Milo watched Fluke climb onto the brick wall in the backyard and from there scramble onto the roof of the back porch, before crawling through the bedroom window.
Fluke’s eyes started darting about as soon as he was inside.
‘What are you thinking?’ asked Milo. One of the things he liked about Fluke was that his friend frequently volunteered what was going through his mind without Milo having to decipher complex facial expressions. When he didn’t, Milo felt quite comfortable asking.
‘I’m nervous.’
‘My dad’s asleep,’ said Milo. ‘He never wakes up.’
‘Okay.’
‘Did you bring it?’
Fluke nodded and removed his school backpack. Five minutes later they were squatting on the floor, a Ouija board laid out between them. ‘Not so hard,’ said Fluke. ‘Just put your fingertips on the edge of the glass lightly, like this . . .’ Fluke rested his fingers on the rim of the small upside-down glass. ‘Try and move it now.’
Milo reached out and shifted the glass easily beneath Fluke’s fingers even though the other boy kept them in constant contact with the glass. ‘See?’ said Fluke.
They had to stop at one point when Mr Chrysler got up to go to the toilet.
‘The wardrobe!’ Milo hissed while he dived under the doona.
When the house had fallen silent again Fluke crept out. ‘I thought you said he never woke up!’
Milo said, ‘Once he goes to bed he never wakes up before I go to sleep. After I’m asleep, how do I know what he does?’
Fluke pursed his lips, then nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Clarity begins at home.’
They resumed the séance.
Milo had taken some time to formulate his question and so they’d just practised for awhile as Fluke said they needed to warm up anyway.
‘You ready?’ Fluke asked.
Milo nodded.
‘Ask your question. Keep it simple.’
Milo took a deep breath. ‘Mrs Appleby, could you tell me what street I should look in for my mother?’
Fluke nodded appreciatively. ‘Good question,’ he whispered. ‘Now concentrate.’
Milo kept his gaze glued to the glass. His fingertips sat lightly on its rim and he held his breath. He noticed that Fluke was holding his, too.
But nothing happened. He reviewed the question in his mind to see if it was too difficult but he couldn’t think of a better way of phrasing it. He was about to suggest Fluke ask a question in case Mrs Appleby had changed her mind about forgiving him, when suddenly the glass moved – all by itself.
Milo felt an electrifying thrill of fear shoot through him. Mrs Appleby was talking to him!
The glass circled the board three times, moving quite quickly. Milo had a hard time keeping up with it. Twice his fingers lost contact, but it didn’t seem to matter.
Mrs Appleby was clearly in an enthusiastic mood.
All of a sudden, the glass came to a stop. Both boys looked at one another.
Then, very slowly, the glass moved out from the centre towards the ring of letters. It hesitated a moment near the ‘C’ then went decisively to the ‘O’ then it looped around and went back to the ‘O’ – Milo wasn’t sure if that was a mistake or a double-O – then it slid across to the ‘R’ before darting across to the ‘D’. Although puzzled and even a little disappointed, Milo didn’t let go. In quick succession the glass spelled out six more letters: ‘I’ then ‘N’ then ‘A’ then ‘T’ then ‘E’ then ‘S’, after which it moved back to the centre of the board and stopped.
Fluke’s eyes were shining. ‘Wow. It worked!’
‘Did it?’
‘I’m excited, aren’t you?’
Milo frowned, decided he was, despite a lingering disappointment. ‘Yeah, me too.’
But Fluke must have noticed something. ‘What’s wrong?’
Milo shrugged. ‘Well, it doesn’t sound like the name of a street. And Mrs Appleby was about to tell me to go see someplace.’
Fluke shrugged. ‘Now she’s telling you “coordinates”. Strife is a numbers game.’
Milo’s face fell. ‘But what does it mean?’ But even as he said it, he knew the answer. In fact, he could ‘see’ it. In his mind’s eye, he re-ran the moment when her hand wove through the air . . . it was very clear to him now. Mrs Appleby had been air-writing, and as he watched the scene in his mind, he realised she had been writing numbers and letters.
3-7-4-7-2-6-S-1-4-4-5-8-2-2-E.
Just then, the phone downstairs rang.
Fluke’s eyes widened. ‘That could be my parents. I better get tough while the going is hot!’
He had the Ouija board packed away and was out the window even before a very grumpy Mr Chrysler had marched past Milo’s door on his way to the phone.
‘See you in school tomorrow!’ Milo mouthed silently from the window.
Next day, during lunch break, Fluke kicked the ball. It sailed off across the school soccer field and the two boys strolled after it.
Fluke counted his steps as they strolled. ‘One, two, three . . .’
