Valoura Karuna and the Cake Stall Kerfuffle

  Why would Mrs V give me money if she didn’t steal it? She must have.

  *****

  By the time I have gone over and over this afternoon’s affairs in my mind night is coming down over our sandstone house and lights are starting to flick on and off and on again like a lighthouse. I drag myself up the lawn, I am in a zombie-ish state and am a little worried that my brother might want to decapitate me if I don’t pull myself together. I can hear clattering and banging inside and Aunt Stacey telling Bastian off for putting his finger knitting in the sink. Yes, my brother knits, but it’s mostly zombies and axes and insects and stuff.

  I can hear Celia on the phone, probably to Carter and I can hear mum and a man chatting away, probably Mr Plaentree come for Mrs Vanmanthy’s, sorry, I mean, his money.

  ‘Darling, you are so good to us, Oscar and I don’t know what we’d do without your support.’ He gushes at my mum.

  ‘Oh, no Keith, you know I live to help and you both do such a good job!’ Mum gushes back. I roll my eyes as I hear them walk out front to Keith’s car. I slide up the side of the house and keep eavesdropping, ah, I mean, gathering intelligence.

  ‘So you have no idea who stole the money?’ Keith can’t hide his curiosity.

  ‘No. They’re all being quite cagey on the subject, Valoura in particular. But I’m sure she’ll tell me when she is ready’.

  Sigh. My mum just made me feel five hundred billion trillion times worse.

  Chapter 13

  I wake with the birds. Soft milky light is peeking through my window. I get up and have a look at the sky, not quite grey but not blue either. My ants are already busy at work and I watch them scurry about, doing their jobs. I wonder if there are aliens orbiting the earth right now watching us from their giant spaceships– I should imagine that we must look just like ants to them.

  No one is stirring, not even Aunt Stacey who has been travelling back and forth to the city all week. She would normally stay there until tonight, but because of the rumpus over my near death experience in Mrs Tremlows’ yard she has been at home.

  Something about the morning air or light or something makes my mind feel clear and calm. Last night Celia and I talked about aborting our plans to snare Emmerllee Lamb in light of the ‘magical appearance’ of the cake stall money. I wasn’t sure what to do and neither was she. I didn’t tell her who gave me the money but I made it clear to Cee Cee that I did not think this was the end of this whole saga. Not.At.All. Mrs V. seemed so certain that she knew who did it, and at the time I was fairly certain it was she herself who had taken the money, but now, in the crisp morning glow, I am not certain in the slightest.

  The cold is nipping at my toes so I jump back into my bed. It is being warmed by a big Labrador and my doona which now, after Gilbert spewed all over my Space Cats one, has a sickening pick and lilac cover on it. As I snuggle in and place my hand on my dogs’ tummy, feeling the rise and fall of his soft breathing, something slips into my sleep fogged mind that I really should have thought of before.

  It could have been anyone.

  *****

  ‘Valoura! Get up!’

  Mum comes in and pulls my doona off then stamps out the door. I groan into my pillow and fumble about for my ‘Hi There Kitten’ alarm clock. Its kitten splattered face telling me that it 11:34am. Holy moley, I slept in!

  When I finally pad into the dining room I am a little surprised to find Aunt Bossy sitting there reading the paper on her itablet and eating a wheat free, rye free, fat free, animal free, taste free wrap.

  ‘She wakes’, Stacey murmurs and turns the page with a flick of a finger.

  ‘Errrrrr’.

  ‘Zombie!!!!!!!!!!’ Bastian screams and pretends to lop my head of with a cardboard battleaxe.

  ‘You watch far too much rubbish Bastian’, Stacey states as she sips what is probably her ninth coffee for the day. Bastian just grins like a monkey at a fruit stall and slides into the kitchen.

  ‘Where’s mum?’ I ask, a bit afraid of the reply which will be caustic I’m sure.

  ‘Hoof and Paw, they had three lambs dumped at the gates this morning so she has gone to help Keith and Oscar settle them in’.

  ‘Ah’.

  After breakfast I go to find Celia in her lab, she’s writing some kind of formula on the window with a whiteboard marker. She could just write it on paper or her laptop but she’s watched too many shows about geeks who write on glass.

  ‘Sup?’

  ‘Oh, Valoura, bad news, Biffo’s party isn’t on, he got injured playing footy and he’s in hospital!’

  ‘Is it bad?’ I ask as I pick a grape up off the table and pop it in my mouth.

