by Chris Miles
‘Okay, 8C! A couple of pieces of business before you start this new term in your usual blaze of academic fervour. This term, you begin your transition into Year 9, which means you’ll soon be choosing your subjects for next year. We’ll be talking more about the Stepping Up program in the next couple of weeks. But the main thing to remember is this: it’s time to start thinking about your futures.’
The future? thought Jack. He wasn’t ready for the future. Especially if it was going to involve conversations like the one he’d just had with Vivi.
On the surface, it seemed like Vivi had settled Jack’s big fear. After all, she’d pretty much confirmed they were still friends. That everything was normal. That he wasn’t in danger of becoming the saddest of social outcasts at Upland Secondary. But somehow it just didn’t feel that way. Instead, it felt like the distance between them was getting wider.
‘Speaking of stepping up,’ said Mr Jacobs, ‘for those of you interested in applying for the Mayor for a Week program, the Community Engagement Committee are holding an information session tomorrow morning in the student centre. There’ll be someone from the mayor’s office explaining the selection process, and one of our own ex-participants will be there to give you a taste of what the winner can expect.’
‘Mayor for a Week?’ said Jack. ‘Sounds like a Vivi Dink-Dawson jam, most definitely.’
Vivi looked thoughtfully out the window for a moment, then turned to Jack. ‘You think?’
‘Are you serious? You’ve risen from roll monitor to international-student buddy to junior school captain. Your thirst for power is clearly unquenchable. Plus, how funny would it be to see you in those mayoral robes?’
Vivi smiled. ‘I do love me some civic regalia.’
Jack smiled back. But he was still thinking about the confusing conversation they’d had at the beginning of home room. If they were still friends, why had she ignored him all holidays? Had something happened that she didn’t want to tell him about? Maybe he just needed to man up and ask her directly.
‘Listen, Vivi,’ said Jack in a low voice, ‘I was just thinking. Before, when you were asking if we’re friends: I think I get it now.’
‘You do?’
Jack nodded. ‘Friends should feel like they can tell each other stuff, right?’
Vivi looked uncomfortable. ‘I guess?’
‘Well, I’m guessing maybe there’s something important you wanted to tell me. And I think – because I’m totally in the same place right now – I think I know what it is.’ Jack put on his most sincere face and leant closer, hoping maybe to peer into Vivi’s thoughts and divine the perfect thing to say. ‘Are you having women’s troubles?’
Vivi pulled away. ‘Am I having what?’
Jack blinked. ‘Well, we’re all in the middle of big changes in our lives, right? You, me, Reese, Darylyn … me … We’re all growing up. Our minds, our bodies. Definitely mine are.’
‘Women’s troubles, though? Are you from the … was there even a decade when people said that?’
‘I just meant: I get it. It’s a difficult period. I mean, n-not period. I mean, yes, periods, let’s not deny the reality here, but – wait, where are you going?’
Vivi had collected her books and was leaving the table. Apparently the bell had rung. Everyone was on their way out the door.
Jack hadn’t even noticed.
Jack barely said a word to Vivi during first lesson – and not just because Ms Liaw ran her Sociology class with a complete intolerance for socialising. So far, leaving aside one or two unfortunate word choices, he felt like his plan to convince everyone he’d hit puberty had gone pretty well. But after the weirdness with Vivi at the end of home room, he realised how easy it would be to undo all his good work. All he had to do was say the wrong thing – again – and he’d be sticking his neck under the friendship guillotine.
And that wasn’t all he had to worry about. Jack couldn’t stop thinking about what those Year 7 girls had said that morning. Bring back Jack? Something about a poll on the Bigwigs forums? Hopefully it was just some dumb thing Bigwigs fans did to keep themselves busy while they waited for the next season to start. What would be the point of bringing old contestants back? Past winners, sure. Runners-up, maybe. But the rest? The ones who hadn’t measured up? Why would anyone want to see them again?
At recess, after his Business and Enterprise special subject, Jack bumped into Darylyn as they both headed for the quadrangle.
‘So what are you thinking?’ said Jack. ‘For next year’s electives, I mean.’
