Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  ‘She’s a total hippie,’ I warned Michelle with a light voice and heavy dread.

  Mum was leaning out of the car window, and against the blue paint her hair looked fluorescent maroon. She wore a big orange blouse with triangular sleeves, and at least eight bead bracelets around her wrist.

  The first thing Mum said was, ‘What’s in the bag?’

  I deflected. ‘This is Michelle, Mum.’

  ‘Hi there, Michelle, thanks for showing Sophie around today,’ said Mum with a distrustful smile.

  ‘Do I call you Mrs Morgan?’ asked Michelle.

  ‘Mrs Morgan is Sophie’s grandmother,’ said Mum. ‘You can call me Taika.’ Mum’s name is pronounced TAI-kah and people usually get it wrong.

  ‘Thank you, Taika,’ said Michelle, getting it right.

  Mum’s smile was genuine. I lifted the bag and said, ‘Michelle helped me buy school shirts – she’s going to help me get some trousers this afternoon.’

  ‘Want a lift to the shops?’ asked Mum.

  ‘It’s just around the corner,’ said Michelle.

  My mother stared at me. ‘How will you get home?’

  ‘I can walk,’ I said.

  ‘I bet it’s been an exhausting day,’ said Mum. ‘I can pick you up—’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ I repeated the tactic from this morning, leaning into the car and giving her a hug. She smelled like bergamot leaves and candle wax and I guessed she’d been working in the shop. ‘It’s not far.’

  Mum examined Michelle with pale blue eyes.

  ‘Be home by six,’ said Mum. I knew it was a warning, not an agreement.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Taika,’ said Michelle.

  ‘Shop responsibly,’ said Mum. ‘I look forward to talking to you about Germany,’ she added to Michelle, starting the car.

  Now Michelle froze. And Mum drove off.

  21

  In my hands I held my brown paper bag and two identical pairs of black trousers. Behind me, Fran and Kylie shuffled through racks of dresses. I tried to eavesdrop as they considered this item, that one; I didn’t know how popular girls chose their clothes, and I was curious – as well as excited.

  Babes was a small boutique with dark purple walls and polished wooden fixtures. I slid the trousers across a glass counter that was stuffed with sparkling accessories, and I’d just nodded to the sales assistant to start scanning my purchases when Michelle appeared at my shoulder.

  ‘What about your other clothes?’ she cried.

  It took me a second too long to respond, but Fran piped, ‘The ones you lost moving house – do you want to keep shopping?’

  Be home by six echoed in my head. Out the window, I could see that the sky – blue all day – was now darkening grey. I felt obligated to say, ‘I have to be home at six.’

  ‘This place closes at six, we’ve got heaps of time,’ said Fran, her eyes brightening. Away from Belinda, she seemed a lot more friendly.

  ‘Do you want a makeover, Yarrindi style?’ said Kylie, peeling a blue dress from a rack and waving it at me.

  ‘Fran’s dream is to be a stylist,’ said Michelle.

  ‘What do you like?’ said Fran.

  I’d never been shopping without my mum and had no idea what I liked. Hoping it didn’t show, I pressed my hand to my forehead dramatically. ‘Oh, help me, Fran! I’m totally vacant right now.’

  Fran let out a little squeal and ran towards a shelf of T-shirts.

  The girls took to the task of ‘replacing’ my wardrobe with relish. Amongst themselves, they decided that my immediate needs were for ‘flexible’ pieces that could get me through a barbecue, a picnic, a date, a party … The fact that I had none of these planned – nor even an invitation to Belinda’s birthday yet – was less important than the outfitting necessary for me to succeed with my new group of friends.

  The woman who ran the shop made me dizzy with suggestions as the girls threw clothes at me, hung and ripped things from my shoulders and pushed me in and out of the tiny change room more times than I could count. More than once, Michelle or Kylie made interventions with my hair, rubber-banding it into an up-do or whipping it into a Kylie-style braid. More slowly, Fran paced around the store, matching item to item, coordinating my ‘look’.

