The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay (7 page)

I'm sitting in detention – all thanks to Nick McGowan. Nick McGowan who is sitting two rows behind me. I look around. Simon Guilfoyle sticks his tongue into his bottom lip, making a gorilla face at me. I don't belong here. I'm not one of them. This is loser central. And I'm a prefect for godsakes. I'm supposed to be the one who hands out detentions. Most of the people here are here because of me. What's worse is that when I walked into the room Ms Michaels assumed I was looking for someone.

‘What can I do for you, Rachel?'

I looked at her. I looked at the other students. I fixed my gaze out the window and forced myself to say, ‘I'm here. On detention. Mr Verney gave me a detention.'

Then she said, ‘Oh,' in that obvious ‘I'm disappointed in you' tone. It was nothing short of humiliating.

Naturally I tried to point all of this out to Mr Verney, my Maths in Society teacher, but he wouldn't listen. Mr Verney had been in a bad mood ever since school started back. There were rumours that he was getting divorced, backed up by the fact that he'd suddenly started wearing inane cartoon ties, had grown a goatee and was spotted reading
Men Who Hate Women & the Women Who Love Them
in the staffroom. So when I tried to reason with Mr Verney, explain to him that I was a prefect and that Nick McGowan was to blame, Mr Verney looked at me, then turned and continued to wipe down the blackboard.

‘You and Nick have earnt an afternoon detention like anyone else,' he said, chalk flying up around him like some kind of dramatic full stop.

‘I realise that detention is like a second home to you, but you've gotta tell him,' I said to Nick on our way out of Maths in Society class. ‘You've gotta tell Mr Verney that this is your fault. Not mine. I don't think you understand. I can't be on detention, Nick. I'm a prefect. What will people think? It will ruin my school record. Plus I have a party shift at work at five p.m. I simply can't be on detention this afternoon.'

Nick's response? He told me that none of this would have happened if I hadn't started behaving like a banshee.

So I told him he was an arsehole.

So he gave me the finger and walked off. Nice.

Martin O'Connell farts next to me. This fart carries the stench of rotting food. For a moment I imagine a pile of putrid, rotting vegetables and chicken carcasses fermenting in Martin O'Connell's stomach. I feel like throwing up. I can't believe Anna Davis ever went out with him. With my hand covering my nose and mouth, I glare at Martin O'Connell, but he looks smug. Typical. So I turn left – in a bid to find fresh air – and watch what the students around me are doing. Some of the younger kids are writing lines. The older ones are just expected to do homework. Two girls behind me are discussing what happened to Dr Terence Elliott in last night's episode of ‘A Country Practice'. But I can't concentrate in this environment. I'm still not sure how I ended up here. I go over – again – how events unfolded the way they did.

There was me, minding my own business in Maths in Society. Then there was Nick, turning up at my Maths in Society class out of the blue, telling Mr Verney that he's decided to drop down to Maths in Society from Advanced Maths.

Mr Verney looked Nick up and down and said, ‘Well, Mr McGowan, you won't be joining us unless your parents sign a form consenting the change. And there will be no more subject changes after this week. So you'll need to get it back to me by Friday.'

‘My dad's in Middlemount, sir.'

‘Well you'll have to get your guardians to sign it.'

Nick said that this wasn't a problem and that he'd get the form signed. He glanced over at me with my gaping jaw and then boldly took the desk behind me.

Mr Verney lent Nick a textbook for the lesson and Nick sat in class and started behaving like he belonged there. With those of us who don't
get
maths. But he doesn't belong. He
needs
to be doing Advanced Maths to get into Medicine.

‘What about your dad? What about Medicine? You need to do Advanced Maths to get in to Medicine.' I hissed all this at Nick when Mr Verney was over at Tim Hammer's desk, explaining to Tim again the difference between isosceles and right-angled triangles.

‘I thought I made it clear to you last week, I'm not doing Medicine,' Nick hissed back.

‘This is ridiculous. You topped Advanced Maths last year. You shouldn't be here.'

‘Why? Because it doesn't “fit” in with what everyone wants for my future? You know, I've thought about it and I've come to the conclusion that the only way I'm going to get through to my dad, to you, to everyone, is by making some sort of a statement. So this is it.'

Mr Verney looked up, his mouth in a suspicious curve, told us to get on with our work, then turned back to the triangularly-challenged Tim.

So I dropped an eraser on the floor.

