She dumps a small, bright-blue condom packet unceremoniously into my hand. I can’t help looking at the back of Joey’s spiky head and wondering if maybe it will cross his mind to use one in future.
I search for a place to be anonymous in the crowd, but it’s worse than I feared. Joey is in a cluster with Kyle and a few other guys, all laughing and making crude gestures with the banana, blowing up their condoms into banana-shaped balloons. Lukas is on the other side of the hall doing the same with a few of the footy boys. The girls aren’t much better. Next to me, Chante is pretending to suck the end of the banana and looking at Lukas as she does it. Angel is giggling.
If there’s a hell, I think I’ve just found it.
‘Now, now, settle down everyone,’ says Mrs Fraser. She’s well over fifty and I think they get her to do this talk every year because she’s impossible to embarrass. Mrs Fraser doesn’t care what the boys say. I bet every year they say the same things and think they’re so original, but it’s all old news to her.
‘You’ve had your fun,’ she says, ‘and it’s okay to be a bit silly about this, but of course we all know sex isn’t just fun and games. Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly normal and pleasurable . . .’
Really? Not what I experienced.
Laughter echoes around the hall. Clearly the idea of Mrs Fraser being pleasured is both disgusting and ludicrous to them. Sex is surely not for teachers. They’re a separate category of person. Kind of the way people think about my mother.
‘Okay now, let’s try to be a bit mature about this because you’re all about to enter an age where sex is going to become a big feature, whether you realise it or not.’
Some of the guys pretend to jerk off with their banana to muted sniggers.
I take a deep breath and focus on Mrs Fraser. Please get this over with.
She begins drawing cute little pictures of a sperm and egg shaking hands up on the whiteboard. Cold fingers of fear wrap themselves round my stomach, squeezing it hard. She goes on to draw this little baby with a bow on its head and one single curly hair poking out. Says something about babies being for life.
Life. A life sentence.
I watch Joey, watching her. Fiddling with the stalk on his banana. His mate Dominic whispers something in his ear, but Joey flicks him away.
‘Babies don’t stay this cute, though,’ Mrs Fraser warns. It wasn’t even cute. Someone should tell her that. ‘They turn into opinionated, obnoxious teens like you lot. So what do you think is the best way to stop the sperm and egg meeting?’
Chante edges closer to me. ‘Where’s Millie?’ she says.
I shrug, keeping my eyes on Mrs Fraser. She’s saying it to rub it in. She’s saying I was Joey’s rebound root.
‘Guess it’s too late for her anyway,’ she muses.
‘What is?’ I snap.
‘This talk,’ she whispers, waving her banana at the whiteboard.
For me too, I suppose.
‘At least she won’t end up being called Millie Milano,’ says Chante. ‘Am I right?’ She giggles and pokes me in the arm with the banana.
When I look back at Mrs Fraser, she’s holding a banana too. Then to a chorus of giggling and whistling from her audience, she deftly peels the thing, rips open the condom wrapper and slides that sucker over the poor, naked banana.
‘Now, your turn,’ she says, beaming at us. ‘Don’t be shy. This is one skill that could save you from getting into a big mess.’
The guys all start laughing. ‘Do you mean a sticky mess, Miss?’ one of them calls out.
But all the girls know exactly what she means. Mess is code for pregnant.
The prickly feeling begins at the nape of my neck, and works its way down to my stomach. Joey slides the condom over his banana.
A trickle of sweat runs down my back between my shoulder blades.
I can’t do it. I can’t watch anyone else slide a piece of rubber over their slimy, aggressive bananas.
Between the squeals and laughter, penis-shaped bananas and condom balloons, I stumble out the side exit of the hall, grab my bag from out the front, and run.
I stop running when I see someone leaning against the school fence in the carpark.
I’m not the only one who’s ditched.
When I get closer I realise it’s Alex, hunched over her phone.
Once upon a time, I’d have run at her and we’d have gone together to Grandad’s hangar. We skipped PDHPE a lot in Year Ten. Especially the awkward bits . . . Instead of learning about puberty, pimples and periods, we’d sneak off to the hangar and sing. I try to remember the last song I taught her.
