Chapter Eleven

Carlie hardy slept that night. Her mind kept on swirling around the events of the day and contemplating all of the things that could go wrong when they took their case to Mrs. Hoskins.

It felt weird to get up and put regular clothes on instead of her school uniform on a week day. It also felt weird to have both her mum and her dad hanging around the house rather than rushing off to work. After they’d finished with the documentary last night they’d sat down to watch it in the studio one last time, and her dad had been so happy that he’d said he wanted to come to the school with them to see Mrs. Hoskins’ face when she saw it.

“Carlie is my daughter too,” he’d said to her mum. “I’d like to be there to witness her debut as a news woman.”

She was eating her weet-bix at the dining room table when her mum came to sit beside her with her coffee.

“Carlie… I was thinking about it…” She turned the mug around in her hands nervously.

“Mm?”

“You said that you fell off the treadmill in the first week of school?”

“Yeah.”

“Back then you and Lucas weren’t friends, right? In fact, you were pretty upset about him being here at all.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well… it’s just that… I think you made the right choice by not lying and saying that he touched you. I can see how that could have been tempting and I’m proud of you for having the strength to tell the truth.”

There was an awkward silence as Carlie felt her face turn red from embarrassment.

“And, you know, in the end I think you’ll find that the people who are worth being friends with are not necessarily cool or popular.”

“Yeah, I know mum,” she mumbled.

“Penelope seems like a nice girl, do you want to invite her to do something for your birthday this weekend?”

“What about Lucas’ race? I thought we were going to go and watch his swimming carnival?”

“I think it would be nice of us to go and support him for a while, but we don’t have to do that all weekend. It’s your birthday. We should do something that you want to do.”

“Can we go out for lunch?”

“Yes, wherever you want. We could go and pick up Penelope from her house…”

She cut her off. “No, I mean, could you and I go out for lunch?”

Her mum’s eyebrows rose. “Just the two of us?”

“Yeah. Why’s that so strange?”

“No, no, it’s fine. I just didn’t realize that was something you might like.”

“We could go afterwards and get my ears pierced and buy makeup, and then get Penelope and go to the swimming carnival.”

Her mum gave her a wry smile. “I was hoping you might have forgotten about the ear piercing and makeup.”

“Mum, you promised I could when I was fourteen,” she complained. “I’m not a little kid anymore.”

She held her hands up in defense. “Okay. A deal’s a deal. You can get your ears pierced on Saturday and I’ll buy you some makeup for your birthday.”

Before long Lucas was out of the shower and they all went up to her school together. Today Mrs. Hoskins was wearing a severe looking dark grey tweed suit with enormous shoulder pads, a ruffled blouse underneath and a striped blue and white scarf around her neck that made her look comically sea-faring.

Her mum insisted that Carlie and Lucas should be allowed to come into the office to discuss their suspensions and Mrs. Hoskins reluctantly agreed. There weren’t enough seats and Lucas offered to stand but her mum disagreed.

“I’ll be fine standing today.”

Mrs. Hoskins look up at Carlie’s mum with an expression of distaste. “Rachel,” she began. “I expect you will want to know what happened yesterday.”

“No Gwen,” her mum replied. “I know what happened yesterday. What I want to know about is what preceded yesterday. How you came to possess a bag of marijuana, and how you broke into Lucas’ locker to set him up for a very serious crime. How you have been systematically defaming his character, and finally, how on earth you thought you’d get away with it.”

Mrs. Hoskins’ eyes were wide with anger. “Well, I never!”

“No Gwen, I never. In all my years as a public defendant or as a criminal defense lawyer, I have never seen such filth. I have never seen a grown woman so thoroughly abuse the power entrusted to her to guide and educate the next generation. Children Gwen. Children. You have manipulated and abused children. You have used your power to set up and defame a perfectly innocent, sweet, trusting boy.”

Mrs. Hoskins’ face was red and scrunched into a glare so potent Carlie had no idea how her mother was enduring it. “That boy is anything but sweet and innocent! He is an American hooligan! He gallivants around this school, touching the girls inappropriately, offering them drugs. For all I know he could be seducing them into sexual relations!”

Her mum shook her head. “We both know that’s not true. Lucas has done nothing of the sort. You are the perpetrator here, and we have the proof.” She laid the DVD of Carlie’s documentary on the shiny polished desk.

“What is that?”

“It is a news report that uncovers this whole sordid affair.”

Mrs. Hoskins took a deep breath and held her head high. “Rachel Stewart,” she spat out Carlie’s mum’s maiden name. “You have always been a trouble maker. From the first day I laid eyes on you when you were twelve years old, I knew you would amount to no good.”

Her mum’s eyebrows rose. “A trouble maker? As I recall I was the dux of my year.”

“Not with my blessing you weren’t. I never did like you. You were always pushing the edge of the rules. Wearing powder blue ribbons in your hair instead of royal blue ones, wearing socks in winter instead of stockings. You always had an unhealthy appetite for debate with your superiors.”

She smiled. “And look where that has led us. I am holding the key to your demise in my hand. I am quite happy for my husband to air this tonight… unless of course you would like to see it first.”

“I don’t have a television in here. I’m afraid I cannot watch it.”

Lucas snorted. “I’m pretty sure there’s a TV in the health class room.”

Carlie and Lucas lead them over to the health classroom, which was unoccupied, and her dad messed around with the TV on the stand in the corner until he got the DVD player to work.

Carlie watched Mrs. Hoskins as the documentary played. She knew it pretty much by heart by now so she knew that when her dad’s voice was talking about how Lucas had come over on an exchange from America there was footage of him trying (and failing) to play cricket with the sound and lighting crew on the lawn outside of the TV station.

She knew that when her dad’s voice said, “All Lucas wanted was the chance to get to know the Australian culture and make new friends,” there was a close up of his face with a big broad smile. He had been smiling at her as she tried to demonstrate how to use the cricket bat when that was shot. For some reason he wanted to stand upright and swing it like a baseball bat.

Mrs. Hoskins’ face was twisted into an evil scowl as she watched the footage that made Lucas look like the big, clumsy, loveable boy that he was.

“But that wasn’t to be, because of one woman.” Ominous music signaled a change in tone of the report as the scene cut to a slow motion snippet of Mrs. Hoskins walking out of the administration building, looking extremely pompous and full of herself.

Carlie watched Mrs. Hoskins face fall as Zoe’s interview and then her statement were played. Then there was the part with Lucas and Mr. Crossey trying to open the lock with Lucas’ key. By the time the footage of her trying to avoid the camera as she got into her expensive car was played her face was drawn and she had a far-away look to her.

“What do you want?” She asked weakly.

“We are willing to refrain from airing this report if we can come to a satisfactory agreement with you.”

Her mum laid out what they wanted. “As an old girl of the school, the last thing I want is for a scandal like this to sully its good name. You will see out the rest of the semester as the principal and then retire on the basis of poor health.”

Mrs. Hoskins hesitated for a moment before she nodded.

“You will keep your distance from Carlie and Lucas and anyone else who they associate with. If there are any problems with my children they will see the deputy principal, not you. If I so much as hear a whisper that you are trying to sabotage them in any way this report will be aired that same day, no questions asked.”

Mrs. Hoskins agreed to all of the conditions that Carlie’s mum laid out.

Finally, as they were getting ready to leave, her mum turned to Mrs. Hoskins and said, “Oh Gwen, about the Marijuana, if I were you I would get rid of it as quickly as you can. I’ve heard burying it in your back yard is the best method. Rumor has it that it floats if you try to flush it down the toilet.”

