fallout noun: radioactive substance
resulting from an explosion
I need a cotton bud. No, wait – there’s Gracie Faltrain.
Gracie, Nick told me what a great kisser you are. Can you teach me?
I’ll teach you how to kiss.
Now that is disgusting.
Faltrain, keep your mind on the game, your tongue in your mouth and your kicks to the CENTA!
Block and defend, Johnson, just like I do in goal. Next time, remember, block and defend.
Trust me, there won’t be a next time.
The last piece of gossip to spread this fast was when Tony Gortmon threw up in the tuckshop line all over Alison Kaner. It was ugly. So is what’s happening to me. The whole school is talking about my ‘kiss’ with Nick and how I missed at the game on Saturday. Annabelle is handing it round like a chip packet, everyone is taking a handful and passing it on.
The good news is, even things like this get forgotten. Tony walks by in the yard today and I check him over. He looks happy; he’s in one piece. I just have to wait for this thing to blow over. And more importantly, I have to lie low until it does.
Until then I’m on my own. And there’s nothing worse than that at school. Lunchtime is only forty-five minutes long but without Jane time goes by in dog years. Forty-five minutes feels like a hundred hours. The first rule is to take your time doing things. When the lunch bell sounds I always go to the toilet. This wastes at least ten minutes and by the time I get out the crowd has cleared. Next I go to my locker, tidy it up a little and then grab my lunch. I don’t go to the tuckshop. There’s nothing easier to spot than a loner in a crowd. I find a quiet place to eat and here comes the highlight – I go to the library. It’s my sanctuary. No one can touch me there.
I’ve always had Jane. I’ve never needed heaps of people because with her around it was enough. We used to hang out with some of the other groups, like Nick and his friends, but she was the only person I really spoke to about stuff that mattered. I never had to say to Jane, ‘Don’t tell anybody.’ I just knew she wouldn’t.
I’m trying to avoid the guys from the soccer team, except Martin. I run into him on my way to the library.
‘Faltrain, come and have a kick of soccer?’
‘I don’t feel like it, Martin.’
‘What? You’re not still worrying about what people are saying?’
‘They’re saying I’m a cotton bud, Martin. A cotton bud. How would you like that?’
‘I wouldn’t. That’s why I don’t go round sticking my tongue in people’s ears.’
‘It’s not funny. Nick’ll ask Annabelle out now, just watch. What’s she got that I don’t?’
‘Geez, Faltrain, I don’t know. Haven’t you got a girl to talk to?’
‘No.’ My reply is little and lonely.
‘I don’t reckon he’s worth it after what he told the whole school.’
‘Well I do. I just wish I hadn’t been such an idiot, then he’d still like me.’
‘Look, Faltrain, everyone stuffs up. Don’t let them make you feel wrong. Just tell everyone to get lost. Tell them all to just bloody get lost.’
I didn’t need to tell them that. I was already alone. That was the problem.
Come home, Jane. Come home and make me laugh.
How do you like looking like an idiot, Gracie? How do you like sitting on your own at lunch because no one will sit with you?
There are people I hang out with sometimes. I laugh when everyone else does but most of the time, I just feel kind of stupid.
I wonder if that’s how it is for Gracie. Probably not. She hangs out in the library and it seems somehow okay. When I’m there I feel like the biggest loser.
I sit at the back behind all the shelves. Books surround me. I bet most of them have never even been borrowed, pages and pages of words that no one ever bothers to read.