Notice - 1. Act One: Out of Place

"And the library is sooo good! There must be thousands of novels, and I'm going to read them all before I graduate!"

"I believe you will, at the rate you devour books," Mum agreed. "You sound like you're having a lovely time, sweets. Have you made any friends yet?"

"Not really. They'll only get in the way of my reading."

"Elijah!" she scolded him lightly. "You can't experience the world with your nose always in a book. Talk to the other boys. It won't hurt you." When he didn't respond, she asked him something else. "Do you miss the farm at all?"

"No... well, yeah. A bit," Elijah admitted. "I don't miss farming, but I miss how quiet it is."

Quiet was something Elijah had taken for granted until it disappeared. At home, silence was plentiful. Even when Dad had machinery running somewhere on the property or Tilly was barking at something she had no business barking at, there were places Elijah could go where nobody spoke to him. His bedroom had been his. The paddocks stretched far enough that another person could become a speck if they walked away for long enough. He could hide among bales of hay and read a book.

Oakfield never stopped making noise. Somebody was always walking along the corridor outside. Doors opened, creaked and slammed. Boys laughed loudly enough for Elijah to hear them no matter where he was in the dormitory, and every few minutes somebody seemed to yell someone else's name from the common room. Even when the school was quiet, the city around them wasn't.

Even when Reggie wasn't in their bedroom, there was evidence that Reggie existed everywhere Elijah looked. A sock beneath the desk. A maths book open on the wrong bed. Three pens without lids. Elijah had already returned two of Reggie's shirts to him after finding them among his own clothes. He missed knowing that if he put something down, it would still be exactly where he left it.

"I miss being an only child," Elijah added. "Now I have eight brothers in my year alone."

"Heh. If you thought the house was quiet now, you'd be shocked how empty it feels without you." Mum paused. He didn't know how to answer. "Dad's investing in a new music machine to add a bit more noise."

Elijah giggled. "What is he going to listen to? Dolly Parton?"

Mum tutted. "I don't know if Dolly's his type of girl. I think he'd rather sit around listening to Johnny Cash pretend he's even grumpier than your father. He misses you, sweets. More than you understand."

"Then I wish he'd come to the phone."

"He tries. He's got more work to do now that you're living all the way down there in the big smoke. I'm even worse at farming than you are, if you believe it."

Before Elijah could think of a diplomatic response, his new roommate burst through the door with a crash.

"Hey, Silverman!" Reggie bellowed in one ear.

"Is that Coowong?" Mum asked in his other.

"Cường," Elijah corrected her. "But he likes to be called Reggie."

"Hi Mum!" Reggie shouted at the phone.

"Hello!" Mum shouted in Elijah's ear.

Elijah disliked Mum's apparent fascination with his roommate. Not that Reggie was a bad person - far from it. He was just... exhausting. Elijah had gone twelve years with his best friends being the cat, dog and goat, plus a million perfect protagonists from the library. It was easy and peaceful. He didn't need any other friends. Mum, however, seemed determined to make him socialise at every opportunity. At home, and a plane trip away.

"How are you, Mum?"

"I'm very well, Coowong. How are you?"

Why she was so enamoured with that name when it wasn't the one Reggie preferred - and she butchered the pronunciation - was anyone's guess. Reggie never corrected her and even seemed to appreciate it, which was puzzling and annoying in itself. Elijah's tongue played with his braces as Reggie invaded his space, his conversations and apparently his family. He tried not to let it bother him... but it did.

"I'm good! I'm just looking for a pencil. Can I have a pencil, Silverman? Please?" Reggie added, remembering Mum was listening.

"What happened to your pencils?" Elijah brushed his wavy brown hair from his eyes. "You can't have lost them all."

"Yeah. They're somewhere, but you have pencils. I saw them."

"Why don't you just look for them?"

"Elijah, sweetie, you can lend him a pencil," Mum insisted.

Of course she'd take his side. How did he become a third wheel in his own phone call?

Elijah sighed. "You can take one, but I want it back. If you lose it, you're never borrowing anything again."

"Thank you, Silverman! I won't lose this one because it's yours. Thanks, Mum! Bye, Mum!"

"He's such a nice boy," Mum commented when Reggie snatched up her son's property and ran off with it.

