Maxi and the Magical Money Tree

by Tiffiny Hall

  ‘Here we go,’ I squeal and press the button on my iPad to initiate landing. The drone swoops down noiselessly and hovers three metres above the small group of kids. At first they don’t notice. Eeyore — the poor kid who had the hiccups once and sounded like a donkey — looks up into the sun. He squints through his fingers at the robot, then taps the kid next to him and points. The other kids tilt their chins upwards. They scramble to stand. I initiate ‘release’ and the drone lets go of the bags and they rain down on the Villagers. They snatch at the packets and unwrap them. Eeyore puts a banana in his mouth and smiles a yellow grin.

  I race over. ‘Do you like my drone?’ I ask. I fly it down to the middle of the kids. They nod with lolly-bulging cheeks.

  ‘Play it cool,’ Tyler reminds me in a whisper.

  ‘Watch,’ I say to the Villagers. I fly the drone around the playground. The kids ‘ooohh’ and ‘ahhh’ at my device, until a green laser-like thing screams across the yard and crashes into my robot. I hit my tablet, trying to initiate an alternate route, but the green machine clings to my drone like some kind of hornet. My camera zooms in and I realise it’s another airbot. I look across the yard and Channing Swanpoel, an A-grade Beefcake, is flying his drone today too.

  ‘What do I do?’ I shriek at Tyler.

  ‘Kill it,’ he says.

  The Villagers are cheering me on. But Channing’s drone is too big — it looks like one you could fly into orbit. I disengage the rest of the bags over the exact group of people I didn’t want to reward: the Perfs. They watch the sweets fall around them but don’t even bother to pick them up.

  ‘Who knows where they’ve been?’ Stacey calls across the playground. She steps on a lolly bag and squashes the contents with her camel gladiator sandals.

  My drone loses the fight and crashes into the monkey bars. Tyler retrieves it for me. The drone is limp. Tiny airbags have detonated but to no avail. My toy was no match for playground wars.

  Channing shouts, ‘I rule!’

  I feel tears bubble and burn.

  Eeyore approaches. ‘Thanks for the sweets.’ He hiccups. ‘The drone was cool and everything, but we all know Channing is the only one allowed to occupy the playground airspace. It’s been that way forever.’

  I smile. ‘Until tomorrow.’ I turn to Tyler. ‘We’re going to need a bigger drone.’

  On my way to class I see Fleur slip a kid some money, then swap folders. She looks exhilarated, decked out head to toe in new gear. She’s even using expensive French stationery and a beyond-pretentious calligraphy pen (although she can’t do calligraphy and likes to pose for selfies with it rather than write anything). I wonder what she’s up to, but don’t have time to interrogate her now.

  I pull my designer denim jacket around me as I enter the classroom. Why is it always too hot or too cold in here? The temperature is as extreme as the vibe of the class. We are either lazy and listless or off-our-heads hyped; there’s nothing in between. Mrs Halfbottom is away sick today, so I wonder what the vibe will be like with a substitute teacher.

  ‘Nice kicks.’ Claudia, a girl in my class who has never spoken a word to me until now, points at my shoes, then her toes. We are wearing the same shoes. Me the same as her. We the same as each other. I’m glowing on the inside.

  Channing farts and we all scream with laughter, so the vibe today is hysteria. I laugh the longest, not just about the fart but with the delight that Claudia noticed my shoes, an invisible thread of like that lets me fit in and be the same.

  I’m keeping up with them, I think.

  The teacher makes me stand up for laughing the most. My cheeks are fiery. Stacey glares at me, eyeing my limited-edition backpack under my desk. It’s the latest, coolest backpack around. I bought the last one and Stacey knows it. Four kids stopped me on my way to class to ask me where I scored it from.

  Stacey opens her little mouth: ‘That was Channing farting to make Maxi smell better.’

  Claudia looks at me behind a tight smile as Stacey basks in the sniggering filtering around us. Claudia is relieved she’s not getting the Stacey treatment, even though I can tell she doesn’t like to see me bullied. Stacey knows this sub teacher won’t be bothered reprimanding her. I sit down and the teacher doesn’t even notice.

  Note to self: stand up to bullies.

