Dropping In (7 page)

Ranga wants to go down to the skate park every afternoon to practise for the competition coming up. ‘Come on, Sticks, those guys probably won't be down there. Some of them work.'

Just thinking about going down there puts a bad taste in my mouth. My grazes sting every time I bend my arm or my leg and it was hard to write at school today because the palms of my hands hurt so much. And those guys will be there. I'm too sore to go, I tell myself over and over — but I know that it is really fear that makes me chicken out and that makes me feel even worse. I make up an excuse so I won't have to go with him. It's so weak! I blame Mum. I tell Ranga that Mum won't let me go down there until my grazes heal and that I'm grounded until I clean up my bedroom.

‘I'll help,' Ranga says straightaway.

‘No,' I blurt out, ‘you go and practise. The contest is this weekend. It'll take ages to clean up.'

‘Not if we shove everything under the bed and in the cupboard.'

That's typical Ranga: out of sight, out of mind. He'd walk out of the house feeling clever and then think it was unfair when he was busted later. It's like he has a giant blind spot in his brain.

‘Mum will know. She vacuums under the bed and she puts washing away in the cupboard.'

‘Yes, but we'll be gone by then.'

‘What about when we get back?'

‘Oh yeah.' He looks crestfallen, but then his face lights up. ‘Your mum will have forgotten about it by then. Anyway, she might not look today and then you could do it tonight.'

This is harder than I thought. Maybe Ranga wants to go so badly he'd be willing to wear the punishment later, though I reckon he just doesn't think through the consequences. ‘Why don't you see if James wants to go,' I suggest.

Ranga looks cheesed off, like he knows I could go if I really wanted to, but he nods and heads over to James' house.

It's weird. Now I feel like Ranga is betraying me by going to the park with James. I want to be with them but I don't want them to find out how scared I am. I guess I want to be alone with my gutlessness. It's not fair to blame them for anything.

I watch through the window as they head off down the street. Ranga has his jumper off. He's waving it like a bullfighter cape and James is charging it like a bull in his wheelchair. They're both laughing their heads off. The part of me that wants to be with them gets stronger for a second and I stand up but then the part that wants to hide takes over and I sit down again. Then they're gone.

I actually do clean up my bedroom for a while but I soon lose interest. I try reading a book but that gets boring and I find myself flicking through pages, reading ahead of myself, and that annoys me. I'm ruining my own book. Maybe eating something will make me feel better.

I'm standing at the fridge door when the phone rings. I pick it up and say hello. There's silence for a while and then a soft girl's voice says, ‘Sorry.'

‘Sorry? Who is this?' I ask but there is a click and the phone goes dead.

Before I have time to think about it Mum is at the door. ‘Who was on the phone?' she says.

‘I don't know. They hung up.'

Mum shrugs, ‘Probably a telemarketer.'

I nod, relieved. I don't want to talk about what girl might ring up and say sorry, not with Mum anyway. Still, I wonder if it was Jess. If it was, it would be strange, but kind of good. She did look unhappy when Ranga, James and I laughed at school. So who was in the wrong? Was it her and her mates for all the stupid going out stuff they were doing, or was it us for laughing?

‘I saw Warren heading off down the street with James a while ago,' Mum says.

I know it's a question even though she hasn't asked me one but I don't want to talk about that either so I say nothing.

‘They looked like they were heading for the skate park,' Mum says, looking at me.

I find something to study outside the kitchen window.

‘Why didn't you go with them?'

‘My grazes hurt too much,' I begin but Mum cuts me off with a loud snort.

‘I almost need a microscope to see those. You've never let a couple of grazes stop you doing something you want to before, so why now?'

‘I wanted to clean up my room,' I say and, as I'm
saying it, I realise what a weak excuse it is. No wonder Ranga looked annoyed.

Mum actually laughs at me. ‘You? Clean up your room?' She seems to think that it's an even more stupid excuse than I do.

‘Go and look if you find it so amazing,' I say. It's annoying having her give me attitude about my room. She hassles me about it all the time and now she's giving me grief for cleaning it. You'd think she'd just be happy.

Mum doesn't say anything else. She puts the kettle on. ‘Want a Milo?'

