Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  ‘That teacher!’ she shrieked. ‘The guy in the detention room!’ She started speaking really quickly. ‘What if they’ve gone in there and found him and Nikki’s missing and they think she’s done something to him?’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ I said, invoking the faintest spellcraft to persuade her. ‘You just drive out of the school now with Nikki and Michelle. Park the car on the street behind the back of the school. I’ll get Kylie and meet you there. Go – before any teachers come out.’

  Fran leaped into her car and fought the engine to start. The ambulance parked. I kept to the kerb of the car park but shuffled away from the Corolla as it spluttered into action. Two ambulance workers appeared just as Fran’s car jolted forward. I could hear Fran swearing as she reminded herself to take the handbrake off. One ambulance worker ran into the front office, one went and opened the ambulance’s back doors. Fran reversed out of her car space and shot towards the street so quickly that her car bounced over a forgotten speed hump. Only when I watched her turn into the street did I start moving – curious, anxious – towards the ambulance. The ambulance workers had assembled a stretcher and they were taking it inside.

  I consoled myself that if it were Kylie or Jeules being taken into the ambulance, their illnesses, being magical, could be easily reversed – although my hands tensed in panic at the thought of springing Kylie out of hospital, or how to help Nikki if they tried to pin something on her for Jeules. I crept forward, along the kerb, past the twenty-year-old cars donated from parents to children, the weathered once-new suburban wagons of the teachers, the shiny bubble cars of the rich kids.

  There was activity around the doors of the office. The women who worked there bustled around the ambulance workers. I could see the stretcher being carried carefully outside. I walked towards the crowd of people who were gathering, staying on the fringes of the car park as much as I could, trying to get close enough to see, but not to be seen.

  As the stretcher was loaded into the back of the ambulance, the head of the patient rolled to one side. I only caught a brief glimpse, but I gasped in shock at the pain on her face.

  It was Ms Dwight.

  60

  None of the anxious women standing around the ambulance paid me any attention at all. I crept back into the school building, and shuffled as quickly as possible to the sick bay. The school nurse had been beside the ambulance – I gambled that if I were quick I’d be able to collect Kylie before she returned. There was an awful coldness in the hall as I made my way towards the sick bay.

  I found Kylie exactly as I’d left her. Two flicks of my hand over her face, a short song, and the black blanket of the spell fell away. Her eyes flickered awake and she slowly sat up. Sapped again, I felt a sharp pang in my stomach.

  Gulping pain, I didn’t have time to give Kylie a comfortable recovery – I prodded her out of bed. ‘Come on,’ I bustled, snatching her by the hand, ‘before the nurse comes.’

  ‘There’s something wrong with my mouth,’ she said dozily. My contact with the skin of her hand sensed a magical residue from the previous spell – Kylie was half-asleep. ‘Soph, there’s something wrong,’ she insisted.

  ‘Then we’ll deal with it when we get to Nikki’s,’ I said, my eyes on the door. ‘Just move.’

  I was sure the nurse would be walking back by now, so I pushed, shoved, pulled and bullied Kylie up the nearest staircase. She walked slower than I wanted her to in the corridors – with everyone in class we were completely exposed. If a single teacher came out of a classroom, or wandered up the hall, we were finished. We turned a corner and the down staircase I was navigating towards lay in sight. When we were halfway towards it, though, Kylie stopped.

  ‘Soph, there’s something wrong with my mouth,’ she said again.

  In frustration, I spun around.

  Kylie’s lips were bleeding. The lining of her nose was bleeding too.

  ‘You’re fine,’ I lied. ‘Come on.’

  61

  By the time I got Kylie out of the building, droplets of blood were staining her school shirt. She kept dabbing her mouth on the back of her hand, staring at expanding bloodstains, her agitation increasing.

  I managed to pummel her towards the toilets. ‘Get your face under a tap,’ I said once we were inside, tearing wads of paper towel out of a dispenser. The bell was going to ring soon; when it did the school would flood with witnesses to any getaway attempt.

  Kylie splashed her face. I accumulated so much paper I almost didn’t hear a toilet flush. I pushed Kylie into one of the cubicles and shoved some paper into her hands just before the toilet-flusher came out.

