Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ I repeated.

  Seconds of silence passed on the phone until my mother spoke again. ‘Are you staying away from that boy?’

  ‘Like he was covered in plague,’ I said … and I guessed, in a way, he was.

  38

  Before I went to bed, I’d left out a plate with some raw sausages and pieces of cheese under the ash tree, with another cup of water. In the morning, I came out to collect the plate and noticed that the meat and cheese were gone, and the cup I’d left drunk down. I hoped that it had been Izek who’d had some nutrition, and not a wandering possum. As I walked back into the house, I heard a crow’s cry and thought that he sounded stronger, at least.

  I’d had a refreshing sleep, and started a clear blue day with Dad, eating a human being’s breakfast of toast and jam. As I munched on my toast, Dad asked me what I’d done with the sausages.

  ‘I’m feeding a bird in the yard,’ I confessed. ‘He seems a bit sick and weak.’

  ‘What kind of bird?’

  ‘Crow.’

  ‘You’ve come a long way,’ he said with a chuckle, ‘Not so long ago you were sending me out in the street to chase them away from Nanna’s house.’

  ‘You know teenagers,’ I said in a stupid voice, ‘we just change so quickly.’

  ‘You got that right,’ Dad said. ‘You seem a lot better than yesterday, for a start.’

  ‘Can I go to a party on Friday night?’

  ‘It’s not going to be like the last party we let you go to, is it?’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s in Yarrindi, at the surf club, it’s for one of the biggest nerds in our year, no drugs or alcohol and its completely parentally supervised.’

  ‘Soph, you may have recovered from your adventures with Lauren on Saturday night, but I have not – and I doubt Lauren has, either.’

  ‘Dad, Gretchen Eighfield is a mega-nerd—’

  ‘— and, I would argue, so is Lauren.’

  ‘The whole year is going … I’ve never been to a social thing with Yarrindi people. It’s really important to me, and Gretchen gave me a personal invitation. Please, please?’

  ‘I will drop you there and pick you up and we will agree that you will check in on the hour, every hour. I do not pay for a mobile phone for you to be out of contact.’

  ‘Deal,’ I said, secretly pleased that I would have transport to and from the surf club, and wouldn’t have to rely on walking, flying or Fran’s Corolla.

  ‘How’s Lauren doing, anyway?’ Dad asked. ‘Have you heard from her?’

  ‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ I said, unconvinced. ‘I’m planning to call her later on.’

  39

  I didn’t check my phone until I was at the Boronia stop for the school bus. There were more missed calls and texts from Lauren. Before I even checked them I called her back, but when her phone went straight through to voicemail all I could do was mumble, ‘Dude, things are carnage at this end. I’ll call when I can. Love you.’ I felt disrespectful, not telling my best friend the whole story, but I knew to do so I’d have to talk to her properly – and circumstances just weren’t letting me.

  Also on my phone was a message from Joel, sent the previous night. Between Boronia and the stop at Cawlish, I forced myself to read: Thanks for everything. Am having the best night of my life. Always, Joel.

  I shut my phone with a body-wide cringe.

  At least Wednesday was a generally positive day. No Modern History meant no Brody – and no Jeules.

  When Michelle got on the bus at Cawlish, Wednesday sunshine and last night’s Dad time almost had me relaxed enough to deal with the crazy look that flared in her eyes the second she saw me. She sat down next to me with a thump. ‘Literally the worst thing in the whole world has happened,’ she said, shoving her schoolbag onto her lap. ‘Have you heard?’

  ‘Fran and Joel Morland?’ I asked, good mood evaporating.

  ‘How’d you find out?’

  ‘Kylie,’ I said. ‘I called her to tell her to get Fran to give the bracelet back, but Fran had already gone to look for him.’

  ‘What is that about? She hates him. She’s hated him from Year 8. He gives her some bracelet and suddenly she’s madly in love with him.’

  ‘She hasn’t actually said that, has she?’

