Bad Behaviour Read online

  Crouched there, Portia’s eyes dart about. ‘We’d better get a move on,’ she whispers, nodding towards the bell. ‘Bags not first.’

  ‘Bags not second,’ Sarah breathes.

  They both look at me, grinning.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ I mutter.

  The rope is smooth and cool in my hands. After a deep breath, I give a tug. But it’s heavier than I expected and the bell comes out sounding more like a pencil rattling in a tin. The girls snigger from the bushes, and Portia says, ‘Pull it harder!’ I tug again, with all my weight this time, and the bell tolls mournfully into the night.

  Instantly they’re on either side of me. Portia yanks the rope away, gives it a few tugs, Sarah after her. But I’ve already taken off, up the path and along the road. Some primal fear has taken over my legs; I can’t stop running. My teeth are chattering so hard they feel like they might shatter.

  The girls soon catch me up. We plough up the path, laughing, uncaring now about who hears. At the back door Portia pulls us into a hug. ‘We did it!’ she squeals. I feel my breast squash against Sarah’s arm, her flesh hard and cold.

  A few girls are sitting up, one or two beginning to clap, and I make a silly bow at the top of the aisle. As I move towards my bed, Portia reaches out, takes hold of my wrist. ‘Well done, mate,’ she says.

  ~

  When I wake the next morning I feel different. I throw off the covers and get dressed, humming a tune under my breath.

  ‘You’re chirpy,’ Emma mutters as we stand at opposite basins, brushing our teeth. Portia strolls past, towards the toilet cubicle, and in the mirror she winks at me.

  I practically run to breakfast. I feel taller, stronger. On the way into the dining hall, a girl from Yellow House calls out, ‘Hey, Rebecca, is it true—did you do the Bell Run?’

  There is a teacher nearby, and he turns to me, eyes narrowed. The Yellow House table are all staring at me now, waiting. Normally I hate to be looked at like this; I will blush and slump and mumble. But everything has changed—this feeling isn’t shame or embarrassment. It’s thrilling.

  ‘I think we’re busted,’ Portia murmurs through a mouthful of Corn Flakes. On the teachers’ table Miss Lacey is talking with the headmaster, Mr Pegg, occasionally glancing our way.

  ‘But how could she know?’ Sarah says.

  ‘Someone dobbed,’ I suggest.

  Portia shakes her head. ‘Nah. Who’d have the guts to do that?’

  But after breakfast we’re summoned to Mr Pegg’s office. He makes us stand in a line in front of his desk while he drones on about the dangers of being out of bounds at night. Boys, he scolds, could have come across us. ‘Or worse,’ he says, ‘a hermit.’

  Mr Pegg is a stooping man with a deep voice, but up close his face is strangely childlike, round and soft at the edges.

  He gives us each a Stonely Road. He points a thin, bloodless finger at me. ‘And you, Rebecca,’ he says, ‘will be first.’

  Back at the house, we stand at the entrance to the dorm and give each other a high-five. ‘Stonely Roads, ladies,’ Portia calls like a game-show host, and everyone cheers. Sarah and Portia seem genuinely thrilled with their punishment, but I’m more subdued. I wonder if my parents will be told about the Bell Run. I hope not.

  Apart from Simone, no one in the house knows about my scholarship. So they don’t really know what’s at stake each time I get in trouble. Dad won’t be happy if he finds out. He’s a high-school principal and strict with my brother and me, always expecting better from us, no matter the circumstance. But how could he ever understand what it’s like up here? Then I feel a surge of shame. My parents are already giving up so much for me to be at Silver Creek; even with the scholarship the fees are enormous. More, I know, than they can afford.

  It is still dark when I get out of bed, the moon cutting slivers of light through the wall. I drag myself from under the covers and, so as not to wake anyone, get changed in the tog room, my feet like iceblocks on the tiles.

  Out the front of the library a Jeep rumbles in the dark, white exhaust spewing from the back. I can’t see anyone else around, not even Rich Browne, who I’ve heard has Stonely Roads most mornings.

  I’m about to sit on the steps when a voice from deep within the Jeep shouts, ‘What are you waiting for, Rebecca? You’ve got thirty-five minutes.’

