Alex Jackson: Grommet

by Pat Flynn

  CHAPTER 4

  Chief

  Alex was writing notes in class. This is inappropriate classroom behaviour. Please speak to Alex and ensure this does not happen again or further action will be taken.

  Mr George Letcher (Year 8 Coordinator)

  “Mmmmm,” said Alex’s father. “A note from George Letcher, hey?”

  “Can you hurry up and sign it before Mum gets home,” Alex said, glancing out the front window for a sign of Sharon Jackson’s yellow Corona.

  His father looked up from the couch. He was dressed in his usual baggy shorts and singlet top, and he had on his favourite black cap with “Lordy, Lordy, I’m over 40” written across the front. A small tattoo of a pair of crossed boxing gloves was visible on his rather large right bicep. In the background an old video of Muhammed Ali versus George Foreman — the Rumble in the Jungle — was playing. It had been watched so many times that the picture was getting fuzzy.

  Jeff Jackson and his son were nothing alike. Most people couldn’t believe they were even related. Alex thought he was a pretty cool dad, but he still couldn’t figure out why a smart woman like his mum married this retired brawler.

  “Tell me,” his dad said, “is this George Letcher a big guy?”

  “Dad, you can’t fight him! He’s the Year 8 Coordinator!”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to fight him, I just asked what he looked like. Speaking about fighting,” he said, signing the note, “you coming down the gym this arvo?”

  Jeff Jackson ran the Logan City Community Boxing Club. He had a few promising fighters and was very proud of all his “boys”. There were some tough types in the club, but they didn’t faze him. Being beaten senseless by a Samoan middleweight in the fight for the 1982 Commonwealth Games bronze medal must have helped him lose his fear of homeboys. Plus, he knew that most of the boys in the club worshipped the ground he walked on, and anyone who stepped out of line would have to answer to them first.

  “Can’t Chief, I’m heading to the skatepark.”

  “Chief” was what Jeff Jackson was called in his fighting days and it had stuck. Except for Sharon, nearly everyone called him Chief. Alex thought it was ironical, seeing as his mum was so obviously in charge at home.

  “You got your mum’s brains and my left jab, and you’re not using either of them,” Chief complained. “Get out of here, then,” he added, half smiling.

  Alex flipped his battered Union Standard skateboard under his arm, grabbed a piece of his mum’s famous banana cake and headed out the door. “ Remember Chief, the note you signed is just between you and me. Mum doesn’t have to know.”

  Alex knew his mum would probably find out anyway. She seemed to know everything. It wasn’t as if she’d yell at him, but she was an expert at making him feel guilty, with that calm, rational tone of hers. Dr Mum, Alex called her.

  “What note?” Chief asked.

  Alex couldn’t be sure he was joking. His dad had certainly lost enough brain cells to have the memory of a goldfish.

  CHAPTER 5

  Slammed

  Alex jumped on his board halfway down the driveway, veered right onto the front yard path and ollied over the three steps, landing smoothly onto the footpath. He gave his sister, Sam, and her best friend and neighbour, Mandy Lee, a wave as he passed by. They were jumping slowly but talking rapidly on the trampoline in the front yard of Mandy’s place, no doubt reviewing the week’s gossip of Year 6 at Beeton Primary.

  Sam was eleven and as tall as Alex, which he wasn’t at all happy about. She was a social junkie, knowing the inside story on virtually everyone at Beeton, and she wasn’t afraid of sharing her extensive knowledge around. Alex was glad they were at different schools this year so she couldn’t tell Mum things such as what Sarah Sceney thought about his bum (she liked it), or how he’d got a detention for kicking a soccer ball through a window.

  The houses along their street were like Chief — getting older, possibly some permanent damage, but kept in decent shape by mostly good, working class people. At least they had been working class — most had lost jobs at some stage in the past decade. Some had found new ones, some worked part‘time, and some were unemployed but still did well for themselves. Mr Stewart, a cheerful man who lived four doors down, had a brand new Commodore sitting in his driveway. Until last week, when the police drove the car and him away.

