Yours, Juli

by Thalia Lark

  The flight to Brisbane Monday morning was uneventful, except for Lori’s elder brother throwing up in the toilet. I spent the majority of the trip in silence, thinking about Mum and wondering how she was doing, and thinking about the animals at home and calculating how long it would be before I got to see them again. Dad had explained over the phone the Friday morning before school finished that he’d organised for our neighbour Shane to take care of the property until my mother returned – that had allayed my fears for the animals at least. The only information Dad had on my mother though was what Mrs Bentley and the social worker had already brought to light.

  Our flight landed at a little past seven in the morning, and we caught the St Peter’s bus back to the school along with fifty or so other students who lived too far to drive. Lori’s mum gave us both a hug and a kiss before departing, telling us to call her if we needed anything. I thanked her for having me over the holidays, and she smiled kindly and said: ‘Anytime, love.’

  The bus drive from Brisbane airport to St Peter’s was quiet only to start with. Lori and I had played Hangman on the back of her plane ticket for less than ten minutes before we were suddenly interrupted by a low clearing of the throat behind us. We both turned our heads to see Courtney Goddard saunter down the aisle and drop into the seat opposite us, her mouth cocked in a jaunty smile as she draped an arm over the back of the chair. I was surprised to see her – and so was Lori by the looks of it – as neither of us had noticed her at the airport when we’d landed; perhaps she’d already boarded the shuttlebus.

  I looked over at Courtney with careful disinterest, my teeth clenching invisibly inside my mouth. I’d initially thought that if we couldn’t be friends, we could at least settle on a mutual respect for one another, but the smugness with which she smirked at us now showed that had been hoped in vain.

  ‘Howdy all,’ she said, her bright blue eyes glinting. ‘How were your holidays?’

  ‘Good thanks,’ Lori said. ‘Yours?’

  ‘Oh, fine, fine. I spent most of the time lazing ’round with Rowan – you know Rowan, right? Rowan Jeffery? Grade above us? In the combined maths extension?’

  Lori nodded slowly. ‘Sure, I know Rowan. So are you two going out now?’

  ‘Not officially, but there’s definitely a spark there.’ Courtney smiled smugly before the skin around her eyes tightened and she turned to face me suddenly, her expression a mixture of suspicion and morbid curiosity. ‘I heard about your mother. That’s some lousy shit having her taken to a mental asylum. It must be hard to have such a fucked-up family.’

  I scowled. ‘Not as hard as it is to realise what a gullible dipshit you are. You shouldn’t believe everything you hear around the playground.’

  ‘Well, excuse me. I promise I’ll dismiss that source as soon as we get back, the lying little prat. Nice tone you got going there though, Julianne. You sound as though you’re fighting the impulse to smash my face into the window.’

  ‘I am.’

  She laughed sardonically. ‘That’d be a good start, wouldn’t it? Expelled before you even got through the gates for second term. How many times did they almost kick you out last term? I lost count after the third.’

  ‘It wasn’t that many times,’ Lori said, rolling her eyes. ‘Besides, Juli’s not well. It’s not her fault.’

  Courtney raised her eyebrows interestedly. ‘I didn’t know you weren’t well. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ I said.

  ‘Is it like what’s wrong with your mother? You know, like your brain is screwed up or something? Because that’d make some major cool stories for the grandkids. By the way, pretty much the whole school knows by now what went down with your personal life at the end of last term. Just a little heads up.’

  I frowned, turning my face to the window.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ Courtney said. ‘Honest. I just made the mistake of telling one person after overhearing Emma talking with Miss Wheaton, and then the news spread like wildfire. You know how it is in a boarding school – what John Doe had for breakfast would make its way around if it was interesting enough.’

  My teeth clenched as I avoided her gaze. I knew she was intentionally trying to wind me up, but I was determined to resist the violent impulses that kept coursing through me.

  ‘I actually feel kind of sorry for you. I mean, on top of your mother being detained for potential insanity, now you’re – well, homeless, and parentless, and in the process of being admitted to the loony bin yourself.’