"Yeah, so you keep on saying," said Elijah, closing the door.

The dining hall was in the oldest part of Oakfield, which meant getting there involved crossing two centuries in two minutes. The boarding wing was old, but had been renovated enough to contain Wi-Fi, modern bathrooms and more power points than the original architects could ever have imagined. Then the corridor opened onto the main building and everything became dark timber, old brick and portraits of men who looked like they didn't know what a smile was.

He slowed whenever he passed the honour boards. Gold letters covered polished wood from top to bottom. Names, years, titles, prizes and scholarships - the only thing this school seemed to lack was modesty. Elsewhere, he saw photographs of former students standing beside politicians, scientists, writers and Olympic athletes. Those were some colossal shoes to fill.

Oakfield reminded its students constantly that important people had once been twelve-year-old boys enrolled here, like he was now. Most enrolments were day students who lived in or near Melbourne, but Elijah was a boarder from a farm near Mildura. It was a lot to get used to. Academically, he loved the place. His teachers didn't tell him to wait for everyone else to catch up. Nobody sighed when he asked another question. The library had entire shelves of books his old school hadn't owned, and there were boys here who could beat him at things.

Meal times, though, weren't something he loved about his new accommodation. He was used to some chaos at dinner. At home, Tilly whined beneath the table, Oscar meowed until somebody put him outside and Esther sometimes bleated through the kitchen window. Dad scolded Elijah for sneaking them scraps while Mum stretched a mundane day into a twenty-minute thesis. None of that prepared him for Oakfield.

Thirty-odd boys talked over one another beneath the dining hall's high ceiling. Cutlery scraped, chairs dragged and applause erupted whenever someone dropped anything. Most of the Year Nines had congregated at one table, exploding into laughter whenever Sebastian Harcourt said something. Christian Li, the boarding Head Boy, occasionally told them to knock it off. They rarely listened.

No rule said Elijah had to sit with his fellow Year Sevens, but every year level seemed to form its own clique. His group had emerged almost accidentally. Banjo Connors, a Taungurung boy with orange streaks through his black curls. Owen Marsh, the most freckled and least tidy person Elijah had ever met. Reggie Nguyễn, of course, who had already decided they were best friends without giving Elijah a choice. Elijah looked at the other boys in his year, and felt he could certainly have done worse.

Bernard Veal and Lane Ericsson stuck together like glue. They were both farmboys, but unlike Elijah they genuinely loved being farmboys, so he didn't have much in common with them. Felix Harcourt preferred his brother's Year Nine friends to the other Year Sevens. Piers mostly kept to himself and appeared perfectly happy about it. Milo was different. He hadn't found his group yet, but he was always around.

"Over here, Silverman!"

Reggie always called him by his last name. Elijah didn't know why.

"Pork niiight!" Owen hooted as Elijah sat down.

"I actually don't eat pork."

Reggie looked horrified. "Pork's the best. What do you MEAN?"

"I'm Jewish."

"Oh." Reggie deflated. "Right. That's probably a good reason."

Banjo and Owen exchanged an embarrassed glance. Owen fiddled with the blue-and-green shoelace bracelet he always wore on his left wrist.

"Don't feel bad for me!" Elijah reassured them. "I'm getting chicken. I'm not about to starve."

That got their attention.

"I did not know chicken was available," Banjo said, suddenly disappointed in his choice.

"I have no regrets!" Owen insisted.

Elijah grinned, covering his mouth with his hand. He treated himself to a roll from the basket in the middle of the table, and enjoyed the increasingly delicious smell coming from the kitchen until finally...

"Dinner's up!" Christian Li announced.

The boys picked up their orders and sat down with their steaming plates and their new little group. Banjo had obvious buyer's remorse. Owen and Reggie seemed happy with their roast pork, but in the end, they all seemed to covet Elijah's chicken. Elijah couldn't help but compare them to Tilly, Oscar and Esther, and wondered why he wasted time being homesick as the others talked about themselves.

"Both of my parents are lawyers. So when Kingston said there was an issue with my hair not being a natural colour," Banjo said, brushing the orange streaks in his black curls with his fingers, "Dad told him he expects all the gingers in Oakfield to shave their heads before he tells me to get rid of mine."

