Peter remains still, as if he is an exhibit in a museum. The mother follows the deputy principal’s cue, and gazes through Peter. Only the boy looks directly at Peter. His eyes are a headache-inducing blue.
The mother says, ‘It’s a lovely little room. I’m sure Jeremy will enjoy it here.’
Handwringer Hamsden nods. His eyes skitter over Peter once more, then he stammers, ‘Well... I’ll show you to Jeremy’s classroom now, and introduce you both to Mrs. Calbourne.’
They depart gratefully. Peter thumbs a sticker on his scrapbook cover. He curves his fingers pianist-style, werewolf-style. He is contemplating the angel fish—the sticker he selected from Miss Amar’s collection two weeks ago—when Handwringer Hamsden comes back up the stairs, this time alone, and asks Peter what he is doing there.
A day later on the news, they will say that Miss Amar rarely spoke to her neighbors and did not have any close friends. No family except for one distant sister, who will eventually travel from Prague to pack up her house. Principal Alteruthemeyer will appear in a brief interview, describing Miss Amar as an intelligent and quiet woman who was well-loved by all her students. Anyone with information will be encouraged to call Crime Stoppers. Having no tearful relatives, and no one else besides the principal willing to appear on TV, the segment will end with a reporter standing outside the school, stating the last of the scant facts. Beyond the school gates, blurry girls and boys will sit on the grass and eat lunch, oblivious as gazelles.
We return again to Peter ten days after the disappearance of Miss Amar. It is a Thursday, one bright with hope for young Peter as he peels a banana in the courtyard, where some of the third grade boys play four-square with a balding tennis ball. Quentin Silvy is King and has held this position for nearly seven rounds; the others in line are starting to itch. Scattered around the four-square court are boys clutching half-eaten sandwiches in crumpled cling wrap, pacing, wiping their mouths with the backs of their hands, shouting at the game. Peter is the only one sitting down because he is the only one who takes his lunchbox out of his bag. This is something Peter is only noticing just now: the other boys do not take their lunchboxes out of their bags, but take their lunch out of their lunchboxes which they leave in their bags. Peter is too mortified to eat his banana.
‘Hey. Are you Peter?’
And Peter is strangely relieved to see the new kid, Jeremy Lavignac, a somber green lunchbox tucked under his arm. That cut-glass gaze.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m Jem.’
‘Hi.’
‘Kyle said you had an egg salad sandwich.’
Peter does have an egg salad sandwich. It is his least favorite sandwich filling, which is why he is eating the banana.
‘...Yeah.’
Jem glances at Peter’s lunchbox. ‘I was wondering, if you haven’t eaten it already, if you wanted to swap. I have ham.’
Peter looks at Jem. Is it credible that an eight-year-old boy wants to trade ham sandwiches for egg salad? Peter tries to rewrap his banana in its skin and pops the lid of his lunchbox. Jem verifies that the sandwiches are indeed egg salad before slipping his lunchbox out from under his arm and producing his own sandwiches, which are in a glossy, tightly sealed Glad bag.
An explosion of yells: Quentin has missed the ball. Grinning sheepishly, Quentin accepts his place as Dunce. Peter and Jem swap sandwiches. ‘Thanks,’ says Jem. He snaps the lid back on his lunchbox and sits down next to Peter. Peter breaks the seal of the Glad bag. Jem uses a different brand of bread from his own family, the kind with visible grains and seeds.
They watch the four-square, chewing their slightly different lunches. A teacher roams into view and disappears.
‘You have piano lessons with Mrs. Yorke,’ Peter finally says.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘What’s she like?’
Jem studies his sandwich. ‘I’m not really sure yet. I’ve only seen her once. I guess that’s what it’s like when you’re switching teachers—it takes a while to figure out.’
‘What grade are you up to?’
‘Five.’
Peter nearly chokes. He realigns the bread. ‘You must be really good.’
Jem says nothing. He takes another bite of the sandwich. ‘You had that teacher who went missing.’
‘Miss Amar.’
‘Was she good?’
Peter pauses. He wonders if Jem means good as in musically talented, proficient; or if he means whether Miss Amar was good at teaching. ‘She was really nice,’ Peter decides. He feels a beat of pain after he says this. ‘She never lied to me.’
