Dylan’s eyes flicked up. He gave me his casual drug dealer nod, but the spark wasn’t behind it, and that made me worry. I told myself that things were going to be okay. Soon—maybe even after lunch—we would be alone again. Free to roll our eyes and make our jokes and work some more on our trust games. I held my hand out to my side, discreet as I could be. As he passed our pinkies touched and that second confirmed everything. That second would sustain me throughout Neville’s lecture. Once that was done we could get back to normal. That’s what I was thinking: grade-three logic.
Neville looked like he’d just discovered Roslyn running a numbers racket out of the counselors’ annex. He addressed Dad and Norma. “If it’s all right with you I’d like to talk to Riley alone.”
“Oh, well—” Dad started to protest, but Norma elbowed him. “That’s fine, Neville.”
It wasn’t fine with me. I actually felt a little scared. You hear stories about mild-mannered types who reach their stress capacity and go postal. Psychos always have names like Neville, and mother issues, and weird weapons collections. What if he stabbed me with his Jesus badges?
Neville held the door open for me. I slunk in and sat in the squeaky chair and he sat opposite me in his authoritarian throne. He had one of those Newton’s Cradles—the silver balls strung up that go clackety-clack- infinity. I lifted one. I watched the balls go back and forth. I could have watched them forever. I guess that’s the point.
“Riley Rose.” Call me The Plague. A small smile twitched on Neville’s lips. He spoke mystically—someone had put Yoda in his tea. “Things run smoothly for so long that you can’t even imagine it any other way—and then one act makes everything stop.” Neville put his finger in between the silver balls and killed the flow. The absence of noise made my palms sweat. I wiped them on Rose’s dress, which was a shambles.
“Let’s talk facts. Fraser’s car—I understand you left it in the desert?”
I nodded silently. “It’s missing a wheel? Last time I looked it didn’t even have wheels.”
I stared straight ahead. I wasn’t about to tell on Bird. Neville studied my face as if searching for cracks. “Must have been the car fairy. Do you know the location of the car?”
“Near the salt lake.”
“Near the salt lake.” Neville nodded. “Facts. There was a bottle of champagne in the counselors’ fridge that’s gone walkabout. Do you know anything about that?”
Ditto Olive. “I took it.”
“You managed to coerce Dylan into ‘escaping’?”
“Yes.” I didn’t know what Dylan had told him, but if taking the blame meant Bird and Olive and Dylan stayed shiny happy in Neville’s head, then that’s what I would do.
Neville straightened random items on his desk. He frowned and spoke without looking at me. “I was like you once: sullen, antisocial . . . It might surprise you to know that I used to be an atheist.”
That did surprise me, but I didn’t say so. Neville clasped his hands together and looked up. Both eyes—even the glass one—seemed to be on me, unswerving, unnerving.
“When I was at university I had no faith. I considered myself to be free. Because if you are under someone else’s authority, then you are not free—and what is God if not authority? But then I worked out: we need rules. From the time we are children we need and respond to rules. We need to be governed. That’s what makes us civilized.”
“Maybe we’re not meant to be civilized,” I offered. “Cavemen weren’t.”
“How many cavemen do you know?”
“I can think of a few.”
“Mmm.” Neville paused. “Think of it like this: the world is a picture and God is the frame. God is the structure. He’s given us all this . . . and we have to . . . work together to fulfill His design. Riley, I can’t make you believe what I believe, but I know you’d be happier with a little faith.”
“I have faith.” I spoke without thinking, adding, “In some things.” In Dylan. I had faith in Dylan. And anyway, frames and structures were different things.
“Do you think you’re the same girl who sat here six days ago?”
I folded my arms and said with a small smile, “Pretty much.”
But my mind stormed. Nooo! I had changed. But it wasn’t anything to do with God. It would have happened even if I hadn’t come here. I went into a parallel universe—the one where Dylan and I stayed in the desert, searching for grub, dipping in the soaks, reenacting Utopia at sundown, kissing and tumbling indefinitely.
