A Hole in the World (2 page)

She couldn’t care less. She’s just glad she’s home.

Julia releases her from the hug and tries to move errant strands of Bianca’s hair from her face. The hair determinedly drops back down to tickle her nose, as if joining Bianca’s crusade to flip her mother off in every way possible. ‘You’re enrolled in The Lodge, starting Monday.’ Bianca vaguely wonders how she managed to arrange that so quickly. ‘And we haven’t done anything to your room, so...’

The chant of ‘couldn’t care less’ in Bianca’s head is getting louder. ‘Mum,’ she says, loudly, effectively cutting her off. ‘I’ve been coming home every holiday... I know the drill by now.’

‘Right. Yes.’ Julia nods, distractedly. ‘Of course you do.’ She smiles and pats her daughter’s hair again. ‘Let’s go in then.’ She already has her work phone out, turning it on and checking the messages. Bianca is surprised it took her this long,
and
that it was turned off to begin with.

‘Actually...’ Bianca glances down the street at a small redbrick house a few doors down and across the road. ‘I was thinking I could go see Scotty...’ She gives her mum a sheepish grin, but Julia is already dialling her answer phone to listen to what’s probably a hundred messages. ‘I miss him and you’ve both seen me
loads
for the last two days!’
While you were yelling at me,
she mentally adds.

‘Okay, but be back for tea,’ Julia says, distractedly. She holds out her daughter’s house key and Bianca takes it, gratefully. ‘I’m making lemon meringue pie for pudding. Your favourite. Just for you.’

Bianca sighs. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she says. She doesn’t have the heart to tell her she hasn’t liked lemon-meringue pie since she was eleven.

*

Scotty, a slightly pimply, blonde-haired, green-eyed kid of about fifteen, looks up from working on his dad’s car as Bianca walks in. ‘Bloody hell! Am I seeing a ghost or are you home when it’s not even
summer
?’

Bianca grins at him and readjusts the strap of the bag on her shoulder. ‘Nope, I’m home. For good, too! I got myself expelled thanks to a rather awesome display of arson! And I did it all to come home to
you
!’

‘Cool!’ Scotty moves the mat he’s sitting on slightly to the side so there’s room for her and she accepts the unspoken invitation, going over to join him.

He already knew about the apparent arson– text messages were exchanged as soon as
Bianca
knew – so she can’t help but smile.

‘Whatcha up to?’ she questions, as she sits down, dropping her bag on the floor and eyeing Scotty inquisitively.

‘Dad’s engine’s gone again,’ Scotty says, with a sigh, ‘and you know how it is... I’m the one that’s good with cars, so
I’m
the one that’s gotta fix it. Pass me the wrench?’

Bianca passes him the wrench from beside her and he accepts it with a grin. ‘Glad to see that boarding school of yours hasn’t destroyed your ability to know the difference between a wrench and a spanner.’

She grins back at him. ‘Nah, but now I know all about smoking and hard drugs.’

He gives her a sharp look. ‘You better be kidding.’

‘’Course,’ she replies.

‘So, what did you use to burn down the library?’ Scotty enquires, after a moment of working on the car.

‘A few tin cans full o’ petrol and a
biiiiig
box of matches,’ Bianca replies, scraping her nail down the paintwork.

Scotty bats her hand away and quickly makes sure she didn’t damage the paintjob. ‘Ah, always a good plan.’ Scotty wipes grease off his hands onto his jeans and looks at her. He appears to be visibly resisting the urge to apply the grease to her nose, but knows from experience where that leads them and it’s nowhere good. ‘Meet anyone nice this year?’

‘Couple of girls. They weren’t bad. If we’d had more internet access allotted I’d’ve written you a long email all about it, but I could barely even do my homework before I was being turfed off and I couldn’t afford the credit to text you much.’ She sighs. ‘I
hated
it there,’ she hisses.

Scotty shrugs. ‘I hated you there, as well. I had no best friend! That just
sucks
, you know that, right?’

She smiles at him. ‘Yup.’

