by Rawah Arja
The library had blue tarp on the floor and new furniture wrapped in plastic. Stacks of boxes with new books lined the room.
PJ knuckled his eyes. ‘You don’t have to waste your lunchtime,’ he muttered. ‘You can go.’
‘You’re Wolf Pack,’ Ibby said. ‘We’re not going anywhere.’
‘Is it your mum again?’ Huss asked.
He sniffed a few times. ‘Yeah. A couple of weeks from release, and they found drugs on her.’
Ibby looked at me and shook his head as Mr Archie walked in. It felt better having him there because I didn’t know how to deal with PJ like this.
PJ started pacing angrily. ‘I hate her, man. I hate her so much.’ He tried to fight back the tears.
‘She’s your mum, bro,’ I said. ‘She’s always going to be your mum.’
He looked at us. ‘Does your mum do that shit? Does your mum leave you so she can get high?’
Mr Archie sat on the table and didn’t say a word.
I passed PJ some tissues. ‘Bro, I know you’re angry but try to calm do–’
‘Calm down?’ he abruptly interrupted. ‘Calm down?’ Tears streaked down his face.
I shook my head. ‘No. That was stupid. Don’t calm down. Scream at us, throw a punch if you need to.’
‘All I’ve ever done was take care of her,’ he bellowed. ‘Clean up after her. Gone and sat in the car while she did what she did to get money.’ His voice cracked. ‘I’ve never had a mum. Do you know what that feels like? What it does to you? Instead of doing normal things like every other kid, I had to work so we can survive. And you’d think she’d look at me just once and say thanks or I love you.’
It was so hard to see PJ like this. He was the tough guy or the funny guy. He was never the broken guy.
I knew nothing we could say or do was going to solve his problems. But I realised, in this moment, it wasn’t about solving or fixing anything, it was about letting him know that we were there for him, even if his mum never was.
The Wolf Pack were there for their brother.
Ibby grabbed PJ in a bear hug and I gripped his shoulder tightly.
And just like that he broke down and cried like a baby. I stood there and watched one of the toughest guys I know fall apart.
Chapter 21
I could hear Uncle Charlie calling me from the shed as I shoved my gear into my bag for Game 2. His honey jars were the least of my worries – I needed to take Amira to school and hopefully see Jamila before I had to head over to Punchbowl Park.
As soon as we got inside the gates of her school, Amira pulled me towards the monkey bars and I saw Jamila standing beside them, waiting at the bottom of the slide for Jehad. My heart almost burst out of my chest.
‘I’m getting better,’ Amira said. ‘Watch me now, Tariq.’
I had just taken a deep breath to apologise to Jamila, when her brother came flying down the slide, clipped my knees and knocked me to the ground. I face-planted into wet bark, and Jehad landed right on top of me. For a little kid, he really packed a punch. I’d heard jokes my whole life about watching out for a Lebanese girl’s brothers, but I’d never imagined an eight-year-old could have been such a threat. I caught my breath and stood up, just in time to see Jamila heading off in the direction of the girls’ high school.
There was no time to go after her and still make it to the Park in time for kick-off. Jamila was on my mind throughout the game against the D Team. I was back to square one with her, with no idea how to convince her that I was just an idiot who ran his mouth.
I scored our first try in the comp, but we still lost 14–6 against the boys from Greenacre and Parramatta, who completed their sets and played the ball much faster than us.
‘Do what you did in the game at training next week, and you’ll be co-captain again with Aaron,’ Mr Archie said. Aaron’s face fell a little but he didn’t object. ‘You both being captain means you need to spend some time together outside of the comp, though. Have you done that yet?’
Aaron and I shook our heads.
‘Tomorrow, then,’ he said. ‘I don’t care what you do, but spend Saturday getting to know each other and figuring out some strategies for this team.’
‘Tomorrow?’ we both repeated in unison. Mr Archie smiled to himself and walked away. We stood in silence, not looking at each other.
‘You can come over to mine,’ Aaron said finally. ‘Mum has a thing on, so we’ll have the house to ourselves.’
