Saving Francesca (2 page)

She tries to grab Siobhan Sullivan as she’s walking in. “Are you with us or not?”

Siobhan Sullivan doesn’t even bother stopping. There’s some loser on the other side of the room that she has to impress.

“I wouldn’t rely on Francesca either,” Siobhan says over her shoulder, with a trace of spite in her voice.

I’ve noticed since the beginning of the year that if she ever has to make reference to me, the comments are snide, and I feel like retaliating. But that would mean I actually care what she thinks. Siobhan’s nickname used to be the Slut of St. Stella’s, thought up by someone inspired by an alliteration lesson in Year Nine. A mean part of me would like to pass that on, except I think everyone here is already working it out for themselves.

I sit at my desk and watch Tara organizing the ex–Perpetua girls.

“We’re having House meetings this afternoon. It’s time to tell them what we think of this place.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Eva Rodriguez asks. The ex–Perpetua girls tend to follow Eva around like she’s their security blanket. She’s so effortlessly cool and protective of her lot, and most of the time I wish I were one of them.

“The invasion of our personal space,” Tara Finke answers, invading Eva Rodriguez’s personal space. “No girls’ sports offered, and when we do PE we have to share three toilets to get changed or do it out in the open. Or the fact that you can’t use the words ‘oral task’ or ‘penalized’ or the number 69 without a guy in your class snickering loudly and grunting. Ring a bell, girls?”

The bell rings, thank God.

“Or that some of the girls get wolf-whistled,” she says, following them to their seats, “and others get called dogs. Or that we actually came to this place because of its drama department and this year they decide to put on
Stalag 17,
which has not one female role, or that some teachers insist on addressing the class as—”

“Gentlemen, get to your seats, please,” Mr. Brolin orders.

Eva Rodriguez looks at Tara Finke and then at me. “Let’s just learn to live with it.”

I nod. Things could be worse.

Thomas Mackee enters the class and burps into my ear.

Thomas Mackee is a perfect example of most of the boys in my homeroom. They have nicknames like Booger and Jabber and they wear those names with pride. Sometimes they attempt a bit of irony—for example, calling a guy who’s absolutely clueless “Einstein.” But other times it’s obvious—the guy with the lowest intelligence level I’ve ever come across is called “Duh-Brain.” Most of the nicer guys have girlfriends, and we know this because they make it clear the moment we’re introduced, as if to say, “Don’t think about it.” Those particular guys have absolutely no idea what to do with girls who aren’t girlfriends, so at the moment they’re at a bit of a dead loss in the friendship department. The smarter ones feel slightly threatened, thanks to all the media coverage about girls dominating in the classroom, and they make sure that we don’t take their seats at the front.

Tara Finke’s theory about Thomas Mackee is that he was dropped a few times on his head as a baby. He’s the poster boy for Slobs Inc.: shirt out, pants around the thighs, and brightly colored boxer shorts that are completely obvious every time he bends down, which is quite often. I’m sure he spends copious amounts of time in front of the mirror trying to get that slept-on, feral look, popular with the surfers and skateboarders at Sebastian’s. He’s watched a few too many
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
films and likes saying things like “Hey, dude, what’s happening?” in a dead-pan voice. He’s cruel as well. Once Justine Kalinsky tripped over him, causing his beloved Discman to crash to the ground, and he called her a dumb bitch. It would have been so easy to put him in his place, but I didn’t say anything. Justine Kalinsky would have seen it as a declaration of friendship, and I’m not interested in putting in that much energy around here.

Thomas Mackee constantly burps loudly in class, and sometimes he tries to make a tune out of his burps. The song with the most requests is “Teenage Dirtbag,” and it’s actually fascinating to watch the level of appreciation for such a talent.

These guys fart a lot as well. I’m not saying that girls don’t. We just aren’t as passionate about them. The smell is sometimes overwhelming and I want to gag. They don’t just limit these attacks to the classroom—they can come at you from anywhere around the school. The corridor, the stairwell, the canteen line. There’s one area we call Fart Corridor because it belongs to the Year Eights and Nines, who are the biggest perpetrators. They make no apologies and feel no embarrassment. If a girl did one at St. Stella’s she’d be an outcast for the rest of her natural life. Here, it’s a badge of honor.

