Dragonfire Page 4

  “Hope I haven’t ruined your date, boys…” Percy hissed under her breath, just loud enough for Gallagher and Donat to hear as she delivered her coup-de-grâce. “Next time, maybe try somewhere a little more romantic…?”

  “Nuffin’ wrong with bein’ gay…” Donat pointed out with surprising open-mindedness, almost sounding genuine in his protest but not at all helping their cause as the laughter at their expense grew substantially.

  “Jesus, Dunkin’… we’re not gay…!” Gallagher hissed back plaintively, rolling his eyes and mightily sorry he’d ever opened his mouth.

  “I know that…” Donat grumbled softly, the damage already done. “…Just sayin’, is all…”

  “Class…! That will do…!” Miss Hoskins snapped loudly, not at all happy about the noise levels, the giggling or the fact that she’d been distracted from her own reading. “I can hand out a snap test instead, if you’ve all finished your work already…”

  That threat instantly turned every pair of eyes back to their text books, and a hush settled back over the class room as actual study finally began. Reading like the rest, Percy could feel the heat of Gallagher’s humiliated glare burning into her back and she cared not a bit, a self-satisfied smirk the only outward display of the enjoyment she felt over her latest victory against the Neanderthals of the world.

  “You really know how to make friends, don’t you…?” Nev whispered a few moments later, allowing enough passed time to avoid Miss Hoskins’ attention. “His dad is the mayor, you know… and they do know how to use guns…” she added as an afterthought, not sure of the relevance but throwing it in anyway.

  “Dad kicks their butts at the range every weekend,” Percy replied with a snort of derision. Her father had been a regional trap-shooting champion several years running, and was the number one member at the local club. “I don’t know why those two morons are even in this class, other than boosting numbers and keeping Hoskins in a job! Never mind about that, anyway: what else did you get for your birthday?” She continued, glancing up just long enough to make sure their teacher had indeed returned to her own book, the class again forgotten for the time being.

  “Haven’t got my ‘big’ present yet, whatever it is…” Nev grumped softly in return. “Dad wants me to wait until he gets home, as usual. And he went and put all his songs on my phone again: my player’s filled with screaming, old pensioners…!”

  “Painful…!” Percy nodded in sympathy, pulling a face and giving her tone just the right amount of drama to suit the occasion. “Thank you so much for that mental image…”

  “Got a solar charger for my phone though…” Nev added brightly.

  “Yes, I already ‘liked’ that this morning… duhhh… how boredom…!”

  “Well, I think it’s pretty cool,” Nev sniffed in return, “and I got something from Yoshi as well…”

  “Creepy, if you ask me, but again: seen the movie, bought the T-shirt…!”

  “Why are you being such a cow this morning?” Nev shot back, knowing Percy was just having fun in her own, caustic way but not really in the mood for it on her birthday. “It’s not the end of the month yet…”

  “Ouch…!” Percy conceded with raised eyebrows, in deference to their current class adding: “…or maybe I should say Touché…! Sarcastic, much…? And apparently I’m the cow… LOL…” she added, actually pronouncing it as ‘loll’ rather than sounding out each letter individually. “So over this conversation,” she declared suddenly, changing the subject again. “…What are you doing later…? Anything planned…? Meeting up with some boy I – and possibly you – don’t know about…?”

  “What, apart from school on a Monday…?” Nev asked grumpily, ignoring the crack about her well-known, almost complete lack of experience with boys and not quite ready to let her friend off the hook just yet. “Dad’s not going to be home until late as usual, so nothing I guess, unless I can find a ‘friend’ to spend time… for a change…”

  “Oh, such melodrama…” Percy sighed, clearly overacting. “I can do better than that. You’ve got a study period after lunch, right? And after that, we both have history…”

  “With you so far…” Nev replied drily.

  “We-ell…” Percy continued, dragging the word out for effect. “You know we have satellite at home, right? And you know it’s Monday… right…?” She left the rest hanging for her friend to run with.