I don’t know where she’s going today. I don’t know if she misses me, if she’s lonely. I haven’t cared enough to ask. I don’t know what she’s painting for her HSC major artwork. Or if she still plans to apply to the Royal College of Art in London.
I don’t even know how Grandad is. I never got to sing to him. He always wanted me to. Let me hear this voice of yours, he’d say. One day, I’d say, one day when I’m brave. Like it was something you could work towards. When I grow up, I’m going to be brave.
The last Christmas I had with him, he asked me to sing him a song as a gift. He chose ‘The Little Drummer Boy’. It costs nothing, he said. How little he knew.
A magpie warbles from a nearby tree and Alex looks up, catches my eye. She lifts her hand. A tentative wave. I lift mine a little, crunch my fingers.
There’s this pathetic part of me that says, that girl is the best friend you’ll ever have. You need her. Way more than she needs you. So you felt betrayed. How big is your ego that you can’t get over that, Ruby? And it’s not like you haven’t screwed up royally.
So instead of turning away like I normally would, today I’m fragile enough to take a step in her direction.
I’m not sure what I’ll say to her. What is there to say?
Alex straightens up, pushes off the fence. I take another step forward and she gives me a weird, wobbly smile. My legs continue to move stiffly, my heart thumping like I’m moving towards a foe, not a friend. Until I’m standing about a metre from her.
‘You –’
‘You skipped too?’
We laugh shyly. I guess some things remain unchanged.
‘Yep.’ Our smiles are thin as peace offerings go, but they’re a start.
‘Never been into kinky stuff with fruit,’ she says. ‘I’m not touching another banana as long as I live.’
‘Bananas should stay in their skins.’
We stand facing each other, the air between us a gulf.
She unzips her skirt pocket and tucks her phone away. Now there are no devices between us. Just two girls clutching for words.
‘You know what the worst thing was about losing you?’ she says finally, looking away.
I don’t know how to answer that, so I don’t try.
‘It was Joey. Losing you because of him.’
My heartbeat picks up at the mention of his name. I don’t want him in this conversation. I don’t want to talk about him or think about him. I wish he never existed for either of us. I’m trying to figure out how to tell her this when she says, ‘He’s such a pompous shit.’
It’s so unexpected, I laugh.
‘He is,’ she says. ‘Thinks he’s God. I couldn’t find anything to love even if I painted him.’
Alex always sees right to the truth, which is probably why she’s good at art. But why couldn’t I see that before? Why couldn’t she?
‘I can’t believe I wanted him for so long,’ I say.
We both fall silent again, and I don’t know where to look. I feel foolish. Not just that I wanted Joey and saw something in him that wasn’t there, but that I let him ruin a friendship forged by the years and tears of our childhood. Alex heard all my secrets and loved me anyway.
‘Ruby, I wanted to say . . .’ Alex seems just as lost as I am. ‘Can I just hug you?’
I nod, and the second I do, her arms are around me – so
ft and warm and comfortable – and I fall into them. I wrap my arms around her too until I’m holding her tight. My cheeks are wet, tears streaming down my face for all the pain that’s been banking up inside me and all the days I needed a cuddle just like this. One that asks nothing in return.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, sobbing. ‘Sorry for pushing you away, and judging you and cutting you off. Sorry for being so harsh.’
My breaths start coming fast.
‘Are you okay?’ she says.
I think back to that scarred old maple tree. To the mission accomplished in minutes.
My chest is heaving now, big gulps of air.
‘My period hasn’t come yet.’ It tumbles out.
‘Did you use anything?’
‘He . . . pulled out. I think.’
The trembling starts in my calves and travels up to my knees. Saying it out loud makes it frighteningly real.
‘Do you want to go get a test or something?’ Alex says gently. Her hand comes to my shoulder.
I shake my head firmly. ‘It’s too soon to know.’
