Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Open it,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind if you look.’

  I tumbled the contents from the bag into my hand. It was a small bracelet, made out of red strings wound together and threaded through red stones, with a slipknot instead of a clasp, beads at its end. Looking more closely, I saw that the three large stones on it were heart-shaped and made of red jasper.

  Red jasper, I knew, I was a nurturing stone. It encouraged the heart and – as soon as I remembered this, I blushed – the sexual organs. Whoever had made the bracelet knew that red jasper was a love stone, but I could sense no magical charge on it.

  ‘It’s pretty,’ I said, sliding it back into the bag.

  He looked unsure. ‘You think she’ll like it?’

  ‘Why don’t you give it to her yourself and find out?’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m not going to be around this afternoon.’ He held up a gloved hand. ‘The bike. You know.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see how she reacts?’ I said, about to drop the bag back into his hand.

  He pushed my hand away. ‘She won’t even take it from me,’ he said, frowning. ‘Just drop it on her desk in Maths.’

  ‘How will she know it’s for her?’ I said.

  ‘Look at the bag.’

  I turned it over in my hand. The word FRAN was embroidered on it in black letters.

  ‘You’ll make sure she gets it, right?’ he asked.

  Whether he was a stalker or not, I suddenly felt very sorry for Joel Morland.

  ‘I’ll put it on her desk, that’s the best I can do,’ I said. ‘But if she asks who it’s from I’ll tell her.’

  ‘She’ll know already,’ said Joel. ‘All I want is for her to put it on and think of me.’

  It was a pretty bracelet.

  ‘And that’s the favour?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s the favour,’ he said. ‘Text me when she’s got it, okay?’

  I nodded. And, probably because he was embarrassed, Joel pulled his gloves tighter onto his hands and left.

  I turned back towards Gretchen and the girls, thinking I could kill some more of my lunchtime with them before I went back to the Technology labs and the Belinda Maitland War.

  Sally, I saw, was gazing towards Joel Morland, even as he walked back into the building and disappeared.

  23

  Aware of the fact that Jeules’s ring was still in my pocket, I put the bag with the bracelet in it in the front pocket of my schoolbag. Red jasper, even if uncharged, was a powerful stone; I didn’t want to risk it rubbing against the azurite and causing a reaction that could make me love Jeules, Jeules love me or the rest of the world go completely insane.

  Gretchen was standing by the time I was at the top of the stairs.

  ‘What did he give you?’ asked Sally before I could speak.

  ‘Just something to give to someone in Maths,’ I said.

  ‘Fran Kelly,’ said Sally. ‘I bet it’s for her.’

  Only at that moment did I realise that Sally was in my Maths class and I felt totally ashamed for never having noticed it before.

  ‘He’s been in love with her since Year 8,’ Gretchen explained. ‘It’s kind of a school joke.’

  I shrugged, not wanting to have the conversation. I saw that Sally was about to say something so interjected, ‘I’m going to the canteen.’

  ‘That’s where I’m going,’ Gretchen said. ‘We can go together.’

  She and I walked to the canteen like old friends. I again had that sensation of displacement as Gretchen chatted about the upcoming end-of-year exams and her study timetable, university open days she was planning to attend, how she felt torn between her love of science and her love of history. She asked me what I was planning on doing when school finished and I confessed I hadn’t given it much thought. ‘Uni, probably,’ was the best I could come up with.

  ‘What about the others in your group?’

  ‘No idea. Nikki wants to be an actress.’

  ‘That’s no surprise to anyone.’

  ‘Maybe Kylie and Michelle want to do something with surfing,’ I speculated. ‘Fran, no idea. Belinda …’

  ‘I take it you aren’t close friends,’ Gretchen said.

  ‘I reckon she’ll end up working with animals.’

  ‘Cleaning cages?’

  ‘As an exhibit in a poisonous reptile tent,’ I said, laughing. ‘No, I shouldn’t speak that way—’

  ‘You shouldn’t,’ said Gretchen, as we lined up at the canteen, suppressing a smile.

  We both burst out laughing.

  ‘It’s strange,’ I said, ‘the girls in my group are mostly nice but all the conversations are about clothes or boys or who’s prettier than who.’

