Laurinda (30 page)

“I couldn’t care less how I am seen.”

“Of course you don’t,” said Katie. “No one who cares about her social position would leave the Cabinet. Don’t you get it, Lucy? No one understands where you’re coming from.
You’re not seen
. That’s why it’s been so easy for them to spread this story about how you’ve gone bonkers, how you’re not coping.”

I shrugged. “It’s probably true.”

“It’s not true, and you know it, Lucy,” Katie said. “The Cabinet want you out of here because you told them where to go, so now other people are getting ideas. And Mrs Grey wants you out because she thinks you don’t give a stuff about the school.”

If only Mrs Grey knew how much mental energy I’d spent on Laurinda!

“We created the Cabinet but Mrs Grey encourages them,” Katie said bitterly. “That’s why they’ve been allowed to run wild. She can’t afford to lose them because their mothers run the Alumnae Association and make massive donations.”

“No, Katie,” I snapped. “Do you want to know why Mrs Grey loves the Cabinet? Because they maintain the Laurinda myth. They keep the dissenters in line. Sometimes they even cull the weak. A little accident here or there, and a troublesome girl or teacher is out. And they don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts, do they, Katie? The payoff is that they get status and credit. They give posturing speeches about how great they are, but they
steal
and they
maim
.”

“I know, Lucy, I know,” said Katie. “That’s why I can’t let you go back to the library. You can’t retreat. You’ll be gone by the end of the year if you do. You can’t
choose
to be alone here with no one to back up your story.”

And here was the bitter paradox of adolescence: alone, I was most myself, most true. But the self that really mattered was the self that was visible, the self that could be shown to other people. And here was Katie, proposing something radical: that she would support whichever self I needed to be out in the world.

“I
have a photo of Mr Sinclair’s bum!” Gina was waving around a packet of Kodak prints in the room, before Politics class.

“Where the hell did you manage to get a photo of his bum?” Chelsea asked.

“At the Year Ten social. See?” Gina pulled out a picture from the packet. It was too far away for me to get a close look. Then she added, “Lucy was a good decoy.”

“What?” Brodie yanked the photo from Gina’s hands. “Let me see that. Oh, my,” she giggled coyly. I had never heard her giggle before. “That
is
a good angle. Look, there’s Lucy, smiling away in the background.”

“Yeah, she kept him talking so I could get a good shot.”

“You’re a liar!” I yelped.

The two glanced at each other, as if to confirm that, yes, Lucy Lam did have a habit of going off at the slightest provocation; Lucy was so unhinged that her door was practically falling off. Discipline, self-control – that was what eleven years at Laurinda had given these girls, and they were things I lacked.

“You don’t even like him anymore!” I accused Gina, to tell her that I knew she was up to no good. But as soon as I’d uttered the words, they were taken to mean something entirely different.

“Ooh, this is very
interesting
,” remarked Chelsea. “I didn’t know Lucy had a crush on Mr Sinclair. I thought she liked Richard Marr.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it!”

“I also have a photo of Lucy making eyes at Mr Sinclair!” said Gina. “It’s very sweet. Wanna see?”

Katie and Siobhan entered the room. “What’s happening?” Katie asked.

“Grab the photo from Brodie!” I shouted.

But Brodie now had both hands behind her back and was smiling like a sunflower. “Touch me and it will be harassment, you lezzo,” she sneered at Katie. She sat down in her seat just as Mr Sinclair entered the room.

All through class the Cabinet and Gina smiled at me, challenging me to say something. Then Chelsea giggled.

“Got something to say?” Mr Sinclair asked her.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” she replied earnestly. “My sister’s reading a book at uni called
The First Stone
, by Helen Garner. Have you heard of it, Sir?”

“No,” he said, but his response came so quickly that I wondered whether he was telling the truth. I’d never heard of the book, they were always citing sources I didn’t know, but I knew Chelsea was getting at something.

“Chelsea, how is this relevant to law-making by subordinate authorities, which is our topic today?” he asked.

“Well, it’s about politics and power. It’s about these two girls at a college—”

“I’m sure it’s a fascinating book for you to discuss in your own time, but today we are focusing on delegated legislation, if you please, Chelsea.”

The class continued, with Mr Sinclair writing on the board and explaining things, and us distractedly taking notes. I had to find a way to get that photograph from Brodie, I kept thinking. I should have grabbed it and torn it up the moment Gina had dangled it in front of us.

