We fly on, land in Honolulu, refuel, and take off.
‘Normally, Georgie-boy,’ Chase says, ‘I would’ve stayed in Hawaii so you could’ve surfed Pipeline. It’s a massively dangerous wave and you would’ve loved it. But we’re in a hurry.’
Me? Surf? All I do on the beach is follow the shade of the umbrella like a human sundial and work on my design for a sun-smart seven-piece bikini.
‘I’m not the beach, er, beach bottom type, Chase. I’m rather too pale.’
‘You’re only pale,’ Chase says, ‘because you live like a mushroom. You won’t know yourself if we ever get back to Australia. Truly.’
If?
What!?
‘I’d rather like,’ I mumble, ‘to be back for first term, Chase. For one thing – well, two things, really – my mother has already bought my new school shoes, and if I’m late, I might have grown out of them. Parker people pride themselves on forward-thinking footwear purchases, Chase. We don’t just walk in and walk out of the shop with a new pair of shoes, no sir.’
Chase laughs and lifts a hank of my hair.
‘What d’you care about school shoe selection, Geepy? When you’ve gone and got yourself a haircut like this?’
‘The haircut was an accident, Chase.’ I wonder if he’ll now kick me off the plane with or without a parachute. ‘The hair salon caught fire when I was halfway through my double-shot short-back-and-sides, and we had to evacuate.’
‘An accident? Really?’ Chase looks disappointed. ‘Well, that’s okay. You’ve done some good things already. You have up-side, George, as they say at school. Although they’ve never said that to you personally.’
That’s true. No one has ever said I’ve got up-side, although I must have some, because everyone does.
‘I used to think you were extremely ordinary,’ Chase adds. ‘Now I think you might be the one and only extraordinary DeeJay G-Pak.’
It takes me a while to work out that I’m DeeJay G-Pak.
Chase flips off his seatbelt. ‘Now, do you want to fly this plane or not?’
‘I can’t fly a jet, Chase!’ My heart smacks hard in my chest. ‘No one in my family can drive a car. I can’t even ride a bike.’
Chase stands. ‘Oh, give it a whirl. There’s nothing up here to hit. Besides, I can wake Clementine if there’s a mechanical failure.’
Five minutes later, I’m wearing a headset and flying a Gulfstream 460 at nine hundred kilometres an hour. Clemmy sits next to me, bare feet up on the dashboard, painting her toenails.
‘George,’ she says, ‘don’t fly into that really massive – whoops! Too late.’
The jet drops like a rock, lightning flashes, and we go into a vertical nose dive. I’ve flown right into the black heart of a supercell thunderstorm!
Clemmy screws the lid back on her toenail polish and puts her feet down.
‘Pull up and go left, George, when you’re ready, as we’re due to hit the ocean in eleven seconds. Make that eight.’
I do what Clemmy says, and suddenly, like a rocket, we’re flying in clear air again. Oh my golly gosh, that was horrible!
‘Do you want to have a shot at landing in Los Angeles?’ Clementine asks. ‘That’d be something funny for Show and Tell.’
‘N-n-n-o thanks,’ I stammer, then hand over the controls and wobble back to my seat.
Chase opens his laptop. ‘Hmmm. Bit of bad news, Parks.’ He pulls a face. ‘My dad says the dear old hedge fund has hit a slight speed bump and lost two hundred million dollars. Which some people want back. Kind of desperately.’
‘Two hundred million, Chase,’ I say. ‘Where’s it gone?’
Chase shrugs. ‘Down the gurgler, I guess.’ He fastens his seatbelt. ‘Strap yourself in, GP, I think we’re in for a rough ride. Better stay on the plane in LA,’ he adds. ‘These people will be coming after us. And I don’t want any of us photographed, shot, or kidnapped.’
That makes two of us, at least.
