let us listen. Sheâs into ghosts and spirits as well.
Dad doesnât give two hoots about any of it. He says itâs all bullshit.
Most days, Dad and I are up first. I love our mornings together. We both wake up all chipper and laughing away while Mum and Tracy lie in bed trying to âthaw out,â as they call it. I can tell Tracy likes being part of the thawing-out club the same way I like being part of the breakfast club.
Unlike most kids, who have cereal and toast for breakfast, I eat in a five-star restaurant most morningsâif I close my eyes and donât look at the laminated table and ugly brown and orange kitchen.
This morning itâs melt-in-your-mouth sautéed beef strips and scrambled eggs. Dad whistles a happy tune as he tosses the beef in the wok and splashes in some sauce before flipping it onto our plates.
We sit together and eat and ooh and ahh. âThis is the life,â Dad says.
âYou make the best stuff, Dad. Why arenât you a chef?â I ask before thinking.
Dadâs not smiling anymore. I was just trying to compliment him, but Iâve said the wrong thing. I do that a lot. Dad dreamed of being a chef, but his father said that was for poofters. So Dad works for a courier company.
âUghhâ¦â Mum and Tracy are up. After what I just said, Iâm glad to see them.
Dad smiles again as they groan their way into the kitchen. He and I are a lot alike. We both like to have fun as much as possible. Teasing Mum and Tracy by acting super happy and awake is especially entertaining.
âHello, you bright sparks!â Dad says, winking at me. My ill-timed comment is forgotten. âBeautiful morning, isnât it?â
        Â
I overheard my parents talking about money and our lack of it this year. Weâre
that
kind of family. One year weâre well off and the next weâre in the poorhouse. I think it has something to do with Dadâs schemes. Our fortune depends on which one he hits on and when. This year it was the gold-panning machine. For months Dad hid in his much-loved three-car (even though we only have one car) garage/workshop inventing a secret machine that would change our lives forever.
âThis is going to be it, Bev, I can just feel it,â he says when he finally shows us a dark green metal contraption. Itâs a rectangular box about the size of a sofa with a fat, ridged hose sticking out of one end and a funnel at the other.
âWhat on earth is it?â Mum asks.
âA gold-panning machine. It can pan in a day what it would take one person a month to pan,â he tells us. âThe hose sucks up the dirt, which then gets sifted like flour, and any gold in there will come out the other end on the magnetic tray. Itâs bloody beautiful!â
Mumâs trying unsuccessfully to act excited, and Iâm trying even harder. Iâm thrilled that he might find gold. At the same time, I canât help thinking I have the Nutty Professor for a dad, without the funny genius part. Tracy just says heâs a loser.
Dadâs a fitter and turner by trade, whatever that is. I should ask him about it, but what if he just fits screws onto bolts and then turns them? A monkey could do that, and I donât want to make him feel bad, because I know heâs really smart. Anyway, he hasnât done that since Tracy was born, because he has more potential than that. Thatâs why heâs always inventing new ways to make his fortune.
He acts like this is going to be different from the firewood-cutting business that left us with no income in the summer. Then there were the booze bus, which not even a drunk person wanted to ride in, and the under-eighteen disco that no teen in their right mind would be seen at. And the metal detector on the beach that turned up nothing better than a broken watch and a fancy hair clip.
But this is it. This will change everything. No more getting