Wildlife

by Fiona Wood

  Given that I’m not actually speaking to her about us, I could give her the lowdown about some shit that is happening here at Camp Horrendous.

  Like, let’s see, Sibylla and Holly. These friends are intriguing. Holly is still riding high on Sibylla going out with Ben, and is getting very friendly with Ben and some of his friends along the way, whereas Sibylla doesn’t even seem that interested or even aware of the whole camp sociograph.

  She likes Ben. That is clear. How can I tell? Her reluctance to talk about him. Her dreamy distracted air much of the time. The way she tries unsuccessfully not to look at him in class. The occasional disappearances into the wilderness, after which she reemerges looking flushed and dazed. I know that look. It is hard for very fair-skinned people to hide certain emotions sweeping through the heart, or the tracks of hard-chinned stubble scraped across the face and neck.

  But she doesn’t seem at all interested in claiming Ben when they are in public. Nor does he show any need to do that. I’m guessing Sibylla’s motivation may be an almost old-fashioned sense of modesty, but what can Ben’s motivation be? He’s not reluctant to show off about anything else. Of course, it’s always within the well-worn path of good-guy self-deprecation.

  He is not stupid, but he is carefully not alienatingly smart, either, at least in class.

  I’ve never seen anyone who is such a natural leader, or more calculating, or better at hiding the calculation. If in doubt, all eyes go to Ben to read what the next move should be, and he, like a chess player, is always thinking a few moves ahead.

  Whatever is happening, though, with Ben and Sibylla, it never appears to be quite enough for Holly, who keeps cracking the whip. She is like the girlfriend personal trainer. And she seems to have a whiteboard somewhere, because she is always reminding Sibylla of some critical date, event, preference, or anniversary.

  The two-week anniversary caused some friction this morning. Sibylla forgot it.

  Exactly fifteen days of my sentence have been served. Confession: I am becoming reluctantly intrigued by my fellow inmates.

  Sitting with Ben is one hundred percent like sitting with someone famous. Everybody loves you, baby…

  I’ve got scrambled eggs, a fresh batch, and some spinach that looked okay, but is now leaking green water and has lost its appeal. Ben has his first course—a massive bowl of oatmeal and stewed fruit. He’ll go back for the full protein cook-up next. And if he’s still hungry, he may have a couple more rounds of grainy toast and peanut butter. He’ll take apples and hard-boiled eggs out with him, too. He’s got to last all the way till Elevensies.

  I’m not even pretending that we can have a conversation. Everything gets chopped up into little bits between stuff like, Dude, who’s that New York rapper with that one that goes… Man, have you got someone to run with today?… Ben, run later?…’Sup…’Sup… When are you doing your solo?…’Sup… Man, Beeso’s got weed, let me know… You hiking this weekend?… Want a run later?… Man, checked out that chart, you have done some serious running, do you even sleep?…

  I try not to feel like the groupie girl who sits with the famous one.

  I breathe him in. In the mornings he smells like soap. No stinky deodorant for Ben Capaldi. He told me his mother has banned it at their house. He wears a tea tree one, and I get a little hint of that. By the afternoon he smells like himself; I don’t know what I’d call it—Essence of Ben? I’m wondering about smells that don’t smell like anything else and how, really, you can describe them to someone who has never smelled them, because smell and taste descriptions rely so heavily on similar smell/taste comparisons (why is it, for instance, that absolute taste qualities like sour, sweet, salty feel so much more limited than absolute visual qualities such as angles, textures, colors? I could describe the appearance of a building more easily than the taste of a curry, for example, without having to resort to comparisons with other structures) when Holly slides along the bench and parks herself on the other side of Ben.

  She’s got her usual filling breakfast of fresh air and fresh fruit. At least she’s picked up a tub of yogurt this morning. Her mother has systematically wrecked her ability to eat what her stomach wants. It’s like she’s put her stomach on permanent hold while she listens to anything but, and genuinely tries to feel “so full” after eating four strawberries.

  “Happy anniversary, you two,” she says.

  “Thanks,” says Ben.

  I say, “Huh?”

  A look and a smile flicks between them. “I told you,” he says.

  “I know, but I still don’t believe it,” she says.

  “What?” I want to know.

  “I bet Ben that you would remember your anniversary, and he bet me you wouldn’t.”

  “Thanks for that,” I say to Ben. What anniversary?

  “I was right,” he says.

  Fair nuff.

  I look at them. Two people who seem to know all they need to know. Why don’t I know the stuff I’m supposed to know, e.g., apparently significant dates?

  “Is it really two weeks since Laura’s party?” I’ve figured what the anniversary must be, and I’m going for honest disbelief.

  “To the day, or actually the day after,” says Holly. “Seeing the kiss happened after midnight.”

  “So, like, super early Monday, soon after midnight, just two short weeks ago?” Here I’m trying for a sincere wish to sort this matter out.

  “Yep,” they say at the same time.

  “Good. I’ll remember for next time.”

  “What?” asks Holly, trying not to smile as I look blankly at her. “What date are you remembering?”

