The Great Gatenby

by John Marsden

  Later, a lot later, we went outside again, grabbed a couple of beers and talked to some of Melanie’s friends. They were funny, the way girls are. You know the way they talk to you like you’ve become their brother because you’re going out with their friend? But first they check you out. They kind of suss out what you’re like, as if they’re making sure that you’re going to treat their friend right, that you aren’t a user. I like that though; I like the way they look after each other.

  ‘Melanie’s changed so much,’ one of them, a girl called Chloe, said. ‘You did the right thing leaving Ainsworth, Mel.’ And to me she added, ‘The teachers all gave her the worst time, just because she was different.’

  ‘She still gets a hard time,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, but not as bad as Ainsworth,’ Melanie said. Then she explained, ‘It’s Chloe who writes me all those crazy letters. She’s the one I was on the phone to at midnight when Gilligan caught me.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ I grinned at Chloe, now that Melanie had created a bond between us.

  ‘Mel’s been talking about you for ages,’ Chloe said. ‘She’s never been so serious about anyone in her life, except her gorilla maybe.’

  Later again Melanie and I sat by a quiet corner of the pool, close together while we talked. The party started fizzling out a bit after midnight, though there were a few very drunk guys who looked like they were settling in forever. We finally closed down and called a cab. Back at Melanie’s we went in through a side door, into a flat that seemed like it belonged to Lil. She was dozing in front of the TV, in her sitting room. I thought that the flat looked more comfortable than the main part of the house, but I didn’t say that.

  ‘Now are you two going to be right?’ she asked. ‘You’ve got everything you need? Erle, Melanie’s shown you where things are?’

  ‘Yes, thanks, definitely,’ I assured her, not wanting her to get up and start trotting around the house like a chaperone. And when the two of us got away into the main part of the house Mel said, ‘I’ve got a percolator up in my room. You want a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, starting to percolate a little myself.

  We headed on up there and I lay back on the bed while Melanie got all the coffee ingredients together. She was well organized; she even had some long-life milk. When the coffee was ready she sat on the desk-chair to drink hers. I stayed on the bed. We were just talking lightly, some jokes, gossip, stuff like that, till she finished her coffee and put the cup down, and sat there, giving me a kind of funny look.

  ‘Sit here,’ I said, patting the bed. She came over and sat down and snuggled in beside me. I was nervous and excited all at once. I felt breathless. I put my arm around her (Mum, I hope you’re not reading this) and we started kissing. I was running my hand up and down her back, slowly. I could feel her bra-strap under her top. I put my hand under her T-shirt and began to rub her back, thinking how nice her warm skin felt. Her hand undid a few of my shirt buttons and crept in there and fondled my chest in a way that had me gasping. I’d forgotten how good that could feel. Somehow, without tying myself into a human knot, or breaking my wrist, I managed to get my hand around to her front. My hand slid up inside her shirt again and nestled around her bra.

  ‘We’d better stop,’ said Melanie, but her actions weren’t matching her words, and she wasn’t going to get my vote. Her bra was annoying me but I didn’t know if I could get if off without a lot of clumsy groping around. As always, I didn’t want to seem uncool. Suddenly she sat up for a moment and slipped my shirt back over my shoulders and off me, then pulled her T-shirt over her head, undid her bra at the back and threw it across the room. I was awed at her generosity. She came back down beside me, and I found myself with a whole new playground to explore. Her hands were driving me crazy as they slid across my stomach, then occasionally, tantalisingly, inside the waistband of my jeans. I was mentally begging, ‘Go lower, go lower’ and at the same time turning her on as much as I could, caressing her beautiful, small, round breasts and strumming the perfect, taut, brown nipples.

  She ran a hand up into my armpit and I nearly went through the roof — I hadn’t known armpits could be so sexy. Somewhere around that time both our zips seemed to give way. My hand was inside her jeans, pressing the springing curls; hers was getting closer, closer, and yes, that was it, and that, and that again. She was twisting around and making little whimpering noises like something was bothering her in her sleep. The further I pressed in with my fingers the more I loved it, especially the little moist noises. And if one thing was certain, it was the fact that she was loving it herself. Then I was hitting it, jackpot after jackpot, as her body took control and jumped away from her, way away, for what seemed like several minutes, while I held on tight and kept pressing as energy from somewhere kept her gasping and kicking.

