8 .
Claud and I locked our bikes outside Quinny’s apartment block on Marine Parade. I had the pizzas tied to my pack rack with ockie straps, which I think is short for octopus because of the way they stretch out and latch on to things. It was twenty-five minutes past eight so we were almost perfectly on time, which is important in a business like ours and important for me because, as I may have mentioned, I’m an on-time person. A swarm of leathery bikers sped past on low-riders with big handlebars. Then a convoy of bogans in hotted-up Commodores roared by. We could hear Kylie Minogue playing very loudly from a balcony. I was thinking about the peach and white-chocolate pizza that I was going to make when I got home . . . with ice cream on top. (That’s if Mum had stopped Lyall and Saskia eating it all while we were gone.)
Claud pressed the buzzer of number 77.
‘Yo!’ It was Uncle Quinny through the intercom. ‘I’ll send Buster down – Buster! Get down there would ya,’ he yelled. ‘How much do we owe yers?’
‘They’re fifteen dollars each,’ I said leaning into the speaker.
‘Jeez, you women make things bloody complicated. I didn’t ask how much it cost for one, I asked how much we bloody owe ya? – Where’s that kid? – Buster! I said get here! – You still there, Canary Legs?’
‘Um, yes, Quinny. It’s sixty dollars.’
‘Right, so why didn’t you just bloody say that? Listen, love, you’ll have to bring ’em up. Buster’s gone AWOL. I’ll kick his bloody behind. Push the door, seventh floor, turn left.’
Claud pushed the door open and I really wished we had spat in their pizzas after all, on account of Uncle Quinny calling me Canary Legs twice in one day. The foyer was hot and airless and smelt like fish fingers.
When we got out of the elevator Uncle Quinny was standing in the doorway of his flat wearing his shiny track pants with no shirt. He looked muscly like Popeye – I think ’cos he works out at the gym in case he ever gets in a fight, which he probably does all the time. We handed Quinny the pizzas and he beckoned us with his head.
‘Come through girls, the boys are just gettin’ the cash together.’
Claud and I stood in Quinny’s entrance hall. There was a television blaring in the lounge room where I could see the back of Buster’s head on a huge curvy couch. He was playing Grand Theft Auto and was in the process of carving up a police bike with a chainsaw, which is probably why he couldn’t hear Quinny when he called him. There was a woman lying next to him with a sarong tied around her. She was asleep. Quinny plonked Buster’s pizza on the glass coffee table in front of him.
‘Nah nah, don’t get up your highness, don’t you move a bloody muscle!’ Quinny joked. Buster didn’t notice. Quinny gave him a clip across the back of the head saying, ‘Where’s your bloody manners, kid?’
‘Hey, Buster, I told you we knew where you lived,’ Claud said, and did the fake laugh again, looking at me to laugh along. To be honest I really couldn’t see what the joke was, especially as Buster could lose his temper any moment and we weren’t exactly in a position of power, being stuck in a flat full of criminals. I just wanted to get out of there.
‘Come with me, Sunshine,’ said Quinny moving into the kitchen. ‘Hey, boys, give us sixty would ya?’ he shouted. There were three men sitting around the table playing cards. One was wearing a suit like a real estate agent and sitting in front of an electric fan. There was another guy wearing boxer shorts and a singlet, and a younger dude in a beanie and full, shiny black tracksuit with white stripes down the sleeves as if he was smack in the middle of winter. He took some money out of the middle of the table and handed me three folded twenty dollar notes, while Quinny opened the pizza boxes and put them on the table.
‘If they’re any good, we’ll order some more next week,’ said Quinny. I could hear Claud fake laughing again from the lounge room.
‘Well, you better beat it then girls,’ Quinny said, standing by the door.
‘Okay, thanks, Quinny. Have a good weekend,’ I said, putting the money in my pocket. He left me at the door and went back to the kitchen.
‘Come on, Claud,’ I said, but she was still talking to Buster and looked as if she’d been caught doing something she didn’t want me to see. ‘Are you coming, Claud?’ I said, a little louder.
