The Ghosts of Ashbury High Excerpt
The Ghosts of Ashbury High Excerpt
The Ghosts of Ashbury High Excerpt
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Note
Most of the following story takes place in an HSC English
exam on the topic of gothic fiction.
The HSC (or Higher School Certificate) is a series of exams
taken by students in New South Wales at the end of their final
year of school. During that final year, students also complete
projects and assessment tasks, the results of which are
combined with the HSC exam results to determine which
university major the student may pursue.
Gothic fiction includes novels like Wuthering Heights and
Frankenstein. In a gothic novel, you will often find mad people
locked in attics, secret passageways, monsters, murderers,
ghosts, and family curses. A beautiful young woman is likely
to ride in a carriage through a bleak landscape, hear the toll of
a distant bell, see a black crow, hear a rumble of ominous
thunder, see drops of blood, hear haunting music, see a figure
shrouded in mist, hear a bloodcurdling scream and it will
all make her prone to fainting several times a day.
PA R T O N E
1.
Board of Studies
New South Wales
HIGHER SCHOOL CERTIFICATE
EXAMINATION
English Extension 3
General Instructions
RILEY T. SMITH
Student No. 8233569
LYDIA JAACKSON-OBERMAN
Student No. 8233410
*
*
*
Later, at lunch, I told my friends about them.
Theres two new people, I said and a storm rattled the windows of the room.
I said theyd been together for years. I said they were swimmers. I
said they trained every day, and that swimming was her passion but he
went along just to swim beside her. I said she had a secret that was
breaking his heart.
Everything I said was based on my impression of Amelia and Riley
at the window in the classroom.
But nothing has happened so far to change my mind.
Ill take his silver shilling instead, says she. Its magic, the silver
one, and returns to your purse each time you pay it.
Eventually, shed have a stockpile of silver, and then shed buy a
ticket and come.
Why go to the trouble, says I, of finding the leprechaun? Just
grow yourself a pair of wings and fly.
Tom Kincaid, she says, and flicks my wrist, but it was good to see
the spark behind her tears.
Shes not written to me for almost a year now, but I keep writing.
I wrote about the snakes in Castle Hill the other day. You cant walk
anywhere, I wrote, but youll fall over a snake. (That was an exaggeration.) Theyre not venomous, I added next, so she wouldnt worry. (But
the black or brown ones, theyll likely kill you.)
Do you remember, I wrote last week, the day we lay side by side on the
grass, and you told me your wee brother was learning to count? The little
one would say, one, two, and then six, seven and nine, twelve, for he
hadnt yet put it all together.
Imagine the world of numbers that way, you said. A great unfolding
mystery is what they are, with chasms of wonder between.
I laughed at you, but I knew what you meant, and I held your
hand, and we looked at the sky and our thoughts flew together, the way
that they do. Those clouds, we thought, are a great unfolding mystery, with chasms of wonder between. And the same, we thought, is
our future.
And our hands tightened like to something fierce.
Today I wrote, Dear Maggie and the thunder roared there are
heat waves here so powerful that birds fall dead from the air. Days when the
sky turns black with bats, driven in swarms by hot winds. They swoop
down, these bats, crowd onto trees, and a constant, rhythmic thudding
begins as they drop dead or dying to the ground.
I tore that letter to shreds, and there it is now in the mud. For
8
louder even than the crashing rain is the constant, rhythmic thudding
of my heart. I know what is coming, and its darkness.
I know that the future is gone.
Och, and when I think of how they shaved my head, clapped irons
on my ankles, and sent me away to the ends of the earth for the rest of
my God-given life they got me for stealing a sheep and when I
think
Not to mention, I have just noticed that the exam question asks for
a personal memoir.
So you want to hear from me Toby Mazzerati not some Irish
convict dude named Tom Kincaid who lived here in 1804.
Hence, please disregard the above, and I will start my answer now.
Thanks for your time.
2.
To:
Y
(Sir Kendall Laurence) Mason Patterson
Scholarship Short list
Dear Mr. Botherit and Mr. Garcia,
Thank you for your memo.
To begin Id like to quibble with your tone.
Shouldnt we be more formal? This is, after all,
the inaugural year of the K. L. Mason Patterson
Scholarship. Does not the late Sir Kendall deserve
11
12
Y
Dear Mr. Botherit and Mr. Garcia,
Remind me how you talked me into joining this
Committee.
I guess Sura and Xavier would be the obvious
choices. They seem scarily smart. And desperately
dull. I dont especially want to meet them. Do we
really have to meet them?
