Pip and Houdini Read online

  ‘What?’ Pip was on the edge of her seat.

  ‘They announced the other finalist’s name. He’d won the Star, and I’d lost.’

  WINNERS AND LOSERS

  Wow! You came second!’ Pip thought it was amazing that, out of all the people competing – and the dozens who didn’t make it through to the final rounds played out on TV – Frankie had so nearly taken the prize. ‘That’s amazing. There are lots and lots of people who go on that show. Matilda told me. She reads a magazine that tells you what happens behind the scenes.’

  Frankie glared at her. ‘You don’t get it, do you? I lost.’

  ‘No you didn’t, you nearly won!’

  ‘But I didn’t win.’

  ‘But you must have been really good to come second.’

  Slumped in her seat, Frankie looked away. ‘Just shut up. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.’

  Pip was bewildered. Why would Frankie be so angry about an amazing achievement? And what had brought her from second spot in a wildly popular reality TV contest to stealing deluxe beach burgers?

  ‘Well, I’d like to hear you sing sometime.’

  Frankie hunched her shoulders and kept her face turned to the window. Pip sighed and helped Houdini to take a drink from her water bottle. She was wiping the lip, about to offer Frankie a drink, when they both heard the voice from the next carriage.

  ‘Tickets, please!’

  Pip bolted to her feet and caught a glimpse of the ticket collector in the next carriage. ‘Rats!’ She dived under the seat to haul out a protesting Houdini.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Frankie whispered.

  ‘Don’t you know? I thought you were too clever to get caught!’

  ‘We’re on a moving train, if you haven’t noticed.’ Frankie grabbed her guitar.

  The ticket inspector was getting closer. Pip made a decision. ‘This way. Hurry!’ With Houdini’s lead wrapped around her wrist, she led Frankie through the train away from him.

  ‘There are only two more carriages to go,’ Frankie panted, nearly knocking out a man with her guitar as she struggled to squeeze past a group standing in the corridor.

  ‘Just keep moving.’ Pip ploughed through but not too fast, not wanting to look suspicious. Eventually, they could go no further because the corridor was blocked with people getting luggage down from the racks.

  ‘Oh no!’ Frankie seemed on the verge of panic. ‘Do something, Pip!’

  Pip looked out the window. ‘The train’s slowing down. Maybe it’ll stop before he reaches us and we can get off.’ Although people were always leaping from moving trains in the movies, she reckoned it was one of those things you shouldn’t try in real life.

  The approach to the station seemed to take forever, and the ticket inspector determined to get to every last person before they had a chance to get out. Fortunately, he was slowed down by a few people who couldn’t find their tickets or who had the wrong ones, but just as they pulled to a stop, he entered their carriage.

  ‘We’re stuffed,’ Frankie groaned under her breath. From the scowl deepening her face, it looked as though she was preparing to argue her way out of strife. Meanwhile, the ticket inspector looked as though he’d heard every excuse on earth and off it a million times or more.

  ‘We’ll just have to make the best of it,’ Pip said, hoping he would understand if they explained they hadn’t had time to buy tickets and offered to pay now.

  ‘Tickets, girls!’ he called out.

  ‘Um, you see—’ Pip began.

  ‘What’s that?’ he interrupted, pointing at Houdini, who had stuck his nose out between Pip and Frankie’s legs.

  ‘It’s my dog,’ Pip explained. Oh no! Now she was going to be in trouble for taking a dog on board as well as having no ticket.

  ‘No dogs on trains, except assistance dogs. Is that an assistance dog?’

  All heads turned their way and Pip’s ears turned bright red. ‘No, but—’

  ‘No ifs, no buts. I’m going to have to make a report.’

  People crowded around them, keen to get off. Pip glanced desperately outside. She couldn’t see any way of escaping the trouble she was in, which would surely only worsen once the ticket man asked for her name.

  ‘Settle down, folks. I just need to take this young lady’s details and then you can all be on your way and the train will get moving again.’ He looked at Pip. ‘What’s your name, love?’

