Shauna's Great Expectations Read online

  Shit, man. Forty thousand years and we’re still not just plain old Australian.

  White people are colourless, adjective-less and unremarkable. Aboriginal people, though, are always black. It would be nice to take a break from living in colour.

  Lou-Anne shakes her head. ‘You don’t have to talk to her.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be mentoring her.’

  ‘Maybe you can do it by email?’

  I start laughing, because Lou-Anne is being perfectly sincere and serious.

  ‘What, Shauna? I’m trying to come up with solutions here!’

  Lou-Anne’s right, of course. We all have school email addresses and I could, theoretically, send Olivia emails. Theoretically. I suppose I should give her another chance, considering how scared and alone I felt when I first arrived at Oakholme. What would I have done if Lou-Anne hadn’t arrived? Who will Olivia Pike have? The other white girls, I think nastily.

  The bell rings for our next classes. We’re in our dorm room but we’re not meant to be here. More often than not we come up here between classes, just to decompress. And to break the rule.

  ‘So what do you think the go is with Olivia?’ I ask Lou-Anne.

  ‘Maybe her colours ran in the wash?’ she says, before laughing raucously at her own joke.

  ‘You know what I mean. How did she get here?’

  ‘Probably the same way you and I did. She sat a test to make sure she could spell her own name and then did an interview to make sure she looked the part.’

  ‘Obviously she was interviewed in a very dark room,’ I remark.

  ‘What are you saying, Shauna? That she pretended to be an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander so she could get the scholarship?’

  I shrug.

  ‘Come on,’ says Lou-Anne. ‘Who’d pretend to be black if they weren’t?’

  ‘Maybe she’s trying to squeeze the last few dirty drops from the identity politics dishrag. People do that kind of thing, you know. For attention.’

  Lou-Anne puts her hand on my shoulder. I must look upset or something.

  ‘But didn’t you just say that she wants everyone to think she’s white?’

  I shrug. ‘I guess you’re right. You’d only want everyone to think you were white if you weren’t.’

  ‘Shauna, you’re making my brain hurt. Stop.’

  Lou-Anne sings an arpeggio, which is what she does when I make her brain hurt. Along with rubbing her temples and scrunching her eyes shut. When my best friend sings an arpeggio, though, it’s music. She’s a classically trained soprano and wants to become a professional opera singer one day. Every second schoolgirl dreams of becoming a professional singer, a model or an actress, but Lou-Anne’s the only one I know who’s actually in with a chance at stardom. She’s a supercharged type of soprano, a coloratura, which means she has a light, agile voice that can pull off high trills and leaps you wouldn’t think a human was capable of. She’s applied for a place in Opera Australia’s Young Artist program. It’s really competitive, but her audition video, filmed by yours truly, got her through the first round and she has a live audition later in the year. One of the music teachers here at Oakholme, Miss Della, is giving her lessons four afternoons a week, so it’s obvious that I’m not the only one who believes in Lou-Anne.

  Though her family knows how talented she is, I don’t think they have any idea how hard she works or how close she is to succeeding. No other member of Lou-Anne’s family has excelled at anything much other than reproduction. One of her sisters, Beth, gave birth to twins when she was just fifteen. Now all three generations live in a ramshackle house near Lake Weyba. They’re a lovely family – I’ve stayed there heaps of times – but they’re also chaotic. When Beth had the twins, Charlotte and Chelsea, their family became known to the dreaded social services, and that’s how Lou-Anne found out about the Indigenous scholarship at Oakholme. Her family, especially her mum, didn’t want her to come to Sydney, but once Lou-Anne heard about the music department here, there was no stopping her.

  I remember seeing her for the first time. Built like a rugby forward, pigeon-toed and followed by a frizzy, black ponytail that spanned the width and length of her enormous back, Lou-Anne did not seem destined to last. Another scholarship recipient who’d been in Year 10, Elodie, had just left the school to work in her uncle’s sandwich shop in Dubbo. That’s what she told everyone, anyway. I knew she’d left because she just wanted to go home and never come back to this strange place. I thought Lou-Anne would realise she didn’t fit in and leave for similar reasons. I still have the same feeling myself sometimes. The scary thing is that I have it when I’m in Barraba as well.

