5

Basic Premise #1: Simon Thorn knows where I live.

If Vicki Mouglalis was the one who told him my address, I will kill her myself using some fiendishly diabolical and highly complex methodology involving pulleys, notwithstanding that she is my closest friend (and that’s not saying much).

Basic Premise #2: Simon Thorn cannot come up here and see how I live.

I can imagine his lips twisting hatefully as he says to his second-in-commands Buddy Sadiq and Glenn Tippett on his way over: Getting a glimpse of the Frankencrowe in her native habitat? Priceless.

The things you see, you can never unsee. He’s not allowed that much power over me. I’ve got to catch him on the street, before he even sets foot on the stairs.

Bolting out of the bathroom and into my bedroom, I look for my backpack and that stupid Compendium of Classic English Poetry that I was forced to borrow off him to write my half of the talk because I was too cheap to source myself a copy. I remember the collective gasp that had gone up when Mrs Dalgeish allocated talk partners midway through first term. I’d only been there a few weeks, but already I knew who was safe, who wasn’t.

‘But it’s worth ten per cent of our final mark!’ Simon had protested, skin pale with fury, refusing to look me in the eye.

‘Maybe you got lucky,’ Adam Carney had snorted from behind, ‘because she’s going to carry your sorry arse over the line, Thorny. She’s got the Tichborne covered; ask anyone. I’ll take her if you don’t want her.’

Lots of people had joined in the haggling, while I burned and burned at my desk, until Dalgeish had rolled her eyes under her unnaturally black Jazz-Age bob and matching eyebrows and put a stop to it. Cornered, Simon’s gaze had snapped to mine with an All right, bring it kind of look which had made me so mad I had asked him for his stupid book in front of everyone, and he’d had to hand it over.

I tip everything in my daypack onto the carpet and I’m looking at a coin purse, a plastic zip-lock bag full of panty liners and a squashed banana that’s ninety-nine per cent black. None of which remotely compute when taken in combination. Where is everything?

While I’m staring down at the banana, whose off-white insides have started leaking out through the broken skin like pus, I’m frantically jiggling on the spot. Tearing off flannelette every-which-way and pulling on jeans, a yellow turtleneck and a shapeless fleecy navy hoodie with kangaroo pockets I’m hoping will convey just the right amount of disdain for Simon Thorn, eternal champion of the free-market system and school captain of the biggest boatload of dysfunctional so-called high-school geniuses in Melbourne.

Every girl nerd and polysexual at Collegiate High—a name that says it all, because every day at Collegiate High is exactly that!—has a metaphorical hard-on for Simon Thorn, who like some mystical Indian shaman goes by many names: The Thornster; Greased Lightning; Simo; Lucky-as-fuck.

He’s the man most likely to steal your girlfriend and charge you for the privilege, via some complex betting/ Ponzi scheme he’s come up with. I can imagine the swinging, cashed-up household he hails from: half an acre on The Avenue in Parkville, with a louche barrister father who doesn’t believe in having to pay a cent for education, and a fruitarian artist mother who used to be a neurosurgeon.

Can Simon Thorn argue. He has a mouth like a sub-artillery machine gun and looks like one of those ugly-beautiful French boys: the kind with interesting bony faces and long, off-kilter noses who model kilts and combat boots on the runway. All grey-green eyes, nuclear-winter pale skin, straight dark brows and slicked-down, side-parted short hair that’s long on top. Whatever the weather—maybe because he’s trying to prove he’s really one of us, one of the proles—he wears worn-looking jeans with beaten-up leather workboots and a rotating handful of faded, button-front Henleys that show off his boxer’s shoulders and broad-spectrum pectorals to perfection.

We’re all scholarship kids, see, every single one of us. Get past the fiendish entrance exam and show proof you live within two kilometres of the place—established for the offspring of the inner-city working class by some 19th century sadist—and you’re in. There’s no uniform, few rules. You don’t have to possess basic levels of personal hygiene or even a loose idea of how the social contract is supposed to work. Based on the way people eat at The Caf, the entire student body has never been taught how to hold a fork properly and can’t afford three square meals a day.

