The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  We have also watched Mrs L.’s office door and we have noticed that she’s often not there. Except for the apple speeches, she’s never there.

  Don’t eat anything.

  Sergio

  A Memo from Elizabeth Clarry

  To: Bindy Mackenzie

  From: Elizabeth Clarry

  Subject: Nail polish

  Time: Wednesday afternoon

  Dear Bindy,

  You know how I said you should think about people at school who have given you food or drinks this year?

  Well, I realised I wasn’t outside the box as I was supposed to be. Because you can get poisoned in other more interesting ways, such as: bath products, toothpaste, or perfume. I’ve seen you using a Ventolin inhaler, so, listen, who has access to that inhaler? Also, I was watching you in History this morning and you were biting your nails. I know you wear nail polish . . .

  Also, I notice Em mentioned Miss Flynn as a suspect. I think she’s always at the computer because she’s editing her online newspaper. But, it’s interesting to note that Miss Flynn is new to the school this year. And she’s here to replace Ms Lawrence who seems to have completely disappeared.

  Did Miss Flynn murder Ms Lawrence so she could take her job and murder you?

  Just some things to think about.

  Love,

  Elizabeth

  The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie

  Wednesday, 4.30 pm

  Finnegan was still not at school today, and my FAD group continue their insanity.

  Meanwhile, I slip further behind as I spend my nights in reverie, and there’s no point in putting that word into a box. It makes no difference. Nor have I phoned the lawyer yet! I am obsessed with getting the transcript right first. For instance, just now I was looking at the password, Edna Lbagennif, and I thought: how do I know that I spelled that correctly? I only heard it, after all, and must have guessed the spelling. Why, it could be Edna Lobbagenif, or Edna Lybugenyf, or, for all I know it might have been Ed Nalbagennif or Ed Nolbanagennif. Who knows? The women were speaking very quickly, words running into one another.

  I wonder if I should find a way to test the password before I phone the lawyer? Just to see if it works? To prove to him I am no fool?

  The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie

  6.30 pm

  What does it matter if he called me annoying? He also called me beautiful. At least, he saw that I was a beautiful person, behind my personality. Oh, insightful Finnegan. And then, in the second FAD session, he became my buddy! Of course, that was Try who paired us up. But still, if I think back now, perhaps I see his feet pointing straight towards mine, his body subtly twisted, so that Try felt compelled to put us together! He played a psychological trick on Try and that’s how we became buddies! I bet.

  The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie

  9.30 pm

  Impossible to get any work done. Can’t stop whispering ‘who’ into the palm of my hand. I sound like an owl with laryngitis. Who? Who? Who? Who, indeed?

  11

  THURSDAY

  A Memo from Astrid Bexonville

  To: Bindy Mackenzie

  From: Astrid Bexonville

  Subject: Hill End

  Time: Thursday, I don’t know what time it is, but it’s effin early, like before school

  Dear Bindy,

  Well, I am writing to you today cos I said I would, cos I haven’t written yet this week. We were talking about you in the reserve yesterday cos Sergio goes, ok, enough with the writing, we need to confer. He doesn’t want to keep doing memos & making copies for the others. You can tell he and Toby and Liz think this is all funny, but Em and me and Briony think it MIGHT be real.

  Nobody was around to like hear us talk, so don’t worry.

  We’ve now decided that EVERYONE is a suspect, including the FAD group. Because we started talking and, okay, we realised this:

  (A) Liz talked about nail polish being maybe a poisonous thing, since you chew your nails, and that was genius. And then Em remembered you told us that someone from FAD gave you nail polish as a present, but anonymously. (Briony wants to test your nail polish for arsenic.) So, okay, who do you think gave you the nail polish? We are all sure it wasn’t us, anyway none of us can remember giving you nail polish, and I think we’d remember that. But it could be significant.

  (B) Also, you told us that Mr Botherit said SOMEBODY had moved you into our FAD group, tho you used to be in another FAD group with more your style of people. Who moved you? Someone from our FAD group who wanted close access to you, so they could give you nail polish and kill you? Don’t laugh, Bindy, it could be.

  So, Emily was cross-examining all of us about the nail polish, saying we could be denying it. And she’s going to cross-examine Finnegan when he gets back to school.

  I could tell the others were kind of thinking, if there’s anyone in the FAD group who wants to kill Bindy, it’d be Astrid. Because we have a kind of history of hostility. Everyone was going, ‘Who hates Bindy most? Oh, look, there’s Astrid. Hmm. Coincidence.’ But I promise I’m not killing you.

  Anyway, but now I come to why I have not joined in the memos this week. It’s that I feel guilty.

  Because in your life story that we read, you talk about how you wanted to be friends with me, and I just laughed in your face.

  And you also talk about the trip to Hill End in Year 8 but you don’t go into details.

  I remember what happened at Hill End exactly, cos I was pissed out of my brain on that trip, tho I was kind of young to be that and someone should really of stopped me. I didn’t know you would keep it in your mind, but I see you did.