  The clothes piled up. On the counter sat a black tuxedo jacket and four printed T-shirt tops in bright colours. They were joined by a black dress with a cherry pattern that Fran promised I could also wear over jeans, a little purple cardigan, some sparkling gold jeans and a pink denim miniskirt shorter than anything I had ever worn in my life. The girls topped the pile with some plastic bangles, a scarf, some pairs of opaque leggings, belts, hairclips and a pair of black Converse sneakers.

  Fran and Kylie stood next to me, cooing as the sales assistant scanned through the price tags, and Fran even squeezed my arm as each piece was folded into a paper Babes bag. I half expected a blurting ‘card rejected’ beep when my debit card went into the machine, but none came. I sent out a thankyou to my Finnish nanna via the universe. It was then Michelle joined us at the counter, and added a final piece of clothing to the pile.

  It was a party dress. It was short and the pale pink of a wild rose, patterned with silver drips of paint. It had spaghetti straps and a silk sash around its waist. It was my size.

  I didn’t say anything. I was too busy imagining myself in the dress, standing on the deck of what I figured Belinda’s house would look like, in bare feet and wearing a little princess crown. I saw Brody Meine walk onto that imaginary deck and fix me with a stare.

  The scanner beeped, I handed over my card once more, and the shopping was done. The bags felt good in my hands, as if I were equipped, finally, for the next phase in my life. Kylie and Michelle were laughing about something, and I laughed too, intoxicated with consumption.

  The sky was storm grey outside the window now. As we stepped out of the shop, a gust of wind caught my hair and, with my hands full, I struggled to pull it out of my face. In the confusion of wind, wild hair and shopping bags, I almost didn’t notice the flash of lightning until after I saw him.

  Brody Meine stood in the doorway of the bookstore that was directly opposite Babes. As I fought with my hair, he rolled back on his heels and leaned against the doorway. He was watching me, and even though he was metres away, my lips trembled with nervous anticipation.

  ‘Is that—?’ asked Kylie, before the wind threw her hair back into her face.

  A white flash flooded the street. Lightning struck.

  22

  The wind was terrible; the sky began to rumble with thunder and I didn’t know how I was going to get home. Brody Meine had disappeared into the bookstore. I glanced at the bus stop but the bench was empty. I couldn’t wait outside in this. It was 6:02 – I could phone my mother and beg a lift but that would be admitting defeat.

  Fran must have seen the panic on my face because she yelled, ‘My car’s in the car park at school!’ and gestured me towards the corner.

  The four of us clambered into Fran’s red Toyota Corolla just as the first drops of rain started jewelling on the windscreen. Kylie and Michelle climbed into the back and I took the seat next to Fran. Above our heads, another bolt of lightning jagged the sky.

  ‘Dude,’ said Kylie to Fran, ‘you shouldn’t drive all the way home in this.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Fran.

  ‘Stay at mine,’ Kylie insisted.

  ‘Fran lives further down the coast,’ Michelle explained to me, but I was distracted. A loose piece of metal had been picked up by the wind and was clattering around the car park. Its sharp crashes were scaring me. I looked at my watch. It was 6:06.

  ‘Where do you live, Soph?’ asked Fran.

  ‘Boronia.’

  ‘Great, that’s near Mish,’ Fran said, and started the engine.

  The little Corolla fought back the rain with sticky windscreen wipers, and part of me was convinced we’d be sliced to pieces by flying scraps of metal before we even left the car p
ark. Fran persevered, grunting, ‘Come on, little car!’ as she manoeuvred through the increasing downpour and the wind to get us out of the car park and, finally, onto the roundabout before Frankston Avenue.

  There were four of us in the tiny car and we were all shivering with cold. The windscreen wipers could barely keep up with the rain, and huge semitrailers were shooting down the highway. Fran’s car shook every time a semi roared past.

  Finally the traffic broke, and Fran started to inch the car forwards. We were driving blind behind a windscreen flooded with water. ‘Is there a truck coming?’ Fran asked. I could hear the nervousness in her voice.

  ‘I can’t see through the window!’ Kylie shouted.

  ‘Wait!’ screamed Michelle. ‘I hear one!’

  ‘I can’t hear anything!’ shouted Kylie.

  ‘Is there one or isn’t there?’ asked Fran, panicking.

