“Yes!” Finn wriggles in her seat. “Major diversion. What’d he do?”
“Some prank with his soccer team. Damaged an equipment shed.”
“Excellent. Thank you, Mark.”
“And hon,” Anita says, “of course, it’s completely up to you, but you should be prepared that if you do mention Willa to Esther, she’ll—”
“Oh, don’t you worry.” Finn shakes the tin to see if there are any mints left. “The less that old homophobe knows about my unsavoury love life, the better.”
This time her mother laughs. Her first real laugh since Finn got home.
CHAPTER 3
Willa
Willa strides up the footpath, stitching her way through the crowds of blue-and-white check headed for the school gates. There are the excitable juniors, the bored intermediates, and those remote senior girls, all moving en masse towards the hulking red-brick building.
It’s strange to be back among them. Willa’s cotton school dress hangs weirdly after weeks of jeans and T-shirts at camp. And then there’s the depressing tug of her laden backpack on her shoulders. It will be even heavier on the way home.
She puts her head down and strides, tired already. Even with all her preparation last night, the morning was chaos. Riley was freaking out because she still couldn’t find her library book. It took another twenty minutes of hunting and questioning before they finally deduced it was in her book bag. At school. Then Jack spilt his cereal on the floor, and the washing machine stalled mid spin while Nan was out in the yard. All before 8am.
Three more weeks until the holidays, she repeats in her head like a mantra.
The first person she sees inside the school gates is Eva, standing in a wash of sunlight, staring at her phone. Just as Willa’s deciding whether to stop or not, Eva spots her and smiles. She pushes her sunglasses up. “Hey there.”
Eva looks impeccable, as always. Her light-brown hair is wrapped into a loose but neat bun, and her brows smoothed to perfect arches over blue eyes. Even though Willa is always Gandry-mandated neat and tidy, she never feels as put together as Eva. Or any of these girls. She thinks she looks tidy when she leaves the house, but as soon as she gets among the picture perfection of these girls, she’ll notice the wrinkle in her shirt sleeve or the small spot on her blazer. No one else would notice, but Willa does.
“So, how was your weekend?” Eva falls into step with her. “Oh, and by the way, this is me making sure you don’t go all aloof on us again.” Willa gives her a look, but Eva just gives her an insouciant smile. “It’s weird to be back, isn’t it?”
“It’s weird being back in uniform,” Willa says, yanking at her blazer. “So, was it nice to see your family?”
“Well, well. Look at you with the chitchat,” Eva teases.
“Very funny.” But it is kind of nice walking into school with the closest thing she’s had to a friend since coming here. On the bus ride home from camp, she learned more about Eva than she’s ever known. That she lives in an apartment not far from the school. That both her parents and her brother travel all the time—the parents for work and the brother for fun. Apparently, her older brother loves trouble like Eva loves success, and she’s constantly acting as buffer between him and their parents. Willa even told Eva something about her family. Not everything, though. Not yet.
The noise thickens as they enter the building, and girls desperately jam in last night’s stories before the imposed silence of form assembly. The air cloys with the smell of mass-applied girl product.
“Only fifteen more school days until the end of term,” Eva mutters.
“Now, that’s not the Gandry girl attitude,” Willa jokes, jumping as an arm drops suddenly onto her shoulders and hauls her in close.
“Morning, ladies!” Amira inserts herself between them, carrying her own personal cloud of sugary perfume and self-confidence. “Civilisation is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? Nothing like a stint in the country to make you appreciate clean sheets and choose-your-own-meal-adventures. You suddenly begin to appreciate the little things.”
“Like self-direction,” Eva drawls.
“So true. I gotta run.” Amira presses a kiss onto Eva’s cheek, drops a slap on Willa’s backside, and marches off into the crowds. “See you in Japanese!” she yells over her shoulder.
Eva grins at Willa’s expression. “Yeah, so now you’ve let her in, you’re going to have to learn to live with her complete lack of boundaries.”