  Beeton was no upper class place, and if it was up to Alex’s mum they would have moved into a nicer suburb on the outskirts of Brisbane a long time ago. The two things stopping them were the price of real estate — as even houses in nearby areas were double what they could sell for in Beeton — and Chief. He had grown up here and liked it. “If all the good people move, then who will the kids have to look up to?” he often said. Alex once reminded him that a retired boxer might not be the best example for the kids of Beeton, but he didn’t seem to take any notice.

  It was a short ride to the skatepark, and Alex had been looking forward to it all week as he was hoping to master a new trick he’d been working on. Since he’d started skating two years ago, one of the hot shots of the Beeton Skatebowl, 18–year–old Casey Marshall, had taken him under his wing. Casey had not only mastered more tricks than anyone Alex had ever seen, but he was sponsored by SkateBiz — a cool skate shop that gave him free products. Casey was the one person Alex truly looked up to. He was more like a Zen master than a skate freak, and was always helping Alex see life from a new perspective. Casey jumped off two–metre ledges onto concrete, so seeing life in a different way was probably necessary for him.

  The park was pumping with kids dressed in baggy pants and tees and trying moves they had seen in some skatey video or magazine. There were good skaters in this part of town. And plenty of hangers–on, boys mainly, who came with their boards but sat around smoking joints, talking up a trick they had landed last week while no one was watching.

  Casey was skating right in the middle of the park — no fear of him landing a trick without people seeing. Nearly everybody had at least a half an eye on him, as he was the benchmark for the other skaters in the park. If Casey could do the trick then the other skaters knew it was possible. Extremely difficult perhaps, but possible.

  He was skating the vert — a two–metre high U–shaped ramp — as Alex walked in. He was simply pumping it back and forth, side to side, but getting some serious air in the meantime. Everyone could see he was building up to something big. He put in an extra effort leading into one of the take–offs, and suddenly, pop, he was twisting and spinning like an Olympic diver. He had one hand on his board to make sure it didn’t fly away, and his body had almost completed a 360 degree twist in the air when he let out a tremendous yelp of exhilaration. It was a cry of self–expression, like for one moment he knew exactly who he was and what he was doing on this strange planet. As he stuck a perfect landing, everybody in the park cheered. And then they all went back to skating, a little more pumped than before.

  Casey spotted Alex and wandered over. He had intense green eyes and like most boarders he wasn’t too tall or bulky but had strong legs and arms hiding under his baggy clothes.

  “Ready to grind?” said Casey, nodding towards the railing.

  “I will be,” Alex replied.

  Alex did a few laps around the ramps to warm up and then started popping ollies, which is the most important move in skateboarding. It was invented by a bloke called Allen “Ollie” Gelfand, who figured out that if you pushed down hard on the back of the board and then jumped and slid your front foot forward you’d become airborne. Alex wondered whether Ollie Gelfand was an expert in physics or simply a crazy boarder looking for more action. He guessed the latter. Casey could ollie onto a picnic table. Alex wasn’t nearly as skilful, but he could get some good air for a thirteen–year–old. Once he ollied down nine steps onto concrete. He nearly wet himself, but he did it.

  When he felt ready Alex went over to tackle the railing. In the trick he was working on he had to ollie up onto the 50–centimetre
metal railing, and then grind down three metres of a fairly steep incline. When he got to the bottom, he would try and jump off the railing, land the board squarely on the ground, and skate off in one piece.

  “Okay, this should be no problem,” assured Casey. “Just relax and flow, let yourself go. Be loose like a goose and brave like Zeus. And remember,” he said winking, “keep your knees bent on the way down for balance.”

  Alex didn’t know much about Greek gods but he got the gist of what Casey was saying. If you were distracted, uptight or downright scared, the odds were that you wouldn’t make the trick. Alex felt he had the right mixture of caution and confidence. He naturally had good balance, and hadn’t had a really bad stack in his skateboarding career. Lots of cuts and scrapes, but no broken bones.

  “Focus,” said Casey as he slapped Alex’s hand. (As well as meaning to block out distractions, “focus” in skateboarding means to snap the board in two. It was a bit like saying “Break a leg” to an actor.)