She turned around quickly, flicking her hair over her shoulder, and said, ‘Hope you enjoy your pizza, Buster. I don’t think I remember spitting in it, but you can’t be sure!’ And then she did the fake laugh. Again.
‘Whatever,’ sneered Buster, trying not to smile.
We waited a long time for the elevator to come. It seemed to be stuck on the twelfth floor. Claud kept jiggling the down button and singing Funky Town in time, which was super annoying and made me feel like I wasn’t even there. Just as the elevator doors were closing, the man from Uncle Quinny’s who was wearing the beanie squeezed himself through the elevator doors. He was carrying a Puma bag. Claud pressed the button for the ground floor. She was still singing ‘Funky Town’, which was really embarrassing, even if it was just in front of some stranger who was wearing a beanie on a forty-something degree night and was staring at the ceiling and whistling.
Claud and I had a record-breaking night at Pizza-A-Go-Girl, but something still wasn’t right. Claud was bouncing around like Tigger from the Hundred Acre Wood and kept humming and singing annoying songs like you do when no one else is around, or you’re in the shower. And whenever I said anything to her I could tell she wasn’t really listening.
‘How much of a loser is Buster?’ I said, when Claud and I were chatting in my bunks. ‘I mean, could he wear any more Lynx? It almost gave me a headache.’
‘It’s better than having B.O. At least he cares about personal hygiene,’ said Claud.
‘Yeah, but he never does anything. I bet you he stays on that couch in front of his PlayStation all weekend. It’s no wonder he doesn’t have any friends.’
Claud didn’t answer.
‘Claud?’ I said, but she didn’t answer me, again. ‘Claud?’ I leant over the side of my bed to the bottom bunk. She was listening to her iPod.
‘Claud!’ I said loudly. She pulled out one of her earphones. ‘What?’ she said, in an impatient way.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Um, let me see, I’m making a ham sandwich. No, I’m doing my homework. What does it look like I’m doing Sunny?’
‘You don’t have to be mean.’
‘Well, maybe you’re being mean,’ Claud said, putting the earphone back in, which made my throat ache.
‘Fine. I’ll turn out the light then,’ I said, flicking off the lamp. I waited a few seconds. ‘Night, Claud,’ I said, but she didn’t answer.
9 .
I woke up and leant over the side of my bunk. Claud was already up, I could hear her chatting to Mum in the indoor kitchen. I leapt out of bed, hoping I hadn’t missed out on anything like pancakes.
‘Here she is,’ said Mum. ‘Morning, sleepyhead.’
‘Morning,’ I said, rubbing my eyes. Willow sat tall in front of me, thumping her tail against the floor. Claud was already dressed and had her back pack on. She smiled at me and said, ‘I gotta go.’
‘Weren’t we going to shoot some hoops?’ I said. ‘We’ve got time before Dad comes.’
‘Nah, I’ve got to get home. I forgot, Mum’s taking me shopping. Gotta get some new school shoes for Monday.’ Claud looked at her watch. ‘Oops, I’m actually running late. Thanks for the sleepover, Alex.’
‘Any time, Claud, you’re always welcome,’ said Mum as Claud made her way down the hall.
‘Bye, Sunny,’ Claud shouted over her shoulder. ‘See you at school on Monday!’ I held Willow’s collar to stop her running after her.
‘Claud’s gone weird,’ I said to Willow, rubbing her ears. ‘Don’t you go weird, Willow.’
While I was waiting for Dad and Steph to pick me up, I dug my school bag out of the cupboard and tried on my school shoes. They still fitted. Dad was running
late and although I was trying to make all sorts of excuses for him, like perhaps Steph had morning sickness again, it was pretty normal for Dad to be running late because he’s officially a late person. You’d think I’d know it by now and make internal adjustments, the way you change the clocks for daylight savings, but I always forget, because I’m absolutely and undeniably an on-time person and am chronically bad at waiting.
