by Van Badham
More later. Love you.
X Me.
I was about to hit ‘Send’ but I hesitated.
PS You are right about my mum. She is really controlling.
Even though it felt like I was betraying some fundamental law, I shoved the mouse towards the ‘Send’ button and clicked.
I opened a new browser window and searched for a timetable of the bus that would take me to school.
25
‘I think those clothes are a bit tight on you, Soph,’ said my mother when I emerged from my bedroom for breakfast.
I was wearing the school shirt and trousers with my proper black school shoes. The plan was to balance out Mum’s inevitable criticism of the clothes with her support for the shoes. My black canvas shoes were in my schoolbag and I intended to change into them before I got on the bus.
Dad was eating toast at the table and was already dressed for work. ‘I think you look lovely,’ he said. ‘Must have been all that beauty sleep.’ He winked at me.
My mother frowned. ‘I want you to have a good breakfast because you didn’t have any dinner.’
I nodded and ate toast. A lot of dark looks were exchanged between my mother and father. When Dad smiled at me warmly I wondered if they’d been talking about my fight with Mum last night. If they had, it seemed that Dad was on my side.
‘Your mother wants to drive you in to school, Sophie,’ said Dad, leaving his crusts on his plate. ‘I’ve been arguing that it’s my turn.’
‘So that you don’t fight,’ I said, ‘I’ll catch the bus. I looked it up on the net and it leaves from just down the road.’
‘You have friends on that bus?’ asked Dad.
‘Not yet,’ I said, smiling.
Dad turned to Mum. ‘Then that settles it, Tiki, Sophie is more than capable of catching a bus by herself.’ Whenever Dad called her ‘Tiki’, Mum usually went silent, and right now was no exception.
I almost skipped to the bus stop I was so excited about the day ahead. It was an orange spring morning and I was convinced that my hair shone amber in the sunlight. When I was far enough away from the house but not too close to the stop, I shuffled out of my ugly black shoes and into the cute canvas ones.
As I arrived at the bus stop and took my place in the queue, I felt myself stand straighter than I think I ever had before. There were a couple of girls there in the junior uniform of a green plaid tunic, and I felt so much prettier, so much more grown-up in my neatly tailored trousers and breast-enhancing school shirt.
I took a deep breath as the bus pulled up. I decided I was going to say hi to Brody Meine this morning in first period. As I found a seat by myself and stared through the window at the yellow morning sun and sparkling blue ocean, I practised a thousand different ways to say ‘Hi’ in my head.
26
The first surprise of the day occurred not long after the bus had hooked down into Frankston Avenue. At the stop past Cawlish Street, amongst the gaggle of hyperactive juniors and sedate seniors, Michelle dreamily sashayed onto the bus. I gave her a tiny wave and was relieved when she smiled and bounded over to me.
‘I haven’t had a bus buddy in ages,’ she said, swinging into the seat next to me. ‘I love your hair out.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘How’d you go last night?’
‘What a drama! The girls dropped me at mine and came in for a bit, but I think Fran was still pretty freaked out. She stayed at Kylie’s after all. That was so frightening on the freeway.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but Fran dealt with it.’
‘If she hadn’t, we’d all be dead,’ said Michelle. ‘Seriously, I’m glad she didn’t drive home. She lives down the coast on a dairy property and it’s a half-hour drive.’
‘Where does Kylie live?’
‘She’s on the south side,’ said Michelle, and she saw me register curiosity at the dour note in her voice. ‘Yarrindi is suburban up here, and sub-sub-suburban down there. This is the west side, and it’s all family homes and nice places. South side is the streets at the back of the school. Flats, mostly. Housing commission. Kylie lives in one with her mum. It’s interesting that Kylie and Fran are close now, ’cos Fran’s parents have this big property and it’s really nice. Fran doesn’t care, though. She’s cool.’
I wondered how cool Michelle would think Fran was if she knew about Dan Rattan poking his tongue down her throat.
‘What about Belinda?’ I asked.
