Lyyssa nods encouragingly. ‘And what else?’
‘Well, on Sunday you drove us to the Westgardens Metro.’ Every other week, Lyyssa drives us to a shopping centre so we can spend our pocket money.
‘Did you have a good time?’ Lyyssa asks.
That’s difficult to answer. I was having a good time, in spite of Bindi and Cinnamon sticking together and making rude comments about everyone, but then Karen pissed her pants and we had to cut short our trip. Karen has some weird form of diabetes that makes her wee every five minutes if she forgets to take her medicine. It wasn’t much fun riding home in the van sitting next to Karen, who smelled like a dirty nappy.
‘Yeah, it was all right.’
‘And what else happened to you this week?’ Lyyssa prods.
I got up. I went to bed. In between, I ate and watched television. I worried that they’ll make me go to the same school as Bindi and Cinnamon. Yesterday, I walked around the neighbourhood and looked at all the old houses. This morning, Bindi told me not to touch her skateboard or she’d kill me, even though I was only looking at it.
‘Nothing, really,’ I say to Lyyssa.
A few more minutes of this and I’m allowed to leave. As I close the door to Lyyssa’s office behind me, I see Sky Morningstar and Jo leave the storeroom. I hang back until they disappear around the corner of the hallway, chatting about paperwork and house rules. I’m not sure what Sky Morningstar or Jo do, exactly. They help Lyyssa somehow. They’re both vegetarians. Sky Morningstar is small and pretty, with curly brown hair and brown eyes. She wears skinny jeans and black Converse All-Stars. She’s here four days a week. Jo is taking over from somebody who recently left. Jo will be here one day during the week and on the weekends. She is tall and pale, and wears long plain dresses that come to her ankles, long strings of wooden beads, and thick sandals. She brings her laptop with her to the Refuge and works on it in the dining room.
I wonder what to do with myself for the rest of the day. This morning, I got some paper towels and spray cleaner and cleaned the grime off the blinds in my room, then I got a knife and scraped off all the stupid Lila-Rose & LeeLee stickers that the previous occupant of my room had pasted all over the desk. Lila-Rose & LeeLee Nelson, the tanned, blonde, skinny Malibu Twins. They have their own TV show, their own line of clothing, and starred in four straight-to-video movies. LeeLee went solo for a while and recorded her own CD before she went into treatment for anorexia. Then Lila-Rose went into rehab for alcohol and drug dependence. Tweens all over the world have girl-crushes on both of them. How vomitous.
Karen told me that a girl named Kim used to have this room, but Karen didn’t know what happened to her. Probably, Kim got sent to the Planet for Dorks Who Like Lila-Rose & LeeLee.
In the Refuge, there are safe and unsafe places, safe and unsafe times. I feel safe in my own room with the door shut. When Bindi is gone, I feel safe.
Bindi has hated me since the moment I got here. I don’t know why. Bindi is about fifteen. She’s not what I’d call pretty, but she’s dark and thin and striking, like one of those models in fashion magazines who’s made up to look sick and heroin-addicted. Bindi has papered her walls with pictures of those blank-eyed models that she’s torn from magazines. Whoever decides what goes in those stupid magazines needs to have a look at the methadone clinic a few blocks up the street from here. Then they’d get a clue as to what heroin-addicted really looks like. Real junkies don’t wear ropes of gold necklaces or shoes that cost five hundred dollars.
Bindi has decided that she’s bound for better things than this boring Refuge, like being a dickhead fashion model or a ‘high-class hooker’ (that’s another look that the fashion mags love), so she’s trying to be as troublesome as she can so they’ll let her go. She breaks the house rules, is rude to Lyyssa, bullies Karen, and is working out what she can do to intimidate me. She hasn’t really done anything to me yet except stare at me in a mean way and make a few threats, like the one about her skateboard. I keep quiet when she’s around and pretend I’m not afraid of her. If I don’t show her anything, if she doesn’t know what I want or what I care about or what I’m afraid of, she won’t know how to get at me.
