Текст книги "Saving Francesca"

Автор книги: Melina Marchetta

Соавторы: Melina Marchetta
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chapter 8

I LOOK FOR Luca at lunchtime to see how he’s coping at my aunt’s place. He’s looking miserable by the cafeteria, and when he sees me, his little face lights up, which makes me want to cry.

“Are you having fun?” I ask over-cheerfully.

“Mummy’s having a nervous breakdown,” he says, and I can tell he has no idea what it is.

“Have you got your lunch?” I ask, fixing up his tie and socks because the administration around here are Nazis about such things.

“That’s what Anthony says has happened to Mummy.”

“Doesn’t Anthony still believe in Santa Claus? Doesn’t that prove that Anthony doesn’t know much?”

Mr. Brolin walks by and stops beside us. “Seniors’ lunch area is on the roof.”

“Can I just finish speaking to my brother?”

He gets me on an answering-back call and I get another afternoon of detention. I can’t even open my mouth to plead my case. Any attempt is construed as answering back.

Luca looks at me helplessly and I can sense he’s close to tears.

“I’ll ring you,” I say, “and then maybe we can talk to Zia Teresa about Pinocchio staying over.”

“Promise.”

“Cross my heart, hope to die.” My voice cracks as I say that. And he hears that crack, and I know it kills him a bit inside.

The day gets worse. We have drama, and for me, drama class is a four-times-a-week nightmare. Every lesson Mr. Ortley puts on a piece of music and asks us to dance, and every lesson we stare back at him, some of us with disinterest, others with horror. Nobody ever dances. Nobody but him. He dances like a maniac, which is a bit embarrassing because he’s about fifty, and seeing a fifty-year-old dancing to Limp Bizkit is pretty nauseating.

“If you can’t lose your inhibitions, you’ll never be able to convince a crowd of people that you’re someone else. That’s what you have to do as an actor,” he says between breaths.

As usual, no one moves.

“Mr. Mackee? Are you going to grace the dance floor with your moves?”

Thomas Mackee gives a snort, which is kind of like a no.

“And you did drama for what reason?”

“Because I thought it would be an easy pass, sir. And you went to the National Institute of Dramatic Art for what reason?”

Ortley doesn’t care. He seems to like what he does. He tells us that he’s waiting for one of those perfect teaching moments when he can say it’s all worth it and then he’ll quit.

“Miss Spinelli?”

I’d love to do the snort thing, but it would give Thomas Mackee too much satisfaction.

“I’d rather not.”

“Why?”

“Because it’ll make me feel self-conscious,” I lie.

“Why?”

I shrug and look down.

I’ve perfected the art of shyness. I had three years of practice at Stella’s, and it’s brought me great comfort over the years. When I was being my un-shy self, I got a different sort of spotlight. Not the one I wanted. I got detentions, was tested for hyperactivity, ridiculed, hassled, ostracized. By the time my Stella friends came to save me, I was ripe for it. Ready to go into some kind of retirement. Because it gets pretty exhausting being on the perimeter.

Here in drama, I don’t actually care what people think of me, and deep down I’m not really self-conscious. I just don’t have the passion for this or the drive. I would like to go onto autopilot for the whole of Year Eleven drama. It’s not as if we’re going to be able to perform this year.

“Are you scared people will make fun of you?”

This man does not give up. He looks me straight in the eye when he speaks to me. No one in this school has done that all year except William Trombal, and that was to intimidate me.

“Maybe,” I mumble.

“You want to dance.”

“You want me to dance?”

“No. You want to dance. Every time the music comes on, you sway.”

Everyone’s looking at me.

“It’s instinct.”

“Then act on instinct rather than on what other people think,” he says in a flat, hard voice.

He turns away from me dismissively. It’s as if he couldn’t be bothered.

My mother forced me to take drama. “You’ll be in your element,” she said.

“She’s shy,” my dad tried to explain.

“Yes, in her left toe she’s shy. She’s just lazy. That’s her problem. She’s too busy worrying about what her friends—”

“I don’t care what my friends think.”

“You care what they’ll do when they remember that you’re the one with personality.”

“Is it okay if I have a say over what I want?” I asked.

“That’s the problem, Frankie. Once you start hanging out with them, they don’t give you a say.”

