Read Online The Wish Pony by Catherine Bateson - Free Book Online Page B

doctor!
    â€˜I should go home,’ I said but fell into step with them.
    Magda looked at me. ‘You could send a message from Bailey’s place.’
    â€˜Send a message? You mean ring her?’
    â€˜Yes, of course – sorry, so last century. Bailey is fixing up a paperback computer for me.’
    â€˜Paperback?’
    â€˜She means a notebook. It’s a notebook computer, Magda. Think of making notes, not reading.’
    â€˜Ah, yes, notepad. Well, whatever it is, Bailey is fixing it and I’ll then be very much this century. You can phone your mother and tell her I’ll bring you home. It isn’t far. We’ll have got there and rung her well before she’s even thought of worrying.’
    â€˜Okay. If you’re sure I’m not a nuisance.’
    â€˜Not to me,’ Magda shrugged.
    â€˜No, of course not,’ Bailey said, as if it was entirely natural that I’d be walking home with him.
    My feet did a little skip-walk all of their own accord. I was walking home with Bailey Ferguson. I didn’t like him. Not the way every girl liked Curtis Shaw, Maddie Shaw’s big brother who was so hot he sizzled. But I’d always been curious about Bailey. Being one of the Geeketeers never bothered him. He always seemed happy. He was equally happy volunteering the answers for tricky maths or science questions as he was playing soccer – not something he could do at all. He didn’t seem to mind when he missed the ball and everyone laughed, or when his glasses fell off and he had to get down on his hands and knees and feel for them in the overgrown grass. He seemed to move around in a happy bubble. And I wanted to know how he did it.
    Bailey’s mum was there, sitting on the floor of the lounge room in the dark. The television wasn’t even on. I would have expected Bailey’s mum – maker of the edible Christmas tree and the Halloween treats – to be the kind of mother who would have whipped up a batch of muffins or anzac biscuits at the first sign of a visitor. But she just looked up, smiled the smallest smile that hardly lifted the sides of her mouth and stayed on the floor. She seemed to be listening to some music the rest of us couldn’t hear. Bailey went right up to her and put his arms around her, awkwardly because of the way she was sitting.
    â€˜How are you, Mu … Debbie? How has today been?’
    Bailey’s mum just nodded and whispered something I didn’t hear.
    â€˜That’s good. I’m pleased. Magda’s here because I’m helping her with her laptop and my friend Ruby from school is here too. She’s watching. She needs to ring her mother, okay? Just to tell her where she is. Magda lives right across the road from them, isn’t that amazing, Mum? I mean, Debbie?’
    Bailey’s mum looked up again and at me and nodded and smiled her unsmiling smile again. I couldn’t understand why Bailey was talking to her as though she was sick or deaf.
    I called Mum who said it was fine that I was at Bailey’s – wasn’t he one of those dux boys whose mum was a doctor? – and to make sure I thanked Magda for bringing me home. It was a blessing, really, she said, as she didn’t feel well at all. Not that that was strange these days.
    Magda’s notebook computer turned out to be almost the same as her phone – quite large and clunky. Nothing like my mum’s notebook which she used to run her card-making business, when it ran, which wasn’t lately. Magda’s notebook was more encyclopedia sized, I said, and Bailey snorted with laughter. I felt quite pleased to have made him laugh.
    While he showed Magda how to use MSN, I looked around the room. It was definitely boysville. The doona cover was Doctor Who. There were old socks under the bed and various bits of clothing strewn all over the floor but the laundry bag – navy blue with white writing that said ‘Wash