Jack was sitting on Miss Jackson’s desk, drawing her geranium while the other kids were mucking about. They were still celebrating Noel’s announcement that they had six weeks’ respite from Miss Jackson.
The obverse of that did mean six weeks of Higgins, but although as priggish as Miss Jackson, he was certainly much less volatile.
Out of the corner of Jack’s eye, he caught movement. At the end of the open-air corridor created by their portable and the one opposite, Jack could see Higgins with the man from the Valiant. Beside them, the lady and girl from yesterday, and possibly, in terms of the lady, from last night, too. The lady leant down, kissed the girl, and then departed. The three remaining approached class.
Jack resumed his seat—he had the details sketched in of the geranium anyway. The other kids were oblivious to the encroaching arrivals, and continued to make a ruckus.
As Rush leafed through Miss Jackson’s red notebook, filled with small, neat writing, Higgins kept a running commentary.
‘After twenty-eight years here, Miss Jackson has got her syllabus pretty much down pat.’ He tapped the notebook in Rush’s hand. ‘You’ll find it all in there. She’s got today’s page marked.’
Mel lagged behind the two. She stopped abruptly and turned, staring straight through the window at Jack. The two immediately locked eyes in a way that made Jack gasp with a surprising recognition—she was a stranger, after all. And yet she hadn’t scanned about first but looked directly at him as though she not only expected him to be there, but—oddest thing of all—to be also looking out for her.
Mel could only be described as pixie-ish, with her short, spiky hair. To Jack, she resembled one of those unreal creatures found in books brought to life by his favourite illustrator, Arthur Rackham. He’d never seen a girl with short hair before. Ever. She really did seem otherworldly. A line of poetry his father sometimes quoted came to him:
A fairy white, a woodland sprite,
An angel without wings
At the sound of Higgins impatiently calling her name, the girl looked to her right and the spell was broken. Jack pressed his face to the glass to see that Higgins and Rush had paused on the steps leading into the corridor.
‘Mel! This way.’
Mel winked at Jack before skipping over to Higgins. Rush stepped aside for her in a gentlemanly fashion. She followed Higgins inside while, curious, Rush paused to look inquisitively in the direction of her stare. The angle was too oblique from that standpoint, and the reflection on the window too glary, but he noted it was the last window at the back.
When the three entered class, the kids quickly divided up into boys down one side, girls the other.
Jack, suddenly shy, glanced up only briefly from his drawing, worried the girl would hold his eye again, and gaze into him with that searching familiarity. But to his relief, she was instead engaged in looking over every corner of the room and was even giving the ceiling a thorough inspection!
Higgins cleared his throat. ‘Good morning, children. This is Mr Rush.’
All of the students, with the exception of Jack, responded in sing-song.
‘Good morning, Mr Rush.’
Rush was taken aback by their training but smiled. ‘Why, thank you!’ he bellowed, to show his appreciation.
Raising an eyebrow at Rush, Higgins went to speak but Rush beat him to it.
‘And thank you, Mr Higgins.’
Higgins, flustered but not knowing quite what to do next, was forced to make a stumbling, hesitant and somewhat comical exit. Rush watched every painful part of Higgins’ retreat before turning towards class.
‘Ladies and gentlemen of distinction, this is your new classmate, Mel.’
Jack darted another quick look at Mel as Rush motioned to her to find a seat. It occurred to Jack the only one available was next to him on the boy’s half, since Michael hadn’t shown up. Hesitantly, the boys and girls watched in alarm as she took it. Jack and Mel examined each other, then Mel, Jack’s drawing.
It showed a woman with a beak-like nose (the significance sadly lost on Mel) being swallowed whole by a giant, carnivorous geranium. Mel was impressed and signalled as much by beaming. From the front of class, Rush noticed her look of admiration but could only guess at what she’d seen. Jack, both self-conscious, and worried he’d be told off for doodling, quickly covered the picture with his exercise book. Rush’s eyes, meanwhile, floated from the diorama to the posters of dinosaurs on the walls.
‘So, my esteemed colleagues, I believe you’re learning about oversized lizards.’
Rush turned to the clean blackboard, picked up a piece of white chalk, and started writing as he read from the notebook. Jack, feeling deflated for some reason, stared out the window again.
‘The Tyrannosaurus stood up to thirteen feet high and weighed seven tons. The Diplodocus stood sixteen feet high, was up to one hundred and eight feet long and weighed seventeen tons. The Stego…’
Rush’s voice trailed off. The kids looked up from the notebooks they’d been busily scribbling in. Mel, who’d only managed to rule a very pretty margin and write down the heading of ‘Dinosaurs’, also stared upfront. Jack’s focus remained outside.
Rush closed the notebook deliberately as if making a decision and turned to face the expectant class. He appraised them with a meditative look on his face, each one in turn.
‘Now,’ he began slowly, but quickly built up momentum, ‘it seems to me that what this is really about is an exercise in time travel.’
