Selby Scrambled (12 page)

‘I think we both got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning,’ Mrs Trifle said, with a laugh. ‘What is the wrong side of a bed, anyway?’

‘Madame Mascara explains this,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘The wrong side is the side you didn’t get in on.’

‘Then it’s true,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘I did get out of bed on the wrong side this morning.’

‘Do you really believe this nonsense?’ Dr Trifle asked. ‘I don’t.’

‘Neither do I,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘Besides, what is bad luck? What could possibly happen?’

‘A plane could crash into our house,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘But what would be the chance of that?’

Suddenly in the distance there was the sound of an approaching aeroplane. Dr and Mrs Trifle listened for a moment.

‘Highly unlikely,’ Mrs Trifle said, as she turned over her shoes. ‘But I do think my shoes look better right-side up.’

‘And my hat shouldn’t be on the bed,’ Dr Trifle said, snatching it up.

‘And I think I did like the bed better round the other way,’ Mrs Trifle said, as the plane passed overhead. ‘Didn’t you?’

‘Absolutely,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘Let’s move everything back the way it was.’

‘Hang on. You don’t suppose we’re superstitious, do you?’ Mrs Trifle asked.

‘Of course not. But there are lots of mysterious things we don’t know about. We’re just not taking any chances. That’s different.’

‘Oh, please,’ Selby thought, as he headed for the lounge room. ‘This is getting totally out of hand. I’ve got to do something to stop this nonsense before they drive themselves crazy — and me, too! Hey, I know …’

Selby raced around the house while the Trifles were rearranging the bedroom.

‘Phew!’ Dr Trifle sighed, as he and Mrs Trifle came back to the lounge room. ‘Now to collect that raffle money. Oops, someone’s spilt salt on the table. That’s bad luck.’

‘I wonder who did that?’ Mrs Trifle said, taking a pinch of it and throwing it over her left shoulder. ‘This should make it good luck again.’

Mrs Trifle grabbed her handbag but, just as she did, her hand mirror fell to the floor and broke.

‘Oh, no! A broken mirror! Seven years’ bad luck,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘How did that happen? I thought I’d closed my handbag.’

‘Hang on,’ Dr Trifle said, thumbing through the book. ‘There’s something you can do. Here it is: Turn around three times, scream, “Shoot me! Shoot me! I’m a rooster!” and then spit.’

‘But that’s too silly,’ Mrs Trifle said.

‘I agree. Don’t do it. Better to risk a bit of bad luck.’

‘Shoot me! Shoot me! I’m a rooster!’ Mrs Trifle said.

Then she spat, narrowly missing Selby.

‘Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘It says in the book that it’s very bad luck to spit on the floor.’

‘Is there anything I can do about it?’ Mrs Trifle asked, wiping the floor with a tissue.

‘It says here that you have to stand on your head and stay there for a minute.’

‘This is getting really
really
stupid!’ Selby thought, as Mrs Trifle got down on all fours.

‘I can’t get my feet up in the air,’ she said.

Dr Trifle lifted Mrs Trifle’s legs up in the air, waited for a minute and then let her down again.

‘Phew! I’m glad that’s over,’ Selby thought.

‘Phew! I’m glad that’s over,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘Now let’s go.’

Dr Trifle opened the front door and then stopped.

‘We can’t go out,’ he said, looking at the ladder that was propped up outside the door. ‘We can’t go out or we’ll walk under the ladder. That’s very bad luck. I wonder how it got there?’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ Selby thought. ‘Just go under it and you’ll see that it isn’t bad luck after all!’

‘You must have been cleaning leaves out of the gutter,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘And you left the ladder there. Let’s go out the back door.’

They started for the back door.

‘Wait,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘It’s bad luck if you don’t leave a house through the same door that you came in.’

‘Yes, that’s in this book, too,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘But it’s okay because you were in the backyard when I came home so you came in through the back door and you can go out through the back door. I didn’t, I came in through the front door.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘Simple: You go out the back and then jump the fence into the laneway, run around the house and move the ladder. Then I can go out the front door and everything will be okay.’

‘This is amazing!’ Selby thought. ‘What’s the problem? Just go out and collect that money!’

‘Everything
would
be okay,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘But there’s no way I can jump that back fence. Unless … you could go out the front and bring the ladder in and then I’ll take it out the back and put it up to the fence for me to
climb over. Then you can go out the front again and run around and help me down the other side.’

‘But to do that, I’ll have to go under the ladder first,’ Dr Trifle reminded her. ‘So it won’t work. Besides, you and I should never go out different doors when we’re leaving the house.
Leave together, stay together. Leave apart, stay apart.

‘I couldn’t stand it if we ever stayed apart,’ Mrs Trifle sighed.

‘I couldn’t either,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘But I don’t know what to do because we have to collect that money. I say we just forget all this superstition stuff.’

‘I agree,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Finally!’ Selby thought. ‘They’re coming to their senses. It’s about time!’

Mrs Trifle suddenly noticed the calendar on the wall.

‘Oh, no! Do you know what day it is? It’s Friday the thirteenth! The unluckiest day of the year! That’s the last straw. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going straight to bed and staying there till tomorrow.’

‘I guess I’d better do the same,’ Dr Trifle sighed. ‘At least we’ll be safe now that our bed’s pointing in the right direction.’

‘Now I’ve really done it!’ Selby squealed in his brain. ‘I was only trying to cure them and now I’ve made it worse! They’re never going to collect the raffle money! What am I going to do? I guess
I’ll
have to collect the money!’

