On my way to school I imagined the various methods the Brotherhood might employ to remove my tongue. Strangely enough, though, they kept their distance all morning, acting as if I was invisible, which was unnerving in its own way. As if their mind games weren’t enough to deal with, at lunchtime Tibor Mintz cornered me in the café queue and asked me point blank why I didn’t like him.
‘I don’t not like you,’ I said.
‘Since being orientation buddies, you’ve avoided me. Is that because I’m a nerd-nerd and not a cool nerd like David York? Or is it something like body odour or halitosis? That’s bad breath.’
‘I hadn’t noticed.’
‘That’s reassuring. I only asked because your sense of smell has been scientifically verified as exceptional.’ He walked away. But now that he’d opened a conversation about friendship, I wanted to find out why he let Nads cheat off him in the maths test. So I surrendered my place in the line to follow him to the far side of Old Block, where he sat against the wall and unwrapped a sandwich. ‘This area is strictly out of bounds,’ he said.
‘I know that but I have a question for you, outlaw.’ I sat next to him and asked why he and Isa did so much school service. He told me it was a condition of the Millington Drake Scholarship he’d won. Isa was on the Judith Ormerod Scholarship for girls.
‘I don’t mind the actual work but it does make us stick out.’ He took a bite of his curried-egg sandwich. ‘People call me Poindexter and Brainiac, which are okay, but I don’t like Suck-arse. Evan wrote that on my satchel.’ He rewrapped his sandwich and put it away. ‘I’m sorry you were stuck with me for an orientation buddy when I don’t even fit in to this school.’
‘I don’t fit in here either.’
‘But you’re friends with Pericles Pappas and Darvin Naylor and Sean Mulligan and Evan Starkey.’
‘Only Pericles. The others are total douchebags.’
Tibor laughed like it was the first time he’d heard the word.
‘Why did Nads sit next to you for the maths test?’ I said. ‘Is there some sort of arrangement between you?’
‘He got into Crestfield on sporting ability alone and requires academic assistance. I’m supposed to be his maths mentor, but he only ever shows up to our tutoring sessions before a test.’
‘How does he know when they’re coming if they’re supposed to be a surprise?’
Leaning in close, which was overkill because there was nobody in sight, Tibor whispered, ‘Mr Monaro is buddy-buddy with Mr Simmons.’
‘So Monaro allows Nads to copy your answers? But why do you let him?’
‘I’m afraid not to.’
‘Don’t worry about Nads and his stooges. They’re just bullies.’ My attitude was all bravado, though, because I was still terrified they were out to get me. Sure enough, on Tuesday afternoon my fears were realised.
I was walking around Rushcutters Bay, enjoying the cool breeze coming off the water, when I saw Starkey leaning against the wall of the Cruising Yacht Club, his slouch unmistakable. I turned to head home, but a hundred metres from the stormwater canal I spotted Mullows sitting on an exercise bench. I veered towards the road but Nads emerged from the roots of a giant Port Jackson fig, rocking with folded arms, in a dodgy imitation of a hip-hop gangster. I aimed for the gap between him and Mullows, but the goons converged. Pretending I’d just noticed them, I waved.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Nads said.
‘Home.’
‘We’ve got a meeting of the Brotherhood.’
‘I’m more of a lone wolf, really. I want out.’
‘Not your decision. We trusted you and you blabbed to the Dash – told him we scared the old codger. I don’t give a rat’s tight arsehole about my reputation, but my parents do.’
I shrugged. Nads clutched my collar, the other two standing back, Mullows with jutting chin, Starkey narrowing his eyes and looking mean as hell.
‘The thing that really pisses me off is you’ve fucked up our weekends till the end of term,’ Nads said.
I tried to protest my innocence, but he roared in my face.
‘You don’t scare me,’ I squeaked.
‘Liar,’ Starkey said. ‘You’re one fart away from crapping yourself.’
‘I kn-kn-know it was you that put the tongue in my bag.’
Starkey flickered his tongue between the V of his fingers. ‘Ba-la-la-la-la. You’re tripping, mate.’
‘Enough,’ Nads said. ‘The time has come to throw you out officially.’
A cork to the back of my knee from a fourth, unseen assailant dropped me to the ground. He and Starkey grabbed my arms, Nads and Mullows my legs, and they carried me up the embankment. Twisting my head, I saw that their apprentice thug was Byron Paget, the tyre-puncturing expert. The four of them dropped me on the hard, barely grassed earth, and a surge of defiance rose in me.
‘If you’re going to do it, then do it,’ I said.
Starkey replied with a kick to my waist that winded me.
‘Take it easy,’ Mullows said. And I hated him for the pathetic degree of mercy he showed without having a second ball in his bag to stop them.
