by R. A. Spratt
‘I refuse,’ said April. ‘No, no, no, no, no!’
‘It’s perfect,’ said Mr Lang. ‘It’s a punishment and a learning opportunity.’
‘Why must teachers see all dreadful things as learning opportunities?’ wailed April.
‘She just has to fill in her details on this form and I can resubmit my entry,’ said Tom, handing the scrunched up sheet of paper to April.
April looked at the paper. She so wanted to tear it into a thousand pieces and throw it in Tom’s face. But what choice did she have? Even April with all her hot temper knew she had to avoid getting expelled if it was at all possible. This was her only way out. She scowled at Tom, which was, of course, entirely wasted on him.
The worst thing about agreeing to be his guide would be his smug satisfaction at getting one up on her. It just wasn’t fair when he was the one who’d been in the wrong in the first place. But life was not fair. April knew that. She reached out and took the sheet of paper. Mr Lang picked up a pen and stretched across his desk to hand it to her. April looked down at the page. ‘Hey, this isn’t a form. It’s last night’s maths homework.’
‘Sorry,’ said Tom. ‘I thought it was that piece of paper.’ He started rummaging through his bag.
‘Give it to me, you big nincompoop,’ said April. She reached in, fished out the form and thrust the bag back into Tom’s arms. ‘I guess this is how it’s going to be for the next four weeks. Me having to do everything for you.’
‘Yes,’ said Tom.
Mr Lang didn’t notice because he was too busy putting away the 46-C form, but April caught the hint of a smug grin about Tom’s face.
It was six o’clock in the morning and April did not want to be out of bed. Even Pumpkin, who was usually wide-awake and ready to start biting people at the slightest noise, was lethargic at this painfully early hour. And yet they were standing in the Daffodil Gardens waiting for Tom so they could start their training.
Maya was holding her first public training session that morning and Tom had insisted that this was the best way to help him prepare. He wasn’t going to do this by half-measures. He wanted Olympic-standard coaching.
The former heptathlete bounded into the gardens at 6 am on the dot.
‘Good morning!’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Are we ready to get sweaty?’ She looked about at her group of aspiring athletes. Aside from April there were a dozen or so, mainly middle-aged, women. They were all wearing stick-on name tags. They had names like Marjorie, Val and Linda. None of them looked particularly fit, but they all looked grumpy and tired from being up so early.
The grumpiest of all was Mrs Pilsbury, the school receptionist. She was only there because her doctor had told her she needed to exercise or she wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy her retirement cruise. Mrs Pilsbury had not endured thirty years of Currawong High students only to miss out on that cruise. It had been the bright light at the end of her tunnel for decades. No one was bricking up the end of her tunnel.
‘Now I know some of you are probably thinking – can I do this? Can I get fit enough in just a few weeks to run a fifteen-kilometre course and overcome twenty-one gruelling mud-covered obstacles?’
Several of the women started to mutter to each other. Apparently, they had not realised exactly what they’d signed up for and had just received a nasty shock.
‘Well, I’m here to tell you that you can,’ said Maya. ‘If I can overcome asthma to be a two-time Olympic runner-up, then you can do this. You won’t be alone. I am here to help you. To inspire you. Together we can achieve anything!’
The women cheered up a little with this encouragement. A few of them even clapped.
Mrs Pilsbury put her hand up. ‘The Good Times Cafe stops serving egg and bacon rolls at 10 am. Will we be finished by then?’
‘Yes, long before then,’ said Maya.
‘All right,’ said Mrs Pilsbury, nodding begrudgingly. ‘Then I’ll stay.’
‘Okay. I’m glad that’s settled,’ said Maya. ‘So are you ready to get sweaty?’
‘No, I’m not,’ said April matter-of-factly. ‘Tom isn’t here yet. I can’t start without Tom.’
‘Who’s Tom?’ asked Maya.
‘He’s my training partner,’ said April.
‘But this is a women’s training group,’ said Maya.
‘That’s sexist,’ observed April.
‘It’s to combat the sexism of the event,’ said Maya.
‘Two wrongs don’t make a right,’ said April.
