Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  I held up the chocolate bar and said, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Least I could do,’ she said, and walked with me to Maths.

  The minutes dripped by in the Maths classroom, and before I was ready to hear it, the bell rang. It heralded another eighty minutes in Modern History. Eighty minutes next to Brody Meine.

  As I walked to class, I doubted I had the strength to stand it today. The desire to wander off the premises, get home and go to bed was really strong. It wasn’t that I was tired, I just wanted to snuggle into the familiar comfort of my room, pile a doona on my head and hide.

  Instead I entered the classroom and there he was, the first time he’d arrived before me, helping Ms Dwight by laying books and handouts on the desks. When I walked in he looked at me without stopping what he was doing and, just as quickly, dropped his gaze. I took to my seat with distracted resignation. Ms Dwight had written the word RAMIFICATIONS on the board in big chalk letters. I failed to stifle a sarcastic laugh.

  Brody sat down. There was his smell again: silver, earth, sweat, laundry powder. There were the strong hands, the tension in the ligaments, the muscly arms. I forced my eyes towards the front of the classroom. Half of me wanted to put up my hand and say, ‘Ms Dwight, I’m very worried about some family stuff and I don’t have the energy to madly desire Brody today. Can I be excused?’ Obviously, I didn’t do it. Obviously, I listened to all of her instructions as to what she wanted us to achieve, in our pairs, while she was in the library hosting the Year 12 debating team’s regional semifinal against Karrawanna High.

  Pairs. Brody was standing, lifting his chair over my desk, and Ms Dwight had disappeared. He sat, he lifted the handout to his face.

  ‘Are we going to actually do this?’ I asked.

  ‘I think it’d make a nice surprise for Ms Dwight,’ he said, lowering the handout to the desk and looking over his shoulder. ‘I don’t think anyone else is going to do it.’

  I looked around the room. Half the class seemed to have disappeared with Ms Dwight; the other half were making animated conversation. Nikki, Belinda and Matt were in the doorway; Nikki was mouthing the word ‘Canteen’ to me. I shook my head at her.

  ‘Your friends are going,’ he said, turning back to me. ‘Isn’t there a solidarity code that says you have to follow them?’

  ‘And who are your friends, Brody?’ I asked, my eyes fixed on the textbook I now held in my hands.

  ‘Books,’ he said. ‘Trees, sunlight. Storms. The colours in an orange. A couple of poems. Lots of songs. Clear nights, secret places … Frogs. Definitely frogs.’

  ‘Can they keep a secret?’ I said, meeting his gaze.

  ‘To the grave.’

  ‘As well as you can?’

  He smiled and looked away. The smile had the beauty of shattered obsidian, the jagged edge of a cliff against the sky, a preying bird. I couldn’t let him know the effect he had on me. I could feel my pendant warming on my skin, and I didn’t want another burn. I stayed perfectly still. He rolled his eyes back towards me and his smile melted into a very faint smirk. ‘No one’s as good at that, I promise.’

  ‘Why do I keep running into you?’ I said.

  ‘They call it “a small coastal town”,’ said Brody. ‘Don’t think it’s fate – I just sell ice-cream.’ He picked up the handout and held it between us.

  I sighed.

  ‘Now,’ he said – and then peered his head around the corner of the paper, with a smile. ‘Do you want to do these questions?’

  I couldn’t say no. Or not laugh.

  50

  Surprisingly, we worked hard. Brody would ask the question from the handout and I would search the index in the textbook, flip through and find the best source to answer it. The book was a collection of primary documents from the post-First World War period, discussing the Treaty process, and we alternated reading sources to one another. It was dry stuff, but neither of us tried to make it funny.

  As we worked, I wondered whether Brody’s seriousness was what alerted people to his age. He seemed ancient in comparison to the boys in my group. Brody could crush someone like Garth, as easily as the skeleton of a mouse. I could understand why the boys avoided him: he made them feel weak.