  Alex picked up speed as he approached the railing at a 45 degree angle, and he bent down to prepare himself to ollie. Just as he slapped his back foot down a dumb smile came over his face. None of your beeswax? Who does she think she is?

  He lost concentration for only a split second, but that was long enough. Alex got the height but his timing was way off, missing the axles entirely and instead landing on the wood in the middle of the deck. Before he knew it he started boardsliding down the railing, totally out of control. The skateboard began wobbling as he picked up momentum down the incline and Alex knew there was no way he could land it from this position. He decided to bail. As he slammed into the ground he wished he’d remembered to strap a beanbag onto his back.

  “A boardslide down the railing, almost the trick of the decade!” said Casey as he ran over.

  “I’m fine, thanks for asking,” said Alex, as he checked whether he could wiggle his big toe. He was happy to discover he wasn’t the concussed cripple he should have been after such a stack.

  “What were you thinking, mate?” asked Casey.

  “Beeswax,” said Alex.

  Casey shrugged. “Whatever it is you’d better deal with it, ’cause if your mind ain’t clear while you’re boarding you’ll be riding a box with wheels.”

  Alex tried to get up but his back and head hurt too much. This isn’t fair! He’d had crushes on girls before, but they had never come between him and his skateboard. Till now.

  CHAPTER 6

  Stuffed

  “And in conclusion, I would like to say that technology, while continuing to make life easier, does not make us any happier. Just because I own a mobile phone doesn’t mean that Jack, the boy I’ve liked for five years, will call me. When the phone rings it is usually my mum telling me to hurry home for tea.”

  As the class applauded generously Sarah Sceney gave Alex a last look, sighed and sat down. Alex was sure she’d get an A for the Technology Oral. She always got A’s. He was just glad that not many people at St Joey’s knew he was Sarah’s “Jack”. He was hoping that once they’d got to high school, Sarah would stop liking him, or at least stop publicly embarrassing him, but this didn’t seem to be happening.

  Becky was next up, and Alex’s turn would be soon after. The topic of their speech was how an aspect of technology had changed their lives. Alex had brought in his relatively old skateboard and a new one of Casey’s to show how the laminated, light wood decks and other modern designs were making tricks much easier to do. He was getting a bit tense. You might get slammed skateboarding, but it wasn’t nearly as nerve–wracking as a school oral.

  “Good morning, Miss Pinzon and class. Today I would like to talk to you about how an aspect of technology has changed my life. That technology is the Internet, and, in particular, chat rooms.”

  Becky’s posh–sounding voice reminded Alex of the girls he heard in the train who travelled to expensive all–girls schools in Brisbane wearing wide–brimmed hats and ties. She said her words properly (not “proply” like most of Alex’s friends) and she certainly didn’t sound like she was born and bred in the Chief’s beloved Beeton.

  “When I chat to people on the Internet I feel like I can say anything, even secrets that I wouldn’t normally tell my friends. When I’m lonely or want to talk, I can turn on my computer and instantly be in touch with thousands of people from all over the world. I usually chat to girls, cause most guys are interested in what you look like rather than who you are, and I normally chat in Lycos teens, cause you can make cool images appear on the screen ...”

  Alex tuned out. He wasn’t really into computers and the Internet. That was more Jimmy’s thing. If Alex wanted to talk to someone he would rather it be Jimmy, Casey, Sam or even his mum or Chief rather than a person he’d never met before on a computer. Still, the way Becky looked and spoke in front of the class, both shy and confident at the same time, made Alex’s heart race. He had the bug bad.

  Alex’s speech went well. He didn’t drop his palmcards or stutter too badly, and his big finale, landing a stationary kickflip on Casey’s new board in the middle of the classroom, actually worked on the first try. That got him instant cred with a few of the guys he hardly knew, and he even thought he saw the faintest hint of a smile on Becky’s face as he sat down after the speech. He was trying hard not to get caught looking at her, but it wasn’t easy.

  At lunch Alex told Jimmy his problem. “I’m a mess, mate. I can’t concentrate on anything ’cause of this stupid girl.”

