Chapter 2: School

The next day, she rode to school: how cool! She sat in the welcome assembly with her friends, and to her relief, Athena was in her home class and most of her electives. Aria and Loya were in her art elective. They split up and went off to their home classes to do paperwork and administrative stuff to get going for the year. Not long before lunch, Helena walked slowly up to the front of the class to hand the nice young male teacher a form she’d filled out, and he noticed her wrist art, since she’d gone over it again with a marker that morning.

He grabbed her hand and held her wrist in front of him. “Tell me about this,” he said, and indicated for the class to hear.

“It’s for Athena. I’ve had some pretty rough times since school finished last year, the problem with my legs, and problems in my family, and Athena’s been my faithful friend through thick and thin over the holidays. I really don’t know if I’d be alive without her, and we made these after a difficult evening for me this week, to mark our close friendship for each other. She’s given me such love!”

The teacher looked up at Athena, who held her wrist up for him to see. “I have a matching one. It’s more than what Helena said. It means that whatever happens for Helena, I’ll be with her, a Larissa level friend.”

The teacher smiled at them both, and said, “Class, that’s a really lovely thing, isn’t it?” There was a chorus of support for that, and it was nice that he knew better than to ask whether they were lovers, like so many of the other kids had obsessed about when they saw the artwork. “I’m glad that Helena has a friend like that, because with her illness, she could really need friends, and I hope you’ll all support her.” Another chorus of support, which was lovely, and unimaginable last year. “But it does give us a problem.” He looked around the class. “It’s against the rules, right? And so I could give them both detentions.” There was a growl of disagreement from the class. “Right. That’d be an awful thing for me to do, given what they’ve said it means. But if I don’t, then maybe one of you others will turn up with some other kind of mark, and when I give you a detention, you’ll say that I didn’t do it for Helena and Athena, so it wouldn’t be fair, and it could become problem, right?” There was some nodding in the classroom, and Helena had to reluctantly agree. She guessed she was heading for a detention after all. “Can someone tell me why you aren’t allowed to have marks like this?”

There was some uncertainty about that, until one of the boys down the back said, “It’s about gang patches, right?”

“That’s most of it, yes. Like the men that shot Larissa’s Julian with an arrow back late last year. Lots of gang patches on them. We sure don’t want that kind of thing at school, right?” That sure got a strong chorus of agreement from the class.

“So what should I do? How about this? Helena and Athena promise us all that they’ll let it wear off, and instead, we’re going to make a big poster to go up on the wall with that same picture on it, and any of you who want can write your own messages of support for them on it? And Helena and Athena, if any other teachers try to give you a detention, get them to talk to me, OK?”

The kids thought that was an excellent way to handle it, and Helena and Athena agreed to let it wear off. The teacher produced a poster and a bunch of textas and said for the kids to get into it. Right, Helena realised immediately, the whole thing was a set up. Amber had commented, and Louise had seen her wrist when they visited Juliano. Of course she wouldn’t leave what happened to chance.

Isabella and Juliano were asleep when they got home, so they went down to Helena’s room to talk and kill time, and Mason heard, and invited them to his music studio, and showed them how it worked. Athena was really interested and learning piano and guitar, and Loya was doing flute so he let both of them play his instruments for a few minutes and gave them some tips from a performer’s point of view, which was just amazing. They were still doing that when Ella poked her nose in. Did they want to do make up? They very definitely did, and they sat in a tight little group in Ella’s little studio and office and Ella did make up for Athena, Loya, and Aria, explaining what she was doing, and why, and they did each other’s hair very fancy with Ella’s advice while they were watching. Then each of them dressed up in formal dresses Ella produced for them, dresses they’d seen Larissa, Layna or Isabella wear at big events, and then they posed for mirror selfies and sent them to their mums to knock their socks off. Then Aunt Raychelle came to tell them now was a good time to meet Juliano, so they took the dresses off and found Isabella cuddling Juliano. They didn’t get to hold him, but they made admiring noises, and Isabella told them how she was feeling.

