Now that the heatwave has broken, Mrs Leeman’s making us work ten minutes through recess until we make up the lost time. We don’t share her sense of urgency about plotting the distribution of cereal crops on a pie chart. None of the other classes are staying in at recess. I ask Jun if there’s anything he can do in his capacity as vice-captain to restore our freedom. He reveals the terrible truth: Mrs Overbeek said he was only permitted to be vice-captain as long as he didn’t organise any protests, rallies, strikes, rebellions or attempt to alter the school uniform, canteen menu or Mrs Leeman’s lesson schedule in any way. He signed a form.

So much for democracy.

A few days later, Mrs Leeman tells us we’re up-to-date with our work, so I don’t have to worry about making an official complaint, anyway. She also announces we’re ready to start looking after our Prep buddies. Everyone in Grade 6 is going to get one (a Prep) to have lunch with and show around the school and stuff. As if they need it. We’re nearly two weeks into the year. Who’s been looking after them until now?

When I was in Prep, I lived in fear of anyone from Grade 3 and up. Now they play in the senior playground anytime they feel like it and even have their own queue at the canteen. I thought I’d feel big and important being at the top of the school, but instead Grade 6 is the same as Grade 5 with more threats and more homework and even the Preps don’t respect us.

Mrs Leeman is going to pair us up by pulling names out of a hat. I hope I get a good one.

We still have two lessons to go before lunch. Mrs Leeman makes us label a diagram of a leaf for about an hour, then Ms Kim comes in and makes us do the same thing in Chinese so we can be bored in two languages.

Jun is lucky. He doesn’t have to do Chinese classes because he speaks Mandarin at home. He’s allowed to go to the library three times a week to do ‘private study’. Most of the time he privately studies The Guinness Book of World Records and draws pictures in the back of his maths book. Mrs Hillman, the librarian, doesn’t mind as long as he does it quietly. Jun says she’s always repairing and reshelving a massive pile of picture books. He says the stack doubles in size every time the Preps have been in the beanbag area.

I’m about halfway through my second leaf when I’m called up to the office to collect my replacement jumper. I feel a bit ridiculous going to pick it up because it’s almost as hot today as the start of the year.

When I get there, the receptionist is typing and doesn’t look up even though I accidentally slam the door and cough a few times.

Great.

It’s Miss Creighton.

There are two receptionists at our school. One is really nice, and the other one is Miss Creighton. You have to call her Miss Creighton – the temperature in the room drops about ten degrees if you call her Mrs Creighton. I reckon her own mother calls her Miss Creighton. She acts like it’s a total inconvenience if you go to the office for anything at all, which makes you wonder why she’s a receptionist and not something else where having a bad temper is a job requirement. And if you need to go to sick bay – a camp bed next to the paper shredder – you can tell she doesn’t think you’re sick even if you’re about to throw up or have blood pouring out of your knee or something. Also, she’s really stingy with the sticky plaster. She never cuts off big enough pieces, so you end up with the sticky bit on the sore. The other receptionist lets us call her Githa, always cuts off a really big piece of plaster and never complains about how much it costs.

I pick up the newsletter and turn the pages in a really rustly way. She keeps jabbing at the computer. A few minutes tick past. I squeak, ‘Miss Creighton?’

Nothing …

‘Miss Creighton?’

Didn’t she call me up to the office?

There’s a bell on the desk but it’s only there for show. It even has dust on it.

I stand there for a few more minutes. A couple of little kids come into the office holding a bunch of permission slips and stop when they see who the receptionist is today. We stand in an awkward cluster and nobody moves until the phone rings and Miss Creighton picks it up.

She heard that all right.

She looks up, sees me standing there and says all sweetly, ‘He’s here, Dianne. I’ll send him back right away.’ All while giving me a withering look. She replaces the receiver and makes a big deal about finding the bit of paper I have to sign. The other two kids have left their permission slips on the desk and escaped while Miss Creighton’s busy throwing my jumper at me as if she had to pay for it herself.

I look down at the package in my hand. I can see even through the plastic that the jumper isn’t the same colour blue as the original; it’s a lighter blue.

How did Mrs Leeman know I wasn’t in class? She wasn’t even in the classroom when I left two minutes ago.

Although it’s too hot to wear a jumper, I put my Not-Quite-Right-Coloured jumper on straightaway. I plan to wear it all day, then leave it at home for the rest of the year so I don’t lose it. I even know where I’m going to hide it: in the linen cupboard. No one ever tidies that cupboard because whenever you open it, fifty towels fall on your head. I’m going to put it behind some orange flowery sheet sets that Newcastle Nanna gave us for Christmas three years ago that are still in the packet.

