by Ailsa Wild
I use my best dramatic whisper to sum up what we’re all thinking. ‘So, Fluoro Guy from the park works for Zoom Mining. He’s dumping toxic waste and Mr Hinkenbushel is investigating him. That’s what the news was about.’
Jessie wrinkles her face, pointing at the article. ‘The investigation in the news isn’t about a new dump in Melbourne. It’s about whether Zoom Mining was breaking the law before the big spill.’
‘Well, if they’re dumping toxic waste under the city, that’s breaking the law,’ I say. ‘That must be why an undercover police officer is staking out the entrance to the tunnel.’
‘You should come down with us,’ Vee whispers to Jessie. ‘It’s the coolest tunnel. Then you’d see the toxic waste, and you’d believe us.’
Jessie shakes her head. ‘There’s no way I’m going down there.’
‘But Jessie –’ Vee starts.
‘No, Vee! It’s so dangerous!’ Jessie’s voice is loud.
‘Shhh,’ I say and we all look at the door.
Nothing. They didn’t hear us.
Jessie hunches her shoulders and taps something in the search bar. She’s so fast, I can’t even read over her shoulder.
‘That’s it,’ she whispers, as the list of search results comes up. ‘That’s the section with our park.’ She taps the third result down on the list.
A strange map comes up. It looks like a normal map, except there are a whole lot of extra grey lines crisscrossing the roads.
‘What are the grey lines?’ Vee asks, leaning in closer.
‘Tunnels,’ I whisper, grinning as I realise what the map shows.
Jessie points to a dot on the line in a green section. ‘Here’s our park. And if you got to the river, you must have gone …’ Her finger glides along a line, like she’s following a maze. ‘… here.’ She stops where the line reaches a bigger blue line, which must be the river. Our river is brown, not blue, but the map people are probably in America and don’t know that.
Jessie pinches the map so we can see more. She points to our street. Then she reads something at the bottom of the map.
‘Warning! Workers are advised never to enter drainage tunnels during wet weather as drains may flood suddenly.’
‘Shhh!’ Vee says.
We hear Dad. ‘The kids had it just before, on the floor by the rug.’
I hold my breath. They’ve discovered that the iPad is missing.
Footsteps move around and I hear the noise of the couch being dragged slightly.
‘Go, go, go!’ Vee whispers.
We both do Kicking-Two-Jump-Scrambles up to our bunks and bury ourselves in our doonas.
Just in time.
The door cracks open and I peek. Alice stands with the light of the kitchen behind her.
Jessie is doing amazing sleep-breathing.
Alice tiptoes towards us and leans over Jessie. I shift as quietly as I can so I can see what’s happening underneath me. Alice is sliding the iPad out from under Jessie’s sleepy-floppy hand. She sighs and stands up.
I mumble and roll over to disguise the fact that I was peering over the edge of the bunk at her.
As soon as Alice closes the door, we all burst into shaking, silent laughter.
‘That was so close!’ whispers Vee.
‘Nice acting, Jessie,’ I say.
‘I even closed the map image before she came in,’ Jessie says.
I’ve got the doona in my mouth to stop the laugh noise from coming out. But then I remember we still have a problem.
‘We’re still no closer to figuring out what to do about the toxic waste,’ I say.
Jessie rolls over underneath me. ‘Squishy, you don’t know it’s toxic waste.’
‘But Mr Hinkenbushel is investigating it. It’s got to be. He needs to know where Fluoro Guy is dumping the waste,’ I say. ‘We’ve got to tell him.’
The others are silent. I think about Mr Hinkenbushel looking at me like I’m a slug and yelling so hard he spits.
After a pause, I say, ‘I’m going to do it. I’m going to knock on his door in the morning.’
In the morning, I grab my toast and go stand in front of Mr Hinkenbushel’s door. Before anyone can stop me. Before I get too scared.
I take a big bite and then knock.
He answers straight away and does his ‘I’m looking at a slug’ face. I try to swallow my toast but can’t. As soon as I start talking, his face turns red. And it’s not just because some half-chewed toast fell out of my mouth. He really doesn’t like what I’m saying.
