We begin... Session 1
Session 1
Monday 28th July 1984 – early morning
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| The course is set... |
Principal Davies had given the High School students the morning off curriculum to wander down to the foreshore to cheer their swim team on, Bailey wistfully wondered how many would actually make it to the sands of the foreshore, not many he guessed. Why would they? Last 8 sporting sessions had been a washout for the High School, those damn Battling Bees from the Academy had won everything, how this turn around had happened he had not even an inkling. But, for whatever reason it was happening he was in danger of losing his job. And wouldn’t the Principal love that? Payback for the slight indiscretion the Coach and Vanessa Davies had had last year – they were ON A BREAK for goodness’s sake. Jake Williams-Mitchell was his best hope, he should win the gold medal event (the 250 yard swim) easily, maybe breaking Coach’s 30 odd year record in the process, let’s face it he had to win!
Thirteen-year-old Jodie Williams straightened her school uniform, skirts, huhh, she’s never really seen the point in them, they got in the way when climbing trees for a start and that was just for a start. But, as her ex-marines pop would say, uniforms are for a reason, a unifier, a social leveller. Pop’s always right, she’d just have to go with it, Pop was always right especially now her mom was looking down from heaven. Jodie wondered what Mom would think about her new step-mom, she thinks she would approve, anything to make Pop happier and stop drinking so much. He said it was to stop the pain of his war wound, but many knew it was just to stop the pain of losing his love as much as the pain of losing his arm.
Jodie heard that sound, her step-brother Jake called it music, she wasn’t so sure – Whitesnake, what kind of band name was that anyway and the noise, she hated it as much as Pop did. She rushed down the back porch steps and ran around the house just as Jake hit the pedal on his aging station wagon, apparently his actual pop had left it behind when he ‘went away for a while’ and Jake had fixed it up. Jodie knew it was his big race today, in fact they had the morning off school because of it, she was hoping he would offer her a lift to school but today, like every day, he didn’t. She sighed as the station wagon sped out the drive but then she rushed inside to grab her bag, shout bye and hopped on her bike. Freewheeling down the slight incline, past Elm Hill Cemetery and Harper’s Paint & Wallpaper shop Jodie headed straight for the fore-shore.
Fourteen-year-old Avery Rose Turner walked unnoticed (as normal) through the recreation ground across the street from Garuda High, she noticed with interest a group of seniors who spotting their form teacher Miss Barklett and the Science teacher Mr. Winthrope had entered ‘Luigi’s Bakery and Coffee’ slope off behind the facilities block in the park. Rose figured not many students (or teachers) would make it to the foreshore but thought she may as well, there could be something, or more to the point someone, to look at. Not often she gets the opportunity to check out the Academy students from the ‘Meadows’, the whole ‘new community’ tend to keep to themselves. Residents of the ‘old town’ often voice the opinion that the Meadows ‘crowd’ think of themselves as too ‘good’ to venture into the old town. The new mall tended to be the only place that the two communities could to be seen mixing. But still, in a couple of weeks the summer holiday crowd would swell the numbers of the old town fourfold and no one would care about he meadows, until fall came at least.
Fourteen-year-old Ellis Easton walked out of the front door. He shouted, “Bye…” although he knew there would be no answer, his mother and father were still not talking, shouting sometimes but not talking. There was still no news about his brother who had been whisked away on so called ‘drug charges’. Every day he heard his mother ring the authorities, every day he heard her cry afterwards, every day there was no news. At least the last day or two the other kids were too distracted with new releases from Mactintosh (a computer called an Apple – that was so lame, no way that was going to last), Sony and their weird silver disc which held heaps more songs than the e-60 cassette tapes he had lined up in his room, what a pain that was going to be to swap over, could you even swap them over, who knows? And, of course there was the swim meet, not that people cared about the swimming by hey, Principal Davies was giving them the morning off. Normally he would head straight to the mall with the rest of his group of friends but he still felt a bit self-conscious about his family’s problems. Maybe it would be best, he thought, to meander down to the foreshore and see who made it there. Walking with one ear phone in and one out (that was the cool way to use them anyway) he passed the ‘Daily Chronicle’s’ office and lowered his head to avoid seeing the array of front pages that adorned the office’s windows. Every one of them for the last few days had some new, ‘insight’ into the drug scandal at the school labs and very often accompanied by a picture of his brother. Of course these ‘insights’ were rubbish and the council had tried to shut them down, there had been a spate of summer house cancellations which was worrying the business folks. Ellis knew they were bullshit, well he was pretty sure anyway.
