Escape from Year Eight Page 5

  Mrs Johnson looks back at him and says in the coldest voice I’ve ever heard, ‘Don’t you threaten me, young man.’

  He brushes past her roughly and strides out the door. Mrs Johnson picks up Leon’s drawing and scrunches it into a ball in her fist. Then she turns to the rest of the class before we have a chance to react.

  ‘Anyone?’ she asks. ‘Why did Jess run?’

  Simone raises her hand. Mrs Johnson nods at her, relieved to be speaking to a harmless nerd. ‘Go on, Simone.’

  ‘Well, I think Jess is trying to run away from his problems. Especially from his dad, because he wants Jess to do everything right, like…’

  Simone says more but I’m not listening. Where’s Leon gone? How come the teacher had to badger him? And then when he stomped out, she acts like nothing happened? I bet I know what he’d like to draw now. Mrs Johnson with her arms cut off and flying in different directions, her bloody torso in the foreground. With her eyes, staring out from the page, crossed over with a big black X.

  11.00 a.m.

  It’s recess time. Amy and Jazz and me are walking around the schoolyard, but my mind is still back in the classroom. ‘How come Old Wart Nose treated Leon that way?’

  Jazz shrugs and says, ‘She hates him,’ as though that should be obvious to anyone.

  ‘Everybody does,’ Amy adds.

  I don’t hate him, I want to say. But for once I manage to keep my big mouth shut. Why should I defend him, anyway? It’s not like he’s been particularly charming to me. But it made me mad when Wart Nose picked on him, and it was mean of her to crumple his cartoon. Why do I care? His drawings are disturbed. I should be concentrating on Amy and Jazz.

  ‘Ever had one of these?’ Jazz asks me. He’s holding out a big round chocolate, a bit bigger than a Mint Slice, with crinkly edges. I shouldn’t take it – it’ll give me pimples. But Jazz is looking at me like he’ll be crushed if I refuse.

  I accept the chocolate and take a bite. It’s amazingly sweet. Disgustingly delicious, Mum would say. Then the filling reaches my taste buds: creamy and salty and nutty as well as sweet.

  ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘I can’t believe I’ve lived till now and never tasted this.’

  ‘Don’t you have peanut butter in Australia?’ Jazz looks alarmed.

  ‘Sure,’ I assure him, ‘but not with chocolate.’ I bite off another chunk. ‘It tastes so American.’

  Amy and Jazz both laugh. It’s kind of scary, being with them. It’s like they expect everything I say to be funny or interesting just because I’m from another country. What’ll they do when I run out of thoughts to entertain them with?

  ‘I never knew there were places on earth that didn’t sell Reese’s,’ Jazz says in wonder.

  ‘What about Africa?’ Amy chides. ‘And Bangladesh. And… all those other countries where kids are starving? As if they get to pig out on peanut butter cups!’

  ‘I don’t mean them,’ Jazz answers crossly, cramming the rest of his own chocolate into his mouth. ‘I meant… you know… civilised countries.’

  We trudge on in sulky silence. Great. What if they break up? Will one of them take friendship custody of me?

  ‘When did you guys meet each other?’ I ask. Jazz told me he lives on the other side of town from us. He gets to school on a different bus. But somehow everybody here seems to have known each other since they were born. Maybe even before that. So it’s kind of a surprise when Jazz answers, ‘I guess we met on our first day of kindergarten.’

  ‘No we didn’t,’ Amy says grumpily.

  ‘We didn’t?’

  Amy looks sideways at Jazz, as if she’s deciding whether to keep on being crabby, but something makes her smile. ‘I remember when I first met you. It was in the barber shop.’

  ‘What barber shop?’ Jazz asks suspiciously.

  ‘Walter’s! Who else’s would it be? We were, I don’t know, about three. I was gonna get my bangs cut and your dad was still in the chair. The barber gave you some gum cos you were being a good boy.’

  ‘I don’t remember that.’ Jazz sounds sulky again.

  ‘Well I do!’ Amy says triumphantly. ‘The funny bit is, you scrunched up your gum wrapper and were pushing it around on the floor going “Vroom vroom!”, pretending it was a car.’

  ‘I never did that!’ Jazz looks mortified.

  ‘Yes you did.’ Amy’s giggling now. ‘You looked really dumb. But you were so cute then.’