  “Oh, my God, I forgot: Game of Thrones…!”

  “Latest episode, screening from noon today and set to record…”

  “And this helps us how…? School, remember…?”

  “I thought that maybe… just this once, and considering it is your birthday…” Percy went on, lowering her voice to a hushed whisper now as she verged into potentially dangerous territory “…that you might consider ditching school after lunch so we can go back to my place and watch it. Mum and George are away visiting Nana, and Dad won’t be home until well after five anyway, so we’ll have the house to ourselves.”

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea…” Nev recoiled slightly, vaguely phobic about the idea of doing anything even slightly against the rules. “We’ve got projects due soon… and someone will know, anyway…” She was thinking of what her father would say if he found out, and nothing she was imagining about that was very pleasant.

  “Seriously…?” Percy almost laughed out loud. “Nevaeh Anderson…” she went on, purposefully using Nev’s full name simply because her friend hated it so much “…you have the highest grades of anyone in the entire year, and have done every year in recorded history…” She knew there was at least a little exaggeration there, but wasn’t about to let that get in the way of making a persuasive argument. “Jorgenson sometimes checks his physics questions with you before he hands them to the rest of the class, for goodness’ sake!”

  That was only once, really… Nev conceded silently.

  “Missing one stupid history class will not hurt your marks at all…” Percy continued, suddenly feeling that an intervention was in order, “and more than that, you never do anything fun that involves breaking the rules even just a little: no cutting class… no kissing boys… not even any bloody swearing, for Christ’s sake, and any bastard will tell you that’s not healthy…!” That she managed to get a suppressed smile out of Nev in reaction to her intentionally excessive profanity was encouraging at least.

  As was the way of teenage girls the world over, as attractive as Persephone Koutroulis knew she herself was, in her own way she nevertheless also envied Nev for her athletic fitness, auburn hair, green eyes and her perfectly-shaped nose and smile. Just that little bit older than her friend and far more worldly and ‘street-smart’, Percy was certain that the only reason Nev had never had a boyfriend (apart from never really seeming to have been interested in having one for some unfathomable reason), was that she never made any effort to ‘put herself out there’, as Percy’s mum would’ve put it in her own, classy way.

  Admittedly, Percy hadn’t shown any interest in boys lately either, past history notwithstanding, but that was of course completely different, and what had happened between her and Johno didn’t really count, anyway. Besides, the fact that she’d decided for the time being to remain happily single was purely an indication that her mind (and heart) were set on far bigger goals, something she was quite confident wasn’t the case with Nev. She didn’t think Nev was gay, although she’d of course never actually asked, and Percy was pretty sure her best friend at least liked boys, even if she seemed likely to slip into paralysis if she ever actually talked to one.

  Nev certainly went on enough about how gorgeous Jon Snow was, (adding silently: well, hello…who wouldn’t think that…?) yet she also had a tendency most of the time to dress in frumpy, utilitarian clothing that basically guaranteed no boy would ever look at her twice. Nev had at least shown a bit of fashion sense for her birthday; although it was of a very different style to anything Percy would’ve chosen for herself, it was neve
rtheless a marked improvement over most other days, when she seemed happy to just turn up in any old thing. Nev was well overdue for a little mischief in her life, and Percy wasn’t above using that to suit her own purposes.

  “I dunno, Perce… we’ve got that paper on Ancient Greece due next week…” Nev wavered, her schoolwork foremost in her thoughts as usual, “…and anyway, what would Barnaby say? He’ll be in the principal’s office five minutes after class finishes to drop us right in it.”

  “Ahhhhhh…!” Perce groaned in exasperation, loud enough for Miss Hoskins to lift a warning eye and glare momentarily in her direction. “You know everything there is to know about physics and chemistry…” she continued, lowering her speech accordingly. “You speak French like a Parisian. Shakespeare comes to you for spellchecking…” she complained, exaggerating again, but on point at least regarding Nev’s tendency to excel in every class “…and you already know more about Ancient Greece than bloody Herodoofus did…!”

