The Protected Read Online Free PDF Page B

ready for school. She stood in her bra and undies, talking to the other girls by the fogged-up mirror. Her long hair hung over one shoulder and she untangled it with her fingers. I retreated to a toilet cubicle – towel wrapped around me – to change into my school uniform.
    I don’t know how we could have come from the same parents. Katie never appeared to try. She could wear a garbage bag and it would look like a well-executed fashion statement. I, on the other hand, was usually running late because I had spent fifteen minutes trying to get my hair right, as if going to school with a different hairstyle would change everything. Like they would turn their heads and stare at me as I walked down the corridor. My God, Tara Metcalf would think. How could I have not noticed how unbelievably cool Hannah McCann is? Look at her incredibly awesome hair!
    Once dressed I ventured out of the toilet cubicle and started to sort out my hair. I was almost satisfied with it and halfway believing I might just make it through the day without an ‘incident’ when Katie stopped her conversation and sighed in a way that was more performative than it needed to be.
    â€˜Step away from the hairbrush, Hannah. Am I going to have to confiscate it?’
    She strode over to me, wrestled the brush from my hand and threw it – a bit melodramatically in my opinion – over her shoulder. She pushed my head forwards and proceeded to violently mess up my hair.
    â€˜Got to admit,’ she said, ‘I can understand why you struggle with this.’ She pulled my head back again, took an elastic from her wrist and performed a quick, complex movement which resulted in my hair being anchored in a messy knot on the top of my head.
    â€˜There.’
    â€˜Now I just look like everyone else.’
    She patted me like you would an obedient dog. ‘Exactly.’
    The others trickled out of the change rooms until it was just Katie and me. She leant over the basin, mouth slightly open and applied mascara to her long eyelashes.
    â€˜How’s Jensen?’ I asked her in my most carefully casual voice.
    â€˜You tell Mum and Dad about him and I will kill you. I will. In your sleep probably.’
    â€˜Obviously … he’s not at school, is he?’
    â€˜No Hannah, he’s not at school. He’s nineteen.’
    â€˜Nineteen?’
    â€˜Shhh!’
    â€˜He’s nineteen?’
    â€˜Yeah. He’s nineteen.’
    â€˜What? Is he at uni?’
    â€˜Yes. Modern American literature. Or something.’
    I knew it. I laughed. ‘What do you talk about?’
    She gave me a look. ‘Some of us don’t have to spend all our time talking.’
    ***
    The short walk home from the bus stop feels like a marathon in the oven-dry air. There is the distant sound of sirens on the highway. I let my shoes scuff on the asphalt and watch the little grey pebbles scatter. A car turns onto our street, I feel it approach and slow down, the pulse of music thudding from the stereo. I look over expecting it to be a P-plater. But it is my grandmother’s pink hatchback. She stops next to me, lowers the window. The throaty wail of Dolly Parton floats from her car: ‘Jolene! Jolene!’
    â€˜Hannah!’ As if she should be the one to be surprised to see me. ‘In you hop.’ It is literally fifty metres to my house. ‘Come on!’
    I walk to the passenger door and get in.
    She reaches over and turns down the stereo. ‘How about this dreadful heat! It’s a disgrace,’ she says, as if there is someone to be blamed. I notice the back seat laden with grocery bags.
    â€˜Thought I would drop some things over. Help your mum out. Was going to come Saturday, but your dad said …’ She waved her hand instead of using words to finish.
    Over the past few months Nanna has made a habit of randomly turning up with groceries and doing things around the house like cleaning the toilet and