Wildlife

by Fiona Wood

  Bennett House is on Slushy for the first week. Then we rotate to some other foul task. The others are Grounds (weeding), Vego (kitchen-garden duty), Community (going to do community service work in Hartsfield), and Maintenance (checking firewood supplies, painting, fence mending, cleaning the chicken coop). House is ongoing—an everyday list of tasks related to keeping our own spaces tidy, laundry done, kitchen clean, beds made, etc. Our house gets inspected for “cleanliness” and “tidiness” every morning after breakfast, which is the one meal we can have either in our house or in the dining hall.

  Slushy is disgusting and possibly a health hazard. First you have to set up all the tables—that’s the okay bit. But at the end of the meal, you have to scrape the plates—bleugh, which is a total biotoxic pile of spitty food mess—and as you do it, you divide off the vegetable scraps to compost and the meat scraps to rubbish. Holly just scraped everything anywhere and sulked when I told her not to.

  Guys and girls are not allowed to touch each other—it’s a written rule—and we are fully forbidden to have any “after dark” mingle time. We have classes and meals together, but houses and hiking groups are segregated, which oddly ignores the whole gay and lesbian question.

  Outside classes, I’ve seen Ben at close range only once. He gave me what I would call a distant or reserved smile. So, looks like it was a random hookup. Which is fine—exactly what I expected. Not a big deal. Holly said he was staring after me when I walked past. I find that hard to believe. She’s just trying to make me feel better.

  I’m too tired and a bit too sad to write home just yet. I miss them, even Charlotte. Who’d have thunk? I don’t think I fully appreciated how relaxing it is having someone I can be really mean to. It’s going to be so hard being nice all the time.

  The one facility they don’t have here is a well-padded cell where we can go and scream.

  Maybe that is what the bush is for. As well as generating oxygen and providing wildlife habitat.

  thursday 11 october

  Get me out of here. Even the earbuds don’t keep it out.

  Who got a good house, who got a crap house.

  Miss mary mack mack mack all dressed in black black black with silver buttons buttons buttons all down her back back back. She asked her mother mother mother…

  How many buttons will she have?

  Love Glee so much/hate Glee so much.

  Twelve buttons down the back of her black dress. Twelve silver discs.

  Who has been fingered/bestowed hand jobs/where, when: claims and counterclaims, idle gossip relating to others.

  If miss mary mack mack mack stood with her back back back to you against a twilight sky, it would, in just the right light, look as though she had twelve clean holes going straight through her.

  She would look two-dimensional.

  She would look incorporeal.

  Who is hot/not hot. Who is in love with whom: accusations and denials.

  A figment, a dream, a specter, a nightmare, a ghost.

  … for fifty cents cents cents to see an elephant elephant elephant jump over a fence fence fence.

  So we’re a house of virgins/what about her?/you’re joking, right?

  Miss mary mack mack mack all dressed in black black black…

  Get me out of here.

  No one is supposed to go off alone. But if I don’t take a walk and escape from everyone else’s chatter and clutter and smell and laughing and complaining, and Lou’s silence, I will lose it. I need some untangle time. And this is the closest, so “safest,” isolated spot I know. It is cold, but I’m well-rugged. Layers. Down jacket. Everyone has the same clothes, from the same outdoor supplies place; name tags are the only way of telling which are whose.

  The sun is almost down. It is prep time, but I’ve created a headache and am officially lying down in the house. Headaches usually work, particularly with male teachers. They’re scared of saying no, in case “headache” is actually “period” and they have to deal with the trauma of some gory hemorrhage in the classroom. The light falls from the sky like a sigh, deepening it from blue to lavender spiked with stars. The air is so cold and clean and eucalyptus-loaded it feels like a health treatment. And just when I can breathe easy and feel that I am finally alone, a tall, angular figure comes crashing into view.

  “Do you know what smells really good up here, Sibylla?” Michael always starts a conversation as though it simply continues on from the last time we’ve spoken. Which it does, in a way, our own twelve-year-long conversation. “The dirt; the dirt smells—rich. Ripe. Fecund.”