  At the time I started at Oakholme, at age twelve, my family was a bit chaotic, too. My big brother, Jamie, had just died in a car accident and my parents were really depressed. They’d stopped looking after me and the house, and I’d stopped going to school so I could look after them. My school at the time called social services and we got a caseworker, who turned out to be a decent person. She gave me information about the Indigenous scholarship.

  All the girls who get the scholarship seem to have sad backstories, but Olivia Pike? Seriously? I wonder what kind of bad luck could have befallen her. She doesn’t look like the kind of person who’s gone through anything worse than a slight headache.

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ says Lou-Anne finally. ‘I’ll find out what’s going on.’

  ‘Don’t do that. I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of snubbing you.’

  ‘At least Self-Raising Flour didn’t put her in our dorm room.’

  ‘I hope they put her in with Keli Street-Hughes.’

  ‘I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.’

  ‘It’d be a fitting punishment.’

  ‘And Olivia deserves to be punished?’

  ‘She should be careful what she wishes for, Lou-Anne. You can’t just solve all your problems by pretending to be someone you’re not.’

  ‘Maybe not, but do you blame her?’

  I don’t respond, because I’m actually pretty sure I do blame Olivia.

  Our housemistress, Miss Maroney, comes blustering into the room and gives Lou-Anne and me a Red Mark each for being in the dorms during class time. Three Red Marks and you have to stay back on Wednesday afternoon for detention. It’s not a big deal when you’re a boarder and you spend the afternoons at school anyway.

  ‘Sorry, Miss Maroney,’ we say as she writes down our names in her diary.

  ‘What will it take to get you girls to listen?’ she growls.

  ‘I would definitely listen if you paid me, Miss,’ says Lou-Anne.

  Miss Maroney tries not to smile.

  ‘Get out before I give you another Red Mark.’

  ‘Oooh!’ Lou-Anne and I purr in mock terror.

  Miss Maroney makes a lot of noise, but she’s not very terrifying. She’s only about twenty-five and she looks like Barbie. She teaches maths and sport in the same steely voice. She thinks that we don’t know that she has parties in the school’s indoor pool during the holidays. If Mrs Green ever found out about it, Miss Maroney would probably lose her job, and a plum job it is too. Oakholme’s sporting facilities are state-of-the-art, thanks to alcohol-laden fundraising soirées hosted by Mrs Green in the school ballroom. Yes, Oakholme College has a ballroom.

  ‘What subject have you got now?’ asks Lou-Anne as we skip down the stairs and out of the dormitory building.

  ‘English. You?’

  ‘Music in the auditorium.’

  We pass Keli Street-Hughes & Co in the quadrangle. Annabel Saxon and Keli’s other twangy cronies always travel in a group, and when they stop to talk they stand in a perfect circle, elbow-to-elbow, so that no one else can edge in.

  ‘Say thanks to your dad for me!’ Lou-Anne and I sing in unison as we glide past the circle of wisdom.

  Keli’s tinkling laughter floats after us and glances right off us to the ground.

  3

  A GROUP OF Year 12 girls hav
e been invited to a meeting in the withdrawing room. We’re the gluttons for punishment who completed an HSC subject last year. Most of us did 2-unit maths, and will continue maths at a higher level this year. Oakholme has begun to encourage its top students to complete an HSC subject in Year 11, based on the theory that spreading the stress over time maximises ATARs.

  This meeting is about the HSC University Pathways program, which gives Year 12 students the chance to complete a first-year university subject. It’s only been offered to the students who, in Mrs Green’s view, can cope with it. This is the first year the program has been open at Oakholme College. We had to apply last year, and most of the girls, including Jenny and me, chose to study Introduction to Legal Systems and Methods online at the University of New England. It’ll be useful for me because I want to study journalism at uni and to do that I would have to take some law subjects anyway.

  Mrs Green had to push for the HSC University Pathways program to be introduced. It was a few years before the powers that be – the ancient Oakholme school board – gave in. She obviously has grand ambitions for improving the school’s academic reputation, which I’m not sure its student body has the ability to back up. Not all rich kids are smart. They’re pretty much the same as the rest of society. Some of them are intelligent, some of them are dunces, and most of them are just good old average.

