I smile, rolling onto my side. The television from the next room casts a blue hue against the wall. I listen to the low murmur of my parents. It only takes a few minutes to fall into a thick, dreamless sleep.
~
I run my fingertips over my braces. They’re coming off in a few months, the orthodontist said. As I push my bowl of cereal away, Archie wriggles his nose at me. He’s only ten, but he’s bigger than most boys his age, and every now and then I catch his look of surprise as he gets to his feet, alarmed at his newfound height. People forget Archie is still only a boy, and I feel a rush of love for him. He is sensitive; has been since he was tiny. Often, on the way home from primary school, boys hanging out at the milk bar call him Red nob. I’ve always been frightened of those kids, their leers and their dark eyes.
Everyone at Silver Creek calls me Bec now. Never Rebecca, or Starford—that didn’t ever stick. I like Bec: there’s a sharpness to it. Mum and Dad sometimes call me Becksy, which I only like when no one else is around, but mostly they call me Rebecca, which is starting to feel like a reprimand.
There were other names for me when I first came to the school three years ago. Rabbit was one, when the boys teased me about my teeth. Bugs Bunny and Myxo mitosis were others. I never told Mum and Dad about these names, or how they used to make me cry. I guess I shouldn’t have smiled in that toothy way of mine, drawing attention to the gap between my big front teeth and my enormous overbite. Mum always said I have a nice smile. In the end, after all that teasing, I couldn’t wait to get braces. But somehow, after I’d been to the orthodontist and my mouth was full of metal and aching, the teasing got worse.
‘You were sleep-talking last night,’ Archie says, head buried in his football almanac. ‘Something about girls.’
I set down my spoon on the laminex table. ‘Was not.’
‘You were. Wasn’t she, Mum?’
Mum drifts into the kitchenette. ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ she says.
‘But she was yelling!’
‘Archie,’ calls Dad from the ensuite. ‘Finish your breakfast.’
‘Hey, Arch,’ I say when Mum has left the room again. ‘Remember how you used to make sounds in your sleep? You know, how you used to rock?’ I put my hands behind my head. ‘You sounded like a total spaz.’
Archie sets his orange juice back on the table, his face pinched. It’s years since Archie has rocked, but he still gets embarrassed about it. It was a strange, sleep-riddled chant where he drew himself up from the covers, crouching on his knees and rocking back and forth, moaning a single note over and over.
I smile. It’s too easy to bait him; there’s almost no fun in it. When he was small, four or five years old, Archie would regularly fly into rages at Dad, his blue eyes filling with tears as he stormed to his bedroom, slamming the door so hard it rattled the plaster in the hallway. A few minutes later a note was slipped under the door, I HAT YOU DAD scribbled in angry crayon.
Later Mum would coax Archie out of his room. As they sat together in the living room, flicking through the channels to find something on television, I couldn’t help watching the way she held him, her brown arm wrapped around his tiny body, while her hand caressed the back of his neck. Her grip fierce yet her touch so soft.
~
Parked outside Red House, Dad offers to walk me to the front steps. I shake my head, grabbing my overnight bag. I can’t speak—my teeth are chattering too much from the cold. Besides, if I speak I will cry, and I don’t want him to see that. I don’t want the girls inside to see it either. Their windows glow in the dark.
I feel like Alice in Wonderland, growing and shrinking in a single moment. Dad reaches over for a hug and the familiar bristle of his moustache and his faint sweaty smell make me want to fall against him.
‘Well, Becksy,’ he says, ‘see you at the end of the term.’
I open the car door. Archie is asleep in the back, head lolling, his mouth open. The Bee Gees wafts through the speakers. I lean over to Mum, give her a kiss. She is leafing through her Entertainment Book, full of discounts, planning where they’ll stop for dinner on the way home. ‘Bye-bye,’ she says, eyes fixed on the pages.
