Dropping In

by Geoff Havel

  ‘We told them we wanted our legs cut off. They just cause pain and get in the way.’

  I stare at him. I can’t believe what he said. He’s got this strange look on his face and then it disappears. He laughs. ‘Just joking, we were stirring up the nurses.’

  I’ve got a horrible feeling he meant it and I can’t handle the thought I’m having about what it would be like to be James so I just watch the Ranga show for a while.

  After maybe five more minutes I decide to have a go at skateboarding myself, without the knee and elbow pads. I walk over to the edge of the ramp and put my foot on the back of my board with the front wheels hanging in the air just over the edge. I’m going to just step on the front and let gravity pull me down into the bowl. When I hit the bottom I should have lots of speed so I’ll just turn off the top on the other side and slow up a bit before I try anything too tricky. I take a breath and step forward, the skateboard tips and I’m off.

  The trouble is the skateboard doesn’t come with me. The back wheels hook up on the edge of the ramp and I fall head first down to the bottom. My right knee smacks into the ground and the ramp sandpapers my palms. As I roll my left elbow cracks into concrete. My shirt saves my back but it’s burning when I stop sliding. I’m lying there, dazed, when I hear laughter.

  It’s the older guys, pointing at me, slapping each other on the back and banging their knuckles together like Americans on TV. I feel worthless. I hate them and their stupid little gang. They feel like big men here, but really they’re just losers and bullies. I hate them but mostly I hate myself for letting them make me feel like this, like shrivelling up and disappearing.

  ‘Are you alright, Sticks?’ It’s Ranga. He’s got my hand and he’s checking it for grazes. ‘You really splattered yourself. Hey, your elbow’s bleeding.’ He rips out a scrunched up tissue. It looks used.

  I pull my arm away. ‘You’re not putting that on my graze,’ I say. ‘I’ll die of snot infection.’

  ‘Do you reckon my snot’s dirtier than this concrete?’ He’s pointing at the ramp. It’s dirty grey with a few red drops of my blood on it.

  ‘Hey Sticks!’ It’s James. He’s got his chair right up to the edge of the ramp. One centimetre further and he’ll fall over. ‘You okay?’ He looks worried in between other expressions that come and go on his face. He does that when he’s upset.

  Suddenly I’m feeling better. My two friends are there for me. But then the worst thing of all happens. I cry. Not a lot. My eyes just water up enough for some to run down my face.

  ‘There, there! Who’s a little baby then?’ It’s the jerk with the long hair.

  I pretend I haven’t heard him. I just get my skateboard, climb out of the ramp and pick up my bag, but the crappiness of this rotten day hasn’t finished yet. My bag doesn’t jingle. I already know what it means, but I open it and check anyway. Yes, my allen keys are missing and I bet I know who took them. I look across at the long-haired kid. He smirks back.

  I know I won’t be able to prove he took them and if I try it will just give him a reason to beat me up. I shake my head and leave with Ranga and James beside me.

  12

  Jess is at it again. At least I think she is. All these girls keep pointing at me and whispering. I can’t hear what they are saying which is really annoying. All the pointing and whispering goes on before school and then at recess too. By lunchtime I’m ready to go and ask Jess what’s going on.

  Then the weirdest thing happens. Lucy James, the most boy-mad girl in the school, comes up to me and says, ‘Ian, Jess wants me to tell you that you’re dumped.’

  Dumped? I didn’t even know I was going out with her. Now I’ve broken up with her. How is that even possible? Ranga is laughing. He tries to put a sorry look on his face. ‘Hard luck man,’ he says. ‘Don’t forget we’re here for you.’ He gives James a big nudge. James is struggling not to laugh as well.

  I can feel a smile pulling at the corners of my mouth. The more I try to stop it the more a laugh tries to force its way out of my mouth. When it spurts out of my nose I give up and all three of us are laughing our faces off at how stupid the whole thing is.

  Lucy stands there looking at us with her mouth hanging open. I get the feeling this is not what she expected. She stares at me for a second then she spins on the spot and stalks back to her mates. Jess is over there looking kind of unhappy which is strange because she’s the one who is supposed to have dumped me.

