Dreaming of Amelia

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  So you want to hear from me — Toby Mazzerati — not some Irish convict dude named Tom Kincaid who lived here in 1804.

  Hence, please disregard the above, and I will start my answer now.

  Thanks for your time.

  2.

  The KL Mason Patterson Scholarship File

  A Scholarship Enabling Two (2) Students to Attend Ashbury High for their Final Year of High School including Tuition Fees, Uniform Allowance, and Monthly Stipend. The Two (2) Students must demonstrate Financial Hardship and Outstanding Potential.

  A Bonus of $25,000 each to be paid to the Two (2) Scholarship Winners upon the completion of their Final Year of High School.

  Memo

  (By email)

  To:

  All Members of the KL Mason Patterson Trust Fund Committee

  From:

  Chris Botherit and Roberto Garcia

  Re:

  KL Mason Patterson Scholarship Shortlist

  Dear Committee Members,

  We’re delighted to announce that we’ve narrowed the field to a tiny shortlist of FIVE applicants!!

  The five students’ names are:

  David Peter Montgomery

  Riley Terence Smith

  Sura Eve Bajinksi

  Xavier Paul Simeon

  Amelia Grace Damaski

  Supporting documentation for each student, including applicant essays, references, school records, etc, attached.

  So! Next step is for the committee to interview these five contenders. Look over the material, get back to us with your comments or questions, and we’ll set up the interviews.

  All the best,

  Chris Botherit (English Coordinator, Ashbury High)

  (with Rob Garcia (History Coordinator & Drama Teacher, Ashbury High))

  PS Two of the applicants on this shortlist have clearly had some troubled times. As you will see from the attached, the troubles have manifested themselves in ways that are a bit startling! But you’ll also see that they have lots of ‘potential’ (in an unexpected area . . .), suffer great financial hardship, have very persuasive reference letters — and Roberto and I are keen to meet with them! So, they’ve made the cut!

  Dear Mr Botherit and Mr Garcia,

  Re: (Sir Kendall Laurence) Mason Patterson Scholarship — Shortlist

  Thank you for your memo.

  To begin I’d like to quibble with your tone. Shouldn’t we be more formal? This is, after all, the inaugural year of the KL Mason Patterson Scholarship. Does not the late Sir Kendall deserve rather more respect? Phrases such as ‘narrowed the field’ and ‘made the cut’ have surely been lifted direct from the cinematographic films.

  And, truly, are so many exclamation points quite the thing?

  (As a dear friend of the late Sir Kendall, I can assure you there was little he loathed so much as the cinematographic film and the exclamation point.)

  Now, I have studied the papers relating to the applicants David, Sura and Xavier. What a marvellous little trio! Such diligent young things — and all seem to me to come from good, quiet, respectable stock. They are Ashbury through and through. Indeed, I can imagine each of them walking the corridors in my own glory days at Ashbury. I am sure they will enchant us at the interviews.

  However, I am bewildered as to why you have included the students named Riley and Amelia. What I see here is not ‘manifestations of trouble’, Mr Botherit. It is trouble. Through and through. Either you are much less astute than I have been led to believe — and I say that with all the respect you are due — or you are making a sort of a ‘joke’. If so, the joke is in very bad taste, and I assure you, Sir Kendall would not have laughed.

  Yours faithfully,

  Constance Milligan (Associate Chair, Ashbury Alumni Association)

  Chris and Rob,

  What are you on?

  Riley Smith and Amelia Damaski?

  Delete them from the shortlist and find another two, pronto.

  Cheers,

  Bill Ludovico (Ashbury School Principal/ Economics Teacher)

  Dear Mr Botherit and Mr Garcia,

  Remind me how you talked me into joining this committee.

  I guess Sura and Xavier would be the obvious choices. They seem scarily smart. And desperately dull. I don’t especially want to meet them. Do we really have to meet them?

  Yours,

  Patricia Aganovic (Parent Representative 1)

  Chris and Rob,

  My two cents’ worth:

  The one named Sura, now she sounds perfect. I can’t tell you what an accomplished violinist like that would do for the school orchestra.

