30
GRACIE
‘Talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity,’ Jane says before school Monday.
‘Shut up, I’m trying to remember my analysis terms. English essays were made to ruin our lives. I bet teachers get together on Saturday nights and plan torture to inflict on us.’ I flick through my notes. ‘What’s the meaning of hyperbole again?’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Yes, I am.’ Call the Guinness Book of Records. Gracie Faltrain knows enough about English to make a joke.
I sit up the front and lay out all my pens, pencils, erasers and rulers. ‘Got enough there, Faltrain?’ Flemming asks on the way past.
It’s his way of saying sorry. I hit him with my ruler. It’s my way of saying sorry back. ‘We’re still mates?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, we’re still mates, you idiot.’
I check that each pen works. I’m starting to understand Alyce. I never cared before if I had a pen because I never had anything to write. Today I don’t want to lose a second.
In reading time I look through the article. ‘Plan it in your head,’ Kally told me. ‘The same way you map out plays in soccer.’ Mrs Young blows the whistle. And I start kicking goals. I keep right on kicking until she says, ‘Pens down.’
‘. . . and in the conclusion, I wrote that the writer intended the reader to feel fear . . . I’m boring you, aren’t I?’
‘Strangely enough, no,’ Dan says. ‘And that’s surprising considering I’ve heard what you wrote three times now.’
‘I just never had so much to write in an essay before.’
‘Go on, then,’ he says, stopping at the lights. ‘Tell me again.’
‘Okay . . .’ I start. And I love how he smiles.
31
GRACIE
I am definitely on my way up the school ladder and for the first time in my life I’m not talking socially. I wrote a whole essay yesterday in English and today I’m ready for a Maths test. I actually finish five minutes before the bell.
‘I am on my way to being a brain,’ I say to Kally and Alyce in homeroom. ‘I may need to get glasses.’ And that’s when things start to fall apart. It’s my own fault. I know better than anyone that as soon as a person brags about their luck that’s when the person’s luck runs out. Mine runs all the way out the door, today. It runs out screaming.
‘We’ve had an anonymous tip that some students cheated in the English essay yesterday,’ Mrs Wilson says. ‘There’s going to be a locker search.’
Of course there’s been a tip. I bet Flemming tried to sell those answers to every failing kid in school. I try to catch his eye but he’s staring straight ahead. And that’s when I know without a doubt that the envelope is still in my locker.
I wait with all the other Year 12s in the corridor. My stomach twists like Dad on the dance floor. There’s nothing I can do, now. Flemming opens his locker and it’s clear. I open mine and it’s not.
‘Oh Gracie,’ Mrs Wilson says. I hate the way her voice sounds. I hate that the word about me moves quicker down the corridor than a rumour of free food at the tuckshop. I hate that Dan will hear about this before I get the chance to explain. But what I hate more than any of it is that while I’m standing here, taking the rap for something I didn’t do, Flemming stands there with his mouth shut.
I wait outside Principal Yoosta’s office. Mum and Dad have been called. Jane, Alyce and Kally look through the window and mouth, ‘Hang in there,’ until the school secretary tells them to go away. ‘Can I go to the toilet?’ I ask her after the bell’s gone.
‘Make it quick,’ she says.
Flemming’s standing in the corridor. ‘Faltrain, what’s happening?’
‘Nothing, yet. I’m waiting for my parents to get here. You said you were taking it on Saturday.’
‘I forgot.’
‘They’re going to ask me where the answers came from.’ He doesn’t say anything. ‘I didn’t even look at them. I’ll be off the school team.’ He still doesn’t answer. ‘I can’t believe you’re letting me take the fall for this.’
‘You’d do the same thing if this was the other way around.’
‘No. I wouldn’t. We’ve been mates for years. Doesn’t that mean anything?’ He’s quiet again. ‘I guess not.’
I was so stupid. Coach saw it. Martin saw it. I trusted Flemming and the minute things got tough he turned his back.
