The Year My Life Broke Read Online Free PDF Page B

check.
    I went back inside and lay on my bed, thinking about the security check. I knew what it would be though. There was only one possibility. That bloody Antelope. It had wrecked our lives. For the millionth time I wished my parents never had anything to do with it. Now it seemed like the cops were watching us, and this girl already knew my life story.
    Of course Antelope hadn’t just wrecked our lives: it had messed up a few thousand other people’s as well.

We got the last four Pipertown wickets for 50 – they had one player away, but so did we. I bowled a few overs without getting a wicket, but I did take a catch at mid-off. So, they led by 74, which meant the game would be a draw unless they knocked us over quickly for the outright. And we started real well. A run-out off the first ball. Cypress had some good players but the openers weren’t crash hot and their running was terrible. Sometimes they looked like they were playing ‘What’s the Time, Mr Wolf?’
    It didn’t improve much from there and I went in at 6 for 54, about the same as the week before, except that Wally had dropped me in the order after my spectacular duck. This time I was determined to concentrate on every ball. I remembered how Don Bradman had batted: ‘Never hit the ball in the air.’ That eliminated the chance of getting caught and getting caught is the way most batsmen get out.
    So I just defended and defended and defended, getting my right elbow high in the air and playing the old forward defensive for ball after ball. I got sledged a fair bit by the Pipertown kids but at least the one who’d made the smart comment from square leg last week didn’t have so much to say. Then I nearly got trapped LBW. I played outside the line of a ball from a girl who bowled medium pace but this time got more swing than I expected. I thought I’d managed to just graze it with the bat but you couldn’t have expected the umpire to hear that, or notice any deflection. I stood there staring at him in that hypnotised way that I know never looks good but it’s hard not to do it. Seemed like about three minutes before he shook his head and said, ‘Just a fraction high, I reckon.’
    I was glad they didn’t have DRS. But it made me realise that I couldn’t keep blocking till stumps. The bowlers were too good and the cordon of fielders was getting closer. I had to play a bigger range of shots. And the very next ball was too tempting to ignore: nicely pitched up, just outside off stump, exactly where I like them. I did a bit of a shuffle, unlike in the first innings where I hadn’t moved my feet at all, and suddenly the close-in fielders were ducking for cover and the ball was across the boundary and into the trees. My first six since before Christmas.
    I didn’t go crazy and try to hit every ball out of the ground but I did get a lot of confidence from that shot, and I pulled the last ball of the over to square leg for four. I could feel my form coming back like blood through my veins. I hit five off the next over and then four, eight, nine . . . I wasn’t keeping track of the score but after a while I knew I must have been close to fifty, and sure enough, there was a lot of clapping from under the trees halfway through the next over when I ran a single, and the umpire said, ‘Well played.’
    By then though we’d lost two more wickets and with only ten players that meant we were down to our last batsman, a girl called Penny. I had no idea of the score or the time but I thought we should get as big a cushion as possible, so I went for it. Pipertown were getting tired, so it wasn’t that difficult. I hit anything I could and tried to keep the strike, and we made it through about five more overs before Penny got bowled. Just clipped her leg-stump, and that was the end of the innings. We headed back to Wally and the deckchairs, where I found that I was 99 not out. Like they