  “Herodotus,” she corrected automatically, unable to stop herself despite knowing Percy had intentionally mispronounced the name just to annoy.

  “What-ever…! The point is, missing one silly history class will not do you any harm whatsoever, and might just do you more than a little good!”

  As Perce had entered into her little rant, it occurred to Nev that it did sometimes feel like she never had the opportunity to actually live once in a while. When she wasn’t at school, she was usually at training, flipping burgers at work, or at home either studying, doing chores or making sure Dad had his clothes ironed and his lunch packed for the next morning. In that moment, with her best friend raving on about enjoying life, she suddenly did wonder what it might actually feel like to break the rules or step outside her well-established routines once in a while.

  “Honestly, Nev: Game of Thrones…!” Percy continued, sensing her friend’s defences were weakening and going for the ‘kill’. “Jon Snow… Jaime Lannister…!” There was a long pause, Percy’s eyes boring into the side of her head as Nev stared hard at the ‘virtual whiteboard’ projected onto the screen at the front of the class and thought deeply about what to do next. “Dragons, Nev… Dragons…!”

  “Oh, Perce…” Nev answered finally, turning to face her friend with a melodramatically dreamy half-smile, the decision made. “You had me at ‘Jon Snow’…”

  II

  A Momentary Lapse

  Nev grumbled something unpleasant under her breath for the thousandth time that afternoon as their push-bikes rounded the Reed Crescent corner and trundled on along Chisholm, pushing down hard on her pedals and trying to catch up as Percy began to draw ahead. The thick scrub and long grass of a wetland nature reserve rose up on either side, and as they continued south she could hear the faint sound of surf crashing against the beach somewhere up ahead in the distance.

  They’d slipped away from school after lunch, made a quick stop at Percy’s house, then headed out of town and turned their bikes south toward the nearby coast. The cloudless sunshine of the morning – something the forecast had promised would last all day – had completely disappeared by that time, gathering dark clouds hanging extremely low, and it was starting to look like an excellent chance of rain in the not-too-distant future.

  Rain wouldn’t have been a problem had they been seated in front of the 55-inch flat screen in Perce’s lounge room, watching cable and snacking guiltily on some of the numerous treats her mum always kept in the pantry. It had turned out however that Percy’s mum had come home earlier than expected, and somehow (…during a moment of temporary insanity, clearly…), Percy had instead convinced Nev to take part in some ill-conceived ‘nature ride’ that was sounding sillier by the minute, particularly now that grey clouds were looming so ominously.

  Second thoughts were also starting to raise their ugly heads at the back of her consciousness regarding the consequences of what they’d done that afternoon. Her Dad often said that there was nothing faster than the ‘speed of doubt’ – Nev was pretty sure he was quoting some comedian from one of his old DVDs – and right at that moment, she was finding out exactly how fast that actually was.

  She was now absolutely certain that she’d be in big trouble for skipping school. Maybe not tonight… maybe not for a day or two… but eventually, her father would find out she’d cut class for the afternoon and when he did, it wouldn’t matter in the slightest that she was already ‘top of her class’, or that one of the periods she’d missed had ‘only been a study break anyway’...

  “Just one more fun fact about living in a small town at the end of the known world,” she growled as she quickened her pace and tried to catch up. Much like any small, country town, everyone in hers always knew everyone else’s business, and sooner or later that business always became public. ‘The truth will out’, Dad also said, and he’d sure-as-hell found that out the hard way. Nev hated her mum for what she’d done to him – to both of them – yet although she’d never admit it to anyone, Nev missed her terribly all the same.

  “Come on, loser!” Percy called laughingly back over one shoulder, sounding like she’d not pedalled a single metre. “You’re making it easy!

  First-is-the-worst…! That strange, irrational catchphrase rose up from some long-forgotten backwater of Nev’s brain – something that had been a running joke back when she was younger, play-fighting to be first in through the front door and losing out to Mum or Dad. She’d only been a kid then, back when she’d never have thought twice about saying something so childish… back when it was still the three of them. Nev released a soft growl and forced those memories from her mind, finding extra strength and surging ahead as her bike swayed left and right under all that increased energy.

