by Leanne Hall
‘Why don’t you put it on your list for Santa?’ I say, even though Mum has been trying to break that particular news to him for two years now. Sam’s not ready to let Santa go.
I look at his too-long hair and his grimy pyjamas and worry about whether everything lovely about him will be lost when he becomes a teenager. I’ve no intention whatsoever of leaving the house tonight when I could be home, where I belong, with one of the best people I know.
‘I could and I suppose it’s not that far away when you think about it and do you think maybe there’ll be a sale before then—’
When I slot the brush into the bottle of polish, I accidentally topple the neighbouring bottle, sending a pool of sticky red across the couch cushion.
‘No!’ I’m up in a flash, righting the bottle and dithering. I blot the puddle with my sleeve, only to realise I’ve just ruined my favourite hoodie.
‘Fuckety fuckety fuck!’
‘Swears, Chloe!’ Sam is halfway between disapproving and impressed.
My jumper comes off in a huff.
‘Why are you so upset?’ Sam asks, and it’s a good question. My eyes are prickling again. I screw all three nail polish lids on slowly and perfectly until the tears subside.
I will not cry any more because I’m sick of red eyes and having a raw nose because Mum is too tight to buy the good aloe tissues.
‘I’ll give you a foot massage, that always makes you feel better.’
‘You can’t, Sammy, your nails are wet.’
I’m angry, boiling hot, but I don’t know if I even have the right to feel that way, so I am just stuffing the feeling deep down in a very healthy, sustainable way.
‘Watch me do a headstand then, I’ve got much better.’
‘Your nails!’ I say, but Sam doesn’t hear me, or he ignores me, and he has his blue toenails up in the air and his sticky fingers squishing into the carpet before I can stop him.
Dad calls late and I know that Mum must have told him what happened. Sam has emptied himself of every thought he’s ever had and is asleep on the couch.
Dad speaks in a low voice, and I know from the clink and echo that he’s sitting on his porch with a beer, watching fruit bats whirl around overhead.
‘Chloe, I’m so sorry, mate.’
There is a clot in my throat that won’t let me speak. I fiddle with the pens in the mug on my desk.
‘It’s senseless, love. You made a beautiful piece of art that meant something.’
‘But what did it mean?’ I don’t speak loud enough.
‘These people.’ His voice is soaked in disgust. ‘They can stuff their exhibition up their you-know-what, because we’re going to have our own party anyway.’
‘Really?’
‘I’ll organise it with your mother. Wine and cheese and the whole lot. I think I’ve got a beret somewhere.’
‘Do you think you and Mum can get along for one night?’
‘You’d be surprised. Your mum calls me sometimes, when she’s in the mood. She’s not always pissy with me.’
‘Okayyy,’ I say, because it’s weird to think about them talking and not shouting. ‘I’d like that. But no one wears berets anymore. They all wear these fisherman beanies.’
‘I can do that.’
‘Dad, I think you were right all along. I should go back to Morrison. I want to transfer back.’
A pause in which I’m sure he’s knocking back beer.
‘That’s fine if that’s what you want, love. But why don’t you let the dust settle a bit? Do you think you can tough it out a little longer? It’s not worth messing up your exams if you don’t have to.’
I say yes, because maybe I can ride it out. Because if I’m being real, I don’t want to go back to Morrison, I just don’t want to stay at Balmoral either.
Much later, when I’m going through my school diary to see if I have anything due tomorrow, I find the envelope Ms Nouri gave me tucked into the cover. Inside is a photocopy of an interview with Bill Henson, titled ‘I’m comfortable with the fact my pictures disturb people’.
Ms Nouri might not have stood up to Mrs Christie, but her message is clear.
I read the interview slowly and marvel at how focussed Henson stays on his work, how little he cares about what people say. How does a person grow an iron skin like that? How do you feel that amount of certainty? Do you have to be a middle-aged white man to feel that way?