  Reverend Ferguson was against loading a university subject on top of the HSC because she thinks we’re already under too much pressure. I know her opinion on the matter because, although we don’t have regular counselling sessions anymore, she always accosts me to chat about this or that. I think she misses me.

  Of course I told SRF that I was all for HSC University Pathways, because it opens up options for me once I’ve finished school. In the end, there was a compromise – only the girls who were already excelling academically would be recommended for a place.

  Mrs Green stares at the excited occupants of the withdrawing room. She has bright, piercing eyes that seem to be able to see everyone at once. When the room falls silent, she clasps her hands and leans back onto the mantelpiece.

  ‘If you’re in this room, it’s because you’re already good at sitting exams . . .’ she begins. She gives a spiel about how the university units on offer are respected by other universities across Australia.

  ‘This is new territory for Oakholme College, and we weren’t sure exactly how we’d support your extra studies. But we’ve come up with a solution. There will be extra classes on offer to support the online work, but they won’t be held here at Oakholme. They’ll be held at St Augustine’s.’

  An involuntary whoop goes up around the withdrawing room. St Augustine’s is a boys’ school, about ten minutes drive away! Embarrassed giggles quickly descend. As anyone who’s been to an all-girls school knows, there’s nothing apt to render girls boy-crazier than sequestration from the male gender. I went to a regular povo government school, Barraba High, until halfway through Year 7, so I’m not quite as under the boy spell as some of my friends. Jenny, for example.

  Jenny is one of those girls who’s ordinary looking until you really look at her and realise just how delicate and pretty she is. The glasses and puppy fat are deceiving. If you talk to her for five minutes you can’t help but notice her gorgeousness – dark eyelashes, clever, hazel eyes and the cute smatter of faint, pinprick freckles that run over her little ski-jump nose. But there are some people, boys especially, who don’t make it through the five minutes because Jenny can be a bit intense.

  There’s this one heartthrob at St Augustine’s who Jenny’s been mooning over for about six months. His name’s Stephen Agliozzo. He’s been unfairly blessed with curly, black hair and blue eyes, and he turns every girl and her mother inside out. I’m not joking. I’ve been to combined Oakholme/St Augustine’s social events and actually seen middle-aged women blush around him. Of course, he doesn’t deserve any of it because he’s an arrogant little prince. There’s not a girl alive who would last a month with him. A girlfriend is like a haircut to Stephen Agliozzo, but probably less important. Jenny, thank God, doesn’t stand a chance. I suppose there’s no harm in dreaming, though.

  ‘Can I see a show of hands if revision classes are something you’d be interested in?’

  Every single person raises a hand. Jenny puts up both of hers.

  ‘Right,’ says Mrs Green triumphantly. ‘I’ll send permission slips out to all your parents.’

  After the meeting, Jenny and I go to the Year 12 common room for hot chocolates. About the only useful thing the Student Association’s ever done is install a coffee and hot chocolate machine there. It must spit out a thousand hot drinks a day.

  Jenny’s excited, really excited, about doing the University Pathways support courses at St Augustine’s. The only thing that can get her as high as those clean-cut boys do is Paris. She has the same shine in her eyes when she’s discussing the city of light, as if it’s a new lover. And if Paris is her lover, it’s mine, too. It’s as if we’ve fallen for the same guy, but we’re both so rapt in him that neither of us minds that he’s seducing the other.

  Jenny’s managed to convince her parents to put up for some cheap digs, so all I have to do is come up with money for the flights, sightseeing and getting around. It’s got to be doable somehow, though I’ve yet to raise it with my parents. They wouldn’t share my exhilaration, and it’s possible that they won’t share their money. I remember the pained look on my dad’s face when he had to contribute to the Toulouse trip in Year 10. He just could not fathom why I had to travel to the other side of the world. So I may end up putting the hard word on my cousin, Andrew. I think he’d loan me at least some of the cash. There’s also the night shift at the Barraba servo. A couple of weeks of that mind-numbing job would be worth it for Paris.

  ‘Imagine being in Paris! We could go to the theatre every night. Imagine, Shauna!’

