Mr Kislinski came back. Velvet was still gasping for breath.
“Perhaps athletics might be more your thing,” he said.
Running last in a race was easy, flattening the hurdles as she attempted to jump over them wasn’t hard either, but snapping the low jump bar took a certain amount of skill. Mr Kislinski was not one to give up on a potential sportsperson, but Velvet was a match for him. When he suggested she try out in the pool, Velvet told him about the congenital disease that made her allergic to chlorine and had been responsible for the tragic deaths of three family members.
Mr Kislinski was undaunted. “I’m sure we’ll hit on your special skill, Velvet.”
By the end of her third week at Yarrabank, Velvet had tried out for every team sport and failed at each one. Mr Kislinski was still working his way through the track and field disciplines. He had a pile of what looked like weapons at his feet.
“How about shot-put, Velvet?”
He called over a small Year 7 boy to demonstrate. The boy tucked the shot-put under his chin like a professional and hurled it a surprising distance.
Mr Kislinski applauded. “Well done, lad. Now you have a try, Velvet.”
Velvet picked up one of the metal balls. It was heavy. She summoned all her strength and threw the shot-put and it flew quite well, but in the wrong direction. It landed on the Year 7’s toe. After he had been helped off to sick bay, Velvet concentrated on the other track and field sports. Her discus scattered the students at the long jump, her javelin caused a flurry in the garden of the retirement village next door and her hammer broke a window in the gym.
Mr Kislinski sighed and surrendered. “I’m afraid you’ll have to join the cultural studies class.”
Velvet put on an award-winning display of disappointment, while mentally high-fiving herself.
“It’s over in T6.”
Velvet turned and hobbled across the oval, a smile creeping over her face. It’d taken three weeks of hard work, but she’d won. No more sport.
CHAPTER 3
Two-thirds of the classrooms at Yarrabank High were wooden temporaries. Parents had raised funds for exciting projects like the gym and an indoor basketball court, even new goalposts. There was currently a lamington drive and a skip-a-thon in progress to raise money for bigger change rooms. Local businesses had sponsored the swimming pool and the grandstand and covered them with logos, but it seemed no one was interested in having ordinary classrooms named after them.
T6 was squeezed between the far side of the football oval and the fence. Even for a temporary building it was remote. If it had been any further away from the main building it would have been outside the school grounds.
Velvet’s mood of triumph faded as she opened the door. T6 wasn’t so much a classroom as a storeroom. The cultural studies class consisted of only six or seven pupils, but it seemed crowded. The students shared the room with excess sports equipment – piles of baseball mitts, boxes of beanbags and stacks of gym mats. At the other end of the room were paint-splattered easels, a broken potter’s wheel and various containers of dried-up paint and clay. It was actually the art room, but no one had enrolled in art that year.
The students all looked up for a moment as Velvet walked in, and then went back to their computer games, MP3 players and conversations – except for one overweight student who was asleep in the back row, his head on the desk among the remains of his lunch.
Velvet found herself a desk. “So what do we do?”
“Whatever you like,” said an Asian boy who was playing a game that involved exploding zombies.
Velvet might have thought he was good-looking if she was interested in boys – which she wasn’t.
“Isn’t there a teacher?”
“Yep.” The boy jerked his head towards the back of the room. “What’s your name?”
“Velvet.”
“Mr MacDonald, say hello to Velvet.”
The overweight, sleeping figure was in fact the teacher. He didn’t stir.
“I’m Peter,” the Asian boy said, and went back to his zombies.