‘Nevertheless,’ said Maya, ‘this is not a training group for boys.’
A station wagon pulled up by the picket fence and Tom got out.
‘Here he is now,’ said April.
Tom was dressed in shorts, a T-shirt and sneakers, ready for athletic activity. For once he wasn’t carrying his long white cane. He took a step forward and slammed into the picket fence.
April sniggered. ‘Mind the fence!’ she called out to him.
‘You’re supposed to be guiding me,’ Tom called back.
‘Sorry,’ said April in a totally unapologetic tone. ‘I didn’t realise I’d started yet.’ She sauntered over to where Tom was sprawled on the footpath and vaulted the three-foot high fence. April didn’t actively participate in any organised sport, but the amount of time she spent wrestling and attacking people meant that she was actually quite a naturally talented athlete. As Tom struggled to his feet, April grabbed him by the shoulder and led him in through the gate.
‘Oh,’ said Maya, realising she couldn’t throw a vision-impaired person out of her training group, even if he was of the male gender. ‘Well, that should be fine.’ Although she secretly decided to make this training session particularly brutal so that the boy would not want to come back of his own accord. ‘Let’s get started …’
A van with the words ‘Mad Mud Mud Run’ on the side screeched to a halt beside the gardens and Brad Peddler leapt out. He spotted Maya and called over to her, ‘Maya, I want a word with you!’
‘This is a women’s only training group!’ said Maya crossly. ‘Just because you’re the organiser of the mud run doesn’t mean you can barge in here.’
‘That’s what I want to talk to you about,’ said Brad, stepping over the fence. ‘Excuse us.’ He smiled at the ladies as he walked past them, but it was a forced smile. The type that doesn’t go all the way up to the eyes. It barely extended to his lips. It was more of a baring of the teeth. He turned Maya away from the group so they couldn’t listen in.
April jabbed Tom in the ribs. ‘Blind people are supposed to have really good hearing. What are they saying?’
‘Ow!’ said Tom, rubbing his side.
‘Stop fussing and just listen,’ urged April.
Tom took a step towards Maya and Brad and leaned in their direction. ‘Something about … “your plan won’t work … should just leave now”.’
‘That’d be right,’ said April. ‘He’s trying to get her to quit because she’s publically shaming his precious race.’
‘Don’t mind me!’ another man called out as he strode down one of the garden paths. He was a tall thin man carrying a bulky shoulder bag.
‘This is a training session for women only,’ said Maya sternly, as she spun around. Having already let one boy in, she didn’t want this to become a slippery slope.
‘And vision-impaired people,’ said April. ‘Are you vision-impaired? If you are, she’ll be too chicken to kick you out.’
‘I’m Luciano Costa from the Bilgong Gazette,’ said the man. ‘Your arrival is big news. I was hoping to take some photos. The editors in the city want to syndicate the story.’
You could see Maya’s mind changing gears. She went from grumpy, intimidating athlete to simpering beauty in a heartbeat. ‘By all means, of course, take whatever pictures you like,’ gushed Maya, smiling at him.
‘But Maya …’ said Brad.
She walked away from him, pretending she couldn’t hear. Brad must have sensed that this was not a goo
d time to create a scene, so he stalked off in the other direction.
‘Um …’ said Luciano, a little dumbfounded to be smiled at by someone so famous and pretty. ‘Shouldn’t you be doing some exercises?’
‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Maya, remembering her assembled group of middle-aged women. ‘Let’s start by doing burpees. You all know how to do them, don’t you? You just lie down, then spring back up and jump.’
‘That’ll be easy for you,’ April said to Tom, nudging him in the ribs again. ‘You know where the ground is.’
‘We’ll start with fifty,’ said Maya.
The middle-aged women groaned glumly.
‘Wait,’ said Tom. ‘I need to be tethered first.’ He pulled a long bright orange strap out of his pocket and handed it to April.
‘You’re kidding,’ said April. ‘Couldn’t you find something more subtle?
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Tom.
‘It’s bright orange,’ said April. ‘It’s so bright they’ll be able to see it from the International Space Station.’