‘Kid, get this into your head!’ Mr Hinkenbushel shouts at me. ‘You don’t know anything. Anything you think you know is wrong.’ His voice is booming in the corridor and I’m scared Dad and Alice will hear. We promised not to bother him.
Mr Hinkenbushel leans forward and spits, ‘You’re getting in the way of a police investigation.’
Talking to Mr Hinkenbushel is pretty much the worst idea I ever had.
‘What is going on?’ Dad asks, poking his head out our front door.
‘Mr Taylor, will you please tell your snooping kid to keep her meddling nose out of my business? She’s going to get herself in big trouble.’
Dad sighs and puts his hand on my shoulder. He pushes me down the hall.
‘Squishy,’ he tells me, ‘I know you’re curious, but you seriously need to stay clear of Mr Hinkenbushel.’
On the tram to school, I make up my mind. ‘We have to go down there,’ I say. Vee nods.
‘No way,’ Jessie says.
‘But we have to,’ I say. ‘We’re the only ones who know.’
‘You don’t know anything,’ Jessie says, sounding exactly like Mr Hinkenbushel.
‘Fluoro Guy is dumping Zoom Mining’s toxic waste. We’ve got a responsibility to get to the bottom of it.’ The tram is sticky-hot because the air-conditioning is broken. It’s so weird how hot it’s been. And it makes it harder to think.
Jessie folds her arms. ‘I am not going,’ she declares. ‘And you’re not going without me.’
‘Oh come on, Jess,’ Vee says.
‘No. It’s too dangerous. We promised Tom we’d be a team. We promised we’d never leave anyone alone.’
‘You won’t be alone,’ Vee says, after a moment. ‘You’ll be with Messy.’
Genius. No-one’s alone when they’re with Messy.
I grin at Jessie, who looks pale.
‘It would be much better to know the truth, wouldn’t it?’ I say. Jessie’s into facts and the truth. She tightens her lips.
After school, we get ready as quickly as we can.
I’m not an idiot. I know you shouldn’t touch toxic waste, so I get Dad’s yellow rubber gloves from under the sink. They’re really big, but they’ll do. Vee grabs the torch from where it always lives, in the second drawer down. I take the kitchen scissors. I need something to cut the rope tying down the plastic, if it’s too tight.
The only other thing we need is the iPad, for photographing evidence. Luckily, Dad left it charging by the TV, so Vee brings it over.
While I’m shoving everything in my backpack, Jessie clutches a piece of paper. It’s the map we were looking at yesterday.
‘You printed it?’ I ask.
She nods, still a bit pale. ‘In the library at lunchtime. So I can show a rescue party where you are.’
‘We won’t need a rescue party,’ I say.
‘I still don’t think you should go,’ she replies.
‘Can we go get Messy now?’ Vee asks, as Alice steps out of the bathroom. We need a grown-up to take us to puppy school.
Finally we’re in the park and Alice has gone home. Messy is bouncing at our knees with his tongue hanging out. He’s so cute it makes my chest hurt. It’s still pretty hot, but luckily the sun isn’t beating down anymore. Instead there are big dark clouds rolling across the sky. They look like a moment in a scary movie.
Jessie is still really quiet, but she’s not trying to stop us anymore. ‘Are you all ready?’ she
asks.
Vee nods. I pull my backpack on tighter. Messy licks my kneecap.
I look around the park. Fluoro Guy is nowhere to be seen. Mr Hinkenbushel is across the road with his binoculars, but he seems distracted. He’s watching the business couple, who are back on the bench. He’s not watching the tunnel entrance at all. Lucky we’re doing his job for him.
We walk to the tunnel entrance and push the lid away as a team.
Vee heads down into the dark. I give Messy one last scratch behind the ears, and nod at Jessie.
As I start to climb down the hole, a drop of rain lands on the end of my nose.
It doesn’t take long to reach the cavern this time. At the end of our tunnel, where it opens out, I shrug off the backpack and kneel down to rummage through it. Gloves first. Then torch. It’s hard to turn on the torch with my big rubbery fingers, so I pass it to Vee.
‘What’s that?’ Vee asks, looking around nervously, as though she heard something.
‘What’s what?’ I reply, walking towards the toxic waste with Vee beside me. I’m thinking about the fact that we’re about to prove someone is committing a huge environmental crime.
