The Protected

by Claire Zorn

  He gives her a salute. Mrs Rourke uncaps her marker and carries on talking about ‘x’ and ‘y’. She turns and writes on the whiteboard and as her back is turned Josh pegs a ball of paper at me. It’s a situation I have been in so many times before. Kids harassing me while the teacher isn’t looking. It practically used to be a school sport – let’s see how much shit we can give Hannah without the teacher noticing. But now the rules are different. Mrs Rourke turns to us and starts talking again. Josh watches her with a straight face. She turns back to the board. Josh looks pointedly at the ball of paper on my desk. ‘I dare you,’ he mouths. The other students, including Tara and Amy, are watching, they’ve never seen the game played like this before. Tara looks completely confused. I pick up the ball and throw it just as Mrs Rourke turns around to face us. Her mouth drops open in shock.

  ‘Miss McCann, I would expect better from you.’ She points to Josh first then me. ‘Both of you, out.’

  I have never been kicked out of class before. I don’t quite know what to do. Leaving would be a good start. Josh stands up.

  Mrs Rourke glares at me. ‘Hannah?’

  Do I pack up my stuff and take it? Do I leave it? Josh has left his and is heading out the door, so I do the same and follow him. Outside he stands with his hands in his pockets and a wicked grin on his face. He shakes his head.

  ‘Jane, Jane, Jane. I’m trying to better my mathematical skills. Stop dragging me down. Ha, look at your face. It’s okay. You’re not going to get expelled.’

  Mrs Rourke opens the door and steps out. She looks at us both, her jaw tight.

  ‘Mr Chamberlain, what do you have to say for yourself?’

  ‘Miss! She was the one throwing stuff.’ He winks at me.

  ‘Miss McCann?’

  ‘Um. I’m … Um, sorry.’

  ‘Your marks would hardly suggest that you are in a position to be mucking around in class.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Consider yourselves warned. Another word from either of you and you can go to the year coordinator’s office.’

  ‘Message received, ma’am,’ Josh says.

  ‘Get back to your desks.’

  When I get home from school Mrs Van is in her front yard, pulling at the cord of her lawnmower. It ignores her. She wipes her forehead with her arm. She wears baggy pyjama shorts, socks with sandals and her Big Banana T-shirt. It’s her favourite T-shirt, I know that because she told me once. Her son bought it for her, he lives in Coffs Harbour. I’ve never seen him.

  ‘Look at my lawn!’ she says when she sees me. ‘So overgrown.’

  It looks like a putting green.

  ‘It won’t start,’ she says in a way that implies the lawnmower is lazy rather than broken.

  ‘Do you want me to try?’

  ‘Oh you are such a good girl.’

  I dump my bag on the path and go over to the lawnmower. I give the starter cord a good tug and the mower grumbles to life. Mrs Van claps, she motions to take the mower from me. I shake my head.

  ‘You shouldn’t be doing this,’ I say. I push the mower along next to the fence. It doesn’t take long to do the lawn. The grass smells good, like childhood. It reminds me of summer holidays when Dad would put the sprinkler on the lawn and Katie and me would run around in our swimmers. When I am finished I glance up and see my mother watching me from our kitchen window. I smile, but the sun is reflecting off the windowpane and I can’t see her expression.

  ‘I don’t see your mother leave the house,’ Mrs Van says.

  ‘She doesn’t go out much at the moment.’

  ‘It is very bad for her to be inside all day. Very bad for the head not to see the sunlight.’

  I pick up my schoolbag. ‘Well, see you, Mrs Van.’

  ‘It has been almost a year since Katie was killed.’

  She doesn’t say ‘passed away’ like everyone else. I despise the term ‘passed away’. It sounds peaceful and graceful and kind of magical. I don’t think there was anything peaceful about Katie’s death.

  ‘That is a long time to stay in the house.’

  ‘Yeah. It is.’

  ‘But, there is nothing like the pain of burying your child. It is the worst kind of agony.’ She closes her eyes for a moment. Then opens them and puts a hand on my arm. ‘I am very tired. Too old! I will go inside. You go to your mother.’

