Thyla - Kate Gordon [42]
The silence, and my joy, was shattered in an instant by the sound of a strangled scream.
I whirled around.
And found myself face to face with Charlotte Lord.
Charlotte Lord had many friends. Friends she enjoyed gossiping with. Friends she enjoyed telling secrets to.
And Charlotte Lord’s friends liked gossiping too.
By the end of the day, I felt every eye in Cascade Falls upon me, and I heard my name whispered behind every mouth-shielding hand.
Everyone knew. They knew I wasn’t normal. They knew I was different. And it hurt. It hurt so badly.
I limped my way through afternoon classes, barely hearing a word any of my teachers said. My mind was full of one word only: the word that Charlotte had spat once she had finished screaming, and before she had turned and run from the washroom. The same word that Inga had used and that had been inked on my history class desk.
Freak.
That’s what I was. I was a freak.
I was a girl with no memory, who had been discovered as a wild thing in the middle of the bush, who had strange dreams, who smelled more keenly, heard more powerfully, who had strength that seemed unnatural, who hated the heat that everyone else loved.
And I had stripes.
At the end of my last class – mathematics – I grabbed my books hastily and ran from the classroom as fast as I could. All I wanted was to be in my bedroom. Alone. Away from the whispers and the stares. I wanted to curl up beneath my doona and make it all go away.
As I ran down the hallway, I passed Erin and Laurel.
‘Hey, Tessa! What’s wrong?’ Laurel called out. I shook my head and kept running. I ran all the way back to room 36. I wrenched the door open, leapt inside and shut it quickly behind me. On the other side, I turned my back to the door and slid down onto the floor. I put my head in my hands and cried.
‘Tessa? What’s happened?’
The voice made my head jerk upwards.
Rhiannah was lying on her bed facing me, a pile of books beside her. Her eyes were wide with concern.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, between my sobbing. ‘Class only just finished.’
‘I got the day off. Told Ms Hindmarsh I felt a wog coming on and I wanted to recover before the walk. I’m not really sick. I just wanted some R and R and I kind of needed to catch up on my homework. Been spending a bit too much time bushwalking lately, I guess! I found something, actually, when I was researching for history. Something kind of creepy, in an old book in the library. I think you should look at it. But do you wanna tell me what’s wrong first, Tess?’
I decided it was time. Time to tell her everything.
I just needed to tell somebody. I mean, I know that you knew, Connolly, but I needed to tell someone else. Someone my own age. Someone at Cascade Falls. I banished all thoughts of bent-back legs, of leaping over walls. Rhiannah was a young girl, just like me. She was my friend. And she was strange, as I was. She would understand.
And so I told her everything. About having no memory, no past, no family. About how I was found on the mountain.
And then, finally, about my stripes.
When I told her the last part, her face grew even paler than usual, and I noticed her hands gripping the corner of the bed, her long nails digging in.
‘Can I see them?’ she whispered.
I shrugged. Why not? I had already told her everything. I might as well show her as well. I pulled my shirt up and turned around.
Rhiannah gasped. ‘Oh, crap,’ she whispered.
‘I know. I know. I’m a freak,’ I said, sniffing.
‘No,’ Rhiannah replied, and her voice was firm. ‘No, mate. You’re not. You’re …’
Rhiannah shook her head, and stood up quickly.
‘I have to go,’ she said, and grabbed her backpack. She started stuffing things into it – clothing, a torch, a woollen hat.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked. ‘Can’t you stay and talk to me?’
Rhiannah shook her head quickly. ‘I need to go and …’
She stopped and looked at me intently. Her eyes darted towards the heavy book that was on the top of the pile she had been reading. She marched over to the bed and grabbed it.
‘Look at this,