Back inside the bright dorm there is no time to cry. Girls are everywhere, galloping up and down the aisle with stories from Exeat, presents from their parents, news from the outside world about parties and footy matches and Geri leaving the Spice Girls. Grabbing my torch, I slip out the back door and run down the hill. I have about half an hour before anyone will notice I’m gone.
I am out of breath when I reach the huts, my side aching. I stumble around in the dark; my torchlight is already waning. There are plenty of empty bottles scattered across the floor—wine, beer, whisky—but the crates are empty. I check each one for leftovers, but there are none.
I put my head in my hands. The hut stinks of old fire, and piss. What am I going to do? I can’t go back empty-handed.
Near my feet is a small, empty bottle of Lemon Ruski. I shine the torch on the label, for a moment admiring the gold hammer and sickle. This would have to do.
~
Everyone has gathered around Portia’s bed for the unveiling. Waiting for hush, she draws a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of red wine from a backpack, and there is a solemn murmur of admiration. Moving around the group, each girl reveals her booty. There is gin, brandy and even a bottle of port with an old rubber cork.
One more until my turn. Blood roars in my head. Portia smiles at me, the first real smile I’ve had from her in months.
‘What have you got, Bec?’
All eyes are on me. ‘Oh,’ I manage to say. ‘Bit of this, bit of that.’
‘Well, come on then. Give us a look.’
I clear my throat. ‘It’s in my locker, actually. Show you later?’
‘Let’s have a look now.’
We stand up and walk towards the tog room. Just as I’m convinced that life is no longer worth living, a miracle comes in the form of Miss McKinney, spotted on the road. The girls scatter, stuffing the bottles in the drawers beneath their beds. ‘Come on,’ Miss McKinney calls from the doorway. ‘Into bed and reading this instant.’
I expel a burst of breath. Thank God. Then I feel a cold hand clamp around my wrist.
‘Show me,’ Portia whispers. ‘Quick.’
Before I can protest she drags me to the tog room. I stand at my locker, heart banging around my chest. Where the hell is Miss McKinney?
‘Come on,’ Portia snaps.
Nothing for it. I open the door, point to the bottom shelf where the Ruski bottle twinkles absurdly. ‘There,’ I mumble, moving to block the view. But Portia already has her foot out.
‘Hang on,’ she says. ‘What is that?’
‘Careful—’
But she’s grabbed the bottle and holds it up to the light. She frowns and sniffs at the mouth.
‘This is . . . water,’ she says.
‘No, it’s not. It’s vodka, good stuff. Try it if you don’t believe me.’
The words are out before I can take them back. I slump against the door, my legs trembling. But Portia merely shrugs and hands it back.
‘I’ve got more in my bag,’ I say, my brain still haywire. ‘Some gin too. Yeah, stole that from my parents. We can have that later, if you like?’
Portia laughs. It isn’t a nice sound, and there is contempt in her eyes. She slinks off, around the corner, her sneakers scuffing the polish. When Emma comes out from the bathroom, she blinks into my open locker.
‘Um, Bec,’ she says, ‘have you ever actually had a Lemon Ruski?’
I slam the door. ‘Of course I have!’ It’s all very well for Emma—she managed to bring something back.
‘Thing is,’ she says, ‘they’re lemon flavoured, so they look sort of white-ish. Not clear, like that. And,’ she adds, nodding at the bottle, ‘they’re usually sold with a lid on.’
I shrug. ‘Like I said to Portia, I’ve already tried some and I threw the lid away.’
&nb
sp; Emma stares. Her eyes are kind, reminding me of Mum. I turn away, embarrassed, as tears stream down my cheeks.
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PART THREE
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We’re doing projects in History. I like learning about our past—about the Gold Rush and the Eureka Stockade, and the Boer War. I’m writing a letter from a convict, dated early 1800s. I don’t know how convicts spoke or wrote back then, but I imagine their stationery was grubby so I stain the paper with dirt and tea and burn it around the edges to look like a scroll.
I feel different in the classroom: disciplined and hungry to learn as much as I can. I feel clever in these lessons, and that certainty, that confidence, is like a warm blanket. It still seems extraordinary to me how much is crammed into a single day up here.
