Ruby Tuesday

by Hayley Lawrence

  Not Joey, though.

  Lukas’s name pops up immediately.

  There bro.

  The sight of his message makes my stomach cold. He hasn’t spoken to me since I pushed him away. I should have just copped it. I should have let him hug me. He was being nice.

  I feel weird that it’s Lukas who tagged me, when it’s Joey I’m in love with.

  I finish the dishes while I think about what to say. Don’t want to look too eager. Two minutes later, my phone lights up again. Then it starts going crazy. By the time I’ve finished the dishes, eight people are going.

  This is as close to Joey as I ever get. Group messages. And it’s only because of Lukas, I know. Joey and I rarely speak. This is the second party Lukas has tagged me in on. Anna’s, this Saturday.

  I should be thrilled. I’ve been invited when heaps of kids in our grade weren’t. But I hate parties. I break into a prickly sweat at the idea of them. Parties highlight how much I live on the fringe – hanging on the edge of a conversation, standing pathetically behind a circle of girls, waiting for my chance to edge in, pretend I’m part of it. Parties are torturous, but not being invited is worse.

  I skipped the last one. Turns out, though, if you don’t want to be in the shit-kicker group at school or spend every lunch alone, you have to invest in the party scene outside of it. That’s the bitter truth.

  Alex’s got a whole new group of friends so she doesn’t go to these parties any more. Not since Kyle’s party thirteen months ago. I was sick that night, but she went anyway. Which I was fine with. She was the one who got invited, not me. I think I even said, have fun, kiss a boy, tell me all about it later. I didn’t tell her not to kiss Joey Milano. I shouldn’t have had to.

  My phone keeps buzzing, so I check out the other responses.

  Lock up your daughters, I’m there. From Jack.

  Vodka, Whiskey or Rum? Or all three? Kyle. I don’t even need to look at the name.

  Get your sparkle on, we’re coming! Angel. If anyone knows how to party, it’s the twins.

  By now, there are over twenty responses to Joey’s text. Everyone in the group is going. My heart flutters at the thought of them all. But if I don’t go, I’ll fall further behind. When everyone’s talking about the party at school next week, I’ll be on the outer. Like the last time. And Lukas might not invite me to the next one.

  Even though Joey asks if we’re going like there’s a choice, there’s no choice for me. I take a deep breath. Type my message.

  Count me in!

  Too enthusiastic. I reword it. Reword it again.

  I’m going too.

  Without giving myself a chance to back out, I hit send.

  Friday morning comes, and with it the news: Joey and Millie are off. Broken up without warning. I hear nothing the rest of the morning, except those words. My brain is incapable of absorbing other information. It is full of Joey Milano being single. That one thought blocks everything else.

  At lunch I sit on the side of the soccer field, watching for him. And even though it feels as though the whole world is holding their breath waiting, nobody’s need to see him is fiercer than mine.

  The group isn’t far away. A hush falls over them as he heads towards their circle, flanked by Kyle and Lukas.

  Millie has taken the day off. Kind of cowardly. Not that I have any claim to bravery. I’d never come back if Joey dumped me. Unless she dumped him? But what fault could she have found in Joey? What would be worth losing him for? It would be like dropping a hundred dollar note on the quadrangle. Someone else will pounce on it before it hits the asphalt.

  Joey gives Jack and the soccer boys a nod as he approaches. They greet him with a fist bump, a slap on the back. I don’t know if it’s meant to be ‘you’re a free man’ or ‘sorry to hear’, but Joey takes it regardless. Then Lukas grabs him in a head lock and they mess around like nothing’s wrong. No broken hearts here.

  If anybody has thought to ask about the break-up, I haven’t heard them. I hardly dare to think about Joey looking for someone new, maybe looking at me differently . . .

  Who am I kidding? I’ll just get my heart ripped open again watching him hook up with some other girl.

  I try to focus on school but my mind is scattered. I leave my bag on the soccer field after the lunch bell blares and don’t realise I’m without it until I hit class. Then I forget which bench I was sitting on when I go looking for it. Can’t even remember eating lunch, or what I had. When I finally find my bag jammed under one of the bench seats, I head back to the classroom and walk into a class of junior kids who look up at me with big, wondering eyes.

