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Description
Addy curled her sun burnt toes around the rim of the pool, and coiled into diving position. She looked at the calm blue water beneath her.
“C’mon! It’s not that cold..” Sasha giggled, already in the pool. Addy was uncertain. The wind blew a cold breeze and she hugged her arms and shivered. “Well, maybe later..” Addy frowned, much to Sasha’s annoyance. Sasha wriggled up the side of the pool and sprinted around to Addy. “I’ll push ya!” Sasha wrapped her dripping arms around Addy and they both were flung into the water. The water was like ice, and Addy plunged deep down, letting a stream of bubbles float from her mouth. Finally they both surfaced. Sasha was screaming and laughing hysterically. Addy playfully splashed at her and yelled: “Aw, shut up!” amongst all the laughter they had forgotten what was going on inside the house. Sasha’s mother angrily opened the fly-screen door. “Sshhhh, girls!” she shouted, phone in hand. “Sorry, Mum…” Sasha’s smile faltered. Addy looked from mother to daughter, and frowned as well. She hated it- Sasha’s mum was always so uptight and didn’t let Sasha do anything. She hardly spent any time with Sasha; she was always on the phone to some client or tapping away at the computer. Mrs Redgry swiveled around and changed her tone to understanding and cheery to the person on the phone.
“You shouldn’t let her boss you around so much… You can never have any fun…” Addy sighed, looking down at her hands. “She was trying to work- it wasn’t really that harsh.” Sasha’s cheeks glowed red. “You’re so lucky to have such a cool mum, Addy.”
Addy laughed. “Cool? That’s just how she acts around you…you should see her at home!” And then it was back to pushing, splashing, dunking and screaming.

The CD player simmered down to a quiet hum as Kathleen turned the volume button down. “Addy, I got a call from school. From your English teacher- Miss Hall is it? Or Mrs?”
Adeline looked up from the novel she was reading. It was a riveting romance novel, and she was just up to the point where the main character falls into the clutches of a young handsome man. Addy could barely pull her eyes away, and her heart was still pounding. But, what had mum just said? She froze, and ran over a list in her head… what had she possibly done to get a phone call? Her brain recalled the events of the past week, but still she couldn’t have the slightest clue of what Mrs Hall would want with her. “Uhrm…really? What did she want?” Addy gulped. Kathleen saw the worry in Adeline’s face. “Look, Addy…whatever you’ve done wrong, I’m sure we can sort it out. Don’t hide from your problems- first thing on Monday I want you to talk to Mrs Hall. And I know you- you’ll avoid talking to her all week. Just be brave and walk up to her with confidence.” Addy’s Mum was becoming all dramatic, acting out the way Addy should walk up to Miss Hall. Addy rolled her eyes. “Mum, what did she want though? I really have no idea what the problem is…”
“She said it was something about schoolwork. Didn’t go into specifics…she just wants to talk to you.” Kathleen shrugged and walked out.

Addy took a deep breath and put the phone up to her mouth.
“Hi, Mrs Hall? How are you?” Addy put on her sweetest, suck-up voice, hoping to gain some brownie points.
“H-hi, Adeline.” Mrs Hall clicked her tongue, obviously not impressed with Addy’s cheery tone. “I’m fine, thank you. I was just calling about your English short story…”
“Oh, the one we handed in yesterday?” Addy said.
“Yes… well, the thing is, Adeline, you seem to have gone a thousand words over the limit and-”
“Oh, sorry... I promise on my next assignment I’ll try and keep it shorter! Sometimes I just can’t help it, and I keep writing and-”
“But there’s more to it than that. I have reasons to believe that you copied and pasted your story straight from the Internet.” Mrs Hall was not happy. Far from it. Infact, I would go as far to say she was steaming at the ears.
“What? You think I copied it?” Addy couldn’t believe it.
“Yes; the language was far too advanced for any Year 9 student to possibly write, and I am quite fine at judging these kind of troublesome things students get up to. I’ve been teaching English for over thirty years, Adeline, may I remind you. You shall have a Wednesday after school detention and you will need to redo your story, this time using you own imagination. Understand?” Addy got a fair amount of satisfaction from hanging up without answering Mrs Hall’s question.

Rune stood at the bus stop as the rain seeped through his flimsy green school uniform. A brass, rusted bottle cap on the footpath caught his eye, and he bent down and picked it up like a bird with a worm. Making sure that nobody was looking, the black-haired, lanky boy stashed his treasure in his deep pocket. He had a sudden daydream right then, just as his Number 48 bus arrived. A giant, shiny gold beetle scurried towards him at a rapid pace. The sky grew dark around him. He was a small bird, a sparrow, perhaps. A young bird. He tried with all his might to fly away from the beetle, but his weak wings kept failing him. Rune beat his wings as hard as he could, but only hovered for a couple seconds and fell again. The enormous bug opened it’s wide mouth, ready to chomp Rune in half. He begun to run with his little thin legs, bug the beetle was too fast and with one big chrunch-
“Well, are you getting in? Or are ya just gonna STAND there!” The gruff bus driver (his nametag reading “Sam”) growled. He looked Rune up and down as if the boy was a tad batty. Rune bent his neck upwards and awoke from his strange daydream.
“Uh… oh, yep.” ‘Crap.’ He thought. He panicked as he fumbled with his bus pass, his fingers wet and slippery. The rain pelted hard against the windows.  The first seat on the bus had chewing gum across it, and the green cheap plastic on the chair had been shredded by some rebel’s pocketknife. He took that seat, not game enough and already too embarrassed to walk further down the bus and pass the snickering passengers.

