Darkhaven

‘You don’t need to make your mind up about much,’ Zenna said, adjusting the settings on her digital camera. I didn’t bother paying attention. I did the bare minimum I could get away with in Media Production, my non-ATAR elective, and I still hadn’t learned how to use a proper camera. If anything, I was worse with a DSLR – I had no idea what the acronym stood for, and a DSLR didn’t take care of everything for me like my trusty smartphone.

Zenna’s multitude of silver rings glinted in the winter sun as she twisted dials with purple-polished fingertips. I’d met this petite girl with rainbow nails and glitter in her hair in Photography back in Year 9, and even though I’d sucked at it, I’d stayed in the class because I figured the next thing I chose might be just as bad, but without anyone fun to hang out with or help me with homework. Unlike me, Zenna Robinson had an eye for a great photo and the skills to take it. She wasn’t doing ATAR, but she was planning to go into cinematography, and she was almost top of the class. At best, I could maybe pick out an interesting subject. I’d yet to get anything in focus.

‘No,’ I remarked, ‘just how to go about the rest of my life. You know, the Question.’

Zenna pushed back her hair – this week, red with gold streaks – and sighed dramatically, putting on her best teacher voice. ‘Gabby. What are you going to do?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, go home, take a long bath, order pizza.’ I elbowed her.

‘Hey, watch the camera! Be useful, go and lie on that bench. There’s no better time to start your career as a photographic subject.’

I snorted. ‘Ha. I am not model material.’

‘I didn’t say you’d be modelling. You add interest to my landscape.’

I sashayed to the bench, exaggerating the wiggle of my hips, and sat down, lingering on the shady end and hunching into my jacket.

‘In the sun, please!’ Zenna called, waving her hand at the other end, rings flashing in the sunlight.

‘But it’s glary,’ I grumbled. I made a point of squinting in her general direction.

‘It’s not that bad. Just do it. Like your TISC thing. Just pick a university that you like the look of and do it.’

‘Easy for you to say. What if I don’t even get a high enough score?’

Zenna kept taking photos. ‘Then you won’t have to worry about having picked the wrong place.’ She gestured to the camera on its tripod. ‘Your turn.’

I pulled my phone out of my jacket pocket and started snapping. Zenna rolled her eyes and packed up the equipment.

Two minutes later, we wandered back to the computer lab.

‘Did you even take any pictures?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied, indignant. She raised one eyebrow.

‘See.’ I gestured as we logged into the computers. ‘They’ve already uploaded to the cloud. Efficiency is an art form.’

Zenna frowned as she gave my meagre collection a short review. ‘Efficiency is not art.’

We worked in silence. It took me about ten minutes to give up. I turned to Zenna. ‘Can I please use some of yours?’

‘Hmm,’ she began, not taking her eyes off her screen, ‘sounds like plagiarism. Why would I let you do that?’

I gave her my best mock-pleading face. ‘Because it would be equally unethical to let your friend fail when you knew you could save her.’

Without pausing in her work, she passed me a USB drive. ‘You forgot you also took these.’

I smiled, plugged the drive in and opened the folder. They were good, but not her usual standard. I knew I’d never get away with passing off anything she’d taken properly as mine. The last file was a video of me sashaying in front of the camera. I grimaced at the size of my bottom. ‘Bitch,’ I remarked.

Zenna smirked. ‘You owe me.’

‘Big time. But still a bitch.’ We giggled, then lapsed into busy silence.

***

Ten minutes before the end of last period, a runner came in with a note summoning me to the deputy principal’s office. I told the receptionist my name and waited in the corner next to a drooping potted fern and an old sofa that looked too hard for anyone’s butt, trying not to read the career advice posters in abundant display on the wall. My eyes had just settled on a lacklustre advertisement about the school’s drama production when a guy’s voice sounded behind me.

‘Don’t go.’ It wasn’t just a voice. It was the sound of oil spreading over velvet. Water thundering over a cliff. But voices didn’t sound like that, at least not that I’d ever heard. I turned.

He was roughly my age and all lanky limbs, with alarmingly scruffy black hair. He lounged on the rock-hard sofa as if he lived there, in black sandshoes, casually-on-purpose ripped black jeans and a white t-shirt. A delicate silver chain hung around his neck, disappearing under his shirt. He was wearing sunglasses, the black wrap-around kind with mirrored lenses so I could see only myself in them.

