She sighs dramatically. “If only. I’d have to kill off his wife first and then hope he’d return my undying love.”
“Are you kidding? He’s a teacher!”
“He’s only thirty. That’s a fourteen-year age gap. It’s nothing, especially when you consider I’m mature for my age.” She grins. “Relax, I’m not a home-wrecker. Plus I saw Morello and his wife in the parking lot one morning and they are obviously and disgustingly very much in love.”
“So it’s unrequited love then?”
“Yep,” she says, standing up, dusting off her uniform, and extending her hand to pull me up. “Unrequited love is better than returned love that fails. This way I can dream. Oops!” She stumbles and coffee spills all over her skirt.
“Oh no!” I cry, lunging at her with tissues and frantically trying to wipe the coffee off. Mum’s warning from last night is still ringing in my ear: You have one set of the uniform so keep it clean.
Paula looks at me, baffled. “What’s wrong? Relax.”
I take a step back. “Sorry.” I motion to her skirt. “Your uniform.”
She shrugs. “I’ve got three.”
I can’t help but blush and quickly change the subject as we head to class.
“So, um, does Morello know?”
It’s her turn to look mortified. “No way. I’m completely discreet. It would be beyond embarrassing if he found out. So tell me, do you like animals? Because I’m an animal lover. I own a Labrador named K4, two cockatiels named Kryss and Sunday (because we found him on a Sunday), one budgie named Green (because he’s blue), a bearded dragon named Forseti after the Norse god of justice, and two turtles named Magneto and Xavier. K4’s been part of the family since before I was even born. Nancy got him for her birthday. K4’s the closest thing to me at home. Do you have any pets?”
“Mum’s not really an animal person. Plus we’re in an apartment.”
“Come on, the bell’s going to ring in ten and I need another coffee now that my skirt’s had a caffeine hit. We’ve got math now and Ms. Hamish is only worth facing with extra caffeine in the system.”
We walk to class together. I think maybe Victoria College might just turn out all right after all.
Mum and Baba are at the restaurant finishing the last touches of the decor in preparation for opening next week. The real estate agent they’re leasing the shop through put them onto an interior decorator, and he’s out there with them tonight giving them some last-minute advice.
I’m in my bedroom, surrounded by study reinforcements (junk food), with music cranked up to a volume that would antagonize my mother but not the neighbors. Maha texts me while I’m doing a character profile of Mr. Knightley for my English homework.
It’s random, frivolous, and gossipy but the familiarity of that voice sends a pang through me.
We send each other texts back and forth. Maha makes me ache with a longing to return to Auburn Grove Girls High, which was a kaleidoscope of cultures and ethnicities. Somewhere where I’m not the ethnic supporting character.
When I feel I’ve written just as much as I can about Mr. Knightley, my phone beeps again. I glance at the text and see that it’s Paula.
I grin and instantly text her back.
I go to Terrence’s house on Saturday night. His older brother, Mason, and some of his friends are there too, drinking in the backyard.
“Your parents home?” I ask as I grab a beer from the cooler beside the outdoor table.
“Nope. We’re prefueling under Mason’s supervision,” he laughs.
“They trust Mason?” I chuckle.
We hang out with Mason and his friends for an hour, have several rounds. They’re okay, in their first and second years at university. They make us laugh, especially Mason, who’s even more of a goofball than Terrence.
One of Mason’s friends lights up a joint and passes it around. Terrence takes a few deep drags but I pass. Drugs have never interested me. I’ve tried dope before. I didn’t really get high, just a little buzzed. It burned the hell out of the back of my throat, gave me bad cottonmouth. Life can fog up enough by itself without me giving it a hand.
“Let’s go into the Cross,” one of them suggests at around ten-thirty.
“What time do you have to be home, Michael?” Mason asks me.
“I could push it to two. Was hoping to play some GTA though.”
“Nah, let’s go out. Hey, Terrence, reckon you’re up to it?”
Terrence looks a little spaced out. He takes a sip of his beer and bursts out laughing. “Sure. I’ll be Robin and Michael can be Batman. He’ll look after me, won’t you?”
