“I’m not really here for your gratitude,” I say honestly. “I need your support and frankly it hasn’t really come my way.”
“Well, change is scary,” she says, as if she’s giving a lecture to her House. “The past leaders have always been despots. We feel safe that way. Richard is exactly like them and it’s better the devil you know.”
“But you don’t run this House like a despot.”
“Of course I don’t. It’s against our ideology. But outside this House we still need order. Just say you let the Cadets run around our property and I have
to worry twenty-four-seven about the girls. It’s bad enough keeping those Murray and Clarence guys away from them.”
“I would never let the Cadets run around our property.”
“Well, Richard said—”
“Screw Richard, Trini.”
“Taylor, we don’t use that type of language in our House,” she says reprovingly.
She leans forward and stares at me intently. “I’m responsible for these kids, Taylor. Like you are for yours. When I leave for holidays, those who don’t have a place to go, they come home with me. So if those Cadets ever come near my year sevens again, I will maim them.”
I nod.
“Would you like to see them now?”
We walk into the junior dorms, where Jessa and Chloe P. are deep in conversation with a cluster of the juniors who are bombarding the hostages with questions.
“Tell me about the set-up,” I say to them, sitting down on one of the beds where some of them are congregated.
The girls look at me blankly.
“What she actually means, girls, is what was it like out there? Kind of describe it to us,” Jessa says, beaming at them and then at me. Trini beams at her and there’s a lot of beaming happening.
The spokesperson for the three sits up. “They had us in a tent and they had two senior boys guarding us and all these boys wanted to come and look at us because they don’t get to see many girls but the two boys guarding us wouldn’t let anyone near us because someone told them that Jonah Griggs said that if anyone touched us they were to break their arms.”
“Jonah Griggs is their leader,” another one of them explains to me.
“Did they scare you?” I asked.
“When they first caught us, it was a bit scary.”
“They have a barbecue every night. That’s what the Cadet guarding us said.”
“Wow,” Jessa says. Chloe P. is equally impressed.
“So what was it like out there?” I say brightly, repeating Jessa’s words. “Kind of describe it to us.”
“There are six boys to each tent and about fifteen tents per form. The year-eleven tents are the closest to
the bush trails and the teachers’ tents are right in the middle of them all. They have this Brigadier from the real army staying with them and everyone thinks it’s cool but they said he can be a bit scary. You should see his tent: it’s massive and always locked up.”
“And where is the Brigadier’s tent?” I ask innocently.
The girls draw me a diagram and I’m impressed at just how much they took in.
“She’s very impressed,” Jessa tells them, beaming.
Everyone’s still beaming and this time I beam back.
The look on the constable’s face said it all to Jude. Another fifteen minutes of their life would be wasted by indifference. But he could see the younger cop sitting at a desk behind him—the one who always stopped Fitz in the street to make sure everything was okay. The young constable caught Jude’s eye and after a moment he wandered over casually.
“You want me to take care of this?” he said to the officer on duty.
“It’s all yours.”
Jude noticed that the constable didn’t look much older than them. Up close, his olive skin was smooth and his dark eyes were questioning but kind.
“So you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“You’re kind of the fourth person and no one’s really listening,” Jude said.
“I’m listening.”
“We’re missing someone.”
“Not Fitz?”
“No, but he’s gone AWOL. Our friend Webb—Narnie’s brother—he’s gone. You’ve probably received word from the school. We don’t know where he is but it’s been two days.”
The young cop’s stomach turned. He knew these kids—the girls, anyway. During his first week on the job five years ago he had been called out to an accident on the Jellicoe Road. It had been the first time he had ever seen dead bodies and he remembered how he had thrown up on the side of the road while his sergeant had told him to pull himself together. He remembered these faces. He remembered Fitz with them, a new look in the troubled kid’s eyes.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Jude said. “Some shit about him being seventeen and probably taking a bit of ‘time out.’ But I bet if his parents were beating down your door, you’d be listening.”
“I said I’m listening,” the constable said firmly.
His gaze went from Jude to the girls. “Who was the last to see him?”
A muffled sound came from Tate but Jude could hardly look at her. It was as if she had disappeared in the last two days. Like the light had gone out of her eyes. He couldn’t handle Tate like this. Narnie, he was used to but not Tate.
“Was he acting strange?” the cop asked. “Did he take anything with him?”
“Nothing’s really missing,” Jude said. “Probably what he would always have on him. Like his Felix cap and he always had his Walkman and that’s gone. But nothing else.”
“What about money?”
Jude looked at Narnie and she numbly shook her head. “There’s no money until we’re eighteen.”
“But that’s soon, isn’t it?” he asked gently.
She gave the young constable the full force of her stare. “Why are you asking us this? He didn’t leave. He would never leave. Something has happened to him. Something bad.”