  “‘I don’t know what happened, officer,’…” she mimicked with breathless sarcasm, jokingly supposing how the imaginary police interview might go after her arrest for murder. “‘One minute, she was cycling in front of me… the next, I was standing over her with the blood-spattered road sign in my hands’…”

  Nev was almost Percy’s height but looked much shorter when standing side-by-side due to her friend’s notably slimmer figure. Nev’s dad often joked that Percy could be arrested for having ‘no visible means of support’, after which Nev usually pointed out in return that dad jokes like that were one of the reasons he never got invited to parties. The irony that she’d picked up many of his ‘old-fashioned’ sayings and mannerisms as she’d grown up with just one parental influence was an irony had eluded her over the years.

  Although she too was definitely on the ‘lean’ side, Nev’s fitness regime had given her a figure that was noticeably more solid and athletic than Percy’s; one that was clearly more defined when wearing form-fitting clothes (as rare as that generally was). At seventeen, she’d already grown into the beautiful young woman she’d always been destined to become; something her father sometimes lay awake at night worrying about.

  His only daughter was smart, funny and full of life… everything her mother had been and more… and that fact was Drake Anderson’s greatest joy and his darkest fear. She’d been forced to grow up early, forced to take a far greater burden upon her young shoulders than any child should ever have to bear, and even a simple truckie who’d left school early understood well enough that that kind of extra responsibility was bound to take its toll on someone so young.

  “It’s up here on the right!” Percy called back over her shoulder, releasing a whoop of excitement and waving a hand in the general direction of what appeared to be a narrow track, disappearing into the scrub on the right about two hundred metres further on. The track looked a bit overgrown and marshy where it joined Chisholm Road, didn’t look at all safe for bikes, and definitely wasn’t very appealing as somewhere to ‘get back to nature’ as Percy had so enthusiastically put it an hour before. The whole thing was starting to seem a bit suspect in Nev’s opinion.

  “Are you sure this is gonna be worth it…?” Nev asked doubtfully as they came to a halt
by the side of the road, standing upright astride their mountain bikes in the middle of the track’s entrance. The duffel bag that still hung faithfully from her back swung to and fro, dragging at her shoulders faintly as she shifted her footing to keep the bike stable. She’d left her books at Percy’s place, but there was no way she was leaving her presents behind and the bag was still quite heavy as a result.

  “Of course I am,” Percy snapped back tartly. “…Been here heaps of times.”

  “The one day I decided to wear my good boots!” She muttered, feeling very dubious about the whole thing and unimpressed by the look of the track as it disappeared into the scrub. “We’re not gonna find Jimmy Hoffa in here, are we?”

  “Who…?” Percy asked blankly, not a shred of recognition in her dark eyes regarding an American union boss who’d disappeared without trace four years before her dad had even been born.

  “Donald MacKay…?” Nev tried again, almost hopeful for a reaction as she at least moved to the subject of more local missing persons.

  “Oh… Em… Gee…! I thought we were skipping ancient history today… can we go, please…?” Percy sighed, already bored and not in the mood for Nev’s treasure-trove of pointless trivia. Turning the handlebars, she lifted herself off the ground and pedalled off down the track, already heading for the first, bush-lined bend as Nev scrambled to remount her own bike.

  “Where’s Wally, perhaps…?” She offered up with sour sarcasm, knowing that Percy was already out of earshot as she turned around and took a long look back down the slope of the road at the rooftops of her town, shimmering faintly in the waning sunlight beyond the intervening grassland. The wind picked up again in that moment, gusting and blowing her hair all about, and she frowned up at the gathering clouds as she reached back and resecured the elastic hair tie holding it all together in a long pony tail beneath her bike helmet. She could smell the ozone of imminent rain now and silently cursed the washing still hanging on the line at home.