  “The date of the day after Laura’s party.”

  “Which is?”

  Trick question. Hard to even remember the day of the week up here in the wilderness blur, let alone dates. “Well, it would be the—seventh?” I guess.

  Another look between them—they’re indulgent parents and I’m the cute but slow kid.

  “Eighth, of October.”

  “Got it.”

  “Beeso’s got weed, and they’re camping at Snow Gum Flat if you want to come,” says Holly, getting up to leave.

  “I heard,” says Ben, easy smile.

  “You’re coming?” Holly asks Ben.

  “You’re going?” I ask Holly.

  “Maybe. How about you two?” But she puts the question to Ben, as though he’d be deciding for me, too, so I get in first.

  “Not me. I want to spend some time in the studio.”

  “Dunno, but either way, I’m running.” He gets up. “Need more fuel.” His long-legged walk. His smooth walk. His smooth skin. His smooth manner.

  “Anniversaries do mean something, you know,” Holly says. “Don’t ignore him.”

  “I’m not. But you could’ve given me a heads-up about the anniversary.”

  “I didn’t want to butt in.”

  Since when? “Maybe I’m just not cut out for the girlfriend job.” I tip my plate sideways. A green puddle pools in its curved edge. “Want some spinach juice?”

  Holly looks exasperated and walks off. She always looks so neat and organized. I feel like a big tall conspicuous twist of loose ends.

  Ben plonks himself back down. His plate has a mountain of eggs, about eight pieces of bacon, tomatoes, baked beans, two sausages, and two of the giant hash brown triangles.

  “Sorry I forgot.”

  There is the smallest glimpse of coldness before the smile. “Forget it,” he says. “Oh, right, you already did that.” Maybe this is my cue to do some soothing, some smoothing, apologize some more, but I don’t want to be that sort of girlfriend. And I privately think a two-week anniversary is dumb, and not very optimistic—aren’t we even planning to make it to a month?

  “What do I smell like?” I ask.

  “Vanilla beans and peppermint,” he says, not stopping to think. “Roses, when you wear that perfume.” Vanilla must be a soap, deodorant, moisturizer amalgam; the peppermint is shampoo. �
�What about me?”

  I blush to think how many times (in—can it really only be two weeks?) I’ve dwelled on this exact question. His smell is complicated, warm and rich, not like any other boy I’ve been within smelling range of. It’s so good it frightens me; it’s clearly some biological lure deviously inviting me to breed with him. Thank god people can’t read minds. “I don’t know. Boy oil? Hey, that’s quite hard to say: boy oil. Listen, too fast, and you’ve got ‘boioil.’ It sounds exactly like a spring—boi-oi-oi-oil… boi-oi-oi-oi-oil.”

  He smiles again and gives me the look, the same look he gave as I turned away from him at Laura’s party. I’ve decided it means something like, you are not like the others. Or it might simply be, you are odd.

  I think he has suffered from too much adoration. It’s very hard not to join the chorus, but I try to refrain.

  “You do know, ‘anniversary’—‘anni’—that bit means year. It’s from ‘annus.’ What’s the point of us all doing Latin if we don’t even use it?” I say.

  Michael walks past us, concentrating on not letting his hard-boiled eggs roll off his plate. I nod in his direction: “There’s a man who’d never use ‘anniversary’ to describe something that happened two weeks ago.”

  “There’s a man who’s not going out with you,” Ben says.

  In my smile, I can’t hide how much I like him, so I let him see it for a second, swallow it, and head out. This is not the way to start a day of concentrating on work. This is the way to start a day of mooching around with Ben. But that ain’t happening.

  Back in the house, I circle the eighth of November on my calendar. And for good measure write: first monthiversary. Or should it be the fifth, which is four weeks to the day, rather than a calendar month? Better check with Holly.

  In grade one, Holly dared me to take my undies off at school. She stood with our two mainstay friends at the time, Suzie Barton and Suzie Nguyen, and the three of them stared me down. “Told you,” said Holly to the others. “You’re a chicken,” she said to me. She clucked like a chicken.

  I knew the outsmart strategy: “I know you are, but what am I?” Before I could blink, she whipped off her Hello Kitty undies, swung them above her head, and whipped them back on, and they were all staring at me again. And all three of them were clucking at me. Suzie Barton was smiling. I knew she was relieved that it was me, not her, getting the Holly treatment, and I could half sympathize with her position even while I squirmed.

  “Told you she wouldn’t,” Holly concluded. “Let’s go look for a new friend, someone with guts.”

  “I’ve got guts,” I said. I slipped my undies down to my knees and pulled them up again.

  “That’s not even off,” said Holly. “That’s cheating. You’re a cheat. Now you’ve got to show your bottom as well.”

  How did she even think up those complex, escalating rules?

  “Bottom” really threw me. I knew it was private. I was in charge of my bottom, nobody else could touch my bottom or tell me what to do with it. But I’d also put Holly in my Inner Circle of Trust when we drew our Stranger Danger diagrams just last week. So, were you allowed or not allowed to show a Circle of Trust person your own bottom? I could never remember that stuff.