“Look,” he said. “I’m not saying I don’t believe that but we hear stories like this all the time. That there’s no way someone would run away or just take off, but they do. Stuff happens that not even the closest person to them knows about.”
“You don’t know my brother.”
“Tate, you were the last to see him,” Jude said. “Can you remember?”
She looked at Jude, bewildered. “Remember? I can remember everything I’ve ever said to him and every single thing he’s ever said to me.”
They looked at her, waiting. “He told me about his university choices and that he was looking in the city papers for a place to live for me and him and how Narnie would come and join us next year when school was out. And how we’d stay in the city for just four years and then we’d come back here because he’s going to build me a house. A house for me and Narnie and him. And that it was going to be hard leaving Fitz behind but maybe, just maybe, we could convince Fitz to come to the city with us and that Jude would be there, too, and then I told him…I told him we were going to have a baby.”
“Tate.” Narnie breathed softly. “Oh, Tate.”
“He was…I don’t know, shocked. Like he couldn’t believe it. I mean, we’ve been together…in that way…forever…because there was never going to be anyone but Webb. That night,” she said, looking at Narnie. “Remember that night? I heard
his voice and it was like…it was like God spoke and I knew, from that moment on, that I’d be with him for the rest of my life. That’s the only reason I lived. To be with that boy with that voice. Remember, Narnie? He climbed through the window, through all that glass, just to hold my hand.”
“No, Tate, you climbed through the window to hold our hands. You cut your arm, remember? Just to be with us.”
Jude watched Narnie put her arm around Tate. He didn’t know this Narnie. Her voice was stronger and he had spent the last two days not being able to look at her because her gaze was so sharp and focused that it pierced through him.
“Maybe he decided—” the cop started.
“No,” Narnie said, staring at him as if warning him against saying anything that would upset Tate. “My brother would never in a million years leave us. You quote all your statistics and what you’ve seen on this job but you don’t know Webb.”
The constable picked up his pen and began to record details, adopting an air of professionalism but deep down he felt a sorrow for these kids that made his insides churn.
“I need a photo,” he said, “and can I suggest a GP? My wife’s having a baby as well, you see.”
Narnie looked at Tate and nodded.
“Let’s start with his name,” the constable said.
We attend another meeting with the Townies and Cadets in the scout hall, ready to talk real issues and make intelligent demands. When Raffaela, Ben, and I arrive, some of the Townie girls are hanging around the entrance where Jonah Griggs and Anson Choi are just about to walk in. One of the girls approaches Jonah Griggs and just hands him her phone. No warm up, no “Hi, how are you, can I call you sometime?” She just hands over a mobile phone so he can record his number. I want to be petty and tell them we don’t have coverage out off the Jellicoe Road but that would just mean I cared.
“Sorry, we don’t have phone coverage off the Jellicoe Road,” Jonah Griggs says, handing it back and disappearing beyond the doors.
As I walk past the girls, I hear one say, “That’s his girlfriend,” and I stop and face them.
“What did you say?”
They ignore me with that wide-eyed how-uncool-is-this-girl-for-responding look on their face.
“I’m not his girlfriend,” I say forcefully.
“Well, good for us,” one of them says snidely.
“Not really,” Raffaela tells them. “He’s got a girlfriend and he’s madly in love with her. She lives next door back home.”
I am surprised by this news. Even more surprised that Raffy knows but then again Raffy has this way of knowing everything. As we enter the room, I ask the burning question as indifferently as I can. “How did you find out all that stuff about Griggs and his girlfriend?”
“It was easy. I lied.”
The meeting is a farce from the moment things get started. Santangelo is babysitting three of his sisters and they practise Beyoncé dance movements while the Mullet Brothers insist on playing their guitars.
“Your mother told my mother that she wants Jessa McKenzie for the holidays,” Raffaela tells Santangelo above the noise. “Do you guys know her?”
It’s the first I’ve heard of the plan and I feel an anxiety that I can’t explain.
“Oh, bloody wonderful,” he says bitterly. “Because
there just aren’t enough women living in my house already.”
The Mullet Brothers fight amongst themselves the whole time and at one stage Anson Choi and Ben are trying to keep them off each other while having an argument themselves about musical pitch and when Jonah Griggs yells, “This is ridiculous! I’m not coming back,” I have to agree for once.
Outside, the Townie girls are still hanging around and while we wait for Ben, I notice them speaking to Griggs, who is very amused at what they have to say, which has to be fake because there is no way these girls would be witty.
We walk home, the Cadets behind us and, not really wanting the Cadets to listen to our conversation, Ben, Raffaela, and I walk in silence.
“You know what I’m going to do when I get back to camp, Choi?” Griggs says a bit too cheerfully.
“What, Griggs?”
“I’m going to write a letter to my next-door neighbour. She’s my girlfriend. We’re madly in love.”
