by Justin D'Ath
Larry set my bag down on one of the picnic tables and brushed the wasp out of his hair. Luckily, it didn’t sting him. I hoped he was going to say goodbye and leave me there. I didn’t want to go in. Not yet – not in the middle of dinner. Everyone would turn and stare, like I was a stranger or something. Like having a dead grandfather made me different from them.
But it was too late. Larry had already pulled open the door.
‘After you, young Cooper,’ he said, waving me in ahead of him.
Gulp!
At first, hardly anyone noticed us. All the year fives from Monvale Primary were sitting there, six to a table, too busy eating and having a good time to look in my direction. I searched for Jeff and the guys, but couldn’t spot them. Right near us, Trent Cassidy from 5J was doing something with a tomato sauce bottle that was making everyone at his table laugh.
Suddenly a chair scraped loudly away from a different table, and Ms Lucas (AKA Ms Mucus) rose noisily to her feet.
‘Cooper!’ she cried, in a loud, mushy voice like a lady in a movie whose husband had just come back from the war, and came flying towards me with her arms out.
Now everyone was looking – first at Ms Mucus, then at me.
I wanted to turn and run, but Mr Sayer was blocking the doorway.
There was no escape.
Seventy-seven year fives, two teachers, six parent-helpers and a former Australian rugby captain watched Ms Mucus hug me.
It was the second worst moment in my life – and both had happened on the same day!
Ms Mucus was only short and I was looking right into her eyes. So I closed mine. But I couldn’t close my nose. Her mouth was about two centimetres away and I could smell what she’d just been eating – cheese and baked beans.
‘Cooper, I’m so so so sorry about your loss!’ she said.
I didn’t say anything, just stood there with my eyes closed, holding my breath and hoping the world would end. All my friends were watching. I was never going to live this down!
It was Miss Hobbie who came to my rescue. I hadn’t heard her stand up or seen her coming, but suddenly she was right next to us, saying softly to Ms Mucus, ‘Go and sit down, Penny. I’ll take it from here.’
When Ms Mucus had gone, Miss Hobbie touched my elbow and steered me over to the serving counter, where a single, squashed-looking toasted sandwich sat all alone in the middle of a huge oval tray.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘There’s not much left, is there? I’ll make you some more.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’m not very hungry.’
It was true. Ms Mucus’s cheesy breath had probably cured me of eating forever. But I didn’t want to hurt Miss Hobbie’s feelings, so I loaded the last toasted sandwich onto a plate. Then I waited, with my back turned to everyone else, while she filled a paper cup with orange cordial from a big silver urn at the end of the counter.
‘Now let’s find you somewhere to sit,’ she said.
People had started talking again, which was a relief. Not all of them were watching as Miss Hobbie led me to a table where only five kids were sitting. They were all from 5L and I wasn’t friends with any of them. I sat next to Lily Ng, whose twin sister Matilda was in my class. Except for their glasses, which had different-coloured frames, Lily and Matilda were identical; so it was like I was sitting next to someone I knew.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Hi,’ Lily said back. She didn’t look at me. ‘I’m sorry about your grandfather.’
For a while we all sat eating in silence. My sandwich was cold and rubbery, and didn’t taste like anything much. I didn’t really want to eat it, but I couldn’t just sit there doing nothing. I hoped nobody else was going to say anything about Pop. The best way to avoid it was to talk about something else.
‘What time did you get here?’
‘Just before lunch,’ Lily said.
I would have been sitting outside the church hall, wondering if I was ever going to get to camp.
Which reminded me: What happened to Larry? The former Wallabies’ captain was no longer over by the door. He must have slipped out while I was getting my sandwich. I hadn’t even said goodbye. Or thanked him for bringing me here.
Or got his autograph.
‘Did you do anything this afternoon?’ I asked Lily.
But it was the boy across from me, Jasper Sass, who answered: ‘We went abseiling.’
No way! I thought. ‘Aren’t we doing that on Wednesday?’
