Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  As the mysterious figure retreated, the black shape fluttered and flapped. I quaked in shock and the giant crow soared through the Senior Quad and up out of view.

  25

  The shock landed hard and it took seconds before I could unfreeze enough to turn around. When I did, my fright flowered into fear – the others had disappeared and the empty room was half-dark. My body, suddenly freezing cold, started to shake, and the silver touch of the chain on my neck felt like burning ice. Moving from the window, I was dizzy and I kept blinking my eyes to expunge what I’d just seen.

  A crow. A giant crow.

  I could hear the crowds moving about the corridors outside but the Art room stayed empty. I wanted to run and turn on the fluorescent lights but I was shuddering: I saw that night again, in the street outside Nanna’s house – the crow watching me with its black rimless eyes. The growling cackle sounded in my ears – I felt sick – I was in the street again, I was at the Art room window, it was this morning on the bus …

  The realisation seeped in like venom, and my breathing became hollow: The crow knows who you are.

  Was it outside, waiting for me? Was I even safe in this empty room?

  Who had it on their arm in the Senior Quad?

  A bloody bird got into the house … She was trying to bring it down and it attacked her.

  I stumbled towards my regular desk and dropped my bag onto it. Still shuddering, I felt the cold of the wooden stool through my trousers as I sat down. The tabletop was cold. My face was cold. Still no one came into the room. A voice inside my head said, It’s outside, you’re inside, stay here. Oh God, it was so still.

  I grabbed the rough canvas of my bag, snatching for my mobile phone.

  The crow knows who you are.

  My hands were stiff even as my thumbs clicked the keys on the phone. Every hair on my arms bristled. The sound of people thumping the corridors reverberated in the metal legs of the Art room stools, but no one came into the classroom. Dad. My thumbs were furious now, clicking a message that read: Please can you pick me up after school? The bell’s at 3.10. I’ll meet you in the car park. I’ve had a bad day – I’ve had a really bad day, Dad, and I need you, please pick me up please, please, please …

  ‘Sophie? You all right? What’s going on?’

  Snap! One blink, two – and the fluorescent lights came on, as if activated by the kindness in that voice. I gasped.

  It was Ashley Ventwood.

  26

  She didn’t look old at all. Actually, she even looked a bit younger than sixteen and her black eyes shone with confused intrigue. She slid her bag off her shoulder and it landed on her desk. I noticed she had gold eyeliner on today.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Ashley repeated.

  ‘I just had a bit of a fright.’

  There was an awkward silence. I fumbled my phone back into my bag.

  ‘Yeah, it got dark quickly,’ said Ashley, glancing at the window. ‘At least a storm will get rid of all the fire ash and stuff.’

  I didn’t respond. Other people were coming in now. As the room filled with noise, some guy whose name I didn’t know slapped Rob Rogers on the head with a ruler. Another guy in grey sneakers did a handspring to leap over a corner desk. The boys laughed.

  Ashley stepped towards me. ‘Look, Sophie,’ she said, and her voice wasn’t half as deep as I remembered, ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been … I get these stupid nosebleeds and they can mess with my head. I was convinced you were someone else, and acted like … We have all these classes together … and if you think I’m a whack job and don’t want to be friends I totally understand—’

  ‘You said stuff to me in another language.’

  Ashley looked uncomfortable and broke eye contact. ‘Things I learned from the internet – stupid Goth stuff.’

  Ms Jackson bustled into the room with a stack of handouts and I guessed it was going to be a theory lesson today. I turned back to tiny Ashley in her makeup and jewellery and holey black tights and gave a deliberately penitent smile. Killer crows? Demons? Who’s the whack job in this story, Sophie?

  ‘We can sit together, if you like,’ I said.

  She nodded, made a similar smile and dragged her stool closer to mine. As Ms Jackson shuffled A4 sheets across the classroom, Ashley adjusted a beaded leather bracelet around her left wrist.

  The tattoo on her hand wasn’t ink. It was brown, with blurred edges. Like a branding – or a burn.

  27

  Ashley walked with me out of the Art room and asked me what I had next.