But Simon’s not sloppy like the rest of us. He’s not content just to coast. He lives by his own set of internal guidelines, and occasionally you get glimpses of the iron that rules him. But only glimpses. He cuts through the rest of us like an icebreaker on its way to leaving the known world behind.

He looks too hard and too clean. He wants to know everything from every angle and he wants to know it now. And he never stops trying to crush me in public. It’s like a blood sport with him.

He’ll be here, any moment and he can’t see how I live.

Where is his damned book?

The last time I felt normal levels of anxiety it was Wednesday afternoon and I was in the Leppitt Gymnasium, painting a crowd scene. Lots of pink, tan and brown faces. Fuckin’ fifty shades! Ozzie Palomares had grunted, down on his massive knees—each one thick as a Christmas ham—beside me, amongst the paint pots.

I had made one of the spectators red-faced, and frizzy-haired, just for him, and Ozzie had given the woman he was painting enormous tits, as a gesture of affection for me and my D-sized rack. We’d grinned at each other like lunatics then, and proceeded to paint moustaches on all the women.

Slow down, rewind. Gym. Start there.

I was already in the gym before the working bee started. I’d helped move the balance beam out of the way to get the backdrop down.

Everything has to be in my sports bag. The one prominently marked with the word Champion on both sides, which must operate as some kind of visual joke once I’ve got the thing slung over my shoulder.

I pull the duffle out from under my bed and squat beside it, before undoing the long zipper that runs the length of the bag. I toss out my wallet, shin guards and the plastic box-on-a-rope that holds my bright yellow mouth guard, digging down through tracksuit, socks and dirty runners until I hit the smooth cover of a textbook.

There are others beneath it, and I tip everything out onto the floor. The weight and motion of upending the bag puts me on my arse on the carpet and two things leap out at me: Simon Thorn’s bloody poetry Compendium and a dark red, A4-sized journal, bound in fake leather with gold scrollwork.

I feel like I’m on fire as I grab hold of both, and my wallet, and my house keys. Slamming the door behind me, I run, shaking, down the stairs to head Simon off at the pass.

It’s chilly now, in a way I’ve only just started to recognise as the way night falls in Melbourne in autumn—bitter and immediate, from sun to shade in a heartbeat—and my feet are soon frozen lumps inside my Explorer socks. But it isn’t long before Simon materialises out of a crowd of start-of-weekend, out-for-thrills street traffic in his usual worker-chic garb—six foot plus of wiry, rock-solid muscle, a fresh bruise under one eye—and I don’t bat an eyelash or even say, Hi.

I just ram the compendium into his sternum so hard he gives an audible ouf, then step off the front stoop of my building, job done, crib protected, crisis averted, and turn on my heel to cross the street. The arcade over the road is only open until midnight, but beyond it, one block over, is a 24-hour grease-pit where I can sit and feel like I’m part of the living, but still be left alone with Mum’s journal, a lamb gyro and something to drink with sugar in it.

I’m so hungry, so grainy-eyed and tired, I’m lightheaded. Or maybe it’s the feel of the journal, burning like acid into my palms. I have to resist opening it right now and devouring it while I walk.

‘Hey, wait, wait,’ Simon growls, grabbing my arm just as I’m about to step onto the road. His hand is red-raw, so damaged from doing time on the bags at whatever designer gym he frequents that the knuckles are practically smeared together into a single puffy line. Simon’s hands are the ugliest part about him, and I don’t want them near me.

‘How dare you come here!’ My voice sounds thick and strange with rage. ‘How dare you touch me. And how,’ I add, elbowing him in the ribs to make him let go but getting only a small, ragged intake of breath in return, ‘do you even know where I live, you creep?’

