She's with the Band Page 2

  As I struggled to make sense of my map, wacky boys with drumsticks loped past willowy girls stretching flawless figures poured into leotards. I was trying not to stare, but to act like the other kids did, ‘This is my life, this is normal’.

  Summoning every last ounce of courage, I gingerly tapped Charlie on the shoulder.

  ‘Hey, um, I’m new and kinda lost. Can you show me where the . . .’

  She whipped around, covering the phone with her hand. ‘It’s my manager,’ she mouthed.

  I scuttled away like a beetle in bad clothes.

  ‘And then he was like, “Well, if you’re not hanging with Richy, can I take you out for sangria?”’

  ‘Like, what’s sangria?’

  ‘I think it’s Mexican.’

  ‘Um, excuse me?’ I butted in. Two beautiful heads swished my way: a cherry redhead in a ‘Bring The Noise’ tight tee, and a Lucy Lui-esque girl in a cute plaid twin-set, who I recognised from some rather racy yoghurt ads.

  ‘Um, can you tell me where the art rooms are? I’m new.’ The girls let their eyes trail over me in disbelief as I attempted a look of nonchalant easy-breeze –Yes, I am a teenage girl dressed like a 45-year-old man on welfare, but I don’t have a problem with that.

  ‘What are you majoring in?’ the red-head asked finally.

  ‘Wait, let’s guess,’ interrupted Ms Yoplait. ‘Hmmm . . . Too gawky for dance . . .’

  ‘Too shy for acting,’ continued Red, nodding. ‘Music or Visual Arts. That outfit says Vis Arts.’

  ‘Uh, yeah.’ Perfect. I was officially a fashion disaster turned walking cliché.

  ‘Wait a sec,’ Red frowned in recognition. ‘Are you Misha Mantle?’

  ‘Mia Mannix.’

  ‘That’s what I meant.’ She pointed a shiny pink nail at me. ‘You’re, like, the daughter of some super-famous painter. My brother told me about you!’

  ‘Justin is such a hottie,’ Yoplait drawled. ‘Don’t you guys end up making out when you’re wasted?’

  ‘Ewwww, Gillian!’ shrieked Red, laughing. ‘Don’t listen to her, Mia, she’s an idiot. My bro is so not cute, right?’

  The guy would make Greek gods look plain. ‘Um, I . . . don’t know.’

  ‘Articulate much?’ smirked Yoplait, holding up some shiny strands of hair for inspection. ‘I gotta ditch these split-ties before ID photos. Peace, you guys.’ She sauntered off.

  Red turned to me and smiled. ‘I’m Stacey. C’mon. I’ll show you where to go. Gillian’s a dance major. She toured as an understudy with the Australian Dance Company last summer, and performed twice. That might sound like no big, but it totally is. Plus she’s in a performance group I’m in –the Star Sisters. We’re major.’

  I nodded. ‘Are you a dance student too?’

  Stacey struck a pose. ‘Acting, darling. I’m totally destined for silver screen success. Once I said, “Sure, that’d be great” on Home and Away. I was making this chick’s boyfriend jealous.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be a stretch.’

  She whirled around to face a buff, buzz-cut boy; basketball player’s body covered by a Save Water, Drink Beer T-shirt.

  ‘Can I help you, Carl?’ Stacey’s voice dripped scary sarcasm.

  ‘C’mon Sissy, don’t be ridiculous,’ he smiled disarmingly. ‘Meet me at the beach after school. The Milky Bars are on me.’

  ‘Gee whiz, that’d be swell, but a) wrong twin, jerk, and b) sloppy seconds aren’t her style.’ Stacey glared poisonously at the dopey-looking Carl. ‘Here’re the art rooms, Mia. I’ll see you later.’

  In a haughty whirl of cherry red, she was gone.

  ‘Okay, people! Listening caps on, motor mouths off! That means you Michael, Sarah!’

  The teacher –a tall bespectacled British man in a coat and bow tie, glared in mock anger until the room settled. The large light-filled space resembled Dad’s old studio: artworks-in-progress covered the walls, as did tins of paint oozing their insides and buckets of paintbrushes in varying states of decay. Books on technique and the ‘way of the artist’ were propped up against life-model mannequins and stacks of different sized canvases. Organised art chaos. Thankfully my weird old-man get-up didn’t look completely fish-out-of-water compared to the experimental-art nerds filing in to find their seats.

