Jellicoe Road (4 page)

“I don’t operate that way…
we
don’t operate that way.”

Judging by his sidekicks I’m not too sure.

“Well then, Santangelo. Is that what I should call him?” I turn to ask Raffaela. She doesn’t answer. She’s still fidgeting.

“Chaz,” he answers for her.

“Santangelo…Chaz, whatever they call you down there, let’s make a deal.”

“Then you start. Tell us what you want.”

First rule of negotiation: never let them think you want something.

“We want access to the Prayer Tree,” Raffaela blurts out.

Raffaela failed negotiating class in year eight. The seniors in our House once had her in mind for leadership after I went through my arsonist stage and burnt half of the oval. We have a collection of arson
ists at our school. There are at least two in year seven in my House who are going to set fire to us in our beds one day.

“We want access to the Club House,” Santangelo states bluntly, looking at me and not her.

“Club House isn’t ours. It belongs to the Cadets.”

“Yeah, but it’s a massive hike for them unless you let them use the river. They want access to the path that leads to it, and you’ve got that.”

“Why the Club House?” Ben asks.

“Limited options. We can’t get into any of the pubs, so it’s hanging out at the Seven-Eleven at night or the car park at Coles. We’re looking for peaceful coexistence, here. One night a week, Saturday night, maybe even two.”

“You’re talking to the wrong people. The Cadets will never allow you in.”

“They might if you give them access to the path.”

I shake my head. “The path is too close to the school boundaries.”

“And the problem is?” he asks.

“We have junior girls,” Raffaela says. “We don’t want strangers that close to our boundaries.”

“Why? Because last time the Cadets got that close you ran off with one of them?” The three Townies exchange looks and I am suddenly suspicious.

“You don’t know who you ran off with, do you?” one of the Mullets says, stepping towards me. “You are one stupid—”

“Is this the best you can do?” Raffaela snaps at Santangelo, pointing to his morons, her finger almost an inch away from the bigger Mullet. He growls and makes a bite for it and Ben drags her back.

Still nothing from Santangelo and then I realise he’s deliberately ignoring her and that they have some kind of history.

“You two know each other well, I presume.”

Just a sigh and pursed lips from her and a hellish scowl from him.

“This is ridiculous,” I say, walking to the door.

“No it’s not. It’s called coexistence.” Santangelo blocks my exit. “Once you and the Cadets get it right, we might even try to sell the idea to the Israelis and Palestinians. What do you reckon?”

“You haven’t told us what you have to offer us yet,” I say.

“The Prayer Tree,” Raffaela says immediately.

“I’m not negotiating with her.”

I glare at Raffaela. Personally, I’m not interested in the Prayer Tree. I’m curious about what they’re going to use as a bargaining tool.

“I’ve got information,” he says to me, “that you might want.”

“About?”

No answer, and for a moment I think we’re dealing with an amateur who has come with nothing to offer.

“What?” Ben asks.

I glance at Santangelo and I get a gut feeling that it’s not about the territory wars or the Club House.

“We have a map that could possibly be the draft for a tunnel,” he says, suddenly focusing on Raffaela and Ben.

A ploy. Doesn’t mean the map is non-existent but he’s holding back and I want to know why.

“Means absolutely nothing to us because they never finished it beyond your school boundaries,” he continues. “But it might be important to you.”

“The tunnel’s a myth.”

“Are you calling him a liar?”

The Mullets are angry. Their teeth are showing
again and they almost back us into the door. Ben tries to stand between us but they shove him out of the way.

“Set up a meeting with the Cadets and maybe we’ll talk again,” I say.

“That might be hard,” Santangelo says.

“Make it easy, then.”

“I don’t think you understand. My father was the cop who dragged you back when you ran away a couple of years ago.”

I chance a glance at him again. He knows something about me; that I can tell. Being the son of the cop in charge would mean he knows a lot about most people around here.

