Magenta McPhee (6 page)

I'd completely forgotten that it was the cross-country run the next day. Fortunately Mum rang me first thing to remind me to wear lots of blue (why couldn't they come up with better house names – Dragon House, for example, Tiger House, House of Happiness – but no, we get boring old colours). Then Polly rang while Dad was trying to plait my hair into lots of little plaits so I could use all the blue ribbon we'd found from last year.

‘Look out the window,' she said in a mysterious voice.

Dad and I shuffled to the window and looked out.

‘So?'

‘The weather prediction today was for sun. Nothing but sun. See those grey clouds?'

I looked up at the sky. There were more clouds than blue patches. ‘Yeah?'

‘My work. That's all I'll say. Oh, and bring a rain jacket. Over and out.'

‘What was that all about?'

‘Polly hates cross-country,' I told him, ‘so she's hoping for rain.'

‘Well it certainly looks as though you'll get a few drops,' Dad said. ‘Good for our vegies.'

‘Wouldn't you like to meet someone who loved vegies as much as you do? You could both do the weeding together.' I knew how corny it sounded. I just wanted him to think about it while I slogged out the cross-country. Actually, I like the cross-country – I don't care about winning, I just like the whole running along the track thing. You see little wrens and butterflies and it's a change from school.

‘I'm happy, thanks, Magenta. Hey, I'll drive you to school today. I'm helping with the library book sale and sausage sizzle.'

‘The library's having a sausage sizzle?'

‘My idea,' Dad looked pleased. ‘Something different. Libraries need to lift their community profile. Get a bit more with the action. Offer something relevant.'

‘Sausages?'

‘Fundraising.'

‘Well, that's good, Dad. I mean it's terrific that you're involved.' I was delighted. It would be another topic of conversation with old Spooky. She'd be just the kind of person who would find that awesome, not just lame.

It started to rain almost as soon as we got in the car.

‘Good thing the sizzle's under shelter,' Dad said, checking out the grey clouds, ‘and it might clear
up, too – look at the horizon. What time is your cross-country?'

‘About ten, I think. The buses leave school almost as soon as we get there.'

‘Well, good luck, break a leg – not!' Dad kissed me goodbye. He was almost too cheerful.

Polly was happy too. She kept looking at the sky and counting the grey clouds. She was wearing a raincoat even though it was just spitting. ‘Look at that,' she hissed at me, ‘just look at it!'

‘Clouds, Polly, just clouds.'

‘My clouds,' Polly said, ‘that's the difference. I conjured these up with a spell.'

‘You what?'

She nodded. ‘I'm getting better, aren't I?' She said it so smugly I wanted the sun to break through the clouds and shine right into her eyes. But it didn't. Instead the rain got a bit heavier and everyone in the bus queue started to complain.

‘We're not going to have to run in this?'

‘My runners will get soaked and Mum'll kill me.'

‘So? Mine are suede.'

‘Ms Olley, we don't have to run if it rains, do we?'

‘Call this rain?' Ms Olley smiled in a way that meant she wasn't at all amused. ‘This is just a mere pitter. Children these days. Wimps.'

It rained the entire bus trip. It rained as the teachers
put up the first-aid tent. The Red House crepe ribbons ran in the rain and left streaks of pink across faces, arms and white t-shirts, and dripped all the way down Ms Mann's lace blouse. She kept looking down at the drips and trying to rub them off.

‘I can't run in the rain,' Polly approached Ms Mann, ‘I'm getting a cold and Jane expressly said that if it even looked like rain, I should just sit in the first-aid tent. She would have kept me home, but she's doing cupcakes today for some celebrity thing and Marcus was busy finding his muse.'

‘I'm afraid,' Ms Mann glared down at another pink drop and at Polly, ‘that the first-aid tent is usually too full by the end of this run for us to take in onlookers. Anyway, I believe the rain's clearing – look!'

Sure enough, the blue patches now outnumbered the grey clouds and they seemed to be skittering away behind us. Polly frowned and I could see her lips move frantically.

‘Get in line then,' Ms Mann fluttered her hands at us, ‘quickly.'