  ‘Right. For those new faces, I’m Mr Rochester –more commonly known as . . .’ He waved for the class to answer.

  ‘Rocho!’ the class called, as if barracking at the footy.

  ‘Right, very good,’ continued Rocho, with a dry smile. ‘And this year I’ll be using the phrases: “I don’t know art . . .”’

  ‘. . . But I know what I pass,’ the class chorused.

  ‘And, “Rome wasn’t built in a day . . .”’

  ‘. . . But they didn’t try hard enough.’

  ‘Exactly. Now, that’s a little about me, the rest I’m sure you can Google, like everyone else does.’

  ‘When he was at art school he sold a painting of two dogs doing it,’ whispered the girl next to me. ‘We found it last year on eBay.’

  Shocked, I choked on unplanned laughter.

  ‘Excellent!’ boomed Rocho. ‘Our first new student has just volunteered to introduce herself.’

  They say most people fear public speaking more than death. I fear public speaking more than waking up during open-heart surgery, finding out your boyfriend is really your brother AND accidentally vomiting on someone important, combined. Twenty sets of eyeballs watched me shuffle past to stand up the front.

  ‘Hi, um, I’m Mia. Mia Mannix. I moved here yesterday with my dad . . .’ A few kids nudged each other. ‘And, um, it’s really . . . hot here.’

  ‘Duh,’ someone muttered, and the class snickered.

  Embarrassment burnt through me like bushfire, and I glanced at Rocho in a panic. He nodded for me to continue. I took a deep breath, desperate not to fail whatever personality test this was supposed to be.

  ‘Look, you wanna ask about my dad, right? I don’t really like talking about him ’cause it’s weird, but if I were you and you were me, I guess I’d be curious. So, um, you guys can ask me anything you like now, but that’s it for the rest of the year. Deal?’

  The class looked at each other in confusion.

  ‘Seriously.’ Please let this pay off. ‘Fire away.’

  Nothing. Eyes darted sideways, trying to suss which way to play this. Still nothing . . . My forehead prickled with stress-sweat. C’mon . . . Then, finally, a long-haired boy up the back raised his hand.

  ‘Where does he paint?’

  ‘At our old place he made a big cattle shed into a studio, but here he’s going to convert the guest wing of the house.’

  Another hand. ‘Does he paint all the time?’

  ‘If he’s working on something new or has a deadline for something, he’ll work all day and all night –and only sleep three or four hours. But sometimes he’ll just spend the day reading and watching TV.’

  ‘What does he watch?’

  ‘The news, stuff on SBS,’ I frowned. ‘Oh, he loves those Chaser guys. He actually uses the word “scallywags” to describe them.’

  The class laughed. Hands waved in the air as questions started flying from every corner.

  ‘Is it true he’s dating that actress, Radha Mitchell?’

  I laughed. ‘No, they were just photographed together at an opening.’

  ‘So he’s single?’

  ‘Sarah!’ Rocho quickly reprimanded the cheeky strawberry-blonde.

  ‘No, it’s cool,’ I countered. ‘Yeah, he is. I think he dug the real estate agent who sold us our house though. He said she was “very nice and welcoming”, which I reckon is Dad-speak for “a total babe”.’

  ‘All right, go Sal!’ yelled Sarah, and everyone laughed.

  ‘Settle down, monkeys.’ Rochester hopped off his desk. ‘Mia’s been very accommodating in entertaining your tiny, curious minds, but we stand at the brink of a new school year . . .’

  ‘Just one more question, Rocho,’ everyone called out. ‘C’mon!’

  ‘All right, all right. Miss Mia –last question please.’

  I locked eyes with a lanky boy in black-rimmed glasses. ‘Yeah?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘So, if you have kids, are you gonna paint their portraits or just stick to photographs like the rest of the world?’

  I blushed and stared down at my sneakers. ‘Um . . .’

  He laughed nervously. ‘Hey, I was kidding . . .’

  ‘I didn’t ask to have my portrait painted,’ I found myself snapping. ‘My dad’s an artist, it’s what they do.’

  ‘Seriously, it was a joke . . .’

  ‘Right, thank you, Mia,’ Rochester threw the boy a bemused look. ‘On that note, the school year begins . . .’

