Lucy and Linh (4 page)

She shuttled us down some more corridors, all the while continuing her commentary: In this wing, Dame Nellie Melba once had dinner with the attorney general. In that wing, two weeks ago, the vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne had held a meeting about the future of higher education with the leaders of the nation's other top five universities. “It was an honor to host that delegation,” said Mrs. Grey, with as much reverence as the nuns at Christ Our Savior would have shown had a flock of archangels descended to announce the Second Coming.

She then showed us the new performing arts center, a massive spherical affair made of glass and metal that could seat five hundred people, and the seven individual rehearsal rooms, each containing a different set of musical instruments. My father made the appropriate wide-mouthed sounds of awe.

After the tour, Mrs. Grey took us back to the main wing. “We're looking forward to having you join the Laurinda community next year, Lucy,” she said to me, and then shook my father's hand.

And so, Linh, my final term at Christ Our Savior went by very, very quickly. If I had known how quickly it would pass, I would not have spent so much time in class daydreaming about when my new uniform would arrive. I would not have walked around comparing our school's rented, pale green, three-bedroom cement music house across the road with Laurinda's performing arts center. I would not have looked at our teachers and thought, geez, Mr. Galloway is really nice but he spelled
liaise
wrong on the board. And I would not have been miffed when Ivy and Yvonne kept riling me. “We will miss you sooo much,” Ivy said. “Don't forget us when you go to your rich school, bitch!”

But you kept bringing me back to myself, Linh, forcing me to notice those moments. You'd laugh like a mad person at Ivy's awful jokes.

“What's the definition of a smart-arse?” she'd ask.

“I dunno,” you'd reply.

“Someone who can sit on a tub of ice cream and tell you what flavor it is!”

“Ha! I have a better one. What's brown and sticky?”

“Gross…we don't want to know.”

“A stick! Ha!”

When old Mr. Warren wore shorts to school, you said, “Hey, sir, nice legs! You should be on a catwalk!”

“Linh, you watch it, or one day you'll have a harassment claim against your name,” he retorted, but then he did a mock sashay with one hand on his hip and wiggled his bum. Those teachers, they cracked us up.

Tully sat quietly and miserably in our group, occasionally smiling like a moribund old lady who wanted relatives to think she was going to be okay. When we got our end-of-year science tests back, you could see that Tully had got near full marks again. “Wow, Tully, you're the smartest person I know,” you told her.

“Piss off, Linh. I don't want to hear your bullshit!” She got up and left.

On my last day, the teachers took us Year Nines to the botanical gardens for a picnic. Even Sister Clarke came along. It was one of those days when the sky was all one bright shade of blue and stretched high, as though you were living inside a balloon, warm and giddy. The sunshine slowed our heartbeats down bit by bit as we sat on the grass in our small satellite groups, but close to one another. Even the popular girls—Alessandra, Toula and their gang—were huddled nearby. Of course we had a hierarchy, but on days like this, when we shared all our food, and when Mr. Warren and four other girls were strumming soft classics like “Stand by Me” on guitars they'd lugged from the music house, I was reminded what a nice place this was. The only break in the mood was when Alessandra turned to Yvonne and said, “Hey, nice blouse, Yvonne. Is it from the eighties?”

Yvonne just shrugged, but you replied, “I heard that the 1980s are coming back into fashion, Alessandra.”

“Oh, I didn't mean the 1980s,” Alessandra said. “I meant the
1880s.
”

Before you could think of a comeback, there were five loud claps and we looked up to see Sister Clarke calling for Tully and me to stand up. Bewildered, we did. “I would like us all to congratulate these girls, your elected student representatives, for the superb job they have done this year.” People cheered. “Not only have they been tireless and enthusiastic in organizing the Red Cross door-knock appeal, the Tournament of Minds team and the Meet the Year Sevens barbecue, but they have successfully petitioned for the introduction of trousers as part of your uniform, so next year you'll be warm during winter!”

Loud cheers erupted. Tully smiled at me wanly.

