The Sidekicks Read online

  Contents

  About the Author

  The Swimmer

  The Rebel

  The Nerd

  About the Author

  Personally, Will Kostakis is ready to catch a ball two seconds after it’s hit him in the face. Professionally, he’s thankful he’s chosen a career that requires little (if any) coordination. After dabbling in celebrity journalism and reality TV, he now writes for young adults.

  His first novel, Loathing Lola, was released when he was just nineteen, and his second, The First Third, won the 2014 Gold Inky Award. It was also shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year and Prime Minister’s Literary awards.

  The Sidekicks is his third novel for young adults.

  ‘Oh, we are not actually friends.’

  I have to give Miles credit. It takes real skill to be that insensitive. I mean, he’s not wrong. When we hang out, people see a group of four, but really, we’re three guys with the same best friend. The only thing Miles, Harley and I have ever had in common is Isaac. But when we’re in the Deputy’s office, and she’s saying that something’s happened to Isaac, that we should rely on each other for support, he could stand to be a little less right.

  Harley groans. He has this general limpness to him, like a puppet missing half its strings. He sinks deeper into his chair. ‘Are you that thick?’

  ‘I am not thick,’ Miles says.

  That’s true, he’s not. He’s second to dux. He’s just never been very good with things that can’t be measured in an end-of-year exam. Like a full spectrum of human emotion.

  ‘I dunno, you’re pretty ducking stupid.’

  ‘Harley, they know what you mean by duck.’ Miles turns to the Deputy. ‘Right? You know.’

  I don’t envy Kathy – Mrs Evans. This would be hard enough if we got along, even slightly.

  ‘Boys, this is a delicate situation. I am certain you are feeling many complicated emotions, but it’s not productive to lash out at one another.’ She’s being careful. She’s speaking slowly and it’s making her British accent more pronounced.

  Miles scrunches his face. ‘Oh, we are not –’

  Harley takes over. ‘This isn’t lashing out. I’d say this is . . . forty per cent?’

  Miles corrects him. ‘Closer to forty-three.’

  ‘Coz there’s a difference.’

  ‘Well, it is a measure so, yes, forty and forty-three are different.’

  ‘All right,’ Harley practically whispers. He turns to the Deputy. ‘This is us at forty-three per cent animosity.’

  Mrs Evans blinks. A pigeon flies past the window behind her. ‘Well,’ she continues eventually, ‘I think that it would be best if we –’

  I interrupt her. ‘How did he die?’ I ask.

  Miles and Harley turn to me. They’d probably forgotten I was sitting between them. Mrs Evans’s office isn’t that big; she’s crammed three chairs in front of her desk in a space that only fits two. Our knees are touching, but when Miles and Harley have one of their little tiffs, it’s amazing what they can’t see.

  ‘You said Isaac had an accident.’ I clear my throat. ‘What happened?’

  Mrs Evans takes a slow, deliberate breath. A moment to perfect her phrasing. ‘To be honest, Ryan, we don’t know much. We know . . . generally.’

  Harley straightens up. ‘Then tell us generally.’

  ‘I would prefer to save that for when we speak to the entire cohort. We’ve organised for all of Year Eleven to come to the chapel for the final half of fourth period.’ She checks her watch. ‘We have some time before then, so –’

  ‘But you are sure?’ Miles asks.

  It takes Mrs Evans a second to realise what he means. ‘Yes, Miles, we’re sure.’

  He’s the first one to cry.

  Everything at Barton House is done in the Marist tradition, which is like regular Catholicism, only with a pinch of French. In the chapel, elaborate stained-glass windows depict le chemin de croix, lit from behind by lighthouse bulbs to give the illusion of God’s love shining down from the heavens. In reality, the chapel is sandwiched between a storage room and sick bay.

  This one time, a bulb burnt out during a service, and Isaac shouted, ‘Who sinned?’

  He cut through bullshit like that, and I can’t believe he’s . . .

  Miles believes it. He’s wiping his eyes on his sleeve. Harley’s harder to read. He bites his right thumbnail.

