Alana Oakley (13 page)

Katriona looked away from her mirror with reluctance. She was sure there was another wrinkle near her eyes that wasn't there yesterday. She could almost
feel
herself aging. Katriona gave her skin a reassuring pat and dropped the hand-mirror to her side as she demonstrated the Winning Walk.

“Note, shoulders back,” Ling Ling pointed as Katriona walked. “Chin high, but not too high. Chest out, but not, well … do your best.” Katriona glided around the room, taking time to check her face in the mirror every now and then for any change.

“What did you say you were going to do again?” Emma said suddenly. She eyed the plastic container, which contained an odd mixture she could only describe as ‘goo'.

Ling Ling picked up the bowl and mixed the flecks of white, beige and yellow into a paste. “It's a facial treatment we read about. Based on an ancient Asian tradition,” she lowered her voice. “Very popular with all the Stars Of Hollywood.” She proceeded to smooth the mixture onto Emma's face as Katriona continued to strut. “Many Chinese believe that bird-nest soup is good for cell growth and tissue repair.”

At this, Emma sat up. Startled eyes popped out of the ghoulish mask which looked like yellowing cement. “What do birds have to do with it?”

Ling Ling was prevented from answering by a loud yell from the door. It was Alana, and she wasn't alone.

“
Ergh!
What ith that awful thmell?” Alana complained, pinching her nose.

A boy about the same age as Alana and from the same school – judging from his uniform – followed her in. He was a curious-looking boy with strangely-positioned eyes and odd-shaped glasses. He walked past the enormous plastic Christmas tree as if it was normal bedroom décor for July. That it was covered with random bits of paper and torn serviettes didn't bother him either. Perhaps he too used a plastic Christmas tree, year-round, as a place to put ideas, like Emma did. (In truth, he used a conventional whiteboard and plastered it with formulas.) The boy walked up to Ling Ling and dipped his pinkie in what remained of the mixture. He tapped it with staccato delicacy onto the tip of his tongue and alternately licked and smacked his lips, as if to test both taste and texture.

“Hmm, just as I thought,” the boy said with a look of deep concentration. “I detect Nitrogen, Phosphate and Potassium.”

“What-ium?” asked Alana.

“You'd probably call it bird poop.”

“Bird WHAT?” cried Emma, sitting up.

Ling Ling pushed Emma back down. “Re-lak! This is a facial treatment traditional
kabuki
actors and Geishas use. It is a very ancient beauty secret from the Orient.”

But Emma refused to be pacified. She knew her friends all too well.

“I know the treatment, but the Japanese use powdered
nightingale
droppings which they sterilise first. Which bird did you use, Ling Ling?”

“Nightingale, budgerigar, same-same lah!” the woman scoffed.

Katriona turned on Emma, furious. “The least you can do is to help me find a cure for aging. Look at me! I'm getting older every day!”

Alana smacked her head in disbelief before leading Miller to the living room, where the sounds of the argument were not as loud. “I'll introduce you later,” she said. “They're a bit busy.”

Miller got down to work. While he tapped on the keys of the laptop, Alana couldn't help but express her curiosity.

“If you can do all this amazing stuff, how come you don't act brainy at school? Aren't you in the bottom class for Maths or something?”

Miller peered at the screen and muttered. “You learn pretty quickly that people who are ‘brainy' aren't always the most liked. In fact, lots of people feel threatened. I mean,” he paused, looking up, “if they're
the teacher
, you'd think they'd want to learn something new. But maybe they just aren't interested in nano-technology. As Gran says, it's not everyone's cup of tea – although I don't see what a beverage has to do with it. Anyway,” he said, returning to the screen, “Practical Maths gives me time to study Advanced Calculus and be with my friends, Chris and Colin.”

“That's really … smart,” Alana said admiringly.

Alana knew a bit about the downside of being ‘brainy' as well.

When Alana Oakley was born, and the months had chased each other, words were absorbed like a sponge.
Mum, dad, book, bird, cup.
Hot on their heels came
splashing, beautiful, different
. Then
peculiar, entrancing, dejected
followed.

