by Debra Oswald
‘Zac, there are good and bad people everywhere,’ argued Mum. ‘If you leave, there’ll be bad people anywhere you go.’
‘But at least I won’t have to look at their faces every day and know who they are and know what they think when I walk down the street.’
The arguing went on for a while longer but in the end Mum didn’t stop me going. She gave me an extra fifty dollars and made me promise on my life that I’d phone her the minute I got to my cousin’s house in Glen.
Chapter Thirteen
Heaps of gossip about me was flying around Narra. In one version, I’d turned into a raving nutbar and been dragged off to a loony bin in Sydney. In another version, I’d lied about my age and joined the navy. I’d robbed several banks, become a pro-skater, had one leg amputated after a motorbike accident, disappeared in the Simpson Desert and moved to Argentina.
I’m sorry to disappoint you but the truth was way more ordinary than that. In fact I was living in the spare room of my cousin’s house in Glenthorpe. My cousin Eliot is a fair bit older than me, twenty-two. When his parents moved to Sydney, he stayed on at their house in Glen to finish off his apprenticeship as a chef. That’s why there was a spare room for me, no big deal.
Eliot worked long hours and spent a lot of time at his girlfriend’s place, so we didn’t get in each other’s way. Every now and then, we’d both be awake and at home at the same time.
‘G’day Zac. You okay?’ Eliot would ask me.
‘Yeah,’ I’d say. And that would be it. I think Eliot had to put up with phone calls from Mum, checking up, and I suppose he did keep an eye on me.
I got a job working four days a week packing shelves at the Bi-Lo supermarket. The rest of my time I spent writing pages of blah blah in my diary, eating bulk amounts of spaghetti bolognese (the one thing I could cook) and skating a bit. Mum tried to persuade me to go to one of the high schools in Glen but I couldn’t hack the idea of school. I didn’t exactly have a plan for myself for the rest of that year, let alone the next year. All I was sure about was staying away from Narragindi. Apart from that, I was just making it up as I went along.
You don’t have to live in Narragindi to keep up with the Narra gossip. After I left, I rang Mum every day. (She said if I didn’t phone to let her know I was alive, she’d hunt me down and kill me.) So Mum passed on any news from town. Plus I saw JT at the Glen skatepark a few times and he filled me in on the rest.
JT reckoned my mum had been pretty dark since I’d left. Before, she always used to joke around with people, especially kids, who came into Chemistzone. Now there was no joking, no smiling. I didn’t need JT to tell me that. I could hear from Mum’s voice on the phone how upset she was about me dumping school and leaving home.
My sister, Amy, was so stinking mad at me she refused to speak on the phone. She was already cut up about Corey and now her lousy brother was making things worse. One of the reasons I didn’t visit Narragindi was that I felt too guilty to face Amy.
People reckoned Lauren Saxelby was different after Corey died. The girl formerly known as Miss Perfect was going off the rails at school: wagging classes, missing work, getting into rows with teachers. JT reckoned there were a few times they found her sobbing her guts out in the school corridor or locked in the girls’ toilets. According to the gossip, there were a lot of arguments round the Saxelby house. People in their street heard the yelling.
After Corey died, a lot of things went toxic. Kids didn’t hang out together skating the way they used to. The council cracked down on skating in public places so it was tough to find anywhere to skate. Plus with Corey and me not there, a lot of people just gave up.
Now that Travis didn’t have a pack of Year 10 skaters to hang with, he started hooning round with his brother Ryan and his mates. That was a big shame because those older guys were A-grade idiots. Travis was in the car with them when they held up the service station on the highway to Glen. With a shotgun. Those morons held up the servo in a town where everyone knows them. They got caught, of course.
Travis spent a night in the cells. JT reckoned that Travis reckoned it wasn’t so bad. (Travis would’ve been scared out of his mind, I bet.) He went to court and they set a date for the proper trial. People around Narra were saying he’d probably have to go to kiddie jail. I asked JT to say hi from me to Travis and wish him luck. JT just shrugged – Travis had dropped out of school and stopped seeing people, even his old best friend, JT.