For years, we had been trying to get out of wearing ridiculous woolen skirts that kept our legs cold no matter how many pairs of tights we had on. Tully and I had argued that it was sexist and old-fashioned. The compromise we had reached with the school was that we would be allowed to wear woolen pants, but the school would also introduce blazers. Otherwise, in our all-gray woolen sweater-and-trousers combos, we'd look like a prison work gang.

Until then, the entire school had only twelve black blazers of different sizes, which students borrowed whenever we had to do out-of-school presentations or debating. But every girl next year would have her own smart new jacket. With no trimmings on the sleeves or collar, and a detachable college logo on the pocket, the blazer could also double as a suit jacket for job interviews. For mothers who could sew, it could be made from Butterick pattern no. 6578. All you had to do was buy and attach the embroidered Christ Our Savior crest. My mother had made a mock-up of the jacket, and Tully and I had advocated for it in student-staff meetings.

Sister Clarke brought out a surprise cake. It was only a Safeway mud cake, and she had six more in plastic bags on the barbecue bench for the whole of Year Nine, but this one had white lettering on it that someone had done with an icing pen. “FAREWELL,” it said, with my name below in cursive.

“It has been a wonderful three years having you at our college,” Sister Clarke said. “You have contributed so much to the school, not only by being involved in so many activities, but also through your strong friendships with your classmates. You will be dearly missed. We wish you all the very best at your new school. Remember, you will always be welcome here at Christ Our Savior—”

“Whoa!” you interrupted, because you didn't want me to get too emotional in front of the class—that's how good a friend you were, Linh. “This cake is awesome! Mr. Warren, you'd better not stand too close, because the knife's coming out and the first cut is the deepest!”

When the buses dropped us back at the school to collect our bags, we saw a group of St. Andrew's boys loitering near our fence.

“Ooh, Yvonne, your lover boy is here!” teased the girls.

“Shut up,” said Yvonne.

We all knew that one of the boys, Hai, had the hots for Yvonne. When we grabbed our bags and headed toward the gate, he and his mates were there to greet us, every one of them dressed in black T-shirt and jacket and jeans. “Yo, Yvonne, check this out, me and ma homies are going to sing you a song, baby gurrllll.”

“Oh my God, so embarrassing,” said Yvonne, covering her face with one hand.

All his mates made gangsta gestures, pointing toward him like he was a Southeast Asian pop star, and he started to belt out a popular American song—but
in Maltese.
As the only Viet kid in a class full of kids from Malta, he spoke Maltese better than he spoke English because all his mates were Maltese. When he finished serenading Yvonne, we all clapped, and then Hai dropped to one knee and asked if Yvonne would be his girlfriend.

She squealed and laughed and said, “Oh, you are too embarrassing,” and of course we egged her on until she eventually said yes, which was what she had wanted to do in the first place. Hai jumped up and squeezed Yvonne in a massive bear hug and then kissed her cheek, and all the while she was shrieking, “Eww, gross!”

I sighed inwardly. Boys, I thought. I would sure miss those boys when I went to the new school.

Suddenly Ivy hollered, “Hey, guys, it's her last day!” She pointed, and all eyes turned to me and I went red. The paradoxes of being a teenager: I didn't like this attention, and yet secretly I
loved
it.

“Oh yeah? Where you going?” the tallest boy asked.

These cute Maltese boys—I just knew Ivy was going to explain to them that I had won a scholarship to Laurinda, like it was a huge deal—and of course it was, except not to these guys. It was the sort of thing that would make them think I was a snob who reckoned she was too good for this suburb. That thought suddenly made me feel very sad.

Luckily, you jumped in. “
I'm
going away,” you lied, but I didn't mind. I never minded when you did those crazy things, Linh. “It's
my
last day!”

“Oh yeah? Where're you going to?”

“Juvie, yo.”

The tall boy knew you were BS'ing, but he played along. “What for, gangsta?”

“Give her a kiss on the cheek and she'll tell you.”

Holy Mary! Even you could not believe Ivy had blurted that out, Linh. But it was our last day of term, and you were in a reckless mood. You grinned and turned your cheek to one side.

The tall boy smiled and came closer. Everyone whooped. Then you turned the other cheek.

