Chapter 11
I’ve been here for a couple of months now. My life has settled into a routine. I have lessons with Miss Dunn. No matter what they tell me, I’m afraid they’re going to send me to Ramsay if I don’t learn enough, so I always do my homework. I read books from the library. I go to tennis lessons and swimming lessons. I avoid Bindi and Cinnamon, without making it obvious that I’m walking around them. You can’t let someone know you’re afraid of them.
One night I don’t have anything better to do, so I look into the lounge room where Bindi and Cinnamon are sprawled on the lounge and Karen is in the brown chair. I survey the room before going in, working out that I can sit on the red two-seater couch, across the room from Bindi and Cinnamon. Karen doesn’t take her eyes from the TV. Even though there’s only some noisy fast-food commercial playing, you’d think it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. Cinnamon gives me a quick glance of mild dislike, and Bindi stares at me for a moment with her eyes narrowed. They don’t try to keep me from coming in, though. The lounge room is common property and they know it.
I settle myself into the sagging, musty-smelling red couch. The couch got here just a few days after I did. Some man showed up at the door and made a big deal about having a ‘donation’ for us, when all he really had was an old piece of furniture that he couldn’t sell at his garage sale and couldn’t be bothered taking to the tip. Lyyssa helped him unload it from his lime-green ute and carry it inside. He never took off his sunglasses the whole time.
For some reason, I decided the couch was female and gave her a name. I called her Clementine. I didn’t tell anyone this, of course, I just named the couch inside my own head.
Clementine the couch is red. Not burgundy, or maroon, but bright, screaming scarlet. And the fabric isn’t just plain velvet, it’s crushed velvet. New, Clementine probably looked fashionably outlandish, like something an artist would have in the house. Twenty or thirty years old, she just looks run-down and sad. But the lights in the lounge room are always turned down low, so Clementine’s shabbiness isn’t so obvious.
The noisy commercial ends and a Channel Eight News Bulletin with Dan Martin and Susan Simons comes on. After Dan Martin reads the national news, mostly boring stuff about the session of Parliament in Canberra, Susan starts on the world news. All female newsreaders are pretty, and Susan Simons is prettier than most. But she has a hard, determined edge that sets her apart. It makes you pay attention to what she says.
‘In New York, a well-known publicist has been arrested for allegedly driving her four-wheel drive vehicle into a crowd outside a nightclub,’ Susan says, looking straight into the camera. ‘Witnesses say that Lucy Grubb, publicist for several prominent actors and the daughter of an influential New York attorney, was angry at being told to move her car because it was blocking a fire hydrant.’
They cut to some news footage. ‘She just went postal!’ some guy in a polo shirt says in an American accent. ‘She yelled, “– you, white trash!” and just ploughed right into a whole crowd of people!’
They’ve bleeped out the dirty word, but you can tell it was ‘screw’.
‘Local authorities say that nine people were taken to hospital for injuries ranging from severe abrasions to a crushed pelvis,’ Susan continues. ‘Police have not yet disclosed whether Miss Grubb remains in custody, or whether bail has been set.’
Bindi and Cinnamon explode into a fit of laughter. They think the whole thing is hilarious. ‘Screw you, white trash!’ Bindi screams at Cinnamon.
‘No, screw you, white trash!’ Cinnamon screams back.
I just know they’re going to go around saying ‘Screw you, white trash’ for the rest of the week. They’re too stupid to realise that they really are white trash. They’re slutty and common. Bindi brags about her boyfriend who’s a dealer, and Cinnamon’s always going on about how much money she made as a stripper in Kings Cross.
They’re the sort of girls that toffs can get away with crushing under the tyres of their expensive cars. But if Bindi or Cinnamon got behind the wheel drunk or stoned and mowed someone down, they’d be sent straight to jail.
I burrow down further into Clementine and hope they shut up before the nine o’clock movie comes on.
‘What’s going on?’ Lyyssa is standing in the doorway. She must have heard Bindi and Cinnamon screaming ‘screw you’ at each other.
‘Nothing,’ Bindi says sullenly.
‘Bindi, I thought we had an agreement. We agreed that you wouldn’t watch TV after nine o’clock until you –’ Lyyssa catches herself in time, ever mindful of ‘breaking confidentiality’ or ‘betraying trust’. Lyyssa bites her lip. ‘You remember our agreement, don’t you?’
Bindi’s not exactly stupid, but she has trouble in school. Probably, Lyyssa wants her to stop watching so much TV until her marks improve.
‘Yeah, right.’ Bindi sighs and gets up from the couch, pushing past Lyyssa and stomping down the hall to her bedroom. Cinnamon follows her. ‘Screw you, white trash!’ ‘No, screw you, white trash!’ I hear them saying to each other, before going into their rooms.
Lyyssa looks confused. ‘What was that all about?’ she asks.
I tell Lyyssa I don’t know. Karen turns her eyes back to the TV.