Lisdalia (3 page)

6

TANJA'S STORY

Lisdalia's main problem was that she was never really a kid. All that trouble she had with her dad; it wasn't the sort of hassle you'd expect from a kid that young. Nor was the “thing” she had going with Mike.

When I met her, she was eleven years old. She was the youngest kid in school, but from the way she talked, you'd swear she was one of the Year Twelves. I mean, she was smarter than any of the Year Twelves
—
any of the teachers in the school could tell you that
—
but it wasn't her “smarts” that caused her the problems. Not on their own. She was just too damned honest. She always said exactly what she thought … and she was always thinking. And people don't really like that. They feel threatened.

Here she was, dark hair, big eyes; a really cute-looking kid
—
beautiful, in fact
—
who didn't behave the way a “cute little girl” is supposed to behave.

I tell you, she may have had problems dealing with her father's attitudes
—
and some of those were pretty choice
—
but in some ways they weren't a whole lot different from what she faced at school or anywhere else.

People like you to act the way they think you're supposed to act. It makes them feel secure. And they have very strict opinions about how eleven-year-old kids should act. Eleven-year-old kids shouldn't give you sensible advice, they shouldn't explain things to you as if you're retarded, they shouldn't correct teachers on technical points and show them up in front of the class
—
and they shouldn't (if they also happen to be girls) have serious friendships with boys.

Don't ask anybody why. It's just the way things should be. They don't know why; it just
is.

I first met Lisdalia in the library at school.

“Nine-ninety-four,” she said, without lifting her gaze from the science-fiction novel she was reading. We were lined up at the borrowing desk; she was waiting to borrow the three or four books that she was holding under her arm — as well as the one she was already a quarter of the way through reading
—
while I was asking Mr Parnell, the librarian, where I'd find books on the Australian gold rushes.

I turned and looked at her, but she was so absorbed in her book that she didn't even realise it.

“What?” I said. My dad isn't one of those types who picks you up in public if you don't say “I beg your pardon” or “Excuse me”, so “What?” is my usual response if someone takes me by surprise. And this kid had.

After half a second, she looked up at me and sort of smiled. “Nine-ninety-four.” She repeated the information patiently, as though she was talking to a slightly retarded pet dog, who couldn't quite get the hang of “Sit!”. “It's the general number for Australian history. Unless you're looking for more detailed information on the gold rushes, like the social and economic effects. Then you might try nine-ninety-four point zero-three, but it's a little harder sometimes to find the relevant information in those …”

Suddenly, she trailed off and went back to her book, as if she was embarrassed.

Parnell was impressed. He was impressed if you could find the encyclopaedias without a road-map, and they were right in front of the entry doors. He had a point, too; after all, he was the one who had to answer all the stupid questions that kids like me asked every day. But this kid knew the actual numbers.

“How did you know that?” He looked straight past me and asked her the question. She looked up again
—
without the smile.

“I was a library monitor in Primary. I learned some of the numbers. The more common ones …”

He studied her for a moment. “What's your name?”

I don't think Parnell meant it to sound like one side of an interrogation on a cop-show. I think it was just his way of trying to be friendly
—
something he really wasn't very good at. He was far more comfortable bawling you out at the top of his voice for leaving the library in a mess, then telling everyone to be quiet, didn't they know there were people in here trying to work?

She looked up at him like a cornered rabbit. She'd only been in the school a couple of weeks, and she was still settling in. Anyone with half a brain could see that she was uncomfortable at being singled out. Anyone except Parnell. Other kids were beginning to look at her.

“Lisdalia …” she whispered, “Petrantonio.”

“So,
you're
Lisdalia.” Parnell leaned across the desk, as if he needed to get a closer look at her eye-balls. “I've heard a lot about you.”

After two weeks?

Most Year Sevens managed to stay anonymous for at least a couple of months. Even Shane Thomas took four or five weeks to gain a real “rep” in the school. She blushed and looked nervously out of the window. I could see Parnell winding up to carry on the third degree.

Time to act.

I grabbed her elbow and began to push her, not too gently, away from the desk.

“Could you help me find some of those history books? I've got a big project due next week, and
—''And on and on. I just kept rambling until we were behind the nine-hundreds shelf, out of sight.

“You okay?”

She nodded. And smiled a little. “Thanks.”

“Don't mind Parnell. He's harmless.” I decided to risk a question of my own, now she wasn't under the microscope. “What did he mean, he's heard a lot about you?”

Suddenly, the nervousness was gone, and a new light came into her eyes. “Maybe he heard about my last school.”

She paused and I nodded. “Yes?”

