Millie and the Night Heron
Page 4
Sheri said I shouldn’t say ‘weird’. I should say ‘individualistic’ and ‘opinionated’. She said that one day I would come into my own and then the world had better watch out. Sheri used to say things like that until she met Brendan.
Brendan said, ‘That’s a troubled child. There’ll be problems ahead there, I can see them now.’ I heard him. I was hiding in the broom cupboard at the time. It’s a long story, but I wouldn’t mind betting he knew I was there, because I saw him through the little crack and he gave the cupboard a long, suspicious stare as though he did know and he meant me to hear what he said.
Some days I thought the old Sheri was right and other days I thought Brendan might be right. Mum simply didn’t notice.
‘You’re just like I was at your age,’ she said, laughing and pulling my hair, gently, ‘with a bit of Patrick thrown in. You’ll be fine.’
I emailed Patrick, saying I had to do a school project on ‘What School Was Like in Your Parents’ Day.’ He wasn’t reassuring.
> To: milliethegreatest@hotmail.com
> From: pmcd@londonuni.edu.uk
>
> School days. Ha! Don’t talk to me
> about SCHOOL. It was simply BARBARIC,
> Millie. It nearly KILLED me.
> I HATED EVERY MINUTE except for
> science and mathematics, which was
> JUST bearable. Even that was RANDOM.
> One year I was stuck with Mr Henshaw
> who knew LESS than I did about
> ALMOST EVERYTHING. Personally, I
> think every child should be tutored
> and schools made OBSOLETE. Better not
> put THAT down, Millie sweet. You
> don’t want to put the teachers off.
> But I went to school in the DARK AGES.
>
> LOVE
> patrick.
>
Of course Patrick had it wrong. It wasn’t school I was worried about. That was easy. It was playtime, lunchtime and the camp looming like a hurricane on the horizon. They were the problems. The work was easy.
The library was open during lunchtime and that’s where I went. The lunchtime librarian on Mondays was always Ms O’Brien and she knew everything about fantasy. I asked her to recommend her favourite authors, in alphabetical order. I started reading the A’s.
I didn’t want to go to school camp because I wouldn’t have Mum to come home to in the afternoon or the library at lunchtime. I’d have to spend three hours on a bus and no one would choose me to sit beside. I’d have to share a room with at least seven other girls and they’d all look at me, at my clothes, at my pyjamas, at the stuff I’d brought to do, the CDs I played, the books I read, and they’d know I wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t sure that I could eat breakfast in front of so many people. I knew they’d be watching me, watching how I ate and checking out my face to see if it looked as bad first thing in the morning as I knew it did. All faces do, but mine in particular does. I’ve got these little pimples. Mum says not to squeeze them so I don’t. Well, I do, because if I don’t they look really gross. But they look gross when you do, too. My hair, which is dead straight—that’s Patrick’s fault—often looks greasy, which isn’t fair at all as I wash it every second day. Who could eat their breakfast happily with my face in front of them? And how could I eat my breakfast with all their faces in front of me?
When I get older I’m going to have dreadlocks, wear thick goth make-up and eat breakfast completely by myself.
I made a list of all the things I needed for the camp. These weren’t on the official list. These were on my list.
GROOVY pyjamas. They had to have Felix the cat or butterflies on them. My most loved green frog ones wouldn’t do. Not at all.
New runners with no holes in them
A pair of jeans without holes
A good hat
Some pimple cover-up
A bra. I HAVE to have a bra.
DECENT knickers
I took the list to Mum.
‘I don’t think it’s worth going,’ I said. ‘Look at what I need and I really do need them, Mum, I’m not kidding. I can’t go without this stuff.’
Mum read the list through.
‘Seems fair enough to me,’ she said. ‘I think we can cover all that. Are you sure you need pimple cover-up. I can’t actually see any pimples.’
‘You’re not looking then.’
I couldn’t believe she’d just give in like that.
‘I look at your face every day, Millie, and I have yet to see any pimple that merits cover-up. But if cover-up is what you need for camp, cover-up you’ll have.’
‘You’re trying to get rid of me, is that it?’
Mum dropped the mug she was drying up.
‘I am not,’ she said and her face went all pinky.
‘Well, why do I have to go then?’
‘Because I hope you’ll enjoy it, Millie. Because the school has planned this camp so you and all the other kids in your grade get to know each other in a different environment. It’s to help you build friendships. You have to go.’
‘Is that your last word?’
‘Yes,’ Mum said firmly, sweeping up the broken pieces of china. ‘Yes it is, Millie.’
‘You have to drive me to school by 7.30 in the morning.’
‘That’ll be fine.’
‘It’s a TAFE morning. You’ll be rushed.’
‘Millie!’
‘Okay, okay.’
I was going to camp even if it killed me.
‘It will kill me,’ I said.
‘School camp never killed anyone,’ Mum said, in her I’m-getting-very-cranky voice.
‘This might be the first time.’
I left the kitchen then. It was time to get out.
I wondered what the symptoms of bubonic plague were and whether I could fake them. I wondered if Mum would believe me if I had a tummy ache or a headache or suddenly developed an inexplicable limp.
