Elizabella Meets Her Match Read online

  Soon more kids were getting wind of the plan, arriving with other items that could keep the bottom of the pool sealed – plastic bags, bin liners, raincoats.

  Sandy came up to Elizabella, his arms full of big stones. “To weigh down the plastic when we fill up the pool,” he explained. He put them on the ground, and pulled a glue stick out of his pocket. “And this is for leaks!”

  “Genius,” said Elizabella.

  Sandy got to work strategically placing the stones around the base of the sandpit, where they would keep the plastic anchored to the ground.

  Before long, it was looking sturdy. Huck had returned, with dozens and dozens of kids, each of them armed with as many Lemony Pinches as they could carry.

  “Fill her up?” asked Huck.

  “Fill her up,” said Elizabella, folding her arms with satisfaction.

  And with that, everyone started gathering around the edge of the pit, squeezing box after box of the putrid substance onto the scrappy plastic base. The juice level began to rise and rise.

  Eventually, after what felt like ten minutes (because it was), the sandpit had been transformed.

  Elizabella stood in front of it, and commanded everybody’s attention.

  “Before I declare her officially open, there are some people I would like to thank. Yes, it may have been my idea, but it takes many brave and dedicated people to turn a tired, old sandpit into a beautiful swimming pool. This couldn’t have happened without all of you who donated your plastic goods for her trusty base. Special mention to Sandy, who had the inspired idea of adding stones to make sure the plastic didn’t rise to the top. A big thanks to Huck and his team for going through all the lunch boxes and all the bins to rescue all the Lemony Pinches. To all the collectors, all the assemblers and all the popper squeezers, thank you. And, of course, the biggest thanks of all goes to our parents. Thanks for being so stingy that you provided us with enough undrinkable liquid that we could literally make a pool!”

  Huck sensed that the lengthy speech was coming to an end, so he started to clap. Everybody followed suit.

  “And now,” continued Elizabella, turning to the creation, “I name you ‘Pit Pool’. Good luck to all who swim in you.”

  Elizabella cast a popper into the pit. It squelched. “I hoped it would burst . . . it’s how they do it with boats.” She stood back, taking in Pit Pool for the first time.

  It was murky, yellow, full of debris and it had a sour musk emanating from the surface.

  It was glorious.

  “Sandy, you first,” said Elizabella.

  Sandy jumped in and started wading, his tongue sticking out with joy like a puppy.

  Elizabella stepped into the pool. After a moment’s hesitation, Huck stepped in too. Unlike Elizabella and Sandy, he had rolled up his pants and taken off his shoes and socks first. Ava and Evie kicked off their shoes and joined them.

  Soon enough all the kids were getting in and out, splashing around and having the time of their lives. They threw balls back and forth, and played piggy in the middle. They did handstands. They pretended to be seals and dugongs and sea horses and sea cats, even though sea cats didn’t exist – they didn’t care.

  “This is even cooler than the Bilby Creek Fete!” someone yelled.

  Even Daphne was in there, although she did make a point of tying her pigtails together up into a bun high on her head so that they wouldn’t get wet and said “No running near the pool!” over and over even though nobody was listening.

  Was it the best pool in the world? Goodness, no. Was having any pool randomly appear in the school even if it was foul and stinky the best thing in the world? Pretty much!

  Then the clouds started to come in and the sun began to disappear.

  Or at least that’s what it seemed like . . .

  A piercing whistle rang throughout the playground. As the kids scurried out of the pool, Elizabella realised that it wasn’t clouds blocking the sun. It was the towering shape of Mr Gobblefrump.

  He screamed, for what appeared to be a full minute. To the untrained eye walking into this situation it wouldn’t have been obvious who had instigated Pit Pool. But this wasn’t Mr Gobblefrump’s first rodeo. A stunt like this only had one person’s name on it – that very name he had just screamed for eternity.

