by R. A. Spratt
‘What’s racist?’ asked Tom.
‘Calling people black,’ said Matilda.
‘I didn’t call anyone black,’ said Tom. ‘I said “the pot calling the kettle black”, it’s an expression.’
‘It’s a racist expression,’ said Matilda.
‘What’s he supposed to say?’ asked April. ‘The pot of African heritage?’
‘He shouldn’t talk about it at all,’ said Matilda. ‘Because he’s not black.’
‘He doesn’t know that,’ said April. ‘He can’t see.’
‘I have no concept of colour,’ agreed Tom. ‘It’s a theoretical idea that has no meaning to me.’
‘Anyway, we’re getting off the point,’ said April. ‘I’m sure Tom is a raging racist, but that is no excuse for him manspreading.’
‘What?’ asked Tom.
‘You’re manspreading,’ said April. ‘It’s a phenomena that has been widely documented on the internet. It happens on all forms of public transport. Men selfishly take up more space than they need to by having their legs spread apart, while women are forced to squeeze into tiny spaces. The fact that no one notices until it’s pointed out just shows how deeply ingrained the patriarchy is and how we unconsciously think men deserve to take up more space.’
‘The only reason I haven’t noticed is because I’m blind,’ protested Tom.
‘Vision-impaired,’ corrected April. ‘Although I am prepared to agree that you are blind to the suffering of others.’
‘Why didn’t you just ask me to put my legs together?’ asked Tom.
‘I shouldn’t have to,’ said April.
The engine of the bus sputtered a few times, then roared to life.
‘Right, we’re off,’ yelled Mr Lang over the sound of the engine. He ground the gear stick until he found first gear and the bus shuddered forward.
‘I’ve got no idea how long your legs are,’ said Tom. ‘But if they don’t take up as much space as mine, that’s your problem.’ He didn’t move his legs a millimetre. They were still spread exactly as they were when he first sat down. If anything, he had fractionally moved them apart.
‘It’s not the length of legs that’s the problem. It’s the space in-between your legs that you imagine it is vital for you to monopolise that offends me,’ said April.
‘You want the space between his legs?’ asked Matilda. She was finding it hard to follow the conversation.
‘No,’ yelled April. ‘I want him to stop manspreading.’
‘You two, stop fighting!’ snapped Mr Lang, glancing over his shoulder at them. He was struggling to get the shuddery bus into second gear.
‘You’re being ridiculous,’ said Tom.
‘I am not!’ yelled April. She picked up her backpack, swung it round and whacked Tom hard on the knee.
‘Hey!’ cried Tom.
Now, being vision-impaired, Tom was eligible for many supportive government programs to help him cope as a fully independent member of society. Unfortunately for April, one of the courses Tom had taken and excelled in, was self-defence for the vision-impaired. So when she whacked him with her schoolbag, a common schoolyard tactic, usually not signifying much, sometimes even used as a gesture of greeting or affection, Tom reacted reflexively as a result of his training. He picked up the nearest weapon to hand, his white cane, and swung it at her. This may have been effective out on the street. But inside a crowded bus, waving a one and a half metre cane about is never going to go well. The cane whipped through the air, hit a hand rail, bounced off and smacked Mr Lang across face.
‘Aaaghhhh!’ cried Mr Lang, grabbing his eyes and letting go of the steering wheel. The bus veered off the road and down an embankment. Now everyone was screaming.
‘Aaaaagggghhh!’
The bus started to tip up on one side as it rolled down the slope out of control. Everyone sitting on the right-hand side of the bus, slid or fell into the people sitting along the window on the left. Tom slammed into April’s outstretched arms. Then Matilda crunched into Tom. And Neil slammed into Matilda.
Tom was terrified, he had no idea what was happening. Although he did have a faint inkling of understanding that he had probably caused it. April grabbed him in a bear hug.
CRUNCH!
The bus had crashed into something and mercifully straightened back up. April turned and looked out the window to see what they’d crashed into. It was the Tyrannosaurus rex. The one that Fin’s head was stuck in. The bus had slammed into it and the huge dinosaur had collapsed on top of the bus.
‘Fin!’ cried April.