  ‘Why’s that strange?’ Gretchen moved up to the canteen and bought an ice-cream.

  Inspired, I bought the same thing. ‘Because at my old school,’ I said, ‘my two best friends are trying to get into Medicine and Law and talking about clothes for hours isn’t something they’d let cut into their study time.’

  Gretchen stood completely still. A junior boy buffeted into her shoulder but she didn’t move, even as he bounced away.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, unwrapping my ice-cream.

  ‘Medicine and Law?’ she asked, pale with the realisation. ‘You’re one of us?’

  ‘One of what?’ I said, but I knew exactly what she meant.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Gretchen said. ‘You’re actually one of us.’

  24

  The words hung in the air between us. A tug on my arm rescued me from the impending, awful conversation.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Fran. ‘Couldn’t have taken this long to get an ice-cream.’

  Nikki was with her. ‘We’ve been having the best fun this lunch.’

  ‘How’s the Steve and Kylie situation?’ I asked, aware that neither Fran nor Nikki had acknowledged that Gretchen was standing right next to me.

  ‘Boring,’ said Nikki. ‘They need to get over it.’

  ‘They will tomorrow,’ Fran said to Nikki, ‘when Brody’s back at school.’

  How Brody could be involved in their reconciliation I had no idea.

  ‘Boring,’ Nikki repeated. ‘We’ve been talking about what to wear to Gretchen’s party. It’s so funny.’

  ‘You have to be part of it,’ said Fran.

  ‘You totally have to,’ said Nikki.

  ‘By the way – hi, Gretchen,’ Fran said, almost as an afterthought.

  ‘It’s great you can come to my party – I’ll see you there,’ Gretchen said to them, smiling politely. ‘I’ll see you later, Sophie.’ She turned to me, and added, ‘You know where you can always find us.’ She then disappeared into the green-shirted, black-trousered crowd.

  ‘What was that about?’ asked Nikki.

  ‘She’s nice,’ I said.

  ‘She’s lame,’ said Nikki.

  ‘But she’s not going to ram my head into a sink, is she?’ I said, fierce.

  Fran’s eyes went wide.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Nikki. ‘Let’s go.’

  We started walking back to the space behind the labs. A dark cloud had fallen over Fran’s face, and it stayed there.

  25

  The look on Belinda Maitland’s face when I returned to the gaggle behind the Technology labs made it worth going there. Fran had blathered about Gretchen’s party all the way from the canteen, and how everyone was going to achieve the ‘Ashley Effect’ with their eye makeup.

  By the time we arrived back at the group, Fran had looped her arm through mine. I wasn’t really paying much attention to what she and Nikki were saying but, for effect, I giggled as we came towards the group and sat down.

  Belinda watched us with narrowed eyes. Her arms were folded across her stomach as though she was defending herself from an oncoming punch.

  I was glad I hadn’t hit her back in the toilets – or, worse, set her hair on fire or caused her skin to m
elt, both of which I knew how to do. It looked so much more painful for her to see me here, laughing with her friends.

  As we settled on the ground, I noticed that Steve and Kylie, though not sitting next to one another, were sitting in such a way that they had full view of each other, even if they weren’t communicating beyond hurt glances.

  Lunchtime passed with an ongoing discussion of what to wear on Friday night. My hopes that the Ashley Ventwood idea would be abandoned were dashed completely when Nikki threw her hand against her forehead and exclaimed, ‘No, I’ve got it, I’ve got it. Different kinds of Ashley Ventwood! Like Barbie, okay – Kylie could be Surfer Ashley, and Michelle could be Hollywood Ashley – so we’re all Ashley, with the hair and the makeup, but with our own unique personalities!’

  ‘I bags being Rock Chick Ashley!’ cried Fran. ‘And in that dress, you could be Lingerie Ashley,’ she said to me.

  ‘Oooh!’ cried Nikki. ‘That’ll get Sophie a boyfriend by the weekend.’

  I forced a smile through the instinct to cringe. I thought of the Ashley I knew and wondered if I should suggest my costume be Ancient and Powerful Witch Capable of Killing You All Ashley, but I let it slide.

