Still nothing from Santangelo and then I realise he’s deliberately ignoring her and that they have some kind of history.
“You two know each other well, I presume.”
Just a sigh and pursed lips from her and a hellish scowl from him.
“This is ridiculous,” I say, walking to the door.
“No it’s not. It’s called coexistence.” Santangelo blocks my exit. “Once you and the Cadets get it right, we might even try to sell the idea to the Israelis and Palestinians. What do you reckon?”
“You haven’t told us what you have to offer us yet,” I say.
“The Prayer Tree,” Raffaela says immediately.
“I’m not negotiating with her.”
I glare at Raffaela. Personally, I’m not interested in the Prayer Tree. I’m curious about what they’re going to use as a bargaining tool.
“I’ve got information,” he says to me, “that you might want.”
“About?”
No answer, and for a moment I think we’re dealing with an amateur who has come with nothing to offer.
“What?” Ben asks.
I glance at Santangelo and I get a gut feeling that it’s not about the territory wars or the Club House.
“We have a map that could possibly be the draft for a tunnel,” he says, suddenly focusing on Raffaela and Ben.
A ploy. Doesn’t mean the map is non-existent but he’s holding back and I want to know why.
“Means absolutely nothing to us because they never finished it beyond your school boundaries,” he continues. “But it might be important to you.”
“The tunnel’s a myth.”
“Are you calling him a liar?”
The Mullets are angry. Their teeth are showing again and they almost back us into the door. Ben tries to stand between us but they shove him out of the way.
“Set up a meeting with the Cadets and maybe we’ll talk again,” I say.
“That might be hard,” Santangelo says.
“Make it easy, then.”
“I don’t think you understand. My father was the cop who dragged you back when you ran away a couple of years ago.”
I chance a glance at him again. He knows something about me; that I can tell. Being the son of the cop in charge would mean he knows a lot about most people around here.
“Well, you just make sure you thank him for me and tell him I said hi,” I say with mock sweetness, although I do remember the cop’s face, kind in a stressed-worried-angry way. The Brigadier, though, was a different story. Cold and tense.
“I don’t think you’re getting my drift. The guy my father and that Brigadier dragged back with you? Remember him? Well, he’s in charge of the Cadets now and rumour has it that none of us want to be dealing with him.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. The Mullet Brothers are smirking. Raffaela and Ben look confused.
“Griggs?” I ask, feigning indifference.
Chaz Santangelo nods. “Jonah Griggs.”
Chapter 4
Jonah Griggs.
Not just a name but a state of mind I never want to revisit, although I do keep him at the back of my mind for those times I get my hopes raised about something. So then I can slap myself into reality and remind myself of what happens when you let someone into your sacred space. Jonah Griggs is my second reminder to never ever trust another human being. My mother was the first and these days I feel like Hannah might have joined that small and intimate group of traitors.
Raffaela and Ben haven’t said a word, but I can hear what they’re thinking as they follow me out into the clearing. I want to tell their brains to shut the hell up but I know the only way to do that is to speak and I can’t.
The lights of the Houses beam through the bush and mark out the path. Finally, after fifteen minutes, silence takes its toll.
“Did you make contact with the Cadets, Ben?” I say finally.
“Me?”
“Me?” is Ben’s standard response to everything.
“Ben Cassidy, could you please tell the class why crossing the Rubicon was considered the catalyst for the fall of the Roman Republic?”
“Me?”
“Ben Cassidy, someone’s on the phone for you.”
“Me?”
“Ben Cassidy, I think one of the Darling girls has a crush on you.”
“Me?”
“Ben Cassidy, who’s the biggest loser in the Western World?”
He’d have that “is this a trick question?” look on his face.
“Me?”
“Seeing as Raffaela made contact with the Townies, you can make contact with the Cadets,” I tell him now.
“I think that Cadet might want to talk to you, Taylor.”
I stop and he walks into me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ben shuffles for a moment, looking at his feet, before he dares look at me. “Well, rumour has it he’s not the easiest person to speak to and seeing you guys have a history it might make some sense….”
“Do you know what a history is? It’s what Raffaela and Chaz Santangelo have. Lots of stories to tell, lots of anger to vent, lots of baggage to check into I-Don’t-Give-a-Shit Airline. The Cadet and me? Nothing to tell. I ran away one day. He was running in the same direction. We ended up on the same train in the same carriage. The train derailed, we walked the same road and hitched a ride with the same postman in Yass. We got caught because the Cadet got scared and rang the powers that be. We came home in Santangelo’s father’s paddy wagon. End of story. No history. No sequel. Nothing.”
I can’t see their faces because it’s too dark but they know I’m lying. I lie all the time about those three days. Probably because I can’t explain it. It reeks of supernatural bullshit and hunches. It stars the boy in the tree in my dreams who took me by the hand and made me stand on a branch and asked, “What can you see?”
“Nothing,” I had said.
“Know what I can see? From this distance, everything is so bloody perfect.”
And I looked harder into the distance and what I saw was my mother. There was a radiance about her that I had never seen before. So I went looking for her and in that dream I found her soul, but when I woke up in the morning, I knew that I had to go looking for the rest of her.
