Thyla (4 page)

Ms Hindmarsh squeezed my shoulder. ‘Sorry, Tessa, I’m afraid Miss Bloom hasn’t
quite
got a handle on the new PA system yet. Her morning bells are always thunderous, or so quiet you can’t hear them and so you turn up twenty minutes late. You can’t use that as an excuse this time, though, Laurel and Erin. Come on, chop, chop!’

She raised an eyebrow at Laurel and Erin, who scampered quickly back up the stairs and into the hall.

From inside the hall, I could hear the thunder of many feet on a hard floor, and, before the door slammed shut again, I caught a glimpse of my new schoolmates.

So many of them! All shapes and sizes! And they were all dressed exactly as I was, in the charcoal grey uniform of Cascade Falls.

They all look so different from one another
, I thought.
And yet the same. Perhaps I really can fit in here.

‘Well, Tessa, this is it,’ said Ms Hindmarsh, squeezing my shoulder. ‘Time to start your life as a student of Cascade Falls!’

Words I did not know before my first day at Cascade Falls:

• netball (a team sport where balls are thrown from person to person and then into a hoop with a net on it)
  
• basketball (from what I can understand, exactly the same as netball, only you bang the ball against the ground sometimes and you can jump up when you throw the ball towards the net, which does seem a
  bit
  like cheating to me!)
  
• ball (for a little while, and then I remembered)
  
• bogan (it is a person of low morals and character – I think)
  
• Pepsi (a fizzy black drink that tastes a little bit like shoe polish)
  
• biro (a writing implement with ink
  inside
  it)
  
• LOL (this does not mean to lie about lazily. It means something is funny. It stands for ‘laugh out loud’. I am not sure why people say it instead of actually laughing out loud)
  
• dude
  

The meaning of the last word I was still unsure of at the end of my first day at Cascade Falls. It was Laurel who said it to me, when she noticed me looking befuddled in our trigonometry class. She leaned over and whispered, ‘It’s okay, dude,’ she said. ‘Nobody gets this stuff.’

Later, as we left the classroom, I asked her what a ‘dude’ was. She just shrugged and said, ‘It’s, well, a dude. A dude’s a dude. You know? Some things just are what they are. Like you. You’re a Tessa. It would be pretty hard to explain what a
Tessa
is in one sentence, wouldn’t it? You just are what you are and –’

She didn’t get a chance to finish, before Charlotte Lord appeared at my side and said, ‘It’s okay, Laura.’

‘Laurel.’

‘Laurel. Sorry. I should remember that from the number of times I’ve seen your name on the detention list. Anyway,
Laurel
, you can go now. I’m Tessa’s mentor. I can take it from here.’

‘But … we were just talking, Charlotte,’ Laurel protested.

Charlotte shook her head quickly and said, ‘No thank you, Laurel. I have promised Ms Hindmarsh and my father that I will look after Tessa, and I believe a large component of this position will consist of preventing her forming acquaintances with undesirable persons …’

‘Can you say that in English, please?’ asked Laurel, which I thought was strange as it seemed that Charlotte was speaking very good English. At least I understood all the words she was saying – unlike ‘dude’ – even if they didn’t seem to be very
nice
words.

Why did Charlotte dislike Laurel so much? She seemed nice – a bit naughty, but nice. And she was right. We
were
only talking.

‘It means she reckons we’re not good enough for her new toy,’ said a voice from behind me.

I whirled around to see Laurel’s friend, Erin, standing behind us.

‘Come on, L,’ she said flatly. ‘Tessa probably just wants to hang out with her cool new friends, not us. Catch ya later, hey? If
Princess Charlotte
allows it.’

The two girls walked away.

I turned back to Charlotte to see her nostrils were flaring, ever so slightly, and her eyes were narrowed.

When she saw me looking, she opened her eyes up very wide and smiled.

‘Don’t mind those two,’ she said. ‘They’re just bogans. Come on and I’ll introduce you to some
nice
people.’

Beneath the huge oak tree in the middle of the school’s central square (which
is
lovely, Connolly. You were right!), I met Kelly, Amy, Jenna, Bridget, Claudia and Inga.

‘This is our outside place,’ Charlotte said. ‘Inside, we have our own table in the cafeteria.’

‘Does everyone?’ I asked.

Charlotte laughed. ‘Of course not,’ she said. She waved at the group as we approached and raised her voice slightly. ‘Girls, this is Tessa.’

None of them smiled with their eyes, and yet they spoke as though they were glad to meet me.

‘So, so,
so
wonderful to meet you, Tessa!’ squealed Kelly, bobbing up and down like a strange, overexcited puppy.

‘I hope you’re enjoying it here,’ said Amy, her eyes narrowed and her arms crossed over her chest. ‘You’ve certainly fallen on your feet getting Charlotte as a mentor.’

‘Very lucky,’ said Bridget.

‘Lovely to have a new girl,’ said Claudia, smiling in a way that seemed warmer than when Charlotte smiled. I decided I liked Claudia the best. She looked somewhat like a very pretty, raven-haired elf.

Inga I liked less. Her eyes were like sapphires and every bit as hard, and her hair was short and severe and nearly as pale as Charlotte’s. When Charlotte introduced us, she didn’t smile or greet me; she just stood staring, one eyebrow raised as if to say, ‘Do you really think you belong here?’

I felt like telling her that no, I didn’t. Not really.

