Riggs Crossing
Page 15
A scream jerks me out of my stupid fantasy.
‘GET OUT!’ A large blond man wearing black trousers and a white shirt is standing near the entrance to the hair salon, pointing a finger out the door. A younger, slim, dark-haired man strides angrily toward him.
‘Fine! I WILL leave!’ the younger man shouts, throwing a towel onto the front counter.
‘Your behaviour is totally unprofessional!’ The blond man has his hands on his hips.
‘What’s unprofessional is YOU and the FASCIST way you run this salon. You STEAL my clients, you DON’T pay me the bonuses I’m entitled to, and you INTENTIONALLY give me bad shifts! I’m SICK of you! You’re JEALOUS of me!’
The blond man splutters. ‘JEALOUS?’ he screeches. ‘Of YOU? You’re a non-talented suburban hairdresser! I only hired you because Ian asked me to.’
‘Well, if we’re going to talk about “non-talented suburban hairdressers” we might start with Ian, mightn’t we?’ the younger man smirks, craning his neck and aiming his voice toward the back of the salon. ‘We all know why you keep HIM on!’
‘LEAVE NOW OR I’LL CALL SECURITY!’
The younger dark-haired man flounces toward the lift, trying to look triumphant, but I can see that he’s about to cry. Without stopping to think, I run after him and we go into the lift together. He punches ‘G’ savagely and the doors of the lift close.
I look at his nametag. ‘Derrykk’. Yep, two r’s, two k’s, and a y.
I remember Scott, the physiotherapist. Like I do whenever I feel a little twinge in my shoulder.
Fortunately, no one gets in the lift on our journey down. As we whoosh down seven floors, Derrykk starts to cry silently, tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘Are you all right?’ I ask him, just as the lift arrives at ground level and the doors open.
Derrykk looks down at me, manages a smile, and pats me on the shoulder. ‘Don’t go into hairdressing, Little One,’ he chokes. ‘It’ll break your heart.’ Then he runs for the Elizabeth Street exit, breaking into a wail of sorrow that makes people turn and look as he heads through the door.
The doors of the lift shut by themselves. I’m standing in the lift wondering what to do, then I remember that I wanted to check out Level 2 for some casual clothes. I find a black long-sleeved T-shirt marked down to $19.99 on the sale rack.
Chapter 38
I leave Llewellyn’s by the Castlereagh Street exit, making sure I catch the bus in time to get back to the Refuge before dinner. We have to sign out and sign back in, and if you don’t come back when you’re supposed to, Lyyssa has to keep a closer eye on you. I don’t like anyone keeping me on a lead, so it’s easier just to follow the rules.
On the bus, I remove the tags from the shirt and despite the heat I put it on over the T-shirt I’m wearing. When I get off the bus, I find a rubbish bin and throw away the tags. The Llewellyn’s shopping bag is folded neatly inside my backpack, where I can get it up to my room without anyone seeing it and then use it as a dirty clothes bag.
I check my reflection in the window before I open the front door. I hope no one notices I’m wearing a new shirt.
‘. . . and I just told him, “I’ve only done that twice in my whole life, so don’t you lay that on me”.’
I don’t know this voice. I don’t want to know this voice. It’s a whiny, reedy, nasty, ill-bred voice.
‘And he says some rubbish about stuff that some other girl did and I got blamed for, and that’s when I picked up the chair and threw it at him.’
I stop at the entrance to the lounge room. Karen is sitting on the couch, staring at the new girl with her mouth open. Shane is sitting next to Karen, staring with his mouth closed and a worried look in his eyes. Cinnamon is sitting in the lounge chair, watching the new girl with barely suppressed contempt.
The new girl is perched on the edge of Clementine, swollen with pride at her recital of whacking some juvenile justice officer or dickhead social worker with a chair. She’s about my age, with mousey hair, teeth with spaces in between them, and mean little blue eyes.
Lyyssa is standing rigidly next to the TV, a smile frozen on her face, obviously wondering what the hell to do with this loud, stupid nutcase. I can hear Jo in the dining room, tapping away on her laptop.
‘Len!’ Lyyssa cries, like she’s drowning and I’m the surf lifesaver. ‘We have a new member of the household. Allie is explaining why she came to live with us.’