Mason hesitates for a moment. “Batman? Christ. Didn’t take you long to get stoned.”
“Thought you said Brittney’s meeting you at Heat?” Liam asks Mason.
“Yeah …” He thinks for a minute, eyes fixed on Terrence.
“And her friends,” Noah adds, grinning at Liam. “Come on, man, she’s hot for you.”
It takes about five seconds for Mason to cave. We order a taxi and pretty soon we’re at the Golden Mile. It’s a typical night. We’ve arrived right about when things start to get going. Mason and his mates are going to meet the girls at the club. Terrence and I have no chance of getting in underage. We agree they’ll go in for an hour while we walk the streets, check out the scene.
“You’ll look after him, won’t you?” Mason asks me, a worried look on his face.
Terrence is full-on stoned and is acting like a bit of a douchebag, laughing uncontrollably, saying stupid things. I’ve drunk quite a bit but I’m not hammered or anything. I can think of better ways to spend a Saturday night than babysitting a stoned Terrence in the Cross, but we’re here now so I figure we might as well make the most of it. I reassure Mason that I have Terrence’s back and they leave us.
“I’m STARVING,” Terrence immediately wails. After giggling uncontrollably for a little bit, he suddenly raises his arms with his palms facing out and says, “These are my hands!”
“Oh, boy,” I say. “Yeah, those are your hands, you moron. Come on, let’s get some food.”
We walk up William Street. Terrence can’t resist commenting on every girl he sees—at the top of his lungs. “You’re gorgeous!” “You’re hot!” “Go easy on the junk food, sweetheart!” “Check out those boobs!”
“Yeah? Enjoy the view, asshole,” one of the girls shouts back.
We make it to a fast-food place. It’s packed with other mostly underage rejects like us, locked in nightlife limbo until we turn eighteen. I get us some vein-clogging burgers and chips and we sit down near the window.
Terrence has mellowed and is concentrating on scoffing down his food. When we’re done, Terrence announces he wants to go for a walk. The street is crawling with people now. We’re due to meet Mason anyway so we squeeze ourselves through the crowds toward Heat. At least Terrence’s new nobody-loves-me mood means he isn’t shouting out ratings for every girl who walks past us.
It’s almost twelve-thirty when we meet up with Mason and his friends. They’re standing outside the club, with some giggling girls who are clearly wasted.
We all walk together to a taxi stand. The queue is insane. Terrence is just standing, staring at the ground. Liam and Noah are all over the girls.
It all happens so suddenly. I hear shouting from behind us: “What you fucking looking at my girlfriend for?”
Then I hear Mason yell out, “It’s a free country. Anyway, who says I was looking at her, you dickhead!”
Then the guy yells, “Can’t handle an Aboriginal guy with a white chick, huh? You dumb racist fuck!”
“What are you on about? I didn’t say you were Aboriginal!” Mason yells back. “You’re fucking white!”
Things have suddenly graduated to weird.
The next thing I know, the guy lunges at Mason and takes a swipe at him. Then a couple of other guys join in and start laying into Mason too. Liam and I immediately jump in. I get some good kicks to my ribs but I give some too.
The fight doesn’t last long. Security from outside the nearest club sweeps down on us pretty quickly and breaks it up. And it’s just our luck—there are some cops nearby and they’re on us in a flash too. You can’t throw a stone without it hitting a cop in the Cross.
The cops have a bit of trouble restraining Mason and the guy who threw the first punch, seeing as they’re both drunk. Liam and I don’t bother resisting. Despite the cops holding them down, the guy and Mason are still mouthing off at each other. We get hauled off to the nearest station.
I’m underage so I have to call a parent to be with me when they question me. Dad comes.
“Are you okay, Michael?” Dad cries as soon as he sees me.
The cop, obviously experienced in dealing with hysterical parents, manages to calm Dad down. I feel awful.
Dad folds his arms across his chest and sits tight-lipped, nervously jiggling his leg up and down.