“You just want me to be like you,” I shouted.

“You are like me. Get used to it,” she shouted back.

My father would go around and shut all the windows in the kitchen so the neighbors couldn’t hear us shouting, but Mia and I would go at it until I backed down or my dad would say, “Mia, she’s a kid. Couldn’t you just let her win for once?”

But it was never in Mia’s makeup to back down.

“Is that what you want, Frankie? That I let you win?”

Yes, I’d want to scream. Just once, let me win.

We’d go to bed furious with each other, and then she’d wake me in the middle of the night and come and lie on my bed and we’d talk for hours, about nothing and everything, and she’d let me touch the scars on her stomach—the scars from where they cut me out of her.

“My pelvis was too small,” she’d say, “and you were in such a hurry to come out that they had to deliver you by Cesarean, and by the time I woke up from the anesthetic, Nonna Anna and Nonna Celia had already held you, and I felt so cheated and I said to your father, ‘Let’s always take care of her, Robert. No one else is to take care of her but you and I.’ ”

But here I am at my grandparents’ house, knowing that this is killing Mia more than a breakdown. And I need to get myself back home, and Luca too. Because if we don’t, my mother will feel as if we’ve been ripped from her without the anesthetic, and the pain waves will be felt by all of us.

I need to get back. But I don’t know how.

My detention with Mr. Brolin means that I have to come into contact with Jimmy Hailler again. He gives me a wave, as if we’re long-lost friends, and I ignore him. So he turns his attention to some Year Eight kid next to him, who is looking over at Mr. Brolin, frightened of being caught speaking. The kid looks miserable. Not just Brolin miserable or Jimmy Hailler miserable, but it’s there in his eyes and Jimmy Hailler doesn’t make things any better.

Later, I sit under the tree in Hyde Park: it’s one of those fantastic weather days that bring everyone out, and I sit among strangers enjoying the sun and watching the old guys play on the giant chess game. I like this park. It’s full of life. Of greenies selling points of view, of lovers lying on the grass smooching, of Japanese tourists having their photo taken in front of the fountain, of the cathedral looming over us. At this time of the afternoon, there are no Sebastian kids around and I feel a bit at peace.

I see the Year Eight kid from detention walking as fast as possible down the pathway, and sure enough, there’s Jimmy Hailler trailing him. A fury builds up inside of me. I don’t know what comes over me, but I’m up on my feet and walking toward him before I can talk myself out of it.

“You should be ashamed of yourself.”

He looks around, to see if I’m speaking to someone else.

“Are you talking to me?”

“Yes I am, Mr. Taxi Driver, De Niro. You’re a bully and I know you don’t care, but I just thought you should know that I think you’re scum. He’s probably some miserable kid with his own demons and he doesn’t need yours.”

I’m actually shouting, and I feel as if there are tears in my eyes, but I don’t care. I’m just sick of all the misery—my absolute lack of control over everything. For a moment, I catch a glimpse of shock on his face, but I walk away. When I reach the lights on Elizabeth Street, I find that he’s next to me.

“It’s my favorite film, you know.” He’s got a lazy voice that comes across as an annoying drawl.

At first I ignore him.

“Taxi Driver,” he persists.

“Of course it is,” I say, because it’s just too much effort to ignore him. “And I bet I can tell you what your second-favorite film is.”

He gives me one of those go-ahead-but-you’ll-be-wrong looks, and the lights change and I walk away. But after a moment I turn back, feeling challenged. He’s still standing at the lights.

I reach him, my arms folded, and I know I’m going to be right and I am as smug as he is. “Apocalypse Now.”

No reaction.

“I’m right, aren’t I? I can tell.”

He doesn’t give an inch, so I walk away for the second time.

“So what’s your favorite?” he yells out. “The Sound of Music?”

He catches up to me.

“I’m not as easy to work out as you are,” I tell him as we walk past Market Street.

“It is. I can tell. You love The Sound of Music.”

“No I don’t.”

“You’ve watched it fifteen times. You’ve jumped around a gazebo pretending you’re sixteen going on seventeen. You’ve sung ‘My Favorite Things’ when you’re sad, and every time Captain von Trapp’s voice catches during ‘Edelweiss,’ you bawl your eyes out.”