  We stand by the exit of the chapel. While the other teachers herd their classes into pews, Mr Collins comes over. He asks us how we are. We’re silent.

  From the back, we can see everything. Guys continue their conversations. They crack jokes. They check their phones. They have no idea why they’ve been pulled out of class. I want that back, the ignorance.

  The bit before.

  Mrs Evans does most of the talking. I watch her words crash against the cohort. Two hundred individual reactions play out at once, intensifying at different speeds. For some, it’s a slow burn; for others, an explosion.

  Marty Johnson turns in his seat. He’s probably said five words to me since laughing at a joke I made on Year Seven camp, but now he’s staring right at me.

  Others follow his lead. Suddenly, us standing up the back makes more sense to them.

  And I start to feel it. Belief. Isaac is dead.

  I need to get out. Mr Collins understands. He helps with the door (it’s ridiculous how heavy that thing is). When I’m certain it’s shut, I squat a little, place my hands above my knees and face the floor. I take a deep breath. This helps with nerves, and apparently, having a mate die feels a lot like nerves.

  Which makes no sense.

  Which makes some sense.

  Everything is different now. ’Course I’m shit-scared of that.

  The more I focus on breathing, the less I think.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  Someone struggles with the chapel door from the inside and I have the time to unfold myself and start pacing. Looks less wussy.

  Mr Collins wants to know if I’m all right. Mum calls it the big duty-of-care tick.

  I force a smile. ‘Yeah, I won’t be long.’

  I’m not going back in. I imagine Mrs Evans is seconds away from handing the reins to Mr Ford, school counsellor extraordinaire, or worse, to Brother Mitchell. I’m not really big on lighthouse love.

  Mr Collins disappears and Miles slips out before the door shuts. He didn’t last much longer than me. I shouldn’t stare but I do. He seems more panicked than upset. He keeps his distance, one hand on his side, the other on his forehead. His lips are moving, but I can’t hear what he’s muttering.

  It’s just the two of us. I should say something.

  ‘You all right, man?’

  He turns to me. His eyes are bloodshot. He doesn’t reply.

  ‘It’s rough, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Something occurs to him. Miles has difficulty censoring his face, so when something’s going on in his head, it’s pretty obvious. He takes a few hesitant steps towards me. ‘Do you happen to know Isaac’s locker combination, by any chance?’

  I shake my head. I can tell he’s disappointed, but at the same time, he’s relieved. Isaac didn’t trust me more.

  He mulls something over. I’ve always wondered what it’s like inside Miles’s head, thoughts processed and discarded before they’d even occur to anyone else our age. Like the hulking all-terrain vehicles mums use for drop-offs, he’s made for more than high school.

  He straightens up. ‘Right. Tell Mr Collins I have gone to the bathroom.’

  He starts down the hall in the wrong direction. Even for Miles it’s weird. I jog to catch up.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I ask.

&n
bsp; ‘The bathroom.’

  It’s like a game of rock paper scissors. Grief trumps ignorance, but curiosity trumps grief. What’s happening in the chapel seems so far away. I need to know what Miles is up to.

  ‘You’re not, though.’

  ‘I am breaking into Isaac’s locker.’

  Oh. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting him to tell the truth so soon.

  ‘Seriously, go back and keep Mr Collins busy.’

  ‘Why are we breaking into Isaac’s locker?’

  ‘Not we, me. I am doing it, you are going back to the chapel,’ he says.

  ‘Why?’

  Miles stops and sighs. I’m wasting his time and it’s all over his face. ‘Isaac has something of mine and I want it back. Someone is going to open his locker at some point soon. I cannot let them find it.’

  That makes the curiosity worse. ‘What is it?’

  He’s growing impatient. ‘If you are going to follow me, you cannot ask that.’

  ‘But it’s something bad?’

  ‘I did not say that.’ He doesn’t give me a chance to ask another question before he adds, ‘We are going to need boltcutters. And a lock to replace the one we cut off, so nobody suspects anything.’

  ‘There’s a hardware shop near Martin Place. I could sprint.’

