Outside the dramatics of the Jellicoe students, there is a stillness around that makes it seem as if no one else exists, but the Cadets are cunning and knowing Jonah Griggs, he’s probably watching us already.
“This means we’re going to lose another trail or part of the property,” Ben says to me quietly.
“Shhh.” I take a few steps back. “Who knows,” I whisper, “but we’re running out of things to trade with them.”
Four thirty comes, as does five o’clock, but nobody surfaces. I stay, standing the whole time, on guard, but by five twenty I’m exhausted and almost ready to give in to the suggestion of one of the guys that we invade.
“It’s best that we stay put on our side of the boundaries,” I tell them. “I don’t know what Griggs’s game is, but we need to know what we’re up against and I’m betting that the moment we cross that line they’ll be on us like a ton of bricks and trying to negotiate back seniors is going to be a lot harder.”
“I don’t think they’re around, Taylor,” the leader of Murray tells me.
“Don’t bet on it.”
After sitting for almost an hour, Richard comes to stand alongside me. It’s his way of making it seem that we’re equal and of asserting some kind of power in this whole farce.
“If they want something from us,” I tell him calmly, “I’m going to give them the trail closest to your House so that every time you see them loitering behind those trees you’ll remember how your little coup attempt contributed to this.”
“Why don’t you just go and have a breakdown somewhere?” he says, walking away.
By five thirty I’m pissed off and bored and I have absolutely no idea whether these guys are going to jump out of the sky or walk straight out of the bushland in front of us.
“Jonah Griggs!” I call out.
“Taylor Markham!” he answers from the bushes right in front of me.
Ben looks at me, rolling his eyes, and I turn around and motion for the others to step back.
“Stay here,” I say to Ben, stepping over the boundary lines.
Griggs comes out of hiding and approaches me as if he is on some Sunday afternoon walk, appreciating the nature around him.
“Where are they?” I ask, seething.
He peers closely at my face.
“Don’t like these things,” he says, pointing to what I’m presuming are the rings under my eyes. “You really need to get some sleep.”
I slap his hand away. “Where are they?” I ask again, forcefully.
“You didn’t warn them about the boundary lines. Those girls had absolutely no idea, whereas my juniors could point them out in their sleep.”
“Why don’t you just give yourself a pat on the back for being the world’s best leader, then.” He gives himself a pat on the back and I can tell he is enjoying himself at my expense.
“I can’t believe how petty you are. They’re in year seven!”
“Why is this a surprise to you?” he asks. “This has always happened. One of you ventures into our territory and there’s payback. Do you remember that?” he calls out to Ben. “Payback for trespassing?”
“With alarming clarity,” Ben calls back.
“Same with us. Happened to my friend Choi here, last year. Do you remember that, Choi?”
Behind him I notice at least one hundred Cadets either sitting in trees or coming out from behind shrubs and branches. I have to hand it to them. When it comes to camouflage, they certainly know what they’re doing.
“He ventured into your territory and our leader had to go fight your leader to get him back.”
Anson Choi nods solemnly. “Traumatic time. They put me into Murrumbidgee House. Very uptight bastards in there. They thought I’d be good at chess and they forced me to play all night.”
“So you and I are going to have a punch-up?” I ask Griggs.
“What do you propose I do?”
“Hand back my year sevens.”
“This is how the territory wars have always been fought,” he says firmly. “It’s in the handbook. Do you think they’re just about threats and ‘don’t walk on our boundaries’? It’s hand-to-hand combat. Someone is always going to lose. Sometimes it’s just one to the jaw. Other times a few to the gut and, presto, we hand back the hostages. The only thing is that for the past four years the leaders have been male.”
“Let’s change the rules this year. Because just between you and me, you’re scaring me.”
He looks at me closely again. “You need to put all your shit behind you because we’ve had at least two meetings about the Club House without you there and Santangelo and I are about this close,” he says, indicating a couple of centimetres with his fingers, “to breaking each other’s necks.”
“Jonah, hand over the kids,” I say tiredly.
He turns around and gives a whistle. The three Darling kids are taken out of their hiding spot and I relax slightly, a bit grateful, a bit surprised. This is a good victory for me in front of my school. All done with not one drop of blood or petty skirmish.
“Are you in charge?” he calls over my shoulder.
I turn around and watch Richard nod smugly. “Technically,” he says, walking towards us.
“Technicalities rarely interest me,” Griggs says, and then he smashes Richard in the face.