  I looked out the window but I couldn’t pick headlights from streetlights or the lights of the petrol station.

  ‘Am I driving?’

  ‘There’s a truck coming!’ screamed Michelle.

  ‘I think I’m stuck in the road—’

  ‘Reverse!’ screamed Kylie.

  The car jolted backwards and all of us were thrown in our seats. A roaring semitrailer blasted a horn at us and a dark shadow rolled over the shivering car. Fran slammed on the accelerator the second the truck had passed and the Corolla shot across the intersection. Michelle shrieked. As Fran turned the car, it tipped – I had one hand gripping the car door, the other on the dashboard, and my knuckles were pearl white.

  ‘We’re on Frankston!’ exclaimed Fran as her car, heavy with girls and bags, spluttered up the steep avenue. ‘Come on, little car!’ she chanted.

  Rain was everywhere. The wheels screeched.

  ‘If the engine goes we’re going to roll backwards onto the freeway!’ said Kylie. ‘If that happens we’ll be smashed to bits!’

  ‘Come on!’ barked Fran as the car struggled up the hill.

  ‘I’ll get out,’ I said. ‘I’ll get out and lighten the load and I can walk—’

  ‘If she stops we’re screwed, we’ll roll backwards for sure!’ cried Kylie.

  Fran was hunched over the steering wheel. I checked my watch – it was 6:16. I’d known these girls for less than a day and now I was going to die with them. Rain was everywhere. The car was halfway up Frankston Avenue but its wheels fought to gain purchase on the wet road. The tyres shrieked.

  Please, I prayed. Please, let the tyres hold. I chanted this to myself as the girls’ hysterical encouragement to the car drowned out the sound of the rain.

  A second, a lurch, a second, a lurch, a second and almost a cut in the engine and Please, let the tyres hold … and they did. The car shot forwards.

  ‘It’s okay!’ yelled Fran. ‘We’re gripping the road!’

  I felt my breath release from my lungs in a cool stream.

  ‘We’re alive, right?’ asked Kylie.

  I turned around to look at her and saw that her eyes were shut tight. Fran was laughing out sheer nervous energy as the car, slowly but now steadily, ascended the hill. By the time we reached the peak, the rain had eased. I wanted to cry with relief but as the girls babbled, ‘That was so close! That was crazy!’ to one another, I concentrated on prying my hands from the inside doorhandle and the dashboard.

  The car turned into Boronia and rain that was suddenly as light as mist. ‘That’s my house!’ I sang as we reached the driveway. Politeness should have dictated I invite them all in, but the events on the road had made moods serious, not social. ‘Thank you, Fran,’ I said, getting out and hauling my bags from the car.

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ she said with a smile.

  Kylie wasted no time in climbing from the back into the front seat.

  ‘We’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said, and the car pulled away.

  It was 6:24. I walked into the house.

  23

  The shopping bags, which had seemed so full and promising when I was carting them out of the store, hung heavy in my hands as I pushed open the unlocked front door.

  The door growled on its hinge and I trod onto the little landing that separated the doorway from the dining room. The house should have been warmer than the cold storm air outside but I was gripped with a chill. My mother sat at the head of the dining room table, eyeballing me. Behind me, the door slammed.

  ‘We got caught in a storm,’ I said.

  ‘What’s in your hands?’ asked my mother. Her arms were folded and the scorn in her eyes was as bright as her orange blouse.

  ‘Clothes,’ I said.

  ‘I thought you were only buying trousers for school.’

  I didn’t want to look at her. My eyes rolled towards the corner of the ceiling. ‘I just want to fit in,’ I said in a tiny voice.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘These girls who made friends with me—’

  ‘Michelle seemed more trustworthy when I met her,’ said Mum, flashing her dark glare.

  ‘She’s totally trustworthy,’ I said. ‘They were really welcoming and—’

  ‘And you promised me you’d be home by six o’clock but you stayed out shopping.’

  The air was warmer now and I could feel beads of angry sweat form on my forehead. ‘I didn’t think being twenty minutes late would make much of a difference and I just wanted to get some nice things to start me off with a new group.’

  ‘It’s not much of a group if you think you have to spend all your money to fit in.’

