Words in Deep Blue

by Cath Crowley

  Packing crates are behind us, a double lane freeway in front. There are a few warehouses spread out along the road on the other side, but that’s about it. Apart from that it’s deserted.

  There’s enough time to send a dropped pin to Rachel and a help! text while I’m waiting for them to come back. Out of respect, I close my eyes when they start to strip Martin of his clothes. I can hear him put up a good fight, though. It takes a while for them to get everything off him. I open my eyes when they’re winding the tape around and around his body, securing him to the pole. They’ve got a couple of rolls of the stuff so they’re not stingy with the amount. He’s wrapped up tight when they stop.

  And then it’s my turn.

  All of them haul me out of the boot and throw me on the ground. They tell me to strip and they kick me when I don’t. I’ll admit I give up pretty quickly. ‘If you want to see me naked so badly, Greg, who am I to ruin your night?’

  The comment earns me another few kicks and then a siren sounds in the distance and they let me get on with the stripping. I’ve always been fairly sure I don’t look good naked but I solve the problem by not looking in the mirror when I don’t have my clothes on. I don’t have to look in a mirror today, but I do have to put up with my ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend filming me for YouTube.

  ‘You fucker,’ I say, as he takes the gaffer tape and winds it around and around me and the telegraph pole again and again and it crosses my mind that there are some parts of my body that will never be the same after I rip that tape off.

  Once Greg’s satisfied that I’m taped sufficiently, he films me some more, and says I can find myself on YouTube under ‘dickhead’. I suggest to him that surely the ‘dickhead’ is the guy who strips another guy naked and tapes him to the pole. I am clearly the dickhead-ee.

  ‘Fuck, I hate you,’ Greg says.

  ‘Believe me, the feeling is mutual.’

  He’s about to make off with our wallets, our mobile phones, the bookshop keys, when I call out that taking those makes this a robbery, not just a joke. ‘Can you practise law with a criminal record?’

  He comes up very close and does some more filming before he throws our valuables on the ground and gets in the car. I’m fairly certain Greg is the kind of guy with a great internet plan, so we’ll be up for all to see before they’re pulled out from the curb.

  ‘What kind of guy does this to another guy?’ I ask Martin when we’re alone.

  ‘The kind of guy who’s taking revenge for a ruined suit?’

  ‘Is it really the same thing? This seems so much worse.’ I look down at myself. ‘So much worse.’

  Martin takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

  ‘You’re mad,’ I say.

  ‘I’m naked and gaffer-taped to a pole. That’s what I am. It’s not your fault. I’m not angry with you. I helped you squirt him with the hose. I want to concentrate on how we get free, that’s all.’

  ‘I sent a dropped pin to Rachel,’ I tell him. ‘We just have to wait.’

  People drive past us but don’t stop. I don’t hear car horns so I don’t think they even notice us. ‘At least it’s warm,’ I say.

  ‘You’re an optimist,’ Martin says after a while.

  ‘It seems important to be, considering the reasonably regular shitness of life.’

  ‘But I mean, why isn’t George an optimist? There’s this guy who’s been writing to her in the Letter Library for three years now and she’s pretty sure she knows who he is, and she’s sure she likes him, so why hasn’t she done anything about it?’

  ‘What guy?’ I ask, and he reminds me it’s the guy he told me about at the party, someone who’s been writing to her in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. ‘He’s been writing to her for three years and she’s almost certain she knows who it is, so why hasn’t she done anything about it?’

  Three years is a long time to write to someone. That’s commitment. That’s romantic. I think about George sitting in the window of the shop, acting cynical about love, when all the while she’s falling for a secret admirer.

  ‘He might not even be the guy she thinks he is,’ Martin says. ‘He might be a psychopath.’

  ‘All the psychopaths are on the internet now,’ I say.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘More potential for victims, I guess.’

  ‘No, why wouldn’t George want to meet him? If she really is so sure about who he is?’

  ‘Scared,’ I say. ‘She’s shy.’

  ‘She doesn’t seem shy. She seems hostile and aggressive.’

