The doddering Languages master, Werner, ripped the tape from Mallory’s mouth. She winced and I prayed it was as painful as it looked.
“Better quick than slow,” he squeaked bracingly.
I watched over a seething patchwork of heads, balanced on one of the stacked benches at the very back of the huge dining-hall-cum-auditorium. The students of the Albert Einstein Boarding Academy (a gross insult to the great man) had surged in like battery hens, but the excitement of this breakfast surprise kept them on their feet, whooping and hollering. Plates of bacon and eggs, their yokes crusting deserted forks, toast and bowls of porridge, were scattered on long tables lining the space, forgotten and going cold. They were too focused on the teachers’ platform in front.
Eating was certainly furthest from my mind. The guilt at ruining my promise to Aunt Bea to behave, undoing months of good work despite the liars and cheats and bullies swarming this place like flies on crap, gnawed at my conscience. I was expected to rise above it all. Right now, the hope I could worm out of trouble took priority.
“It was Winsome. The freak! Daddy will press charges. We’re suing the school. There she is!” Mallory jerked her head in my direction, her lips swollen and red. “I was sleeping in my dorm when she barged in and kidnapped me. I woke up here, taped so tight I can barely breathe. It’s a federal offence. Call the FBI!”
Her apparent suffocation didn’t impede the chest-heaving drama. She was gaffer-taped from shoulders to knees on a desk chair on the teachers’ dais. Her partner in crime, Chad, was positioned next to her in identical bondage. The two of them looked like pupae squirming in silver cocoons. Their eyebrows were absent. A sign on his chest announced in large red letters: Chad blows goat. Mallory’s said: Danger – Herpes. Their mottos inspired peals of laughter as the hall filled.
Principal ‘the crow’ Bird and the clueless student counsellor, Mr Jenkins, stalked the perimeter in outrage. A smart person would have hidden in her room, but curiosity always ruled my world. Mallory burst into theatrical sobs, not quite as convincing without a swoon. That could wait until the court case. Time to squash my nerves and row my meagre defences.
“Winsome Light, here. Now!” The crow returned to the stage and offered Mallory a comforting pat on the shoulder. Jenkins followed like a dutiful lackey.
The crow’s scowl pinned me from across the hall, commanding me to move. The awful woman was a Coco Chanel wannabe, suit buttoned to her throat, unburdened by the trademark cigarette and genuine style. Everyone present swivelled and attention fell upon me like an inquisitor’s glare. Old boy Werner waved his Stanley knife with hands as steady as a windsock in a high gale. Chad wriggled away from the blade. He was such a moron! No punishment stole the beauty of the scene. What could they do to me? The threat of expulsion seemed an incentive, if not for my long-suffering Aunt Bea.
I sighed and jumped from the bench. Faces tracked me eagerly as I trudged to the gallows, jostled by kids toned, pudgy and bony. My popularity was on par with vaccinations. I told myself again it didn’t matter, that the opinion of my fellow inmates was my least concern.
As I neared, Mallory regarded me with a hateful expression. Her mouth resembled a couple of inflated leeches. I stifled a laugh, breaking from the herd for the stage. The crow willed me closer with a hooked finger, trapping me within the overpowering radius of her Red Door perfume.
“Account for your whereabouts last night, Miss Light. Preferably, the truth.”
When would she prefer a lie? Adults – experts at stating the totally obvious, yet missing the point entirely. “I was sleeping. I have a witness.” Mallory wasn’t the only one who could act.
“A witness?”
“Yes, proof of my innocence.”
“Please explain.”
“You know, evidence. Confirmation that Mallory is puking the standard pile.” Yet again, my mouth operated outside the control of my brain. Claps and whistles echoed the hall.
“You are on perilous ground, young lady,” she threatened, thin-lipped. “Your great-aunt Beatrice is but a phone call away.”
Actually, Aunt Bea was several oceans and a few continents away with me exiled in arctic Austria. Only a thirty-hour journey to Sydney, Australia in her jet. Except for the last six blessed years, we’d been global nomads. I’d been to so many schools in so many countries that I no longer nurtured relationships with my fellow students. What was the point if I was never able to return social invites, which made for a very one-sided exchange.
But surely a little moral support right now wasn’t too much to ask? I used to believe teens stuck together. A bugger, that foolish optimism! Sometimes, no matter what I told myself, it really did matter.
“Chablis,” I mumbled.
Drilling my hands deep inside my jacket pockets, I wished my alibi hinged on someone other than my roomy. And on something other than blackmail. The only reason Chablis was poised to jump to my defence were the photos I had of her and handsome Professor Ramsteed, both bombed and taking his name far too literally. But as her favourite pastime was posting selfies on any digital medium, she may still change her mind and consider their release on Instagram as flattering.