After her friends went home, Helena helped Riley set dinner up, and then she held Juliano so that Isabella could have dinner with her family. She sat there watching them, a happy family, and thought about going home to her mum. She knew she could blow things up anytime, make it look like it was her mum’s fault, and that was more than a bit tempting. But Larissa would know. She mightn’t say anything, but no, Helena wouldn’t go there. She’d give it her best go with her mum, but it would never be like this. How could she manage without this love in her life?

The next day, it was the special school outing. Instead of school, Athena was going with her to a special location. They’d looked at the map and seen that it was quite a distance from where they lived, but both of them really wanted to ride there. She left super early to make sure they had time, and Athena met her between their houses. It took them nearly an hour, with a couple of breaks at the top of big hills, but they made it in time. The outing was at an athletics track, and it was very busy when they arrived. They found a place to park their bikes, and then they walked across the track to a marquee that was set up in the middle of the athletics track. She could see Eleni organising everything, and Louise standing in the middle of the tent talking to Larissa. Right, the first thing she had to do was to introduce Athena to Larissa.

Larissa broke off talking to Louise when she saw Helena and got a big smile on her face. “Helena! it’s wonderful to see you here!” She came and hugged Helena, and then turned to look at Athena expectantly.

“Athena, meet Larissa. Larissa, Athena’s been my faithful friend all through the holidays.”

Larissa gave her a big smile and took both Athena’s hands. “Athena, I’ve heard all about you. Thank you so much for being a wonderful friend for Helena, you’ve really made me happy. And made Helena happy, which is much more important.”

Athena was suddenly shy. “Thanks.” She took a deep breath. “Larissa, thank you for looking after Helena, and I just want to tell you, I’m super excited that you’re Australian of the Year, and I believe in you. Your speech was really inspiring.”

“Thanks.” Larissa gave her another big smile. “I’ll do my best, but I can only do that because people believe in me. Talking about that, I really want to introduce some people.” Helena and Athena were introduced as ‘my favourite cousin and her bestie’ to Larissa’s assistant Toni, her events organiser Suzy, and three security girls, though Helena already knew them from the park, and had seen two of them do the triathlon.

“Now, can you two do something for me?” Of course. “Kids are still arriving for a little while yet. If you see some kids looking lost, can you go and talk to them? Ask them how they became friends to get started.”

Helena and Athena ended up talking to a blind boy named Anthony and his friend from Sale. He was really looking forward to meeting Harry, who Helena hadn’t even really noticed on the list of special guests. Then the four of them started talking to a girl from Warragul who’d been in a traffic accident and now only had the use of one arm; she was here with her younger sister who was pushing her wheelchair around. Helena honestly felt bad, she wasn’t anywhere near as handicapped as these two kids who were rapidly becoming her friends, and they agreed to all sit up the front. She could see Larissa’s team doing the same, encouraging the growing number of kids to talk to each other.

Then she saw another pair of kids looking around confusedly, so she approached them to see if she could help. One of them was deaf, and his friend said that there was supposed to be a table for deaf kids with an Auslan translator, but where was it? Athena volunteered to find it, which left Helena with the deaf kid and his friend, so she asked if the friend could teach her basic sign language. She’d got to ‘my name is Helena’ and learnt his was Diego with an extra big swipe when Athena came back and said she’d found the table.

It was nearly time now, and there were nearly a hundred kids there. Looking around, Helena saw a wide range of school uniforms, and a wide range of disabilities. Blind, deaf, wheelchairs, some walking aids. Some kids weren’t so obvious. Like herself, she supposed, until she started walking; her distinctive gait sure stood out, but at least she didn’t feel self-conscious here.

Then Louise, well, ‘Ms Tennyson’ here, stood up on a stage at the front, and called out for the kids to start sitting down, or wheeling to a table, as appropriate. Helena looked around as she went back to her seat, where were all the special visitors? Ah, she spotted Dylan Allcott down the other end of the tent. But no Hannah?

