by Laura Elvery
It comes to him: ‘And they all spat on me, one by one by one, and I just had to sit there while they pretended to be perfect. I couldn’t wipe it, not right then. The principal said he’d do something, but he never did. And Mum didn’t have any power with those people like the other parents, and so she asked me what I wanted to do.’
Ms Morris writes on her paper while his classmates study their scripts or pretend to doze. Lying on her stomach on the carpet, Stephanie watches him almost sadly, Dylan thinks. He hesitates and stumbles through the middle part of his performance, in which a girl at his old school told everyone about how she’d been pregnant, once, but then she’d caught the ferry with her older sister to get an abortion in Melbourne.
Stephanie raises her head. She doesn’t look sad anymore.
‘That’s what she told us,’ Dylan says, flustered by Stephanie’s bright eyes.
He doesn’t like to think about his thirst for water, but there it is, a sticky ticking in the back of his throat.
‘I thought it was a low act, what that girl did,’ Dylan projects into the silence of the room, ‘but she treated it as though it was some sort of victory.’
He recalls his final typed lines and delivers them smoothly. ‘And those two things – what happened to that girl with the baby, and what she did about it, and what happened to me, and what I did about it – showed me that there’s no justice. Not really. Things are out to get you.’ He has followed his own stage directions and approached the window. He puts his head in his hands. Freezes.
The applause from the class is flat. As he walks past Ms Morris’s desk, Stephanie jumps up and strides towards the door. One of her friends follows her outside.
Ms Morris stands and watches them go. ‘Dylan, stop. Was that true?’ she asks.
‘Parts of it.’
Ms Morris sets her jaw. She looks like she’s trying to smile through something. ‘Honestly, though, Dylan. I—’
‘Parts were based on my real life. But I was a character. I made up the character.’ He knows teachers prefer fiction over non-fiction. Cut too close to real experiences and guidance officers must be summoned. Revelations can only come in flickers.
She waves him away.
*
The next day, Ms Morris is on playground duty, and Dylan watches her stroll the ridge above the school oval with her hands behind her back. Ms Morris is tall, with a stoop and close-cropped blonde hair. He locates a plastic straw on the ground a few metres away, and makes a show of lifting it from the dirt and dropping it in the bin.
‘Aren’t kids the worst?’
Ms Morris smiles. ‘Sometimes.’
‘I mean, they can’t even pick up after themselves.’
She passes him, folding her arms across her chest. ‘You’re a regular good Samaritan, Dylan.’
‘Did you like my play, miss?’
Ms Morris makes a hmmm noise and makes to keep walking.
‘So you hated it.’
Ms Morris tilts her head, like: I didn’t say that. The first bell rings. ‘Back to class, Dylan.’ She takes off her hat and turns to go.
He calls after her. ‘So you hated it?’
They have an audience now. Four or five students from his Drama class gather, almost in earshot, lazily fingering their phones.
‘I can’t believe you hated it. Miss?’
She stops walking. ‘I think you knew that someone in our class had struggled with that very issue, and yet you chose to perform a monologue about it anyway. That’s what I think.’
‘About abortion?’
She wipes the word away with her hand. ‘That’s what I think. But, anyway. Come on, there’s the bell.’
‘Well, Stephanie should have thought about that before she fucked—’
Ms Morris wheels around and her words rush out. ‘What kind of a shithead are you?’
Dylan clasps his hands above his head. He lets out a laugh and looks over to his classmates, who glance up from their phones. ‘She just called me a shithead.’
His teacher’s face reddens. ‘Dylan,’ she says in a low voice. ‘No. I said, “What kind of a student are you?”’
‘Oh, brilliant, now you’re going to lie about it?’
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘You think I’m a shithead.’ He grins. His lips are dry against his gums.
Ms Morris is shaking her head, panic spinning through her eyes. ‘Listen.’
Dylan saunters ahead of her. ‘I know what I heard.’
Josh, short and affable and hopeless at Drama, takes a step closer. He grins too. ‘Did you, miss?’
Their teacher’s best smile. ‘He misheard. Absolutely not.’
