Dropping In (4 page)

I shake my head. ‘It's dangerous. It'll break as soon as your skateboard hits it.'

‘No way! Look!' Ranga stands in the middle of it and bounces. I can almost see the nails working loose.

‘I'm not going on it.'

Ranga starts making chicken noises and flapping his arms.

‘I don't care what you say,' I shout. I hate it when he calls me chicken. I turn to James. ‘What do you reckon?'

‘I can't skate,' he says, ‘but if I could, I'd give it a go.'

‘Don't do it Ranga,' I say. I'm almost pleading and I hate myself for it 'cause it sounds like I'm scared, but I know what's about to happen. I've seen it before.

Ranga stands at the top of my driveway, near the carport. ‘Any cars coming, James?'

The road's clear. James shakes his head and Ranga's off. He pushes off with his right leg, twice, and then he crouches ready to ollie on to the ramp. He lands on the exact middle of the ramp and it flexes, but it doesn't break and it seems to spring him into the air. He gets about a metre into the air but he can't land it properly and he takes a couple of steps, falling forward with his legs kicking up behind, before forward-rolling across James' lawn. I can't believe his survival reflexes.

James is hooting his head off. Ranga's head swells. He jumps to his feet, grabs his board and runs to the top again.

The third time he lands it properly but on the fourth there's a loud crack from the ramp as he takes off. We check it out but everything looks okay so Ranga gets ready for jump five. He's going to do a grab this time.

He pushes off and gets set early, but when he hits the ramp everything goes wrong. I can't tell exactly what happens even though I'm standing there watching. The ramp seems to fly to pieces and Ranga cartwheels through the air. Somehow he gets his feet down first and breaks most of his fall before he lands on his back on the road. Then his skateboard smacks into his face. His eye is swelling before he even sits up. What's amazing, there's no grazes on his elbows or shins, just a bit of a rough patch on one hand and one shoulderblade.

Mum gives him an icepack to put on his cheek. Then Dad puts a bit of wood down outside the door and it makes enough of a ramp for James' chair to get in through our front door so we can watch telly for a bit.

Ranga pretends his prang didn't hurt much but when he gets up to go home he's limping. You'd think he'd learn, but he doesn't.

I'm in maths when the PA announcement comes through. ‘Ian Whyte, please come to the principal's office immediately. Ian Whyte to the principal's office immediately.'

Oh crap! What's going on? I don't think I've done anything wrong lately. I think back over the last few days. Nothing: nothing worth a trip to the principal's office anyway. So what is it? My guts are squirming. What if something's happened to Mum or Dad?

The secretary at the front office looks up as I enter. She smiles, but it's not a happy smile. I can't quite work it out, but at least she's not stern — more sympathetic. I nearly freak out. Something's happened to Mum and Dad. I'm sure of it.

‘Have a seat, Ian. Mr Sutton will be with you shortly.' She picks up the phone and speaks softly into it.

In less than a minute Mr Sutton comes out and walks across to me. I'm nearly choking with fear. He's going to give me the bad news any second now. I grip the chair.

The first thing he says is, ‘You're not in trouble, Ian.'

It
is
my parents! Maybe Dad had a car crash. Maybe Mum had some sort of accident. Hideous possibilities rush through my mind. ‘Has something happened to Mum and Dad?' I blurt out.

Mr Sutton looks surprised. ‘No,' he says. ‘Why ever would you think that?'

A hot relief is flushing through me when I see Ranga. He's sitting on a bench outside Mr Sutton's office, talking to some lady. I've never seen her before but she doesn't look fierce. She's leaning towards him talking softly, like she wants to help him with something. Ranga is leaning away from her like she's a spider.

He glances up as I pass. I've seen that look before. It's the look he gets when he's been accused of something he didn't do and he doesn't know what to do about it. It's an about-to-explode look. Then I'm in Mr Sutton's office.

Mr Sutton asks me to sit down in one of the chairs in front of his desk. He sits down on a chair facing me — not his chair behind the desk, a chair near mine.

