by Van Badham
The look she shot back was one of unbridled hostility. ‘I know what you are,’ she said in a hissing whisper. She plonked herself on her stool directly in front of Ms Jackson’s desk, in a way that made it clear she didn’t even want to look at me.
I was so shocked, I kept silent for the rest of the class, although Ashley kept my attention. Whenever she thought Ms Jackson wasn’t looking, she unpicked the shoelaces of her boots. By the end of the class, her boots were peeled open like spent flowers, and the laces were held tightly in her hand.
16
After Art, I had a double free period to myself. At Baulkham Hills Girls I’d studied Journalism and Commercial Art as one-unit courses, but Yarrindi had no equivalent. It had been decided that as I was planning to do extension courses for my remaining subjects next year anyway, I could use the gaps in my timetable for private study.
Ms Jackson showed me to the Senior Quad, the door to which was next to the Art room. Disoriented by the confusion of new rooms and corridors, I hadn’t noticed the leafy, secret paradise that the Art room actually looked onto. Shady green trees pooled around a lower level of grass, and up some stairs there was a level that was concrete, with benches and tables.
Alone, I sat myself on one of the benches and flopped my planner diary onto the table. I spent a good fifty minutes transcribing my new class timetable into its pages and organising all my handouts, schedules and notes into my folder.
With another half an hour till lunchtime – and my curiosity about what Michelle was going to reveal about Brody fluttering around my brain like a panicking moth – I decided to explore the school.
I walked back through the Art room door and down the empty corridor. I found a staircase and explored an upper level of the building that I guessed, from the bumps, shouts and giggles behind doors, contained the Drama labs. As I walked the near-silent hallways, I watched dust particles floating gently through sunbeams that poured through the building’s windows. I turned a corner into a new hallway, and a soft hum resolved itself into a low singing; these were Music rooms and a class was learning Gregorian chants. A pushed door led me back out into the main quadrangle.
I was thinking about buying myself something from the canteen when a wall perpendicular to it caught my attention. Loud murals announced that the wall hid the boys’ and girls’ toilets, and I headed over there.
The girls’ toilet block was dark and empty, and my footsteps slapped against its concrete floor. The toilet cubicles had metal doors and one screeched as I swung myself inside. I dropped my bag on a hook and was hitching up my skirt when heavy footsteps let me know that I wasn’t alone. Two girls were talking and I knew the voices: Fran and Belinda. I heard the word ‘she’ three times before they were close enough to be heard clearly, and I knew, by instinct, they were talking about me.
Slowly, soundlessly, I let my skirt fall and stepped onto the closed lid of the toilet, levering myself to sit on the cold, tiled outcrop in the wall that hid the toilet’s plumbing.
‘Do you like her?’ asked Belinda.
‘Don’t know yet,’ said Fran. I heard a tap turn on.
‘She’s totally lame collective, not us,’ Belinda said. The tap turned off. ‘I don’t think she’s got an actual haircut.’
‘Why’d you invite her to sit with us?’ asked Fran.
‘Nikki’s idea,’ said Belinda. ‘She’s desperate to find Matt a girlfriend so he doesn’t get between her and Ryan.’
One of them was brushing their hair – from the clipped way she spoke, I presumed it was Fran. ‘Matt’s not going to go for someone like Sophie in a million years. God, Nikki’s stupid.’
‘Sophie looks fat in that uniform,’ said Belinda.
‘Give her a break,’ said Fran. ‘It’s her first day.’
‘I reckon she wants Brody Meine, anyway.’
They both laughed.
I was listening so intently I’d grown careless: my pose had relaxed and the toes of my left foot were resting dangerously on the toilet’s flush lever.
A brush was zippered back into a schoolbag.
‘When are you going to tell Michelle about you and Dan Rattan?’ asked Belinda.
‘I’m not,’ said Fran.
From the drop in the volume of their voices, I gathered this was explosive information. I leaned further forwards, balancing myself with the edge of my shoe sole against the flush lever. I was half-sure they’d be able to hear the sound of my breathing.
