Take Three Girls

by Cath Crowley

  I’m not usually competitive with other people. I’m not even really competitive with myself. I get passionate about things and then I want to know as much as I can about them, so, usually, not counting the time I got obsessed with the ukulele, which still eludes me as an instrument, I get good at things.

  I put in the effort.

  I dropped out of private lessons because I knew Mum and Dad couldn’t afford them. And because I wanted to work with the computer, which was something my cello teacher couldn’t help me with.

  The idea that someone would think music isn’t important to me, when I’ve been practicing in the freezing cold, when all I think about is the Frances Carter audition, when I’m skipping maths and science tutoring because I’m so serious about it, when I’m spending all my hard-earned cash on looping software and how-to guides and music, is enraging.

  Somewhere along the way elegant Oliver’s got the wrong idea about me.

  Anal, not elegant. Anal Oliver. Repressed Oliver.

  Most people have the wrong idea about me at St Hilda’s. Here I’ve been slotted into the box of quiet, studious geek. Friend to Iris Banks and anyone who’s got a computer-related problem or a website to be built.

  This doesn’t bother me.

  But this – this view Oliver has – really bothers me.

  And it’s not about me secretly liking him as Iris’s eyebrows are suggesting right now. She’s so obvious, wiggling them at me like our argument is a sign that there’s something going on between us.

  There’s nothing going on between us, I think as he helps Sarah tune her flute, his lips hovering over the mouthpiece, stopping to inform her that the flute has the highest voice in the woodwind family.

  I do not want to kiss Oliver.

  What I want is for him to shut up with his explanation to Sarah.

  ‘Frances Carter doesn’t play the stops.’ I interrupt him. ‘Did you hear her that day? She played what she wanted to play, how she wanted to play it, and it was brilliant.’

  ‘You’re not Frances Carter,’ he says, and Sarah snorts again.

  ‘I know I’m not Frances Carter.’

  ‘Wait . . . you’re not thinking about auditioning?’

  That’s it. It takes me a long time to reach my limit, Oliver. A long time. But I have reached it. Well and truly at the limit now.

  I pick up my bow.

  I look at his knuckles and think about whacking.

  But then I decide to do something else.

  I pull my cello close, place my legs in exactly the right spots on either side, close my eyes and find the piece I want to play. I find it in my head. I remember notes like I remember mathematical formulas, like I remember where I’m meant to be on Wednesday nights. I see the piece hovering there in the dark under my closed lids.

  I count to three.

  My old music teacher used to say that Sonata No. 3 in G Minor for Cello and Harpsichord hit her like heartbreak every time. It hits me like that, too. Looped or not. In the sonata I hear dreams and conversations. I hear how much I want to win the place in Iceland. I hear longing in these notes. They go all the way to the past and forward to some future where I haven’t yet arrived.

  I finish playing and there’s quiet all around me. Mrs Davies and Iris are smiling. Grinning, actually. Sarah’s flute is forgotten. Oliver is staring at me. It’s the first time I’ve seen him speechless since we met.

  ‘We’ll have a little more of that, Kate,’ Mrs Davies says.

  ‘Nothing to say, Oliver?’ I ask, before rehearsal begins. ‘You’re uncharacteristically quiet.’

  He focuses on Mrs Davies.

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

  Oh, yes I do.

  I’m celebrating and singing myself all the way from the auditorium to the bus. Iris has gone back to the room for her travel sickness tablets, so I call Ben while I’m waiting for the rest of Year 10 to arrive.

  ‘I’m celebrating and singing myself,’ I say when he picks up, before he’s even had a chance to drink his coffee.

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘It means I showed Oliver that I’m a good musician.’

  ‘You’re a great musician.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you, too. In a completely platonic, stick a fork in my eye rather than date you kind of way. No offence.’

  ‘None taken. Have you spoken to anyone at school yet?’ I ask.

  ‘I had a brief conversation with a pigeon yesterday.’

  ‘I’m going out on a limb here and saying that doesn’t count.’

  ‘It was quite a pigeon,’ he says.

  ‘You and I both need to take a risk. I need to make something happen. You need to stop talking to pigeons instead of people.’

