Jellicoe Road (14 page)

“Get to the point,” Griggs interrupts.

“It was like I was looking at him,” Santangelo
finishes. “The kid in the photo.”

“This all based on one photo,” Raffy says.

“You’ve got to see it to understand. Actually, there are two photos. The other is of the group.”

“What group?” I ask. My heart is beating fast and my mouth is getting that churning sweet feeling of nausea.

“About five of them. One’s a Cadet; I could tell by the uniform. My father had the file out on his desk once when I was in there. All I saw were the two photos and the cap, which was found out there,” he says, pointing to the river.

“What was his name?”

“Xavier.”

My stomach settles back down and I take a deep breath of relief. “Never heard of him.”

“Xavier Webster Schroeder.”

I feel faint and my breath seems to leave my body with a speed I can’t control. I need it desperately to come back, because the feeling that I’m breathing through a straw frightens the hell out of me.

“Are you okay?” Griggs says, looking at me. He turns to Santangelo. “Why do you always do this?”

“Why do you always go berserk when she loses a bit of colour?” Santangelo asks back.

“Because she’s an asthmatic, you moron, and every time you open your mouth and tell her something she forgets how to breathe.”

I get this horrible feeling that while I’m in the middle of an asthma attack these two are going to thump the hell out of each other again.

Raffy fumbles through my backpack for my inhaler and I take a few puffs until I get my breathing back under control. She glares at both of them, a bit pale herself.

“What?” Santangelo asks again.

“Just drop us off at my place,” she says, helping me up. “And if you guys have one more fight, I swear to God, Chaz, I will never speak to you again.”

They stand staring at each other and I’m waiting for a comeback from him. But Santangelo just looks a bit gutted and I realise it’s because Raffy looks just as bad and I get a glimpse of how things really are between them.

Without looking at Griggs he holds out a hand to him and Griggs shakes it, reluctantly.

We get into the car and I lean back, exhausted. Santangelo turns and looks at both of us. “So what’s the story?”

I close my eyes and curl up on the seat.

“Our House guardian who lives by the river,” Raffy says. “Her name is Hannah Schroeder.”

We get dropped off at Raffy’s place and her mother forces me to have a lie down and then refuses to drive me home that night. So I’m taken prisoner and made to wear a crisp white nightie for middle-aged people that has pink and white bows on the shoulders. Raffy looks apologetic because she left any nightwear she could have lent me back at the school. We sit watching television until late. I haven’t said much since finding out about the missing boy’s link to Hannah and my uncanny resemblance to him. I don’t want to even think about it right now, so we lie in bed, pretending the conversation never came up, and just concentrate on trivial stuff, like the guys.

“Do you miss being friends with Santangelo?” I ask her after the lights are out and we’re almost asleep.

“What makes you think we were friends?”

“Everything.”

I hear her yawn.

“Being enemies with him is better,” she tells me. There’s a pause and I think she’s going to say some
thing more but she doesn’t and it’s just silence for a long while.

“My father…” I begin, realising that I have never said those words out loud. “If I look like that kid in the photo and he’s disappeared…”

She turns to face me and although I can’t see her in the dark, I sense her there. “Don’t listen to Santangelo. Once he was convinced that a girl he was going out with looked exactly like Cameron Diaz and, I swear to God, my father looks more like Cameron Diaz.”

I curl into the nightie, the crisp cotton cocooning me in a wave of security and I go to sleep thinking of the boy in Santangelo’s photo.

Because thinking of him brings me solace.

We’re still in our nightwear at eleven o’clock the next morning. Raffy’s dad is making us breakfast. The doorbell rings and Raffy’s mum calls out, “It’s open.” I just can’t believe these people invite people into their home without asking who it is.

Santangelo and Griggs walk in and Raffy and I exchange looks of mini-mortification. They’re surprised to see me but Raffy’s mum is too busy kissing
Santangelo with such enthusiasm that it’s like Jesus Christ has just walked in.

“And this is Gri—Jonah,” Santangelo says, trying very hard to let the name roll off his tongue.

Jonah Griggs shakes hands with both Raffy’s parents like they’re in the military. As usual he is dressed in his fatigues and looks away the instant someone tries to make eye contact. Raffy’s mum forces them to sit down and they get to see us up close and personal in our nighties. I think I felt less self-conscious in my undies and singlet the night Griggs came to my room.

I watch Raffy’s mother standing behind her chair, holding on to Raffy’s long hair as if putting it into a ponytail and there’s this pride on her face while she’s touching her, like she’s saying, “Look at my beautiful girl.” It makes my eyes fill with tears and I quickly brush them away but as usual Jonah Griggs is looking and I want to melt into the ground and have the nightie cover the insignificant puddle that is me. It’s not that I miss my mother. It’s just that I miss the idea of what one would be.