‘Sounds real interesting. Sorry I missed it.’ This comes out before I’ve had a chance to think it over. Karen and Shane just keep staring. Cinnamon lets out a tiny snort of laughter.
‘They put me in Seggro for three days,’ Allie says proudly. Seggro? This trashy little Allie is a wanker. Even I know that Seggro only happens in real jails, not kiddie detention centres or group homes. It’s short for ‘segregation’, and means they put you in a cell by yourself because you’re violent or uncontrollable.
‘I’ll put you in Seggro if you ever sit on my couch again.’
‘Len!’ Lyyssa gasps. Allie’s mouth snaps shut. Cinnamon hides her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with laughter. Karen and Shane have dimly realised that something’s up and are giggling vaguely, even though they haven’t really understood what’s funny. Jo comes to the doorway and stares.
‘Len,’ Lyyssa repeats sternly. ‘That couch is for everyone’s use. And that’s no way to speak to a newcomer. I’d like you to apologise to Allie.’ She looks around. ‘Cinnamon, Karen, Shane, can you please help me in the kitchen? Allie and Len, please come join us in the dining room in five minutes.’
Lyyssa walks briskly from the room and Jo retreats with her, followed by Karen and Shane, both of whom can’t stop laughing and will probably keep laughing all the way through dinner. Cinnamon doesn’t look at me as she leaves the room, but her face has just a trace of a smile on it, something I haven’t seen since Bindi left.
That leaves me standing in the middle of the room and Allie sitting on Clementine. I shop at Llewellyn’s. I’m not sharing Clementine with some ugly little mutt who might have crabs. I ball my hands into fists and take a step closer to Allie.
Allie leans forward and looks me up and down. Her mean little eyes sharpen onto my new shirt. ‘Nice shirt. What size is it?’
What she means is, I’m going to take your shirt.
‘My size,’ I say in a low voice, taking another step toward her. ‘Now get off my couch and don’t ever go near it again.’
Allie is out of the room in a flash.
Chapter 39
Nothing happened during dinner. Allie was seated across the table from me, and I stared her down every time she looked at my way. I’ll keep doing this for a couple of days, then ease off. But every once in a while, I’ll stare her down again.
I’m in my room, sitting on my bed. I’ve decorated it as much as I can in Leo colours, orange and gold. At the Westgardens Metro I bought a couple of gold candle holders, and put peppermint-scented candles in them. There’s a rule about not lighting candles or cigarettes or joints or bushfires in the Refuge, but Lyyssa and I have an agreement that I am allowed to light candles provided that I never light more than two and never set them next to anything flammable or put them any place they might be knocked over. I’ve put the candles on the mantelpiece above where the fireplace used to be.
I used to have my books on the mantelpiece. Now I put them in a small bookshelf that I found in someone’s garbage and spray-painted a saffron colour. And at a fabric store at the Westgardens Metro, I found four metres of sheer orange fabric threaded through with gold. It was on the remnant table and only cost $12.99. I draped it over the fixtures that hold the window blinds, so that the fabric hangs like a curtain.
‘I’M NOT WEARING ANY PYJAMAS! I SLEEP IN MY CLOTHES, YOU STUPID COW!’ Allie screams at Lyyssa.
Whoever decided Allie should come to the Refuge made a blue. She’s way too crazy for this place. I don’t think even Major Heath will be able to do anything with her.
It’s all right to be mean to people, even to hit people, if they really need to be taught a lesson.
I close my eyes.
Daddy drives us into town. We stop at the Post Office and get the package with the books Daddy ordered for me. The package comes from Sydney. Once we’re in the car again I take Daddy’s bowie knife from the glove compartment and cut the strong tape so I can open the package. There are some books that I asked him to get me, and the next volume of Self-paced Mathematics that Daddy says I have to finish before I can have a 50cc motorbike. There’s also The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for Daddy, which weighs more than all of my books put together. Every once in a while Daddy gets one thick book and spends the rest of the year reading it.
We park outside the bottle shop and I leave the books on the car seat.
