I’d thought I could show up at school and do the work, then catch up with my real friends on the weekend. I’d make some friends at Balmoral, not close ones, and not heaps. Maybe a trio, like the one Claire, Milla and Yin formed, a loose bond with girls that are in a few of my classes. That would have been enough.
The thing is, I don’t think I can reverse my decision now.
I’ve seen what it’s like.
Balmoral girls get more homework, extra reading, extension exercises. The world is expected of us. Our teachers are available at lunch, after school and even on holidays, to go over our assignments and tests in detail. They’re paid to push us hard, we have to deliver, and I’m doing things that I wouldn’t be able to achieve at Morrison. I’ve got to pedal hard just to keep up with the pack.
I can’t go back to my old school.
If Liana could see the brand-new science labs we get to use, the shiny state-of-the-art equipment, she’d be amazed, and maybe furious. Sitting the scholarship exam wasn’t even my idea, it was hers.
She wanted to get into McGowan, a selective state school with a good netball team and specialist STEM program. We did practice exams together, then sat in the same massive room at the Showgrounds, along with hundreds of other hopeful teenagers vying for spots at independent schools around the state. But when the results came in, it was me that got the offers: a full scholarship to Balmoral, or a half-scholarship to Sheltower Girls Grammar.
I jam the rest of the scroll into my mouth and crumple the paper bag. Natalia and her gang are hanging out the front of the juice bar, right next to the bus stop. They must have been on the tram before mine. Apparently there’s a secret shortcut through the grounds that gets you to the tram stop early, but no one’s ever shown me. The boys they’re with, some spoilt guys from Norton Grammar, are making a big show of flexing their muscles and pushing each other around, even while they’re sucking on hot-pink takeaway cups.
Sarah has taken off her blazer and rolled her winter skirt up so it barely covers her butt. She’s sitting on one boy’s lap, but the rest of the girls are more interested in their phones than the Grammar boys.
Natalia stands apart from the rest, eyes on her phone, with Ally looking over her shoulder. They don’t care that they’re blocking the footpath, forcing shoppers to flow around them.
I pretend to read my Biology textbook while I eavesdrop.
‘I can’t believe she’d go out in those pants,’ Ally says. ‘Again. I’ve got chills.’
The two girls watch the screen quietly, and at one point Ally squeals.
When whatever they’re watching finishes, Natalia looks up and catches my eye. I can tell that she’s pissed off with Ally by the way she’s angled away from her. Her eyes are hollow.
‘What are you looking at?’ Natalia calls out, but I know it’s just a reflex. There’s no fire in her words. She seems blank, empty as a lost sock, especially compared to how she was last week. She was so jumped up in self-defence class that she was lucky she didn’t take Petra’s eye out.
Behind her I can see the Grammar boys checking her out, and I don’t blame them. Perfect tanned skin, skinny legs and boobs the exact right size, those supermodel eyes, blue-green, set far apart and a bit alien.
I hold her gaze and shrug. I can read your mind, a bit, I think. Something’s wrong with you. I can tell you’re wearing a mask.
Natalia eyeballs me for a few more seconds before turning back to her friends.
I check the bus timetable. I don’t think the 3.50 p.m. is coming, so I decide to walk to the next bus stop. I’m hauling my second-hand Maths, International Studies and Biology textbooks home and my bag straps cut heavily into my right shoulder. Once I’m far enough up the street, I slip my backpack on properly, both straps, a proper dork.
I realised two days into my new school that no one uses the green Balmoral backpacks; they all use the green duffel bag instead. There is no way I can use anything other than this perfectly good new backpack that Mum bought, though. When I got the scholarship it felt like a free ride, but it turned out that there were plenty of extras apart from the fees. Summer uniform, winter uniform, sports uniform. Straw hat, school swimsuit, textbooks, excursions.
The air is thick with exhaust fumes at the next intersection. Cars fly by; one driver wolf whistles. I have no idea why school uniforms do this to men, they’re literally an advertisement that I’m underage.
A new billboard looms above the crossroads. A pale girl in a silky cream slip lying on the ground, her sleeping face surrounded with a bright red blot of hair. Her legs cross at the ankles, her wrists turn soft side up. Her skin is dirty and scratched.
She might be selling perfume or shoes, but that can’t be right.
The girl looks damaged, and sexy. Something crawls deep in my gut.
Around the fallen girl everything is dark and foreboding: the thin silhouettes of trees, a shadowy, indistinct figure hiding behind one of them. The half-seen figure is bulky and powerful; the girl so beautiful and bare. The photographer has managed the lighting perfectly, illuminating the crumpled figure of the girl and then letting patches of darkness take over.
I think of the police and rescue service workers walking methodically through the parklands next to school, and imagine them finding a discarded body in the creek. Should an assaulted girl look this sexy and glamorous? I flash back to mum saying that the community cares more about some women than others. What is wrong with people?
I squint at the