He didn’t seem that happy to be hosting me and I wasn’t really happy being his guest, but I’d just gotten a chance to be captain again. If it meant I had to be in Aaron’s territory, then so be it.
Hunter and his team played on the other side of the Park, but there was only one toilet block, which meant we were bound to run into each other. Sure enough, when Riley headed into the building, a few boys from Team A followed him inside.
‘Did you see that?’ PJ asked.
‘It’s not our problem,’ Huss said, scrolling on his phone. ‘They’re not going to do anything to him here with everyone around.’ He then turned to Matt and Lee. ‘Go check on your mate in the toilets.’
‘We should go,’ Ibby said. ‘I’m going whether you boys are in or not.’
Leaving anyone alone in the bathroom with a bunch of bullies wasn’t right. I went with Matt, Lee, Ibby and PJ to the toilet block, to see Riley surrounded by three of the A Team boys.
‘You guys need to stop whatever you’re doing and apologise,’ Matt said. The boys laughed and gave us the finger.
Oh my God, white people and their apologies…
It didn’t work like that in our neighbourhood. If you did something stupid, either you got punched in the face or you got punched in the face, and these kharas were in our neighbourhood.
Ibby grabbed one of them by the collar. ‘I’m not white and I don’t apologise. I smash people’s heads in. Next time you touch Riley, you’re going to regret you came to Punchbowl.’
Ibby and PJ ran off the bullies while I turned to check if Riley was okay. He was squatting against the wall, shaking. I helped him up just as Hunter showed up with a few more of his mates and blocked us from leaving.
‘If it’s not the worst team in the world,’ Hunter announced. ‘We’ve got Noodle Boy here with the white-headed freak and a bunch of mozzies.’
PJ turned to Ibby and snapped his fingers like he’d had an amazing realisation. ‘That’s who the ranga reminds me of!’
‘Who?’ Ibby asked, playing along. ‘Wait, wait. Don’t tell me. Let me guess. The short, ugly one in Mulan?’
‘You’re close,’ PJ said. I swear these guys had an encyclopaedic knowledge of kids’ movies thanks to Bob. This could take a while.
‘I wanna play,’ Lee said with a grin. ‘Is it Lord Farquad from Shrek? No wait, he’s too tall.’
‘It’s the hunchback guy, Quasimodo!’ PJ pointed at Hunter. ‘Spit image, ay?’ We all exclaimed in agreement.
‘But Quasi’s got a good heart,’ Lee added. ‘This guy is just rotten on the inside and out.’
Hunter blinked a few times, his face now as bright as his hair. ‘You pussies watch princess movies!’ he cried.
‘Each and every one of those princesses could kick your arse, ranga,’ I shot back.
He focused on Riley as the weakest target. ‘At least I don’t look like you. You freaking look diseased.’
‘Just piss off,’ I said as Aaron made his way into the toilet block.
‘Or what, mozzie?’ Hunter said. ‘Why don’t you do us all a favour and go back to your shithole country and take that freak with you?’
Before Ibby, PJ and I could put his head through the wall, Aaron grabbed him by the shirt. We held off the other guys and I waited to see if Aaron was really serious about cutting himself off from Hunter.
‘You’re being a prick and you need to stop,’ Aaron said, holding Hunter to the wall.
Hunter’s face twisted in a sneer. ‘Your dad would be so disgusted to see
you side with them.’
Aaron went nuclear. It took all of Ibby and PJ’s strength to hold him back as Riley tried to get him to calm down. Hunter and his boys took advantage of the commotion to creep out the door, but not before Hunter threatened us with his connections to people who could do dangerous things.
‘Does he know you boys are from Punchbowl?’ Lee asked, scratching his head. ‘His connections are probably your cousins.’
‘Your dad would be really proud that you stood up to Hunter,’ Riley assured him. ‘They’re just trying to get under your skin.’
Aaron was washing his face. ‘Did they do anything to you?’
‘Nah, the boys walked in just in time.’
Lee cleaned his glasses on his shirt. ‘Look, mate, they’re probably jealous of the benefits of your hair. You can push in line and get disabled parking.’
Riley finally cracked a smile. ‘And don’t forget the pension.’
