Bug Week by Airini Beautrais

Author:Airini Beautrais
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victoria University Press
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

The girl who shaved the moose

Grace got up early because they were going to the museum. She got ready for school with time to spare. She didn’t sprint for the bus. She stood at the end of her driveway, running her shoe through the gravel. She made wave patterns, circles. She picked up a handful of gravel and crunched it in her fingers. She stroked the gate post, its fur of lichen.

The bus pulled up. Whenever she got on the bus, Grace wanted to turn that wheel, pull that lever. She settled herself in a seat halfway down, opened and shut the small window a few times. The bus crunched through the lanes and backroads, sometimes it seemed it might clip the hedges. Greenness rushed past.

They were leaving at playtime. The bell startled Grace out of a daze. She’d been punching holes in a worksheet with the sharpened end of a pencil.

‘Hand your sheets back in,’ Mr Miles was saying, ‘and stand behind your desks.’

Grace looked at her sheet. No one could read a word of it: it was a minefield. Grace wasn’t angry, she just hadn’t noticed she was doing it.

She pushed the worksheet to the bottom of the pile, walked back to her desk, stood next to her friend Joel. She stood still and quiet, shoulders set, back straight. Joel was wriggling. ‘Anna, Riley, Paige, you may go to the bus,’ Mr Miles said. Three goody-good girls left the room. Grace kept standing still. Joel kept wriggling. ‘Fucking stop wriggling,’ Grace said.

Grace and Joel got on the bus last. They sat behind Mr Miles, partly because he’d told them he’d be keeping an eye on them, but also because Grace liked to be near him. He was her favourite teacher ever. There was something gentle about Mr Miles. He never yelled. When he didn’t like your behaviour he’d give you a sad look. Mr Miles didn’t smile an awful lot, but he always kept his cool.

‘Mr Miles has a boyfriend,’ someone yelled. It was Caleb.

Grace turned around. ‘Shut up or I’ll fucking punch you,’ she said.

Grace watched Mr Miles’s neck as it slowly swivelled. He had chosen to ignore Caleb. ‘Grace,’ he warned. But she could see that he wasn’t angry.

Mr Miles did have a boyfriend, but it wasn’t any of Caleb’s fucking business.

Grace heard a scuffle behind her. Caleb and Mason were fighting over something. They were a few seats back. Grace saw a glint of silver and Perspex. She thought she knew what it was. But how had they got it?

Grace checked that Mr Miles was looking elsewhere, then dropped to her knees on the bus floor. The old lino was sticky and sandy. ‘What are you doing?’ Joel said, starting to laugh.

‘Shut up.’ Grace was little. She could get under the seats. She went between her bag and Joel’s, between the legs of Riley and Anna, who squealed, past Georgie and Charlie, and got to Caleb. She rose from under the seat with a fierce look and fell on Caleb with all the force she could summon.

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