I usually don’t care too much about other people’s opinions. If they want to think my body is too big, they can. If they find me too quiet in class, whatever. But this is different. The photo means too much to me.
I showed too much of myself, and now, to my surprise, it turns out I do care what other people think.
DAY 59
Dad picks me up from outside the gym where Marley and I have been taking the class that has you dancing along having a good old time and then suddenly dropping to the floor to do push-ups and crunches until you want to hurl all over your mesh-panel leggings.
‘Does Marley need a lift?’ Dad cranes his head.
‘Nah, she likes to walk. It’s barely a block.’
‘We should take her…’
‘Dad! We’re not babies anymore.’
That shuts him up, but in actual fact I am personally relieved that I don’t have to walk the narrow streets in the dark. Marley, on the other hand, loves this time of night.
‘Good workout, honey?’
I fiddle with the aircon, directing the jets right onto my sweaty face. My body has been full of adrenaline and secrets since I went to that pervert Pulpitt’s house, and then that got mixed into a sludge with anger at Petra, but now stomach-crunching until my abs burned has somehow restored my feeling of reality, of being back in my body instead of in a nightmare.
‘I had a crap day so I suppose it helped.’
‘Crap day? Anything I need to know about?’
‘I’ll tell you at home, I just want to flop for a second.’
I put the radio on loud, Dad turns it down a notch, and we race down the slippery dip of Windermere Avenue, flanked by the biggest, richest, oldest mansions, the kind that have tennis courts and swimming pools and British-sounding house names. I wonder what crimes have happened behind the closed doors of these houses that no one knows about.
When we get home Dad makes me sit at the breakfast bar and pick coriander leaves off the stalks, which definitely counts as child labour.
The benches are littered with gaping spice packets and sticky spoons, the food processor is out and awful ancient Bob Dylan is on the sound system and there are one-and-a-half empty wine bottles and I realise that Dad shouldn’t have been driving the car. Mum is going to crack it when she sees the mess and Faith doesn’t come again until Thursday.
Dad pours himself another glass. He puts rice on to boil and commences chop chop chopping a giant pile of vegetables. Steam gathers around us and fogs up the back windows.
‘You in the mood yet to tell me about your day?’
I shift on my stool, nearly kicking Dylan Thomas, who wends his way around my legs.
‘What do you think about censorship, Dad?’
‘You’ll have to be more precise, honey.’
‘Censorship of art.’ I scroll on my phone for pics of Chloe’s art piece, which I also think of as mine. ‘Remember that art project I helped my friend with at the beginning of the holidays?’
He nods, even though he has no idea. Mum keeps track of me and my schedule, but he has only the faintest idea on any given day. I show him the screen.
‘Is that you, Tal?’
He reaches across the bench and grabs my phone with his greasy cooking hands.
‘I don’t like seeing you like that. Where were you? Why would you agree to that?’
I grab my phone back and wipe it on my top.
‘Forget it’s me, Dad. God, can you just try and be normal for a second? Chloe is trying to make a point about the portrayal of young women or something. And then this dw
eeb complained about Chloe’s photo, saying she was offended or whatever, and Mrs Christie banned it from the exhibition.’
Even just talking about it makes my hackles rise. I pretend not to feel it most of the time, but Balmoral is a stifling, suffocating blanket, as bad as the boarding school in Picnic at Hanging Rock. It’s not only that Petra thinks she’s got the moral high ground, but also that the school agrees with her, that they don’t care about the things that matter to us.
When something real and raw like Chloe’s photo comes along, they push it away. As if we don’t know what bad people can do.
‘Is that what happened?’
‘Chloe worked so hard on this for her major art project, and so did I, and it was only up for less than a day before one person—one person!—complained, and they’ve taken it out of the exhibition. And Chloe isn’t eligible for the art prize now, which is totally unfair and she deserved to win—’
‘I’ll call Gary after dinner—’ starts Dad.
