Ishmael and the Hoops of Steel (19 page)

‘Can't do anything about that now,' Scobie said. ‘But we can do something about this year. We made the finals back in Year Nine, so there's no reason we couldn't do it again and then maybe go all the way. Of course, we'd need to be really serious about it.'

‘Ah what exactly do you mean by
serious
, O Supreme Being and Jumbo Storehouse of All Wisdom?'

‘Well, Orazio, for a start it would be good if we could all get to the meetings on time. And it would also be very helpful if once we got there we were
organised
and
focused
and we didn't waste time discussing totally irrelevant
personal
issues, like problems we might have with certain
teachers
and
assignments
or even the love life of another member of the debating team – or lack thereof.'

Razz pointed at Bill, Ignatius and me in turn. ‘Are you guys listening to what our Glorious All-knowing Leader is saying here? If we wanna win the big one, you guys have gotta cut
all
that stuff out, OK?'

Then Razz turned back to Scobie.

‘Don't worry, O Captain, My Captain, I'll keep them in line. And look, don't be too hard on them. Hey, I've probably been guilty of some of those things myself.'

‘Surely not,' Scobie said. Then he thrust his hand forward, palm down, with his chubby fingers spread out. His eyes swept around the table. ‘What do you say? Senior Debating Champions?'

We all pancaked our hands on top of his.

‘Senior Debating Champions,' we replied.

We were just disentangling ourselves when Miss Tarango weaved her way through the yard, setting a course for the staffroom. She was carrying an armful of folders. We all watched as she disappeared inside. I think the same thought was going through each of our heads, but it was Bill who turned it into words.

‘Last year with Miss Tarango.'

That put a bit of a dampener on how everything was shaping up.

‘We'll have to get her something really nice when we leave.'

‘Rigid idea, Billy Boy!' Razz said with a soft punch to Bill's arm. ‘And not the usual stuff like flowers or chocolates. Gotta be something special.'

We all agreed with that. But what?

‘Hey, I know what we can do,' Razz said. ‘It's simple, man. We're winning the Debating Trophy, right? Well, why don't we just win the College Cup for Miss Tarango while we're at it?'

We joined with Razz in laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of his suggestion.

All of us, that is, except James Scobie.

‘Maybe we should look into it.'

We all waited for the punch line. It never came.

‘Forgive me, My Lord of Humungous Heaps of Grey Matter, but are you
nuts
?'

‘It would be the perfect present for her,' Scobie stated calmly. ‘She's always been Charlton House's number one supporter even before she was made Patron. She supports everything, she gets dressed up in the house colours, she always cheers the loudest even when we lose – which is normally the case – and she's by far the hardest working of all the house Patrons. It's about time she got some reward. And I can't think of a better reward for all that effort than winning her the College Cup. I'm just suggesting we should consider it, that's all.'

Razz pruned his face up in disbelief.

‘Consider it? Look, Your Know-It-All-Ness, I think there are some pretty basic things you're missing. Like, for a start,
this
, Scobes,' Razz said, thumping on the table and stamping on the ground, ‘is reality. It's where the rest of us here are living. Why don't you forget about Charlton ever winning the College Cup and come join us?'

‘I'm happy to deal with reality, Orazio. That's why I think before we dismiss the idea we should do some hard research into our previous performances, assess our strengths and weaknesses, study the points table and see what the
reality
of our situation is.'

At the mention of the words ‘research' and ‘points table' Prindabel lifted his nose slightly off his
Science World
magazine and glanced up.

‘Well, if you want research,' Razz said, ‘just take a look at how we went last year in the Big Three. Athletics Carnival – last place. Swimming Carnival – last place. Cross-country – hey,
what do you know? Last place. You won't go changing that all around in just one year. It's impossible.'