  Damn. Wrong class.

  I spend the rest of the day hearing nothing, seeing nothing. Trying so hard not to let Joey creep into my thoughts, and failing every fricking second. His dimpled smile, his chocolate eyes, his dark, messy curls.

  Joey is single. I want him so bad, I can’t even look at him. Surely the secret is written in my eyes. If we make eye contact for even one second, he’ll know how much I want him. So I avoid him entirely. And when, by some miracle, I make it home, I bundle my bag through our squeaky wooden door, dump my stuff in my room, rest against the wall and exhale.

  Even after Mum’s in bed, I can’t sleep. I lie there studying the wall opposite my bed – blu-tacked with song lyrics, sheet music, my own compositions. Most of them about him. There are only two things on that wall that haven’t been inspired by Joey. One is the first song I ever wrote, seven years ago. The other is a fairy flower from the forest, framed behind glass. It’s pressed into the shape of a star now, but still deep purple.

  I give up on sleeping and scribble out my thoughts, my deepest desires. And before long, they have formed a song, the melody weaving itself into my lyrics. I pick up my guitar and strum it out quietly to myself.

  Oh, so many nights have I dreamed of you . . .

  When I’m happy with it, I lie in bed with my thoughts, every word he’s ever said to me, every smile, every time I’ve watched him, every time he’s brushed past me or touched me.

  It is the sweetest way to fall asleep.

  Saturday goes too fast, the hours clicking down to Anna’s party. The house is sparkling, spotless, because I’ve had to keep busy. My stomach is in knots at the thought of seeing Joey at the party.

  Single Joey.

  Will he notice me? Will I get to steal a moment alone with him? Maybe he’ll even confide in me about his problems with Millie. I’ll be safe to confide in, because I’ll probably be the only one there who doesn’t know Millie.

  By five o’clock, I know I can’t go to the party. The thought of it makes me want to throw up. I am hideously sick with nerves and the idea of having to compete for Joey’s attention in a crowd of flirting girls. I’m not that kind of girl. I can’t compete for attention. Don’t know how to flirt.

  I sit with Mum out on the back deck with a cup of tea, and dunk my biscuit in it.

  ‘That biscuit’s sitting at the bottom of your mug,’ Mum says.

  I look down. There’s next to nothing left of my scotch finger. And I can’t remember actually eating any of it.

  The evening air is syrupy and still, making me feel sticky and unclean. When there is a breeze, it’s hot and it makes the leaves crackle in the trees. Even though evening is coming, the heat of the day clings on, and the sun going down won’t change that much. Our deck is drenched in the last light of day, because the house was built to catch the sunlight. Back when that was a good idea – before the drought.

  It’s hotter inside, though, so I sit here with Mum in silence until the shadows reach the ramp leading down from the deck. Then Mum wheels inside over the bump of the sliding door, and I listen to her fierce thrashing of porcelain keys.

  Mum stops playing for a moment, then transitions into Chopin. Angry Chopin. The kind that makes Alex’s smashed vase tremble on the mantel.

  On her down days, Mum’s devoted to Chopin. Because he understood, she says. He too, spilled his d
espair into the keys. So Mum punishes those keys like everything is their fault.

  I want to stay out on our rotting timber deck with the last sob of daylight. But then I hear the first howl of the wild dogs. And a gunshot. The hairs stand up on my arms as the forest falls silent and I escape into the butterscotch glow of our living room.

  Mum tells me we’re safe, but I read in the local paper about someone just out of town who’s losing stock. He said the dogs are cunning. They mix with the stock by day and when the sheep are at the dam, all heavy with wet wool, the dogs attack. Apparently they don’t even eat them.

  It makes me want to move to the city and never come back.

  I toss the dregs of my tea over the deck, grab Mum’s empty mug, and escape into the butterscotch glow of our living room.

  Mum stops playing a little while after I enter, her energy spent. She rests her hands in her lap.

  ‘Sorry I’ve been off,’ she says.

  I shrug. ‘Rough day.’