Mum and Dad arrive. The secretary tells us to go through to Principal Yoosta’s office. ‘This is very serious, Mr and Mrs Faltrain,’ he says.
‘I know,’ Dad answers. ‘That’s why Helen and I would like to hear our daughter’s side of the story.’
Mum nods and reaches for my hand. ‘Tell the truth, Gracie.’
As much as I hate Flemming right now, I won’t turn him in. I was stupid enough to take the answers from him. I was stupid enough to think about using them. ‘I didn’t cheat. A friend gave me the envelope and I put it in my locker. I never even looked inside.’
‘And the name of the friend?’ Principal Yoosta asks.
I keep my mouth shut. We go around and around in circles but I won’t tell them. Mrs Young walks in after a while holding my analysis. ‘Well?’ Mr Yoosta asks.
She nods at Mum and Dad and sits down. ‘Firstly, I would like to say that without a doubt, Gracie has not cheated prior to this point.’
‘You’re certain?’ Principal Yoosta asks.
‘Her essays reflect no knowledge whatsoever of the texts.’ Ouch.
‘This essay shows a marked improvement but that’s because she studied hard this week.’
‘She did,’ Mum says. ‘Bill and I helped.’
‘The work has a style to the writing that could only come from her.’ She smiles at me.
‘That might be the case,’ Principal Yoosta says, ‘but the fact remains that the answers were in her locker and she has admitted to taking them from a friend.’
They don’t expel me and Mum won’t hear of them excluding me from classes. So my punishment is losing my spot on the school soccer team. I have detention on Friday afternoons for the next three weeks, so that makes training the state girls hard but not impossible. I have ‘cheat’ added to the end of my name, though. And worse than that, Flemming, a mate, treated me like I’m nothing.
I’m sent home for the rest of the day. Mum and Dad walk on either side of me. Everyone stares. We pass Coach on his way to class. I can’t look him in the eye. I’ve trained with him and the guys for five and a half years. I can’t believe I won’t be a part of the end.
‘It wouldn’t take a genius to work out which of your friends gave you the test,’ Mum says in the car. ‘Andrew Flemming, right?’
‘They might have gone a little easier on you if you’d given them his name, baby.’
I stare out the window as the world passes by. ‘You believe that I didn’t cheat, don’t you?’
‘I know you,’ Mum says. ‘I believe you. I also believe you’re stupid enough to entertain the thought of cheating. Am I right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Gracie, why didn’t you come to us earlier? We could have helped.’
‘Because earlier you weren’t listening to me. You would have made me quit school soccer anyway.’
She rubs her eyes again. I’m making her really tired this year. ‘We can argue this around and around in circles. Will you ever think about cheating again?’
‘No.’
‘Do you plan on working hard to pass Year 12?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then this is the end of it.’
‘You’re not grounding me?’ ‘You just lost the thing you love the most for a stupid mistake. We’re not punishing you even more. I don’t want you seeing Andrew, though.’
‘Not a problem, Mum. I don’t plan on it.’
Jane, Alyce, Kally and Dan walk in at four. ‘I’m off the school team. It’s my own dumb fault. I should never have taken the answers from Flemming.’ I look at Dan.
‘I didn’t do it.’
‘I’m the guy who listened to a word-by-word account of your essay four times. You don’t need to tell me. I’ve got somewhere to go. I’ll call you later.’
‘What do I do now?’ I ask. ‘You have Tim Tams with us.’ Jane pulls out a packet. ‘You kick it to goal at the state trials and you keep training the girls for the practice match.’
‘You say, “Stuff you, Andrew Flemming” and you make it anyway,’ Kally says.
‘You study.’ Alyce pushes up her glasses.
I take their advice. I study for part two of the English assessment. I go over my Food Tech notes so I don’t let Corelli down. And then, late at night, I sit next to Dad on the couch. I get close to him. He puts his arm around me. ‘It hurts when a friend lets you down,’ he says.
I move in closer to him. ‘Yeah. It really does.’
