Pookie Aleera is Not My Boyfriend

  telling me to breathe normally.

  I said that was the only way

  I knew how to breathe.

  The nurse said she was going to check my pulse

  and my blood pressure

  before letting Mum take me home.

  As we were leaving, she said,

  ‘Don’t go jumping off any more sheds.’

  I waved and answered,

  ‘No way. Next time I’ll jump out of a tree.’

  Mum and the nurse stood

  with their mouths hanging open,

  until I smiled and said,

  ‘Only joking.’

  SELINA

  Every morning this week it’s been the same.

  Ms Arthur calls out the roll.

  Alphabetically.

  Starting with Pete Ancich,

  followed by Tiffany Brown,

  then me, Selina Chandler.

  Everyone says, ‘Here, Ms’

  or, ‘Present, Ms.’

  But we’re all waiting

  for Ms Arthur to call out Cameron’s name.

  Because,

  without fail,

  Cameron jumps out of his chair,

  salutes Ms Arthur

  and says, in his loudest voice,

  ‘Present and ready for action, Ms!’

  The first time he did it,

  Ms Arthur frowned and muttered,

  ‘Thank you.’

  We could see she was a little bothered.

  But after a week of Cameron

  saluting and shouting,

  she realised he wasn’t going to stop

  and he wasn’t hurting anybody,

  except maybe our eardrums!

  So now, once in a while,

  instead of just calling out, ‘Cameron Knowles’,

  Ms Arthur stands to attention and says,

  ‘Sergeant Knowles!’

  Cameron smiles and almost leaps from his chair.

  Everyone giggles,

  except Cameron.

  He’s too busy yelling!

  MR KORSKY

  When all the children

  have gone home

  I circle the schoolyard

  picking up lunch wrappers

  and chip packets

  and discarded hats –

  the Lost Property basket is overflowing –

  and soft-drink cans

  and lolly wrappers

  and every day

  someone leaves a half-eaten apple

  wedged

  in the branch of the sunshine wattle

  as if they’re leaving me a gift.

  I shake my head

  and fling it in the rubbish,

  wondering why they couldn’t

  practise their throwing

  and aim for the bin near the toilet block

  instead of making me stretch into the tree

  when I’m two years off retiring

  and the only hair on my head

  grows out of my ears and my nose

  and

  hello . . .

  what’s this . . .

  the half-eaten apple

  resting in the same place . . .

  except underneath is a note

  and printed in very neat handwriting

  are the words,

  ‘Please, sir.

  The apple isn’t rubbish . . .

  it’s for the birds.’

  I stand there holding the paper

  and as if on cue

  I hear a chirp from above.

  A rosella sits high in the tree

  watching me.

  I put the apple back,

  the note I tuck in my pocket.

  One less thing to pick up.

  ALEX

  My brother

  goes into his bedroom

  puts on his favourite

  grunge rock DVD,

  turns it up really loud,

  jumps on his bed

  singing louder than the music

  and

  starts air guitar!

  He waves his right arm

  up and down

  like a crazy windmill

  banging the strings

  his fingers twitch and move

  faster than the speed of light

  as his face contorts

  in weird air guitar poses.

  Then he jumps off his bed

  and lands on his knees,

  sliding along the shiny timber floor

  still playing

  furious air guitar.

  Mum just smiles

  and keeps reading her book.

  I’m trying to do homework

  so I ask Mum

  if he could turn it down,

  and what does she say?

  ‘In a minute. Let him have his fun.’

  My brother is twenty-six years old.

  LAURA

  Mum says they named me

  after their favourite song,

  ‘with a chorus of strings and soaring vocals’,

  that’s how Mum describes it.

  And that song, which they’d sing over and over, is

  ‘Tell Laura, I Love Her’.

  Mum says she’d always cry whenever she heard it,

  when Dad and her were . . .

  you know, boyfriend and girlfriend . . .

  in love . . .

  before they got married.

  Mum says when they came home from the doctor

  after learning she was pregnant,

  they agreed to call the child Laura

  even if it was a boy!

  Mum says,

  she knew I’d be a girl

  because of the name.

  She calls it destiny.