  Michelle gave a grave nod. ‘On the phone, last night. Apparently they met at the lighthouse and were all over one another. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘I guess either get rid of the bracelet or hope it just all plays itself out,’ I said, praying that Michelle would heed the clue.

  ‘I mean about our group,’ Michelle said. ‘He can’t come and hang with us! He’s not one of our guys – he’s never even come close. The guys won’t stand for it – they’ll go back to playing football every lunchtime and we’ll never see them again. And what am I going to do? Make conversation about his bicycle? It’s a complete social disaster.’

  ‘Maybe he and Fran will keep to themselves.’ I hoped, for Fran’s sake, that this wouldn’t happen, that the bracelet would get snagged on a chair and break before the girls isolated her completely.

  ‘Gross!’ squealed Michelle. ‘I can’t believe this has happened right before Gretchen’s party. Going as Ashley Ventwood was completely Fran’s idea. If we have to kick her out of the group, we’ll all have to go as something else. We’ve bought all these black wigs and everything.’

  ‘You wouldn’t really kick her out of the group,’ I said. ‘Even if this thing about Joel Morland turns out to last more than a day – I mean, she is your best friend.’

  ‘She’s a lot closer to Belinda these days than she is to me,’ Michelle said with a righteous sniff.

  40

  When we got to school, Nikki was eating at the school gate, wearing a long-sleeve white undershirt again. Kylie was speaking to someone on a mobile phone, and neither Belinda nor Fran were anywhere to be seen.

  ‘You look terrible,’ said Nikki as Michelle and I walked up to meet them.

  ‘You’ve heard the news?’ asked Michelle.

  ‘And totally vomited into a bucket,’ Nikki snorted. ‘Five years of avoiding the desperate psycho and she falls because of a bracelet.’

  ‘Someone should really go after it with a pair of scissors,’ I suggested, but my voice was drowned out by the sound of Kylie snapping shut her mobile phone.

  ‘She won’t even come to school today!’ Kylie bellowed.

  ‘Fran’s spending all day with Joel Morland?’ I asked, increasingly concerned at the potency of the spell.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Kylie, ‘but Belinda’s so worried Joel’s going to sit with us at lunchtime that she’s not even turning up today. She says she going to get her mum to call her in sick.’

  ‘Belinda just wants attention. She’ll be here before the bell,’ said Nikki, shoving the last few chunks of her burger into her mouth.

  ‘We have to tell her,’ said Michelle. ‘He can’t sit with us. The guys will leave. They will.’

  ‘They’ll do more than leave,’ said Nikki. ‘Joel sits with us, Ryan will transfer to another school.’

  ‘I reckon get rid of the bracelet,’ I tried, but no one was listening.

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ said Michelle. ‘As soon as she turns up. Either he’s kept way away from us, or she has to find a new group.’

  ‘Tell her now,’ said Kylie, staring into the distance, face contorted with shock.

  We all looked towards the street, where Fran was walking up to the school gate hand in hand with Joel Morland.

  ‘Fran’s on drugs,’ Nikki said, ‘that’s the only thing that could possibly explain—’ The words died in her mouth.

  Joel was beaming as he and Fran turned into the school grounds. Fran had a dazed smile that was actually frightening, and the bracelet around her hand burned so bright red I blinked to look at it.

  ‘Hey, Sophie.’ Joel smiled to me as they walked past.

  ‘Fran – Fran, we’ve got to talk!’ yelped Mi
chelle.

  ‘We can talk later,’ Fran said. ‘Have a nice day!’

  I shivered.

  ‘I’m going to call Belinda back – something tells me lunchtime’s not going to be a problem,’ Kylie said.

  ‘Are they surgically attached?’ demanded Nikki.

  ‘More like magically bound,’ I said. ‘If we can get rid of that bracelet—’

  ‘Like she didn’t even care that we were here,’ Michelle said.

  I watched Joel kiss Fran on the face before they walked into the main building. Fran stopped walking and kissed him back. Then Fran’s tongue darted into Joel Morland’s mouth.

  Kylie held her mobile phone limply in her hand.