“I let her in?”
“She can slip through any friendship crack. Catch you later.” Eva turns for the west buildings.
Before Willa can head through the doors to the north quad, she hears her name. She spins around, nearly bumping into some Year 8s. The vice principal is standing by her door, beckoning.
Ms Cassavetes’ hair has already begun its daily escape, falling in lank strands around her head. And, as ever, her effort at corporate attire is stymied by wrinkles, what looks like dog hair, and a shaggy cardigan she keeps in her cold office but sometimes forgets to remove before leaving. Basically, she’s a mess—especially compared to the parade of impeccable girl grooming that’s currently marching past her door.
Willa’s always figured that Ms Cassavetes made some deal with the career devil, one that sacrificed grooming skills for maximum efficiency in all other areas. Because while she slays at her job, and parents and students both like and respect her, she always looks like she woke from a twenty-year coma and had five minutes to get ready before returning to work.
“Good morning.” Ms Cassavetes folds her arms and leans against the doorjamb. “I heard you girls did very well on camp. Good job.”
Willa smiles uneasily. She’s already had to come to terms with the fact that teachers make her unreasonably nervous. It’s her lot in life. “Thank you.”
“I was going to get a hold of you after assembly, but you’re here now. It’s late notice, I know, but could you please attend a middle-school curriculum meeting this afternoon? Just for an hour? The council has suddenly decided that there needs to be a student representative on the committee. It seems like a job for one of the academic leaders, but Stella from the seniors is busy this afternoon. Could you make it this once?”
Willa recalibrates her afternoon, biting back at the stress that’s already flickering at her periphery: Curriculum meeting instead of study. Pick up Riley from Lefah’s house. Then get dinner started while Nan goes to her community gardens meeting. The missed homework can happen after dinner while she helps Jack with his. She can probably get it all done if she spends lunch in the library today too. Then there’s the fact she’d never say no anyway. “Sure, I can do it.”
Ms Cassavetes smiles and pushes herself off the jamb. “Great. Thank you. Can you also ask one of the girls to chat at assembly on Wednesday about the camp? It would be good for the younger girls to hear about the experience. Especially those Year 9s. They can focus on trying to get selected for next year.”
Willa nods, mentally signing Amira up for it. “Sure.”
“Good girl. Have a great day.” And she’s back in her office with the door closed.
CHAPTER 4
Finn
She finds Dan where she can always find him on Tuesdays: in the front garden, under the weird scrubby tree that drops needles into their hair and food. Still, no one else is ever sitting there, so it’s become their Tuesday lunch place.
Mondays he has drumming lessons. Wednesdays she has all-captain meeting. Thursdays she has lunch with the other intermediate student representatives to talk shop. Then he has multimedia club on Fridays, while she has extra art. But Tuesdays are inviolably theirs. Finn loves their little forty-three minutes of banter and smartassery. It gives her strength to get through the rest of the week. School gets so fast and so hard sometimes, but on Tuesdays with Dan, there’s only the comfort of having completely understood nearly every single thing another person has said since the day you met them. It’s been like that since they sat together in Ms
Hedge’s horrifyingly dull history class in Year 8 and shared a textbook and commentary on the teacher’s unhinged outfit. And they’ve never looked back.
He rubs his palms on his grey school pants as she sits down. Then he immediately swipes his hand through his sandy hair. She knows exactly why he’s being a fidgety weirdo too. His new girlfriend is sneaking off from her school today to eat lunch with them.
“You’re nervous,” she sings.
“Of course I am.” He rubs his legs again. “My girls eating lunch together? Terrifying.”
“Your girls? You make us sound like a harem.” She picks up her roll and inspects it.
“What are you expecting to see in that sandwich? Have you actually ever eaten anything but a cheese roll for lunch? Ever?”