As the bus’ rhythm started up again, slightly swaying side to side, Rune looked at the shiny, dripping wet trees whizzing past his window. The thick branches grew, weaving together intricate patterns as they shot rapidly upwards, forming a giant human-like hand. Rain slithered down the wooden fingers. The hand stretched up to the sky, more and more branches from different trees attaching themselves to the giant arm forming. The hand caught a dark, murky raincloud, squeezed the water out of the cloud, like dirty water squeezed out of a sponge.

“DING”

The bus halted and Rune woke up from his daydream. He realized that this was his stop. Before he got up to leave, Rune looked out the window. The trees were back to normal. And it had stopped raining.

Rune was glad that the bus stopped a block before his house, and that it didn’t go past it. His house was shabby and dilapidated, the worn wood showing through the cracked white paint. The tin roof with coming half off, and there were broken and ugly wicker chairs sitting on the veranda with a filth-ridden carpet laid across them. The grass out the front was ridden with stringy overgrown weeds, which came up to about waist height. He tried not to think about it as he walked through the front door. He walked into the first door on his left- the only room he liked in the whole house. His bedroom. It was quite a small room, ‘cozy’ some might say. Rune’s drawings were stuck up on all four walls, completely covering the wallpaper. He never took them down, and when he finished his latest sketch he would simply just stick it up in front of an older one. If someone one day took all those layers down, they would probably find little stick-figure drawings that Rune did in Grade 2. Facing the window was his desk, which he never used for homework, but always for artwork. He had his set of lead pencils in a special black bag which he took everywhere with him. He was proud of his pencils, and very proud of his bedroom ‘gallery’. Rune opened a box kept under his bed and put his brass, rusty bottle cap inside. In the box there were hundreds of little treasures- half a floppy disk, a Barbie doll’s arm, a strange peaked hat, a clay figurine of a dragon… all funny things that inspired him.

He heard a crash in the kitchen. Sprinting down the hallway, he helped his Grandma off the ground.
“I broke the cup…” Marie whispered quietly to her grandson.
“That’s okay, don’t worry.” Rune led his nanna to the couch and as she sat there and apologized he cleaned up the smashed glass on the floor. He swore when he realized he was bleeding, and rushed to the bathroom to wash it up. There wasn’t any band-aids, so instead he got an old rag and tied it across his fingers. He came back to the loungeroom to realise that Marie was crying, her head buried in her hands, with each sob her hunched back rising. Rune stood, astonished.
“It’s okay Nanna, it’s just a glass…” Rune was unsure of what was wrong.
“My boy, you do so much for me… and I just sit around all day being useless and breaking things…I’m useless…” Marie started wailing, throwing her hands in the air and shaking her head. Rune wasn’t quite sure what to say. He held her hand.

Girls sat around the classroom, gossip, jokes and arguments being flown around corner to corner. The split second Mrs Hall entered, smiling, silent ladies sat in their seats, ready for their history lesson. There was a rumour that in the locked cupboard in the corner of the room, which she forebode anyone to go into, contained a strap, which she smacked particularly disobedient students with. Just a rumour.

Once all the students were hard at work, answering grammar and spelling questions from their textbooks (which was a general waste of pen ink, may I add) Mrs Hall asked Addy up.
“Adeline, do you have your assignment here?” Mrs Hall, hoping for a no, cocked her head on her side and glared at Addy.
“Yes.” Addy’s eyes gleamed as she handed the neat pages over to her teacher. She hadn’t changed a thing- just reprinted her first story, her “copied” one. Mrs Hall placed the assignment in her basket with one chubby, gold-ringed hand and sent Addy back to her desk. Addy laughed inside- Mrs Hall would explode when she started correcting THAT tonight!

After that class, Sasha and Addy ate their snack on the oval. Addy did most of the talking, jabbering on about Mrs Hall daring to call her at home, how hard she worked on the story, only to get accused of copyright fraud and what a joke it would be when Mrs Hall found out about her handing back exactly the same assignment. Sasha sat in silence, quite unlike her, slowly eating her Granny Smith Apple. Crunch. She looked down at her toes. Tried to listen to Addy for a while. Looked back at her toes. Nope, nothing interesting there.

Finally, when Addy had ran out of things to say, Sasha spoke quietly.
“Mum says we have to move.” She didn’t want to look into Addy’s eyes. She pretended to be fascinated in the dirt caught under her nails.
“…Move?” Addy pondered. “Move HOUSE?” Addy almost choked on her muesli bar.
“She wants us to move to Queensland…for her work. For good. I really don’t want to go…” Sasha brushed her black and blonde streaked hair behind her ears and tried to cover up her watering eyes.
“But, but Sasha! You can’t go! No…you can’t… I’ll miss you too much…I…” Addy started blubbering. “Tell your bloody mum you’re not going!”
Sasha raised one eyebrow, shocked.
“Tell her you refuse to go, and that you’ll just hitch-hike your way back to Melbourne anyway! Tell her you-”
“Addy! I have to go, she’s my mum! Don’t worry so much, I… I’ll call you everyday! And come down and visit you in the holidays! I won’t be so bad…”
Addy reached over to her best friend and hugged her tight. “I’ll miss you so much. I wanna come with!”
The girls both started giggling through their tears. They’d been best friends since primary school, and they sure didn’t want to be parted.

