Alana Oakley (14 page)

The rumble of wheels against the concrete always made Khalilah's heart skip a beat. Skaters took turns freefalling from the lip of the basin to plunge into its cavernous depths (supposedly over 3½ metres deep) only to come up the other side and repeat the process. After the skateboarder had achieved enough momentum – and only if he or she was good enough – could they take off, grip their board and freeze in the air in suspended animation. Khalilah was fascinated by their daring displays of aerial mastery. It was a kind of magic, defying gravity.

“No reason why you can't learn,” Alana pointed out.

“Me? With this body?” Khalilah scoffed.

“You can do anything you want to,” Alana insisted. “If you really want to.” And then Fate (if you believe in Fate) turned up – in the unlikely form of a rather scrawny figure with six fingers – not counting thumbs. It was Two-Fingered Tr
ầ
n, or as he liked to introduce himself now, Tr
ầ
n-the-Man.

“Hey! It's Hotchickalana!” he called out with a wide grin, a beaten-up skateboard under his arm.

It wasn't long after the greetings and introductions were made that Khalilah was balancing on that very board with an equally wide smile on her face. “Look! I'm doing it! I'm doing it!” she cried excitedly. Khalilah was standing on the skateboard, which was not moving, and had not yet fallen off.

Alana left them to it, crossing over to the beachside where a group of Japanese tourists were peace-signing at a camera. She kicked off her shoes and sank her toes into the soft sand. It was like sinking into a warm, solid, shifting bath. The salty air made her skin damp and clammy. The rhythmic pounding of the surf provided the perfect background for her thoughts – how to find out where Flynn disappeared to for two hours every day. So far the Mexican
sombrero
disguise hadn't worked, and chasing him down hadn't either… As Alana worked her way through options, she decided the simplest thing to do would be to hide, preferably in a vantage point, so she could see but not be seen. Since she had lost Flynn near the florist and Church Hall on King Street, the first floor of the café across the road – home to the Hare Krishnas – was her best bet, she thought to herself as she pounded a fist into her hand.

Alana's sudden cry of satisfaction frightened off a pair of gulls stalking her shoes in the hope that they were something edible. She dusted off her jeans to flick away the remaining grains of sand. By the time Alana walked back to Khalilah and Tr
ầ
n, Khalilah had mastered the ‘take-off' as well as the ‘glide'. Alana had never seen her look happier. “You did real good!” Tr
ầ
n was saying. “Let's do it again sometime,” and then he began to show Khalilah his way of saying goodbye, which involved a strange hand movement to slick back his hair, bumping opposing shoulders on the diagonal and wiggling fingers – or what remained of them – at each other.

“This is how we say goodbye in Brunei,” Khalilah said demonstrating, stretching out both hands to clasp his in a handshake, and then bringing her own hands back to her chest. “It means that whatever good intentions you have in your heart, I place in mine,” she explained.

“That's way cool,” Tr
ầ
n exclaimed. “Like a heart-to-heart thing. Well, see you later!” and with a wave he was off on his skateboard to practise more double kickflips.

“Way cool,” Khalilah echoed with longing. From the way Khalilah was staring at Tr
ầ
n's skateboard, Alana got the feeling her friend wasn't talking about their handshake.

But the day's excitement for Khalilah had only begun. As they left the skate park on their bicycles, a young driver in a Monaro wasn't looking where he was going and almost knocked her off. Khalilah wasn't a very experienced rider – truth be told, she was still getting the hang of riding the streets – but she knew when someone was in the wrong. The combination of fright, shock and self-righteous anger prompted a furious glare and rude hand-signal. Then Khalilah rushed off to catch up to Alana, who was oblivious to the unfolding drama.

The young driver didn't appreciate being told off
in front of his mates
by someone younger than himself; and even worse, by a girl. With a screech of brakes, he tore after Khalilah to tell her so. It didn't take long for Alana to notice that the Monaro was blazing after them and that the driver was mad. The driver – a P-plater, Alana noted with dread – had already cut off two cars to inch its way further up Oxford Street to yell abuse.

“What's that guy's problem?” Alana asked Khalilah, who explained, in between laboured breaths up the steep hill, about her near-death experience and the two-fingered salute. Khalilah had picked up more from Tr
ầ
n than the ‘take-off' and the ‘glide'.