  God, it was even exhausting for me; I can’t imagine how it felt for her. But when she’d finished and got her breath back it was my turn, like I’d been hoping. She turned her attention to me and with giggles and little touches lightly brought me to screaming point and through and beyond it till I was going off like a geyser at Rotorua or Yellowstone or somewhere, and when it was all over and we’d finished laughing and checking each other out we had to spend about ten minutes with tissues, cleaning up. It was amazing all the places it had reached. Then we just lay there for a long time, three-quarters asleep, and that was so nice and warm. At one stage I heard her parents come home. I asked her ‘Will they check?’ She stirred and answered, ‘No, they don’t care’, so I let it be and just relaxed there with her.

  Sometime before dawn though she stirred again and said, ‘You’d better go. Dad goes down the beach about seven o’clock and he usually calls in to see if I want to go.’

  ‘Ok,’ I said and gathered my things and kissed her on the forehead and headed out the door.

  ‘Don’t get lost,’ she giggled as I closed it softly behind me.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was hard to settle back to life in the ole schoolyard. The night I got back, Sunday night, Rob Hanley-White ate two entire packets of Chocolate Mint Slice biscuits. I mean, two whole packets! I guess I can eat one if I really work at it but God, it takes some effort. I think he only did it so he wouldn’t have to share them with anyone. Sure enough, about ten o’clock he started vomiting, and every five minutes from then on he brought up another instalment, and the stuff he was vomiting was just the purest chocolate syrup you’ve ever seen in your life. I mean, McDonald’s would have used it right away on their sundaes, that’s how pure it looked, even if it did smell a bit funny.

  But then we had this, like, ping-pong match with the relieving Matron who was on duty. We took Rob around to her and said, more or less, ‘The guy’s sick; you gotta give him a bed.’

  ‘What’s he sick from?’ she said.

  ‘He ate two whole packets of Chocolate Mint Slice biscuits about an hour ago.’

  ‘Well he’s a greedy little boy,’ she said ‘and he’s certainly not getting any sympathy from me. He can go back to the dorm and suffer, and maybe next time he’ll think twice before he makes a pig of himself.’ So we took him back to the dorm, where he kept on being sick. After a while James Kramer and I decided this was ridiculous, so we took him to the Sick Bay again.

  ‘Matron, we realise it’s his fault he’s sick, but we’re the ones being punished, because he’s keeping the whole dorm awake, and we want to get some sleep.’

  ‘We’ve got exams coming up,’ added James, piously.

  ‘Look,’ said Matron, getting really crabby, ‘I’m not having him in here and that’s that.’

  I could see her problem. The Sick Bay was empty and through her sitting room door you could see a ballet or opera or something she was watching on TV. What’s the one where everyone sings in loud voices all the time? Opera, I think. So only Rob the Rat was standing between her and a slack night. But we gave in without much of a fight and took him back again. He seemed to have got over it by then, and we all
drifted off to sleep, but round about midnight he started in on another round. By now everyone was really angry.

  ‘Leave him in a basket on her doorstep, with a note attached,’ suggested David O’Toole. But we decided to try the direct approach once more.

  ‘Matron, he’s really sick, I mean it might be serious. We don’t know for sure that it was the chocolate biscuits.’

  ‘Could be Ratsack,’ Punk volunteered.

  ‘Matron, we don’t want to see you getting sued or something like that if he dies in the middle of the night. We’re really thinking of you here.’

  Matron knew when she was beaten, and took him in at last, but it was with a bad grace. I mean, what was she employed for, for Chrissake? I felt sorry for the Rat. As we walked back down the corridor we could hear her voice: ‘Now don’t think you’re going to be missing any classes tomorrow. You’ll be out of here before morning Inspection, and I don’t care how sick you’re feeling.’