He stands up and offers her a grease-covered hand to pull herself up with, which she accepts, barely even noticing the muck. ‘So, apparently I’m going to The Lodge starting Monday,’ she says. She wipes her hands on her jeans, complacently.

‘Cool!’

‘You better not abandon me for other friends, though. ‘’Cause I’ll never forgive you.’

He smiles as she pulls her bag back onto her shoulder. ‘I’m not going to abandon you,’ he says, with a smile and a touch of his hand on her arm. ‘I never would.’

*

‘So, have
you
met anyone special?’ Bianca asks, gently, as she sits on Scotty’s bed, Xbox controller in her hands as she tries, desperately, to knock pirates off their ship. She’s never been good at video games, especially pirate ones, much preferring to play with swords herself.

The one good thing about St. Mary’s School for Lameasses:
fencing
.

Scotty presses a button and she dies and promptly pouts at him. ‘No,’ he says, ignoring her with practiced ease. ‘Girls at my school are all stupid. Or lesbians. Sometimes
both
.’

‘Are ya sure they’re not just, I don’t know,
not interested
?’ She gives him a grin and it’s his turn to pout, which she ignores just as effortlessly.

‘It does my ego less harm to think they’re all stupid lesbians rather than just not interested. I like to think that if they were smart and/or straight they’d be crawling all over me.’ He stands up from his bed and reaches for two cans of pop, one of which he hands to Bianca with a smile.

‘What time you gotta be home for?’ he asks.

‘Tea,’ she replies, ‘which means I have at least one more hour to fail at this game. I think you could probably kill me another thousand times or so.’

He grins at her. ‘Rematch it is, then.’

*

Bianca looks up from her tea, food half way into her mouth, and catches her brother’s speculative gaze.

‘What?’ she says.

‘I wondered if you could burn my school down, too,’ he says, quietly.

‘I didn’t burn the school down, Topher,’ Bianca snaps. ‘It wasn’t me, it was Angela.
She
did it. I wasn’t even in the
room
. She just used my lighter.’

‘Why’d you have a lighter?’ Topher enquires.

‘Because, I like looking at flames.’
And
because Melissa gave it to her. But she’s not going to tell the winner of
Annoying Younger Brother 2010
that.

‘So, you burned the school down because you like flames, then?’

‘It wasn’t the school, it was the
library
, and
I
didn’t
do
it,’ she snaps again. ‘Get your facts straight, you little worm.’

‘Topher, stop encouraging your sister,’ Julia warns from the end of the table. She looks across at Bianca. ‘We won’t always be able to stop them pressing charges,’ she tells her. ‘We don’t want you to end up in jail.’

‘I didn’t do it!’ Bianca exclaims, throwing her hands up. ‘How many times do I have to say that before you believe me?’

Bryan glares at her. ‘Don’t talk to your mother like that.’

‘Dad, I’m sorry,’ Bianca says, ‘but I
didn’t do it
. And she won’t believe me!’

‘Who’s ‘
she
’? And it’s not that we don’t believe you, it’s more that the evidence points right at you! You
did
keep telling us how much you hated it there, after all...’

‘I
did
, Dad,’ Bianca says, plaintively. ‘But not enough to set fire to a
library
.’

‘I wish you’d liked it more, Bianca,’ he says. ‘It cost me such a lot to send you there.’

‘Us,’ Julia coughs around her cup of tea.

Bianca and her father ignore her. ‘I think I’ll do better at The Lodge, though, Dad. St. Mary’s wasn’t a good learning environment for me.’

Her father sighs. ‘As long as you don’t burn any more schools down,’ he mutters.

‘It was the
library
!’ Julia and Bianca exclaim at the same time.

Topher looks up from his food after a moment and says, quietly, ‘If I burn my school down, can I not get in trouble, too, Dad?’

*

The phone beeps at two in the morning and wakes Bianca. She groans to herself, wishing death upon whomever texted her, and reaches out of bed. When she sees who texted her, she immediately retracts her wishes of death. Scotty.