  I’m laughing too, so Jazz relents and joins in. I’m starting to feel really good when I catch sight of him.

  Leon. Standing alone under a tree, staring at nothing, as peanut-butter-cupless as a Bangladeshi.

  ‘Doesn’t he talk to anybody?’ I ask.

  ‘Not really.’ Amy shrugs. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘I think he might have said something in sixth grade,’ Jazz jokes.

  ‘That was probably just a sneeze,’ Amy adds, ‘or a hiccup.’

  I don’t feel like joining in their banter, remembering the way Leon looked at Wart Nose. ‘I thought he might chuck a full-on spaz in English class,’ I say.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘You know, have a fit.’

  ‘A full-on spaz!’ Jazz does a jerky little dance like a spastic person. ‘That’s a good one.’

  I didn’t mean to insult anyone disabled.

  We’ve passed Leon’s tree, and I decide not to worry about him any more. It feels great to make Amy and Jazz laugh. ‘If you guys ever come to Australia,’ I say in my best ocker accent, ‘I’ll buy youse a Four’n Twenty pie and some caramel Tim Tams.’

  4.30 p.m.

  As I step off the school bus, Poppet trots down the driveway to meet me. Her little feet – three white and one black – pad along the gravel without making a sound. My runners, crunching loudly with every step, seem like giant clodhoppers in comparison. Poppet stops when she gets to me, looks up and says, ‘Meow?’ Which I take to mean, ‘How was your day?’

  ‘Good question,’ I answer, scooping her up and carrying her towards the house. I tell myself not to be scared to go in today. It’s just a house. And Leon is just a boy, even if he is weird. When we get there, I set Poppet down on the front steps. She looks affronted.

  ‘Sorry,’ I explain, ‘but Mum said you definitely aren’t allowed in the house.’ To compensate, I go to the fridge for a block of cheese that I’ve sussed out she loves. It’s mottled yellow and white and it’s called Monterey Jack. Sounds like a singer that Eve and Will might listen to. I’m about to cut off a slice when the phone rings, making me jump like I’ve just been electrocuted. All the fears that I left at the front door come rushing in. Don’t be stupid, I tell myself. It’s probably just Mum checking up on me.

  I pick up the phone. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Kate!’ an old lady’s voice shouts back. ‘You get on down here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve been waitin’ for you to get off that bus. I got a job for you.’

  ‘Is this Nadine?’

  ‘Who else would it be? Spot’s been naggin’ me about when you’re gonna come again, so you better make it snappy.’

  Can’t say I’m broken-hearted to be getting out of here. ‘Well… okay.’

  I drop Poppet’s cheese into a bowl we put out for her on the front steps, give her a quick pat, then head on down the road. It’s a gorgeous autumn afternoon. The sun – low in the sky – slants across the cornfields, highlighting the gold amongst the green. Funny to think it’s spring back in Melbourne.

  I turn the corner toward Nadine’s place, and as I reach the top of the hill, Spot bounds out to meet me. Thank goodness he doesn’t grab my arm this time. He runs around me twice, then trots up his driveway, turning his head to see if I’m following.

  ‘Hey there, kiddo!’ Nadine calls. She’s sitting at a card table in the front yard. There’s another kitchen chair beside the table, so I sit there.

  ‘Seein’ it’s such a nice day,’ Nadine says, ‘I thought we’d have us a picnic.’


  She hands me a tall glass of a light-brown drink with about ten ice cubes in it. I take a sip, expecting watered-down Coke, but instead taste bitterness.

  ‘What’s this?’ I ask warily.

  ‘Iced tea,’ she answers. ‘It ain’t poison. Try some sugar in it.’ She shoves a fat little china woman in front of me, then reaches over and lifts off her head. She’s hollow, with sugar cubes inside her.

  ‘That’s cute,’ I say, dropping two cubes into my tea.

  ‘Well,’ she says dryly, ‘I wouldn’t have chose it myself. But when you got seventeen-grand and great grandkids, they kind of run out of good ideas for Christmas presents.’

  I don’t know what to say to that, so I ask, ‘What’s this job you’ve got for me?’

  ‘Here,’ she says, pointing to a plate of cookies.

  ‘I baked four dozen of these this afternoon, so you’d better get started.’

  ‘That’s my job?’

  ‘Yep.’ Nadine smiles smugly.