  Dad left home two years ago

  and now whenever he phones from the city,

  and I’m not home

  he says to Mum,

  ‘Tell Laura, I love her.’

  Only I don’t think he sings it into the phone.

  RACHEL

  This morning

  Ms Arthur writes

  NIGHT SKY

  on the whiteboard

  and asks us to try to describe it

  in one sentence.

  Everyone looks around the room

  nervously

  waiting for someone to raise their hand.

  Ms Arthur leans patiently on her desk

  until I can’t stand the silence any longer.

  I raise my hand and say,

  ‘It’s like a blanket for the earth to sleep under.’

  Ms Arthur smiles.

  Cameron raises his hand and says,

  ‘It’s deeper than the Grand Canyon!’

  Mick adds,

  ‘And wider than the Pacific Ocean.’

  Selina says, ‘It’s where shooting stars

  write their name.’

  My favourite is when Alex says,

  ‘It’s lightning graffiti!’

  And suddenly everyone is raising their hands

  and calling out,

  ‘An ink ocean!’

  ‘Thick chocolate sauce with sprinkles for stars . . .’

  ‘. . . and the moon is the cook’s fingernail!’

  After Ms Arthur

  has erased the words

  NIGHT SKY

  from the whiteboard

  and we’re knuckling down
to maths

  Cameron raises his hand

  and asks,

  ‘Ms, can you write two words

  on the board every morning

  and we’ll try to describe it?’

  Instead of answering,

  Ms Arthur walks to the whiteboard and writes,

  YES, CAMERON.

  CONSTABLE DAWE

  ‘Good morning, Class 6A.

  My name is Constable Dawe

  and I’m here . . .

  what’s that, young man?

  No, my name is not Constable,

  it’s Brian,

  Constable is my title,

  my rank in the police force.

  Yes, young lady,

  like a General,

  only we don’t have generals,

  just commissioners

  and sergeants

  and constables

  of which I’m one.

  And I’m here to talk about road safety.

  Can anyone tell me something about road safety?

  Well, yes, you’re right,

  it should be called pedestrian safety

  because no one can hurt a road,

  it’s just a large piece of concrete.

  True, young man,

  if someone dropped a bomb on the road

  that would destroy it

  but I don’t know anyone with a bomb, do you?

  Yes, terrorists have bombs

  but we don’t have terrorists in town

  not last time I looked anyway,

  back to road safety, pedestrian safety, if you will.

  Can anyone tell me what we should do

  before crossing the road?

  Pardon?

  Wear clean underwear!

  Who told you that?

  Your mother . . .

  in case you’re in an accident.

  Well, I’m here to prevent you having an accident

  so

  apart from wearing clean underwear,

  what else should we do

  before crossing the road?

  Yes,

  before crossing the road

  we should first leave the house,

  but, Class 6A,

  let’s imagine, shall we,

  that we’re all on the footpath

  in clean underwear

  and about to cross the road.

  What should we do to avoid accidents?

  No, wearing a life jacket won’t save us

  not unless the road is flooded

  and it hasn’t been flooded since 1978, I believe,

  so take off the life jackets

  and

  and

  and

  yes, young lady, that’s correct

  look both ways

  no

  not up and down

  not forward and behind

  look right and left

  and then

  and then

  no, don’t run like heck, young man,

  look right again

  then quickly walk to the other side.

  Well done, Class 6A.

  Now, can you tell me

  what we should do on bicycles?

  Not fall off . . . yes.

  Not do wheelies when your dad’s watching . . . yes.

  But what should we be wearing?

  Thank you, young man,

  we know about clean underwear

  we’ve heard enough about clean underwear

  what else should we be wearing . . .

  on our heads . . .

  no, I was not saying we should wear

  clean underwear on our heads!

  No, not a sunhat,

  something harder than a sunhat, perhaps,

  a helmet

  yes,

  a helmet.

  I think we’ll leave it there for today, Class 6A.

  Next time

  we’ll talk about water safety . . .

  yes, okay, swimmer safety, if you must.

  Without the underwear hopefully.

  Stop laughing, Class 6A,

  I wasn’t suggesting nude swimming.

