Maybe we need more time. That’s what my friends say. I’m not so sure. Now, whenever I picture my mother, I see her all those years ago, when I was a child. I think of her kind face and warm hands, and the certainty of her love. I want her to call me—part of me will always want that—only now I’m not sure what it is I want from her and whether I need it anymore.
‘Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca . . . Why do I get the feeling you’re only here because you’ve been found out?’
Sitting behind the large desk, Mr Pegg has his hands clasped around the back of his head. In the corner, Miss Lacey leans against the windowsill, the sleeves of her polar fleece pushed up to her elbows. It is so very quiet in the office; even the birds outside in the trees are still.
‘I was going to come,’ I mumble, gazing into my lap.
I sense his eyes boring into me. ‘But Briohny came forward straight away. Why didn’t you?’
I look up. Because I’m not a vindictive cow. ‘Because I was scared,’ I say.
Mr Pegg leans forward, his elbows clunking against the desk. ‘The fact remains that you were an accessory.’
The air around me feels suddenly feels viscous. ‘I was just going along for a look,’ I mumble. ‘I know it was wrong, I really do. I just . . . I don’t know . . . wasn’t thinking of the consequences.’
‘Something you’ve struggled with all year, wouldn’t you say?’
Mr Pegg swivels his chair to face the window. There isn’t much to see—just the blur of trees—and he swivels back around.
‘I’m going to suspend you for four days,’ he says. ‘But you’ll serve the suspension internally, sleeping in a tent outside the dining hall. This also means you’ll miss half of the Final Hike, though you can rejoin your group at the end of the third day.’
It isn’t a surprise, but when the sentence is delivered I sag in the chair as if I’ve been winded. Tears pool in my eyes. Please, not the Final. Please, not after everything—all that sweat and agony—don’t take that away from me.
‘Think yourself lucky,’ Mr Pegg, says almost gently. ‘The others are suspended for a whole week.’ He lets out a loud sigh. ‘I’m going to call your father now. Something tells me that’ll be worse than missing the hike.’
~
Outside the office the sun shines in the wide blue sky and the air smells of freshly cut grass. It’s the exact smell I remember from the morning I left home with Mum.
Miss Lacey follows me out onto the verandah. I scramble down the steps and cross the road, hoping that she’ll get the hint that I don’t feel like talking.
‘Hey,’ she calls.
I keep walking, ignoring her repeated calls. But she lunges from behind, pulling me into a fierce hug. A sound makes its way out of my mouth—half a cry, half a snort—and I try to pull away, struggling against all the shame and anger that is bubbling up in my throat. But I soon give in, wrapping arms around her waist. She is all skin and bone beneath her polar fleece.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It was a mistake.’
Miss Lacey pushes me away, as roughly as she held me. ‘Breaking into someone’s house isn’t just a mistake,’ she says. ‘You do understand that, right?’
I nod miserably.
She brings her hands to her face and sighs. ‘Do you know how lucky you are, Bec, to have these opportunities? I just hope you can learn from this. That you can change your behaviour and become a better, more honest person. Otherwise you’re going to grow up to be an adult no one likes very much.’ She tilts her head, scrutinising me just as she had the first afternoon in the dorm. ‘I’m not saying this to be cruel, you know.’
Long shadows stretch across the road. Miss Lacey kicks at a piece of quartz and it skittles to the verge. ‘What a way to end the year,’ she murmurs.
I wipe my eyes with my sleeve. Miss Lacey is no longer looking at me but somewhere far off. There are lines around her mouth. She doesn’t seem so youthful now, as her shoulders slump forward and the gravel grinds beneath her heavy tread. And I wish, with sudden, powerful intensity, that this year could have been different; that we could have been friends after all. But it’s too late now, too much has gone wrong, and I have been too callous, too thoughtless, even though buried beneath all these hard feelings is something far more complicated, something much like love.
~
Simone sits on the front steps, banging her hiking boots together, dried mud showering from them like snow. Outer tents and blue japaras hang over the banister. The drying room door has been flung open for the first time since Sarah left, while pegged to the washing line sleeping bags and mats air in the warm breeze.