  I locked my fists by my sides, feeling my face heat up with anger as I glared down the front of the bus. My knees were starting to jiggle up and down imperceptibly; it was only a matter of time, I thought, before one of them tried to force its way up Courtney’s behind.

  ‘Plus…didn’t I hear somewhere that your dad was facing charges or something? There was a rumour circulating that he did something really stupid – you know, like petty theft or something.’ She shrugged, her eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe I got that bit wrong…but it wouldn’t surprise me, you know. Having a disabled ex and daughter would send anyone around the bend.’

  ‘I’m not fucking disabled,’ I said, turning to glower at her suddenly.

  Courtney’s smile fell. ‘Well, maybe not, like, severely disabled or anything. But mental illness is still classed as an intellectual disability, my mum said so. Besides, don’t you have, like, a learning disability as well?’

  I stood up from my seat, furiously glaring at her with my fists by my sides, surprised at how sharply her words had struck a chord. ‘I don’t have any disability, you bitch. And I don’t have a mental illness either. I’m as normal as your fucking John Doe. Why are you suddenly attacking me like this anyway? Did you just get bored of sitting on your fat, lazy ass? You’re pathetically small friend pool is going to get even smaller if you keep treating people this way. And it’s absolutely laughable that you think you feel sorry for me. Let me tell you that you’ll never feel half as sorry for me as I do for you. That little spark that’s kindling between you and Rowan Jeffery? I’m more likely to climb Mount Everest than you two are to go out – in fact, I’m more likely to climb Mount Everest than you are to start dating anyone. Just look at yourself, Courtney. You’re nothing but a spiteful little turd whose idea of feeling “sorry” for someone is to taunt them and throw callous insults in their face. I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but there’s no way any guy’s ever going to take you. You’re arrogant, you’re spiteful, and, to be brutally honest, you’ve put on a few pounds over the holidays. Trust me, it’s better if you go fuck yourself now than try and hold out for some petty romance that will never, ever happen.’

  Courtney glowered at me, and I realised in between shallow, hoarse breaths that I may have overdone it a little. But frenzied energy was pumping through my veins and I couldn’t bring myself to care. The flash of hurt in her eyes was swiftly replaced by a heated glare of loathing.

  ‘You’re such a bitch, you know that?’ she said. ‘And I hope you do end up in foster care. Maybe then you’ll be placed with someone capable of beating you into – I don’t know – a half-decent excuse of a human being.’

  ‘Maybe your own parents could take a leaf out of that wish list of yours.’ I glared at her fiercely. ‘Or maybe, you know, they could just take you down to the river to have your soul exorcised.’

  She scowled at me, her face and neck red and her nostrils flared with anger. Then she rose suddenly from her seat and stalked back down the aisle without another word. I slumped back in my seat as she disappeared, ignoring the eyes that had been watching our exchange, and purposefully avoiding Lori’s gaze beside me.

  ‘That was a bit harsh,’ she said.

  ‘Nobody’s ever said you were fucking disabled,’ I snapped.

  She hesitated. ‘No, but still…’ She lowered her voice. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t heard about Courtney’s past weight issues. She very nearly ended up in hospital – you know, with an
orexia. The doctors had to give her this intensive course of protein supplements and meds to make her hungry and stuff, just to get her back to average weight.’

  Angry guilt curled in my stomach. I hadn’t heard about Courtney’s weight issues, and as much as I disliked her, anorexia was not a path I would send anyone down willingly. What if my ignorant words had triggered something dangerous in her head? She might not have even intended the “disability” to be an insult in the first place. That made what I’d said sound even worse somehow. However much I regretted what I’d said though, my ego got the best of me. ‘I’m not saying sorry. You don’t go around insulting people’s family and mental health.’

  Lori shrugged and didn’t say anything more on the matter. Whether she agreed with me or just didn’t want to rile me any further, I wasn’t too sure.

  The bus pulled up outside the gates shortly before eight o’clock. Students were already milling around the grounds, heaving suitcases and bags to dormitories and chatting about their activities of the previous two weeks. I followed Lori in stony silence to our dormitory and we unpacked our belongings without speaking either to each other or the few other girls who were already there.

