The Protected (8 page)

‘I'm not stuck up. How does being scared make me stuck up?'

‘What are you scared of? Why do you have to take everything so fucking seriously?'

***

I am in my room when the taxi pulls into the drive-way. I can see it from the desk by my bedroom window. The passenger-side door swings open. My father. One leg and then the other. Hands brace, one on the door, the other on the roof of the car. He slams the door shut behind him, limps down the path to the letterbox. He takes from it one single letter, stands gazing at it in his hand. In the kitchen I hear my mother turn on the radio and turn it off again. She opens and closes cupboards, a tap runs. My father stands there looking at the letter in his hands, turns it over and I can see that it's a postcard, not a letter. We don't know anyone who might be in the kind of place you send a postcard from. A place where we are missed. He puts the postcard in his pocket.

After dinner I take our plates into the kitchen and open the dishwasher. I hold the first plate, my mother's – laden with uneaten food – and push the pedal on the bin with my foot. On top of a mound of potato peelings is a postcard, or rather, two halves of a postcard. I set the plate down on the bench and extract both pieces, hold them together. The picture is of snow-capped mountains and a blue sky. Greetings from Zurich!

Dear Katie and Hannah,

How are you both? I am good. The conference is going well. I've met some amazing people. Zurich is a really nice place, lots of good chocolate! Next time I will bring you guys and your mum along. Look after her for me. I miss you.

Lots of love, Dad

He was overseas about a month before the accident. He had got the postcode wrong. The postcard has been floating in the great land of undelivered mail all this time. Finally found its way home, a year too late.

I take the postcard into my room and stick it together with sticky tape. Then I go into Katie's room, open her desk drawer and put the postcard inside.

FOURTEEN

Life advice Katie gave me:

* Ignore the health warnings, smoking is hot.

* If you see something in a store, but it's too expensive, take a red pen, cross out the price and write next to it what you want to pay. The sales assistant will think it's on sale. (Don't make it too low, though. They get suspicious.)

* Breakfast is the easiest meal of the day to cut out.

* Don't drink pre-mixed drinks. It's the sugar in them that makes you feel worse the next day. They also make you fat.

Josh is in my Maths class. He sits opposite me with two other Reacher Street High kids. The desks are arranged in a horseshoe shape, probably to encourage dynamic class discussions or something. Mrs Rourke, my Maths teacher, clearly despises the arrangement. She doesn't really encourage any interaction between class members. She also doesn't respond well to questions, you get the feeling she'd prefer if there were no actual students there so she could get through the lesson without interruption.

Katie would say it's stuck up to say this, but none of the other kids in the class are what you would call especially academic. It's the second lowest Maths class. Pretty much everyone else here is in detention at least once a week for various violations of school rules. Then there's me. I'm just crap with numbers. Most of my other classes I get HDs. Mrs Rourke has sensed that I hate Maths, or maybe less sensed and more noticed from my endlessly incorrect answers. She doesn't offer any smiling encouragement, but instead treats me like a disease she can't cure.

Today, she writes a series of algebra exercises on the whiteboard. She begins to explain – for about the five-hundredth time – how to find ‘x'. Josh, of course, puts his hand up.

‘Yes?'

‘I found “x”, miss. It's up the top there, next to the six.'

She lets out a long breath. ‘Do I have to ask you to leave, Mr Chamberlain?'

‘Miss, I'm just trying to help out.'

‘Shut up and listen.'

‘Yes, miss.'

She continues with her droning, monotone explanation.
It takes me a moment to realise that Josh is staring directly at me. I look over to him and he crosses his eyes. I look away, but when I glance back he is still doing it: sitting there looking directly at me with his eyes crossed. As directly as it is possible to look with your eyes crossed, I suppose. Mrs Rourke notices him. Her eyes dart from Josh to me. She is confused. Post Katie, I am off limits to any sort of harassment by other students. Everyone knows it. But it is clearly inconceivable that anyone would be socialising, no matter how subliminally, with me. She ignores the incident like she is sure she is seeing things and moves on to the next problem. I glance at Josh, he crosses his eyes again.

Mrs Rourke folds her arms.

‘Mr Chamberlain, do you have a problem?'

‘Yeah, miss. Thanks for asking, I have a lot of problems
and I just don't know where to turn anymore.'

She purses her lips and narrows her eyes. ‘One more interruption and you can leave.'