  ‘It’s a cover,’ I say, working something out about my sister as I say it.

  ‘Good cover,’ Martin says, but I think he’s worked it out too because some of the anger’s gone out of his voice.

  I look around for Rachel’s Volvo, wondering if my text got through.

  ‘With a bit of luck, Amy might call the police,’ Martin says.

  I love Amy, flaws and all, but I know, without a doubt, that she won’t be calling the police. I know that she didn’t call them after I disappeared in the boot. She didn’t take down the numberplate like Rachel would have done. She didn’t get into a taxi and say, ‘Follow that car.’

  It’s Rachel we’re waiting for. Rachel I texted. Rachel who’s coming to save us.

  Rachel

  it’s a soft nuzzling at air

  Towards the end of dinner, I get a text from Henry – help! Along with it, there’s a dropped pin on a map showing me his location.

  I’m relieved that I have a reason to go early. Relieved too, that I can tell Mum it’s an emergency and I’m not going dancing with Henry. ‘He’s in some trouble,’ I say, and kiss her and Rose goodbye.

  I call Lola when I get outside, because I’m not driving to the docks alone. Before I even say hello, she tells me in a rush that I was right. ‘Your idea was perfect. We’ve pooled our money and my grandmother kicked in too, so we can rent a friend’s studio for a brilliant rate and we can record all our songs, from the first to the last, every song we’ve ever written, so we can sell them at our last gig and maybe keep selling them after.’ She takes a quick breath, but not enough to let me speak. ‘Are you looking for Henry? I saw him with Amy and Martin earlier, near the bookshop.’

  The fact that he’s talking to her doesn’t necessarily mean anything and even if it does, Henry hasn’t done anything wrong. He hasn’t made any secret about the fact that he loves Amy. He’s selling the bookstore to get her back. I know this.

  Still. I think briefly about deleting Henry’s call for help and going home. But he’s my friend and friends save each other and I can’t not save him because he’s got terrible taste in girls.

  ‘Rach? You there?’ Lola asks.

  I quickly fill her in, and her voice shifts from excited to worried. She puts the phone away from her mouth and tells Hiroko. ‘Tell her we’ll cancel Laundry and go with her,’ Hiroko says from the background, but Lola’s not all that keen on the idea. ‘Ask George to go with you,’ Lola says, coming back to the phone. ‘And if she can’t, then call us back and we’ll come.’

  I drive to the bookstore, park, and text George from the car, letting her know that I need her help with Henry. It’s not that late, but she’s already in her pyjamas – blue ones with clouds – and she doesn’t bother going back in to get changed.

  She takes my phone, looks at the dropped pin, and directs me through Gracetown, in the direction of the city. We don’t bother with music, we’re too wired to listen. I’m worried about Henry and since George is unusually quiet, I assume she is too. ‘Through these lights and then take a left,’ she says, and we hit a heap of Friday-night traffic.

  I’m watching a group of girls walk in front of the car, girls my age out for the night in short dresses, long boots and glittery skin, when George blurts out that Martin asked her on a date and she told him she’d meet him at Pavement.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Pavement,’ she says again.

  It’s what I though
t she said, but I was hoping for Martin’s sake I’d misheard. ‘Is Pavement the same kind of place it was three years ago?’

  ‘It’s pretty much the worst club in the city,’ she says, and then starts defending herself. ‘He told me I had a problem. He wouldn’t leave me alone.’

  I can’t exactly judge her. I held a grudge against Henry for three years. But Pavement? She couldn’t have just told him she’d been at Laundry and then not showed?

  ‘Henry was with Martin tonight,’ I say. ‘They went for dumplings.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says, but clearly she’s edgy as she directs me through the centre of town, past the main City Train Station, and towards the docks.

  We’re on a long stretch of dark blue road when George finally tells me to slow down. ‘He’s somewhere around here.’

  We really start to worry when we get to the blinking dot on the map and he’s not here. I pull over and George looks at the map, pinches it between her fingers and makes it bigger. I take it from her, and turn it around. ‘It’s a double highway,’ I say. ‘He’s on the other side.’

