Shift

by Em Bailey

  ‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘I can taste it already.’

  I’d only just walked through the school gates on Friday morning when Miranda bounded up, acting like everything was fine. Like she hadn’t recently tried to convince me to jump off a roof. ‘I’ve got the best news,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ The sensation of her fingers on my arm was giving me the creeps.

  ‘Oona’s going away!’ gloated Miranda. ‘Some friend is going to pick her up this afternoon and whisk her off for the whole weekend. Can you imagine Oona having friends?’

  I couldn’t.

  ‘Here’s the best bit,’ Miranda continued. ‘I’m going to have a party. A super-exclusive one – starting straight after school. Oona will be gone by then.’

  ‘I’m working tonight,’ I said coolly.

  Miranda’s face pinched the way it always did when someone was irritating her. ‘So call in sick,’ she said. ‘Seriously. You can’t miss this. It’s going to be incroyable.’

  ‘I’ve called in sick a lot recently,’ I said. ‘Noah won’t be happy.’

  Miranda’s forehead creased. ‘Are you being deliberately stupid?’ she said. ‘I mean, more than usual? Come after work then. The party will be going all night. Probably all Saturday too.’

  ‘No.’ I’d been so petrified of saying this to Miranda. But now that I was doing it, I was almost enjoying it. ‘I promised my mum I’d spend Saturday at home,’ I said. ‘We’re making a cake and watching movies.’

  Miranda sniggered. ‘You’re not serious.’

  ‘Actually yeah, I am,’ I said.

  ‘You’re really not coming?’

  I shook my head. ‘Sorry.’ Although I wasn’t.

  Miranda’s fingers curled up. So did her face. ‘You bitch.’

  The word flew at me like a fist and I knew it was meant to knock me out, or at least wind me. But I didn’t feel a thing.

  ‘You can’t just ditch me like this,’ she said. ‘I won’t let you.’ Then she turned and stalked off.

  Miranda didn’t speak to me or look at me for the rest of the day. It was supposed to be a punishment, of course, but it was actually a relief – like taking off a pair of too-tight jeans. I breathed out. Relaxed, just a little. When I arrived home, Mum and Toby were outside. Mum had on thick, way-too-big gardening gloves and was pulling ivy off the front of the house, leaving behind a wall covered in tiny claw-like marks. Ralph was racing around with a long strand of ivy in his mouth, shaking it and growling.

  ‘But I like the ivy,’ Toby was saying.

  ‘I do too,’ said Mum. ‘It just needs controlling. It’s getting into the guttering.’

  This used to be Dad’s job. The gloves were his, too. I wandered over, enjoying the feeling of the sun on my face. ‘Hi.’

  Mum smiled. ‘Hey, sweetie,’ she said. ‘Oh, before I forget – Noah called. He said it’s going to be quiet tonight so he won’t need you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Are you pleased? It means our family weekend can start right away.’ Mum grinned cheekily. ‘Maybe it can start with you helping me with this ivy?’

  I nodded. ‘Sure. I’ll just go and change.’

  When I opened my wardrobe all the empty coathangers rattled and clanked together. Still, I found what I needed – my old trackpants and a faded jumper with a hole at the collar. They were baggy, but comfortable at least.

  I was just about to go back outside when my phone rang. Miranda’s name appeared on the screen.

  You don’t have to answer it. She won’t know. But in the end I answered it anyway. I figured she’d have to apologise for calling me a bitch and I relished the chance to hear it.

  ‘Hey, Olive.’ Miranda sounded subdued. A little nervous. ‘I’m just ringing to say sorry about being a total wonk today. I guess I was just really upset about you refusing to come to the party, especially as I arranged the whole thing just for you.’

  I knew the best way to deal with this was to just ignore it. So why was it so hard to do that with Miranda? ‘I wasn’t being rude,’ I said. ‘I –’

  ‘Apology accepted,’ said Miranda. Then with a heavy sigh she added, ‘I’d better let you go. I guess you’ve got to get ready for work.’

  ‘Actually my shift was cancelled,’ I said, and immediately regretted it.

  ‘Really? Fantastic!’ said Miranda brightly. ‘That means you can come over tonight after all.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ I said, horrified by how quickly I was losing control of this conversation. ‘I’m staying home. I’m wrecked.’

  For a moment I thought she’d hung up. Then I heard a faint sound – somewhere between a sigh and a snicker.

  ‘Miranda?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was just wondering what everyone at school would say if they knew.’ She spoke in this very casual, careless way and I could picture her examining her nails as she was speaking.

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘About Ami, of course. I bet they’d all be interested to hear about her. And the kids at your brother’s school.’ She laughed lightly. ‘You have to admit, Olive. It makes a pretty funny story. And they’d probably be fascinated to hear about how you tried to top yourself.’

  My body went ice-cold. When I spoke my tongue felt thick and swollen.

