by Cath Crowley
Then Kate plucks a lemon tart off the table and polishes it off in one mouthful. Ady finds a plate and starts cruising the table, making selections. She presents it to me.
‘You’ve had a shock. You need sugar.’
The tart is sublime, and so is the brownie. The almond croissant is perfectly flaky. I don’t feel numb anymore. I don’t even feel cold. The sugar rush is making me giggle. I pull off my swim cap and slingshot it across the carpet. We start laughing – we laugh for ages. It’s not that funny, and yet . . . it’s something. Something unexpected.
When we’re stuffed full, Ady sits at one end of the window seat and I sit at the other. Kate takes the piano stool, tinkles the keys.
Ady looks around. ‘It feels wrong without the beanbags.’
‘Do you think Malik was at the pool?’ I can’t bear to think of him seeing me like that.
‘What happened, Clem?’ Ady asks.
‘I don’t know. I just . . . I couldn’t stand it. Everyone watching.’ I stare down at my bathers. ‘This stupid suit.’
Ady looks around. She picks up the piano cover and drapes it across my shoulders like a cape. I hold it out to read the school motto: Orta recens quam pura nites.
‘Newly risen, how brightly you shine.’ Kate translates.
‘So, so bright,’ I say sigh. ‘I fucked up.’
‘Do you care?’
I think about it. ‘No.’ I feel strangely light at this admission. ‘I really don’t. I’m sick of this place. I’m sick of all of it. I’d happily go back to my last school. Any school.’
Kate says, ‘There are good things about St Hilda’s.’
‘Like what?’
‘More opportunity. At my last school most of the students had dropped out by Year 10, so they can help on the farm or do some apprenticeship. No one goes anywhere.’
‘Wake up and smell the privilege!’ It’s one of Jinx’s sayings.
‘My mum went here,’ Ady says. ‘Her mum too. They both married Basildon boys.’
I look at Ady, think about her photo-perfect Basildon boyfriend.
‘Are you going to keep the tradition?’
Ady doesn’t answer. She pops some brownie in her mouth.
And then I hear myself say, ‘What’s it like?’
The question hangs in the air.
Ady’s face shifts. ‘What makes you think I know?’
I shrug.
‘Don’t believe everything you read,’ Ady says softly.
I feel chastised, but also disappointed. I’m desperate for tips, advice, strategy. I used to get all my information from Iris but I’m not going there with this. The other night I googled ‘first time sex’ and saw some things I can’t un-see.
‘Fucking PSST,’ Ady says.
‘I hate that site.’ Kate thumps the ominous lower keys, playing monster music.
‘Hey,’ I say. ‘You think we can count this as our second social outing, for Malik?’
Ady groans loudly and I laugh like a seal. Kate’s monster music morphs into ragtime. I guess we go a bit delirious. In all our scoffing and scrambling, we don’t notice the door opening until it’s too late. Principal Gaffney and Deity Haydn-Bell enter laughing, but their laughter turns to shocked silence. Gaffa serves us her steeliest stare.
‘Girls!’ Her voice sounds demonic. ‘WHAT is going on?’
Kate, Ady and I freeze. We have violated the green room and decimated the dainties. I’m wearing a piano cover and dripping water on the carpet. I glance at Ady. Her lips are pressed tight together and her shoulders tremble with impending laughter. It’s because Kate’s still eating the brie. We are deeply fucked.
Sunday 14 August
If we’d analysed what we did in advance, each one of us would have known we were heading for a Saturday detention. But it was one of those glorious moments when three people make an unspoken pact: let’s just do it.
So now I’m waiting for the official talk from my parents.
I didn’t actually see Clem’s failure to launch; I walked into the buzz and confusion that followed it when I left the gear cupboard, where I’d been to meet Rupert.
I slipped into the gear cupboard – a room filled with squad kickboards, and lane floaty things, and water polo stuff, and containers of chlorine – while all eyes were on the brand-new turquoise investment.