  He was making me nervous too. His gravity and focus on the coursework drew my attention not to him, but to myself. When I noticed a deep scar, about an inch and a half long, on the side of his neck near his collarbone, I shuddered with the realisation that I had nothing to match it. He seemed not so much older than me, but more scarred, more cautious and, I had to admit it to myself, incomparably more violent. For the past week I’d indulged, literally, a schoolgirl crush on him. From his point of view, I must have seemed a simple, scattered child.

  We were on the last question when his focus failed.

  ‘Why do you always do that?’ he asked, abrupt.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Grip the stone around your neck. What is it?’

  ‘A turquoise. It’s new.’

  ‘Show me.’ As I reached for the clasp at my neck, he said, ‘You don’t need to take it off – just lean forwards.’

  My blood was building and I cleared my throat in vague terror. Moving to the edge of my seat, I leaned in towards him, holding out the stone while holding my body as far away as possible. I didn’t care about Mum’s warning not to let anyone touch the stone; as Brody leaned in to examine it, I felt his breath – a man’s breath – brush against my throat.

  Different parts of my body sparked and flowed in a way they hadn’t before. The muscles in my thighs tensed in my seat, and I could feel my tongue was swelling in my mouth. I wanted it to stop immediately, and not ever to stop. Then he reached for the stone and our fingers touched.

  I heard the sound the moment our skins made contact, followed by a chorus of yelps and short screams. It was the cracking, shrieking sound of breaking glass and shattered ice.

  Brody snatched back his hand and looked around the room. My eyes followed his and my pendant fell back against my chest. Behind me, three towering sets of segmented windows were being riddled with cracks, the air popping with the sound.

  ‘Get down!’ barked Brody as the highest panes of the window cracked.

  Those students left in our classroom squealed and cowered as the glass splintered but didn’t fall. I huddled over my desk, my arms over my head, protecting myself against the shards I was sure would fall like lethal daggers any second.

  ‘Get out of here! Quickly!’ Brody yelled to the room as the glass continued to fracture. The other students ran for the corridor.

  I was too frightened to move. The relentless noise stopped but sudden chirrups here and there convinced me if I moved the broken panes would fall on me.

  ‘Come on, I’ve got you,’ Brody said in my ear, taking my arm. The panes crackled again. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get out.’

  I was surprised to find that I was sobbing, but my eyes were dry. My limbs were frozen.

  ‘I’m here,’ he murmured. His other hand took my other arm. ‘I’m here. Lift your head. If the window falls, it falls on me. Stand up.’

  I slowly lifted my head.

  ‘Come on,’ he repeated, lending my arms his strength as my reluctant body uncurled from the table.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ I said.

  ‘I’m frightened too,’ said Brody, ‘but we have to leave. On your feet, come on.’

  I was trembling as I stood up. Brody used one hand to drag his desk and then mine out of our path. The noise made by the panes of glass was almost musical, but it was a prelude to an impending crash.

  ‘One foot after the other,’ said Brody, not releasing his hands from my arms, walking me, like a robot, to the door. Through the doorway I could see our classmates watching our progress in transfixed horror. The panes cracked louder. We were now halfway across the room. Then, without any warning, a momentous strength lifted me into the air, launching me the final few metres across the room and out of the door just as all the broken panes
fell out of their frames in an explosion of shattering glass.

  I landed on my knees, on carpet, almost at the far wall of the corridor. I was safe, but my first thought was, Where’s Brody?

  ‘Where’s Brody?’ I screamed aloud to the gaggle of people who stood between the classroom door and me.

  The gaggle parted to reveal him standing in front of the entrance to the classroom, doubled over, panting, his hands on his knees. There was an ocean of knife-sharp glass shards stuck like icicles in the classroom floor behind him.

  ‘Don’t scream, 1919,’ he said across the corridor. ‘It’s just a little broken glass.’

  I tried to smile, but instead I burst into a wet flood of tears. Hands crowded around me and dragged me to my feet. ‘She’s fine,’ Brody told them. ‘She’s just had a scare.’ I tried to stop blubbering, but hot tears swelled and stained my face.

  No one in the corridor seemed to know what to do. Brody, almost laughing, stood, tried to regulate his breathing, and closed the classroom door.

  ‘Get her to the nurse,’ he said to someone in the crowd. Surrounded by helping elbows, I heard Brody say, ‘I’m fine. Someone get a teacher.’

