The answer was three steps behind her. The answer was also dressed up in white shirt and white pants. The answer was our pool guy.
‘You know Seb?’ said Miranda, and there was no mistaking the pride in her voice.
Seb may have been the pool guy, he may have been kind of short, but he was hot hot hot.
‘Seb, you know my little brother Dom?’ she said, tousling my hair. Seb sure was doing weird things to my big sister: she was so not the tousling type.
‘Where have you been?’ Miranda said to me. ‘Mom’s been ringing you like mad.’
Now Mom was accelerating towards us, facial expression and body language telling me that I was in trouble yet again.
‘Some kids tried to rob me,’ I said to Miranda.
‘Some kids tried to rob you?’ said Miranda, conveniently, just as Mom arrived.
‘Darling,’ she said, anger becoming concern. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘I’m okay,’ I said.
‘You poor thing,’ she said.
As we walked back up to the pool I told them what had happened. How I was walking along the street and this gang of kids, including that Brandon who Mom had tried to help once, accosted me. How I managed to fight them off. Okay, it didn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but Mom and Miranda seemed to buy it.
‘Yeah, I’ve heard of that sort of stuff happening a lot lately,’ said Seb.
It was only when Mom and I entered the house together that I questioned just how easily Mom had bought it. I mean, if it was my kid, wouldn’t I ring the cops or something?
‘Do you know who that boy with Miranda is?’ I said. ‘He’s actually our pool guy.’
Mom looked at me, brow furrowed, shook her head, and said, ‘That’s a very disappointing judgement, Dom.’
And it probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done when I then said, ‘Mom, do I really have to come tonight?’
Hot bath, hit the sack – that was all I wanted to do.
Mom opted for a non-verbal reply, fixing me with a look so withering it would’ve deforested most of the Amazon Basin.
‘Okay, I just need to freshen up,’ I said, borrowing one of her expressions.
I went upstairs.
Firstly I had a shower, trying to convince myself as I did that it was pretty much like a bath except it was vertical instead of horizontal, and a bit less wet. And I have to admit, as I got dressed I did feel better.
My phone beeped.
A message from Hound. Call me!
So I called him.
‘How’d you go with Guzman, Youngblood?’ he said.
‘I’m all over it,’ I said.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because he’s acting real suspicious-like.’
‘Okay.’
‘And Nitmick dropped in, he was very whiny.’
What’s new? I thought. Very Whiny was Nitmick’s default setting. Except, perhaps, when Brock the Rock was knocking the crap out of somebody.
Hound continued. ‘He reckons we hacked into his computer.’
‘We did hack into his computer!’
‘No, after that. Later, after I was stupid enough to bail the tub of lard.’
‘Well, it wasn’t me,’ I said, thinking that whoever had managed to hack into paranoid Nitmick’s paranoid computer must really have known what they were doing. ‘Sorry, but I’ve got to go.’
‘Guzman, okay? I need to know what he’s up to.’
When I eventually got back downstairs Ready! Set! Cook! had already started.
It was time to introduce the contestants, and the camera panned from one face to the next.
When it came to Toby’s face, we all cheered and yelled.
‘Let’s everybody keep their fingers crossed for Toby,’ Mom gushed, looking proudly at her youngest son sitting next to her.
The show had been taped a few days before and even though Toby had been sworn to secrecy I’m pretty sure he wasn’t going to sit there, looking so pleased with himself, if he hadn’t made the final.
And I was pretty sure Mom wouldn’t have invited all these people around for a bite to eat if he hadn’t made the final, either.
Sworn to secrecy, my rectal passage.
Eventually the judges announced the finalists and – what a surprise – Toby was amongst them. More clapping. More cheering.
Again, I looked over at Toby, expecting more smugness. But that wasn’t what I saw, at all. Instead he had this look on his face of – I’m not sure how to describe it – concern? Worry? Maybe even terror? Toby saw me looking at him, though, and immediately stuck out his enormous tongue at me.
Then something occurred to me.
‘When’s the final?’ I asked Mom.
