Mooney river, p.1
Mooney River, page 1
CONTENTS
Map
Part I
Rain
Part II
Nelly
Part III
Erik
Part IV
Thatch
Part V
Rain
Part VI
Thatch
Part VII
Erik
Part VIII
Nelly
Part IX
Rain
About the Author
MAP
PART 1
RAIN
If the planks below me broke right now, I’d die.
My neck would snap on the rocks, or my organs would explode, or I’d try to fight the dark water pulling me down, but my clothes would be too heavy, and I’d lose, and I’d drown.
I shiver.
I know the planks won’t break. I can feel them moving over the black rush and the shifting branches. Alive but stable. I breathe steam onto my fingers, watch it drift, then disappear. When I press my palms against my cheeks, they freeze again. Everything’s fucking freezing. The bush is grey with cold, and I can feel the chill from the narrow footbridge all the way up my spine, chattering like teeth.
No one told me how cold this town would be.
It’s been almost two years, and I’m still not used to it.
I try to imagine heat. The way the waves push out from a fire, wobbling. I imagine I’m wearing gloves, but I wouldn’t be able to hold the pencil if I were. The flimsy piece of wood that keeps scratching at the cold page.
My gaze is locked on the far bank of the weir, where dead trees pierce the water like needles, stretching their pale arms towards the sky. I focus on the biggest one. Long, ragged lines and knots, and patches of darkness. The tree leans across the river like it’s trying to whisper. I blur its edges as the morning gets brighter and bluer. Ducks are landing, making trails that move light in distorted shapes across the water.
I jump as my alarm goes off. I’ve reset the ringtone to something that sounds like cherubs playing harps, but it still scares the shit out of me. I think it’s one of those association things. Like when people can’t go in the water because they saw Jaws once, or can’t touch hair-clips or balls of fluff because they’re scared of spiders.
Or like when I thought Colonel Sanders was reading my mind.
Just for a little while.
I was seven, and a girl with a purple birthmark on her cheek told me about God. She told me that an old man sat in the sky and watched me all the time, even when I was asleep, or on the toilet, and he knew everything I’d ever done or thought. Then she launched down the slide in a spiral of pigtails and self-reverence.
I walked home, to a house a few streets back from a cluster of take-away shops, imagining a withered old man crouching on a cloud, pressing his ear against the ice cream fluff to hear my thoughts.
A few nights later I saw his face, giant and sinister, in the sky outside my window. God was smiling at me – leering at me – through the darkness. He was reading my mind. I took my doona to the corner of the room furthest away from God and curled up on the ground where he couldn’t see me, sleeping there for at least a few nights. Until I got used to him. Eventually, the glowing head became a sort of comfort. Familiar. I told him how I felt, and what I wanted, and what I hated, and all of my secrets, until we moved. A few months later, I saw an ad for popcorn chicken and learned what a franchise was.
For some reason, I still get nervous when I see the red and white face of Colonel Sanders.
It’s an association thing – like my alarm.
I rap on the ‘stop’ button and finish the lukewarm mouthful of tea left in my keep-cup, then slip my pencil and sketchbook back into my bag. Standing, I flex numb toes inside my sneakers and shake each leg a few times, trying to get them ready for the walk to school.
I leave the water, foaming and freezing, to break on the sharp rocks.
* * *
Mooney River High School.
It seems inviting from the outside. Leafy and open, at the top of town.
But when you’re in there…
It’s not bad, really. It’s not like one of those circle-jerk religious schools, or an inner-city cage with metal detectors at the front gate. I’ve never had my head held in a toilet bowl, or been humiliated by a teacher, or had to sing prayers out loud or anything. My life’s never been threatened.
The school’s tiny, so it only took me a few days to learn where everything was, and where I didn’t want to be. The teachers are mostly fine, and the students are garden-variety adolescent psychopaths. Nothing too scary. Mostly surfers and stoners and farm kids.
The worst thing about Mooney River High is that it’s impossible to get lost. In other schools I’ve been to, you could escape into whichever sub-culture would accept you. The anime group, or the group who pierce each other’s ears at lunchtime, or the giggling group of horse-girls with no horses. I could just slide into a pack and forget myself.
But there’s no forgetting here.
You can’t get lost if you don’t have a crowd.
The delightful shire of Mooney River – including the town itself, a bunch of farmland, and a stretch of cliff-lined beaches and famous waves – has a total population of just over five thousand people. If you’re between the ages of twelve and eighteen, you spend your weekdays here, at the high school. With the same kids. Every day. It’s the sort of place where your personal reputation is fixed within a few hours of enrolment, never to be forgotten.
I became ‘That Spooky Loser’ (‘Spooks’ for short) on my first day. At my last school, I’d slid into a pack of neo-goths. They sat in the art room at lunch, on the floor next to the heater, usually. They brought needles and dye to school to use when the teachers weren’t looking, and I ended up with a septum piercing and a few green streaks in my hair. The kids at Mooney River thought it was weird, I guess. It was either that or the book I was holding outside of class. I don’t think I was even reading it properly. It was just my first day, and I picked it up and held it open out of habit. Marli had gone off with her friends, and I was too terrified to introduce myself to anyone. I didn’t have a phone back then. Even if I did, it would have just been an overly pixelated supermarket model, and I don’t have social media or anything, so I probably would have taken out the book anyway.