None of the other students bothered to introduce themselves, but Velvet recognised some of them. Hailie, whose foot was in plaster, was filling in a Does He Think You’re Sexy? quiz in a Dolly magazine that must have been at least ten years old. Roula, the girl with the blue-streaked hair who Velvet had seen on her first day, was painting her nails green. There was also a muscular African boy with cropped hair and a body like a junior Arnold Schwarzenegger who was doing ab crunches in a corner. Velvet had heard Year 7s reverently whispering his name as he passed in the schoolyard. He was Jesus Mbele, the previous year’s soccer best and fairest. A boy with a sullen expression was playing a purple electric guitar decorated with lightning bolts. The guitar wasn’t plugged in. His long hair was tied back in an untidy ponytail. He wore glasses and had bands on his teeth. As he plucked the strings his head swayed from side to side, as if he could hear the full sound of the notes and not the thin metallic plinks. He was too engrossed in his music to notice Velvet. A boy with his back to the class was kneading a lump of clay and forming it into something. He was the only one who seemed to be doing anything vaguely “cultural”.
Roula blew on her fingernails. “What’s your name?”
She was in Velvet’s humanities class, but obviously had not been paying attention when the teacher introduced her.
“Velvet. Velvet S Pye.”
Roula sniggered. “Weird name. Makes you sound like a cushion.”
“What’s the S stand for?” asked Peter, who was trying to be friendly.
“Snobnose?” suggested Hailie, who wasn’t.
“Seraphina.”
They all looked at her in disbelief.
“Seriously?” Roula said. “Don’t your parents like you or something?”
“It was my grandmother’s name.”
“Hey, check this out.” The boy who had been modelling clay moved aside to reveal his creation – a crude phallic shape sticking up from the desk.
Velvet blushed.
“Grow up, Drago,” said Peter.
“You’re a creep,” said Roula.
Drago was short and stocky, with badly cut hair. He had a very unattractive face with a nose that bent to one side, little piggy eyes and a scar that twisted his mouth into a permanent sneer.
“Hey, what’s your name … Corduroy, what school did you come from?” Drago spoke with an unidentifiable accent and a lisp.
“St Theresa’s.”
Hailie and Roula shared a look.
“So what’s a stuck-up snob like you doing here?” Drago smirked crookedly. “Daddy made redundant?”
Velvet ignored him, and his sculpture, and pulled a book from her bag.
“What you reading?” Hailie took the book from Velvet’s hands so that she could see the cover.
“Woo-the-ring Heights.”
“That’s Wuthering,” Velvet said.
“Sh-tupid word. What’s it mean?”
“It means old and spooky.” Actually, Velvet had no idea what it meant. “It’s the name of the house on the cover.”
Hailie flicked through the book, looking for more pictures, before tossing it back to Velvet and going back to the pile of outdated magazines.
“I used to live in an old house like that when I was a kid,” Roula said.
“What, in Greece?” Drago asked.
“No, in Brunswick, when we first came to Australia. There were ghosts. They rearranged things on the shelves, hid keys and made the tzatziki go off.”
“Sure, Roula,” Peter said.
“Seriously. You ask my mum.”
“I’m just going to the toilet,” Hailie announced, rubbing her stomach. “You know, just in case.”
Velvet blushed again and glanced at the boys, who were pretending they hadn’t heard. Everyone knew that Hailie was the only Year 9 girl who hadn’t started menstruating. She went to the toilet about twenty times a day because she imagined she was g
etting cramps.
Velvet gave up trying to communicate to the cultural studies class.
CHAPTER 4
The next Monday there was a lunchtime concert in the amphitheatre. This was where weightlifting competitions took place and where the school gathered when sports prizes were awarded each term. The school band was playing, or that’s what Velvet thought Hailie had said. Velvet decided to go, in the hope that there were one or two Yarrabank students who were not total philistines, and she’d just been unable to find them among all the jocks.
There were only a couple of dozen kids in the audience. Peter was surrounded by a group of young female admirers. Hailie and Roula were there too, and some of the deviants with bald heads and tattoos. There was no sign of any classical music lovers.
The band members came on and boys in the front row threw polystyrene cups at them. It wasn’t the sort of band Velvet had had in mind, with trumpets and flutes. Their name was painted on the drum kit – Toxic Shock. One of the band members was the sullen guitarist from cultural studies. He strapped on his guitar and launched into a crashing intro. The lead singer started shouting into the microphone. The other guitarist and the drummer joined in and the various sounds fused into a deafening roar. Velvet covered her ears. It was awful. The singer stopped making his contribution and the guitarist stepped forward to do a solo, hair flying, right arm swinging. She didn’t stay for the next song.