“We were just driving around…in Jonah’s car and we thought maybe we’d pick Raffy up and then
Taylor at the school, but obviously she’s here.”

“What a pity. We’ve already made plans to go shopping,” Raffy’s mum says.

“Shame,” Raffy says. “We’ll see the guys out,” she adds, standing up.

“Raffy, they might want some breakfast.”

The boys speak over each other, explaining that they’ve already eaten, and I walk out with Griggs while Santangelo has a twenty-minute goodbye with Raffy’s parents.

“What’s with what you’re wearing?” Griggs asks while we stand outside waiting for the others.

“It’s pretty hideous, isn’t it?” I say.

“Don’t force me to look at it,” he says. “It’s see-through.”

That kills conversation for a couple of seconds.

“Strange that you’re hanging out with Santangelo,” I say, trying to keep the silence from growing even more awkward. It’s much easier dealing with him as an enemy in the territory wars than like this.

“Strange? I don’t think that word comes anywhere near it. My troops are on an overnight camp three hundred kilometres away from here. I had to sleep at the Santangelo penitentiary for pre-pubescent girls.
There are hundreds of them, including that annoying pest that belongs to you. I have one brother and I live with four hundred guys. Girls under the age of fourteen are the most frightening creatures I have ever come across. They all insist on running around the house in their underwear. Then Nanna Faye comes over as well as Nonna Caterina and I have to drive them to Bingo in ‘my car’ and then they make us stay and we have to call out the numbers and they have these Bingo codes like, ‘Tweak of the thumb…Stop and run…Two fat ladies…Clickety click,’ and did you know Santangelo’s black and Italian? Do you know how many cousins he has as a result? Well, I’ve met them all and they ask me a hundred questions and I rarely talk to anyone outside my immediate family or school so let’s just say that the past twenty-four hours have been somewhat on the traumatic side. And to top it all off there’s the sergeant who looks at me like I’m going to wipe out his family during the night.”

“As if Santangelo’s dad would ever have you in his house if he thought that,” I say quietly.

He’s not looking at me and suddenly I get why he doesn’t look people in the eye. It’s like he thinks he’ll
see the doubt or the distrust or the questions about his past.

“Okay, so it’s not that bad,” he says after a while. “So, like I asked, what’s with the nightie?”

“It smells like what I always think mothers smell like,” I tell him honestly, knowing I don’t have to explain.

He nods. “My mum has one just the same and you have no idea how disturbing it is that it’s turning me on.”

Before I can even go red, Raffy and Santangelo walk towards us.

“Your nighties’ see-through,” Santangelo says, getting into the car. He rolls down the window. “I have a plan,” he says.

I shake my head. “I can’t do territory wars at the moment.”

“It’s not about that,” he says. “It’s about those photos.”

“Do you have a death wish?” Griggs warns.

Santangelo ignores him. “I’m going to get them for you,” he tells me.

“How?”

“Easy. I’m going to break into the police station.”

I talk about going back to the school every day but I always end up staying. On Saturday night they take me to a twenty-first party. I have no idea who it’s for but it’s at the scout hall and I’m almost convinced that the whole town has been invited. Jonah Griggs is sitting at a table with Santangelo, Santangelo’s girlfriend, and some of her friends. When he sees me, there’s a look of surprise and something else.

I’m self-conscious about the skirt I bought with Raffy and the T-shirt that barely covers my midriff, and the fact that I let Raffy’s mum brainwash me into believing that no woman should leave her house without wearing lipstick but I like the way it makes me feel.

Senior Cadets are allowed out on a Saturday night during the holidays and the place is packed with them. The music is loud but the people’s voices are louder and every one of them looks happy. I haven’t seen so many happy people all in one room, except on television, but these people don’t look like they’re acting.

It surprises me to see Ben in a huddle with the Mullet Brothers and Anson Choi and some of the Townies. I didn’t know he was back from holidays.
He walks towards me doing this salsa cha-cha thing and it makes me laugh and I dance back towards him. He drags me over and introduces me to people he’s just met. “They think you’re a babe,” he whispers in my ear, and because nobody has ever called me a babe before, I find myself charmed. Then Griggs and Santangelo are beside me and somehow Griggs has managed to shoulder his way between Ben and me. Although I don’t look at him, I feel him at my shoulder for most of the night. The Townies poke fun at Griggs and Choi because they’re in uniform but the banter is good-natured and I’m surprised how clever Griggs is in his response to it.