  ‘We have twenty minutes before the bell goes. It is not just a matter of you sprinting there, you would have to get past the ladies at reception, twice. I know there is one in Design and Tech, but that is locked up in the tool cage, so that leaves us with . . .’

  It clicks for him first. When Mr Collins isn’t teaching Economics, he looks after student stuff like timetabling and lockers. He has the boltcutters students use if they forget their lock combinations. And he’s in the chapel at the moment, which means nobody’s in his office.

  ‘Come on.’ Miles launches himself into a door on our right. It swings open to the fire stairs. He climbs two steps at a time. This is a keenness to break school rules that I’ve never seen in him before.

  What’s in that damn locker?

  I go to ask, but Miles escapes the stairwell and the door is closing. I leap over the last steps and catch it. Barton House occupies the first seven levels of a twelve-storey building – wherever I need to be is usually three flights of stairs from wherever I actually am. This time we luck out, Mr Collins’s office is only one floor up.

  Problem is, there’s a metre-wide floor-to-ceiling glass panel between his office and the corridor. Anyone walking past will notice the student who’s broken in. And there’s also the actual breaking in part.

  I can feel the he job quickly becoming a me job. ‘Since you are here . . .’ Miles begins. He tries to communicate the rest with a look.

  ‘Me?’ I ask.

  ‘Your mum is a teacher.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean I can just –’

  He raises his hand to shut me up. ‘We do not have time.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘We need an alternative.’ He looks around. His eyes fall on the lone chair outside N4. He can’t seriously be considering it.

  ‘Yeah, let’s not throw a chair through a glass panel,’ I say.

  ‘I was not going to.’ He was totally going to. ‘But . . . how else are we going to get in?’

  ‘Dude, no.’

  ‘Sorry, I have never broken into a teacher’s office before.’

  ‘Well, neither have I.’ I grip the doorknob and twist. It turns. ‘Okay, now I have.’ I push the door open.

  Miles stays put. ‘Go on, then,’ he urges.

  Amazing what I’ll do to satisfy curiosity.

  I flick the switch and the light stutters to life. I scan the office for the boltcutters, but Mr Collins doesn’t leave them lying around in plain sight. I open desk drawers. Juice poppers, pens, manila folders – no boltcutters.

  ‘Check under the desk,’ Miles suggests.

  I watch him through the glass panel. ‘You’re not coming in?’

  He’s stepped back a little further for plausible deniability. ‘One of us needs to keep watch,’ he says.

  Typical. I hop onto my stomach and start feeling around under the desk.

  ‘You know what? I will fetch my lock and meet you at Isaac’s locker,’ Miles says.

  ‘Actually, I’d rather you stayed.’ I nudge Mr Collins’s sneakers aside and feel the space behind them. ‘Miles?’ I worm forwards a little and peer out the doorway. He’s gone.

  Great.

  I worm back and continue searching. My hands close around a pair of handles.

  Bingo. The boltcutters.

  New thing I can say for certain: I look stupid with boltcutters stuffed under my shirt. I switch off the light and shut the door. Hoping no one leaves class early and notices my strange cleavage, I hurry back down the corridor, up the stairs and along an identical corridor to Isaac’s locker.

  Miles is waiting, his lock hanging from his right index finger. We don’t say anything at first, like locker 308 is something sacred. For a quiet second, grief defies the rules of rock paper scissors and trumps curiosity. There’s a pang in my chest.

  ‘All right, we do not have long,’ Miles says. ‘It is just a hole in the wall.’

  I pull the boltcutters out from under my shirt and line up the blades on either side of Isaac’s lock. I squeeze the handles together until the blades meet. Miles reaches in and threads the broken lock out of the hole. He pockets the evidence and I open the door.

  He swoops in before I can even get a look. He’s knocking and lifting things, searching. I step back. Miles is a mess of frantic energy. What could have him so edgy?

  A can of deodorant falls out and rolls to my feet. I pick it up. ‘Do you need any help?’ I ask.

  It’s obvious he does. ‘No.’

