Give Me Four Reasons (17 page)

* *

Mum drops me off at school the next morning with my suitcase, pillow and sleeping bag. I am wearing my new denim miniskirt, one of my surfie t-shirts and my leather belt. I also have my new thongs on and I have freshly painted toenails. I put one foot up on the dashboard, hoping Mum will notice.

‘Put your foot down,’ she says.

‘Just drop me at the corner here,’ I instruct her. ‘You’ll never get a park out front. The buses will be there.’

‘But you’ll have to lug your suitcase and sleeping bag all the way along the street.’

‘Never mind,’ I say. I wish we had a normal car. But I can’t spoil things now. I look cool. I have cool friends. I can’t let them see me get out of a hearse.

Mum pulls over to the kerb.

‘Are you going to be okay without me?’ I ask.

‘Isn’t that what I should be asking you?’ Mum says, laughing.

I heave my suitcase off the back seat and onto the footpath. I reach in and get my pillow and my sleeping bag. I stick my head in through the driver’s window and kiss Mum. ‘See you on Thursday,’ I say.

She smiles, then indicates and pulls the car back out into the traffic.

I look down at the suitcase, wondering how I’m going to lug everything. The sleeping bag has a corded loop around the top, so I thread that over my head and slip my left arm through it. I tuck my pillow under my left arm, too. Then I grab the suitcase with my right hand. I have to lean over to my left to keep the suitcase from dragging on the ground. Somehow I manage to stagger the two hundred metres up to the front of the school. I am hot and sweaty and flustered by the time I get there, but at least I wasn’t seen climbing out of a hearse.

Sidney and the other girls from our tent are already sitting on the grass at the front of the school. Mrs McKenna marks the roll and, soon after, Sidney and I climb onto the bus. Miff and Mandi push us from behind. Mia and Holly reach through and tug at our hair. Sidney’s right. This camp is going to rock.

I plonk down on a vacant seat about six rows from the front.

‘Not here,’ Sidney says. ‘The back seat.’

The Back Seat.

It is like a throne.

I walk cautiously towards the back seat. The green leather seems to glow. The chrome gleams. The window behind sparkles. The kids already sitting down move their bags out of the aisle so we don’t trip over them.

I sit down and slide to a far corner. Sidney sits beside me, Miff beside her and then the other girls from the I Don’t Care tent slot into the opposite corner. I look at the other kids pushing and shoving their way onto the bus. I wait for someone to spot me and call out ‘fraud’. Or for someone to tell me that I need to sit behind the teacher at the front, beside the kid with his head in a sick bucket.

But no one does.

* *

Our bus arrives first at Orientation Camp. Sixty jostling, giggling kids grab their bags and go to their tents. The tents aren’t little tents that we have to put up ourselves, but permanent canvas structures on concrete bases. Each tent has two windows, a door and a pitched roof. The tents are arranged around a large grassy space with a pile of firewood in the middle. A circle of logs separates the tents from the grass.

We choose a tent and race for our preferred bunk, unrolling our sleeping bags on top. I wait for all the other girls in my tent to pick their bunks, and then I chuck my sleeping bag onto the one that’s left. Then I wait for the other girls to leave, unzip my suitcase and place the
Cindy
magazines under my pillow. I need easy access to them. I feel better, just knowing they are there.

Our first task is to make a sign and place it on the hook at the front of the tent. A square of cardboard has been provided for the purpose. Holly is artistic and she sets to work straight away. The beautiful, decorative lettering seems too good for our rude, silly name, but I don’t say anything. We hang up the sign and then sit outside on the logs.

The other girls’ tents are: the Angels, the Devils, Beach Bums, Pink Possums, Banana Splits, February Foxes, Sassy Six, Six Chix (who have already scored the nickname ‘Sick Chicks’) and Star Gazers. I secretly think our name is stupid. But it’s too late to say that now.

Elfi and Rochelle come out of the Devils’ tent, just as the two boys they are sharing with hurl their bags through the door. ‘Pick those up!’ Rochelle shouts to the boys. ‘I don’t want to trip over them in the middle of the night.’

‘Jeez, get a grip, giraffe girl,’ Miff murmurs, too quietly for Rochelle to hear. ‘We’re not at home now.’

‘Is that why you turned your bag upside down and emptied it in the corner?’ Sidney asks her.

‘
Ex-actly!
’ declares Miff.

