Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Copyright Page
It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m riding towards the local pool to meet my friends Leni and Anya. The pool reopened for the season a couple of weeks ago, but this is the first day that it’s been hot enough to go. It seems like everyone is outside today, enjoying the sunshine. Everyone except me, that is. Hot weather makes me worry, and not just because of sunburn – although with my pale skin that’s always likely. It’s because of something my parents always say. When everyone else is joyfully chucking on their T-shirts and sandals, my parents are shaking their heads and saying, ‘It shouldn’t be so warm at this time of year.’
Global warming. That’s one of the things I worry about a lot. I worry about it because climate change is affecting the environment. Wet places are getting drier. Cool places are getting warmer. And animals have fewer and fewer places to live. That’s on top of all the other stuff they have to cope with, like pollution and forests being cut down.
So that’s a little glimpse into the brain of Sophie Bennett. Strange, huh? Most thirteen-year-old girls I know worry about stuff like what they should wear on the casual-clothes day at school. Or whether some hot guy likes them. As far as I know, I’m the only thirteen-year-old who finds it hard to enjoy a sunny spring day because she’s thinking about what happens to frogs when their lake disappears.
I blame it on my parents. They’re obsessed with this sort of stuff. Mum works as a wildlife rescuer, which means that people call her if they’ve found a koala wandering down the middle of the main street (it happens) or a lizard with a broken leg. We often look after these animals at home. Last week, for instance, we had a wombat wandering around.
When they’re ready, Mum releases the animals back into the wild. I know she often worries about what will happen to them next. I mean, it keeps her up at night. Which is probably why when she’s not working, she’s busy going to rallies and demonstrations to make people aware of climate change and to pressure governments to do something about it.
Dad’s job has nothing to do with animals or nature – he works in IT – but he does a lot of campaigning too and knows heaps about the environment. Actually, he knows heaps about everything. He’s always got about twenty books out from the library at once.
‘Knowledge makes you powerful, Soph,’ my dad says to me sometimes. I get what he means. But sometimes, like on days like today when everyone else is happy about the sunshine and I have a knot in my stomach about it, I can’t help thinking how much easier it’d be not to know so much. Sometimes knowledge makes you lonely.
I wheel my bike around to the left and take a shortcut through the skate park. Lots of people from school hang out there, especially Edi Rhineheart and Hazel Atherton because they go out with two of the boys who practically live there – Archie de Souza and his friend Leo Flynn. There’s hardly anyone here today, though, at the skate park.
As I near the ramp I check out the graffiti to see if anything’s changed. My favourite piece is still there. It’s of a girl in a bikini wearing a beauty-queen sash that says ‘Miss Everything’. For some reason, the girl has these huge feet, and underneath there’s a caption: ‘Filling the Big Shoes’. I’m pretty sure it was done by Leo and I wonder if it’s supposed to be his girlfriend, Hazel. Or maybe it’s Edi. But Edi’s feet are definitely not large. Edi’s feet are perfect, like the rest of her. I guess it’s the ‘everything’ bit that makes me think of her. She’s got what a lot of people at school want. Brains. Beauty. A boyfriend. Dad told me once that good art is something that makes you think and this picture definitely does that. It’s very cool. I’d love to tell Leo one day how much I like it, but he’s in the year above us at school and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know I exist.
When I arrive at the pool I realise why no-one was at the park. Everyone is here. The concrete car park is super hot and I feel the heat radiating up towards me as I push my bike over to the rack. There are a couple of boys there, chaining up their own bikes. One of them sniggers when he sees mine.
‘Man. What century did that thing come from?’
Hardly any of the stuff I own is new. It’s not that we’re poor exactly, it’s just that my parents don’t go out and buy stuff like most people. My mum is big on op shops and trash-and-treasure finds and my dad loves fixing things up. A bit of glue. A bit of paint. ‘Giving it a new lease on life,’ he calls it. This sounds nice, I guess, but what it means is that my things always look different to everyone else’s. Which means that I always look different to everyone else.