“Chablis Getty. Come up here, please.”
The crowd divided as if Moses himself issued the command. Chablis’ family were prime contributors of money to the school. Werner finally triumphed and Chad stretched in his boxer shorts, gazing around with the keenness of a sloth. Tape abrasions and bleeding nicks patterned his naked torso. Werner wielded the scalpel in Mallory’s direction. She whimpered convincingly.
“Yes, Principal Bird?”
Chablis – or ‘Shabby’ to me – flicked champagne hair extensions. She fluttered in knees socks and a blazer, sponging every drop of attention from admirers in the front row. With the crow distracted shushing students, Shabby turned to grin at me. Then I knew for certain the dirt I had on her wasn’t enough.
“Can you corroborate Miss Light’s whereabouts, Chablis?” The principal’s doubt was louder than any answer.
I searched the audience for the tiny blond boy who trembled alone to one side of the assembly hall, his face pale and troubled. His name was Jaime. I’d met him early this morning on my parkour run, which finished with a stolen snack from the kitchens. No amount of hassle for my current jam matched what he’d suffered. I caught his eye and winked, hoping to convey confidence. His chin raised a notch.
“Her story is …” Chablis began, while I didn’t dare breathe. “True. Winsome was asleep in her bed. All night. We were woken before the alarm this morning by the noise of trampling feet and kids shouting to come and see this.”
Chablis gestured at Mallory and Chad a few metres away, struggling to hold back her obvious amusement. Both the captives were now liberated from their bindings, upright on rubbery legs. To my astonishment, Chablis gave a five-star performance.
“How do you know Winsome did not slip out during the night?” The crow didn’t bother to hide her disappointment.
“Lately, she’s been screaming and gibbering in her sleep. I can hear her through my earplugs. Some rubbish about someone called Raphaela and devils and strings and stench. Couple of other names …” She wore her thinking face, the same open-mouthed one she used to catch lobbed M&M’s. “Billie, I think?” She couldn’t help herself and turned to me. “Is he hot?”
Everyone laughed again and shabby lost a few stars. On her mention of stench, a petroleum reek wafted into the hall. It had the undercurrent of rot. I scrunched my nose. Had someone neglected the garbage?
“That’s quite enough! Thank you, Chablis. Mr Werner, kindly fetch the school nurse for these two. Mr Jenkins, may I have a word?”
The principal and the counsellor moved off to the back of the stage and put their heads together, finally managing a whole useful brain. Their murmured voices rang too clear above the student babble, which was gaining volume. I’d never really appreciated how acute my hearing was until coming here, where it became increasingly obvious I was privy to things said that others weren’t.
Suddenly, another voice competed with Bird and Jenkins. A familiar one from my nightmares, causing a tingle of fear up my spine and a lurch in my belly.
“Who but the devil pulls our waking-strings! Abominations lure us to their side …”
The night-time dread leached into daylight, out in the open for all to see. I blinked back panic. Was this only in my head? Waves of stink accosted my nostrils. I glanced around at the students below and confirmed my worst fears. They looked the same as every other occasion, jaws slack and faces sullen – all clearly oblivious to the poetic taunts.
“Each day we take another step to hell, Descending through the stench, unhorrified …”
A translation from the poet Baudelaire. The Flowers of Evil. I’d seen poetry drive students mad before, but not this literally. And I’d developed two psychiatric symptoms too many: voices in my head and smelling the cesspit. I imagined IV lockdown with concerned elderly faces looming to smother me in care. Did they still use padded cells on mental patients nowadays?
“Mallory and Chad were drugged when you found them?” Bird asked Jenkins, dragging me back to reality.
“Yes. The perpetrator used ether to knock them out. It’s fast acting, fades quickly and leaves no symptoms. Easily obtained and used. We’ve only had a brief chance to inventory the labs, but it seems a small quantity may be missing.”
The side effects were vomiting and dizziness. Mrs Paget had taught me this in home-school medicinal chemistry when I was seven. And I’d had to scale four storeys of the Science wing and prise a window open from outside to steal it. Technically, it was quite the challenge to obtain. Especially on short notice. It had been a very busy night. I waited, hyper-vigilant, but a couple of fantasy sentences seemed to be the limit of my addled brain right now.
“I do not believe her story, Mr Jenkins,” Bird said.
“Mallory’s accusations are wild, indeed. She’d have no idea of her attacker if she was unconscious.”
“Not Mallory,” Birdbrain squawked. “I’m certain Winsome has coerced Chablis into providing an alibi. Is there some way we can swab her fingers or match the handwriting on those signs. Confirm her guilt? You say the theft occurred last night? There’d be ether residue all over her.”
