Dreaming of Amelia (2 page)

For there, in the doorway, they stood:

Riley and Amelia.

I knew, at once, that it was they.

 

Lydia Jaackson-Oberman
Student No: 8233410

There was the first time I saw this exam question.

It happened just now.

‘The dynamics of first impressions', said the question.

‘Are you serious?' I replied. (The supervisor frowned at me for talking out loud.)

My first impression of this question is that it sucks.

Nothing has happened so far to change my mind.

There was also the first time I saw them.

It happened in rollcall, the first day of the year.

He had a pair of swimming goggles slung over his shoulder. She had bloodshot eyes. He sat on the window ledge, facing the room. She turned and pressed her forehead to the glass to look out.

They were talking to each other.

I remember he called her Ame. Like aim. Like a command. And I thought that her bloodshot eyes were looking out the window for a target.

I remember she called him Riley, like his name could not be touched.

They both had wet hair, only hers was brushed back into a long ponytail. From behind, I could see that the ponytail was leaking: thin watershadows formed on her school shirt.

As I watched, he rubbed his hands over his head. He was friendly and rough with his head, as if it was a dog. Now his hair stood up in spikes.

And then something happened.

She reached a hand towards him and he reached his hand
towards her, but his eyes found the eyes of strangers in the room. Their hands almost touched but did not.

I saw cobwebs in the slender, empty space between those hands.

Later, at recess, I told my friends about them.

‘There's two new people,' I said — and a storm rattled the windows of the room.

I said they'd been together for years. I said they were swimmers. I said they trained every day, and that swimming was her passion but he went along just to swim beside her. I said she had a secret that was breaking his heart.

Everything I said was based on my impression of Amelia and Riley at the window in the classroom.

But nothing has happened so far to change my mind.

 

Tobias George Mazzerati
Student No: 8233555

A blast of rain like a sudden loss of temper. Thunderclaps that feel personal. Hailstones the size of sheep.

Or practically that size.

It's a mad kind of weather that they have in this country, to be sure. I'm an Irish lad, been here in Castle Hill these past two years — and today, as the storm rages around me, I can feel a darkness looming.

Night terrors have haunted me lately. Strange, dreadful visions of Maggie's face: she laughs and then her smile contorts into a scream.

Och, my Maggie, the sweetest, hottest girl you ever saw, and I left her behind.

When I said goodbye, I promised that I'd write once a day. Maggie said she'd write every hour.

Her eyes, I couldn't see them for the tears, as she swore she'd find a way to come here too. She'd find a leprechaun, she said, but she'd not take his gold coin, for it'd only turn to ashes in her hand.

‘Ah well, then,' I agreed. ‘Don't be taking that.'

‘I'll take his silver shilling instead,' says she. ‘It's magic, the silver one, and returns to your purse each time you pay it.'

Eventually, she'd have a stockpile of silver, and then she'd buy a ticket and come.

‘Why go to the trouble,' says I, ‘of finding the leprechaun? Just grow yourself a pair of wings and fly.'

‘Tom Kincaid,' she says, and flicks my wrist, but it was good to see the spark behind her tears.

She's not written to me for almost a year now, but I keep writing.

I wrote about the snakes in Castle Hill the other day.
You can't walk anywhere
, I wrote,
but you'll fall over a snake
. (That was an exaggeration.)
They're not venomous
, I added next, so she wouldn't worry. (But the black or brown ones, they'll likely kill you.)

Do you remember
, I wrote last week,
the day we lay side by side on the grass, and you told me your wee brother was learning to count? The little one would say, ‘one, two,' and then ‘six, seven' and ‘nine, twelve', for he hadn't yet put it all together.

‘Imagine the world of numbers that way,' you said. ‘A great unfolding mystery is what they are, with chasms of wonder between.'

I laughed at you, but I knew what you meant, and I held your hand, and we looked at the sky and our thoughts flew together, the way that they do. ‘Those clouds,' we thought, ‘are a great unfolding mystery, with chasms of wonder between. And the same,' we thought, ‘is our future.'

And our hands tightened like to something fierce.

Today, I wrote,
Dear Maggie
— and the thunder roared —
there are heatwaves here so powerful that birds fall dead from the air. Days when the sky turns black with bats, driven in swarms by hot winds. They swoop down, these bats, crowd onto trees, and a constant, rhythmic thudding begins as they drop dead or dying to the ground.

I tore that letter to shreds, and there it is now in the mud. For louder even than the crashing rain is the constant, rhythmic thudding of my heart. I know what is coming, and it's darkness.

I know that the future is gone.

Och, and when I think of how they shaved my head, clapped irons on my ankles, and sent me away to the ends of the earth for the rest of my God-given life — they got me for stealing a sheep — and when I think —

Not to mention, I have just noticed that the exam question asks for a personal memoir.

So you want to hear from me — Toby Mazzerati — not some Irish convict dude named Tom Kincaid who lived here in 1804.

Hence, please disregard the above, and I will start my answer now.

Thanks for your time.

The KL Mason Patterson Scholarship File

A Scholarship Enabling Two (2) Students to Attend Ashbury High for their Final Year of High School including Tuition Fees, Uniform Allowance, and Monthly Stipend. The Two (2) Students must demonstrate Financial Hardship and Outstanding Potential.

A Bonus of $25,000 each to be paid to the Two (2) Scholarship Winners upon the completion of their Final Year of High School.

 

Dear Committee Members,

We're delighted to announce that we've narrowed the field to a tiny shortlist of FIVE applicants!!

The five students' names are:

David Peter Montgomery
Riley Terence Smith
Sura Eve Bajinksi
Xavier Paul Simeon
Amelia Grace Damaski

Supporting documentation for each student, including applicant essays, references, school records, etc, attached.

