Two Weeks in Grade Six Read online

  Contents

  Sunday 15 July

  Monday 16 July

  Tuesday 17 July

  Wednesday 18 July

  Thursday 19 July

  Friday 20 July

  Saturday 21 July

  Sunday 22 July

  Monday 23 July

  Tuesday 24 July

  Wednesday 25 July

  Thursday 26 July

  Friday 27 July

  Sunday 12 August

  Anna Pershall, age fourteen, and her mother, Mary K Pershall, live in Melbourne, where they like to write in their garden and then reward themselves with a trip to the mall for some retail therapy and a skinny latte.

  Mary, who grew up on a farm in the middle of the United States, hated going back to school after the long prairie summers. She and Anna have had endless discussions about what goes on inside a group of kids: the shifting alliances, the jokes, the secrets, the hurtful words that can live in your heart for decades. Anna and Mary wanted to write this book to shine a light on what kids really learn in grade six … and have some fun doing it.

  Mary has written eight other books, including the award-winning You Take the High Road as well as Too Much to Ask For, an Aussie Bite co-authored with daughter Katherine, and Stormy, which brings to life one of those hot prairie summers. Her latest novel, Asking for Trouble, was published by Penguin in 2001.

  Anna intends to write eight other books. She has also won awards, including ‘Most Courageous Student’ at her karate club. Her favourite things are horse-riding at her godmother’s and watching ‘Buffy’ videos. Anna has a cat, five fish, a sister with heaps of friends, and a hermit crab named Kaitlin.

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  ‘I’m not sitting at a table with them,’ Ashleigh protests. ‘They’re the top five losers at the school!’

  It is third term, grade six and Kaitlin’s teacher has switched table groups around. Now Kaitlin’s on a table with stuck-up Ashleigh, Matthew the Mouth and Stephen, a curly-haired nerd who only cares about marine life.

  Thank goodness she still has Shelley, her best and only friend, by her side. But when Ashleigh decides it would be fun to break up their friendship, Kaitlin could be in for the hardest two weeks of her life.

  To all the kids who find it hard to fit in

  Australians all let us rejoice,

  For we are young and free …

  Australian National Anthem

  I’m lying in bed and Eve is bustling around, adjusting my blind, tucking my quilt in at the bottom of my bed, acting like it’s a great old night, like we’re a family on TV with heaps to look forward to.

  ‘Sure you’re all set for tomorrow?’ she asks cheerily.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say.

  ‘I know your uniform’s ready … have you got all your books in your bag?’

  ‘Yes.’ If I say it tiredly enough, maybe I’ll convince myself to fall asleep quickly.

  ‘And you made your lunch …’

  ‘Yes.’ She should know. She’s the one who insisted how efficient it was to do it the night before. She stood there and watched me make a sandwich, told me not to put too much peanut butter on because it’s mainly fat and sugar.

  ‘Okay then!’ She sounds like a netball coach. ‘You can sleep the undisturbed slumber of the fully prepared.’ She hesitates by my bed. Can’t decide whether to kiss me. And I can’t decide if I want her to. She’s my grandmother but we hardly know each other.

  She settles on brushing my hair back with her hand. She says in a gentle voice, ‘Bet you’re looking forward to seeing your friends again.’

  ‘Sure am.’ I hope I sound convincing. She still thinks I’m normal.

  She walks over to the door and twists the dimmer switch till the light’s barely on. ‘Good night, Kaitlin.’ Her tidy English accent floats across my room.

  ‘Night, Eve.’

  I’m alone. I curl up around the cold rock in my stomach. Sunday night is the worst feeling in the whole week. The Sunday nights before a new term are the four worst feelings in the year. Bet you’re looking forward to seeing your friends again. Why didn’t Shelley ring me? I know she went to Queensland for the holidays, but she was supposed to get back this morning.

  Maybe she was too tired to ring, or maybe her mother wouldn’t let her because they had a heap of unpacking and cleaning up to do. I know! I bet her answering machine was broken and it didn’t record my voice. I feel myself relax towards sleep because that would be a very good reason for Shelley not to ring. Maybe she’s lying in her bed wondering why I haven’t rung her.

