The Plot Thickens Read online

  ‘No, let her speak,’ said Ian. ‘I want her to clear my name.’

  ‘Travis can’t have been waylaid on the way to breakfast,’ said Friday, ‘because the pancakes were a surprise. No one knew about them until we arrived at the dining hall.’

  ‘I guessed,’ said Travis.

  ‘No, we always have muesli on Wednesdays,’ said Friday. ‘If you had guessed, you would have guessed that.’

  ‘Then someone must have told me as I was walking to the dining hall,’ said Travis.

  ‘Then how did you come to be locked in the closet?’ said Friday ‘Even Mr Brecht doesn’t have a key.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Travis. ‘Perhaps the bully had a copy.’

  ‘Turn out your pockets,’ said Friday.

  Travis emptied out his pockets. They were empty. ‘See!’ he declared. ‘It’s not fair, sir. I’ve suffered a trauma and she’s blaming me, the victim.’

  ‘Well, you are annoying,’ said Melanie. ‘It would be anyone’s natural instinct.’

  Friday gingerly got to her feet and walked over to the closet. She looked inside. There were long, deep shelves stacked with heavy paint bottles, buckets of acrylic primer, reams of paper and glue by the gallon. On the floor in front of the art reference books was a scattered pile of biscuit crumbs.

  ‘And here we have the motive,’ said Friday, pointing towards the reference books.

  ‘Books?’ said Mr Brecht. ‘How are they a motive?’

  ‘This is a school,’ said Friday. ‘Travis is a hormonal teenager. And those books would have the only pictures in the school featuring naked ladies.’

  ‘It’s not true!’ protested Travis.

  Friday picked up a book on European portraiture that was lying on the ground. ‘If you pick up a book and open it quickly so that each side of the cover is lying on the horizontal palm of your hand,’ said Friday, ‘the book will naturally fall open to where it was read last. It’s got to do with the stretching and bending of the paper and cardboard in the spine. Like this …’ Friday opened the book so that the covers were against her palms and the pages fanned out in an arch. They slowly flicked to their final resting place. ‘Ah, just as I suspected: the Renaissance. Rembrandt and Rubens. Really, I have to congratulate Travis on going against the contemporary objectification of women and showing interest in classical beauty values.’

  ‘Maybe I just like art,’ said Travis, snatching the book away from Friday.

  ‘I’m sure you do,’ said Friday. ‘But this art was specifically created because men like looking at naked ladies. Really you were enjoying art appreciation in its truest sense.’

  ‘Then where’s the key?’ asked Mr Brecht in frustration. ‘Clearly, I have to be able to lock this closet if I’m going to enjoy my own cheese.’

  Friday looked about. ‘We have to think like Travis. He’s in here eating cheese, looking at pictures, when he hears the other students arrive. He realises it’s too late to sneak out, so he decides to pretend he’s been locked in. So he has to hide the key. The problem for us is there are so many possibilities. He could drop it into a bottle of glue or paint and the only way we’d find it is by emptying all the paint out in the closet.’

  ‘We can’t do that. There are thousands of dollars’ worth of paint in here,’ said Mr Brecht.

  Friday turned to Travis. ‘Show me your fingernails.’

  Travis dug his hands in his pocket. ‘No, you can’t search me without a search warrant.’

  ‘Really?’ said Friday. ‘That means you know your fingernails would give you away.’ She looked across at the shelf directly opposite the reference books. There sat one big block of clay, wrapped in plastic. She peeled back the wrapping from the top. The clay was perfectly smooth.

  ‘The surface is undisturbed,’ said Mr Brecht.

  ‘It’s clay,’ said Friday. ‘It would be easy enough to smooth down.’ She reached into her pocket and took out her own dorm room key, then started to gouge a long line through the top of the clay.

  ‘What are you doing?’ demanded Mr Brecht. ‘I need to use that clay for this afternoon’s year 8 class.’

  ‘It’s in here somewhere,’ said Friday. ‘Aha!’ Her key had struck something. Friday dug her finger in and gouged out another key. ‘The key to the art closet.’

