by Lee Hayton
I let out the breath I’d been holding, and relaxed. I nodded at her, ‘Do I need to fill in some forms?’
Ms Pearson smiled. Wide. ‘Oh no, you don’t need to do anything.’
I started to feel as though I was on less sure ground. ‘How do I apply for assistance then?’
‘You don’t, Daina Harrow. Your mother will need to apply for the funding. Once she comes into the office to complete the application, we’ll release the necessary equipment from the school stationery supplies.’ She sniffed and shifted her weight back. Her hands folded neatly in front of her waist.
‘While she’s here she can complete the paperwork that she’s failed to fill in for your attendance here. Get everything cleaned up and signed off.’
I swallowed hard and nodded. ‘I’ll let her know,’ I said as I backed out of her office and turned away. One avenue I doubted my mother would be following up on anytime soon.
#
When I arrived home, the front door was locked. I went around the back of the house and picked up the fake stone that held the spare.
Empty.
I went back around to the front and put my ear to the door. I couldn’t hear anyone moving around inside. Mum usually only locked it when she went out, and increasingly not even then. But the curtains were still drawn from last night so I couldn’t be sure. Perhaps she was sleeping one off on the sofa.
I wriggled the door again to make sure it really was locked up, and not just caught. It refused to open. I stepped back and walked the perimeter to see if there was anything else open. The window to the bathroom was ajar, but when I tried to pull it open further, I could see that the latch had been turned to the wrong side. It left enough of a gap to let some fresh air through, but there wasn’t enough room for me to stick my fingers in and flick it open.
There was already a slight drizzle. If my luck held that would soon be a downpour. And we didn’t have a veranda or balcony. The art deco styling meant that there weren’t even any eaves to shelter beneath.
The mist that formed on my clothing started to turn to droplets.
I tried to use the hairpin to open the lock, but I couldn’t even get a feel for the tumblers, let alone turn them. The rain was starting to come down more persistently now. Drops gathered in my wet fringe and then ran in tiny rivulets straight into my eyes. I wiped them clear with frustration.
I could throw a brick through the ranch slider. That would teach my mother to lock me out of the house. But then it would just mean cardboard over the glass, and an offer to every thief in the neighbourhood that it was open season at number fourteen.
I jiggled the front door again, pulling hard in anger, frustration and misery. It jolted and tipped on the long grooves of the fitting, and I could see that the lock mechanism was slightly ajar. I tried it again, sliding it with force and exerting some downwards pressure to encourage it to slip more. I was rewarded with a wider gap.
Three more pulls and the tongue of the lock popped free.
I opened the door and looked around. No sign of mum so I pulled the curtains back to let in the grey sky shine in.
The spare key was on the lounge table, and I attached it to the clip on my backpack. Stupid idea to keep a spare where we could both access it. My stupid idea after a couple of incidents where my mother managed to lock herself out when she was the only one home. Not from this house. From another shabby state home. Well, she could be the one who fended for herself from now on. You didn’t need to teach me twice.
There was a sound from mum’s bedroom that stopped me cold and raised the hairs on the back of my neck. A howl, a moan, the unmistakeable sound of someone in pain.
I ran to her room and slammed the door. It was locked as well. I pounded on it. Panic swarmed up my throat closing it shut. I had to exert my voicebox to get the sounds through. ‘Mum! Mum, can you hear me? Are you okay?’
I pounded and tried to turn the handle but it bounced against the lock. My hand slid off, slick with the sudden sweat of fear. ‘Mum! Can you hear me? Should I call an ambulance? I’m calling an ambulance.’
I ran back into the kitchen and reached for the phone when she came running up behind me. ‘Get into you room right this instant, and close the damn door behind you!’
I stared at her. Relief lost to the ferocity of the anger I saw in her face.
‘Get to your room. Now!’ She slapped me across the face. The sting, the pain. And then she grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me. Pushed me towards the back corridor. Towards the stairs.