  There was nothing for it – Pip was going to have to lie, or else she was done for.

  ‘It’s…it’s—’

  An explosive noise ripped through the clamour of passengers gathering up bags, boxes, babies, and, in one case, trying to corral an umbrella that refused to stay closed. Everyone went quiet as the carriage filled with the stink of one of Houdini’s finest farts. Then…

  ‘Eurrgghh! What a pong!’

  ‘That’s disgusting! Who did that?’

  ‘Lemme out of here! I can’t breathe!’

  Ignoring the ticket inspector’s pleas, the crowd of travellers who had been waiting mostly patiently to get off decided they could wait no longer amid the suffocating pong. They surged towards the door, carrying Pip, Houdini and Frankie with them out of the train and across the platform towards the exit.

  Pip turned back briefly to see the ticket inspector leaning out of the train, calling, ‘Stop! Wait!’ But it was far too late and he could barely be heard above the hubbub of passengers getting off the train and the new arrivals getting on.

  ‘This way!’ Frankie grabbed her arm and they skidded towards a side exit.

  Pip glanced over her shoulder, and saw the ticket inspector close the door and the train slowly rumble forward on its journey.

  They ran out into the street, not stopping until they had turned the corner into relative safety.

  Frankie had a huge, cocky grin on her face as though everything had worked out exactly as she’d thought it would. ‘Told you, didn’t I?’ she said. ‘Stick with me, kid, and you’ll never get caught.’

  Her heart hammering as fast as a train at top speed, Pip could only shake her head in disbelief.

  ‘So, what next?’ Frankie said, as though she expected Pip to have a plan of action ready for any occasion.

  ‘Let’s keep walking.’ Pip wanted to get far away from the station. ‘Do you know where we are?’

  ‘Nup, never been here before.’

  They walked briskly along the shopping strip, putting as much distance as they could between them and the station. It was late in the afternoon, and only a few people were around. A couple gave them curious glances and Pip supposed they must make an odd-looking trio – Frankie in her big hairy coat, mop-headed Pip and Houdini, the world’s goofiest-looking dog.

  ‘Let’s turn up here.’ Pip pointed to a quiet residential street, keen to get away from prying eyes.

  ‘Saved by a fart! Hilarious!’ Frankie’s grin had returned. ‘Clever Houdini!’ She gave him a pat.

  Pip didn’t think there was anything clever about farting. Nevertheless, Houdini seemed to have more lives than the proverbial cat, and after this latest episode there was no doubt that her dog was the rightful namesake to the great escape artist, Harry Houdini.

  ‘We’ll have to stay here tonight.’ Pip didn’t want to risk returning to the station in case the ticket inspector had reported her.

  ‘Stay where?’ Frankie sneered.

  ‘Do you have a better plan?’ Pip thought that Frankie might be good at talking bulldust (as Sully would have said) and losing her cool when things went belly-up, but she wasn’t quite so great at making decisions.

  Frankie just shrugged.

  ‘Where do you usually stay?’

  ‘Pubs or motels usually.’ Frankie didn’t make eye contact and Pip figured the beach café probably wasn’t the first place she’d skipped out of without paying.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll be staying anywhere that comfortable tonight.’

  ‘Then where?’

  Pip had
been thinking hard as they walked about just that, and she thought she had an answer. After last night’s little misadventure in the van, vehicles were out. Breaking into an empty house didn’t seem to be an option either, with lights on in all the homes they passed.

  ‘Here.’ She stopped. Houdini sat on her foot and looked up in surprise.

  ‘On a sports oval?’ Frankie looked even less impressed. ‘Don’t think we’re exactly prepared for camping.’

  Pip pointed across the small three-tiered stand for spectators.

  ‘It has a roof in case it rains and benches to lie down on. And I don’t think anyone will want to play sport at night.’

  ‘We’ve got a guard dog, in any case,’ Frankie said as they walked across the sports field. When they got to the stand, she walked up to the top level and sprawled out on the bench, closing her eyes. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got anything to eat?’

