Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  Cross with myself, I plonked down in front of my computer, signed onto Gmail and prepared to vent my spleen to Lauren.

  She was way ahead of me. The email from her was entitled: MY HEAD IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE.

  Okay, so it’s a week since you’ve been gone and I have no life. On Monday it was ‘Sue, come over and watch a DVD’ and I got ‘I can’t I have to study for Maths’. Tuesday it was ‘Sue, I’m bored – want to go to the park?’ and it was ‘No, no, I have a biology assignment due in six months that I have to do …’ Blah, blah, blah, it goes on like this.

  Okay, so last night is Friday, and I’d said to Sue ‘Come on, Friday, there’s a movie I want to see down at the mall – I will EVEN PAY’ and she’s all ‘I would, but they’re doing this open lecture on bioethics at the State Library, you can come if you want’ and I said ‘I wouldn’t come if you paid me’ and ended up going to the movies BY MYSELF. It was SO lame.

  So, anyway, Sue goes to this thing and this BOY starts talking to her, and it turns out he goes to Sydney Tech and is also trying to get into Medicine and isn’t this lecture interesting and he and his ‘study group’ are going to SEE THE SAME MOVIE THAT I DID in the city after the lecture, and would she like to come?

  So Sue, the traitor, texts her mum and tells her she’s with ME and goes to the movies with this Vijay character and his mates and they have a high old time and then they go to a café in NEWTOWN and drink COFFEE until it gets late enough for Sue to realise she is essentially screwed for public transport. And she tells this to Vijay and his mate goes ‘I’ll call my brother, he owes me a favour.’ The brother turns up in this Land Cruiser and Sue gets a lift ALL THE WAY HOME. Vijay, of course, has asked for her number and they are going on a PICNIC tomorrow.

  And the reason I know all this is because filthy liar Sue’s mother went nuts when Sue got home at 11:30 pm and Sue told her that I was having – wait for it – emotional problems because I was worried about not getting into Law and she had to come over to my house because I was threatening to kill myself.

  And when her mother said ‘Wherefore Land Cruiser?’ Sue told her that it belonged to some guy I was seeing that no one was supposed to know about and now Sue is not allowed to talk to me, because Sue’s mum thinks I am a whack job AND I am running with a ‘fast crowd’.

  And then – and this is the best bit – Sue’s mum phones MY mum and tells her about the Land Cruiser and how angry she is that I kept Sue out. My mother gets off the phone and randomly decides that it is my SISTER’S bad influence that has resulted me in getting involved with these older boys, so she phones my sister and yells at her – and then Lucy phones me and yells AT ME because she thinks that I have been making things up and blaming her for things to get out of trouble.

  I totally wouldn’t mind if I was actually doing any of the things I am being accused of. As it is, I have been grounded and Mum is threatening to not give me ANY spending money for the Canberra trip to make it impossible for me to go out.

  Send me photos of you in your clothes! I want to know what the cool kids are wearing so I can climb out the window and go join the circus!

  X LOZ

  64

  It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. I decided that I would reply to Lauren’s email with the pictures she requested, so I started digging around my room for my camera.

  It was about five o’clock by the time I located it in a box that had somehow ended up in a drawer under the television unit in the lounge room. I was posing in front of the fading light coming through my bedroom window when Dad knocked on my door.

  ‘Yeah?’ I asked, and he popped his head through the doorway.

  ‘You feeling a bit housebound?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, I am taking pictures of myself.’

  ‘One of the blokes from the club has just called about this function tonight. It’s a three course meal and a magician,’ he said brightly. ‘Do you want to go?’

  ‘Do you want to go?’ I responded.

  ‘It means we don’t have to cook,’ he said. After a pause he added, ‘Things being a bit delicate at work, I really have to be there. It won’t go all night.’

  I thought about it. The chances of anyone from school spending Saturday night with a magician rather than at Belinda’s party were remote. That being said, the club was probably where all their parents were going to be. I had a sudden vision of Fran’s mother bailing Fran up tomorrow, going, ‘And we met one of your school friends at the golf club, I think her name was Sophie.’ Any hope I had of getting away with the lie that I was in Sydney would be shot down in flames … in the worst possible way.