  I hear what Lucy says to them. It is only one word. Gay.

  One of the other girls puts an arm around Jess like she’s comforting her and they do that flock of birds thing, turning around all together and walking away.

  I’m left standing there wondering what just happened and somewhere deep down I feel like I’ve lost something. It bothers me all afternoon and I make up my mind to try and catch Jess without her friends after school and actually talk to her. She might tell her friends I’m a stalker but I don’t think so.

  James, Ranga and I are walking home and we’re just about to go in the deli for an ice-cream when someone shouts, ‘Hey losers!’

  I know that voice. It’s that long-haired guy from the skate park. We turn around and he comes walking up to us. He’s got a couple of his mates with him. They’re like a gang and I just know they want to beat me up.

  Ranga steps towards them. ‘Leave him alone, Luke. He hasn’t done anything to you.’

  Luke sneers. ‘Tell that to someone who cares.’ He shoves Ranga hard. He must be strong because Ranga flies backwards and bangs into the wall. Then he turns to me. ‘Feeling funny now, are you?’

  The other two guys are standing either side of me and Luke shoves his face right in front of mine. ‘Let’s start again. What are you looking at?’

  ‘A pathetic little thug!’ says a grown-up voice, and a huge hand grabs Luke’s shoulder and spins him around. It’s the deli owner.

  Just for a second I see the look on Luke’s face. He’s nearly wetting himself with fear. Then I realise that he’s seen me see how gutless he is. He’s really going to hate me now.

  The deli owner is like a body builder or something. Ranga once told me that he was a sailor before he bought the deli. Whatever he was, he’s strong. He pushes Luke away like he’s a toy. ‘Piss off, and take your weak mates with you.’

  Luke almost looks like he’s going to smart-mouth the deli owner but he doesn’t. He just gives me a death stare and they strut off like they’re tough guys. It would have been funny except they’re much tougher than me and Luke will get me as soon as he has a chance.

  ‘Are you alright?’ the deli owner asks, but it’s not Ranga or me he’s talking to. It’s James.

  James nods. ‘Thank you,’ he says.

  The deli owner smiles. ‘No worries. It was a pleasure. I’ve watched those punks throwing their weight around for a while now. It was good to be able to do something about it.’

  There’s the ding of a bell from inside the deli and the man spins around. ‘Customer,’ he says. ‘See you boys.’ And he’s off, back into the shop.

  13

  Ranga wants to go down to the skate park every afternoon to practise for the competition coming up. ‘Come on, Sticks, those guys probably won’t be down there. Some of them work.’

  Just thinking about going down there puts a bad taste in my mouth. My grazes sting every time I bend my arm or my leg and it was hard to write at school today because the palms of my hands hurt so much. And those guys will be there. I’m too sore to go, I tell myself over and over — but I know that it is really fear that makes me chicken out and that makes me feel even worse. I make up an excuse so I won’t have to go with him. It’s so weak! I blame Mum. I tell Ranga that Mum won’t let me go down there until my grazes heal and that I’m grounded until I clean up my bedroom.

  ‘I’ll help,’ Ranga says straightaway.

  ‘No,’ I blurt out, ‘you go and practise. The contest is this weekend. It’ll take ages to clean up.’

  ‘
Not if we shove everything under the bed and in the cupboard.’

  That’s typical Ranga: out of sight, out of mind. He’d walk out of the house feeling clever and then think it was unfair when he was busted later. It’s like he has a giant blind spot in his brain.

  ‘Mum will know. She vacuums under the bed and she puts washing away in the cupboard.’

  ‘Yes, but we’ll be gone by then.’

  ‘What about when we get back?’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ He looks crestfallen, but then his face lights up. ‘Your mum will have forgotten about it by then. Anyway, she might not look today and then you could do it tonight.’

  This is harder than I thought. Maybe Ranga wants to go so badly he’d be willing to wear the punishment later, though I reckon he just doesn’t think through the consequences. ‘Why don’t you see if James wants to go,’ I suggest.

  Ranga looks cheesed off, like he knows I could go if I really wanted to, but he nods and heads over to James’ house.