The bell goes for lunch while I’m walking back to class, so I go and look for Alex. He won’t use the main steps out of the corridor because Leini and Gina now control that whole area during all of recess and most of lunch. It can get quite crowded if Leini feels like being mean to each kid individually. The whole playground is oddly deserted. I walk around and see a bunch of kids yelling and running around the toilet block, so I head in that direction. There seems to be a lot of water on the ground. A lot of water, considering there’s been no rain.

This water’s not coming from the sky, though. It’s coming from the breezeway next to the toilets.

The whole place is covered in fast-moving, ankle-deep water that is pouring out of the girls’ toilets and flowing towards the administration building where the staffroom and principal’s office are. Some smaller rivers are breaking away from the main one and forming ponds on the oval and at the bottom of the stairs, but the big one looks like something off the news – you could surf on it. One or two kids are running into the girls’ toilets at a time and two seconds later running out again, screaming. What could be so interesting in there that boys are going into the girls’ toilet? That’s something we’re not allowed to do even if the school is on fire. I follow some other kids in. The toilet in cubicle two is overflowing, but the real action is coming from the floor behind it. The concrete has cracked open and a massive jet of water is shooting up into the air, hitting the opposite wall and then swirling in a big watery snake out the door, which has pushed open under the pressure.

It’s pretty spectacular.

Some kids are daring others to go across the torrent of water to cubicle three. One kid inches forwards and puts his toe in the rapids. We all stare in awe as his shoe – laces and all – is yanked off his foot and flung against the row of silver taps, before leaving the bathroom submerged in the wall of water gushing out the door.

In about five minutes, we’re all different levels of soaking in size order. My shoes and socks are full of water and the middle-graders are wet up to the waist. Some of the braver Preps look like they’ve been swimming in their clothes.

I head over to where Alex is standing at the end of the breezeway where it meets the grassy bit.

‘Hey, Jesse! Jesse! Look at this!’ Alex leaps in the air and slides on his bum all the way down to the oval in the muddy water, then climbs back around to the top. ‘Now you go!’

I follow Alex and about twenty other kids down the waterslide. The water’s all full of rubbish and sticks and leaves and stuff. You can’t see the bottom. I hope no one pushes me under.

Miss Agostino, wearing the Duty Teacher vest, wades through and peers over the semi-circle of open-mouthed kids standing in the doorway to the girls’ toilets. She says two or three of the words we’re not allowed to say at school and gets on the Duty Teacher walkie-talkie thing. She shouts, ‘Di! Brian! We’ve got a situation down here. Yeah … no … well, look out the window.’

Next thing, Mrs Leeman turns up and yells at us to move out of the doorway or we’ll all drown. She says the pipe is not only for the girls’ toilet, or the school’s supply, but a mains supply pipe. Nobody moves out of the breezeway. We keep on jumping over and around the water. She can’t give the whole school a detention.

The only one not really playing around in the water is Braden. He’s standing on the riverbank, looking worried. Alex and I yell at him from the waterslide. He comes over but says he doesn’t feel like jumping around in the toilet water. Maybe this kind of thing happened all the time at his old school.

Mrs Leeman grabs her phone and calls the office. Then she calls another number and asks for the police! She must think the toilet block is a crime scene, so it should be interesting when the police turn up and tell her it isn’t.

Mr Wilson comes down to the breezeway and politely asks everyone to get out of the water. None of us pay much attention to him when a pipe hasn’t exploded and none of us pay much attention to him now. I can’t see Mrs Overbeek at all. This must be the kind of job she lets Mr Wilson handle because she doesn’t want to do it herself.

Jun pokes his head out of the library window that backs onto the courtyard and watches all the twigs and leaves and wrappers float past. Occasionally he reaches out to grab something out of the river. He doesn’t seem to be interested in where the water’s coming from, only what’s in it.

Two police cars and an SES truck arrive and everyone is yelling to be heard above the sound of the water. Mr S turns up with Ian, and they both start bossing everyone around immediately. It’s so funny … they use exactly the same expressions: ‘Hurry it up!’, ‘Hop to it!’ and ‘Don’t muck around!’ Ian must go to the same university that Mr S went to, fifty years ago.

‘I want the Preps to Grade 3s here in pairs! Hop to it! Hurry up!’ Mr S says to all the little kids. Then to us he says, ‘Grades 4, 5 and 6 need to line up by the retaining wall. Don’t muck around! You know the drill!’ Ian doesn’t say ‘you know the drill’ because he’s new and doesn’t know whether we know the drill or not. A policewoman is telling some kids who are jumping off the retaining wall it’s time to stop jumping off it and line up on the oval.

It takes a bit of persuasion to get some of the kids out of the water. Everyone has gone a bit wild and the noise is unbelievable. Maybe someone should tell the cop how boring school usually is and she might let us jump around in it a bit longer.

Mrs Leeman is busy telling the cop in charge what to do and he has a gun on his belt.

