In the empty corridor Richard mumbled, ‘Fuck it, I’m not going to see that shit-face.’ Whenever one of them wanted to duck school, the other went too, and they’d been doing that ever since Year Nine. ‘What do you expect when everything here is so fucking boring, man?’

  ‘I can’t piss off my mother again, Rick. Especially with my dad – you know …’

  ‘Sorry, mate, I forgot,’ Richard said. ‘My father doesn’t give a shit how I do at school, you know that.’ Ever since Richard’s mother had died when Richard was six, Richard had been raised by a workaholic but sex-crazy dad. He was still bringing home a series of pathetic women who didn’t last longer than a few months each and who ranged from druggies who gave his dad any variety of sex he desired in return for support of their habits to the latest one, who, according to Richard, was addicted to watching animal-fucking videos while she and his dad imitated them.

  ‘That’s bullshit, Rick, your dad does care!’

  ‘Whatever,’ Richard said finally. ‘But I sure wish the prick would stop letting his prick rule his bloody life – and mine.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  Richard shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m so sick and bored with school.’

  ‘So let’s go and see Mr Bell, deputy principal and god of our champion league team, and tell him just that: that we’re bored with school and see no bloody use in it.’

  ‘You do the talking then, mate!’

  ‘You know I’m not good at that, Rick.’ In the past, Richard had always done their talking whenever they were in trouble or wanted to con things from others.

  ‘Not this time, mate,’ Richard chortled. ‘Not this time. It was your idea, so you bullshit Mr Bell.’

  They straightened up and started marching down the corridor, utterly united in their friendship. It had started in Year Nine. Richard was one of only three Pālagi in their class and someone Fale didn’t even really care about. After a day of watching him being bullied by a trio of large Samoans, he’d inexplicably experienced the urge to help Richard, but was too scared to do so.

  He went home that day and told his dad about it, who explained, ‘If you’re afraid of something, you’ve got to face it straight up in order to overcome it.’

  ‘But there are three of them and they’re bigger!’

  ‘Then you have to even the odds,’ his dad replied, smiling. ‘There are two of you: you and the boy being bullied. So you need a third helper.’ He looked at Fale, waiting. ‘Got it?’

  The next morning, Fale wrapped up his baseball bat and hockey stick in ‘ie lavalava. Before form period he found Richard, who at first refused to believe him when he said, ‘I’ll help you fix those bastards.’

  During lunch time, Fale went up to Mat, the leader of the three bullies, and told him that Mr Bell wanted to see him and the other two in the gym straight after school. Something to do with Mr Bell wanting them to play for his second league team, he’d flattered him.

  When the trio stepped through the front door of the deserted gymnasium, Richard stepped out from the side and, confronting Mat head-on, whacked the baseball bat into Mat’s right knee. As Mat collapsed to the floor screaming in pain, Richard brought the bat down on his left shoulder. One of Mat’s mates sprang forward to his aid, but Fale drove his hockey stick into the boy’s belly. As the victim grasped at the hockey stick, Fale pulled it out and up and down with a whipping tthhwwaacckk! across his head. The third bully turned and fled.

  One clutching at his knee, the other at his bleeding head, Mat and his cohort sobbed in pain. ‘You threaten us again, and we’ll kill you!’ Richard promised.

  ‘And if you tell anyone it was us, we’ll kill you, you got that?’ Fale leered into Mat’s face. ‘You got that?’ Through his stream of tears and snot and excruciating pain, Mat nodded and nodded.

  The next day the official story – that Mat and his friend had suffered severe injuries falling off the pummel horse and parallel bars in the gym, where they had been messing around unsupervised – which all the staff believed, spread quickly throughout the school. The true and mesmerising unofficial story, which all the students believed, resulted in the school’s students acquiring a massive fear of – and respect and admiration for – Fale and Richard. Richard was a Year Nine lover of the TV series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He nicknamed himself and Fale ‘The Magnificent Duo of Ponsonby’, a name that was later adopted by many others, including staff, at St Paul’s.

  Now, Fale steered Richard ahead of him when Mr Bell called, ‘Come in!’