  ‘No unfortunately. Er, I wouldn’t eat that if I were you, it’s a mould experiment.’

  ‘Ah!’ I scream and I spit it out. It hits the window and slides down slowly onto the floor. ‘COULDA TOLD ME!’

  ‘Well I didn’t know you’d eat it ya noob.’ Celia busies herself at her chem set.

  ‘Anyway, what are we going to do?’

  ‘We have to find some way to corner her alone or even just follow her about and see what she’s up to.’ Celia says as phials of liquid are being poured into bigger ones and set on a Bunsen burner.

  ‘Er, no following, my following days are over…for now. Damn it! I wish we had surveillance technology. What I’d give for a few microscopic bugs and a hover drone….’ I am now dreaming about high tech gadgets and nailing the Grater with video footage procured through her bedroom window via drone.

  ‘Wake up! Valoura, we don’t have those things. We have to come up with something different.’ Celia sighs and tips a yellow liquid into a brown one. It reacts and smoke starts billowing out. A lot of smoke.

  We run from the shed coughing and spluttering and see Bas watching us from the kitchen window. He shakes his head and makes the loony sign – twirling his finger around his ear. Celia sticks her finger up at him and he goes to tell Aunt Stacey.

  ‘She won’t care’ Celia splutters between coughs.

  ‘Was that supposed to happen?’ I ask, slamming the shed door shut. Smoke puffs out through the cracks around it.

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’ Celia scratches her head and closes her eyes. Her fingers are twitching about, I think she’s doing calculations.

  ‘Er, Cee Cee?’

  ‘Huh, oh yeah, sorry. Emmerllee. Right. Well what about the skate comp? She’ll probably be there. Although Biffo was meant to be riding in the dirt bike championships at Woolton. Nah, he won’t be doing that now will he.’ Celia is looking a bit happier. I get the feeling she really wants to confront Emmerllee big time. ‘Only one more day and we’ll have her over a barrel’ Celia rubs her hands together with a look of malicious glee on her face. Yup, mad scientist.

  *****

  I hear a car pull up and race round the front to see who it is. It’s uncle Kai! He jumps from his rusty van with Bessy his blue heeler following behind and grabs me into a huge hug.

  ‘Hey there Bobble Head (his nick for me), how you been?’

  ‘OK, ergh, argh, put me down!’

  Kai drops me from a bear hug just as Bas comes screaming out of the house and tackles Kai to the ground. They are wrestling and stuff and Stacey has come out and is trying to talk over their grunts.

  ‘Hello Kai, ever so nice of you to tell us you were coming’, she huffs sarcastically.

  ‘No probs sis, you know me, free as the wind’.

  ‘Or too free with your wind’, I joke, playfully punching Kai on the arm. He grins and responds with a massive fart. Bas pretends to faint on him,

  Kai pushes Bas off him and goes to his van. He starts pulling out all this cool stuff like a didgeridoo which he hands to Bas.

  ‘You know he will just use it as a weapon right?’ Celia says as she cuddles Kai.

  ‘Woah missy, you are a woman now!’ Kai exclaims and hands her what looks like a slab of charcoal.

  ‘Wow, cool thanks Kai!’ She shouts as she runs o
ff to her shed.

  ‘Only Cee Cee could be excited by a lump of coal’ I grumble. Where is my present? Kai reads my mind and I scream as he pulls out a beautiful red and yellow roadster bicycle.

  ‘What! No way! Thank so much’, I launch myself at him almost knocking him over. He pats me on the back and giggles.

  ‘Your mum told me what happened to your old one’, he leans in for a whisper, ‘monster truck rally was it?’

  I giggle and take off riding around and around the van whooping at the top of my lungs while Bas makes fart sounds on his didge.

  Aunt Stacey is looking a bit forlorn, I think she wants a present too. Kai notices and almost wets himself laughing.

  ‘As if I’d forget you grumble guts’, he wipes his eyes as he passes Stacey a black velvet box. I stop riding around and watch as she opens it. Inside is a beautiful blue, green and gold opal necklace.

  ‘Oh Kai, this is beautiful’, she sighs as she lays it against her pale neck. ‘It must have cost you a fortune!’

  ‘Dug it up me’self out at Lightning Ridge, couldn’t believe it when I saw it, sweet specimen’.

  ‘Thank you’, Stacey gingerly hugs her brother. I can tell she is quite touched by his gesture.