‘There’s another school at the other camp,’ he explained. ‘We had to switch days.’
Bummer! Abseiling was one of the two best activities at Thunder Canyon Camp. And now, because Pop died, I’d missed it!
‘Was it good?’ I asked, taking a sip of orange cordial like I didn’t care.
‘It was super scary!’ said Lily. ‘I couldn’t look down till I was nearly at the bottom!’
Jasper caught my eye. ‘Two of the guys you hang out with, Jeff and Dan, went down forwards.’
‘Rap jumping,’ I said.
‘Yeah, that’s it,’ said Jasper. He seemed to shiver. ‘They must have nerves of steel! Going down backwards was bad enough!’
Lily had a misty look in her eyes. ‘Those two guys are soooo brave!’
I would have done it, I wanted to tell her. If I’d been there, three guys would have rap jumped. I was just as brave as Dan and Jeff.
Suddenly there was a big pool of cordial spreading across the table. Without meaning to, I’d squeezed my paper cup so hard its sides had caved in. The others at my table all squealed their chairs back to stay dry, but I just sat there watching the cold, sticky liquid go drip drip drip into my lap.
This is your fault, Pop, I thought. If you hadn’t made me late for camp, Lily and Jasper and all the other year fives would have been saying how brave Cooper Hodge was too.
Straight after dinner, Miss Hobbie, who’s a bit of a nature freak, led us on a night walk up through the thick rainforest behind the camp. Ms Mucus and the other year five teacher, Mr Johnson, came along to keep an eye on us. So did most of the parent-helpers. Everyone had torches or headlamps and there was a track marked with arrows and white-painted posts that we had to stay on or else. We were supposed to be looking for owls and possums and stuff, but lots of kids were just fooling around.
I was with Jeff and Dan and the guys (finally!) and ours was the noisiest group. All except me. The others kept going on about how wicked abseiling had been, and laughing about funny things that had happened on the bus trip, so all I could do was listen and feel jealous. I didn’t want to remind them that I hadn’t been there. Or why I hadn’t been there.
Just before the walk started, Fadi had come up to me and silently shaken my hand, like a Mafia boss on TV. The other guys had cracked up. When the laughing stopped, it was like everyone was too embarrassed to talk to me, or even look at me. I wanted to ask if they saw the old dude who’d come into the dining hall with me, and whether they recognised him. But I kept my mouth shut because someone might say, ‘Wasn’t Captain Slayer in the same team as your grandfather?’ And then everyone would remember Pop was dead, and we’d all feel even worse.
The best part of the night walk (the only good part, as far as I was concerned) was the rock-painting cave. It was right at the farthest point from camp and down a little side trail. Because the cave was small and the trail very narrow, we were only allowed to view the rock paintings six people at a time. Dan and Gregor had to wait their turn while the other guys and I went in with Mr J. It wasn’t much of a cave, more of a rock overhang, and the paintings were pretty faded, but there was a clump of bushy ferns over to one side that gave me an idea. Switching off my torch, I slipped behind the ferns and ducked out of sight. Nobody noticed I was missing as Mr J led everyone away.
When the next group came along, I suddenly jumped up and yelled ‘Boo!’
Everyone freaked, even Dan. But the person who screamed loudest was Ms Mucus. She was pretty mad at me and let me know it.
/>
But it was better than having her hug me like she’d done in the dining hall, and on the way back down the hill, Dan gave me a silent high five.
Wombat Camp had twelve little log cabins for kids on school camps. Each cabin had four bunk beds, so eight boys or eight girls got to stay in each one. But because I hadn’t arrived until half a day after everyone else, I didn’t get to choose where I slept. Dale Watson from 5J got to share with Jeff, Dan, Jack, Fadi, Michael, Benj and Gregor, instead of me. Dale wasn’t even in the rugby squad.
I got put in with Jasper Sass and six other guys from 5L who I hardly even knew.
And they’d left me with the bottom bunk right near the door, where I was always in a draft and there was almost nowhere to put my stuff.
