This morning, Eve thought she had hit on a winner: West Nile virus, carried by mosquitoes and predominantly infecting animals but also transmitted to humans. Symptoms included headache, fever and pain in the joints. She could do all those. But at 7.30 am, Ms Atkins told Eve she didn’t want to see her again even if she had cancer or was bleeding to death from her eyeballs.
‘I don’t like liars, Ms Hardy. The world doesn’t take kindly to liars.’
Eve trudged, as much as a skinny six-foot girl can, down the hall past rooms where girls were fine-tuning hair, completing last-minute homework on the floor and checking they had their swimmers for PE, knowing that no one was going to stop her and ask her in, ask her anything. Everyone knew she was infected. Contagious. It was a pity that wouldn’t wash with Ms Atkins. Sarah had already left for class, her bed made and books stacked neatly on her side table. Eve tried to remember what Sarah’s first class was. It was biology, and Eve had modern history. This year, they didn’t share one class. They only crossed paths at lunch or recess at school. Eve pushed the neat stack of Sarah’s books into an un-neat stack. She knew that even Sarah thought she was infected. She pretended she didn’t, because Sarah was good at that, but she would slip away from Eve like beads of water down a cold glass.
Eve had begged her to talk to Rebecca, and Sarah kept saying she would. When Sarah wasn’t promising or disappearing, she was studying. In the past three weeks, she had developed a love of studying. That’s what Sarah had told Eve breathlessly when Eve found her one afternoon.
‘Sorry, Eve. I was studying. Mum really wants me to get out of my comfort zone this year, improve my marks in everything.’ Sarah had put her hand on Eve’s shoulder and said the words as though it was all a huge pain, a big imposition.
Eve noted that Sarah would sit with her at dinner, but she would join the conversation with Elizabeth or Fiona or Kate, always making sure it wasn’t just her and Eve. Eve also noted that Sarah was starting to eat double serves of everything, pretending she wasn’t going to eat anything at all and then eating more than anyone. She was sly about it: eating as she walked to take her plate to the pile of dirty dishes or grabbing and gulping when everyone was leaving the table. She touched food when no one was looking. It was the same thing she did with Eve. She touched her when no one was looking.
After West Nile virus failed her, Eve waited until the bell rang to make the dash to English class. Her every movement was considered, as if she was watching herself in a full-length mirror, being careful not to make any mistakes: the way she stood outside the classroom; to lean or not to lean against the bag rack; to clutch school books in front or rest them casually on her hip; to put her fingers up to her fringe and fix it. There was constant noise in her head, yet there were just whispers and silence around her. Whispers and silence. She moved in her own separate world, sometimes being bumped in the shoulder by a girl wanting to get past to mind seats.
Eve slid into a seat in the back row in English class and made herself busy with textbook arrangement. When Rebecca walked in with her friends, their excitement and force made all heads turn.
Judo 4 were playing tonight at the Hordern Pavilion, they shrieked more than once. Somebody ran up and down on the spot, the energy from footsteps that went nowhere lighting up the stationary girls seated behind the desks.
‘Johnny Nicholas. I would die. Die.’
‘Can’t wait.’
A forearm was grabbed and squeezed for emphasis. The back of a blouse pulled.
‘What are you wearing?’
The teacher was late, and Amelia stood in her place at the front of the classroom and began singing, throwing her arms out so wide they almost touched the blackboard behind her. ‘You’re my bright sky, my torment. Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be your man. Gimme gimme your love, your love, your love.’
Girls started banging on their desks with the palms of their hands, repeating ‘your love, your love’. The fan whirred above their heads, feet stomped on the carpet and the volume grew. Eve turned to look out the window to search for any sign of Mrs Chapman and only caught Isabel Ching running down the corridor, looking worried.
There was a tap on Eve’s shoulder, and she turned to find Rebecca sitting on the desk in front, her legs crossed, facing her.
‘Eve, are you going tonight?’
‘Pardon?’
Eve thought she saw Rebecca half-roll her eyes, but then Rebecca leant forwards and asked in a louder voice, ‘Are you going to the Judo 4 concert tonight?’