Once the kids were settled, Ms Tennyson stood up on the stage and welcomed them all, and said that the aim of the day was for them to get to know each other, and to become friends, and to be encouraged by the various guests that were coming. Hannah should be arriving soon, but the others were here already, and she hoped that they’d all have time to meet each of the guests through the day. But before the guests, she wanted to introduce Australian of the Year Larissa Wright.

That got a very big cheer, and Larissa stood up on the stage and said hello to everyone, and said that she knew all of them were a step or two behind the other kids, and that could be discouraging, but they were all strong just to be there, and they could take strength from each other. Then she said that she’d be giving a talk later, and walking around all day, and her personal goal was to get to know everyone there, all of them heroes, both them and their friends. She introduced her team and said they were worth talking to as well. But now it was her pleasure to introduce the first guest, her best bud and last Australian of the Year, Dylan Allcott.

He got nearly as big a cheer, and got up and told the kids his story, including his school story. Helena had watched some videos of him talking already, but she’d never seen him talk about his school experience before. His message was fiery and passionate, a call to not accept the limitations other people imposed on them, and to band together to look after each other, and to demand that the schools and all the other kids make allowances for them, and to make everyone around them change their expectations by living a much bigger life than those people thought possible. Oh, and if anyone wanted, he’d be running wheelchair tennis sessions on the track later, and you didn’t have to live in a wheelchair to try it out. Helena decided that today of all days, she was game.

Then Dylan went and sat at the table next to them and started talking to the kids there. She turned to the other kids at her table, and they talked about what Dylan had said. Each of them had some problematic way that the school was hard for them, and they made plans about how to ask for those challenges to be fixed.

Next up was Harry, with Bud, his famous guide dog. To her surprise, he was already sitting at a table like the other kids. Well, he could, he was much younger than the others, and she’d mistaken him for another school kid. His dog led him up onto the stage, and he talked about his life, and how tough school was, how depressed he’d been, and then running into Larissa after his accident, and what he was doing now. Then he asked his team up: his sister, and his girlfriend. His sister talked about her artwork and invited anyone to come experience her art over under another little tent. Larissa shouted out from a table down the back that you really had to get blindfolded before you looked at it, and then experience it slowly, but totally worth it.

Then Harry introduced his girlfriend Pippa and she talked about the prejudice she experienced for having a blind boyfriend, and all the judgement, was she pretty, and did it matter? Her heart, of course, that’s what mattered, and Helena could almost recite that bit with her. Then she blew Helena’s mind by talking about how their relationship was different, so physical, because he couldn’t see, and she pointed out to all of the kids that they shouldn’t worry about what they don’t have, they should think about how they bring things to the table that other lovers never think of. And she just said, outright: sex with a blind guy is a revelation, a vision of what love really should be like, and she’d never consider wasting her time with a sighted boy again. Helena wasn’t the only kid dumbstruck that she said that at a school event of all things, but somehow it just rang a bell inside her soul.

Then it was time for a break, to talk to each other more, and Helena turned to the blind boy at the table and asked if he wanted to meet her properly, and let him feel her. He smiled, and said he really wanted to do that. Wow, she liked that; he was gentle and smiled a lot, so Athena let him do that for her too. When he finished, Athena said, “Oh come on, I know you want to,” and put his hands on her tits. “Just so you know they’re there,” she said, to laughter from the rest of the table. Helena had to have a go at that too, and it was actually kind of fun. She’d never have thought of that, and she could see that the boy really appreciated that. Not that hers were very big, of course. Yet, hopefully.

That led to the blind boy asking Helena about her problems, and she was still explaining them when Harry came to their table and asked to be introduced to them all. They knew the drill, so he was allowed to feel their shape, and then he sat down with his girlfriend and talked to them, which was a real thrill for her blind friend, and instructive for Helena; you could have a good life even if you were handicapped, but you had to earn it; you had to work much harder for it. Then Harry started explaining how he could use sonar to get around by himself, under the right conditions. Helena was looking at him in stunned surprise: that was something people could do? Her blind friend said he’d heard about it, but he hadn’t really figured that out, so Harry agreed that he’d give him a tutorial at the end of the day after everyone else left and it wasn’t so noisy.