Fury (11 page)

“Oh my God, Marianne! I got scared half to death,” exclaimed Lexi loudly. Then she started giggling again. Marianne laughed loudly and slapped Ella on the back.

“Do you mind being more careful?” said Ella, with a tone of annoyance.

That was the first time I’d heard Ella annoyed. I wanted to look into her face. To see this new, other side of her. But the room was too dark.

“It’s only feathers,” said Marianne, catching a handful.

“Yeah, but my mum’s going to kill me when she finds out that not only have I let you into her secret room, but that you’ve messed it up as well.”

I liked how Ella used the words
secret room.
Maybe that’s where she keeps her Mean Girl, the one that doesn’t keep sucking upwards all the time. I reckon if you looked inside me you’d find a cabinet filled with cracked china dolls.

“I’ll clean it up,” said Marianne. She was serious again. “So what did you want to show us?”

Marianne and Ella stared at each other in the dark.

“This,” said Ella and she pointed to a shelf.

There sat four severed white heads. Each one was wearing an identical mask made of speckled brown feathers, wire whiskers and pointed ears. They were cat faces. Where the noses should be sat tiny red ribbon roses instead.

“Perfect,” said Marianne and she beamed at Ella with what could have been a genuine smile. Or not. The mask came off its stand and over her face before I could tell.

When we looked at each other again, we realised we were not ladies anymore. Now, we were feral.

“I think there is a mirror up the back,” said Ella.

I could only tell it was Ella from the colour of her dress. She was the same height as Lexi, and Lexi was the same height as me. One day I would look back at this frozen picture inside my head and wonder why it was Lexi. What it was that was so different about her.

I knocked a shelf with my shoulder and a white-feathered owl nodded back at me. Pearls and ribboned lace dripped from its empty eyes.

“What’s this?” asked Marianne, standing in front of a black sheet. In the dark it shimmered like black water. She gasped and took a step back, treading on Lexi’s toes and elbowing me in the stomach.

“Sorry,” she said. I looked at her face but in the candlelight I could only see the expression of an immovable cat.

Marianne took hold of the sheet and, with a sharp tug, pulled it away.

We found ourselves staring at the mounted head of a dead wolf.

Marianne screamed. Ella screamed. Lexi and I screamed and we all turned around and start running. Feathers whipped through the small space and flew out from under our feet. The pillar candle blew out.

Ella had forgotten that she was supposed to be discreet. Marianne had forgotten that she had promised to help Ella hide the evidence. We ran screaming down the stairs and out through the front door.

It was Marianne who started laughing first. I thought I was
the leader, but maybe it was at that point that things changed. Marianne laughed so hard she doubled over. And staring at her, a stranger in a Regent dress and a brown cat’s mask, we all started to laugh as well.

“Oh my God, how stupid are we?” coughed Marianne.

“But who are we now, really?” sighed Lexi wiping her eyes.

“We are nobody now,” replied Marianne. “That’s why we can do what we want. Come on, let’s go.”

“But where are we going?”

No one seemed to hear me. They were already walking off together, so all I could do was catch up. Under the street lamps, our shadows were extra long and almost devil-horned.

It didn’t take me long to figure out where we were going. I could walk this journey with my eyes closed, even though I haven’t been here for the longest time. How long has it been? Ten years? Longer?

A few times Marianne got lost, but I knew where she was taking us. I knew where she was taking
me.
The lamps seemed to light our way like they already knew. This was the way to Neil’s house.

“I think this is it,” said Marianne looking up at the large, dark red shape. “Tell us Eliza, are we where we need to be?”

“Yes,” I replied stiffly, but Marianne didn’t hear me. She was bending down by the side of the driveway and grabbing a handful of stones. She looked up to the window in the loft and she aimed a stone right at it.

“Marianne, what are you doing?” I hissed.

“Wait!” replied Marianne. She lobbed another stone at the window.

I turned around. Behind me, Lexi and Ella stood silently like masked twins.

“I think we should leave,” I said to Marianne.

“Hang on. Look!”

A light went on inside. The window was pushed upwards and Neil looked out. He was wearing a white singlet. Inside my mask, I winced.

