10. Black Tights and Band-Aids

After breakfast Scarlet borrowed Amber’s bicycle and went riding with a chocolate box under her arm, her bare legs pumping up and down and her insides doing loop-the-loops. Mr Kadri had agreed to sell her armbands at the Colour Patch Café.

Griffin had released his crickets into the wild, put his chocolate-wrapper collection between the pages of The Comprehensive Illustrated Ornithologist’s Bible and donated his Black Magic chocolate box to Scarlet. Now it was filled with armbands and Indigo had painted a sign on the inside of its lid — Wishbands: fifty cents each.

As she neared the café, Scarlet grew more and more nervous. Anik would be there. She wondered if Mr Kadri had remembered to tell him about her plan.

But it wasn’t Anik she saw first. It was his grandmother and his two aunties and his one uncle, all standing straight and tall on the grey slate flagstones under the striped awnings and the switched-off neon sign outside Mr Kadri’s café. They were waiting for the bus to take them to work at the smallgoods factory. Their heads turned at the sound of Amber’s squealing bicycle brakes. They recognised the colourful daughter of Mr Benjamin Silk. Mr Kadri had told them that this girl who made spiders to drink and Anik to smile, also made very big wishes. She was their true friend. They dipped their heads to her and Scarlet dipped hers in return and then Anik came.

‘You honour my people,’ he said softly. ‘My grandmother Mosas, Auntie Shim, Auntie Janda and Uncle Tansil.’

One by one, Anik’s family offered their hands and shy smiles to Scarlet. Then the early bus arrived and the aunties and uncle got on and the grandmother stayed and watched and watched as the bus took them away from her.

Scarlet’s wishbands were a great success. The Rainbow Girls and Griffin wore one each to school. Amber was especially excited. She was so proud of her interesting sister she stopped off after school and told Elsie all about Scarlet’s big wish.

For months, Elsie-from-the-post-office had seen Mr Kadri’s friends catching the early bus to the smallgoods factory and she knew Anik’s grandmother bounced babies on her knees in the Kadris’ upstairs paradise. The quiet people didn’t buy stamps or string. They had no words to ask for them, no need for them, no-one to send letters or parcels to. And they didn’t need a post box with a small black door and a silver key, because no-one sent them any letters. Elsie was seventy-two years old and after Amber’s visit, she felt slightly disappointed in herself. She had never visited Anik’s family and had never wished a wish as big as Scarlet Silk’s.

Layla bought a wishband because of John William. She and Griffin once had a dear old friend named Miss Amelie. John William was Miss Amelie’s sweetheart. He went away to war and Miss Amelie waited for him until the day she died, but John William never came back. Layla wanted Scarlet’s plan to work so that what happened to John William and Miss Amelie would never happen again.

Mr Davis, the bus driver, asked Annie about the wishbands she and Nell were wearing. Then he told them about the olden days when he wasn’t much older than Scarlet. He said he’d been sent to jail because he wouldn’t fight in a war and he said he’d rather wear one of Scarlet’s armbands any day, than a shiny golden medal.

 

Small things happened at Cameron’s Creek that week. Scarlet Silk had lunchtime detention five times for being out of uniform. Elsie put a box of wishbands on the post-office counter next to the balls of string and books of stamps.

Bigger things happened, too. Ben used the timber from the old bridge at Gypsy’s Bend to build a table. It was so long he had to open the doors at both ends of his shed and his secret men’s business wasn’t secret anymore.

Scarlet’s tights were being worn on the arms of all sorts of people. The Lollipop Lady, Constable Wilson, Mr Davis, Mr Jenkins, Miss Cherry and the preacher from Saint Benedict’s Church. But by far the most wishbands were worn by children.

By Friday afternoon, Scarlet had enough money to buy six new pairs of tights and a packet of Band-Aids. She put the Band-Aids on her feet where her shoes rubbed and cut the new tights into armbands.

On Saturday morning, Indigo and Annie set up a silk screen in the studio and printed the flyers Indigo had designed for the next small step in Scarlet’s peace plan.

Scarlet rode Amber’s bicycle to the charity shop and found a rack of brand-new blue T-shirts. They were seventy-five cents each but the lady let Scarlet have eleven for the price of ten because the sleeves were sewn on inside-out. That afternoon, while Annie, Perry and Indigo printed a white dove on the front of each T-shirt, Griffin and Layla and the other Rainbow Girls cycled all over Cameron’s Creek, poking flyers into letterboxes.

As Christmas drew closer, red-kite kind of wishes seemed less and less important to the people of Cameron’s Creek. They didn’t think about what gifts they would receive or worry about what they would eat or wonder what to wear. When they met at the post office or the bus stop or the school, they talked about where they could buy more wishbands or discussed the flyers they had found in their letterboxes. And whenever they read the word peace on Christmas greeting cards, they thought about children who didn’t know what it was like to live in peace.

On Monday during lunchtime detention, Scarlet Silk from the small town of Cameron’s Creek began the next part of her plan to change the world. She wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Australia.