by Debra Oswald
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Getting Air
eISBN 9781742745695
Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney, NSW 2060
www.randomhouse.com.au
First published by Random House Australia in 2007
Copyright © Debra Oswald 2007
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.
Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry
Oswald, Debra.
Getting air.
ISBN 978 1 74166 270 2 (pbk.).
1. Skateboarding – Juvenile fiction. 2. Skateboarding
parks – Juvenile fiction. 3. Friendship in children –
Juvenile fiction. 4. Contests – Juvenile fiction.
I. Title.
A823.3
Front cover photograph ©iStockphoto.com/Daniel Brunner
Cover design by Louise Davis, Mathematics
For my boys, Dan and Joe.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Imprint Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Reading Guide
Chapter One
If someone had asked me, at the beginning of last year, before everything spun out of control, ‘Zac, what are the best things in your life right now?’, I would’ve just mumbled and laughed like a braindead prawn. Not that anyone would bother to ask a fifteen-year-old unfamous guy from Narragindi a question like that. But if they had asked, I know what the answer would’ve been. Last year, two of the best things in my life – apart from my family – were skateboarding and my best mate, Corey Matthews.
Of course, back then, I didn’t know what was going to happen. I’m still trying to get my head around it …
One afternoon in the April holidays, Corey and I had been cruising around on our skateboards, not headed anywhere in particular.
‘You planning to skate to Sydney, are ya?’ Corey called out, laughing.
I twisted my board round to stop, crunching into the road gravel, and waited for Corey to catch up. I’d ended up way out of town, right underneath the sign that people see when they take the turnoff from the highway:
NARRAGINDI
POPULATION: 8398
Before we get into what happened last year, you need to understand something about our town: Narragindi is a hole. If you’re after movies, proper shops, a swimming pool, a go-kart track, decent live bands, a dance club or any kind of major fun, don’t bother coming to Narra.
For high-school kids, Narragindi is especially brain-numbingly, eyeball-shrivellingly, life-threateningly boring. Did I mention there are no movies?
For little kids, Narragindi is a fun place to grow up. You play footy in winter, swim in the river in summer; you’re happy. You think the world is fair. People are mostly nice to little kids – ‘G’day Zac, little mate.’ But when you get older it’s different. I remember the day I knew it had changed. I was in a shop with a mate from school, looking at CDs. I felt someone’s eyes burning into the back of my neck and I realised that the shop guy was staring at us, giving us the hairy eyeball. Surveillance to make sure we didn’t steal anything. Then he searched our bags on the way out – I’m talking really rough and suspicious, like we were maximum-security prisoners hiding contraband weapons. You hit thirteen and suddenly you’re a ‘youth’, with everyone thinking you’re a thief and a thug.
Anyway, the point is, when you’re fifteen, Narragindi isn’t such a champion place to live. That was the stuff churning around in my head as I scuffed my skateboard back and forth in the loose gravel.
‘Which way now?’ Corey asked.
‘We could hang out for a while at Macca’s,’ I suggested. There’s a McDonald’s at the service centre on the highway, about two kilometres away.
‘I haven’t got any money,’ said Corey.
Neither did I. That was a problem. If guys like us hung around too long at Macca’s without spending lots of money on junk food, we got hassled by the pimply pinhead with the little MANAGER badge on. Between us, Corey and I only had two dollars and fifteen cents.
‘Back into town, I guess.’ Corey shrugged but was happy enough. That was one of the things about Corey. He didn’t whinge and bellyache. He could usually find a way to have a good time no matter what. And that’s something that makes a person excellent company.
We took off down the road on our skateboards, swerving around the potholes like slalom skiers. I loved skating (still do). I liked the freedom of it – no rules, no timetable, no winners or losers. It was truly good to skate with your mates but it was also truly fine on your own. I could work on a new skating trick, stuff it up a hundred times, land on my arse a hundred times, but it was no one’s business except mine. And then when I finally landed the trick perfectly, the feeling was sweet.
On days when my brain was a mess – scrambled eggs inside my skull – getting out on my board really helped. If I got a bit of speed up, the air rushed into my face and blew away the garbage in my head. I reckon it was absolutely the same for Corey too.
I could see him on the road just ahead of me. Suddenly – for a laugh – he swung his back wheels off the bitumen and through the dirt, sending a cloud of road dust into my face. He turned to grin at me, let rip an evil cackle, then shot forward again.
‘You mongrel!’ I laughed and took off after him.