  ‘Plans of action?’ he asks.

  ‘Plans of action.’

  I make one for him. He makes one for me. We’ve been doing it forever because it’s easier to do what you’re told than to do something you tell yourself. Plans of action are the reason Ben joined The Wilderness Society and started writing to the Environment Minister every week to stop fracking, close coal mines and at least attempt to save the forests. It’s the reason he got on a bus and then a train and went to help a pod of whales that had beached themselves on the Warrnambool coastline. Plans of action are the reason I lobbied Mum and Dad to send me to St Hilda’s, the reason I started up a website-building business to save money for Melbourne – they’re the reason I’m here.

  ‘You need to join the chess club. Iris is shy. Iris is in the chess club here. Every second Sunday. She says it’s a good way to meet people,’ I say.

  ‘Not possible. I don’t even play chess.’

  ‘Then learn. Better yet, find someone, an actual person, to teach you.’

  The bus rolls in and I tell Ben to hurry and give me my plan of action. ‘I’m about to go on excursion. No time to argue the finer points of my plan.’

  ‘Okay – you have to cut out on excursion. Go to the record store and check out that club Orion you’ve been telling me about.’

  ‘Not possible. I don’t break rules like that.’

  ‘Then learn,’ he says. ‘Better yet, find someone, an actual person, to teach you.’

  Plans of action are always followed.

  This is the point of a plan of action.

  Iris appears after I’ve hung up. She couldn’t find her travel sickness tablets, so we sit at the front of the bus, right behind the driver. I would have thought the vibrations of the wheels would make the sickness worse; but Iris says no, all the space in front of her is good. ‘I can’t talk though. I need to sit quietly or I’ll vomit.’

  I’m happy to be quiet.

  I can feel the thrill of playing still in my hands. That thrill makes me entertain the thought that I might cut out on the excursion. I take my phone and look up Vinyl City on Google Maps while Ms Yelland gives us the outline of the day. We start at the Herbarium. There’ll be no chance to cut out during that. We’re all together and we have to answer questions on it.

  ‘You get an hour for lunch,’ Ms Yelland says, holding onto the overhead rail and swaying slightly. She looks dishevelled. I can see her racing for a coffee as soon as break starts and not checking on us till rollcall on the bus back.

  I can get to the record store and back in an hour.

  ‘Can you open the window?’ Iris asks.

  The breeze pours over us and the sky along with it. I fill Iris in on the plan, and ask her to cover for me. ‘Will you do it?’

  She keeps staring straight ahead. ‘Yes,’ she says after what seems like a long time. She doesn’t offer to come with me. There’s no way she’d risk her chance at the scholarship, which is based on behaviour and grades.

  So why am I even considering risking it myself?

  I’ve been to the Herbarium once before with Ben and his parents. So thanks to Ben, I already know about the history, the collection (1.5 m
illion dried plant and fungi collections, botanical library, archives, art) so it’s not a big deal that I can’t completely concentrate.

  I stand in the tropical glasshouse, staring at a Titan Arum from Indonesia, noting that it’s the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world, while I go through the pros and cons of cutting, the possible consequences, the potential fallout. I’m not sure what happens when you do something like this and get caught because I’ve never done anything like it in my life.

  Iris isn’t paying attention either. She’s trying to get me to read the latest PSST post. I act like I’m looking, but I couldn’t care less who’s giving who a blow job. It’s not my business and it’s not interesting.

  What’s interesting is Orion.

  At the start of lunch I watch Ms Yelland and wait for the best moment. When she’s lining up for coffee, I walk towards the road as fast as I can while still looking casual. I’m determined at first, but as I get closer I feel more hesitant. All that traffic. All that everything on the other side. Cross the road, Kate. Cross the road. On the count of ten, cross the fucking road.

  ‘You keep standing there, she’ll catch you.’

  I turn to see Ady sitting on the ground, legs stretched out, back against a tree, watching with what I’d describe as bemused disinterest. She nods over my shoulder, at Ms Yelland in the distance, and then tilts her head towards the road. ‘The light is green, Kate,’ she says.

  I take it as a sign.

