Jellicoe Road Read Free

2
    When it is over, when I’m the last person sitting on the canvas-covered dirt floor, when the candles have burnt out and the sun has come up, I make my way towards Hannah’s house by the river. Hannah’s house has been unfinished ever since I can remember. Deep down I think that’s always been a comfort to me, because people don’t leave unfinished houses.
    Working on her house has been my punishment ever since I got to this place six years ago. It’s the punishment for having nowhere else to go in the holidays or breaking curfew or running away with a Cadet in year eight. Sometimes I am so bored that I just go and tell her that I’ve broken curfew and she’ll say, “Well, no Saturday privileges for you, Taylor,” and she’ll make me work all day on the house with her. Sometimes we don’t say a word and other timesshe talks my ear off about everything and nothing. When that happens, there’s a familiarity between us that tells me she’s not merely my House caretaker. In that role she works out rosters, notifies us of transfers between Houses or exam schedules or study groups or detentions. Sometimes she sits with the younger kids and helps with homework. Or she invites them to her house and makes them afternoon tea and tells them some bad news, like a grandparent being dead or a parent having cancer, or makes up some fantastic story about why someone’s mother or father couldn’t come that weekend.
    Absent parents aren’t a rare thing around here, probably because a tenth of the students are state wards. The Jellicoe School is run by the state. It’s not about money or religion but it is selective, so most of us are clever. The rest are a combination of locals or children of alternative environmentalists who believe that educating their children out in the bush is going to instil a love of nature in them. On the contrary, most of the students run off to the city the moment year twelve is over and revel in the rat race, never looking back. Then there are those like Raffaela, who is a Townie and is out here boarding with therest of us because her parents teach at Jellicoe High School in town and they thought it would be better for her not to have to deal with that. Richard’s parents are embassy staff who live overseas most of the time, but his grandparents live in the outer district of the area so it seemed like the best option for him.
    I don’t know where I fit in. One day when I was eleven, my mother drove me out here and while I was in the toilets at the 7-Eleven on the Jellicoe Road, she drove off and left me there. It becomes one of those defining moments in your life, when your mother does that. It’s not as if I don’t forgive her, because I do. It’s like those horror films where the hero gets attacked by the zombie and he has to convince the heroine to shoot him, because in ten seconds’ time he won’t be who he was anymore. He’ll have the same face but no soul. I don’t know who my mother was before the drugs and all the rest, but once in a while during our splintered time together I saw flashes of a passion beyond anything I’ll ever experience. Most other times she was a zombie who would look at me and say things like, “I didn’t name you. You named yourself.” The way I used to see it was that when I was born she didn’t take time even to give me anidentity. Of course there’s a story behind it all and she’s not that cut-and-dried evil, but my version keeps me focused. Hannah, of course, knows one of the other versions, but like everything, she keeps it a mystery.
    Usually, especially these days, we seem to be angry with each other all the time, and today is no different.
    “Transfers,” she says, handing me the sheet. I don’t bother even looking at it.
    “My House is full. No more transfers,” I tell her.
    “There are some fragile kids on that list.”
    “Then why transfer them to me?”
    “Because you’ll be here during the holidays.”
    “What makes you think I