The Year My Life Broke

by John Marsden

  I followed him back to the table. ‘Who do?’

  ‘Two police officers. They’re brothers. One’s a sergeant and the other’s a senior constable. They share the house.’

  ‘Oh.’ I did feel like a turkey. ‘What about the girl?’

  ‘Harriet? Have you met her? She goes to your school and I think she’s in Grade 6. She’s Lenny’s daughter, she lives there too, most of the time, when she’s not with her mother. Lenny’s the younger brother, the senior constable. He and his wife are divorced.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He seemed to know a lot about them. I hoed into my lasagne. I needed to readjust my thinking. And I did as good a job on that as I could, but a long time after I’d finished I still had a question. How come my dad reacted that way when he thought I meant the other place? It was like I’d been suspecting the wrong house. Maybe there was something dodgy about the other one instead? The way my dad headed for the window, it was like he wouldn’t have been surprised to find that empty-looking house swarming with the Drug Squad, the Homicide Squad, the CSI guys and a couple of SWAT teams. Maybe my dad was a cop keeping an eye on the place? Maybe my mum was? Their real jobs used to be financial adviser and property broker, both working for Antelope Investments. And look where that had got us. Into a scummy house in scummy Tarrawagga. Any job would have to be better than those. I would have settled for at least one parent as an undercover agent.

  We had PE at school once a week, with a teacher called Mr Surrey, and right from the start I didn’t like him. The first five minutes of the very first class was a disaster. We started by playing dodgeball and I was one of the people he put on the outside, to be a thrower. I threw all right, hard and fast, right into Mr Surrey’s face. It wasn’t my fault! He was bending over picking up a ball and never saw it coming. It would have hurt though. He jumped up holding his face, then yelled, ‘Who did that?!’

  Considering everyone was staring at me in horror it was pretty obvious. I put up my hand, he bawled me out, then sat me on the bench for the whole lesson while he walked around holding an icepack to his face and glaring at me.

  Second PE lesson: I had a sprained ankle from jumping out of the biggest tree in our backyard at home. But when I told him that I couldn’t run or do exercises he bawled me out again. ‘I saw you walking into school this morning,’ he said. ‘You weren’t limping then.’

  Well, maybe he’d been looking at the wrong person, because I’d been limping all morning like an amputee, and PE’s the last subject I’d be trying to skip. Anyway, he made me do all these runs, even though my ankle hurt like crazy, and he kept yelling at me to go faster.

  The third lesson, he put me with a girl called Amanda, and we had to take it in turns to skip. While we were waiting for Mr Surrey to blow his whistle I held the rope by one end and started whizzing it around, getting faster and faster. Unfortunately, just as it reached terminal velocity I lost my grip and it flew out of my hand and hit Amanda. ‘Oh BEEP,’ I yelled. I’d better not say what the word was but it started with S and ended with T and it wasn’t shoot. Or shut or sheet, although it was pretty close to both of those. Mr Surrey went off for the third week in a row. He put me on the bench again, then at the end of the lesson called me over for a talk. Personally I’d rather be yelled at. ‘You are a disruptive influence,’ he told me, while I stood there with my head down, trying to look ashamed. ‘You’ve been nothing but trouble since you came here. I expect everyone to follow the rules, blah blah look at me when I talk to you blah blah blah don’t like your attitude blah blah blah get out of my sight.’

  Now I have lots of faults, I’m sure; well OK, not that many, but I must admit if I do have one it would be that I’m stubborn and I’ve got a bit of a temper. After three lessons Mr Surrey-style I decided I wasn’t going to make any effort in PE at Tarrawagga. He hadn’t seen me in action during any of those classes and it was obvious that he thought I was a PE loser. OK then, I’d be a PE loser. It fitted with the way I’d been acting at recess and lunchtimes, not joining in any sports. So from then on, when we had cricket in PE I held the bat like it was a tennis racquet and popped up catches that a Grade 1 kid could take with his eyes shut. In basketball, every pass I made got intercepted, mainly because I signalled them ten seconds before I threw them. When we had softball I missed the ball by a metre and went out for three strikes every time. It didn’t take long for other kids to start moving away from me on the bench. Mr Surrey looked my way less and less often and before long I was spending fifty minutes out of every fifty-five-minute lesson doing nothing.

