Lucy, Chapter Three

It was so unfair… so incredibly unfair.

Last night, after Lucas had almost burned their house down with his ridiculous attempt at roasting a chicken, she had been sure that his departure was imminent. When her mum took her dad into the study and shut the door behind them she was certain they were discussing the most expeditious method of getting rid of him.

But they weren’t.

She would never be rid of him.

Lucas was like a nasty yellow under-arm stain on her favorite shirt – annoying, embarrassing, and stubbornly difficult to remove.

She had been looking forward to going back to school all summer holidays because she thought she would have a new, glamorous American friend to show off, but now she felt nothing but dread. Today was going to be the worst day of her life.

She gritted her teeth and kept her head facing forward as she sat on the wooden bench outside the principal’s office with Lucas and waited for her mum to come back out to deliver the news.

‘Please let Mrs. Hoskins say no,’ she repeated over and over again in her head. But no matter how much she chanted for it she knew it was futile. Her mum had that look on her face when she had left them on the bench, that look she got when she knew she held the trump card.

Lucas kept on trying to make conversation with her and it was so irritating. Was he socially retarded or something? Couldn’t he tell that she had no interest in talking to him?

“Does your school have any sports teams?” He asked.

“Yeah, heaps.”

“Like what? I’m guessing there’s no football here.”

“There is so. Girls can play football too. Not that they’d let you play.”

“Why not?”

She rolled her eyes. “It wouldn’t be fair, you’re like some sort of giant or something… and, presumably, you’re a boy. There’s no way they’ll let you on a sports team.”

“Oh.”

She glanced over and he was doing that annoying face that made you feel sorry for him. His brow was furrowed a little bit and the corners of his mouth turned down just slightly.

Whatever. His disappointment wasn’t her problem.

When her mother stepped out of the principal’s office she was wearing a huge dazzling smile and Carlie immediately knew that her life was ruined.

“He will have to wear appropriate attire,” Mrs. Hoskins was explaining in her high pitched upper-class wanna-be-English voice. “Obviously he wont be able to wear the same uniform as the girls but something similar, slacks and a white collared shirt and a tie with the school badge. We can’t have a student rollicking around in jeans and t-shirts.”

“Yes, yes of course we can accommodate the dress requirements,” her mother replied cheerfully. “I’ll take him shopping now and bring him back at lunch time.

So Carlie had the morning to herself. Three and a half hours to kiss her old life goodbye. At morning tea she found Bess, Gina and Zoe in the shadow of the pool stands, the same place that they’d sat at last year. They dragged benches together from the surrounding area to form a group and sat around regaling each other with stories of their summer vacations.

“Hey, weren’t you supposed to get an exchange student this year?” Zoe asked.

“Yeah.”

“So? Where is she?”

“Urgh, you’re not going to believe this. She is a he and he’s going to be here at lunch time.”

Three sets of curious eyes turned to her.

“A boy? A boy is going to go to school here?” Gina asked, only barely concealing the excitement in her voice.

“Yeah, I’m supposed to meet him at the front of the school at lunch time.”

“You’re going to bring him back here, right?”

“Ah… I guess so.”

Bess nodded. “Yes, bring him here first. If he’s a loser we can always chuck him out. Do you think he’s a loser?”

All three girls’ attention was focused on Carlie. She’d never been asked such an important question before and didn’t know how to respond. Was Lucas a loser? How was she to know?

“I don’t know, I only just met him yesterday.”

“Yeah, but what’s your impression of him, did he seem loser-ish?”

“I don’t know.”

Bess rolled her eyes. “Is he weedy and nerdy and pimply?”

“No.”

“He’s probably not a loser then. Does he have a girlfriend?”

“I don’t know.”

Thankfully, it was already time to go to third period and none of her friends were in her German class so she could escape the conversation about Lucas. She neither knew nor cared if Lucas had a girlfriend and she was sure that once her friends met him they would feel the same way.

The whole debacle was really stressing her out. What if Lucas refused to be ‘chucked out’ of her group and stalked them all semester? Her friends would surely blame her for such a bane.

She could barely keep up with what Frau Pinkerton was saying.