  We’re on the asphalt at the front of the school, waiting for the beginning-of-term assembly to start. I’m up the back with the other grade sixes, pretending I’m not here. At least I’m pretending not to see what’s beside me: all the friends so happy to be together again.

  ‘Hi, Carly!’

  ‘Hi, Lisa!’

  They give each other a hug. I turn away from them, hoping they’ll notice I’m peering around for someone. Where is she? What if my one friend doesn’t turn up? Maybe her plane crashed on the way back from Queensland.

  ‘That was such a cool party, Claire!’

  ‘Yeah, Claire, it was the best!’’

  I pretend I can’t hear. I make it as obvious as possible that I’m looking towards the front gate. Come on, Shelley, walk in now! I glimpse a swish of blonde hair.

  ‘Ashleigh!’ Carly says.

  ‘Over here, Ash!’ Claire cries.

  What would it be like to have your name called out like that, to stroll across the playground like a princess? My eyes are nearly worn out watching for the person I want to come through the gate. Wait … there she is, crossing the street! No. When she gets to the gate I can see it’s only a girl in grade five with hair a bit like hers. Followed by a mother in a hurry, dragging a howling prep boy by the hand.

  ‘Hi.’ It’s Shelley. Suddenly beside me. She must have come in the back way.

  ‘Hi!’ I can feel a smile spreading across my face. ‘How was your holiday?’ I shout above the clang of the bell.

  ‘Good!’ she shouts back. ‘I liked Dream World the most. How was yours?’

  ‘Great!’ I say happily. ‘Canberra was cool.’ That’s where I went, to stay with my dad. I take a deep breath and feel myself relax. With my friend beside me I don’t have to pretend not to be here. I can look around and see.

  After the bell, the Principal takes her place on the front steps and the strains of our national anthem crackle through the loudspeaker. ‘Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free …’

  I know all the words, but I don’t sing them. That hasn’t been a cool thing to do since about halfway through grade four.

  ‘With golden soil and wealth for toil, our home is girt by sea …’ The grade ones and twos belt it out down the front. Bet they haven’t got a clue what ‘toil’ or ‘girt’ means.

  When I was in grade one and two we used to do three verses, but the tape has got pretty worn out now. These days they stop it after the first chorus. When the music ends, the principal gives us a big smile and says what she does at the beginning of every term, ‘Welcome back, children! How was your holiday?’

  The preppies cry eagerly, ‘Good!’ So do the ones and twos, but by grade three some of the kids are pretending they can’t understand the way Mrs Jarvis speaks English. Back here, we don’t say anything. We look at our friends and kind of raise our eyebrows or roll our eyes, make some sign that says, ‘As if!’ meaning, ‘As if we’d tell her about our holidays!’

  At least this assembly is short, just the ‘it’s a new term, do your best and don’t forget to put your names in your jumpers’ kind of stuff. No interschool sports or Students of the Week to report on yet.

  When the Principal’s finished, having wished us another term full of the ingredients she always mentions (fun, hard work and success), our teacher appears in front of us. ‘Come on, grade six,’ Mr Callaghan says, ‘line up behind me.’

  ‘But we never line up!’ Ashleigh whines. It’s true. Now that we’re at the top of the school, after assembly we just make our way back to our room in a wandering bunch.

  ‘You’re lining up today,’ Mr Callaghan says firmly. ‘Come on, two neat lines.’

  ‘But why?’ More kids than just Ashleigh whine this time.

  ‘Because I’ve decided it would be a good idea, that’s why!’

  We grumble, but eventually we line up and march behind Mr Callaghan. ‘What’s with him?’ Shelley asks me. ‘He’s treating us like we’re in preps.’

  ‘Less talking and more walking!’ Mr Callaghan bellows.

  ‘That’s really tight,’ Shelley mumbles.

  When we get to our classroom door, it gets worse. Mr Callaghan stands in the corridor and announces, ‘When you go in, I don’t want you to sit in your old seats. I want you to line up against the back wall.’

  ‘What are you gonna do, shoot us?’ Matthew asks loudly.

  ‘It has crossed my mind,’ Mr Callaghan says as he unlocks the door, ‘but I understand it’s illegal.’