  As I slid back into my seat, I snuck another look at the glasses boy. He could tell I was watching him, but he didn’t look back. Weirdo, I decided. Mean, freaky weirdo.

  Students swarmed like honeybees in designer threads to find a spot in the shade for our very first lunch. Don’t let me sit on my own, I pleaded silently. Surely someone would wave me over, take pity on the new girl in the funny clothes.

  Someone? Anyone . . . ?

  Cursing my cowardly nature, I was just about to duck into the loos to hang with my friend Suds the Soap Dispenser, when I spotted a flash of red. Stacey! I fought the urge to scream her name with relief, and instead plonked down next to her and dug an apple out of my bag.

  ‘How was your first class?’ I spoke through a mouthful of juicy Granny Smith. ‘Vis Arts wasn’t bad. This semester is all “traditional skills and disciplines”. Easy. Kinda boring though. I had to do Vis Arts to get Dad to agree to move to Sydney, but exactly how life-changing is still life, y’know?’
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  Stacey peered suspiciously over her sunglasses at me.

  ‘What?’ I asked. ‘Do I have paint on my face?’

  ‘Are you high?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Are. You. High.’

  ‘Oh, um, no thanks. I don’t really do drugs. I mean, it’s fine if you want to but . . .’

  ‘Why are you talking to me?’

  I choked on apple. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re disconcerting.’ She frowned delicately. ‘You can leave now.’

  ‘Okay,’ I whispered. ‘I’m sorry. I thought . . .’

  ‘Don’t think.’ A smile as frosty as a strawberry slushie. ‘Just leave.’

  Hands shaking, I scooped up my satchel, ready to bail. But straightening up, I saw: ‘Stacey?’ Reality dawned.

  ‘Hey, chick.’ She blew me a kiss. ‘I see you’ve met the less attractive Jackson. Yo, Sissy, you’ll never guess who wants to hang out with you . . .’

  Over sushi and sparkling mineral water, the Carl situation took front and centre. The facts as they stand: 1) Sissy and Carl used to have a thing. 2) While Sissy was away on a ‘totally random’ modelling shoot, Carl had a thing with someone else. 3) Sissy and Carl no longer have a thing.

  Stacey spent approximately thirty-five minutes denouncing Carl as everything from ‘an airhead with no licence’ to ‘a double-timing low-life who has more in common with a compost heap than the human race’.

  Sissy responded to this by sighing and muttering ‘chill out’ and ‘he just wants to hang’ as Stacey started listing all the novelty T-shirts she’d seen him in that ‘both sucked AND blew’. Sissy sat practically immobile, an ice statue in shades, moving only to shoot me steely glances, which said ‘Who are you?’ and ‘Why are you here?’ and ‘Is that outfit ironic or just plain stupid?’.

  Just as Stacey remembered a T-shirt which read FBI: Female Body Inspector, the hacky sack a group of kids had been kicking around arched high over their heads, coming to land neatly in Sissy’s Caesar salad.

  ‘Keep an eye on your balls, kid,’ she snarled to the skittish skinny boy who came to collect it. ‘You’ll lose them’.

  ‘Sorry.’ He backed away sheepishly.

  ‘You should be,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t eat this now.’

  ‘Get something tasty from the cafeteria,’ Stacey offered, sucking red-rope liquorice provocatively.

  ‘These damn heels give me blisters.’ Sissy slipped them off, wincing. ‘Can you go for me?’

  ‘Oh, it’d be an honour, Your Majesty.’ She bowed, smirking (a family trait).

  ‘Mia,’ the ice statue fixed her gaze on me, ‘would you mind?’

  Something passed between the twins.

  ‘Um, okay.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t she a sweetheart?’ Sissy cooed. ‘Garden Salad –nix the dressing. Pay you back mañana.’

  GARDEN SALAD NOT AVAILABLE.

  Alarm bells stared to ring –literally, from a car outside –and then stopped.

  But the offending sign still stared me in the face. Tuna and Greek Salads were nestled happily in their see-through plastic beds, stacked high next to Garden Salad’s empty row. I rubbed my forehead, feeling a lettuce-related headache seep through the back of my skull.

  ‘Tough call, huh? Tuna or Greek.’ The glasses-wearing art-class boy had appeared at my elbow. ‘Need a hand deciding?’

  ‘What, should I paint their pictures?’ My words were tart. ‘Thanks, I can handle this.’