Neil waved. Marianne waved back. Then she took a stone and hurled it at him.
Hard.
Neil jumped out of the way and the stone disappeared somewhere inside his room. I glared at Marianne. Well, as best I could glare out of a cat mask covering half my face. But Marianne thought it was hilarious. She aimed another stone at him. Neil disappeared inside the room.

“Marianne!” I shouted and I grabbed her arm. “Mari—I don’t think this is such a—
aahhh!”

I screamed as a stream of cold water hit both of us at once. I slid the mask onto my forehead and looked up.

Neil looked down at me in surprise. He was holding a suspiciously empty glass.

“Eliza?”

“Yeah?” I replied, wincing again.

Marianne though, was not finished. She had gone back to the side of the driveway and was picking up more stones.

“What are you doing wandering the streets after curfew?”

“Secret women’s business,” I replied, looking back up at him. Neil smiled down at me. He dodged to the right as another stone sailed past his ear.

Lexi and Ella appeared to be helping Marianne choose the best stones. They had also pushed their masks up. As Marianne lobbed another stone, the both of them stared at her open-mouthed. I would have sworn they were looks of adoration.

This time the stone hit the glass above Neil’s head and there was a cracking noise. I jumped. A light flickered on somewhere downstairs. Neil looked up at the cracked pane and then he looked back down at us again. The four of us stared up at him, frozen on the spot, completely guilty and completely visible.

“What have I done to deserve this attack from you lovely ladies?” asked Neil.

“You should have defended us from Gauntly in English today,” said Marianne, with her hand on her hips. “It was very unchivalrous of you to just sit there and let us just take his crap.”

Neil looked at the cracked window again and then back to Marianne.

“I’m sorry,” he replied. “I won’t let that happen again.”

From somewhere downstairs in the house, we could hear a man and a woman’s voice.

“Okay. Time to leave,” said Marianne. She pulled her mask down. Lexi and Ella did the same. Marianne grabbed Lexi’s fingers in one hand, Ella’s in the other and made a run for it. The light on the front porch flicked on. I gathered up my skirt and turned around.

“Eliza!”

I turned again and looked up at Neil.

“Just want to say,” he said, “that you look pretty…”

I bit my bottom lip.

“…strange. But in a good way.”

Oh yeah.
Right.
I rolled my eyes. At that moment Mr and Mrs Fernandes appeared on the porch in hilarious, matching dressing gowns.

“I think I looked better before you dumped water all over me,” I replied. Neil winked at me. I made a face at him and pushed my mask down. Neil slammed his window and the light went off in his room. I ran after the others into the safe shadows of the street.

Marianne, Lexi and Ella had stopped under a street lamp. They were panting and falling over each other in laughter, masks discarded on the ground.

“Marianne was telling us about what happened in English today,” exclaimed Ella. “If only I’d been there, Lizzie!”

No, I don’t think so,
I thought.
No, you don’t call me that.

“This is the best fun I have ever had,” said Ella, still puffing. “I’ve—never done anything like this before—this is just crazy mad!”

“Well,” said Marianne, squeezing Ella’s shoulder. “It’s because you made the right choice to hang out with us.”

“Um, yeah,” replied Ella and she put on a bright smile.

“I propose a toast to our new friend,” said Marianne. “She’s just passed her first test with flying colours.”

Lexi was standing there beaming. I thought about giving Marianne a dirty look. I noticed lately that Marianne thought she made the rules. I didn’t like it.

“Let’s go back and get cleaned up,” said Marianne.

“So. You’re still all coming over to my house tomorrow night to choose outfits?” I asked, inserting myself between Marianne and Lexi. “Oh, by the way, Ella, Blonde Two is having a birthday party for Blonde One this Saturday. I put your name down to go. Hope you don’t mind.”

“I know,” replied Ella, too quickly. “Um, I’ve already told her I’ll be there.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Good then,” I said. “We’ll meet after school. Like we did today.”

“Ugh,” said Ella. “Sorry, can’t do. I’ve promised to be elsewhere.”

I felt a drop of water hit me hard in the face. It was starting to rain. There was a rumble in the distance, and it looked like another electric storm was blowing in from the coast. And here we were in our thin dresses, wandering around in the dark. Suddenly I felt vulnerable again.

