by Debra Oswald
‘You’ve gotta keep paddling hard in a town like Narra so you don’t just sink into the ooze,’ she said.
That’s true, I thought. Most of us would probably sink into the ooze soon enough. But not Lauren.
‘First, I want to get the best HSC I can,’ she explained. ‘I’ll keep working on videos until I get into one of the top film schools. I’m not naive. It’s not going to be easy. And I know –’
Lauren suddenly stopped, embarrassed. Corey was staring at her in a weird way.
‘What?’ she laughed. ‘Do you think I’m an egomaniac?’
‘No way.’
She pulled a goofy face, sending herself up. Corey laughed. From that moment on, he was a goner – that is, totally in love with Lauren Saxelby.
Chapter Eight
Glenthorpe is a much bigger town ninety kilometres down the highway from Narragindi. In ‘Glen’ they’ve got a cinema multiplex, bigger shops, an indoor pool with a waterslide and a pretty reasonable skatepark. So kids head for Glen if they want a bit more excitement than you can get in Narragindi. The trouble is, it takes an hour and a half on the bus from Narra to Glenthorpe and you can get stuck waiting ages for a bus back. It’s a one-hour drive if you can bludge a lift from your parents or someone. It’s a forty-minute drive if Travis’s speed-freak brother Ryan is driving.
The next Saturday, Mum did the run to Glen. She pretended it was because she needed to visit our cousins there but really she went to give Corey a lift down. Glenthorpe has a proper full-on hospital and that’s where Trisha Matthews had ended up. She had a badly broken arm and dislocated shoulder that needed surgery, metal pins and whatever. Trisha claimed that she’d fallen down the back steps but everyone reckoned Warren Beggs bashed her.
I don’t know if Warren ever hit Corey. I never saw any bruises and I’d like to think Corey would have told me if something like that happened. But I guess I can never be sure about that.
No way a maggot like Warren would ever drive Corey to visit his mother. That’s why Mum offered a lift: to save him doing the trek to the hospital on the bus. Corey was staying full-time at our house while Trisha was getting patched up in Glen.
On the Sunday after the hospital visit, he was trying to keep his mind off worrying about Trisha. Mum’s big solution to that was to yabber nonstop about the skatepark campaign and Corey kept nodding, as if he was totally amped about the whole thing. I figured he was too polite to tell Mum to shut up.
Amy roped Corey into helping with little jobs for the campaign. The three of them – Amy, Corey, Mum – sat round the kitchen table stuffing and addressing envelopes. Inside those envelopes were letters begging for donations from all the businesses in town.
Me, I was flopped on the couch, vegging out in front of the TV, not doing anything useful. So when there was a knock on the door, I thought I’d better be the one to get off my arse and answer it.
I could tell by the shape in the splodgy yellow glass of the front door that it was Lauren Saxelby. A bad feeling shivered through my chest and it took me a second to work out what the feeling was: shame. I was ashamed that Lauren would see inside our small, ordinary house with our lumpy old green couch and the crumbly lino on the kitchen floor and our ancient television set, which Mum had covered in red tape when the sides fell off last summer. I was imagining the way Lauren Saxelby would screw up her face at our scabby stuff compared with her big house full of shiny stuff. And then I got angry with myself for even caring what she thought about my family.
I opened the front door.
‘Hi Zac,’ said Lauren.
‘Hi,’ I muttered and sloped back to the couch.
‘Lauren!’ said Amy. ‘Is that it? Fantastic!’
Lauren had finished editing the video for the skatepark campaign and she handed the disc to Mum. Amy was desperate to watch it that second and whacked it straight into the DVD player. Mum thumped me on the bum to make me shove over on the couch. Everyone sat around and watched the video. I had to admit it wasn’t bad. It included footage of skateparks in other towns, plus shots of Narra skaters. The voice-over was comments from kids about why a Narragindi skatepark would be a top idea.
Mum was smiling her head off. ‘This is perfect.’
‘Thanks,’ said Lauren. ‘Corey helped me with it a lot.’
Corey blushed. Compliments always embarrassed him massively.