  I gradually became a bit of a smart alec, like, making sarcastic comments when Mr Surrey made a mistake, which was often. This helped him love me heaps. One day he started the lesson by saying, ‘Some of you need to have more self-confidence in your team mates,’ and I said, ‘What about self-confidence in ourselves – should we have that too?’ and he went red in the face and glared at me and told me to run four laps, which I thought was a bit of an overreaction. So when I got back from my four laps and he told me to fetch the bats I ignored the fact that he’d set the oval up for softball and came back with a bag of cricket bats.

  Just stuff like that.

  In a way I didn’t mind that I wasn’t getting anything from PE, even though it used to be my favourite subject. But the truth was, I hated that school more every day. I missed Abernathy so bad it hurt in my heart. I missed Joey who was so funny you couldn’t eat lunch while he was talking in case you choked on your cheese sandwich. I missed Pho, who gave us boys advice about how to chat up girls and how to ask them to go with you . . . and how to drop them when things didn’t work out. I missed Muzza, who could play every sport like a star and loved it as much as I did. Between us we’d taken Abernathy to the top, for both cricket and footy, which may sound like bragging but it’s true.

  Tarrawagga was so scummy and boring. The most exciting lesson of the week was doing a worksheet on commas and full stops. Maths was like, page 37, questions 1, 2 and 3. Homework: questions 4 and 5. Next day, page 38, questions 1, 2, 3 and 4. Homework: questions 5 and 6. Next day . . .

  We had assembly once a week, in a big hall, and it was usually just teachers making announcements about lost property and behaviour at the bus stops and how there was too much rubbish around the school. But then one day this kid called Red O’Hearn got up and went out the front. People paid more attention straight away, because it wasn’t often that kids spoke at assembly, but also because he was a good guy and everyone liked him. I actually didn’t get why he wasn’t school captain, but apparently he got in too much trouble with teachers.

  Red was another of the kids who played sport regularly and I wouldn’t say he was a natural but he gave everything about 146 per cent. Didn’t matter what the sport was, he went for it. Mr Surrey loved him. Anyway, he made a pretty radical speech. It went something like this: ‘Listen, I know this school doesn’t exactly have the greatest rep around the district . . .’

  Right away Ms Krishnananthan, the principal, looked like she was going to jump up and cut him off, but she couldn’t really do that, so she made a face like someone who’s swallowed a cockroach. A live one. But Red was facing us, with his back to her, so he couldn’t see that. He just kept on going.

  ‘Not many of us have been here all the way through, for seven years, but I have, and so has Nirvana, and so have Amanda and Shelley and Rolf. And you know what? Every year we’ve been beaten by every other school at everything. And I’m sick of it. So we want to change that. We’ve got these big cricket and netball games coming up soon, and we want to piss on the . . . sorry, sorry, I mean . . .’

  Too late. Ms Krishnananthan was on her feet and most of the teachers looked like they’d all suddenly swallowed cockroaches. On the other hand the kids were pissing themselves . . . sorry, I mean, laughing a lot, especially some of the little ones, who were probably having real bladder control problems they were so hysterical. It t
ook at least a full minute to calm everyone down and the whole of that time Red was talking to Ms Krishnananthan, except she was doing the talking. He just stood there, and his face matched his name. Now I knew why he hadn’t been chosen for school captain.

  At last Ms Krishnananthan came to the microphone. ‘That was a most unfortunate moment,’ she said. ‘I don’t find it at all amusing that one of our students would use such language, especially in front of the younger children. And I’m sorry that some of you apparently thought it was funny. However, Redmond has apologised profusely and I am going to allow him to finish his remarks, on the condition that he chooses his words with much more discretion.’

