Morning. Mum swirls through the cottage doing a last-minute tidy-up. She star jumps onto the porch. Of course, Samantha copies her. I ignore them and just carry the bags out to the car. You can’t do anything about Mum when she is in a star jump mood. Anna is helping Nanna struggle into the back seat. I don’t want to sit next to Nanna. She’ll snore and tell that dumb fish story. Anna hops in beside her. Oh no, Leo is already sitting in the middle seat, next to the window. He’s sneering at Mum. I can see it. I don’t want to sit next to him either. Oh, the other window seat is free. ‘I bags the other window,’ I shout.
Samantha is standing with Floppy under her arm and her legs glued to the ground. ‘Rob and Mum said I could have the window seat.’ Her nose is crinkled and her beady eyes are crunched. I shove her, but she won’t budge. ‘No, and I’m going to tell Mum if you push me again.’ I won’t win this. It’s turning out badly. I plunk myself next to Leo. Samantha jumps in after me and shuts the door. She pokes out her tongue. ‘I’ve got the window seat.’
‘Me too.’ Leo smiles. No, I mean, smirks. I elbow him in the side. ‘Hey, that hurts.’
‘Sorry, Leo. It’s a bit squashed in the middle seat.’
Rob revs the car. I look out past Samantha’s head through the window. The sky is blue, the sun shining. Oh, who cares about dumb window seats and dumb Leo sticking like glue? Not me. Rob zooms off, heading north. Yes, north. Beaches, fun parks. I nudge Samantha and stick my thumbs up. ‘Goodbye house,’ I shout.
Samantha points Floppy’s paws out to sea. ‘Goodbye look-out.’
‘Goodbye ocean,’ Mum sings.
‘Goodbye teeth,’ Nanna gurgles.
Suddenly, there is dead silence. Everyone turns to stare at Nanna except Rob, who is driving. Mum’s hands bounce around like jumping beans. Everyone knows. We HAVE to go back. Nanna without teeth is a BIG problem. She would only be able to eat porridge and yoghurt. Rob groans, then slows down, ready to turn, when Nanna announces proudly, ‘Just joking.’
Everyone laughs with relief. ‘You’re hilarious, Nanna.’ Samantha’s pudgy hand reaches over to the back seat and Nanna’s wobbly hands wiggle back at her. I think I get my great humour from Nanna.
I squint at the seawall. I don’t say goodbye to the seawall because of Anna. She is a bit sensitive about our rock painting. I can just make out our orange rock.
Leo notices me squinting at the boulders. ‘Backwards Jack.’
‘Oh, shut up, Leo,’ I whisper under my breath. I wonder if he told Rob about it.
We turn out of town. As we hit the main road, Rob says that there will be no detours. No detours? Rob must be joking. I have to see the Big Bull at Wauchope and I really want to see the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour. ‘Hey, Rob.’
‘It’s a nine-hour drive to the Gold Coast. No tourist stops, kids.’
‘But there is lots to see on the way, Rob.’
‘Look out of the window.’
As if I can, jammed between Samantha, Floppy and Leo. ‘I haven’t got the window seat.’
Rob doesn’t even listen. ‘At Coffs Harbour there’s the Big Banana. We drive right past it.’
Nanna sparks up. ‘A banana smoothie. Mmmm. We should stop there.’ Nanna is right. I wait, staring at the back of Rob’s golf ball head.
‘Maybe we’ll stop on the way back.’
That means NO. Rob won’t stop on the way there or the way back. I start to argue, but Mum turns around with that look. It is her new support-Rob tactic AND right in front of Leo. ‘No, Jack.’
Leo smiles. I’ll wipe that smile off his face one day. This is all so unfair. ‘Bananas,’ I mutter under my breath as Rob zooms between forests of scribbly gum trees and along divided highways. I twist away from Leo. My head is thumping. The road cuts through mountains like a bread knife, or is it my head? Finally banana plantations appear, in the valleys, along the sides of hills, right to the peak. Thousands of trees with leafy green palms and fat yellow bananas hanging from them in pods. I’ll give it one last try. ‘Rob, can I …’
‘Sorry, Jack. Another time. I promise.’ Rob turns his head to look at me for a second.
‘NO BIG BANANA.’ Leo elbows me.
I grunt at him, ‘NO BIG BULL,’ then whisper in his ear, ‘you bull-poo.’ Leo gives me a mucky look. ‘Bull-poo,’ I whisper again, before I flick Rob’s hair. ‘NO BIG GOLF HEAD either.’
Anna laughs. Rob rubs his prickly head. Mum gives it a pat too.
‘NO BIG SHEEP,’ Samantha bleats. ‘Baa-baa.’
