Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  The boy must have been Ryan, although with his pretty-boy haircut and stringy physique he was nothing I imagined Nikki’s boyfriend would be. He kissed Nikki’s shoulder through her school shirt, with a half-eye glance in my direction, as if to prove me wrong.

  ‘You were there,’ Fran said to the guy I had identified as Garth. ‘What was Ashley’s deal?’

  He scratched his shaved head. ‘It happened really fast. Looked like drugs.’

  ‘You reckon?’ asked Michelle.

  ‘Yeah, she was popping like she’d had California Dreaming. That stuff can be unpredictable. Wayne Truscott sells it. It’s like weed that’s baked in acid or something.’

  ‘Even weed baked in acid is not going to make your face bleed,’ said Fran, disbelieving.

  He shrugged. ‘That’s what it looked like to me.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Ryan asked Nikki again. I saw he was massaging her hand.

  ‘Belinda’s the one you’ve got to worry about,’ said Nikki.

  ‘They sent her home,’ said the yellow-haired boy.

  ‘No way!’ cried Nikki and Ryan in unison.

  ‘Yeah, Ashley Ventwood had a lie-down for ten minutes and is back up and walking around, but Belinda fainted in French and Mrs O’Grady had to drive her home.’

  The group laughed, but I was careful not to join in too loudly.

  ‘Seriously, though,’ said the yellow-haired boy, just to me, ‘did you freak out?’

  ‘Because I got hugged by Brody Meine?’ I said with a smirk. ‘It takes a lot more than that.’

  ‘Really?’ asked the boy with a matching smirk. ‘You’ll have to tell me about that one day.’

  In Modern History, I’d been trying to flirt with Brody Meine. Right now, I realised I was flirting with the yellow-haired boy without even trying. ‘Maybe I will,’ I said, just for practice, and levelled him a smile. The boy blushed and we both laughed.

  While we were talking, Kylie had joined the group with her hand held by a muscular, handsome boy with dark hair and a slightly dumb-looking face. I realised he had to be Steve. Looking around the circle, I saw Ryan feeding Cheezels into Nikki’s giggling mouth, and a guy with curly bleached hair talking intently to Fran and eyeing Michelle. This, I guessed, must be Rob or Dan – most likely Rob, as something about the way Dan was talked about suggested he was in another group, or even another year. This Rob guy was good-looking enough. He had really white teeth.

  The yellow-haired boy I was talking to must therefore be Matt. I realised that when I wasn’t looking at him, he’d been looking at me. His eyes were on my legs.

  ‘Is Ashley Ventwood’s blood on my trousers?’ I asked to let him know I had caught him out.

  ‘Ah—’ he said, looking bashful, but meeting my eyes. ‘Sorry – something new to look at,’ he said with a shrug.

  ‘You should try an art gallery,’ I said. I dipped a spoon into the pot of lemon yoghurt I’d brought from home and put it in my mouth. The sourness of lemon with the sweetness of sugary yoghurt is my favourite taste in the world.

  He watched me eat. ‘Yeah, I heard you do Art.’

  I smiled. Yesterday, Fran had said I wouldn’t be his type in a million years, but here he was smiling back at me, with his grey eyes hovering for my attention. I almost shot her a told-you-so grin but I concentrated on my yoghurt.

  ‘You going to Belinda’s party?’ he asked me.

  ‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘If everyone’s invited—’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ said Fran, interjecting. She was metres away on the other side of the circle and I was surprised that she was listening to our conversation. ‘I think she wants to keep it just close friends.’

  ‘I thought she was inviting the whole year,’ said Michelle. ‘She’s putting it on Facebook.’

  ‘If she puts it on Facebook the whole town’ll turn up,’ said Steve. ‘It’ll be like Marty Benson’s birthday last year.’

  ‘Three people got arrested,’ Nikki told me in an authoritative voice.

  ‘Are you sure she wants it small?’ asked Michelle.

  ‘I thought the whole idea was to look as massively popular as possible,’ said Kylie.

  Everyone apart from Fran and Garth laughed at this. Even I smiled.

  ‘I think we should wait to hear what Belinda wants,’ said Fran.

