Million-Dollar Mess Down Under Read online

“All you rich kids are the same,” Kasey said dismissively. “You meet an ordinary person and you don’t know what to say.” She started to move off.

  “Wait,” I said. “I’m not rich!”

  She cocked her head to one side. “So what are you doing at St. Mungo’s?”

  “It’s a long story—a boring one.”

  Kasey smiled. “I’ll be the judge of that.” She nodded in the direction of her house. “Let’s go, Socks.”

  “Socks?”

  Kasey pointed at my St. Mungo’s socks with the purple tassels.

  “The name’s Khatchadorian, Rafe Khatchadorian,” I said, doing a lousy imitation of James Bond.

  “I think I’ll stick with Socks,” Kasey replied, as she began doing backward figures of eight toward her house.

  YEAH, I KNOW.

  You’re thinking, Hey, Rafe, this stuff about the cute roller-skating Kasey is all well and good, but what was on that sheet of paper you dropped back near the lockers? You just left us hanging, dude! Fess up!

  Okay, I’ll fess.

  Let’s park my friendship with Kasey over here and rewind to the sheet of paper. This is what it looked like:

  * * *

  Case number: 45388/RK00022091961

  Security Level: RED

  Witness name: Oleg Duliatnev aka “Rafe Khatchadorian”

  Case officer: Senior Field Agent Scott Thurlow

  June 12, 2017

  Notification of warning to protected witness Khatchadorian

  Dear Mr. Khatchadorian,

  This is the second time I have had to warn you about breaching Agency Protocols on Witness Protection. As you know, your past life as a black-belt mixed-martial-arts expert makes you incredibly dangerous. When I placed you at your last school, I did not expect you to draw attention to yourself by injuring quite so many students, no matter how much you claim to have been provoked. The FBI is not in the habit of paying hospital bills because you object to the way someone looks at you. As an ex-Special Forces operative (Helmand Province Youth Division) with links to the Mafia, you have many skills, which, if used unwisely, could result in much worse happening to those who cross your path. We do not want to have to take you out of St. Mungo’s because of some “unfortunate” incident—like what happened last year in Philadelphia. Regardless of any information you have, you must control your tendencies.

  The next scheduled assessment will take place in three months’ time. As always, burn this letter after reading.

  Senior Field Agent Scott Thurlow

  Department of Witness Protection

  FBI Office

  32405 32nd Street, New York

  * * *

  Too much?

  Not believable? Obviously fake?

  I didn’t care.

  If this dumb letter stopped Cory Tamworth-Blythe from harassing me for five minutes, it would be worth it. If he did believe my fake FBI letter, then I also knew that the news would be round St. Mungo’s faster than a dose of the flu. “Back off” would be the message to the other St. Mungo’s inmates, and I could breeze through the next few months without worrying about fruit bats in my locker, or anything else The Winners Club had planned for me.

  It was worth a shot.

  MEETING KASEY MADE a difference to being at St. Mungo’s. I hung out with her most days after school (bringing a change of clothes so I could get out of those St. Mungo’s things FAST) and found out a few things about her.

  She really liked roller-skating. Not only did she roller-skate to and from school, she was

  a member of the Sydney Spitballs Roller Derby Team, along with

  Miss Bennett, who, according to Kasey, was the only human on the entire staff, everyone else being either a reptile, insect, or slug.

  Kasey was, like me, big on art. In her case, it mainly revolved around decorating her skates and the skates of the rest of the team. She was good at it too.

  She had lived in her house on the school grounds ever since she’d been born, which meant that she knew more about St. Mungo’s than anyone else (with, maybe, the exception of her dad).

  Best of all, she introduced me to the Big Spaghetti Splodge and John Olsen.

  “YOU’VE NEVER SEEN the Big Spaghetti Splodge? It’s an Olsen!”

  I shook my head for the third time. No matter how many times I shook it, Kasey couldn’t believe it.

  “But it’s right there in the Great Hall, up above the stage where the school assembly is! You can’t miss it! It’s an Olsen!”

