Take My Word for It (5 page)

I think under it all Soph has no confidence. You can never pay her a compliment—she won't let you. She hates her parents. She mucks around at everything—it's as though she doesn't want to have a proper go at it, in case she fails. Or in case she succeeds. She takes the biggest risks—she could have been expelled about six times already this year. She and Kate went into town at midnight at the start of last week—they caught a taxi at the roundabout and didn't come back till about three in the morning.

Another good thing about Soph is that she really is generous. She'd give you anything. You can't say you like anything she's wearing, or she'll try to give it to you. She'd give you the shirt off her back and the bra off her front. I think her parents must have heaps of money—she's got the best clothes of anyone in the dorm—but she takes the worst care of her stuff. She loses and breaks more things than anyone I've ever seen. She's also the cheekiest student to teachers that I've ever seen. When Mr Bostock was giving back tests the other day Sophie didn't hear him call her name, so he picked up hers and brought it down the room towards her saying, ‘What do you want, Sophie, Room Service?' She just said, ‘That's what you're paid for isn't it?'

He acted like he didn't hear, but I can't see how he could have missed it. Everyone in the room heard.

So, that's Soph, about the most unboring person I've ever met. I don't know whether I'll put down to be with her next year, but I know one thing, I wouldn't have missed it.

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18

I got a message to go see Dr Whiteley today, which had me a bit worried, but it was only for an Anzac Day service next week—there're two kids from each year, and she wants Rikki and me to go for Year Nine. It's quite an honour really.

We did this beautiful poem in English yesterday, called ‘The Good-Morrow'. It's a love poem, written four hundred years ago.

It's so sweet. I'm going to write it out in full and stick it on my desk—next to Peter's photo, I think. It's kind of ironic that the day after we did the poem, Cathy got a phone call from Andy to say she was dropped. So that didn't last long. She was so upset—I didn't realise she liked him that much.

We've got so much Prep I shouldn't be writing in this at all. It's hard to settle down to proper work though—my desk is next to the door into the dorm, and Ann's in there playing her violin, like she does every night. I know she has to practise, but she always spins it out twice as long as she should, so she can get out of Prep. And it's so boring. She plays the same tunes over and over, especially that theme from ‘Second Coming'. She sounds like galvanised iron when you're pulling one sheet of it across another.

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19

Chloe came to see me again today. It is good that she does it. No guy in tow either, although she says she's still with Hamish. She said Dad's getting with someone, too. I really cracked at her, until she said, ‘It's not my fault. Don't take it out on me.' We started talking a bit then. I asked her if she was glad they were divorced, and she said she thought it was better in some ways. She said she couldn't understand why it happened though—she thought they'd stopped fighting quite a few months before. I realised then that she didn't know the full story at all. That's good in one way—that she doesn't know I caused it. See, she was away a lot towards the end of that year—she'd been getting quite a lot of work catering and cooking and she was saving to go overseas. She didn't realise that the reason they'd stopped fighting is that they'd pretty much stopped talking. Actually that only struck me afterwards, and I was living at home fulltime. Boy, was I ever dumb.

I asked her if she missed ‘Connewarre' and she said she did. But . . . well, I know that's the truth, that she misses it, but I don't think she misses it the way I do. For me, it wasn't just land, it was the ground under my feet. The only thing I can compare it to is this: when I was about eight, Chloe, and whichever boy she was with at the time, took me to the Show. Now, they've got this thing there that I suppose everyone would have known about except me. It's called the Gravitron or something—it's a barrel that spins, and the floor drops away, and you're stuck to the wall by centrifugal force. But I didn't know any of that. Chloe and this boy told me they had a big surprise for me, and they made me shut my eyes while they took me in there and got me to stand against the wall, making sure I didn't get any clues about what was going to happen. Well, the thing started up, slowly at first, then faster and faster. That was OK, then suddenly I felt that I was a few centimetres off the floor. I couldn't understand how that could happen, as I hadn't realised that I'd moved, and I looked down so that I could get myself back on the floor. Then I saw that the floor had dropped away, and I had this absolute panic that the thing had malfunctioned and it was all falling apart—that it would fly to pieces around me. It took a few moments to realise that it was doing what it was meant to do. When I saw Chloe laughing, I started to understand. Then it just became a matter of surviving the ride, all the time wishing for death.

