Jellicoe Road
Melina Marchetta
For Daniel
and
for Max
Contents
Prologue
My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.
Chapter 1
I’m dreaming of the boy in the tree and at…
Chapter 2
When it is over, when I’m the last person sitting…
Chapter 3
The territory wars have been part of the Jellicoe School’s…
Chapter 4
Jonah Griggs.
Chapter 5
He went missing on one of the prettiest days Narnie…
Chapter 6
The boy in the tree in my dreams comes calling…
Chapter 7
The next afternoon I walk to Clarence House to find…
Chapter 8
She stood at Webb’s door: Tate, with the wild hair…
Chapter 9
I’m riding as fast as I can. The faster the…
Chapter 10
I’m dreaming. I know I’m dreaming because I’m in a…
Chapter 11
It is dark, surreally dark, and I’m hanging upside down…
Chapter 12
Over the weekend Ben gets word through Raffaela that the…
Chapter 13
Three things happen in the next week that keep us…
Chapter 14
The look on the constable’s face said it all to…
Chapter 15
It’s peaceful like this, on my back. A loving sun…
Chapter 16
By the second day of the holidays everyone has left…
Chapter 17
On one of those days during the holidays when they…
Chapter 18
On the last day of the holidays, Santangelo sends word…
Chapter 19
I go to see Santangelo’s dad at the police station.
Chapter 20
Finally we came to an agreement about the Club House…
Chapter 21
One day Tate was there, a ghost of Tate, sitting…
Chapter 22
Somewhere on the highway to Sydney I begin to cry…
Chapter 23
“Taylor Markham?”
Chapter 24
During this time I start to get to know my…
Chapter 25
There is a sick feeling in my stomach when we…
Chapter 26
Aftermath. Everyone uses it all the time so I get…
Chapter 27
And life goes on, which seems kind of strange and…
Epilogue
He sat in the tree, his mind overwhelmed by the…
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Melina Marchetta
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.
I counted.
It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-la. We were going to the ocean, hundreds of miles away, because I wanted to see the ocean and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. I remember asking, “What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?” and my father said, “Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,” and that was the last thing he ever said.
We heard her almost straightaway. In the other car, wedged into ours so deep that you couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. She told us her name was Tate and then she squeezed through the glass and the steel and climbed over her own dead—just to be with Webb and me; to give us her hand so we could clutch it with all our might. And then a kid called Fitz came riding by on a stolen bike and saved our lives.
Someone asked us later, “Didn’t you wonder why no one came across you sooner?”
Did I wonder?
When you see your parents zipped up in black body bags on the Jellicoe Road like they’re some kind of garbage, don’t you know?
Wonder dies.
Chapter 1
—TWENTY-TWO YEARS LATER—
I’m dreaming of the boy in the tree and at the exact moment I’m about to hear the answer that I’ve been waiting for, the flashlights yank me out of what could have been one of those perfect moments of clarity people talk about for the rest of their lives. If I was prone to dramatics, I could imagine my sighs would have been heard from the boundaries of the school to the town down below.
The question begs to be asked, “Why the flashlights?” Turning on the light next to my bed would have been much less conspicuous and dramatic. But if there is something I have learned in the past five years, it’s that melodrama plays a special part in the lives of those at the Jellicoe School. So while the mouths of the year twelves move and their hands threaten, I think back to my dream of the boy, because in it I find solace. I like that word. I’m going to make it my word of the year. There is just something about that boy that makes me feel like I belong. Belong. Long to be. Weird word, but semantics aside, it is up there with solace.
Somewhere in that hazy world of neither here nor there, I’ll be hanging off that tree, legs hooked over the branch, hands splayed, grabbing at air that is intoxicating and perfumed with the sweet smell of oak. Next to me, always, is that boy. I don’t know his name, and I don’t know why he comes calling, but he is there every time, playing the same music on one of those Discmans for tapes from the eighties, a song about flame trees and long-time feelings of friends left behind. The boy lets me join in and I sing the same line each time. His eyes are always watery at that point and it stirs a nostalgia in me that I have no reason to own, but it makes me ache all the same. We never quite get to the end of the song and each time I wake, I remind myself to ask him about those last few bars. But somehow I always forget.
I tell him stories. Lots of them. About the Jellicoe School students and the Townies and the Cadets from a school in Sydney. I tell him about the war between all three of us for territory. And I tell him about Hannah, who lives in the unfinished house by the river at the edge of the Jellicoe School, and of the manuscript of hers I’ve read, with its car wreck. Hannah, who is too young to be hiding away from the world and too smart to be merely organising weekend passes for the kids in my dorm. Hannah, who thinks she has me all worked out. I tell him of the time when I was fourteen, just after the Hermit whispered something in my ear and then shot himself, when I went in search of my mother, but got only halfway there. I tell him that I blame the Cadet for that.
The boy in the tree sobs uncontrollably when I tell him about the Hermit and my mother, yet his eyes light up each time I mention Hannah. And every single time he asks, “Taylor, what about the Brigadier who came searching for you that day? Whatever became of him?” I try to explain that the Brigadier is of no importance to my story, that the Brigadier was just some top brass, high up in the army, who had been invited to train the cadets that year, but the boy always shakes his head as if he knows better.
And there are times, like this time, when he leans forward to remind me of what the Hermit had whispered. He leans so far forward that I catch his scent of tea-tree and sandalwood and I strain my ears to listen so I will never forget. I strain my ears, needing to remember because somehow, for reasons I don’t know, what he says will answer everything. He leans forward, and in my ear he whispers…