The bell goes. We have to leave our home room and go to our first proper high school class, which is drama. We know that because Mrs McBain handed out timetables for us to glue into our diaries. As we move through the crowd in the corridor, I stick close to Stephen so I won’t get lost. He’s as good at remembering directions as he is at mental maths.
He finds the drama room, which is big, with thick black curtains at the windows. We stand around just inside the door because there’s no tables or chairs. We have a new teacher for this class. We didn’t get a chance to really suss out our home-group teacher, and now here’s another one. This one looks really young. She’s skinny and she’s wearing a little white strappy top with flowers and a blue filmy skirt. She makes me think of ice-cubes in a tall, elegant glass.
Her voice, though, is warm and enthusiastic. ‘Welcome to drama!’ she says. ‘My name’s Miss Larsen …’
‘How come you’re holdin’ a tennis ball?’ interrupts the fat boy who got a detention on orientation day. ‘Are you a big-shot pro?’ He makes an exaggerated swing with an invisible racquet. Suddenly I remember his name, because the teachers kept using it on orientation day, as in, ‘Billy, would you please sit down?’ and, ‘Billy, that remark was inappropriate.’
I think Miss Larsen was still in drama-teacher school back then. Now, she laughs a little at Billy’s performance, but I notice her face has gone red. ‘I’ll tell you what the ball’s for in a minute,’ she says. ‘The first thing I’d like you to do is sit on the floor in a big circle.’
I have a flashback to last year, when our teacher, Mr Callaghan, made us sit at new table groups. Thank goodness this class is nicer than that one. It takes a while for everybody to shuffle around and decide where to sit, but no one complains about who they end up next to. Not even Billy, who’s on my left. Stephen’s on my other side, with Matthew beside him. We’re across the circle from the cool girls.
Miss Larsen lowers herself next to them, crosses her long legs and smooths her filmy skirt over her knees. ‘Now!’ she says brightly, holding up the ball, ‘this is a tool to help us get to know each other. I’m going to toss it to somebody. I want that person to tell us their name and three things about themselves. Then they toss it to somebody else.’
Wouldn’t you know it? She throws the ball across the circle, straight at Stephen. As I’m sending up a silent prayer for God to put three normal thoughts into Stephen’s head, Billy lunges across me, sticks his arm out in front of Stephen and catches the ball.
‘Watch it, mate,’ Matthew growls. Stephen looks stunned.
Billy resumes his place next to me, still clutching the ball, and announces loudly, ‘The first thing about me is, I like girls.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Miss Larsen protests.
‘What for?’ Billy asks sharply.
‘The person I aimed the ball at was supposed to catch it.’
‘You didn’t say that,’ Billy points out.
‘Well …’ You can see her deciding what to do. ‘Okay. But from now on, no one is to leap out of their place. And don’t forget to tell us your name.’
‘It’s Billy, silly,’ he says in a cheeky voice, ‘and the second thing about me is, I like girls a lot.’ With his hands, he draws a curvy female figure in the air.
Some of the girls giggle uncertainly.
‘And the third thing is, I like girls with great … big …’ he pauses for emphasis.
‘Billy …’ Miss Larsen warns.
‘Eyes!’ Now more people laugh, and not so uncertainly.
‘Class!’ Miss Larsen sounds dismayed. ‘Let’s focus. Billy, throw the ball to someone. Gently.’
Billy looks around the circle for ages, tossing the ball up and down in his hand, but eventually (of course) chooses one of the cool girls to throw it to.
She catches the ball neatly. Her back is as straight as a ballet dancer’s. ‘My name’s Olivia,’ she says, smoothing a strand of her long black hair behind her ear. ‘Three things about me are I’m a Pisces, I’m getting my belly button pierced for my birthday, and I’m a model.’
The class gasps, all at once. We could see with our own eyes that she was pretty, but now she has suddenly become officially beautiful.
‘A model!’ Miss Larsen says. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah, really,’ Olivia laughs lightly. You can tell it’s not the first time she’s answered this question. She pats the cool girl next to her on the shoulder. ‘Me and Tiffany have been with an agency since we were six.’