  26

  I wandered off to Maths with Kylie and Fran, nodding and smiling as they speculated about the boys’ secret plans for party costumes. I thought briefly of the black bag with the bracelet in it, but by then we were already in Maths, seated and pretending to complete quadratic equations.

  When the bell rang I was so sapped of energy from sheer boredom that I barely had the strength to drag myself out of the entombing classroom. ‘I’ll give you a lift home,’ said Fran as I dumped my stuff into my bag. ‘The box, remember? It’s in my car. Come on, Kyles – you can have a lift too.’

  The three of us headed down to the car park and clambered into the car. I sat next to the box in the back. When the doors were shut, I was about to hand over the bracelet, but Kylie commanded Fran’s attention.

  ‘What do you think of the long-sleeved look on Nikki?’ she said.

  In the back, I rolled my eyes. It was one thing to make a mockery of these discussions with Gretchen, it was another to be involved in them.

  ‘I think that things are not as cool with Marlina as Nikki’s pretending they are,’ Fran said.

  ‘How can you tell that from her choice in shirts?’ I asked.

  The car followed the queue out of the school driveway, towards the gate. I saw Fran’s face in the rear-view mirror. ‘Because she never dresses like that,’ she said.

  ‘Not even in winter, and it’s almost November,’ Kylie said.

  ‘Nikki’s parents are superstitious and a bit vulnerable,’ Fran explained. ‘I mean, they’re nice—’

  ‘How nice can you be to send your kid to a deprogramming centre?’ I asked.

  ‘Marlina was wild,’ said Kylie. ‘There were rumours that she was going up to the Point and doing rituals – way beyond Tell-Alls and under-the-rose business.’

  Fran cut in. ‘You know the Point – it’s that bluff on the other side of Frankston. If you veer off the road there are walking trails and a lookout.’

  The Point was where Ashley had pushed me from the cliff on Sunday night.

  ‘Who started the rumours?’ I said.

  ‘Nikki heard things. Her sister had that bedroom downstairs and used to sneak out the downstairs door,’ said Kylie. ‘She’d bring guys home, I know that. There are some weird people around Yarrindi, people who live out on farms where no one can see what they get up to. There have been rumours about things happening up on the Point for years. Orgies. Drinking blood. My mum doesn’t like it up there, reckons it’s always been a bad place, long before there was ever a town here. She reckons that’s why it never got houses built on it, unlike the rest of Yarrindi.’

  I thought of reminding Kylie that the Point was also a natural rock outcrop and probably not a sensible place to build houses, but I didn’t.

  ‘People get involved with stuff like that for different reasons – some people have a look and they realise pretty quickly it’s not for them. Marlina was seen hanging around there, rumours got out in the town, and then Nikki’s mum found all her witch equipment—’

  ‘The equipment in the nice plastic box next to me?’ I said. ‘Doesn’t make sense her mum didn’t throw it out.’

  ‘Nikki’s Mum and Dad won’t even go into Marlina’s room,’ Fran said. ‘They’ve got some belief that it’s a bad room, and that’s maybe why Marlina got so crazy.’

  I wondered if owning a statuette of San Cipriano that could materialise psychic visions of itself in the bathroom was maybe a stronger reason, but I kept my mouth shut.

  ‘They would never have sent Marlina to that deprogramming place on their own,’ said Kylie. ‘They told everything to their priest, and he was the one who made all the arrangements.’

  ‘The Italian priest who Nikki’s in love with?’ I asked.

  ‘In love with when she’s not doing horizontal laundry with Ryan,’ Kylie laughed.

  ‘No, it was an old one, who was at Don Bosco’s before,’ said Fran.

  ‘This all went down about nine months ago,’ said Kylie. ‘He left not long after Marlina got sent up to Sydney. I’ve never seen the hottie priest. Have you, Franz?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘He is hot. Hot and completely unavailable – literally the perfect man.’

  ‘I still don’t know what this has to do with Nikki wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt under her top,’ I said, trying to imagine who’d been with Marlina, drinking blood and having orgies on the Point. Ashley obviously knew the terrain, but she and Izek didn’t strike me as the orgy type. I thought of the way Ashley kissed him on the head, the tears on his face when he showed me the vision of her branding.