‘Are you and Dan together?’ said Belinda.
‘No, we’ve kissed, like, twice, that’s all,’ Fran snapped.
‘Twice?’
Fran’s tone was a warning. ‘Anyone asks Dan, he’s still with Tracy Taylor.’
‘Don’t get mad at me,’ said Belinda. ‘I’m not going to tell anyone.’
‘Good,’ said Fran. A bag was thrown onto a back, steps taken. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
There was a faint sound of hissing water, but I didn’t know where it was coming from. From the sound of their footsteps I could tell the girls were nearly out of the toilet block. The hissing grew louder.
‘What if Sophie turns out to be a loser?’ asked Belinda.
‘Then we ditch her,’ said Fran.
Then my foot slipped. My heel landed on the flush lever and the sound of rushing water filled the air.
17
For lunch, my mother had packed me a hard herb cake and filled my drink bottle with rose cordial. By the time I sat down with Michelle and the others behind the Technology labs, I was too hungry not to eat and too lazy to go to the canteen. I was alternating chews with punching the girls’ mobile phone numbers into my own phone when Nikki drew everyone’s attention to the strange snack in my hand.
‘Is that like a … mull muffin?’ she asked, wide-eyed.
I laughed, but said nothing.
‘No, seriously, is it?’
‘Just herb bread,’ I fudged, smiling. Nikki didn’t seem like the brightest person in the world, but I made a mental note that she was quite observant.
I ate wordlessly, and out of the corner of my eye noticed Fran and Belinda looking guilty and sheepish. They hadn’t come back into the toilets to investigate who’d overheard them, but it was obvious they knew that someone had.
‘It’s weird without the boys here,’ said Kylie.
I wanted to say, ‘Speaking of boys, tell me about Brody Meine,’ but I restrained myself. I’d looked for him amongst the lunchtime throng, but there had been no sign of him. I wondered who his friends were.
Michelle was finishing a carton of yoghurt. ‘How was Art?’ she asked me.
‘Weird,’ I said, choosing – I didn’t know why – not to mention my strange exchange with Ashley the Goth. ‘There were only five of us there.’
‘What did you have after that? I do biology with Kylie and Nikki, Fran has Geography and Blin is in Drama,’ said Michelle.
‘Independent study. I just hung out in the Senior Quad.’ I fumbled for a topic that I hoped would remind the others of the conversations we had at recess and, therefore, the conversation about Brody. ‘I should’ve gone to the office and organised a school shirt instead.’
‘I’ll take you there after school if you like,’ said Michelle. ‘And I’ll come with you up the road too, show you where Babes is, so you can get pants.’
‘I’d be up for that,’ said Kylie.
‘We should all go,’ agreed Fran.
I notched up this group plan as a victory over Belinda, whose face betrayed her annoyance at my inclusion. I longed to bring up the subject of Brody, but with her in this mood, I didn’t want to lay any traps for myself. She and Fran had laughed when his name was mentioned in the bathroom – I had to know why. Straining with curiosity, I swallowed all my cordial without even tasting it.
The girls began discussing clothes, shopping, outfits for an upcoming party and, inevitably, the missing boys. Nikki had received a text from Ryan during Biology – the soccer match was over, but he’d
been elusive about the score. Halfway through analysis of what this could mean, Michelle snapped her back straight.
‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed, and turned to me. ‘We were going to tell you about Brody Meine!’
‘He’s a murderer,’ Nikki announced, eyes shining.
18
I didn’t speak but the shock must have registered pretty clearly on my face. Fran let out a nervous chuckle but she went quiet when my eyes flicked to hers.
‘He’d be with the guys today if he hadn’t been thrown off the team,’ Nikki said.
‘He killed someone playing soccer?’ I asked.
Michelle shook her head. ‘No, that’s not … We don’t really know …’
‘Hazel Kent’s mum reckons—’ Nikki began, but Michelle silenced her.