Darylyn raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, I don’t want to startle you, Jack, but I think it’s very likely that my subjects for next year will include maths, computers … and computers.’
‘Right, of course,’ said Jack. ‘Computers. Good choice.’
They walked the rest of the way to the quadrangle in silence. Reese and Vivi were already there by the time Jack and Darylyn arrived. The four of them had claimed one of the tables there halfway through Year 7, and so far nobody had challenged them for it. Reese seemed especially psyched to see them – which made it all the more mysterious when he offered Jack a high five that was seriously lacking in swag. It was almost as though Reese had been looking right through him.
‘So,’ said Jack. ‘Mayor for a Week. I told Vivi she should apply for it. She’d be a certainty, right?’
‘Totally,’ said Reese.
Darylyn nodded. ‘To the extent that anything is certain, I would say hell yes.’
Vivi shrugged. ‘I don’t know. My marks haven’t been so great this year. I probably don’t need another distraction.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Jack. ‘You’re still equal top of our class, last time I checked.’
Vivi side-eyed him. ‘And you happen to know that because you’re keeping an eye on your competition, I guess?’
‘Nerds,’ coughed Reese.
Vivi put on a shocked expression. ‘Nerds? I refute that statement most strenuously.’
‘As do I,’ said Jack. ‘Do you think we’d be sitting here at the cool table if we were nerds?’
‘No,’ said Darylyn. ‘But let’s face it – we’re mostly here because of Reese’s genetically-acquired street cred.’
Reese poked Darylyn in the arm and grinned. ‘That’s racist.’
This is new, thought Jack. Not the jesting, but the direct physical contact. Was this something male and female buddies did now? He waited a moment, then tentatively jabbed Vivi in the arm. Unsure if he’d made a decisive enough jab, he did it again, harder.
‘Ow! What the – ?’
‘Mayor for a Week,’ blurted Jack. ‘Are you going to do it or what?’
Vivi rubbed her arm and winced. ‘It depends. First of all, they might require a candidate with a full set of functioning limbs.’
‘Sorry,’ said Jack. ‘It’s all this new muscle tone I’ve suddenly got. So annoying. I guess I don’t know my own strength.’
‘Second,’ said Vivi, ignoring him, ‘since it’s just a popularity contest, they’ll probably end up giving it to someone like her again.’ She pointed at four Year 11s cruising through the quadrangle as though it were a beachside esplanade.
Natsumi ‘Nats’ Distagio and the Shieling twins, thought Jack. As usual there was a random fourth member of the entourage – a budding beta-babe orbiting Nats’s inner circle.
Reese leant towards Jack. ‘Dude, is that your sister?’
Jack looked closer, then found himself nodding dumbly as he realised that, yes, apparently Hallie was now rolling with Upland Secondary’s topmost division of divas. One more thing that seemed to have changed between the end of Term 3 and the start of Term 4.
‘Wow,’ said Vivi. ‘You could totally work that to your advantage, Jack. Marry into the Distagio family. Become an instant millionaire. Plus, she’s so pretty.’
Jack shrugged. ‘She’s okay.’
Okay, he thought. Okay in the same way that flying in an F-35 stealth jet w
ould be ‘okay’.
Natsumi Distagio’s tan was just that shade more perfect than anyone else’s. Her eyes, nose and mouth were crucial millimetres closer to ideal. Her hair had optimum bounce and lustre. Natsumi Distagio – and Jack felt this was no exaggeration – was a hottie of sufficient magnitude to be one of those models who stood at the back of the stage during the presentation of a TV Week Logie award.
Vivi nudged Jack. ‘So when are you going to pop the question?’
‘Huh? Why am I being singled out here? What about Reese? He’s a guy. Like me. We’re both guys. Both … fully grown guys.’
Vivi glanced at Reese, who flinched at the sudden attention.
‘Somehow I don’t think Reese has his eye on Nats,’ said Vivi wryly. ‘Anyway, I think it’s good you’ve got yourself a love interest.’
