by Colin Bowles
PUFFIN BOOKS
SURFING MR PETROVIC
What do you do when you’re eleven years old, your dad’s going out with a fashion model, your mum’s hooked up with Barry, who looks just like a maths teacher…
And maths is your worst subject?
Then there’s the little genius from hell, and the friends you don’t even like that much…
If this is LIFE, where does Tao get off?
+ + + + +
Colin Bowles has worked as a barman, taxi driver, folk singer and soccer goal-keeper, as well as in advertising and as a journalist and writer. Colin has had numerous books published in Australia and overseas, writing for both adults and children.
By the same author
Going Off
Wasted
Nights in the Sun
SurfiNg MR PEtrovic
COLIN BOWLES
PUFFIN BOOKS
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Penguin Books Australia a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd, 1997
Text copyright © Skyview Holdings Pty Ltd, 1997
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ISBN: 978-1-74-228454-5
1
Everybody hates me.
Everybody.
My mother, my stepfather, my real dad, my steps, the cops, the principal at my school, even some bloke from Yugoslavia I don’t even know. His name is Mister Petrovic and he really, really hates me. If he could get his hands on me I reckon he’d rip my legs off and beat me unconscious with the soggy ends.
We’re going round there to see him right now.
I’m terrified. I don’t want to go but they’re going to make me. I’m eleven years old and I reckon it’ll be a miracle if I see twelve.
I don’t know how I got into this mess. It actually wasn’t my fault. Well, maybe that’s not quite true, but it wasn’t as much my fault as some people – mention no names, but thanks a lot, Mum – as some people seem to think. Besides, I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately. There were the mid-term test results and Dad’s girlfriends and the dog dying and everything.
I suppose I’d better explain …
It started a couple of months ago. I was on my way home from school with Matt and Bluey. Matt’s cool. Really cool. Everyone says so. A couple of months ago he got hold of his dad’s electric razor and came to school with the left side of his head completely bald. Then he had his nose pierced and had a diamond stud put in it. (It looked great until last week when he had a cold and he got bits of green gunge stuck in it.) Matt’s dad – he calls him by his first name, Dennis – has got a really important job and his mum – he calls her by her first name, Tara – is an investment advisor, so they’re not around much and he doesn’t get all the parenting hassles that us other kids get.
My other mate, Bluey, isn’t cool at all. He just does whatever Matt tells him to do.
Matt’s the captain of the school footy team, or at least he was until he got thrown out for signalling to the coach from the wing. He only used one finger to make the signal and I guess that’s why he’s not in the team any more.
But Matt still brought his football to school and we kicked it around on our way home from school. We all go for our local team, the Dockers. I’m Stephen O’Reilly and Matt’s Ben Allan. Bluey’s tall and skinny and he has a funny sort of run so we let him be Spider Burton.
Playing footy in the street isn’t easy. You have to keep your eyes out for the traffic if you don’t want a hip-and-shoulder from a passing car. You also have to be a pretty good kick because the streets are narrow and there are parked cars down both sides, and if you’re not spot-on you can lose your ball in someone’s garden and then you have to shin a wall to go and get it.
Now Matt never had to go and get the ball because he’s such a good kick. But on this particular afternoon he put a torpedo up to Bluey and it was way off line and it sailed over Bluey’s head into Mister Petrovic’s garden. And that’s when my troubles started.
‘You’re allowed to move your feet,’ Matt said to Bluey.
Bluey just kind of shrugged and looked embarrassed. It was usually Bluey who had to go and get the ball, and it seemed kind of demeaning and, well … unsettling … for Matt to have to do it. But that was the rule. If you missed your kick, you got the ball.
‘It was straight at you. You only had to jump,’ Matt said.
Now this was a lie, but Bluey still didn’t say anything. Neither did I. I figured Matt was just trying to cover up the fact that it was a very ordinary torpedo punt.
‘You did it deliberately,’ Matt said, which was an even more outrageous lie. ‘So I think you should get the ball.’
‘I couldn’t have reached that pass with a stepladder,’ Bluey protested.
Matt put his hands on his hips. He had a mean look on his face. ‘Get the ball,’ he repeated. ‘Dog-breath.’
Now I knew that it wasn’t fair that Bluey had to go and get the ball. Bluey knew it wasn’t fair that he had to go and get the ball. And Matt knew it as well. But Bluey went and got the ball.
At the time I still thought it was because Matt felt embarrassed about the bad kick. I never ever figured he was scared of Mister Petrovic.
I thought it was just me.