‘Belinda’s a beachie,’ said Michelle, with gravity. ‘South of the lighthouse there’s a coastal strip and that’s where the big, big houses are. Most of them are weekenders for rich people, but some people live here all the time. Belinda’s dad makes TV commercials and spends most of his time in Sydney, but she and her mum and her little brother live in this amazing house. You’ll see it at her party.’
‘If she invites me,’ I said.
Michelle laughed. ‘You’ll totally be invited. I spoke to her on MSN last night and I think she’s going to invite the whole year. Our year has a Facebook group – I’ll invite you to join,’ she said. ‘The boys are lousy bus buddies because they have soccer training in the morning. Garth, Ryan and Matt all live on this side. So does Nikki, but she’s right down the bottom of the hill and usually walks. She says it’s for exercise but she’s addicted to these burgers they sell at the petrol station diner. She has one every morning. It’s hilarious.’
The bus cruised down the hill and crossed the intersection. I could see Yarrindi students stumbling towards the school in a snake of green and black. The bus rolled down the length of Yarrindi Road and students ambled out of the milk bars and convenience stores with breakfast snacks in hand. At the end of the road, the bus turned right and the little white lighthouse floated over my left shoulder. The bus turned right again and Michelle pointed south to the distant houses with glinting glass windows and decks that lined the coast, a hill of cliff-rock building behind them. ‘There’s Beachie Land,’ she said, and swung her finger towards the street we were now travelling down, where blocks of squat, cheap flats peered treelessly at the roadside. ‘And this is the south side. Notice how the cliffs keep them nice and separate. It’s weird,’ she said, and wrinkled her nose.
All I could think was, How did I know Belinda’s house had a deck? I began replaying the fantasy of Brody Meine and I standing on a deck, with Belinda in the background, looking fat in a red cocktail dress. I giggled.
‘What’s funny?’ asked Michelle, but I was not going to betray myself and tell her.
27
Nikki was leaning on the school fence, next to the gate. Fran and Kylie and Belinda were standing in a group behind her. Michelle and I both laughed when we saw Nikki bring a burger to her lips with one hand as she waved us over with the other.
‘Oh my God, you look awesome!’ she said to me with half a mouthful of burger. ‘I love the side-part, you have such thick hair!’
‘Michelle helped me out with the uniform,’ I said.
‘Totally better than the blue thing that made you look fat,’ said Nikki.
Belinda laughed. I wondered if it was karmic punishment for my unkind thoughts on the bus. My cheeks flushed red.
‘I’m just being honest!’ said Nikki. ‘You look heaps cool now. You don’t need a haircut at all.’
I guessed that Belinda had been sharing yesterday’s observations with the group. My first impression of her had been neutral but over the course of twenty-four hours it had become hostile. I hadn’t had an enemy since primary school and it was a skin-prickling feeling. I had to be careful.
‘Shut up, Nik,’ said Michelle, rolling her eyes.
‘She’s actually really skinny!’ Nikki protested, hoeing another bite out of her burger.
Michelle, Fran and Kylie had caught my embarrassed flush, so I giggled and the tension broke. ‘Thank you, Nikki,’ I said. ‘Coming from you, I know it’s true.’ I didn’t mean to, but I shot Belinda a look. The bell rang.
‘Modern. Urgh!’ grunted Nikki
, turning on her heel and speaking over her shoulder to me. ‘I hope Ms Dwight doesn’t make you sit next to the psycho.’
I wanted it more than anything in the world.
28
But he didn’t show.
I sat by myself in my allocated chair in the loner section of the double horseshoe and, as Ms Dwight shuffled a new handout through the room, I was so disappointed I slumped in my seat.
The class was bigger today. There was a blockish boy I instantly disliked sitting next to Joanie, scribbling on his handout with a pencil, making burping and grunting noises apparently only for the satisfaction of making Joanie uncomfortable. There was a small guy sitting near Ashley who had the sharp-eyed stare of a professional pickpocket. There was also a guy with a square jaw, wide shoulders and a shaved head, who sat next to Belinda. From the way he involved himself in every conversation between her and Nikki, I guessed that he was her boyfriend, Garth. Belinda batted her eyes, flicked the ends of her hair and put her hands together on the edge of her desk in a way that made her breasts lift. I made a superhuman effort to read my handout, answer comprehension questions and banish away wishful fantasies of the wall collapsing on Belinda’s head. It wasn’t easy.