"I got detention on my last day of primary," Owen volunteered. When the boys laughed, he explained. "True! We had this stupid farewell assembly, but I had swimming training at four. It went overtime, so I just left. Coach said four!" He insisted as the others jeered. "I think Mum sent me here so she'd have fewer kids to worry about."

"Oakfield found me, not the other way around. I did some maths competition back in Lào Cai and apparently I’m a genius," Reggie explained proudly. "So a billion tests later I'm here! We picked Australia because it was the closest boarding school to Vietnam offering a full scholarship... but it doesn't feel very close. Great meat pies, though."

Once dinner wound down, the Year Seven and Eight boys returned to their floor. The Year Seven and Eight boarding floor was shaped like a long letter T. The common room occupied the crossbar, with bedrooms running down the long corridor and the bathrooms at the far end. The staircase sat between the bedrooms and the bathrooms, meaning Elijah heard a lot of foot traffic outside his room for most of the day.

Elijah had learned the geography quickly. The floorboard outside Bernard and Lane's room squeaked. The bathroom door slammed unless someone caught it. Piers' room was far enough down the corridor that he could disappear into it without anyone noticing. Elijah and Reggie were closer to the common room, which meant Elijah could hear practically everything even with their door closed.

The building itself was far older than the boys living in it. Doorframes were scratched from generations of luggage. Someone had scratched E.C.R. into the underside of Elijah's bedframe, possibly long before he was even born. Those bedframes looked as though they had survived several wars and intended to survive several more. Elijah sometimes wondered how many Oakfield boys had slept in his room before him. Probably hundreds. He preferred not to wonder how many of them had used his mattress.

In the common room corner, Elijah immediately claimed his favourite beanbag with a book. With nine Year Sevens and everyone else paired off, Piers had lucked into a room of his own and stayed behind its closed door. Rajesh, a Year Eight, typed poetry. Bernard and Lane watched The Simpsons. Banjo painted, Owen played on his phone, Reggie drew comics and Felix challenged Milo to table tennis. Milo accepted, already looking like he regretted the decision. Two thrashings later, he retreated to a corner.

Felix wandered over to Elijah.

"What are you reading?"

Elijah showed him the cover. "The Hound of the Baskervilles."

"Sherlock Holmes?"

"Yes."

"Have you worked out who did it?"

"I only just started."

"I worked it out."

"Okay."

Felix ignored the lack of interest. He looked remarkably like a miniature Sebastian - black hair, blue eyes, very pale skin.

"Mysteries are easy. Writers always make the guilty person obvious because they have to give you enough clues."

"Good writers don't."

"Bet I'd work one out before you."

Elijah reopened his book. "Probably."

Felix frowned. "Probably what?"

"You could."

"I said I'd beat you."

"Yeah. You probably would."

Apparently that was even more irritating than arguing.

"Hey, Harcourt!" Reggie called. "Bet I could kick your butt at table tennis!"

Felix finally left. What was this guy's deal? Why did he feel like he had to posture so hard and win at everything? Elijah returned to his book. He didn't so much read novels as consume them. His eyes steadily moved down the page, the paper turned, and thirty seconds later it happened again. A book opened Friday night could easily be on the shelf by Saturday morning. Books were easy company. If Elijah misunderstood someone in a book, he could always turn back a page and try again.

Forty pages later, he barely noticed Reggie drop onto the beanbag beside him.

"Silverman."

Elijah turned a page.

"Silverman!"

"What?"

Reggie clutched his comic against his chest. "Do you remember your pencil?"

"The one I told you not to lose?"

"I didn't lose it."

"Okay?"

"I don't know where it is."

Elijah lowered the book. "Then you lost it."

"No! I left it on the table with my comic. I went to play Harcourt, came back five minutes later and it was gone."

"That's still losing it, Reggie!"

"If I lost it, I wouldn't know where I left it. I know exactly where I left it."

Elijah reopened his book. "Congratulations. You've invented a more elaborate way to lose my pencil."

Reggie groaned and began searching.

"Has anyone seen the pencil I was drawing with?"

Lane shook his head. Bernard ignored him. Milo shrugged from the edge of the room. Banjo came over to help.

