OLIVIA PIKE IS waiting for me in the withdrawing room. It sounds like she’s in rehab, I know, but at Oakholme all the rooms in the admin. building have official names like that. It’s totally Old English and wanky, but still, when you get invited to one of those rooms it makes you feel like you’re part of some hallowed class.
Anyway, I get the note at roll call:
Shauna, your mentee, Olivia Pike, will be waiting to meet you in the withdrawing room at 9 a.m. sharp. SRF.
After roll call, I head down to the admin. building, which is Victorian-era, three-storey, the original boarding house back in the day. I make my way to the withdrawing room and there’s this blue-eyed, blonde-haired kid sitting at the boardroom table. She has an air of confidence about her, so I know right away that she can’t be Olivia Pike.
Olivia Pike is this year’s recipient of the Indigenous scholarship. I sat in the very same chair in the very same withdrawing room four and a half years ago, wondering if they ever used the fireplace, because it seems really real. (It is.)
After one glance at this prissy blonde chick, I click my tongue and stalk right back out. I’m missing my French class to be here and we’re working on the subjunctive, which totally confuses me. I really wish I were there and not here (an example of the correct use of the subjunctive, I think).
Annoyed that my time’s being wasted, I go to Reverend Ferguson’s office to tell her that Olivia Pike’s not in the withdrawing room.
‘She seems to have withdrawn,’ I say, never short of a joke, even when the circumstances irritate me.
Reverend Ferguson clasps the end of her desk in panic. ‘Oh, don’t tell me . . .’
Even though the Indigenous scholarship is competitive (you have to do an exam and provide references), the recipients have a habit of going AWOL. You know, walkabout. The school board thinks they’re doing this great thing for the Aboriginal community by plucking a cute little button-nosed black girl out of her unwholesome environment and giving her a proper education and upbringing. What they don’t understand is the pull of home and family that drags us back, the way the moon drags the tide. For a while there were rumours that the school wouldn’t hand out any more Indigenous scholarships because of the failure rate. Since the program began ten years ago, seven out of the ten scholarship recipients have taken off for home within the first twelve months.
Olivia Pike has set a record though, scarpering in the first five minutes.
I follow Reverend Ferguson as she races to the withdrawing room.
‘Olivia?’ she cries in a pained voice as she flings open the door.
‘Yes, Reverend Ferguson?’ the blonde girl says calmly.
Reverend Ferguson half-screams, half-laughs, grabbing my upper arm as if she’s drowning.
‘Oh, Shauna, you had me scared to death!’
‘That’s Olivia Pike?’
Reverend Ferguson lets go of my arm and straightens herself up. She’s a larger lady, our Self-Raising Flour, and like self-raising flour she tends to get bigger when heated up. Her forehead pops sweat beads and her clothes seem suddenly too small. She opens her jacket, adjusts her skirt and finally exhales. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that Self-Raising is one of God’s earthly vessels.
‘Olivia, this is Shauna Harding. Shauna’s going to be your mentor this year.’
Olivia Pike smiles for just long enough to show dimples and a dental plate.
‘Hello, Shauna,’ she says.
‘Hi.’
I’m still in shock. I can’t believe they’ve given the Indigenous scholarship to a piece like this. Jesus Christ. She’s not even black. I guess she must be one of those confused souls who identifies as Aboriginal but doesn’t have a black gene in their body. I mean, she’s practically albino.
‘I’ll leave you two alone to get to know one another,’ says Reverend Ferguson, closing the door behind her.
There’s a seat at the table opposite Olivia Pike, but I don’t sit. I had a nice speech prepared in the vein of ‘if you ever have any problems or need any advice, don’t hesitate’ but I don’t deliver it.
‘Look, I have to get back to class, but, um, I’m Shauna Harding and I’m in Year 12.’
Olivia Pike blinks at me like a camel, then her pretty face twists. ‘I don’t want anything to do with you,’ she says nastily.
‘What? What do you—’
‘I don’t want anyone to know about my background. I’ve told Reverend Ferguson and she’s promised not to tell a soul. So if word gets around, I’ll know who let slip.’
‘Fine with me,’ I say, completely bowled over. Usually there’s no announcement about who has won the Indigenous scholarship. It’s kind of obvious because a random Aboriginal girl pops up and everyone knows how she got here – her rich parents! (joke). I’m happy not to make a big deal of it, but crikey, the attitude on this girl!