I was halfway through a question that was taking a whole paragraph to answer when a warm voice said ‘Excuse me’ so close to my ear that I almost jumped out of my seat.
Brody Meine was standing over my desk, leaning forwards. Blood rushed to my face and I couldn’t speak. He moved back a little. ‘Do you have a pen I could borrow?’ he asked.
I nodded and reached for my pencil case. Glancing beyond him, I saw Nikki taking an interest in what was going on at my desk. Belinda was writing answers to the handout, but giggling with the boy next door, paying attention to nothing else.
Aware of Nikki’s scrutiny, I wordlessly handed him a biro.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and took his chair.
I tried not to look at him, but my eyes kept straying to his face. Since yesterday, the shadow of a beard had grown on his jaw. From his profile, I noticed how long and black his eyelashes were. His eyebrows angled into a nose that, I noticed, had the bump of an old break on it.
I wanted to say, Hi, how’s it going? I wanted to say, Hi, I’m the new girl, but I couldn’t. Instead I wrote answers on the handout that made decreasing amounts of sense.
‘Class,’ said Ms Dwight, and when I looked up I saw that she was smiling at me. ‘I want you to break off into pairs and work through each other’s answers. If you haven’t finished, I want you to answer the remaining questions together.’
‘Can we work in a three?’ came Nikki’s voice from the other side of the room.
‘Only because there’s an odd number in the class, Nikki,’ said Ms Dwight.
Brody was on his feet. He flicked his chair into the air with one wrist and planted it opposite mine. I tried to suppress an instinctive rise in the temperature of my blood by taking a long breath. I hoped he wouldn’t notice the flush on my cheeks.
As it was, he didn’t even look at me. He sat down and snatched my handout from the desk, and held it up like a wall between us.
For some reason, the gesture made me bold.
‘Question One—’ he began from behind the sheet.
‘Are you always late to class?’ I asked quickly.
A split second passed before he answered. ‘Yes. How many nations participated in the negotiations of the Treaty?’
‘Twenty-seven,’ I said. ‘Why are you always late to class?’
‘Dunno,’ he said, not looking up. ‘What were the notable exclusions?’
‘The defeated central powers as well as, significantly, Russia, which was excluded for negotiating its own peace with Germany in 1917.’
There was a pause.
‘Did I get that right?’ he asked.
I looked at his handout. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You only mentioned the defeated central powers.’
Still without looking at me, he reached across the desk for his handout and transcribed my answer. When he’d finished, he slid his handout back towards me and re-erected the paper wall between us.
I was glad he couldn’t see the smile on my face.
‘Question Two—’ he began.
‘Question Two—’ I interrupted. ‘If you’re going to copy my answer, don’t you want to know what my name is?’
I saw his fingers tighten on the handout. There was an odd noise coming from the classroom somewhere but the tense ligaments in Brody’s raised hand absorbed my attention. ‘It says here,’ said Brody, ‘Until March 1919, the most important decisions regarding the extremely complex terms of the peace fell to regular meetings of the Council of Ten.’
He dropped his hand onto the desk, and the paper barrier with it. ‘So what do you go by?’ he said, slicing the space between us with his unblinking green eyes. ‘ “March 1919” or “Council of Ten”?’
I smiled, Brody smiled – and a blood-curdling scream erupted from the middle of the classroom.
In the centre of the inner horseshoe, Ashley Ventwood was clutching at her shoulders and chest, shrieking in convulsions of pain. Ms Dwight shouted, ‘Give her space! Get the chairs away!’ Panicked students snatched up chairs and desks while Ashley tumbled to the floor. At the boy sitting closest to the door Ms Dwight shouted, ‘Get Mr Simpson from his classroom! Quickly!’ and as he flew into the hallway she approached Ashley. Ashley was lying on her stomach and her legs were jerking as if she were being strangled.
‘Greg, help me!’ cried Ms Dwight, and she and Greg Shoal took Ashley’s arm and leg and tried to roll her onto her side. When Ashley’s face heaved from the carpet, Brody and I gasped in unison.