  I remembered Gilligan’s words from the start of the term: ‘You’ll often hear me speak of the Crapp House family. It’s a family, and the boarding house is a home away from home. We don’t expect you to do things that you wouldn’t do in your own home, and by the same token you’ll find that you can always approach us in the same way that you would your own parents. My door is always open . . .’ Actually I really didn’t remember all that. He sent a copy of it out in a letter to parents. Shows how impressed he was with his own speech.

  The exams seemed to inject an extra note of madness into the place. These boys sure went for the marks. Well, some of them anyway. David O’Toole was recognised as the dorm Brain, and the guy to see when you needed help with homework. But now he started getting aggro with people like me when we politely asked for a smidgin of assistance. Only Adam Marava got instant answers, which showed that even a brain like O’Toole was smart enough to realise that you can’t write an exam paper with broken arms. My trouble was a bit different. I spent more time thinking about Melanie than I did about schoolwork.

  One night I spent the entire homework session writing her name on my pencil case, in a really ornate design. Melanie liked it a whole lot but I didn’t know any more about Science or History or Maths at the end of that night than I had at the start of it.

  I didn’t tell anyone about my night at the Tozers’, though I did say we’d been to a party. I read some smart comment by someone once who said that guys don’t have their real orgasms till the next day, when they tell their friends about it. I was determined not to fall into that trap. I don’t think Melanie told anyone either, except maybe Georgie, who was making some pretty dumb jokes for a while after that weekend, and every time she did, Melanie would get mad and tell her to shut up.

  The day before the first exam a massive epidemic of gastro went through the year ten boarders, the boys anyway. I don’t know why. Matron said we weren’t keeping our supper area clean enough, but I wouldn’t say it was any worse than the others. But I and most of the others from Dorm Six ended up in Sick Bay, and we weren’t the only ones. Rob Hanley-White, having barely finished purging his system of chocolate biscuits, went right back in again. James Kramer, Punk, Paul Watson, even Sog Bell. At one stage it looked like Ringworm would be the only one to come through unscathed. I’d always suspected he was kind of magical and this seemed to prove it. In a lot of countries I’m sure he would have made Chief Witch-Doctor. In our country he made Chief Turkey.

  It wasn’t too funny having gastro, to tell you the truth. We weren’t allowed to eat much and we didn’t feel like eating anyway. The worst thing was the diarrhoea. Man, I sure splattered that toilet bowl. It got so that you couldn’t even fart with any confidence. In fact, we ended up having a competition: the one who could fart the most times without poohing his pants was the winner. We were laughing so much that we put ourselves at a disadvantage right away. I got eliminated in the first round — ‘eliminated’, what a choice of words. James did a shocker. He had to change not just his pyjama pants but the sheet as well. Brian Bell, Adam Marava and Punk survived until the fourth round — talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. I don’t think their gastro could have been too bad. Finally, however, Punk was declared the winner. It wasn’t until later that he admitted he’d cheated . . . and he had the evidence to prove it. By then we were all paralytic anyway and Matron was looking like she’d been in a nuclear meltdown. We were nearly chucked out of Sick Bay. We were threatened with Gilligan, the Headmaster, the doctor, Sylvester Stallone. So we eventually settled down. But Punk was forever afterwards known by a new nickname, ‘Winnie’.

  A couple of people got kicked out the next morning but most of us had to do our first exam, Science, while still in bed. Matron was meant to supervise but she didn’t do too good a job. The cheating that went on was unbelievable. Holy mashed monkeys, these guys could cheat! If they were the future of the nation then the nation was in worse shape than I thought. Rob the wonder-rat had his textbook under the sheets. I mean, you had to hand it to him, the guy had a certain style. I must admit I too got by with a little help from my friends. What else could a man do? The stakes were high.

  At lunchtime, to everyone’s astonishment, Ringworm came in to visit us.

  ‘You all wank too much, that’s why you’re sick and I’m not,’ was his helpful contribution.

  ‘Oh God, Ringworm,’ groaned James.

  ‘Ringworm, why are you such a nerd?’ asked Adam Marava, in his unique, clipped accent.