  I remember you were put in the same cabin as me and my friends cos you must have forgotten to put your name down for a cabin with your own friends, and we, like, politely asked you to move to another cabin. Cos we knew you wouldn’t really fit in with us. But you laughed like you thought we were joking, and you had a cold, so when you laughed there was a bit of snot that came out of your nose. Not too much and I know I over-reacted when I got hysterical and started screaming that you were grossing us out.

  And then you blew your nose, and said it was too late to change cabins. So I went, ‘Okay, Booger Mackenzie, you can stay here if you like.’ And that kind of infected everyone, and they called you Booger for the rest of the trip.

  And on the last night, I started kind of like chanting, Booger, Booger, Booger Mackenzie! cos I was still annoyed with you for staying in our cabin. Kind of like pretending it was a fun game as a tribute to you. And everyone joined in the chant, and you got that asthma attack.

  I thought you were just faking it to make us stop.

  It was probably just that your cold had moved to your chest tho? But still, it made me feel bad.

  So, when I think back, even tho I was only young, I kind of really hate myself for it. You were always so happy back then I never thought that like calling you a name could take you down, plus you were so smart, so you know, I kind of think happy, smart people are indestructible.

  But I think maybe people kept calling you Booger for the rest of Year 8. I hope not, but I have a kind of memory of you being alone a lot that year, and people making fun of you. I hope that’s a wrong memory, but if it’s right that must have sucked.

  So, I feel guilty and terrible.

  But I’m very sorry and I hope you can forgive me one day.

  Love,

  Astrid

  Night Time Musings of Bindy Mackenzie

  Thursday, 11.35 pm

  Strange, strange, disturbing!

  A mystical thing just happened and I must type quickly, to know if it is real.

  Very well. (Calm my breathing.) Here it is:

  I arrive home from school in a state. Astrid’s memo leaves me feeling as if I have been plucked from my life and placed into a rattling cage. I feel awry, broken, exposed, taken apart piece by piece. My secret anguish, my secret year, scrawled in Astrid’s handwriting.


  I pound the piano all afternoon. Veronica and Jake watch me carefully. Bella presses one of her toys into the palm of my hand—a little plastic man who belongs in her toy bus. This makes me cry.

  I decide I must have a hot bath. Anthony gave me bath bombs for my birthday: I watch as a strawberry bomb fizzes and dissolves.

  Astrid apologised.

  That stone of resentment that I carry around in my heart: should it now fizz and dissolve?

  But can I let it go?

  I think I’ve been trying to do that all year. I think that’s why I’ve been wanting Try to talk to me about my Life. I wanted her to ask me about the cataclysmic episode in Year 8. It’s all there, hinted at in my Life. I wanted to tell Try all about it—a part of me wanted her to hate Astrid as I do.

  I lie in the bath and watch the light bounce off the tap like a starburst.

  I think about the ‘name’ that Astrid gave me in Hill End— the name that they called me for most of Year 8. I can never write it down.

  I forgot who I was that year.

  Astrid chose my name for me.

  I think of Ernst von Schmerz and how, at his old school, they would not let him choose his name. So now he chooses over and over, to defy them.

  Astrid’s just a skinny girl who is always running from police. Why did I let her choose my name that year? I see now why she hated me. I was happy. I wanted to be friends with her. I didn’t care that she’d been cruel to me the previous year—I had signed up for her cabin. Astrid knew my social status but I did not. She felt compelled to show me who I was. By naming me, she thought she held a mirror to my soul.

  This year, I’ve been just like Astrid. Frantically naming my FAD group, showing them who I think they are. But as my FAD group pointed out, if you name people like that, you place yourself above them. Worse, you give them no room to change.

  It was the Name Game that made me do it—when they put my name in the centre of the page and described me like that. It was just as if they had renamed me. I think that’s why Hill End has been so present in my mind this year.

  I think of names, and of choosing who you want to be.

  I think of the names of my FAD group. Toby, Briony, Astrid, Emily, Sergio, Elizabeth, Finnegan and Try.

  I stare at the starburst of light on the tap, squint, and the starburst splits into squiggles, like a sparkler shaking in the night.

  Names begin to merge and collide.

  Try and Toby collapse into one. Briony and Bindy. Finnegan, Miss Flynn.

  Now my squiggles of light have become two fish, facing one another, almost colliding, almost kissing, whispering: who who who.

  The starburst, the squiggles, the fish, the starburst, the squiggles, the fish. I move closer to the tap and there is nothing but a tap: a swan’s neck, a silver cane. Reflected in that cane is the elongated face of Bindy.

  Bindy Mackenzie.

  I stare and all I can think is: Finnegan, Finnegan, Finnegan Blonde.

  Finnegan A. Blonde.

  His signature on that ‘Buddy Contract’, all those months ago.

  Finnegan A. Blonde.

  And as I stare, his name collapses. Fin. Neg. Gan. A. Blon. De. The pieces run backwards. De. Blon. Gan. They reverse within themselves. Ed. Nolb. Nag.

  I lift the plug by its loop.

  I am standing in the roar of draining bathwater.

  Ed. Nolb. Nag.

