I'll Tell You Mine Read online

  I lie awake for hours. Everyone else seems happy to crash out in this strange place with its spooky creaks and the low exhaust-pipe drone of city traffic. If I go to sleep will I fall out of the tiny bed? Its sides are too close to my body. It’s like I’m lying in a padded coffin. I might as well be, I suppose.

  Jess lets out a little fart – three short pops. She would be horrified to know she’s a sleep farter. Maddy’s a heavy breather and sucks at the frothy saliva on her plate. She slipped the metal-grooved mouthpiece in just before lights out – to keep her newly straightened teeth from going all snaggled again. She’s cuddled up to her contraband phone like it’s a teddy bear.

  Normally I would touch myself before I dropped off, knowing that I was safe from anyone finding out I’m a secret nympho. But tonight I just have to lie straight as I can and pray for sleep. My feet are like cold rocks. I rub them together and wrap the doona tighter around my shoulders. The ticking of the old school clock on Maddy’s side table seems to get louder the longer I’m awake – a monotonous mechanical heartbeat.

  Just as I’m starting to feel the whirling, downward pull of sleep, I hear a choking sob. Who is it? I look at the three beds and the shadowy bodies. I can make out Maddy. She’s got her mouth open, drooling and dead to the world. Jess looks out for the count too, but then she does have to get up at 4.30 for swimming training.

  The sound is coming from Harriet. I stay perfectly still and listen. The crying goes on for a long time – fifteen minutes at least. I wonder if she’s asleep and this is some weird nightmare. But then she plucks a tissue from the holder next to her bed and blows softly into it. Finally, the gulping, dying fish sounds disappear and are replaced by a calm, steady breath. It’s not the first time I’ve heard someone cry themselves to sleep.

  When I was little Mum would sometimes sleep in my room. I think after she’d had a fight with Dad. I had an extra single bed and she would crawl in late at night and pull the Wiggles bedspread over her. She would sniffle and let out low moans like she had a stomachache. I would sometimes get the courage to whisper into the dark, ‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’ She would stop crying and insist, ‘Nothing, sweetie. It’s time for sleep now.’ The next morning she would get up, make the bed and let me eat Froot Loops and warm milk as a treat. We wouldn’t talk about it. We never seem to talk about things in my family.

  I stare at Jess’s clock for a while. It’s after three. In a few more hours I can at least go to school. Lose myself in double maths, biology and PE and skirt out to the edges for a while, without having to be stuck in the middle of all these girls. Just four more hours. I pull the covers over my head and shut my eyes, trying to count an imaginary constellation of fluorescent stars.

  5

  My first week in the boarding house doesn’t go well. There’s a rule for everything and I manage to break just about every one. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I don’t bother to get out of bed for the first breakfast bell or even the second bell. I figure – we live at school, so why do we have to get up so early?

  Instead, I savour the scraps of my dreams and the cozy womb of my doona as everyone else rushes around frantically fixing their hair, spraying on deodorant and packing their bags. At the very last moment I throw off the covers, dress, grab my bag and head to roll-call. I have to run but I can make it by the skin of my teeth.

  My last-minute approach doesn’t sit well with Gabby. ‘The breakfast bell is for all the boarders. That includes you now, Kate.’

  On Thursday morning I wake to find her standing at the foot of my bed, tapping her watch until I crawl out and head for the showers. She informs me she will be pulling me out of bed personally ‘until I can be responsible enough to get up at the right time on my own’.

  On Friday I drag my carcass out of bed on the first bell. I do not want the first person I see in the morning to be Gabby.

  I skip washing my clothes, but by the end of the week I have no clean undies and the armpits of my dresses are yellow and stinky.

  ‘Something pongs in here,’ Maddy says, giving me a pointed look. ‘I’m going to the laundry if you want to come, Kate.’

  Reluctantly I shove all my clothes into a bag and follow Maddy down to the machines. She helps me put some powder in the right slot and shows me the settings. It’s not that hard. Afterwards I even feel a bit satisfied folding my sweet-smelling socks and hanging my crisp school dresses in the cupboard.

  On the following Thursday I’m rostered on to help set the tables for dinner but instead of meeting Gabby in the dining hall like I’m supposed to, I choose to smoke a cigarette out our dorm room window and gossip with Maddy.