  We will not be nude swimming next week

  or any other week

  we’ll be . . .

  Thank you once again, Class 6A.’

  SELINA

  Mr Korsky brought his nephew Nigel to school

  to help him because poor Mr Korsky

  has to wear a neck brace for another week,

  you know,

  after the unfortunate flying Jacob incident.

  Nigel has a nose ring,

  two earrings

  and an eyebrow ring.

  He also has a tattoo of a snake

  slithering up his arm

  and when he flexes his bicep

  it looks like the serpent is about to strike.

  He showed all of Year Six this trick at lunchtime

  when he was emptying the rubbish bins.

  Nigel says he used to come to this school

  ten years ago

  and he tried to jump off the shed as well

  only he wasn’t flying;

  he was ambushing

  his worst enemy, Mark Banbridge.

  He told us about Mark

  and some girl called Robyn

  and how Mark

  shouldn’t have got so friendly with her.

  I swear when he was talking

  the tattoo on his arm grew bigger and meaner,

  and I moved to the outside of the circle,

  just in case.

  Cameron asked Nigel

  if getting all those piercings hurt

  and Nigel said,

  ‘Nah, the only thing that hurt was my eardrums.’

  ‘Eardrums?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah. You should have heard the noise

  Dad made when he saw all my rings!’

  CAMERON

  My dad makes things up.

  I know that now,

  but when I was young

  and my ears were even younger,

  I believed everything he said.

  Like the day we sat in the park

  and watched the teenagers

  throwing a bright green plastic ring,

  a radical Frisbee,

  and I asked Dad what it was called.

  He said, quick as you please,

  ‘A parisian ring’

  and I practised saying the words

  over and over

  sitting beside Dad

  watching the teenagers catch and dive and fling

  and I saved all my pocket money for three months,

  safely hidden in a jar,

  the lid closed tight, under my bed

  until I had enough money to buy one.

  I walked into every shop in town asking,

  ‘Do you sell a parisian ring?’

  They searched their computer lists,

  they asked the boss,

  they scratched their heads,

  no one sold a parisian ring,

  no one had even heard of it.

  So at dinner I asked Dad

  the next time he went to the city

  could he buy one

  and I handed him the money,

  all my savings.

  Mum and Dad stared at the coins

  piled between the mashed potato

  and the gravy jug.
/>
  Dad said,

  ‘Parisian ring?’

  He looked at Mum

  and Simone

  and then back at me.

  I made the throwing motion with my hand

  and repeated the name

  over and over.

  How could he forget?

  ‘You know, in the park,

  the green plastic thing.’

  And then he remembered.

  A week later

  I got home from school

  and there was a parcel

  neatly wrapped on the table

  and a card with my name on it.

  I unwrapped the parcel

  as quick as my hands could move.

  It was green

  and in splashy black writing on the top

  were the words,

  Astro Frisbee.

  What!

  Astro who?

  Then I turned it over

  and scrawled in black texta,

  in writing just like Dad’s,

  were the words,

  parisian ring.

  I looked up and saw Dad smiling

  and he said,

  ‘It’s a good name, don’t ya reckon?’

  We went outside into the backyard

  and played until dark,

  me and Dad

  and the parisian ring.

  JACOB

  My brother Mick broke his arm

  when he was nine years old.

  I only sprained mine.

  The day he came home from hospital

  he let me draw a dragon on the plaster cast.

  I was five years old

  so it wasn’t a very good drawing

  just lots of colours

  with big round circles and horns,

  and fire coming out of his mouth.

  Mick showed it to everyone in school

  and he got me to sign my name on it

  and said I’d be a famous artist one day

  ‘like Michelangelo’

  who I thought was a Mutant Ninja Turtle.

  Everyone at school wanted to sign their name

  but Mick wouldn’t let them.

  He said it wasn’t a cast anymore,

  it was Jacob’s art gallery.

  Every night I coloured in the dragon

  on Mick’s arm

  and the next day he’d show everyone at recess.

  I look at the bandage on my arm now.

  The doctor says I was lucky I didn’t break it.

  What do doctors know?

  SELINA

  Ms Arthur walked into class

  and said, ‘Good morning, 6A’