‘
Seems
impossible,' Scobie said and held up his hand just in time to stop Razz from shouting,
I know not
‘
seems
'
!
‘But not all the points that contribute to the College Cup come from just those three events. What we really need is for someone to
analyse
all the available
statistics
on last year's competition and then prepare a detailed
breakdown –
perhaps a
spreadsheet
, even – of the points-scoring system and
report
back to us.'

Prindabel's head had crept a little higher and his eyes had opened a little wider with each of the words Scobie had stressed.

‘What we
need
,' Scobie said finally, tapping the point of his finger on the table, ‘is for someone to do the
maths
.'

The Prindabel Power Pointer shot up into the air.

‘I could do that.'

‘Really, Ignatius? Would you?' Scobie said, actually managing to look genuinely surprised. ‘That would be excellent. At least then we would have a better picture of where we stand.'

‘Well, yeah, sure, Prindabuddy, why not? Go ahead. Knock yourself out. Write a report on Charlton's chances of winning the College Cup. And to save time, do your conclusion first. Just type in “Zero”.'

That's where the discussion ended. Even though I couldn't think of a better thankyou present for Miss Tarango than winning her the College Cup, I had to agree with Razz. It was never going to happen.

The remainder of morning tea was spent throwing up other ‘lasts' for the year. We came up with plenty too. Some good, some not so good. The one that got the biggest laugh was ‘last detention for Razz'.

But there was one ‘last' that I kept to myself. One that I couldn't stop thinking about.

The last day without Kelly Faulkner back in my life.

I'd spent most of the holidays thinking about meeting Kelly Faulkner again; wondering where and when it would all happen and what it would be like. I also spent a bit of time trying to hose down all my spot-fire doubts, which threatened to take hold and rage out of control.

Things like, that maybe Kelly had changed, or met someone else. I mean, all we really had was that night at the Dugongs' concert and one short, amazing, mind-blowing kiss. If she really did like me, then why did she stop sending emails? When we finally met again she'd probably just stare at me with those beautiful ice-blue eyes and say, ‘Do I
know
you from somewhere?'

All right, I was just being stupid with that last bit. Kelly would remember me. After all, how many other Ishmaels did she know?
I
might be forgettable, but unfortunately my
name
certainly wasn't. I decided to remain positive and focus on what I knew rather than what I didn't know. And I knew from Sally Nofke via Razz that Kelly and her mother and brother Marty were back, I knew that she'd been really busy getting set up in the boarding house at Lourdes College and I knew that Razz and Sally were working on getting Kelly and me together. I was daydreaming about that very get-together one lunchtime when Ignatius Prindabel presented his report on
the College Cup. When he did, the course of the entire school year changed.

With Mr Guthrie's permission we were all gathered in Homeroom to hear the official findings. Some were gathered more enthusiastically than others.

‘Welcome to Fantasy Island, kiddies, where Uncle Iggy Wiggy will now waste our time.'

Ignatius ignored Razz and pulled some sheets from a folder. We each received two pages. They were filled with charts, diagrams, lists, tables, figures, percentages and bullet points.

‘You really do have a very bad case of chronic nerdism, don't you, P-buddy?'

‘Thank you, Orazio,' Scobie said. ‘Now I've already studied the report in detail, so Ignatius, why don't you just run through the highlights for everyone else?'

‘Well, Pie Graph 1.0 shows the breakdown of all the various sources of points for last year's College Cup, obviously expressed in percentages.'

‘Obviously,' Razz repeated.

‘As you can see, the Big Three – the Swimming Carnival, the Athletics Carnival and the Cross-country – accounted for approximately 56 per cent of the total points allotted. The remaining points came from a range of other minor events, which I have labelled Miscellaneous and spelt out in more detail in Pie Graph 1.1 as well as Table (A). These include the various inter-house competitions such as the indoor soccer competition and the talent quest as well as points for participation in certain school activities.