When we got back into town, my mouth was still coated with road dust so I needed something to get rid of the rank taste. At the Crazy Bargains discount shop, you could get a bottle of some dodgy-brand soft drink for ninety-nine cents. I grabbed two bottles from the fridge and took them to the checkout. Meanwhile Corey wandered around sussing out the piles of cheap plastic junk they sold at Crazy Bargains.
Waiting at the checkout, I could hear people around me talking. I squinted out the front window into the street and realised what they were all muttering about.
An angry, drunk guy had planted himself in the doorway of the Imperial Hotel straight across the road. Warren Beggs. Corey’s step
father. Warren was roaring at someone inside, going off at the mouth so loudly you could hear it, clear as anything, inside Crazy Bargains.
Everyone in the shop was yabbering about him. People in Narragindi are ‘gifted and talented’ at gossip. If there was a Gossip Olympics, Narragindi would get a truckload of gold medals. And one of their favourite topics was Corey’s family.
No one knew much about Corey’s real father but everybody in town knew that his mother was part of the Matthews family. The Matthews family had always been considered the lowlife trash of Narragindi – back at least four generations that I know of.
‘They live like animals in tin sheds.’
‘They’re all criminals and dole bludgers.’
‘Those Matthewses all end up in jail one way or another.’
And on and on – you get the idea.
The woman in front of me in the checkout queue was raving on to everyone in a voice like a meat grinder. ‘The Matthews woman took up with that sewer rat Beggs a couple of years ago. But what can you expect? That whole Matthews family – they’ve always been scum. Scum we should hose off the streets of our town.’
Corey must’ve been able to hear her – he was only a couple of metres away. But he kept his head down and acted like he couldn’t hear. Corey was always like that: he never retaliated or let on that it got to him. I don’t know how he did it.
I wanted to grab that stupid woman and bark ‘Don’t talk about people like that’ in her stupid ear. But I knew Corey would hate it if I made a fuss. His survival strategy was to keep a low profile.
We paid for the bottles of weird red fizzy-drink and headed out of Crazy Bargains, down the main street. Corey kept his eyes fixed on the footpath – he didn’t want to see the stickybeak faces staring at him through the shop window. He tried not to let those people have any space in his brain.
I was just starting to relax when a dark-coloured shape whooshed into my peripheral vision. Warren Beggs lunged across the street and blocked the footpath in front of us. Next to me, Corey flinched as if he’d touched a live electrical wire.
Warren was a tall, stringy bloke but powerful and wound-up tight. He had heavy-duty tattoos: they went up both arms, and he had a lightning bolt across his right eye socket and a huge spiderweb spreading round his neck. The terrifying thing was the look in Warren Beggs’s eyes. That look could suck the air out of your lungs and make it impossible to speak or breathe, let alone run. Warren hated Corey – for no reason that I could figure out. Corey was always careful to keep out of Warren’s way and not rile him up.
‘Where is she?’ Warren asked Corey in a low, rasping voice. (‘She’ was Corey’s mother.)
‘Home, I think,’ answered Corey, staring at the footpath. Warren was the kind of guy who’d start a fight if he thought someone looked at him the wrong way.
Corey’s real father disappeared years ago and people reckoned he was in jail. Even Corey had no idea where he was. One of Corey’s uncles (on the Matthews side) got stabbed to death in jail with a screwdriver … or stabbed with a Stanley knife, depending on which version of the story you heard. His other uncle was in jail too, but still alive, I think.
Corey’s mother had hooked up with a few different boyfriends and most of them were dropkicks and mongrels. But Warren Beggs was the nastiest mongrel of all. He’d been living with Corey and his mum on and off for nearly three years.
People in Narragindi loved to gossip about Warren but they’d never dare do it to his face.
‘Warren Beggs is a drug dealer.’
‘Beggs killed a dog with a shovel to stop it barking.’
‘Warren Beggs killed a man in Melbourne.’
I didn’t know what the truth was but there’s no doubt Warren Beggs was a deadset scary guy. My mum reckoned he was a ‘hard man’. If she ever saw Warren Beggs walking down the street, she crossed to the other side.
Warren grunted at Corey like he was a waste of space and then stalked back to his van. Once he’d gone, I heard Corey breathe out in relief. For a few seconds, I wasn’t sure what to say.
Eventually Corey said something. ‘Let’s find somewhere to skate.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, as we headed down the street.
If anyone saw Corey Matthews wandering down the main street of Narra with a skateboard under his arm, they would’ve had no idea of the trouble he had to handle in his life. They would’ve thought he was just another fifteen-year-old guy hanging out.
Chapter Two
There was no skatepark in Narragindi (big surprise) and people went ballistic if kids skated in carparks or the schoolyards. There was really only one place in town where you could go to skate and hang out with your friends.