Sasha looked up from the hug. Mrs Hall was striding towards them, her double-chin flopping as she charged forwards, Addy’s story in one hand.
“Addy!” Sasha whispered. “Look!”
Addy panicked as she saw Mrs Hall’s great figure getting closer and closer. “What do we do?” She thought about getting up and running away.
“Just relax and explain you didn’t cheat, that you wrote it all by yourself and… say that you’re a pro at writing and that’s why she thinks it’s such ‘high standard’.” Sasha whispered, making both of the laugh.
“Adeline, can I have a word.” Mrs Hall asked sternly. Actually, it was more of an order than a question.
“Uh, yep.” Addy got up and looked at Sasha, who just winked.
“I guess you know what I’m here to talk to you about. I told you to redo your story- to do a new story in your own words. And you give me this! This copied story!”
“It’s not copied, I wrote it myself.” Addy said strongly. Mrs Hall stared at her unsympathetically.
“Now you will have a detention after school today, tomorrow and on Thursday.” And the teacher strode her was back inside the school building. The two girls looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

Rune headed straight for the spot behind the pot plant, where he always sat at lunchtime. No one could possibly see him there, and nobody could walk past and look at him, wondering why he sits by himself. He pressed his long back over the smooth surface of the pot and began to peel his orange.
“Hey! Prune! Get over here!”
Rune heard laughing coming from behind him. He ignored it, and continued peeling his orange.
“Prune! Hey, I said Prune! Rune, c’mon.”
Finally he turned around. It was Brandon Roystan. He had a soccerball trapped under his foot and he looked down at Rune with piercing green eyes. “Come play.” He began to dribble the ball from side to side. Soon he was making rings around Rune and Rune dropped his orange just in time to catch the soccerball as Brandon kicked it to him. All the guys nearby burst into laughter. “C’mon!” They all jeered. Rune refused, but soon gave in and slowly walked over to the pitch with the others.

They started from the middle of the pitch, and started passing the ball around. Dennis to Mike. Mike to Felix. Felix tackled by Sam. Sam to Paul. Back to Sam again. Rune had no idea what was going on or what he was doing, he didn’t even know which end he was kicking to or what team he was on. Suddenly Dennis passed to him. What was he meant to do now? He panicked, and took a wild swing at the ball, and completely missed. There were hoots, cackles and snorts all round. They started up a cheer “Pru-une, Pru-une, Pru-une…” and Rune realized that they invited him to play just for their own entertainment. Ayden rapidly sprinted up to Rune, a feral smile across his face. Rune was scared stiff that the muscle-y brute he was going to punch him, so he got a fist ready.

Ayden all of sudden had his hands clamped on Rune’s back pockets and with one swift yank Rune’s tracksuit pants were down to his ankles. Ayden ran around hooting, clicking his heels and doing “Number One” with his index finger. Rune was ashamed as ever as everyone pointed and laughed at his daggy green underpants. He felt dreadfully exposed and naked and he wondered how many people could see him. He hastily yanked his pants back up and sprinted away to the toilets.

How he hated Ayden Fischer. His anger started bubbling like bolognaise sauce in a pot. He felt the urge to punch something, someone…or Ayden. The thought passed his mind to go back out there and pick a fight with that damn redhead, but he knew exactly who would win. Rune locked himself in one of the toilet cubicles and sat on the seat, only getting more and more angry. He envisioned dacking Ayden himself and began to laugh. Infront of the whole school at assembly, Ayden is accepting some sport award and BAM! he runs up and shows the 1000 boys at Brighton Grammar Ayden’s beautiful undies.
Rune kicked the wall with frustration. If only!

The end of lunchtime bell sounded and Rune stomped out of the toilets, still boiling with rage. As he passed the student lockers he had an impulse to write Ayden a nice little note. He had a scrap piece of paper in his pocket and, of course, his trusty pencils. He scribbled in thick black letters onto the paper:

I’LL GET YOU
BACK

Under the message he drew a dark skull with and wicked grin. Once Rune was satisfied with the evilness of the letter, he popped it in the small gap of locker 388. Revenge is sweet.

A couple hours later, when Rune was sitting in Maths class trying to explain to Mr Sanchez why he hadn’t done his Algebra homework, the principal Mr. Edgar knocked at the door and asked Rune to come to his office. Rune gulped- not the principal’s office!