  I go.

  Oh my god, I’m going.

  I get to the stop seconds before the tram arrives. I’m out of breath and ecstatic – euphoric – scared out of my mind – I can’t believe I’m doing this. After months of waiting I’m rolling along the city streets, rolling towards the record store, free of St Hilda’s, feeling crazy good. I stare at the time, willing the tram to go faster.

  I get off at Collins Street and follow the dotted line on the map that leads to Vinyl City. It’s in a regal old building, light brown brick that’s golden in the sunlight. The Subway next door looks out of place; the present slapped next to the past.

  Through a glass door on the right, I can see stairs. The sign on the glass says ORION and there’s a hand-drawn arrow pointing up. Standing back, I see there’s also an old sign made of light globes on the outside of the building. I imagine it lit up at night, the beckoning fizz.

  Leaning against the front of the record store is a girl my age, maybe a little older, wearing a black dress underneath a deep blue 1950s overcoat with black-and-white-striped tights and black boots. Her hair’s short short, and the same colour as her dress. She’s sipping a Big Gulp, staring at me. I remember I’m suited up in the very special St Hilda’s uniform. Without taking her lips from the straw she smiles. I smile back.

  We walk inside.

  The shop is narrow and long. Vinyl on one side, CDs on the other. It smells of cigarettes and dust but most of all it smells of music. Blues and jazz, electronica and indie. Gig posters stapled to the walls fight for space. There’s a huge picture of Dylan behind the counter – he’s surveying the store, the god who decides who’s in and who’s out. The guy working at the register drifts around to Beck. I locate the sound coming from a turntable at the front.

  I pick up some flyers for Orion then gravitate to electronica. I’m flicking through the O section when the Big Gulp Girl appears next to me and starts flicking through the Ps. She holds up Portishead’s Dummy, and I nod and hold up ohGr’s Welt and she makes a motion with her hand to signal that they’re kind of hardcore and I make a sign back that I agree. We keep flicking through records. Every now and then she looks at one I’m holding or shows me something she found, talking in vinyl.

  After a while, she heads to the counter, makes a purchase, smiles again at me on the way out, and, she’s gone. I follow her but I’m too late; she’s about to get on a tram, a piece of fast-moving sky.

  ‘Wait!’ I yell, and start running. I feel crazy chasing after her, but she turns towards the sound of me, shields her eyes against the sun, and waits for me to jog over. ‘I’m Kate,’ I say when I arrive, slightly out of breath.

  ‘Max,’ she says.

  ‘Your tram,’ I say, pointing as it pulls out.

  She dismisses it with a wave of her hand. ‘Interesting taste in music. Unusual for a St Hilda’s girl.’

  ‘Do you know many?’ I ask.

  ‘I like a woman in uniform. I know some Basildon guys, too.’

  I make a face.

  ‘They’re not all bad,’ she says.

  We don’t have time for a long conversation or a gradual lead-up. ‘I’m dying to go to that club,’ I tell her, and point at the Orion sign.

  She grins. ‘I’m going next Friday. Open mic night. Some of my friends are playing.’ She takes out her phone and waves for mine, keys in numbers and hands it back to me. ‘You’re a musician?’

  ‘Cello,’ I tell her. ‘You?’

  ‘Fan of music. Drama queen. I have a friend who plays cello. He’ll be there Friday night. I’ll introduce you.’ She looks at her watch. ‘I’m so late. See you Friday, Kate,’ she says, and only then do I look at my own watch. Time to run.

  Friday 15 July

  At the Botanic Gardens everything is green and black and damp. Our guide takes us through the Herbarium and the native path and up to the Volcano which is planted with every kind of succulent imaginable. Lainie keeps saying they look phallic or like baboon bums. Once she says it, I can’t stop thinking it. We laugh and make stupid monkey noises much to Iris’s disgust.

  For lunch we have free time to wander, gather intel, take photographs, whatever. I tell Lainie I want to find the Temple of the Winds. It’s this totally romantic-looking structure with columns and a domed roof. It sits at the top of the gardens and from it you can see the river and the city and all the way to the mountains.

