~
“Rose,” Mr Burgess called. “A moment please.”
Everyone filed out of the classroom, leaving me with my English teacher. I noticed he had my exam on the desk in front of him.
“Did I fail?” I asked apprehensively. My mother did not take kindly to poor grades.
Mr Burgess had been staring out of the window and didn’t answer.
“Mr Burgess?”
“No, Rose, you didn’t fail,” he slid the exam towards me. “In fact, you were in the top five percent of the class.”
I rearranged my bag strap on my shoulder, frowning.
“Is that bad?”
“No, it’s not bad. It’s just...” Mr Burgess ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I don’t understand why you could do so well on the exam and not the in class assignments.”
“Well, sir, I was under the impression that the in class assignments didn’t count towards our GPA, but the exams did.”
Silence fell between us and students chattered outside the classroom.
“Technically you’re not wrong, Rose, but I would appreciate a little more effort in class. Otherwise I’m not going to be able to write you a very good recommendation once you leave school.”
“Oh, um, actually, I’m starting a traineeship down at the hospital soon,” I told him, trying to look proud of myself. “So I’ll only be doing school part time.”
“Oh, well, excellent,” he stood up to go to his next class. “I should also mention that you were in the top three percent of the state.”
I barely heard him. I’d noticed my stalker standing in the trees again.
“Uh huh, yeah that’s great, Mr B.”
He sighed and shouldered his bag.
“Good luck, Miss Evermore.”
I followed him out and then headed straight to the tree line.
“You were in my dream.” I said loudly, knowing he could hear me.
“I know,” he replied, leaning against a trunk. “And you didn’t hit me with a saucepan this time.”
“Can you blame me?” I stood well away from him, close enough to the open that I could run if he tried any funny business.
He sighed and muttered something like, “They always give me the difficult ones.”
“Excuse me?” I folded my arms. “You’re stalking me, not the other way around. Also, I’m rather curious as to whom, ‘they’ are?”
“If you come with me, you’ll find out,” he replied, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh sure,” I said sarcastically. “I’m just going to follow the guy who’s been stalking me, into the woods away from people.”
“Students.”
“Witnesses.” I shot back.
He laughed in spite of himself.
“I guess I can’t blame you, can I?”
The bell rang behind me, signalling next class. Without another word, I marched through the tree litter and left him behind.
School ended, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I loved Fridays, and the two days that came after. Despite my stack of homework that my teachers had insisted on setting, I planned on spending my weekend sleeping, eating and reading.
As though sensing an opportunity to ruin my weekend, my mother rang just as I was climbing into my car in the school car park.
“Hello?” I was apprehensive; when Mum rang, it was because she wanted me to do something.
“Have you finished school?”
“Yes, why?”
“Head down to the hospital now. Jacqui is there until four, she wants to interview you.”
“Oh,” my heart fell. “I’m not dressed very neat.”
“Well tidy yourself up and head over there. I’ll see you for dinner.”
She was gone before I could protest. I scowled at my phone. She always did that so I couldn’t argue.
Reluctantly, I started up my car and pulled out of the car park, noticing the conspicuous lack of school jerks around. I saw them climbing onto the school bus a little ways down the road and waved at them happily. I must’ve done more damage to their car than my own.
The hospital was in the very centre of town, and I dodged Ar Cena’s pathetic excuse for peak hour traffic by taking the back roads. I pulled into the hospital car park and sat in my car for a moment, looking up at the hospital that I’d been born in - born in eighteen years ago, and was now trying to get a job in. I was suddenly hit with the reality of it all. I almost pulled out of the car park, but instead forced myself out of the car, retying my long ponytail and ditching my leather jacket at the last minute. Though I hated it, the white polo shirt (the only uniform my school insisted on) was a lot neater than the jacket.
“Respectable,” I muttered under my breath, locking my car. “Be respectable.”
I walked up the slight incline to the glass sliding doors, waiting for them to register me (one of the hazards of being short was that sometimes automatic doors didn’t see me). When they did, I was assaulted by the smell of disinfectant and steam cleaned carpets. I inched anxiously across the lobby, suddenly feeling very dirty and grimy. The woman at reception looked up at me, stretching a smile across her lip sticked mouth.
“How can I help?”
“I’m looking for Jacqui,” I said, gingerly placing my fingertips on the top of the desk. It was so quiet that you could hear the clock on the wall ticking off the seconds. “I was meant to have an interview with her this afternoon.”
“One moment,” another lip stick smile, and she disappeared into a back room. She came back towing another woman who I recognized.
“Hi, Rose,” Jacqui said, smiling at me. “Come on through.”
I followed her into the backroom which turned out to be a small kitchenette, sitting down in the plastic chair she pointed me at.
“Tea or coffee?” she asked, pointing to a battered old kettle.
“No, thank you,” I replied.
“So, Rose, you want to be our new trainee?”
“Yes,” I said, tacking a smile onto my mouth like Lip Stick out the front.
“Have you worked before?”
“No, I haven’t. I’ve always done school full time.”
“But now that you’ve finished your mid years, you want to get into the work force?”
“Yes,” I said firmly, trying to convince myself and deciding it was just easier to agree with her.
“Alrighty, I’ll just get you to fill this out, and I’ll be right back.”
I took the pen she offered me, beginning to fill out the form in front of me. I’d guessed that this interview was just a formality, and I was right; the form was asking for bank details so they could pay me. Jacqui came back just as I finished.
“When your Mum said that you were looking for a job, I thought of you straight away,” she said, sitting opposite me with a folder. “I’m glad you’re going to be joining us here, Rose.”
“Me too,” I replied, though my stomach seemed to fill with lead as I said it.
“Last time I saw you, you were only this big,” she said grinning, holding her hand about a metre off of the floor.
“That wasn’t that long ago,” I replied, disgruntled. “Hey, Jacqui, when would I start?”
“Well, you could come in for half of tomorrow, just to get you used to the way we run things here.”
“Sure,” I agreed, though I groaned internally. A sleep in had been sounding so good.
I finished chatting with Jacqui just before four o’clock, and we agreed that I’d be there at nine the next morning to learn the ropes.
Well, I thought to myself as I climbed into my car, Mum will be pleased.
She was. She made spaghetti bolognaise for dinner, which was my favourite. Take away was all very well and good, but home cooked meals were always my favourite.
“You got the oven working again then?” I asked, winding pasta around my fork.
She launched into a story about the man who’d come to fix the gas. She’d had the day off work to clea
n up the kitchen, and it was almost back to how it was before I set it on fire.
After dinner, I crawled up onto the roof with a book, but I left it face down with its pages splayed over the tiles. Instead I hugged my knees close to my chest and watched the sun sink beneath the hills that surrounded Ar Cena. I tried to feel happy about the fact I now had a job, but at the same time, I struggled with staying in the same town. Suddenly I understood why the students in the year above me had fled for the city as soon as they’d finished.
I lay back on the roof, staring up at the clouds which were turning pink and orange. Who knows how long I’d be stuck here now?
Stop it, I chided myself angrily. You have a job, be happy. It’s better than the great void of nothingness you were facing at the end of year twelve.
But, as I pulled my book over my face and began to read by the light of the streetlight, I knew how I really felt.
Soul Fire Page 6