telling me to breathe normally.
I said that was the only way
I knew how to breathe.
The nurse said she was going to check my pulse
and my blood pressure
before letting Mum take me home.
As we were leaving, she said,
‘Don’t go jumping off any more sheds.’
I waved and answered,
‘No way. Next time I’ll jump out of a tree.’
Mum and the nurse stood
with their mouths hanging open,
until I smiled and said,
‘Only joking.’
SELINA
Every morning this week it’s been the same.
Ms Arthur calls out the roll.
Alphabetically.
Starting with Pete Ancich,
followed by Tiffany Brown,
then me, Selina Chandler.
Everyone says, ‘Here, Ms’
or, ‘Present, Ms.’
But we’re all waiting
for Ms Arthur to call out Cameron’s name.
Because,
without fail,
Cameron jumps out of his chair,
salutes Ms Arthur
and says, in his loudest voice,
‘Present and ready for action, Ms!’
The first time he did it,
Ms Arthur frowned and muttered,
‘Thank you.’
We could see she was a little bothered.
But after a week of Cameron
saluting and shouting,
she realised he wasn’t going to stop
and he wasn’t hurting anybody,
except maybe our eardrums!
So now, once in a while,
instead of just calling out, ‘Cameron Knowles’,
Ms Arthur stands to attention and says,
‘Sergeant Knowles!’
Cameron smiles and almost leaps from his chair.
Everyone giggles,
except Cameron.
He’s too busy yelling!
MR KORSKY
When all the children
have gone home
I circle the schoolyard
picking up lunch wrappers
and chip packets
and discarded hats –
the Lost Property basket is overflowing –
and soft-drink cans
and lolly wrappers
and every day
someone leaves a half-eaten apple
wedged
in the branch of the sunshine wattle
as if they’re leaving me a gift.
I shake my head
and fling it in the rubbish,
wondering why they couldn’t
practise their throwing
and aim for the bin near the toilet block
instead of making me stretch into the tree
when I’m two years off retiring
and the only hair on my head
grows out of my ears and my nose
and
hello . . .
what’s this . . .
the half-eaten apple
resting in the same place . . .
except underneath is a note
and printed in very neat handwriting
are the words,
‘Please, sir.
The apple isn’t rubbish . . .
it’s for the birds.’
I stand there holding the paper
and as if on cue
I hear a chirp from above.
A rosella sits high in the tree
watching me.
I put the apple back,
the note I tuck in my pocket.
One less thing to pick up.
ALEX
My brother
goes into his bedroom
puts on his favourite
grunge rock DVD,
turns it up really loud,
jumps on his bed
singing louder than the music
and
starts air guitar!
He waves his right arm
up and down
like a crazy windmill
banging the strings
his fingers twitch and move
faster than the speed of light
in weird air guitar poses.
Then he jumps off his bed
and lands on his knees,
sliding along the shiny timber floor
still playing
furious air guitar.
Mum just smiles
and keeps reading her book.
I’m trying to do homework
so I ask Mum
if he could turn it down,
and what does she say?
‘In a minute. Let him have his fun.’
My brother is twenty-six years old.
LAURA
Mum says they named me
after their favourite song,
‘with a chorus of strings and soaring vocals’,
that’s how Mum describes it.
And that song, which they’d sing over and over, is
‘Tell Laura, I Love Her’.
Mum says she’d always cry whenever she heard it,
when Dad and her were . . .
you know, boyfriend and girlfriend . . .
in love . . .
before they got married.
Mum says when they came home from the doctor
after learning she was pregnant,
they agreed to call the child Laura
even if it was a boy!
Mum says,
she knew I’d be a girl
because of the name.
She calls it destiny.
Dad left home two years ago
and now whenever he phones from the city,
and I’m not home
he says to Mum,
‘Tell Laura, I love her.’
Only I don’t think he sings it into the phone.
RACHEL
This morning
Ms Arthur writes
NIGHT SKY
on the whiteboard
and asks us to try to describe it
in one sentence.
Everyone looks around the room
nervously
waiting for someone to raise their hand.
Ms Arthur leans patiently on her desk
until I can’t stand the silence any longer.
I raise my hand and say,
‘It’s like a blanket for the earth to sleep under.’
Ms Arthur smiles.
Cameron raises his hand and says,
‘It’s deeper than the Grand Canyon!’
Mick adds,
‘And wider than the Pacific Ocean.’
Selina says, ‘It’s where shooting stars
write their name.’
My favourite is when Alex says,
‘It’s lightning graffiti!’
And suddenly everyone is raising their hands
and calling out,
‘An ink ocean!’
‘Thick chocolate sauce with sprinkles for stars . . .’
‘. . . and the moon is the cook’s fingernail!’
After Ms Arthur
has erased the words
NIGHT SKY
from the whiteboard
and we’re knuckling down
to maths
Cameron raises his hand
and asks,
‘Ms, can you write two words
on the board every morning
and we’ll try to describe it?’
Instead of answering,
Ms Arthur walks to the whiteboard and writes,
YES, CAMERON.
CONSTABLE DAWE
‘Good morning, Class 6A.
My name is Constable Dawe
and I’m here . . .
what’s that, young man?
No, my name is not Constable,
it’s Brian,
Constable is my title,
my rank in the police force.
Yes, young lady,
like a General,
only we don’t have generals,
just commissioners
and sergeants
and constables
of which I’m one.
And I’m here to talk about road safety.
Can anyone tell me something about road safety?
Well, yes, you’re right,
it should be called pedestrian safety
because no one can hurt a road,
it’s just a large piece of concrete.
