I arched an eyebrow, looked from his crotch to his face. “If it’s crabs, you’ll have to shave your pubes off. Maybe Fleur will help you.” I waved the petition at him and started walking backward. “Thanks for signing. Laters.”
40
A Little Salvation
The Bronzewings moved off the court and the twins started fooling around with the volleyball. Sarita joined them. Her hair hardly moved as she bounced around. I don’t know what my face was saying to them, but one minute I was on the sidelines and the next minute I felt the ball in my stomach. “Oof!” I doubled over, trapping it in my arms.
“Chuck it back!” Lisa yelled.
“Come on, Riley!” Sarita was grinning and waving her arms.
A voice came from the other side: “Chuck it to me!” That was Richard. What an invitation! I threw the ball at him as hard as I could. He threw it back just as hard, and then, somehow, I was playing volleyball with the twins and Richard and Ethan and Sarita. And the thing was—it was fun. I didn’t mind that my soft hands were getting all banged up, because it felt good to thump the ball like that. It felt good to leap and dive. And when I aced a shot it felt . . . awesome. After twenty minutes of urgent spiking we had drawn a crowd. I played up to them. I was theatrical—weeping when I missed a shot, spinning when I made one. I danced on my toes and embraced the cheers. Neville was my number one fan. He was beaming, rolling his fist, and chanting, “Go Ri-ley, go Ri-ley!”
After a killer finish the good counselor trotted up with cold water and compliments. “Good game.” He clapped his hand on my aching shoulder. “It’s great to see you participating, Riley.”
I felt momentarily shocked. Was that what I’d been doing? Then I saw how I could work my perceived cooperation to my advantage. That’s when I hit him with the petition. Neville looked appalled. “Absolutely not! The salt lake isn’t even accessible.”
“It is!” I insisted. “There’s a fire road. I’ve got . . . I’ve seen the map.”
“Riley. Let me tell you something about structure. Have you heard of structure? Well, structure is important. Do you want to know why it’s important? Because, Riley, without structure, everything falls apart. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Not really.”
“Even if I thought it was a good idea for you to go to the salt lake—which I don’t—we already have your off-site activity planned for tomorrow. We’re going whitewater rafting at the falls.”
“But what about after that?”
“No. I can’t even entertain the thought.”
“Trevor said it was a healing lake,” I put in.
Neville smiled at Trevor’s name. “Never mind what Trevor said.” He looked at me, almost fondly. For a minute I thought he might ruffle my hair. “Riley, am I right in thinking that you want to take Dylan to the salt lake so that he can be cured?”
“No.” I ducked and shrugged. It sounded stupid out loud.
“Come on.” Neville closed the subject with a sanctimonious smile. “How are you doing with the house?”
“We still have to do the second room.”
“You can finish up in the morning before the falls excursion. Unless you mind missing The Word.”
“I don’t mind.”
“No.” Neville looked at me sideways. “I didn’t think you would.”
Dylan wheeled out of his room, plugged in and staring across the plain to the latest round of jumping, sweating, shrieking, high-fiving, fully active campers. Suddenly I felt a burning injustice on his behalf. Fuck structure! It was okay for Neville, flouncing around in his high pants. And Roslyn, doing her mad rockin’ pelvis dance. And Anton, leading yet another troop of Mallees into the scrub. It was okay for them. But all Dylan could do was watch and pretend he didn’t want any part of it. I knew that was what he was doing because that was what I had always done. We were the mutards, and after all we had been through, well, what was so wrong with a little salvation?
I tried to give Neville the petition, but he wouldn’t take it.
“Please,” I harangued him. “It’s important.”
“It’s not going to happen. We’d need permission, there’s no vehicle—”
“Maybe Trevor could take us?”
“Sorry.” Neville started to walk away. I had one card left—blackmail. I blurted, “I’ll tell everyone about you two . . . you and Trevor. . . .”
Neville paused. He held his breath and frowned at the sky. Then he gave me a funny, stilted smile. “I have nothing to hide from God,” he said. He reached over and put his hand on my shoulder. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I muttered, stirring the dirt with my shoe. “Sorry.”