“End of faith discussion.” Neville flexed and gave his desk a little love pat. “What should I do—what course of action would be appropriate?”
I said in a small voice, “Send me home?”
“Yes, but what would you have learned?” Neville’s mouth turned up. I looked at his chest and clocked his badge: Jesus is coming . . . look busy. I wanted to scowl but I couldn’t. It was impossible to hate Neville.
“Dylan’s going home,” Neville said. “His mother is taking him home. He doesn’t have a choice. You, however, have a choice.”
Dylan’s going home? The words spun around my head like little evil planets.
“Think about it,” Neville said.
I walked out and Dad and Norma went in. I waited for them on the picnic bench. I sat in the bright sunlight swinging my feet and watching the shadows dance across the dust. I felt hazy, like I was coming down. I had been expecting Neville to lose it. I think I wanted him to be horrible and irrational to me so I could be horrible and irrational back. Instead he’d given me options. I could be at home without Dylan, or here without Dylan. At least here I had unfinished business. His mom’s Tarago was still in the parking lot. Once upon a time I might have slashed the tires or stuffed a banana in the exhaust pipe to keep him from leaving. Now I could hold my breath and still let him go.
Dad and Norma came back out. Norma was wearing a tight smile to match her ass-pants. Dad’s smile was looser, fonder. He put his arm around my shoulder. “Come on, Potato Head. Let’s get your things.”
And I opened my mouth and said the words he never thought he’d hear: “I want to stay.”
And so it was decreed that Dad and Norma would spend the night at the Nhill B and B—a thrilling prospect by anyone’s standards. Before getting in the Camry, Dad took me aside. “What about this talent show?”
“Bring a book,” I advised him.
“Are you going to perform?”
“I’m going to do something. But I don’t know what.”
“You know what your mother would have—”
“I’m not doing Ophelia.”
Dad’s face went fuzzy. “I wish she could be here to see you.”
“She is,” I said. “I can feel it.”
One Word session, Roslyn had told us the story of Jesus alone in the desert for forty days and forty nights. He gets thirsty and hungry and freaked out, and Satan, the game show host, keeps throwing sweeteners at Him. Roslyn was all, How can we resist temptation? and What is the purpose of spiritual retreat? But I couldn’t think about God and Jesus. I was thinking about Mom. Maybe when people die their souls become mist. I felt Mom most on cold mornings when the air smelled wet and somehow old and new at the same time. I’d felt her here at Spirit Ranch more than anywhere, because here was where I had needed her most. She had varicose veins on her legs. She ate banana and brown sugar sandwiches. Her smile didn’t always reach her eyes, even for me. So, she wasn’t perfect, like God is supposed to be, but she was mine.
59
This Way Utopia
Dylan’s mother stood outside his door like a bouncer. She had his bags at her feet. I paused at the end of the ramp to take a breath, and then I went for it. She tried to block me. I dodged from side to side. “Can I say good-bye to Dylan?”
“You just go back.” She held her hand up. She could have pushed me—I’m guessing she wanted to. Her hand was as pale as Dylan’s. I don’t know why I did it, but I reached for it. I turned it over and stared at her pa
lm. “Your love line is fine,” I told her. “It’s good and clean. And your lifeline is long. I’m an expert in this.” Dylan’s mother didn’t take her hand back. She let me hold it. I saw a tear escape the bottom of her sunglasses. “I’m really sorry,” I said quickly, without looking up. And then she just moved aside, like a spook on the ghost train. One minute she was in my face and the next she was gone.
Dylan was leafing through the camp program.
“Oh, hi,” he said super-casually. “How are you?”
“Eh.” I sat down on the bed. “Your mom is crying.”
“Surprise, surprise.” Dylan gave me a look of mock reproach. “What did you say to her?”
“I apologized.”
“What for?”
“Leading you astray . . .”
“You didn’t.”
“I must have done something wrong,” I said. “I feel awful.”
“Catholic guilt.”
“Minus the Catholic.”
Dylan wheeled over so his knees were knocking against mine. He held my hands and whispered, “Don’t feel bad. I had the best time ever.”