A thought flashed through my mind: stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.

“Mr Sinclair,” I said in the middle of the silence. “They have a photo of you.”

“Pardon, Lucy?”

“They have a photo of you from the social. They took it from behind you.”

At first Mr Sinclair didn’t register what my last sentence meant. But then he did, and at the same time he realised my tone was not light or fun. “And where is this photograph?”

Brodie glared. Gina looked like she wanted to kill me. Amber kept her head down.

Katie spoke up. “Brodie has it.”

“Come on, Brodie,” Mr Sinclair said, extending a palm. “Hand it over.”

Brodie sat there, staring blankly at him. “Hand what over, Sir?”

“The photograph. Now!”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sir. I don’t have any photograph.”

Mr Sinclair gave a great sigh of exasperation. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t, Sir, and I would appreciate it if you stop looking at me like that. It’s creeping me out.” She then made a big show of turning over her folder, turning out all the plastic loose-leaf pockets, and flipping through the pages of her exercise book. There was nothing there. She stood and emptied the pockets of her skirt. A handkerchief with lace edging, half a packet of fruit Mentos. That was it.

“No other pockets,” she concluded, as if she were the one conducting the investigation, the head of the police force.

How could it have disappeared like that? I hadn’t heard her tear it, I hadn’t seen her eat it. Then I realised what she had said: no other pockets. She wasn’t wearing a blazer! She didn’t have hers with her, but Amber was wearing hers.

“Amber Leslie has it!” blurted Katie, just as Amber was giving Brodie a sideways curve of a smile.

“I do not!” declared Amber. “How dare you, Katie, you liar!”

“Amber Leslie, stand up and come over here now,” Mr Sinclair said. “With your things.”

I had no idea where he was going with this and I hoped he knew what he was doing.

Amber stood and walked insouciantly towards Mr Sinclair, until she was directly in front of him. “Yes, Sir?”

“Give me the photograph.”

She made the same display of turning out her books and folders and her skirt pockets, and the two side pockets of her blazer, which were piped with gold and maroon. “You see, Sir? Nothing.”

Of course, every girl in the class knew there was one pocket she had not turned out. Edmondsons was as expensive as hell, but they were definitely quality suppliers. Every girl’s blazer had an inner pocket sewn into the lining.

“Sir, it’s in the inside pocket of her blazer,” Siobhan said.

Of course. Mr Sinclair wasn’t going to touch Amber’s blazer.

“I don’t understand why you’re picking on Amber,” muttered Chelsea. “It’s not as if she’s the type to go around taking pictures of people’s bare behinds for kicks.”

Mr Sinclair paled. It was not just a cliché. One moment he was normal-toned, even a little red from frustration, and the next time I looked at his face I realized why redheads were more susceptible to skin cancer. I didn’t know how to tell him that he was being had, that there was no nude photo.

“Search me,” Amber said, her hands undoing the top button of her blazer. “Or, if you’d like, I can take it off for you . . .”

“No!” yelled Mr Sinclair. “You stay right where you are, Amber Leslie! All of you – stay exactly where you are until I come back.”

When he’d left the room, Amber smiled coyly and took off her jacket. She whirled it above her head with one finger and threw it onto Mr Sinclair’s desk, to the whoops and hollers of her friends.

No one else was celebrating. This had gone on long enough, and it wasn’t funny.

“Come on, everyone, give Amber a big round of applause!” shouted Brodie.

Only two other pairs of hands started clapping, steadily and slowly increasing in tempo, a three-person percussion dance track for Amber’s performance.

“This isn’t funny,” I said.

Gina and Chelsea clapped louder, raising their hands above their heads and whooping, like some kind of tribal spirit-rousing routine. “Wooo! Woo! Woo!”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” exclaimed Siobhan. “This is so pathetic.”

Siobhan would never have said that earlier this year. Something was happening at last. Something had roused the soporific inhabitants of Laurinda, made them shake the dust from their hair. I finally understood – the Cabinet was now collapsing, the glass had fallen off the hatch and people were climbing out. Still, Brodie stood firm in her centre position on top shelf, using whatever charm she still had to keep the girls in their place, and entreating the others to close the damn door and replace the glass. Now I understood why the Cabinet had taken the extreme measure of bringing Gina into their group. It had been an act of desperation.