Waiting makes me itchy and twitchy and I pace up and down as if I’m in prison. Even if you have a lot of things you could do while you’re waiting, it’s as if the waiting itself makes you forget them all. Waiting makes me feel like I’m a puppet lying in a heap, hoping someone will come and pull my strings. Sometimes I feel like the only on-time person in the whole world. Even the cool change was late and hadn’t come through in the night the way it was meant to. It was as hot inside the house as it was outside.
So I lay on the bottom bunk for a while and thought about all the different kinds of waiting and how some of them are worse than others. Like waiting for Christmas, for instance, which is almost fun because the more you wait, the more exciting it gets. Especially if you’ve got a chocolate advent calendar and can possibly resist opening all the little windows and eating all the chocolates in one day. Waiting for something that is running late – like your dad, or a train, or a cool change – is a different sort of waiting, though, on account of the lateness taking complete control of your life.
Waiting for an important letter to arrive can be exhilarating but torturous at the same time, like when you enter a competition and don’t know whether or not you’ve won. Waiting for Steph’s baby to arrive is delicious, especially since the longer we wait, the more we get to feel it kick.
I wondered how long I’d have to wait for Claud to become normal again and start behaving the way a best friend should?
Auntie Guff does a lot of waiting. She’s waiting to meet the one and fall in love. She never seems to get tired of waiting either, because she says she’s got full faith in the forces of the universe. Steph wants her to try speed dating because she says a woman’s got to take control of her own life, but Auntie Guff says that control is just an illusion and that everything happens in its own perfect time frame.
I think I agree with Steph, though. At least if Auntie Guff tried speed dating it would fill in time while she’s waiting for the universe to get it together.
Waiting at Dr Robinson’s surgery is a total dead drag of a bore. Why do they go to the trouble of making an appointment time for you if the doctor’s always running forty minutes late? Plus, all the mags are way out of date and have important pages missing.
Waiting for the anaesthetic to wear off after you’ve had a filling at the dentist is sort of fun because your face feels all thick, and if you try to drink a glass of water, you spill it down your front.
Obviously, the Tangent Police got my post-it-note message. It may have been a mistake to sack them!
‘Muuuuum!’ I shouted, putting on my new basketball shoes.
‘Don’t yell, Sunny!’ Mum yelled from the lounge-room where she was reading the Saturday papers.
‘When Dad comes,’ I said, ‘tell him I’m down at the school playing basketball. He can pick me up from there,’ I said, standing at the loungeroom door.
‘Okay,’ said Mum. ‘Well, give me a kiss because I won’t see you for the weekend.’ I leant over the couch and kissed her on the cheek. The good news was she didn’t even pong of smoke.
‘Also Sunny, Carl doesn’t have his kids this weekend, so we thought it might be a good chance for him to bring some of his furniture over from the flat, you know, just to get Lyall and Saskia sorted and their bunks set up.’
‘Yep,’ I said, ‘fine by me,’ which was a total lie. I was so glad to be going to Dad’s where I could eat Coco Pops, and not have to deal with Carl and Lyall and Saskia. Dad’s place was starting to feel like barley in a game I couldn’t get out of, where all the rules had changed.
When I got around the corner into Scott Street I could hear the sounds of basketball bouncing coming from the school courts, which was good because even though shooting goals is something you can do all by yourself, it’s better when there are other people to join in with, especially when you’re wanting to test out new shoes.
But something stopped me dead in my tracks. It was the sound of Claud’s fake laughter, which sounds kind of like the noise a donkey would make if someone told it to pretend to be a kookaburra. At first I thought I must be imagining things, because how could it be Claud when she had gone to Chadstone with her Mum? But then I heard it again. I hid behind the corner and peered around the wall towards the basketball courts. I could see two people and one of them was definitely Claud. The other one was absolutely and undeniably Buster Conroy!
Even though my legs wanted to run away, my eyes couldn’t stop watching them. Claud was teaching Buster the rules and all the moves and they were bouncing the ball and laughing like old friends. I wanted to vomit and cry at the same time. How did this happen? Maybe Claud was on her way home and Buster bailed her up and forced her into it? Maybe he threatened to rearrange her face? Maybe Claud’s mum had cancelled the shopping trip and Claud was near the school when her mum rang and she just thought she’d shoot a few hoops and then, whoosh, Buster jumped out from behind the drink taps and she couldn’t get away and she thought it was better to play along with it to protect herself. Maybe she was going to call me right afterwards and tell me what a complete and utter loser Buster was, and how we were never going to do another delivery to the Conroy’s again.
