Other Hemispheres

A Mirror, Mirror & The Missing Fanfiction

Chapter 1: Worse Things Than Boarding School

2005

Liston, Ohio

"You'll miss the adoption conference, dude," Antonio told him. "A bunch of us were gonna go together" – never mind the fact most of them weren't even adoptees in the first place – "and make some trouble, mess with the coordinators a bit."

His friend sat with his back to him, and to the mall fountain, hunched over in a grumpy slump, sitting on the edge of the dirty marble rim, only the skull on the back his sweatshirt visible.

There was a long pause – the fountain plinked and tinkled, almost like it was laughing – and his friend grumbled, "Yeah, well, I'll get over it." A stupid conference at Clarksville Valley High School was the least of what he'd miss. "I can't believe my parents are doing this to me." He thrust his hand into the water, smacking past the surface with an angry splash. "They hate me – I knew they hated me." They were always mad at him. "It wasn't even my fault!" Was it ever? "My life is so sucky." Maybe not the most eloquent descriptive term, but he was only a thirteen-year-old boy. It was the best he could do. He dragged his dripping hand out of the fountain. It was cold, so he stuffed it under his sweatshirt to warm against his body.

"I mean, okay, it does suck and all, sure, but there are worse things than boarding school, Gav-man."

Still not turning, "Yeah? Name one."

"Uh..."

Antonio couldn't actually – as it turned out – come up with an example on the spot.


Columbus, Ohio

Three Weeks Later...

In the backseat, Jo Tiegan's quivering bottom lip stuck out slightly as the rental car drove along the winding path of sugar maple trees. There were so many – all dramatic and beautiful in their autumn colouring – and the sun was beating down on them so hard, she bet if she was to wind down the window and stick her head out right now, the air would smell like a pancake breakfast.

But she wasn't here for pancakes.

Or fun.

She was more than eight thousand miles from the last place she'd called home – and it would never be home, not for any of the Tiegans, again.

If she could have made herself forget, her dad's sad eyes in the rearview mirror – when she glanced away from the winding line of maples, to focus on something, anything, straight ahead – would have reminded her.

The building – brick and foreboding, if it was anything like the picture in the brochure – would be appearing any second.

They didn't call it reform school, despite that so obviously being what it was.

Both the officials who ran the school and the legal committee who'd 'suggested' – in lieu of a few worse options, little as worse seemed actually possible – she spend a couple of years here called it – that was, Sacred Heart Academy – a 'youth correctional facility'.

Jo would've been a lot more outraged being sent here – when she hadn't done anything – before her friends died. She'd been hoping they'd live, and she'd been fighting for her own reputation, as if it was part of getting them better – until they didn't.

A ton of stuff which seemed to matter before they died just stopped mattering. Even the fact Jade Coigley lied about her involvement in their deaths.

"Jo, we're here."

She raised her shoulders into a shrug and reached for the doorhandle as the car stopped and Andrew Tiegan got out. It was funny, seeing the side he got out on, since back in both New Zealand and Australia, it would have been the passenger side. There was no passenger here. Mum hadn't flown out with them; she was home with Jo's little brother, Royce. So it was just the two of them. Under different circumstances, this would have been a bonding trip. Jo and her dad had always been close. Not so long ago, she'd been really close to both her parents. She'd been their adopted golden baby back when they thought they couldn't have biological children, their only child until Royce surprised them all. But with all that happened, even before this fiasco with her two best friends dying, she'd been losing her mother – it started when they moved to Wellington for Catherine Tiegan's job as school principal for Hampton Shelly and this one really horrible woman on the Board started giving Cat a hard time.

Still, she'd had her dad.

Only, on this eight-thousand-mile trip they'd barely talked at all.

She knew he felt sorry for her; it just didn't – couldn't – help her, knowing it.

At least he believed she was innocent, Jo thought as he got her suitcase from the boot and pulled up the handle for her so she could wheel it.

"Mum thinks it was me," Jo mumbled, blinking hard and reaching for the handle. "Like everybody else. Mum thinks I did it."

Andrew shook his head unconvincingly. "Cat's just under a lot of pressure. This hasn't been easy for her, either. Two students dead, shafted from her dream job... Moving back to Australia in such a hurry and having to get your brother set up in a new school..." He swallowed hard, put his hands on his hips, and sucked his teeth. "She wanted to be here for you, Jo. It just wasn't possible. Not with everything else happening."

Jo grunted. She didn't believe it. Dad was just playing the peacemaker. Mum was probably focusing all her energy on Royce – her real son – and trying to forget about her daughter, the accused murderer, the screw up kid she'd made a mistake and adopted almost fifteen years ago.

