Free Mothers and Daughters by Kylie Ladd Page B

admitting she’d missed him? Maybe she wouldn’t mention that. After a couple of months I got used to it though . By April it wasn’t so humid, and I loved that once I’d done my lessons I could do what I liked—read or nap or go to the beach . There are three or four other kids here that are also too old for the school and do their work by correspondence like me. Sometimes we sit together in the community hall and help each other out. No one supervises us so we get to muck around a lot, though Mum checks every night that I’m up to date and she goes off if I’m not. My best friend is called Tia. She’s Aboriginal, with a bit of Japanese in her too. You should see how deep she can dive to get abalone! I still don’t like eating it, but she gives me the shells and they’re really pretty. Tess paused and reconsidered. My best friend here , she amended in her mind. Janey was her real best friend, though it annoyed her that Janey hadn’t made the effort to write her a letter like Callum had. Maybe it was because she was coming up to see her anyway? Still, it had been a long time . . .
    I just wanted to see how you are and to say that I still think about the year seven disco and that you’re pretty cool. That was it. That was the sentence she had been reading for. Tess took a deep breath and went over the words again, committing them to memory. She still thought about it too, usually at night when she was drifting off to sleep. The year seven disco had been held not long before they’d left for Kalangalla, as an end-of-year celebration. The principal had insisted it take place during the day, so that no one could sneak off into the darkness and teachers didn’t have to be bribed or forced to return out of hours to supervise the students, and at first Tess had thought it was a bit of a joke. The multipurpose room still looked like a multipurpose room, even with cellophane on the windows and a glitter ball hanging from the ceiling. The boys that were so keen to flirt at Subway or in PE had suddenly gone aloof and reserved, clumping together at the far end of the room like adolescent algae. The girls bitched about what everyone was wearing or stood around similarly feigning boredom and indifference. Tess’s eye was throbbing where Janey had accidentally jabbed her with a mascara wand while they were getting ready, and she was thinking about going home, when someone put on ‘Dancing Queen’ by ABBA. Her mother loved that song. From as far back as Tess could remember, as soon as her mum had heard the distinctive opening piano flourish and Benny’s breathy Ah Ah Ahhh s she would drop what she was doing and shimmy around the room, or, if she was waiting at traffic lights, throw her head back and shake her shoulders until the car behind them honked to indicate that the lights had changed. Without thinking about it, unaware of the stares of the boys and Janey’s tight frown, Tess moved out into the centre of the floor, lured by the music, and began to dance. For the first verse she was all alone, but then someone appeared beside her. Callum. ‘You look pretty good,’ he’d said, leaning in as she dipped and swirled, and matching his own movements to hers. ‘Mind if I join you?’
    It had broken the ice. Everyone began dancing after that—girls, boys, even the teachers, and as long as the old songs kept coming they stayed on the floor. He and his mates had been idiots, Callum said later when they were out by the bubblers, getting a drink and catching their breath. They had thought they were so cool, requesting a playlist of Jay-Z and Limp Bizkit, but the trouble was no one could actually dance to that stuff. All you could do was stand around violently nodding your head until someone thought you were having a fit and made you lie down with a pencil between your teeth. Tess was laughing so much that she didn’t notice him leaning towards her until his mouth was on her own, warm and soft.
    ‘Thank goodness for ABBA,