  In the evening Mum sits at the dining table sorting through a pile of paperwork from the lawyers. The pedestal fan whirs around back and forth, snatching papers and tossing them to the floor. Rather than move the fan or turn it off, Mum just repeatedly picks the papers back up, swearing under her breath.

  I have ventured from my room because it is stifling in there, no breeze at all through the window. Plus it is dinnertime, supposedly. Although my mother seems oblivious.

  ‘Um, are you going to eat anything?’

  She looks up from the table, frowning as if I have said something deeply offensive. ‘What, Hannah?’

  ‘It’s just, I thought I might get something to eat.’

  ‘Fine.’ She turns back to her work.

  ‘Shouldn’t Dad be home by now? It’s after seven.’

  She dismisses the question with a wave of her hand. ‘I don’t know. Maybe he has a meeting.’

  ‘Okay. I might make some spaghetti. Dad will probably want dinner when he gets home.’

  ‘Yes,’ she sighs. ‘Dad will probably want dinner.’

  ‘Or maybe I’ll just do some instant noodles. It might be too hot to cook spaghetti.’

  She isn’t listening.

  I take a packet of two-minute noodles from the cupboard, split it open and drop the square of dehydrated curls into a bowl. I shake the loose noodles out – like the tiny bones of a delicate creature – and scatter the powdered flavouring over the top. Through the kitchen window I see a taxi approach our driveway and stop. The passenger-side door opens and my father begins to slowly extract himself, puppet-like, from the car.

  The taxi driver gets out, walks behind the car and opens the boot. He pulls out Dad’s crutch, hands it to him and puts his briefcase and laptop bag on the grass.

  The taxi drives off, leaving my dad standing alone with two bags he can’t carry.

  I go outside and he smiles but doesn’t meet my eyes. I pick up the bags and he follows me, limping, up the path to the house.

  ***

  ‘Hi Hannah!’

  They slid into the seat behind me, Tara and Amy. Always the Tara and Amy show. The bus swayed as students loped on. I couldn’t see Katie out the window. She was usually right at the back of the line, no rush – practically had a bus seat reserved in her name.

  ‘How was your day, Hannah?’ Amy asked. ‘Get any lesbian action in the library? Or were you at it all by yourself?’

  I kept my focus on the window. Katie had advised me to stick to the ‘ignore them and they’ll go away’ strategy. This was highly fallible. In the Canadian Rockies, for example, cougars are known to stalk unsuspecting campers for up to three days before they strike – no matter how good their prey are at ignoring them.

  ‘Han-nah, you’re being so rude!’ Tara said. ‘Amy’s just trying to make conversation. Aren’t you into Amy anymore? Just into yourself?’

  Amy laughed as if she were in front of a camera. Students continued to file on to the bus, but the flow was slowing to a trickle. Then Katie got on. I caught her eye. I imagined her walking up to Amy and Tara and dismissing them with some cold witty remark. But it didn’t happen. She walked down the aisle, gave me the briefest of sideways glances and continued on to the back seat.

  ‘Oh, you should leave Hannah alone, Amy,’ said Tara. ‘She’s so in love with you, she’s aching for you.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. She’s so frigid though, aren’t you, Hannah?’

  ‘You know why she’s never been
with a guy? She doesn’t want anyone to find her dick.’

  ‘What do you do with it, Han-the-Man? Do you tuck it in to your undies? Oh my God, you can totally see she has a lump there! Look at her thing!’

  ‘I’m going to vomit. That is so disgusting.’

  ‘Oh you know what is disgusting? Jared’s haircut! I’m like, what the fuck happened to your hair?!’

  ‘I know. He said his boss totally made him cut it. So bad …’

  And they moved on. For the next ten minutes they left me alone, until the bus was almost at my stop and I felt something on my back. I ignored it at first. They were clearly trying to get me to turn around. But it kept going. I turned around to see Tara holding a black marker. Amy dissolved into giggles.

  ‘Oh no!’ said Tara. ‘I think you’ve got pen on your shirt!’