  Elizabella sat in the Think Very Hard About What You’ve Done Corner, reserved for particularly big trouble. It was in Mr Gobblefrump’s office where he kept snow globes with pictures of himself on the shelves behind his chair. Elizabella thought this was a strange hobby. Only ten minutes ago she had been drenched in pool juice, surrounded by her adoring peers. And now she was in a spare uniform from the Lost and Found that was not only way too small, it was also the school dress, which Elizabella thought was all types of wrong. Elizabella looked down at the dangly necktie on the dress. The end of the tie was dark and worn like it had been sucked on every day by its previous owner, which it undoubtedly had.

  She could hear Mr Gobblefrump in the playground yelling at everyone. He was so angry, his words were jumbling together like a shouty soup. Next he would be in to give her a gold-standard telling off.

  Elizabella knew that teachers were never really angry. She’d seen it often enough: they’d laugh with one another, then turn to a kid, yell like that kid had just stepped on a kitten, then promptly turn back to the other teacher and start laughing once more. They pretended to be angry during a telling off in an effort to bring some gravity to the situation. However, Elizabella suspected that Mr Gobblefrump was an exception to the rule and that he genuinely was furious most of the time. Either that or he deserved a Merit Certificate for Outstanding Performance in the Field of Angriness.

  Elizabella thought she’d take advantage of this quiet time before the Mr Gobblefrump scream-a-thon to work on another haiku in her mind.

  Huck has a nice smile,

  A nice personality

  And he has nice ears

  She blushed. Why am I embarrassed? I am embarrassed for admitting I like Huck in front of my own brain! OMG . . . Did I just tell myself that I like Huck? Like like like?

  And with that, Elizabella scrunched up the thought like a piece of paper and tossed it into her mind-bin, put the mind-bin into a mind-cannon and shot it into mind-space where it could never make her blush again.

  When Elizabella got home that afternoon her dad was in the garden, covered in dirt with a big grin on his face. “Look, Elizabella!” He beckoned her outside. “Mum’s waratah!”

  Elizabella knew that her mum, Audrey, had grown up in a tiny apartment. When she moved in with Elizabella’s dad, it was the first time Audrey had ever lived somewhere with a garden. She loved the garden, but she was hopeless when it came to growing anything in it. Audrey had tried planting basil and parsley, daisies and poppies. But she was easily distracted from the task of nurturing the plants, and whatever she planted inevitably ended up shrivelled and brown – if it ever emerged from being seeds in the ground at all.

  Once for her birthday, Martin had planted Audrey a waratah shrub. He’d said it was hers to look after because it was the type of plant that would thrive even if you might accidentally neglect it from time to time. Elizabella’s mum had loved that waratah and it did thrive, even though she forgot about it often. It thrived now, even though Audrey had passed away. Elizabella’s mum was up in the sky somewhere along with Gran, all the worms that had come and gone from Squiggly Manor and Elizabella’s cat Oldcarpetina (named so because when they got her she was already so old she had almost no fur left, and Elizabella thought she resembled a very wise, old carpet).

  Elizabella went out into the garden where her dad was proudly pointing to the big red flower coming out of the shrub.

  “Mum can still make it flower!” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Elizabella. “Nice one, Mum.”

  “Remember when she tried to grow tomatoes and instead she grew an ant colony?”

  Elizabella laughed. Her mum had been so bad at growing things. Exc
ept for ants. And waratahs. And Elizabellas. She was excellent at growing those. Even her experiment at growing a Toddberry had something going for it, Elizabella supposed.

  “Now I’ve worked up a thirst!” her dad said. “Chocolate milkshakes?”

  “Sounds great, Dad.”

  Elizabella followed her dad back inside the house. It was nice to see him so happy and Elizabella’s heart sank knowing she was about to really kill the mood by giving him the letter that was in her bag . . . Maybe she’d wait a bit longer.

  She sat on a stool by the kitchen bench while her dad got to work on the milkshakes.

  “Remember when Mum tore two pairs of jeans and then tried to take the good bits of each pair and staple them together to make a new pair of jeans?” Elizabella asked.

  Martin laughed. “They were the worst pair of jeans I’d ever seen!”

  “And then she insisted on wearing them to the Bilby Creek Good Time Supermarket just to prove that they worked.”

  “I was so embarrassed!” said Martin. “I hid in the car while she went in!”