‘There are a lot of strange rumours about Brody Meine,’ said Michelle, ‘and we don’t know if all of them are true.’
‘It’s true that he got kicked off the soccer team, though,’ said Kylie. ‘And it was because he punched the crap out of some guy from Shoalhaven.’
‘Brody Meine turned up at this school about a year ago,’ explained Michelle. ‘Just before Ashley Ventwood. He’s good at sport and he’s pretty smart too, but he—’
Michelle looked lost for words.
‘He totally wasn’t interested in anybody,’ Nikki blurted. ‘Not just girls – I mean, he didn’t want to be friends with anyone. He was playing sport with Ryan and the guys – you know, they’re guys and they talk about sport and whatever, but he was like this silent weirdo even though he was pretty good.’
‘Actually, he was really good at sport,’ said Kylie. ‘You can see it in his body – he’s all shoulders, but he’s fast too.’
‘Do you think he’s hot?’ asked Belinda with a sneer.
Kylie rolled her eyes as if Belinda had said the stupidest thing ever. Belinda, I noted, had no response.
‘I don’t know how we found out,’ continued Michelle, ‘but someone saw a form at the office or something, and Brody’s older than us – he’s eighteen. People reckoned he must have repeated but the guy is not dumb, so then the idea was that he must have dropped out, or been sick, or—’
Again, Nikki leaped into the conversation. ‘But he was too good at sport to have been sick, and then there were rumours that he must’ve been kicked out of somewhere, and no one knew which school he’d been to, because he wouldn’t talk to anybody. And then they had this game with Shoalhaven.’ Nikki turned to Kylie. ‘Were you there?’
‘No,’ Kylie said, turning to me, ‘but Steve was. It was a regional semifinal knockout and they were under heaps of pressure, but Steve says that Brody was having the best game of his life and got this amazing goal … This guy from Shoalhaven hadn’t been a problem before, but after Brody’s goal the guys were all cheering and celebrating, and the Shoalhaven guy came up to Brody, said something and pushed him. Steve didn’t hear what he said but Brody lost it. Steve says that Brody just rammed his fist into this guy’s face and blood splattered over everybody.’
I thought about Brody’s dark brow and wide shoulders. There was something in his green eyes that was so wounded it suddenly didn’t surprise me that he was capable of hurting someone.
‘He was red-carded, like, instantly,’ said Kylie, ‘but he didn’t care. He just kept slugging this guy and it took most of both teams to pull him away.’
My heart was racing but I was as cool as I could be. ‘Did the guy die?’ I asked.
Michelle shook her head. ‘He got taken to hospital – his face was messed up really badly. Brody got kicked off the team. Dan,’ Michelle’s voice hovered around the guy’s name, the guy I knew had secretly been kissing Fran, ‘Dan said that Brody was asked to apologise, and flat out said no. They threatened him with everything and he didn’t care. Just said nothing.’
‘And all the guys avoid him now because they think he’s a psycho,’ said Kylie. ‘Steve was really frightened by what happened.’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘The end of last year,’ said Michelle.
‘So …’ I was trying to choose my words carefully, ‘how does that make him a murderer?’
‘Well,’ said Nikki, ‘Hazel Kent is this chick in Year 9 who lives on my street, and her mum writes for the local paper. She knows heaps of people and when this whole thing happened she started asking questions about Brody and everyone – the school, everyone – was totally quiet. This guy from Shoalhaven was in hospital with a mashed face and the cops didn’t want to press charges and it all got sorted really quietly. Hazel’s mum reckons that Brody must have a prior record or something and that they’ve sent him to this town to keep him out of trouble, because—’
I said, ‘You don’t know if that’s true or not.’
‘But it makes a lot of sense,’ sang Nikki.
‘You didn’t see what he did to that dude,’ said Kylie.
‘Neither did you,’ I said.
‘I saw Steve afterwards,’ said Kylie, and a shadow crossed her face. ‘He had blood all over his soccer kit … He’s had bad dreams about it.’