“I murdered three kids. They brought their books back late, so I slashed their throats with the librarian's letter-opener and hid the bodies behind the fiction shelves.” She looked down at her fingernails, pausing again for effect. “Other than that, I don't know what it could be.”

Mind your own beeswax, Tanja!

“Sorry. I didn't mean to …”

But suddenly she was relaxed. “Don't worry about it. I'm used to it. Do you still want some help with those books?”

She was younger than me, and ten centimetres shorter, but I got this strange feeling that I was looking up to her. I nodded dumbly, and she turned to scan the shelves, while I wondered exactly what it was she was “used to”.

Later, I worked it out. Being singled out; having people look at you like you're different. But by that time I was already her friend, and she certainly didn't seem “different” to me. Not in any way that really mattered.

“Here we are,” she said. “ ‘Gold Rushes of the 1850s'. It's not the best book, but it's a good start.”

She was right about that. It was a good start
—
in more ways than she realised.

7

COMPETITION

“I guess it would be all right,” I said. “If you really think it's good enough.”

It was second half of lunch, and I was in Miss Vegas' room again. But this time, for once, there was no problem. In the first few weeks of the year I'd spent quite a bit of time in that room, talking to her about “things”. It wasn't like I was unhappy at the school or anything. Not really. It was just that I'd had a little trouble “settling” — that's what teachers call it; it means behaving the same as everyone else, not making waves, getting on with the other kids … and with the teachers.

Miss Vegas held up the sheet with my poem on it. “Let's have no false modesty, Lisdalia.” One thing I really respected about her was the fact that, nice as she was, she didn't pull punches. You knew where you stood with her. If you went fishing for compliments, you were wasting your bait. “You
know
it's good enough. And I certainly wouldn't be wasting my time asking you if I didn't think it was.”

“Okay, then. You can send it.”

“Your father won't mind? I wouldn't want —”

“I doubt it. It's just a writing competition, after all. Besides, I might just forget to mention it to him. If I don't win, it won't matter, and if I do, there won't be a lot for him to complain about, will there?”

She smiled. We'd had talks about my father before. Now it was settled, she changed the subject. “How's Michael feeling?”

“Not too bad. His mum says it's just a virus; he'll be back on Monday.”

“That's good.” She sounded as if she meant it. As if she was really interested. A lot of teachers weren't; once you got out of their subject area, you didn't really exist. I guess that's why Miss Vegas got the job as our coordinator, even though it was only her third year of teaching. You have to care — and have a lot of patience — to deal with all the problems a bunch of Year Sevens can throw at you.

I'd never really had problems at school, not since they'd skipped Year Three and jumped me straight from Second to Fourth. But that was Primary.

High School was a whole new experience. You had lots of different teachers, and each one expected you to react in a different way. Most of them were okay, and a couple were great, but I had trouble with one or two. The same sort of trouble I had with my dad. They didn't listen to you. They used phrases like, “It's my way or the highway” if you didn't do things exactly the way they wanted. Their lessons were boring, and when the kids did little things — mostly pretty harmless — to liven them up, they'd hit the roof and throw detentions around like confetti at a wedding. It's funny how the teachers who kept you interested and actually taught you something never had to give out detentions or any of the other pointless punishments that were so much a part of other lessons.

Most of my “interviews” with Miss Vegas had been about the problems I'd had “adjusting” early on. A couple of the kids had given me a hard time — you know, calling me a T.P. (that's “teacher's pet”) and a crawler, just because I answered questions and actually did the little bit of work that we were asked to do. But they were never a real problem. They didn't know me; they came from Greenvale Public, and they hadn't had the chance to get used to the way I did things. Most of the kids, the ones who had come through from Boundary Park with me, simply ignored them, and the whole thing died down. Just like Miss Vegas had said it would.

My real problem was our Science teacher, Mr Plamenatz.

Now, I know that anyone with a name as unusual as mine shouldn't throw stones, but his first name was Wardell. Wardell Plamenatz. And I found myself tending to agree with Tanja that perhaps going through life saddled with a name like that might have had some sort of effect on the way he developed.

Mr Plamenatz suffered from a major personality problem. He thought he had one. A personality, that is; not a problem. He had a huge ego, but his main claim to fame was his unique ability to reduce a class of thirty kids to a state of screaming boredom in less time than it took to say “Open your books to page fifteen and copy out the first five paragraphs”.

I never did react very well to boredom, but I'm also, usually, very polite. But for some reason old “Valium” Plamenatz brought out the worst in me.

It wasn't just that he was deadly boring, and that he didn't know his stuff — or at least couldn't get it across to his students — it was the fact that he was an arrogant egomaniac and a bully.