  Standing by the sink, I saw blood on my own hands. I turned and clumsily reached for a tap. As the water flowed, thin streams of red bloomed into streaks of pink that swirled towards the drain.

  ‘I thought you were leaving,’ I heard over my shoulder.

  Belinda.

  ‘We are. I’m meeting Fran at the back of the school with the car. Nikki and Michelle are in it.’

  ‘Where’s Kylie?’

  ‘Blin?’ came a frightened voice from the cubicle.

  ‘Here!’ barked Belinda. She glared at me. ‘What’s wrong with your hands?’

  I shut off the tap and wiped my hands dry.

  ‘Kylie’s got a nosebleed.’

  ‘That seems to happen around you a lot.’

  I didn’t have time for this. ‘Belinda, okay, you don’t like me and whatever, but the other girls are your friends. Can you help?’

  ‘I’m not risking a suspension by leaving school for – for what reason exactly?’

  I suppressed a grunt of frustration. ‘To get them away so they stop acting weird. Michelle was trying to bury herself in the dirt. You don’t have to come with us, you wouldn’t even fit in the car—’

  ‘I get a lot of that since you’ve been around,’ she hissed.

  I took a deep breath. ‘We’ve been spreading a story that Kylie’s been in a car accident. Remind everyone Nikki’s in the detention room. You don’t have to say anything about me. No one’s going to suspend me for missing one period of Art – I’ve got a double free next, anyway.’

  Belinda tilted her head.

  I continued quickly. ‘Tell people Michelle’s … I don’t know … That she saw what happened to Ms Dwight and she’s had to go home.’

  ‘Ms Dwight?’ asked Belinda.

  ‘You don’t know?’ From the blank shake of her head, I realised whatever had happened to Ms Dwight had happened fast. ‘She’s been put into an ambulance. We saw it in the car park. Hence the emergency plan leaving by the back – there was a horde of people around the front office as they took her away.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ I said, walking over to the cubicle and opening the door. I was grateful that Kylie had the paper towel pressed to her face. ‘The story about Michelle will stick,’ I said, guiding Kylie to the way out. ‘Ms Dwight looked really bad.’

  ‘Maybe she had a nosebleed,’ Belinda said, leaning over the sink and washing her hands.

  62

  The back way out of the school was a path that ran behind a couple of demountables. Holding Kylie by the hand, I dragged us both to the right of a demountable with a class in it, hoping that we were out of everyone’s eye line. It only occurred to me as I ploughed Kylie through some banksia bushes that ran alongside the room that we were still completely visible from all the windows at the back of the main building.

  I couldn’t think about that now. ‘Ow,’ cried Kylie as branches and flowers whipped at her legs and her face. ‘I’m cut … I’m cut!’

  ‘Shut up!’ I said, pushing her in the back. ‘Stay close to the wall of the classroom!’

  I was feeling weaker. My legs were cramping and my stomach felt bad. Only the remembered visions of the thirty points of light gave me the impetus to keep moving.

  ‘Stay down!’ I said to Kylie, feeling my way around the side of the demountable that faced the back
fence. I saw a concrete path leading into some bushes but I resisted the urge to make for it diagonally.

  Kylie, I heard, was crying a little.

  ‘Shh!’ I said. ‘You can cry all you like when we’re in the car.’

  We crept directly underneath the windows of the class. It was a French lesson – I could her the class inside repeating: ‘Où est le camping? Où est le syndicat d’initiative? Où est la gare?’ in unison and I hoped I would never hear those words again.

  Reaching the path, I tried to convince myself that only someone with their face pressed against the window in the furthest corner of the occupied demountable would be able to see us. I ran Kylie and myself up a set of concrete stairs that went into some bushes and ended with a gate.

  When I unlatched the gate and pulled Kylie behind me into a quiet suburban street, I heaved a huge sigh of relief: Fran was here in her red Corolla, the engine was running. She popped the passenger door open as I approached. ‘Get in the back with the clowns,’ she said. ‘It’s hell keeping them away from the wheel – you’ll have to flip the front seat yourself.’ She turned back to face the wheel; I saw her knuckles were white where she gripped it.

