Gracie Faltrain Gets It Right (Finally)

by Cath Crowley

  ‘I wonder that a lot, lately. I wonder it so much sometimes I can’t sleep.’

  ‘We’ll help you catch up in English,’ Dad says. ‘From what I’ve seen, you’ve been working pretty hard, staying up late studying.’

  ‘Thanks for noticing.’

  ‘I think it’s important for you to make decisions on your own, now, baby. But I’m always here if you need me. Why do you think I bought Foxtel? I knew there’d be some late nights waiting until you were in bed. I can’t go to sleep until you do.’ I forget, sometimes, that Dad’s as worried about me as Mum. He has a different worrying style, that’s all.

  They read the letter again before they give it back. ‘I wish we could fix the other things you’ve written about in here. But those things have to fix themselves,’ Mum says. ‘And they will, with a bit of time.’

  Dad drives Alyce and Kally home. Mum puts on the kettle. ‘We need coffee,’ she says. ‘And all the old newspapers from the laundry. We can do an hour of study before bed.’ Jane sits with us and together we go over the techniques of analysis.

  ‘So, I have to discuss how people put a spin on the truth?’ Someone should have told me that before. This is one English assignment I might actually be able to do.

  ‘Good, Gracie,’ Mum says, looking over my work after a while. I can’t remember a time when I needed her and she didn’t drop everything to help. Even when Dad was away in Year 10, I knew I only had to call. It always took him a few days to make it home, but if I waited, one afternoon I’d hear his keys in the door.

  I think about Annabelle before I sleep. I think about the look on her face as she sat on that bench. She’ll never hear her dad’s keys in the door again. For the first time ever, I wish that things were better for her. I actually wish that she’s happy.

  25

  ALYCE

  I wake early. It’s still dark but I know it’s nearly morning. I hear the birds. Last night, when I was lost in the bush with Gracie and Kally, I remembered that I did this when I was young. I would lie in bed listening, searching for a way to describe how the birds sounded in the second before the sun rose. They bobble, I thought, but it wasn’t right. Before dawn birds know the sky is about to explode with velvet light. There’s no textbook to describe the excitement.

  Last night Gracie made me believe that New York is possible. She has a way of talking that sweeps people up and pushes them to new places. I heard the dawn in her voice, all the colours that soak the sky in that first moment of sun. Her views are so strong sometimes they blow mine away. Maybe that’s why I told her about New York but I didn’t tell her about Andrew. I’m not sure I want to leave Brett. He might not make me excited, but I can predict him. Gracie would talk about fate and love and I don’t want to make a decision about those things, yet.

  I dress quietly and write a note for Mum and Dad explaining that I’m going to school early. I wait until it’s light outside and then I leave. I let myself imagine what it will be like to walk along the streets of New York next year. I’ll arrive after Christmas and it might be snowing. There will be lights and the giant tree I’ve seen in all the pictures. There will be Central Park and museums and cafes where I can sit and order and no one will know that I was the girl everyone teased through primary school.

  I’m at the neighbourhood house by seven-thirty. I don’t mind waiting. At eight a woman unlocks the door. ‘You’re an early bird,’ she says. Birds make me think of planes and that makes the excitement bubble inside me. I’m really doing this. I’m really making the first step towards leaving.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘My name’s Alyce Fuller. I want to volunteer.’

  ‘I’m Janet. How old are you, love?’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘We always need help. Come into the kitchen and have a cuppa. I’ll explain the sort of things we do.’

  ‘We’re open nine to about seven Monday to Friday and nine to five on Saturday and Sunday. We have paid workers but mostly we’re staffed by volunteers.’ She smiles. ‘People come in and use the Internet. We offer classes some nights, like English or computers, yoga, that sort of thing. Most of the time people drop in for a chat and a cup of tea. We have a lot of elderly in the area who like a bit of company. You might be interested in the kids’ club. I need a bit of help there.’

  ‘The kids’ club sounds good,’ I say, and she hands me a form.