  ‘I just can’t . . .’ she sighs. ‘Without the pedals, it’s tinny. No depth. I want to recreate . . .’ She bites her bottom lip.

  Eight years of no pedals on a piano. She tried all the alternatives to foot pedals, but nothing was good enough. The fall robbed the beauty of perfection from her, like confiscating the fine brushes from a painter. Technically still perfect, but lacking depth.

  ‘Didn’t you say there was a party on tonight?’ Mum says.

  ‘Anna’s. But I’m not going.’

  And I mean it. My party anxiety is maxing at full revs. As if a party under normal circumstances isn’t bad enough . . .

  Mum studies me a moment.

  ‘You should go. Be a teenager for once in your life. Rebel or something.’ She gives a small snort, like the idea of me rebelling is the most ludicrous thing she’s ever thought of. ‘You’re seventeen for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you alone on a Saturday night,’ I say.

  It’s a lame excuse and I know she won’t go for it.

  ‘Ruby, that’s ridiculous. You leave me alone all the time. And honestly, there are times when my own company isn’t such a bad thing.’

  It’s like a punch in the gut. ‘You don’t want me here?’

  I don’t know why it feels like a shock. After the accident, Mum shed herself of everyone except Nan and me. She never seems to pine for her old friends. I miss them more than she does, and I can’t even remember their names, just the way I felt when they were crammed into our living room. Alive. Valuable. Inspired. Brave.

  But now Nan has gone, and I know how much she misses her.

  ‘You need to be getting out more,’ Mum says decisively. ‘Ruby, when I was seventeen, I’d seen so much. You’ll be eighteen soon, you can’t live like an old lady.’

  I open my mouth to argue. But I know it’s true.

  ‘You’re only young once. Go. Let your hair down. I trust you not to drink, but just be careful, okay? Parties, booze, boys . . .’

  ‘I know all that.’

  ‘A little reinforcement never goes astray. Now leave me to my lover.’ She pats her hand on the piano lid. ‘Until just now you were planning on going. One night won’t kill either of us. I need to get my head in the right place again. To stop hating on this beautiful upright. It’s not her fault.’ She strokes the polished top of the Steinway lovingly. ‘And you need to stop hiding, Ruby. Now scram, girl.’

  It’s just on dark as I pull the Colorado to a stop outside Anna’s. Her house is close to our school in Willaware. I changed my outfit at least seven times before deciding on my black flats, ripped skinny jeans and my favourite green-knit top. I think of how Nan chose the wool, the perfect contrast for my hair, she said. How she spent night after night knitting it, needles clacking.

  I pull my fingers through my tangled hair to tidy it.

  My heart is fluttering wildly in my chest as I stand at the door. I raise my fist to knock, but don’t. I could turn back for the ute, drive around for an hour, head home. But I can’t afford to burn an hour’s worth of fuel. Maybe I should park in a street somewhere and wait it out.

  The door is wrenched open. A girl with big teeth and wavy purple hair opens the door, looks me up and down. She’s a taller, thinner version of Anna. A stick of celery is hanging from her mouth. She waves me through with barely a smile. ‘They’re out back.’

  I have one job now. Operation Find Anna.

  I find her with the twins and a couple of the sporty girls from our grade. Stiff hugs, too-loud laughter, girls picking at labels on their drinks. No tea, no coffee in sight. So I dip into an ice bucket for my own drink with its own label to pick at. It doesn’t matter what it is – I can’t drink anything at all on my Ps – but it helps me to blend in. Helps me pretend I fit here.

  I wish I was home with Mum, singing beside her. Singing is effortless. Talking is so much fricking harder.

  Anna gives me a brief hug, a kiss on the cheek. I say happy birthday, but I’m not sure she hears, as she gets pulled into a hug by someone else. At least I made an appearance.

  I was here, people. Tick my name off for attending.

  Hopefully this will stave off the ‘reclusive weirdo’ tag for a while. How many minutes do I need to stay? I look around the crowd, as though I’m looking for a friend, but I’m really only looking for one person. Terrified of seeing him, but unable to leave until I have.

