I Had Such Friends

by Meg Gatland-Veness

  When we got back to the car, I was just building up the courage to ask Peter if he would mind posing when he suggested it himself.

  “What about a photo of my ugly mug?”

  “Really?”

  But he was already in the car.

  “Not today though,” he said and I risked a look at his dented face. It hadn’t improved.

  “Next time,” I said. “Maybe on the beach, with the football.”

  “Cool.”

  He drove me home and I had him drop me on the highway again. He didn’t seem offended, but now that I think about it, he never seemed offended by anything.

  My parents hadn’t even found the note. It was still sitting on the bench under a tumbler. I ripped it up and threw it in the bin. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

  I spent the afternoon washing the sand out of my hair and telling myself that it was too early to call Annie Bower and tell her that I loved her.

  14.

  A fortnight since my date with Annie Bower and it was last period English on a Friday again. Martin was sitting next to me, as per usual, humming some terrible pop song, also as per usual; fun times with Martin Archer. Annie was sitting over the other side of the room with a bunch of girls, as per usual, and she would look at me every so often just long enough to catch my eye. That was certainly not usual. In fact, it was very unusual. We had not spoken since the date. However, I had managed to muster the courage to smile at her a couple of times. And the best part was, she had started to smile back.

  The bell rang and almost everyone sprang out of their seats before our teacher had even finished her sentence.

  Martin and I always waited to be dismissed.

  When we walked out of the room, I noticed Annie had stopped in the hallway to read something on the noticeboard. And I thought suddenly that she might be waiting to talk to me. So I stopped walking about three metres away from her. Martin stopped too.

  “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, Martin,” I said, hoping he would catch the hint and leave me alone.

  “What do you mean? Aren’t you getting a lift with me?”

  Martin was never very good at picking up on hints.

  “No, I’m going to catch the bus home, my parents have ungrounded me.”

  That wasn’t totally a lie. I mean, they had let me go on a date with Annie, so surely I could be trusted to catch the bus again.

  “But Hamish, we can get McFlurries!”

  I tried to laugh, to show Annie that we were joking and that McFlurries weren’t our main source of enjoyment, but I could see that she was smiling.

  “Another time,” I said, giving him a good shove. He looked a bit upset but I didn’t have time to feel guilty.

  I took a few steps until I was next to Annie and tried to read the noticeboard. I say tried because I was very distracted.

  “You were grounded?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to sound tough. I even shrugged my shoulders and put my hands in my pockets.

  “What did you do?”

  “Wagged school,” I said, casually.

  “I must say that I am shocked,” she said in a funny, posh English accent.

  “Yeah, well, it’s true, I swear. Peter and I went to the beach.”

  I tried to slip it in to the conversation casually; I didn’t even say his last name, because I wanted desperately for her to know that Peter Bridges was my friend and that I wasn’t a total dipstick.

  “Peter Bridges?”

  “Yep,” I said, and we started to walk together. Just like that.

  She nodded. I wanted so badly to know what she was thinking. Was she impressed? Did she think I was a rebel now? Maybe I should have told her we wagged twice.

  “Would you like to come to my house for dinner tonight?” she asked suddenly.

  “Sure,” I said, hiding my bewilderment terribly. “What time should I come over?”

  Thinking back, I don’t know how I managed to be so calm. The Hamish inside me had ripped off his shirt and was swinging from the nearest tree.

  “Well, you can come straight from school if you like,” she said.

  “Um, I might just go home and change first,” I said, self-conscious about my sweat-soaked school shirt. “But I’ll come straight after that.”

  “Okay sure, see you then,” she said and she walked away from me. Her school skirt was very short and she always wore make-up to school, but I knew that Annie wasn’t like those other girls. Obviously she wasn’t like those other girls because she had just asked me out on a second date. A family dinner counted as a date, didn’t it? But Annie had never made fun of me, not ever. I noticed the car of girls waiting for her, but she waved them away. I saw her cross the road and start to walk home. I wondered if she wanted me to walk with her, but I thought that was probably the stupidest thought I had ever had.

  So I caught the bus home. Peter’s car didn’t meet me at the bus stop that day, but I think that was because football training was on. Maybe he’d actually gone for once. The bus ride home seemed to take hours. When I got home, I asked my mum if it was okay for me to go to Annie’s house for dinner and she gave me a kiss on the forehead and said, “Of course, tell her hi from us.”

  I wasn’t sure if this dinner was meant to be formal but I couldn’t fathom wearing jeans again. So board shorts and a T-shirt had to suffice. And thongs of course. As I walked, I wished I had thought to put suncream on. It was three in the afternoon but still, my toes were getting sunburnt and the tar on the road was melting and sticking to the bottom of my thongs.

  Annie’s house was cute. It was little and white with a picket fence and a yellow front door. Her mother answered, still in her work clothes.

  “You must be Hamish,” she said, shaking my hand. She had one firm grip. I generally found people had firm grips. I think perhaps I just had a very weak grip.

  Annie came to the door. She was in a floral dress and had bare feet. I kicked my thongs off and left them on the veranda.