  ‘Why don’t you fill this out? We need your details, things like a police check and parent’s permission. Drop it back when you’re ready and we’ll go from there.’

  While I wait at the bus stop I write the details of the neighbourhood house in the space marked ‘community work’ on my Young United Nations application. I forge Janet’s signature because I’ve written that I’ve been working there for a year. I might have until I’m twenty-five to apply but I don’t want to wait that long. By the time the organisers of the United Nations ring Janet, she’ll know me. She’ll see why I needed to lie. It’s not even a lie, really. It’s a smudge on the truth.

  It is time I took a chance. Gracie gets the things she wants because she’s willing to risk everything. All my dreams of New York will stay in my head if I don’t do this. I want them to spill out of me next year and become real. Being brave is hard but being scared is harder. I cross my fingers and stand in front of the post box. I mail my application. And all the way to school I hear the sound of birds.

  Term Two , Day 16

  Okay, this is a message for anyone who was dumb

  enough to listen to me before. Stock up on the Tim Tams,

  turn off the TV and stop wasting time tidying your desk.

  Get your butt into gear or YOU ARE GOING TO

  FAIL ENGLISH. It’s almost the second half of the game.

  It’s time to start scoring goals.

  Gracie Faltrain

  26

  GRACIE

  I’ve come back from being lost in the wilderness at camp only to get even more lost in the wilderness of my analysis essay. I’d rather be stuck in the dark facing a man with a chainsaw than stuck in a room facing a teacher with an essay question. I thought I’d be good at this sort of task and maybe I would be if I’d listened last year. Or the year before. Or the year before that. Let’s face it. I wasn’t even listening in primary school when they explained how to finger paint.

  The Year 12 advice book that Mum bought me explains that it doesn’t do any good to panic. I agree. Panic gets you nowhere. But when your future is lying in the middle of the road about to be run over by a truck with a Year 12 English examiner at the wheel it’s pretty hard to stay calm. ‘If I fail English my life is over,’ I say to Mrs Young in our second lunch study session.

  ‘I thought we decided not to panic.’

  ‘This is me not panicking.’

  ‘Gracie, it’s only Wednesday. You have four more days and this is only one assessment task. It is important but the key thing is to pass the end-of-year exam.’ She smiles. ‘Now, concentrate. When you say that your future is being run over by a truck it’s called “hyperbole”.’

  ‘The truck has a name?’

  ‘The truck isn’t called “hyperbole”. The technique is. I mean you’re exaggerating. Let’s start from the beginning.’

  And she does. She starts from the beginning and goes over everything again. She talks slowly. And by the end of the session I think I understand. ‘We’ll move on to another definition tomorrow,’ she says. ‘You can do this, Gracie. I know you can.’

  Of course that would be easier to believe if I could remember the definition of hyperbole five minutes after I’ve walked out the door. My life is definitely over.

  ‘The key to study is to link the word and meaning to something you’ll remember,’ Kally says Thursday before school. ‘Like, remember alliteration by linking it to Dan.’

  ‘He’s damn, damn hot’, Jane says. ‘Double D. Alliteration.’

  ‘Like, cute Corelli,’ I say.

  ‘Freaking not funny,
Faltrain. I’ve spent almost every lunch this week hiding in the toilets so I don’t have to talk to him. The more I hide the more I obsess. If I have one more dream about him in his Superman suit I’m changing my name to Lois.’

  ‘Love is a form of slow, painful torture.’

  ‘I’m in lust, not love, Faltrain. But good work on the hyperbole. Where’s Alyce, by the way? She’s going to be late for school.’

  ‘She’s at the neighbourhood house. Imagine how great next year will be if I pass English and qualify for the state and Alyce gets into the Young United Nations and you get into Journalism.’

  ‘If I get into Astrophysics, between the four of us we could rule the world,’ Kally says.

  Jane looks at Corelli who’s walking across the quad. ‘I’d love to be a part of your plans for world domination. But I have to go hide in the toilets.’