  There’s the sound of more knocking, lifting, searching.

  ‘If you tell me what we’re looking for, I can –’

  ‘Where is it?’ He runs his hands over where they’ve already been. ‘Where . . . is . . . it?’

  He pushes away from the locker. It’s the closest he’s ever been to swearing. He walks around in a tight circle and looks like he’s about to implode.

  I try to calm him. ‘Look, nothing can be –’

  ‘One thing,’ he says breathily. ‘I rely on him for one thing.’

  He crouches down, head resting on his fists.

  I look to the locker. ‘Are you sure it’s not here?’

  ‘I am sure,’ he insists. ‘It is a red pouch. He must have taken it home. I told him never to take it home.’

  I step closer and put the deodorant back. At first glance, there’s no red pouch, just some textbooks, loose paper and his sports bag. Instead of ransacking the locker like Miles, I go for the sports bag. Every so often, Isaac leaves his basketball stuff at school over the weekend to get out of Saturday sport. It’s surprising how often that excuse flies. I open the bag and, yep, his unwashed gear from last week is in there. I gag. The smell is potently Isaac.

  I stir the contents and catch a lick of red. I reach in and pull out a small zip pouch. I check over my shoulder. Miles is still crouched on the floor. Curious, I unzip. I see yellow. Heaps of it. The pouch is filled with fifty-dollar notes.

  ‘Um?’

  Miles glances up and his eyes come alive. He’s on his feet in an instant, snatching the pouch from my hands and zipping it shut.

  ‘What?’ I stammer. ‘How did you manage to –?’

  ‘Just forget you saw that, all right?’

  ‘Dude, that’s like two grand, easy.’

  Miles shakes his head. He closes the door and threads the unbroken lock through the hole. He clicks it together and starts walking away.

  ‘You’re not going to say anything?’

  Our eyes meet briefly. ‘This did not happen.’

  Five xylophone notes play over the school PA system. Whoever spearheaded the switch from a bell to percussion probably believed it was a gentler, less-disruptive way to signal the end of clas
s, but nope, we’re an all-boys school. I can hear the catcalls and the chairs shifting.

  Miles disappears down the fire stairs and I’m standing out in the open with –

  Crap. Students explode into the corridor. I tuck the boltcutters under my shirt. Looks pretty obvious, so I cross my arms. Still pretty obvious. Everyone’s moving as one shouty mass towards the main stairwell. There’s no way I can get into Mr Collins’s office, not without somebody noticing. He’s probably on his way back from the chapel anyway. I need to hide the boltcutters somewhere more subtle.

  I get to my locker. One arm folded over my chest, I manage to open the door. I plant the boltcutters behind my bag. A worry for later.

  My lunch is up on the top shelf – a takeaway container stuffed with chicken and brown rice. A quick zap in the Year Eleven common room microwave and it should be good to go. I reach for the container then hesitate. I microwave my food, and what then? Eat at our usual spot? Stare at the space where Isaac used to be?

  And . . . I’m not hungry anyway. I grab my swim gear instead. It’s instinct. Once the guys from my year get up here, I know there’ll be a string of questions that I don’t want to answer, that I don’t know how to answer.

  There’s no one on duty in the aquatic centre on Mondays.

  I take the fire stairs down to the basement. It’s deserted. The pool glows greenish-blue in the dark. I leave the main lights off and cross the room. The water’s persistent csssh drowns out the sound of my breathing.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  I toss my bag on the floor, strip out of my uniform and slip on my togs. They’re still wet from this morning, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll be soaked in a sec.

  I step up onto the block and dive. The water folds over me, fingertips to toes. And the rest is habit, muscle memory, years of squad training echoing through my limbs. To the wall and back again.

  I built my life in twenty-four seconds. I doze off in class and half-arse my homework, but so long as I train three hours a day and keep the blue ribbons coming, no one really cares. I’m on page five of the school prospectus: Ryan Patrick Thomson, Olympic hopeful. I’m not full of myself though. I pretend not to like it when people throw around words like ‘champion’.