The Sidekicks

by Will Kostakis

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Ice-cream?’ he asks.

  Hank’s a prime example of how jarring it can be to peer behind the curtain. Out in the corridors, he’s Mr Morgan, this menacing teacher who barks, ‘Gents!’ like it’s some kind of threat. In here, he’s a gentle giant with a mini freezer under his desk.

  ‘No.’ Mr Watkins would kill me. ‘But thanks.’

  I shut the door.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Hank bites into his chocolate-coated ice-cream. I don’t get it. It isn’t even nine o’clock, and the aircon is set to Arctic.

  ‘Do you have a free?’ I ask.

  ‘No, I thought I’d relax in here while my Year Eights re-enact Lord of the Flies.’

  No other student would believe Mr Morgan ever makes jokes.

  ‘I’m gonna . . .’ I point across the room. He tips his ice-cream to me and swivels back to face his computer.

  Each English teacher has a tiny workstation against the wall, except Mum. She has an office in the corner. When I’m there alone, she insists I keep the door open. I don’t know what difference it makes; the wall is mostly glass. Anyone can look in and see what I’m doing. Not that I mind. I can think of worse places to spend first period. Like in Mr Ford’s office, or the library. At least here, I can play music and access the staff wireless network, where none of the good websites are blocked.

  I drop my bags in the corner and get comfortable at Mum’s desk. I launch a playlist on my phone. The beat is heavy enough to make Hank look over. He doesn’t need to say a word. I pause the track. ‘Sorry,’ I mouth.

  He returns to his work. I find a silent way to pass the time: making sense of the scrawled notes Mum’s stuck to everything on her desk. When the staffroom door opens, I expect it to be her. It’s Amy. Mum has mixed feelings about Amy. She always looks like she’s received bad news; Mum can’t stand that, but she knows the impact of a young female face on male minds.

  Amy leans back on the door until it closes. She stays there for a moment, blinking up at the ceiling.

  ‘Forget something?’ Hank asks.

  Amy shakes her head. ‘No, but I told them I did.’

  Her face screws up like she’s willing herself not to cry. Hank launches out of his chair. He pulls her in close and consoles her, angling the ice-cream away from her cardigan.

  I’m not supposed to be seeing this, but Hank’s forgotten I’m here.

  Amy says, ‘I had to skip over his name on the roll.’

  My chest tightens. Amy teaches Isaac’s class. She’s fresh out of uni; he must be her first . . .

  The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  ‘Do you want me to pop in and look after them for a bit?’ he asks Amy, releasing her.

  ‘No, no, it’s fine.’ She wipes her eyes. ‘I’ll be fine.’ She clears her throat and straightens her blouse. ‘I doubt they feel any better.’ She grabs a whiteboard marker off the nearest shelf. ‘Can’t go back without something.’

  She leaves and Hank closes the door. He turns and our eyes meet. I must look shattered, because his shoulders drop. He shrinks.

  ‘Ryan,’ he says.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  I loop my arm through the straps of my bags and make a break for the door. ‘I just remembered . . .’ My eyes sting. I blink. ‘I have this thing. Tell Mum, all’s good.’

  And I’m out. I cross the hall, take the fire stairs two at a time, and charge out onto the lower level. The corridor’s deserted. Anyone else with a free first isn’t stupid enough to be in yet. That’s one of the perks of Squad. I’m in at sparrow’s, no matter what.

  My locker isn’t far from the stairwell. Blinking back tears, I enter my combination. I pull down, it doesn’t unlock. ‘Damn you.’ I reset the lock with three twists of the dial and try again, slower this time. It works.

  I can’t shake the thought of Amy standing against the door, breaking. I want to cry for her. I want to cry for me. I want to cry for Isaac.

  Maybe coming back so soon was a mistake.

  I open my locker. The boltcutters are propped up against the corner.

  I completely forgot about the other stuff that happened yesterday. Raiding Isaac’s locker. The money. Miles. He and Isaac were up to something, and whatever it was, I helped cover it up. The proof is still in my locker.

  I need to get rid of it. I breathe out the emotional residue and focus. Boltcutters. Right. I have to return them to Mr Collins’s office before he realises they are gone. He probably has a class now. Amy’s definitely back in her classroom. I wonder how she’s –

  I exhale.