  Inside, the house was cluttered. There seemed to be too much furniture and too many bookcases and picture frames and photographs. But I liked it. I preferred their homely clutter to the stark cleanliness of Martin’s house or the dusty bareness of mine. She led me through to her bedroom. It was weird seeing her life from the inside. It was also unbelievable that I was in Annie Bower’s bedroom at all. It kind of felt like trespassing. Like going out of bounds at school. When I was in primary school, we used to play Home 44 at lunchtime, and the fastest path to home was around the Science demountables, but to run around there was against the school rules. And I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t risk being caught by a teacher and getting in trouble. I never won those games.

  Annie’s bedroom was pretty. That was the best word I could use to describe it. There were posters on the walls from old Broadway musicals and her curtains were made of a floral fabric that probably looked similar to what the upholstery on our sofa had looked like thirty years ago when my mum bought it. Her room was quite tidy, not pristine, but tidy, like everything had its place. She had a bookshelf full of hardcovers. I was jealous of that. She had a few teddy bears on a cane chair in the corner; they could only be described as well loved. Her bed was one of those large single beds that almost has room for two people and it had one of those canopy things hanging over it. The bed was made, but it was lumpy, which made me think she had just thrown the covers over the top and her sheets were still all bunched up underneath.

  She also had a huge mirror and dressing table situation covered in an almost purposefully stereotypical, girly array of make-up, jewellery and nail polish. I didn’t see any photos of Charlie anywhere, and I wondered if she’d hidden them for my benefit, so I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable, or whether they just made her too sad. But then I noticed one, stuck into the side of her mirror. It was an old-fashioned Polaroid photo of Charlie, Annie and Peter. It was crooked as she had obviously taken it herself. I didn’t realise Annie and Peter were friends, but I gu
ess they had someone important in common. Peter had his arm draped over Annie’s shoulder and he was smiling. I’d never seen him smile like that.

  She sat down on the end of the bed. I stood awkwardly for a moment wondering if I should sit next to her and ended up trying to casually lean against her built-in cupboard door. It was a sliding door. Not the best idea. But I tried to make my slow lean to the side as the door moved beneath me look cool.

  “So, I think we’re having curry for dinner, is that okay?” she asked, mildly amused by my awkwardness.

  My family were a bit meat-and-three-veg inclined and curry was something that seldom graced the presence of our dining table. And by seldom, I of course mean never.

  “Sure, I love curry,” I said, and then, still feeling awkward, I moved to look through her books.

  I was very thankful to find that they were all hardcover classics like Dickens and Austen. I also found the Polaroid camera that she must have used to take the photo on her dresser. It was a proper vintage one. I’d never used a Polaroid before, but the thought of an instantly developing photo was super exciting.

  “You can borrow it sometime if you like,” she said, sensing my jealousy as it emerged from my very pores.

  “Really?”

  “Of course, as long as you give it back. I am pedantic about lending people things. You should consider yourself very lucky.”

  “I really do,” I said.

  And I did.

  She then introduced me to her hermit crab, Clyde, and gave me a tour of the house. I could smell the curry cooking. It smelt funny. I didn’t think I was going to like it.

  We sat on the floor in the living room for a while watching the news with her dad. I think he was trying to size me up. He kept asking my opinion on the news of the day and I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t really pay much attention to current affairs. To be honest though, I hadn’t watched TV in a very long time. Annie’s dad was short, shorter than her mother, and his hair was starting to turn grey; that must have sucked. Her mother worked as a cook in an old people’s home and her dad was a builder. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much call for builders around where we lived; everyone tried to do it themselves. He had calloused hands and a few skin cancer scars.

  Annie got called away to help set the table and I tried to think of things to say.

  “So, did you build this house yourself?”

  “Yeah, my old man helped a bit, but most of it was me. I’m especially proud of the architraves.” He gestured in a very general way.

  I had no idea what an architrave was.

  At the dinner table, I sat next to Annie. She poured me a glass of water. She served me some rice and curry. It was reddish in colour and had chicken and vegetables in it. I must have been pulling a face.

  “Don’t worry if you don’t like it,” her mother said, smiling.

  So I tried it. I was expecting it to be really spicy but it was surprisingly not that bad. I wished I were more adventurous when it came to trying new food but I couldn’t help the fact that I was basically restricted to whatever Dad happened to be growing on the farm.

  I didn’t have seconds. I couldn’t work out if it was rude to ask for more or rude not to, so I opted for the latter. Probably wrong.

  After dinner, Annie washed up while I dried and her parents went to sit outside and do a crossword. How cute was that?

  Annie filled the sink with bubbles and her dad got mad at her because he said it made the glasses taste like soap.

  We sat together on the couch. Not touching, but close enough to touch, if we wanted to. I didn’t think she really wanted to, but I didn’t really blame her.

  “So, how’s school? You understand this Romanticism stuff?” she said.

  “Yeah, not bad. I like the poems, they’re easier to write about than a whole novel,” I replied.

  “Yeah, I agree, you can focus on the tiny details.”