‘Footsteps,’ Vee says, ‘coming down that other tunnel.’
I pause. She’s right. I can hear footsteps too, coming from the far tunnel. That means we only have a moment to find out the truth. I bolt over to the plastic pile as fast as I can. We need this evidence. And we need it now.
The plastic is tied down tight. I scramble around it, looking for a loose place. None. Lucky I brought scissors. There! I snip a few sections free and the whole thing comes loose like a big net. I shove the scissors back in my pack, toss the rope aside and peel the plastic back to look.
It’s not toxic waste at all.
‘Squishy, hurry, they’re getting closer,’ Vee says. She’s at my side now, with the torch. ‘Oh,’ she says, looking at what was under the plastic. A trolley, a stack of tools and a neat pile of bricks. Beside them are some bags of cement and a cement mixer.
Fluoro Guy runs into the cavern. ‘Kids! What are you doing? You really shouldn’t be here.’
I stare at the circle logo on his shirt. This is the first time he’s been close enough for me to read it. The logo isn’t for Zoom Mining at all. It says Drainz R Us.
‘You’re … you’re just fixing the drains,’ I say. That’s what Jessie said he was doing.
‘Of course I am, why else would I be down here? Listen, it’s raining cats and dogs. It’s going to get dangerous quickly. We have to run.’
If it’s raining that bad, Jessie will be getting soaked waiting for us. And Alice will expect us to come home. He’s right. We should run. I turn back towards our tunnel.
‘Squishy! We can’t go that way,’ Vee says, pointing. ‘Look.’
She’s right. Our tiny trickle of a creek has filled up already. It’s covering our footpath. I remember that warning Jessie read when we were looking at the drain map. Something about sudden floods. Something about it being dangerous to work down here when it’s raining.
‘Quick! Downstream,’ Fluoro Guy says, gesturing for us to go first. ‘Go, go, go!’
We run towards the tunnel to the river. Me first, then Vee and finally Fluoro Guy. As we run, the stream gets more and more full. At first there are trickles over the footpath. Then wide puddles. Then we’re running ankle-deep in water.
I keep thinking I hear splashing footsteps a long way behind us. It must just be the way we echo in the tunnel.
I trip over something in the dark and land face-first in the stream.
I’m still wearing those stupid washing-up gloves and they fill with water, feeling cold around my fingers. I scramble back to my feet and peel them off as I run. The water is up to my knees as I throw the gloves away from me. I can hear Vee crying as she runs.
I have never been this scared in my life. I feel something against my legs. Something slithery in the water. I scream. And then realise it’s the net that tied the orange plastic, being washed downstream. I kick it aside and keep running.
Finally, we’re at the entrance. I scramble a few steps up the bank. It’s raining heavily but I don’t care.
Jessie is here. She’s kneeling by the river, holding a yellow rubber glove and crying. She doesn’t even notice me.
It’s Messy who sees me first. He leaps into my arms, barking and licking my face. I clutch him, half-laughing, half-crying.
Jessie hears him and turns around as Vee scrambles up beside us. Jessie’s face lights up. Fluoro Guy is behind Vee, at the tunnel entrance. He’s up to his hips in water.
Jessie hugs Vee, their black hair merging so you can’t tell whose is whose. ‘I thought you’d drowned!’ Jessie says into Vee’s shoulder.
I think about the fact that we nearly did drown. Jessie was right. We should never have gone down there. I squeeze Messy tighter and start to feel sick thinking about it. Messy licks my face even more, as though he can tell how bad I feel.
When Fluoro Guy reaches the footpath beside us, Jessie pulls back from the hug and asks, ‘Where’s Mr Hinkenbushel?’
‘What?’ Vee asks.
Jessie looks worried. ‘Didn’t you see him?’
‘No, why would we?’
‘He saw you go down, and followed you in. He was worried about flash-flooding.’ Jessie half-smiles, but her face is really pale. ‘He was right to be worried. I gave him the map and he said he’d bring you out this way. He said he’d find you and meet me here.’
Those footsteps I heard. He must have been behind us.
Just then Messy turns in my arms and growls down at the tunnel entrance. Straight afterwards, I hear a voice booming out.
