by Nova Weetman
Nova Weetman has been writing for eighteen years. As a screenwriter, she has written short films for Film Victoria including Ripples and Mr Wasinski’s Song (AWGIE nomination and winner Best Australian Short at MIFF) and has written for Neighbours, Pixel Pinkie, H20, Buzz Bumble, Wild But True and Fanshaw and Crudnut. Nova is the author of two middle reader books in the Choose Your Own Ever After series and two young adult novels, The Haunting of Lily Frost (2014) and Frankie and Joely (2015). The Secrets We Keep is Nova’s fifth book.
www.novaweetman.com.au
Also by Nova Weetman
Middle Reader
A Hot Cold Summer
Play the Game
Young Adult
The Haunting of Lily Frost
Frankie and Joely
For Evie, a lover of sad stories
Chapter 1
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a house burn, but it’s not like anything else. It’s nothing like the out-of-control bushfires that you see every summer on TV. It’s more contained, as if the fire has its own plan. It seems to burn in on itself, like a marshmallow on a stick when you go camping. The smoke is thick and black and it plumes up into the air. And the fire just roars through, room by room, chewing it all up.
I watched it. Dad and I both did. By the time we drove up with our pizza boxes ready for dinner, the fire had already destroyed the back half of the house. It was a Thursday and I’d been at netball training. Dad had picked me up because he’d worked late. I’d started eating the pizza on the drive home because I was starving, but I dropped the crust on the floor when we drove around the corner. I could tell something bad had happened because there were four fire trucks. I remember counting them. And all our neighbours were out on the street. Like they were watching a sporting match or something. We didn’t know where Mum was. Not until after.
That was six weeks ago. I’ve stayed in four different beds since then. The first night I slept at my best friend Bridge’s house because Dad had to deal with the firemen and the police. I curled up next to Bridge and tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. I just kept thinking about Mum. After that we stayed with Dad’s brother for a bit, and then a friend of Dad’s. One night we even crashed on the floor at Dad’s boss’s place. It’s not something you think about until it happens. I’d always imagined that I’d sleep in my white wrought iron bed forever, not shuffle around like an orphan.
But now I have my own bed again and Dad and I are living in a flat of our own. And the best thing about living with just my dad is that, even in the world’s tiniest one-bedroom flat, it almost feels roomy because there are only two of us. And one of us, that would be me, is on the small side, so it’s like only one-and-a-half normal-sized people are squashed in together.
I have the bedroom and Dad has the couch. He says he doesn’t mind, but I’m not so sure. It can’t be very comfortable squashing up on our short, second-hand couch each night. But we don’t have much of a choice right now.
My room is just large enough to fit the bed that Dad bought me at an op shop and my borrowed clothes that don’t even fill a suitcase. I have a couple of other things too: a white porcelain rabbit, a red diary with a lock on it and an old clock that belonged to my grandmother. They sit on a ledge under my window so take up almost no room at all. After the fire there wasn’t much left. These were the things I managed to salvage.
We’re here in this new flat and this new suburb because of the fire. But that’s a whole other story and not one I’m going to get into right now. Because if I do then I’ll never make it to school on time. And it’s my first day.
It seems strange to be starting mid-term, particularly when it’s a Thursday. It’s not like starting fresh on a Monday morning in term one, when everyone is just back from the holidays and they haven’t seen each other for weeks, so they’re all a bit uncertain even if they’ve been going to the school for years. This is one of those beginnings that can only feel like a new beginning, where everyone in class will stare and wonder why I’m there without actually asking. It’s enough to give me a sick feeling in my tummy if I think about it for too long, so I’m choosing not to.
‘You ready, Clem?’ asks Dad, poking his head into my room. His brown hair is sticking up at all angles this morning, which tells me a lot about his night. I decide it’s best not to mention it.
‘As ready as I’ll ever be,’ I reply, using his favourite expression.
He smiles at me and I manage to smile back, amazed that after everything that’s happened we can still smile at all.
‘Come on, then. If we go now we can check out the neighbourhood.’
I start to follow him, but stop, patting my hair to make sure it isn’t as crazy as Dad’s.
‘Dad, do I look okay?’
He turns and gives me a dad sort of look. It’s encouraging, as if he’s trying to understand, but we both know hair really isn’t his strong suit.
‘Of course, honey. You look like you always do.’
‘You mean messy brown hair, a nose and dark brown eyes that look black if I haven’t had enough sleep?’
He leans down and touches my cheek affectionately. ‘You forgot the million freckles on your nose.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Apparently I inherited those from my mum, but she isn’t around anymore.
I bend down to retie one of the laces on my purple Converse, and notice the hole in my leggings. I poke at it and say, ‘Not sure how long these are going to last, Dad.’
He holds the door open for me so I can follow him out of the flat and into the stairwell. ‘Are those ones getting a bit—’
I interrupt before he can finish his sentence. ‘Are you going to say small? Because we both know that’s a lie.’
‘Well, I was going to say tired,’ he says. ‘And you’ll grow.’