‘G’day,’ the man behind the counter says. He’s reading a girlie magazine, the kind that shows ladies with huge, perfectly round boobs that Daddy says are really fake and ugly.
I follow Daddy as he heads toward the back of the store to get a slab of VB. We’ve reached the coolers when the bell on the door tinkles and another customer walks in.
‘Small bottle of Johnny Walker Red, thanks.’
It’s Terry. The blond mullet bloke we went down to Sydney with, the one who introduced Daddy to that loser with the bathroom scale.
Daddy cut Terry dead after that, and so did Ernie and so did some other people in Riggs Crossing. Then, a big patch of Daddy’s crop got ripped. It wasn’t too hard to work out who stole it. Terry’s car ran a lot better and had two new front tyres the week after Daddy’s patch got ripped. And the work on Terry’s car hadn’t been done in Riggs Crossing. How did Terry get the money to get those repairs done? And why didn’t he have the repairs done at Murphy the Mechanic’s in town? It stuck out like dog’s balls.
Daddy stops dead in his tracks when he hears Terry’s voice. ‘Stay here,’ he says to me, then strides to the front of the shop.
I don’t move an inch from where Daddy told me to stay, but I step onto a box so I can see over the cardboard display with a fake palm tree advertising a free glass with each bottle of Kokomo’s coconut liqueur.
‘Terry,’ Daddy says loudly.
Terry turns white when he sees Daddy. ‘Hey, Mick!’ He forces a smile. ‘Long time no see!’
Daddy grabs Terry by his jacket and throws him into the palm tree display, sending some bottles crashing to the floor. They roll around, but none of them breaks. The clerk looks up from his magazine, annoyed. ‘Hey, mind the stock!’ he says.
‘Never mind the stock. I’ll pay for whatever his head breaks,’ Daddy yells. He boots Terry in the ribs, pulls him up, punches him in the mouth, then drags him to the door and tosses him out onto the pavement. I creep toward the front of the shop so I can see them. Daddy is crouching over Terry as he lies groaning on the footpath. ‘You rip my patch again, you’re dead meat,’ Daddy hisses.
The clerk puts the Johnny Walker in a paper bag and takes it outside. ‘Um, that’s seventeen dollars for the whiskey,’ he says to Terry.
‘It’s on me,’ Daddy says, reaching for his wallet. ‘Best seventeen bucks I ever spent.’
I open my eyes and look at the ceiling for a minute. I wonder if Lyyssa would let me paint the ceiling gold. If she says yes, how would I paint it so that the paint doesn’t drip onto the floor?
‘I TOLD YOU I’M NOT WEARING ANY PYJAMAS! TAKE YOUR PINK POOFTER PYJAMAS AND SHOVE THEM UP YOUR ARSE!’
Allie’s door slams, then Lyyssa and Jo try to talk to Allie through the door before they give up and go back downstairs.
Allie’s not really angry. She’s just working out how far she can push Lyyssa.
I turn onto my side and stare into the flame of one candle. Yes, Allie will need to be taught a lesson regularly. But her ribs won’t get broken, like four of Terry’s did.
Chapter 40
I’m the only one at home when Cinnamon leaves.
Even without Bindi’s bad influence, Cinnamon still isn’t doing well at school and wants to drop out. The principal, DOCS, Lyyssa, and what’s left of Cinnamon’s family all agree that Cinnamon is mature enough to quit high school, providing that she does some TAFE course to ensure that she learns some way of making a living without going back to the stripping and petty theft she was into before she was brought to the Refuge. It’s arranged that she’ll study hairdressing at TAFE and live with her elderly auntie, one of the few members of her family she can stand to be around.
How do I know all this? Cinnamon doesn’t bother talking to me, and Lyyssa would never violate someone’s privacy by telling me. I haven’t been doing any more snooping in Lyyssa’s office, either. In a place like this, you just breathe in knowledge like this, like you breathe in air or someone else’s fart smell, whether you want to or not. You can hold your nose, but you’ve still got to breathe the same air in through your mouth.
Where I lived with Daddy, it was the same. Everybody’s private business was an open secret. Everybody knew who was growing, selling, or dealing marijuana or other stuff, but no one said anything.