  We go inside and chat and drink tea and eat biscuits and caramel mud cake. Bas and I convince Kai to play Guitar Master for hours and hours and hours. I am kicking everyone’s butt - of course. Uncle Kai makes pizza and after dinner we guzzle sweets and shout rude words at the contestants on bad reality TV shows. I like hanging out with Kai, he’s a loon; as tall and as wide as a doorway, dreadlocked and scruffy. He has Aunt Stacey’s hair colour and nose (straight and pointy) but my mother’s eyes – warm and brown. We don’t see him much, he travels around in his van doing fruit picking and labouring and stuff here and there. He knows A LOT about indigenous Australian folklore and tells us stories about how he worked in the desert with the traditional owners setting up solar power systems for them. They taught him their culture and they all got a long really well. I don’t think he wanted to leave but Kai can’t sit still for long.

  Mum is exhausted but so happy to see Kai when she gets home and it’s not long before she has him fixing bits and bobs that Bas had broken or smashed. He is really good a making stuff and fixing things. When he is finished he makes us a grass sled from cardboard, bits of wood and rope. We then spend the day sliding down the grass and into the creek. It isn’t until Bas slams into a tree that mum puts a stop to our shenanigans.

  ‘Right. Kai, come to Hoof and Paw and build us a chook house.’ She demands as she mops the blood from Bastians’ arm.

  ‘No problem, sister of mine’. Kai answers with a bow. My mum rolls her eyes at me and Kai winks at me.

  I go and help him put tools in the trailer which he hitches to his van. He tells me lame jokes and quotes whole sketches from this old old old show called Mouldy Pylon or something. He makes me laugh.

  ‘How can you be Aunt Bossy faces’ brother, I mean, you’re so cool?!’ I ask as I sit in the back of his van playing with his Star Battles figurines.

  ‘Wow thanks bobble head, I think that is why I am so cool V. Your mum was the nice one, too nice if you ask me, always helping everyone and loving everyone. Made me want to puke!’ He puts his finger in his mouth and laughs. ‘Then Stacey, she was the…’

  ‘The bossy one?’ I interrupt. Kai laughs and looks over his shoulder.

  He whispers, ‘Yep. She was always the bossy one’. He winks. ‘But she was also the clever one. If you ever had a problem that you couldn’t work out, Stacey knew the answer.

  ‘Yeah, but she’s kinda unbearable’.

  ‘It’s just a front. She hates to be wrong, but deep down Stacey is a kitten.’ Kai giggles as he pulls me out of the van and shuts the door.

  ‘Yeah? Well I’ve never seen it!’ I punch him playfully on the arm. He grabs me and flings me over his shoulders the way firemen do when they rescue people. He walks us towards the house.

  ‘That’s why I’m the cool one. I see through peoples disguises. Take Bas for example. He thinks he’s a zombie fighter.

  ‘Yeah right!’

  ‘Well, yeah, I know that he’s really a…’

  ‘Big wuss’, I interrupt.

  ‘No I was going to say an excellent knitter, jeez Valoura, you’re almost as acid tongued as Stacey’. Kai giggles again has he dumps me on the sofa and goes to find mum.

  I am shocked! Am I really like Bossy Queen of Bossdonia? Nah.

  Chapter 14

  I am all smooshy and warm and half asleep when a big lump lands on my belly. ‘Argh Gilbert, gerroff!’ I yell, pushing him off my bed onto the floor.

  ‘Oi!’ A surprised yell comes from Gilbert. Huh?! I throw my doona off and see Cee Cee sprawled on the floor rubbing her butt.

  ‘Nice one Loo, way to break my bum.’ She pulls the doona back and jumps into bed with me.

  ‘What are you doing freak, get out!’ I try to push her out but she has her hands gripped firmly on the bed head.

  ‘I’m cooooold!’

  ‘What do you want’ I say exasperatedly, giving up.

  ‘It’s Saturday’.

  ‘Yeah, so?’

  ‘Skate comp!’

  ‘Yeah, so?’

  ‘Sooooooo, we will get The Grater to confess, Carter will win the skate comp, he will be rich and we can go to the Triple U show and eat chips and….Celia trails off as her face goes into disgusting spasms of a person imagining all sorts of disgusting teen romance moments.

  ‘EW!’ I try to shove her out the bed again, but she puts my Scare Bear over my face and tries to smother me.