  I am grabbing at the towel, running to my bedroom, searching through my notes—

  And there it is.

  My musings on the password. One spelling of the password:

  Ed Nolbanagennif.

  It is Finnegan A. Blonde in reverse.

  12

  FRIDAY

  The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie

  Friday, lunchtime

  The relief is great. At last, it is done.

  Of course, I behaved like a fool before I did it.

  The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie

  This morning, I climbed the steps to the top balcony, and waited outside Mr Botherit’s office until he emerged to go and teach a class. Then I slipped into his office.

  I sat at his computer. I seemed to be in a trance.

  For, you see, this is what I was thinking: it is a message. If the password is Finnegan’s name in reverse, it is a message from Finnegan to me. The message says this: use the password, use my name, reclaim your own good name! The message urges me: just download the outlines of some assignments and exams, and you will find your way hack to your position! Number 1. Finnegan, my buddy, trying to send me there.

  The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie

  I sat at Mr Botherit’s computer, looking at the icons on his screen, hazy in the light from the office window. But there it was. An icon of an open scroll, with the word Enlightenment across it. That was the name the lawyer had mentioned, the name of the software. I clicked on the icon.

  Password? it demanded.

  With trembling fingers I typed it in: Ed Nolbanagennif.

  It won’t work, I thought, it’s probably another spelling—it’s Edna, like I thought, It’s—And then I hit Enter and I was in.

  I was in, as they say in the movies. The screen was awash with bright colours and tantalising options.

  I grabbed the mouse, clicked LOG OFF, leapt from Mr Botherit’s chair, ran out of his office door, and burst into tears.

  The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie

  I cannot believe how close I came to cheating.

  As it was, I may have come close to getting caught: as I rushed from Mr Botherit’s office, I saw Try down the end of the balcony. I’m not sure if she noticed me or not. Certainly, she was looking my way.

  But I swivelled, and sprinted to the library.

  And here I have been in my shadow seat, pretty well ever since. The sun is warm today but there is a chill in the shadows, and I huddle around my computer and my fingers try to type.

  The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie

  As soon as I got here, I took out my phone, deleted seven or eight messages from my mother asking me to call her, and telephoned the lawyer. Surprisingly, he answered at once.

  I told him that I had found a transcript of the words spoken by the two computer programmers as they passed me by. I explained that I like to type transcripts. He was taken aback.

  But I did not feel proud, I felt ashamed. I had not phoned before because I wanted to use the password for myself . I knew that now—the coincidence of Finnegan’s name being the password in reverse. That was only the excuse I had been waiting for.

  The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie

  At any rate, I read out the transcript to the lawyer, and he made some interested sounds. He wanted to know if I had printed it out or saved it to disk or shown it around. ‘It’s highly confidential,’ he explained. ‘That’s one important document you’ve got there.’ I felt some stirrings of comfort. He wants me to bring my laptop into his office on Monday.

  I ran into the library and printed out a copy of the transcript, even though he didn’t want me to. He was a fool— anything could happen to my laptop! You should always have a backup.

  Good grief. Do you know who that is?

  That is Auntie Veronica!

  Walking through the front gate of my school!!!

  A Memo from Bindy Mackenzie

  To: Briony, Emily, Elizabeth, Toby, Sergio and Astrid

  From: Bindy Mackenzie

  Subject: Your Memos

  Time: Friday, 5.00 pm

  Dear Everyone,

  I am going to give you this before the debate tonight. I hope, once you have read it, you will understand why it was easier for me to write than to explain this in person.

  Auntie Veronica came to the school at lunchtime today, and took me to a café with her for the afternoon. She had news.

  She had heard from the doctor. He had some of my test results back. And it seems there are traces of arsenic in my system: mo
re than there should be.

  And that explains so much of what’s been happening this year. The doctor gave Auntie Veronica a list of symptoms of chronic arsenic poisoning, and they include things like feeling physically and mentally exhausted, and sick, and numb, and getting headaches, and it can even cause these callouses on my palms that I thought were from the rowing machine. Also, you can get Visual disturbances’ and ‘impaired mental activity’. No wonder you all turned into animals.

  Auntie Veronica had spent some time talking to the doctor, my mother, and the doctor again. The three of them think they know the answer: I have been going to an old house that my dad owns. It’s on Gilbert Road in Castle Hill. And I’ve been tearing down the wallpaper for him. My mum has been to the house before too, and remembers that the earliest layer of wallpaper is green, and could date as far back as the 1870s.

  Well, at that time, people sometimes made wallpaper green by putting arsenic in the paint.

  They’re going to check this, of course, and I have to go to the hospital tomorrow to get more tests done.

  But, as you can see, there’s no mystery.

  It’s just that my dad’s been poisoning me.

  Oh, and Auntie Veronica also let me know that my parents have decided to separate. My mother’s been trying to reach me for the last few days, but I didn’t know why and haven’t returned her calls. She’s going to tell me all about it tomorrow.

  My friends, you were right about so much.

  See you all after the debate tonight. And thanks for all your work—you’re all amazingly smart and very special.