Finding Freia Lockhart

by Aimee Said

  “Come on, Freia,” she says, pulling me up from the chair. At first I just sort of stand there while Siouxsie pogos up and down and plays air guitar. When I realise that she’s not paying any attention to what I’m doing, I let loose with some side kicks and moderate headbanging myself. When the track finishes we fall onto the bed, puffed and laughing like loons.

  Mrs Sheldon (“Call me Pam”) asks if I’d like to stay for dinner, but I don’t want to push my luck with Mum on a school night. I walk the five blocks between Siouxsie’s house and mine feeling lighter and happier, and I can’t explain why, except that when I saw that Ramones poster in Siouxsie’s room I felt like I belonged somewhere for the first time in a long while.

  “How did you and Siouxsie get on this afternoon?” asks Mum as I set the table.

  “Pretty good,” I say, hoping she won’t ask me to elaborate. If she finds out my whole presentation is based on how much I hate her favourite Jane Austen novel, I’ll never hear the end of it.

  “I think it’s a good idea for you two to do it together,” she says. “I wish my students would be more creative with their tutorial presentations.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Please don’t ask me any more about it, please don’t ask …

  “So what are you actually doing?”

  “We-ell.” I try to think up a plausible lie, but my mind’s racing in panic. “It’s, uh, going to be kind of a debate.”

  Mum nods enthusiastically. “Always good to have a bit of banter back and forth about the issues. What are you debating?”

  “Um, well, you see, Siouxsie’s speaking for the affirmative, and I’m taking the negative.”

  “Yes, thank you, Freia, I do know how a debate works. But what will you be representing the negative about?”

  “About the stupidbloodybook, of course!”

  Mum looks shocked and I’m not sure whether it’s because I’ve lost it over what she must think is a perfectly innocent question, or because she can’t believe that it’s possible for her own flesh and blood not to worship her favourite author.

  “I’m sorry, Mum, I really tried to like it, but I just don’t. All the Bennet women are stupid and their dad’s condescending and sexist and Darcy’s just a puffed-up know-it-all with a huge ego …” My mouth is racing now as I list my litany of Pride and Prejudice dislikes. I’m so busy rattling them all off that it takes me a while to notice that Mum is doing her best to keep a straight face. “What’s so funny?”

  “Sorry, Fray, I’m not laughing at you. It’s just that I’ve never seen you get so passionate about, well, anything. You and I don’t have to like the same books, you know.”

  “So you’re not disappointed?”

  “Well, I guess I’d better rethink who’ll take over as secretary of the Parkville chapter of the Austenites’ Association when I retire, but what you enjoy reading is your business.”

  I’m so shocked that I’m speechless. Luckily, Ziggy chooses that moment to make a grand entrance by shouting, “Yo yo yo, ladies, where’s my dinner at?”, which earns him a lecture about using American slang and enforcing outdated gender roles.

  Score: Freia one, Ziggy nil for this round of mother–child relations.

  23

  By Wednesday the hockey field has recovered, much to Ms Chan’s and the Bs’ joy. I walk to the oval with Kate and Brianna, but once we’re on the field I hang to the side with Siouxsie.

  “It’s not that I don’t like playing sport,” she says thoughtfully. “I just don’t think I’m aggressive enough for this game.”

  As if on cue, Bethanee races towards us, dribbling the ball deftly with her stick. We leap in opposite directions to avoid her.

  “Nice one – not!” screams Belinda.

  Siouxsie rolls her eyes and without thinking I return the gesture. Afterwards I worry that Belinda may have seen us, but less than a minute later she’s punching her fist in the air to mark another field goal and seems to have forgotten all about me and Siouxsie. Unfortunately, Ms Chan hasn’t.

  “Lockhart and Sheldon! Stop standing around like a pair of lazy carthorses! I want five laps of the oval from each of you.” I look at Siouxsie in disbelief. She just shrugs. “Now!” screams Ms Chan, and we head for the outer edge of the oval at a slow jogging pace, muttering.

  After two laps I’m too puffed to even mutter any more. I give Kate a can-you-believe-she’s-making-me-do-this look as we pass her for the third time, but she’s too busy laughing with Bethanee to see me.