“Why are you whispering?” I smiled teasingly, and waited. And waited. I wanted him to kiss me. Where was my kiss?
“Will you sign my program?” Dylan asked in a big nerd voice.
“Oh. Okay.” I opened the map page and marked a big X where Fraser’s house was located. I drew an arrow going into the desert and wrote: This Way Utopia. Then I wrote down my address, e-mail, and phone number, signed Miranda Biggerbottom.
Dylan crooked his finger at me. “Come here.”
I leaned in.
“Closer,” he said.
I moved closer.
“Now, close your eyes.”
I closed my eyes. I smiled and waited. Still no kiss. I felt something else, though, something light on the crown of my head, then it was falling down, fine as a spiderweb.
“Open your eyes,” Dylan told me.
I looked down to see his silver cross glinting in the hollow of my breastbone.
I frowned at it, unsure for a moment. “I fully expect you to wear it upside down,” Dylan joked. “I just wanted to give you something. I’ve never taken it off before.” He touched his neck, patted the place where his cross used to be, and then he cleared his throat. “Ahem.”
He put his hand on my face, tilted it slightly, smiled, and drew me in for a long frozen moment that grew into an earth-moving, stars-falling, sea-foam-crashing-on-the-rocks, slow-derangement-of-the-senses kiss.
We came up for air. He pressed his forehead against mine.
“Keep your eyes closed,” he whispered. I heard him pause and take a breath. His hands brushed his wheels and his chair creaked. I heard him push back and forward and finally, out. When I opened my eyes, the room was bright and Dylan had gone.
60
Hootenanny
I found Olive and Bird in the rec room. She was reading a book about the constellations; he was reading one of Fraser’s notebooks.
“Delilah’s gone,” I told them. “So has Dylan.”
I sat down with the weird siblings and pressed my head into the sofa. They didn’t ask me anything. Sitting between them was as good as a hug.
One by one the Honeyeaters trickled in from the mess hall. When Sarita saw me she came running up. She had glitter on her eyelids, and a smile to match.
“Oh, Riley!” She clasped my hands and squeezed them. “I thought perhaps you were never coming back. I said to Fleur that you were like a sunset: iridescent and inimitable and then . . . gone. And all that is left is the impression of greatness.” She gave me a trembly smile and then threw her head back and laughed like a maniac.
I blinked. “Wow.”
“You like that?”
I nodded.
“I was acting. I have been practicing my oratorical skills. I’m going to be the master of ceremonies for the talent show.”
“You sounded like a prophet.”
She punched the air. “Yes!”
“What did Fleur say?” I asked her.
Sarita shrugged. “She bitched about her hair.”
Roslyn walked in with a clipboard in her hand, her hair pulled back so tight it was like an instant face-lift. She scanned the campers, found my face. She looked puzzled for a moment but then resumed her ringmaster role.
“Campers, listen up. You have some free time before dinner. I suggest you use it to master your acts for the talent show. There’s no dress rehearsal, kids. Tomorrow it is, the big enchilada. Floor managers, I want to see your running sheets before we go in for dinner. Costumes, props, lights, music cues, all of it on paper.” Her voice rose above the chatter. “If it’s not on paper, it’s not happening.”
The Honeyeaters swooped down on Sarita and chirped in her ear and stuck her with their beaks and scratched on her clipboard with their talons. Lisa and Laura were on the small stage, practicing their steps to no music.
“What’s the song?” I asked Sarita, pointing to them.
She checked her clipboard. “ ‘Hot Legs’ by Rod Stewart.”
“That’s so wrong!”
Step, kick, head back, crump, crump, squat legs, jump, out, windmill, windmill, boom! I love ya honey! They ended back-to-back, facing the world with cruel pouts.
The rec room looked like a hootenanny. Craig and Fleur were in a corner working on their harmony. He sang with his eyes closed, but she stared straight at him as her voice wavered and quavered all over the place. In another corner Richard and Ethan were going through their Jesus rap.
