Bone Song (4 page)

The library at lunchtime would have to be the quietest place in the whole school. I sit at the long table next to the dictionaries and encyclopaedias and try to finish all of my maths. Last night’s homework, tonight’s homework and that scummy Exercise 22.

I draw little boxes around the numbers and letters in the algebra problem but it doesn’t help;
a
is being ridiculous today, trying to tell me it’s equal to about a thousand when I know
b
is worth 11. Can’t work out
y
. It’s wriggling around on the page, won’t stay in one place. Maybe
y
has fleas, like that kitten.

What would be a great name for a kitten like that? Blackie? Boring. Midnight? That’s more like it. It probably would be OK to wash it in detergent, if I didn’t get any in its eyes. It. I don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl. Not that it matters. I can’t keep it.

In fifth period, Ms Mitchell tries hard to get everyone excited about Abraham Lincoln and presidential power, but she doesn’t get anyone to pay attention until she talks about his assassination. She says, ‘Would you call John Wilkes Booth a terrorist or just a murderer?’

Some hands actually spring up like daffodils from the mud. Man, one of them is Dobie’s. I sit up and listen. This could be interesting.

She’s obviously given Ms Mitchell a shock too. ‘Er, yes, Deborah, what do you think?’

‘Terrorist is a totally over-used term, and it is usually used inappropriately anyway, especially by the media. The correct word for a political murderer is assassin.’ Dobie’s
voice is calm, like she’s giving a lecture at a museum or something. The other kids glance at each other and raise their eyebrows, and some boys go, ‘Oooooohhh,’ but Dobie’s right.

‘Er, yes, you’re probably correct.’ Ms Mitchell is struggling for an answer. ‘However, if we think about what terrorists in today’s world try to achieve, how their beliefs make them think
they
are in the right, can we compare that to Booth?’

‘Booth was part of a political movement, but in the end he’s remembered more as an insane individual. Isn’t terrorism more about using violence and killing to inflict your obsessions on other people?’ Dobie hasn’t bothered to put her hand up. She says what she wants, then sits back in her chair as if she’s waiting to see how many angry ants she’s stirred up.

Heaps. A dozen hands waggle in the air and Ms Mitchell looks quite excited. This is the most interest this class has shown in weeks.

Belinda gets in first as usual. Her ponytail bobs around when she talks. ‘I think all the terrorists are insane individuals. They just use their religion as an excuse.’

It’s never that simple. Look at Dad. In our town he was Mr Charity. Gave heaps of money to the hospital and had an ECG machine named after him. Senior partner in a big law firm. Ran a very efficient debt collection business on the side. I guess he still does. Mum and I skipping out on him must have dented his reputation a little bit, but no doubt he made up some story that turned Mum into a raving loony.

‘Melissa, what do you think?’ Ms Mitchell is beaming at me like she thinks I’m about to say something highly intelligent. Why on earth do the teachers always pick on me to answer questions? I sit here minding my own business, being anonymous, and they turn me into teacher’s suck.

‘I think Dobie’s right. Lots of people are terrorists, even the people we live with every day. If you’re trying to kill someone or make
their life not worth living just because you’ve got lots of power, then you’re a terrorist too.’ Oops, where did that come from? I should’ve kept my big mouth shut. Funny thing though – some of the girls are nodding like they know exactly what I’m talking about.

‘I totally agree with that.’ Dobie’s still lounging back in her chair, but she’s scowling big time.

Mitchell looks at her for a couple of seconds. She opens her mouth then shuts it again, like she was going to say something.

Instead she glances down at the book in her hand and says, ‘So what about Booth?’

Mitchell’s destroyed the whole thing we were getting into. Dobie’s mouth twists. She obviously thinks Mitchell’s a chicken, like I do. I wanted to hear what else Dobie might say. Why would she agree with me? What would she know?

Next period is P.E. in the gym. Shit. I hate the gym, and I especially hate it right now.
That vaulting horse looks about ten feet high to me. How can I get out of it? Fake rabies? Faint?

