“Yeah. Mind if I sit with you?”
“Sure,” I said as he sat down.
“I mean sure I mind,” I said seriously.
He looked confused and started to stand up again.
“I’m kidding,” I said. I’d never had a way with words.
I never would have chosen Martin as a friend, but I was happy that day when we sat together for the first time, and I think it was the first time I had been happy all year. Even if he was the only kid in the school who got picked on more than me, I liked him. And I stupidly thought that once there were two of us, we would be in less danger. I was obviously wrong there. But from that day on, we always sat together. I guess he didn’t have any friends before me either.
He got me a computer game for my birthday that year and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that we didn’t have a computer. For weeks I was telling him about reaching high scores and beating levels. He didn’t have the heart to tell me that it wasn’t that kind of game. It was just car racing. That little charade went on for far too long. But I guess that showed what good friends we were.
He didn’t buy me any presents after that because I explained to him that I didn’t get pocket money and therefore couldn’t afford to buy him anything back. He didn’t understand at first, and said he didn’t mind if I didn’t buy him anything because his parents bought him everything he wanted. But I hated the feeling I owed people things.
Anyway, five years later, we were thick as mud. I mean… we didn’t really ever talk about anything serious. We mainly played video games. When he came to my house, we didn’t know what to do. He eventually started bringing his laptop so we could watch movies on my veranda. Martin liked action films. Before then, we had to play board games and unfortunately my family only had two of them. It didn’t take long to get sick of Scattergories and Mousetrap.
People used to have fun at my house. When I was in kindy and I had friends, they would come over and we’d swing on the Hills hoist and run around in the sprinklers. If I swung on the Hills hoist now, it would probably still hold me. But Martin is another story.
At his house, his mother always brought us weird health foods and we sat on the floor in front of a screen shooting or racing things. I’m not going to lie and say that I had a great time because I didn’t. In fact, a lot of the time I would have preferred to be at home reading a book or out taking photographs. But Martin was happy. And that was good because I think he deserved to enjoy himself at home when he had such a terrible time at school.
Martin called me his best friend, but I always found that a little false. Surely if you only had one friend they couldn’t be your best friend.
Last period was maths. Martin and I were both doing Advanced Maths but he was way better at it than me. I managed to come second in every test, but he always topped the class. Martin wanted to design video games when he left school, and to do that he needed to be ace at maths. His parents really wanted him to be a dentist or a doctor. He was smart enough. I mean, back then he was doing the whole rebellious teen thing but I always knew he would eventually submit, I could tell. And yes, Martin’s way of rebelling was disagreeing over which university course to take.
Martin always had a much better relationship with his parents than I did. They actually talked to each other at the dinner table and they all went out together on the weekends. His big sister had just finished her third year of Medicine. She had given in. Martin told me she used to want to be a fashion designer. I had never really spoken to his sister – she was always in her room listening to goth music and studying. She was into thick, dark mascara and black nail polish and lipstick. She used to dress really crazy too.
Now she lives in Sydney and I hear her wardrobe is entirely made up of pastels. That makes me sad. I wonder if she is a totally different person now or if that moody emo chick is still inside her mauve cardigans.
She came back over Easter one year and I got to speak to her briefly. Martin’s parents still had an Easter egg hunt every year and, while Martin was crawling under bushes and looking under flower pots, I climbed a tree. At first it was because I saw an egg up there that no one else had. Then it became very apparent to me that I couldn’t get back down. After about a minute, Martin’s sister – her name was Katie, by the way – climbed up and joined me. She was wearing jeans and a pink button-up shirt with a pair of matching pink slip-on shoes. She was very pretty too, I might not have mentioned that, but she had a perfect face. She looked like a model.
She seemed very experienced at climbing that tree. In fact, I would wager she had climbed it hundreds of times. Probably to get away from Martin. Poor kid couldn’t climb a tree to save his life. She took out a cigarette and lit it before she spoke to me. She offered me one but I refused.
“Aren’t you going to be a doctor?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Then shouldn’t you not be smoking?”
“Probably.”
She was always a little bit surly.
“I hate this fucking Easter egg hunt,” she said, tapping the cigarette ash onto a nearby Easter egg. “I don’t even eat chocolate.”
Oh yeah, Katie was also a vegan.
“The kids enjoy it,” I said. “And Martin, of course.” Martin had, at that moment, discovered there were eggs inside the pockets of all the washing hanging on the Hills hoist. Suffice to say, he was feeling quite triumphant.
She laughed. “I guess so.”
I was stuck in a very awkward position. I had hardly ever spoken to the girl and now I was trapped in a tree with her. I had never been trapped in a tree with a girl before.
“So how’s Martin doing?” she asked and I realised this was the first time she sounded friendly.
“Oh, you know, he’s doing great. He’s coming first in our Maths class…”
“I don’t mean how is he going at school, Jesus, I hear that from my parents every day. I mean how is he going, you know, at life?”
“Oh, well, as good as can be expected I suppose.”
“Does he still get picked on?”
I wasn’t sure how she knew. Martin never confided in anyone as far as I knew. It was possible that she just worked it out by looking at Martin and the things he was into. It wasn’t that hard to put two and two together.
