The Recruit (2 page)

Taylor sighed. ‘I know you can take care of yourself, Jaz, but I still worry. You should’ve got help. Don’t go off on your own, please?’ He shot her a concerned warning.

‘I know. I didn’t think, I just acted. Next time I’ll get help, okay?’ Although Jaz doubted she would. She never stopped long enough to think about the danger factor.

‘No, let’s just hope there’s no next time.’ Taylor shook his head, as if he wasn’t sure what to do with her. ‘Do you want to go back inside?’ He put his hand on her shoulder and smiled before sniffing the air and wriggling his nose.

‘Um, no. Minka was sick and there seems to be a lingering smell. I wanna go home and shower for a long, long time.’

‘Hmm, good plan. Come on, let’s share a taxi,’ said Taylor, shooting her a sympathetic smile.

Jaz stopped the taxi just down the road from Anna’s house and got out.

‘I’ll see you at school,’ she said to Taylor.

‘Take it easy, Jaz. Say hi to Anna for me.’ He waved as she shut the door and watched the taxi leave.

With a sigh, Jaz turned and walked close to the tree line keeping to the shadows. She didn’t want neighbours dobbing her in. She was staying the night with Anna, her alibi, so she could go out clubbing with Tay.

When she came to Anna’s huge house, she took her shoes off and hung them off her arm. Climbing up the nearby tree, she worked her way out across the large lilac branch to reach the roof of the house and towards Anna’s window.

When she climbed in, Anna was up playing a game on her computer as usual.

‘Hey, you’re home earlier than expected?’ said Anna swivelling in her large chair. Her room was huge with a queen-size bed and a flat screen TV on the wall. But it was her computer set-up that looked like it belonged in a video gamer’s den.

Anna had her strawberry blonde hair piled up on top of her head in a loose bun, two pencils stuck through it. She’d obviously been studying. One of her favourite pastimes.

‘Yep, kinda fizzed out. I swear trouble just follows me,’ said Jaz sitting down on the end of the bed. She felt tired and just wanted to put on her pjs and crawl into Anna’s bed.

Anna turned off her screen and walked over to the bed. ‘Oh no. What happened? What did you do?’

‘Hey, what makes you think I did anything?’

Anna smiled. ‘Years of experience being your best friend.’ She jumped onto the bed beside her. ‘Okay, dish.’

‘Well, firstly I need a shower and then I’ll tell you everything.’

‘I’ll be here waiting.’

Jaz got up and headed to the massive en suite, the large tiles cool on her feet and easing the pain from wearing heels.

She glanced in the wide mirror at her long black hair, her olive skin, and wondered if Taylor would ever see her as anything other than his friend. She would have pondered this further if the lingering smell of Minka hadn’t crawled up her nose and choked her. Minka had better be nicer at school now. But in the back of her mind Jaz knew she was expecting the impossible. Things in her life were never easy.

‘Where the hell is it?’ Jasmine mumbled, lifting up black folders, chucking aside magazines and pens as she searched her desk. ‘I’m sure I left it here!’

Her dark-painted nails scratched through her silky black hair as if searching for a clue. She paced to her large bed, kicking a pile of black sheets and a dark purple doona out of the way before bending down to search the black cavernous space underneath. Odd socks and shoes lay undisturbed. Three old school books were collecting grey fluff and a rag doll, minus its eye, long ago left abandoned, but still no sign of the necklace.

With a heavy sigh, she sat back on her heels, and examined her room. The dark grey carpets and deep purple curtains made it hard to see anything in the spacious but messy room. Not that she’d ever admit that to her mother, she’d had a pink fit when Jaz picked out her colour scheme. Her mum had refused to help her paint her walls, still trying to convince her that maybe a light blue or yellow would be better than a grey. But it was her room and she felt comfortable in the darkness…except when she couldn’t find stuff…but that could be due to the fact her room needed a clean.

Slapping her hands over her eyes, she racked her brain trying to remember the last place she had seen it. She’d left it on her desk after her shower this morning.

Realisation struck Jaz like a hit to the head with a cricket bat. ‘That little bugger!’ she growled, wishing she’d thought of him sooner.