They had to move the precocious pre-schooler to Miss Tate's class, if only to give Mrs Rineheart the pre-retirement year she felt she'd earned. Surely, after forty years of Faithful Service, she didn't deserve to have her grammar corrected by a
three-year-old!
Thus Alana was not only reading
See Spot Run
and
See Spot Run with Jill
, she was rewriting the story too. In careful handwriting, one arm clutching her blankie while sucking on a pacifier,
Spot and Jill wer scoring goles and eeting deelishus is creem
because that was far more exciting. It never occurred to her that the spaces between lines were deliberate. The
Spot and Jill
stories were like a join-the-dot or coloring-in page that needed filling in. Alana obliged – to the alarm of her teachers and the delight of her dad. Her grandmother was even more elated. According to Alana's grandmother, nobody was good enough for her daughter, Emma. To be Good Enough, you had to carry a laptop or briefcase, and be too busy to have a conversation without being interrupted by Important Phone Calls and Urgent Texts. They most certainly did not carry a
djembé
or call people ‘Dude'. She wasn't impressed that Hugo had done both. But as soon as it was discovered Hugo had taught Alana to read (
clever, clever girl
), he went from being a good-for-nothing-no-hoper-bongo-drum-player to my-son-in-law-the-genius. Thus Alana was able to win the scholarship to Gibson High, but in order to
keep
it she had to maintain high grades. It was mainly for this reason that she worked so hard at school.

“I'm sorry. Your laptop – while a very charming shade of turquoise – is inadequate for the purposes of infiltrating the firewall of the school's computer system and deciphering their encryption. May I suggest we redeploy to somewhere more suitable?”

Miller said, peering over his glasses.

“Huh?”

“Do you want to come over?”

“Oh. Sure.”

The bang of the front door and a muffled, “Be back soon,” interrupted Emma, Katriona and Ling Ling's bickering.

After a heartbeat, Ling Ling asked, “Did Alana just bring home a
boy
?”

“No,” Katriona said, peering through the curtains, “Alana just
left
with a boy.”

Emma stared at her two friends and lay back down. “Oh, very well,” she huffed, “give me The Works.”

…

Ling Ling watched with envy as Katriona tilted to the left, a swathe of long fair hair cascading down to her thigh. With a
screech,
Katriona tipped suddenly to the right, leaning back as she did so. Katriona shook her head in exhilaration. She could almost smell the petrol fumes. Ling Ling tapped her foot with impatience. Both she and Katriona had dressed up for this special occasion. Ling Ling had swapped Buddhist spiritualism for Soho spunk and was decked head-to-toe in bright orange leather, while Katriona wore leopard-skin tights and a studded leather jacket.

“My turn now,” Ling Ling demanded.

“
Brmm. Brmm
.
Brrrrrmm
. Just a bit longer,” Katriona whined.

Ling Ling tugged at Katriona's hands, which gripped the bike's throttle. “Come on, you've been on for ages.”

“NO! I said. Just. A. Bit. Longer!” Katriona held the Harley in a death-grip between her Amazonian thighs.

The
clang
of a mop bucket and the
thunk
of the light switch in the basketball court next door interrupted their scuffle.

“Take your finger out of my eye, Katriona,” Ling Ling whispered. “I think somebody's here.”

The cleaner of the Police Boys' Club was surprised to find a Harley Davidson in the Second-Chancers' room. He was even more surprised to see a woman's lipstick print on the shiny chrome of the bike's mirror. “I guess this one's a female,” he shrugged.

CHAPTER 22

Flynn under the microscope. Road rage.

News of Coach Kusmuk's disaster-struck future school did not improve anybody's mood – least of all Alana's. It looked like the coach would remain at Gibson High for another year at least.

“It just got personal,” Alana said with a fierce glint in her eye.

Alana was not the only one to become fascinated by the antics of what became known as the Toy Truck Arsonist. It became a hot topic at school, too. The fact that the criminal (or criminals) appeared to be targeting schools, and left a toy truck at each crime scene, had everybody wondering who it could be. The press took to writing sensational reports, even though the police remained tight-lipped about their progress. The question on everybody's lips was: would their school be next?

But if the police were puzzled, what hope did Alana have of solving yet another riddle on top of the mysterious Flynn, whose records had turned out to be disappointingly boring? He had recently transferred from inter-state and, by the look of it, spent most of his life moving schools every one or two years. His father was Major Paul Tucker. There was no evidence of a mother, and he had one older brother.