‘NO.’
I march over to the wall and flip on the fan before the smoke alarm starts beeping.
‘I don’t want you to call Gary, Dad. I want you to tell me what I should do about it.’
‘Huh.’ Dad gives it actual thought. The kitchen is an utter mess around him and he forgot to put an apron on and has turmeric smeared down his front.
‘So this photo is an important personal statement, right?’ I nod.
‘And you’ve been silenced from making this statement.’ You can almost see his mind rewinding to his radical university days, as he likes to call them. Apparently even Gary was a socialist back then, which is impossible to believe.
‘I think a petition is a good place to start.’ He slides spring onions into a pan. ‘Get the support of your fellow students first. And try to get some teachers to sign.’
‘Dad, please. That’s not going to happen. The teachers don’t care about anything but keeping their jobs.’
‘Yeah, fair point.’ He bats the onions around the pan with an egg flipper. ‘Still. You can ask, to make your point. Make it obvious what you’re doing and if anyone questions you, say you’re exercising your democratic rights.’
‘But what about an actual protest? Hanging a banner over the school, or staging a walkout…or a sit-in. Or a hunger strike?’
‘Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.’ Dad’s eyes are shining and it’s not just chilli and steam and wine. ‘First, create awareness around the issue. It might be enough. Your posse will help you, right?’
I roll my eyes. Posse.
‘They might.’ I already know awareness won’t be enough to fix this, not at Balmoral. Something more extreme is in order.
‘Maybe ask Sarah? I haven’t seen her over here for a while. Are you two still tight?’
‘Dad, just because I asked you for your opinion doesn’t mean you get to mess with my social life.’
He holds his hands up in surrender.
‘Okay, point taken. My only condition is that you don’t get yourself suspended. Know your limits and try to exercise some judgement.’
‘Sure. Judgement.’
Dad takes the coriander off my hands. ‘Did I tell you I’m taking a few weeks off?’
He didn’t.
‘Your mother is stressed out of her mind with that Baker-Hill contract,’ he says. ‘I’m going to stay home to cook and be around for her. And you, of course. Give you lifts, help you with your homework.’
Mum is always stressed out over some project so it’s not an excuse. I look at Dad’s tired face, the pan smoking on the stove behind him, and I feel bad for ever doubting him, for wondering about the nights he comes home late, for thinking the police might be onto something.
I want to ask him about the case, what the police asked him and why, but I can’t.
One day he’ll have a stroke or a heart attack or an ulcer from too much work and I wish he could just say he’s taking time off work for himself, because he needs a break too.
DAY 60
We are alarmed by the censorship of Chloe Cardell’s artwork, Someone’s Watching, and are dismayed by the restriction of free speech in our school. Balmoral’s motto, Sapientia et Libertas, encourages its students to think independently, which we believe Chloe Cardell has done.
We demand that Someone’s Watching be put back on display and that it be rightfully considered for the Balmoral Art Prize.
Sarah thinks that I should put the petition online, but I disagree. Anyone can click ‘like’ or join a group, it doesn’t mean they believe in it, they just want to do what everyone else is doing and be seen looking like they care. What I need is to look people in the face and know for sure that they think that Nouri and Christie and Petra are wrong and we are right. I need them to agree with me.
So, I’m going old school with this: a paper-and-pen petition, something that Christie and the School Board might understand. Dad helped me with the wording and it made him tragically happy.
I use the photocopier in the library and get a surprising amount of encouragement from the librarians who are all secret anarchists except when it comes to the Dewey decimal system. But they laugh when I ask them to sign and say it’s not their place to get involved. I stick petitions up on every corridor, and then I go around with a clipboard and I talk people into signing and I am a proper campaigner.
I hit up our year level first, at morning recess, starting with 10Q, Chloe’s class. It’s not easy. I have to convince everyone you can’t get in trouble for having an opinion.