Carlie looked over at Lucas and their eyes locked. He was biting down on his lip, trying to contain his amusement. As soon as they were out of the classroom they were both laughing hysterically.

Her dad took them all out for a celebratory breakfast of French Toast and cappuccinos and then her mum had to go back to work.

“You were fabulous Rachie,” she heard her dad say as he squeezed her mom to him and kissed her on the lips before she left.

“Urgh, gross,” Carlie said, embarrassed by the abnormally high level of affection they’d been showing each other lately.

Carlie and Lucas didn’t have to go back to school until the next day so they got to tag along with her dad all day. It was really fun. He was covering an interview with Queensland’s Governor General in the Southbank Parklands. The Governor was having some problems with his public image, so he was presenting the awards for ‘Young Queenslanders of the Year,’ and then doing a live interview afterwards where he would talk to the young people and try to convince the public that he was ‘hip’ and ‘with it’.

Carlie stood beside her dad and every now and then he’d lean over to her and whisper about the best way to shoot a frame, or how to know when to cut away to a different angle. She watched Tracy Grimshaw expertly guide the Govenor through a ‘casual talk’ with the teenagers and young adults who had won the prizes.

Lucas sat off to the side under the shade of an awning. He wasn’t feeling well because he’d eaten too much for breakfast and then had to sit in the back of a news van with no windows as it swerved and weaved in and out of traffic on the way out to Southbank.

After a while all of the young people went out on the lawn to play a game of pick-up cricket with a set that the Governor’s advisors had brought along while Tracy asked the Governor a few more questions.

When her dad queued the girl who was batting, she called out for the Governor to join in the game and he acted as if it was a big surprise. He rolled the cuffs of his business shirt up as he jogged out on to the patch of lawn and took the bat from the girl. The camera switched from the boy who was bowling to the Governor taking an embarrassing far-off swing at the ball.

“God, he’s terrible,” her dad muttered under his breath. “We’ve got to do something. Go in and relieve him of that bat,” he told her.

“No way! I’m not going in there.”

The Governor took another ridiculous swing at a slow easy ball.

“Well shit, we’ve got to do something… Lucas! Lucas, get in there and have a go at batting. Tell the Governor to try bowling for a change. Joke around and smile with him a bit.”

Lucas looked a little green as he got to his feet, but he did as he was told. He was a much more obedient child than she was. He swerved a little as he jogged to where the Governor was swinging the bat around.

“Get a close up of this,” her dad ordered the cameraman.

Carlie and her dad watched as Lucas approached the Governor. He was smiling but it didn’t look quite right. He looked a bit groggy. His eyebrows were squished down a bit, as if he were slightly demented.

The Governor smiled back and held the bat up for Lucas to take. Lucas lifted his hand towards the bat, but his other hand went to his stomach and the smile fell from his face. He bent a little at the middle. His shoulders hunched.

Oh shit.

A wave passed from his abdomen, through his shoulders and neck, and then French Toast and cappuccino was hurtled from his mouth all down the front of the Governor on live TV.

The Governor stood, aghast, his arms outstretched as vomit dripped from his silk tie.

“Should we cut?” The cameraman asked.

Carlie looked up at her dad. He was biting on his lip and had his eyes narrowed. “No. Keep rolling. Keep the camera on the Governor.”

It took a second for the Governor to compose himself, but then he put his hand on Lucas’ back and bent his head towards him to say something. Lucas nodded.

“Somebody get this boy some water,” the Governor called out as he walked Lucas back to a bench in the shade of a big tree.

“Keep rolling,” her dad said.

One of the Governor’s aids jogged over to the bench with a bottle of water, which she handed to him then stood off to the side.

“Close in on him talking to the boy,” her dad said.

The Governor handed Lucas the bottle of water and was saying something to him as Lucas sat with his head bowed and his elbows resting on his knees. He must have made a joke because Lucas looked up at him and laughed and then the Governor smiled and laughed too.

“Okay, you can cut now,” her dad said. “If that doesn’t get him reelected nothing will.”

He was right. Lucas throwing up on the Governor was all over the news that night. Whenever the Governor was on TV he was talking about how he’d reacted to being thrown up on. His obvious concern for Lucas showed his human side a lot better than trying to play cricket did.

“I don’t know how dad knew to keep on filming,” Carlie told her mum at the dinner table. “If it had been up to me I probably would have cut to a commercial as soon as I saw he was going to barf.”

Her mum reached over the table and squeezed her dad’s hand and he gave her a little grin.

The next day Carlie and Lucas went back to school. The official story they were supposed to tell everyone was that someone from Lucas’ swimming club had tried to set him up, but of course they told Penelope the truth, and Tamika too.

Carlie had been surprised when she’d walked up to their usual lunch spot and Tamika had been sitting there in her school hat, looking like a dork.

“Um… Penelope said it was okay for me to sit here,” Tamika said.

“Yeah, that’s fine. I’m Carlie, by the way.”

Carlie didn’t know why Tamika refused to take her hat off but after a while she just got used to it and stopped thinking about it. Tamika was actually the same age as the rest of them, even though she was only in eighth grade.

Carlie told her and Penelope all about how she was going to get her ears pierced and get makeup for her birthday that weekend and invited Penelope over to stay the night on Saturday. She noticed Tamika looked away when she said that and even though she didn’t really know her, she invited Tamika to come too.

“Really? You’d really want me at your party?” She asked skeptically.

“Well it’s not really a party. We’ll just go and watch Lucas swim in his races on Saturday afternoon and stay up late and watch movies or something that night. My real birthday is on Sunday but mum wont let me have people over late on a school night.”

“Well… I’d like to come, but I’m not sure what my mum will say. Can I have your phone number so my mum can talk to your mum?”

That night Carlie stayed up to watch Lucas’ favorite show with him, “Ladette to Lady.” They both spent the vast majority of the time in stitches over the ridiculous girls at Eggleston Hall and the even more ridiculous teachers.

When she went into her room to get ready for bed her mum came in to talk to her.

“Carlie, you know your friend Tamika?”

“Yeah?”

“I just got off the phone with her mum.”

“Oh, about this weekend? I invited her to stay over on Saturday.”

“Mm… honey, Tamika has a skin condition which causes her hair to fall out.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Yes. It’s called Alopecia. Her mum says she’s very self conscious about it.”

“Is it contagious?”

“No. You can’t catch it.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Mm… so, if you still want her to come over you’ll need to be sensitive about her hair. You wont be able to do your beauty treatments like you do with Penelope.”

Carlie snorted. “They don’t work anyway. I think they just write those things in magazines to torture girls like us.”

“So do you still want her to come over? I told her mum I’d call her back.”

“Yeah. I think it’ll be alright, don’t you?”

Her mum smiled and touched her on the shoulder. “I think you’ll handle it just fine.”

After she said goodnight to her mum Carlie couldn’t figure out why she felt so happy. Even though there had been the huge drama of Lucas’ and her suspensions, everything seemed to be going so well lately. Her mum had told her that she was proud of her. Her dad had said that she was a real news woman. And she had friends. Friends who wanted to come over to hang out with her, not just to use the pool and her parents surround sound entertainment system. It was strange how the people you would never think to look twice at could make you happy.

Lucy, Chapter Ten

Lucas hadn’t realized how much the secret about the pot had been weighing on him until he told his parents about it. After Mrs. Weaver had called them on iChat to tell them that he and Carlie had been suspended from school she called him into the room and let him talk to them alone. They had been upset, as he had suspected they would be, but it wasn’t as bad as he’d pictured in his head.

After he’d told them, his mom pointed the webcam away from them while they discussed what his punishment should be. They didn’t realize that he could still hear them. It was as if they were little kids who thought if you couldn’t see them you couldn’t hear them. There was some sort of technology disconnect when it came to his parents.

