The Cane by Maryrose Cuskelly

Author:Maryrose Cuskelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2022-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

Joe had noticed Janet right back in first term when she started at Kaliope West. There was a bit of interest in her because she’d moved up from Brisbane and her mum was an artist. Janet wasn’t up herself at all, though. She and his sister, Angela, were in the same school netball team and Angela liked her, said she was great. The netball team were playing Candleford High one Wednesday afternoon when there happened to be a bye in the cricket competition, so Joe and some of his mates went to barrack for them.

Angela was a terrific goal defence, dogged and not giving the Candleford goal attack—one of those blonde hard-faced bitch types that Martin and Brendon were so keen on—a look-in. Angela intercepted a pass and had the ball down in her team’s goal circle before the opposition knew what had happened. At the next centre pass, the goal attack got right up in Angela’s face. Joe didn’t hear what she said; didn’t have to. He heard similar taunts practically every time he played a game of footy. Kanaka, darkie, coon. Angela just kind of crumpled. The goal attack was all over her after that for the next couple of points. But Janet, who was playing wing defence, put her hand on Angela’s shoulder and said something to her. Angela laughed, and after that they had the game won. He even saw Janet give the goal attack a hip and shoulder at one point. She was called on it by the umpire and given a penalty. But that look she gave of ‘who, me?’ Jeez, it made him laugh.

When he got to know Janet she was really nice. Not that he ever said that to anyone. Martin and Brendon would have given him all kinds of shit back then if he’d told them that was why he liked her. Not now that Janet was missing and probably dead, of course.

Janet was pretty ordinary looking, really. At least, that’s what he’d thought before he got to know her a bit. But she seemed to get prettier and prettier the more time he spent with her. She had these amazing blue eyes; kind, but also they just blazed when she was fired up about something. And she didn’t have that knowing hardness of the girls Martin and Brendon went after.

He and Janet had ended up in the same ancient history class even though she was a grade below him. Because there’d been so few Grade 11s interested in taking the subject, the school had combined the two levels. They were both pretty good students and found the Roman Empire and all that shit interesting, so Mrs Pocock allowed them to sit together in the back row and didn’t complain if they talked as long as they kept it down.

They’d got together towards the end of first term. The music teacher, Mr Murphy, had been putting on a concert in the rec hall on a Friday night to raise money to buy new instruments and stuff.

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