Felix was less sympathetic. "It's a cheapo. Who cares?"

"I care!" Reggie snapped. "Either help or shut your face."

Milo quietly got up and joined the search. Elijah watched Reggie become increasingly upset and felt guilty. He really did seem certain. Maybe someone had picked it up. He wriggled out from the beanbag and fetched another pencil from the drawer in his bedroom, then returned and gave it to Reggie.

"Here. I'm sorry for being a jerk."

Reggie blinked at him. "I'm sorry I lost it."

"Maybe you didn't. It'll turn up."

"Thanks, Silverman. Thanks for helping, guys."

Almost immediately, Rajesh held up a pencil. "Is this it?"

"Where did you pick that up?" Milo asked.

"Floor. Right here."

Banjo frowned. "That was not there before."

"What makes you so sure?" Owen asked.

"I remember. I looked there. I've got an eidetic memory."

Felix rolled his eyes. "That's not a real thing."

"If I pay enough attention to something, I can recall it with exact details. I can paint the skylines of every Australian city from memory. That's what got me accepted here in the first place!" Banjo insisted.

The ruckus finally caught Lane's attention, and the big guy turned his head from the couch. "Why couldn't you remember where it was earlier, then?"

"Why would I? I was painting. Not looking for a pencil I didn't know was going to disappear!" Banjo explained, like Lane's question was absurd. "I looked at the floor when we started searching. It wasn't there."

"Maybe you just didn't see it next to my shoe," Rajesh suggested.

"Oh my god. The case of the missing pencil is solved!" Bernard raised his hands dramatically, then scowled at the group. "Now can we all please move on?"

By Thursday, everybody had. Everyone except Banjo, apparently, remained content to classify it as one of those odd little things that didn't matter enough to explain.

Weekday afternoons were swimming training for Owen, which meant the Year Seven dormitory received a considerably louder version of him when he returned. Today, it wasn't the good kind of loud.

"Banjo! Did you move my bracelet?"

"What bracelet?"

"The one on my bed."

Banjo's expression changed. "No."

Elijah glanced over his book.

Owen held up his bare wrist. "My mum made it before I came here. Blue and green shoelace. A bit wonky."

Felix snorted. "You and your mum wear friendship bracelets?"

"No! It falls apart if it gets wet, so I tie it around my bedpost before swimming."

"Shut up," Owen added when Felix laughed.

Banjo had already put down his paintbrush. "You definitely left it there?"

"Yes. It's always there."

Something uncomfortable stirred in Elijah's stomach. Reggie had been just as certain about the pencil. He followed Owen into the bedroom, with Banjo and Reggie close behind. Owen pointed at the wooden post at the end of his bed.

"I wrap it around twice and tie it. It couldn't have fallen off."

"You haven't been back here since training?"

"No."

Elijah looked at Banjo. "Were you?"

"Not since classes."

Nobody locked the rooms during the day. Anyone could have come in. Elijah stared at the empty bedpost. The pencil could have rolled away or been picked up by mistake. A bracelet tied in a knot was different.

"Someone must have taken it."

Owen frowned. "Why on earth would anyone take it? It's worth nothing to anyone but me."

"Maybe that's the point," Elijah said. "Everyone knows you wear it."

By the time they returned to the common room, Reggie had already announced that they were searching for a stolen bracelet. Banjo started under the couches.

Milo hovered nearby before quietly asking, "What colour?"

"Blue and green," Owen said.

"I'll help."

Lane sighed and joined them. Bernard remained in front of the television.

"If it was tied to his bed, why are you looking out here?"

"Because it's not tied to my bed anymore," Owen snapped.

Felix was equally useful. "Nobody cares about your mum's friendship bracelet."

Piers's bedroom door stayed firmly shut. Reggie knocked once and returned shaking his head.

"Piers says good luck."

"Thanks, Piers!" Owen shouted at the closed door.

They searched until dinner and found nothing. Owen even accused Banjo twice of hiding it as a joke. The second time, Banjo told him to knock it off. By bedtime, Owen had gone unusually quiet. Elijah noticed him rubbing his bare left wrist while Mr Kingston finished his checks. He'd seen Owen fiddle with the bracelet every day since arriving at Oakfield, but somehow its absence was more noticeable than the bracelet itself had ever been.

