Ishmael and the Hoops of Steel (35 page)

‘Razz has got a big mouth,' I said.

‘The biggest,' Kelly said with a smile. ‘And Sally's not too far behind. You're not angry, are you?'

I shook my head. ‘No, I'm used to it by now.'

Kelly bit her bottom lip and said, ‘It sounded like you could have had quite an … interesting … night over there.'

‘Still rather be here.'

Kelly was looking straight at me now.

‘You must really love
Hamlet
, huh?'

I was looking straight back at her.

‘Yes. I do,' I said. ‘Always have.'

Just then a sharp beep made Kelly jump and a white minibus flashed past and parked a little way down the street. She glanced over her shoulder. The other Lourdes boarders were already saying goodbye to friends and moving off.

‘Um well … I better go. Thanks again for coming. I'm really glad you did. Otherwise it could have been ugly. You know, with me turning up at Raychell Taylor's and scratching her eyes out and everything. But before I go, I just wanted …'

There was another beep. Kelly glanced around again. The last of the Lourdes girls were getting on the bus. A whole bunch of faces were looking at us through the rear window.
They were smiling and laughing. Kelly turned back and shook her head.

‘Great,' she said, pulling one of her beautiful daggy faces. ‘Look, this is probably the wrong time and
definitely
the wrong place … but I just wanted to say …'

Horn again. Two blasts this time.

Kelly's shoulders slumped. Behind her the girls at the back of the bus laughed and waved. A couple of heads poked out the side windows. A beaten smile crept on to Kelly's lips.

‘I better go. I …' she said.

And that's when I kissed her.

I didn't really know if she wanted me to or not. But like Hamlet had just pointed out, thinking about something too much can often be ‘one part wisdom' and ‘three parts coward'. I decided I'd been a coward long enough. The sound of cheering and whooping filled my ears. I wasn't sure if it was coming from the girls in the bus or from inside me. Almost immediately a horn began blaring in one long continuous
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
.
It didn't stop until Kelly's lips left mine. Then she stared at me for a second before hurrying off down the street to a rowdy reception.

As soon as Kelly climbed inside, the Lourdes bus pulled away from the curb, did a U-turn and headed back my way. I could see Ms Entwhistle in the driver's seat. She looked like she wanted to aim the bus at me and stamp on the accelerator. I waved as it shot past, but further down the road it veered to the kerb and jerked to a halt. A side window slid open. Kelly stuck her head out.

‘Ishmael!' she called. ‘
Hamlet
. Act Two. Scene Two. Lines 116 to 119. Got it?'

I could only just make out what she was saying above the tinny minibus motor and the noise of the other traffic.

‘Um yeah, right. Act Two. Scene Two,' I called back. ‘lines … um …'

The bus began to move away.

The other girls were laughing and waving. I waved back.

‘Lines 116 to 119!' Kelly shouted. ‘Don't forget!'

‘One hundred and sixteen to 119,' I shouted back. ‘I won't!'

Kelly fell back giggling into the bus and was caught by the other girls as Ms Entwhistle put her foot to the floor and sped off into the night.

I spent the entire trip home trying to work out what the quote could be. By the time I was back in my room, I was pretty sure I'd worked it out. It had to be the old ‘hoops of steel' bit about friendship. Kelly told me that was one of her favourite parts.

When I found my copy of
Hamlet
I flicked through to Act Two, Scene Two. I ran my finger down the pages to line 116 and read to line 119. It wasn't about hoops of steel at all. Instead, Kelly had found me that poem she promised.

Being wrong had never felt so good.

The weeks leading up to exams came with a rush of ‘lasts'. Last assignments, last house meeting, last school assembly, last regular school day, last Homeroom (where we all put in and bought Mr Guthrie a new backpack for his upcoming holiday trip to Nepal), last lessons for each of our subjects and then, last lesson altogether. Finally, the only thing that remained was the St Daniel's Talent Quest and with it, our very last chance to make Operation Tarango a success.

