I Had Such Friends

by Meg Gatland-Veness

  “But I bet you didn’t ask your teachers to give you any work that you missed out on.”

  This is very true. But Martin did give me his book to copy from both times.

  “How are you feeling anyway?” I said.

  He brushed it off. “Fit as a fiddle.”

  “Have you told your parents yet?”

  He looked at his shuffling feet. “No, they don’t need to know.”

  “But if it’s getting worse maybe you need new medication?”

  “It’s just the heat.”

  I understood not telling his parents. Martin did it for good reasons, unlike me. He actually didn’t want to worry them. I just didn’t like talking to mine.

  At lunchtime, Martin and I went to the canteen. He had money for garlic bread so we were both going to get some. We were standing in the line like good boys. We were waiting our turn. Then these guys from our year pushed in front of us. They were the stupid ones. The ones who thought beating people up was a sport. We let them push in. Guys like us didn’t protest about things like that. If that was all that happened, it wouldn’t have been a bad day. But that wasn’t all that happened. They turned around and started talking to us. And we knew it was going to be bad.

  “Hey, hey, you two.”

  We tried not to meet their eyes, hoped the line would move fast enough that we wouldn’t have to respond.

  “Hey faggots!”

  We still didn’t respond, so one of them threw a piece of lettuce at Martin from his roll. It stuck to his cheek. I could see Martin trying to figure out whether it would work out better for him if he brushed it off or left it there.

  “Listen, my friend here doesn’t have enough money for his sausage roll.”

  They weren’t looking at me anymore; everyone at school knew I had no money. Martin shook his head.

  “I don’t have anything.”

  But that was stupid because he was obviously in the line for the canteen and therefore must have money on him. I knew this. He knew this. They knew this. We were just trying to buy more time.

  “Aww that’s too bad. You wouldn’t mind if we just checked your wallet there, just in case you missed any?”

  Martin shook his head again but they were already prying the wallet from his chubby fingers.

  “Would you look at that, guys? Guess it’s Martin’s shout, he’s got ten dollars in here.”

  Martin kept shaking his head and I kept pretending to be invisible. Don’t judge me. There was nothing I could have done. This was a common scenario. We had learnt very early on not to fight it. If they got what they wanted, they generally left us alone. Generally.

  “But I dunno, guys, seems to me like he knew all along that money was in there and maybe he just didn’t want to give it to us.”

  Martin shook his head again. I wondered where all the teachers were.

  One of the guys poked Martin in the stomach.

  “I guess you didn’t really need to eat any more did you, porky?”

  Martin shook his head again. It wasn’t his fault, you know. The asthma made it difficult for him to exercise.

  We should have got out of the line then. But Martin kept spare money in a secret section of his bag just in case such a thing happened, so there was still a chance we could get our garlic bread if the line would just move a little faster and they could buy their sausage rolls and go away.

  “That’s not very nice of you. My friend here could have starved.”

  “I’m sorry,” Martin said to his feet.

  “You know what, I don’t think you are.”

  He was right, Martin wasn’t sorry. He wanted that garlic bread.

  And he got it too. He just had to have his wallet thrown in a rubbish bin and I had to endure a little energy drink in my hair. I was a bit sticky for the rest of the day and Martin’s wallet had a little cream cheese on it, but the boys went away once they had their food and a teacher showed up to supervise the line.

  At the end of the day, I walked straight from class to the parking bay and got in Martin’s air-conditioned car. I didn’t go to the beach, I didn’t play football, I didn’t jump off any rocks. And even though I was safe in that car, I felt afraid. Because I suddenly realised that this was it now. I wasn’t going to get in that Toyota Corolla again. And I hated my mother for it, but she was right. I wasn’t going to see Peter Bridges at school because even if he did show up, which was unlikely, we weren’t in any of the same classes and he certainly wasn’t going to hang out with me at lunchtime when he had an entire football team to tackle. It was the end of our brief, strange friendship. My parents had succeeded and I was back to being that kid with only one friend. A friend with cream cheese on the inside of his pocket.

  12.

  I didn’t see Peter for at least two weeks. Martin’s mother picked me up every morning and every afternoon. Some afternoons we stopped to get McFlurries. I thought about Peter a lot. I wondered if he was waiting at the bus stop for me. Waiting to take me to another near-death experience.

  At least their car had air conditioning. Although, now that I think about it, I don’t really like air conditioning. I always feel like my eyeballs are going to dry up and fall out of my face.

  It was a Friday when I spoke to Annie Bower again. And you’re going to need to brace yourself, because you are never going to believe this, but Annie Bower asked me out on a date.

  Okay, okay, stop laughing, because it’s true. I had English last period and Annie was in my class. Martin took the day off school because he had a cold or some shit. Though, who the hell got a cold in the middle of summer, I don’t know. So I had to catch the bus to school while Martin’s mother was putting flannels on his head, making him hot tea and changing the channels on his TV because his arms were too weak to reach the remote.