  When I see my face in the mirror I look like I’ve plunged my head into a furnace. Splashing my cheeks with cold water doesn’t make any difference to the redness.

  “Surely there’s some kind of law against that under the Child Protection Act,” I say to Kate on the way to rehearsal.

  “Well, you were kind of asking for it.” I feel a bit betrayed. I mean, Kate’s always been the first to stick up for me when it comes to PE.

  “I wasn’t doing anything different to usual. I always run away from the ball in hockey.”

  “But you don’t usually draw attention to it by slacking off with Siouxsie Sheldon. Everyone knows Chan’s got it in for her.”

  “We were just standing together.”

  “Come off it, Freia,” says Bethanee. “You must know that hanging out with Morticia isn’t going to win you any prizes.”

  As we enter the Parkville gates, I’m almost pleased to see Michael Harrigan approaching so we can change the subject.

  “Nice look, Lockhart,” he says and I feel my cheeks burn even hotter. “Did you forget the sunblock?”

  “Be kind to poor Freia,” says Bethanee. “She had to do some exercise this afternoon and the exertion almost killed her.” Then she, Michael and Kate laugh. I try to muster a giggle to show that I’m capable of having a laugh at my own expense before pushing past Michael and up the stairs to the safe confines of the balcony.

  I’m relieved when Daniel doesn’t even look up from the lighting desk; at least one person won’t see my lobster impression.

  “How’s it going?” he mumbles as he sets the levels for the opening scene.

  “It’s been better,” I answer, not bothering to even draw my chair up to the desk.

  “Princess problems?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  Where would I even begin? Would I start with why I hang around with a group of shallow, bitchy girls who, on the whole, seem to loathe me, or cut straight to why I’m pretending not to like Siouxsie just to keep said shallow, bitchy girls on side? I might not know Daniel very well, but I doubt I’d be scoring any points on his decent-human-being scale if he found out how much like them I really am. “It’s just the usual complicated friends stuff,” I tell him.

  He turns towards me so that we’re eye to fringe. “Maybe that’s why I choose not to have friends.”

  I’m still thinking about Daniel’s words as I lie in bed, even though I’m meant to be having an early night so I’ll be wide awake and energised for the EE debate tomorrow.

  Could not having friends be a choice? And, if so, what would drive you to make that choice? I mean, I might not feel like I fit in with the Bs, but at least I’m part of something.

  When I finally fall asleep I dream I’m walking through a beautiful orchard and all the trees are laden with fruit. The sun is shining, but not too hot, and there’s a gentle breeze on my skin. I feel happy. I catch a glimpse of something gold out of the corner of my eye, followed by more and more, until there’s an orb of gold spinning in front of me. It’s then I realise that it is, in fact, little gold bees, and they’re buzzing and angry and swarming around my head.

  I don’t need to consult any dream dictionary to know what this dream means.

  24

  Ms Reid looks confused when I hand her two cards; one with a bonnet on it and the other with a bomb.

  “The topic of our presentation today,” says Siouxsie, confidently, “is ‘Pride and Prejudice: Best Bo
ok or Biggest Bore’. I’ll be speaking for the affirmative and Freia will be taking the negative. At the end of each topic the audience will vote for who they think has made the most convincing argument. Hold up your bonnet card if you agree with me or your bomb card if you think Freia’s right.”

  Ms Reid puts her bomb card down, confident that she won’t need it. Siouxsie leads with an impassioned list of reasons why Mrs Bennet is one of the greatest fictional characters of all time. I see loads of people nodding in agreement.

  I’m beginning to think this debate is a really bad idea when she nudges me to start my rebuttal.

  “My fellow English Extensioners,” I say in the pompous debater’s voice I’ve been practising, “I put it to you that Mrs Bennet is the most annoying, interfering and stupid mother in the history of literature. Not only is she obsessed with her daughters’ personal lives, but she also insists on inflicting her own outdated ideas and stupid schemes on them …”

  The half hour allotted for our presentation flies by. To my surprise, although the voting still comes out in the book’s favour, there are a decent amount of bomb cards on show at each vote and even Ms Reid uses hers after my particularly heartfelt outburst about the overuse of bonnets as a motif. Perhaps I’ll be looking at a B+ after all.