‘So don’t ever come and talk to me.’ She looks at me in disgust, like I’m something stuck in the tread of her shoe. ‘Don’t even look at me, all right?’
‘Fine with me,’ I say again. I’ve got my hand on the door handle, about to walk out, when I think of something to burst her bubble.
‘People will find out,’ I say. ‘They always find out.’
‘Maybe in your case, Jedda.’
‘My name’s Shauna.’
‘Well, you’re as brown as a walnut, Shauna.’ (Which is not true, but I am darker than her.) ‘I’m passable,’ she says.
‘That’s what you think,’ I reply icily before leaving the room.
Reverend Ferguson’s hovering in the hallway.
‘That was quick,’ she says uncertainly. ‘Now, you do know that Olivia wants to keep her background confidential . . .’
‘Olivia doesn’t want a mentor,’ I tell her, leaving her mouthing like a goldfish as I head to the language lab.
Jedda, I mull furiously, trying to remember how to conjugate être in the subjunctive mood. How dare she! That little Year 7 shit!
Of course the first thing I do after French is tell Lou-Anne all about Olivia Pike.
‘Passable,’ repeats Lou-Anne. ‘What does she mean by that?’
‘Well, she obviously thinks she can pass for white.’
Lou-Anne takes a minute to process that. She never says anything she doesn’t mean, not even to be nice, which she always is – sometimes painfully so. I know she’s not going to say something like Why would she want to do that? We know damn well why she would want to do that. We’re not ashamed of our heritage, but we’ve both had the feeling at times that life would be a lot easier if we could just turn white for a few hours. We’ve talked about it before. How only white people can be Australian. How everyone else, including us, the originals, needs to justify themselves with an adjective. Chinese Australian. Greek Australian. Indigenous Australian.
Shit, man. Forty thousand years and we’re still not just plain old Australian.
White people are colourless, adjective-less and unremarkable. Aboriginal people, though, are always black. It would be nice to take a break from living in colour.
Lou-Anne shakes her head. ‘You don’t have to talk to her.’
‘I’m supposed to be mentoring her.’
‘Maybe you can do it by email?’
I start laughing, because Lou-Anne is being perfectly sincere and serious.
‘What, Shauna? I’m trying to come up with solutions here!’
Lou-Anne’s right, of course. We all have school email addresses and I could, theoretically, send Olivia emails. Theoretically. I suppose I should give her another chance, considering how scared and alone I felt when I first arrived at Oakholme. What would I have done if Lou-Anne hadn’t arrived? Who will Olivia Pike have? The other white girls, I think nastily.
The bell rings for our next classes. We’re in our dorm room but we’re not meant to be here. More often than not we come up here between classes, just to decompress. And to break the rule.
‘So what do you think the go is with Olivia?’ I ask Lou-Anne.
‘Maybe her colours ran in the wash?’ she says, before laughing raucously at her own joke.
‘You know what I mean. How did she get here?’
‘Probably the same way you and I did. She sat a test to make sure she could spell her own name and then did an interview to make sure she looked the part.’
‘Obviously she was interviewed in a very dark room,’ I remark.
‘What are you saying, Shauna? That she pretended to be an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander so she could get the scholarship?’
I shrug.
‘Come on,’ says Lou-Anne. ‘Who’d pretend to be black if they weren’t?’
‘Maybe she’s trying to squeeze the last few dirty drops from the identity politics dishrag. People do that kind of thing, you know. For attention.’
Lou-Anne puts her hand on my shoulder. I must look upset or something.
‘But didn’t you just say that she wants everyone to think she’s white?’
I shrug. ‘I guess you’re right. You’d only want everyone to think you were white if you weren’t.’
‘Shauna, you’re making my brain hurt. Stop.’
Lou-Anne sings an arpeggio, which is what she does when I make her brain hurt. Along with rubbing her temples and scrunching her eyes shut. When my best friend sings an arpeggio, though, it’s music. She’s a classically trained soprano and wants to become a professional opera singer one day. Every second schoolgirl dreams of becoming a professional singer, a model or an actress, but Lou-Anne’s the only one I know who’s actually in with a chance at stardom. She’s a supercharged type of soprano, a coloratura, which means she has a light, agile voice that can pull off high trills and leaps you wouldn’t think a human was capable of. She’s applied for a place in Opera Australia’s Young Artist program. It’s really competitive, but her audition video, filmed by yours truly, got her through the first round and she has a live audition later in the year. One of the music teachers here at Oakholme, Miss Della, is giving her lessons four afternoons a week, so it’s obvious that I’m not the only one who believes in Lou-Anne.
