On the Jellicoe Road

  “What?” they’re all asking me at once.

  “Are you okay?” Raffy asks.

  I unlatch my seatbelt, get out of the car, and begin walking back down the road. I hear the slamming of three doors behind me and feel them following.

  In front of us, on the side of the road, among weeds and ferns and rocks and tangled bushes, are a group of poppies. Surrounding them is a pebbled border, which seems to convey the message to keep clear. I’m staring at the flowers in amazement and then I look at Griggs.

  “Do you guys jog along here?”

  He shakes his head. “We go the other way.”

  “What is it?” Raffy asks. “One of those roadside shrines or something?”

  “Makes sense,” Santangelo says. “There was supposed to be the world’s worst accident here about twenty years ago.”

  I turn to him. “Who died?”

  He shrugs. “My dad would know, obviously. I think two families got wiped out. But they weren’t from here.”

  Griggs is watching me carefully. “You okay?” he asks quietly.

  There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to tell them the story. It’s like it belongs to me…and Hannah. I don’t know what’s true or not. Did Hannah know about those families?

  “There’s this story,” I begin, “that they were planted by these kids who went to the Jellicoe School and one day they were destroyed by the Cadets while they were jogging. It was the first year the Cadets came. But the next day, one of the Cadets came back and he planted them again. With the kids, that is.”

  “Where did you hear that?” Griggs asks.

  “From Hannah.”

  “The one who looks after you?”

  I don’t answer. There’s just something about this spot. I turn around and look at the other side of the road where Jude first saw Narnie, thinking she was an apparition. They’re not real, I keep on telling myself. Those people aren’t real.

  Griggs, Santangelo, and Raffy are looking at me closely and I walk back to the car.

  Griggs convinces Santangelo that he should drive, in case Santangelo’s dad sees us. “So where to?” he asks.

  Santangelo turns around in the seat, looking at me. “I’ll show you the spot where they found something that belonged to the missing kid.”

  “That’s morbid,” Raffy says.

  “What missing kid?” Griggs asks.

  Santangelo turns back around but I catch his eye in the rear-view mirror and he looks away. Once again I get a sense that he knows something more than I do about my own life. I can’t imagine what it is but I suspect as the son of a policeman, he comes across all sorts of information. Stuck out at the school in the middle of a territory war, I have never had access to any information from town. Then again, I’ve never searched for it, because Jellicoe never seemed like anything more than a weak link between my mother and Hannah. Over the years I’d wondered sometimes if they had met while Hannah was at university in the city or maybe working in a pub someplace. Or maybe Hannah was a neighbour who felt an affinity for a single mother her age who couldn’t get through her day without a cocktail of alcohol, drugs, and pain-killers. Hannah could have worked at the methadone clinic one of the times my mother tried to quit. But every time I spoke to Hannah about the connection between her and my mother she’d just ask, “Do you feel safe?” I’d shrug because I didn’t feel threatened and she’d say, “Then for the time being that has to be enough.”

  But it was never enough. And I resent her more for it now than I ever have.

  But Santangelo seems to know something and, more than anything, he seems willing to tell.

  “Take us there,” I say quietly.

  The spot is way on the other side of town. As we drive I follow the river, right through town and back out into the middle of nowhere again.

  The place is almost as majestic as Hannah’s property. Big weeping willows shade the area by the river. Ropes hang off branches ready for swimmers to throw themselves into the water.

  We sit, the four of us, watching the river, not saying much because it’s not as if we’re friends who have things in common to discuss. But strangely enough, it’s not awkward—just silent, apart from the typical nature soundtrack buzzing in the air. Once in a while some little flying insect stations itself right in front of my nose and then it’s off doing a crazy three-sixty turn before flying away in a manic direction.

  “You’re not another one who’s obsessed with that serial killer, are you?” I ask Santangelo.

  “No.”

  “Then why mention a boy who disappeared almost twenty years ago?”

  “How do you know it was almost twenty years ago?” Santangelo asks.

  “You said.”