Now the class looks at Tiffany. Yes, she’s beautiful as well. Perfect, slender figure. Long smooth hair like Olivia’s, only hers is white blonde.
‘Do you get much work?’ Miss Larsen asks Olivia.
‘Mostly catalogue stuff. Target and Myer, that sort of thing. Our parents don’t want us to do anything big till we’re older. But we did do a TV commercial when we were eight. For shampoo.’
It’s not fair that the first girl who got to talk had that kind of information to tell us. What am I going to say when it’s my turn? I hope she doesn’t throw the ball to me!
I needn’t have worried. Olivia tosses the ball on to her model friend, who cradles it gracefully in her slender hands. ‘Like Olivia said, I’m Tiffany.’ You might know she’d have a sparkly name like that. ‘When I grow up I want to join a really good modelling agency in New York. Also, I got a Labrador puppy for Christmas and she’s so gorgeous. And I have a cat named Candy.’
She’s so lucky. Mum says I can buy all the pets I want as soon as I get a high-powered job to pay for them. Tiffany’s my age and she already has a high-powered job. I assume she’ll pass the ball on to the third cool girl, but instead she throws it to that tall redhead who’s still sitting next to Chloe. How come everybody likes her so much?
She fumbles when she catches the ball, like I probably will. At least she doesn’t drop it. She mumbles something, staring down at her lap.
‘What’s that?’ Miss Larsen asks. ‘You’ll have to speak up.’
The girl gives Miss Larsen her wounded-wildebeest look. ‘I said my name’s Justine.’
‘That’s unusual.’
Justine looks stricken.
‘But very pretty. What three things can you tell us about yourself?’
Justine is staring at Tiffany like she wants to strangle her. Then, an entirely different expression comes over her face, as if she’d been eating chicken livers and suddenly switched to fudge-ripple ice-cream. ‘Well,’ she says dreamily, ‘last year my dad took me to the Show. First we had KFC and then we went to this big barn full of rabbits and cats. I mean they were in cages, they weren’t running all over the place or anything. We went to the horse judging and then we saw this really cool dog show where people had to make their dogs heel, sit and stay. Only this one dog, I think it was a poodle, wouldn’t stay. It jumped up and ran off into the audience and climbed on some guy’s lap and then …’
‘That’s nice, Justine.’ Miss Larsen looks alarmed. ‘You can throw the ball to someone else now.’
‘She never said three things about herself!’ Billy looks affronted.
‘I think she did,’ Miss Larsen asserts.
Billy says, in a slightly lowered tone, ‘Calls herself a teacher and she can’t even count.’
Meanwhile, Justine is looking around the circle and she’s decided to throw the ball to … oh, God, it’s heading straight towards me. I manage to catch it without too much fumbling. But what am I going to say? Anything would be a come-down after Olivia and Tiffany. Please, at least, don’t let it be something too loserish. ‘I’m Kaitlin,’ I say, hating the clunky sound of my name. ‘I’m a Leo. My favourite food is lemon meringue pie and my best holiday was when we went to the Gold Coast.’
I did it! I can tell by how the cool girls are looking at me that I didn’t say anything really stupid. With relief I toss the ball across Stephen and Matthew to one of the Asian girls. I’ve never actually been to the Gold Coast, but my ex (very ex) best friend told me al
l about it, plus I’ve seen about a million ads for Movie World, and Mum says that if I’m still speaking to her when I’m 16, she’ll take me there.
Sweaty and bedraggled, feeling like I just trudged a hundred kilometres across the Simpson Desert, I unlock my front door. Mum’s not in the kitchen so I go out to the bungalow. While I was in Canberra she had it converted to an office. She’s been talking about doing that for years, and after her big job in Perth she finally decided she had enough money. Now she can invite clients here instead of always going to them.
As I open her flash new security screen door she swivels towards me on her gas-lift chair, looking so relieved you’d think I really had survived a trek across the desert.
‘You made it,’ she says.
‘Guess so.’ I head across her forest-green carpet to her cool little bar fridge which is cleverly disguised as a cupboard.
Mum watches me as I grab a can of Pepsi Max. ‘How was it?’ she asks.