‘NO BIG NOISE,’ I bleat back at Samantha before I tell her to shut up. But she doesn’t shut up. She keeps baa-ing, baa-ing until Nanna pipes in.
Nanna is holding an empty lunch bag. ‘NO BIG COOKIE.’
Mum joins in next. ‘NO BIG FEAST.’
Then it starts seriously. Total nuttiness takes over the car like a virus. ‘NO BIG ROCK’… ‘NO BIG KOALA’… ‘NO BIG MANGO’… ‘NO BIG …’
As we drive past the Big Banana, I yell out, ‘NO BIG IDIOTS.’
There is this dead silence for two seconds, before everyone is yelling, ‘NO BIG NUTS, NO BIG BRAINS, NO BIG …’
I groan. ‘Put on the radio, Mum. Pleassssse.’
‘What, darling?’ Mum splutters.
Darling? I give up. ‘Radio,’ I shout.
‘Oh, all right.’ It takes a while for the laughing to stop and Mum’s music to hum through the car. There are no more BIG anythings mentioned and Samantha starts begging Mum to change the station. Mum doesn’t.
Luckily Rob turns into a roadside service centre. ‘Rest stop, kids.’ Every two hours Rob pulls over. He says that when you’re driving you don’t notice how tired you get. ‘Drivers fall asleep at the wheel.’ I reckon that Rob is an advertisement for the road safety slogan, ‘Stop, Revive, Survive’.
It is great stretching my legs, especially since I have been stuck between two blobs. Samantha blob and Leo blob. Toilet stop. Good, at least it won’t be a bush can under a goanna attack. Imagine having two penises. Goanna-power. I might do some research on that when I get home. Interesting. I wonder how my fungus is. Has it turned into penicillin or something incredible?
My stomach rumbles.
‘Hamburgers and milkshakes for everyone?’
‘Rob, Rob can I have a double burger with cheese and bacon?’
‘Me too,’ Leo copies, which is really annoying.
Rob rubs my head, then puts one hand on Leo’s shoulder. ‘You kids must be starving.’
‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Leo and I race towards the counter.
Rob smiles. ‘Good to see you boys getting along.’
I don’t know about that. I glance at Leo, then Rob. Rob really, truly, desperately wants me to get on with Leo. I guess I have to try but it’s a BIG ask. Hey, is that funny? NO BIG ASK. I can add that to the NO BIG list.
Nanna, Mum and Rob sit together. The kids sit at another table. I gulp down the last bite of hamburger.
‘Everyone finished?’
I look at Samantha and Anna. ‘Do you want to trick Nanna?’
‘It’s not a mean trick, is it?’ Samantha slurps the last of her lemonade.
‘No, don’t be stupid. Nanna will think it’s funny.’
‘I don’t know.’ Anna’s dimples look like question marks. She isn’t sure.
‘Nanna likes a joke. You know that.’
‘What are you planning?’ Leo leans forward to listen as I whisper the great trick. ‘But I can’t be in it,’ Leo complains.
‘Next time, Leo.’ It’s family stuff. ‘We’ll do it when Nanna gets into the car. Okay?’
The ‘Stop, Revive, Survive’ pit stop is over. Rob is looking at his watch. Nanna is shuffling towards us. I elbow Samantha, then Anna. ‘Ready?’ I whisper under my breath.
‘Ready.’ Anna.
‘Ready.’ Samantha.
From the corner of my eye, I see Leo slumping against the car.
‘FLASH,’ I shout. ‘NOW.’
We all drop our shorts and dive for our toes. Our bums are in the air, our underpants are flashing, glowing. Purple.
Nanna chuckles and clucks. She gets so excited that she flashes her own underpants back at us. Yes, they are purple too. We end up in a howling heap. We can’t believe it. Nanna is wearing her purple underpants too. She must have a secret supply of them.
Mum turns around to see. Her face drops disappointedly. ‘I wish I was wearing mine.’
Rob rubs his chin, trying to hide a smile.
‘I’ll buy you a pair of purple underpants too, Leo.’ Nanna puffs up with satisfaction at her clever bargain hunting.
‘That’d be really great.’ Leo mutters under his breath, ‘Not.’ He doesn’t get it. Purple underpants. It’s something big that Nanna wants to buy him a pair. Luckily Nanna doesn’t see. That is mainly because she’s talking to Rob, who is excited that Nanna wants to buy Leo purple underpants. Rob gets it. I think sawdust is coming out of Rob’s ears. Ha, ha.
Oh, the sawdust has stopped. Rob is in the driver’s seat. ‘Get comfortable, everyone. It’s a long drive to get there.’
Mum says that Samantha HAS to swap seats with me. Samantha kicks me. ‘Stop pressing against me, Jack.’
‘So now you know what it’s like.’
