Fury (2 page)

I hear his guarded, squeaky footsteps trailing behind.

“Slow down. Don’t run in the hallway.”

Ugh. Bad flashbacks. This is just like being back at Priory. He is as bad as snarky old Principal Hollerings.

“Can I see Lexi? What about Marianne?”

I reach the end of the hallway and turn to my left. I stumble into another too-bright, fluorescent-white room. I am still a little dazed when I realise I’m in a kitchen. And standing at the laminate bench with her back to me, is Ella.

“Oh my God!” I try to say, but it gets stuck halfway in my throat. I make a sort of gagging noise instead.

Ella spins around and her eyes widen.

“Oh Lizzie! Am I so happy to see you!”

I can’t contain myself. I haven’t seen Ella since we left the body and went our separate ways. She is quivering like a puppy. I walk up to her. Then I lunge at her throat.

That’s when I find that something—or more precisely someone—is holding me back. It is Dr Fadden.

I first met Ella over chicken cacciatore.

The night before, Mum had promised she would make me lunch for the first day back at school after term break.
Yes,
I know I can make my own sandwich. I mean, how hard is it to slap two pieces of bread together? But like I’ve already told you, I’m lazy and spoilt.

In the morning I opened the fridge door to find no brown paper lunchbag containing my favourite chicken and Jarlsberg cheese on rye. Instead, inside the fridge, between the bottle of red wine and the bottle of white, lay a flat twenty-dollar note.

That was how I found myself in the hot canteen queue, along with all the other kids with busy or lazy parents. I piled some of the canteen slop on my plate without looking. Everything was covered in the same identical cheese, and I watched as it melted and made a goopy lump on the communal serving spoon.
So
disgusting. You would think this was prison. Or a public high school.

To my left, an unfamiliar girl slid next to me along the self-serve counter and grabbed a plate. I guess I mustn’t have noticed her standing behind me in the queue. For good reason too. Average height. Average weight. Average brown hair. Average length on that average brown hair. I lost interest
and concentrated on trying to flick cheese strings back into the bainmarie.

“Chicken thingy … beef thingy … fish thingy … vegetable thingy …
thing
thingy,” the girl recited to herself as she inspected each sauce-flecked label. She took a small scoop of each and arranged it onto her plate so none of them touched the other.

Okay, I was intrigued. I looked at my own plate, where I had made some sort of sloppy, cheesy mountain.

“Eliza Boans,” I said and held out my free hand.

“Oh, hi. Ellanoir Dashwood. Call me Ella,” she said animatedly and shook my hand. “This is my first day at Priory. Isn’t it great? Look at this dining hall, doesn’t it look beautiful? Like a palace … not that I have ever been in a palace myself, but it’s what I imagine a dining hall in a palace would look like…”

“Um, yeah,” I replied as I hurried ahead. “Hope you, er … enjoy it here. See you around then, I guess.”

I wondered which planet Ellanoir Dashwood had just landed from.

“What? People pay that much to eat this crap?” I said to Mrs Wally, Wes’ mum, at the cash register.

Yes, that’s right. Her son, our school debating champion, is called
Wes Wally.
Some people must think the miracle of birth is hilarious. Especially Mrs Wally. Everyone knows she
has no class anyway. She may be rich now, with her geriatric, mining-king husband, but we all know which side of the wall she came from. It shows too, from her giant hoop earrings down to her gum chewing and pink velour tracksuits. I heard that Mrs Wally was working here on community service for drink driving. Apparently she drove her Mercedes over a roundabout instead of going around it. Only problem was that she didn’t expect to be unceremoniously stopped by the palm tree in the middle.

“Watch your language, Miss Eliza, or I may be forced to report you,” said Mrs Wally, trying unsuccessfully to frown with her botoxed-up forehead. “Now pay up and move along. You’re holding up the queue.”

I scowled and un-scrunched the twenty-dollar note out of my new Belle Bijoux coin purse. “Whatever. Here, take it. Actually, just keep the whole lot. I don’t need it.”

I attempted to flick the note like a ninja star, but unfortunately my cool manoeuvre did not execute well, and I literally pelted the money at her. I grabbed my plastic tray and marched off. She used to waitress in a Middlemoore sushi bar before she struck gold; I’m sure she’s used to rude customers. She can consider the rest of the twenty a tip.

