Bel looked at her watch. It was exactly one-thirty. She was right on time. She had agreed to meet the Hansons outside the door to the department store at one-thirty, and for once the bus hadn’t been late. Just then, Diana, Walker, Jessica, Avie, Mackie and Zoe came around the corner. Good. They were on time too. The problem was, where were Ike, Tay and Zac?
“Don’t worry. They’ll be here soon,” Diana reassured them. Her motherÕs intuition turned out to be right. Ten minutes later the boys arrived.
They were in a hurry, and were adjusting bits of their clothing as they walked. Taylor’s shirt appeared to be on inside out. All three were sweaty, and out of breath.
“Where have you been?” Belinda asked them.
“We ran into your friend Kate and her boyfriend,” said Tay. “We were playing some... er, games, with them. It was such fun!”
“Those elephants were the best!” Put in Zac.
“What elephants, Zachary?” Asked his mother.
“Er... don’t worry, Mom. They weren’t important.” He turned to Belinda. “That friend, Kate, of yours is a very funny girl.”
Taylor screamed with laughter. “That’s not how I’d put it,” he laughed.
“What?!” Asked everyone except Zac and Ike.
“It’s not important. All that matters is that we’re here now.” “Yeah.”
Suddenly Taylor remembered. “Bel!” He exclaimed. He dragged her around the side of the building.
“Where are they going?” Asked Walker.
“Oh, they just want some time alone, I’m sure,” said Diana. "I'll just step inside this store, here, and have a look at some of those very nice dresses while we wait for them."
The rest of the family decided to accompany her, except for Isaac, whom they left on watch outside the shop for the moment when Belinda and Taylor should emerge.

Taylor was feeling very romantic. He pulled Belinda close and gazed deep into her eyes. She gazed back, mesmerised by how blue his eyes were.
“Bel,” he said.
“Mmm?” She replied.
“Ike doesn’t want you any more. So you can go out with me again.Ó
“Oh. Good.” They kissed. They kissed again. As their short pecks lengthened, they forgot that they both had braces, now.
Suddenly they heard a “click”. They were both wrapped up in the kiss, and neither paid any attention until they tried to pull apart.
Nothing happened. They pulled back again. Nothing. Tay pulled. Bel pulled. Nothing. They wiggled around. Still nothing. It was then that Taylor and Belinda realised that their braces had become well and truly locked together. They were dismayed, to say the least.
“‘Ot do ‘ee ‘oo now?” Asked Belinda, the sound muffled and distorted because she couldn’t move her mouth.
“I ‘unno,” replied Tay.
Half an hour later they were still standing there, locked together at the mouth. Through practice and due to no other alternative, they had become very good at understanding the limited sounds that they could make. Taylor was currently describing the components of an atom to Belinda, who was listening avidly. She had no other choice but to do so.
“And so, ‘ere ‘re ‘eese ‘ings called ‘le’trons, ‘ro’ons ‘n’ ‘oo’rons. ‘N’ I fink ‘ere ‘ade of ‘arks.” (Don’t worry about what he just said, it’s not important, unless you’re interested in physics.)
Now, you and I might have trouble understanding what in the world Taylor was mumbling about, but Belinda understood him perfectly.
“‘Es,” she said. “I ‘nder’and now.”

About an hour later, Zac came out of the store. He told Isaac that their mother only had three more dresses to try on until she exhausted the range of merchandise available at "Polly's Dress Boutique".
“So you’d better go get Bel and Tayles, Ike,” Zac told his eldest brother.
Ike sauntered over to the alleyway, where he saw Taylor and his girlfriend joined together at the mouth.
“They’re obviously involved in a passionate kiss,” thought Ike, and gave Taylor a huge, brotherly slap on the side of the head.
Taylor’s braces ripped from his teeth and he was thrown across the alleyway with the force of Ike’s slap.
Tay sat up dazedly, shaking his head. Taylor looked over at Belinda. His braces were dangling from hers. She reached up and pulled bits of metal and rubber bands from her mouth.
Taylor ran his tongue over his teeth. No braces. Oh well. He didn’t really need them anyway.
Just then, the rest of the family walked out of the shop. Diana was so wrapped up in her purchases, she didn’t even notice her second oldest son was now revelling in braces-free happiness.

