Yellow (13 page)

By the time Boogie has shown me all this, the world has rolled around to day, and my shadow slopes low and thin at my feet, but despite the morning heat I still shiver. The surfers will be up and about now, wriggling into their wetsuits, but it feels like I'm the only person in the world. I don't know how to help Boogie, and knowing what happened, seeing what happened, makes it worse. I can't un-see it. I wish I could un-see it. I didn't think it was possible to feel any more useless than I did before, but there you go.

‘That was me,' says Boogie, after I've had time to digest all that I've learnt.

‘Please don't take this the wrong way,' I whisper back. ‘But you don't sound like the confident person you were in the memories.'

He does a sad, snorty laugh. ‘Loneliness has a way of sucking all of the confidence out of you,' he tells me.

I nod, even though he can't hear me, and I roll the truth of it around in my brain. The birds are all up now, and they're calling out to each other, and flapping their wings to shake the fog-eyed dawn awake.

‘I'm really sorry, Boogie, but I have to get back to my mum,' I say, biting my lip.

‘You can't leave me, I won't let you leave me all alone again!'

But I ignore him and I hang up without even listening for his goodbye, and I ignore the phone box as it shrills after me, and I make my way home to where I can't hear the ringing anymore, because I know that I can't help him, and he can't help me. Our problems can't cancel each other's out, and sometimes two negatives don't make a positive; sometimes we just have to muddle around in the dark by ourselves. That's just how it is sometimes. And I have a mother who needs me.

When I get home I see she's made her way from the bathroom to her bed, but she's still snoring that whistling kind of snore. I pat her head like I am the mother and she is the child, but she doesn't wake up, and I sing her the lullabies she used to sing me until I have to leave her to get ready for school.

It's the day of the Youth Issues speech and all the clocks look menacing to me as they count down to the moment I'm going to have to talk. Willow doesn't notice my nerves. Right now, she's too angry. History's just finished and she's been given lunchtime detention for sassing the teacher and telling him that she didn't want to learn about how Burke and Wills were tragic heroes, because they actually weren't the first explorers in the desert, not even close, the indigenous people had been walking around there for tens of thousands of years, and Burke and Wills were just dumb white people who should have stayed in England. Then she told him that if he wasn't going to teach her about the true history of our country, she didn't see the point in anything else he had to say, because he was, quite frankly, an idiot. Then she slammed her textbook shut and refused to open it again for the rest of the period. It didn't help her reputation for being weird, but I liked her even more for sticking by her principles. I could never find the confidence to do that.

And yet, I need to write a speech that I'm going to have to perform in front of everyone important in town.

Shit.

‘He called me a delinquent and said that I'd never make anything of myself if I kept it up.' Willow fumes as she stomps down the hallway towards detention. I have to run to catch up.

‘Being called a delinquent isn't so bad,' I tell her. ‘At least it kind of has attitude. It's better than being called a nerd.'

She slows and looks at me, her hands smoothing down the sides of her faded, second-hand skirt.

‘That's not true. Nerds run the world, little one. Don't let them make you forget that.'

Then she glares at the room where she'll have to write lines during lunch and with an exasperated sigh she slouches inside. I make my way over to the library to write my speech. I watch a meaty footy kid shoulder-barge a scrawny year sevener and I can hear some girl getting grief about her glasses; I wonder where all these powerful nerds are. I've never seen them.

After lunch Mrs Thomas swoops to meet me in purple paisley that matches her new purple glasses, and her hair looks spikier than ever. It's strange, being in a car with a teacher, and I'd never have imagined that Mrs Thomas drives around in a beat-up old FJ Holden, but there you go. I try to roll the window down to get some air, but the handle isn't there.

‘It fell off about a decade ago and I haven't gotten around to replacing it yet,' Mrs Thomas informs me brusquely, without taking her eyes off the road.

I need some air, I feel like the nerves are having a fistfight in my stomach. I'm guessing she can sense it.

‘How are you feeling?'

My hands are clenched, grabbing at the sides of my school skirt, my knuckles are white.

‘Like I'm never going to forget to do my homework ever again.'

Mrs Thomas's usually no-nonsense face slips for a moment, and she shoots me a wry, sidewards smile.

‘Very good. That's the attitude I try to cultivate in all my students.'

I return her wry kind of smile.

‘You'll be better than you think,' she assures me.

‘How do you know?' I say, trying to hold down the nausea.

Her voice softens just a smidgen. ‘Because, Kirra, you're always better than you think you are.'

I don't believe her, but a huge part of me wants to.

We've arrived at the town hall, a plain, red-brick thing that could do with renovations, and yet it's never looked so imposing in my life. People mingle around inside, eating the egg salad sandwiches that are cut into triangles and laid out on silver trays. I couldn't eat if my life depended on it. Other students are there, from the other local schools, and then the ones from the private schools in their fancy blazers and slicked-back hair. I feel totally out of place.

‘Who let freaky Barbie out of her cage?' I hear one private school girl snipe to another.

‘Tell me about it. Where's Yvette?'

They're talking about me.

Obviously.

Yvette Olive Yabsley is a really smart girl in The Challenged Group. She usually does this sort of thing, and I wish Mrs Thomas had done both of us a favour and let her speak. Cassie calls her ‘Y-O-Y' and mimics her whenever Yvette is around, making a play on her initials. She calls out dramatically, ‘Why oh why was I born with this ugly face?' ‘Why oh why do I smell like gross old cheese?'

