The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  Emily

  I think she’s sick because she’s stressed out all the time. Because I noticed, Bindy, that you got sick when you were in fifth grade and you had a history test the next day? I noticed that. Actually, we all did. But I said, maybe you get SICK whenever you worry about school? And Year 11 was too much for you because it’s senior school so maybe it became like a vicious cycle, where you get worried, get sick/go crazy, get behind in school work, get more worried, get more sick/ more crazy hallucinations, get more behind, and so on.

  Sergio

  I don’t mean to sound f—ked up and depressing, but I’m just thinking about this hallucination issue, seeing as I’m watching over Em’s shoulder, and I’m thinking about this second cousin I’ve got who got schizophrenia. And I’ve gotta say his symptoms were stuff like hallucinations, and not being able to sleep at night, and feeling kinda helpless and f—ked up the way you’ve been, Bindy. And another thing, I know it can get smart people like you, and around your age. Anyway, that’s not what you’ve got, but if it is you’ve gotta get to a doctor and get treatment or you get completely f—ked up.

  Elizabeth

  Okay, but she told us she’s got other symptoms as well, I mean physical symptoms, so it’s probably part of some bigger thing. I mean, not just her brain. So, don’t let Sergio scare you too much, Bindy, but you’d better go see a doctor. Astrid wants the computer. I think she might get a few more turns at your computer than most oth

  Astrid

  BINDY HAS A DRUG PROBLEM. I should have seen it before. It explains EVERY single symptom. She’s addicted to hallucinogens. Maybe LCD, PSP, maybe GHB? Not sure which. Or she’s like hooked on amphetamines. Which, Bindy? I can send you some material on addiction if you like, my mum keeps leaving it around the house.

  Briony

  Well, that makes me think, maybe she’s being poisoned by something?! (I don’t think she’s the drug-taking kind of a girl.) I read about this family who were all getting sick and crazy like you, and they discovered it was from the wood they were burning in their fireplace, which had some kind of chemical in it. And also some families get lead poisoning from old pipes! SO. THINK, BINDY. Where might you be getting accidentally poisoned? You live with your aunt and uncle: do they have an old house? Old pipes?

  Emily

  Briony is right. For sure it’s poison because now everything makes sense! Why has Bindy been thinking that we’re all poisonous? It’s because her subconscious is trying to warn her that she is being poisoned. It keeps sending her subliminal messages but all she hears is the word: poison! so she gets her head confused.

  But, why does it have to be accidental? It’s probably someone trying to murder her.

  Astrid

  If someone is trying to murder Bindy, it would be that guy she talks about in her life story. The one named Joshua Lynch who went to her lunchtime session, and then she writes to the principal about marijuana in his backpack? Which by the way should be legal anyway. I remember when they did that search of his stuff, and he got expelled like the next day. Who knew that was cos Bindy told the principal? He’s been waiting to get revenge ever since and now he’s getting it.

  Briony

  But

  Astrid

  Joshua would know about drugs because he was a drug lord. He’s probably poisoning her with drugs (ie hallucinogens— as I said above!!!). He was only at our school for like a week but I remember him. He was, like, totally old school.

  Briony

  But what about the people who were using the school intranet to share music files, and Bindy wrote to the principal and it got shut down?!! Or maybe some of the people who were using the reserve to drink, smoke, etc, and Bindy wrote to the principal to tell him about them?!!! It could have been them.

  Sergio

  It was the principal. Couldn’t take any more of your correspondence, Bindy.

  Toby

  No, you have to look close to home. It’s always someone the victim knows.

  I think it’s that little cousin of yours, Bindy, the one named Bella. You’ve gotta learn to leave her toys alone.

  Emily

  No! It’s Auntie Veronica and Uncle Jake because Veronica’s pregnant, right, so they want to make room for their new baby and they are too kind to hurt Bindy’s feelings by asking her to move out and therefore it’s easiest to kill her! It makes perfect sense.

  Toby

  And then they can bury her in their garden and KEEP TAKING RENT FROM HER PARENTS!!!

