Escape from Year Eight
PUFFIN BOOKS
Escape
from
Year Eight
‘Jeez, Mum,’ I yell, ‘you could have warned me
before you decided to ruin my life!’
When Kaitlin’s mum tells her they’re going to live in America for three months, Kaitlin is furious. She finally has a group of friends at school – real friends she can trust – and now she’s going to move a million kilometres away.
But when they get to Iowa, even Kaitlin has to admit it’s not a total disaster. Amy and Jazz in her eighth grade class seem extra friendly. But what’s with that weird kid Leon who won’t talk to anyone? And what’s his problem with Kaitlin?
Also by Anna & Mary K Pershall
Two Weeks in Grade Six
A Term in Year Seven
Also by Mary K Pershall
Making Jamie Normal
Too Much to Ask For
Escape
from
Year
Eight
Anna &
Mary K Pershall
PUFFIN BOOKS
PUFFIN
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Penguin Group (Australia), a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd, 2007
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Text copyright © Anna and Mary K Pershall, 2007
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
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ISBN: 978-1-74228-041-7
For Katie
Thanks for inspiring us
Saturday 30 June
10.25 a.m.
‘Jeez, Mum,’ I yell, ‘you could have warned me before you decided to ruin my life!’
I’ve never been this mad at my mother before. I’ve never been this mad at anybody!
Heart hammering and fists clenched, I stare at her across the kitchen table. She stares back, her eyes glittery with tears. She’s made a special brunch for us: Weight Watchers pancakes with low-joule maple syrup. At least she could have let me enjoy it before she murdered my appetite with her plans for my future.
‘What are you so afraid of?’ Mum demands. ‘You’ve done fine at high school. Why doesn’t that prove that you can do it at another school?’
‘Because,’ I screech, ‘this other school is in an entirely different country, and unlike when I started high school I don’t know a single person who’s ever been to that stupid place you’re talking about!’
Mum closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. This is a method she’s learned to control her temper, but it makes me madder than ever. She takes another slow breath, then opens her eyes and looks at me. ‘I thought you’d be really thrilled,’ she says in a hurt voice. ‘I thought this was like the most wonderful gift I was giving you. That’s why I’ve been saving it up as a surprise. I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure I could make it work.’
She looks so disappointed that I can’t help feeling a little sorry for her. But I feel more sorry for me! I mean, for the first time in my life, I actually look forward to going to school. Even on Sunday night I’m all happy because I get to spend the next day with my friends. Real friends that I can trust. And now my mother wants to drag me to the other side of the world just so she can do some course that’ll further her career.
‘What about Rick?’ I ask. He and Mum have been seeing each other for nearly a year and a half now. Maybe my opinion doesn’t mean anything to her, but surely his does. ‘I guess you think it’s a fantastic idea to go off and leave the nicest guy you’ve ever dated?’
Mum sighs and prods her pancake, now stone-cold, with her fork. ‘Rick is a sweet guy,’ she says, ‘but I don’t want to rush into something I’ll regret later. That’s one of the reasons I want to do this trip. I need some time to think about him.’
‘Well that’s just stupid!’ I’m aware that my voice is loud enough for Will next door to hear if he still lived there, but I don’t care. ‘You don’t need to move to the middle of nowhere in America to think. You could do that in the backyard. Or in the toilet! You just want an adventure and you didn’t even bother asking me if I wanted to be involved in it!’
Mum’s eyes are flashing now. She’s forgotten her temper-controlling tool. She jumps up from her chair, dumps her pancakes in the bin, then turns to me. ‘Well, Missy,’ she snaps, ‘so what if I do want an adventure? I happen to think I deserve one. All I’ve done since your dad left is work. I want to live a little before you chuck me in a nursing home!’
Right now, chucking her somewhere stinky where they force you to watch talk shows all afternoon sounds like a pretty good idea. I mean, I know she deserves a life, but does it have to take priority over mine?
Monday 2 July
9.05 a.m.
‘I’m gonna tell about you,’ Vi whispers, her black eyes dancing.
‘No!’ I protest.
‘Yes,’ she says, grinning, ‘I am!’ She raises her hand in her graceful but purposeful manner. I could make her put it back down if I really wanted to, but I don’t bother. I guess I’m curious to see how the other kids will take what she’s got to say.
We’re in home group. Vi used to be in the front row, but now she sits up the back with me and Matthew and Stephen.
A couple of months ago Mrs McBain started this thing where after she’s read the daily bulletin, we get to tell the class any good news we’ve got. The cool girls say it’s just like Show and Tell in primary school and they’d rather wear their hair in an afro than share bits of their superior lives with us mere mortals. But the rest of us think it’s pretty interesting. Right now, Billy’s telling us what he got up to over the weekend.