The girls were very pretty, but talking to them for only a few minutes made me feel very tired and inadequate. They all spoke with such plummy accents, as though they had been raised in a manor in England, not a convict town at the end of the world. Charlotte explained that they had all been sent to finishing classes, courtesy of her father. ‘Which is why we stand a mile above the other girls at Cascade Falls,’ she said. ‘This may be an exclusive school, but many of its population would make you believe otherwise.’ She leaned in and whispered, ‘Scholarship students,’ and made a repulsed face. ‘They bring down the tone of exclusivity quite severely!’

Exclusive. That word seemed perfect for Charlotte and her friends. They were exclusive. They were important. And they seemed to be keenly aware of it. I wanted to like them. I promised myself I would
try
to like them. But as we walked away from the oak tree and the thoroughbred girls, I found myself feeling slightly, secretly, relieved.

Then Charlotte introduced me to Rhiannah.

Rhiannah’s hair was jet black, and her skin was as white as the sheets on my hospital bed. Her eyes were dark, too. Nearly black. And when Charlotte introduced us, Rhiannah’s dark pink lips curled upwards and her eyes smiled too.

‘This is Tessa,’ Charlotte said, for perhaps the twentieth time. It felt like the millionth and I was growing tired of the sound of my own name. ‘She’s new. Tessa, this is Rhiannah.’

Rhiannah wrinkled up her nose and sniffed at the air.

‘Is there a problem, Rhiannah?’ asked Charlotte testily.

‘No, no, not at all,’ said Rhiannah. ‘I just thought I smelled … something. Don’t mind me.’

Rhiannah held out her hand and took mine. She shook it up and down. Her grip was strong, but I matched it. ‘Lovely hands,’ she said, still smiling.

I looked down at them. To my eyes, the fingers look stubby and the fingernails were too short and remained dirty, no matter how many times you and I scrubbed at them. Remember, Connolly? You said they looked like farmers’ fingernails.

‘Why are they lovely?’ I asked.

Rhiannah just shrugged and smiled again. ‘They look like they’re used for great things. You can tell a lot about a person from their hands.’

I examined my hands more closely. They had wide, square palms, and the fingernails looked tough – as if they could claw through anything. Rhiannah’s were a bit like that, too: long and slightly pointed and dark. I looked at Charlotte’s fingernails. They were pearly pink and they sparkled in the sun.

I liked mine better.

‘That’s a very charming bangle,’ I said, looking at the metal circle around her wrist. I said it partly because I felt as though I should compliment her back after she had been so nice to me, and partly because I really did like it.

The bangle was made from flat, shiny copper. It looked like she polished it every day. Carved into its surface were intricate patterns that looked somehow like … animal tracks?

A word tried to push its way into the group of words inside my mind.

It started with a ‘P’.

Poor … Purr …

Purinin …

I could not draw my eyes away from the bangle. It seemed, strangely, as though as I was looking at it, the patterns began to move – the footprints began to leap and dance. Almost as though my brain were not in control of my limbs, I reached out. I wanted to touch it. I just wanted to find out what it would
feel
like. It was as if I was under some strange sort of spell.

Rihannah jerked her hand away, breaking the enchantment. ‘Don’t touch that … please,’ she said. I looked up at her eyes. They seemed fearful. I wondered why. All I had wanted was to touch the bangle. I looked back down at it again now. The footprints were standing still. The magic was over.

‘Tessa?’

‘Yes?’ I said, looking up at Charlotte.

‘Time to move on,’ she said. ‘See you later, Rhiannah.’

‘Yeah, I gotta go too. My brother’s waiting for me,’ said Rhiannah. Her voice was back to normal now. ‘Great to meet you, Tessa!’

I watched Rhiannah walk towards the school gates. As they opened, I saw a boy standing on the other side. His hair was dark, like Rhiannah’s. Even from here I could see that he was exceedingly handsome. As the gates shut, I was almost certain I saw his eyes flick my way, and his brow furrow. I felt my heart begin to beat very quickly, and I pressed my hand to my chest, feeling my cheeks burn.

‘He’s a bit of a looker, isn’t he?’ Charlotte whispered in my ear. ‘I don’t blame you for checking him out.’

‘I was doing nothing of the sort!’ I protested.

‘Oh, come on. Perrin is famous,’ said Charlotte. ‘One of the best-looking boys in Hobart. Pity his sister is such a nutcase. I hope she didn’t scare you. I only introduced you so you didn’t get freaked out by her later.’

I shook Perrin’s face from my head. I wanted to tell Charlotte that I didn’t think Rhiannah seemed weird at all. She seemed much nicer than all the ones who didn’t smile with their eyes.

But before I could say anything, the loud noise that had scared me so much that morning quaked through the air yet again. It scared me less each time. I flinched, but I did not cower.

Charlotte clapped her hands. ‘Class time!’ she said. ‘I do hope you have enjoyed meeting my friends, Tessa. They are definitely the most
correct
people for you to be associating with at Cascade Falls. I hope you will understand now that Erin and Laurel, and Rhiannah and her crowd are, well,
not
. You’ll thank me later for teaching you this, trust me. Now, according to your schedule, you have maths, with me. Come on. We mustn’t be late.’

I trailed along behind Charlotte as she marched up the long, polished wood floorboards of the corridor towards our classroom, watching as the sun through the windows glinted off her spun-gold hair. I couldn’t help thinking that the halo of light did look very much like a crown.

‘Princess Charlotte,’
Erin had called her.

I wondered then whether the Tessa who came out of the bush, with her matted hair and bruises and the long streaking scars across her back, would have seemed like the kind of girl Princess Charlotte would want in her court.

I wondered if the Tessa from
now
would be, if Charlotte could see who she really was.

After all, I still had the scars.