‘We can show this to all the clubs in town, to get support for the skatepark,’ said Mum. ‘Mind you, it can’t be an adult who does the presentations. It needs to be a kid – someone who believes in the skatepark and can talk about why it’d be a great thing.’
Mum flashed a look at me, her eyes drilling into me like lasers. I kept staring at the TV screen as if my head would fall off otherwise. No way was I going to get roped into it.
‘You do it, Corey,’ said Amy.
‘Me? I wouldn’t know what to say,’ protested Corey. ‘Anyway, why would they listen to me?’
‘I could help you write a speech if you like,’ offered Lauren. She was good at that kind of stuff (of course).
‘Yeah? Oh well, thanks and everything but I don’t think – I couldn’t do something like that,’ Corey mumbled.
Later, when Lauren had gone, Corey and I were hanging around in my room, sometimes talking, sometimes just listening to music.
‘Hey,’ said Corey after a few minutes with no talking. ‘Lauren was asking me the other day about what I want to do when I finish school.’
I snorted a laugh. ‘Is she a career guidance counsellor or something?’
‘What are you gonna do?’ he asked me. ‘Will you stay on at school after Year 10?’
I shrugged. I hadn’t decided. A lot of kids didn’t stay on at Narragindi High. Of course everyone expected Corey Matthews would be one of the kids who’d leave after Year 10.
‘It’d be good to get an apprenticeship,’ said Corey. ‘But who in Narra’d give me an apprenticeship? No one.’
That was true, even though I wished it wasn’t. No one in Narragindi would give a Matthews kid any chance.
‘Anyway …’ said Corey. ‘Right now the main thing is making sure Mum’s okay and that. So not much point thinking about it – y’know, the future.’
He sounded so down, I wanted to cheer him up.
‘What about when I start my amazing skateboard and BMX magazine?’ I said. ‘You can work on it with me. You can do the illustrations and graphic design.’
‘I’d like that.’ He nodded slowly. ‘I’d love that.’
I stared at the ceiling, projecting imaginary movies of how great it would be running our own skate magazine.
Then I noticed Corey shimmy himself across the floor on his back.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked. ‘Sweeping my dirty floor with your T-shirt?’
Corey was squinting into the dark space under my bed. ‘You still got that model thingo? Is it still under here?’
Corey reached into the dusty, fuzzy mess under my bed and dragged out the model of a skatepark built on a square of plywood. For my twelfth birthday, my nana sent me some cash. I went straight to the hardware store and bought the materials to make the model. Corey blew the dust off the top of it.
‘This is an exact scale model of the skatepark we want, yeah?’ asked Corey.
‘Yeah.’
I thought when I made the model – I was only twelve, remember – I thought people would say ‘Oh right, Zac, we get you now. That looks great.’ But it didn’t work out that way.
Corey picked off the balls of fluff that had stuck to the model in the last three and a half years.
‘You could use this model in presentations,’ said Corey. ‘You should help, Zac – do the speeches. You’re good at stuff like that.’
Corey had seen me blabbing on stage when I was in the Narragindi High debating team. But I’d dropped out of public speaking and all that halfway through Year 8.
I shook my head. ‘Nah. It’s your business if you wanna help out on the
new campaign. But I’d hate to see you get all psyched and then –’
‘And then the grumpy old guys kill it dead. That’s what you think will happen,’ said Corey.
‘I remember how lousy it felt, that’s all,’ I said.
Corey turned the model around in his hands, peering at it and smiling as if he could see the little tiny skaters whooshing up and down the balsa-wood skateramps. That’s what I used to do when I first made that model.
‘Have it,’ I said.
‘Don’t give it to me. I don’t want to wreck it.’
‘It’s not doing me any good getting festy under my bed,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s yours now.’
Corey carefully stood up, holding the model as if it was the most precious object in the world. ‘Thanks, Zac.’
He loved that skatepark model so much, he carried the damn thing around with him for the next week. He’d lug it to school and keep it in his locker. He’d cart it round to our place and leave it sitting on top of the TV. He was worried that if he left the model at his place, Warren Beggs might get into one of his foul moods and smash it up. I think he also just liked having the model around. It was the solid 3D version of a dream in his head – a dream that you could possibly make a good thing happen.