"Jo..."

"Look, I get it, okay? There are worse things than boarding school." She threw up a hand.

"If you need us–"

"I'll try not to," she said resignedly. "I know you'll be too far away."

"Not that far." Andrew's tone went serious.

"Australia's on the other side of the world, Dad." It wasn't like New Zealand, just across the Tasman from Sydney. "It's in another hemisphere!"

"I would come from the other end of the universe for you, kiddo." He blinked away gathering moisture in his eyes. "It's not too far." It's never too far for parents who love their child. "Try to see this as a fresh start. Make some new friends. You've always been great at that."

"That's what Mum said." She looked at her sneakers. Even though she thinks I killed the last two friends I made.

"Good advice, eh?"

"Yeah."

"Come 'ere." He pulled her into a tight hug. "It'll be right in the end. Things have a way of doing that. Have faith and don't give up."

"I love you," Jo mumbled into his shirt before pulling away.

"I love you, too. We all do, sweetheart." Reaching into his pocket he pulled out an only slightly melted chocolate bar. "I was planning on eating this on the plane back to Sidney, but I think you might need it more than me."

She unzipped a side compartment of her suitcase and stuffed the squishy chocolate bar inside. "Thanks." Her stomach had been feeling acidic since their plane landed; she doubted she could eat it, but the thought was nice. She liked that her dad still cared. And, anyway, giving up chocolate in the Tiegan family was practically giving up a kidney; it was a gesture meaning true, deep love.

Shivering as Andrew inched back towards the car, Jo whispered it was freezing. "It's supposed to be September." Her whole life, September meant heat. But in Ohio, it was cold.

"Summers and winters reversed here," Andrew reminded her.

She nodded. No summer for her. From winter to autumn, then – surely, in no time – straight back to winter again...

Summer was a long, long way off.

Just like home.


"Mr. Danes, I don't care to hear what you thought you were doing with that skateboard on the stairs. You know the rules – therefore, 500-word essay, Why I Will Respect The Rules Here At Sacred Heart Academy Starting Today, by Homeroom tomorrow morning, no extension granted!"

If he was a judge, he'd have banged a gavel.

From the aforementioned Mr. Danes, whose face was hidden by a yanked-down hood, there came a muttered, "What, don't I even get my property back?"

A skateboard was kicked under the desk with a whir-whir-whir. "You want to make it six hundred?"

The boy said something under his breath then drew the drawstring from his hood tight and started chewing on the cracked plastic aglet on the tip.

"Consider yourself lucky I don't write you up for that gang-affiliated sweatshirt." The principal pointed his Bowling Green Falcons pen at him, gesturing at the skull and crossbones logo on the shoulder, which matched an even larger skull on the sweatshirt's back.

He spat out the aglet like someone trying to quit smoking would have spat out a gnawed sunflower seed and glowered disdainfully.

"Speaking of your shirt, I want you back in uniform first thing tomorrow morning, young man. You're dismissed."

On his way out, Gavin Danes collided – or at least his shoulder did – with somebody entering the office.

"Ow! Hey! Watch it, mate!"

He didn't bother looking to see who it was he'd bumped – he was in a bad mood over losing his skateboard and having to write that stupid essay. "Walk much?" he hissed, shuffling past, nearly tripping on something.


Jo rolled her aching shoulder. Some boy in a skull sweatshirt had just smacked into her as she tried to wheel her suitcase into the principal's office; she'd almost tripped him, which would have served him right, even if she hadn't yanked the suitcase forward towards his legs on purpose.

The principal was sitting at his desk, writing, and didn't look up when she entered.

"Hi!" she tried, with forced brightness, lifting a hand and waving even though the motion made her shoulder start throbbing again. "G'day."

"May I help you?" His eyes – pale grey – flitted upwards. "Who're you, miss?"

"Jo... Jo Tiegan? I'm new." She gestured behind herself with a point of her thumb. "My dad's just dropped me off."

The principal blanched. "You're Jo Tiegan?" He began shuffling through files anxiously.

"Yep, that's me." She intertwined her fingers and rocked back and forth. "Something the matter?"

Pressing an intercom, "Marge!" he bellowed. "Marge, get in here, we have a problem."

"Guess I'll take that as a yes," murmured Jo, feeling increasingly self-conscious. Her hands dropped to her sides; she stopped rocking.

Marge, a frumpy woman in a navy blazer, shuffled in, pushed past Jo, and bent her head close to the principal's while he frantically hissed something in a breathy, unclear voice.

