Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Acknowledgements
About the Author
He’s here somewhere. The house feels different.
I sneak up the hall to my room, throw my schoolbag on the bed and head for the kitchen. If I can make it to the fridge without being seen, maybe I can avoid him for at least half an hour.
No such luck. He’s sitting at the kitchen table and stands, turning towards me with an awkward, embarrassed half-grin. His hair is a little longer than I expected. We’re the same height so I’m forced to look directly into his dark hazel eyes. The aura surrounding him shines over-bright blue, like the sky above the lucerne paddocks in the middle of summer.
I see colour everywhere, even in things that aren’t physical, like bird calls, numbers and days of the week. People always have auras. My best friend Lucy’s is pink and Mum’s is yellow, the same as Fridays.
Sometimes a day changes colour. The worst days are red and the best days are so clear you can see right through them. This afternoon is canary yellow, the sort that melts lazily in the sun. Usually that’s my favourite kind, but not today. Even though I don’t want him here, I’m not going to be rude. That’s not who I am.
“Konichiwa.” I stumble over the “w”.
That’s problem number one. I don’t speak Japanese.
“Kenichi?” Am I getting his name right? I don’t like the letter “k”, especially when it’s upper case. It shouts too loud.
The blue boy nods. His smile is now a lopsided upturned crinkle, reflecting in his eyes. I can’t tell if he’s laughing inside or not.
“I’m Charlotte.” I point to my chest.
He looks more embarrassed to see where I pointed. I knew it would be like this. Extremely uncomfortable. My friends call me Charlie, but this boy isn’t going to be my friend. I don’t want him here. Mum didn’t ask my opinion. Now I’m stuck looking after him every single guaranteed-to-be-boring day until he goes home.
That’s problem number two.
“Good afternoon, Shallot,” he says, in English manicured with an American accent. “I’m happy to meet you.”
At least we can communicate, even if I sound like a salad vegetable.
Every two years a student comes from Tokyo to stay for a year and every other year a kid from Cowra High goes to Tokyo. It’s only for Year 10s. Mum is super keen to be involved. I’ve already told her I’m not applying to go and I don’t want to host an exchange student.
“It’s still a few years away,” she said. “You might change your mind.”
I thought that would give me plenty of time to work on an excuse, except Kenichi isn’t an exchange student. I didn’t get any warning. He won an essay competition and for the prize he could choose to attend any school, anywhere in the world. When he chose Cowra, Mum volunteered to look after him.
Mum is the most efficient, energetic person I know. She doesn’t look like a farmer. She dresses like she works in an office except without the high heels, even when she’s dipping sheep. Her blonde hair is always perfect, not flyaway like mine. But her blue eyes have the same sparkle I see when I look in the mirror. I love her but she can be the most irritating mother in the world. Like now.
“I don’t want to babysit some kid who can’t speak decent English,” I’d said to Mum when she told me what she’d done.
“It’ll teach you to be more tolerant. You might learn a few Japanese words.” Mum put her arm around me. “It won’t be that bad, I promise.”
“Yes, it will. I know what happens. If you’re the host family kid, you have to look after the overseas kid all day at school. And on the weekend, too. How am I going to do that if I can’t even talk to her? Jenny Stone’s sister had an exchange student last year. She hated it.”
I’d pushed Mum’s arm away. Year 7 is hard enough without her making it worse. I tried a different tack.
“I’m not sharing my room with some strange girl I don’t know.”
“You won’t have to. Kenichi is a boy. I cleaned out the spare bedroom for him yesterday. You can sulk about it all you like, but he’ll be here in two weeks.”
Problem number three. A boy.
And problem number four is the biggest problem of all. It’s Eli’s bedroom. It’s not a spare room.
Two weeks later is right now and the blue boy is staring at me as if I’m supposed to do something. Like what? I can’t sit him in front of the TV and turn on the cartoon channel, like I do when I’m babysitting the MacAllister kids. It’s his first day here and I’m already out of ideas.
I glance at my watch. Mum won’t be home to rescue me for a long, tedious hour. Surely she could’ve missed one Historical Society meeting.
“Do you want something to eat?” I ask.
“Are you eating, Shallot?”
“Yeah. I’m starving. I didn’t have lunch.”
I flip the lid on the bin and ditch the sandwiches Mum packed for me. No one does the sandwich thing anymore.
“I’ll eat too,” he decides.
Good. That should use up some time.
The cake tin is chock-a-block with freshly baked lamingtons. Mum is waving the Australian flag right from the start, but I’m not objecting to that. I love lamingtons.
I tease two plates out of the cupboard. Everything in our house is packed, racked and stacked so if you take one thing out, the rest of the shelf comes with it. The pantry is dangerous. A year ago, a 24-pack of coke fell on my foot and broke three toes. I’ve had more packaged food-related injuries than childhood diseases.
Mum shops like a survivalist. There’s only the two of us, but once I counted twenty tins of tomatoes and twelve packets of udon noodles in the pantry. She has this thing about Japan, which is what got me into this mess in the first place.