‘Help. Help! I’m stuck.’
It’s Mr Hinkenbushel.
‘My leg’s tangled. I can’t get it free!’ Mr Hinkenbushel is by the tunnel entrance, struggling in the water. Messy leaps out of my arms and runs to the water’s edge. He barks wildly at Mr Hinkenbushel, who lifts something above the surface. It’s part of the rope net I kicked aside. The water is nearly up to his armpits. It’s brown with white foam on it, rushing into the river.
The Fluoro Guy leans over and reaches for Mr Hinkenbushel’s hand. He pulls hard, but nothing happens. Mr Hinkenbushel stays stuck and Messy keeps on barking.
‘It’s no use,’ Mr Hinkenbushel says. ‘I’m too tangled.’
Fluoro Guy scrambles past Messy down into the rough water. He plunges his head under, near Mr Hinkenbushel, and we wait. He comes up, puffing.
‘Can’t get it,’ he says. I can see the ends of the net lashing around in the current. Fluoro Guy takes another deep breath and goes under again. We stand on the edge, watching both men kick and flail. I lift up Messy and cuddle him, trying to get him to calm down, but he squirms against me, barking like there’s no tomorrow.
Their heads come up again.
‘Oh, crap! Now I’m caught!’ shouts Fluoro Guy. He struggles to get free but he can’t.
Two grown-ups are tangled in the water, and we’re stuck on the bank, watching them. We can’t go in there. The river would just wash us away.
‘If only we had a knife!’ Jessie says.
Jessie’s right again. And I’m an idiot. I’ve got scissors.
I drop Messy on the grass and whip the kitchen scissors out of my backpack.
‘Here!’ I shout, and then pass them carefully, handles first, to Fluoro Guy. He grabs them.
In seconds both men are on the bank. Soaking wet. But not drowning.
‘Thanks, kid,’ Fluoro Guy says, passing me back the scissors. ‘You saved our lives.’
‘They should’ve stayed out of danger in the first place,’ Mr Hinkenbushel mutters. Messy leaps up and tries to lick his knees, nearly knocking him back into the water. But Messy’s tail is wagging and Mr Hinkenbushel leans over and gives him a rough pat.
Vee’s lips are blue and my teeth are chattering. It’s still raining big, heavy drops.
‘Everyone needs to get home
and dry,’ Fluoro Guy says. ‘And someone needs to talk to your parents.’
My stomach cramps. Dad and Alice can’t know what we’ve been doing. We’d never be allowed to leave our bedroom again.
We all scramble up the footpath and start walking home, across Flinders Street and up through the wet Melbourne streets.
Messy and Fluoro Guy make friends. Fluoro Guy scratches behind Messy’s ears and Messy bounces around his knees. Vee explains about him being ours but not really.
I don’t talk. I’m feeling scared of what Dad will say when we get home. The more I think about it, the more I realise Jessie was right and it was stupid to go down that tunnel. I keep remembering all that raging water rushing out into the river.
But I’m walking near Mr Hinkenbushel and I can’t help being curious. When we’re waiting to cross Collins Street, I finally open my mouth.
‘Mr Hinkenbushel, if you weren’t staking out Fluoro Guy, what were you doing?’
Mr Hinkenbushel frowns. ‘Kid, when are you gonna learn that it’s none of your –’ But before he can say anything else, something happens. Messy stops jumping around Fluoro Guy’s feet and bolts over to the entrance of a bank.
‘Messy, stop it, here boy!’ Vee shouts.
Messy jumps up to the knees of a neat businesswoman standing on the steps of a bank. The woman laughs and pushes Messy down. It’s that same neat woman from the park.
Then she frowns. ‘Hey, bad dog. Drop that! Give it back! No!’
Messy is bolting towards us with something in his teeth. He takes it straight to Jessie, who is holding out a treat from her pocket. ‘Good boy. Drop it. There’s a good boy.’
Messy drops a USB stick into Jessie’s hand. She stares down at it.
‘Give that back,’ the woman says, running towards us in the rain. She doesn’t seem so friendly anymore. She looks angry. And maybe even scared. She wasn’t wearing that lanyard in the park.
I look over Jessie’s shoulder. The USB stick has Zoom Mining’s logo on it.