“So there's nothing? Nothing at all on his record about misdemeanours? Suspensions? Expulsions? Nothing?” Alana cried in disappointment.

Miller looked up from his computer. “Nothing on record. Looks like a typical army brat. Moved around a lot, with stints in Haiti and Rwanda.” Alana nodded. That would explain the French.

Flynn's lack of wickedness appeared conclusive until Alana overheard the Deputy Principal deliver a grave warning:

“The Police are keen to pin these fires on someone, and your record isn't doing you any favours. If you cannot account for your whereabouts from four to six, then it doesn't matter what I or your teachers say. Flynn,” he appealed, “we can't help you if you won't help yourself.”

Flynn's eyes remained stubbornly glued to the floor.

“Very well. I expect I'll be seeing your father soon enough.”

Flynn walked away, but not before spotting Alana, who could not duck behind the pot-plant quickly enough. The scowl he gave her was as dark as thunder.

So that's the mystery of Flynn's school records solved,
she thought to herself. Could all of these pieces be inter-connected? Could Flynn Tucker be the Toy Truck Arsonist?

Alana's History teacher, Mrs Snell, took advantage of the hot topic to describe gruesome, fire-related, historical details, the likes of which were guaranteed to give them all nightmares.

“Fire,” Mrs Snell said during one lesson, “has exacted its wrath throughout the course of humanity. In the year 1666, the heat from the Great Fire of London was so powerful that it made the lead roof on St Paul's Cathedral drip like ice cream. According to eyewitness accounts, hundreds of pigeons, preferred to brave the fires rather than abandon their nests; their wings burned and they plummeted, down, down, down, to their deaths.
Aww
,” Mrs Snell smiled. “Poor things.” Sofia fiddled with her mood ring – now a muddy yellow – and avoided eye contact. Mrs Snell strolled around the classroom, needles a blur as her knitting trailed behind like a woollen tail.

“Witchcraft hysteria reached its peak in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Common witch-hunting methods included drowning, leg vices, whipping stocks and scalding lime baths.” Khalilah put a shocked hand to her mouth, while Maddie, on the other hand, tried not to think of pond scum as she stared at the spittle in the ‘V' of Mrs Snell's lips.

“But fire was also used as a means of torture to extract confessions from these so-called ‘witches', who were usually just kind, little old biddies good with herbs and healing.” Mrs Snell paused – a kind, little old biddie herself … at least in her own mind. “Between 50,000 and 80,000 suspected witches were executed from 1500 to 1660. Eighty per cent were women.” Mrs Snell's face swooped so Alana could see hairline cracks in the teacher's powdered cheeks.

“Tied to a stake and then,
whoomph,
set alight. If they survived, they were a witch and if they didn't, they were innocent!” She paused, eyeing Alana, a question mark in her eyes. Alana – like the ‘witches' before her, who knew they were damned if they did and damned if they didn't – remained rigid and silent. Mrs Snell's hideous smile surfaced again, like a deep-sea monster. “Have you got anything to say to
that,
Miss Oakley?” she asked.

Why don't you ask Flynn?
Alana thought to herself, but instead all she said was, “Poor things?”

…

As much as Alana would have liked another chance at tailing Flynn during the unaccounted-for hours, training for soccer, homework and mid-year exams made it impossible. She was dwelling on the unfairness of it all – why couldn't she do this full-time? – when somebody gave her a poke. Hard.

“
Oww.
” Alana clutched at her side.

“You haven't been listening to a word,” Khalilah accused.

Alana thought about lying but decided against it. Khalilah's radar for Stretched Truths and Embellished Tales was almost as sharp as Alana's radar for Mystery. Alana blamed her suspicious mind on her mother. Alana would be (happily) naive if Emma wasn't always Up To Something.

“Sorry, what were you saying?” Alana said apologetically.

“I was saying, I wish
I
could do that,” Khalilah pointed.

The two girls were at Bondi Beach, legs dangling over the side of the path's edge, overlooking the sea. The coastal hotspot attracted hordes to its beach in the summers, but even the winters drew crowds. Bondi was a favourite haunt of Khalilah's too, not only because of its freshly cooked fish and chips, cool rap music and awesome graffiti art, but also because of the Bondi skate bowl.