by R. A. Spratt
Every student had a square metre of canvas and five litres of paint in each of the primary colours, plus black and white.
‘But what do you want us to paint?’ asked Fin.
‘Your emotions,’ said Miss Hickson.
‘An emotion isn’t a thing,’ said Fin. ‘You can’t paint it.’
‘I want you to express your feelings,’ said Miss Hickson.
‘But what if I don’t have feelings,’ said Fin, ‘or they’re so repressed I don’t know what they are.’ Feelings were not Fin’s greatest strength. He could do fear, stress and irritation, but the more subtle gradations in between were beyond him.
‘Just paint that then,’ said Miss Hickson, beginning to get peevish.
Fin looked around. April was already squirting big dollops of paint on her canvas. She had a manic but uncharacteristically joyful expression on her face. The rest of the class seemed to be getting in the spirit too. There were squeals of delight and giggles as paint went everywhere.
Fin sighed. He didn’t care what Miss Hickson said. He was not going to express his emotions. He didn’t want to. If he used the paint to make as much mess as possible, he was sure she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
The double lesson passed quickly. The painting only took half an hour, but cleaning up after the painting filled the rest of the time and somehow made the students messier. The sinks were outside the classroom and if you cram thirty teenagers around a trough full of water, it is almost impossible to avoid a water fight. Especially when there is so much cockroach-related tension in the air.
It started when someone ‘accidentally’ tipped a bucket of dirty water all over April, then escalated when she threw a dozen filthy paintbrushes back. Unfortunately, she missed the person who doused her and got seven innocent bystanders. Then it was on. The whole class was grabbing every nearby receptacle and hurling as much water as possible through the air. To start with April was the target of most of it. But as more water went astray, more side battles were created until everyone was just trying to get everyone else wet.
‘Enough!’ bellowed Miss Hickson.
Everyone froze mid-water fight, suddenly conscious of what they had done. They were all drenched and the art equipment was strewn everywhere. Several water jugs had ended up on the roof and paintbrushes were caught up in a nearby tree. Pumpkin was now largely blue.
There was a dreadful pause as they waited, wondering what Miss Hickson was going to scream at them. But she did something much more shocking. She broke into an enormous smile.
‘Well done, everyone,’ Miss Hickson beamed. ‘You’ve truly embraced the anarchic spirit of expressionist art. I’m very proud.’
The class collectively unclenched. There was a sense of dizzying euphoria, like you only get when you know you’ve got away with something you really shouldn’t have.
‘Now if you’ll just clean up the mess you’ve made cleaning up,’ said Miss Hickson, ‘you should finish in time for the bell.’
The class hastily sorted out the mess, actually working well as a team to hoist the smallest member of the class, which happened to be Fin, up onto the roof to get down the containers. They knocked the paintbrushes out of the tree with some handy good-sized rocks and were soon finished. Things didn’t exactly look tidy, but nor could you tell there had been a near disaster level of mess fifteen minutes earlier.
‘Well done. Class dismissed,’ said Miss Hickson, as the hooter sounded.
The class started picking up their bags and chattering among themselves.
‘You see,’ said April defiantly. ‘I told you today was going to be better.’
Fin smiled. He had actually enjoyed art. That was practically a miracle. Perhaps April was right.
Suddenly, there was a bloodcurdling scream.
‘Aaaaagggghhhh!’
April leapt up onto the desk. ‘What is it? A snake? A time bomb?’
‘My roach,’ wailed Matilda. ‘My roach!’
Matilda was holding a chocolate box with the lid open, but the look on her face was a thousand times worse than the look of someone who’s just discovered that the only chocolates left were Turkish delight.
‘What’s she going on about?’ asked April.
‘I don’t think she had chocolates in that box,’ said Fin.
People were gathering round Matilda to look.
‘It was you!’ accused Matilda, pointing at April. ‘You did this. You said you would.’
‘Do what?’ asked April in exasperation.
Matilda turned the box around to show her. ‘This!’
April and Fin saw Matilda’s roach. It was floating on top of a pool of what looked like bright red blood.
‘How can a cockroach bleed that much?’ asked April.
‘That’s not blood,’ said Fin. ‘It’s paint.’
‘You drowned Bertha in paint,’ accused Matilda.
‘I did not!’ cried April.