“Well, you just make sure you thank him for me and tell him I said hi,” I say with mock sweetness, although I do remember the cop’s face, kind in a stressed-worried-angry way. The Brigadier, though, was a different story. Cold and tense.

“I don’t think you’re getting my drift. The guy my father and that Brigadier dragged back with you? Remember him? Well, he’s in charge of the Cadets now and rumour has it that none of us want to be dealing with him.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. The Mullet Brothers are smirking. Raffaela and Ben look confused.

“Griggs?” I ask, feigning indifference.

Chaz Santangelo nods. “Jonah Griggs.”

Jonah Griggs.

Not just a name but a state of mind I never want to revisit, although I do keep him at the back of my mind for those times I get my hopes raised about something. So then I can slap myself into reality and remind myself of what happens when you let someone into your sacred space. Jonah Griggs is my second reminder to never ever trust another human being. My mother was the first and these days I feel like Hannah might have joined that small and intimate group of traitors.

Raffaela and Ben haven’t said a word, but I can hear what they’re thinking as they follow me out into the clearing. I want to tell their brains to shut the hell up but I know the only way to do that is to speak and I can’t.

The lights of the Houses beam through the bush and mark out the path. Finally, after fifteen minutes, silence takes its toll.

“Did you make contact with the Cadets, Ben?” I say finally.

“Me?”

“Me?” is Ben’s standard response to everything.

“Ben Cassidy, could you please tell the class why crossing the Rubicon was considered the catalyst for the fall of the Roman Republic?”

“Me?”

“Ben Cassidy, someone’s on the phone for you.”

“Me?”

“Ben Cassidy, I think one of the Darling girls has a crush on you.”

“Me?”

“Ben Cassidy, who’s the biggest loser in the Western World?”

He’d have that “is this a trick question?” look on his face.

“Me?”

“Seeing as Raffaela made contact with the Townies, you can make contact with the Cadets,” I tell him now.

“I think that Cadet might want to talk to you, Taylor.”

I stop and he walks into me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ben shuffles for a moment, looking at his feet, before he dares look at me. “Well, rumour has it he’s not the easiest person to speak to and seeing you guys have a history it might make some sense….”

“Do you know what a history is? It’s what Raffaela and Chaz Santangelo have. Lots of stories to tell, lots of anger to vent, lots of baggage to check into I-Don’t-Give-a-Shit Airline. The Cadet and me? Nothing to tell. I ran away one day. He was running in the same direction. We ended up on the same train in the same carriage. The train derailed, we walked the same road and hitched a ride with the same postman in Yass. We got caught because the Cadet got scared and rang the powers that be. We came home in Santangelo’s father’s paddy wagon. End of story. No history. No sequel. Nothing.”

I can’t see their faces because it’s too dark but they know I’m lying. I lie all the time about those three days. Probably because I can’t explain it. It reeks of supernatural bullshit and hunches. It stars the boy
in the tree in my dreams who took me by the hand and made me stand on a branch and asked, “What can you see?”

“Nothing,” I had said.

“Know what I can see? From this distance, everything is so bloody perfect.”

And I looked harder into the distance and what I saw was my mother. There was a radiance about her that I had never seen before. So I went looking for her and in that dream I found her soul, but when I woke up in the morning, I knew that I had to go looking for the rest of her.

That’s when I first saw the Cadet, on the platform of the Jellicoe Station. I knew who he was in an instant. It’s not every day that you hear a story about a boy who killed his father. That was the rumour, anyway. Standing on the platform alongside him, I believed every word of it. There was a caged fury to him. A feralness that seeped out of every pore.

“Do you know when the next train to Yass is coming?” I had asked.

“Go to hell,” he said, but there was a desolate fear in his eyes and I couldn’t look away.

“Been there. Trust me. It’s so overrated.”