Good in what way? wondered Jack. He felt it again – the feeling he’d been having the whole year, of some uncrossable gap between them, of being talked down to. When Vivi said it was ‘good’, it sounded like the sort of ‘good’ you’d say to a puppy who’d finally learnt to poop in the right spot.
‘Because it’s such a joke that I could be with someone like her …’ he muttered.
‘She is significantly older than you,’ Darylyn noted. ‘Though the age difference only seems so pronounced because of the wide variance of physical and emotional maturity in adolescent populations.’
There was an awkward pause. Reese glanced from side to side, then hastily unwrapped the earbuds from his battered MP3 player. ‘So … I just found out about this thing called Calypso War. It’s, like, these Caribbean singers in the 50s who went around dissing each other like total gangstas –’
Vivi poked Jack in the arm. ‘I didn’t mean to make fun of you.’
Jack shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
‘Actually, I did mean to make fun of you. But only in a “we’re all grown-ups and can look after ourselves” kind of way.’
That’s the problem, thought Jack. It didn’t feel like that at all. It felt more like they were making fun of him in a ‘you can’t possibly be our equal because it seems very doubtful that you possess any pubes yet’ kind of way.
At no time was Jack more aware of the ‘wide variance of physical and emotional maturity in adolescent populations’ than when he had to front up for his Monday afternoon double lesson of PE.
For a start, Mr Delphi was the kind of PE teacher who didn’t see any problem leaving it up to students to choose sides for team sports. Jack was a long way from being top pick, which was bad enough as weekly humiliation went. But that wasn’t even the worst thing.
The worst thing was the changing rooms.
Jack was pretty sure Vivi and Darylyn and all the other girls got to disrobe in civilised silence behind their own personal bamboo screens, possibly with gentle Oriental-style music piping into the changing room through a speaker somewhere. The boys’ changing room, on the other hand, was basically an open-plan dungeon built for maximum psychological torture.
The building itself appeared to have needed repairs for decades. The floor was carpeted with a mulch of stray socks, the air was a haze of weird body odours and stale deodorant, and there were occasional random stocktakes of whose testicles had dropped and whose hadn’t.
There was one other major difference between the girls’ changing room and the boys’ changing room.
The girls’ changing room didn’t have Oliver Sampson.
Oliver Sampson was in 8D, and had the exact opposite problem to Jack – if being rigged like a horse between your legs really qualified as a problem. Like Jack, Sampson had gone to primary school at Upland West. And then, sometime between the end of Grade 6 and the start of Year 7, Sampson had been swept up in the biggest testosterone tsunami in recorded history. Over the course of a single summer holiday he’d tripled in size in every direction. When he’d stripped down in the changing room that first week of high school, the other new Year 7s literally cowered, as if they’d received a visitation from some extraterrestrial superbeing. (‘Who is this god who walks among us?’ someone had whispered.)
But as the months passed, the rest of the boys cowered no more as they inched towards the benchmark Sampson had set. Soon they were no longer boys, but fledgling dudes.
All except Jack. Even Kenny Hodgman – Jack’s last ally in Year 8 pubelessness – seemed to have betrayed him. Just since the end of Term Three, the Hodgemeister’s voice had dropped so far he sounded like Darth Vader to Jack’s Jar Jar Binks.
Jack dumped his backpack on one of the benches furthest from Sampson and the others. He stood looking at it, contemplating how to get his school clothes off and his soccer shorts on before anyone noticed he’d finally become the only minnow in the shark tank.
‘Hey, Jack!’
Jack looked up. It was Philo Dawson, Vivi’s younger cousin. He zoomed towards Jack, shoulders jerking forwards, as though his whole body were being reeled along by the semi-crazed grin that seemed to leap a mile ahead of the rest of his face.
‘Hey, Philo.’
‘Can you believe it’s the last term already, Jack?’ Philo shook his head wistfully. ‘Year 8, almost over.’
Technically, Philo should have been looking forward to the end of Year 7. He was a full year younger than Jack, but his parents had insisted he be pushed up a year level so he could finish school sooner and take on his responsibilities to the family business: Sultana World.