  ‘Even if you got permission from our parents?’ They don’t call Matthew ‘the Mouth’ for nothing.

  With all of us at the back of the room, Mr Callaghan stands in front of us. Once he starts speaking, you can tell he’s carefully planned what he’s about to say. ‘I’ve been doing some thinking over the holidays. I’m sure that if you’re honest with yourselves, you’ll agree that by the end of last term there was more
talking than working going on in this room.’

  He stops and scans the class, looking very serious. We shift around nervously. This doesn’t sound good.

  ‘What I’ve decided to do,’ Mr Callaghan goes on, ‘is assign you to new table groups.’

  The class explodes into moans.

  ‘No!’

  ‘You can’t do that!’

  ‘That’s so unfair!’

  I don’t say anything, but inside I’m complaining with the loudest of them. I don’t want to be apart from Shelley!

  Mr Callaghan taps his foot impatiently and yells, ‘If you want to go to recess today, you will listen!’

  It takes a while for everyone to shut up. Even when it’s become totally silent, you can still feel resentment zinging around.

  ‘This is not a punishment,’ Mr Callaghan explains through the invisible buzz. ‘As I said, I’ve given this a lot of consideration. It’s not all bad news. I want to introduce some positive activities for you to look forward to …’

  ‘Like what?’ Carly demands before Mr Callaghan has a chance to finish his sentence. You can see him making an effort to keep cool.

  ‘Well, like a trivia quiz. Sort of like those shows on TV, where people get into teams and answer questions. I thought we’d have one once a fortnight, on a Friday, with prizes!’ He looks pleased with himself as he says that last word. It’s three of his other words that have sunk like hot metal into my brain. Get into teams.

  ‘What are the prizes?’ Ashleigh wants to know. She doesn’t have to worry about who will be in a team with her.

  ‘You’ll have to wait and see.’ Mr Callaghan’s starting to sound a bit irritated. ‘Let’s get back to the table groups. I knew you wouldn’t like changing, but I just don’t think there was enough learning going on with the arrangement you had last term.’

  That’s too much. The class explodes again.

  ‘We learned heaps!’

  ‘We learned enough to last the rest of our lives!’

  ‘Can’t we choose at least one friend to be with?’

  Mr Callaghan responds with a question of his own. A loud one. ‘Do you want recess?’

  When the class has settled back to silent resenting, Mr Callaghan holds up a piece of paper with coloured squares on it and says, ‘This is the class map. I spent about twenty hours working this out. There will be no changes!’

  Paper in hand, he walks around the room pointing to chairs and saying names. As for me, I wish as hard as I can. I close my eyes so tight my face squishes up. I cross my fingers and toes and say, ‘Please let him put me with Shelley. Please let him put me with Shelley!’ Of course I don’t do that, really. All the other kids can see me doing is standing and staring. Only in my mind, I do all that.

  ‘Shelley!’ My mental eyes snap open. Mr Callaghan is pointing to a chair. Shelley goes over to it.

  ‘Kaitlin.’ He points to the chair next to it.

  Thank you, thank you! I want to run over and give Mr Callaghan a big hug. But I restrain myself.

  Shelley and I are the first to be put at our table. Mr Callaghan tells us to sit beside each other on the long side. He touches the chair on the end nearest to me. Whose name is he going to call to go there? In the millisecond before he can say it, I scramble around in my mind, trying to decide who I want …

  ‘Matthew!’ Mr Callaghan says.

  The Mouth. Thanks, Mr Callaghan. This time I have no desire to hug him. Matthew lumbers over. ‘Why’d you put me next to her? So I can copy her work?’

  ‘Just sit, Matthew.’

  Mr Callaghan touches the chair on the long side across from me. ‘Stephen,’ he calls out. Stephen is the quietest boy in our class. He has a head-full of blonde curls.

  ‘I’m stuck between two brains!’ Matthew complains. ‘What are you tryin’ to do, make their smart rub off on me?’

  Mr Callaghan ignores him and puts his hand on the back of the chair next to Stephen’s. ‘Jessica,’ he says. Jessica is pretty new in our class. She moved here halfway through last term. She’s small and skinny and I’ve never heard her say much. When she first got here I thought maybe Shelley and me could be friends with her, but Shelley says she’s weird.