  ‘Double free,’ I told her, explaining the situation with my lost subjects. ‘Guess I’ll have to go to the library, with the smoke and the rain and everything.’

  ‘See you in English,’ she said, smiling, and took off down the hall.

  As I walked towards the library, I was glad for the instruction to stay indoors today. Ashley, her apology and the Art class had returned me to the world of the tangible, but I didn’t really want to be reminded of the imaginary things I could make myself afraid of. A memory resurfaced of listening to an audio book of Bram Stoker’s Dracula at school in Year 5. I had freaked myself out so much that on the way home from school I used my lunch money to buy a bag of garlic from the local fruit market. When I got home I stuffed the bag under my pillow and my mother refused to come into the room, change my sheets or do my laundry until I’d put it in the bin.

  Recalling that smell of garlic, I craved the taste and heat of a meat pie. I retraced my steps through the building and followed the hallways towards the canteen. The pie I bought was too hot to eat, so I walked the long way towards the library. A small part of me wondered whether I should sneak into the toilets to eavesdrop on Belinda’s certain personality assassination of me to Fran, but overhearing someone plot my downfall struck me as a lot less pleasant than staying indoors, eating and starting some research at the library for an assignment on surrealism.

  Turning corners, I heard the faint notes of music coming from down the hall. Someone was playing and replaying a sequence on an electric guitar, the sound of which was not much muffled by a soundproof door.

  A few metres from the doors to the Music rooms I recognised the tune. The invisible guitarist was learning the Jimi Hendrix song ‘The Wind Cries Mary’.

  Biting into my pie, I decided to lurk in the corridor and enjoy the halting music as long as it took to eat and move on. Pure nosiness led me to sidle up against a glass panel in the rehearsal room door and peek in to see who was playing.

  Of course it was Brody Meine, picking away at a sapphire blue electric guitar. His eyes travelled from his fingers to some scraps of sheet music on a stand; his hair fell over his forehead, and no part of him matched the green school shirt and grey shorts he’d been made to wear. As he perfected each chord he looked up into the blank space in front of him, so I knew there was no chance he would notice me gazing in. When he made a mistake, he repositioned, restrummed, and smiled to himself in a way I’d never seen Brody Meine smile at anything.

  I could ignore him all I liked but there was one thing I couldn’t deny – I’d been changed by what happened when Brody kissed me. The moment his hands made contact with my skin, something awakened in my blood that was as dangerous and exciting as shattering glass, a storm, a street catching fire. And what I’d tasted that night on his lips was that the same thing had caught fire in him.

  Whatever Brody thought now – whether we were going to continue to ignore one another, whether we’d ever exchange another word our entire lives – didn’t, sadly, change the situation. Brody played ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ and I walked away from the rehearsal room, finally understanding just how lonely it was to fall in love.

  28

  The double period flew by in the library. I immersed myself so deeply in Arnason’s History of Modern Art and the distracting enchantments of paintings by Magritte, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali that it was actually painful to receive the SMS that read: We’ll be back in A2 for lunch. There o
r square. X Nikks.

  When the lunch bell rang, I didn’t move, but only two minutes later my phone beeped again.

  We’re all here – where are you? Mish

  I responded with a heavy sigh.

  I didn’t want to pack up my things and leave Arnason, but I did it. Walking back to the Art room, I found myself wondering where Gretchen and her friends might be sitting, where Ashley was, if Brody was still in that rehearsal room and whether he’d just walk away if I invited myself in for lunch. As it was, I passed the Music rooms on my way back and saw through the panel window that the light was off.

  In the Art room the whole gang had reassembled; the only difference between this scene and this morning’s was some puffiness around Belinda’s eyes. I was surprised she was there and I wondered if Belinda had been crying because her feelings were hurt or because she’d been outmanoeuvred.

  I took a seat just outside the group circle and waited silently for an invitation to join the conversation. One came soon enough, from Michelle, who explained, ‘We’re talking about what people wore to Belinda’s,’ and moved her chair across so I could join in. Fran, I learned, had worn a white dress that Nikki reckoned looked ‘hot’ and a girl called Jacinta Callum, whom I didn’t know, had worn a blue dress that, according to Belinda, made her back look fat. It was interesting that Ryan was an active participant in the best-dressed discussion, while simultaneously Kylie talked to Rob and Steve about something to do with surfing. Garth and Matt sat together, whispering. I didn’t know what they were talking about and I didn’t want to know.

