Kalpana's Dream (3 page)
‘Yes?’
‘Miss, I’m not
rare
. I’m just an ordinary kid who likes football. But, ’ Blocky folded his arms across his solid chest, ‘I’m not a leatherbrain.’
‘Leatherbrain?’ echoed Ms Dallimore.
Big Molly Matthews creaked round in her chair. ‘It’s what Mr Crombie – he takes us for history – calls boys who love football, Miss. Boys who play football even in the summer!’
‘I didn’t say “love”, I said “like”, ’ muttered Blocky.
‘Mr Crombie thinks they’ve got shrivelled brains, ’ Molly went on. ‘Shrivelled brains like leather, see? He says for every goal they kick they lose a hundred brain cells, and in the summer, it’s a thousand – but that’s not true, is it, Miss? Because if Blocky had no brains, then he wouldn’t care about being called a leatherbrain, would he?’
‘I suppose not, ’ replied Ms Dallimore, a little uncertainly. ‘And Miss, what you love shows who you are, doesn’t it? So if you wrote about something you love, you’d be writing about your real true self, wouldn’t you?’
‘Oh
yes
!’ replied Ms Dallimore.
Molly beamed at her. ‘So I’m going to write about my baby shoes!’
A muffled groan rose from the Short Street kids. Molly Matthews’ baby shoes! She’d talked about them at Show and Tell for years: how beautiful they were, how soft and tiny, how she could remember her mother’s hands fastening the two little buttons on the side . . .
Molly glared round at them. ‘I’m going to!’ she cried. ‘I can, can’t I, Miss?’
‘Yes, of course you can, Molly.’
‘
See
?’ Molly flounced in her chair triumphantly, and the chair gave a mighty creak.
Molly Matthews was a big, big girl. Her hands were big, and her feet, and her kind face was round as a plate – a very big plate, a Christmas plate you could fit a whole turkey on. There were kids from Short Street who said Molly Matthews had never worn those shoes. They were made of soft blue leather, tiny as fairy slippers. Even when she was five, both little shoes had fitted neatly into one of Molly’s broad pink palms.
‘It stands to reason, ’ Kate had said to Neema when they were both only in Grade Three. ‘She’d have been an enormous baby, with enormous feet. Her gran might have bought those shoes for her, like she says, but I bet her mum could never squash them on.’
It was one of the few things Kate and Neema disagreed about, because Neema felt certain there would have been a time, even if it was a very short time, a few days, or perhaps a single week, when Molly’s new pink feet would have fitted perfectly into those fairy shoes.
Neema’s gaze drifted towards the window: across the playground she could see three boys helping Mr Lazenby carry sports equipment, and one of them was the boy she’d met outside the library on her very first day at Wentworth, the one who’d seemed so strangely familiar. His back was towards her, yet she knew it was him – something about the set of his shoulders and the way he moved. And once again those words came drifting oddly into her mind: sheep, shepherd, lamb . . .
‘Ms Dallimore?’ Brainy Jessaline O’Harris raised an earnest hand.
‘Yes, Jessaline?’
‘Ms Dallimore, when does the essay have to be handed in?’
‘Oh, six weeks or thereabouts, ’ said Ms Dallimore casually.
Jessaline gaped at her, and so did the rest of 7B. Six weeks? It was ages; in six weeks a whole long summer holiday could pass, a kitten grow into a cat, a baby learn to smile. You could grow your hair long, fall in love and out again, get slim, grow fat, learn Russian, become an entirely different person. Jessaline twitched at her long skinny plaits. ‘Ms Dallimore?’
‘Yes, Jessaline?’
‘Ms Dallimore, why have we got so long?’
7B listened, and Ms Dallimore’s radiant smile shone over them again. ‘So you can think, ’ she answered, ‘and imagine, and – and learn to fly!’
Kate raced along Lawrence Road in the direction of Kindness Kreche, her bag banging on her shoulders, dodging old ladies out shopping with their trolleys, and stragglers from the primary school who chanted at her, ‘Kate thinks she’s great! Just because she goes to high school!’
She was late. Her little sister Lucy would be waiting, giving poor Miss Lilibet what Mum called ‘Lucy-Hell’. She was late because she’d hung out at the gates with Neema and the other kids from 7B, whingeing about Ms Dallimore and her essay and the mysterious fact that she’d given them six whole weeks to do it, which meant she must be expecting something truly special . . .
And as they’d stood there, grizzling heartily, who should come by but Ms Dallimore herself – long skirt swirling, her dark red hair fizzing with some kind of weird electricity. ‘Thoughts flying already, I see, ’ she called as she swept past them, heading for that waiting, big black car.
