Alana Oakley (5 page)

To cover his confusion, Boris, the boy in the oversized leather jacket, threw a wad of paper at the skateboarder, Tr
ầ
n's face.

Tr
ầ
n protested. “Miss! Miss! This is disabl-ism!” He yelled, holding up a hand which had a thumb and only one finger. The story of how Tr
ầ
n lost the other three changed all the time. Some days he claimed it was a hunting accident. Other days, it was a kung-fu move gone wrong. Whatever the reason, Two-Fingered Tr
ầ
n never hesitated to use the loss to his advantage. Enzo – the third boy – planted himself between the other two boys yet again in his peacekeeper's role. Thus it was that the two boys exchanged insults from a metre apart. Tr
ầ
n had the last word with what he called the “Tr
ầ
n Salute”, by holding his L-shaped digits against his own forehead. “Loser!” he spat. Eventually, the room settled back down.

Emma pursed her lips, popped another painkiller in her mouth, and added
No swearing
and
No name-calling
to the list of rules, along with
No fighting.
As an afterthought, she underlined the additions and surrounded them with flowers and stars. Emma decided their first topic would be Job-Seeking, for she was sure that somewhere, in some way,
somehow,
the Second-Chancers could make a positive contribution towards society. She just had to help them find it. They began with a role-play.

“Give me a job, or I'll bash yur head in!” demanded Boris. Boris looked at his peers, noting with satisfaction that they looked impressed.

Ling Ling was right. Teaching
was
a lot like bringing up a toddler. She quickly flicked through the book and found a passage which felt relevant.
Focus on the positive and praise them, while guiding the negative out the door.
“I love your directness, Boris (praising the positive), but I'm worried you're coming across too strong (guiding the negative out the door). Strength is a good thing, but we don't use our teeth to open a can of soft drink, do we?”

Not to be outdone, Boris tried again.

“Give me a job, or I'll bash your head in. Please.”

A whistle of approval ran through the group.

Little steps
, Emma promised herself as she rubbed her temples.
Little steps
.

CHAPTER 7

Two musical minds meet

Ex-Sister-now-Miss Beatrice of the Benedictine Sisters was a woman who loved God and music in equal parts, if only because she believed they were one and the same. If she were really honest, she loved ‘Musicals' and ‘Broadway' even more, and said a prayer of penitence whenever the thought stole into her mind. Thus Choir Class was an hour of singing
all the time,
even when the students only wanted to speak.

“Good morning, class,” Miss Beatrice trilled at the start of every class.

“Good morning, Miss Beatrice,” the class was expected to trill back.

Whenever anybody forgot and lapsed into the spoken word, she encouraged them with a dramatic wave of her arms, her frizzy hair bouncing in agitation. She reminded Alana of a heavy, flightless bird struggling for take-off.

“Sing it. Sing it!” she would urge.

“I feel like a dork,” Flynn breathed in a sing-song voice to Maddie, who giggled in spite of herself.

“Last week, we discussed dissonance and consonance,” the teacher continued melodically. “In
Phantom of the Opera
the composer uses dissonance to evoke fear by combining notes that sound like they don't fit. Flynn and Maddie, could you please perform your composition on dissonance?”

“Yes, we can,” Flynn answered in a deep, operatic voice, earning a huge smile from the teacher, and laughter from the class.

Maddie moved into position with her violin, sliding her bow along each of the strings to check she was in tune. Flynn made a huge show of exercising his lips before placing them experimentally on the mouthpiece of his saxophone. They nodded to each other and then there was an eruption of sound. A cacophony of notes clashed harshly. The noise made everybody wince.

“Lovely. Perfect. Now, consonance,” Miss Beatrice sang with another wave.

“But we –”

“Sing it. Sing it.”

Maddie tried again, singing, “We haven't prepared a piece for consonance.”

But Miss Beatrice ignored their protests, urging them to find harmony in the musical scales they were familiar with. Maddie was a frequent user of social-networking sites to meet other musicians, and she often jammed with friends online, so she was used to improvising. But would Flynn know what to do?