Some of the kids are already lined up for the horse. They actually like bouncing on that stupid little springboard and sailing up into the air. I want to keep my feet on the ground. Dobie didn’t get changed and Feibler’s sent her back, no excuses accepted unless you have a note. I should’ve faked one for myself.

She comes back out and stands, arms crossed, her bottom lip sticking out. Feibler’s not happy either.

‘There’s nothing to be scared of. If you take it slowly, you’ll soon get the hang of it. Look at the others.’

‘I’m not scared. I just won’t do it, that’s all.’ Dobie points past the mats. ‘What about that? Why can’t I do that?’

I look to where she’s pointing. It’s a long piece of wood, raised about a foot off the floor.

‘The beam? Bit tame for you, isn’t it?’ Feibler shrugs. ‘Fine, do that then. As long as you’re doing something. I’ll come and give you some help in a minute.’ He glares around at everyone who’s not running, jumping or swinging on a piece of equipment. Basically, that means me.

‘Miss McCardle, join Miss Lessing on the beam. I imagine the horse is beyond you as well?’

He’s being sarcastic, but that’s OK. If I don’t have to jump over that monstrous thing, I don’t care what he says. Except now I’m stuck with Dobie again. It’s like a curse. By the time I get over to the beam, she’s up on it, balancing on one foot, her other one up in the air. She’d look like a ballerina if she was skinnier. She leans forward and her leg goes straight up, toes pointed. Maybe she does do ballet.

Just as I open my mouth to ask, she lowers her leg and jumps off.

‘Your turn. You’ll have to take your runners off.’

The cool, dusty floor under my feet reminds me of my naked dances in the mornings. My face gets hot and I step onto the beam too quickly. Straight away, I overbalance and have to jump off. I don’t look to see if she’s laughing. I bite my lip and step on again, more carefully this time. The beam seems wide and solid but once I’m on it, it’s suddenly narrow. I have to keep one foot in front of the other.

‘Find your centre, down in your guts. Take a deep breath and focus. Don’t think about your feet or you’ll never stay on.’ It’s Dobie, giving me instructions. She sounds like an expert, encouraging and firm; I take a breath and let it out, wondering where on earth my centre is. But then I feel something settle in the pit of my stomach like an anchor on the sea bed so I focus on that and ignore my feet, like she said.

‘Centre your weight over your right foot and lift the left. Slowly.’

But she just told me to ignore my feet! My right one’s at the back. The anchor shifts back a little, I raise my left foot, bending
my knee. I get it up about nine inches. Hey, maybe I could be the next Karate Kid! Uh oh, a big wobble sets in and I fall off.

‘Lost your focus, huh?’ Dobie hops up on the beam. She makes it look like it’s about two feet wide. ‘Takes a while to get it. You lasted longer than I thought you would.’

Who the hell does she think she is? Every day she’s Bad Attitude to the extreme, now she’s Beam Queen. But I can’t help watching closely as she balances, stretches, swings around, does these ballet poses like she was born to it.

‘Hey, you’re really good. Do you learn ballet or something?’

That makes her wobble for a few seconds until she gets it under control. Her face has gone all dark and she’s probably going to tell me to piss off, or worse, but she doesn’t.

‘I used to.’ She points down at the beam. ‘The best gymnasts can turn somersaults on this thing, you know.’

‘Are you going to try it?’ That’d be amazing. I bet she could do it, too.

‘Nah. Can’t.’

‘Oh.’ I don’t know what else to add. There’s something about the way she said ‘Can’t’ that felt loaded, like she meant stuff way beyond me. I’m not going to pry.

Feibler comes over to order us around but he stops when he sees Dobie balancing with her eyes closed. She doesn’t know he’s there and she does that leg thing again, getting it nearly perpendicular, her arms out like bird wings. Feibler watches her for two or three minutes and shakes his head. By the time she opens her eyes, he’s gone back to the kids on the horse.

‘Feibler came over. He was watching you,’ I tell her.