I knew Rupert would be expecting that we’d mess around a bit, and I had firmly decided to delay the break-up till after the formal. (Don’t judge me.) When he came in, looking gorgeous, I knew I’d made the right decision.
He kissed me and, before my brain could intervene, break-up words started coming out of my mouth. It was like a Wellness class override coming into effect.
‘I’m sorry, Rupe, I think we’ve got to break up.’ I put my hand gently on his cheek. Not one pimple. He’s like a god. You could cast him as the younger brother of Sam Heughan and people would totally believe it.
He looked at me with a wary smile. ‘Are you joking?’
‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Why?’
I was as surprised as he was to hear it come out of my mouth: ‘I’m not in love.’ It’s not like we’d ever even mentioned love.
‘Me neither. But that’s not a problem, is it?’
‘Well, yeah – I mean, maybe.’
‘Is there someone else?’
Such an annoying response.
He obviously misinterpreted the pause. ‘Who is it?’
‘There’s no one else. And I’m kind of hurt that you’d think it.’
‘Well, I’m kind of hurt that I’m getting dumped for no reason.’
‘No offence, but “not in love” is not “no reason”.’
He was silent. He looked sulky, broody, like a model for an edgy fashion label.
‘I am sorry. I mean it. Wait a few minutes before you come out, okay?’
‘Okay.’
I planted one last kiss on his manly cheek. He flinched. Unnecessary dramatics, Rupe.
Anyway, that’s how come I left the pool hot on the bare heels of Clem, and how I found myself soon after eating a delicious and entirely unexpected morning tea.
My parents are not impressed.
I’m knitting my new project, a stripy cardigan that will have rainbow wings or petals erupting from the shoulders, budding, opening up further down towards the elbow. I am knitting because I’m impatient to make something the minute I think of it, and because I know it will annoy my parents that I’m not concentrating fully on their message to me about what a disappointment I am.
‘Do not smirk, Adelaide,’ my mother says. It wasn’t a smirk; it was a little ding of recognition about why I was finding myself interested in Kate and Clem. I don’t know what either of them will do next. I could write the script for Bec or Lola or Tash. But these two – nuh-uh, never at all what I expect.
‘I’m not.’
‘What you did was childish and so disrespectful. You ruined a carefully planned afternoon tea. You’re lucky it’s just a Saturday detention.’
‘Yeah, I feel so fricken lucky.’
My mother goes into her annoyed lip compression mode. ‘You could have been suspended.’
‘Like you were,’ I say, looking at my father. How can they be so self-righteous? It’s a family joke that he was suspended from Basildon, for smoking, when he was sixteen.
‘We’re talking about you, not your father.’
‘No, we never talk about him, do we?’
‘Could we lose the attitude, please?’ my mother says.
‘I know that we’re in trouble. I can hear you fighting. I don’t know why you even care about this. It’d be better if I got expelled. Then you wouldn’t have to pay my school fees.’
My parents exchange a long look.
‘Ady, we do want to talk to you . . .’ my father starts.
‘But not now.’ The way she looks at him! She’s clearly the source of my death-stare powers. Exactly what are they not telling me?
; My father’s look concedes my mother’s right to call the shots. He leaves the arena with a parting platitude: ‘School’s a game, Ady; you’ve just got to play along.’
‘You two think you’re so cool, but you’re such losers.’ I count some stitches.
My mother yanks the knitting out of my hands and slams it down on the table.
‘Could you stop deflecting attention from yourself and try for one minute to take this seriously?’
‘I know. If only I was perfect, like Clare.’
I can tell my mother is using all her self-control not to bite back. ‘I’m not going to keep talking to you while you’re being such a smart-arse. But do think about it. What you did was –’
‘“Childish and disrespectful”. I get it.’
‘You have so many opportunities, Ady – don’t be the person who takes that for granted.’