  The descent seems to take forever. I can still hardly see a thing, tripping and skidding on loose stones. The bush leans in towards the road, menacing. I hear the crackle and snap of things moving about in the shrubs, and fear starts to seep into my blood, turning it cold. My breath is noisy, as though amplified out here. This isn’t so much fun, after all.

  To make sure I don’t walk the Jeep follows me, its headlights casting a long shadow across the road. Near the bottom my laces come loose and I crouch to tie them. My eyes are streaming. The Jeep rolls up behind and blasts its horn, which gives me such a fright I lose my balance and keel over. I lie on the road like an overturned beetle until the disembodied voice hollers from the window, ‘Don’t you dare stop running!’

  I turn my head, miserable, and stare right at the lights. They’re like two burning suns in a black sky.

  Later that morning my class goes swimming at the dam. I dress in board shorts and a T-shirt: in my bathers I feel shy around the other girls from other houses, which seems strange to me after I had the guts to get nude for the Bell Run. The water is tea-coloured and the mud on the bottom squelches beneath my toes. I try not to think about snakes lurking in the reeds. A few girls dive from the board and I watch their slender figures rise in the air and plunge into the water.

  I float on my back, away from the others, the sun hot against my face. Murky shapes glide across my eyelids. I can’t hear anything, floating like this. I can only feel the bob of the water, the breeze brushing against my forehead. I close my eyes. I’m so tired after the Stonely Road, but the splash of the boys’ bombs into the dam makes me flinch.

  I feel on edge for the rest of the morning, and at lunch, as I’m handing my crockery back to the slushie, I drop my plate. It crashes to the floor and the entire dining hall roars, banging their fists on their tables, as is the custom. Immediately I feel my face flush and my hands begin to shake. Somehow I hold in my tears.

  Later, on the way back up to the house after class, Lou loops her arm through mine and urges me around the back, where there’s an old fruit box near the door. We drag it around to the top of the dusty slope. Lou sits at the front, her legs bunched up around her face, while I sit behind, my legs hanging over the sides. We push off, tunnelling through a flume of hot air, laughing all the way down.

  At the bottom Lou tries to get out but she’s stuck, and by now we’re both howling. Then I feel something warm gush between my legs and an earthy pong rises like steam. Piss is pooling in the box. It’s everywhere, creeping towards Lou.

  My ears roar with a rabid panic. Girls are gathering at the top of the slope to watch. Finally Lou climbs out, kicking up another mushroom of dust. Only when she’s a few paces up the slope do I tip myself out. There’s now a puddle of piss in the dirt, and I grind it under my heel before scurrying across the sand towards the deck, away from the others, dragging the box along with me.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Lou is staring down at me, shielding her face from the sun.

  ‘Just looking for a new box.’ I tug at my soaked shorts. ‘This is breaking apart.’

  Lou stares a moment longer. Then she gives a wave and carries on up the slope.

  I run to a bathroom cubicle and slump against the toilet seat. My whole body is shaking. Am I so nervous around everyone that I can’t control my bladder? What if Briohny finds out? I can’t bear to think about it.

  I don’t know how long I stay like this, my head on my knees, but eventually I hear the girls’ voices grow dim as everyone drifts down the hill for dinner.

  ~

  During prep, Portia calls me over to her desk. She has her sketchp
ad out to show me some drawings. Portia can draw anything—faces, landscapes, dream worlds. Sometimes she invites me to join her on the deck, where we sip on cups of raspberry cordial and eat Saladas. We’ve also been into the bush at the back of the house, where she smokes a cigarette and we fossick among the foliage. Other times we sit on the edge of her bed to look at her photos. She likes to show me the same ones over and over. They’re mostly of her mum. She lives in Queensland with her girlfriend. Portia stays with them on holidays.

  Portia doesn’t even mind that her mum is gay. No one in the house teases her about it. I’ve never heard of anyone’s mum being gay. How does that even work? Was she always gay, or did she change her mind about men when she was with Portia’s dad? I don’t know any gay women, but my dad used to work with a man who lived with another man in an apartment near the city. His name was Tim, and he wore a gold earring and looked a bit like Elton John, who was also once married to a woman. It’s all very confusing.