  (Apparently, Riley has taught himself to play the drums. A self-taught percussionist! So is my two-year-old. Say no more.)

  Kind regards,

  Lucy Wexford (Music Coordinator, Ashbury High)

  Mr Botherit and Mr Garcia,

  Constance, once again.

  Forgive this scribbled ‘postscript’, but it occurs to me that it would be the height of foolishness to keep Riley and Amelia on our shortlist for a moment longer. According to the Scholarship Charter, we are obliged to interview all students on the shortlist. Ergo, at present we have to interview them! We will have to be in the same room as them! They will see our faces!

  (No doubt, they will learn our names too, for good manners will oblige us to introduce ourselves.)

  I urge you to remove them with haste.

  Yours sincerely,

  Constance Milligan

  Mr B and Mr G,

  Guessing that Amelia and Riley are included for humour value?

  David, Sura and Xavier sound okay.

  Although, if any of those three come to Ashbury their marks will be off the charts. My boy Toby’s rank will slip and, from what he tells me, if it slips any more it’ll end up in pieces on the concrete.

  Could you find a couple of ‘Applicants with Outstanding Potential’ who aren’t likely to live up to their Outstanding Potential for a few years yet?

  Cheers,

  Jacob Mazzerati (Parent Representative 2)

  Mr Bothersome and Mr Gracias,

  I write with urgent haste. It is I, Constance again — by my nightlight — at midnight — for I have just awoken from a dreadful nightmare, dreadful! and I have no choice but to write to you at once!

  I have seen them! In my dream! It was those applicants, Riley and Amelia — oh, they were wicked, monstrous, satanic creatures — miscreants! — they had sprung, fully formed, from the loins of —

  Please hearken to my words:

  In the dream, we were interviewing them. Riley had taken the form of a great hairy ape, and Amelia was a little black viper. (She had wrapped herself around the back of that bright red chair, the one that dear Patricia Aganovic favours at our committee meetings.) And do you know what they did? Why, that ape and that viper, that pair of vicious reprobates, they spent the entire interview STUDYING US ALL! Oh, their quick, cunning eyes were busy staring and staring at us! (No doubt, they were valuing our jewellery and our clothes and the quality of our haircuts! And I myself, in this dream (and in real life, if you can credit it), had just got a new perm and rinse — it keeps my spirits up — AND I was wearing my good pearl necklace and my great aunt’s ruby rings!)

  Quite reasonably, I asked a simple question: ‘What of your parents? What do they do?’

  Well, they laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Such hideous, horrible, howling laughter!

  Then Riley, the ape, changed form and became a nasty little squirrel with blood-red eyes. And Amelia, the viper, turned into a sort of leaky fountain pen and spilled all over the floor, and there I was with my good mop and bucket, the expensive mop with the fancy handle that I use on the floorboards in my —

  But that is incidental.

  What is important is this! D’you not see it? The dream was a WARNING. And we MUST PAY HEED. If we interview these two, each of us will find ourselves secretly WEIGHED as a potential target for their wicked, sche
ming ways!

  And worse, what do you suppose will happen, pray, when they miss out on the scholarship? Why, hell will have no fury! The vengeance they will wreak — It is THEN that we will see their truly hideous — I can scarcely grasp this pen for —

  For, do you not understand? They will have seen our faces. They will know our names.

  Strike them from the shortlist at once.

  Yours,

  Constance Milligan

  3.

  Tobias George Mazzerati

  Student No: 8233555

  If you could just ease your way out of the nineteenth century, and back to modern times?

  Back, in actual fact, to a couple of weeks before the summer holidays last year.

  Cos that’s when my dad had his tennis buddies round.

  Thursday night and my feet’re up, cold pizza, rain outside, TV bright like it’s superkeen tonight, when a tennis shoe hits the back of my head.

  I turn around and there’s Frankenstein.

