The 10 P.M. Question (31 page)

Ernest Burrows was icy, too, but they leaped up onto the seat together and came down off the back with almost balletic precision.

“We’re good,” said Gigs. “We should join a circus or something.”

“I’ll get it,” said Frankie at the bus stop. He brandished his brand-new three-month bus pass. Uncle George had gotten it for him from the bus ticket office.

At Petrus’s suggestion, Frankie had made a list of all the things about the household that were (a) mildly irritating, (b) very irritating, (c) plain unworkable, (d) actually dangerous.
Unreliable source of bus fare
had been in the very irritating column. Uncle George had agreed to address columns (b), (c), and (d) promptly, and had been as good as his word, which meant, among other things, that the smoke alarm batteries were fresh and everyone (except Ma) had had a flu shot.

Gordana said she didn’t see why Frankie should be the only person who got to have a fix-it list, so she had made one of her own. She had put
Uncle G walking around without underpants
in the (d) actually dangerous column.

It was Frankie’s code-word week. He’d given quite a bit of thought to it, too, since it was a momentous week, but in the end, nothing had seemed particularly fitting. He’d rejected capital cities, wildcats, European soccer clubs, native trees, and names for marbles (he knew quite a few of these from the Aunties), and had settled rather lamely on candies.

“Odd Fellow,” he said to Cassino, which was slightly appropriate, come to think of it. Yesterday he’d done Wine Gum, which had no significance he could think of. Maybe on Thursday he’d do Jet Plane, because Sydney would be flying out then. Tomorrow he’d be catching the bus from the midtown terminal, which would mean enduring constant filthy comments from Seamus and Eugene Turnip Head. Too bad. Ha, he’d do Jelly Rat, just for them.

“Yendys nil presentium findefinatus chalkydom?” (Sydney definitely not coming to school?), said Gigs as they sat down.

“No,” said Frankie. “Packing. But really, just looking after the little ones.”

They rolled up their tickets and stared at the installation.

“Can you see anywhere?” said Gigs.

“We could squash them up some more,” said Frankie.

“Tried that,” said Gigs. “They won’t move. I think they’re fossilized.”

They looked helplessly at each other.

“S’pose we could change seats,” said Gigs, without much enthusiasm.

Frankie tried to imagine sitting somewhere else in the bus. Too bad what Petrus said about the danger of inflexible routines, the thought freaked him right out.

“No,” he said.

“No,” Gigs agreed.

“What shall we do with them?” said Frankie. He held his ticket up, looking at it with regret.

“We could save them,” said Gigs. “How many months left of Notts? June, July, August . . .” He counted the months off on his fingers. “Five and a half months, minus four weeks of holidays, that’s about eighteen weeks. Eighteen multiplied by five, that’s ninety, multiplied by two, that’s one hundred and eighty tickets . . . That’s quite a lot of paper!”

“For what?” said Frankie.

“We can make a papier-mâché figure of something . . . of the bus, or the Turnip Heads, of Mr. A . . . of —”

“Of
Cassino,
” said Frankie.

“Yes,”
Gigs breathed.

They sat for a few seconds in happy contemplation of a Cassino figurine, a memorial to four years of bus rides and code words and Chilun.

“I’ll look after the tickets,” said Gigs. He plucked Frankie’s ticket from his hand and put it with his own in the front pocket of his backpack.

They really
were
a well-oiled machine, Frankie thought. Maybe they should start a business, make millions.

But he might be going into business with Louie and Gordana. Louie had given him the hard sell, saying his bird drawings would ensure the business took off, ha, ha. Gordana was going to design the T-shirts and bandannas. Louie was going to do the selling and marketing. Frankie was still thinking about it. It would certainly be a fun way to earn money, better than a paper route or dishwashing at the Cupcake Café. And he wanted to start saving. The Aunties had said they would match him half a fare to Sydney if he wanted to go. He definitely wanted to go. Petrus thought it was a good thing to aim for.

Gigs unpacked his breakfast. “Today we have a poppy-seed bagel”— he lifted the lid of the bagel and displayed the contents —“with bacon and tomato relish,
no
greens, to be followed by an egg and banana and Black Doris smoothie.”

“I’m carbo-loading,” he added, biting into the bagel. “For the Pasadena game.”

On Saturday Notts was playing Pasadena at Victory Park, the name of which, as Gigs pointed out in his team talk, had
not
done much for Notts in the past. So no complacency. Gigs had actually said this. And with a completely serious face. Frankie had to very strenuously not look at Sydney in case she eye-bulged and made him laugh. Sydney had been on the sideline at practice — with Bronwyn Baxter, who had come to watch Gigs, though he comprehensively ignored her before, during, and after.

Bronwyn Baxter would probably be at Victory Park on Saturday, too, but there would be no Sydney. Frankie knew this rationally, but somehow he still couldn’t quite believe it.

Frankie stared out the window at the passing river. A thin mist hung just above the water, obscuring the tips of the willows. A few ducks hunched together on the riverbank. Three more months and there would be ducklings. Petrus had suggested Frankie practice thinking ahead to good things rather than bad. It was partly a matter of habit, he said; the more you did it, the easier it became. Frankie wasn’t finding it easy yet. But he was practicing manfully.

For instance, next week was Ma’s birthday. He was drawing her a comic strip story of Boris Pancake and his true love, Plastic Lara, condemned by the curse of Baba Yaga to a music box life except for one day a year when she could take human form and be in the world with Boris Pancake. It was a tragi-comedy with a half-sad, half-happy ending. On the whole, Frankie was finding it very enjoyable.