  They drank their chocolate milkshakes.

  “How was school?” Martin asked.

  School was not something Elizabella wanted to talk about, because it would quickly lead to the letter in her bag.

  She quickly changed the topic. “Let’s play snap! I really want to play snap!”

  “Okay?” said Martin, a tad confused.

  Elizabella didn’t even like snap. She ran out of the room, cursing herself silently in her head for not suggesting a game she actually enjoyed, like gin rummy.

  After she returned with the cards, they played a few rounds.

  “So, Elizabella, how was school?” her dad asked again.

  “Have you done the crossword in the Bilby Creek Gazette? We have to do the crossword in the Bilby Creek Gazette!” she said, hurriedly.

  “We do? I didn’t know you–”

  Elizabella had already run out of the room in search of the paper.

  After the crossword, Elizabella suggested sudoku. Then she made her dad read out all the items in the trade and personal sections of the paper, as well as the advice column. He drew the line at the real estate pages.

  “Elizabella, I think we’ve had all the joy we can from the Bilby Creek Gazette today,” he said.

  “Don’t you want to see what the median rental price of a two-bedroom unit in Bilby Creek is?” Elizabella asked.

  “Ummm, no,” said Martin, closing the paper. “Elizabella, how was school?”

  “Well, Dad . . .”

  Her number was up.

  A few minutes later, Elizabella was watching her dad’s eyes. They would widen, then narrow, as his brows arched and furrowed while he sat at the kitchen table reading the letter that had been sent home with her that day. He was trying to process what Elizabella had done. He was reading the words but he couldn’t make them stick together in a comprehensible order. Instead, they floated around his head like balloons randomly bobbing across the sky. Pool. Gobblefrump. Sandpit. Poppers.

  The letter had been transcribed by Mr Biffington, who ran the Bilby Creek Primary School office with his partner Mr Crab. Mr Biffington and Mr Crab hyphenated their names when they got married on the Gold Coast, so technically they were both Mr Biffington–Crab. To avoid confusion they used their original names at school.

  That afternoon, when Mr Gobblefrump had eventually come to see her in the Think Very Hard About What You’ve Done Corner, Elizabella couldn’t be too sure exactly what he had said. He had screamed so high, he sounded like an oboe. From outside the office in the playground, Huck, who was waiting for Elizabella, could have sworn he saw a crack appear in the glass of the office window.

  After that, Elizabella was taken in to see Mr Biffington, where she had to explain what she had done in full detail. Elizabella loved this; it was like being interviewed for the Bilby Creek Gazette. And as Elizabella explained her inspiration, the resources and the sheer human effort involved in the creation of Pit Pool, Mr Biffington had to stifle a Real Human Response.

  This was a thing Elizabella had noticed teachers doing all the time. When a kid did something really cool or funny that a teacher didn’t want to acknowledge, they would often try to hide their Real Human Response. Sometimes they would fake a coughing fit, make a series of garbled grunts or, in extreme cases, turn around and run away.

  Mr Biffington’s strategy was to put a handkerchief to his mouth, hiding an involuntary expression of awe, and squint very deeply through his tortoiseshell glasses, masking a look of disbelief. Elizabella was confident that he and Mr Crab would be singing Pit Pool’s praises over dinner at home that night.

  Now, at the kitchen table, Martin had finally finished the letter. He was starting to grasp what had happened.

  “You made a pool . . . from juice . . .?”

  “Yeah. I named her Pit Pool.”

  Martin let out a big sigh.

  “Dad, are you okay?” Elizabella asked, as she watched Martin drawing circles around his temples with his fingers.

  Then he looked at his watch and sat bolt upright with a start.

  “6.30!” he cried. “I have to go!” Elizabella was confused. Where could her dad possibly have to go in such a hurry?

  “Where?”

  “Ahh . . .” said Martin, already on his feet, “nowhere . . . somewhere . . .”

  “What?” asked Elizabella, who had followed him into the bathroom where he was dabbing cologne on his neck. Martin pulled a fifty-dollar note out of his wallet and put it in Elizabella’s hands.