‘Now Ian, you're not in trouble. What we'd like,' he pauses for a second and looks towards the door, ‘is your help.'

My help? We? He's the only one in here. He must be talking about that lady out there: the one who's freaking Ranga out. Who is she? What does she want?

‘We want to ask you some questions relating to your friend Warren. You are the person most likely to have noticed something.'

I'm about to ask him what he's talking about when the lady walks in. Mr Sutton introduces her as Ms Broadacre. She's from some government department, some kind of social worker. She has this concerned look on her face but she looks sharp too. Her eyes stare. I have to look away and then look back. She's still staring. It creeps me out.

She sits in a chair next to me. ‘Ian, your friend Warren may need help but I have to determine what course of action to take. That's where you come in,' she says.

I glance across at Mr Sutton but there's no help there. He's part of this. What's Ranga done? Do they want me to dob on him for something?

She's talking again, pinning me to my seat with those eyes. ‘Several of the teachers have noticed that Warren
has a lot of bruises and cuts lately. I'm wondering if you can tell me anything about them. Have you noticed that Warren has been getting injured a lot lately?'

‘Yes,' I say, ‘but he always hurts himself.'

She purses her lips like I've said something important and nods. ‘Hurts himself how?'

I don't get it. So what if Ranga falls off his skateboard, or jumps off the roof? What's it got to do with her? I stare back but she doesn't even blink. ‘He does things, you know, like skateboard tricks, and he falls off.'

‘Is that how he got his black eye?'

It's like she's a lawyer and a judge all rolled into one but I still don't get what she's asking me about Ranga for. I nod. ‘Yes, we made a ramp on my driveway and he was doing a jump when it broke. His skateboard hit him in the eye.'

She keeps staring at me and I feel like a bug under a magnifying glass. I shift on my chair. It feels like she doesn't believe me. ‘When was this?' she asks.

‘Last Saturday,' I say.

She writes in a big black notebook for a moment and then she looks up, suddenly. ‘Has he ever hurt himself when you weren't there?'

I stare at her. What is she trying to find out? Then I
remember the bruises in the change rooms.

She knows I've thought of something. I don't know how, but she knows. I look across to Mr Sutton. He's definitely on her side. At least I think there are sides and they're on one side and I'm on the other, with Ranga.

I can't think of a way to tell her that explains about his bruised back in the change rooms so I just nod. I get the feeling somebody is going to get into trouble but I don't know who or even why. How can you get into trouble for having accidents?

Ms Broadacre is still sitting in her chair a metre away but it feels like she's in my face. I want to leave but I have to sit there and, bit by bit, they lever it out of me: how hurt he was, how he didn't want to talk about it, how he said it was his fault and how he said he was sick of being himself.

Then the questions aren't about Ranga. They're about his mum. What's she like? Do I see her often? Is she nice? Does she hit him? And then I get it. They think his mum is bashing him!

That's stupid! Or is it? Images flash through my mind: his mum shouting at him, the look on her face when she opened the door that day, the way Ranga wouldn't talk about it and how we never go to his house. Suddenly I
don't know anymore. A sick feeling rises up in me when I think about all the things I've said. I can almost feel Ranga out in the hall willing me not to say anything, but it's too late. There's nothing I can do about it.

Ms Broadacre scribbles away in her notebook for a while and then she looks up. She leans forward and takes my hand. I recoil. I can't help it and I think about Ranga recoiling from her in the hall as I came in. What have I done? It feels like I've betrayed him somehow. She tells me that everything I've said is confidential and that Ranga will never know what was discussed in here. She says I've been a good friend to Ranga and they only want to help him.

That's all very well for her to say. Ranga might not know what I said in here, but I will. I don't feel like a good friend. I feel dirty. Even if his mum does hit him, I feel dirty.

It's like poison. James, Ranga and I are sitting under a tree. We're all concentrating on our ice-creams, not talking at all. I've heard a saying about this — ‘there's an elephant in the room.' Well, it's like that but it's not an elephant, it's poison, and it's eating away at us. I can feel it choking me. It's there in the back of my throat and I can't swallow it or spit it out.

