‘You’ve got awesome hair,’ the assistant says to me. ‘It’s sort of pre-Raphaelite, like in those nineteenth-century paintings of Medea and Ariadne.’
‘Thanks,’ I reply, glowing. The only people who normally compliment me are my parents and they’re legally obliged to so it hardly counts. ‘I love those paintings. I’ve got a postcard of one on my wall by J.W. Waterhouse.’
‘He’s the best!’ she says. ‘You’re so lucky to have hair like one of his models. Mine gets all stringy if I try to grow it.’ She tugs at her shoulder-length blonde hair. ‘See?’
‘But yours is nice too,’ I say.
‘Not like yours. Yours is –’
‘I want this one,’ says Riley, cutting off our conversation. She thrusts the belt at the shop assistant and I step backwards. The way Riley pushes past me, I get the impression she’s annoyed with me. Once again, I don’t know what I’ve done.
After she’s bought the belt, she strides out without waiting for us. We catch up to her a few shops down where she’s staring at a hairdressing salon across the way, her eyes shining. ‘I’ve just had the best idea,’ she says, spinning around to face me. ‘Romola, you should get your hair cut!’
‘What?’
Paige claps her hands. ‘That is such a great idea. Romola, you should do it now.’
‘But … I like my hair the way it is,’ I stammer.
‘Come on,’ says Riley, ignoring my protests. ‘It’ll be great. Let’s look at styles.’ She and Paige walk over to the shop, leaving Amal and me standing there.
Amal smiles at me uneasily. ‘You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,’ she says quietly. ‘It’s your hair.’
I nod but find myself following them over to the shop all the same, a sick feeling rising in my gut.
‘Romola!’ calls Riley in a singsong voice. ‘How about this style?’ She points at a poster of a model with short, messy hair.
‘Oh, I, um …’ Finding it hard to breathe, I pull at my clothing. I feel as if I’m wearing one of those old-fashioned corsets and Riley is standing behind me pulling the laces tighter and tighter, trying to make me fit. I reach up and touch my hair, which is pulled back into a loose ponytail. Smoothing it down is such a familiar, comforting action to me. What if this is the last time I ever get to do it?
‘I don’t know,’ I reply uncertainly, desperately wishing she’d drop the subject.
‘Come on, Romola,’ says Paige. ‘Don’t be a spoilsport.’
I look from one girl to the next – to Riley with her glittery smile, Paige with her hands on her hips and Amal with her serious gaze. My membership in this group is hanging by a thread. Literally. Well, not literally, but if I were dangling off a cliff, clinging to a thread, Riley would be at the top with a pair of scissors in her hand. If I don’t go along with her plan – one snip and I’m gone.
Even so, I can’t help thinking of the Navajo Indians and their belief that every thought they’ve ever had is stored in their hair. The longer the hair, the greater the wisdom. I run my fingers through my thick dark mane and wonder, would my wisdom, my personality – my Romola-ness, as Dad likes to call it – disappear with each chopped lock?
‘Well?’ says Riley. ‘Are you coming in or what?’
My hands are shaking so much, I clasp them together.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘I … I can’t do it.’
‘Romola!’ cries Riley, rolling her eyes dramatically. ‘Why do you have to be so boring?’
‘She can’t help it,’ supplies Paige.
Even in the face of their insults, even with my heart thundering and my palms sweating, I won’t budge. Riley stares at me. As with Mum during an interrogation, I don’t break eye contact.
‘Fine,’ she says at last. ‘Have it your way – be unfashionable.’ She links arms with Paige and they flounce off towards the food court.
The rest of the shopping expedition is unpleasant to say the least. Riley and Paige spend the entire time either ignoring me or contradicting me if I dare to offer an opinion. Amal smiles at me a few times but that’s about the only good thing.
I feel nothing but relief when it’s finally time to go and meet Riley’s mum in Bunda Street. While we’re waiting, Riley hooks an arm around Paige’s neck and takes a photo of them with her phone. ‘Come and be in the photo, Amal,’ says Riley.
Amal looks at me, concerned. ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I need to check my phone anyway.’ When I get it out, there are a bunch of texts from Mum asking me to call her urgently. That’s strange. I didn’t hear any beeping. I must’ve accidentally put my phone on silent when I last checked it.