‘Doesn’t bother me,’ said Tom.
April fastened one end round her wrist, and the other around Tom’s.
‘Let’s go!’ said Maya.
Suddenly April found herself yanked off her feet. Tom had dropped to the ground with cat-like agility and she had been pulled down on top of him. ‘What are you doing?’ she cried.
‘Burpees,’ said Tom happily, as he sprang up again, yanking April with him. ‘Try and keep up.’
April could hear the shutter of Luciano’s camera working overtime as her humiliation was captured for the local paper.
Joe was sitting in the back corner of Dad’s garden eating a slice of the Chelsea Bakery’s finest mud cake. He was hiding from his own family, but also the world. He barely coped with the pressure of holding brief conversations. He didn’t think he could handle the combined and conflicting expectations of so many people. Even eating the cake made him feel bad because it reminded him of poor Mr Chelsea and that misplaced decimal point. So Joe ate more cake to make himself feel better about the cake that was making him feel bad. Joe wondered if he had an eating disorder. This thought worried him even more, so he ate even more.
‘Hello.’ Loretta’s sweet voice made Joe flinch. He had thought he was completely hidden. He looked up to see Loretta’s perfectly perfect face smiling back at him. He shoved the rest of the cake slice in his mouth.
‘That’s not a good way to pursue a training regime,’ said Loretta. ‘Carb-loading is important, but you need to be working on technique and metabolic conditioning.’
‘Huh?’ said Joe through his still three-quarters-full mouth.
‘But most importantly, if you’re actually going to win the mud race,’ said Loretta, ‘you need to train in mud. Real mud. Not mud cake.’ She picked up the other half of the cake and threw it onto Dad’s compost heap.
Joe whimpered.
‘Come along,’ said Loretta. ‘I’ve got plans for you.’
Half an hour later Joe found himself standing inside the St Anthony’s Academy Equestrian Centre. It was an amazing facility. Mr Lang had not been exaggerating when he had described the school’s extreme wealth. If anything, he had been understating the case.
Joe couldn’t believe a town that had a school as mundane and run-down as Currawong High could also have a school with facilities this spectacular. He supposed there must be a lot of extremely rich people who wanted to shove their kids into an opulent school in a remote country town. They walked through the dressage training arena, past the showjumping field and out onto the larger cross-country course.
‘Why are we here?’ asked Joe.
‘Because you need to train for obstacles and mud,’ said Loretta. ‘And the cross-country training facility has plenty of both.’
Joe looked about at the array of hedges, fences, walls and ditches stretched out ahead of him.
‘But they’re for h-horses,’ said Joe.
‘My horse won the mud run last year,’ Loretta said with a wink. ‘If this training worked for Vladimir, I’m sure it can work for you.’
‘You can’t be s-s-serious,’ said Joe.
Loretta shrugged. ‘That’s up to you. How much do you want to win?’
Joe considered the question. The simple answer was ‘not at all’. He didn’t even want to go in the race. But he had to. And he had to win. So many people were depending on him. He couldn’t let them all down because then they would want to talk to him about how he’d let them down, and that would just be unimaginably awful. ‘A l-l-lot,’ confessed Joe.
‘Good,’ said Loretta. ‘This is going to be fun. Giddy-up!’
‘What?’ said Joe.
‘Sorry, I’m used to talking to Vladimir when we’re here,’ said Loretta. ‘Off you go.’
‘G-g-go where?’ asked Joe.
‘The first jump,’ said Loretta, pointing to an unnervingly high hedge in front of them. ‘Pretend you’re a horse and get galloping.’
‘Really?’ asked Joe.
‘Do I need to get out my spurs and jab you?’ asked Loretta. From the mischievous twinkle in her eye, she seemed to be hoping he would refuse. Joe took off jogging. The hedge was massive. He took a running dive at it, scraping through the top branches and flying out the other side, where he tumbled into a roll and landed with a splat in a big puddle of mud.
‘Well done!’ said Loretta as she jogged around the side of the hedge. ‘Excellent start. Come on, up on your feet. You’ve got the water hazard next. It’s down the hill. It helps if you get up as much speed as you can.’
