Dropping In Read online

As I reach our letterbox I look across at James’ house. He’s in the window, like last night, but this time when I wave he waves back. If it wasn’t dinnertime I could probably go across and talk to him. But it is, so I don’t.

  As we eat dinner I tell Dad about what happened. He doesn’t ask questions as I speak. He just nods every so often. It’s good telling him stuff. Mum always tries to take over your story, asking questions and telling you things about the people you’re trying to tell her about. Sometimes she makes you forget what you’re saying. Tonight she doesn’t interrupt either. Once she lifts her hand and leans forward, but Dad catches her eye and shakes his head. She looks at him for a moment and then sits back and lets me finish.

  When they’ve heard everything they try to tell me about James and cerebral palsy, but they don’t really know any more than I do. They say how sorry they feel for James, but I get the feeling that they are sorrier for James’ parents than they are for him. They say how hard it is for them and how Mrs Davidson has had to give up work for all these years to look after him and that it is very expensive to look after a child with cerebral palsy and how they have to have a special car and modify the house.

  After a while it starts to annoy me, Mum and Dad going on about how hard it is for James’ parents. I just know that I’d hate to be him, stuck inside a body that won’t obey you. I’ve only known him for one day but they’re talking about him like he’s a problem, not a kid.

  ‘He’s not a problem,’ I say. ‘He’s James.’

  Mum and Dad look at me and then they look at each other.

  ‘Yes,’ says Dad. ‘Yes, of course.’

  4

  I’m walking to school down the street. Ranga usually waits for me on the front porch of his house, sort of hopping up and down on the spot. It’s as though he’s got overcharged batteries and all the extra energy is sparking out of him, making him bounce. Today he isn’t there. Maybe he’s still suspended. I slow up and look for signs of him at the windows. Nothing. Then just as I pass the driveway he calls to me. ‘Sticks! Wait up!’

  Me waiting for him — that’s a change! Ranga walks down the driveway and straightaway I know something’s not right. He never walks anywhere, he runs. He’s got one arm tucked up against his side as though it’s sore. His bag is on his other shoulder but he’s leaning over as though it’s really heavy, though it can’t be — not the way it’s bouncing.

  I wait until he catches up. He looks tired and one eye is puffy. It might turn black next week. He’s probably walked into a door or something like that. He’s always hurting himself.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask, looking at his eye.

  ‘Nothin’!’ he says. ‘It was an accident.’

  He keeps on walking, slowly, looking at the ground. I try to speed him up by walking fast but he just drops behind so I slow down and walk beside him. I try walking slower than him to see what he’ll do but he slows down even more so I give up and just match his speed. He doesn’t even look at me. After about thirty metres I can’t stand the silence anymore but I don’t know what to say so I just keep on walking, looking across at him every so often.

  I can’t work out if he is sad or angry, dragging himself along like that with his face like thunder. I’m stealing one more glance at him and just as I do, he looks at me. I just blurt out the first thing that comes into my head. ‘Have a prang on your skateboard?’

  ‘Nuh.’

  ‘Your bike?’

  He looks at me, like he’s angry now. ‘Why?’

  ‘Your face,’ I say, ‘and your arm.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ he snarls. ‘My fault, so leave it.’

  Jeez, what did I do?

  After sport we have to have showers. Ranga usually runs around with no clothes on, flicking everyone with his towel as they get changed. No shame! But today he’s in the toilet. I change slowly and in the end it’s just him and me. Finally I’m changed too and Ranga hasn’t even started. He’s still in there. I know he’s not using the toilet ’cause there’s no sound, so he’s most likely just sitting.

  ‘You’ll be late for class,’ I call out.

  ‘You go,’ he says. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

  ‘Mr Brown will be angry,’ I say.

  ‘Well you better go or you’ll be in trouble too.’ He’s getting mad again, just like this morning.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, and I start walking back to class. Whatever’s going on isn’t my business. At least I figure it isn’t my business for about twenty metres, but then I just have to know what’s going on. I turn back and slide through the door. I lean my face around the change-room wall, silently.

