izzy

French Bulldog or Red Rover or it’s your turn to be Scary Spice
Kisschasy or building the lair or turn around and kick their shins

this is the last place they’ll ever think to find us
(or is it the first?)
the trees seem impermeable from inside
but you can see us from a mile off

melted crayons or Italian to ten or never say ‘fuck’ in front of grown-ups
times tables or brown bag tucker van or Spike sliced his thumb open with a Stanley knife

I never understood why no one wanted to be Scary Spice
I did.

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sarah

When the rebellion started, the flag was a pair of old school shorts that someone had abandoned by the magpie tree. Arthur was the one who tied them to a ruler and climbed the jungle gym and started piping orders in a sweet, high falsetto. The kids flocked instinctively, with the innate understanding that anybody higher than you is in charge, and if a kid has managed to get higher than the adults, then, by gosh, you listen to him. Jonathan and Pia had the best handwriting so they were chosen to scribe, which they did frantically on their cursive practice lined paper with the extra dotted line in the middle, so you knew where to start curving the letters.

The orders were:

1. If someone can’t afford the canteen, once a month they are to be allowed to have a free meal up to $4 in value. If necessary, we are willing to compromise on the healthiness of the food options, but if the kid wants a lolly, they get one.

2. The crossing guard is no longer to be a target of abuse by the grade 6 kids, because he’s doing a hard and boring job, and he’s never late, not even once, not even when his wife had the heart attack and instead of going in the ambulance to the hospital, he came to the crossing like always and held his stop sign with a shaking hand and white lips and still smiled at every kid who went past.

3. Boy germs and girl germs are hereby abolished. The only germs to be acknowledged on school grounds are actual germs of which there are billions to choose from, so it’s not like anybody is going to miss those two. Kids are still allowed to call other kids weird, though, because sometimes you just need an outlet, and sometimes it helps to be told that you’re weird so you can think about whether that’s a thing you want to be and why.

Arthur felt that three was enough to start off with, to show everyone that they were serious, but not prone to bureaucratic fiddle-faddling. By now someone had remembered that Kaitlyn was learning the trumpet and she was chosen to play the anthem of the revolution, which because she hadn’t been playing very long was mainly a drawn out wobbly blurt, but they felt that there was room for improvement here, as in all things.

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