Ishmael and the Return of the Dungongs

  ‘… and I’m telling you, this is what chicks do. She’s sending you a subtle message, man. You gotta get the radar going here. You gotta pick up on these things. Do you think if she was on the blower to the local priest she’d say, “Hi, Father, lovely to talk to you; by the way, do you realise I’m standing here totally starkers at the moment?” No way. Man, she’s got the hots for you-bad. You are so in, dude!’

  ‘Razz, I think you’re getting a bit carried away.’

  What was I saying? ‘Carried away’ was the Razza’s natural state. It was like pointing out to a hurricane that it was being a touch breezy.

  ‘You’ll see, man. Just wait till the party. You and Kelly Faulkner – wicked!’

  In the seat beside me, Orazio Zorzotto drummed a manic beat on the lid of the desk while his head bobbed up and down and his legs jumped like twin jackhammers.

  ‘Look, Razza … about the party … Just don’t … you know … just don’t go crazy with this “me and Kelly Faulkner” thing, OK? I mean, don’t make a big deal out of it, all right? I just want her to think that I’m normal for a change, that’s all. So don’t go acting … you know … like a madman or anything.’

  Razza stopped drumming and pushed his fingers through his mess of black hair so that it stuck up at strange angles. ‘I get it. What you’re saying is, you want me to be sort of low-key … a little … inconspicuous … Adopt the old laid-back approach.’

  ‘Yeah … laid-back. That’d be good.’

  Razza raised his eyebrows, pushed out his bottom lip and nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yeah … sure … No worries. I’m totally cool with that.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, starting to feel a little less stressed about the party. It lasted around fifteen seconds. As I leant over to drag the remaining books from my school bag, a sharp jab hit my ribs. I turned around to find Razza’s face leering at me.

  ‘Eh … Kelly Faulkner,’ he said sticking out his tongue and panting. ‘What d’ya reckon, eh?’ My ribs suffered another onslaught. ‘You and Kelly Faulkner? Kel-ly Faulk-ner,’ he repeated like a deranged hypnotist while his eyes grew into two big satellite dishes. ‘You da man, Ishmael,’ he said, punching my shoulder. ‘Just think, you and Kelly Faulkner … you and the Kel-ster … the Kel-meister … the Kel-enheimer!’

  Razza shouted this last title as if he was introducing a boxing match and accompanied it with such a thunderous drum roll on the desktop that everyone stopped what they were doing and stared as his hands blurred into a flurry of blows. It was only a matter of time before either Razza or the desk exploded into flames. That was until …

  ‘Mr Zorzotto! Cease and desist!’

  Immediately the room transformed into a living display of wax dummies that would have made Madame Tussaud weep with envy. Every sound, every movement, every breath, every spark of life had been swallowed by a black hole that now hovered menacingly in the doorway. It was the Deputy Principal, Mr Barker, and he was glaring at Razza, who now sat with his hands frozen mid-beat just centimetres off the desk.

  ‘I generally try to avoid executing anyone on the first day of a new school year, Mr Zorzotto,’ he said in a grinding growl. ‘It tends to unsettle the younger students. However, as I consider you a very special case, I am willing to make an exception.’

  Listening to Mr Barker chew out his words always made me think of a car being slowly crushed into scrap metal by a steel vice.

  ‘So I want to make it perfectly clear to you, Mr Zorzotto, that if you so much as brush your little pinky against that desk one more time, you will find yourself experiencing something that will make the unspeakable horrors of the Spanish Inquisition seem like a therapeutic massage. Do we understand each other?’

  Razza moved his head up and down in slow motion as if he knew that one false move was sudden death.

  ‘Wonderful,’ Mr Barker said, then threw one last sweeping glare at the rest of us before stalking off.

  I waited a few seconds then let out my breath. Around me signs of life began to seep back into the room. I checked Razza. He still hadn’t moved a muscle.

  ‘Razz, he’s gone.’

  He rotated stiffly in my direction. His face was as blank as an empty page and his arms still hovered zombie-like in front of him.

  ‘Razz? You OK?’

  For a moment there was no reaction, then the mouth before me slid into a cheesy grin and a pair of eyes lit up like demented mirror balls. ‘Kelly Faulkner,’ Razza whispered, ‘the Big Kel-huna!’

