Saving Francesca (21 page)

My dad is whistling cheerfully, putting on an act, I’m sure, and Luca is out of the car and running toward his friends playing marbles before I’ve even opened the door.

“I’ll call every day,” I tell my dad.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll only be gone three days.”

He gives me a peck on the cheek. “Quickly, before this bus drives over us.”

Will and a band of merry prefects are in charge of this nightmare. They’re the only Year Twelves attending, and I think they’ve been given a pep talk on keeping enthusiasm high.

“If they get any more cheerful, you’ll see an upchuck on the Princes Highway,” Jimmy Hailler mutters.

Ms. Quinn comes along and taps him on the shoulder.

“Let’s check through your bags to see if you’ve packed neatly, James.”

He gently pushes on her shoulder, effeminately.

“Let’s.”

If Jimmy’s stashed away anything, I doubt they’ll find it.

Brother Louis, wearing jeans, stands alongside me.

“Love the denim,” I tell him. He looks pleased.

We get the lecture about no alcohol, no drugs, no cigarettes. “Zero tolerance,” they say. They warn us that they’ll send us home in a taxi and let our parents pay for the two-hour fare. Anyone found in a cabin with a member of the opposite sex will be suspended. They’ve been listening to the all-famous “What to threaten students with at school camps” tape, which must be circulated to all schools.

When we arrive at Gerringong, down the South Coast, we’re told to get into a group of eight and grab a cabin. The four of us stay huddled together. The girls standing closest to us we call the Hair Bear Bunch because of their fascination with their hair—it’s all they ever talk about. The Indie girls are on the other side of them. They’re the type of girls who would consider me a social outcast if they knew of the presence of a Britney Spears album in the Spinelli household. Rumor has it that Tara almost joined their group but they found out she had the Celine Dion single “My Heart Will Go On.” Tara reckons they protest for the sake of protest, and we agree that we couldn’t bear listening to Socially Aware FM for the next three days. Thankfully, Eva Rodriguez’s group grab us in our hour of need, and we bag cabin number one.

Camp is so outdated, it’s retro, and I doubt it’s changed much in thirty years. I can guarantee we’ll end up singing “Peace Train,” “Imagine,” and “Let It Be” before the night’s out. But I enjoy it because I need something to stop me from thinking about home.

Thomas and his friends have brought along their guitars, and they play their punk crap in the food hall. I can’t believe I know all the lyrics, thanks to sitting next to him on the bus every day.

Tara, Justine, and I stand watching them, their only audience.

“Someone should tell him that he can’t sing,” I say.

“Oh please. Let me,” Tara snickers.

“I can play that,” Justine muses.

“On the piano accordion?”

“What are you laughing at?” she asks me.

“You blow me away.”

Having boys around at camp is hard. You have to be on the alert. Boys, for example, like exposing themselves. They walk back from the shower blocks with their towels around them, and next minute either someone flashes at you, or one of his friends grabs his towel off him and makes a run for it. I have to say it’s a bit traumatic at times, not knowing when the next penis will appear.

The first night I have to help Ms. Quinn and Brother Louis serve dinner, and they are as relaxed as, laughing with each other and the helpers. I try to work out what I like about them. There
are
cooler teachers and even more stimulating ones, but I think it’s the fact that they actually like us.

“Are you married?” I ask Ms. Quinn.

“No. You?”

I laugh.

“If I can’t have Brother Louis,” she tells me, “I don’t want nobody, baby.”

I look at Brother Louis, who has two pink stains on his cheeks. It makes him look so cute.

“I’m in love with someone I can’t have as well,” I tell them boldly.

“He’s a fool,” Brother Louis says to me.

I’m pleased.

I get a bit of a crush.

It’s lights out at ten o’clock, which is when the action starts. The other girls in our cabin have a CD player, and someone puts on some music and Eva Rodriguez shows us how her brother hip-hops. “It’s like world peace is determined by how serious you are and how low you wear your pants,” she tells us.

It starts off ridiculous and goes downhill from there as we each take a turn. We dance in a way that’s only possible when there are no boys around. The rule is not to take yourself seriously, but whoever gets a solo has to keep as straight a face as possible and go for it.