  My sobs eased as my brain realised that the danger had passed. I saw Nikki in the corridor, standing pale, a half-drunk bottle of Fanta in her hand. ‘I am dropping this subject!’ she cried to the hallway.

  A teacher approached, herded students, studied damage. Someone was told again to take me to the nurse. I made to follow, but instead my eyes found Brody in the parting crowd. He stared at me, I stared back. We were both statue-still amongst the moving throng. Something telegraphed between us in that moment, as if our stillnesses floated across the crowd, met, and then merged indissolubly.

  Before he turned away I saw that his nostrils were flaring and, as he left, that the back of his shirt was soaked with blood.

  51

  I sat on the bed in the school clinic. My eyes had dried. The nurse was picking tiny shards of glass out of my shirt and trousers. She was a motherly woman with sandy hair, a plump face and a comforting aura. Her name, I read from a badge on her uniform, was Sandra.

  ‘There you are,’ Sandra pronounced. ‘Completely unharmed. Though you must have had a shock. Do you need me to sign you out? Get you home?’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’ve got frees and my mother works in town.’

  ‘You were lucky. It could have been very nasty up there,’ she said. ‘Though they told me Brody Meine was covered in blood again.’ She took a final dust of my shoulders. ‘He won’t come and see me, of course. Always has to prove how tough he is.’

  ‘ “Again”?’ I asked her. ‘Does he get into a lot of accidents?’

  ‘More that accidents happen around him,’ she said. ‘I’m sure the other kids have told you.’ Her eyes landed on my bandaged hand. ‘Maybe you’re one of his tribe. The kids I see more than once in a week I put on a special list.’ Her hands shooed me towards the door.

  ‘What’s the list for?’ I asked.

  ‘Prayers,’ said Sandra.

  52

  I could have joined the others at lunch but with the afternoon off and my head still dizzy, I decided to check up on my mother at Tea’sers. Being honest with myself, tea, motherly comfort and a lift home were what I needed a lot more than another afternoon with Belinda.

  I sent Michelle a text message: Was in weird accident in Modern. Nikki will tell all. Have frees, going home. X Soph.

  As I entered Tea’sers, an old-fashioned shop bell rang. The shop was deserted. It was a fairly small place, with dark green walls and small jade-coloured couches decorated with pink cushions. From the ceiling hung an ornate gold chandelier.

  The back wall was a set of black shelves with a doorway to a storeroom in the middle. They held what appeared to be thousands of tea canisters like the ones Mum had at home. It was overwhelming to think of the variety they contained.

  In front of the shelves, on the counter, was propped a little blackboard. Its professionally scripted letters read:

  Ask us about the TEA of the DAY!

  Personal blends mixed to YOUR taste!

  Take home sizes: 100 g, 200 g, 500 g or 1 kg!

  Black teas! Green teas! Oolong! Fruit and Herbal!

  CALM your MIND with advice from our TEA EXPERTS:

  Book a private consultation TODAY.

  I heard footsteps and my mother emerged from the back of the shop. From my first glance I could tell she wasn’t completely recovered from her ‘funny turn’.

  She looked surprised, but pleased, to see me.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘I finish early on Thursdays.’

  ‘Big day?’

  Because she was so pale, I decided not to worry her. ‘Nothing unusual. Not for Yarrindi.’

  Mum raised an eyebrow, but I didn’t elaborate. ‘Are they all different teas?’ I asked, my eyes on the towering shelves.

  ‘Indigo is a tea extremist. She’s the owner – bought this place when she won the lottery, did I tell you?’

  ‘You haven’t told me anything,’ I said, and had to admit, ‘I guess I’ve been a bit absorbed. You know, new school, finding new friends …’

  Mum winked. ‘You’re sixteen. I’ll forgive you,’ adding, ‘I’ve just brewed myself some lemon balm. Do you want some?’

  I nodded. My mother walked to the storeroom and returned moments later with a glass teapot and two small glasses. She set these in front of us and filled them.

  ‘Is it always this busy?’ I said, sipping.