Almost as soon as the starting pistol went the sun came out, as though it was blessing our run. The rain made the bush smell like lemon and eucalyptus and wet sand. Polly settled into a grumpy walk but I stretched out my legs and ran for a while. The sandy track was good to run on – not as springy as grass but not thuddy
like the pavement. I kept running – even when my legs felt wobbly. I ran through that feeling and found my rhythm again. I didn't care about winning. I was just enjoying it – it felt as though someone had let me loose after days sitting at a desk.

‘Well done, Magenta McPhee!' Mr. Green gave me my raffle ticket. ‘This must be a personal best for you. You'd better go and get your ribbon. Third place!'

Blue House kids I hardly knew slapped my back. I couldn't believe it – third place! I didn't think of myself as being one of the sport jocks. Well, I wasn't. I was a fantasy writer. But maybe I could run, too. It felt good.

About ten minutes later Polly shuffled bad-temperedly past the finish line. She was blowing her nose repeatedly and loudly into a clean tissue.

‘Jane will kill me,' she glared at everyone. ‘I'm not allowed to get a cold. Marcus has his exhibition opening this weekend and they're counting on me to be on deck to mind the brat, I mean Jeremy. She'll kill me,' and she blew her nose again. You could tell she was faking.

‘I came third,' I waved my ribbon at her. ‘Third place, Polly!'

‘Good on you,' she said sourly. ‘Next it'll be the marathon.'

‘Well, hardly,' I said, falling into step with her as we headed to the barbecue where Mr. Tanner was
dispensing sausages and rissoles wrapped in white bread. ‘But I might do some training. See if I can get second next year. I mean it's good for a fantasy writer to do something physical as well. It can help you write. I read that somewhere.'

‘I'm a vegetarian,' Polly told Mr. Tanner. ‘I did inform the school of this at the beginning of the year and I was told that my needs would be catered for.'

‘Have a sausage then,' Mr. Tanner said. ‘I wouldn't guarantee there was any meat in these.'

‘The preservatives in sausages don't agree with me,' Polly said. ‘I would have thought it was easy enough for the school to arrange for some marinated tofu for the vegetarians. I can't be the only one.'

‘The others provide their own lunch,' Mr. Tanner pointed out. Most teachers would have already yelled at Polly by now but Mr. Tanner was only six months away from retirement and was determinedly cheerful under all circumstances. We knew this because he'd told us. Which was a mistake, really, because at first everyone had wanted to make him yell. We gave up though. His patience was simply greater than ours.

‘My mother is doing cupcakes for seventy today,' Polly said. Her grumpiness had gone and she was just enjoying jousting with a teacher. ‘She didn't have time to prepare a special lunch for me as well. Marcus, who is, as you probably know, a reasonably prominent
sculptor, is looking for his muse. His exhibition opens this weekend and he's worried that he'll get artist's block immediately after the opening and have to lie in a darkened room for a week like last time. So there was no one to make me lunch this morning, Mr. Tanner.'

Mr Tanner flipped a rissole into a waiting bread wrap, topped it with fried onion, squeezed a dollop of sauce over it and handed it to me. ‘Congratulations, Magenta McPhee,' he said. ‘Third prize for Blue House, that'll boost our results, won't it? Come back if you want a sausage,' and he winked at me before turning back to Polly. ‘I wasn't suggesting that your parents should prepare you alternatives to our traditional post cross-country fare, but rather that you were old enough yourself to anticipate hunger in the face of our carnivorous repast.'

I wished I had my notebook with me. Listening to Mr. Tanner was like reading a fantasy novel. I should have been taking notes. Mind you, he only talked this way with Polly. Otherwise he was pretty normal.

‘Our fridge is full of cupcake mix,' Polly said, ‘and wax castings, Jane's white wine and the brat's antibiotics. He has a middle-ear infection but went to childcare anyway this morning because he could actually stand up without falling over. I'm practically an abandoned child, Mr. Tanner.'

‘Then have a sausage, Polly,' Mr. Tanner smiled at her.
‘Abandoned children sometimes must abandon their principles in order to survive.'

Polly sighed. ‘I'll have barbecue sauce, not tomato, thanks,' she said.

I pinned my green ribbon to my shorts. Everyone could see it and know I'd got third place.