She flaps Floppy’s paw in my face. I squash Floppy’s nose. What else could I do? Samantha aims Floppy’s bum at me. Suddenly Mum’s hand grabs Floppy. ‘No teasing.’ Mum only gives Floppy back to Samantha when we both promise to stop arguing. I stare out of the window now that I have the window seat AT LAST. We drive and drive. Then we drive some more. It is getting so boring. I kick Samantha. She whines back at me. Mum turns around. ‘Stop it, Jack.’ She passes out a packet of jelly snakes. Everyone takes a snake. Anna and Samantha have a stretching game. How long can they stretch a red jelly snake? They have to be careful. They measure it. It’s twenty-four centimetres. Wow. Snap. Ha, ha. Samantha eats her half of the snake. Anna throws her half to me. I eat it. Then we have a snake stretching competition.
Nanna has a go. Her knobbly hands make it hard to pull. She loses, but I give her a whole snake. She really wants a red snake. Bits stick between her teeth. When will we be there? When? When? Oh no, Nanna takes out her teeth to get to the jelly bits. I am going to be sick.
Leo laughs at her. He presses back on the car seat, whispering to me behind Samantha’s back, ‘Toothless old bat.’
Pushing Samantha aside with one hand, I take a swing at Leo. ‘Shut up.’
Leo yells out, ‘I didn’t do anything. Stop it. Why are you hitting me?’
He knows why. He does. I stick my finger up at him as he nurses his arm. He is putting on this over-the-top show, moaning and gulping as loudly as he can.
Mum and Rob don’t even ask what happened. They just shout at me. ‘Why did you do that, Jack?’
What am I supposed to say?
‘Are you all right, Leo?’ Mum apologises. All right? What does that mean? Mum and Rob are horrible, lecturing me on being nice to poor little Leo. Yeah, sure. Leo called Nanna a terrible name. My nanna. Mum and Rob wouldn’t believe me even if I told them. And Nanna can never know. ‘I’m really disappointed in you, Jack,’ Mum says quietly. Well, I’m disappointed in Mum.
Rob turns to stare at me. It’s only for a few seconds, but there is this awful look in his eyes. He hates me. My head is exploding. What can I say? Nothing. Anna shakes her head at me. Everyone is against me. I turn away and press my face against the window. Leo stops whingeing eventually. Mum puts on Samantha’s CD and the car whizzes ahead.
‘Where are the rest of the jelly snakes?’ Samantha suddenly looks around.
There is a search. I don’t even try to look. Everything has been so unfair. How I am supposed to like Leo? And Rob hates me. This choking feeling makes me gasp for air.
‘The packet must have fallen under the seat.’ Nanna smiles. ‘I’ll buy you all some more jelly snakes later.’ She is so kind. I give Leo a dirty look.
‘Don’t worry about the jelly snakes or anything else.’ Mum turns around and touches my hand. ‘We’re all going to have a good time together.’
I’m not so sure.
Hours, hours, hours. The sun blares into the car. Nanna is the first to nod off, then Anna. There is a duet going on in the back — Nanna and Anna snoring. Leo is leaning against the other window. Good, he can stay there. Samantha has collapsed into Floppy’s fur. I feel my eyelids getting heavier. It’s the sun, the glare … zzzzzzzzzzz.
I doze and wake, doze and wake. Leo’s face sticks into my head like fungus. Oh, my fungus. It likes the sun. It should be growing a lot. Mum’s and Rob’s talk sifts in and out of my head. ‘World peace …’ Mum’s favourite topic. ‘Why do you think Jack hit Leo?’ ‘Maybe he’s jealous.’ ‘They’re just kids. It’s too early, but they’ll work it out. They just have to get used to each other.’ I am never going to get used to Leo. I just want Mum and Rob. Rob is our … I try to speak, but the sun … I wonder if the bottle is big enough for my fungus. Hope the fluids aren’t oozing out. Yawn. It likes the heat … heat … yawn … zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Someone is shaking me. ‘What? What?’ Fungus attack. It is HUGE, white, slimy, stinky. I start hitting the fungal growths. ‘Fungus,’ I moan.
‘Jack, stop it. I’m not fungus.’ Blonde frizz is hitting my face. ‘Jack, Jack. It’s Mum. Wake up. We’re here, darling. The Gold Coast. We’re here.’
I’m confused. Where am I? ‘Darling? Don’t call me darling.’
Mum is smiling at me. I look around blearily. Ah, I am still in the car. Rob’s head peers over the front seat. What a big golf-ball head. Ha, ha. Oh, I remember. He hates me. There’s Nanna. Anna is running her fingers through her dark hair. She is beautiful. No, I don’t mean that. I shake my head. ‘Wake up, Jack.’ I blink hard twice, rub my face with both hands.
We’re here.