‘And then my uncle’s like, “Let’s put her pedal to the floor and see what she’s got in her.” So we’re tearin’ down the Wallan Road at like 160 k’s, and suddenly this giant roo jumps right out in front of us. My uncle brakes and we’re swerving around like anything.’ Billy jerks from side to side on his chair to demonstrate the motion. ‘My aunty smacks him with this can of Cougar and Coke she was drinking and said it was lucky he didn’t kill us all.’
‘I’d say it’s lucky the police weren’t around,’ Mrs McBain comments.
‘Sure is,’ Billy agrees, ‘cos my uncle bought an electric guitar off this guy at the pub and my aunty thought it was a bit suss.’
‘Okay!’ Mrs McBain says cheerfully, scanning the room. ‘Who else has some news? Vi! What have you got to tell us?’
‘It’s about Kaitlin,’ Vi announces brightly.
‘You know you’re only supposed to tell your own news,’ Mrs McBain reminds her.
‘I know, but this is extenuating circumstances because Kaitlin’s going on a world trip and she’s gonna miss four months of school. She’s leaving in September.’
‘Really?’ Mrs McBain’s looking at me. A little worriedly, I think. They have this system at our school where we keep the same home group and English teacher for three years, so Mrs McBain has got to know me pretty well. She loves how I debate and she’s said a few times how anything I write for her cheers her up. I guess she’ll be sorry to have me gone from the class.
‘It’s not exactly a world trip,’ I explain. ‘It’s just that Mum found out that round-the-world tickets were the cheapest way to go. She’s signed up for this course in America, so I’m gonna go to school over there. Then we’re going to England for Christmas, to visit Eve and Will. That’s my grandmother and our ex-next-door neighbour.’
‘Wow,’ Justine says, twisting around in her seat to look at me, her green eyes glowing underneath her wild mass of red hair. ‘You’re so lucky!’
That’s exactly what Vi said when I called her on Saturday. I thought she’d be all cut because she wouldn’t get to see me for four months, but she was like, ‘You’re stopping in California? And Las Vegas? They’re two of the coolest places in the universe.’ I guess I started to get a little excited after that, not that I let Mum know. I’m still mad at her for planning my life without consulting me. And it’s not like we’re spending much time in those awesome places. From September till just before Christmas we’ll be in Iowa, this state nobody’s ever heard of. That’s where Mum’s doing her course and I’m going to school. About a million kilometres from the only real friends I ever managed to make.
‘Are you goin’ to Hollywood?’ Matthew asks. He used to be overweight, but now he’s the tallest kid in the class and he’s slim as. His voice is still as loud as ever, though. ‘You gonna see the house where Drew Barrymore lives?’
‘Kiss Paris Hilton for me!’ Billy screeches.
‘Send me a photo of Brad Pitt,’ Chloe chirps.
‘8B!’ Mrs McBain commands. ‘Settle down.’
The class stops talking, but everyone’s still looking at me. Except for the cool girls, of course. They’re pretending they can’t understand the word ‘Hollywood’ when it’s uttered by low-lives like us. As if we care! Olivia’s put on a few kilos since I left their group, and Tiffany’s got pimples sprouting all over her T-zone. I haven’t seen either of them in a Target catalogue for quite a while.
‘That’s fantastic news, Kaitlin,’ Mrs McBain says as the bell begins to clang. ‘You’ll have to tell us more about it later.’
As we get up and push our chairs in, I notice that Stephen’s looking at me in his old, lonely way. It cheers me up to see that at least one of my classmates is sad that I’m going to leave him behind and maybe die in a plane crash.
‘Hey, Stevo,’ I say as we head towards the door, ‘can you look after Annabel while I’m away?’ Annabel is the hermit crab he gave me last year.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘I don’t know if the other crabs will want her back. They might bite one or two of her legs off.’
‘What?’ I protest. ‘You can’t let her get murdered!’
He’s grinning at me now. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out whether Steven’s joking or not.
‘Don’t stress, Katie.’ Matthew, as usual, is happy to let us know his thoughts. ‘If anything happens to your crab, Stevo’ll have a different creature waitin’ for you when you get back.’
Thursday 30 August
5.30 p.m.
‘Ah,’ Mum sighs, twisting the lid off a tiny bottle of gin, ‘this is the life.’ She pours the gin into a plastic glass of tonic and ice that’s on the tray table in front of her.
We left Australia behind about half an hour ago. I got a window seat. Mum’s sitting next to me and beside her there’s this woman wearing a business suit and a frown, tapping away on her laptop. I’m still clutching the plastic card that tells you where all the exits are on a 747. I watched this show once that said the passengers who count the rows between them and the two nearest exits are much more likely to survive a crash.
Mum takes a sip of her gin and tonic, then tears open the little foil bag that came with the drink.
‘You’re not gonna eat those, are you?’ I ask.
‘What are you?’ she replies. ‘The peanut police?’