He started to walk away and I thought of something else.
“Can I make a phone call?” I asked him.
“Riley . . .” Neville sighed. “Okay. Just this once.”
Once we were in his office Neville passed me the phone and then he just stood there. I gave him a look. He gave me a look back and kind of rolled his shoulders and took himself out to the hall.
Chloe’s phone went straight to voice mail.
“It’s me,” I said. “Are you screening? Pick up, pick up, pick up. Okay. Obviously I am still in hell. I’m sorry you had to get up early all for nothing. And I’m traumatized about Ben’s party,” I drawled. “I’m puncturing my skin with a blunt compass as we speak.” I waited. She didn’t pick up. “Okay, Chlo, I’ve gotta go. I’ll be back Sunday night for deprogramming. Arghhh, help!” I held the receiver out and shrieked twice before hanging up.
Neville’s drawer was open a crack—I opened it all the way. There were hundreds of Jesus badges inside. Hundreds! I grabbed one and put it in my bag. I noticed a set of keys labeled Fraser. I weighed them in my hand. My finger traced the VW insignia and I could have smacked myself. Why was I trying so hard? I didn’t need a petition. I didn’t need permission. We did have a vehicle—the dune buggy! I spun myself around and around and around in the chair until I felt too sick to be excited.
41
Aces
The prospect of the salt lake expedition enhanced my otherness. I was not like them—the other campers, the colored balls. I was strong. I had purpose. I could make things happen. At dinner I shuffled down the table until I was next to Dylan.
“I have something cool to tell you.”
He held his hand up to calm me down. “Fleur already told me about the petition.”
“You talked to Fleur? When?”
Dylan smiled. “When you were playing volleyball.”
I winced. “You saw that?”
The knowledge that Dylan had seen me being “physically active” sent me into High Cringe. That meant he’d seen all my flesh sliding around and my face going blueberry. He might have even seen me laughing with the twins—over a ball!
“You were getting into it.” Dylan smiled again, but it wasn’t a sly smile. “It was nice to see you having fun. Different.”
“Shaddup.” I waved him away. “I was playing along. I was trying to infiltrate so that I could get”—I uncurled my hand and showed him the key to the dune buggy—“this.”
Dylan looked confused for a moment, then the wrinkles on his brow straightened out. “Does that thing work?” he asked idly, as if he didn’t care about the answer.
I nodded. “So, tomorrow we’re going to the salt lake.”
Dylan said nothing. He poked at his dinner. He dragged his fork through the gravy, making little swirling patterns with it.
“The salt lake,” I reminded him. “In the desert. The one with the healing powers.”
Dylan put his fork down. “I might have a conflict of interest.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think I can believe in the salt lake and still believe in God.”
“Fuck off,” I said. “If you can suspend your disbelief for arks, or people getting turned into pillars of salt, or bloody great kippers falling from the sky, then I don’t see why you can’t do it
for me.”
“Oh, I’m doing it for you now, am I?” Dylan smiled. He drummed his fists on his thighs. I put my hands over his and drummed with him, but I was too excited. I really thumped him. “Shit,” I said. “Can you feel that?”
He laughed. “No.”
I kept drumming a complicated beat.
That night’s movie was a Good Word documentary about cults. It went on for three hours and covered all the good ones: the orange people, David Koresh and Waco, Reverend Jim Jones and The People’s Temple. Dylan and I started laughing during the segment on the Manson family. He was so psycho—“My eyes light fires in your homes!”—and his girls looked so skanky with their lank hair and acne, their miniskirts, love beads, and swastikas. They kept showing the same still of the Spahn Ranch where the Manson family had lived. It was dusty and spooky. Every time the voiceover said the word “Spahn” Dylan would counter with “Spirit.” In the reenactments showing the family’s chill-time, i.e., singing around a campfire, Charles Manson had a guitar, and whenever they showed a close-up of him, Dylan would whisper, “Craig.” We chuckled into our sleeves and suffered terse looks from Anton. The video ended with a big plea for God-ness and that old chestnut about not worshiping false idols—oh, irony!—but I was in too good a mood to dispute it.
