“Think about it,” he tells me as we sit in Starbucks, soaking marsh-mallows into our hot chocolates. “Empire magazine will interview you one day and you’re going to admit that it’s your favorite movie. At least I’ll come across dark and mysterious.”
“Do you know how many guys would pick Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now as their favorite films? You’ll come across as a cliché.”
“I like The Princess Bride as well.”
“If you spread that around, you just might get lucky with the girls.”
“What makes you think that I’m not lucky with them now?”
I make a scoffing sound. “Dream on.”
“Bitch.”
“Just honest.”
After a moment he nods as if agreeing.
“So what do you girls talk about?”
“Nothing exciting. You guys most of the time.”
“What’s the Eva Rodriguez chick like?”
“She’s pretty cool,” I say. “What is it about her that makes everyone interested? There are better-looking girls.”
He shrugs. “Good-looking, knows her sports, uncomplicated. Doesn’t have to prove a point a thousand times a day. Like you said, cool. Maybe even Siobhan Sullivan and Anna Nguyen too.” He looks at me almost reprimandingly. “The guys think you need a personality.”
“That’s actually funny, coming from the Personality Kings of the Western World.”
“You do a pretty good act,” he says.
“What?”
“The Miss Mute thing.”
“I just haven’t got anything to say.”
“Yeah you do. You kind of mutter it under your breath when you think people can’t hear.”
“Really.”
“Do you want to hang out? At your place or something?”
Hanging out with Jimmy Hailler will mean that I have to say hello to him every day. I’m not ready to say hello to him every day. Too much commitment. It’s bad enough that I’m sharing chocolate brownies with him. I shake my head.
“Not today.”
“Whenever.”
He’s the foulest-mouthed boy I’ve ever come across and constantly uses the c-word. I tell him it offends me and he calls me a prude. I shrug. So be it. I’m a prude. But he says he’ll hold back when he’s around me. He talks about smoking dope, probably a lot more than he actually smokes it, and just when you think you’ve come up with some theory about him, he’ll make you change your mind. He’s obsessed with fantasy fiction and is incredibly biting about those who get fantasy and sci-fi mixed up. The constant Machiavellian grin on his face is a cover-up for some kind of yearning, which doesn’t excuse him for being rude and obnoxious and cruel, but he’s honest, and I think that deep down he’s as lonely as I am.
On the trip home on the bus, I’m vomiting out words, unable to hold them back no matter how hard I try—talking film and music and books and gossip and DVD commentaries and clothing and teachers and students and pets and brothers and loves and hates and lyrics and God and the universe and our dads.
But not mothers.
“That’s off-limits,” he tells me, and I can’t help feeling relieved and guilty.
But most of all, I feel a little less empty than the day before.
chapter 9
IT’S THURSDAY AFTERNOON, and we have sports. These are the choices for the girls: watching an invitational cricket game; studying in one of the classrooms; or watching the senior rugby league. As you can imagine, I’m torn.
William Trombal is standing on the platform of the bus in his league shorts and jersey as I step on.
“What are you doing?”
He’s speaking to me. There is something on his face I can’t recognize. It looks a bit like panic and I’m confused.
“Going to the rugby game,” I explain politely.
“I think you’ll enjoy the cricket.”
“Based on the match fixing and controversial rotating roster, I’m ideologically opposed to cricket.”
I try to step past him, but he goes as far as putting his arm across to block me. A you’re-not-going-anywhere arm.
“Is there a problem here?” Tara Finke asks, pushing forward. He has no choice but to let us on.
I get a glare the whole way there. I don’t know what it is with this guy. One minute he’s totally conceited, next minute there’s a bit of sympathy, then there’s the hostility, and today there’s everything, including a bit of anxiousness.
I’ve got to give the Sebastian boys this. They’ve got heart. But skill? After watching them play, I feel a whole lot better about the basketball game. They get so thrashed that even Tara Finke is yelling, “This is an outrage!”
But they never give in, not once, and half the time I think they’re bloody idiots and the other half I can’t help cheering if they even touch the ball. The score is too pitiful to divulge. The other side are kind of bastards and our guys are bleeding and, strangely enough, every single time William Trombal gets thumped by those Neanderthals, my heart beats into a panic.
On the way back to school, I sit facing him and he’s in his own miserable world. I actually think he wants to cry, but that revolting male protocol of not crying when you feel like shit just kicks in. He looks at me for a moment, and I feel as if I should be nice and look away, but I don’t.
“Why don’t you just stick to what you’re good at?” I find myself asking.
“I warned you,” he says gruffly.
“You didn’t say there was going to be blood.”
“You should have gone to the cricket game.”
“Do they win?” I ask.
“Every time.”
“Then why don’t you join the cricket team?”
He’s horrified. “It’s not about winning!”
We approach the school, and the first of the guys shuffles past and pats William Trombal on the back. He’s their leader, although half their size.
“Maybe next week we’ll be able to score, Will.”
“You played a great game,” one says.
“No, mate, you did.”
“No. You did, mate.”
They go on forever. It’s nauseating stuff, but there’s no blaming. They get off the bus smiling tiredly.
Oh God, don’t let me like these guys.