  After the many times they’d been summoned to Mr Bell’s office, they thought they’d be used to it being the untidiest office on the planet, but they were again shocked – or was it disgusted? – by its wild tangle of sports gear, books and files and papers, framed photographs of his wife and three children and the many rugby league teams Mr Bell had coached over the years, which had made their school the most famous rugby league school in the country, and piles of National Geographic magazines, which everyone at the school knew was Mr Bell’s favourite reading.

  They stood shoulder to shoulder on the only unoccupied space in front of Mr Bell’s desk, trying not to breathe in the stink of stale sweat that emanated from the tangle. ‘Be with you in a minute, gentlemen!’ Mr Bell said, without looking up from the school reports he was reading. Fale peered across the deputy principal’s desk. Fuck, the bastard’s reading ours! ‘Very interesting, very,’ Mr Bell murmured. They both tried not to look into Mr Bell’s expansive bald spot or at the long grey hairs sticking out of his large ears. Once, when Fale had mentioned Mr Bell’s name to his parents they’d told him that Clarence ‘the Shoe’ Bell was an ex-priest who’d left the church and married a former nun. His nickname came from the time when corporal punishment had been the main method of discipline in schools. Instead of using the cane, he’d used one of his old shoes. The name had stuck, long after corporal punishment had been abolished.

  ‘So, Mister Feao and Mister Scown, we meet again.’ The Shoe began his clever shuffle. ‘I know I have many important things to do today and I know you two have very important things to do, such as studying and trying to catch up on all the work you haven’t done this year, so I’ll get to the point.’ The Shoe ran his tongue over his dry lips. ‘You, my handsome friends, are going to leave this marvellous institution without – yes, without – your NCEAs. You, Mister Feao, are going to join that staggering statistic of Pacific Island students who leave high-school without any qualifications, and you, Mister Scown, will do the same and thoroughly disappoint your brilliant, highly qualified father.’ Fale felt the pressure of Richard’s elbow on his left arm. He moved his arm away but Richard’s elbow followed. ‘Your reports are absolutely disgraceful.’ The Shoe’s voice was now more decisive, demanding. ‘Not one single merit, not one single satisfactory, and there are two of you.’ He paused and raised up his offended eyes, and Fale felt as if he were going to topple into them. ‘Which is to say in the more honest language of the past: you two are failing, yes, failing, everything.’ He paused again, screwed up his face dramatically and asked, ‘By the way, can you tell me why you’ve been absent for thirty-one days each this school year, and on the same days? Are you Siamese twins – or should I use the simpler term, conjoint twins?’

  ‘Sir!’ Fale heard his voice squeaking. ‘Sir, my dad is very ill in hospital and I don’t feel too good.’ Immediately the Shoe was on his feet and offering them chairs. ‘I haven’t been sleeping well,’ Fale added.

  ‘Sit, sit.’ The Shoe seemed concerned about his welfare. ‘Is your dad going to be okay?’

  Fale nodded slowly and bowed his head.

  ‘Mr Feao’s been really crook.’ Richard joined the play. ‘Might be prostate cancer.’

  Fuck, that’s too big a lie for the Shoe to swallow! Fale thought. But he did. ‘My dad died of that: a terrible, terrible way to go,’ the Shoe said, his voice trembling with sadness.

  ‘The doctors got it early,’ Fale continued their attack, ‘so they’ve got it under control, sir.’

  Gazing at him with sympathy, the Shoe murmured, ‘I hope his recovery is swift. Please give him my best wishes when you see him next, Fale.’

  ‘We’re sorry about your father, sir,’ Richard said, injecting sorrow into his voice.

  ‘My dad had a good innings,’ the Shoe answered. ‘He was in the Auckland league team, was a front rower.’ That explained the Shoe’s wide shoulders, short massive legs and squat build. ‘You know, Fale, I’ve never understood why you stopped playing league at the end of the third form. You’ve got the build, the speed, the –’

  ‘Intelligence, sir?’ Richard found the word for him. Fale looked away. Why can’t Rick stop his suicidal shit?

  ‘Thank you, Richard,’ the Shoe said, nodding. ‘Yes, Fale, the intelligence. You could be in our champion team right now.’