East Rivermoor built a wall to keep the world out. But what if the real danger came from within? Before the seven o’clock news started to call us monsters, I wondered whether deep inside I wanted myself to be one anyway. Neil once told me you had to become a monster so that you didn’t become the victim of one instead. I don’t care what anyone says. I believe him.

There were two striking things about Friday morning.

The first was that the rumour mill was abuzz with the news that a gang of thugs had terrorised East Rivermoor overnight. I saw Ella out of the corner of my eye as I walked the hall toward the Science Wing for Psychology class. She was huddled up behind a marble pillar with Jane Ayres, talking so fast it looked like she was vomiting. I couldn’t hear anything above the noise of the other students. Jane looked
suitably impressed with whatever Ella was feeding her, like a mother bird feeding her chick regurgitated gossip.

The second thing was that Marianne looked perfectly normal. Her blonde hair was pulled up in a high bun with a black satin bow, a matching bow at the throat of her perfectly pressed blouse. She sat with the type of posture my mum’s always going on about me having, her Psych textbook already opened to the right page. She didn’t look like someone who would break the six-thirty school-night curfew. Or someone’s window. We sat on high stools behind a sterile white bench, divided by Neil Dennis Fernandes.

“Are the rumours true that your house was attacked last night?” Marianne asked him with a completely straight face.

“Yes,” replied Neil. “My parents had to call the police. I mean, our property was damaged and everything. I feared for my life.”

The two of them chatted with the ease that came from being each other’s only company in Chem four days a week. They seemed to have the comfort level of a pair of siblings. Or, of a pair of soulmates.

Marianne made a
tsk-tsk
noise. “What is the point of having curfews when they are so blatantly flouted? Personally, I blame the parents.”

“Oh, I blame the kids,” said Neil. “Teenagers just don’t have any respect for rules these days. It was completely different in my day, Marianne, during the war. Back then, these kids would have gotten a good flogging.”

“Oh, I completely agree,” said Marianne without flinching.

I used to think Marianne would make the perfect serial killer. I don’t think that anymore. Now I know that Marianne can be a victim just like the rest of us.

“I heard that they purposely chose to attack you—is that true?”

“They tried to kill me. I had to show the policeman the empty glass with the water I used to try and fight them off. I do believe this is a hate crime, Marianne.”

“Did you get a good look at these assailants?”

“No. I only saw shadows. They moved too quickly. Like
cats,
you could say,” replied Neil, leaning his chin onto the back of his hand and smiling at Marianne.

“Ah,” said Marianne, raising an eyebrow. “What about your parents? Did they see anything?”

“They only saw what looked like a group of three, most likely four, male youths fleeing the scene. That is what I overheard them telling the police anyway.”

“Four male youths, did you say?” asked Marianne with a mock tone of surprise. “Now, how many gangs of four male youths exist here? I believe that would be, like,
none.”

What the hell? In case they have forgotten, this is not
Chem with the two of them alone, this is Psych and I am here too. I mean
hello?

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

I can feel a dead weight somewhere at the back of my head. Then I realise that weights are also attached to my fingers, my hands, my arms, my legs—my whole body. So I am not dead. I am horizontal somewhere. I don’t want to open my eyes, but I want to know what Hell I’ve woken up to.

The first thing I see is a bare concrete ceiling. That is all I need to see really. I shut my eyes again quickly.

“Try not to move,” says the female voice above me. “If you really have to, do it slowly.”

I try to prop myself up onto my elbow. The lumpy surface beneath me sags and groans. I am on some disgusting old bed, in an even more disgusting room. There’s a sink, and a plastic chair is squeezed in tightly next to me. The fluoro lighting makes the whole room greenish. When I look at my wrists, I can’t see my veins.

How many criminals and druggies and drunks have been here before? Is this where they think I belong now, too?

I look up and see that it’s the counsellor who’s spoken to me. I want to shout at her to go away, but when I open my mouth my throat is so sore I end up in a coughing fit.

A glass of water is pushed into my hand. I take a mouthful and I want to spit it out onto her face. Eww,
tap water.
I only force myself to drink it because I’m choking to death.

“Your friend will be fine. She’s been taken to a private hospital. Her cuts are only superficial.”