That’s when I first saw the Cadet, on the platform of the Jellicoe Station. I knew who he was in an instant. It’s not every day that you hear a story about a boy who killed his father. That was the rumour, anyway. Standing on the platform alongside him, I believed every word of it. There was a caged fury to him. A feralness that seeped out of every pore.
“Do you know when the next train to Yass is coming?” I had asked.
“Go to hell,” he said, but there was a desolate fear in his eyes and I couldn’t look away.
“Been there. Trust me. It’s so overrated.”
And for reasons I will never understand, I received a smile from Jonah Griggs, and there was a yearning in it, touching a nerve inside me that still freaks me out to this day. On that train something was unleashed in both of us. He didn’t say much about himself except that it was his first time away from his mother and brother and he had a desperate need to know that they were all right without him. And I told him everything. About my first memory, sitting on the shoulders of a giant who I know can only be my father. Of touching the sky. Of lying between two people who read me stories of wild things and journeys with dragons, the soft hum of their voices speaking of love and serenity. See, I remember love. That’s what people don’t understand. And what I also remember is that in telling that tale to the Cadet on the train I got a glimpse of peace.
When the train derailed and we decided to hike, there was never a question that we wouldn’t stick together and find my mother. Except on the third night he had a dream and betrayed us.
“What do I say to him?” Ben asks, bringing me back to the real world.
What should he say to the Cadet? Ask him why he called his school to come and get us when
we were so close to wherever both of us wanted to be. Ask him why he had made that call when he knew I was two hours away from my mother.
“Tell him we want to make a deal.”
I walk past the year-seven and-eight dorms, where Jessa McKenzie has already taken over. The others hang off her every word and I haven’t seen them this animated…actually ever. The Lachlan House leaders were always strict. Commandments number one to ten ranged from No Fun to No Fun. But down here, Jessa McKenzie and her posse are either giggling hysterically or spooking one another out. The rest of the girls are engrossed in her tale and I even notice Raffaela amongst them, sitting on one of the beds, intrigued.
“He’s killed ten people in twenty years,” I hear Jessa say.
“But nowhere near here?” That comes from Chloe P. who, in all probability, will now be paralysed with fear all night.
“Those kids who went missing a couple of years ago were from Truscott, which is halfway between here and the city,” one of the year eights says. “That’s close enough.”
“Lights off,” I say.
They look my way. Scrubbed little faces of kids who don’t really know who I am. Just that I’m in charge.
“I’m telling them about the serial killer, Taylor, and how he—”
“Is nowhere near us,” I interrupt.
I walk over to her as they begin to disperse. I catch a glimpse of the newspaper clippings spread out all over her bed. The faces of the dead or missing, so young and happy that all I can think of is, how can they be dead? Toothy grins, mostly those school photos that you keep hidden.
But the worst photos are those of the parents. Their faces are so drawn and grief-stricken. They want their children back. I look at the faces of the girls around me and wonder who would look that grief-stricken for half of them. If something happens to me, whose face will be on the front page of the paper begging for me? Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?
I look at Jessa McKenzie and I wonder what type of warped person carries around newspaper clippings of dead kids and despairing parents. What kind of a freak is this kid who’s giggling hysterically with the girls in the neighbouring beds, each with a crush on the other for being the same age when the rest of the world seems so old?
The three of them are snuggled up together, talking like they haven’t seen one another in years. Sometimes I look at the girls in my form, in my very own house, most of them now on the third floor with me, and I realise that I hardly know them.
For the first time since they made me leader of the community, I realise why I told Hannah I was thinking of leaving. It’s fear. Not of having to negotiate territory, fight a war, and make sure we come out of it with more land than when we started. I can do that blindfolded.
It’s this that scares me.
My seniors have left the House.
I’m in charge of fifty kids who don’t give a shit about the territory wars. They just want to be looked after.
And I have no idea how.
Chapter 5
He went missing on one of the prettiest days Narnie could remember in her whole sixteen years. One of those days when she woke up and actually wanted to be alive.
Over the next twenty-four hours the four of them called his name, first with annoyance, then urgency, hysteria, rage, grief.
And then with despair.
By the third day everyone else at the school joined in, as well as the Townies and the Cadets.
But the birds still sang and the river still flowed and the flowers were in full bloom.
And then their voices stopped and their souls stood still and they ceased being who they had been.
Because who they were had always been determined by him.
Five days after his disappearance she scraped the words and numbers on the trunk of the Prayer Tree.
MATTHEW 10.26
And she vowed that she would never leave this place until he returned.
Chapter 6
The boy in the tree in my dreams comes calling again. His visits are more frequent these days. I ask him why and he tells me it’s because he’s waiting for someone. For the first time ever I feel a chill slice through me. I ask him who it is he is waiting for but he doesn’t answer. For some freaky reason, Hannah comes to mind and just when I’m about to ask him another question, I sense that there is someone else in the tree with us. Someone at the edge of the branch, like a shadow, but I can’t quite see their face. The boy stands up tall on the branch and dives into the water below and I hear a whimper from the shadow at the end of the branch. It frightens me so much that, with shaking legs, I stand as well. Ready to jump. Just about to.