  We set off for it. Right from the start Lainie’s complaining and saying, ‘Can’t we just get some chips?’ We’re walking alongside the lake when I notice a guy in the distance who looks like Stu. My heart stops for a second. It is Stu!

  He’s with a big group of picnickers; about twenty of them, some on camp chairs, some on rugs. I wonder if it’s his family, but they look too disparate. There’s a short, busty woman bossing people about, a guy in a cap who wobbles when he moves and a really fat guy who doesn’t stop talking. Stu’s bending over a girl with a guitar – he’s showing her a chord or something – and I feel mad envy.

  Lainie’s voice is gnatty in my ear. ‘Who are you looking at?’

  I cup my hand to smell my breath, then tell Lainie I’ll meet her at the cafeteria. ‘There’s something I’ve gotta do.’

  When Stu sees me walking towards him, he does a double-take.

  ‘It’s you!’

  ‘It’s me.’ I glance down at my uniform. ‘Excursion.’

  Stu indicates the party behind him. ‘Colleagues and clients.’

  ‘Who’s the skirt?’ I ask, trying to be tough.

  ‘You mean Millie?’

  ‘She’s got your guitar.’

  I’m an idiot. Only now realising that most of the people in Stu’s group look . . . different. I know there’s a politically correct way to say what I’m thinking – ‘intellectually challenged’ or ‘differently abled’. Anyway, Millie is immersed in the guitar, plucking away on one string, but holding it like a baby.

  ‘Work do. Christmas in July,’ Stu says. ‘Never say no to free food, that’s my motto. I do care work. That guy there is Benny, and that’s Daulton and that’s Ed. They live at the Blue House, residential accommodation. When I do the overnighters, those are the dudes I’m minding. You want to meet them?’ And before I know it he’s leading me over and introducing me to everyone. One guy tries to hide in his jumper, another is all up in my face with a barrage of cricket statistics and Millie smiles at me like I’m amazing.

  Stu takes my hand and a plate of half-eaten pavlova. ‘We’re just going for a walk,’ he announces. The busty
older woman gives him a look, but he just winks at her and half-marches me across the lawn until he’s out of their view.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Stu looks around frowning. I’m about to suggest the Temple of the Winds when he says, ‘There.’ He leads me to a clutch of trees that has a hollow just big enough for two people and a pav.

  Half an hour goes in five seconds. We gorge on sugar, and kissing, and we roll around in the leaf litter. After a while, Stu sits up.

  ‘This is no good,’ he says.

  ‘It isn’t?’

  ‘We need a place.’

  ‘Don’t you have a house?’

  He looks pained. ‘I live with my parents. It’s temporary. They’re retired. They never go out.’

  Stu picks up a branch that holds two seedpods, their smooth necks twisted together. He presents it to me. ‘Ah, the lovers.’ He has a light in his eyes and an edge to his voice. ‘What would happen if you got caught with me in your room?’

  ‘Expulsion. A BIB is a major infraction.’

  ‘BIB?’

  ‘Boy in Bed.’

  Stu’s finger has found a hole in my tights and he’s driving me to distraction. I start to babble, ‘There’s a door. We call it the portal. It’s in the basement. It doesn’t lock.’

  A text from Lainie, Where are you?

  ‘Shit!’ I scramble to my feet, brush down my tunic and press myself into Stu for a final kiss. Then I bolt across the gardens, feet nearly sinking in all the soft green lawn.

  I get back to the bus just in time.

  Ms Yelland eyeballs me. ‘So nice of you to join us, Clem.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, making my eyes big. ‘I got lost.’

  I sit, quietly shimmering, with the seedpods, the lovers, in my pocket, and my hand over it making a protective cage. We haven’t gone far when I feel something at the back of my head. I whirl around. Adelaide – Ady – has plucked a twig from my hair. Tash says, ‘What is that?’ Ady flicks the air. ‘Nits.’ She makes a face, her lips all drawn, reminding me of zombie dolls or fork marks in pastry. I give her a fake smile and she goes shadowy for a second. I think, So what if you’re beautiful, I’ve got Stu! Ha! I think this all the way back to the groan of fifth period.