CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Maybe I deserved it. Maybe having to be up this early was the universe's way of punishing me for messing everything up so badly with Shane yesterday—for misusing my feminine wiles.
Or maybe it was Ella's fault for, once again, choosing a boyfriend with issues.
It was seven-fifteen in the morning. Okay, so not that early by some people's standards, but I was a teenager, not a baker or a morning radio show host. Seven-fifteen was an obscene hour to me.
I yawned and tried to rub the sleep from my eyes. It was going to be hard to spot Alan when I could barely keep my eyes open. I had prepared a bag of food for him that would hopefully keep him away from his stepmum's drugged food for a few days. I hoped this would buy me some time to work out how to sort out this mess.
There was only one bike in the rack so far—a sparkling, purple mountain bike. It looked nothing like the dirty, mud spattered bicycle that I'd watched Alan crash last week. Hopefully, that meant Alan hadn't arrived at school yet.
I looked around the playground. A group of year-sevens in oversized uniforms were sitting nervously near the bubblers, talking awkwardly. Their squeaky voices were suddenly drowned out by clumsy honking sounds emanating from the school hall. The school band obviously hadn't improved much since last year.
I'd never been at school this early before. I usually burst into roll call just in time to pant 'present' as the teacher read out the class list. It was weird to think that some kids arrived this early every day. Why would anyone bother?
My pondering was interrupted by a group of year-eight girls chattering as they wheeled their bikes over to the rack. I moved out of the way. Things were starting to heat up here. The year-eights came and left and were replaced by another group. Over the next fifteen minutes, my eyes glazed over with boredom as I watched streams of students arrive, lock up their bikes and move on.
No sign of Alan.
Finally, at eight a.m., a lone figure on a dirty bike wobbled his way through the school gates. Alan had arrived. I waited until he'd finished fumbling with his bike lock before approaching him.
'Alan!'
Alan looked up at my face but didn't say anything.
That's okay. I'm used to talking to myself when he's around.
I was relieved to notice that his cheeks were a rosy pink hue today rather than the sickly grey colour they'd sported when I'd last seen him at the swimming pool. Hopefully that meant he'd taken my advice and not eaten any more of his stepmum's food.
'Here, I got you some food for the next few days.' I forced the bag into Alan's hands.
He stared blankly at the bag in his hands, then gave a glimmer of a smile.
'Remember, don't eat any more of Sharelle's food, okay? And don't touch anything Shane gives you either,' I instructed him.
Without saying a word, Alan wandered aimlessly away from me. He pulled a chocolate bar out of the bag and started eating. I sighed with relief. Maybe after a day without poisoned food he'd be able to tell me what was going on.
An annoyingly familiar movement caught my eye.
A flash of blonde hair as it was whipped around at breakneck speed.
Carly had arrived at school.
Which was weird because, as Carly's 'roll call buddy', I was well aware of the fact that Carly was not an early riser. She made me look like the queen of mornings. She often didn't make it to roll call at all.
Today, though, it appeared that Carly had had no trouble dragging herself out of bed. Her hair was artfully tousled, the top two buttons on her school dress were pressed open the way she liked them, and her white school socks were pulled up high to emphasise her short skirt and non-uniform-policy high-heeled shoes. The only indication that Carly was not completely awake yet was that she was currently misdirecting her flirtatious energy at Mr Cunningham, one of the geography teachers. I'd heard rumours that last year Mr Cunningham had confiscated a packet of cigarettes from Carly and informed her parents. Geography wasn't one of my electives, so I hadn't witnessed the carnage first hand, but apparently Carly had invoked revenge on Mr Cunningham by causing trouble in every geography lesson after that. Mr Cunningham had retaliated severely with reprimands and detentions.
I rubbed my eyes. I had to be mistaken. Had Carly just purposefully dropped her pen at Mr Cunningham's feet?
Carly's high pitched giggle rang out across the playground.
'Eww! Now it's all dirty!' I heard Carly say. I watched as Carly bent over to pick up the pen, then snapped back up and blew on the pen provocatively. It was sickening. I couldn't believe she was flirting with a teacher. It was so inappropriate, and especially to be doing it with Mr Cunningham, who was old, crusty and her mortal enemy.
Suddenly the cogs in my brain, which had been whirring quietly in the background since Carly's party at the weekend, jolted to a stop.
Mr Cunningham must be Mr Crusty-Pants.
And Crusty-Pants was the father of Carly's ex-boyfriend Derrick. I'd assumed that Derrick had the same last name as his father, so I had been looking for a Mr Paine. I hadn't considered that Derrick might be Crusty-Pants' stepson and therefore have a different surname.
If Mr Cunningham was Crusty-Pants, then it was no wonder Mr Cunningham had had a heart attack when he'd learned Carly was going out with his stepson. Mr Cunningham and Carly loathed each other. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Carly was the one who'd coined the name 'Crusty-Pants' in the first place.
Thankfully for my morning breakfast (which I preferred to keep inside my stomach), Mr Cunningham did not seem to be paying any attention to Carly. He was too busy scrabbling through his briefcase. Finally, he seemed to find what he was looking for. He pulled out a set of keys and walked towards the social sciences building, away from her.
Carly, who had previously been engrossed in cleaning/making out with her pen, took off after Mr Cunningham.