  “Look,” I said. “Just show me. It’ll be easier. And stop saying ‘it’s an Olsen’.”

  One of the advantages of being the daughter of the caretaker was that Kasey could get into St. Mungo’s after everyone had left. Making sure that her dad was safely in another part of the school, Kasey snuck us into the Great Hall. It was Friday evening, so there wasn’t even a chance of bumping into one of the velociraptors. They were all at home, trying to forget about St. Mungo’s until Monday morning.

  The only times I’d been in the Great Hall were during the school assembly. I’d never seen the place without it being stuffed to the walls with kids and velociraptors. Now, even though it was still light outside, it seemed slightly spooky. Our footsteps echoed on the wooden floor. The place smelled of polish and human sacrifice.3

  Kasey walked to the middle of the hall and stood there, looking at a white shape on the wall. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “He did it.”

  “Who? Did what?” I asked.

  Kasey pointed at the white shape. “That’s the Big Spaghetti Splodge.”

  I cocked my head to one side. “Is it modern art? Some kind of minimalist thing?”

  It looked like a plain old white sheet to me.

  Kasey disappeared behind the stage and came out wheeling an enormous set of stepladders. She pushed them into place below the white shape and started climbing.

  “Winton has always hated the Spaghetti Splodge,” Kasey said. She got to the top and reached for what I could now see was a giant sheet. “Too messy for him, too wild. He’s been threatening to cover it up for ages, but I never thought he’d do it after the School Board wouldn’t let him. Not when they use it in all the shiny brochures and everything. And not to something so …” Kasey stopped mid-sentence as she struggled with the sheet.

  “Something so …?” I was desperate to see this thing now.

  “So amazing!” Kasey said, giving the sheet a sharp tug.

  I took a few steps back to get a better look.

  “That’s an Olsen,” Kasey said.

  IT WAS A PAINTING.

  A gigantic, amazing, incredible, stupendous, sprawly MESS of a painting. It was splodgy. It was wobbly. It was blue and black and green and yellow and orange and a few colors I didn’t even recognize. Paint flew everywhere and there were, I dunno, things hidden in the paint—sort of “realistic” objects, some animal shapes. Plants, maybe. It was impossible to tell, impossible to pin down.

  I loved it.

  And, yes, it did look like a splodge of spaghetti.

  Kasey stepped off the ladder and stood next to me. “Not too shabby, eh?” she said, nudging me (painfully) in the ribs. She pointed at the painting. “Lake by John Olsen,” she said. “Australia’s greatest painter. In my opinion.”

  I looked at Lake more closely. “This John Olsen, is he famous?”

  Kasey nodded. “Massive. His paintings are in all the state galleries. We can go see some tomorrow, if you like?”

  “That’d be cool.” I didn’t say anything else because I was thinking of something. “And this painting would be worth, like, a ton of money?”

  “Heaps. Millions. The Tamworth-Blythes gave it to the school years ago.”

  “No wonder they walk around like they own the place,” I said.

  “They practically do,” Kasey said. “They own almost everything else in East Fudge and half of Sydney besides.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, only half-listening.

  There was so
mething about Lake that was giving me a weird little tickle somewhere in my brain. I didn’t know exactly what the tickle was telling me—assuming tickles can tell you anything—but I knew one thing: Lake looked an awful lot like the paintings back at 322 Lorikeet Drive.

  JUST SO YOU KNOW, Mom and Georgia were still both doing fine. Georgia was loving her new school, blah-blah-blah, and Mom was enjoying getting to know Sydney, etc.

  After dinner that Friday, I went straight up to the attic, leaving Mom and Georgia watching TV.

  The big blank canvas was still there.

  I looked at it, and it stared back blankly (being blank, natch) at me.

  “Paint me,” it whispered.

  I mean, it didn’t actually speak or anything. It wasn’t haunted, or at least I don’t think it was. That’s just how it felt. Like it was talking. Or like Uncle Grey was talking to me (which, I admit, is kinda spooky).

  “Paaaaaaint meeeeeee,” whispered the canvas.

