Military Minds (Lesbian Story)

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

It was late afternoon when Rebecca had finally stopped crying.

Millie had sat by her side throughout the hours, offering tissues and a comforting embrace. It was the tenderest experience Rebecca had ever had with a female friend.

Only then did she realise how much Millie cared.

The school was bathed in the sun’s fading light. Rebecca found herself leaning her arms onto the window sill and gazing out at the beautiful sight.

The creative part of her mind told her to draw it, but she knew that whatever she drew looked like it was done by a ten-year-old. Rebecca wasn’t much of an artist; she was more of a writer.

She took her time observing the structure of the school, almost through new eyes. She observed the way the ground was high above the dormitories, only leaving a narrow path leading toward the front of the rest rooms. She observed the fading brown painted window frames, and the moss beginning to emerge from the crevices in the stone walls.

The door to their dormitory slammed open, interrupting the middle of Rebecca’s daydream.

She half-turned, expecting to see Jacinta or Rowena. Instead, she saw Megan. Rebecca noticed she was dressed out of uniform again: wearing a black t-shirt with skull and crossbones on it. Written above it was Too fast to live and below Too young to die. Her light blue jeans had frayed ankles, and on her feet were white go-go boots.

“Skipping classes again are we?” Rebecca smirked.

But only when she noticed Megan’s face didn’t light up with emotion, or a smile, did she realise this was entirely something different.

“I don’t know about you,” Megan said, in the most serious tone Rebecca had ever heard her use, “but I’m going to track down the punks who dropped bombs on our school.”

“What, now?” Millie exclaimed, her eyebrows flying up to her forehead. “Megan do you want to get yourself killed?”

Megan didn’t reply. She shoved past Millie and glanced at Rebecca. Rebecca could sense the urgency in her eyes, could feel how serious she was about her mission.

She breathed a sigh, before turning fully to face Megan.

“I don’t want you to die,” she said, “so if that means I have to come with you, I will.”

                                                                *****

The two of them had made it halfway down Gap Road when they began to run short of breath. Rebecca pulled over on the concrete of a bus stop. Megan followed shortly after, panting heavily as she dropped her massive bag of stuff down.

“You are literally insane,” Rebecca managed to say between pants. “I think we just filled out our own death warrants by doing this.”

“Insane is my middle name,” Megan smiled. When Rebecca met her gaze, it disappeared.

She glanced away sharply to the houses across the street.

“How the hell are we supposed to know who did it?” Rebecca asked. It was clear she was beginning to grow exasperated. “I mean, what if they just did it to play a practical joke on us? What if they don’t come back?”

“Trust me,” Megan said firmly, “when I say, this is no practical joke. A war is beginning on our school. I’m not going to sit back and let those jerks destroy everything I’ve worked so hard for.”

She half-glanced over her shoulder at the wooden fence behind them, then back to her knotted fingers in front of slightly parted legs.

Rebecca could tell Megan was nervous, even if she’d never admit it. She thought if she mentioned it, Megan might break her nose in exchange.

“Do you think it’s Stawell?” Rebecca asked, breaking the dawning silence between them. “I mean, from what some people have said, they’re –

“It’s possible,” Megan shrugged. “However, there is a high change it might be another army.”

After their brief break, Megan led them both to the Sunbury Train Station.

Before Sunbury Square had been constructed around it in two thousand and three, the station simply used to be two platforms across from each other. The side with Sunbury Square behind it was where trains went from Southern Cross Station all the way to Bendigo or further. The side with the station was where Megan had been most.

During primary school her parents had made her go into Melbourne City for counselling sessions near the Royal Children’s Hospital. When she was eight her cousin, Nick, had molested her. She told one of her childhood friends, which she then told her mother, and then her mother told Tracy – Megan’s mother.

Before Megan knew it, she was glancing up to the scary faces of police officers and seated in a room to be questioned.

While they waited patiently on one bench, Rebecca drew her journal from her backpack and began filling out the latest of her tale. She wrote down the air raids, she wrote down how close her and Megan were becoming, and made sure not to miss what Millie had done in Phil’s tent. That was her favourite part. Megan, on the other hand, sat moving her knees up and down to the music her iPod Touch was playing.

“Megan,” Rebecca said, once she had finished writing.

“Mmm?”

“What are your parents like?”

At first Rebecca thought Megan was going to chuck another fit and stalk off. Instead, when she glanced over to her, she noticed Megan had her face in her hands and was crying.

She put an encouraging arm around Megan, and leant over in an attempt to see her face.

“I’m sorry,” she sighed, “are they really nasty to you?”

Megan sat up sharply. Rebecca almost jumped out of her skin, but relaxed as Megan dug her fists into her jeans pockets.

“My parents are dead,” she said emotionlessly, almost as if the cry had drained her. “They were killed, right after I finished my first junior year.”

Rebecca’s heart dropped dead inside of her chest. She suddenly felt a surge of affection and adoration for Megan, mostly because of how strong she still managed to be.

“I was at my aunt’s for the weekend when it happened,” Megan went on, almost bursting into tears again. Rebecca could see the strain in her face as she attempted to hold them back. “Coincidence or not, I don’t know. All I know is when I saw them in their coffins, and saw them get lowered into the ground; they took a huge part of me with them.”

A Vlocity 160 pulled into the platform when Rebecca and Megan arrived at Sunbury station. It was a train belonging to V/Line, the most trusted of Victoria’s train companies.

The other company, Metro, was mostly used for suburban people who urinated on the uncomfortable seats.

The Vlocity was V/Line’s most recent train, being introduced in two thousand and six. It was a series of two to three carriages designed to seat one hundred and forty passengers and travelled a maximum distance of one hundred and sixty ks.

Megan and Rebecca boarded and sat near the front of the first carriage. As they passed through Diggers Rest and Watergardens, Rebecca was immensely surprised that Megan cuddled into her for the rest of the ride to Southern Cross station.