Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  As I walked out with Joanie, I tried hard to make my voice sound friendly-without-being-too-friendly but I struggled to find something to say.

  ‘You from Sydney?’ she offered in a tiny voice. She was wispy thin.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘Must be exciting. More exciting than this place.’

  I felt that the honest answer, ‘No, just as boring,’ wouldn’t add to an ailing conversation, so I walked in silence. We passed boys in the corridor throwing their bags at one another, and girls sputtering with disapproval while pretending to ignore them. After a stint at a single-sex school, I realised it would take a few days to remember how to share walkways with boys. I swung my schoolbag to my chest and held it with both arms, so an errant elbow wouldn’t send me flying.

  ‘Modern’s better,’ said Joanie eventually. ‘It’s more interesting.’

  She pushed open the classroom door.

  Again there was a double horseshoe formation of tables, again there was a familiar gathering of subcultures seated around it. You go to enough schools and you learn to read the signs pretty well. A thirty-something teacher in a salmon-coloured dress was stapling handouts together. Around her sat the Goth Girl, another two Restless Girls, a couple of Nerd Boys, a pretty girl sitting with a couple of adoring male fans, a trio of girls so serious they instantly marked themselves as High Achievers, and a girl who looked just like Joanie, whom Joanie sat next to immediately. I hesitated in the doorway, unsure of where to sit.

  The teacher looked up from her handouts and smiled at me. She had brown hair and a warm face and I could tell – I had no idea how – that she was pregnant.

  It struck me that that was a really weird thing to guess about someone.

  She stuck out her hand and said, ‘You must be Sophie Morgan. I’m Gail Dwight.’

  I had never had a teacher shake hands with me before, and I shook her hand limply, a little confused. ‘Ms Dwight in the classroom, of course,’ she said. ‘Take a seat.’

  The spot she indicated was the same place I’d sat in for the Maths class – on the far side of the outer horseshoe, alone. I wondered if at Yarrindi this was the area reserved for the new, the lost or the terminally unpopular. Maybe it was my uniform, and once I got it sorted I’d be able to sit somewhere else. In my mind I started cataloguing what variation of the Yarrindi uniform I would adopt. As the handouts were passed along, I looked around the room and made a list of exclusions. The Goth look would never be me, and the Joanie look was not something I aspired to. I’d left the High Achievers behind with Lauren and Sue. My eyes wandered towards the Restless Girls. With their sparkling eye shadow and frost-pink pouts, they looked like girls who knew how to make boys like them – who didn’t care how their mothers wanted them to dress. Within me, envy burbled.

  The handout was on the Treaty of Versailles. The notes were clear and well laid out and from them I could tell that Ms Dwight was a good teacher. I sat up in my chair and paid attention while she started to speak.

  Ms Dwight asked a couple of questions, but not of me. From glances she shot my way, I got the feeling she was trying to introduce me to her other students, helping me identify the smart from the not-so-smart, to get a measure of my place in the room. It was interesting to note that, without paying as much attention as the High Achievers, it was the Goth Girl, Ashley, who got every answer right. As she answered, I looked at her more closely. She was tiny, with pixie features, and her skin was milk-light underneath her dyed black feathery hair. Her eyes were small but sparkled under black eyeliner. Compared to her lightning-fast answers, the High Achievers looked wan and slow.

  Halfway through a question posed to the pretty girl about German coalfields, everyone’s attention snapped to the classroom door, which was blown open, it seemed, by a force of nature.

  He marched into the classroom while the door swung on its hinges. He wore a black T-shirt under his school shirt, and his shorts were grey, not regulation black. Under his dark eyebrows, his eyes shone even greener than they had yesterday.

  It was him. The guy from the ice-creamery. Striding across the room towards me. I was so shocked, so excited, that it took a whole second to realise that my body had tensed up and my feet were floating centimetres above the floor.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said in a gruff voice, and a bag – his bag – floated past my head as he threw it behind the chair next to me.

  Without noticing me at all, he swung around the corner of the horseshoe and into a seat. I tried not to look at him as he landed in the chair next to me, but I could smell him in the air – a cloud of sweat, raw earth, laundry powder and, somehow, silver. It was a delicious smell. I put my hands palm-down on the desk in front of me to steady myself. I tried to make myself listen to the opposite side of the room, where the Restless Girls were hissing at his entrance.

