JUNE 16
God I really started something tonight. I wrote a whole lot of questions to Marina—one by one—and she kept answering them, so I just kept on going. I hope I did the right thing. She ended up crying and crying like no-one I’ve ever seen before. She seems OK now. I hope that Mrs Graham doesn’t find out. I think I put my foot in it, my whole leg maybe.
JUNE 20
We had the debate tonight, after two postponements. We don’t seem to have improved much—we lost again, to MLC. They had Caroline Barber as their first speaker—the Barbers were our neighbours at ‘Connewarre’. It was good to see her. She asked me to come and stay in the August holidays, but I don’t know. I don’t know if I can stand to see ‘Conne’ all run down and with someone else owning it.
Anyway, the debate. Cathy went first and talked about the human things—that was our plan—like family and friends. I went second and did the other stuff—like mountains and sunsets and stars. Sarah was third, and she did mainly rebuttal, plus she talked about how even pain was good because you can’t experience the bliss until you’ve had some bad times to compare it to. I thought we did OK, and some of the audience said we were ripped off, but they’re probably a bit biased.
JUNE 21
Roll on mid-term. Dad rang tonight to say he’d pick me up from here on the Tuesday to go straight to the snow. Chloe’s getting a lift up with the Kinrosses.
I’ve been thinking some more about asking Mr Lindell to read this Journal and I don’t think I will. There’s too much in it that I wouldn’t want him to read—too much personal stuff. I’m scared they’d send me to a shrink if they knew everything. I might let Cathy or someone read it instead.
Sometimes I think I ought to go to see the School Counsellor, see if she can sort out my complicated life. I don’t even know her name, but she’s meant to be good. Marina practically lives there.
Speaking of Marina, I’ve been watching her the last few days—since Friday night really. She seems OK, kind of strained, but that’s nothing new. Everyone’s got the flu anyway, except me. I refuse to get it. Marina is going to Cathy’s for mid-term—if she doesn’t enjoy that she’ll be hard to please.
Kate and Soph and Trace have got some outrageous plan to take an illegal this weekend and go skiing. They’re mad, but knowing them they’ll probably get away with it. They get away with so much. They want to go with Lisa Chen and Susannah Scotland—should be wild.
Apparently it hasn’t stopped snowing for about five days. I’d love to go but I suppose I’ll be boring and stay here and finish my Crusades assignment.
JUNE 22
What is going on? Chloe reckons Mum’ll get married too, to some bloke I’ve never heard of. I don’t know if Chloe knows what she’s talking about or not. It’s just hopeless. Everyone’s trying to get out of basketball again—there were eight people with notes at training. What a day.
JUNE 23
Some sloppy smelly heap of meadow mayonnaise has kleptoed nearly all of my Crusades assignment. I can’t believe it. I’m too mad to cry. If I find out who did it I’ll give them what the guy who killed King Richard got. Why are some people such utter complete skid-marks? All they left was the Bibliography and the Title Page and one map—don’t know why they bothered to leave that even. Maybe I should thank them for leaving it. As it is I went so sick in Prep that I think I’ve scared them all into silence. Marina looked like she was going to dive under her desk.
I went to see Mrs Graham. She was quite good actually, but I know there’s not much she can do. She said people take them because they don’t like someone, so they want her to bomb out; or they take them so they can copy and improve their own marks. In the first case, she said, you never catch them because they trash the stuff straight away. In the second case, you can catch them if you see something in their assignment that you recognise as yours, like a sentence in an essay, or a drawing—but she said it’s pretty rare.
I wonder if there are people around here who hate me enough to take my assignment just to get me into trouble. Emma went off at me the other night—well at a few of us actually—but I don’t think she’d do something like that. I don’t think anyone in this dorm would. I figure it’s someone from another dorm, although it’d be hard for them to get in and out of here without being seen.
The thing is, I spent so many hours on that thing. There’s been a kind of Crusades mania round here the last week or so. People have been getting up at five in the morning to do more work, or sneaking back downstairs after lights-out. I’ve done quite a bit under my doona with a torch, and last night Cathy and I did some in the Drying Room till after midnight.
I just choke up with anger when I think about it.
JUNE 26
Handed in what I could of the Crusades assignment. I did two essays over the weekend and one of the maps again and some of the pictures, so in the end I still had a lot less than half. I don’t know what’ll happen about my mark. Apparently two other people got theirs ripped off too. Dr Whiteley came into our Morning Assembly and made a speech about how disgusting it was and how she wants them returned. Maybe they will be, but I doubt it.
At least I’ve got plenty of witnesses to the work I did.
JUNE 27
It’s a madhouse here again tonight folks. K, S and T have been busted wide open for last weekend’s illegal. Every five minutes another message comes for one of them to go see Mrs Graham, while the other two sit here white-faced. They think they’ll be expelled, and I guess there is a chance of that. They are crazy. They play with hand grenades all year long and then they’re upset when one of them finally goes off. But they’re still getting the giggles every few minutes, even now. What a bunch.