‘Look,’ said Animesh, pointing at April’s painting. ‘She didn’t use red paint in her picture.’
‘Exactly,’ said Matilda. ‘She couldn’t. She was hoarding it all to drown my Bertha.’
‘But I never had a chance,’ protested April. ‘The class has been together the whole time.’
‘You could have snuck back in while we were having the water fight,’ said Matilda. ‘No one would have noticed.’
‘Miss Hickson would have noticed,’ argued April.
‘Actually, I wouldn’t,’ said Miss Hickson. ‘While you were outside enjoying yourselves, I was brewing up a nice cup of tea. I find I always need a nice cup of tea by the end of year 8 art.’
‘But I didn’t do it!’ wailed April.
‘You said you were going to kill our cockroaches,’ said Matilda. ‘I heard you right before art.’
‘But she didn’t mean it,’ said Fin.
‘Yes, I did,’ said April. ‘These kids are really ticking me off. I meant it all right, but I didn’t do it. I was too busy.’
‘I’m telling Mr Lang,’ said Matilda.
‘Tattletale,’ sneered April.
‘Murderer!’ accused Matilda.
‘Wait!’ cried Fin, looking at the cockroach in the box. ‘I just saw Bertha move.’
‘Aaagghh!’ wailed Matilda. ‘She’s dying slowly. My poor, poor baby.’
‘I’ll step on her if you’d like, to speed things up,’ offered April.
Matilda lunged for April, which was a mistake. April had been waiting for a chance to use some of her judo moves. The two girls wrestled about under the tables, noisily banging into the chairs. Pumpkin joined in, yapping and snapping at Matilda’s skirt, trying to get a good grip. The class was loudly cheering Matilda on, so no one noticed at first when Fin scooped up Bertha with his bare hand.
‘Now Fin’s attacking Bertha!’ Animesh yelled over the ruckus.
‘No, I’m not,’ said Fin, hurrying towards Miss Hickson’s desk. ‘I’m trying to save her. It’s not too late.’
Miss Hickson had a single washbasin. Fin turned the tap on to a gentle pressure and held the roach underneath the stream of water, rinsing the red paint away. Then he turned her over and rinsed her underside.
The room fell silent as they watched Fin work. He grabbed a biro, broke off the end with his teeth and pulled out the ink tube. He used the pen’s plastic shell as a pipette to flush water over the roach’s delicate antennae until they were also entirely clean. Then he took off his ugly school hat, laid it on the desk and gently placed the roach on top. It didn’t move.
‘She’s dead!’ wailed Matilda. ‘What am I going to do? I’ll never find another roach that good in time.’
‘Hush up,’ said Fin. He started to blow gently on the roach. Its antennae and wings quivered a little in the breeze. He blew gently again and again.
Suddenly, a leg twitched.
‘I don’t believe it,’ cried Animesh. ‘He’s doing CPR on a roach and it’s working!’
Fin kept blowing. The water
was slowly drying off the cockroach. A second later, its antennae quivered and it scurried forward a couple of steps. Two more breaths and the roach scurried right off the cap and tried to hide in Miss Hickson’s pencil case.
‘It’s a miracle,’ breathed Matilda.
‘You should say “thank you”,’ said April.
‘I wouldn’t have to thank anyone if you hadn’t tried to kill her in the first place,’ shouted Matilda.
‘It wasn’t me!’ cried April.
‘Okay, that’s enough,’ said Miss Hickson. ‘The cockroach is fine. I’ll find a clean box you can put her in, Matilda.’
But as Miss Hickson turned away and the rest of the class started to gather their things, there was a bloodcurdling scream.
‘Aaaaagghhh!’ cried Matilda. She was as white as a sheet and there was a horrified look on her face.
Pumpkin was standing on top of the table, chewing something.
‘That dog is eating my cockroach!’ accused Matilda.
‘How do you know?’ said April.
‘He jumped onto the table and snapped her up!’ said Matilda, shuddering at the horror of it all. ‘I saw him do it!’
‘You’ve got no proof,’ yelled April.
Unfortunately, at that moment Pumpkin stopped chewing, swallowed, burped, and a cockroach leg fell out of his mouth. Pumpkin sat proudly on the desk expecting everyone to be impressed by what he had done.
‘Oh dear,’ said Fin.