  Ranga is struggling to get his T-shirt off. It seems like it hurts to lift his arms up. He’s got his back to me as he tries to pull it over his head. He gets stuck with his elbows jammed in the armholes and his head half in and half out of the neck hole. I can see what he has been hiding — a couple of huge mottled bruises, like he’s been run over by a truck.

  Ranga must have heard me then, because he jumps a bit and starts trying to pull his T-shirt back on properly, to cover the bruises. His head is stuck. It looks like he’s scored a goal at soccer, except he trips over the bench and falls across it. He’ll hurt himself more if he keeps struggling like that.

  ‘Ranga,’ I call, ‘It’s only me.’

  He freezes, but then, after a moment, he just pulls his shirt back down. It’s amazing how it goes on so easily after the huge struggle he was just having, but that’s what always happens when you’re hurrying too much. Things just don’t work out.

  His face is all red but he doesn’t look angry now — just embarrassed. He’s looking at me as though he’s expecting me to say something. I don’t.

  He does up his shoelaces and then he looks straight at me, full in the eyes. It makes me feel weird. He’s too close and staring. I look at the wall behind him, over his shoulder.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ he says, all low and fierce, but kind of pleading.

  ‘Tell them what?’ I ask, but I think I know.

  ‘You know!’ he growls.

  I nod. But I don’t really. I just have an idea I don’t want to think about.

  ‘I was being stupid,’ he says. ‘I’m sick of it, that’s all — sick of being me. I’m sick of the stupid things I do.’ Then he just gets up and walks to maths.

  Now I’m not sure exactly what he wants to be kept secret.

  At the end of the day he’s not waiting at the front of school. I hang around to see if he got detention or something but he doesn’t turn up. He’s gone without me.

  5

  James is looking across at my house again. He’s not behind his window like usual. He’s on the front verandah. I’m inside looking back at him from behind the curtain so he can’t see me. I don’t want to be friendly after school today. It feels like he caused all of Ranga’s problems and Ranga is my friend so I should be mad at James. The trouble is I know that’s not fair. James didn’t do anything.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  I jump like I’ve had an electric shock. Mum’s voice is normal but I feel like she just leapt out at me and shouted. My fingers are tingling.

  Mum walks to the dead centre of the window. ‘What are you looking at? Oh, it’s your friend James.’ She waves at him.

  My friend? James? It’s another surprise — thinking that James might be my friend. I hardly know him. If he’s my friend, why am I hiding from him?

  ‘Looks like he wants to play,’ Mum says. She’s looking at me kind of funny.

  I think I have to say something, explain why I’m still behind the curtain, but I don’t know why. James must know I’m here now, and anyway, what has he done except be friendly to me?

  ‘I’ll go over for a bit,’ I say. I have to do something.

  ‘Okay,’ says Mum.

  James is still on the front verandah of his house when I walk down our driveway. He’s smiling. I can see it from here. It’s a big happy smile. He’s happy to see
me and I don’t know how I feel.

  I glance down the road at Ranga’s house and then I cross over.

  James rolls his wheelchair forward a bit as I walk up the steps. ‘Hi,’ he says.

  ‘Hi,’ I say back. Then we both just start looking around. I don’t have anything else to say. I don’t think James does either.

  I’m starting to feel really stupid when he says, ‘Do you want to see my room?’

  His room is down the back of the house. I follow him there. He drives his wheelchair fast: a bit too fast I reckon. There are chips out of the plaster on all the corners — the same height as the footrest on his chair. I imagine him banging into everything like a bumper car at the Royal Show. It’s a funny idea but it can’t be right because he doesn’t hit a thing all the way through the lounge room and down the passage to his room. Maybe he only sometimes loses control or misjudges corners.

  His room is set up so he can get around easily. James coasts down to his desk. He judges it well, stopping just before he crashes into it. The desk is extra high so he can get his legs underneath it when he is sitting in his wheelchair. He edges forward, a bit at a time, until the desk is pressing against his chest. If he ever crashed into it quickly I reckon it would almost cut him in half.