‘Sunday night,’ she said.
No big deal, I thought. Toby probably didn’t want to see me race anyway. Yes, he came along to a lot of my meets, but it was more about the hot dogs than the hot racing.
‘We can all watch it in your hotel room,’ I said. ‘I’m sure Coach Sheeds will let me.’
A look crossed Mom’s face and she said, ‘But, darling.’
My mum isn’t really a ‘But, darling’ sort of person, so immediately I knew something was up.
‘The show is actually taped in the afternoon,’ she said.
‘And you told Toby you’d go?’ I said.
‘Your dad and your grandfather will be at the race, of course,’ said Mom.
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘Time for dinner!’ said Mom, clapping her hands. ‘Everybody at the table, please.’
Again my stomach rumbled ominously, so I paid a visit to the toilet, hoping something would happen.
But nothing happened. When I returned everybody was already seated and I copped another dirty look from Mom.
There was one empty seat, so I took it. Miranda was on my left. And next to her was Seb. And across the table was Tristan.
And he was giving me this weird, inane sort of smile.
I picked, supermodel style, at the food that was put in front of me. And then it was dessert time.
Dad made a little speech. About parenthood, about watching your children grow and thrive, about the joy you have in their achievements. Mom made a little speech. About parenthood, about watching your children grow and thrive, about the joy you have in their achievements.
And the ice-cream came out, on a silver platter, a great glistening pyramid of it. There were ‘ooh’s and there were ‘aah’s and there was a round of applause.
‘Only a little bit for me,’ I said to Mom, but she piled my plate high.
After the first spoonful I knew I was in trouble. I put my spoon down, but Mom glared at me. I knew what she was thinking, too: that the green-eyed monster she’d recently been on about had reared its head.
I dug in again, bringing the loaded spoon to my mouth. My throat constricted, the ball of ice-cream in my mouth had nowhere to go.
I stood up, intent on getting to the bathroom. But I was gagging. So either the ice-cream extruded from my nostrils and I began to look like the soft-serve machine at McDonald’s, or I opened my mouth.
I choose the latter, and after a tremendous choking sound, the ice-cream flew out.
Now all eyes were on it, as it arced through the air, a milky-tailed meteor, and landed back on the plate. Splat!
An appalled silence followed.
Until one person spoke.
‘Great shot, buddy,’ said Tristan.
THURSDAY
FRONT PAGE VIEWS
The next morning, when I walked into the kitchen, I walked into Alaska, into Antarctica, into Yakutsk, officially the world’s coldest city.
Mom was juicing her juice.
‘Morning, Mother,’ I said.
She said nothing, but I knew what she was thinking: green-eyed monster, head, raise. She was thinking that I’d intentionally sabotaged Toby’s big moment.
But maybe she just hadn’t heard me over the grind of the juicer, I thought. So I repeated the greetin
g, louder this time.
‘Morning,’ she replied, her voice glacial.
No: monster, head, raise, for sure.
‘Hi, Tobes,’ I said to my younger brother, who was shovelling cereal into the cement-mixer that was his mouth. In return I got a look that would snap-freeze a polar bear.
Again: not fair.
I looked over at Miranda. Eyes on her iPad, she was gnawing on toast.
‘Morning, sis,’ I said.
She looked up at me and slowly shook her head. As if I was a disappointment. As if I was a lost cause.
It was a relief when Dad appeared, suited up, ready for work.
‘Didn’t run this morning, champ?’ he said, shaking muesli into a bowl.
‘Tummy’s still a bit dodgy,’ I said, hands over stomach.
He lowered his voice. ‘Wasn’t a good look, was it?’ He poured soy milk onto his muesli. ‘The ice-cream thing.’
‘Not a good look at all,’ I agreed.
Dad threw me a half-smile, but it wasn’t enough.
It was still Alaska, Antarctica, Yakutsk.
I wanted him to tell me that it was going to be all right, that The Debt would be repaid and my life would return to normal.
‘Might be a just dairy thing,’ he said. ‘You could try soy.’