“Yeah,” I said. I could have lied to her, but she wasn’t his mother.
“That’s no good,” she said, putting the cigarette out on the tree and dropping it onto the grass. “But it will get better.”
“Will it?” I didn’t mean to ask it, and I sure wasn’t asking about Martin.
“Yeah, sure. Uni is totally different to high school.”
That made me smile. Less than a year and I would never have to go back to that school. I would have a whole new life and find other people like me. Quiet Photographers Who Hate Farming – that could be the name of our club.
She jumped down from her branch. “So, need a hand getting down?”
I could have lied, but who was I kidding – I could have spent the rest of my life in that tree.
“That would be very kind of you.”
After Maths, I caught the bus home. There was no Toyota Corolla parked in the bus bay.
3.
I woke on Wednesday with a huge headache. It felt like someone had a pair of shears in there and was cutting wires willy-nilly. But I didn’t tell my mother because I wanted to go to school. And I know that sounds pretty crazy, but I thought that maybe Peter would be there and maybe he would say “Hey Hamish” in a casual, offhand way, and maybe some of those bullies in my year would hear him and think, Why is Peter Bridges talking to that kid? Maybe he’s not such a loser after all. And then maybe they would think they should stop picking on me because Peter might beat them up if they didn’t. And maybe I would start to get a rep at school, as the rebel who Peter chose to be his friend. Also, I never told my mother anything, anyway. So after I had a cold shower, I put on my freshly ironed school shirt, had a couple of painkillers an
d orange juice for breakfast and jumped on the bus for school. It was so hot that I was having at least two cold showers a day. Not that it helped much.
I did see Peter that day, but it wasn’t at school and he didn’t say hi to me in front of those bullies in my year. Instead, he was leaning on the hood of his car when I got off the bus at the school gate. He was wearing the same jeans and hoodie from the other day and smoking another cigarette. When he saw me, he gave me a little nod, flicked his cigarette and got in the car.
I was stuck. Was it a get-in-the-car nod? Or was it just a hello-Hamish nod? Did he want me to wag school with him? And if he did, was that something I could ever do? I’d never even skipped a class before; I was always too terrified of getting in trouble. I stood there on the curb debating with myself for a good minute or so. He didn’t drive away. I eventually decided What the hell, walked over to his car and got in. He smiled at me.
“I didn’t think you’d come. Thought wagging school might be against your moral code,” he said against the roar of the engine.
“Yeah well, I wasn’t sure, but you only live once, right?” I said, putting my seatbelt on.
“Something like that.”
He offered me a cigarette but I shook my head. The thought of smoking terrified me.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked.
“Plan? What are you, in the army? Let’s just drive around and see where we end up.”
“Sounds good to me, Captain.”
God I was so frickin’ cutesy pie, I almost bloody saluted him.
First, we went to the McDonald’s drive-through and Peter picked up a cheeseburger for breakfast. He ate it with his right hand and drove with his left. He offered to buy me something but I declined. I felt kind of queasy, possibly from the smoke in the car, and my headache had only slightly ebbed.
We drove to the beach. I should have known that was where we were going. But I didn’t know back then. Back then, I didn’t know him at all.
When we got out of the car, I left my bag and my shoes behind but I still had my school uniform on.
“Take your shirt off,” Peter said to me as he got out of the car. “You look too much like a school kid.”
“I am a school kid,” I said, trying to sound like I was making a joke when I was really secretly panicking. I couldn’t take off my shirt in front of Peter. He was built, I mean really built, and me, well… I was me. I looked like Captain America before he becomes Captain America. In fact, I looked like the kid Captain America could beat up before he becomes Captain America.
“Yeah, but if someone sees you looking like that they’ll call the cops or call the school and say you’re wagging,” he said.
“Oh.” He was right. And I was shitting myself. What you don’t understand is that I was the guy who got changed in the toilet cubicle at school so the other boys wouldn’t see.
But I took the shirt off. And I waited for the laughter, for the smirk, for the “Jesus, shield my eyes, it’s so bright.”
But nothing. In fact, he wasn’t even looking at me.
Then, panic number two: was I going to make a total fool of myself when Peter got that football out again? But the gods were on my side – he didn’t even open the boot. He locked the door, tucked the key under the car somewhere and we walked down to the water.
Were we going to swim? In my school shorts? How would I explain that to my mother?
But no, we walked along the sand to the rocks. I tried to patch up the silence with words, but I was terrified of saying something nerdy, especially after I’d called him “Captain.” I wanted to ask him how he never got caught doing these things. Why the school hadn’t expelled him. Why his parents hadn’t grounded him.
We walked with our feet in the water.
“Where are we going?” I asked as Peter clambered up onto the rock shelf. It did not look at all safe and it was awfully far away from the lifeguard tower.
“There’s a place around here where you can jump straight off into the water,” he said and offered me his hand.
Definitely didn’t sound safe. Actually it sounded like the kind of thing kids like me died doing.
I took his hand.
