THE bell rang. Mr Fairburn directed us in long files from the front to the back of the auditorium. A row of boys. A row of girls. A row of boys. I rushed to sit behind Sue. Cheryl Nolan was behind me. The papers were handed out.
‘Keep them face down.’
A deadly hush descended on the hall.
‘Thirty seconds to go.’
The air was thick and tense.
‘Fifteen seconds to go.’
Mr Fairburn raised his hand, index finger extended towards the ceiling.
‘Ten … nine … eyes to the front, Basin … seven … six … five … pens poised … three … two … one …’ his arm released like a guillotine. ‘Go!’
There was a rustle of paper and a bowing of heads. About fifteen minutes into the exam, a few of the girls got itchy legs.
The boys had no easy means of cheating. Jeff Basin, who was sitting across the aisle from me, got stuck on number sixteen.
‘Deb …,’ he whispered out of motionless lips, ‘Hey … Deb. Sixteen?’
I glanced over.
‘Sixteen,’ he mimed, his eyebrows puckered.
I casually consulted my thigh. The answer was way up under the elastic of my pants. Without answering straight away, I gazed at the ceiling, crossed my legs, chewed my pen as if in thought, glanced at Mr Fairburn, then hissed the answer across the aisle.
‘Nineteen twelve.’
Cheryl leant forward to whisper a question. I held up my paper, a little to the right so she could see it. We were all going for it up the back of the hall. Answers were being whispered. Tunics were pulled up. Mr Fairburn was pretty deaf and pretty blind. He was way up the front.
‘One more, Deb?’ pleaded Jeff.
It was near the end of the exam.
‘Forty-six?’
I checked the answer and scribbled it on my rubber. I waited till Mr Fairburn’s back was turned. He was pacing up the front aisle saying, ‘Five more minutes.’ My rubber thudded softly into the aisle between us. Jeff waited a while and retrieved it with his foot. He’d just written down the answer on his paper when his neck was seized in a strangling clamp. A big hairy hand crashed down on his desk. It was the deputy head.
‘Hand it over, Basin.’
He gulped and tried to wiggle out of Mr Berkoff’s grasp. Berkoff hauled him up by the neck. ‘Get to the office boy!’ he said. He turned and began to tap the other culprits on the head with his Bic biro. ‘And you, you girls—Susan Knight, Deborah Vickers. Headmaster’s office, right this minute. Pronto.’
Sue and I slunk out to the quadrangle for lunch. The Greenhills Gang were on their usual seats in the sun.
‘Debbie! Sue!’ Cheryl called out to us. ‘Come here! What’d Bishop say? Did he go off?’ she asked us.
‘Oh, yeah.’ I shrugged coolly.
‘Is he gunna send a letter home to ya olds?’
‘S’pose.’
‘So he craked ’eh? Didja dob?’
‘On you? … No way.’
Cheryl smiled and nodded to the others and even Tracey Little looked approving. Dobbing was the weakest act anyone could pull. The gang girls gathered around to put us to the final test. We may have failed our history exam, but this exam was far more important.
‘What’s a sixty-niner?’ Cheryl interrogated.
‘Oh … you know,’ Sue said, glancing nervously at the listening boys.
‘What then?’
‘Head to tail.’
‘What does buckin’ mean?’ asked Kim Cox.
I demonstrated, jerking my pelvis backwards and forwards. Susan followed suit. The boys guffawed crudely.
Tracey looked us up and down. ‘Comin’ down the dunnies for a fag?’
She led the way. Kim kept guard at the door of the girls’ toilets. The rest of us disappeared into separate cubicles. We closed the toilet lids and stood up on them. Our heads emerged over the top of the adjoining walls and, as usual, the first formers pulled up their pants and rushed out of the toilet block, screaming.
‘Here yar.’ Cheryl dealt out the cigarettes. We lit up. I dragged back and swallowed a huge gulp of smoke, held on to it for a few seconds and then blew two professional looking ribbons of smoke from my nostrils. Feeling confident, I manoeuvred my mouth into my smoke-ring position, but they hatched in furry, fluffy blots.
‘Oh, handle it, Debbie,’ Cheryl sneered, blowing three perfect rings from large to small, with the smallest sailing elegantly through the larger ones.
‘Deadset!’ said Sue.
‘Perf!’
Kim’s head shot round the toilet door. ‘It’s Yelland! Quick!’ Our heads bobbed down and the toilets flushed simultaneously. The other girls sauntered out.
‘Meetcha up the back of the bus this arvo,’ Tracey hissed to Sue. I pulled the chain again and again, but the cigarette butt floated obstinately in the toilet pool. I stuffed my mouth with peppermint Lifesavers and walked out as casually as I could. The girls’ counsellor was standing there.
‘Eating in the toilets, Deborah?’ Mrs Yelland eyed me suspiciously. ‘You’re cultivating bad habits.’
That afternoon we’d made it. We were sitting up the back of the bus—sucking oranges, doing the drawback and knocking the kids who sat up the front. We were tough. We were accepted. We were part of the sacred set.
‘K’niver drag Darren?’
Once we were admitted into the gang by Tracey and Cheryl and the rest of the girls, they arranged a match for us with two of the boys.
‘He’ll roolly suit ya.’
‘Yeah, you’ll look roolly good together.’
The best thing about being in the gang, was that all the spunkiest guys on Cronulla Beach were in it. It didn’t matter what boy picked you, ’cause in the looks department, you never got a bummer.