“I can’t believe he let Matthew and Micah take the blame for him,” his dad said.

“I guess he was afraid of how we’d react,” his mom replied.

“That’s not an excuse. I don’t want him to think it’s okay to take advantage of his friendships.”

“I don’t think he does. If he thought it was okay he wouldn’t have felt the need to confess.”

“True. I guess that took some balls. So what should we give him?”

They argued over his punishment and finally decided that he’d get the same thing as Matthew and Micah got – two weeks grounding when he got home and he’d have to watch the documentary about schizophrenia instead of going to homecoming this year. He tried to act surprised when they tilted the webcam back onto them and delivered the news.

“Think about it Luka,” his dad said. “This would have been much easier on you if you had have owned up at the same time as Matthew and Micah. You could have watched the documentary with them. Instead you have to do it all by yourself.”

Lucas tried to act serious and remorseful but he was secretly gleeful. He didn’t care about the punishment. All he cared was that his parents didn’t hate him.

Mrs. Weaver had to go back to work that afternoon so she dropped Lucas and Carlie off at Mr. Weaver’s work. He worked at a TV station on Mt. Coot-tha and seemed to spend a lot of time walking about hurriedly between different rooms and taking calls on his cell phone. He had an assistant who took them to the cafeteria and ordered them croissants and cappuccinos then speedily retreated back to whatever they were doing.

“What does your dad do?” Lucas asked.

“He’s a producer. He produces A Current Affair.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a news show.”

“Have you ever explored this place? I bet there are heaps of cool things to do.”

“Yeah, I know my way around. But listen, I need you to focus. I want to hear what happened again.”

Lucas sighed dramatically. “Again? You’ve heard this, like, three times now.”

“Yes, again.”

Lucas described exactly what happened in the most ridiculous detail and Carlie stared at him and nodded and prompted him to continue.

When he was done she shook her head. “There’s something I’m missing.”

She chewed on her thumbnail as she stared out the window at the forest of eucalyptus trees.

“Do you use a combination lock or a key lock on your locker?”

“Key. Why?”

“Do you have it?”

“No, the groundskeeper took it.”

“Why would she insist that the lock be cut off when you were right there offering to open it for her?”

“I dunno, dramatic effect?”

Carlie looked back at him suddenly, a new light in her eyes. “No. She wouldn’t let you open it because she knew it wasn’t your lock. Your key wouldn’t have worked on it.”

“Huh?”

“Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

“But I haven’t finished my cappuccino,” he complained as she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him from the table.

Carlie led him down a series of hallways and to a room where her dad was standing at a high table with a couple of other people murmuring over clippings on the table.

“Dad we’re bored, can we borrow one of the camcorders and make a documentary outside?”

Her dad looked up and smiled. “Of course honey, you know where they are.” He turned to one of his workmates. “She’s a news woman in the making, that one,” he said proudly.

Carlie went over to a tall closet and got a camcorder out. “Thanks, we’ll get out of your hair now.”

Her dad waved and went back to his work, then turned back to them. “Here, take my personal phone, just in case.”

Carlie called a cab and before long they were back at school. It was fifth period and everybody was in class so they had the school to themselves. She had him stand by his locker and describe, yet again, what had happened and then they took off in search of the groundskeeper. They found him weeding a garden bed outside the gymnasium.

“We were wondering if you would answer a few questions regarding the lock that you cut this morning?” Carlie asked as she trained the camcorder on him.

“Ah…” George stood up and removed his leather work gloves. “Sure, I guess so. Is this for a school project?”

“Yes, you could say that. Do you cut locks off lockers very often?”

“Not at this time of year. At the end of the year there are always a few girls who accidentally leave their lock behind and then I have to cut them away, but this is the first time during the school year.”

“Hmm… do you still have the lock?”

“It’s in the work shed.”

“Would we be able to see it please?”

“Sure.”

George led them up to his work shed, unlocked it, and took the severed lock from a draw under the workbench in the middle of the room. Carlie kept the camcorder pointed at him the whole time.

“Are you sure this is the lock you cut this morning?” She asked.

“Yes, this is where I left it.”

“Does anyone else have access to this work shed?”

“No. The cleaners might but they never come in here.”

“Is it possible that someone could have come into the shed and replaced this lock with a different one?”

“I guess it is possible, but it’s highly unlikely.”

“Why?”

“Because of the marks on it. I started cutting on the left side, but the angle hurt my wrist so I ended up cutting through on the right side of the lock. I’m sure this is the lock I cut off this morning. Why the cross examination?”

“Oh, we’re just trying to be thorough Mr…?”

“Crossey. George Crossey.”

Carlie nodded. “Thank you so much for your help Mr. Crossey. Now, Lucas, see if your key fits in this lock.”

Lucas fished his keys out of his pocket and Mr. Crossey handed him the lock. He held it up for the camera, slid the key inside and tried to turn it but he couldn’t. Carlie was right. It wasn’t his lock.

“Let Mr. Crossey try. He’s an impartial third party.”

Lucas handed him the lock and key and Mr. Crossey couldn’t get the lock to open either.

“That’s great! That’s proof that someone broke into my locker. We should go and show it to Mrs. Hoskins right away. Maybe she’ll un-suspend us!”

Carlie didn’t share his enthusiasm. “It’s not water-tight. She could say that you just went and got a different key and that’s why it doesn’t work. We need more. Besides, think about it Lucy, if Mrs. Hoskins knew it wasn’t your lock that means she knew you were being set up and was happy to go along with it. We need real proof. We need a confession.”

His heart sank back to its previous low. “How are we going to get that? We don’t know who did it.”

“No, but we have an idea who might know about it.”

They intercepted Zoe on her way out of English class.

“I need to talk to you,” Carlie said.

“Why would I want to talk to you?”

“Because I’m making a documentary. My dad said he might air it on his show. You could be on TV.”

Zoe’s eyes flickered and she bit down on her lip.

“It’s not bad. I promise you will look really good. We’ll do a soft lighting that’ll make your skin glow.”

“Okay. After Japanese. Where do you want to do it?”

“Ah…”

“In the library,” Lucas cut in. “I’ll get us a study room so the sound will be good.”

They went to the library and he sweet talked the librarian into giving them one of the study rooms to use. When they were inside Carlie started acting all shy.

“Um… Lucy, can you film me for a minute. I want to make a statement.”

He took the camcorder and watched her through the display.

She shifted in her seat nervously and pushed a strand of straight brown hair behind her ear.

“I’m Carlie Weaver and I’m a student at BGGS. In the first week of classes this term I had an accident in PE. I was trying to run too fast on the treadmill and I fell of the back of it and crashed into Lucas. We both fell on the floor in front of the whole class. For some reason we were sent to the principal’s office, even though we hadn’t done anything wrong.

“When I was in her office, Mrs. Hoskins kept on prodding me to say that Lucas had touched me inappropriately. She kept on asking if he had touched my breasts or my bottom. She called him a cunning fox and implied that he was dangerous to the girls at school. She made me feel like all I had to do to get Lucas kicked out of school was to say that he’d touched me.”

Lucas was stunned. Mrs. Hoskins had been out to get him all along. She must be the one behind the pot in his locker. His heart sank. It was going to be impossible to get un-suspended now.

“That’s it,” Carlie said.

He lowered the camcorder and turned it off. They sat staring at each other across the plastic-topped desk.

“I think Mrs. Hoskins set you up.”

He nodded.

“She’s a big fish to fry… actually she’s like a big whale to fry.”

He laughed. “No, she’s more like a sea cow.”