‘Now, George,’ Chase adds, ‘pick a few shares on the stock market. Shares that will go up – a lot. Unless your parents can send us a couple of hundred million they have lying about? Plus another fifty for good luck, because that seems to have wandered off as well.’
‘My parents are research scientists, Chase. They’re really smart but they’re really poor.’
‘Pardon me for saying this, Parkie,’ Chase replies. ‘If they were really smart, they wouldn’t be really poor. You have to turn that ship around. Because someone is going to have to cough up a fair few million somehow, some way, and soon. D’you have any pets, George?’
‘Only Amy.’
Chase glances at Amy, who is watching 101 Dalmations on her personal, dog-friendly seat screen. Then Chase looks at me.
‘I don’t have to spell this out to you, Parkie, but I will. D-E-A-D D-O-G. These people will come after us and everything we’ve got to get that money. And leave no survivors. And on another subject,’ Chase adds, ‘you’d better put those medical books in the overhead locker or under the seat in front, because it’d be kinda dumb to get killed by one if we have a rough landing.’
I push the pile of books under the seat. Yes, it’d be rather a sick joke, so to speak, to have my skull fractured by a six-hundred-page book about the human brain and how to keep it in good condition.
We land at LA International Airport to refuel.
‘So what do your parents actually do?’ Chase asks, bouncing a ball for Amy, who jumps at it like a trout after a bug.
‘They’re studying space rocks for possible uses on Earth,’ I say. ‘But as an experiment, my dad and I have a backyard project growing algae for bio-fuel. It could be worth millions. But at the moment, it’s just smelly green weedy stuff in a pond.’
Clementine’s voice comes over the intercom. ‘Hold onto your hats, kids. It’s time for take-off. We have bad guys incoming.’
I look out and see three men in black suits and sunglasses running towards the plane. Then our twin jet engines scream and we blast off like a Phantom fighter leaving an aircraft carrier. Luckily I have a good hold of Amy and had visited the bathroom three minutes earlier.
‘Next stop, New York,’ Chase says. ‘If you can make it there, GP, you can make it anywhere.’
Make what? A last wish?
‘Um, any sign of that money, yet?’ I ask Chase.
Chase blows out a breath. ‘Nope. But Dad put fifty million in my account for safekeeping.’ Chase brings up a chart of the New York Stock Exchange. ‘So basically, GP, you and I’ve got to invest it. Which means you have to use your super brain to work out what we’ll invest it in.’
Me? Invest fifty million dollars? That’s mad!
‘My dad says education is the best investment in the world,’ I volunteer.
‘Get real, George.’ Chase taps my head with a spoon, as if it is a boiled egg. ‘And get cracking. Because it’s my parents’ money paying for your scholarship. Or it was. So if we want to go back to good old Tapley Grammar, I suggest you come up with something brilliant.’
‘Oh,’ I say, ‘dear.’
‘Don’t do the oh dear thing.’ Chase brings up a phone app with a smiley horse icon. ‘What do you know about racehorses, George? Do your parents have any? At all?’
No Parker would ever, or could ever, own a racehorse.
‘No,’ I say. ‘But I understand the theory of trying to pick a winner. Why?’
Chase’s phone screen fills with numbers and names.
‘International form guide,’ he explains. ‘They’re racing at Ascot in England. I’m thinking of putting twenty million bucks on Limpy Prince in the fourth. I like the sound of him. He’s a teenaged horse whose mother is Home At Last and his dad is King Swampy Slow Coach.’
‘Don’t do it, Chase,’ I say. ‘Why don’t we put that fifty million in the international overnight money market? We’ll earn interest and we can’t lose it. Then if we see other opportunities, we’ll have the money. Plus extra.’
Chase considers this as we fly over the American Midwest, where you’ll find the Corn Palace, a magnificent building decorated all over with corn, a place that’s on my bucket list to visit before I die, as visiting it after I die would be hard to arrange, and not much fun for anyone, ha ha!
