Take Three Girls

by Cath Crowley

  ‘It could be a fire. It could just be a drill.’

  ‘I heard it’s a BIB,’ a Year 7 says in a stage whisper.

  ‘Boy in bed.’ Jinx’s eyes glaze over for a second. ‘Lucky dog.’

  I’m trying to imagine which of the boarders would be mad enough to try to smuggle in some salami. It never crossed my mind to try to get Stu in, even though it was possible – the thought of him clapping eyes on all the trappings of the boarding house was way too squeamy. At least I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

  When we reach the library we’re sorted into years and houses. Iris and Kate are the last to come in. Indra Prahna, blue house captain, steps in as Old Joy’s proxy.

  ‘It’s been reported that there is a male on the grounds. Ms Reichl’s checking the rooms. Anyone got anything they want to confess?’

  ‘I wish!’ Someone groans and we laugh.

  Iris and Kate look strange. Their body language is out of whack. They’re standing next to each other, but Kate’s body is aimed at the door, while Iris has the same look on her face that our dog Bananafish used to get when we’d caught him with the empty Nuttelex container. Kate catches my eye. She holds her palm out and pokes her finger in it, in Iris’s direction. Whatever that means. I shrug, but then Iris turns to say something and Kate turns her hands to fists.

  Old Joy takes a while. We’re all wondering if she’s caught the ‘male’.

  ‘What happens next?’ I ask Jinx. ‘Does she bring him in here so we can all have a turn?’

  Jinx looks at me in shock. ‘Clem!’

  ‘I’m joking.’

  She grins.

  We sit, we wait. Indra patrols, in her element. Kate and Iris continue their weird non-stand-off. I wonder if they’ve had a fight. I feel something tugging at my pants leg and look down to see a hand slide me a slip of paper. The passer of the note – a Year 8 who looks like she’d rather be anything but – gives me a covert smile to go with it.

  I open the note surreptitiously.

  Something BIG. Come to my room tomorrow, early as poss. Kate.

  What’s big? Does this mean the BIB was Oliver? That would explain Iris’s grim face. But if it had been Oliver, surely Kate would have been smiling, or at least looking flushed and tousled. I stare at Kate and she gives me meaningful undecipherable looks.

  We stay rounded up for about ten minutes. When Old Joy comes back there’s this communal effort not to laugh – I can feel it practically holding the room together. She has her sleep mask holding her hair up, and two bits of tape at her temples – I think it might be some kind of old-fashioned wrinkle corrective. Her boobs, usually formidable, are unrestrained, pointing due south.

  She says, ‘You can go back to your rooms.’

  Someone squeaks, ‘Any joy, Joy?’ And we spill into laughter. Old Joy closes her eyes, mustering strength, and then flat out hollers. ‘GO!’

  Something BIG! What is it? One am comes and goes. I push the curtain aside and stare into the black night. There’s a moon out, but it’s nowhere near full – it looks like something someone started drawing and forgot to fill in. I imagine boys bumped from boarders’ beds, roaming around the grounds, horny and unsupervised. I wonder if any of us will sleep tonight.

  Saturday 3 September

  Iris is dressed by seven, ready for our ‘special’ breakfast before the exam. I still can’t believe it’s her. I’m still hoping for an explanation and wanting to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘I’m a bit too nervous to eat,’ I tell her. ‘Would you mind if I skipped?’

  She grabs my shoulder, squeezes it, and I’m struck again by her kindness. She wishes me luck, smiles, and then leaves to get a coffee. The touch of my shoulder, the wishes of luck, her last-minute smile – they all seem genuine.

  Clem arrives not long after Iris has gone. Ideally I’d break the news gently, but there’s no time. ‘I think Iris has something to do with PSST,’ I tell her. ‘I saw her emails last night.’

  I explain, but she doesn’t believe it. ‘She wouldn’t do that. There’s no way.’

  ‘I’m hoping not either, but I need her password to find out for sure. I really hate to rush you, but time is running out. Do you know what she might choose as a password? I want to prove she didn’t do it, Clem.’