Inside the bus, there were kids strewn everywhere. April shoved Tom, Neil and Matilda off her and bounded down the aisle, making little attempt to avoid Kieran and Animesh with her feet. Mr Lang was just opening the concertina doors as April hit the steps and launched herself cat like onto the dirt outside. The sight that met her eyes was shocking.
The T-Rex had been three times the height of the bus, but now it had collapsed over the top. The T-Rex’s feet were a metre off the ground and the massive fibreglass statue seesawed precariously in the wind. At the top end, in the jaws of the giant animatronic creature there was Fin, still stuck by his head. Although now that the dinosaur was lying across the roof of the bus, Fin could support some of his own weight by standing on his tippy toes on the roof top.
‘Are you dead?’ called April.
‘Not yet,’ cried Fin. His voice muffled inside the dinosaur. ‘I’m actually more comfortable now. I’m getting more air flow from this angle.’
All sisterly concern drained out of April and she went back to her natural default mode of paying out on her brother.
‘You know you’re a huge idiot, right?’ said April.
‘I’m smaller than you,’ said Fin. He was two inches shorter despite being one year older.
‘That’s why your idiocy is so massive,’ said April. ‘Because relative to your actual size it’s totally out of proportion. Your dumbness to volume ratio is enormous.’
Loretta and Joe were sprawled in the dirt just metres from the front wheels of the bus. Joe had tackled Loretta, knocking her out of the way as the bus hurtled down the embankment towards them. Joe was just sitting on the ground apparently in shock. But Loretta got to her feet and tried to brush some of the dirt off her clothes. She was filthy from landing hard in the dirt, then having Joe crash down on top of her.
‘S-s-sorry,’ stammered Joe.
Loretta had a huge smile on her face as she slapped the dust off her school uniform. ‘Don’t be. That was thrilling. This is turning out to be the best school excursion ever,’ said Loretta. ‘We never did anything this exciting at St Anthony’s.’
Joe still hadn’t got up. He was gritting his teeth.
‘Are you okay?’ asked April.
Joe never did say much, but it wasn’t normal for him to sit on the ground clenching his teeth and squinting into the middle distance either. Especially not when one of his siblings was dangling precariously out of the mouth of a dinosaur. Joe had more maternal instincts than most mothers. He was like an emu. When the mother leaves, the male sits on the eggs and looks after the babies.
‘F-f-fine,’ said Joe.
April looked closely at Joe’s face. ‘Then why are your eyes watering?’
‘What’s wrong,’ said Loretta.
‘Nothing,’ mumbled Joe.
‘Stop lying!’ said April.
‘I s-sprained my ankle,’ said Joe.
Loretta burst out laughing. ‘Oh the irony, it’s delicious. A real sprained ankle!’ said Loretta. ‘Shall I get Daisy to come and carry you?’
‘I’ll be f-fine,’ said Joe. He shifted all his weight onto his good foot and using his hands for support slowly stood up. He looked pale and clammy but he was upright. ‘See.’
‘Ahuh,’ said Loretta. ‘Now try walking over to the bus to check on Fin.’
Joe took one tentative step. As soon as he moved his weight onto his bad foot he collapsed on the ground again. It
took all his willpower not to scream out in pain. Tears were pushing up at the back of his eyes. He could not cry in front of Loretta Viswanathan. He turned away from her, then realised he was facing all the kids on the bus. Their faces pressed up against the glass. Joe pulled his cap down over his eyes so if he did accidentally let a tear or two slip out, no one could see.
April had climbed up on top of the bus to check on Fin. He looked ridiculous with his head clamped inside the dinosaur statue, tiptoeing back and forth on the roof as the dinosaur tilted in the breeze. April took in the sight.
‘You know it would be so easy for me to dack you right now,’ she observed.
‘Don’t do it!’ cried Fin.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t,’ said April. ‘It wouldn’t be sporting. It’d be like shooting fish in a tin of sardines.’
Fin breathed a sigh of relief. He was pretty sure he was wearing his Lego undies and he didn’t want everyone at school to see.
‘I could tickle you though,’ said April.
‘April, please,’ pleaded Fin.