I walked quickly, scanning the lunch-hall, and spied Lexi and Marianne sitting on a bench in the corner by a large potted palm. I stuck my hand up and waved just as Justin Hawkins ran past and smacked a scrunched-up paper napkin at me. It had something sticky on it that clung to my hair.

Loser!
I wanted to shout. But I held my tongue. The hall was too loud anyway and I guess I didn’t want everyone to stare at me. I put my head down and beelined quickly toward Lexi and Marianne.

“Forget your lunch today?” said Marianne.

“There’s something gross in your hair,” said Lexi.

“I know and
I know,”
I replied and dropped my tray down. “Don’t remind me, please.”

I looked at the both of them, sitting quietly and almost expressionless.

One is blonde and just back from a yachting holiday in the Greek Islands. She’s got the Goldilocks of tans; it’s just right. Not too pale and not too tanorexic
.

The other one is brunette with skin so white that if she were any paler, she would be, like, Nicole Kidman.

“Justin Hawkins is such an immature little brat,” drawled Marianne, my blonde friend, as if the idea of Justin Hawkins being a brat bored her. She was delicately eating a white bread sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper. I could smell the smoked chicken, baby spinach and vintage cheddar. I was jealous.

“Here. Let me fix that,” said Lexi, and she got up to seat herself next to me.

“Eliza! You move so fast! I was trying to keep up.”

The small figure of Ella loomed terrifyingly close, clutching her tray. The food on her plate was still perfectly separated.

“Oh. Hi again. Um, sit down. Lexi and Marianne,
this is Ella. She’s new. Ella—
vice versa.”

“Hi Vice and hallo Versa!” quipped Ella.

I watched the faces of my two friends to see their reactions. There were none.

Ella plonked her tray down and stretched her hand across the table toward Marianne.

“Ellanoir Dashwood.”

Marianne looked back at her calmly.

“As in Jane Austen?”

“No, not
Elinor!
It’s
Ella-noir.
Although actually, that’s exactly where my mum got my name from—
Sense & Sensibility.
She thought Ellanoir would be, I guess, classier.”

“Oh I see,
Ella-nywar,”
said Marianne holding out her hand. “How do you do, Ella-
nywar?”

Ella squeezed herself down on the bench beside me. Lexi eyed Ella curiously.

Marianne stared at us, and I caught her passing a “blink-and-miss” look to Lexi. I didn’t miss it. I knew it was a signal. Lexi looked at her, acknowledged and then looked away.

I didn’t miss that either.

“I’m still new to this suburb. East Rivermoor.” Ella sighed loudly when she said East Rivermoor Like she was talking about somewhere romantic and perched on a cloud in rainbow land.

“My mum and I just moved in last week. We came from … um actually, that’s probably not important. But, East Rivermoor, it’s so—nice!”

“Nice?” repeated Marianne. “Yeah, I suppose so…”

“We’ve moved into the purple house. You know the one that looks kinda white-washed? But it’s not white. It’s purple. Like aubergine. Aubergine-washed? And it has a roof that looks kinda like waffles.”

“Actually, no.” Marianne replied bluntly and shifted her eyes in my direction. “Just like none of the houses in East Rivermoor are made of gingerbread, I don’t know any aubergine and waffle house…”

“I do.”

I glared back at Marianne. “It’s a few streets down from my place. You should know which house Ella is talking about. I’m ashamed of you, Marianne. I thought your family was one of the oldest in East Rivermoor.”

Marianne averted her eyes.

“I live in the blue house on The Bourne, Ella. And Lexi lives just around the corner from me.”

Ella made a sudden high-pitched noise like a small chihuahua.

“What? Are you
serious?
You’re totally kidding me! The blue house? With the three levels and the white trims? With the
turret?
You honestly live there? That is just, like, the best house in East Rivermoor. Can I come over some time?”

“Sure,” I replied. I guess I didn’t have much choice. I was trying to prove a point to Marianne, even though I didn’t really know what my point was.

Marianne groaned. I kicked her under the table. She
yelped loudly, but I ignored her and took a mouthful of my disgusting cheese mountain.

“Ugh. Revolting!”

“The chicken cacciatore is not altogether that bad,” said Ella happily, stabbing her fork into a cube of something that did not look like chicken.

