Alchemy. Margaret Mahy

Their argument had concluded as he came into the room, allowing them to move into an unspoken alliance against him.

      “Oh, damn!” his mother cried. “How on earth did you do that?”

      “You must have really tried hard to get one,” said Danny Roland now saw that he and Martin were taking it in turns to play a pocket-sized electronic game called Viper – a game that actually belonged to Roland himself. They must have stolen it from his room.

      “Really hard!” chimed in Martin, Danny’s obedient echo. They enjoyed trying to cut him down to their own sizes. The Viper game played its maddening electronic tune three times in quick succession. “My turn! My turn!” yelled Martin.

      “It was out by the mall,” explained Roland, speaking to his mother across the argument his brothers were now resuming. “I parked there for about fifteen minutes and…”

      “But there’s a great big supermarket car park across the road from the mall,” cried his mother.

      “Mum, I’m really sorry,” Roland interrupted, guilty but impatient at having to apologise twice. “I thought I’d only be a minute – well, I was only a minute – a few minutes, anyway…” His voice trailed away. “I’ll pay,” he offered rather stiffly. “I’ve still got that birthday money Grandpa sent me and…”

      “Don’t even think of it,” his mother said impatiently. “You’re not to spend Grandpa’s present on a parking fine. Mind you, it’s a pity but…” Here she sighed with exaggerated force. “Anyway, just be more careful, that’s all.”

      “You always say that to him,” shouted Danny, then turned quickly as the Viper peeped and sang again, this time between Martin’s fingers.

      “I don’t mind paying,” said Roland, ashamed at feeling a surge of relief. But of course he had known when he made the offer that there was a good chance his mother would turn it down. His brothers knew it, too.

      “He was just bull-shitting,” growled Danny. “He didn’t mean it.”

      “Danny, I hate that language,” said their mother. “It’s real Huntsbury talk! Just for that, you can be the one to go and collect the takeaways – well, once we work out what we want. Where’s that menu they gave us last time?” She looked over at Roland. “Grandpa would want you to spend that money on something you really enjoyed,” she said.

      “Roley enjoys Chinese food,” suggested Martin. “He could buy us dinner with his birthday money”

      “Right on!” shouted Danny. Once again the game took advantage of his distraction. “Oh, blast!”

      “Serve you right for getting too smart,” said Roland. And then there was a confused few minutes during which the three of them shouted at each other while their mother looked for the menu, finally locating it in a kitchen drawer. All four of them tried to work out just what meals they would be wanting, and a tremor of argument about what television they might watch while they ate their takeaways came and went during this discussion. It all took time, but at last everything was decided and finally Roland was able to think about making for the sanctuary of his room.

      “And how’s Chris?” his mother suddenly asked playfully. It was almost as if she were flirting with him herself.

      “What about her?” asked Roland, turning a little defensively. At the mention of Chris’s name both Danny and Martin looked up from the game of Viper and began a rude howling. Danny made terrible sucking sounds.

      “Chris! Chris! Chris! How about a kiss?” he shouted. “Oh, what luck! We can have a—”

      “Shut up!” yelled Mrs Fairfield, cutting in just in time. “Stop it, you kids. I hate it when you speak like that. Just ignore them, Roland.”

      “I am! I do!” said Roland. “They can be as immature as they like. I don’t care. Anyhow, Chris is away for the weekend… on the coast with her family. And, by the way, that’s my game of Viper.” His brothers howled again, but this time with dismay as Roland, stretching nimbly over Martin’s shoulder, snatched the game away from them and pushed it into the pocket of his blazer. Then, hoisting his backpack once more, he made for his bedroom… his sanctuary.

      But tonight when the bedroom door closed behind him, the events of the day came crashing over him like an avalanche. His backpack thumped on the floor and he tumbled forward on to his bed, boots on the quilt, face burying itself deep in his pillow. The family cat, Scruff, who had complacently folded himself beside the pillow, shot away, ears back, looking highly aggrieved. Finding the door firmly shut, he had no choice but to sit down and treat himself to a good, hard washing, while Roland lay on his bed, gazing into self-imposed darkness and feeling the weight of his remarkable afternoon bearing down on him. At first, it seemed like a single weight between his shoulders, but then it divided, becoming not one burden but several.

      There was the central one, of course – his confrontation with Mr Hudson. Then there was his failed attempt to command Jess Ferret’s grateful attention, followed by the complicated excitement of tracking her home. And, mixed in with all this, was something else – something uneasy and shapeless, something he could not name. I’m altering, he thought. (“Hey!” his inner voice commanded him. “Forget all that! Pull yourself together, mate. You are, what you are, what you are! Don’t try to be different!”)

      “I’m not trying to be different…” he mumbled into his pillow, then broke off. “Oh, forget it!” he told himself impatiently.

      Really, he thought, I should tell old Hudson to get stuffed. I should tell him to go ahead and let McDonald know everything. (Old McDonald had a school, he and his friends had sung years ago, Ee-I, Ee-I, O! And every teacher was a fool! Ee-I, Ee-I, O!) He had already argued his way through all this earlier in the afternoon, but he couldn’t help going through it again and again and again. OK, so if he did confess to the principal it would mean having to surrender his prefect’s badge, but then at least the whole business would be behind him – over and done with, and there would be none of this sneaking around trying to strike up conversations with Jess Ferret, and being rejected with something close to scorn. And, after a week or two, some other school scandal would push his doings into the background. Most people would quickly forget his fall from grace.

      But then the mocking image of Chris swam in his mind… really swam, because for some reason he found himself imagining her stroking towards him, gliding through rippling green water, slender and naked, with her hair billowing out around her. And then, before he had a chance to enjoy this vision in any way, his mother became part of it too, dog-paddling alongside Chris in her own determined fashion, wearing last year’s navy-blue swimsuit. Roland groaned softly. Chris’s probable scorn and his mother’s inevitable grief were not to be born. Why… why… why had he stolen anything in the first place? That was the rocky question. Why?

      Turning his head wearily as if it were a dead weight that had to be rolled along rather than lifted up, he stared at his desk, half imagining he might, if he really concentrated, be able to see where the pens and the red notebook were still hidden, a somehow sinister presence in the darkness of a closed drawer. And at that moment, probably because the closed drawer suddenly reminded him of a coffin, the ancient and irrelevant dream of the magician, Quando, slid into his mind. (“Careful!”) Impatiently, Roland chased both the warning voice and the memory out of his head.

      And, after all, he had half expected the voice. What he had not expected was that a strange irritated exhilaration should be suddenly active in him, edging its way through the humiliations of the day, glinting like a random gold thread in the dark weave of the afternoon. He had first felt it leap into life as Stephen turned away from him in the schoolyard; as if, from that moment on, he was set free of family and friends – even free of Chris – to live a life which would be exclusively his own. Of course, having to talk to Jess had been a bit of a drag, though that moment when she had suddenly stopped looking so utterly vacant and had snapped back at him was something to think about. But how could he possibly have enjoyed tracking