But now most of the eyes of the room were not focused on the Cabinet. Stella rolled hers at Katie. Katie sighed dramatically and raised her hands in the air. Even Trisha MacMahon gave me an elusive smile, as if to say, how ridiculous. Then she made her long pianist’s fingers into a pistol and raised it to her temple.
Shoot me now
.

“Where do you think he’s gone?” asked Amber, still believing she was the centre of attention. “He’s missing the show.”

“The sexy, sexy show!” whooped Chelsea. “Amber, you sexy beast! Shove it down your skirt, Amber! He’ll never find it.”

“This is seriously not a joke,” warned Katie.

“Shut up, Miss Tautology,” sneered Brodie.

“Come on and show us what you’ve got, Amber!” Gina hollered.

Amber pulled the photograph out of her blazer pocket and slowly rotated her hips in time to the claps. Just as she was shoving the picture down her skirt, pushing down hard because she wore it extra-tight to accentuate her funnel waist, Mr Sinclair came back into the room. And he had brought Mrs Grey with him.

They both stared at the scene, the three girls cheering, Amber’s jacket spread out on Mr Sinclair’s desk, thrown with perfect precision so its sleeves dangled over the edge as if hugging the wood, and Amber dancing around seedily and ramming something down her skirt.

“Give me that!” snapped Mrs Grey, extending her arm.

Amber, who only a few moments ago had been so brave, so crazy, so wild and so full of her own power, stopped. Her hand was still wedged in her waistband.

“Now!”

Amber pulled out the creased photograph and handed it over.

Mrs Grey looked at it. “Back to your seat, now! And take your blazer with you.”

Amber picked up her blazer and went back to her seat.

“Unbelievable!” scoffed Mrs Grey. Then she turned to Mr Sinclair. “Well, Howard, I hope this has restored some order to your classroom.” The unequivocal contempt in her tone turned up the corners of Brodie’s mouth. Mrs Grey had spoken to Mr Sinclair not as a colleague, or even an adult, but as if he were a child who had dobbed in another younger kid for stealing his toy. “No more silly business,” she said.

Before she was out of the room, Katie blurted out, “I think Gina has the negatives! They’re in her folder.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Katie!” She turned towards Gina. “You have no reason to develop any more photos from that batch, Gina. Do you understand me?”

Gina looked at the woman she called the Growler, the woman she and the Cabinet thought they could outsmart, yet who could in an instant make her feel trivial and ridiculous and childish. “Yes.”

Those photographs, in the span of half an hour, had become worthless currency. No one cared anymore. Even Mr Sinclair was ashamed, ashamed that he had panicked over something so trite, ashamed that the photos didn’t even come close to confirming his worst fears (that, somehow, someone might have snapped a picture of him at the men’s urinals), ashamed that when Amber started to unbutton her blazer he had been so out of his mind with worry that he had run out for backup and dragged in the strongest and most powerful woman he knew, the Head of Middle School. The woman who could make anyone feel trivial and ridiculous and childish.

We all knew who ran this ship.

*

News always travelled fast at Laurinda. When Katie told Siobhan and Stella about how my days at the school were numbered, they too were furious. So I was surrounded by unexpected allies as I waited by the gate after school for my bus.

“Getting rid of the scholarship girl just because you spoke the truth,” Siobhan declared. “How low can they get?”

Trisha MacMahon joined us. “I have rehearsal this evening, so I’m just hanging around,” she said, by way of introduction. “Can’t believe they’re thinking of kicking you out.” I knew she’d had a soft spot for me ever since she found out I had started the applause for her at assembly. “They were going to break my hands, those bitches.” Trisha flexed her beautiful fingers. “I really should think about getting these things insured.”

The girls told me that the Cabinet had let Nadia Pinto join them for half a week last term while I was away, as they prepared her for the conference. Trisha had heard Amber yelling at the Year Eight girl. “No, Nadia, you can’t just read off the page. You have to memorise the whole thing. Jesus, it’s only ten minutes!” Nadia must have cried at least five times under the Cabinet’s tutelage. The final straw had come from Chelsea. “Wear a maxi-pad, in case you get nervous and piss yourself,” she’d told her. Once the conference was done, Nadia steered clear of the Cabinet, and not even Brodie’s velvet assurances could bring her back.