  Who will Mr Callaghan call for the last chair, the one on the end next to Shelley? I don’t have time to think who I do or don’t want. He puts his hand on it and says, ‘Ashleigh.’

  ‘No way!’ Ashleigh screeches. She has her arm firmly linked through Claire’s.

  ‘Ashleigh,’ Mr Callaghan says calmly, ‘I told you I’ve given this a lot of time and thought.’ He holds up his map. Somehow I think he knew he’d have to say this. ‘There will be no changes, remember?’

  Ashleigh clamps Claire’s arm closer to her side. ‘I’m not sitting at a table with a bunch of losers!’

  Acid boils in my stomach. Mr Callaghan’s face goes red. Looks like he wasn’t prepared for this. ‘Listen, young lady, who do you think is running this class?’

  ‘Uh-oh, not a good question,’ Matthew mumbles to me.

  Ashleigh doesn’t answer. She still has her arm clamped to Claire, who is giggling nervously. Mr Callaghan walks over to Ashleigh. ‘I do not appreciate you putting down your classmates!’ His voice is shaking.

  Ashleigh stares at him. Her voice is steady. ‘I only told the truth. They’re the five top losers at the school.’

  ‘Just sit!’ Mr Callaghan shouts, pointing towards the empty chair.

  ‘No!’

  Claire’s giggles are getting close to crying.

  ‘You’ve got two choices, young lady!’ Mr Callaghan bellows in Ashleigh’s face. ‘You sit where I tell you or you go to the Principal’s office!’

  Then, suddenly, Mr Callaghan falls silent and the expression on his face changes from anger to something like fear. He’s looking towards the door. I look, too … and see the Principal, Mrs Jarvis, standing there. ‘Is there a problem here?’ she asks politely.

  ‘No,’ Mr Callaghan says.

  ‘Yes!’ Ashleigh says. ‘A big problem!’

  ‘Nothing we can’t sort out,’ Mr Callaghan assures Mrs Jarvis.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ashleigh screeches. ‘It won’t be sorted out till I’m sitting next to Claire!’

  ‘Ashleigh,’ Mrs Jarvis steps into the room. ‘That’s no way to speak to your teacher.’

  ‘But he wants me to move to a table group with … with them!’ She points to us, and I’m grateful she didn’t call us losers in front of the Principal.

  ‘Then that’s what you have to do,’ Mrs Jarvis tells Ashleigh.

  ‘No way! It’s not fair!’

  ‘Ashleigh …’ Mrs Jarvis manages to inject a stern warning into her voice without shouting. ‘You do what the teacher says, and you do it without backchat. If you honestly believe that a decision is unfair, you can make an appointment to see me out of class time.’

  ‘You bet I will!’ Ashleigh splutters.

  ‘That’s settled then. Sit where Mr Callaghan told you to.’

  Ashleigh plonks down next to Jessica, with a scowl on her face that would scare away were-wolves.

  Mrs Jarvis turns to the rest of us and says, ‘Have a great term, children,’ then waltzes off.

  Mr Callaghan goes on to the other tables to assign seats there. No one else argues with him. In fact, nobody says anything. Everyone’s breathing as quietly as possible, so they don’t attract Mr Callaghan’s attention. It’s hard to know what a teacher will do after the Principal’s had to come into their room. I notice that the red in Mr Callaghan’s face has spread up his forehead over the bald part of his head. Better not to stare at that.

  I look down at my new pencil case that Mum gave me at the airport the day she flew out. It’s really cool, a hot pink box with buttons that you press to make little drawers pop out, just the right shape for the ruler or rubber or pencil sharpener inside them. There’s an angel on the top of my pencil case and I pretend I’m floating with her, high in the sky in a hot air balloon, because I don’t want to see Ashleigh’s angry face.

  When the bell goes, Ashleigh rushes over to Claire. Claire grabs her arm and they head out the door, a chattering team.

  I turn to Shelley, who’s taking her time putting her protractor and gel pens back in her pencil case. ‘You want to go to our spot?’ I ask her.