  ‘I think you should come anyway,’ Matt said, leaning to whisper in my ear so no one else could hear him. ‘I’d like to see what you look like out of uniform.’

  The way he spoke made me uncomfortable, but I met his gaze with a surface coolness. I’d never had a boyfriend – I’d never even kissed someone. Brody Meine’s arms around me this morning was the most physical contact I’d had with a boy since touch football in primary school. Nikki and Ryan, I could see, were comfortable together. Kylie and Steve’s knees overlapped and from the way they looked at one another I guessed they were already having sex. Looking around the group, at the way the girls sat and the way they all talked to the boys, I realised I wasn’t only a fraudulent dresser. Did you sit with guys at your last high school? Nikki had asked me yesterday, and I was too stupid to grasp what she meant. I was dressed like them, but there was no way I had earned membership of this group. All instinct to flirt withered. I cast my eyes down nervously.

  When I looked up, Matt made a show of looking at my legs again, and winked – and I wanted to be sick. My stomach trembled. I willed the bell to ring.

  It heard me, and its clear peals filled the air. I got shakily to my feet and reached down for my bag. It was Matt who scooped it from the ground and handed it to me.

  ‘See you at lunchtime,’ he said, grinning.

  30

  We had English next, and as I walked over to the classroom with Michelle, I was sweating with nausea. There was a judgmental glare in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before and it was unnerving. ‘What was that all about?’ she asked, flicking her head in Matt’s direction.

  I liked Michelle and I knew she was someone I shouldn’t deceive. ‘He just started talking to me,’ I said.

  ‘He was whispering in your ear.’

  ‘It made me really uncomfortable.’

  ‘You shouldn’t’ve flirted with him.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ I said, more than a little embarrassed that she’d noticed what was going on. ‘It’s been a long time. You go to a girls’ school, you forget.’

  ‘Boys are animals,’ instructed Michelle. ‘You’re the one who’s got to keep them in line.’ Her voice was harsh and her argument, I thought, was really unfair.

  We walked a few metres in silence. ‘I like you, Sophie, and I don’t want there to be problems,’ she said. It sounded like a warning.

  ‘Can you have a word to Matt then?’ I asked. ‘Tell him to be … less intense.’

  Michelle stopped walking. We were at the base of the staircase. ‘To Matt?’ She looked really confused.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘You were talking to Garth,’ said Michelle, her eyes wide with concern. ‘The guy with the shaved head is Matt. The blond guy’s Belinda’s boyfriend.’

  31

  I spent all of English feeling sick. Michelle was sympathetic but increasingly paranoid about how Belinda would receive reports that I had flirted with her boyfriend. The shiny newness of the morning had been dulled and then destroyed by blood clots, demonology and a social time bomb that I didn’t know how to defuse.

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ said Michelle when Mrs Fendy left the classroom to fetch some books. ‘She’ll understand. She’ll understand eventually.’

  ‘She hates me already and now she’ll think I’m trying to steal her boyfriend,’ I said.

  We were supposed to be writing up notes while Fendy was gone but our notebooks were blank.

  ‘Belinda doesn’t hate you,’ said Michelle. ‘She doesn’t know you.’

  ‘Neither does anyone else,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry
for what I said before.’ I was glad to hear it. ‘I’d love you to flirt with Matt. I’d love him to flirt with anyone apart from Nikki, who he is really annoying.’

  ‘In Modern, Belinda was flirting with him,’ I said.

  ‘She can, because she’s got a boyfriend,’ Michelle said. She half-smiled. ‘He goes along with it because he’s trying to make Nikki pay attention to him.’ She paused. ‘It’s stupid, isn’t it?’

  Some seconds passed. Michelle was deep in thought. ‘Maybe I should go home,’ I said. ‘I feel like throwing up.’

  ‘What was the last thing he said to you?’ asked Michelle.

  ‘He told me he’d see me at lunch.’

  ‘Okay, easy. Get to lunch late. Hang out in the library until the second half, and then when you get there, come sit next to me and don’t talk to any of the boys. If he so much as looks at you, just flick anything he says as a question to me. I’ll talk Fran out of saying something to Belinda, but we have to hope she hasn’t texted her already.’