The Felix jammies helped. The boy-leg knickers and matching bra in a Japanese pattern—not sweet little roses but wild pink and red florals on green—helped a little more. Mum forgot the cover-up, on purpose I think, but she got everything else and didn’t once wrinkle up her nose at the expense.
While I was packing, she came into my room.
‘It’s hard fitting in, Millie,’ she said. ‘I don’t think either your dad or I did it particularly well, either.’
She hardly ever called Patrick ‘your dad’. He was always Patrick. When he was ‘your dad’, it was a serious you-are-growing-up-talk. I breathed in deeply.
‘I’m okay,’ I said.
‘I hope you will be, Millie. I hope you find at least one friend. That’s all you need, you know, a good friend like Frannie. I really want you to be happy here. I do so want you to be happy, Millie. I finally feel as though I am somewhere I want to be, somewhere I’ve chosen to be, and things are falling into place for me. I want that to happen for you.’
When Mum said that kind of thing, with that little frowny look, she always made me want to do what she wants.
‘I can’t promise to love camp,’ I said.
‘I know that, Millie, but you can promise not to be determined to hate it.’
‘Okay,’ I said, but I kept the fingers on my right hand crossed. I’d wait to see who I had to sit next to on the bus before I promised that.
CHAPTER
SIX
The trip was the worst. I had to sit next to Mr Lawrence. It wasn’t that Mr Lawrence was so bad, it was more that sitting next to any teacher was bad, unless it was Ms O’Grady. Everyone adored Ms O’Grady. She was co
ol. Kids queued up to sit next to her. She was pregnant and she let you feel the baby kick if she liked you. Or that’s what Tayla claimed.
Tayla was the prettiest girl in our grade, if not the whole school. She had long dark hair that hung down almost to her bottom. She had perfect skin and almost-green eyes. She sat some of the way with Ms Grady and then she swapped with one of her best friends.
Nobody queued up to sit with Mr Lawrence. It was just him and me, all the way to camp. He tried to make conversation, but I didn’t feel much like talking, so I did that grunting thing. It put him off after a while and we both pulled books out of our day-packs and read.
The only conversation we managed was just before we pulled in for morning tea, when he happened to catch me trying to glimpse the title of the book he was reading.
‘It’s just something my wife wants me to read,’ he said, a little apologetically, holding up the book.
’12 Steps to Raising Successful Teens,’ I read. ‘My mum’s got that, too.’
‘Has she? Did she ... sorry, Millie. You are clearly a success story. That was rude of me.’
‘She hasn’t even read it,’ I said quickly. ‘She doesn’t like the person who gave it to her.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Well, I don’t think that excuse will work with my wife, unfortunately.’
‘You could always drop it in the bath. That worked for me. I always drop books I don’t like in the bath. Or I did, when we had a bath. We don’t have one in our new house. We’ve got a shower, of course.’
‘I hadn’t thought of the bath trick. I have, on occasion, dropped a book in it. Not deliberately, of course. And I’ve always dried them carefully, in front of the gas heater. Or with my wife’s hair dryer. Never totally works. Good idea, Millie. In the bath, eh? Simple but effective. Thank you.’
You can see what I mean when I say no one was queuing up to sit next to Mr Lawrence, although it was quite charming of him to tell me I was a successful teenager, when I so obviously wasn’t.
I was in the left-overs dormitory. There’s nearly always one of them. Suppose you’ve got 44 girls from Year Seven. The dorms sleep eight, so you have five rooms of eight and one of four. The girls who don’t have special friends are always bunched in the last room.
There weren’t even four of us. There was Jess, Daina and myself. Jess was on some kind of medication which made her sleepy and slow. Daina was just a girl who liked to be alone. I guess they might have thought that about me, too, given my lunchtimes in the library. So they put us together, in the left-overs dormitory.
Camp wasn’t looking good by anybody’s standards.
It got worse. The first day wasn’t so bad. We had a choice of activities. They do that on the first day to lull you into the feeling that everything will be all right. After that the pressure was on.
A chart went up in the recreation room. It divided us into four teams. I was in Koala Team. At least they divided us up. There was some At least they divided us up. There was some split up, as were Helen-Sarah-and-Rachel. Helen and Tayla were in Koala Team. It was clear they hated each other.
Why they think team activities will build trust and friendships is beyond me. In my experience, the person on the team who fumbles the ball, doesn’t run fast enough or can’t think of a way to get a stupid tyre over a stupid wooden pole is hated, called names and never allowed to forget their failure. So much for trust and friendship!
I knew I would be that person on Koala Team.
I did fumble the ball and I was the only one who had any difficulty scaling the fence in the obstacle course, except for Jess who didn’t count because of her medication and Brett who was just plain fat.
But I didn’t get called names and my mistakes were hardly noticed. Koala Team was focused on not letting Helen and Tayla kill each other. They picked on each other’s tiniest mistakes and hissed and spat at each other like wild cats.
‘You dropped that, you’ve cost us a point,’ Tayla said, before Helen had even had a chance to catch, let alone drop, the ball.