That night I lay awake in bed listening to the Boobook owl. I was thinking about the salt lake. I had no idea what it looked like. What I imagined was not unlike the illustrations in Utopia. I pictured a mirage: after miles of sand an oasis would spring up, complete with palm trees and parrots and big-personality flowers. The salt lake would be pale green—opalescent—and the salt crystals would sparkle in the sunlight. The water would feel cool, maybe even carbonated. Once Dylan and I were immersed we wouldn’t be able to feel our bodies. We’d surrender to the lake’s drift, its pulsing currents and tingle-essence. Dylan’s crutches would float away like driftwood. And we’d laugh. We’d sink our heads under the water and hold our breath till one hundred. And when we came back out we’d be different. Dylan would be able to walk and I’d be able to cry.
When I finally fell asleep I had weird, foggy, fumbling dreams. In one, Counselor Neville had wet his pants. He kept saying, “It’s okay, everybody, it’s just water,” and smiling like a child. In another Dylan was dancing and he moved like a . . . well, like a dream.
On the Fifth Day
42
Wonderfully Made
On the morning of day five, cabin three awoke to heavy banging on the door. Fleur slipped out of bed to open it and there stood Roslyn in a pair of spectacularly bedazzled bib overalls. “I’m bringing the breakfast bugle to each of you . . . personally!” She drew the bugle to her lips and smiled around the mouthpiece. I braced for the squall. Fleur gawped at me. I shook my head. Sarita huddled up against the wall with her hands over her ears. Roslyn blew and blew. Finally, she lowered the bugle and smiled like an axe murderer. “The thought for the morning is: I am fearfully and wonderfully made!” Roslyn took a bow. On her way back up she noticed the lip-sticky shroud tacked to the mirror. She reached for it and rasped, “Which one of you found this?”
Sarita was shaking her head and mouthing don’t, but I wanted to see what would happen. I put my hand up. “I did.”
“And you didn’t think to hand it in?” Roslyn’s voice climbed the walls. “You thought instead that it would be fun to soil it with your . . .” Her mouth was pursed in disgust as she searched for the right word. “Whore paint!”
“Ew!” Fleur reeled back.
“I only kissed it,” I said innocently. “I love Jesus.”
Roslyn scrunched the shroud in her fist and stormed out. After the door had stopped quaking, Fleur smiled. “She hates you.” Then: “When are you going to do my hair?”
I could feel Roslyn eyeballing me all through breakfast. I told Dylan about her visit. “Did she bugle at Casa Mutard?” I asked.
He nodded. “She told me she was fearfully and wonderfully made.”
“We all are,” I drawled.
“Oh, sure.” Dylan looked down at his legs and then up at me. “You shouldn’t have taken her shroud. People have to have things to believe in.”
“It was just lipstick.” Dylan looked at me and I felt ashamed. It was a shitty thing to do. Unfeeling. It was like turning someone’s lucky horseshoe upside down, or ripping the last page out of a library book. “All right,” I said. “I’ll go and apologize.”
Roslyn didn’t make it easy for me. She was so wounded. Her brow was ripple-marked—like sand at low tide. Call me the wrinkle-bringer; I knew that expression too well. She could have been Norma, the time she figured out that I’d stolen her credit card. Or Dad, the time he’d found me puking in Mr. Ping’s poinsettias. Or—and I didn’t like remembering this because it wasn’t a good memory—she could have been Mom.
I was eight and Freya, Queen of Grade Three, was coming over to play. I was supposed to tidy my room, but I elected to trash it instead. I had a frenzied half hour of pulling things from drawers, imagining Freya’s look of awe as she stepped over Power Rangers and Dr. Seuss. My grade-three logic said that this would make me memorable. Mom was so angry she almost hit me. She brought her fist to my face and then opened it at the last minute. Poof! It was scary, knowing I could make her that mad. Later, Mom told me it takes forty-three muscles to frown. She jabbed a finger at a deep line in the middle of her forehead. “You see that?” she said. “That one’s got your name on it.” Dad never got angry like Mom did. Norma says Dad has a blue aura. Mine is red. Mom’s would have been red, too.
