Billy Bobbins

Some of you may have noticed strange occurrences in the drama room recently. Curtains moving for no apparent reason, windows mysteriously being opened, the computerised lights behaving in unexpected ways, that sort of thing.
It's time you learned the truth....

the truth about Billy Bobbins, the ghost of the Redback Theatre...

Billy Bobbins was a year 7 student at NPSC. He was one of those shy, quiet kids, that sits in the front row, but right over the side out of the teacher's line of sight. One of those kids that stands on the edge of a group of friends, but never quite makes it into the circle, and never says anything, until the circle closes him out and he quietly drifts away without anyone noticing that he has gone, or was even there to begin with. He yearned to be part of a group like that...to feel like he belonged somewhere...anywhere...
While he was desperate enough to take anything, of all the little cliques and groups and clubs at NPSC, the one he longed to be a part of the most was the Redback Theatre Group. On transition night last year, he had come along to the school and sat in the audience in the drama room as they put on a show. He had sat on a plastic green chair in the back corner, closest to the door, as all the other grade sixes from all the schools in the area pushed and shoved and crowded into the front rows and packed out the room.
And what a room! He'd never seen such a wonderful room in any of the primary schools he had been to. Big velvety looking curtains, strange, complicated looking lights and control panels, a real, carpeted stage...
Then the lights went down, and the Redback Theatre Group did their thing. Billy was entranced! Not by the play, he couldn't really follow that...something about an elephant, and a butler, and a missing bear, and a lesbian couple - but he laughed and cried and cheered all the same. No, what really held him spellbound were the actors themselves. They seemed so alive and energetic, so confident. Their voices, their body language, the way they trusted each other to each play their part, all came together to make them one big, living breathing, moving, wonderful team.
So entranced was Billy in the actors that he almost didn't notice when the play finished. Only the applause and cheers from the other grade 6s snapped him out of his daydreams. Avoiding the crush and the rush for the door that would undoubtably follow, Billy slipped out the door to wait for his parents in the corridor outside. He pressed himself against the wall, doing his best to avoid eye contact with the flood of chattering children who swirled out of the room and away down the halls of their soon-to-be-new-school. Not that it was necessary. Not one of them even looked in his direction. He sighed as they swept by.
It was obvious that many of them were already making friends, or worse, already were friends, from primary school, or local sporting teams. Still, it was hard for Billy to feel too down...not after what he'd just seen in that room. Looking around him now, he saw that the drama room was just as interesting on the outside as on the inside. The corridor windows, which he'd assumed from the inside were just painted black, he now saw were actually notice boards, and on the notice boards outside...oh, the the pictures! Dozens of pictures of kids laughing and kissing and posing and dressing up and acting out and having fun and most of all, looking like they belonged. Right there and then he knew what he was going to do. What had that tall, scary looking teacher said in the speech in the library? Moving from primary school to high school was a chance to 'make a new start'. Well that's what he was going to do...he was going to take that chance, he was going to make a new start...

(to be continued)