Thyla - Kate Gordon [10]
‘Hello, Ms Hindmarsh,’ she said.
She turned to me, and I felt my heart quicken, my muscles tense. She was smiling, but I did not feel she was being exactly friendly towards me.
And I was not sure if I felt friendly towards her.
I knew she was the daughter of Vinnie’s friend. Of your friend. I knew Ms Hindmarsh had recommended her very highly, but still, something niggled at me. Something like a memory, but different. More like intuition.
‘Hello … Tessa, is it?’ she asked.
I nodded, and bowed my head. Every instinct in my body was telling me to make myself low.
Hide, a voice in my head said, and the muscles continued to pull down.
I pulled against them.
Camouflage. Stalk.
I told the voice in my head to be quiet. I tried to extinguish the fire that had begun to spark inside me.
Why was it asking me to hide? And especially, why was it asking me to hide from this girl?
Perhaps these voices were the call of memories trying to make themselves known – but now was not the time for them to be doing so. They were strange memories, belonging to a strange person, and I did not want to be seen as strange.
I had an inkling Charlotte Lord might not like ‘strange’.
‘Yes. Hello, Charlotte,’ I said, willing my muscles to relax.
‘Welcome to Cascade Falls,’ she said, her eyes seeming to penetrate me. ‘I know you’ll get along just fine here. If you let me teach you how.’
‘Did Miss Bloom give you a copy of Tessa’s schedule?’ asked Ms Hindmarsh.
Charlotte nodded and held up a sheet of blue paper. ‘We have four classes together, so that’s good,’ she said. ‘And I can ask one of the girls to keep an eye on her in the others. I think among all my friends there should be at least one girl in each of Tessa’s classes. We’ll look out for her. Dad told me everything Tessa has been through. He was most concerned for her.’
‘You know everything that happened to me?’ I blurted. ‘Your father knows? But how?’
‘Oh, my father knows most things,’ Charlotte said, smiling in her pretty, wintry way.
Charlotte must have noticed my anxious expression, because she laughed and said, ‘Don’t worry, silly thing. Dad only told me you had an accident and they were unable to find your parents. If you have any more sordid skeletons in your closet, they are still hiding away behind the coats.’
I felt a bit calmer. Of course, she was right. There was no way her father could know everything – about my memory, about how I looked when I was discovered. About the scars.
For some reason, it was Charlotte knowing about the scars that bothered me most. I was not certain why, but I did not want her to know about the scars.
I did not want any of my classmates at Cascade Falls to know about the scars. I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be successful at this ‘school’ business. I wanted to make you proud of me.
Suddenly, the wooden doors behind Charlotte sprang open and two giggling girls burst through.
One of the girls had quite dark skin, and another word joined the collection in my mind: Aboriginal.
She had very large eyes, shaped like round hazelnuts, and her cropped curly black hair was streaked with sunlight.
The other girl was very pale, with ginger hair and cheeks like two bright red apples. Her eyes were green and they were glimmering wickedly.
When the girls saw us standing there, they stopped abruptly and ceased their giggling.
‘Sorry, Ms Hindmarsh,’ said the short one. ‘We were just, um, getting some fresh air before class!’
From deep inside the building, a voice echoed towards us.
‘Laurel Simpson! Erin Mijak! Come back here!’
Ms Hindmarsh put her hands on her hips and stared at the girls, eyebrows raised.
‘Ummm …’ said the dark-skinned girl. ‘Maybe we should just, errr …’
She looked behind her at the man with the