Cinnamon is Bindi’s little hanger-on. Cinnamon is more conventionally pretty than Bindi, with thick brown hair that falls to her waist, a straight nose, and a bee-stung mouth. She’s a bit heavy, but I’ve seen guys turn and stare at her boobs and butt. It’s her eyes that ruin her looks. They’re big, brown, and empty. In one of the old magazines in the library, there’s an interview with a dog breeder who talks about Irish setters, which have been bred for their looks for so many generations that they no longer have any brain to speak of. ‘Those dogs are so dumb, they get lost on the end of their leads,’ the breeder said. That dog breeder could have been talking about Cinnamon.
Cinnamon’s lack of intelligence is probably why she follows Bindi around. I don’t have to worry about Cinnamon unless Bindi is here.
Anyway, both of them will be at school until around four. I decide to have another look in the library, even though my first look in there didn’t exactly thrill me. I open the door and look at the books, some of them lined up neatly, some just piled on top of each other. There are all the standard-issue kids’ books, from Winnie the Pooh to Little House on the Prairie. Nothing new there for me. I move on to the next shelf. Sweet Valley High, The Baby-sitters Club, The Saddle Club, and, wouldn’t you know it, A Twinning Team, by druggy Lila-Rose and skinny LeeLee. Modern trash for tweens.
Tweens. Nobody who is a tween would want to be called a tween. Anyway, I’m older than a tween.
I move on to the next shelf. Issues of Christian magazines probably sent to us by the Foundation, the group of church people who started the Refuge and who are still partly in charge of it. A stupid-looking kids’ book called Bessie Bunton Joins the Circus, with a picture of a fat girl in a tutu on the cover. A dozen or so yellowed and dusty volumes of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. God knows where those came from. And why would anybody want a condensed book? Then there are the brightly coloured paperbacks, obviously bought by Lyyssa, stuff about self-esteem and life choices and mapping your own destiny. These are all in mint condition.
There are a few Mills & Boon novels and a few historical romances. When I came in here the other day, I opened one written by a lady named Serena Delacroix because it had a picture on the cover of a dark-haired man pashing a girl who looked like Cinnamon, but it was so embarrassing I had to stop reading. The story was about Riana, a young English noblewoman who’s kidnapped by a pirate named Cade. The beginning was kind of boring, so I skipped some pages and ended up reading the part where Cade forcibly takes Riana to his bed. She sobs and says she hates him, but secretly realises that she loves him and desperately hopes that she has conceived his son. I closed the book feeling embarrassed to be female. Before I put the book back on the shelf, I wiped the cover with my shirt so that no one can ever find my fingerprints on it and prove that I touched such a stupid book. I have to wonder, who owned that book to begin with, and why the hell did they give it to us?
There are rows of old school textbooks: algebra and trigonometry and history and grammar. A few books seem utterly pointless: Advanced Machine Quilting, Colour Schemes for Australian Homes, and Birthday Cakes for Children.
As I come to the end of the third bookshelf, I see three huge boxes of books stacked on top of one another in the corner. Probably, no one has got around to sorting them yet. The boxes are too heavy for me to lift, so I open the flaps of the top box, pull the books out a few at a time, and set them on the table.
I have hit the jackpot.
I tiptoe to the door and close it very carefully, so that the latch doesn’t even click. Then, working as quietly as possible, I sort the books into three piles.
OKAY
These are the ones I’m too old for, or too young for, or that just don’t interest me. I also put schoolbooks and cookbooks into this pile.
CRAP
<
br /> All the Mills & Boon-type books go into this pile, along with condensed books, religious stuff, and stupid girl books. Just when I think I’ve got the CRAP sorted, I find So Rich, So Famous by June Collins and two Star Trek books. Three more for the CRAP pile.
MINE
These are the good ones. Or at least they look good. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but what choice do you have? There’s a book on Chinese astrology and a smaller paperback on regular astrology. The dust jacket of the Chinese astrology book is blood red, with black lettering and a gold stencilled picture of a dragon. There are a couple of biographies that look interesting. The biography of Georges Sand is perfectly new – I can tell by the stiffness of the pages that no one has ever opened it.
I’m going to take these books up to my room now and hide them. After all, I’m the one who went to the trouble of sorting them.