I stop and look at him, ready to deny it, but then I feel my mouth twitching. “Seems like I’ve watched it one or two times less than you have,” I say.

“Think about it,” he tells me as we sit in Starbucks, soaking marsh-mallows into our hot chocolates. “Empire magazine will interview you one day and you’re going to admit that it’s your favorite movie. At least I’ll come across dark and mysterious.”

“Do you know how many guys would pick Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now as their favorite films? You’ll come across as a cliché.”

“I like The Princess Bride as well.”

“If you spread that around, you just might get lucky with the girls.”

“What makes you think that I’m not lucky with them now?”

I make a scoffing sound. “Dream on.”

“Bitch.”

“Just honest.”

After a moment he nods as if agreeing.

“So what do you girls talk about?”

“Nothing exciting. You guys most of the time.”

“What’s the Eva Rodriguez chick like?”

“She’s pretty cool,” I say. “What is it about her that makes everyone interested? There are better-looking girls.”

He shrugs. “Good-looking, knows her sports, uncomplicated. Doesn’t have to prove a point a thousand times a day. Like you said, cool. Maybe even Siobhan Sullivan and Anna Nguyen too.” He looks at me almost reprimandingly. “The guys think you need a personality.”

“That’s actually funny, coming from the Personality Kings of the Western World.”

“You do a pretty good act,” he says.

“What?”

“The Miss Mute thing.”

“I just haven’t got anything to say.”

“Yeah you do. You kind of mutter it under your breath when you think people can’t hear.”

“Really.”

“Do you want to hang out? At your place or something?”

Hanging out with Jimmy Hailler will mean that I have to say hello to him every day. I’m not ready to say hello to him every day. Too much commitment. It’s bad enough that I’m sharing chocolate brownies with him. I shake my head.

“Not today.”

“Whenever.”

He’s the foulest-mouthed boy I’ve ever come across and constantly uses the c-word. I tell him it offends me and he calls me a prude. I shrug. So be it. I’m a prude. But he says he’ll hold back when he’s around me. He talks about smoking dope, probably a lot more than he actually smokes it, and just when you think you’ve come up with some theory about him, he’ll make you change your mind. He’s obsessed with fantasy fiction and is incredibly biting about those who get fantasy and sci-fi mixed up. The constant Machiavellian grin on his face is a cover-up for some kind of yearning, which doesn’t excuse him for being rude and obnoxious and cruel, but he’s honest, and I think that deep down he’s as lonely as I am.

On the trip home on the bus, I’m vomiting out words, unable to hold them back no matter how hard I try—talking film and music and books and gossip and DVD commentaries and clothing and teachers and students and pets and brothers and loves and hates and lyrics and God and the universe and our dads.

But not mothers.

“That’s off-limits,” he tells me, and I can’t help feeling relieved and guilty.

But most of all, I feel a little less empty than the day before.

chapter 9

IT’S THURSDAY AFTERNOON, and we have sports. These are the choices for the girls: watching an invitational cricket game; studying in one of the classrooms; or watching the senior rugby league. As you can imagine, I’m torn.

William Trombal is standing on the platform of the bus in his league shorts and jersey as I step on.

“What are you doing?”

He’s speaking to me. There is something on his face I can’t recognize. It looks a bit like panic and I’m confused.

“Going to the rugby game,” I explain politely.

“I think you’ll enjoy the cricket.”

“Based on the match fixing and controversial rotating roster, I’m ideologically opposed to cricket.”

I try to step past him, but he goes as far as putting his arm across to block me. A you’re-not-going-anywhere arm.

“Is there a problem here?” Tara Finke asks, pushing forward. He has no choice but to let us on.

I get a glare the whole way there. I don’t know what it is with this guy. One minute he’s totally conceited, next minute there’s a bit of sympathy, then there’s the hostility, and today there’s everything, including a bit of anxiousness.

I’ve got to give the Sebastian boys this. They’ve got heart. But skill? After watching them play, I feel a whole lot better about the basketball game. They get so thrashed that even Tara Finke is yelling, “This is an outrage!”

But they never give in, not once, and half the time I think they’re bloody idiots and the other half I can’t help cheering if they even touch the ball. The score is too pitiful to divulge. The other side are kind of bastards and our guys are bleeding and, strangely enough, every single time William Trombal gets thumped by those Neanderthals, my heart beats into a panic.