  ‘You should go now,’ Maddy warns me as we sit on the sill and hold the burning stubs out the window, blowing the smoke out into the fresh air.

  ‘Can’t. Be. Bothered,’ I say lazily.

  ‘Okay. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s easy. It’ll take you two seconds.’

  At dinner, Gabby corners me again. She’s like my warden. ‘We missed the pleasure of your company this afternoon in the dining hall,’ she says.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Oh that’s okay. I’ve put you on set-up every night next week so you can make up for it.’

  Normally after getting a punishment I would chuck a fit and sulk. But that doesn’t seem to do much good here.

  Curfew sucks the most. I’m too old to be forced into bed at 10.30, so after everyone conks out I sneak into the stairwell with a torch and read until I’m tired. Unfortunately Gabby is also a night owl and on her way back from the kitchen one night to get a cup of chamomile tea, we bang into each other in the hall. She now makes spot checks in the stairwell and in my dorm.

  ‘You’re making life too hard for yourself,’ says Maddy. ‘Gabby is totally onto you. Unless you want her hanging off you all term you have to bend the rules. I can teach you.’

  Maddy’s right. It’s not too long before I’m goose-stepping like the others. By week three I’ve got it down. This is how it goes most days.

  7.15 am: Breakfast bell. Get out of bed. Stand in line for lukewarm shower. Longer than five minutes and the timer goes off and try-hard greenie Emma knocks on the shower door and says, ‘Water is our most precious resource, Kate. Leave some for our children to enjoy.’

  Really, really hate Emma Cobb.

  7.40 am: Shove down breakfast with herd. Weetbix or cornflakes only. Five per cent actual orange juice. Powdered milk. Toast cooked in giant silver toaster machine from the 1950s. (One rotation equals hot bread. Two rotations equal charcoal.)

  12.30 pm: Lunch bell. Sprint to dining hall. Stand in line for food like soup kitchen. Any later and all the edible food will be gone, leaving tuna and salad rolls.

  3.30–5.00 pm: ‘Free’ time. Prison gates open. Sign out. Milk bar. Sign in.

  6.30 pm: Dinner. Monday – Lasagna. Tuesday – Mystery casserole. Wednesday – Curry. Thursday – Stir-fry. Friday – Mexican. Saturday – Pizzas. Sunday – Roast.

  8.30 pm: Study hall.

  10.30 pm: Lights out.

  REPEAT.

  Apart from the whole living at school thing, classes are the same. It’s easy to bludge. I sit up the back and avoid answering questions. You just look down a lot and pretend to be really interested in your page. I’ve become invisible to most teachers anyway. Maybe they’ve given up on me, like my parents.

  I’ve perfected mucking around. I write poetry in maths, burn things with the Bunsen burner in science, read magazines in Italian and write ‘I Love Nate’ a thousand times in Australian studies. In Year Ten it’s easy to do the bare minimum. We’re not doing our VCE yet, so nothing really counts. Some girls, like Emma Cobb, want to get straight As but I’m happy to get by on Cs and Ds.

  It’s not all bad though. The watercolour and clay smell of the cool sandstone art cottage makes me happy. I’m usually down th
ere before my teacher, Mrs Gregory, shows up. Sometimes we talk about galleries and art shows she’s seen. Or she gives me a new trick to try to be a better artist. This term I’m doing photography – mucking around with a digital SLR – experimenting with different apertures and light filters and snapping at flowers and street graffiti.

  I don’t mind English either. I like writing stories and reading books. My teacher, Miss Horsell, is about two seconds out of uni and hasn’t mummified yet. She says I’m a talented writer. Sometimes I even believe her.

  PE is my most dreaded 45-minute time-waster of the day. I usually pretend I have bad period cramps so I can get out of it. I’m unco, a bad runner and terrified by the possibility of having to partner up with someone to practice kicking a ball back and forth across the shiny gym floor. Nobody ever turns to me casually and says, ‘Wanna go with me?’ They avoid making eye contact and scurry away two by two like they’re animals on Noah’s Ark. I’m usually left with another sad single who can’t find a partner or Miss Fairbairn cheerfully grabs a ball and says, ‘I’ll be your partner, Kate. I think I still remember how to kick a soccer ball.’