“Wow,” you breathed afterward, flapping your hands as if you'd just stuck them in hot coals. “Discount day. Two for the price of one!”

As we walked home that last afternoon, you with that dopey grin stamped on your face, I thought about the summer before I had started Year Seven at Christ Our Savior. I was a pretty shy kid, but I had read every edition of
Smash Hits
and
TV Hits
at the library over those holidays to train myself to be a teenager. I thought that if I knew what was in them, I would have things to talk about with the cool girls. It never occurred to me that what I knew wouldn't alter the personality I had—not until I came to that first homeroom and Mrs. Abrams sat me next to Melissa for roll call. All year I had nothing much to say to her, because she lived the life the magazines assumed teenagers lived: sneaking out at night to go to parties and buying the same brand of T-shirt that others did. She didn't have to
read
about it.

But you, Linh, you managed to make a place for yourself at Christ Our Savior by watching, not by showing off with try-hard knowledge of popular culture. Your jokes and pranks were good-natured and self-effacing and never pissed people off like some of the backhanded things girls like Alessandra said did.

Do you remember how, before we left for the picnic that morning, we heard Melissa crying in the girls' bathroom, refusing to come out? You leaned against the door and quietly told her, “Don't worry, Melissa, at least you're really
highbrow
now, not like the rest of those hussies.”

She finally emerged from her stall, realizing you weren't going to offer her false reassurance like everyone else, but also that it wasn't that big a deal that her drawn-on eyebrows were half an inch higher than the two pale and hairless half-moons created by her terrible waxing mistake.

Melissa stood in front of the mirror, cleaning her face and sniffling. After a few moments, you both cackled like crazy. Then she looked at me. “Oh, man, I'm going to miss you!”

It was really nice that she said that, since you were the one she really liked. Even if it wasn't true, at that moment it felt good.

When I arrived home, our lounge room was packed with new boxes, which meant that Uncle Sokkha had paid a visit. My mother was crouched on the floor, peeling the masking tape from the tops of the boxes. “
Wah,
who would wear this?” she asked, holding up the sample she was meant to replicate, a very short, dark red skirt with buttons up the front. I did not tell her that some of the girls at Christ Our Savior would commit unholy acts for a thing like that.

“Hey, Ma, will you have any of that material left?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Can I have some?”

“What do you want it for?”

“I want to make a skirt.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“Don't waste your time.”

“It won't be a short one,” I promised.

“You've got better things to do now,” she told me.

Dad sat on our mustard-yellow sofa, which had been donated to us thirteen years earlier by the Brotherhood of St. Laurence. He was looking through the navy folder that Mrs. Grey had given us.
“Wah!”
he suddenly exclaimed. “Look here, Quyen! Look at this!”

My mother eased herself off the floor and sat next to my father. “One hundred and thirty-five dollars!” she exclaimed.

They were looking at the uniform list from Edmondsons. “And that's only the jacket,” said my father. “Look at this skirt!”

He held up the booklet and showed us the winter uniform, a pleated tartan kilt worn by a smug girl who obviously did not care about having cold legs in winter.

“Let me see that.” My mother took the booklet from him and put it up close to her face. All the sewing had made her nearsighted. Then she said the five words I dreaded most: “I could make you that.”

“But where would you get the material?” I hoped to put her off, but I knew she would try to find it in the Vietnamese fabric stores. I also knew she would never find an exact match, because the fabric was probably imported from England for a hundred dollars a yard. She would pick a polyester tartan in a close-enough pattern, and for the double-buckle belt link at the top of the kilt, she would go to the fabric store and find a plastic-painted-to-look-like-metal one. She had no idea how worlds apart her homemade skirt would be, even if her couture skills were just as good as those of the tailors of Edmondsons, if not better.

“No one will know the difference,” she said.

“Old woman,” my father sighed (though in fact he was five years older), “she is not going to have one of your peasant homemade outfits for this school. What will the teachers think of this cheapskate family? They're already providing her with a full scholarship!”

Even though he had insulted my mother's sewing skills and implied she was stingy, Linh, I did not say anything to contradict my father. I was on his side, because he was on mine.