Rebecca was talking to her. Eve couldn’t get the chorus out of her head. Everyone was singing. Hands were waving. Amelia was leading the whole class; she had a duster in one hand and a whiteboard eraser in the other, banging them together. Rebecca was leaning over. Eve tried not to act too relieved.
‘No, no. I didn’t know about it.’
‘Oh, Eve. You’re going to miss seeing Johnny Nicholas. He is so gorge.’ Rebecca listed Johnny’s best assets as she hopped off her desk and pulled a seat next to Eve. Eve moved her chair in a bunny-hop to the right to give Rebecca more room. ‘Don’t you just love Johnny Nicholas?’
Eve hadn’t prepared for this and was no good at impromptu. She stuttered at first before collecting herself and remembering to slow her words down.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s divine.’ Eve managed to release a few more adjectives about Johnny Nicholas, deciding that now was not the time to tell Rebecca she had never heard of Judo 4. She knew she’d been missing a lot of important things lately.
Rebecca flicked Eve’s fringe out of her eyes. ‘You’re growing your hair long. I like it.’
‘Thanks.’
Everything was returning to normal. She was like Alice in Alice in Wonderland when she wakes up under the tree and realises it was all a dream, that there is no Mad Hatter, or evil Queen of Hearts or very late bunny rabbit.
‘Such a pity you’re not going. I wish I’d known so I could have got you tickets. Everyone’s going.’
‘Bloody boarding house. They don’t let me do anything. It’s a gulag,’ Eve said, her chest expanding to breaking point. Then she lowered her voice and whispered, ‘Rebecca, what did I do? Why weren’t you talking to me?’
‘Oh, Eve. You get so worked up over nothing. It was a mix-up, that’s all.’
Eve didn’t press further, as the noise had lowered to a quiet hum of girls going about their business together. The teacher, or her replacement, would presumably be coming down the concrete walkway any minute.
‘So you just love Judo 4 too?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, I do. Can’t believe I can’t go. It’s so unfair.’
Rebecca began swaying next to Eve and singing. Other girls around the classroom began singing. Morning light fell through the window in a slanted rectangle, nearly touching the teacher’s desk.
‘You’re my bright sky, my torment. Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be your man. Gimme gimme your love, your love, your love.’
‘C’mon, Eve,’ Rebecca said, her shoulder touching Eve’s.
Eve started on the chorus; it was all she had managed to pick up in the last ten minutes, and she hoped it would be enough. She made a mental note as her lips parted to say ‘Gimme gimme’ that she would make sure she found someone with a Judo 4 tape as soon as she went back to the boarding house. ‘Gimme gimme your love, your love, your love.’
Someone said ‘Shut up’, and everyone stopped singing except for Eve. Her voice, shaky and unsure, halting at the window, hung in the room like a body from the ceiling.
‘Keep going, Eve,’ Rebecca said when Eve began to trail off. She stopped singing, and Rebecca repeated, ‘Keep going, Eve.’
All heads turned as Eve started up again, her high voice scraping against the windows and down the blackboard until it faded to almost nothing. She bowed her head to finish the song. ‘You’re my bright sky, my torment. Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be your man. Gimme gimme your love, your love, your love.’
Rebecca stood up, k
nocking her chair onto the table behind. ‘You are such a liar, Eve Hardy. There is no such thing as Judo 4 or Johnny Nicholas. We made it up and you lied to us. You can’t have ever heard that song because it doesn’t exist. You were talking about Johnny Nicholas like he was real. How sad and pathetic.’
Rebecca shook her head and waited until every single girl in the class was craning her head in their direction. She could feel when the moment was right to speak. ‘You are a liar.’ Then she turned to address the class. ‘I told them you were a liar. No one believes anything you say, Eve. No one.’
After the class inhaled collectively then exhaled a mix of relief that they were not the chosen one, they waited to take their cue and joined the rising laughter that reverberated across the room.
‘I made that up this morning, Eve. Pretty cool song, hey?’ Amelia said, pushing Eve in the back of the head.