  Emily

  But do we know that her parents are paying anything for her to live there? Her dad seems pretty cheap. (Who makes you do a business proposal before you can get pocket money?) Along with all his other faults of character. And I think to myself: maybe the dad is killing her so he doesn’t have to pay for her university education? I suppose that is upsetting to hear.

  7

  Night Time Musings of Bindy Mackenzie

  Sunday, 10.30 pm

  Here I am at home again: very calm, very philosophical.

  Such a strange day!

  Yet, I am content.

  I have yet to speak to my parents or Anthony—but even on that issue I am calm. I will defend myself, and Anthony. I will try not to let my father condemn us.

  I woke this morning, with a start, in the rocking chair! A sudden rock backwards woke me! (That was Toby.) I screamed, then stopped. He looked funny in his pyjamas.

  I felt fine. It turns out I am not the sort of person to get hangovers. I am so glad to discover that about myself. Astrid said she is the same, so we have that in common.

  Well, Toby wandered out of the living room again, and I saw my laptop on the coffee table. It was open, and I could see words on the screen. Immediately, I felt uneasy. I recalled typing in a frenzy last night, in my hazy, ecstatic state. But then what? I had no memory of shutting down. What if I had deleted the whole file?! Worse, what if they had read it?!

  And so I checked, and lo, I discovered that my FAD group had created a document of messages. Further, they had found my Life, and read that. I was so relieved that they hadn’t read this document that I didn’t really mind the intrusion of privacy with respect to my Life. The Life is just my old diaries, and merit awards, really, from childhood. Whereas in this document, which includes the Life, I have scanned in all my philosophical musings and memos; I’ve typed in the most intimate night time musings! And these include much about the FAD group itself that would perhaps have reversed their new-found fondness for me. (For instance, I seem to remember referring to Emily as a drama queen, a vampire, swinging double doors, the Death of Debating, and a person who will never do well at school. I wish I had not written such vicious things about them. I got them all wrong.)

  I was a little annoyed by their suggestions that my dad is not a nice person, and that my parents’ marriage is in trouble. That is just the misrepresentative nature of those diary entries. Obviously, I’d only ever written in the diary at times of distress! Such as when my parents were fighting! My life story was not accurate, and at some point I’ll have to explain this to the FAD group.

  But then I began to laugh at their outlandish comments— ideas about me being poisoned, suspects from my past, and so on. Before I had quite finished reading, a voice called me into the kitchen.

  Breakfast was ready!

  Everyone was there except Finnegan, who, it seemed, was still asleep upstairs. The table was set with cereals, milk, juice, toast and jams, and Try was standing at the stove, looking very tiny in a white bathrobe, making pancakes! She was gazing at her frying pan, earnestly.

  The others looked up guiltily as I entered, but I smiled my forgiveness upon them, and there was a general sigh of relief.

  ‘Okay, Bindy,’ Sergio said. ‘We’ve gotta give this to you straight. We have something important to tell you.’

  I sat down at the table, and turned to him.

  ‘You are slowly being murdered,’ he declared.

  ‘Poisoned,’ Briony asse
rted.

  Try swung around from the frying pan. I sat on my hands.

  ‘Are you ready for this?’ said Sergio. ‘You want to know who it is?’ He dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper: ‘It’s Mrs Lilydale. With the carob-coated energy drops.’

  I reached for the Special K, laughing.

  Then I looked up again. There was silence in the room but for the sizzling of Try’s pancakes. Her back was turned again, but the rest of the group were staring at me.

  ‘Mrs Lilydale?’ I said, straight-faced. ‘With the carob-coated energy drops. Interesting.’

  Suddenly, they were all talking.

  It seemed that after writing messages on my computer, they had talked late into the night. And this was their conclusion.

  They almost seemed to believe it.

  ‘It’s cos we read in your life story that you saw something in her office,’ Astrid explained. ‘She wrote that note to you about the papers on her desk, and she wanted to know exactly what you’d seen? They must have exposed Mrs L., somehow. Like maybe she’s in a criminal conspiracy or something.’

  ‘Or maybe she’s a stripper in her spare time,’ Sergio suggested.

