A Step Off the Path

Best Year

I've always wanted to tell people about the best year of my life. It was the year I spent at Everglen Senior School.

Everglen took both day and boarding students and catered for kids who were in their last four years of high school. Bit odd that, but I think it came about from the days when they were exclusively a boarding school and only took kids who were at least fourteen years of age.

I went there for my final year of high school just after I'd turned seventeen. Man, it was good.

Why you ask? Well, you see, Everglen is an all-girls school and I'm a boy.

Now, how the hell did that happen?

I'm going to have to hark back quite a few years to explain it to you, so bear with me.

. . . . . . . .

My father was in a real shitty mood. It was during the long school holidays, just a few weeks before I was to go back for my final year of high school. Recently, he was often in a shitty mood, but this was a beauty.

The relationship between Dad and I had been pretty grim for the past year. Of course, at the time, I thought that he was entirely responsible, but I did concede years later that maybe, just maybe, I'd had a fair bit to do with it as well.

So, what was going on? I started eavesdropping and spying. This is what I got.

"Hazel, we can't knock this back. It will be the making of us."

"I know, Paul, I know. I'm not saying that we should."

"I'll just have to go by myself."

"No fucking way. I know what you're like . . . and out there among all those island beauties."

"Oh, for Christ's sake."

"No. That's that. So cross that option off completely."

"Shit."

My parents owned a building company. Dad was the builder and Mum did the management side of things. I worked out that they'd been offered a major contract with a small South Pacific island nation to build a pile of infrastructure: civic and community buildings.

The work would take about a year.

So . . .

"We can't take him with us?"

"No, Hazel (exasperated patience) they don't have a senior high school. We're going to be building the bloody thing."

"Alright, alright," (getting pissed off).

"We can't just leave him at home by himself. Christ knows what he'd get up to."

Why not? I'd have a ball. Come on, folks, just leave me at home.

"Your sister won't have him, will she?"

"You've got to be joking. After the way he behaved the last time we went there, she's banned him from coming to her place."

I wasn't that bad, was I? I mean, my stupid cousin, Peggy, is a complete dill . . . I just wanted to have a look at her boobs . . . she said okay, but then went all stupid.

"It'll have to be a boarding school."

"Yeah, and they cost a bundle."

"Too bad, we'll just have to cop it."

"I suppose. You'd better start looking."

A boarding school, ay? I didn't know anybody who'd gone to a boarding school. All I knew about them was stuff I'd read in books or seen in movies.

They seemed to be places where the big kids terrorised the little kids. Not to worry, I'd be one of the big kids.

"Paul, all these bloody boarding schools seemed to be booked out years ahead."

"Shit."

"I've found one that's had a late cancellation. I've put a hold on the place, but there is a problem."

"What?"

"The place is called Everglen and it's a girls' school."

"Well, that's fucking useless."

"Maybe not. I reckon I might be able to talk Mitchell into it."

"But . . . but how could it work? And he's become such a contrary little bastard anyway."

"Just give me a chance."

Mum talked me into it. I mean, I was right into doing crazy things, this was going to be the most spectacular crazy thing of them all.
Mum turned me into a girl: clothes, hairdo, make-up, etc. I reckoned I looked pretty good. I'd have made a great slut.

The staff and teachers at Everglen didn't have a clue from the outset, or for the whole time I was there, but the girls in my dormitory got onto me pretty quickly.

What was their reaction?

Amusement and delight.

I had no idea that boarding school girls were so randy. By the time the best year of my life ended, I was damn near exhausted.