Wishlist

I think there should be more Tuesdays.

The air is a bit clearer, the earth is quieter. People are already spent from overexerting their Monday promises. I like Tuesdays because dad is ‘trying out’ pilates for the third year running and mum forgets to factor in school zones during her drive home. On Tuesdays I get to be alone.

I am hiding where I won’t be found. The school’s chatter has dwindled and instead magpies warble in the gumtrees skirting the playground, egging me on to play hide and swoop. I won’t fall for it.

It’s warm inside the tunnel slide, the red plastic glowing from the afternoon sun as I run my fingers over the curved ceiling, savouring the static dragging at my skin.

Pressing my back harder against the twist in the middle, right before the slide gets steep, I wedge myself firmly in place. My arms spread out slowly, tiny hairs buzzing against it as the world glows red. I wonder if this is what it was like in the womb.

Mrs Baxter told us last term that we all need seven positive touches a day. Otherwise we lose the connections in our brain that feed positivity and love and empathy. Empathy, she says, is very important.

I’ve started to count them — sometimes my mum takes my elbow while we’re crossing the road, sometimes dad puts his hand on my shoulder when he asks me to set the table. I beat my record yesterday and got five. Five. The trick is to position yourself in the way so people have to reach out and manoeuvre you. Mum bumped into me when I laid a trap outside the bathroom and used her hand to steady me. When I made a big ooft sound, as if she’d taken me by surprise, she even squeezed my arm for a few seconds. It was a warm comforting pressure and I felt something in my chest go liquid like melted butter was spreading through my ribcage.

Sometimes when I close my eyes I pretend that the sun-soaked plastic is someone else’s skin, that they’re enveloping me in a big hug. Sometimes on a Tuesday afternoon when the school goes still, I can trick my insides into turning buttery again.

The magpies caw in warning.

There’s shuffling in the bark outside. I go stiff, holding my breath, insides tingling with dread as some intrinsic part of me knows danger is close.

A thump happens at the bottom of the slide. I feel it reverberate up my spine.

Peering down the tunnel, I see large hands shove a grocery bag beneath the lip of the chute.

The magpies tell me not to move, cawing and bickering. So I don’t. I just wait until the hands stop shoving the green fabric bag and the bark stops crunching beneath retreating steps and the sun dips a little lower and the slide walls begin to feel like ice.

Slowly, muscles straining, I unclench my legs and slip a little further down the slide. The golden light is turning blue and I know for sure that my parents will be home and dinner will be in the microwave. I should go.

The bag doesn’t look heavy.

I should go.

If I took out my lunchbox it would probably fit in my backpack.

The magpies don’t say anything. Not very helpful.

Slowly, I creep further and further until my feet touch where the slide levels out. My clumpy school shoes are only a centimetre from the bag.

I should go.

Instead my fingers untwist the cloth ties until the sides collapse and reveal… Four gold bricks.

I blink. They’re not bricks but stacks of tightly wadded bank notes bound by straining rubber bands. I stare at the old man printed on the top note and his kind smile, the sort I imagine a grandfather might give. I feel like I’d have more positive touches if my grandparents hadn’t got ‘the Big C’.

I think about Mrs Baxter and empathy and what it would feel like to have velvety old-person skin wrap around me in a long hug. I think about the number seven. And then I shove the grocery bag into my backpack and run home as if the fickle magpies are chasing me.

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It starts with a black notebook sitting in the middle of the handball court.

Before morning assembly, Jack Fairbairn picks it up from the cracked asphalt and opens it. The opening bit is important, it’s where the magic starts.

I watch from where I’ve squeezed myself between the paperbark tree and the balcony railing, eyes following his as he reads my neatest handwriting.

Please return underneath the broken bubbler before 3pm.

Pretend this book is a magical genie lamp, what would you wish for?

Wish: Name:

With bated breath I see his mouth scrunch up in consideration. Other kids are flapping across the quad like jabbering seagulls outside a fish and chip shop. Jack’s hand snaps the book shut and goes to throw it back on the concrete. My heart freezes painfully. The leather will scratch.

But someone calls Jack’s name and, at the last second, he stuffs the notebook into his bag.

He might keep it. Jack might forget all about it and find the notebook two weeks later with rotten banana smooshed over the cover. I try not to worry, but that frozen feeling is tumbling down a steep slope, gathering more dreadful possibilities as it goes. What if Jack hands the notebook into lost property? What if he uses it to do his Copy, Cover, Check spelling homework?

But at 4pm when I finally have the nerve to check the assembly quad with its neat metal benches, I see that a small black notebook rests beneath the unconnected pipes of the broken bubbler.

Hands shaking, I open the first page. There at the very top in cramped pencil is Jack Fairbairn’s wish.

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Everybody is talking about it. Even Mrs Baxter was overheard whispering to the sick bay nurse about how someone got into her classroom.

Everyone has a theory too. Most think it’s an early birthday present, but Jack is insisting it’s magic. I like the sound of that. I like the way it felt in my chest when we were led into the classroom and everyone saw the huge Mega Croc Racer 3000 box sitting on Jack’s desk. His eyes seemed to swell like balloons, his mouth opening as a gasp pushed its way out.