  She thinks for a moment. Looks around the room. ‘I don’t know what it is, but I’m pretty sure I know where she’d keep it.’

  She walks over to Iris’s closet and looks around in the bottom, sifting through shoes, until she pulls out a black bound notebook. She turns to the back page where the passwords are listed and shows it to me. ‘It’s not her,’ she says.

  I want to believe it. I want to believe that if Clem knows Iris well enough to guess where she hides things, she knows what Iris would and wouldn’t do.

  I type in the password and get into her emails. And that’s when we see the whole sordid exchange between Iris and Theo Ledwidge. Iris has been feeding him information all year.

  ‘She hates me that much,’ Clem says quietly.

  While we’re skimming, an email comes in from Theo. I open it and we read. Then there’s a terrible silence in which I try to reconcile the kind Iris who stays up late to help me study, with the Iris who would plan this.

  ‘Can you do something?’ Clem asks.

  I nod and read through the email again, so I know as much as possible about what they’re intending. They’re putting PSST on the big screen at the formal tonight: Top Ten PSST Posts on display for everyone to see.

  ‘Can you shut it down before then?’ Clem asks, already texting Ady to let her know what’s going on. The two of them are what-the-fucking? to each other via text, while I’m starting to smile.

  ‘I can’t shut it down, but if I can get access to the computer I can mess with it.’ I start grabbing my things. ‘I’ll do it after the exam and before the formal. I’ve got it sorted,’ I say. ‘But first – the future.’

  I sit at the front of the exam room, listening to the teacher give instructions before she hands out the papers. Iris is three rows in front of me. I stare at the back of her head, at those sloping shoulders. I imagine her sending secrets to Theo late at night.

  She turns around and waves. Small face, small life.

  Good luck, she mouths.

  Good luck, I mouth back, but I mean good luck surviving the shit storm.

  The teacher puts my paper on my desk. I stare at the cover, at the place where my name will be, at the dots I will colour in, each one corresponding to an answer. I do not want to be here. I want to be somewhere else.

  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.

  I stare at the dots.

  Dot, dot, dot.

  Fuck it.

  I took the one I wanted to take.

  *

  Choices are all we have. It doesn’t matter if things don’t work out. It’s that we make them for the right reasons – to follow what we think is the best road. I know that when I tell Mum and Dad what I decided, they will tell me that the path of life changes. That the world forks off in inexplicable and unimaginable directions, and you take what seems the right path at the time. It might end, but then there’s another one, and another one, and if you’re lucky, at the end, you’ll look down at the roads you took and they will make the most beautiful, intricate, crazy pattern.

  More beautiful, I think, than a straight line.

  Whatever happens later, I will never regret this moment. Running hard through the grounds, fumbling with my phone to call Oliver, shouting into the phone that he shouldn’t go on without me. Grabbing my cello, hailing a taxi and getting in the back, breathless, leaving the biggest tip I’ve ever left because I can’t wait for the change, cutting a path through the cars, horns sounding, Oliver on the other side, waving at me, the two of us standing in the wings, tuning, breathing – breathe, breathe, breathe.

  Play.

  Saturday 3 September

  I’m sitting on Iris’s bed holding her journal i
n my hand thinking, ahem, I’ve been here before. History always repeats. You would think Iris would learn to not write down her deepest secrets for other people to find them. You would think, but you would be wrong. I knew her passwords would be on the back page – Iris has always kept her passwords on the back page – but as to what else the journal contains, as much as I’m dying to know, a bigger part of me is resistant. Rhapsodies about Theo. Rants about me. I open it again, just for a flash and a piece of paper falls out. It’s a letter and it’s addressed to me. So I guess I have to read it.

  Dear Clem,

  I know what you think of me. I’ve known it for ages. I knew even before we came here, when you were so eager to share a room with anyone but me. You’ve been screaming for freedom for a long time. It hurts that you don’t like me, that you don’t want to be around me. I lean towards you and you lean away. It’s always been like this. I’m not me without you, but you don’t give a flying fuck.

