Chapter 6: Discovery

Saturday 31-Mar 2007

On Saturday night, Chris sat down and looked at the notes that he'd made the night before, the list of things he knew about Shahia. It was painfully short.

- Shahia's family used to have lots of money, now they don't have enough

He was pretty sure that he was right about that. She used to go to St Joseph's. He had nosed around on the net and found that it cost about $15,000 a year to go there. It didn't matter how you looked at it; that was a lot of money. But now, they didn't have enough money to buy a new school uniform for her. What she was wearing was definitely second hand.

On top of that, there was her lunch. Even though she did her best not to speak to anyone, Shahia didn't like to be alone. At lunch she'd always be hanging out somewhere near the crowd, in sight of them. If the weather was fine, she'd sit on the corner of the field doing her homework. The few times it had rained, she'd sat in the corner of their home room instead. Chris had seen her lunch — two dry, old sandwiches and an apple, with water. The cheapest lunch you could have, they'd said when she was teased about her lunch, but now Chris realized that was terribly unfair; it wasn't her problem if her parent's didn't earn enough money.

- Shahia has changed from a friendly, outgoing person into someone completely withdrawn

Chris didn't know what might have caused that. Obviously something had gone wrong with her family, or in it, and he was going to have to find out what. He was a bit nervous about what he might find out, but he had daydreamed a little, imagining himself rescuing Shahia from some terrible situation. Chris grimaced. Reality was likely to much messier and harder.

Well, after today, he had something else to add to the list. They'd spent the afternoon visiting an uncle — boring! On the way home Chris had been sitting in the back of the car daydreaming, when he'd idly noticed something on the side of the road: he saw a girl leaning over a baby stroller, lifting a small child out of it, comforting it and giving it a kiss. Just before the girl had slipped out of sight, she'd looked up and, to his amazement, it was Shahia.

He added an item to the list:

- Shahia has a baby

He looked at the list. He had no idea what to make of that. Initially he'd thought that she must have gotten herself pregnant and then run off from her parents. But after some thought he'd realized that there were a couple of big holes in that story. If she had a baby, what would she be doing at school? Yet to Chris, she'd seemed to handle the baby like she was its mother. Still, the story that Andrew had told didn't fit with a baby — that's not the kind of thing you could keep a secret, and it would've been huge news. Andrew definitely would've said something. For a moment he was tempted to call Andrew, just to check his story, but then he realized how stupid he'd sound. One of the older girls at his school had gotten herself pregnant a couple of years before, and it'd been a massive scandal. Anyway, no one would've missed noticing her shape at school before she'd gone off to have the baby. Chris wasn't good at baby ages, but this one had looked big enough to walk. He'd asked his mum, and she'd looked at him funny, and said that babies started to walk maybe from nine months. So it just didn't fit. But still: what was she doing with a baby?

Chris looked at the list again. Where could he get more? Then he realised that there was something else he could do. He logged onto his computer, and dug around in his notes until he found Sue's MSN address. Sue recorded every minute of every period on her iPod so she could go back and listen to it again if she needed to. He entered Sue into his MSN, and she approved him as a contact straight away.

vixenwithglasses16: Hiya Chris
chrismacjiveboy1: Hi Sue. How you this Sat night?
Vixen16: k. Just doing homework
Jiveboy1: homework? On a Saturday night?
vixen16: y. What you doing?
jiveboy1: nothing
vixen16: don't give me a hard time then
jiveboy1: y ok.
vixen16: so what you want?
jiveboy1: it's about Shahia. btw, thanks for giving me that note
vixen16: np
jiveboy1: you still recording all the classes on MP3?
vixen16: y
jiveboy1: you remember Shahia's impromptu talk?
vixen16: y
jiveboy1: can you send me the mp3 of it?
jiveboy1: My mum wants to argue with me about what she said
vixen16: what date was it?
jiveboy1: don't know
vixen16: brb
jiveboy1: maybe about Mar 13?
jiveboy1: you still there?
jiveboy1:.
vixen16: was on the phone. Looking...
jiveboy1: thanks heaps
vixen16: actually it was 12th
-- vixenwithglasses16 is sending you Shahia.aac --
jiveboy1: thanks heaps, you're the best.
vixen16: when you going to apologise to Lisa?
jiveboy1: will she talk to me now?
vixen16: maybe.
jiveboy1: I'll see. I know I should
vixen16: do that. ciao.
jiveboy1: bye

It would be amazingly easy to say sorry over MSN. For a moment Chris was tempted to IM Lisa now and apologise, but he knew better than that. His parents might think he was a no good idiot, but he wouldn't try that on. He'd have to do it in person, at school one day when he could get her alone.

Chris sat and listened to Shahia twice over. Her words were as amazing and penetrating as they had been the first time. Her comment about the dead heart hit him with the force of a sledgehammer again. "It's another part of Australia, the violence that comes from a dead heart." He stared into the ceiling for a long time before deciding that he certainly wasn't happy with his heart, with what he'd done, and that he was going to be a lot different from now on. Taking that detention for Shahia was exactly the thing he had to do more of. Then he sat at his computer and typed Shahia's talk up, so he could give his mum a copy. Finally, he looked at his print out and went back to his list. To his list he added another bullet point.

- Shahia is an illegal immigrant