  “What do you think you’ll do at uni?” I asked.

  “I really want to be a writer but I guess I better get a job first. Probably teaching.”

  “Do you work now?”

  “A little, just babysitting here and there, but there’s not much money in it.”

  “What will you do after school?”

  “I’m thinking of working with Mum over the summer. Cooking giant vats of watery soup.”

  It sounded better than farming. But so did most things, including death.

  She turned on the TV and we watched a show about the RSPCA. There was a dog that had to be put down and we both cried. Not in a this-reminds-me-of-the-person-I-knew-who-died way, just in a genuinely I-wish-people-wouldn’t-treat-animals-like-that way. It was a beautiful moment. I didn’t feel like a wuss at all.

  “Want any dessert?” she asked.

  “Sure.” I never got dessert at home, not even on my birthday.

  We had vanilla ice cream with hundreds and thousands. Both home brand, but infinitely better than nothing.

  After we filled our bowls with warm water and left them in the sink, we went back to Annie’s room. I heard her parents come inside, complaining about the mozzies.

  We sat on the bed. Together. I was sitting on Annie Bower’s bed and she was also on the bed. And she was awake, so it wasn’t like I was a creepy stalker who had climbed in her window in the night. No; she had invited me to sit on her bed next to her.

  I was terrified.

  What if this was the moment when we were supposed to make out? And this wasn’t a girl who was clueless like me, she had experience. I hated to think about how much, but she certainly had kissing experience and my qualifications in that category were zero. Not even as a kid. I never played kiss and catch in primary school. I was a chicken.

  She lay back across the bed. I contemplated for too long and finally copied her. She was looking at the ceiling. I tried to do the same but that face of hers was so distracting.

  Even in the light of dusk, I could tell that the ceiling was covered in those glow-in-the-dark stars. I wanted to stay until dark so I could see them properly. Not in a suggestive way, I really did want to see them.

  I thought she was about to ask me if I believed in the afterlife or something very profound, but instead she said, “Want to play grip ball?”

  Grip ball, for those of you unfortunate enough not to know, was a game in which the players caught a ball on a Velcro disk strapped to each person’s hand. It was a game we played as children. A game I had forgotten existed after my sister died and my childhood with her.

  Annie climbed off the bed and fished around underneath before drawing out the game. It didn’t seem like it was played with very often, but maybe it was; maybe she did this with all the boys. Again, something I didn’t want to think about.

  We started playing in her room but, after a few near-death experiences for her ornaments, we decided to move outside.

  It was far more difficult in the dark and, though this was one of the few sports I could actually attempt without making a total fool of myself, we gave up fairly quickly.

  I decided not to stay much longer after that. I didn’t want to push my luck with my parents. They were still uneasy and I was still tiptoeing around the subject of Peter Bridges and his drug history.

  Her parents said goodbye and told me I was welcome anytime and Annie thanked me for a lovely night.

  She came outside with me when I left. I almost didn’t ask her, but somewhere I found the courage.

  “Annie?” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I was just wondering, was this a date?”

  She didn’t think about it. “Yeah.”

  “And, the other night, with the ice cream, was that a date too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, um, does that… I mean, are you my girlfriend?”

  “If you want me to be. Do you want me to be?”

  “Yeah,” I said, far too high-pitched to be suave.

  “I guess I am then,” she said, and she went back inside before
my brain had a chance to catch up.

  She let me keep my Velcro disk.

  15.

  It was a Saturday morning and I went to school. But don’t freak out. I went because our rugby team was playing in the grand final and I wanted to see Peter being amazing. And he was. They creamed the visiting team. No one could get past Peter. He was like a brick wall. The other players might as well have been wind. And not even strong wind, just a gentle breeze.

  Everyone was sitting on the grass to watch. Lots of people had picnic blankets. Dads were drinking beer and little kids were running around with their own footballs. Mums looked more worried than proud. They were probably wishing they had tried a bit harder to convince their sons to wear protective helmet things. Peter wasn’t wearing one. But I doubted his mother was in the crowd that day. It was probably unfair of me to think that. She may very well have been there. She might have been just as worried as those soccer mums with their four-wheel drives and mouthguard cases in their handbags.

  Peter noticed me in the crowd, sitting by myself. I must have looked pretty pathetic. He didn’t wave at me. I didn’t mind. I didn’t wave at him either but he knew I was there to see him and I knew he appreciated it. I didn’t need him to acknowledge me.

  After football games, the team usually went out drinking at the shark tower. Most of them looked over eighteen so buying beer was never an issue. But Peter didn’t go to the shark tower that day because he went to the beach with me instead. When Peter pulled into the nature reserve outside of town and we bushwalked to this little bay that no one ever went to, I gushed, “You were amazing! Those guys didn’t have a chance of getting past you!”

  He smiled. He was always happy after playing football. It must have been nice to be so good at something. I’d never been amazing at anything. I did well at school, but never as well as Martin, and I was okay at photography, but no one would say I was amazing. Peter was the best on his team and everyone knew it.