  “No he didn’t,” Griggs says, looking suddenly interested.

  “And I didn’t say it was a boy.”

  “Was it?” Griggs asks him.

  Santangelo nods.

  “I’ve probably been told about it before,” I say. I didn’t want to tell them about Hannah’s manuscript. “You?”

  He shrugs, but I keep my focus on him until he fidgets uncomfortably. “I saw a photo of him once,” he says quietly. “It left an impression.”

  “Because he was our age?” Raffy asks.

  Santangelo thinks for a moment, as if he needs to figure something out himself while trying to explain it to other people.

  “Do you ever wonder how someone our age can possibly be dead? There’s just something really unnatural about it.”

  I watch his face as he tries to explain.

  “If you saw the photo you’d understand. You’d want to say to the kid in it, “Why weren’t you strong enough to resist death? Didn’t that look in your eye stop anything bad from happening to you?”

  “But you’re not talking about someone’s age; now you’re talking about their spirit,” Raffy says.

  “Maybe I am. It’s like when I was in year eight and we had to study The Diary of Anne Frank. I mean, she died of typhoid. Can you believe it? How could Anne Frank die of typhoid? The girl never kept her mouth shut, she was bloody annoying, and it was like nothing could kill what was inside of her. I thought, okay, maybe a gas chamber or a firing squad could kill her but not an illness that other people survived.”

  I’m very disturbed to find out that the leader of the Townies has a soul and I’m beginning to develop a bit of a crush on him.

  “At the end of the day it’s about heart beats and blood flow,” Griggs says flatly. “People’s spirits don’t keep them alive.”

  Santangelo looks at me again. “The kid in the photo…his hair was kind of wavy, like a golden brown, and his eyes were that colour that’s not blue or green and he was smiling, so he had this kind of cut in his face. Not a real one. As if the smile made cuts in his cheek, but they weren’t dimples.”

  Raffy and Griggs look at me. I stare out at the river.

  “I saw you once,” Santangelo says, and I know he’s speaking to me. “It was about two years ago and you were sitting next to Raf. There was this performer at the Jellicoe fair. You know, one of those travelling Shakespeare slapstick comedies and you were laughing and you kind of—well, not to be insulting or anything because you don’t look like a boy anymore…the guys always say, ‘That Taylor Markham, she’s not too bad-looking,’ so I don’t want you to think that I think you look masculine because I swear to God you don’t, you look—”

  “Get to the point,” Griggs interrupts.

  “It was like I was looking at him,” Santangelo finishes. “The kid in the photo.”

  “This all based on one photo,” Raffy says.

  “You’ve got to see it to understand. Actually, there are two photos. The other is of the group.”

  “What group?” I ask. My heart is beating fast and my mouth is getting that churning sweet feeling of nausea.

  “About five of them. One’s a Cadet; I could tell by the uniform. My father had the file out on his desk once when I was in there. All I saw were the t
wo photos and the cap, which was found out there,” he says, pointing to the river.

  “What was his name?”

  “Xavier.”

  My stomach settles back down and I take a deep breath of relief. “Never heard of him.”

  “Xavier Webster Schroeder.”

  I feel faint and my breath seems to leave my body with a speed I can’t control. I need it desperately to come back, because the feeling that I’m breathing through a straw frightens the hell out of me.

  “Are you okay?” Griggs says, looking at me. He turns to Santangelo. “Why do you always do this?”

  “Why do you always go berserk when she loses a bit of colour?” Santangelo asks back.

  “Because she’s an asthmatic, you moron, and every time you open your mouth and tell her something she forgets how to breathe.”

  I get this horrible feeling that while I’m in the middle of an asthma attack these two are going to thump the hell out of each other again.

  Raffy fumbles through my backpack for my inhaler and I take a few puffs until I get my breathing back under control. She glares at both of them, a bit pale herself.

  “What?” Santangelo asks again.

  “Just drop us off at my place,” she says, helping me up. “And if you guys have one more fight, I swear to God, Chaz, I will never speak to you again.”