At lunchtime she walked out to the front of the school where her mum’s car was waiting in the pick-up area. The passenger-side door opened and Lucas emerged, wearing grey trousers and a white collared shirt with a blue tie that was similar to the one she had to wear to school every day, only bigger and silkier. He slung a dark blue army-style canvas bag over his shoulder and waved into the car before heading over to her.

As Carlie watched him approach she tried to look at him objectively. Was he a loser? Life as she knew it might just depend on that.

He smiled at her. “Ready?”

She turned and lifted her hand to wave to her mother, but she was already driving away.

Her hand dropped back to her side. “I guess.”

As she walked him down to the pool stands he talked at her incessantly. She felt curious eyes turning to watch them as they walked and her cheeks burning with embarrassment.

“Your mom thinks that they’ll let me play some sports. She says it would be difficult to justify letting me play a team sport, like, they probably won’t let me play football or water polo or anything like that, but I can probably do an individual sport.”

“Great. Good for you,” she said without joy.

“Do you play any sports?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

God, what was this guy’s obsession? “Because I don’t play well with others,” she said dryly.

“Oh. Maybe we could join the same team? We could both try something new out…”

She stopped and turned to him. “Listen, Lucas, I don’t want to join a sports team with you. I don’t want to try out anything new with you. All I want is for you to try to embarrass me as little as possible.”

Lucas was silent for once. His brow furrowed.

“This is my school.” She motioned around her. “This is my life. I wish you weren’t in it, but you are. Please, try not to embarrass me.”

His grey-blue eyes seemed to cloud over momentarily before he looked away and started walking again. He was silent all the way down to the gymnasium and she wondered if perhaps she had been too harsh. There was a burning sensation around her heart, as if her conscience was trying to scold her.

He had looked as if he were on the verge of tears.

Whatever. He’s the one who asked for this. He’s the one who lied on his Rotary form.

As they approached the benches her friends were sitting at each pair of eyes rose to inspect Lucas.

Bess smiled slyly at Zoe.

Carlie introduced him to them and they all smiled sweetly and waved when she said their names.

Bess moved her bag from the bench beside her and said, “Want to sit?”

Lucas moved his big lanky frame over to sit beside her and Carlie sat on the end of the last bench.

Her three friends questioned Lucas and he responded, quietly at first, then growing in confidence until he was smiling and joking with them, doing impressions of an Australian accent in his deep scratchy American voice and making them laugh. He told them about how he’d set the chicken on fire by accident and they laughed and flicked their hair and tilted their heads to the side and smiled winningly.

Lucas had the full and rapt attention of each person in the circle of benches, except Carlie. She picked at her sandwich and wished it were easier to ignore him.

She wished she’d never even heard of Rotary Exchange.

“Did you forget your lunch?” Zoe asked Lucas. “Do you want my Pop-Tart?”

“Nah, it’s okay, Mrs. W. bought me lunch in the city.”

Carlie didn’t look up but she felt her nostrils flare with anger. Her mum had taken him out for lunch? On a work day? Carlie could count on one hand the number of times her mum had taken her out for lunch in her entire life. She had only just met him yesterday and already she was taking him out for lunch?

And since when had she become Mrs. W? He’d said it in such a comfortable way, as if she were his buddy.

God, it was so frustrating! Lucas was a big, dumb, lying buffoon, why did everyone give him so much attention?

Frustration became her constant companion over the following days. Everyone seemed to love Lucas, even her dog. Winston, who had always been a hyperactive ball of naughtiness, was spookily calm in his worship of Lucas. He had abandoned his nice cushy dog bed in the living room to sleep on the bare floorboards outside the door of the spare room (she would never refer to it as Lucas’ room). One night she had gotten up to go to the toilet and accidentally stepped on the poor deluded mutt as she walked down the dark hallway to her bathroom.

And the bathroom… don’t even get her started on her bathroom. How could she be expected to share it with this disgusting slob of a boy? He left his stuff out all over the place, his toothbrush, deodorant, shampoo and some weird American face wash that she’d never heard of before were all scattered around her previously neat and organized space.

His hair was everywhere. It was mostly dark longish strands that curled into big loops that obviously came from his head, but when she was cleaning the bathroom one night she found what she was fairly certain was a pube that did not belong to her.