And for reasons I will never understand, I received a smile from Jonah Griggs, and there was a yearning in it, touching a nerve inside me that still freaks me out to this day. On that train something was unleashed in both of us. He didn’t say much about himself except that it was his first time away from his mother and brother and he had a desperate need to know that they were all right without him. And I told him everything. About my first memory, sitting on the shoulders of a giant who I know can only be my father. Of touching the sky. Of lying between two people who read me stories of wild things and journeys with dragons, the soft hum of their voices speaking of love and serenity. See, I remember love. That’s what people don’t understand. And what I also remember is that in telling that tale to the Cadet on the train I got a glimpse of peace.

When the train derailed and we decided to hike, there was never a question that we wouldn’t stick together and find my mother. Except on the third night he had a dream and betrayed us.

“What do I say to him?” Ben asks, bringing me back to the real world.

What should he say to the Cadet? Ask him why
he called his school to come and get us when we were so close to wherever both of us wanted to be. Ask him why he had made that call when he knew I was two hours away from my mother.

“Tell him we want to make a deal.”

I walk past the year-seven and-eight dorms, where Jessa McKenzie has already taken over. The others hang off her every word and I haven’t seen them this animated…actually ever. The Lachlan House leaders were always strict. Commandments number one to ten ranged from No Fun to No Fun. But down here, Jessa McKenzie and her posse are either giggling hysterically or spooking one another out. The rest of the girls are engrossed in her tale and I even notice Raffaela amongst them, sitting on one of the beds, intrigued.

“He’s killed ten people in twenty years,” I hear Jessa say.

“But nowhere near here?” That comes from Chloe P. who, in all probability, will now be paralysed with fear all night.

“Those kids who went missing a couple of years ago were from Truscott, which is halfway between
here and the city,” one of the year eights says. “That’s close enough.”

“Lights off,” I say.

They look my way. Scrubbed little faces of kids who don’t really know who I am. Just that I’m in charge.

“I’m telling them about the serial killer, Taylor, and how he—”

“Is nowhere near us,” I interrupt.

I walk over to her as they begin to disperse. I catch a glimpse of the newspaper clippings spread out all over her bed. The faces of the dead or missing, so young and happy that all I can think of is, how can they be dead? Toothy grins, mostly those school photos that you keep hidden.

But the worst photos are those of the parents. Their faces are so drawn and grief-stricken. They want their children back. I look at the faces of the girls around me and wonder who would look that grief-stricken for half of them. If something happens to me, whose face will be on the front page of the paper begging for me? Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?

I look at Jessa McKenzie and I wonder what type
of warped person carries around newspaper clippings of dead kids and despairing parents. What kind of a freak is this kid who’s giggling hysterically with the girls in the neighbouring beds, each with a crush on the other for being the same age when the rest of the world seems so old?

The three of them are snuggled up together, talking like they haven’t seen one another in years. Sometimes I look at the girls in my form, in my very own house, most of them now on the third floor with me, and I realise that I hardly know them.

For the first time since they made me leader of the community, I realise why I told Hannah I was thinking of leaving. It’s fear. Not of having to negotiate territory, fight a war, and make sure we come out of it with more land than when we started. I can do that blindfolded.

It’s this that scares me.

My seniors have left the House.

I’m in charge of fifty kids who don’t give a shit about the territory wars. They just want to be looked after.

And I have no idea how.

He went missing on one of the prettiest days Narnie could remember in her whole sixteen years. One of those days when she woke up and actually wanted to be alive.

Over the next twenty-four hours the four of them called his name, first with annoyance, then urgency, hysteria, rage, grief.

And then with despair.

By the third day everyone else at the school joined in, as well as the Townies and the Cadets.

But the birds still sang and the river still flowed and the flowers were in full bloom.

And then their voices stopped and their souls stood still and they ceased being who they had been.

Because who they were had always been determined by him.

Five days after his disappearance she scraped the words and numbers on the trunk of the Prayer Tree.

M
ATTHEW
10.26

And she vowed that she would never leave this place until he returned.