  ‘Be careful – you’ll take Sophie’s head off!’ Ms Dwight said.

  I could hear him turning towards me. ‘Sorry,’ he said, then flicked his attention back to Ms Dwight.

  I didn’t want to look at him. Did he know I was the girl in the snowball shirt from yesterday? My heart was pumping fast and I was struggling to maintain a sense of control. To lose it for a boy on the first day at school would be social disaster.

  Ms Dwight’s hand was on her hip. ‘Why are you late, Brody?’

  ‘Counsellor’s appointment,’ he said, and I heard him pull a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and throw it on the table. It landed in front of me. The paper was soft – it would have smelled like him.

  Ms Dwight approached the table, scooped the note into her hand and read it intently. I watched her face and saw the corners of her mouth turn up into a near invisible smile as she handed the note back to him. He slid it back into his pocket as she said, ‘Class, get out your notes.’

  Amidst the noise of everyone opening folders and taking notebooks out of bags, I opened my own (undecorated) folder and let out a long, calming breath. I told myself that Brody was probably a loser, or a druggie, or worse. I’d been wrong about boys before. The boy I had a crush on in my first week at Bowral High had turned out to be a Dungeons & Dragons–playing nerd. I opened my pencil case.

  Something tugged at my chair. I sat up, and my spine felt contact not with the plastic back of the chair as I expected, but knuckles. Brody’s knuckles. He was holding on to the back of my chair to lever himself over his bag to retrieve something. It took me a deep blush, and a full second, to shuffle forwards in my seat, away from his hand.

  13

  Eighty minutes later, the bell rang. I doubt I’ve ever concentrated on a classroom handout more in my life. When memories of yesterday – that flash of green when his eyes met mine – flickered into my mind, I forced them out. For a torturous double period I kept my elbows so close to my body that my back and arms were stiff. I didn’t want him – Brody – to think I was trying to touch him.

  Between analysing historical sources and answering questions in full sentences, I tried with everything I had not to notice his handwriting (scratchy but legible), his hands (faint scars on one knuckle), or the muscles in his arms (strong, taut, smooth). I was embarrassed; I’d clearly been out of co-education too long. Staring at the pages of the handout, I thought of myself as a fox let loose in a chicken farm, so dazzled by the taste of blood I forgot to notice the farmer with the gun.

  The second the bell rang, Brody grunted to no one in particular and was the first person out the door. I sat there a little dazed, mostly relieved but also – hilariously – slightly disappointed by his rapid departure, and almost didn’t hear Ms Dwight say, ‘Sophie, that’s the recess bell, you’ve got fifteen minutes.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘I’d invite you to join me in the break but I have a meeting today,’ she said kindly. ‘I suppose you haven’t had a chance to meet the other kids yet.’

  ‘That’s okay, Ms Dwight,’ came a voice from the opposite corner of the room. I turned to look: it was one of t
he Restless Girls – a short girl with tendrils of blonded hair and heavy blue eye makeup. ‘You can hang out with us, if you like,’ she said, indicating the girl next to her – a taller girl whose own bleached hair radiated from dark regrowth like silky white straw. This girl’s thin wrists and fingers were heavy with silver bangles and rings.

  ‘That’s kind of you, Nikki,’ said Ms Dwight, looking to me with gentle encouragement.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, in my best bright-but-not-too-pushy voice, and I followed my first two friends out of the room.

  14

  ‘We usually sit with some guys but they’re at a soccer carnival so it’s only girls today,’ said Nikki as she navigated the bustling crowds of the corridor. ‘Did you sit with guys at your last school?’

  It was a question to establish my status. Clearly, at Yarrindi, fraternisation was associated with a level of social success. ‘It was a girls’ school,’ I said coolly.

  ‘Sounds boring,’ said the other girl, who had introduced herself as Belinda.

  ‘I’m with Ryan, Belinda’s with Garth, Fran and Rob used to be together but aren’t now, Kylie’s with Steve Peters, and everyone wants Michelle and Dan Rattan to get back together but he’s still with Tracy Taylor—’ said Nikki.

  ‘—who’s in Year 10 and we all hate her,’ added Belinda.

  Nikki’s eyes gave me a quick examination. ‘Matt in our group’s not with anyone,’ she said after an approving second. ‘And there are a couple of other guys in our year who are okay.’

