She

She

David McRobbie

She

David McRobbie

Copyright © 2014 David McRobbie

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Cover image: Robert McRobbie

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

About The Author

Other Books by David McRobbie

Chapter One

She was the first female in my life, apart from my mother and younger sister, Alice. There’s also our English teacher at school, Ms Bailey, and the social studies teacher, Ms McArdle. Can’t forget them. Anyway, this particular ‘She’ slouched into our home classroom late one morning, and became my bully.

It’s one thing when a guy fronts you and says, ‘Hello, I’m your local torturer. Here to make your whole life miserable.’ I mean, that’s okay. I can deal with it; done it before, heaps of times and learned all the strategies. I could even write self-defence leaflets about it, pamphlets and stuff, but they’d be about boy vs boy tactics. Never a girl bullying a guy, because that is a different kettle of ball games.

Girls bully each other, no mistake about that, but they’re more subtle about it and not so physical. Over my school years, I’ve been able to watch them at it, and be glad it wasn’t me on the receiving end.

Three months into my second year high school, I was doing well enough, had my own two mates to hang around with, Leonard and Maurice. We were not the brightest bunch, but in there somewhere, upper middle to top. We liked the quiet life and didn’t mind classical music. Last year the school organised a rock musical called Move Over Mozart, the idea being that classical stuff was for losers. We guys organised a protest petition and got three signatures. Our own, as it happened. But we boycotted the show.

So back to this She, who turned up in our class one morning, silent and bulky, long blonde hair, dressed in a tartan sports team jacket, coloured red mainly, number 69 on the front. Her black track pants went all the way down to her sneakers so that she was just a straight line from top to bottom. There was no shape, like the other girls had. Last year Leonard, Maurice and I didn’t give a toss about girl shapes, but now, suddenly, we were all eyes and imagination, even giving our two favourite women teachers glances from time to time.

The She’s face wore a not-happy-to-be-here expression. Everybody looked, but nobody spoke, except our home room and English teacher, Ms Bailey, who glanced up from what she was doing and gave a half smile. ‘Oh, hello. You must be Olive Carson.’

‘Yeah, only they call me Livy.’

‘Well, Livy, if you’re happy with that. Find yourself a desk. There’s one next to Sandra.’ Livy Carson flopped into the empty desk beside Sandra, who had a shape and gave out a full smile, but needn’t have bothered. Livy sniffed and looked at the teacher, who went on, ‘I’m Ms Bailey, and we’re doing English. Do you have the text book, Livy?’

‘No. No one said.’

‘Right, well, we’ll get you sorted out for next time.’ Ms Bailey turned to the rest of us and pointed to me, ‘Rob Braden, let’s hear what you’ve written.’

Rob Braden, that’s me. I got to my feet and flipped open the exercise book as Maurice whispered from the desk behind, ‘Your turn to shine.’ I read my piece and sat down.

All I got was a nod. ‘Good enough, but you started your item with three sentences, one after the other, each beginning with the same word. Took my mind off what you were saying, put it on how you were saying it. So, re-work, and apart from that —’ Ms Bailey waved a hand like some kind of salute. It was as much praise as she’d give, but good enough. The bell rang and we guys went outside to mooch around until next period.

Leonard had exciting news about Ms Bailey. ‘Her first name’s Irene.’

‘How’d you know?’ Maurice demanded. This had been our quest, to find Ms Bailey’s first name so that we could use it in private whenever we discussed her, which we did often.

But Leonard had won. He explained, ‘I heard Ms McArdle use it.’

‘Irene.’ I tried the name. ‘Irene Bailey. I like it. Suits her. And what’s Ms McArdle’s first name?’

‘Working on it,’ Leonard said. He’d also started on a poem in praise of her, but couldn’t find a word to rhyme with that surname except ‘gargle’.

‘Not very romantic,’ I said.

‘It’s not a love poem. Besides, she’s out of our league.’

I took time off to notice that Livy Carson was on her own, eyes on the ground, leaning against the school wall, standing on one foot, the other propped behind her. The rest of the girls kept on doing their own thing in a casual but determined sort of way. They knew Livy was there, but no one made a move towards her.

Making friends is tricky; you can’t get in unless you give out, and Livy Carson was doing neither. It was her business. I looked away and we three guys got a game of hacky sac going.

For a girl who said nothing, she really stirred things up, the who, what, and where questions flew around. Maurice’s sister was friends with a girl who knew things. She was as good as the ABC. News on the hour. Anyway, after a couple of days Maurice reported that Livy Carson had been to three different schools already this year and it was only July, but Maurice didn’t know why she’d moved around so much, so all we could do was guess.

‘Maybe she was trouble,’ Leonard suggested. ‘And got the heave-ho.’

‘Burnt the place down,’ was all I cold think to say.

‘Nah,’ Maurice added his bit. ‘We’d have heard about that. And she’d be at a different kind of school, where they lock the doors and hide the matches.’

Leonard held up one finger. ‘Tell you what, I vote Rob goes and asks her.’

‘Yeah, I can see that happening.’ And so the mystery of Livy Carson remained unsolved.

After a week of wondering, and not finding any answers, Ms Bailey, Irene, gave us a writing exercise. This was one where we had to watch as one boy came out to the front and did a bit of play acting, like he was looking for something. Our job was to describe what he did and invent a reason why he was doing these things. We had to comment on the way he moved, the expression on his face and the look he gave at the end when he didn’t find what he was after.

Time allowed: twenty minutes.

It’s the kind of assignment I like. Not the stupid write-a-whole-story-in-a-forty-minute period kind of thing. Title, beginning, middle and end. I made this exercise a bit of a story, using words like ‘furtive’, ‘anxious’ and ‘defeated’, which I scrubbed out and put in ‘frustrated’ instead.

With time up, Ms Bailey looked around the room, then said, ‘Can we hear what you’ve written, Livy?’

Livy got to her feet and mumbled, ‘Didn’t get to finish it all.’

‘Well, give us what you’ve got.’

So Livy began, ‘The guy came in. Looked for something. I don’t know what. He looked again, looked again —’

‘And?’ Ms Bailey encouraged her. ‘What did his face tell you? Was he nervous about what he was doing? Do you think he should have been in the room at all? Was he being — sneaky?’

‘Don’t know,’ Livy said. She closed her exercise book and flopped down, her eyes on the desk, her lower jaw working.

‘Anyway, thank you for that, Livy.’ Ms Bailey looked around the room. I thought: please don’t pick me. Okay, I felt for Livy. I hardly