  Miss Fairbairn was happy for me to do all the gym chores for a while. But after I unknotted the skipping ropes, inflated the soccer balls and organised the sports cupboard, she decided to keep a better eye on me.

  ‘Not many girls get their monthly bill every week, Kate,’ she says.

  I vow to come up with better illnesses. Ross River Fever? Lyme Disease? Migraines? Explosive diarrhoea?

  Chronic fatigue worked for Gina Kapilos last year. She spent months sitting on the gym steps, listlessly writing in her notebook, looking pale and puffy.

  ‘I have chronic fatigue,’ I tell Miss Fairbairn.

  She sighs and rolls her eyes. ‘Kate. You do not have chronic fatigue. You have chronic laziness. Put your runners on. We’re starting hockey today.’

  ‘I can’t. I’m allergic to grass.’

  Miss Fairbairn pushes air out of her mouth and wipes sweat from her top lip. ‘I’m not a violent person,’ she mutters, a wry smile on her face. ‘But you bring out the rage in me.’

  I stand my ground. ‘It makes my throat swell up. I go into anaphylactic shock. I could die.’

  ‘Fine. There are forty cricket bats in the cupboard that need new grips . . .’

  *

  After I run to the dining hall to claim my soggy roll, glass of cheap cordial and piece of dented fruit, I sneak down to the gardens. Which is stupid because you’d think the teachers would want us to enjoy the botanical environment. We have to sit on hard asphalt in the quad courtyard instead.

  It’s cold by the lake and I wrap my bare legs up in my blazer for extra warmth. I take a single bite out of the wrinkled apple and chuck it in the water where even the swans ignore it. There’s a little boy playing with a motorised boat with his dad and I watch them over the top of my book, missing my dad. I wonder how he’s going with Liv on his own. What’s he reading to her? What strange dinners is he making and how much is the rubbish bin overflowing? He needs my help sometimes and I worry he won’t get everything done without me around. The wind whips up over the lake and I’m considering retreating to a warm aisle in the library when I see Maddy walking towards me, carrying a block of chocolate.

  ‘Want some?’ she asks, plonking herself down next to me, as if we hang out together in the gardens all the time.

  ‘Nobody saw you come down here, did they?’ I ask, looking around for other girls. You have to keep watch for Year Twelves. They arrive in packs, with linked arms and their boyfriends.

  Maddy laughs and breaks off a row of chocolate. ‘Yeah right, Kate,’ she says, her mouth full. ‘As if I’ve lived in the boarding house for over three years and haven’t learnt how to sneak out.’ She offers the chocolate to me and I break off a single piece. ‘You can have more than that,’ Maddy says suspiciously. ‘You’re not anorexic are you?’

  ‘Do I look like I am?’

  Maddy looks at me and frowns. ‘Nah, I guess not. Did you hear Grace Johnson is in hospital? Force-feeding her Maccas probably.’

  Grace used to be a little bit pudgy until she started eating salad, avoiding carbs and running round the gardens twice a day. She thought she was fooling everyone by wearing three jumpers to hide her bones. In the end she had this weird hair growing on her neck and she was cold all the time. Her parents took her out of school because she was so sick. Poor Grace.

  The teachers were so worried we were all going to end up like Grace that they held a seminar about healthy eating and invited a nutritionist to the school to talk to us about the dangers of crash dieting. It didn’t really work, everyone still wants to be skinny. Including me.

  Underneath my skirt are fierce red stretch marks that wriggle their way across my bum and hips like tiger stripes. I can’t seem to stop putting on weight. My once flat stomach is now a jiggly pot belly. My skirts cut into me and my shirts barely do up around my chest. I try not to eat junk food but after a few days I give up. I look enviously at Maddy’s slim legs. ‘How come you don’t get fat?’ I ask. ‘No offence but you eat so much.’

  Maddy shrugs. ‘Genes,’ she says. ‘Just lucky I guess.’ Maddy shivers and pulls her jumper around her knees, stretching the fabric to breaking point.

  Maddy props herself up on one elbow and flips through my book. It’s a dark fantasy novel that I don’t want to finish because it’s so good.