‘What is it?’ I ask as soon as Mum picks up.
‘Oh, Romola! Why didn’t you answer your phone? Your dad Skyped.’
‘What?’
‘It’s okay, he’s going to try again in – let me check – thirty minutes. Then he has to go on manoeuvres. Shall I come in and get you?’
‘No, it’s okay. Riley’s mum’ll be here any second – it’ll be quicker if I go with her. You wait for Dad’s call.’
‘All right, darling. Do hurry.’
‘I will.’
When I hang up, all three girls are looking at me. ‘Your dad’s going to call?’ asks Amal. I nod, unable to speak. I need to talk to Dad – my real dad, not a pretend dad. ‘That’s awesome!’
As Amal squeezes my hand, Riley’s mum pulls up beside us. What a relief! Mrs Lewis leans across the passenger seat to talk to us and I notice Riley’s little brothers wrestling in the back. ‘Sorry, kids, change of plans. Hubby got caught up so I’ve got the boys with me.’ She gestures behind her. ‘Two of you will have to make your own way home. Sorry about that. I’ve got room for Riley and one extra. Any takers?’
Amal prods me in the back. ‘You go. You need to talk to your dad.’
I bend down to pick up my bag, but when I stand up, Riley is whispering in Paige’s ear. Paige throws me a sideways glance then climbs into the back seat of the car while Riley gets in the front.
‘But –’ I begin.
‘Let’s go, Mum,’ says Riley, shutting the door behind her. Mrs Lewis toots goodbye and pulls away while I stand there gaping. I feel like I’ve been hit by a stun gun.
Amal stares at the car as it disappears from sight, her face red. ‘I cannot believe those two. That was so …’ She searches for the right word. ‘Mean-spirited.’
Coming from Amal, these are strong words. If I didn’t have an incredibly urgent deadline, I’d take the time to share a few words of my own.
‘I need a taxi!’ I cry, looking around frantically.
‘This way,’ says Amal, grabbing my arm, and we bolt along the street fast as shoplifters. When we get to the taxi rank there’s a massive queue.
‘What am I going to do now?’ I wail.
‘I’ve seen people hail taxis round the corner,’ says Amal. ‘Follow me!’
We run along the street, take a sharp left then hang off the kerb, peering out into the traffic. ‘Come on, come on,’ I say, madly searching for a glimpse of a white car with a light on top. The minutes tick by but no taxi comes. ‘Back to the rank?’
We retrace our steps at top speed, but in the meantime, more people have joined the queue. ‘No!’ I cry. ‘Why aren’t there enough taxis in Canberra?’
‘How about a bus?’ suggests Amal. ‘If you hurry, you might just make it.’
I grab the crumb of hope she’s offering, gobble it down, and race for the bus stop. As my legs carry me along the path, thoughts of Dad press against the inside of my skull till I’m sure my brain will burst like a water balloon. I have to get home for that call. I have to hear his voice. I have to know for myself that he’s safe.
As we push past people coming home from the shops, Amal apologises to everyone we pass. ‘Excuse me, excuse me – sorry about your groceries – excuse me!’
‘There!’ I cry, pointing up ahead. ‘The 938! Run!’
The bus has its ticker on, ready
to pull out into traffic. When a crowd appears out of nowhere, blocking our path, Amal tosses aside her usual politeness and shrieks, ‘Move it, people! Pregnant lady coming through!’
The crowd parts and I race right up to the door of the bus and bang on the glass. ‘Open up! Please! Let me on!’ The driver looks down to see what all the commotion is and I put on my best pleading face – the one that usually gets me an extra cupcake from Mum. ‘It’s an emergency!’
I frantically mime pulling the lever but all the driver does is shrug, as if to say, ‘Sorry, wish I could help but I’m powerless once the door is shut.’ He pulls out into traffic.
‘No!’ I scream, stamping my foot on the ground. ‘This can’t be happening!’
‘Can you call your mum?’ asks Amal.
I check the time on my phone. ‘No point. By the time she gets here, Dad’ll be Skyping and then there’ll be no one to take his call.’
