Saving Francesca

It’s the most we’ve ever spoken. I don’t want to be her bosom buddy and I don’t want to tell her about my mum.

“It’s just Sebastian’s getting to me,” I half-lie. “At least the Pius girls seem to be having a better time than us.”

“I’m having a great time.”

I glance at her.

“No, it’s true,” she says, “compared to Stella’s. I hated Stella’s.”

“Then what about all the protest Tara Finke goes on about? Why do you go along with her if you love the place?”

“Because she has every right to. It’s unfair what we have to put up with there. But that doesn’t make me hate the school. It’s better than complaining about nothing or discussing the tragic return of the off-the-shoulder T-shirt,” she says, referring to Natalia and Michaela’s conversation and revealing a bit of a bitchy streak. Which I kind of like.

After a while, I ask, “What was wrong with Stella’s? We had nothing to complain about.”

She shrugs. “Yes we did. People just convinced you that we didn’t.”

“‘You,’ singular or plural?”

She looks at me. “You think people chose not to hang out with me, don’t you? But it was my choice. I chose not to hang out with them. The only people I wanted to hang out with, I’m getting to hang out with now.”

I realize she’s including me in these “people.”

“Me?”

“I think it’s because you were a bit of a dickhead like the rest of us in music, but we kind of never knew it until we went to music camp in Year Nine for elective. I’d never seen you without your friends, and you were so different. So loud. And I thought, who is she? You were such a show-off, for three days, and everyone shit-stirred you and you let them, which was so much fun. And you sang ‘On My Own’ from Les Mis and you weren’t even self-conscious and it blew everyone away. I reckon that’s why Ms. Tagar picked it for the musical in Year Ten. Except you didn’t go for it.”

“I’m not into musicals.”

“Really? Fu

She turns into a tree-lined street of massive Federation houses and already I feel calmer.

Suddenly, Justine Kalinsky gasps and pulls me behind a tree.

“Oh my God. The tuba guy.”

“The what?” I ask, trying to look through the branches.

“Don’t look. He’ll think we’re looking,” she whispers.

We both look ridiculous.

“Let’s try to act natural.”

“Hiding behind a tree?”

She puts a finger to her lips and we stay hidden until I feel a giggle build up inside of me. A guy wearing a Sydney Boys High uniform walks by holding a tuba.

Justine’s face goes the most ferocious shade of red, and the moment he’s five steps away she grabs my hand and we run in the opposite direction.

We don’t stop ru

“Who’s the tuba guy?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“How long have you not known him?”

She looks at me miserably. “You’re going to think I’m a loser.”

“Justine, my friends from Stella’s are hanging out with a girl who once wrote ‘Francis Spinelli’s mum is a lesbian slut’ on a wall at Petersham station. I think you’ll just have to wait for that Loser of the Month tiara a little while longer while I wear it, with pride, around my neighborhood.”

“Tina was always jealous of you.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“Three years. I’m in the same combined school band with him.”

“Have you ever spoken to him?”

“He looks at me at the bus stop. Sometimes I’m on the bus and it drives past his stop and we have eye contact.”

I think about it for a moment. “I had a bus-stop relationship for four years at Stella’s.”

“What’s his name?” she asks.

“The Boy from the Bus Stop. I never actually spoke to him, but we had a visual relationship, if you know what I mean.”

“I think ‘Tuba Guy’ is a bit more original than that.”

“I once liked a guy whose name was Roller Boy because I saw him on Rollerblades, but never found out his name. Then there was Altar Boy, whose name I discovered was Dudley, but I prefer to remember him as the former.”

She stops in front of her house and we’re awkward for a moment.

“Do you want to come in?”

I shake my head. “I still have to take another two buses home.”

“Don’t you live in A

“I’m staying with my grandparents in Concord. My mum’s kind of sick.”

She nods, understanding.

I’m about to walk away when I think of something.

“Was I cruel? At Stella’s.”

She shakes her head. “You just seemed kind of … I don’t know … You always belonged to a big group, but it was like you didn’t want to be with them and I couldn’t understand why you stayed.”

“I liked … like them,” I explain. “They’re my friends.”

“I didn’t say it was them you didn’t like.”

I feel as if I’m talking to my biographer and the mood is too dramatic.

“I think you’re wrong, though,” I tell her.

“About?”

“The return of the off-the-shoulder T-shirt. Be afraid of that. Be very afraid.”

She giggles. I grin. I go home to my grandparents feeling okay.

chapter 11

ONCE A MONTH, my no

S biscuits.

No

And I know instantly it’s William Trombal’s grandmother.

I take the plate off her politely and walk into the kitchen and begin to make the coffee. It takes forever to make enough for twenty, and I just want to get into my pajamas and curl up in bed. While I wait for the coffee to come up, I stand at the door and watch them praying, concentrating especially on No

And at that exact moment, I realize that the S biscuits must go. They ca

So during the Glorious Mysteries, I put them in the bin, wrap up the garbage bag, and take it outside. I know the Virgin Mary will understand. The Jews are a lot like the Italians, so I’m sure there were jealousy issues between her and the other women of Nazareth.

Then I change into my pajamas and go to bed, trying to get into my English novel.

Half an hour later the doorbell rings. The Rosary group is making such a racket in the living room that no one hears and it rings again.

I go to answer it and find myself face to face with William Trombal. I’m not sure who’s more embarrassed, but I figure it’s me because of the Harry Potter pj’s I’m wearing, courtesy of Luca last Christmas. William looks confused.

“Do you live here?”

“No.”

I’m not interested in elaborating, so we leave it at that.

“I’m picking up my grandmother.”