Meanwhile JT had lost his touch and was starting to annoy the hell out of people. He’d had a few serious blow-ups with teachers – not JT’s usual laid-back jokey style at all – and been suspended twice.
Just when it looked like things couldn’t get any more rancid, the Narragindi Council did what I always suspected they’d do – they double-crossed everyone on the skatepark. Even though we had the OzYouth grant and all the money, they went back on their promise to give a piece of land for the skatepark.
The front page of the Narragindi News had a big headline: ‘No Genuine Youth Interest in Skatepark, Says Council.’ Which was total rubbish. But those guys could tell whatever lies they wanted to. The council announced that they wouldn’t give permission to build the skatepark in the town park.
The old mongrels were going to get away with their dirty tricks because there was no one to fight them. Mum was too worn out, too upset about Corey and too worried about me. All the skaters had given up hope.
‘Nothing you can do.’
‘What’s the point?’
‘We’ll never get a skatepark.’
Remember the awesome skateboard Mitchell won in the raffle? Well, he never even took the plastic off. Now that the Narragindi skatepark was cactus, Mitchell said he was going to sell the gear back to the shop.
About two months after I left Narra, I had a Sunday afternoon off work and headed over to the Glenthorpe skatepark.
About ten other skaters and BMX riders were already hanging around. A skatepark might look disorganised but under the surface, there’s a system operating, with unspoken rules. People take turns and make space for each other without making a big deal out of it.
The skaters were even giving a fair go to a couple of rollerbladers. Skaters generally dump on rollerbladers for being ‘rich snobs’. They get called ‘pizzacutters’. Personally, I don’t mind bladers if they follow the unspoken rules of the skatepark and treat the rest of us with respect.
I nodded hello to a few guys but I avoided getting into conversations. You can make it clear you want to be left alone without being unfriendly. I didn’t want to have to pretend to be normal.
I was mucking around on my board when I got that shivery feeling that someone was watching me.
There was Lauren Saxelby sitting on a park bench. I had no idea how long she’d been there watching. She looked different: sad and small and uncertain, as if the light, or energy or whatever it is inside a person, had faded away almost to nothing.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hi.’
I couldn’t work out what she was doing there. She had a sports bag on the bench next to her. Maybe she’d brought video gear in the bag.
‘You doing more filming for your video?’ I asked.
‘No. Your cousin told me you might be down here.’
‘Oh, right …’ Now I was really confused. Why was she here?
‘You heard they pulled the plug on the skatepark?’ she asked.
I nodded.
‘So everyone’s given up,’ she said.
‘Worn out. Exactly what those old reptiles want.’
She didn’t say anything for a minute. I was still confused. Then Lauren unzipped the sports bag and pulled out the old skatepark model I’d given Corey.
‘The police didn’t know what to do with this,’ she explained. ‘I said I’d give it back to you.’
She handed me the model. I tried to stop my hands shaking as I took hold of it.
‘Look, I know you hate my guts,’ said Lauren.
; ‘I don’t hate your guts.’
‘What happened to Corey … I still can’t even … I don’t know who I can talk to or what I –’
‘Corey’s dead,’ I interrupted. ‘Nothing to talk about.’
Lauren flopped back down on the bench, her eyes wet with tears. My voice had come out meaner than I’d intended. I felt bad for taking out my rotten mood on Lauren. It was weird being there with her – we’d never been friends but now we had this powerful, almost unbearable connection with each other because of Corey. Neither of us knew what to do about that connection, how to talk to each other. In the end, I told her something I hadn’t told anyone else.
‘I was thinking …’ I said carefully, ‘if the skatepark got built in Narra it should’ve been dedicated to Corey.’
‘You mean like “The Corey Matthews Memorial Skatepark”?’
‘Something like that, yeah.’
‘That’d be fantastic,’ said Lauren, her eyes shiny with a tiny spark of life again.
‘No point now. Now the skatepark’s stuffed.’