  ‘You think you can explain it to Fran?’ I asked, unsure.

  ‘If she hasn’t said anything, it’ll be fine,’ said Michelle. She stared at me. ‘Fran is my best friend.’

  32

  As I wandered to my next class, Art, my mind struggled to put it all together. Fran was Michelle’s best friend, but Fran was kissing Dan and telling all to Belinda, who was with Garth but who flirted with Matt even though he was supposed to be in love with Nikki who was going out with Ryan. Belinda was going to kill me because I flirted with Garth, even though I thought he was Matt, and the worst part of it was that I didn’t care about any of them because I only wanted to feel for a second – just one second more – the protective wrap of Brody’s arms around my body, and the beat of his heart against my back. Thinking about this, even in the context of all the other confusions, made me recall the dark hair on his jawline and my pulse beat in my throat. How would he react if he heard about the flirting with Garth incident? Would he care? Did he even know what my real name was?

  I walked the halls like a zombie, until another zombie came into view.

  I’d noticed Ashley in English but had been too preoccupied with my own problems to notice whether or not she’d recovered from this morning. I was surprised she was still at school. She was walking very slowly down the hallway, and I thought she might even be limping. As I caught up with her, a book spilled out of her grasp and onto the corridor floor. It took her a moment to bend down to get it, and by then I’d already picked it up and put it back in her hand.

  ‘You didn’t have to do that,’ she said. She sounded very weak.

  She continued walking.

  ‘How’re you feeling?’ I asked, following.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Her hand flicked to her neck and I noticed that she’d reconstructed her shoelace necklace.

  Standing so close to her, I could see she really was limping. ‘Can I help you carry something? You don’t look—’

  ‘I said I’m fine,’ she said, staring ahead.

  ‘Look, Ashley,’ I tried. ‘I’m new, I’m trying to work out who’s who and how I fit into all of this, and if I’ve done anything to upset you – like, I know you were sick and didn’t mean that stuff today—’

  We were at the door of the Art room and it was closed. Ashley reached out for the doorhandle and discovered it was locked.

  ‘—but for you to scream at me … just let me know what I’ve done.’

  Ashley looked at me. Her skin was still very pale but her eyes were piercing – as if she was looking past my face, into my brain, or something even deeper. I started to feel sleepy.

  ‘Something is out of place here,’ she said. Her gaze softened, and became curious. ‘We should know one another by sight. I wonder if we have become our disguises …’

  A smile flickered on her face. This day had been too weird for words.

  Standing this close to her, I was struck by how much older she seemed, older than me, older than anyone else at school. There were lines in the corners of her eyes that not even her thick eye makeup could hide. Her voice was older too. I tried to convince myself it was because she was recovering from the morning, but something in me didn’t think so.

  ‘Please don’t hate me,’ I said.

  ‘No, jel’enedra,’ she said with a purr, ‘but will you give your mother a message from me?’

  ‘What?’ I said, my eyes half-closed.

  ‘Svaka vracara i vrazje strane,’ she said.

  ‘What does it mean?’ I asked her.

  ‘ “Stay away from Brody Meine.” ’

  The door of the Art room popped open in Ashley’s hand, unlocked.

  33

  Something was wrong with me in Art, and it continued into the free period I had before lunch. Sickness, stress, weirdness; perhaps it was the overwhelming experience of starting a new school, but whatever it was, it had exhausted me. I was flat out drawing a picture of a circle in Art, and when I staggered into the Senior Quad for the free period, I sat at the table on the top level, dropped my head onto my folded arms and fell into a dreamless sleep.

  When I awoke, it was because someone was pulling at the sleeve of my shirt. I sat up, half-believing I was still dreaming. Three faces I didn’t immediately recognise leered over me.

  ‘Are you okay?’ said one of them. It was a girl from my Modern History class.

  ‘What time is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s the beginning of lunch,’ said another girl.

  ‘Didn’t you hear the bell?’ asked the third.