‘Hello,’ he said, in that voice. I could feel his gaze on me, even through the dark lenses.

‘Um, what?’ I sputtered.

He broke the gaze, looking down at the corner of the couch where a thread was torn loose.

‘Sorry,’ he said. Now he sounded normal. ‘The play. It’s terrible. Trust me, I saw the rehearsal.’ He looked back up. Something was different about him from a moment ago, but I couldn’t pick it.

‘Ri-ight.’ I drew the word out. ‘Well, I wasn’t going. I was … ’

‘Not looking at career posters?’

I started. How had he known that? I glanced over the array of “Be at the cutting edge of biotech” and “Do you have what it takes to lead a team?” posters and shrugged, trying to sound as casual as his jeans looked. ‘I just wish I could meet God or whoever it is up there and they could tell me what the hell I’m supposed to be doing.’

He looked at me. Sunglasses still on. ’Do you really wish you could meet this god of yours?′

I turned away from his intensity. ‘I don’t really believe in God. I’m here to see Mr Cantwell.’

The strange boy chuckled. ‘That’s probably about as close as most people get to the god of careers.’

I didn’t get it. And I was miffed at his familiarity. ‘How did you know I wasn’t reading career posters anyway?’

His long fingers picked absently at the loose thread in the couch. ‘Lucky guess. And you know, there’s about twenty of them and you’re deliberately staring at that one very dull drama PSA.’

Mr Cantwell opened his door and waved me in.

‘Nice chatting,’ the boy said, stretching his arms overhead and sticking his legs out like this was his living room or something.

‘Whatever,’ I muttered. I stepped over his feet, my toe catching the edge of his shoe. The boy grinned.

Mr Cantwell returned to his office chair and motioned for me to sit. He was a tall, angular man with a face full of features competing for dominance: prominent chin, long nose and dark, bushy eyebrows. He was gruff and blunt and feared by most of the school, but under the suit and tie and stiff exterior, he genuinely cared about the plights of indecisive students.

‘Ah, Gabby. I thought I’d see how you were doing with your university choices.’

I gave him a “how-do-you-think” look – we were familiar enough – and plopped into one of the chairs in front of his desk.

‘You’ve been in here every semester since you had to choose your Year 9 electives, trying to change your subjects.’

It was true. I folded my arms, trying not to betray my internal anguish. ‘I don’t think I can get this right.’

He leaned back in his chair. ‘Did you meet with the career counsellor?’

I nodded. Fat lot of use that had been. The woman had looked at my records, then looked at me and asked if I had thought about having a baby. I’d walked out without a word. Mr Cantwell steepled his fingers and regarded me over his reading glasses. ‘It’s not about getting it right. Consider that a university degree isn’t for everyone. I’m not saying you don’t have the academic skill – you definitely do – but it isn’t your only option. Just keep that in mind.’

‘What else should I do?’ Stupidly, I felt like crying. I pushed the feeling down and gritted my teeth.

‘Well, I would suggest a gap year. Take some of the pressure off. My daughter took a year off, travelled a bit, worked, and she said it gave her a different perspective. Or you can look at TAFE options, if vocational training appeals more to your interests.’

I slumped. TAFE. Degrees. Gap years. Nothing felt right. ‘But I still have to apply to somewhere now. I need an epiphany.’ My voice cracked. Dammit.

Mr Cantwell smiled. ‘Gabby, sometimes in life you just have to make a decision.’

An alarm beeped from his wrist. ‘If you need anything, just let me know,’ he offered, silencing the alarm as he stood to open the door. I smiled and thanked him, not meeting his eyes, in case he saw mine about to water, and hurried out of the room.

The strange boy was gone.

***

Heavy clouds were massing on the horizon when I came out of Cantwell’s office. I took a deep breath of the electric air, letting it diffuse the feeling of panic. Frizzy hair be damned, I loved a good thunderstorm. Sure, I wasn’t fond of the humidity that preceded one, but it was worth it for that feeling of pent-up excitement. Like being a kid, waiting at the gates of the Perth Royal Show, next in line for the turnstile.

Dad was back today and he picked me up in his black Calais – his inconspicuous drive, for when a chauffeured Mercedes was too theatrical. I had long ago stopped asking questions. When I was five, Alex had bought me a cubby house, turned it into my “special agent” office and told me that whatever I got up to in there, it would be top secret. Not even he could know. That way, we would both have our secret lives. Dad took a different tack. I had questioned him, once. Never again.