As he walked down the avenue to the foreshore he caught glimpses of the Academy’s team marching down the street the next block along. Gee those kids were weird, and not in an interesting weird sort of way, more a creepy weird. And, where were their folks? He almost felt sorry for them, at least the Garuda High team had a group of adults in the car park having a tail gate party and rooting the swim team on, the Academy had no one and even their coach was marching silently with them. This was a sharp contrast to Coach Bailey who was strutting up and down the sand shouting inspirational phrases such as, “Winning isn’t everything… It’s the only thing !” “Second place is first place LOSER !” and similar such things, no wonder Ellis didn’t really like sport.
Whitesnake’s newest album ‘Slide it In’ blared from the door speakers in the cab of Jake Williams’s station wagon. Jake was trying to use Williams-Mitchell as Sgt. Williams was NOT his dad, and never would be. But, double barrelled names were unusual and no one really cared when he tried to explain… So, it would be ‘Williams’ he got called by. He was thinking of the race as he turned the corner onto Foreshore Drive, well actually he was thinking about how wrecked he felt, trying to juggle school, the dojo (where he was the top student and therefore often at the end of sensei’s ‘demonstrations’) and his part time job at the Y (which seemed to have grown in shifts of late) all were taking their toll.
Rounding the corner he had to slam on the brakes to avoid running into the tail end of the freekin’ ‘Battling Bees’ swim team who were marching 3 abreast down the drive. Who even walked like that, it looked like those old films his step dad watched of ‘nazis’ or the ‘japs’ as the Sgt. called them, marching all in time, no emotion.
Blaring his horn did nothing, even their coach didn’t turn round so Jake pulled out and sped past them, swerving back into the lane as soon as he passed them. Pulling up into the parking lot he kept the music blaring and jumped out, dropping into some burpees and deep squats followed by san shin kata, letting out a, “KI AIII” with every punch.
Garuda High history would like to show that the morning passed with race victories or at least close races, sadly history is not so accommodating. Instead, it would show sweeping and somewhat humiliating victories by the Battling Bees in every single race, every damn one! As the meet neared the end there were only a handful of parents left and about 30 students (the ones with nowhere to go or whom were too scared to play hooky) from Garuda High. The Bees still stood on the sand, mainly in their line except after every race when they would huddle together and if one were close enough one would hear what sounded like a deep hum a droning noise. Obviously, it was some sort of school chant or song but it was strange this was the only sign of anything that could even remotely be called emotion.
By the time it came to the last race Coach Bailey was past forlorn, it looked like the man had just been sentenced to get the electric chair. Slowly he trudged over to Jake Williams, and put both hands on his shoulders. To onlookers it looked like he was imploring Jake to at least do his best, eek back some pride for the school, no matter how small.
As the swimmers took their place on the sand at the start/finish line the crowd moved slightly closer, this was the last chance and Jake was fast, very fast. Jodie Williams grabbed one of the vacant chairs from next to a car in the parking lot and dragged it over to stand on, Ellis Easton appeared at her side and they shared a smile as Jodie decided that if Jake did well everyone should know he was her ‘brother’, if he didn’t do well, he wasn’t really was he!
Rose Turner looked around the crowd, she liked people watching, even if they were weird people like the Bees…
CRACKKKK the starter pistol discharged into the air and the swimmers ran forward into the lake, hurling themselves into a dive as soon as the water was knee to thigh deep. This seemed to galvanise the crowd into noise, after all it was nearly all over and everyone loved an underdog story. Until about an hour ago underdog would be the last thing anyone would have described Jake as, but now he was barely an underpup!
Water streaming off his face Jake surfaced and his vision became clear, it was a perfect start, a good sprint and excellent dive and he’s stayed under for about 9 yards. As his vision cleared there was nothing in front of him except the buoy in the distance… WAIT, holy crap on a cracker, exploding out the water 10 yards ahead of him was Sommer Frisks, how was that even possible? As the realisation that Frisks had stayed under even longer than him sunk in Jake was aware of another swimmer pulling past him, he was in 3rd place for craps sake. Jake heard the sounds of his name being chanted by the crowd, put his head down and pulled hard, his cupped hands extending into the water and pulling back, pulling back as hard as he could.