  ‘There are some good ones in Year 12,’ remarked Belinda. It was as though they were discussing the best chocolates in a mixed box.

  We turned out of the building and walked across an asphalt quadrangle towards a squat building. Behind it I could see the green grass of a soccer field.

  ‘Canteen’s over there,’ said Nikki, pointing towards a side of the quadrangle choked with students. I decided not to tell her that my mother made my lunches. ‘We sit behind the Technology labs,’ she said, indicating the squat building.

  We reached the spot soon enough and the group was already assembled. I recognised the two girls passing notes around in Maths this morning. One of these girls, Fran, was very pretty – she had a small, triangular face, dark eyebrows and long, smooth walnut-coloured hair worn with a mid-part and hairclips. The second, Kylie, had a warm, brown face and golden hair kept out of her eyes by a narrow braid around her forehead. Kylie looked sporty. Both girls were thin.

  ‘Welcome,’ said a fifth girl, Michelle, who was also the tallest and, it seemed, the leader of the group. Her features were vaguely Islander, and she was beautiful; she had long, almost black hair and olive skin, and she flashed me a smile full of perfect white teeth.

  I shot a deferent smile back and lowered my head. I appreciated that these girls were assessing my potential to fit into their group and I was determined to meet, but not surpass, their expectations. I kneeled and sat on the side of my ankles, trying to copy their casual, cross-legged postures as closely as I could without embarrassing myself with my skirt.

  ‘You don’t have a uniform yet? You going to stay in that one?’ asked Michelle.

  I shook my head. ‘I need to buy a whole new wardrobe,’ I said, adding the lie, ‘Most of my stuff got lost in the move.’

  ‘No way!’ gasped Nikki.

  I tried to look disinterested. ‘Some stuff got mixed up. It’s no big deal.’

  ‘So you have, like, NO clothes,’ said Nikki. ‘Are you going to have to wear your uniform at home and—?’

  ‘Idiot,’ said Michelle, and Nikki was silenced. ‘You can get the school shirt at the front office,’ Michelle told me, ‘and we get our pants from Babes, in town.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, meeting Michelle’s eyes. The conversation may have seemed light, but it was like being on an examination table and I was nervous. I’d never tried to hang with popular girls before and it took a lot of concentration to follow their cues. The pang of envy I’d felt when I’d watched them in class had grown into a throbbing need to belong. The original mission had been to make myself over to defy my mother’s control, but now … I realised that transforming myself required more than a change of clothes. It required a change in status, and a new group identity too. To be accepted by these girls was to be officially judged as transformed.

  And I knew that if I said one wrong thing I’d have no one to sit with at lunch.

  ‘What do you think of everyone?’ Fran asked, shaking out her long, dark hair.

  ‘I haven’t really met anyone,’ I replied.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if you met someone you thought was cool and they turned out to be a total loser?’ said Belinda. I suppressed the memory of the D&D player from Bowral High and adjusted my legs to sit on my trembling hands.

  ‘What did you think of the fat girl in our Maths class?’ asked Kylie.

  I shrugged.

  ‘Rhonda Suggs,’ said Fran to Michelle, then to me, ‘She’s totally dumb. What about Joanie?’

  ‘She’s very quiet,’ I said, noncommittal.

  ‘We call her Joanie Moanie,’ said Nikki. ‘She hates everything. What about Goth Girl?’

  Some names were universal. ‘Ashley?’ I asked.

  ‘Total weirdo,’ said Belinda.

  ‘She was new a year ago,’ said Fran.

  Nikki started laughing. ‘She turned up and had all this makeup on and Belinda leaned over on her first day and was like, “Hey, your eyeliner is smudged,” and Ashley went to the toilet – this is funny, right? – and came back and it was exactly the same,’ she said, between chuckles.

  ‘She seems smart,’ I said.

  ‘She’s hell smart,’ said Nikki, sniffing a green apple she’d removed from a lunch box.

  ‘She hangs with Nathan Riley and Brett Heffernan and they’re like a three person lame collective,’ said Belinda. ‘They sit at the bottom of the canteen stairs and all they do is read books.’

  ‘Nathan’s all right,’ said Michelle, and Belinda rolled her eyes. ‘Nathan’s all right,’ she repeated. Belinda shut up with a glowering smirk.