  I thought about seeing Lake at St. Mungo’s and I let my eyeballs wander around the attic at Uncle Grey’s paintings and drawings. They looked a lot like the John Olsen painting at school. Which was a good thing … right? I still had that weird tickle, but I decided to think about what that could mean later. Right now, the canvas was talking.

  “Come on, bud, we ain’t got all day.”

  I picked up a paintbrush—a real fat one that sat nicely in my hand. It felt good, as though it belonged there. At the metal sink in one corner, I poured some water into an empty plastic bucket, grabbed a tube of paint—ocher, since you ask—and mixed the paint with the water. I stood in front of the canvas for a few seconds, waiting. I don’t know what for, exactly. Inspiration? The return of my mojo? But then I plunged the brush into the water, drew back my painting arm, and dragged the brush across the white canvas in a messy, super-splashy, splodgy, orangey-brown circle.

  It felt great.

  THE NEXT DAY, Kasey called round to take me into the city. We were going to see the Olsens at the Art Gallery of NSW before heading to the Golden Blades Stadium, where Kasey and the rest of the Sydney Spitballers were having a practice session. I couldn’t wait. I’d never been to a roller derby.

  BTW, this wasn’t a date or anything icky like that. Just thought I’d make that clear.

  This was a NON-date.

  Which, of course, didn’t stop Mom and Georgia from acting like a couple of TOTALLY EMBARRASSING DOOFUSES when Kasey arrived.

  “Cool house,” she said, skating inside. “Funky.”

  Mom gave me a wink that was supposed to be secret but wasn’t. It was such an obvious wink that the draft from Mom’s eyelid knocked me off my feet.

  Georgia was even more obvious. “Is this your girlfriend, Rafe?” she said. “Oooooooooh!”

  I was about to protest when Kasey beat me to it. “No,” she said, all cool. “Socks and me are friends.”

  “Socks?” Georgia asked.

  Kasey pointed to me. “That’s what I call him.” She raised her eyebrows in a question. “Because of the socks he has to wear.”

  “Oh, yes,” Georgia said. “So is that friends friends, or boy and girl friends?” My sister isn’t someone who is put off easily.

  “Friends friends,” Kasey said. She skated expertly around the kitchen table and headed for the door. “Socks is a mate. Nothing else, okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So—thrrrrp to you, Georgia.” That thrrrrp was me blowing a raspberry, which may not have been the coolest thing I’ve ever done.

  We battled across the garden and set off down the hill toward the harbor.

  Next stop: Sydney!

  TO GET TO the Art Gallery of NSW, Kasey took me on a kind of instant Sydney tour. From East Fudge, we took a bus into the city and got off at Circular Quay. She was on her skates and I’d taken my skateboard, so we could move pretty fast.

  I’d seen the Sydney Big Stuff before in a thousand pictures—the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the, er … well, mainly the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge—but they looked even better in real life. For Kasey, who’d seen them a zillion times, it was nothing. She skated past with hardly a glance while I kept bumping into people because I was too busy goggling.

  Eventually, the Sydney Big Stuff was behind us and we skated around the Botanic Gardens to the gallery. A cool, old building sat right on top of a massive four-lane freeway called the Eastern Distributor. And I mean literally on top.

  Inside, we put our stuff in the cloakrooms (after Kasey had argued with a gallery guard about being able to keep her roller skates on—she lost) and headed to the Olsens.

  “It looks like a jellyfish,” I said.

  Kasey glared at me.

  “That’s a good thing!” I said, holding up my hands. “I like jellyfish!” (Tbh, I really don’t.)

  We were in front of a painting called Five Bells by John Olsen. It was only the second one I’d ever seen after the Big Spaghetti Splodge back in the Great Hall at St. Mungo’s, but it was enough for me to know I was definitely a fan.

  Five Bells was big—about thirty-three square feet—mostly blue and green and white and, no matter what Kasey thought, it did look like a jellyfish. A kind of fat blue-green shape sat over to one side with lots of trailing “tentacles” drifting down and across. The more you looked at it, the more you kept thinking you could see things in there, like the ocean, fish, buildings, and fields. The trouble was, when you zoomed in, the squiggles weren’t actually things at all … if you get what I mean.

