Pip and Houdini Page 2

  Annie’s frown cleared. ‘I’m a survivor. Even if I can’t run fast?’

  ‘You think fast. Maybe that’s just as important.’ Pip gave her a wave. ‘Thanks for explaining about the oxygen.’

  She walked out of the insect section, heading in the direction of the Afrovenator skeleton, which wasn’t hard to find as it was encircled by big crowds. Standing on two legs, its mighty head nearly at ceiling height, it stood as if poised to crush its prey between its enormous jaws.

  Pip stopped, transfixed by the sight. Even in skeletal form, it gave her the chills thinking about it rampaging after its fleeing, terrified prey. And when it roared—

  At that moment, someone did roar, and it wasn’t the African dinosaur but Ms Bristow. Actually, it was more of a screech from a teacher who was Pip’s least favourite. Whereas Mr Blair had done his best to understand and help her when Sully had become sick and died, Ms Bristow – stiff and disapproving – had never tried to hide her disdain for Pip’s rebellious ways. But she’d never actually yelled at Pip before.

  ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing? Come here, right this minute! I mean it!’ Ms Bristow shrieked. ‘I’ve had enough of your antics, do you hear!’

  WHAT A GOOSE

  Pip froze, expecting all eyes to fall accusingly on her. But they didn’t. In fact, even Ms Bristow wasn’t looking at her but towards the idiot who’d climbed on top of a model of a mid-sized dinosaur that looked a bit like a large turkey, and was pretending to ride it.

  ‘Spiro! Come down from there this minute!’ Ms Bristow screamed. ‘I’m telling you for the last time. Get off and come here!’

  The rest of 5A and 5B were laughing out loud and pointing as Spiro showed off, his dark eyes glowing green under the museum lighting, and Ms Bristow yelled that he’d soon be extinct himself if he didn’t get down. Pip was pushed aside as the crowd that had been inspecting Afrovenator turned to gawp at Spiro, the turkey-tamer. Then security rushed past, including Annie.

  Pip grinned. It was a pretty funny moment – typical Spiro. He was such a goose. Even better was imagining her nemesis being grounded for the entire summer holidays in punishment. It was unlikely – his mum and grandma let him get away with murder – but it was a nice thought.

  Spiro, she thought, was too stupid to be a survivor. But Pip wasn’t, and she needed to get going before her luck ran out and she was spotted. If she and Houdini caught a bus soon, she’d be home in twenty minutes and hopefully Mrs Browning would never know that they hadn’t been in the park all this time.

  She walked out of the museum and down the steps, blinking in the blinding sunlight, and ran straight into Mrs Browning, who was rushing up the steps, stricken with panic.

  Busted, big time. Pip gulped. Who was the goose now?

  ‘Pip! Thank goodness. Oh, thank heavens.’ The words tumbled out of Mrs Browning in a rush. ‘I thought you’d run away. I didn’t know what had happened to you, if you’d run away or been abducted. You might have been hurt! Anything could have happened. How would I explain it to Child Protection and the police, even to Michael and Tilly? I’d have to admit it was my fault for letting you go to the park on your own.’

  ‘Um,’ was all Pip could manage before Mrs Browning’s relief turned to bewilderment.

  ‘How could you do this? I just don’t understand. Matilda would never—’

  Pip couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t think of one single excuse. If she’d felt bad yesterday, this was a million times worse.

  Mrs Browning’s shoulders slumped and she rubbed a hand across her face. ‘You have no idea how I felt when I couldn’t find you in the park. I didn’t know what had happened. I nearly had an accident driving here.’ She glanced towards the car parked illegally at the bottom of the steps that, right now, was being ticketed by a parking inspector.

  Pip thought Mrs Browning might be crying and felt sick at the thought that she’d made her so upset.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed. ‘I just wanted to see a real-life dinosaur skeleton. I thought I’d be back before you noticed Houdini and I were gone.’

  ‘Houdini?’ Mrs Browning stuttered, as though she’d forgotten all about him. She looked around and spotted him under the tree, snoring his head off.

  As Pip unhooked his lead from around the tree, he opened one eye, yawned and stretched before getting up. He went to sniff Mrs Browning’s shoes, leather being a particularly favourite scent of his.

