Maxi and the Magical Money Tree

by Tiffiny Hall

  The doorbell rings. We freeze as if a gun’s gone off. Having just moved, we don’t receive many visitors, except Tyler, and he’s over so much these days he just waltzes in.

  ‘Ignore it. I think the doorbell’s still playing up from when your father hosed it down, washing the front window last week,’ Mum scoffs.

  But then the doorbell rings again. My father plunges the fundraising money into the pocket of his blazer. My brain kicks into overdrive as I remember who is standing on the other side of the door. Fleur remembers at the exact same time, but it’s too late. Our parents are already heading for the front door, knocking the wobbly coffee table on their way past.

  Ding-dong! Mum swings the front door open and we watch her face distort with confusion.

  ‘Ma’am, I’m Bevan and I work at the local Hardy’s supermarket,’ the Captain says.

  My father pushes past my mother. ‘Hi, what can we do for you?’ he asks. ‘We already support all the charities we can.’

  The Captain looks down at his clipboard, which holds the script I wrote him. ‘A Maxine Edwards entered a competition on your behalf at the supermarket to win a car,’ he says. I admire the perfect clash of his tomato-red tie and cornflower-blue shirt — he really looks the part.

  ‘My wife enters those things all the time,’ Dad says. ‘Maxi probably just copied her mother. No harm, no foul. We’re sorry she entered when she was underage.’ He begins to close the door.

  The Captain fidgets. His acne is flaring. He must be nervous. I glare at him to calm down.

  ‘No, um, sir. I’m here because she entered according to the competition rules and regulations. She entered on behalf of the family,’ he says.

  Mum still looks confused.

  ‘I’m thrilled to tell you the Edwards family has won the prize. I have the keys.’ The Captain rattles the keys in his hand, then presses the button and the slick four-wheel drive sings ‘beep beep’ in our driveway behind Mum’s beat-up hatchback. He hands her the keys. ‘All yours. Just need a signature here.’ He points to the fake form we created. My mother is staring at the car and signs the piece of paper without looking down.

  ‘Hang on. That vehicle is ours? We won a competition? Who are you?’ Dad asks.

  ‘I’m Bevan. Deputy manager at Hardy’s. Mr Hardy entrusted me with delivery of the prize. I hope you will enjoy it.’ The Captain is now so nervous he’s starting to sound like a robot.

  Fleur and I push our parents out onto the verandah and lock the door behind us. I give the Captain a sneaky thumbs-up and mouth, ‘Thank you,’ then shoo him away.

  ‘The car is ours! Check it out!’ I say, pulling my parents by the hand towards the four-wheel drive. Mum begins trembling with excitement.

  Dad shakes his head in disbelief. ‘I don’t believe in luck,’ he says. ‘We’re not lucky, we’re hard-working.’ He keeps saying this until I shove him into the ‘cockpit’ of the driver’s seat. Mum dives in next to him.

  ‘The front seats have TVs in the back of them,’ I call from behind. ‘Start her up!’

  Dad starts the engine and the car purrs awake. We all watch in awe as the monitor on the front dashboard tells us how to back out of the driveway without hitting the green wheelie bin. I wave at the Captain as we glide away from the house.

  ‘We should drive over to Hardy’s and thank them,’ Dad says, wearing the smile sported by successful contestants on game shows, the smile I’ve been envious of. This is what it feels like to win!

  Fleur comes to the rescue. ‘Uh, no. I think it would be better if we wrote them a formal letter of gratitude, and Maxi and I can hand-deliver it. Maxi should do it since she’s the one who entered us,’ she reasons.

  Dad is distracted by the radio. It’s a button in his armrest with a little knob you manoeuvre like a thumb-sized joystick to flick between stations. ‘Miraculous!’ he says.

  ‘Change the mood lighting,’ I call.

  Dad’s eyes fly up to the rear-vision mirror. ‘How did you know there was mood lighting?’ he asks.

  Mum presses a button and tiny lamps around the perimeter of the ceiling flick from blue to pink to green. Then the sunroof opens and a fresh breeze dances through our hair.

  ‘Tyler’s mum has this car,’ I recover quickly. The green lights hide my red lie.

  ‘Fish and chips for dinner at the beach,’ Mum declares. Her hands are pumping through the sunroof like she’s a teenager, her bracelets singing. ‘Put your hands up!’

  Fleur and I giggle.

