Beautiful Monster

PART ONE: Chapter One

The school bus hisses to a stop. Tessa Edwards looks up from her maths book as Camilla lifts her bag onto her shoulder.

"Luke is so busted tomorrow," Camilla says gleefully. "Watch Allen go mental about him wagging for a surf."

Tessa nods; she can't believe how brazen Luke is. While the rest of them are trying so hard to fit in to year 8, Luke does what he pleases, when he pleases. Tessa is a little scared of Mr Allen; even though he doesn't shout, he seems to menace with his quiet authority.

Halfway down the bus, Brodie's red hair is glinting in the sun. He's waving something at her.

"What?" she shouts, irritated. Brodie's lips move, but the bus has started up, rattling and snorting down the road. Tess can't see what it is, but it looks like a certificate. "What?" she shouts again.

"An excellence award." His lips form the words. "Mum's gonna be so pleased."

Tess smiles at him. He's a pain in the bum sometimes, but he's cute too. Two days ago she'd helped him cover all his schoolbooks, carefully smoothing the plastic so it didn't wrinkle, even finding photos of him and his best friend, Joel, to put on the cover of his school diary. But he'd found one of him and her instead - at Adventure World, both wet and sunburnt but smiling - with their arms around each other.

"Use this one," he'd said, dropping it onto the diary. "You're an awesome sister - sometimes."

And today is his birthday, so she's trying hard to be especially nice.

"Stop using that schoolteacher voice," Mum had warned her when they left for school this morning. "Brodie's only ten - you forget he's not as mature as you."

"Bossy Tessy" Brodie calls her when she's like that. But he doesn't get how hard her life is, the pressure she's constantly under to get good grades while still fitting in to this new school structure, so different from primary school. His world revolves around trading cricket cards and electronic toys.

Tess looks out the window at the passing shopfronts and sighs. She's got a science project to finish tonight and a maths investigation - calculate the length of ink an average student writes in a week. It's been troubling her all day. She thinks she knows how to do it - just needs to run it past Dad tonight. But she groans, remembering: he's doing an extra shift at the clinic. Maybe she can ring him. Mum will try to help, but she's more arty than mathematical.

The bus pulls in at their stop. Brodie gets off before her. Tess waves to a couple of girls from her year. "Wait up!" she shouts at Brodie.

"See what I got?" He thrusts the certificate in her face.

"Yeah - you're just a genius," she says, watching the traffic, "for a brain-dead dead-head."

Brodie is laughing. "And you're just a hairy armpit freak."

Tess reaches out to give him a quick punch. He's been telling everyone about the hair in her armpits. She'll kill him next time. "Shut up, Ranga." She pulls him back from the kerb. "Wait."

The traffic streams by. It's a seventy zone, but most cars seem to travel much faster.

"After the blue one," Tess points to the right, "then stop on the island."

They cross to the middle and wait for another break in the traffic. Their mum has been trying to get a crossing guard on this street for ages. For the first two weeks of school she wouldn't let them cross without her until Tess kicked up big-time.

"We're not babies anymore, Mum," she'd complained, humiliated by the gibes about mummy's girls from the kids on the bus. "You're giving Brodie a stigma - they're all teasing him."

Her mum had been reluctant, but hadn't let go of her control completely. Most afternoons she just waited for the bus to leave before she came around the corner to watch them cross the road.

The wind whips up out of nowhere; it seizes Brodie's certificate and fires it up into the air. Tess hears him gasp. His hand reaches up to snatch it back, but it somersaults, taunts him, like a runaway kite. He doesn't take his eyes off it, lurches out into the street.

Tess reaches for his backpack. Misses the strap. Pulls the Darth Vader key ring off.

The white sedan hurtles down the street.

The wind drops suddenly and Brodie's certificate falls to the bitumen road. He reaches down to peel it up.

Tess hears screeching brakes.

A bang.

The soft whump Brodie's body makes as it hits the ground.

Then the engine revving, the squeal as the sedan fishtails down the road, its front bumper sparking against the bitumen.

She huddles next to Brodie. All traffic both ways has stopped. Suddenly it's silent. She can't speak and can't turn him over. He looks like a broken bird. People are rushing about them. There's a new noise, and it overwhelms her. Mobile phones, shouting and a high, thin keeling. She looks around wildly.

Brodie doesn't make a sound. The side of his face is pressed against the road, covered in blood. His eyes are shut.

Her mum is running down the footpath.

Running towards them. Her mum doesn't make a sound either. She drops to the ground. Then moans "Brodie, Brodie," - over and over again.

They don't touch him. The sirens are getting louder. The keening continues.

"Tessa, Tess." Her mum grabs her shoulders. "Stop it, Stop."

But she can't. She can't close her mouth. She can't stop the noise.