Free Forgetting Foster by Dianne Touchell

Dad and her, sat at the kitchen table and ate it. Foster cracked his door open just a bit, so it didn’t make any noise. He could hear the rustle of cellophane and the chink of forks on china and the low voices and no one came to get him. Even though he’d sent himself to his room he felt the exclusion like an arrow.

cake and class news
    Somehow it got to school. Someone had been at the church, some grown-up Foster didn’t know. But that grown-up knew someone who knew someone who had kids and all of a sudden Foster found himself on the receiving end of some peculiar attention he couldn’t account for. Boys would sniff him as they went past and then giggle. There were some jokes about restricting fluids from the older boys. Foster laughed along at first because everyone else was laughing and he didn’t understand. He didn’t want to be kept outside the joke. He had been kept outside a lot lately, so if there was a joke, and people laughing, he was happy to laugh along too. But then Jack, who got picked on a lot because he was smaller than everyone else and had a facial tic, told Foster, ‘They’relaughing at you. They reckon you peed your pants in church.’
    ‘I know that, stupid,’ Foster replied. But he hadn’t known. The knowledge stung, but he wasn’t about to make his humiliation worse by admitting he was stupid as well. ‘It wasn’t me, anyway,’ he continued. Foster tried to sound casual and hoped his sudden breathlessness didn’t make his panic show.
    ‘Who did then?’
    ‘Dad. He’s sick, you know.’
    ‘I thought he was just mental.’
    ‘He’s not mental!’ Foster said, thinking about the smell in the car. ‘He just got confused.’
    ‘About what?’
    ‘Where he was.’ Foster turned on the tone Aunty used. Firm and instructive.
    ‘Did he think he was on the loo?’
    ‘Sort of,’ Foster replied. ‘It’s nothing for you to worry about.’
    ‘Not worried,’ Jack said. ‘Don’t care. You’re the one with the mental dad.’
    Foster was going to say something but couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make things worse. He was wretched about the whole thing. He concentrated on the cake he hadn’t been invited toshare, because it gave him something real to be cross about.
    When they walked into class and sat down, Foster saw Jack lean over to Blinky and whisper in his ear. Then both boys turned around laughing, Blinky’s eyelids fluttering like a bee’s wing. Foster felt bad-dream breathless, made all the worse because he knew he was already awake.
    Dad had once told Foster a story about a queen who was part bee and part lady. She had wings that beat so fast their thrum was like the ping of a harmonic on a guitar string. Her name was Melaina, a name Foster thought as musical as the sound of her trembling wings. She lived in the underworld, probably the same place Mum’s moat serpents came from. Dad didn’t actually say that but Foster imagined the underworld to be full of dark things that trap princesses and inspire heroes. But Melaina was very sad. After dark she would take flight among sleeping humans and bring them a draught of honey laced with her melancholy. Dad said that’s where bad dreams come from. And when she finished whispering her sadness into the ear of a soundly sleeping boy she would leave a fine dust of golden pollen on his eyelashes, like a sticky gauze. That’s why it was so hard towake up from a nightmare, Dad said. She was not to be feared, but pitied. Dad sat on the edge of Foster’s bed on the night of that story until he fell asleep again. Dad didn’t sit on the edge of Foster’s bed much anymore.
    ‘Foster Sumner!’
    Blinky and Jack were still looking at Foster but so was the whole class now. Mr Ballantyne was looking too.
    ‘Yes?’ Feeble, but it was the first thing to come out of Foster’s mouth.
    ‘Wakey-wakey, Foster, I said,’ Mr Ballantyne continued. ‘It’s your turn to give class news. What would you like to share this