by Ailsa Wild
For Odette and Zephyr – my own bonus family. Together you helped me invent Baby.
– Ailsa
For my little mess-makers, Wombat and Bilby.
– Ben
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
About the author and illustrator
Copyright Page
I hold my breath as she grabs a ledge of rock with one hand. She grips tight, her knuckles pale. The sky behind her is so bright it’s scary. She slips a little and her fingers slide back towards the edge.
There is a blur of rope and rock and a thump as shoulder collides with cliff.
Carmeline Clancy’s familiar laugh rings out, and I let my breath out in a whoosh. I’m watching her on the TV in the foyer of Rockers, our rock-climbing centre. I’ve seen these clips hundreds of times on YouTube. I loved Carmeline Clancy before she got famous.
Carmeline is from Colorado and she’s the youngest person ever to climb Lincoln’s Terror, one of the hardest climbs in the universe. She straps her camera to her helmet, so you can watch the crazy stuff she does. Her YouTube channel is the best.
Usually the videos in the rock-climbing centre are of grown-up men. Not today, though. Carmeline Clancy is news because she’s making a movie and doing all her own stunts. They’re filming the city scenes in Melbourne this week.
I want to be Carmeline Clancy. Or maybe I want to hang out with her forever. I can’t decide which.
I turn to my bonus sister Vee as the next clip begins. I call her my bonus sister because she was like the bonus points I got for moving in with my dad. Vee is fun.
‘I’m going to find Carmeline Clancy tomorrow and get her to sign my rock-climbing top,’ I say.
‘I’m going to make friends with her and then I’ll get to be in the movie,’ Vee says.
‘She’s going to make me a stunt-person in heaps of movies,’ I say. Then I do an announcer voice: ‘Squishy Taylor, stunt-climber!’
That’s me, Squishy Taylor. It’s like the gangster, Squizzy Taylor, only better.
Vee grins and says, ‘I’m going to go to Colorado and take her title as the youngest person to climb Lincoln’s Terror.’
We both laugh. ‘You can’t even climb the Gargoyle’s Escape yet,’ I say.
The Gargoyle’s Escape is the hardest climb at Rockers. I can only do the first half of it. Vee is a little bit better but not much, and she’s been rock-climbing for heaps longer than me. I only started recently, when I moved in with her. I moved in because my dad had Baby with her mum.
A voice-over comes on: ‘Rock-climbing child star Carmeline Clancy arrived in Melbourne yesterday where she is already making waves –’
‘All right you two, giddy-up.’ It’s Alice, Vee’s mum, coming out with our bags. Baby is asleep in the sling with his big head leaning sideways under her chin. She stands right in front of the screen so we can’t see.
‘Let’s go,’ says Alice, turning our shoulders towards the door.
‘Hang on,’ I say, straining to keep looking at the screen. The announcer is saying something in a serious tone, but I can’t hear it properly.
Alice turns around, but it’s too late. The voice-over has stopped and now they’re playing one of Carmeline’s more awesome falls.
‘Come on, Squishy,’ Alice says.
‘They were talking about Carmeline Clancy,’ I say.
‘Of course they were,’ says Alice, like the only thing anyone ever talks about is Carmeline Clancy. Which is kind of true in our house.
Me and Vee do upside-down scissor-kicks from the tram handles on the way home. Vee can do more than me, but I do better flips because I practise on the monkey bars at school. Vee is in the year above me and those kids don’t do monkey bars anymore. Vee pretends she doesn’t care, but I’d care if I were her.
Alice hides her face in Baby’s shoulder, pretending to be scared as I land from a flip. She looks up and says, ‘You just spent two hours rock-climbing. Are you not totally exhausted?’
‘No!’ we chorus, and both jump upside-down again.
‘Well, I’m just going to pretend you don’t belong to me, OK?’
I say, ‘OK, Alice!’
Vee says, ‘OK, Mum.’
Vee’s black ponytail swings in time with the swaying tram. Mine is too much of a big curling tangle to actually swing, but I like how it feels, dangling off my head.