‘Well, maybe it’s not stuffed if we can prove to everyone that –’
‘Hold on.’ I put my hand up to stop her raving on. ‘Why are you saying “we”? Don’t look at me.’
But Lauren was getting fired up now. ‘I’m not a skater. I’m not the person who can get everyone psyched about the skatepark again. But if we could get the skatepark named after Corey, it’d be – I mean, you know how important the skatepark was to Corey –’
That’s when I really snapped, throwing words at her like a slap in the face. ‘Skatepark’s not gonna do Corey any good now.’ I dumped the skatepark model on the ground at her feet. ‘I don’t want this thing.’
‘Corey loved it,’ said Lauren. ‘He always said –’
‘I said I don’t want it.’
Lauren got to her feet and kicked the model across the concrete, away from her. ‘Do whatever you want with it. Stomp on it, chuck it in the river. I don’t care.’
She hoisted the sports bag onto her shoulder and half walked, half ran down the street.
When I got back to my cousin’s place, I put the skatepark model on top of the boxes crammed next to the bed I was sleeping in. I stared at the model through the night, trying to conjure up the tiny imaginary skaters whooshing up and down the balsa-wood ramps, the way I used to. I saw wood and plaster and paint but no tiny skaters.
Chapter Fourteen
Because the Narragindi skatepark was dead, Ray Stone decided to hold a funeral for it. Well, sort of.
Stone and two of his cronies from the council slapped their car doors shut and strode across to the park carrying a shovel. It was a Sunday afternoon, but Stone was wearing a suit and tie to show everyone he was still a Very Important Guy even on Sunday.
That week, the council had announced they were putting in a new rose garden in the same corner of the park where the skatepark was supposed to go – as if those mongrels were trying to rub our noses in it. I’ve got nothing against roses. I’ve got nothing against any kind of flower. The point is, there were already plenty of other rose gardens in Narragindi but there was no skatepark.
Ray Stone wanted to get his photo taken digging the first shovel of dirt for the new garden. He’d invited Dennis – the guy who ran the Narra News – to be there with his camera, ready to cover the story about the death of the skatepark.
There was a bit of talk around Narragindi that people should turn up to demonstrate against the dumping of the skatepark. But everyone figured there was no point. It was hopeless anyway.
Ray Stone took off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves to start digging. That’s when my mum showed up with my sister, Amy. Two minutes later, Lauren arrived, ready to film the whole disaster with her video camera.
Stone leaned on the shovel and looked around the empty park with a smirk on his bloated face.
‘So is this some kind of demonstration?’ he asked Mum. ‘Three people? Is this all you expect in the way of a turnout?’ He was talking loudly, putting on a show for Dennis.
Three people didn’t look like great town support for the skatepark and that was exactly what Stone wanted. That’s what the whole rose-garden-photo-opportunity was in aid of. The council needed to spin some PR fluff to explain why they’d double-crossed us on the skatepark. They needed to explain it to all the people in town who’d donated money and bought raffle tickets. It was a big show to prove that kids in Narragindi didn’t really care about a skatepark.
Yeah, Ray Stone was holding a funeral for the skatepark: he was going to bury the idea once and for all in that corner of grass.
‘Look, Dennis mate,’ said Ray, bunging on his blokey voice, ‘the fact of the matter is, Narragindi does not want an eyesore in the middle of town, covered in graffiti, unused except as a centre for antisocial behaviour. See for yourself, Dennis: the poor turnout today is powerful evidence that the town youth don’t want this skatepark.’
Up until then, Mum was trying to control her mouth. But she couldn’t hack any more of Ray Stone’s lies. She fronted straight up to Stone and gave him a mouthful.
‘Because you old bigots wore the kids down!’ said Mum. ‘You made them lose any faith that things could be fair. I always said to my kids: if you want something, you can work to make it happen. What am I supposed to say to them now?’
Stone tried to be smarmy with her. ‘Come on, Gail, the truth is –’
A smarmy voice would never work on my mother, especially when she was fired up like this.
