‘Good. Where is it?’
I reluctantly hand over the details. And hope I don’t regret it.
CHAPTER 14
I’m looking at the beachgoers who surround us. Searching, wondering, conjuring. It could be any one of them. Anyone sitting on this sandbank could be the Cedar’s insider. Risking their place to ensure Daniel Mason-Johnson loses his hero status. I can’t imagine someone else wanting it as badly as Imogen or I do.
‘We’ll have to go soon, L,’ George says, lowering her sunnies to check the time on her phone.
Maddy pushes up on her elbows. ‘Go where? You’ve only been here for like, an hour?’
George looks over at me, as though she’s waiting for my approval to tell Maddy.
‘Mrs Meyer’s Neighbourhood Watch program,’ I say. ‘The intro thing at the community hall. We didn’t think you’d want to come.’
‘Well, maybe I will come,’ she snaps, and starts packing her things away into a deep woven bag.
George and I exchange a look. One that says, ‘Well, this just got awkward.’ We both know Maddy’s only coming to make a point.
I glance over at the Cedar Army’s spot and Sufia gives me a half-wave. I guess I’ll just see her there.
‘It’ll pretty much be parents, Mads, just so you know,’ I say. And Sufia. And any of the Cedars she brings with her.
‘Yeah,’ agrees George.
Neither of us wants to listen to Maddy whinge about how boooored she is, which is inevitable, but she’s sticking with her decision to tag along and follows us to the top of the beach, where we cross the road into what feels like new enemy territory.
It’s packed, full of everyone I expected – the parents who smiled with tight lips when Sufia and I rocked up to their kids’ birthday parties, the local shop owners who supercharge their CCTV when a Cedar walks by, the stay-at-home mums who have no feelings either way about the situation but have nothing better to do.
Mrs Meyer is giving a chirpy welcome speech as we scramble for three spare seats together. Crime, safety, victims, change . . . words that have vapid meaning now that they’re coming from the mouth of Imogen’s mum.
I can already feel Maddy wriggling around in her seat between George and me. ‘How long do you reckon this’ll go for?’ she whispers to anyone who’ll answer. George and I exchange knowing glances and ignore her question. I’m more concerned about whether Sufia will show or not. There’s no sign of her yet, which makes me feel both relieved and nervous at the same time.
‘I will always do what I can for this community,’ Mrs Meyer continues, commanding the stage like she’s old-school Obama or something. She’s not even reading from typed-up notes, so this really is just coming naturally to her. ‘But I’m only one person. If we’re going to make a real change, we need to do this together.’
A few weak claps follow. Because she’s most definitely not Obama. Maddy wriggles again, and this time I feel her boredom. When is Mrs Meyer going to get to the good stuff? It’s starting to feel like this is the initiation for some kind of secret club. Where only signed-up members will get the real information later, and this ‘key messaging’ is just to rope them in with common ideals. To collect anger votes. And my guess is that this crowd will leap to it like a magnet.
Suddenly, as though my own magnetic forces have summoned her, Imogen appears crouched down in the aisle beside my chair. ‘Hey, thanks for coming,’ she says, looking past me, surprised at Maddy’s presence. ‘I need to talk to you. Outside. Please.’
As I follow her, I notice her hair is out of its can’t-be-bothered topknot and back to its straight, frizz-free perfection. ‘What’s up?’ I ask.
She pivots on her wedges. ‘I have a lead.’
‘Okay . . .’ I say, waiting for some big revelation.
‘You know that girl who works at the kiosk? Red hair, glasses?’
‘Yeah, Olivia. I mean, I don’t know her —’
‘It’s her. She’s the one Daniel has been hooking up with down at the river.’ Imogen’s eyes have lit up. Something they definitely haven’t been doing much of lately.
I pause, piecing together what Imogen has already connected in her super-smart brain. ‘So, she could be it? The Cedar insider?’
Imogen nods. ‘How are you going to tell her?’ she asks, her eyes motioning to the audience behind me, and one particularly bored member of it.
