Million-Dollar Mess Down Under Read online

  “He’s not an actual tomato. He’s a lawyer.”

  “A lawyer?”

  “Yeah. People who deal with the law? You must have heard of them,” I said. “They’re always on TV.”

  Mom gave a short laugh and threw a piece of eggplant at me. It bounced off my head and fell to the floor, where Junior snaffled it up.

  “Hey! I’m pretty sure that’s against the law,” I said. “Eggplant assault.”

  “You can check with your new fruit and vegetable expert tomorrow,” Mom said. She continued chopping. “I wonder what he wants?”

  “Maybe he found out Georgia was adopted,” I said. “And we aren’t actually related.”

  “And what’s the bad news?” Georgia said triumphantly.

  She and Mom high-fived each other right in front of me, which I thought was pretty rude. Still, I had to admit, it was a zinger.

  Nothing else happened, so I’ll stop this chapter right here.

  ONLY MOM AND I went to see Mr. Ato. Mom said Grandma had to stay to make sure Georgia didn’t have a party or start a nuclear war with China or something. I wasn’t complaining. In fact, I was dying to know exactly what the good news was. I kinda pushed the bad news way down in a corner and didn’t think about what it might be. How bad could it be?

  “The bad news,” Mr. Ato said, when we were seated in front of his desk in his office, “is that one of your relatives has passed away.”

  Okay, that’s pretty bad.

  Mom frowned. “But I don’t have all that many relatives. I’m sure I’d know if I was missing one.”

  Mr. Ato pulled a sheet of paper toward him and peered down at it. “Well, it seems your husband’s father’s half-brother, Grey Aloysius Vernon Khatchadorian, has departed.”

  My head was starting to hurt. Mom’s husband’s father’s half-brother?

  “I never knew Grandpa Khatchadorian had a brother!” Mom said.

  “It seems so,” Mr. Ato replied solemnly. “Families are very complicated these days.”

  “Amen,” I said, thinking about my own dad. I’m too lazy to explain now—especially if I start adding in husband’s father’s half-brothers—but full details are available in Middle School: Get Me Out of Here.

  “Why don’t we just call him Uncle Grey to make things easier?” Mr. Ato said. “I mean, it’s not strictly accurate, but at this point it doesn’t really matter.”

  Mom and I both nodded.

  “Your uncle died several months ago, but it has taken this long to find out where you lived. He died in Australia and had no other relatives. Rafe is his only blood relative remaining.”

  I blinked. I wasn’t too sure about that “remaining” part. It made me sound like my days were numbered.

  “Australia?” Mom said.

  Mr. Ato nodded. “Sydney, Australia.”

  “How did he die?” Mom asked. “Old age?”

  “Ah, no, unfortunately not, Mrs. Khatchadorian. Your uncle was attacked by a pack of rabid koala bears while walking in a remote section of New South Wales.”

  “They’re not bears,” I said. “Koalas, I mean. Everyone outside Australia calls them bears, but they’re not really.”

  Mr. Ato looked at me like I was speaking Swahili.

  “He’s been to Australia,” Mom explained impatiently. “Rabid?”

  “The animals had been in contact with a rabid bat,” Mr. Ato said. “A very rare event, or so I’m told. Unique, even. The police report says they’ve never seen anything like it. Your uncle didn’t stand a chance.”

  All three of us fell silent as we contemplated Uncle Grey’s gory and surprising end.

  “Hey,” I said, recovering quickly—don’t judge me; I never knew I even had a sort-of uncle until two minutes ago—“what’s the good news?”

  “Oh, yes, I almost forgot.” Mr. Ato lifted a file from his tray. “Rafe has inherited a house.

  Mr. Khatchadorian left him everything. Of course, as Rafe is a minor, you’ll have to look after the legal side of things, Mrs. Khatchadorian.”

  “A house?” I repeated. “Whoa! How much is it worth?”

  “Rafe! Don’t be so rude!” Mom said. “Think about poor old Uncle Grey!” She leaned forward and looked at the lawyer. “How much is it worth, though?”

  Mr. Ato handed Mom a sheet of paper. “It’s difficult to say, Mrs. Khatchadorian, but, from what I can see, it won’t be much less than a million dollars.”