  “Come on,” Holly was saying, ready to walk off. “She’s a wimp.” Keen to retain three friends if possible, I took off my undies, turned around, and lifted my dress quickly.

  Holly smiled in triumph, running her own script of challenges, dares, rules, and judgments that I could never keep up with, let alone predict.

  She ran into the playground, shouting, “Ms. Menzies, Ms. Menzies, Sibylla Quinn showed her bottom to us three girls behind the peppercorn tree.”

  And today, to help me in the public humiliation stakes, Holly is walking across the courtyard, swinging a pair of my knickers in the air. They must have fallen out of my laundry bag when I brought it back. These are large-ish undies. Huge, actually. Low of leg and high of waist. I like to wear big mama undies when I have my period, particularly at night, particularly up here, where you do not want to risk a leaking tampon and the special laundry walk of shame. So I use the pad-and-big-undies safety net. But really, it’s a kind of private thing. Not something I want flapping around for everyone to see.

  Holly has decided differently. She is doing burlesque va-va-voom as she swings them. And she has attracted the attention she was looking for. “What the hell are they?” asks—great—Billy Gardiner.

  “Sibylla’s full-brief, maximum-comfort, minimum-sizzle cottontails.”

  I make a grab for them with a lips-only smile. She holds them out of my reach for one last swing, and flips them gently on my head.

  “Gee, you could fit a couple of friends into those easy riders,” says Billy.

  I give a merry trill, try to kill Holly with a death glare, and walk, bereft of dignity, up the steps to Bennett House, swearing to pay more attention to laundry retention in the future.

  monday 22 october (late)

  In Paris, there is a wide footbridge called the Passerelle des Arts. It spans the River Seine from the Institut de France on the Left Bank to the courtyard of the Musée du Louvre on the Right Bank.

  Its wooden boards curve up gently in the middle and slope down again to deliver you to the other side. To keep you from falling in, there are wavy, crisscross wire panels stretched between old gray-green lampposts.

  Like metal scales or petals, thousands of padlocks are fixed to those wire diamonds all over the bridge, love locks.

  Each one a love story, a promise, a tribute, a memory…

  I could only open my letter from France (yay!) once everyone was asleep.

  Lou,

  I put up a lock for each of us and F. I know you won’t mind. I loved him, too. Don’t need to tell you that.

  I’m getting by, busy with school, struggling with French, and guessing you have plenty to distract you up there in the cold mountains, too, e.g., survival. Everyone knows boarding school is the last wild frontier. When they start daubing their faces with mud, run.

  Here are a couple of photos of the lock. You can visit it one of these old days. See how tough it looks? It will outlast us all, Lou. I got it engraved by a little guy, a watchmaker, in the 5th—Henri took me there—who looked exactly like Rumpelstiltskin. I decided it had to be engraved; I didn’t want any of that texta or nail polish crap that you can see on some of the other locks. Mine is right next to yours. They can keep each other company as the years click over.

  I look at the photos. A medium-size very solid brass padlock, happily nestling in the midst of other locks of myriad variety. The engraving says fredlovesmlouloves; it’s in lowercase with the letters forming a complete circle, no spaces, so a casual glance won’t decode it. I like that a lot. It is private. It is perfect.

  Dan’s is right next to it. It says my friend; Fred’s initials, FBF—Frederick Brymer Fitzpatrick; and a date—his birth date. His death date is tattooed along Dan’s left Achilles tendon. Not many people know that, particularly not Dan’s mother. His friend Oliver talked him into waiting six months, and then took him someplace he knew two weeks before Dan left for Paris.

  I’ve enclosed the key to your lock, Lou—I thought you might like to throw it from the top of some mountain, or drop it deep into a crevice or bottomless lake… or maybe just keep it.

  I’m thinking of you lots. Estelle and Janie send love and they’re writing soon. They came with me to the bridge and Janie took the photos because my hands were shaking too much. She pretended not to notice, and kindly just said I was a shit photographer and you deserve better. Write soon.

  Love,

  Dan

  I hold the key, pressing it hard between the heels of my hands until it’s blood temperature and has left two deep impressions. Don’t want to let it go.

  Thank you, Dan. My friend, too. Fellow keeper.

  I look forward to sitting with him when he gets back and I am released. We will sit and not have to talk. Or we may talk.
If we do, it won’t be to reassure someone who doesn’t feel as bad as we feel that everything is okay.

  I can’t remember exactly when Fred started calling me m’Lou, it was from the nursery rhyme. Lou, Lou, skip to m’Lou… I should have written stuff like that down.

  Where was the infernal journal when I needed it?

  Lunchtime with Mr. Popularity is not as easy to negotiate as you would think. I’m not a clingy type to start with. Sure—this fact has been strictly theoretical till now seeing as I haven’t had a boyfriend not to be clingy with. I still feel shy about the whole going-out thing. Living up here this term makes it too public. So I’m not automatically going to be sitting with him. But Holly has no such scruples, no hesitation, and she seems to think that now we both automatically sit with Ben’s group.