Midnight crash by Tara zlick (ready player one ebook TXT) 📕

of the time he comes back empty handed. I
think he just sits by the Yarra River (his favourite fishing spot) and stews.

God, it’s hard to see your dad down so badly. Although it has made me more
independent. I don’t know any other fifteen-year-olds who do the laundry, cook spaghetti
bolognaise dinners and buy the groceries every week. I just want to get on with life.
That’s what Mum would have wanted. I try to tell him that, but there’s a barrier between
us. I just don’t feel like talking about these sort of things. I can talk for hours about
gossip, school, TV. Just not feelings. That’s probably why I have a boy as my best friend.
I feel freaky talking about feelings. I like action, as the saying goes, not words.

Dad sighed. ‘I have to get back on the treadmill,’ he said. ‘Back to some decent
work. I owe it to you.’

‘Yeah, when you’re ready, Dad. You don’t need to rush things.’

This wasn’t true. I wanted him to get back to full-time work. I wanted him to be
able to buy me a decent birthday present instead of a Sanity record voucher I got this
year. I’m in year ten, but I’m still getting primary school presents. It didn’t even buy me a
full-price CD! I want to come home without seeing him staring emptily at the car racing
on the box, or staring out the window as he shovels a saucepan of baked beans around.
Most of all, I want to be able to be a daughter, not a surrogate mother. The fact I’m an
only child makes it worse. I’ve got nobody else to help me out.

‘Stacey, I have to get a move on. We’re not saving anything. Your mother’s money
isn’t going to last forever,’ he said.

That’s what’s saved us. Mum’s life insurance. Her superannuation insurance wasn’t
much, but it still paid off the mortgage so we now own our house. But the insurance, I
think, let Dad off the hook. He preferred moping around and not dealing with stuff. Two
years after she died he still only works a couple of days a week. The money has dwindled
and if this continues we’ll really be stuck. I know he hurts. I know he even suffers a bit of
depression from time to time. But what sort of life does that leave me with? A dead
mother and a dad that’s all worn out.

‘Then what about looking around for another job?’ I said. ‘There’s some decent
stores around that’d need full-time work.’

‘Stace, it’s not that easy. I’ve tried, but…’

I let him trail off. It’s always the same. Spell out the problem and then discuss why
it can’t be solved.

The next day at school Topps virtually dragged me towards the Year Twelve home
room where Caitlin was most likely to be. He was that excited.

‘I thought computer geeks weren’t interested in girls,’ I said as we walked to the
portable. It came out more cutting than I meant (both about him being a geek and being
uninterested in girls), but I was feeling uncomfortable and silly about talking to Caitlin
and I felt angry at Topps because of it. What, exactly, were we going to ask anyway?

Topps wasn’t an easy boy to upset. He never had been. ‘C’mon Stacey, you’ve seen
Revenge of the Nerds’ he said. ‘Remember that line: “All jocks think about is sport. All
nerds think about is sex”’. There’s an honest truth about that quote.’

I pretended to be unimpressed and told him I’d never seen Revenge of the Nerds.

It’s hard to say if Topps is really a geek or not. He loves computers, he has an
encyclopaedic knowledge of movies, he can ace a test without studying and he wears
glasses that don’t suit him. Also, he can’t play sport to save himself, except for
badminton, and prefers to listen to video game soundtracks and electronica created by
MySpace weirdos than Video Hits. But he’s confident and friendly with strangers, which is decidedly un-geekish. And he’s not a real geek because he wears Globe skate shoes
and Ever Tough shirts his mum buys him. I think he’s a unselfconscious half-geek/halfcool
sort of guy, a bit like a werewolf that uncontrollably changes at every full moon. It’s
a fairly good personality mix.

We’ve been best friends since year seven. We hooked up in the first week during a
game of softball. We both sat on the fence at the end of the batting line trying to avoid
playing. ‘Don’t you think softball is, like, illogical,’ he had said. ‘It doesn’t make sense.
You hit a ball, you run around a diamond and you just end up back where you started.’

‘I’m thinking of making it more interesting by just running to first and doing a
handstand on the base,’ I had said.

‘I’ll give you a can of Sprite if you do.’

‘You’re on.’

But I never got the chance. I got struck out and the ball was thrown to first base
before I took a step. I wouldn’t have done it anyway. It takes a lot for me to do something
that makes me look ridiculous.

From then on we clicked. We’d been through a lot together: the infamous
shepherd’s pie food poison outbreak at school camp, the school bus crash last year that
broke Trevor Gilchrist’s nose; Helen Dudley’s birthday party where Topps ignored me
after I’d replied ‘true’ when asked the question: ‘You’d rather kiss road kill than Peter
Topolski, true of false?’, and as a result we didn’t speak for the rest of the night. And of
course, my mum’s death.