  ‘Remember when we first met?’ Dad calls to Mum over the loud music. ‘It felt like this. Free and easy.’

  They love to tell us about how they first met. Dad turns down the music and recounts meeting Mum again. They were two singles in line for a rollercoaster at the Easter Show. Mum tells it that they were seated together by the hand of fate. Dad says it was lucky mathematics — that he had counted the couples and manoeuvred himself up the line to be close to Mum, so they, two odd singles, would be seated together.

  Mum introduced herself as ‘a very spiritual person’. According to Dad, she had the light in her eyes that you sometimes see in yogis and happy old people. She wasn’t the suburban mum then. She was barefoot, clad in a smock, dancing to music no one had ever heard of, a bit out there. He loved war movies and books that were thick enough to sit on.

  Mum fell in love with his fancy words and gentle hands that had never felt the graze of manual labour, and he fell in love with her free spirit that had no need to analyse the world. Dad was so articulate, but he loved Mum for being vague. How she ended her sentences with ‘so …’ all the time kept him hanging. ‘I liked the ride, it was fun, so …’ ‘I’m not working tomorrow, so …’ That, he said, meant she always wanted to see him. And when he showed her a box with a ring in it, her answer was ‘yes, so …’ Dad loved the mystery of her ‘so’s. They are pretty much opposites — Dad will make a to-do list, Mum will write a bucket list — but it works.

  Dad turns up the music as we cruise towards the beach. We feel the thumps of the guitar beat in our chests through the crystal-clear speakers. We catch onto the chorus and sing loud and off-key. This is exactly how I had always hoped our family would end up: rich, with no worries, driving a brand-new luxurious car, living it up on the right side of town. For the first time in my life, I have everything I ever wanted. So why do I feel so …

  Chapter 21

  Full of potato cakes and thirsty from all the salt, we arrive home at dusk with our greasy hands in our laps to protect the pristine leather upholstery. Dad parks the car in the driveway and turns to us, smiling. Mum twists in her chair to face us and she has tears in her eyes. We’ve pulled up behind our old car.

  ‘Well, this is a first,’ Dad says. ‘First time winning anything and first time I may believe in luck.’

  ‘You don’t feel lucky having us?’ I ask.

  ‘I feel blessed to have you. That’s different.’

  Mum and Dad begin to tell us the story of our old car. They bought it second-hand from a guy called Ralph who owned a cat called Goose. They time-shared the car with their next-door neighbours, the Bakers.

  ‘The car was only for special occasions as we caught public transport everywhere else. Whenever she broke down, Ralph would be over to fix her in a flash, hoping for some of your mother’s lasagne.’ Dad looks at Mum. ‘You cook a mean lasagne,’ he says.

  ‘I know.’ She laughs.

  Eventually it did become a little complicated — Mum was pregnant — and the Bakers struck a deal. Dad tutored their eldest son in exchange for full custody of the wheels. One year of tutoring and the beat-up car was theirs.

  ‘She was as unpredictable as our greengrocer’s grammar,’ Dad says. ‘But she was ours, and we loved her.’

  A fifty-dollar note flies onto the windscreen and sticks to the glass. I gasp. My parents’ eyes narrow. Fleur notices too and tries not to panic.

  ‘So what will happen to the old car now?’ I quickly ask. Mum and Dad re
main turned in their seats. Another note slaps onto the windscreen. Money in the wind means trouble. My heart is a hammer.

  ‘Fleur will need a car in a couple of years,’ Dad says.

  Fleur tries to summon enthusiasm but fails. ‘Yay!’ she says sarcastically.

  The notes fly away. I have to hurry Mum and Dad inside. Now! They turn back to the front to stare lovingly at their history. The old car looks irrelevant now, like a clump of badly moulded Play-Doh.

  ‘My hands are sooo sticky,’ I say. I wave them alarmingly close to the vanilla leather.

  ‘Do not touch those seats,’ my father orders, opening his door with his elbow.

  ‘Let’s go inside and wash our hands,’ I urge, but they stand outside, staring at the four-wheel drive.

  ‘Can I do the honours?’ Mum asks. I’m watching the air and spy another note floating in the distance. Dad hands her the key and she presses it. The car beeps and locks. Mum sighs.

  ‘Distract Mum,’ I whisper to Fleur. ‘I’ll check it out.’

  ‘Mum, can you help me to braid my hair?’ Fleur asks.