Josh doesn’t falter. ‘Sure thing, miss. He really is a shithead, though.’
It’s not even a word Dylan’s classmates use. But the rumour spreads anyway, and they hassle Ms Morris. Admit it, they urge. It’s funny because it’s true. Just say it. But she won’t budge. Packing away costumes two days later, Dylan hears Ms Morris telling her favourite student, Jessica, that he has a strange imagination. Within a week, his peers have settled on a position somewhere between not believing him, and the vague idea that Ms Morris did say it, but she shouldn’t get in trouble – she’s only telling it like it is.
*
At the start of Biology, period one, the note on the whiteboard says: Regulation of gene expression.
Dylan takes out his textbook. ‘Sir, why can’t we study something relevant?’
Mr Shah pauses with the whiteboard marker poised at the start of a new note. ‘Care to explain what you mean, Dylan?’
‘Something that makes sense to our lives,’ Dylan says. ‘Like mining or water or minerals.’
Mr Shah taps the board. ‘We’re studying genetics. What you’re talking about sounds more like the purview of Chemistry.’
‘Why can’t you just give me a simple answer?’
Among the class there are raised eyebrows.
‘Excuse me?’ Mr Shah’s tone darkens. ‘Because that’s not what this term is about. You’re always welcome to study whatever you want in your own time.’
‘Yeah, okay, sir. Blah blah blah.’
‘Dylan, are you trying to be difficult today?’
He fishes through his pencil case. His hands are shaking. ‘Whatever, sir,’ he says, willing himself not to cry like he did after those kids spat on him at church. ‘If being difficult means wanting to be informed and not wanting to die from whatever shit is in that river. If it’s illegal to ask questions about fucking science.’
The class is energised – not on their teacher’s side exactly, but tickled by this spectacle. Mr Shah caps and uncaps his whiteboard marker. He raises his eyebrows, speaks calmly. ‘Obviously you can’t talk like that in here. Time to go. I’ll phone Mrs Austin and tell her you’re coming.’
Dylan shoves his books and pencil case into his backpack, heads for the classroom door. The clock above the whiteboard shows that it’s barely ten minutes into the school day. ‘Maybe you’re all complicit, anyway. Maybe Fluminis is paying for all of this.’ He sweeps his hand around the classroom, and everyone follows his gesturing to the metal storage cupboard with the kicked-in doors and the rusted taps for Bunsen burner gas. To the decapitated skeleton model up the back. To the rat foetuses in glass jars up high on shelves so the juniors can’t reach them.
Jessica says, ‘What are you talking about?’
Mr Shah raises a hand. ‘Jessica. Don’t.’
‘Forget it.’ Dylan palms the door frame. ‘Stay ignorant, losers.’
He’s at the front gate of the school, turning left, when he sees a familiar car. For a moment he thinks Mrs Austin has already rung his mum, who’s rung her brother to come intervene – all in that short space of time. Dylan is slipping through other elements so easily, it could be possible.
> He raps his knuckles on the car roof. ‘Uncle Jon. Did Mum call you?’
‘Whoa. Hey.’ His uncle is sitting with one leg inside the car, and the other planted on the grass beside the footpath. ‘Your mum? No.’
‘What are you doing here?’
Jon glances past Dylan, towards the school buildings. He raises the mobile phone in his hand. ‘Ah, just pulled over to use this. I didn’t realise I was here at—’
‘Can you give me a lift?’
‘Why’ve you got your bag?’ His uncle narrows his eyes. ‘You in trouble?’
‘Yep.’
‘Your mum will find out, won’t she?’
‘Probably. It’s fine. You can tell her.’
Jon smiles. He nods towards the empty passenger seat. Dylan jams his bag at his feet, shuts the door, wanting to drive away fast. He waits. He watches Jon unlock his passcode and check his phone again. Nothing. His uncle looks back at the school, then starts the car and merges onto the road.
‘Had driving lessons yet?’ Jon asks.
Dylan shakes his head. ‘Too expensive.’
Jon knocks his fist into Dylan’s leg. ‘Ah, well, you’d better con me into some free ones, then?’
‘Thanks. Yeah.’