‘Ayyy!’ PJ hollered, picking him up off of the ground in a massive hug. ‘Did Ghostbusters just crack a joke about his hair?’
‘I knew you would come around,’ Matt said to me quietly as the boys laughed. ‘Thanks for helping out my mate.’
‘I know I made your life hell before,’ Aaron was saying to Riley. ‘I’m really sorry. I was picking on someone I didn’t expect to fight back because –’
‘Because you were a dipshit,’ Ibby interrupted.
‘Yeah, I was,’ Aaron agreed.
Riley laughed a little.
‘What?’ Ibby asked, looking surprised. ‘He was. You were. But you’re cool now because you stuck up for him.’
‘Bullies like Hunter think they’re all tough and strong around their mates,’ I told Riley. ‘But if we found him on his own, I guarantee you he’d shit his pants and run the other way. He only comes after people when he’s got them outnumbered.’
‘And you won’t be outnumbered again,’ PJ put in. ‘You’re part of the F Team.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Lee said, ushering us out of the toilets. ‘This is all really emotional and stuff, but this place stinks and I’m about to pass out.’
All of us coming together for Riley felt good. And really, considering how this whole experience had started, it felt strangely appropriate that we should truly come together as a team not on the footy field, but in the stinking toilet block in Punchbowl Park.
Chapter 22
Sharing a room with all my brothers and sisters was turning out to be a major hassle. If Feda was sleeping, she’d go into Terminator mode if we woke her up. She had a major exam coming up at the end of her residency and spent any minute she wasn’t at work or asleep studying like a maniac.
‘Don’t bother your sister,’ Dad said to me. ‘Don’t give her nervousness or stress or I be very upset.’
Things were still tense between Feda and me. She only spoke to me when she had to, and usually left the room whenever I walked in. I knew I’d messed up really bad, but I couldn’t find a way to make it up to her. With her exam coming up, none of us were allowed to linger in the room. Only Mum and Dad really saw much of her, when they made her special herbal tea or took her plates of sliced fruit.
‘She be good doctor,’ Mum said proudly to Aunty Salma. ‘Then Insh Allah she get married.’
Saturday after our second game, breakfast was served as usual under our vine-leaf-wrapped pergola. Uncle Charlie sat next to me and I knew he was going to ask me about the honey jars.
‘You forget, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘It’s okay. I leave some jars for next week.’
Mum and Aunty Salma had made some fresh manoush on the saj oven. The crispy warm dough with the perfect amount of lightly salted cheese melted in your mouth, and was always ten times better than anything you could get in the shops. Abdul and Saff fought over the last piece and Amira snuck some Nutella into hers before rolling it up, trying to hide the evidence.
‘It’s all over your mouth, I whispered.
‘Don’t think I can’t see, Amoora,’ Mum called out as she rolled the fluffy dough. ‘No more after this.’ She then tried to tempt Feda away from her books with a plate of freshly buttered, extra sugary pastries that were Mum’s specialty. It was a mix of sugar and butter with a dash of diabetes that my brothers and I drooled over. Dad slapped Abdul’s hand away from the plate.
‘This for Feda!’ he warned. ‘She studying, she need energy.’ Feda came out of the house, picked up the plate and flipped Abdul the finger before heading back to her room.
‘Can I please have one, Mum?’ I begged.
‘When you become doctor like Feda, I make you some.’
Ibby and PJ must have smelled the manoush cooking from their homes, because they both rolled in the back gate a few minutes later. It was good to see PJ looking more like his old self after his breakdown in the library. I knew things were far from resolved with his mum, but Mr Archie and Mr Ahmed were working with Grandma Ceci to find the best long-term solution, and I think sharing the burden with the rest of us had eased his mind a bit.
Ibby and PJ squashed themselves in on either side of Abdul, who now couldn’t move his arms.
‘I told Mum she made a mistake feeding you piglets years ago,’ Abdul said, trying to free his hands. ‘I can’t even reach my food.’
‘You don’t need to.’ Ibby took a piece of his manoush. ‘It’s mine now.’
‘Where Hussein?’ Mum asked me, turning over the bread. ‘Tell him to come.’
