She could feel the sun scorching her back and the sweat trickling down her legs. And the flies; she could do without the flies, she thought, flicking at them repeatedly. The flies were making it hard to keep her camera steady on the subject. All she needed was for Jude to stop clowning around long enough so she could click the shutter and then go down to the gates for the last shot, then to the bubblers and wash up.
‘Was it romantic? I bet it was.' Jude spun around, her arm hugging her waist as she looked up to the sky. 'Oh God, Mik, I bet it was so romantic!’
‘Please? Jude? Be a sport!’
She held the Box Brownie against her midriff, her feet apart, her head bent over the camera and her right eye focusing down the lens. The school building stayed where it was, but not Jude, the flibbertigibbet.
It was hard, however, not to love your best friend, frustrating as she was, thought Miki. Jude. Her sister. Almost. In everything but blood, they were sisters. She couldn't remember a time when Jude wasn't in her life. But she was also the most annoying creature on the face to the earth. Just look at her!
She tried to control her giggles watching Jude skipping around the peppercorn tree and trailing her lunch paper behind her like some Chinese dancer. If Jude caught her laughing, she would be encouraged to keep clowning.
She let the camera drop to her side, her hand through the diagonal strap keeping it against her leg as she looked away from Jude’s antics to a vanishing point, something stationary she could concentrate on while she composed herself.
'Donny, Donny, my darling. Make love to me, Donny,' Jude crooned.
Flicking her plaits back over her shoulder, Miki moved forward with a scowl and a renewed determination. She had to get angry with her subject, start demanding some co-operation instead of this juvenile idiocy.
Wind had kicked up the playground dust. Taking a clean handkerchief, she flicked gritty particles off her lens, noting she had only three shots left on her roll. Would there be a moment this side of Christmas when Jude wouldn’t be cavorting around that stupid tree or pulling an idiotic face or preening like Ava Gardener or shoving a finger up her nose and sticking her tongue out like the village idiot?
Or turning around and giving a bum show of navy bloomers to the camera?
Click! The sound of the shutters opening and closing, a sound that usually thrilled her.
'Dam!'
Involuntarily, she had clicked the button and captured Jude's silly antic. Too trigger happy, she cursed. Too impulsiveness. She couldn’t use such a dopey photo, and she couldn't afford to waste film either. Now she only had two shots left. She wanted to show her family how brilliantly she was using their precious birthday gift. They already had a problem with Jude. Lots of people did.
‘Brenner! Do that tie up!’ The command came loud and shrill.
Looking over her shoulder, Miki saw the speaker striding across the grass towards them. When she looked back at Jude, she saw rebellion in Jude’s eye. Here’s trouble, she thought.
‘Look at you! You're a disgrace, Brenner!’ The senior advanced on them. ‘Let that belt out at least six inches before I report you,’ she said as she pointed at Jude’s tucked in waist-line.
The prefect was a pale, thin stretch of a girl, her uniform perfect in every detail, not a wisp of hair out of place, shiny shoes, school badges and her panama at the regulation angle. She stood with her arms folded and her feet apart, glaring, making it clear who was in charge. It was obvious from the look she gave Jude that she was not impressed with Jude’s disheveled appearance.
‘You're fine, Patrick. You can go!’ said the senior. ‘Go on, beat it. Go, go!’
Miki turned back to Jude. Oh God, don’t do it. Jude was responding to this mean Year-12 girl with her usual bad attitude. Jude hated being called Brenner, but more than that, she hated being told what to do by prefects. Jude had an aversion to prefects, and now she stood frozen in position, the long piece of lunch wrap held high above her head, her left foot poised ready to twirl herself into her scarf dance routine, and brazenly out-staring the scowling prefect.
It was hilarious but if she giggled now it would only get Jude into more trouble. She saw how ironic that it took this sour prefect to finally get Jude to strike a graceful pose. She coughed to cause a distraction.
‘Go! Go!’ the prefect yelled at Miki for the second time before turning back to Jude. 'You, Brenner! You are a little smart-alec Jew who shouldn’t even be at this school and wouldn’t be only Legacy’s paying your way. Everybody knows that.’
Miki stepped up to the girl. ‘Don’t you dare say that! It’s not fair.’
‘I’ll say what I like, thank you!’ The senior glared at her. ‘I told you to vamoose, didn’t I? What are you still doing here, anyway? Scat!’
Instead of moving off, Miki turned from the senior and faced Jude. It wasn’t fair on Jude, such an insult, but everyone hated this stuck-up prefect anyway, and it struck Miki that the girl might even be able to do what she hadn’t been able to do; get Jude to stand still and look half sensible. It wasn’t exactly the shot she'd planned, but a shot of the school building, with Jude in the foreground being arrogant to a prefect might fit the story of their school days, anyway.
‘Hey, Jude?’ she called when she had her subject in the frame.
The prefect stood glaring at the pair of them.
Jude looked at Miki. Her face lit up when she spied the camera. She gave a thumbs-up sign.
Miki looked down the lens.
Jude straightened up.
Miki pressed the red button.
‘Finally!’ she muttered to herself, rolling the film forward to the last shot. It was a shame that not all of the building was in the shot but she was already warming to this less formal and studied element of her art.
Under the continued scrutiny of the prefect, Jude made a half-hearted go at straightening her tie and letting out her belt.
Judith Miriam Brenner––one of the school’s smartest students but also one of the school’s least co-operative students. Jude was high on their list of juniors to harass. The prefects despised poor Jude who couldn’t help she was Jewish. Couldn’t help that she was smarter than them. Couldn’t help that she wouldn’t stand for being told what to do. Not by idiots, Miki reasoned. Not by most people, if it came to that.
Under the prefect’s hostile gaze, Jude slowly and methodically picked pieces of lint from her navy box-pleated uniform. She pulled up her black stockings and polished the toes of her lace-ups by rubbing their dusty surface across the back of her hosiery. All achieved without taking her eyes off her persecutor.
Miki recognized Jude’s expression; a condescending smirk that would be read by Miss Bossy Boots as insubordinate
‘Did you drop that?’ It was the wax lunch wrap, the Isadora Duncan scarf.
Jude stared insolently at the senior.
‘Pick it up!’
Jude obeyed. She handed it to the prefect who scrunched it.
‘They yours?’ the senior barked, pointing at a pile of shrivelled orange peels scattered on the dusty ground a little way off.
Jude