‘Waaaagggghhhh!’ said Matilda, as she dissolved into hysterical weeping.
‘Fin, April, you had better go and see Mr Lang,’ ordered Miss Hickson. ‘And take that dog with you.’
Joe had never been so scared in his life. Daisy had cornered him in the boys’ bathroom. He had thought he was safe there. The smell alone should have been enough to put off any normal girl. But Daisy was clearly not normal. She stationed two friends on the door to keep watch and went in after him.
‘Are you trying to avoid me?’ she asked. Joe’s back was pressed to the wall. Daisy had her hands up either side of his shoulders and was leaning in so her face was uncomfortably close to his chest. She would have preferred for her face to be uncomfortably close to his face, to encourage impromptu kissing, but she wasn’t tall enough.
Joe had sprinted to the boys’ toilets as soon as the bell rang for recess. He had been in there for the full twenty minutes, so clearly he was either avoiding her or he had a terrible bowel problem. Apparently Daisy was not to be deterred by either alternative.
‘Er …’ said Joe, struggling to know what to say. It would have been rude to yell ‘GO AWAY!’ and he didn’t want to hurt Daisy’s feelings. He briefly considered yelling ‘HELP! I’M BEING ATTACKED!’ but he suspected that would be something he could never live down.
‘So are you going to ask me to the ball?’ asked Daisy. ‘The Cockroach Races Ball is a seriously big deal. It’s the third most important event in the Currawong Social Calendar. I need to know what colour corsage you’ll be buying me so I can match it with my dress.’
‘Um …’ said Joe. His brain was screaming ‘I DON’T WANT TO TAKE YOU. I DON’T WANT TO TAKE YOU!’ and his mouth was opening and closing, but he couldn’t get his vocal cords to make sound. If only Daisy had been able to lip read.
‘Obviously, the decision is yours,’ she said. ‘But pink really suits me. If you tell Maria in the florist it’s me you’re buying for, she knows the shade of rose I like.’
‘N-n-n …’ said Joe.
‘What was that?’ asked Daisy, showing the first sign of interest in what Joe might have to say.
‘N-No,’ said Joe.
‘No, what?’ asked Daisy. ‘No, you don’t like pink? I suppose white would do if you have strong feelings about it.’
‘N-N-No, I can’t take you,’ said Joe. Getting out the words was a great strain, but now that he’d finally said them an enormous sense of relief washed over him.
‘What?’ said Daisy. Apparently just as Joe’s vocal cords had started working, Daisy’s brain had stopped.
‘I can’t take you to the b-b-ball,’ said Joe, with growing confidence.
‘Why not?’ asked Daisy.
Joe stared at her. What reason could he give? He couldn’t say ‘because you terrify me,’ or ‘because all girls terrify me’. It would be the truth, but it wouldn’t be good for his image. And he couldn’t say ‘because I can barely speak to girls let alone dance with them’, because she would probably find that endearing and just use the fact to bully him more. He needed a really good, solid excuse that would make this beautiful girl leave him alone and stop scaring him.
‘B-B-Because …’ began Joe, making the mistake of starting to talk before he knew what he was going to say.
‘Because what?’ asked Daisy. She was starting to get testy now, and Joe knew that girls like Daisy went from flirty to nasty in a microsecond.
‘B-Because … er …’ said Joe, his brain flailing for inspiration, ‘I’m taking someone else.’ He didn’t know where the words came from. Let alone why he said them out loud. He was horrified with himself.
‘Someone else?’ asked Daisy, her face screwing up unattractively as though this was a deeply distasteful thought. ‘Who?’
Joe’s brain blanked. He’d only been living in Currawong for three days. He hadn’t learned any of the girls’ names at school yet. They were all the same to him. Giggly and terrifying. He couldn’t tell you what any of them looked like, because he tried not to look girls directly in the face. It was like looking directly at the sun – so dazzling you could do yourself damage. So Joe blurted out the name of the only girl in Currawong he knew: ‘Loretta Viswanathan!’
Daisy recoiled as if she’d been slapped.
‘You’re taking her?!’ Daisy clearly knew who Loretta was. She was reacting with the body language of someone who had just found out that Joe had smallpox. She shrank back from him as if he were diseased.
‘Yes,’ said Joe, relieved that Daisy had taken a step back.