I looked over my shoulder at her in confusion as she headed back to her room. Then saw the man standing there with his hands on his hips. Naked. Erect.
I ran up to my room and slammed the door shut. As though that would erase the image from my mind.
#
‘No, no, no,’ Susie said as she grabbed the hairbrush from Melanie’s hands. ‘That’s not the way. You have to backcomb it. Otherwise it won’t stay in place.’
Tracy sat and let them fight over administering her hairstyle. She didn’t seem bothered either way. But then again she didn’t seem bothered about much of anything.
Susie managed okay until it came to securing the twist in place. It held steady for about thirty seconds and then collapsed in slow motion. Now Tracy didn’t have a hairstyle and had backcombed hair that stuck out like a white woman’s afro.
‘Guys, you can’t leave her like that. She looks like a freak,’ Vila said.
Tracy stuck her tongue out. ‘Takes one to know one.’
‘Here, let me try,’ I said and grabbed the brush off Susie. When I was seven, I’d dreamed of being a hairdresser and practised whenever mum was in the mood to let me.
I lightly brushed the outer layers, then twisted the rest into a knot, and secured it low on Tracy’s head. It may not have been the complicated arrangement the other two had been aiming for, but at least she could go out in public.
‘Now you look like a spinster,’ Vila said with a laugh.
‘What the hell’s a spinster?’ Tracy asked.
‘An old woman who lives alone with a collection of cats,’ I inserted. ‘And no you don’t. You just look a bit…’
‘A bit…?’ Melanie prompted, and Tracy raised her eyebrows.
‘A bit like a middle-aged woman with only two cats.’
Tracy laughed again. Apparently unconcerned with how she looked. Something unique to her amongst female teenagers.
‘Hey Daina,’ Vila said and tapped my knee. ‘We’re up for maths next. Do you have your books sorted?’
I shook my head, and Susie looked over in confusion. ‘What books? Did we need to bring something?’
Vila shook her head. ‘Nah, she doesn’t have any school stuff. Mr Nippon said he won’t let her hand in any more homework until she gets the right equipment.’
Susie laughed. ‘That sounds so rude: right equipment.’
She and Tracy mocked each other with pretend genitalia, and then Susie turned back to me. ‘It’s a pity it’s not the start of the year. If you get a job as the stationery monitor, you can nick loads of stuff and no one ever notices.’
‘What do you mean?’
Susie shrugged. ‘They have a stock of all the school equipment at the back of the music room. It’s in the cupboard there, along with all the broken synthesisers and shit. They bring it out every January and have it all in one room so you can order everything you need from the school. They cream it in fees. The markup’s nearly double what you can get it at The Warehouse.’
‘Where everyone gets a bargain,’ Melanie trilled in an odd moment of joy.
‘Take this, anyhow,’ Vila said, extending an exercise book. ‘I can’t help you with the calculator but seeing as how you’re pretty much doing my homework you can at least share in my old offcasts.’
I took the book out of her hand. Vivid crossed through her name in pen. Half of the pages were missing.
‘So generous,’ scoffed Susie, leaning over to examine it in detail.<
br />
I felt a flash of anger, an emotion I didn’t generally allow myself. I was dressed in someone else’s discarded blouse. St Vincent de Paul provided my backpack and my shoes. I had a rubber band tying my hair back. I couldn’t afford a haircut, and I couldn’t afford a frigging scrunchie because they only sold them in packs of twenty and I could at most afford one at a time. And now I was meant to be grateful because I had a discarded exercise book from someone who didn’t even know how to add in their head. Grateful.
Vila nudged me in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Sorry about the other day. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.’
I nodded and looked at her. ‘Your mother really didn’t seem that bad.’
‘Yeah, well. Sometimes what you see in a few minutes isn’t what a persons really like.’
