The Year My Life Broke (3 page)

Red came looking for me when I was at the bus stop after school. We only had about sixty seconds before the buses left, and he wasn't on my bus, so it had to be a quick conversation. He said, ‘Hey, thanks for turning up at lunchtime, Josh, but I guess we've got enough people.'

‘No problem,' I said.

‘Sorry about what Surrey said. He can be a real bastard if you get on his bad side.'

‘Doesn't matter. I muck around a lot in PE so I guess I deserved it.'

‘Hey, you know, I was thinking, I play for a club, South Tarrawagga, and on Wednesdays we have a coaching clinic for, like, new players, you know, beginners and all that. You want to come? I help out most weeks. Kids improve quite a lot – you can see them getting better . . .'

Final calls were being made for the buses and we were both getting personal invitations from teachers to climb aboard. I felt awful for having deceived Red about my cricket. He was a nice kid.

‘Oh look, thanks, I gotta go, I'm not that bad really, but thanks, um, I'll let you know
. . .
' And I ran for my bus.

We were watching a 20/20 match on TV that night when I started whingeing about PE. Pippa was standing in the doorway. She'd just been whingeing too, about the fact that we were watching cricket. I didn't think she was listening while I was complaining about Mr Surrey to Mum and Dad, but suddenly she looked at me and said, ‘All my friends at Abernathy called you the Meathead.'

‘Pippa!' Mum said. ‘That's not very nice. Apologise to Josh.'

‘What do you mean they called me the Meathead?' I asked. I was pretty angry.

She shrugged. ‘I'm just telling you, that's what they called you.'

‘But what did they mean by it?' Dad asked.

Pippa shrugged again. ‘They meant he was just a meathead. All he does is play sport, talk sport, eat, breathe and live sport. He's never interested in anything else.'

‘That's not true,' Mum said, but kind of automatically. I wasn't sure if she believed it.

I knew it was stupid to let anything Pippa said upset me. Mum and Dad were always telling me to ignore her. That wasn't easy though. When it came to upsetting people, she was a professional. When it came to upsetting people, she was the Princess of Painful. But I'd never heard of kids at Abernathy calling me the Meathead, and it did get to me. Cricket, sport – they weren't the only things in my life. I liked reading and I'd read the whole Harry Potter series twice. I liked drawing and painting in art and I especially liked ceramics when we'd done it last year for a week with a visiting potter at Abernathy Primary. I was mad on Lego and I'd built a whole fleet of battleships and destroyers and stuff.

But yeah, cricket was the thing I was into most. Since when had that been a crime? I knew I was fairly good at it and I dreamed of playing for Australia one day. So did a million other kids, of course, but I was dead serious about my cricket, and until everything went wrong and we had to move to Tarrawagga I'd trained four afternoons a week and played two games every weekend.

Pippa went off to her bedroom again – she spent a lot of time in there these days; she'd kept to herself much more since we'd had the big financial wipe-out. After she'd gone, Dad said quietly, ‘Don't worry about what Pippa says, Josh, she's hurting quite a bit still, and she wants to share the pain around.'

Mum just looked at him, then said to me, ‘My friends and I used to be called the Cube by the other girls when I was at school.'

‘The Cube?'

‘You know what a cube is . . . a whole lot of squares stuck together.'

It took me a minute to get it, then I laughed.

My parents were decent people. I knew the truth about what happened when Antelope crashed. I knew my parents had the choice of grabbing every dollar they could get, and running for it, like Mr Martini and Mr Wilkins. Instead, they'd put all their money into it to try to prop it up. Despite what people yelled at us and said about us online, I knew my Mum and Dad had done the right thing. I was proud of them for that. They lost most of their friends, who didn't understand what had happened – and didn't even try to understand – and we ended up poor, but I didn't care.

One friend who still kept in touch though was Mark Watley, my coach from Southern Districts. Mark had played twelve games for Tasmania before he snapped his Achilles. He was good. And funnily enough the very next day after Pippa told me about the Meathead thing, cricket came back into my life. When Dad got home from work he told me how he'd run into Mark. ‘He asked where you were playing,' Dad said, ‘and when I said “nowhere” he was a bit shattered. They're picking the rep teams soon. Seems like you're in the North Central zone now. Mark's got a mate, though, who coaches an Under 14s team for Cypress. He says you should sign up for them. You'd get good coaching and he feels you should be playing Under 14s.'

‘Cypress? What's Cypress?'

‘It's a club not far from here. About eight k's. They play Saturday mornings. Mum or I could get you there, no worries.'

‘Under 14s? They'd be a lot bigger than me.'

‘Mark thinks it would be good for you. You'd get more competition. He's given me the coach's number. I'll ring him after dinner if you want.'

I did want. Meathead or Vegehead, I was hungry for cricket. I needed to get out there and play decently again, instead of all the mucking around I'd been doing at school. I wanted it so badly I would have walked to Cypress every Saturday for a game. I would have walked backwards.

‘OK, I guess. I don't mind.'

I heard Dad's conversation with the coach. His name was Wally. It seemed like Mark Watley had already rung him, because Wally was keen to have me. Training was on Fridays and games were like Mark had said, on Saturdays. My dad told him I'd be there Friday. I felt great when I heard that. I scoffed dinner in about six mouthfuls then asked for more. ‘Gee, Josh,' Mum said. ‘What's got into you? You've hardly eaten a thing the last few months.'

It was true, my appetite seemed to have gone away. I didn't know whether it was Tarrawagga or the school or both. Maybe it was Antelope. My tummy was filled with sadness since everything had gone wrong, and there hadn't been much room for food.

Just four days later I was at my first training session for the Cypress Under 14s. I had played a few Under 14s games before, when Abernathy Tigers were short of players. And when I saw the Cypress kids, they didn't seem so big. Maybe I was catching up height-wise. Anyway, I didn't feel I was playing with giants any more.

