“Richard’s got some great ideas,” the Hastings House girl explains.

“You don’t have the people skills, Taylor.”

“And you never turn up to meetings.”

“And not once did you gather intelligence against the Cadets last year.”

“You spend too much time in trouble with Hannah. If she’s on your back, she’ll be on ours.”

“You just don’t give a shit about anyone.”

I block them out and try to go back to the boy in the tree….

“Are you even listening to us?”

“Let’s just take a vote.”

“Five says she’s out and she’s out.”

Back to the tree…inhaling the intoxicating perfumed air and listening to a song with no end and to a boy with a story that I need to understand.

“This is the worst decision I’ve ever known them to make.”

“Everyone calm down. We just vote and it’ll be over.”

“She burnt down the bloody laundry when I was in her House. Who can trust her?”

“They were sultana scones.”

The voice slices through the others and I glance up. Ben Cassidy is looking at me. I don’t know what I see in his eyes, but it brings me back to reality.

“What are you doing, Ben?” Richard asks quietly, menacingly.

Ben takes his time, then looks at Richard. “The one-in-charge gave it to her, so we should respect that.”

“We haven’t agreed that she’s the leader.”

“You need five votes against her,” Ben reminds them.

“Murray? Hastings? Darling?” he says to the others in turn. They refuse to look at me and I realise they’ve rehearsed this. “Clarence…”

“Raffaela reckons we need to get the Prayer Tree,” Ben cuts in before Richard can drag him into it. I can tell they haven’t discussed this with him. He’s considered the weakest link. Except when they need his vote. Big mistake.

“That’s all we want back from the Townies,” Ben mutters, not looking at anyone.

Richard glances at Ben in disgust.

“And of course the Club House is a priority.” Ben starts up again, and I can tell he’s enjoying himself.

Silence. Tons of it, and I realise that I have my one vote that will keep me in. For the time being, anyway.

“Who’s in charge of the Townies this year?” I ask.

I’m staring at Richard. He realises that I’m here to stay and despite the look in his eyes that says betrayal, backstabbing, petulance, hatred, revenge, and anything else he’s planning to major in, he lets me have my moment.

“We’ll find out sooner or later,” he says.

But I like this power. “Ben?” I say, still staring at Richard.

“Yes?”

“Who’s in charge of the Townies these days?”

“Chaz Santangelo.”

“Moderate or fundamentalist?”

“Temperamental, so we need to get on his good side.”

“Townies don’t have a good side,” Richard says.

I ignore him. “Is he going to be difficult?” I ask Ben.

“Always. But he’s not a thug,” Ben says, “unlike the leader of the Cadets.”

“Who?” Richard barks out.

I see Ben almost duck, as if a hand is going to come out and whack him on the back of his head.

“First thing’s first. This year we get the Townies on our side,” I say, ignoring everyone in the room but Ben.

The chorus of disapproval is like those formula songs that seem to hit number one all the time. You know the tune in a moment and it begins to bore you in two.

“We’ve never done that,” Richard snaps.

“And look where it’s got us. In the last few years, we’ve lost a substantial amount of territory. It’s been split up between the Cadets and Townies. We haven’t got much left to lose.”

“What about the Prayer Tree?” Ben asks again.

“The Prayer Tree is not a priority,” I say, standing up.

“Raffaela reckons the trade made three years ago was immoral,” he argues.

I try not to remember that Raffaela, Ben, and I spent most of year seven together hiding out with Hannah. I can’t even remember Ben’s story. Heaps of foster parents, I think. One who put a violin in his hands and changed his life.

“Do me a favour,” I say to him, a tad on the dramatic side. “Don’t ever bring morality into what we do here.”

Chapter 2

When it is over, when I’m the last person sitting on the canvas-covered dirt floor, when the candles have burnt out and the sun has come up, I make my way towards Hannah’s house by the river. Hannah’s house has been unfinished ever since I can remember. Deep down I think that’s always been a comfort to me, because people don’t leave unfinished houses.

Working on her house has been my punishment ever since I got to this place six years ago. It’s the punishment for having nowhere else to go in the holidays or breaking curfew or running away with a Cadet in year eight. Sometimes I am so bored that I just go and tell her that I’ve broken curfew and she’ll say, “Well, no Saturday privileges for you, Taylor,” and she’ll make me work all day on the house with her. Sometimes we don’t say a word and other times she talks my ear off about everything and nothing. When that happens, there’s a familiarity between us that tells me she’s not merely my House caretaker. In that role she works out rosters, notifies us of transfers between Houses or exam schedules or study groups or detentions. Sometimes she sits with the younger kids and helps with homework. Or she invites them to her house and makes them afternoon tea and tells them some bad news, like a grandparent being dead or a parent having cancer, or makes up some fantastic story about why someone’s mother or father couldn’t come that weekend.

Absent parents aren’t a rare thing around here, probably because a tenth of the students are state wards. The Jellicoe School is run by the state. It’s not about money or religion but it is selective, so most of us are clever. The rest are a combination of locals or children of alternative environmentalists who believe that educating their children out in the bush is going to instil a love of nature in them. On the contrary, most of the students run off to the city the moment year twelve is over and revel in the rat race, never looking back. Then there are those like Raffaela, who is a Townie and is out here boarding with the rest of us because her parents teach at Jellicoe High School in town and they thought it would be better for her not to have to deal with that. Richard’s parents are embassy staff who live overseas most of the time, but his grandparents live in the outer district of the area so it seemed like the best option for him.

I don’t know where I fit in. One day when I was eleven, my mother drove me out here and while I was in the toilets at the 7-Eleven on the Jellicoe Road, she drove off and left me there. It becomes one of those defining moments in your life, when your mother does that. It’s not as if I don’t forgive her, because I do. It’s like those horror films where the hero gets attacked by the zombie and he has to convince the heroine to shoot him, because in ten seconds’ time he won’t be who he was anymore. He’ll have the same face but no soul. I don’t know who my mother was before the drugs and all the rest, but once in a while during our splintered time together I saw flashes of a passion beyond anything I’ll ever experience. Most other times she was a zombie who would look at me and say things like, “I didn’t name you. You named yourself.” The way I used to see it was that when I was born she didn’t take time even to give me an identity. Of course there’s a story behind it all and she’s not that cut-and-dried evil, but my version keeps me focused. Hannah, of course, knows one of the other versions, but like everything, she keeps it a mystery.

Usually, especially these days, we seem to be angry with each other all the time, and today is no different.

“Transfers,” she says, handing me the sheet. I don’t bother even looking at it.

“My House is full. No more transfers,” I tell her.