She walks out of the room, leaving me alone with my dropped stitches.
Happy families.
I wonder how much trouble Kate and Clem are in.
To say that Clem took the road less travelled today would be the understatement of the century. That Kate and I followed her is another unexpected result of the world according to Malik.
Sunday 14 August
‘I can’t believe you ate the brie,’ Mum says.
I can’t believe the brie is what she’s fixated on.
‘She said you ate the brie after she specifically told you to put it down. She said you ate the strawberry, too. You don’t even like strawberries.’
‘Why, Katie?’ Dad asks.
‘I was hungry,’ I say.
I can’t explain to them how good it felt to be with Ady and Clem in the Oak Parlour, to be letting things spill, to hear them spilling. It felt so good to hear Clem talk about the water and how she was willing to give it away, to listen to Ady’s certainty, to eat the brie and not care.
On my way out of the room I didn’t feel ashamed or worried. I felt reckless. I felt good. I felt desperate to call Oliver and tell him that I’m not giving up the audition.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Mum says, taking the phone back from Dad. ‘I can hear it in your voice. Something’s going on.’
I almost tell them.
But they’re about to go to bed early so they’re up in time for backbreaking work.
‘Were you led by someone?’ Dad asks.
‘She’s not a follower,’ Mum says.
I think back over the day and aim for the truth. ‘I was inspired.’
‘Well,’ Mum says, ‘I hope detention on the weekend is equally inspiring. I hope you’re also inspired by the fact that you’re not getting any more passes out of school until after your detention.’
‘I really need the passes,’ I say.
‘Why? You’ve got all the cheese you need right there in that school. We’re paying a heap of money for you to be there, Katie. We’re paying it because you said it’s what you want.’
‘It is,’ I say.
‘Then act like it.’ She hands the phone back to Dad.
‘It was just a slight malfunction of character,’ I tell him.
He says he knows it was. ‘It happens to us all.’ But he doesn’t say I can have my pass privileges back.
I hang up and Iris is looking at me with her I-told-you-so eyes. We’ve been fighting since I walked into the room and she launched at me because everyone had heard what we did, and she couldn’t believe I’d be so stupid as to get involved with Clem.
‘I didn’t get involved with her – I was helping,’ I said.
‘And look where it got you. That goes on your record. Your permanent record. It affects your chance of a scholarship.’
‘Principal Gaffney said it wouldn’t.’
‘You really think she gives you a free ride after that? You need to stay away from Clem, work hard and not get into any more trouble.’
Iris looks genuinely upset for me. Which is why I don’t tell her what I’m about to do next. I take my toiletry bag. I say I’ll be back in a minute.
I walk down the corridor calmly, but make a turn before I get to the bathroom, towards the basement. I take a second, not even that, to consider what I’m about to do. The road not taken, I think, and head into the darkness, past old costumes and suitcases and broken desks and chairs, feeling my way to the portal. It only takes one strong push.
And I’m free.
‘Hello?’ Oliver answers his phone.
‘Hello,’ I say, stomping my feet partly because it’s cold, and partly because I’m nervous, and mostly because I’m incredibly scared I’ll get caught.
‘Kate?’
‘Oliver?’
‘Now that we’ve established our identities,’ he says, ‘why are you calling?’
‘I escaped,’ I tell him, still slightly out of breath. ‘Through the portal.’
‘The what?’
‘The portal in the basement.’ I give him far too much information about how to get in and out of it. I’m just babbling now, so I get to the point. ‘Don’t ask Juliette. I want to start. Tonight. Only, I don’t have my cello.’ I look down at my feet. ‘I don’t even have shoes. I’m in socks.’
There’s a pause. I wait anxiously, hoping it’s not too late. ‘You don’t go through a portal in socks,’ he says. ‘Don’t you know anything? Stay put. I’m coming.’
