‘Can we go back in now?’ I call out. ‘We’re burning!’
Across the oval, the Year Tens are sunbaking on the grass with their shirts pulled up nearly to their bras. I see one of the teachers take a step towards them, then she stops and pulls out her phone and it’s just another afternoon at Sutherbend High.
***
I stay at the library for a little while after school, partly because I love the library and partly because the bank’s sending someone to value our house this afternoon. The computers are all being used by kids on detention, so I sit in my favourite aisle, under the air-conditioning vent, and play with the bouquet of flowers Zin had left in my locker. I have no idea what any of them are, but I’d never let Zin know that.
‘Richard!’ the librarian yells. ‘Put him down right now!’
I crane my neck to see one of the Year Nines lifting another Year Nine up by his shirtfront. He says something to him that I can’t hear.
Clem, who’s on detention for being disruptive during final-period maths, glances up from his computer game.
At about five the library staff start making their daily everyone-out signs. I hitch my bag up onto my shoulder out in the yard and Clem falls into step beside me. We walk in silence for a while.
‘Hey,’ he says.
‘Hey. What was that all about?’
‘What?’
‘The Year Nines.’
‘Oh. Think Carl’s been doing crap at Fairyland. And that kid, Richard, isn’t happy about it.’
‘Right.’ I swallow. ‘What sort of crap?’
‘How would I know?’
‘Why’s Richard not happy about it?’
‘I dunno. Maybe he lives there?’
‘I thought all the Fairyland kids went to Ascott.’
Clem snorts. ‘That’s stupid – they probably go to lots of different schools. Who’s going to broadcast that they live in Fairyland? Anyway, wanna do something? My tutor’s not coming till seven.’
‘Which one?’
‘The physics and chemistry one.’
‘You don’t get a break over summer?’
‘Are you kidding? It’s all being ramped up so I’m set for next year.’ He rolls his eyes.
I’d asked Mum for a tutor, just after Clem started with one. I wanted to learn how to craft my essays better. I wanted to learn how to structure things in a way that made sense, like the books I read. She’d looked at me, her expression completely bewildered. ‘But you’re doing well enough, aren’t you? You don’t need a tutor. Just talk to your teacher if you’re confused.’
I don’t think Clem’s parents are really on board with the concept of ‘well enough’. He and Lara complain bitterly to each other about the tutors they have to see, and I sit there and seethe and wish my parents were the type who saw value in that sort of thing.
Clem nudges me with his shoulder. ‘Hey, Price?’
‘What?’
‘There’s something else bothering you, isn’t there? Other than the adoption stuff?’
I hesitate. Telling Clem about moving to the caravan park isn’t going to change anything. It’s not going to stop my dad from gambling, or stop the bank from coming out to value our house. I keep thinking of the way they’d all stared at me about the letter stuff. And Fairyland is much, much worse.
‘No,’ I say. ‘That’s it.’
Clem looks at me and I think he’s going to keep pushing, but then he suddenly runs off and latches onto the low branches of a tree on the nature strip, his hat swinging from his neck by its string. ‘Wanna climb it?’
‘No. I don’t want to climb it.’
‘It’ll cheer you up.’
‘Clem – c’mon. You’ll rip your uniform. Again.’
He ignores me and pulls himself up onto the branch. The tree trembles alarmingly, but he just keeps climbing up and up until I can’t see him anymore. ‘Clem?’ I call, hating how uncertain my voice sounds.
‘It’s very green up here!’ he calls back. ‘Green’s the most soothing colour, remember? You told me that! Remember when you wanted me to paint my room green?’
‘Come down,’ I say, but he doesn’t and I think about walking off, but I don’t do that, either. I stand by the trunk with my arms crossed and watch two little primary school kids and their mother unlock their front door across the road and go inside. I wonder what the kids are looking forward to. I wonder what they’re worried about. I wonder whether their mother has dozens of overdue bills fanned out like playing cards on her cluttered desk.
I kick the trunk of the tree so hard that all the leaves shake. ‘Clem!’
He lands on the ground next to me, grinning and covered in leaves and sticks.
‘You’re an idiot,’ I say as he dusts himself off and puts his hat back on.
‘Race you to that car?’
‘I’m not running in my stupid school shoes!’
But he’s off, bag in hand, running full-pelt down the footpath as though he’s being chased by things that only he can see.
CHAPTER TWO
My dad took me to the track once. I’ve been since with Mum, searching for Dad when he was meant to be at work. A couple of times, I’ve gone looking for him by myself. But when I went with Dad that one time, the whole place seemed like a wonderland.
Taylor had a friend’s birthday to go to, so Dad just took me along with him. Running errands, he’d told Mum. For ages after, I’d thought an errand was another word for horses. Perhaps the sort of horse we’d seen at the track that day, gleaming and delicate and frothing at the bit. Even now, if I see a hint of a race on the news or something, I always watch the horses speeding around the track. Running errands.
Dad had intensity to him that day that I thought was about the horses, the errands. His clenched fingers and damp forehead, the way he watched the races without blinking, every part of him trembling with the enormity of it.
I thought he was overcome, as I was, by their size, their grace. The impossibility of them. The crackle of anticipation in the air. The way he let his breath out in a laughing gasp when some of the races finished.
I guess he won a lot of money, although I don’t really remember anything about that part of the day. Not really. What I do remember is how happy he was, how he spun me around and around. I remember him buying me an orange icy pole. I remember how I sat in the car with the windows down, sucking on it, while he raced into a florist and bought a bouquet for Mum. It was so large that it filled the back seat, and the bright-green smell of it gave me a headache.
When Mum saw it, she wasn’t as happy as I’d thought she’d be. She brushed her fingers along the shining leaves, the impossibly bright petals. She sniffed at the sharp smell and looked away from Dad.
‘Oh, Charlie.’ She didn’t look at the flowers again.
‘Where’d you go today?’ Mum asked me later that night, while she watched me wash my face and brush my teeth and hair.
‘Running errands,’ I said, thinking of the horses. Mum sighed and went back out into the living room, and I peered at my lips in the bathroom mirror, still stained a bit orange from the icy pole.