Jem looks down and flicks a piece of egg from his trousers. ‘I hope the police find her,’ he says.
‘Yeah. I hope she’s alright.’
Peter is nearing the crust. His teeth strip the last of the white away. Jem asks, ‘Do you have any brothers and sisters?’
‘No. You?’
‘No.’
Think back to when you were eight. Think back to lonely lunch hours and ill-fitting school uniforms and being stranded at school without a way home. Think of having to raise your hand to speak and to ask the teacher if you could go to the toilet. Think about the homework you carried on your back. Think of the zip breaking on your pencil case, of juice flooding your schoolbag. Think about every time you died—in class, in the courtyard, on the oval.
Think about those others who made it bearable. Try to remember how it was, exactly, that you met.
This bright afternoon, like so many others that do not burn with shame or fear, will vanish like Miss Amar.
It will be two months later that Peter’s mother will call the school. The fee for piano lessons has been waived for the past bill, but she wants to know when Peter can start learning again. As if she believes that Peter is falling fatally behind schedule, his chance for greatness slipping away, and what is Alteruthemeyer going to do about it? Mrs. Pushkin is only able to advance her complaint as high as Handwringer Hamsden, who is in his handwringing element. ‘I will liaise with Mrs. Yorke,’ he says, liaise, as if it will require trench coats and secret handshakes, but Peter’s mother is, for the moment, satisfied. She expects a resolution within the week.
By this time Jem and Peter are regular guests at each other’s houses. Today they sit on the carpet of Jem’s vast living room, their school shirts untucked, Wii controllers slack in their hands.
Jem asks, ‘Why does everyone call him Handwringer Hamsden?’
‘It’s what all the parents call him. Even my mum and dad call him that sometimes. I’m not sure what it means exactly. I don’t know if he knows that people call him that.’
‘My mum hasn’t met Mr. Alteruthemeyer.’
‘No one has. Except for Channel Seven.’
Peter triggers a beanstalk and they climb into the clouds.
Jem’s mother walks in, sorting through a pile of mail. ‘Are you staying for dinner, Peter? We’re having fettuccine, and you’re very welcome to stay.’
‘My mum is coming to pick me up at five. But thank you anyway, Mrs. Lavignac.’ He always makes sure to say her name carefully. La, vin, yak.
‘That’s alright, dear.’ Mrs. Lavignac looks up from a telephone bill and smiles. Exits just as Jem collects a 1UP. It’s strange, but whenever Jem’s mum smiles at Peter, whenever she’s so nice, Peter just thinks of that first real encounter with her, waiting for Miss Amar. The way she stared through him.
‘Jem.’
‘Yeah?’
‘What’s Mrs. Yorke like?’
Jem wrinkles his nose. ‘Um. I don’t know really. Strict? But not.’
Peter thumbs the A-button and sprints from some flying hammers.
Jem adds, ‘She’s nice. You’ll be alright, really. She just. Well. She just wants you to be the best.’
‘I’m not very good.’
‘You practice your scales, right? All the time? She would like that.’
‘It’s what I do most of the time though. I’m not very... good.’
&nb
sp; ‘Scales are a start.’ They run for the flag. Jem hits at 2000, Peter at 800. They head into the castle. ‘You’ll be fine, Peter. Honestly.’
Peter lets the controller slip into his lap. He takes a sip from a tumbler of water on a coaster.
‘We can practice now, if you want.’
Peter and Jem hover over a new level. There’s a whole world waiting. ‘Are you sure?’ Peter asks.
And here Peter must examine his tidy, exemplary friend. The school could not be prouder to have a student such as Jem Lavignac. They’ve already made him perform at both the primary school assembly and the high school assembly. Peter is sure that now they will wheel the Kemble out for any occasion, no matter how tenuous. The Anzac Day ceremony. Vaccinations.
And Mr. and Mrs. Pushkin aren’t letting Peter hang out with Jem for fun. This isn’t so Peter can socialize. Jem is some sort of asset; the Pushkins’ encouragement of their friendship is calculated, strategic. So, ‘Are you sure?’ Peter asks again, because if there’s one thing Peter is deathly afraid of, it’s Jem ascribing these nefarious motives to Peter himself.
Jem saves the game. ‘Let’s go.’