Raffaela gives me a sideways glance and I can tell she’s trying not to laugh and I realise what Griggs
found so amusing when he was talking to the Townie girls.
“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend, Griggs.” Anson Choi feigns surprise. “What’s her name?”
“I didn’t actually catch her name,” Griggs continues.
“Lily,” Raffaela says over her shoulder and this time I give her a sideways look.
“Great to know that I’m in love with a girl with a cool name.”
“It’s Taylor’s middle name,” Raffaela calls back again.
Placing Raffaela in the path of an oncoming car becomes one of the major priorities of the next ten seconds of my life.
“So apart from writing letters home to your fantasy girlfriends,” Ben says, walking backwards, “what do you guys do out here without television and phones?”
“Men’s business. Bit confidential,” Griggs says patronisingly.
“Wow, wish I were you,” Ben says, shaking his head with mock regret. “All I’ll be doing tonight is hanging out in Taylor’s bedroom, lying on her bed,
sharing my earphones with her, hoping she won’t hog all the room because it’s such a tiny space.”
He gives them a wave. “Now you have fun with your men’s business and spare a thought for my plight.”
Griggs and Ben compete in a who-can-outstare-each-other-longer competition until Anson Choi drags Griggs away to the other side of the road.
I look at Ben then Raffaela. “What was that all about?” I whisper angrily. “The Lily thing and the hanging out in Taylor’s bedroom?”
They both have a what-did-we-do look on their faces.
“He just went from a zero to a two in my eyes for not smashing you, Ben!”
“How does he get to be a ten?”
I look over to the other side of the road and watch Griggs as he walks. It’s a lazy walk but so full of confidence that you want to be standing behind him all the way.
How does Jonah Griggs get to be a ten? He sits on a train with me when we’re fourteen and he weeps, tearing at his hair, bashing his head with the palm of his hand, self-hatred pouring out of him like
blood from a gut wound in a war movie, and for the first time in my whole life I have a purpose. I am the holder of the grief and pain and guilt and passion of Jonah Griggs and as we sit huddled on the floor of the carriage, he allows me to hold him, to say, “Shhh, Jonah, it wasn’t your fault.” While his body still shakes from the convulsions, he takes hold of my hand and links my fingers with his and I feel someone else’s pain for the first time that I can remember.
The knock at my window that night frightens the hell out of me. I’ve used the window for years as an exit point, but nobody has used it as an entry and for a crazy moment I convince myself that the boy in the tree in my dreams is coming after me.
I get up from my computer and peer out and there, crouching on the ledge, is Griggs. He doesn’t ask to be let in. He just stands up, expecting me to step aside. Technically this could be considered against the rules of the territory wars but I open the window. He looks down at my singlet and underpants and stares for a long time as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Then he climbs in and looks
around the room without commenting.
I walk to my drawers and put on my jumper, which hardly reaches my thighs.
“Hope you didn’t do that on my account.”
I don’t say anything and he casually leans against my desk, picking up the novel that’s sitting there.
“It’s bullshit,” he tells me, flicking through it. “There’s no such thing as Atticus Finch.”
I shrug. “It’d be good if there was, though. Why are you here?”
“Why else? The Club House,” he says.
I nod. “If we agree on this, we need to explain the rules to the Townies,” I tell him.
“Okay,” he says. “No ridiculous dress codes concocted by irrational women.”
It’s like he’s making things up off the top of his head.
“It’s our men who are irrational,” I explain to him. “We prefer to be labelled as pragmatic and long-suffering.”
“So how do they get in here?”
“Who?”
“Your irrational men. Cassidy? The rest?”
For a moment I get a sense of why he’s really here.
I feel my face flushing and see that his is, too.
I clear my throat and get back to business. “Ban for life on anyone who gets drunk.”
“No boy-band music.”
I don’t know what to say to that one because I’m making all this up as well.
“No…Benny Rogers.”
“Kenny,” he corrects.
“We insist that the Mullet Brothers don’t play every night.”
“Mullet Brothers?” After a moment he works out who I’m talking about and he nods. “We call them Heckle and Jeckle.”
“And you never step on my second-in-command’s fingers ever again.”
He nods once more. “My second-in-command? Choi? He DJs. He’ll want to do that at least once.”
I nod. Lots of nodding. It’s all too awkward. A few days ago I had brought up one of the most taboo subjects of his life and he had me pinned against the wall and here we are pretending it never happened.
“If this backfires, there’ll be a war,” I say.
“There already is a war. I think you forget that at times.”
“And you don’t?”
“Never. And you can’t afford to either.”
“Is that a warning?”
“Maybe. But let’s not make it complicated. Let’s just make sure it doesn’t backfire.”
He holds out a hand and I shake it and as I do he stands up from where he’s leaning against my desk and it’s like he hovers over me, which is strange because I’ve always been at eye-level with the boys around here.