Selling and dealing aren’t the same thing, by the way. If you have a large amount of marijuana that you’ve grown yourself and you sell it, then you’re a seller. But a dealer is something totally different. A dealer buys drugs from lots of different sellers and then re-sells them to whoever he can. You’d never want to be a dealer, because too many people, hundreds of people, know what you’re doing. Most dealers are sleazy people with no ethics. They’ll cheat you, or give you up to the cops in a minute to save their own skin. And a ripper is even worse. A ripper is someone who steals someone else’s crop. A ripper is probably the lowest form of life on the planet, except for a rock spider.
The day Cinnamon leaves, I’m in the lounge room watching some trash TV before I get started on my homework. Karen is at retard school, Allie is at Junior Crim school, and Lyyssa is with Shane at the doctor’s. Cinnamon is waiting in the front hall, sitting on top of her largest suitcase. She’s managed to assemble a collection of old leather suitcases, some brown, some black. She’s wearing her necklace, a short-sleeved black T-shirt with lace at the sleeves and neck, a long flowered skirt, and Doc Martens. Since Lyyssa isn’t home, she lights a cigarette and flicks the ash out the window into a shrub. After a while, I hear a car coming, so I get up and look out the window. A young man in a new Gemini has pulled up in front of the Refuge. He’s good-looking, dressed in a flannelette shirt and tight black jeans.
Cinnamon opens the door for him. ‘Hey, Gazza,’ I hear her say, without much enthusiasm.
‘Hey, Sis,’ Gazza says, in the same tone. ‘I’ll get your bags.’
They load up the car, and then Cinnamon comes back in and goes upstairs to check her room, just in case she forgot anything. She comes back down with a bottle of styling gel and a black beaded purse. She glances into the lounge room and sees me watching her. ‘Bye,’ she says gracelessly, and leaves without waiting for me to reply.
Chapter 41
The Refuge feels wrong with Cinnamon gone. I listen for her music but it’s not there. Shane and Karen’s stupid kiddie music and TV shows irritate me even more than usual. I look at the way people dress on the street and they’re always wearing an ugly colour or awful shoes. Even posh women look like they’re trying too hard with their clothes and jewellery and handbags. Cinnamon could do better than any of them on bugger-all pocket money and stuff picked out of Salvation Army donations.
Cinnamon wasn’t my friend.
I used to have friends.
Avril’s driving one of the commune’s cars even though she’s only fifteen. Megan’s in the front seat and I’m in the back with Kevvie.
I was sleeping over at Megan’s. Her dad had to take the dog to the vet, because he was cutting bracken with a brush hoo
k and nicked the dog by accident. Mr Wilson looked about to cry. He lifted poor Bluey into the front of the truck like a baby and roared down the dirt road.
Avril is Megan’s friend from school. She heard Mr Wilson’s truck going past the commune and called Megan. A bunch of parents at the commune went off for a two-day trail ride, so the kids are having a party. ‘Sweet,’ Megan said. ‘Dad won’t be back for hours, he’ll get pissed at the pub after he gets Bluey fixed up.’
‘Hey,’ Avril says to me. ‘Haven’t seen you at school.’
‘I’m home-schooled,’I say.
‘We’ve known each other since kindy,’ Kevvie grins. ‘What’s your old man up to these days?’
I shrug. Kevvie knows what my old man is up to, the same as his old man.
‘That necklace is so cool,’Avril says.
I feel myself blush. ‘Thanks.’ It’s a silver chain, with small charms hanging from it. A heart, a peace sign, a unicorn, a cross, a star. Daddy’s girlfriend Aleta makes necklaces. She made this one specially for me before she left for Sydney to sell them at the markets. The charms are all supposed to bring good luck, but the unicorn is special to me. When I want something really badly, I hold onto him and make a wish.
Kevvie’s got taller since I saw him last year. He smells like freshly mown grass and Lynx body spray.
Avril and Megan chatter about school all the way to the commune. Kevvie and I just listen. We drive down the mountain, turn onto another dirt road. Kemboja, the wooden sign by the broken-down gate reads.
‘Kemboja,’ Daddy snorts every time he drives me here for a birthday party or something. ‘That’s Aboriginal for “place of many bludgers”.’