Frustration and disappointment judder through me like an earthquake. I start walking – marching, actually. My legs have spoken. I’m not exactly sure where I’m going but I do know that if I stand still I will shake apart. Amal jogs along beside me.
By the time we reach the Illumicube, I’ve got a stitch in my side and have to stop. The Illumicube is a huge glass cube that lights up in different colours whenever you honk your horn or yell at it. I’m certainly in the yelling mood, and while I might be puffed, I’m not so puffed I can’t pump out a few ‘colourful expressions’, as Rex would call them. The Illumicube answers with some colours of its own: deep pink, blue, then a bold red that matches my mood. They say you ‘see red’ when you’re angry. That’s exactly what I’m seeing now.
Red.
Red.
Red.
After sharing my feelings with the Illumicube (and Amal and anyone else within a three-hundred-metre radius), my voice conks out and I collapse on the ground. A couple of people throw me sideways glances but keep walking. A guy selling poems gives me a wide berth. Even Amal, who’s been smiling at me with a concerned expression on her face, stands at a safe distance.
I look around and, for the first time in my life, notice things I’ve never seen before: a five-year-old girl pinches her younger brother and he kicks her back; there’s graffiti on a traffic sign abusing someone for stealing their boyfriend; the manager of a fish-and-chips shop asks a busker to move along and the busker yells out to passers-by that he got food poisoning there. Little acts of revenge – that’s what they are. Little acts of revenge and they’re happening everywhere.
‘Why do these things always happen to me?’ I demand, thumping the ground with my fist. I’m past caring about how I look to people. As I sit on the ground in the middle of Civic, yelling and pounding the asphalt, I’m ashamed to admit I’ve let my worries about Dad get pushed aside by thoughts of the person who got me here – Riley Lewis. A small part of me (okay, a big part of me) wonders what it would feel like to take revenge on her – actual revenge. I roll the word around in my mouth like a boiled lolly. They say revenge is supposed to be sweet. If that’s the case, I wouldn’t mind a taste of it.
‘… if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’
– William Shakespeare,
The Merchant of Venice
SATURDAY AFTERNOON, 23 APRIL
This morning’s trip to watch the balloons seems like an age ago. Romola must be shopping with her friends now. Why does she put up with those girls?
I slip downstairs, hoping to make a snack while Marshall’s busy in his study. No such luck. He hears me and comes in. ‘Can I get you anything? Muffin? Toast? Pizza?’
‘No, thanks.’ Why does he have to be so nice? It only makes it worse. I remind myself he told Mum I was a burden and that he’s just faking it. But lately, it’s becoming harder to convince myself that’s true.
He slides into a chair while I hunt around in the fridge for some sandwich ingredients. ‘I’ve got some bad news, Seb,’ he says. Even though I’ve got my back to him, I can tell he’s rubbing his beard. He always does that when he’s worried.
‘What is it?’
‘I rang one of the veterans from last week – one of the ones whose interview disappeared.’
‘Yeah?’ I say, my heart beating faster.
‘His daughter says he’s too sick to be re-interviewed so I guess that’s that. Such a shame. He’s a fascinating man.’
Guilt slithers under my guard again, churning up my guts.
‘Ah well,’ Marshall continues, ‘hopefully, the others can help.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, taking my time getting out the marg so I don’t have to look him in the eye. ‘Hope so.’
I could always confess. It might even be a relief, but then Marshall would hate me for sure. A few days ago, that wouldn’t have bothered me, but now … meeting those old blokes and seeing the stuff he does … I don’t know. I guess I didn’t count on admiring Old Beardy Face. And speaking of guilt, there’s still the matter of the wedding dress. That, at least, I can do something about. So long as we leave first thing Tuesday morning, I’m safe. I make my sandwich and I take it up to my room where it stays on the plate, untouched.
As I’m lying on my bed mulling things over, the doorbell rings. I hear Marshall answer the door, then a thud, thud, thud up the stairs before Romola bursts into my room. ‘Have you ever noticed,’ she says, sweeping past me, ‘that when you chew a piece of bubblegum, it’s really sweet at first? Then, after a while, the flavour disappears and all you’re left with is this tasteless rubbery blob in your mouth?’ She moves about my room, lifting up clothes and comics. ‘Well?’ she says. ‘Have you?’