The Hansons were impressed by the Shrine of Remembrance. They watched the light strike the words engraved in the stone, "Greater Love Hath No Man". Bel, Tay, and Zac were adjusting their tour of Melbourne so that the family were looking at tourist sites closer and closer to the Dead Flea Motel. They finally reached the art gallery. This was where they planned to lose the rest of the family. Walker was really “into” art, and he’d spend hours gazing at the paintings while his wife and children browsed in the gift shop, or drank endless mugs of hot chocolate in the gallery café. It would be easy for the intrepid three to slip away...

Tay, Zac, and Belinda dodged around a corner. They stopped running and leant against the wall of a building, bent over, panting.
“I... think we can... stop running now,” Taylor gasped out.
“Yeah. Did we even need to run, anyway?” Asked Belinda. “Your father was so engrossed in that Van Gogh I don’t think he even saw us go.”
“Well, where do we go now?” Asked Zac. “Have you got the map, What’s-yer-name?”
“It’s Belinda,” Bel reminded him. “Yeah, I’ve got the map. We turn left here, then left, left again, right, straight ahead, and it’s the third left on the right.”
“Okay, that sounds simple enough. Let’s go.”
They set off at a rapid pace.

A while later, Belinda and two-thirds of Hanson stood gazing up at a fluorescent sign. It depicted a chicken having its head cut off, with lots of blood spraying everywhere, the logo of the Dead Flea Motel. The sign was a masterpiece of flashing purple neon, and it didn’t matter in the slightest that a chicken being decapitated had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with a Dead Flea.
Finally, Belinda summoned up enough courage to walk up the dingy steps that were the entrance to the cheap one-storey motel. Taylor and Zac followed her, and thus they entered the Dead Flea in search of Jonathan.

It was dark inside, and the place reeked of old socks, beer, and something undefinable. Neither Belinda or either of the Hansons wanted to define it; they had a feeling it had an affinity with dead fish that was far too close for their liking.
Trying not to breathe deeply, they walked gingerly over the rotting carpet towards a deeply sleeping old woman who, in an establishment of a higher class, would have been called a receptionist.
They peered at her, standing on their tiptoes to see over the high counter. She was filthy, even more so than the room they were standing in, which was by no means pristine.
What were they going to do? None of the three wanted to shake the woman's shoulder to wake her up. They weren't normally squeamish, but this woman was really unhealthy looking.
Finally Belinda remembered that the dentist had allowed her to keep the rubber gloves he had used on her that morning, because she had liked the taste of them so much. With luck they would still be in her pocket. She pulled them out and handed them to Zac. He could do the honours. It was his fault they were here, anyway.
Zachary slipped his elegant fingers into the gloves and reached out in the direction of the woman. He gently touched her shoulder. It seemed to be enough to wake her, which was fortunate, because the gloved seemed to be disintegrating. Zac pulled them off and threw them on the ground.
He, Belinda and Taylor watched with fascination mixed with trepidation as the filth-coated rubber bubbled, hissed, and melted into a pile of green-glowing ashes.
The old woman stirred, and Bel, Tay, and Zac took a step backwards. They didn’t want to be anywhere near this horribly dirty person, who had the bacteria build-up to make perfectly normal flavoured rubber turn into radioactive ashes with just one touch.
The woman’s bloodshot, piggy little eyes peered at Zac malevolently.
“Whadda ya want?” She asked.
“Umm... Is Jonathan Conter staying here?”
“Yeah. Down that corridor, fourth on the left. He was great in bed last night. Tell him Agnes sends her love and I’m open for another night of passion tonight.”
Taylor, Belinda and Zachary were shell-shocked. Jonathan was twenty-two, and this woman had to be pushing eighty.
“Whatever,” Taylor mumbled, and the three started along the corridor.

[ 17 ]