  These men used to have dinner parties where Mum and Dad drank lots of wine while Archie and I watched videos upstairs, sprawled across the soft leather couches. The apartment was spotless and everything seemed to match. I liked the bathroom best, with its heat lamps and enormous bathtub, always smelling like the spicy cologne Dad occasionally wears to work.

  When I look at Portia I think of Tim. They’re both poised, confident in their appearance, in their look. With her Mooks sweaters and old jeans worn at the knee, Portia has the best clothes of all the girls at Silver Creek. The only thing I like in my drawers is a Quicksilver T-shirt I bought for myself at Christmas.

  Portia has endless stories about camping trips, race meets in Armidale, tennis tournaments at Blairgowrie, long hot summers on Fraser Island. Her older brothers supply the booze, and she’s hooked up with heaps of boys. She’s even given Rollo Walker, the best-looking guy in the school, a blowjob.

  ‘You’ll have to come stay with me in Queensland,’ she says casually one afternoon. ‘Best beaches in the world. We eat prawns and lobster every day. It’s awesome.’

  Imagine going to Queensland to stay with Portia! I feel big and smug to have been singled out, to have been picked above all the rest. But I try not to show too much excitement. Portia, after all, is fickle. One day she likes someone, the next day she doesn’t—that much I have learnt about her. Only this morning, on the way back from chapel, she told me that she doesn’t like many girls in the house.

  We had taken the long route behind the art school. Smoke from the burn-off in the front paddocks tickled my throat.

  ‘Red House are just sheep,’ she said, reaching for a stick lying beside the path. ‘Always following. It’s so boring.’

  ‘But some are all right,’ I said. ‘I mean, what about Ronnie?’

  Portia didn’t reply. She slashed at some wattle.

  I stopped. ‘What about me?’ I was trying to be light-hearted, but I could hear the plea in my voice. I wonder if Portia could hear it too.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said finally, after giving me an even stare. ‘I haven’t worked you out yet.’

  That evening it is too humid to sleep. Portia and I go out to the deck and begin throwing stones on Yellow House’s roof. We have a system—three throws each while the other keeps guard, taking breaks for a sip on a glass of cool milk. The stones on the tin sound like gunfire.

  ~

  Miss Lacey leads a group to collect firewood. We forage in the scrub at the back of the house, gathering up bracken, kindling, and larger branches and logs. It’s overcast, the air clotted. We have already made about half-a-dozen trips to the boiler room when my back begins to seize up.

  ‘How long are we doing this?’ moans Briohny.

  ‘Come on,’ Miss Lacey calls. ‘If you get enough now, you won’t run out later in the term.’

  ‘Who the fuck cares?’ Sarah mutters, a large log balanced between us. ‘Why don’t we just have a hot-water system?’

  Ronnie was wrong about Sarah: she’s changed since our Bell Run. No longer the compliant, well-behaved one, she talks loudest after lights-out, and smokes in the boiler room every afternoon.

  I like Sarah. She has wonderful stories about Indonesia, where her family lives, describing the food and heat and the local people in vivid detail. I have seen photos of her brother stuck to the wall beside her bed. He looks like a female version of Sarah, with the same bad skin and upturned nose. He smokes a lot of pot, Sarah once said. ‘So much that he sees things. Dragons in the sky and giant mushrooms blooming from the ground.’

  We stagger through the trees until Sarah trips on a root, sending the log flying. As we lean over to pick it up, Sarah nods towards Miss Lacey and whispers, ‘Look.’ Miss Lacey is bent over with a sack of kindling and beneath her grey sweatpants is the clear outline of a g-string. We snigger until she spins around.

  ‘What is it?’

  Sarah throws a smirk my way, glancing back at Miss Lacey beneath her dark lashes. ‘Well . . .’ she says, ‘we were just admiring your g-string.’

  The log strains in my arms. Miss Lacey blinks, fixing her eyes on Sarah, then me, and there’s something in her face I haven’t seen before: contempt.

  ‘What a stupid thing to say,’ she snaps. ‘I’ll be seeing you both in detention.’