  Nicky’s waiting for me after school. She takes one look at the grin on my face and says, “Either the presentation went really, really well or Johnny Depp’s your substitute teacher.”

  I tell her all about it as we drive to Switch where Jay gives us extra whipped cream and marshmallows on our hot chocolates and the biggest slice of mud cake I’ve ever seen.

  “Cheers,” says Nicky, clinking her mug against mine.

  “Hey, Freia.” I look up to see Daniel standing by our table. “I, uh, just wanted to ask how the thingo went today … in English.”

  “It was good, thanks,” I say. He grins and gives me the thumbs up.

  Nicky’s smiling so hard at Daniel that I think her face may crack. She kicks me and I realise she’s waiting for an introduction. “Nicky meet Daniel. Daniel this is my English tutor, Nicky,” I mumble into my cake, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

  “Hi, Nicky,” says Daniel, equally awkwardly.

  “It’s good to meet you, Daniel. Would you like to join us?”

  Now it’s my turn to do the kicking.

  Thankfully, Daniel shakes his head. “Thanks anyway, but I’ve got stuff to do. See you at rehearsal tomorrow, Freia.”

  “He seems nice,” says Nicky as soon as Daniel’s out of earshot.

  “Yeah, he’s okay. Shouldn’t we be getting onto the essay plan? My Pride and Prejudice pain isn’t over yet, you know.”

  “Freia Lockhart, you’re blushing! Is there something going on between you and Daniel that I don’t know about?

  “As if. Even if I fancied him – which I don’t – hanging out with him would only make me even more of a social liability.”

  “It seems to me that you two get on pretty well. I mean, it was nice of him to come over and ask about the presentation, wasn’t it?”

  “I never said he wasn’t nice, but he’s got a bad reputation and it’s already rubbing off on me.” I tell her about the rumours going around Parkville, and about Michael Harrigan and how weird things are with Kate, and how I’d like to be friends with Siouxsie, but I’m not sure if we really are friends or if she just wanted to do the presentation together, and that if we were to be friends, I’d be banished from the Bs, and all the other crap that’s crowding every spare millimetre of my brain.

  Nicky listens and nods and makes “mmm” noises, but when I finish she doesn’t have any answers for me. “There’s a lot of stuff in life that only you can make decisions about. You need to learn to trust your instincts. If you think about this stuff from your own perspective, instead of worrying about what everyone else will think about it, I bet the answers will come to you.”

  How I get in touch with these so-called instincts is not made clear to me since Jay chooses this moment to clear the table and the conversation turns to some party they’re both going to later. By the time he takes our cups away Nicky’s face is flushed and she seems to have forgotten what we were talking about.

  “Where did we get to with that essay plan?” she says, as if we’d been discussing it all along.

  “I hear congratulations are in order,” says Mum as she dishes up tofu surprise at dinner. (We’re still trying to work out what the “surprise” in this recipe is. Judging by how bland it tastes, it may be that there’s nothing but tofu in it.) “Nicky said your presentation went very well.”

  “Sounds like cause for celebration,” says Dad. “How about lunch at Il Gusto on Sunday?”

  “Don’t you have too much homework for that Freia?” asks Ziggy, with a malevolent smile.

  “I reckon I can squeeze it in,” I say and Mum and Dad both smile at me. It’s been so long since I’ve done anything that pleased them, I’d forgotten how good it feels.

  Ziggy scowls, annoyed that I’ve stolen his mantle as the Golden Child. I even go for a second helping, despite tofu surprise having the consistency of lumps in paste, just to make Mum smile again. After dinner we play Scrabble and Ziggy sulks when Dad won’t let him put down “bling”. I could get used to this.

  I keep thinking about what Nicky said about trusting my instincts. From what I remember of Year Eight biology, animals use their instincts for stuff like working out how to build nests, or which kind of berries will poison them, or knowing how to birth and raise their young. If this is anything to go by, I might be at a genetic disadvantage, since my mum and dad seem to have no instinct for parenting (and if tonight’s dinner is any indication, Mum’s instinct about what is edible is also in doubt).

