Froghopper: Part 5

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.'

'Honest! said Flea. 'It's a launch -- 38 feet long and it's got a 250 horsepower diesel engine.'

'That's about half the launches in this marina,' said the man, 'and a fair number of them get broken into by brats like you. If I had my way, there'd be no waste of public money on Family Courts and counselling. I'd give you counselling right enough. A good boot up the arse! Now, scram!'

Flea took a step backwards. The man's face was red and his eyes were as hard as concrete. 'I am meeting my family,' she insisted. 'Grandma, Mum and Dad, my brother and sister --'

'I warned you! he yelled. 'This marina's private property. If you don't move pronto, I'm picking up that phone --'

Flea folded her arms. 'Call the police,' she said.

'What?'

'Go ahead! Phone the police! They help lost kids. I'm a kid. I'm lost and you won't help me.'

The man went still and his concrete look shifted. He sniffed, coughed and then spat less than a metre from her feet. 'Come inside,' he growled, holding open the door. 'Sit where I can see you, and don't touch a thing, you hear?'

As if I would, thought Flea. The office was a mess and it didn't smell too good. Maybe it was the man who ponged, of maybe it was last week's sandwiches. No. it was definitely the man. As she perched on the edge of a wooden chair, Flea changed her mind about being a famous surgeon. If people smelled like this on the outside, what were their insides like?

He squeezed himself back into the space behind his desk. 'All right, lad. What's your name?

'I'm a girl,' she said.

He looked up quickly. 'What?'

She spelled it for him. 'A g-i-r-l!'

'I didn't -- You looked -- I wouldn't have yelled at you, if I'd realised --'

That's sexist, she wanted to say, but instead she told him, 'My name's Flea Green.'

'Flea?' Then he said what all adults said. 'I suppose you get called that because you can't sit still.'

She gave the usual answer. 'No. When I was young that's how I pronounced my real name, which is Felicity.'

'You don't look all that old now,' he said.

'I'm eleven,' she replied.

He picked up a pencil and put the end between his teeth. At least, she thought, it wasn't up his nose. But maybe it had been. She found herself staring at the red nostrils with their tufts of grey hair.

Publisher: HarperCollins

Price: $12.95

Age group: 7-10 yrs


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