I hardly got any sleep. The door wouldn’t latch properly and kept rattling in the wind. And someone in one of the top bunks was snoring all night like a V8 supercar. Plus, every time I closed my eyes, I started thinking about the funeral. It was awful how I’d had a giggling fit and even worse how Mr Sayer had looked at me afterwards. I almost wished it had been me in the coffin, not Pop.
No, I didn’t.
But I didn’t want him to be in there, either.
Then I started thinking about his Wallabies jumper. Who had put it on the coffin lid and what happened to it afterwards? I hoped they didn’t leave it there when they buried him. I hadn’t gone to the cemetery, so I didn’t see. But the longer I lay wide-awake in my drafty bottom bunk thinking about it, the more convinced I became that they had buried Pop’s Wallabies jumper with him.
Which wasn’t fair. Pop had made a promise to me one day when I was about six years old. I was staying with him and Nanna on the farm, and he said when I was big enough for his rugby jumper to fit me, I could have it.
But then he went and died before I grew up.
He could have waited! I thought, burying my face in my pillow and trying to think of stuff that wouldn’t make me angry, or sad, or keep me wide-awake in the middle of the night when everyone else was fast asleep.
Finally I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew the door was wide open and a blaze of sunlight came streaming into the cabin. There was someone standing in the doorway looking down at me.
‘Wake up, sleepyhead,’ said the voice of Miss Hobbie.
I squinted up at her, still half asleep, trying to work out what was going on. Then I noticed that all the other bunks were empty.
‘Did I sleep in?’
Miss Hobbie smiled. ‘Don’t stress. There’s still time for breakfast if you get dressed quickly. I’ll be waiting outside.’
So for the second meal in a row, I was late. Everyone seemed to be sitting at the same tables as the night before, so I took my bowl of cereal and paper cup of orange juice and sat next to Lily.
‘Did you sleep okay?’ she asked.
I didn’t know if she was making fun of me, so I just nodded.
Jasper was sitting across from me again. He had a silly smirk on his face. I should have kept my big mouth shut, but I couldn’t stop myself.
‘What’s so funny, Sass?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You should have woken me,’ I said crossly.
His smile just got bigger. ‘I’m not your mother, Hodgie.’
I ate the rest of my breakfast in total silence. Nobody else at our table said anything, either.
Who’d have thought that year five camp would turn out to be such a barrel of laughs? Not! I thought. Because nobody in the history of the world had ever felt less like laughing than I did right then.
‘Everyone choose your paddling buddy,’ said Nat, one of the kayak instructors. ‘I want you all in teams of two.’
We had travelled all the way to Mirror Lake, about an hour and a half from camp, to learn about kayaking. After lunch, when we’d all had a bit of practice on the dead-calm lake, the two buses were taking us to Thunder River for the activity I’d been looking forward to even more than abseiling – white-water kayaking.
It was going to be wicked!
But when I went looking for Jeff to be my paddling buddy, he and Jack had already teamed up. So had Dan and Fadi. All my other friends had chosen their paddling buddies, too.
Their bus had got to Mirror Lake first. I’d wanted to travel with them, but it didn’t work out. Everyone else had piled into the same buses (and the same seats) where they’d been the day before, so I couldn’t sit with my friends. I ended up on the other bus, which was filled mostly with kids from Ms Mucus’s class.
Someone lightly touched my arm. It was Lily. Her yellow life vest was almost bigger than her and she looked a bit like SpongeBob. ‘Do you want to be my paddle buddy, Cooper?’
Everyone else was in teams already, so I had no choice.
‘Okay.’
Nat gave us lots of tips, like sitting up straight and using the muscles in our legs and bodies, not just our arms, to work the paddles. But kayaking was harder than it looked. Each paddle had a long metal shaft with an oval-shaped blade at either end. You had to hold the shaft with your hands quite wide apart and rotate it from side to side, so that first one blade, then the other, pulled the kayak through the water. The key to it was working as a team. If you and your paddle buddy got things wrong, you didn’t get anywhere.