  He flicked me an amused smile and began commentating into an imaginary microphone. ‘Folks, tonight’s match is proving to be a doozy. In the red corner we have Greek Salad: the sharp salty goodness of olive and feta cheese calmed by robust sweet tomato. And in the blue corner, Tuna Salad: chunks of flavoursome sea life, enveloped in naughty-but-nice mayonnaise. The gloves are off in the battle of healthy lunch options at Silver Street High.’

  ‘I said I didn’t need your help,’ I said sharply, refusing to be amused.

  Unperturbed, he shoved the microphone in my face. ‘Mia Mannix, from your position ringside tell the folks at home who you think will take the crown.’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know.’ I imagined Sissy’s cold disapproval of either choice, eyes flashing like a pirate’s cutlass catching the moonlight before claiming a life. ‘I need a Garden one!’

  ‘Mia, the words “it’s only salad” are flashing above you in large neon letters.’

  ‘You don’t understand!’ I wailed. ‘If I buy the wrong one . . .’

  ‘Okay, okay!’ Hands waved to quell my outburst. ‘Look, I bought a Garden Salad yesterday and only had a few bites ‘cause it lacked charisma and charm. Let’s buy a Greek Salad, fill out my Garden Salad, and ta-da! One Super Salad Solution.’

  I couldn’t help but crack a smile. Boy Wonder dipped his head in the direction of some stairs. I found myself falling in step beside him.

  He walked with the deliberate quickness of a cat on a kill. Sneaking a glance at his face, I got the distinct impression of self-assured intelligence, a million thoughts jostling under the surface. His eyes darted to take in the content of every poster pinned to the noticeboards and the details of every person we passed. It felt as if we were on a spy mission.

  ‘Here we are.’ He stopped, stuck a key in a door covered with faded stickers, and peered at me through narrowed eyes. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

  ‘No complaints so far.’ Okay, so I’d never had anyone to keep secrets for, but that sounded cooler.

  ‘Excellent.’

  The door swung open to reveal a windowless room crammed with junk of all shapes and sizes: mad scientist’s lab meets burgled op-shop. Stuffed red parakeets regarded me from a swinging wooden cage, while a mound of expressionless mannequins lay disinterestedly in a heap. Stacks of ancient magazines were piled haphazardly on top of the computers in the corner, threatening to topple with the faintest breeze. Old movie posters were Blu-tacked clumsily to the wall –swooning French lovers frozen in infatuation and impassioned martial-arts men sworn to bloody revenge.

  A whiteboard with dates and deadlines scribbled on it seemed to be the only thing representing any kind of order.

  ‘Welcome to my office.’ The boy hastily swiped some empty takeaway containers into an overflowing bin. ‘Actually, it’s the school newspaper’s office but given it’s a one-man-show, I claim it as my own. Emil Allen, editor extraordinaire.’

  I gestured to the picture that hung above his desk: a large, black-and-white photograph of two naked women, both covered in paint, one dragging the other across a big canvas in front of an audience of well-dressed onlookers. ‘Jugs out for art. Is this the secret that gets you through the day?’

  He glanced at the picture, unsure if I was impressed or offended.

  ‘That’s Yves Klein. French guy. Used to make artworks by using, ah, human paintbrushes.’ He shot me a furrowed-brow look. ‘I thought you’d be into artists like him. I mean, your dad . . .’

  ‘. . . Uses stock-standard, totally inanimate paintbrushes,’ I quipped. ‘So where’s this secret?’

  He whistled. ‘Libby! We have company.’

  A tiny brown puppy emerged from a pile of cushions, yawning.

  ‘Omigod, a puppy!’ I squealed. She tumbled over to Emil, yapping until he scooped her up. ‘Shhh,’ he reprimanded her gently. ‘Stealth-like, remember? We’re in enemy territory.’ She sneezed and looked up at Emil in surprise. ‘I found her a few days ago in a cardboard box. I think someone was trying to get rid of her.’

  ‘Wow, that’s a real lose-faith-in-humanity moment.’ Warm little licks covered my hand. ‘She’s so cute.’

  ‘Hold her. I’ll fix you that salad.’

  She settled into my arms, pillow-soft and puppy-fat.

  ‘So, who ya buying lunch for?’ he asked. ‘Hot date?’

  ‘Sissy Jackson.’ Whose brother is the hottest date in the world, I added silently.