by Colin Bowles
‘All I need to know,’ Mister Watson said, in a gentler voice, ‘is who made the phone call to the wood company?’
‘Matt did, sir,’ Bluey said.
‘I thought so. So if he was the one who called the wood company and he was the one who wrote the cheque, what was your role exactly?’
I could see his point. So did Bluey. ‘Well, we didn’t do anything much, really, sir,’ he said, clutching at this lifeline.
‘You stupid boys,’ the principal said. ‘You are both far too easily led by young Armstrong.’ He sighed and leaned forward, apparently making up his mind. ‘You do realise that making out fraudulent cheques could be a matter for the civil courts?’
I couldn’t swallow. The police! He was going to shop us to the cops!
‘Fortunately, Mister Petrovic does not want to pursue that course of action. And as this happened outside of school hours and off school property I have decided to take no further action. I shall let your parents deal with you. Though what they will make of your behaviour, I have no idea.’
He stood up, strode to the door and threw it open.
‘I shall be keeping a very close eye on both of you, in future. If anything of this nature occurs again then I shall have to take very severe action. Now get out of here and I don’t want to see either of you in here again this year. I hope you’re ashamed of yourselves.’
When we got outside my legs felt weak and I had to lean against the wall to keep from falling over. My mouth was so dry I could hardly swallow.
Bluey’s face was white as chalk. ‘I hope Matt doesn’t find out we dobbed him in,’ he said.
‘He dobbed us in,’ I reminded him.
Bluey didn’t seem to have taken this in. Suddenly we were both running. We had to get to a toilet.
Fast.
Next morning Matt was there waiting for us outside the deli on South Terrace. ‘Yo, guys,’ he said, as if nothing had happened.
‘You’re alive,’ Bluey said.
Matt grinned, and shucked his schoolbag over his shoulder. He didn’t say anything. He was going to wait for us to ask.
‘So what happened?’ I asked him.
‘What happened when?’
‘With your dad,’ Bluey said. ‘What did your Dad say about the cheque?’
‘Hey, everything’s cool.’
I doubted it. I guessed Matt was just showing off in front of us. ‘What’s he going to do, Matt?’
‘He was real mad at having to leave work and come and get me from school. That seemed to upset him more than the money.’
‘But what did he do?’ Bluey whined, desperate to know the details of the fiendish punishments Matt would have to suffer.
‘He grounded me,’ Matt said.
‘For how long?’ Bluey asked him. ‘Six months? A year?’
‘A week,’ Matt said. ‘No videos, no pocket money and no going out after school for a week.’
‘A week?’ I said. I felt cheated. When my mother heard what had happened from the principal I had been grounded for two weeks. For just standing there and watching. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘Hey, my old man’s cool,’ Matt said.
I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe it.
‘I had my pocket money docked for three months,’ Bluey said.
Matt looked pleased with himself. Now I think he knew for certain that he could get away with just about anything.
‘But what about the money?’ I said.
‘Dad said he was going to order some firewood anyway,’ Matt said. ‘He’s going round old man Petrovic’s on Sunday with a trailer to pick it up. I have to help him stack it, though.’
‘And that’s it?’
Matt just grinned and kept walking.
‘You dobbed on us,’ Bluey told him.
Matt turned around and glared at us. ‘You mean, if I hadn’t said anything you were going to let me take the heat on my own?’
Bluey took a step backwards. ‘No, of course we wouldn’t.’
‘Right. Good. So no problem.’
‘No problem,’ Bluey mumbled.
Matt nodded, satisfied that he had made his point, and then kept walking. I suppose that was when I realised that I really didn’t like him very much. Sometimes there are people at school that you stay in with, not because you like them, but because everybody else thinks they’re cool and you want to stay in good with them, hoping that some of their cool will rub off on you. But really, all you’re doing is making yourself less cool by hanging out with them and being their slave.
I wondered what my life would be like if I hung out with people I really liked for a change.
‘One thing we do have to figure out though,’ Matt was saying.
‘What’s that?’ Bluey asked him.
‘We have to work out some way to get even with old Petrovic for all the trouble he’s caused.
10
I was supposed to spend the next weekend with my dad. It was the first time I had stayed with him since the day he’d left.
I had all my things packed the night before; my boogie board, my surfboard, my toothbrush and a spare pair of jocks, which Mum packed. I was up and ready by six o’clock, even though he wasn’t due to pick me up until nine.
As usual he didn’t get there till nine-thirty but I didn’t care. What was half an hour when you had a whole weekend?
But as soon as I saw him in the doorway I knew something was wrong. He just wasn’t Dad. He seemed really quiet and he didn’t smile. I wondered what had gone wrong. Perhaps Mum had told him about Mister Petrovic and the wood delivery and he was mad at me about that.
I piled into his car. He wasn’t saying much and I decided not to say anything either until I’d figured out what was wrong. Instead of driving down South Terrace towards his place we drove into the town centre and parked down by the wharf.
‘I thought we were going to your place,’ I said.