  ‘Of course, honey,’ she says, following Fleur inside.

  I wait in the living room, listening to their footsteps. When I’m positive Dad is in the shower and Fleur and Mum are in Fleur’s room, I sneak out the front door. Bloated clouds release their load and rain pelts wet fists into my face. I stick out my tongue to catch some droplets as I run around to the side of the house, snatching at money as I go.

  The door to the basement is wide open again. This time I know it wasn’t Fleur as she was with me. I jump onto the ladder and pull the hatch closed on top of me. I race to the wardrobe, hurdling over the washing machine, and step inside. Then I slide down the second ladder, sneeze, enter the cellar and sprint as fast as my legs will carry me down the laneways of bottles, shadows slipping and sliding. Each row I’m hit with more panic, every corner, sharper alarm.

  When I finally reach the sparkling tree, I’m heaving for oxygen and good news. The tree is pristine, vibrating softly as always in the dappled light, and looks pleased to see me in a thick cloak of notes twirling in rainbow ice-cream colours. I admire the tree in the cavernous room until a little voice pinches the air: ‘Hello?’

  I freeze. Perhaps I imagined the voice emanating from behind the trunk. I swallow hard and try to control my jumping organs, then force myself to inch closer to the tree. A pale arm unfurls from the side of the trunk with crimson-dipped fingers. My breath pins to my throat.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I choke. The arm drops onto an unopened package and leaves a red smear. Someone’s down here in the cellar. Someone knows my secret.

  The feeling that something really bad is about to happen squashes my heart down into my shoes, making it hard to lift my feet. I nudge forward, reaching out to touch the tree, which sparkles at my caress. I pick up a nearby table-tennis paddle to arm myself, then jump behind the tree, yelling, ‘Arrrgghhh!’

  ‘Don’t hurt me!’ A frightened girl is curled up in a ball beside the tree, covering her face with a forearm that is streaming with blood from the elbow to the wrist. An axe lies on the floor next to her. Then the girl slowly lowers her arm and her rosebud face, perfect and symmetrical, glowing in all the right combinations of white and pink, stares up at me.

  ‘Stacey?’

  ‘I followed Tyler. I saw him come down here and I hid behind the racks of bottles. He didn’t stay long. I w-wanted to see what was down the wardrobe,’ she stammers. Tears come, but don’t fall.

  I choose one of Fleur’s new scarves and wrap it tightly around Stacey’s cut arm. ‘You could have really hurt yourself,’ I say. ‘You might need stitches. Is that my dad’s axe?’

  ‘I found it,’ Stacey says.

  ‘So you were planning on stealing my tree?’ I step back as anger stomps on my concern.

  ‘As if you would give it to me,’ she says. ‘I’ve never used an axe before and I cut myself a little bit. It’s not deep, but it stings.’ This time the tears do fall.

  I crouch down next to Stacey and put an arm around her. ‘Should I call an ambulance?’

  ‘No. It’s just a scratch. I’m not a wuss. And how would we explain all this?’ she says, looking around and shrugging off my arm.

  I bite down on my lip. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’

  Stacey’s eyes clear, revealing her cunning thought before she says it. ‘Not if you cut me in.’ She smiles. ‘A branch a day is fair.’

  I stand up. ‘A whole branch!’ I kick over a nearby Lego structure that Tyler has been working on for days. It crashes onto the ground in pieces. ‘That’s not fair. This is my tree.’

  ‘Life’s not fair,’ Stacey says, then hobbles to her feet. ‘I’m going home. A branch a day or I tell everyone your big secret. You have until lunchtime tomorrow to decide.’ She leaves the cellar, clutching her wounded arm.

  A stab of anger knifes me in the chest. I grab a nearby iPad and throw it across the room. The iPad smashes. Then I fling my arms around the tree, but my cheek feels something sticky. The bark is bleeding magic sap. My fingers trace the three deep grooves in the trunk where Stacey’s blade has sliced into its flesh.

  ‘I have to go and figure this out,’ I whisper. I pick a few notes to pay the family bills, then collect the bag with my prepared gifts for Drop Zone tomorrow. I’ve bought Easter eggs and Smarties cookies.

  I stare at the bloody axe, then almost haemorrhage with panic. How am I going to explain all this? I feel like that dude Dad mentioned, Callicles. I’m all leaky and empty after taking whatever I wanted. Now I want nothing, nothing but to undo this whole big mess and make it right.