We started in the nets and after a while Wally chucked me a ball and told me to bowl. The batsman was a big fat kid with long hair that he had to keep brushing out of his eyes. But he knew what he was doing and, geez, when he hit a ball it stayed hit.

It felt so good to have a cricket ball in my hands again. My first delivery had six months of frustration and hunger in it. It wasn't that short but it just about took the big kid's head off. ‘Holy crap,' he said. The second one took his middle stump out and sent it spinning backwards. He got a thick outside edge on the third one and in my imagination it flew into the safe hands of someone who would have been at first slip.

He hit the fourth one so hard it just about took my head off. ‘Holy crap,' I said, and he laughed. I had to run about fifty metres to get it back.

I got my revenge a bit later when I got him again, bowled, with a yorker. Then it was my turn to bat and that was harder. I was pretty rusty and two of the bowlers were genuinely fast. I reckon I faced three overs before I got one perfectly in the middle and felt that sweet sensation of bat and ball clicking together, and saw the ball race away into the distance.

Wally put me straight into the team, because they were missing three kids for the game the next day. So I fronted up in the morning, with my whites white and my pads cleaned and my bat sanded and oiled. I'd found a few hairline fractures in the splice of the bat, but Dad and I coated them with superglue, so it looked like I'd get at least one more season out of it. That was lucky; we couldn't afford a new one.

We were playing a team called Pipertown, and we won the toss and batted. I went in when we were 5 down for 46, and I had big plans to knock up a fast hundred and save the day for Cypress. Unfortunately I got out third delivery I faced. The ball moved a little and my feet didn't move at all. It was a really clumsy bit of batting. As I left the crease to begin the long walk back, a Pipertown player at square leg said to me, ‘Go back to kindergarten, kid.'

I reached the line of deckchairs under the trees, feeling embarrassed and angry. ‘Doesn't matter,' Wally said. ‘It's a while since you've played, so Mark told me. It'll come back to you.'

We got out for 88. When their innings started I waited till the boy who'd made the kindergarten joke came in to bat, then asked our captain, a kid named Jonah, if I could bowl.

At the start of the next over Jonah threw me the ball. The kid from Pipertown had just hit three fours in a row. I marked out my run-up, gave the umpire my hat and came in with a burning feeling in my heart. It was just like in the nets the day before. The ball reared up like a cobra, only this time the boy tried to hook it. He got a top edge and the ball lollipopped high into the air. It seemed to take a minute and a half to reach the height of its long climb, then it descended slowly into the safe hands of our wickie. Pipertown were 3 for 70.

I got another wicket in my third over but at stumps they were 5 for 116. These matches went for two days, so they'd finish their innings the next weekend. I went home in my best mood since we moved to Tarrawagga. Getting a duck didn't matter so much; at least I was playing cricket again. I was even nice to Callan and Pippa. We played in the backyard and when they batted I gave Callan two chances and Pippa three before they had to go out.

When I batted I smashed a ball from Callan a bit too hard, and it went flying next door, into the cops' place. Six and out. Now the situation from a few weeks back was reversed. I was the one who had to get over the fence. I could have gone to their front door and knocked but after Harriet had hopped over our fence I figured I had the same rights. I just hoped they wouldn't shoot me.

Their backyard was much better for cricket than ours because it was mostly bare grass. Ours had too many plants and flowers. All that stuff got in the way. I could see the ball straight off, right against their chook shed. Pretty good shot, if I say so myself, even though it had got me out. I headed for it, trying not to look too guilty. But the situation from our place continued to reverse itself, 'cos through their back door came Harriet. She must have seen the ball come over; in fact she got to it before I did and picked it up and chucked it to me.

‘Thanks,' I said.

‘You're welcome.'

‘Is your name Harriet?'

‘That's it.'

‘Mine's Josh.'

‘Yeah, I figured that.'

I thought I might as well keep reversing things so I asked, ‘You wanna play cricket with us?'

‘Yeah, OK.'

She went to the back door, opened it and yelled into the house, ‘I'm going next door to play cricket.'

Someone yelled back and then a cop came out. He was just wearing a police shirt and trousers but he still looked like a cop. ‘G'day,' he said to me.

‘G'day.'

‘You from next door?'

‘Yeah.'

‘You must be Cameron's son.'

‘Yeah, I'm the oldest. I'm Josh.'

‘G'day, Josh.' We shook hands. He was the first policeman I'd ever talked to. He seemed all right. He turned to Harriet. ‘Be back by six o'clock, OK?'

‘OK.'

Harriet and I got over the fence while Lenny watched. I felt a bit self-conscious, like we were doing something illegal. That's the effect cops have on you I guess. But Harriet seemed good. Turned out she was an OK bowler. But she wouldn't bat. ‘I get minus scores when I bat,' she said. ‘And I hate it. I hate everything I'm not good at.'

She got me out with a faster ball when I tried to hit her into the middle of next week. Callan stumped me. ‘You should be in the school team,' I told her.

‘I might get in,' she said. ‘Surrey said I'm close. How come you're not in?'

I was gobsmacked. Somehow I'd forgotten that I might have blown my cover by playing backyard cricket. Luckily Callan was too far away to hear. ‘Not good enough,' I muttered.

She gave me a look, like, ‘What kind of idiot do you think I am?' I guess policemen's kids are pretty hard to fool. I went red. I didn't know what to say. We were sitting on the swing seat guzzling water.

‘Oh well,' I said. ‘I don't really try all that hard at school. Especially PE.'

‘Why not?'

‘I dunno, just started off bad with Surrey, so I couldn't be bothered trying . . . Plus, I don't know, I wanted to see what would happen if I . . . if I . . .'