The Year My Life Broke Read Online Free PDF

the school team,’ I told her.
    â€˜I might get in,’ she said. ‘Surrey said I’m close. How come you’re not in?’
    I was gobsmacked. Somehow I’d forgotten that I might have blown my cover by playing backyard cricket. Luckily Callan was too far away to hear. ‘Not good enough,’ I muttered.
    She gave me a look, like, ‘What kind of idiot do you think I am?’ I guess policemen’s kids are pretty hard to fool. I went red. I didn’t know what to say. We were sitting on the swing seat guzzling water.
    â€˜Oh well,’ I said. ‘I don’t really try all that hard at school. Especially PE.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜I dunno, just started off bad with Surrey, so I couldn’t be bothered trying . . . Plus, I don’t know, I wanted to see what would happen if I . . . if I . . .’
    â€˜If you what?’
    And suddenly it all came out. Stuff I sort of didn’t even realise about myself. A flash went off in my brain, like someone had taken a photo of what was in there and the photo was getting printed through my mouth. Slightly weird really.
    â€˜It’s just . . . sport. That’s all anyone knows about me. They think I’m a sport meathead. It’s like I’m this prize horse or something. You know how some people are with their cars, they polish them up and take them to shows, I’ve got this uncle, Uncle Will, he’s got a ute, an FPV F6, a Falcon, same as the highway cops use, anyway he takes it to ute musters and wins all these awards and people stand around saying how great the ute is but you know what? Uncle Will never uses the car for anything ordinary, he just keeps it for the musters. And that’s like people are with me and sport. They look at me when I’m playing cricket and tell me I’m great or whatever but I don’t know what would happen if I wasn’t out there performing. Who would I be then? Would people like me? Would I have friends? Well, so far, the way things are going at Tarrawagga, I’d say they’d treat me like a total reject.’
    I said the last part with a bit of feeling, as I was pretty worked up by all the lousy stuff that had been happening, but then as I sat there and Harriet just looked at me I added, ‘I really do like sport, you know, I actually love it, but sometimes I wonder if that’s all I am, a sports machine.’
    â€˜Yeah, maybe it’s like being a policeman’s daughter, you know, the other kids treat me like I’m a bit weird. Especially if their dad or their mum’s been in trouble. I never know whether kids just look at me and see “cop’s daughter” or what. I’m always careful who I hang out with, who I play with and what I say. Got burnt a few times in Prep.’ She laughed.
    â€˜Your dad let you come over here though, no fuss.’
    â€˜Yeah, but that’s because of the security check on your mum and dad.’
    It took me a moment to register what she’d said, then I got the full impact. ‘The WHAT?’ I stood up. ‘They did a police check on us?’
    She went a bit red. ‘I don’t think I was supposed to say that. See what I mean? Any time you open your mouth you can step on a mine and blow your leg off.’
    â€˜What do you mean, they did a police check on us? Who did? Your dad? Your uncle? The CIA?’
    â€˜There was a reason.’
    â€˜What reason?’
    She looked me straight in the eye.
    â€˜I can’t tell you that.’ She glanced towards the fence. ‘I think I better go now. It must be nearly six o’clock.’
    As she headed for the fence I called out, ‘Hey, no telling anyone I can play cricket, OK?’
    She called back over her shoulder, ‘Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.’
    â€˜Really?’ I wanted to say. I could only hope she’d keep my secret better than she’d kept the one about the police