Chapter 55
REPERCUSSIONS
Skylar walked into the office of the intermediate school and explained why she was there. For Finlay, and also for Scarlett. The secretary said, “Nobody on Scarlett’s approved list will be here, then?”
“I’m afraid not,” Skylar said. “Her father is out of the country, her grandmother is in Hawke’s Bay, and her aunt is at work. But I’m, er, her dad’s partner, so Jade asked me to come get this sorted for both of them.”
The principal came out of her office then. “Hello, Skylar,’ she said. “Let me explain what’s happened, and then we’ll send Finlay home with you. Any word from Scarlett’s whanau?” she asked the secretary.
Which meant that Skylar had to explain again. “If you need to talk to somebody on the list,” she said, “you can ring his grandmother, but as for somebody who can actually be here, I’m afraid that’s me.”
“Maureen did suggest that Scarlett could go home with you,” the principal said.
“It’s a bit irregular, but needs must, eh, and as we got permission from both Maureen and the aunt, I don’t see a problem.
” Nadine Fernley, her name was, and she was, oddly, less scary than Skylar’s principal.
Even though intermediate pupils were surely the most difficult of all, during that time when the most angelic child was suddenly talking back and acting out and being, in fact, the occasional monster.
There was a reason Skylar taught Year One.
“But what happened?” Skylar asked. “They were getting along fine this morning. They’ve been getting along fine most of the time lately.
The odd squabble here and there, but fighting?
Finlay hit a girl? He hit Scarlett? That’s hard for me to believe.
Though I realize that mums aren’t always the most objective.
” She had to add that bit for credibility. She felt perfectly objective.
“Oh, he didn’t hit a girl,” Nadine said. “Scarlett hit a girl—and a couple of boys, too—but Finlay only hit the boys.”
“I’m completely confused,” Skylar said. “Can we start at the beginning, please? What actually happened here?”
“Suppose I take you in there,” Nadine said, “and let them tell you themselves.”
Scarlett was holding an icepack to her nose. She also had blood on her uniform blouse. Finlay, meanwhile, had an icepack on his knuckles, and another held to his eye.
“You both look like you’ve been in the wars,” Skylar said. “Care to explain?” To tell the truth, she was so relieved that they hadn’t hit each other, it was a bit hard to be as stern as she ought to be.
Scarlett said, “What was I supposed to do when James Wattersley came up to me and told me my dad’s a dirty player? And that he’d probably paralyzed that guy on purpose?”
Skylar didn’t feel a bit like laughing now. “Somebody’s paralyzed?”
“I don’t know,” Scarlett said, “because I don’t have a phone.
He said so, and Colin Bowers, who’s his best mate and the other biggest bully in my year, said, yeh, he was, and it was Dad’s fault.
So I hit James, and then he hit me, and then Mary Hawera, who hates me anyway and is James’s girlfriend, pulled my hair, so I hit her, and then—”
“And then I came out of school,” Finlay said, “and they were all hitting Scarlett, so I had to hit them. What was I meant to do, just let them hurt her like that? With all of them ganging up, and kids filming and all?”
“Kids filming?” Skylar asked.
“They always film,” Finlay said, “when there’s a fight.”
“Wasn’t there a teacher around?” Skylar asked, mainly because you were meant to ask that.
“No,” Scarlett said. “There’s never a teacher around when there’s a fight. I think they all go and hide under their desks or something. And anyway, they were calling my dad names!”
“It’s true, Mum,” Finlay said earnestly. “They were. If I’d run for a teacher, Scarlett would probably be dead or something.”
“I wouldn’t be dead,” Scarlett said. “I was fighting back. Those boys aren’t very good fighters. They’re just bigger, so they think they’re good fighters. But Finlay hit Colin really hard. I didn’t know you could punch like that, Finlay.”
“I didn’t know either,” Finlay said. “Maybe I have natural fighting talent.”
“If you want to develop your natural fighting talent,” Skylar said, not laughing, because that would be inappropriate and also detrimental to Finlay’s character development, “we’ll get you lessons.
Which will teach you how not to fight as well.