  I used to get bullied at my old school. Fat kids tend to cop it, and I used to be a lot fatter than I am now. In Year Four kids figured out that brute force had less impact than ritual teasing. Psychological torture totally beats the usual bullying tactics of spitting gum into your hair, writing on your locker, graffitiing about you in the toilets, tripping you up, pranks. None of this comes close to day-after-day social exclusion that breaks a kid down. My problem? I won’t take it. Not from a spoilt kid like Stacey who always looks unnaturally dry-cleaned. I’ll give it back. This makes her angrier because she believes in her shallow shopping-centre soul that she is better than me, and here I am, acting equal to her. And me — a fatty!

  ‘At least I don’t look like a fart,’ I say under my breath. Stacey doesn’t hear me. Tyler low-fives me under the desk.

  The teacher doesn’t know where we are up to in maths. He has skipped ahead and confused everybody. Kids are bored so have commenced a burping competition. The teacher is yelling, ‘Enough!’ but Channing still burps loudly. He is the third kid in a family of five boys — explains a lot. He gives me an idea though. I take out my notebook and start scribbling.

  Stacey is reading aloud the list of things on her gift registry at the mall for her upcoming birthday party. ‘I want a new pair of ballet shoes,’ she proclaims. I can’t believe the way everyone is listening to her so intently.

  ‘Look!’ Channing calls. He reaches under his desk and prises off some old chewing gum. ‘Dare me?’

  The teacher warns him, then surrenders and turns to the whiteboard to write a sum.

  ‘Eat it, eat it, eat it!’ everybody chants — except Tyler. He’s trying to work out the sum. That’s why if I were in the market for a boyfriend, he’d top the list — earnest and smart.

  Channing drops the old chewing gum into his mouth and chews with his mouth open so we can see the dirty sticky web covered in saliva before he swallows it. I’m going to vomit.

  The teacher orders Channing out of the room to report to the deputy principal’s office. Kids are laughing uncontrollably, of course. I slip out of class unnoticed and corner Channing in the corridor. I eyeball him. ‘How much?’

  He glares at me. ‘For what?’

  ‘Playground airspace. Name a price,’ I say.

  He crosses his arms across his chest. ‘Not for sale.’

  ‘I’ll cut you a deal. You sell me playground airspace to fly my new drone I’m about to purchase, and I’ll employ you to pilot. But there’s a catch.’

  Channing listens. The dumb look fades from his face as his eyes open wider. He uncrosses his arms.

  ‘You have to drop packages into the playground every day according to this schedule,’ I say.

  Channing snatches the piece of paper out of my hand and half-reads it. ‘Monday, Tuesday, blah, blah … What the heck are squirrel dolls? Smarties cookies … Huh? What’s this?’

  ‘Calendar of drops. You drop these things into the yard from my drone every day, I own the airspace, you work for me, people like me, thank me, we all have more friends.’

  He slits his eyes. ‘You need an airbot to make friends? That’s sad.’

  I grab the paper out of his hand. ‘You swallowed used gum,’ I say. ‘Besides, it’s called doing something nice for other kids, Google it, whatever. You wouldn’t understand. Look, if you’re not interested, I’ll pay someone else to do it. There’re plenty of Beefcakes who can fly a drone.’ I mention an amount as I turn to walk off, but Channing hooks my arm and swings me around.

  ‘What? A day?’ he sort of mumbles as he does the maths in his head and tries to believe his own sums.

  ‘You heard me.’

  He nods.
‘Bring the drone to me packed and ready at recess and I’ll do the drop every lunchtime.’

  ‘I own the playground airspace then. Shake on it?’ I say. I’d been feeling low-level okay after Stacey’s mean comment, but now I’m swimming on the surface of feeling excellent.

  Channing spits in his hand and grabs my palm, the saliva squelching between our skin. His face softens. ‘Deal,’ he says.

  Chapter 17

  Back in class, we’re at last doing work, our heads bowed over our iPads. A noise makes me look up and I see a familiar blonde fringe through the door’s glass window. The door clicks open. The head pokes into the classroom. The teacher turns. The kids silence.

  ‘May I please have Maxine Edwards?’ my mother asks.

  The teacher nods. He has no idea who Maxine Edwards is.

