The following story is the inaugural
winner of the 2018 Buzz Words Short Story for Children Prize which was won by Jemma van de Nes. The judge who chose
it from the 209 entries was Jackie
French.
Empty Orchestra
The
playground is like an orchestra.
With
his eyes closed, Nick can hear it all; the thumping bass of footsteps pounding
across the bridge; the sizzle and crackle of static on the slide; the shrill
whistle of the chain on the flying fox; the squeals of laughter from the girls
in the cubby.
He
imagines that he is the conductor of all this noise, banishing spiteful giggles
and hurtful words with a swish of his baton.
It is so vivid - this image where he is in control of the music. But what he really sees, when he opens his
eyes, is the empty swing beside him.
He
pumps his legs and reaches for the clouds with his toes and pictures a world
where nobody calls him names, where adults don’t tell him to leave the house
for the whole day and where everyone has someone to talk with.
He
doesn’t talk much anymore.
His
mum said not to; that the reason they keep moving is nobody’s business.
But
he’d tell anyone if they stopped long enough to listen.
He
still sings, though, because when he sings, he forgets. The constant moving. The new schools. The couches he sleeps on.
He
swings and sings his song, the one he wrote for his dad. His favourite part is: Your arms are the walls that hold us safe and tight. When we find a home with you, everything will
be alright. When he sings it, he hits notes so high he feels like he is
flying.
A
girl climbs out of the cubby and hangs from the monkey bars by her legs. Her hair cascades to the ground and swirls in
tangled knots about her face. She
reaches her arms out wide, like she’s trying to hug the universe.
Who’d
want to do that, he wonders?
She
ignores her friends, who are still in the cubby, tapping at their phones.
But
she smiles at him.
She
has braces, too.
They
swing together, on opposite sides of the playground – forwards, backwards,
forwards, backwards – like a metronome keeping time.
Their
own time.
And
then, she’s on the swing beside him.
“That’s
a pretty song,” she says, her voice a whisper on the breeze. Her cheeks are flushed, and her hands are
shaking. “You should record yourself
singing it, even just on your phone.”
Her
feet skid along the ground and he thinks she’s leaving, so to cover her
embarrassment he shares with her some of his own.
“I
don’t have a phone,” he says.
“Lucky
you,” she laughs. “No mean messages from
your friends.”
He
looks to the cubby and sees the girls whispering behind their hands. “I guess,” he shrugs. “But … I … we … don’t have a phone at all
where I … where we’re staying … with one of mum’s friends. She’s got two babies who cry all the
time. Mum said I had to get out of the
house for the day so her friend could sleep when the babies do. They said my singing is too loud so … I can’t
go back to the house until mum gets home from work, which is at night, and I
can’t ring her to check or anything. I
wish I had a phone. I’d ring my dad
every day, just to hear his voice. He
sends me postcards. Which I … love … but
I miss his voice. He used to sing me to
sleep. Every night. Even though I’m nearly twelve. But he’ll be home soon. Once he’s earned some money up north, we can
find a place of our own. The three of
us. That’ll be cool. And I’ll be able to sing with my dad every
day and I won’t have to stay in the park until dark.”
He’s
said too much, and he squirms in his seat on the swing as the worry about sharing
all the things his mum said not to tell anyone twists and turns into knots in
his stomach.
“Did
you make that up?”
“No,
I really can’t go back to the house until it gets dark.”
“I
mean the song. Did you write the song?”
He
nods.
She
takes a deep breath and kicks off. She’s
swinging again and he sighs with relief.
“There’s
this thing,” she says, “at the community centre every Saturday. They have Milo and biscuits and singing. Like a choir.
My mum runs it.” She rolls her
eyes. “Sometimes they even have karaoke.
You should do it. We could go.”
He
smiles then because he knows from Japanese lessons at one of the schools he’s
been to this year that karaoke means empty
orchestra.
But
he’s not empty. Not anymore.
Her
phone beeps. She scrolls though the
message and wipe her eyes. He hears the
wave of laughter from the girls – her friends – in the cubby.
She
jumps off the swing. It ricochets on the
chain, shooting from side to side, like it doesn’t know where to go now that
she isn’t part of it anymore.
“I’m
Casey,” she says. She turns to face
him. Waiting.
He
can’t believe he just spilled his entire story and now he can’t even say his
own name.
Casey
is already running when he yells, “I’m Nick!”
He
shouts so loudly, he thinks everyone on the playground will stop and look and
laugh and point: at his tracksuit pants with the holes in the knees and his
mismatched socks and his uneven hair cut that doesn’t hide the scratch on his
cheek that he pretends is from his mum’s friend’s cat.
But
they don’t hear or see him; he is invisible to them, like always.
Casey,
though … she stops.
And
rolls her eyes.
He’s
beginning to like the eye roll.
“Yeah,
yeah,” she says. “I know you from
school. You sit at the front of my maths
class.”
“I
do?”
“You
do.”
He’s
had his head down and eyes to the ground since moving here, when all along he
should’ve been looking up.
“Come
on!” she laughs. “Let’s go! Before all the good biscuits are gone!”
Nick
runs after her, his footsteps a drum beat on the path and soon they are side by
side. The huff of his breath is the
woodwind. The swish of her hair in the breeze is the strings. The brush of
their arms against each other’s is the percussion. And he realises then that the magic is not in
controlling the music, but in being part of it.
It is a moving story and shows the importance of connection with others. Love the music anthology.
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