‘Better yet – or as well as, if you want – I’ll line up some extra shifts for you at the cafe. Steph’s quit. You’ll be by yourself after school till I find someone else.’
Dylan pictures Stephanie’s heart-shaped face, her imperfect complexion, strangely alluring. ‘Why? Why’d she quit?’
Jon reaches between his legs. He pulls on the lever and his seat jerks forward. ‘Didn’t say.’
*
Minerals start turning up in Dylan’s trouser cuffs, pooling in the fabric folds by his ankles. He crouches by the deep fryer at Barcombe Cafe, feeling breathless. With his thumb he pulls the hem out further and runs the tip of his finger through them. Sandy, but sharper and colder. The sound alone shoots pain through his teeth. It isn’t a uniform mass – he extracts a misshapen nugget, then inspects his hand. Skin-to-skin contact isn’t as dangerous as ingesting through water, but his mind throbs with the promise of scrubbing, later. Dylan cups the bottom of the trouser cuff and crunches the particles together in his palm.
Stephanie announces her arrival by humming. She is here to drop off her key. She stands above Dylan with her arms folded, the key pressed against her freckled arm.
‘Can you see this?’ Dylan points.
She’s been ignoring him since Drama class. Her silence has been like background noise, as humdrum as traffic. Now it’s a roar.
‘There. In the cuff.’
Stephanie looks pissed. She shakes her head and plucks bunches of serviettes out of a metal canister. ‘What a shame I won’t get to work here with you anymore.’ She’s making a mess.
‘I’m serious. Please.’
With a huff, Stephanie drops down. She forks three fingers onto the kitchen’s sticky floor to steady herself. She peers inside. A few seconds. ‘Is this a joke?’
‘They’re minerals. Bits of metal, shavings of it.’
‘Bits of metal?’
‘From the river. It’s filled with poison.’ A chink appears in his voice. What felt inevitable minutes ago now feels monstrous. ‘Look!’
Stephanie scrunches up her face, rises and glares at him. She leaves the serviettes on the counter, next to her key. ‘You’re so full of shit.’
On his walk home, the sky looks about to break apart before a storm, the clouds quickened with seams of lightning. The rain begins three or four streets from his house. In the cuffs by his ankles, two handfuls of weight shift up and down as he begins to run.
There.
By the fence.
Underneath the letterbox.
Fine silvery shavings and nuggets are clustered in tiny piles on the concrete at the end of his driveway. They look like they’ve been pawed at by an animal. Dylan tries to steady his breathing. They must have washed up here: Barcombe is under attack from a river swimming with toxins. He thinks of his mum, coiled on the sheets in their house, stepping out of bed, touching her forehead, walking to the sink for a mouthful of water in a tall clear glass.
He opens the front door, giddy with a sensation like dread, but with something else, too. Pleasure: the anticipation of a shower. In the bathroom, he carefully tips the silver grounds from his trouser hems into the cubicle. He sheds his clothes. He squirts Toxin Corps into his palm and rubs. Water sluices down his arms and chest. He watches the drain swallowing the biscuit-brown liquid.
*
The next morning, before his mum wakes, Dylan checks the letterbox. No minerals, but inside is a typed letter folded into a white rectangle:
FOUND PRECIOUS METALS?
WE PAY GOOD MONEY FOR METALS!
IN YOUR HOUSE? ON YOUR PERSON?
YOU FOUND THEM? WE WANT THEM!
CALL: 0491 570 158
Dylan takes the cordless phone from the kitchen and sits on the balcony, in the spot where his mum goes to unwind after work by painting ceramic nativity scenes and miniature, bewildered possums that she buys at the markets.
He grips the paper between finger and thumb. He dials the number.
‘Hello?’
‘I got your letter,’ Dylan says. ‘I know this is a joke. I just want to know who this is so I can avoid you at school.’
There is muffled laughter. ‘Um,’ a boy says.
It isn’t Stephanie, then, Dylan thinks, feeling light-headed.
‘It’s Bob. Bob Smith.’
