Dear Rudy,
Have you ever had that feeling like you’re going to be found out, like you’re in the wrong place or doing the wrong thing and you’re just waiting for people to realise? Maybe you feel like that right now. Or maybe it’s more like when you were in TAFE and you were failing your subjects, and you waited way too long to tell Mum and Dad about it. I don’t know how you thought they wouldn’t notice, or maybe you weren’t thinking ahead at all. But it’s a weirdly anxious feeling, isn’t it? I mean, not anxious like anxiety. It’s like you can never settle into being because you’re waiting to be pulled out of it. That’s how I feel, anyway, especially at school. That’s why I kind of like exams even though other people really hate them.
The QCS exam is so much weirder than a normal exam don’t you think? It’s strange we even have it, when the other states only have to prepare for final exams once. But for us pineapple-state kids, there are two whole days of testing instead of tests spaced out in our normal timetable, which I like but most people find quite boring and mentally draining.
Mostly though it’s the way the teachers act about it that I find so strange. We started the first testing day today with a breakfast provided by the school, to ‘help us prepare’. I don’t know if it’s all schools, but ours gave us cereal and pancakes. Pancakes are delicious, but pretty impractical. I mean it is not exactly ideal for seven straight hours contained in one room is it—that much sugar and starch. Protein wasn’t even an option. Maybe it is just my body that is overly sensitive to sugar in the morning, but it seems like serving red cordial at a fifth birthday party and then wondering why no one will sit still for pass the parcel. I have eggs every day before I come to school, so I skipped the sugar meal and drank coffee instead. Caffeine has been proven to enhance your mental performance in short bursts—I have one most days before school.
Once we finished our sugar binge, we lined up in alphabetical order with all of our supplies in a clear plastic sleeve, sort of like at the airport when they make you pull out all the liquids in your hand luggage. You need to have:
There were inevitably people who had forgotten a sleeve, or some other supplies, so we stood around waiting for them to sort it out. I don’t know how they could forget, when we were given a very clear list more than a month ago, but maybe they’d had a rough morning or something. I know I struggle to follow the rules that aren’t written, like the social rule that says it’s rude to be honest when someone asks you if they look like they’ve put on weight, but it seems even weirder to me that people can’t follow the rules that are actually written on a piece of paper and handed out, like the clear-plastic-sleeve rule. Because of the alphabetical order I was behind Ben Whitaker, who was telling horrible jokes and then laughing at them nervously when no one else did. They weren’t bad in that funny cheesy way you tell jokes, though. No, they were nasty. I’d rather be quiet like I am than tell bad jokes. A bad joke is way worse than no joke. Definitely. Sometimes if I want to join in a conversation about jokes I’ll tell your joke as if it’s my own, the one about the zoo with only one animal. People always laugh, but never as much as they laughed when you told it.
We filed into a classroom and sat at the evenly spaced desks while a teacher patrolled. There was so much angst among the teachers about the possibility of someone cheating, but I don’t even know how you would begin to try. Or why you would bother. The test is supposed to be an accurate assessment of your knowledge in comparison to everyone else in your year level, so if you cheat you’re cheating the school and the whole education system out of a truthful result. I hope I’m in the top 10 per cent of our school, and I think I will be. Dee says I can sound conceited when I talk about my marks, but I’m just being honest about how I’ve scored so far. And this test is meant to measure our ‘core skills’, so it’s most likely to be similar to the average of all our other marks.
The point our teachers stressed to us above all else was that we needed to make sure we coloured the A, B, C or D oval in the answers booklet all the way to the edges. Don’t half colour them, and don’t even think about colouring outside the lines. As if the whole fiasco was a test of your ability to manoeuvre a 2B pencil as opposed to measuring your potential for tertiary education. Oh, and the pencil had to be a 2B. If the teachers were to be believed, you would basically end up flipping burgers for the rest of your life if you didn’t bring the correct pencil.
We started at precisely 9.05 am. Some people coloured fast and furiously, others were slower and more measured. There is something meditative about focusing all your energy on answering questions like that. If only the rest of my life could be as structured and planned as these two days. There is no room for embarrassment, awkwardness or making the wrong choice. I mean, you can choose the wrong answer, but answering the questions is still the only choice.
I know you didn’t do as well on QCS as you did on your driving exam. Mum said you were a ‘circle trying to fit into a square hole’ at school. I think I’m a square when it comes to learning, and a circle when it comes to everything else. Mum tells herself a lot of stories to make herself feel better though, so maybe you weren’t a circle or a square. Maybe there aren’t particular-shaped holes to fit into to begin with.
After the exam I walked to the bus stop with Dee and Jessica Rabbit, who were busy making plans for tonight. Jessica Rabbit said, ‘It’s just a small gathering, a little group of us blowing off some steam after that ridiculous exam,’ in a way that made it seem like she didn’t want me to come.
Dee was sincere when she said, ‘Come, Erin, it’ll be fun. Jess’s parents are away and they have the best stocked bar. It’s probably warm enough to go for a swim too.’ Her eyes move around a lot when she’s being insincere and they weren’t so I could tell she meant it.
Usually I would go to anything I was invited to with Dee, but today I didn’t feel like it. I told her I had to study. Instead of feeling anxiety about what she would think, or worrying about what I’d be missing, I felt relief.
It’s strange that saying no to my friend would bring so much relief. If I don’t want to hang out with someone does that mean they are not really my friend? You always seemed to want to be with your friends. You liked them more than me and Mum and Dad and Ollie, or at least it felt like that. Maybe I am feeling this way because of what month we’re in. There’s not much I can see myself jumping at right now. I’ve got rocks in my stomach and I’m only half-tuned in all the time. Things seem to be happening behind a pane of glass, so I can see them but I can’t reach out and touch them. I don’t know. I wish we could sit down together and talk about this stuff.
Love, Erin