That night was the busiest night of Selby’s life. He ran from mailbox to mailbox, quietly opening them and taking out the envelopes with the money. He filled bag after bag with
tickets and money and left them in a pile on Camilla Bonzer’s doorstep.

‘I never thought money could be so heavy!’ Selby thought as he dragged the last bag of money and tickets to the pile. ‘I’m exhausted! And I’ve finished just in time, the sun is coming up. But what am I going to do about the Trifles?’

Selby limped back to the house, curled up and fell asleep. He woke to the sound of the telephone ringing. Mrs Trifle stumbled out of the bedroom to answer it.

‘Camilla, I’m terribly sorry …’ she started. ‘What? … What do you mean? … Really? … No! … No!! … No!!! That’s wonderful! I can’t wait to tell my husband!’

‘What is it?’ Dr Trifle asked. ‘What’s happened?’

‘That was Camilla phoning from the Hospitals’ Benefit Breakfast. Apparently someone collected all the raffle money.’

‘I guess Postie and Melanie must have felt well enough after all,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘Hey, if Postie was okay then do you know what that means?’

‘No, what?’

‘Maybe black cats aren’t such bad luck after

all.’

‘And the very best news of all,’ Mrs Trifle said, ‘is that
I won
!’

‘You what?’

‘My ticket won the raffle! I won a new car! Can you believe it?’

‘No, because you didn’t even send your raffle ticket in,’ Dr Trifle said, looking to where the envelope had been on the table and not seeing it. ‘That was more than luck — that was a miracle! The ticket got to the raffle all by itself! You see, didn’t I say that there are lots of mysterious things that we don’t know about?’

‘You can say that again,’ Selby thought.

‘Of course I won’t keep the car,’ Mrs Trifle said.

‘You won’t?’

‘No, it wouldn’t look right for the mayor to win the prize. I’ll tell them to sell it and give the money to the hospital.’

‘It seems that all of those things that were supposed to be bad luck, weren’t bad luck after all,’ Dr Trifle said.

‘Good!’ Selby thought. ‘Finally all that silly superstition business is over.’

‘In fact, they were
good
luck,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘Quick, let’s move the bed back and walk under that ladder and — hey, it wasn’t Friday the thirteenth after all! Someone must have flipped the calendar over to next month. Oh, goody, there’s a Friday the thirteenth at the end of next week!’

‘Great,’ Dr Trifle said, spilling a pile of salt and looking around for another mirror to break. ‘Now how are we going to get a black cat to cross our path?’

‘Oh, woe woe woe,’ Selby thought. ‘This is going to be just as bad as before. Just my luck … what am I saying?!’

I wish that I could learn to speak In German, Portuguese and Greek And Arabic and Japanese And Hindi, Thai and Cantonese. I wish my tongue could wrap around Every sort of foreign sound From Timbuktu to Samarkand And even EuroDisneyland. Yes, I would stop and say, ‘G’day!’ To all the folks who came my way. They’d say, with faces all agog, ‘He talks like us! — and he’s a dog!’

Selby’s brain was scrambled.

He wasn’t sure who he was or even
what
he was.

‘I don’t know where I am,’ he thought. ‘Or
who
I am.’

Selby looked down at his paws.

‘What are these things on the ends of my arms? Am I a cat? No, I don’t have any whiskers. A mouse? No, I’m too big to be a mouse. A bear? No, too small. And what’s that funny thing poking out of my bottom? Oh, yes, it’s a tail. Hey, it’s a dog’s tail! I’m a dog. But I don’t feel like a dog.’

Selby was lying beside the swimming pool in the backyard. He glanced towards the house.

Suddenly the back door opened. Walking towards him was something strange — a machine, maybe.

‘It’s shaped kind of like a person,’ Selby thought, ‘but it’s all shiny. People aren’t shiny. No, it can’t be a person. Besides, people don’t have flashing lights all over their chests.’

The creature came closer. It was humming.

‘He’s humming that song. I know that song but I can’t remember where I’ve heard it before. Oh, I’m so confused.’

Selby’s problems had all begun a week before. Mrs Trifle was at work and Dr Trifle was in his workroom. Selby was secretly reading the fantasy series,
Valley of Dead Souls.
He’d just started the last book,
Dogboy’s Final Challenge.

‘I can’t wait to see if Dogboy kills the Gork king,’ Selby thought. ‘It’s
sooooooo
exciting!’

Selby was so caught up in his book that he barely heard Mrs Trifle’s footsteps and the sound of the front door opening. Selby quickly slipped the book under the lounge just as Dr Trifle came out of his workroom.

‘How was your day, dear?’ Dr Trifle asked his wife.

‘Terrible,’ she sighed. ‘Problems, problems, problems. After a while I was so confused and exhausted that, before I knew it, I’d eaten a whole bag of leftover chocolate Easter eggs. And everyone was giggling at me because I kept humming that song from the Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits ad without even thinking.’

‘What song is that?’

‘You remember, it goes like this:

‘I hate that song but it’s stuck in my head. It’s embarrassing when I hum it!’

‘I hate it, too,’ Selby thought, ‘and it’s stuck in my head, too. But if
I
start humming it, it’s going to be more than embarrassing.’

‘I don’t understand the human brain,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘We think we’re logical and sensible and then we gobble up whole bags of
chocolate Easter eggs and sing dog food ads without even thinking. And we make so many mistakes.’

‘What we need are helpers that
don’t
make mistakes,’ Dr Trifle said.

‘Yes, that would be perfect — but impossible.’

‘Impossible? Never say
impossible
to an inventor,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘Frank! Come here!’