Maxi and the Magical Money Tree

by Tiffiny Hall

  Chapter 13

  On Saturday Tyler and I find ourselves marooned at Candy Sphere. I used to think a few dollars’ worth of sweets was extreme. We go nuts and buy: jubes, licorice, lollipops, fairy floss, milk bottles, foam bananas, normal chocolate, chocolate with candy in it, expensive chocolate, Easter eggs, snakes, cake pops, frogs, candy canes, bullseyes, popcorn, chocolate dessert pasta, fortune cookies, gummy bears, rainbow straws, gumballs, candy hearts, honeycomb, jellybeans, sherbet bottles, musk sticks, nougat, éclairs, sprinkles, sour worms and gooey caramel.

  ‘I’m going to be sick,’ Tyler says.

  ‘Now we have the energy to shop,’ I say, wiping a chocolate smudge off my mouth with my sleeve. At first the sweets felt like delicious little fireworks exploding in my mouth, but now I’m feeling kind of sick and I don’t want to admit our candy spree could have been too much of a good thing.

  ‘If you could have anything in the world right now, what would it be?’ I blurt.

  ‘Wow, you said that really fast!’ Tyler laughs. ‘You aren’t used to sugar, are you?’

  ‘I feel weird and buzzy,’ I say. I touch my forehead and can feel my pulse beating behind my eyebrows. ‘So what would it be?’

  ‘A carousel,’ Tyler says. ‘My very own one.’

  ‘Isn’t that for babies?’

  Tyler looks away. ‘Most fairground rides top my psychotic fear of earwigs,’ he says. ‘But there’s something really nice and safe about a carousel.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, realising he’s one of those kids who are scared of rides. Then I add, ‘Earwigs?’

  ‘Yeah! Insects that crawl into your ears at night and lay eggs in your brain. What’s your big dream?’

  ‘A bath,’ I say. ‘One that is shaped like an egg and made out of coloured stone. I’ve never had a bath. Never ever.’

  ‘That explains the stink!’ Tyler laughs. I’ve been waiting for that one and punch him playfully in the arm.

  We leave the candy shop and head to the toy store.

  ‘Next best thing.’ Tyler points to a blow-up swimming pool. ‘We could fill it up in the cellar and you could bath down there,’ he suggests, ‘under the tree.’

  We pay for the blow-up swimming pool and arrange for it to be delivered to my house. I find a hobbyhorse with a silky soft mane, but it doesn’t compare to a carousel. We buy some expensive Lego, board games and an ant farm.

  ‘Let’s go to the pet store,’ I say and Tyler’s eyes light up.

  ‘You sure you don’t want to buy clothes or shoes or something? I thought all girls were shoe maniacs,’ he says.

  ‘Nah, I’d buy crickets over stilettos any day,’ I reply.

  At the pet store Tyler stares at a blue and gold macaw in a glass sanctuary. ‘How much?’ he asks the assistant.

  ‘This beauty is worth thousands of dollars,’ he says.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ Tyler says.

  I pull Tyler away. ‘Wait on,’ I whisper. ‘You can’t buy that expensive bird. It’ll give us away. Where will we hide him?’

  ‘You have grandparents?’

  ‘Yeah. A grandmother.’

  ‘Can’t we keep him at her place?’ Tyler asks. ‘We could have all our new stuff delivered there. In fact, we could pay to do her house up into a big playhouse just for us. She wouldn’t mind, would she? Is she kinda old and a bit out of it?’

  ‘Well, sort of. She tries to win money from that TV show called Breakfast by answering every phone call with “I wake up with Breakfast”, in case it’s them calling. She wants to buy a bird bath real bad.’

  ‘Perfect! You should buy one for her, and we can keep the macaw there. Wouldn’t she love that?’

  ‘I guess. She only really lives in three rooms of the house, and there’s this big shed out the back we could hide stuff in,’ I say. ‘But I’m not sure about buying a macaw …’

  Tyler nods. ‘Under the tree is probably safer. Let’s think about the bird then,’ he says, tapping its cage. ‘What do you think Fleur is up to?’

  ‘Don’t care.’ I’m still livid with her for spending so much money without telling me. I smile, thinking of my car scheme. That’ll sort her out. She liked the idea but didn’t want anything to do with it in case we got into trouble. Who’s chicken now?