The two acts representing Charlton House were Razz and a couple of guys from Year Ten who did comedy routines. They were pretty funny but I couldn't see them getting anywhere near topping Slobo Bugslag. As for Razz, he'd been staying back after school in one of the music rooms and working on a ‘new dimension' to his drum solo. We all wanted to know what it was, but he said it was a secret and we'd just have to wait to see ‘how it all came out on the day'.

The gym was packed and noisy. The Seniors were all up the front in the best seats. Scobie, Ignatius and I were sitting together. Bill had gone with Razz to help carry his drum equipment and get it set up backstage. Brother Jerome was the sole judge.

The first act was a magician from Franklin House. Not exactly mind-blowing. Our Year Ten boys were second. They
went down well because they took off some of the teachers, but after Slobo Bugslag performed it was depressingly obvious that whoever wanted to win the Talent Quest would need to push him into second place. A few more mediocre acts followed and then it was Razz's turn.

After a year of trying, a year where we'd dragged ourselves from laughing stock to within a handful of points of being college champions, all of Charlton House's hopes were now riding on this one performance. If ever we needed the Razzman to be a real superhero, now was the time.

After he was introduced to a wild reception from Charlton, Razz did his regular clicking of the drumsticks then launched himself into his performance.

Right from the first clattering, pulsating drum roll, Razz was on fire. He was leaving nothing in the tank. But it still needed that ‘something extra' to top Slobo. That ‘something extra' came after Razz completed a thundering pass on the drums and changed into a steady, repetitive tribal beat. It didn't take long for the audience to become a little restless.

Then Bill Kingsley walked on to the stage.

The reaction to Bill was deafening – a wild mixture of laughter, whistles and jeers. It wasn't that surprising. As well as having his hair greased back and wearing heavy eyeliner, Bill had on a pair of white tights and a three-quarter length jacket that was covered in tassels and sparkles with a mass of coloured feathers exploding from each shoulder. I picked it right away as an Uncle Georgiou special. I think Bill might have finally had that talk with his father.

As the gymnasium went off, Bill just stood centre stage with his hands on his hips like a Show Tunes Superman. Then he undid his jacket to an explosion of hoots and whistles and threw it to a Year Eight Charlton boy who had scuttled on stage to catch it. Under the jacket Bill was wearing a sleeveless skintight muscle shirt in Charlton gold that left his midriff exposed. It was amazing to see how much weight he'd lost and
how much muscle had replaced it. He looked great. But the best part was the words on the front of his shirt spelt out in shiny red letters.
TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE
it said.

Then Razz cranked up the beat and Bill held out his hand and a sparkling hoop came flying in from the side of the stage. In one movement he caught it, spun it in his hand, slipped it over his head and set it twirling effortlessly on his hips. What followed was a dazzling array of tricks. I'm pretty sure I recognised the ‘corkscrew', the ‘vortex', the ‘booty bump' and possibly the ‘ninja pass' in amongst them. And with every twirl and pass of the hoop, the jeers were replaced by whoops and cheers.

For most St Daniel's boys, it didn't matter what you looked like, or what you were – an impressive display of motor skills and hand–eye coordination could win them over every time. So could courage. Bill was giving them a hefty dose of both.

The performance finished with an earthquake of a drum roll and Bill spinning four hoops simultaneously on his neck, knees and arms. The crowd – except for a handful of boys who had trouble raising their knuckles off the floor – went wild. But no one went wilder than Jimmy ‘The Main Event' Mainwaring, who was leading the cheering from the front row. Miss Tarango might have come a close second, but I like to think that Scobie, Ignatius and I were right up there. As for Billy – he was beaming.

And the final result?

Well, you know those movies where you've got this group of people and they have to win like a horse race or a big hockey match or a football game because if they don't, the world will end or something? And you know when you're watching those kinds of movies, you sort of know all along that they'll end up doing it – winning that race or that game – because after all, it's just a movie and you have to have a happy ending, right? But then sometimes they write the story so that for a moment you start to think, hey, maybe
they're not going to make it after all – maybe they're just going to try really,
really
hard and come really,
really
close and miss out, and you start getting a bit tense and worried even though you keep telling yourself you're being stupid because of course they're going to do it. And then, right at the last second, when all looks lost, they actually
do
win the horse race or the hockey match or the football match. Well, my point is this: sometimes real life is just like those movies.