  I walk towards my mum and hate that I see the way Stacey is staring at Mum’s work pinafore accessorised with a nametag. I’m sure none of the other kids’ mums wear pinafores, let alone nametags. The embarrassment is a fog, a default emotion that distracts me from wondering why Mum is at school.

  When I reach her, she ushers me out the door where a gust of never-ending school-corridor draught wraps itself around my neck. Then her presence makes me freak out. She’s found the tree! She must have followed the money wind after Fleur left the hatch open again and found all our new stuff stashed in the cellar. This is the end. It’s finally over. I watch her in a trance of fear.

  ‘It’s happening,’ Mum says, her face stern.

  ‘What? What’s wrong? Is it Nanna? Fleur?’ I ask guiltily, hoping for a family emergency.

  ‘No, sweetheart. The eggs are hatching.’ She smiles.

  Oh, a different kind of family emergency. Then I panic again. ‘You were in my room?’

  ‘Cleaning, and I noticed the eggs moving,’ she says.

  ‘My room was already clean.’ I search her face — did she find any money?

  ‘Never clean enough.’ Mum winks.

  ‘I-I-I hope you didn’t vacuum the rug. The eggs would have died with the movement,’ I improvise.

  ‘I know, I know. You’ve only told me a hundred times.’ She props her hands on my shoulders. ‘As soon as I saw the eggs hatching, I came straight here. I know how much it means to you. Your father is teaching and I have to be at the chemist soon, so there’s no one at home to look after them.’

  ‘Can I go home, Mum, please? We have a sub who’s no good. I’m not missing anything. Tyler will catch me up. Puleeease take me home to look after the babies,’ I beg and ham up the face she can never say no to — pouting lips, eyes large, eyebrows sliding downwards.

  Mum smiles and hugs me. ‘Just this once,’ she says. ‘We’ll tell a white lie and say you’re needed for family reasons.’

  ‘Are white lies okay, Mum?’ I ask. Maybe all of my lies about the money tree have been white, so they’re not that bad.

  ‘They don’t hurt,’ she says. ‘White lies are the little fibs good people tell to help each other. It’s the red ones you have to look out for.’

  ‘Red?’

  ‘The ones that make your cheeks red and give you away. It’s hard to hide a red lie that hurts other people.’

  Well, I’m not hurting other people … am I? I think back to the philosopher Socrates’s soul and the leaky jar. I felt empty lying to buy stuff, but now thinking of my eggs hatching, I feel full again.

  Mum drops me at home. I love being home on a school day surrounded by home smells, home sounds and privacy. Plus, Mum’s twelve-layer lasagna sitting on the bench is practically singing to me.

  Mum follows me into my room. I’m beyond nervous having her in here, standing on the rug. I scan the floor for money. Thankfully no notes are poking through.

  ‘I think there are crates downstairs in the basement. We can put the eggs in there,’ she suggests. ‘I’ll go see.’

  Horror winds me. ‘No, I’ll do it!’ I screech, way too passionately. I take a deep breath. ‘I mean, I don’t need a crate. The babies live in the incubator for three days and feed off their eggshells, then move on to live food. We don’t need to do anything at this point but make sure they hatch safely.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says.

  I sigh in relief. ‘I’ve waited weeks for this,’ I say, motioning to the eggs.

  ‘I know, sweetheart. I rang your father and he can’t wait to come home to meet them. I wish Colin were alive to see this. Anyway, I better love you and leave you. Off to work. Be back after dinner. Do some catch-up homework for me, okay?’ Mum hugs me tight, both arms around my neck.

  ‘Mum, before you go, can I ask you a question?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘What would you do if you won the lottery?’ I ask.

  ‘Have our friends over for a roast, put some away for your university fees, buy your father a really smart pair of shoes and give quite a bit to charity. Oh, and I’d fix those medical bills for Nanna — we just can’t keep up,’ she says without hesitating, meaning she’s thought about it.

  I shrug. ‘It could happen.’

  Mum jingles her bracelets around her head as if to say, ‘In. My. Dreams.’

  ‘I’ll be rich one day,’ I say.

  Mum smiles, but the smile stops at her eyes.