I slump on the end of my bed. There’s a curious energy in the house, cautious and constrained, like it was pulsing beneath the floorboards. So it has come to this, I think bitterly: watching on, uselessly, as everyone else prepares for the Final Hike.
In the corner of the dorm Briohny clutches her teddy bear, sobbing. A few beds down, Portia is folding clothes into a bag—to take home, I suppose, on her suspension.
‘Do you think you could shut up?’ she snaps.
‘Don’t blame me for this,’ Briohny wails. ‘We would have been caught anyway.’
Portia shakes her head. ‘You stupid bitch, he was never going to call the police!’
‘But he said . . .’
‘It was a threat! To flush us out. And you fell for it.’
Portia tosses a T-shirt on the floor. Her eyes are red and I wonder if she has been crying too. It never crossed my mind that the Final might have meant as much to her as it does to me.
‘Do you honestly think the school would call the police and risk it getting in the papers?’ she says.
Briohny cries some more. When she’s done she stares vacantly across the dorm. ‘My dad is going to kill me,’ she says. ‘I mean really kill me.’
‘All our parents are going to kill us,’ Portia mutters.
‘I never thought he’d make us miss the hike.’
‘Well,’ says Portia, glancing towards me, ‘not all of us are. Remind me, Bec: how exactly did you manage to only get an internal?’
Such a question, pitched to trap me, might have rattled me before. But I’m not afraid anymore, not of Portia or Briohny or their power in the house.
‘I didn’t go inside,’ I say. ‘I stood on lookout—ask Briohny if you don’t believe me. I was still an accessory . . . Well, that’s what Mr Pegg called me.’
‘God,’ Briohny sniffs. ‘You’d think we’d gone Reservoir Dogs on them.’
She lies back across her bed, running a hand through her hair, which needs a wash. After a while she pulls out her tuck box and rummages around for some beef jerky, ripping open the packet and stuffing strips of it into her mouth.
~
I hear the rest of the school leave for the Final. I don’t get up for early breakfast to say goodbye to my group, or wish them luck. I know I should, but I can’t bring myself to leave my tent, which has grown hot and soupy as the sun peeked through the wisps of fairy-floss cloud.
Hunger eventually drives me outside and I’m surprised to find another girl waiting out the front of the dining hall. Her name is Amy, and she’s from Orange House: it turns out she had also joined Portia and Briohny on an excursion to Miss Constantine’s.
We spend the day washing the fleet of Jeeps. Amy doesn’t say much. It is hot again and we are both sweating hard by mid-morning. I wear a wide-brimmed hat, but Amy’s head is bare; I can already see the first bloom of burn on her scalp. After lunch she complains to Mr Connolly, the assistant supervising us, that she isn’t feeling well and asks if she can go to the nurse.
‘Sure,’ he says, and we don’t see her again until dinner.
The next day’s task is rock collecting. Mr Connolly drives us down to the front paddock, which is pimpled with boulders and stones. ‘You need to take those rocks and put them in there,’ he says, pointing to a rusty trailer under a gum.
Most of the rocks are around the s
ize of an overstuffed hiking pack. It takes both of us to lift them.
Mr Connolly allows us a break in the afternoon. I stand by the fence, a hand raised against the sun, staring across the paddock. A faint breeze whistles up from the road. Far off I can see a couple of trucks and a car.
Amy joins me, chewing on a piece of grass. ‘How are we ever going to move all these rocks?’ she breathes. ‘It’s like Monty Python.’
I nod, rubbing at the base of my spine. I don’t tell her I haven’t seen Monty Python.
Mr Connolly raises his Akubra, fanning away a fly. It’s almost pleasant, standing there like that, watching the road.
~
Mr Connolly drives me out to the Circuit’s halfway point at Mount Bleak. It’s still the afternoon and no one’s in yet. After I’ve set up my tent I go for a walk to the lookout, finding a seat on a boulder that feels like sandpaper against my bare legs. But I position myself in a patch of sun and it’s lovely up here, gazing down to the shadows that stretch the length of the valley like witches’ spindly fingers.
Day soon tips into night and birds flock across the sky. The girls still haven’t arrived, so I decide to make them dinner as a surprise after their long day.