‘All right,’ said April. ‘I’ll leave you alone. I don’t really need to do anything. It’s like you’re self-tormenting at this stage. I can just stand back and enjoy the spectacle.’
‘When we get back to school,’ yelled Mr Lang. ‘You are all suspended.’ Mr Lang had climbed out of the bus. His face was red with rage.
‘All the kids in the school?’ asked Kieran. ‘Isn’t that just a student free day.’
‘Not all the kids in the school, you ridiculous boy!’ snapped Mr Lang. ‘The Peski kids. I’m suspending the lot of you. You’ve destroyed a local monument. And seriously damaged the school bus. You lot are a walking train wreck. Ever since you’ve come to this school you’ve wrecked everything.’
‘That’s a bit harsh,’ said April. ‘I like to think we’ve added to the local colour.’
‘Yeah,’ said Fin. ‘With our big city neuroses we’ve made Currawong more cosmopolitan.’
‘They did save the cockroach races, catch a runaway bear and solve a bank robbery,’ said Loretta. ‘I think it’s very ungrateful for you to be so critical of their few antisocial behaviours.’
‘They crashed a bus into a local tourist attraction!’ cried Mr Lang.
‘You’re the one who crashed the bus,’ argued April.
‘Only because you hit me in the face when I was driving,’ said Mr Lang.
‘No, I didn’t,’ said April. ‘Tom did.’
‘You’re blaming the blind boy?!’ cried Mr Lang.
‘Not blind, vision-impaired,’ April corrected him. ‘And Tom is a far more complicated person. You shouldn’t just see him as a boy with a disability. He’s more than that. He’s a boy with a disability with a violent temper, psychopathic attitude and shameless disregard for others when it comes to manspreading.’
‘What’s manspreading?’ asked Mr Lang.
‘Ask Tom,’ said April. ‘He’ll show you.’
‘I’m reporting you all to the Department of Education,’ said Mr Lang, as he stomped back to the bus. ‘I shouldn’t have to put up with this. Prison guards in maximum security have less difficult people to deal with.’
‘Hey!’ called Fin from inside the dinosaur head. ‘Mr Lang isn’t going to start the bus is he?’
‘He probably just wants to get the bus out from under the T-Rex,’ said April.
‘But if he does that,’ said Fin. ‘I’m going to fall three metres to the ground and possibly have my head ripped off by the weight of the dinosaur.’
‘You should have thought of that before you climbed up there and stuck your head in to impress Loretta,’ said April.
‘I was not trying to impress Loretta,’ argued Fin. ‘I was trying to establish if the statue accurately represented the number of rear teeth in the jaw of a T-Rex.’
‘Because that impresses all the ladies,’ said April.
The bus shook as Mr Lang turned over the engine. It rumbled for a second then died.
‘Make him stop!’ panicked Fin. He was only thirteen. That was much too young to die. All the things he’d never done started to flash before his eyes – drive a DeLorean, win a Nobel prize, become an astronaut, cure cancer, invent a perpetual motion device, kiss a girl . . . ‘Save me!’
‘Fine, fine,’ said April.
Mr Lang turned the key again, and the engine rumbled laboriously to life, sputtered a few times then died again.
April knocked on the doors of the bus and called out to the teacher.
‘Hey, you’re not going to drive away are you?’ she called through the doors. ‘Fin is worried he is going to die.’
‘We need to get back to Currawong to get help,’ said Mr Lang, trying the engine again. The whole bus shook as the engine turned over, but then died again.
‘Yeah, well it’s not going to look good on your teacher’s file if he gets decapitated when you back the bus out,’ said April.
‘I will back the bus out slowly,’ said Mr Lang. ‘The dinosaur will slide off. A few students can support Fin so he isn’t hurt in the process. It will be fine.’
‘Yeah, and if you’re wrong my brother will bear a striking resemblance to Anne Boleyn in a few minutes,’ said April.
‘I’m the adult, I make the decisions,’ snapped Mr Lang. He turned the key again and this time the bus didn’t rumble. The starter motor just ticked. He tried again. And again there was just a ticking noise.
‘What is that?’ asked Mr Lang.
