Thyla - Kate Gordon [24]
She was scared, I realised. Scared of Charlotte. Scared of being made an outcast, like I was.
Laurel and I walked towards our lockers.
I could tell from several yards away that there was something different about my locker. Instead of the plain, shiny metal that was usually its facade, it now had slashes of bold red adorning it. My pace quickened and I soon found myself at my locker, reading the words ‘Tessa Connolly is an untouchable’.
‘What does that mean?’ I asked Laurel.
‘It means you crossed them,’ she said. ‘It’s happened to all of us. You cross Charlotte’s royal court, you’re untouchable. It means none of the other girls are allowed to be friends with you.’
I remembered what Harriet had told me: ‘Don’t mess with the in-crowd or they will mess you back.’
I felt tears prickle at my eyes. ‘So you and Erin, and Rhiannah and Harriet and Sara … you won’t be friends with me any more?’
Laurel finally smiled. ‘Oh, no. We can still be mates with you,’ she said. ‘We’re untouchables too.’
It was a comfort, Connolly, but still, I felt nauseated and guilty. I thought you would be disappointed in me. You wanted me to do well at school, and be friends with Charlotte, and I had failed.
‘Come on, Tess,’ said Laurel, seeing my miserable expression. ‘It’s not so bad. You’ve still got us. And you don’t want to be friends with those cows anyway. They’ll suck the life out of you. Stick with us freaks and you’ll have a much better time.’
I smiled at Laurel. She was right. I did have a better time with her, and with Rhiannah’s gang, than I had with Charlotte and her friends. Perhaps this ‘untouchable’ business was for the best.
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Laurel. ‘Now, come with me. I have a stash of doughnuts in my room. They cure all.’
You didn’t warn me about this, Connolly.
I’m not mad at you. You had so much to think about; so much to remember to tell me about that I don’t blame you for forgetting this. And, besides, you probably assumed I would know.
After all, it’s my body.
I didn’t know, though. I didn’t know that my body would do this.
We were in history – one of the classes that Rhiannah and I shared. We were learning about Tasmania in colonial times, and I had just surprised Mr Beagle (and myself), by remembering that the first name for Tasmania was Van Diemen’s Land, and that the colony was named after Anthony Van Diemen, who was the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. He was the one who sent the explorer, Abel Tasman, on his voyage of discovery in 1642, and so Tasman named Van Diemen’s Land in his honour.
I didn’t know how much my teachers had been told about my lost memory. I supposed they must have been told something, so I would not be unfairly penalised in class.
My classmates knew only that I had been through a trauma, though they didn’t know the nature of it. Ms Hindmarsh and I had a long conversation about how much to tell the other students. She knew most of what had happened (the parts you and I knew, anyway), and she wanted to know how much I wanted made public.
‘I think we should tell them I am an orphan and that I was in hospital,’ I said, after thinking for a few moments. ‘But I think I don’t want them to know about my memory. And I don’t want them to know I was found on the mountain, in the condition I was in.’
‘That’s probably for the best,’ said Ms Hindmarsh, smiling. ‘We wouldn’t want the girls to panic, thinking there is an attacker out there – not that I think that’s what happened to you. I just know how quickly hysteria can spread with those girls. And the parents. We don’t want parents to think that this is an unsafe place to send their girls. Cascade Falls is a very safe place for girls …’
Ms Hindmarsh’s voice trailed off and her eyes became dreamy and wistful. I thought, not for the first time, that while she seemed effervescent and jolly on the outside, there were worlds inside Ms Hindmarsh