  I was sad, though, that Dad was having a tough time and I wasn’t in a position to give him my company. He clearly thought the evening might be fun.

  ‘You go, Dad,’ I said eventually. ‘I’ve really got heaps of study to do and I’ve just been procrastinating. There’ll be stuff I missed from yesterday too.’

  He tapped his fingers on my door. ‘I can’t tempt you?’

  ‘What would Mum say?’

  His gaze dropped, and he gave a thoughtful frown. ‘You’re right,’ he said, nodding. ‘So if you’re not coming along, I might head off now. You’ll let me know if you go out?’

  ‘Of course, Dad,’ I said. He looked disappointed. He couldn’t have known, without me telling him the whole story, just how much more disappointed I was.

  65

  With Dad gone, I threw myself into the self-portrait session with as much gusto as I could.

  I had a shower. I washed and combed out my hair, giving it the side parting I’d affected since coming to Yarrindi. My mother didn’t believe in blow dryers, but the builders of the house had certainly believed in bathroom ceiling heaters; I turned all of them on and combed out my hair until it was on the drier side of damp. When I was putting on lip gloss and mascara in my room, I finally admitted to myself that I was dressing to go to a party – a party I knew, looking down at my watch and seeing it was after seven o’clock, was already taking shape.

  Part of me suggested that I go. ‘Just crash it,’ I said to my dresser mirror, as I smacked my lips before reglossing them. ‘Yeah, just go. She’s not going to throw you out.’ But even my reflection was not so sure about that. There had been talk of Matt and Garth acting as ‘security’ on the door – I could only imagine Garth’s delight in manhandling me out onto the street. It occurred to me then that, as I hadn’t ever received an invitation, I didn’t know the address anyway. Even though I realised a house by the beach with 300 teenagers popping out of it probably wasn’t that difficult to find.

  I went to my wardrobe and pulled out the gold, sparkly jeans and put them on. Amongst the T-shirts I’d bought was a pink one with an off the shoulder sleeve and a bright picture of a hula girl on it and I pulled it over my head. I hit the self-timer button and starting snapping away.

  I’d held a vain hope that these photos would be good enough to post on Facebook, to pretend that I was actually at some swanky inner-city party with models and strippers. As it was, when I reviewed the snaps in the camera I realised that I looked like a girl in a loud outfit standing in her bedroom with a desperate expression on her face.

  Depression hit me. Staring at my clown-sized fake smile on the screen of the digital camera, I decided that the whole thing was pointless. I should just give up. It wasn’t only that I was missing the most happening party in town. It was that I hated myself for not being there. And that meant Belinda had won.

  Still in the gold jeans, I wandered into the kitchen for a drink of water when my eyes lit on a carton of wine Dad had unpacked earlier.

  Sometimes my mother would encourage me to take a sip of wine with dinner or with a cake she’d made. Her philosophy was to encourage responsible drinking ‘as the Europeans do’, rather than ban it entirely and let me find my own way to my limits. I’d never really liked the taste of wine, so I’d resisted her attempts to train me to drink it. Now I was miserable, and lonely, and in the ho
use unsupervised with heaps of the stuff.

  I seized the bottle nearest to me, grabbed a wineglass and plonked them on the kitchen bench. The bottle was a screw top, so it only took a flick of my wrist to take the lid off. A sniff of the bottle’s top was like snorting paint-stripper, and I coughed. Well, you’re drinking it, not smelling it, I said to myself, and filled the glass.

  Then I had a sip. I think I took too big a mouthful because my throat burned. It stung. I coughed, and hastily filled a tumbler with water from the tap, taking a big gulp. I coughed a few more times, but the water helped.

  I shoved the bottle under my arm, picked up both glasses and went back to my room. If Belinda was going to have her precious party, so would I. Taking in a smaller, less painful sip of wine, I changed out of the gold jean ensemble and stood in my underwear.