‘Why? That’s what’s got me stumped,’ Mum continued. ‘Some of you lot just love the sound of the word “no”. Then there are the fence-sitters – cowards who want to keep everybody happy. Fence-sitter types end up losing their balls on the barbed wire.’
‘Look, I think … uh –’ Stone began.
Mum fixed Stone with a look as sharp as a tack. ‘Then I worked it out. You straight-out hate kids. The way you go on, you’d think every kid was a thug and a criminal.’
‘What I want to see for this town –’
‘What you want is to put all the kids – well, the boys – put all the boys in an underground bunker when they hit twelve and not let them out until they turn eighteen, ready to be workers and members of the RSL. Skaters and their mates – they’re our kids. This town’s children. We owe them a bit more than this crap.’
Later, I saw Lauren’s video of Mum blasting Ray Stone. I know I’m biased (on account of being her son) but I’ve got to say, she was amazing.
Ray turned his back on Mum and tried his smarmy voice on Dennis. ‘You can see how recent events have unsettled our community,’ he said. ‘Frankly, Dennis, I think there’s a lot of grief and anger about the Corey Matthews business being transferred where it doesn’t belong. It’s not our fault that boy got himself killed.’
‘Got himself –’ gasped Mum. ‘What did you say?’
Mum couldn’t speak, too upset by the disgusting way Ray Stone was using Corey for his scummy excuses.
Amy put her arm round Mum. ‘Let’s just go home.’
They walked away. It was over. You could never win against a guy like Ray Stone and his dirty tricks. It was hopeless.
Stone turned to Dennis with a smug smile. ‘Mate, truth is, it was an orchestrated campaign, the work of a small, selfish group and even then –’
‘What’s that noise?’ asked Dennis.
On the video, you can hear the noise: a distant rumble, like a cross between a growl and a sandpapery dragging sound. Amy laughed. She guessed what that sound was before anyone else. It was the sound of wheels on bitumen.
Turning into the main street of Narragindi was a pack – about sixty kids on skateboards and another seventy or so on razor scooters, bikes or rollerblades. Kids without wheels got doubled on bikes or jogged alongside. The usual suspects were there: JT, Travis, Stella, Riley, Mitchell, Matt Daly. There were heaps of Year 7 kids and a fair whack of the Year 11 guys. Even Jycinta and Marissa got
off their bums and walked. Mr Stepanovic rode his mountain bike and Miss Kadri had borrowed someone’s scooter. There must have been more than a hundred and fifty of us altogether. I was on my skateboard near the front of the pack.
I’ll never forget the faces we saw as we swung around the corner and hit the park. Mum and Lauren looking confused but smiling. Ray Stone and the council guys looking confused and cranky. Dennis scrambling to snap photos of the wheeled pack.
I should stop for a minute and explain a bit of the story I jumped over.
A couple of weeks after Lauren gave me back the skatepark model, I heard about Ray Stone’s rose garden plan. I kept staring at the model, sitting there on the cardboard boxes. I kept thinking about Corey and all the work people had put into the campaign. I kept stewing about how unfairly things had turned out. It made me sick to think that Stone was getting away with burying all of that like it was stinking festy rubbish everyone wanted to forget.
I rang JT. ‘JT, it’s time we got off our arses.’
I talked to the skaters at the Glenthorpe skatepark and those guys understood totally. About fifteen skaters from Glen offered to travel to Narragindi and support us at a demonstration.
Meanwhile JT and I got cracking on the phones, talking to as many people as we could get hold of. On the Friday before, I caught the bus back to Narragindi and camped out in JT’s lounge room. For the next forty-eight hours, JT and I worked our bums off. I didn’t let Mum or Amy know I was back in town. I wanted to do the work myself.
Ray Stone was a sneaky toad. He deliberately set the rose garden thing at the same time as the football semifinal, so more than half the people in Narra would be at the footy. In the end, I had to go to the sportsground at half-time and talk a bunch of people into coming down to the park with us.
So there we were.
‘G’day, Mr Stone,’ said JT, grinning as he swung his skateboard to a neat stop on the path.