‘Fine,’ I answer firmly. I have no desire to tell her that there are two models in my class or about Justine’s weird dog show or anything else. Luckily she’s not as nosy as Eve, but I’d better come up with at least one sentence to assure her of my normality. ‘I learned heaps,’ I say.
‘Well then, that’s your first day over with.’
‘Yep.’ The main thing is, I survived with no one looking at me like I was a dork. Now I’m safe at home, and I’m pretty sure there’ll be an e-mail from Eve waiting on my computer, the old one Mum left behind in the house. I’m saving that to read just before I go to bed.
Meanwhile, the Pepsi is cold as. The icy bubbles taste wonderful. Mum punches numbers into her large-display calculator. ‘Let’s see.’ She’s mumbling to herself. ‘Six years. Times approximately 180 days per year …’ She turns to me and announces gleefully, ‘Only 1,179 days of high school left to go!’
That’s what I get for having an accountant for a mother.
I wander down to the bottom of our garden, where Will’s watering the herb and veggie patch that he and Eve planted early in the spring. Before she left to go back to England, Eve made Will promise that he’d keep the patch in good shape. She couldn’t stand to think of her basil and tomatoes withering away while Mum and I existed on junk food. Mum still exists on junk food anyway, but she’s happy for Will to look after the organic side of things whenever he wants to.
Will gives me a big smile and puts the hose down beside the cucumbers. ‘They can use a good soak,’ he says. Wiping his hands on the back of his jeans, he comes over to me. ‘Nice to have you home, love.’ This is the first time I’ve seen Will since I got back from Canberra.
‘Having a good summer?’ I ask him.
‘Can’t complain,’ he says, sitting down on the church pew that he and Eve got at a Brotherhood shop. ‘Missing your gran, though.’
‘Me, too,’ I say, sitting down beside him. I run my hand over the wood that Eve sanded and painted bright blue. She was so pleased with herself the day she and Will brought this home in his station wagon. ‘Do you think she’ll come back?’ I wonder.
‘I sure hope so,’ Will answers. Then he says in a confiding voice, ‘You know, it never entered my head that I could care about anybody else after Rebecca died. But your gran … I’ve never met a more intelligent, more alive woman than her.’
I give Will a sharp look. Can old people really fall in love? I mean I know I teased Eve about it, but Will actually sounds serious.
It’s our first English class. Since we have Mrs McBain, our home-group teacher, we get to stay in our home room. Yesterday we had classes in five different rooms. At least I’ll get more exercise walking around the corridors than I did at primary school. I tried to concentrate really hard on how to get back to each room because I don’t want to be directionally dependent on Stephen.
Mrs McBain’s telling us what we have to do this lesson. ‘I want you to write a page about the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to you.’ She has a kitchen timer on her desk which she sets in a decisive manner. ‘You can brainstorm quietly with those around you for five minutes,’ she explains, ‘then I expect complete silence while you’re actually writing.’
She pushes a button on her timer. She doesn’t have to tell the class twice to start talking.
‘What are you gonna write about, Stevo?’ Matthew asks.
‘I have to think,’ Stephen answers mysteriously. He’s never been one to give much away.
‘I know a wonderful thing that happened to you,’ Matthew prompts. ‘Remember when your water snail had thirty-three babies?’
Stephen smiles at the memory. It was cool when he brought the babies, some as small as rice grains, to school in a takeaway container and put them in with the tadpoles to eat the algae. Mr Callaghan thought it was great because he hardly had to clean the tank after that.
‘What about you, Katie? I bet you got a good idea in there.’ Matthew taps the side of my head with a forefinger.
‘Not yet,’ I say. I wish he wouldn’t touch me. ‘Give me a minute.’
I look around at the rest of the class. Matthew and Stephen and I are sitting in the back row, over in the corner like we did yesterday. Most of the others are in the same places as well. I’ve done some intensive listening and have sussed out more people’s names. The Asian girls, for example, are Vi and La. Vi said even though her name is spelled ‘Vi’, it rhymes with ‘me’. And the cool girl who isn’t a model is called Charlotte. They’re at the end of the second row, over by the door. Now that I’ve been around them for a day, I can see that Charlotte is not in the same league, looks-wise, as Olivia and Tiffany. But she’s still pretty. I wish I could be like them, sure of everything I did and said.