Carlie smiled. “Hey don’t offend the manitees, they’re lovely placid creatures. Hoskins is a great white shark feasting on baby seals.”

“A great white with little rectangular glasses, a ridiculous perm and annoying fake pompous accent.”

She laughed. “And that awful pink lipstick. Don’t forget the lipstick… Sonny Jim.”

Lucas leaned back in his chair and laughed freely. It was just like his dad said, ‘laughter is the best medicine.’ Even though he still felt like they were in an impossible situation, he felt a bit better when he and Carlie were laughing about it.

She made him hide behind a shelf of books when Zoe came to the library after her Japanese class. Carlie fussed over her as if she were a Hollywood starlet. She collected all of the desk lamps from around the library and took them in to the study room with them.

“I’m going to create the perfect lighting for your skin tones,” he heard her say as she closed the door.

It took about twenty minutes, and then Lucas watched Carlie and Zoe embrace and Zoe walk out of the library. He waited a few minutes to make sure she wasn’t coming back before going into the study room.

Carlie was sitting at the desk peering into the screen of the camcorder as she played back the interview.

“I think we got it,” she said without looking up.

He sat beside her and she angled the screen so he could see too and they watched together. In the video, Carlie gently coaxed and Zoe did a great impression of someone important answering important questions. He had no idea how Carlie did it, but within minutes Zoe was transformed from a suspicious, unwilling interviewee to a gushing fountain of information.

She talked openly about how Mrs. Hoskins had called her, Bess and Gina into her office one at a time to ask if he had ever pushed drugs on them.

“She said that another girl had come to her and told her that Lucas had offered her drugs. She wanted us to agree that he was a drug dealer, I could tell.”

“How could you tell?”

“Well, she kept on talking about how he was a blemish on the face of the school and a danger to us girls. She called him an American hooligan and said he wasn’t to be trusted. She kept on implying that the reason he’d left our group was because we’d stood up to him about the drugs and kicked him out.”

Lucas felt his face burning red. He was embarrassed and ashamed that Mrs. Hoskins thought that about him.

“And what did you say?”

“I told the truth. I said the reason he left was probably because he couldn’t handle the responsibility of sitting with the popular girls, so he went and found unfashionable people to sit with.”

He was gob smacked by the depths of her arrogance.

“What about Gina and Bess? What did they say?”

“Mrs. Hoskins told us not to talk to anyone about it. I’m probably going to get into heaps of trouble for talking about it on TV…” She hesitated.

“You look great Zoe,” Carlie interjected. “The school tie really brings out the blue in your eyes in this lighting.”

“Really?” She touched her face with manicured fingers.

“Yeah, for sure. You look stunning.”

Zoe smiled into the camera.

“So what did Gina and Bess say?” Carlie prompted.

“Well, we weren’t supposed to talk about it but of course we did. When Bess was there Gina said she thought Lucas had left the group because he liked Bess but she didn’t like him in the same way and he couldn’t handle being around her any longer, but when we were alone she told me that she really thought that Lucas liked her the best.”

“Uh-huh, and what about Bess?”

“Bess went along with what Mrs. Hoskins said.”

“Bess said that Lucas had offered her drugs?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t a big deal. There was already someone else who’d said it and Bess was just going along with it. It’s not like she lied, she just agreed with something that wasn’t true.”

“Right, that’s understandable. Did Lucas ever offer you drugs?”

“No,” she scoffed.

“Did he ever talk about drugs, or even alcohol?”

“No.”

“Do you think he offered Bess drugs?”

“No.”

“Why do you think she would say that he did?”

Zoe shrugged. “You know Bess, she’s just looking for attention.”

“Right. Well it’s good to know there are still some people out there who aren’t attention seekers.”

Zoe didn’t catch the sarcasm in Carlie’s voice. She smiled and said, “Yes. I’m very down to earth.”

That was essentially the end of the interview. They put the desk lamps back out on the desks that they came from and were walking out of the now deserted school when Carlie suddenly pulled him behind a tree.

“What?”

“It’s Mrs. Hoskins,” she whispered as she took the camcorder out of its case and held it up to start recording again. She got footage of Mrs. Hoskins walking from the administration building, across the pathway and to the staff parking lot. “Come on, watch this…”

“Mrs. Hoskins!” She called out as she jogged towards the school principal.

The old bat turned briskly and her eyes went wide with alarm when she saw Carlie jogging towards her brandishing a camcorder. She hurried towards a stately black Mercedes.

“Mrs. Hoskins, would you answer a few questions for us regarding Lucas’ suspension.”

“I have nothing to say!” She cried indignantly.

The vehicle’s unlocking mechanism bleeped and she opened the driver’s side door.

“Mrs. Hoskins, we just have a few questions…”

She raised her hands to shield herself from the camera as she plunked herself down into the big luxury car.

“Mrs. Hoskins, what do you have to hide?” Carlie cried dramatically.

She slammed the door and the car jumped to life, almost running over Carlie’s foot on its quick retreat.

Carlie turned to him and smiled a huge, delighted grin. “That couldn’t have gone better.”

“What do you mean? You didn’t get her to talk at all.”

“Exactly. She wouldn’t talk, which makes her look guilty. Come on, let’s go show my dad.”

When they were back at the TV studio, Carlie managed to pull her dad aside to look at her ‘documentary’. He started off just nodding every now and then, but after the interview with Zoe he was smiling and when he saw the footage of Mrs. Hoskins running away from the camera he got out his phone and started making calls.

He took the camcorder off Carlie. “This is amazing honey, I’m so proud of you. We can probably run it tomorrow night.”

“No, wait dad. Don’t you think we should ask mum first? I mean, what if we can come to a better agreement without airing it?”

“Use it as leverage?”

Carlie nodded.

He hesitated for a moment. “This is good stuff Carlie, news worthy… but it is yours to do what you want with. I can help you to cut and edit it this evening and you and your mum can decide what to do with it.”

They spent the evening at the TV station. Mr. Weaver called Mrs. Weaver, who drove up after work to see what they were doing. They ate dinner in the cafeteria and talked about what Mr. Weaver should say in the voice-over commentary that would guide the viewer through the story.

In the end, when Mr. Weaver had cut and spliced and added a voice over, stock footage of the school, some music and special effects it was very dramatic and felt like a real news story. He blurred Zoe’s face and changed her voice and added the words ‘identity concealed for student’s safety.’ It was all very impressive.

“Let’s hope that this is enough to tip the scales in our favor tomorrow,” Mrs. Weaver said.

Lucas felt a mixture of emotions. On the one hand it had been an awful day full of nasty surprises, but on the other hand Carlie had stood up for him so vehemently and with such complete confidence in his innocence that he felt happy to have found that she was such a good friend.

Telling his parents about the pot in Micah’s backyard and how he’d let Matthew and Micah take the blame for him had been difficult, and they’d been mad, but in the end he was so relieved to not have to carry the secret around with him anymore that it more than balanced out the punishment they’d given him.

He wasn’t sure what was going to happen tomorrow but he kind of hoped he got to see Mrs. Hoskins’ face while she watched Carlie’s documentary. That, and he wanted to see Mrs. Weaver in action.

Lucy, Chapter Nine

As soon as Carlie got to school she knew something was wrong. Everyone was looking at her funny and then Lucas didn’t show up for homeroom.

“What’s going on?” She asked Michelle, one of the girls who sat near the back.

“You didn’t hear? I thought you’d know all about it.”

“About what?”

“Lucas got caught with a big plastic bag full of pot.”

“What?”

“Yeah. They found it in his locker. Mrs. Hoskins had the groundskeeper cut the lock off and she found it. She said she had ‘sources’ who were right about him.”

