by Rowena Mohr
‘Yeah. No sweat. I’ve got plenty of other stuff to do, anyway.’
‘But that’s not the point. He shouldn’t be able to talk to people like that and get away with it.’
‘Look, when you’re as gorgeous and talented as Jet Lucas, you can get away with murder and no one cares. Forget about it.’
Danny didn’t look for a minute like he was going to take my advice. He started pacing up and down as if he was psyching himself up for something – and then he came out with it.
‘You’re too good for him. You know that, don’t you?’
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I climbed onto the stage to hang Jet’s shirt from the scaffolding.
‘It’s true,’ Danny insisted. ‘The guy’s a creep. Do you think anyone who really cared about you would treat you the way he does?’
‘Danny, how many times do I have to tell you? Butt out.’
Danny was pressed against the edge of the stage looking up at me. We must have appeared to anyone watching as if we were rehearsing the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. How wrong could you be?
‘I’m serious, Lu. Answer my question.’
‘What question?’ Had he actually asked me a question? I couldn’t remember.
‘Would-someone-who-cared-about-you-treat-you-like-that? Well?’
‘No,’ I said sullenly, like a little kid being forced to admit to a lie.
‘Then why do you let him? Tell me that.’
‘I don’t know.’ It was true. I didn’t know. Danny rolled his eyes in exasperation.
‘Look at you,’ he said. ‘You’re a mess. You’re so wired it’s like you’re on drugs. Look at what he’s doing to you.’
Slowly and calmly, I began to explain a few things to Danny.
‘You know what? You’re right. It is about time I stood up for myself. And the first thing I’m going to do is tell you to get off my case. I don’t know what your problem is, Danny. Maybe you’re jealous because I went out with Jet and not you? Whatever it is, I wish you’d get over it and leave me the hell alone.’
I turned away and walked to the front of the stage. It was completely dark now and I was blinded by the lights, but I could see that the first couple of rows were already full. A hush spread slowly over the quadrangle and I wondered what would happen if I just picked up a guitar and started playing.
It would be so easy. Jet’s guitar was right there. There were so many songs I’d written, that I’d never played for anyone. I could play them now for these people and then everyone would know what it was like to be me. As I gazed out over the seats, I saw Dad and Nina standing behind the last row.
I thought of you and wished it could all have been different; that you were there, standing beside Dad and Nina. That it was my concert and you had come to hear me play. That we were together again.
The lights seemed to be getting brighter until I couldn’t see anything at all. I could hear something though. A kind of wave of blurred sound that came and went. Then Danny’s gravelly voice broke through it.
‘Luisa? Lu? What are you doing?’
I turned to look at him, but my eyes were still popping with neon suns and moons.
‘The concert’s about to start,’ he said. ‘Come on.’ He took my hand and led me down the stairs at the back of the stage. From there, the wave of sound was suddenly clearer. It was laughter.
Mr McGregor was onstage speaking into the mic. He was apologising for the delay and introducing Jet Lucas as Motherwell High’s very own James Blunt – which I knew I should have found quite funny because Jet hated James Blunt.
Something was wrong though. The wires in my arms and legs were zinging away harder than ever, but they seemed a long way away from me. Between me and my body was a thick curtain of bubble-wrap. I could see and hear myself and what was going on around me, but everything was out-of-focus and faraway and seemed to be taking a long time to make it through the layers of plastic.
From where I was standing, I could see into the back of the Arts and Crafts stall where Mrs Kapiniaris was selling lumpy hand-knitted stuffed animals and psychedelic teddy bears made out of fluorescent fake fur. I could see all the people crowded around waiting for Jet to play. I knew I should know who they were, but it was hard to concentrate on their faces. One of them was wearing what looked like a Hogwarts Sorting Hat and holding a green dog. It took several moments before I realised it was Edith Morton dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West and carrying Toto so he wouldn’t get trampled. Beside her, Tiahna-Dorothy was showing way too much cleavage for a little girl from Kansas. And standing right in front of Dad’s car, examining the number plate, was the same policeman who had pursued me earlier.