“Taylor?”
I look at my clock. Six A.M.
Raffaela is standing by my bed. “It’s Ben. You should see what the Cadets have done to him.”
They went for his fingers like they knew how much he needed them. His House leaders would always do that to him, too. Ben’s a muso. Loves anything that produces a tune, so naturally it’s always his fingers that get smashed when someone is pissed off with him, and Ben has one of those personalities that invites pissed-offness. Raffaela has his fingers taped and it’s a while before he looks up at me. I flinch at what I see.
I’m presuming the eye will go a purply colour and that it will be difficult for him to eat for a day or two, judging by the amount of blood around his mouth. Raffaela cleans him up with the practicality of someone who has spent a lifetime doing it and I try to keep my mind on the semi-carnage in front of me but I just can’t help thinking back to my dream.
“So you made the offer,” I say.
He nods but even that seems painful.
“And they didn’t like it?”
“He wanted the negotiations to take place between him and the girl. ‘Isn’t she in charge over there?’ That’s what he said. Like I thought he would. Remember that part where I said he’ll want to speak to you?”
“And he’s a coward who gets his thugs to do the dirty work for him.”
“Oh no,” Ben says, trying to shake his head and pushing Raffaela’s hand away. “He did all this himself. You’ve got to hand it to him. He does his own dirty work.”
I can tell Ben’s angry.
“I am allowed to delegate,” I say to him, speaking more sharply than I should.
“Yeah, I know. But you weren’t delegating. You were avoiding someone and I got caught in the middle. Look at me. I’m five foot four. I’m a weakling. My specialty is medieval jousting and violin. I’m not built for pain. He, on the other hand, is a ten-feet-fricken-tall unit.”
“Then we try again and give him want he wants for the time being,” Raffaela says.
“We have no idea what he wants.”
“Did this happen on our territory or theirs?”
“Does it matter? It hurts the same. They have booby traps everywhere. It’s like one of those bad Chuck Norris–Vietnam War movies from the eighties.”
“So they’re bored?” I ask.
“Out of their tiny brains. They just worked out that you can’t get mobile coverage out here. So no text-messaging means more terrorising. You can’t walk a metre without a trip-wire getting you. You need to call a meeting with Richard and the other leaders. Remind them of exactly where the boundaries are because if one of the younger kids gets caught in the wrong area, there’ll be casualties and the teachers will start asking questions and the other Houses are going to go apeshit.”
“Then we’ll go check the boundaries later today.”
“I’m not going!”
“Yes you are, Ben. You’re my second-in-charge.”
“Only chosen because you didn’t want Richard. Don’t think for one moment that I thought you picked me for any other reason. I don’t get chosen for things unless there’s a motive. You know why I’m head of my House? Because Number One Son found Jesus Christ and is now a happy clapper with those Hillsong People in Sydney, and I’m about this close to joining him.”
/> “I’ll get Richard, then. He’ll be the best of a bad bunch of backstabbers. Is that okay with you?” I snap. I walk out and slam the door, thumping furiously down the stairs.
The teacher who has replaced Hannah is calling the roll in our dining room and everyone acts as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Everyone except for me and Jessa McKenzie. She sits at the bottom of the stairs wrapped in her nightgown, with that perfect yearning concern on her face.
“Go get some breakfast,” I say firmly.
“Are you going to Hannah’s?”
“It’s none of your business where I’m going,” I mutter, slamming out the front door.
Hannah’s house has begun to lose her scent. These days it smells musty and still. I walk to her room in the attic and lie on her bed. It’s been a week since I’ve seen her and I know that it’s time to go and speak to one of the teachers. To ask casually where she is. I bury my face in her pillow. I can’t remember one day in the last five years that Hannah hasn’t been around and for a moment I want to cry. I’m angry that I want to cry because I feel like I’ve been manipulated by the soundtrack in my head—the same one that made me cry in some shit sentimental movie with Julia Roberts where the mum is dying of cancer. I get off the bed and walk down to the kitchen. Hannah’s manuscript is there on the table, but it seems thinner and the pages are spread out like someone’s just read them, like someone’s just been here, which makes me feel uneasy. The pages aren’t numbered, so I don’t know whether I have the beginning or end or whether it’s in sequence but these days I’m not really looking for continuity.
All I’m after is something that makes sense to me.
In between setting up a bilateral agreement with the enemy, banning rumours about serial killers, and fobbing off an attempted coup d’état by Richard and the other House leaders, I go to see our Principal about Hannah and realise that in the whole time I have been at the school, I’ve been in this office only once. John Palmer moves from behind his desk and sits me down in one of his “guest” seats like he’s promoting the notion of some kind of warmth and familiarity. It’s not that I don’t like the adults around here; it’s just that they don’t stick around long enough. The Jellicoe School is their stepping stone to some other place and there have been three Principals since I’ve arrived. That’s what makes Hannah different. Rumour has it that Hannah went to school here and just never left. That’s another of what I call the Hannah mysteries. Why would a woman who’s not even in her mid-thirties hide herself away from the world out here? Worse still, why would she choose to leave out of the blue and not tell me?