By term two, day two, period two, Tara Finke has had enough. She hands out slips to all thirty girls in the school and asks them to turn up for a lunchtime meeting where, quote, “The female proletariat are going to embark on the Revolution.”

Oh, Tara.

No one turns up, of course. Tara Finke sees it as a success because Justine Kalinsky and I are there, and I want to point out to Tara that we haven’t exactly “turned up.” It’s called having nowhere else to go. But Tara is in denial and she gets Justine Kalinsky to take the minutes. Justine makes a list of our names and then a list of all those absent, as if they’ve sent their apologies, and that takes up half our lunchtime.

“Suggestions?” Tara Finke asks.

“The most logical and persuasive one of us should go and see one of the House coordinators,” Justine says, scribbling down a list of names under the heading “L and P,” obviously for “logical and persuasive.” “Someone who can argue our case with passion and sensitivity.”

A Year Ten boy walks by and clutches his crotch.

“Don’t these people realize that their bourgeois mentality is a manifestation of two thousand years of patriarchal crap?” Tara Finke snaps, giving him the finger.

I watch Justine discreetly cross Tara Finke’s name off the “L and P” list.

We have a House meeting during period four. I’m in Kelly, which is named after a dead Brother who took in thirty boys off the streets of Sydney in the 1800s and then died of diphtheria.

The school doesn’t have a school captain. It has six House leaders in Year Twelve, and ours is William Trombal. He’s the shirt-rolled-up -to-his-elbow, no-nonsense type. He always has a frown on his face and looks slightly harassed and I think the girls-being-at-his-school thing doesn’t impress him in the slightest. He’s in charge of sports reports each week, and having to stand through such detail, spoken with such reverence, makes me want to yell, “It’s just a ball game, for crying out loud.”

My grandmother knows William Trombal’s grandmother, which I think makes him half Italian. She claims that William Trombal’s grandmother stole her S biscuit recipe and she dislikes her with a passion, although they pray together in the same Rosary group each week. Not that William Trombal and I have ever acknowledged this connection.

Tara Finke nudges me. “Fascism at its best here. They train them young.”

I ignore her. My theory is to lay low, and my reluctance to get involved has nothing to do with fear or shyness, contrary to popular perception. I have this belief that people hate change and, more than anything, they hate those who try to change things. I might not be interested in being in the most popular group in the world, but I’m less interested in being an outcast. Anyway, my being political would make Mia happy and I wouldn’t want that. She thinks she knows who I am because she thinks who I am is who
she
tells me I am.

“God they love the sound of their own voices,” Tara Finke mutters.

And you don’t?

Suddenly, I feel everyone’s gaze on us. I look up and William Trombal is glaring, his dark eyes slicing straight through me.

“Do you have a question?” he asks, totally ignoring Tara and looking straight at me.

Tara Finke is scribbling something down on the lunchtime list of complaints. She passes it to me and I skim the list. At the bottom she’s written,
Ask him where he got the pole up his ass from.

The whole House is looking our way. I spot Luca, who gives me a sympathetic smile.

“We were just wondering . . . ,” Tara Finke begins.

I can’t believe she’s going to make things worse. I look at the coat of arms behind William Trombal’s head, which is full of Latin pretension.

“. . . if the P stands for pace . . . peace. . . ,”
I finish off for her. I feel her glaring at me, but it is not as bad as the smug, condescending look on William Trombal’s face.

“You’re saying it in Italian,” he says, like he’s speaking to a moron. “In Latin it’s
pax
.” Then he deliberately turns around to look at the coat of arms and then looks back at me. “And there’s no P there, anyway. It’s a V. For veritas. ‘Truth.’ ” He pauses for emphasis after each word. “But I can understand how the V/P thing could confuse you.”

“Ripped,”
Thomas Mackee behind me snickers, suggesting that William Trombal has well and truly won the point in this exchange.

When the meeting is over, Ms. Quinn, our House dean, is standing there in front of me. She holds out her hand and I realize I still have Tara’s note.

“Can you come to my office?”