It was wrinkled grapes that had put Upland on the map. Sultanas had become such big business that a previous generation of Dawsons had built a Sultana World amusement park in the middle of Upland. They called it Sultana World World. So when Philo’s parents had demanded that Philo – sole heir to the Sultana World empire – be accelerated to a higher year level, the school council had agreed. Partly because agreeing with Philo’s side of the Dawson family was just what everyone in Upland did. But mostly because the sooner Philo finished school, the less likely he was to accidentally burn it down.
Philo unzipped his long, old-school gym bag and pulled out his soccer gear. ‘So how were your holidays, Jack?’
Jack was about to answer when he heard an unwelcome sound behind him: the many-octaves-too-low voice of Oliver Sampson.
‘Yeah, Sprogless, how were your holidays?’ Sampson loomed behind him, shirt off, chin raised, shoulders absurdly wide. ‘Didn’t see you at the Under 15s sign-on.’ Being spoken at by Sampson was like the verbal equivalent of being jabbed in the ribs. ‘What happened? Finally get booted back to the Under 12s where you belong?’
Jack was pretty sure the only kind of under-15s club Sampson deserved to join was a club for people with 15 IQ points or under, but he didn’t say this. He put on a disappointed face and shrugged. ‘I’ll probably have to give cricket a miss this year. Got a bit of a … groin problem, actually.’
‘Groin problem?’
Jack bowed his legs and made a half-hearted pelvic thrust. In theory, it was meant to suggest a massive weight in the front part of his underpants. In practice, it looked like he’d suffered an accident in the back part.
Sampson snorted. ‘As if. Everyone knows you’re a total baldy-balls.’
The changing room turned into an echoing cavern of laughter. Only Philo and Kenny Hodgman remained silent. Sampson merged back into the mass of wide shoulders and underarm hair that was everyone else in the changing room who wasn’t Jack Sprigley.
‘He’s such a nong,’ said Philo.
‘Y-yeah,’ said Jack.
‘I mean, he called you “Sprogless”, and that’s not even your name.’
Jack grabbed his backpack and headed for the toilet cubicles next to the showers. Sampson had decided one thing for him, at least. There was no way he was going to get changed out in the open now.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Philo.
‘Where does it look like I’m going?’
‘But why are you taking all your stuff with you?’
‘Oh,’ said Jack, glancing down
at the open backpack. ‘Well, that’s because … I’ve got these new Nikes? They cost heaps. Probably shouldn’t let them out of my sight.’
‘Are you sure they’re new? They look a little worn.’
‘That’s … designer scuffing. It’s the new thing.’
‘I can watch them for you if you’re worried –’
‘No, really, it’s fine. I’ll just take my gear in with me. Actually, since I’m doing the whole toilet thing anyway, maybe it’d be just as easy to get into my shorts and stuff while I’m in there.’
‘Okay,’ said Philo. ‘I just thought you might have been worried about the … you know. The pubes thing.’
Jack snorted. ‘I’m not worried. Why would I be worried? Sampson doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’m totally normal, pube-wise. I’m just the same as everyone else.’
Just then, Jack caught a glimpse of Kenny Hodgman, who was doing his best to get his soccer shorts over the significant deposit the puberty fairy had recently paid into his underpants. Jack blinked in disbelief. It didn’t seem possible that one person could need to grow that much genitalia in such a short space of time. Who needed to reproduce that urgently?
Philo waved a hand in front of Jack’s face. ‘Are you okay, Jack?’
‘Y-yep.’
‘You’ve gone a bit pale.’
‘I’m okay. I’ll … I’ll be out in a minute.’ Jack closed the cubicle door, dropped his backpack and leant against the wall.
He wasn’t fooling anyone. Sampson saw right through him. Even Philo knew the score.
Which meant Vivi and Reese and Darylyn probably saw through him too.
The tide was rising on Pubeless Island.
The PE double turned out to be only marginally less humiliating than the changing room. After some warm-ups, half of Mr Delphi’s combined class of 8C and 8D were sent off to practise dribbling and passing, and the rest gathered at one of the soccer nets to choose sides for a game.
Jack hung at the back with Philo and Vivi as Mr Delphi selected captains for each side.