  Peter didn’t meet me at the bus stop when I got to school. Of course there was no way for him to know that I would be there since I’d been dropped off at the main entrance every day for weeks. I’d seen him around here and there, but he hardly ever spoke to me at school. Sometimes he would give me a little nod of recognition, but that was all. He was obviously embarrassed that we were friends and he didn’t want anyone to know that he hung out with someone like me. Which again posed the question of just what the hell he was doing with me in the first place.

  Anyway, it was probably a good thing that Peter didn’t meet me at the bus stop that morning because if he had, I wouldn’t have been in English that day. And if I hadn’t been in English, then frickin’ Paul wouldn’t have thrown the contents of my pencil case around the room when our teacher left a bit early to get to lunch duty on time, trusting us to turn off the lights and push in our chairs all by ourselves. And if Paul hadn’t thrown my pencils around the room, then Annie Bower wouldn’t have stayed behind to help me pick them up. And that was beautiful in itself.

  It had been at least two months since Charlie Parker died, and Annie didn’t cry all the time anymore.

  Her friends left, not having noticed me crawling around on the floor retrieving pencil sharpeners and erasers. Most people didn’t notice me. And, for a little while, I didn’t even realise that Annie had stayed because I was busy reaching under the teacher’s desk to try and retrieve my glue stick. And then I saw her. She was crawling around on her hands and knees just like me. I almost ran straight into her face.

  “Oh, hi Annie!” I said, a little too loudly seeing as she was only inches away from my face.

  She didn’t smile, but I didn’t expect her to.

  “Hey Hamish,” she said, and I almost died hearing her say my name.

  She handed me my ruler. It was one I could bend in half so I could fit it in my pencil case.

  “Paul’s a dick,” she said, and the word sounded so funny coming out of her mouth. It was like a fire-breathing dragon coming out of a tiny, blue robin’s egg.

  Then came the moment, the romantic-movie moment, the breath-catching, heart-pounding moment when Annie and I both reached for the
sharpener, and for just an instant our hands touched. She, of course, pulled back immediately. I guess romantic-movie moments didn’t really happen to boys like me.

  She stood up and sat on one of the desks. I spotted one of my red pens in the corner, by the door, but I left it there and sat opposite her.

  “So,” she said, “have you finished the essay due tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, you?”

  “Yeah, I finished it a week ago,” she said.

  “Me too!” Why the hell did I tell her that?

  She almost smiled. I wondered if I was supposed to offer a conversation starter now.

  “Doing anything fun tonight?” I asked.

  “No, I think we have family coming for dinner,” she said. “I was going to try and find something else to do.”

  “That bad, are they?” I asked, trying to make a little bit of a joke.

  “Are you doing anything tonight?”

  “No, not really,” I said, full of hope.

  “Want to see a movie or something?”

  “Yeah sure,” I said, and then I was suddenly hit by the enormity of what Annie had just asked me. And I sat there with my mouth open like a fucking fish.

  “Okay, well, want to meet in town at seven?”

  I nodded meekly.

  She got up and left. I finished packing my bag and followed her out the door. I picked up the red pen on my way out.

  I caught up with Annie. She didn’t have a backpack like me. She carried a handbag and a folder for all her books. That’s what all the popular girls did. And the folder was covered in pictures of celebrities and cute animals.

  “Sorry, so, seven at the movies?” I said, trying to sound casual.

  “Yep,” she said before she ran off to the front gate where a car full of her friends was waiting for her. I wondered if I would ever have enough friends to fill a car. Even if I did, I doubted they would have waited that long for me.

  I walked to the bus stop alone and in awe. My life had completely and totally fallen from my hands and slipped away to god knows where. I had no idea what was going on. Part of me still thought it was all someone’s idea of a sick joke and soon they would turn the cameras off and laugh at me for falling for it.

  At the bus stop, there were some guys from the year below playing the hold-on-to-the-metal-pole-that’s-been-in-the-sun-all-day game. They had to hold onto it as long as they could and the first to let go lost. No one ever challenged me to that game, but I wasn’t complaining. You should have seen the blisters they got on their hands from that hot pole. They were fucking crazy.

  I thought about what Annie might be doing. Sitting in the back of a car full of her friends. They were probably listening to music and singing together, they probably had the windows open and all their hair would be blowing around in the wind. One of them would have her feet up on the dashboard and the driver would be trying to dance and control the car at the same time. They might have stopped to get slushies and they were probably sharing them so they could all try the different flavours. They probably dropped the first girl off at her house and sang to her out the window. She would wave at the car as it drove away and she would wish that her house wasn’t the first on the route because it meant she missed out on being in the car for longer. They probably saw some guys walking to the beach in their wetsuits and honked the horn at them and whistled as they drove past. Annie probably wasn’t even remotely thinking about me.

  It wasn’t until I was on the bus, sitting by myself at the front, that I realised. I was still grounded.

  Shit.

  My first ever date and I wouldn’t be able to go. Figures.

  I walked in the front door and my mother was sewing a button back onto one of my school shirts. I sat down next to her.

  “Mum?” I said.

  “Yes, petal,” she replied, without looking up from her needle. She used to call Paige ‘petal’ all the time and Paige would call Mum ‘middle bit’ because she didn’t know what the middle of the flower was called without the petals on it. I wasn’t cute enough to get away with something like that.