Not even Tony Prospero, whose dad ran Lawrence Motors, could identify the make of the glistening black car. It was huge and solid, with a long sloping bonnet and big spoked silver wheels. ‘Like a bloody hearse, ’ growled Kerry Moss. Its windows were black too, tinted darkly against the light – you couldn’t hope to get the tiniest glimpse inside. Ms Dallimore wouldn’t be at Wentworth High much longer, the Year Eights kept hinting darkly. Soon, perhaps very soon, Count Dracula in his big black car would speed her away to his castle in Transylvania.
Which was a fairytale, of course, thought Kate. All the same, when Ms Dallimore started on about thinking and imagination and
flying
, and heavenly music of the soul – when she started giving out wacky homework – you couldn’t help hoping the fairytale might be true.
Because what did Kate have to write about? She was ordinary, like Blocky Stevenson. There was nothing the least bit unusual about her, and her family was ordinary, too. She didn’t have exotic parents like Neema had: a glamorous Indian mother who worked at the university, and a doctor dad who, when he was a baby, had been found in a cardboard box on the back step of a children’s home . . .
‘Oh!’ Kate skidded to a halt. Across the busy road, she saw a small square girl in a paint-smeared kinder smock, all by herself, gazing entranced into the window of the hardware store. Lucy. Lucy where she shouldn’t be, again.
‘Lucy!’ Kate fought her way grimly through the heavy afternoon traffic, the streams of trucks and fuming buses, the angry hooting cars. ‘Lucy, what are you doing here?’
Her little sister turned. Ignoring Kate’s question she pointed to the window, where a big shiny mulching machine was displayed behind the glass. ‘Katie, if you put a person in there, a bony old person like Lilipet, and switched it on, would–’ ‘You’re not supposed to
be
here. You know you’re supposed to wait at the crèche for me.’
‘You were late. All the others had gone home. There was only Lilipet there.’
‘That doesn’t matter; you still have to wait.’
‘I was helping you, ’ said Lucy, as she often did.
‘What?’ Kate was breathless and angry from her struggle across the road. She’d almost been run over by a pale pink florist’s van. Looking down at her little sister’s bland face, she felt a sudden painful jab in the middle of her chest and thought it might be actual hate. If only Count Dracula would spirit
Lucy
away.
‘I saved you walking all that way, ’ said Lucy virtuously, ‘like – like
her
.’ She pointed down the road, and Kate turned to see a small dishevelled figure hurrying anxiously towards them: Miss Lilibet.
Poor Miss Lilibet was breathless too, her face all flushed and blotchy, big black hairpins tinkling to the pavement at her feet. ‘Oh, Lucy dear, I’m so glad you’re safe and sound!’ She put out a hand to pat Lucy’s arm, but Lucy flinched away. ‘So careless of me!’ Miss Lilibet exclaimed. ‘What will your mother think?’
Nothing, thought Kate. There was no way she was telling Mum that Lucy had run off again.
Miss Lilibet pushed back a straggle of wispy hair. ‘I turned my back for just the merest second, and she was gone. Vanished into thin air. She’s so, so–’ Miss Lilibet stared at Lucy, who stared sternly back. ‘So quick.’
‘Yes, she is quick, ’ agreed Kate.
‘And so determined.’
‘Yes.’
Now they both considered Lucy, their gaze fixed on her small square chin and the way it jutted, firmly, from beneath her rosebud mouth. Lucy would be a match for any vampire, thought Kate.
‘There’s never been another child got out before, ’ Miss Lilibet went on fretfully. ‘Never once!’
‘You can go now, ’ Lucy told her, waving a small dismissive hand. ‘My sister’s here.’
And Miss Lilibet obeyed! She obeyed a four-year-old! Kate watched the small sad figure plodding down the road, shoulders drooping, head lowered in defeat. That was one thing she’d never be when she grew up, decided Kate: a keeper of a crèche.
‘You shouldn’t run away from the poor thing, ’ she scolded Lucy.
There was no reply. Stealthy as a footpad, Lucy had scuttled off again. Kate spotted her almost at once, down at the bus-stop, talking to – Oh no! Kate’s heart gave a little jump inside her chest – a group of Year Twelve girls from Wentworth High, resplendent in their brilliant scarlet sweatshirts! And – and Lucy was dancing round them, one small arm stretched out, one chubby, square-nailed finger pointing at their knees. ‘It’s snowing down south!’ she was chanting gleefully, ‘Snowing! Snowing!’
It was a saying of their gran’s to which Lucy had taken a fancy, ever since she’d heard Gran murmur the words to another old lady in the supermarket. The old lady had looked down at the white edge of slip showing beneath her hem, tugged at a hidden strap and whispered, ‘Thank you, dear.’