‘What about the form?' I whispered up to Nick, my face centimetres from the carpet. ‘My parents won't sign that form.'

‘Well then, I'll just have to sign it for them.'

‘
What
?' My head jolted up and that's when I hit it on the side of my desk and said ‘
Shit
!', louder than was probably appropriate for a Christian school. For Mr Verney.

That's when Mr Verney busted us. Told Nick and I that if we had so much to talk about then we could do it after school. In detention.

I look at my watch. I look at Ms Michaels, who is sitting at her desk out the front marking papers. Fifteen minutes of this detention to go. Fifteen minutes and then I get to have it out with Nick on the bus. Followed by a work shift at the restaurant. I put my head on my arms and wish tomorrow would hurry up.

As soon as Ms Michaels lets us go, I grab my school bag, check I have my work uniform and run to the bus stop. I can't decide whether I should scream abuse at Nick McGowan when he turns up at the bus stop or freeze him out and ignore him. The point is, my ‘no detention' record has now been sullied because of him. And there is no way that I'm letting him forge my parents' signature on a form. He'll get caught for sure. And I'll probably lose my prefect's badge.

When I get to Central Avenue there is only one other student waiting for the later bus. She's carrying a cello. My face clearly communicates the way I feel because when she recognises me as a prefect she pulls two chunky silver rings off her left hand and shoves them in her dress pocket. I turn away. Who cares about her rings? I've got bigger things to think about. My heart is pumping faster than usual. Waiting for Nick to round the corner, I'm feeling revved-up and terrified at the same time. Because when he gets here, it's game on.

He turns the corner. Our eyes lock. I glare at him and then turn my back. He walks over to me but I move away. Towards Cello Girl. Things are not quite so easy when the 303 bus arrives. I sit in the old persons' seat at the front and Nick jams himself next to me. He does two kilometres worth of nagging, all the way to Indooroopilly Shoppingtown.

‘What's your father's first name? What does his handwriting look like?'

I stare out the window and ignore him but he keeps at me.

‘You know you've lived at my house for a week and this is the most you've ever spoken to me. And it's because you want something. If you think for a second that I'm going to help you in any way forge my parents' signatures – you're delusional.'

‘Fine.'

I go back to staring out the window.

Out of the corner of my eye I watch him unzip his school bag, take out his homework diary and start scribbling practice signatures. This is ridiculous.

‘My dad's name isn't Eddie, it's Tom. And that signature looks like it was written by someone who's had a stroke. It's appalling. Mr Jaffers is never going to believe that that is my father's signature.'

‘Who's Mr Jaffers?'

‘The head of Curriculum and Studies, you idiot.'

Then I remember the brochures in my bag. The career brochures that I picked up for Nick McGowan last week. It's now or never. And maybe now is the perfect time.

‘Frankly, Nick, I don't think you've thought this through. All this talk about wanting to go back to Middlemount. Okay, so you don't want to be a doctor, but that doesn't mean you're not going to change your mind again. Or you might find another career that still requires you to have done Advanced Maths. You know there are a lot more jobs out there other than just mining and medicine. I was in the Careers Room the other day with Zoë and I found . . .'

I fumble around in my bag, which is on my lap, and produce the fifteen brochures. I know my pitch is sounding dodgy, overly rehearsed, a little wooden. I sound like I'm trying to sell Nick McGowan a set of encyclopaedias or something.

‘I found some really interesting brochures on different jobs and I was thinking . . .'

‘You've
got
to be joking.' He glances down at the brochures. ‘Medical researcher? Dentist?'

‘Well . . .'

‘Town planner?'

‘I just thought—'

‘You just thought what? That my life was your business? Well, it's not.'

I lean over, grab his school bag and start to shove the brochures inside. Nick yanks his school bag away from me but in doing so a small blue book falls out. I pick it up. On the front cover in red print it says:
The I Hate To Cook Book – More Than 180 Quick And Easy Recipes
. Underneath the titles there's a cartoon picture of a rather stunned woman wearing a chef's hat.

‘Why on earth have you got a cookbook in your bag?'

Nick snatches the book from me and before I can say anything else is already up and moving to another seat. A seat that's further down the bus. I look over my shoulder at him but he's staring out the window with an expression that tells me exactly how he's feeling: Pissed off. And as we drive along Moggill Road, I think about how nine days ago Nick McGowan just thought I was uptight; now, he hates my guts.