  ‘Don’t make me throw up my breakfast, Sergio!’ Emily seemed very angry.

  ‘And Lilydale sent you the carob-coated energy drops,’ Toby said, turning back to me, ‘and told you to come back for more.’

  ‘I see you eating them all the time,’ Emily pointed out. ‘I thought they were chocolate for the longest time, and I was so pissed at you for not offering me one.’

  Now, I am ashamed to say, a strange sensation overcame me. A tingling excitement. Because, although they were only joking, perhaps they were right! I had been feeling so unwell, so unlike myself all year. And Mrs Lilydale did keep pressing those energy drops on me. Why?

  ‘But why?’ I said. ‘Why would she want to kill me, instead of, I don’t know, bribing me not to say what I saw on her desk? She’s not insane! And I think she likes me!’

  ‘Exactly!’ cried Astrid.

  The others turned to her and she shrugged.

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t see anything on her desk, Bindy?’ Emily demanded.

  ‘I didn’t see anything at all,’ I said. ‘I never knew what Mrs Lilydale was going on about.’

  ‘It’s such a tragedy,’ said Astrid, happily. ‘She has to die for, like, no reason?’

  Try was silent throughout this discussion. She flipped pancakes, moved around the table, tipping pancakes onto plates, and returned to the stove and made more.

  I noticed, as a pancake slid onto Sergio’s plate, the faintest hint of a smile. But she remained silent.

  Until Astrid said, ‘Try! Don’t you reckon this is serious and we should, like, get Lilydale arrested?’

  The others clamoured, ‘Yeah, why aren’t you saying anything, Try? This is, like, one of your FAD group being murdered and all you can do is bake!!’ Although, she was not technically baking, of course.

  At this, however, she finally switched off the stove, and turned around. She stood with a hand on her hip, a querying look on her face.

  They all took this as an invitation to explain, and began to tell Try how sick I had been, that I’d been having hallucinations, that it was Mrs Lilydale trying to poison me. In a frenzy, they listed my symptoms, and Toby explained that they were the symptoms of someone being poisoned.

  Try raised an eyebrow at that.

  ‘Ask Briony!’ cried Toby. ‘She told us the symptoms. She knows them because she did this Biology assignment about contaminated water in Bangladesh. Tell Try about it, Briony.’

  Briony said that wells had been dug in Bangladesh, as part of a world aid project, to get fresh water for the people. Only, they didn’t realise they were digging into soil and rock full of arsenic, so now the water is full of arsenic and the people are being slowly poisoned.

  ‘And it is true, Try,’ Briony insisted. ‘Bindy does have some of the symptoms of chronic arsenic poisoning.’

  ‘Don’t you think we should tell someone?’ Emily cried. ‘I mean, we’ve got our semi-final in debating this Friday! We need Bindy alive!’

  Try turned to me with a concerned frown. ‘How are you feeling today?’ she asked.

  Surprised, I replied: ‘Fine!’ And this was true, I felt better than ever! Perhaps I was over my illness!

  ‘Okay,’ Try spoke in a soft voice—the kind that makes people lean forward to hear. She held the back of a chair, and rocked slightly.

  ‘Okay,’ she repeated. ‘You all remember I once promised I’d tell you my theory on teenagers?’

  Not really, most people said.

  But I remembered. It had been early on.

  ‘And you remember how Bindy claimed that she is not a teenager?’

  They all remembered that.

  Suddenly, Try pulled out the chair she had been leaning on, and sat on it. She pushed herself back from the table, so she was surveying us all.

  ‘It’s like this,’ she said, talking fast. ‘It is my belief that the teenager is a person with three main characteristics. First!’ She held up a finger. ‘First, teenagers get caught up in their own heads. Okay, I don’t want to offend you guys, but teenagers think about themselves a lot. They obsess about what they look like, what people think of them, what the point of life is. So, number one, too much introspection.