‘Good thinking, GP.’ Chase hands across his laptop. ‘Talk to our banking guy in Geneva, Mr X. The password is HELLO.’
I type and suddenly the image of a big man in a dark room comes up.
‘What language does he speak?’ I ask.
‘He doesn’t,’ Chase says. ‘Just type, and Bob’s your uncle.’
I do that then log off. Clemmy’s voice comes over the intercom.
‘Landing in New York pretty soon, guys. Ground temperature, well, a bit on the cold side. And there’s some of that what-do-you-call-it? That fluffy stuff. Snow.’
Chase pushes his intercom button. ‘Great, Clemmy. You’re always so accurate.’
Really? Way below, the landscape is blanketed in white. It’s beautiful.
‘The land of opportunity,’ I say. ‘America.’
‘Every land is the land of opportunity,’ Chase says. ‘Speaking of which, what are you like at writing pop songs? Those things can earn millions overnight.’
Me? ‘Well, I do like an old-fashioned bush ballad or a fun-filled folk song,’ I say. ‘You know, something about shearing angry sheep or straightening old nails, and so forth. They don’t write songs like that anymore.’
‘And you’d better not start,’ Chase says. ‘No, you’ll need to write about love. Falling in or out. One way or the other. I don’t care. Whatever feels best.’
‘I haven’t had much experience in those areas, Chase,’ I say. ‘It’s one of my weak points, I suppose.’
Chase swivels in his leather seat. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You love Amy. Write about her. No one’ll know she’s a dog. And I bet you five million bucks that you’re in love with that girl, Charlotte, from the jetty. Because she was falling in love with you.’ He puts out his hand. ‘Come on. Five mill. Bet!’
I sit on my hands. ‘She wasn’t falling in love with me,’ I say. ‘She was appreciative that I saved Amy from the deadly grip of the swirling sea.’
Chase pokes the limp collar of my Tapley Chargers tournament top, with its energy-saving accordion-type sleeves and onboard bandaid station for blistered fingers.
‘There’s your first two lines right there, George. You can write the rest after you’ve seen how Beyonce or Rihanna do it at Madison Square Gardens tonight. They’re worth trillions.’
I haven’t heard of them. I’m not even sure if they’re people.
‘Hold on to your hats!’ Clemmy announces. ‘We’re going in! Don’t worry about arming the doors or cross-checking. I never do.’
Out of the window, I can see hundreds of tall buildings and the Statue of Liberty.
‘New York!’ I say. ‘Wow!’
‘That’s the spirit,’ says Chase. ‘Be optimistic! Because it’s more fun, even if things turn out worse than you can ever imagine.’
We land at JFK Airport, Clemmy weaving her way between passenger jets that lumber around like shiny white monsters. I’ve heard New York is smoggy, but today the sky is an iridescent blue and the snow is dazzling. For a moment, I think of my folks working on the space rocks, even if I think my algae project has more commercial potential, as Chase would say. But my parents believe in working for the good of all people, not just themselves.
‘We should,’ Chase says carefully, ‘hide our jet. Otherwise someone we owe money to might try and make it their jet.’
‘Hide it where?’ I can’t see any dark alleyways or handy trees, ha ha.
‘We’re in America,’ Chase says. ‘The military will have a few strike fighters stashed in a shed somewhere. I’m sure they’ll let Clemmy park for a while.’
I’m sure they won’t. The American military don’t look after stuff for you. They blow it up.
Chase unclips his seatbelt and stretches. ‘You see, George, Clemmy was judged as the second best-looking civilian in the world. And that opens doors. Hangar doors in this case. See? It’s happening already.’
A guy in United States Air Force overalls waves at us with orange ping-pong bats. Then we’re inside a huge hangar and Clemmy parks the jet into a space marked ‘Visitor’, between Lightning A-35 fighter-bomber war planes.
I don’t believe this. But as I zip Amy in her bag and check the seat pocket, I do know for sure that things are getting stranger and stranger every day.