Panicking in slow motion, I turned back to the stage just in time to see something fall out of the sky and land square on Mr McGregor’s head as he stood at the microphone. Something white and gooey, a lot like the dairy-whip ice-cream the stall beside the tuckshop was selling. As one, everyone in the crowd looked upwards to the roof of the Science block to see the gleeful faces of three Year Nine boys peering over the eaves, exactly like those gargoyles on medieval cathedrals. At least, I remember thinking, Meko and the Goth-Loli girls are safe.
I’m not exactly sure what happened next. Mr McGregor, his eyes full of dairy-whip, blundered past me towards the boys’ toilets to wash his hair and clothes. There was a flash of green lamé as Toto leapt from Edith’s arms with a yelp and disappeared into the throng. And I think that’s when Jet Lucas, dazzling in a white linen shirt that was not the one I’d ironed, walked out onto the stage and announced to the crowd that he was going to play a new song he’d written called ‘Life Before You’.
Chapter 18
AS THE OPENING CHORDS FLOATED out over the grounds, I remember thinking that there was something familiar about the song, but I couldn’t quite place what it was. I saw Danny looking back at me from the stage. I wondered vaguely if he recognised it too. And then I remembered. It was my song. Your song.
You know how sometimes you’ll find out something about someone and it changes everything you ever thought about that person? You flash back over all those not-quite-logical conversations, those sideways looks, those evasions, and all the pieces of the puzzle gradually shift into place. You begin to understand – like being run down by a very slow train – that you got everything wrong; that person’s motives and actions were, in fact, perfectly transparent right from the start – if only you had been smart enough to see. And once this realisation dawns, two things happen:
1. You feel deceived, cheated, lied to – even though none of those things may have technically happened.
2. You are very, very angry at yourself for being so stupid, for not seeing what was right in front of your face, and for not figuring out what everyone else already knew.
By the time Jet reached the chorus, my chorus, a lot had suddenly become clear. What an idiot I’d been. How deluded and blind. How completely and utterly self-deceivingly stupid to think that Jet Lucas might actually be interested in me when all he wanted was my songs. I felt sick then, actually nauseous. The bubble-wrap began to peel away and the wires holding my body together snapped and I catapulted into the air in a thousand pieces.
There was a sudden, long, dying wail of feedback from the speakers. Up on stage, Danny was holding the lead to the sound system in one hand and waving the other in a threatening manner at Jet Lucas. In the silence, I heard myself gasping for air. Or maybe I was crying – I couldn’t tell. For a second, I imagined myself leaping onto the stage and … doing what? Screaming, kicking, punching, swearing like a lunatic?
And then I was up there.
Jet saw me coming. In his face was everything I needed to know. No guilt, no embarrassment, no regret – just stony- faced resentment that he’d been caught out. In that one look I saw all my fantasies turn to ash. I knew – finally – that he wasn’t worth wasting another breath on. But that didn’t stop me.
‘You,’ I began, my voice rising to a
crescendo, ‘lying, cheating, thieving, untalented dirtbag.’
The audience, thinking the evening’s entertainment had resumed, fell quiet. I could sense their anticipation from beyond the glare of the lights. I decided to indulge them and made a lunge for the microphone stand.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ I bellowed, ‘let me introduce the real Jet Lucas.’
Jet tried to escape, but Danny, still brandishing the electrical lead to the sound system like a gladiator’s weapon, headed him off so that he was trapped cowering like a rabbit in headlights.
As I described all the horrible things Jet had done to me – and no doubt lots of others – I became angrier and angrier. When I got to the part about him stealing your song, there was no stopping me. The audience listened with horrified fascination as I tore Jet Lucas apart live on stage.