  The wonderful thing is, I can imagine. The terrible thing is that I just can’t quite imagine how I’m going to pay for everything. Theatre every night?

  The two of us in a little studio apartment in the Latin Quarter. Buying pastries in the morning. Eating ham baguettes on a bench by the River Seine at lunch. Meeting some gorgeous French guy and zooming around Paris on the back of his motorbike . . .

  ‘Shauna? Shauna?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You look about a million miles away.’

  ‘I was. I was in Paris.’

  Jenny grabs my hand and squeezes it. There’s light dancing in her eyes. We both laugh.

  ‘What about Stephen Agliozzo?’ I ask her with huge eyes full of mock-sadness. ‘Do you think you could bring yourself to leave him behind for a whole month?’

  Jenny can’t help but blush as she rolls her eyes. She’s never been one for carefree breeziness.

  ‘We’ll have to book our flights pretty soon,’ says Jenny, between sips of her hot chocolate, which is fogging up her glasses.

  ‘Thinking about Stephen?’ I ask her cheekily.

  ‘It’s the steam from the hot chocolate, Shauna! I’ve already forgotten about him.’

  ‘Oh, sure.’

  Jenny was a late developer, and while she’s very smart, there’s no hint of the knowing, catty sophistication that would give her a pass into one of the ‘popular’ groups at school. It’s one of the things I like about her. Sass, hormones and boy craziness have only just pulled into her station. I just wish she’d fixate on someone nicer and more attainable than an in-demand pretty boy like Stephen Agliozzo.

  I’m not one of those really boy-crazy girls, but I do have a lot more experience than Jenny. I had a few boyfriends back in Barraba, but not much action since I first donned the bottle green Oakholme tunic. At Barraba High, it was all taken much less seriously. Kids hooked up and broke up on a week-to-week basis and most of them didn’t cry into their social media accounts when it was all over. Some of the older students had longer, more serious relationships and it was well known that a few of th
em had sex.

  I had sex this summer with Nathan O’Brien at the country music festival I went to with Andrew. Nathan’s not even a schoolboy. He finished school last year and now he works on his parents’ farm at Kootingal near Tamworth.

  I don’t quite know how it happened that night. We just stayed up talking about music and school and how annoying Sydney is. Then we ended up slow dancing to a bad cover of Keith Urban’s cover of ‘Making Memories of Us’, both of us wishing the song would never finish. One thing led to another – believe me, I wanted it to – and I woke up the next morning in Nathan’s swag with my sweaty, naked legs tangled in his.

  Jenny almost needed oxygen when I broke the news to her. You’d think it was she who’d just lost her virginity the way she carried on. Lou-Anne, on the other hand, didn’t flinch. In spite of her sister’s glaring example of where sex can lead – the maternity ward followed by years of drudgery – Lou-Anne is quite seasoned between the sheets. Of course, all the smut unfolds up in Eumundi, where the kind of men who interest her live. At Oakholme people have no clue about Lou-Anne’s sex life, or indeed anything that might explode the narrow boundaries of their rigid minds.

  Nathan did hunt me down on social media in the days following our steamy night wrapped up in his swag, but I’m not sure what our ‘status’ is. If you’d told me that morning that I was going to lose my virginity that night, I never would have believed it. It came as a shock to wake up in a paddock entwined in someone I’d only met the day before. At dawn my eyes slammed open onto dry blades of grass and a broken – yes, broken – condom a few centimetres away from the swag. The first thing I did after locating my cousin, whose side I was meant to be plastered to (according to my mother’s pre-festival instructions) was to find a pharmacy. After a dose of the morning-after pill, I was nauseous for days. So it was a mixed experience. The earth didn’t move. The condom did. But Lou-Anne had always warned me not to expect too much.

  It felt good to get Nathan’s message, though, and to know that it wasn’t just a one-night stand for him. When I read his words, my stomach dropped, and then fluttered around my body like it was not attached to anything. He said that he was coming to the Easter Show to exhibit his family’s cattle, and that maybe I should swing by. Too bad. I’ll probably be back in Barraba at Easter. That was my nonchalant reply, which I kind of regret now.