  First of all, know this: I only told Mum and Dad about Stu because I was worried about you. You changed when you met him and I don’t trust that. I don’t get why you would willingly give up the one thing you’re good at. I don’t even get how you could sleep with a guy you’d only known for a minute, who’s so obviously not boyfriend material (even I can see that) . . . I’ll admit there was a bit of jealousy there. Why are things so easy for you? You going away to Kate’s was like the last straw. Did you have to take her away from me? My only friend here, if she ever truly was. Did you laugh about me together? I bet you told her all my fails. Well, sister, you don’t know the half of them.

  You know what I do to make myself feel good? I got the idea in Wellness. Dr Malik was talking about depression, ways to lift yourself out of the swamp. He said we should think about people who are having a worse time than we are. Or maybe he said we should think about being grateful for what we have? But it made me think of that word schadenfreude – taking pleasure in other’s misfortunes. You were right when you said that I was only happy when I was looking at someone else’s sads, and it made me even happier to know that I could share it. Who doesn’t want to feel better about themselves? Who doesn’t want to feel like those perfect people suffer too? It’s the rule that fuels a hundred gossip rags – and okay, we don’t have any celebrities at St Hilda’s, so we just have to make do with our own social pecking order. But I think you should know that the first time I shared something on PSST it was an accident. I was with Theo, studying. I was telling him about how some Year 8s had ordered sex toys online and had them sent to Old Joy. Do you remember the week after there was that thing on PSST about Astrid Martin and her peppermint lube? That was the start. I’d see Theo every week and tell him things – sometimes they were true and sometimes I made them up – and I guess it hit the same part of my brain where chocolate does. Theo loved my ‘work’. He flattered me and I was ripe for it. I bet even the most terrible evil tyrants start small. I bet things just snowball and before they know it the thing they’ve made is alive and hungry and they have to keep feeding it. Malik said that too – energy flows where focus goes.

  So there you have it. A confession. I’m not proud of myself. I know that Theo isn’t actually into me (why would he be? why would anyone be?). He’s using me – maybe in a way I do know some of what you’re feeling with regards to Stu. But beyond all that, I know that I’ve hurt people – friends, strangers, family (sorrysorrysorry). This thing Theo wants for Saturday – the big reveal, PSST’s Top Ten – I can’t believe I’ve contributed to it. I don’t know who I am anymore. What I wish, what I wishwishwish, is that I could get a time machine and take us back to age eleven, to sporty Clem and brainy Iris, and our old bedroom with the two alcoves Dad made us – mine mint green, yours sky blue – and that we could be in our bunks laughing like we used to, sharing like we used to.

  And now it’s five and time for study hall, and any second Kate’ll be back. So I’m signing off with love and shame, and I’ll never show you this.

  Iris

  Saturday 3 September

  We’re at our tech run-through for the formal, and everything’s looking good. I’ve never had to fake being pleasant to this extent before. I could happily kill Iris Banks and Theo Ledwidge with my bare hands right now, but my job is to keep my eyes open and my mouth shut. So I fake it with the smiles and make like it’s any other day. Not the day that PSST is about to come undone.

  My backing film has a tasty trance-like quality – clouds scudding across skies, flowers popping into bloom, abstract swirls doing their psychedelic things. Theo has actually been pleasant and helpful, talking to our Drama teacher Ms McKeen about the lighting program. Iris is hanging around like his little shadow. I suggest that we put the admin passwords for both computers on the table where they’re set up in case we need to do any adjusting to the film or the lighting tonight. Theo says no need, but he’ll be around to help. Ha! I made sure I saw him entering the password. So long as he doesn’t pull a late change, I can give Kate what she needs. We’re running the film and the ‘Moments’ powerpoint on the Basildon computer – it’s their art department graphics laptop, the fastest hard drive for the job.

  We double-check, plug in and tape down the leads into power points and into the data projector and lighting board, and we’re set.

  Tables are having their cloths laid and chairs, glassware and crockery are all being unpacked and unstacked.

  I say goodbye to Iris and Theo, nice as pie, feeling a surge of excitement that they have no idea they’ve been found out.