Staying ahead of the Monaro was easier in some parts of Sydney than others. Alana and Khalilah's escape relied heavily on three factors: their knowledge of back streets (not great), the traffic (quite heavy, so good), and their fitness (?!). Whenever they thought they had lost it, they would hear the roar of the souped-up engine and the thunderous exclamations from its exhaust, which sent their legs spinning faster. But after fifteen minutes of playing cat-and-mouse, Khalilah was tiring, Alana was running out of inspiration, and the Monaro wasn't giving up.

“Follow me,” Alana yelled as a new idea struck. It was risky but it was their only chance.

Their bikes wove in and out, up and down, and sometimes missed pedestrians by centimetres when footpaths offered the only safe passage. Alana's ‘circus-like' horn came in handy. Its baritone bellow got people scuttling out of their way. Nevertheless, the Monaro got closer and closer. It was only after Alana and Khalilah turned into a quiet street that sloped gently downhill a couple of suburbs away that the Monaro screeched to a halt.

“Garn! Garn! Garn!” the driver's friends urged from the backseat, baying for blood.

The driver peered up at the street sign – Eveleigh Street, Redfern – and muttered, “Nah, not worth it,” before turning back, thwarted, in a cloud of burnt rubber and dirty exhaust.

The two bikes continued on more slowly and then one of them stopped. Alana looked back at Khalilah and said, “It's okay. I don't think they're going to follow us.”

But Khalilah was looking, not up the road where the Monaro was driving away, but up at the sky where the thudding sound of a helicopter pulsed like an oversized heartbeat. “No, I know,” she said, her face hopeful, “I was just wondering if we made it on
Speedsters
.”

CHAPTER 23

A little respect

Road-rage drivers, it must be said, were not on Maddie's family's list of Favourite People, either. Nor were Volunteers with Good Intentions, as they were to find out that Saturday afternoon. Volunteer Sharon Morris sat primly on the edge of the proffered chair. She smoothed her skirt for the third time and looked around. The sea of expectant faces did not help her nerves. Despite her two-day course on ‘Effective Communication', she launched into the questionnaire that would determine what could be done to help without so much as a Howdy-Do, eager to be gone from what was reputedly Sydney's most violent neighbourhood. That that dubious honour was actually held by another suburb made no difference to Public Perception. Wasn't life complicated enough without challenging
almost comforting
labels?

“So they're your half-brother and half-sister then?” Sharon Morris asked Maddie, as she ticked boxes and scribbled notes in the margin. It brought to Maddie's mind a magician's box: as if her siblings had been sawn in two. The question made Maddie's mum bristle with anger – hadn't halves, quarters, eighths and other frightening fractions divided families for generations with Society's obsession with blood and its subsequent dilution? Blood was blood was blood. And no amount of counting or note-taking would make Maddie, Troy and Cassy feel any less like brother or sister. What infuriated her even more was that nobody ever asked any of the really important questions like, “How are you?” and
genuinely cared
about the answer they gave. Instead it was all Business. Professional. And subsequently
cold
.

Uncle Joe was also in a grumpy mood. Sharon Morris had mistaken him for that old geezer, what's-his-face, down the road. The smelly one with the gimpy leg and missing teeth. Was the woman blind? They looked nothing alike, and Joe was at least ten years younger.

Running around pretending to be an aeroplane (or a very noisy bird) was four-year-old Troy, and (forever) trailing after was little sister, Cassy, a year younger. Neither of them knew they were half of anything as they ducked in and out of furniture, legs and pot plants, with Khalilah chasing them and making scary noises. Suddenly, Khalilah changed tack. She huffed and puffed to a stop, acting as if she was too tired. She collapsed on the couch in defeat, all the while keeping an eye out for the creeping figures, which tiptoed from behind. “Gotcha!” she yelled, pouncing as the pair squealed in fear and delight. The teenager tucked each child under an arm like sacks of potatoes. Their shaking and squirming produced a shiny, plastic packet from Troy's pocket. Khalilah put them both down to pick the sweets up from the floor. “
Mmmm!
Jelly babies. My favourite!” she said with a big wink. “I'm hungry, too.”