In the background Dylan hears several voices punching through, making demands, tossing questions around. The wind rushes around trees and bodies, where his tormentor with the phone stands, probably at the wharf past the Federal Hotel.
His mum can’t know about this, not after everything that’s happened. Before the spitting at his old school, Dylan was so doomed, so lonely. Now he’s almost glad to have no one but his mother and his uncle. He has his job at the cafe, and the plush void of the cinema once a fortnight when Jon takes him. That’s all and that’s enough. The prospect of freedom – no more school next year – is nothing but a void.
‘Well,’ Dylan says. ‘You’re obviously making that up. So, fuck you. And leave me alone.’
‘Hey, whoa, mate,’ the boy says. ‘I’ll pay. That’s what the letter said, didn’t it?’
Dylan whispers it: ‘I don’t deserve this.’
‘Sure you do. You earnt it fair and square. Steph told me.’
That voice. The tautness. The odd high pitch. Stephanie’s boyfriend, Briggsy.
‘What luck,’ Briggsy continues. ‘What a find!’
‘Stephanie shouldn’t have told anyone.’ Dylan eyes an empty water bottle on the table. ‘She didn’t—’
‘You’ve got a shift later at the cafe, don’t you?’
He refuses to speak. Refuses to think of the time Briggsy has invested in the letter and the payoff he’ll be expecting. Someone in the background offers a piece of information that Briggsy snatches up.
‘Six? After you’ve finished, come on down to the wharf to get your sweet, sweet cash.’
‘I’m not doing that.’
But Briggsy’s voice has gone.
*
Later, after Briggsy and Josh and Vossy have ordered two boxes of chips from Dylan and counted their dozens of coins across the counter, they watch him lock the front door and then they herd him, almost politely, past the Federal, towards the wharf, as he knew they would. Briggsy pops the boys’ rubbish into the bin. He licks the tips of his fingers.
At six o’clock the river is the colour of granite. The setting sun makes corrugations on its surface.
Josh asks, ‘Here?’
The river, Dylan thinks. He turns his back to them and walks to one side
of the wharf. It’s narrow, with wooden boards brown-dotted with bird shit and the dirty pretty scales of fish.
Briggsy faces him. He rests his elbow on a post and lets his wet fingers droop, to dry. ‘It just really isn’t any of your business what Steph may or may not have done,’ he says.
‘She told me.’
Vossy says, ‘I doubt it—’
Briggsy shakes his head. ‘She did not.’
And Briggsy is right. The information about the abortion came when Dylan eavesdropped on his mum, who clutched the cordless phone and talked with Uncle Jon on the balcony while the paint dried on a nativity scene. Lumpy donkey. Startled baby. Mary’s head bowed in prayer.
Dylan feels the thirst ticking in his mouth again. He looks beyond the boys to the entrance of the Federal, where a procession of men in fluorescent vests and hard hats tilts towards the front door. He will not call out. When those kids spat on him during Mass, during the hymn, he could have raised his voice higher than the song, but he didn’t. He wouldn’t admit what was happening to him.
‘Even your uncle thinks you’re weird,’ Briggsy says. ‘He feels sorry for you.’
Last night: more metal shavings grown like webbing from his heels as he stepped out of the shower. A pile coned neatly in front of the keyboard in his room. More, still, this morning underneath his cereal bowl.
‘Speaking of your uncle,’ Josh offers.
Dylan says weakly, ‘I brought the letter.’
Briggsy talks over him. ‘Steph’s my girlfriend still, no matter what your uncle did.’
Jon Perrett, born in Launceston, cafe owner, smelling of blackboard chalk and breakfast juice, dressed in running gear, eyes the colour of hops.
He shouldn’t, but he does. He asks the question. ‘What did my uncle do?’
Briggsy lowers his voice. ‘What the fuck do you think? He’s almost twice her age, for God’s sake. She came to me when she found out she was pregnant, even though we were on a break. She came to me.’
Dylan can’t see in front of him, can’t see the river beyond the wharf, beyond his feet. He holds the letter, hardly feeling it in his hands, or the wind on his face. He can picture the pillowy bundles of serviettes in Stephanie’s hands, and her face when she dropped the key on the counter.