  A MILLION BUCKS! A million!

  It was all I could do to stop myself from kissing Mr. Ato.

  Mom didn’t—stop herself, I mean. She leapt right across the desk and planted a big wet smacker on the lawyer’s shiny forehead. Mr. Ato turned the color of, well, a tomato.

  “This isn’t a joke, right?” Mom said, still holding Mr. Ato’s head. “Because that wouldn’t be very funny.”

  Mr. Ato wriggled out of Mom’s clutches and straightened his tie. “I am not in the habit of joking about matters like this, Mrs. Khatchadorian. The house is number 322 Lorikeet Drive, East Fudge, Sydney, Australia. It seems that East Fudge is a popular suburb of the city. Most desirable.”

  In my head I was thinking about all the things we could do with a million dollars. Big red sports car, tick. Guitar-shaped swimming pool, tick. Summer vacation in, oh, let’s say Barbados …

  I could see myself in a hammock hitched between two gently swaying palm trees while—

  Mr. Ato coughed. “There is one condition.”

  Sports car, pool, and Barbados vanished. Ditto with the palm trees.

  “Condition?” Mom said.

  I sensed that what he was about to say would involve trouble for someone—most likely me.

  I wasn’t wrong.

  “Your uncle insisted that, to inherit 322 Lorikeet Drive, you and your family must live there for a minimum of two months and that both you and your sister must attend school in Sydney.” Mr. Ato shuffled in his seat. “Your uncle also insisted that Rafe attends his old school—St. Mungo’s in East Fudge. The estate will pay for your airfares and the school fees. St. Mungo’s is a very exclusive school.”

  “That’s it?” I asked. “All we have to do is go to Sydney, stay there for two months and I go to a posh school and we get the house?”

  Mr. Ato nodded.

  Mom looked happy.

  “Easy,” I said, smiling like an idiot.

  This was before I found out about the uniform.

  “NO. NO WAY. Not a chance. Forget it. Not gonna happen. Nuh-uh.” I shook my head firmly. This was non-negotiable. Rafe Khatchadorian was not a man to be trifled with. There was no way I was agreeing to this. Australia was off the cards.

  “I hate you!” Georgia wailed. “I wanna go ’Stralia!”

  “But it’s a million dollars,” Mom said. “And it’s just a uniform.”

  “Yeah!” Georgia shouted. “It’s just a uniform, Mr. Selfish!”

  I looked at them both coolly and raised an eyebrow (it’s hard to do, btw—raise one eyebrow, I mean—I’d practiced for months to get it right just for moments like these) and pointed a quivering finger at the computer screen, where the St. Mungo’s school uniform was displayed in all its horrific detail: the hat, the socks, the shorts, the tassels.

  “Does that look like ‘just a uniform’?” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “I still hate you!” Georgia yelled.

  “I’m sure you don’t have to wear all of the uniform,” Mom said.

  “St. Mungo’s operates a very strict uniform code,” I read aloud. “No exceptions. Offenders will be fed to the school tiger.”

  Mom’s eyes more or less popped out of their sockets. “What?!”

  “Okay, I made up that last bit,” I said. “But I’m still absolutely, definitely, totally, one hundred and ten percent NOT doing it.”

  “WELCOME TO AUSTRALIA!” The guy stamped my passport and grinned from ear to ear, as if seeing my jet-lagged face at 5.36 am was exactly what he needed to complete his Tuesday morning. He turned
off his smile suddenly and put on a serious expression. “Just watch out for the giant rabid bush turkeys, okay, mate?”

  Australians.

  It was all coming back to me. They like barbecues and beaches and something called cricket, but, more than anything else in the whole wide world, Australians love to tease tourists. I’m surprised they weren’t pushing for it to be included in the Olympics. The first time I’d been here, it had been a guy on the plane telling me all about drop bears that eat tourists. Now this.

  “Very funny,” I said. “Like the drop bears, hey? Har-har.”

  “No,” the passport guy said, his face getting even more serious. “This is not a laughing matter, sir. The Department of Agriculture has issued a recent warning about a rise in the number of giant rabid bush turkeys. They’ve been spotted in increasing numbers in and around the city. I mean, they won’t kill you or nothing, but they can take a finger off you quicker than blink. Plus, you’ve then got rabies.”