He walked slightly behind Mr. Edgar, staring at his brown fluffy hair and the perfectly circular bald patch at the back of his head. Mr. Edgar got out his key and unlocked the daunting office door, letting Rune through first and then closing the door behind them. Rune sat in the small chair in front of the principal’s desk. He had a peek around the room as he waited for Mr. Edgar to sit down. Rune stared at the fat hour hand on the clock. It turned into a chubby mouse with little blackcurrant eyes. It broke away from the clock face and began scampering over the wall. The minute hand on the clock formed a striped snake and started slithering around, gaining on the silly mouse. The snake almost got it’s jaws around the grey ball of fluff but unexpectantly the mouse shot out through a gap in the windowsill.
“Rune! Are you listening to me?”
Rune blinked. “Oh, yes… sorry…”
“Concentrate, boy. Yes, as I was saying, Ayden has informed me of the threatening and aggressive letter you left in his locker. Absolutely terrible. Now, don’t looked so stunned, we know it was you who wrote it. The letter was written on the back of a page that had your name on it. Now I certainly don’t want blackmail in my school. This is an alarming and distressing act of bullying, young man. Tell me, why did you write this?” The principal held out the note, the skull’s white eyes slicing through Rune’s heart.
“Uhm..” Rune felt as though he was choking. He swallowed hard. No chance was he going to tell him about Ayden pulling his pants down. “He…well, I was a little angry with him and…”
“You were a bit more than ‘a little angry’!” Mr. Edgar showed the note again, tapping at the skull picture.
“Well, we were playing soccer, and everyone laughed when I missed the ball..” Rune drifted off, not knowing what else to say.
“They laughed at you, and this is the reason for threatening to kill Ayden?” Mr. Edgar held up the note for the third time, shaking it around with an exasperated look on his face. Rune said nothing.
“You’ll have after school detentions for the rest of this week. And, because all of the schoolrooms are being used this month for drama play rehearsals, you’ll have to use our sister school’s library. It’s just down the road so you can walk there after school today.”
Rune was in shock. Four after school detentions was bad enough, but at a girls’ school? Rune got embarrassed easily, but he’s doubly embarrassed around girls. Rune sat in the office, hands clenched together and his jaw nearly touching his knees.
“Don’t look so shocked.” Mr. Edgar almost chuckled as he stood up. “I’ve been quite easy on you. Blackmail is a very serious offence, Rune. Okay, you may go.”

As Rune opened the door to leave he wished it would suddenly collapse on him and cause him to be in hospital for the remainder of the week. Oh, how he wished…

Addy waited patiently at the library front desk, really not enjoying her first few minutes of detention. Finally the librarian got off the phone.
“I’m here for a detention for Mrs. Hall…uh, I’m Addy Naps.”
Ms. Esthen looked down the list with her librarian hawk-like eyes and came to Addy’s name. “Yes, Adeline? Here you go.” Ms. Esthen got the yellow note and handed it over to Addy with a confused look on her face, as though she didn’t quite understand what the note meant. Addy read it.

Adeline, I have assigned you the task of redo-ing your creative writing
story, and may I remind you that you actually have to redo it. This time
you won’t get away with being a smart-alec.
Mrs. L. Hall

Addy felt like ripping up the note into small confetti but Ms. Esthen had her hawk eyes on her. Addy took a seat at the ‘detention section’ of the library; quite a depressing place that looked just a smidgen shoddier than the rest of the library. Addy wanted to just put her feet up and relax, but could feel those librarian hawk-eyes upon her.

Rune slunk into the library, looking around anxiously not knowing what to do. Ms. Esthen peered at him from over the top of her glasses.
“Yes, young lad?”
Rune blushed. “Uh, sorry…I don’t know where I’m meant to be…You see, I’m in detention for Brighton Secondary, down the road, but there’s a problem because all the classrooms are-”
“Oh! Yes yes, you must be Rune. Just have a seat in the section over there. Oooh, don’t forget your note.” She handed Rune his own yellow note, that read:

Rune:
You will spend this time reflecting and meditating on the damage
you have done in your ghastly acts of bullying.
From: Principal Edgar

Rune took a seat. He wasn’t quite sure exactly what Mr. Edgar’s note meant, so he got out his sketchpad and pencils. He looked around. Man, did that librarian like to stare! He quickly looked back down at his desk. He didn’t like eye-contact, especially with females. He began to doodle on his page, making small spirals.

In five minutes these small scribbles had grown into a full-page caricature of Ms. Esthen, with a giant eagle sitting in her brown boofy hair.  He had exaggerated her glasses: they were so far down her nose they looked as though they were about to fall off. There was a little speech bubble coming out of her mouth saying, “I love after school detentions! What FUN!!!” Rune had a tiny smile on his face as he added a border as the finishing touch.

Addy played with her fringe as she sat behind her blank piece of paper. What to write, what to write. All she could think about was her old story, and how much she despised Mrs Hall. Addy just decided to start with anything. She had to hand something up to her teacher.

Laura looked quite young for her age. She always got teased about this,
and there were often moments of confusion and embarrassment when
she first told people her age. She got called shorty by all of her
classmates. People picked her up and took her for piggy back rides
all the time and..

Addy swore as she re-read the writing and realised it was worse than something she would have written in primary school. She scribbled over it with her ballpoint pen, and hoped that nobody would be able to read it.

She looked around. The blank, cream library walls gave her no inspiration. The slim dark-haired boy sitting next to her seemed to be doing something interesting. She secretly craned her neck to the left and looked out the corner of her eye. Addy couldn’t help giving out a snort as she saw Ms. Esthen so comically drawn. Rune looked up at her, confused.
“That’s a good one!” Addy chuckled. “Pretty damn funny!”
Rune blushed. What was he meant to say? All of a sudden he wondered why he had sat so close, he probably should have sat a couple seats down…
“Thanks…it’s not really that good…” Rune closed his sketchpad.
“Nah, of course it is! You must be prettty good at art, hey? Can I’ve a look?” Rune cautiously passed his sketchpad over to Addy. He was nervous; he wasn’t sure if he’d ever shown anyone it before.

Addy admired page after page, pointing out certain ones she liked. “Oooh, that one’s awesome! The bees are so realistic.” Addy looked up at Rune. He smiled weakly. “Sorry…” Addy realised how shy Rune was. “I’m being a bit of an annoying prat.” She handed him back his sketchpad.
“That’s okay.” Rune said, quickly slipping it back into his schoolbag.

