Squishy Taylor in Zero Gravity (5 page)

Jessie doesn’t look convinced, but she steps away from the telescope.

We stride out our front door and cross at the lights near Spacewoman’s building. It has a foyer just like ours, with glass doors that need a swipe card to get in.

We watch a few people swipe and open the doors.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Next person who comes, we follow them in.’

The next person to step up to the door is a tired-looking man wearing funny blue pyjamas and sneakers.

‘Why is he wearing pyjamas?’ Vee whispers.

‘Shhh,’ I say, and squeeze her arm.

As the tired man steps through the door, I jump forward to catch it and keep it open.

We’re in.

We wait by the lift with the man in blue pyjamas. I hope he doesn’t notice that we don’t have our own swipe card. Luckily he’s scanning wearily through his phone and barely even glances at us.

We follow him into the lift and Vee nudges my arm, nodding at his pyjamas. I try not to laugh. Jessie frowns at us. At the ninth floor, the lift stops and we follow Pyjama Man out. He goes straight to the door by the lift and digs for his keys. Where now?

Jessie spots the fire-escape door at the end of the corridor and leads the way to it. As soon as we reach the stairs and the door closes behind us, our giggles burst out.

‘We made it!’ I say. We
high-five
each other.

‘That man was wearing pyjama
s
,’ Jessie says, in the same tone she uses when she discovers a new fact on the internet.

‘On the
street
,’ Vee says. ‘Why was he wearing pyjamas on the street?’

I start running up the stairs. ‘No idea,’ I say. ‘Let’s go find a rocket.’

The others chase me up the stairs. My astronaut training has paid off. I can run even faster than I used to and Vee is right behind. Jessie is slower, but we’re all at the top pretty soon. The door to the roof is different from in our building. There’s no gate and the stairs go all the way up. The door looks as though people open it all the time.

There is a sign. ‘Residents and guests only,’ Jessie reads aloud.

‘I laugh in the face of residents,’ I say, pushing open the door. It’s like our favourite line from
Lightspeed Kids
, but funny because I changed it from ‘enemies’ to ‘residents’.

Vee snorts and laughs. ‘Especially when the residents wear pyjamas,’ she says.

I step out onto the roof and into a garden. Someone’s growing vegetables and flowers up here. It’s like our balcony times a million. So many pots and tubs and wooden boxes full of plants.

‘Dad would love this,’ I say. Dad’s job is making other people’s gardens good. He has all these books about gardens that people grow in strange places.

‘Hey look,’ Vee says. ‘
S
trawberries!
’ They’re still green but so cute, tucked in under their leaves.

Then I remember to look for the rocket. It’s on the other side of the roof. In between it and us is a tall wire fence.

The rocket is covered with a huge piece of blue plastic.

‘It does look rocket-shaped,’ Jessie admits from where we’re standing with our faces pushed up against the wire. ‘But you can’t actually see what’s underneath.’

I pull back, looking for a way in. The fence has a gate with a padlock.

I can do the bobby-pin trick on most padlocks.

‘Anyone got a bobby pin?’ I ask. Jessie and Vee shake their heads.

‘Hi there,’ says a voice behind us. We jump. It’s Pyjama Man, but he’s not wearing pyjamas anymore. He’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, like Dad wears.

I gulp.
Busted.

‘Um, hello,’ Jessie says to Pyjama Man, who’s carrying a glass of fizzy water with a slice of lemon in it.

Vee pinches me and whispers, ‘Don’t look so guilty.’

‘Hi!’ I say brightly, doing my smile-and-look-them-in-the-eye thing. Mum would be proud.

‘I’ve never seen you kids here before,’ he says. ‘What are you up to?’

My heart beats faster. Quickly! Make something up. ‘Um, we’re visiting our, um, cousin,’ I say. ‘He lives downstairs.’

‘Actually, we should probably check how he’s going,’ Jessie says, and turns towards the door.

Pyjama Man sits on a wooden chair and leans back with a sigh. I’m following Jessie, but Vee doesn’t move.

‘Why were you wearing pyjamas?’ she asks him. I stop to see what he says.

He looks confused, then laughs. ‘Oh, you mean my scrubs? They’re my nursing uniform.’

Scrubs? Nursing uniform? Then I imagine him with a white face-mask standing next to a hospital bed. He’s right. Nurses wear pyjamas. I’ve seen it on TV.

The man sips his fizzy water while Vee stares at him. Then he asks, ‘Is your cousin that cute kid who lives on the fifth floor?’

‘Yes,’ says Vee.

‘No,’ Jessie says, at the same time.

The man raises his eyebrows. Jessie and Vee look horribly guilty.

Squishy Taylor to the rescue. ‘Our cousin does live on the fifth floor,’ I say, ‘but he’s not cute, he’s
gross.
’

We have to get out of here before Pyjama Man asks any more tricky questions.

I grab Vee’s hand and pull her out the door. We tumble down the stairs and head for home.

Vee looks a bit disappointed. ‘We didn’t see the rocket,’ she says.

I don’t really mind. ‘That’s OK,’ I say. ‘Now we know the way to the roof for next time.’

That evening, Jessie interrupts my skype with Mum on the couch.

‘Sorry, Devika, I need Squishy,’ she says, pulling at my shoulder.

‘Bye, Mum!’ I call.

Jessie tugs me into our room. The sparks have started again – showering off the roof across the road. We huddle around Vee, who’s already watching at the window.

‘We need to get up there
now
,’ Vee says, ‘while she’s making the sparks.’

I nod. And then shake my head. ‘Dad and Alice will never let us.’

‘You’re right,’ Jessie says. ‘And you know what? We don’t actually need to be there to find things out. What do we already
know
about her?’

Jessie gets her notebook and coloured pens (in perfect rainbow order) and we sprawl on our bedroom floor together. I lean my chin on my elbows, watching her write.

• She makes sparks.

• The sparks happen between dinnertime and 10 o’clock.

• She hides what she’s doing.

‘She’s a spacewoman,’ I say.

Jessie groans. ‘Squishy, she’s
not
a spacewoman.’

I grin. ‘OK, maybe an alien.’

Jessie hits my shoulder with her pen.

‘
Ow
,’ I say and then get serious. ‘But she
was
wearing an astronaut’s helmet that first night, wasn’t she, Vee?’

Vee nods, so Jessie writes:

• She wears a form of protective helmet.

This is the thing about Jessie. Just when you think she’s fun, she starts using boring grown-up words.

‘What else?’ Jessie asks.

‘I wish we could get out
while she’s working
,’ I say, looking over at the sparks flying in the night.

But between dinner and 10 o’clock is the hardest time to sneak away from Dad and Alice.

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we keep a close eye on the building whenever we can. Jessie scans the tele-pad every night before bed. Once it’s dark, the camera app doesn’t really record very much. Jessie scrolls through the footage she’s taken from dawn till dark every day.