‘I thought we’d go into town first,’ he said. ‘We need to buy you a couple of things. Your mother says you need a new pair of boardies, for a start.’
I shrugged. It wasn’t my idea of a good time but I guess I did need some new shorts. And this could work out all right. I knew I could hit Dad for Billabongs, but if I was with Mum, sure as eggs we’d end up in Target getting a Red Spot Special.
As we got out of the car you could smell the sea. You could hear the lines jangling in the rigging of the yachts moored in the marina, and the seagulls were squawking and flapping around the stern of a fishing boat making its way past the south mole. There were only a few tourists walking along the boardwalk. Most of them were busy buying t-shirts in the markets and drinking cappuccinos.
It was still quite cool and the sun was watery and pale yellow. We decided to have a walk before we did the shopping.
Dad bought us ice-creams at one of the coffee bars in the park and we cut across the railway line and down towards the beach. I could tell Dad wanted to say something important so I just waited for him to talk first and concentrated on my ice-cream. I’d got rum and raisin, even though I hated it. I didn’t like eating strawberry ice-cream when I was with my dad. I wanted to impress him.
‘Your mother says you’ve been having a few problems lately,’ he said, finally.
‘No, it’s okay.’
‘Who’s this kid, Matt?’
So Mum had blabbed about the wood delivery. I might have known. I suppose that was fair enough, he was still my dad and I guess he had a right to know. ‘Matt Armstrong. Blond-haired kid. His dad works for that company you wrote the commercial for.’
‘The kid you play footy with? The one with the ring in his nose?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You still hang around with him?’
‘Sure.’
A long silence. ‘Your mum told me what you did,’ he said. ‘It was pretty stupid.’
That hurt. That really hurt. Mum had yelled and screamed and grounded me for two weeks, and I could cop that. But just the
n I realised the one thing I had been really afraid of was my dad finding out and saying just that. That I was stupid.
‘She reckons you’re easily led,’ he said.
This was worse, much worse, than standing in the principal’s office. ‘I’m not.’
Dad shook his head. ‘Make sure nothing like this ever happens again.’
‘It won’t,’ I said. Not if this was going to be the result, I thought. I’d rather have my dad like me than Matt-stupid-Armstrong.
‘How’s your schoolwork?’
‘Okay.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ I lied.
‘Mum says you’re struggling this year. The teachers have told her you’re having a hard time concentrating on your work.’
I didn’t know what to say to that. I suppose I hadn’t done much work recently. I was even copying other people in physical education.
‘I’ve let you down,’ Dad said, suddenly.
That threw me completely. What he said didn’t make any sense. I thought I was the one letting him down. I was the one getting twenty-three per cent for maths and surfing the Croat, and helping Matt Armstrong dump ten tons of mill-ends on Mister Petrovic’s driveway. If anyone was doing any downletting, it was me.
It was like there was a shadow over his face. He looked really angry and drew his arm back and threw his cappuccino ice-cream into the water. The seagulls screamed in excitement and started dive-bombing as it bobbed in the dark oily water of the harbour.
‘I would have eaten that,’ I said, a little bit scared, trying to make a joke of things.
‘Tao,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’
His eyes were all sort of clouded-over. He didn’t even look at me, just stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at the water. I’d never seen him like that and I didn’t know what to say. Dad had always been so cool. Nothing had ever seemed to worry him before.
‘It’s okay,’ I said.
‘I mean it. I’ve really messed up.’
‘No. No, you haven’t.’
He bent down and put his hands on my shoulders. ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you,’ he said.
I waited. Suddenly I knew what he was going to say.
‘Something’s come up. You can’t stay over this weekend.’
I had this hollow feeling. It was like I was an ice-cream container and someone had scooped up all of me with a big metal spoon. I didn’t want my rum and raisin double-cone any more. I did what he had done, exactly the same way. I drew back my arm and tossed it into the water. The seagulls were really happy now.
They were the only ones who were.
‘Why not?’
He took a deep breath. ‘It’s kind of hard to explain. You just can’t. But look, we can still have a good weekend. We’ll go surfing out at Port Beach and I’ll get you some new boardies, whatever kind you want, you just name it, and maybe this afternoon we can play Qasar. You want to do that?’
‘But why can’t I stay with you?’
‘I’ll drop you off just before bedtime and pick you up first thing in the morning. That’s the only thing we’ll be doing differently.’
‘It’s Belinda, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ he said, but I didn’t believe him. The hurt changed into anger really fast. I thought, If he isn’t going to be my dad, he doesn’t have the right to lecture me about who my friends are, and it isn’t any of his business whether I get into trouble or not. Here he was, always telling me to be honest and truthful, and he had lied to me when he had left Mum. Back then he had said he was just going away for a while, when he was really going to live with Belinda. He had lied about still loving my Mum and he had lied about this weekend.
‘Why don’t you ever stand up to her?’ I asked him.
‘Who?’
‘Belinda.’
‘Tao, believe me, it’s not what you think.’
I twisted away from him. ‘I want to go home.’ ‘Tao …’
‘I hate you,’ I said. I didn’t shout it, because I didn’t feel like shouting. I just said it, like it was something new I had just learned. Which, in a funny way, it was.