He pulled me up onto the shelf. God he was strong. I mean, yeah I was a shrimp, but he lifted me with one arm. One frickin’ arm. I probably couldn’t have even lifted his arm.
He walked off along the platform and I followed like a little puppy, skipping about to avoid stepping on any barnacles. I looked up at Peter, thinking he would probably be stepping on them without even thinking about it. But he wasn’t. He was skipping about just like me. I liked that, it made me smile. Peter Bridges may have been tougher and stronger and bigger than me, but he still had to skip to avoid stepping on the barnacles. And that was nice.
“I came here once with my dad,” I said, filling the air with words to hide my fear. “We looked at starfish in the rock pools.”
It was funny, that, because I had totally forgotten that memory until we climbed up onto those rocks. My sister had been there too, but I didn’t mention that. Another day.
He didn’t respond to my story. He probably thought looking at starfish was lame compared to death-defying leaps off a rock face.
I followed him a little further until we reached the cliff face. I was a little bit terrified, I’m not going to lie. The water was swirling around like it was in a food processor.
“You can’t be serious?” I said, staring at the whirlpool of terror beneath us.
“Come on, Hamish,” he said, backing up. “Don’t be a wuss.”
Then he ran. And he jumped. And he fell. He fell into the swirling vortex below. I almost squealed like a little girl. He could have definitely died doing that. There were rocks everywhere. Sharp, jagged rocks. Death rocks.
I almost had a heart attack until I saw his head surface and he took a huge gulp of air, shaking the water out of his hair.
“See,” he yelled. “Nothing to it.”
I did not want to do that. I stood perfectly still. He couldn’t force me to do it. I would just tell him about my headache and he would drive me back to school. We might be able to make it in time for period two. I had Photography period two. I loved Photography.
Peter was climbing back up to the platform.
“So,” he said. “You going in?”
“I, um, I don’t think I really want to.”
I took another look over the edge. The water was dark blue, it looked very deep, I couldn’t see the bottom and there was a terrible gurgling sound as the water got pulled under the rock platform and sucked back out to sea. I did not want to be in that water at all.
But then Peter nudged me ever so slightly and I toppled into the water. This wasn’t as impressive as it sounds. A three-year-old blowing out his birthday candles could knock me over.
There was a very brief moment of shock and terror as I fell – I really hope I didn’t scream – and then the numbing cold of the water. My headache was instantly back as my head went under and I swallowed a whole lot of water. Then I kicked my tiny legs and tried to get to the surface. I started to panic. Where was the sky? I couldn’t see a thing except bubbles all around me and stupidly I hadn’t taken a deep breath as I fell. My body was tumbling around inside the currents like I was a little goldfish, except that goldfish could breathe underwater and I definitely couldn’t.
When I finally found the surface and emerged from the waves, I found myself face to face with a rock. Another wave washed over my head and the water made my eyes sting. It must have looked like I was crying.
“Climb up, fool!” Peter was yelling at me.
So I grabbed onto the rock with both hands. It was slipperier than a fish. My head went back under the water again and I was sure I was going to die. The water was churning around like a tornado.
“How?” I coughed back. I had swallowed so much sea water that my stomach felt like a washing machine.
I heard a splash behind me and realised Peter had jumped back
in. In a second he was beside me. I couldn’t keep my head above the water because I didn’t grab onto him. I just kept drowning. It was very embarrassing. And funny how I was worried about looking like a wimp even in a situation where I might have died.
“Here,” he said, grabbing onto hidden crevices in the rock and hauling himself up. “Just follow me, it’s easy.”
It was not easy. In fact, it was very difficult, and painful. I cut up one of my hands pretty badly when I grabbed what turned out to be the wrong spot and I cut open my foot on a barnacle. It stung like crazy in the salt water.
Peter helped me over the edge and I lay there shivering.
“Maybe this wasn’t the best idea,” he said, looking at the blood coming from my foot and my hand.
“No, it was fun,” I said, and he laughed.
I guessed this was the sort of thing the football team did all the time. Peter would probably come here with his mates and they would all jump off together. They would push each other in and laugh, and have a competition to see who could jump the furthest, or who could stay under the longest and no one would freak out or nearly drown themselves. Again, I wondered why on earth Peter Bridges was hanging out with someone like me.
I suppose you know by now that I had never done anything like that before. Anything really dangerous. Life-threateningly dangerous. I was, quite frankly, a scaredy-cat. I can’t believe I ever swung off that rope into Dane’s billabong. I guess, as a kid, I didn’t realise how unsafe it was. Back then, I thought I was invincible. Back then, I didn’t realise children could die.
I lay on the rock in the sun for a while trying to dry my shorts. My head felt awful. Peter jumped in a few more times and each time I waited to hear that gulp of air to let me know he hadn’t hit some awful jagged rock and killed himself. Not only would that be shithouse, but there was no way I could have possibly pulled his body back out of the water. He would have had to float there until a helicopter showed up.
Eventually he must have got bored of jumping by himself. So he came and sat beside me. I sat up and tried to look less pathetic, but instantly regretted it. My head actually felt like it might fall off.
I Had Such Friends Page 3