Jaz strode out of her bedroom, down the wide corridor to the other end, straight into her brother’s room, and stumbled. Argh! It was so bright she had to wait until her eyes adjusted before she could start looking. The gold of her necklace hung from his bedpost, taunting her. She stepped into Simon’s perfectly clean room. She was sure his shoes were colour-coded, along with his clothes. Jaz put her necklace on over her head, the medallion dropping between her breasts. She was about to leave but yanked at the crisp white sheets on his neatly made bed. A smile curled on her deep red lips. She knew he would hate that, Mr Oh-So-Tidy Simon, but he might think twice before going into her room. And what normal fourteen-year-old has a room this clean anyway.

‘Jasmine, are you coming or not! We need to leave now or we’ll all be late!’ echoed her mother’s voice up the staircase.

Jaz bellowed back as she grabbed her black school bag and headed down to the foyer. ‘Yeah, yeah, keep ya shirt on, Mum.’

She watched the expression on her mother’s face change from her normal calmness to irritation, as she looked Jaz over with her sharp eyes. Tasha Thomas’ blonde hair was pulled back into a hard bun and her cream skirt suit was immaculate. It went with the face she was making, like she was just about to ‘tut tut’ along with an exaggerated eye roll.

‘Jasmine,
tuck in
your shirt please,’ Tasha asked as she gestured to Jaz’s white school shirt. ‘We pay good money for you to attend a top school and I just wish you would be a little appreciative of what you have. You’d look so pretty if you did your hair and didn’t wear so much…black.’ Tasha’s eyes roamed down to Jaz’s thick black stockings and Doc Martens. ‘Oh God, I’m going to get another call from them, aren’t I? And is your skirt getting shorter or do they make them like that now?’ Tasha’s eyes were drilling holes in her red tartan skirt.

Personally, Jaz couldn’t see what was wrong; all the girls wore their skirts this short. She didn’t even mind the stupid thin black tie they had to wear, the guys had to wear it too.

‘You look like a high school drop out,’ sneered her brother, who was waiting patiently by his mother’s side with his shirt crisp and folded into his pants as carefully as origami. He was short for a fourteen-year-old, like his hormones hadn’t kicked in yet, still baby-faced with soft blond hair, fair skin and their mother’s blue eyes.

‘Better than dressing up like a fifty-year-old school teacher, you’re just missing the tweed jacket.’ Jaz snorted at her own joke.

Simon was about to open his mouth but he was cut off.

‘That’s enough you two, into the car.’ Tasha checked her diamond-encrusted watch as she followed them both out to the sleek, silver Mercedes. At the door, she stopped Jaz and reached for the necklace around her neck. The medallion slipped into her mum’s hand. ‘Jaz, I told you not to wear that. Why can’t you keep it in your room, where it will be safe?’

‘It’s safe on me, Mum.’

Tasha gave her a pained look. ‘But what if it’s lost or someone spots it and steals it? It’s real gold.’

Jaz had heard this all before. ‘It’s all I have of my real dad. Please Mum.’ The only reason Jaz had it was because she’d found it while snooping through her mother’s things a few years back.

‘I wish you hadn’t found it, Jaz. I wish I hadn’t told you it was from your real father.’

Jaz sighed. ‘But he’s not alive and seeing as you won’t tell me anything about him, I think of this as a compromise,’ she said taking the medallion back and slipping it back down inside her clothes.

A few times her mum had opened up, telling her about how much her smile was like her dad’s or that she was strong and determined like him, and what Jaz saw in her mum’s eyes showed she really did love him at some stage. Who knows why it all went south. She refused to tell Jaz anything, except he’d died in a car crash and that was it. So this was her life. Clinging on to a pendant of a guy she knew nothing about.

‘Okay, okay, you win. Just please keep it hidden under your clothes. Come on, we have to go.’

Jaz smiled on her way to the car. Her mum was getting soft in her old age.

‘I’m in the front, Knuckle Head,’ Jaz said to Simon as he reached for the car door.

The sprinklers popped up and began watering the dark, green lawn as Tasha pulled out of the paved driveway and onto the road. Simon called out from the back seat, the leather squelched under him as he leant forward. ‘Mum, don’t forget I have my computer lessons with Dad after school, I need to be on time please.’

‘I won’t forget darling. How about you Jasmine, do you want a ride to Pax’s today?’ asked Tasha, keeping her eyes firmly on the road ahead.

‘No thanks, Mum. I don’t mind the walk, warms me up before my work-out.’

Tasha sighed, ‘I do worry about you walking down there. It’s not the best part of town.’