Take my bike, for instance. Dad found it one evening in the hard rubbish and brought it home. He was so pleased with it. ‘It has a great, solid frame. It’ll last for twenty years once I’ve redone the brakes.’ He fixed up the gears too. Mum wrapped ribbons around the handlebars and painted orange-and-purple swirls over the rusty spots on the frame. When they presented it to me they were both so thrilled that I couldn’t turn around and say, ‘I hate it. It’s ugly.’ They would’ve been shattered. So instead I said, ‘Wow! Thanks!’ and steeled myself for the rude comments I knew would be coming my way when I turned up at school on this thing.
Luckily my friend Anya has taught me how to deal with dumb remarks – or at least, I picked up some tricks from watching her. Anya is very good at turning an insult into a joke. Sometimes I think she does it a bit too much – she puts herself down a bit – but it is a pretty good trick.
I turn to the sniggering boy and shrug my shoulders. ‘Hey, this bike is cutting-edge compared to the penny-farthing I used to ride,’ I say.
He gapes at me. It doesn’t matter that he probably has no idea what a penny-farthing is. All that matters is that it shuts him up for long enough for me to walk off. I don’t bother locking my bike. That’s the one good thing about having pre-loved stuff. Generally people don’t want to steal it.
There’s a long queue to get into the pool and just as I’m finally pushing through the turnstiles, there’s a message from Anya.
Where R U?
Anya is the texting queen. She’ll text you when she’s standing two people ahead of you in the queue for the school canteen. She’ll text you when you go to the loo during a movie night. I’m not so big on it myself. For one thing, my phone is ancient (of course) and the predictive text doesn’t work so it takes me ages to write anything. I don’t bother replying. I figure it’ll be way quicker if I just go and get changed and hurry to meet them.
In the change room I pull on my bathers. They’re a one-piece. There’s no way Mum would let me wear a bikini and, to be honest, I wouldn’t want to wear one anyway. I’d feel way too self-conscious. I actually like my bathers. My aunt Kaye gave them to me for my birthday and they’re brand-new. Next I slather on the SPF 50 sunscreen. Anything less and I’ll look like a cocktail sausage in twenty minutes flat.
‘There you are, Soph!’ It’s Anya standing in the entrance to the change room, her hands on her hips. She’s wearing a bikini and she clearly doesn’t feel one little bit self-conscious about it. ‘Leni’s out there with the guys, minding our spot,’ Anya says.
My insides sort of skid sideways when she says that, like I’ve taken a corner too fast on my bike. By the guys Anya means Leni’s mates from athletics training: Adam and Josh. Adam hangs around with us a lot and it’s pretty obvious he’s got a thing for Leni. I always figured that Josh got dragged along without having much say in it. But just recently, this crazy though
t has come into my head. One that’s so crazy I would die rather than tell anyone about it. Even my friends. Recently I’ve been wondering if Josh has been hanging around because of me.
One part of me thinks that this is totally ridiculous. But then another part keeps looking for clues that maybe he does like me. I sometimes feel as if I have this gauge in my head – one of those things with a needle that swings from one side to the other. Sometimes when Josh is around, the needle swings towards ‘He likes you’. But other times it goes straight over to ‘You’re imagining things, Sophie Bennett’.
Anya taps her foot impatiently as I put my bag in a locker. ‘Hurry up, Soph!’ she says.
I quickly check that I’ve got everything. Towel. Hat. Sunscreen. Water bottle. Right. I’m ready for anything.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Let’s go.’
The pool smells like chlorine, sunscreen and lemonade iceblocks. Everywhere I look, I see someone I know. Erin and George are on the grass near the change rooms, deep in conversation about something – probably some computer game, knowing those two. Briana and Phoebe are nearby, flicking through magazines.
Sitting on the edge of the pool, chatting as they dangle their legs in the water, are Edi, Hazel and their boyfriends Archie and Leo. The four of them look like they’re in a poster advertising summer.
Anya calls out hi to them and I have to admit I cringe a bit. It’s not like we’re friends with them. But of course in Anya’s perfect dream world, everyone would be friends with everyone. Perfect Edi would hang out with the girl on the orange-and-purple pre-loved bike.