  “I was wondering if I could, maybe, go out tonight.”

  She looked at me. There had never been a deadline put on my grounding so I thought I was in with a small chance.

  “And where, pray tell, do you wish to go?”

  “Well, to the cinema.”

  “Who with?”

  “Annie Bower.” I cleared my throat. I didn’t recall ever saying anything so ridiculous in my life.

  “What? A girl? You want to go out with a girl?” She was beaming.

  “Yes, to the cinema, if that’s okay with you?”

  “How do I know you’re not lying again?”

  “Mum, be serious, do you think I would invent a story as ridiculous as this?”

  She smiled. “Well, if your father says it’s all right then you can go, but come straight home after the movie, okay?”

  I hugged her. “You’re the best, Mum!”

  I went outside to find my dad. I knew he would be easier to convince than my mother. He was fixing our back fence when I found him.

  I asked him almost the same thing, but his response was a bit different.

  “Annie Bower? As in the Annie Bower? The Annie Bower who was in the school play last year? Annie Bower who was Cinderella?”

  “Yes Dad, that Annie Bower is going to the movies with me.”

  He patted me on the back. “I’m proud of you, son. She’s a beauty.”

  “Oh, by the way, could I borrow money for the tickets?”

  “Yeah, all right mate, get it out of my wallet.”

  I ran back inside and was about to start getting ready when the phone rang.

  “Can you get that, Hamish?” my mum called. I think she had just stabbed herself with the needle. She was sucking on her thumb.

  So I answered the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey Hamish, want to hang out tonight?” It was Peter.

  “Oh, sorry I can’t Peter. I, um, I have a date.” It sounded so silly.

  I had shocked him. I could tell because there was absolute silence on the other end of the phone.

  Finally he spoke. “Who with?”

  “You will never believe this, but it’s with Annie, as in Annie Bower.”

  After what seemed like a whole minute he said, “Well, have fun, mate” and he hung up on me.

  I thought he would have laughed, or congratulated me on snaring the prettiest girl in the school, like a regular friend would, or do something; anything. But he didn’t. Even I wanted to laugh. It was pretty amusing, I admit, that someone like Annie Bower was going out with someone like me. I realised then, more than ever, that I didn’t know Peter at all.

  I walked upstairs and looked in the mirror. What to wear on this date wasn’t nearly as concerning as what I was going to talk about. Either way I was screwed.

  At least seeing a movie meant I wasn’t expected to make too much conversation.

  It was at least thirty-five degrees that evening and the thought of wearing anything other than board shorts and a T-shirt made me sweat. But this was a date, or at least kind of a date, and I had never been on a date before, so I pulled on my jeans. I couldn’t comprehend wearing shoes so thongs had to do and a plain white T-shirt seemed pretty safe. My least favourite thing about wearing T-shirts was that they were loose around my arms.

  I walked into town. I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but we didn’t have a car. My dad did have a ute that he used to take our crops to town but I wasn’t supposed to take it out except for emergencies. The gear shift was similar to Excalibur in the Stone. Also, at that moment in time, it was full of hay bales. Not very sexy.

  I had to leave home at six to get there in time. My legs were on fire when I arrived and luckily I had thought to take deodorant with me in my shoulder bag. Otherwise I would have been in trouble. And by shoulder bag I don’t mean a handbag, I mean the black bag that I carried my camera in. The
re was nothing I could do about the sweat patch on my back. My shirt was clinging to my skin. I would just have to stand facing Annie all night, but that was fine, I could deal with that.

  She was ten minutes late, even though she lived at least half an hour’s walk closer to town than I did. She had those brown sandals on again and a singlet and denim shorts. She looked beautiful.

  “Hey,” she said, as she approached.

  “Hey, how hot is it?”

  “About ten hots,” she replied. “You must be dying, why did you wear jeans?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m an idiot.”

  “It was so hot at my house that the photographs on my pin-board were all curling over in the corners.”

  I’m going to admit that I was very jealous that Annie had enough friends to put photos of them on a pin-board. If I’d put photos of all my friends on a pin-board, it would’ve just been one photo of Martin. And that would have been weird.

  Also, as you know, my mum didn’t like me sticking things to my walls because it peeled the paint off.

  We walked into the cinema. It was really small; there were only two screens and it always smelt kind of damp and musty in there. It actually used to be one screen but they decided to split it in half so they could show two movies at once. The wall they built between the two rooms wasn’t great since you could always kind of hear the movie playing next door.

  The two movies showing were a vampire movie and a romance. Annie didn’t seem keen on either of them and I didn’t blame her. I certainly didn’t want to sit through a vampire movie, and she probably didn’t want to end up crying about her dead boyfriend in some soppy romance.

  “Want to do something else instead?” she asked, with her face all crinkled up.

  “Sure, I don’t mind.”

  So we went back outside. Walking into the heat was like walking through water. The air was thick and heavy.

  “We could go for ice cream?” she said.

  That was a cute idea. Something that suited Annie Bower. I also liked that she wasn’t on a diet. Why do skinny girls always go on diets?

  We walked to the ice cream place and I tried desperately to think of something witty to say. “How was your day?” I said. Nailed it.