Liam and Zeeg (tentative)
an excerpt

“My first person is a girl who was born in Olympia. Her favourite colour is red, and her favourite food is spaghetti. She likes to play with her stuffed animals, her mother is teaching her how to knit a scarf and she likes to ride horses. Does anyone know who this is?”

A girl in the front of the classroom raised her hand. “It’s Shaye Walker.”

“Any other guesses?” Mr. Mackie raised his eyebrows.

A girl sitting next to me nodded. “It’s Shaye.”

Mr. Mackie grinned. “Well, you’re right.” He put the note card down on the table in front of him. “Let’s read the next one. My second person is a boy who was born in Sydney, Australia.”

I slunked down in my seat. Unless there was another Australian boy in the class, I knew exactly who this was.

“His favourite food is meat pie with tomato sauce and his favourite colour is green,” Mr. Mackie continued. “He likes to play his Captain Rocketfuel video game, he has seen baby lorikeets in their nest and he once saw his brother fall up a slippery dip.” Mr. Mackie seemed to do a double take, which made sense considering the subject matter of what he had just read. “Does anyone know who this is?”

The class was silent. Then one boy raised his hand. “What’s a slippery dip?”

I boggled at that. How does someone not know what a slippery dip is? Surely Mr. Mackie would set him right.

Mr. Mackie stared, puzzled, at my note card. “Not quite sure, actually,” he said.

“Isn’t that a kind of candy?” a girl sitting on the other side of me asked.

“And what’s a lorikeet?” someone else asked.

I was turning red as beetroot. I put my head down on the desk. The desk felt comfortingly cool under my cheek.

“Well, perhaps we can have the person who wrote this explain what these things are,” said Mr. Mackie. “Which brings me to my next point of discussion, anyway. We have a new student who comes from far away. Liam Holling, can you come up to the front of the classroom?”

My heart started beating faster than a railroad train. I walked up to the front of the room. My feet felt like they were covered in cement.

“Liam has come to join us from Sydney, Australia,” Mr. Mackie said. “Does anyone know where Australia is?”

“It’s in the southern hemisphere,” someone piped up.

“Kangaroos and koalas live there,” someone else said.

“Liam, would you like to show us where you are from on this world map?” He pulled down a map from the top of the whiteboard. Australia looked so small in the corner of the world.

I found Sydney on the map and pointed at it. “Right there,” I said in a quiet voice.

“How long have you been living here in Redmond, Liam?”

“A couple weeks.”

“Must be a bit of a shock.” Mr. Mackie put his hand on my shoulder. “Folks, Liam may say things a little differently from the rest of us. He might say things we don’t understand, like ‘slippery dip’ or ‘lorikeet’.” Mr. Mackie turned to me. “What are those things anyway?”

“A slippery dip is on the playground,” I said, my face hot. “You sit on it and slide down. And a lorikeet is a kind of bird.”

“I see,” Mr. Mackie nodded. “Well, even if he does use different words for things, I want to make it clear that Liam here is a member of our class to be treated the same as everyone else. Now, does anyone have any questions for Liam?”

A couple of hands went up, and my heart sank a little.

“Have you ever seen a kangaroo?” the first person asked.

“Of course.”

“How about a koala?” the second person asked.

“Sure, but only at the zoo. They like to hide.”

“Do you have TV in Australia?” the third person asked. People in the classroom giggled a little.

“Of course we do,” I scoffed. “We even have Foxtel.”