The tram stops four doors down from our building, opposite a big hotel. The hotel has shiny brass luggage trolleys and an outdoor carpet and men in fancy suits who just stand there, waiting to be nice to people.
We cross at the lights, towards the hotel, and Vee elbows me and points. A big, scraggly grey puppy is sitting next to one of the men. It’s skinny and is looking up with massive soft brown eyes. The man kicks it, not hard, but still a kick.
‘Hey!’ I say, because that was mean.
The puppy scampers away, limping. It stops behind a big tree out the front of the hotel, and I run towards it. I want to pick it up and cuddle it and give it food. But something scares the puppy and it bolts across the road where I can’t follow.
‘Come on.’ Alice tugs my hand. I follow her towards our place, even though I don’t want to.
‘I’m calling the pound,’ the Fancy Man says.
I turn around to glare at him for being so mean, but then immediately forget all about it. Because someone is getting out of a taxi and heading into the hotel.
‘It’s Carmeline Clancy!’ I say.
‘It was not Carmeline Clancy,’ Jessie says, packing up her violin music. Jessie is Vee’s twin, my other bonus sister. Even though they look matching, in lots of ways they’re opposites.
‘It was so, I saw her,’ I insist.
‘You wish you saw her,’ Jessie says in her annoying older-kid voice.
‘I did see her.’
The twins are only five and a half months older than me, but Jessie does this all the time.
‘Can you guys give it a break?’ Alice asks. She’s kneeling on the floor and Baby is trying to kick her in the face while she wrangles his dirty nappy off him. Usually on Saturday morning, Dad looks after Baby while Alice does rock-climbing. This weekend, one of Dad’s old friends is sick so he’s gone over to make him food. That’s why Baby came to the gym.
Baby is wrinkling his face. I calculate that he’ll start screaming in nine seconds. I start counting down: Nine, eight, seven …
‘Can I google where Carmeline’s staying?’ Jessie asks.
Six, five …
Alice says nothing.
‘Please, Mum?’ Jessie brings the iPad over.
Four, three …
‘No.’
‘Please?’
Two, one …
‘Waaaaaaah!’ Baby is super loud when he’s annoyed.
Alice sits back on her heels. ‘I said no, Jessie. Can you just get out of my face for a minute?’
Jessie sulks off to our room. You’d think Jessie wouldn’t care where Carmeline Clancy was staying, because she never watches the clips with us. She says they’re soooo boring. But Jessie’s into facts. And she’s into being right.
I wonder if I really did see Carmeline Clancy getting out of that taxi.
In our room, Vee is lying on her tummy on the top bunk, looking through the telescope.
‘How’s Boring Lady?’ I ask.
Boring Lady works in
the office exactly across from our window and we used to think she was boring. Then we found out she was the Chief of Special Secret Undercover Operations. Now she’s kind of our own private police officer. She knows we spy on her and she doesn’t mind. All she does in that office is type, anyway.
‘I’m not looking at Boring Lady,’ Vee says, with a scrunched-face voice. I realise the telescope is at a different angle than usual. Vee’s looking down at the street in front of the hotel.
‘Can you see her?’ I ask.
‘Not yet,’ Vee says. We both know we’re talking about Carmeline Clancy without saying her name. Because that’s how much we care.
‘You haven’t seen her because she’s not there,’ Jessie says. Jessie has started putting her things away in neat rows in her drawers.
I do a Split-Legged-Upside Down-Hoik up to Vee’s bed and nudge her aside to look through the telescope. Usually I look through the telescope from my bunk, which is in the middle – and means you see directly across to Boring Lady’s office. From Jessie’s bunk on the bottom, the telescope looks up at the stars. Which is perfect because she’s also an astronomy-head.
‘How good is that tree?’ Vee says. It’s the tree the puppy hid behind. I’ve never noticed the tree properly, but it’s enormous, with wide, spreading branches, reaching to the hotel wall. I shift the telescope to check out the rest of the tree. It would be a solid tree to climb.