As the sun disappears behind the trees I finally see their silhouettes moving towards the campsite. Simone’s long, skinny legs; Lou’s strong, slender frame; Ruby’s height above them all—and I feel a pang of regret that I have missed the last three days with them. Spotting me they squeal, charging along the stretch of track to pull me into a sweaty group hug.
While they unpack, I shove the jaffle irons in the fire and go for off for a wee. I swat through bush until I’m far from the campsite. But as I pull down my shorts my torch wavers and goes out. Thrown into darkness, I flail for a few minutes, panic rising, until I hear Simone’s laugh, then make out a sliver of flame against the starless night.
Crouched in the tickly grass, I begin to cry—tears of relief, this time, that I am back with my friends. At last I can see it: that Portia was never a true friend to me—and she never can be.
~
The next day we hike to Mount Farrier, then on to Farrier Lake. After lunch we head out to the waterfalls, and I have a wash in the basin. Back at camp I cook dinner again—tonight it’s beef stir-fry, with packet carbonara pasta. ‘I could get used to you getting suspended,’ Simone says with a grin.
We pack up early the next morning before another climb of Oatland Spur. Then it’s on towards Craig’s Hut near the summit of Mount Franklin. It’s the longest day of the Circuit. We won’t arrive at the site before nightfall.
There had been a celebration planned for this final night of the hike. As much as you can, anyway, with our supplies—some lemonade and sweets brought from our tuck lockers. But as the cold clear night rustles at the alpine peppers, everyone grows solemn. While I make hot chocolate, Simone brings out the packet of marshmallows and begins roasting a few on a twig.
‘Can’t believe we’ll be going home so soon,’ I murmur. ‘Back to civilisation.’
‘Home,’ Lou murmurs, leaning her head against Simone.
I wonder what Lou will take back to the farm, what memories will burn brightest. I know I’ll take home all kinds of things, many of them unpleasant, many I’ll wish I could forget, but I know there will be many good things too, and right now I want to remember this moment most, sitting around the fire; this happiness with my friends.
‘Bec!’ Lou shouts, pointing. My marshmallow has blackened, sizzling in the flames. ‘It’s like a melted face.’ Lou giggles, tugging at her eyelids. ‘Mwwaahhh!’
Simone edges away. ‘I tell you what, Lou. You are dead-set the weirdest girl I know.’
We all laugh, our voices loud, and I pick off the burnt skin and place the warm flesh in my mouth.
~
The next morning I stagger out of the tent, rubbing at my eyes. I feel woozy from not enough sleep. But the air is already warm and the cool dew on the grass is glinting like thousands of tiny jewels.
Reaching Clay Hill by mid-morning, and after a quick snack of bread and cheese, we begin clambering down East Ridge. Far off, beyond the trees, I can make out the khaki-green roof of the Silver Creek dining hall. So close. But we’re not going back to school—not yet. We have to climb Mount Silver Creek one last time.
The Saddle is empty. So tranquil, too—there’s something almost monastic in the cool air. In the distance I hear the trill of birds, calling soft yet clear, and below that, like a bass track, comes an insect-like buzz of smaller birds hidden somewhere in the trees.
We move slowly up the muddy track. How different this is from the first time I scaled the mountain with the rest of Red House. I’d been so quiet that day, so afraid of everyone—afraid of what I didn’t know about them, and afraid of them not knowing me. Now, after a whole year living together, it seems we know everything about each other, but that could change in a heartbeat; it feels like we’re on the cusp of something momentous and out of our control.
When we reach the top, the sun saunters off behind the clouds, leaving the air strangely sticky. The summit is also empty. It’s eerie being up here on our own, like we’re the last people alive. Lou offers to take a photograph and we gather under the gnarled old snow gum, arms around one another’s waists, smiles stretching wide.
Everything happens quickly now. We have to vacate the house. Pack our clothes, empty our lockers, clean the dorm and the bathrooms. Remove all traces of our existence. Wipe it all away. ‘We can’t have your dirt here for next year’s girls,’ Miss Lacey says, almost cheerfully.
