Saving Francesca

“You played a great game,” one says.

“No, mate, you did.”

“No. You did, mate.”

They go on forever. It’s nauseating stuff, but there’s no blaming. They get off the bus smiling tiredly.

Oh God, don’t let me like these guys.

In legal studies, we debate refugees, because Mr. Brolin hasn’t prepared a lesson and he wants us to do the work. Based on our detention relationship, he always calls on me, and on principle I refuse to give in.

“What’s your opinion, Miss Spinelli?” he asks (he pronounces it spin-a-lee). He does the stare that doesn’t intimidate any of us. It almost makes me want to laugh out loud.

“What’s your opinion, Mr. Brolin?” Tara Finke asks.

She gets into trouble for speaking without putting up her hand.

“What I think isn’t the issue, Miss Finke.”

“Why?” she persists.

I can guarantee he won’t give his opinion. He sits on the fence in the name of professionalism and gets someone else to voice his fascist views (I’ve got to stop sitting next to Tara Finke), and around here, there’s always a candidate.

“Why should we let people in who jump the line?” Brian Turner asks. He’s unimportant in the scheme of things, but he would be so shocked if someone pointed out his unimportance to him.

“Because in their country there mightn’t be a line,” Tara Finke says.

“They just want to come here because we’re the land of plenty,” this girl who always states the obvious says, stating the obvious.

“Yeah, plenty of bullshit,” Thomas Mackee mutters under his breath. Tara Finke and I look at him, surprised, while Brolin comes stalking down the aisle to write in Thomas Mackee’s diary for language.

“I agree with Thomas,” Tara Finke says.

Thomas Mackee looks horrified. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t agree with me.” He looks around at his friends, and with his finger twirling around his head, he makes the “she’s cuckoo” sign. They snicker with him.

“We have a responsibility,” she continues without missing a beat.

“What? To let terrorists into the country?” Brian Turner asks.

“I thought we were talking refugees, not terrorists,” Thomas Mackee says.

“See, you agree with me,” Tara Finke argues.

“I do not agree with you. I just don’t agree with them,” he says, rolling his eyes.

“In what way don’t you agree with me?” she snaps. “We’re saying the same thing. That there’s plenty of bullshit here and that refugees aren’t terrorists.”

Brolin grabs Tara’s diary to record the “bullshit” because it gives him a purpose.

“We’re the only democratic country in the world that puts children in jail,” she says, looking around at everyone.

“It’s very easy to express outrage from your comfortable middle-class world, Miss Finke,” Mr. Brolin says, pleased with himself.

“Well, that’s pretty convenient,” she says sarcastically. “Shut the comfortable middle class up and rely on the fact that the uncomfortable lower classes in the world aren’t able to express outrage and offer solutions. They’re too busy trying not to get killed.”

“I don’t like your tone,” he says.

“My tone’s not going to change, Mr. Brolin.”

“You have to question where you get your facts from,” Brian Turner says.

“Where do you get yours? The Telegraph? Today Tonight? Your parents? Well, my mum works for the Red Cross Refugee and International Tracing Agency, and she goes and visits the people in Villawood every two weeks. We don’t put on our uniforms just when it suits us, and I resent someone stopping me from saying what I believe just because I live happily in the suburbs.”

Mr. Brolin looks uncomfortable. He’s saved by the bell, and he’s out of there before we even pick up our books.

Ryan Burke, a guy from my English preliminary extension class, approaches us, smiling.

“We’re trying to get a social-justice group thing happening around here,” he tells us. “You interested?”

“Sounds cool,” Tara says.

“Oh shucks. Wish I belonged,” Thomas Mackee snickers as he passes by with his posse.

“Ignore him,” Ryan Burke says, walking alongside us. “He’s just trying to rebel. His mother’s high up in antidiscrimination.”

“That should come in handy when he gets discriminated against for not having a brain,” Tara says before leaving us for her design and technology class.

We’re outside our English preliminary extension room and end up sitting together.

I like Ryan Burke and his group. They can be cool and take their work seriously at the same time. Even the slackers like them, although once or twice there’ll be a dig about their dedication. These guys feel just as comfortable surfing as they do going to the theater. They like girls but don’t feel the need to date them, and at first they were the hardest to get to know because they had so many female friends from outside the school. More than anything, they enjoy each other’s company, and although there is a lot of tension between them because of their competitiveness, they’re the type of guys you like to see around the place.

Ryan Burke is good-looking. He has that golden-haired look, with a gorgeous smile. I think he hates the perception that he’s the good old boy, and once in a while he rebels against the image. But deep down he has a decency that I think will stay with him.

He becomes my English extension companion. Like Shaheen from biology and Eva from economics, our relationship is confined to sitting next to each other in class and whispering. In the halls and on the quadrangle we acknowledge each other, but there is no need for in-depth chatting. The bonding takes place in class.

In English extension, we’re doing an Austen unit, and Ryan and I analyze who we are in Pride and Prejudice.

“I’d like to think I’m Darcy,” he says, “but I think I’m a bit of a Bingley. I can be talked out of things sometimes. You?”

“I’d like to think I’m Elizabeth, but deep down I think I’m the one whose name no one can remember. Not Lydia the slut or Mary the nerd or Jane the beauty or Elizabeth the opinionated. I’m the second-youngest. The forgotten one.”

“Yeah, I know which one you’re talking about. What’s-her-name.”

“Yeah.”

Later, I walk down the senior corridor and William Trombal is coming from the opposite direction, speaking to his friends. They’re having one of those Trekkie-versus-Trekker discussions. There’s just something about William Trombal that screams out Star Trek fan. I personally can’t do the Vulcan salute with my fingers and have felt inferior because of it, so disliking William Trombal more than ever suits me just fine. He’s laughing at something one of them says, and it transforms him completely. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him smile, and it’s kind of devastating. They walk by me, completely oblivious. Until the very last moment, when he looks over at me and our eyes hold for a moment or two.

And I get this twitch in my stomach.

I walk through Grace Bros. to get through to George Street to catch my bus, and I find myself going straight to the counter that sells my mother’s favorite perfume. I spray it in the air and it’s as if the scent’s a genie and it triggers everything off inside me and I can’t get over what comes up with that one spray. Memories and photos and sayings and advice and music and lectures and shouting and security and love and nagging and hope and despair … despair … why has despair come up? I don’t remember despair in her life, but it is evoked with this magical spray. But more than anything, I remember passion.

I look around for the counter that sells my scent, but I’m so petrified that if I spray it in the air, nothing will come out. And then Mia’s scent seems to fade away and everything else fades away with it and I know that all I have to do to recapture it is press the spray button again.