Fall by Candice Fox

rounded the first quarter marker, Peter Anderson was rushing past her, his huge legs striking out,hitting the grass with thuds. Boys from Flinders and Cook houses followed, grabbing at the feathers. They were still chanting their house songs. Tara could hardly breathe.
    Run, run, boys and girls,
    Try to get away,
    We won’t stop, can’t stop,
    Gonna make you pay!
    For the next quarter, all she did was wait for the bigger boys to lap her again. When they did they came in silence, the game on now, the home stretch in sight. Tara huffed and struggled through the bush at the bottom of the school, following the rustling pink streamers over rocky ground, her thick ankles rolling over sharp stones in the clay. Small helpless sounds came out of her. In the rocking, bouncing world she spotted Mr Lillington standing among the trees, a carpentry magazine in his hands, his heavy brow furrowed. The older man heard Tara bumbling along well before he saw her. Tara hung her head, burned as he watched her slowly approach.
    â€˜Hey,’ the man said, jutting his chin. ‘Harper. Harper. Down there and around to the right.’
    Tara wheezed, looked, tried to control her whimpering. Sweat rolled down her calves. The teacher pointed, raising his furry brows.
    â€˜Down there, girl,’ he said.
    He said ‘girl’ the way Joanie said ‘stupid’. But when Tara looked, she saw the trail leading off towards the quadrangle and nodded. A shortcut. The music teacher watched her go, his lined face softened by pity.
    She heard other children laughing as she cut away. But Tara only wanted it to be over. She emerged at the edge of the field as Peter Anderson sailed through the finish ribbon, his arms outstretched and shirt gone. Girls visiting from the high school pelted his hard, pale body with water bombs. Tara clambered up the rise and headed for the lines of teachers and parents.
    Her mother would be there among the crowd somewhere. Tara sucked air and forced herself on. She was so slow that she could measure individual expressions as she passed, heard snippets of words from the parents.
    Whose kid is that? Harper. Harper girl … chubby little … rolls … kid’s gonna have herself a heart attack.
    â€˜That girl’s snorting like a piggy,’ a girl at the edge of the crowd said, pointing at Tara as she passed. ‘Piggy, piggy, piggy.’
    Tara felt sweat in her eyes. She pounded towards the finish line. A crowd of her classmates was waiting for her there, stretching their thin, strong limbs, zinc rubbed from noses and dribbling from wet chins. She could smell the barbecue.
    Oranges. Tubs of quartered oranges. Tara headed up the straight and it was Craig Dune who threw the first slice.
    â€˜The food’s up here, fatty-boom-bah! Run, run, run.’
    Tara felt an orange slice bump against her chest. Then another. Suddenly a rain of them, boys and girls from older grades hurling the slices at her legs, her face. Teachers shouting, reaching for little wrists. She caught a rind in the eye and slid in the wet grass. She fell hard on her side before the finish line. She could see the balloons, the girl with the broken leg and the timer sitting on the stool.
    In the crowd, Joanie had her arms folded, eyes on the horizon. Tara scrambled to her feet and pushed through thebodies of the adults, the forest of hips and stomachs, until she reached her. Her mother stood beside a woman who might have been her twin – both caramel goddesses wrapped in strips of fine grey silk. Joanie’s ringlets were pulled tight in a ponytail on her square shoulder, the curls cascading down her chest.
    â€˜Mum,’ Tara gasped through the tears. ‘Mum.’
    â€˜Is this your little one?’ The woman beside Joanie looked down at Tara with a mixture of concern and humour, her crooked smile faltering when she noted the orange juice dripping from the girl’s hair.
    â€˜Mum,’ Tara pleaded,