There are Cadet sightings on the northern border of our boundaries for a whole week. The area is at least a kilometre away from where they are camped so allowing themselves to be sighted is a deliberate attempt at intimidation. Just between you and me, it works every time. The other House leaders want me to begin acting on the intelligence were receiving, but premature action in the past has been the Jellicoe Schools downfall and Ill be damned if I make the same mistakes the leaders have made in the past.
On her weekend visit home, I send word through Raffaela to the leader of the Townies that wed like to make contact. We receive no answer and the cat-and-mouse games begin. Waiting for war is a killer. Not knowing when the first strike will happen, not knowing what the outcome will be. The build-up makes us tense. Sometimes I want to walk right out there and yell, Bring it on! just to get the suspense over.
But its the home front thats the worst. The school has always had a policy that the House leaders, with the help of the rest of the seniors, take care of their own Houses with the assistance of an adult. Every student knows that the leader has been chosen in year seven and is groomed for the next five years. But every year we have elections and pretend that the House leaders and School leader have been elected by the people for the people. The teachers fall for it. Theyre pretty young and clueless. Most of them only stay three
years maximum to fulfil the Board of Educations employment requirements, so patterns among the students arent really picked up. They are diligent, though. Each time a Lachlan student forgets to turn up to a sports training session or music recital or debating practice, I get harassed by the teachers. From the junior dorms on the first floor all the way up to the year-elevens rooms on the third, those in my House drive me insane with their expectations. Questions about television privileges, duty rosters, computer access, and laundry. There are tears and fights and tantrums and anxiety. And Hannah is nowhere to be found. Im furious that she has let me take care of this all by myselfalmost like some kind of payback for the last time I saw her. In the past Hannah spent most of her spare time in Lachlan, helping out the House leader, but now that Im in charge shes gone into hiding.
A year-ten girl knocks on my door. Evie from year seven just got her period.
So?
You have to speak to her. Shes crying.
Go get Raffaela.
Shes not around. Wheres Hannah? How come Ms. Morris is doing roll call?
I have no idea where Hannah is.
I recognise the look on the girls face. Its a do-you-have-any-idea-about-anything look.
Ill go get Hannah, I say finally, just wanting to get away. Except when I go down to her office and turn the handle to walk in I find it locked. In my whole time at the Jellicoe School I dont ever remember Hannahs door being locked and I put it down to an extended tantrum, which sits uneasily with me because Hannah never has tantrums. Im about to head back upstairs but I see Jessa McKenzie coming my way, so I walk out, get on a bike, and ride down to the unfinished house by the river.
At this time of the day our grounds are at their most sinister. I can handle it at night but theres something about this time, when the sun begins to disappear, that makes me think the grounds have so much to hide. Theres just endless silence. No birds, no crickets. Nothing.
I dump the bike on the ground beside the house and make my way to the front. Hannah, I yell out angrily.
But the echo of my voice is the only response.
Hannah, this isnt funny!
I stand in the silence, waiting for something. For her head to appear out the window on the first floor, looking exasperated and saying, Help me with these skirting boards, Taylor.
I look around, sensing somethingsomeone. The house has an area around it that Hannah tends and mows. Itll be my garden, she tells me constantly, where shell plant lilac and lilies and shell sit there, on the front verandah, like in that Yeats poem that she sometimes recites to me:
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there
But beyond the tamed area there is dense bushland, uncultivated, without even a walking trail. Three kilometres of that is what separates us and the Cadets. Rumour has it theyve been creating a secret trail for years, which would make getting to us as easy as. The quickest way for them would be via the river, which flows directly behind Hannahs property. But it belongs to us. Here, near Hannahs house, the river is at its narrowest and theres only about twenty metres between the banks. In the last couple of years, because of the drought, the river has been not much more than a trickle. Once in a while, over time, weve almost lost it through poor leadership but somehow weve always managed to hold on to it and maintain that physical distance between us and them. Today, though, somewhere in that dense uncultivated labyrinth, something or someone is watching. I can feel it with everything I have inside of me that keeps me alert to malevolence.