The Cry of her Heart
The bus disgorged Leilah at school and the driver yelled at her. “Get on with youse!” he growled, caulking his throat with a gob full of phlegm. “Bloody flooding’s making me late.”
“Sorry.” Leilah stood and clutched her school blazer close around her throat. Rain tipped from the heavens like angry angels doused the earth with buckets of cold water. Each drop fell as large as a coin and soaked her before she reached the shelter of the bus stop.
“Lei!” Dante jabbed her shoulder blade with a pointy finger. “What’s wrong with you today? You looked like you wanted to stay on the bus.” He hoisted a battered umbrella over them both and frowned at the sight of her swollen lip.
“Tired.” Leilah yawned. She sagged against him and rubbed a hand across her mouth, the fragile scab cracking and sending sharp pain signals to her brain.
“Nocturnal activities will do that to a girl.” He smirked and Leilah glared at him.
“Dante, stop!”
Tane pushed his way underneath the umbrella. He forced himself between them and slipped an arm around Leilah’s shoulders. She sighed with relief at the comfort his contact brought. “Dad said your stallion got out last night.” He rubbed a gentle index finger along her jaw and Leilah nodded.
“Yeah, he called by looking for you.”
He jerked his head towards her lip. “He said you got hurt.” Tane shrugged. “He didn’t look very hard for me though, did he?. He found me at home in bed.”
Dante glanced sideways at Leilah and smirked. She intercepted the look and hid her smile. Growing up among cops made the sergeant’s son wily and cunning. He always said it took a thief to catch a thief.
“Hey.” Vaughan met them at the school gate after clambering out of Horse’s truck. Leilah wrinkled her nose at his appearance.
“You look like someone dragged you through a hedge backwards,” Tane said, relinquishing his hold on Leilah as they approached their classroom.
“Whatever!” Vaughan snapped. He rubbed his stomach and winced. Leilah watched his face, desperate to talk to him about the previous night. He didn’t give her the chance. “I’ve got a maths tutorial now,” he said, peeling away from the group and heading for the science faculty building. Water droplets shook from his dark hair with every movement of his lithe body.
“Man of few words.” Dante scowled over his shoulder and Leilah shrugged.
“Someone said he went to the hospital,” Tane mused, opening the classroom door and allowing Leilah through first. “You think he’s sick?”
“Sick in the head,” Dante muttered. Leilah caught his sideways glance and shook her head.
“Red got out. He shagged everything within a three kilometre radius last night. Horse caught us trying to get him out of their field and found it funny. Vaughan looked terrible.”
Tane jerked his head towards Vaughan’s retreating back. “I heard their farm is in trouble. Horse would love one of Red’s foals. Are you sure he didn’t leave the gates open on purpose?”
Leilah cringed. “Certain. Red jumped their fence.”
“How do you know?” Dante asked.
She turned on him, fire in her eyes. “Because the damn horse flattened me when I tried to get him back and the gate was definitely closed. He didn’t open it and then shut it behind him, did he? Dad climbed the fence and drove him towards it. Red didn’t let me open it before he barged through.” Leilah put her hand up to the lump on the back of her head. “He flung me far enough away not to trample me.”
“Geez.” Dante squeezed her shoulder. “That’s pretty good evidence right there.” He changed the subject. “Did you hear the thunder and lightning last night?”
Leilah nodded. “It kept me awake.”
“Amongst other things.” Dante’s sultry look made her turn away to hide the heated blush climbing her neck.
She removed her soaked blazer and gave it a shake, distributing water in a circle around her. The rimu floorboards dimpled with darker spots of brown. Leilah turned towards the front of the classroom and narrowed her brows at the empty teacher’s desk. “Where’s Clough?”
“Looking at the stiff next to the rugby pitch.” Lani Grady widened her eyes and savoured the atmosphere of scandal surrounding her desk like an aura of sickness. “There’s a body in the gully.”
“A what?” The collective shout brought most of the class to her side and Lani simpered under the increased attention. The local butcher’s daughter enjoyed her five seconds of fame to the full.
“Yeah. A third former found him. She’s in the secretary’s office now. Didn’t you hear the hysterics?” Lani shifted in her seat as a host of questions buffeted her ears. “The cops will be here soon.”
Leilah headed for her seat at the back of the class and threw her bag on the wooden floor. She sank into her chair, a fearful heaviness in her chest. Breathing came if she ignored all the other sounds in the room. Tane and Dante hung around Lani’s desk, listening to her ill-informed and over embellished details. Leilah rested her forehead against her arms and drowned out the surrounding rumble of voices.
“Everyone, sit down!” Clough entered the classroom and slammed the outer door. He stumped across the room with his characteristic heavy-footed stride and barked out orders in his English accent. “Get into your seats before I give out this tempting stack of detentions.” He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up further on his pointed nose and flapped the book of green slips. “Who wants to pick up rubbish this Saturday?”
“I’ll do it.” Dante raised his hand, pushing boundaries and issuing a silent challenge. He made certain his backside sank into his seat after all the others.
Clough waggled the book of slips a few more times and narrowed his eyes. A smirk drifted across his lips. “See me after registration, Dante,” he said, his tone acerbic.