The nickname’s not that bad. ‘Spooky Loser’ is better than ‘Rotting Trash Bag’ or ‘Fuck Stick’. Better the devil I know.
I settle into a nook against an old eucalypt as a tide of uniforms pour from an orange bus. Dark blue shirts, grey shorts and skirts. A scramble of shoes, bags, hats, scrunchies.
The kids from the beach walk the loudest. They swagger around with their chests out, like the wave they caught that morning single-handedly brought about world peace. They’re confident in the knowledge that it doesn’t really matter what their parents do for a living, or what kinds of music they listen to, or how smart they are. They know the social currency here is salt.
You can tell which kids live on farms because they usually cluster together, full-cheeked and grass-fed. I like listening to them talk about ewes and four-wheelers and yields, even though I don’t understand the jargon. They just always sound so sure.
The town kids are everyone in between. Including me, I guess. Doe and Marli’s place is a ten-minute walk from school, downhill, towards the river.
I stay at the beach with my Pop on weekends.
He’s part of the reason they placed me down here.
* * *
Somehow, even though I dawdle all the way through the red-brick corridors, across the oval and the cricket pitch, I still get to Literature first. Miss K’s classroom is a weatherboard masterpiece on stilts, situated at the very edge of school. They call it a ‘demountable’, which means it’s really, really shitty. You can practically smell the asbestos.
I wait on the dirt outside, carving circles with my sneaker, gazing off into the bush that backs onto the far side of the school. I heard a rumour that a boy in my year got a blowjob over there. Or maybe that’s where the principal found the bong. Either way, that patch of trees has seen some things.
Eventually, I refocus and notice an old iced-coffee bottle wedged under one of the steps up to the classroom. I’m bending to pick it up when I hear Miss K behind me.
‘Morning, Rain!’ she calls, bouncing over in a long skirt the colour of terracotta. Her hair is a messy bundle, and huge earrings jangle against her neck. Right now, she’s trying to take out her keys while holding a bulging laptop bag, three hardcover books, and an almost-overflowing mug of what I’m about to discover is cold coffee.
‘Morning, Miss. Can I take your...?’
‘Thank Ford for kids like you,’ she says, handing me the mug and unlocking the door.
Miss K’s thanking Ford because we’re studying Brave New World right now. She likes to keep her comments on-theme, like the posters covering the thin walls of the classroom. Each one is a laminated cover of a novel or movie. There are a couple of album covers and poems around, too. Added insulation. It’s a pity she can’t poster-over the dank carpet.
I wait for her, holding two vessels of caffeine that don’t – and never did – belong to me, throwing the old iced-coffee bottle in the bin once we’re inside.
‘How are you going with your journal?’ she asks.
I sit down as a few other kids filter in, talking. ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘I’m writing about—’
‘Miss K!’ a pompous voice cuts across me from the back of the room
Eleanor Everson.
Her light blonde hair is still swinging with the effort of interrupting me. Despite looking like the priss who dies fifteen minutes into every horror movie, Eleanor is cutthroat. Everything she does is calculated, from her control of essay structure to her stiff blonde fringe. I’ve imagined her cutting it with a steel ruler while reciting totalitarian mantras to her reflection.
‘Morning, Nelly,’ says Miss K, using a twee nickname that doesn’t suit the girl with her back to me. It also doesn’t make sense for ‘Nelly’ to be the abbreviation of ‘Eleanor.’ ‘Elly’ would make more sense. Even ‘Lenny’.
‘I’ve written another practice essay,’ Eleanor says. ‘May I have your feedback on it?’
‘Another one? Ford be praised!’
Eleanor doesn’t say anything. She gives Miss K the essay, as well as a little smile. (I can tell by the way she drops her hip and cocks her head.) Then her hair’s flying again and she’s taking a seat.
The whole class is here now. All seven of us.
‘Ooookay, year elevens!’ Miss K calls, over the soft babble. ‘Books out! Circle up!’
Familiar with the ritual, we shuffle through our bags, take out our books, and drag our plastic chairs to the centre of the room. I sit between the teacher and a girl called Carissa.
Miss K taps at her iPad. ‘First of all… daily notices for Thursday the…’
Once she’s opened the right program and read the date, she reminds the class that we can’t use our phones on school grounds. Then she points at her screen and says, ‘Debate Club would like to inform you that new members are welcome. If any of you would like to sign up, there is a sheet on Miss Jones’ desk.’
Eleanor raises her hand, then says impatiently, ‘Please only sign up if you’re willing to read the prep materials. We had a lot of dead weight last year that I’ve only just managed to dispose of.’
‘That doesn’t sound very collegial of you, Eleanor.’
‘Contrary to popular belief, Miss, debate is not very collegial. I’m only trying to prepare people for the reality of the club.’
