Ishmael and the Hoops of Steel (27 page)

But the P-man wasn't done yet. From on his knees he made one last lunge, stretching out his thin right arm like an extendo-pole. And then, at the last moment, when it looked like he would have to fall just short, a familiar long, bony finger uncoiled itself. It was the Prindabel Power Pointer! It straightened and locked firmly before jabbing into the side of the volleyball. The ball bobbed upwards, landed for a second time on the tape, balanced there for a moment, then slid off down the opposite face of the net. By the time Windermere realised what was happening it was too late. Despite desperate, sprawling dives by two of their players, the ball bounced off their fingers and landed on the court.

The St Daniel's crowd went off. In amongst it all I caught glimpses of Mr Hardcastle pumping his fists like a madman, Mr Barker and Brother Jerome applauding madly and Miss Tarango doing her justifiably famous war dance. Back on the court Mr Guthrie calmed us all down and told us not to go completely crazy until we shook hands and congratulated the other team, which we did.

Then we went completely crazy.

After a lot of high five-ing, back-slapping, bear-hugging and whooping, Theodore and Razz (with a bit of a wince) hoisted Prindabel on to their shoulders and paraded him around the gym while the cheer squad up above performed a raucous
version of the school song. Ignatius waved at the crowd and held high the long, bony digit that had delivered the college its first ever volleyball championship – a digit referred to by an emotional Mr Hardcastle at that week's school assembly as the ‘Finger of God'.

For the next few days at school, boys would run up to Prindabel offering their open palms for a high five. And as befitting his new standing as a St Daniel's College Volleyball Legend, Ignatius even managed to make contact with some of them.

It ended up being one of the best semesters ever. Along with our victories in the Cross-country and the volleyball, we also won our last two debates and qualified unbeaten for the finals. They were the big highlights. But there were two other things I don't think I'll ever forget from the first half of Year Twelve.

One was the look on Razz's face when he saw his Semester One report card. I'd be guessing it matched the look on Mr Farmer's face when Razz gave him the sad news that he wouldn't be in his Economics class any more.

The second one was this phone call.

(Theme to
Mission Impossible
ring tone.)

Me:
Hello. Leseur residence. Ishmael speaking
. (Yes, I know. But it's what I was taught to say as a kid.)

Voice on the line:
Hi, Ishmael. It's Kelly. Kelly Faulkner
.

Me:
Hi, Kelly. How're you?
(But really – Oh my god! It's Kelly! OMG! OMG! OMG!)

Kelly:
I'm fine. How're you?

Me:
Good. Fine. Great. Yeah good
. (Had she got the message that I was OK?)

Kelly:
That's good. Well, why I'm ringing is … I guess you know about our Formal in a couple of weeks
. (Yes, I know and I'll come!)
Look, I realise this is really late to be asking
(Who
cares? Ask away! I'll come!) …
and I feel really bad
(I feel great! I'll come!) …
but I wasn't sure if I was even going to go or not and then I thought you only get one Year Twelve Formal
(Absolutely! And by the way, yes, I'll come!)
… so I was hoping, you know, if you were free
(Are you kidding? I was born free! I'll come!) …
and you wanted to
(I do! I really do! I'll come!) …
that maybe you'd be my partner for the night
. (Hmmmmmmmmm. I might have to think about it. I don't want to rush into anything.)

Me:
That'd be great. I'd love to. Yeah, sure. Thanks. Great. I'd love to. Great. Great
.

Kelly: (with a giggle)
I'll take that as a ‘yes' then
.

And that's how Razz, Sal, Kelly and I ended up going to the Lourdes Formal together. Razz's Uncle Georgiou chauffeured us all to the venue in a 1956 red Cadillac convertible. As well as Show Tunes, Uncle Georgiou also loved showy cars.

It turned out to be a good night with plenty of laughs. How could it not be with the Razzman there in fine form? And even if Kelly was quiet and seemed afraid to let herself be truly happy, being near her was still the best place in the world to be.