  ‘What would she buy if she could have anything in the world?’ Tyler continues.

  I think for a moment. The macaw yawns and spreads his wings, his feathers looking like a stormy tropical morning or where the ocean meets the sunset.

  ‘A fridge that keeps track of your calories and tells you how much you’ve eaten in a day and sounds an alarm if you go to eat something that will push you over the limit,’ I say.

  Tyler laughs. ‘How boring!’ He has a bit of green gummy bear stuck in his teeth.

  I load up on lizard necessities, then we head out into the mall to buy whatever we want.

  New books, trainers, I buy some clothes but nothing flash, really just replacements of the jeans and T-shirts I already wear. I have all the money in the world, but I can’t think of anything I really want or need. The irony is what I would love to buy, I can’t. How could I explain new animals to Mum and Dad? Where would I keep them? Perhaps Dad and that Kipling bloke are right: success and failure are both imposters that should be treated the same. Am I any more happy as a success with money than I was feeling a failure without?

  Tyler goes wild on Nerf guns and more Lego. We visit the hardware store and buy materials to make more mosquito rackets, then finish off in the cinemas. We buy lots of popcorn and ten tickets so we don’t have to sit next to anyone. I pass Tyler my new phone to upload the best apps.

  ‘Should have bought all the tickets and had the cinema to ourselves,’ Tyler whispers.

  ‘We wouldn’t want to be greedy,’ I say, cracking a smile. Then guilt crashes in. ‘I haven’t done any homework. We had the physics project to do.’

  ‘Why don’t we do some research after the movie? We could go to the fun park and study gravity, time, speed, whatever,’ he suggests.

  ‘I’ve never been to a fun park,’ I say. ‘Dad believes there are better things to do with your money.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Tyler says.

  The movie sucks big time. I fade out and think about the money tree and how I’ll manage to keep it hidden from my parents. The lies won’t stop and they feel like a sticky net I’m choking in. Drilling deep down, I realise I wanted to be like Stacey. Wear what she wears, carry an expensive bag with a fancy logo, be driven in a car where you don’t have to climb over the front seat to sit in the back. I wanted a walk-in wardrobe, a bed fit for a big friendly giant, pretty wallpaper and all those friends who obsessed over the stuff I bought and bought it too. The copycats and the pandering puppies who seem to follow Stacey everywhere, panting and whistling and pawing over her things. I wanted that. And now I can have it all, yet I still feel like nothing, like I don’t even rate.

  After the movie we go out onto the street. I raise my arm and a taxi pulls up, the petrol smell enveloping us in a thick wad of fumes. Its exhaust opens the world up to us in a cloud of possibilities as we realise we can go anywhere we choose.

  ‘Carnival Point,’ Tyler says. ‘And step on it,’ he adds as they do in bad movies like the one we just absorbed. We laugh at our lameness because when you have as much money as we have, you can afford to be as lame as you want.

  Soon I’m climbing a metal mountain in a wobbly green cart. My heart is a gong. Everything is changing so fast. I reach the peak and wave down at Tyler before my stomach slams into my ribcage as the cart descends and I speed so fast the sky wraps around me. This has to be close to light speed. Over the bumps, colour shifts and the world distorts. I twist and bend through the world as the horizon compresses down. I slowly climb again before gravity flattens my cheeks to my ears. At the crest of the next hill I should be feeling on top of the world — my plan worked, I’m the richest kid in the world, I’m a great success, I can have anything I want and I’ll have ev
erything I ever dreamed of — but for some reason, I feel hollow.

  When I hop off the rollercoaster, Tyler meets me with notes. ‘Since an object in motion tends to stay in motion (one of Newton’s laws — inertia, I think), the coaster cart will keep going forward even when it is moving up the track, against the force of gravity.’

  I’m not listening. But Tyler is excited.

  ‘Another of Newton’s laws states that the acceleration of an object depends on the mass of the object and the amount of force applied. The higher the coaster climbs, the more gravity can pull you down over a greater distance,’ he says. ‘The potential energy you build going up the hill is released as kinetic energy, the energy of motion that takes you down the hill. The higher the incline, the greater the coaster’s acceleration on the way down and the greater its speed becomes by the time it reaches the bottom.’

  ‘I felt that when my stomach was between my ears,’ I say.