Miss K almost says something, then her mouth twitches and she goes back to the notices. ‘The next one is from the gardeners, asking you very politely to put away your rubbish. I’m going to add that you to ought to Fording put your Fording rubbish in the Fording bin, so that some unfortunate Fording gardener doesn’t have to do it for you. And don’t forget about the recycling bins near the canteen.’
A girl across from me closes her eyes.
‘The final notice is about band... You will be meeting in Room 3, not Room 5, this week…’
Carissa takes out a little leather diary and makes a note, then closes it and puts it back into her bag. I watch her – her careful intensity – like she’s a stranger on the bus.
I really like Carissa, but I know almost nothing about her.
I know that she plays the trumpet, I guess. And I know she’s obsessed with Greek mythology. It’s like porn to her. Most of it is porn, if you read closely enough. If her parents knew, she’d be in for it. As it is, Carissa uses words like narcissistic and Sisyphean in regular conversations, and her mum keeps buying her books. Parental control locks don’t block mythology fan-fiction sites, either.
Carissa moved here from The Philippines around the same time I got here, and she’s the only person I can really talk to at school. We hang out at lunch most days, gravitating towards one another in mutual exclusion. We read in the library, or do homework, or just sit around with our headphones tucked under our hair. Sometimes she comes with me to the art room.
I also know she has beautiful, shiny black hair. I once had a dream that I shaved it off and pasted it over my own hair, which is usually a dull, ashy brown. Carissa wasn’t even angry in the dream; she’d been wanting to cut it all off and tattoo a pomegranate on her skull.
What I mean is: I know all these things about Carissa, and I spend all this time with her, but I don’t think I know her. I’ve never met her parents. I’ve never seen her house. I don’t know who her crush is. I’ve never told her about that dream I had, or about anything embarrassing or important.
I feel like I never tell anyone anything these days.
That’s why this class is so bizarre. These eight people here, who barely know each other. We sit in this circle and talk about life and death and madness, knees almost touching, novels on laps. So intimate, but completely isolated.
‘I thought we could start today off…’ says Miss K, setting down the iPad ‘…by discussing chapters 16 and 17. John and Mustafa Mond. What did everyone think of their conversation?’ She surveys us, her eyes landing on a fully bearded farm kid named—
‘Damien?’
‘Um… sorry, Miss...’ says Damien, fumbling with his book in a way that makes me think he didn’t read the chapter. ‘Which section?’
‘Chapter Sixteen. John has been taken to Mustafa Mond’s office, where they discuss reasons for social control.’
Damien scrambles to the back of the book, then drops it and mumbles, ‘Oops.’
Miss K sighs. ‘While Damien finds the page, someone else get us started...’ In the silence, a fly buzzes, then lands. ‘If no one volunteers, I’ll have to pull a pop-stick out of the—’
‘I think it’s clear,’ pipes up Eleanor, looking at each member of the class like she’s being interviewed, ‘that Mond’s argument is stronger than John’s. Stability is more important than freedom. After all, Mond has the advantage of perspective. He’s read about the past. He’s thought about the future. He understands science, and politics, and rhetoric. John is weak; he’s an emotional wreck whose argument holds no water. People think they want truth, and love, and choice, but most of them are completely...’
‘Yes…?’ asks Miss K.
‘Well… it’s obvious, isn’t it?’ says Eleanor. ‘When people are left to govern themselves, they turn into savages! They think freedom will bring them happiness, but they end up miserable.’
‘It’s their right to be miserable!’ I blurt, hearing the words as if I were outside my own body. ‘What’s the point of being alive if you don’t have any choices? I’d rather be unhappy and myself than some kind of… smiling puppet.’
Eleanor glares at me, pursed lips and raised eyebrows. ‘Of course you would think that, Rain. But some of us would rather prioritise safety and stability. It’s completely irresponsible to run around writing poetry when there’s no food or infrastructure.’
‘But… We’re not robots…’ I say. ‘We can’t be told not to write poetry. We need poetry. We sort of are poetry….’ Miss K leans forward as Eleanor rolls her eyes. ‘I’m just saying that… it’s part of who we are. Art, and stories and… just… feelings. And danger, and love. Are we people without all that? John didn’t think so. He thought we’d be better off dead.’
Eleanor folds her arms and crosses her legs. ‘That’s a very romantic ideal, Douglass, bu—’
‘Please refrain from calling other students by their last names, Nelly. It comes across as hostile.’
‘Yes, Miss. I was just telling Rain that—’
‘Romantic ideals can be good though, yeah?’ a black-haired boy named Freddie says. He has bloodshot eyes and a slow, monotonous voice. ‘Individuality… Spontaneity... Freedom from rules… It’s like Kurt Cobain said: “I’d rather—”’
‘Will you be exclusively quoting burn-out musicians in your argument, Freddie? Because I don’t think they’re effective references. I think, that if we’re going to succeed in life, we should refuse to take advice from anyone in the 27 Club.’
Freddie gives me a consoling look, shrugs, and retreats back into the plastic curve of his chair.
I almost sigh. It gets stuck somewhere in my head as I instead say, ‘We must have different definitions of success…’