Floors are mopped, walls scrubbed, windows buffed spotless. I crouch in one of the toilet cubicles and write in black texta on the underside of the ledge, Bec was here, with the date. You can only see it from sitting on the toilet, which gives me an odd sense of pleasure. It seems important, somehow, that I leave my mark. That I am remembered.
The bins are already overflowing—with food, books, and so many clothes. Some girls are even throwing away their hiking gear. ‘I won’t need it again, will I?’ Briohny says, tossing her thermals into a black garbage bag. But I’m taking it all home—it cost thousands of dollars.
Somewhere in there are exams, as well as end-of-year games. One afternoon is Quest, a series of inter-house competitions: wheelbarrow racing and Paarlauf relays. Emma and I enter the custard competition and come third.
More entertainment follows after dinner. Each house performs a song, and Red House decides to dress as country bumpkins with chequered shirts and riding boots, though for some reason Portia paints her face with brown shoe polish. We stand in front of the school and sing a variation on ‘Give Me a Home Among the Gumtrees’:
Give me a drink with the assistants
We can’t resist it
A drink or two in the SMQ
A Bundy out the front
Miss Lacey out the back
And she’s knocking on Conno’s door . . .
The final line provokes a roar around the dining hall and Miss Lacey hides her face behind Mr Connolly. ‘Thanks very much, ladies,’ she says later, laughing, as we get ready for bed. ‘I don’t think I’ll forget that one in a while.’
~
The marathon is two days away. It hardly seems real as we’re each given a commemorative white T-shirt with Silver Creek written on the back at breakfast. Mine is so big it fits over my sweater. After chapel I wander down the road, calling out to Ruby to sign my back.
Pretty soon everyone is having her T-shirt signed. We move on to another house, then down the hill. Nestled in the trees is the last girls’ house, Jade. Already a few girls have come out with black markers.
‘What are you girls doing?’
It’s Miss Constantine, marching towards us.
‘You’re out of bounds,’ she says. ‘Impinging on the grass. I’ll have to report this.’
She points to the ground. Briohny and I each have one foot on the road, one on Jade House’s front lawn.
<
br /> ‘But we’re not doing anything wrong.’
Miss Constantine’s eyes narrow. ‘You just don’t get it, do you, Rebecca? It’s not a matter of right and wrong, it’s about obeying the rules.’
‘Please,’ Briohny says. ‘We’ll get Stonely Roads and the marathon is the day after tomorrow.’
Miss Constantine smirks. ‘It’ll be a nice warm-up for you then, won’t it?’
~
I sit in the shade on the library steps. Beneath the window the plants are wilting. I lick my lips, tasting the salty, cracked skin. ‘It must be nearly forty degrees,’ I sigh.
Briohny raises her face to me, squinting in the bright light. She’s wearing a blue headband that makes her face taut, like a ballerina’s. The wind flutters and her gaze shifts off towards the smudge of trees on the hill.
‘Like they care,’ she mutters.
A Jeep rolls into the car park and Miss Constantine climbs out, a cap pulled over her hair. Spotting us, she raises a hand to the peak. ‘Ready?’ she calls.
We set off. The air is even hotter further down the drive, burning at my lungs. Sweat pours from my brow into my eyes.
Briohny trails behind me. Once or twice I hear her falter. When she draws up at the cattle grille, Miss Constantine slams on the horn. ‘Don’t you dare stop!’ she shouts.
‘Come on,’ I call to Briohny, slowing down so I’m at her side.
Briohny jolts along, eyes ahead. I glance at my watch: thirty minutes. It will be tight. I run over the bridge, the creek burbling below me. Over my shoulder I see Briohny trip and careen towards the bank, flinging herself straight into the water.
‘Briohny!’
I rush towards her, sliding down the slope and sloshing through the creek.
‘I don’t care,’ she screams, thrashing about in the shallows. ‘I don’t care anymore!’
‘You have to get up. You have to keep going.’
I grab the back of her singlet and haul her towards the bank. She’s gone limp like a rag doll, feet dragging over the pebbles, but I manage to get her out of the water. She rolls onto her back.
Bad Behaviour Page 20