Though her family knows how talented she is, I don’t think they have any idea how hard she works or how close she is to succeeding. No other member of Lou-Anne’s family has excelled at anything much other than reproduction. One of her sisters, Beth, gave birth to twins when she was just fifteen. Now all three generations live in a ramshackle house near Lake Weyba. They’re a lovely family – I’ve stayed there heaps of times – but they’re also chaotic. When Beth had the twins, Charlotte and Chelsea, their family became known to the dreaded social services, and that’s how Lou-Anne found out about the Indigenous scholarship at Oakholme. Her family, especially her mum, didn’t want her to come to Sydney, but once Lou-Anne heard about the music department here, there was no stopping her.
I remember seeing her for the first time. Built like a rugby forward, pigeon-toed and followed by a frizzy, black ponytail that spanned the width and length of her enormous back, Lou-Anne did not seem destined to last. Another scholarship recipient who’d been in Year 10, Elodie, had just left the school to work in her uncle’s sandwich shop in Dubbo. That’s what she told everyone, anyway. I knew she’d left because she just wanted to go home and never come back to this strange place. I thought Lou-Anne would realise she didn’t fit in and leave for similar reasons. I still have the same feeling myself sometimes. The scary thing is that I have it when I’m in Barraba as well.
At the time I started at Oakholme, at age twelve, my family was a bit chaotic, too. My big brother, Jamie, had just died in a car accident and my parents were really depressed. They’d stopped looking after me and the house, and I’d stopped going to school so I could look after them. My school at the time called social services and we got a caseworker, who turned out to be a decent person. She gave me information about the Indigenous scholarship.
All the girls who get the scholarship seem to have sad backstories, but Olivia Pike? Seriously? I wonder what kind of bad luck could have befallen her. She doesn’t look like the kind of person who’s gone through anything worse than a slight headache.
‘I’ll talk to her,’ says Lou-Anne finally. ‘I’ll find out what’s going on.’
‘Don’t do that. I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of snubbing you.’
‘At least Self-Raising Flour didn’t put her in our dorm room.’
‘I hope they put her in with Keli Street-Hughes.’
‘I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.’
‘It’d be a fitting punishment.’
‘And Olivia deserves to be punished?’
‘She should be careful what she wishes for, Lou-Anne. You can’t just solve all your problems by pretending to be someone you’re not.’
‘Maybe not, but do you blame her?’
I don’t respond, because I’m actually pretty sure I do blame Olivia.
Our housemistress, Miss Maroney, comes blustering into the room and gives Lou-Anne and me a Red Mark each for being in the dorms during class time. Three Red Marks and you have to stay back on Wednesday afternoon for detention. It’s not a big deal when you’re a boarder and you spend the afternoons at school anyway.
‘Sorry, Miss Maroney,’ we say as she writes down our names in her diary.
‘What will it take to get you girls to listen?’ she growls.
‘I would definitely listen if you paid me, Miss,’ says Lou-Anne.
Miss Maroney tries not to smile.
‘Get out before I give you another Red Mark.’
‘Oooh!’ Lou-Anne and I purr in mock terror.
Miss Maroney makes a lot of noise, but she’s not very terrifying. She’s only about twenty-five and she looks like Barbie. She teaches maths and sport in the same steely voice. She thinks that we don’t know that she has parties in the school’s indoor pool during the holidays. If Mrs Green ever found out about it, Miss Maroney would probably lose her job, and a plum job it is too. Oakholme’s sporting facilities are state-of-the-art, thanks to alcohol-laden fundraising soirées hosted by Mrs Green in the school ballroom. Yes, Oakholme College has a ballroom.
‘What subject have you got now?’ asks Lou-Anne as we skip down the stairs and out of the dormitory building.
‘English. You?’
‘Music in the auditorium.’
We pass Keli Street-Hughes & Co in the quadrangle. Annabel Saxon and Keli’s other twangy cronies always travel in a group, and when they stop to talk they stand in a perfect circle, elbow-to-elbow, so that no one else can edge in.
‘Say thanks to your dad for me!’ Lou-Anne and I sing in unison as we glide past the circle of wisdom.
Keli’s tinkling laughter floats after us and glances right off us to the ground.