Ellis was as shocked as most people as he watched the swimmers from the Bees pull away from Jake, he didn’t know much about swimming, or sport in general, but he had heard enough these last few days to know that Jake was supposed to win. He put a supportive hand on the chair that was now rocking violently as Jodie Williams jumped and stamped and called her ‘brother’s’ name out. Rose Turner’s attention turned to the crowd, obviously this race was going to go the same old predictable way the others had gone and Rose wasn’t a fan of predictable. Coach Bailey looked like he was going to have a cardiac, red in the face from yelling he was kicking sand around and glaring at the Bees and their coach, who weirdly were all just standing there, no emotion, no chanting, no cheering…
Jake was gaining, adrenalin from hearing the crowd coursing through his body. As they reached the buoy at the half way mark he made his move, arcing his body around the anchor chair he surfaced in front of Tommy Chang and gained on Frisk. Deeper and deeper he pulled until he was level, shoulder to shoulder, Frisks sent a hand sideways on his downward stroke but the karate training paid dividends as Jake executed a perfect Jodan Uke to block it with his own right hand and then executed an enpi tsuki (elbow strike) to Frisks’ upper back, knocking the wind out of him and making him tread water momentarily. Jake used the time to pull 10 yards ahead the crowd noise again becoming audible, Ellis Easton had turned cheerleader, standing in front of the crowd waving his arms in upwards scoops he admonished them to chant louder, and they did!
20 yards to go and the crowd were going wild, if Jake had had time he would have seen his little step sister bouncing up and down above the heads of the crowd, arms flailing and yelling Jake’s name again and again… Until she disappeared from view, the chair finally giving way. But the call was taken up by Rose, yes Rose Turner… Everyone was surprised by what happened next, but non more than Rose herself. Grabbing the back rest of the brokenchair she jumped to the front of the crowd, yelling out, smacking the chair part into the sand, it getting smaller with every strike. No, one had every seen Rose Turner like this, maybe not even Rose herself…
Ellis tried to hold Jodie aloft, above his head so she could see and keep cheering, he barely managed it and promising himself he would, perhaps, spend some time with the weights he put Jodie on the ground where she immediately pushed her way through the crowd.
With nearly 10 yards to go until the leaders could stumble to their feet and sprint up the sand Frisk pulled level with Jake…. NOOOOOOO this wasn’t going to happen thought Jake. As he felt a tug on his swim shorts he let loose a mouthful of water into the face of Frisks, just as the latter was taking a gulp of air. Frisk was in the shallows now, on his knees but was coughing. Jake felt the sand scrape his knees and he scrambled to his feet and began to sprint up the sand towards the finish tape. Frisk’s hand scrapped Jake’s back, he was close, the crowd rushed down toward the tape. Arms intertwined like battling gladiators Frisks and Jake reached out for the tape. But Frisks had the edge, he had managed to get his left arm over Jake’s outstretched arm and was pulling it down, his own right arm ready to shoot out and break the tape… It was over!
Suddenly, and simultaneously, two things changed the course of the races’ history. One, a piece of wooden chair landed smack in front of Frisk, not enough to make him have to adjust his lunge it was however enough to adjust his gaze to the side. Just in time for his gaze to be met by a wall of sand, not a big wall, in fact in the terms of walls it was minute, miniscule even. But, it did bring his outstretched hand back onto his face to clear his eyes. This was enough, Jake reached out with his left hand, grabbed the tape and flung himself over the finish line.
The next thing Jake was aware of was Coach Bailey pulling himself to his feet and his step sister Jodie barrelling into his waist and hugging him tight.
“We did that, we won the race for Jake,” exclaimed Ellis to Rose, “look what we did!”
Rose looked and a brief smile pulled the corners of her lips up, well everyone liked an underdog story she thought to herself.
As the cheering on the beach subsided the announcer announced (as is their want) that Jake had won but Coach Bailey’s record still stood. Coach grinned, the day was saved, maybe his job was saved. No one paid any attention to the fact the Bees all huddled together before getting into lines of three and marched off, no noise, no emotion, no anything…
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