I nod and as I'm nodding someone knocks at the front door, exactly in time with my nods. Mum's eyes fly open and she cracks up, pointing at me and at the front door. I nod. She cracks up even more. I'm laughing too as I head for the door.

The first thing I see when I open the door is Ranga's face with a fat lip and blood smeared on his cheek.

‘What happened?' I ask.

Ranga talks out of the side of his mouth. ‘That kid Luke was hassling James and he wouldn't stop. We had a fight.'

‘Who won?' I ask.

Ranga starts to smile but then he winces. He holds
his lip and licks where it's split. ‘I was winning, but then he got hold of me and he was punching me out when the other guys dragged him off.'

‘Luke had a blood nose and I bet he gets a black eye,' James says from behind Ranga.

‘So what happened when they dragged him off?' I ask.

‘The other guys said he was gutless and to leave me alone. Jimmy, the guy who does all those balances on his front wheel, said if Luke didn't cut it out he'd have to deal with him.'

‘He left,' says James, grinning like an idiot. ‘We had to look out for him on the way home but he wasn't waiting for us so maybe he'll leave us alone now.'

‘Why did you think you might run into him on your way home? You didn't go past the shop, did you?'

‘No, but we reckon he lives around here.'

That's not good news. ‘Around here? How do you know?'

‘That's his tag in the underpass,' Ranga says.

‘Warren!' Mum's seen Ranga's face. She hurries him into the kitchen. Before he can protest she's taken a bag of frozen peas out of the fridge and wrapped them in a tea towel. She tells him to hold it on his lip while she cleans up his face with a wet washer.

Ranga does everything she says, not complaining even when I'm certain she hurts him a bit wiping off the blood and putting Betadine on the split in his lip. If it was me, I'd be in trouble for fighting, but she would fuss over me too. She's a great mum.

Ranga looks relieved when she stops. It's hard to put together the kid who takes crazy risks on a skateboard, who fights guys a lot bigger than him and who always gets into trouble for saying and doing stuff without thinking, with the kid sitting there doing exactly what Mum tells him. He looks like a puppy.

‘Would you boys like a Milo? Ian and I were about to have one,' Mum says.

Ranga's eyes light up. ‘Dip and Gunk!' he says.

‘What's Dip and Gunk?' James asks.

We tell him the rules while Mum makes the Milo.

We roll a dice to work out who goes first and I lose. That'll make it hard to win.

My Milo is steaming. Ten seconds I reckon, that's all I'll try for. Mum has the stopwatch. She's going to be the judge too.

I'm about to put the Milk Arrowroot biscuit into the Milo when Ranga says, ‘Past halfway!' like we always do.

‘Yes,' I growl. I take a few seconds to refocus.

‘Hold it steady!' Ranga says just as I start to lower it again.

‘Stop it! I know what you're doing,' I say.

‘What?' says Ranga, all helpful innocence.

‘You're trying to put him off,' says Mum. ‘That's cheating, Warren.'

Ranga shakes his head. ‘No, it's an important part of the game. I'd be cheating if I did this.' He bangs the table with his hand. My Milo slops around in my cup.

James has a huge grin all over his face. He loves it. He's holding his biscuit already but his fingers won't grab it properly. They're too tight and the biscuit is on a bit of an angle. It will snap straight off if he does it like that. I hold my biscuit up, above the cup, ready to start.

Mum hisses and raises a finger to Ranga. He sits back. I lower the biscuit into the Milo. One. James' eyes nearly bug out. He leans forward and bumps the table. My Milo slops up the Milk Arrowroot past halfway.

‘Sorry,' James says, sitting back and making the table wobble again.

I can't wait any longer. Only eight seconds, but if I leave it I'll gunk. I lift it out and, as I raise it to my mouth, I see James watching everything I do, opening his mouth when
I open mine. I nearly crack up but somehow I make it.

‘Beat that,' I say to Ranga through my mouthful of mush.

He just laughs and then winces, holding his lip. ‘Easy,' he says but he chickens out after nine seconds and lifts his biscuit into his mouth. He smirks at me and does a number one sign with his finger.