  Laughing his arse off at me, on account of the direct hit to my head.

  I kid you not: Frankenstein standing in my living room.

  Couple of his monster buddies, too. Big sweaty shadows in the twilight-fading room.

  ‘Toby!’ go the monster buddies. (That’s their way of saying hi.)

  ‘Tobias,’ says Frankenstein — that’s his way.

  You’d think his accent might have faded (like the twilight), cause he’s been in this country 20 years, but no — ‘Tobias,’ says Frankenstein, accent smooth and sweet, ‘you still have leetle ping pongs for balls?’

  In one smooth move I had his shoe up off the floor and hurtling high speed towards his neck.

  He took it from the air and let it drop.

  ‘What happened to your tennis game?’ I go.

  All three monsters stand there looking at me; sound of rain outside.

  None of us blinked.

  Next thing my dad’s there, handing out beers. ‘I’m thinking a pasta,’ he says. ‘Whaddya say, boys?’

  Skinny monster goes, ‘That one you do with the olives?’

  Fat monster goes, ‘And the anchovy fillets?’

  And Frankenstein: ‘You kick ass, my friend!’

  Frankenstein’s real name is Roberto Garcia.

  Also known as a buddy of my dad’s. They met at this winetasting course my parents did, back when my parents were an item. Roberto Garcia was running the course.

  Turns out, by spooky chance, he’s my History teacher now. Gets my dad onto school committees too. (He has Frankensteinesque powers of persuasion.)

  Anyhow, this particular night, tennis rained out, big plates of pasta, monster glasses of red wine, hangin’ with Dad’s buddies, the stereo blasting out their favourite toons — I played them some sets of my own — I’m a superstar DJ is what I am, in my spare time — and they started off ready to be full of mock and scorn but ended up kind of nodding along, eyebrows jumping with the beat, now and then making that face. Lips turned down, head tilted sideways: Huh, who’d have thought it, this ain’t bad.

  So I’m taking a break some point that night, nice and sleepy — Dad and his fat buddy shootin’ some pool, skinny buddy frowning at the stereo (trying to replicate my DJ success) (no chance), when Frankenstein lands his big arse on the couch, shoving my legs to the floor at the same time, and gets me with a face full of garlic-red-wine breath.

  Folks, he truly is one mother of a monster. Big acne-scarred face, nose like a landslide, hairiest arms and legs you ever saw so you’d think he was a mountain goat in his spare time, but — if you will forgive a bit of sentiment please — also the nicest guy in the world.

  And this is the night when the story begins.

  Let’s just say, the short version is, Frankenstein recalled he was my History teacher.

  ‘Tobias,’ he says, ‘Toby, my boy, you wish for an idea for your History project — you wish maybe to start during this summer?’

  I’ll tell you what he meant:

  He meant: Toby, my boy, your marks are running down the gutter to the sewers of the earth. Your future, my boy, is a flying fox strung up in electrical wires. Yes, you’re a superstar DJ, my boy, but your future is a maggot in a chunk of rotting cheese.

  That’s what he meant.

  But he’s a nice guy like I said, so he didn’t use those words.

  ‘Roberto,’ I said, ‘I wish.’

  He’d been hangin’ with his homeboys down the local history club, he said. Some guy there had found some old papers in a termite-rotting blanket chest.

  ‘The originals,’ says Roberto with that shrug he always does, like he thinks he’s a South American sex god, when in fact he’s a big ole ugly Frankenstein, ‘the originals, we give to the Mitchell Library, naturally. But I have copies. You can look at the —’

  He gets a bunch of papers from his briefcase. They’re the letters belonging to a guy named Tom Kincaid. Once lived right here in Castle Hill. The letters tell a story, and it’s true. That’s the way of history I guess.

  You’re yawning, folks, I can see your drooping eyes.

  You’re thinking timelines, dates, import/export, sealing, whaling, sextant, compass, let me quietly die of boredom, let me slip so far in my chair that my chin smacks the edge of the desk and my teeth go through my tongue.