  ‘You’re getting in the front,’ I said to Kylie in a commanding voice. She still had the bloodied towel pressed to her face, but she nodded.

  Michelle and Nikki were making noise but I ignored them. I kept hold of Kylie’s hand as I fumbled with the catch on the seat, crawled into the back of car, pulled the front passenger seat back into position, then leaned over and hauled Kylie in. I launched for the door and closed it, seizing Kylie’s seatbelt and drawing it into the latch.

  ‘What’s wrong, Kyles?’ asked Fran as I fell into my seat. Next to me, Nikki giggled.

  ‘Nosebleed,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  ‘Best roadtrip ever!’ Nikki cried, laughing.

  I turned to look at her.

  She and Michelle were sitting in the back seat of Fran’s car in their underwear, laughing their heads off.

  63

  The trip to Nikki’s house was only five minutes but it felt like hours. Kylie slumped in her seat and Nikki and Michelle babbled at such speed it actually hurt my head. I knew I needed peppermint tea – it was a vehicle for a healing spell that would recharge my flagging energy.

  And I needed all the energy I could get. As I told Fran about Ms Dwight, and Belinda in the toilets, my mouth seemed to work separately from a body crippled by failing strength and the scar tissue of last night’s adventure. Searching my internal catalogue of spells, I realised that I could regain some more power if I found some orange candles and some chillies to burn. I had a dim recollection of there being some orange candles in Nikki’s box of tricks, but even so, I made a mental note that I had to start carrying supplies around with me or I was going to kill myself with mere exertion.

  The Corolla finally drove down the long, shadowy driveway to Nikki’s spooky home. With coaxing from me and Fran, Michelle and Nikki put their clothes back on before they got out of the car.

  I ordered Nikki to get her keys out and I walked over to Fran’s window. ‘When you get back, don’t park the car outside the house. I’ll text you if Marlina’s already here, but we need to remain discreet.’

  Fran gave me a reassuring smile, and I smiled sincerely back. My mobile phone buzzed in my pocket. There was another message from Lauren, but there was also one from Joel.

  ‘You going to be all right?’ Fran said to me, staring as Nikki tossed the entire contents of her bag onto the doorstep, looking for her house keys.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, reading Joel’s message: Sure thing. What do you want me to do? I waved the phone at Fran. ‘Cavalry’s arriving.’

  ‘Stay in contact,’ Fran said, winding up her window and turning the car around towards the road.

  The door of the house came open with a splatter of metal keys and hands. As Fran drove away, the girls chased one another into the house.

  I scooped Nikki’s discarded stuff back into her schoolbag and texted Joel Morland her address.

  64

  I chose not to look at the statue of the Virgin Mary when I walked in, and I didn’t really want to go upstairs and face the demonic figurine of the Cipris’ patron saint either. The girls, though, were already upstairs by the time I was through the door; alarmed by hoots and thumping, I decided I had to follow them.

  As one heavy foot landed after another on the staircase, I tried to use as little energy as possible to magic-lock all the doors in the house. If I didn’t have the strength to knock the girls into dumb shock, I reasoned, I could at least contain them. This latest spell caused stabs of pain at the back of my eyes – it reminded me of the burn that comes when you eat a too-cold ice-cream. I shuddered at how quickly I made an association between this thought and Brody Meine.

  I shielded my eyes from the shelf San Cipriano sat on, and found the girls in the kitchen. They were hovering around the open door of the fridge and didn’t even notice me entering the room. Nikki was handing things to the others.

  ‘Milk!’ she cried, raising a carton to her lips. ‘Milk’s good!’

  Michelle was gulping down orange juice from a bottle. She glugged slowly, but the juice was disappearing fast.

  ‘Guys,’ I said. ‘Go easy on the food. You’re not—’ But they weren’t listening. A red-brown crust of half-dried blood around Kylie’s lips made her look like a Satanic circus clown. She held a tub of ice-cream and was feeding it to herself in handfuls.

  Nikki was slurping her milk. ‘Great idea coming back here, Soph,’ she said through wet lips. ‘School’s boring me right now and I’ve never been so thirsty. Not ever. Though this milk is sour, it’s great.’

  I tried to take the carton out of her hand. She snatched it back violently. I realised that trying to come between them and the food could be dangerous.