  ‘But anyone could have put that there,’ protested Travis, pointing at the key. Ian reached over and grabbed him by the wrist. ‘Let’s have a look at your fingers,’ he said.

  Travis’s fingers were covered in dried clay.

  ‘Young man,’ said Mr Brecht quietly, which only made what he said more menacing, ‘if you want to look at the art reference books, you can do so at any time. But a more serious crime has been committed here. You owe me a cheese. I expect that cheese to be replaced by the end of the week, and not with some locally made rubbish. A proper brie imported from France using dangerously unhealthy unpasteurised milk. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Travis.

  ‘Now, come on, let’s get to work,’ snapped Mr Brecht.

  Chapter 9

  The First Lesson

  ‘I’ve seen what your old art teacher taught you,’ said Mr Brecht, ‘and it’s all a load of rubbish.’

  ‘All of it?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘Pointless busy work,’ declared Mr Brecht, ‘getting you to use cheap acrylic paint and bog-standard cartridge paper. That’s never going to inspire you to be great artists.’

  ‘Da Vinci did lots of drawing on paper,’ said Friday.

  ‘And what’s his legacy?’ asked Mr Brecht. ‘Seven oil paintings. One of which the paint is peeling off because he used flawed, experimental techniques. What’s the point of painting a mural of the Last Supper if you’re going to use paint that peels off? He was painting a church wall, not a seven-year-old girl’s fingernails.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘I’m going to teach you how to do proper oil painting on proper canvas, like real artists,’ announced Mr Brecht. He opened up his duffel bag and took out several plain white canvases. ‘Here, hand them around.’

  ‘They’re rather big,’ noted Melanie. Each canvas was at least one square metre.

  ‘That’s the whole point,’ said Mr Brecht. ‘I want you to have big ideas, to express all your feelings. If you paint on a small piece of paper, you can only have small ideas and small feelings. Let your emotions out.’

  The class started distributing the frames. Friday got hers. She was surprised how impressive it felt to hold. It was a proper timber frame with canvas coated in thick white paint.

  ‘Luckily for you, your headmaster is an idiot,’ said Mr Brecht. ‘He’s given me an enormous budget. So I’ve bought you the best supplies. Cedar frames, French cloth, and I primed the canvases myself. You’ll never make a masterpiece on paper. It’s like drawing on a children’s menu at a pizza restaurant.’

  ‘I like this teacher,’ Melanie said to Friday. ‘He sounds like fun … in a deranged, egomaniacal sort of way.’

  ‘At the end of my eight weeks here trying to drum talent into you,’ continued Mr Brecht, ‘the Headmaster wants to hold an art show to display your work, which will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.’

  ‘Who would want to buy paintings by a bunch of high-school students?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Their super rich parents,’ said Mr Brecht. ‘So I’m sure we’ll raise quite a bit of money.’

  ‘For charity?’ asked Friday.

  ‘If you call a private school’s indoor swimming pool fund a charity, then yes,’ said Mr Brecht.

  ‘But the school doesn’t have a swimming pool,’ said Friday.

  ‘That’s what the fund is going to rectify,’ said Mr Brecht. ‘Capitalism is wonderful, isn’t it?’

  Friday was still suffering the effects of her blow to her head. Apart from the splitting headache, her thoughts were very fuzzy indeed. She was finding it hard to concentrate long enough to remember what a sentence
was about by the time anyone had finished saying it. But she had got the gist that she was meant to be painting.

  ‘What do you want us to paint?’ Friday asked.

  ‘Whatever you want,’ said Mr Brecht.

  ‘Can you narrow it down?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Something that makes you passionate,’ said Mr Brecht.

  ‘Friday doesn’t do passion,’ said Ian.

  ‘I thought she was your girlfriend,’ said Peregrine.

  ‘They’re having a long, drawn-out fight,’ said Melanie, ‘because Friday made Ian uncomfortably aware of how little his father cares for him.’

  ‘I don’t know why he doesn’t,’ said Friday. ‘Ian is very nice –’

  ‘Did you hear that?!’ said Melanie. ‘The concussion is making her speak the truth!’