“No. You’re kidding.”

Michelle shook her head. “He said it wasn’t his, but I bet it was. Doesn’t he live at your house? Does he like, smoke pot all the time?”

“No, of course not. He never smokes anything.”

She gave a wry smile. “It just goes to show you, you never can tell if you really know someone.”

Carlie sat back in her seat and listened as the teacher called the names and the girls all responded. She couldn’t believe it. Surely she would have noticed if Lucas was some sort of druggie.

“Wait… he was there when they cut the lock off?”

“Yeah. He offered to open it but Mrs. Hoskins told him to stand back, then he said the pot wasn’t his when she pulled it out of his locker.”

She shook her head. Something felt wrong.

According to her mum drugs were readily available at every street corner and it was up to Carlie to ‘just say no,’ but the reality was she’d never been offered drugs and she’d lived in Brisbane all her life.

Where would Lucas get a big bag full of pot? Not at the swimming pool, it was incredibly healthy and wholesome at the pool. Maybe he could have gotten it from Ben, but she’d met Ben before and he was sporty and fit, not the sort of person who she could envisage owning marijuana.

Even if Lucas had pot, why would he keep it in his locker?

Michelle said Mrs. Hoskins had ‘sources,’ but if Carlie didn’t know about it how would anyone else? Sure, Lucas talked to everyone in the whole school, but he did it in a cheerful, open sort of way, she’d never seen him whispering to anyone about drugs.

There was definitely something wrong. If Lucas had said the drugs weren’t his then she believed him.

Even though the teacher hadn’t called her name yet she jumped up out of her seat and headed out the door and towards the principal’s office. She hurried through the administration building and past Margie the secretary.

“Do you have an appointment?” Margie called out after her. “Young lady, you need an appointment!”

An appointment was the least of her worries right now. She strode straight up to Mrs. Hoskins’ door and knocked loudly on the heavy wood. There was no response so she knocked again. She didn’t bother trying a third time. She opened the door to a very upset Lucas and an unexpectedly blithe Mrs. Hoskins.

Lucas was huddled in a low chair and Mrs. Hoskins’ large, pink-clad form towered above him on the opposite side of her huge desk. Her stiff permed grey curls were slightly disheveled, most likely from the unusual occurrence of exposing herself to the heat this morning, and her rectangular spectacles were perched low on her nose. The wrinkled skin around her mouth held her lips in a tight, small smile.

Her eyes bulged momentarily when they met with Carlie’s.

“Carlie, what are you doing here?”

“Mrs. Hoskins,” she said between gasps of air. “Lucas is innocent. Someone set him up.”

Mrs. Hoskins’ eyebrows rose. “A set up? Well, that seems a most unlikely scenario. Run along now, you’ll be needing to get to class.”

“You don’t understand. It makes no sense for Lucas to have drugs. Someone has set him up. I’m sure of it.”

Mrs. Hoskins narrowed her eyes at her. “You will stop this nonsense at once. This boy was caught red handed with marijuana at school. He is very lucky that I haven’t called the police. Now, you will go to class and forget these silly notions at once, or I will have no option but to suspend you.”

Her reaction was so strong and so negative that it immediately set off alarm bells in Carlie’s mind.

She took a deep breath, stood as tall as she could and said in her calmest voice, “If you have to suspend me then I guess that's just what you'll have to do. Someone set Lucas up and if you wont listen to me maybe our lawyer will.”

Mrs. Hoskins’ mouth scrunched up and her brow lowered as if she were a bull contemplating a charge but her eyes were all wrong. It wasn’t anger or resolve that she saw in her old hateful eyes. It was something else.

“Come on Lucas,” Carlie reached for his hand and he moved towards her.

“Don’t you dare even think about walking out that door Sonny Jim,” Mrs. Hopkins snarled.

Lucas looked up at her with red-rimmed, uncertain eyes. She grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the door.

“You are suspended! Do you hear me? The both of you are suspended! I might even expel you!”

Carlie couldn’t help but laugh. In the emotion of the moment Mrs. Hoskins had forgotten about her snobbish British accent and was talking like a regular Australian.

“You will be hearing from us,” she said as she pulled Lucas out the door.

Once they were out the front of the school she started to feel shaky. Her hands were unsteady as she reached for the arm of a bench to sit down on. She couldn’t believe she’d done that. She’d never stood up to an adult like that, especially not the school principal.

“What should we do?” Lucas asked.

“We’ll have to go and see my mum, at her office in the city.”

“Okay. Should we take the bus?”

“Yeah.” Her mind was racing, trying to put the pieces together and figure out what had happened.

“Well, let’s go then.”

“Okay… Wait. We should write Nell a note so she knows what happened. She’ll be all alone at morning tea and lunch.”

Lucas agreed and they wrote her a note and went back in to push it through the metal slats of her locker. As they were walking up the hill on the way back out of school Lucas had a funny smile on his face.

“Why are you smiling?”

“Oh, nothing… it’s just that it was really nice of you to think of Nell, that’s all.”

They caught the bus into the city and Carlie led Lucas into the big glass building that her mum’s law firm had their offices in. Even though it was the school’s uniform policy to wear the ugly felt hat any time she was in uniform outside of school grounds, Carlie purposefully didn’t put it on as an act of defiance. It was a stupid hat anyway. Who in their right mind would wear a dark blue felt hat in the heat of Brisbane?

The receptionist on duty didn’t recognize her. “I’m Carlie Weaver and this is Lucas. We need to see my mum. It’s kind of an emergency.”

Moments later her mum was in the reception area, ushering them through to her office where they sat on the comfy chairs. Her mum’s office was nothing like Mrs. Hoskins’. It was on the side of the building so an entire wall was made of glass and looked over a grassy square and had a view of city hall and the other tall buildings around. Her mum had a small desk and a large filing cabinet on one side of the office and the other side was filled with four cushy chairs and a few side tables.

Carlie hadn’t been in here for a long time, probably a year or more. She looked around and saw that not much had changed. There was still the oil painting of a suburban footpath and house on one wall and a formal family portrait from when she was about eight hanging beside it.

Her mum sat down on one of the cushy chairs with them and they told her what had happened. Lucas elaborated on a few points. He said that Mrs. Hoskins claimed that a student came to her and told her that Lucas had offered to sell her pot.

After a while her mum took a yellow notepad and pen out of the drawer of one of the side tables and started taking notes.

When they were done explaining everything that had happened she leaned in to Lucas.

“Lucas,” she said seriously. “I need to know the whole truth. If I’m going to defend you I need to know exactly what you did and didn’t do.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Her mum’s steady gaze held on Lucas. “Everybody makes mistakes and bad decisions in life. Making one bad decision does not make you a bad person. If you had anything to do with the marijuana, I need to know about it so I know the best way to defend you.”

“You’d defend me even if I did it?”

“Yes,” she said seriously. “I will always defend you, even if you made a bad decision.”

Lucas blinked a few times and then he said, “I swear it isn’t mine. I have no idea how it got in my locker.”

“Have you ever had marijuana before?”

“What do you mean had?”

“Have you smoked it, or eaten it?”

“No.”

“Have you owned it?”

Lucas hesitated and his brow wrinkled. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know what it was. Joseph Thule sold it to me for $10 and then I didn’t know what to do with it.” He was talking rapidly. “Micah didn’t know what to do either so we asked Matthew.”

“Matthew?”

“Micah’s big brother.”

“Oh. Was this back in America?”

“Yeah. Matthew told us what it was but he said we couldn’t smoke it because we’d get kicked off the swimming team when we got drug tested. He wanted to tell their parents about it but I wouldn’t let him because I was afraid my dad would get upset at me.”

