A Letter from Luisa

by Rowena Mohr

  Chapter 22

  DANNY BALDASSARRO CAME TO SEE me earlier this afternoon. He walks funny because his back’s still tender from all the glass pieces, but he looks much better than the last time I saw him. On the other hand, I probably look like something out of Dawn of the Dead – and without any good excuse.

  We sat at the kitchen table and I suddenly felt as if I was going to start crying all over again. Honestly, I don’t know what’s happening to me lately. Normally, I’m pretty much in control, but ever since the fete it’s like I’ve totally lost the plot. Some days I don’t feel I can cope with the littlest thing. And now here I was about to lose it in front of the guy I’d nearly killed with an exploding car.

  ‘Let’s go out to the studio,’ I suggested, jumping up from the table. I thought I’d be more comfortable in the studio, maybe because I felt like I was in charge there. After all, this is where I’d taught Danny how to mix sound for that dirtbag Jet Lucas … Damn. There I was again, back at that place where I didn’t want to be, where everything was messed up and it was all my fault. I took a deep breath and tried to find something to talk about that wouldn’t lead me back there.

  ‘I saw your family at the hospital,’ I said. Too late, I realised that I probably couldn’t ask Danny whether they still wanted to kill me. I’d have to improvise. ‘You never talk about them,’ I ventured, thinking that this was certainly true.

  Danny was playing with the sliders on the desk, not looking at me. ‘There’s not much to say. We’re just an ordinary family.’

  ‘But, you know, that thing with you and my dad … I thought maybe you didn’t get along with your dad or something?’

  Danny shrugged. ‘No big secret. We just don’t have anything in common. My dad’s a builder and he wants me to be a builder too. I tell him I want to play music and he gets all schizo on me.’

  ‘I’ve seen your building skills,’ I said. ‘I think you should stick to music.’

  The tiniest smile flitted across Danny’s face, and then he was back to being serious.

  ‘I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry about all that. I didn’t mean to come between you and P—’ Danny cut himself off and looked at me guiltily.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to apologise.’

  ‘No, I want to.’ He paused and I could see he was struggling to find the words. ‘Hanging out with your dad,’ he continued, ‘was so great because he could see that wanting to be a musician was actually okay. That it’s not just something you do on weekends after you finish your real job. You don’t know how lucky you are to have a parent who understands that.’

  ‘Actually, yes I do. And you know what?’ I had a big goofy smile on my face and Danny must have thought I’d gone nutty again. But he started to smile too.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘I can share him with you. After we get back from Spain, that is.’

  Danny looked at me hard, trying to figure out whether I really meant it. Or maybe he was thinking about something else. I know I was, because it had suddenly occurred to me that all I really wanted to do was kiss him.

  How weird is that? How can you know someone for aeons and not even like them most of the time, and end up wanting to kiss them?

  I didn’t, though. Kiss him, I mean. I just put my hand out and touched his arm – right below his T-shirt sleeve where I could see a couple of small scars from the glass. And Danny put his other arm out and pulled me close to him and we stood there, me kind of leaning against him – because of his injured back – and both of us leaning up against the console. And then I felt something inside me give way.

  Something – maybe those high-tension wires that had been twisted up tight as a spring in my guts – began to slowly unravel, and I realised that that stretched-to-breaking feeling had been there for as long as I could remember and I had just gotten used to it.

  About half an hour later – or it seemed that long – Danny asked, ‘Will you play me that song? The one I heard you playing here that day? The one Jet …’ He paused.

  I don’t think either of us wanted to talk about Jet Lucas ever again, but I suddenly thought that yes, I did want to play that song. I wanted to take it back from Jet. I wanted to take back everything I’d allowed Jet to steal from me – a brain that worked, my dignity, my self-respect.

  I let go of Danny and pulled my guitar from its case. As I picked out the first chords and started to sing, it occurred to me that I’d never spoken to Danny about you, never told him what happened. He’d never asked me – not because he wasn’t interested, I don’t think, but because he knew I wasn’t ready to talk about it.

  So I sang ‘My Life Before You’. It was all in there – the good stuff before you got sick, the hospital, the chemo, the fear – and the long, slow, fading away of hope.

  As I was singing the last chorus, I looked up. Dad and Nina were at the door of the studio, gawping at me in amazement because I actually had a guitar in my hand again.

  We leave for Spain in three weeks. We’re going to Barcelona, Madrid and Seville and then to Malaga. I told Dad we have to go to Álora, too, which is the little village Abbie came from. And Cervantes! The guy who wrote Don Quixote. How funny is that? You probably know that already, but I think it’s pretty cool.

  It will be weird going there without you. At least, I expect it’ll be weird. I know you always wanted to go, so I promise to take lots of pictures and write and tell you all about it.