I didn't show a thing on my face though. I'm proud of that—not one flicker of fear. I wouldn't give them that satisfaction. At the end, when Chloe asked me what I'd thought of it, I just said that it was OK. I hope she was disappointed.

So, that's the best I can do to describe how I feel about losing my beautiful ‘Connewarre'—the ground under my feet.

I'm pleased Chloe and I talked a bit though. This might sound big-headed but I think she does resent me a bit. She didn't do well at schoolwork or sport, then she got expelled from here in Year 11, so when I get good marks in tests, and get promoted in rowing, I imagine her thinking, ‘I don't want to be outdone by my little sister.'

The thing I resent about her though, is the way she takes advantage of Mum and Dad living apart. She sees it as a good chance to get everything she can. The way she spends Dad's money is sickening. But I'd never dare say it to her face. I'm just little Lisa.

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20

Ran so many laps today. I'd normally do a crossie but there's been the odd car-load of drop-kicks around again and Dr Whiteley has banned crossies unless you're in a group of three and tell a teacher you're going. I like to run alone.

I hope we do well on Saturday, at the CMC. We're up against University again, and Muirfield, who beat the Thirds by half a canvas a few weeks ago.

And this time the Fourths are in the same race, which'll be interesting.

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21

Mr L, supposing you did something bad, something really bad, do you think your grandparents would see it from Heaven and be upset and angry at you for doing it? I used to worry about that a lot, but then one day I thought that if they were in Heaven they'd be happy all the time (otherwise it wouldn't be Heaven). So that must mean they wouldn't know about it.

Maybe a screen drops into place whenever you do something bad, so they can't see? But then they'd wonder what you were doing that was so awful. Oh, it's so complicated.

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22

Well, that was a scorcher. We got a stinking start—we were side-on when the starter gave the word. I think Tash was rattled by one of the officials yelling at us as we came up the river for the start—he thought we were going to get in the way of a crew that was racing down the course. Tash had it under control, but he didn't know that. So anyway, the gun went and by the time we got going we were very last. That was good in one way, 'cos University and MLC nearly crashed ahead of us. After a hundred metres the Fourths had the lead, or at least it looked that way from where I sat. Then came Muirfield, then University and MLC abusing each other as they tried to steer a decent course, then the legendary Warrington Thirds. Mr Bostock must have been wetting himself. We were starting to panic, Tash was yelling, ‘Keep your heads up girls, get it together,' but we weren't making much progress. The others all caught the Fourths easily, but we still weren't functioning. Then Muirfield suddenly ploughed to a halt—we found out later their gate broke—and so we passed them, and even though that wasn't a great achievement it helped us settle down somehow, and we set out after the Fourths. I know it's wrong but I wanted to beat them more than anyone else in the race, and beat them by a good margin, too. I thought it'd be my fault if we didn't. And I know how badly they wanted to beat us.

Coming round the bend we hit the headwind, but Tash found us some dead water and we went for twenty hard. I was trying too much I think and I couldn't go with the flow, not using my head, not catching the run of the boat. Tash said, ‘Hey Lisa, get with it.' We reached the Fourths; they were sweating and gnashing their teeth and both of us were catching MLC. But gradually we started getting away from the Fourths: out of the corner of my eye I could see Kizzy slipping backwards. ‘Keep the pressure on,' Tash said. In the other boat I could hear Myra yelling, ‘Shut up, shut up', and I gave a little grin inside. That was typical Fourths, fighting when things went wrong. ‘Two hundred metres,' Tash said. ‘come on Thirds, last effort.' I was level with the MLC bow but University looked out of reach. We settled down to grunt it out with MLC. Tash was red in the face, gripping the side of the boat and urging us on. I heard the bell as University crossed the line. But we had to beat MLC. ‘Come on, come on,' Tash screamed. We were flying, together at last, their green singlets and red faces were so bright—I remember that more than anything—but the line was too close. A metre past the line we were ahead of them, but that was no use.

