Sweet Bombe Alaska

Revelations

After lunch I had double English, one of the few classes I didn't share with Simon or CJ. I checked my timetable against the map of the school, making sure I was heading in the right direction. The campus was an impressive mash-up of turn-of-the-century sandstone and sleek 'glass meets steel'. Either way, both old and new structures were a stark contrast to the weatherboard three-bedder I'd lived in all my life.

When I walked into room 347 the teacher wasn't there yet, but most of the seats were already taken. I assessed my options. Back row next to a guy who looked like he could crush walnuts in his armpits, empty desk smack in the middle of the front, or second row near the window-next to Hannah Owens.

She glanced up just as I put my bag by the seat next to hers and I could have sworn the room temperature dropped suddenly. The look she gave me froze my intended 'hi' dead on my tongue.

'This seat free?' I mumbled instead.

Jaw clamped tight, she scanned the classroom, checking my other seating options just like I had done seconds before. When her forehead creased and an annoyed sigh escaped her lips, I knew she'd taken pity on me.

'Guess so,' she said, then picked up her novel and buried her nose in it, her leave-me-alone message loud and clear.

I started pulling my English texts from my bag.

'I'm Kahled,' I said. Figured it would be rude not to introduce myself.

Hannah didn't even look up and, for a moment, I started to think Simon might have been right about the Bombe Alaska. Then, another sigh, more exasperated this time.

She glanced my way, lips an uninviting line. 'Hannah,' she said and turned back to her reading.

Silence.

Something rubbed inside me, dared me to ignore her cold shoulder.

'Good book.' I nodded at her novel. 'You like John Green?'

I gave myself a silent high-five when she looked up and held my gaze. Several expressions flitted across her face as her desire to be left alone went head to head with her curiosity.

Curiosity won.

'Have you actually read this or just seen the movie?' She pointed to her copy of The Fault in Our Stars.

'I've read it. Read most of his stuff. My favourite is Paper Towns but Looking for Alaska was also good.'

Hannah blinked several times. I couldn't read what was going on behind her wide hazel eyes, but damn if I didn't mind looking into them anyway.

'If you're into the sick-lit, try Me, Earl and the Dying Girl. Can't remember who it's by but I was sold. Got to give points to a book about cancer that has so many laugh-out-loud moments.'

Her brows drew up.

Then the corners of her lips twitched and ... she smiled.

I swear, that very moment the temperature in the room climbed a fraction of a degree.

It took almost two weeks and another nine English lessons before the chill around the second row window in room 347 disappeared completely and I realised that Hannah's cold demeanour was just a thick, protective coat she wore. It took close to the rest of the term and a pair-work English assignment to piece together why she felt the need to wrap herself up this way.

First I noticed her uniform, even though Hannah went to great lengths to avoid it being noticed. It was always clean and neatly ironed, never missing a button or dangling a thread. But if you knew what to look for, you saw what her meticulous grooming tried so hard to mask: The hint of grey in the white shirt that was inevitable when it has gone through too many washes. The almost too short skirt, only just reaching regulation length. And even though her shoes were polished to a black so glossy a Clarks' salesman would have been proud, underneath there was no hiding the giveaway overworn softness of the leather.

The cookbook came next. It was week eight. We were in the library, working on our English assignment, when I spotted it at the bottom of a pile of her school stuff: 101 Recipes on a Budget.

Now, there were several reasons why a girl like Hannah might borrow a budget cookbook. Research for a home economics assignment. Except she didn't do home economics. Maybe she was borrowing it for a friend? But as far as I could tell, Hannah didn't have any friends.

Or? She was going to use it herself.

The third clue came a few days later when I overheard Emma and Jasmine near the lockers.

'Can you believe she's not going on the Kakadu trip?' Emma said.

'I know! Apparently her dad is taking them to Paris instead,' Jasmine told her.

'I'd pick Paris over Kakadu any day.'

'I know! So jealous!'

And suddenly the pieces fell into place.

When I walked into room 347 later that day, Hannah was already sitting at our desk near the window.

I slid into the seat beside her. 'You're not going on the Kakadu trip next term?'

Hannah glanced up from the book she was reading. 'No.' She quickly looked back down. 'We're going to Paris.'

Sure, and I was booked for a space flight on Branson's Virgin Galactic.

I decided to coax her truth out with my own. 'I'm not going either.'

She turned to look at me again. 'How come?'

I took a shaky breath. 'Because trips like that aren't included in my scholarship.' I let the sentence, and all it meant, hang between us.

Hannah's hazel eyes stayed fixed on me and, like that first day, they gave no clue to the thoughts forming behind them. I waited for it, for the sudden drop in temperature around the desk in the second row under the window in room 347.

But amazingly it never came.

'There is no Paris, is there?' I asked.

Hannah's eyes widened. There was a trapped stillness about her, like a cornered animal not knowing whether it should bolt or just give in. Then she gave the tiniest shake of her head.

Later, she found me in the library.

'Dad took the Porsche and moved to Frankfurt with some woman called Annemieke,' she said, the words heavy and wet around the edges. 'Mum got the house but almost lost it ... she couldn't find work for the longest time. I had no idea how bad it was until I found a stash of unpaid bills behind her prized Swarovski crystal.'

I listened, my math homework completely forgotten. With each cold truth Hannah allowed me to see, I realised life lived behind expensive bricks was not always that different to life lived behind weatherboard.