  ‘Now,’ she held up a second finger, before anyone could interrupt. ‘Now, number two, the teenager needs excitement—it’s a reaction, I guess, to the realisation that life is ordinary. In childhood, it’s fresh and exciting, but then you start to see that the grown-up world is boring. So you look for hysteria and drama. You scream at concerts, you shriek when you see each other, you ride on rollercoasters, you get into alcohol and drugs. All year I’ve been hearing you guys use words like conspiracy, compulsion, pathology—you get posttraumatic stress from exams; you’re always running from the cops. I mean, you guys are just desperate for excitement. You’re looking for extremes. You’re looking for a climax.’

  There were slight noises from the group—minor, murmured protests. But Try held up a third finger.

  ‘And finally, teenagers lose their sense of perspective. They’re stuck between childhood and adulthood so they don’t know whether they’re up or down. One day, they’re dressing up to look old and get into a bar; next day, they’re putting on their cute voice to get the child’s fare on the bus. It’s like they’re in an elevator all the time, so they can’t judge where they are.’

  ‘Well,’ began Emily, ‘I think that—’

  But Try had not finished. She lowered her voice to an even gentler pitch.

  ‘You guys are just being teenagers,’ she said. ‘You think about poison because you’re caught up with yourselves— Briony’s studying poison in Biology, so she thinks it must be happening all around her. And you all throw yourselves at Briony’s idea because you’re looking for the climax. You want there to be something exciting going on behind the scenes. So Bindy’s being poisoned—that’s why she’s sick, that’s why she’s hallucinating! It’s a murder plot! And you don’t have judgement or perspective, so you can’t say to yourselves: well, hang on just a second, why would somebody murder an innocent schoolgirl like Bindy Mackenzie?’

  People were beginning to look uncomfortable. Some frowned, opened their mouths to speak, and closed them again. Some tried to explain that they’d only been joking about the poison.

  ‘Which brings me to our Bindy,’ Try concluded, ignoring them. ‘I think she might be more of a teenager than she knows herself. I think she’s too introspective, for a start— always obsessing about doing well at school, and that makes her tense and unhappy. I think she’s looking for extremes, by which I mean, extremely high marks, and that makes her stay awake all night, pushing herself to the edge, going for number 1 in everything. And she’s lost her perspective—she can’t see where she belongs in the world, partly, forgive me, Bindy, because her parents have gone off to an apartment th
at has no space for her. And this, in my humble view, is what’s making Bindy sick. All this is making her exhausted and stressed; she feels out of control and lost.’

  I admit, I was overwhelmed.

  I felt like weeping again.

  What she said felt so true.

  ‘And today,’ Try said, looking at me again, ‘you say you feel okay today?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Could that be,’ she suggested, ‘because you’ve finally been honest and open with a group of friends?’

  How did she know about last night?!

  I felt a wave of serenity. People half-smiled at me. They began to eat breakfast again, pour themselves juice, ask for the raspberry jam. They began to talk of other things.

  Nobody was trying to poison me. And I was healthy again for I had found a place I belonged.

  As I chewed on my pancake, thoughtfully, I felt a sudden burning in my cheeks. For a memory had come to me complete. That earlier FAD session when Try asked us to list our flaws. I had refused to do so, but, in my mind, I had listed my own three flaws as:

  • a tendency towards reverie;

  • difficulty coping with anti-climax; and

  • occasional trouble judging distances.

  There they were! Try’s three teenage characteristics! I was caught up in my own head (reverie); I was obsessed with crises (and so could not cope with anti-climax); and I had trouble with judgement!

  I was a teenager, after all!

  After breakfast, Try asked me to help her clean up, and sent the others away. We did not say much as we worked, but at one point, Try said, quietly, ‘I hope you don’t mind what I was saying there. I didn’t mean it to be critical.’ She was looking away from me, leaning over the dishwasher.

  ‘Not at all!’ I exclaimed. ‘I was just shocked to hear I was a teenager.’

  And then, when we emerged from the kitchen, there was a sudden shout of ‘Surprise!’ and do you know what it was?

  It was a surprise party for me!

  Because it had been my birthday on Friday. They had been blowing up balloons, and hanging streamers from the walls while I was in the kitchen!

  Emily was holding an open carton of ice-cream, with a candle in its centre. Everyone sang Happy Birthday, and I blew out the candle quickly, before any more ice-cream could melt.