Squishy Taylor in Zero Gravity (6 page)

Spacewoman never leaves the building.

We see
Pyjama Man
lots of times, going in and out in his pyjamas. But we never see a red-headed spacewoman. Even on the weekend. And yet some nights we still see sparks on the roof.

Every day it gets creepier and creepier. We
have
to find out what she’s doing.

It’s not until Monday night that Dad and Alice go to bed early enough for us to sneak out.

‘Shh,’ I say with my ear against our bedroom door. ‘I think they’re in bed.’ We wait a few more minutes and then crack open the door.

My schoolbag is on the kitchen floor. I take a big step over it and Jessie follows. Behind me there’s a noise. I turn to see Vee, who has tripped on the schoolbag. She bumps into the bench and knocks the wok sideways into a teacup, which falls and smashes on the tiles.

Three seconds of
horror
later, Alice flicks on the light. ‘
What
is going
on
?’

‘Um, we were just –’ I start.

But Alice doesn’t let me finish. ‘Squishy Taylor, why are you even
talking
right now?’

‘You asked us a question,’ I say. Which is a perfectly reasonable answer.

Sometimes Alice can be really sarcastic. ‘Well, I’m sorry for
confusing
you,’ she says in a super-mean voice. Then she snaps, ‘What I meant was,
go to bed
. This very second.’

‘Well you should have
said
that,’ I say sulkily.

‘Stop talking right now, Squishy,’ Alice says, gripping my shoulder with sharp fingers and pointing me at the bedroom.

Why is she being horrible to me and not the others? But I realise, as soon as I’ve turned around, that they’ve already gone to bed. I guess they already know how mean their mum is.

I bite down on all the things I want to shout at Alice and scramble into my bunk.

She practically slams the door.

‘No point trying to sneak out again tonight,’ Vee whispers.

I can still feel Alice’s fingers where they held my shoulder. I know we were officially in the wrong, but I’m mad at her for aiming all her
anger
at me.

Jessie whispers, ‘The problem is that Mum and Tom are too wide awake, when we need them to be asleep.’

Vee starts talking and I can hear a grin in her voice. ‘We should tire them out so they go to bed really early.’

We make a new plan. Alice is going to hate it. It’s genius.

The next night, we drag out going to bed as late as we possibly can. I brush my teeth for about half an hour. Vee spills milk in her bunk and needs to have her sheets changed. Jessie claims she forgot to practise violin and Alice lets her stay up. (They’d probably let her practise violin at three in the morning if she wanted to.)

Then, just before finally going to bed, I sneak a huge slop of red cordial into Baby’s sippy-cup and hand it over. He grabs it with his fat little hands and starts
slurping
.

By the time they kiss us goodnight, it’s
ages
after bedtime. And that’s only the beginning.

Vee is first. Twenty minutes after Dad and Alice’s bedroom door closes, she scrambles down. We listen to her whine, ‘
Muuuum, I’m still awaaaake
.’

Alice grumbles, but brings her back to bed.

We let ourselves go to sleep because Jessie has set an alarm.

I wake up to hear Jessie screaming, ‘
Eeeeeeek!
Spider, spider! Help!’

A minute later, Dad flicks on the light.

‘There! Spider! Eeeek!’ says Jessie. Dad goes chasing round the room with a plastic container, but he can’t find the ‘spider’.

Jessie is actually a really good actor. She makes him crawl under the bed and pull back all her blankets and shake them before she finally agrees to go back to bed. When Dad leaves, we high-five each other over the edge of our beds, giggling quietly.

Mine is the best job. At four in the morning, the alarm goes off. It’s still dark, and I tiptoe as quietly as I can to the kitchen for a cup of warm water. I take the cup into Dad and Alice’s room where Baby is in his cot by the door. This is the trickiest part. Can I wake up Baby, without being caught?

I pull back his blankets, pour the water all over his nappy and legs, give his tummy a little wobble for good measure, and then hurry out of the room.

I wait. Did it work?

‘
Waaaaaaah!
’

Brilliant. Now he’ll be awake until breakfast time. Job done. Dad and Alice will go to bed super early tomorrow and we can finally get a proper look at Spacewoman’s rocket. I slip back to sleep.

We were totally right. Alice and Dad go to bed at 8.38, which is pretty much a record.

We pull on coats and shoes and tiptoe out the door to the lift. We have to get across the road without being noticed by a grown-up who thinks they can tell us what to do. It’s all about looking confident, like we know exactly where we’re going. But not so confident that people think we’re
hooligans
. (An old lady called us
hooligans
one time when we were having too much fun on the tram.)

It’s not far. Just up to the lights and across the road. No-one pays us any attention. We pause at the front steps of Spacewoman’s apartment building. We can’t open the front door ourselves.

‘Now we wait,’ I say. ‘Someone will go in soon.’

But nobody comes.

We stand by the door for ages. It’s hard to look confident but not like a
hooligan
when you’re just hanging around on the footpath way after bedtime. A couple go past and make stern faces, as though we’re doing something naughty. If it were daytime we could play hopscotch and no-one would even notice us.

A man walks towards us. I think maybe this is our chance, he’s about to go through the front door. But he doesn’t. He stops in front of us.

‘You kids all right?’ he asks.

‘We’re fine,’ I say.

He looks at us, waiting for me to say something else. I glance at Jessie. She looks so guilty, it’s like she just killed a puppy.

‘We’re just waiting for our … um … cousin,’ Vee says. ‘He lives up there.’

The man shrugs. ‘OK. Long as you’re not in trouble?’

‘We’re fine,’ I say again.

He walks away slowly, and checks us a couple of times over his shoulder.

‘We’ve gotta get inside,’ Vee says.

‘But
how
?’ I ask.

Jessie comes to the rescue. ‘I’ve got a plan,’ she says. ‘Let’s hope this works.’ I watch her step up and press the buzzer.

‘Who are you calling?’ I ask.

‘Hello?’ a voice comes out of the speaker.

‘Hey,’ Jessie says. ‘My name’s Jessie, I’m one of the kids you met on the roof the other day?’

‘Ye-es?’ the man says, uncertainly.

‘
Pyjama Man?
’ I whisper, and Jessie puts her finger to her lips and nods.

‘Remember how we were visiting our cousin last time?’ Jessie asks. ‘Well, it’s his birthday today. We really want to surprise him before bedtime. Please can you let us in?’

‘Um, I guess so.’

There’s a pause and then the door pings. We’re inside.

‘Jessie you’re a
genius
!’ I say, high-fiving her in the foyer.

‘That was awesome. How did you know his number?’ Vee asks.

Jessie smirks. ‘I was looking when he unlocked his door. It just stayed in my memory. I kind of forgot about it until now.’

We ride the lift up to the ninth floor and then jog up the fire-escape stairs.

I turn back to the others as I reach the rooftop access door. ‘Now shhhh, Spacewoman is probably there already.’

‘She’s not a spacewoman,’ Jessie hisses.

I push open the door and tiptoe out onto the roof with the others behind me. We have to be super careful. Spacewoman only works at night and never leaves her building. She is officially really creepy and might be an
alien
. Who knows what she does to kids who spy on her? I start to feel a bit scared, as well as excited.

There’s a light on over by Spacewoman’s rocket, but no sparks. She’s probably there, working away, getting ready to fly into space. We creep over towards her fence. Yes! The gate is unlocked. And the rocket is uncovered.

Jessie gasps and I grin in the dark.