  ‘I’m going to throw up,’ Nikki said.

  What had Joel said to Marlina that rewarded him like this?

  What had he traded?

  41

  In first period Ancient History, I found myself staring at Nikki’s white sleeves.

  She’d been quiet all lesson, even copying the notes from the board and tackling the questions from the textbook. Her silence was almost deafening, but it made it easier to hear the background chatter of ‘Have you heard? Fran Kelly and Joel Morland …’ ‘Can’t believe it – Fran and Joel …’

  ‘Have you seen Fran Kelly’s with Joel Morland?’ that buzzed more or less constantly in the background.

  When Nikki finally noticed me staring, she shot me a heavy look. ‘What?’

  ‘What’s the deal with the sleeves?’

  Nikki shrugged, turning back to her textbook. ‘I get cold.’

  ‘It’s late October.’

  Nikki shrugged again. ‘Late October or not, I still get cold.’

  I was still looking. ‘How’s things with Ryan?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, not raising her head.

  ‘What’s it like having your sister back home?’

  ‘Sophie,’ Nikki said, still staring in her textbook, ‘you turn up at this school, no one knows anything about you, and then all this totally weird stuff starts happening. Maybe if there’s gonna be an interrogation, it should be of you. What do you reckon?’

  I couldn’t discern if the tone of her voice was a threat or a warning.

  Now I felt cold. ‘Sorry, Nikki,’ I said.

  ‘Just looking out for you,’ she said, turning her page.

  42

  I hadn’t seen Jeules since yesterday’s catch-me game around the Technology labs, but learning what I had from the onyx stone, I didn’t want to risk a rematch.

  Rather than provoke him with my usual wander around the school, for my free period I set myself up in the library in direct view of the entrance, writing into my folder notes from a pile of textbooks in front of me.

  Ms Jackson had set an essay for Art that I’d decided to do as practice. Even though none of my assessments were being counted, I had to be careful not to miss any study units that could turn up in the exams next year. I was copying notes out of a textbook for about twenty minutes, when a hand on my shoulder made me jump.

  ‘This is better,’ said a voice.

  Jeules.

  ‘You scared me,’ I said.

  ‘It’s always impressive to see someone acting on advice, Sally,’ he said. ‘Year 12 coming up, any mistake you make now you’ll regret for the rest of your life.’

  I noticed there were juniors crawling over the library computer terminals. They didn’t seem to have a teacher with them. ‘Are you teaching now?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m supervising a research period. Mr Hella is sick too, so I’m covering his classes. I’m probably going to be in here all day.’

  I didn’t know who Mr Hella was. ‘Good for you, Mr Jeules,’ I said in a light voice.

  ‘You can prepare for class tomorrow if you like,’ he said, walking back towards the juniors. ‘French responses in the lead-up to war.’

  I nodded and put my head down in my book, watching, out of the corner of my eye, Jeules walk away to bark at some juniors. They looked like a Year 7 class, and seeing their small hands and faces as Jeules moved amongst them reminded me of what a brutal monster he was.

  His ring was in my pocket, and he was in the library.

  I left my things on the desk, exactly where they were. I fetched my wallet out of my bag and walked up to the librarian, asking if I needed a pass from her to go the bathroom.

  ‘Aren’t you on a free?’ she asked, looking at me if I was stupid.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  I skipped out of the library without looking behind my shoulder. Whether Jeules noticed I was missing or not, I didn’t have much time.

  43

  I scurried through the hallways in the direction of the English/History staff room. It didn’t take long to find a noticeboard with one of Jeules’s signs tacked to it. Checking to see that no one was around in either direction, I ripped the A4 sign off the board, letting the thumbtacks that held it fall to the floor.

  I folded the sign in half three times as I galloped around the corridors. I slowed my pace when a teacher came out of a classroom, and hid the folded piece of paper in my hand that held my wallet, but the teacher was busy with a folder and was soon in another room without paying me any attention. As I turned another corner, I slipped my hand into my pocket and pulled out Jeules’s ring. The corridor was empty and I seized the opportunity to drop the ring into the improvised envelope I’d made out of Jeules’s sign.