  She gave Red the microphone. It took him a while to find his rhythm again but he eventually got back on track. ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry about that, I’m really sorry, Ms Krishnananthan, and teachers, I’m just not used to this talking in front of everyone and I’m not too good at it. Anyway, the thing is, what I wanted to say, I’m proud of this school, I reckon it’s all right, we’ve built it up from just a couple of demountables and look at it now, we’ve got the new oval opening in a few weeks and it’s a beauty, and we’re gunna play the kids from Maxwell on it, in front of pretty much everyone from the district, the mayor and the members of parliament, and you know what’s gunna happen, we’re gunna get thrashed like we always do, and so what I reckon is we should get off our bums, sorry, our behinds, and work our butts off and make sure we don’t get thrashed. So we’re gunna have training every day, before school and at lunchtime, and even after school if we can do it, and I’m gunna take the cricket team with Mr Surrey, and Amanda’s gunna take the netball team with Ms Robbins, and between us we’re gunna see if we can make the kids from Maxwell go home with their tails between their legs, so that’s all I’ve gotta say except everyone should have a go, because a team’s only as good as its weakest player, so we need to make our weakest players as good as we can get ’em.’

  Then he sat down, as everyone clapped and clapped. It was a good speech and I sat there feeling a bit ashamed of the way I’d pretended to be so hopeless at sport. Coming from Abernathy I couldn’t see Tarrawagga the way Red saw it, but I could imagine how he’d feel, watching it grow, even if in my opinion it had just grown from a little hole to a big one.

  I thought, ‘Stuff it, maybe I should give up being stupid about sport. Maybe I should have a go.’

  At lunchtime they were sorting out all the kids who volunteered for the cricket and netball teams. Quite a few turned up, inspired by Red’s speech. I saw the girl who lived next door to us, the cop’s daughter, Harriet. She was in Grade 6, same as me, but the other class.

  Red and Rolf and Mr Surrey were organising the cricketers and I walked up to them, feeling pretty nervous to tell the truth, because it wasn’t going to be easy to explain how I’d turned from hopeless to pretty handy in one morning. I had the feeling that Mr Surrey, for one, wasn’t going to be impressed. But I needn’t have worried. He took one look at me and said, ‘Thanks for coming, Josh, but we’re not that desperate.’

  Red shot me a look like even he thought that was harsh, but he wasn’t going to stick up for me to Mr Surrey. Who would? Why should anyone bother? I just walked straight away, but then Mr Surrey called my name again and I stopped and turned around to see what he wanted. Maybe he realised he’d gone too far and wanted to apologise. Instead he said, ‘We might want someone to go around in a chicken suit selling raffle tickets, Josh. I’ll let you know.’

  A couple of kids laughed and I turned around and kept walking. I knew my face was burning. I’d scored four centuries for Abernathy last season, and one for Southern Districts, and I’d taken 5 for 11 against Northern Suburbs in a rep game. Now the best offer I could get was to wear a chicken costume. Even if it was my own stupid fault, it still hurt.

  Red came looking for me when I was at the bus stop after school. We only had about sixty seconds before the buses left, and he wasn’t on my bus, so it had to be a quick conversation. He said, ‘Hey, thanks for turning up at lunchtime, Josh, but I guess we’ve got enough people.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry about what Surrey said. He can be a real bastard if you get on his bad side.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I muck around a lot in PE so I guess I deserved it.’

  ‘Hey, you know, I was thinking, I play for a club, South Tarrawagga, and on Wednesdays we have a coaching clinic for, like, new players, you know, beginners and all that. You want to come? I help out most weeks. Kids improve quite a lot – you can see them getting better . . .’

  Final calls were being made for the buses and we were both getting personal invitations from teachers to climb aboard. I felt awful for having deceived Red about my cricket. He was a nice kid.

  ‘Oh look, thanks, I gotta go, I’m not that bad really, but thanks, um, I’ll let you know . . .’ And I ran for my bus.

  We were watching a 20/20 match on TV that night when I started whingeing about PE. Pippa was standing in the doorway. She’d just been whingeing too, about the fact that we were watching cricket. I didn’t think she was listening while I was complaining about Mr Surrey to Mum and Dad, but suddenly she looked at me and said, ‘All my friends at Abernathy called you the Meathead.’

  ‘Pippa!’ Mum said. ‘That’s not very nice. Apologise to Josh.’