‘Com’on, Mum. I’m old enough to take care of myself, you know that. Why don’t you come down for a work-out? It’s been ages since we’ve sparred together…and Pax keeps saying he hasn’t caught up with you for so long!’ Pax ran The Ring. It was the gym that she always went to, which just happened to be in a seedy part of the suburb.

Tasha risked a long glance at her daughter. ‘I know, darling. I’ll try to make it one day so you can beat me up, yet again. But I’m so out of touch with all that now. Work keeps me busy at the law firm.’

Jaz slouched in the front seat as she swallowed her mother’s excuse. She’d been coming to the gym less and less and Jaz missed her. It was her mum who introduced her to the gym, before Jaz could even walk, spending every afternoon there teaching her martial arts like her life depended on it. But these days her mum’s job and social calendar kept her pretty busy. She had turned into the rich wife, just like all the other ones in their area.

Jaz stared out the tinted window watching the two-storey houses flash by. Her pulse started to throb in her neck as Taylor’s house was coming up. Their red SUV appeared first, still stationary in the wide, circular, paved driveway, Taylor’s mustang beside it. Craning her neck she watched the large, jarrah double doors but they didn’t open; maybe he was already in the car.

‘Would you like us to go back so you can get a better look at Lover Boy?’ Simon teased.

Jaz swung around so fast, her hand flying, but Simon had been ready, hiding behind his school bag, but the force she’d used caused his bag to slam into his face.

‘Mum, Jaz got me in the face,’ he whined.

‘Jasmine, I wish you would behave,’ Tasha said, hardly flinching.

‘He’s baiting me.’

‘And you are falling for it.’

Jaz crossed her arms and Simon slunk back into the leather seat. They travelled in silence until Jaz and Simon gladly climbed out and went through the large metal gates of St Christian College.

‘Bye kids,’ Tasha yelled through the car window. Simon said goodbye while Jaz just raised her hand in a half wave and took off along the pathway, her hair flying behind her.

‘Hey Jazzy, over here.’

Anna Johnson, best buddy in the world, waited by a shady lilac tree that grew in the corner of a large manicured lawn, in front of the towering, brick school. Teenagers ambled past heading into the building, while others gathered outside waiting for friends. Anna must have something to tell her, as she always twirled her hair when she was trying to contain herself. Jaz threw her bag down on the lawn as she joined Anna on the wooden seat.

Jaz took a deep breath before turning to Anna. ‘Go on, spit it, I can see you’re dying to tell me something!’

Anna’s soft green eyes brimmed with excitement and the small freckles on her delicate face highlighted her fair skin. ‘You’ll never guess what happened this morning?’ she teased, finally releasing her hair from her nervous fingers.

‘Um…you hacked into the school’s computer again to see what grade you got in English?’

‘Don’t be a knob! No, I got here early as Mum had to get to work but you know who was here, sitting right here on this very spot?’ Anna was practically bouncing on the seat.

‘Calm down, anyone walking past would think you were trying out for the drama club. Honestly, that’s the last impression we want to give.’

Anna rolled her eyes while Jaz smiled.

‘Ricky was? Really? Did he say anything, did you talk to him?’ Jaz pressured her for the details.

‘Well no…but he might have if I had gotten close enough,’ said Anna with her standard cheeriness.

Anna may be the brightest person she knew, but she could also be so clueless. ‘Anna! Tell me you talked to him…did you chicken out?’ Jaz rested her arms on Anna’s shoulders and shook her, already guessing the answer.

‘Well yeah, I was kinda scared.’

‘You git! He was probably waiting for you; maybe he was making a move.’

‘He had his nose stuck in a book, I doubt he was waiting for me,’ said Anna screwing up her cute freckled nose.

‘But everyone knows we always sit here, it’s our spot and nobody comes near, unless they’re new or unbelievably stupid.’

‘Who’s unbelievably stupid, I hope you’re not talking about
moi
?’

They both looked up. ‘Taylor, don’t sneak up on us like that,’ said Jaz almost gasping for air, but she was always gasping for air around him. He always managed to make a pair of black school pants look delectable, and with his blond hair flicked up at the top he could have easily come from a modelling shoot. Not that she was into the good-looking types but Taylor was different. She knew him well and he wasn’t vain and up himself like the other good-looking popular kids.

‘So do I get to find out what you were talking about?’ he said raising a perfect eyebrow, his school bag hanging from his shoulder. He could make the simplest things look cool.