  There’s whistling. I wipe my eyes and peer over. A maintenance guy in a baggy collared tee shuffles up the corridor, a ladder under one arm. I cram my stuff into my locker, concealing the boltcutters. He continues past but doesn’t get far. He turns the ladder upright and unfolds it like a pro. He climbs up and starts tinkering with something on the ceiling.

  My bag sinks forwards, exposing the blades. Quickly, I angle my body between the maintenance guy and my locker. I unzip my sports bag and slip the boltcutters inside.

  ‘What’s that now?’

  I almost jump out of my skin. I look back. The maintenance guy’s on the phone, standing beneath the exposed wiring of a security camera.

  ‘Hang on, don’t. I’ll be right up.’ He ends the call with a string of obscenities, then notices me watching. ‘I didn’t say any of that.’

  ‘None of it,’ I concur.

  He holds a small, black dome against the ceiling and starts screwing it back on. Looking past him, the same black domes dot the ceiling at regular intervals. There’s one near Isaac’s locker.

  The school has footage of us breaking in.

  I’m late for Modern, even with a free beforehand. It’s a skill. I shut the door quietly behind me.

  ‘You’re early!’ Omar snorts.

  Shut up, Omar.

  Mr Butler feels the same way. ‘Shut up, Omar.’ His eyes follow me as I weave between the desks. ‘Nice of you to join us, Ryan. Work is on the board, get started.’

  Isaac always sat between Miles and me. Today, Miles has filled the void with a stack of library books. He’s an aggressive borrower. The moment we learn our next Modern topic, he checks every relevant book out of the library. I doubt he even uses them.

  I approach. He doesn’t tear his eyes away from his school planner when he says, ‘Hey.’

  He has no idea how much shit we’re in.

  ‘Mr Ford told me Isobel is coming in to collect Isaac’s stuff.’ He’s congratulating himself. We got into the locker before them. He thinks we’ve won.

  ‘There are cameras.’

  Miles looks up. ‘What?’

  ‘I checked. In the corridors, outside Mr Collins’s office, near Isaac’s locker, everywhere,’ I say. ‘They saw everything.’

  Miles leans closer. ‘Someone spoke to you?’

  ‘No, but –’

  He shrugs it off. ‘Then we are fine. They are only there for when there is an incident.’

  I blink hard. ‘You knew?’

  My surprise bounces off him. ‘They are difficult to miss. Honestly, I would not be surprised if they were empty shells put there to scare us.’

  ‘They’re not, I saw a maintenance guy fixing one and . . . You let me break into a teacher’s office and then Isaac’s locker, knowing there were cameras?’

  He blinks. There’s no remorse.

  ‘You’re unbelievable,’ I say.

  ‘Relax. No one is going to check the footage for no reason.’

  I want to counter his point but I can’t. He’s right. Nobody saw us. There’d be no reason to check the footage. I mean, Mr Butler whacked the front of Mum’s car and she had to chase down the surveillance footage. I exhale. We’re in the clear. We got in and out before –

  ‘Isobel,’ I mutter.

  ‘Yes, before lunch,’ Miles says.

 
; ‘No, no, she’s coming to open the locker. Mr Collins will realise he doesn’t have the boltcutters.’

  There’s a raised eyebrow. ‘You have not put them back?’

  ‘You left me standing in the corridor holding them when the bell went. I didn’t have a chance.’

  ‘Ryan, you need to put them back.’

  ‘Really? Thanks, I hadn’t pieced that together.’ Sarcasm everywhere.

  ‘Ryan.’ It’s Mr Butler’s attempt at sternness. It isn’t very threatening.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Are you going to take out your things?’ he asks.

  Miles’s eyes flare. ‘Or did you leave them in your locker?’

  I reach for my bag. ‘No, I’ve got them right –’ Oh, I get what he means. ‘Actually, sir, I need to go to the toilet.’

  He’s unimpressed. ‘You just came in.’

  ‘And I only just needed to go.’

  Mr Butler sighs and shoos me off with one hand.