  ‘My friend Nate lent it to me to read,’ I say.

  ‘Naaa-aate,’ Maddy says, drawing his name out slowly, like she’s blowing a smoke ring. ‘Who is he?’

  I take back the book and put it in my bag.

  ‘Just a friend,’ I say.

  I’m not about to let Maddy know I’m devouring every page of the book like it’s an encrypted love message to me. That I don’t really want to give it back because every time I hold it in my hands it makes me think of him.

  ‘Four hundred and fifty-two pages? You’re a brain, aren’t you?’

  ‘Hardly. I just like reading.’

  ‘So, Kate, tell me your life story,’ she says. ‘We still have twenty minutes until the bell.’

  ‘My life story? I haven’t really done anything yet. When I was little my parents took me backpacking around Europe. I’d tell you about it but I was too young to remember anything. I was born in Melbourne, grew up in Melbourne. Went to school in Melbourne. Most of this year I’ve spent in my room, grounded. Oh, I did go to Fiji last year for a holiday, and to Brisbane and Tassie with my mum for her work.’

  ‘You’ve been on a plane? I can’t wait to travel. Maybe to Japan. I could eat sushi and model.’

  We both go quiet for a moment, imagining ourselves far away from this place and the hundreds of girls in blue-checked uniforms who don’t like us.

  ‘Only two-and-a-bit years to go,’ says Maddy. ‘Maybe we can get a flat together after Year Twelve? I can cook for us. Better than the food we get here. I make gourmet stuff for my dad and my brother all the time.’

  ‘You’d have to do something about your snoring. You sound like a sick walrus.’ I imitate her snorting and heavy breathing. She punches my arm, not hard but enough for me to stop. She’s stronger than she looks.

  Maddy pulls two magazines out of her bag. We sit there, me reading my book and Maddy reading her fashion mag – eating the whole block of chocolate, piece by piece. Occasionally Maddy reads out a sliver of celeb gossip or makes me do a quiz on sex. It’s obvious by the way she asks the questions she’s actually had sex, possibly more than once. I remember seeing her in sex ed class expertly pulling a condom over a banana while everyone else giggled and grappled with the thin, slippery latex.

  I’ve done a couple of handys and once gave a guy a BJ when I was off my head. But only for a minute because he tasted weird and I thought I was going to retch because
he kept pushing my head down.

  ‘Favourite position?’ Maddy asks.

  ‘Um, dunno.’

  ‘Weirdest place you’ve ever done it?’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ I say.

  ‘In a woolshed . . . or a tractor . . .’ Maddy muses, giving me a mental picture I wish she hadn’t.

  ‘Age you lost your v-chip?’ she asks.

  There’s an awkward silence and I decide I can’t keep pretending to be some sex vixen. ‘I’m still a virgin,’ I admit. ‘I nearly did once with the guy I like.’

  Maddy looks up from her magazine. ‘Oh, sorry, I thought you’d done it. You seem like you’ve done everything. I was fourteen. With this guy back home. He was, like, fifteen I think. I just found out Mum had cancer. I was pretty gutted, crying and stuff, and we were hanging out in his bedroom. I didn’t really think about it too much. It just happened.’

  ‘Did it hurt?’ I want to ask her all kinds of things: Does she feel different? And wasn’t she worried about getting an STD or worse, pregnant? And wasn’t it strange to take your clothes off in front of a guy?

  ‘Yeah. A bit.’

  Maddy groans as the end-of-lunch bell rings faintly over the trees. She checks her timetable. ‘Maths, science and PE. Kill me now.’

  I flip open mine. ‘Italian, geography and RE.’

  Maddy screws up her face. ‘You win.’

  As we head up the hill I think Maddy might not want to walk in the school gates with me – weird Goth girl. But it doesn’t seem to bother her. We walk side by side, our arms nearly touching, right though the quad. When we reach the lockers she turns to me and says, ‘Want to meet up tomorrow lunch?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  And that’s that. It almost seems too easy.

  On the way to Italian, I balance three folders, a vocab book, atlas and bible on my hip. The top book slides off, sending the whole lot skidding onto the ground with a clatter. As luck would have it I’m walking right past the Year Ten popular group. You know the types: blonde, blonde and blonder.