On the way back to school, I sit facing him and he’s in his own miserable world. I actually think he wants to cry, but that revolting male protocol of not crying when you feel like shit just kicks in. He looks at me for a moment, and I feel as if I should be nice and look away, but I don’t.

“Why don’t you just stick to what you’re good at?” I find myself asking.

“I warned you,” he says gruffly.

“You didn’t say there was going to be blood.”

“You should have gone to the cricket game.”

“Do they win?” I ask.

“Every time.”

“Then why don’t you join the cricket team?”

He’s horrified. “It’s not about winning!”

We approach the school, and the first of the guys shuffles past and pats William Trombal on the back. He’s their leader, although half their size.

“Maybe next week we’ll be able to score, Will.”

“You played a great game,” one says.

“No, mate, you did.”

“No. You did, mate.”

They go on forever. It’s nauseating stuff, but there’s no blaming. They get off the bus smiling tiredly.

Oh God, don’t let me like these guys.

In legal studies, we debate refugees, because Mr. Brolin hasn’t prepared a lesson and he wants us to do the work. Based on our detention relationship, he always calls on me, and on principle I refuse to give in.

“What’s your opinion, Miss Spinelli?” he asks (he pronounces it spin-a-lee). He does the stare that doesn’t intimidate any of us. It almost makes me want to laugh out loud.

“What’s your opinion, Mr. Brolin?” Tara Finke asks.

She gets into trouble for speaking without putting up her hand.

“What I think isn’t the issue, Miss Finke.”

“Why?” she persists.

I can guarantee he won’t give his opinion. He sits on the fence in the name of professionalism and gets someone else to voice his fascist views (I’ve got to stop sitting next to Tara Finke), and around here, there’s always a candidate.

“Why should we let people in who jump the line?” Brian Turner asks. He’s unimportant in the scheme of things, but he would be so shocked if someone pointed out his unimportance to him.

“Because in their country there mightn’t be a line,” Tara Finke says.

“They just want to come here because we’re the land of plenty,” this girl who always states the obvious says, stating the obvious.

“Yeah, plenty of bullshit,” Thomas Mackee mutters under his breath. Tara Finke and I look at him, surprised, while Brolin comes stalking down the aisle to write in Thomas Mackee’s diary for language.

“I agree with Thomas,” Tara Finke says.

Thomas Mackee looks horrified. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t agree with me.” He looks around at his friends, and with his finger twirling around his head, he makes the “she’s cuckoo” sign. They snicker with him.

“We have a responsibility,” she continues without missing a beat.

“What? To let terrorists into the country?” Brian Turner asks.

“I thought we were talking refugees, not terrorists,” Thomas Mackee says.

“See, you agree with me,” Tara Finke argues.

“I do not agree with you. I just don’t agree with them,” he says, rolling his eyes.

“In what way don’t you agree with me?” she snaps. “We’re saying the same thing. That there’s plenty of bullshit here and that refugees aren’t terrorists.”

Brolin grabs Tara’s diary to record the “bullshit” because it gives him a purpose.

“We’re the only democratic country in the world that puts children in jail,” she says, looking around at everyone.

“It’s very easy to express outrage from your comfortable middle-class world, Miss Finke,” Mr. Brolin says, pleased with himself.

“Well, that’s pretty convenient,” she says sarcastically. “Shut the comfortable middle class up and rely on the fact that the uncomfortable lower classes in the world aren’t able to express outrage and offer solutions. They’re too busy trying not to get killed.”

“I don’t like your tone,” he says.

“My tone’s not going to change, Mr. Brolin.”

“You have to question where you get your facts from,” Brian Turner says.

“Where do you get yours? The Telegraph? Today Tonight? Your parents? Well, my mum works for the Red Cross Refugee and International Tracing Agency, and she goes and visits the people in Villawood every two weeks. We don’t put on our uniforms just when it suits us, and I resent someone stopping me from saying what I believe just because I live happily in the suburbs.”

Mr. Brolin looks uncomfortable. He’s saved by the bell, and he’s out of there before we even pick up our books.

Ryan Burke, a guy from my English preliminary extension class, approaches us, smiling.