  The bus pulled into my stop. I stood up and inevitably showed the whole bus the back of my shirt. The shrieks of laughter were utterly predictable, yet still I felt my stomach turn at the sound of it. Her audience was captivated. I put my backpack on in an effort to hide Tara’s handiwork, but the damage was well and truly done. It was also posted on Instagram, just in case anyone missed out.

  Katie caught up with me after the bus had driven away.

  ‘Hannah, you can’t just take that shit.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  She doesn’t answer me.

  ‘Katie?’

  ‘It says “I have a big dick”.’

  I unzipped my bag and pulled my jumper out. I put it on. I couldn’t bear going any further with those words written on my back.

  ‘You should have slapped her,’ said Katie.

  ‘You should have slapped her.’ I was losing it before we even made it home. I wiped and wiped at the tears but they kept coming.

  ‘What? It’s my fault, is it? Yeah, good one, Hannah.’

  ‘They would stop if you told them to!’

  ‘Hannah, Tara is going out with Jared, for fuck’s sake. He’s my friend. He’s Jensen’s mate. I don’t need this drama. It has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be my sister.’

  ‘And so what if I do do something? Then what happens later when I’m not around? What do you think they’ll do then?’

  ‘At least they don’t pretend they’re trying to help me out.’ I spat the words at her. ‘I hate you.’

  Katie rolled her eyes and kept walking. ‘God, Hannah. Whatevs.’

  *

  I got changed as soon as I was home. I shoved the shirt into a bag and put it in the bottom of the garbage bin where Mum wouldn’t see it. I did the same with the two other shirts that were ruined in similar ways in the months after. I told Mum I had lost them, left them behind after swim training.

  ***

  Fifteen

  I am up to song two-hundred and forty-six: ‘The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret’ by a band called Queens of the Stone Age. When I walk around the corner of the ag building, Josh is already there. He is down on the grass, next to the veranda, crouched beside the paddock fence. A goat has its head through the wire and is eating grass from his hand. He goes to scratch it behind the ear and the goat startles. He waits, holding still while the goat watches him, decides he is safe and reaches forwards again to take more grass. Josh looks over his shoulder and sees me. I pull the earphones from my ears.

  ‘I gotta go, Goatee. Or Jane’ll get jealous.’

  He stands and vaults up onto the veranda, takes a seat on the edge, feet dangling over.

  ‘This is my spot,’ I say.

  ‘Um, this is out of bounds, Jane. So it’s nobody’s spot. You can’t own it, I’ll dob you in. And I think after the whole Maths prank you pulled you would be in a lot of trouble.’ He opens his bag and pulls out a sausage roll and a carton of chocolate milk.

  ‘Where’s your lunch?’ he asks me.

  I produce a no-name brand muesli bar.

  ‘Oh man. That’s your lunch? That’s all you’ve got?’

  ‘There was no food left in the house. Again.’

  ‘Someone tell World Vision. You could be a sponsor child. Here.’ He breaks the sausage roll in two and hands me half.

  ‘No, it’s okay.’

  ‘It is not okay. You need some saturated fats, girl. You’ll fade away.’

  I take the sausage roll from him. We sit there eating our bits of sausage roll. He is done in two bites.

  ‘How come I get a nickname?’ I ask.

  ‘Nickname? What nickname? I have no idea what you’re talking about, Jane. Why’s it called that anyway? A nickname? Was there some dude called Nicholas and one day someone couldn’t be bothered and called him Nick instead? Is human invention fuelled by laziness?’

  ‘Couldn’t say.’

  ‘Always ducking around the hard questions, Jane. Very elusive. Drink?’ he holds the chocolate milk in my direction.

  ‘No. Thank you.’

  He shrugs and takes a swig from the carton. ‘Ahh, that’s the ticket. Doesn’t your mum make you lunch, Jane? Oh shit. She is around, isn’t she? She wasn’t in the car accident? Sorry.’

  ‘No. She’s around. Just.’

  ‘Phew. Man, I get all “Gah!” when I’m around you.’ He shakes his hands crazily next to his head. ‘Scared I’m going to say the wrong thing and traumatise you.’

  ‘You won’t traumatise me.’

  ‘Good. Let’s talk about something else. Anything you’d like to discuss?’