Milo didn’t kick balls anymore. Not since the time Nicholas Fawnley had smashed a classroom window with a soccer ball and had then promptly kicked it to Milo so he’d get the blame. Milo, a wake up to that old trick, had promptly kicked it back. It smacked Nicholas in the head. He was in a coma for a week.
‘Penny for your noughts,’ Fluke said. ‘Sixty-one, sixty-two . . .’
‘We have to go to 3-7-4-7-2-6-S-1-4-4-5-8-2-2-E.’
Fluke nodded cautiously. ‘You can’t ignore extra-century perception,’ he said. ‘But how do you go to 3-7-4-7 and the rest?’
‘They’re map coordinates.’
Fluke’s eyes went wide. ‘Wow. Mrs Appleby gave you map coordinates?’
‘She knew I liked numbers.’
‘So where is this place?’
‘It’s a street four blocks from here.’
‘How do you know?’
Milo shrugged. ‘Sometimes I read maps. 37 degrees 47 minutes 26 seconds south by 144 degrees 58 minutes 22 seconds east is O’Grady Street.’
‘Cool. When do we go?’
‘The police are watching me,’ Milo said. ‘And Dad’s grounded me.’
‘Ah, Mrs Appleby’s godiva isn’t even cold and they want to nail it on you. They’ll make you an escape-goat, you know. You’d better be careful!’
While Milo was trying to work this out, Fluke squinted across the field to where the ball had rolled into a clump of banksias. ‘You going to the funeral? Seventy-one . . .’
‘Dad said he didn’t think I’d be welcome. He said Mr Appleby might want to make it a double service.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Dunno.’
They reached the banksias. ‘Grown-ups are weird. Like legal aliens, only different. Ninety-eight steps. That’s not bad.’
Milo knew he was ‘different’. He knew very well that people thought he was strange but as he thought they were pretty strange, it kind of evened itself out. In any case, the Prime Minister kept telling everybody they had to embrace their differences. Milo wasn’t sure he wanted strange people embracing him. One or two might be nice, though.
Just then the Principal, Mrs Petersham, went past, escorting some student teachers around the sports field. She was a tall stiff woman with dark glaring eyes. She glared at Milo. Mrs Petersham had hated him ever since Milo could remember. She certainly wasn’t the embracing sort.
‘Heard from your mum?’ Fluke asked.
‘She phoned the day before yesterday but I was being arrested.’
‘That sucks.’
‘I miss her,’ said Milo.
Fluke patted Milo on the shoulder. ‘It’s a shame people don’t stay with their partners. That’s what monotony is for. She still hasn’t written to you?’ Milo shook his head miserably. ‘Hey, maybe your dad’s stealing her letters?’
‘I’m home before he is.’
The first bell went. They ambled back towards the school buildings.
Fluke said, ‘So when do we go?’
Milo had been thinking of nothing else. Time was running out. In less than two weeks he’d be going to a juvenile detention centre, probably forever. He had to find his mum before then or he would never see her again.
‘What do you think?’ Milo asked. If the other kids at school thought Milo was strange, they pretty much all thought Fluke was stupid, but that was because they didn’t know him. Milo sometimes thought he was the smartest person he knew, despite his creative approach to the English language.
‘We lay low for the first week and lull them into a false sense of secretary. Then we strike!’
Milo nodded. That seemed like a good plan and he’d still have a whole week to find his mother.
‘You need to show saint.’
‘What?’
‘You know, very good. Show your dad – and everyone else – that you’re a goody-goody shoo-shoes. That way, they drop their regard.’
‘Okay,’ said Milo, his spirits soaring.
‘See?’ said Fluke. ‘When at first you don’t succeed, cry cry again. That’s the secret.’
The second end-of-recess bell rang and they headed to their classroom.
‘We’ll find her,’ said Fluke. ‘My dad says sometimes you just gotta change your latitude.’
The phone was ringing when Milo got home. He rushed to pick it up. ‘Mum?’
Silence.
‘Quite a bit’s happened since you last called, Mum. I went to the police station but Dad came and got me. Mrs Appleby died and the police think I killed her, but I didn’t mean to. All I wanted to do was find out where you are. But she died before she could tell me . . . Mum? Is that really you?’
Milo waited for a response. He could hear traffic in the background. At least she wasn’t staying in some remote place like the Simpson Desert.
He told her quickly about his day at school leaving out the plan to come looking for her.
He was afraid she might do an adult version of hide-and-seek, and she was hard enough to find already. ‘Well, I better go now, Mum. Thanks for calling. I love you.’
Milo replaced the phone on the cradle.
A week later he and Fluke wagged school.