“Muuuummm!” She screamed.

“What on earth is the matter?” Her mum asked as she hurried into the bathroom.

“There’s a pube! A dark brown disgusting pube that is not mine!” She pointed to the offending hair on the white tile floor, its dark hue and tight curl obviously mocking her with its boldness.

“Oh for god’s sake Carlie. Don’t be such a drama queen.” Her mother tore a piece of toilet paper from the roll, bent to pick up the pube with it and threw it in the toilet bowl as if encountering stay pubes was nothing to worry about. Carlie donned the thickest cleaning gloves in the house and armed with a spray bottle of bleach she scrubbed the place the hair had been and the toilet too.

It was the worst at school. Lucas took every single class with her, even German, which she was certain he’d never spoken in his life. She’d tried to explain to him that there was no way he’d be able to take the class if he didn’t already have a year of study behind him, but he was unmoved. He insisted on sitting beside her and would lean over throughout the class and ask questions. When Frau Pinkerton called on him in class he’d just make up some stupid phrase that sounded half way German and made the whole class laugh and the teacher smile and shake her head.

She had been totally crushed when they had their first music class together. Music had always been Carlie’s thing. She had played the flute since she was nine and had even done a couple of Australian Musical Examination Board exams. She was pretty good, but she felt like a retard when Lucas had gotten up to demonstrate his skills on the keyboard. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he could also play the trumpet and the violin and the oboe. He could probably play her flute if she would let him get his big annoying hands on it.

Mr. Hawthorn, the music teacher, was delighted. It seemed that Lucas could play anything that you cared to put in front of him, and he could play them all well. He spent the entire first class testing him with every instrument that the school had in its rental program, except the flute. Lucas said he couldn’t play the flute. Thank god.

Lucas made everyone but Carlie laugh with his antics. He jumped seamlessly from classical masterpieces to pop tunes and then to show tunes. He played the Ava Maria on the oboe. He played the theme to Star Wars on the trombone. He played the intro music to ‘The Simpsons’ on the classical guitar and then the song ‘Oklahoma’ from the musical on the violin as he did a funny dance and the class and Mr. Hawthorn clapped along in time.

She hated him.

When Friday finally rolled around she was embarrassed beyond belief when her friend Bess invited him to go to the beach with her and Zoe.

“Ah… are you going Carlie?” He asked.

Before Carlie could answer Bess cut in. “No. My sister is driving with her friend so with Zoe, you and I there wouldn’t be any extra room.” She turned to Carlie. “No offense Carlie, it’s not personal or anything, there just isn’t enough room.”

Lucas looked from Bess to Zoe to Carlie. His crystal blue eyes rested on hers for a moment as he seemed to contemplate the situation.

“You know, I already told Mr. W. that I’d help him in the garden this weekend and I don’t want to disappoint him. Maybe we could all go to the beach another time.”

She didn’t know what would have been worse, for him to go to the beach with her friends when she wasn’t invited or for him to spend the weekend getting buddy-buddy with her dad over the proper care of bromeliads.

She was so glad there was only one period left of this awful week before she could go home and lock herself in her room for a few days and try to pretend this had never happened. Thank god it was Health and Physical Education with Ms. Stephens, a nice, easy, embarrassment free afternoon in the gym.

Carlie was pretty good at P.E. It’s not like she was an athlete or anything, but she was reasonably fit and coordinated. Her mum had an old treadmill in the garage that she ran on a few times a week and on Tuesdays and Thursdays she took the bus out to Fitness First in Toowong to do their ‘Abs Butts and Thighs’ class. Sometimes she stayed after the class and used the cardio machines so this term of P.E., which was called ‘Getting to know the gym,’ should be easy for her.

Zoe and Gina were in this class with her too, so at least there would be a buffer between her and Lucas, or at least that’s what she thought. As soon as Ms. Stephens said the word ‘partners’ the idea of a peaceful afternoon vanished. All around the gym girls’ eyes locked on each other, anxious hands grabbed others to secure the safety of a partner. Carlie looked over at Gina and Zoe who were already standing side-by-side and not looking at her.