True, young man,
if someone dropped a bomb on the road
that would destroy it
but I don’t know anyone with a bomb, do you?
Yes, terrorists have bombs
but we don’t have terrorists in town
not last time I looked anyway,
back to road safety, pedestrian safety, if you will.
Can anyone tell me what we should do
before crossing the road?
Pardon?
Wear clean underwear!
Who told you that?
Your mother . . .
in case you’re in an accident.
Well, I’m here to prevent you having an accident
so
apart from wearing clean underwear,
what else should we do
before crossing the road?
Yes,
before crossing the road
we should first leave the house,
but, Class 6A,
let’s imagine, shall we,
that we’re all on the footpath
in clean underwear
and about to cross the road.
What should we do to avoid accidents?
No, wearing a life jacket won’t save us
not unless the road is flooded
and it hasn’t been flooded since 1978, I believe,
so take off the life jackets
and
and
and
yes, young lady, that’s correct
look both ways
no
not up and down
not forward and behind
look right and left
and then
and then
no, don’t run like heck, young man,
look right again
then quickly walk to the other side.
Well done, Class 6A.
Now, can you tell me
what we should do on bicycles?
Not fall off . . . yes.
Not do wheelies when your dad’s watching . . . yes.
But what should we be wearing?
Thank you, young man,
we know about clean underwear
we’ve heard enough about clean underwear
what else should we be wearing . . .
on our heads . . .
no, I was not saying we should wear
clean underwear on our heads!
No, not a sunhat,
something harder than a sunhat, perhaps,
a helmet
yes,
a helmet.
I think we’ll leave it there for today, Class 6A.
Next time
we’ll talk about water safety . . .
yes, okay, swimmer safety, if you must.
Without the underwear hopefully.
Stop laughing, Class 6A,
I wasn’t suggesting nude swimming.
We will not be nude swimming next week
or any other week
we’ll be . . .
Thank you once again, Class 6A.’
SELINA
Mr Korsky brought his nephew Nigel to school
to help him because poor Mr Korsky
has to wear a neck brace for another week,
you know,
after the unfortunate flying Jacob incident.
Nigel has a nose ring,
two earrings
and an eyebrow ring.
He also has a tattoo of a snake
slithering up his arm
and when he flexes his bicep
it looks like the serpent is about to strike.
He showed all of Year Six this trick at lunchtime
when he was emptying the rubbish bins.
Nigel says he used to come to this school
ten years ago
and he tried to jump off the shed as well
only he wasn’t flying;
he was ambushing
his worst enemy, Mark Banbridge.
He told us about Mark
and some girl called Robyn
and how Mark
shouldn’t have got so friendly with her.
I swear when he was talking
the tattoo on his arm grew bigger and meaner,
and I moved to the outside of the circle,
just in case.
Cameron asked Nigel
if getting all those piercings hurt
and Nigel said,
‘Nah, the only thing that hurt was my eardrums.’
‘Eardrums?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. You should have heard the noise
Dad made when he saw all my rings!’
CAMERON
My dad makes things up.
I know that now,
but when I was young
and my ears were even younger,
I believed everything he said.
Like the day we sat in the park
and watched the teenagers
throwing a bright green plastic ring,
a radical Frisbee,
and I asked Dad what it was called.
He said, quick as you please,
‘A parisian ring’
and I practised saying the words
over and over
sitting beside Dad
watching the teenagers catch and dive and fling
and I saved all my pocket money for three months,
safely hidden in a jar,
the lid closed tight, under my bed
until I had enough money to buy one.
I walked into every shop in town asking,
‘Do you sell a parisian ring?’
They searched their computer lists,
they asked the boss,
they scratched their heads,
no one sold a parisian ring,
no one had even heard of it.
So at dinner I asked Dad
the next time he went to the city
could he buy one
and I handed him the money,
all my savings.
Mum and Dad stared at the coins
piled between the mashed potato
and the gravy jug.
Dad said,
‘Parisian ring?’
He looked at Mum
and Simone
and then back at me.
I made the throwing motion with my hand
and repeated the name
over and over.
How could he forget?
‘You know, in the park,
the green plastic thing.’
And then he remembered.
A week later
I got home from school
and there was a parcel
neatly wrapped on the table
and a card with my name on it.
I unwrapped the parcel
as quick as my hands could move.
It was green
and in splashy black writing on the top
were the words,
Astro Frisbee.
What!
Astro who?
Then I turned it over
and scrawled in black texta,
in writing just like Dad’s,
were the words,
parisian ring.
I looked up and saw Dad smiling
and he said,
‘It’s a good name, don’t ya reckon?’
We went outside into the backyard
and played until dark,
me and Dad
and the parisian ring.
JACOB
My brother Mick broke his arm
when he was nine years old.
I only sprained mine.
The day he came home from hospital
he let me draw a dragon on the plaster cast.
I was five years old
so it wasn’t a very good drawing
just lots of colours
with big round circles and horns,
and fire coming out of his mouth.
Mick showed it to everyone in school
and he got me to sign my name on it
and said I’d be a famous artist one day
‘like Michelangelo’
who I thought was a Mutant Ninja Turtle.
Everyone at school wanted to sign their name
but Mick wouldn’t let them.
He said it wasn’t a cast anymore,
it was Jacob’s art gallery.
Every night I coloured in the dragon
on Mick’s arm
and the next day he’d show everyone at recess.
I look at the bandage on my arm now.
The doctor says I was lucky I didn’t break it.
What do doctors know?
SELINA
Ms Arthur walked into class
and said, ‘Good morning, 6A’