“Here you go.” I pass Kenichi a lamington on a plate decorated with sprigs of cherry blossom and a column of kanji lettering.
I put another lamington on a plate for myself and sit down opposite him to see what he does. I bet they don’t have lamingtons in Japan.
He carefully dusts off the coconut.
“You’re supposed to eat that.”
Using his fingers like chopsticks, Kenichi picks the fallen flakes from his plate. Then he starts to laugh – a warm, wash-over-you kind of laugh that makes me laugh too. It also makes me feel foolish because I’ve got no idea what I’m laughing about.
“What’s so funny?”
He points to the kanji.
“What does it say?” I ask.
“A weasel wiped its nose here.”
“Seriously?”
He smothers another laugh with a grin.
Maybe this exchange thing won’t be a total fail. At least I’ll enjoy listening to Kenichi translate the dinnerware for Mum. Imagine what might be written on the bottom of the cereal bowls or inside the coffee mugs. I knew there was something suspect about a Japanese dinner set without any teacups.
“What made you choose to come to Cowra?” I ask.
“I didn’t. My father chose for me. I wanted to go to Paris.”
What? I’m lumbered with looking afte
r him and he doesn’t even want to be here.
“Why didn’t you tell your dad that?”
He shrugs and doesn’t answer.
“So you just gave in?”
He shrugs again. It’s hard holding a conversation when I’m the only one in it. He’s such a wimp. If he’d had the courage to tell his dad where he wanted to go, I wouldn’t have a problem. But I do. I’m stuck with him now and I promised Mum I’d be friendly. I’m good at pretending.
“Mum’s been fussing and planning your visit for weeks. She’s got a list. Do you want to see what you’re in for?”
He nods.
“I’ll be back in a minute.” I hesitate. His plate is empty. I place the cake tin on the table. “Have some more lamingtons. Mum made them especially for you.”
“Thank you. I am very lucky.”
He certainly is. She’s too busy to make lamingtons any other time.
Mum is ultra-organised with all sorts of techie stuff to handle appointments and task lists. She’s the queen of the deadlines, but only on her laptop. No one would believe it if they could see the mess in her office. A trail of ants has found an unwashed coffee mug sitting on her mouse mat. There are so many boxes stacked under her desk, there’s hardly any room for her feet.
The list has to be here somewhere. I spot it on the floor, poking out from under a half-dead pot plant.
“Here.” I hand the printout to Kenichi. “Mum’s cheat sheet.”
Mum found the list on an Internet blog. She thought it was good advice. I know the list off by heart even though I only read it once. I like the way items on lists line up like soldiers inside my head. If one goes AWOL I can tell, because a list turns a different colour when its shape changes. Mum’s lists are always khaki green, everything in its perfect place.
Five Things Not to Do with Japanese Exchange Students
1. Don’t think you know everything about Japan (ignore what you’ve seen on TV).
2. Don’t exclude students from everyday tasks (they want to be involved).
3. Don’t arrange too many visits to tourist attractions (see #2).
4. Don’t have family arguments in front of students.
5. Don’t avoid talking to students just because it’s hard to communicate.
I’m glad I don’t have to worry about the last one anymore. Kenichi’s English is easy to understand.
“You need to watch out for number two. It probably means being dragged into town to help Mum carry bags, every time she goes grocery shopping. She loves buying food. And there’s endless work to be done on a farm. You don’t even want to think about that.”
Kenichi studies the list as if he’s trying to memorise it. “I’m looking forward to my time in Australia.”
“You’re in for a big disappointment stuck out here,” I say. “Nothing except sheep, on and on forever. Mum’s got twenty-two hundred hectares of them.”
“I think staying on a farm will be interesting.”
“Only if you like sheep.”
He starts to answer, but I cut him off. “You don’t have to be polite. No one likes sheep. They’re stupid animals.”
The thin thread of words connecting us finally snaps. The conversation collapses into a silent heap. It doesn’t matter if we speak the same language when I can’t think of anything else to say. I gather up the plates and put them in the dishwasher. I wipe down the bench and empty the bin. Now I’m out of things to do as well as stuff to say.
How could Mum do this to me? The scrunch of Kenichi folding her list into sections magnifies one hundred times. My chair screeches louder than a cockatoo as I sit back at the table. I have to say something.
“Is that origami?”
He unfolds the piece of paper, pointing to the first item on the list. “Japan isn’t full of people making origami, just like your streets aren’t full of kangaroos.”
Smart alec. If he goes out after dusk or at dawn, he’ll see he’s wrong. There’ll be kangaroos on our road. There always are. Mum’s got two new dents in the front of her car to prove it.
I’ve done my best to make him feel at home. More than I should’ve had to. It’s Mum’s turn now.
“I’ve got a Maths assignment due tomorrow. It looks like a tough one, so I need to get started. Would you like me to turn the TV on?”
“That’s not necessary.” He gets up and tucks the chair against the table. “I can find something to do now.”