As I turn back around I notice Cello Girl, her back to me, standing in the open middle section of the bus. I watch her holding on to the back of a seat to keep her balance. She's put her silver rings back on. So I get up, move down the bus, tap her on the shoulder. She turns, and an annoyed expression passes over her face until she realises that it's me. That prefect.

‘Nice jewellery,' I say. ‘Consider yourself on detention tomorrow.'

I can see in her eyes that she now thinks I'm a bitch. But I don't care. I move back to my seat. Then I realise that if I'd caught her early this morning Nick and I would have been on detention with her. Oh God.

When we get to our stop, which also happens to be outside the restaurant where I work, Cello Girl is long gone. I grab my bag and push through some sweaty BBC boys who are playing some hand-held video game. But before I'm even off the bus I see Nick is already walking ahead, up the hill to home.

Fiona Curtis is letting the kids make their own sundaes.

I contemplate this information as I shove my bag into one of the lockers and readjust my red wig in front of the crew-room mirror. Then I turn to Vivian Woo and ask her how she knows. Vivian leans back into the doorway. Ankles crossed, she spins her Brigidine College hat on her finger and says that Susie P told her. And that Susie was working front counter yesterday when Fiona brought through her birthday party group and allowed them all – one by one – to make their own sundaes.

Traditionally this is something that is reserved only for the birthday child. It's a special treat – something to set them apart from their friends. Not anymore, apparently.

I must look shocked. Or pissed off. Or both, because Viv looks at me with sympathy and says, ‘I know. And apparently she scored really well.'

I freeze for a moment, slowly put down my red lipstick and turn to face Vivian.

‘I thought scoring wasn't starting until next week?'

‘Yeah, I dunno. But they scored her yesterday. I heard they brought it forward because Simon or Chris is going on holidays.'

‘What'd she get?'

‘Seventeen out of twenty.'

‘Who scored her?'

‘Simon.'

We both roll our eyes. I go back to applying my clown mouth. Of course it was Simon, since Fiona has always been one of Simon's favourites.

‘What'd she get? How many kids?' I try to ask this nonchalantly, not taking my eyes from the mirror, as though I don't really care what the answer is. The truth is that I care. Boy, do I care. But I can't let Viv know this since – as much as I like her – she's a well-known blab.

‘Ten ten-year-olds.'

Ten-year-olds? Talk about easy
. But before I can say anything more than ‘Pffft,' Viv says, ‘Plus Fiona is Mrs Westacott's niece. So as if that's not going to go in her favour.'

I turn around – my jaw hanging open in shock. But Viv says she has to go. She just came in to check her roster and her mum's waiting for her out in the car.

With Vivian gone, I think about Fiona Curtis. About the Party Hostess competition. It's a masterstroke, that sundae idea. How could I not have thought of it? I haven't been concentrating, that's why. I've slackened off. It's my own fault. I bite down on my lip, and begin to realise now that I had just assumed that I would win this Party Hostess of the Year competition, hadn't ever seen Fiona Curtis as a serious rival. I just lumped her in with the rest of the hostesses whose idea of a party is playing a forty-minute game of Eye Spy. But clearly Fiona Curtis is taking this seriously. She's strategising at home. She's upping the ante. I'm going to have to pick up my game. And she's related to the owner.

Shit. But I can do this. If I put my mind to this I can beat her. I have to beat her. And I don't need a gimmick – like Fiona Curtis – to win this thing. Nobody can do a birthday party like me.

I walk into the storeroom and grab the party box. Mrs Westacott, who owns the Kenmore restaurant with her husband, prepares the boxes at home on the weekends. They're millionaires, apparently. I've never actually seen Mrs Westacott, but in my head she looks like Mrs Howell from ‘Gilligan's Island'. I've always imagined her as a haughty woman with a poodle face wearing a fur coat and pearls, who sits at a dining table and prepares our weekly birthday party boxes. I figure she'd be the type of person who says
Dah-ling
a lot. My eyes skim the contents of the box and see the usual balloons, birthday cake candles, party bags. I peel my party profile off the side of the box. Six kids. Five-year-old girls. Birthday girl's name is Sally. My confidence rises. Five-year-olds love me. Let's just see Fiona Curtis try and beat me at this. Nepotism be damned, I'm going to win this. I head off into the restaurant thinking, Party Hostess of the Year? Piece of cake.