“We’re trying to get a social-justice group thing happening around here,” he tells us. “You interested?”

“Sounds cool,” Tara says.

“Oh shucks. Wish I belonged,” Thomas Mackee snickers as he passes by with his posse.

“Ignore him,” Ryan Burke says, walking alongside us. “He’s just trying to rebel. His mother’s high up in antidiscrimination.”

“That should come in handy when he gets discriminated against for not having a brain,” Tara says before leaving us for her design and technology class.

We’re outside our English preliminary extension room and end up sitting together.

I like Ryan Burke and his group. They can be cool and take their work seriously at the same time. Even the slackers like them, although once or twice there’ll be a dig about their dedication. These guys feel just as comfortable surfing as they do going to the theater. They like girls but don’t feel the need to date them, and at first they were the hardest to get to know because they had so many female friends from outside the school. More than anything, they enjoy each other’s company, and although there is a lot of tension between them because of their competitiveness, they’re the type of guys you like to see around the place.

Ryan Burke is good-looking. He has that golden-haired look, with a gorgeous smile. I think he hates the perception that he’s the good old boy, and once in a while he rebels against the image. But deep down he has a decency that I think will stay with him.

He becomes my English extension companion. Like Shaheen from biology and Eva from economics, our relationship is confined to sitting next to each other in class and whispering. In the halls and on the quadrangle we acknowledge each other, but there is no need for in-depth chatting. The bonding takes place in class.

In English extension, we’re doing an Austen unit, and Ryan and I analyze who we are in Pride and Prejudice.

“I’d like to think I’m Darcy,” he says, “but I think I’m a bit of a Bingley. I can be talked out of things sometimes. You?”

“I’d like to think I’m Elizabeth, but deep down I think I’m the one whose name no one can remember. Not Lydia the slut or Mary the nerd or Jane the beauty or Elizabeth the opinionated. I’m the second-youngest. The forgotten one.”

“Yeah, I know which one you’re talking about. What’s-her-name.”

“Yeah.”

Later, I walk down the senior corridor and William Trombal is coming from the opposite direction, speaking to his friends. They’re having one of those Trekkie-versus-Trekker discussions. There’s just something about William Trombal that screams out Star Trek fan. I personally can’t do the Vulcan salute with my fingers and have felt inferior because of it, so disliking William Trombal more than ever suits me just fine. He’s laughing at something one of them says, and it transforms him completely. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him smile, and it’s kind of devastating. They walk by me, completely oblivious. Until the very last moment, when he looks over at me and our eyes hold for a moment or two.

And I get this twitch in my stomach.

I walk through Grace Bros. to get through to George Street to catch my bus, and I find myself going straight to the counter that sells my mother’s favorite perfume. I spray it in the air and it’s as if the scent’s a genie and it triggers everything off inside me and I can’t get over what comes up with that one spray. Memories and photos and sayings and advice and music and lectures and shouting and security and love and nagging and hope and despair … despair … why has despair come up? I don’t remember despair in her life, but it is evoked with this magical spray. But more than anything, I remember passion.

I look around for the counter that sells my scent, but I’m so petrified that if I spray it in the air, nothing will come out. And then Mia’s scent seems to fade away and everything else fades away with it and I know that all I have to do to recapture it is press the spray button again.

But I don’t.

Later, my dad picks us up from Nonna’s and Zia Teresa’s and takes us home for the afternoon. We lie on their bed, and my mum is holding on to us so tight that I can’t breathe. She holds us and she’s crying and she says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again until I can’t bear the sound of those words.

And I want to tell her everything. About Thomas Mackee the slob and Tara Finke the fanatic and Justine Kalinsky the loser and Siobhan Sullivan the slut. And I want to tell her about William Trombal and how my heart beat fast when he looked at me, but more than anything, I want to say to her that I’ve forgotten my name and the sound of my voice and that she can’t spend our whole lives being so vocal and then shut down this way. If I had to work out the person I speak to the most in a day, it’s Mia, and that’s what I’m missing.

My nonna comes in, and I feel her gently pull the skirt of my school uniform down over my thighs because my underpants are showing. I bury my face in my mum’s neck and I inhale her scent as they pull me gently away from her. I inhale it with all my might so I can implant it in my mind.

Because I need it to be my badge.