I woke up on the day of the swimming carnival with a question looping endlessly through my brain.
Should I stay or should I go?
I rolled over on my mattress and put the day’s options through weird Wally’s SWOT analysis.
Strengths: If I stayed home today it would bolster my campaign to find a new school. I had already missed nearly a week of classes and just couldn’t see myself ever going back. Missing the only event on the sporting calendar that I gave two hoots about would give extra momentum to my campaign. I’d be on a roll.
Weaknesses: The obvious one was that I’d miss the only event on the school’s sporting calendar that I gave two hoots about. And I’d let Hero down. He said the team was pinning their hopes on me to get them out of a six-year slump. I didn’t care that much about the team, but I didn’t like to disappoint Hero. My hospitalised, soon-to-be-discharged mother would flip if I skipped the carnival. So would Anders. He’d turned into a bit of a swimming Nazi, dragging both of us out of bed early every morning for training. That was the problem with weaknesses; they really weighed down the old SWOT analysis.
Opportunities: Mum was coming out of hospital today, so if I ditched the carnival, I could help her get home, up the front stairs, into a chair, and onto the phone to start finding me a new school. A new life even. Though it might be a bit of a big ask with her down to one working leg and arm for the next few months...
Threats: The only ones that I could foresee–
A gentle knock interrupted my train of thought.
‘Henry, are you up yet?’ An eye and half a goatee appeared in the crack in the door. It was Caleb.
I rolled onto my stomach and pushed myself up onto my feet as he swung open the door.
‘Impressive.’ It was Anders, standing beside Caleb in the doorway.
‘What?’
‘Jumping from prone to standing position in a single action. If you can do that, you can learn to surf.’
The distant sound of an ambulance wah-oo, wah-oo, wah-ooed into the foreground then faded slowly away. ‘Good to know,’ I said finally. ‘Can I get dressed now?’
‘No,’ said Anders.
‘Pardon me?’
‘Come on out,’ he said. ‘Vee wants to show you something.’
It was the first time I had been inside Vee’s room.
It glowed like a black pearl with graceful lamps bouncing light off white walls and soft furnishings. Luxurious swathes of black, gold and silver fabric, held back by thick tasselled cords, framed the block-out blinds covering the window.
Her bed, an ornate four-poster, covered in silvery linen and soft falls of pillows, was draped in transparent hangings, fastened at each corner by twisted clusters of dried roses. Jewelled Venetian masks hung on either side of the bed, their white faces caught in a variety of dramatic expressions, laughing, crying, shocked and terrified.
Heavy wooden bookshelves covered an entire wall, filled with books – aged hardcovers with gold and silver lettering embossed into their spines, slim volumes of poetry, frivolous paperbacks and blockbuster fantasies lined up alphabetically by author.
An oil painting of a mother and child under a moonlit sky sat in a fancy gilt frame above a tidy desk with elegant carved legs and a high-backed leather office chair.
Neatly set out on the desktop were photographs in silver frames, a pewter pitcher and drinking glass on a matching platter, an Oxford dictionary and thesaurus squeezed between bronze dragon bookends and a vase containing a blood-red rose. In the centre of the desk lay a closed Toshiba laptop, the only glimpse of technology in the room.
‘Wow.’
‘Thank you.’ Vee shut the door behind us. ‘Please, sit.’
She gestured towards the curved seat at the end of the bed and then held up a shopping bag like a prize.
‘Voila!’
She tossed it into my lap. It weighed next to nothing. I upended it, not expecting much from the contents tumbling out into my lap.
It took a moment to take in what I was seeing: a pair of blue togs so wildly fluorescent you needed sunglasses to look at them, a pair of matching top-of-the-range blue Vortex goggles with mirrored lenses and a new blue swimming cap.
‘They’re Funky Trunks,’ said Vee unnecessarily. I knew what they were. I’d seen the squaddies training in them for the past couple of seasons. They were forty dollars a pair, way outside my price range.
‘The latest natatorial accessory, according to Anders,’ said Caleb. ‘He said you were in dire need for today’s carnival. Hence last night’s eleventh-hour shopping expedition.’
‘You don’t like them?’ asked Vee, a tiny frown puckering her brows. ‘I went to great trouble to choose the funkiest Funkys in the stratosphere. Did I do wrong?’
‘No, you did good, Vee–’
I folded the trunks into two, then folded them again. It is impossible to fold a piece of paper seven times and I had now proved it was impossible to fold Funky Trunks more than three.
The crush in my chest barely let me squeeze the words out. ‘It’s just that I’ve decided not to go to the carnival.’
I risked a quick look to gauge their reaction. Caleb and Vee had both turned to Anders, their faces unreadable.
‘Why not?’ he asked.
I shrugged. I’d held off telling Mum while she’d been in hospital that I wanted to change schools, so I just couldn’t get into any discussion with Anders about ditching Perpetual Suckers before I got into it with Mum.
The silence rippled out across the room.
‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘Go tell your principal.’
‘What?’
‘If you’re not going to the carnival, you’ll have to let Mr Paulson know.’ He held Vee’s door open for me.
If that’s all it took...
‘Fine,’ I said, walking past him. ‘I will.’
‘And while you’re there, have a look at the school sign they’re putting up out the front.’ He slammed the door shut behind me.
I took my time getting dressed, but when I came out, Vee’s door was still closed.
The kitchen looked empty without Manny flashing knives at the benchtop. For the first time I noticed the flaking varnish, the worn patches that were normally obscured by his beaming presence.
I waited, but no-one came out of Vee’s room. So I slammed the front door on my way out. Just to let them know that I had gone.
‘Henwy – where’s your bwoo?’
‘My bwoo?’
Sebastian was slathered in enough blue zinc to spur Scotland to a win in the Rugby World Cup.
‘The shops wouldn’t sell me any. They said they needed it all for you–’ I dug a finger into his belly and he ran off gurgling with laughter.
Perpetual Suckers was a seething mass of colour, with half the school sporting yellow streamers, zinc, hairspray and ribbons and the other half wearing blue.
‘Henry!’ Hero ran up, blue glittery eyeballs goggling at the end of springs on his head. ‘You came!’
I flicked a finger at one of his eyeballs and watched it bounce crazily around his head. ‘Nah, I just gotta see Mr Paulson. Let him know I’m not coming.’
His face fell. ‘Oh ... OK.’ He pointed to the front of the school. ‘He’s fixing up the sign. I spelt it wrong. Sorry.’
‘OK–’ I backed off before he could try to change my mind. ‘Good luck for today. And remember, keep your legs up and kick hard.’
I waved and ran off, wondering what he had managed to misspell...
I spotted Mr Paulson’s bright orange hair on the other side of the adventure playground. He stood at the base of the school sign, his hat in his hand, mopping his brow.
Towering above him was Perpetual Sucker’s Thought for the Day, the inspirational message read by tens of thousands of people on their daily commute into the city.
A message that today stopped me dead in my tracks.