  “Very D. H. Lawrence.”

  “Yes, he overuses it. But, have you noticed?”

  “I have not yet smelled the dirt.” I roll and sniff. Not bad. Actually beautiful. Rich, rotty, mushroomy, deep. “It smells dark brown.”

  “Exactly.” Michael is delighted. It’s mostly nice knowing that I am Michael’s safe person—it is like being my clearest self without even having to try.

  “What would you say is a good word for it?”

  Another deep sniff. “Dirty,” I say, laughing. “Dirtastic. Dirtelicious. How’s your house? All okay?” I ask.

  “Yes. Yours? You’re with Holly?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  We are still getting to know where everyone is. There have been only a handful of desperate pleas to change, only a few deadly enemies put together. People know they have to put up with it.

  “And you’ve got Hamish—and Ben Capaldi?” I gulp on his name, hoping Michael doesn’t hear the wavering pitch straining to be casual.

  “You’re not actually going out with him, are you?” Michael asks.

  “No. Are you kidding me? Definitely not.”

  “But it is true…?”

  “Yes.” I am dying to ask whether Ben has mentioned me, or whether Michael, for the first time in his life, has tuned into any random chitchat, but I bite it.

  “It is strange timing.” He’s knocking one heel against the same bit of dirt, making a half-moon.

  “You think he kissed me because of the billboard?”

  He shrugs. “There was no kissing before the billboard.”

  “It was just a—dumb—party thing. It meant nothing.”

  Michael looks at me, into me. He knows very well that I’m saying a line I have agreed with myself is the lowest-risk-of-public-humiliation line. Just as well it is getting darker by the second.

  “Because he is not smart enough for you.”

  “He’s smart.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  “Michael, he’s got the whole grade eating out of his hand. It’s hard to know whether the girls or the boys love him more.”

  “It is a nauseating portrayal of ‘head boy in the making.’ He’s too keen to be popular.”

  “That doesn’t make him dumb. That makes him pragmatic.”

  “The decision to act dumb to be popular is dumb; therefore the guy is dumb.”

  “It’s not acting dumb; it’s more like not offending anyone.”

  “That stance offends me.”

  “He gets along with everyone—even the people in advanced math.”

  “He’s courting the Asian-nerd vote—his tactics are crudely obvious.”

  “Only to you. To me it looks more like he knows how to make people relax. He doesn’t threaten people.”

  “That’s weak.”

  “I’d call it flexible.”

  “We will see.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “No—I mean literally: we will see him at close quarters for the whole term.”

  “True.”

  “You know, Holly looks at him a lot.”

  “She looks at everyone. She looks at you.”

  “But not for long. I look back. I outstare her.”

  It’s true: Your weird friend, Holly says, why does your weird friend stare? Maybe he likes you. Shut up. Isn’t he—mentally ill or something? Just a super brain. Super weird. Stop saying it. And admit—he’s goo
d-looking. Maybe.

  “I’m still recovering from the sight of you at the junction.”

  “So am I. At least up here I don’t have to see it.”

  “Was it in any way enjoyable?”

  Good question. It was a swirl of people, darlings, makeup, heat, waiting, everyone saying fuck a lot—as noun, verb, adjective—in a casual, friendly way, and the only calm focus was Beeb, but even she spent most of the time glued to various iThings. It was the strangest day of my life, hands down—I was the center of attention, but it was also as though I weren’t there. As though I could have peeled my skin off, walked away to the side, and looked on, and no one would have noticed.

  “It was wonderful, if you enjoy being pushed, pulled, poked at, brushed, sprayed, powdered, and then kept sitting while people fiddled and adjusted the lights for about a million years. It was basically a boredom/embarrassment playoff.”