  They stand staring at each other and I’m waiting for a comeback from him. But Santangelo just looks a bit gutted and I realise it’s because Raffy looks just as bad and I get a glimpse of how things really are between them.

  Without looking at Griggs he holds out a hand to him and Griggs shakes it, reluctantly.

  We get into the car and I lean back, exhausted. Santangelo turns and looks at both of us. “So what’s the story?”

  I close my eyes and curl up on the seat.

  “Our House guardian who lives by the river,” Raffy says. “Her name is Hannah Schroeder.”

  We get dropped off at Raffy’s place and her mother forces me to have a lie down and then refuses to drive me home that night. So I’m taken prisoner and made to wear a crisp white nightie for middle-aged people that has pink and white bows on the shoulders. Raffy looks apologetic because she left any nightwear she could have lent me back at the school. We sit watching television until late. I haven’t said much since finding out about the missing boy’s link to Hannah and my uncanny resemblance to him. I don’t want to even think about it right now, so we lie in bed, pretending the conversation never came up, and just concentrate on trivial stuff, like the guys.

  “Do you miss being friends with Santangelo?” I ask her after the lights are out and we’re almost asleep.

  “What makes you think we were friends?”

  “Everything.”

  I hear her yawn.

  “Being enemies with him is better,” she tells me. There’s a pause and I think she’s going to say something more but she doesn’t and it’s just silence for a long while.

  “My father…” I begin, realising that I have never said those words out loud. “If I look like that kid in the photo and he’s disappeared…”

  She turns to face me and although I can’t see her in the dark, I sense her there. “Don’t listen to Santangelo. Once he was convinced that a girl he was going out with looked exactly like Cameron Diaz and, I swear to God, my father looks more like Cameron Diaz.”

  I curl into the nightie, the crisp cotton cocooning me in a wave of security and I go to sleep thinking of the boy in Santangelo’s photo.

  Because thinking of him brings me solace.

  We’re still in our nightwear at eleven o’clock the next morning. Raffy’s dad is making us breakfast. The doorbell rings and Raffy’s mum calls out, “It’s open.” I just can’t believe these people invite people into their home without asking who it is.

  Santangelo and Griggs walk in and Raffy and I exchange looks of mini-mortification. They’re surprised to see me but Raffy’s mum is too busy kissing Santangelo with such enthusiasm that it’s like Jesus Christ has just walked in.

  “And this is Gri—Jonah,” Santangelo says, trying very hard to let the name roll off his tongue.

  Jonah Griggs shakes hands with both Raffy’s parents like they’re in the military. As usual he is dressed in his fatigues and looks away the instant someone tries to make eye contact. Raffy’s mum forces them to sit down and they get to see us up close and personal in our nighties. I think I felt less self-conscious in my undies and singlet the night Griggs came to my room.

  I watch Raffy’s mother standing behind her chair, holding on to Raffy’s long hair as if putting it into a ponytail and there’s this pride on her face while she’s touching her, like she’s saying, “Look at my beautiful girl.” It makes my eyes fill with tears and I quickly brush them away but as usual Jonah Griggs is looking and I want to melt into the ground and have the nightie cover the insignificant puddle that is me. It’s not that I miss my mother. It’s just that I miss the idea of what one would be.

  “We were just driving around…in Jonah’s car and we thought maybe we’d pick Raffy up and then Taylor at the school, but obviously she’s here.”

  “What a pity. We’ve already made plans to go shopping,” Raffy’s mum says.

  “Shame,” Raffy says. “We’ll see the guys out,” she adds, standing up.

  “Raffy, they might want some breakfast.”

  The boys speak over each other, explaining that they’ve already eaten, and I walk out with Griggs while Santangelo has a twenty-minute goodbye with Raffy’s parents.

  “What’s with what you’re wearing?” Griggs asks while we stand outside waiting for the others.

  “It’s pretty hideous, isn’t it?” I say.

  “Don’t force me to look at it,” he says. “It’s see-through.”