In English we’re reading Romeo and Juliet, and I’m enchanted by the lovers’ doomed passion. So much, in fact, that instead of quiet reading I stand on my bed and shout lines around the dorm.
‘Bloody hell, Bec!’ cries Briohny from the corner. ‘No one wants to hear your fucking sonnets!’
‘They’re not sonnets.’
‘Whatever—shut up!’
‘But don’t you think it’s wonderful?’
A few girls groan. In the next bed Emma makes a face. She is writing to Cadbury again: last term they sent her a whole box of complimentary chocolates after she complained a bar of Fruit & Nut had no fruit or nuts.
‘Maybe it’s time to consider other people in the dorm?’
I hadn’t seen Miss Lacey standing in the doorway and her voice gives me a fright.
‘I’m not hurting anyone,’ I say with a pout.
‘No, but you’re disturbing silent reading.’
‘So?’
‘Oh Bec,’ she says, tugging on the wisps of her hair. ‘Why does everything have to be so difficult with you?’
But she sighs when my face falls and comes over to my bed. What Miss Lacey doesn’t know is that I’d forgotten how much I love books, and how much of a reprieve they are from the chaos of Red House. ‘Shakespeare is wonderful,’ she says quietly. ‘And it’s great that you’re enjoying reading the play. Miss Jones tells me you’re doing very well in class.’
When she puts the lights out, I grab the torch and Pride and Prejudice from my bedside table. It’s the tatty green leather-bound copy that used to belong to Nan. She gave it to me last year, after I watched the BBC series with Mum.
On the imprint page Nan had scribbled her name and the date, 1936. She was the same age then as I am now. It’s strange to imagine Nan ever being young. She went to boarding school too. I wonder if she lay in bed at night, the lives of Elizabeth and Mr Darcy taking her far away from the dorm.
~
A girl from Purple House slit her wrists during the night. Her name is Helen. I don’t really know her—she’s not in any of my classes—but in Red House we’ve always called her Rapunzel, on account of her incredibly long hair.
It’s all anyone can talk about at breakfast. Apparently Helen got out of bed after lights-out and cut herself in the bathroom. Then she walked back into the dorm bleeding everywhere, all the other girls screaming and crying, before she was rushed to the nurse.
I look over at Purple House’s empty table. They don’t have to go to class today. They might even get to go home.
‘I’d cut my wrists if it meant I could go home,’ Emma mutters.
‘Double standards, isn’t it?’ I whisper, glancing towards Lou.
Emma chews on her nail and shrugs. ‘What else is new?’
Later, standing in line for the crossie, I hear kids asking Helen’s head of house about the blood and her wrists and how close to death she had been. Miss Constantine, a young, black-haired woman with a bird-like frame, scoffs. ‘It would have taken her a week to bleed out,’ she says. ‘They were scratches, hardly deep at all. She was never in any real danger. I mean, she didn’t even cut herself the right way!’ She points to her wrist, makes a slashing movement along its length. ‘You’re supposed to cut down the inside of the forearm, not across the wrist.’
Red House is still talking about Helen as we get ready for bed. Why Helen did it doesn’t seem to concern anyone; they’re all more interested in where she did it—and how the girls in her house were driven home in a bus that afternoon.
‘She should have done it at the chapel,’ Portia says. ‘Then it could have been religious, like a sacrifice. She should have strung herself up to the cross, slit her wrists and hung there like Jesus. We all would have seen her as we walked down to breakfast.’
The dorm has gone quiet.
‘That’s horrible, Portia,’ Simone says. ‘How can you say that?’
But Portia just cackles.
I climb into bed and pull the covers to my chin. I am thinking about Lou, of course, but also about Kendall. What if she tries to hurt herself?
Portia looks around, smiling slyly. ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,’ she sighs.