Leilah groaned, the sound loud enough to reach the teacher’s ears. He turned and gave her a sad smile. “My thoughts exactly, Miss Dereham.”
Vaughan opened the door and slipped inside, shaking water from himself like a dog. Clough glared at him. Then the teacher’s expression softened. “Ah, yes. The principal cancelled all extra tutorials this morning. The executive staff are in an emergency meeting.”
“Yep.” With his usual deadpan expression, Vaughan sauntered to Leilah and sank into the chair next to her. His chair. Leilah shot a sideways look at him and then buried her face in her arms. The body existed. She didn’t imagine it. Acid rose into her throat and she felt grateful for the teacher’s misunderstanding of her desperation. Dante pushed the envelope every damn time, but she needed him. She needed his help now, more than ever. She couldn’t afford for him to be tied up after registration and all of Saturday morning.
Panic puffed from her lungs in the shape of asthmatic sounding breaths. She felt the tightness and the sense of strangulation like a strange hand around her windpipe. Clough whipped around as she stood. She clutched her throat as her brain screamed for oxygen. “What’s wrong with her?” His complexion paled at the second alarm of the day. “Is she asthmatic?”
“No, sir.” Vaughan stood and took Leilah’s elbow, starting at the tremor running through her body. “She’s never done this before.”
“She’s in shock about Malcolm,” a spotty teenager commented, nudging his desk companion and offering a knowing look.
“Malcolm?” Dante shifted in his seat and faced Clough. “What about Malcolm?”
“He’s dead,” Lani informed the class with a look of satisfaction. “They found his body in the gully. I tried to tell you.”
“Malcolm?” Tane’s head whipped around so fast, the action looked supernatural. Dante shrugged in the seat next to him.
“Wow. Who knew?”
“That’s enough speculation!” Clough raised his voice, attempting to reign in the sense of panic mingling with the teenage desire for scandal. “The local police just arrived. We won’t know anything until they finish their examination.”
“Is your hot dad here, Tane?” Lani fluttered her eyelashes at him and nudged her friend. Miriama’s cheeks pinked as she reeled from the sharp elbow in her ribs. She tried not to stare at the object of her desire but her gaze strayed towards Tane’s blonde head as though to spite her.
“Dunno.” Tane shrugged, his face impassive. “He won’t tell me anything. Not allowed.”
The identity of the body sent darts of electricity through Leilah’s vision. Spots of black and white obliterated the classroom and intensified the pain in her chest. Malcolm lay in the stream next to Hector’s property. Malcolm. Recriminations forced their way into her muddy thoughts. He looked dead, his hair swirling about his head like serpents in the current. What if he wasn’t quite dead? What if?
“She’s a mess.” Clough sounded surprised. He scratched his wiry hair with a calcium spotted fingernail and the detention slips flapped to the rhythm. “Vaughan, take her to the nurse.”
Vaughan tugged on her arm, his face a mix of fear and confusion. “Come on Lei, let’s go,” he whispered.
“I didn’t know,” Leilah gasped, her throat tightening further and crushing her words.
“What?” Vaughan leaned closer.
“I didn’t know,” she hissed, her words emerging as a wail. “I didn’t know Malcolm Donnelly died. I didn’t know it was him.”
“Oh, bloody hell.” Clough threw his detention slips on the desk and glared at Lani. “Way to break the news to everyone, kid!” He jabbed a pointy finger at the butcher’s daughter. “You’ve got a big mouth, girly. Now see what you did.”
“Leilah, out, now!” Vaughan sent a look of alarm towards Tane and his friend rose. Between them, they hauled her from the classroom. Her legs moved in robotic steps and her breath came in pants. Once walking, her chest loosened and the relief brought tears.
“I’ll take her bag.” Dante’s concerned voice rang out behind her and tensed, knowing what came next.
“No, you don’t. Sit down!” Clough snapped.
“But why?” Dante protested and Leilah heard the board rubber hit the wall above his head.
“Because I bloody say so!” Clough yelled and Leilah felt the remnants of her energy lose itself through the soles of her feet. Revenge sounded sweet.
“Cloughie’s got a crap aim,” Tane snorted as he leaned Leilah against the wall of the classroom to close the door behind them. Vaughan grunted and shot her a sideways look tinged with anxiety. “He’ll hit him with that one day. It’s probability,” Tane continued, taking Leilah’s arm again. “Do the maths.”
“Shut up!” Vaughan snapped.
“Not the nurse.” Rain spattered the tin roof of the classroom and covered walkway as Leilah struggled free. She bent double and let the blood run into her head.
“But Cloughie said,” Tane replied.
“I don’t care.” Leilah sank to all fours and watched the rain create rivers beneath the walkway. It churned up the baked dust underneath and swept it out of sight.
Vaughan crouched next to her, his lips close to her ear. Leilah felt the warmth of his breath on her temple. His nearness promised safety and security and she yearned for both like her lungs sought oxygen. “Where do you want to go?” he whispered and she heard Tane’s feet shift in protest. He liked Cloughie. He did what Cloughie said. Mostly.
“I want my dad,” Leilah said and her voice broke around the words. “I want Hector.”