Joe scrambled to his feet and took off running down the hill, giving himself over to Loretta’s instructions in much the same way Vladimir would. It was easier to just relinquish free will entirely when he was with Loretta. Struggling to maintain control never worked, it was just exhausting. And while Loretta had a wicked streak, from Joe’s experience it had never been aimed at hurting anyone, so he knew he would be all right. He might get bruised and bloodied and perhaps humiliated, but essentially he would be all right, if by all right you simply mean, not in an emergency room. Joe could live with that. At least that’s what he told himself as he jumped over a farm gate and landed in two feet of freezing cold water.
Fin had persuaded Neil to help him build the course. This hadn’t been hard. Fin had told Neil that he needed his help, and then simply not waited for Neil to reply. This was an easy trick to pull on Neil because he always took so long to reply to anything. Sometimes he could take two or three days just to answer the simplest questions, like ‘Do you need a haircut?’ or ‘Would you like a burger for dinner?’.
‘This is going to be the best mud run course ever,’ said Fin as he unrolled his plans to show his friend. ‘There’s going to be a mud launcher, mud twisters and a mudfall.’
‘What’s a mudfall?’ asked Neil.
‘It’s like a waterfall,’ explained Fin. ‘Only with mud.’
Neil nodded as he looked over the diagrams. ‘That’s a lot of mud.’
Fin grinned manically. ‘I talked to the head of Bilgong Mining. They’ve got two thousand tons of dirt they dug out of their tin mine. They’ve been looking to get rid of it, and now they’re going to give it all to me.’
‘But that’s just dirt,’ said Neil. ‘You need mud.’
Fin waved his hand dismissively. ‘All I need is a little rain and it will be sorted.’
Neil scowled. He lived on a farm with his grandmother, the Cat Lady, so he knew from experience that rain was tricky. When it didn’t come, it didn’t come for ages. But Neil was a boy of few words, and there was no way he could explain the dynamics of climatology to his friend in monosyllables, so he decided not to bother.
‘I just need to tell the mining company where to dump the dirt,’ said Fin. ‘They’ll do that after the mine closes for the day, when their trucks aren’t needed.’
‘So what are we doing?’ asked Neil.
‘We need to tell th
e construction crew how to build the obstacles,’ said Fin.
Neil looked at the blueprint. The obstacles seemed to involve massive machines.
‘I got the ideas from Leonardo da Vinci,’ explained Fin. ‘He came up with some awesome military designs for cannons and catapults. And he only had sixteenth-century technology. We’ve got computers, power tools and earth movers, so it should be a cinch.’
‘Is this safe?’ asked Neil, pointing to a particularly nasty-looking mud cannon on the plan.
Fin shrugged. ‘There was nothing in the competition rules that said the design had to be safe. If the course was safe, it wouldn’t be challenging. Will you help?’
‘Why me?’ asked Neil.
Fin looked at his friend. It was only a two-word question, but Fin understood all the implied meaning. Why did he ask Neil – a barely verbal, short boy with chronic vertigo to help? ‘I didn’t want to ask my family,’ said Fin. ‘They always ruin everything. Or takeover everything. Or hijack everything.’
Neil looked at him expressionlessly. He didn’t even blink. Fin felt like Neil was looking directly into his soul. He was going to have to tell the truth.
‘Plus,’ said Fin. ‘I don’t have any other friends.’ Fin realised this wasn’t just true for Currawong. It was true for life. He hadn’t had proper friends when he had lived in the city either. There had been the other boys from the chess club and the D&D club, but they weren’t really ‘friends’. They were just like-minded people who enjoyed correcting each other.
Neil didn’t say anything. He nodded once, which Fin understood to mean a blanket acceptance of everything Fin had proposed. Neil didn’t have any other friends either.
‘We need to look like a couple,’ said Ingrid.
Dad nearly died of a heart attack. It was late on Sunday afternoon. He thought he had snuck out to his greenhouse unseen. He had been carefully repotting his tomato plants. But Ingrid’s silent arrival had so startled him, he jumped and threw potting mix all over himself.