“I only joined the fight because Mason was outnumbered,” I explain to the cop. “The other guy threw the first punch. Mason was just defending himself.”
“My son would never start a fight,” Dad says. The cop raises his hand to silence him.
“What was the fight about?” the cop asks me.
“The guy just flipped out. He thought Mason was looking at his girlfriend, then all of a sudden they’re in a screaming match about him being Aboriginal. He called Mason a racist—”
Dad is suddenly animated. “Is that what the other guy is saying? That this was about racism?” He sighs. “Everybody loves a racism story, don’t they? My son told you. The other guy started the fight.”
“Sir! I need you to stop interrupting.”
Dad, bristling, nods and sits quietly. The cop writes down some more notes and steps outside to speak to the cop questioning Mason.
In the end nobody is charged. It’s a first-time offense for us all, and nobody has been seriously hurt.
I have no idea at this point that Liam and the girls have filmed the fight on their phones and that later that night Noah will post the video on YouTube with the tagline Reverse Racism. I have no idea that someone from Aussie Values picks it up and tweets it: They call US racists? Look what this “Aboriginal” guy did to Mason and his friends. I also have no idea that the current affairs programs pick it up from there.
I go home oblivious to the furor to come.
Paula texts me on her way to school on Monday morning.
At Auburn Grove Girls High I was always top of my class. My blazer was covered in badges. I was by no means the smartest girl, but I am a perfectionist and competitive and that helped. Mum’s expectations that I take the title for the Afghan community’s Best Academic Performer in New South Wales might have had something to do with it as well.
I feel a different breed of pressure at Victoria College. There’s a competitive spirit among a lot of the students here that’s both exhilarating and utterly terrifying. Some of the teachers have an It’s the journey not the destination kind of philosophy. For some of the others, there’s a little too much talk about exams and grades.
Everybody warned us about the jump from tenth grade to eleventh grade, but I truly never expected the pile of work to grow so high so fast, or the pool of competitors to be so big. These are kids who live and breathe success. I misunderstand a girl called Joy when she refers to her father working at Woolworths. My mind goes things in common and I casually mention that her father might know a family friend called Kamal who works in admin at the head office. Turns out Joy’s father might indeed. Given he’s Woolworths’ CFO.
Here, ambition isn’t even a prerequisite. At Auburn Grove Girls High, ambition was a word you’d see in Comic Sans MS font on a poster stuck to the library door. But anybody with half a brain knew a brother or sister or friend who had the grades but not the contacts. Had the résumé with the wrong address and zip code. Had a cousin who was Raj at home and Ray at work.
I know I’ve got to work twice as hard as everybody else because I’ve got twice the distance to run just to catch up.
So today when Paula’s in band practice (she plays the cello), I’m in the library at lunchtime, getting a head start on a major history essay due next week. Two girls from my history class, Zoe and Clara, are sitting at a nearby table, working on their laptops. From the titles, I can tell they’re working on the same essay.
I know that these early days are critical. Mum and Baba have spent all week drumming it into me: Lay a good strong foundation from the start. They just don’t think this applies equally to the social part of school.
I muster up the courage to pack my things and walk over to them. We haven’t yet spoken, and Paula’s not in history with me, so until now I’ve been sitting alone. From the classes we’ve had so far, I can tell these two girls are smart and driven in a slightly scary, if admirable, way. They remind me of the kind of girls you come across in a gym class: highly coordinated, perfect form, big energy, no sweat or frizz. The ones everybody else follows as they pant and trip their way through Zumba moves. That’s okay though. I like the competition.
“You’re doing the Treaty of Versailles essay too, huh?” I say brightly.
Zoe offers a fake half smile. “Yep,” she says. She continues typing, eyes glued to the screen.
“We’re in the same class,” I say, looking at Clara.
“Yeah, I know,” Clara says. She’s friendly enough, but there’s none of Paula’s warmth about her. “You got a scholarship here, right?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Where were you before?”
“Auburn Grove Girls High.”
Zoe raises an eyebrow. “Congratulations,” she says, facing me. “You must be really smart to get a scholarship.”