  That kills conversation for a couple of seconds.

  “Strange that you’re hanging out with Santangelo,” I say, trying to keep the silence from growing even more awkward. It’s much easier dealing with him as an enemy in the territory wars than like this.

  “Strange? I don’t think that word comes anywhere near it. My troops are on an overnight camp three hundred kilometres away from here. I had to sleep at the Santangelo penitentiary for pre-pubescent girls. There are hundreds of them, including that annoying pest that belongs to you. I have one brother and I live with four hundred guys. Girls under the age of fourteen are the most frightening creatures I have ever come across. They all insist on running around the house in their underwear. Then Nanna Faye comes over as well as Nonna Caterina and I have to drive them to Bingo in ‘my car’ and then they make us stay and we have to call out the numbers and they have these Bingo codes like, ‘Tweak of the thumb…Stop and run…Two fat ladies…Clickety click,’ and did you know Santangelo’s black and Italian? Do you know how many cousins he has as a result? Well, I’ve met them all and they ask me a hundred questions and I rarely talk to anyone outside my immediate family or school so let’s just say that the past twenty-four hours have been somewhat on the traumatic side. And to top it all off there’s the sergeant who looks at me like I’m going to wipe out his family during the night.”

  “As if Santangelo’s dad would ever have you in his house if he thought that,” I say quietly.

  He’s not looking at me and suddenly I get why he doesn’t look people in the eye. It’s like he thinks he’ll see the doubt or the distrust or the questions about his past.

  “Okay, so it’s not that bad,” he says after a while. “So, like I asked, what’s with the nightie?”

  “It smells like what I always think mothers smell like,” I tell him honestly, knowing I don’t have to explain.

  He nods. “My mum has one just the same and you have no idea how disturbing it is that it’s turning me on.”

  Before I can even go red, Raffy and Santangelo walk towards us.

  “Your nighties’ see-through,” Santangelo says, getting into the car. He rolls down the window. “I have a plan,” he s
ays.

  I shake my head. “I can’t do territory wars at the moment.”

  “It’s not about that,” he says. “It’s about those photos.”

  “Do you have a death wish?” Griggs warns.

  Santangelo ignores him. “I’m going to get them for you,” he tells me.

  “How?”

  “Easy. I’m going to break into the police station.”

  I talk about going back to the school every day but I always end up staying. On Saturday night they take me to a twenty-first party. I have no idea who it’s for but it’s at the scout hall and I’m almost convinced that the whole town has been invited. Jonah Griggs is sitting at a table with Santangelo, Santangelo’s girlfriend, and some of her friends. When he sees me, there’s a look of surprise and something else.

  I’m self-conscious about the skirt I bought with Raffy and the T-shirt that barely covers my midriff, and the fact that I let Raffy’s mum brainwash me into believing that no woman should leave her house without wearing lipstick but I like the way it makes me feel.

  Senior Cadets are allowed out on a Saturday night during the holidays and the place is packed with them. The music is loud but the people’s voices are louder and every one of them looks happy. I haven’t seen so many happy people all in one room, except on television, but these people don’t look like they’re acting.

  It surprises me to see Ben in a huddle with the Mullet Brothers and Anson Choi and some of the Townies. I didn’t know he was back from holidays. He walks towards me doing this salsa cha-cha thing and it makes me laugh and I dance back towards him. He drags me over and introduces me to people he’s just met. “They think you’re a babe,” he whispers in my ear, and because nobody has ever called me a babe before, I find myself charmed. Then Griggs and Santangelo are beside me and somehow Griggs has managed to shoulder his way between Ben and me. Although I don’t look at him, I feel him at my shoulder for most of the night. The Townies poke fun at Griggs and Choi because they’re in uniform but the banter is good-natured and I’m surprised how clever Griggs is in his response to it.

  We’re in a world full of people Raffy knows. People who bring her to life and it seems as if her feet hardly touch the ground because every second person picks her up and twirls her around. While she’s speaking to her uncle, friends from her primary school introduce themselves to me.