'Mr Cunningham.' Carly caught up to him, suspiciously 'breathless' for someone who'd run only a few metres. 'I was wondering if I could borrow your documentary on volcanoes.'
Mr Cunningham stopped in his stride to glare at her. He eyeballed her angrily, before shifting his gaze onto me, as if I was colluding with Carly on some sort of practical joke. I only then realised I'd been unconsciously following them in order to stay within earshot. I dropped my folder on the ground, crouching down to 'pick up' the pieces.
Good one, Fiona; that doesn't look suspicious at all.
However, it seemed to satisfy Mr Cunningham.
He glared at Carly as I started to retrieve the papers that had fallen out of my folder.
'You didn't have much interest in it last year when you were misbehaving,' Mr Cunningham said dryly.
'Oh, I did!' Carly exclaimed. Then she hushed her voice. I had to shuffle closer to them to hear what came next.
'I'm sorry for my behaviour. It's just … it's just that I was embarrassed about what my friends would think if they knew of my passion for volcanoes.'
It was too much. Passion? The only thing Carly had a passion for was taking self-portraits of herself and for stealing other girls' boyfriends. I couldn't contain myself. To my horror, the sound that exploded from my mouth sounded like a pig and a horse were having a fight to the death.
I tried to suppress my incredulous laughter, but my cover was blown. Both Mr Cunningham and Carly turned around to glare at me. Carly recovered quickly, though, and in true Carly style identified the awkward situation I was in and made the most of it.
She turned on the fake sobs.
'See what I have to put up with? It's no wonder I pretend I'm not interested in class!' she wailed (although, I noted, not loud enough for anyone else to hear her).
Well, if looks could kill, I would have been a ghost myself now, because Mr Cunningham was giving me the biggest greasy in the history of teacher-greasies at Canberra High School.
'Fiona, get away from here before I give you a detention,' he barked. 'I've never seen such a disgraceful disregard for another student's learning.'
Carly punctuated his statement with another fake sob.
'Sorry,' I mumbled, as I quickly gathered the remains of my papers from the ground, under Mr Cunningham's aggressive supervision. Carly, meanwhile, took the opportunity to multi-task whilst Mr Cunningham's attention was distracted. She sneered at me whilst continuing her fake sobs.
Satisfied that I was on my way, Mr Cunningham turned back to Carly. He pulled a hanky out of his pocket and gave it to her.
'There, there, you poor child. I had no idea of your passion for volcanoes. Let me get you the video,' he crooned.
My folder was all packed up now, but I was hardly going to leave after I'd seen Carly turn on the waterworks. She usually resorted to sly looks and flirtation to get what she wanted. She must be really desperate, and I wanted to know what it was she was after.
Their backs were turned to me now, so I quietly shuffled closer to the pair from behind.
Carly was still sniffling.
Pu-leeeeeze!
'Mr Cunningham, I'm so a-f-f-fraid that someone else will h-h-hear us. I couldn't stand it if someone else knew about my h-h-hobby.'
Stuttering now? Wow, yet again I'd really underestimated Carly's arsenal of manipulation tactics. Someone should get that girl to Hollywood!
'C-c-can I please pick it up at your place t-t-tonight? Or maybe you could give it to D-d-derrick and he can give it to me?' she suggested hopefully.
Once again, I proved myself completely unable to control my bodily functions. I gasped loudly.
So that was it. Carly was trying to get access to her ex-boyfriend Derrick through Mr Cunningham. I thought back to the face-wash video. Carly had admitted she'd been trying to get a hot formal date for months. Derrick had upset her plot by turning all the Grammar School guys against her, so she'd formulated a new plan. It seemed that her plan was to flirt her way back to Derrick through Mr Cunningham. Wow, she was really desperate for a formal date if she was willing to grovel to old Crusty-Pants.
The fact that Carly's effortless popularity was actually a carefully planned strategic attack definitely made her seem less cool in my eyes. I mean, who could be bothered? Who cares who she takes to the formal? The girl had a screw loose.
Then it hit me … the photo in Carly's room. It wasn't a sinister murder plot at all. It was simply part of her planning strategy to get a formal date. Chris was dead, therefore unavailable as a formal date, so Carly had scribbled out his face. Carly had thought Shane was an option, and circled his face. Derrick Paine had recently dumped her, so he'd received the scribble treatment too. She must have reconsidered writing him off completely when she came up with her brilliant plan of apple-polishing Mr Cunningham.
At the sound of my gasp, both Carly and Crusty-Pants swung around.
But I wasn't waiting around to get in trouble again. I couldn't afford a detention. It was hard enough trying to fit in homework, a job, and sorting out Ella's love life, without a detention too.
So I did the only thing I could think of. I ran for it, heading for the one place I didn't think anyone would find me—a pigeon-poo infested alcove in the small gap between the science block and the school fence. Megan and I used to hide there together in year seven when we wanted to tell secrets.
When I arrived at my hiding place, I was horrified to find that it wasn't empty. At the sound of my approach, the two bodies that were nestled there, sprang apart guiltily.
I couldn't believe my eyes. Huddled together, whispering intimately, their heads close, were …
Megan and Jason.
Lara had been right. They were in love with each other. I felt sick.