I woke up extra early in the morning at 5:30 am, and snuck into Rachel’s room, knowing full well that not even New Year’s fireworks could wake her from her coma. I went to her chest of drawers and took the navy blue athletics skirt she wore for hockey, and then made a run for it. I went in front of my mirror and tried it on. And I looked pretty darn cute If I do say so myself. I wore my red school shirt as it was house colours today and my house wore red. In those fancy books, Mum read the women always wore red when they were deemed to be evil, and that was the way I was feeling knowing that today was going to be another day that everyone stared at me thinking I was from Uranus, and not in the funny way.
Mum promised to make me lunch today as opposed to just chucking a bacon and cheese roll from bakers delight into a brown-paper bag and flicking me loose change to buy potato chips from the canteen at recess. When I finally got downstairs, she made me a jam sandwich, some carrot sticks and a chocolate yoghurt ‒ and of course a Bakers delight roll too as it was going to go off after today and Mum wanted to get rid of the thing.
“Rachel, come downstairs and have your milkshake!” Dad yelled like he was rounding up troops for battle, a joke he usually made which I often ignored. Rachel didn’t eat much for breakfast, so Mum and Dad figured if she eats a muffin or has a milkshake than they’ve done the best they can.
“Don’t forget to give Mr Symonds your permission note for Music A-viva! Oh and Ken please don’t forget to pick him up from the front gate as the oval entrance will be chock-a-block by 4pm!” Mum instructed as she raced out the door with a thermos of coffee and iPad holstered in the other.
Before I knew it we were all ordered to the Suzuki and made our way off to the carnival. Rachel was just dressed in normal school uniform because she was feeling sick after the Chinese food that Mum brought home last night and was hoping to get to go home early today. Fat chance, I thought.
As we got out of the car, Rachel hobbled off and left me to fend for myself. I walked through up to the school oval and my eyes lit up with pride. The marquee was up, the different events set up for shot put, long jump, high jump and tug-of-war all in the middle of the oval with the running track on the outside. Miss Walker had designed it all to fit without getting too cramped and done a pretty bloody good job. Scott might have thought she was trying to brainwash the school and I was thinking who cares; she’s clearly got her head glued on right.
As I sat on the grass in an area with my school house, none of the other boys wanted to talk to me all that much, which didn’t surprise me. That had been the same the past few weeks. Since we started the ‘safe in the schoolyard’ program at school a few weeks back, only a few of us were now wearing the purple badges they gave us, and Miss Walker didn’t wear her rainbow one anymore as she was nervous about what the kids and their parents were saying about her. Stuff ’em, I’d say. With all my thoughts running wild this morning, I’d suddenly realised I hadn’t seen Benjamin yet. With his Mum gone he may be running a little late as I knew his dad was struggling a bit keeping up given he was doing it on his own. But when I finally saw him I had a feeling he wasn’t running late, he was preparing for something ‒ that surprise he’d been brewing for a few weeks. I had completely forgotten about it honestly but was wondering what he was doing, a prank of some sort or some kind of flash mob or something. I was wrong though; it was something much simpler and a hundred times more impressive. Something I’d briefly joked about when he first stayed at our house a few weeks back, and something I’d thought might be good for him after I spoke to the Reverend at his mother’s funeral. But again I thought it was too crazy to be possible.
It was Benjamin walking up the oval towards me, red shirt on, rainbow badge pinned on. Badly, but still hanging on. And a big, bold and beautiful blue skirt!
The whole school turned to him and every jaw dropped one by one, like some kind of stunned Mexican wave.
I immediately thought of the advice I gave him when Louie Dixon farted in PE. Anything embarrassing you do makes you a laughing stock for a week or two, and then someone comes along and does something even more ridiculous. Benjamin was wearing the school skirt, but not just any skirt ‒ I saw the stain on the skirt. It was Rachel’s, the one that I wore a few weeks back when Scott McElroy spat on it and I chucked it. He must’ve taken it from the spare clothes bin. And the rainbow badge he must have taken from when Miss Walker tossed hers away.
He came up to me with a big grin on his face,
“You surprised?” To which I nodded to like I was one of those bobbly-head toys Mum had on the dashboard of her car.
Benjamin looked like he had perked up quite a bit.
“What’s this about?” I said wondering why he’d stoop to the bottom of the barrel where I was.
“You’ve been sticking up for me this past few weeks. Today I’m sticking with you!”
I could see Scott McElroy glaring at us from his seat and picking at his teeth, hoping that would freak me out, which it kinda did.
But today I blocked that out; today was just for me and my best mate.
“Come on mate, let’s get ready for the three-legged race!”
We went up to the table where Miss Walker was giving everyone a stocking and a number to pin, and when she saw us she gave us an awesome grin.
“You boys look like winners to me!” she said as she handed us a stocking. “Go get ’em!” she winked at us and we went to the starting line.
“Now Mum used to tell me the key to winning is to start with outer feet first, then the ones tied together!” Benjamin was giving me instructions that I wouldn’t dare ignore, and we went to the starting line.
“You ready, buddy?” he said with a shaky voice, with sweat starting to drip from his forehead.
“Sure am, mate!”
The gun went off and we went off for a ripper start. Out, in, out, in Benjamin was yelling as we soared our way pass the other kids and suddenly we were colliding with the tape. We’d won. There wasn’t much of an applause; no one came to drench us with a tub of Gatorade like they do in the movies, and no one lifted us up onto their shoulders, but Mr Symonds handed us both a blue ribbon and patted us on the back at the finish line, and Benjamin took his with pride even though he was mostly trying not to have another asthma attack. And right about now, nothing could beat this moment. The only thing that could’ve come close was the raffle that was presented to me by Miss Walker ‒ turned out Mum did buy all the tickets in the booklet!