My Life and Other Massive Mistakes (10 page)

‘I'm going to have a convertible,' Jack says.

‘I'm going to have a limousine,' I tell him.

‘I'm going to have a convertible limousine.'

‘Yeah, well, I'm going to have a convertible limousine with a cinema and a spa and a bowling alley in it,' I say.

‘I'm going to have a bowling alley with nine cinemas and a 13-hole golf course.'

‘Minigolf?'

‘No, real,' he says.

‘How are you going to fit a real golf course into a bowling alley that is inside a car?'

‘My architect's working on it.'

Jack kicks a crushed lemonade can along the gutter with the tip of his holey-toed sneaker. We're walking up my street, heading home from the bus stop. I'm quiet for a bit, thinking about how cool it will be when we actually have the stuff we always dream about.

‘I hate talking like this,' Jack says. ‘It gets me all excited, then we can't do any of it. We need cash, and lots of it.' He kicks the can again.

‘I know,' I say.

‘Like, not a small amount. A
large
amount of cash,' Jack underlines, punting the can as he says
large.
‘Ow.'

‘I know.'

‘Like, more cash than Rupert Murdoch or Packer or Trump.'

‘Absolutely.

‘More cash than there is in the world right now.'

‘How's that even possible?'

‘I don't know,' Jack says, ‘but guys like us can make it possible. Some people complain about things being impossible but they shouldn't waste the time of guys like us who are already making stuff happen.'

We stop in front of my place. The grass in the front yard is up to my knees. I'm supposed to mow it but Mum won't pay me for it. She says it falls into the category of ‘helping out around the house'.

‘Maybe we could sink a mine in my yard,' I suggest, kicking at the ground.

‘What?'

‘A mine. That's how the government gets
cash. They let billionaires sink mines and then they sell all the stuff out of the ground to China.'

‘But the only things buried in your backyard are broken toys. And … What was the name of your old dog?'

‘Dennis.'

‘And Dennis.'

‘There might be other stuff. You never know till you start digging. I wonder how much a fracking rig costs,' I ask.

‘Doesn't fracking leak gas into the water so you can light a match and set your tap water on fire?'

‘I think so.'

‘That'd be cool,' Jack says. ‘Yeah. Mum'd get weird about it, though. I think she used to be a hippie.'

Jack and I dump our backpacks in the long grass and sit on the kerb.

‘What else have we got?' I ask.

‘I make plenty of natural gas, but after what
happened with Mr Schmittz, maybe we should rule that one out.'

‘Yeah.' I bite my thumbnail.

Jack picks his nose.

‘Don't pick your nose!'

‘Why not?'

‘I don't know. Hey, maybe we should sink a mine in your nose.'

‘I've already got one up there,' Jack says. ‘And I pull out, like, 100,000 dollars' worth of premium nuggets every day.'

‘I wonder if China would be interested?'

Jack continues his mining project.

‘What about body parts?' I suggest. ‘You know, for people who need a replacement. On Mum's driver's licence she has to say whether she'll give away her kidneys when she dies, but what if they could get a nice, fresh,
living
kidney? That's got to be worth a bit.'

‘What about hair?' Jack says. ‘For old guys having hair transplants.'

‘That's pretty good.' I get my maths notebook out of my backpack and jot in the back.

‘An arm?' I suggest. ‘I wonder how much you'd get for an arm … My left one really gets in the way when I sleep. Sometimes I get pins and needles and I can't feel it anymore and it's so bad I think it's someone else's arm in the bed and they're trying to rip my face off.'

I bite my thumbnail again and my front
teeth click together. ‘What about teeth?'

‘Teeth?'

I wiggle my top front tooth, then the ones around it. Then the bottoms.

‘The tooth fairy pays five bucks a tooth, and I have maybe six baby teeth left, including the ones right up the back. That's 30 bucks.'

I quickly jot down the figures.

Jack's eyes dance and he starts wiggling his teeth like mad.

‘I've got four, maybe five,' he says.

‘That's a lot of cash just sitting there in our mouths doing nothing. Come inside.'

We head in to my house and go straight to the bathroom. We both open wide and try to count our baby teeth in the mirror. We think we might have $65 or even $70 in untapped assets.

‘And when I stay at my nan's, the tooth fairy gives ten bucks,' I tell Jack.

‘No way.'

‘Yes way.'

‘When are you staying there next?'

‘What day is it?'

‘Friday.'

‘I could stay tonight.'

‘Well, let's rip out a few of your teeth,' Jack says.

‘I'll go get the pliers.'

I run to the laundry, excited. I can't believe Jack and I have come up with a business idea that's actually going to work. We are geniuses.

I find the head torch in the camping tub. I grab the pliers from the toolbox. I bolt back into the bathroom, flick on the torch and gaze into the mirror at all those beautiful, gleaming white gems inside my mouth.

‘What's the point of teeth, anyway?' I ask Jack. ‘Apart from eating.'

‘They're annoying,' Jack says. ‘Mum makes me brush mine, like, once a day.'

‘I have to do mine twice,' I tell him.

‘That's ridiculous,' Jack says. ‘We should just rip 'em all out now. Imagine if you only had five teeth. You could brush them in 20 seconds rather than two minutes.'

‘All we gotta do is bust 'em out.'

I hold up the pliers.

Jack and I look at them.

They're kind of old-looking and rusty, and when I try to pull them apart they squeal.