Four heads turn in our direction. Four smiles pass across us and away, like lighthouse beams. Then the poster kids turn their attention back towards each other.
Near the kiosk is this loser guy called Nelson who is the year above us at school. He’s hard to miss at the best of times because he’s big and loud but today he’s especially hard to ignore. He’s standing on the path, his arm draped around a blonde girl, and as we walk past, he pretty much shoves his tongue down her throat right in front of us. It’s completely disgusting and I can’t imagine what this girl is thinking, letting Nelson go anywhere near her.
Earlier in the year someone wrote this ‘hot list’ ranking the girls in our year in order of ‘hotness’. It was pinned up on a noticeboard. No-one knows for sure who did it but most people suspect it was Nelson. I was way down on the list, and I guess I was supposed to feel cut about that, but actually I just felt creeped out that someone had rated me – especially someone like Nelson Cooke. If I was making a list of the hottest boys (and I never would), he wouldn’t even be in the top one hundred. Not even the top million.
Leni was in the bottom half of the list too, which just shows how dumb it was because she’s gorgeous. Anya was in the top twenty and although she said she was disgusted, I think she was a tiny bit flattered.
I hate how those ratings have stuck in people’s heads, even though the list was ripped up. Things like that never properly disappear, that’s the problem. That’s why it’s always bugged me that the person who did it never got into trouble.
‘Leni’s over there,’ says Anya, pointing. I can see Leni over on the grassy area on the other side of the pool. Adam and Josh are with her and they’ve got a ball, which they’re throwing back and forth between them. Josh looks up and smiles as we get close. The gauge in my head swings over – just a little – to the ‘like’ side.
‘Uh, excuse me? We’re at the swimming pool, not the football field, you know!’ Anya calls out.
Adam has Leni in a headlock and Anya rushes over to ‘save’ her, although I can tell she’s secretly hoping he’ll do the same thing to her. Adam is definitely very cute, but lately I’ve been thinking Josh is better looking.
Anya and I sit down on the concrete and Leni, Adam and Josh come to join us. I notice that Josh chooses a spot next to me, even though there’s a much bigger space next to Adam. My imaginary gauge needle moves a fraction more into ‘like’.
‘Wow, Soph,’ says Anya suddenly. ‘Your legs are so white!’
I look at them and sigh. ‘Yeah, kind of dazzling, aren’t they?’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ says Josh. ‘White is better than leathery any day.’ As he says this an old couple with skin exactly like leather walk past and it’s very, very hard not to laugh.
The conversation turns to favourite TV shows, which inevitably leads to Acacia Lane. It’s one of those shows that everyone either loves or hates. Anya completely loves it. She got Leni hooked and because Leni watches it, Adam does too.
Josh grunts in disgust and looks at me. ‘Please tell me you don’t watch that stupid show too, Soph.’
I laugh and shake my head. ‘We don’t have a TV,’ I say.
Josh looks surprised, as everyone does when they find this out.
‘We’ve got a computer, though, so I watch DVDs on it sometimes,’ I say quickly, but I can see the damage is done. It’s one more thing to add to the list of weird stuff about me. I sometimes feel like I should walk around holding up a sign that says ‘DIFFERENT’ in huge, red letters. Underneath could be a whole lot of check boxes.
Rides an ugly bike.
Wears strange clothes.
Doesn’t have a TV.
Doesn’t eat meat.
‘Wow!’ says Josh. ‘I’ve never met anyone without a TV before.’
The ‘like’ gauge screeches over to ‘You’re imagining things’.
Leni, who can never sit still for very long, jumps to her feet. ‘Time for a swim,’ she says, and two seconds later neatly dives into the nearest pool.
Josh looks at me and Anya. ‘What about you two?’
Anya goes to the edge of the pool, dips a toe into the water, then quickly pulls it out again. ‘There’s no way I’m going in there,’ she declares. ‘It’s freezing!’