  ‘You promised you wouldn’t. You said you wouldn’t tell anyone about Ami.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ Miranda said sharply. ‘I said I hadn’t told anyone. I never said I wouldn’t. That would be a stupid thing to promise. Because, you see Olive, I’ve never fallen for that I’m so tough act of yours. I’ve always known what you really are. Spineless. And I also knew that one day you’d need a bit of … encouragement to do what I wanted you to do.’

  The room was beginning to tip and spin around me. Ami wouldn’t have let Miranda do this – threaten me like this. But I’d never been as resilient as Ami.

  ‘OK,’ I said. My voice was a whisper. ‘I’m coming.’

  ‘Great,’ said Miranda. ‘See you soon, then.’

  Slowly I took off my trackpants and old jumper and turned back to my wardrobe.

  Mum and Toby were drinking water in the kitchen when I walked in. ‘You look like you’re dressed for going out,’ said Mum, a catch in her voice. ‘Not for ivy-removal.’

  ‘I’m going to Miranda’s,’ I said.

  Toby’s face fell. ‘No!’

  ‘Olive,’ said Mum. ‘I’d like you to stay home tonight.’

  My teeth clenched. ‘I’ll stay home tomorrow.’

  ‘Please don’t go,’ said Toby.

  I couldn’t look at him. I was wishing with all my heart that there was some way to tell him I had no choice.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said, struggling to stop my voice breaking. ‘I promise. I have to go out tonight.’

  ‘No,’ said Mum. ‘No. I’m putting my foot down about this. You’re forbidden to leave the house. I want you to wait here with Toby while I go to the shops. Then I’ll cook something really del–’

  ‘Wait here with Toby,’ I said, mimicking my mother’s voice. ‘That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? Me minding Toby.’

  ‘No,’ said Mum. ‘That’s not it at all.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Admit it.’

  Mum stepped back, knocking a pile of dusty travel brochures off the bench. They slithered to the floor.

  My chest felt tight. Constricted. All that sea air and I couldn’t seem to get it into my lungs. When had I last taken my meds? Not for days, I realised. Maybe weeks.

  ‘Livvy, what’s wrong?’ Mum was standing right there in front of me but she may as well have been on the other side of the universe. ‘Tell me what’s wrong!’

  ‘You take advantage of me,’ I said hoarsely. ‘Because you know I feel so guilty about what I did to you and Dad.’

  Mum’s face was creased with confusion. ‘What do you mean? What exactly do you feel guilty about?’

  She wanted me to say it? Fine then, I would. The words scraped along my tongue
and burned my lips, but I pushed them out anyway. ‘I’m the reason Dad left.’

  Mum’s arms lifted up, like she was about to embrace me, but then she let them fall again. ‘Sweetheart. Oh love. Your dad didn’t leave because of you.’

  ‘Don’t lie,’ I said angrily. ‘He left because I was too hard to deal with. I was awful. He was ashamed of me and sick of me and all my – issues.’

  Toby started to whimper, Stop it, stop it. I expected Mum to go over to him, but she stayed where she was. ‘That’s not true. You mustn’t ever think that. There were so many problems …’

  ‘Like what?’ I said.

  Mum started crying too. ‘Oh god, where should I start? His inability to deal with things aging. The car. Himself. Me.’ Mum shook her head, her crying becoming indignant. ‘Mid-life bloody crisis. Such a cliché.’

  None of this made sense. If only my head would stop spiralling I could sort out my thoughts. ‘If I’m not the reason he left,’ I found myself yelling, ‘then why didn’t he visit me in the clinic?’

  Mum pulled out a tissue and wiped her nose. She seemed to be avoiding looking at me. ‘I should have told you this, Livvy,’ she said. ‘Ages ago. He did try to see you. A number of times.’

  For a moment I felt so light, like I might lift up off the floor. He does still care. But the lightness vanished as something dawned on me. I faced Mum. ‘You stopped him.’

  The gardening gloves had slipped off Mum’s hands and were lying at her feet. Toby had shoved his fingers in his ears and was making a loud, tuneless noise to block out our voices.

  ‘You were so unwell,’ said Mum. ‘You needed stability.’

  ‘Don’t try to make it sound like you kept him away to protect me,’ I snarled. ‘You were punishing him! For leaving. You want to control everything – what I say, what I eat, who I see. Living here is like …’ I groped around, trying to think of the way to describe it, then remembered the perfect expression. ‘It’s like trying to breathe with a pillow held over my face.’

  ‘No. No.’ Mum’s face was stricken and ugly.

  ‘It’s your fault he left,’ I said. The words were pouring from me, unstoppable, pushed out by my rage.

  Toby was huddled up in a tiny ball on the ground. Finally Mum seemed to break from her stupor and crouched down beside him, stroking his back. When she looked up at me her face was a mess of tears. ‘Please, Livvy. Let’s all calm down. Talk about this properly.’

