The Things We Keep

‘The Things We Keep’ gave me a very realistic picture of a primary school playground in the 1980s, with sensitively drawn characters and a twist at the end.

— Fellowship of Australian Writers New South Wales

Sam was eleven when he won the Super Nintendo. He was weightless, like he’d won gold in Atlanta. He blew orange dust from the winning ticket he’d plucked from his Cheezels packet at recess. Mine went straight into the bin with the crumbs, as did Luke’s second-chance draw card. Luke already had a Super Nintendo, and I had an old Sega, so we were happy for Sam. We often saw his mum at the food bank near the canteen collecting dented cans of baked beans and expired produce. She’d struggled since Sam’s dad died, so we knew she’d never spend $300 on a Nintendo. For a short time at the end of grade six, it felt like Sam found his own patch of sunlight. For me, it was a time when luck was something you could claim, just by staying close enough to the right person.

Sam found Luke and me at lunch, trading basketball cards in the library’s non-fiction section, which even the librarian seemed to forget existed. “It’s here!” he whispered to us. “Come over after school.”

Instead of rushing home to watch Round the Twist, Luke and I pedalled hard to Sam’s place. We ducked beneath the swooping magpies that guarded the school’s entrance, who only had eyes for Luke’s orange helmet. Sam chose to ride with his mum – even a few extra minutes without his prize was unbearable – leaving us to pedal through the black exhaust cloud of their ‘85 Datsun.