In legal studies, we debate refugees, because Mr. Brolin hasn’t prepared a lesson and he wants us to do the work. Based on our detention relationship, he always calls on me, and on principle I refuse to give in.
“What’s your opinion, Miss Spinelli?” he asks (he pronounces it spin-a-lee). He does the stare that doesn’t intimidate any of us. It almost makes me want to laugh out loud.
“What’s your opinion, Mr. Brolin?” Tara Finke asks.
She gets into trouble for speaking without putting up her hand.
“What I think isn’t the issue, Miss Finke.”
“Why?” she persists.
I can guarantee he won’t give his opinion. He sits on the fence in the name of professionalism and gets someone else to voice his fascist views (I’ve got to stop sitting next to Tara Finke), and around here, there’s always a candidate.
“Why should we let people in who jump the line?” Brian Turner asks. He’s unimportant in the scheme of things, but he would be so shocked if someone pointed out his unimportance to him.
“Because in their country there mightn’t be a line,” Tara Finke says.
“They just want to come here because we’re the land of plenty,” this girl who always states the obvious says, stating the obvious.
“Yeah, plenty of bullshit,” Thomas Mackee mutters under his breath. Tara Finke and I look at him, surprised, while Brolin comes stalking down the aisle to write in Thomas Mackee’s diary for language.
“I agree with Thomas,” Tara Finke says.
Thomas Mackee looks horrified. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t agree with me.” He looks around at his friends, and with his finger twirling aroun
d his head, he makes the “she’s cuckoo” sign. They snicker with him.
“We have a responsibility,” she continues without missing a beat.
“What? To let terrorists into the country?” Brian Turner asks.
“I thought we were talking refugees, not terrorists,” Thomas Mackee says.
“See, you agree with me,” Tara Finke argues.
“I do not agree with you. I just don’t agree with them,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“In what way don’t you agree with me?” she snaps. “We’re saying the same thing. That there’s plenty of bullshit here and that refugees aren’t terrorists.”
Brolin grabs Tara’s diary to record the “bullshit” because it gives him a purpose.
“We’re the only democratic country in the world that puts children in jail,” she says, looking around at everyone.
“It’s very easy to express outrage from your comfortable middle-class world, Miss Finke,” Mr. Brolin says, pleased with himself.
“Well, that’s pretty convenient,” she says sarcastically. “Shut the comfortable middle class up and rely on the fact that the uncomfortable lower classes in the world aren’t able to express outrage and offer solutions. They’re too busy trying not to get killed.”
“I don’t like your tone,” he says.
“My tone’s not going to change, Mr. Brolin.”
“You have to question where you get your facts from,” Brian Turner says.
“Where do you get yours? The Telegraph? Today Tonight? Your parents? Well, my mum works for the Red Cross Refugee and International Tracing Agency, and she goes and visits the people in Villawood every two weeks. We don’t put on our uniforms just when it suits us, and I resent someone stopping me from saying what I believe just because I live happily in the suburbs.”
Mr. Brolin looks uncomfortable. He’s saved by the bell, and he’s out of there before we even pick up our books.
Ryan Burke, a guy from my English preliminary extension class, approaches us, smiling.
“We’re trying to get a social-justice group thing happening around here,” he tells us. “You interested?”
“Sounds cool,” Tara says.
“Oh shucks. Wish I belonged,” Thomas Mackee snickers as he passes by with his posse.
“Ignore him,” Ryan Burke says, walking alongside us. “He’s just trying to rebel. His mother’s high up in antidiscrimination.”
“That should come in handy when he gets discriminated against for not having a brain,” Tara says before leaving us for her design and technology class.
We’re outside our English preliminary extension room and end up sitting together.
I like Ryan Burke and his group. They can be cool and take their work seriously at the same time. Even the slackers like them, although once or twice there’ll be a dig about their dedication. These guys feel just as comfortable surfing as they do going to the theater. They like girls but don’t feel the need to date them, and at first they were the hardest to get to know because they had so many female friends from outside the school. More than anything, they enjoy each other’s company, and although there is a lot of tension between them because of their competitiveness, they’re the type of guys you like to see around the place.
Ryan Burke is good-looking. He has that golden-haired look, with a gorgeous smile. I think he hates the perception that he’s the good old boy, and once in a while he rebels against the image. But deep down he has a decency that I think will stay with him.
He becomes my English extension companion. Like Shaheen from biology and Eva from economics, our relationship is confined to sitting next to each other in class and whispering. In the halls and on the quadrangle we acknowledge each other, but there is no need for in-depth chatting. The bonding takes place in class.
In English extension, we’re doing an Austen unit, and Ryan and I analyze who we are in Pride and Prejudice.
“I’d like to think I’m Darcy,” he says, “but I think I’m a bit of a Bingley. I can be talked out of things sometimes. You?”
“I’d like to think I’m Elizabeth, but deep down I think I’m the one whose name no one can remember. Not Lydia the slut or Mary the nerd or Jane the beauty or Elizabeth the opinionated. I’m the second-youngest. The forgotten one.”
“Yeah, I know which one you’re talking about. What’s-her-name.”
“Yeah.”
