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AS SOON AS THE END-of-day bell rang, all three girls raced to their dorm room. Nomusa and Samantha had already packed their bags the night before, while Jessie hadn’t yet begun. When they arrived at their room, it was to find Cassandra already waiting there. Her small overnight bag was sitting on the spare bed, but Cassandra herself was wandering about the room, reading the list on the door and peeping into their cupboards.
“Oi!” Jessie said. “Keep your sticky beak out of our stuff.”
Nomusa collected her suitcase, hugged her friends goodbye and headed out, with Jessie calling after her, “Bring us back some wedding cake!”
“Can we go now?” Cassandra asked.
“Can’t you see I’m still packing?” her sister replied.
“Your rooms are much nicer than ours. Is this where the girl who never came sleeps?” Cassandra asked, bouncing on the bed that should’ve been Anastasia’s.
“Shh!” Jessie said, who was madly shoving an odd assortment of clothes and shoes into a large leather tote bag. “I’m sorry I ever told you about that.”
Cassandra pointed at the pair of smart sandals Jessie was pushing into a side pocket of the bag. “Are you really going to wear high heels on the beach?”
“You are totally the most nosey, annoying —” Jessie began, but stopped as Matron McKenzie stepped heavily into the room, wearing her usual blue uniform and carrying her ever-present clipboard.
“Good afternoon, girls. I am still on the hunt for the elusive Anastasia.” Spying Cassandra sitting on the fourth bed, her eyebrows went up and she asked hopefully, “Are you her?”
“No, ma’am. I’m Jessie’s sister.”
“Yes, I see, no more than a wee lass.”
Looking around the room as if hoping to find the missing pupil in a wardrobe or behind a bed, Matron missed the swift kick that Jessie aimed at her sister’s shin.
Rubbing her leg, Cassandra added hurriedly, “But, I just saw her in the corridor. Leaving. For the weekend, I mean. She was holding a red bag, ma’am, didn’t you see her?” Samantha was fascinated to see that, as Cassandra lied, her greenish-blue eyes became round and guileless, and her face assumed a completely innocent expression. She looked almost angelic.
“Oh dear, I seem to keep missing the child. My goodness, but this hunt is getting rather exhausting. Do tell her to report to me, will you?” Matron said to Samantha.
Samantha swallowed hard and, looking at her feet, said carefully, “I will if I see her, ma’am.”
Matron McKenzie moved ponderously out of the room and Samantha released a nervous breath.
Jessie looked at her with fond annoyance. “You, Sam, are rubbish at telling anything but the complete truth! And you, Caz, apparently have your uses. Got to tell you, brat, sometimes you almost scare me.”
Cassandra curved her rosebud lips into a sweet smile and said, “Can we go now?”
Down in the parking lot, the girls found Mr. Steadman leaning up against a dusty, rusty old Land Rover. Sam gave him a quick hug and introduced Jessie and Cassandra. Jessie peeped eagerly inside the Landy, looked momentarily disappointed when she saw the empty seats, and then murmured to herself, “Pick him up on the way.”
“All aboard! We’re in the rust-bucket today — we need a four-by-four for those roads in the reserve,” Mr. Steadman said, hoisting Jessie’s heavy bag into the back with a grunt as the girls clambered into their seats.
Samantha was dismayed to see an untidy coil of rope lying on the floor of the front passenger seat. “Oh no, Dad! Not the gears again?”
“Afraid so.” Mr. Steadman started the engine and seemed pleasantly surprised when it started on the first try. Patting the dashboard affectionately, he said, “There’s life in the old girl yet!”
They reversed out of the parking space and then set off, with a loud bang from the exhaust, down the lane which led away from the school. As soon as the car was in fourth gear, he said, “Secure her for me, won’t you, Sam.”
Sighing heavily, Samantha hooked the slip knot at one end of the rope over the knob of the gear stick and passed the other end of the rope to Jessie, who was sitting with Cassandra in the back.
“You’ve got to tie it to the back-door handle,” Samantha said, with an apologetic grimace. “Else it slips out of gear.”
As if to demonstrate the fact, the gear stick suddenly popped into neutral, and the car slowed with a suddenness that threw the occupants forwards against their seat belts. Mr. Steadman started the engine again. This time, it took several tries and more smoky explosions from the exhaust. Thankful that they were well out of sight of the school, Samantha clung to the gear stick, holding it firmly in fourth gear while bracing herself against her seat, and muttered disgustedly about the car. Jessie, who had only ever travelled in the most luxurious of vehicles, seemed to find the whole business hilarious, and happily clambered over the back seat to tie the other end of the rope to the handle of the back door.
“Make the knot nice and tight, now,” Mr. Steadman shouted over the noise of the engine.
“This, I’ve got to see,” Cassandra said, swivelling in her seat and getting comfortable, as if settling in for a good show.
Jessie fiddled with the rope and the handle for a few minutes. “Um, I’m not really sure how ...” Her voice dwindled off uncertainly.
“A good, strong reef knot is best, I find,” Mr. Steadman said encouragingly.
Jessie made a feeble attempt to tie what looked to Samantha like a one-sided bow.
“I’ll do it.” Cassandra climbed nimbly over the seat and quickly secured the rope to the door. “There you are, that’s how it’s done,” she said smugly to her sister.
“Oh, get knotted,” Jessie growled as they both returned to their seats.
She was just fastening her seatbelt when she noticed that they were passing the open gates of the entrance to the boys’ school, Clifford Heights.
“Aren’t we stopping to collect James?” Jessie asked plaintively, craning her neck to see the rapidly receding gates.
“James?” said Mr. Steadman, in surprise. “James isn’t coming with us; he and Dan have a rugby training camp all weekend.”
“A rugby camp? Since when?”
“It’s been on their timetable since the beginning of term. Compulsory for all the boys, you know, otherwise you wouldn’t catch Dan near a rugby field.”
Jessie flopped back into her seat with a whimper and stared forlornly out of the window. Cassandra gave a gleeful sort of cackle, but Samantha reached back to give Jessie’s hand a comforting squeeze.
“Sorry,” she said. “I also thought they were coming.”
“Yeah, and I’ll tell you why we thought that!” Jessie said, suddenly sitting forward in her seat again and growing quite fierce. “Because Dan said they were coming. He said that —” But here she faltered, apparently wracking her brains to think back to exactly what it was that Dan had said. “Well, he made it sound like they were coming. And I bet he did that on purpose. Git! Next time I see him ...” She narrowed her eyes and cracked her knuckles.
But even without the dreamy presence of James to look forward to, Jessie could not stay grumpy for long — not with the sun shining dazzlingly on the increasingly distant smudges of blue mountains, not with Sam’s gentle teasing, and not with the prospect of a weekend at the beach to look forward to. She was soon smiling at her own romantic foolishness and grew downright cheery when she pictured Daniel Steadman mashed up against the sweaty armpit of a hairy brute of a rugby player, scrumming about in the mud for a stupid ball.
“Awesome,” she said happily to herself. “Totally awesome! I’m beginning to think that I will definitely enjoy this weekend much more than someone else I know.”