Yours,
Patricia Aganovic
(Parent Representative 1)
Y
Chris and Rob,
My two cents worth:
The one named Sura, now she sounds
perfect. I cant tell you what an accomplished
violinist like that would do for the school
orchestra.
(Apparently, Riley has taught himself to play
13
Y
Mr. Botherit and Mr. Garcia,
Constance, once again.
Forgive this scribbled postscript but it occurs
to me that it would be the height of foolishness to
keep Riley and Amelia on our short list for a moment
longer. According to the Scholarship Charter, we are
obliged to interview all students on the short list.
Ergo, at present we have to interview them! We will
have to be in the same room as them! They will see
our faces!
(No doubt, they will learn our names too, for good
manners will oblige us to introduce ourselves.)
I urge you to remove them with haste.
Yours sincerely,
Constance Milligan
Y
Mr. B and Mr. G,
Guessing that Amelia and Riley are included for
humor value?
David, Sura, and Xavier sound okay.
Although, if any of those three come to Ashbury
their marks will be off the charts. My boy Tobys rank
14
Y
Mr. Bothersome and Mr. Gracias,
I write with urgent haste. It is I, Constance,
again by my night-light at midnight for I
have just awoken from a dreadful nightmare
dreadful! and I have no choice but to write to
you at once!
I have seen them! In my dream! It was those
applicants, Riley and Amelia oh, they were wicked,
monstrous, satanic creatures miscreants! they
had sprung, fully formed, from the loins of
Please hearken to my words:
In the dream, we were interviewing them. Riley
had taken the form of a great hairy ape, and Amelia
was a little black viper. (She had wrapped herself
around the back of that bright red chair, the one that
dear Patricia Aganovic favors at our Committee
meetings.) And do you know what they did? Why,
that ape and that viper, that pair of vicious reprobates, they spent the entire interview STUDYING US
ALL! Oh, their quick, cunning eyes were busy staring
and staring at us! (No doubt, they were valuing our
jewelry and our clothes and the quality of our
15
16
3.
If you could just ease your way out of the nineteenth century, and back
to modern times?
Back, in your actual fact, to a couple of weeks before the summer
holidays last year.
Cos thats when my dad had his tennis buddies round.
Thursday night and my feetre up, cold pizza, rain outside, TV
bright like its super-keen tonight, when a tennis shoe hits the back of
my head.
I turn around and theres Frankenstein.
Laughing his arse off at me, on account of the direct hit to
my head.
I kid you not: Frankenstein standing in my living room.
Couple of his monster buddies too. Big sweaty shadows in the
twilight-fading room.
Toby! go the monster buddies. (Thats their way of saying hi.)
Tobias, says Frankenstein. (Thats his way.)
Youd think his accent might have faded (like the twilight),
cause hes been in this country twenty years, but no Tobias, says
Frankenstein, accent smooth and sweet, you still have leetle pingpongs for balls?
In one smooth move I had his shoe up off the floor and hurtling
high speed toward his neck.
He took it from the air and let it drop.
What happened to your tennis game? I go.
All three monsters stand there looking at me. Sound of rain outside.
17
None of us blinked.
Next thing my dads there, handing out beers. Im thinking a
pasta, he says. Whaddya say, boys?
Skinny monster goes, That one you do with the olives?
Fat monster goes, And the anchovy fillets?
And Frankenstein: You kick ass, my friend!
Frankensteins real name is Roberto Garcia.
Also known as a buddy of my dad. They met at this wine tasting
course my parents did, back when my parents were an item. Roberto
Garcia was running the course.
Turns out, by spooky chance, hes my History teacher now. Gets
my dad onto school committees too. (He has Frankensteinesque powers of persuasion.)
Anyhow, this particular night, tennis rained out, big plates of pasta,
monster glasses of red wine, hangin with Dads buddies, the stereo
blasting out their favorite tunes I played them some sets of my
own Im a superstar DJ is what I am, in my spare time and they
started off ready to be full of mock and scorn but ended up kind of
nodding along, eyebrows jumping with the beat, now and then making that face. Lips turned down, head tilted sideways: Huh, whod
have thought it, this aint bad.
So Im taking a break some point that night, nice and sleepy
Dad and his fat buddy shootin some pool, skinny buddy frowning at
the stereo (trying to replicate my DJ success) (no chance), when
Frankenstein lands his big arse on the couch, shoving my legs to the
floor at the same time, and gets me with a face full of garlic-red-wine
breath.