It could have been a barbed comment, but she softened it with another nudge in the ribs. And I got her point. My mother had once been the starlet of a dozen open days at primary school. She’d outshone every other mother there with her stunning hair and carefully applied makeup. She’d charmed and flattered every other parent in attendance until they hung on her every word.
And four hours later she’d be passed out cold while I’d be trying to work out how to feed myself. Hard to tell a lifetime of misery in a few short minutes. ‘I’ll trust you on that, then. Thanks for this.’
‘Can’t have you being kicked out of maths class,’ Vila responded, standing as the bell went for class. ‘I’m now fully reliant on you for any chance of passing.’
I laughed, but again I felt that firm flash of anger. I pushed it down and out and walked to class in step with Vila.
#
Once the coast was clear, I slammed my locker door closed. One step towards the music class and a man came in through the double doors. I turned back to my locker, trying not to look as though I was doing anything wrong.
An arm reached over my shoulder and I froze. I haven’t even started to do something wrong, I wanted to protest. A helmet was lifted from the top of the lockers and the man walked back the way he’d come.
My heart was beating fast - thrum, thrum, thrum – the sound prominent in my ears and the vibration visible in my chest. This was no good. I headed back to the exit from the prefab. This was stupid and pointless. I wasn’t about to feel this bad just to get my hands on a calculator. I wasn’t a thief.
My hand on the wired glass of the double doors I stopped. But what else was I going to do? If I couldn’t turn in work during the year, then my final results would be based solely on work already submitted. At different schools. With a total of eleven weeks missing already.
I had one chance to get away from this hellhole of an existence, and that was with a scholarship to university. That and a student loan, and I’d never have to live with my mother again. But they don’t hand them out to dimwits. And they don’t hand them out to students who stuff up entire years of schooling.
I could always beg and borrow to get the stupid plastic calculator. The one that had to have specific branding to be acceptable because otherwise the teacher might need to learn how to operate more than one. Or understand what it was they were passing on from the textbook. God forbid.
And if I succeeded at that, then I’d feel the same way I’d felt earlier today. Except double or triple and for a hell of a lot longer. If I wasn’t allowed to just have something that was new and right, then I should take it. Better the guilty conscience than the burning anger. Eating away at me. I didn’t want to die of cancer in my thirties because I spent my teen years seething with anger I wasn’t allowed to express.
When I turned back around the corridor was still empty. I decided to take that as a sign and carry on carrying on.
There was a moment when I opened the music room when I thought that I’d walked in on a teacher. My mind spun through a half-dozen excuses, all of them lacking, and then realised that it was a music stand that someone had chucked a fabric cello case over.
There was a triphammer operating in my chest now. Knowing my luck with anything lately I’d pass out when I got my hand on the incriminating item, and then wake up in school prison.
But it was too late now. If I didn’t get in and out soon, the janitor would be heading around and locking it all up for the night. How the hell would I get out of that one, eh? I wouldn’t.
I knelt down by the locked door, behind the piano, and quickly inserted the hairpin I’d been carrying since Ms Aiello’s counselling session from hell.
The lock was almost identical. I wondered if the keys that staff held onto so dearly were actually just copies of each other, and could all be interchanged.
When I walked through the door, I instantly saw the stack full of stationery. There was also a stack of sports clothing, branded with the school logo. I couldn’t imagine having to pay for another uniform just so I could play a game. What a waste of money.
A pile of exercise books sat on top of a sealed cardboard box full of the same. I pushed and pulled a few boxes, and then found another cupboard with loose pens, staplers, rulers and – jackpot – scientific calculators. I pulled one out and grabbed a slip of spare batteries to go with it, just in case.
It was when I turned to head back out that I heard a voice call out. I froze in place. I’d closed the door behind me but if anyone checked I’d be caught in the act. Ms Pearson would have a joyous celebration, but I’d be in the shit.
I scanned the tiny space. There was another door, which I presumed led to another classroom – the English room if my spatial ability was up to par – but apart from that I was stuck.