  Dad and Nina are coming straight home after that, but I’m going to Osaka to stay with Meko for ten days. I can’t wait. Meko’s promised to take me to Tokyo to see the Harajuku girls, and we’re going to a real live J-punk concert.

  Hey, I thought you might like to know. Dad just came in to say good night, and to tell me that the music lawyer from Sound Advice has just sent Jet Lucas a letter telling him that if he ever plays or records ‘My Life Before You’ as his own composition I, Luisa Linley, will sue his slimy arse! Go Dad!

  Also, Nina was fantastic in her concert as the Thistledown Fairy. (Kravitz, Goss and Tony Soprano were not invited.) She really did look like a piece of thistledown. I don’t know how she does it. Madame Olga was delirious with pride. She cried all the way through Nina’s solo and afterwards she gave Dad a bony hug and kissed him on both cheeks and told him that Nina was ‘a prodigy’.

  And Danny is going to teach me the chords to ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ so I can jam with him and Dad. I haven’t kissed him yet – but I still want to. Which I think is a good thing. It’s kind of nice waiting for the right moment. Exciting.

  He came over yesterday afternoon, and we lay in the back yard eating grapes and listening to music. I was thinking about the fact that I should probably try and get the kiss in before we went to Spain – just in case, you know, he suddenly decided he liked someone else while I was away. He must have seen the dopey look on my face because he started laughing at me.

  ‘What? What are you laughing at?’ I threw a grape at him.

  ‘Nothing. I was just wondering if I should top up my medical insurance.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ He grinned at me lazily. ‘It’s just that you look like you’re planning something – and we all know how well that’s going to turn out.’

  ‘Hey, I thought you were on my side.’

  ‘I am. Just promise me you won’t become a wedding planner.’

  He thinks he’s so hilarious. I threw more grapes at him, but at the same time I was thinking that he was right. I was a total nut-job, leaving a trail of destruction behind me wherever I went. Danny must have read my mind.

  ‘Look, you are a control freak. A certifiably dangerous control freak. Everybody knows that.’ He ducked his head under another barrage of fruit. ‘But anybody with half a brain can figure out why. And it’s not such a big deal. You just need someone to tell you to chill out every now and again. And, hey, I’m not doing much at the moment, so …’

  He grin
ned again, that slightly goofy lopsided grin that was beginning to have an effect on me. A sort of tickling, bubbling effect …

  ‘And you don’t mind that I almost killed you?’

  ‘Stop that.’ He poked me with a twig he found on the grass. ‘You’re just feeling sorry for yourself. Repeat after me: I am not responsible for everything bad that happens.’

  I am not responsible for everything bad that happens.

  And I think that’s when I finally accepted that maybe everything was going to be okay, and that I didn’t have to single-handedly keep the universe on track. The universe was going to do whatever it wanted, and I couldn’t control it.

  All I could do was go along for the ride.

  I let out a deep breath and lay back on the grass looking up at the sky, looking up at the universe looking back at me.

  ‘Hey,’ Danny said. ‘You never told me what happened to Melissa and Shania.’

  ‘Oh, didn’t I? Well, it’s not pretty. Are you sure you’re up for this?’

  ‘Oh no, they’re not dead, are they? They were standing right beside the car.’

  ‘No, no, they’re not dead.’

  ‘Well, what then?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing happened to them. Not a scratch.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  ‘I wish I was, but no, they both walked out of there completely untouched – like they’d been standing in the eye of the storm and it just completely missed them. They were probably both down at the Red Triangle pool hall half an hour later sculling Vodka Cruisers.’

  ‘Unbelievable!’ He whistled in admiration.

  ‘And you know what else?’ I rolled over onto my stomach. There was so much stuff I hadn’t told him. ‘I mean, I didn’t see this myself, obviously’ – I gave him a slightly evil sideways grin and took another grape out of the bowl – ‘because some wannabe superhero had me pinned to the bitumen at the time. But Nina told me that Edith Morton’s sister told her, while the dust from the explosion was still settling, she saw Shania lean over and light a fresh cigarette from the burning wreckage of the car …’

  See you, Mum. Te quiero. Te extraño.

  Love,

  Luisa XXOOXX

  About the author

  ROWENA MOHR GREW UP IN rural Queensland. While her brothers and sisters were out milking cows and driving tractors, Rowena stayed inside and read, or acted out her own stories in the bush surrounding the house.

  She successfully avoided becoming a writer for many years, moving to Melbourne and working as an actor on TV shows such as Carson’s Law and Neighbours, and then as a theatrical agent helping other actors find work. At the same time, she began writing stories for children and young adults inspired by her own remembered experiences of how simultaneously awful and wonderful being a teenager really is.

  Rowena has recently moved back to Queensland because she missed the sunshine.