“Yo, yo, yo, Christ is the Man and I love him so (so),
He’s the dude with the answers dontcha know (know).”
Bird saw me looking and smiled. “I don’t need to practice,” he said.
“Me either.”
And then Roslyn was there, giving me a sisterly smile. “Riley, I’m looking forward to your piece.”
Sarita said, “I don’t even have you scheduled!”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I don’t have to—”
Roslyn spoke over me. “Riley can close the show.”
“Oh, awesome.”
“So,” she pursed her lips. “What have you got?”
I had nothing. Roslyn was waiting for me, I could practically see her stress levels escalating. Her eyes dipped slightly. Her palm tree quivered. Just then Fleur came up. I never thought I’d be so happy to see her. She slunk her arm through mine. “Sorry, Roslyn. Riley and I need to discuss hair and makeup. I’ll give her back, I promise.”
61
The Appeal of Wrongness
Fleur was sitting on the chair in front of me, looking like she wanted to change her mind. “Be afraid,” I whispered, “be very afraid.” I snipped the air with my scissors and cackled evilly.
Fleur frowned. “You’re so unprofessional.”
“I have scissors,” I deadpanned. “So what kind of look do you want?”
“I don’t want a look,” Fleur said. “Just a trim, maybe some bangs.”
“Bor-ing.” I sighed and started combing her wet hair. I combed it into a palm tree, like Roslyn’s, then a faux-hawk, like Craig’s. I considered revenge.
On one nature walk, Anton had pointed out an aboriginal “canoe tree”—a red gum with a big scar down its trunk; long ago the missing bark had been used to shape a crude canoe. If I’d wanted to be really, really mean I could have given Fleur a canoe tree cut—perfect at the front, hacked-into at the back, the kind of cut that would leave people whispering in her wake. But revenge no longer seemed important. What did seem important was this: I could make Fleur look better, if only she’d let me.
Perfect bangs are impossible with paper scissors and Fleur couldn’t sit still. She kept faffing her hands around her crown and making nervous noises. “Don’t go too short!”
As with Sarita’s treatment, I had the chair facing the wall opposite the mirror. It was killing Fleur to know that all she had to do was turn, turn, turn and she’
d see . . . the damage. I pictured myself spinning her around. Fleur, meet Raggedy Ann. Her scream would strip the stucco walls.
“As your hairdresser I advise you stop jiggling.”
Fleur squinted at me. She picked her nails and pouted.
“Can I ask you something?”
I stopped cutting. “Okay.”
“Did you have sex with Craig?”
I was glad I was the one holding the scissors.
“No.”
“Oh.”
The conversation might have ended there, but I heard myself saying, “We were going to, but he didn’t want to use a condom.”
Fleur frowned. “You knew he was with me, right? So, what—you just don’t like me?”
“I don’t dislike you.”
“Was it the fat jokes?”
“I probably would have done it anyway.”
“Is that like Sir Edmund Hillary saying the reason he climbed Mount Everest was ’cause it was there?”
“A bit.” I wasn’t about to broadcast my low self-esteem to the one person who wouldn’t get it. Craig made me feel good. No. The idea of Craig made me feel good. How could I explain the appeal of wrongness? Chloe always says never apologize, never explain, but I opened my mouth and . . .
“I’m sorry.” My apology hung in the air with the hair spray. I resumed cutting, but I was only making things worse. My hands were like lumps. I couldn’t seem to cut straight.
Out of the blue, Fleur said, “I don’t think Craig actually likes me. I mean, I’ve been saving myself for him and he doesn’t even seem to . . .” She stopped. She looked like she was about to cry. “I try and talk to him. Like, I think about it so hard. I write down the questions beforehand and I rehearse and then I call him and read them aloud—and I never get any closer to knowing him. Do you think I should just have sex with him?”
“No!” I laughed. Then I looked at her hand gripping the edge of the sarong. This was serious business for Fleur. “Maybe you should wait,” I suggested. “Maybe there’s someone better... youknow, outthere in the real world.”
“What if sex is the only way you get close to people?”
Everything Beautiful Page 17