Finn shrugs. “I change cheeses. Sometimes it’s cheddar. Sometimes it’s Swiss.” She’s never been an adventurous eater. “Anyway, some of us are too busy with our more pressing life commitments to bring handcrafted meals every day.” She eyes his bento-style lunchbox, jammed with a rainbow array of healthy edibles. “Your mum really needs to go back to work. She’s clearly bored stupid.”
“Bored and a post-chemo health nut. It’s all raw and grains at my house.” He picks up a piece of purple cabbage. “This, apparently, is food. I’d always thought it was merely decorative. Can I come to your house for some carbs soon?”
“So what you’re really saying is that you’re jealous of my cheese roll?”
“I’m not saying anything at all.”
“Yeah, right.”
In a blur of energy and wispy, dyed-blonde hair, Rosie arrives. Finn can tell Dan’s really into her, because he stutters a little as he introduces them. “Y-you remember Finn, right?”
Rosie rests her hand on Dan’s shoulder and gives Finn a sunny smile. “Of course. Hi. How was your camp?”
“It was great.” Finn eyes Rosie’s jeans and loose, long hair—the perks of going to state school.
“Finn met a lady there,” Dan says.
“Awesome.” Rosie drops cross-legged onto the ground and turns to Dan, “Hey, remember the community group thing I was telling you about? The one Andy was asking you about making YouTube videos for?”
“Yeah.”
“They might have to shut it down.”
“Why?”
She snags a piece of carrot from his lunch and shrugs. “Funding issues. Or maybe conservative assholes disguised as funding issues. Who knows?”
“That’s crap.”
“Totally,” she says, munching. “We’re trying to come up with a plan to attract attention to it. Will you help if we need video?”
“Of course.”
“What’s the group?” Finn asks.
“It’s this queer-friendly space for under-eighteens. Down on Leight Street, near the old mattress factory. You know it?”
“No.”
“The building’s shitty, but the people are great. Andy’s practically lived there since he came out.”
“Who’s Andy?”
“Oh, sorry.” Rosie laughs. It’s an obnoxious snort of a thing for someone so delicate, which makes Finn like her even more. “My twin. So now we’re all trying to think of ways to get some attention to the cuts.”
“You should help out, Finn,” Dan says. “Sounds like your kind of gig.”
“Why? Just because I kiss girls?” She slaps his knee. “Next thing I know, you’re going to be asking me if I know every gay you meet.”
“No. Because you’re a crusader, like this one.” He tips his chin at Rosie.
“Nothing wrong with that,” Rosie says. “Not all of us want to spend our days ranting into cameras, waxing lyrical about sci-fi for fellow nerds.”
“One hundred and twenty thousand YouTube subscribers can’t be wrong.”
“They could be, if they all have teeny tiny little brains.”
“You got even more subscribers while I was gone,” Finn says, eyes wide.
He gives her his best faux-modest look. “What can I say? I know my stuff.”
Rosie turns to Finn. “You know, we’ve been together six weeks, and I’ve avoided watching a single sci-fi film.”
“You lucky, lucky thing.”
They smile at each other, and Finn knows that finally, finally, Dan has picked a winner.
The three of them banter for a bit, comparing school and life notes until Rosie checks her phone and jumps up.
“I’ve got to go. But, hey, if you do want to help, Finn, we could totally use extra brains on this. And it’s a really cool place. I can let you know about our next meeting?”
“Uh, sure.” How does Finn always manage to get herself roped into helping with things? What vibe does she give off that says ask me? “I’ll try to come down.”
“Cool, I’ll message you.” Rosie drops a quick kiss onto Dan. “And you’ll help if we need you too, right?”
“Of course.” He smiles up at her. “I told you I would.”
Finn gets the feeling he’d say yes to anything Rosie asked.
“Good.” Rosie kisses him again. “See you, guys.” And she’s off, bouncing across the lawn and through the front gate. Dan’s smile as he watches her stride down the street is a sickening thing.