‘Don’t do that, Amelia, the liar might cry. Look around, Eve.’ Rebecca paused. ‘Everyone knows what you’re really like now. I suppose you might tell us now you had lunch last week with Rob Lowe?’
Eve said nothing. She stared down at her textbooks, her neck turned red and she felt cold prickles spread inside her body. It wasn’t good enough for Rebecca. Her hand came down and flicked Eve’s textbooks to the ground, and then her own and then Amelia’s.
‘Oh, sorry! Silly me,’ Rebecca said. ‘You should pick those up, Eve.’
Eve picked up her textbooks and put them back on her desk, and then she picked up Rebecca’s textbooks and put them on Rebecca’s desk, and when she looked up different sets of dewy pink lips were mouthing ‘liar’ at her.
‘Oops, there’s a pile here too, Eve,’ Rebecca said, standing over fallen textbooks further down the row of desks. ‘Don’t bother getting up.’
Eve stayed on her hands and knees to pick them up and heard the thud of more textbooks falling onto the carpet. Then another thud and another.
‘There’s lots to pick up, Eve,’ Rebecca said. Her voice was at the front of the classroom now.
Eve crawled from desk to desk, picking up textbooks and putting them back on desktops, making sure she kept her eyes down so she could restrict her senses as much as possible. In that moment, her world became hands stretched out, textbooks, carpet, school shoes, table legs, laughter. Hands stretched out, textbooks, carpet, school shoes, table legs, laughter. She crawled from desk to desk underneath the pockets of scorn and pity, past knees and crisp white socks. She stopped crawling only once, to wipe a tear that had fallen from her cheek onto the back of her hand, and then she continued, knowing she needed to finish.
When she crawled past Bethany Stephens’ desk, a strawberry-scented rubber hit her on the bottom. A few desks on, a couple of HB pencils hit her on the back, and a bright-red sharpener with its own attached waste disposal cracked the back of her head. It was all small stuff – pencils, sharpeners, rubbers, three rulers – no calculators or textbooks or protractors. The worst was when the flotsam connected with her head. She tried to be ready, but each time it was a shock. Six girls in the class of seventeen kept their pencil cases shut and kept spinning their heads towards the louvres, hoping to see their teacher coming down the steps. Then one girl yelled, ‘Here she comes! Mrs Chapman is coming!’
Mrs Chapman swung into the room just as Eve had picked up every last textbook and ten girls had collected the contents of their pencil cases from the floor, apologising to the class for being late with a wave of her hand. As she spoke, Eve slipped into her seat and made a decision not to rub the lint and carpet from the round, red patches on her knees. She faced the teacher, unaware that two rainbow clips had somehow become dislodged and now swung near her ear on strands of hair every time she moved her head. ‘I had to finish off the paperwork for this year’s Occupational Health and Safety in the classroom.’
The class opened their textbooks to page 54 as instructed and began reading the words of Charles Dickens. Everything stung. Eve tried to turn the pages of her novel but they were thin and she couldn’t find page 54. She went backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards as quietly as she could, licking her fingers, trying to make the pages stick, trying to get where she needed to be. She finally flattened her book on page 54 and stubbed out a tear running down the side of her nose with an already wet finger. She grabbed her right wrist under the desk, her thumb holding the back and her fingers pressing down on the front, pushing in, moving fast, up and down, up and down. Eve played ‘Air on the G String’, her fingering swift, up and down and around on her wrist, under the desk, while her class pretended not to look at her. Her wish had been granted. Rebecca wasn’t ignoring her any more.
When Eve finally saw Sarah for the first time at 4.30 that afternoon, Sarah had her legs straight out in front of her and was lazily packing a small suitcase while talking to Penny Cross. Penny was in the midst of a forty-five-minute hair-conditioning treatment and was wearing a floral shower cap. Eve stood at the doorway for a few minutes and watched Sarah chatting to Penny, sliding underwear into the side pockets of her suitcase, a pair of court shoes, telling Penny about the restaurant she was going to that night. It was Friday, and Sarah was packing for a weekend out.