“We don’t really like scaring the kids,” he says patiently, looking to where Richard has fallen. “So you need to warn them that for every one of them who enters our territory, their leader gets payback. You, of course, can distribute punishment to them for your troubles. I’ve found in the past if I have to be the punching bag for one of my juniors, I usually get him to polish my shoes, maybe do my washing—the petty things, you know. But it rarely happens. You see, my juniors know who’s in charge. We try not to confuse them because it puts them in danger.” Griggs feigns confusion. “So who is in charge around here?”
“I’m in charge,” I say, staring at him, bristling with fury.
He looks down at Richard and extends a hand. Richard is still stunned and doesn’t know whether to take it or not.
“You okay with that decision, Dick? Can I call you that? Her being in charge?”
Richard mumbles something unintelligable.
“Good to hear.” Griggs walks away.
Richard sways slightly so I hold him up. He puts his sleeve to his nose. “Maybe we should meet tonight and discuss the boundaries,” he says.
“Clear this area now,” I tell him before turning to Trini, who is clutching the three kids to her breast.
“You okay?” I ask them, but they’re too busy trying to disentangle themselves.
“Make sure you debrief them and that they’re okay,” I tell Trini. “I’ll come and speak to them later.”
“I don’t want them hassled,” she says, leading them away.
I walk back towards the disappearing Cadets. “Hey,” I call out after Jonah Griggs. He stops with Anson Choi by a tree and leans against it, a ghost of a smile on his face. He looks pleased with himself and I give him that little moment of triumph before I get up close and slap him hard across the face.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” I say, furious.
“Ouch, that hurt!” he says, rubbing his cheek.
“I can fight my own battles.”
“I wasn’t fighting your battles,” he argues.
“Yes you were. That’s my business,” I say, pointing to where the others, except for Ben, have retreated, “and your little patronising act could put me in a weak position with them.”
“I don’t think they realised he was protecting your interests, Tayls,” Ben calls out. “They’re too stupid.”
“I wasn’t protecting her,” Griggs argues angrily over my shoulder at Ben.
“It kind of came across as if you were,” Anson Choi explains to Griggs patiently.
“Did I ask your opinion, Choi?”
“No, but just from my perspective and what I know about your history,” Anson C
hoi says calmly, “it came across like you were—”
Griggs gives him a look and Anson Choi puts up his hand and nods as if he understands that silence is required.
“Protect your boundaries and it won’t happen again,” Griggs tells us.
“If you think you’re scaring us, think again, GI Jerk,” Ben says.
I look at Ben, impressed with his wit and force. “Let’s go,” I say to him, and we walk away.
When we reach the bend and they no longer can see us, Ben gives a laugh. “How bloody impressive was that?”
“I thought you were very impressive,” I say.
“No, I mean him giving Richard a biffo.”
I stop and stare at him.
“He had it coming to him, Taylor. While you’ve been so tragic for the past week with the whole death-by-eighties-music thing, Richard was an arsehole. I was bloody impressed with Griggs,” he says to me. “He’s gone from a zero in my eyes to a two.”
“How does he get to a ten?”
“If he did to Richard what he did to me. I got the full enchilada, you see. One to the face and the two to the gut, plus the stepping on the fingers.”
“So when it’s happening to someone else it’s all cool?”
“Any pain inflicted on Richard warms my heart and it warms yours as well. Go on, admit it. When he hit the ground and the blood went flying and you knew in your heart his nose was broken, didn’t you just want to jump for joy and stomp on his ugly face?”
I look at him, shaking my head. “Actually, no, Ben. I didn’t. I was thinking that I’d rather be in the common-room watching Home and Away.”
“You know what your problem is? You don’t know how to enjoy yourself. That was fun. That was better than Home and Away.”
Later I go see the Darling girls and take Jessa and Chloe P. with me, only because they’re convincing about their ability to ask questions of people their own age as opposed to my question-asking, which Jessa points out could be intimidating.
Darling House is a touchy-feely House. Everyone is really sweet and they even say grace before meals. It’s interesting to see how other Houses work. The past leaders of my House were so hell-bent on being the best that there was no room for anything that didn’t have to do with power. Here, every emotion and talent and opinion is nurtured and supported.
“I’m grateful for what you did,” Trini says to me, offering me tea and jam tarts, which are served to me on what looks like their best china.
“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.
Chapter 14
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.”