Two-thirds of the classrooms at Yarrabank High were wooden temporaries. Parents had raised funds for exciting projects like the gym and an indoor basketball court, even new goalposts. There was currently a lamington drive and a skip-a-thon in progress to raise money for bigger change rooms. Local businesses had sponsored the swimming pool and the grandstand and covered them with logos, but it seemed no one was interested in having ordinary classrooms named after them.
T6 was squeezed between the far side of the football oval and the fence. Even for a temporary building it was remote. If it had been any further away from the main building it would have been outside the school grounds.
Velvet’s mood of triumph faded as she opened the door. T6 wasn’t so much a classroom as a storeroom. The cultural studies class consisted of only six or seven pupils, but it seemed crowded. The students shared the room with excess sports equipment – piles of baseball mitts, boxes of beanbags and stacks of gym mats. At the other end of the room were paint-splattered easels, a broken potter’s wheel and various containers of dried-up paint and clay. It was actually the art room, but no one had enrolled in art that year.
The students all looked up for a moment as Velvet walked in, and then went back to their computer games, MP3 players and conversations – except for one overweight student who was asleep in the back row, his head on the desk among the remains of his lunch.
Velvet found herself a desk. “So what do we do?”
“Whatever you like,” said an Asian boy who was playing a game that involved exploding zombies.
Velvet might have thought he was good-looking if she was interested in boys – which she wasn’t.
“Isn’t there a teacher?”
“Yep.” The boy jerked his head towards the back of the room. “What’s your name?”
“Velvet.”
“Mr MacDonald, say hello to Velvet.”
The overweight, sleeping figure was in fact the teacher. He didn’t stir.
“I’m Peter,” the Asian boy said, and went back to his zombies.
None of the other students bothered to introduce themselves, but Velvet recognised some of them. Hailie, whose foot was in plaster, was filling in a Does He Think You’re Sexy? quiz in a Dolly magazine that must have been at least ten years old. Roula, the girl with the blue-streaked hair who Velvet had seen on her first day, was painting her nails green. There was also a muscular African boy with cropped hair and a body like a junior Arnold Schwarzenegger who was doing ab crunches in a corner. Velvet had heard Year 7s reverently whispering his name as he passed in the schoolyard. He was Jesus Mbele, the previous year’s soccer best and fairest. A boy with a sullen expression was playing a purple electric guitar decorated with lightning bolts. The guitar wasn’t plugged in. His long hair was tied back in an untidy ponytail. He wore glasses and had bands on his teeth. As he plucked the strings his head swayed from side to side, as if he could hear the full sound of the notes and not the thin metallic plinks. He was too engrossed in his music to notice Velvet. A boy with his back to the class was kneading a lump of clay and forming it into something. He was the only one who seemed to be doing anything vaguely “cultural”.
Roula blew on her fingernails. “What’s your name?”
She was in Velvet’s humanities class, but obviously had not been paying attention when the teacher introduced her.
“Velvet. Velvet S Pye.”
Roula sniggered. “Weird name. Makes you sound like a cushion.”
“What’s the S stand for?” asked Peter, who was trying to be friendly.
“Snobnose?” suggested Hailie, who wasn’t.
“Seraphina.”
They all looked at her in disbelief.
“Seriously?” Roula said. “Don’t your parents like you or something?”
“It was my grandmother’s name.”
“Hey, check this out.” The boy who had been modelling clay moved aside to reveal his creation – a crude phallic shape sticking up from the desk.
Velvet blushed.
“Grow up, Drago,” said Peter.
“You’re a creep,” said Roula.
Drago was short and stocky, with badly cut hair. He had a very unattractive face with a nose that bent to one side, little piggy eyes and a scar that twisted his mouth into a permanent sneer.
“Hey, what’s your name … Corduroy, what school did you come from?” Drago spoke with an unidentifiable accent and a lisp.
“St Theresa’s.”
Hailie and Roula shared a look.
“So what’s a stuck-up snob like you doing here?” Drago smirked crookedly. “Daddy made redundant?”
Velvet ignored him, and his sculpture, and pulled a book from her bag.
“What you reading?” Hailie took the book from Velvet’s hands so that she could see the cover.
“Woo-the-ring Heights.”
“That’s Wuthering,” Velvet said.
“Sh-tupid word. What’s it mean?”
“It means old and spooky.” Actually, Velvet had no idea what it meant. “It’s the name of the house on the cover.”
Hailie flicked through the book, looking for more pictures, before tossing it back to Velvet and going back to the pile of outdated magazines.
“I used to live in an old house like that when I was a kid,” Roula said.
“What, in Greece?” Drago asked.
“No, in Brunswick, when we first came to Australia. There were ghosts. They rearranged things on the shelves, hid keys and made the tzatziki go off.”
“Sure, Roula,” Peter said.
“Seriously. You ask my mum.”
“I’m just going to the toilet,” Hailie announced, rubbing her stomach. “You know, just in case.”
Velvet blushed again and glanced at the boys, who were pretending they hadn’t heard. Everyone knew that Hailie was the only Year 9 girl who hadn’t started menstruating. She went to the toilet about twenty times a day because she imagined she was getting cramps.
Velvet gave up trying to communicate to the cultural studies class.