When the telescope reaches the bottom of the trunk, I notice the puppy is back. The telescope is so good, I can see his beautiful eyes and the rib bones under his fur. He looks so trembly and sad.
I wonder if Carmeline Clancy will come out again soon. I wonder if the puppy will stay still this time.
I have an idea. ‘Let’s go play hopscotch,’ I say.
We haven’t played hopscotch since we used it as a cover to stake out a diamond smuggler.
Vee grins. ‘Brilliant.’
Jessie agrees to come too. I guess practising your violin and tidying your room get boring after a while – even if you’re Jessie. She finds the chalk in a drawer, lined up beside pencils and textas. Vee tells Alice what we’re doing, and we pile out the door.
The puppy is gone again, but maybe it will come back. And maybe we’ll see Carmeline Clancy. We dawdle up the street and draw our hopscotch court as near as we can to the hotel, in the shade of the big tree. One of the Fancy Men out the front glares at us, but we stay far enough away that he can’t say anything.
We play three and a quarter games before Carmeline Clancy steps out of the hotel. It is her. At our hotel. She’s even wearing that rock-climbing sports top from the overhang video! I grab Vee’s arm and we just stare at her. She’s real. Right there on our footpath. My skin feels tingly and my ears buzz.
She’s walking with a woman who’s not her mum. I’ve seen her mum on YouTube. This woman is really tall, with a stiff back and zero smiles. One of the Fancy Men waves down a taxi for them.
I’m all ready to run up and say hello to Carmeline – except my heart is going really fast and for the first time in my whole life, I’m worried about what to say. I push back my shoulders. It doesn’t matter, I’m going over anyway.
The Fancy Man is opening the taxi door. If I’m not quick, Carmeline will be gone and I will have missed my chance. As I walk towards them, the woman turns around and meets my eye.
She gives me a death look. It says: ‘Don’t even think about coming one step closer. You are nothing. We don’t want to think about you.’
I stumble to a halt. She turns around and follows Carmeline Clancy into the taxi, which drives away.
I stare after it as it disappears up the street. The Fancy Man looks at me a bit strangely, but I don’t care. It’s my street too.
‘Who do you reckon the lady is?’ Vee asks, coming up beside me.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, ‘but she is scary.’
I lie on the lounge-room floor to skype my mum before bedtime.
‘Hey there, Squish,’ Mum says. ‘How was rock-climbing?’ Mum remembers everything about my schedule, even though she’s too busy to talk for long.
‘Good. Hey, can a security guard be a lady who’s not in uniform?’
Mum knows things about security people because she works for the UN. Her new job in Geneva has the word ‘security’ in it.
Mum laughs. ‘Absolutely. Got a new career plan, Squisho?’
I shake my head. ‘No. I just figured out who the lady with Carmeline Clancy is.’
‘I should have known this would be about Carmeline Clancy,’ Mum says.
‘She’s staying in the hotel next door,’ I tell her.
It’s not exactly next door, but Mum’s used to me exaggerating. She already knows all about the new film from me skyping her every night.
She gets her cheekiest grin and says, ‘Are you gonna figure out a way to meet her?’ Mum never really got over being a rebel when she was a kid. She raises her eyebrows. ‘Maybe you can bust into that hotel or something.’
Alice comes over with Baby on her hip. ‘Don’t put crazy ideas in their heads, Devika!’ She’s smiling, but she’s got a little bit of a warning tone. Say hello to this guy instead.’ Alice dumps Baby between the screen and me.
Baby tries to eat the screen. It makes us all laugh. Then it’s time for Mum’s next meeting, because it’s daytime in Geneva.
‘Love you, Squishy-sweet,’ Mum says. She looks at Baby and does soppy-grown-up face until I hang up.
There’s no news of Carmeline Clancy all day Sunday and Monday. I don’t see the puppy again, either. It’s not until Monday night that Dad turns on the TV news while he’s cooking. I’m sitting at the bench, sneaking bits of cheese.