Down on the oval, it’s almost as wet as the breezeway. You can’t see much grass anymore and there’s a big lake starting around the goalposts. Kids start climbing up the posts and splashing down into the mud, which is already knee-deep. Some ducks are heading across from the park looking really interested.

‘Hey, Alex,’ I say, ‘do you think your dad’ll be here soon to study the groundwater? There’s a lot of water on the ground.’

Alex starts laughing and says, ‘No, he’ll be here tomorrow. When the water’s underground.’

We’re laughing so much Ms Kendall has to come over and tell us to settle down.

I don’t know why it’s so funny anyway … it’s water.

Everyone’s meant to be ticked off the roll then stand in a straight line, but it’s total chaos. The policewoman is trying to keep us down on the oval. She says, ‘Everyone needs to find their teacher and stay with their class group.’

For some reason we all find this instruction really funny. We all wander around saying, ‘Are you in my group?’ and laughing until a guy in orange overalls with ‘SES’ written on the back comes over and says if we don’t form seven neat lines in five seconds we’ll all be staying back an hour for every minute we muck around.

Ms Kendall has to count our class as well as her own because Mrs Leeman is too busy telling emergency workers what to do. Two kids from our grade are not in the lining-up area. Alex and I volunteer to grab Jun, who is still in the library. The other person missing is Minha.

The policewoman comes over to our class. ‘All right, everyone. We need to know where Minha is. Who’s friends with Minha? Hands up.’

Our eyes follow the line of ducks from the oval, through the school grounds to the park across the road. Minha is standing on the footpath supervising them on the zebra crossing. She’s letting them cross the road in little groups. None of the ducks are mucking around or waddling off.

They’re better behaved than we are.

Mr Winsock has to put the orange flags out on the crossing before Minha can be persuaded to leave them and join the rest of the class.

While this is going on, Miss Agostino has gone into a panic because two Preps are missing from her class. No one has seen them since the bell went for lunch. The SES guy goes back to the breezeway and joins the others. We’re too far away to hear what anyone is saying although I notice Mrs Leeman is looking upset instead of her usual thing of making other people look upset. No one’s allowed to move or get a drink or go to the toilet, so all of a sudden we all need to go to the toilet and feel a bit thirsty.

A few more police cars and state emergency trucks arrive. It must be a slow disaster day if they’re all turning up here. Then an ambulance comes around the corner and drives right into the school grounds and pulls up in front of the ‘Strictly No Parking’ sign even though there are spaces everywhere. Two officers climb out and join the others to get instructions from Mrs Leeman.

Suddenly the water noise stops, and the fountain drops down like magic. It’s so quiet my ears are humming. A couple of SES workers head straight into the girls’ bathroom and come out again almost immediately with one soaking, crying Prep each. Mrs Leeman runs forwards and hugs them – a sight the whole school finds more astounding than anything else we’ve witnessed so far.

The ambulance officers take the Preps, wrap them in stuff that looks like silver foil and make them lie on little trolleys. They must be okay though because the ambulance takes them and Miss Agostino away without lights or sirens or anything.

As soon as the ambulance leaves, Mrs Leeman comes down and announces now is a good time for us to be given a Prep to look after. She wants us to keep them away from the water. She says there isn’t time to pull names out of a hat. She’s going to call out a Grade 6 name and the name of a Prep.

I get a kid called Thomas Moore. He comes over to me and says, ‘I’m Thomas Moore’ which is totally unnecessary because I was told that about three seconds ago. But he doesn’t stop there.

‘I can count to a hundred,’ he says. ‘And I can read and spell, and I have a boat in my room and a dog and two sisters and if I eat macaroni cheese I throw up … and I can count to a hundred.’

He’s annoying me already.

‘Huong and Amy are twins,’ he announces to no one in particular.

Alex is given a Prep who is staring at the water with his eyes as big as frisbees. Alex is being really nice to him, saying, ‘Don’t worry … it’ll be okay.’ His Prep is nodding and sniffing, letting Alex hold his hand. It’s making me feel a bit guilty because I’m seriously thinking about swapping Thomas Moore for a different Prep.

While we wait to be collected early from school by our parents, we’re allowed to watch from about two hundred kilometres away. I wonder if any of the TV stations will turn up to do a news story.

The water people are talking about the crack in the pipe. ‘It’s as old as Adam,’ one of them says. ‘We’re going to have to dig the whole section out – past the blockage and out to the mains.’

If they have to dig up all the plumbing, maybe they’ll uncover my missing jumper. Whoever took it could have buried it. It’s not as if they can wear it. Besides, it’s got my name on it.

‘My mum is a nurse and a doctor,’ Thomas Moore is saying, ‘and my dad has a jacket like that one.’ He points to the SES guy. Lots of kids are looking at me because he’s my Prep and he’s annoying everyone.