“I’m sorry I ruined your shroud,” I told Roslyn. “If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you . . .” It was just a line, but Roslyn caught it and hung on.
“As a matter of fact, there is. I want you to think really hard, Riley. Think about what you believe in. Think about what God means to you. And then I want you to express the results of your ruminations at the talent show. It can be in song form, or a dance, or a dramatic oration.”
I gave her a scarecrow’s smile—eyes: unsettled, mouth: half-open, just stopped short of saying something rash. I heard myself say, “Sure, that sounds neat.” Sure? Neat? I staggered back to the Honeyeaters’ table, reached for Dylan’s toast, and decimated it.
He was smiling. “That bad?”
All I could do was shake my head. “Jay-sus. You so owe me.”
43
Past Life
Nothing could get to me that morning. Not Roslyn’s miffed-ness, not Richard and Ethan’s creation theory breakdown, not Fleur alternating between nagging me about her hair and bitching at me for taking the last muffin. Even Anton’s order that I help out in the kitchen didn’t faze me. I rolled up my sleeves and stood next to Olive at the sink. She washed and I dried. I must have been radiating happiness, because now and then she’d steal a look. Then it was as if my happiness was contagious, because Olive would seem to rise inside her apron and a second later she’d burst out with some nutty insight.
“I saw a comet last night. I counted over twenty deep sky objects. A nebula, a star cluster, a quasar—”
“Olive, how did you and Bird get to be . . . you and Bird?” I asked her.
“Mom designs satellites and Dad teaches theology.” Olive brought a plate up for closer inspection. “Bird says it’s the best of both worlds. Lots of hypotheticals in our house.”
I wanted Bird and Olive on my team. Absolutely.
“This is confidential,” I whispered. “Dylan and I are going into the desert today. We’re going to try and find Fraser’s salt lake.”
Olive clapped a rubber-gloved hand over her mouth. She squeaked through her fingers, “That is so exciting.”
“It’s all thanks to Bird. We’re taking the dune buggy.”
Olive took her hand away and spat out suds. She looked around and lowered her voice. “You’ll need supplies. Food and water.”
“Can you sort something out?”
“It would be an honor.”
“Tell Bird to meet us at the garage in an hour—I don’t want to raise suspicion among the Honeyeaters.”
“Don’t tell them—or they’ll all want to go.”
Olive seemed much wiser than her years. Norma would have called her an “old soul.” She who once told me that in a past life I was the town prostitute—they put me in stocks and pelted me with old fruit. Ah, Norma!
44
Cultural Anthropology
Neville came with us to open up Fraser’s house. I watched the big bunch of keys crash against his hip and smiled. I knew why their clank and jangle sounded different. I kept my hand in my pocket on the key to the dune buggy and wondered what kind of music it would make on its own.
Someone had collected the thrift shop boxes in the night, but Fraser’s journals were safe in the garage for Bird. The mysterious cleaner-upper had also opened the curtains and swept the porch, and now Fraser’s house had all the hallmarks of a “cottage charmer.” The second room, his bedroom, was almost presentable. It was dusty and there were still book colonies all over the floor, but it lacked the “local dump” décor of the first room.
“Shouldn’t take you long,” Neville said. He passed me his watch. “Get back by noon so you’ve got enough time to clean up before the falls.”
Dylan spoke up. “I don’t want to go to the falls. There’s no point. I’ll just be sitting there.”
I jumped in. “I don’t want to go, either. I practically drowned when we did the canoeing.”
Neville smiled. “What are you proposing?”
My mind raced. I needed a plausible, admirable lie so that Neville could let us off and still feel like he was doing his job.
“We could spend the time reflecting,” I offered. “We could work on something for the talent show. I know I said it as a joke, but now I’ve made this promise to Roslyn . . .”
Neville looked bemused. He didn’t quite believe me. But he wanted to. Need is not quite belief, but sometimes it’ll do.
Everything Beautiful Page 13