‘Sure, Dad,’ I said, my voice intentionally low. ‘Soy will really solve everything.’
His spoon stopped mid-muesli and he fixed me with a look.
I know my dad’s very handsome. That he has excellent hair. And he dresses well. And keeps fit. I know all that, but most of the time it seems to me that Dad is sort of bland, the way a lot of businessman types are sort of bland.
Sort of bland and sort of boring.
There was nothing bland or boring about that look he gave me, though.
It was an angry look.
And a fierce look.
Maybe even a mean look.
And it said: Stop whingeing, because you’re not the only one who has had to go through this crap.
I met his look, though. And he was the first to look away, back to his stupid muesli and his stupid soy milk. But that didn’t matter, that was a crap game anyway, because he’d already said, without uttering a single word, all that he needed to say.
If it’d been Yakutsk before, it was even colder now.
‘Is that a whistle?’ I said, though I’d heard nothing at all. ‘I’ll go get the paper.’
Outside, I made for the fig tree on our front lawn, the one that still had the remnants of a tree house, and collapsed under it.
Leaves rustled. Birds sang. Clouds chased after each other in the great blue playground of the sky.
‘Hi, Dom!’
‘Jesus, Tristan!’ I said. ‘You scared the hell out of me!’
‘Sorry,’ he said, sitting down next to me.
When I say next to me, I really mean next to me: our butts were practically touching.
Look, I’m a pretty modern sort of fifteen year old, not fazed by a bit of male-on-male contact, but I couldn’t help shuffling away from him a bit.
At least until there was no more butt-on-butt action happening.
And what was it with Tristan, anyway? Why was he just wandering around? Yes, I knew he didn’t have to get ready for school, but still. The old Tristan never did this.
Leaves rustled. Birds sang. Clouds chased after each other …
‘Hey, Dom,’ said Tristan. ‘You know before the coma?’
‘BC, you mean? Before Coma?’
‘Yeah, that’s right: BC. What did we used to do apart from taking the boat for a spin?’
‘You seriously can’t remember?’
‘Hey, I’m asking, aren’t I? The specialist said that sometimes, after a coma, people have trouble accessing their memory.’
Like a corrupted hard disk, I thought, whirring and whirring, looking for data that isn’t there.
‘So what did we get up to, you and me, BC?’
‘I don’t know, the usual stuff. Hang out. Horse around. Take the mickey. Hang out a bit more. More horsing around. Take some more mickey.’
A motorbike passed and the rolled-up newspaper flew towards us.
I leapt up and plucked it out of the air one-handed.
‘Great to talk, Tristan,’ I said, walking quickly towards the house.
Look, I had to admit, I wasn’t a big newspaper reader.
Mostly I just looked at the sports section, mostly the athletics, mostly the running. And because there was seldom any running, mostly I read nothing.
I removed the plastic coating and was about to flick to the sports section when something on the front page caught my eye.
LAZARUS BROTHERS IMPLICATED IN LATEST GOLD COAST MURDER read the headline, and under that was a large photo of the implicated Lazarus brothers.
Behind them, sitting on a tiny wooden stool, a triple-shot espresso in hand, was yours truly.
Okay, I wasn’t in focus, my face was grainy, but surely anybody who knew me would recognise it as me.
Or would they?
There was one way to find out.
I took the paper back inside, held up the front page so Mom and Dad, both now sitting at the table, could see it.
‘Check out these Lazarus brothers,’ I said. ‘They’re mean-looking dudes, aren’t they?’
Dad looked up from his muesli.
‘Wouldn’t want to meet them in a dark alley,’ he said.
‘Don’t you reckon, Mom?’
She looked up from her juice, and said, ‘Scum.’
If my own parents didn’t recognise me, then I doubted whether anybody from school would.
I figured it had to do with context: me sitting at Cozzi’s at ten in the morning on a school day just wasn’t what you’d expect.
I was safe, then.
