The first week of school was always a bit uncomfortable. Izzy missed home and she wasn't sleeping well. It was evening after dinner and the study was quiet, with only the sound of fingers tapping on keyboards to break the silence. Outside, rain was drumming on the roof and water gushed in drains. Sydney was experiencing La Nina, which had prevented the girls from going outside after dinner. Izzy wished she could snuggle up in her pjs in bed. She opened her laptop and began typing an email to her oldest friend.
*
Isabelle Storm <is.a.storm2@gmail.com>
To: katharine.west@abbotscraig.edu.au
Subject: re: Anybody out there?
Dearest Kath
I have been writing pages of my thoughts to you, the only problem, they are in my diary! I write under my doona with a torch after lights out. I have so much to share with you. I will transfer my musings to email soon. Such transcribing cannot be done during prep due to inappropriate content...
Mum's doing better. I think. I'm kind of worried but she likes to tell me no one dies of cancer anymore. I think it's a protection thing. Doctor Google doesn't agree unfortunately, and I slip into panic mode every so often.
Things that are impossible at boarding school.
1. Get from A to B without encountering someone you would rather not
2. Eat a ripe peach
3. Go an entire day without hearing the words 'young lady'
4. Find a private moment to (dot dot dot!)
You asked after Em. Em is Em. She is obsessed with our old friend Dom and talks about nothing else. I don't think he knows she exists, but she's got a plan and knowing Em, he won't know what hit him.
Don't pay attention to my birthday please. Mia's on it! All I want is a pair of white Birkenstocks (and happiness).
Signing out before the bell goes,
I like you and I miss you,
X Isa (bella)
PS Tal says 'Wassssuuuuppppppp!'
PPS Any news of 'he who should remain nameless?'
*
When she was done writing, Izzy pushed her laptop aside, lay her head on her desk and closed her eyes, grateful they didn't have much homework. It was always that way the first week back.
Izzy's desk was in between Em and Zara, with Tal just behind them. No sooner had she rested her head when she heard a familiar....'Pssssttttt!!!'
It was Tal. Izzy looked up. Tal winked at her and leaned across the study passing a heart shaped pink post-it note. Izzy glanced briefly at the note and smiled. They both got up and left the room. On the way out, Tal speedily slapped notes on Zara and Em's laptop screens.
Feeling nervous but elated, Izzy followed Tal down the darkened corridor towards their dorm. Bunking out of prep was a dangerous exploit likely to result in a 'task' and perhaps even a black mark. Tasks were a form of punishment typically given out on slips of paper by prefects or house mistresses who caught the students behaving against school rules. Black marks counted against house points and were read out in the dining hall in front of the entire school. Izzy avoided both like the plague.
Tonight, though she was so restless, she didn't care. Tal had proposed a tea party in their dorm room -a chance to decorate and make the place homely. The only catch was the girls couldn't turn the lights of the dormitory on, that would give them away. They also needed to be extra quiet as there were always prefects on the prowl for girls who should be in prep.
Izzy was usually a "good girl". She had been granted a bursary to attend Watford and her mum had made her promise to behave. Not that bunking out of prep would affect her bursary, but it was the overall image that mattered. Tal and Em were the naughty ones, always getting slips.
Tal pulled on Izzy's sleeve and whispered: 'I've got chocolate fridge cake from home. Back in a sec.'
She snuck out to the kitchen, while Izzy waited on her bed. There was a strip of light streaming though her window from the nightlight outside and the splashing rain sparkled against the glass. She pulled the curtain open; moonlight bathed the room in soft light. She reached into her locker for a box of photos she'd had printed at Officeworks over the holidays and began to sort through them looking for the best ones for her pinboard. There was an old picture of Dom in the box that she wanted to find and hide before the others joined her.
'What is this crazy girl up to?' Zara laughed, as she entered the room with Em. 'We're for sure going to get caught. Is she trying to make life harder for us?'
Em smiled. 'I don't care! I could have eaten my own arm off I was so bored in there.'