Marge's plastered-on smile was taut, much more forced than Jo's cheery hi and g'day. But she must have noticed – to some extent – how stricken Jo looked, because she said, albeit flatly and without much genuine emotion, "Don't worry. There's just a small technical matter to clear up, dear. Your name is Joseph Tiegan?"

"It's Josephine," she corrected.

"Oh..." She darted her eyes towards the principal, who was shuffling papers, a furrow puckering his brow. "Well, dear, there seems to have been a tiny little mix up. We'd thought... Well, according to the information we were faxed, we were under the impression – incorrect, apparently – you were a boy."

"We don't have any girls' rooms available on the second floor," grumbled the principal, glowering now as if the mix up were her fault, for daring to show up here being a girl.

"Do I have to be on the second floor?" Jo wondered aloud, thinking about running back outside and trying to catch Andrew's rental – except her dad's car must be more than halfway down the treeline already... Besides, even if she could tell him there'd been a mix up, it wouldn't mean he could just take her home. And even if he could just take her home, that wouldn't fix the fact her mother thought she'd killed her two best friends, Mia and Jesse.

"Sacred Heart policy," said the principal, slowly, like she was stupid or something, "is all court-mandated students – as well as those who require medical accommodations – must be housed within second-floor dormitories."

Jo didn't require medical accommodations, she was healthy as a horse and all that, but considering why she was sent here, she understood if they thought she was a freaky psycho who needed to be housed with the problem students.

Only, her heart sank at the thought, at the full realisation, because that didn't bode well for her alleged fresh start.

Showed just what Mum knew, didn't it?

"Could we house three girls to one room for the time being?" the principal asked Marge from the corner of his mouth. "Move in another bed?"

"Second-floor bunks are nailed down."

"Da–" he caught himself before saying damn. "And we can't have a temporary cot because loose furnishings" – apart from one desk chair per room – "are against regulations on the second floor."

This was totally starting to sound more like gaol than a boarding school. Maybe Jo should have just let them lock her up in a green jumpsuit after all. She wanted to tell Marge here she wasn't really a problem kid; she hadn't hurt anyone.

She hadn't thrown that crowbar.

It was Jade Coigley, not her.

Except...

Did it matter?

They'd never believe her.

Not if the old codgers at the hearing hadn't.

Not if her own mother hadn't.

Now Marge was saying something to the principal sotto voce Jo could only catch a few scattered words of. Her ears pricked in spite of herself, wanting to know her fate. "Danes... Condition... Shouldn't trouble her too much... Only temporarily... Something more suitable..."

It was where they were going to put her when they thought she was a Joseph anyway, and it was the best they could do for now.

Probably.

Spinning out of her huddle with the principal, Marge handed Jo a slip of yellow paper with cheap, smeary ink that left her fingertips dark. "Room 216 – for the foreseeable future. And welcome to Sacred Heart Academy."


It wasn't the prevailing smell of boy stink that made Jo finally despair; she had a younger brother, after all, she was used to it.

No, what broke her was the heavy clank of the deadbolt at the end of the second-floor hallway after she'd found the room, followed by a mechanical buzz, then the sight of the rusty bars on the window in the low afternoon sunlight.

Her bottom lip began quivering for the second time that day.

The beds – and the single desk, too – were nailed down.

The bare walls had exposed brick on one side.

The bed she assumed was for her, because the beige sheets weren't crumpled, was stark and smelled like a cheap beach-ball. She thought of her own room, back in Wellington, before they'd had to pack up everything – Jade was living there now. She pushed the last part of the thought away. It was too painful.

Anyhow, gone were her band posters and drawings and the mobile she made at school back in Sydney.

The flashing mental image of her favourite art supplies made a lump come into her throat. Not only did she not have them here, she didn't even have her suitcase; the principal made her leave it downstairs for inspection.

Apparently to make certain she wasn't smuggling weapons in her clothes.

Did they – that stupid principal and Marge – seriously expect her to have a meat cleaver hidden in her undies?

The chocolate bar her dad'd slipped her was in her suitcase, too.

Good thing she wasn't hungry.

