Ishmael and the Hoops of Steel (2 page)

‘Move on? Why? What's the point? Wherever I go, whatever I do, I'll still be me and that means everything's always going to turn out like crap.'

‘
That's
the spirit, Leseur!' Razz said, leaping off his chair and grabbing me by the arm. ‘Come on! It's only 11.45. If we hurry we'll make it to the train station just in time for you to throw yourself under the 12.06.'

I shrugged my arm free and lay back down. ‘Hilarious, Razz. No, really, I'm actually cracking up big time – on the inside.'

‘Hey, I'm just trying to help, man. I know this whole Kelly thing's a real …'

‘Bummer? Yeah, you know, I'm
fairly
sure we've established that much already.'

Razz moved to the end of the bed. ‘Look, man, you can't just give in. Just think of it like you've had this killer wipeout on your bike, see. And you know what you gotta do when that happens, right?'

‘Aaah, let me guess. Seek immediate medical attention, get plenty of rest, drink lots of fluids and whatever I do, don't, I repeat
don't
, under any circumstances, let my psycho friend talk me into getting on anything that looks even remotely like a bike, ever again in my entire life?'

‘Hi-laaaar-ious, Ishmael. No, really, I'm cracking up big time – on the
in
side,' Razz said in a pathetic imitation of me. Then he switched on his serious face.

‘Come
on
, man, this was gonna be the big year, remember? What about all the stuff we talked about doing together, you and Kelly, and me and Sal? You know, parties, movies, dances … the Semi-formal. We can still do that stuff, dude. We
just have to hook you up with a new chick now that Kelly's out of the picture.'

‘What, just like that? Razz, it took me two
years
to “hook up” with Kelly – that's if you can even call a three-second kiss “hooking up”. You don't think you're being just a touch …
ambitious
?'

‘No way, man! Now you've got two years of valuable chick-chasing experience behind you. You're love match-fit. We just need to step it up a bit, that's all. You know, eliminate the middleman, go straight to the source and play our cards close to our chest.'

‘Riiiiiiiiiiiiight … And when exactly did you swallow the
Cliché Dictionary
?'

Razz's eyes went for a bit of a roll.

‘All I'm saying is that we should concentrate our efforts on chicks who are … soft targets.'

‘Soft targets? What the hell does that mean?'

‘You know, chicks you already have some connection with, like chick friends of Sally … or sisters of guys in our class … or maybe someone's rela –' Razz froze. His eyes widened. A final syllable dropped from his mouth. ‘… tive.'

He turned to me shaking his head in disbelief.

‘I'm a genius. I am your
actual
genius. No, seriously, man, it's true. I've just had a brainwave – a Razzman special. Stand
well
back, Ishmael. And cover your eyes too, dude, before they're burned out by the awesome light bulb of total braininess that must be glowing above my head.'

‘Razz, what are you talking about now?'

‘What am I talking about? I'm talking about me maybe having the answer to all your chick-drooling prayers, Ishmael.
That's
what I'm talking about.'

‘Really? And what exactly
is
the answer to all my chick-drooling prayers?'

Razz opened his mouth to speak. Then he closed it.

‘Nah, you'll have to wait. Got to check a few things out
first to make certain. Don't want to get you all fired up for no reason. I'll tell you when I'm sure.'

That was all I could get out of him. Later on when Razz was leaving he said, ‘Just you wait, Ishmael. If I can pull this off it'll be huge!' He looked about as excited as a barber at a werewolf convention.

Would you be at all surprised to hear that I had a very bad feeling about all of this?

There wasn't much time to worry about what terrifying surprise Razz might have in store for me, because two days later the new school year started and my life lurched into overdrive.

Back at St Daniel's everything was pretty much the same except for a new Creative Arts Centre that was finished over the holidays … and us. We were different because for the first time we were wearing the Senior uniform – long grey pants and a light blue shirt with a navy and gold striped tie. In winter and on special occasions, we added a blazer.