Mrs Graham’s interrogation technique is to keep calling you in one by one and checking the stories against each other till she finds a contradiction. Then she goes for the throat. She takes notes while you answer, which helps put you off more. Also she bluffs a lot. Last year there was a ginormous powder/deodorant/moisturiser/toothpaste/shampoo fight in the dorm, right at the end of Prep. I missed it by seconds, because I’d been in the library and was still coming back. But Mrs Graham was convinced I’d been in it and she said Miss Curzon had seen me there, which she couldn’t have, and when I asked Miss Curzon she said she’d never said that at all. Talk about getting framed.
Apparently the Housemistress before Mrs Graham was even worse—she had a Breathalyser and she used it to test anyone who’d been out on Exeat. It’s hard to believe, but Skye Wills swears it’s true. I mean, that is sick.
JUNE 28
K, S and T have been severely gated—I thought they’d have been suspended at least. All that money Kate’s father heaped on the school for tennis courts and the library and everything must have paid off. I reckon I would have gone with them if I’d known I’d just get gated.
I rang Chloe tonight—she’s got an exam tomorrow so I thought I’d better tell her to go for gold. She sounded OK—I think she’s done a bit more work this year. She needed to—Mum and Dad went sick about her results last year.
Sisters have been living in my brain a lot lately. I’m so curious about Miranda. Is she or isn’t she? I wonder if Chloe thinks about her, or worse, if she’s ever gone looking for her. It’d be funny if we met in the Dobson Road Milk Bar, opposite Mrs Aston’s.
But with all this thinking, I’ve come to a decision. I’m not going to go there any more, to Dobson Road. That’s it now. I want to know the truth about Miranda, but I want it straight. In fact I want it from Dad. I want him to tell me, and I’ll wait until he does, and if necessary, one day I’ll ask him myself. It may not be for a year or two, but I’ll wait. I’d rather do that and have it open. Everyone’s been too sneaky about it, operating in the shade, in the shadows. Me included.
It’s strange to think I could have a little half-sister. I don’t know if I’d ever want to meet her. I’m not very good with those really young kids. I think Miranda’s going to have to be shoved into th
e back of my mind for a while.
It was good tonight though. Chloe and I had a good goss. No-one else wanted the phone for once. But Chloe did say that Lynette’s practically moved in to Dad’s. She’s there all the time. She’s got a lot of her clothes there, and she’s bought some new furniture for the flat. Sounds like now she’s spending Dad’s money for him, as if enough people weren’t doing that already.
JUNE 29
Mum called in this afternoon. I was at basketball but she found me, and gave me some tuck, and some clothes I needed for the snow. She was on her way to the McCowans—she’s staying there for a few days. She said Chloe cruised through her exam this morning.
It’s funny, there she was standing at the end of the gym, with all these bags and parcels, looking a bit self-conscious in such a foreign place, but trying to be cool while she told me all the news and explained what was going down, and there was I in my PE gear, sweaty and red-faced and panting a little, hands on my hips, and feet apart, and in the background was the noise of the ball and the pattering feet and the refs’ whistles and the players’ calls and I had this huge sudden urge to throw my arms around her and give her a hug and tell her I loved her. I didn’t of course, because I wouldn’t have wanted her to die of shock, but I did have the urge. Anyway I just thanked her for coming and for bringing the things, and I wished her goodbye and I put the stuff on the side benches. I ran back into the game without looking back, and I guess she went off to the McCowans’ place at Longwood.
I’m going to wear jeans to this Year 9 Dance. It’ll be a big anti-climax, I think. I can’t imagine anything Mrs Graham organising being a really wild night. But I might be wrong. I’ve got a stunning Koori top that I bought with my Christmas money, so I’ll wear that. It’s got this wonderful design in gold and black. K, S and T have to do a det on Tuesday night while we party on. Soph’s such a joke—she’s complaining that the det’s illegal, because gating was their only punishment and now Mrs Graham’s adding more. Tough, Soph—get yourself a good lawyer.
JUNE 30
I’m so bored and hyper this week—I don’t know why. We haven’t had much Prep since the Crusades assignment finished. There’re Science and Maths tests on Monday but I’m not in the mood to study. I know I can pass OK anyway.
I think I’ll write a description of Kate, for something to do. I remember writing one of Sophie a long time ago in this Journal.
To start with, Kate’s bad points are that she’s big and lazy and she can be as rough as a downtown dunny. She doesn’t give a damn about manners, or things like cheating in tests or lying to a teacher. But she’s honest in other ways: for a start, she’s honest about herself. Her good points are that she’s got a heart of gold. She’s loyal to her mates, she’d never dob, she’s generous with everything she owns. Or maybe it’s that she doesn’t care about possessions. If she’s going out to play tennis she’ll take the nearest racquet, whether it’s hers or someone else’s. If your Walkman’s missing, the first person you ask is Kate—she just picks up the nearest one. Her parents own a string of hotels somewhere in country towns. They’ve got heaps of money, so maybe that’s why she doesn’t care about possessions.