  ‘Want to go again?’ he asks. ‘You bought a ticket for unlimited rides and a VIP pass so you don’t have to wait in line. Silly to waste them.’

  My lungs begin to tighten. I take a breath and it is a balloon lodged in my throat. More breaths, more balloons. The air is all slippery and slides out of me; I can’t hold on to it, I can’t breathe it in. I flap my arms, wheezing.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Tyler asks.

  ‘I … can’t …’ wheeze, ‘breathe,’ I say, gasping for air. He pulls me over to a nearby bench and sits me down.

  ‘I don’t know what to do, tell me what to do,’ Tyler says. ‘Help,’ he calls out to the people passing by, ‘she can’t breathe!’ Then to me, ‘Do you have an asthma pump?’

  Between gulps of air, I manage, ‘I don’t have asthma.’

  Tyler freaks out and calls for help again. Someone has tied an elastic band around my chest. My heart pounds in my ears. I reach my chin into the air and try to drag in some breaths, but I can’t.

  ‘Help us!’ Tyler yells and finally a woman dressed in an Alice in Wonderland costume hurries towards me. She holds out a cup of coffee. I shake my head.

  ‘I … don’t …’ wheeze, ‘drink … coffee.’ Wheeze. ‘Can’t breathe,’ I gasp.

  ‘Drink,’ she orders in a voice of treacle.

  Tyler takes the coffee and forces it to my lips. ‘Do it,’ he says.

  I swallow a scalding bitter sip of the long black. Alice lifts her hand, indicating to drink more. I cough, wheeze, sip, cough, wheeze, sip.

  Alice puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Inhale,’ she whispers.

  I try to breathe and this time some air sticks.

  ‘Exhale,’ she whispers.

  I breathe out and the air leaves my lungs as it’s meant to. In, out, in, out. The air is behaving and after a few moments the rubber band around my chest loosens a bit. ‘That’s better,’ I sigh.

  ‘I have asthma. When I forget my pump, a hot caffeinated drink can help open the airways,’ Alice says.

  ‘I think it was the rides, the excitement,’ I say, but deep down I know what is making my insides feel all kicked in. It has thick roots digging into the pit of my stomach and branches that are snagging in my chest. I’m feeling completely torn between having an adventure and doing something that feels wrong.

  Tyler collapses next to me. ‘That was full-on. You scared me.’ He taps my leg. ‘You’ve been on one massive ride since …’ He stops himself. ‘Probably the excitement catching up.’

  My first long breath fills my lungs. I hand Alice back her coffee and take in her blue pinafore and blonde manicured fringe fighting to be freed from its black satin headband. She smoothes her apron with the palm of her hand.

  ‘Thanks a million,’ I say, then just as my lungs open, my throat closes with tears. Swallowing hard, they’re stubborn and won’t go down, pushing up into my face until my eyes are wet. Something about Alice standing there, Alice the queen of childhood adventure, upsets me … I try to hold back the tears, but one springs off my cheek like a diver and I swipe it away quickly so Tyler doesn’t see.

  Alice sails a hand down onto my shoulder. Her eyes are a scintillating metallic blue. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asks.

  A few tears escape, but I’m fighting it; my face could turn into a stinging lather of tears any minute. I take a deep breath. ‘I think I’m behaving badly.’

  Tyler’s hand finds mine.

  ‘Sometimes behaving badly is fun and harmless and helps you to learn and grow in a way that being good will never do,’ Alice says.

  ‘But what if one of the impossible things you believed in your dreams before breakfast became real? Really real. And you know it’s wrong, deep down, but you can’t help but take part in the adventure,’ I say.

  Tyler squeezes my hand.

  Alice smiles. ‘Sometimes you have to take the path less known to find out,’ she says, then irons out her pinafore and adjusts her headband. ‘Are you feeling better?’

  I nod, then swing my backpack around to my front and dig. I find my ‘WANT’ list and hand it to her. ‘Would you sign it for me?’ I ask. ‘Something to remind me to be adventurous, like you?’

  Alice delicately turns over the page, then writes: Believe in the impossible. She winks at me as she hands back the piece of paper. We both know she’s just a girl in a costume, but today her rescue felt like a sign, as if she were sent to give me the courage I needed to let go and really believe in my one impossible thing: Maxi’s magical money tree.