Tariq: Yo. Come over. Mum’s making manoush.
Huss: Can’t. Got to take Big Haji to the medical centre.
Tariq: Is she alright?
Huss: Yeah. Just a couple of check-ups.
Aunty Salma sat beside me and nibbled at my food. I don’t generally believe in murder, but people eating my food makes me homicidal. But I had to stay calm, since Feda wasn’t talking to me, I needed Aunty Salma’s help.
‘I need to lose a few kilos before I leave,’ she said in Arabic from behind her huge sunglasses. She always wore them when she had no makeup and looked like a D-list celebrity. ‘Very important to keep the husband happy.’
Ibby sat beside Mum and she taught him how to roll out the dough and stretch it into the air to get it just the right size to fit onto the dome saj. My brothers and PJ were in the yard, kicking the ball around while Dad watered the cucumbers and tomatoes. Uncle Charlie and Amira were messing around with their bees.
It was about as much privacy as I was likely to get. I turned to Aunty Salma. ‘I have a friend who said some bad things to hurt a girl. What should he do to fix it?’
She took off her glasses, her eyes wide open. ‘Is my nephew going to get married?’
‘What? I said my friend.’
She laughed. ‘Okay. Does your friend really like her or is he just playing?’
‘Nah, he really likes her. More than any other girl he’s liked before.’
I explained what this ‘friend’ had done.
‘He’s lucky he didn’t get a slap. My advice would be to say sorry first, but more than that, he has to prove he’s sorry.’
‘But how?’
She tapped her long nails on the table. ‘His actions. If he wants her forgiveness, he has to be patient and work hard.’ She then told me about a guy she really loved back in the day, but because she was poor, his family never accepted her. ‘Turns out he wasn’t that good either, and got married two weeks after he said he was in love with me. I know you think I’m all fake with plastic surgery but your aunty did make the boys in the village work for her.’ She smiled, but with sadness in her eyes. ‘How life changes, right?’
‘I don’t think you’re fake,’ I protested. ‘You’re actually alright. Better than alright. I said some crap stuff that I shouldn’t have.’
She nudged me with her elbow. ‘And are you nice to me now only because I helped your friend out?’
I felt terrible that she saw right through me. She’d been here for weeks, and it was only when I needed something that I took the t
ime to get to know her. ‘I’m sorry, Aunty. I’ve been a bit of an ass, I know.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I still love you. But you know, you’ve said a lot of stuff you shouldn’t have. Not just to me, or to this girl you – sorry, your friend – likes. Maybe you should be more careful before you say things. One day, “sorry” may not be enough.’
I knew she was talking about Feda. ‘I’m trying to do better.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I see that. And trying is good, it’s very good. Try harder, and Insh Allah things will get better.’ She winked at me, then went to sit under the mulberry tree, trying to catch some sun.
I carried some plates to the outdoor kitchen, when Feda reappeared with her empty plate. As usual, her eyes slid right past me.
‘How’s the studying going?’ I asked.
‘Fine. Need to get back to it.’ She stood impatiently, waiting for me to get out of the way.
I looked down at my plates, then over at hers. Try harder, Aunty Salma had said. Actions, not just words. I reached over to take her plate from her, and watched her frown in confusion out of the corner of my eye as I washed it. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again.
‘Yallah, Tariq,’ Dad called from the garden. ‘I drop you at your friends.’
The moment passed, but for the first time, I felt a little hopeful that I could mend my fences with my big sister.
Mr Archie had already called Dad to let him know that Aaron and I would be spending more time together outside of the comp. Since it was the weekend, it was abaya-and-green-and-gold-kangaroo-thongs day for Dad. We drove around Aaron’s Shire neighbourhood, windows down and Dad’s thick white beard flapping in the cold breeze.
We stuck out like a sore thumb, and I could sense the stares from the people around us. When we finally turned into Aaron’s street, it was lined with tall trees, shiny new cars and mansions by the water. The air smelt like Matt’s hair, the salty, fresh tang of the ocean.
‘I go down and make sure everything is okay,’ Dad said, parking the car.
‘No, Baba. I can walk myself.’