“Really, Ms Bird. Don’t you mean confirm Winsome’s innocence? How could a lone assailant possibly achieve a theft after hours? And then take not one, but two students hostage, in the dark, without alerting a patrolling supervisor? Surely given Winsome’s diminutive size, she lacks the physical ability to lug someone of Chad’s stature from his bed, onto a chair, down several flights of stairs and so on. I feel this is the act of a group.”
How indeed. I was amazed myself that it had been so easy. But I’d discovered the teachers’ private elevator early in my second term here. After lifting Jenkins’ pass code during one of our completely pointless counselling sessions, it was a small matter to ferry the worms downstairs and wheel them into the dining hall. The only part that proved challenging was negotiating the couple of stairs to the platform.
“Yes, yes! So it seems. Nonetheless, I do not trust her. Her reputation speaks for itself, and not in kind words.”
“But what is Winsome’s motive for an attack on these two? She is barely seventeen, certainly not the criminal mastermind you imply. She has been perfectly behaved since that initial incident in the laundry room two years ago. We’re making rapid progress in therapy.”
“The incident whereby Winsome blackened Mallory’s eye? As Student Counsellor, you see no connection between then and now?”
“Do you doubt my professional opinion …?”
Bird and Jenkins yammered on. His question about motive was the smartest ever to make the long journey from his solitary neuron to his flapping gums. Even though discounting my criminal genius was kind of insulting, I was grateful he had so little faith in me.
The toxic cadaver smell faded once the creepy voice in my head had vanished. I mentally clung to the peace of 3 am this morning, the best part of my stretch here, while the student collective hung around, watching me with unfriendly eyes. Parkour practice at that hour felt special, like tumbling in nothingness. The dark had an indigo tint, moonlight shafts flashing through arched windows as I sprinted by. I often wished running away was so easy. Even though I’d only lived in Sydney for six short years, forgetting periods in this prison, it was my home and I missed it.
The Academy didn’t come close, nested in an Alp-bound castle. But steep stairwells, tangled passages, abandoned cellars, and nooks made it a snap to evade the dorm matron and her cronies, who patrolled the night like walkie-talkie clad Pac-Men. I’d been running for an hour, tearing ever downwards to approach the hotel-sized kitchen on the ground floor. Not usually one for caution, some instinct made me halt just outside the swinging entrance doors, through which an argument eventually became clear.
“Lift him higher, dick!”
“You keep calling me that and you can do it yourself, Mallory,” said a sulky male voice.
Mallory and her sidekick – the incredibly hot, incredibly dopey, Chad – up to no good, as usual. I peeked through a round window embedded in the door.
“Stop. Please. It’s so cold,” a young male voice pleaded. A sliver of light fell across the kitchen floor at the room’s furthest reaches. The trio were in the outback rubbish area, a bricked-in dead end housing several dumpsters, unless cross-country skiing appealed.
“Maybe this will teach you to mind your own business.”
“It was an accident,” their victim said. “I only needed to use the bathroom. I didn’t mean to see you. Please, please,” he sobbed.
“Maybe we should let him be, Mal? It was only a headjob.” The slaps of Chad’s arms keeping himself warm echoed around the interior. I pushed through the split door, seeking a hiding spot. The space was large, lined with industrial cookers along one side, cooking benches opposite. Several floor-to-ceiling storage towers filled with dry goods cut the area in half like bookshelves. There was a walk-in refrigerator in one corner containing the white-chocolate cheesecake I raided often. “It is pretty cold out here.”
“No one sees me on my knees. Do you hear? No one!”
“I won’t tell anyone, I promise! Please, Mallory,” the boy begged.
“You’d better forget you know my name, you little prat. Let this be your motivation.”
It was impossible they’d be so homicidal as to dump a kid in a waste-filled skip in the sub-zero snow. They preferred public thuggery, a ring of onlookers cheering them on. Digital displays from the stoves added a green tinge to the yellowed light pouring from the bin receptacle, making hiding in the shadows difficult. My every step further inside seemed to disrupt the quiet like a mortar blast.
“I can’t get his singlet off,” Chad whined.
“Let me go!”
“Just hurry, we’ll get sprung.”
“He’s struggling.”
“You cretin, Chad! Do you expect him to undress and jump in himself?”
Chad swore: in this his vocabulary excelled. I snuck as close as I dared, squatting behind tuber-filled bins across from the back door.
“This is dumb, Mal. The kid’ll freeze.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake. We’ll let him stew for a few minutes and then dump him inside somewhere.”
“Ahh, his motivation,” Chad said sagely.