  You’d prefer the names and sexual preferences of my cousins and their kids.

  Or the tragic tale of my parents’ splitting up a few years back.

  Or the story of Riley and Amelia, scholarship kids who came to my school this last year.

  Too bad.

  By the time Riley and Amelia started at my school, I was deep into the Tom-and-Maggie story.

  It’s blood, gore, betrayal, torture, murder — plenty of murder. And it’s kind of a love story, too.

  Wake up and I’ll tell you the story.

  Riley T Smith

  Student No: 8233569

  Three years later and my fist’s in the air at the same door.

  The fist hits a gust of moving red and rushing ponytail. The fist hits Amelia’s voice: ‘What was that?’

  ‘Blank it,’ I tell her.

  My hands are on her chest. I’m moving her back into her room.

  ‘Who were those people? What was that place?’

  She means the new private school where we started that day.

  ‘Soak it in bleach for half an hour.’

  I’m moving her into her room. My elbow juts back to slam the door.

  Those wild, crazed eyes of hers can change to moonshine softness in a doorslam.

  Her skin is as pale as watermelon sucked free of its juices.

  That’s the steel-grey desk, that’s the wardrobe, the bed, that’s her giant stuffed cow, her guitar. Her bag spilling sheet music and water bottles. That’s her hands, cheekbones, lips, that’s the space behind her knees.

  I love her bare legs from a distance. When she’s standing by a pool. When she’s facing the water, thinking. Her legs are as white as watermelon rind, veined with blue from cold. There’s that H shape behind her knees. The H that trembles softly with the swimming water cold.

  Or when she swings in the park, when she sits on the swing in a short, short dress, and she pumps her bare legs, pumps all those muscles in her pale, slender legs. You watch from behind and you can see the long hair flying. She holds so tight that her knuckles turn dark pink.

  She never wears makeup.

  She wears this khaki cap sometimes, and the cap stays on her head even when she tips her face backward to the breeze. She puts her ponytail through the gap at the back. That’s how it stays on. The ponytail flies free and holds the cap.

  And there’s that H behind her knees, stretching and contracting, stretching and contracting while she swings.

  You know when somebody pushes you on a swing? The thud of their hands on the small of your back. You swing through the air then you spin back down and there’s the thud of their hands pushing you higher. The hands are there
to help you. They want to push you higher. They want to make you fly.

  But there’s the pressing of the hands on the small of your back, there’s the force, there’s the thud of their hands.

  Don’t ever push me.

  Emily Melissa-Anne Thompson

  Student No: 8233521

  How did I know it was they?

  This, I cannot explain.

  Except to say that it must have been one of those previous sentiments of doom.

  Anyhow, there they were! In the doorway of the Year 12 common room. At that very moment, the room lit up with lightning. And for a split end of time, I think I saw Riley and Amelia laugh! Their faces seemed to crack in two with laughter! Sudden, howling, shrieking, horrifying laughter! (No doubt it was also demonic.)

  Perchance it was my imagination. I do have a hyperthyroid in my imagination so who knows. Anyway, before I could be sure, the lightning was gone and the room was dim again.

  And there they stood. Riley and Amelia. Not laughing at all. Just looking calm.

  Their eyes wandered the room.

  They both put one foot forward and paused.

  The air was silent. Every person in the room had stopped breathing.

  In fact, the blood had stopped pumping in my veins. (Which was death-defying conduct on my part.)

  There was an insufferable sense of waiting: a sense of terrible suspense. As if Riley and Amelia were lions, and we were a ménage à trois of lively, prancing deer.

  The lions were stalking the deer. Which of us would they devour?

  (Oh! Who could have predicted? If only I knew then what I know now!!)

  Riley and Amelia did not enter. They turned at exactly the same moment — and they walked away . . .

  Why?

  Was it that they knew, even then, that they did not belong? Did they sense the fear, and wish to torment a little longer?

  Or was it simply that the bell had rung forth for the end of recess? So they had to go to their next class. I suppose it might have been that.