Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
‘Tennis racquet…….tennis racquet!” Quiet snigger. ‘Tennis Racquet…..tennis Racquet!’ More sniggering. Louder this time.
The sound of those words and the cocky, intimidating voices of her tormentors made the blood rise to Rebecca’s cheeks and her heart race alarmingly. She fought the urge to cry. It was the crying that had got her into this trap in the first place. She felt the cracked vinyl of the school bus seat, sticking to the bare part of her legs. The urge to peel her legs off the sticky surface and pull her dress down further to form a barrier, was niggling at her, but she couldn’t bring herself to move, for fear of attracting some new kind of taunt.
Rebecca had never been possessed of the self-assured nature of some of her classmates. At this moment, she longed to be the sort of person who could just turn around, say, “Fuck off losers!” to be rewarded by approving chuckles and cheers from admiring onlookers. Unfortunately, she was anything but. She was a compliant people-pleaser. A good girl. The shame of having been caught out as a ‘dobber’ and the resulting humiliation was excruciating. If only she had even one ally on the bus, but as usual, she sat alone in the front seat.
Her most recent moment of humiliation (the second one in a matter of days) had occurred only five minutes earlier. Mrs Stepwell or ‘Steppy’ as she was known by most of the students had cornered Rebecca as she ascended the undercover walkway towards the school bus stop. There was a common catch cry amongst the students: “Steppy’s on the war-path”. This ‘war-path’, on any given day might be carved out of a need to ensure all girls were wearing the regulation navy blue ribbon (“It must be 2.5cm in width, girls”) or simply out of desire to create fear. Today, she had been on her biggest war-path of the year so far: to catch the perpetrator of an act of vandalism: the smashing of a year 7 girl’s tennis racquet.
“Show me these boys then. Where are they?
“But Mrs Stepwell,” Rebecca had backpedalled desperately “I’m not sure if they actually did it. They might just be saying they did as a joke or something.”
“Just point them out”, she had ordered, and with that, Rebecca’s fate had been sealed.
Still stuck to her seat, Rebecca closed her eyes and tried unsuccessfully, not to think about her initial moment of public shame: the way she had cried on Monday upon finding her shiny new tennis racquet ruthlessly smashed up and sticking out of the school dumpster. There had been a significant number of witnesses to her tears. She had cried in a way that could not have been described as composed or measured. Her shoulders had heaved and the guttural howl emerging from her had provoked great mirth from the growing group of voyeurs who had stopped for the entertainment. Her sorrow was born of a feeling of horror at the prospect of telling her parents that she had let this happen to the racquet they had only bought her a week earlier. She had left it on the court after tennis coaching (an initiative her parents had organised in an attempt to help their un-sporty daughter fit in at her new school), and by the time she had gone back to the tennis court, it was gone.
Among the group of amused onlookers had been Max and Mike, two popular Year 8 boys with trendy haircuts and a plethora of female admirers. She had recognised them as the boys who always sat at the back of the bus, having conversations littered with obsceneties, in voices designed to be audible to everyone but the elderly driver.
On that Monday afternoon, however, Max and Mike had chosen not to sit in the back seat. Instead, they sat pointedly in the seat directly behind Rebecca, something which struck her immediately as unusual and unnerving. Then the taunting began.
“We saw you crying today. You looked really upset! Do you know who broke your tennis racquet?” asked Max, in an elaborately insincere imitation of concern.
“No.” Rebecca kept her head down, studying the pale blue stripes on her school dress.
“Well we know who did it”, piped up Max gleefully.
Despite her instinctive grasp of their mockery, she whipped her head around to face them.
“Who? Who did it?”
Both boys smirked.
“Us. We did it.”
“What? But, why?
“For fun”.
In her state of shock, it wasn’t clear to Rebecca whether or not they were telling the truth, but as the horror of their words sank in, the two boys stood up and strode triumphantly to the back of the bus, laughing. Once they had slid into their backseat throne, they started to quietly chant the words: “Tennis Racquet………….tennis racquet….tennis racquet” like some maniacal broken record. Other kids watched her for a reaction, while Rebecca just sat, looking deeper into the lines of her uniform fabric wishing to somehow melt into them. The sickening chanting routine had continued for three more painful afternoons.
Now, as she sat on the bus, overwhelmed with shame but grateful at least that it was Friday, Rebecca was full of regret. Why had she been stupid enough to report their taunting to Mrs Annesly, her homeroom teacher, that morning? Why couldn’t she have just toughed it out for one more afternoon, knowing that a two-day reprieve was in sight. Maybe if she had done that, a new victim would have caught their interest by Monday and she would have been off the hook. Now, however, she had reached a whole new level of vulnerability. Sure, she would have a break next week, while Max and Mike served their week of detention with Steppy, but after that, she knew she would be fair game.
“Tennis Racquet…. Tennis racquet…tennis racquet….”they chanted, their tone of amusement, today replaced with one of menace. As it built to a crescendo, Rebecca studied her lap with increased determination.
She felt a wayward tear escape and roll down her cheek. As it splashed between the blue lines of her school dress, she dreamed of being home, safe under her doona with a Milo and her favourite cartoons to distract her. Only ten more minutes to go.