  Something in me – the thin, imaginary membrane that had always contained my temper towards my mother – split like a burst bag. ‘And how long has it been since you were a teenage girl?’ I shouted, shaking with anger. ‘I have the right to make my own friends! I need to make decisions about my own life!’

  My mother stayed calm. ‘No, you don’t,’ she said, twisting in her chair. ‘You need to get good marks in your subjects and get into university.’

  ‘Mum, come on,’ I said, rage boiling. ‘You never let me do anything for myself! And you totally humiliated me in the ice-cream shop yesterday and it wasn’t fair!’

  ‘Don’t you speak to me like this,’ she said. ‘You’re at fault here. If I say six, I mean six.’

  ‘I’m almost seventeen years old!’ I shouted. ‘Your rules are for a twelve-year-old!’ I didn’t know where the words were coming from. ‘Don’t you want me to grow up? Let me grow up!’

  Tears were actually stinging at my eyes and I didn’t want Mum to see them. I swung away from her and was marching towards my bedroom when her hand shot out and caught me by the elbow.

  ‘I love you very, very much,’ said Mum, staring not at me but straight ahead. ‘I know you are a clever girl and that’s why I will warn you just this one time. These rules are about keeping you safe. I let you enjoy certain freedoms but I will revoke them if I am not satisfied that you are able to take care of yourself.’

  ‘Mum,’ I said, trying to snatch my arm back, ‘if you don’t give me any responsibility I will never learn how to take care of myself.’

  Mum’s hand dropped from my elbow. Her spine straightened and lightness seemed to flood into the room. ‘I’ve made soup for dinner,’ she said. ‘Fresh tomatoes, and basil from the garden.’ She turned to look at me. Her expression was so happy and fresh it was impossible to believe only moments before she had been glowering.

  I stifled a grunt and, trying to stop myself from actually stomping a foot, I dropped my gaze to the floor. I saw Mum’s bare pink feet curling around the legs of her chair. They were wet, and small green leaves clung to them. Shaking my head, I started towards my room.

  ‘Sophie,’ said Mum, standing. ‘Were you frightened by the storm?’

  ‘Yes. Terrified,’ I barked in frustration.

  Mum turned to me, her hand on her hip. ‘If you’d been home by six, you would have missed it,’ she said, and walked into the kitchen.

  24

  I’d mea
nt to go into my room and change straight into the pink party dress, just to check that it fitted. Instead, I walked into my room, dropped my shopping bags on the floor and wriggled out of my uniform into my underwear. My bed looked so comfortable that I plonked myself straight on top of the doona, planning to shut my eyes for only a couple of seconds, but I fell heavily asleep.

  In my dreams, trucks roared, rain fell, I wore a princess crown on my head and the girls’ toilets at school were overrun with foxes. I walked out behind the Technology labs and there was Lauren, although she didn’t look like Lauren; she walked me through the hallways of Baulkham Hills Girls that turned into a shop that was selling lavender plants. In the doorway of the shop stood Brody Meine. He was holding a lavender plant, and he had blood all over his hands. I woke up in a sweat, shaking my head, trying to dispel the heaviness of my sleep. Sleeping like this for two nights in a row bothered me. As I got up, I decided the situation with Mum was causing me serious stress.

  My alarm clock showed 5:07. Sticky with sweat, I grabbed my robe and snuck into the bathroom for a shower. Clean, with wet hair, I returned to my room and sat down in front of my computer.

  There was an email from Lauren.

  Yo, just checking in. Am hoping that you are just really tired from your Big Day and not cross because of what I said about your mum. If I stepped over a line, I’m really sorry.

  Today was the most interesting day ever. Sue is thinking of dropping biology next year. That is actually all that happened.

  Living vicariously through you.

  XXX Lauren.

  I promised myself I would send her a longer email later, but for now I hit ‘Reply’ and whacked some words onto the screen as fast as I could.

  Quickly,

  Amazing guy SITS NEXT TO ME IN MODERN. Name is Brody and – the email was too brief for me to dangle ‘he might be a murderer’ in front of Lauren and not explain – he is a total bad boy. Also have been adopted as a charity project by the cool group! We have been shopping – I will send pix of my transformation.