  Then he beat out the remainder of his furious drum roll on the top of my head.

  Yep … the old laid-back approach … The Razzman was totally cool with that.

  4.

  FISH–WHALE AND THE REBUT–HEADS

  ‘Hey, where’s Scobie, anyway?’ Razza asked after he had finished using my skull as a bongo drum.

  I’d been wondering the same thing. ‘Don’t know. He was supposed to be here from the first day.’

  A few more boys wandered into the room. One of them was Ignatius Prindabel.

  ‘Yo Prindabel – my main man,’ Razza called.

  A thin stooping figure looked up, nodded and loped his way awkwardly towards us. ‘Leseur. Zorzotto,’ he said, then shoved his fists into his pockets and studied us silently as if we were specimens in a lab.

  Razza held up his hands. ‘Whoa, steady on, how about letting someone else get a word in once in a while?’

  Ignatius stared back at Razza like he always did – as if he was looking at some bizarre abstract painting whose meaning and purpose completely escaped him. I couldn’t blame him: they didn’t have much in common. Razz was sort of ‘out there’ while Ignatius was more ‘along the corridor, down the stairs and tucked away in the far corner of the basement’.

  ‘So Prindabel, tell me, what exciting things did you get up to over the holidays, eh? Steam-clean your calculator? Fumigate the encyclopaedias perhaps? Try out for the lead role in the local musical production of Revenge of the Nerds?’

  ‘Actually’ Prindabel said, ‘I attended the Junior University Maths and Science Summer School program.’

  ‘Of course you did,’ Razza said. ‘And I was going to do that as well, but then I decided it would be more fun if I just inserted bamboo shoots under my fingernails and watched some grass grow.’

  Ignoring Razza completely, Prindabel turned to me. ‘Did you know that at the Central Missouri State University they’ve just identified the largest Mersenne prime number ever? It’s 9.8 million digits long – that’s two to the 32,582,657th power minus one. They had to use 700 computers! Can you believe it?’

  I shook my head. I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Man, you must be dynamite on a date, Prindabel,’ Razza said. ‘I can see you now: “Tell me, sweetheart, would you like to check out my Mersenne prime? It’s 9.8 million digits long, you know.” ‘

  Ignatius gave Razza another of his ‘abstract painting’ looks, then shrugged his shoulders and glanced around the room. ‘Scobie’s not here,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, well done, Sherlock,’ Razza said. What tipped you off? Was it the fact that he’s not here? You should have your own CSI spin-off series. CSI Nerd.’

  Just then the large form of Bill Kingsley ambled into the classroom. ‘Billy-boy, over here. Hey, have you been on a diet or what?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I think another pizza and movie marathon night at your place might be in order. You know, Bilbo, if you lose any more weight they’ll downgrade you to a small planet. Then watch out, man. You saw what happened to Pluto.’

  Bill gave a slight smile. ‘Where’s Scobie?’

  ‘Not sure yet, but we should have something soon. Prindabel’s leading the crime scene investigation team. He’s just waiting on forensics.’

  A scuffle at the door caught our attention. Doug Savage and Danny Wallace were wrestling over a football until Danny finally wrenched it free and charged to the back of the room with Doug in hot pursuit.

  Moments later a solid figure
with a helmet of blond hair and a snarl appeared. Have you met Barry Bagsley, talented sportsperson, professional bully, prince of the put-down and dictator-in-waiting? He surveyed the room before pushing his way through a group of boys and heading in the direction of Danny and Doug, who were happily thumping into each other in the back row. Unfortunately he stopped when he came to us.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t the famous debating girls – Fish-whale and the Rebut-heads.’

  Rebut-heads-that was new. Barry must have been honing his skills over the holidays. Then he looked at Bill and sneered. ‘You know, Kingsley, they reckon you are what you eat. So what did you eat, eh? A herd of pigs?’

  Bill’s eyes dropped, but he said nothing.

  ‘So what’s your favourite meal, then? Beef jerky?’

  Barry Bagsley’s smile slid into a snarl. ‘Well, it looks like funny man Zor-zit-to has something to say. You know, Or-arse-i-hole, you should be very careful. Someday someone might take your jokes the wrong way and you’ll end up with your nose spread all over your face.’