  I make a U-turn and see Henry before she does. He’s shining in the darkness; arms pulled back like a suburban Caravaggio.

  ‘Shit,’ George says, spotting Martin.

  I pull up near them, and we get out. Henry Jones naked is quite a sight and I try not to look like I’m enjoying it as much as I am.

  ‘Hello,’ he says.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘You seem to have gotten yourself in some trouble.’

  ‘You’re naked,’ George says.

  ‘Really?’ Henry says. ‘We hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Why are you naked?’ George asks.

  ‘Why are you in pyjamas?’ Martin asks, as she walks around to his side of the pole.

  ‘I had to leave in a hurry, to save you.’

  ‘Maybe I wouldn’t need saving if someone hadn’t told me she’d be at Pavement tonight.’

  ‘I said I might be there.’

  I decide it’s the best thing for everyone if we get Henry and Martin down as soon as possible. There’s nothing to cut with in the back seat, so I open the boot, and there, next to Cal’s box, are scissors and, for some reason, a steak knife.

  I pick them up, and stare at the box. My hands touch the cardboard instinctively. I trace my finger around the question mark, but don’t open it.

  George walks over and I close the boot. ‘You take the scissors and Martin,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll take Henry and the steak knife.’

  ‘Do you have a steady hand?’ Henry asks me while I’m cutting.

  ‘Fairly steady,’ I say. ‘I’ll go carefully around the sensitive parts.’

  ‘It’s skin. It’s all sensitive, really.’

  I nod, cutting slowly.

  ‘How do I look naked?’ he asks after a while.

  ‘Not half bad,’ I say.

  ‘Can I take that to mean I look half good?’

  ‘Close your eyes,’ Martin says to George. ‘Stop looking at me.’

  ‘I’m cutting some fairly sensitive areas. Do you really want me to close my eyes?’

  ‘I’m glad you find this so funny. If you and Rachel were naked and Henry and I were making jokes, it’d be a whole different story.’

  ‘Relax,’ George says.

  ‘Relax?’ he says. ‘If you didn’t want to be friends you could have just said no. Do I need to beg every single day? You haven’t even bothered to say sorry.’

  He yells the last bit, and George doesn’t answer for what seems like a long time. Eventually she says, very quietly, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What?’ Martin asks. ‘You’ll have to speak up.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ George says loudly.

  ‘I accept,’ Martin says.

  ‘Careful of my penis please,’ Henry says, and I suddenly find the whole situation hilarious. I haven’t found anything funny in ten months. Usually I pretend to laugh. I try to make jokes.

  ‘Don’t laugh while you’re cutting,’ he says, making me laugh even more.

  ‘You’re shaking,’ he says, and George is laughing now and Martin too and Henry’s saying, ‘I’m glad my naked nuts are so hilarious to you all,’ but he’s laughing as well and he’s happy that everyone else is happy, because that’s the kind of guy Henry is.

  We pile in the car, and Henry and I listen to Martin retelling the story of tonight to George, who interrupts every five seconds or so to say she’s sorry. He gets to the part about Henry talking to Amy, and then Greg arriving, and I look quickly across to the passenger seat.

  Henry’s staring out the window, with an old jumper I keep in the car over his lap. ‘You can say it.’

  I’m dying to say it. What kind of a girl doesn’t call the police when her idiot boyfriend throws two guys into a car and drives away? What kind of person stands on the side of the road and stares into the boot and doesn’t do anything? ‘It’s not my business, Henry,’ I say instead, because he doesn’t need to feel any worse.

  I’m not in the mood to drive all the way across town, so Henry and George convince Martin to stay at the bookstore. ‘You can sleep in my bed,’ Henry says. ‘I’ll sleep in the shop with Rachel.’

  After Martin and Henry get dressed we all sit behind the counter and watch the clip of them on YouTube. ‘You can’t really see much,’ Martin says.

  ‘Of you,’ Henry says. ‘There’s a fairly shocking close up of me.’ He puts down his phone after a while. ‘So people see us naked? So what?’