‘My turn,' James says. He gets his chair as far under the table as he can, but he still has to lean forward. He rests his arm on the table but the effort makes his hand shake worse than ever.

‘I'll get a tray, ‘Mum says. She gets up and gets a serving tray from the kitchen. She puts it across the armrests of James' chair. A little frown flits across his face but she doesn't notice it.

‘How's that?' She puts his Milo mug on the tray and steps back.

‘Good, thanks, Mrs Whyte.' He smiles.

Mum picks up the timer and James gets in position. His hand is tense as anything and the harder he tries to keep it steady the tenser it gets. I'm afraid the biscuit is going to shatter.

Mum clicks the timer. ‘Go!'

James dunks. He's been watching us because he only sinks it to halfway, but it's sort of waving back and forth
and up and down in the Milo. It's going to snap off before he even gets it out. His face goes redder as the seconds tick past. At about ten seconds he lifts the biscuit out and actually gets it to his mouth. He's beaming, with biscuit mush oozing out of the corner of his smile. Ranga and I high-five him.

‘Twenty seconds,' Mum says.

James' smile disappears. All three of us are looking at Mum.

‘What?' she says.

‘I only counted to ten,' James says. ‘I don't want any favours. I want to win fairly.'

Mum is smooth, but we all know she isn't telling the truth. ‘Time flies when you're having fun,' she says. We're all still looking at her. ‘It seems to go faster when you're really concentrating. Besides, ten seconds is a win anyway.'

James is not convinced but I back Mum up. ‘I counted to twenty — with “and” in between each one. Your brain must have been racing.'

James still isn't convinced. He turns to Ranga who looks back and then says, cool as you like, ‘I wasn't counting. I was watching but it seemed like a long time to me.'

Finally James smiles. ‘I win!'

‘Only round one,' Ranga says. ‘Now I'm really going to show you how it's done.'

‘Bring it on,' James says.

Behind him Mum has a faraway look in her eyes and she's frowning slightly.

I have to go again and at one minute I get the Milk Arrowroot into my mouth without gunking. Ranga tries for seventy seconds but he gunks. James and I laugh our faces off while he scoops the biscuit mush off the table and eats it. Then it's James' turn.

He's got delusions of grandeur. He holds the biscuit in for eighty seconds but when he tries to lift it out, it barely makes it over the rim of the cup before it cracks off and splatters all over the table.

Ranga and I are laughing and chanting, ‘Gu-unk, gu-unk,' but Mum looks really uncomfortable. She's holding herself back while we watch James trying to scoop up the gunk and eat it.

It's Ranga who sorts out the situation. ‘Don't think you can get out of this,' he says. He scoops most of the gunk back into James' cup and hands it to him. ‘If I have to eat my own gunk so do you. It's the rules.'

‘Right,' says James and he takes a big swallow.
‘Urgh!' He squishes some out between his teeth like he's been playing with us for years and we're all laughing our faces off.

James looks calm for someone being taken to the children's hospital for an operation. I'm looking through the window when the paramedics wheel him out of the house in one of their chairs and I run out to say goodbye.

James waves when he sees me coming and then the paramedics lift him into the back of the ambulance. I walk up to the door and when they finish strapping him in, and his mum and dad kiss him and hug him a hundred times, they let me hop in the back with him for a minute.

Once I get in there all the things I want to say disappear or seem kind of cheesy. How do you tell a friend that he is about the bravest person you know or you're going to miss having him around or that you're scared for him? Instead I punch him on the shoulder and say, ‘Some people will do anything to get out of school.'

James laughs which makes me feel better. Maybe it
was the right thing to say after all and he feels better too. We talk for a while and then the paramedics tell me James has to go so I climb out. Before they shut the door I lean back in and tell him I'll come to visit him.

He smiles and says, ‘See you there.' But then he grows serious. ‘Tell Ranga I'm sorry I might miss his skateboard competition.'

How can he be thinking of that when he is about to have an operation to implant something in his body?

‘It's okay,' Ranga says from behind me. He's puffing. He must have run up the hill. I step back out of the way and he looks at James for a moment. Then he says, ‘Have a good holiday.'