The Midnight Dress(3)

Rose did exactly what she always did. She performed her ministrations. She made him toast, let it cool on the bench; it was all he could eat. She bought two-litre bottles of coke from the kiosk, which seemed to soothe him. She wet a towel and he laid it over his body like a shroud.

She brought these things to him soundlessly, went on bare feet, sand still patterned on her legs, said nothing.

‘Thanks,’ he said once.

Once, ‘I’m sorry.’

Rose spent the rest of her time exploring. She climbed over the rocks at the right side of the bay and found another beach, exactly as perfect and completely deserted. She thought about moving her stuff there. A few items of clothing, her green notebook: she could empty out her little drawer into her black plastic bag. She could build a shelter out of palm fronds. All she’d need was matches and a blanket. She’d find water somewhere. She fantasised about these things at length, sitting on the beach or floating on her back in the sea. The clouds built all day and each night they burst and the rain that fell obliterated all other sounds, the sea, her breathing, her father’s restless turnings.

‘What’s up with your dad, then?’ Mrs Lamond asked. ‘Is he sick or something?’

‘A bit,’ said Rose, running her fingers along the snow domes containing plastic reef scenes. ‘But he’s getting better.’

‘I like your hair,’ says Pearl in first period, French.

Rose had used a black rinse. She’d walked all the way to town to buy the stuff and hitchhiked back with a man in a truck full of watermelons. It had cost her nearly twelve dollars on account of all her hair, money which could have been spent on food or petrol.

The rinse made her hair more coarse and wiry than ever.

‘Serves you right,’ her father said, sitting on the edge of his bed, tentatively, watching her with his long thin sorrowful face.

Today, her first morning of school, she tied her hair in two buns on either side of her head. It made her look like she was wearing headphones, which made her laugh. She walked to the caravan park showers and outlined her eyes in thick black eyeliner. There was nothing she could do about her thousand freckles. She examined herself in the mirrors.

‘Ugly bitch,’ she said, then went to wait at the place that Mrs Lamond said the bus would pass.

She thought that at the school office they’d make her wash off her make-up, but the headmistress, Mrs D’addazio, didn’t even seem to notice.

‘Lovely,’ she said, looking at Rose. ‘The girls will be so excited to have a new friend. We’re a small school, very small, and how old are you? Here, you’re fifteen, so that’s just lovely, you’ll be able to take part in the Harvest Parade, that is on at the end of May, we have our very own float at Leonora High and all the girls are on it, you’ll have to find a dress. All the girls have dresses made. We call it dress season here. It’s a tradition, I guess you could call it that. Can your mother sew?’

‘I don’t have a mother,’ said Rose.

‘Oh darling,’ said Mrs D’addazio, ‘I’m so sorry, of course you don’t. Well, don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll find someone who can help you.’

Rose kept her face implacable.

‘I mean it’s a really nice colour, your hair,’ Pearl adds in French.

Pearl’s fluoro highlighters have tumbled out of her pink pencil case and rolled across to Rose’s side of the table. Pearl leans to retrieve them. She has no idea about the rules of personal space, Rose decides. Pearl Kelly smells of coconut and frangipani.

‘I have a highlighter dependency,’ says Pearl.

Rose looks at her and away.

Pearl writes in the highlighters, mixing all the colours, big letters, tangerine and lime and lemon and cherry pink. She adds huge exclamation marks and instead of dots there are love hearts above each and every letter i. It makes Rose feel faintly queasy. She taps her black nails on the desk so that Pearl can see them.

‘I think you’re going to really love it here,’ says Pearl.

They have to form pairs so Madame Bonnick can hand out their group assignments.

‘Just stay with me,’ whispers Pearl, which is très annoying.

She has arranged her highlighters très neatly.

‘Good idea,’ says Madame Bonnick. She speaks French with a terribly nasal accent. ‘Bonne idée. Pearl will look after Rose. These are the roles that you will play for the assignment, you will pick them from the hat, and there will be no negotiation. For each role you will prepare two minutes of dialogue and the more impressive you are with your roles, the more imaginative, the better. I am talking props, mesdemoiselles and messieurs. I am talking costumes.’

Pearl picks a piece of paper from Madame Bonnick’s hat.

‘Oh goody,’ she says.

‘No way,’ says Vanessa across the room, because she has picked the Hunchback of Notre Dame. She flicks her long blond ponytail and starts to argue for a redraw.

At recess Pearl insists that Rose sit with them.

‘Honestly, where else are you going to sit?’ Pearl says. ‘What are you eating?’

‘Nothing,’ says Rose.

‘Are you anorexic?’ asks Shannon with a hint of excitement.

‘Here, eat my apple,’ says Pearl. She hands it to Rose.

There are six girls in all: Vanessa, Pearl, Maxine, Mallory, Shannon, and now Rose. They begin to talk of dresses.