He gives her a salute. Mrs Rourke uncaps her marker and carries on talking about ‘x' and ‘y'. She turns and writes on the whiteboard and as her back is turned Josh pegs a ball of paper at me. It's a situation I have been in so many times before. Kids harassing me while the teacher isn't looking. It practically used to be a school sport – let's see how much shit we can give Hannah without the teacher noticing. But now the rules are different. Mrs Rourke turns to us and starts talking again. Josh watches her with a straight face. She turns back to the board. Josh looks pointedly at the ball of paper on my desk. ‘I dare you,' he mouths. The other students, including Tara and Amy, are watching, they've never seen the game played like this before. Tara looks completely confused. I pick up the ball and throw it just as Mrs Rourke turns around to face us. Her mouth drops open in shock.

‘Miss McCann, I would expect better from you.' She points to Josh first then me. ‘Both of you, out.'

I have never been kicked out of class before. I don't quite know what to do. Leaving would be a good start. Josh stands up.

Mrs Rourke glares at me. ‘Hannah?'

Do I pack up my stuff and take it? Do I leave it? Josh has left his and is heading out the door, so I do the same and follow him. Outside he stands with his hands in his pockets and a wicked grin on his face. He shakes his head.

‘Jane, Jane, Jane. I'm trying to better my mathematical skills. Stop dragging me down. Ha, look at your face. It's okay. You're not going to get expelled.'

Mrs Rourke opens the door and steps out. She looks at us both, her jaw tight.

‘Mr Chamberlain, what do you have to say for yourself?'

‘Miss! She was the one throwing stuff.' He winks at me.

‘Miss McCann?'

‘Um. I'm … Um, sorry.'

‘Your marks would hardly suggest that you are in a position to be mucking around in class.'

‘Yes.'

‘Consider yourselves warned. Another word from either of you and you can go to the year coordinator's office.'

‘Message received, ma'am,' Josh says.

‘Get back to your desks.'

When I get home from school Mrs Van is in her front yard, pulling at the cord of her lawnmower. It ignores her. She wipes her forehead with her arm. She wears baggy pyjama shorts, socks with sandals and her Big Banana T-shirt. It's her favourite T-shirt, I know that because she told me once. Her son bought it for her, he lives in Coffs Harbour. I've never seen him.

‘Look at my lawn!' she says when she sees me. ‘So overgrown.'

It looks like a putting green.

‘It won't start,' she says in a way that implies the lawnmower is lazy rather than broken.

‘Do you want me to try?'

‘Oh you are such a good girl.'

I dump my bag on the path and go over to the lawnmower. I give the starter cord a good tug and the mower grumbles to life. Mrs Van claps, she motions to take the mower from me. I shake my head.

‘You shouldn't be doing this,' I say. I push the mower along next to the fence. It doesn't take long to do the lawn. The grass smells good, like childhood. It reminds me of summer holidays when Dad would put the sprinkler on the lawn and Katie and me would run around in our swimmers. When I am finished I glance up and see my mother watching me from our kitchen window. I smile, but the sun is reflecting off the windowpane and I can't see her expression.

‘I don't see your mother leave the house,' Mrs Van says.

‘She doesn't go out much at the moment.'

‘It is very bad for her to be inside all day. Very bad for the head not to see the sunlight.'

I pick up my schoolbag. ‘Well, see you, Mrs Van.'

‘It has been almost a year since Katie was killed.'

She doesn't say ‘passed away' like everyone else. I despise the term ‘passed away'. It sounds peaceful and graceful and kind of magical. I don't think there was anything peaceful about Katie's death.

‘That is a long time to stay in the house.'

‘Yeah. It is.'

‘But, there is nothing like the pain of burying your child. It is the worst kind of agony.' She closes her eyes for a moment. Then opens them and puts a hand on my arm. ‘I am very tired. Too old! I will go inside. You go to your mother.'

In the evening Mum sits at the dining table sorting through a pile of paperwork from the lawyers. The pedestal fan whirs around back and forth, snatching papers and tossing them to the floor. Rather than move the fan or turn it off, Mum just repeatedly picks the papers back up, swearing under her breath.

I have ventured from my room because it is stifling in there, no breeze at all through the window. Plus it is dinnertime, supposedly. Although my mother seems oblivious.

‘Um, are you going to eat anything?'

She looks up from the table, frowning as if I have said something deeply offensive. ‘What, Hannah?'

‘It's just, I thought I might get something to eat.'

‘Fine.' She turns back to her work.

‘Shouldn't Dad be home by now? It's after seven.'

She dismisses the question with a wave of her hand. ‘I don't know. Maybe he has a meeting.'

‘Okay. I might make some spaghetti. Dad will probably want dinner when he gets home.'

