Mrs Leeman stares at all of us with more intensity than usual when we come in after recess. Eventually she says, ‘Minha. I want you down the front next to Rey … you’ll have to swap desks with Braden for now.’

  Braden’s head turns around like it’s spring-loaded. Minha’s desk is right up the back, in a low-visibility position. He lifts his desk lid up and piles his arms up with the mess of papers, pencils and other items he has in there. Erasers, toffee wrappers and pencil shavings scatter all over the floor. Mrs Leeman allows Jun and me to help him pick everything up because Minha is already packed up and patiently waiting for his desk to be vacated.

  ‘I may have to move you again, Braden,’ Mrs Leeman says, ‘so don’t get too comfortable.’ I turn my upside-down head a little bit to look at Braden in his new position.

  He looks comfortable already.

  * * *

  My alarm goes off in the middle of the night on Friday. I look at my clock and remember I’m having breakfast at school and doing my first cross-country training session today. I’m up early enough to see Dad about to leave the house on his bike. It’s interesting that he chose a spotted tree frog suit when he works at a warehouse full of chocolate tree frogs and other chocolate stuff. Maybe it’s a silent protest against our new restrictive diet.

  I have to walk to school, so I’ve already used up a whole lot of energy before I start. I’m surprised to see nine other kids already there – one of them is Ahmed. He’s trying without success to stand next to Peta, who is jumping around all over the place. Mr Winsock makes us use even more energy by doing stretches.

  ‘Okay,’ Mr Winsock finally says, ‘I want everyone doing four laps of the oval, except Jesse and Ahmed. I don’t expect any newcomers to keep up with the others just yet. You two can just do three laps today.’ Peta and Ahmed start giggling when Mr Winsock says that.

  He blows his whistle and we all take off. I jog for about half a lap before the others (including Ahmed) pull away from me. I walk the second lap and spend the third lap half-walking, half-standing bent over with my hands on my knees, concentrating on staying alive. When I get to the finish line, I lie down in the damp grass, admire the swirly clouds and listen to the yells and laughing of the rest of the school arriving now that it is a civilised time of day.

  A little voice that might be mine whispers, ‘I think I can do another one’ but Mr Winsock says, ‘Not today, Jesse. I’ll let Mrs Leeman and Ms Kendall know you two will be a little late to class.’ I sit up and see Peta waiting for me.

  It’s not until later when I’m sitting in class that I remember about breakfast. Running around the oval this morning forced thoughts of toast and hot chocolate to go from the front of my mind to right out of it.

  On Saturday, Alex comes over with some more chocolate creams and a vanilla slice. I eat the vanilla slice straightaway but put the unopened packet of chocolate creams in a gumboot under my bed.

  ‘Fred Hollows was an eye doctor,’ Alex says, peering into the fish tank. ‘I went to Kade’s house after school and his dad had a whole book about him. Look at all these awards he won.’ Alex holds the page open. ‘It says here that he stopped hundreds of people from going blind in Australia and then went all over the world doing the same thing for thousands more people. Pretty cool.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you and Kade were friends,’ I say, feeling weirdly uncomfortable.

  ‘We’re not, not really,’ Alex says awkwardly. ‘We’re just in the same class.’

  Einstein swims forwards to look at the book. We sprinkle a bit of food in the tank and he waits in front of the castle while One, Two and Three eat the flakes as they fall through the water. They still haven’t figured out that if they stay in one spot, they can keep eating. They must swim around and think, Yay! Some food just fell on my head.

  We find out some more stuff about Fred Hollows before he became an eye surgeon. He was actually born in New Zealand, so I might be able to use the map on our kitchen wall after all.

  ‘Hey!’ Alex suddenly says. ‘I’ve just thought of something. First, your brother had an eye operation, then you got Einstein with the boggly eyes from Minha and now we’re doing a project on a Great Australian eye surgeon! That’s three eye things!’

  ‘Oh, yeah. What does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t think it means anything,’ Alex says. ‘It’s just a coincidence.’

  ‘Aye,’ I say, laughing.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ Alex says.

  ‘Aye, aye, aye,’ we both say, cracking up.

