How can he be a police officer? It’s not possible.
Sick, blind panic streaked through me. Magic and I ran up some steps, past a large fountain, across a patch of well-worn grass, then down a laneway between a restaurant and an apartment block. The lane was just wide enough for a car. I stayed to the right, against the wall, running on my crutches past overflowing bins at the back of another restaurant. Further down, I could see the small, steam-covered front window of another eatery. I ran past the window: ‘Red Dragon Food and Gifts’. There was a ‘Closed’ sign on the door. Inside, dumplings on a flour-covered bench. A lady spooning goop from a silver bowl into small, round wrappers.
I looked back to see if the cop was standing in the mouth of the alley, then I shoved the narrow red shop door. I was surprised when it opened. I poked my head inside. It was warm and smelt good.
The lady turned to me. ‘Not open, not open,’ she told me, waving her hand.
‘Please?’
‘Not open.’
I let Magic in and stepped in behind her. They wouldn’t be far away. Kid on crutches comes in to report a murder. Cop goes to alert a more senior officer and kid disappears. They would come for me.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘I’m very tired.’ I motioned to my crutches.
She regarded me, clicked her tongue, turned away and continued spooning mixture into dumpling wrappers. My stomach snarled. I had hardly eaten all day.
She shook her head. ‘Why are you alone?’
‘Just a few minutes, then I’ll go.’
‘Where are your parents?’
‘My dad’s at work,’ I said. ‘He’ll be home soon.’
She clicked her tongue again, like she knew I was lying, then waved a hand covered in dumpling-mush towards a small, red wooden table in the back of the store, near a scattered collection of teapots, lamps and bamboo steamers.
‘Thank you,’ I said and shuffled over. Magic was tired now and would only walk at a snail’s pace, so I pretended to browse the cumin seeds, crushed chilli and fish sauce bottles lining the counter. The lady was paying me no attention anyway, so I dragged Magic along, steered her into the corner and partially hid her behind a display filled with pink and red Chinese slippers.
I pulled one of the four small chairs out from under the table and flopped down onto it. I was physically exhausted, mentally on fire. I could still see the front window but I could easily lean to my right, out of view behind a shelf filled with lamps, if I needed to. It felt good to be in here, even though the lady with the dumplings couldn’t do much if a police officer tried to drag me away.
Being inside the shop made me feel like I had stepped outside time for a moment, like I’d gone through a portal. The music sounded like Buddhist monks chanting on a hilltop somewhere and the spicy smell and steam and colourful cushions and birdcages took me to some other place. It bought me a few moments to think.
How could he have pushed that man off a balcony and be a police officer? Maybe he’s not a police officer, I thought. Maybe they caught him. He was a criminal waiting to be charged. But he was in uniform.
Can you wait here for one moment? I’d like to have a more senior officer present. That’s what she’d said. Then she knocked on his door. She was a senior constable. He must have been a higher rank than that. He had a corner office that looked important somehow.
What am I involved in?
I thought of the other times in my life I’d had anything to do with police. Two young officers had helped us when our house was broken into. They took our fingerprints and one of them, a lady with blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and a super-heavy belt with pepper spray and a gun and a bunch of other stuff, had put her arm around my mum when she had cried. And Mum knew a cop called Clint from when she went to school. He worked at Katoomba Police Station now and she sometimes said hello to him when we were up in town. Once, he let me off with a warning for riding without a helmet. My only experiences with police had been good. They were supposed to be good people. So who was this guy? How did he get a badge?
My brain felt like dumpling mush. I stared out the front window, past the rhythmic rise and fall of the woman’s shoulders as she made her food.
Who do you go to? Who do you go to when you’re in very deep trouble and the police are not an option?
Mum, was my first thought. Before I get in any deeper.
I pulled out my phone and sent her a message.
Are you busy? I really need to
tell you something
TWENTY-FOUR
HOW IT FEELS
I always thought that Mum didn’t understand how hard everyday life was for me, even though she tried. At the public school down the road, I used to get teased and pushed around for my hobbly walk. So she sent me to the independent school, which she couldn’t really afford but she said she would somehow. And guess what? Kids picked on me there, too. So I went back to the public school the next year.
She wondered why I was angry all the time, why I got in trouble, why I argued non-stop with her, why I seemed to get detention every second day, why I hit that kid one Friday morning.
The hit was a total accident but it was the thing that tipped Mum over the edge. These two kids had been hassling me all week, calling me ‘retard’ and ‘spaz’ and trying to trip me over. It wasn’t even a big thing that made me snap. One of them, Angus Dodson, threw my tennis ball under a classroom and I had had enough. I lashed out and punched him right in the mouth before I even knew what I was doing. I had never hit anyone before. I got his braces with my fist and the metal cut my finger open. I bent the braces and my mum had to pay for them. She took the money out of the savings account she’d been building for me, $20 a month since I was a baby. I hadn’t told any teachers about Angus teasing me every day so they thought I’d just lashed out without being provoked. That was a week before my operation. Mum had pleaded my case with Mrs Johnston, the principal, who decided not to suspend me but gave me a week of after-school detention.
This week, on one of those nights when Harry had sat at the dining table staring at his laptop screen, he asked what I’d done to make Mum want to send me away for a week. I knew that he knew because I’d heard Mum tell him, but I recounted the story about the kid called Angus and the fight. I told him about another time when I took the short cut home from school across the big water pipe that’s like a high bridge across the gully. It’s pretty dangerous but heaps of kids do it. We got caught and Mum found out. Then there was being late to class all the time, getting detention for swearing, arguing with teachers, the list went on and on. I had no idea why I was doing these things. I didn’t feel like I was choosing to. ‘Hormones!’ Mum always said.
Dad asked me about Mum. I didn’t want to say anything bad about her but I told him how it had been between us lately. Not like it used to be. We used to be good together. ‘You and me,’ she’d say, cuddling me into her on the couch while we watched re-runs of Doctor Who. But in the last couple of years, since she started working so much, life was different. When she first woke up things would be good. Or we might have a moment where things were okay but then we’d have an argument about homework or about how long I’d had the hot tap on or some misunderstanding about my sports uniform and we’d be off again. The storm never seemed to pass. Just when I thought it was over the wind would change and it’d circle back over us.