Dreaming of Amelia (41 page)

What are you,
an extra in the
Rocky Horror Show
?

my mother
frying onions
and the dress
i
found in
St Vinnie's
on the way home
from school,
it was only 2 dollars.
it's my birthday
I get to choose.

I'm not in the mood for an
argument

take it off and put it in the bin
well,
he
likes it.

Trust me
he also wants
that dress taken off
.

Which struck me
as funny.
You're not
wrong there.

What's so funny
.

You realise that
he likes to take photos
of me
when I get changed?

I mean
before
I get —
when I'm not —

after the pool
early in the morning
after training?

which struck my mother
as funny.

You're suggesting he
takes nude photographs of you
it's not suggesting
if it's true

the last couple of years
used to be he'd promise
a new story about
fairies
or
four-leaf clovers
but now
it's just what we do.
it started —

Sometimes
people say
the strangest things

my mother
winding a tea towel
eyes over my head
voice winding slowly
around the room

They say
hurtful
spiteful
untrue things
but we both know
it's just
they have a wild imagination
and
they want to wear a dress
a very
stupid dress
to their
party

turning
back to the stove

And now that stupid dress
has burned the onions
!

like I said,
people say the strangest
things
and usually
they're
just
not
true.

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Emily Melissa-Anne Thompson
Student No: 8233521

Now, I don't know about you, but an evil monster has fallen into my lap.

Speaking gothically, this is great news.

But get a life outside the gothic already. If you did, you'd realise that I don't actually
want
an evil monster in my lap, thanks all the same.

*Sigh* This exam is almost over — a final gothic blast concludes my tale . . .

Today, I arrived at school in distress. Somebody had phoned my mother last night and told her something that made me fall senseless to the floor.

I will not tell you what, just yet. You may live in suspense.

Mum and I talked electrifyingly for some time about her news, and then I went upstairs to bed.

I spent the night tossing and turning.

I had Special K and the last of the chocolate-maple cake for breakfast, and came to school for this exam — in a state, as I said, of distress.

The sky was gloomy (in all honesty), and behold! this exam was to take place in the Art Rooms.

I walked across the oval to the Art Rooms in a storm cloud of personal chaos. Through the entry door, along the corridors
(muttering crankily to the ghosts, ‘Could you not have been more careful?') and towards the room where I am now.

A collection of people stood there — and my heart plummeted to my feet.

For there, amidst these people, were: Lydia, leaning against the wall, eyes closed; Amelia, lost in the middle of the corridor; Riley, against the facing wall, frowning deeply to himself; the three of them eerily silent . . .

. . . and here came Toby, approaching from the opposite direction.

As Toby and I closed in on the trio, they shifted, looked up, changed position — and I observed this:

Toby's face lit up at the sight of Amelia —

while Amelia turned towards Riley —

and Riley, pointedly, looked instead at Lydia —

who, having opened her eyes, gave Riley a powerful, extraordinary glance, before closing them again.

At this moment, the door to the exam room flew open from the inside, and a woman leaned out and blinked at us.

This caused a bigger stir. People picked up pencil cases, water bottles, talked loudly to one another.

In the stir, Toby leaned towards Amelia,
slipped a folded note into her hand
, and then walked into this exam room without a backward glance.

Amelia pressed the note into her pocket and moved to Riley's side. She spoke to him intensely. Riley watched her as she spoke, and his eyes glinted fiercely like a chainsaw in the sun. Then he stood and walked further down the corridor. She followed him and they continued talking with their backs to us. From behind, Amelia looked as fragile as an anorexic movie star.

All this time, Lydia's eyes stayed closed.

Then we had to go into the exam. As I walked through the door, I could see that Riley and Amelia were still talking.

I am sorry to say, I could not hear the words of their intense conversation. Neither do I know what was in Toby's note (I don't have X-ray vision). And, speaking generally, I cannot explain what on earth
all
these flashing looks and moments meant.

However, there is one thing I
can
say . . .

Something romantic has happened between Riley and Lydia.

How do I know this?

The look that they exchanged. It said it all. Trust me. I am a student of love.

Riley must have got my note suggesting that Amelia was cheating, and moved straight on to Lyd.

But oh, oh, woe and betide me! Horrors! Oh horrors!
That it were not so!
Even now, little shrieks assail my ears from within my troubled brain. As if banditti were lurking in the woods!

You do not know why it is so horrifying, do you?

Trust me. It is.

Speaking gothically, the end is nigh, and I would quickly like to point out that the
dynamics of first impressions
have been very significant to this
personal memoir
and that I have drawn on my
extensive knowledge of the gothic
and you will recall that there has been plentiful gothicnesses! I have used words like
agitated
, and
moat
, and I have done a lot of
senseless fainting
. With a little more time I might have found some
femme fatales
and
family curses
, yet still there have
been
ghosts
, and
doppelgangers
(eg Lydia has both a big games room and a small games room), and
gloomy weather
and so this is a very valuable HSC exam — and now, finally,

there is a
monster
.

A GOTHIC MONSTER.

Who is it?

……

……

It is Riley.

You recall the suspenseful phone call that my mother got last night?

It was from Cassie's mother. She is on the Scholarship Committee. Apparently, a teacher had suggested to the committee that maybe Riley and Amelia's criminal record was worse than they had thought? So the committee spent the last couple of weeks making inquiries. And yesterday they found out the truth.

AND IT
WAS
WORSE!! MUCH WORSE!

The reason Riley and Amelia were put in detention was not just because they stole money from a petrol station. No.

It was because, when a man tried to
stop
them stealing, Riley beat him up so badly — with his bare hands — that the guy ended up unconscious, his arm fractured in three different places, and his spinal cord damaged in such a way that he'll probably never walk again.