After it was all over, Razz and Sally headed off to a post-Formal party but all the Lourdes boarders had a bus waiting to take them back to the school. Kelly didn't seem to mind that much.

Outside the venue she thanked me for the ‘lovely night' and for being her partner on such ‘pathetically short notice'. She also said she was lucky to have a ‘friend' like me who would ‘put up with her'. Then she kissed my cheek and thanked me again for everything. She was about to board the bus and take a big chunk of my heart with her, when I managed to squeeze out the one question I'd been wanting to ask all night.

‘Kelly. It's ages away yet I know, and you don't have to decide right now of course. But I was wondering … Do you want to come to our formal … you know, with me … as my partner?'

The tiniest of smiles crept on to Kelly's face and stayed.

‘I thought you'd never ask,' she said.

A few weeks into the new semester we were back in one of the library discussion rooms. Scobie was sitting at the end of the table with a laptop opened in front of him. I was sitting beside Razz, and across the table from us were Bill and Ignatius. Scobie was hunched forward and we could only see half of his head sticking up above the back of the computer screen.

‘Anything?' I asked.

Scobie tapped on one of the keys and waited. His round pale face appeared above the screen. He adjusted his glasses.

‘Nothing yet,' he said.

We were waiting for the school Debating Society to post the grand final topic on their web page. That's right, we'd made it all the way! Scobie, Bill and Ignatius had won the
That We Should Re-introduce the Death Penalty
quarter-final and Scobie, Razz and I won the
Climate Change is the Only Issue
secret subject semifinal. Now the grand final was only one week away.

The topic was scheduled to go up at noon. Mr Slattery had given us special permission to miss English so we could start our preparation as soon as it arrived. It was five past twelve already.

‘Man, I can't believe we're in the final. Our last debate ever and it's the Big Kahuna! But boy, Wesley are gunna be tough. They beat Sal's team in the quarters. They were pretty deadly.'

Wesley Senior College was an exclusive girls' school with a reputation for academic excellence. Razz reckoned their uniforms had higher IQs than a lot of the guys at St Daniel's. I was there when they took on Lourdes. It was the only time I'd seen Kelly since the formal. We didn't get to talk much.

Scobie pushed the
Refresh
button again. We waited. He shook his head.

‘Man, the suspense is killing me!' Razz said with a slap of the table. ‘Gee, I hope we get something good. Remember that secret topic debate in Year Nine, Bilbo? No Scobes that night and we thought we'd get killed and then we scored that topic about the sci-fi fantasy stuff and you blew 'em away! Hey, maybe you'll get lucky again, Billy, and we'll be Affirmative for
That Hooping Should Be Made Compulsory in Schools
. Or maybe we'll get a Prindabuddy special like
That the Geek Will Inherit the Earth
.'

A click came from the end of the table. Scobie's head ducked down and was almost lost behind the screen.

‘Is it up, Scobes?'

We could just make out James's head bobbing up and down.

‘Well what is it? What's it like? Come on, man, tell us.'

Scobie slowly lowered the screen a little and sat back. His mouth was twisted off-centre.

‘This is going to be
very
interesting,' he said. ‘We're an all boys' school, we're up against an all girls' school, two of the three adjudicators including the chief adjudicator are female, and our topic is …'

Scobie clicked the lid of his laptop shut.

‘
That Women Are the Weaker Sex
. We're … Affirmative.'

For a moment it felt like someone had died. But it was really just our chances of winning suffering a near-fatal stroke.

‘But … how are we going to argue
that
?' Bill asked.

Scobie sent his mouth on a full circumnavigation of his face then gave his considered response.

‘Verwy, verwy carefullwy,' he said.

‘You're telling me, Scobes,' Razz said. ‘Otherwise we're gonna come out of this looking like a bunch of male chauffeuring pigs.'

Ignatius didn't even bother to object. All he said was, ‘Maybe you could read a passage from
The Sun Safe Adventures of Britney and Amber
to prove them wrong, Orazio?'