  ‘What do you mean they called me the Meathead?’ I asked. I was pretty angry.

  She shrugged. ‘I’m just telling you, that’s what they called you.’

  ‘But what did they mean by it?’ Dad asked.

  Pippa shrugged again. ‘They meant he was just a meathead. All he does is play sport, talk sport, eat, breathe and live sport. He’s never interested in anything else.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Mum said, but kind of automatically. I wasn’t sure if she believed it.

  I knew it was stupid to let anything Pippa said upset me. Mum and Dad were always telling me to ignore her. That wasn’t easy though. When it came to upsetting people, she was a professional. When it came to upsetting people, she was the Princess of Painful. But I’d never heard of kids at Abernathy calling me the Meathead, and it did get to me. Cricket, sport – they weren’t the only things in my life. I liked reading and I’d read the whole Harry Potter series twice. I liked drawing and painting in art and I especially liked ceramics when we’d done it last year for a week with a visiting potter at Abernathy Primary. I was mad on Lego and I’d built a whole fleet of battleships and destroyers and stuff.

  But yeah, cricket was the thing I was into most. Since when had that been a crime? I knew I was fairly good at it and I dreamed of playing for Australia one day. So did a million other kids, of course, but I was dead serious about my cricket, and until everything went wrong and we had to move to Tarrawagga I’d trained four afternoons a week and played two games every weekend.

  Pippa went off to her bedroom again – she spent a lot of time in there these days; she’d kept to herself much more since we’d had the big financial wipe-out. After she’d gone, Dad said quietly, ‘Don’t worry about what Pippa says, Josh, she’s hurting quite a bit still, and she wants to share the pain around.’

  Mum just looked at him, then said to me, ‘My friends and I used to be called the Cube by the other girls when I was at school.’

  ‘The Cube?’

  ‘You know what a cube is . . . a whole lot of squares stuck together.’

  It took me a minute to get it, then I laughed.

  My parents were decent people. I knew the truth about what happened when Antelope crashed. I knew my parents had the choice of grabbing every dollar they could get, and running for it, like Mr Martini and Mr Wilkins. Instead, they’d put all their money into it to try to prop it up. Despite what people yelled at us and said about us online, I knew my Mum and Dad had done the right thing. I was proud of them for that. They lost most of their friends, who didn’t understand
what had happened – and didn’t even try to understand – and we ended up poor, but I didn’t care.

  One friend who still kept in touch though was Mark Watley, my coach from Southern Districts. Mark had played twelve games for Tasmania before he snapped his Achilles. He was good. And funnily enough the very next day after Pippa told me about the Meathead thing, cricket came back into my life. When Dad got home from work he told me how he’d run into Mark. ‘He asked where you were playing,’ Dad said, ‘and when I said “nowhere” he was a bit shattered. They’re picking the rep teams soon. Seems like you’re in the North Central zone now. Mark’s got a mate, though, who coaches an Under 14s team for Cypress. He says you should sign up for them. You’d get good coaching and he feels you should be playing Under 14s.’

  ‘Cypress? What’s Cypress?’

  ‘It’s a club not far from here. About eight k’s. They play Saturday mornings. Mum or I could get you there, no worries.’

  ‘Under 14s? They’d be a lot bigger than me.’

  ‘Mark thinks it would be good for you. You’d get more competition. He’s given me the coach’s number. I’ll ring him after dinner if you want.’

  I did want. Meathead or Vegehead, I was hungry for cricket. I needed to get out there and play decently again, instead of all the mucking around I’d been doing at school. I wanted it so badly I would have walked to Cypress every Saturday for a game. I would have walked backwards.

  ‘OK, I guess. I don’t mind.’

  I heard Dad’s conversation with the coach. His name was Wally. It seemed like Mark Watley had already rung him, because Wally was keen to have me. Training was on Fridays and games were like Mark had said, on Saturdays. My dad told him I’d be there Friday. I felt great when I heard that. I scoffed dinner in about six mouthfuls then asked for more. ‘Gee, Josh,’ Mum said. ‘What’s got into you? You’ve hardly eaten a thing the last few months.’