‘Yes,' she sighs. ‘Dad will probably want dinner.'

‘Or maybe I'll just do some instant noodles. It might be too hot to cook spaghetti.'

She isn't listening.

I take a packet of two-minute noodles from the cupboard, split it open and drop the square of dehydrated curls into a bowl. I shake the loose noodles out – like the tiny bones of a delicate creature – and scatter the powdered flavouring over the top. Through the kitchen window I see a taxi approach our driveway and stop. The passenger-side door opens and my father begins to slowly extract himself, puppet-like, from the car.

The taxi driver gets out, walks behind the car and opens the boot. He pulls out Dad's crutch, hands it to him and puts his briefcase and laptop bag on the grass.

The taxi drives off, leaving my dad standing alone with two bags he can't carry.

I go outside and he smiles but doesn't meet my eyes. I pick up the bags and he follows me, limping, up the path to the house.

***

‘Hi Hannah!'

They slid into the seat behind me, Tara and Amy. Always the Tara and Amy show. The bus swayed as students loped on. I couldn't see Katie out the window. She was usually right at the back of the line, no rush – practically had a bus seat reserved in her name.

‘How was your day, Hannah?' Amy asked. ‘Get any lesbian action in the library? Or were you at it all by yourself?'

I kept my focus on the window. Katie had advised me to stick to the ‘ignore them and they'll go away' strategy. This was highly fallible. In the Canadian Rockies, for example, cougars are known to stalk unsuspecting campers for up to three days before they strike – no matter how good their prey are at ignoring them.

‘Han-nah, you're being so rude!' Tara said. ‘Amy's just trying to make conversation. Aren't you into Amy anymore? Just into yourself?'

Amy laughed as if she were in front of a camera. Students continued to file on to the bus, but the flow was slowing to a trickle. Then Katie got on. I caught her eye. I imagined her walking up to Amy and Tara and dismissing them with some cold witty remark. But it didn't happen. She walked down the aisle, gave me the briefest of sideways glances and continued on to the back seat.

‘Oh, you should leave Hannah alone, Amy,' said Tara. ‘She's so in love with you, she's aching for you.'

‘Yeah, I know. She's so frigid though, aren't you, Hannah?'

‘You know why she's never been with a guy? She doesn't want anyone to find her dick.'

‘What do you do with it, Han-the-Man? Do you tuck it in to your undies? Oh my God, you can totally see she has a lump there! Look at her thing!'

‘I'm going to vomit. That is so disgusting.'

‘Oh you know what is disgusting? Jared's haircut! I'm like, what the fuck happened to your hair?!'

‘I know. He said his boss totally made him cut it. So bad …'

And they moved on. For the next ten minutes they left me alone, until the bus was almost at my stop and I felt something on my back. I ignored it at first. They were clearly trying to get me to turn around. But it kept going. I turned around to see Tara holding a black marker. Amy dissolved into giggles.

‘Oh no!' said Tara. ‘I think you've got pen on your shirt!'

The bus pulled into my stop. I stood up and inevitably showed the whole bus the back of my shirt. The shrieks of laughter were utterly predictable, yet still I felt my stomach turn at the sound of it. Her audience was captivated. I put my backpack on in an effort to hide Tara's handiwork, but the damage was well and truly done. It was also posted on Instagram, just in case anyone missed out.

Katie caught up with me after the bus had driven away.

‘Hannah, you can't just take that shit.'

‘What does it say?'

She doesn't answer me.

‘Katie?'

‘It says “I have a big dick
”.
'

I unzipped my bag and pulled my jumper out. I put it on. I couldn't bear going any further with those words written on my back.

‘You should have slapped her,' said Katie.

‘You should have slapped her.' I was losing it before we even made it home. I wiped and wiped at the tears but they kept coming.

‘What? It's my fault, is it? Yeah, good one, Hannah.'

‘They would stop if you told them to!'

‘Hannah, Tara is going out with Jared, for fuck's sake. He's my friend. He's Jensen's mate. I don't need this drama. It has nothing to do with me.'

‘You're supposed to be my sister.'

‘And so what if I do do something? Then what happens later when I'm not around? What do you think they'll do then?'

‘At least they don't pretend they're trying to help me out.' I spat the words at her. ‘I hate you.'

Katie rolled her eyes and kept walking. ‘God, Hannah. Whatevs.'

*

I got changed as soon as I was home. I shoved the shirt into a bag and put it in the bottom of the garbage bin where Mum wouldn't see it. I did the same with the two other shirts that were ruined in similar ways in the months after. I told Mum I had lost them, left them behind after swim training.

***