  ‘There are kids who come in when school finishes, and I’m told it’s the place to be on weekends. Indigo’s a people person. I’m better at the one on one.’

  I pointed at the blackboard. ‘Can I have advice from a “Tea Expert”? That’s you, isn’t it?’

  Mum hesitated. ‘That’s actually what most people come in here for.’

  ‘Really? Just to find out their “personal blend”?’

  ‘For company, mostly, I think,’ said Mum. A shadow crossed her face, and I saw there was something she was in two minds about telling me. ‘Sometimes people just need to spill their guts to a stranger,’ she said as a cloud of lemon balm swirled up from her cup. ‘Choosing their favourite variety of tea is as good a pretext as any.’

  She looked calmer for the tea, and I decided to tell her about the broken glass. ‘Mum—’ I began, but was interrupted by the shop bell. A woman in her twenties in a black office suit had come into the shop. She was striking for her wax-coloured skin and limp bob of orange hair. She looked agitated.

  ‘Diannah?’ asked my mother over my head. ‘I expected you at two o’clock.’

  ‘Something’s come up,’ said the woman, glancing at me, ‘but I can come back if you’re busy …’

  ‘This is my daughter,’ said Mum with a reassuring smile at Diannah. Already clearing the tea set, Mum put her hand on my arm. ‘If you don’t want to wait for the bus, I’ll give you money for a cab,’ she offered.

  ‘I’m walking home,’ I said, loud enough so Diannah could hear me. I gulped the last of my tea. Diannah, I noticed, looked relieved.

  My mother walked me to the door. ‘I’ll see you at home,’ she said as I walked out.

  The door closed and for some reason I looked back. I saw my mother’s hand turn over the hanging sign advertising the clairvoyant. The new notice read, Shop closed for fifteen minutes. A lock clicked shut.

  53

  I half-considered going into the ice-creamery, but I willed myself to walk home. Once there, I changed my clothes and slumped into the lounge room to watch a little television. This early in the afternoon, all channels were showing loud cartoons and I couldn’t follow them. I switched off the set. I was too lazy to read a book, so I went to the computer in the vain hope that Lauren was online. She wasn’t. I decided to email.

  Hi there. Normal day. Ashley the Goth is mysteriously sick – might be related to violent nosebleed seizure. Br
ody and I worked together in Modern; when he touched my pendant in class, all the windows exploded. School nurse says she’ll pray for me. Mum very disturbed by something – won’t let me know what it is. I think she’s working as a clairvoyant at the tea place. How are things at your end? X Soph.

  I sat back in my chair and reread what I had written. My words were spelling out with electronic clarity what my brain couldn’t – or didn’t want to – absorb.

  These were the facts:

  I’d been in Yarrindi for six days.

  In that time I’d met a boy. I didn’t know who he really was, or why a shadow hung over him, but everywhere he went, there was trouble. When I ignored him, everything was fine. When I smiled at him, a girl had a violent seizure. That girl had tried to warn me – she had tried to frighten me into listening, but I let him breathe on my neck and brush against my hand and glass had shattered.

  I shook my head. What I was thinking wasn’t possible because it couldn’t be possible. Strange signs and portents were hippie crap; notes in the margin of a mediaeval page that had been turned long, long ago. I was a child of my father’s world, of facts and statistics, emails and texts. We indulged my mother’s superstitions, he and I. She grew excellent gardens, and if she thought it was because of the phase of the moon, it harmed no one.

  And yet, there, in my mind, the images replayed: Brody in the bookstore doorway as the violent storm was brewing; his arm around my chest as Ashley screamed and bled; the image of his bleeding back, and that wordless transaction in the corridor; his eyes to my eyes … his stillness to my stillness.

  I breathed out.

  It didn’t have to be dark fate, doom or an oncoming storm. Viewed one way, I was just a teenage girl who liked a boy with a bit of a past. And maybe another girl was jealous to the point of throwing fits – it was, after all, me in Brody Meine’s arms when she was writhing on the ground, me he’d rescued when some windows broke in class. And my mother wasn’t a clairvoyant. She was just superstitious as well as overprotective and she could see me growing up.