‘Hey! I’m Richard.’
‘Stella.’ Oh, God. It’s the guy from detention.
‘You’ve moved into lot twelve,’ he says. ‘It’s one of the best places in Fairyland – you must be rapt.’
We both stare at him. I wonder which caravan he’s living in. Some of them are pretty rotten. It hasn’t occurred to Taylor or me that we should be grateful for our place-in-the-caravan-park-that’s-not-a-caravan. We’ve only looked at it as the worst thing that’s ever happened to us.
‘How long have you been here?’ I ask.
‘Pretty much all my life.’
Taylor tugs her skirt down and heads off along Booran Road. ‘See ya.’
‘Where’s she going?’ Richard asks.
‘Catching the bus to Ascott.’
Richard’s eyebrows go up. ‘Oh. You go to different schools?’
‘We didn’t until she set half the library on fire,’ I say. That stunt had felt particularly personal.
‘She set half the library on fire?’ He glances after Taylor, who’s stopped to tie her jumper around her waist. ‘That was her? People still talk about that.’
‘We had five fire trucks roll up.’
‘Did she do it on purpose?’
‘Taylor doesn’t do things by accident. Not things like that.’
‘Ever?’
‘Ever.’
Richard gives Taylor one more worried look and then we pass the intersection and he begins to talk. He talks for the entire fifteen-minute walk to school. He tells me about the time the river flooded and two of the cabins got washed away. He talks about swimming in the pool in summer and how he’s going to string up a tyre over the river. He tells me about Muriel, who lives in the cabin that looks empty, and Marky, who lives in the one covered in flowers. He tells me how some of the people at Fairyland have to share the toilet and showers in the block by the pool. By the time we’ve arrived at school my head feels too full.
‘I saw you in detention the other day,’ I say.
‘Huh?’
‘With Carl?’
‘Oh! Right. Yeah. He comes to Fairyland at night and does dodgy crap – eggs the cabins and rips up people’s gardens. Hopefully he’ll stop now.’
‘Right. Fair enough.’
‘I’ll see you,’ he says. He seems so happy that I figure Fairyland can’t be as bad as we’ve been imagining.
We’ve finished exams for the year and school is in that strange place where we’re still expected to turn up, but there’s really no important work for us to do. Although, being Year Elevens, we’re being treated to class after class on preparing for the following year. Sutherbend High isn’t a particularly great school, but they take self-care pretty seriously.
Sitting in the science building, listening to how we need to eat lots of dark, leafy green vegetables and wholegrains next year – which is all stuff I’d been planning on doing anyway – I write on a piece of paper and toss it across the table to Clem.
I do this to all my friends, but Clem’s always been the one I have the most to say to. The most shared memories. My notes always start the same way. Do you remember.
Do you remember the time you got chased across the whole suburb by a huge dog that turned out to be a goat?
He reads it and smiles and scrunches it up into his pocket before the teacher (now talking about the evils of processed foods) notices.
As we leave the room half an hour later, he’s picking at his tie again, and I take it off him and stuff it into my pocket.
Later, it’s just Lara and me at our lockers. It’s weird to think that next year we’ll be out of the regular student lockers and up on the hallowed third floor that is reserved solely for Year Twelves. Legend has it that you can see the ocean on a clear day. Clem says that it’s bull because the ocean is way too far away, but I hope he’s wrong. I love the idea of seeing the sea.
‘I found this website,’ Lara says, passing me a printout from a website about adopted families and reuniting.
I look away and hand the paper back to her.
‘Just something to think about.’
‘I really don’t want to talk about it, Lar.’ I’d thought about those services a lot over the years, but I didn’t think I needed them. I use a lot of ‘I’ statements and have muesli for breakfast. I’m fine with being adopted.
‘But . . .’
‘Just drop it, okay?’
Lara shoves her books back into her locker. ‘Alright,’ she says stiffly.
I look at her bowed head and sigh. ‘Sorry, Lar. It’s not you. Thanks for looking the stuff up.’
She half smiles, although I can tell she’s upset. I open my mouth to say more, but she strides off. I watch her go and then I put Clem’s tie in his locker, snap the door shut and head out of the school gates.
Clem falls into step beside me, but it’s different now. I don’t live in a house anymore. It was hard enough when my house was crappy and loud and his was quiet and lovely. I don’t know how it works now. What if he wants to hang out at my house?
‘Want to come over to mine?’ he asks, as though he can tell I’m panicking about what to do.
I feel my shoulders relax. ‘Your parents home?’
‘This early? No way.’
‘Alright. Cool.’ I reach down and buckle up my T-bars because only Clem’s here and it’s okay to be lame when it’s just Clem.
‘You right?’ he asks.
‘Yeah. Just all the family stuff. You know.’
‘Alright,’ says Clem, but I can tell he’s still mystified. He’ll leave Sutherbend and be the sort of guy who sends his parents a card on their birthdays and sees them once a year for Christmas lunch at a bistro somewhere. I’ll be the sort of person who spends her life living with her troubled parents in a caravan park.
His house is cold and quiet. I shiver and we head upstairs to his room. I sit down on the floor in front of the window and stare out at the quiet street.
Behind me, in the reflection of his open laptop screen, I can see Clem lift his hand, like he wants to stroke my head, then put it back down in his lap.
I glance around at him. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing, Price. You opened your crunchy letter yet?’
‘No. I haven’t opened my crunchy letter.’
‘It’s not going to make it easier.’
‘How would you know?’
‘Because procrastinating doesn’t help anything.’
‘Where’d you get that crap from?’
‘You.’ He reaches for the laptop. ‘You got really obsessed with procrastinating after you read that book with the rainbow cover.’
‘Oh! The Happy Doer! I loved that book!’
We go down to the living room, drink cola, eat carrot cake and watch video clips online. His mum comes home and smiles at me.
‘Lovely to see you, Sarah,’ she says.
‘Um . . . you too.’
‘Her name’s not Sarah. It’s Stella, Mum.’ Clem runs his hands through his hair. ‘It’s not like I’ve got so many friends that it’s confusing.’
She doesn’t say anything to Clem, but that steeliness appears in her expression. She gives me a quick look, as though I’ve tricked her somehow, and then she gets something out of the fridge and pads away in her stockings, and I hear a door quietly close because everything in Clem’s house is quiet. Except Clem.