  The fact is that I’ll never fit in with the Bs and, whether I like it or not, Kate is one of them now. And I’m not sure whether the people who I feel most like myself around are even interested in being friends. I know Nicky would tell me I should be true to what I feel is right for me, but the voice of Mum’s books nags at the corner of my mind, telling me that if I make the wrong decision now, I’ll end up a social outcast forever, living in a caravan with eleventy cats.

  25

  “Only two more weeks and we get our Saturdays back,” says Daniel by way of greeting when we get to Parkville at the same time the next morning.

  “Can’t wait,” I say, although I’m dreading returning to the cleaning/supermarket routine.

  He waits while I chain my bike next to his and we walk to the hall together. Maybe it’s just that Nicky’s got me thinking about it, but something feels different this morning. It’s like there’s a crackly sort of energy passing between us, like one of those Jacob’s ladder things in the Science lab, where electricity travels between the two metal rods.

  If Daniel feels it, he doesn’t let on. As soon as we get up to the balcony, he’s all “Can you check on the red gel that melted during Wednesday’s rehearsal?” and “We need to tidy up the dissolve from the study to the bedroom in scene four”. So much for trusting my feelings to lead me to answers.

  “Coming to lunch?” yells Kate when Mr Wilson announces break time.

  “I think I have stuff to do here,” I tell her, leaning over the balcony and hoping that Daniel won’t hear me and ask what that “stuff” might be, since everything’s going smoothly at our end.

  “I told you,” says Bethanee to Kate, as if I can’t hear her. “She’s too busy with her boyfriend.”

  Of course I have to go with them after that. I mean, if I don’t, it’s as good as saying they’re right.

  “Look who’s here,” calls Belinda. “We were beginning to think you didn’t like us any more, Fray-Fray.”

  I force a smile.

  “Come and sit next to me,” she says, patting the ground beside her. The spot to the right of Belinda is traditionally reserved for whoever her favourite B is at the time, so it’s more than a little weird that she’s directing me there. Bethane
e, who had been about to sit there, gives me the death stare and quickly plonks herself on Belinda’s left side before the others get any ideas.

  “I heard your Pride and Prejudice thing went well,” says Bethanee.

  “Oh yeah!” says Kate. “I forgot that was yesterday. How was it, Fray?”

  Bethanee continues as if Kate hadn’t said a word. “It must’ve been all those lunchtimes you spent working on it that gave you the advantage. That and doing it with Morticia, of course – everyone knows she’s Reid’s pet.”

  “You did your presentation with Siouxsie?” asks Brianna, incredulously.

  “Careful, Freia,” says Belinda. She puts her hand on my shoulder as if she’s concerned about me. “Between lunch hours with Morticia and rehearsals with Skeletor, we may lose you to the dark side.”

  “How is Skeletor?” asks Bethanee. “Has he tried to kiss you with those enormous lips yet?”

  “Ugh,” says Brianna, with a shiver of disgust. “You don’t let him do that, do you, Freia?”

  “It’s the only part of him with any padding. Can you hear his bones banging together when you do it?” Bethanee’s just about wetting herself laughing now.

  I want to tell them that Siouxsie’s a better person than any of them; that Daniel’s nicer than any of the jocks they hang out with; that they’re not my friends and I don’t need them. But I just go red and shoot Kate a look that I hope says “help me”.

  For once she gets the message. “Don’t be mean,” she says. “Freia can’t help having to hang out with those two. It’s not as if she likes them or anything.”

  Bethanee’s lips become thin and for a moment I think she’s going to lay into Kate for sticking up for me. Thankfully, Belinda has the attention span of a five year old with ADHD when it comes to talking about anything but herself, and the subject is dropped in favour of an in-depth discussion about the superiority of spray-on fake tans over lotions. I force myself to finish my sandwich, even though my mouth is so dry I have to chew each mouthful a million times before it’s broken up enough to swallow.