Billy’s in the second row again, right in front of us. Just as I’m thinking how quiet he’s been this morning, he calls out to Mrs McBain, ‘What if –’
‘Billy!’ Mrs McBain stops him. ‘Raise your hand if you have a question.’
He shoots up his hand, talking at the same time. ‘What if some people in here never had anything wonderful happen to them?’
‘Then they can come up to my desk and have a private conference.’ Mrs McBain is not as easily bamboozled as Miss Larsen. ‘Would you care to arrange that now, Billy?’
‘No, I never …’
Before he can get anything else out of his mouth, Mrs McBain says, ‘Then get back to quietly brainstorming, please.’
‘I don’t need no conference,’ Billy mumbles angrily, but too softly for the teacher to hear.
‘Hey, mate,’ Matthew says to him. Billy turns around, a ready-to-fight expression on his round, doughy face.
But Matthew only has a helpful suggestion for him. ‘You could write about one of those girls you told us about yesterday in drama.’
Billy snarls, ‘I never meant I never had nothin’ wonderful happen to me.’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘I meant other kids in here never did. Like her.’ He points to Justine, in the first row. Hopefully she didn’t hear that. I’m grateful he didn’t single me out as the least likely to have experienced something wonderful.
‘I know!’ Matthew has lost interest in Billy. ‘I’ll do when we won the first trivia quiz.’ He opens his exercise book and starts to write in his big, loopy scrawl.
Billy is still turned around in his seat, glaring at Matthew. ‘I’ve had thousands of wonderful things happen to me,’ he states.
Matthew looks up at him. ‘Me and Katie and the Fish Expert here, we won every quiz in our grade last year. We even got to go to an interschool competition. We would of won that, except the only question I knew was which famous Australian race horse died in America and people thought they poisoned him. Remember that, Katie? You were spewing when we came in second.’
‘No, I wasn’t.’ Why does he have to make me sound like a total nerd?
‘You sure acted like you were spewing,’ Matthew protests. ‘You wouldn’t talk to me for three days.’
‘Well, I don’t care about trivia any more.’
Stephen looks at me, shocked. ‘Why not?’ he asks.
‘Because … just because!’ I say irritably.
Why do I have a feeling that Olivia and her friends are listening to us? They don’t look like they are. They’re just sitting there, quietly chatting with each other, enveloped in their private cloud of coolness. Yet something tells me they’re evaluating everything I say.
Of all the parts of high school I’ve been dreading, this is a bit I especially haven’t been looking forward to: changing my clothes for PE. We never had to do this in primary school, because our actual uniform consisted of tracky daks and runners.
We’re in the girls’ change room, off to the side of the gym. It’s big and echoey, made out of concrete. We’re all trying to hide from each other while we change. The cool girls are next to me.
As I’m attempting to wiggle out of my school dress and into my PE shirt without showing anything, I hear Olivia ask one of the other cool girls, ‘Do you like them?’
I wonder who she’s talking about. Surely it couldn’t include me since I’m standing right beside her.
‘I said, do you like them?’ Olivia asks louder, and I suddenly realise she’s talking to me.
‘Who?’ My voice squeaks like a surprised mouse.
‘Those boys you sit with.’
I knew they were watching me! What am I supposed to say?
‘I don’t exactly like them,’ I splutter as I bend over to put on my runners. Too bad Mum made me buy the cheapo brand from Pay-Less. I finish tying my shoes and straighten up. Olivia, with the other two cool girls behind her, is waiting for me to say more.
‘I mean I don’t like them like as in liking them. I know them because we went to the same primary school. Stephen’s shy but he knows everything about computers and marine animals and Matthew’s not as dumb as he seems. When you get to know him …’ I’m blathering like an idiot. Why don’t I just shut up?
‘Okay,’ Olivia says, and turns back to her friends. Okay what? Did she read my mind? Sometimes I can’t stand myself! My first chance to talk to the cool girls, and I carry on like a retarded parrot.
Term in Year Seven Page 2