And sometimes it's not.

Slobo Bugslag won the Talent Quest ahead of Razz and Bill in second place, and in our final year at St Daniel's, Creswell took out the College Cup.

Operation Tarango had failed.

But when the Year Twelves were dismissed from the gym, and Scobie, Ignatius, Razz and I made our way through the guard of honour with our friend Bill Kingsley smiling and laughing and walking proudly beside us, it really didn't seem that bad.

Ten days later our Year Twelve exams were over. I was pretty happy with how they went. So were Scobie, Ignatius and Bill. And, for the first time in his life, so was Razz. Now the only thing that remained to officially mark the end of our time at St Daniel's College was the Graduation Dinner.

It was held in the school gymnasium. At one end was a stage decorated with a massive display of flowers, balloons and streamers as well as the four house banners. The rest of the floor space was filled with long tables and chairs all set out and decorated in the college colours. It looked pretty special.

At our table were Razz and Mrs Zorzotto plus special guest Uncle Georgiou; Ignatius, his parents and his sister Cynthia; Bill and his mother but not his father (who apparently had an important business meeting that couldn't be missed); Scobie and his dad along with his mother, who had flown in especially for the night; and me, my parents and Prue.

It was a huge night. There were plenty of speeches, of course. The best one came from Scobie as the retiring School Captain. He told us that we should never be afraid of taking on impossible things. Unless we did, he said, we would never discover the amazing things we were capable of. After that Brother Jerome presented James with his College Captain plaque and described him as ‘the standard to which every
future captain should aspire'. It got the biggest cheer of the night and a standing ovation.

Then came all the other awards and presentations. After the College Cup was presented to Creswell, all the individual academic prizes were given out. By the end of the night there were quite a few trophies and plaques on our table. Scobie got Dux as well as first place in just about every subject he did, Ignatius picked up awards in Science and Maths and after a huge improvement in his theory grades, a shocked but ‘totally stoked' Razz took out the HPE award. Bill and I didn't miss out either. I got a third-place certificate for English plus a Conscientious Study award and Bill got a second-place certificate for Film and TV.

After dinner came the viewing of the ten-minute videos each house had put together to sum up their year. Like other houses', Charlton's had lots of clips of Seniors involved in a whole range of college activities. Footage of Scobie dancing at the Formal got a big laugh. To put it kindly, Scobie is to dancing what a three-toed sloth is to speed skating. There was also a few fleeting seconds of fame for our debating and volleyball teams as well as the Hoops of Steel. The biggest roar of approval was a tie between a clip of Miss Tarango at the Athletics Carnival doing a wild happy dance after one of the tug of war victories and the clip of Bill keeping four hoops in motion at the Talent Quest. After that came up on the big screen, Mrs Kingsley smothered him in a bear hug.

The official part of the evening ended with the presentation of our graduation medals followed by a performance of the college song. It was led by Theodore Bungalari, and I even thought I saw Mr Hardcastle choking back the tears. The rest of the night was spent talking, laughing and telling stories. Oh, and taking plenty of photos.

Mrs Kingsley was our table's official photographer. That's what she did part-time at a local paper. We made sure we didn't miss anything. We took photos with our families, with
other Seniors (even Barry Bagsley was in there somewhere) and with our subject teachers including a special one where Mr Barker and Brother Jerome were pulling stupid faces and the rest of us were giving them our best Grim Reaper looks.

But that was just the beginning. There were photos of our debating team holding the champion's trophy, and one of the Fighting Fifths volleyball team with Mr Guthrie where we recreated a shot of Ignatius and the legendary ‘Finger of God' play. Then we reunited all the members of the Hoops of Steel and Mrs Kingsley took heaps of shots of us in all our Reverse Cool glory while Melvin did his best ninja moves. The last photos we took inside the gym were of Miss Tarango and the Fab Five.