I was so disappointed. I thought I'd let them down. That was our last race against University and now they'd think they were better than us. And we'd wanted to test ourselves properly against Muirfield. We still think we can beat MLC, but then we'd thought that yesterday too. All in all it was a hopeless effort. I think I'll take up free-fall bungy jumping.

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24

I'm going to write more about the weekend, seeing nothing much happened today. The Regatta was such a mess—hope we've used up all our bad luck before the big one on Saturday. Mr Bostock was calm about it but Miss Warren gave us a big lecture about our starts and our steering (Tash was not impressed).

The Fourths came last, not counting Muirfield.

Saturday night I was absolutely stuffed. I skipped the movie and went upstairs to the Year 11 cubes and talked to Skye and Stevie for an hour or so. That's one good thing about being in the Thirds—I get to talk to the Seniors much more. But I was in bed by nine o'clock.

Sunday Chapel was even more boring than usual. Halfway through the Responses Dr Whiteley stopped and made us start them again, because she said we weren't saying them in time. I think that's weird. Surely if we're praying it's up to us what speed we do it at. They're having a big crackdown on Chapel at the moment—even Ann got a det yesterday.

Then after Chapel Mrs Graham had this heavy session with us in the dorm. See, Marina was out on a double exeat, despite the fact that it was a closed weekend—but she was with a teacher (Mr Lindell), plus she never goes anywhere, so I guess it was fair enough. Anyway, Mrs Graham had a meeting with us about her. I was pretty surprised by what she said. She said we hadn't been very kind to Marina, that we'd left her out of things, that she'd promised Marina's mother that we were such a friendly group but that we'd let her (Mrs Graham) down. She asked us if we still blamed Marina for the kleptoing, and she said it would be unfair if we did.

There was a long silence and everyone seemed to be looking at me, so I spoke up. I was quite heated actually—must have been all the sleep I'd had the night before. I said I thought we'd been pretty good to her. We're always asking her things and trying to include her. We lend her stuff and give her stuff and crack jokes with her and we don't pay her out like we do to each other. In fact we stick up for her all the time. If anyone from another dorm says anything about her face or that, we practically shred them. I said we don't hold the kleptoing against her, 'cos for one thing it was never proved, but it's true that there's been hardly anything stolen since Marina got busted with Kate's shirt.

Marisa Chan was at this meeting, and she was OK. She said she noticed Marina wasn't slinking about the place like a hunted fox any more—she walks more confidently and has her head up more. But she still said we didn't treat her as a full member of the dorm.

Kate said it was pretty hard because she never gives you any encouragement when you do try to include her. Soph, in her usual outrageous way, asked how come Marina got special privileges, seeing she was meant to be treated the same as everyone else. Mrs Graham asked, ‘What special privileges?' and Soph pulled the trigger and said, ‘Well where is she right now? It's a closed weekend and she's on a double exeat,' which left Mrs Graham without much she could say, just making horrible faces.

I admit there've been some awful things done to Marina during the year: Sophie using her like a puppet is one that springs to mind. Trace renaming her Teddy ‘Marina' when the teddy lost his grunt is another. But by and large I reckon we've been good to her—and good for her. I swear, there have been times when I'm sure she's smiling inside at the things that have happened. The other night, for example, Sophie was getting changed, and as she was struggling into her jeans (she's not getting any thinner, Soph) she moaned, ‘Oh, I need to take a Panadol just to get my jeans on.' I happened to be looking right at Marina, and something definitely flickered across her face. I suspect it was that elusive smile.