Lucas’ eyes went all watery and he gulped for air between his rambling sentences.

“Matthew promised that he’d say that he and Micah bought it and that I didn’t know anything about it, but I still wouldn’t let him, so we had to try and get rid of it.

“I thought we should flush it down the toilet but Micah said it would float so we buried it in their back yard instead. Everything was fine until… until Micah’s mum decided she was going to have a… a…”

Carlie and her mum leaned in, enthralled by Lucas’ unusual story.

“…a Labor Day party.”

Carlie and her mum looked at each other. She had no idea why having a Labor Day party was such a big deal.

“We had to help clean up the back yard for the party,” Lucas continued. “When we got to the place where we’d buried the pot there were all of these plants growing out of the ground. We didn’t know what to do because Micah’s mom puts all of the garden waste into a composter, so she’d see them if we just pulled them out.

“Matthew and Micah wanted to tell their dad but I said no. I wanted to burn the plants but Matthew said the whole neighborhood would be able to smell it, so we went to the hardware store and bought Roundup to spray them with.”

“Did it work?” Her mum had dropped her lawyer’s façade and a small smile appeared on her lips.

“Yeah, they died but then we didn’t know what to do with the dead plants. There were only a few days until the party so we just pulled them out and tossed them over the fence into Mrs. Stubbs’ yard. We figured that she was so old and blind that she’d never know the difference.”

“And?”

“Everything was fine until after the party when Grandma Judy walked Mrs. Stubbs back to her house and she went out into the back yard and saw the dead pot plants beside the fence. She’s from Berkeley so she knew what they were and she took them back and showed them to Micah’s mom and dad.”

Lucas’ bottom lip began to quiver and a big fat tear spilled over his cheek.

“They told my mom and dad and then they sat us all down and asked us what happened. Matthew said he and Micah bought it. He said that I had nothing to do with it and I just sat there and didn’t say anything.”

Lucas bowed his head and buried his face in his hands, sobbing. “When we went home my dad said he was proud of me for staying out of trouble. Matthew and Micah were grounded and weren’t allowed to go to the homecoming parade. They had to stay home and watch a documentary about drugs and schizophrenia, even though it was all my fault.”

Lucas’ shoulders lurched unevenly from his big sobs and her mum moved her chair closer to Lucas and patted him on the back.

“There, there, Lucas,” she murmured soothingly. “You’re a very lucky boy to have such good friends.”

He nodded his head but didn’t lift his face out of his hands.

“It’s not too late to own up to your parents you know.”

He looked up at her and sniffed. His cheeks were red and wet with tears. “You’re going to tell them?”

“No, but you could tell them. I think it would probably make you feel better to clear the air, don’t you?”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, maybe.”

She patted his shoulder and then sat back into her chair. “I don’t think that episode has any bearing on the current situation. Now, tell me, are there any girls at school who don’t like you or would prefer it if you weren’t there?”

Carlie sat and listened as Lucas talked about the trick Bess and Gina had played on him at assembly and her mum made notes on her yellow paper. It made sense that Bess and her old group was behind it, but she couldn’t help but feel that they were missing something. The pieces just didn’t fit together properly.

Lucy, Chapter Eight

Carlie had dimples in her cheeks when she smiled. Lucas had known her and lived with her for five weeks but he’d never noticed because he’d never seen her smile until now. Of course she made a facial expression that imitated a smile regularly, but this was her first real smile.

She had just laid her letters down on the scrabble board and was smiling at her own joke. She’d written ‘poopoo’ across the triple word score square and a double letter score square.

“I don’t think that’s in the dictionary,” he complained even though he knew he was going to let her get away with it.

“We let you have eek,” she retorted, still smiling.

“Fine.” He held his hands up in surrender.

Carlie giggled with glee as she added her points. “Thirty-nine!” She wrote her score down. “That puts me at one hundred and twelve, Penelope at ninety-eight and Lucas at forty.”

Penelope and Carlie grinned at each other triumphantly.

He really needed to get a different game to play at lunchtime.

He’d started bringing board games to school because Penelope was so painfully shy that conversations with her were like talking to a wall. A pretty wall, but a wall nonetheless. Since Carlie had joined them they’d started using scrabble as a way to gang up on him. They didn’t do it meanly, it was just like they were asserting their supremacy as girls, kind of like the way his mom and Micah’s mom high-fived each other any time one of them made a joke about how dumb men were.

It didn’t really bother him. He was pretty sure of two things; first, he’d just had a string of bad luck for the past two weeks with the scrabble letters he’d picked up, and second, Carlie and Penelope were in cahoots against him.

Despite a dismal losing streak at Scrabble, things had gotten better for him since Carlie had left her old group of friends. She was polite to him now. She had stopped rolling her eyes and she actually made an effort to talk to him every now and then.

Last weekend she had gone with him and her dad to the nursery to look for more bromeliads. He was glad because, to be honest, he was kind of sick of bromeliads. He had no idea how Mr. Weaver kept his enthusiasm for them up. They were just spiky little plants with weird-looking flowers.

He’d clowned around with Carlie at the nursery, making jokes about the Latin names for the plants and making the garden gnomes have stupid conversations with each other in high-pitched voices. After a little prodding from him she’d joined in and had invented a gnome character that hated bromeliads with a passion. It had made him laugh so hard that he’d bought it and they stuck it by the path in the front garden (Mr. Weaver had banished it from the pristine bromeliad museum of the back yard).

Carlie’s bromeliad-hating gnome spoke with biting sarcasm in a high pitched Scottish lilt and was called Dr. McLooty. Before long Dr. McLooty was invading all corners of their lives. When they were at the dinner table he’d make a comment about how he couldn’t wait for math class the next day (Carlie despised math), when they were in drama class Carlie would lean in and Mr. McLooty would comment on what a “pompous old tart” the Queen was and how he had no idea why Colin, the boy in the play they were studying, would want to see her.

Mr. McLooty cracked him up. Just the voice that Carlie used was enough to send him into fits. More than once he’d gotten in trouble for laughing during an otherwise completely serious class at school.

Penelope was tolerant of Dr. McLooty, if not a little bewildered by him.

“You should come over this weekend to meet him Nell,” Carlie said one day when Penelope reminded them that she had no idea what they were laughing about.

“Really?”

“Yeah, of course. Come over to my house and stay the night. You can meet Dr. McLooty and we can swim in the pool and watch movies and eat popcorn.”

Penelope’s face glowed with happiness. “Okay, I’ll ask my mum.”

When she came over that Saturday afternoon Lucas hung out with them for a while. He even went up to Blockbuster to pick out some movies with them and Mrs. Weaver, but they outvoted him on every movie pick.

He wanted to watch horror films. He was still trying to replace the nightmare scenes in his head from Sally’s Baby with something else… anything else. Aliens, predators, axe murderers, they were all preferable to Sally.

Although he would never in a lifetime ask them about it, the girls seemed to be unscarred by Sally’s Baby. They didn’t feel the need to scare themselves silly, they wanted to watch vampire romances. He endured through about fifteen minutes of the first one before it became too much for him and he retreated to his bedroom to play computer games and go to bed.

He was woken multiple times throughout the night by squeals and giggles coming from Carlie’s room and the next morning when Carlie finally rolled into the kitchen for breakfast he had to put his hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t laugh.

She smelled awful, like rotting fruits and vegetables or something. She had goopy dried greenish-grey stuff all over her face and her hair was tangled with plastic wrap and a lumpy white mixture that looked a bit like cottage cheese. She lifted her hand to cover a yawn and he noticed that she was wearing black nail polish. The whole effect was not flattering.

