I stand up. My head feels slightly better. I look around for my clothes. ‘Are you going back up to the main block?’ I ask Liz.
‘Yeah, to the canteen. I think it’s about to rain, though. Should have brought my umbrella down.’
I am about to offer to share mine with her when she speaks again.
‘I saw you and Edie training on the courts the other week. Looking good.’
‘Oh! Thanks.’
‘Although your backhand volley still needs a bit of work, doesn’t it?’
That’s when I remember my umbrella has a broken spoke. It will be no good to share with anyone. I had best return to the main block by myself.
Besides, I am in a bit of a hurry: I need to find Will Everhart before the end of lunch.
Chapter 7
WILL
I get to the newsroom just after twelve-thirty. I knock on the door and Nat hauls it open. She kicks aside a stack of empty boxes and ushers me in.
I survey the familiar chaos: Nat’s desk covered in piles of paper. Her beaten-up computer with Post-it Notes fluttering along its side. The stereo, with Nat’s awful garage punk blaring. The corkboard, set lopsided against the peeling wall, where draft Messenger pages jostle for space. The rusted filing cabinet. The moth-eaten couch.
Duncan Aboud, Nat’s unofficial editorial assistant, is sorting papers on the floor. No-one barring Nat herself knows how Duncan manages to spend so much time in the Messenger newsroom when he’s supposed to be in class at Edwin Street Boys’ Academy across the road. When questioned on the subject, he tends to mumble the phrase ‘cross-institutional learning’ a lot.
‘Duncan: out,’ Nat commands.
Duncan pushes his glasses up his nose, gets to his feet and rushes for the door.
As soon as it closes behind him, Nat’s demeanour shifts. She steps towards me. With a coy smile she leans in and kisses me on the lips.
It’s new, this thing between us. It started last Monday night. I was helping her with a Messenger article on refugee policy. We’d drunk a tank-load of Red Bull. Then Nat found a bunch of cat videos online that had us both in hysterics, and I was crouched against the filing cabinet wheezing with laughter, saying, ‘That is so funny,’ and Nat was saying, ‘You are,’ and I was saying, ‘No, you are,’ and then in a different voice, a low-down voice like she was telling me a secret, she said, ‘You’re seriously great. You know that, right?’
That’s when things heated up.
But that was a week ago, and now it’s Monday again, and lunchtime. Daylight is streaming onto the crumb-caked carpet, lighting up the floating dust whorls and catching the scratches on the desktop. The voices of our classmates echo in the corridor. As I kiss Nat back, it occurs to me that what was exciting a week ago on Red Bull in a dark room now seems weirdly sordid.
I hear the boom of Deputy Davids’ voice outside. ‘Inez Jurich, get down from that balcony rail at once.’
I pull away from Nat, indicating the door.
She nods in agreement. ‘Another time.’ Wiping her mouth with her sleeve, she falls into her desk chair. I flop onto the couch.
We look each other.
‘So. About this cartoon,’ says Nat, turning businesslike.
My stomach turns. Here it comes: the moment I’ve been dreading. Nat’s worked out I drew it and is going to blast me for it.
Her eyes light up. ‘How great is it?’
I release the wall of breath inside my chest. ‘Incredible,’ I say.
‘Hadley deserves it,’ Nat says. ‘More than deserves it. What a creep.’ She grins. ‘Do you know this Amelia Westlake person, by any chance? The name sounded familiar to me but I can’t put my finger on it.’
She hasn’t a clue it’s me, then. Better still, she thinks it’s someone real. This is exactly what we were aiming for.
I furrow my brow. ‘There’s a girl in year ten who’s in the Rhythmic Roses who’s called Amelia,’ I say. The Rhythmic Roses is Rosemead’s prize-winning modern dance troupe. ‘Mousey hair, I think. Actually, I have a feeling she’s related to Duncan,’ I throw in.
Nat shakes her head. ‘He has a cousin Emily at Rosemead, but her hair isn’t mousey, and she doesn’t dance,’ she says, matter-of-fact. ‘She’s into horses,’ she adds, as if being into horses completely excludes either of those things. ‘Which means the Rhythmic Roses girl could be Amelia Westlake, which would be a relief ’ – she is saying all of this incredibly quickly – ‘because I had this awful feeling that it might have been a pseudonym, and you know the school rules about publishing anonymous contributions. And after the investigative piece I ran on the canteen’s supply chain, Croon’s already looking for an excuse to ditch me as editor.’
‘Of course.’ A wave of guilt sweeps over me. How could I have forgotten about the shit Nat copped for that supply chain piece? It exposed a link to a battery hen farm known for animal cruelty – a farm that also happens to be run by a prominent Rosemead family.
Croon wanted Nat’s head on a plate. She would have kicked her off the Messenger in an instant if she’d been able to find a flaw in her research.
This is the tightrope Nat’s always walking: breaking meaningful stories without getting Principal Croon offside. Or if she does get her offside, making sure it’s in a way that’s beyond criticism. Publishing a cartoon under a pseudonym is definitely not in the ‘beyond criticism’ category.
‘I’ve done a bit of searching already,’ Nat says. ‘There are no references to Amelia Westlake in any recent Rosemead publications. They keep the student rolls on the staff intranet behind a firewall, so I haven’t been able to check those yet, but I’ll find a way. I really I hope I can locate her,’ she says. ‘This cartoon is one of the best contributions I’ve received for a long time.’
‘I agree.’ I’m burning with guilt, but still