  ‘What a loving family we are’, Bastian’s sarcastic comment is muffled through the bear what is choking me. Then I hear another ‘oof’ - I think Bas has crash tackled Celia and is tickling her. Yup, she has dropped the bear and is squealing like a three year old at a Widdle and Toot concert.

  ‘What is going on?! It’s too early for this noise.’ Mum walks in and sees us wrestling. I grab her arm and pull her in, Bas starts to tickle her under the arms and Celia and I grab her feet. She is writhing like a snake with fleas and laughing and choking all at the same time.

  ‘Enough!’ Finally escapes her mouth and we quit all gasping and lying in a heap. Aunt Stacey walks by and glances in, she shakes her head at us and walks on. Then Spazzy comes and jumps on the pile of bodies and goes for an inconvenient nap.

  Mum is on the Youth Week committee so she has to help set up the skate competition. We all rush our breakfast and I go and wake Kai. He is not in his van but down by the river meditating. Once we all get our stuff together we head off to the park. All except Stacey of course. I am so enjoying my new bike, it has the best brakes of any bike I’ve ever had. When I was little I had Celia’s hand me down BMX and the only way I could brake was by digging my heels into the ground. Which was fine, as long as I was wearing shoes! (thongs were no good).

  Joyce Grayston park is quiet in the early morning light, there are a few people about putting up flags and stalls and decorating the lamp posts. The youth centre guy is setting up the P.A. system and keeps saying ‘check check, one, two, check check’. It’s kinda getting on my nerves.

  While mum, Kai, Celia and me are setting up trestle tables, Billy shuffles up to Bas who is filling a bucket with ice. He is sullen and scooterless.

  ‘What up Bill?’

  ‘Mum. She confiscated my scooter didn’t she.’

  ‘What?’ My brother doesn’t look surprised though.

  ‘Yep, reckons I’ve been wagging school and…’ Billy whispers something to Bas. All I can hear is ‘…it from’. The nerds see I’m watching them so Bas asks mum if he and Billy can go get drinks for everyone and they slink off together across the park, heads touching talking a million miles a minute. I watch them until they disappear…I don’t know, but something about them is making me uneasy.

  Celia appears at my side and follows my gaze. ‘What’s up Loo?’ She sha
kes her head and her body follows, ‘anyway’, she doesn’t wait for a reply and pulls me by the arm, ‘everything’s set up, lets go and find The Grater’. Celia’s excitement is palpable (nice word that).

  We scan around to see who’s about. Because we live in a small town whenever something happens everyone comes out of the woodwork, so the park is filling up quickly. Lot’s of guys and a few girls are coming to sign up for the comp, the P.A. is blasting out some hip-hop and a band is setting up in the music bowl thingy. It is pretty much impossible to pick anyone out of the crowd.

  Celia starts pulling me about, we run into Mrs V. She doesn’t look very happy and I suspect she’s nervous about fronting up to my mum but she needn’t worry, my mum calls her over with a big smile on her face and Mrs V. lets out the massive breath she’d been holding.

  ‘Sorry Mrs V. can’t stop!’ I yell as Celia pulls me along by my sleeve like a demented dog walker.

  A bunch of the roughest kids in town are standing by the play equipment, swinging on the swings and pouring energy drinks on the slippery dip.

  ‘Hey, Celia!’ Uh oh, it’s the fish murderer. Celia gives me a worried sideways glance and seems to hesitate about going over to Carter and his dumb friends.

  ‘Just go Cee Cee’, I say exasperatedly as I shove her in their direction. If she wants to hang with idiots who am I to stop her?

  I do know that I don’t want to hang out here though, some of the nastier girls with jeans so tight they look like an over squeezed tube of toothpaste are looking at me like sharks circling a baby seal. I spy my dumb brother up by the river so I take off over there. As I run up he says really loudly ‘Oh hi Valoura, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Uh der, I’m seeing what you are up to? What I can’t walk around the park like everyone else’.

  ‘Oh… yeah, whatevs. Like I care what you do.’ He says this nonchalantly but I know he is defo up to something.

  ‘What are you up to Bastian?’ I give him my most scrutinizing look.

  ‘Just leave me alone VALOURA jeez, you’re almost as bad as Aunt Stacey, bossing me around all the time and telling me what to do.’ He pushes past me and heads back towards the comp, I want to run after him and give him a wedgie, but I can’t be bothered, he is such a snail and he’s not my problem anyway.