That was the only attempt Velvet made to be involved at Yarrabank. Why had she imagined there would be anyone who she could relate to at such a grungy school? There wasn’t a single person she wanted to be friends with.
The following week, the cultural studies class was quiet, even though Mr MacDonald was away. Velvet surveyed her classmates. They were the outcasts of Yarrabank High, the sports-handicapped – those too injured or too inept to play any kind of sport, or clever enough to convince Mr Kislinski they were.
Peter made one or two attempts to chat with Velvet, but soon returned to inscribing his desk with tags. Drago was working on his latest sculpture – a very realistic dog turd. The Toxic Shock guitarist, whose name was Taleb, was playing his guitar. This time it was plugged into a small amplifier and he was listening through headphones. Roula told them about the time she’d been swept out to sea while swimming and was saved by a dolphin. Jesus was improving his pectorals with a pair of enormous dumbbells. Velvet settled down with her latest book. She had decided that cultural studies was her chance to read her way through the classics.
When Miss Ryan popped in to check on them, they were all quietly getting on with their own business.
“Everything okay?” she said.
No one responded.
“Peter, I wonder if you could help me arrange the furniture in the hall after school? For the Trivia Night.”
“Sure.”
Peter didn’t look at her. Miss Ryan hovered in the doorway, as if hoping for a chat, and then left.
“Miss Ryan’s got a crush on Peter,” Roula whispered to Velvet.
Velvet tried to avoid conversation with Roula, because it usually involved some unbelievable story, but she was quite interested to learn more about Peter.
“Really?”
Roula nodded. “Mothers and female teachers always fall for his charm.”
“He is very good looking, isn’t he?” Velvet said.
There was a constant knot of girls hanging around him in the schoolyard or trailing after him in the corridor.
“Can’t see the attraction myself,” Roula replied. “He’s not my type.”
Peter’s skin was like brown satin and he had beautiful dark eyes and perfect teeth. His thick black hair was well-cut. He was one of those people who would look good in anything – even the shapeless Yarrabank uniform. He wore his pants just tight enough, his shirt just loose enough, and the purple hoodie seemed to hang just right for him.
“Why doesn’t he hang out with kids his own age?”
Peter was in Year 10, but he seemed to prefer the company of younger kids.
“Dunno,” Hailie said.
“Has he got a girlfriend?”
“Why? Are you interested?”
“No!” Velvet said.
“That’s the weird thing,” Hailie said. “No one has ever seen him with a girl.”
“If all the girls think he’s hot, but he doesn’t want to go out with them, and if he’s intimidated by his own peer group, he must be insecure. It’s obvious.”
“Geez, you say some dumb stuff, Velvet.”
Hailie left to meet up with her boyfriend behind the change sheds – not the footy-playing one who had refused to carry her to sick bay, she’d dropped him the week before, but her latest boyfriend, the greasy-looking singer from Toxic Shock.
CHAPTER 5
Velvet stared at the Mandarin test that had just been handed back to her. It was nearly the end of first term. She had developed an uneasy routine at Yarrabank High. She wrote long, passionate essays, and her English teacher told her she was brilliant. The other students in her English class thought she was a stuck-up snob and a try-hard. The maths teacher, Mr Axiotis, was quite nice and algebraic factorising and simultaneous equations made sense to her at last. Mandarin, on the other hand, remained a complete mystery. There was a giant D on the top of the page. Velvet had never got such a low mark in her life.
The Mandarin teacher, Mrs Dwyer, was a pretty young Malaysian woman who wore cute outfits. The boys all fancied her; the girls all wanted to be her. She cracked jokes and everyone enjoyed Mandarin lessons. Everyone except Velvet. Mrs Dwyer spoke perfect English, but she gave all her instructions to the class in Mandarin. The only time she spoke in English was when she was explaining new grammar. Velvet didn’t understand a word she said – in Mandarin or in English.
