Chapter Two
Foreign Spaces; Familiar Faces

AS LEE SAT ON the bench worrying about what might happen when her Nan turned up -or if she’d turn up at all- a red Holden ute pulled up in the loading zone where a no standing sign could be seen clearly and a middle-aged woman leapt out of the driver’s side and slammed the door shut. Lee looked away thinking she was just some old woman there to pick up someone else; little did she realize there wasn’t anyone else left at the station for her to collect. Lee was slouching forward when the woman came to a standstill behind her, ‘It’s bad for your back to slouch like that.’
   Lee put her book down and turned her head to face the woman who was addressing her.
   ‘How’s my beautiful granddaughter?’ the woman smiled as Lee stood up. ‘You’ve grown into such a lovely young lady!’ The woman said excitedly and lunged forward embracing Lee in a giant hug. ‘You should have told me earlier that you were coming and I could have prepared a little bit. Oh my godfather I can’t get over how you’ve grown!’
   Lee rolled her eyes as her Nan, Jodie, loosened her grip on her and tried to avoid eye contact at all costs.
   ‘Let’s get your bags into the car,’ Jodie said and looked around to only see one bag sitting, then, alone on the bench. ‘Ah, don’t we travel light?’
   Lee walked around behind her to the passenger side of the ute as Jodie threw her bag into the tray and climbed back into the driver’s seat. They got home later that afternoon; home was a couple of hours drive up the coast from Townsville.
   On the way Jodie, of course, did all the talking. ‘The last time I saw you, you were only a little girl. I’m just thrilled to be having you coming to live with me and the others will be happy, I’m sure, to meet a new face too!’ Jodie was a social worker, so she said to Lee that she always has someone to see and that she took on boarders sometimes; kids who had problems.
   ‘Maybe that’s why I’m here?’ Lee thought to herself as Jodie continued to talk. ‘I’m here because I have problems,’ she slouched down in the seat and looked at the scenery as they passed by.

It wasn’t by choice that Lee didn’t talk; it wasn’t that she didn’t want to either. She just couldn’t. Whatever she wanted to say always came out horribly wrong and distorted. She couldn’t seem to express herself through words, the way she once did, before she  died.
    ‘Nan must be the world’s craziest driver and she swears a whole heap too. How she still has a license and her job, I just don’t know,’ Lee wondered as Jodie continued to talk about when Lee would visit her as a child with her mother. Lee could hardly remember all those years ago- a whole lot had happened since then to cloud over the good memories of her early childhood. And yet sitting there beside this woman, who was related by blood but almost a complete stranger, Lee felt safe and warm. It had been a long time since someone had been so eager and excited about her presence.
   Jodie Baker was definitely not what Lee had expected of her grandmother. Lee’s ideas of “old people” were drawn from what she’d seen in the lives of her Great Aunt’s friend’s. They were frail little old ladies who only went out three times a week: to Bingo, Senior Citizens and to do the grocery shopping in their boxy beige Volvos. But upon hearing that there would be other teenagers living in the same house as she would be changed the other thoughts she had about what kind of a place her Nan lived.
   ‘Beautiful country, isn’t it? Depends on how long you want to stay; you might learn to love it out here? It sure is nice.’
   Lee looked down at the backpack on her lap and fiddled with the zipper, ‘what is she listening to?’ Jodie had some music playing on the radio, ‘Simon and Garfunkel perhaps?’ Lee thought with a frown as Jodie changed from humming to herself to singing quite loudly along with the lyrics.
   ‘Hope you don’t mind? I can’t help myself from signing when I feel the need,’ she put her hand on Lee’s shoulder; Lee smiled back at her slightly and sank a bit lower into her seat.
    ‘She certainly is lively!’ Lee thought as she looked at her Nan from the corner of her eye, she certainly was amusing. Lee had to admit that she couldn’t remember her well enough from when she was younger, so she wasn’t sure if Jodie had always been that eccentric. Then ABBA began to play over the radio; Dancing Queen. That’s when Jodie made the smile on Lee’s face grow wider. Lee bit her lip trying to hide her amusement and looked back out of the window. Lee thought to herself, ‘taking this plunge and running away may just be the best thing I have done in a very long time…at least my new living environment will be a happy one…’
   Jodie had started talking about how great she thought ABBA was when she was younger. ‘Sure I was close to 30 when they first came on the scene and made it big, your dad hated me listening to their records non-stop. He …’
   Lee had switched off paying attention to what Jodie was saying after that. Talk of Lee’s father had never been a good topic of conversation for her. It was the last thing she’d ever want to talk about by choice.