  He boots up his computer and double clicks on a game icon. It’s one of those games that make you think, a quest game where you have to collect things and use them to solve puzzles and get to the next level. I don’t usually play those games because I get impatient. I’d rather drive a virtual car or fight someone with swords and guns.

  James is trying to get the cursor to point at a bag of food so he can collect it. He keeps overshooting and trying to move back over it but he just overshoots again. Perhaps I should help. I reach for the mouse but James snatches it away from me. He looks angry.

  ‘I’m doing it!’

  ‘I was just …’ but James cuts me off.

  ‘You can’t just take over!’ He turns back to the game, but his hand is shaking worse than before. ‘It’s a stupid game anyway,’ he says.

  His eyes are watery like he’s almost crying and I feel bad because I did something wrong but I didn’t mean to. He’s just blown up over nothing at all and I feel like I’ve got pins and needles in my hair and up my nose. I mean, I just tried to help. He should be saying sorry, not me. And then he does — sort of.

  ‘People always try to take over, like I can’t do anything at all. They think they’re helping but they’re not.’

  I don’t know what to say so I just go, ‘Sorry,’ and sit there for a long time saying nothing. Then James hands me the mouse.

  ‘Do you want a go?’

  ‘I’ll wreck your game.’

  ‘There was a save point not far back so it won’t matter.’

  Bewdy! I click on the food bag. A little hunger graph at the top of the screen turns green and goes down. That’s got to be good. Not being hungry, I mean.

  ‘Now what?’ I say.

  ‘We need to find a key so we can open the door to the library.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To get a street directory so we can find our way around the city,’ James says, like I’m a little kid.

  ‘So where do you reckon it is?’ I’m walking the avatar around the room. If I click on a spot it walks there, like Michael Jackson doing a reverse moonwalk. I’m just going around in circles. It’s frustrating. I want to do something but I can’t. There aren’t any hotspots. I head for the door. It’s shut. The avatar just stops, facing it. I can feel James watching me. He isn’t saying anything. I back up the avatar and run at the door but it just stops in the same place.

  I turn around to see what James is doing. He’s just watching me. ‘What do I do?’ I ask.

  He smiles. ‘Type “open door” in that box at the bottom of the screen.’

  I do and it does. Doh!

  We keep playing and at first James has to tell me how to do everything, but after about an hour I’ve pretty much worked it out. It’s a tricky game and I’m sick of having to think all the time. I want to shoot something or drive a car or something. It’s frustrating but James is having fun. He’s smiling and laughing so I play for a bit longer. James seems to want to keep going on forever but I’ve had enough. Eventually I say I’ve got jobs to do and head home.

  As I walk across the road I glance down towards Ranga’s place. Maybe he’ll come over later. That’d be good.

  6

  I love Saturdays. The whole weekend stretches out in front of me. Ranga and I are skateboarding on my driveway. He’s still sore but not enough to slow him down. The sky is blue, no jobs to do. Sweet!

  Our driveway starts out steeper near the house and then flattens out nearer to the road. It’s good fun, but there are little edges in the brick paving that sometimes catch your board a bit. If you fall it’s like landing on a cheese grater so I’m wearing knee and elbow pads. Ranga’s just wearing jeans. I try to tell him, but he reckons it will never happen: not to him anyway.

  He is much better than me at skating. It took me ages to do an ollie and I still can’t get very high. I’ve got lumps on my shins from trying kickflips and when I ride fakie it feels wrong. I even get speed wobbles when we skate down the hill but Ranga looks solid either way, and he can do all sorts of tricks that I can’t. When he’s flipping and spinning the board it’s hard to see how he does it and when he lands the board’s always right way up under his feet.

  ‘Loosen up,’ he says. ‘You’ve got to take a risk to learn a new thing.’

  Yes, but I want all my skin and I hate pain.

  Ranga wants to enter a competition at the skate park next term. He goes up there, every so often, to use ramps and do grinds and stuff, but there’ll be lots of big guys there today and we don’t feel like riding that far anyway so we practise here.