  She stalks back through the trees. Sarah laughs, dropping the log into a damp patch of earth. I watch Miss Lacey go, shame prickling at my fingertips. Turn back. But she doesn’t and I kick at a pile of old leaves.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Sarah asks as I look over my shoulder. Miss Lacey is gone.

  ~

  It’s prep. I should be at my desk. Instead I’m in the bathroom, running cold water over my hand, which I burnt on the boiler.

  Back in the study I find Miss Lacey at my desk, turning over a page in my workbook.

  ‘Yes?’ I say, scraping my chair across the floor and sitting down.

  She looks up from the workbook. ‘Where were you?’

  I shrug.

  ‘Rebecca?’

  ‘I was in the bathroom, okay. What’s the big deal?’

  She slaps her palm against the desk. ‘That’s it. Go to the boiler room. Go on, get out.’

  ‘What the hell? Why?’

  ‘I said get out!’

  Her face has gone white, her pupils like pinpricks. Everyone in the study turns to look—it’s the first time Miss Lacey has shouted like this.

  I storm outside, but she follows, grabbing at my arm. We’re almost tussling.

  ‘This is bullshit!’ I cry.

  ‘I beg your pardon? What is the matter with you?’

  ‘I burnt my hand! But you don’t care about that, do you?’

  Miss Lacey shakes her head. ‘I’m getting pretty sick and tired of all this, Rebecca—you need to work on your attitude. Think about what’s at stake here every time you open your mouth for some snide remark, all right? You can stay out here and think about your behaviour.’

  I slump into the plastic seat beside the woodbin. Under the lurid light I see how dark circles bruise her eyes, her hair frizzing at her temples like a girl’s—and I remember that she isn’t that much older than me, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six.

  ‘What are you smirking at?’

  I shrug. ‘Nothing.’

  She nods a few times, chewing on her lip. It looks like she’s going to say something, maybe try to get to the bottom of whatever is going on here. Part of me wants that—for her to like me again. But then I think, Why should I have to make it up to her? I haven’t done anything wrong. Blowing air from my lips, I ask how long I have to stay out in the cold. ‘You know,’ I sneer, ‘I don’t want to get pneumonia.’

  Her face hardens. ‘You’ll stay out here all bloody night if you have to.’

  When she’s gone I slump further into the seat, tracing my sneaker up and down the boiler. I like it out here, on my own. I can hear myself think, and I can think about anything I want. But all I can think about is Miss Lacey and her anger. It was
thrilling, to see her upset—because of me.

  Later that night I can’t sleep. My hand stings hot beneath the sheets. I get up a few times to run it under more water. This only eases the pain for a few minutes and I end up sleeping with my hand pressed against the metal bedstead.

  I dream Miss Lacey is chasing me. We’re thrashing through the bush out the back of the house, the sun high in the sky. She is shouting unintelligibly at me, and I’m terrified—a cold, black fear. In the long grass by the dam she catches me and her nails dig sharp at my skin.

  ~

  The next night, when everyone else is asleep, Emma and I creep off to the tuck room for a Milo. As Emma pours milk into her mug, she asks, ‘Why do you always suck up to Portia?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You shouldn’t, you know. The other girls like you already. They look up to you.’

  I almost laugh, but in the gloom I can see Emma is frowning. ‘No they don’t,’ I say.

  She shrugs. ‘Maybe,’ she says, reaching for the light, ‘you shouldn’t worry so much what other people think.’

  I stay out there in the dark. So that’s where I stand on the spectrum of our friendship: on the cusp of potential, but only if I become better, nicer. It’s a painful thought, almost like betrayal, and I ball my hands into fists, squeezing at a sudden fury towards Emma. ‘Like it’s that easy,’ I want to shout.

  At the window in the corner the moon shines dully at the opaque glass. I think of Father Wilson and his sermon. About how Silver Creek gives us the chance to see God in his Creation. But it isn’t that; it isn’t that at all. You don’t see anything clearer up here: not the girls in the house, the teachers, or whatever god there might be. You only see yourself, stripped back, bare. You see yourself in an unflinching light, and you cannot look away.