I spent Sunday at Sans Souci Beach, where we were showing Aunty Salma around. Feda walked with her along the long, winding path just below the hills that my brothers and I slid down on pieces of cardboard. She wasn’t not speaking to me since our argument last week, but she was curt, and I noticed her eyes slid across mine most of the time.
On the drive back, Aunty Salma and Dad sang Um Kalthoom songs together. As soon as Dad parked the van, everyone rushed out to make it to the shower first. Dad called me into the living room.
‘You fix things with your sister,’ he said, without preamble. ‘She is very busy with her job, and I don’t want her to be stress at home. You fix it.’
‘Baba, I –’
‘No excuses. Since you were baby, Feda look after you. She is like your second mum. You don’t speak to her like that.’ He headed for the TV to get his daily news fix. The first story was mobile footage of some boys from our school punching each other, surrounded by other boys cheering them on.
‘Were you involved in this?’ Dad asked with his eyebrows raised. ‘Tell me truth and I won’t get upset. I call Mr Archie if you lie.’
‘That was last year, Baba,’ I said, walking closer to the TV. Their faces were blurred by the report, but I recognised a couple of the guys who were throwing punches. At least two of them had been expelled by Mr Archie weeks ago. ‘How did they even get this footage?’
Tariq: Did you boys see that video about
Eddie and Bill’s fight on the news?
Ibby: Yeah man. Which snitch gave them that video?
PJ: I was at church and my cousin Jerry told
me about it. Archie and Ahmed are going to
be pissed, man.
Tariq: Huss, did you see it?
Huss: Can’t talk now.
‘Forty thousand subscribers now,’ Lee said, proudly showing PJ his phone. ‘AsianInvasion001 is my YouTube channel. Wanna watch one of my videos?’
‘Nintendo, stop waving your phone in my face,’ PJ said. ‘Or I’ll launch it over the fence.’
Ibby tried to jump on PJ’s back. ‘Bro, what’s wrong?’
‘Nuffin, bro. Just get out of my space, man.’ PJ trudged away, breathing heavily into the cold air.
We were back at Tuesday training with Mr Archie and Mr Ahmed, who weren’t in the mood to deal with any of our excuses, and were in foul moods because of the old leaked video.
‘Your game on Friday was a disaster,’ Mr Archie called out as we ran laps around the field. ‘You will have to work twice as hard to prove to myself and Mr Ahmed that you are a team.’
Aaron slowed down when he reached Huss. ‘You going to explain why you tried to throw the game?’
‘Piss off, man,’ Huss said. ‘I don’t owe you shit.’
‘You hogged the ball. You didn’t pass. You didn’t even listen to Tariq when he called for the ball,’ Aaron continued.
Huss turned to me. ‘He thinks I tried to throw the game?’
Aaron now stopped and took a few breaths. ‘Yeah, he does.’ The rest of the boys were on the other side of the field with Mr Archie and Mr Ahmed.
‘What about you?’ Huss said to Aaron. ‘You saw that ranga smash Lee’s head in the ground but you didn’t do anything. Maybe you threw it for your Shire mates?’
Aaron scowled. ‘I didn’t do shit for Hunter. We’re not mates and everyone saw how hard I was playing.’
I stood near Huss. ‘Didn’t do anything to stop him creaming your team though, captain.’
‘It’s complicated.’
We heard Mr Archie call our names.
Huss laughed out loud. ‘Complicated? The whole park heard that ranga give it to Riley, and you’re telling me your friendship with him is complicated?’
I watched Aaron’s face turn a shade darker in anger.
‘You of all people should know Hunter is a snake, because let’s face it, you were one too until very recently,’ I said.
‘Lads!’ we heard Mr Archie shout. ‘Move! Right now!’
We sat beside the goalposts to listen to feedback from Friday’s game.
Mr Archie looked me dead in the eye. ‘I’m not sure of some of your intentions, I’ll say this now. If any of you don’t want to be here, pack your things and leave. I don’t have time to deal with boys who pretend to care for their school and this team.’
Mr Ahmed tucked the footy under his arm and stared at Huss and me. ‘Tariq’s not your captain. Aaron is. So we expect you to turn to him for guidance on the field.’
Huss pulled out some grass from the ground and laughed to himself.
‘You think it’s funny, lad?’ Mr Archie turned on him. ‘You were away two days last week with no explanation. You showed up to the game and barely played. You really want to laugh right now?’
Huss shrugged and focused on mangling the field grass. I could tell he was shutting down by the way he had drawn his body in. Finally, Mr Ahmed told him to pack his things and leave.
‘We’re not going to accept disrespect,’ he said. Mr Archie looked grim.
Huss kicked a few pads and stormed off. Ibby and PJ looked at me, but I was just as confused as them. He hadn’t lost control like that in a while. Something had to be up.
‘Tonight,’ I whispered to the boys. We’d get to the bottom of things at movie night.
We trained as normal, trying to find our rhythm as a team and waiting for Aaron to figure out how to drive the game forward. My jaw clenched as I watched Mr Archie give him advice and work with him one-on-one.
Matt looked around to see if anyone was watching before sidling over to me. ‘Hunter isn’t going to stop, dude. Riley said a car followed him home last night before speeding off.’
‘If he’s been bullied for such a long time, why hasn’t he told the cops?’ I asked, still watching Aaron and Mr Archie.
‘That’ll make things worse.’ Lee now came to stand with us. ‘He doesn’t want to make it bigger.’
‘So why you telling me? What can I do?’
Matt tried once more. ‘Dude, we told you because back at camp, it was the first time Hunter had been confronted about anything and we think you could help Riley out. I mean, we can help him out. We’re teammates now, right?’
Ya illahi, this team came with a mountain of baggage.
‘He came, got money, then left.’ I heard Huss’s voice in the living room when I got home. ‘I don’t know why I thought he wanted to stay. How dumb am I?’
‘You’re not dumb,’ Feda replied. ‘Your dad has been doing this to you for a long time and because you’re a good person, you always give him the benefit of the doubt.’
Since we were little kids, Huss had always been around my place, like another brother. I had seen things about his dad that Huss didn’t like to talk about, like the time his dad beat him almost unconscious, or made him ask people for money, and then disappeared.
I had come home late in the afternoon because I was at Amira’s parent-teacher interviews. Mum had taken Aunty Salma to Cabramatta to buy fabrics while Dad finished work in the evening. If Feda was too busy, I usually did Amira’s parent-teacher chats instead of Mum, especially because Amira always liberally ‘interpreted’ the truth to Mum when she didn’t understand what the teachers were saying.
I stood by the living room door now and listened to a little more of their conversation. Huss had told me stuff about his dad, but I hadn’t known that he had made contact so recently.
‘I was away from school because Dad said he wanted to hang out and he wanted to change and start fresh. But he lied again.’
‘You know it’s nothing to do with you,’ Feda said. ‘Your dad leaving and being absent from your life is on him. Not you.’
‘Does it make me a bad person that I still care about him?’ he said.
‘Of course not! You can feel however you want to feel. No one can take that away from you.’
‘Don’t tell Tariq,’ I heard him say. ‘I don’t want him to know.’
I took a few deep breaths and tried to process what I’d just heard. I felt bad for Huss, but I was also cut that he wouldn’t trust me enough to tell me about his dad.
‘Okay, well, that’s your choice,’ Feda said. ‘But alienating yourself from your friends when you need them most might not be the best idea, Huss.’