After all the bad bits of news finish, the newsreader puts on a smug, patronising smile and says: ‘Melbourne is under attack by one young stormtrooper who has done thousands of dollars worth of damage to her hotel room. Critics say rock-climber-turned-movie-star Carmeline Clancy is a spoiled brat who …’
The TV is showing images of the hotel on our street, then Carmeline Clancy rock-climbing, then other ones of Carmeline Clancy looking sulky. The images flick up quickly, one after the other.
‘Carmeline Clancy’s Tour Nanny spoke with our reporter.’ An image of the woman comes up. She looks even taller and scarier with her arms crossed, staring down the camera.
‘This is absolutely out of character for Carmeline,’ the Nanny begins.
‘Oh, she’s the Tour Nanny,’ Vee says. The woman doesn’t look like a nanny to me, but Vee doesn’t seem to notice. ‘Do you reckon Carmeline Clancy came to Australia without her mum?’ Vee’s so busy talking that we don’t hear the last bit of the news.
The newsreader begins handing over to the weather report.
I think about Carmeline Clancy’s awesome YouTube clips. I can’t imagine her destroying a hotel room.
‘It wasn’t her,’ I say.
‘How would you know?’ Jessie asks.
‘I’ve watched her for hours,’ I say. ‘She’s always really careful. And tidy – she’s probably your real twin, swapped with Vee at birth.’ This is a joke, but Jessie doesn’t laugh. ‘Carmeline Clancy definitely didn’t do it.’
‘But you have no evidence,’ Jessie says.
I think about my mum suggesting I break into the hotel. ‘I’ll go ask her,’ I say.
‘You will not,’ Jessie says.
Vee pops up from behind the couch where she’s been building towers for Baby to knock down. She’s got a smile on her face. ‘How are we gonna meet her?’ she asks.
‘Dinner!’ Dad interrupts. ‘Someone wake up Alice.’
‘I’m awake,’ Alice says, opening their bedroom door. She has naps before dinner some afternoons, because Baby is teething.
Alice puts on her serious voice as she fills everyone’s plates with broccoli. ‘I was listening to the news in there,’ she says, ‘about your rock-climbing friend.’
‘She’s not their friend,’ Jessie says.
We all smirk at each other. Princesses are so grade one.
‘– But,’ Alice goes on, holding up the tongs like a stop sign, ‘even the most famous stunt-doubles need to be respectful of other people’s things.’
I get what Alice is saying, but she’s wrong. ‘Carmeline Clancy isn’t a stunt-double. That’s what’s so cool about her. She’s doing her own stunts,’ I explain.
Vee grins at me. One day we’re going to do our own stunts.
Later, Vee interrupts my Skype session with Mum to throw a piece of paper down on my lap. ‘Look what I found in the recycling,’ she says.
I’m annoyed, because Mum only has about three minutes to talk to me. Vee is taking my precious time. But I read the piece of paper anyway, because it’s in front of me.
To the Occupier, it says. It’s a letter explaining that the road will be closed for filming over the next two weeks. Sorry for the inconvenience.
I wave the letter at the screen. ‘They’re closing the street for Carmeline Clancy’s film,’ I explain to Mum.
‘Which street?’ she asks.
I squint at the little map down the bottom. ‘The one round the back of our building!’
At school, my friends are all obsessed with how bad Carmeline Clancy is. You can kind of hear their parents in their voices as they say things like, ‘I wouldn’t want to be friends with someone like that,’ and, ‘She shouldn’t be allowed on TV,’ and ‘It’s just plain rude.’ They sit around and have a little agreeing party together. Everyone agrees with everyone else, only more so. Carmeline Clancy seems to get worse and worse as they talk.
I suggest playing ninja-monkey tag, but no-one hears. They’re all having too nice a time judging Carmeline.
I get depressed and go looking for Vee. But she’s with the older kids who all do snob-face at me.
I go do flips off the monkey bars by myself. I even talk to some grade-one kids for a bit until the bell goes.