Folks, he truly is one mother of a monster. Big acne-scarred face,
nose like a landslide, hairiest arms and legs you ever saw so youd
think he was a mountain goat in his spare time, but here if you
forgive a bit of sentiment please also the nicest guy in the world.
18
Too bad.
By the time that Riley-and-Amelia started at my school, I was
deep into the Tom-and-Maggie story.
Its blood, gore, betrayal, torture, murder plenty of murder. And
its kind of a love story too.
Wake up and Ill tell you the story.
RILEY T. SMITH
Student No. 8233569
Three years later and my fists in the air at the same door.
The fist hits a gust of moving red and rushing ponytail. The fist
hits Amelias voice: What was that?
Forget it, I tell her.
My hands are on her chest. Im moving her back into her room.
Who were those people? What was that place?
She means the new private school where we started that day.
Soak it in bleach for half an hour.
Im moving her into her room. My elbow juts back to slam
the door.
Those wild, crazed eyes of hers can change to moonshine softness
in a door slam.
Her skin is pale as watermelon sucked free of its juices.
Thats the steel gray desk, thats the wardrobe, the bed, thats her
giant stuffed cow, her guitar. Her bag spilling sheet music and water
bottles. Thats her hands, cheekbones, lips, thats the space behind her
knees.
I love her bare legs from a distance. When shes standing by a pool.
When shes facing the water, thinking. Her legs are white as watermelon rind, veined with blue from cold. Theres that H shape behind
her knees. The H that trembles softly with the swimming water cold.
20
Or when she swings in the park, when she sits on the swing in a
short, short dress, and she pumps her bare legs, pumps all those muscles in her pale, slender legs. You watch from behind and you can
see the long hair flying. She holds so tight that her knuckles turn
dark pink.
She never wears makeup.
She wears this khaki cap sometimes, and the cap stays on her
head even when she tips her face backward to the breeze. She puts
her ponytail through the gap at the back. Thats how it stays on. The
ponytail flies free and holds the cap.
And theres that H behind her knees, stretching and contracting,
stretching and contracting while she swings.
You know when somebody pushes you on a swing? The thud of
their hands on the small of your back. You swing through the air
then you spin back down and theres the thud of their hands pushing
you higher. The hands are there to help you. They want to push you
higher. They want to make you fly.
But theres the pressing of the hands on the small of your back,
theres the force, theres the thud of their hands.
Dont ever push me.
I will also say this. That I wondered when I would see Riley and
Amelia again.
I did not have to wonder long. It was four minutes later.
The girl (Amelia) was in History Extension 1 with Mr. Garcia.
And so was I!!
But nothing of note happened in that class.
Plus, I couldnt see her. She was three seats behind me.
By the next day, I knew they were here on scholarships. In fact,
Cassies mother is on the committee that chose them! But she couldnt
tell Cassie (or me) anything about their backgrounds, because it was
confidential. Hmm, I thought.
That day, Amelia was in English Extension 3 with Mr. Botherit . . .
and so was I!!!!!
And so, normally, was Lydia. But she was not at school.
Now, I will here display two details which might seem shady now,
but later? The bloodred moon will shine upon them.
First! Our English class took place in Room 27B in the Art Rooms
across the oval.
The Art Rooms? Oh, you dont know how important that is!
Hearken! I will tell you!
Well, the Art Rooms are not the Art Rooms anymore. Oh no!
That building is now the K. L. Mason Patterson Center for the Arts.
Because it turns out that a very rich man succumbed to death, and left
a HUGE FORTUNE to our school.
A fortune which I could have taken off his hands with ease if he
had only had the foreskin to ask me. But oh no, he had to go and waste
it on our school.
Therefore, there is now a committee going mad, trying to think up
ways to spend the money. Im sure they have better reasons to go mad.
But did KL think of that? No.
One thing they have spent the money on is, of course, scholarships.
Another is the crazed renovation of the Art Rooms.
23
The Art Rooms were once the building where students slept, back
in the olden days when our school was a boarding school! Anyhow,
but then it became the Art Rooms, and now it has been renovated and
includes conference rooms, drama theaters, auditoriums, art galleries, kitchens, and state-of-the-art resource centers (i.e., classrooms),
and, furthermore, its name has grown so long you need mouthwash to
loosen up the muscles of your teeth before you say it.
But we all still call it the Art Rooms.
