Posse Read Online Free Page B

half the hut. Something only a second-best friend would do. Patricia can be quite funny when she’s not being so serious.
    We sneak like serpents back across the bare, dry paddock to the mess hall and slip in the double doors. I’m horrified to see Bevan sitting next to Clare at our table. They’re huddled close, leaning in, animated in their gestures. I glare at Deborah, who’s looking bored. She shrugs.
    As we’re walking to our table, Bevan gets up, pats Clare on the shoulder and walks back to the instructors’ table on the other side of the mess hall.
    Clare is grinning stupidly when I sit next to her.
    â€˜What the hell did he want?’ I ask.
    â€˜You, actually,’ says Clare.
    â€˜Don’t talk rubbish.’
    â€˜I’m not. He wants to set up a hockey game this afternoon. Miss Howell told him you were the best hockey player at school. He wants you to pick a team of girls, and he’s going to pick a team of instructors and teachers.’
    I’m suspicious. I look to Johanna for confirmation. She doesn’t make up stories.
    â€˜It’s true,’ she says. ‘You have to put me on the team. I wouldn’t mind tackling Bevan. He’s so cute. And a minister!’
    â€˜ And a minister! ’ mocks Clare, wiggling her head from side to side.
    I’m quietly pleased by the prospect of a hockey match, but not thrilled that Clare and Bevan are getting cosy. Why does that bother me? I’m not jealous. I don’t want either of them. I just have this feeling, like I used to have all the time when Mumand Dad were at each other’s throats, that something dangerous is around the corner. Globus hystericus . Mum and Nanna get it too. It’s like a tennis ball in your throat and butterflies in the stomach with the volume turned way up, sometimes until you can hardly breathe. It’s a psychological thing, I think. It’s why Nanna started taking Valium. These days I only get it every now and then.
    My posse and another group are on clean-up duty for lunch. We have to stack all the plates in a stand over a concrete drain outside and spray them with hand-held hoses. Of course, with my posse in charge, everyone ends up getting soaked before a drop of water falls on the plates. Mrs Ricci, who I sent twelve volts through in a science class in Year Seven, waddles over and yells at us. We look solemn until she’s out of earshot and then we’re at it again. I have enough self-control to refrain from squirting her retreating back.
    I often wonder what makes me such a naughtygirl. Mum reckons it’s the ‘stupid, fancy private school’ and Dad’s well-publicised peccadilloes. Dad reckons it’s the crazy, oppressive, man-hating environment at home. I think I’m just an honest girl in a dishonest world. Better to be honest and the butt of the odd joke, if you ask me. It’s much more fun than taking yourself so seriously that you have to cover up all the stupid mistakes you’ve made because they don’t gel with the image you’re trying to project to the world. I feel sorry for people like that, and that’s most adults. It’s pathetic.
    Two girls in the clean-up group are known as ‘Toni-and-Joey’, as if they’re a single entity. Like Clare and me, they’ve been best friends since primary school and all through high school. Unlike Clare and me, neither of them has any other close friends at school. They do everything together. They’re in all the same classes and play the same sports. One can’t move without the other. That’s also quite pathetic.
    I let them hang out with my posse sometimes, for their own good, but also because I used to have a little crush on Toni. She’s really beautiful. She has this gorgeous olive complexion. The skin on her face and body is so smooth you can’t stop looking at it. She looks Spanish, actually, even though her parents are both bog