  “Wow!” I said, “I’ll keep an eye out—”

  “Gotcha!” Passport guy turned to the other passport guy (who was a woman passport guy) in his booth and bumped fists. “Twenty-three so far, Marlene, and it’s not even six o’clock!” He dinged a bell on the desk and I heard a small cheer from the rest of the passport controllers.

  As I moved past the counter, I heard him start on the next gullible American behind me.

  All of this had completely passed Mom and Georgia by. There were only the three of us. Grandma Dotty didn’t want to leave her soup kitchen behind (too complicated to explain) and, besides, someone had to look after Junior. Australia doesn’t like you bringing apples into the country, so dogs are practically impossible.

  I think I’ve mentioned before that Mom is not a good flier. In fact, if we hadn’t been on our way to pick up a big juicy COMPLETELY FREE house, there’s no way Mom would’ve made the journey.

  And Georgia had turned into a zombie. Or something real close to that. She was walking but her eyes were closed. I’d tried to tell her about the loooooong flight back when we were in Hills Village—okay, I admit, I was trying to put her off coming—but she’d thought I was exaggerating when I’d told her it was a million miles to Sydney.

  And if you’re wondering what changed my mind about coming to Australia and wearing that St. Mungo’s uniform, the answer is simple. Mom just told me I was going and deep down I didn’t blame her one little bit. A million bucks is a million bucks. That’s a whole bunch of shifts at Swifty’s Diner for Mom. My dignity didn’t stand a chance against that.

  The last time I was here, Australia had made an impression on me. Among a bunch of other things that happened, I’d broken my leg, foiled a diamond-smuggling plot, saved some ancient cave paintings, and found out what budgie smugglers were. The time before that, I’d been chased by zombies (sort of) and accidentally blew up an art gallery. As we waited for our bags, I wondered exactly what kind of surprises Australia had in store for me this time. Because, by the time I was on my way back to Hills Village, giant rabid bush turkeys would have been the least of my problems …

  OUR BAGS CAME and I guided Mom and Georgia through to the taxi rank. Zombie Georgia tried to eat a couple of people on the way, but I managed to stop her. Only kidding.

  It felt weird because Australia didn’t seem so foreign to me. This was my third trip and, thanks to Uncle Grey, we now owned a house in Sydney—322 Lorikeet Drive. We had, more or less, become Australians, although I’d never actually spent any time in Sydney itself.

  And then jet lag hit me. I gave the taxi driver the address and fell into a deep, deep sleep as Sydney whizzed past the window.

  Back in Hills Village, when Mr. Ato had told us we’d inherited a house in Sydney, I’d gone online and found that the suburb the place was in looked pretty ritzy.

  So when we pulled up outside something that could have come straight out of a horror movie, I asked the taxi driver to double-check the address. I’d looked on Google, back in Hills Village, but the place had been hidden by a big truck.

  “This is it, mate, no mistake. 322 Lorikeet Drive.” The taxi driver glanced nervously at the house and shuddered. “Good luck.”

  Inside three seconds, he’d dumped our bags on the sidewalk and zipped off in a cloud of exhaust. I stared at the rusty iron gate. It had the letters G.K. spelled out in wrought iron and my heart sank. The taxi driver was right. This was Uncle Grey’s place. A screeching jet-black crow on top of the gate peered at us like we were breakfast. It screeched once and then flapped off to settle on the roof of our new house.

  “There’s got to be some mistake,” Mom said.

  Georgia burst into tears. I was grateful she’d done that because it stopped me from doing the exact same thing.

  The garden looked like the weeds had a meeting one day and decided to strangle the house. If I said it was a jungle, that wouldn’t be fair on regular, tidy jungles like the Amazon and, er, other famous jungles. Scattered in the twisting, wriggling weeds was an impressive collection of total junk. I figured there were probably a couple of dead bodies and some radioactive nuclear waste hidden somewhere in there too, but I wasn’t in any hurry to look closer without a hazmat suit and breathing apparatus.