But what about tomorrow? And the next day, and the next? This is going to be the longest ten days of my life.
I don’t want to tackle my Maths Assignment. I can do it quickly later. Maths is just numbers and numbers are just colours and patterns. Easy – peasy. All I have to do is line them up the way they look right. Sometimes I have trouble with the number eight. It’s such a rebel and refuses to stay where it’s put so I don’t always get one hundred per cent. I just want to sit here and try not to resent what Mum did.
We didn’t have a spare room until Kenichi needed somewhere to sleep. The room belongs to my brother, Eli, even though he hasn’t used it for eight years. I knew something awful had happened when Aunt Mandy picked me up from preschool instead of Mum. It was Tuesday and the day was blood red when it should have been purple. I don’t remember a funeral. I remember Mum crying and how shaky and silvery the house felt with just her and me in it. The space Eli left couldn’t be filled with photographs and memories, no matter how hard Mum and I tried. I rarely go in his room. It hurts too much.
Mum won’t talk about what happened. She talks about everything, talks all the time, but never about that and she won’t talk to my Nana Ruth, not since that terrible red day.
Eli couldn’t see the colours I saw. He was blue, like the new boy in his room. I thought Eli knew everything and I couldn’t wait to follow him around at school. But on my first day there, I walked across the playground by myself.
Mum left his room untouched. For almost a year I thought it meant he was coming back, but death is forever and no amount of pocket money thrown in a wishing well can change that.
Until two weeks ago, everything in his room was the way it still should be, with Eli’s soccer trophies, Nintendo games and Batman comics sitting where he left them. Now Mum’s cleaned the room and the motorbikes on the quilt have been replaced with wattle sprays and bright-feathered parrots. The treasures that sat frozen on the shelf for years have been packed in boxes on top of the wardrobe and under the bed.
Mum’s made a place for a stranger to store his things and that means Eli’s space is crushed up small, shoved into a corner. I imagine Kenichi putting his clothes in Eli’s chest of drawers, lying on Eli’s bed and staring at the marks Eli made on the ceiling with his football. Can this visit get any worse?
At least Kenichi won’t be touching my brother’s stuff.
“Can I get you anything?” I stop at Eli’s bedroom door, pretending to be a good host, but really I’m checking for changes.
“No, thank you.”
He’s sitting at Eli’s desk. I can see his fingerprints and footprints everywhere. Two folded rows of clothes stripe the bed and two pairs of shoes are neatly stacked underneath it, next to a box of Star Wars Lego.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Writing in my journal.” He puts down his pen and stares at the page. “I promised my mother I would record everything that happens to me in Australia.”
“You’re going to let your mother read it?”
He smiles, a resigned I-don’t-get-a-choice kind of smile.
If I had a journal, it would be digital. I’d set a password to protect it from Mum, like I do with my phone messages and my email.
I wonder if he’s writing about me. I lean in closer, but I can’t make out any words from the doorway. I can see all sorts of things other people can’t, but when it comes to words, my eyes are only as good as my glasses. It’s probably in Japanese anyway.
“It’s a tradition in my mother’s family for the eldest son to keep
a journal. Do you have any family traditions?”
“No.”
It wasn’t always like that. On Christmas morning, Eli and I would wait patiently until Mum finished preparing a big Christmas lunch with glazed ham, baked potatoes and at least three kinds of salad. We’d sit beside the brightly decorated tree while she read each gift label aloud and handed out the presents. Later in the morning, Nana Ruth would appear with more presents and her secret-recipe Christmas cake.
Now at Christmas, Mum leaves a present on the end of my bed, we have ham sandwiches for lunch and Christmas cards with money arrive in the mail from Nana Ruth. Mum always throws hers in the bin. When she’s not looking, I retrieve the money. There’s almost a thousand dollars in an envelope at the back of my sock drawer. It doesn’t seem right to spend it or to let Mum throw it away.
“I don’t like writing, but I think traditions are important,” Kenichi insists. “They help keep a family together. You could create one.”
I’m not listening to a lecture from someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. People who don’t have family problems always think they have all the answers.
“You haven’t written much.” I’m not invading his privacy by walking over to the desk. He’s the one who shouldn’t be in here.
He closes the journal. “It’s a poem. I don’t need many words if I have the right ones.”
Is he one of those obnoxious think-they-know-it-all kids?
Last year, my class learned to write haiku poems. Three syllables, five syllables and three again. The rows balance up and make wonderful colour-coded patterns. I’d like to ask if he’s writing haiku, but I won’t, not after the origami incident.
If only I could hang out at Lucy’s house until he goes home.
I flop onto my bed and flip open the purple diamante-studded cover on my mobile. I’d promised Lucy I’d ring as soon as I could.
“So what’s he like?” she asks.
“A bit quiet and a lot boring. He speaks English with an American accent. He calls me Shallot.”
“That’s sweet, but what’s he really like? Is he cute?”
“How would I know?”
“You’ve got eyes behind those glasses. He’s not ugly, is he?”
Red Day Page 1