I looked down at my unrecognisable pile. I swore something deep inside of it quivered in anticipation of being eaten. Lexi had finished cleaning the gunk out of my hair and was unwrapping her own lunch. I couldn’t tell you how badly I wanted Lexi’s lunch—a poppy seed bagel with smoked salmon, dill and cream cheese.

“You know what I think? Only the kids whose parents don’t care enough about them subject them to the canteen lunch,” piped Marianne out of the blue.

She turned toward Lexi who said nothing. I fumed and wanted to glare at her, but she just smiled serenely down at her own perfectly half-eaten sandwich.

“Ella, what do you have next class?” I asked loudly.

“Um … History in Room N14, I think…”

“Excellent. So do I.” I dropped my fork and stood up.

“On second thoughts, I’m not hungry. Ella and I are going to go to class early. So I can show Ella … stuff.”

I glared at both of them and pushed my plate so it came to rest between the two of them. “Here, have a nice little chat over this. I don’t care.
Whatever.
Seeya. ”

I threw my satchel over my shoulder and grabbed Ella’s
arm, extracting her from the bench mid-mouthful and away from my two so-called
friends.

“Marianne and Lexi are … nice,” said Ella, puffing. I realised we were almost running.

“You think so?” I replied sarcastically.

I slowed down. They re-tiled all the hallways in Italian porcelain during the semester break. I guess Principal Hollerings wanted everyone breaking the rules to slip and break their necks. That would definitely teach the naughty children not to run through the corridors.

“They don’t say much, I have to admit. But they really are so pretty,” replied Ella. “I’ve never sat at a table with girls like that before … I guess it’s always been a dream of mine, you know, like in those books about girls and boarding schools…”

“Enjoy the novelty while it lasts, honey,” I replied and I steered her toward the South Wing.

The South Wing was unveiled just this morning during our boring welcome back this-is-the- last-term-before-the- TEE-so-be-good-and- for-godsakes-behave assembly. It used to be the old East Rivermoor Powerhouse so it’s, like, a hundred years old. The museum wanted to move here, but Priory is richer than the government, so it’s become our new History, Arts and Social Studies wing. It cost millions, apparently. But hey, it’s just money. This is our education we’re talking about.

We arrived fifteen minutes early for Mr Carter’s class. I found myself lowering my head a little as we stood in the corridor outside. I didn’t want to appear desperate, with a new girl with me and everything. It’s hard just surviving high school sometimes; trying to balance being eager, but not
that
eager. Pity really, because I like History. I mean, I wish there weren’t so many boring dates and facts to remember, but I really like all the stuff to do with scandals and murders and assassinations. Did Anastasia of the Royal Russian family actually survive the execution of her entire family? Did Lee Harvey Oswald really kill John F. Kennedy? Did you know that Anne Boleyn wore a red and grey damask gown to her beheading—what a total fashion-babe. And I actually like Mr Carter. He never pads out a class just to stretch it to the full hour. If we finish early he lets us watch music videos.

Mr Carter was also early for class. To be honest, I don’t think he’s super old, not like,
forty,
but he dresses like he’s just stepped out of the poor little wardrobe that time forgot. But vintage is cool; it’s the new black. Mr Carter indicated that we should enter the classroom first, so we trundled in awkwardly before him. He’s a gentleman like that.

“I see we have a new pupil, Miss Boans, unless you are chaperoning her around for your own entertainment?”

“Er, yes we do and no I’m not,” I replied.

“Then, pray introduce us.”

“Oh,” I said and I felt myself blushing. “This is Ella. I mean, Ellanoir.”

“Ellanoir?” repeated Mr Carter. He pronounced “noir” properly in a European accent. Not in a Middlemoore bogan accent like Marianne.

“Ellanoir Dashwood,” Ella blurted.

Then she did something that I have never, ever seen anyone do before in real life. She curtsied.

“Miss Dashwood,” said Mr Carter and a smile played across his face. “Delighted. Please have a seat with Eliza.”

“Let’s be backseat bandits,” I whispered to Ella.

“Huh?”

“It just means we don’t sit right up the front—oh, never mind, let’s just sit here.”

From the corner of my eye I could see Mr Carter smiling at us. He’s actually pretty hot for someone his age.

“What was that?” I whispered as we plonked ourselves down.

“What?”

“
That.”
I inclined my head and lifted an imaginary skirt.