Clara doesn’t give me a chance to respond. “You know, I’ve never been out to that part of Sydney.”
“Watch out, Clara,” Zoe adds. “We’ve got serious competition now.” She laughs to herself, but there’s no cheer in her.
There’s an awkward silence. Zoe goes back to typing and Clara picks up her book. I hover for a second, embarrassed, wondering what the most dignified exit strategy is, when I’m saved by Paula, who comes rushing toward me with her laptop open.
“Did you hear what happened?”
Zoe and Clara look up. “What?”
“Don’t you have band?” I ask her.
“We finished early. Mr. Moreland’s taking the eighth graders on a field trip.”
Paula places the laptop on the desk, closer to me. “Here, check out Facebook.” She scrolls down the page.
“Your profile picture is a cat,” Zoe says flatly. “I’m a dog person.”
“Oh, me too!”
“You can’t be a cat and dog person.” Zoe rolls her eyes.
One of Paula’s friends has tagged her in a post of a video clip. The video clip has the caption: My friends getting beaten up: but you won’t hear about that in the media because they’re white.
“Okay, girls, check this out!” Paula clicks play.
A bunch of guys are yelling abuse at each other. One of them yells out something about racism, then takes a swing. A fight breaks out. And then suddenly there’s Michael, in the middle of it all. I just make out Terrence’s terrified face as he stands to the side, watching.
“Seriously?” I shake my head in disbelief.
“Yep,” Paula says, nodding. “The Terrence connection I can understand. But Michael?”
“I hate seeing people fighting,” I say in disgust.
“Morons,” Zoe pronounces. She takes a closer look at the screen. “I’m surprised Michael’s in on it. Just shows there’s a dumb caveman in all guys.”
Clara clucks her tongue. “I can’t believe Jane has the hots for Terrence. Sure, he’s okay-looking, popular, blah, blah, but where’s her self-respect?”
“She’s never aimed high in anything, so I’m not surprised.”
Paula flashes an angry look at Zoe. “That’s low, Zoe.”
Zoe pretends to l
ook surprised. “Sorry. I get she’s your cousin, but come on, even you can tell Jane’s always been happy playing it safe and bare minimum.”
I want to laugh in her face. Bare minimum? Jane got fifteen out of twenty on a test and practically imploded.
“When I said that’s low, Zoe, I didn’t expect you’d sink lower,” Paula says quietly.
Zoe looks momentarily ashamed but then quickly regains her composure. “I’m not going to apologize for having high expectations.” She looks at me directly now. “Being top of the class is not something I intend to give up.”
Paula’s no longer interested and starts packing her laptop. Zoe’s words float in the air and she seems suddenly uncomfortable. She sits up straight.
“Look, is it too much to ask that Clara and I can do our work without being harassed with gossip and idle chatter?”
Idle chatter? Who talks like that?
“Sure, sure,” Paula says dryly, and we move to another table.
“What’s her problem?” I ask Paula. “I mean with me specifically?”
“Zoe’s been the top of our class since forever. That’s her role, that’s who she is. Then along you come from gangland Sydney with a scholarship that puts you in the same league as a girl who’s had tutors and study plans since she was a toddler. You haven’t seen anything yet. Hold steady.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Don’t worry. I can handle competition. In fact, I love it. As far as I’m concerned, bring it on.”
One of the current affairs programs picks up the fight in a story that manages to mix several hot topics at once. First it’s “youth street violence,” then it’s “binge drinking,” then it’s “bystander racism.” They show the YouTube clip but the images of Michael and Terrence are blurred, I guess because they’re underage. Then they interview some experts and finally a guy called Mason, who was at the center of it all.
“So he accused you of racism? Just out of the blue like that?” the reporter asks him.
“Yeah. I wasn’t even staring at his girlfriend. It was obvious he was looking to start a fight. I had no idea he was Aboriginal. He doesn’t look like one. He’s got light skin. I mean, he’s probably not even really Aboriginal. They claim it sometimes so they can get benefits and stuff. For some reason he’d decided I had a problem with him and his girlfriend.”