  ‘Houdini,’ Mrs Browning murmured again. She looked defeated, as though she wasn’t quite sure what to do. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re both all right, I really am. But, Pip, you just can’t do this kind of thing. You can’t just wander off anytime you want. Did you even stop to think how much trouble Michael and I would be in?’

  Pip was saved from having to say ‘no’ by the sound of Matilda’s voice above the din 5A and 5B were creating as they burst out of the museum lobby. A red-faced Ms Bristow had a firm hand on the shoulder of an unrepentant Spiro, whose face brightened when he saw Pip.

  ‘Look, Ms Bristow! It’s Pip. I thought she was grounded.’

  ‘So did I.’ Ms Bristow pursed her lips.

  ‘Mum, Pip! What are you doing here?’ Matilda chimed in. ‘And Houdini?’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Pip muttered. ‘I wanted to see Afrovenator so Houdini and I caught the bus.’

  ‘Well, I’m just glad I found you both,’ Mrs Browning said, although she sounded more defeated than glad.

  ‘Oh, man!’ Spiro grinned at Pip’s predicament. ‘That’s a terrible thing to do. Ms Bristow, what Pip did is shocking, far worse than riding a Caudipteryx. I think you should give her detention. Maybe you should suspend her, even.’

  ‘Just be quiet, Spiro. I’ve had quite enough of you for one day. Now get on the coach with the others, up the front where I can keep an eye on you.’

  As Spiro ambled off towards the rest of 5A and 5B, Ms Bristow said to Mrs Browning, ‘I’m sure you’ll deal with Pip as you see fit.’

  From the look on her face, ‘fit’ was possibly a stint in juvenile detention. Pip hunched her shoulders and stared at the ground.

  ‘I’ll take Matilda with us, if that’s okay,’ Mrs Browning told her. ‘One less for you to worry about.’

  ‘Oh, Matilda’s never given us a moment’s worry.’

  Of course she hadn’t. Matilda was perfect in everyone’s eyes. Pip didn’t think she could feel any worse, but she did. The Brownings already had the perfect child. Why would they want one who was so far from perfect it wasn’t funny?

  They drove home in an uncomfortable silence. Even Matilda’s chatter about the museum exhibits and Spiro’s antics cutting their visit short eventually tapered off.

  ‘Pip, go to your room,’ Mrs Browning said, when they reached Number 30 Elliott Street. ‘I’ll bring you some lunch in a while.’

  When Matilda and Houdini would have followed, Mrs Browning stopped them. ‘I think Pip needs some time on her own to reflect on her actions.’

  Matilda mouthed ‘sorry’, and they disappeared into the kitchen after her mother. Pip sloped up the stairs and into her bedroom, and sat on the bed. It wasn’t even really ‘her’ room or ‘her’ bed, just the ones she’d been given. All her stuff – not that she had much – was either in her backpack or in the crate beneath her bed, the one she’d been in when she was abandoned by her mother on Sully’s doorstep.

  Dragging it out, she traced the faded letters on the side. ‘Best quality Cox’s Orange Pippin’, it said in elaborate twirling letters. They were a kind of apple, Sully had told her one day when she’d asked where her name had come from. There wasn’t much in the crate – a soft toy that Sully had given her, known as Bear even though it looked more like a dog, a skateboard that didn’t run straight and a few old books she’d bought when the school library had its annual sale with everything priced at a dollar.

  Her most precious things – the blanket she’d been wrapped in when Sully had found her, the photo of her
mother Cassandra, another of Sully and his Em, and Cass’s postcard to Sully from Byron Bay – were in her backpack. She never went anywhere without them or the Barbie wallet she hated, which had the remaining cash she’d won on the horses – money she’d raised to pay for Sully’s rehab, only for him to die before he got to go.

  There would be some more money once their house – Sully’s and hers – in Greene Lane was sold. Pip had had the idea to use it to hire someone to search for her mother, but the Brownings had told her that it would be kept in a bank for her until she turned eighteen, almost eight long years away. If the police were having trouble finding Cass now, what luck would they have in eight years’ time?

  Someone knocked on the door and Pip hastily stuffed the crate back under the bed. When she opened the door, she found not Mrs Browning but Matilda with a tray containing a sandwich and a glass of orange juice.