  And I’m meeting Max here in just four hours.

  Saturday 3 September, later

  Last year the formal was the big thing. Our first proper formal. All we talked about. Who was wearing what. Who was partnering up. Who was going solo. Both okay options because we were a group, a happy unit at the centre of the universe. Me and m’ gals. The best pre-s, the best afterparty. Hair. Make-up. The most enviable selfies. The most ridiculous rumours on PSST about the group sex that, of course, didn’t happen. We did play Twister while pissed, and Bec sprained her little finger.

  This year I’m waiting on the wide marble doorstep of Tash’s house, alone. Max needs to get some study done, so no pre-s for her.

  Last year I was in purpose-bought Scanlan Theodore. This year I’m in altered vintage.

  If it hadn’t been for the kind-but-fake rallying that followed the latest big PSST outing, I could have huffily ignored this part of the night.

  Tash’s mum, Sherry, answers the door, head immediately on the side and sympathetic smile applied. ‘Your poor, poor mother. How is she?’

  ‘She seems okay, thanks Sherry.’

  ‘Let’s hope things pick up.’

  Stepping inside I see a lot of my friends’ parents have been invited for drinks, too.

  ‘I didn’t ask your mother, Ady. I thought she had enough on her plate.’ That’s true, and she does not need a giant helping of insincere sympathy dumped next to it. But still, it seems rude not to have asked her.

  I look at Sherry, remembering my mother’s report to my father after she first picked me up from this very house, soon after Tash’s family moved here in Year 7. Your daughter’s friend Tash lives in the most comically vulgar faux-Georgian house in Toorak, and that’s saying something.

  And my father, always vague, asked: Which ones are they again?

  The social climber and the nose droner with hair implants. And they both laughed.

  They have a way of being mean together that seems bonding. When I told them not to be so judgemental, my mother said, Sorry, darling, very naughty, you’re right. And they both laughed again.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘She does have rather a lot on her plate.’

  Inside, most people have already arrived. Everything looks the way it always does, but doesn’t feel like my world anymore. My head and heart are with Kate, who is right this minute trying to work out the best way to smackdown PSST.

  The boys are drinking beer and the girls prosec
co and Aperol with a mint leaf in each glass, which will be the only thing that some of them eat tonight. The boys are in suits, and the girls are zippered and dieted and taped into some pricey and very bare evening wear, and I’m a bit one of these things definitely doesn’t belong, but happily so.

  I’m wearing an evening jumpsuit from Gram – a wild geometric pattern – that she bought at Biba in London in the late 1960s. It’s sleeveless with a diamond shape cut out at the back and the front, and has a high, bead-encrusted collar. I’ve got a big, messy-teased down do, Jean Shrimpton smoky eyes and nude lips.

  ‘What are you wearing, babe?’ Tash’s routine am I safe to ridicule it? question.

  ‘Vintage Pucci.’ Hard burn.

  Tash is forced to admire it. ‘Amazing.’

  ‘I love it,’ says Bec.

  I sip my (colour-coordinated – there’s orange in the jumpsuit pattern) drink and wander into a group talking about the PSST post. Everyone becomes awkwardly quiet.

  ‘Don’t stop because I’m here. It’s not just me they hate – they disparage girls every single week. I mean, who are these misogynists? Is this the actual Stone Age?’ It’s quite a relief to be coming on super feminist, thanks to listening to Clare and my mother, but still, I one hundred percent believe it.

  Nick Fergusson says, ‘Oh, come on, Ady, where’s your sense of humour? My father says we’re letting political correctness rule us.’

  ‘Political correctness is not a pejorative,’ I counter. (Clare again.) ‘It’s just people being switched on enough not to further vilify groups that are already under attack.’

  ‘What? Like girls? You all look okay to me.’ It’s delivered like a joke-sleazy compliment. And there’s a general sense that the boys are agreeing with him.

  ‘Don’t be a douche, Nick,’ Rupert says. ‘You only have to look at domestic violence stats to know there’s a massive gender problem, and things like PSST contribute to it.’