Turning onto the driveway of the new house she would be staying at, Lee’s eyes went wide and her jaw dropped. If she hadn’t been sitting down she would have fallen over from awe. When they pulled into the driveway, Lee had to rub her eyes to make sure that she was seeing things right.
    ‘Wow! Check out that house!’ Was her immediate thought, ‘I’ve never been to a house this huge ever before. Not even Chester’s parent’s house was this big!’
  As Lee got out of the car she remained in awe. ‘Look at that view of the beach!’ She moved closer to the fence to look at the view that the house overlooked. ‘Chester sure would have loved to live here.’   Lee continued to look out at the view of the ocean and thought about her best friend she had left behind in Brisbane. Chester, as athletic as he wasn’t, had always wanted to learn how to surf. One day. ‘I wonder if it’s happened yet, even though it’d be sort of difficult… I wonder if there is a beach where he’s gone.’
   Jodie guided Lee inside and gave her the grand tour. There were a total of seven bedrooms in the Baker house; two floors, a couple of living rooms, two and a half bathrooms and a huge joint dining room and kitchen.
    ‘This is so much better than that old cow’s cramped little apartment,’   Lee smiled. Where she had been staying with her father’s Aunt, there was barely enough room to swing a cat... She had tried that once. “That stupid moggy”, as Lee referred to it, would be all over her books when she was trying to study; it’d just sit and clean itself. It smelt, really bad at that, like a wet towel that had been dumped on the floor of a bathroom for a month or two. As Lee thought about that old cat that she had hated so much she couldn’t for the life of it, think of what its name was… was meaning yes, it was dead now. The next door neighbour ran her car over it. She smiled morbidly a little to herself when she remembered Chester’s reaction to seeing it dead in the driveway.
   Lee chose a room at the end of the hall; it had the best view of the ocean. The previous owner of the room had graduated from high school the previous year and had moved to Townsville to go to university. When Lee walked in and, without even seeing the other room, she knew it had to be hers. There were heavy curtains over the windows and a queen-sized bed and a timber cupboard over by the far right corner.
   ‘I’ll get you some sheets of mine and a spare blanket. We’ll have to go shopping to get you some things to brighten the place up and make it your own,’ Jodie left the room as Lee sat on the bed, sinking into the comfy mattress.
    ‘A place to call my own? This is MY room… I honestly like the sound of that,’ she smiled as Jodie returned with sheets and a doona. After she helped her put the sheets on the bed, Jodie left Lee in the room to put her things away and make herself at home. Lee didn’t bother taking things out of her bag. She took off her jacket and sprawled on the bed. She was laying there only a short time before she fell asleep; that’s where she stayed, until about 10.30 the next morning.

The following day, after she peeled out of bed and took a shower, Lee was sitting downstairs at the dinning table writing to Chester when Jodie came in with the laundry. ‘Oh, you’re up. Sleep well?’
   Lee nodded with a smile.
   ‘What’s that you’re writing; a letter to one of your friends?’
   Lee nodded again to say yes, though she kept her head down and continued writing.
   ‘Oh, well it’s nice to know you are going to keep in contact with friends. We can post it when we go into town later?’
   Lee looked away and shook her head thinking to herself.   ‘No Nan, it’s okay’.   She didn’t know where to post them because of the dilemma Chester and she had at that moment. She knew she shouldn’t have lied, but she couldn’t face the truth yet. Jodie already knew about him though- she’d been on the phone to her sister the night before. It was quite apparent to Lee from the way that her Great Aunt spoke about Jodie that the two sisters didn’t have a good relationship either.