  I plod to my bedroom. My hand finds the light switch and my room awakens. I blink, then scream. Three huge cracks carve into the wall above my bed. I smooth my hand over them. They look as deep as the marks in the money tree’s trunk. Turning to Socrates and Sibyl, I examine them. They haven’t been hurt. My baby lizards wrestle in their new habitat one level down from Sibyl’s enclosure. My lizard family is all happy.

  Fleur appears at my door. ‘You screamed, silly,’ she says.

  ‘Shhh, quick, come in.’ I usher her into my room and lock the door behind her. ‘Weird?’ I ask, pointing to the wall.

  Fleur stares at the cracks. ‘This place really is a dump. Falling apart.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘They weren’t there yesterday!’

  ‘So?’

  I climb onto my bed and stick my finger in a crack. I can’t tell her about Stacey until I work out what to do. ‘Mum’s going to flip,’ I say.

  Chapter 22

  At 6am I’m wide awake to feel the last whisper of night exhale through the room. I breathe it in as early morning buckles through the blackness. I’ve been twisting myself into a suffocating cocoon of sheets for hours, picturing money flying past my parents’ window, a money hurricane swallowing us all up. And I can’t help wondering if the cracks in my bedroom wall happened at the same time as the tree was attacked by Stacey. I turn to stare at the blue heat lamps in my lizard enclosures, then sit up, hooking my hair behind my ears. Maybe the tree is linked to the house somehow.

  ‘Is that why?’ I whisper. No one can steal the money tree because it’s a part of this old house and stealing the tree would mean destroying the house we live in.

  I crawl out of bed, slide on my gumboots and raincoat. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I tell Socrates, then turn on my torch.

  I hunt for sharp items in Dad’s neglected shed at the back of the house. I’m scared of using the axe because of what happened to Stacey. I find a few tools, boogie boards, a broken ping-pong table and a pair of ice-skates. A rusty nail won’t do the job and there doesn’t seem to be much else. I collapse on a stool to think. Maybe this was a dumb idea. I should be trying to figure out what to say to Stacey, not hunting around in the dark for blades. Perhaps I should just use the axe? No, think about Stacey’s arm. My brain light bulb flicks on. Blades! I grab the ice-skates and run ou
t of the shed and around to the side of the house. I heave open the hatch and disappear down the hole.

  Minutes later, I’m apologising to the tree. Long shadows wash across the ceiling where the branches touch. ‘Sorry, friend, I have to do it,’ I say, holding one of the ice-skates, blade pointed at the tree’s trunk. I swing my arm back, then hack into the tree. The bark is tough and soon I’m working up a sweat. I chop at the trunk until the tree bleeds sap and there is a palm-sized tattoo in the shape of an asterisk. I stare at the wound and rest my head against it. The tears come in stinging pinpricks. How did I get here? A girl who lies, steals and assaults nature?

  I kiss the tree. The branches shimmer and rain down money in a twirling wind of colour. Money swamps my feet. Our stack of note blocks almost reaches the ceiling now. I throw the ice-skate onto a pile of stuff. Back in the day, I would have wished for a new bike or more pocket money, but now I wish I didn’t have all those things and I wish more than anything that Stacey could suffer amnesia.

  I stare up at the tree brushing against all sides of the room. The tree is bizarre-looking today, as if it belongs in a Dr Seuss garden. The light radiates in waves off the leaves, like heat shimmering off roads and in front of horizons. The tree makes the room feel wide open and endless.

  I kiss the tree again, fill my lungs with its unusual scent one more time, then scurry upstairs.

  Peering through the window next to the front door, it’s still a bit dark. Dad insists on turning off the lights to save electricity if no one is in the room. Only a dim, struggling bulb above the stove wafts light down to the front of the house. This means the coast is clear. Everyone must still be upstairs.

  I wipe my muddy gumboots on the front doorstep and slowly, with breath held and muscles tensed, ease myself into the house. The door thumps behind me. I creep through the entrance, all ninja-in-training, then a ripping, cracking noise slices into the quiet. My heart skips a beat, playing hopscotch. I wait for Dad to run downstairs, but no one comes. I follow the noise, then air sucks into my mouth and I nearly choke when I see the huge crack in the living-room wall. The crack is the size of a bike wheel and it’s in the shape of an asterisk.