  On Monday morning, Mr S comes down to the oval before school to watch the cross-country training. ‘This looks like terrific fun!’ he says, before we’ve even started running. Mr Winsock blows his whistle and I jog around the oval until my legs turn to jelly.

  Afterwards, in the canteen, Peta makes me a hot chocolate, but I can only take little sips like someone rescued after two weeks lost in the outback. I can’t face a piece of toast.

  Later, in the classroom, everyone starts working in their Great Australians groups. Everyone except our group. Jun, Braden and I start talking about drawing eyes with yucky diseases on our poster.

  Rey says, ‘It’s not a project about eye diseases. It’s about Fred Hollows.’ She’s not shy like some new kids.

  ‘Yeah,’ Alex agrees. ‘It’s a Great Australians project.’

  I say, ‘But that’s what Fred Hollows did to become a Great Australian. Treated eyes that had eye diseases.’

  ‘They’re not all diseases, though,’ Rey says. ‘Some of them are eye conditions. That’s different.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

  ‘I know!’ says Braden unexpectedly. ‘Like cataracts!’

  I start laughing. ‘You mean like Cataract, your cat?’

  ‘Yeah. I mean – no.’ Braden laughs too. ‘Cataract is just her name. But cataracts are something wrong with your eyes. I don’t know what they are, though.’

  ‘It’s when the eye goes kind of cloudy,’ Alex explains. ‘You have an operation to have the cloudy bit taken out and a clear bit put in. Fred Hollows is famous for doing that operation … he did millions of them.’

  Ms Janik comes over to see how we’re going. We’re not going well. ‘I’d like to see something on the page by the end of this session, please,’ she says.

  As soon as she walks away, Jun has a good idea. ‘You know how tracing paper is kind of see-through?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Alex says, slowly.

  ‘How about we draw a big eye in the middle of our poster, then have an eye-shaped flap of tracing paper over the top? Like a cataract!’

  We all try to picture what he’s describing.

  ‘Anyone looking at our poster can lift up the cloudy eye and see a healthy eye underneath!’ Jun adds.

  We all agree it’s worth a try and better than what we have now – which is nothing.

  At the end of the morning session, Ms Janik is pleased we’re starting on our project. ‘It’s terrific!’ she says, lifting the tracing paper ‘cataract’ to reveal the coloured eye. ‘It has real flair!’

  We haven’t started writing anything yet, though. It’s all flair and nothing else.

  At recess, Thomas Moore is at the wall, this time with Huong and Amy. I’m glad they seem to be friends again, but I hope that all the Preps don’t come down here. Thomas Moore keeps glancing towards the end of the wall.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask him.

  ‘You just missed him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He lives in there,’ Thomas Moore says, pointing to a hole at the end of the wall. ‘Shingleback Wilson.’

  We all take turns peering into the hole. I can’t see anything – just an empty space. Thomas Moore puts half a ham sandwich on a bit of flat rock in front of the wall. I’m tempted to grab it myself.

  Peta tells us that her Grade 6 class is doing the Great Australians project as well.

  ‘I didn’t know your class had a student teacher,’ Braden says.

  ‘We don’t,’ Peta says. ‘We’re doing the project with Ms Kendall.’

  ‘Oh. We thought it was Ms Janik’s idea,’ Jun says.

  Peta laughs. ‘No. It’s kind of fun, though. We get to push all the desks back and work in the middle.’

  ‘We have to work up the front,’ Braden says. ‘Or in the aisle.’

  ‘Ms Kendall doesn’t mind if we talk,’ Peta continues, ‘as long as we’re working on our projects, too.’

  I think about how much fun it must be in Ms Kendall’s class. We’re allowed to talk in our groups, too, but only if it’s about our projects.

  Huong and Amy wander off, but Thomas Moore doesn’t go with them.

  ‘What are you all talking about?’ he asks me.

  ‘Our Great Australians projects.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘My nanna’s a Great Australian.’

  ‘Why? What did she do?’

  ‘She gave all her things away.’

  ‘Gave what away?’ Jun says.