I have no idea. It would appear it’s not really the best time to be thinking about it, anyway. Because looking over Imogen’s shoulder, I see Sufia and the Cedar Army marching towards the hall.
‘What’s going on, cuz? It’s not finished already, is it?’
I wish it was. But as Sufia skips up the steps, towards our paused position at the top of them, I can still hear Mrs Meyer giving her sermon inside.
Sufia doesn’t wait for a response, as usual. Sometimes I don’t know that she even wants one. She continues past us and into the hall, and Imogen and Nasser swap smiles as he follows behind. No one else makes eye contact with us.
‘Guess we should head back in, then,’ I say, and Imogen and I wait for the Cedars to assemble themselves at the end of the hall before we return to our places. Me with Maddy and George, Imogen solo in the wings.
Sliding back into my seat, I catch a glimpse of Mrs Meyer’s face as she spies the new arrivals, the very ‘criminals’ she’s trying to eradicate from our community. Not that she has the guts to actually say that. She looks kinda nervous. It’s kinda hilarious.
Muddling up her words a little, she launches into her action plan. First up, a review of existing security measures at local parks and recreational spots, she says. Next, to develop and implement an effective communication strategy. Annual campaigns, an events calendar and workshops. Focusing on a monthly crime-awareness campaign. Identifying and responding to the needs of the community.
‘So what, she’s going to put security guards on the beach?!’ George scoffs, leaning in to Maddy and me.
‘The irony is they’d be Lebbos, wouldn’t they?’ I scowl at Maddy when she says this, and then she widens her eyes with exaggeration and a forced, ‘Sorry.’
‘She’ll just have spies. Everywhere,’ I say. I know this is dramatic, but nothing seems too far-fetched right now. It feels like we’re about to start living in some kind of dystopian nightmare.
I turn to face the back of the hall. Sufia is whispering with a couple of Cedars, and my throat feels tight. I don’t know how long I’ve been holding my breath for, but it feels trapped now. Like there’s no way out. Instead, my legs search for a way out of here.
Sufia grabs my arm as I run through the door of the community hall. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘If you’re going to do something stupid, I don’t want to be here for it.’
She shakes her head. ‘Please. Is that why you think we’re here? Give us some credit, would you? For once in your life.’
I release myself from her grip and keep running. Down the steps. Onto the footpath. Past shops and houses. And when I’m far enough away, I finally exhale. It’s only then that I realise how shit it is – that I’m always expecting the worst.
Post-lunchtime rush, Jordan is kicking back on the grass. I hope he doesn’t remember what my nipple looks like.
‘I’m an idiot,’ I tell him as soon as I’m close enough.
‘Okaaaay . . . hello and why?’
‘Because, I just . . . do you reckon I’m fair? I mean, not like fair fair,’ I say, holding my arms out to show that I don’t mean my skin. ‘But a fair person? Fair, in the way I think.’
‘Hmm, you like throwing the tough questions at me, don’t you, LK?’ He’s looking out to the river with his pretend-serious face on. Or possibly this is his ‘I can never look at your face again’ face.
‘Don’t make me laugh! I’m serious.’ I drop down onto the grass next to him. ‘Maybe I can be a bit irrational. Sometimes.’
‘Just sometimes?’ he says, nudging his side into mine. ‘Nah,
only kidding. I’m gonna say you do your best.’
I scrunch my face up at him. ‘I do my best? What, are you my science teacher now, or something?’
‘What I mean is,’ he says, bringing his eyes back to me, ‘you do your best with what’s in front of you. What you get given from, you know, other people. If someone acts like a shithead, you call them out on it. Like with this Daniel guy – yeah, I reckon you’re thinking about it maybe a bit too much and getting pretty fired up, but you’ve given it a fair judgement.’
I see his point with that one, but . . . ‘What about the Cedars? Am I fair to them?’
‘Mate, you’re not fair to yourself. That’s what you should be more worried about.’
There’s too much to be worried about. I want to tell him about sitting in the community hall. About how I couldn’t breathe, wondering what Sufia and the Cedars had planned. There wasn’t even a might in my mind, just a no-doubts-given assumption that they would do something. I remember Sufia’s offended face – it’s not one you forget easily.