  ‘I guess I can handle it,’ I admit as I reach for a cookie. It’s crispy at the edges but chewy in the middle, with milk-chocolate chips and another, more surprising taste.

  ‘Cool,’ I say. ‘This is the second time today I’ve had peanut butter and chocolate together.’

  Nadine looks disappointed.

  ‘But these are heaps yummier!’ I figure I’d better take another cookie. ‘Nothing beats homemade.’

  Nadine watches me munch, slipping Spot a cookie without taking her eyes off me. ‘You know anybody else who’s old?’ she asks.

  Funny question, but somebody who makes cookies this good deserves an answer. ‘Eve, that’s my grandmother, she’s pretty old.’

  ‘How old?’ Nadine peers at me.

  ‘I don’t know exactly. Maybe sixty-five?’

  ‘Ha! She’s a spring chicken. Guess how old I am?’

  I’m afraid I’ll insult her. But she’s waiting for my answer so I say, ‘Uh… seventy?’

  She cackles. ‘You’re a flatterer! I’m seventy-nine.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Yep. Seventy-nine years, three months and twelve days. I had me a hip replacement a while back, and since then I feel younger than ever.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Yep. I’ll take all the medical intervention I can get, long as it’s helpin’ me. But when I start to slow down for good, when I can’t make a garden come spring, or hunt me a deer in the fall, that’s the time I’ll lay down and die. No waitin’ around in a nursing home for this old dame. I’m not scared to meet him.’ She points up to the sky. ‘In fact, I’m lookin’ forward to havin’ a cup of coffee with him and asking him a question or two.’

  ‘You hunt deer?’ I ask.

  ‘Sure do,’ she answers proudly. ‘Been baggin’ me a buck every fall since I was twelve. You can’t go past venison for flavour if you ask me.’

  I must look a little horrified because she says, ‘I use every bit of that buck that’s fit to eat, and it ain’t like they’re an endangered species. If we didn’t shoot some, they’d overrun the place.’

  ‘Isn’t it scary?’

  ‘A little scary’s good for you. That’s why I took my kids out huntin’ when they were young. Lou-Ann as well as the boys.’

  I picture a tiny girl in a pink party dress holding the rifle I saw in Leon’s cartoon.

  ‘How old do you have to be to hunt?’ I ask.

  ‘You gotta be twelve to get a youth licence. That’s how old Leon was last huntin’ season. I offered to take him out. I thought maybe he was grown up enough to appreciate an adventure. I even said I’d buy him the licence. But he didn’t want no part of it.’

  Nadine scowls as she says that. Then she looks at me and brightens up. ‘How about you? You want to try huntin’?’

  ‘I don’t think I’d be very good at it,’ I squeak in alarm. ‘I was hopeless when our home group went on an excursion to Dark Zone. That’s where you zap each other with lasers. Matthew, he’s this guy who likes me, he shot me about ten times.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Nadine says, ‘that’s one way to show a gal you’re interested.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agree wistfully. Suddenly I’m homesick for Matthew and the feathery peppercorn tree we used to sit beneath while we sipped our blue granitas.

  Nadine holds the plate of cookies out to me.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I say.

  ‘Well,’ she replies, ‘you don’t have to make up your mind about the huntin’ right away. Youth season don’t open till the seventeenth… Anyways, how are they treatin’ you over at that school?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Leon still showin’ up every day?’

  ‘Yeah…’ I want to say something about Leon, or ask something, but I can’t think how to put it.

  I must be taking too long holding up my end of the conversation, because Nadine starts up again. ‘When that boy was little, he loved bein’ outdoors. There’s this cabin I own in a patch of timber up near Marshall-town, and he liked goin’ up there more than anything. I used to take him every spring to hunt mushrooms. Ain’t much to it, just a room with a couple of beds and a rickety old kitchen, but Leon thought he was in heaven if we could go and spend a few nights.

  ‘Ralph, that’s my oldest son, he mainly uses the cabin now, during deer season mostly. He calls it his huntin’ lodge, but I call it his gettin’-away-from-the-wife lodge.’ Nadine chomps another cookie and says, ‘Ralph just loves my peanut butter cookies. They’ve been his favourite food since he was one-and-a-half years old. If he don’t have at least a couple dozen of those cookies stored up at the cabin, he reckons he don’t feel secure.’