  ‘So I go back to school and face a storm of ridicule,’ Martin says.

  ‘I’ll be there,’ George offers, and he gives her a look that suggests that this is a very good consolation prize.

  The two of them go upstairs and Henry and I lie on quilts in front of the Letter Library. He turns off the lights so we’re just voices in the dimness. ‘She left me,’ he says after a while. ‘She didn’t call my parents or the police.’ He holds up his phone. ‘Hasn’t even sent a text.’

  ‘In her defence, that’s a hard text to write.’

  ‘I used to worry sometimes,’ he says, ‘before we really started dating, that other guys were better kissers than me, and that’s why Amy and I weren’t going out officially.’

  ‘Speaking as a girl who’s kissed you, I can say you’ve got nothing to worry about in that department.’

  ‘I’m sorry I don’t remember more of it. Was I better than Joel?’

  ‘You were different.’

  ‘Did you have sex with him?’

  ‘That’s a personal question. Did you have sex with Amy?’

  ‘You’re right. It is a personal question,’ he says.

  ‘Maybe we should talk about something else.’

  ‘Things have changed between us,’ he says, but he doesn’t say how, and I’m not sure if he means things have changed between him and Amy, or him and me.

  ‘What good things have happened to you in the last three years?’ he asks. ‘You’ve only told me the bad things.’

  I haven’t thought about the good things in a while but a lot of good happened before Cal died. ‘I won the science awards, before Year 12. And the maths awards. I swam two kilometres almost every day with Mum. Dad visited and took Cal and me windsurfing. I was Sports Captain in Year 11. What about you?’

  ‘I won the Year 11 English prize. I did pretty well in Year 12. I went to the Year 12 formal with Amy. Lola and Hiroko wrote a song about me. I won a short story competition.’

  ‘That’s a good list,’ I say.

  ‘Can we try again to go dancing?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I tell him, for the second time.

  He falls asleep, and I lie awake, enjoying being next to him.

  The Broken Shore

  by Peter Temple

  Letters left between pages 8 and 9

  1 February – 5 February 2016

  Dear George

  I appreciate all the apologising, but seriously, you can stop. So everyone in class saw me naked on YouTube? The shot
s were mostly of Henry.

  If you really want to make it up to me, maybe you could tell me about the letter guy. Who do you think he is?

  Martin

  Dear Martin

  I know you’ve told me to stop, but I need to say one more time – I’m sorry. To make it up to you, yes, I’ll tell you about the guy, who I think is Cal Sweetie.

  I’m not a hundred per cent sure it is Cal, but before the first letter arrived, he was in the bookshop a lot, and he wasn’t just here to talk to Rachel. He spent loads of his time looking through the Letter Library.

  He’d tried to talk to me at school but I hadn’t said much back. You’re right. I’m a little defensive, but I don’t fit in there. I’m the girl reading second-hand books when everyone else has the latest smartphones. I wear second-hand clothes. My dad comes to school at parent-teacher interviews and loudly announces to my homeroom teacher that he can’t afford to send me on camp.

  Let me be clear: I don’t care that we’re broke sometimes. The bookshop is worth it. But it doesn’t exactly pave the way to popularity. It’s easier to block people than hear them call me a freak.

  But Cal isn’t like that, and I missed out on talking to him and then he left for Sea Ridge with Rachel. The letters kept coming, but I saw Tim Hooper at our book in the Letter Library. He’s Cal’s best friend, and it convinced me even more that the writer was Cal.

  I could have told Cal I knew before now, but I wasn’t sure that I liked him that way until he stopped writing. I thought he was kind of geeky and a little strange at first, but some time after his letters he started to look cute to me. He’s sweet. And kind. And I want to meet him face-to-face and talk.

  George

  Dear George

  I know Cal a little, and he is all the things that you’ve written about him. I hope you get to meet him and I hope it works out.

  You might think you need to keep people at bay – but if you weren’t so reclusive at school, I think you’d actually have a lot of friends. You’re interesting and funny. And I very much like your clothes. I very much like everything about you, George.