Izzy looked up from her seat on the bed and laughed. 'I've been eyeing that fridge cake out,' she said. 'I thought Tal was being stingy not offering it to us.'
The door squeaked open, and Tal entered the room.
'Speak of the devil,' Em said.
Tal grinned. She'd located a tea pot in the kitchen, and made a pot of English breakfast, which was precariously balanced on a small tray with four mugs, a plate of fridge cake, a jug of milk and some sugar sticks. Zara stood up and helped her carefully extract the mugs from the tray.
The girls all joined Izzy, who was now settling on the rug beside her bed flicking through photos, squinting in the darkness. Izzy set aside some good ones of her parents and Mia, with their dog Atilla. She paused on a photo of Kath. Not for the first time, she wished her friend could be with them. They had been inseparable since they were kids, but Kath's parents had wanted her to go to another school as a day scholar, so they only got to see each other occasionally outside of school. Kath was friends with all Izzy's Watford friends, and they'd been trying to get her to join them boarding for what seemed liked forever. Izzy smiled at the picture. The two of them were balanced on a beam dressed as wizards, they must have been about ten. Kath knew all Izzy's secrets, even about her brief romance with Dom. They'd talked for hours about him back when they were dating (if that's what you could call it!). It seemed like forever ago now.
Whilst the girls were chatting and preparing tea, Izzy came across the photo she was looking for. She put the picture up to her face to see more clearly in the dim light. Dom was standing beside a horse with his arms around its neck. He looked so young. Izzy caught a faint smell of cologne that had been sprayed on the back of the photo. Tal glanced at her, and she dropped the photo to her lap and then when no one was looking, surreptitiously slid it under her mattress.
'This is delicious,' Zara said, complimenting Tal on her fridge cake. 'A girl could get in trouble with this stuff around.'
'Thanks, it's so easy to make,' Tal said.
'We should ask if we can make it in home ec,' Zara responded.
At that moment, Izzy's phone vibrated. Earlier in the day she'd texted her mum to tell her the news about Pascal but hadn't received a response.
Swiping her screen, Izzy tapped to open the message.
Dana: Poor girl. I'll have to give her mum a call. Hope you're settling in darling.
Izzy quickly snapped a photo of her friends crouched on her rug in the dark stuffing their faces with fridge cake.
She texted her mum back instantly with the photo.
Izzy: We do alright! Love you.
Her mum responded with a laughing emoji.
When Izzy returned to the conversation, Em was giving a report on her progress with Dom. Secretly Izzy wondered if progress was the right word. Em was clearly not on his radar.
After they'd finished their tea, the girls set about pinning their photos up and hanging fairy lights across the dorm room. At one point they heard a noise outside. It nearly gave Izzy a heart attack. All the girls froze. Prefects had been known to crawl around during study trying to catch girls out. Last term some girls had been caught bunking prep and had been tasked with running around the netball courts at five in the morning in their pajamas.
Following the silence, was a crack of thunder so loud it shook the building. White lightning that danced across the walls like a strobe. Izzy clutched Em's arm.
Tal's eyes flew open; she put her hand across her mouth, as the door to their dormitory squeaked.
'Well, well, and what do we have here!?' a stern sounding voice floated across the dorm.
Izzy immediately recognised the lilt of the voice.
'Come in... you dork,' she hissed at her friend Priya. 'And keep your voice down!'
'Oh my dog, I'm gonna kill you!' Tal cried, clutching her chest.
'Preps over, morons! You can turn the lights on,' Priya laughed, her shape in the doorway a silhouette against the light in the corridor. She fumbled for the light switch.
'Wait don't!' Em said leaping up and striding across the room. She crouched down and stretched behind her locker. Immediately she flicked a switch and the whole room lit up like a winter wonderland.
'Aww! So pretty!' Priya said.
Tal smiled. 'My work is done,' she said, slapping her hands together. 'Want some fridge cake?'
Priya nodded and came to join them, squeezing herself into the circle on the tiny rug.
Izzy noticed her earlier feeling of foreboding had lifted. All was right with the world. Even the sound of the storm was in some strange way, comforting.