‘Snowing down south!!’
The Year Twelve girls never wore slips beneath their tiny skirts. They didn’t know what Lucy meant. Neither did Lucy, really.
‘Down south?’
‘In Tasmania, darling?’
‘No! No! Down there!’ Lucy pointed at their knees again.
‘Isn’t she cute?’
‘Darling.’
‘Sweet.’
Lucy did look sweet, Kate would grant them that. She was very small, and everything about her was square: her short sturdy body, her face, the glossy chocolate-coloured hair that was cut straight all round so that only the tips of her ears showed beneath it, like drops of rich pure cream. Yet whenever some stranger in the street said ‘sweet’, Kate fumed inside. Oh, it was all right for them! They didn’t have to live with her, they didn’t have to share a room!
‘Why is she here on her own, though?’ wondered a thin spiky-looking girl with a prefect’s badge pinned proudly to her chest.
‘What’s your name, sweetie?’
‘That’s for me to know and you to find out, ’ replied Lucy, in the manner of her gran.
‘Are you lost, darling?’
‘No!’ Lucy stamped her little foot.
The girls laughed. ‘Ooh, she’s cross with us!’
‘Look at her eyes! They’ve gone black – like raisins.’
‘No they haven’t! My eyes are beautiful! My gran says! Yours aren’t though – yours are like, like–’
Kate rushed up. ‘Lucy, come on now, we’ve got to get home.’
The Year Twelve girls gazed at her with disapproval.
‘Are you her sister?’ demanded the spiky prefect.
‘Yes, ’ mumbled Kate.
‘How come you left her on her own? She could have got lost.’
‘Or run over.’
‘Anything.’
Kate flushed. ‘I didn’t leave her on her own. She – she got away from me.’ Kate heard her voice sounding lame and flustered, a little like Miss Lilibet’s.
‘You should take more care of her, ’ said the spiky one repressively.
‘She’s only small, you know.’
‘And sweet.’
‘Snooty Year Twelve snobs, ’ raged Kate, as she marched Lucy off along the street. She bet none of them had little sisters. Or if they did, you could bet they didn’t have to share a room with them; or do their homework with a Lucy hanging round their neck. Or listen to her snoring when at last she’d gone to sleep – really big snores, the kind you might expect from a construction worker who’d had a heavy day on site.
How on earth was she going to get Ms Dallimore’s essay done, when everyone agreed that instead of being easy, it might turn out to be really hard? How was she going to concentrate, to think, to imagine, to – to fly? With Lucy there?
If only Dad would finish her sleep-out on the back verandah. All he really needed to do now was put the windows in; the windows that would look out over their big yard. Then she’d have peace, and a private place, and a latch on the door to keep Lucy out. ‘Ready by Christmas, ’ he’d promised her last year. And then, ‘Ready by the time school starts.’ Now it was ‘Ready by Easter, ’ and Easter was weeks away. And Kate just knew, when Easter came closer and she started asking him again, Dad would say, ‘Ready by Winter’ – or else start giving his favourite answer, which was ‘Soon.’
Their house was full of ‘soons’: taps that dripped and drawers that stuck and roller blinds that wouldn’t roll . . .
‘Kate! Katie!’ Lucy was tugging at her arm.
‘What?’
‘You’re not listening! You didn’t hear what I said!’
Kate sighed. ‘What did you say, then?’
Lucy beamed at her. ‘I’m going to have Milo when I get home – and not in milk! Out of the tin, with a big, big spoon!’
‘No you’re not. Mum says it’s bad for your teeth.’
‘I am, ’ said Lucy. ‘AM! AM! AM! And you’d better not try and stop me or I’ll–’
‘You’ll what?’
With her free hand Lucy reached into her pocket and took out something truly horrible: it looked like a crow’s whole wing. She brandished it at Kate. ‘Or I’ll knock you down with a feather!’ she said in Gran’s voice again.
Kate’s lips twitched; she simply couldn’t keep from smiling. As Mum said, Lucy was Hell, but you had to laugh at her sometimes.
Two weeks passed by. No-one in 7B had got very far with Ms Dallimore’s essay, not even Molly Matthews, who normally couldn’t wait to write about her baby shoes. Jessaline O’Harris was the only one who’d really started, and starting it was as far as Jessaline had got. ‘It looked so easy, ’ she’d told Kate and Neema earnestly one study period in the library, ‘but do you know, I simply couldn’t get a grip on it.’ Brainy Jessaline had shaken her skinny plaits in bewilderment. ‘And that’s not like me at all.’ She’d fished a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and showed it to them. ‘Look!’