  The windows that weren’t smashed were covered in a thick layer of dust and pollution. The roof sagged in more places than it didn’t. Rooms seemed to have been added by a do-it-yourself freak with a thing for Count Dracula. To top it all off, the house was rammed right underneath a HUGE freeway halfway through construction. A thick cloud of concrete dust drifted down from a jackhammer clattering away about three inches from Uncle Grey’s chimney.

  “It might be better inside,” Mom shouted.

  I gave her the famous Rafe Khatchadorian Eyebrow Raise.

  “Oh, right,” I shouted back. “Because I really like the outside.”

  I was being sarcastic. In case you hadn’t guessed.

  MOM GAVE ME the key and pointed at the front door.

  “Me?” I squeaked, trying and failing to keep the tremor of TOTAL FEAR out of my voice. “You want me to go in first?”

  Mom nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  I gulped and tried to think of a way I could avoid opening the door without looking like a complete yellow-belly. Hadn’t Mom seen any scary movies? Whoever goes into a spooky house first always cops it. A rookie error. There was no way—No, wait. I’d got that wrong. It’s always the kid at the back who cops it.

  I looked around to check Georgia was last in line. Good. If the house was full of zombies or vampires or guys wearing hockey masks, it’d be Georgia who they’d go for. Call me heartless, but, hey, sooner her than me, right?

  I turned the key and pushed the door, which creaked inward slowly on rusty hinges. I couldn’t see a thing inside the house. I stepped through the doorway … and walked straight into a thick blanket of cobwebs.

  Have you ever seen anyone do that? Walk into a spiderweb, I mean? Hilarious, isn’t it?

  Unless it happens to you.

  I screamed so loud I drowned out the jackhammers, whirling round and round, scrabbling at my face like a wild man before the GIANT MUTANT SPIDER1 sank its giant mutant fangs into my neck.

  Okay, here’s the thing. After having a giant mutant spider land on your neck, you’d have been kinda safe to assume that was probably going to be the worst thing that happened to you on that particular day, wouldn’t you? Which just goes to show how wrong you can be because, as I careered blindly across the room, I slammed straight into a werewolf.

  Yep, you heard me: a werewolf.

  Big, hairy beast with massive sharp claws and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth? You know what I mean. A WEREWOLF.

  Now, I’m not looking for sympathy here—okay, I am—but what would you do if, one after the other, you had:

  (A) copped a face full of sticky-icky cobwebs;

  (B) were about to have a giant mutant spider inject you with venom; and

  (C) you’d just run into a werewolf in a h
aunted house?

  Exactly. I fainted.

  WHEN THE MISTS CLEARED, a giant moon was looking at me.

  “Rafe woke up, Mom!” yelled the moon, which, for some weird reason, had the exact same voice as Georgia.

  The moon face disappeared and my eyes focused. I lifted my head to find I was lying on a huge moldy couch in what must have been Uncle Grey’s house … only, now it had the lights on. Mom was moving around the room, lifting dust sheets off things and turning on lamps. Personally, I was a little bugged that she wasn’t, y’know, mopping my brow with a cold flannel and looking all sympathetic and motherly.

  “Where is it?” I whispered.

  Mom stopped in her tracks. “Where’s what, honey?”

  “The werewolf!”

  “Oh.” Mom pointed behind me. “There.”

  Georgia says I jumped about forty-six feet in the air, but I know she’s exaggerating because the ceiling was only nine feet high and I hit that.

  There, behind the couch, was the werewolf.

  Except it wasn’t. It was a stuffed bear. A kind of mangy, moth-eaten stuffed bear with one eye and some of its stuffing leaking out of one leg.

  “How are you feeling?” Mom asked.

  I dropped back down to the couch, using my special ninja skills. “Take a wild guess.”

  As most of you know, I don’t have any special ninja skills, so I bounced off the couch and landed safely on the floor, cleverly using my face to cushion my fall. As Georgia and Mom laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen, I just lay on the shag-pile carpet and watched a giant cockroach walk slowly across my nose.

  From where I was lying, that “good news” part of the deal Mr. Ato had mentioned wasn’t looking so good.

  OKAY, I ADMIT IT, the cockroach didn’t say anything.