‘Do you even know what that song is about?’ I ranted at him. ‘No, of course you don’t. Because you didn’t write it, did you? And your mother didn’t die. And you didn’t watch her dying – slowly, excruciatingly – for years, knowing there was nothing you could do about it. You don’t really know anything, Jet. You think a song is just something that’s going to make you famous. That’s going to make it easier for you to treat more people like dirt. But you don’t know anything about music. You don’t know anything about anything …’ With each point, I jabbed my finger into Jet’s chest for emphasis until finally I was simply pounding him with both fists.
Danny, obviously worried that I’d soon be up on an assault charge, dragged me off the stage.
That would probably have been that, but as he led me down the back stairs, I spotted Melissa and Shania – fag in hand – leaning up against Dad’s car and arguing heatedly about something. Something, I’m pretty sure, that had to do with the fact that they had just heard me – in front of the whole school, no less – admit that I’d had a secret relationship with Jet Lucas.
It’s funny, isn’t it? You would think that I’d had enough drama for one day. That I really shouldn’t have given a toss about what the KGB thought about me and Jet. Or even that they’d ditched their stall to come and slaver over Jet’s concert; after all, every teenage girl in a ten-kilometre radius – and a few of their mothers, by the look of it – had done the same. But no. It was as though the surge protector in my head had had enough for the day and switched to overload. I headed towards the car, intent on telling Melissa and Shania to butt out of my life for once and for all.
So focused was I on my new mission that I didn’t notice Danny Baldassarro just behind me and, no doubt recognising the signs from the Jet showdown, preparing to put himself physically between me and my unsuspecting targets.
If you were making a film about the Motherwell High Twilight Fete Disaster, this whole next bit would be in slow motion.
1. First you would see Shania and Melissa slouching against the car, deep in debate about what punishment I deserved for trespassing on their territory.
2. In close-up, there would be a shot of Shania sucking seductively on her cigarette, her expression changing to alarm as she spotted me coming towards her.
3. As the camera followed me towards the car, you would see, in the background, Mr McGregor coming back from the toilet block with a white towel thrown over his head as he dried his hair.
4. In one seamless movement as elegant as one of Nina’s ballet steps, you would see me snatch the cigarette from Shania’s fingers and toss it high over my shoulder.
5. As the cigarette revolved mesmerisingly in a slow arc above us, Danny Baldassarro would reach out and spin me around to face him.
6. As he attempted to pull me away from Shania, the camera would pan up to the cigarette still suspended above us and then follow its downward spiral as it tumbled towards the open door of the petrol compartment of Dad’s car.
7. The audience in the cinema would hold their breath as the cigarette hung, still spinning, millimetres away from the mouth of the petrol tank.
8. Here, a series of quick flashbacks to the petrol station would show me placing the cap on the roof of the car while I pumped three dollars twenty worth of petrol into the tank, then spotting the policeman, sprinting back towards the car and driving off with the cap still sitting on the roof.
9. The audience would watch in wide-eyed horror as the cigarette tumbled slowly onto the lip of the tank, teetered drunkenly for a second or two and then dropped out of sight.
Of course, all this slow-motion stuff might create the impression that there was enough time for all of us to get away from the car before it blew up. And in the film there would probably be one of those bits where the heroines, recognising the danger they’re in, take a slow-motion dive to safety while behind them a spectacular sheet of flame erupts into the sky.
What actually happened was this: Shania flicked her cigarette. The car exploded. My life was over.
Chapter 19
I DON’T ACTUALLY REMEMBER MUCH after that. I’ve had to piece it together bit by bit, like an episode of CSI. What I found out was:
The buildings on either side of Dad’s car created a kind of wind tunnel which channelled the force of the explosion forward towards the stage – where Jet Lucas was attempting to reconnect the sound system so that he could no doubt steal more of my songs – and back toward the Arts and Crafts stall where Mrs Kapiniaris was selling off the remaining stuffed toys at half price.
Jet, guitar still attached, was blown about five metres into the air before landing in Mrs Renfeld’s cactus garden. The Arts and Crafts stall disintegrated; the canvas blew clean away and a shower of mangled teddies, headless giraffes and foam stuffing rained down over the bitumen, psychologically scarring Mrs Kapiniaris for life.