  ‘My house and your house and this school and the hospital …’ Thomas Moore spreads his arms right out. ‘And the shops and all the books in the library and the actual library,’ he goes on.

  ‘Why have we never heard of her?’ Alex asks.

  ‘I’ve heard of her.’

  ‘That doesn’t make her a Great Australian.’

  ‘What does make you a Great Australian?’

  ‘You know,’ Braden explains. ‘When you’ve done something amazing … and everyone knows who you are.’

  ‘Everyone knows who I am,’ Thomas Moore says.

  ‘That’s true,’ Peta says. ‘I might actually miss you next year, Thomas.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Not just me. All of us. To high school,’ Peta explains.

  Everyone’s quiet for a minute, then Braden says, ‘It’s weird to think we’re all going to high school next year.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I have to travel by bus.’

  ‘Which one?’ Braden asks.

  ‘The forty-two.’

  ‘Me too! But aren’t you going to Claremont Park? Where are you getting on?’

  ‘At the corner then change at the station,’ I tell him. ‘Two buses.’

  ‘Me too! Change at the station, I mean. If I go to Kallista. If I go to Claremont Park, we can go the whole way together.’

  ‘I’m going to Claremont Park too, but I’ll be getting there early,’ Peta says. ‘They have athletics before school.’

  ‘Maybe we could all meet at the station after school?’ Braden suggests.

  ‘Maybe.’ Peta sounds unsure.

  The only one not talking about high school is Alex. If he goes to St Bennett’s he’ll travel by train or car. St Bennett’s is about a thousand kilometres away. In the other direction.

  Lunchtime is nearly finished by the time Jun arrives and sits down on the asphalt.

  ‘Samra and I had a school captains meeting with Mrs Overbeek,’ he says, opening his lunch box. ‘We have to do a speech at graduation assembly and thank all the teachers.’

  We wait for him to go on.

  ‘I told Mrs Overbeek that I don’t want to give teachers flowers. Flowers just die,’ he continues. ‘So I put forward a motion for pot plants.’

  ‘And?’ Peta asks.

  ‘Mrs Overbeek told me the flowers have already been ordered,’ Jun says, taking an apple out of his lunch box.

  Alex nods his head, slowly. ‘So, you have to give the teachers flowers?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Jun says. ‘I told Mrs Overbeek that the flowers she ordered won’t have been cut yet. So we still have time.’

  Peta starts laughing. ‘What did Mrs Overbeek say when you told her that?’

  ‘She said she didn’t want to discuss it any further,’ Jun admits.

  On the way back to class, I see Minha and Rey in the Preps’ veggie garden. It looks like they’re talking to a bunch of leaves. I catch a bit of their conversation.

  ‘Yeah, so snails and slugs are both gastropods, which means, “stomach foot ”,’ Minha is saying, ‘and they eat with thousands of microscopic teeth.’

  Eww, gross.

  Rey looks kind of interested in snails’ teeth, though. She picks up a snail and stares at it. Minha might have to explain what ‘microscopic’ means. By the end of the week, Rey will know everything about snails and birds and insects but have no idea where the library is.

  At the end of school, Alex, Braden and I leave via the retaining wall because Braden forgot his jumper down there.

  When we’re about ten metres away, Alex stops abruptly. ‘Hey! Look!’ He points to the flat rock.

  A shorter, fatter Shingleback Wilson is sitting about three-quarters out of the hole in the wall, picking at Thomas Moore’s sandwich.

  We creep slowly towards the wall, but he scoots back into his hole as soon as one of us steps on a crunchy leaf.

  ‘What do you think he’s doing?’ Braden asks.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Alex laughs. ‘He’s not doing anything. He’s just living. He lives in the wall.’

  ‘And we live on the wall,’ Braden says, laughing too. He grabs his jumper and we head home.

  Braden and I leave Alex at the corner and turn down our street. A really long truck is backing out of my driveway. A big sticker on the side says, ‘R & J Saunders. Roof Supplies. We’re on top of it.’

  Hilarious.

  Up on the roof, three people are wearing harnesses with complicated-looking toolbelts. One of them is yelling instructions at the other two.