Helen retaliated by crossing her arms and not even trying.
‘Yeah,’ she said, when the ball fell at her feet, ‘I sure did. Mind you, if you’d kept your big mouth shut, I might just have been able to catch that.’
‘Tayla!’ Dion shouted, ‘let’s just try to finish the course, can we?’
‘I’m not interested in playing with a team who doesn’t put in one hundred and ten per cent.’
‘Well, I’m not interested in playing with some stuck-up little nobody who thinks she’s the greatest and criticises everyone else as though they’re complete losers.’
‘Girls, if your whole team isn’t playing, you’ll be penalised one hundred points, and I mean that!’
‘Sorry, Ms O’Grady. See what you’ve done now?’
‘Oh, shut your face, Tayla. Could I care less?’
‘It wasn’t Helen’s fault,’ I said, forgetting myself. ‘If you’d just stop being so mean, Tayla, we might get somewhere.’
‘Oh, what would you know?’ Tayla turned the full force of her wrath on to me. ‘You aren’t even from round here, are you? How come you think you know anything?’
‘I know what I saw,’ I said, ‘and I know what I heard.’
‘Oh, do you? Well, I know what I saw on the obstacle course and that was you going around that fence without even trying.’
‘I did try. I’m just not good at things like that.’
‘Not good at much, are you, Millie Mouse? You cheated. You could get us disqualified for that.’
‘Tayla Cameron, what is going on here?’
‘Nothing Ms O’Grady. We’re just discussing our group and negotiating role changes, that’s all.’
‘It sounds more like shouting,’ Ms O’Grady said. ‘Helen, come here. I want to talk to you. Team, take 50 points off for not finishing and a further 25 off for disputes. Then go and have some afternoon tea.’
‘See what you’ve done, Millie Mouse the big cheat, you’ve upset Ms O’Grady. You shouldn’t upset pregnant women. You might make something happen to the baby.’
‘That’s just rubbish,’ I said. ‘Honestly, Tayla, how do you expect to get away with that kind of stuff? She’s not upset, anyway. She’s just doing her job.’
‘What would you know about Ms O’Grady? Do you know that she lost a baby last year? Well, do you?’
‘No. No, I didn’t know that.’
‘It’s true. The baby was born early. Stress, my mother said. She’d know. She’s a nurse. Bet you didn’t know that, Millie Mouse.’
I watched Ms O’Grady walking away with Helen. She was looking serious and shaking her head, but I didn’t think we had stressed her.
‘I’m not doing any more of this,’ Tayla said. ‘I feel sick. I’ve got a headache right here.’ She pressed her temples with her pink sparkly fingernails.
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Millie, where do you get off being such a b-word. I get headaches. I get migraines. Sometimes I have to stay in bed for two days. The pain is so great that I faint if I have to get up. That’s what I think I’m getting now. You don’t care about anyone other than yourself, do you? You don’t care if Ms O’Grady loses another baby. You don’t care if I get a migraine. You’re just so selfish.’
I watched her saunter off. I couldn’t believe what she had just said. I did care about people. I turned to Dion, but she was busy tying up her shoelaces.
‘I care about people,’ I said to her anyway. ‘I didn’t know about Ms O’Grady. How was I to know?’
‘Everybody knows about Ms O’Grady,’ Dion said in a flat voice, ‘and everyone knows Tayla gets bad migraines. She fainted during a tennis match once. She’d gone on with a migraine so she didn’t let her doubles partner down. She’s a state champion.’
‘How does everyone know?’
‘Well, I didn’t go to Stockie.’
‘Tayla’s right. You don’t know much.’
We had fruit and biscuits for afternoon tea. You were allowed one piece of fruit and two biscuits. Then it was free time. Some kids played table tennis in the recreation room. Others went for walks, kicked a soccer ball around or practised netball. I went to the dorm, lay down on my bed and read for a while.
Helen interrupted me.
‘Ms O’Grady wants to see you,’ she said, poking her head in without even knocking. ‘She’s in the dining room.’
I clutched the book to my chest. Why would she want to see me?
As if reading my mind, Helen said, ‘I bet Tayla’s been telling her stuff. But don’t worry, Millie, I’ll be a witness if you need one. Ms O’Grady’s cool. She listens. You’re probably just going to get the poor Tayla talk.’
‘The what?’
‘You’ll see.’ And with that Helen disappeared.
I walked as slowly as I could over to the dining room. Kookaburras nearby laughed at me. Normally I love kookaburras. They are one of my favourite birds. I love the shape of them and the flash of blue in their wings and I love their laughter. It sounds as though they are inviting the world to share their wonderful, wild joke. But this afternoon it sounded as though I was the joke.
Ms O’Grady was sitting at the edge of one of the tables, a cup of tea in front of her.
‘Sit down, Millie,’ she said, indicating a chair that was pulled out a little, so I would be facing her. ‘Do you want a drink of something? I could rustle you up a tea, if you drink it?’
‘No, thank you,’ I said. ‘I had some cordial with my fruit.’