Maddie's little brother snatched at the bag. “They're not jelly babies. They just look like it. Anyhow …” he added, in case Khalilah got any ideas, “they've got bacon in them.”

Maddie's mum took in a shocked breath, but Khalilah just roared with laughter. “I don't like sharing my jelly babies either,” she confided to him. With a suspicious glance backwards, Troy ran off, hand-in-hand with his little sister – but not before slipping a fat, red sweet, half-melted and squashed, into Khalilah's hand.

Miss Morris took note of Khalilah who, although she bore no resemblance to the rest of the family, could well be a relative. She clicked her pen decisively. In her job it did not pay to ‘assume'. “And this is …?” Sharon enquired with a vague wave in Khalilah's direction.

“Cousin,” wheezed Uncle Joe promptly, ignoring Khalilah's surprise. Sharon Morris bent her head to tick yet another box.

When Sharon Morris took her leave to continue her survey elsewhere, Uncle Joe waved his arms like a baby bird attempting to fly. The saggy pockets of his biceps flapped like washing drying on the line. “Hurry. Hurry. Help me up,” he urged.

“Where you going, then?” Maddie asked, flummoxed.

“I'm off,” he said pointing to the house across the road. “I'll show that young Missy how alike we all look. Mess up those tidy numbers of hers,” he grumbled.

Khalilah took his arm and helped the elderly man to the door. “I'll help, shall I?” she said with a cheeky grin, grabbing a cap to hide her plait. “Who shall we be this time?”

CHAPTER 24

Dating disaster

It wasn't
fractions
which were making life more difficult for Alana, but a different mathematical concept called algebra. The countdown to The Big Game was overshadowed by the mid-year exams, which ambushed Alana in July. At least that's what it felt like. No matter how hard she studied, she never felt it was enough. Alana knew she could just as easily ask help from Sofia who, under Mr Hornby's nurturing tutelage, had turned into something of a mathematical whiz. But Sofia was tired of Alana's rants about keeping letters and numbers separate, like some kind of alpha-numerical apartheid. Besides, Alana enjoyed skyping Uncle James for help, especially when he was in an exotic location, like now. While she wore double of everything – woolly beanie, pullover and leggings – James was a world away in a t-shirt and shorts.

“Show me the Eiffel Tower again,” she begged. James had moved his webcam away from the iconic view after Alana had become too distracted.
The Eiffel Tower!
How many times had her father passed it as a youth?

“I'll show it to you
after
you've done question three,” James promised.

Alana bent her head in concentration, then showed her work to the webcam before saying slyly, “Mum's out on a date tonight. With Dr Teen Expert,” in case James had forgotten.

Alana was not disappointed by James's reaction. The laptop in Paris fell, revealing the hotel room's ornate rococo ceiling.
Ooh la la! Extravagant!

“Really?” James asked too casually, once he'd righted the screen. He adjusted it to include the view from the window as promised, as well as to hide from Alana's perceptive gaze.

“
Wow, il est si divine
,” Alana breathed. (Wow, it is so divine.)

“So where have they gone?” James asked, because he didn't care.

“Sofia's dad's restaurant,
Gastroniment,
” Alana said distractedly. She was already jotting down ideas for a song. A song about Paris …

…

Emma was pleased about the choice of restaurant. She hadn't been to
Gastroniment
since it had first opened. In the restaurant's early days, family and friends alike had pitched in to lend Sofia's dad a hand, and Emma had helped by waitressing. Those days of struggling-to-make-ends-meet were gone. Now it was impossible to dine there without booking weeks in advance.
Gastroniment
continued to get rave reviews for its innovation and creativity.

Sofia's dad – owner and chef – was no ordinary cook. Luca Luciano was part of the ‘experimental cuisine movement' and his cooking style was a combination of Science and Art. Each meal excited the senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch in different ways.

Emma was still pinching herself that she was on a date (finally!) with Oliver, when a woman dressed as a traditional
geisha
greeted them at the door. The theme for tonight's meal was ‘
Trésors
of the Orient', which promised a fusion of French and Asian cuisine. Dr Gray insisted she call him by his first name, and Emma had one chance to look briefly into the emerald depths of his eyes before being swallowed by the inky black of the restaurant's interior. An infra-red goggle-wearing ‘
ninja'
waiter led the way.