He doesn’t take long. He doesn’t live far from the school, as it turns out. ‘Just around the corner,’ he says, looking at me and then at my feet. He says we can’t walk anywhere if I don’t have shoes, so we sit at the tram stop.
‘I’ll have to lie,’ I tell him, ‘which I don’t mind. Only now that I think about it, escaping with a cello will be difficult.’
‘You can use my dad’s. He won’t mind.’
The sky, the lights, the night, are all telling me I made the right decision. I get the strangest thought sitting here. As though inside is a landscape and I am at the very best part of me now. I’ve run right to the end, to the cliffs of myself.
‘I have to tell you something,’ Oliver says. ‘I spoke to Max tonight, told her about what happened at orchestra, about how I wouldn’t budge so I lost the chance of working with you. She said I had to tell you, and I think I need to tell you, too.’
I turn a little more towards him and wait.
‘It’s to do with what you call me,’ he says. ‘The anally retentive fuckwit.’
‘I’d forgotten I called you that.’
‘Alas, it’s not so easy for me to forget.’
‘Sorry.’
‘No, it’s okay. I am sometimes, about music, and when I’m nervous. And both things are happening when I’m around you. You make me nervous.’
‘Because I’m so good?’ I joke.
‘Partly,’ he says seriously, but doesn’t elaborate on the point. ‘I brought some music I thought you’d like.’ He hands me an earbud so I can listen. He puts the other in his ear. I’ve never heard the artist before.
‘It’s like Zoe Keating, but not.’
‘Julia Kent,’ he says. ‘This is “Gardermoen”.’
‘The album?’
‘Song. The album is Delay.’
A tram pulls up but we don’t get on. I wonder what we look like, to the people in there, staring out. Two people, joined at the ears by music.
‘How will you get home?’ he asks.
‘I haven’t thought that far.’
The stars sharpen up.
The world becomes more.
WEEK 6
THE IDEA OF PERFECTION
Week 6: The idea of perfection
Provocation
Song: Lou Reed, ‘Perfect Day’
Points for discussion/reflection
• What’s your idea of a perfect day?
• Is there such a thing as perfection? Is perfection even possible?
• What influences your idea of perfection? (Peers? Art? Media? Family?)
• Perfection is a myth promoted by the media.
/> • What are your flaws? How do you live with them?
• Perfection is boring. Flaws are what make people interesting.
• Beauty is subjective.
Task
In your journal, reflect on what your perfect day would be. Write an itinerary. Who would you be with? What would you be doing?
PSST
FAT CLAM’S WALK OF SHAME
Patrons of the St Hilda’s Winter Fair were terrorised by an unidentifiable fleshy mass. It came out of the water and remains at large. Heh heh.
diddywah: Some like ’em lardy.
K-bomb: That’s the most DISGUSTING thing I’ve ever seen. My EYES!!!
Ericsonic: Krispy Kreme.
Wylderworld: How about you Bizjiz? Up for jabba-action?
Bizjiz: Ha! My dick’d get lost in there.
StHildasSuffragette: Bizjiz – your dick’s so teeny-weeny you wouldn’t be able to find it in the first place. K-bomb – you’re the disgusting one. The fuck is wrong with you guys?
Ericsonic: Anyone harpooned that??? rate and review fresh meat for Rate the Boarders
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Monday 15 August
Iris follows me to the bathroom this morning, still going on about how stupid I was to sneak out last night, something only topped in stupidity by Clem, Ady and me eating the food in the Oak Parlour.
‘Did you think you wouldn’t get caught?’ she asks again, putting her toiletry bag on the shelf in front of the mirror and taking out her toothbrush. She’s asked me the same question at least fifty times, so I no longer feel like it requires an answer.
‘You’ve changed,’ she says.
She says this like it’s a bad thing, but people need to change. What if I stayed the same person all my life? I brush my teeth for a good long while, giving myself time to think about that, while Iris launches into a speech about how this is the kind of thing that happens when people hang out with Clem.