“You would know superficial, wouldn’t you?” I snap at her.

She looks back at me and bites her bottom lip.

I give her a massive fake smile. I take another drink of the water. I wonder if it’s making my insides bleed.

“You can leave now. I want to see Dr Fadden.”

She doesn’t look pleased, but she knows she can’t do anything about it. She’s not the boss of me. I’m not as fragile as Lexi. I won’t let her do that to me.

The youth counsellor marches out. Her high heels—black strappy things—click against the concrete. My eyes follow them eagerly down the hallway. Wow. Roger Vivier’s latest collection. I know because my mum has the exact pair. They cost two-and-a-half-thousand dollars.

You know, I can profile too. One: I don’t think this youth counsellor could afford them on her salary. Two: they’re the type of shoes a guy would buy a girl.

I almost cry when Dr Fadden appears against the metal bars of the sick room. It’s like I’m already in jail and he’s come to visit me. I’ll do my totally nuts but strangely sexy Angelina-Jolie-from-
Girl-Interrupted
routine, and he’ll get me out. I know what he’s going to say. That whether I stay here for the rest of my life or whether I walk out is my choice alone. Ha, I reckon I can see through him too.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, pulling the plastic chair up to the bed.

“Worse than ever.”

“I am sorry that had to happen.”

“Sure you are.”

“I didn’t want you to hurt yourself. I had to get Michelle to help me.”

I stare at the fresh white tape on his cheek.

“Michelle, is it? Not Dr Jennens?”

“Look, if I really thought you were crazy, you’d be strapped down to this bed, you wouldn’t be able to slouch like that.”

“Who do you think you are, my mother?” I say and narrow my eyes at him. “I didn’t call you in here to argue.”

“So?” Dr Fadden leans in close to me.

“I’m ready to talk. I’ll tell you what happened at the party.”

“That’s the right attitude, Eliza.”

“Yeah. Whatever. The only thing you will have to promise me is that I get to tell it my way, without interruption. Not just the facts I know you want to hear. I’m going to tell it my way.”

Dr Fadden looks down at his hands and back up again.

“Of course I’ll listen.”

“In exchange I want to see Lexi. In the flesh.”

He looks unimpressed. He stands up and puts one hand on his hip and the other over his forehead.

“Take it or leave it.”

The doctor puts both his hands on his hips. Then he stares at me.

“I saw Neil on Tuesday,” he says.

“Don’t try and change the subject! Don’t you dare try and bring him into—”

“I just thought you might like to know.”

“I don’t care! I don’t frickin care!” I put my face into my palms. What does he think he’s trying to do? Break me? Because he’s doing it totally wrong.

“Fine, Eliza. It’s a deal.”

I look up to see his hand in front of me. I don’t really want to make the deal anymore. Then I remember that it was me who came up with it in the first place.

I take his hand. It is calloused and rough. I trust him. How can I not? Do I have a choice anymore? I swapped my heart for a bargaining chip a long time ago. And here I am turning it over and over again in my hand, not sure what to trade it in for.

“As far as I know, gangs of four male youths do not exist here—isn’t that right?” Marianne asked Neil as she leaned in towards him. “See, two isn’t enough for a gang and three means a third wheel, but four guys is a boy band, isn’t it?”

“Shhhh!” I hissed and shot Marianne a look. If she were sitting directly next to me I would have kicked her.

I glanced behind me to look at Aardant, his mouth hidden
behind his gripped hands. I rolled my eyes at him and he managed to force a smile between his fingers.
Jealous much?
I wanted to say to him in Lexi’s words.
You don’t know how much,
I answered for him.

Professor Adler entered the room in his lab coat and a black fedora hat. As long as we’ve attended his classes, the Professor has never done any chemical experiments to need a lab coat. Neither has there been any sun in our basement classroom to need a hat. Even in the middle of winter, the room was warm from the earth pushing in around us. For an hour we would be buried here with no marker or trace.

The Professor was carrying a metal cage in each hand. Each contained a white rat, and there were heaps of wires and things. I had a bad feeling about this. I put my hands over my eyes and looked down at the desk.

“Miss Boans!” called Professor Adler in his hoarse voice. “Would you like to be of some assistance to me?”