“What on earth have you done to yourself?” Mrs. Weaver asked.

“Huh?”

“What is all of this on your face and in your hair?”

“Oh!” She patted over her face and head and her eyes went wide. “We were doing a beauty treatment… we read about it in Dolly…”

Her mom walked over to her and picked at Carlie’s crusty hair. “A beauty treatment? What is this?” She sniffed at her head and her nose wrinkled in disgust.

Carlie’s forehead creased and the greenish-grey face mask she had on crinkled. She turned quickly and ran out of the room.

Mrs. Weaver turned to him and Mr. Weaver. “What…? I mean, what was she thinking?”

Lucas just shook his head and went back to his breakfast. He had no idea what went through girls’ heads, if anything at all.

A yelp of distress echoed through the house a few moments later and then Carlie and Penelope boarded themselves up inside the bathroom for the rest of the morning.

After all of that fussing, when they finally emerged from the bathroom they both looked exactly they same as they had before their ‘beauty treatments.’

That was the way it went the Carlie, Penelope and Lucas. All three of them were friends, but sometimes they were better off without his input, and he knew it. When they got caught up in their ‘girl stuff,’ he’d just go and find something else to do.

Sometimes he’d bike over to Ben’s house and hang out for a while. Ben was a nice guy and his family was into sports the same way Lucas and Micah’s families were. Ben and his sister Natalie always had some swim meet or cross country race or kayaking regatta to go to and sometimes Lucas went with them. Any time he could enter the events he would, just as something to do.

When they went to swim meets he only entered the events he wasn’t good at. Lucas had always been good at swimming and it had always been a source of great distress for him. He’d raced Micah since they were so young he didn’t even remember and he always beat him. Sometimes he wanted to swim slowly just to let Micah win, but he knew that was unfair.

He was contemplating quitting swimming for the thousandth time when he got to school that Monday morning and headed for his locker. There was a sea of dark blue skirts and white blouses crowded around the stand of lockers that his was a part of and he pushed to the front to see what was going on.

Mrs. Hoskins was wearing a super-sized pink woolen skirt suit and fanning her fat, sweaty face with a lace frilled handkerchief as she watched the large, burly groundskeeper cut through the lock on one of the lockers with a large set of bolt-cutters.

The locker looked eerily familiar and it only took a quick count from the end of the row for Lucas to realize it was his that they were trying to break into.

“Ah… I could just open that for you if you like?” He said.

The man with the bolt cutters turned and said, “Oh, great…” before Mrs. Hoskins cut him off.

“That wont be necessary,” she trilled. “Stand back Mr. Gray. George, you get back to work on that lock.”

Mr. Gray? Since when did anyone call him Mr. Gray?

Poor George’s shoulders slumped as he turned back and struggled with the bolt cutters and lock. After a great deal of exertion he managed to cut through Lucas’ lock. He took it from the locker and offered it to Mrs. Hoskins, who waved him away as if he were an irritating insect. George sighed and put the lock in his pocket as he walked away.

Mrs. Hoskins stepped up to his locker and started rooting through it, pulling out folders and notebooks and his spare swimsuit until she held a plastic bag full of what looked like dried herbs triumphantly in the air.

“Ah-ha! My sources were correct!” She shouted exuberantly. “Marijuana!” She pronounced it marry-you-wana.

“Wh.. What?” He stuttered. “That’s not mine.”

“I beg to differ Mr. Gray. It seems you’ve been caught red-handed!”

He didn’t know what to think or to do. He’d been set up. He didn’t own any marijuana, well at least not since that unfortunate incident last summer.

“I think you had best come with me young man.” Mrs. Hoskins grabbed him by the ear and marched him through the crowd of girls. It hurt like hell but he was too afraid to make her stop.

This was really serious. He didn’t know what it was like in Australia, but in America you could get arrested for owning marijuana and go to prison. He didn’t like the idea of prison. Images of shackles and forced labor ran through his head. They probably had some medieval form of physical punishment here, like that episode of The Simpsons when Bart was indicted for fraud and got the boot.

All of these fears ran through his head as Mrs. Hoskins paraded him past groups of whispering girls on the way to her office. He had a sinking feeling that this was the first of many miserable days ahead.

Lucy, Chapter Seven

Carlie was surprised by how much she missed Lucas. He was still physically there a lot of the time, but he’d lost all of his warmth towards her. He used to joke around and try to make her laugh all the time, but now he was just polite and quiet around her.

He’d left their group at school to sit with Penelope instead.

“I was about to chuck him out anyway,” Bess said when she realized he wasn’t coming back.

“Yeah, he was such a stick in the mud, I don’t know how much more of him I could have taken,” Gina agreed.

Carlie knew they were just saying that. Bess had tried to flirt with Lucas all the time and once she had overheard Gina telling Zoe how cute she thought Lucas was and how she thought he liked her better than Bess.

Now that he was gone, she could see the attraction of him. Although he was only fourteen, Lucas was already tall with broad shoulders and long, muscular limbs. He had a body that was approaching manly but his face was still open, friendly and boyish. He smiled and laughed a lot, but the only person he ever laughed at was himself. Sometimes he said things that she could argue were mean, like when he cried, “God no!” when her dad asked him if he was trying to seduce her, but she knew there was no malice in his heart. He was just a big, clueless boy.

His detached civility only made his departure more difficult for her. On Monday night she heard him practicing his tuba and so she got her flute out to play with him, but after she joined in he stopped and knocked on her door. For a moment her heart leapt. She thought that he wanted to sit in her room and play face-to-face, but when she opened the door he didn’t have his tuba with him.

“I’m practicing what I’m going to play at assembly on Thursday. I can go into the garage if you want to practice your flute.”

She hesitated for a moment while it settled in that he was rejecting her. “No, that’s okay, I can practice later.”

He walked away without replying.

She had no idea what he thought he was going to play at school assembly, but the noises coming from his room sounded nothing like a tuba. She sat at her desk, pretending to do homework while she listened to him play. He was obviously experimenting, pushing the limits. He made noises like a weird percussion instrument, he warbled between octaves, he made the sort of sound you might associate with a UFO landing, he somehow made it sound like Harley Davidson motorcycle.

In between all of these sounds she could occasionally pick out a melody, but it was lost quickly.

She hoped he didn’t make a fool of himself in front of the entire school.

Even though he was clearly avoiding her, Lucas was quickly becoming best pals with her parents. He worked with her dad in the garden on the weekends and he and her mum had become ‘jogging buddies’. Her parents adored him, but it didn’t annoy her the way it used to. Now it just depressed her.

On Tuesday night he asked her mum if they had any board games that would travel well. Her mum dug an old game of chess out and found the box of scrabble for him.

“Do you mind if I borrow these?”

“No, not at all.”

“Thanks Mrs. W., you’re the best!”

He went to his room and Carlie noticed that her mum had a funny little smile of satisfaction on her face as she put Snakes and Ladders and Kerplunk back in the cupboard.

On Wednesday Bess asked after him. “So how’s Lucas?”

“Oh, he’s fine, I guess. I don’t really know. We don’t talk that much.” She consciously kept her voice even and light, even though she found the subject of Lucas to be deeply depressing.

“What’s he up to these days?”

“Ah… well between his lifeguard job and swimming practice he’s at the pool a lot.”

“Yeah? And?”

“Um… he’s been playing his tuba a lot. He’s giving a performance at assembly tomorrow instead of making a speech.”

“The tuba huh?” Bess smirked at Zoe, who raised her eyebrows and one corner of her mouth.

Carlie wasn’t sure what was going on. They’d never shown any interest in Lucas’ tuba playing before. “Yeah, why?”