Mister Petrovic didn’t have much of a garden. He lived in a little brick house that looked sort of stark surrounded by all the upper-yuppie Federation-style clapboard houses that lined the street. What made it even more stark was that the previous owner had put concrete slabs over the entire front garden – which wasn’t much bigger than the goal square at the MCG anyway – and left just a few square patches of dirt for garden beds. Mister Petrovic had planted some stunted rosebushes there and they didn’t have many leaves and they had absolutely no roses; it all looked pretty miserable.
The football had bounced over the bushes and landed next to the screen door on Mister Petrovic’s verandah. Bluey vaulted the wall easily, because he was pretty tall, and got to the ball in about three strides. As he bent down to pick it up, the screen door creaked open and we heard a voice say, ‘Hey! What you think you do?’
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Matt said.
Mister Petrovic came out onto the verandah, the screen door clattering shut behind him with a tinny bang. He had been living in the street for about three months and we had seen him a few times, sitting on his porch in an old overstuffed armchair that had straw coming out of a hole in the side. Sometimes he shouted things at us in some strange language. Matt said he was a Croat, whatever that was.
Mister Petrovic, it has to be said, is not a pretty sight. He is about the same height and width as my dad’s bar fridge, only with a head on top, and he must be pretty old, because all his hair has turned grey. He still has a lot of hair on top though, but it’s cropped short and sticks straight out from his scalp like bristles. In fact, when you look at Mister Petrovic it is hard not to think about hair. There’s a lot of it sticking out of his nose and his ears, like grass growing out of a crack in a wall, and he always has stubble on his face. No matter what day you see him, Mister Petrovic always looks as if he last shaved yesterday.
He wore a white singlet tucked into a pair of brown trousers, and this way you could see even more of Mister Petrovic’s hair. It was like he had two grey blackboy fronds gripped under each armpit. There was so much hair trying to get out from under the neck of his singlet that I doubted if he could see through it to tell whether or not he had slippers on his feet. Perhaps that was why he always wore a shoe on one foot and a slipper on the other.
Now, seeing Bluey on his verandah, he looked really angry. ‘What you do, stupid thing?’ Mister Petrovic shouted at Bluey. ‘You break my rose?’
Bluey jumped the wall in one bound and took off. I followed him. I looked back once and saw Mister Petrovic standing in the gateway, staring after us. He had his hands hanging by his sides. They were like sides of pork and about the same colour. I knew I didn’t want them around my neck.
‘We’ll get him back,’ Matt said.
We were on the corner of Federation and Cantonment streets, a safe distance from Mister Petrovic. Bluey was breathing hard, the ball under his arm, his eyes the size of soup plates. ‘He didn’t scare me,’ he said.
‘We’ll still get him back,’ Matt said.
It occurred to me for a moment that Mister Petrovic hadn’t really done anything for us to get him back for. All that had happened was he’d shouted at us when we kicked the ball into his garden. But Matt said that the honour of our little gang had been stained, and we now had to re-establish our creds in Cantonment Street. I remember vaguely agreeing that Mister Petrovic should somehow be Got Back.
I didn’t really mean it.
2
I suppose I’d better explain my family situation to you, as sometimes it gets pretty complicated. My dad doesn’t live with us. He lives about three k’s away, with his girlfriend. I live with my mum and her boyfriend, who is called Barry. I can’t call him dad and he doesn’t like me calling him Barry so I end up not calling him anything, which makes it pretty difficult writing on his Christmas card and leaving him phone messages and things like that.
He has two kids, called Connie and Michael, and they live with us half the time except when they go and stay with their real mum. Their real mum’s new boyfriend, by coincidence, is my uncle.
You can see how things can sometimes get complicated.
Saturday mornings my dad comes to pick me up and take me out for the day. Sometimes I go to his place, but not very often, because I don’t think his new girlfriend likes me very much. Her name is Belinda and she’s a fashion model.
Now the day after we had the run-in with Mister Petrovic was a Saturday. Most Saturdays my dad comes to pick me up about ten-thirty. He’s supposed to be here at ten but my dad is always late for everything.
I got up early, about a quarter to ten, had my shower and then went to the kitchen to make my breakfast. I looked in the pantry. Boring.
‘Any Coco Pops?’
‘They’re not good for you,’ Mum said. ‘There are Weetbix or Corn Flakes. Or you can make yourself toast if you want.’
‘You got brown bread again.’
‘You’re the only one who likes white bread. I’m not buying it just for you. When I do buy it, you never eat it.’
‘Matt’s parents let him have a Mars Bar and a Coke.’
‘I’m not Matt’s parents,’ she said.
I hate arguing with my mother. You can never win. She has an answer for everything. I suppose that’s because she’s a teacher.
‘I’m hungry and there’s nothing to eat.’ Even as the words left my mouth I knew what she was going to say. If you don’t like what’s there, you can always starve. No skin off my nose.