  Fran’s voice recalled me from the stench of burning flesh. ‘Like, her parents are nervous people – they do what the priest tells them, and now they also do what Marlina tells them, because she’s some kind of light-in-the-eyes extremist whacko. They just listen to the loudest voice telling them what’s good and bad – and this is the first time Marlina’s been in that house since she’s been away. Guilt central. Nikki in long sleeves is maybe Marlina deciding that Nikki’s dressing like a slut and should cover up or something, and her parents making her do it.’

  ‘Nikki would say something,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t know her,’ Kylie said. ‘It took months for all this stuff to come out about Marlina – she didn’t talk about it. For the biggest mouth in the world, she doesn’t let anyone know anything about her own life.’

  ‘She didn’t go to Ryan’s this afternoon, she went straight home,’ said Fran. ‘I’m just wondering if we did actually get away with our visit to Nikki’s yesterday.’

  My heart jumped with panic. ‘But Nikki said—’

  ‘She wouldn’t drop the rest of us in it,’ Kylie said, a little too hopefully for the adrenalin to stop running through my body. ‘She wouldn’t.’

  ‘We’ll watch the sleeves,’ said Fran, ‘but I’m telling you, Nikki being let out of the house on Friday night to dress up as Ashley Ventwood or the Virgin Mary … I wouldn’t bet money it’s going to happen. This is your place, Soph, isn’t it?’

  27

  We pulled up outside my house and got out of the car. Kylie passed me the box from the back seat and as I walked to the front door with it laden in my arms I heard Fran call, ‘Do you need some help with that?’

  I turned around. Neither Fran nor Kylie were back in the car. It took me a couple of seconds to register why.

  They wanted to come in. To my house.

  ‘Uh, you can hold it while I open up,’ I said. They marched quickly towards the doorstep.

  As I stood there, I looked out to the street beyond them. Construction workers were coming in and out of houses on the other side of Boronia Road. That one might be a Finder, or two, or all of them, was chilling my already panicked blood …

  … especially with a box of ma
gical instruments in my hands.

  When Kylie got to the doorstep, I shoved the box at her and fumbled through my bag, looking for my keys. I punched the key into the lock and the moment the lock turned I pushed the door with everything I had and scurried inside.

  Fran and Kylie didn’t move. ‘Come in,’ I said, and as soon as they did, I slammed the door shut.

  ‘Do you hate your neighbours or something?’ asked Fran, laughing at the speed of my entrance as she walked into the dining room. ‘Wow, this place is really cosy!’

  ‘Yeah, nice place,’ said Kylie, looking around. ‘It’s just you and your Mum and Dad, isn’t it?’

  I nodded. I felt better for being in the house. So did Fran and Kylie, I could see it in their faces. It was interesting to realise that they were affected by what they couldn’t see – the suffused orange glow of the chicken blood on the walls, which coated everything with protective magic.

  ‘Do you want this box in your room?’ Kylie asked.

  ‘Just put it on the dining room table,’ I said, planning to go through it when the girls had gone.

  Fran had wandered to the glass doors. ‘What an amazing garden!’ she said. ‘You would never be able to tell this was here from the front of the house.’

  ‘Gardens are what my mum does best,’ I said.

  ‘I thought she worked at Tea’sers,’ said Kylie. I froze – I’d forgotton I’d told Michelle. ‘My mum goes in there sometimes,’ Kylie explained. ‘She gets psychic readings and things. She says they’re really good.’

  I rolled my eyes, as if this were the most embarrassing information in the world. ‘Yeah, my mum’s a total hippie,’ I said. ‘She’s worked in garden centres and things, knows a lot about herbs. Has the world’s most amazing collection of tea.’

  ‘And reads palms and does fortunes,’ said Kylie to Fran.

  ‘Sounds more like a witch than a hippie,’ said Fran with a laugh.

  Although I wanted to choke, I laughed too. ‘You should see her broomstick collection. I’m going to borrow her pointy hat for Friday night.’