Second! Mr. Botherit talked about the fact that English Extension 3
is a new subject this year, with an emphasis on memoir, and therefore we had to write blogs.
I had a lot to say about this idea, but Amelia, who happened to
be sitting five seats away from me (horizontally speaking) paid no
heed to me.
She spoke to not a soul. She was silent as a chocolate bar.
Her posture was good. Im not suggesting here that she hunched
over or hid behind her hair or suchlike. Oh no. She was poised and
clear-eyed and her posture was exquisite and her eyes followed the
teacher every moment.
He pranced around the room (as he responded to my many things
to say), and Amelias eyes followed so closely it was as if he had magnets in his face.
(Im not suggesting here that Mr. B is hot.)
Eventually, Mr. B asked me to stop talking. He said he was going
to give us topics for our blogs, and the first one was My Journey
Home.
And then I had a lot more to say.
Nevertheless, in the end, I wrote my blog. And as I typed, I heard
the sound of Amelia typing. I looked across at her. Her long hair slid
down her back like a waterfall. (I dont mean that it was wet; Im being
meteorological.) She would type very quickly and then shed stop.
Thered be a long, silent pause.
24
Her fingernails were the extreme short of someone who bites their
nails overtly. And her fingers wandered across the keys, gently stroking them whenever she paused.
It was just as if we did not exist.
At the end of the lesson, she drifted back across the oval. A lot of
the boys in our class stopped to watch her go. Theyd been checking her out the whole lesson, both openly and stealthily. A mixture
of both.
And then, at the other side of the oval, Amelia stopped. I looked
in the direction of her gaze. It was Riley. He reached her. I did not see
them speak. I did not see them touch. I simply saw the space between
them close, and then I saw them gliding calmly onward.
The boys in our class uttered a silent, plaintive sigh.
LYDIA JAACKSON-OBERMAN
Student No. 8233410
The second day of term, I didnt see Amelia and Riley at all.
I stayed home from school.
Had to stay at home because my head exploded.
I was sweeping up the pieces of my head when my mum wandered
into the room. She was half-asleep/hungover in her bathrobe. Shed
been celebrating the night before bought herself an independent
record label just the other day. My mother picks up companies like
other people pick up milk.
Watch your feet, I said.
Her eyes flew open. Then she whimpered quietly: Opening her
eyes had hurt her soul. She closed them fast.
Seriously, I said, theres broken head all over the place in here.
Mum sighed and drifted to the hallway. I could hear her telling
Dad to stay out of the kitchen. I couldnt hear his answer, just his tone.
25
It was: deep, low, hm, well, really, Im too important a man to have to stay
out of my own kitchen, arent I?
Mum replied with her own tone, which was: huh, interesting.
Are you?
I finished sweeping up my head and then, for a laugh, picked out a
couple of the bigger pieces, and juggled them.
That was funny. You should have seen our dog, Pumpernickel. He
thought it was a game just for him he was doing these frantic
bounces, like, spring! spring! All the time getting closer, desperate to
snatch one of the pieces of my head from the air. And I was shaking
my head. I mean that literally. Id put the rest of the head in a cocktail
shaker and I was shake, shake, shake. And Pumpernickel
Ah, just kidding.
My head didnt explode.
What, are you as stupid as my dog?
No, I stayed home because my mother asked me to let the roofing
guys in. She had some appointment to take her hangover to, and Dad
had to go rule the world! (Thats what he does. He rules the world!
Or, at least he judges it. Hes a judge.)
Anyway, I needed a break.
Dont think I cant hear you, Exam Marking Person. This is what
youre saying: What?! She needed a break? Isnt it the second day
after the summer holidays here? And she already needs a break? Isnt
that just like her generation?! I dont know about the future when
Take it easy or youll spill your herbal tea.
Youre forgetting that you dont know every thing.
Surprise!
You dont.
At the start of the summer holiday last year, my best friends, Em
and Cass, flew away. (Em on a Canadian ski trip; Cass to voice training in Melbourne.)
26
While they were gone, my boyfriend and I broke up. And my dad
moved out of the house. (Three weeks later, he moved back in.)
The summer disappeared.
Not a single drop of light. Pure darkness. An eclipse.
Im much more sane than I sound. But this last year some kind of
madness has found its way underneath my nails. This last year, Ive
made the worst mistakes of my life.
Ill get to the mistakes.
The point for now is this: At the start of the year after that dark
summer I was not myself at all.
Or maybe I was. Maybe Id been cut down to my essence.
27