The Long Way Home

  Chapter 24

  Simon rode his bike slowly to school the next morning. The large red welt under his right eye stung in the cold morning air causing it to ache all over again. His cheekbone looked like a swollen peach, only the skin that was once soft was now bruised and torn. Even when he pulled his cap down over his eyes there was going to be no way of hiding it when he got to school.

  Slowly bringing his BMX bike to a halt on the crest on the footpath of the Donnison Street overpass, he stared down at the railway line below where only 24 hours earlier he would have been standing on the platform just around the bend with his Poppy. Why did good days always have to end so badly? He was getting sick and tired of putting up with the same antics all the time, sick of being the person standing in front of the runaway rollercoaster his mother had become and trying to stop it. Each time it would end the same way, badly. He would always get run over and hurt.

  He had arrived home yesterday to be greeted with the smell of dinner cooking on the stove and a clean house courtesy of his Mum spending the afternoon tidying up for an invited guest that evening, namely Ron from across the road. She looked happy and had managed to find the time to put on a nice red dress, make-up and tie her black hair back in a single ponytail. For once her eyes didn’t look red and sunken and she had seemed happy to see Simon when he walked in the front door. It probably helped that his Dad, Sally and Poppy had dropped him off at the front gate and left him to walk up the driveway alone. The less his Mum and Dad saw of each other lately the better.

  All that his mother had asked him to do before Ron arrived was to take out the garbage. It had seemed a simple enough task until the plastic rubbish bag tore open before he reached the wheelie bin spilling the entire contents over the ground beside the carport, including the birthday card from his Aunty Gail and Uncle Tim.

  The whine of an electric train rose above the sound of the traffic crossing the bridge into town. The stainless steel electric double deck set passed directly underneath him as it accelerated out of town towards Sydney. He wished he was on board rather than watching it pass by while recalling the hurt he had felt reading his birthday card under the light in the carport. Taking his schoolbag from off his shoulders, he took out the stained birthday card he had rescued from a bag containing potato peels, dirty cotton tips and a can of tuna brine and read it one last time.

  Dear Simon

  Sorry we can’t be with you this year on your birthday, it’s hard to believe you are now 11. Have a truly happy birthday, remember all the good times we shared together and the times that are yet to come. Although we are far apart, always know that we hold you close in our prayers.

  Have an excellent birthday, hope the $50 buys you something nice to enjoy.

  Love Aunty Gail, Uncle Tim, Lynette and Justin

  Xoxoxoxo

  His birthday had been three months ago, his mother had only got around to throwing it out now and goodness knows where the $50 had gone. All this time he had wondered how his Aunt and Uncle could possibly have forgotten his birthday, after seeing the card in the garbage the answer was clear.

  He remembered how angry he felt as he stormed back inside and yelled at his mother, demanding to know why she hadn’t given him his birthday card. Her angrily denying that they had even sent him one only incited him further. After kicking the kitchen cupboard in frustration while screaming ‘I hate you’, he had looked up quickly in enough time to see the box of cling wrap with a full roll inside that had been sitting on the bench now in his mother’s hand. A moment later it struck him across the face, the metal tear off strip slicing like a cat’s claw through his cheek as the box disintegrated in a flurry of blows.

  Simon held the card out over the overpass and let it go, watching as it fell past the overhead wires and fluttered down onto the tracks below. Remembering how his last attempt to run away had ended badly, he tried to remain strong. It was only a matter of weeks now, his Dad had promised, and the courts would grant him full time custody meaning Simon would finally be free to live with him.

  In the meantime he had to get to school. At least having Miss McKenzie as his teacher again this year helped.