‘How was school?’ Dad asked as I slid into the warm front seat.

‘It sucked.’

‘Ah, today was the day the TISC handbooks were released from their cage to unleash terror on uncertain students. I’m in the know.’ He tapped his nose.

I rolled my eyes.

‘You know it’s not the end of the world if you start the wrong major. You can always change it.’

‘Who says I even want to go to uni?’ I said, thinking about Mr Cantwell’s comment.

‘Well, you have some time to think about it. But it doesn’t hurt to have a plan.’

I sat in stubborn silence. He shot me more than one concerned glance. It wasn’t Dad I was mad at, but I was mad at something, and he was there.

Since Dad’s house was in West Beach and I went to West Beach Senior High School, the drive home took less than ten minutes. West Beach was named, with an extraordinary leap of imagination, for the beach it incorporated, and being in Perth meant it faced west. Of course pretty much all beaches in WA faced west, but whatever. It was a quiet suburb, and both Cecelia and Zenna lived within a few minutes’ drive, or a fifteen-minute walk if I couldn’t get a lift. All the houses looked the same: beige, rendered four-by-twos with double garages and well-kept lawns at the front. Two-point-five dogs and a kid and all that. I loved Alex’s little apartment in the city, where Italian pistachio gelato was only a short stroll away and the neighbourhood lawnmower brigade didn’t wake me up every Saturday morning.

Alex spent most of his time in Canberra when he wasn’t staying with me. Talk about being an imposition. I’d hassled him about it once, but he assured me that he loved hanging out with me, then grinned and said it was all about the water anyway, and when he wasn’t working, he was rowing or water skiing or paddleboarding. Alex teased me about being the only person in the world who wore shoes and jeans and a long-sleeved shirt to the beach; I maintained that anything less than knee-high boots was inviting sand into my socks where it didn’t belong. Beaches were pretty – in photos. And I had to admit they were kinda awesome in a thunderstorm. I had always had an urge to watch a thunderstorm roll in from the vantage point of a mountaintop. Sure it would be suicide-crazy, but still. Fantasies were supposed to be crazy.

Dad frowned as we drove down our street. By the time we pulled into the driveway, his expression was black, his mouth a thin line. A silver BMW waited in front of the garage door. I peered at it, curiosity twining with unease in my stomach. We almost never had visitors, and definitely never unannounced.

Dad pulled up alongside the BMW and turned off the engine. ‘Stay in the car.’

Before I could open my mouth to protest, his door shut behind him. A woman dressed in a pencil skirt and jacket stepped out of the back of the BMW. I leaned over and cracked Dad’s window.

‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ Dad said, the warning low in his throat.

’We can’t all play happy families, Jon,′ she said with a cold sneer. She handed him an envelope. ‘Let me know what you want to do about it.’

Dad tucked the envelope in his jacket pocket and glowered after the BMW as it disappeared down the street. I grabbed my bag and followed him into the house, intrigued, but he vanished into his office without a word. Something to do with his work then. It was unusual that his co-workers would come to the house, but I’d long ago stopped worrying about furtive visits from people Dad worked with.

I slung my bag down in the hallway and headed for the kitchen as my phone buzzed – Cecelia, reminding me of our TISC book and chocolate date. If only there was a job for someone whose favourite thing to do was eat dessert. While I rummaged in the freezer, Dad’s footsteps scuffed across the room and I straightened, ice cream tub in hand. ‘Can I go over to Cecelia’s? We’re going to study.’

‘Sure. But be back early, please. It’s a school night.’

‘Is it really?’ I asked, mocking. ‘Here I was thinking it was Friday.’

‘Wishing, more like.’ He had his wetsuit and beach bag in hand, ready to head back out and take advantage of the wind and storm swell, but not before he admonished me about eating some fruit. ‘Apples, Gabby. The round red things in the bowl on the table. Or bananas. And it doesn’t count if you eat it with syrup and ice cream!’ Then he was gone.

I made myself a banana split, complete with two scoops of ice cream, chocolate sauce and maple syrup, and sat at the table with my TISC handbook. I flicked aimlessly through the pages, not really seeing them. The Question loomed over me. Cecelia was so sure of her path that, despite her efforts, she really couldn’t understand my problem. Zenna was more sympathetic, but she didn’t have any great advice either. She said I should just go to uni, which to her – a smart girl who had somehow never fit into academia or aspired to university study – was a magical world where clever people found their place.