Or maybe Claud and Buster arranged to meet down at the hoops while they were talking last night, and maybe Claud didn’t want me to join in so she lied about going shopping, and maybe ever since meeting that Mitch dude at Dreamworld Claud had developed a thing for bogans?
On the way to Dad and Steph’s I sent Claud a text, asking how the shopping was going. She texted back that she was at Smiggle and they were having a bumper sale. Dad and Steph have air conditioning because they’re not as obsessed with the environment as Mum and Carl are, which is why I guess it’s a good thing that everyone ended up getting divorced and meeting new people and matching up better, even if it does mean all the kids have to live in two houses.
I was hanging out for a bowl of Coco Pops. I stared into the pantry cupboard. All I could see were neat rows of tuna in cans. Steph was perched on the edge of her stool at the bench. It looked as if her baby bump had grown even more and was making it hard for her to breathe. Dad was brewing a pot of herbal tea.
‘What’s the deal with the Old Mother Hubbard situation you’ve got going in the really tragic cupboard?’ I asked. ‘Where’s all the stuff gone?’ By stuff I meant things like Kingston biscuits and Tim Tams and all the other yummy things Steph’s been having monster cravings for.
‘Pregnancy-induced diabetes,’ said Steph. ‘I just got the test results back. I can’t have any sugar until after the baby’s born. They found too much glucose in my blood.’ I pulled open the fridge. There was a plate of hard-boiled eggs, half a roast chicken and two tubs of sprouts. I checked the freezer. No ice cream.
‘What the—’
‘I have to do a blood test after every meal,’ said Steph, sipping her tea.
‘The Coco Pops?’ I said, looking at Dad kind of how Willow looks at me when she’s desperate for a walk.
‘We’re a sugar-free home for a while, Sunny. It’s not going to kill us,’ Dad said.
‘Actually,’ said Steph, ‘it’s all refined carbohydrates not just sugar, so no white rice, white pasta or white bread. And no juices either, no caffeine, no soft drinks, no cordial. Oh, and no alcohol, but that won’t bother you too much, Sunny.’
‘Nah, none of it bothers me,’ I said sarcastically, pouring myself a cup of tea. ‘Any honey?’
‘Oh, the honey’s gone too,’ said Steph. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s just a bit of a challenge for a while, mix it up a bit, support Steph. You know how
it is, Sunny, you’re a team player,’ said Dad.
‘That’s just in basketball, Dad.’
The fact is, I’m not a team player. I’m used to one-on-one. It’s obvious. But all the people I’d been one-on-one-ing with seemed to be disappearing. Even Coco Pops. Mum had Carl. Dad had Steph. Steph was about to get a baby. Lyall had Saskia. And Claud . . . well, Claud had gone weird, which is really just a nice way of saying she’d become a bogan-loving stinking liar. I had the most horrible feeling of just me. I had Willow but being a dog she did have limitations, even if dogs are renowned for being man’s best friend. Knowing my luck, she’d probably latch onto Carl. If people were designed to be just me, then why does most of the world revolve around people trying to couple up? Being just me, just didn’t feel right.
I made myself a chicken sandwich with some new weird bread that Steph had bought, and said with my mouth full, ‘I’m going to call up Granny Carmelene.’ Both Dad and Steph gave me the eyebrow. ‘I’m going to go visit her like she suggested, I don’t care what Mum says. She’s my grandmother and a blood relative. She’s someone who’s actually . . . mine.’
At Dad and Steph’s there’s a basketball hoop above the garage door. Surprisingly, it hadn’t even melted yet.
‘Come on, lay-ups,’ said Dad, tossing the ball up high. I jumped and caught it then took a shot before I hit the ground again. I missed. I could see Steph watching through the window from the couch.
Sunny Side Up Page 5