‘If you don’t like what’s there,’ she said, ‘you can always starve. No skin off my nose.’
Groan.
I got a bowl, took the packet of Weetbix to the table and took six. I put three dessertspoons of sugar on top and went to get the milk from the fridge.
‘You can take all that sugar off first,’ Mum said. ‘And would you mind leaving some Weetbix for someone else?’
‘But I’m hungry.’
She gave me The Look, so I put one of the Weetbix back in the box.
When she went out I put it back in my bowl.
While I was eating breakfast I watched her through the kitchen window hanging out the washing. The rest of the house was quiet. It was Michael and Connie’s weekend to go to their mother’s and Barry was at the market doing the grocery shopping. My dad would never have done that. Not ever. I still hadn’t decided if that made Barry better or worse than Dad.
I did know for sure that in every other respect Barry wasn’t as good as my real dad. That made me think about my favourite subject: when were my parents going to get back together? They’d split up ten months, three weeks, thirteen hours and forty-seven minutes ago. At first I thought it was just temporary but four months ago Barry moved in and that started me wondering.
I don’t think I could stand it if it was for ever.
I wish I had parents like Matt. They hadn’t split up and they let him do anything he wanted. They were perfect.
Mine, I was beginning to realise, were far from perfect. They wouldn’t let me do anything. Mum had got even stricter since Dad left. Last month she threatened to cut off my pocket money for the next two years if I got my ear pierced. Matt’s parents had let him get both his ears and his nose pierced. He smoked cigarettes in the park and he reckoned he was going to get a tattoo for Christmas.
Matt was lucky, but he was also a bit scary. He had done some crazy things. Like the time he glued the school caretaker’s boots to the floor of the school shed, or broke into the principal’s office and put cotton wool in the mouthpiece of his telephone so he had to shout at the top of his voice when he rang up someone.
Now I remembered Matt had said that we had to get even with Mister Petrovic. I hoped he wasn’t going to think of something too scary for us to do.
‘What are you thinking about?’
I looked up. Mum was standing in the kitchen doorway, watching me. I felt guilty straight away. She has the knack of doing that. When she gives me The Look, I can feel guilty even when I haven’t done anything to feel guilty about.
‘Nothing.’
‘You look guilty,’ she said.
I decided to change the subject. ‘I was wondering what a Croat was,’ I said.
‘Why were you wondering that?’
‘When we went past Mister Petrovic’s house yesterday, Matt said Mister Petrovic was a Croat.’
‘A Croat is someone from Croatia. It’s part of a country that used to be called Yugoslavia. It was on the news a lot a few years ago. There was a war going on there.’
‘Oh, that place,’ I said. I vaguely remembered seeing the pictures on television, people firing mortars and big guns and others being carried into ambulances, moaning. Dad had told me the place used to be called Yugoslavia. There had been lots of people from Yugoslavia living near where we lived for years, a
nd they had market gardens and stuff. Some of their kids even went to our school.
I’d never heard them called Croats before.
I was full up, and there was still one Weetbix left in the bowl. I managed to scrape it into the bin without Mum seeing. But you can never do anything without Mum seeing. She has a little radar in her head that tracks guilt, like one of those heat-seeking missiles.
‘If you can’t eat it, don’t put it in your bowl. There are kids your age starving in Africa.’
‘Well, send them this then,’ I said.
Another Look: not funny.
‘Are you going out like that?’ I just had on the pair of board shorts that I wore to bed.
‘I’ll get dressed in a minute.’
‘Your dad will be here any minute.’
‘He’s always late.’
‘You best be ready anyway.’
I washed my breakfast bowl in the sink. That was another innovation Mum had brought in since Barry and Connie and Michael had come to live with us. Everyone had to do their own dishes. Also another reason I wanted Dad back.
I decided since we were in the house on our own, it was as good a time as any to tackle my favourite subject. ‘Are you and Dad going to get back together again?’ I asked her.
She was busy packing away the dishes on the drainer and didn’t seem to want to look at me. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
‘But you said it was just a trial separation.’
‘Well we had the trial. And it was a unanimous verdict.’
‘Not unanimous,’ I said.
She turned around to look at me, and now there was a sort of wistful look in her eyes. ‘He doesn’t love me any more,’ she said, in a really ordinary way, as if she was reading the weather report. ‘Sometimes that happens. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.’
That was insane. I couldn’t understand why Dad wouldn’t love my mum. For a start she wasn’t bad to look at, as mothers go. She wasn’t at all fat, she had a lovely face and really beautiful long red hair. And she made absolutely excellent lasagna.
‘What about you?’ I said. ‘Don’t you love Dad either?’