  “Why don’t you just go over and talk to her?” asked Jimmy.

  “Look at her, mate,” Alex said. “She’s with a group of six girls and one of ’em’s Sceney. I wouldn’t be caught dead going over there.”

  “Well it doesn’t look like Billy’s too scared.”

  Alex turned to see Billy Johnstone confidently stroll up to the group of girls. He must have made quite an impression, because they giggled and hung on his every word like he was a movie star or something. It made Alex sick. What made him even sicker was that after a short time Billy said something to Becky, and they walked off together. Just the two of them. Alone.

  “Mate, I think you’re stuffed,” said Jimmy.

  CHAPTER 7

  J + M = T (Jimmy + Mouth = Trouble)

  It was the talk of Year 8. Billy had asked Becky to go out with him and she had said no. He had been rejected with a capital R. Hammered. Bagged. Dissed. This never happened to Billy Johnstone. He took it like a man, punching any boy who dared laugh at his misfortune. The next day, to prove his manhood, Billy asked out Claire Carney, and she said yes. According to Adrian Dorry this was no surprise, as Claire always said yes to the boys who asked her out. Her nickname was CC, not only because of her initials but because of the slogan— “she can’t say no”. Adrian said that her and Billy had already gone together six times in primary school.

  Rumours started flying about Becky and why she turned Billy down. Peter Callaghan heard that her family was ultra religious and she was becoming a nun. According to various other students she was either:

  (a) frigid

  (b) a lesbian

  (c) already going out with Joshua Jackson from Dawson’s Creek

  (d) all of the above.

  No one knew what to believe.

  “I wish I knew her secrets, like her stupid Internet friends do,” Alex said to Jimmy as they played handball down behind the Graphics Block.

  Jimmy’s eyes lit up. “How do you know she chats on the Internet?”

  “She gave a speech about it in Tech Studies.”

  “Did she say what server she uses?”

  “Server? As in tennis?”

  “No, you moron. Internet server. Yahoo, Excite ...”

  “I think she mentioned it. Lickass or something ...”

  “Lycos?” Jimmy laughed. “You have no idea, Jackson. Did she say what her handle is?”

  “Handle? As in a door?”

  “No, as in her Internet name.”

  “Nah.�
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  “Oh well, she shouldn’t be too hard to spot.” Jimmy’s green eyes were twinkling.

  “What are you planning, Homan?” Alex had seen this look on Jimmy before, and it meant one thing. Trouble.

  “Leave it to me, dude. With me helping ya, you’ll be in like Flynn, not rejected like Johnstone the looozzzerrr.”

  As if on cue Billy Johnstone and his group sauntered around the corner. They were probably heading for the clump of trees in the corner of the school where they could pass around a smoke without getting busted. Billy had obviously heard his name and the word “loser” in the same sentence, because his head reared up and he puffed up his chest and shoulders to make them look even bigger than they already were.

  “You got a problem, red?” he said menacingly.

  “No problem. I was just talking to me mate,” said Jimmy.

  Billy looked Alex over. “Where’s ya skateboard, grommet?”

  This wasn’t meant to be a question. More a put–down.

  Billy turned back to face Jimmy. “If you’re gonna talk bad about someone, do it to their face. Like if I was gonna call you a giant freckle, I’d say it right to ya, not to me mates when you weren’t around.”

  Billy’s friends laughed.

  Alex could see that Jimmy was packin’ death, and he couldn’t blame him. Although as tall as Billy, Jimmy was only half his weight. It was as if puberty had remembered to let him grow up but forgotten to give him any bulk. His biceps were all skin and bone and Alex reckoned he’d be flat out beating Sam, Alex’s sister, in an arm wrestle.

  “Look mate, I don’t want any trouble,” Jimmy said.

  “Who wants trouble? I’m just going to break ya arm to teach you a lesson in manners.” Billy grabbed Jimmy’s right wrist and began twisting it round his back.

  Jimmy didn’t say a word, but it was obvious he was in pain. His eyes started watering, but Billy didn’t back off. He seemed to be enjoying himself and even smiled at Claire, who looked uncomfortable but nevertheless smiled back.