  Sometimes you can have all the fancy English terms at your fingertips and still, the best word to describe hiding in the toilet because the boy you like doesn’t like you is that it sucks.

  ‘Focus on the posts,’ Mrs Young says Friday afternoon. She’s supervising the detention Kally, Alyce and I have for wandering off at camp.

  ‘I think you mean focus on the goal, Mrs Young. “Posts” are in Australian Rules football, not soccer.’

  ‘Focus on the goal of a clear essay, then, and you’ll be fine.’ She packs up her books and signals for us to do the same. ‘I’ll be at school early on Monday if you need anything. Take tonight off and work on Saturday and Sunday.’

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Young.’ It turns out I did smack her in the face for a reason. I’d still be lost in the wilderness of English if I hadn’t got her attention.

  Dan’s waiting out the front of the school to take Kally and me to the practice training sessions with the girls. ‘I’m worried we won’t win the bet,’ Kally says in the car. ‘Are you worried?’ she asks me.

  I am. But sometimes a person needs to hear that they can win. Mrs Young showed me that this week. ‘Relax. Tomorrow we’ll sub four of the girls plus you into the school game to give you all a taste of what it’s like to play against boys. Sunday we’ll work hard at state trials. Dan will bring some guys along to extra training. We have a solid plan. I think we’ll be okay.’

  ‘I’m glad I’m not in this alone.’

  ‘You’re not,’ I say, and Dan nods. It’s all right for him. He’s not the one who might lose his hair, I think. But I don’t say anything. I smile like I don’t have a care in the world.

  I watch Kally and the girls train tonight. Please let them win. Please. ‘Go, Char,’ I yell. ‘Go Esther.’ I call out things to help them. I write down where they might have trouble. At the end of the session I tell them they’ve done a great job. I remind the players who are on for the school game tomorrow to be early. And the last thing I do is cross my fingers.

  ‘I want to show you something on the way home,’ Dan says after we drop Kally at the Orions’. He grins as we drive along the highway.

  ‘You’re excited,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, I am.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Some place I love as much as you love the soccer field.’

  ‘It’s funny. I do love soccer. Every other year it’s been the only thing I’ve focused on. This year, when I’m so close to my dream of playing for the state, other things are crowding in. I want to pass school. I want those girls to win the bet. I want to win the school soccer competition but I’d rather the girls I’m subbing in tomorrow play well. Life’s confusing.’

  ‘And it wasn’t last year?’

  ‘It was. But at least for a while I thought things were clear-cut. I knew I wanted to win at soccer no matter what. I wanted to help Martin and Alyce and I was willing to put everything on the line to do it. I was so sure of myself.’ Okay, in the end I was wrong. But is being wrong but confident worse than being right without a real clue what you’re doing?

  Dan stops at the airfield. ‘We’re here.’ We walk up to the wire fence and stare through. ‘I fly one like that,’ he says, and explains how to take off and how to fly. I imagine him, looking down on a world that looks small enough to move with his hands.

  ‘You’d see everything from up there, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘More than you see from down here, that’s for sure. But you can’t see everything.’

  I think of last year and the year before. ‘It would be so much easier if you could.’

  27

  MARTIN

  ‘You have to tell Gracie that we’re friends,’ Annabelle says.

  ‘I will. I need to find the right time.’

  ‘Kally feels like she’s lying. So does Dan.’

  ‘It’s not like Faltrain tells me about all her new friends.’

  ‘It’s different and you know it.’

  Why is it different? Because Faltrain would say it’s different? Because she’d say there are rules and I can’t kiss her enemy? All the good stuff in me is finally rising to the surface.

  ‘Martin,’ Annabelle says in a way that makes me think she’s been talking for a while but I haven’t been listening. ‘You can’t have a new start if you don’t deal with the past.’

  ‘Since when do you care so much about Faltrain?’

