It’s a win–win proposition: sign the petition and you get the day off school, or sign the petition and you help save the planet.

  I study the scattered groups, both grade six blue and grade six green, divide them in my mind into people who’ll do it for the principle, and people who’ll do it for a day off school, and start canvassing.

  Spying On Ted

  Oliver and the Bean is in the middle of a small shopping village, its entrance on the corner of Oliver’s Lane, a few shops down from where two streets intersect.

  Seeing as how we all loved the book Harriet the Spy when we read it in grade four, it’s fair to say that this, a legitimate spying opportunity, is a dream come true.

  We have a clear view from where we are standing on the intersection roundabout which has been made into a little garden that now contains a tree, a flowerbed, a bench, and us.

  We feel so conspicuous, because what is there to do except stare at the café, hoping Ted will come out and we can follow him?

  Maybe it would have been a better idea to go to his home address. Though I don’t know it. I was only half paying attention when we went there.

  Luckily the shops are between school and Gus’s house, so we would be walking through here to get to his place.

  ‘We need a reason to be here,’ says Cecily, looking around.

  ‘Our reason is spying on Ted.’ Gus is digging in his backpack for his mini spyglass. He’s carried it with him since grade four.

  It’s as much a part of him as his Minecraft obsession or the fact that he eats strawberry jam toast for breakfast every day.

  As he brings it up to his eye, Cecily grabs his hand and pushes it back down.

  ‘When do I get to use it if not now?’

  ‘We can see the café clearly from here without it!’

  ‘Any Agatha Christie tips?’ I ask Cecily.

  ‘Wrong genre. She’s crime, not spy.’

  Even five minutes feels like a long time when you are standing doing nothing but looking at a café doorway in the middle distance.

  ‘Gus, could you maybe do a solo shift while Cecily and I have a quick look in a shop?’

  ‘If I must,’ says Gus, straightening up, ready to assume full responsibility.

  We go into Design Squad and browse. The guy here says good afternoon but not like he means it.

  We do a lap of the shop, and try on some of the rubbery non-pierced earrings.

  ‘Can I help you with those?’ shop guy asks.

  ‘We’re just browsing,’ says Cecily, unconcerned.

  ‘For a birthday present,’ I add, trying to give our browse a more realistic flavour.

  ‘Shall I wrap a pair for you?’ he asks, sending us silent hate bombs. He knows we’re not buying anything.

  ‘We’re still thinking about it,’ says Cecily firmly.

  ‘Do you know the owner of the café over there?’ I ask, nodding across the road as I sanitise my hands, because who knows who’s just been handling those earrings?

  Cecily smiles her approval at my investigator skills.

  ‘No,’ he says.

  He is not making us feel welcome. I can’t decide if I want to come back soon and buy something, just to show him, or never darken his doorstep again, just to show him.

  We rejoin Gus. ‘Any Ted action?’ I ask.

  ‘None.’

  ‘How long were we gone?’

  Gus checks his watch. ‘Five and a half minutes.’

  So, spying is harder than you’d think and we’re back feeling conspicuous again in the roundabout garden.

  Whenever you see spying on TV or in a film, people are either in disguise or, more typically, they are sitting in a car, where you can hide by slouching down, and you can follow the person you’re spying on if they take off.

  If Ted drives away from the café, we can’t follow him. In fact, the best we can hope for is to see him in his café’s doorway.

  Thinking of that, I scan the streets and don’t see Ted’s car parked anywhere. There’s probably a back entrance and car park, which I hadn’t even thought about.

  It’s one hundred per cent possible that he only comes and goes from the back door of the café.

  If nothing happens in the next fifteen minutes, we’ll have to head home after our impromptu fake brainstorming meet-up at Gus’s.

  Kristen from the bookshop walks past briskly and waves at me. She and my mum are both crime fiction fans.

  ‘It might look more natural if we’re eating or drinking,’ says Gus. ‘Otherwise, we are just loitering with intent.’ Gus’s mother is a solicitor, and he has a good working knowledge of criminal behaviour.

  ‘Anyone got any money? We could get icy poles from the corner store,’ I say.

  Cecily digs around in her backpack. ‘I’ll go.’

  Soon enough we are three friends innocently meeting for an after-school icy pole. In the middle of winter.

  People enter and leave the café, but Ted isn’t one of them.

  While we wait, Gus checks Ted’s social media.

  Fruitless.

  Everything is set on private except the café’s Instagram account which is full of gorgeous food pics that make us hungry.

  Then, hello, just as we are about to give up, Ted, wearing a black wrap-around apron, appears in the doorway of the café with a woman who is not my mother.

  ‘It’s him!’ I say.

  Gus and Cecily stare.

  I grab Gus’s shoulder. ‘Stop looking! Turn around, turn around, turn around, face me! Cecily –’

  Peeping over Gus’s shoulder I see Ted and the woman laughing as he leans down, kisses her on the cheek and hugs her before she walks off and he goes back into the café.

  I didn’t need to tell Cecily what to do. She’d whipped her phone out immediately to take the photos we need.

  ‘Not exactly passionate,’ says Gus, swiping through the images.