At night, the stickers on Peter’s scrapbook cover become bloated with depth. Freed from their two-dimensional existence, they take to the air like astronauts. Peter counts them, one for every week with Miss Amar, as they spin like a celestial mobile. There is the giraffe, his first sticker, its outlines cracked slightly from the scrapbook’s wear-and-tear. There is the dolphin, glittering kaleidoscopically, the same painful blue as Jem Lavignac’s eyes. Jem is here too—sort of—Peter feels that this is all happening while Jem is beside him or above him or inside him—and he feels a bottomless kind of sadness, an ache that feels good and bad at the same time, that sort of bothness that adults never talk about, oversimplify, like erasing strokes from a drawing. He wakes up before his alarm can ring, to a murky blue sky. His face is dry but he knows he has cried—like his library book, caught in the flood of juice, his skin can’t hide it.
Before his first lesson with Mrs. Yorke, on the way to school, Peter scrutinizes his Megasaurus Scrapbook and his exercise book like an archaeologist. The stickers on his scrapbook cover are inert today, secretive as glyphs. Miss Amar’s script has the opaque codedness of another time, another culture, which has been evaporating from Peter ever since the disappearance.
‘Good luck,’ his mother says when they reach school. Her bracelet has snagged on her sleeve, but she hasn’t noticed yet. ‘Let me know how it goes, okay? Make sure Mrs. Yorke writes in your notebook.’ Peter feels peculiarly sorry for his mother in this moment. Something about the way she means every word so very much.
Mrs. Yorke is already waiting when Peter climbs the gymnasium stairs. If she is irritated about having to take on more students since Miss Amar’s disappearance, she does not show it when she opens the door for Peter. He has seen Mrs. Yorke at school concerts before; he recognizes her sharp nose and bulletproof chignon. She spends the first five minutes of the lesson asking Peter what he feels are irrelevant questions, like what grade he is in and what his favorite subject is. Peter glances over at the desk and notices a brown leather-bound day planner, a pile of music books, a sharpened pencil, a perfectly rectangular eraser. There are no playful sheets of stickers or smiley-faced stamps. All of Mrs. Yorke’s students are advanced and old; Peter is profoundly embarrassed to be here. Even the room smells different with her in it.
As Jem and Peter predicted, Mrs. Yorke starts with scales. Peter’s responses are unblemished, if not hesitant, and Mrs. Yorke watches, her patience bordering on grimness, as if she is guiding a slow donkey up a flight of stairs.
‘Your scales are sound,’ Mrs. Yorke says (sound—Peter must return to the word and re-angle it—as in ‘safe and sound’). ‘You might want to think about lifting the tempo a little bit. Now, onto sight reading.’ She slides the first book from the pile on the desk and flattens the page to the earliest grade. Panic blooms in Peter’s head. ‘We won’t do this every week,’ Mrs. Yorke adds. ‘I would just like to get an idea of your competency. I’ll give you a minute to study the music.’
Peter doesn’t know it, but what he is doing now, instead of studying the music, is reflecting bitterly on the concept of relativity: how this one minute of preparation flashes by compared to the one minute of, say, waiting for a video to load.
‘Okay, Peter. Please begin. Go very slowly, if you like. Remember to count.’
What follows is a melody that is performed too slowly to have a discernible melody, moving like a tortoise trying to cross a busy highway. Mrs. Yorke coaches him through the journey. ‘Yes. Yes, good. Steady—make sure you count. D in the left hand. No, no, darling. D. Yes, that’s right. Good. Careful—remember to count. Just keep going...’
By the end of the piece, the lines of the stave have blurred together. Peter withdraws from the keyboard. Mrs. Yorke says, ‘That wasn’t bad—you need to keep a close eye on your rhythm. Your sight-reading in the treble is going very well. Just remember that in the bass, on the spaces, the notes are A, C, E, G—All Cows Eat Grass. And on the lines, the notes are G, B, D, F, A. Great Big Dogs Fight Anyway.’
It is at this pronouncement that Peter knows for sure that Miss Amar is gone, dislodged from reality like a pitch too low for notation. Miss Amar had taught Peter similar mnemonics to help him remember how to read the notes on the stave—FACE on the spaces and Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit on the lines for the treble stave; All Cows Eat Grass for the spaces in the bass. But this is the first time Peter has heard Great Big Dogs Fight Anyway. He is certain that Miss Amar used a different sentence, but all of a sudden Peter cannot remember what that was. It was poetic, he is sure, less violent. Peter gazes at the piano keys, and at the periphery he can perceive that Mrs. Yorke is gazing at him, as if she too senses some unbridged gap between them.