You could have, for example, pulled them off Scarlett. ”
“Well, not three of them, I couldn’t,” Finlay said. “And I couldn’t hit Mary, either.”
“I hit Mary,” Scarlett said. “Her nose bled worse than mine, and I kneed James in the bollocks. After he hit me in the chest. He did that on purpose, so I had to. We would’ve beat them, even though there were three of them and only two of us, but a teacher broke it up, so we couldn’t.”
“Nobody,” Nadine said, “is allowed to physically attack any pupil at this school. Full stop.”
“What was I meant to do, then,” Scarlett said, “when James said that about my dad? Would you let somebody say that about your dad?”
“And Scarlett’s, like, practically my sister,” Finlay said. “You can’t just let your sister get beat up and not help!”
“First,” Nadine said, “if somebody says something you object to, you do not have to physically attack them. What would our lives be like if adults lashed out like that anytime anyone said a cross word to them? We’d have punch-ups on the trains.
In offices. In Parliament. Is that the world you want to live in? ”
“Yes,” Scarlett said. “If they’re saying things about my dad, I do.”
“Me too,” Finlay said.
“Well, I’ll tell you what happens in my school when pupils fight,” Nadine said. “They face consequences.”
“Fine,” Scarlett said. “As long as they get the same thing. I didn’t start it, and Finlay didn’t do anything bad at all. You should probably give me his punishment, too.”
“No,” Finlay said. “Mum always says that you make your choices and you face the consequences. I wanted to hit them, and I hit them. I’m ready to face the consequences.”
Nadine said, “Here’s what we’re doing. First, you two will both be picking up rubbish and helping the custodian at lunchtime for the rest of the week.”
“Fine,” Finlay said. “Who cares?” Which was not the most politic answer, but Skylar couldn’t help being proud of him. Of both of them, if truth were told. Although, of course, violence was deplorable. Obviously.
“In addition,” Nadine went on, “we’ll be having a Restorative Justice session with the peer mediation team, and they may assign additional consequences.
Fighting is very serious, and we’ll be treating it as such, but the most important thing is to work as a community to mediate issues like this so you don’t resort to violence next time. ”
Scarlett just looked at her. Skylar was pretty sure Nadine could read the thought-bubble as well as she could herself. If they say things like that about my dad, I’m not promising anything. She wasn’t Zane Mahuta’s daughter for nothing.
But what about that thing the kid had said? It couldn’t be true, could it? The kid was twelve years old! How would he even know?
Cell phones.
Please, let it not be true.
How she hated time zones.
First, there was getting the kids home to Zane’s, cleaning them up, and explaining to the rest of the kids, and to Granddad.
Although that wasn’t the very first thing she’d done.
The first thing, after the cleanup and resumption of icepacks—it was fortunate that Zane had half a freezer full of them, and plenty of Panadol, too, for the aches—was to grab her phone, retreat to Zane’s bedroom, hold her breath, and type in the search term.
All Blacks v England rugby injury
The man had broken his neck.
His neck.
She could feel the blood drain from her face. Her legs didn’t want to hold her anymore, and she sank down on the bed, the dread contracting in her stomach, and read on.
Condition unknown. Undergoing surgery. Guarded optimism.
She dropped her head into her hands and breathed. Three times. Four.
Could you break your neck and not be paralyzed? Was that a thing? Possibly? Please?
The papers were full of it. England fans calling for an investigation. International rugby announcing a review. The All Blacks expressing concern for the player and assuring reporters of their full cooperation in the process.
And Zane himself nowhere to be found, at least not in the quotation department.
Why, why was she a teacher? If she hadn’t been, she’d already have known what had happened. But why hadn’t Zane even texted her?
It was now … she checked the time. Four-thirty P.M. Which meant five-thirty A.M. in London, and no, she couldn’t possibly call Zane at five-thirty in the morning just because she was worried about him.
He didn’t need to know about the kids right now, either.
He needed to sleep, and she needed to get a grip.
Which was why she went out into the lounge again and told the kids that the player would be having surgery, and she was sure they’d know more tomorrow.