  ‘But it is a kiss,’ I say. ‘Evidence of him kissing another woman!’

  Cecily looks at me. ‘I know it would be, like – great – if he turned out to be a liar and a cheat, but that was not a romantic-looking kiss.’

  We three put our heads together and look at the pictures again.

  ‘My mum always says it’s a good sign when men have women friends,’ says Cecily.

  ‘And people don’t have to be dating to kiss and hug each other goodbye,’ says Gus.

  ‘Wow. Whose side are you two on?’

  ‘Yours,’ they say together.

  When we finish spying, we just have time to race into Gus’s and out again, and hurry home.

  Writing Like Fury

  As soon as we’re alone, heading home, Cecily asks me why I didn’t tell her about going to Plum’s.

  ‘I don’t know. You don’t like her,’ I say.

  ‘Since when did you stop telling me stuff?’

  ‘When I started worrying about THIS the whole time.’ I take her phone, find the photos she took, and send them to myself.

  ‘I get it,’ she says. ‘But no more secrets, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  We’re pretty quiet the rest of the way home.

  In the pre-Plum, pre-quitting spelling bee times, I talked to Cecily about everything. I would definitely have shared my Important to Me ideas with her. We would have gone over and over who the other woman might be. We knew all the details of each other’s days.

  But now I want some spaces of my own, as well as things I share with her.

  I’m still in the syrupy swamp of wanting different bits of everything at different times.

  I really appreciated spying help from Cecily and Gus – they’re the best. But I also want to see if Plum and I can be friends.

  Is it a crime if I try that out alone?

  ‘How was brainstorming?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Good. I’m going to write my talk now.’

  When and how should I mention the possible other woman?

  I’ve looked at Cecily’s photos on repeat and I’m determined to remain hopeful that Ted could be two-timing my mum.

  That woman walked away from the café with a spring in her step and a smile on her face.

  I’m a bit insulted that Ted would prefer anyone to my mum, but on the other hand it would be exactly what I’ve been hoping for, an end to the ridiculous plans.

  I make four slices of vegemite toast. Generous amount of cold butter on golden toast, a light and even scraping of vegemite over the whole surface, with a few darker patches for a salt bang. Cut each piece in two diagonally.

  This is the correct way to make vegemite toast.

  Before I head upstairs I put my phone on the coffee table in the living room. Part of our phone agreement is that Mum knows my password and can check my phone any time. With a bit of luck she might discover the photos herself.

  I get into bed – my favourite place to work – one piece of toast in my mouth, seven on the plate.

  First step, write a work plan.

  Now: research and draft Important to Me talk, topic: Climate Change Action. Write petition statement that grade sixes should attend School Strike 4 Climate.

  Tomorrow: ‘revise, refine and make it shine’, remembering to incorporate linking words.

  Friday: deliver talk.

  I look up carbon emissions.

  I look up climate change environment impact.

  I look up polar ice climate change impact.

  I look up native animal habitat climate change.

  I look up ecosystems climate change.

  I look up catastrophic weather events climate change.

  I check through my climate change work sheets from last year.

  I feel about on my empty plate: I have chomped my way through eight pieces of vegemite toast.

  Crumbs have worked their way down my neck and somehow right down to my toes.

  My bed has become a spiky place.

  I’m overheated under my doona and I have managed to smear vegemite on my top pillowslip.

  My cheeks are burning with concentration.

  I’m in a fever of anger and fear and crumbs and irritation.

  I may not have a climate change page in my catastrophe notebook, but I have a whole lot of separate entries in my ‘Natural Disasters’ section: tsunami, bushfire, flood, typhoon, staying cool in a heatwave.

  I look up climate change symptoms causes.

  It all comes crashing into focus.

  Greta showed me the big picture and now I’m starting to understand how it fits together.

  I write like fury until Mum is calling out that dinner is ready.

  Climate Action, Talking the Talk

  On Friday morning Mum gives me a huge goodbye hug and hands me my phone. ‘You’ve left this downstairs two nights in a row.’ She looks confused. I’m allowed to have my phone under my bed at night in case there’s a fire or some other emergency.

  ‘Did you look at it?’ I ask. ‘Because you know you can.’

  ‘No. Is there something you want to show me?’

  I wimp out. ‘Not – particularly.’

  ‘Okay, good luck! I hope your talk goes well.’

  I’m not usually too nervous about giving talks. We do it a lot. But today it feels like there’s something real at stake.

  I stand in front of my class and take a calming breath.

  ‘As you all know, I am someone who’s interested in catastrophes . . . and today I will talk to you about one that is Important to Me, the biggest catastrophe of our time: climate change, and I will suggest that we – grade six – can do something about it.

  ‘Small degrees of climate warming equal large degrees of destruction for our planet.

  ‘What exactly causes global warming?

  ‘We do! Humans and our greenhouse gas emissions: specifically, too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

  ‘The emissions are caused mainly by our use of fossil fuels – petroleum products, coal and natural gas – and if we don’t reduce them to net zero by 2050, much earlier if possible, our planet’s ecosystems will not survive.