Cassie's mother was calling to warn us to stay away from Riley.

Too late!

The monster has ensnared one of us.

And, oh, it is
Lydia
— who would have thought it would be she?

Worse, worse, it is
all because of me
that Lydia has been so ensnared!! I made it happen!!

Here are my final words:

Inside, careless ghosts are haunting. Outside, thunder is rumbling. And the future? What does the future hold — what HELL does the future hold with a MONSTER in our midst???

This I cannot tell you . . .

The bell is clanking gloomily. PENS DOWN, PLEASE!

Alas! Oh, woe! Oh, nevermore! Mercy! Help me! Help us!

And so on . . .

THE END

 

Lydia Jaackson-Oberman
Student No: 8233410

Okay, life, enough with the lessons.

Lesson 1: You think you're one kind of a person — smart, kind, loyal — turns out you're the opposite.

Thanks. Great. Really glad to hear it.

Things are winding up here. A whispering around me. Not words, exactly. Just sighing, stretching, yawning, clearing throats. Someone drops a pen, shakes out a hand. It's been a long exam. Thunder outside, so people giggle — thunder being gothic, and all. The supervisors frown but they can't catch the giggles in their outstretched hands.

That night with Riley. We didn't go far, but far enough to send me home fast. Heartbeat pounding as I got into my car: noneedtofeelguilty, noneedtofeelguilty — Amelia is cheating on
him
, so it cancels out! noneedtofeelguilty. Foot on the accelerator, revving at the lights: but she must neverneverneverfindout.

A two-week study break, and I hid at home.

Kept my eyes half-closed, even closed when I could. Tried to look at myself in the mirror through my eyelids once. (You can't do it.)

Shrugging, too — I did a lot of that. Reach for a pecan cookie, shrug. Get myself a coffee, shrug. Open up a book. Yeah, whatever.

If you haven't figured it out, I was trying not to see and not to care. (I'm so transparent.)

A funny thing happened one night, a few days before the HSC
started. I was in my window seat with a Maths textbook. It was making me uneasy, this book: the level of mathematical detail was kind of surprising. Maybe I should have started reading a few months back? That's what I was thinking.

Huh. Shrug.

I needed a break. Thought I might call Em or Cass. Or maybe they'd be online.

You know what I did?

Sat at my computer and went straight to a folder of old emails between me and Seb. Found some archives of our IMing. Read through fragments, laughed at some, thinking as I did:
I'm so over Seb, I can look at our past and just laugh fondly
.

I felt grown-up.

Then I found an exchange about the first mix Seb ever made for me. Found the mix in my music files. Drums and thrash, then something softer — lyrics and acoustic guitar. A chorus that repeats, ‘Remember me'.

So, this night, I left my Maths book on the window seat and played the song. Thought of the sunflower Seb gave me the first time we met. How we used to go quiet when we listened to one another's music: concentrating, giving it a chance. How nervous we'd get around each other early on, and we'd cover it up by being stupid. Shout at each other about irrelevant things, make dumb jokes, fall down laughing. Get serious suddenly, about our plan to make kids' books together. Or about our secret fears — he used to be a bad boy and got into fights, but he'd got it under control — so his fear was that his temper would come back. We'd call each other up in the middle of the night with ideas or crazy thoughts.

I played the song again. And it crept up on me —

Lesson 2: You're not honest with yourself.

You want the truth? In our last few months together, I'd started messing with his mind. Not on purpose. I think my own secret fear was that I liked him too much. I was afraid he'd see that in my eyes and laugh or run away. And it made me crazy. I'd ask for the impossible one day, and turn cold and sharp the next.

When he asked me for a break, he deserved it.

And then, when he asked me back, I was too proud to take him. So now he had Astrid, and whose fault was that?

I played the song again. Found YouTube covers, and played those too. ‘Remember me,' the song said, over and over, like a ghost, like someone gone, or someone left behind.

And it draped itself over me like fabric —

Lesson 3: You've lost him.

Sat at my desk, kept right on playing that song, exactly like a freakin' teenager. Close your eyes all you like, the tears find a way to get out.

The HSC started. I've been slipping in and out of exams like a ghost. Apart from one conversation yesterday, I haven't talked to anybody much.

Not even my parents, but that's nothing new. When they're home, they don't quite see me — I'm not in focus. And here's something funny. This morning, I'm heading down the driveway on my way to this exam, and there's my mother's voice.

She's in her robe, hand against the sun, framed by the front door — movie star pose — calling my name.

I pause, look back. In a flash I think of her affair. I think of
femme fatales
and
family curses
. I think, that's
me
, framed by that door —

I close my eyes and listen to her voice.

‘There's a message on my phone,' she calls, ‘from Cass's mum, from late last night. There's someone at school you should avoid! A boy who was in juvenile detention! Do you know him? His name is
Riley
!'

I laugh, and drive away.

‘Five minutes to go,' the supervisor says. Thunder, gasps, giggles, faster writing.

I have one last thing to say.

My conversation yesterday was with Amelia.

I was crossing the oval after an exam. Amelia crossing towards me. Bloodshot eyes, she must have come from the pool.

We stopped, chatted about nothing. Then something changed. Her hand flew sideways, oddly, and her bloodshot eyes found mine.

I noticed something: her hair was dry. She hadn't been swimming, she'd been crying.
She knows
.

‘Riley's not talking to me,' she said. Her voice was like a series of blocks that she had to take out one at a time. She never shares herself. My heart hurt to see how hard she found it.

‘He hasn't — he doesn't call me back,' she said.