After everyone has found their tents and gathered together on the logs, Mrs McKenna reads out a metre-long list of
Don’ts
. It includes everything from, ‘Don’t leave your tent before six in the morning,’ to, ‘Don’t leave your tent after nine-thirty at night,’ and a lot of other things in between.

‘Now listen up, people,’ Mrs McKenna says. ‘I’m only going to say this once. Every time you break a rule you get a strike. Three strikes and you’re out. Your parents will be called to come and take you home. No argument.’

‘Harsh!’ Miff whispers.

Mrs McKenna then teams up each of the girls’ tent groups with one of the boys’ tent groups to form our activity groups. Everyone laughs when she announces that a group called ‘the Bushbashers’ are with ‘I Don’t Care’. I’m delighted when I see that Jed is in the Bushbashers.

‘I Don’t Care?’ Jed says as we walk off together to our first activity. ‘Who chose that name?’

I shrug.

Jed shakes his head and looks back at my new friends. ‘I’ll bet it was that black-haired girl. She looks like she doesn’t care about anything except herself.’

‘Her name’s Miff, and she cares about her friends,’ I tell him.

‘Well, I hope some of that rubs off on you,’ Jed says.

I am about to stomp off when I see that Jed is laughing and holding up his hands in surrender.

‘I’m staying out of everything,’ he says.

I punch him, but it’s a friendly punch.

The first bonding activity at camp is canoeing. Our activity group, and the one that Rochelle and Elfi are in, meet at the swamp. I realise that I’m happy to see them. Maybe being away from school and having fun here at camp will break the ice that’s frozen between us.

‘The first thing you have to do before setting out,’ says Cameron, our camp instructor, ‘is to make sure your canoe is all right.’ He points at a row of orange canoes lined up on the bank of the swamp. Each bunk-buddy pair comes forward and grabs a canoe for themselves.

‘You want to be certain there are no holes, no spiders, no snakes,’ Cameron adds.

Sidney and I scream and almost drop our canoe on the bank. We check for holes and nasty biting things and, once we’re sure there aren’t any, we float the canoe in the shallow water and climb in.

‘Once you’re out there,’ Cameron goes on, ‘stay sitting down in your canoe whatever you do. Standing up is dangerous and we don’t want you causing yourselves any injuries.’

Sidney and I set off across the lake. I’m not very good at paddling and neither is she, so we spend most of our time going around in circles. When we eventually figure out that our paddles need to be on opposite sides from each other, we manage to go in a fairly straight line towards the far shore.

I hear laughter behind me and I swivel my head to see Elfi and Rochelle skimming along on my right. I begin paddling at an angle towards them. ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘You guys seem to have the hang of this.’

Our canoe bumps into theirs.

I laugh.

Without looking at me, Rochelle pushes at our canoe with her paddle and she and Elfi continue on their path across the lake.

Wow, I think. They just totally dissed me. I was only trying to be friendly.

Sidney looks at Rochelle and Elfi’s backs as they paddle away. Then she glances at me. Her face asks the question. My eyes fill with tears. I put my head down and start paddling furiously in the opposite direction. I am not looking where I am going. I wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway.

‘What’s going on, Read It and Weep?’ Sidney asks when I finally rest my paddle. ‘I didn’t think it was you who was meant to do the weeping. And certainly not over anything those two do.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’I tell her, not lifting my head.

‘How can I not worry about it?’ Sidney says. ‘My best buddy is crying.’

I am about to burst into more sobbing because Sidney is being so nice to me, but then she adds, ‘And if she doesn’t stop crying we’ll be going around in circles in the middle of this lake forever.’

I laugh and sniff and wipe my eyes on my t-shirt sleeve. I shouldn’t be sad. One of the popular girls just called me her best buddy. I look at Sidney and smile. ‘Let’s paddle over to Miff and Mandi,’ I say.

Miff and Mandi have been having even less luck with their canoe than we have. They are stuck in some reeds in the far corner of the lake. We paddle up to them and our canoe bumps them further into the reeds.

‘Hey,’ Miff laughs, gripping onto the edge of her canoe. ‘I thought you were here to rescue us, not sink us.’

‘That would be like the blind leading the blind,’ says Sidney. ‘Paige and I are useless, too.’

‘Maybe you could pull us out?’ Miff suggests. ‘I could hold onto your paddle, Paige. Then Sidney could paddle in reverse. Like pulling a car out of the mud.’