  Braden says, ‘Hey, Jesse! Check this out!’ and points to a massive pile of corrugated iron and roof insulation in our garden. The corrugated iron is all twisted and rusty with big holes in it. No wonder the roof leaked. Next to it the old insulation is all bunched up and it stinks. Every kind of creature has probably been up there scratching and peeing and pooing for about fifty years.

  R & J Saunders have left the new stuff over by the fence. It’s just a tiny pile of metal sheeting and one roll of insulation. One roll! They’ll have to go back to get the rest. They weren’t on top of it this time.

  When we walk into the house, we find Mum sitting at the kitchen table with Braden’s mum, Rina. It sounds like the roofers are going to crash through the ceiling at any minute.

  ‘Rina’s offered to have you at their place for the night, Jesse. You may as well keep your uniform on – just grab your pyjamas and toothbrush and stuff.’

  I groan. ‘Why can’t I stay here?’

  ‘It won’t be finished today. They’re squeezing us in between jobs.’

  ‘I don’t mind—’

  ‘Just get your things, will you? I don’t have time to argue.’

  That’s not really true. It would only take about ten minutes to argue. Probably less because Braden and his mum are here.

  Braden follows me to my room. It’s so bright in here we have to squint our eyes.

  ‘Oh, wow. It’s so weird in here without the roof,’ Braden says, looking up. ‘It feels like a giant is going to reach in and grab us.’

  The light is flooding every corner of my room. I can see the space between my desk and the wall and it’s like a time capsule of my life. There’s stuff back there I haven’t seen since kindergarten: a certificate from when I was in the Under 6s, a plastic giraffe from the spring festival and a pair of socks with different-coloured toes I’ve been looking for since Grade 1 … all with about a metre of dust on them.

  I throw some stuff in my schoolbag, and then look for my sleeping bag in the linen cupboard. I can’t find the good one. All I can see is an old one, right up the back with all the stuff we don’t use. What I do find, when I pull the sleeping bag out, is a big box of chocolate frogs from Dad’s work. A whole box! So Dad is telling us how great this diet is and he’s cheating! The box is empty though so he must have eaten them all. I push the box back where I found it. I don’t want Dad to know that I know.

  Mum wants us to go to Braden’s straightaway. She won’t even let us stay and watch the roofers.

  ‘I’m sorry, boys. Not this time.’

  How many other times will we get the roof done?

  Before we leave, I run back up to my room and put an old towel over the fish tank in case something falls in it. Also, goldfish eyes might be really sensitive to light and I don’t know if Einstein can squint his boggly eyes or not.

  Mum makes us take some carrot cake with us. ‘Carrot is very good for your eyes,’ she says to Rina.

  ‘Is that right?’ Rina says, impressed, accepting half the cake. She’s welcome to have my share. I’ll be able to see through walls if I eat any more.

  Braden’s house is only a few houses up from ours so it doesn’t take long to get there. The lounge room and hallway are covered with a million toys and books because Braden has three little sisters. They’re watching something noisy on TV and making Cataract the cat run around after a milk bottle top. When she stops moving, I get a quick look at her eyes. I remember now – they’re kind of wonky but not cloudy, like real cataracts.

  Braden and I go up to his room. He has some pretty cool stuff. He keeps most of his games in a box with a combination lock so his sisters don’t get to them and spill food on them. We’ve only been playing for about a minute when his mum yells that dinner is in five minutes.

  Five minutes!

  I look at my watch. It’s only six o’clock. That’s about the time someone in our house says, ‘Well, I guess we’d better start thinking about dinner.’ Start thinking.

  We head down the hallway to wash our hands, but Braden’s sisters are already in the bathroom, taking forever. I wonder what we’re having for dinner. It can’t be any worse than what I get at home.

  Braden’s dad, Brian, is in the kitchen. He looks like Braden, only gigantic. He makes everything in the kitchen look too small. His hair is the same orange as all the kids and he has a massive beard that goes out to the sides as well as down. He takes my hand and shakes my whole arm up and down. ‘Jesse! How are you today?’

  ‘Fine thank you, Brian! How are you today?’

 

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