Eve ran her fingers up and down the doorframe until someone said ‘Excuse me’ from behind. The boarding house was a muted version of school. Proximity and constancy kept most of the girls close to civil. Nothing more, though. ‘Pass the milk.’ ‘Excuse me.’ ‘Did you put your empty popper in my bin?’
Sarah and Penny turned to the door, and Sarah jumped up and slid her suitcase under the bed. ‘Hi,’ she said to Eve.
‘I’ve been looking for you,’ Eve replied.
‘I’ve been here.’
‘Packing?’
‘Yeah.’
They both stood in the hallway side by side with their backs against the wall. It was something every girl automatically did: you needed to be able to see who was coming when you were talking.
‘Where are you going?’ Eve asked. She had come to tell Sarah about Rebecca. She needed to tell her first, explain herself about Judo 4, about what happened at English today, that she wasn’t a liar, but the suitcase under the bed changed everything.
‘My mum organised it,’ Sarah said plaintively. ‘I didn’t know until yesterday. A weekend out at Rebecca’s. I had nothing to do with it.’
Eve looked at Sarah and said nothing. The nothing made Sarah talk more.
‘Eve, I’m your friend, you know that. I’ll be back Sunday night.’ Again, the emptiness pulled at Sarah’s words. ‘I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to. My mum is angry at you, says I can’t trust you, over what happened with Rebecca’s dad.’
‘What happened? What did I do? Tell me what I did, Sarah, with Rebecca’s dad. Tell me.’
‘Oh. I don’t …’
‘Tell me.’ Eve’s voice was low and pleading. Sarah kept her eyes on the wooden banister across the hall. Occasionally, little heads would bob up, step by step, followed by a whole person, and then they would disappear into a doorway.
‘Rebecca says you walked in on him in the shower deliberately, that you put your hand on his thigh under the table at dinner. She said you told him you wished he was your dad. She said there’s something wrong with you.’
Eve stared at Sarah with her mouth open.
‘You wanted me to tell you,’ Sarah said. ‘I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding.’
‘God. I walked in on him when he was cleaning his teeth once. He was in his suit. I said sorry. I don’t understand why she’s saying this. I went on holidays with them. I hardly spoke to her dad. He was cleaning his teeth.’
Eve went flat against the wall, her palms slapping the double brick, needing the heaviness of it, the solidity. In a small voice, she said, ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’ll talk to Rebecca this weekend,’ Sarah said.
‘Will you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Can you tell them about how he was cleaning his teeth, and he was in
a suit, and I said sorry?’
‘Sure.’
‘And that I never put my hand on his thigh or –’
Sarah turned and leant her shoulder against the wall so she was facing Eve. ‘Look, it will blow over soon, and everyone will forget about it. It’s a big, fat mistake,’ she added reassuringly, and then her voice changed. She was pleading. ‘But if Rebecca sees me around you, she will tell her mum, who will tell my mum. You see, don’t you, Eve? I just have to be careful, just for a little while.’
‘Okay,’ Eve said. ‘Okay.’ But then she added, ‘You don’t have to go.’ She could feel a chip in the wall with her finger. It was all chalky, like a mini moon crater. ‘You could stay here. I could help you with your English assignment.’
‘If I go, I can talk to Rebecca.’
‘She hates me,’ Eve said. ‘They all hate me.’
‘That’s not true,’ Sarah answered, as though Eve was saying the sun comes out at night.
Eve wondered whether they were standing in the same hallway, in the same year, on the same planet. Girls walked past clutching shampoo and brushes and books. Water was running and toilets were being flushed at the other end of the hall. Penny stuck her head with the floral bathing cap atop out the doorway to see what was happening and then stuck it back in quickly when she saw the two of them up against the wall. Eve felt hot prickles tumbling down her neck, spreading across her chest. ‘Why won’t you be my friend, Sarah? You’re not being a friend.’
Sarah’s over-the-top stunned look spurred Eve on. And Eve saw the white room, the mad old lady next door, lying in the lounge room next to Rebecca, drinking Milo. ‘Meg said you never like to rock the boat. You’re always trying to make people like you. You’ll do anything to make people like you.’
Under the Influence Page 19