We watch a documentary on female Grey Nurse sharks. ‘The stronger babies eat their brothers and sisters while they’re still inside their mother,’ the narrator tells us. Maybe the old Gracie Faltrain would have said: ‘It’s a shark eat shark world in high school. And only the toughest survive.’
But that’s just a stupid philosophy to live by. I move in even closer to Dad. I watch the babies snapping at each other. And it’s harsh. Way too harsh.
ALYCE
I go home after I’ve been to Gracie’s and ask Mum to drive me to Andrew’s house. It will be too dark to walk home, after, but I need to see him. Or, maybe it’s the other way around. I think he needs to see me.
‘You’ve come to yell, too?’ he asks, sitting on his front step. ‘Woodbury was just here. Who’s he to call me an idiot?’ Andrew tears off pieces of sandwich and throws them on the grass. ‘He doesn’t even know me.’
I watch as two birds fight over the crusts. ‘You have to own up.’
‘Everything’s clear-cut for you, isn’t it?’ His voice sounds like it did on that day he broke up with me.
‘This is clear-cut,’ I say.
‘It’s not for me,’ he answers, his eyes on the grass. ‘Dumb birds,’ he says, and I watch him rain the last of his crusts down on them till he’s left with nothing. ‘Go home, Alyce,’ he says. ‘Just go home.’
32
GRACIE
I don’t ask Mum and Dad if I can stay home today. There are some things you can’t hide from. I walk down the corridors and kids stop talking as I pass. I look them straight in the eye. There’s only one person I care about. And it’s him I’m going to see.
I knock on Coach’s door and my stomach knots. I want him to believe me but there’s every reason he won’t. It’s not like I haven’t done dumb things before. It’s not like I’ve never lied. He takes one look at me and says, ‘Hang on. I’ll get a soccer ball.’
We walk to the oval. He kicks to me and I kick back. ‘I didn’t do it.’
‘I know you didn’t do it. One look at Flemming’s face is enough to tell me something’s not right. I don’t suppose you’d consider telling the whole story so I can help you?’
I almost do tell him. But I did take the answers. I did think about cheating. I have to own that. ‘Sorry, Coach.’
‘I didn’t think so. I guess this means I won’t be seeing you as much anymore. I’ll miss you at the Saturday games.’
‘The girls will still be on the bench. I thought I might help out from the side. If that’s okay.’
‘It’s fine with me. Principal Yoosta didn’t say you couldn’t watch. I could use a co-coach.’
The next thing is hard for me to say because ever since Year 7 I’ve been Gracie Faltrain, soccer star. I’ve been the only girl who was brave enough to play on a boys’ soccer team. It felt good to be that girl. But the truth is, I’m not the best female soccer player around. I’m only one of them. Char, Beth, Alex, Brianne, Natalie, Esther, Joanna, Rachel and Sophia are as good as me, just to name a few. And Kally is even better. She’s a member of the school too, so that makes her eligible to take my place.
‘I want to talk to you about my replacement. It should be Kally.’
‘She didn’t do so well at our tryouts.’
‘She didn’t do so well because we blocked her.’
‘She’s a midfielder?’
I nod.
‘You’re telling me she can cut it out there?’
I nod again.
‘Okay. We’ll give her a go.’
‘Just like that? You’ll take my word for it?’
‘I took Knight’s word about you and look what happened. I got one of the best players I’ve ever seen. Don’t be late on Saturday.’
‘I won’t.’ There are people who are counting on me.
*
My first job as co-coach is to make sure that things are different for the girls in the next Saturday game. I figure it’s time to call in a few favours and remind my team-mates that I deserve some loyalty. Bet or no bet. Girl or no girl.
I start with Francavilla. He shuts his locker and I’m standing there. Waiting. ‘Faltrain, you scared me.’
‘How long have we played soccer together?’
‘What?’
‘Answer the question. How long have we played soccer together?’
‘Six years.’
‘And how many times have I won us the game?’
‘I don’t know.’
I push him into the lockers. ‘Think about it.’
‘Hundreds. More than hundreds.’
‘That’s right. And am I a boy or a girl?’