From this position, I achieved a relatively unobstructed view. Stripped of his clothing, the poor little boy’s flesh was blue-tinged. He huddled barefoot on chilled concrete, not a scrap of fat on his body and I didn’t think he had the luxury of minutes before the cold damaged his fingers and toes. He shivered uncontrollably.
It was at this point I bumped a pyramid of potatoes. Spuds frolicked about like vegetables on a spree. I silently stole one of Chad’s tamer words.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
My breath plumed the air. One of them, I could take. Two of them? A trial beyond my abilities.
“You need to stop watching Twilight. It’s giving you bad dreams,” she snorted. “Is the scary, sparkly fairy coming to make you his boyfriend?”
“Shut up, Mal!”
“Shove him in and we’re outta here.”
“What d’ya mean? Leave him here?”
The poor kid yelped, cries muffled as the lid moaned shut. They truly were spineless wretches. “Is there someone in the kitchen or not?”
“I’m tellin’ you, Mal. I heard something.”
“I don’t believe you, but you better go and check anyway.”
Uh-oh. A huge silhouette blocked the doorframe, torchlight piercing the gloom. He took a step and a potato bounced across the linoleum.
“See?” he called, turning back to Mallory. “Where’d that come from?”
From my crouch, I dived into the large open bin of onions. Chad swung back into the kitchen, while I flattened myself beneath the lip. Moving at all would trigger an avalanche. A Neanderthal shuffle hinted at Chad’s closeness.
“Shit. If we get caught, Chad, you kidnapped me and forced me to do it.” The dumpster lid ground open. “What am I going to do with a nosey little turd like you?”
Please don’t see me, I begged silently. Please don’t see me! I squeezed my eyes partially shut and cowered, as Chad’s lumpy head appeared and his flashlight framed me in brilliance. Through my lashes, he gawked at me, mere centimetres from my face. But the shade tugged closed and he moved away. Was he blind as well as witless?
“It was nothing,” he said.
“Wait ten minutes and then get out. And if you breathe a word of any of this, you’re mincemeat. Got it?” Mallory eventually joined him. “Told you no one’s here.”
Their voices faded along the corridor and I exhaled relief. There was no explanation for my stay of execution. Chad had been stoned the day they gave out mercy and missed his quota. If he’d seen me, I was bloody sludge beneath his Vans. So … He must not have seen me? Strange. His mother – or the thing that laid his egg – might need to get his eyes checked.
I rescued Jaime from his fate as a popsicle for rodents, waited while he showered, and got him back to bed. I’d teach him to fight, buy him some mace for the time being. I could have left it at that. Should have. But anger at the injustice of Chad and Mallory winning got the better of me.
“Winsome! I am talking to you.” The crow gripped the arm of my jacket and shook. I glanced down at her fingers and she hastily let go. Smoothing her own jacket, her face was a pinched-lip blend of disgust and lost opportunity like when you open the carton, rather than checking the date, and take a huge whiff of two-month-old milk turned to cottage cheese. “The issue is by no means resolved, Miss Light.”
The rest of the school was dismissed for classes. Except for the real culprits, who’d earned the fabulous welts all over their arms.
“My skin’s sensitive. I’m having a reaction to the tape,” Mallory complained.
If honesty ruled, my biggest regret was not stripping them naked and parking them on the Academy driveway. I so wanted to say, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” The crow’s sermon droned and I tried to look engaged. I rationalised the awful odour of death and decay had been a symptom of ether contamination, not my own psychosis. Inhaling chemicals was a poor excuse for the morbid voice in my head, though.
“I shall leave no locker, bathroom cabinet, sports bag or dresser drawer unchecked in my quest to punish the offender. Rest assured, Miss Light, I will discover the facts.”
Screeched hysteria from Mallory announced that Chad had thrown up down the front of her nightie. Chunks of last night’s lasagne splattered the floor. From her bilious expression, Mallory looked set to return the favour. It made everything worthwhile, if only for a second.
“Winsome Light!”
My name was sure copping a work-out today. An intimidating man in black commando pants and a tight t-shirt strode across the dining hall, unmoved by snowflakes steaming his form. Werner trotted after him, objecting loudly to unauthorised personnel on school premises. He reminded me of a toothless yapping terrier.
“It’s alright, Mr Werner. I am familiar with Mr Hugo,” said Bird.
Since when? If the guy was a mountain, he’d answer to Everest. His voice rumbled like a Harley Davidson, his attitude take-no-nonsense. He frowned down at me, bringing an entirely new sort of trouble. He’d materialised to take me home, proving there was plenty of merit in the old phrase ‘Be careful what you wish for’.