‘It’ll come.’ She says it with a certainty nobody can give. ‘It will.’
She reaches forward and hugs me again. Hard.
‘Hey, I have a lift coming any second,’ she says. ‘You’re never going to believe who.’
‘Who?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘Is it Grandad?’
Alex scoops her bag off the concrete, slings it over one shoulder. ‘You coming?’ she says. ‘Let’s do something fun. There’s been too much heavy shit lately.’
And that’s the truth.
A dark blue ute pulls up and I recognise it instantly as Alex’s dad’s. I don’t feel ready for a full family reunion. But Alex opens the passenger door, and it’s not her father in the driver’s seat. It’s a guy fiddling with his phone.
He looks up at me briefly, then does a double take.
The black hair is familiar, and the square jaw.
‘Is that . . . ?’ His question is directed at Alex.
‘Uh-huh,’ she says.
He drops his phone on the console. I drop my bag on the concrete.
Now I can see the faintest trace of the boy I knew in his face. I wasn’t close enough at the hangar to recognise him.
‘Erik?’ I say.
His door is slamming, and he’s out of the ute.
A window to my childhood unlatches. For a brief moment, my mind is bathed in light and heat and wild birds and treks through the creek, and swimming in the waterhole at Rawson Falls, playing king and queens of the forest in the treehouse.
‘Ruby,’ he says, and I can hear an Irish lilt in his voice.
Without even thinking, I’m moving towards him, and his arms are opening and then I’m in them. Wrapped in the tightest hug. He no longer smells of dirt and grubby boy, but laundry powder and faintly of tangy deodorant. He’s a good deal taller than when we were kids, so the hug is different to when we said goodbye.
Erik gives me a squeeze, then holds me at arm’s length to examine me.
‘You haven’t changed a bit, have you?’
‘You have! Your voice has broken. And you have an accent.’
He hangs his head and laughs. ‘Yeah, that happened some time ago.’
Up close, I can see the light stubble on his chin, around his jaw. I suddenly feel self-conscious. We’ve both changed an awful lot in the seven years since he left. He has no idea how much.
‘Ally tells me you still sing.’
I feel a sudden flash of misery. Oh god, I hope she didn’t show him the clip.
‘What are you doing back?’ I say, to change the topic.
‘I came to see Grandad. His seventieth. The big party.’ He grins. ‘Well, are you getting in?’
‘He’s having a party?’ I feel stupid for not knowing.
‘Absolutely.’ He opens the back door for me and slings my bag across the seat. ‘We’re gonna have ourselves some fun, we are.’ He looks from one of us to the other. ‘Does this mean you two have made up?’
I smile shyly, look at Alex.
‘Yeah,’ we both say.
No word has ever sounded better.
‘We can go back to being the Three Musketeers, then.’
I climb into the back seat and Alex turns around from the front, grinning.
‘Told you you’d never guess who,’ she whispers.
I catch Erik’s eye in the rear-view mirror as he pulls away from the school.
‘So where are we headed?’ I ask.
Alex and Erik exchange a glance. I’d forgotten their eyes are exactly the same colour. A shade of green that changes with the light. They look more like brother and sister than cousins.
‘We were planning to kill some time at the airport,’ Alex says.
‘Do you mind?’ Erik glances at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘There’s just a couple of things I need to do.’
‘Erik’s got his licence now,’ Alex says, with a hint of pride.
‘Alex told me you were training last year,’ I say. ‘I bet Grandad was proud.’
Erik shakes his head. ‘I feel kinda bad. He lost his licence about the same time I got mine . . .’
‘Stop,’ Alex says. ‘He can fly again now, thanks to you. You’re the only one Grandad trusts to fly the Bluebird.’
We’re all quiet till Erik says, ‘Do you remember that song you wrote when we were kids, Ruby? About that bird falling from its nest.’
I look out at the trees rushing by. ‘Yeah.’ I don’t tell him about the magic when I sing that song in the hangar. Or how the lyrics are still on my wall, even though I know the song word for word and note for note.