Most people in our town know Cassie and our group, and it's not doing me any favours, standing here with all of the people she's bullied over the years.

I wish I had done my homework.

We're ushered up to our seats on stage. I look down at the sea of faces watching us expectantly. I want to stand up and tell everyone that it's all been a big mistake, and I don't have anything worth listening to, and I shouldn't be there. Except I don't, of course. I just bite my nails and think that maybe suffocating under the sand dunes wouldn't have been so bad.

The girl who was sniping about me earlier stands up. She has frizzy brown hair and thick glasses, and in that measured, practised voice of a seasoned debater, she makes an earnest speech about the state of school funding. A boy with braces talks about how we should give more to charity. Again, he sounds like a debater. I am so very, very out of my depth here. Someone else talks about the environment, her speech full of clichés, like how children are the future of the planet, and how Mother Earth would be weeping.

It's my turn now.

Shit.

I feel like my legs are going to turn to jelly.

I clear my throat.

I look around and everyone's waiting for me to begin.

I look around and see McGinty's half-purple face staring up at me.

Terror grips me.

Shit.

My brain gives me the silent treatment, and I lose my words.

The girl with the frizzy hair and glasses whispers to the girl next to her, ‘Here comes a speech about whether wedges or heels are hot for next season.' The other girl titters. They really don't know me at all.

I take a deep breath, ignoring McGinty. My voice is small and unsure, despite the microphone.

‘People think that country kids are dumb . . .'

I hear the frizzy-haired girl whisper behind me, ‘No, just freaky blondes.'

I lose my words again, then focus on Mrs Thomas, who's nodding at me.

‘I mean, our marks are worse than the city kids'. Not many of us go to university compared to the city kids. And it makes me wonder why. Some stuck-up people might think it's all to do with bad breeding.'

I hear the kids behind me sneer at the words ‘stuck-up'; it's not a debaters' phrase at all. My speech isn't polished like their speeches, I sound rough and awkward, but I'm here now, so I ignore them and keep going, my voice getting steadier.

‘But that's getting into eugenics, and all that sort of stuff has been disproved. People have said it's to do with poor quality teachers.'

I look Mrs Thomas squarely in the eye.

‘But I know that's not true either. I couldn't ask for a more dedicated or encouraging teacher, even if the way she demands the best from me makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes. I think the reason kids here don't do so well is because it's not cool to be smart. If you're smart, you get called a nerd, and have spit balls thrown at you. Although I'm sure the smart kids in city schools get their fair share of spit balls, too.'

That makes the audience laugh. I'm finding my confidence now, and my voice is stronger as I continue. Everyone seems to like listening to what I have to say. It's like I'm holding the conch shell in
Lord of the Flies
and nobody's realised yet that I'm Piggy, and that the shell doesn't belong to someone like me.

‘The thing that the city kids have, and the country kids don't have,' I finish with, ‘is a clear example of why it's worth it to ignore the teasing, and to ignore the spit balls. They see the people who have gone to university, and those people are working in fashion houses, and they're helping cure cancer, and they're travelling the world as foreign correspondents. And those things . . . those things are way cooler than pretending to be dumb and not achieving anything at all. Those things are cooler than having a dead-end life, just because you wanted to be popular in high school. But here, in the country, we don't see those rewards, because all the people who are doing those glamorous things have moved to the city.

‘If you guys want us to get better marks, then please don't have debates in parliament about school funding, don't schedule after-school lessons. Just show us the people who've left this town and have made something of their lives, because I can't imagine anything outside of this town. I can't imagine their lives. All I've ever been shown, in my fourteen years of living here, is that good grades equals spit balls. Please show me why I should try. Please show me what's possible. Please show me something else. Thank you.'

The audience is on their feet. They're roaring applause. The local Labor senator has even taken two fingers in his mouth and whistles in approval. I hang my hair in front of my eyes, and feel my face has turned bright red. When I turn around, I see that even the kids behind me are wearing shocked expressions and they're up on their feet now too, clapping me. Mrs Thomas has that look again. The one that says, ‘this is why I am a teacher'.

I sit back down and the others pat me on the back. The frizzy-haired girl leans over to me.

‘Wow, that was like, impressive. Hey, I'm sorry I underestimated you, it's a bad side effect of my competitive streak, don't take it personally.'

She smiles in a nice sort of way and I smile back at her, my face feeling redder than it's ever been before, and I think of how blushing has never felt so good.

We're all milling around the hall afterwards, but it's different this time. I'm still nervous, but it's a good nervous.

‘Some bloody useful ideas that we can implement,' says the Labor senator, giving me a hearty pat on the back that almost makes me drop my sandwich. Mrs Thomas flutters over to me.

‘Seems the audience was rather pleased that I chose you to speak. Now please don't question my judgement again, Kirra.'

The sides of her mouth twitch upwards before she moves on to the food platter. I feel a grip on my arm, and I swing around to come face to face with McGinty. I actually drop my sandwich this time, and choke on the bit that's in my mouth. He thumps me on the back until it's dislodged from my throat.

Shit.

He's right next to me and I'm forced to look into his eyes instead of focusing on his birthmark. I'm surprised that underneath his birthmark he's actually got kind, droopy eyes, like the type a sweet old uncle would have. He's still gripping my arm, and that makes my heart thump so hard that it feels as if it's being bruised by my rib cage, but strangely his smile is jolly and genuine.