Welcome home. Missed u. Come see me again 2mo. We’ll hang out. xx

She smiles at the text and quickly writes Scotty back.

Dont hold ur breath, still in dog house. Might b grounded dunno yet. Txt u tomorrow. U woke me. Go to bed!xxxxxxx

She hits send and checks her inbox. There’s another text.

I’ll explain it was me. You shouldnt get the blame for my mistake. We’ll talk soon. A. x

Bianca sighs. She doesn’t
want
Angela to explain it was her. She doesn’t want to have her expulsion retracted and have to go back there. She wants to stay at
home
, with Scotty just down the street and a whole new school to make friends in.

Even if it
does
mean dealing with her parents and Topher every day.

Dont. Its fine. Im home + happy. U LIKE SM’s dont screw it up. Im glad to be out of there and didnt get in trouble. Leave it. Talk to u soon.x

She rereads the text to Angela a couple of times before she sends it, wanting to make sure she was as vehement about her desire
not
to be sent away again as humanly possible in a hundred and forty characters.

She yawns and sits up in bed, flicking on the light and looking around the room she’s missed so very much. There are posters on the walls, a few of random boy bands, a couple of female musicians, a few of TV shows and movies she was a fan of before she left four years ago. There’s a cork board by the door, onto which she’s pinned dozens of photos of her and Scotty and her and other friends; friends she’d made in primary school and lost when she moved to high school. 

She sighs and considers taking those pictures down. Scotty’s the only one she’s friends with these days, the others long moved on from her, finding making new friends in high school easy and leaving her behind easier still.

Bianca stands up, moving out from under her duvet, climbing off her bed and walking across to the board. Five minutes later, every picture that doesn’t have Scotty in has been ripped cleanly away from the board, leaving the little pins and empty patches of cork behind.

New start. Beginning now.

Bianca’s rucksack is heavy, weighed down with school books and lunch. This is something she
hasn’t
missed; carrying a heavy bag all the way to school every day, but she has Scotty walking by her side with a big grin on his face, so, as far as she’s concerned, it’s a necessary evil.

Scotty’s babbling about the people he’s made friends with, gesticulating wildly and almost skipping along beside her as he talks. ‘You’ll meet Cory, too. You’ll like him! He’s a laugh. He’ll probably try and hug you when he first meets you, though, so don’t be surprised.’

She gives him a shocked look and he laughs. ‘It’s fine! It’s just his way! He likes making new friends and you’re the kind of person he likes.  Lewis, though... He’ll go in for a grope if he thinks you’re hot. And you’re totally his type, so you’ll be lucky if your boobs aren’t sore by the end of the day.’

She pulls her blazer closed over her chest and glowers at him. ‘I don’t think I like your friends,’ she mutters. Four years at a girls’ school has left her unaccustomed to modern boys and their ways.

‘Lies, all lies. You’ll love them all,’ Scotty tells her, firmly. ‘Except Lewis, maybe. And Daisy. But no one likes her, anyway. Well, ‘cept Cory...’ He laughs as they turn the corner. ‘Just kidding,’ he says, ‘Daisy’s awesome. Dresses and talks like a slag, doesn’t act like it, though. She’s great.’

Bianca stops in her tracks and pauses. Scotty’s voice fades out as he starts to talk about the teachers and she turns slowly to look at the wall by her side. The hole is still there, bigger than she remembers. It’s big enough for a girl her size to climb through with room to spare, which is strange, considering it was only just big enough for her when she was little. She wonders, for a moment, what it would take to climb up the wall and into the hole. She wants to. She really,
really
wants to. She’s not sure
why
she wants to, but the desire is definitely there.

‘Bianca? Earth to Bianca? Hello?’ Scotty waves a hand in front of her face and she refocuses, turning to look at him. ‘Geez, you were out of it!’ he exclaims. ‘What’s up?’

‘Just... that.’ She points at the hole in the wall. ‘I climbed in there once... A
long
time ago.’