  When I’m out of view, I sprint to my locker. I grab the sports bag with the boltcutters in it, throw it over my shoulder and hope Mr Collins has a class. He doesn’t. I can see him through the glass panel. He must sense someone standing close, because he looks up. He smiles and waves me in.

  I haven’t had much to do with Mr Collins. I’ve never been in one of his classes and Mum’s never invited him over. He works in the school boarding house, and beyond that, he’s a total mystery. I don’t even know his first name.

  I open the door. He’s shoving his gym gear to one side, making room on the couch. ‘Ryan! Sit, sit.’ He wheels his chair back. ‘Wait, do you have a free?’

  I don’t hesitate. ‘Sure.’

  I sink into the couch. Mr Collins hunches over, elbows on his thighs. ‘How are you doing?’ he asks. It’s more sigh than speech.

  I don’t know how to answer the question. I can tell him what happened in the staffroom earlier, how contagious Amy’s sadness had been, how suddenly it had gripped me . . . But that paints a very specific picture of how I’m doing, and honestly, it hasn’t been like that. Not the whole time. Can I say it’s not as bad as I thought it would be? Mostly, it isn’t this huge sadness. It’s a constant, sort of, hollowness in my chest. An acknowledgement of an absence. And piled on top of that, there’s the stuff I still have to worry about, like the stolen boltcutters in the bag on my lap.

  ‘I’m all right,’ I say.

  He doesn’t push for an elaboration. Instead, he asks if I want a drink. ‘I have some OJ somewhere,’ he adds.

  I remember seeing the packet when I was raiding his things. It’s in the top drawer of his desk.

  ‘I’m good, thanks.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to have some.’ He turns to his desk and pulls open the drawer. While he wrestles a juice popper out of the plastic packet, I realise I have a chance. I unzip my bag and reach for –

  Mr Collins swivels back around, breaking the popper’s seal with a straw.

  ‘Actually, could I have one?’ I ask, my heart in my mouth.

  He’s happy to oblige. He opens the drawer again and I drop the boltcutters onto the floor. I guide them under the desk with one foot. I’m half-off the couch when he holds the popper out to me.

  I accept the orange juice and sit up. ‘Cramping,’ I explain without him asking. I glance down – the boltcutters’ handles are poking out. Close enough. I break the popper’s seal and take a sip. It tastes nothing like any orange I’ve ever had. Still, it doesn’t last long.

  I should leave. I’ve done what I needed to, but I’m in no rush to return to the stack of books in Modern where Isaac used to be.

  ‘Does it get any better?’ I ask.

  Mr Collins lowers his drink and wheels closer. He swallows hard. ‘I’ll probably get into trouble for saying this, but . . . We all pretend like we know what we’re doing when it comes to this stuff, like we know how to fix what you’re feeling but we don’t. We’re all feeling it too.’ He’s being too bleak, so he adds, ‘Time. Time helps.’

  I push my straw down into the empty popper. ‘So you’ve . . . lost a student before?’

  ‘When I was doing my placement, there was a kid from a Year Nine class,’ Mr Collins says.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He’d been sick for a while, so it wasn’t sudden, but it’s always shit.’ He doesn’t hesitate, or whisper it, he just lets ‘shit’ land like the most adequate word, professional code of conduct be damned. I appreciate it.

  ‘And there was –’ He stops and furrows his brow, considering whether or not to share. He decides to. ‘My best mate died in Year Twelve.’

  ‘How?’ I blurt.

  He deflects the question with a short shake of his head.

  I feel bad. ‘Sorry.’

  If it bothers him, he doesn’t show it. ‘My parents were originally from Adelaide. Whenever they had the chance, they took me back. Callum and I were apart for weeks at a time and it didn’t faze me. But as soon as I knew I would never see him again . . . I needed him. It took me a while to realise why. I was a private person, reluctant, nervous – but not with Callum. We shared everything through high school. When I lost him, I lost all that time. He was the other half of every anecdote, and the one who remembered them better. I’d put all my eggs in one basket, and suddenly . . .’ He nods a fraction. ‘Callum was gone, and no amount of needing him would bring him back.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  He sits back and exhales. ‘Well, I . . .’ He gives it more thought. Eventually, he continues, ‘I don’t know whether it was conscious or not, but I stopped holding back. I told people more. Even if I only knew them for a minute, I made sure they knew something about me. Instead of putting all my eggs in one basket, I put smaller eggs in many baskets. You could say I diversified my investments, protected myself from the volatility of the market. So if something happened to one basket, I had plenty more, and I’d never have to start from scratch again.’