Simon’s fingers bear down harder around my arm as he snaps, ‘I can’t believe you bent the front cover of my book right back!’

I’m not a short person, but he makes me feel short, and so angry I see stars. Running on instinct, I reach below my left armpit with my right hand and pull out sharply on his battered little finger. It’s a trick Mum taught me. Simon gives a wounded bellow and lets go.

‘Now it’s two for two,’ I snarl, and a taxi blares in passing as we tussle for a moment on the edge of the bluestone kerb.

‘I’m not going to carry you!’ he shouts, and an Asian girl coming our way, in fluffy Mukluks, skinny jeans and a black hooded puffer, opens her eyes wide and swerves around us.

‘And I’m not asking to be carried,’ I splutter, ‘and especially not by you. I’m out, you’ve won. There’s nothing now standing between you and the R. M. Tichborne Prize! Field’s clear, best of luck with your life.’

It’s true: I don’t care anymore; he can have it, that thing we both wanted so badly. Suddenly, I feel lighter: One less thing to consume me. Simon is so shocked that he drops my arm and I’m across the road before he can work out a reply.

‘That’s it?’ he calls, frowning over the rooftops of the cars passing between us. ‘One bad thing happens and you give it all up? You don’t come back? Where’s your fight? You’re supposed to be a fighter.’

I turn and look back at him, hugging Mum’s journal to me. Beneath it all—the big hair, the swagger, the sarcasm-as-full-body-armour—I’m no better than any of them, the people inside her book. I am the sum of my vanities and my faults, my cravings and my weaknesses, just like they are.

All I want is my mother. I need her to come back.

One moment Simon is standing there, glaring at me, and then the sea, the sea that is in my eyes, washes him away, and there are only colours. I don’t hear him cross the road, but then he’s right in front of me, stepping up under the bright white of the arcade signage, and I can’t understand why he isn’t glad. The Tichborne Prize is worth $10,000 to the top student in their final year. It’s a no-strings, no-questions-asked windfall. You can use it to fund your tertiary studies or your raging coke habit. For the lowlifes of Collegiate High, it’s a big, big deal; no one’s ever seen that kind of money in their lives. But I am prepared to walk away.

That’s what I tell Simon, mumbling the words in the vicinity of his chin. He stares down at my scar tissue with fascination and I feel it burn. Up close, it’s like crocodile or ostrich hide, quite alien.

‘It’s bad, really bad what happened with your mum,’ he says in a low voice. ‘But we have until Wednesday, and it’s important. Dalgeish got me your details and gave us an extension because of the circumstances. It’s a joint thing, remember? Marks given for ability to work with others. Which indicates more than one person must participate. We’re the last two. That’s what I came to tell you: there’s still time.’

I tap the back of the journal. ‘Maybe for you,’ I tell him jerkily, ‘but time’s everything in cases like this. This was Mum’s. We’ve been looking everywhere for it. It was in my gym bag!’

He can hear the confusion and bitterness in my voice, and frowns.

‘I must have scooped it up with everything else on the kitchen bench before I left the house that morning,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘It could tell me everything, or nothing, but this is where I turn and swim out, partner.’

I don’t care that I’m not making any sense, flinching as he moves forward until he’s so close I can smell the sandalwood and citrus and sweat on his skin. I don’t really want to know anything more about him. We two are ships. I hold his gaze as I back away.

Eventually, Mum liked to say, hands on hips, surveying the mess of our possessions as we geared up for yet another move, you have to give things up, even if it hurts.

I know I will have to give up Mum’s book, but not yet. Not when I’m the only one in the whole world who spoke the same language she did, and can maybe read this thing to work out what happened to her. It’s almost as if I was created to do it, and I will not fail.

I look up into the clear, cloudless black of the night sky, the muted stars, and say fiercely, ‘I do not submit.’ Then I turn and enter the glaring white tunnel of the arcade teeming with late-night shoppers heading home, uncaring of whether Simon is with me or not.