“She’s great,” Finn tells him before he can ask.
“Isn’t she? She reminds me of you sometimes.” He freezes. “Oh, wait, that’s weird.”
“Yep. Weird.”
“I just mean because she’s got all this energy. You don’t look alike or anything.” He’s blushing. Actually blushing.
“Uh, I’m aware of that.” There’s no avoiding the fact that Rosie’s a babe in a way that Finn could never be.
She has to laugh, because Dan still looks creeped out. “It’s okay, don’t freak. We’re clearly pretty different. For example, she thinks you’re hot.”
He smirks but doesn’t say anything.
It’s not like this stuff hasn’t come up before. When they first met, Finn sometimes worried that Dan was into her in a way she wasn’t into him. She liked this skinny, nervous sweetheart with a biting sense of humour, but he didn’t give her the tingles. But if he did like her back then, he never said or did anything about it.
It’s annoying, when she tells people her best friend is a guy. They always ask her if she’s ever “gone there” with him, like it’s an inevitability that things will get complicated. But it never has. It’s been a point of vague awkwardness from time to time, like now, but Finn only knows that she loves him to death and has no desire to touch him. And she’s 99.999 per cent sure he’s always felt the same.
“Hey, so Rosie and I had the commitment talk this weekend,” he tells her, shutting his lunchbox. “I don’t know why she thought we needed to have it. I’m not looking anywhere else. Ever.”
“That’s sweet. And gross.” She hands him the rest of her roll. “Willa and I haven’t talked about anything like that.”
“Yeah, well, you have to give it some time before you talk about that stuff. Just let it happen for a bit, and see what’s what.”
She shoots him a look. “Hey, Wisdom Boy, don’t do that thing where you get all sage and advice-y because you’ve been in a relationship for, like, a minute. Before Rosie came along, it’d been a long time between drinks for you too.”
“Can’t you just let me have this one thing? You’re better at everything else.”
“I guess.” She elbows him. “By the way, that is so spectacularly not true.”
“Whatever. So, what’s she like? You barely told me anything the other night.”
“That’s because your mum kept yelling questions the whole time. You should have just given the phone to her.”
“She missed you.”
“I know. I’ll come see her soon. Anyway, Willa’s awesome. She’s super serious and tough, but then she’s kind of a secret softy. It’s cute.”
“So when can I meet her?”
“First I have to see her.”
“Whe
n’s that?”
“We’re supposed to meet Friday.” A hum of impatience crashes through Finn. It’s only Tuesday. She lets out a little moan.
“What’s wrong?”
“Friday’s ages away.”
He stares at her. “Wow. This girl’s made you all weird and needy. Now I really want to see her.”
“One, shut up. Two, get in line.”
CHAPTER 5
Willa
Willa’s in the library, using every minute of her free period to bury this maths chapter in her past. It will be one less thing to do tonight.
Behind her, a group of Year 8 girls back and forth between complaining about some group project they’re supposed to be doing and discussing Melinda’s chances of making up with Joel. Willa has no idea if Melinda is someone from TV or a girl who goes to Gandry, but either way the debate is intense.
She blocks them out and works steadily through the next forty minutes. With five minutes until the bell, she’s only got one equation left to do. But right at the last hurdle, the temptation’s too much. She slips her phone out of her pencil case and slides it under the cover of her maths text. It wouldn’t exactly look good for an academic leader to be on her phone in study period, but she can’t resist. She used to be able to leave her phone in her bag all day and not even think about it. Not any more.
But it’s worth it because there’s a message from Finn.
Confession…
Willa smiles. Do share.
The response is instant. Waiting until Friday is really, really hard.
Tell me about it.
Two more days…
I know.
Unless…
What?
What time do you get back from school?
My bus usually gets in just after 4.
There’s a pause. I have school council until four. What if I met you? Could you hang out for a minute? Or do you need to be home straight away?
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