We’re in a world full of people Raffy knows. People who bring her to life and it seems as if her feet hardly touch the ground because every second person picks her up and twirls her around. While she’s speaking to her uncle, friends from her primary school introduce themselves to me.

“I married her in grade six,” one named Joe Salvatore tells me, grinning.

“What did a wedding consist of in grade six?” I ask.

“An exchange of rings made of grass and a
reception of candy and sherbet,” he explains. “Chaz refused to attend because she was his best friend since they were born and he thought she was his.”

“As if,” Santangelo says, scowling. Griggs doesn’t look too impressed, either, and Joe Salvatore seems to enjoy their irritation. When Raffy finally reaches us, he lifts her off the ground and smothers her with noisy kisses and she’s giggling in a way I’ve never heard before.

I talk local politics with Santangelo’s mum and teacher shortages with Raffy’s dad. I do the twist with Santangelo and politely decline an invitation to go for a drive with one of his friends. I do the Time Warp with Jessa and the Zorba with Raffy and, when I need to stop for air, Jonah Griggs is there and he takes my hand and leads me through the crowd until we’re outside.

I take deep breaths, looking at the town stretched in front of me. When I turn around, he cups my face in his hands and he kisses me so deeply that I don’t know who is breathing for who, but his mouth and tongue taste like warm honey. I don’t know how long it lasts, but when I let go of him, I miss it instantly.

We end up with the Townies and Cadets at
McDonald’s on the highway at two in the morning. I look around at everyone and I can’t help thinking how normal we look and I don’t think I’ve ever felt normal. I watch Raffy as she removes the pickles from her hamburger and hands them over to Santangelo without them exchanging a word and I realise again there is more to that relationship than spelling bees and being enemies. These people have history and I crave history. I crave someone knowing me so well that they can tell what I’m thinking. Jonah Griggs takes my hand under the table and links my fingers with his and I know that I would sacrifice almost anything just to keep this state of mind, for the rest of the week at least.

On one of those days during the holidays when they were completely bored, Webb came up with a plan. The five of them sat by the river, at the very spot where Webb dreamed of building a house.

“We build a tunnel,” Webb said. “It runs from my House to Tate and Narnie’s and then we take a detour and it goes from their House, underneath the driveway and then to the clearing.”

“Purpose?” Jude asked, practising his overarm with rocks against the tree.

“To get around after hours. It’ll be tops.”

“Tops, will it be?”

“The Great Escape.
They built a tunnel,” Fitz said, enthused.

“They needed to, morons. It was a matter of life and death,” Jude said dryly.

“We’re bored to death, Jude, so isn’t that a matter of life and death?” Tate asked.

Webb was grinning. Tate, too. They always grinned in unison. Like they were thinking with the same mind, sharing the same heart. Ever since any of them could remember, Webb and Tate had been like that. Jude knew it was why he was drawn to them. They were like beacons for Narnie, who couldn’t seem to operate without them and Fitz and Jude loved the three, unashamedly.

“They think I saved them but they saved me,” Fitz once told him. “I didn’t exist before I belonged to the Fucked-Up Four.”

“Five,” Jude had corrected.

He could hear Webb, Tate, and Fitz discussing the tunnel as if it already existed.

“Narnie, explain to the delusional trio why the POWs needed that tunnel more than we do,” he said.

“Nazis,” she muttered, sitting against the tree. Bad day for Narnie.

“Weren’t your grandparents Nazis?” Fitz asked, lining up at least five imaginary enemies and, with his finger and popping sounds, eliminating them one by one.

“They were Germans,” Narnie said. “Big difference.”

“Although Oma Rose vas a Nazi vhen it came to eating za sauerkraut,” Webb said in a bad German accent, and for the first time in a long time, Narnie laughed.

“I’m all for the tunnel. It could save our life one day,” Tate said. “We could be chased by evil and have to hide down there.”

“Evil out in Jellicoe? I wish,” Fitz said.

“Think of how tunnels saved people from Hitler,” Tate said.

“Yeah, but last I heard Hitler was dead. The bunker, a gun, Eva. Ring a bell?” Jude said.

“Cyanide,” Narnie corrected.

“We’ll pretend we’re the East Germans trying to escape to West Germany. No Nazis.”

“Just Communists.”

“All we need is to be able to get from one House to the other and then from that House to the clearing,” Webb said, slightly frustrated by the fact that nobody but Tate was taking him seriously.

Jude looked from Tate to Webb, shaking his head.

“You know what?” Webb asked. “I’m getting
another fantastic idea.” The seven
P.M
. call bell rang in the distance but Webb was in another world.

“Skirmish,” he said, impressed with himself. “Let’s have a war.”