  ‘Along with burning fossil fuels, the other big impact on carbon emissions is clearing land for farming and logging. This also destroys habitats for living creatures.’

  I look up. It’s important to make eye contact during a presentation.

  Cecily is looking daggers at me.

  I remember that land clearing and its impact on animal populations is her Important to Me topic. Ugh. I should have made sure I talked to her about my talk.

  Plum, on the other hand, is transfixed, listening with full concentration, leaning forward on her elbows, thoughtfully nibbling the tip of her right-hand pigtail.

  I have ‘captured the imagination’ of one listener, at least. It’s one of our Important to Me goals.

  ‘So, mining, manufacturing, transport, deforestation and population growth have caused record carbon emissions.

  ‘In addition, our destruction of habitats means that not only are species dying out at a record rate but zoonotic, or animal to human, diseases have become a global threat to public health.’

  Uh-oh, I’m reading. I remind myself to look up again.

  More daggers from Cecily.

  ‘With the COVID-19 pandemic we had to act quickly because it was a crisis.

  ‘Climate change is an even bigger crisis, but somehow governments are still not acting fast enough. I think that’s because it can look like a lot of separate problems, and they fix those one at a time. But they are all connected. And they are symptoms. The cause is the big overall problem of climate change.

  ‘Climate change causes bushfires, droughts, flooding, loss of sea ice, record heatwaves and other catastrophic events. We lose flora and fauna species. We breathe air full of particle pollution.

  ‘People and animals are literally dying due to climate change but our government still supports fossil fuel producers when we should be planning for a clean energy future.

  ‘Led by the stunning example of Greta Thunberg, from Stockholm, Sweden, millions of school students are giving their governments the message that it’s time to commit to a clean energy future right now –’

  Someone does an audible fart.

  I bet anything it is Nate.

  Yes, he’s smiling proudly and nodding to Monty and Sid.

  A few sniggers.

  I work with the material. ‘Methane is another greenhouse gas, mostly caused by cattle farming, and cow farts. It is carbon emission.

  ‘My handout* includes an interesting fact about how to make cow farts less toxic.

  ‘We can help by making sure we have plenty of meat-free days at home. This is a good example of how kids can make a difference, just by asking for something different for dinner.

  ‘If your parents get cross and talk about how busy they are and ask can you just eat your dinner, please, you can offer to cook one night a week. I can share a very easy and delicious recipe for chilli beans.

  ‘Another way we can make a difference is by showing our government that we care enough to get out and protest.

  ‘As we are studying in class this year, many social reforms have been led by protest, for example the work Nelson Mandela did in South Africa to stop apartheid and fight for majority rule.

  ‘And on the last day of this term, Australian students, along with students from all around the world, will join School Strike 4 Climate to say that we need urgent action to save our planet.

  ‘I’m suggesting that all of grade six should attend the strike. Most of us will be voting in six years’ time. That is, in two elections. It is not too soon for us to think seriously about the climate policy we need urgently in order to save our planet.

  ‘Finally, as Greta Thunberg has said, we know what needs to be done, we just have to do it! So, in conclusion, I ask, who is with me? Who will strike with me for climate action on Friday 17 September?’

  With adrenaline-shaky, sweaty hands, I get out the petition sheet I’ve prepared for grade six blue and hold it up.

  ‘If every single grade six student signs this, we have a chance for our school to let us make a difference. Why should we wait until we’re in high school? We are just as capable as year sevens to go to the city and go to a rally.’

  There is a moment of silence.

  Then, whoa, I’m hit by a wave of applause.

  Plum races to the clipboard and is the first to sign. She passes it on, saying, ‘We’re all signing this, am I right?’

  I’m swarmed by my whole class as they clamber to sign the petition and Alex is saying, ‘Okay now, one at a time, one at a time.’

  I instinctively look for Cecily to share the moment.

  She is the only person still sitting at her table, looking at me with her disapproving eyebrows-up face.

  * You can find my handout on page 305.

  Unfriends?

  Cecily and I stomp along together.

  Without asking us, the mothers have arranged that Cecily will come home with me this afternoon.

  ‘Mum only just texted me. She’s doing a tricky Zoom interview and she wants the house empty. Believe me, I would not have agreed to go to your place today. You knew I was doing “Saving Habitats for Local Species”! You basically just stole a whole lot of my material.’

  ‘I only mentioned it once! You’ll give a fantastic talk about it!’

  ‘A heads-up would have been nice.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It sounds like you spoke to everyone about your petition except your friends!’

  ‘You were having the spelling bee photos done. And then . . .’ I should have spoken to her.

  ‘That’s not even why I’m cross. I’m cross because it was my idea, School Strike 4 Climate. You did that whole talk because of something I said, and you didn’t even bother telling me about it. But you obviously told Plum. She just about knocked people over to sign the petition. I thought we agreed, no more secrets?’

  One minute I’m worrying about drifting away from Cecily, the next minute I can’t stand walking down the street beside her.

  One minute I feel apologetic and the next I’m angry.

  She’s acting like I needed her permission to talk about School Strike 4 Climate. She might have mentioned it, but she doesn’t own it.

 

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