‘Ah, Jordan, I’ve got to head off . . .’ We’re interrupted by a mousy voice, someone treading softly behind us. We turn our heads at the same time. It’s Olivia.
‘Oh, shit, sorry, Liv.’ Jordan gets up and I follow. ‘Totally forgot.’
They talk logistics of closing, opening, refills, deliveries, while I stand face to face with either a fresh opponent or our newest recruit. And I’m reminded of Imogen’s question from earlier: How are you going to tell her?
‘I bags not doing it,’ says George, when I direct the question at her now.
‘Well, you know I can’t.’ We’re facing each other at the wooden outdoor setting in her backyard and George’s face looks packed full of dread. ‘She knows how much I hate Daniel, so she’ll just say I’m making shit up so that she dumps him. I mean, I’d be offended if she thought I’d ever be that low. But you know . . . love. Makes you think and do dumb stuff and all that.’
‘Don’t say hate.’ George dislikes it when anyone uses that word. Too harsh and final, she says. Too lenient in Daniel’s case, I reckon.
‘Sorry, but it’s true. I hate him for everything he is and has done.’
George winces. ‘Yeah, well, let’s just figure out how to get Maddy away from him without pissing her off and making ourselves look like troublemakers.’
Really, there’s no amount of trouble we could make that would be worse than anything Daniel’s ever done. Nothing.
‘Would Maddy do the same for us?’ I accidentally ask the question aloud rather than keep it in my head.
George doesn’t seem shocked or outraged by my suggestion that Maddy would stay silent if she knew a boyfriend was cheating on either one of us. ‘Who knows? She’d find a way to make it our fault, probably. Or she’d act like she was staying out of it because it was none of her business. I don’t know, maybe she would – do the same for us – and we’re just the biggest bitches ever right now.’
Maddy has always had a way of making us feel like that. Even when we’re trying to do a good thing for her. But we’ve been friends for too long to ever say anything about it. Just another thing we’ve learned to accept.
‘Imogen can’t do it, either, you know. It has to be you, George.’
She plonks her forehead onto the wood. ‘Do I have to?’ she moans.
I nod, even though I know she can’t see it.
‘This sucks.’ She finally lifts her head for air, a hint of regret in her voice. ‘But okay. If I’ve gotta do it, I’ll do it.’
CHAPTER 15
‘So, all in all, it was a pretty boring affair,’ Imogen says as I wait behind her in the kiosk line the next day.
I’m so tired I can barely get my ears to function. I was thinking, pretty much all night, about whether George had told Maddy yet. Surely, she would send me a text, I kept reminding myself. Surely, I’d get an abusive phone call from Maddy, shooting the non-messenger just for the sake of it. But I woke up to neither of these things.
‘Sorry that you wasted your time going.’
Imogen clearly didn’t notice me leave her mum’s launch thingy prematurely and rather dramatically.
‘All good.’ I notice, ahead of us, the way Olivia and Jordan muck around with each other behind the counter. Laughing and nudging with in-house jokes. ‘I guess we were expecting something controversial and we didn’t get it, so we should be grateful for that?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Imogen scoffs. ‘She doesn’t deserve our gratitude, remember.’
Olivia takes Imogen’s order for a chicken-salad sandwich, and Jordan leans over the counter for mine. ‘Let me guess,’ he says, closing his eyes and holding a finger at each of his temples. ‘Sausage roll?’
‘Yep! How’d you know?’ What I really want to order, though, is a heaped serving of courage to tell Olivia what I think of her right now. And another spoonful, to reveal the truth about her to Maddy myself. Okay, make that three spoons: if I’m getting served all that courage I may as well use it to tell Jordan my secret feelings. Maybe.
He clicks his fingers and does a little jig to take the sausage roll out of the oven. Three dollars and fifty cents and a brief farewell from Imogen later, I’m heading back to our spot. To George and Maddy, who are chatting about bandeau versus triangle to avoid talking about anything real.