  ‘Um. How do you like being at St Joseph’s? Do … do you feel you are getting a quality education?’

  ‘Ha ha. Nice reporter voice. Oh man. What is with the teachers here? They’re all so concerned. Mr Black’s like, “How are you settling in, son?”’ Josh puts on a fake deep voice, furrowing his eyebrows. ‘This is right after he gives me a detention. So I’m like, well it would help if you didn’t give me all these detentions. And he gives me extra “tasks” for D&T. I don’t even know why. I’ll be in class and he’ll hand me a lump of wood and say, “Go and sand that for me, son”. I mean, is that supposed to be a reward or a punishment? I won’t lie, Jane. I find it confusing. And the uniform rules piss me off, I’ll be honest. What’s with the ties? In summer! Man, it’s not a freakin’ business college. I’m not here to learn to become a banker.’

  ‘What do you want to do? I mean after Japan.’

  ‘You remember that, very observant, Jane.’ He stretches up, puts his hands behind his head and leans back against his bag. ‘I don’t know. I was thinking of design or something. Not graphic design but like, furniture or something. Like I’m making this cabinet thing for my D&T project. I like furniture.’

  ‘It’s a reward.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When Mr Black gives you something extra to do. He’s probably noticed you’re good at D&T.’

  Josh raises his eyebrows. ‘You think? I was talking to him about Japanese architecture once, that was cool.’

  ‘You’re his protégé.’

  Josh laughs. ‘But I’m shit at Maths. He’s told me if I want to do design at uni I have to “pull my socks up”. But it’s just so boring, like who cares about the value of “x”?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And what about the textbook questions? If Johnny has to eat eighteen hot dogs, and he’s already eaten one-third, how many hot dogs are left? For starters, who the hell is making poor Johnny eat eighteen hot dogs? Secondly, why doesn’t Johnny just count them himself? And thirdly, as if that’s a problem I’m ever going to have to solve in real life. But I need good marks. So I guess I gotta figure stuff out. Get my shit together. Start giving a crap about Johnny and his hot dogs.’

  ‘My dad’s an architect.’

  ‘Oh yeah? He happy?’

  ‘No. I don’t think that’s because of his job, though.’

 
‘Fair enough. I’d like to become an awesome successful designer mainly so I can stick it to my dad.’ He laughs. ‘So I can be all like, “You said I’d never do anything useful, look at me now!” That makes me really screwed up, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I think revenge is a perfectly good motive.’

  He looks at me and narrows his eyes. ‘Oh yeah? And who would you like revenge against?’

  I don’t reply.

  He looks at me, waiting. ‘Hmm, very mysterious, Jane. Let me know if you want me to hurt someone for you. I mean, I can give it a go.’

  ‘Your dad wouldn’t be happy if you did design at uni?’

  ‘My dad is permanently not happy, but yeah. He wants me to be like my brother – wear a suit, make heaps of cash and then spend every Friday getting plastered so I can forget how much I hate my life.’

  ‘That’s what your brother does?’

  ‘Yeah. And you know, Dad doesn’t give a shit about being happy. It’s not about that, it’s about looking good to everyone else, having an investment property, a nice car, all of that crap. Who cares if you want to slit your wrists every waking moment.’

  ‘What about your mum? What does she think?’

  ‘Ah, you see, that’s irrelevant because he’ll be the one paying the uni fees.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He is quiet for a few minutes. We sit and watch the goats. Eventually the bell sounds for the end of lunch. He turns to me. ‘Well, it’s been swell. Ha. That rhymes. What do you have now?’

  ‘Ah, I have a thing over in D Building.’

  ‘A thing, hey? Mysterious.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He laughs. ‘I’ll walk you.’

  ***

  The tourists that bypass our town are usually headed to a village called Leura, it’s one of the ones with boutiques and cafés. It also has a bookstore – the kind I could live in, burrow myself away amongst Austen and the Brontes. Nestle between Dickens and Hardy. Not a vampire in sight. I was there one Saturday, must have been a month or so before the accident, I remember that because Dad was away at the conference in Switzerland and I felt outnumbered at home without him.