The Map of Night by Kimberley Starr

Author:Kimberley Starr
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780648748830
Publisher: Pantera Press

Dad drove her to school. At the gate, wind wafted leaves around her, persistent and annoying as the kids in the playground. The sun was bright and reflected in glaring waves off the concrete so that the wavering brick building looked as wet as her own eyes. Glass windows returned her stare. Dad walked her right into the classroom. They weren’t late after all, and the other kids were still outside. Gabby looked at the workbooks that Ms Jones had put aside to talk to parents about with a sudden flutter of panic. What if Dad asked Ms Jones about Gabby’s report card?

But Dad just asked Ms Jones if Gabby’s eggs could be put into the staffroom fridge. Gabby took her schoolbag to the storeroom where she had space on a shelf, and, through an internal window, watched Dad talking to Ms Jones. They both turned to face her, looking sad, not angry. He was probably telling Ms Jones that Gabby was acting weirdly about Mum.

Dad left, and school began. Numeracy, which meant maths, washed over Gabby. Her uniform started out crisp and clean from the clothes dryer. By recess, it was as limp and sweaty as a cheese sandwich in a plastic bag. She let the other kids pour outside first, via the little storeroom at the back of the classroom where they kept their bags.

They smashed their bodies into the heat that prowled just outside the door. Gabby followed them into the playground. Bark was laid out around the climbing castle and the swing set was hot and softened with damp, and stank of paint stain and pesticide. Mia was talking with some of the other girls. She had big eyes, as wide apart as a cicada’s.

‘Insects prefer to live in wet climates,’ Gabby told the other kids. ‘Where their small bodies are less likely to dehydrate.’

Mia wrinkled her nose. ‘Ewww.’ When she and Gabby had been friends, Mia hadn’t been disgusted by cicadas just because they were bugs.

After recess, they had literacy, Gabby’s favourite subject. Then Ms Jones asked them to display their presentations along the walls of the classroom, where parents would see them later in the week. Gabby pushed a desk underneath her Ancient Greek Food poster, for the bowls of eggs and the paper fetta. In front of them, she rested a little sign:

DO NOT EAT!

She stood in the middle of the room and looked at her classmates’ work. A couple of times she tried to talk to Blake, but he just walked away. He was angry. This was a competition. Prizes were at stake.

‘Blake says nice job about the eggs,’ Olivia Merchant said. Olivia had been Mia Cassidy’s best friend ever since Gabby said it wasn’t particularly clever of Mia to have a new baby sister, and Mia mysteriously stopped talking to her. ‘You said your mum would get you special olives, different eggs. Eggs from weird birds. These ones are just from chickens. Anyone could get these.’

You all look like… jelly, Gabby

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