Lily was useless. I had never seen anyone so uncoordinated. Not only did she keep hitting my paddle with hers, sometimes she whacked me on the arm, or missed the water altogether. I couldn’t get any sort of rhythm going because her paddle was always in the way. And it hurt being bashed all the time! In desperation, I tried calling time like a marching instructor – ‘Left, right, left, right’ – but still Lily got it wrong. After about ten minutes of going in circles, my arms felt black-and-blue and we were only about thirty metres from shore.
Nat came paddling back from the middle of the lake, where everyone else seemed to be doing fine. He was in a one-person kayak, so it was easy for him.
‘Having problems, guys?’ he asked.
‘It’s my fault,’ Lily squeaked. ‘I’m totally hopeless!’
She was totally right, so I totally said nothing.
Nat came gliding in alongside us. He told us to pull our paddles into our bright-orange kayak, then he began pushing us smoothly towards shore.
‘What do I call you guys?’ he asked.
‘I’m Cooper and she’s Lily.’
‘Which bus were you on?’
‘The second one,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘That figures. You guys missed the start of my talk. I might have forgotten to tell you something fundamental about tandem kayaking – the bigger person should always be in the back seat.’
‘So it’s my fault?’ I said, feeling a bit annoyed.
Nat gave me a friendly smile. ‘No, Cooper. It’s mine for not doing my job properly. How old are you?’
‘I’ll be turning eleven in two months.’
‘You look pretty fit,’ he said. We had reached shallow water now and Nat held our kayak steady while Lily and I swapped places. ‘Do you play any sports?’
‘Rugby,’ I said. ‘And cricket and tennis in summer.’
‘What about you, Lily?’
‘I’m hopeless at everything.’
‘Nobody’s hopeless at everything,’ Nat said. ‘Who knows, kayaking might be your thing.’
Kayaking wasn’t Lily’s thing. Even with me in the back seat, she still couldn’t get the hang of it. But at least I could see what she was doing wrong now (just about everything), and keep clear of her out-of-control paddle.
I began to feel sorry for her. She did seem to be trying. It was her size that was the problem. Or her lack of size – Lily was tiny. Her arms, poking out of her huge lifejacket, looked like skinny little sticks. No wonder she had to keep stopping to rest. It gave me an idea.
‘Take your paddle out of the water, Lily, and lie it across your knees,’ I said. ‘I’ll try paddling on my own.’
When Nat said I looked fit, he’d
probably meant strong. But either way, he was right. I was fit and strong. You had to be, to play rugby. And it turned out that my rugby muscles were good for kayaking, too. Even with just me paddling, Lily and I were faster than lots of the other kayak teams on Mirror Lake that morning.
I was starting to look forward to our run down Thunder River.
Nat and the other instructors had been secretly watching us. After a sausage-sizzle lunch on the lake shore, they divided us into two groups of roughly the same size and began handing out coloured kayak helmets. Half of us got yellow helmets, the rest got red ones.
Lily and I were in the yellow-helmet group.
‘Hang onto those lids,’ Nat said. ‘You’ll be wearing them on Thunder River.’
It was exciting getting helmets. White-water kayaking was dangerous! Even though we weren’t at the river yet, a lot of kids put them on.
‘Why are they different colours?’ asked Jasper Sass, tightening the chinstrap of his red one.
‘It’s so we know who’s who,’ said Nat. ‘There are two kayak runs on the river, and one is a little more challenging than the other. So we’ve divided you into groups, according to your ability. Each group will be tackling a different stretch of river.’
Ms Mucus climbed onto a tree stump where we could all see her. ‘Listen up, everybody!’ she shouted. ‘As you just heard from Nat, we’ll be travelling to two different locations this afternoon. That means some of you will need to change buses. So here’s how it’s going to work: if you’ve been given a red helmet, you’ll be travelling in that bus’ – she pointed at the one Jeff and the guys had been on – ‘and those with yellow helmets will be going in that one’ – she pointed at my bus.