  Despite my stubbornness, I knew I needed to apologise to Courtney for what I’d said to her on the bus. So I finished unpacking hurriedly and then lurked outside the door to the dormitory, waiting for her to appear from downstairs. I tried to catch her eye as she headed down the hall towards the dorm, and when she continued to ignore me, I stepped in front of her to block her path and forced her to make eye contact with me. My apology jolted out in a less than friendly tone, but I comforted myself with the fact that it was better than it not coming out at all. ‘I’m sorry for what I said.’

  ‘Whatever.’ Courtney pushed past me with her bag and disappeared inside the dorm.

  I felt irritated and a little scared of what the other girls would think when Courtney told them what I’d said, so rather than wait for my reputation to implode, I turned down the staircase, shouldered past a few eleventh-grade girls coming up, and headed outside. The beach had helped alleviate some of my claustrophobia over the holidays, but I was rapidly feeling cooped up again now I was back at St Peter’s.

  I saw a tall, familiar redhead in the distance heading towards the girls’ dormitory complex with her friends, and so I lingered by the open doorway with my hands in my pockets, watching them in silence and waiting. Alex looked up a few metres away and smiled at seeing me, raising her free hand to her shoulder and waving it discreetly.

  I smiled back half-heartedly.

  Her eyes turned puzzled, and she hung back from the dormitories, gesturing Sarah upstairs ahead of her. ‘I’ll be right there,’ she said, then lowered her voice as she glanced at me. ‘Good holidays?’

  ‘The best.’

  Her eyes narrowed in a wary frown. ‘What’s the matter?’

  I shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter. How were your holidays?’

  ‘They were great. We drove down to visit relatives on the Gold Coast.’

  I nodded.

  She looked at me seriously, her eyes narrowing. ‘Do you want to talk about it? I can go dump my bags and we can go somewhere quiet.’

  I debated her offer quietly for a minute before pursing my lips and shaking my head. I didn’t want to admit what I’d said to Courtney, which was sounding more and more malicious every moment I kept thinking about it. ‘It’s not important.’

  She nodded, reaching a hand up and pushing a strand of her hair behind one ear.

  My eyes roamed her face, which was freckled from the holidays, and I noticed her once-long auburn hair was just brushing her shoulders now. ‘You’ve cut your hair.’

  Alex pushed her shoulders back and looked at me uncertainly, my accusatory tone tipping her off. ‘Something’s definitely up. Come on, I’ll drop my bags upstairs and then we’ll go chill somewhere for a bit. The library’s probably going to be quiet on the first day back.’

  I dropped my chin to my chest and nodded reluctantly, following her upstairs to the eleventh-grade dormitory. Once there, she dropped her bag on her desk and started to unpack while I climbed up the ladder of her bunk and perched on the edge of her bare mattress. There were a few other eleventh graders folding their clothes into their dressers, but no one seemed remotely interested that I was in their room. Sarah even smiled to me as she passed from her bunk beside Alex’s.

  I frowned after her as she disappeared towards the bathroom, and then I leant over and rested my chin in my hand. ‘Does Sarah know about us?’

  Alex upturned her face to me, her eyes apologetic. ‘I couldn’t help it,’ she whispered after a brief hesitation. ‘She figured it out on her own, I promise. But I couldn’t lie to her after that. Have you heard me try to lie? I sound like I’m trying to convince someone I was born with two heads.’

  I found myself smiling a little, unexpectedly calm and unworried that Sarah knew. ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.’ Then I shrugged one shoulder. ‘I should give you a few pointers if you’re that bad of a liar. Rule number one, don’t look them directly in the eye – always look a few millimetres to the left of the pupil.’

  ‘You just made that up.’ She smiled and shook her head, turning her gaze to a blue and green shirt draped over her arm. ‘Sarah doesn’t care, by the way. She’s known that I’m gay for a while now.’

  ‘She doesn’t disapprove of me?’