  I shook my head. My eyes adjusted to the light and the faces came into proper focus. All three girls were from my Modern History class – the High Achievers. I knew one of them was called Gretchen, and I thought the other two were Sally and Naomi.

  ‘I have a free before lunch,’ I explained. ‘It’s been a really heavy couple of days.’

  ‘Especially with Ashley Ventwood’s fit in Modern this morning,’ said Gretchen.

  ‘That was so weird,’ said Sally. ‘You know Belinda Maitland got sent home?’

  ‘You would know that, of course, because you sit with her,’ said Naomi, a faint note of resentment in her voice.

  ‘And Ashley’s fine,’ I said, choosing not to acknowledge this last remark. ‘A little weak but she got through Art … Got through better than I did. I wonder what brought it on …’

  ‘She came back to our class halfway through Geology,’ said Naomi. ‘She said it’s some kind of weird allergy to stuff in the air and it can make her have fits and hallucinate.’

  ‘That blood was gross,’ said Gretchen, reaching into her bag and retrieving a water bottle. ‘No wonder Brody Meine had to catch you—’

  ‘Catch me?’

  ‘Why else would he be holding you?’ said Naomi. It was not a rhetorical question.

  I shrugged, and after a moment Gretchen extended the bottle to me. ‘Drink some water, you’ll feel better.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, taking a swig.

  ‘Keep it,’ said Gretchen. She was a tall girl with thick straight hair and she looked like a plain talker.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said again, and continued drinking, refreshed by the cold water. After a moment, I realised that the other girls were still standing. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Am I sitting in your spot?’

  Glances were exchanged between the girls. ‘Is it all right if we sit down?’ asked Gretchen. ‘We do sit here at recess and lunch and there’s usually never anyone around.’

  They didn’t move until I said, ‘Of course! It’s your table.’ Then they pulled out the chairs, set their bags on the ground and made themselves comfortable.

  ‘You don’t have to tell anyone you were here – we won’t say anything,’ said Sally.

  ‘That’s completely fine,’ I said, confused.

  Gretchen leaned back in her seat. ‘We just can’t imagine Belinda Maitland would be too thrilled for someone from her group to be seen with us.’

  ‘I don’t
care what Belinda thinks,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what everyone says,’ said Naomi.

  They were more my people, these girls, than Michelle and her group. These were the girls Lauren and I would both be sitting with if we’d transferred together to Yarrindi High. It made me a little sad to think they thought I’d be embarrassed to sit with them. As I was here, and had to kill time anyway, I made conversation.

  ‘What are you thinking of studying at university?’ I asked Gretchen.

  Gretchen’s eyes lit up. ‘At the moment, I want to study Archaeobotany,’ she said with a nerdish glimmer.

  When the bell rang for half-time, I almost didn’t get out of my seat. I almost said: I’m really one of you and I can’t handle the interpersonal stress that goes on behind the Technology labs! But I didn’t. Instead I thanked them for the company, and Gretchen for the water, and made my way out of the Senior Quad. Crossing the grassy lower level to the building’s main entrance, I saw something I wondered if Gretchen, Sally and Naomi knew was there.

  In the shadow of a tree on the border of the quad, Brody Meine was sitting with his back to the trunk and his knees bent up to his elbows. He was reading a blue paperback and taking irregular bites out of a green apple. I stood there watching him for a few seconds. What was it about this boy that frightened people? Maybe it was because, even sitting the way he was, there was something about the way he set his body that suggested a predatory animal, feigning relaxation but ready to pounce. Seeing him, watching his eyes race across the page, I wondered if it was also the contradiction between his intellect and his physique that set everyone on edge. Boys with brains that fast usually didn’t have bodies that strong. I couldn’t see the title of the book, but it absorbed his full attention.

  Or so I thought. The voice was that of a leopard, growling at night. ‘Hey, 1919,’ Brody said, not lifting his gaze from the paperback, ‘I’m glad you lost that black hat.’

  I couldn’t speak. The words Stay away from Brody Meine echoed in my brain. Whether it was a good move or bad, I couldn’t tell, but to my shame I shuffled quickly to the door and away from the Senior Quad.