I pushed a stack of boxes to my right, trying to make no noise at all and almost succeeding. It left a gap that I slid into and crouched down. I could just make out the door, and pulled my head back, tucking my legs and feet into the small space as best I could. I closed my eyes in case my not being able to see them stopped them being able to see me, and waited.
It was odd, but my heartbeat had slowed and quietened down. Maybe I’d gone so far into a panic that it hadn’t been able to keep up in the end and was now just barely moving, like an overweight teen trying to make it through the last hundred metres of the 1k run.
There was no sound, followed by more no sound. I relaxed further back into my tiny trap, my spine becoming loose like jelly. Instead of the blackness behind my eyelids I could envisage my body as it changed into protozoa, into amoeba. Tiny and jelly. Jelly and tiny.
The door banged and my eyes flew open in surprise. Footsteps that sounded like thunderclaps. I pushed back against the wall as every part of body wanted to strain forward to peer around the corner and see. And be seen.
Shuffling. Closer, closer.
And then further away.
The door banged shut and I heard the lock turn. With the key inside it.
The relief of not being caught was short-lived. When I gathered the courage to walk to the door and peer into the keyhole, I couldn’t see light at the end of the tunnel. The key was still in there. How the hell was I meant to fidget it from the inside when it was blocked with the key? My limited lockpicking skills had only been born from necessity. They contained no finesse, no deep knowledge or dexterity.
If I’d felt sure that no one was on the other side I would have exploded, taken my frustrations out on the walls and the floor and the door. I would’ve pounded my fists raw and screamed my throat dry.
Instead, I whimpered and began to cry.
The other door was the only possibility. I had no idea of whether the English room would be locked up: I didn’t own a watch and my limited sense of time had been destroyed by anxiety.
I kneeled and pulled boxes away from the second door. With my eye to the lock, I could make out daylight, but when I tried to work it, the hairpin snapped from the effort.
I threw it on the floor in disgust and put my head in my hands.
When they found me tomorrow, I would be in more trouble than I’d ever been in my life.
For so long I’d tr
ied to hold everything together. Keep everything running as it had when I was smaller and my mother could still be depended upon to take care of things. But it had been crumbling, crumbling.
I didn’t know what the hell I was doing anymore. I shouldn’t have to. Now they’d find out that everything was a slapped together mashed-up lie, and my life would change.
It wouldn’t be for the better.
My mother was no longer capable of looking after me. Hadn’t been for a while. I’d now be in the type of trouble that would ensure I was taken away. Stored somewhere different. With the other broken kids.
And if I thought a spoiled teenage bully was a worry, it was nothing to what a truly fucked-up kid would be.
I was too high maintenance to live with CYF kids. Even at my low maintenance standards.
And then they’d try to place me in a home and I’d be left with some pervo who got his kicks off putting his hands down my pants - or her kicks. And then I’d be fucked. Literally.
I put the calculator into my backpack and closed up the flap. There were some refills on the shelf in front of me, and some markers in the cupboard where I taken the calculator from. If I was in here for the long haul, I might as well amuse myself. I could write a series of letters and put them in bottles. Leave the remnants of my current self and throw them out to the wind to let someone find in a day, a week, a month, a year. A lifetime.
I drew a picture of the home that formed my earliest childhood memory. The grass grew high around the steps leading to the front door, but at least the inside had been clean; spotless.
A bike that I’d been given to learn to ride on. Bright red paint that flaked off to reveal the hard crusting of orange rust. I’d fallen off a hundred times, brought home a hundred scraped knees, blood bright to match the paint. Bruises deep with crimson, purple, brown.
We’d moved so many times since then it was hard to keep track. The wooden house with the peeling white paint; the old red brick where I’d spent a day industriously poking out the crumbling grout until I was yelled at and dragged inside. They turned topsy-turvy in my head until they merged together into one old draggy house. Too old for decent folk. Too new to demolish. Just right.