I quickly realise that I’d rather be talking about triangle bikini tops than having a conversation with the cousin who is coming my way.
‘Oi, what are you doing tomorrow night?’
I pause to try to remember if I’ve forgotten some super-exciting plans. Unfortunately, I have not.
‘Not a question,’ Sufia says, noticing the frown on my face. I’ve been ambushed on the edge of the sandbank, my sausage roll gripped in my fingers. ‘Cousin Amal’s laylieh. It’s at Tayta’s house because Mum says she’s too sick to get in a car to anyone else’s house. She’s not, but anyway. You’re coming.’
I didn’t even know our cousin Amal was getting married. Or that I was invited to any pre-wedding get-togethers. But this feels like more of an order, less of an invitation.
‘Um, okay.’
‘Good.’
But unremarkably, things feel less than good as Sufia strides off to where she came from.
‘Why does she always look so pissed about something?’ Maddy questions when I’m back at our towel-covered spot on the sand. She eyeballs Sufia all the way to the red gum.
‘I don’t know, resting Arab face, I guess.’ Despite having known Sufia for literally my whole entire life, I still can’t figure out her moods. I don’t think anyone ever will.
Maddy and George crack up. It’s been a while since any of us have laughed about anything. Especially together. But I’m soon reminded of the thing we’re not telling Maddy. The serious thing that she definitely won’t laugh about.
I catch George’s eye and she shakes her head at me. She tries to mouth something, but gets busted by Maddy, who’s finally quit staring at the Cedars.
‘What are you two doing?’
‘Nothing,’ George and I say at the same time.
‘Heaps subtle, you guys. Anyway, whatever.’ Maddy starts rolling up her towel. ‘I’ve got to go meet Daniel – sorry, that person who can’t be named – so you two can bitch all arvo if you want.’
‘So, it’s going well, then? Things with you and Daniel?’ asks George, breaking the rule she made us agree to.
Maddy is standing over us now, shoving her towel into the bag she’s slung onto her shoulder. ‘Yeah, but seeing as how you two don’t want to know about it, I’ll keep all the juicy details to myself.’
As she takes off, Imogen quickly moves to where Maddy had been standing and we’re now looking up at her raised eyebrows.
‘Tell me she’s stormed off because she knows?’
‘Ahhh . . .’
‘Well . . .’
‘Useless,’ she says, shaking her head, and departs just as hastily as she arrived,
not bothering to stick around for any explanations.
George waits the obligatory five-second count, until Imogen is well out of earshot. ‘This is killing me, L.’
‘Do you know what’s killing me, George? That Daniel is still walking around unpunished.’
I know that’s not George’s fault. Looking ahead to the river, instead of at George’s pained face, I know I should tell her that. But while she might think her part in all this is small, it’s actually so much bigger. And if she just gets it done, we’re one step closer to an unpunished Daniel no longer being a reality.
Sufia seems to have suffered no consequences for having a secret boyfriend. I look around the laylieh that’s kicked off in Tayta’s good living room – at pretty much every girl in the Karimi family giggling over a weird mash-up buffet of Chanel-logo cupcakes and Lebanese pizzas, and how Sufia is basically their queen. Everywhere she goes, no matter what she’s done, her loyal devotees never bat a false-lashed eyelid.
Looking at this scene, you’d think she was the one getting married.
‘I’m surprised it’s not Sufia who’s engaged,’ Mum had said on the drive over to tonight’s girls-only festivities.
‘Mum, she’s sixteen!’
‘Well, you know what they’re like . . . marrying girls off as soon as they get their period.’
Sometimes I’m convinced my mum is more dramatic than the Lebanese.
On that particularly gross note, she’d dropped me off two doors down from Tayta’s so she could avoid bumping into anyone I was related to. Strolling alongside our car was Sufia, who had Ricky P drop her eight doors down from Tayta’s so that they too wouldn’t cross paths with any of her relatives.
Now the centre of attention in a room full of people we are related to, Sufia’s embracing her other side. The family side. The one where she shows off how much she loves her culture and traditions. Except the evil eye, that is.
Half My Luck Page 12