Frankie had hatched the idea in the week after his nut-out.
Nut-out
was, of course, a Gordana term, but he didn’t really mind it.
Nut-out
seemed as good a word as any for that fevered,
desperate
time. The farther that time receded, the more it seemed like it had all happened in a gloomy cave or tunnel, some unlit Otherworld; he had been stumbling around in that place, looking for his bearings.

He had spent a lot of the week after his nut-out lying around, thinking and sleeping. He was like an invalid, depleted and dozy. Ma had fed him chicken soup.

But two days after his visit to Alma and his talk with Ma, he had rung Sydney and she had come around with the unfinished
Valiant Ranger
. Frankie had looked at the three endings and wondered at his earlier outburst.

“I think we should do it your way,” he said to Sydney. “I really want to. I’ll do the pictures for it. I’ll do them before school starts.”

“So what’s been going on with you?” Sydney demanded. “Why have you been mad at
me
?”

Frankie had known she would cut straight to the chase. He had wanted her to. He wanted to explain everything, especially his new brilliant lightbulbs of understanding. He’d been tired that week, but he’d been elated, too; his head had felt perfectly clear at times, his thoughts burnished and valuable.

They had sat in the sunroom; it was warm and light and the sounds from outside lent a muffled music. Frankie had been enjoying lying there the last couple of days, looking out the glass doors at the liquidambars, the stark architecture of their branches, emerging slowly as the leaves fell.

He told Sydney everything about the last week, and while he talked in the usual messy, out-of-order way, and even though she was there listening attentively, it was right then that he began missing her, missing her busy-listening face, her eye-bulges, and her bold questions.

But Petrus had said that missing was good. Sad was good, said Petrus. Nothing wrong with sad. Frankie had glowered at him, doubting he’d ever had a sad day in his life.

“Do you think your mother will ever go outside?” Sydney asked in the sunroom.

Frankie had counted the leaves falling from the liquidambar — one, two, three, four, five — and shrugged.

“Do you think you’ll ever go and live with the O?” he asked.

“When I’m older,” said Sydney firmly. “When the little ones are older.”

“I was so mad at your mother,” said Frankie. He had been thinking about saying this for days.

“I’m pretty mad at her, too,” said Sydney.

“It was
easier
to be mad at her,” he said a moment later. He had figured that one out all by himself, somewhere between Ma’s room and his own, two nights before.

“Like I didn’t know that,” said Sydney, giving him a vintage eye-bulge.

Frankie sighed now, remembering the sunroom conversation. He had nearly cried twice in front of Sydney, but he had drawn the line. He had to get a grip on that. He would rather have multiple encounters with rabid, genetically altered bull ants than turn into someone who cried at the drop of a hat. And speaking of ants, Petrus reckoned he was going to have Frankie coexisting happily with the horrible little beasts by next summer. Frankie was skeptical. But you never did know. Petrus had given him some exercises to do in the night when ten p.m. anxiety loomed, and they weren’t bad. He had gone several nights in a row without trotting down the hall.

And tonight would be a good test.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly and heavily.

“Too much
sighing,
” said Gigs. “I’m counting. You want some?” He offered Frankie some dried pear. “Albino’s ears,” he said.

Frankie chewed the dried pear and decided its texture was working against it. It was like wet sand.

“Splontys, maximal, Yendys partil?” said Gigs. (You really sad about Sydney going?)

“Multiplyls.” (Totally).

“Nixtus meesum asdys eldduc-top?” (Is she your girlfriend?)

Frankie turned and bulged his eyes at Gigs.

“Seriously,” said Gigs. He had chewed all the middle out of his dried pear so that he was left with a pale rind, which he now rolled into a circle and bit.

Frankie decided to give the question serious thought.

He thought of all the things he liked about Sydney: her black eyes, her dreads, her nose stud, her bangles, her almost accent, her jokes, her clothes, her questions, her speeded up movements, her plump tears, her handwriting, her magnificent
daring
.

He thought about what Alma had said when he had been leaving the Aunties’ that night. They had been on the veranda once again and she had hugged him fiercely, then stood back and looked at him, taking his chin in her smoky fingers.

“Rara avis,”
she said. “That’s what you are, Frankie. A
rara avis
.” She had pushed him out into the night then, to Uncle George and the waiting car.

Frankie had looked it up in the dictionary the next day.
Rara avis
meant “rare bird.” It was Latin. He’d been doubtful about it at first, thinking really he didn’t want to be rare; he’d rather be common, especially if it guaranteed being normal.

But he liked saying it. It sounded good, rolling and majestic. After a few days he changed his mind. It was quite splendid, really. He wouldn’t mind being called
rara avis,
after all, not a bit. It made him sound rather wonderful.

But now, as the bus turned into Memorial Avenue and he contemplated whether Sydney was his girlfriend, it occurred to him that
rara avis
should really be her honor. It fit her perfectly.
Somebody or something rarely encountered,
the
Concise Oxford
had said.

“So?” said Gigs, doing a rather good eye-bulge of his own. “Is she?”

“I don’t
think
so,” said Frankie.

“Ha! Bonga!” said Gigs, snapping down the lid on his breakfast container.

He smacked Frankie on the arm, and Frankie smacked him back and they both watched out the window as the bus turned the last corner to the midtown terminal.

Kate De Goldi
has published young adult novels, short fiction, and picture books.
The 10 p.m. Question
was awarded the
New Zealand Post
Book Award in both the young adult and general fiction categories. About the novel, she says, “I wanted to write a book that explored profound personal difficulty amid the chaos of ordinary life, a book about sadness and loss and about fat, whiskey-swilling aunts, swimming pool phobia, exotic cakes, delinquent brothers, bird species, childish parents, cricket, bad-tempered sisters, cartoons, secret languages, pets with funny names. . . . I wanted to write about the complexity and hilarity in the everyday business of being human.” Kate De Goldi lives in Wellington, New Zealand.