‘I know. I could smell him. Last period he’s always sweaty and he sprays on more deodorant.’ She grins. ‘Come on, your turn. Have to make it look good so he won’t
decide you need a turn on the horse.’

This time I raise one leg behind me and spread my arms. When I start to wobble, Dobie steadies me with two fingers on my shoulder. ‘Breathe and centre,’ is all she says, and when the anchor settles again, she takes her hand away. I’m breathing slowly, lifting my leg, stretching forward. I could balance here for hours, I think, until my standing leg gets a major wobble and I have to step down to the floor. Back to reality.

I look up and Dobie’s smiling this huge smile. It’s so unlike her that I’m speechless. ‘That was amazingly good for a first-timer,’ she says, and now I’m so astonished, I have to sit down.

Today, for the first time since the accident, I felt like air. Balanced, free, in that space that I only used to find in dancing. I thought I’d lost it forever. We didn’t do much beam work at Barton, and only a little bit in dance class, but I’d forgotten the simple gut-level stuff that happens when you focus like that.

Marveen talked about it sometimes. She’d phrase it like a lecture but she was really trying to get everyone to come together in that central place. She’d quote this poem by Yeats,
The Second Coming
, about things falling apart and the centre not being able to hold. Something like that. When I went
and looked it up to read the whole thing, I didn’t understand it. Still don’t, but I like the lines.

God, how long is it since I allowed myself to think of Marveen? Or the dance classes? Even when I was mobile again and my arm was out of that straitjacket sling, I couldn’t go back, not even to say
hi
. Seeing the others leaping around the floor, especially the hopeless ones who couldn’t even keep time properly, would’ve killed me.

Couldn’t do it. Don’t even want to think about it.

Goody surprised me. She was a bit awkward but she managed the centring and balance thing like she’d been doing it for years. Well, maybe she has, but I don’t think so. She doesn’t seem the type to dance or play music or anything like that. Except for her poems.

Goody got a note to see the principal just before class finished. What was that about? Wonder if she’ll tell me. I’ve been waiting
in detention for ten minutes and no one’s turned up. The smell today is vomitous. Maybe someone did vomit in here.

The door opens with a snap like the person on the other side is trying to rip the handle off. It’s Goody, with a face like God having a bad sinners’ day. Mr Hornsby is right behind her. That explains a lot.

‘God helps those who help themselves, Ms McCardle,’ Hornsby says, in a tone that makes me want to grab him by his big red nose and twist it until he begs for mercy. I take back what I said about Goody’s face. She’s not God, she’s the sinner. I swear I can hear her teeth grinding from here.

‘Yes, sir.’ Goody is grovelling; I want to shake her, make her stick up for herself, then I hear her mutter, ‘Stupid prick,’ and I have to duck my head. Hornsby can’t decide whether he heard what she said correctly, but in the end he ignores it.

‘You girls are here until five. I will be back to check on you. If you’re not using
your time constructively, I shall have to find chores for you to do.’ He sniffs and leaves, closing the door behind him like it’s really made of iron bars.

So, no tree washing or filing today. Hmmm, homework. Now there’s a novel idea. Goody drags her books out of her bag, sits down and puts her head on the top book, jamming her fingers in her ears. I sit back in my chair and watch her. There’s not much else to do and I figure she’s got to come up for air sooner or later.

It takes a few minutes. I’m starting to get bored, thinking about sneaking out for a walk, when she sighs and straightens up. There’s a possibility she was crying but her face is dry and looks like a papier-mâché mask.

‘What do you think of Ms Rogers?’ she says to the ceiling. ‘Apart from the fact that she’s an interfering cow.’

Does she want an answer? ‘She’s OK. Wasted here. Can’t cope with all the kids who don’t want to be here.’

‘Like you?’

‘I didn’t say I didn’t want to be here.’

‘You don’t work in class, don’t say anything unless you have to, don’t do homework, spend your time finding new ways to get detention.’ She turns to look at me, a funny little smile trying to turn her mouth up again. ‘I’d nominate you for Student of the Year ahead of Spike Donivan, but that’s about all.’