Razz was going to respond but then he stopped and slapped his forehead.

‘Man, and I just thought of something else. The Wreckin' Ball said she was coming to the final! We're dead meat, dudes. Even if a miracle happens and we win, we'll never get out of there alive.'

‘Well, let's not get carried away, Orazio. We need to look at the positives. First of all, at least we know it's true, don't we? Women
are
the weaker sex, right?'

We all nodded automatically.

‘Sure,' said Razz.

‘Absolutely,' said Ignatius.

‘No question,' said Bill.

‘It goes without saying,' I added.

We'd come a long way in debating since Year Nine. We never complained about a topic any more and Scobie had banned Razz from ever saying that we'd been given the ‘crap side' of the argument. Now, whatever side we had, we automatically believed it with all our hearts.

‘Excellent!' Scobie said. ‘Now that we are all agreed that women
are
in fact the weaker sex, we just have to work out
why
they are.'

Everyone stared at their pens and fiddled with their notepads for a bit before Ignatius spoke up.

‘Well, if we are defining weak as in “not as powerful”, then when it comes to physical strength, on average, women are not as strong as men. Statistics from various power sports will prove that.'

‘Thank you, Ignatius. It's a start, but we're going to need
much more than that. And keep in mind that saying women are less powerful than men is not the same thing as saying that women are inferior to men or less intelligent or less capable than men.'

‘No, no, we're not saying that. Absolutely not,' Razz said, laughing nervously as he checked quickly over both his shoulders, ‘because everybody knows that's so totally not true. Isn't that right, Ms Heckenvaal, just in case you're listening in on some sort of spying device?'

‘Speaking of Ms Heckenvaal, Orazio, how do you think she would argue this topic?'

‘What, you mean after she printed it out from the web page and shoved it down the throat of whoever wrote it? Sorry, Scobes, I can't see the Wreckin' Ball ever agreeing that women are less powerful than …'

Razz stopped as if he'd been struck on the back of the head.

‘Wait on. Miss
did
say stuff about women having less power … less influence … didn't she?'

James smiled and nodded.

‘Yeah, that's right. Isn't that what all those Suffering Jets chicks were going on about? Women not having the right to vote … not having the same
political
power as men. And, and remember in that feminism stuff how we looked at all those countries where women still don't have the same rights as men? We could use that, couldn't we? Like how they're sort of
weaker
that way?'

The rest of us nodded along with Scobie and started scribbling on our notepads.

‘Hey, man, and I think I got another one! What about all that equal pay stuff and how women don't get the top jobs? That'd make them less powerful too wouldn't it?'

Razz was really getting excited now.

‘And wait, wait, wait. There's all that cultural and religious stuff we did too. Like how women are treated as inferior to men in some places and they can't be priests and stuff. That
reduces their power I reckon. I mean, didn't Wreckin' Ball say that the whole feminist thing was about women trying to get their fair share of power? And in a lot of places they still haven't got it, right? We could use some of that stuff couldn't we, Scobes?'

Scobie didn't answer immediately. He just started to clap slowly and firmly. ‘What a piece of work is a Razzman,' he said.

The rest of us joined in the applause. While James Scobie might have been able to paraphrase
Hamlet
, Orazio Zorzotto was never one to be outdone.

‘I am Razzman, hear me roar. My brain is too big to ignore!'

As a sign of our appreciation we pelted him with pens and bits of screwed-up paper.

The debating finals for all the various year levels were hosted by Preston College in their Performing Arts theatre. The Senior final was the last debate of the evening. The theatre was jam-packed.

Both teams were lined up on opposite sides of the stage separated by the timekeeper's and chairperson's table. On the desks in front of us were pens and notepads as well as glasses and jugs of cold water. Behind us were big vases of flowers. The school banners and colours of St Daniel's and Wesley College were draped on the back wall. We'd never been in a debate quite like this one.