Later, I walk down the senior corridor and William Trombal is coming from the opposite direction, speaking to his friends. They’re having one of those Trekkie-versus-Trekker discussions. There’s just something about William Trombal that screams out Star Trek fan. I personally can’t do the Vulcan salute with my fingers and have felt inferior because of it, so disliking William Trombal more than ever suits me just fine. He’s laughing at something one of them says, and it transforms him completely. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him smile, and it’s kind of devastating. They walk by me, completely oblivious. Until the very last moment, when he looks over at me and our eyes hold for a moment or two.
And I get this twitch in my stomach.
I walk through Grace Bros. to get through to George Street to catch my bus, and I find myself going straight to the counter that sells my mother’s favorite perfume. I spray it in the air and it’s as if the scent’s a genie and it triggers everything off inside me and I can’t get over what comes up with that one spray. Memories and photos and sayings and advice and music and lectures and shouting and security and love and nagging and hope and despair . . . despair . . . why has despair come up? I don’t remember despair in her life, but it is evoked with this magical spray. But more than anything, I remember passion.
I look around for the counter that sells my scent, but I’m so petrified that if I spray it in the air, nothing will come out. And then Mia’s scent seems to fade away and everything else fades away with it and I know that all I have to do to recapture it is press the spray button again.
But I don’t.
Later, my dad picks us up from Nonna’s and Zia Teresa’s and takes us home for the afternoon. We lie on their bed, and my mum is holding on to us so tight that I can’t breathe. She holds us and she’s crying and she says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again until I can’t bear the sound of those words.
And I want to tell her everything. About Thomas Mackee the slob and Tara Finke the fanatic and Justine Kalinsky the loser and Siobhan Sullivan the slut. And I want to tell her about William Trombal and how my heart beat fast when he looked at me, but more than anything, I want to say to her that I’ve forgotten my name and the sound of my voice and that she can’t spend our whole lives being so vocal and then shut down this way. If I had to work out the person I speak to the most in a day, it’s Mia, and that’s what I’m missing.
My nonna comes in, and I feel her gently pull the skirt of my school uniform down over my thighs because my underpants are showing. I bury my face in my mum’s neck and I inhale her scent as they pull me gently away from her. I inhale it with all my might so I can implant it in my mind.
Because I need it to be my badge.
chapter 10
IN HISTORY CLASS, I’m sandwiched between Thomas Mackee and Justine Kalinsky. None of his friends are in this class, so he doesn’t feel the need to be Neanderthal man, although our history teacher has explained that Neanderthal man was very misunderstood and not the boofhead he was reputed to be. As usual, Thomas Mackee is making those frustrated grunting noises that have nothing to do with the Franco-Prussian War. He does what he always does in his spare time. He tries to decipher musical notes from some tabular form. Thomas Mackee has a passionate need to be in a punk band, but from the looks of things he learned music by ear, and now, for some reason, he has to know how to read it. When I can stand it no longer, I grab the book and sheet in front of him and pass them to Justine Kalinsky so quickly that they are undetected by the teacher and Thomas Mackee can’t get to them.
It takes Justine Kal
insky ten minutes to decipher the notes. She’s like this music genius. I hand the music back to him, and he makes one of those grunts that Cheetah makes in Tarzan movies when Tarzan explains something important to him. A kind of “huh” and “oh yeah” mixed into one.
I look at him. “Would you like me to introduce you to her? Her name’s dumb bitch.”
“Why don’t you just take a Midol,” he snarls.
I ignore him, and as we pack up he grunts a thanks to Justine, who glances at me, distressed.
“This doesn’t mean we have to be his friend, does it?”
On the bus, Justine Kalinsky and I sit in the back row making small talk about one of the teachers. When the bus stops at Broadway, about ten Pius girls get on. Two of them are Michaela and Natalia, my Stella friends. As usual, they’re animated, enjoying their lives with those around them. Why do I feel as if something’s missing in my life without them and they don’t feel the same about me? That doesn’t make them bad, does it? My mother’s voice goes through my head. She’s the hoarder of memories. “Remember the time they stayed for the weekend and didn’t even say thank you or goodbye? Remember the time they wouldn’t come to the phone when you were crying and apologizing about something you had no reason to be sorry for? Remember the times they’d come to school and decide they weren’t going to speak to you that day?” No, Mum. Because I chose not to remember the moments that pigeonhole me as one of the top five losers of all time, but hey, thanks for the memories.
Natalia and Michaela spot me instantly. “Oh my God,” they scream, running down the aisle, knocking people in the face with their bags. Thomas Mackee looks up from the music magazine he’s reading, unimpressed by the squealing. I don’t think it’s the excitement of seeing me as much as the theatrical aspect of their personalities that compels them to do it. But they always made me laugh at St. Stella’s. They gave me some identity.
We hug, and a few of the other ex–Stella girls wave from the front of the bus. Others ignore me. Girls like Tina, our archenemy, who’d throw a party and invite everyone in my group but me. The girls would always tell me not to take things personally, but I never believed there was any other way of taking it. Thankfully, they’d be loyal and not go to whatever I wasn’t invited to, except when they couldn’t get out of it.