‘Is that a trick question?’
‘Exactly. On the field, it doesn’t matter. I’m bringing some more girls from the state trials to get a little practice with us on Saturday. You’ll kick to them and watch their backs as if they were me. You got a problem with that?’
‘No.’
‘That’s the right answer.’ I let him go and find the other guys. One by one. That’s how you change things.
‘So, you’re not talking to Flemming ever again?’ Corelli asks at lunch.
‘I’ve got nothing to say.’ I kick the ball. Hard. Kally catches it on her foot and slams it back.
‘So, is anything wrong with Jane?’ he asks. I actually have to bite my lip so hard I taste blood but I don’t say anything. ‘It’s only, when I try to talk to her she runs away.’
‘Am I the only one who’s going to call this like it is?’ Kally asks. I wave my hands at her. No, pull out, danger up ahead. I drag my hands across my throat. It’s no good. Kally’s about to spill Jane’s heart on the grass at Corelli’s feet. ‘I mean, I haven’t known you and Jane long, but hello, check out the steam in the kitchen.’ Okay, she really spilled it. There’s no way we can put a spin on that.
‘What?’ he asks.
‘She likes you,’ Kally says, speaking slowly.
‘Faltrain?’ Corelli asks. I run. I run and don’t stop until I reach the quad.
‘It wasn’t me,’ I say when I find Jane.
‘Wasn’t you what?’
‘Wasn’t me who told Corelli you like him. Kally did.’
‘I’ll be in the toilet if anyone needs me,’ she says. ‘And if Corelli comes looking and you tell him where I am, I will hunt you down. I will kill you.’
It’s like I said, though. There are some things you can’t hide from. Even in the girls’ toilets.
JANE
Okay. I’m sick of living in the toilet. I have to face him. Soon.
33
JANE
Liking someone who doesn’t like you sucks. Especially when they did like you but someone prettier came along. The only thing worse than liking someone who doesn’t like you is when that person you like finds out that you like them. Clearly, I am a girl on the edge. Of what, I’m just not sure.
Mr Faltrain drives me to Corelli’s on Friday night. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asks. ‘Not missing home, are you?’
‘At the start of the year I wanted to go back. Now, I’m not sure what I want.’
I don’t know if I’m t
hinking about staying because I’ve been so happy hanging out with Corelli or if it’s really something I want. My GPS guiding system started misfiring after I took that first trip in his car. It’s been on the blink ever since.
‘Home’s so built into us,’ Mr Faltrain says. ‘Maybe you’ll migrate for a while, stay with us for the summer and go back to England before our winter starts.’
‘Still hooked on the Discovery Channel, hey Mr Faltrain?’
‘It’s addictive. Last night I watched a special on hummingbirds. You’re one of our family, Jane. You have a home with us any time.’
I watch him drive away and then knock on Corelli’s door. ‘I like you as a friend’ is written all over his face.
We stand on either side of the bench and he explains, in great detail, how to cook rice so we don’t have to talk. ‘Okay,’ I say after he moves on to couscous and other grains. ‘I know Kally told you. Let’s get it out there.’
He puts the lid on the rice. ‘Yeah, that was weird.’
‘Weird how?’
‘She doesn’t even know us. I mean, why would she say that?’
I get mad, then, and I make it a policy not to lose control. I’ve seen Faltrain do it. It’s not a pretty look. But Corelli’s making this even more humiliating than it needs to be. ‘Wake up and smell the, the . . . okay, help me out here, I’m looking for a food analogy.’
‘Coriander?’
‘Good. Wake up and smell the coriander, you idiot. Would I sit in your car over and over while you sang Britney Spears if I didn’t like you? Did you think I’d suddenly turned Pop Princess?’
He backs up a little. ‘I thought we were friends. The last time I made a move you threatened to glue my lips together.’
‘The last time you made a move was in primary school. I didn’t have access to anything stronger than Clag. I didn’t mean the situation to be permanent.’ I sit down. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. You’ve got a girlfriend.’
‘I don’t know what you want me to do.’