  Was it only this morning I told Holly (again, she can’t hear about it often enough) and Pippa and Tiff Simpson how glamorous it was? How the makeup artist kept her stuff in a huge three-tiered metal toolbox. How she had every single tint of Bobbi Brown foundation and mixed the colors on the back of her hand. How they had a caterer bring in delicious sushi and baby passion-fruit curd tarts and mini roast beef bagels for lunch, how the dress I had to wear was clipped and gaffer-taped behind me to make it fit better, how the fan under my hair, hand held by an assistant lying on the floor, made me stretch and stand up taller, how the hair stylist had invited me out for a ciggie break, and the makeup artist said, You’re not moving, but then took pity and told me what the best nights were at Frenzy and Catalina, as though I’d be allowed out clubbing, and wasn’t just a loser halfway through year ten.

  Both versions are disconcertingly kind of one hundred percent true.

  “It’s left you with dark eyelashes.”

  “It’s a tint. Do you have to notice everything?”

  We are heading back in the now quickly fading light.

  “Beeb—you know, godmother—said I wasn’t allowed to go into the great outdoors without getting my eyelashes tinted.”

  “Curious.”

  “Holly had her legs lasered. And armpits. And bikini line.”

  “Curiouser.” Michael is quietly astounded by the whole girl contortion around clothes, makeup, appearance. He is sane enough not to get it at all.

  “What did you do?”

  “I’ve been running a fair bit. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to come up here in a fairly fit state.”

  “More useful than hair removal. I’m starving. Is there enough stuff that looks like itself for you?”

  “Yes. But nothing appetizingly so.”

  He has always preferred food that looks like itself. For example, roast potato: yes, mashed potato: no; chicken leg: yes, chicken curry: no.

  I’ve been stomping along next to Michael like this for so long. Usually enjoying his company. Sometimes feeling a bit smothered by the intensity. Always with the background worry niggles. Is he okay? Is he taking his meds? Is he coping without meds? Is he talking to people? Do I need to “include” him? Has he been invited? Is he going too far in class? Does he need a reminder: hold something in reserve, don’t leave everyone behind?

  In kindergarten, he always said hello by holding my hand. It gave me a spurt of important grown-up feeling to be the one giving comfort. He trusted me completely, wholeheartedly. And I understood that was how it would be with us. He was someone to look after. I held his trust carefully, a little egg to protect.

  No holding hands anymore. He’s one of the biggest guys here. And fit. He needs to be, strange as he is, super brainiac that he is—he would otherwise be the ideal bully target. And he hasn’t helped things by refusing to join any sports teams. He does the bare minimum compulsory stuff, and he runs long-distance. He’s also quite content spending time alone in the gym, but he loathes the whole elite private school sports ethos, and particularly the notion of sport scholarships—that is, buying kids to win stuff that looks impressive in the school’s promotional material.

  Me? I don’t give sport a moral second thought. I don’t like it, and it doesn’t like me, either, so we leave each other alone and I do the fitness programs, the sort that don’t require speed or ball sense or a competitive spirit. Up here we get to do yoga as an option, and that is exactly my speed. Meditation usually equals sleep for me.

  He’s looking at me, having some internal struggle about whether he should say something.

  “Spill.”

  “Things will change for you now.”

  “Because of the billboard?”

  He nods, worried. “The consequences of the billboard.”

  I remember asking my mum if there was anything wrong with Michael when we started school, because by then I had registered him as being different from the other kids. She said he was very clever and a bit of a worrier. I’ve modified that diagnosis over the years to full-on genius and pathologically, sometimes cripplingly, anxious. But it’s always seemed only reasonable that someone who understands so much might worry in proportion to that understanding. Maybe that’s simplistic, but it’s how things look to me.

  sunday 14 october

  I have survived Camp Craptacular for almost a week.

  I’m supposed to start reengaging.

  With people.

  So, the people in my house. Oh, yes, because I feel such a warm community camaraderie.

  Sibylla. I like the name. My first Sibylla. She’s called Sib, mostly. She seems okay. She smiles. Maybe I’ll smile back one day. The buzzy buzz I detected is because her photo is on a giant billboard. I saw it. It’s for a perfume and either the hair and makeup artistry or some kind of CGI makes it look as though she is entangled in ivy. Her skin is very white in the photo, and in reality. And she has a dreamy, out-of-the-world look in the photo that is also pretty similar to the way she looks much of the time.