  ‘This ice-cream’s bad,’ said Kylie, scooping another handful into her mouth.

  ‘Nikks,’ I said, watching them helplessly, trying to contain my nausea, ‘can you tell me what Mr Jeules was saying to you in the detention room?’

  ‘He’s a weirdo,’ she said, draining the last of her milk and reaching inside the fridge for another carton. ‘Asked heaps of questions.’

  ‘Did you answer them?’

  She glugged the milk. When she spoke, it was with a furry white moustache. ‘All this bad girl stuff,’ she said, taking another slug. ‘Wanted to know if I believed in the devil … If the devil was making me crazy.’

  Michelle had finished an entire two-litre bottle of orange juice. She dropped the empty bottle on the ground and tore a block of cheese from the fridge. Kylie licked her sticky fingers.

  ‘What did you say?’ I said to Nikki, trying not to feel sick.

  ‘Told him the devil was my boyfriend and we pashed in the car at White Beach. Told him that I’d made a pact to go to hell and he could come. He told me all my friends were witches and I told him they were heaps more fun at a party. Freak.’

  I felt cold. Michelle gnawed chunks from the block of cheese. ‘I love the taste of cheese mould,’ she said.

  ‘He told me I could save myself and I told him,’ she swallowed the last of the milk, ‘that I already saved myself at the bank, and I was getting better interest.’ She laughed, and Michelle laughed with her. When Kylie started to giggle, flecks of ice-cream spattered on her bloodstained shirt. Nikki faced the fridge. ‘Everything in here is off, hey,’ she said, sticking a hand inside and retrieving an egg carton. ‘Eggs!’ she shrieked ‘We can drink these! Hey, hey, guys – the glasses are in the cupboard. You want to drink eggs, Soph?’

  ‘I’d like some peppermint tea, if you’ve got some,’ I said weakly. It was now as much for my head as my stomach. Nikki ambled over to a cupboard and retrieved a green packet of tea bags that she threw to me. As I caught them, I saw Michelle and Kylie crack raw eggs into glasses and down them like shots.

  I found a kettle, turned it on, and grabbed a clean
cup from the washing-up rack. There was a foul smell in the kitchen beginning to mess with my nose. It radiated from the refrigerator and it grew more pungent by the minute.

  ‘I’ve found some raw cake mix in the cupboard!’ squealed Nikki with delight, tearing open a box with a packet inside and pouring the raw granules of an unmixed cake into her mouth.

  I leaned forward to close the refrigerator door.

  On the shelves of the refrigerator, mould dripped. Two capsicums in a door shelf withered, shrank and turned black before my eyes. The entire contents of the fridge were rotting. So was fruit in a fruit bowl on the kitchen table. Kylie picked up a black-skinned banana and squeezed its rotten pulp into her mouth like a tube of toothpaste.

  I was so nauseated, I almost forgot about my peppermint tea. The moment the kettle clicked, I poured the boiling water over my tea bag and prayed the brew wouldn’t mould over before one healing mouthful reached my lips. As I inhaled steam from the cup, trying to sniff out any decay, I heard a knock at the door.

  I froze. My phone beeped in my pocket. I pulled it out and checked the message.

  Joel Morland. I’m at the door.

  I hurried out of the kitchen and towards the stairs as quickly as I could with a cup of hot tea in my hands.

  As I hobbled through the lounge room I did everything I could to ignore the human-size apparitions of San Cipriano and Under-the-House Marlina, sitting in the Cipris’ armchairs like demonic parents, watching me and laughing.

  65

  ‘Joel,’ I exhaled, swinging open the door, ‘you have no idea how much I need your help.’

  He was with his bike and still had his helmet on. ‘I heard things got pretty crazy. Did Kylie really kiss Brody Meine?’

  I nodded. ‘It’s been hell,’ I said, sombre with truth. ‘I’m just trying to get the girls cleaned up and sorted before they do something dangerous.’

  Joel’s ears pricked at a sound from upstairs. ‘They’re being sick?’ The unmistakable sound of someone vomiting in an open-doored toilet echoed around the house. Given what they’d been shoving into their stomachs, the vomiting was probably a blessing.