‘This school has Student of the Year?’ I’m astounded. Look what I’ve been missing out on.

‘Are you kidding? Course not.’ Goody laughs but it sounds rusty at first until she gets the hang of it, then she can’t stop. I have to laugh at her laughing, even if she is a bit hysterical. Then it’s all over and she sighs, tapping her fingers on her books.

‘Algebra. Last week, easy-peasy. This week, gibberish.’

‘Canto. Last week, Mr Nice. This week, the Hound from Hell. What’s the problem?’

‘System error. I think my hard drive has crashed.’ She taps her head.

‘You want some help?’ As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I wish I could call it back. I don’t want to be anyone’s buddy, helper, saviour.

She giggles again. ‘You’ve failed every maths test this term. I don’t need help in how
not
to do it.’

She’s saying I’m stupid! Ignorant cow. ‘I failed those tests on purpose.’

‘What for? What’s the point?’

She doesn’t believe me, I can tell. ‘The point is my mother. She put me here to teach me a lesson. So I’m teaching her one back.’

She sort of shakes her head, like I’m speaking a foreign language. I turn my back
to her and pull some books out of my bag. No way I’m doing any homework but if Hornsby comes back, I can look busy in a second.

Then, just when I thought I’d squashed it back into its hole, the horrible, black nothingness of my life zooms out and smothers me. I have to fight to get a breath, I know my fingers are pulling at my clothes but I can’t stop them.
Count, count, COUNT, one two three, light in, black out, four five six, light in, black out…

Suddenly hands are on my head, not the cold ones; warm, quiet, resting, these are. Someone’s behind me, leaning me back into their body, warm hands holding. I breathe, count, breathe. The black thing slides back into its hole. I open my eyes, it’s so bright that I have to blink hard.

It’s Goody behind me. Shit! Get me away from her. I jump up from my chair, head for the door, open it and run. Down the shadowed corridor, past empty rooms, battered lockers, heading for the double doors where the sun is shining. I burst
out through the doors, make it as far as a wooden seat by a weed-filled garden and sit down in a heap, my legs shaking.

I don’t know what’s worse – having one of my stupid freak-outs in front of Goody or having her feel sorry for me and touch me. No one touches me,
no one.

Then she sits down next to me and I hold myself very tightly, getting it all under control. Just waiting for the sympathy, the sorry voice, the same old lines the shrink gave me that Mother picked up on, repeating them like some kind of magic mantra until I told her to shut up before I tore her limb from limb. Go on, Goody. Say your pity piece.

‘You don’t seem the type for drugs,’ she says.

‘Huh?’

‘That’s the easy way out, anyway. Only postpones the shit that’s causing it all.’ She leans back and puts her face up to the afternoon sun.

OK, I’ll play along, but what could she really know? ‘The shrink wanted to put me on tranquillisers for a while but I said no. Maybe I should say yes. What do you think? You sound like an expert.’ Did she catch the sarcasm? I kept it minimal.

‘Yeah, I am a bit. Say no. Better to face the dragon.’

‘You’ve met my mother, have you? Tell me, what do you do with dragons that’re undefeatable?’

‘They’re always in it to win, at all costs. And usually better at battle tactics. You have to be trickier, faster, plan your moves, like in chess. They’re cunning with words too, and use them to try and crush resistance.’

I think about what she said, and
something
happens inside my head, like a door opening so that I catch a glimpse of sunlight.

‘Um, I think maybe I’ve got two dragons. One inside and one outside. And I’m not sure which one is bigger and meaner.’

Ow! She’s grabbed me by the arm and is dragging me back inside. ‘Hornsby!’ she hisses, ‘Heading across from his office.’ We start running, our feet thumping down the corridor. Too bad if he hears us. By the time he gets to the detention room, we’ll be sitting like little mice, studying and finishing our homework. The Hornsby dragon is barely knee-high, easy to kick aside.