As I said before, most kids will do little things to relieve their boredom — flick pen caps around; write dirty notes; ask stupid questions like, “What page are we on?” when he's already told them ten times, and anyway it's there on the board in bright red chalk (the kind that never rubs off properly, so you can't exactly read whatever it is he writes next).

They didn't do any of those things for long in
his
class.

Mainly because he humiliated them.

He was a big man, and he'd lean over them like King Kong and say something hurtful and personal. He seemed to be able to home in on whatever it was that worried them — everyone has something they feel insecure about — and he'd hammer away at it until they were so embarrassed they wouldn't dare open their mouth again.

And, of course, he was
never
wrong — just like my father — even when he wasn't right. But at least my father had his good points. We never detected any in Mr Plamenatz.

So, I began my own little “payback campaign”.

It was probably because he decided to pump up his ego by picking on Aaron Herbert, the most harmless and likeable kid in the whole form.

Even Shane Thomas had always left Aaron pretty much alone. Aaron had been in an accident when he was young, and he could be a little “slow” at times. He forgot things, and sometimes he'd daydream a little and wouldn't have a clue what was going on around him.

Just the sort of victim Plamenatz could handle.

It was last period, a few minutes before the hooter — not Aaron's best time of the day — and the poor kid was having trouble remembering some minor point which just happened to be right there on the board in front of him.

Plamenatz had launched into one of his performances, leaning over him, and announcing to “the audience” that “Mr Herbert” was in line to be the first kid in the history of the school to get a minus score on his report card for Science.

I looked across at Aaron. He was confused and scared, and there were tears forming in his eyes, and then I heard myself saying: “Leave him alone! You're not so perfect yourself.”

There was a sudden, horrible silence, and I saw Plamenatz stiffen.

His gaze slid slowly across the room until it met mine, and there was a look in his eyes which might have been hate or fear, but before he could speak, the hooter sounded and everyone began to pack up.

As I threw my things into my bag, forcing myself to look down, I felt him loom up in front of my desk.

“You wait behind, my girl.”

My girl!

If I was
his
girl, I'd apply for adoption.

Then I did the bravest — and scariest — thing I'd done in my life up to that point. I picked up my bag, turned on my heel, and threw over my shoulder, “I've got a bus to catch.” And I walked slowly towards the door, expecting at any moment to feel his hand on my shoulder, dragging me back.

It didn't happen. When I reached the door, I risked a quick glance. He hadn't moved, but the look on his face now was definitely one of hate.

From then on it just got worse.

He didn't say a word about it the next day, or in the days that followed. But he kept finding things about my work to criticise — something I had never experienced before — and he began to talk down to me in a “superior” voice, that only made him sound … childish. Once he even called me “Lisdalia the Failure”, which a couple of the Greenvale kids picked up on and used for a while.

So, I began to fight back.

I kept picking him up for spelling or punctuation mistakes on the board (he made quite a few, it's quite easy to do), and I'd ask him curly questions on whatever topic we were studying — ones I knew he wouldn't be able to answer. I'd spend half my free time in the library, looking up books for items to catch him out with.

It was war.

But he had more weapons.

He'd do something to get me to react, then he'd slap me with a punishment or a detention — which I'd refuse to do.

That was how I ended up seeing so much of Miss Vegas. Before they put me on school detention and contacted my parents, they decided to give her a go at me. I think my Primary record might have helped; I'm not sure Shane Thomas would have got the same deal.

I came to her room all defensive, ready to … I don't really know what I was ready for — I hadn't
planned
any of it. In the end, it didn't matter. Within five minutes, we were talking like old friends, and by the end of that lunchtime, I was just a little closer to “adjusting”.

“Remember,” she said, as she closed the door behind us, “you're not there to compete with him — or anyone else. You don't know everything …” she paused, and smiled a little. “Not yet. Mr Plamenatz and all your teachers are there to help, but they can't do it if you're fighting with them. Or if you're on school detention.”

“But he's …” I began, but she cut in.

“A teacher.” There was a finality in her voice, but the expression on her face softened it a little. She ruffled my hair. “What do you expect me to say? Look, just try to find a way to work with him — or at least not make things any worse. There will be a lot of things in life that don't go the way you want, and you can't go fighting all of them. Roll with it; it's good for building character.”

So I tried. I called off the war, and we entered a sort of “armed truce”.

At least he didn't pick on Aaron again. Even when the poor kid fell asleep out of boredom in the middle of a lesson, or copied paragraphs from the wrong page, and then couldn't answer any of the questions on the board.