Description
Addy curled her sun burnt toes around the rim of the pool, and coiled into diving position. She looked at the calm blue water beneath her.
“C’mon! It’s not that cold..” Sasha giggled, already in the pool. Addy was uncertain. The wind blew a cold breeze and she hugged her arms and shivered. “Well, maybe later..” Addy frowned, much to Sasha’s annoyance. Sasha wriggled up the side of the pool and sprinted around to Addy. “I’ll push ya!” Sasha wrapped her dripping arms around Addy and they both were flung into the water. The water was like ice, and Addy plunged deep down, letting a stream of bubbles float from her mouth. Finally they both surfaced. Sasha was screaming and laughing hysterically. Addy playfully splashed at her and yelled: “Aw, shut up!” amongst all the laughter they had forgotten what was going on inside the house. Sasha’s mother angrily opened the fly-screen door. “Sshhhh, girls!” she shouted, phone in hand. “Sorry, Mum…” Sasha’s smile faltered. Addy looked from mother to daughter, and frowned as well. She hated it- Sasha’s mum was always so uptight and didn’t let Sasha do anything. She hardly spent any time with Sasha; she was always on the phone to some client or tapping away at the computer. Mrs Redgry swiveled around and changed her tone to understanding and cheery to the person on the phone.
“You shouldn’t let her boss you around so much… You can never have any fun…” Addy sighed, looking down at her hands. “She was trying to work- it wasn’t really that harsh.” Sasha’s cheeks glowed red. “You’re so lucky to have such a cool mum, Addy.”
Addy laughed. “Cool? That’s just how she acts around you…you should see her at home!” And then it was back to pushing, splashing, dunking and screaming.

The CD player simmered down to a quiet hum as Kathleen turned the volume button down. “Addy, I got a call from school. From your English teacher- Miss Hall is it? Or Mrs?”
Adeline looked up from the novel she was reading. It was a riveting romance novel, and she was just up to the point where the main character falls into the clutches of a young handsome man. Addy could barely pull her eyes away, and her heart was still pounding. But, what had mum just said? She froze, and ran over a list in her head… what had she possibly done to get a phone call? Her brain recalled the events of the past week, but still she couldn’t have the slightest clue of what Mrs Hall would want with her. “Uhrm…really? What did she want?” Addy gulped. Kathleen saw the worry in Adeline’s face. “Look, Addy…whatever you’ve done wrong, I’m sure we can sort it out. Don’t hide from your problems- first thing on Monday I want you to talk to Mrs Hall. And I know you- you’ll avoid talking to her all week. Just be brave and walk up to her with confidence.” Addy’s Mum was becoming all dramatic, acting out the way Addy should walk up to Miss Hall. Addy rolled her eyes. “Mum, what did she want though? I really have no idea what the problem is…”
“She said it was something about schoolwork. Didn’t go into specifics…she just wants to talk to you.” Kathleen shrugged and walked out.

Addy took a deep breath and put the phone up to her mouth.
“Hi, Mrs Hall? How are you?” Addy put on her sweetest, suck-up voice, hoping to gain some brownie points.
“H-hi, Adeline.” Mrs Hall clicked her tongue, obviously not impressed with Addy’s cheery tone. “I’m fine, thank you. I was just calling about your English short story…”
“Oh, the one we handed in yesterday?” Addy said.
“Yes… well, the thing is, Adeline, you seem to have gone a thousand words over the limit and-”
“Oh, sorry... I promise on my next assignment I’ll try and keep it shorter! Sometimes I just can’t help it, and I keep writing and-”
“But there’s more to it than that. I have reasons to believe that you copied and pasted your story straight from the Internet.” Mrs Hall was not happy. Far from it. Infact, I would go as far to say she was steaming at the ears.
“What? You think I copied it?” Addy couldn’t believe it.
“Yes; the language was far too advanced for any Year 9 student to possibly write, and I am quite fine at judging these kind of troublesome things students get up to. I’ve been teaching English for over thirty years, Adeline, may I remind you. You shall have a Wednesday after school detention and you will need to redo your story, this time using you own imagination. Understand?” Addy got a fair amount of satisfaction from hanging up without answering Mrs Hall’s question.

Rune stood at the bus stop as the rain seeped through his flimsy green school uniform. A brass, rusted bottle cap on the footpath caught his eye, and he bent down and picked it up like a bird with a worm. Making sure that nobody was looking, the black-haired, lanky boy stashed his treasure in his deep pocket. He had a sudden daydream right then, just as his Number 48 bus arrived. A giant, shiny gold beetle scurried towards him at a rapid pace. The sky grew dark around him. He was a small bird, a sparrow, perhaps. A young bird. He tried with all his might to fly away from the beetle, but his weak wings kept failing him. Rune beat his wings as hard as he could, but only hovered for a couple seconds and fell again. The enormous bug opened it’s wide mouth, ready to chomp Rune in half. He begun to run with his little thin legs, bug the beetle was too fast and with one big chrunch-
“Well, are you getting in? Or are ya just gonna STAND there!” The gruff bus driver (his nametag reading “Sam”) growled. He looked Rune up and down as if the boy was a tad batty. Rune bent his neck upwards and awoke from his strange daydream.
“Uh… oh, yep.” ‘Crap.’ He thought. He panicked as he fumbled with his bus pass, his fingers wet and slippery. The rain pelted hard against the windows.  The first seat on the bus had chewing gum across it, and the green cheap plastic on the chair had been shredded by some rebel’s pocketknife. He took that seat, not game enough and already too embarrassed to walk further down the bus and pass the snickering passengers.