So he’s been a good mate.

We found Caitlin reading over school notes. Year twelves seemed to do nothing but
exams and homework. One of her friends – Becky someone, I think – was with her. They
both looked up at us in surprise.

‘Hi Caitlin,’ said Topps. ‘I was wondering if we could talk to you for a minute?’

‘What about?’ she asked hesitantly. Obviously she had no idea who we were.

Topps looked at Becky and back to Caitlin. ‘It’s private,’ he said. ‘It’s about the
Video Saloon.’ Caitlin gave Becky an exasperated look. Becky turned up her nose at us and left,
obviously annoyed.

‘What about the Video Saloon?’ Caitlin asked, but before Topps could answer she
looked at me. ‘Say, don’t you work there? You took over my job.’ She didn’t sound very
happy about it.

‘Yeah, I thought it would be good if Stacey apologised,’ grinned Topps. ‘And while
we’re here, I was just wondering, did anything funny go on before you decided to leave?’

‘What do you mean funny?’

‘Like, anything that was perhaps not one hundred per cent normal?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Stacey just has this feeling about the place, you know, that things are a bit weird.
Like that guy, Robert Keppler. We wanted to know a bit more about him – like, he freaks
Stacey out a bit, and I was sort of wondering, is he dangerous or what?’

‘I only worked there Friday and Saturday evenings,’ Caitlin said, ‘I don’t remember
every customer.’

‘Horror movie fanatic,’ said Topps. ‘Likes the freaky stuff. Looks like that old
wrestler, The Undertaker, if The Undertaker had gone on a Subway diet.’

‘Oh, yeah, him. Robert Keppler. I sort of remember. I dunno, I was only there six
months. He seemed…harmless. I wouldn’t worry about him. Nah, he’s just a bit weird,
that’s all. Why, has he been hassling you?’

‘No,’ I said, wanting to tie this pointless conversation up, ‘I just wanted to know.’

‘Hey Caitlin, why did you leave anyway?’ asked Topps as I took his arm and
turned to leave.

‘My dad knows the manager of the new Blockbuster store. I’m going to be working
there over summer.’

Which didn’t answer the question because the school year wasn’t over for a month
and Caitlin left the store around four months ago. I surprised myself by speaking up again
and asked, ‘How did you find Vince and Colin?’ I wanted to know if she’d seen either of
them getting up to mischief down in the basement with the pirated discs, but I didn’t want

to spell it out yet. I still didn’t feel I could trust Caitlin enough.

‘Oh, I dunno, I wasn’t there long, so…’

The morning bell interrupted us. Caitlin seemed relieved. She told us she had to go
and quickly picked up her notes and rose from the bench. I saw Topps glance at her legs
as she did. I gave him a nasty look and he shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “‘She’s
wearing a really, really short skirt, what did you expect me to do?”

‘Thanks Caitlin for your help, we’ll see you round,’ Topps called after her. She
ignored him. He seemed reluctant to leave but I dragged him away.

‘Seems a bit strange,’ I said to Topps as we walked to our homeroom. ‘Caitlin
wasn’t telling us everything.’

‘Like what?’

‘I dunno. But she seemed uncomfortable, like she didn’t want to talk about it at all.’

‘Perhaps she was dazzled by my wit and charm?’ said Topps.

‘No, I’d reckon it was more freaked out.’

‘Why don’t we just tell her about the pirated gear?’

‘Because we don’t know all the facts yet. And that little discussion didn’t help at
all. We didn’t even ask her about the free rental credits. Besides, I don’t feel comfortable
talking about it with her.’

Truthfully, I was almost ready to ignore the pirated discs anyway. If Topps hadn’t
been so pushy about talking to Caitlin, I would have never gone near her.

Later that afternoon during lunch I left Skye (Topps had gone off with his mates to
the IT room) for a toilet break. As I walked into the toilet block with its harsh antiseptic
smell and faded graffiti half-heartedly rubbed off by the cleaner I bumped right into
Caitlin. She gave me a fright. ‘Oh, sorry,’ I said, a little shaken.

She ignored me. Instead she looked around, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear.
She leaned over to me. I could smell sweet perfume and tangy shampoo on her skin.
‘Listen, I just want to add one more thing about that store,’ she said, almost whispering now. ‘I didn’t want to say anything in front of your friend, but watch yourself. Just keep
your head down…’

Before she could finish her friend Becky called her from outside the toilet block.
‘Just watch yourself,’ Caitlin said hurriedly. She started to leave but stopped again,
turned to me and said, ‘And don’t ask me anything about that store again, because I don’t
want to talk about it.’