  When I was close to the staffroom, I slowed to a walk again and took pains to affect a vague expression. Parts of me worried that sweat from my anxious hand would stain the envelope and leave a genetic trail for Jeules to follow, but I dispelled the thought as paranoia: he might be a Finder, but he was not a forensic scientist.

  About to turn the last corner before the staffroom, I stopped in my tracks. I could hear voices in the corridor. I stood with my back to the wall, near the top of the stairwell, waiting for the voices to pass.

  A door closed, someone walked away. A peek around the corner revealed one of the History teachers walking in the opposite direction from me down the hall. Heart in mouth, I took a couple of steps towards the staffroom. I walked really slowly now, waiting for the teacher to disappear around a corner or down some stairs. The second she was out of sight – taking the far set of stairs – I paced silently towards the staffroom. My ears were pricked like an animal’s, and I was praying that I’d be able to hear anyone behind me as they approached.

  Outside the door of the staffroom, I kneeled down, pulled the ring envelope from my hand and slid it under the gap at the bottom of the staffroom door.

  I was only just back on my feet when I heard a door open. Sprung, I whirled around to the source of the noise.

  ‘What are you doing there, 1919?’ asked Brody Meine, standing in the doorway of the History book room.

  44

  I took a couple of steps towards him before I spoke. ‘Nothing,’ I said, almost in a whisper. I searched the corridor over both of my shoulders before scampering towards the book room.

  I thought Brody was going to let me in but he walked out and shut the door behind him.

  He noticed me staring at the closed door. ‘I’m going to the canteen,’ he said. ‘Even the school psycho needs to eat. Do you have any classes apart from Modern? Or a serial attendance problem?’

  ‘I’ve got a weird timetable, it’s difficult to explain.’

  ‘Explain at the canteen,’ he offered. ‘The inedible doughnuts are on me.’

  ‘I can’t – Jeules is on my back, I have to get back to the library.’ I was about to skitter towards the stairwell when the door of the staffroom swung open.

  A short-haired female teacher whose name I didn’t know stuck her head out of the room and looked around. I froze.

  ‘Brody, have you been in this corridor the whole time?’ she asked.

  ‘Just got here,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ said the teacher, looking me up and down. ‘You’re that new girl—’r />
  I nodded.

  ‘Do you have a name?’

  ‘Sophie,’ I said, my voice trembling.

  ‘Have you seen anyone in this corridor, Sophie?’ she asked.

  ‘Only Brody.’ I was trying not to shake.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, but she didn’t close the door. She stared down the other end of the corridor.

  ‘Later, then,’ Brody said to me, walking away.

  I turned, and tried to stay upright, though my legs had turned to jelly. My mind burned with the image of the teacher in the staffroom doorway, the crushed envelope held tight in her hand.

  45

  Shaking even as I got back to the library, I tried to hold it together enough to pretend to be getting on with my work. I knew I couldn’t keep looking at Jeules without raising suspicions, so I listened for his voice; he was berating a junior about their inadequacy at using an internet search engine in more or less a constant stream. Poor kid.

  My eyes were swimming across the pages of my Art textbook when my ears became alerted to a different sound. I looked up and saw Matt walk into the library and over to the photocopier. He put a book face-down on the photocopy plate, and fed a copy card into the machine. Multiple copies of something flicked out into a pile. I guessed he must be doing an errand for a teacher, but it was strange that he hadn’t been given access to a staff copier. I wondered if maybe one had broken down.

  When the bell rang, I wasted no time in putting my things into my bag and getting as far away from Jeules as possible. As I walked out of the library, I looked over my shoulder and saw Matt still at the copier, smiling to himself as he held an A4 page in his hand, paying the bell no mind.

  46

  Maths, of course, had its own distractions. I walked into Mr Gazzara’s classroom to find Fran sitting next to Joel Morland, and Kylie sitting by herself, her face a mask of shock and cold fury.