As the bus’ rhythm started up again, slightly swaying side to side, Rune looked at the shiny, dripping wet trees whizzing past his window. The thick branches grew, weaving together intricate patterns as they shot rapidly upwards, forming a giant human-like hand. Rain slithered down the wooden fingers. The hand stretched up to the sky, more and more branches from different trees attaching themselves to the giant arm forming. The hand caught a dark, murky raincloud, squeezed the water out of the cloud, like dirty water squeezed out of a sponge.

“DING”

The bus halted and Rune woke up from his daydream. He realized that this was his stop. Before he got up to leave, Rune looked out the window. The trees were back to normal. And it had stopped raining.

Rune was glad that the bus stopped a block before his house, and that it didn’t go past it. His house was shabby and dilapidated, the worn wood showing through the cracked white paint. The tin roof with coming half off, and there were broken and ugly wicker chairs sitting on the veranda with a filth-ridden carpet laid across them. The grass out the front was ridden with stringy overgrown weeds, which came up to about waist height. He tried not to think about it as he walked through the front door. He walked into the first door on his left- the only room he liked in the whole house. His bedroom. It was quite a small room, ‘cozy’ some might say. Rune’s drawings were stuck up on all four walls, completely covering the wallpaper. He never took them down, and when he finished his latest sketch he would simply just stick it up in front of an older one. If someone one day took all those layers down, they would probably find little stick-figure drawings that Rune did in Grade 2. Facing the window was his desk, which he never used for homework, but always for artwork. He had his set of lead pencils in a special black bag which he took everywhere with him. He was proud of his pencils, and very proud of his bedroom ‘gallery’. Rune opened a box kept under his bed and put his brass, rusty bottle cap inside. In the box there were hundreds of little treasures- half a floppy disk, a Barbie doll’s arm, a strange peaked hat, a clay figurine of a dragon… all funny things that inspired him.

He heard a crash in the kitchen. Sprinting down the hallway, he helped his Grandma off the ground.
“I broke the cup…” Marie whispered quietly to her grandson.
“That’s okay, don’t worry.” Rune led his nanna to the couch and as she sat there and apologized he cleaned up the smashed glass on the floor. He swore when he realized he was bleeding, and rushed to the bathroom to wash it up. There wasn’t any band-aids, so instead he got an old rag and tied it across his fingers. He came back to the loungeroom to realise that Marie was crying, her head buried in her hands, with each sob her hunched back rising. Rune stood, astonished.
“It’s okay Nanna, it’s just a glass…” Rune was unsure of what was wrong.
“My boy, you do so much for me… and I just sit around all day being useless and breaking things…I’m useless…” Marie started wailing, throwing her hands in the air and shaking her head. Rune wasn’t quite sure what to say. He held her hand.

Girls sat around the classroom, gossip, jokes and arguments being flown around corner to corner. The split second Mrs Hall entered, smiling, silent ladies sat in their seats, ready for their history lesson. There was a rumour that in the locked cupboard in the corner of the room, which she forebode anyone to go into, contained a strap, which she smacked particularly disobedient students with. Just a rumour.

Once all the students were hard at work, answering grammar and spelling questions from their textbooks (which was a general waste of pen ink, may I add) Mrs Hall asked Addy up.
“Adeline, do you have your assignment here?” Mrs Hall, hoping for a no, cocked her head on her side and glared at Addy.
“Yes.” Addy’s eyes gleamed as she handed the neat pages over to her teacher. She hadn’t changed a thing- just reprinted her first story, her “copied” one. Mrs Hall placed the assignment in her basket with one chubby, gold-ringed hand and sent Addy back to her desk. Addy laughed inside- Mrs Hall would explode when she started correcting THAT tonight!

After that class, Sasha and Addy ate their snack on the oval. Addy did most of the talking, jabbering on about Mrs Hall daring to call her at home, how hard she worked on the story, only to get accused of copyright fraud and what a joke it would be when Mrs Hall found out about her handing back exactly the same assignment. Sasha sat in silence, quite unlike her, slowly eating her Granny Smith Apple. Crunch. She looked down at her toes. Tried to listen to Addy for a while. Looked back at her toes. Nope, nothing interesting there.

Finally, when Addy had ran out of things to say, Sasha spoke quietly.
“Mum says we have to move.” She didn’t want to look into Addy’s eyes. She pretended to be fascinated in the dirt caught under her nails.
“…Move?” Addy pondered. “Move HOUSE?” Addy almost choked on her muesli bar.
“She wants us to move to Queensland…for her work. For good. I really don’t want to go…” Sasha brushed her black and blonde streaked hair behind her ears and tried to cover up her watering eyes.
“But, but Sasha! You can’t go! No…you can’t… I’ll miss you too much…I…” Addy started blubbering. “Tell your bloody mum you’re not going!”
Sasha raised one eyebrow, shocked.
“Tell her you refuse to go, and that you’ll just hitch-hike your way back to Melbourne anyway! Tell her you-”
“Addy! I have to go, she’s my mum! Don’t worry so much, I… I’ll call you everyday! And come down and visit you in the holidays! I won’t be so bad…”
Addy reached over to her best friend and hugged her tight. “I’ll miss you so much. I wanna come with!”
The girls both started giggling through their tears. They’d been best friends since primary school, and they sure didn’t want to be parted.