Jack turned from the window in a flash. Mel’s wide eyes travelled from him to Rush.
Discarding the notebook altogether, Rush began to pace. ‘Now, it is very hard to picture the past, unless we bring our own experience to it. For instance, we might say that a Tyrannosaurus was as heavy as two cars and as tall as three. Imagine something like that tearing down the street after you!’
Making a loud roar, the teacher ran several metres down the centre aisle, hands scissoring like jaws. The class laughed spontaneously before many cupped their mouths, worried they’d be told off for making a racket.
Rush proceeded to fill the blackboard with pictures rather than notes, all while telling stories, making jokes, and venturing increasingly absurd and funny noises like dinosaurs might have made. He encouraged the kids to do the same; the more adventurous of them obliging.
Jack, a rare smile on his lips, took out his book again. Inspired by Rush’s unorthodox teaching method, he saw he could attempt a new kind of drawing, more ambitious in scope. He set about it at once. Mel watched. Now and then, the teacher glanced over at him as well.
The school day, which normally seemed to drag forever, rolled by in a flash.
During recess and lunch, Jack thought about speaking with the new girl. After all, they had not even exchanged a single word all day. But Kate and Michelle commandeered her attention. From the gestures they made to her clothes, sartorial matters were on their mind.
But Mel still resumed her seat by him in class.
The final few minutes of the school day were nearly over.
With a flourish, Rush drew one final stroke on the blackboard, the last of the worn-down chalk splintering to dust in his hand. The board was an abstract mess of lines and squiggles.
The end-of-school bell rang. For once, the class did not move.
Rush laughed. ‘Well, off you go… home time!’
The kids got up and scurried outside. Jack finished his drawing, closed his book and, not having been given homework, put it under his desk, being careful not to get a splinter under his nails. He dashed out after the other children, Mel following him. The charismatic teacher smiled at her as she passed. Then, when alone, he made his way to where she and Jack had been sitting.
Rush kneeled beside their desk, surprised at the intensity of feeling overwhelming him. Although energetic at all times, he had been particularly frenetic today, mostly, he imagined, to cover his nerves. To see this girl for the first time—this girl already eleven years old!—emotions whirled within him with nowhere to settle. He wondered about the boy next to her, how he’d moved from writing in one notebook, to scribbling in the next.
Rush gripped the desk giddily.
Never normally one to pry, curiosity got the better of his usually faultless ethics, and he reached under the desk and pulled out the boy’s notebook.
‘Wow,’ he muttered.
The picture was a good likeness, a very good likeness indeed—in fact, more than that, a touch of magic. It was unmistakably of him, Rush, but dressed as Doctor Who in his present Tom Baker incarnation, emerging from the TARDIS.
The boy had drawn himself standing before the Doctor, perhaps hoping to join the Time Lord in his travels? And there, peeping round the door of the TARDIS, captured in a mere few lines, Mel.
Rush peeked out the window in time to see Mel racing to catch up with Jack. Rush’s focus dropped back down to the drawing.
There, underneath, a remarkable caption:
A fairy white, a woodland sprite
An angel without wings.
Jack untied his bike.
‘Hey, Jack is it?’
Jack appraised Mel shyly. She had the oddest accent, perhaps a mixture of the inflections of many countries, although it made a surprisingly musical mix.
‘So, what do you do for fun round here, Jack?’
For a moment, Jack wondered if she meant at school, which would have been an odd question. But then he figured she must have meant living in Miller’s Creek.
She certainly wasn’t like the other girls, with their floral patterned dresses. Not in her trousers, like he’d wanted to wear that morning.
‘Where are you from?’
‘All over the world. Mum travels a lot.’
That explained the accent. She also looked different to everyone else in town. Everyone in Miller’s Creek was white. She and Mr Rush were a welcome intrusion of different worlds, people and places.
They walked to the school gate in silence, Jack pushing his bike. He could sense her weighing him up. Here she was, having seen the world, and the furthest he’d been was into Adelaide. Jack struggled to say something as he got on his bike.
‘Why come here then?’ he asked, kicking at the pedals.
‘Mum wants to revisit home. This is where she grew up. Plus the country air’s meant to be better for her, the doctor reckons.’
Jack wanted to continue the conversation, but chickened out. He could see Michelle’s mum staring at Mel then at her own daughter in her pretty floral dress. It occurred to him they were looking at Mel the way some parents looked at him. Only her difference was worn on the outside; his oddity came through, no matter how hard he tried, in drips. Befriending her would only make him even more friendless. If it were possible to be more friendless.
Jack had wished only that morning he could have a friend to play with—a boy like himself—not a girl in trousers.
‘Well, gotta go.’
As he pedalled off, Mel stepped after him. ‘I loved your drawing!’
But Jack didn’t turn back. Mel leant against the school fence. She caught a glimpse of Kate and Michelle’s mothers, Mrs Burnett and Mrs Harrow, staring at her. She waved and they giggled.
Toco Productions 