  ‘Just trying to bring a little sunshine into an otherwise bleak and thankless world,’ Razza said with a smile.

  Barry slowly prised his eyes away from Razz and turned to me. ‘And what have you got to say for yourself, Le Sewer? Nothin’ as usual? Well, I haven’t forgotten our little discussion at the end of last year, and I reckon you got some serious payback coming your way.’ He looked around the class. ‘No Scobie yet, Le Spewer? Gee, whose skirt are you gonna hide behind if he doesn’t turn up?’

  ‘I’m not hiding,’ I managed to mumble.

  ‘Brave words, Manure,’ Barry laughed, ‘but we’ll see – I promise you that. We will definitely see.’

  We all watched as he wandered to the back of the room, wrenched the football away from Danny Wallace and began twirling it on one finger.

  ‘Gee, you know, I’d forgotten how much I missed Bagsley’s little pep talks,’ Razza said. ‘Now I feel I’m ready to face the day!’

  ‘You might just wanna watch what you say, Razz. I don’t think he was joking about that nose thing.’

  ‘Look, man, I’m not stupid. Bagsley’s dumb but he’s not an idiot.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, he’s never going to actually hit anyone, is he? Not at school, anyway. Man, can you imagine what would happen? After all the trouble he’s been in can you imagine what Barker would do to him? They’d probably chuck him out. Bagsley knows that. Nah, if he was gonna biff anyone, it’d be somewhere away from the school, somewhere deserted.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t get him too riled up.’

  ‘Yeah, well, what about you, dude? What was all the crap he was going on about “payback” time? What did you do to him, anyway?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  That wasn’t entirely true. But I didn’t feel like talking about last year’s end-of-school assembly when I’d threatened to expose Barry Bagsley as a bully because he was making Bill’s life hell. That’s when I said that I wasn’t going to hide from him any more – that next year I was going to stand up for myself. Well now it was next year, and I was struggling to picture myself actually doing that. On the other hand, picturing myself with my nose spread all over my face was a cinch.

  I stole a glimpse at Barry Bagsley. His chair was tilted at a dangerous angle and he was rocking back and forth, butting the back of his head lightly against the rear wall. I wondered what was going on inside that head. He was probably devising new ways to indulge his favourite pastimes – advanced lesson disruption, random acts of torment, applied character assassination and creative bodily noises. Or maybe he was just like the rest of us, wondering where James Scobie was.

  You really had to hand it to Scobie: he’d been at St Daniel’s for less than a year, and yet in that time he’d taken on Barry Bagsley and won, inspired our struggling senior rugby team to a famous victory over arch-rivals Churchill Grammar and single-handedly dragged the first debating team in the school’s history to the State finals. As a result, he’d become something of a cult hero with a reputation for being totally fearless. Not even the brain tumour scare that caused him to miss the last term of school had put a dent in him. In the testosterone-charged world of St Daniel’s Boys College you just didn’t get much bigger than James Scobie.

  ‘Wow, it must be my lucky day. I haven’t seen so many handsome faces in one place since I gatecrashed the Cleo Bachelor of the Year finals.’

  Miss Tarango stood beaming at us with her double-dimpled smile, her shiny blonde hair and her glowing beach-holiday skin. Was there ever a better sight in front of a classroom?

  ‘Welcome back, boys. What do you say we get this show on the road? Danny, how about you put that football in your bag before it gets lost … permanently. OK, let’s quieten down, everyone. That’s better. All right, gentlemen, before I bury you under a veritable mountain of administrivia I would just like to say how happy I am to be …’

  Miss Tarango stopped and turned towards the door, where a small, pale boy had suddenly appeared. Everything about him was neat, even and tucked in. He looked like some primary kid playing dress up. Long grey socks stretched from the mirror-polish of his shoes to his knobbly knees and a pair of carefully pressed shorts rode high over the small mound of his belly. Behind the thin, round glasses that rested on his pink and slightly chubby cheeks, two dark pupils gazed calmly ahead. Then he squeezed his eyes shut and stretched them open while his lips rotated around bizarrely as if they were trying to escape his face.