Mrs Dwyer was writing characters on the whiteboard and saying something in Mandarin. The other students were busily writing down the answers. Velvet stared at the characters. The only one she recognised was the verb “to be”.
Velvet hated lunchtime almost as much as she hated Mandarin. At St Theresa’s she’d had lots of girls in her friendship group, and other girls who were desperate to hang out with her on any days when she wasn’t speaking to her friends. At Yarrabank, she sat by herself. Even the newly arrived refugees had each other to sit with, though they didn’t speak the same language. Velvet spent her lunchtimes in the library.
At St Theresa’s she’d ordered sushi or rocket and haloumi salad from the refectory. At Yarrabank, she ate sandwiches made by her mother. They were awful. Velvet forced herself to eat one sandwich. As she was walking to the bin to throw the rest away, she could smell smoke. A crowd was gathering.
Velvet saw Peter. “What’s going on?”
“Someone set the rubbish skip on fire,” he said. “Three guesses who it was.”
Miss Ryan was putting out the flames with a fire extinguisher.
Velvet stood on her toes so she could see over the crowd. Mr Kislinski was marching Drago to his office.
At least lunchtime on Thursdays was short.
Cultural studies wasn’t exactly the highlight of Velvet’s week, but it did mean it was almost the weekend, and it was better than doing fifteen laps of the oval or having some jock hurl balls at her. Velvet spent the time doing her homework and reading the complete works of Jane Austen and Douglas Adams. She texted her friends at Saint Theresa’s, but they didn’t text back.
The other cultural studies students kept pretty much to themselves. All Velvet had to do was put up with Drago’s obscene clay models, Hailie’s endless chat about boyfriends and period cramps, Roula’s unbelievable stories and Taleb’s tinny guitar playing.
Jesus didn’t speak much, he mainly grunted.
“Hi, Jesus, how are you?”
“Urgh.”
“Hey, Jesus, how’s the knee?”
“Urgh.”
“Want a chewy, Jesus?”
“Urgh.”
He was the only one who wasn’t h
appy being in the cultural studies class. Peter told Velvet Jesus’s story. As well as winning interschool swimming medals and playing in the hockey and lacrosse teams, he had been the school’s star soccer player – a celebrity because he’d scored sixty-two goals in a season.
“But he was jumped in the changing rooms by six thugs from another team that lost badly. They beat him up – fixed his knee so he would never play again.”
Jesus spent most of his time staring longingly out of the window at the students playing sport on the oval. Velvet almost felt sorry for him.
Velvet had no friends at Yarrabank. That was okay. She would be studious, come top in everything (except Mandarin). She would be aloof from the Yarrabank students. The last thing she wanted was to become one of them.
Velvet would have gone on all year reading her way through the classics and feeling superior in peace every Thursday afternoon, if it hadn’t been for Roula’s Uncle Dimitrios. When she arrived at T6 the following Thursday, the cultural studies class was in uproar. Instead of the usual background noise coming from computer games and Taleb’s guitar strings, there was shouting, swearing and the sound of a chair being hurled across the room. Velvet timidly put her head around the door.
“Your uncle’s a stupid old fart!”
“You wouldn’t say that to his face, you knob!”
Roula and Drago were facing each other, standing so close their noses were almost touching. They were both seething with anger. Peter was trying a little quiet persuasion to stop the argument.
“Come on, you guys. Who cares what her dumb uncle says?”
“He is not dumb. He’s smart. He’s the Mayor of Yarrabank and he says Croats are sneaky liars.”
Drago went for Roula’s throat. Velvet rushed over to help Peter separate them.
“Let her go, Drago. You don’t have to take any notice of what she says.”
“Who asked you, stuck-up snobface?” Drago let go of Roula and turned on Velvet. “What would you know about this stuff?”