With a shrug, the pair resumed their positions and began, tentatively at first, and then with growing confidence, to feed off each other's sounds. If their music had been a painting, it would have filled the canvas with bold strokes of colour. Up and down, the notes swirled. Flynn played a few bars from a classic sci-fi flick, which Maddie countered with a reference to a popular TV sitcom. The students laughed out loud. Sofia grabbed a couple of pens and began to drum the beat. Soon everybody, even Miss Beatrice, was tapping their hands and feet appreciatively, until the harsh sound of the bell interrupted Maddie and Flynn's melodic duet.

“Don't forget your homework on chromatic scales,” Miss Beatrice sang as the students trooped out jauntily, the harmonies still ringing in their ears. “Wonderful work, you two,” she aimed at Maddie and Flynn as they packed their instruments away.

“There are some deadly music websites I can show you if you want to do more of that stuff,” Maddie said in a normal voice when they were out of the teacher's earshot.

“That would be great, thanks,” Flynn said with a smile.

“Did you know, 83% of females polled last year said they thought the saxophone was the world's most romantic instrument?” Sofia informed her friends later.

“Not the
guitare
?” Alana said, surprised.

“I believe it,” Maddie said dreamily.

Alana rolled her eyes. First Khalilah had succumbed to Flynn's charms. Then Sofia. Not Maddie, too?!

CHAPTER 8

A date with destiny

Emma dreaded Fridays. Every Friday her mother called to find out how she was – although she never actually asked. Emma suspected she wasn't all that interested. Emma's mother spent most of the phone call providing information and updates about The Community – Filipino migrants like themselves who had moved in the hope for a better life: births and deaths, catastrophes and marriages … which were sometimes the same thing. That Emma had married a good-for-nothing-no-hoper-bongo-drum-player-turned-famous-jingle-writer-who-had-passed-all-too-soon-God-rest-his-soul, was an achievement she wore like a merit badge. But enough was enough. For the woman who bought her week's groceries with hoarded coupons, her daughter was a prime example of waste. It was time for Emma to get married again or, at the very least, begin dating. Preferably a Professional.

It was maddening that her only offspring should remain so stubbornly independent – not that Mrs Corazon didn't try to convince Emma of the benefits of being otherwise.

She tried persuasion.
“Dentists are such lovely people. So compassionate and caring.”

Then bribery.
“I bought you a beautiful pair of shoes to go with that dress I got for you last week. Two for the price of one, what a bargain! No, of course I won't wear it at the same time. It will look perfect for when you go out with Dr Manny.”

And when that didn't work, guilt.
“My poor heart. You will kill me one of these days with your shenanigans. One day, you'll come home and find me as dead as a doorknob” – idioms weren't one of her strengths – “For my sake, you should think of settling down.”

Now would
not
be a good time to confess that her latest ‘shenanigan' had landed Emma sixty hours of Community Service. With an ear half-cocked towards the high-pitched whine of her mother's prattle, Emma uttered the appropriate sounds for their Friday ritual –
Really? She didn't! You're kidding!
– while running an index finger along the Police Boys' Club dusty bookshelf. There had to be a better resource than
Taming Your Tiny Two's
.

Emma pulled a book from the shelf. It had a glossy cover wrapped around it and boasted over 200 pages of expertise on “teenage terrorists.” Emma popped a painkiller in her mouth and backed into a wobbly office chair, still mumbling and
ooh-ing
and
ahh-ing
at the handset, which she'd now placed on speakerphone. She buried her nose in the book and put her feet on the desk while she made notes. The author, whoever he or she was, was very insightful. Emma flicked through the pages. She reflected on her own relationship with Alana and realised ruefully that she didn't know anything about bringing up a teenager. No, in answer to the author's question, she
didn't
know what made them tick. Were they really an unexploded time bomb, like Dr Teen-Expert was suggesting? Emma took a quick glance at the dust cover, and then took a longer, keener look. Dr Gray looked like he belonged on the cover of a men's fashion magazine. He was what her mother liked to call a ‘man's man': broad shouldered, with chiselled features and deep-set eyes.
I wonder what colour they are,
Emma mused.

There was a knock at the door.