  I pretend to drink. If Joey doesn’t show in the next half hour, I’ll slink out quietly. Go home to Mum. Ask if she wants to duet with me. The music is just starting to come back. We’re finding our new normal as two, instead of three. Before, when mum had Nan, my voice was more of an afterthought. An optional extra. Now, I’m all she’s got, but my voice still needs coaxing. She knows this, of course, because she knows almost all my secrets. She even knows about the time Frank the Tank kissed me behind the demountable block in Year Seven and everyone teased me for weeks. I know most of Mum’s secrets too. I think.

  All this only makes me yearn for home. Who am I pretending to be, playing teenager at Anna’s party? I don’t belong here. And one person I really don’t want to see will be here tonight, no question. Will Lukas ignore me, or wait for a moment to catch me alone? Maybe that’s why he invited me. So we can talk, alone. It won’t be hard to catch me alone tonight.

  Why did I ever agree to come?

  The football team are lining up shots along the ledge of the back fence, and Anna’s parents have locked themselves in their upstairs room. That way they don’t have to witness boys pumping goon down each other’s throats. A few of the people here are eighteen like Anna, but most aren’t. Clearly if Anna’s parents don’t see what’s happening, they don’t think they’re responsible for it.

  Whoop, there he is. Might as well sound a siren. Joey Milano just entered the yard, Jack close on his heels. My heart leaps into my throat. He’s making right for us, the group surrounding Anna.

  I’m so nervous that I have a quick drink from my bottle, and the glass rim hits my teeth. It tastes like corn fructose syrup. One thousand percent concentrated sugar.

  It’s me Joey goes for first.

  Me? My skin prickles wildly, my heart a sick drum in my chest. Is this real?

  ‘Hey, Ruby.’ Those dimples.

  He leans in for a kiss, and I can smell the beer on his breath as one hand goes to my hip. His kiss plants right at the corner of my mouth, and I swear he lingers for a second.

  Joey’s eyes meet mine a couple of times as he chats to the group. Maybe I have something on my face?

  Then Angel comes running up to Joey. Drapes her arms all over him, and says, ‘Are you okay?’

  Joey laughs, maybe a little too hard.

  Chante comes up with Angel, but goes predictably for Jack. Jack’s the guy that everyone loves, but no one seems to date. She kisses him on the cheek, says something and laughs on his shoulder. Jack peels away from her and heads for the beer tub, emerging a moment later from the shadows of the yard, beer in han
d.

  ‘Joey’s good, right bro?’ He claps Joey across the back. ‘Women aren’t worth the trouble.’

  ‘Hey,’ Chante says in mock insult, flicking her hair. ‘We’re not all trouble.’

  ‘You, girl, are definitely TROUBLE.’ Angel wraps her arms around her sister’s waist, playing it up for the boys. I hate it when they do that.

  ‘Some are worse than others,’ Jack says. ‘Now, pass this man another drink. To freedom, brother!’

  Someone passes Jack a beer, who passes it to Joey. They clink the necks of their bottles and drink.

  Jack leans towards Joey and says something in his ear. Joey looks me up and down, before Jack guides him away with one arm and leads him to where the boys have lined the fence with shot glasses.

  I watch Jack pick up a guitar leaning against the fence and make for the deck. He doesn’t warm up with any chords, just strums the guitar a few times and opens with a classic rock song. His strings take a while to warm up, but nobody seems to notice, and people gather before him, sitting on the grass to listen like he’s some kind of preacher.

  I should go home. But the way Joey’s eyes lingered, like he was checking me out . . .

  I find a spot to sit on the grass at the back of the group watching Jack perform. I try to lose myself in his music for a while, even though he gets a few chords wrong and he’s slightly off-key.

  I can’t leave without giving Joey a chance. He’s never looked at me like that before.

  Jack’s small gathering of worshippers on the lawn grows as he rocks his guitar. Mum wouldn’t tolerate the performance. Good looks and cockiness only get you so far in the presence of a trained muso. She’d be grimacing at his sloppy timing and pitchy voice. If you’re going to sing to a crowd, Mum says, you’d better make sure you’re worthy of them. But Jack plays like he’s unafraid. He doesn’t care about the crowd. And because of that, everyone loves him.