Tears streamed freely and she felt herself choking on the lump in her throat. Flinging herself onto the beach-ball-smelling bed, Jo wished she could suffocate and die. Her friends were dead, and everyone thought she did it. Somewhere in her confiscated suitcase was a borrowed jumper, one of the last things Mia ever loaned her. She and Mia had had big plans for the next school break, before this tragedy struck; they were going to stay at Mia's uncle's high rise flat in Auckland and visit the Sky Tower – since Jo had never seen it before, having lived in Australia her whole life – and gather overripe feijoas for making jam and have a bonfire with marshmallows on the beach. Jo'd been working on Mum for months for permission. She'd been about to cave, to let her go, even with Jade getting her into trouble in class so often – Jo was sure she was. Dad had vouched for her, saying it was good for Jo to spend so much time with friends and Mum had agreed. It was difficult to believe not only was none of that going to happen, but she'd never see Mia ever again period. It didn't seem possible.

Her shoulders shook with sobs, and she dragged a hand over her face. There was an unfamiliar tan-line on her wrist, where her digital watch had been – Marge made her remove that in the office, too.

Why was she here?

She hadn't done anything!

The way Jesse's parents had looked at her during the hearing...

Like they'd thought she should be in a room with iron bars on the window, just like this one...

She missed Alex and Tama – her other close mates in New Zealand apart from the now deceased Mia and Jesse – and wondered if Tama's dad would even let her talk to him, if she got phone privileges here and could ring their house.

Tama had a cellphone, one of those new flip phones, but his dad monitored its use even more than the house phone.

If things had been different, she might have liked Tama – like really liked him. He took himself a bit too seriously, which she super wasn't into, but he was very tall and dark and handsome, all good (every girl was into that), plus being just brilliant – his IQ was probably about ten million...

As it was, she missed him as a friend, as her good mate, and that was enough to make her heart ache. She didn't need to miss him as a crush to hate being so far away from him.

What friends was she going to make here? The second floor was practically an inpatient unit, all timed lockdowns and security button beep-beeps. The kids on the other floors probably wouldn't even talk to her, not once they found out what she was supposed to have done.

"Are you crying?"

Red, puffy face awash, Jo looked up and blinked.

A boy, maybe a year younger than her, with a purple streak in his dark hair and wide blue eyes was standing beside her bed.

"Oh!" His voice cracked, reedy with shock. "You're a–"

"A...what...?" she asked through her stuffy nose, the corners of her mouth turning up slightly.

"A...girl..."


Jo almost – almost – cracked a smile; then she saw the skull and crossbones on his shoulder, putting together this puzzled-looking, purple-haired boy was the same one who'd been mean to her earlier.

The corners of her mouth turned back down again.

She groaned, "Aw no."

A confrontation with the first enemy she'd made here was not something she needed right now. Especially considering they were locked into this part of the school together. Her chin trembled and she appeared as if she'd start crying afresh.

He softened some. "Hey, it's okay – don't cry anymore."

Sniffing, she motioned at his sweatshirt. "Walk much?" she reminded him, thinking maybe he didn't realise who she was.

To his credit, the boy winced. "Look, I'm sorry, all right? Besides, you could have put me in the hospital, tripping me with your stupid bag. I bruise easily. What are you doing in here, anyway?"

"Um, weeell," she choked raspily, "apparently I'm your new roommate until the school sorts a few things out."

"I can't believe they put a girl in here." He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other.

"It's really not a huge deal," she tried, hoping to convince herself as much as him. "I've got a brother, so I'm used to guys. You've probably got a sister or something at home, right?"

He shook his head.

"Oh." She picked at the nail on her little finger and stared at the floor for a couple of seconds. This was a conversation going a whole lot of nowhere.

He tried breaking the ice with, "So, what's your accent, anyway? You from England or something?"

Jo scowled. "Australia."

He shrugged. "Same difference."

"It's really not."

"Whatever."

"Look," she sighed, wiping at her still damp eyes with the back of her wrist. "Maybe we should start over." They'd better at least try to get along, if they'd have to live together. "I'm Jo." She stuck out her hand. "Jo Tiegan."

He shook her hand but pulled his back so quickly she thought he disliked her. "Gavin Danes."

"I'll stay on my side of the room, I promise – you won't even know I'm here."

"I don't mind you being here," he kind of mumbled, sitting down on the edge of her bed. She seemed okay, and under her blotchy pout and red nose, he suspected she was also really pretty. "But it's hard to believe any parent would send their kid here from the other side of the world." Geography wasn't Gavin's strength, but even he knew how far away Australia was from Ohio. "What'd you even do, kill somebody?"

Jo's red face instantaneously went ashy. Her hands shook as she tried to draw them into her lap and – balling them into fists – hide them in the sleeves of her sweater.

"What, for real?" blurted Gavin, blinking and scooting back a little, making the bed springs squeak. "Shit, Jo, I was kidding."