  It’s weird. Now I feel like Ranga is betraying me by going to the park with James. I want to be with them but I don’t want them to find out how scared I am. I guess I want to be alone with my gutlessness. It’s not fair to blame them for anything.

  I watch through the window as they head off down the street. Ranga has his jumper off. He’s waving it like a bullfighter cape and James is charging it like a bull in his wheelchair. They’re both laughing their heads off. The part of me that wants to be with them gets stronger for a second and I stand up but then the part that wants to hide takes over and I sit down again. Then they’re gone.

  I actually do clean up my bedroom for a while but I soon lose interest. I try reading a book but that gets boring and I find myself flicking through pages, reading ahead of myself, and that annoys me. I’m ruining my own book. Maybe eating something will make me feel better.

  I’m standing at the fridge door when the phone rings. I pick it up and say hello. There’s silence for a while and then a soft girl’s voice says, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Sorry? Who is this?’ I ask but there is a click and the phone goes dead.

  Before I have time to think about it Mum is at the door. ‘Who was on the phone?’ she says.

  ‘I don’t know. They hung up.’

  Mum shrugs, ‘Probably a telemarketer.’

  I nod, relieved. I don’t want to talk about what girl might ring up and say sorry, not with Mum anyway. Still, I wonder if it was Jess. If it was, it would be strange, but kind of good. She did look unhappy when Ranga, James and I laughed at school. So who was in the wrong? Was it her and her mates for all the stupid going out stuff they were doing, or was it us for laughing?

  ‘I saw Warren heading off down the street with James a while ago,’ Mum says.

  I know it’s a question even though she hasn’t asked me one but I don’t want to talk about that either so I say nothing.

  ‘They looked like they were heading for the skate park,’ Mum says, looking at me.

  I find something to study outside the kitchen window.

  ‘Why didn’t you go with them?’

  ‘My grazes hurt too much,’ I begin but Mum cuts me off with a loud snort.

  ‘I almost need a microscope to see those. You’ve never let a couple of grazes stop you doing something you want to before, so why now?’

  ‘I wanted to clean up my room,’ I say and, as I’m saying it, I realise what a weak excuse it is. No wonder Ranga looked annoyed.

  Mum actually laughs at me. ‘You? Clean up your room?’ She seems to think that it’s an even more stupid excuse than I do.

  ‘Go and look if you find it so amazing,’ I say. It’s annoying having her give me attitude about my room. She hassles me about it all the time and now she’s giving me grief for cleaning it. You’d think she’d just be happy.

  Mum doesn’t say anything else. She puts the kettle on. ‘Want a Milo?’

  I nod and as I’m nodding someone knocks at the front door, exactly in time with my nods. Mum’s eyes fly open and she cracks up, pointing at me and at the front door. I nod. She cracks up even more. I’m laughing too as I head for the door.

  The first thing I see when I open the door is Ranga’s face with a fat lip and blood smeared on his cheek.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask.

  Ranga talks out of the side of his mouth. ‘That kid Luke was hassling James and he wouldn’t stop. We had a fight.’

  ‘Who won?’ I ask.

  Ranga starts to smile but then he winces. He holds his lip and licks where it’s split. ‘I was winning, but then he got hold of me and he was punching me out when the other guys dragged him off.’

  ‘Luke had a blood nose and I bet he gets a black eye,’ James says from behind Ranga.

  ‘So what happened when they dragged him off?’ I ask.

  ‘The other guys said he was gutless and to leave me alone. Jimmy, the guy who does all those balances on his front wheel, said if Luke didn’t cut it out he’d have to deal with him.’

  ‘He left,’ says James, grinning like an idiot. ‘We had to look out for him on the way home but he wasn’t waiting for us so maybe he’ll leave us alone now.’

  ‘Why did you think you might run into him on your way home? You didn’t go past the shop, did you?’

  ‘No, but we reckon he lives around here.’

  That’s not good news. ‘Around here? How do you know?’

  ‘That’s his tag in the underpass,’ Ranga says.

  ‘Warren!’ Mum’s seen Ranga’s face. She hurries him into the kitchen. Before he can protest she’s taken a bag of frozen peas out of the fridge and wrapped them in a tea towel. She tells him to hold it on his lip while she cleans up his face with a wet washer.