I didn't like to admit it, but my new Senior uniform made me feel a bit special. Mum said I looked like a ‘real man'. Even my near-genius little sister Prue agreed. Kind of. What she actually said was that ‘from a distance, in suitably low light and through a soft-focus lens, I might make a very passable approximation of a real man'. High praise indeed! Dad reckoned I had been ‘straitjacketed in the uniform of the Establishment', whatever that meant.

Our first day back started with a meeting for all Year Elevens in the gym.

I caught up with Razz on the way there. He was pretty hard to miss. His tie was dangling around his neck like a noose and his new blue shirt was hanging out and blotched all over with sweat. It also had a couple of buttons missing and a big
grass stain on one side that kept on going right down to his trousers.

‘Man, do you know how these things work?' Razz asked, grabbing and yanking at his tie like he was fighting off a blue and gold striped anorexic python. I was about to rescue him from almost certain self-strangulation when a familiar voice hit us both from behind like a piece of four by two.

‘Mr Zorzotto. Please inform me. I
need
to know. Which one was it, exactly?'

Razz and I turned and were confronted by Mr Barker's face. It didn't look overjoyed. One eyebrow was raised.

‘Sir?'

‘I'm fascinated to know which one it was, Mr Zorzotto. Were you dragged here behind a pack of runaway horses or have you been the unfortunate victim of multiple lightning strikes?'

‘Been playing soccer, sir.'

‘Soccer?' Mr Barker raised his other eyebrow and stared at Razza's uniform. ‘Soccer?' he said again before completing a Razz circumnavigation.

‘Did the grandstand fall on you, Mr Zorzotto? Were you trampled in a mass pitch invasion? Did someone set off a large incendiary device near where you were standing?'

Mr Barker was still the undisputed Sultan of Sarcasm.

Razz screwed up his face like he was seriously considering these possibilities. ‘Nah, nothing like that, sir. Just had a bit of a kick around, that's all.'

‘Just a bit of a kick around?' Mr Barker said as a disturbing smile died on his face. ‘Well, Mr Zorzotto, I
strongly
suggest you have “just a bit of a tidy up” before you even
think
about joining your fellow Seniors in the gymnasium this morning. I hope I make myself
perfectly
clear.'

He had. Mr Barker was
excellent
at making himself perfectly clear. We watched as he strode off towards the gym, clicking his fingers at bits of rubbish on the ground and sending boys scurrying after them.

‘Do you reckon maybe he's got one of those split personality things?'

I knew exactly what Razz was getting at. Last year we discovered that Mr Barker was a big fan of my dad's old band, the Dugongs. He even stepped in as manager for the reunion concert when the real guy ran off with all the band's money and gear. For a while there he seemed … almost human. He actually smiled sometimes. He even
danced
with Razz's mum during the Dugongs' concert. Now the band were trying to get their old album remastered and re-released and get back into performing, and Dad said if they did, they wanted Mr Barker to be their full-time manager. But here at school, he'd totally morphed right back into Deputy Principal Barker – the man most likely to make your life hell.

‘Must be a Batman and Bruce Wayne thing,' I said. ‘You know, two identities but the same person, so they can never be in the one place together.'

‘Maybe. ‘Cept I can't see Barker jumping about in tights and a cape, can you?'

While I tried unsuccessfully to imagine that, Razz gave a few half-hearted tucks and pulls at his uniform and then we followed the crowd into the gym. It didn't take long to spot who we were looking for.

‘Ah, here they are,' Razz said cheerfully. ‘The Short, the Tall, and the Cuddly.'

Three faces looked our way. They belonged to James Scobie, Ignatius Prindabel and Bill Kingsley. Razza's description was pretty spot on.

Even with his trademark stoop Ignatius Prindabel was almost a head taller than Bill and about three heads taller than Scobie. Add to that a high forehead that seemed to be chasing his hairline back, and about 20 centimetres of wrist extending out past each cuff, and you could swear he was growing as you watched.

James Scobie, on the other hand, looked like his new
uniform was attempting to swallow him – and succeeding. His shirt was bunched around his little chubby belly and his trousers, due to James' acute leg shortage, were backed up like a concertina above his perfectly polished shoes. He was the human equivalent of one of those wrinkly Chinese dogs.