  ‘Hey, Ringworm, when your mother gets married, can I come to the service?’ Evan yelled out.

  ‘Has anyone seen my red jumper?’ Ringworm asked, not quite making the connection with all of this.

  ‘Yeah, I used it last night when I had diarrhoea and couldn’t make the toilet in time,’ Matt Roxborough told him.

  ‘You better not have,’ Ringworm said, fairly sure that this was a joke.

  ‘It’s on top of the book lockers in the Prep room,’ Sog Bell told him. Trust Soggy to know.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Ringworm, making his exit with a final shot. ‘Anyway, at least I know what I’m thinking about, and none of you do.’ God knows what that was supposed to mean.

  By teatime I was feeling better and getting violently hungry, having not eaten in twenty-four hours. One of the women from the kitchen brought our meals over on a trolley.

  ‘It’s no wonder you’ve all got gastro,’ she said, ‘the way you leave those supper areas so filthy. Flies all over them. For all that you complain about the food, you’ll never find a fly in our kitchen.’

  ‘No self-respecting fly’d come into your kitchen,’ answered Hanley-White.

  After tea Melanie was allowed to visit. She was depressed about the exams. ‘I know I failed Science already. I thought a joule was like a diamond or ruby or something. And there’s no way I’ll pass History. God I feel like the biggest meathead in exams. I hate the way the teachers sit there and stare at you all the time, like they know you’re cheating and they just can’t wait to catch you.’ She switched direction. ‘You want to come stay in the holidays? You’ve got that hike next week . . . I’ll hardly see you for the rest of this term.’ Well, I can tell you, it was a nice feeling to lie there and listen to her talk like that, even if she was depressed. I was more rapt in her every day.

  ‘You ought to come and stay up at Gleeson,’ I told her. ‘We’ve got things there that you never saw before — like a kitchen sink.’

  ‘Oh very funny. I hate it when you give me a hard time about that stuff. It’s not my fault. God I wish I wasn’t in such a bad mood.’

  ‘Why are you? Because of the exams?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know. Everything. I’m not looking forward to these holidays. They’ll be so boring. And I’ve had the biggest fight with Georgie.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Oh, I said something to her about Michelle O’Byrne and she went and told Michelle. I told her not to! God I hate it when you can’t trust someone. She’s a two-faced bitch. You know who
she likes? David O’Toole, that’s who. Can you believe it? They’ve got nothing in common.’

  Round about then Matron arrived and threw her out. But before she went she wrote a message in texta on my stomach. It took about three days to wash out, but it made me the object of some interest in the showers. God, she could be outrageous sometimes.

  Chapter Twelve

  The hike which had been lurking vaguely in the background for a long time, just a word which had no real meaning or power, suddenly had almost arrived. There were twenty of us going, all our dorm, plus eight day-boys. All the year ten kids did a hike, but we took it in turns, and the boys were kept separate from the girls, which took a lot of interest out of it for me. As well as the students, we had Crewcut and Mr Walker, the German teacher, and an Outdoors Instructor named Derryk Dunne, who was meant to be a good guy. I hadn’t seen him much, as he was always away doing another hike or climbing Everest or something.

  It was just our luck to have it scheduled for after the exams, when all the serious schoolwork was over and everyone else would be having a slack time. I’d survived the exams, and maybe even passed a few. I’d survived gastro, and I’d survived a couple of weeks without a cigarette. And so had Melanie. The Metropolitan Diving Titles had come and gone, and because it was a Friday afternoon I was allowed to watch, so I’d been able to see Mel. They put her in the Opens, two age-groups above what she could have gone in, because Linley had a good year nine diver named Eva Weinkamer, and there wasn’t anyone in the Seniors. Anyway, Melanie had been brilliant, and had come second by about .0000001 of a point, or something like that. We celebrated at McDonald’s and got back to school late and got clean away with it because everyone was so rapt in Mel’s result. That was good. But her parents hadn’t even been there to see it, which pissed me off in a big way, but Melanie said she thought they were overseas. I figured they were probably buying Hawaii.