He didn’t get angry at me for saying it. He just sort of stood up and rubbed his face with his hand.
‘I really hate you,’ I told him.
‘Fair enough,’ he said.
We got back in the car and drove back to the house. We never said another word to each other.
Mum found me in the back yard, kicking a football against the wall. I heard Dad’s car drive away. Good.
Kick, kick.
I knew she was standing behind me but I ignored her. I didn’t want to talk to anyone right then.
‘I don’t blame you for being upset,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’
‘Did he explain to you why you couldn’t stay with him this weekend?’
‘I’m not interested,’ I said.
‘Sit down, Tao.’
‘I said I’m not interested.’
‘I said, sit down!’ Mum wasn’t a big lady or anything like that, in fact I’m almost as tall as she is and probably as heavy. But when she uses a certain tone of voice it’s a signal to watch out. She doesn’t shout; if anything her voice gets softer. Like the calm before a cyclone hits.
So I did as she said. I sat down on the little brick wall around the petunia beds and she sat down next to me.
‘This is probably hard for you to understand, isn’t it?’
I didn’t say anything. Sometimes it’s easier to sulk than explain how you’re feeling.
‘Your father’s going through a difficult time, too.’
Oh, just great, I thought. I really need to hear about his problems.
‘That doesn’t excuse what he’s doing. He loves you, I know he does. But he’s not as … what’s the word you use? Cool. He’s not nearly as cool as you think he is. When some men get older they… they can’t deal with not being young any more. I suppose that’s impossible to imagine when you’re as young as you are.’
‘Why can’t I stay with him this weekend? It’s because Belinda won’t let me, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s because Belinda threw him out.’
This didn’t make any sense at all. ‘Threw him out?’
‘It wasn’t his place, Tao. This is his house. Half of it, anyway. Where he was living was her place.’
‘She threw him out?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So where’s he going to live?’
‘He wanted to come back here but I said no.’
‘But why?’
‘Because … because it took me six months to get used to living without him, and I wasn’t going to have him here for a few weeks just to remind us all how much we’d miss him when he left again. And it wouldn’t have been fair on Barry. So he’s going to sleep in his office until he finds a new place. That’s why you can’t stay with him this weekend.’
‘But why did Belinda throw him out?’
Mum gave a long sigh. ‘She found him with another woman.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No, you probably don’t, thank God. Let’s just say that adults aren’t quite as smart as you think.’
‘You mean he got tired of hanging out with Belinda and he still didn’t come back to you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I hate him.’
‘Don’t hate him. He doesn’t hate you.’
‘But why didn’t he tell me all this himself?’
‘I don’t know. He has his pride, I suppose. He knows how you look up to him and I think he’s scared of falling off that pedestal you’ve put him on. I don’t think he ever wanted you to put him up there but now he’s got used to the view, I suppose.’
I sat there for a long time staring at the paving stones. Three ants were trying to carry a dead stag beetle across to the other side of the yard. It was obvious they were never going to make it. I bounced the ball on them and
they stopped.
‘You and Dad are never going to get back together again, are you?’
‘That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. I think you’ll just have to learn to get used to that idea.’
After a while Mum got up and went back inside. I just sat there. Get used to the idea?
Not ever.
11
Mid-term the whole school had tests on maths and spelling and things like that. The purpose of these tests is to make the kids at school feel bad and stay up late for a whole week worrying about them. At least, that’s what me and Matt and Bluey worked out, and if that’s the idea then it works.
When we got the results back I wasn’t exactly surprised. But I was shocked. I knew my marks weren’t going to be very good but I had no idea they would be that bad. Now what Bluey does when he gets a bad mark is he leaves his test book at school and never shows his parents the results. He forges their signatures at the bottom of his test papers and then everyone’s happy. He says his dad’s favourite expression is ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you’, and he’s just putting the principle into practice.
This can work too well, of course. Bluey’s teacher thought that Bluey’s forged signature was his mum’s real one, so when he had to get a note signed by his mum to say he could go on a school outing to the zoo, his teacher thought that was the forgery and he never got to go.
But that doesn’t work for me. There are three reasons why I have to bring my test book home, always, even if it’s a shocker. The first two reasons are Michael and Connie. Connie is too honest not to show her dad her test results; and Michael is too brilliant and wants to show off. So they always bring their test books home for Barry to look at, and if I didn’t bring mine home, Mum would want to know why. The third reason I can’t hide my test results is because even though my Mum doesn’t teach at our school she knows how all the schools in the area operate and she talks to some of my teachers and there is just no way I can hide anything from her, ever.
Having a teacher for a parent is a complete pain.
When I got home that afternoon, Michael was already sitting at the table in the family room, looking very pleased with himself. Barry was sitting beside him and Mum was looking over his shoulder, as he showed them through his test book, pointing out an unbroken string of one hundred per cent scores. He looked at me and put one hand to the side of his face so neither Barry or Mum could see and then poked his tongue out.
