Tall Story - Candy Gourlay [42]
I stared down at him and then at Andi, uncomprehending.
Andi’s head jerked up sharply, the blank mask slipping off so briefly that if I had not been watching her, I would not have seen it. The corners of her mouth wobbled like she was going to cry. Why was she upset? What was wrong? What did Rocky mean?
Then Andi pulled the blankness back on. ‘Start?’ she said in a flat voice.
‘Yeah.’ Rocky’s smile seemed to become even whiter in the sunshine. ‘Bernardo, you’re the answer to our prayers. You’re gonna win us the match next week!’
23
Andi
The Great and Wonderful Rocky, Captain of the Great and Wonderful Souls, says he can’t allow me – shooting average: 100 per cent – to join his team. And yet he’s perfectly happy to sign up a certain Big and Friendly GIANT even though it is obvious that he is in no shape to run or do anything that amounts to proper basketball – apart from being TALL.
If someone eight foot tall with sincere brown eyes ever makes you wish upon a stone … don’t. Even if you don’t believe in magic anyway … don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Spare yourself the aggravation of something opposite coming true.
Rocky was so deliriously happy about discovering Bernardo that he seemed to think I would be deliriously happy too. Their last league game was on Tuesday, at home. Against a team called the Colts.
And he was going to play Bernardo.
No trial, no training, no nothing.
‘Don’t worry, mate, we just want you on the court for the first quarter. We’re going to psych them out!’ he chortled. ‘So. Will you be in school tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’ Bernardo looked a little bit nervous. ‘First day.’
‘I’ve got a spare Souls uniform – you’ll be fine in my kit. You’re not as wide as you are tall,’ Rocky said. ‘The shorts might be a little bit short, but it won’t be too bad. I’ll bring it tomorrow.’
‘I don’t knows,’ Bernardo said, looking at me as if I knew the answer to the meaning of life.
I looked away and shrugged.
Rocky slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Bernie, mate, you’ll be fantastic!’
As we walked out, Bernardo said, ‘I carry for you.’ Rookie of the Year grabbed at my gym bag but I hung on to it like a mother defending her young.
‘I can MANAGE,’ I replied with a vehemence that had Bernardo staring down at me with that puzzled, lost-puppy look that must have taken years to perfect.
‘What wrong?’ He said it so softly, so sympathetically, so perfectly.
‘NOTHING.’ I summoned all my will power to flatten my eyes, my nose, my mouth, flatten my face into nothing. Like a pancake.
And I walked a little bit faster, knowing that those tree trunks he called legs would not manage to pick up enough speed to catch up.
It was exactly four-thirty when I finally turned the key in the front door lock, Bernardo shambling up behind me. The reason I knew that was because my mobile beeped and I saw the time as I read the text message from Mum.
WER R U?!!!
And before I could even push the door, it swung open with a horror-movie violence that made me shut my eyes in preparation for the hatchet in the skull, the arrow in the chest, the bullet in the forehead. But it was just Mum, and she didn’t need any weapons to smash against my head because she opened that door yelling, like her tongue had taken a running leap.
‘Where were you? I came back early and there was NOBODY at home. There was PIZZA all over the kitchen table and Darth Vader on TV but no sign of you two. Andi, how many times have I WARNED you—’
‘Mama, I am the blame.’
Bernardo stepped in front of me so hurriedly he almost lost his balance, but as he flayed about with his massive hands, I grabbed his arm and he steadied. ‘I am the blame. Sorry, sorry, Mama.’
And then the two of them went into a yakatakabaka rant at the same time.
Bernardo managed to keep up his side, producing a forceful stream of Tagalog that crashed like heavy waves against Mum’s rippling yakatakas until slowly it was only Bernardo doing the ranting and then he shut up a