Because she’s so casual and carefree, not many teachers like her, although she gets on well with some—Miss Curzon, and Mr Ross, which is a bit surprising, but I think he likes the way she’s always stirring him.
Kate’s got a loud voice: she’s biologically unable to whisper. She’s also got a huge laugh. When she laughs you either join in or leave the room. The only problem with all this volume is that she snores like a dinosaur. They say there’s a snorer in every dorm, and Kate sure rattles the windows and brings down the plaster. I’m used to it now, but it took a while.
I don’t think Kate could ever live in a city.
Kate knows more jokes than anyone I’ve ever met but the trouble is none of them are funny. You do get sick of them after a while—in fact they can get on your nerves if you’re a bit down.
Well, Kate Mandeville, this has been your life—from my point of view, anyway.
JULY 3
Had nothing to do this afternoon so I tried to ring Mum, got no answer; tried to ring Chloe and got Lynette instead. She said Chloe had gone to the movies with a guy called Brendon—I’ve never heard of him before. I made the big effort and talked to Lynette a bit. She was pleased, I suppose. She’s got a promotion in her job—she’s running a new department, looking after Japanese customers or something. I didn’t know she spoke Japanese.
I wonder what growing up was like for her. She seems so confident and polished. I wonder if she ever got so depressed she felt like pulling the plug. It’s hard to imagine, but you never know with people.
JULY 4
Dear Lisa,
Oh, so much to say, but I don’t know where to start! Lisa, there’s a lot about you that I didn’t understand before. If only you let people like Sarah and Rikki read this Journal! So many people think you’re tough—no, not tough, sorry, that sounds terrible—but strong, and a bit hard to approach. They say you never show your feelings or tell anyone your problems and I think they assume that maybe you don’t like them much.
This is coming out badly. What I mean is, everyone likes you, obviously—if they took a vote for School Captain in our year you’d win easily—but maybe they’re a bit scared of you. The trouble is, they have long memories, and I think they remember how hard you were with Natasha when her parents separated last year. I don’t think anyone realised your parents had just broken up—and of course you, being you, didn’t tell anyone.
Things have changed since then, obviously—people like you because you’re generous and you’re always doing things to help people and you never whinge or backstab. But they still find you hard to get to know.
Reading your Journal has been the first time that I’ve felt I’ve really started to get to know you. The things about you and your family—I felt privileged to be allowed to read them. The stuff about Kate and Sophie was really funny. I’d forgotten a lot of the things you’ve put down here—as you noticed I don’t write so much about school, but I loved some of your stories. I’m glad you liked reading my Journal, too—and I’m glad I showed it to you.
Lisa, I hope we’ll be much better friends after this. Have a good rage tomorrow night—there’s some real dolls at St Luke’s. I can’t wait. Have a good mid-term too. I’m so nervous about having Marina to stay, but I’m glad she is.
Heaps and stax of love, Cathy.
JULY 5
Dear Lisa,
I hope you won’t be angry with me for writing in your Journal. I don’t think I’d like anybody to write in mine. But I saw the way you were all swapping Journals last night, so I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind.
I wish someone had asked me to write in theirs but I can understand why they didn’t.
So, I am a gatecrasher in your book. It’s a strange feeling, like I’m talking to you, but with a muffled voice. I wonder if I will have the courage to watch your face as you read this.
Lisa, the thing I find hard right now is that everyone is putting so much pressure on me to talk. I feel they watch me like cats in a garden, waiting for me to speak, to perform.
I can’t understand how people can use words so casually. They talk without thinking: they open their mouths and the words run out like water from a tap. I used to be like that once. Now I’ve learnt that words are precious, dangerous things.
Lisa, please talk to me, make me talk, ask me questions, force me to speak.
I can’t stand my own silence.
M.
Help! I’ve just found this, and she’s already left. She’s gone with Cathy for mid-term. I wish I could run after their taxi now. Oh, I can’t wait to see her next week. But God knows what I’ll say when I do, or if I’ll be able to say anything.
JULY 13
How am I ever going to bring this up-to-date? So much has happened I feel like I’ll explode before I can get it down. I knew I sho
uld have taken it to the snow but I figured I wouldn’t have time to write in it. I wouldn’t have, either. It was all action up there—the weather was so great for once, and the snow was the best for years.
Anyway, I’d better start with the hot goss from here. First, Marina saw her father over mid-term, while she was staying with the Preshills. And she talked to him, according to Cathy. Words came out of her mouth! She’s sly, the old Marina—she must have planned it all in advance. I still don’t know a lot about it, because Cathy hasn’t had a chance to tell me much, but she said Marina’s father’s in a prison camp at Tarpaggi, which isn’t far from the Preshills’ place at Tregonning. So I guess Marina must have gone to the prison at visitors’ hours or something. Wonder if it was like in the movies, with glass screens and telephones? Anyway, Cathy said Marina actually told her she’d seen him, when she got back to Tregonning, and she said, ‘Thank you for having me’ to the Preshills when they were leaving.