A very different kind of Friday afternoon
Even for St. Andrew’s, news of my punishment had sped around the school in Guinness Book of World Records time. The fact that I was condemned to a life of geeksville for the next couple of months proved to be a constant source of amusement for everyone in the senior quad. And they seized every opportunity to remind me of my sentence.
It was another Friday afternoon and the quad was filled with anticipation of the weekend: football matches, barbecues, parties, drinks and girls, not necessarily in that order. Boys moved among the groups, hearing who was going where and what the best offer was. There’s nothing like that Friday-afternoon feel, except when your mother’s grounded you and your English teacher has condemned you to death by musical.
Hey, Willo, are you going to Dion’s brother’s party? Should be a big one.
I shook my head. Mum had made it pretty clear that I wasn’t going anywhere for a very long time.
No, mate, can’t. All part of the St. Andrew’s payback.
At least he had the decency to look sorry for me.
I turned around and saw Tim running toward me. This was going to be a completely different story. You could see he was already buzzing with the thought of the weekend.
Hey, Willo! He jumped over my bag and landed right in front of me. There’s a new guy from Melbourne who’s just made it on to the footy team, Mark someone, top footballer … big bloke …
I looked at Tim blankly, waiting for him to get to the point.
Anyway, he’s invited the footy boys to watch the game at his place tonight. We asked if we could bring some ring-ins, soft soccer heads like yourself.
Great, so the new guy’s been here for two seconds and he has more of a life than I do.
He’s a good bloke, you’ll like him. It’ll be a pretty quiet one, though, because we’ll be saving it up for Saturday night.
Right. Dion’s brother’s eighteenth. I bet your new man got an invite to that as well.
It’s all about the keg and the girls, Willo, all about the keg and the girls. He nearly broke his face he was grinning so hard. The Jockmeister’s putting on the recovery on Sunday. He slapped me on the shoulder. Man, everything about this weekend is good. We are going to parrrteee!
This was obviously a rev-up. I waited, saying nothing.
What?
His face was like a five-year-old’s who’s been accused of doing something he didn’t do.
How can you have given me shit all week and forgotten now?
What, Will? I don’t know what you’re talking about!
Hey, Willo, Timmy boy, what’s up?
Whereas Jock, on the other hand …
Willo’s giving me grief for telling him about the weekend.
He even said it like a whingeing five-year-old.
Jock looked at me and grinned. He put his arm over my shoulder and spoke to Tim.
Mate … mate, you know what this means?
Tim shook his head.
This means young William here gets to hang out all weekend with the geek freak show. That would be sooooo much fun. Don’t you wish we had to do it too?
By this time Tim was finally getting it. He burst out laughing and high-fived Jock.
Ohh. Right. Yeah mate, we’ll miss you. But don’t worry, we’ll be thinking of you when we’re out pulling chicks and having beers. Don’t you worry, mate. Two looooooooong months will pass in no time.
They high-fived each other again, slapped me on the back and laughed all the way to the bus stop, waving as they went.
I left them to it and decided to head over to Chris’s, the only place I was allowed to go apart from school and home, and even then only in half-hour intervals. I could still hear Jock and Tim carrying on at the bus stop. If it were either of them in trouble, I’d give them heaps too. It wasn’t not being able to go out that bothered me so much. Since the accident I’d been happy to come to school, see the boys, go home, play the guitar. Considering I had been up for anything last year, I suppose it was a pretty big change, but the boys accepted it. They’d throw an invite my way and then leave me alone.
That’s what got me most about the Save Will Armstrong campaign. I was happy with the way things were. I’d been making a real effort to do nothing and the musical screwed with all of that.