Siobhan, Eva, and I try to outdo each other and everyone’s laughing uncontrollably, even Tara. We collapse on our beds, perspiring.

“God, you’re a show-off,” Siobhan tells me between pants, still laughing.

“Takes one to know one,” I say back.

Later, we lie on our bunks, talking in the dark. About anything. We go around the room, nominating teachers we love; teachers we hate; Year Eleven boys we’d date; Year Eleven boys we hate. Guys or girls we suspect are gay. We have a massive debate about which
Buffy
season was the best and an Angel versus Riley versus Spike dispute, and we end up nominating our most romantic moments in a film.

“The Last of the Mohicans,”
I say. “Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe. ‘Stay alive. I will find you.’ ”

“Drew Barrymore in
Never Been Kissed,
” Justine says, “waiting for the guy out on the baseball field and she doesn’t think he’ll show and that Beach Boys song comes on and he’s running down the stairs and everyone’s cheering.”

“. . . and Justine’s crying,” Siobhan says.

“Every single time. I’ve got it on DVD.”

“Han Solo and Princess Leia pretending to hate each other in
The Empire Strikes Back
.”

“Boring,” one of the girls boos.

“Don’t
ever
insult the
Star Wars
films,” Tara warns mockingly.

“In
The Godfather
Michael Corleone sees this girl in Sicily who ends up being blown up by the Mafia, and the look on his face is priceless,” Siobhan tells us.

“When she’s getting blown up or when he first sees her?”

“Buttercup and the Farm Boy in
The Princess Bride,
” Anna Nguyen suggests. “‘As you wish.’ ”

“Jason Biggs and the apple pie.”

We groan.

“No, I’ve got the best,” Eva Rodriguez says. “
Jerry Maguire
. ‘You had me at hello. You had me at hello.’ ”

That one gets applause, and it trails off until the last two voices are dreamy blurs.

I think I’m a bit in love with these girls. They make me feel giddy. Like I haven’t a care in the world. Like I’m fearless.

Like I used to be.

Don’t get me wrong. The camp does hit a few low points. We have to make a human pyramid displaying the foundations of the Catholic Church, and the most frightening aspect, according to Brother Louis, is that Thomas Mackee is holding up the pyramid, which makes the whole future of the church incredibly shaky.

But I get to know people I have never spoken to. Some tell me that they thought I was weird until now, or that it’s the first time they’ve seen me smile, and for a moment I feel like the most popular girl around. And then they ask me if I could introduce them to Siobhan or Eva.

After dinner on the second night, we hang out in our cabins listening to music until we hear a scream from outside.

“Probably another penis sighting,” I tell Justine as we walk out to investigate.

Will and the prefects are standing in front of a cabin, two doors down. The girls from that cabin are crying hysterically, and the prefects look harassed.

Obviously a hair-grooming session has taken place, as the girls are all braids and beads. Ryan Burke comes up behind Tara and me and puts an arm around our shoulders.

“What is it with girls and séances?” he asks. “My sister has them all the time.”

Justine is trying to calm the girls down.

“We were trying to contact Eliza’s grandfather, but now there’s an evil presence in there,” one of them cries.

“Who? The Blair Hair Witch?” Tara mutters.

Ryan and I look at each other comically.

“Did she just crack a joke?” he asks.

The Hair Bear girls refuse to go back into their cabin.

“There are
no
other cabins left,” Will explains politely, but the girls aren’t budging and I can tell he’s pretty shitty.

“Spirits are easy to get rid of,” I inform them. “You go in there, say eight Hail Marys while walking counterclockwise.”

Will and the prefects are not impressed. It’s obvious they got little sleep last night, and their eyes are hanging out of their heads. The séance girls, however, are looking at me as if I’m their hero.

I walk up the stairs to the cabin and Will follows me, but I gently push him back. “Nonbelievers are barred.” I look out at the crowd. “Believers, come forth!”

Tara, Siobhan, and I exit the cabin. We’ve spent ten minutes inside, hip-hopping while chanting a few prayers with mouths full of the Twisties and Pringles we found lying around.

We stand on the veranda and everyone below us stares in silence. Justine is still comforting one of the Hair Bear girls, and Eva and the rest of our cabin are killing themselves laughing.

“This house,” I say dramatically, like in a scene out of
Poltergeist,
“is clean.”