Her face, always pale, was a deathly white and scarlet blood was pouring from her nose. She was half-whimpering, half-barking, and even Ms Dwight shrieked when she saw the blood. Nikki screamed.
‘It’s a nosebleed! It’s just a nosebleed!’ said Ms Dwight, but Ashley’s body was twitching violently. ‘You’re going to be all right!’ cried Ms Dwight.
Just then Mr Simpson came running into the room and dived towards Ashley, scooping her into his arms. The rest of us stood frozen.
‘Clear a path!’ he ordered, and Ms Dwight grabbed away chairs that blocked his path to the door.
‘Pruslas, Pruslas,’ blubbered Ashley as blood streamed down her face. ‘What you have unleashed will be returned! Jasa tu chovihani!’ Her head rolled backwards in Mr Simpson’s arms and she struggled in his grasp. I saw in one of her hands she clutched the remnants of her shoelace necklace from yesterday; it had broken, and it dangled from her hand like a split cord.
Her upside-down eyes lit on Brody and me. Her struggling calmed but she coughed clots of blood out of her nose.
‘Easy now!’ cried Mr Simpson.
‘Unleash your demons, sea and air!’ Ashley hollered, straight at us. ‘You’ll burn!’ she screamed. ‘You’ll burn!’
Mr Simpson carried Ashley from the room. Chairs, tables and handouts were strewn all over the carpet and in the middle of the floor there was a small puddle of Ashley’s blood.
‘She’ll be all right,’ said Ms Dwight shakily, reaching, as if on automatic, to straighten a chair. ‘Everyone, I know it’s been a shock but she’s all right. Let’s clean up.’
An instinct I couldn’t control made me look over my shoulder at Brody. I wanted his assurance that I was okay before I moved anywhere.
Brody didn’t look at me, but his arms – which I only noticed now, right now, were wrapped tightly around my own – released me, and he pulled away.
29
‘That was, without doubt,’ said Nikki, ‘the most absolutely whack morning ever.’
It was recess and we were sitting behind the Technology labs. It turned out my second subject of the day, Ancient History, was also one of Nikki’s. For an entire double period she and I had sat next to one another, distracted and agape at the events in Modern.
Seated with us were Michelle and F
ran, as well as some boys I hadn’t been introduced to. Introductions were coming second to Nikki’s account of what had happened with Ashley. The assembled group hung off every word.
‘You should have seen it,’ she said to the skinny boy with the side-swept black fringe and sideburns who sat at her elbow. ‘We’re doing this thing, right, this handout, and she starts wigging – totally wigging out.’ Nikki looked to me for confirmation. I nodded. ‘I thought she was having significant period pain or something – she was grabbing her stomach and twisting her head. Everyone’s so out of it, no one’s paying any attention except me, until she screams and hits the floor. It was crazy. Teacher’s screaming, chairs everywhere, and when they got her off the floor—’ Nikki started to laugh. She raised a hand to her mouth to try to stop herself, but she couldn’t. ‘It’s not funny, I know’ she said, involuntary chuckles escaping her control, ‘but she had all this nosebleed and it looked like a period was coming out of her face, that’s what I thought. I’m sick. I’m sick but it was …’ She laughed again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking at me, then back to the others. ‘She totally started yelling at Sophie and Brody like they were the devil or devil children or whatever and Brody—’ The giggles came again. ‘And Brody—’ Nikki couldn’t stop laughing.
‘What about Brody?’ asked Fran, turning to me.
‘He put his arms around her!’ howled Nikki, pointing at me. ‘Like, “Don’t call her a demon.” It was so funny. And when Mr Simpson carried Ashley out he was like “Oops, sorry” and he let her go.’ Nikki convulsed with laughter.
‘What a freak,’ said a boy with yellow hair.
I went for cool. ‘It was pretty weird.’
‘I meant Brody Meine,’ said the boy.
‘I know,’ I said, staring down his grey eyes.
‘Are you okay?’ said the black-haired boy to Nikki. ‘Do you need a Gatorade or something?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Nikki, wiping the laughter tears from her eyes. ‘Thanks, baby. This is Sophie, by the way.’