  Do you get what I mean? It’s difficult to describe paintings, especially abstract paintings like Five Bells. Maybe just look it up. Go on, look it up. I’ll wait right here until you get back. Oh, and make sure you look up the 1963 painting—not the big mural at the Opera House, which is also called Five Bells and is also by John Olsen (just to make things even more confusing).

  OKAY?

  You saw it?

  Looks like a crazy jellyfish, right?

  It also, just like the Big Spaghetti Splodge at St. Mungo’s, reminded me of every painting at 322 Lorikeet Drive. That weird tickle was getting more ticklish. Could there be something fishy going on? Or was Uncle Grey just a really big Olsen fan?

  There were also plenty of fishy goings-on in the Five Bells painting.

  “Painted in 1963,” Kasey said, peering at the little label off to one side of the painting.

  We carried on through the exhibition. It was like dipping your eyeballs in sunshine and candy. Or maybe it was more like being in an aquarium. Or a funfair for your brain.

  We looked at McElhone Steps and Sydney Sun and Dry Salvages and drawings of lakes and giraffes and birds and swimming elephants and wrinkly old dudes and they were all fantastic.

  I hadn’t realized properly until then that painting could be fun as well as, y’know, “serious” and “brainy” and all the other stuff it’s supposed to be. By the time we’d reached the end of the exhibition, I wanted to race back to 322 Lorikeet Drive and continue painting up in the attic.

  “Pretty good, hey?” Kasey said. “But that’s enough art for today. Time for pie!” Kasey lifted her head like a dog catching a scent on the wind. She swiveled around and pointed toward the city. “Follow me!”

  We scooted across the Botanic Gardens and pulled up in front of what Kasey told me was a famous pie truck. What is it with Australians and pies?

  Kasey ordered while I found a bench in the shade. After a couple of minutes, she came back with a pie on a paper plate. There was roughly a bottle of tomato ketchup on top with a wooden fork stuck in the sauce like a flag.

  “Meat pie,” she said, and sat down. “I got you the curry one, seeing as how you’re all posh.”

  Even though I’d been to Oz twice before, I had, until now, managed to avoid eating one of their pies. “Pie” in America means something sweet, like apple pie, or banana cream pie. You know, tasty.

  The pale, sweaty-looking thing on my plate looked dangerous, as if it might explode, or mutate into a
giant slug. Maybe it was actually made of slugs? I prodded the pie with the fork and gave it an exploratory sniff.

  “What kind of meat is it?” I asked nervously. I needed a little more detail. For all I knew, there could be crocodile or budgie or cat in that pie. Or a combo of all three. This was Australia. They eat kangaroos here.

  “Dunno,” Kasey mumbled through a mouthful of pie. “Never thought about it before. It’s just meat, dude. She’ll be right. Dig in.”

  I shrugged and dug in. Apart from the pie being the temperature of a thermonuclear reactor core, she was right.

  THE MEAT PIE acted as a kind of air lock between all the hifalutin art we’d been looking at and my first visit to the Golden Blades Stadium.

  The stadium was in a totally different part of the city, so we got another bus that rattled west until Kasey jerked a thumb. “This is us.”

  The rundown industrial area where we got off seemed a million miles away from all the glitz of the Sydney skyscrapers. Kasey pointed at a dirty, white square building in the middle of a strangely glittering parking lot that was surrounded by a buckled and broken wire fence. A rusty metal sign missing a few letters and leaning at an angle stood at the entrance.

  “This is the place,” Kasey said, and skated off. “C’mon, I’m late!”

  When I got closer, I saw that the parking lot was glittering because of all the broken glass scattered around. It looked like a bottle-breaking convention had been held there. Weeds poked through cracks in the cement, and black tire marks looped in figure-of-eights across the whole place.

  “Hoons,” Kasey muttered.

  “Hoons?”

  “They come here at night and skid around in their cars and throw bottles out of the window.”