  “Seeing an action film. Order pizza,” he said with a sense of finality. Clearly he had no desire to discuss the matter of his mysterious outing any further.

  Why is Dad racing out to see an action film? He never goes to the cinema . . . But pressing the matter opened the door to more Pit Pool trouble. So, even though it was extremely hard, she swallowed all of her curiosity.

  “Okay Dad,” she said. “Have fun!” And he promptly left the house. Elizabella went back into the kitchen.

  “What about dinner?” said Toddberry, swishing the hair curtains out of his face to reveal a snarl.

  He’d been sitting at the kitchen table this whole time, drawing a beast on his forearm. Elizabella looked at Toddberry’s inky creation. It was a snake with the head of a dog. Elizabella suspected he had chosen to make the body a snake because it was easier to draw than the body of the dog, but she thought the better of suggesting it.

  Elizabella pondered the fifty-dollar note scrunched in her fist. I could order pizza, she thought, or I could make Toddberry a special dinner AND give Dad back his money. Win-win!

  “I’ll cook dinner,” she said.

  “What are you going to make? A picture of spaghetti bolognaise?” said Toddberry.

  Elizabella went to the fridge and started pulling things out. A jar of chocolate spread, two carrots, three leftover spring rolls and anything else that looked vaguely within its use-by-date.

  She had soon set up a veritable picnic on the table. She put a plate in front of Toddberry and one at her own place. Toddberry stared at dinner which, along with the aforementioned, included strawberry yoghurt, a jar of capers, a cup of cold pea soup and a lettuce leaf. As a final touch, Elizabella put the Sorry Haiku she’d finally settled on in front of him.

  Picture was funny

  But made Toddberry hungry

  For this, I’m sorry

  “Thanks,” he managed. “It’s not umm . . . good, no offence.”

  “It’s a haiku.”

  “Just because it has a fancy name, doesn’t mean it’s good,” said Toddberry.

  “It’s a Japanese poem with three lines that have five syllables, then seven, then five,” she explained.

  Toddberry thought for a moment. Then he swished his hair out of his face and started counting on his fingers as he said:

  “E-LIZ-A-BEL-LA,

  DO YOU CALL THIS MESS DIN-NER?

  ME-GA DI-SA
S-TER.”

  Elizabella was impressed. “Wow, you’re a really good mean poet,” she said.

  Toddberry’s hair curtains closed, and he mumbled, “I’m good at heaps of stuff but no one knows.” He turned his attention back to the feast. “This is literally just the inside of the fridge outside of the fridge.”

  “Yes!” said Elizabella. “It’s Deconstructed Fridge! It’s a delicacy.”

  Toddberry and Elizabella ate bits and pieces from Deconstructed Fridge. Well, Elizabella tried to eat a bit of everything in defence of the edibility of her creation, while Toddberry just ate the whole jar of chocolate spread with his finger.

  After dinner, she took some of the leftovers outside to Squiggly Manor, the worm farm at the bottom of the garden. She lifted the lid and looked down at the ever-growing worm family. She started scooping in the capers and yoghurt and various other bits and pieces. The curious worms slithered up to the food.

  “At least you guys have sophisticated palates,” she said to the worms. As she watched them begin to gorge on their glorious banquet, she thought about her day. It had been magnificent, of course, but she had ruffled some feathers. Toddberry was surly, even though she had written him a Sorry Haiku and also made him dinner. And on the way home from school Huck, who had waited for her, said that he noticed some of Mr Gobblefrump’s hair was falling out, which was quite something given his hair was actually a toupee. She thought he must be really, really stressed out to be losing his fake hair.

  Elizabella decided to write Mr Gobblefrump a Sorry Poem. She thought it should sound a little grown-up. So she sat in the garden watching the worms and let her mind go to work.

  In the heat of the moment I forget what’s what

  I forget what’s right and I forget what’s not

  And my actions do become my art

  Forgive me for doing what’s in my heart

  The next day, Elizabella caught up with Huck while she was walking to school. She was so keen on being on time, she didn’t even think for a second about whether or not she liked or like liked Huck.