That the officials had reviewed the accident over and over again, and if they hadn’t seen any foul play, there wasn’t any foul play.
(Investigation be damned.) Then she supervised homework—“Yes, you still have to do it, even with a black eye. If you didn’t want to do that, you shouldn’t have got into a fight.
” Which got her major maturity points, as what she wanted to say was, “Why don’t we all lie on the couch, watch a stupid movie, and eat takeaway Chinese and vats of ice cream? ”
After that, she cooked the simplest possible dinner with Olive and Duncan as her sous-chefs, because routine was calming and important, supervised the washing-up, lay on the couch with all the kids piled around her like puppies and read a story, and got everyone to bed by seven-thirty.
She didn’t even get any pushback, because they were all heavy-eyed and squabbling from that early start.
She went into Scarlett’s room, though, once she had the little ones settled. Olive was already asleep, but Scarlett was awake and reading a book. She lowered it when Skylar came in, though, and asked, “Did you come to yell at me?”
“No,” Skylar said, sitting on the twin bed beside her. “I came to see how you’re going. It was an upsetting day.”
“Yeh,” Scarlett said, and then nothing else.
“You’re loyal to your dad,” Skylar said, choosing her words carefully. “Loyalty’s a beautiful thing. You also stand up for what you believe, and that’s important, too.”
“Dad says, ‘Kaua e mate wheke, me mate ururoa.’”
“Don’t die like an octopus,” Skylar translated. “Die like a hammerhead shark. Go down fighting, I guess.”
“Yeh. Because he’s Maori, and so am I.”
“Is this what you’d like to have done, then? Thinking about it now?”
“Not really,” Scarlett said. “I haven’t done it before, not for … for real. I get angry sometimes, but I don’t want to hurt people. I wanted to then, though. It made me filthy when they said that about Dad.”
“It wasn’t true, though, and you knew it. He isn’t a dirty player. Rugby’s a rough game, that’s all, and people get hurt.”
“Even when somebody makes a high tackle or something,” Scarlett said, “they hardly ever mean to. Dad says that when things are moving that fast, it’s hard to get everything exactly right, no matter how hard you try.
But that you have to try your hardest anyway.
And if you do get a yellow card, you practice that skill so it doesn’t happen again. ”
“And you think he’ll do that now,” Skylar said, “if that wasn’t just a terrible accident. If there was something he could’ve done to avoid it.”
“Of course he will,” Scarlett said. “He always does. You can’t be the skipper if you don’t try the hardest.”
“Then,” Skylar said, “how much does it matter if people say rubbish things?”
“Oh.” Scarlett thought about that for a minute.
“I guess it shouldn’t as much? Dad says there can be heaps of sledging during the match, but you almost always forget it as soon as the game’s over.
Sometimes people get a hot head, but once you have a beer and a laugh together, it’s over.
I don’t see how you do that if you’re really angry, but it must be true, because you’re not allowed to hit each other in rugby, at least not real hitting.
You can push and shove a bit, but that’s all.
Or you don’t just get a yellow card, you get a red card, and you’re out. ”
“They must have come up with ways to discipline their emotions, I reckon,” Skylar said, “so they don’t cross the line even when they’re hot like that. Maybe you can ask your Dad when he comes home. Another type of coaching, eh. He’d be the one to tell you.”
“OK.” Scarlett yawned. “That sounds like a good idea. But I’m still not sorry I hit them.”
Skylar smiled. “I know. But you may want to find a better way, if only so you don’t have to pick up more rubbish.
” She hesitated, then gave Scarlett a kiss on the forehead and smoothed her hair back.
She knew how many times she’d wished for somebody to do that with her before she’d met Zane, and how protected she felt when he did it.
“You’re a strong girl,” she told Scarlett.
“A brave girl. You’ll work this out. I have faith in you. ”
“Thanks,” Scarlett said. “I was glad you came today. And I was really glad Finlay helped me. It was kind of like … more whanau.”
Surely Skylar’s heart couldn’t hold all this emotion. “Yeh,” she said. “Exactly. Get some sleep now, and I’ll see you in the morning. Every day’s a new beginning. That’s the good thing about mornings.”