Kate O’Donnell is a writer, editor and bookseller specialising in children’s and young adult literature. She has a BA in History and French from the University of Melbourne and studied Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT. Untidy Towns is her first novel.
www.kateodonnell.com.au
#LoveOzYA
For Nana Marie, for Gran and for Boz –
and all the remarkable histories you’ve created
I ran away on a Tuesday afternoon in late March. Six pm and I was headed south-west in a train that smelled stale. I had put two hours and however many kilometres behind me. Walking the length of the carriage and back again to stretch my legs, I lurched and pitched with and against the movement of the train. I’d done it now. Right decision. Wrong decision. My decision.
I’d woken up in my room in the boarding house, like normal. But I didn’t feel normal. It wasn’t a cold, or a headache. I padded down to the kitchen and tried to pinpoint the feeling. It was a bit like a stomach-ache, maybe. I scraped butter and Vegemite onto a piece of toast and felt very strange. Taking myself back to bed, I rested the toast on the pillow.
The school uniform hanging across the back of the chair made the feeling worse. The pile of homework either half-finished or blatantly ignored on the seat of the chair made it very bad indeed.
‘You’re going to be late, Longley,’ Tess, the boarding house prefect, called through the door.
‘Meh,’ I said back, my voice doona-muffled.
‘Year twelve assembly this morning. It’s compulsory.’
Some ‘old girl’ was coming to talk to us, some twenty-eight-year-old success story. I could just imagine how it would go. Clare or Charlotte or Olivia would drone on about how St Thomas’s had set her up for life and how, wow, look at her now. She never would have thought she could win a scholarship to Oxford and get a job in a corporate law firm and buy a pearl necklace and have over-blow-dried hair and an orthodontic smile if it weren’t for her education here.
It was all I could do to lie like a corpse. I couldn’t go to that assembly.
‘Are you sick?’
‘Probably.’
‘Faker.’ I heard her shoes tap. She always jigged while making her mind up. ‘Well, you’d better go see the nurse.’ Jig, tap. Tap. Tap. ‘Don’t get a detention.’
But I wouldn’t go and see the nurse. I just wished I were somewhere else.
Lulled by the clacking and the whoosh, I was pleased with train travel. It was kind of serious and old-fashioned and made me feel good. Perhaps because the chairs were ancient on this train, much older than me. I imagined that my parents – hells, probably my grandparents too – had sat in these same chairs for the journey from Emyvale to Melbourne and back again.
It hadn’t been a planned escape. I suppose I would say I’d accidentally fled.
Once Tess had gone, I decided I would take the morning for myself, and spend the day doing something actually enjoyable. After coming to this decision my joints unlocked.
It’s easier to get out of bed when you aren’t going to school.
It’s so much easier to face the day in a pair of jeans than in a uniform.
It’s impossibly easy to walk out the boarding house’s front door and far away from a pseudo-inspirational assembly.
I trod the footpath to a nearby café, to see if a coffee would help. I messaged Mia. Screw class! Coffee? The girls never got me to wag. Now look at me!
I was headed to the bustle of Windsor, a place where posh meets hipster meets junkie. I sat at an outside table and stirred sugar into my latte. It didn’t help. Not even a chocolate croissant really helped.
I texted Ben. Adventure?
It’d been a couple of weeks, so I wasn’t sure I’d hear back from him. He’d set his Facey status to ‘in a relationship’ after I went with him to the rowing regatta, but then that had disappeared entirely after I’d commented, ‘Who’s the lucky girl, then?’ Maybe I’d been a little harsh.
Mia messaged. Where u?
Taking the day.
Lol. Frau Ohmann going to be sehr wütend when you miss test.
I’d forgotten about the test. A quick jerk of panic pulled through my stomach, but not hard enough to make me go back. Not today. Oh well.
Bell’s gone. Coming or no? Mia sent.
Nah.
Ur crazy lady. Then in a second message: Hey what did VP want y’day?
My finger hovered over the screen. Nothing important.
I’d been ‘invited’ to the vice-principal’s office. More like a summons. I sat where I was told, in the second-nicest chair I’d ever sat in. I’d been in the principal’s office once, for my scholarship interview, and the chairs in there were the nicest chairs in the school and possibly the world, all leather and studded. These ones were almost as nice.
The VP’s face was stony, but there was something about her mouth that I think was trying to be kind. ‘Hello, Adelaide. How are you?’
‘Good?’ I was nervous. I didn’t know what I was supposed to have done, but was feeling a very strong urge to apologise for whatever it was.
Then, after a pathetic knock at the door, the school counsellor came in and sat on the chair beside mine.
I smelled a trap. Fight or flight, I wondered. I bit the insides of my cheeks. I felt my face turn all harsh and mean. Mia called it my cat’s bum face.
The VP looked into my eyes, her mouth frog-line straight. ‘Do you know why I’ve asked you to come in here today?’
I wanted to shrug and scowl. I shook my head.
‘Your teachers have noticed a decline in the quality of your work …’ My ears unfocused and a ringing started up, pinging through me like panic. Her words breached the ringing in snippets: ‘Must be serious, this is year twelve … always been such a pleasure until … as a scholarship student … reconsider our support.’
