John Marsden - While I live

I never said anything corny to Gavin about how important he was, how much I needed him, but he must have known it. He must have known it from the time we got up in the morning to the time we went to bed at night. And I thought maybe that’s why he preferred being on the farm to going back to school. After all, in secondary school you get treated like you’re eight years old. I guess it follows that in primary school you’d get treated as though you’re three years old.

I couldn’t treat him like he was three years old. A three-year-old was no good to me. I treated him like he was sixteen years old, because that’s the only way the farm could survive.

Mind you, there were still plenty of moments when I treated him like he was four years old.

On the wall above my desk I’ve got a quote which says ‘Don’t treat people as you think they are, treat them as you think they are capable of becoming’. These days with Gavin were maybe the first time in my life that I’d actually done what the quote said. To be honest, I didn’t do it because of beautiful principles but because it was the only way we were going to make it.

Fi left on the Saturday morning to go back to school in the city. It’d been great having her there. She’d helped me like no-one else could have. I stood in Wirrawee watching the bus disappear down the highway, wondering when I’d see her again. I felt awfully lonely that day. For all that Homer and Gavin were like my brothers, and I loved the big brat and the little brat (not counting the days I wanted to kill them), nothing beats a girl-friend who speaks your language and knows what you’re thinking. And nothing beats a girlfriend like Fi.

After Fi left I went in to Elders with Gavin, to pick up some bags of concrete. We needed to cement in the posts for the new cattle yards. But the trouble with places like Elders is that you see all this stuff, and you know it would make your life so much easier, but you can’t afford it, so all you can do is gaze and drool. For instance they had a post driver with a hands-free automatic auger. Dad would have loved that for the cattle yards.

The next day, Sunday, Gavin and I were sitting looking at the yards as we ate our lunch. I’d brought sandwiches, in an Esky, to save time. We’d done a pretty good job with the cement, considering. I said to him, ‘Why don’t you want to go back to school?’ I’d already tried to have this conversation, but this time he seemed more open.

He got a terrible frown on his face. ‘I don’t like school.’

‘Well, of course I am totally in love with school.’

‘No you’re not.’

‘It was a joke.’

‘Well, I don’t care. I don’t like it.’

‘Yeah, you’ve made that pretty clear. But why?’

‘It’s boring.’

‘Schools have to be boring. It’s against the law for them to be interesting.’

‘You’re stupid.’

‘Seriously, why don’t you like it?’

He did get serious then. He gave me a long sideways look, as if trying to figure out whether he could trust me or not. I didn’t say anything. If he hadn’t worked that out by now, there wasn’t much more I could do.

Finally, looking away, he said, ‘The other kids don’t like me.’

That did surprise me. I knew he’d had trouble early on, but I thought he’d been travelling quite well since then.

I waved to get his attention. ‘They don’t? Are you sure?’

After a long pause, looking away again, he said, ‘They call me “Deafy”.’

‘Oh.’ My sandwich suddenly coagulated in my mouth. I put the rest of it down. ‘Oh. I didn’t know that.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes it does.’

He shrugged.

‘Those little creeps.’ I was starting to get angry. ‘What do you do when they call you that?’

‘I used to punch the crap out of them. But I got in trouble. So now I don’t do anything.’

‘Oh.’ I felt both angry and helpless. It was typical of Gavin to have kept all this to himself. He might have told my parents, but I didn’t think so. I wanted to tell him to go back and punch the crap out of the other kids again, but I realised that mightn’t be the best advice. I couldn’t think what to tell him. ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones’? Yes, but being called names can break your spirit, break your heart. Which was worse?

I’d rather have a broken arm than a broken heart any day.

‘What would happen if you dob on them?’

He looked offended. ‘I’m not doing that.’

‘Have you got any friends?’

‘Yeah. Mark.’

I knew Mark. He was famous for being the naughtiest kid in Wirrawee. Naughtier than Homer even, when Homer was in primary school. In fact next to Mark, Homer would have been school captain.

I could see how Gavin might have ended up with Mark as a friend. I’d noticed even back in primary school that although the other kids laugh at what the naughty kids do, naughty kids usually don’t end up with a lot of close friends. Homer was the exception.

It struck me that living wild on the streets of Stratton during the war might have been a good time for Gavin. He had a gang, a group of feral lost and homeless children, and he’d ended up in charge, so there was no question about his popularity. Away from school, in a situation where deafness was just a minor inconvenience, all his strengths had been shown to maximum advantage.

The next day he came to the bus with not much more than the usual amount of grumbling, complaining, whingeing, dawdling, sulking, and insulting remarks directed at me. Querulous, that’s another good word. I can definitely say he was querulous.

It was my first day back since the funeral, and it was a little weird, the way the other kids treated me. I hadn’t thought about what it would be like. We’re nearly at the start of the run, so when Gavin and I got on the bus there were only the Sanderson kids, Jamie Anlezark, and Melissa Carpenter. They were just the usual ‘Hi, Ellie’, ‘Hi, El’, but they did look at me that little bit longer than normal, and their faces were that little bit redder.

The next stop is Homer’s and he sat next to me as always. To my absolute astonishment no sooner had he sat down than he pulled out a book, turned to a bookmark near the end and settled down to read. I lifted it up as he read to see what it was. It looked old and dusty. The name was The Scarlet Pimpernel. I put it down again, gently, feeling really disorientated. This would be something like Van Gogh playing full-forward for the West Coast Eagles.

After Homer got on, there was a long haul to the Boltons, at ‘Malabar’, then the Grahams and the Pereiras, then the Young twins at ‘Adderley’, and then the bus filled up so fast you couldn’t keep track of them all. There were lots of new kids on the buses these days, but we were lucky; we still had a friendly group, and once we got the Young twins it was like a party every morning. Shannon and Sam Young were a laugh a minute — no, sorry, take that back, a laugh a second. It didn’t matter how sleepy you were in the mornings, when they came bouncing down the aisle of the bus everyone woke up. Even Brad Davis, who slept through parties, footy games and exams, sat up to attention when the Young twins climbed on board.

But today it was different. Everyone was so quiet. Everyone glanced at me as they got on and everyone waved or nodded or said hi or all three, but then they just sat in their seats murmuring away like magpies very early in the morning.

In the seat ahead of me Sam Young picked up a black beetle on a tissue and was about to chuck it out the window. Before he did though he knelt up and showed it to me over the back of his seat. ‘Hey, Ellie,’ he said, ‘look what came out of my nose.’

I laughed. But the laugh strangled itself in my throat when I saw Shannon frown at him from across the aisle. They were treating me like I was an emotional cripple. Well, maybe I was, but I didn’t like to be reminded of it.