Safe from the standard Grammar punishment for wagging school, which was three days’ suspension. But as I put bread in the toaster, I realised that I had this wrong. Maybe three days’ suspension wasn’t such a bad thing. Because, let’s face it, school was totally getting in the way.
And if I did get suspended Gus would have to look after me. Which pretty much meant I could do what I liked.
Yes, I had found a way to wag, but it was complicated and it was risky and I’d already been found out.
As I ate the toast, I tried to think it through. Did I really want to get suspended from school? By the time I’d finished my toast I knew the answer.
I went upstairs to my bedroom. Found the Lazarus brothers’ photo on the net. Copied it, pasted it into Word. Wrote Is that Dom Silvagni? in 14 point Arial Rounded MT Bold on the bottom. I thought about emailing it but decided against it: emails can sit there unopened for yonks. But a fax, that arrives pre-opened.
Sometimes the old technology just rocks, I told myself as I WinFaxed the doctored photo to the school’s fax number.
I went back downstairs.
When the home phone rang a couple of minutes later, Toby answered it.
‘Mom, it’s for you,’ he said. ‘It’s Grammar.’
Mom took the phone. As she listened to whoever it was on the other end she walked over to the kitchen table and I studied the front page.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I agree it does look a bit like him, but …’ I interrupted. ‘It is me!’
‘Sorry, can you hold on for a second?’ said Mom, cupping her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. ‘It’s you?’
‘It’s me, I totally wagged school. I pretty much deserve any punishment they dish out,’ I said cheerfully.
After all the porky pies I’d been serving up lately, it actually felt really good to tell the truth.
Mom took her hand off the mouthpiece. ‘Dom has just owned up, Mr Cranbrook. No, I agree absolutely.’ She put down the phone.
Shocked, she said, ‘You’re suspended until next Tuesday.’
I punched the air with my fist.
Which probably wasn’t the best idea. Because Mom collapsed into a chair
and started crying.
Or was it crying?
Was she using some of the skills that had caused the great Pacino to remark, ‘You’ve got real presence, babe.’?
And Dad had reverted back to his normal bland self; he must’ve known that it was Debt-related.
The phone rang again.
And again Toby answered it. But this time it was for me.
‘Yes, Dom speaking,’ I said.
‘What in the hell were you thinking?’
This voice was so strident, it took me a second to work out that it was Coach Sheeds talking.
‘I’ve just been summoned by the principal,’ she said. ‘You’ve gone and got yourself suspended!’
‘The race is on Sunday,’ I said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘You can’t race!’
‘But the race is on the weekend,’ I said. ‘Not a school day.’
‘You’re not listening to me, Dom. You are suspended. You cannot race. You are not going to Rome.’
Each word like a bullet thud-thud-thudding into the target, smashing my dreams, destroying my life.
‘Dom?’ said Coach. ‘Are you okay?’
I wanted to collapse onto the floor, I wanted to open the floodgates and let the tears come.
I wanted to, but I didn’t.
‘Of course I’m okay,’ I said, and I hung up.
FRIDAY
LITTLE SILICON VALLEY
I checked the address again: 958 Goldman Avenue, Silicon Valley. It was an empty block. Tussocks of brown grass and piles of rubbish and a faded For Sale sign. So much for Dr Chakrabarty and his cryptics, I thought. What a waste of time, of a ninety-eight-minute train trip. And had I just gone and got myself suspended for nothing? Missed out on the race for absolutely no reason?
But then it occurred to me: Usain Bolt actually had two world records: the 100 metres in 9.58 seconds and the 200 metres in 19.19 seconds. So I kept walking until I got to 1919 Goldman Avenue.
It looked like any other factory in the area, a big boxy building made from concrete blocks. The trees outside were spindly, grey with dust. Ragged plastic bags danced in the wind. A mangy dog sniffed about. On a wall the company’s name – ase Logi – was spelled out in letter cut-outs. It took me a while to realise that a couple of cut-outs were missing, that it should’ve read Case Logic. That was encouraging, anyway. Case, housing, they were the same thing, weren’t they?
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