  ‘Mum sent me up. Are you okay?’

  ‘I suppose.’ Pip shrugged.

  ‘I’m not supposed to talk to you. Mum’s really upset, you know.’ Matilda put down the tray on the chest of drawers.

  ‘I didn’t mean to upset her. I didn’t think she’d find out.’

  ‘That’s what she’s upset about – well, partly. I heard her talking to Dad on the phone. It’s not just that you were supposed to be grounded. It’s that you tried to deceive her. And you frightened her.’

  ‘I know. I told her I was sorry.’

  Matilda went to the door and hesitated. ‘She said…’

  ‘What?’ Pip asked, even though she was sure it wasn’t going to be anything she wanted to hear.

  Matilda pressed her lips together as though she was trying to rein in a secret, but in the end she just couldn’t do it.

  ‘Oh, Pip! She said she’s not sure it’s going to work out, you living here. They’re going to talk it over when he gets home.’ Her round blue eyes looked unusually serious. ‘Pip, you have to tell them you’re really, truly sorry, and that you won’t do anything like that ever again.’

  But what if I can’t?

  The words almost spilled out before Pip could stop them, but now they were in her head and she couldn’t un-think them. How could she make a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep? What if the life she’d led up until now meant she never could fit into a nice, normal family like the Brownings?

  Living with Sully, there had never been any rules beyond ‘use your noodle’ and ‘don’t be a chump’. So Pip had become used to making her own decisions and doing what she thought was right.

  When Matilda left, she drank the juice but left the sandwich untouched. She felt too sick in her stomach to be hungry. She stayed upstairs even when she heard Houdini bark, the front door slam and Mr Browning’s voice call out that he was home. An hour later, she slunk down for dinner, feeling lower than a snake’s belly, as Sully would have said.

  Mrs Browning barely said a word during dinner; neither did Pip. It was left up to Matilda and Mr Browning to carry the conversation. Pip concentrated on eating the stirfry that struggled to get past the lump in her throat.

  ‘I suppose I should ask you what you thought about the exhibition, too,’ Mr Browning eventually said, turning to Pip.

  ‘It was good,’ she muttered, wondering if they would be less angry with her if she told them she hadn’t enjoyed it at all. ‘But I only saw the Afrovenator and some prehistoric insects.’

  ‘Well, that’s—’

  ‘I just don’t understand why you did it!’ Mrs Browning suddenly burst out, over the top of Mr Browning. ‘Why you defied us like that just to go to the museum!’

  ‘I wanted to see the dinosaurs. I’d never seen one before,’ Pip tried to explain.

  Bewildered, Mrs Browning looked at her husband and back at Pip. ‘But you all went to the history of palaeontology exhibition in Parramatta last year. I remember your class going because Tilly didn’t stop talking about it for at least a week after.’

  Pip didn’t know what to say. The class had gone to the exhibition, but without Pip because she and Sully didn’t have enough money to pay for the excursion. She’d had to stay at school with Ms Brewster. Shame flooded her and so she said nothing.

  ‘Well,’ Mr Browning patted his wife’s hand, a forced smile on his face. ‘What’s done is done. Pip, why don’t you take Houdini out into the garden for a few minutes while Tilly loads the dishwasher? Then I think an early night for you both might be the best thing.’

  But when Pip went to bed, she didn’t read. She didn’t even get into her pyjamas or go to sleep. Instead, she thought for a long time, asking herself what she should do now. In the end, the only answer was that she had to go, this very night.

  The Brownings didn’t really want her, not after today, and if she left it until morning, it might be too late and the welfare would come to take her away. She should leave, while she had the chance. She should do what the police had not and travel north to Byron Bay where her mother had once lived.

  So she stuffed her backpack with a few essentials, waited in the dark, lying fully dressed under the covers pretending to be asleep until Mr Browning called goodnight through the door, and then she waited some more.

  Only when the house was silent did she rise noiselessly, pick up her backpack, and creep into Matilda’s room to leave a note where her friend would see it in the morning. She tiptoed down the stairs. There was no sign of Bruce the cat, who liked to roam the streets at night, but Houdini got up from his bed in the kitchen when he heard her, as though he’d been waiting for her. He held his lead in his mouth as if a midnight walk was something he did all the time!