  She raised one eyebrow at my sarcastic tone and turned her head to survey the suddenly empty room. I’d been so absorbed in our exchange I hadn’t noticed the other students leave, and now we were the only ones left in the dormitory. I was startled as suddenly Alex turned back towards me, pulled herself up onto the bottom rung of the ladder, and caught my lips in a swift kiss, holding her spare hand behind my head. She pulled back and grinned at me, her hazel eyes bright but contemptuous. ‘Of course not, you idiot.’

  I rolled my eyes, chewing on my bottom lip as my mouth tingled from her touch. I hoped my cheeks weren’t turning pink. I cleared my throat at the thought and hunched my shoulders over, watching her from above as she folded the last few of her items and stashed them in her chest of drawers.

  ‘You seem to have this image in your head of everybody within this school hating you,’ Alex said, her tone matter-of-fact and a little annoyed. ‘I mean, everyone knows you’ve had a few ups and downs since you arrived, but it’s not like biblical times, you know. We’re not all going to dump you in the middle of the oval and throw rocks at you. And nobody but Sarah knows, by the way. About you and me, I mean. Unless you told anyone.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, we’re still undercover then. Seriously though, people wouldn’t react as badly as you—’

  I sighed tiredly, cutting her off. ‘Can we not do this now?’

  She glanced at me, nodding slowly. ‘Sure.’

  Once she’d finished unpacking, she tossed her empty bag onto the pile in the hallway to be taken to the attic, and then we made our way to the library, which was as empty as Alex had predicted. The librarian glanced at us as we passed the front desk and then returned to her computer screen before we’d even made it past the first aisle. Alex grabbed my hand unashamedly after we were out of eyeshot, and pulled me down the steps behind the junior fiction section. She guided me past the senior shelves to where three bean bags were resting against the wall. We dropped into one each and Alex sighed, nestling into her bean bag and turning her head to face me. ‘So what happened?’

  I shrugged, staring at the ceiling, feeling less guilty than emotionally traumatised now. Perhaps the stress of Mum being in hospital and the pressure to be happy for two weeks at Lori’s was finally driving me into the ground too deep to dig my way back out again. ‘I said something stupid.’

  ‘That sounds like you.’

  I glared at her as she chuckled. ‘I’m serious.’

  She fell silent as her eyes settled on the side of my face. ‘What did you say?’

 
‘I said something to Courtney Goddard about her weight on the bus. I mean, that wasn’t the only thing I said – I said a lot of bitchy stuff to her – but that was probably the worst, considering…you know, what she’s been through.’ I sighed, closing my eyes and shaking my head. ‘She was insulting me and I just lost it. I should’ve just ignored her.’

  ‘Hadn’t you heard of her past weight issues before then?’

  ‘Obviously not, or I wouldn’t have said something like that. I’m not an idiot.’

  ‘You don’t reckon it’s a bit of a touchy subject even for people who haven’t had an eating disorder?’ Alex paused thoughtfully, ignoring the irritated glare I flashed her and frowning towards the highest shelf of books looming in front of us. ‘Well,’ she finally said, glancing at me with raised eyebrows, ‘I must say I never expected you’d feel so remorseful about something like this.’

  ‘It’s flattering how highly you think of me.’

  ‘I meant that as a compliment.’

  ‘So you don’t think it’s serious?’

  Alex frowned. ‘She had fucking anorexia, Juli. You don’t pick on people with histories like that.’

  ‘She started it. She called me and Mum disabled.’

  ‘She said that? Damn, that’s low…even for Courtney.’

  I sighed when she didn’t offer anything else. ‘So what do I do?’

  Alex pressed her lips together and shrugged. ‘There’s nothing you really can do. Did you apologise?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m not the best at body-language, but I’m fairly sure it was unaccepted.’

  ‘Well, our Courtney’s not exactly known for her forgiving nature, is she? Don’t worry, she’ll hold a grudge for a while, but sooner or later she’ll forget about it.’ Alex puckered her lips and frowned. ‘I would keep an eye on her if I were you though. Knowing Courtney, she probably won’t tell anybody else about what you said.’