  Miss Tarango placed her hand high on her chest. ‘Well, boys, here’s a sight to warm our hearts,’ she said, and a chorus of greetings and cheers bounced around the room as James Scobie smiled and waddled in.

  5.

  THE ‘S’ WORD

  ‘Hey, Scobie. What’s it like having someone screwing around in your brain?’

  Homeroom was over and we were preparing for the next lesson. Miss Tarango had already left and Barry Bagsley, having fired off the first shot, was basking in the appreciative smirks of Danny Wallace and Doug Savage.

  Scobie looked up. ‘I can’t say that I’d recommend it. But at least it’s something you’ll never have to worry about. Your brain is safe. I don’t think they’ve invented an electron microscope that powerful yet.’

  Barry Bagsley darkened like a thundercloud. ‘Yeah well, just keep away from me, will ya? I wouldn’t want to catch anything from you.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about,’ Scobie said pleasantly. ‘There’s absolutely no scientific evidence at all of human-to-animal transmission.’

  When it came to a war of words between James Scobie and Barry Bagsley, it was never in doubt where the weapons of mass destruction were stored. But Scobie’s power over Barry wasn’t due only to his verbal skills, or even because the First Fifteen rugby team had adopted him as their mascot after a poem he wrote last year inspired them to conquer Churchill Grammar. No, it had more to do with Scobie’s complete lack of fear, and his refusal to back down. The effect of Scobie’s return on Barry Bagsley was the same as a muzzle being strapped on a mad dog.

  Apart from having a more subdued bully, the new school year at St Daniel’s Boys College started pretty much in the usual way. First we had the routine talks about how ‘crucial’ this year was going to be and how we had to ‘knuckle down’ to our study ‘right from the word go’. Then each of our subject teachers outlined the work we were going to cover while at the same time trying to make it sound far more interesting than it really was and about as essential to our futures as learning how to breathe. As it turned out, Miss Tarango had the hardest battle in that regard.

  ‘Boys, this semester, as well as a class novel and a short Media unit, our main focus will be poetry.’

  Groans rose, eyes bulged, brows furrowed, heads dropped, and the entire class seemed to sag as if it had taken a collective blow to the stomach. Ignatius Prindabel wore the expression of someone who had recently been informed that he’d have to have his appendix r
emoved via his backside.

  Miss Tarango just smiled sweetly and ploughed on regardless. ‘Yes, this semester we will have the opportunity of exploring and experiencing language at its most creative and powerful. We’ll be looking at everything from song lyrics and rap to all sorts of poetry, starting with the classic love sonnets of Shakespeare.’

  The class froze and stared at Miss Tarango in horror. She’d said the S-word. Ignatius Prindabel went white and clutched his calculator to his chest as if someone had threatened to steal his favourite teddy.

  Razza was the first to regain the ability to speak. ‘Shakespeare! What do we have to do that for? Poetry’s bad enough. Why can’t we just stick with modern stuff? What are we doing Shakespeare for, Miss?’ Nodding heads and rumblings of support filled the room.

  Miss Tarango held up her hands, closed her eyes and waited for silence. When it returned, she opened her eyes, smiled at Razza and took a deep breath.

  ‘In answer to your question,’ she said calmly, ‘we are doing Shakespeare, Orazio, because we wish to celebrate the very pinnacle of human thought. We are doing Shakespeare because we are bold and perceptive seekers of beauty and truth. In short, we are doing Shakespeare, Orazio, because we are lovers of life and language.’

  For a moment Razza seemed hypnotised by Miss Tarango’s voice. Then he broke away and looked around the class. ‘We don’t sound much like us.’

  ‘Well perhaps, Orazio,’ Miss Tarango said, raising her eyebrows, ‘we will surprise us.’

  Razza glanced across the aisle to where a cross-eyed Jarrod McGucken was attempting to pop a pimple on the end of his nose.

  ‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high if I were you, Miss,’ Razza said.

  But Miss Tarango was having none of it. ‘Come on, boys,’ she pleaded. ‘Don’t let me down here. We’re St Daniel’s men, remember-”courage forged in a lion’s den” and all that. James, you’re on my side, aren’t you? Give us the Scobie scoop on Shakespeare.’