The whole class shouted and patted Jack on the back and asked if they could have a turn during recess. No one noticed the bruises on my knees from where I fell through the window trying to haul the too big box through the too small gap.

My smile isn't the same as everyone else’s, it’s big enough to hold a secret.

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Maureen Phillips got a Freddo Luxe ice cream cake which caused her to end up in sick bay because of her lactose intolerance, but which she declared was 100% worth it.

Hector Nomikos got a purple bike with a basket on the front.

Sally Mann wants a dog.

This is rather tricky.

I arrive to pick up one from an address I memorized on a supermarket flyer, convincing the sceptical woman that my mum is waiting in the car. At home, I sneak through the back door and hide the bored-looking bulldog in my closet throughout dinner.

Luckily mum and dad’s renovation show is on so they don’t hear when the dog whines to go to the bathroom. I wait until the zany presenter gets excited about polished concrete before I let the bulldog down the hall. The clicking of his nails with each waddling step is masked by my dad daydreaming about re-doing the kitchen.

The dog licks my hand when I give him our leftover sausages. A sloppy thank you which I add to my positive touches for the day. Three.

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Suddenly kids are hunting for the notebook and I have to find more and more complex hiding places. Taped beneath one of the assembly benches. On top of a disused fan in the old demountable. Between the J-K section in the library.

I have to stay later and later to avoid being caught which means mum and dad have assumed I’m hanging out at a friend’s house. I don’t correct them, I just stand in front of the kitchen cabinets until dad needs a ladle and ruffles my hair when he asks me to move. Five. Not even close.

Darting towards the bubbler, I crouch down and flip the book open to the second page. My stomach drops..

There’s no name beside the wish, only a star in green biro.

I re-read the wish. Then again.

The green biro doesn’t change.

I wish my parents not to get divorced.

I don’t know how to buy that.

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They’ve taken the notebook.

Rumours fly that it sits solemnly on the principal’s desk like a dark omen. Parents have surged in and out of the office all week, none more livid than Sally Mann’s mother who threatened to sue the school over her dog allergies.

I don’t know what to do with the remaining three stacks of golden notes, how to fulfil the wishes, how to find the person with the green biro.

It’s been a terrible Tuesday. It’s already 3:15 and I’ve only had one positive touch. In fact, it’s probably only a touch. It was definitely a mistake when Jack’s hand swung back and brushed mine.

I sit cross-legged in the mouth of the slide, thoughts too heavy to make the climb.

The school is quiet, the grounds empty. The magpies are unnervingly silent. Hair on my arms begins to prickle in warning.

I look up and I am not alone.

Bad. Man. That’s all my brain registered before it short circuits with fear.

His solid mass lunges for me and I turn, scrambling up the slide, my terror-damp hands refusing to stick to the walls. The static inside the red plastic suffocates me as I struggle to the midway twist.

The whole structure shudders. Angry footfalls thunder above me across the play equipment, pausing right at the slide’s entrance.

Yelping, I let go, tumbling back. My head strikes the plastic and I slip bonelessly over the lip onto the bark ground with a groan.

My backpack is missing, I have to get it. My skull is buzzing, my breath out of reach.

The metal playground shudders again and I know I have seconds before those heavy footfalls reach me. I crawl on my bruised stomach to the unzipped backpack, reaching inside with trembling hands. The rubber bands have snapped so I grab a fistful of golden notes and hurl them as far as I can.

He doesn’t want me. He wants the money.

The man realises what I am doing and shouts, chasing after the notes fluttering away along the ground.

And I run. I run further into the school, towards people. Leftover teachers, janitors, someone who can help quiet the roaring in my blood. I pelt up the library steps two at a time and rush for the still-open doors.

Ellouise Birch choses that exact moment to exit.

I crash into her. The contents of her pencil case goes flying as we thump into the too-thin carpet. I can’t breathe, except I’m somehow apologising. I can’t think, but I somehow remember Ellousie broke her arm last year and to be extra careful as I roll off her.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I chant in time to my wild heartbeat.

She sniffs and I realise her eyes are red-rimmed as they scan me blearily. “Are you ok?”

“I… What are you still doing in the school?”

She sniffles again, wary this time. “I didn’t want to go home yet. I was drawing.”

Right, her pencils. I begin to gather up the scattered mess, scooping up highlighters and erasers and… My fingers still on a green biro. She has several. On her pencil case she’s drawn a row of little green stars. I’m still staring at them when she asks, “Are you sure you’re ok, Sam?”

I look up. I didn’t realise she knew my name. I didn’t realise any of them might.

Something cracks, emotion bubbling through the fissures until I’m shaking and crying.

Ellouise’s face goes soft, reaching across the spilled pencil case to pull me into a tight hug. Though she is small, her grip is fierce.

I didn’t grant her wish, I didn’t place myself in the way, I didn’t boldly ask. I’m hugged even though I haven’t proven I deserve it yet.

“Me too,” she murmurs.

I relax into her touch, letting myself feel the rise of her breath, the warmth of being held. It is better than butter, the feeling beneath my ribs melts like caramel.

I dare to hug her back.