‘You’re taking Loretta Viswanathan to the Cockroach Races Ball?’ asked Daisy, her nose wrinkling as though this thought was more disgusting to her than the actual smell of the boys’ bathroom.
‘Yes,’ said Joe.
‘Why?’ asked Daisy.
This seemed an odd question. While Daisy was the most beautiful girl at Currawong High, Loretta was in another league of beauty. She was as beautiful as a model. And not the type you see in Kmart catalogues. Loretta resembled the type of model you’d see on a Milan catwalk, looking incredibly bored to be wearing the latest impossibly overpriced designer outfit.
‘Um …’ said Joe. Lying was one thing, but fabricating a whole backstory was more than his imagination could handle. He decided to go with the truth. ‘Because she’s my next-door neighbour.’
‘So she got to you first,’ said Daisy. ‘Typical. Well, don’t come crying to me when she rips out your heart and minces it in a meat grinder.’
‘Okay,’ said Joe. Daisy was frightening him more, not less now. He was glad he had decided to lie. It seemed like a very good decision.
‘You know she cheats,’ flung out Daisy.
‘On boys?’ asked Joe, confused by this turn in the conversation.
‘No, in the cockroach races,’ said Daisy.
‘I don’t really care,’ Joe replied honestly.
Daisy gasped, which was a mistake. You should never inhale sharply in such a smelly room. ‘Then you two deserve each other.’ With that, she turned on her heel and stormed out.
Joe slumped back against the wall. He had finally got rid of Daisy. It was as if a weight had been lifted off him.
Suddenly, Daisy burst back into the bathroom. Joe hastily stood up straight. ‘Scott Benito just asked me to the Cockroach Races Ball and I said yes.’
‘He asked you in the five seconds you were gone?’ asked Joe incredulously.
‘Yes, that’s how popular I am,’ said Daisy. ‘So we’ll see you and Loretta at the b
all. I look forward to watching how miserable she makes you.’
Daisy stalked off again.
Then Joe had a horrible dawning realisation. He wasn’t off the hook at all. Now he had to do something much, much worse. Now he had to ask Loretta Viswanathan to be his date. He considered fainting but he couldn’t even do that. The boys’ bathroom is no place to collapse.
Dad was in the garden gardening. Digging up weeds, pruning and planting were the only things that could calm his never-ending sense of dread. Fear had draped over him like a heavy cloak, weighing him down every second of the day for the past eleven years. Ever since that terrible night when he saw the one woman he truly loved smash in a grown man’s nose with a dinner plate. He could barely remember what it had felt like before, when his life was normal. He was so used to his hands shaking, his breath shortening and sweat pouring off him. He lived every day in a constant state of fear that you would normally only experience if you were being chased by a grizzly bear.
But in the last few days it had got worse. Now Dad wasn’t just scared for himself, he was scared for his children too. He was terrified of his wife, but at least she’d had the skills to take care of their children. What chance did they have now that he was their last line of defence?
That’s why Dad was out in the garden weeding the daisies. Kneeling in the sun, methodically improving the flowerbed, a small section at a time, was the closest he came to meditation. Actual meditation always made him self-conscious. Every time he closed his eyes he was worried that an assassin would leap out and attack him.
Dad had been working his way up the border for over an hour and his body was finally starting to relax. His hands didn’t shake so much anymore that he’d accidentally pull up the daisies, and he could go an entire ten minutes without needing the bathroom. This was as close to feeling good as Dad got.
He was able to enjoy the rustle of the wind through the trees, the buzz of the bees collecting nectar from the jasmine plant nearby and the soft bubble of the fountain in his ornamental goldfish pond.
Until he heard it. A sort of swoosh-thud. The distinctive sound of a spade cutting into soil.
Dad’s first instinct was to play dead. But then he realised it would be suspicious if he was dead in the middle of the garden. He cautiously raised his head so he could look over the French lavender bush in the direction he’d heard the noise come from. He didn’t see anything at first, but then he spotted it. Right in the middle of the rhododendron there was a big round bottom. Someone had their head stuck in the bush. Dad could not imagine what they might be doing – planting a listening device, or a booby trap, or a bomb? His brain told him to run away, but then he thought of his children. He couldn’t keep letting them down. He was the grown-up. If there was someone dangerous in the garden, he had to confront them.