  He gets me to watch a freestyle routine that he’s going to do. He says he’ll fit it in over the ramps, easy. He’s got a map of the park in his head and he just skates it in his mind. One trick joins into another all up and down the driveway. I reckon Ranga will be famous one day if he doesn’t die trying something dangerous first.

  ‘Hey Sticks,’ Ranga yells. ‘That kid’s watching.’

  James is in the front window of his house. I wave and he waves back. Then he backs up his chair and heads towards the door.

  Ranga stops skating. He looks unhappy.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘Is he mad at me?’

  ‘He’s never said anything. I don’t think so.’

  James’ front door opens and he drives out. He’s waving as he comes down the driveway. ‘Hi Sticks. Hi Warren.’

  ‘Ranga,’ says Ranga.

  ‘Hi Ranga,’ James says. He smiles. Then Ranga is smiling too and, just like that, we’re all mates.

  Ranga tells James about the skating competition and shows James his tricks. As Ranga leans into a turn James leans his head. When Ranga does an ollie James does this little lurch upwards in his chair. He’s feeling every move in his mind but his body just isn’t going to cooperate enough for him to do it in real life. From the look on James’ face he wants to skate a lot more than I do. It’s unfair that he can’t.

  Then, like always, Ranga has a random idea.

  ‘I reckon I could build a ramp down here.’ He points to the edge of the driveway. ‘I could get speed down the driveway, ollie onto the ramp and get some serious air out onto the road.’

  I can just imagine the dodgy ramp he’s going to build. He’ll hit the ramp and even if it doesn’t collapse he’ll skin himself alive and break some bones when he hits the bitumen.

  I try to talk him out of it. ‘What about cars?’

  James pipes up. ‘I’ll keep lookout.’

  What’s James doing? Doesn’t he know what’s going to happen if Ranga goes ahead with this? I have to stop them. ‘We haven’t got any materials,’ I say.

  ‘You know how Big Rubbish Day is coming up? Well, around on Caledonia Avenue t
here’s one of those pine pallets out on the lawn already. We could take it apart and make it into a ramp.’

  ‘Do you reckon the wood’s strong enough?’ I say, trying not to sound like a wet blanket.

  ‘Those pallets carry bricks,’ Ranga points out.

  So that’s it. The three of us head down to get it.

  James’ wheelchair is very cool. He keeps up with us if we don’t walk too fast. There’s no footpath on our road. It’s not busy enough or wide enough and halfway down to the roundabout a car comes. James keeps on going like his chair is a car too. The real car just passes him. The driver even indicates and gives James a wave as he goes by.

  After the roundabout, there’s a footpath. There’s a gap in the curbing and the footpath slopes down to the road so people with prams can cross the road without having go over a step. The sloped bit is quite steep and James leans his head forward before he drives up it. His chair tips up on quite an angle and then lurches level again. For a second I thought it might turn over but it’s fine. James has done this before.

  Down the hill, past another roundabout, and up along Caledonia for fifty metres and there’s the pallet. A man is weeding his lawn. Ranga marches up to him and says, ‘Can we have the pallet?’

  The man smiles. ‘Go right ahead.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Ranga.

  He watches us pick it up. Ranga gets on one side of it and I get on the other. It’s heavy. ‘Gunna build somethin’, boys?’ the man says.

  ‘A ramp,’ Ranga says.

  The man looks worried. ‘For bikes?’ he says.

  ‘No, skateboards,’ Ranga says.

  ‘You’d better double up the boards. They’re too thin for that. They’ll flex and snap.’

  I can see the advice go in one of Ranga’s ears and out the other. ‘Thanks,’ he says, nodding like he really listened.

  Walking twisted sideways with the pallet between us is hard. We put it down and rearrange ourselves. I follow Ranga and he follows James, like a little procession.

  We stop for a rest at each roundabout and halfway up our hill. When we finally get to my house my fingers are red and there is a groove across them where the edge of the pallet was digging in. Ranga is flexing his fingers and rolling his shoulders too. We’re both sweating. James is fresh as a daisy.