Teachers were no help to me either. They had lamented my lack of application to my studies all year, ever since I realised that none of my subjects were inspiring me and stopped bothering. When I tried to explain that to Flamebeard, after he told me that I had an aptitude for biology and should pursue it with more vigour, he responded by launching into an impassioned talk about molecular genetics. I had stared, wondering at how the irony was lost on him. And that was the point: if I was destined to pursue the subject, if I really cared, I too would have forgotten what we’d been talking about and joined him in the genetics digression.

I wondered what my mum would have said. Dad didn’t keep any photos of her, so I didn’t even know what she looked like. When I was six, I’d come home from school one day, a half-finished drawing clutched in my fist, crying because we’d been asked to draw our mum for Mother’s Day and I didn’t know which colour crayon to use for her hair. He’d sat me down and explained that she’d been an officer like him and had died from a bullet wound during a mission they’d been on. As with all his work, he couldn’t elaborate, but I kept asking him questions. Finally he snatched the drawing out of my hand and tore it into pieces, screaming that I mustn’t talk about it. I’d never seen him so angry before, or since, and I’d never asked about her again. I didn’t exactly miss her but sometimes I would see Cecelia laughing or talking or bickering with her mum, Nancy. I guess I just missed that relationship. Nancy had always been more than kind to me, but it wasn’t quite the same. Although it had come pretty close when she’d made me a litter-of-puppies cake for my seventh birthday. Literally, eight little cakes in different puppy shapes, iced in white and brown with chocolate buttons for spots. They’d been almost too cute to eat.

My phone buzzed again. Nancy would pick me up in an hour, after ballet. Cecelia and her two younger sisters all took lessons. I had tried hip hop for a while, but I didn’t have an ounce of musicality or commitment to practise and the teacher eventually advised that perhaps I would prefer athletics, which had to have been a joke, except she said it with a straight face.

I pushed the TISC handbook away, dumped my bowl in the sink, changed into comfy jeans and an old hoodie and found my sneakers, thinking of going for a walk. I was mostly okay with my soft, size 12 physique. Well, 14 if I shopped at those stores, but I avoided their disproportionate mannequins and their smug, skinny sales staff. I knew I wasn’t fat – I’d be a size 8 or 10 in America – and I wanted to be confident about my non-flat stomach, but damn it was hard, when media was full of rake-thin girls and airbrushed images. Even so, walking was more for reflecting on a book I was reading, or sometimes finding an idea for an essay. I needed more than an idea now though. I needed an intervention.

I peeked into Dad’s room as I passed. He’d left his jacket slung across the end of the bed. I hesitated, then ducked into the room and slipped my hand into the fold of the jacket, careful not to disturb it. Dad had an uncanny eye for details like that. My fingers found paper and I drew the envelope out, my skin tingling even though I knew he wouldn’t be back for an hour at least.

It was old-looking paper, thick and heavy in my hand, and had a roughened texture like parchment. The surface of it glinted in the light. Intrigued, with my ears straining for any sound of Dad returning early, I flipped the envelope over. It had been affixed with an old-fashioned wax seal in white, a lying-down figure eight with a line through it. He’d already opened it, so he wouldn’t notice if I lifted the seal again. I peeled the flap back, careful not to tear it, and peered into the envelope. It was empty.

My first thought was that Dad must have removed the contents. My second was that it was an extraordinarily heavy envelope to have nothing in it. I was just about to put it back when it started to glow. The pit of my stomach fizzed with excitement as a white, translucent orb the size of a golf ball floated out of the envelope and hovered around eye height. Mesmerised, I extended my hand, wondering if it was ridiculously foolish to touch it, but before I could bring myself to move closer it exploded in a puff of glitter like tiny stars, a miniature elliptical galaxy bursting into life and fading from the room. Nothing remained except an empty, now suitably light, parchment envelope resting in my hand. I stared at the space where the orb had been, then inspected the envelope, but it contained no further clues. Was it a message? More importantly – the effervescence in my gut intensified – was it…

I couldn’t let myself believe it. Magic. Maybe my mind was making up illusions to distract me from my career choices. I gave myself a shake, tucked the envelope back into Dad’s jacket and retreated from the room.