I see Josh and Adam exchange a look – a mischievous one. Before Anya can step away, the two of them run up to her, grabbing her under the arms as they jump in. Anya tumbles in, screaming at the top of her lungs.
‘Come on, Soph!’ calls Leni, her wet hair flicking over her shoulder. ‘It’s great once you’re in.’
‘No, it’s not!’ calls Anya, surfacing. But she’s looking pretty happy, even though her hair has stuck down against her head.
Adam attempts to dunk Leni but she manages to wiggle away. ‘Come on, Soph!’ she says. ‘We need you in here.’
‘Okay, okay,’ I say. ‘I’m coming.’ I run to the edge of the pool and leap in.
Afterwards, Josh and Adam go to the kiosk for snacks and Leni, Anya and I stretch out on the concrete to warm up. I lie on my back with my arms out to the sides like a T, eyes closed against the sun. But then a shadow falls across my face and I open my eyes again. Nelson is standing there, one arm still around the blonde girl and a stupid smile on his face.
‘Check out the hairy pits on this chick!’ he says, pointing at my underarms. He says it really loudly and it suddenly feels like everyone in the entire pool is staring is me. I’m too shocked to do anything besides jam my arms against my sides. But Anya leaps into action.
‘Shut up, Nelson, you moron!’ she snaps. For a small person, Anya can yell very loudly. ‘No-one cares what you think so just get lost.’
Nelson looks like he’s planning on hanging around but Adam and Josh come back, holding iceblocks and cans of drink.
‘What’s going on?’ says Josh. Josh is not a big talker, but he’s got this way of sounding very serious and like you wouldn’t want to mess with him. Also, although he’s younger than Nelson, he’s almost as big.
‘Nothing,’ mumbles Nelson and slinks off with the girl.
‘What was all that about?’ asks Adam, passing out iceblocks.
‘Nothing. Just Nelson being a jerk,’ says Leni. I’m grateful to her for not telling the guys what happened, but I’m also feeling pretty shaken up. And really self-conscious too. Of course I’d noticed that I’d started to sprout a bit of underarm hai
r, but it was so little that I didn’t really pay much attention. Most of the time it’s covered up. I just totally forgot that in my bathers it would be visible. But even if I had thought about it before coming to the pool, what would I have done? I’ve never shaved before, or anything like that.
The unwrapped iceblock is beginning to soften in my hand, but I don’t feel like eating it. What I feel like doing is getting dressed and going home. I’m looking over towards the change rooms when I notice something under a nearby tree. I think at first it’s a fluffy brown hat or a curled up scarf, but when I go over I realise that it’s a ringtail possum.
Maybe it’s hurt, I think, but although it’s still warm, it’s not moving at all.
‘Gross, Soph! It’s dead. Leave it alone.’ My friends have gathered around me, although Anya is hanging way back with a disgusted expression on her face.
‘I’m just checking if it’s a female. Maybe it’s got a baby in its pouch,’ I say. This is something my mum always does if we see dead wildlife. She’ll even pull over if we’re in the car, so doing this doesn’t seem strange to me.
The possum is a female and when I check the pouch there’s a curled-up little ball of fur in there. I gently scoop it out.
Leni inches forward. ‘Is it dead?’ she says.
The furball is warm and I can see – just faintly – its side lifting and falling.
‘No, it’s alive, but it’s probably dehydrated,’ I say. I take the baby possum over to my towel and gently wrap it up, making sure that air can still get through. ‘I’d better take it to Mum straight away.’
Adam whistles and shakes his head. ‘You are one gutsy chick, Soph. I can’t believe you just did that.’ I know he means it as a compliment but it’s no big deal to me. I can’t imagine not doing it.
I get changed quickly and say goodbye to my friends.
‘Hey, good luck,’ says Josh. ‘I hope you make it back in time.’ He’s got a strange look on his face. Like seeing me remove that baby possum has made him think about me in a different way. I’m just not sure if it’s in a good way or not. My ‘like’ gauge returns to the middle. Just as it always does.
Sophie Bennett Saves the Planet Page 1