Lila My nails were bitten back and my uniform bunched around puppy fat yet Lila was neat even in rebellion her prim potty mouth little elfin ears, “fuck this” with calculated irreverence, just before the teacher came in She loved Arctic Monkeys and Vampire Weekend did I know them? I would nod in faux familiar rapture to riffs I had never heard then memorised alone in my bedroom, as I donned and shedded polyester dresses my mufti day defence system When roll call 9G got so hot sweat stuck thighs to plastic chairs class reconvened to the library, aircon whirring, to watch Tasmanian Whaling, History for the Classroom The couches were a murky lime green and Lila huddled next to Ally and Lucy with their thin girl limbs and tidy french braids somehow the couch could not fit one more There is discipline for vodka bottles stowed in lockers detention for mascara rimmed eyes I rhymed ‘torrid’ with ‘florid’ and won a prize in assembly knowing it was oil to the fire to contagious, quick laughs spilling over rules and classroom walls Os-straya fairrr trailing off, I braced for it, Lila knew I turned 15 and brought brownies to roll call but my tupperware returned just as heavy passed from each girl’s hands and mutters of the grapefruit diet, only so much fake tan can cover, blubber, blubber Lila wrapped the smallest square in an aloe vera tissue and winced a smile … I always imagined the spires but it’s the cobblestones that keep my attention speckled and polished by a few hundred years of hurried students My friends populate cafes for hours, we gossip fondly about faculty and make languishing plans for Cambridge’s Christmas-less summer I tell school day stories from Sydney “and Lila!” I say, pausing on the oddly improbable sing-song name I no longer need to know.
Samara Horne is an emerging writer who has studied at the Australian National University, Canberra and in the UK. Samara drew on her experience at school on Gadigal land, Sydney, for Lila. Samara’s work previously appeared in Poems by Young Australians volumes 5 and 6, published by Penguin Random House.
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