They picked me up and swung me in time to their count. ‘ONE! . . . TWO! . . .’ I relaxed all of the muscles in my body. ‘THREE!’ They released me and I flew up, up into the sky. In the moment before gravity reclaimed me, I lost my resolve and stiffened. Then I dropped.
And one point.
A pin –
Pricked a balloon.
A dart –
Hit a bullseye.
A stone –
Struck a windscreen.
The tip –
Of my tailbone met the flat, hard earth.
A full stop.
My body was shattered.
Delirious with pack violence, the thugs came lolloping down the slope, Nads ruffling Paget’s bowl cut, Starkey filming on his phone. Mullows reached me first.
‘Run!’ he said. And I did, like an antelope that was wounded but thankfully still faster than the lions.
Over the bridge, around the cricket ground, past Reg Bartley’s grandstand and the tennis courts, up the lane, past St Luke’s. Terrace houses, cafés, shoppers blurred. I tripped on a poodle’s leash, knocked over stools, apologised. Dashed up a side lane and emerged in familiar territory: red wall, substation, car park, pay-toilet panic-room – two dollars’ entry. Thank God for the gold coin in my pocket. I kissed Her Majesty and dropped her into the slot. Open sesame.
>WELCOME TO ROBOLOO, YOUR PREMIUM AUTOMATED HYGIENE SOLUTION. TO LOCK DOOR, PUSH THE RED BUTTON. TO OPEN DOOR, PUSH THE GREEN BUTTON. TOILET FLUSHES AUTOMATICALLY.<
I smashed the red and sat on the can, chest burning. The acute-stabbing, dull-throbbing pain in my tailbone brought me close to vomiting. I held back, fearing my lungs would rise on the surge of chunky acid, fall out and slap onto the tiles, still trying to breathe on their own.
Then there was elevator music. A soothing electronic melody from the easy-listening album Songs to Bleed to. ‘What the world needs now is love, sweet love.’ Never more true.
The cabin revolved. My mouth tasted metallic. My ears burnt. My vision shimmered and faded to black.
>BANG! BANG! BANG!<
I came to.
>BANG! BANG! BANG!<
A voice on the other side – Starkey.
‘We know how much you like hanging out in public toilets, but when you come out we’re going to smash the living shit out of you.’
I stood and the toilet flushed itself. I drank water from the nozzle in the wall recess then read the sign: WATER NOT POTABLE. DO NOT DRINK!
With my ear against the door, I could hear my assailants talking outside but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then I heard a horn tooting.
>peep!<
>PEEP! PEEP!<
>PEEP! PEEP! PEEP!<
A red light began flashing. The writing beneath it said
MAXIMUM TIME LIMIT: 15 MINUTES AUTOMATIC CLEANING CYCLE WILL COMMENCE 1 MINUTE AFTER RED LIGHT FLASHES PLEASE VACATE IMMEDIATELY
Time flies when you’re unconscious.
I couldn’t decide whether to push green and run, or take my chance with the cleaning cycle.
The beep was piercing and continuous.
>WARNING! MAXIMUM TIME LIMIT HAS BEEN EXCEEDED. CLEANING CYCLE WILL NOW COMMENCE.<
Steel panels on the walls receded. Fifty or sixty small but menacing nozzles telescoped from the gaps. I assumed the brace position, covering my face.
>FWISHHHHHHHHH!<
Jets of hot water, focused and high-pressured, tattooed every inch of my exposed skin. Thirty seconds of industrial-grade excoriation later, they stopped.
ROBOloo had said cleaning cycle, so I kept my head down and waited. The nozzles buzzed, shifted angle and sprayed disinfectant, stinging my already stinging arms and legs. A cold rinse followed, then the jets puckered and shrank like metal cunje. Momentary silence, then clicking and whirring that built to a cyclonic howl as every droplet of water was sucked through the floor grate.
I was saturated, skin burning, ears ringing, knee bleeding worse than before. I checked my reflection in the metal mirror. Dulled by scratches, it made me look soft-edged, as if I was disappearing. Above the mirror was graffiti scrawled in black marker:
PAPPAS IS A FAGGOT!
and beneath it in blue:
SO ARE YOU!
>CLICK!< >THANK YOU FOR VISITING ROBOLOO, YOUR PREMIUM AUTOMATED HYGIENE SOLUTION. PLEASE VISIT AGAIN SOON. DOOR OPENING.<
I stepped back into the world, half-expecting to discover it had changed in my absence – but it hadn’t, except for the appearance of the crazy old hermit, sitting on his electric chariot right outside the ROBOloo doors.
‘You’re wet,’ he chuckled through a wheeze. Turns out he’d seen the goons chasing me and followed them to the automatic dunny. ‘Figured they’d corralled you in that newfangled lav,’ he said.
‘Not my proudest moment.’
‘Bad eggs, that lot. You should steer clear.’