I turned to stone right there on her fancy chair. I’d worked really hard. For years. Been on my best behaviour for five years. Done my homework. Acted like a role model. Smiled through a toothache to debate. Been called a nerd while trying to fit in. I was stone with an aching, flaming centre. This education cost too much.
After my coffee, I caught a tram into the city to get lost in the crowd. I accidentally bumped knees with a girl as I sat down, but she just smiled and shifted a little to make room. Her boyfriend sat next to her, holding a ratty backpack, and she put a hand on his knee, and when she spoke it was in German. In fast German that I couldn’t quite follow, but that featured the words ‘Flinders Street’ and ‘Federation Square’. They both wore jeans all faded and fraying, giving off an effortless cool.
I leaned forward and interrupted. ‘I’m getting off there. At Fed Square, Federation Square. I can tell you when it is.’ I had never wanted to be so helpful.
They smiled at me. ‘Cool. Thanks.’
‘Bitte schön.’ It just popped out.
They both smiled bigger. ‘Sprechen sie Deutsch?’
‘Ein bisschen,’ I said, demonstrating ‘a little bit’ with my thumb and finger.
‘Wir sind aus Berlin.’
‘Cool,’ I said. My German had deserted me. ‘Ich bin von … here …’ I pointed to the ground. ‘But I’d like to go to Berlin someday,’ I added, mostly to be friendly.
They smiled some more and nodded. When we reached Fed Square and got off the tram, the girl waved and said, ‘Good luck for your travels!’
Not far from Flinders Street, I spotted a travel agent selling flights to Europe for $1149, student fare. For a moment, as I was standing there, it was an actual possibility. Just go into the shop, buy a ticket, go. Live life
!
But I only had $150 in my bank account. That was all. And it wasn’t even mine, really. I didn’t earn it. It was pocket money, child’s money. Given to me to keep me out of trouble. And it was working. There I was, looking for trouble, and unable to purchase it.
Instead, I wandered, people-watched and window-shopped. The tourists poured off buses. Uni students loped along Swanston Street with their backpacks. All the suits trudged along like a grey army. Everyone had a purpose, except me.
At 3.37, Ben replied to my text. I was sitting on a step at Fed Square without a ticket to Berlin but with a sense of doom and gloom. And a hot chocolate.
Hey, he wrote.
Hey. By that point I didn’t really want to talk to him anymore. I’d just hoped he’d have been a willing accomplice for a day of fun.
What’s the adventure?
Nah, nothing.
Serious?
Yeah, don’t worry about it. I was all out of adventure anyway.
U mad?
People asking ‘are you mad’ makes me so mad. No.
K. Pause. Let me know if u want to do something soon.
We could hitchhike to Sydney. If he said yes, I would go.
Lol. See you on the wkend.
See ya. It would’ve never worked out, us two.
I wouldn’t be brave enough to hitchhike anyway. But how far could I get with my $150? Nowhere far. Even I knew that was loose change – for coffee and train tickets.
What I knew for sure was that I definitely wasn’t going back to school.
It was this determination that took me to the station.
It was exhaustion that bought my ticket home.
I turned my phone back on when I felt as though I was far enough away – well, close enough to home – and it rang nearly straight away.
‘Oh, thank god.’
‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Are you all right? Where are you?’
‘I’m just on the train.’
‘School said you didn’t turn up to dinner. Where are you?’
I looked for landmarks, but it was getting harder to see with daylight slipping into a darker blue nightness. ‘I’m somewhere just outside of Colac.’
She was quiet for a moment. I heard a sound like a catch in her throat. ‘What?’
I held my phone tight to my ear, and I could hear my mother breathing, and I was coming home to her but what if she didn’t want me to?
‘I just wanted to come home.’ I felt one hundred per cent a little girl. ‘I needed to get out,’ I said more firmly.
‘I’ll be at the station. I’ll be there. I’ll be waiting for you.’
I nodded and squeezed out an ‘okay’. As I pressed ‘end call’ it sounded like she was starting to say something else, but I’d already cut the connection.
I felt sick to my stomach, my throat was constricted and everything felt too hard. This was familiar, at least.
My phone pinged with one, two, three messages from Mia. I ignored them.
I may have been firm and determined, but I was also coming apart at the seams. One more emotion and I would split open and no one would be able to put me back together again, no matter how many horses or men the king had. And no matter how skilled they were in patching up girls who don’t have any real reason to have come apart.
She was there, like she’d said she’d be. The boot of the car was open, I suppose in case I had bags. Which I didn’t. No change of clothes, no toothbrush, no plan.
She was there, jangling her keys in one hand, shaking them absently as though in front of a baby’s face to distract it from tears or tantrum. Her long hair made her look young. She was young, really. ‘I’m just shy of forty,’ she’d said recently.
I’d be shy of forty, too. But I would be eighteen next February, and I couldn’t wait.
I felt wrong-footed, like I didn’t quite have my sea legs. I tried not to rush at her, but I failed and we power-walked towards each other and she grabbed at me so tight. I quickly shut my eyes to keep in some sudden tears. I would not, would not cry. ‘Hi, Mama.’