A few of the books are just so weird as to defy classification. There’s a very old blue paperback called Memoirs of a Midget by Walter de la Mare. There’s an even older blue hardback called The Story of a Piece of Coal: What it is, Whence it Comes, Whither it Goes. I open it – the paper lining the front cover has a pretty floral pattern. It was published in London in 1896, written by Edward A Martin, FGS. I wonder what FGS means. It doesn’t seem very interesting, but there are some nice illustrations of the prehistoric plants that became coal, and of the machines that cleaned and refined the coal.
Before I can stop myself, I’ve constructed one of those impossible dilemmas that I hate but can’t stop making up. What if I’d read every single book in the library and had nothing left except Memoirs of a Midget, The Story of a Piece of Coal, or So Rich, So Famous? And I wasn’t allowed to have any new books until I’d read at least one of them? Which one would I read?
Before I’ve solved that dilemma, I remember the time and glance at my watch. A quarter to four. I’d better get the books up to my room in a hurry. Only one problem: there are too many to carry in one trip. I put the OKAY and CRAP ones back into the boxes, hide half of the MINE pile behind the shelves, and sprint out of the library and up the stairs with the others, which I hide under my bed. I can get the rest of them tomorrow.
I make it to my room just in time. Five minutes later, Bindi and Cinnamon come back from school, slamming the front door behind them. At six we have dinner. Lyyssa or Sky cooks for us four nights a week; on the other three days it’s our own responsibility to look after our meals.
Lyyssa is a good cook, which is surprising, considering how bad she is at everything else. Tonight, she’s cooked a lamb roast so tender it falls off the bone, with mashed potatoes, roast vegetables and gravy. Despite the food always being nice, I don’t enjoy mealtimes. Lyyssa sits at the head of the table, trying to start a conversation that includes everyone. Cinnamon and Bindi ignore everyone else, talking to each other about how much they hate all the teachers at school. Karen pours tomato sauce on everything on her plate, takes huge mouthfuls, and makes disgusting smacking noises as she chews.
I sit at the table eating quietly, trying to tune out Karen’s chewing and Bindi and Cinnamon’s bitchy chattering. I wonder which of the books I’ll start to read first. Maybe I’ll start with one of the astrology books, then . . .
‘You haven’t said much this evening, Len,’ Lyyssa says, breaking my concentration.
I think for a moment. ‘The roast was really nice. You did a really good job cooking.’
Lyyssa beams. ‘Thank you, Len.’
When we’re finished eating, we carry our dishes to the kitchen. Bindi comes up behind me. ‘Suck-arse,’ she hisses into my ear.
Chapter 3
Today, a lady from the Salvation Army, Major Heath, took me to Kmart and let me pick out some underwear and stuff. Ten pairs of socks. Ten pairs of knickers. A couple of bras. And two sets of pyjamas: one pair in plain blue cotton flannelette, and the other with a flower design all over them.
It was kind of fun going to Kmart and having things bought for me, even if it was a little embarrassing. Everybody noticed Major Heath’s Salvation Army uniform and paid more attention to us than normal.
We didn’t go to the Kmart in Westgardens Metro – we went to the one in the city. Since I came to the Refuge, I’ve only been out a few times. I like taking short walks around the neighbourhood, and once I walked as far as University Road. I’ve also been to the Westgardens Metro with Lyyssa and everybody else.
On the way, we passed a million shops and restaurants and saw all sorts of people with weird hair and wearing weird clothes. The University. The University Regiment. And just before we got there, on the left, a big park with a swimming pool shimmering in the afternoon sun.
Before bed, I order all my clothes in the bureau. My underwear drawer is my favourite, because all my underwear is brand new. My other clothes are second-hand, mostly jeans and jumpers. Oh, my shoes and watch are new – the nursing staff bought me a pair of trainers and a digital Casio as a goodbye present when I left the hospital.
I feel bad that the people at the hospital seemed to have got more attached to me than I was to them. A few of the nurses even cried when I left. It bothers me that I didn’t feel like crying. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel grateful that they’d taken care of me, or that I didn’t appreciate being given a pair of shoes and a watch. But I couldn’t feel sad about leaving.
I knew there was something else that I should feel even sadder about. But I didn’t know what.
Chapter 4
Just when I’m really getting fed up with being the new kid in this crappy place, someone else shows up to distract everyone’s attention from me, which suits me just fine.
