The early morning sky was gold on the horizon, then blue, with barely a transition. The Crestfield colours. It was ten degrees and still an hour before sunrise, which meant an hour before the opening of International Velvet. Isa had brought a thermos of coffee, which she poured as we sat on the backpacks we’d stuffed to bursting with the knitted DNA.
‘Your hands are shaking,’ she said as I took the cup. ‘Are you nervous?’
‘Just cold,’ I said, even though I was scared shitless on at least two counts. Isa had figured out I’d been faking my appreciation of the macchiato, which was a huge relief, and she’d made the coffee sweet and milky but strong enough to provide a much-needed surge of courage and determination.
I took out her charm bracelet and held up the little key. ‘It worked,’ I said. ‘Last night I wound the mechanical hen, and when I dropped in Pericles’ token, Ethel started clucking.’
A smile lit up Isa’s face, and her eyes widened.
‘She laid a little golden egg with a message inside. A message to me, and Bert as well. A secret about our shared ancestry.’
‘I don’t understand?’
I gave her a smile. ‘It’s a long and crazy story, so I’ll save it for after we get this thing up.’
Walking through Crestfield’s rear gates with the weight of hundreds of hours of knitting on our backs, I figured we’d be easily spotted on the security footage. ‘Let’s hope nobody’s watching the live broadcast,’ I said. ‘It would suck if this thing got cut down by a security guard before anybody else had a chance of seeing it.’
‘No chance of that happening,’ Isa said. We reached The Labyrinth and dropped our packs. ‘I’m going to record the installation and post it on The Owlet.’
‘Serious?’
‘Last night I wrote this blurb to go with it.’ On her phone she showed me a rationale of our work more explicit and detailed than the one we’d submitted to Ms Tarasek. It was followed by a call to action, urging the students to sign a petition demanding that the faculty, administration and board commission plaques outlining Joseph Millington Drake’s involvement with the eugenics movement and his establishment of a racist and discriminatory selection process. The plaques would be attached to the statue and the auditorium bearing his name.
Why not have the statue and references to Millington Drake removed altogether? ‘Whitewashing,’ Isa said. ‘What he did should be talked about. Not forgotten.’
Isa climbed over The Labyrinth gate first. I heaved over the backpacks then followed. We walked to the centre in silence, contemplating the magnitude of what we were doing. Isa had never entered The Labyrinth before, and she laughed when she saw Millington Drake with his hand on King Henry’s rump. ‘Pompous git,’ she said, and reached for the bull’s snout.
‘Don’t! If you touch him he talks, and it might set something else off.’
We unpacked the two massive lengths of DNA. Isa stitched them together then filmed us wrapping one end around Joseph Millington Drake’s neck. We trailed the coil almost halfway back to the entrance, at which point it ran out, then tied on a single thread that we laid the rest of the way to the gate. Isa attached a small disk to the end that said YOU ARE HERE! We climbed back over the gate, then hid our empty backpacks behind the recycling bins and found a spot in the grove that was catching the first rays of sun.
Beginning with the discovery of my connection to Edwin Stroud, a.k.a. Theodore Stonehouse, I told Isa all about myself. I told her about the strange discoloured patch that had become a nub, which grew into a tail. I told her of my fear of it being exposed and the shame that had controlled me. She was incredulous, astonished, perplexed then curious, but never once showed any sign of being repelled. She hardly spoke until I’d finished and asked what she was thinking.
‘It must’ve been a huge thing for you to deal with. Especially trying to work through all of the possible causes. But maybe now you’ve shared it, you’ll realise that it’s actually a really small thing.’
‘It’s almost five centimetres.’
‘Okay. Well, out of all the afflictions that anybody could have, it’s still far from the worst.’
‘You don’t think I’m a complete freak?’
‘It makes you unique, which is a good thing. We should embrace the unusual. And like Theodore wrote, it is a little bit funny.’
‘Remember when we were at my dad’s apartment and I pushed you away?’
‘How could I forget?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘It almost killed me.’
‘Same. But now you know the reason.’
The sun had risen high enough to provide a little warmth and give Isa a beautiful golden glow. ‘Would you push me away now?’ she said.
I shook my head and Isa moved in close. Right on the verge of something exceptionally amazing happening, Pericles appeared in the corner of my eye. With zero sensitivity for the moment, he yelled out and came gambolling down. ‘Did it work?’ he said.
Unsure if he meant the key in the chicken or the art project or telling Isa everything, I said, ‘It worked!’ and he pulled us into a three-way hug.
During Maths, Isa sat with Phoenix and I sat next to Pericles and none of us gave Monaro a second of our attention. The air was electric with anticipation. Tibor poked me in the back and asked what was going on. Considering his vital role in devising the DNA pattern for Isa, I passed him a note saying that we’d installed it this morning. He sent one back saying, ‘May the Force be with you.’
Second period, Isa and Phoenix had Dance, and Pericles had Woodwork, leaving me alone with free study in the library – almost an hour to speculate on the possible scenarios that might play out. Though initially I’d hated going to Crestfield, I now had a tight crew of good friends and was worried we might be broken up. But I figured that expelling Isa and me would only bring unfavourable attention to the school and its troubling foundations.
For the final five minutes I stared at the library clock, willing the second hand to move faster. And when the electronic glockenspiel finally sounded, it wasn’t the regular signal for recess but the call to special assembly. Adrenaline spread like poison through my vascular system. My heart raced and the tail folded in on itself.
I took the catwalk to the Joseph Millington Drake Auditorium, calling and texting Isa on the way, but there was no response. I lingered near the entrance, asking other Year 10 students if they’d seen her. Cheyenne Piper said Isa had gone in already so I made my way up the stairs. And just as I was about to enter alone, there was a tug on my blazer. ‘Shh!’ Isa said as she took my hand then led me back down the stairs and around the side of the building. ‘Word on the street is that two meddling kids have tampered with the statue of our beloved founder and his bull.’ She opened her laptop and got onto The Owlet. The clip of us wrapping the DNA around Millington Drake’s neck was ready to post. ‘I think it’s time,’ she said, and tapped SUBMIT, sending the footage, exposé and petition to every exceedingly gifted and dangerously privileged student enrolled at Crestfield Academy.
‘You’re the bravest person around,’ I said. ‘No matter what happens next, we’re in this together.’
‘There’s nobody in the world I’d rather get into serious trouble with,’ Isa Mountwinter said. And then she kissed me.