“Oh, no reason.” Bess shook her head and changed the topic of conversation.

That night she listened to him practicing again and couldn’t help but laugh. His piece started off with the American national anthem in a slow, boring kind of way but quickly morphed into some sort of hip-hop style rendition of a marching band song, complete with that weird percussion thing he did. From there he transitioned into ‘Waltzing Matilda,’ but it was so fast and groovy that it was nothing like a waltz. He somehow juxtaposed that onto a different song, and it wasn’t until he was half way through that you realized he was playing the Australian national anthem, which he finished in a triumphant blast.

She no longer worried that he would make a fool of himself. What he had played was nothing like the boring plod of a tuba, it was fast and exciting and full of life and fun.

The next morning the entire school piled into the assembly hall. It didn’t surprise her that Lucas didn’t sit with her and her friends. She looked around for him and spotted him sitting with Penelope with his tuba in his lap a few rows away.

Mrs. Hoskins droned on for a while about school business and then she called the exchange students and all of the students who needed to make announcements to the stage. She watched Lucas stand and walk up to the front of the hall and get in line behind the French exchange student.

There was movement beside her, and she was surprised to see Bess and Gina getting up and walking to the front of the hall.

“Where are they going?” Carlie whispered to Zoe.

“They’re giving an announcement.”

“About what?”

“About a fundraiser they’re doing.”

“For what?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

Carlie watched nervously as Bess and Gina lined up behind Lucas.

Mrs. Hoskins called the French girl up onto the stage, who started to give her speech in a thick accent. She was mostly just talking about how hot it was in Brisbane and how she wished the classrooms were air-conditioned.

She had a sympathetic audience.

Carlie listened politely but she couldn’t help but glance over at Bess and Gina. It felt like they were up to no good. They too, were glancing around and then she thought she saw Bess do something to Lucas’ tuba but she couldn’t tell what. Lucas was holding the tuba at his side and listening to the French girl intently; he didn’t notice that they were messing around with his instrument.

When the French girl was done everyone clapped briefly and Lucas took the stage. He walked up to the microphone, but instead of introducing himself he just took a deep breath and brought his tuba to his lips.

Carlie was expecting the deep, rich sound of the first notes of the American national anthem, but just a little squeak came out.

There was a low murmur from the crowd of girls.

Lucas’ brow furrowed and he took another breath and tried again. His tuba squeaked again, and then something seemed to give away and a low, bubbly rumble issued forth that sounded alarmingly like a big, sloppy fart.

There was a split second of silence before the entire school erupted in laughter. Even the teachers, who were all sitting behind him on the stage, were laughing. The only people who weren’t laughing were Lucas, Carlie, Penelope and Mrs. Hoskins. The principal looked aghast, her eyes were bulging out of their sockets and her thin mouth was turned down in a tight frown.

Lucas looked around for a moment and then he did something that only made the situation worse, he tried again. Another deep, rumbling fart echoed around the auditorium.

Stunned, he lowered the tuba from his lips and the laughter only got worse. He had bright red lipstick smeared all over and around his lips.

His face had turned red and he looked around for just a moment before he ran off the stage and out the door of the hall.

The laughter continued as Mrs. Hoskins stepped up to the microphone and tried to take control of the situation.

Now was the time that Carlie should leave, while everyone was distracted and laughing. She wanted to leave, to go to him and tell him something to make him feel better, but she couldn’t make her legs work.

She looked around and spotted Penelope, hunched in her chair, biting down on her lip while she frowned. She didn’t look like she was about to go after him either.

Mrs. Hoskins was starting to get the girls under control. She was threatening to give out lunchtime detentions. The laughing diminished until it was just a chuckle here or there and then there was silence again. She sent the girls who were going to make announcements back to their seats.

Carlie had missed her opportunity. There was no way she could get up and leave now, if she did every eye in the school would notice her. They’d all know that she’d gone after Lucas and his farting tuba.

Bess and Gina had smug smiles on their faces as they approached her and Zoe. Zoe held her hand up and they did a muted high-five as they passed.

Carlie couldn’t believe it. They’d done that to Lucas on purpose. They’d humiliated him in front of the entire school. They’d made almost a thousand girls and all of the teachers laugh at him. It wasn’t just mean. It was mercilessly cruel.

Mrs. Hoskins was droning on about how the teachers were going to crack down on girls who weren’t wearing the school badge and the whole school was sitting, quiet and bored again.

Suddenly she decided that she was going to do it. She was going to leave. She was going to get up and go and make sure Lucas was okay. She was going to commit social suicide.

She stood.

She couldn’t believe it, but she stood.

“What are you doing?” Zoe whispered.

Mrs. Hoskins stopped talking and stared at her. The eyes of one thousand girls turned to her.

Oh shit.

She commanded her legs to walk. She moved as quickly as she could under such intense scrutiny. Finally she made it past the row of girls sitting between her and the aisle and stumbled into the open space. She was walking, then she was jogging, then she was running out the door, her face burning with embarrassment as the entire school looked on in stunned silence.

Once she was outside she continued to run away from the auditorium. Lucas was nowhere in sight. It had probably been a minute or more since he ran off the stage and Carlie didn’t know where to go to look for him.

She tried to think of where a boy would go when he was humiliated like that, but Lucas was the only boy she knew so she didn’t have much to work on. She decided to check the toilets because that’s probably where she’d go. Because Lucas was the only boy in an all girls school there were only two toilets that he was allowed to use; one was in the library and the other was in the gymnasium. Seeing that it was closer, she tried the library one first.

As soon as she approached the door she knew he was in there. She could see the light was on from the crack under the door and she could hear him sniffing.

“Lucy? Are you okay?” She called him Lucy all the time out of habit now.

“Yeah,” an unsteady voice replied.

“Can I come in?”

There was silence for a few seconds, then she heard the lock turn and he opened the door. His face was pink and wet from where he’d obviously scrubbed the lipstick away and his eyes were rimmed with red.

She had no idea what to say. She hadn’t actually expected him to open the door. “Um… is the tuba broken?”

He shook his head. “They put a potato down my bell pipe.”

“Oh… the old potato down the bell pipe trick?”

He tilted his head to the side and stared at her for a second before he started laughing. At first he just chuckled a bit, but then he started to really laugh and she joined in.

“Did you hear the sound it made?” He asked between gasps for air.

“I’m pretty sure everyone heard it.” Now that he was laughing about it she could look at her memory of the event with fresh eyes. It was actually pretty hilarious. “You should have seen Mrs. Hoskins’ face, I thought the old bag was about to have a heart attack.”

Lucas was laughing so hard his eyes were watering over. He picked up the tuba and the potato and they walked out of the library, still laughing. “I wonder what other noises you could make by sticking stuff down the bell pipe.”

“I don’t know, but I have a feeling I’m going to find out.”

When they stepped outside he stopped and looked at her. “Where is everybody?”

“They’re all still in assembly.”

Lucas’ eyes went wide. “We should go and stand outside the auditorium and play the tuba with the potato in it.”

She laughed. “No way.”

“C’mon, it’ll be hilarious. Everyone will be in stitches.”

“Mrs. Hoskins will expel you for sure.”

“How would she know it was me?”

Carlie tilted her head to the side. “Who else do you know around here who has a tuba and a potato and is missing from assembly?”

He pouted like a little kid. “Please?”

“No.”

He sighed dramatically. “Fine. I guess I’ll just go and eat then.” He started to walk off towards the staff building.

“Ah… Lucy?” Her heart began to pound from nervousness.

“What?”

“Do you mind if… well, can I sit with you?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Sure.”