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.”