  Chapter 14

  On Monday evening the tree is thicker than I’ve ever seen, money shedding everywhere. The colour bursts to the ceiling, the cellar hardly containing it. The trunk is glowing. I walk over and touch the tree; it vibrates softly under my palm. I pluck a note from a nearby branch and watch a new one flower immediately.

  ‘Our card has arrived!’ Fleur fans herself with the credit card. She is wearing a complicated red dress with a peplum, sleeves and cut-outs. She has on a pair of sky-high stilettos with feathers wrapping around her ankles, way too much makeup and a garland of flowers in her hair. Fleur is reclining in a luxurious armchair and seems to be wobbling; her cheeks flap, her hips seesaw from side to side and the flowers bounce on her head.

  ‘That was slow for express post,’ I say.

  ‘Well … someone may have opened the envelope last Wednesday and taken the card for a workout already,’ Fleur says.

  Typical.

  ‘What’s that?’ I ask.

  ‘Massage chair,’ she says with a ripple in her voice. ‘My back was tight and this is meant to do wonders for the lumbar.’ She smiles through trembling lips as her lower back receives a rub.

  ‘Where’d you get it?’

  ‘A fancy furniture shop in the city. It was delivered this afternoon. I assembled it down here all by myself — made my back worse but I’m happy now.’ She increases the intensity and the chair massages her legs more violently.

  ‘You look ridiculous,’ I tell her.

  ‘I’m dressed to the nines when I’m usually dressed to the zeros. Why can’t you give me a break?’ She scowls. ‘And anyway, you think you look better in that weird outfit? What did you buy? New trainers? Replaced your trackie dacks? Got a T-shirt with twelve species of cats on it?’

  ‘I’ll defend the cats T-shirt,’ I say.

  ‘All the money in the world and you still look like you,’ she says.

  Wow, that’s harsh. I glance around at the mountains of boxes surrounding the tree. ‘Where’d all the stuff come from?’

  Fleur points to her brand-new pink laptop. ‘Online, express delivery,’ she says, then kisses the credit card.

  I feel sick. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I should be on top of the world, but I can’t shake what Alice said about taking the path less known. I can’t help but feel that this path may be leading to unhappiness.

  Upstairs in my bedroom there’s money poking out from the sides of the rug. The tree’s growing so fast I’m having trouble hiding it. I fetch the broom and start to sweep as muc
h dough under the rug as I can. The more we harvest, the faster it grows. If you look through the floorboard gaps, you can now see the glow from the tree. I sweep as hard as I can, but I feel exhausted, emotionally beat, and eventually I swap the broom for Sibyl and sweep my hand across her scaly back. She’s been scratching incessantly these past few days. Her heartbeat pounds through her skin into my fingertips. I return her to the enclosure, then fan the eggs. Sibyl begins to scratch on the glass again. I ignore her and hop into bed but can’t sleep, not only because of Sibyl’s claws on the glass but also the scratching of my thoughts. What if some of our stuff is delivered when my parents are home? What if Mum goes down to the basement to clean it out? She’s been threatening to do that for ages. What if she follows the glow?

  There’s a knock at the door. ‘You asleep, kiddo?’ Dad asks.

  My heart rips through the sheets. It’s not safe in here. What if he spies some money?

  ‘I’m trying to sleep! Don’t turn on the light, it will wake me up,’ I say.

  Dad comes into the room and sits on my bed. He pushes the hair out of my eyes and breathes out heavily. ‘How’s school?’ he asks.

  ‘How’s work?’ I retort. I feel him smile in the darkness.

  ‘Work is great. Good bunch of kids and I’m running an advance lit. class. I have last period off tomorrow because the Year Twelves have careers counselling. Thinking of doing some house sprucing — haven’t even been down to the basement yet.’

  ‘No! You can’t! I mean, the kids need you. They say you’re d’man. You should be there at the careers thingy,’ I urge, feeling light-headed.

  ‘But they don’t need me. I teach philosophy, literature and classical Greek history. I’m not the corporate —’

  ‘Dad! Dad, listen to me. It’s about building a bond with those kids. They’re about to go into the scary big world, the real world, and you’re an example of someone who, um,’ I search for the right words, ‘you know, um, followed his passions. Did what he wanted. You’re a success story! How many kids think, “Geez, when I grow up I really want to be a philosopher,” and then go and do it? I bet no one will be there for those kids. The philosopher types. Who’s supporting them?’