That night I dream about the lambs in the front paddock. They bleat sadly as Portia shepherds them towards the chapel. At the altar they’re hoisted to the top of the giant crucifix where their throats are cut by figures dressed in black. I cry out, but no sound comes from my mouth. Blood drips down the crucifix and the lambs’ wool falls in a soft coil.
~
The next morning I wake up with stoney dread in the pit of my stomach. Tomorrow we’re heading out on our house hike. To distract myself, I think about home—about Mum and Dad and Archie, our warm living room with the soft glow of the television, my bed. If only I could have a short break from Silver Creek, a few days is all I would need. But I can’t.
In the afternoon I visit the nurse, pretending to have gastro. There is a chance, if she believes I’m sick, that I’ll be sent home: it’s been happening ever since a boy contracted meningitis. But as she takes my temperature she frowns, and I know I haven’t fooled her. She gives me charcoal tablets, watches me swallow down a couple with a gulp of cold water. ‘There,’ she says. ‘That will set you right for the hike.’
God, I write in my diary that night, four days with the house is going to be hard.
The next morning, I pile into a Jeep with six other girls. Two more vehicles follow in convoy. Rain spits against the windows. An hour later we stop at an unfamiliar site. No one seems to want to get out.
‘Come on,’ Miss Lacey says, but even she sounds reluctant, peering through the window at the murky sky.
The rain doesn’t stop all day. It’s proper rain, too, stirring up an earthy smell from the ground.
After we set up camp no one can get a fire started. I’m so hungry I eat my tinned beef and vegetables cold. Emma watches, horrified, until eventually she cracks open the lid of her own tin. ‘It’s not too bad,’ she says through a mouthful.
I hunt through a bag of scroggin for a dried apricot. ‘I wonder if we’ll look back and think these are the best days of our lives?’
‘Doubt it. Why do they always say that about school, anyway?’
‘Teachers say it, don’t they?’
‘Figures,’ Emma says, grinning suddenly. ‘They’ve come back to work at school!’
We look at each other and fall about laughing. I don’t know what we’re laughing about, but it doesn’t matter. When Emma wipes her eyes, smearing beef across her cheek, I think, Thank God I have you.
~
We hike through sleet. Wind flays at any bare skin. I can’t feel my hands. The terrain is slick, with exposed roots and loose rocks—a few girls have fallen already. We’re headed for a hut somewhere on th
e other side of the mountain, with a loft and a giant fireplace. The only thing that keeps me going is imagining that warm glow against my face.
On a ridge the group stops for photographs in front of an enormous boulder. Teeth chattering, Emma links her arm through mine. Miss Lacey shouts, ‘Cheese,’ for each snap.
We arrive at the hut just as the sun drops. From a distance it looks like a hunting cabin from a horror film, with a shadowy porch and even an animal skull fixed above the door. Inside it smells dusty and faintly smoky from a pile of old ashes in the fireplace.
Portia and her group move swiftly towards the loft. I follow up the ladder, my pack swaying. At the top they’re already laying down their mats and sleeping bags, and when I edge towards the corner Portia blocks my way.
‘What are you doing?’ Beanie off, her greasy hair sticks out at odd angles.
‘Just setting up my mat.’
‘No room.’
I point to the corner. ‘There’s a spot right there.’
Sarah pushes past. ‘There’s no room, Rebecca. Get it?’
Portia turns away, leaving me to stare at the back of her head. It’s so stuffy up here—I can feel sweat gathering above my lip. I close my eyes. If you let me sleep here, I will her from across the loft, I won’t bother you again. I won’t talk to you or offer you food or try to make you laugh, I promise. Just please give this final thing to me.
But I don’t have the courage to say it. When Portia looks at me again, she asks, ‘Why are you still here?’ in the same tone she might use to ask someone to pass her a pillow. As if this cruelty was nothing to her, just part of her day. Now the words come gushing from my mouth.
‘Why are you being like this?’
Everyone stops and turns. Portia’s eyes widen a fraction. She takes a step towards me, her fists clenched.
‘Can you just fuck off?’ she says, pointing to the ladder.
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