The thing is, I like being short. I always have. I’ve noticed that people treat you differently when you’re small, especially if you’re a girl. I like that people underestimate me. Especially when I’m lined up for a race and waiting for the gun to go off. My old Little Athletics coach used to joke that I was a firecracker. And my best friend, Bridge, and my other friends at my old school used to call me cute. But I don’t want to think about my old school right now. If I start to imagine Bridge sitting next to someone different in class it will just make me teary. I know I had to leave, but knowing it and doing it are really different things.
So instead I say, ‘Sure I’ll grow, Dad. By the time I’m your age, I’ll be a giant.’
He pretends to laugh, mocking me in his playful way. Obviously I don’t want to stay this height forever. But while I’m eleven and one month, it suits me just fine.
‘Will you be right walking home this afternoon, honey?’
I give Dad a look and he shrugs.
‘Course, Dad. Not like I can get lost around here.’
I think Dad picked this flat because the roads are straight and simple. There aren’t any roundabouts or tricky corners that can catch you out, not like where we used to live.
Our old house was a white weatherboard with a hallway down the middle and rooms running off either side. There was a bay window at the front that I used to curl up in to read a book while I waited for Dad to come home from work. Our house was surrounded by other old houses on a wide, winding street with trees that dropped leaves all through autumn. The parents spent their weekends sweeping them up, and the kids spent their afternoons spreading them out again. There were swings hanging in the front yards and trampolines in the back. Everyone knew each other. It was awesome.
The flats we live in now are nothing flash. There are four flats upstairs and four down, t
he bricks are brown and the whole place is like a sharp-edged box.
We’ve only been here a week, in our downstairs flat, and I haven’t seen anyone in the yard yet, so I have no idea who it is we hear walking around upstairs in the morning, or listening to music beside us in the night. And so far all of the faces I’ve seen are looking down.
Dad nudges me as we walk past some people covered in tattoos. The woman even has an image of a snake along one side of her face. I wonder if it ever scares her when she looks in the mirror. We didn’t see many tattoos in my old neighbourhood. Maybe the odd one on an arm or a leg, but not a fully inked skin suit like these two have. I kind of like it. It makes me think that everyone is a bit different around here. Just like me and Dad.
‘What are you doing today, Dad?’ I ask.
‘Maybe I’ll get something for dinner this morning,’ he says, ‘and then I have to go in to work to talk to the boss about when he wants me back.’
We turn off the main road and start heading down a side street.
‘Six weeks is a long time off,’ says Dad. ‘Imagine what the Acacia aphylla is looking like now.’
I grin at Dad testing me on the type of plant he’s talking about. I play along. ‘Is it wattle something? If I can remember do I get to choose what you buy for dinner?’
Dad works at the botanical gardens. He’s one of the plant experts, a horticulturalist. He knows almost all of the Latin plant names and spends a lot of time looking after the native Australian plants. He used to take me there when I was little. I’m glad he’s going back to work because it’s not like we have any sort of garden at the flat. Not like our old house. Although there is a bit of a courtyard there that could do with some love.
‘Nope. Wrong answer,’ says Dad. ‘Wattle something doesn’t cut it.’
‘Oh no! Don’t make curry again, please,’ I beg, remembering the taste of the chilli three nights before.
‘What about roast chicken? And chocolate pudding?’ asks Dad. ‘Sound good?’
Roast chicken and chocolate pudding are what I always have for my birthday dinner. It’s been the same since I was four. But I’ve already had my birthday and because it was only two weeks after the fire and we were sleeping on someone’s floor, we’d eaten beans on toast that night.
So this must be my belated birthday dinner or starting-at-a-new-school dinner.
‘Extra potatoes?’ I ask, grabbing Dad’s hand.
He swings my arm. ‘Will a kilo cut it?’
‘Depends. You planning on eating any?’
‘The girl’s a joker!’ he says loudly, and I don’t even care who hears.
My dad’s not the sort of dad you’d notice. He’s not super tall – must be where I get it from – or super big. He’s just an ordinary dad: bit scruffy, bit daggy. But he has a wicked sense of humour that always makes me giggle even when I’m cranky or sad. He just knows how to make me laugh.
Mum used to hate it when we’d get started. She could never quite keep up and her jokes just weren’t funny. She said it made her feel left out. It didn’t mean we actually tried to leave her out. It just happened naturally. Like when you have a friend at school who just gets you. No matter what mood you’re in, they can read it. That’s what my dad does with me. And my best friend Bridge, too.
Ahead I see lots of kids walking. They’re noisy – laughing – like going to school is about the most fun you can have on a Thursday. I hope they know something I don’t.
My feet have started to itch inside my Converse. So I shuffle on the spot, trying to trick them. But the itch is growing as if I’m about to run a race. Dad says it’s adrenalin and that I need to change it into power so it makes me run fast. But I wonder what the point of adrenalin is right now. It’s not like I’m gearing up to run anywhere – unless I can turn and run away.
‘There it is, Clem,’ says Dad as we reach a tall wire fence.
I look in. There is a horde of kids on the other side, as busy as a hive of bees. Balls are being bounced. Monkey bars are being swung on. Conversations are happening everywhere. And I’m out here. Looking through holes in the wire, wondering how I’m going to do this.
