It is night. They move with such stealth they could be almost floating
along the road. I can't see faces, just the outline of their movement.
But when the moon drifts out from behind a cloud, bathing the road in an
urgent sort of light, I see how they're all gazing up towards me.
'They're coming back, ' I murmur. I turn to Kendall, and she puts her
sewing aside, eyes on me. They never waiver. It was supposed to be a
place where teenagers would learn resilience, confidence and
independence, where long hikes and runs in the bush would make their
bodies strong and foster a connection with the natural world.
Living in bare wooden huts, cut off from the outside world, the students
would experience a very different kind of schooling, one intended to
have a strong influence over the kind of adults they would eventually
become.
Fourteen-year-old Rebecca Starford spent a year at this school in the
bush. In her boarding house, 16 girls were left largely unsupervised, a
combination of the worst-behaved students and some of the most socially
vulnerable. As everyone tried to fit in and cope with their feelings of
isolation and homesickness, Rebecca found herself joining ranks with the
powerful girls, becoming both a participant--and later a victim--of
various forms of bullying and aggression.
Bad Behaviour tells the story of that year, a time of friendship and
joy but also of shame and fear. It explores how those crucial
experiences affected Rebecca as an adult and shaped her future
relationships and asks courageous questions about the nature of female
friendship.
Moving, wise and painfully honest, this extraordinary memoir shows how
bad behaviour from childhood, in all its forms, can be so often and so
easily repeated throughout our adult lives.
