Cleanskin Cowgirls by Rachael Treasure

Author:Rachael Treasure [Treasure, Rachael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers

Twenty-eight

Like a hard punishing whip to the skin, a letter from Sarah Jones arrived for Elsie about the Smiths’ downfall. Elsie was at first excited to be getting mail as she watched Gracie walking from the direction of the station office towards her with a smile on her face. Gracie loved delivering the mail by hand.

Elsie’s enthusiasm dimmed when she saw her mother’s handwriting on the envelope and she almost passed it straight back. Instead she slumped down on the bench seat outside the mess room. Her feet felt hot in her boots, her toes sweating, the flies seeking moisture in the corners of her eyes. She swept them away crossly as she began to tear open the envelope. Her mother had barely written anything on the thick embossed stationery folded around a sheaf of newspaper clippings and website print-outs.

Dear Eleanor,

I hope you are well. FYI about your ‘friends’ and what was going on in the shed you spent so much time in. Your poor father is having to deal with it.

Love Mum xxx

Elsie could read between the lines. They were furious with her. They knew she knew all about the sewage pipe to the shed. The clippings started with a front page from the local Rington newspaper. Elsie looked at a photograph of her father putting his hand up to block the camera. She flicked to another article from a bigger regional paper with a picture of the Smith family’s shed. The headline read Town Bogged Down by Blast. Then another from a city paper, then some global coverage. Another tacky article titled Bog Hogs from another magazine. Mother went all out, Elsie thought as she shuffled through clipping after clipping. Sarah Jones was keeping tally of just how angry she was with Elsie for the scandals she’d created with those boys.

The print before Elsie’s eyes blurred. The explosion was news worldwide, not because a beautiful boy had been seriously injured, but because the sewage theft allowed subeditors to use their basest puns. The Sh*t Hits the Fan in Small Town, mocked one of the headlines in bold font.

There was even a quote from their former science teacher Vernon Tremble, saying the Smith twins were like local gangsters and deserved all they got. But the worst things were the photographs of Zac taken in hospital. The way his face was cast away so his blackened hair and red-raw skin screamed. His body limp on white sheets, his family standing around him. He was barely recognisable.

Suddenly she was transported back to that night. It felt like an age in the past, but it had only been this month! She thought of the light in the twins’ eyes when they explained what was going on in the shed. She could hear the excitement in Zac’s voice: ‘The technology we’re working on with Dad could revolutionise life for everyone. Few people think about it, but we have a superclass created by the world’s dependency on fossil fuel for industry and transport. They control everything.

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