Part 4 (1/2)

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 loungeroom where she was reading the Sat.u.r.day 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 b.u.mper 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 b.u.mp 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 hardboiled 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-onone. It's obvious. But all the people I'd been oneon-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.

'I've decided I'm going to get all the kids in the team to call me Coach,' said Dad as he tossed up another layup, which I put straight through the hoop.

'Even me? It's going to be hard for me not to accidentally call you Dad.' I threw the ball back to him and he started dribbling it towards the ring, ready to shoot.

'Come on! Defence, Sunny, defence a you don't need an invitation to get in there.'

'Dad, it's about a hundred degrees!' I said, making a lame attempt to get the ball. He swerved and shot a goal.

Dad never lets bad weather get in the way of sport. Doing exercise together is our version of big chats. We don't actually say much but it's the way we get along. Sport's good like that a you can bounce and shoot and pa.s.s and throw your thoughts around. I was feeling uneasy about having just called Granny Carmelene and organised to go around there on Sunday. I was worried about having to keep it all a secret from Mum. But then I thought about all the secrets I have to keep for Mum and keeping just one secret from Mum suddenly felt okay.

This is what I mean (and I know there're some I've forgotten): I can't tell anybody that Mum smokes. I can't tell Carl about how Mum rings Crossword Solutions for the answers before he comes over and then acts as if she's worked them out herself. I can't tell Dad and Steph about Carl moving in yet, don't ask me why.

I can't tell Carl that Mum goes through at least ten changes of clothes before practically every one of his visits, or that her cleavage is totally due to a push-up bra.

I can't tell Carl that Mum is super-messy and only makes her bed or does the dishes on the days when he comes around.

I can't tell anybody about how Mum does witchy spells with candles and that's why there's a burn mark on the indoors-kitchen bench.

I can't tell anybody about Mum's full-moon women's group, and how they sometimes dance about with their clothes off.

I can't tell Carl or Lyall or Saskia about how Willow likes to eat cats, so Boris probably won't last more than a day.

I can't tell anybody that I know that Dad and Steph's baby is a girl.

See? One little secret about a visit to an old lady hardly stacks up against that, does it?

I was thinking and dribbling (the ball that is) and bouncing and thinking and dribbling when I felt the wind change and the temperature suddenly drop. The was.h.i.+ng on the line snapped and whipped like it was about to take off. Dad ran over and started pulling the pegs off.

'There she blows!' he said rolling the sheets into huge b.a.l.l.s and piling them into the laundry basket. I felt a chill at the back of my neck, then a large wet splat on my forehead which made me look to the sky to make sure it wasn't the kind of splat that came from a large bird. There was a blanket of dark cloud making its way overhead a the sky had changed its mind from blue to charcoal in a huge sweeping Etcha-Sketch way. The concrete steamed with evaporating rain breathing up like a sigh. And then it started really pelting with the cool, well overdue, delicious raindrops we'd all been waiting for. It was galloping down. Was.h.i.+ng that heat wave clear out of the summer.

That night, Claud didn't call like she usually does when I'm at Dad's, which absolutely and undeniably proves she's gone weird, and is why I didn't call her either. Besides, it was the call I'd made to Granny Carmelene that I was thinking about, and I didn't even want to tell Claud about that one. Not any more.

'Are you sure you don't want me to come in?' asked Dad as he pulled up outside Granny Carmelene's house.

'I'll be fine, Dad, really, and I can get the bus home too. Mum got me a new Metcard.' I leant over and gave him a kiss goodbye. It was two minutes to two. I was a little (okay, very) nervous. I mean, I really knew nothing about Granny Carmelene. Apart from the fact that she used to be married to Grandpa Henry, but for some unknown reason he had gone away, and that whatever she did to Mum all those years ago caused her and Mum to be divorced, which, let's face it, could make her an altogether dodgy individual. The only other thing I knew was that Granny Carmelene was meant to be posh as. Dad says it's because she comes from old money.

Granny Carmelene's house had a huge iron gate at the front, kind of like the castle of the Theys. There was a smaller gate to the side with a buzzer. I pressed the b.u.t.ton at two o'clock precisely, because being exactly on time really gives an on-time person an extra thrill, even if it's also completely obsessive and super daggy and not the sort of thing you'd usually 'fess up to.

I walked up the gravel path towards the house. It was deathly quiet, except for the crunching of my shoes, which could have been mistaken for sound effects in a cheesy detective movie. I felt for a moment as though I was trespa.s.sing, or maybe being monitored by a hidden camera, which made me even more self-conscious and determined not to do anything rude, like pick my nose.

There was thick velvet lawn on either side of the path, and it circled around both sides of the house and all the way down towards the river. That lawn must have been the happiest gra.s.s ever, all plump and quenched and moist from the rain, which hadn't stopped all night. I had the urge to throw myself down and roll on it like a dog and maybe even dig a hole, because sometimes when things are so precise and symmetrical I just want to muck them up, like Miranda Percival's hair, or pictures of the Taj Mahal. There were two rounded garden beds carved into the lawn, each crowded with coloured roses, like confetti.