‘It’s just that you look so good! I don’t want you to start getting into bad habits again.’
‘Gee, I do love flattery,’ Mum says brightly. ‘But peanuts are an excellent source of antioxidants.’ She pops some nuts into her mouth and gives me the biggest grin. I’ve never seen her this excited before. And she really does look good in her blue shirt with long sleeves and delicate silver pinstripes. She’s also got on her size ten black pants. I know the size because she’s told me about fifteen times. Her hair’s a bit weird, though. She reckons the new cut makes her look younger, but I think it resembles a cockatoo’s crest.
I guess I’m pretty happy to be sitting here, too. Our first stop is California. Eve sent me some money to spend at Disneyland and Universal Studios and Las Vegas. ‘If you win big,’ she wrote in an email, ‘I expect a cut.’ I’m trying not to think about what’ll happen after that, when I’ll be the new kid in a classroom full of Americans.
Mum’s taken the glossy magazine out of her seat pocket. She’s engrossed in an article about Californian vineyards, so I plug in my earphones, tune into the rock channel, sip my Coke and stare down at the tops of clouds. This makes a change from the bands I’ve been listening to lately: the Wiggles and Hi-5. Mum let me leave school a week early so I could spend some time in Canberra with Dad and Sarah and the kids. Jake’s in kinder now, and Alice is one and a half. She’s so cute the way she walks around with her fat little tummy sticking out. She can say heaps of words, even sentences like ‘Kay-Kay read again,’ and ‘Push me high!’ It seems like she’s growing up faster than Jake did. It made me sad to look at her and know I won’t see her again till she’s two.
Sarah took me out one night to this hippy restaurant we like. That’s where me and her have our best talks. Over the roast pumpkin soup I told Sarah how Mum is calling this her midlife crisis trip. She laughed at that and then said, ‘This is such a wonderful opportunity for you, hon.’
I laughed at that. ‘Sarah, I bet you’d say to Schapelle Corby, “Sweetie, I know it’s tough in gaol, but this is still a fantastic opportunity for you to experience something totally different.”’
‘I don’t think so!’ Sarah spluttered.
I chuckle at how much fun it is to stir Sarah. I bet Mum’s happy I won’t be seeing her for four months. But Dad said they’d keep on ringing me every Wednesday, even though the call has to reach across the ocean and over the mountains to the middle of America, to this farmhouse where we’ll be living. Mum found it on the Internet. It’s only like a twenty-minute drive from the college she’s going to and the rent is really cheap.
The night she spotted it, Mum called me from her office on the phone intercom. ‘Hey, kid,’ she said, ‘come out and have a look at this!’ So I went out to her bungalow and there on her computer was a picture of a beautiful two-storey white house surrounded by a green lawn. Even though I was still pretty mad at Mum at that point, I thought the house looked like a present you might give to somebody you really loved.
A few people are wandering up and down the aisles now, trying not to get deep vein thrombosis. Something smells really good. Must be dinner heating up. Yum. I’m so hungry my stomach’s growling. I’m glad I didn’t waste
my appetite on stupid peanuts like Mum did.
3.00 a.m. (Australian time)
They’ve turned off the lights and everybody on the plane except me is asleep. All I can see out the window now is my own reflection. I make a face, puffing out my cheeks till they’re round and full. By the time they brought us dinner, I was so hungry I ate everything on the tray, including the stale bread roll with a frozen-solid pat of butter. I was stuffed! A few hours later they brought around a midnight snack for anybody who wanted one, and even though I wasn’t hungry at all I had one because by then I was so bored I thought I was going to die. Of course Mum had to book us the cheapest possible flight, so we don’t have TVs at our seats. I had to strain my neck to watch a crappy movie that I’d already seen on DVD at Vi’s house.
I wish my mother would control herself! I know she’s asleep, but she could still exercise some self-restraint. She insisted on pushing up the armrest between us, and now she’s got her arm splayed across my chest. Her feet are sticking into my space and her mouth is hanging open. Why can’t she sleep neatly, like the business woman? She has an unwrinkled blanket pulled up to her chin, with her hands folded tidily on top of it. She’s wearing a little mask over her eyes and her mouth is firmly closed.
I’m glad they’ve finally turned off the screen that shows a giant map of the Pacific, with our plane, three centimetres long, inching across. When it was on I couldn’t stop looking at it, even though it made me feel panicky because I couldn’t see the little plane moving at all. Maybe something’s gone terribly wrong with this flight and I’ll be stuck forever on my way to Los Angeles with my mother’s arm across me. Unless of course we crash. Which reminds me: that show I watched with hints on how to survive a plane crash was pretty stupid when you think about it. The passengers who died might have counted the rows between them and their two nearest exits a thousand times, and it wouldn’t show up on anybody’s survey because they’d be dead, wouldn’t they?