  My guess is that she is someone who likes her alone time, and there’s not much of that to be had up here.

  She is not a model as such, apparently. It was a once-er.

  She is very tall and willowy. And I honestly can’t work out if she’s beautiful or ugly. Maybe both? Certainly very interesting-looking; perhaps she’s a fine example of the French jolie laide, a cool concept if ever there was one.

  Holly, also in the house, seems to be Sibylla’s bestie.

  She is bossy, loud, and has an opinion about what everyone should be doing, and how they should look, and in Sibylla’s case, she seems to be promoting an early-days relationship with someone called Ben. Why? Not sure which one he is.

  To me, the new girl, Holly is all bristly attitude, waiting for me to make a wrong move (that won’t take long) and very prove I should like you. She is waiting for me to want her approval, to feel some fear, to long for acceptance, to crave her friendship, none of which will be happening. If she knew exactly how uninterested I am in fitting in, she’d conserve her energy.

  She is always offering her honest opinion. Brutally honest. Who’ll tell you if I don’t? Someone should point out to her that not everything needs to be said. On some topics, she could just shut up.

  If I were at all interested in engaging with this lot, I would have told her yesterday. She stopped a girl, not sure who, outside the classroom building, completely careless of who might hear, and asked her if she thought it was time for some depilatory action? De-what? this girl responded.

  Holly laughed. She made as though to walk away, but turned back and said in a loud voice, You’ve got a freaking mustache. Have a good look at yourself in the daylight, for god’s sake.

  To another girl, unfortunate enough to be sitting where Holly thought she might want to sit, she said, Shove over, what’s-your-name, Van? Truck? Car?… She was speaking to Van Uoc, the smartest girl in my math group. Ten times as smart as Holly, but so quiet and shy. Needless to say she just moved over.

  Annie looks like a big strong country lass. Only she’s not. She’s f
rom the city, south of the river, like everyone else here, except me. She seems to like bugs. She looks and sounds a bit thick. She is always telling us to eat her chocolate/use her shampoo, or whatever. Needy. Or am I too cynical? Friendly, perhaps.

  Eliza seems okay. She’s some kind of nutty fitness fiend, though. Always coming back from an extra run. And she chews gum, which may compel me to drive a stake through her heart at some stage.

  Pippa is the ultimate spoiled brat based on her worldly goods, but she also seems genuinely sweet. She might be Cartier watch and cashmere socks, super-coiffed locks and French phrases, worshipping at the memorial shrine of Alexander McQueen, but she’s a contented soul, and I suspect it has nothing much to do with the little cloud of luxury she floats on. She is the third sister in her family to come up here, and she knows the drill.

  Holly watches her extremely closely, jealous of the loot. Pippa is oblivious.

  We need a gossip away from other ears, so Holly and I make our forbidden way to the laundry/drying room. Bennett House is the closest dorm building to this utility building, and we’ve worked out that we can latch the drying-room door open late in the afternoon and escape the house via an easily unscrewed ventilation panel behind the hot-water tank in our own little Bennett House airing room. My pocket knife has already earned its keep. Our spy-movie exit plan includes getting the others to cover for us by pretending we are asleep if a teacher comes snooping, checking for teachers once outside, breathless dash to drying-room door, and suppressing explosive laughter once we get inside. It’s worth the risk of dire punishments just for the blissful absence of other people.

  While I unwrap our contraband and only slightly soggy stash—tomato and cheese sandwiches from lunchtime—Holly is straight on to her favorite topic: Ben. “You have to get him alone.”

  “I don’t think so. I can’t think of anything more embarrassing.”

  “Well, unless you completely screwed it up, he’ll probably want to kiss you again.”

  “He doesn’t even seem to recognize me.” I wasn’t kidding. I seemed as invisible as ever to him in class. And chances are I did screw the kissing up.