Everything Beautiful Read Online Free PDF Page A

along. His name tag was also clearly displayed: Ethan. The song went forever. Roslyn was dancing, but her brain must have been sending mixed messages; her pelvis didn’t know where to go. If I’d had my phone I’d have snapped her for Chloe.
Out of the forty-odd campers the majority were under twelve and enthusiastic to the point of psychosis. When they sang “Jesus” they closed their eyes and waved their hands in the air. In and around that there was smiling. Lots of smiling. These kids were shiny-clean and plastic-wrapped. They made me feel like a big, dirty outlaw, and while part of me felt proud of my difference, another part just felt … bleak. Lonely. I sat back, hugging my knees, and let the veil of blah fall over me. “Three days,” I reminded myself. “Three days, not seven, and then I get a big, beautiful Ben Sebatini reward.”
Now that the tape-recorded music had faded, Roslyn produced a brass bugle. She hunched her shoulders and blew, and the noise was like pure pain. Long after she stopped my ears were still ringing. Roslyn took a humble bow. “Thank you, thank you! That’s the breakfast bugle. When you hear that you’ll know tucker’s up!” Roslyn had a monotone. Her words all ran together like wet ink. When she stopped to take a breath she almost lost her balance. She teetered on the spot, and everybody waited.
“Campers, on your name tags you’ll see a feather. That feather represents your group. Hands up—who has a white feather?”
Many hands shot up.
“Ter-rif-ic. If you have a white feather, that means you’re in the Mallee group. Who has a brown feather?”
Slightly fewer hands showed.
“Okay, brown feathers are Bronzewings. And if you have a yellow feather, you’re a Honeyeater, okay? Ter-rif-ic. Okay, people, go find your people!”
I dug around my bag for my name tag. I was a yellow feather. Honeyeater. Sarita flashed her name tag at me. She was also a yellow feather. I put my palm up. How . She came over and sat too close and the other Honeyeaters followed. There were eight of us: Sarita, Fleur, Richard, Ethan, the curious Bird, girl twins with identical nun-cuts, and me. Ter-rif-ic.
Counselor Neville patrolled the stage with a cordless microphone and told an interminable story about how driving down he got a flat tire, which led to an epiphany about just how small he was, but just how perfectly he fit into the physical world. He ended with a breathy prose poem: “The clouds were rolling across the sky. The trees seemed to be breathing. I felt so ALIVE. I remembered to thank God. It seems so obvious, but how often do we take time out—to sit and think and appreciate—but most of all, to thank God? I took time out. I sat on the hood of my Volvo and watched the colors spread in the sky, until the sun had sunk completely.” Neville’s hand swooped. He tucked the microphone under his arm and clasped his hands together. “Let’s thank Him now.”
Heads bowed around me. I picked at my cuticles.
For me the whole God thing was imposs. Godliness was next to dubiousness. If the Christian kids at my high school were anything to go by, then camp was going to be a big smile full of bad teeth. Those kids were creepy. They talked Alpha and Hillsong like it was a new slang and they wouldn’t budge in their beliefs if you hit them over the head with a dinosaur bone. Before the Norma Trauma I’d been to church maybe three times in my life. Dad used to be a “lapsed” Catholic. Now he as good as says that Mom was the lapse factor.
I wondered if she was watching. If she could see me now she’d be laughing, rolling her eyes, going “Jay-sus!” like she used to say to Dad when she wanted to tick him off. Mom was fat like me. She was dotty and overdramatic. When she found out about the cancer she howled like a howler monkey. I remember her stomping around the backyard. “I will not go gracefully, I will not.” But as she got weaker, her anger faded.
First comes acceptance, then