  ‘What did Kylie wear?’ I asked, trying to ingratiate myself into a conversation that didn’t interest me.

  ‘Short linen orange wraparound with gold shoes,’ said Nikki, as if answering a quiz question. ‘She and Fran would be my equal Top 2. Mish looked hot but I’d seen her boots before.’

  I wondered if the exclusion of Belinda from this list was an aftershock from this morning’s confrontation. Belinda, I saw, glared at Nikki for a couple of seconds before dropping her head and staring at her knees.

  ‘Best dressed, not counting those in this room?’ asked Ryan to Nikki.

  ‘Guy hot or girl hot?’ said Nikki. ‘Hmm … Not counting those in this room …’

  ‘Nerida Collins?’ asked Michelle.

  ‘I don’t even know who she is,’ said Ryan.

  ‘Year 10. White short-sleeved lace dress.’

  ‘Yeah!’ said Ryan. ‘She’s got a great rack.’

  Nikki and Ryan tousled playfully while Michelle and Fran debated the merits of Nerida’s lace dress with Belinda. Part of me longed for the giant crow of my imagination to burst through the window and carry me away.

  ‘I’ll pay Nerida,’ said Belinda, ‘but which guy?’

  A slow smile spread across Nikki’s face. ‘Hate to say it,’ she began – and I thought she looked at me.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Michelle, and she did look at me. She and Nikki said it at the same time: ‘Brody Meine.’

  ‘You reckon?’ sneered Fran.

  ‘Come on,’ said Michelle, ‘those snakeskin shoes were rock and roll.’

  ‘Rock and roll like dying of an overdose in a bathtub,’ said Belinda.

  ‘The guy’s a dick,’ said Garth loudly, interrupting his own conversation with Matt. ‘And he dresses like a faggot.’

  The girls started to giggle. Garth was incensed.

  ‘The guy has no friends, like, not one, thinks he’s too good because he lives with some homo in town and works in an ice-cream parlour,’ he grunted, looking at me, ‘but every chick in the school starts taking their pants off whenever he walks past.’

  ‘Don’t include me,’ Belinda said, giving Nikki and Michelle a dismissive glance. ‘I think he wrecked the whole Yarrindi soccer season last year.’

  ‘A vacant midfield a week from the playoffs!’ howled Ryan theatrically, biting his knuckle.

  ‘Unforgivable,’ said Matt, dead serious.

  ‘He’ll get what he deserves,’ Garth said. ‘Let’s see what you girls will think of him then.’

  His smile was so bloodless, I shivered.

  ‘Say what you like,’ Michelle said, eyes flashing at Garth, ‘but I heard he picked up.’

  The morsels of food I was chewing suddenly lost all flavour. It was like chewing a mouthful of paste.

  Ryan was incredulous. ‘Brody the face smasher?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Michelle.

  ‘Who?’ demanded Belinda.

  The food was sticky in my mouth and I had to spit it out. I slid off my chair and headed towards the sink, where there was a roll of hand towel in a rusty metal dispenser.

  ‘Soph, you all right?’ called Kylie as I spat chunks of half-eaten hotel sandwich into a hand towel. I nodded, and coughed.

  Nikki grabbed Michelle’s arm. ‘You have to tell us about this. Why did you not tell us about this?’

  ‘I only found out in Biology,’ Michelle said. ‘Kate Yarmouth told me her brother was coming back from a friend’s house on Montgomery and he saw Brody Meine crossing the bridge with a girl.’

  ‘Someone from the party?’ asked Nikki, in a state.

  ‘He said so.’

  ‘Did she also look like a serial killer?’ asked Belinda.

  ‘What was she wearing?’ asked Fran.

  I walked across the room and dropped the hand towel into the bin with a metallic thud.

  ‘Don’t think Kate didn’t ask,’ said Michelle. ‘Her brother’s in Year 7 and clueless. All he said was that Brody was with some chick and he didn’t know who she was.’