Chapter 2
‘It’s big,’ I say, stating the obvious and suddenly wishing that I had agreed to check it out last week when Dad offered to arrange a school tour. But I’d been so determined not to think about it that I’d just put it off for as long as possible.
‘Yeah. It didn’t look this big on the internet,’ says Dad, squeezing my hand.
‘It’s sometimes a bit hard to tell things like that from a website,’ I reply.
Dad raises an eyebrow. He promised me he did a bit of research, but it probably involved choosing the closest school. Not that it really matters. I only have two-and-three-quarter terms to go before I’ve finished primary school, so unless this place really sucks, I think I’ll be fine. I think.
My old school was a red brick building, historic and impressive, with a couple of portables which had been added on later. It was small, so everyone knew each other. I met Bridge the day I started prep when she defended me from a kid called Alex. We’ve been besties ever since.
This school seems to stretch on forever. I can see two ovals, a basketball court, some huge building I guess is a gym, and then more buildings, and more buildings, and it makes me feel tinier than an ant. And that’s saying something. Although the ovals look pretty cool. The oval at my old school was mini, with fake grass and only two lanes. Not ideal for running.
‘Come on, let’s go in. You’re not going to learn anything out here,’ says Dad gently, nudging me towards the gate.
A girl pushes between us and bangs through, leaving the gate swinging behind her.
‘Good to see they teach manners here,’ Dad says, pulling an amused face.
Normally I’d laugh with him, but right now his joke makes me feel more on edge.
‘Maybe it’d be better if I start on Monday,’ I say. ‘You know, a new week and all.’
‘Come on, we’re here now.’ Dad holds the gate open for me and I walk in, dodging a handball being hurled against a wall.
‘I reckon the office is this way,’ Dad guesses, walking towards the only officey looking building around.
When new kids started at my old school, I didn’t give them much thought. I never wondered how they felt on their first morning or what had happened to cause them to change schools mid-year. I just hung out with my friends and didn’t go out of my way to make them feel welcome. Bridge and I were too busy shooting goals in the netball ring or walking around the school talking to think about including anyone new. So I hope karma’s not going to get me. If nobody talks to me, or notices me, it will be a very, very long day.
Dad has to push the heavy office door pretty hard to open it. I walk in behind him.
A couple of girls are filling in a form at the counter and one of them turns and looks me up and down. She stops at my Converse and then looks away. These girls are wearing skirts and leather shoes, not Converse. Both are wearing animal print tops. And their hair is long and brushed and shiny and not tied up with an elastic band in a ponytail, like mine. Not only do I feel new, I look different.
At my old school, my friends and I always wore patterned leggings with shorts over the top and some sort of coloured t-shirt. That was our uniform. Even if our leggings were ripped or had holes at the knees. Bridge has this awesome pair of leggings with unicorns on them. My favourite ones had watermelons, but they burnt in the fire. The leggings I’ve got on today are the ones I was wearing when the fire happened. Actually my whole outfit is what I was wearing that day. Down to my shoes. Bridge and another friend Sophie gave me some of their clothes, but it’s not the same. I lost my favourite purple knitted cardigan in the fire, too. Just thinking about all that makes my eyes itchy.
‘Hello. Can I help you?’ calls a woman perched behind a d
esk.
‘I hope so,’ replies Dad in his most friendly voice. ‘I’m Neil Timmins and this is my daughter, Clem.’
I try to smile but the lump in my throat gets in the way.
‘Hi. I’m Leanne, the administrator.’ She gives me a reassuring smile and her bright red earrings dangle. ‘Anything you need to know, you can ask me.’ She looks at me first and then at Dad.
‘Great. Where should Clem go?’ asks Dad.
It’s strange having Dad talk for me. I wouldn’t normally let him, but right now my words have completely disappeared. Luckily he still has his.
‘I’ll call someone to show you around, Clem,’ says Leanne, turning to answer a ringing phone. ‘Is Clem short for Clementine?’
‘No. Just Clem,’ I say.
But Dad can’t help himself and explains, ‘Clem’s name is my fault. I thought she was going to be a boy so I named her after Clem Burke.’
In the past I have tried to explain to Dad that other people don’t have any idea who he is talking about. Just because his musical tastes haven’t developed since 1982, doesn’t mean other people’s haven’t. The look on Leanne’s face confirms I’m right.
‘From The Ramones,’ I say, wishing we hadn’t got into this right now.
‘And Blondie,’ adds Dad. ‘Don’t forget Blondie.’
Leanne manages to smile at us and then turns her attention back to the phone.
‘You okay?’ whispers Dad.
I look into his eyes, wishing I could go with him to the shops to buy dinner instead. But Dad doesn’t need me falling apart at the moment. He needs me to pretend that I’m fine. Just like he’s pretending. It’s a Timmins family tradition, don’t you know?
‘Couldn’t be better,’ I say lightly as I hear Leanne call over the loudspeaker for someone called Ellie Lucas to come to the office.
‘You go, Dad. I’m fine. Really.’
Dad nods and rubs his eyes like he’s trying to stop himself from crying. That would be a disaster and not something I could handle with Leanne and her super-red accessories looking on.