Sasha looked up from the hug. Mrs Hall was striding towards them, her double-chin flopping as she charged forwards, Addy’s story in one hand.
“Addy!” Sasha whispered. “Look!”
Addy panicked as she saw Mrs Hall’s great figure getting closer and closer. “What do we do?” She thought about getting up and running away.
“Just relax and explain you didn’t cheat, that you wrote it all by yourself and… say that you’re a pro at writing and that’s why she thinks it’s such ‘high standard’.” Sasha whispered, making both of the laugh.
“Adeline, can I have a word.” Mrs Hall asked sternly. Actually, it was more of an order than a question.
“Uh, yep.” Addy got up and looked at Sasha, who just winked.
“I guess you know what I’m here to talk to you about. I told you to redo your story- to do a new story in your own words. And you give me this! This copied story!”
“It’s not copied, I wrote it myself.” Addy said strongly. Mrs Hall stared at her unsympathetically.
“Now you will have a detention after school today, tomorrow and on Thursday.” And the teacher strode her was back inside the school building. The two girls looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

Rune headed straight for the spot behind the pot plant, where he always sat at lunchtime. No one could possibly see him there, and nobody could walk past and look at him, wondering why he sits by himself. He pressed his long back over the smooth surface of the pot and began to peel his orange.
“Hey! Prune! Get over here!”
Rune heard laughing coming from behind him. He ignored it, and continued peeling his orange.
“Prune! Hey, I said Prune! Rune, c’mon.”
Finally he turned around. It was Brandon Roystan. He had a soccerball trapped under his foot and he looked down at Rune with piercing green eyes. “Come play.” He began to dribble the ball from side to side. Soon he was making rings around Rune and Rune dropped his orange just in time to catch the soccerball as Brandon kicked it to him. All the guys nearby burst into laughter. “C’mon!” They all jeered. Rune refused, but soon gave in and slowly walked over to the pitch with the others.

They started from the middle of the pitch, and started passing the ball around. Dennis to Mike. Mike to Felix. Felix tackled by Sam. Sam to Paul. Back to Sam again. Rune had no idea what was going on or what he was doing, he didn’t even know which end he was kicking to or what team he was on. Suddenly Dennis passed to him. What was he meant to do now? He panicked, and took a wild swing at the ball, and completely missed. There were hoots, cackles and snorts all round. They started up a cheer “Pru-une, Pru-une, Pru-une…” and Rune realized that they invited him to play just for their own entertainment. Ayden rapidly sprinted up to Rune, a feral smile across his face. Rune was scared stiff that the muscle-y brute he was going to punch him, so he got a fist ready.

Ayden all of sudden had his hands clamped on Rune’s back pockets and with one swift yank Rune’s tracksuit pants were down to his ankles. Ayden ran around hooting, clicking his heels and doing “Number One” with his index finger. Rune was ashamed as ever as everyone pointed and laughed at his daggy green underpants. He felt dreadfully exposed and naked and he wondered how many people could see him. He hastily yanked his pants back up and sprinted away to the toilets.

How he hated Ayden Fischer. His anger started bubbling like bolognaise sauce in a pot. He felt the urge to punch something, someone…or Ayden. The thought passed his mind to go back out there and pick a fight with that damn redhead, but he knew exactly who would win. Rune locked himself in one of the toilet cubicles and sat on the seat, only getting more and more angry. He envisioned dacking Ayden himself and began to laugh. Infront of the whole school at assembly, Ayden is accepting some sport award and BAM! he runs up and shows the 1000 boys at Brighton Grammar Ayden’s beautiful undies.
Rune kicked the wall with frustration. If only!

The end of lunchtime bell sounded and Rune stomped out of the toilets, still boiling with rage. As he passed the student lockers he had an impulse to write Ayden a nice little note. He had a scrap piece of paper in his pocket and, of course, his trusty pencils. He scribbled in thick black letters onto the paper:

I’LL GET YOU
BACK

Under the message he drew a dark skull with and wicked grin. Once Rune was satisfied with the evilness of the letter, he popped it in the small gap of locker 388. Revenge is sweet.

A couple hours later, when Rune was sitting in Maths class trying to explain to Mr Sanchez why he hadn’t done his Algebra homework, the principal Mr. Edgar knocked at the door and asked Rune to come to his office. Rune gulped- not the principal’s office!

