Thyla - Kate Gordon [31]
She leaned back out. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘What can I do you for?’
I made up a story about not feeling well and my head being cold, and asked to borrow her hat.
She hesitated for a moment, and narrowed her eyes at me, biting her lip. Then she shrugged and said, ‘Sure, why not. But don’t lose it. It’s one of my favourites. It used to belong to my nanna, and anyway, it’s ace for when the red devil isn’t behaving itself.’ She pointed to the curly red bonfire crackling away on her head. ‘Just give it back when you’re better, ’kay?’
I pulled the hat out now and pushed it roughly onto my head, then strode towards the door. My hand was on the doorknob, just about to turn, before I remembered.
I cursed under my breath and turned back around.
I sprinted, feet light on the carpet, to Rhiannah’s top drawer, pulled it silently open, and grabbed a handful of tampons and pads. The last thing I wanted was to be alone in the wilderness and feel that wetness between my legs again.
Just as I was shutting the drawer, I noticed it.
Glinting and glimmering in the corner.
It was Rhiannah’s copper bangle.
I knew I shouldn’t. It was Rhiannah’s private thing, in Rhiannah’s private drawer, and she had asked me not to touch it, but I couldn’t help it. Just as before, my fingers were drawn to it. Just as before, I imagined footprints dancing over its glinting surface. I reached further into the drawer and brushed it, just lightly, with my fingertips.
The jolt was so strong and so sudden and so sharp, I cried out with shock and pain and fell to the floor. It was like nothing I had ever felt before. It was like a million needles sticking into my fingers, like scalding water being poured over my whole hand. It hurt so much I couldn’t breathe.
I looked down at my hand and was shocked to see there was no mark. No bruise. No blood. No burn.
My eyes were tingling with tears and my head was thudding.
What had just happened? What had caused that jolt, that pain?
It couldn’t possibly have been Rhiannah’s bangle, could it?
I didn’t even bother to close the drawer. I was too scared. I just scrabbled my way to my feet and ran from the room.
It didn’t take long to catch up with Rhiannah and Sara and Harriet. They were still within the school’s grounds, standing in a triangle and dressed in identical black clothes and woollen hats. They weren’t talking yet, but seemed to be organising their equipment: looking at maps, preparing.
Though it was dark, my eyes could make out their faces and their bodies quite clearly. It was as if I had created by some magic a daytime within the night, but only for me. I put the torch back in my bag. I did not think I would be needing it.
Though I knew it was improbable that their eyes could see as well as mine, I shrank back and sidled behind a gum tree by the entrance to the building. From there I could watch them and they would not see me.
Over the tang of eucalyptus, I could smell them, too. They smelled of sweet vanilla perfume and sweat and … fear. And I could hear, loudly as if my ear was pressed against their chests, the beating of their hearts; rapid like the hearts of small animals.
And it wasn’t only Rhiannah and the others that I could smell, or see, or hear. I could smell each flower in the garden separately and distinctly. I could see far away to the walls of Cascade Falls; to the cracks and ridges in the stone and the sheen of the metal spikes that sat on top like enemy soldiers, bayonets in hand. I could hear every cricket singing in the grass, and every small animal scrabbling in the bushes.
And, when Harriet and Sara and Rhiannah began to talk, each word carried to me crisp and clear. For once I was grateful for my heightened senses. I knew that Charlotte