There were three of them left, Lucas, Carlie and Penelope Roth. Ms. Stephens made Penelope be her partner and so Carlie was left with Lucas for the exercise circuit. They were supposed to workout for a minute while their partner counted the number of repetition of whatever they were doing, then swap.

They started on sit-ups and Lucas went first. Carlie didn’t like to admit it, but he was pretty fit. He did 64 sit-ups in a minute. Then it was her turn she had an overpowering need to beat him. She pushed as hard as she could and did 65 sit-ups in a minute.

“Ha!” She taunted him, but he just gave her a funny little half-smile.

Next were push-ups and she was irritated to see that they seemed to be just as easy for him as the sit-ups. He didn’t even break a sweat as he easily pumped out 59 of them in a minute. She knew she couldn’t beat him at this but she was intent on not giving in and doing them the ‘girly’ way with her knees on the ground. She stayed on her toes and struggled to get 26 in before the timer went off.

Then it was on to star jumps.

“What’s a star jump?” Lucas asked.

Carlie rolled her eyes and showed him.

“Oh! A jumping jack, that’s easy.”

Because it had taken him a while to figure out what a star jump was it was easy for Carlie to beat him and she felt a smug satisfaction as they moved on to the elliptical machine, which she kicked his butt in too. She was feeling very confident when it got to her turn on the treadmill. She ran on the treadmill at home all the time, she was totally going to beat that smart-ass American at this.

Lucas looked annoyingly comfortable on the treadmill. He had ridiculously long legs that strode out to both the front and back edges of the tread in an easy, relaxed gait. He didn’t even look like he was trying to beat her, which both infuriated her and gave her more confidence.

By the time she got on the treadmill she was totally psyched up. She was going to kick his ass! She accelerated until the tread was moving under her so quickly that she was pretty much sprinting. The machine whirred loudly and her steps pattered briskly. Her arms pumped and she breathed quickly and deeply.

She was going to win.

Her lungs started burn with the effort. It had been 45 seconds and every muscle in her body was screaming. Her abs hurt from the sit-ups, her chest hurt from the push-ups, her butt hurt from the elliptical, but she pushed on. She could feel people’s eyes starting to turn to her but she didn’t care. She was going to show Lucas that she was really better than him.

Just 15 more seconds.

By now she was panting heavily and the patter of her feet was starting to morph into thuds as her legs got heavier and heavier. Ten more seconds. She pumped her arms harder and tried to force her legs to cooperate as she counted the seconds down. As the counter ticked down she prepared herself for the slow-down.

Machines like this had a built in slow-down, or warm-down routine, so that you wouldn’t go flying off the machine when it stopped dead. She was prepared for it, but it never came. The counter ticked down to 0:00 but the tread kept on moving just as quickly.

She reached out to the control panel and hit the emergency stop button, but nothing happened. She hit the down button but it didn’t slow down. She looked around desperately, her heat pounding in her ears, her vision blurring as she took in the shocked expressions of her classmates who were all staring at her.

“Ms. Stephens!” She called out.

The teacher hurried to the front of the machine and tried all of the things that Carlie had already attempted.

“Make it stop!” She pleaded.

Her feet were heavy, her thighs burned, the stunned silence of her classmates was filled in with the insane whir of the crazed machine, the thud of her footsteps and her frenzied breathing.

“Help…” she tried to yell but what came out was more of a whimper. She was trapped on this maniacal machine, it had her captured, helpless in its evil grips.

Her legs were so sore and heavy. She stumbled. She felt herself lose balance…

And then there were a pair of arms around her. Strong arms. They hoisted her up and backwards. Her legs were still moving as if she were running and her heel connected swiftly with a shinbone. Behind her ear she heard a swear word in a distinctly American accent as the world around her tilted and she fell backwards.

She braced for the impact but it never came. She heard a thud and when she opened her eyes she was indeed horizontal, but she wasn’t hurt. She was cradled safely against a disturbingly solid, warm chest.

She looked around her as she puffed frantically to re-oxygenate her shocked system. The whole class was staring at her, and then, as if on cue, they all started laughing. They were pointing and screeching with joy, laughing hysterically at her.

She was mortified. Totally, completely mortified.