  Then I took out the pink dress.

  I held it up against myself and sashayed towards my mirror. It was supposed to be my Cinderella moment, tonight, wearing this dress, showing all the kids at the ball what a foxy babe the new girl was. I’d had no idea when I bought it on Monday that my Cinderella moment would actually turn into the whole pantomime, with Belinda perfectly cast as the evil stepmother and the whole popularity pack as her vicious crew. A part of me didn’t want to put on the dress, but another part, the cruel, self-hating part, said, Yes, put it on, you’ll probably look fat in it anyway. I took another gulp of wine to fortify myself.

  I didn’t look fat in the dress. I knew, for certain, standing in front of my dresser mirror, that I looked great. It showed off my shoulders, gave me a tiny pink waist, and its short length showcased my thighs – all in a creamy pink shade that made me look thin and pretty. I refilled my glass and downed more wine. I regretted being alone, because I wanted someone, even poor old grounded Lauren, to see the transformation I’d made from überdork into beautiful princess.

  Sticking with this theme, I found the plastic crown where it had fallen when I’d been changing, and put it back on my head. I took a few more sips of wine before holding my wineglass aloft to the dresser mirror and toasting, ‘Here’s to the princess of nothing!’ Then I drained the glass.

  I didn’t feel drunk, but I had the sense that with a few more sips this could rapidly change. My mouth had grown accustomed to the taste, and I considered pouring myself half a glass more, but my hand was firm on the bottle and I took it back to the kitchen, screwed the cap back on with force and replaced the bottle. Then I scrubbed the glass as hard as I could under the tap, until I was absolutely sure it was clean. So that was wine, I thought. Big deal.

  I went back to my room. Suddenly, I was aware that the wine was beginning to take effect. My cheeks were growing warm and my head started to swim. I felt stupid for what I’d done, and powerless to resist its effects. Surely I wasn’t drunk? But the bathroom swayed, very slightly, and my face was sweating and so was the top of my chest. I patted my face with a damp washer, but I still felt hot.

  I went back to my room. I felt stupid, and confused, as if my body was being taken over by a hostile presence. My stomach clenched as if I was going to be sick. I felt dizzy. Of course I felt dizzy, I realised. I didn’t eat anything for dinner.

  I had to get out of the house, where the atmosphere was stale, thick, suffocating. The part of my brain that wasn’t sluggish with alcohol told me a walk outside would be a good idea, so I flung on some ankle socks and shoved my feet into the new Converse sneakers. I grabbed the purple cardigan from the wardrobe. The sweat on my brow warned me that I had seconds to get outside before my stomach would heave half-digested red wine all over the carpet. I shoved my phone and keys into my clutch purse and raced towards the front door.

  Once outside, I felt instantly better. The moon was almost full, and the cool air revived me. The ocean sparkled with moonlight and the stars were vivid in the night sky.

  Wanting to walk in the night air, but wary of unexpected encounters with Belinda’s party guests, I eschewed my traditional route south towards Frankston Avenue and turned around half-dizzily to explore the north end of Boronia Road.

  66

  I walked confidently. I realised, looking over the tops of the houses on the other side of the street, that Boronia was the highest road in the matrix of Yarrindi’s west side. The houses opposite mine backed onto paddocks that rolled upwards into slopes of dark, bush-covered mountains. These houses were a little higher than ours. Given the spectacular view of the ocean from our house, I guessed that theirs must be panoramic.

  My stomach was settling with each breath of clean air, but I was a little slippery on my feet. I was walking too fast, as well as clumsily, but I pressed on.

  I wondered whom all these homes contained. Some glowed dark yellow behind firmly fixed curtains, but there were some with huge glass windows that revealed indistinguishable people gathered around a TV. I tried to take comfort in this; each occupied house proved that not everyone in Yarrindi was hanging at the Maitlands’ – although I couldn’t see any teenagers sitting at home.

