Froghopper: Part 2

By JOY COWLEY

The man in the boat-marina office was picking his nose with one hand and eating a sandwich with the other. Flea didn't want to disturb him. Adults could be sensitive about things like that. Already today, she'd been yelled at by Grandma, who had forgotten to bolt the dunny door, 'Why don't you flaming well knock?' Gran had bellowed. Too late. Flea was already running to tell her brother Pete that Grandma had red lace knickers with pink hearts draped around her knees. Afterwards, Grandma had laughed about it, but the marina man didn't look the laughing type. His face ran downhill in grumpy lines except for the nose that jiggled up and down on the end of his finger. Flea turned her back to the office windows and tried counting the white yachts parked in the marina: two, four, seven, twelve. Not that counting was her favourite thing, but it was a way of filling time. Fourteen, twenty, twenty-three.

'Hey kid! What are you doing?'

He was at the door with his half-eaten sandwich.

Flea took her hands out of her pockets. 'I'm lost,' she said.

'What?' He was quite old. Grey hairs sprouted through the gaps in his shirt like weeds through a pavement. 'What was that?'

'I'm supposed to be meeting my family at our boat,' Flea said, 'only I don't know where it is.'

'Oh yeah?' He took another bite. 'What boat is that?'

'I don't know the name. They only just bought it.'

The man looked Flea up and down: her bare feet, her faded shorts and T-shirts. He put the finger back in this nose, turned it like a corkscrew and withdrew it. 'I'll give you thirty seconds to vanish,' he said, 'then I call the cop shop.'

Publisher: HarperCollins

Price: $12.95

Age group: 7-10 yrs


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