  I’ve finally thought of a question. ‘Do you think he’s normal?’

  ‘Well.’ Nadine sounds huffy. ‘He went bald kind of early, but other than that…’

  ‘Huh? Oh no, I don’t mean your son. I mean Leon!’ I’m so flustered I reach for another cookie.

  Nadine’s got that look in her eyes like the day I met her, when she was talking about Carrie. ‘Leon was…’ She seems to be thinking hard. ‘He was the most softhearted little kid I ever knew. Him and me would be watching TV, and if somebody played a mean trick on somebody else, even if it was just a cartoon, he’d get upset. Got so I wouldn’t even turn on the set when he was here. And you couldn’t read him a storybook. Those fairy tales, they’re full of people bein’ mean to each other.’

  I’m not sure if Nadine’s answered my question about whether Leon’s normal or not. She says sadly, ‘I miss that boy talkin’ to me.’

  ‘It’s not just you,’ I say, trying to make her feel better. ‘He doesn’t talk to anyone at school either.’

  ‘Yep,’ Nadine agrees, ‘that’s what I hear. A voluntary mute, I believe that’s the official diagnosis. Carrie told me some of his teachers think he ought to get treated by some fancy specialist, but Carrie don’t like that idea.’

  ‘Why not?’ I ask.

  ‘Cos she’s afraid they’ll give him drugs, and Carrie hates drugs. She’s had dozens of different prescriptions tried out on her. She says the best they ever do is make her fat, or feel like she’s got a big ol’ soggy sponge in place of a brain.’

  I can’t help giggling at that. Nadine grins a little, too. ‘She can make a body laugh all right. And just cos she ain’t been a model mother in some people’s eyes don’t mean she don’t think the world of that boy. She reckons he’ll talk again when he’s ready.’

  Spot comes over and rests his head on my knee. Across the road the sun has dropped below the level of the trees in the forest, which everyone round here calls the timber. The air is getting chilly. As I scratch behind the dog’s warm ear, I think how often my own brain hasn’t worked the way I wanted it to.

  7.00 p.m.

  ‘Why do you wanna go there?’ I say. ‘You don’t need to lose any more.’

  Mum frowns at me across the big round table where we’re sitting. We’re in what Janice called the dining room, and we’ve got Weight Watchers lasagne
in front of us, warmed up in the microwave. And Mum’s just told me she’s found a Weight Watchers group to join in Ames, the town where her college is.

  ‘It’ll help me not gain,’ Mum informs me, ‘and it’s a good way to meet people.’

  ‘You already met somebody at Weight Watchers,’ I point out. ‘And then you went off and left him.’

  Even I’m annoyed by my sulky tone. But I can’t help it. I feel like crap. Must be all the cookies I shovelled down at Nadine’s. I take my fork and mush up my lasagne, which was already mushy enough. It’s too disgusting to swallow. I wonder what sort of foods Alice likes now. I wonder if she’ll even remember me by the time I get back to Australia. Sarah emailed me that Ali’s going to baby swim classes and Jake loves kinder gym. My little sister and brother are growing up without me!

  Mum is looking at me in her concerned-parent manner. ‘Am I leaving you here alone too much?’ she asks in that patient voice that drives me crazy. ‘Is that the problem?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I like it here alone.’ Which is not entirely true, but that doesn’t mean I want Mum around all the time. So why am I complaining about her going to Weight Watchers? Because sometimes anything she does makes me mad.

  Some of my mood must have rubbed off on her, because now she’s looking all hurt and sad. Well, I’m not going to feel sorry for her. She’s the one who got us into this. ‘Don’t you miss Rick at all?’ I ask her.

  ‘Of course I do.’ The patience has vanished from her voice. Now it’s soggy with tears. Great. All I need is for her to start crying. Which is what Rick did when he said goodbye to us at the airport. Mum is his first and only serious girlfriend, and she seems to think that’s some sort of crime that makes him totally unsuitable to settle down with.

  ‘He’s such a sweet guy,’ Mum says, wiping her eyes on one of the pink paper serviettes that Janice left for us. ‘Maybe I’m stupid not to jump at the chance to marry him. I just don’t want to make another mistake, like I did with your dad.’

  She looks at me, her eyes glittery. She’s teary, but she’s not going to cry. I can see she wants to, but she’s making a big effort not to for my sake. I guess I do feel a little sorry for her.