Ranga is staring at his ice-cream but I know he's not seeing it. I'm staring at mine but I'm watching him out of the corner of my eye. I know he wants to ask me what the lady said to me and what I said to her but, at the same time, if I was him I wouldn't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it either because I'll have to tell him what I said, how she got me to say things and then all of a sudden they meant something I didn't want them to.

The trouble is, Ranga and I have always told each
other everything; at least I thought we had. Maybe Ranga has had this big, dark secret he's never told me. Maybe his mum does hit him. No, not Ranga! He can't keep a secret about anything. The harder he tries the more likely he is to blurt it out.

Then he does blurt it out. ‘You know that lady, the one in Mr Sutton's office?'

I nod.

‘She was asking me questions, and no matter what I said, it felt like she thought Mum was hitting me. It was like being in a trap.' He stops and stares at me.

I feel relief from my fingers to my toes. ‘She was the same with me. She told me she wanted to help you but she wrote stuff in her book whenever I said anything, and I don't reckon she wrote what I said.'

‘Was she a social worker?' James asks.

‘I don't know.' Ranga shakes his head. ‘She seemed more like a detective.'

He's right. She said she wanted to help but it felt more like she was out to get Ranga's mum.

‘What's going to happen now?' I ask Ranga.

‘She's going to talk to Mum.'

Silence for a while.

‘When?' James asks.

‘Dunno. Now maybe.'

We all eat our ice-creams for a bit. What's going to happen to Ranga tonight when he gets home? If his mum is belting him he'll cop a hiding. Even if she hasn't ever hit him things are going to be bad, for the both of them. I can't imagine how bad it's going to be. What will they say when they see each other tonight?

James is the first to talk. ‘I see social workers all the time. They try to help but sometimes they interfere too much.'

He stops. I wait, but he doesn't say any more. He can't say something like that and then just leave it. I can tell from the look on his face that Ranga is thinking the same thing. We're both looking at James but he's staring into outer space.

‘What? What do they do?' Ranga asks.

‘When I was a kid …' James starts.

‘You are a kid,' Ranga says.

‘No, when I was a little kid.'

‘You are a little kid,' says Ranga standing up. ‘You only come up to here.' He holds his hand against his chest at the exact height of James head.

James stares at him for a second and then cracks up. We're all killing ourselves laughing and whenever we
manage to stop one of us snorts and then it's on again. We can't stop until we're too weak to laugh any more.

My ice-cream has melted all over my hand while we've been laughing and I'm licking it off my fingers when James starts his story again.

‘When I was a little kid,' he says. We only snigger for a bit. ‘When I was a little kid, my big brother …'

‘I didn't know you had a big brother,' I say. ‘Where is he?'

‘He works in the mines, up in Karratha. He's an apprentice fitter.'

‘How old is he?'

‘He's nineteen,' James says. ‘Anyway, when I was a little kid, Brad used to take me for rides on his Peewee 50 motorbike all around the farm.'

‘How?' Ranga says. He's leaning forward.

‘He used to sit me on the bike in front of him and put a strap around us so I wouldn't fall off, then we'd ride all around the bush tracks near our house. It was the best fun I ever had.'

‘Didn't you get in trouble from your parents?' I ask.

‘No, they let us do it.'

My parents would never let me do something risky like that, and I'm healthy. I used to get busted for dinking
with Ranga when we were little. It was fun but we always fell off in the end, especially when we tried to stop or a hill got too steep.

James gets all serious. ‘The point is we never told the social workers because Mum and Dad said they would stop us. Mum and Dad might even have got in trouble for letting us.'

‘You lived on a farm?' Ranga has already lost track. ‘You ever heard a baby pig when someone grabs it?' He starts sucking in his breath and making this awful screaming, squealing noise.

Jess, one of the girls sitting near us, almost has a heart attack. She jerks up and her head nearly spins off her shoulders. Then she sees that it's just Ranga. Her friends are laughing at her. She glances at them and then back at Ranga. ‘Loser!' she sneers.