  ‘Since I know that you do.’ She looks me straight in the eyes as she says it and that’s when I figure it out – I think maybe I’m in love with Annabelle Orion. And that is news that Faltrain is definitely not going to take well.

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ I promise. ‘Soon.’

  28

  GRACIE

  I warm up next to Flemming for the school game Saturday morning. I think about that envelope with the answers. I think about all the warnings people have given me about him. When you kick the ball around with a guy for six years you get to know him, though. Yeah, he’s an idiot, sometimes. But mostly he’s one of the good idiots. He took those notes because he doesn’t trust that he can make it on his own.

  ‘How was the end of camp?’ I ask.

  ‘Boring. I should have gone off with you and Alyce.’

  I stretch my hamstrings and try to look casual. ‘So, Mum and Dad and Jane are helping me revise for the English essay. You want to come over this afternoon?’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do, Faltrain.’

  So much for casual. ‘I bet you haven’t opened that envelope yet. It’s not too late.’ If I know Flemming he’ll look at it Sunday about midnight. ‘If I can pass without cheating then you can.’

  ‘If you don’t want the stuff, give it back. I’ve got someone who’ll buy it off me.’ We’re not talking like mates, now. Our sentences are cut short so nothing important fits.

  ‘It’s in my locker.’

  ‘Give me your key.’

  ‘It’s open.’

  He looks at Kally, Char, Esther, Natalie and Joanna sitting on the bench. ‘They’re scared,’ he says. ‘They should be.’ We run into the game but it feels like we’re not on the same side anymore. How did that happen so quickly?

  Corelli’s the only player who cuts the girls any slack today. The other side slams them and our guys don’t pass the ball. They’re mad that Coach’s brought in new players. They don’t trust the girls to make the shot. So they do what our team always does when it feels threatened: they pull together and shut out the enemy.

  Coach sends the girls on one at a time. One at a time I try to kick them the ball but I’m not enough. One at a time the guys show them what I can’t explain: that the practice match is going to be tougher than they ever expected.

  ‘You did good,’ I say after. And then I take them through, one point at a time, how they could do better. ‘It’s hard when you feel like you’re alone out there,’ Char says.

  She’s right. Last year was rough but I had players on my side. ‘I’ll fix that before next week,’ I say. No one can make it when they feel like their back’s against the wall.

  I look across at Flemming sitting on the bench. ‘No one.’


  ALYCE

  I don’t watch Brett play football this afternoon. I arrive at Gracie’s game as Andrew’s leaving. He sees me standing there and slings his bag over his shoulder. ‘Gracie’s gone,’ he says. ‘She went with Woodbury. I have to get something from school. You want to come?’

  I nod.

  ‘Where’s Mason?’

  ‘He’s busy.’

  I think back to when I first tutored Andrew and I had no idea what to say. I read up on soccer and cars and tried to talk about them. ‘Just be yourself,’ he told me. ‘I like listening to all the stuff that goes on in your head.’

  ‘I watched a documentary the other night that explained there’d be no drinking water left before the end of our lifetime,’ I tell him today.

  ‘I guess it’s lucky we’ve got Coke.’

  ‘On average 1.55 litres of water are needed to make one litre of soft drink.’

  ‘You’re very serious, aren’t you?’

  ‘I try hard not to be. We’re not walking in the direction of the school.’

  ‘You know what? It doesn’t matter. Tell me about that documentary. The world’s ending, right?’

  ‘It is eventually.’ I turn my phone off so Brett can’t call. ‘But it’s not ending today.’

  29

  GRACIE

  ‘So Linda, Kirsten and Maggie were cut,’ Kally says at trials this morning. At the beginning of the year I didn’t think I’d care who was cut as long as it wasn’t me. But even the state cuts aren’t clear-cut anymore.

  I run onto the field. I play my hardest. I force myself to forget about the girls who aren’t here. The more I play soccer, the more complicated winning gets. Because this time, it’s the girls from my team who I have to beat, not the opposition. And if I beat my friends, I can’t get around the fact that a part of me has to lose.