  Pip sank down a short distance away and fished out the cookie. She broke it in half and gave Frankie one half. When she looked at Houdini, his eyes were fixed pleadingly on the cookie. She sighed and gave it to him. He wolfed it in one gulp. That was the last of the food.

  Making a pillow of her backpack, she lay down. The stars were starting to come out. Houdini jumped up beside her and laid his head on her belly. She stroked him as she thought about all that had happened in the last two days and the journey still to come.

  Pip had thought that Frankie was already asleep because she had been silent so long, but just as Pip’s eyes were beginning to close, Frankie’s voice drifted over to where she lay.

  ‘Where were you last Christmas?’

  ‘Living with my friend Sully in Spring Hill.’ Pip thought about her nine-year-old self without a clue that within a year Sully would be dead, that she’d have to go on the run to elude the welfare and that she would end up on a quest to find her long-lost mother.

  ‘This time last year I was famous,’ Frankie said, wistfully. ‘Now…I don’t know where I am.’

  ON THE RAILS

  Pip didn’t interrupt as Frankie explained how she’d found out that the people who made the TV show had built up her hopes of winning because that would make it more shockingly dramatic when she lost.

  ‘“It’s just TV”, that’s what they told me,’ she explained. ‘It would be too boring if the person the audience wanted and expected to win actually did. So they have to come up with a twist to make it good television.

  ‘They promised me that I would still get to record my songs and perform at some important events, but all I could think about was that I didn’t win.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Pip told her and then wished she’d kept her mouth shut. It obviously did matter to Frankie.

  ‘Mum and Dad said it didn’t matter, too, but it did!’ Her voice shook a bit. ‘So I did some stupid things, starting hanging out with people who just wanted to have a good time. I was at parties every night. One time I slept in and missed a radio interview I’d promised to do. Then I was late to sing at a Christmas concert for kids in hospital, and the record I’d been promised never happened.

  ‘The agent who was organising stuff for me said I had to be more professional. Mum and Dad told me to grow up. I ignored everyone, except the people I was hanging around with. Then, when I didn’t get asked to do any more shows or recordings or interviews and I wasn’t famous anymore, they told me they didn’t want to hang out with me. Mum and Dad said they were glad! We had a big fight, I left Melbourne and now I’m here.’

  ‘Oh,’ Pip said.

  Frankie mumbled, ‘I’ve really messed up, haven’t I? Now I’ve said it out loud, I can’t believe I was so stupid!’

  Houdini sat up, scrambled down off the bench and trotted away from Pip. A second later, she heard him jump up next to Frankie. From the sound of it, Frankie was crying into his fur.

  Pip thought about what Frankie had said. ‘Maybe you’ve done exactly what your mum and dad asked you to do.’

  Frankie sniffed and blew her nose. In a watery voice, she said, ‘Exactly the opposite, don’t you mean?’

  ‘My friend Sully told me that to be a grown-up you sometimes have to take a good long hard look at yourself.’

  ‘Then why do I still feel so small?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pip replied, surprised that Frankie felt that way. Until tonight, she had given the impression that she thought she was so much smarter than everyone else. ‘I feel like that, too, when I do a wrong thing. Perhaps everyone does.’

  Sniffing, Frankie said, ‘The people on the show told me you have to fake it till you make it.’

  ‘Like pretending?’

  Frankie made a noise that was somewhere between laughing and crying. ‘Yes. But I don’t think I can do it anymore.’

  ‘What did you pretend about?’ Pip asked.

  ‘Oh, everything! That I was cool and tough.’

  ‘You are cool and tough!’

  ‘I’m not. I’m just a…loser! Not because I lost the contest but because I lost the plot.’

  Pip sat up and looked over but she could barely see Frankie in the dark. ‘Everyone makes mistakes. I do it all the time.’

  ‘But you haven’t stuffed up like I have.’

  ‘Some people probably wouldn’t agree.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll find her? Your mum?’ Frankie asked.

  Pip looked out at the stars. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘At least you’re doing something important. I don’t know what I’m doing.’ Frankie’s voice was slurred with sleep.