She lay prone, on top of Lucas in what probably looked like some sort of sex position, with his arms around her. She scrambled off him and fled the scene as fast as her poor tortured legs would carry her to the bathrooms, locked herself in one of the stalls and started to cry.

To Ms. Stephens credit, she gave Carlie a good five minutes to try and calm down before she sent Penelope in for her.

“Carlie?” Penelope knocked lightly on the stall door as she spoke. “Are you in there?”

“Yeah.”

“Ms. Stephens says I have to take you and Lucas up to see Mrs. Hoskins.”

“What? The principal? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know. She says any incidents that involve Lucas have to go straight to the principal… I’m sorry. I know you are probably upset.”

Carlie sighed. “Let’s just get it over with.” She wiped the tears off her face and walked out of the bathrooms with Penelope. Thankfully there was a route to get to the school principal’s office that wouldn’t take them back through the gym.

Lucas was waiting for them outside. His brow was creased and he was chewing on his lip.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

“Yes. No thanks to you.”

The crease in his forehead got deeper as he drew his eyebrows together and pouted his lip out. “I didn’t mean to hurt you… I thought you were about to fall…”

Penelope’s dark round eyes moved from Lucas back to Carlie.

“Let’s just go.”

She led them up the stairs, around the tuckshop, past the library to the stately old administration building. The only building in the entire school that was air conditioned.

Penelope looked from Carlie to Lucas and back again with an amused smirk on her soft plump face. “Good luck,” she said as she left them sitting on the same polished wood bench that they’d been at just four days earlier.

Mrs. Hoskins wanted to talk to Lucas first and Carlie twiddled her thumbs nervously and tried to ignore the aches all over her body as she waited. When it was finally her turn she switched places with Lucas and sit in the plush chair on the opposite side of the desk to the principal.

“Carlie, I’ve heard you had a spot of bother in Health and Physical Education today,” she started in her grandiose voice.

“Yes Mrs. Hoskins.”

“It would appear that this young fellow grabbed you from behind while you were running on the… what do you call it?”

“Tread mill.”

“Yes, yes, the tread mill. Now, give me all the details you can think of dear.”

Carlie told Mrs. Hoskins what had happened, how even though the timer on the machine had stopped the tread belt wouldn’t, and how Lucas had picked her up but they had fallen backwards.

“So he grabbed you and then pulled you down onto the ground?”

“We fell. I think I might have accidentally kicked him.”

“Hmm… and after he had pulled you down onto the ground with him… did he touch you?”

“What do you mean? Of course we were touching, I was lying on top of him.”

“Ah! He pulled you on top of him on the ground, there is an important detail.” She made a note on the piece of paper in front of her.

“Well I was already on top of him because of the way he was holding me.”

“He was holding you down, on the ground!” Mrs. Hoskins’ enthusiasm for the story appeared to be growing by the sentence.

“No, not holding me down, just holding me… like, left over from when he picked me up.”

“Hmm… and I’ll ask you again, did he touch you… inappropriately?” She turned her head to the side and raised one eyebrow.

“Inappropriately? What do you mean?”

“Did he, say, touch your breasts or your bottom?”

Carlie was confused. She didn’t think Lucas had touched her breasts or her bottom but she didn’t know, it had all happened so fast.

“I don’t know, did you ask him?”

Mrs. Hoskins smiled. “Now dear, the fox is not going to admit it when he pulls his cunning tricks.”

She paused a moment to let her meaning settle over Carlie. She was calling Lucas a cunning fox. She was implying that he had done this on purpose so he could touch her breasts and bottom.

“Now,” Mrs. Hoskins continued. “The safety of the girls of this school is of the utmost importance. It is my highest priority. You must understand that a threat to their safety must be taken seriously and dealt with in a swift and unconditional manner.”

Carlie nodded.

“I know these things can be difficult and confusing for the victim but I must ask you again, did that boy touch you in an inappropriate way?”

It was so tempting, so very, very tempting. If Lucas got kicked out of school he would surely be sent back home to America. He would be banished from her life and everything could go back to normal. She’d have her friends back and her parents back and her dog back.

All she had to do was tell one itty-bitty tiny little lie and he would be gone.

“Well?” A small smile played at the corners of Mrs. Hoskins’ mouth as she waited for Carlie’s reply.