NATHAN HAS ONLY called me twice since our ‘date’ at the beach, but somehow everyone knows we’re ‘dating’. Having a boyfriend at Oakholme is kind of a big deal, especially for those who live in the boarding house. Not that many boarders have boyfriends. I mean, Lou-Anne’s got a hunk up in Eumundi named Isaac, but he’d probably prefer to chew off his own face than call her at the boarding house.
One boarder who definitely doesn’t have a boyfriend and wants one is our beloved scrubchook Keli. She talks about her neighbour, Matt Adler, so often that an outsider would think he was her boyfriend. However, during my time at Oakholme Master Adler has called Keli a total of zero times. To my knowledge, anyway. Which is not to say that she doesn’t speak to him on Miss Maroney’s phone. In these times of fourth-wave feminism, Keli feels completely free to stall the phone queue by calling Matt and talking about herself in this saccharine little voice that she never otherwise uses.
Jenny Bean gave me some interesting insights into Matt Adler’s feelings for Keli after going to the second fortnightly Introduction to Legal Systems and Methods support class at St Augustine’s last week without me. I’d been sick and dizzy that afternoon and Miss Pemberton wouldn’t let me go. I really should have gone. I’m already way behind on the online reading and haven’t even started the first assignment, but I’ve been feeling so rotten that I just can’t do it on top of everything else.
Anyway, I assumed that Jenny would be lost sans moi in that St Augustine’s testosterone pit, but apparently she struck up a conversation with one of Stephen Agliozzo’s less attractive friends, Tom Something-or-Other. Stephen had told Tom, who told Jenny, who told me that Matt Adler wishes Keli would stop ‘stalking’ him. Apparently the last time she called the St Augustine’s boarding house, Matt pretended to have a broken leg and said he couldn’t get to the phone, because he’d already used the ‘out at rowing practice’ excuse too often.
Of course I relay this juicy piece of intelligence to my other friends during prep. late one afternoon. It’s almost dinnertime. Keli’s coven is in the back corner discussing something dreary in tones of great hilarity.
‘How is that even possible?’ shrieks Annabel Saxon.
The usual suspects and I are all huddled around our table discussing the undesirability of Keli Street-Hughes in hushed tones.
‘Imagine waking up next to that every morning,’ says Indu.
‘You’d wake up orange,’ chimes in Bindi.
We all break apart laughing, and Keli’s group looks over at us. We don’t care. We keep cutting up in barely whispering voices.
Then in walk some Year 7 and 8 boarders, including Olivia Pike. I hoped that she’d even out her hairstyle with some sheep clippers, but she’s opted instead to pull the hair either side of her baldpate into a topknot. It’s ‘passable’, to fire her own words back against her, but to me she looks like some denounced detractor from the Chinese Cultural Revolution with half their head shaved. What a traitor! I was right about her from the beginning. Anyway, I feel like she’s been justly served and that our frosty relationship can resume as normal during our next meeting.
‘So how’s it going with Nathan?’ Bindi asks at regular volume. She knows full well how it’s going with Nathan, but this is prep. and it’s a public conversation.
‘I might go and pay him a visit at the Easter Show,’ I answer casually.
‘I’m in,’ says Indu.
‘Me too,’ says Bindi. ‘Is he entering the wood chopping competition?’
We, and all the girls around us who’ve been eavesdropping, burst into uproarious laughter, even though no one quite gets the joke.
‘Nathan’s handsome,’ says Indu. ‘I don’t know about those boat shoes, though.’
‘You should have seen him at the music festival in his cowboy boots and Akubra.’
‘That’s weird, Shauna,’ says Bindi.
‘Not when everyone’s dressed the same way.’
‘Or undressed the same way,’ murmurs Lou-Anne.
I’ve been thinking about Nathan quite a lot since the day at the beach. It’s hard to avoid it with my friends analysing every moment of our date. We’ve entertained every possible theory as to why he didn’t want to go into the water, from shrinkage to an inability to swim. I know that we’re over-analysing, but I do enjoy talking about him. There are certain details, however, that only Lou-Anne will ever hear.
I like Nathan and that scares me a bit. I have to watch what I say to him. I know I put my foot in it at the beach by accusing him of racism, but sometimes it’s like I see it everywhere. And a lot of the time it really is there. When I was in Year 9, I had a boyfriend who I met at a science camp. His name was David and it was about as serious as it gets for a Year 9 camp romance, featuring exchanges of ‘I love you’, passionate sessions that involved tongue kissing and underclothes groping, and promises of staying together forever.
One weekend, David invited me to his house for lunch. I met his family and everything seemed to be going well. Then his mother asked me flat-out, ‘And what’s your ethnic background, Shauna?’
I didn’t know what she meant.
‘My ethnic background?’
‘Where do your parents come from?’
‘Barraba,’ I answered.
‘And where’s that?’
‘Have you heard of Tamworth?’
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘but what I mean is, what country is your family from?’
I told her Australia. Then I told her that my dad’s Kamilaroi and I’ve got Irukandji blood on my mum’s side.
‘You’re Aboriginal,’ gulped David’s dad.
I swear, you could have heard an ant fart. David’s parents looked at each other in shock. They didn’t even try to hide their horror.
‘And do you consider yourself Australian or Aboriginal?’ his dad asked awkwardly.
How was I supposed to answer that? I muttered something about being both, knowing that it was the beginning of the end.
David never called me again. In fact, I never spoke to him again because whenever I called his house he wasn’t there. Eventually I stopped calling. And I decided to avoid city boys forever. I call them ‘city’ boys and it makes them sound worldly, but they’re really just flat-lawn suburban boys, whose parents’ jar is just as small as my parents’ jar, and with the lid screwed on just as tightly.
I’m glad that Nathan’s from the country. It’s one of many things I like about him.
The clock strikes six-thirty and, like a herd of hungry cows, everyone rises and thunders down the hall into the dining room. We’ve got this dumb system for working out who gets fed first. We each take a glass from the service bar and on the bottom of each of the IKEA glasses is a number. The lower the number, the further up in the queue you go. It’s a clunky system, and I have no idea who started it or when, but it does work. It stops younger and less popular girls from being pushed around, and scoring the number three glass (numbers one and two were smashed before my time) is like finding the golden ticket in a Wonka chocolate bar. It’s very democratic.
Tonight I pull a lousy number and I have to wait around for ages for some kind of stringy chicken dish. We always complain that the boarding house food is disgusting, and at the same time that the portions are too small! For some reason the dining room is a great place to whinge. Prep. hall is a forum for gossip and the dining room is the complaints centre.
At the back of the dinner queue, with my nose full of the smell of bad chicken, I’m jolted by a wave of nausea that makes me weak at the knees. Stuff comes up and I have to make a huge effort to send it back down.
‘Shauna! Where are you going?’
‘Bathroom,’ I mutter to Lou-Anne on the way out of the room. ‘I’m sick. I can’t stand the smell.’
I hightail it up to our bathroom and this time I really throw up. I feel awful. I sway to my bed and flop down. When I look at the ceiling it spins, so I close my eyes.
I sleep for hours. Literally hours. It’s after eight-thirty when I wake up. The first person I see when I open my eyes is Lou-Anne, who’s pushed her bed closer to mine. She does that sometimes, if one or both of us are feeling fragile.
She’s flat out on her belly copying word-for-word an Othello essay I wrote last year.
‘How was your nap?’ she asks flatly.
‘Fine. I don’t know what happened.’
‘Nathan rang while you were asleep.’
‘I’ll call him back.’
‘Don’t forget to tell him you’re pregnant.’
I nearly choke on my own nonchalant chuckle.