  Trying to make myself invisible, I returned to my stool and sat still.

  ‘That’s why he left early,’ concluded Nikki. ‘He’d picked up whoever at the party and arranged some rendezvous so they could both leave without anyone knowing. So all we have to do is work out who left not long after, and we’ll know.’

  ‘That could be heaps of people,’ said Fran.

  Trying to maintain my cover, I asked, ‘But why wouldn’t he want anyone to know? A big, public snog with someone would make him look heaps less weird.’ Of course, I thought to myself, a big, public snog with someone could also make him an object of your ridicule – like Gretchen.

  Nikki pinched her chin, in deep thought. ‘I tell you how it makes sense,’ she said after a minute. ‘I reckon Brody’s got a girlfriend. Either she’s the girl on the bridge and they’re keeping it quiet, or the sneaking around with the girl on the bridge is so the secret-squirrel girlfriend doesn’t find out.’

  ‘Why would he want to keep it quiet?’ asked Michelle.

  ‘Maybe he wants to see what else is out there,’ said Nikki, biting into an apricot. ‘You know what guys are like.’

  How Ryan reacted I didn’t see – I was distracted when Fran gave me a playful punch in the arm. ‘Maybe he is on with Ms Dwight,’ she said with a laugh.

  I fudged a smile but I said nothing. My brain was starting to whirr with the words, Brody’s got a girlfriend, Brody’s got a girlfriend.

  29

  In English, Mrs Fendy announced that we had finished Jane Austen and we were going to start our Shakespeare unit – she had picked Macbeth for us. While she called for volunteers to help her bring the books in from the book room, I kept my hand down and fretted.

  When Mrs Fendy had gone, Michelle turned to me and said, ‘You know, I’m thinking that if he’s starting to come to parties and pick up girls, it’s possible he could be … worth saving.’ I was so preoccupied that I didn’t bother to pretend I didn’t know who she was talking about. ‘You know he asked me and Kylie if you were around? Just think, if you had been there, maybe he would have gone after you.’

  ‘Not if he’s got a secret girlfriend,’ I said, despite myself.

  ‘Whatever it is, it’s a good sign. Maybe Brody’s just shy, and that’s why he doesn’t hang out with anyone. Maybe he just needs to be asked.’

  ‘You want to … invite him to something?’
<
br />   ‘Don’t you?’ said Michelle, her eyes wide.

  ‘I think I’ve had time to get used to him,’ I said, writing the word Macbeth in large letters on my notepad. In a bid to further distract Michelle I said, ‘I was surprised to see Belinda and Garth at lunchtime.’

  ‘Why? They’re in our group.’

  ‘Nikki burned Belinda pretty badly,’ I said. ‘I thought Belinda would want to stay away from people who made her cry, and that her boyfriend would, you know, go with her in solidarity.’

  ‘But where would they go?’ Michelle looked uncomprehending.

  ‘Sit by themselves? Take some time out? I’m sure Garth is friends with guys in other groups at school.’

  Michelle frowned. ‘They wouldn’t do that to us,’ she said.

  Something in her tone made it sound like a warning.

  30

  The moment the bell rang, Michelle was on her phone talking to Nikki about Friday night. We walked out of the building together and she was still on the phone, although she could see Nikki, on her own phone, waiting for us at the school gate.

  ‘You want to come with us to check out some stuff in town?’ Michelle asked me, hanging up.

  I was about to say ‘Sure’ when I heard a car horn sound and my dad bark ‘Hey!’ across the car park.

  It was then I reached for my phone and saw the seven missed calls from Dad. A text message from him that I’d ignored read: I’ll be there to pick you up – just tell me you’re okay!!! I’d forgotten about the panicked SMS I’d sent him at recess.

  ‘Actually, that’s my dad – I’d better go,’ I said, not bothering to wave goodbye to Nikki or Michelle as I ran towards the car. I was inside in seconds and managed to plant a kiss on Dad’s face and do up my seatbelt with one movement.

  31

  ‘I had my phone off and only just got your text message. I came as soon as I could – what on earth happened this morning?’ asked Dad as the car crawled behind all the others bottlenecking the car park of Yarrindi High.