Page 13 of Kiwi Sin

“She says not to worry about that,” Jack said. “It’s just until you’re making money, she says. Anyway, my mum likes helping people.” He had his father’s gray eyes and his father’s seriousness, young as he was. Those eyes had an observant look. A settled look. He was like me, maybe. He watched first, so he’d know.

“All right,” I said. “I’m keeping an account, so I can pay your parents once I have a job.”

“It’s OK,” Jack said. “They’re pretty rich.”

“Still. It’s better to pay for yourself.” That much, I knew.

Jack considered that. “Even if they have heaps of money? So you don’t have to say thank you, maybe? Or feel bad that somebody had to do extra?”

“You still have to say thank you,” I said. “They went out of their way to help. They shouldn’t have to gomoreout of their way, unless it’s to help somebody who could never pay.”

“Like a kid,” Jack said. “Or a really old person.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Also, I think the cooker here is broken.”

“Really?” Jack headed over and pushed the buttons, the same way I had, and got the same thing.

Cooktop

Oven

He said, “It’s working. You just have to press here to bring it up.”

“After that,” I said. “It doesn’t heat up, the cooktop.”

Jack did some more pressing and got the little flames, then looked at me and shrugged.

I said, “It doesn’t get hot, though.”

He reached into a cabinet and pulled out a pan, then set it on the glass top. There was a faint, high-pitched whirring noise, and he put a hand over the pan and said, “It’s getting hot.”

“Huh,” I said, inspecting it. Yes, it was. “It didn’t before.”

“Did you have the pan on it?” he asked. “It only works if it has the pan on it. It cooks by magnets. If the pan isn’t on it, there’s nothing for the magnet to grab, so it doesn’t start working. It’s an induction cooker. In regular cooking, the element gets hot, and it transfers the heat to the pan, which is less efficient because you lose some heat when you transfer. That’s called conduction, because of the transferring. In induction, the pan is where the heat starts, so you don’t lose any. Also, it’s safer, because there’s no fire.”

“Oh,” I said, and felt stupid.

“I didn’t know, either,” he said. “My dad explained.”

“Do you know how to cook things, too?” I asked.

“Not heaps of things,” he said. “Mostly things in the microwave, and toast. I make my mum tea and toast sometimes. She’s having another baby, and she needs those things while she’s still lying down in order to get up in the morning if she’s feeling sick. If my dad’s not home, I bring it to her instead. He taught me. But I’ve watched my mum and dad cook, so maybe I know. I’m not sure. I don’t really know if I know how until I try to do things.”

I thought about my eggs in the glass. They’d been slimy. “D’you think you could help me later?” I asked. “Tonight?”

He studied me in the same way his father would have. Assessingly, I’d call that. “Don’t you know how? Everybody knows how to use a cooker. Everybody who’s grown up, anyway.”

“Not me,” I said. “Men don’t do that where I was living, so I need to learn.”

“Oh,” he said. “OK.” And grinned. He had all four adult teeth at the front, but was missing one of the canines. He’d be about nine, then. One thing I did know, and that was kids. Mount Zion grew heaps of things, but mainly, they grew kids.

I smiled with relief, put out a hand, and said, “It’s a deal.” We shook, he grinned some more, and I said, “We’d better start that walk to school, though. Wouldn’t want you to get a hiding. They’d have to give it to me instead, eh, since it’d be my fault, and I’m too old. Embarrassing.”

He didn’t laugh, which showed that I wasn’t much chop at Outside jokes. He said, “Why would I get a hiding? Fighting’s not allowed.”

“Not fighting,” I said. “From your teacher.”

He stared at me. “Your teacher can’thityou. Grownups aren’t allowed to smack kids. It’s against the law.”