‘Sure,’ I reply warily, sitting up.
‘When that happens to me,’ she continues, tipping her head to the side and scanning the book titles on my shelf, ‘I add another piece to make it tasty again, and when the taste of that wears off, I add another piece. Each time, it works for a little while, but it never lasts.’ When she gets to the end of the shelf, she swings around and looks at me. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘Uh … that you don’t like bubblegum?’
She stares at me as if I’m the biggest idiot on the planet. ‘No!’ She drops to the floor and looks under my bed, all the while talking faster and faster. ‘Riley was sooooooo sweet to me when I first joined the group. Sweet like grape-flavoured bubblegum. After a while, she started doing mean things. Not all the time – just every now and then. Like, one time, she borrowed money from me and promised to repay me. When a couple of weeks had passed and she still hadn’t paid me back, I mentioned it, and she acted like I was being petty for asking. Can you believe that?’ Romola gets up and looks behind my door. ‘It was my money and she made out like I was in the wrong? Every time she did something like that I’d try to convince myself it didn’t matter, that it’d pass, or that it was only a joke. I’d sweeten up the gum. But not anymore! Today – today she went too far. Too far!’
I jump at the intensity of her voice.
‘You know what she did?’
In my experience, when someone starts asking rhetorical questions, it’s best to sit quietly, nod or shake your head occasionally, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get out of there alive.
‘She made me miss my dad’s Skype call. Deliberately. He wanted to wish me good luck for ANZAC Day – that’s what Mum told me – but he didn’t get to. Mum said he looked good but I didn’t get to see that either. It’s been weeks since I’ve spoken to him. Weeks!’
Her voice breaks and I think she might cry but she holds out her hand like a stop sign. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m not going to blub like I normally do. I’m here for something else.’ Her eyes drop to the floor where my bag lies open. ‘There it is!’
She bends down and takes out my book of myths. ‘Tell me about this,’ she says, stabbing the front cover with her finger. ‘I want to know the real story.’
‘Um … okay,’ I say, not daring to argue with her. ‘Well, that’s Circe. She’s a sorceress and she ha
s a friend called Glaucus who’s in love with a girl named Scylla. Now, Scylla doesn’t want Glaucus because he’s an ugly sea monster. He gets all depressed – being rejected and everything – and he tells Circe about it. Circe decides to get even with Scylla so she goes down to the watering hole where Scylla hangs out –’
‘The place in the painting?’
‘Yep. She makes up a potion and pours it into the water. When Scylla rocks up, she goes into the water and the potion turns the bottom half of her body into six massive dogs. She’s so freaked out, she goes and hides in a cave where she lives unhappily ever after.’
Romola nods slowly, absorbing the information. Her eyes are fierce as a wild animal’s. ‘Right,’ she says, ‘thank you.’ She sits down on the chair in front of the desk and flicks through the book maniacally. After a few minutes, she swings around and eyeballs me. ‘You have to help me – I can’t think of any revenges!’
As she thrusts the book at me, her dark hair is loosely pulled back from her face and her eyes burn with hate. She looks just like Circe holding out her dish of poison. Did I look like that when I deleted Marshall’s files? It’s not pretty. In fact, it’s kind of scary.
‘Well?’ says Romola. ‘Are you going to help me or not?’
‘Um …’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ she replies, grabbing the book back. ‘I just thought of something.’ She spins around on the chair, flips to the back of the encyclopedia and starts scribbling down some notes.
I stay where I am, watching her silently, not sure what to do. When at last she puts down her pen, I’m relieved. She’s finally got it out of her system. Great, maybe she’ll calm down now …
Instead, she turns to me, her eyes narrowed to slits. ‘You know what?’ she says, looking more like Circe than ever. ‘This,’ she pats the book, ‘is all very well, but let’s face it, the chances of Riley’s face actually being covered in boils are pretty slim. I need something more, something real. I need to do something. Sebastian, it’s time to crank things up a notch.’
The Beginner's Guide to Revenge Page 7