Lee had ended up going into town with Jodie that afternoon; it was a chance to get to know the town. While they were in town, Lee learned just how popular Jodie was with the people who lived there as they were stopped and talked to by many people. She introduced Lee to every one of them. ‘This is Lee, my granddaughter. She’s come to live with us this year,’ she’d say glowing. It gave Lee warm and fuzzy feelings that Jodie was so excited to be having her come to live with there- that was a rare feeling for Lee. There were two weeks exactly to that day until Lee would get to trial her new school, Pelican Beach High.
    ‘Pelican Beach? Fat chance!’ Lee thought to herself as they drove past the schools sign at the front gate, ‘I haven’t seen any pelicans around here, only fat seagulls.’
   They had to go to the school so that she could try on her uniform and fill in the rest of her enrollment forms. In Lee’s eyes the school work wasn’t going to be the issue at the time, it was the fact that she was going to have to wear leather shoes.
   Lee narrowed her eyes at Jodie and scribbled on her note book, not in their wildest dreams am I going to wear leather shoes!
   ‘Its fine, Lee, just go try these on and let me know if they fit. We’ll deal with the shoes later,’ Jodie smiled and handed Lee a pile of clothes which she took with her to the senior toilet block to try them on. On the way in she passed by two blonde girls, they both gawked at her as she stood aside to let them pass by her.
   ‘Wow, their standards have really dropped here if that’s  the kind of juniors we’ll be having around this year,’ one of them whispered to the other as they left the toilet block.
   ‘We’ll have to keep an eye out for that one, hey?’ the other smiled.
   Lee hung the clothes over the door and piled the clothes she was wearing on the closed toilet seat as she changed. ‘Stupid skirts!’   she thought as she pulled the zip up and rearranged the skirt to face the right way. Once she was dressed and had checked that no one else was in the bathroom she went out to stand in front of the mirror so see how stupid she was going to look. ‘God, this can’t be happening, can it?’ She thought as she tugged on the bottom of the skirt. damn things are always too short!’
   ‘They all fit?’ Jodie enquired as Lee returned to the uniform shop. Lee nodded in response and leaned against the wall, with a sigh and put her hands in her pockets. ‘Things will be okay, trust me,’ Jodie smiled as she handed over her credit card.
    ‘That’s what they all say…’   Lee looked away.
After the uniforms and enrollment details were sorted out Jodie took Lee to get her stationary and school books as well as some other belongings for her room.
    ‘Nan sure is keen-mad on getting my life sorted to make me feel more at home. I feel guilty for her buying all this stuff!’   Lee thought to herself when they got home. Jodie had also bought new material for drapes and a maroon carpet for the floor, a computer table and chair and a bean bag. Lee and Jodie dragged the boxes and bags up to Lee’s room and they assembled the computer table and chair before changing the miss-matching sheets to the new ones they had bought that day..
   Jodie spent the most of an hour trying to read the instructions or swearing about the “missing parts.” She gave up and proceeded to sort out Lee’s new curtains. When Lee went down to see what was happening for dinner she enquired about the table and asked if Lee had given up on it yet. ‘So have you figured out that piece of junk in there?’
   Lee leant in the doorway with a raised eyebrow.
   ‘You haven’t, have you? No worries we can always get Mat to fix it up for you when he gets here. He’s really handy like that…’ she began to speak when Lee cracked a grin. ‘You did get it together?’ she pulled a face and sighed. ‘You might not talk but you are still as cheeky as you were when you were little,’ she grinned back at Lee and stood up from her sewing table. ‘Are you up for some take-out? I’m not in the mood to be cooking anything, one more splurge for the day won’t hurt too much.’ Lee nodded in reply as Jodie went to retrieve the phone. ‘How’s pizza sound?’ she called out to Lee and in response Lee gave her the thumbs up.
   They got pizza from the local pizza joint and went down to the beach and watched the sunset. As Lee watched the sun melting into the horizon she thought to herself that it was really nice, though she couldn’t shake the looming feeling of depression of going to a new school. She knew in her gut that she wasn’t going to be accepted for who she really was and she knew that people were going to say things about her because it had always been like that. She knew that she wasn’t going to be enough for the people who lived around there but Jodie told her to keep her chin up and ignore it. Lee knew she was right, but it didn’t make the job any easier.
   A few more days went by like this. Jodie painted the walls in Lee’s room as Lee moped around, unmotivated. Jodie went about her days as usual and worked around Lee who vegged; not showing much interest in anything. She’d walk past and say random things to see if Lee would notice- a lot of the time she didn’t. Lee hardly even interacted with her until the 23rd of January, when the others started to arrive.