So that afternoon, Corey and I ended up at this one special spot: outside the Narragindi Town Hall and the empty old bank next door. Those two buildings had ramps, steps, metal railings, plus curved concrete sections on the front that worked pretty much like quarter-pipes. If you were careful, you could skate there without getting in anyone’s way.
Kids were already hanging around, yacking, mucking about on boards or BMX bikes, staring into space, whatever. We’re talking mostly guys but there were some girls skating or riding bikes.
Stella, a girl in Year 9, was teaching herself to do a frontside nosegrind along the metal railings. Her dark ponytail swung from side to side as she shifted her balance and you could see her dark brown eyes shining, focused on what she was trying to do. I’ve got a lot of respect for Stella. Some guys gave her heaps when she first started skating but she didn’t let it bother her and just kept going. Now she’s a better skater than most of those guys.
Riley, this Year 7 kid, was busting a gut trying to do a nollie flip. He was nowhere near getting it but that didn’t stop him trying. I remembered being deadset keen like that when I was Riley’s age.
I slapped my board down onto the concrete, ready to do a run, when a voice screeched so loudly my eardrum went into spasm.
‘Zac! You loser!’
It was JT. Real name: Jamie Throsby, but everyone called him JT. A seriously tall, bony, clumsy guy with a huge dopey smile that showed off his massive number of massive teeth. One of those sandy-coloured, freckly guys with a clump of hair flopped across his face. He was in Year 10, the same as me and Corey.
‘How you going, JT?’ I asked.
‘Excellent, mate. Better than excellent. Just sitting here working on becoming a hot-looking skating god,’ JT said and then cracked up laughing.
JT’s mate Travis snorted. Travis was way shorter than JT but he was a muscly, powerful little guy. I always thought of a bull terrier when I looked at Travis – the same scrunched-up sultana eyes and big lump of a nose in a hard blocky skull. Touchy like a bull terrier too. He was forever getting in trouble and suspended from school.
‘JT, did anyone ever tell you you’re a motor-mouth clown?’ asked Travis.
‘Yep. Been a motor-mouth clown since the day I was born, according to my mum,’ grinned JT. ‘Why don’t you all sit back, relax and watch a master skater at work.’
JT strutted along the ledge, posing like some try-hard guy in a music video, then went for the skating trick. Well, whatever trick he was trying to do went badly wrong. He ended up flying off the edge of the steps and thumped onto the grass. He laughed his head off, rolling around, yelping.
‘Y’know, JT, I worked out why you do all those spazzo falls,’ said Travis, looking at JT sprawled on the ground.
‘That’s classic comic timing, mate,’ JT said.
‘No mate,’ Travis went on, ‘you make a big funny-ha-ha deal out of it to cover for the fact that you can’t skate to save yourself.’
‘You are totally dead, Travis,’ JT growled. He chased Travis up and down the front of the Town Hall, swiping at him with his long bony arms. Then the two of them flopped onto the concrete, squawking like a pair of hyped-up cockatoos.
I know a lot of people get annoyed by guys like JT. He did go off at the mouth too much and
his jokes were generally pretty lame. But I reckoned he was good value. He sent himself up more than anyone and he was always trying to give people a laugh. You’ve got to pay that.
All the time JT and Travis were hooning around, Corey was quietly hanging out. He was chatting to a few people, fixing the wheels on some little kid’s board, laughing at JT or just sitting there, thinking his own thoughts. That was the thing about Corey: he could make it so people hardly noticed he was there.
‘Corey, are you gonna have a go at that thing we talked about before?’ I asked.
Corey shrugged – he’d give it a go. He grabbed his board, clambered onto the top of a ledge, screwed up his face to concentrate and then went for it. He did a very tidy skating run – grinding along the stone wall, jumping down three steps, airborne for several seconds, and then speeding round the curved ramp to the footpath.
‘Champion run!’ whooped JT.
Travis nodded, impressed. ‘Getting some big air.’
Corey grinned, looked at his feet, kind of shy but happy too. When Corey was hanging around with us, he could relax a bit. He didn’t have to be ‘a Matthews’. He was just a skater.
‘Hey,’ said JT, ‘if you had to choose between your mother and your board, what would you choose?’
‘Board. No question,’ Travis answered straight back.
‘Okay,’ said JT, nodding, like he was some serious interviewer. ‘What if you had to choose between your board and your girlfriend?’
Before Travis could answer, there was a hoot of laughter. I looked up to see it was a girl called Jycinta, who was walking up the street towards us.
‘You retards are so kidding yourselves,’ snorted Jycinta. ‘You’d never be able to get a girlfriend anyway.’