He walked slightly behind Mr. Edgar, staring at his brown fluffy hair and the perfectly circular bald patch at the back of his head. Mr. Edgar got out his key and unlocked the daunting office door, letting Rune through first and then closing the door behind them. Rune sat in the small chair in front of the principal’s desk. He had a peek around the room as he waited for Mr. Edgar to sit down. Rune stared at the fat hour hand on the clock. It turned into a chubby mouse with little blackcurrant eyes. It broke away from the clock face and began scampering over the wall. The minute hand on the clock formed a striped snake and started slithering around, gaining on the silly mouse. The snake almost got it’s jaws around the grey ball of fluff but unexpectantly the mouse shot out through a gap in the windowsill.
“Rune! Are you listening to me?”
Rune blinked. “Oh, yes… sorry…”
“Concentrate, boy. Yes, as I was saying, Ayden has informed me of the threatening and aggressive letter you left in his locker. Absolutely terrible. Now, don’t looked so stunned, we know it was you who wrote it. The letter was written on the back of a page that had your name on it. Now I certainly don’t want blackmail in my school. This is an alarming and distressing act of bullying, young man. Tell me, why did you write this?” The principal held out the note, the skull’s white eyes slicing through Rune’s heart.
“Uhm..” Rune felt as though he was choking. He swallowed hard. No chance was he going to tell him about Ayden pulling his pants down. “He…well, I was a little angry with him and…”
“You were a bit more than ‘a little angry’!” Mr. Edgar showed the note again, tapping at the skull picture.
“Well, we were playing soccer, and everyone laughed when I missed the ball..” Rune drifted off, not knowing what else to say.
“They laughed at you, and this is the reason for threatening to kill Ayden?” Mr. Edgar held up the note for the third time, shaking it around with an exasperated look on his face. Rune said nothing.
“You’ll have after school detentions for the rest of this week. And, because all of the schoolrooms are being used this month for drama play rehearsals, you’ll have to use our sister school’s library. It’s just down the road so you can walk there after school today.”
Rune was in shock. Four after school detentions was bad enough, but at a girls’ school? Rune got embarrassed easily, but he’s doubly embarrassed around girls. Rune sat in the office, hands clenched together and his jaw nearly touching his knees.
“Don’t look so shocked.” Mr. Edgar almost chuckled as he stood up. “I’ve been quite easy on you. Blackmail is a very serious offence, Rune. Okay, you may go.”

As Rune opened the door to leave he wished it would suddenly collapse on him and cause him to be in hospital for the remainder of the week. Oh, how he wished…

Addy waited patiently at the library front desk, really not enjoying her first few minutes of detention. Finally the librarian got off the phone.
“I’m here for a detention for Mrs. Hall…uh, I’m Addy Naps.”
Ms. Esthen looked down the list with her librarian hawk-like eyes and came to Addy’s name. “Yes, Adeline? Here you go.” Ms. Esthen got the yellow note and handed it over to Addy with a confused look on her face, as though she didn’t quite understand what the note meant. Addy read it.

Adeline, I have assigned you the task of redo-ing your creative writing
story, and may I remind you that you actually have to redo it. This time
you won’t get away with being a smart-alec.
Mrs. L. Hall

Addy felt like ripping up the note into small confetti but Ms. Esthen had her hawk eyes on her. Addy took a seat at the ‘detention section’ of the library; quite a depressing place that looked just a smidgen shoddier than the rest of the library. Addy wanted to just put her feet up and relax, but could feel those librarian hawk-eyes upon her.

Rune slunk into the library, looking around anxiously not knowing what to do. Ms. Esthen peered at him from over the top of her glasses.
“Yes, young lad?”
Rune blushed. “Uh, sorry…I don’t know where I’m meant to be…You see, I’m in detention for Brighton Secondary, down the road, but there’s a problem because all the classrooms are-”
“Oh! Yes yes, you must be Rune. Just have a seat in the section over there. Oooh, don’t forget your note.” She handed Rune his own yellow note, that read:

Rune:
You will spend this time reflecting and meditating on the damage
you have done in your ghastly acts of bullying.
From: Principal Edgar

Rune took a seat. He wasn’t quite sure exactly what Mr. Edgar’s note meant, so he got out his sketchpad and pencils. He looked around. Man, did that librarian like to stare! He quickly looked back down at his desk. He didn’t like eye-contact, especially with females. He began to doodle on his page, making small spirals.

In five minutes these small scribbles had grown into a full-page caricature of Ms. Esthen, with a giant eagle sitting in her brown boofy hair.  He had exaggerated her glasses: they were so far down her nose they looked as though they were about to fall off. There was a little speech bubble coming out of her mouth saying, “I love after school detentions! What FUN!!!” Rune had a tiny smile on his face as he added a border as the finishing touch.

Addy played with her fringe as she sat behind her blank piece of paper. What to write, what to write. All she could think about was her old story, and how much she despised Mrs Hall. Addy just decided to start with anything. She had to hand something up to her teacher.

Laura looked quite young for her age. She always got teased about this,
and there were often moments of confusion and embarrassment when
she first told people her age. She got called shorty by all of her
classmates. People picked her up and took her for piggy back rides
all the time and..

Addy swore as she re-read the writing and realised it was worse than something she would have written in primary school. She scribbled over it with her ballpoint pen, and hoped that nobody would be able to read it.

She looked around. The blank, cream library walls gave her no inspiration. The slim dark-haired boy sitting next to her seemed to be doing something interesting. She secretly craned her neck to the left and looked out the corner of her eye. Addy couldn’t help giving out a snort as she saw Ms. Esthen so comically drawn. Rune looked up at her, confused.
“That’s a good one!” Addy chuckled. “Pretty damn funny!”
Rune blushed. What was he meant to say? All of a sudden he wondered why he had sat so close, he probably should have sat a couple seats down…
“Thanks…it’s not really that good…” Rune closed his sketchpad.
“Nah, of course it is! You must be prettty good at art, hey? Can I’ve a look?” Rune cautiously passed his sketchpad over to Addy. He was nervous; he wasn’t sure if he’d ever shown anyone it before.

Addy admired page after page, pointing out certain ones she liked. “Oooh, that one’s awesome! The bees are so realistic.” Addy looked up at Rune. He smiled weakly. “Sorry…” Addy realised how shy Rune was. “I’m being a bit of an annoying prat.” She handed him back his sketchpad.
“That’s okay.” Rune said, quickly slipping it back into his schoolbag.