  ‘No, Houdini,’ she whispered. ‘You’re better off here. The Brownings will look after you and give you bones to chew and take you to the park, and you’ll have your comfortable bed they bought for you. I don’t know when I’ll next have a bed.’

  Houdini just grinned at her in his silly way and wagged his tail. When she went to the door, he trotted after her.

  ‘Go back to bed, Houdini,’ she hissed. ‘Go to sleep.’

  She opened the door a crack and shimmied out, but before she could close it, Houdini had wriggled through, too.

  ‘You’re a stupid dog,’ she told him in a low voice. ‘Stay here where you’re safe.’

  But he sat down and began to scratch. When Pip tried to shove him back inside, he ran in circles, thinking it was a game of catch. Pip couldn’t risk hanging around until he was ready to go back inside. So she shut the door softly and left him on the porch watching her as she walked away from Number 30 Elliott Street through the warm night air.

  THE SECRET STOWAWAYS

  Pip had reached the far side of the park when the faint sound of barking made her turn around. There he was, Houdini, picking up the lead he’d dropped and trotting steadily towards her – as though he was out on an afternoon walk and not absconding in the middle of the night.

  What was she supposed to do now? If she returned him to the Brownings, she risked discovery. If she just left him on the loose in Spring Hill, there was no telling what mischief he’d get into, especially around busy roads. Houdini had all the road sense of a speed bump.

  ‘Go home,’ she told him sternly, wagging a finger at him. He dropped his lead, bounced up and licked her finger.

  Pip sighed. The message obviously wasn’t getting through. In desperation, she looked around for a stick, spotted one and hurled it as far as she could back across the park towards Elliott Street. She hoped he would race after it, giving her a chance to disappear from sight. When he couldn’t find her, he’d turn back towards the Brownings’ – hopefully.

  But Houdini, who would chase joyfully after balls, sticks, birds, even on one occasion a Coke can, which he’d collected and dropped at the feet of the tosser (much to the man’s dismay and embarrassment), was having none of it tonight. Giving it barely a glance, he looked up expectantly at Pip as if to ask, Where are we going?

  ‘Don’t look at me like that!’ she said. ‘All I know is that
I’m going north to try and find my mum. I don’t know how I’ll get there, which way to go or how long it will take. I don’t even know where I’ll sleep tonight, so if you follow me, that’s what you’re getting yourself into. So don’t blame me when you don’t get a soft bed to sleep on, Mr Browning’s old shoes to chew and a juicy bone every week.’

  It was difficult to tell if any of that had sunk in. Houdini’s expression rarely changed from one of hope – for dinners, walks, bones, belly rubs, car trips and all the things that he’d enjoyed over the past few weeks. But Pip hoped her tone of voice had conveyed the seriousness of their situation.

  What she’d said was true. She had no idea where they were going to sleep tonight, only that it needed to be out of sight. Anyone who spotted a kid out alone so late would be sure to call the cops. And when the Brownings discovered her gone in the morning, they would have the authorities looking high and low, so she needed to stay off the streets as much as possible.

  But where? She couldn’t return to Greene Lane; it would be the first place everyone would look. She had experience of breaking into houses – one house, anyway – but that meant roaming the streets until she found a likely house. Same with cars, unless…

  Inspiration struck. If she could find an unlocked car in a carpark that didn’t have round-the-clock security, that would work. She wasn’t too worried about the owner finding them fast asleep tomorrow morning; at this time of year, she and Houdini would be woken at dawn by the sun. At first light, they would be on the move before anyone knew they were missing.

  Pip knew the local supermarket where she and Sully used to do their shopping had a large carpark and it was just ten minutes’ walk.

  ‘Come on, Houdini,’ she said. ‘I know where we’re going.’

  Once they passed the Spring Hill neighbourhood where she’d lived with Sully – where the nights were sometimes noisier than the days with cars doing doughnuts, people fighting and music turned up loud – the silence returned. Even Little High Street seemed quiet, although Pip took a back street to be on the safe side. They met no one on the road, and it didn’t take long to reach the carpark.