  ‘Sir, as you know, in Samoan families you have to always obey your grandparents, and mine have absolutely refused to let me play any sport after I suffered a seizure in Year Nine and the doctors diagnosed a faulty heart valve.’ He observed the Shoe’s face closely and, when he recognised total belief there, experienced a warm sea of elation lapping at his heart. He’d decided in Year Nine that league meant too much training and giving up too many nights out, afternoons for practice and Saturdays for games, as well as suffering the bullying of coaches like the Shoe.

  Blinking repeatedly, the Shoe said, ‘How is it now, son?’

  No hesitation. ‘My last annual check-up showed I won’t need a valve replacement until I’m in my fifties at least, sir.’

  ‘Wonderful news, son, wonderful!’ the Shoe exclaimed. ‘You should have told us that years ago, and I wouldn’t have pestered you about playing league.’ Surreptitiously Fale glanced at Richard, who refused to look back at him. ‘Now, for that other matter of not performing to capacity, gentlemen,’ the Shoe said, clearing his throat. ‘All your teachers know, I know, and you know that you have extremely high intelligence.’ No threat or sarcasm in his remark. ‘So why are you not performing?’

  Fale felt Richard’s gaze, urging him to answer, so he lowered his head, and confessed, ‘Sir, I have lost interest in studying, yes. I keep trying and trying but I can’t seem to …’ The right word wouldn’t come.

  ‘Connect?’ the Shoe offered.

  ‘Yes, sir, connect with my studies. I just can’t!’

  ‘Neither can I, sir,’ Richard chorused, screwing up his face in painful regret. ‘I try, sir, really try, but my studies don’t feel relevant any more.’

  The Shoe sighed. Sitting up, he said, ‘You’re not the only boys over the years who’ve felt that, but most of them have kept trying, really trying, and gone on to have very successful careers.’ The Shoe sounded just like Fale’s mother, and he had to resist that, stop it from churning up his guilt and remorse again. ‘So do you want to leave school and get jobs?’ the Shoe asked. ‘Without qualifications and during this recession you’re not going to get anything, and if you do they’ll only be shit jobs with little pay.’

  ‘I don’t know about Richard, sir, but I’m going to really settle down and try and get my NCEA,’ Fale vowed.

  ‘Me too, sir!’ came Richard’s agreement, with military-like commitment. ‘I’ll get my dad to help me.’

  ‘As you know, sir, my dad’s a science-maths graduate, so I’ll get him to help me, too.’ Fale was proud of that embellishment.

  ‘I’ll talk to all your other teachers and get them to help you as well.’ The Shoe shuffled to a triumphant stop. ‘You must promise me you won’t be absent from school again, though. If you are, I won’t bother to have another confessional session like this with you.’ He paused. ‘I’ll just release you from this terrible prison called St Paul’s!’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Richard said. ‘I’ll really do my best, and I’ll get my NCEA if it kills me!’

  ‘Me too, sir.’ Fale felt like snapping to attention and saluting the forgiving, understanding Mr Bell.

  The Shoe rose slowly to his large feet. He extended his hand to Fale and declared, ‘Son, I hear you’re a marvellous gardener, so get your NCEA and go to Massey and be a horticulturist or a scientist.’ He had a crushing handshake, but Fale didn’t flinch. He was so stoked with the deputy principal’s reference to him being a great gardener. Really stoked!

  ‘How did he know about your gardening?’ Richard asked as they walked back down the hallway.

  ‘Cos the Shoe is shuffling to God’s tune and knows everything.’

  After school that day – and they didn’t skip any of their classes – they went to Richard’s house, changed, walked down to the Richmond Road supermarket and, like they’d done many times before, bought two coconut milky bars, a packet of barbecue chips and some golden kiwifruit, and shoplifted a six-pack of Coke, three packets of condoms and the Aveeno body lotion that was popular with the girls. However, when they got back to Richard’s home, the promise they’d made to Mr Bell jabbed into Fale’s insides and revived his guilt about failing, so he told a disappointed Richard he was going home.