  Pip lay down again on the uncomfortable bench. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘Tomorrow, first I want to eat the biggest breakfast you’ve ever seen, and then I’ll do something to make everything okay again. Tomorrow…’ Her voice drifted into silence. Pip waited for her to continue but then realised Frankie had fallen asleep.

  Soon after, Pip slept too but not soundly. Every strange sound half-woke her – the hoot of an owl, Frankie talking in her sleep, a car starting up in the distance. It was early when the birds began their chatter, and not long after that the sprinklers on the field sprang to life, sending great arcing showers from one corner to another.

  She sat up and looked around. Houdini was snoring and twitching on the bench where Frankie had been lying last night, but the girl was gone. Thinking she’d gone to try the bathrooms next to the stand, Pip walked down but found them locked. She ducked behind a bush to pee, then washed her hands and face in the sprinkler spray.

  ‘Frankie!’ she called out. When there was no answer, she walked right around the sports oval calling Frankie’s name. Back at the sports stand, Houdini was stretching and scratching. He looked up hopefully at Pip, but when she didn’t produce any food he ignored her and continued scratching.

  Where was Frankie?

  Pip waited until the sun rose way above the treetops and the sprinklers had switched off. Her stomach was grumbling like a volcano about to explode. She’d eaten nothing since yesterday afternoon, and though she filled her water bottle from the tap near the exit from the oval, she and Houdini wouldn’t survive very long without something to eat.

  She looked around for her backpack and spotted it on the ground. Thinking she must have knocked it off the bench while she was sleeping, she picked it up and was about to sling it over her shoulder and head back to town when she realised that it was lighter than it should have been. It was also open, whereas she always kept it zipped.

  Pip looked inside, rummaging with increasing desperation through her meagre belongings. The postcard and photos were there and so was her cap, but the Barbie wallet containing all her money was gone.

  GIVE AND TAKE

  Pip sat down on a bench, head in her hands. What was she going to do now?

  She was almost too upset to be angry with Frankie – that’s if it had even been Frankie who’d stolen her money. All sorts of possibilities flew through her mind. Perhaps Frankie had woken up to find someone taking Pip’s wallet and she’d c
hased after them and…

  But then why hadn’t Frankie come back?

  Pip had no answers, but there was no use crying over spilt milk, as Sully would have said (although he had always added that beer was an entirely different matter).

  After retracing their steps to the station to check the time of the next train north, which was not for another hour and a half, Pip and Houdini walked to the town square. It was market day, with dozens of stalls lined up, selling everything from fruit and veggies to jewellery to computer games to handmade cards. There was even one selling everything for pets, including dog biscuits. Houdini looked hopefully from the stall to Pip.

  ‘Maybe later, if we can get some money,’ she told him as her eyes alighted on the next stall and a germ of an idea planted in her brain.

  The stall glimmered and glittered with lights, tinsel, baubles and everything you needed to get ready for Christmas. A sign above depicted a toothy, goofy reindeer (RUDOLPH) next to a naked Santa’s helper (RUDE ELF).

  ‘Got everything you need for Christmas,’ said a large lady with a double chin, holding up a red nose. ‘Need a nose? I’ll throw in one free for your dog.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have any—’ Pip fished around in her pocket and found a dollar wedged right at the very bottom. ‘Is this enough?’

  The lady sighed but handed over the noses. Pip hoped they wouldn’t be a complete waste of the very last coin she had in the world.

  No one took any notice of them as Pip walked to the centre of the square in front of the market, dug her cap out of her pack and placed it upside down on the ground. Houdini sniffed at it, confused.

  ‘This could be a very bad idea,’ she muttered to him, attaching her own nose. ‘But it’s the only one I’ve got, so it will have to do.’ As an afterthought, as she fixed the red nose she’d bought from the stall to the end of his natural one, she told him, ‘Don’t fart.’

  A few people were starting to look towards her curiously, wondering what to expect. It was now or never. Pip took a deep breath and began to sing the only song she could remember some of the words to.