“Excuse me, I'm looking for –” a voice started. It was deep, with a pleasant timbre.

“You,” Emma pointed.

“Me?”

“You're … him,” Emma added another word.

“Yes, I'm me,” the speaker said with a smile full of patience.

In a burst of excitement, Emma's arms flailed like a baby chick leaving the nest on its maiden voyage … and plunged headfirst in a backward-somersault onto the floor. The tall stranger rushed to help Emma untangle her legs from the office chair. The book landed spreadeagled beside her, the author's photograph in plain sight.
The black-and-white headshot does not do him justice,
Emma thought as she gazed at the real thing.

“You.” She was back to one word again, this time pointing at the book.

The look of bemusement turned into a slight grimace, which was interrupted by the Police Boys' Club administrator who appeared at the door. “Sorry, Doctor, he's not here at the moment – sabbatical,” she said by way of explanation. The woman looked down curiously at Emma, whose sprawled figure looked like an advertisement for
Don't Do Drugs
. “I see you've met Emma Oakley. She's looking after the Second-Chancers while he's away.”

“Oh,” the tall stranger said, taken aback. “I thought she
was
a Second-Chancer.”

“You look better in colour,” Emma said.

He laughed and helped Emma to her feet. She stood woozily.

“I think you've taken quite a knock to the head,” he said, concerned.

A high-pitched squawking from the phone on the desk broke Emma from her trance. Her mother! She'd forgotten. She picked it up and held it like a microphone, enunciating each word into the mouthpiece, “I don't want to go out with a dentist.” There was a second burst of sound, louder than the first.

The man, still holding Emma steady by the arm, looked amused. “Would you like to go out with
me
?” he challenged.

CHAPTER 9

A case of indigestion

Alana dashed to Food Technology after Elite Squad training, with her hair and clothes in complete disarray. Coach Kusmuk had taken great delight in pushing Alana beyond her physical limits, and could be heard snickering as she stumbled through the obstacle course
blindfolded
– a feat she hadn't made anyone else do. Despite being late, Alana took the time to give the lecture-theatre doors a quick spray from her mini bottle of lubricating oil – Alana packed with a Girl Guides' thoroughness – for the hinges were notoriously noisy. Alana had no desire to make an embarrassing entrance during the Celebrity Chef's demonstration. Gibson High often invited experts to conduct workshops or to teach. It was considered a coup for the school, therefore, when TV Personality and Chef Extraordinaire, Isabella Thornton, agreed to visit to demonstrate her ‘Delectable Desserts'.

“Just look at how the velvetiness of the butter and sugar combine to create a luscious, smooth, flowing caramel –” the chef's muffled voice could be heard through the widening crack. With one eye closed in concentration, Alana pushed the door an inch further. Isabella Thornton had thick, wavy, titian hair and skin the colour of clotted cream. Her hour-glass figure moved with grace as she navigated her way around the workspace. The smell which curled past Alana's nose reminded her of the local patisserie, which sold all her favourite desserts: chocolate éclairs, choux creams, and toffee pudding. It made her mouth water.

Isabella Thornton's voice was as silken and sweet as the ingredients she worked with. “There is something deliciously wicked about mingling the gooey syrupiness of this silky sauce with the tartness of these nubbly berries, which I'm going to let cascade through my fingertips, because really,” she confided to the watching students from beneath long lashes, “nothing beats the feeling of plump, tumbling Forbidden Fruit.” Vivid dots of colour fell through her hands, each landing with a satisfying
plip
in the pile of stickiness. Through the wider crack of the door, Alana saw a sea of enthralled faces. Everyone sat mesmerised by the self-proclaimed Domestic Goddess, their eyes soft and unfocused. Alana knew they would never look at food the same way again. Her own eyes continued down the line. Khalilah's mouth hung wide open. Chef Thornton proceeded to “dollop sublime spoonfuls of ivory cream” onto the finished dessert. She dipped a delicate pinkie into the confection for a quick final taste. At the same time, Khalilah absentmindedly wiped a thin stream of drool from her chin. Khalilah never knew food could be so ‘naughty', ‘nubbly' and ‘sublime'.