There was a new plan every day, bigger and better than the day before. Each afternoon at four o’clock they would meet to discuss it.

On Jude’s last day they met at midnight and camped under the oak by the river. Fitz handed them a bottle and Webb took a swig, spitting it out instantly.

“What the hell was that, Fitz?” he asked, trying to regain his breath.

“Grappa. Got it from the Italians next door. Burns your insides out.”

“And the enjoyment is?” Jude said, taking a swig, his eyes instantly tearing up and his breath coming in gasps.

“I reckon if I put a match right here, you’d see fireworks,” Fitz continued, taking out his matches and breathing heavily into the air.

Still trying to recover, Jude stared at him. “Why would you want to do that, dickhead?”

“Live on the edge, GI Jude. That’s my motto.”

Fitz took out a cigarette and Jude grabbed it out of his mouth. “You’re going to set us all on fire, you homicidal feral fruitcake.”

“Hand it over,” Tate said, taking a few deep breaths before swigging from the bottle. She stared at Narnie in shock and started coughing out of control. Narnie fanned her down, patting her on the back until the coughing subsided.

“Can we stay focused?” Webb asked, taking out a purple leather book.

“Mate, no one is going to take you seriously with a book that looks like that,” Jude said.

“Yeah, Chairman Mao and his little purple book,” Fitz said, laughing at his own joke.

“It’s Chairman Meow to you, and I’ve got a system set up that’s going to blow your mind.”

“I wouldn’t mind other parts of me bl—”

“Fitz!” Tate said. “Grossed out. Majorly.”

“Is anyone listening to me?” Webb asked, annoyed. “Is that too much to ask?”

“I am,” Narnie replied.

Webb leaned over and grabbed her face. “Then I can die happy.”

Narnie patted the space next to her and Fitz sat down obediently.

“Okay, we play skirmish,” Webb said. “Cadets, Townies, us. We split this area into territories and anyone who tries to invade loses ground. We have rules of engagement, diplomatic immunity, and one or two fisticuffs.”

“What part of this are we going to enjoy?” Tate asked, pointing to Narnie and herself.

“The part where we take you hostage and ravage you,” Fitz said.

“You’re an animal.”

Fitz did gorilla impersonations and Narnie shushed him gently.

“Fitz, you head the Townies, Jude heads the Cadets, and I’ll get the Houses together back here. We need to get the six Houses working, so we need rules.”

“No fraternising with leaders of other Houses,” Tate said. “Rule number one.”

Webb looked taken aback.

“What happens if you do?” he asked, jumping on top of her and trapping her with his arms and legs.

“The two leaders get placed in exile…together.
For the rest of their lives.”

“Okay,” he said with enthusiasm, jumping off her. “I’m writing that rule in. ‘No relationship between leaders of opposite Houses’.”

“I’ve got one for the territory wars,” Fitz said, his eyes bloodshot from the spirit. “If trespassing occurs, there’s payback.” He jabbed at thin air. “One to the jaw, two to the gut.”

“So what does the winner get in the end?” Tate asked.

“They get to sit around with the losers and say, ‘I am King Xavier of the world.’ Repeat after me.”

“And me?” Tate asked.

“You get to be my queen.”

Tate looked pleased with the idea.

“How come you’re the leader of the community?” Narnie asked, almost smiling. “Why can’t Tate be?”

Webb looked at his sister, grinning. “Why can’t you, Narnie?”

Fitz leaned his head on Narnie’s shoulder. “And I’ll be your queen?”

“You can be the eunuch,” Jude said, shoving him out of the way, “and I’ll be her prince.” He bowed and took Narnie’s hand, kissing it, and their eyes
met. It was awkward for a moment until Narnie looked away.

“So how long will it take to get your troops in gear?” Webb asked him. “We’re serious here, you know.”

“Mate, we’ve been ready for years.”

“By the time you come back next year, we’ll be ready—tunnel and all.”

“If it’s going to be like
The Great Escape,
make sure there are trail bikes,” Jude said.

“So you’re in?”

He shrugged. “As long as I get to play Steve McQueen.”

Spending days with Santangelo and Griggs becomes a habit for the rest of the holidays. Most of the time the Mullet Brothers, Choi, Ben, Santangelo’s sisters, and Jessa McKenzie come along as well. We end up either at Santangelo’s place or Raffy’s, but mostly the former because Raffy’s mum and dad teach the Townies and keep on asking them for overdue homework.