  ‘I mean, I’m very lucky,’ I add quickly. ‘I have everything I need. I don’t have to be rich, but it would be nice not to worry, wouldn’t it? Money makes life easier, true?’

  Mum’s expression hardens around her eyes, then she sighs. ‘Well, money doesn’t grow on trees. You have to work for it,’ she says.

  I swallow hard. She leaves me feeling guilty.

  The baby lizards lounge half out of their eggs in white mucus tents, slowly moving their itty-bitty legs and tails. I film them on my new phone. There’s not much I can do except narrate the whole experience and I do this in an English accent to sound more like a proper documentary maker. The baby lizards are smaller than my pinkie and suckle their shells. I have over fifty-five healthy babies and hold Socrates and Sibyl up to the incubator to watch their offspring thrive. I’ve already prepared the babies’ bedroom with fake grass, some climbing branches and a water hole.

  I send Tyler a text saying I’m a proud new lizard mum, and he comes over after school to see the babies. He likes my video, much. We both agree it’s the coolest thing we’ve ever seen. I tell Tyler about his brother’s warning concerning the posting of lizard propaganda on social media.

  ‘Hey, you only live once. May as well spend an hour a day seeking the approval of strangers,’ Tyler jokes.

  So up it goes online. This is me. Take it or leave it, world.

  Chapter 18

  As I see it, purchasing playground airspace is the best investment an eleven-year-old nobody could ever make.

  ‘Hi, Maxi! What’s it gonna rain today?’ one kid yells as I enter the schoolyard.

  I shrug and smile. ‘Have to wait and see. Meet you over at Drop Zone.’

  The kid hollers to his mates and they all gather on the basketball court, ready for the drop.

  I take a seat on a bench with Tyler and relax in the warm air. The only kids too cool to be involved in Drop Zone are the Perfs. Stacey said my drone ‘drops junk’, but I watch her friends sneakily pick up a gold coin here, a fun bangle there. You’d have to be crazy not to want free gifts every day. Since I initiated Drop Zone, Tyler and I have been eating lunch with the Villagers, we’ve played a game of Quidditch and joined other Loners in the library to work on a group geography project. We’ve never been more popular. Tyler has even made some insect rackets for fellow students and they go hunting at lunchtime in an Insecto pack. Whoever fries the most bugs wins. It’s a niche activity, but he’s found his circle.

  Tyler covers his mouth with his hand and whispers, ‘Incoming.’

  I look up and Stacey is standing in front of me with a pink envelope. I know immediately what it is. This is something I’ve waited for my whole life. This is something so big, I’ll write four di
ary entries about it, maybe even a song or a short play starring Socrates and Sibyl. I accept the envelope and look at Tyler. His eyes are wide like one of his bugs before it gets zapped.

  ‘I didn’t want to invite you, but all the other kids coming wanted the Drop Zone deadbeat to come,’ she says.

  I open the envelope and all my blood transfers to my cheeks. The paper is strawberry pink with gold writing. I read out the invite under my breath: ‘Dear Lizard Loser and Insecto. You are cordially invited to attend my dress-up birthday party. Bring lots of presents. Stacey.’ I smile on the inside.

  ‘I’ll check my diary,’ I say aloud. Tyler laughs. Stacey rolls her eyes. This is the third party I’ve been invited to since Drop Zone started. I feel flushed for a moment with popularity. There’s no way I’ll miss it, but I still have to play hard to get.

  ‘Whatever,’ Stacey says and walks off.

  ‘Not a fan of our nicknames, but at least we were invited,’ Tyler says.

  I sigh, looking down at my phone. ‘My Instagram video has three hundred and ninety-eight “likes”. I love Instagram when it’s loving you back. So your brother was wrong. I don’t regret posting the hatching of the eggs. Not at all. Not for a nanosecond.’

  ‘Good on us,’ Tyler says, taking credit for his part in feeding my lizards with his premier quality insects to create a healthy lizard family. ‘Here comes the drone!’

  We watch the drone fly into Drop Zone so quietly the teacher on playground duty never notices our toy that is no bigger than a cantaloupe. Today I have attached limited-edition motorcycle models for the boys and tiny squirrel dolls wearing cute outfits for the girls. I stayed up late last night, writing tags for the gifts that say, ‘Fun to the Max. Enjoy.’