  ‘– when he isn’t being a total pompous bore,’ continued Friday. ‘Which is only about three per cent of the time.’

  ‘And she reverts to character,’ said Ian.

  ‘When I say passionate,’ said Mr Brecht, ‘I don’t mean “love”.’

  ‘We’re not talking about love, either,’ said Ian.

  ‘I was,’ said Melanie.

  ‘It can be something that makes you passionately angry,’ said Mr Brecht. ‘Or deeply sad. Or insanely jealous.’

  ‘I can think of several things,’ said Ian, glaring at Friday.

  ‘Good,’ said Mr Brecht. ‘Now, all of you, shut up and get painting. I don’t want to hear a word out of you until your canvas is covered. Anyone who speaks will have to buy me another cheese.’ Mr Brecht leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The class set to work.

  Friday pondered her emotions. She had a lot of them. Her looming antagonism with Ian had worn her down. She did feel angry, and resentful, and even just plain irritated. But that was all on the surface. When she dug deep into the strata of her emotions (something she had never done before but now found she was able to, thanks to the clarity of thinking her head injury had allowed her) she realised that, underneath it all, she felt very sad.

  Ian was just the tip of the iceberg protruding above the surface of her despair. Beneath, she had a lot of sadness with her family, but also with herself and her own inadequacies – the things that prevented her from having more than one friend. From being able to hold a socially acceptable conversation. To fit in, blend in and melt away in comfortable familiarity. Friday had never realised how sad she felt about all these things; she thought she was proud to not need them. But humans are pack animals. They naturally seek out community and belonging.

  ‘Excellent!’

  Friday turned around when she realised that the voice was from outside her head, not her inner monologue.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Friday.

  ‘Your painting is beautiful,’ said Mr Brecht. ‘I’ve never seen a child of your age express emotion so poignantly on canvas.’

  ‘I have?’ said Friday. She hadn’t even thought about what she was painting. ‘I just painted what I was feeling. Like you said.’

  Friday looked back at her canvas. It was a savage tapestry of vivid blue and brown strokes, skewered in the centre by two haunting, dead black eyes. Friday realised she had painted a self-portrait.

  ‘Wow,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Have you ever considered seeing a psychiatrist?’ asked Mirabella, looking genuinely scared.

  Ian came over and studied Friday’s work. ‘I think Friday should be taken to the nurse,’ said Ian. ‘The knock to her head is more serious than we thought. If it’s made her capable of feeling human emotion, she may have suffered brain damage.’

  Chapter 10

  Golf

  The next day, Friday had a terrible headache. But her brain was working normally, at least normally for her. She sat in the corner of the dining hall, tentatively picking at her serving of blancmange. Friday was trying to move as little as possible, because every movement or sudden loud noise would make her flinch. And every time she flinched she felt like someone had hit her in the head with an axe.

  Luckily, Melanie was the perfect companion to have in times such as these. Melanie had a gift for being silent, especially when she was asleep.

  Friday was slowly making her way through the food and was just starting to feel slightly better, when there was a loud bang, and the crashing of crockery.

  Friday’s first instinct was to roll up in the foetal position, clamp her hands over her ears and wait for it all to be over. But that didn’t seem to be happening. The noise continued and, if anything, grew louder. Now there were shouts of abuse.

  ‘You stinking cheat!’

  ‘How dare you! I did no such thing!’

  ‘Next you’ll be saying fairies moved the ball!’

  ‘I did not cheat!’

  Friday slowly turned to see Tom Malik and Stephan Bauer wrestling. They were rolling back and forth along one of the long table tops, knocking off cutlery and laden plates as they grappled. As every plate or fork hit the ground, it might as well have been hitting Friday directly in the head, it hurt so much.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Friday.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Melanie. ‘It sounds like it’s some sort of disagreement, but you can never tell with boys. When they act like this, sometimes I think they just want a hug.’

  Friday got up and slowly walked over to the two wrestling boys. They were on the ground now, banging benches and tables, which made awful scraping noises as the furniture was bumped back and forth across the linoleum floor.

  ‘Stop it,’ said Friday.