The Santangelo home is like a madhouse. I’m not quite sure how his mum finds time to be the mayor
of the town as well but she manages. She’s the only person who gets away with calling Santangelo a “little shit” and once in a while she’ll go for the collective and refer to both Griggs and Santangelo as those “two little shits.” Most of the time the “two little shits” take it on the chin but sometimes Santangelo says, “I’m fucking out of here,” and his mum warns, “Don’t you dare swear, you little shit.” The Santangelo sisters, Griggs, and Raffy ignore it all, but Jessa and I are fascinated and frightened at the same time. We wait for a showdown but it tends not to happen and then everything’s all calm again and the only two left in a mess are Jessa and me. Sometimes we are very relieved to escape it all.

It’s during those moments that I notice how similar we are. Both Jessa and I have spent almost half our lives brought up by people other than our parents and neither of us have siblings. She has no recollection of her mother, who died of cancer when Jessa was two years old, and I have too much recollection of mine. Jessa lived with her aunt but hero-worshipped her father, who died when she was nine in some apparent freak accident, and my only memory of my father is of being on his shoulders and touching the sky.
Though after Santangelo’s revelation about the boy in the photo, I’m not too sure anymore. More than anything, we have Hannah in common, and somehow during these holidays I begin to see Jessa as a kind of link to whatever it is out there that I need to work out.

“Do you think of Hannah a lot?” she asks me when we move back to the House close to the end of the holidays. I’m letting her sleep in the spare bed in my room because everyone else isn’t back until the weekend and there’s no one else in the dorms.

All the time, I want to say.

“Sometimes.”

“Do you think something’s happened to her?” she asks quietly.

All the time, I want to say.

“Sometimes.”

“Taylor, just say the seri—”

“Don’t,” I say, irritated, turning over, away from her. “Jessa, forget the serial killer. There are enough other things to worry about.”

“She’d never leave us, so it can only be the serial killer.”

I grit my teeth and count to ten so I won’t yell at
her. “He only takes teenagers,” I say, not so reassuringly. “She’s in her thirties.”

“But I read on this website that, in the townships stretching from the Sturt to the Hume Highways, there have been eleven attempted kidnaps and three actual kidnaps of women over twenty-five in the last ten years.”

“Can I suggest another website? It’s www-dot-shutupabouttheserialkiller-dot-com.”

She is silent for a moment and I feel guilty about the aggression.

“If Hannah doesn’t come back, I’ll have no one,” she says in the smallest voice I’ve heard her use.

I reluctantly turn to face her again but looking at Jessa’s face always has this sledgehammer effect on me, so I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling.

“Hannah’s coming back. Anyway, you’ve got whoever looked after you before you came here.”

“My aunt. But she has my cousins and I know she likes me, even loves me, but it’s not like I felt as if I belonged. Until Hannah turned up.”

“She turned up one day? Just like that?”

“Uh-huh. I just thought she was so beautiful. She said, ‘Let me look at you,’ and then she cried and
held me and said that if she had known about me, she would have come much sooner.”

“Funny. She turned up just like that for me as well.”

“Maybe she’s like in that TV show where those angels moonlight as people and they come down to help others. You know. Like in
Touched by an Angel
.”

“I don’t think she’s an angel, Jessa. She swears worse than Santangelo and Griggs.” I turn and lean on my elbow, facing her. “So what did she say when she showed up?”

“That she was a friend of my dad’s, but I don’t really believe that. I couldn’t imagine Hannah knowing my dad and she seemed much younger than him, anyway.”

“I’ve never known my father,” I tell her.

“My aunt said mine was a crazy man and that he lost his marbles years ago, but I don’t think he was, you know. I think he was just really sad.”

“Maybe because your mum died.”

“I don’t know but when he came to visit, he’d tell me the best stories about growing up around here. When Hannah told me I’d be coming here
when I was twelve, I was ecstatic.”

She looks at me intently. “She used to talk about you. She’d tell me that when I came to the school, I would have you and that she’d be the luckiest person in the world because she’d have both of us. I used to think she was your mum.”

“I have a mother and she’s not Hannah.”

“But don’t you ever wish she was? I do.”

I don’t answer. I just wish Hannah would come back and tell me off like she used to. Or even keep me a little at arm’s-length, which she always seemed to do with me. Not like Jessa. I’d watch them together: Hannah would smother Jessa with kisses and cuddles and they’d giggle like kids. Maybe my guard was up all the time and she was reacting to that. But I wish she had seen through it and I wish that once,
just once
, I had told her how I feel. That I feel safer when she is around. Sometimes I had tested her, wanting so desperately for her to let me down so then I would have an excuse to walk away. But she never did. I wish I could tell her it breaks my heart that I miss her more than I ever missed my mother and that the thing that frightens me the most about next October when I graduate is not that I won’t
have a home, but that I won’t have her.