"Your mum can probably make you another one," Reggie offered.

Owen shrugged. "Yeah."

It was obvious that wasn't the point.

The bracelet appeared the following morning. Banjo found it wedged between the arm and cushion of one of the common-room sofas.

Owen practically snatched it from him. "Where was it?"

"There."

Elijah stared at the sofa. "You checked there yesterday?"

Banjo gave him a flat look. "I pulled all the cushions off. It was not there."

Owen was already tying the bracelet around his wrist again, relief written across his face.

"Maybe somebody found it and put it there?" Reggie suggested.

"Why wouldn't they just give it back?" Elijah asked.

Nobody had an answer, except Bernard, who groaned. "Please don't start another investigation."

Elijah didn't. Not officially. But he started paying attention. The pencil had been worth eighty cents. Owen's bracelet was worth even less. Both vanished from places their owners were certain about. Both reappeared somewhere people claimed to have already searched. He couldn't work out what anybody gained.

Friday evenings still felt strange at Oakfield. At home, Mum lit the candles, Dad came in from outside, and Shabbat seemed to happen around Elijah whether he remembered or not. Oakfield accommodated him, and Elijah tried to keep up the routine on his own. He wasn't always good at it. Without his parents there, Friday sometimes felt like any other day until he realised too late that it shouldn't. Mum would probably say trying still counted. Elijah hoped so. Unfortunately, this Friday wasn't finished with him yet.

Milo entered the common room after classes and stood beside the doorway for several seconds before anyone noticed him.

"Um... has anyone seen my keychain?" he asked.

Elijah's eyes immediately left his book.

"The resin one." Milo held up the little metal ring on his schoolbag where something was supposed to be attached. "It's usually here."

"What does it look like?" Owen asked.

"Clear. About this big. There's a little blue flower inside."

"Expensive?" Banjo asked.

Milo shook his head. Of course it wasn't.

"When did you last see it?" Elijah asked.

"Umm... breakfast."

Rajesh thought for a moment. "Yeah. I saw it."

Milo showed Elijah the clasp. It wasn't broken.

Another object that couldn't simply have fallen away.

"Why would someone take my keychain?" Milo murmured.

Elijah suddenly remembered how little he'd spoken to him. Piers seemed content living like a hermit. Lane and Bernard had each other. Felix had his brother. Milo was simply... there.

"Who gave it to you?" Banjo asked.

"My twin sister. Eleni does resin stuff. Blue's my favourite colour." Milo swallowed. "She said if I hated boarding school, I'd still have something from home."

Elijah looked at the little empty clasp. People seemed to bring strange things from home. Owen had his mother's bracelet. Lane apparently had a wooden tractor somewhere. Milo carried something his sister had made. Elijah hadn't brought anything like that. Dad wasn't really the sort of person who made keepsakes.

Then Elijah remembered the little shelf beside his bedroom window at home. Dad had put it up after finding Elijah stacking books on the floor. He hadn't asked what Elijah wanted or made a ceremony of it. He'd just appeared one Saturday morning with timber, a drill and the announcement that books weren't supposed to live in piles. It was still there. Elijah had never thought of it as something Dad had made for him.

He pushed the thought away and returned his attention to Milo.

"We'll find it," Elijah promised.

Milo looked surprised. "What if we don't?"

"We always do," Lane said. "They turn up somewhere weird."

Everyone began looking. Milo joined them. Elijah didn't.

He returned to his room and opened an exercise book.

Pencil - mine. Reggie borrowed it. Found near Rajesh. Cheap. Banjo says floor already searched.

Bracelet - Owen. Tied to bedpost. Found in sofa. Mum made it.

Keychain - Milo. Clipped to bag. Sister made it. Important.

Then Elijah listed who might have had access.

The result was almost useless. Nearly every Year Seven appeared on every list. There were fewer sightings of Piers outside his room than the Loch Ness Monster, but everybody else had opportunity. If someone wanted to steal things, Oakfield offered much better targets - phones, headphones, watches, laptops. Felix owned a table-tennis paddle he claimed cost more than some people's shoes. So why these things? Three objects, none valuable. The answer wasn't in how. He had to think about why.