‘Now I've also completed a breakdown and analysis on each of the Big Three events to see where the individual houses gained their points, with a particular focus, via James' instructions, on what proportion came from performance compared to participation. You can see the results of that in Charts 1, 2 and 3 and Tables (B) and (C). In addition, Table (D) shows the points difference between the losing houses and
the eventual winning house expressed both in raw numbers and as a percentage of the total winning score. On the second page …'

‘Prindabel, stop!' Razz said, waving the handouts at him. ‘I'm sure this is brilliant, man, and you'll probably win the Nobel Geek Prize, but before my head explodes, just tell us what it all means.'

Ignatius placed his two sheets of paper together, tapped them on the desk in front of him and laid them down.

‘It means, Orazio, that based on the evidence of last year's results … it's mathematically possible for Charlton House to not win
any
of the Big Three and still win the overall College Cup.'

‘You're joking.'

‘No, I'm not. Of course the more successful we are in the Big Three, the smaller the percentage of points we need to win in the Miscellaneous section and therefore the better our chances of winning the cup will become.'

Razz blew out a long breath. ‘What about you, Your Way-Better-Than-Us-ness? Do you agree with Professor Pie Graph here?'

‘Absolutely,' Scobie said. ‘And I've come up with a Three-point Plan to help us achieve our goal.'

Scobie waddled to the front of the classroom and wrote
OPERATION TARANGO
on the whiteboard.

‘The madness begins,' Razz said with a shake of his head.

Then Scobie added
1.
MOTIVATION.

‘The first thing we have to do is motivate everyone in Charlton House to get involved, to train hard and to do their best. We certainly need to lift our game as much as possible in the Big Three.'

Scobie returned to the board and wrote
2.
PARTICIPATION.

‘This will be our secret weapon. In the Cross-country, for example, as long as you finish within a set time, you get a point for your house. Same with some events in the swimming and
athletics. This is an area that has never been fully exploited. We'd need to aim at what I like to call
Saturation Participation
.'

Scobie added the final point of his Three-point Plan.
3.
DIVERSIFICATION.

‘We definitely need to spread our points-earning potential away from just the big three. We need to specifically target the long list of miscellaneous items. We need to make sure that
whenever
and
wherever
College Cup points are up for grabs, Charlton House is there, in numbers and ready to compete.'

Scobie clipped the lid on his whiteboard marker and walked back to the cluster of desks where the rest of us were sitting.

‘Motivation, Participation and Diversification,' he said. ‘That's what can win Charlton House the College Cup. I think we should give Operation Tarango a go. Who's with me?'

Just as he did with the debating challenge, Scobie held his hand out in front of us.

‘What about you, Ignatius? A lot of data would have to be continually collated and analysed once we got under way. We'd need someone who could give us accurate, detailed, up-to-date reports on our progress and coordinate our plan of attack. Would you be willing to do it?'

Ignatius immediately placed his spider-like hand over Scobie's.

‘You had me at “data”,' he said.

‘Excellent. And what about you, Bill? Surely a
Lord of the Rings
devotee wouldn't turn down the opportunity to join an unlikely quest with a rag-tag band of companions to bring back a legendary golden cup for a fair damsel.'

Bill had a shire-sized smile on his face as his big hand engulfed Prindabel's. ‘You had
me
at “quest”,' he said.

‘And Ishmael, your namesake was a bit of a quest man too, wasn't he? Can't promise you an adventure on the high seas, but it should turn out less dangerous than tackling the great white whale. Will you answer the call, Ishmael? Can we pipe you aboard?'

‘Aye, aye, Captain,' I told him and added my hand.

That just left Razz.

‘So, you're all off on a
biiiiiiiig
quest now, are you?' he said, like he was talking to pre-schoolers.

We all nodded back at him like pre-schoolers. Razz rolled his eyes but clamped his hand firmly on top of the stack.

‘Well, there's no way I'm gonna let you four lunatics have all the fun while I'm stuck here by myself in Hobbitville.'

There was a moment of communal grinning before we began to withdraw our hands.