DAY 7: Friday
My skims: 0
Wriggler’s skims: 0
Days to becoming world champion: 32
No training today: hottest day in history.
Money made for tinnie: -$10 ($735 to go—again.)
It was the hottest day in the history of the world, and we got in the most trouble in the history of the world, just for trying to stay out of the heat.
My house is not that different from most of the other houses on our street. It’s an old fibro place with a big front yard. The backyard is tiny. All that fits in it are Mum’s little vegie patch and the chicken coop Dad built.
Dad has six chickens that run around the backyard, pooing and squawking and getting in the way.
Dad always says, ‘We don’t have much but we have as many eggs as we want.’ Which in my mind is exactly none. I hate eggs. I don’t like chickens either.
The front yard is where everything happens. There’s a lawn that slopes down to the street. There are a few steps going up to the front door. There’s a front verandah and, on a hot day, it’s the coolest part of the house.
Wrigs and I were sitting out there.
‘It’s too hot to skim today,’ Wrigs said.
‘Let’s make some money then,’ I said.
‘Nah, too hot.’
He was right. What Wrigs and I do when we’re really bored is try and outdo each other.
‘It’s so hot I saw a bird fall out of the sky,’ he said.
‘Oh yeah? It’s so hot I saw a plane fall out of the sky.’
‘It’s so hot my sister burnt her lips on her braces.’
‘It’s so hot my grandma’s false teeth melted.’
‘It’s so hot I sat in the oven to cool down.’
‘It’s so hot I stuck a chilli up my bum to cool down.’
Wriggler didn’t have a good comeback to that one so he said we should go to Tearley’s house.
Cindy Tearle lives two streets away from me, and my mum and her mum are best friends. Tearley and I have been in the same class ever since preschool and I can’t stand her. She is my archenemy. She thinks she’s really smart. But, she does have one of the only swimming pools in Pensdale and it was the hottest day in history.
We decided to ride to Tearley’s. I still have the same hopeless bike I got when I was seven. It’s painted with all these stupid designs and it has a big sticker on the frame that says ‘Street Rad’. It might as well have one saying ‘This bike is lame but we’ve tried to hide that fact by painting some really sad lightning bolts on it and giving it a name we think makes it sound really cool, but really just makes it sound even more pathetic than it already is’.
Wriggler’s bike is called ‘Screamer’, which describes the noise he makes when he hits the front brake too hard and goes flying over the handlebars.
To get to Tearley’s house we rode down my street, Phillip Avenue, turned left into George Street and then left again into Elizabeth Road. It was so hot we were both dripping with sweat by the time we got there.
Tearley’s house is a little bigger than ours, and a bit newer. But only a bit. Hers is from the seventies. It’s got shag pile carpet on the floor and a weird indoor rock garden just inside the front door. You have to take your shoes off before going in. It’s not that the house is especially nice or anything, it’s just that Tearley’s mum is Chinese and everything has to be feng shui, which means the furniture is arranged to encourage positive thoughts. She starts shouting if anything is out of place.
When we arrived Tearley made us go around the side of the house, so we wouldn’t disturb the air inside, or something.
When we got to the pool I whispered to Wrigs, ‘Liget’s jigust igignore higer aignd mayigbe sheig’ll gigo bigack inigside aignd ligeave uigs aligone.’
Tearley must have heard me because she said, ‘Shigut uigp, yigou idigiot. Yigou’re siguch aig nonghead, Dribbler.’ Then she dived into the pool.
I don’t know how she worked out our language so quickly. And I hate that she always calls me nonghead and Dribbler. She’s not that smart, though—she should have said ‘nongighead’ and ‘Drigibbler’.
After we’d been swimming around for a bit I thought it would be really cool to have something to float on. The only thing I could think of were the beanbags in Tearley’s tele room.
The beans in beanbags are polystyrene balls. That’s the white stuff that they put in packing boxes so that things don’t get broken. The good news is that polystyrene floats, so the beanbags floated excellently. It was like sitting in armchairs on the top of the water.
Then I had such a brilliant idea I fell off my bag. Beanbag surfing. You put the beanbag in the middle of the pool. Then you get out of the pool, take a run-up, jump on the beanbag and see how long you can stand on it before you fall off.
Tearley was the first to have a go. She ran up and jumped on her beanbag and it cruised right into the middle of the pool. It hardly sank because she was so light. She stood there until it completely stopped moving, then she dived back into the water. It’s a big advantage to be small like Tearley when you’re beanbag surfing.
Wrigs completely missed his bag and almost cracked his head open on the side of the pool.
I nearly made it right across the pool on mine but the beanbag wasn’t strong enough to hold my weight. It started to sink, and it must have split because little white balls started escaping. As the split got bigger, more and more balls came out.
All the little balls floating on the water made me think of a snow dome. Y’know, one of those ornament things people give each other as presents. A model of Santa, or the Eiffel Tower, or something, inside a plastic dome. When you shake it, white stuff floats around the model and is supposed to look like snow.
We emptied the rest of my beanbag into the pool, but the balls floated and wouldn’t sink, so we couldn’t turn the pool into a proper snow dome.
‘Let’s make waves,’ I yelled.
We started doing bombs and splashing so the balls would get caught in the wake and get pushed underwater. But they would only stay under for a moment before they popped back up. You had to dive under at just the right time. When you did it right, it felt like you were in your own private snow dome.
I was underwater when Tearley’s mum turned up. Even though I was looking up at her through a million balls, I could tell she was mighty angry. Let’s just say it was the last time we’ll be swimming in Tearley’s pool this summer. It might be the last time we see Tearley, too. I think she’s grounded until she’s twenty-two.
The good news was that by the time we had been kicked out of Tearley’s place the day had cooled down. And I had the best idea ever. Even better than the snow dome, because it involved making money.
Bike couriers.
We rode up to the supermarket and when people came out we offered to deliver their full shopping bags to their homes for fifty cents a bag, or to their cars for five cents.
We could just about safely carry four bags each. Two hooked over the handlebars and another two in our left hands. We needed to keep our right hands free to steer and brake. It was tricky to balance the bikes but we were making a fortune—fifteen dollars in the first two hours.
We wanted to make as much as we could, so we turned every delivery into a race. We wanted to make sure we got back to the supermarket quickly to find new customers.
On the ninth trip we were going to a house in Yarran Street, which would take us ten minutes each way.
We started racing and Wrigs took the early lead but I was hot on his tail. I had my chin to the handlebars to cut down wind resistance. I caught Wrigs on the last corner before the house and launched myself off the gutter to get in front of him. But I landed a bit too close. He hit his front brake hard. That’s when I remembered why his bike is called ‘Screamer’.
Wrigs and four bags of groceries flew past me, like they were in slow motion, and shattered on the ground.
Replacing the food cost us the fifteen dollars we had made as bike couriers and the ten dollars Ms Burke gave us for clearing her garden.
And just to top it off, when we got back to Wriggler’s house, we opened his bedroom door to see how our silkworm farm was going and about ten thousand moths flew out. Great big brown ones that flew all through his house, landing on the curtains, in the cupboards, on the beds, on the ceilings, everywhere. Wrigs’ mum wasn’t impressed.
How was I supposed to know the worms I’d found weren’t silkworms and were just normal dirty moths?
So after all our hard work we were still no closer to buying the tinnie. And I’m way behind in the world record schedule as well. I should be close to twenty skims by now.