‘It’s not that easy.’
‘Bunkum!’ He swatted the air. ‘They’ll stop making mischief soon enough, believe you me. I reported them to the school principal.’
‘Well, that certainly helped the situation.’
‘Didn’t report you, though,’ he said, holding up a finger. ‘Figured you weren’t one of ’em. Cut from a different cloth, you are. Shouldn’t be knocking round with ’em. Bad eggs, that lot.’
‘I’d better get home now. See ya.’ I turned and started walking.
‘Hold your horses!’ he said, and scooted up to me. ‘You’re bleeding like the buggery.’
‘I’ll be right, thanks.’
‘Come here!’ He pulled a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Don’t screw up your nose. I washed it Monday. Hold still now.’ He tied it around my knee. ‘There you go. Right as rain.’ Blood darkened the pale, yellowed cloth in seconds.
‘Your hanky’s ruined.’
‘Never mind about that, boyo. Just make sure to untie it when you get home, put some antiseptic on your leg. Don’t want it dropping off.’
I inspected the hanky more closely. ‘What does the B. M. stand for?’
‘Bert McGill. Ruby’s handiwork. She was my better half. Sewed it on so I wouldn’t forget.’ He clears his throat. ‘Miss Daisy can give you a ride. Hop on the back and hold tight.’
‘No thanks. I can walk.’
‘Suit yourself then.’ He pulled a tight one-eighty and rolled off, yelling, ‘Stay away from those hooligans! They’re bad eggs.’
Safely back at the apartment, I rinsed my knee, applied Betadine© to it and the nub, put long loose pants on and soaked Bert’s hanky. Dad came home and cooked Mum’s fettuccine alfredo and served me an enormous plateful. It was bland and stodgy – depressingly unlike the original.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said.
‘Nothing.’
‘Sit still and eat then, instead of pushing your food around.’
I couldn’t sit still, though, because the nub must’ve swollen to twice its size and demanded constant repositioning to minimise the agonising throb that was making me wince.
‘I emailed your mother for the recipe specially, because I know you like it. But the look on your face is telling me something else.’
‘It’s great,’ I said, and forced myself to eat the entire load.
After dinner I went to my room and read an account of an assault on Esther’s kid brother, Samuel, nineteenth-century style. Synchronicity through the ages.
Esther and William found Samuel crouched against a stone lion at the bottom of the entrance stairs, blood from his swollen nose pooling between his feet. He told them that three Ultimo larrikins had clobbered him. William insisted on reporting the matter to the police, but the boy assured him that his injuries were minor and he still had the sovereign.
‘Here it is,’ he said, smiling through blood-stained teeth as he proffered the coin.
‘Put that away,’ William said. ‘You deserve ten more for resisting those brutes.’
In fact, there had been only one assailant. Samuel had met him while waiting in line for Monsieur LaSalle’s Enchanting Tableaux Vivants, a titillating show featuring famous artworks recreated by groupings of scantily clad artist’s models and dancers – all required by law to remain perfectly still, on threat of the attraction’s closure. The larrikin had convinced Samuel he looked too young for admission, and offered to swap boots for his higher heels. As Samuel was untying his laces behind the calliope, however, he’d lunged for his back pocket. A scuffle ensued, with Samuel copping most of the blows, his cries muffled by the jaunty tune from the steam organ.
Dora Hinkley, Fernleigh’s housekeeper, had been visiting the Waxworks on her monthly afternoon off. Overcome by the grotesque displays in the Chamber of Horrors, she’d sought refuge on a chair near the calliope, hoping the gay music would expunge the scenes from her mind. Instead, she was shocked to see her young master in conversation with a larrikin. When the hooligan leapt upon him, she felt powerless to intervene and so remained hidden behind a palm until the assailant left. On returning home she reported the incident to Professor Hunnicutt, stopping short of revealing what Samuel had been lining up for.
The following day Hunnicutt pressed his son to give a full confession. In complying, Samuel revealed that William Stroud – a man whom his father had heard of, but never in connection to his daughter – had given him a sovereign to make himself scarce. Hunnicutt’s anger was hardly assuaged by Samuel’s confession that he’d been waiting in line for such a dubious spectacle. Hunnicutt called Esther to his study and condemned her for failure of moral obligation. And he forbade her from ever seeing William again.
Esther wrote in her diary that, up until the night of her father’s chastisement, she’d been ambivalent about her feelings towards William. But the injunction had the effect of making him seem irresistibly attractive, igniting a passion that would not be easily extinguished.
I continued reading till I fell into a restless sleep. Unable to remain on my back or side for any length of time, I lay on my stomach but found it difficult to breathe. Throughout the night I was woken, frantic and soaked in sweat, by a recurring dream of my assault seamlessly merged with Samuel’s beating.