‘Okay,’I say. I grasp the scooped end of my paddle and hold the other end out to Miff. Our canoe begins to drift away from Miff and Mandi’s, so I stand up and hold the paddle out. Miff stands up as well and grabs it. Both canoes begin to wobble.

‘Steady,’ calls Mandi.

‘Sit down!’ Sidney shouts.

But it is too late. My canoe wobbles and rocks and then tips. I scream as I fall into the muddy water. When I surface, I see that Sidney, Miff and Mandi have also fallen in the lake. Two empty canoes bob beside us.

I want to sink under the water. Sidney and Miff and Mandi are going to hate me. Capsizing a canoe and getting your friends wet is not cool.

But then Sidney begins to laugh. She wipes her hair off her face and pulls at a reed that is stuck in her fringe. Then she throws it at me.

Miff and Mandi begin to laugh, too. They are not angry. They are not glaring at me. And soon they are also throwing lilies and weeds and pond scum at me and at each other.

‘Right, you four!’ yells Mrs McKenna from the bank. ‘Get out! That’s strike one for each of you!’

Sidney looks at me and smiles.

I smile back at my new best buddy.

* *

The afternoon ends with a bedraggled group of girls heading for the shower block. I have pond scum in my hair, mud all over my feet and my eyeliner has streaked all down my face. I no longer look like the type of girl who can claim her place on the back seat of the bus. But neither does Sidney or Miff or Mandi.

I wash my hair, scrub my face and do the best I can with my grimy feet. When I emerge from the shower, dressed in Felicity’s old tracksuit, Elfi and Rochelle are standing in line, waiting. Sidney and Miff have finished showering as well, and are combing their hair in front of the mirrors.

‘Oh, look,’ Elfi says, nudging Rochelle. ‘It’s Paige Winfrey. We haven’t seen you all year.’

Miff turns around from the mirror. ‘What are you talking about? She was in the same canoeing group as you this afternoon.’

‘That wasn’t Paige,’ Rochelle says. ‘That was some girl wearing too much make-up.’

I’m standing with my back to Sidney and Miff. ‘Guys,’ I whisper to Rochelle and Elfi, ‘please don’t do this.’

‘Well, well, well,’ Elfi says loudly, ignoring my plea. ‘Haven’t things changed? On the Canberra excursion last year, you were always last in the line for the shower and here you are, first.’

‘I suppose you’ve used up all the hot water, too,’ Rochelle adds. ‘Scrubbing off all that make-up.’

My bottom lip quivers as I grit my teeth and stare into the eyes of my two former best friends.
Please understand
, I want to say.
Please stop being mad about what happened. Please just be happy for me.

But I know that’s never going to happen.

And it’s too late to change things now.

23

The Devils are on dinner dish-up duty. At this camp we don’t line up and have our food ladled out by kids behind the counter. Instead we sit at our tables and wait as the Devils wheel around metal trolleys laden with huge pots. I wait with Sidney and the rest of the I Don’t Cares, jiggling my tray and looking at the lumpy mashed pumpkin and beef stew with equal parts scorn and hunger.

When it is my turn to be served, Rochelle digs into the pot, then slings a huge spoonful of orange mash onto my tray. Bits of it flick up onto my face.

I turn my head to look at her. She is not smiling or grinning. She looks embarrassed, so I don’t think she splashed me on purpose.

Sidney looks at me and laughs. She reaches out, wipes the food from my face and flicks it across the table at Miff.

Miff is angry at first, but then she gets a mischievous glint in her eye. ‘Food fight!’ she whispers. She glances over her shoulder then dips her finger in the stew that Elfi has just served her. She flicks a blob of stew at Sidney. Sidney puts her fingers into her dinner and flicks one lump of pumpkin mash at Holly and one back at Miff. Mia and Mandi begin flicking bits of their dinner at all of us.

I haven’t done anything yet. For a moment I feel like I’m back in the water fight at Juniper Bay Primary School, too scared to have a go. But then Miff flicks some mash at me and it lands on my nose. She laughs.

‘You’re dead!’I tell her. I scoop up a huge handful of mash and hurl it across the table at her.

It misses.

I watch in horror as the orange blob flies across to the next table and hits Laura Dingle in the back.

Everyone stops as Laura wails and runs off to tell a teacher. We frantically try to wipe all evidence of the food fight off our faces, but it is no good. Our shirts and the tablecloth are spattered with mash and stew. And Mrs McKenna is no fool.