As for poor Mr McGregor – well, talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Remember I told you that he’d gone off to the toilets to try and wash the dairy-whip out of his hair? And that he was just coming around the corner of the Admin building as the car exploded?
Well, the cop put two and two together and decided Mr McGregor was a terrorist. Of course, the towel draped over Mr McGregor’s head could have looked a bit like one of those Arab head-dress thingies, and may have added to the unfortunate misunderstanding. And yes, you could say that if I hadn’t stolen Dad’s car that particular cop would probably not have been at the Motherwell High Twilight Fete looking for me. And if the cop hadn’t been at the fete, he would never have seen the gentleman in what looked like traditional Middle Eastern dress lurking around the scene of what looked suspiciously like a car bombing.
The fact that the towel-headed gentleman was running towards the scene of the explosion rather than away from it would seem to contradict these assumptions, but was more than probably overridden by the fact that said cop was surrounded by rather a lot of bodies lying on the ground bleeding. So, no doubt priding himself on his lightning reflexes and patriotism, the cop launched himself at Mr McGregor and tackled him to the ground. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Oh, and a piece of burning debris landed on Mrs Blascoe’s dog. Now this might not have been so bad, except that Mrs Blascoe’s dog had just finished impersonating Toto at the Emerald City mocktail bar in a natty little jacket made of – as it turned out – one hundred per cent flammable synthetic lamé with a very low ignition point. I didn’t see the tragedy myself, but Mr Ignatius the art teacher told Dad it was like watching a Dali painting come to life.
The reason I didn’t see Mrs Blascoe’s burning dog was that I was sandwiched between the bitumen and Danny Baldassarro. I remember seeing Danny’s face coming towards me, and for a weird split second I thought he was trying to kiss me. But I was moving too – away from him. We fell together, not slowly the way I’m writing this, but fast and hard as if we were thrown down from way up in the air.
When I hit the ground, it was like falling off the monkey bars when I was little. My lungs felt as though they’d been rammed through the back of my ribs. And then Danny fell on top of me. I think I blacked out
for a second, probably from lack of oxygen. When I opened my eyes, there was Danny’s face, centimetres away from mine – eyes shut, blood trickling from a little cut in his cheek.
I’m not sure how long we lay there like that. It seemed like a long time, but it probably wasn’t. I remember thinking it was quite nice – cosy – being sandwiched together like that. There was so much going on around us, but we were safe, tucked up together in our little cocoon away from where it was all happening.
Some men came and dragged Danny off me and whisked him away. I felt strangely exposed after he was gone – suddenly weightless and gravity-free. I thought I might float away altogether, but it was just someone lifting me onto a stretcher. And then there was the screaming and wailing – whose, I couldn’t tell.
In the Emergency Room, there were lots of bright lights and everyone seemed serious and professional – exactly like it is on TV but with less shouting of ‘stat’, whatever that means. I wasn’t in pain, just numb, as if someone had given me a shot of something. Maybe they had, and I just hadn’t noticed. I watched the nurses’ faces hovering above me. One of them had a mole shaped sort of like a muffin right beside her nose, and I wondered why, since she must be friends with lots of doctors, she hadn’t asked one of them to remove it.
The nurse with the muffin-mole seemed to be in charge, and she was definitely the most serious one there. She was looking down at me – or not so much at me but at my body, as if there was something really terrible about it that I couldn’t see or feel. I was beginning to get scared, but then her serious face turned into a confused face as she realised that the blood all over me wasn’t mine.
Once they’d confirmed I wasn’t going to die, they left me alone. I lay there listening to the sounds coming from the other cubicles. I guess I was listening for Danny – hoping to hear something that would let me know he was okay – but there was nothing. I could hear Jet’s voice quite clearly though – a decidedly untuneful ‘ow … ouch … aaargh’, coming from somewhere down the hall.