‘Oh, my girl,’ she said softly.
Carried homeward in the front seat of the car, I felt like everything was out of whack. My defiant high had ebbed with the long stretch of clickety-clacking train rail and the lowering sun in my eyes. Conversation was like untangling delicate necklaces that had been down the back of the drawer for years – finicky, and not worth it.
There was a little part of me, as I lay back in the seat and let my head flop towards the window, a little bit of me that found it poetic. Like I was some kind of invalid.
‘Are you okay?’ asked Mum.
Am I okay? I thought I had made the right decision.
‘Yes.’ I closed my eyes.
‘Do you want to tell me anything?’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘Addie, I just don’t believe that.’
‘I’m really tired.’ I couldn’t look at her; I couldn’t formulate answers or explanations. I just couldn’t.
‘We can talk later. We’re almost home.’ Her voice was even, kind, mumsy. It made me feel ashamed.
I felt invalid.
Not only that, but I could feel the town’s collective disappointment already. Who saw us drive away from the station? Who saw me get off the train? Who was sitting around their dining room table that night thinking, I wonder what Adelaide Longley is doing back in town, mid-term? Or was I being just a little bit over the top? Emyvale was probably already asleep.
I scrunched my eyes tightly closed. ‘Have I disappointed you terribly, Mum?’
She didn’t say anything.
I closed my eyes tighter, and my stomach clenched. It was my decision, one I was determined not to regret. Just a few hours earlier this had been the easiest decision to make, the only option. But now I started to feel I needed reassurance that it wasn’t the stupidest mistake I had ever made.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘I just couldn’t stay there another second more.’
‘I never knew you were so unhappy,’ Mum said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I feel like a bad mother.’
We should’ve been closer than we felt then. So I didn’t say anything. I really didn’t want to agree with her; what a terrible thing to say. But at that moment I also didn’t exactly disagree. What kind of mother sends her eleven-year-old daughter away to boarding school?
But that was unfair. At the start, I’d desperately wanted to go. Everyone in town told me how smart I was. They seemed astonished at my memory and the speed at which I learned new things. My year six teacher said it would be a shame for me to go on to the local high school. I remembered telling Mum how much I wanted to go to ‘the clever school’. I was still a keen little mustard seed at the start of last year. I’d aced year ten and hadn’t even felt a wisp of the impending doom that my friends talked about. School was easy. Weird. So when had it turned?
I’d sat the scholarship exam when I was ten. I’d gone to the city with my grandparents and we’d stayed in a tall hotel and our window looked out over a park. The school was grand and the woman interviewing me said all kinds of nice things. Then, when I got the offer letter, everyone in town knew about it and congratulated me. The school uniform was so new and fancy, and I felt like a character in a book. I took bobby pins from the bathroom cupboard and practised pinning my hair like the girls on the covers of Enid Blyton books, or annoying old Lucy from Narnia. I was a smart cookie, a child genius. I was making my family proud.
‘I didn’t really know how miserable I was until this morning. I know it sounds crazy …’ I tried to catch hold of one of the emotions I was having. ‘I feel like a bad daughter.’
It was only about six minutes’ drive from the st
ation to our house. The home fires were burning, by which I mean that the lights were on inside.
Mum pulled into the driveway, turned off the engine and pulled on the handbrake. She squeezed my knee. ‘We’ll be all right.’
The overgrown bushes along the fence line had sticky tendrils that grabbed at my legs as I went through the gate. I pushed the tendrils away, and walked along the path to the front door.
Clover’s face lit up when I came through into the kitchen. It actually did, it flashed, and she got down from her chair and ran to me, leaping into the arms I held out for her.
‘Addie!’ Her strong, chubby legs hooked around my waist and I clasped my hands together under her bum.
‘Hi, Clover-ber-dover.’
She leaned back to look at me, patted my cheeks with mashed potatoey hands and smooched me on the mouth. ‘Addie is at home!’
‘I am.’
‘Why?’
‘I missed you!’
‘You going to stay here with me?’
‘Yep …’
She kissed me again and wriggled to get down, right out of my grip.
Gran kissed me too, and I felt her mark my cheek with a soft smear of lipstick. She smiled, but not too much. Steaming towards the stove, she started checking the oven and pots. ‘You’re hungry,’ she said. When her gaze fell upon me it came with uncomfortable severity.
I felt judged in the way I imagined other girls might when their well-meaning grandmothers observed their questionable fashion sense or that they had fallen for the wrong young man. I had to face the music. But I wasn’t hungry.
‘You are going to stay with Ears?’ asked Clover, looking up at me with a squish-face grin.
Ears was her bunny. ‘Yes!’ I said.
‘I got the Foreman boy to chop some wood, Libby,’ said Gran, popping the oven mitts back on their little hook. ‘I’ll bring you some tomorrow.’
Clover sat on my feet. ‘You are going to stay here with Tim?’
I reached down to bop her softly on the nose with my finger. ‘I am!’ Tim’s the pony. Ears and Tim are basically Clover’s most important friends.
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