Chapter Nine
The Narragindi High Athletics Carnival is always held in the middle of winter now. A few years ago some moron scheduled the carnival on a stinking hot February day and five people ended up collapsing with heat exhaustion. Because our school oval is dried out and lumpy, we have the carnival at the council sportsground on the edge of town.
Most of the teachers were more relaxed on sports day. Ones who were already friendly and cool, like Mr Stepanovic, got the chance to joke around with us. But teachers like Mrs O’Byrne were crabby no matter what day it was.
Mrs O’Byrne found kids incredibly annoying so it was a bit of a shame for her (and for us) that she ended up being a high-school teacher. I don’t know whether she started out hating kids or whether being a teacher for a hundred and forty years had made her hate us. Anyway, the point is, she marched around the sportsground, wearing a yellow sunhat, barking and growling and snapping her fangs at any kid who scurried across her path.
The Narragindi High principal, Mr White, strolled around with his hands behind his back and a dopey smile on his face, trying to avoid doing any work. Mum called Mr White the ‘Teflon Man’: he let everything slide off his non-stick surface.
A few kids took the races seriously. Most of us, like Corey and me, went in a couple of events. And then there was a pack of people who sat on their bums in the grandstand and tried to get out of going in any races at all. No prizes for guessing that Jycinta and her cronies were sitting on their bums, bludging.
Lauren was darting about with a clipboard, being one of the main organisers for her house. (No big surprise there, either.)
‘Why don’t you guys go in the 200 metres?’ Lauren suggested to the cluster of girls sitting with Jycinta.
Those girls rolled their eyes and snorted as if Lauren was suggesting they wade through 200 metres of dog poo.
‘I’m hopeless at running,’ Marissa explained. She felt guilty about saying no to Lauren. ‘I might go in the shotput but.’
‘Excuse me?!’ screeched Jycinta, flashing Marissa a poisonous look. ‘You will not be going in the shot anything!’
With her surprisingly strong arms, Marissa was good at the chucking events like shotput and javelin. But there was no way Jycinta would let her go in any event. Marissa shut her mouth and shrank back into her seat.
Stella did well in a lot of events. She was one of those people who’s handy at most sports. (I guess that’s why she got the hang of skateboarding so quickly.) When Stella went onto the track to warm up for the 100-metre final, she bent down to fix her shoelaces.
‘Stella!’ hissed Mitchell, popping up beside her. ‘I’ve been watching how you’ve been doing your starts and I reckon you could shave half a second off your time if you put your feet differently. Like, did you see in the Olympics how they –’
‘What races are you going in, Mitchell?’
‘Oh … me? None. I’ve got this thing with my Achilles tendon which means I can’t put pressure on my ankles.’
‘Well, that’s a shame. Why don’t you rest your ankles and your mouth and let me run the race myself?’ sighed Stella.
‘Oh, sure. Okay, sure. Sorry … I was just trying to – y’know … good luck and everything. Sorry …’ he stammered and backed off.
JT arrived late but he made up for it with a big entrance. He skateboarded through the sportsground gateway, making a trumpet-fanfare noise with his mouth. He was wearing diving gear – wetsuit, flippers, mask and snorkel, all spray-painted red (JT’s house colour).
‘Aww …’ groaned JT as he looked around the sportsground. ‘I thought it was the swimming carnival.’
You could tell most of the teachers were trying hard not to laugh at JT’s long bony body in the tight red wetsuit, flippers and mask. Mr Stepanovic cracked up laughing. Miss Kadri – the new young English teacher – got the giggles. Mrs O’Byrne was the only teacher who didn’t see the funny side of it. She barked at JT and made him take off most of the gear. She had to let him keep on the wetsuit or he would have been nude.
Travis wasn’t at the athletics carnival that year. Not officially anyway. He’d been suspended from school the day before. Mr Cleveland had caught Travis crawling under the science benches and sneaking out the window. He wasn’t suspended for the crawling or the sneaking. He was suspended for the things he’d said to Mr Cleveland when he’d got caught. (Use your imagination.)
