I leave without saying more, I can barely see or think. I crush the envelope in my fist.
Ms Nouri’s office door slams shut behind me and then I’m face to face with Marley and Ally, who are huddled against a wall nearby, looking intently at Marley’s phone.
They’ve been waiting for me. No longer strangers or enemies, but not friends either.
‘Chloe? Are you okay?’
I march away from Ally’s worried voice.
‘What’s happened? Chloe? Talk to us.’
She calls my name until I turn the corner, already searching for a place to be alone.
After nearly crying in the middle of Japanese, I skip PE completely. I’ve never been able to leave a scab alone so it makes sense that I have to see for myself that my photo isn’t there anymore.
The corridors are empty, but when I pass the Great Hall I see Natalia already standing in front of the space where Someone’s Watching used to be.
‘You’re quick,’ I say.
I wonder how much longer it’s going to take before it’s the talk of the year level. Or maybe I’m flattering myself that anyone beyond us will care.
‘I have eyes everywhere.’ If I thought she’d hug me in commiseration, I’m wrong. Natalia is preternaturally still.
We contemplate the bare wall. Who would have thought that white space could say so much.
‘Where is it?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know.’ This surprises me. I don’t think it was in Ms Nouri’s office. It’s big enough that I would have noticed. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’
‘Tell me exactly what Nouri said to you.’
I swallow over the nervous lump in my throat and try to remember the whole blurry awful conversation.
‘She said someone put in an official complaint about our photo, uh, they were distraught, and Mrs Christie made the decision to take it out of the exhibition. I got the impression that Nouri might not agree but was forced to go along with it.’
‘Distraught?’ Natalia’s voice is steely. ‘What a joke. Who do they think is distraught?’
A great weariness takes over me. My limbs are heavy, my head heavier still. I think about Sunita and Bridie and all their talk about dead bodies and blood, and I can’t figure out anymore if I’ve done something wrong. Was it too much? Was it the wrong message?
Natalia’s phone chimes. She checks it, puts it away.
‘Okay, we need to go.’
‘Where?’
‘Right now.’
Her fingers close around my wrist and she walks me, fast, towards the closest door that leads outside.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Shush. Thinking.’
‘Who was that?’
Natalia doesn’t answer, but it soon becomes obvious as we round the outside of the tuckshop and cross the small lawn to the portable that serves as the Year Ten common room. There are so many reasons not to go to the common room—it’s cold, the carpet smells, it’s cliquey—that I can barely remember what it looks like inside.
Marley lounges on the steps, Ally is doing some sort of risky parkour move, standing on the handrail and clutching the windowsill.
‘She’s in there.’ She jumps down.
Natalia storms up the stairs, checking to see I’m with her. And something very obvious becomes clear to me.
Natalia is not still, not calm or relaxed or resigned. She’s wound up, waiting for the right moment, muscles coiled like a panther. She’s a weapon about to be unleashed.
I follow her across the common room, to the corner where a group of boarders—Brooke, Petra, Audrey, Jody and others—are sitting on couches.
Natalia slows to a saunter.
‘Hi guys!’ Natalia’s voice is friendly bright. ‘Mind if I sit down?’
Instead of waiting for them to make room she muscles into the group, forcing herself into place right next to Petra. I hover a few metres away.
‘How are you going, Galbraith?’ Natalia slings her arm across the back of the couch and Petra cringes away from her. ‘Been up to anything interesting lately? Like, sorting your pencil case, or…ruining someone else’s hard work perhaps?’
The group finally catches Natalia’s tone, because they start melting away, until it’s just Petra and Audrey.
Petra doesn’t say anything. Audrey looks intently at her feet.
‘I’m trying to figure out why you would do this,’ Natalia continues to Petra conversationally. ‘Is it because you’re a bit of a jealous bitch? You can’t stand that Chloe’s not only smart but creative too? I mean, you get good marks, right, but there’s something robotic about you, isn’t there?’
‘Tal—don’t, I don’t need you to—’ I say, even as I’m wondering if she’s gotten it right. Why would Petra do this to me?
‘Or perhaps it was me that offended you? Oh, that Natalia, she’s always looking for attention, she thinks she’s so hot. Is there something about me that bothers you?’
Natalia has never looked more of an evil little pixie, with a mouth full of knives and eyes that can slash.
I have to ask. ‘Petra, was it you?’
Petra looks up at me, stricken. I remember her fidgeting in the library this morning, and all of a sudden I don’t need her to answer.
‘Why wouldn’t you say something to me directly? I wasn’t trying to upset anyone.’
I was trying to pull on a thin thread of meaning from deep inside and convince myself it was worth something, that it was significant enough to show.
‘The photo is disrespectful, Chloe!’ Petra blurts out. ‘Even if you didn’t mean it to be.’
‘I definitely didn’t mean—’ I try to interject but Petra is bursting with things to say.
‘You haven’t been here as long, so you don’t know what it feels like. You’re making fun of something awful that’s happened to us. Death is serious, death is forever…I don’t know why you of all people don’t see that, Natalia! The whole thing is really tacky.’
That word takes my breath away, even as I was starting to feel sorry for Petra, being pinned down by Natalia’s force.
Tacky.
Tacky is tracksuits in public, second-hand school blazers and fourth-hand textbooks, sneakers from Kmart, saying haitch like my Morrison friends do. Bringing your basic sandwiches to school, your family not having a car, living in the wrong suburb, never having