‘Whatever happened, wherever he’s been, we stay away from Brody – everyone does,’ said Michelle.
I knew it was wrong, and I didn’t understand it, but the silent voice in my head repeated: Not me, not me …
19
It turned out that Michelle was in my English class, so we made our way to the classroom together. I wanted to ask her more questions about Brody but I decided they could wait. As we trundled into the building and up some stairs, Michelle chattered and I considered endless possibilities as to the real story of Brody Meine.
‘The party we were talking about before,’ Michelle said, easing herself through the crowds of people clogging the hallways, ‘it’s Belinda’s birthday. She’ll totally invite you – it’s just … she takes a while with people. It’s this Saturday anyway. We should look at stuff to wear at Babes this afternoon.’ She smiled, and I was struck again by how beautiful she was.
‘I really appreciate you … you know, being nice to me, letting me sit with you,’ I said. ‘This is really daunting, the whole new girl thing.’
‘I understand,’ said Michelle. ‘When I was the new girl, I didn’t even speak English.’
This surprised me. ‘Where are you from?’
‘My Dad’s from Latvia, my mum’s Malay, and I grew up in Germany, speaking German. Work that one out,’ said Michelle, walking into a classroom. ‘We got here when I was eight. It was like being the new girl for two whole years.’
‘I can’t believe you don’t have an accent,’ I said, following her towards a desk in the back corner of the room. Trying to stake out some common ground, I told her, ‘My mum’s family are from Finland.’
‘No way,’ said Michelle. ‘That’s really close to Latvia. Do you speak Finnish?’
‘I can count to ten and say thank you and hello. Can you still speak German?’
‘It’s the only subject keeping me alive at school,’ she said, nodding.
We were setting up our folders on the desk. A birdlike middles-aged woman entered the room and started scribbling on the blackboard with orange chalk.
‘I wish I was better at English,’ sighed Michelle. ‘I am totally the dumbest person in this class.’
I looked around the room. The cast of the movie of my first day at school had changed again. This was the Advanced English class and I could tell why Michelle was glad for my company: the room was wall to wall Nerds and High Achievers. With one exception.
Sitting alone at a desk in the opposite corner of the room was Goth Girl Ashley. Her boots were still open – she’d managed to knit together a necklace from the shoelaces she’d unpicked in Art and now she was wearing it. I presumed it was a Goth thing.
She had her feet up on the desk, a scowling expression on her face. And she was staring straight at me.
20
Michelle and I survived a double period of analysing vocabul
ary in Jane Austen’s Emma. Afterwards she took me down to the office where the school shirts were sold. I had a rare moment of feeling grown up when I told the woman behind the counter that I could pay by debit card. Michelle picked out a shirt that was two sizes smaller than my mother would have chosen and I decided to get three of them then and there.
We were outside, walking out towards the school gate, when Michelle said, ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you all day that those shoes are really cute.’ I smiled. I could see Kylie and Fran standing next to one another on the other side of the gate and was secretly glad that Belinda, for whatever reason, had decided not to come.
My smile froze on my lips, though, when the sound of a car horn blared from the street.
‘Soph, are you okay?’ asked Michelle.
‘Fine,’ I said, clutching the brown paper bag with my new shirts in it, watching the window of my mother’s blue Hyundai Getz wind down.
‘Hey!’ called out my mother. ‘Over here! Sophie!’
Michelle was at my elbow. ‘Is that your mum?’
The car horn beeped again. I swallowed hard. ‘Yes,’ I said, and tried a giggle. ‘She’s so cute. She thinks I’m still seven.’
‘That’s adorable,’ said Michelle.
‘I’ll have to tell her I’m going shopping,’ I said and, making a quick assessment that Michelle was innocuous enough for my mother to like, added, ‘Want to meet her? She’s pretty funny.’
‘Sure,’ said Michelle, with enough genuine enthusiasm that I waved at my mother and walked towards the car. Michelle gestured ‘Two minutes’ to Kylie and Fran, who dropped their bags to the ground and waited.