Being suspended wasn’t going to stop Travis enjoying the athletics carnival. He showed up anyway and stood outside the cyclone wire fence. Travis whooped and yelled stuff out, swinging off the fence like a demented spider monkey. Eventually Mr Cleveland stalked over there and gave him heaps.
That was the difference between JT and Travis. JT could get away with a lot – he was funny and people liked him. He could suss out when people were getting seriously angry with him and he’d back off or give them a huge cheesy grin to make it okay. Travis always took things too far until he got in real trouble. With Travis, you’d watch him getting into an argument with a teacher and you’d think, Oh no, Travis, stop now. Don’t say that. Shut up now. But he never did, so he was always in deep trouble.
There was a pack of mothers at the carnival as usual plus one or two fathers. The mothers sat bundled up in rugs, with thermoses of coffee, chatting and gossiping. A few times I glanced across and saw some of the mothers staring at Corey, leaning their heads together to talk about him.
My mum zoomed down in her lunchbreak like she did every year. It didn’t matter much to me but I could see Amy smile when Mum hurried into the grandstand in her Chemistzone uniform. She got there just in time to see Amy’s second attempt in the high jump. Amy was doing well and Mum roared and clapped like a crazy person. (Yes, guaranteed to be embarrassing, Gail Marlowe.)
Later, when Mum had to go back to work, I went down to the edge of the high-jump area and took over the job of cheering Amy on.
‘Excellent preparation, run-up and execution by Amy Marlowe on that last jump,’ I said. ‘Oh yes, ladies and gents, Marlowe is on fire. Records may be broken here today.’
Amy waggled her tongue at me and laughed. I felt someone’s eyes on me and realised Lauren was watching me joke around with Amy. Lauren had this confused look on her face, as if she couldn’t believe that a meat-head like me would be nice to his little sister. I just tried to ignore Lauren Saxelby and her opinions about things. Anyway, Amy ended up coming second in the junior girls’ high jump.
Every time JT went in an event that day, he did something weird. In the 100 metres he ran backwards for half the race until he tripped himself up and went sprawling across the track. In the 200 metres, he ran the whole race dragging his left leg behind him as if it was paralysed. JT laughed like a strin
gy red kookaburra at his own stupid stunts and so did most of the people watching.
Then at the start of the 400 metres, Mr Cleveland fixed JT with a Stare of Death. ‘No monkey business in this race please, Jamie Throsby.’
JT nodded and took up his position on the starting line, super-serious. But then when Miss Kadri fired the starting pistol, JT grunted and jerked his body as if he’d been hit by a bullet and collapsed onto the grass. For several long seconds he lay there, not smiling, not moving. Miss Kadri burst into tears, thinking she’d somehow shot him with the starting pistol.
Even when JT bounced back up onto his feet, Miss Kadri couldn’t stop crying. Mr Cleveland really tore into him then. He refused to give JT the satisfaction of being suspended and getting out of school days. Instead, Cleveland sentenced him to a detention every afternoon for the next fortnight. So I guess even JT had gone too far that time.
I heard noise and a flurry of activity in the grandstand where Jycinta and her friends were sitting. Matt Daly, the eighteen-year-old guy Jycinta was hot for, had turned up. Matt was twelve months into a plumbing apprenticeship and he was there to do some work on the pipes in the change rooms at the side of the grandstand.
Jycinta went totally mental, scrambling in her bag to find a mirror, lip gloss, hairbrush and extra jewellery. It wasn’t easy to sneak past the teachers to get to Matt but she was desperate enough to try. She kept down low, waddling behind the rows of seats like a duck wearing sparkly earrings. Then she squeezed between the railings at the side of the grandstand and scooted into the change rooms.
Jycinta got fifteen minutes of flirting time with Matt before she was sprung. Mrs O’Byrne dragged her out of the change rooms by the waistband of her skirt.
Jycinta plonked herself back in the grandstand, steaming mad.
‘It’s your fault, Marissa,’ she seethed.
‘My fault? I never did anything,’ Marissa said.
‘Exactly. You didn’t do anything to warn me Mrs O’Bitch was about to show up.’