I shook my head, my face still in my hands.

The metal cages came clunking down on Professor Adler’s demonstration table.

“Now, can anyone tell me what they think we are going to learn today?”

Marianne’s hand shot up immediately.

“Miss Jones?”

“I believe it is Learned Helplessness.”

“Correct, Miss Jones. Is it because you have read the curriculum?”

“No, sir,” replied Marianne, sounding slightly annoyed. “The setup of your experiment is similar to the diagram on page six-hundred-and-fifty-three of our text book.”

“Well, my dear Miss Jones,” replied the Professor. “I can only give credit to your fine mind.”

A look of surprise crossed Marianne’s face; she beamed happily at Neil.

“Now class—Learned Helplessness. Page six-hundred-and-fifty-three of your text, as stated by our star pupil. Rather than waste my breath though, on a generation that obviously has no attention span—” Professor Adler flicked Marianne a knowing look, “—I will demonstrate it instead. Now watch carefully, class. See this device I have in my hand? Every time I press the red button, it will automatically administer an electric shock to Rat B.”

There was a shuffling and scraping of chairs on the polished concrete floor. I bet everyone was leaning in eager not to miss any of the action. I still had my hands over my eyes.

“I can’t watch this,” I whispered to Neil. “If I thought Psychology was going to be like this, I never would have picked it.”

“What did you expect? That we would all lie around on leather couches talking about our feelings?”

“Er, pretty much,” I replied. “How can you bear to watch? Don’t you remember
Tacky?”

When Neil was six years old, he became the proud owner
of a brown rat with a white spot. He named it Ratattack. Neil and Tacky were inseparable; they even slept on the same pillow. When I had to sleep over at Neil’s because my parents were going on another marriage counselling retreat, we would drag our sleeping bags together and Tacky would sleep in between us.

One day when we were out on the front veranda, Tacky jumped out of Neil’s hand and was never seen again. On the same day Marianne’s cat, Mr Darcy, looked much fatter than usual.

“That was a long time ago,” said Neil. “We all change. We have to get tougher, don’t we? Just watch for a little bit. Just enough so you don’t fail next week’s exam.”

I fanned open my fingers in time to see Professor Adler press the red button down with his thumb. The rat in the cage jumped, then slumped back down. It didn’t even try to cower in the corner or anything. It just lay where it was and shivered. I felt a piece of my heart go thump onto the concrete floor.

“Rat B,” said Professor Adler tapping the cage with his stick, “caused a bit of a fuss when first administered the electric shocks. Now multiple shocks later, the rat has realised that there is no means of escape. It has basically given up.”

To further demonstrate his point, Professor Adler pushed the button again.

I felt sick. I couldn’t stop looking at that rat with its beady pink eyes staring straight at me. I just wanted to get away from it. I had to—

“Are you all right?” asked Neil.

“No,” I replied. “I have to get out of here.”

“Don’t move,” said Neil.

“But—”

“If you run out of class again you’ll be on a one-way journey straight to Hollerings. And since I’d have no choice but to go after you, that will make two of us. Don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to be doing three back-to-back detentions. Scarily enough I’m starting to become a really good janitor, and if that’s the career path I choose, I think my parents will kill me. Stay where you are and I promise I’ll put it right. Trust me?”

“Okay,” I replied, but I didn’t believe him. I realised I was shaking. I was shaking just like the rat.

“Neil—” I said.

“Eliza, can you shut up?” Marianne responded instead. “I know that you don’t care if you fail, but Neil and I do.”

OMG. I wanted to say something even ruder and smarter back, but I couldn’t open my mouth. I was too crushed.

“Compare the response then, of Rat A, a perfectly unaltered specimen not previously subjected to any adverse stimuli.”

The Professor lifted the door of the other cage. The rat shot out, ran across the floor and quickly disappeared.

Girls screamed and a few scrambled on top of chairs. On the other side of Neil, Marianne quickly stood up and backed away from the bench. The boys started making brave moves to save everyone from the impending doom. I just sighed.

“Hey, watch it!”

“Why don’t you watch yourself!”

Marianne had backed onto Aardant’s bench. His open bottle of water was now horizontal and running over his pad of paper, across the now blossoming ink, and onto his lap.