‘Huong and Amy are my best friends,’ he says.

Mr Wilson stands up on a plastic chair and tries to get everyone’s attention. ‘I … uhhh … have some very important announcements from Miss Creighton,’ he says. I wonder if she’s looked up and noticed the office is flooded yet. No one can hear what Mr Wilson is saying because the chair he’s standing on is sinking into the mud. The SES guy takes over and reads out the messages, which are not important at all, but a list of kids who have to go home with someone else because their parents can’t get away from work.

‘And the after-school care kids have to meet in the gym!’ the SES guy says. ‘I’m guessing you know who you are?’ After hearing this last instruction, Thomas Moore races off across the oval, making the ducks fly a couple of metres out of his way then settle down again on their puddles. I have no idea whether Thomas Moore’s in after-school care or not. I do know Mrs Leeman said we have to stay with our Prep until they’re collected. I squelch through the mud after him, towards the gym. Inside, about twenty kids from different grades are sliding around in their socks on the muddy wooden floor. An after-school care worker seems relieved to see Thomas Moore and I’m relieved to hand him over.

By the time I get back to the oval, Alex has already gone and Jun is waving at his grandparents who are looking for a dry spot to park.

‘Jesse! Alex said, “see you later”,’ Jun says to me, carrying his private collection of interesting twigs and leaves towards the car.

I have to go home with Braden, which is ridiculous because I live about ten minutes away and so does he. Braden’s dad signs us out like we’re in kindergarten. The back seat of his car is covered with sand even though we are nowhere near the beach. It all sticks onto my wet, muddy clothes. It should be me complaining, not Braden’s dad going on about the smell in his car.

Braden and I hang around for a bit at his place then decide to walk back up to the school to look at the water situation. He’s a bit reluctant to return. He still seems worried about the broken pipe for some reason. On the way there he says, ‘How much is it gonna cost to fix it, do you reckon? Five thousand dollars? Ten thousand?’

I don’t know why he’s so worried. He only just started at Westmoore. I’ve been here since Prep and I’m hoping they’ll have to close it down.

When we get there, the emergency people are gone. The toilet block is taped off with blue and white chequered tape like on TV. I’ve always wanted to go under some blue and white chequered tape.

Braden’s already wading towards it when I hear a bunch of kids laughing behind me. The after-school care kids are on the adventure playground, which looks a bit more adventurous now that it’s partially under water. I head back in that direction, hoping the after-school care snacks have been left unattended.

When I get to the climbing wall, though, I see what the kids are laughing at.

I should’ve gone with Braden.

Thomas Moore is hanging upside-down on the climbing wall. One leg of his school pants is stuck around a foothold. He’s trying to pull himself up, but he can’t do it without pulling his pants down. A couple of big kids I’ve never seen before are laughing and urging him to leave his pants on the wall and go for a swim. A few little kids are standing around not really doing anything.

I can’t see any supervisor. I can’t see Braden. I can’t see anyone I know.

The big kids start splashing water up from the ground. ‘Uh-oh … ship’s sinking …’

I feel sick all of a sudden and try to ignore the wobbly feeling in my legs urging me to do something that will probably result in me hanging upside-down on the climbing wall as well.

I paddle towards the wall. It’s a bit tricky grabbing Thomas Moore around the waist and untangling his foot in knee-deep water. As soon as he’s around the right way he says to me, ‘Why did you do that? You wrecked it … I can climb right over the wall.’

He kicks the wall and runs off back towards the gym, yelling, ‘I want honey and vegemite in my sandwich and I’m going in the ambulance with Huong and Amy … and three cups of milo.’

The big kids have disappeared. Everyone’s disappeared.

I wouldn’t mind a sandwich.

When I get to the gym, I’m surprised to see Ian helping the after-school care workers set up the snack table. He must think he has to volunteer for everything. I stand in the line behind some other kids – Ian might not know I’m not entitled to a sandwich.

When I get to the front of the line, though, he gives me two sandwiches. He says, ‘I heard what you did at the climbing wall, Jesse. Good work, bro.’

Bro? Ian talks like a guy in a movie and acts like he’s known you for years when he’s only just met you. Also, he reminds me of someone, but I can’t think who. He calls to Thomas Moore, who is walking around in circles and staring up at the ceiling for some reason.

‘Hey, Thomas,’ Ian says. ‘What do you have to say to Jesse?’

‘He’s my buddy,’ Thomas Moore says, looking at me.

‘… And?’

‘And I have to show him around the school for a year,’ he says, spinning around and flapping his arms in the air.

‘Don’t you have something else to say?’ Ian asks. ‘Something important?’

Thomas Moore says, ‘I’m a helicopter’ and twirls away, back towards the door.

I’m starting to regret coming over for a sandwich. This is worse than the climbing wall.