So! Next step is for the committee to interview these five contenders. Look over the material, get back to us with your comments or questions, and we'll set up the interviews.

All the best,

Chris Botherit (English Coordinator, Ashbury High)

(with Rob Garcia (History Coordinator & Drama Teacher, Ashbury High))

PS Two of the applicants on this shortlist have clearly had some troubled times. As you will see from the attached, the troubles have manifested themselves in ways that are a bit startling! But you'll
also
see that they have lots of ‘potential' (in an unexpected area . . .), suffer great financial hardship, have very persuasive reference letters — and Roberto and I are keen to meet with them! So, they've made the cut!

Dear Mr Botherit and Mr Garcia,

Re: (Sir Kendall Laurence) Mason Patterson Scholarship — Shortlist

Thank you for your memo.

To begin I'd like to quibble with your
tone
. Shouldn't we be more formal? This is, after all, the inaugural year of the KL Mason Patterson Scholarship. Does not the late Sir Kendall deserve rather more respect? Phrases such as ‘narrowed the field' and ‘made the cut' have surely been lifted direct from the cinematographic films.

And, truly, are so many exclamation points quite the thing?

(As a dear friend of the late Sir Kendall, I can assure you there was little he loathed so much as the cinematographic film and the exclamation point.)

Now, I have studied the papers relating to the applicants David, Sura and Xavier. What a marvellous little trio! Such diligent young things — and all seem to me to come from good, quiet, respectable stock. They are Ashbury through and through. Indeed, I can imagine
each of them walking the corridors in my
own
glory days at Ashbury. I am sure they will enchant us at the interviews.

However, I am bewildered as to why you have included the students named Riley and Amelia. What I see here is not ‘manifestations of trouble', Mr Botherit. It is
trouble.
Through and through. Either you are much less astute than I have been led to believe — and I say that with all the respect you are due — or you are making a sort of a ‘joke'. If so, the joke is in very bad taste, and I assure you, Sir Kendall would
not
have laughed.

Yours faithfully,

Constance Milligan (Associate Chair, Ashbury Alumni Association)

Chris and Rob,

What are you on?

Riley Smith and Amelia Damaski?

Delete them from the shortlist and find another two, pronto.

Cheers,

Bill Ludovico (Ashbury School Principal/ Economics Teacher)

Dear Mr Botherit and Mr Garcia,

Remind me how you talked me into joining this committee.

I guess Sura and Xavier would be the obvious choices. They seem scarily smart. And desperately dull. I don't especially want to meet them. Do we really have to meet them?

Yours,

Patricia Aganovic (Parent Representative 1)

Chris and Rob,

My two cents' worth:

The one named Sura, now she sounds perfect. I can't tell you what
an accomplished violinist like that would do for the school orchestra.

(Apparently, Riley has taught himself to play the drums. A self-taught percussionist! So is my two-year-old. Say no more.)

Kind regards,

Lucy Wexford (Music Coordinator, Ashbury High)

Mr Botherit and Mr Garcia,

Constance, once again.

Forgive this scribbled ‘postscript', but it occurs to me that it would be the height of foolishness to keep Riley and Amelia on our shortlist for a moment longer. According to the Scholarship Charter, we are obliged to interview all students on the shortlist. Ergo, at present we have to interview them!
We will have to be in the same room as them!
They will see our faces!

(No doubt, they will learn our names too, for good manners will oblige us to introduce ourselves.)

I urge you to remove them with haste.

Yours sincerely,

Constance Milligan

Mr B and Mr G,

Guessing that Amelia and Riley are included for humour value?

David, Sura and Xavier sound okay.

Although, if any of those three come to Ashbury their marks will be off the charts. My boy Toby's rank will slip and, from what he tells me, if it slips any more it'll end up in pieces on the concrete.

Could you find a couple of ‘Applicants with Outstanding Potential' who aren't likely to live up to their Outstanding Potential for a few years yet?

Cheers,

Jacob Mazzerati (Parent Representative 2)

Mr Bothersome and Mr Gracias,

I write with urgent haste. It is I, Constance again — by my nightlight — at midnight — for I have just awoken from a dreadful nightmare, dreadful! and I have
no choice
but to write to you at once!

I have seen them! In my dream! It was those applicants, Riley and Amelia — oh, they were wicked, monstrous,
satanic
creatures — miscreants! — they had sprung, fully formed, from the loins of —

Please hearken to my words:

In the dream, we were interviewing them. Riley had taken the form of a great hairy ape, and Amelia was a little black viper. (She had wrapped herself around the back of that bright red chair, the one that dear Patricia Aganovic favours at our committee meetings.)
And do you know what they did?
Why,
that ape and that viper, that pair of vicious reprobates, they spent the entire interview STUDYING US ALL!
Oh, their quick, cunning eyes were busy staring and
staring at us
! (No doubt, they were valuing our jewellery and our clothes and the quality of our haircuts! And I myself, in this dream (and in real life, if you can credit it), had just got a new perm and rinse — it keeps my spirits up — AND I was wearing my good pearl necklace and my great aunt's ruby rings!)

Quite reasonably, I asked a simple question: ‘What of your parents? What do they do?'

Well, they laughed and laughed and laughed.

Such hideous, horrible, howling laughter!

Then Riley, the ape, changed form and became a nasty little squirrel with blood-red eyes. And Amelia, the viper, turned into a sort of leaky fountain pen and spilled all over the floor, and there I was with my good mop and bucket, the expensive mop with the fancy handle that I use on the floorboards in my —

But that is incidental.

What is important is this! D'you not see it? The dream was a
WARNING
. And we MUST PAY HEED. If we interview these two, each of us will find ourselves secretly
WEIGHED
as a
potential target
for their wicked, scheming ways!