‘You were in the photo right?’ says Teaghan. Because Teaghan signs, Brooke and Ella do too. ‘Looking scary and dead.’
‘Thank you for your support,’ I say because I am a born diplomat and I’m genuinely surprised that Teaghan still talks to me after we replaced her with Ally in eighth grade. ‘But I’d do this anyway even if someone else was in the picture because I don’t think the school should infringe our civil liberties.’
I can tell they don’t believe me and I wouldn’t either and I don’t actually know anything about civil liberties, but I don’t waste time worrying. I’ve gone into what Dad calls the zone, which apparently happens to him sometimes when he’s playing golf or drinking aged whiskey.
All I’m focused on is the numbers; the more signatures the better. Chloe was so dejected yesterday, like a stray dog that had been kicked one too many times, and I wonder if I can be a good friend, a better friend, the best sort, and whether that will make up for anything.
The international students decline to sign the petition, except for Bochen, who listens carefully.
‘What do you do with it?’ she asks.
‘I’ll give it to Mrs Christie, and if that doesn’t work, the School Board.’
‘No government?’
‘No, never,’ I say and she signs.
I count and I’ve hit ten pages of names and addresses. Ten! I’d count actual numbers of signatures but I can’t afford to slow down for one second.
Chloe’s not at school and I can’t tell from her messages whether she’s really sick or just moping. I’m hoping to surprise her with an avalanche of signatures by the time she comes back to school tomorrow and she will weep tears of joy and tell me how amazing I am, both as a muse and a future prime minister or CEO or general all-round boss bitch and she will be right.
I race to every class as soon as the bell goes, so I can use the seven minutes in-between periods to get signatures.
At lunch I convince Marley and Sarah to cover the bottom corridors, while Ally and I roam the top levels. It is a testament to our collective boredom that they agree without a single argument.
Ally and I have amazing success with the Elevens and Twelves, who are grumpy about their assessment tasks and sign easily. I don’t think about how the entire school probably feels sorry for our year level and I don’t care if some are pity signatures.
We work our way down to our floor again and come across Petra sitting in an empty classroom with
some minor fellow geeks, playing chess of all things and it’s like we’re out on the savannah and I’m a cheetah and she’s an antelope. Dinner time, little antelope.
‘Tal, no,’ murmurs Ally, and tries to reverse out the door, tugging on my sleeve. I pretend I haven’t heard her.
Petra is minus her twin Audrey and looks scared when she sees us. I can actually hear Ally whimpering behind me.
‘Hi everyone. We’re petitioning Mrs Christie about the unfair censorship of Chloe Cardell’s artwork.’
‘Chloe who?’ one of the chess players asks.
‘If you care about freedom of speech, then you should sign it.’
I place the clipboard down on the table and hold out a handful of pens. The geeks avoid eye contact.
‘Who’s organising it? Is it Amnesty International?’ one of the girls asks Petra.
‘It’s me!’ Is it that hard to believe?
Ally—I could kiss her—joins in. ‘It’s a student-led thing. We’re being involved citizens, or something?’
‘We just don’t think that one person’s opinion should override what the rest of us think.’ I stare right at Petra when I say this, and to my surprise she meets my gaze.
‘Why are you doing this, Natalia?’ asks Petra. She’s not being defiant, she seems genuinely puzzled. Realising her hand is hovering, she puts the chess piece down on the board.
‘Do you think it’s fair?’ I throw back. ‘That one person thinks they’re so important and so right, that they’re going to make everyone else suffer?’
‘I’m not suffering,’ whispers a girl to her neighbour, confused.
‘Is it that you think you’re above us, Petra?’ I can’t help raising my voice and banging my hand on the table. I’m on a roll again; pure lightning runs through my veins. ‘Are your precious little feelings more important than Chloe’s hard work and talent?’
Petra has gone super-red in the face, and I can see she’s surprised because I’m one hundred per cent right and she can’t deny it.