They bring him here one evening when we’re all in the TV room. Bindi and Cinnamon are on the couch, Karen is sprawled in an armchair, and I’m lying on the floor, propped up on one elbow. Lyyssa answers the door and speaks for a few minutes to someone with the front door wide open. A blast of winter air blows into the lounge room.
‘Close the effin’ door,’ Bindi says loudly, and Cinnamon giggles.
The front door shuts and Lyyssa, pretending she didn’t hear Bindi, brings a kid into the lounge room. ‘Everyone, we have a new member of our household. This is Shane.’ We look at Shane. He drops his eyes to the floor as Lyyssa introduces each one of us.
Shane is about eight, blond, and scared-looking. He’s wearing a ski cap, and he’s rugged up with so many jumpers that his ski jacket won’t close in the front.
‘Shane, would you like to take off your jacket?’ Lyyssa asks him. He doesn’t really want to, but he thinks that this is what Lyyssa wants him to do, so he takes off his jacket and holds it tightly to his chest.
‘Maybe you’d like to watch some TV with the rest of the house,’ Lyyssa suggests. ‘I’ll take your bag up to your room. You can get settled later.’ Lyyssa picks up Shane’s duffle bag and trudges up the stairs, not noticing that there isn’t any place for Shane to sit. Shane stands there frozen, paralysed.
‘Geez, if they’re gonna send a guy to the house, couldn’t they have sent one ten years older?’ Bindi says. Once again, Cinnamon giggles at Bindi’s stupid remark.
‘You can sit over here, Shane,’ I say, as much to piss off Bindi as for any other reason. Shane slowly walks over, puts his jacket on the floor next to me, and sits cross-legged on top of it.
In two minutes, I’m silently cursing Shane and bitterly regretting my attempt to be nice. Shane smells. As if Karen wasn’t bad enough, they’ve sent us another stink bomb. Shane smells like stale farts and sweat and socks that have been worn for weeks. Where the hell did he come from, anyway?
I’ve been breathing through my mouth for five minutes when Lyyssa reappears. I raise my hand. ‘Is it okay if I go to bed now, Lyyssa?’ I think my brain is deprived of oxygen, having to breathe Shane’s miasma. At the Refuge you don’t have to ask for permission to go to bed, nor do you raise your hand before you speak.
‘Sure, Len,’ Lyyssa says. I get up and run out of t
he room, not caring that Bindi and Cinnamon are sniggering at me. I dash up the stairs and into my bedroom, closing the door behind me and taking gasps of fresh air. When my head clears, I take a towel and my robe and go down to the girls’ showers and soap myself until every centimetre of my body that was contaminated by Shane is cleansed.
Purified, I return to my room and lie on my bed. I hear Lyyssa coming up the stairs with Shane, chattering to him about house rules, fumbling with the keys to the boys’ toilet and the boys’ showers, which have been locked because there haven’t been any boys at the Refuge for a while. Then Lyyssa unlocks the door to Shane’s room and they go inside. For a few minutes, I can hear them talking, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Then Lyyssa’s voice rises. ‘Shane, you need to have a shower. Or at least a quick wash.’
‘NO!’ Shane yells.
‘Shane, this is not negotiable,’ Lyyssa says firmly. ‘You don’t have to spend an hour in the bathtub, but you must at least make an effort to be clean.’ Shane makes protesting, whimpering noises; probably Lyyssa has taken him by the arm and is trying to pull him toward the shower.
Then Shane lets out a scream that makes me hold my ears. It’s not the volume of the scream that makes me shudder; it’s the history behind that scream. You don’t even have to think very much about what it means. Why was Shane removed from whatever home he came from? Because he was abused. Sexually abused. Where was he abused? In the shower. Which is why he now wears three jumpers and a ski jacket like a protective exoskeleton and is terrified of taking his clothes off or going anywhere near a shower. Why doesn’t Lyyssa know this? Hasn’t she read Shane’s file yet?
Lyyssa must have let go of Shane, because he’s run back inside his room and slammed the door behind him.
‘Shane?’ Lyyssa says, her voice trembling. ‘Shane, I didn’t mean to scare you. If you want to lock your door, you can turn the lever right above the doorknob.’
Riggs Crossing Page 2