But it was Bill Kingsley that had Razz and me gawking.

‘Geez, Billy Boy. Is the rest of you being shipped in later or something?'

What Razz was so tactfully pointing out was that Bill didn't seem quite as ‘cuddly' as he'd been at the end of last year. Don't get me wrong, there was still
plenty
of him to go around, but when you looked closely at the way he filled out his new blue shirt, there was definitely not as much as you expected.

Bill answered Razza with his usual shrug.

‘Come on, Billy. Spill the low-fat beans. Let us in on your secret before you disappear completely.'

Bill shrugged again but managed to mumble, ‘It's nothing … just … you know … stuff I've been doing … just food … and stuff.'

‘Just food and stuff? Geez, Kingsley, could you be a little
less
specific? What kind of stuff? A jungle commando course? An all-you-can-eat-low-cal-steam diet? A close encounter with some kind of flesh-eating virus? Out with it, Bilbo.'

Bill looked around at all of us, then at Razza.

‘Just been hooping.'

‘Hoping for what?'

‘Not
hoping
–
hooping.
'

‘Hooping? What, you've had whooping cough?'

‘No, I got a hoop.'

Razz looked totally lost for a moment then he slapped his forehead.

‘Aw, man, no! You didn't, did you? You didn't get one of those rubber hoop things tied around your stomach to squish it into the size of a pea?'

‘No, I got a hoop – just a normal hoop.'

Razz frowned. ‘A normal hoop … as in …'

Bill swallowed. ‘As in … hula.'

‘A normal hoop,' Razz repeated slowly, ‘as in …
hula
? What, one of those big round plastic things that …
chicks
… used to wiggle around their stomachs way back in the past before anything
good
was actually invented?'

Bill opened his mouth but didn't get the chance to answer.

‘Did you know that the record for the most hula hoops spun by a single person at the one time is 105? Someone from China, as I recall. And did you know that the circumference of the largest hula hoop ever spun was 51.5 feet? That's approximately 16 metres. An American did that.'

Razz kept the same gaze of disbelief on his face but shifted it slowly from Bill to Ignatius.

‘
How
, Prindabel? Please tell me. How do you
know
stuff like that? And what's even more scary and freaking-me-out-ish is
why
do you know stuff like that?'

‘Simple. At last year's Extreme Science camp we were investigating the properties of wave motion and centripetal force and in order to assist our understanding of the topic we were required to undertake detailed research into a variety of examples of – ‘

Razz placed his hand on Prindabel's shoulder and patted it reassuringly.

‘That'll do, Prindabuddy, that'll do. I knew there
had
to be a perfectly geekish explanation.'

‘They're sort of making a comeback … Hula hoops, I mean.'

This was Bill. Scobie and I nodded encouragingly. Razz just stared.

‘They have these big hula-hooping conventions all around the world. My mum read about it. Then there was this notice at the church hall for a hooping class, so she joined up and really liked it. Bought her own hoop and everything and started practising at home all the time. Got really good too.
And she lost heaps of weight. Mum wanted my father to have a go. But he wouldn't. Reckoned it was just for women and kids.'

‘You
don't
say?' Razz offered.

‘Yeah, well, anyway Mum said I should try it. So I did. I was hopeless but Mum gave me some good tips. Like where to put my feet and about my “thrust points” and everything and I sort of got the hang of it. I started practising every day. And I lost a bit of weight too. Now I'm learning some tricks. I can already do the “lasso”, the “vortex”, the “helicopter”, and the “ninja pass” and I'm working on the “revolving door”, the “corkscrew”, and the “booty bump”. I reckon I …'

Razz squeezed his eyes shut and held up a hand in front of Bill's face.

‘Bilbo, stop, please. I don't feel very well. We must
never
speak of this again, OK? It's awesome that you're killing the kilos, man, but some things should definitely stay in the closet. That's what we got closets
for.
'

Bill looked at Razz but said nothing as Mr Barker's voice sliced through the gym.