‘Maybe it was Good Boys Don’t Frighten Animals?’ Jem suggests. ‘That’s what I remember learning with my first teacher. I don’t really think about that stuff anymore when I’m sight reading, to be honest. It’s just like reading words now.’
Jem and Peter are loitering in the outfields of the softball pitch, oversized gloves in hand, feigning alertness. Half of the class have no talent for softball, rotating through the bases on the strength of penalty balls, or trotting to the back of the batting line after striking out.
Jem adds, ‘I know what you mean though. It’s like you think there’s only one way to learn something and you think you’re learning it the way everybody else is learning it, but there’s a million different ways instead. It kind of makes your brain hurt.’
Some of the sportier members of the class, like Quentin Silvy, are red with frustration. They spew advice and impatient encouragement at their teammates like helicopter parents. Mr. Cutbush demonstrates how to swing the bat for the hundredth time. Peter watches Kyle Pickering step up to the plate and prays he lands a hit. One more strike and the teams will switch roles.
Jem says, ‘Maybe you should try to find out what happened to Miss Amar. It’s like you need—what’s the word?—closure. That’s what Mum kept saying, anyway, when Granddad died. It’s why we moved here, why we’re living in his old house.’
‘Miss Amar isn’t dead,’ Peter says without conviction.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean that. But she’s gone, right? And you might never see her again. You need to say goodbye to her, in a way. You need to understand what happened, you know? Understand for yourself.’
Understand for myself, Peter thinks. Like Jem is asking him to believe some private truth, as if truth is no solid thing. Kyle swings—sunlight bounces off the bat—and the ball hits the catcher’s glove with smug certainty. ‘Strikeout!’ Mr. Cutbush calls. ‘Change sides!’
There is no official record of who is in the junior primary choir; the ranks fluctuate from week to week. It is difficult for Mrs. Diamond to make any progress with such an irregular congregation, so while the upper primary and secondary choirs are w
ell-drilled under her watch, the junior primary choir never performs at anything more taxing than a school assembly. No cunning devices are therefore required when Peter and Jem sneak into the Tuesday morning practice session and blend in with the other students. Their target is Miss Jung, the piano accompanist, whom Peter saw one lunchtime walking to the canteen with Miss Amar. She is also, as Jem observed, the only other music teacher with the title of Miss. Their friendship was surely inevitable.
As Jem and Peter murmur along to a jaunty song about pavlova, Peter watches Miss Jung’s sure fingers, which move with indifferent proficiency. She could be piloting a spaceship, or inputting the launch sequence for deadly missiles. Out of all the music staff, Miss Jung is the one the students know the least about. She never teaches, so Peter is unfamiliar with her temperament, though he can perceive—in the way she punches her chords and tosses her fringe from her eyes—a wild reckless determination. If she ever played Truth or Dare, she would probably pick Dare every time.
Choir is scheduled to finish five minutes before the bell, so at quarter-to-nine Mrs. Diamond cheerfully dismisses the troops. As the students shoulder their schoolbags and Mrs. Diamond turns off the overhead projector, Jem, without a giveaway glance at Peter, approaches Mrs. Diamond. Peter is almost disappointed at her predictable gladness. ‘Oh hello, Jeremy,’ Mrs. Diamond says. ‘I haven’t seen you in choir before. I loved the Debussy you played at assembly the other week...’
Miss Jung is folding up her music and slotting it into her bag. Peter takes a sip of juice for courage and walks to the piano. He feels like he’s wearing a spacesuit, the careful steps he must take. Miss Jung snaps the buckle of her bag. Her eyes rest on Peter.
‘Excuse me, Miss Jung.’
She straightens her back. A robot pendant swings and settles at the center of her chest. The words dry up in Peter’s mouth.
‘Hello,’ she says, with the stiffness of an adult who is frightened of interacting with children. In the distance he can hear Jem—the pro—sucking up to Mrs. Diamond, offering to carry her books back to the staff room. They head towards the door.
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