‘Battery’s flat,’ said Neil.
‘I guess you don’t get to make the decisions after all,’ said April. ‘The electrons in the lead acid battery have made them for you.’
Dad and Ingrid had been hiking through the woods for what felt like miles. They had ditched the dirt bikes, literally in a ditch, back by the main road. Ingrid had said they couldn’t ride too close up to the prison because there would be security sensors buried in the forest floor that the vibrations would trip.
Dad was not having a good time. He was not very fit. He did do a lot of gardening but grafting rose bushes and propagating seedlings was not great cardiovascular training. Normally Dad would enjoy being in the woods and looking at all the plants, but it was night-time and he couldn’t see anything, his lungs ached and his legs were on fire. And as much as he loved plants, he didn’t love walking smack into a low hanging tree branch or thorny bush every few paces.
All Dad could do was follow Ingrid. The moon was a slim crescent, there was barely any light at all. He sensed her as much by her movement as anything else. She certainly made no noise. But he could see the movement of branches parting as she made her way through the dense undergrowth. Until suddenly she stopped.
‘We are here,’ she whispered.
‘Where?’ asked Dad.
‘Look,’ Ingrid pushed aside a branch and Dad could see that they were on a hilltop overlooking a valley. The sun was beginning to rise. It hadn’t peeped above the horizon yet, but the sky was growing purple as light started to drift up into the sky. Dad could make out the shape of a dark, square building surrounded by high barbed wire fences with four guard towers, one at each corner.
‘It’s a prison,’ said Dad.
Ingrid nodded. ‘Your wife is inside.’
Dad felt very cold. He tried not to think about his wife. At least in the daytime. He couldn’t stop his brain from having dreams and more often nightmares about her at night. He knew she was in prison, but he hadn’t thought about what that meant. She was tough. She could handle anything. He knew that. But this prison looked like a lot to handle. It was worse than anything his imagination could have conjured up. He hated to think what sort of things went on inside such a bleak and miserable building, hidden away in the woods, away from eyes and oversight.
‘We must get inside,’ said Ingrid.
‘What?!’ said Dad. He knew they were trying to break his wife out, but it hadn’t occurred to him that they would have to break in. It didn’t seem very sensible.
/>
‘They aren’t going to let her come out here for a nature walk,’ said Ingrid. ‘We have to go in and get her.’
‘How?’ said Dad. It looked like an impossible task. ‘We’ll never even get past the barbed wire.’
Ingrid glanced at the building, ‘That’s not barbed wire. It’s razor wire. Electrified razor wire.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ said Dad. He started to hyperventilate. This was all too much. ‘They’ll just lock us up too. If they interrogate me I won’t be strong. I won’t be able to resist. I haven’t got it in me. I want to do the right thing but I’m not strong enough. I’ll tell them everything.’
‘You don’t know anything,’ Ingrid pointed out.
‘I know,’ agreed Dad. ‘But perhaps I know more than I think I know.’
‘You don’t,’ said Ingrid. ‘I’ve known you for two years. You definitely don’t know more than you think you know. If anything, you know much less.’
‘But will they believe that?’ asked Dad. ‘Perhaps I should make something up.’
‘Am I going to have to slap you?’ asked Ingrid. ‘Or can you get control over your emotions by yourself?’
Dad took some steadying breaths. ‘I’m okay, I think.’
‘Good,’ said Ingrid.
‘But you can’t seriously propose us trying to get in there?’ said Dad. ‘It would take months to dig a tunnel. Or arrange for a helicopter to land in the exercise yard at the exact time she was out jogging.’
‘Which is why we will keep things simple,’ said Ingrid, turning back to look at the layout of the prison. ‘We will go in through the front door.’
‘What?!’ exclaimed Dad. ‘They’ll shoot us as we walk up the driveway.’
‘No,’ said Ingrid. ‘I have made arrangements. I had a contact acquire a military vehicle for us.’ Ingrid went over to a nearby bush and pulled it aside. It came away easily, apparently it wasn’t a real bush, just camouflage. Behind the scrub was hidden a 1984 Toyota Corolla. It was a small, underwhelming grey car.’