We get a massive cheer and applause. We wave a royal wave, and the Hair Bear girls are grateful and instantly our best friends, promising us free makeovers.

Will is looking at me, shaking his head with bemusement, as the others go back to their cabins.

“What?” I ask.

“You’re psychotic.”

“I got them back into the cabin, didn’t I?”

“What have you guys been doing in there? You’re perspiring.”

“Hip-hopping.”

He looks at me, as if he’s trying to work out if I’m having him on.

“You don’t strike me as a hip-hopper,” he says, laughing.

“I squeeze it in between ghost-busting.”

I look down at what he’s holding in his hand.

“Fart gas? Shame on you, Will.”

“Tom Mackee’s cabin. There could be more.”

“As if they don’t have enough natural emissions of their own.”

I feel reluctant to go and he seems to feel the same. It’s pitch-dark and we can only see each other’s outlines. We sit on the veranda and his hand comes across and touches mine and I slip my fingers through his and we sit like that for a while.

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

I’m thinking heaps of things, but they all require too much honesty and I don’t think I can take that at the moment.

“I’m wondering who came up with the concept of putting fart smells in a can.”

“Worse,” he says, hardly able to stop himself from laughing, and I just love the sound of it. “Imagine being their kid. Imagine going around saying, ‘My dad invented fart gas in cans. That’s how we made our millions.’ ”

It degenerates from there and we try to outdo each other’s grossness until he yawns and apologizes, and I can sense his tiredness.

“How much sleep did you get?”

“Hailler, the dickhead, got chucked out of his cabin because he wouldn’t shut up, so he ended up in ours and continued to not shut up for the rest of the night.”

“What did you guys talk about?”

“Rugby.”

“What else?”

I can sense his surprise. “Nothing else, just rugby. You?”

“Lots of stuff. And then movies. Have you ever seen
The Last of
the Mohicans
?”

“I love it.”

“Really?” I’m over the moon. We share a movie. Finally, we’re on the same planet.

“Don’t you love the part where he says, ‘Stay alive. I will find you’?” I ask.

“I love that massacre scene,” he says, like an excited little boy, “where they’re walking down that path in the middle of nowhere and they’re surrounded by the woods and you know the Indians are going to attack and it’s so tense.”

Things that make you go
hmmm.

I can sense him looking at me in the dark and I turn to face him, feeling the warmth of his breath on my face.

“What’s going on, Will? Speak to me.”

I don’t know where those words have come from. I’ve heard Mia say them. “What’s going on inside your head, Rob? Tell me.”

Will doesn’t speak, but his hand squeezes mine tighter.

“It’s like you have a plan and someone comes along and makes you want to change it all, but you still like your first plan, no matter how fantastic the second one makes you feel.”

“I’ve never planned anything, so I don’t understand the feeling,” I say.

“Well, I plan everything. I even plan my plans.”

“So tell me about plan number one.”

“First of all, but not in this order, there’s civil engineering. I know I can get between approximately 98.6 and 99.3 in the High School Certificate and that analyzing King Lear’s nervous breakdown on the heath is going to be the deciding factor in those marks.”

I can sense him looking at me in the dark as if I’m supposed to understand this dilemma.

I’m in love with a droid! Any minute now he’s going to start using formulae to work out how he feels about me.

“I know I want to kind of run away next year. Do the whole backpacking thing. Just get lost, you know?”

“You were so confused about the whole overseas thing and now you’re so certain,” I say. “Aren’t you worried about leaving your comfort zones anymore?”

“It’s like what you said at the wedding. About comfort not being everything.”

Great. Now he’s going to start taking my advice, when it’ll mean him leaving.

“I need to sort out the plan priority,” he says decisively.

“Tell me about plan number two.”

“I stay and hang out with this smart-ass who can tell me the difference between Trotsky and Tolstoy.”

I want to beg, “Pick plan two. Pick plan two.”

He kisses me and it’s not like at the party or the wedding. It’s soft and slow and familiar, and this time around I feel as if he’s in control of how he’s feeling and that there’s no regret or guilt on his part. But I taste a bit of sadness in that kiss and I don’t know whether it’s mine or his, but it makes us both tremble and not want to let go.