  Boronia started to slope down; the road curled under the lip of a hill and I followed it, still in my half-dreamy state. There were sounds of the ocean and of frogs in gardens, which made me think of Brody, but mostly all I could hear was the hypnotic rhythm of my new sneakers against the scratchy surface of the footpath. It was a lulling sound, and I was listening to it, and watching the moon spill silky shards of light over the ocean, and remarking to myself that I was still wearing the plastic crown, when I noticed the slope of the incline had dropped off sharply and I was very nearly at the base of the hill.

  The realisation dawned – I had walked a lot further than I’d intended to. I’d face a difficult uphill walk if I tried to retrace my steps. Stupid! Stupid! I said to myself, not for the first time that night, as I stood on the bottom of the hill and worked out what to do.

  Despite the moonlight, and the streetlights, I was in a fairly dark part of town. The effects of the alcohol had faded now and with my improving awareness came the realisation of how unsafe I’d let myself become. The street at this end of the descent was not only quiet, the suburban homes were also further off the street, and many were behind thick trees. Someone could grab me where I stood and not a single person would witness it. Clutching my pendant with one hand, I fetched out my mobile phone with the other. I was about to call Dad and ask him what to do, when the pendant in my palm reminded me of the promises I’d made to Mum, the covenant to protect myself. Not a week had past and already I’d failed to live up to it.

  With a sigh, I put one foot in front of the other and continued on to the bottom of the hill.

  The corner on which I found myself intersected with the highway. Although there were houses along the road, there were no footpaths; gravel lay as a kind of third lane between the highway and the homes. On the other side of the highway were the street-lit parking bays of Yarrindi’s beachside parkland.

  Walking south, I hoped I would be safe on the highway until I hit Frankston and could turn back up. As I moved, though, I found the gravel was difficult to walk on, and I was concerned, in my vanity, that gravel dust would get my new sneakers dirty. Cars and the occasional truck were speeding down the highway alongside me, but not with the same frequency as they did in the day, so I decided to cross the road and head south along more stable ground.

  I turned to the highway. From the north trucks were roaring along, the road shaking as they passed. In my plastic crown and my pink dress, I took a fortifying gulp of air and tore across the highway to its very centre – crashing, stomach first, into a metal mesh safety barrier on a traffic island. The trucks on the other side of the road were so close that the ends of my hair were being whipped against my face. The crown saved me from complete hair-blindness, but the blow to my stomach was crippling. For more than a minute, I hung like a soft doll over the traffic barrier, trying to will breath back into my body.

  When it came, I wasted no time climbing over the barrier. The traffic didn’t ease for
a couple of minutes, but when it did – and when I was sure it did – I flew across the road, slowing down only when the border of the car park was about to hit the grassy parkland lawn.

  Self-congratulations were short-lived, as I looked at the parking bays stretching ahead of me. I would have to follow them all the way up to the lit green sign of petrol station. As I walked, I glimpsed into the cars parked at polite intervals from one another and came to the realisation that not all the students of the Yarrindi senior school had stayed at Belinda’s tonight. Teenage hands and mouths and torn-at handfuls of clothing bobbed in cars steamed up in the dark. As I passed a red Cortina swaying in time to the action inside it, I wondered whether a car ahead would reveal that Fran and Dan Rattan had also absconded from the party.

  It would take only one romantic encounter to sour into an argument, then one door to be flung open, and I would be exposed. Not wanting to stray too far from the potential safety of the cars, but eager to get back home without being discovered, I veered into the relative darkness of the parkland area.

  I was approaching the widest section of the park, and the rotunda, when I started to think I might actually make it home unseen and unscathed. I was warm with anticipation as the petrol station came closer into view, and I peeled off my cardigan, wrapping it around my clutch purse in a bundle. There were likely to be school people crossing the pedestrian bridge back to the west side as they came out for the night or came in, but I planned to argue the case, if challenged, that I’d just come in from Sydney myself – I’d had a big day and come home. My wristwatch indicated that it was just before twelve.