I sit in front of Ms. Quinn, watching as she reads the list. Most of the time she looks highly strung or half-bemused. She’s pretty tough and doesn’t give an inch, but I think that’s how she has to be. My mother began her teaching career in a boys’ school, and she said that every day was like going to war and every day she’d come home with battle fatigue. Ms. Quinn is youngish, but not teenage-boy lust material. I think they like her, but they still call her a bitch behind her back. She’s spoken to me once or twice about some screw-ups on my timetable, but that’s as far as it’s ever gone.

“I like this,” she says after a moment. I recognize the look in her eye. It’s that Tara Finke/Mia Spinelli look. “I think you should have issues. This must be hard on you girls. I’ll set you up with Will and he’ll work through these requests with you.”

I’m already picking up my bag. I’m not interested in dealing with William Trombal so soon after this morning’s alphabet lesson.

“Tara Finke would probably prefer to do that,” I say politely.

“According to this, Tara Finke thinks that Will has an object protruding from a part of his body,” she explains to me politely. “I don’t think she’s the right person to speak to him.”

“I don’t think I am either.”

She smiles and hands me back the list. “If he came across as gruff, it’s because he’s actually quite shy.”

I nod. It’s a blowing-her-off nod. It works, because she looks past me to the door as if to say, “You can go now.” I do the polite-smile thing and, relieved, I turn around.

And walk straight into William Trombal.

We’re almost exactly the same height, so eye contact is inevitable. I find a scar between his eyes to concentrate on. He has a strange face. It’s all sharpness and angles and incredibly fair skin. But then he’s got this thatch of black hair that’s such a contrast. It’s like two cultures had a massive fight over his face and neither won.

“The girls are just having a few issues that they thought maybe you could iron out,” Ms. Quinn explains.

“About?”

His voice is deep and gravelly. I once heard one of the girls say that he had the voice of a sex god, but because I’ve never really heard what a sex god sounds like, I can’t verify that.

The list in my hand suddenly feels like a hot wedge against my palm. I don’t want to hand it over. Apart from the comment about him, Tara Finke has this tampon machine obsession and she insisted on putting it at the top of the list. He holds out his hand, and I’m hating Tara Finke’s guts for putting me through this.

He runs his eyes over the list, and I know the exact moment that he’s reached the final line. His face flushes red and then he looks at me.

“What’s your name?”

“Francis . . . Francesca . . . Spinelli.”

Your grandmother stole my grandmother’s S biscuit recipe, as you
well know.

“I was going to be called Francesca,” Ms. Quinn tells us. She nods, looking at us both. “But my mother went for Anna Carina.”

I don’t know how to react to this piece of trivia, so I smile politely.

“Were your parents Trotsky fans?” William Trombal asks, not at all perturbed by her rambling.

I wait for her to correct him but she doesn’t. He might think he’s the king of Latin translation, but he knows nothing about Russian literary history.

“Do you want some advice, Francis Francesca?” he asks me.

It’s kind of one of those rhetorical things, because I can already tell he’s going to give it to me.

He sighs and sits on the corner of the desk in an attempt to be as accessible as possible.

“Try to keep low-key. If you make a fuss, the guys aren’t going to like it. There’s going to be a shitload of stuff around here—sorry, Ms. Quinn—that you’re not going to like, and being vocal about it will give you a rep you don’t want.”

I nod as if it’s the best advice I’ve ever received. “I’ll pass that on to the—”

Before I can finish, he turns away and sits down, his back to me, as if I was never there. I stare at the back of his head. There’s something about it that makes me want to commit a violent act with a blunt instrument.

“It’s Tolstoy, by the way,” I say as I open the door.

He turns around. “What?”

Shut up,
I tell myself
. Shut up.

“The writer of
Anna Karenina
. Not Trotsky. Trotsky was a revolutionary who was stabbed with a pickax in Mexico in 1940. But I can understand how the
T
thing could confuse you.”

He looks at me, his eyes narrowing. William Trombal doesn’t like to be put in his place. Bad move.

I look at Ms. Quinn. She’s smiling.

“Thank you, Ms. Quinn,” I say politely, and walk out.

My father makes us an omelette for dinner. The three of us sit eating in silence. There has never, ever been silence at our dinner table, and tonight it’s like torture.