When you live in the forest, birds are as common as wildflowers. In spring, they build nests far above the reach of predators, but the trouble with chicks is they don’t stay in their nests. They fall.
Sometimes, we’d find only a pile of downy feathers left. Other times, an injured chick, and all we could do was make it comfortable.
Nan was born here in Cooper’s Creek. She was as tough as the country is dry – she’d tell me to go for the hammer. Put it out of its misery. I never could. I’d find an old shoebox, wrap the fluffy ball in tissues until it died. Probably crueller, but not brutal.
Occasionally, when the three of us were walking, we’d come across a small, fuzzy little creature with half-grown wings, struggling along on the forest floor. We’d take it back to Nan’s, keep it warm, feed it. These were the birds that were broken in ways we could fix.
When it was strong enough to fly around the house, we’d take it into the forest. I can still feel Erik’s big, warm, grubby hands enveloping mine and Alex’s as we held a rainbow lorikeet.
‘On three,’ Erik said.
And we counted together.
‘One, two . . .’
His hands unfurled slowly, like a flower. Allowing ours to open up, and the bird gave a squawk as it flapped its wings and flew into the freedom of the trees, a couple of stray feathers falling between us. I caught the others looking at me and I felt suddenly shy. Because we’d done this amazing thing. I can still see the beam of deep yellow light shining through the trees, spilling into their identical eyes, changing them from green to gold.
But the last time, we freed a dove, and everything changed. Alex had a fever and had to stay home, so it was just Erik and me. After we let the dove go, Erik took a step towards me and my heart fluttered. I remember how our eyes met and his smile melted.
Alex’s voice breaks through my memory.
‘Little bird, broken wing, fly again and then you’ll sing . . . Ruby?’
She’s looking at me strangely.
‘Sorry?’
‘Your song. Isn’t that how it went?’
She must have been singing it to me. I smile. ‘Yeah. Something like that.’
After Erik parks the ute at the airport, we head for the security gate. Alex has forgotten the code. I could punch it in, but I let Erik find
it on his phone instead. He’s the only one of us authorised to be opening the gate anyway.
We follow him across the scorching tarmac to the hangar and push through the small side door. It’s cool and dark inside, and our footsteps echo in the cathedral silence. Alex flicks on the lights, and the domed space blinks to life.
Right in the centre, parked patiently as ever, is the Bluebird. Returned, not stolen. Glossy and toy-like. Beautiful. Maybe not everything lost is gone forever.
Alex walks over to the Bluebird, reaches out a hand and strokes the glass of the cockpit reverently.
‘Strange to think he’ll never fly her again . . .’
Her words echo back at us. Never, never, never.
‘How is Grandad?’ I say. Suddenly aware that I can ask again. Maybe even see him.
I haven’t seen him in town for the last year. He’s hard to miss, a tall man with wiry white hair and a profile thin as cardboard.
‘Grandad’s been . . . struggling a bit since he lost his licence,’ Alex says to me.
‘It’s why I came back,’ Erik says, watching Alex. ‘Not just for the party . . . to take him flying.’
I think of all the times I could have gone to see Grandad but didn’t. The petty year I spent fighting with Alex.
‘Right, I’ve got some things to take care of. Are you two all right to wait?’
Alex grins. ‘Anything is better than Sex Ed . . .’
Erik laughs. ‘Wait – you called me because you wanted to skip Sex Ed?’
‘Doesn’t Grandad have a Scrabble board here somewhere?’ I say. I can already feel my cheeks burning.
Erik shakes his head, and I see him grinning as he makes for the staircase that leads to the office.
It turns out Scrabble is a great distraction. Before we know it, we’re fighting over who can have what word and it feels like no time has lapsed between us.
When Erik finishes, he joins us.
‘Deal me in,’ he says.
‘That’s not how the game works,’ Alex says. ‘You’ll be starting on the back foot.’
‘I don’t care.’
So she opens the bag of Scrabble tiles, and he fishes some out, then takes the next turn.
Ruby Tuesday Page 9