  ‘Joel Morland’s the metal-head in Maths,’ said Kylie with a mouthful of chocolate bar. I knew she meant the long-haired guy.

  I noticed something like a frown cross Fran’s face.

  ‘Total loser,’ said Nikki. I kept my face blank, but this was a disappointing verdict. Still, sacrificing a friendship I hadn’t pursued for the sake of membership to a social group wasn’t the worst exchange I could think of. Besides, I had questions of my own that needed answering.

  ‘Who’s that guy in Modern?’ I asked Belinda. I was trying to seem so casual I didn’t even look at her.

  ‘Greg Shoal? He’s totally in love with Stuck-Up Bitch Louise Parker,’ she replied. I gathered Louise was the pretty girl in Modern and Greg one of her admirers.

  ‘He’s hot, though,’ added Fran.

  ‘The guy who turned up late …’ I said, staring off to the far edge of the soccer field.

  ‘Brody Meine!’ gasped Nikki and Belinda in unison.

  ‘You don’t like him, do you?’ Nikki asked, grabbing my arm. In my peripheral vision I caught the others in the group swapping anxious glances.

  ‘Nuh,’ I lied. ‘There was something weird with him and Ms Dwight …’ I rolled a sarcastic smile across my face and looked straight at Michelle. ‘Are they on or something?’

  A couple of the girls giggled. Michelle smiled back at me with a glimmer of respect. The bell rang.

  What had been a dull hum of background noise became a roar as students began flocking indoors. The group of girls shoved half-eaten packets of chips or half-empty lunch boxes into their bags and stood up. Michelle didn’t move.

  ‘We’ll tell you at lunchtime,’ she said to me. ‘Same place.’

  ‘What have you got now, Soph? Can we call you Soph?’ asked Nikki.

  I nodded as I fished my class schedule from my skirt pocket. ‘Art,’ I said.

  �
�None of us are in that class,’ said Belinda.

  ‘I’ll walk you there, Soph. It’s on my way,’ said Michelle, and turned for me to follow her.

  I smiled my first honest smile of the whole day. I’d done it. I was in.

  15

  The difference between my arrival in Maths and my arrival into the Art class could not have been more pronounced. This morning, alone, I had been flat out to attract my classmates’ casual glances. Now, arriving with Michelle, everyone was looking at me.

  A short woman with red hair and sandals greeted Michelle at the door with, ‘Is this the new girl?’

  ‘This is Sophie, Ms Jackson,’ said Michelle, putting her hand on my shoulder. Then she said, ‘Same place, at lunch,’ and left.

  ‘Take a seat,’ said Ms Jackson. Wide eyes watched me select a stool on the corridor side of the room. There were only four other people in the class: one of the Nerd Boys from Modern sat with another Nerd Boy, a square-set girl with muscly arms sat directly opposite me, and in the corner, glaring, was Ashley, the Goth Girl.

  ‘We’re low on numbers today,’ said Ms Jackson.

  ‘Soccer carnival,’ said the Nerd Boy I didn’t know.

  ‘Thank you, William,’ said the teacher, with tired politeness. ‘We’ll make it a quiet one, then, with some still-life practice.’ She waved listlessly towards an arrangement on her desk. I regarded a pineapple, a folded red scarf, a wooden artist’s model, two mugs and a jar full of paintbrushes on a white plastic platter as she dispensed lead sticks and white art paper on clipboards to the skeleton class.

  I stared at the artist’s model; the way its limbs were posed made it look like a hanging victim. I’d always found the blank-faced dolls creepy – my mother had gone to buy me one once, but someone had had a heart attack in the shop and we’d left without buying it.

  ‘Everyone move in closer,’ the teacher said. ‘I’ll find some erasers.’

  As she disappeared into a storeroom, everyone dragged their stools closer to Ms Jackson’s desk. Ashley, I noticed, was the only other person I’d seen at school today wearing a skirt. She wore it with opaque black tights and black Doc Marten boots, and I saw a tattoo on her left hand of a symbol that looked like a circle with a triangle on it. I smiled at her as we collected our art materials from our desks. ‘I’m Sophie,’ I said, with a friendliness emboldened by my fresh alliance with Michelle. ‘I’m in your Modern class.’