  He grimaces. ‘It could have been me, and that scared me,’ he adds. ‘I didn’t want to leave my legacy to one person, and risk it being lost. I gave as much of myself to as many people, so that when they put all those pieces together, that would be the mark I left on the world.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ It’s all I can think to say.

  ‘Don’t be, it’s . . . You’ll find what makes it better for you. Me, I was a shy kid. It’s apples and oranges.’

  I know what he thinks. I’m Ryan Patrick Thomson, Olympic hopeful. That’s my mark, but it isn’t all of me. There’s so much only Isaac knew. The world is a dark place when you’re hiding something. Telling Isaac who I liked, when we kissed, how it felt – that was me kicking the door open a smidge to let the light in. He was my light in dark places, and now he’s gone.

  The apples are apples.

  ‘I should probably go back to class.’

  Mr Collins sighs. ‘Why did I have a feeling you didn’t actually have a free?’

  ‘Uh . . . because you’re in charge of timetabling?’

  I can tell he wants to laugh. ‘Off you go.’

  Mr Butler doesn’t notice I’ve been gone for nearly half the period. Miles does. ‘Is it done?’ he asks without looking up from his textbook.

  ‘Yeah.’

  He turns the page and highlights a passage. The boltcutters are back in Mr Collins’s office, and that resolves everything – the cameras, the break-ins – so we don’t need to talk any more. He’s not going to tell me where the money came from, what he and Isaac were up to, because we’re not actually friends.

  It’s like he’s drawn a line under yesterday and moved on. I watch him over the books stacked between us. He’s writing something in the margin of his page. I go to speak but my chest is tight. The world is dark. I want to kick the door down and let the light in. I want to tell him I’m scared and sad, without being afraid of it sounding poofy. And I want to tell him I kiss guys and it’s awesome. I want to . . . not pretend. But I don’t have the guts.

  I nee
d what I had with Isaac. Some light. Any light.

  Mr Collins is in my head, telling me to diversify my investments. Smaller eggs, many baskets.

  I speak up. ‘My favourite colour is aqua.’

  ‘And?’ Miles asks.

  We have a spot that’s ours, a table in the corner of the courtyard farthest from the staff common room. Miles would always get up me for saying it was ‘furthest’. When I stopped, Harley started. He likes the way ignoring tedious grammatical distinctions makes Miles squirm.

  I can almost see it playing out like it has a thousand times. Harley sitting slouched, smugly clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, Miles getting into a huff, Isaac biting back a smirk.

  The paint job might be flaking and it might get the worst of the jacaranda’s fury, but this table is where we orbited Isaac.

  I unwrap my recess – sushi from the caf – and wait. Two younger kids try to commandeer a corner to copy each other’s homework.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But we –’

  ‘No.’

  They scoop up their books and keep walking.

  This is the spot that’s ours.

  There’s a nineteenth-century drawing room in the back of our English classroom – think comfortable chair, world globe and antique bookshelf all on a rug tucked in the corner. It’s mostly for ambience, to give the room a scholarly feel, but Conrad sits back there to raise productivity. We can’t see him, so we assume he’s always watching.

  I check over my shoulder. He is watching. I fake dusting something off my shirt and turn back. Hank’s told Mum what happened in the staffroom, that’s a certainty. She hasn’t sent a message or come to find me, which means Conrad’s her eyes and ears. She’ll grill him the moment class is over.

  I should at least look productive.

  I open my English folder and thumb through the pages. I get to a sheet explaining literary techniques and lose my breath. Isaac wrote over the top of it. His letters are tall and thin: What You Need Right Now. Underlined twice in red, because presentation was important to him. He thought that as the son of the Head of English, I didn’t abuse my power nearly enough, so he compiled a list of excuses guaranteed to get me out of class (ranging from imminent bowel movements to personal tragedies) and instructions on how to make a selection (Just close your eyes and fucking point at one).