  Ranga does everything she says, not complaining even when I’m certain she hurts him a bit wiping off the blood and putting Betadine on the split in his lip. If it was me, I’d be in trouble for fighting, but she would fuss over me too. She’s a great mum.

  Ranga looks relieved when she stops. It’s hard to put together the kid who takes crazy risks on a skateboard, who fights guys a lot bigger than him and who always gets into trouble for saying and doing stuff without thinking, with the kid sitting there doing exactly what Mum tells him. He looks like a puppy.

  ‘Would you boys like a Milo? Ian and I were about to have one,’ Mum says.

  Ranga’s eyes light up. ‘Dip and Gunk!’ he says.

  ‘What’s Dip and Gunk?’ James asks.

  We tell him the rules while Mum makes the Milo.

  We roll a dice to work out who goes first and I lose. That’ll make it hard to win.

  My Milo is steaming. Ten seconds I reckon, that’s all I’ll try for. Mum has the stopwatch. She’s going to be the judge too.

  I’m about to put the Milk Arrowroot biscuit into the Milo when Ranga says, ‘Past halfway!’ like we always do.

  ‘Yes,’ I growl. I take a few seconds to refocus.

  ‘Hold it steady!’ Ranga says just as I start to lower it again.

  ‘Stop it! I know what you’re doing,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ says Ranga, all helpful innocence.

  ‘You’re trying to put him off,’ says Mum. ‘That’s cheating, Warren.’

  Ranga shakes his head. ‘No, it’s an important part of the game. I’d be cheating if I did this.’ He bangs the table with his hand. My Milo slops around in my cup.

  James has a huge grin all over his face. He loves it. He’s holding his biscuit already but his fingers won’t grab it properly. They’re too tight and the biscuit is on a bit of an angle. It will snap straight off if he does it like that. I hold my biscuit up, above the cup, ready to start.

  Mum hisses and raises a finger to Ranga. He sits back. I lower the biscuit into the Milo. One. James’ eyes nearly bug out. He leans forward and bumps the table. My Milo slops up the Milk Arrowroot past halfway.

  ‘Sorry,’ James says, sitting back and making the table wobble again.

  I can’t wait any longer.
Only eight seconds, but if I leave it I’ll gunk. I lift it out and, as I raise it to my mouth, I see James watching everything I do, opening his mouth when I open mine. I nearly crack up but somehow I make it.

  ‘Beat that,’ I say to Ranga through my mouthful of mush.

  He just laughs and then winces, holding his lip. ‘Easy,’ he says but he chickens out after nine seconds and lifts his biscuit into his mouth. He smirks at me and does a number one sign with his finger.

  ‘My turn,’ James says. He gets his chair as far under the table as he can, but he still has to lean forward. He rests his arm on the table but the effort makes his hand shake worse than ever.

  ‘I’ll get a tray, ‘Mum says. She gets up and gets a serving tray from the kitchen. She puts it across the armrests of James’ chair. A little frown flits across his face but she doesn’t notice it.

  ‘How’s that?’ She puts his Milo mug on the tray and steps back.

  ‘Good, thanks, Mrs Whyte.’ He smiles.

  Mum picks up the timer and James gets in position. His hand is tense as anything and the harder he tries to keep it steady the tenser it gets. I’m afraid the biscuit is going to shatter.

  Mum clicks the timer. ‘Go!’

  James dunks. He’s been watching us because he only sinks it to halfway, but it’s sort of waving back and forth and up and down in the Milo. It’s going to snap off before he even gets it out. His face goes redder as the seconds tick past. At about ten seconds he lifts the biscuit out and actually gets it to his mouth. He’s beaming, with biscuit mush oozing out of the corner of his smile. Ranga and I high-five him.

  ‘Twenty seconds,’ Mum says.

  James’ smile disappears. All three of us are looking at Mum.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘I only counted to ten,’ James says. ‘I don’t want any favours. I want to win fairly.’

  Mum is smooth, but we all know she isn’t telling the truth. ‘Time flies when you’re having fun,’ she says. We’re all still looking at her. ‘It seems to go faster when you’re really concentrating. Besides, ten seconds is a win anyway.’