  The boys ignored her and kept wrestling. Tom was trying to rub a handful of mashed potato in Stephan’s hair, and Stephan was trying to bang Tom’s head on a table leg.

  Friday sighed. There was a large jug of water on the table. She picked it up and poured it over the boys’ heads.

  ‘Hey! What did you do that for?’ demanded Tom.

  ‘Now we’re all wet,’ protested Stephan.

  ‘You two are ruining lunch for everybody with your loudness and violence,’ said Friday. ‘If you’re going to try to hurt each other, go and do it outside.’

  ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ accused Stephan, turning on Tom. ‘If we went outside, he’d probably use the opportunity to attack me from behind.’

  ‘You’re paranoid,’ accused Tom. ‘And deranged.’

  Friday rubbed her forehead. The pain was definitely getting worse.

  ‘If you want some peace and quiet again,’ said Melanie, ‘it might be quickest just to solve their problem for them.’

  ‘I can’t cure them of being idiots,’ grumbled Friday.

  ‘No,’ agreed Melanie, ‘but they are arguing about something, and perhaps it’s something you could settle with your detective skills.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Friday. ‘Boys, I will get to the bottom of whatever it is you’re fighting about and work out who really is at fault. On one condition.’

  ‘You want us to pay you?’ asked Tom.

  ‘No, my condition is that you will both shut up,’ said Friday. ‘You will speak only when spoken to and then only in a very soft voice, as if I were a timid mouse and you were frightened I would run away.’

  Melanie made a scoffing noise. ‘Yeah right, as if you would run anywhere.’

  ‘Okay,’ continued Friday, ‘using your quietest indoors voices, tell me what happened. From the beginning.’

  ‘It was the inter-house golf championship yesterday,’ said Tom.

  ‘I’ll just nod and pretend I know what that is,’ said Friday. ‘Continue.’

  ‘We were the top contenders to win,’ explained Stephan. ‘We’re the number two and three players in the team.’

  ‘Who’s number one?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘Ian Wainscott,’ said Tom.

  Friday winced.

  ‘He always wins,’ added Stephan. ‘But he wasn’t competing yesterday.’

  ‘How come?’ asked Melanie. She turned to Friday. ‘You do
n’t mind if I ask these questions for you, do you? It’s obviously a painful subject for you to discuss.’

  Friday had closed her eyes and waved her hand for Melanie to continue the line of questioning.

  ‘So why wasn’t Ian playing?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘He had too many detentions,’ said Tom. ‘If you get three or more detentions in a week, you can’t play comp sport.’

  ‘It’s a rule to encourage gentleman-like behaviour off the field,’ explained Stephan.

  ‘Really?’ said Melanie. ‘Sport has such strange concepts of ethics.’

  ‘So, for the first time this year, Tom and I had a chance of winning,’ continued Stephan. ‘And he decided to cheat.’

  ‘I did not!’ protested Tom. He looked like he was about to grab Stephan again, so Friday held up her hand to get their attention.

  ‘Take me to the scene of the crime,’ she said. ‘And no more bickering.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Tom, ‘but it’s a bit of a walk. It happened on the seventeenth hole.’

  ‘Urgh,’ Friday shuddered. Her headache had made any form of bright light painful to endure, and it was a sunny day outside. ‘All right, if you find me a pair of sunglasses I’ll go out to the golf course with you to have a look.’

  Ten minutes later, Friday, Melanie, Tom and Stephan were striding out towards the seventeenth hole of the golf course. It was a long, hilly walk, which wound around trees, bushes, water features and strange sculptures depicting heroes from Greek mythology.

  ‘Is it normal for golf courses to be randomly decorated with statues?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Not really,’ said Stephan. ‘It can affect the game when your ball bounces off one. I hit a ball off Achilles once and it bounced into a sand trap.’

  ‘Some elderly benefactor donated them to the school,’ explained Tom. ‘I think they just put them around the golf course so they’d be out of the way.’

  By the time they crossed the sixteenth fairway, they had lost sight of the school behind them. If it weren’t for the unnaturally green grass beneath their feet it would be as if they were in a forest. It was so tranquil to be surrounded by nature.