  His mother had given up telling him to clean up in his room, so it was the untidiest one in the house, with his clothes, empty food wrappers and packets and bottles, sports equipment and other possessions strewn everywhere. ‘Go ahead and kill yourself with your own filth and stink!’ his mother told him. She continued to do Fale’s laundry though. When he returned to his room that afternoon he realised it was as bad as Mr Bell’s office, and he did see the filth and smell the stink for the first time, so he stripped his bed and put on clean sheets and pillowcases, piled all his dirty clothes into the laundry bag, collected the other rubbish – including three filthy pairs of underpants and socks (what a pong!) he found under his bed – stuffed it into a large rubbish bag and dumped that in the green rubbish bin. He dusted his bookcase, books, DVDs and CDs and put them back into the bookcase, lined his shoes along the bottom of his wardrobe, straightened his clothes on their hangers and, with even more care, sprayed his desk top and computer with anti-bacterial fluid and wiped them clean, then placed his textbooks, exercise books and writing utensils on his desk. Quickly he vacuumed the floor. Then, as he dripped with sweat, he stood and admired his work. Whew, he ponged! He peeled off his sweat-drenched shirt, dried his body with a hand towel and sprayed himself with deodorant. Now he was ready! Fale sat down at his desk to start his revision, his catching up.

  Apart from art and maybe physics, Fale knew he had to start almost from scratch with every subject. He only had the required textbooks for physics and maths, so he started with maths. He opened the massive textbook and tried concentrating. Tried. Tried and tried. Couldn’t. Fuck!

  Then the insight came. Just like Einstein seeing that equation for relativity. Yeah, think of the textbook as a rich garden, and he was entering it to study all the plants in it: how they got to be what they were, their relationships to one another … Soon he was in the zone, deeply in the zone, as the sports-mad Fou would have described it.

  When Fou’s car pulled into the garage, Fale broke from the spell and remembered he had to cook. ‘I’m bloody tired,’ Fou said. ‘So I’m going to have a sleep. I can’t help you with the cooking.’ He was glad of that because she was a hopeless cook. She also messed up the kitchen and used up all the pots and pans and left him to clean up.

  He had a main course of fried pork chops and thick mushroom sauce, steamed green beans in butter and mashed potatoes, and a desert of fresh fruit salad and plain yoghurt ready when their mother got home just after the six o’clock news. Before she came into the dining room, he withdrew his father’s chair from around the dining table and rearranged the others so there was no gap. He also opened a cold Heineken stubby and put it with a long beer glass by her placemat. For his sister, who treated any form of alcohol as poison, he put ice cubes in a glass and filled it with water. Mango juice for himself.

  Straight after their meal, while Fou washed the dishes, he went out and inspected the garden, plucking out the new weeds and collecting the rubbish.

  At about eleven, his mother took him a cup of drinking chocolate. He could hear her opening his door quietly and he knew she was wary she might not be welcome. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her looking around his spick and span, healthy-smelling room, and shaking her head in disbelief.

  ‘Don’t say it, Mum,’ he cautioned, not wanting her congratulations.

  ‘I won’t, then,’ she said, putting his cocoa beside his maths textbook. He continued pretending he was totally preoccupied with his work. Gently she put her arm round his shoulders. ‘What are you studying?’ she asked.

  ‘Maths,’ he replied.

  ‘I was bloody hopeless at maths,’ she said. ‘Have your cocoa before it gets cold.’ She bent down and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Don’t work too late.’ She turned and was going out the door when he called, ‘Thanks Mum.’

  Next morning his mother insisted he take an umbrella because it was drizzling outside. Reluctantly he took it, but he was glad he did because, as he hurried up John Street, the rain got heavier. ‘Man, I tried ringing you most of last night,’ Richard protested as soon as he reached him. ‘So did the other guys – and Rochelle.’

  ‘My battery ran out,’ he lied, extending his umbrella over his friend. ‘Got to get my phone recharged.’ Everything was sleek with rain.

  ‘Need something to eat,’ Richard said, so they manoeuvred their way through the splashing, swishing morning traffic to the Busy Oven Bakery. ‘Tried to study last night but I just couldn’t concentrate …’

  ‘Same here,’ Fale lied again. They returned the greetings of some of their friends inside the bakery, which smelled enticingly of hot bread and pies and other baked treats. Richard bought two mince and cheese pies.