‘So,' Polly said, ‘well done, Magenta. I guess I could help you train. You'll need a motivator.'

The sausage had cured her bad temper.

‘That could be good,' I said. ‘Like a personal trainer?'

‘More than that,' Polly said, ‘a motivator is with you every step of the way. It's a new American thing. I read about it on the Net. Did you see my rain? All I needed to do was spend a bit more time on that spell and I'd have it perfected. It was great, wasn't it? Nothing on the forecast about rain today – that was all mine.'

‘You are getting better,' I squeezed her arm, ‘well done, Polly! You have the third-prize rain-making ribbon – a new category in the cross-country!'

‘Thanks,' Polly grinned at me. ‘Wait until I can make lurve potions. Who do you fancy? I've got my eyes on Adam Lister.'

‘Adam Lister!'

‘Why not?' Polly stuck her chin out. ‘He's only two grades ahead.'

‘But he's hot, Polly. He's hot and he's with Katey and they've been together, like, for ages.'

‘I'll wait until he's free,' Polly conceded. ‘I think it's unethical to break people up – it's against my feminist principles. Sisterhood is sacred. I'll practise on Hentley, I think.'

Hentley was a year above us. He wasn't exactly hot but he had a good smile, great ears and clowned around as though everything was okay in his world when we all knew that his dad had walked out leaving his mum with three kids and no job. Hentley couldn't afford to buy school textbooks but borrowed them from the library. He worked on weekends, mowing lawns and stuff, and gave the money to his mum. Hentley was cool in an uncool way.

‘I don't think you should practise on anyone,' I said. ‘What happens if Hentley falls head over heels and you're just toying with his emotions? That's not very ethical, Polly.'

‘I might fall head over heels, too,' Polly said calmly. ‘I like Hentley. He has values.'

There were times when Polly sounded as though she was someone's mother. I put it down to her being the daughter of Jane and Marcus who talked about everything in front of her.

‘What about you?' she turned to me. ‘Who shall you use my lurve potion on?'

I shook my head. I wasn't going to play.

‘Not still pining after Richard?'

I shrugged.

‘Magenta! It's been years.'

‘Three years, two months, three weeks and one day,' I said. I kept a record.

Polly shook her head. ‘That's crazy, Mags. You should get out more, live a little. You are too much your father's daughter.'

‘Well that's not true,' I said, ‘I have to be my father's daughter because I am. Anyway, constancy is a good thing. Everyone in fantasy books is constant as the day.'

‘Yes, but we aren't living in fantasy, Mags, we're in the contemporary world and it's standard practice now for girls to have crushes on many boys, right through high school and university. We should probably all go out with at least ten different guys before we graduate. Then, eventually, when the biological clock's winding down a little, we find the one and marry him. After eleven point five years we divorce him and find another Mr. Right. That's the modern way.'

‘Jane and Marcus aren't divorced.'

‘Marcus is too used to Jane's cooking,' Polly said. ‘He'd never leave Jane. Jane's got this thing about happy families. She'd do anything to keep it together. And she does work at it – always pestering Marcus to do meditation classes with her and couples' massage. Marcus goes along with it but you can tell he's just zoning out.'

‘I don't care,' I said, trying to fray the bottom of my third-place ribbon. ‘I can't help who I am.'

Polly looked at me seriously and nodded, ‘No,' she said, ‘you can't. That's true.'

When I got home from school, Dad was sitting in the lounge room with curtains drawn listening to some mournful music.

‘I got third place!' I said, waving my ribbon at him. ‘In the cross-country.'

‘Well done, Magenta!' he said. ‘Let me see.'

I turned on the light so he could admire the ribbon. ‘What's wrong?'

‘Nothing,' he said, stretching his mouth into a smile, ‘nothing at all. I've just been sitting here listening. You can hear better in the dark, you know.'

‘How was the sausage sizzle?'

‘The usual – the sausages sizzled. People bought them. Good thing, really, that the rain didn't last all that long. It might have deterred people from coming out. We – the library – made quite a bit of money. I was personally thanked for my part in making it happen.'

‘So why are you sitting in the dark looking unhappy?'