Read Online The House That Was Eureka by Nadia Wheatley - Free Book Online Page B

street. He’s a schoolkid, she told herself. It was beneath her dignity to be seen on the street with him in broad daylight. That Friday night, that’d been okay, off in that place where no one could see them, but imagine if everyone saw her coming into CYSS with Noel.
    But when she got to CYSS, there was no one there who could have seen her. There was just a piece of paper flapping on the door:
    Because we’ve been
    running demos they’ve
    threatened to cut the
    funds and close this place.
    So we’re having a
    picket down at CYSS
    Headquarters.
    11–2
    Come along!!!
    It was all double dutch. Evie didn’t know what a picket was. Except for a picket fence. They’d had one of them in Campbelltown, painted white, out the front. In between the wide neat green lawn and the wide neat green nature strip. Evie suddenly felt homesick, and wished she could talk to Roseanne. Roseanne made her feel stupid sometimes, but she lived next door and was always there to talk to. Evie was lonely. An emptiness inside her.
    Evie caught the bus back to Newtown Bridge and instead of going straight home she cut down past Uncle George’s and sat by herself for a long time on the stage above the suburbs, till it was time to go and get Sammy.
    When she got home she realized she’d forgotten to lock her room.
    ‘I did not!’ Maria screamed.
    ‘I did not!’ screamed Jodie.
    (Noel heard the shouts from next door. He was in the kitchen, getting the despot’s afternoon tea.)
    They did not go in there, Maria and Jodie reckoned.
    ‘Then how come the bloody cupboard’s open, how come the top drawer’s open, how come you’ve got my hairbrush in your hand, Jodie?’
    ‘I did go in there but only just a minute ago, I didn’t open the cupboard, I just got your hairbrush,’ Jodie agreed.
    Jodie was a round kid, placid as a fish, and usually Evie didn’t mind her. It was Maria that drove Evie mental. Skinny, spiky, secretive Maria.
    But this day Evie grabbed the brush off Jodie and shook her.
    ‘Liar! You’ve been in there all afternoon, the both of you!’
    Just as Jodie burst into tears Ted came home, then Ted yelled at Evie, then Evie burst into tears just as Mum came home.
    ‘They get in my room! They hang around and follow me and use my brush on their nitty hair.’
    ‘We do not!’ Maria screamed.
    Mum sighed, and took her shoes off. ‘Why can’t you two just leave Evie alone?’
    ‘But there’s nothing else to do,’ Jodie said reasonably.
    (‘You could go and see Mr Man,’ Sammy said; but Maria grabbed her and dragged her into the loungeroom.)
    ‘I’m just an unpaid babysitter!’ Evie complained.
    ‘Unpaid!’ Ted yelled. ‘Are we meant to pay you, as well as keep you?’
    ‘I pay my board!’ Evie gave Mum twenty dollars each week, out of her thirty-six dollars dole.
    ‘It’s the rent that’s the worry,’ Ted muttered.
    Then Evie slammed into her room and locked her door while Mum burst into tears.
    Rows, Noel thought, hearing the noise from next door. Rows.
    On Sunday night he heard another one. Not the words, just the voices. This one was in the room next to his: Evie’s parents’ bedroom.
    ‘
You did what?
’ said Ted.
    ‘I bought a trampoline,’ said Evie’s mum. ‘That’s why I went out yesterday morning. They’ll be delivering it tomorrow.’
    It was late, too late for a row, but she hadn’t been game enough to tell him till now.
    ‘Just think, darl, how much the girls will get out of it, Jodie and Ree and Sammy, I mean. It’ll fit in the backyard . . .’ (That was about all that
would
fit in the backyard; you couldn’t swing a cat in this place!) ‘And it’ll give them something to do in the holidays. And Evie can teach them…’
    Evie had been in the A-grade trampoline team at school; it was the one thing she’d been really good at. She could do somersaults, and everything. But better keep off the subject of Evie, her mum thought.
    ‘...And the girls will love it,’ Evie’s mum repeated.