  I knew I should be feeling something then. There was my mum and my brother – both of them so upset, because of me. But something hard and heavy had pushed up against the entrance of my heart, preventing it from opening. Mum reached out to me, but I didn’t take her hand. Her mouth kept opening and shutting and I knew there were words coming out but they dissolved before they reached my ears.

  When I began to walk – turning away from Mum and Toby and heading outside – I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet. The only thing I felt was the vibration of the door as it slammed shut behind me.

  I began to run.

  At first I just ran blind and fast, hoping the wind rushing over me might clear everything away. When I couldn’t run anymore, I walked – slower and slower until I was too exhausted to take another step and I sank down onto the curb. A horrible noise started coming out of my mouth – something in between crying and gasping.

  I had nothing with me – no money, no phone. What the hell do I do now?

  I couldn’t go to Miranda’s place. Not while I was such a mess.

  I looked around to see where I’d ended up. On the Esplanade, not far from the Mercury.

  Money, I thought. Money was something real. If I had some I might feel less like I was hurtling through space. I stood up. A clear-ish path had formed through the jungle in my head. I would go and ask Noah to give me an advance on my pay.

  There was a long queue outside the Mercury. Strange. Hadn’t Noah told my mum it was going to be quiet? I squeezed into the foyer and looked around. Standing in the snack bar was a girl I didn’t know, scooping popcorn, serving drinks. I strode over to the ticket office and pushed my way to the front of the queue. ‘What’s going on, Noah? Why is someone else doing my job?’

  Noah kept selling tickets. He didn’t even look at me. ‘What did you expect?’ he said. ‘You left me in the lurch tonight. Again. It was lucky that Polly was available.’

  A hum started up – high and insistent. Polly must have turned on the ice-cream light.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘You rang my mum and told me not to come in!’

  ‘No, I didn’t. And I tried to call your phone – about twenty times – to find out where you were.’ Noah shook his head. ‘Dad is not happy, Olive. He says you’ve become totally unreliable.’

  ‘There must be something wrong with my phone,’ I muttered. ‘I didn’t hear it ring once.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Noah, looking at me for the first time since I’d arrived. ‘Well, maybe you’ll hear this then. Olive, you no longer work here. Now, please get out of the way so I can do my job.’

  I stood there, fighting to keep myself together. Noah looked at me warily, then sighed and put up the back in five minutes sign.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, coming out of his ticket office and pulling me over to a bench in the corner. His face was grave. ‘Is it true? What everyone’s saying about you?’

  I frowned. ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘That you’re on drugs.’

  ‘No!’ I said, my throat aching. ‘Why would anyone say something so awful?’

  ‘Probably because you look like you’re on drugs,’ said Noah. ‘You’re so thin. And pale.’

  ‘Noah,’ I pleaded, ‘it isn’t true. And I’m sorry that you think I stood you up tonight, but you have to believe me, that’s not what happened.’

  Noah crossed his arms. ‘So what did happen? Someone rang your mum, pretending to be me?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Are you selling any more tickets or what?’ someone called impatiently from the queue.

  Noah stood up. ‘I have to go,’ he muttered. ‘Good luck, Olive. I really hope you sort yourself out.’

  I pushed my way back outside, the world blurring into tear-mirages around me. Everything twinkled. It was almost beautiful. A calmness came over me then – a foggyish, murky one. Like I wasn’t completely awake.

  And, almost like I had no say in it, like something was pulling me there, I turned and started heading for the ocean.

  I expected to feel the old panic lifting up inside me the moment my shoes hit the sand. The last time I’d been on the beach was the night Lachlan and I were searching for Katie. Although I’d been nervous then, it wasn’t hard to block out the ocean – probably because it was dark and I had a task to focus on. I wasn’t alone, either. But this time the sky was still glowing from the setting sun, so the water – the waves – were bright, sparkly. There was no task, and no other person, to distract me.

  Still, the calmness stayed and I walked along the sand until it stopped being powdery dry and began to squelch beneath my shoes. That’s where I stopped. I couldn’t seem to move – forward or backwards. So I just stood there, watching and listening.

  A woman jogged past with her dog. The dog’s paws were kicking up great chunks of sand as it galloped along and it looked at me as it passed, smiling in that crazy-happy way that dogs do. And I started laughing. I mean, how can you not laugh at a dog running on the beach? But I was also kind of crying, too. Laughing and crying simultaneously hurts. It hurts and it’s confusing.

  I turned to watch the dog run off down the beach. That was when I saw Lachlan, walking towards me in that casual, unhurried way of his, a towel slung over his shoulders, hands in his pockets and his hair gently blowing in the breeze.

  If he was surprised to see me there he didn’t let it show. Instead he just lifted his hand and waved, happy to see me. Me. The girl who was standing there on her own with a blotchy face.

  ‘Hey,
’ he said. ‘How are things?’

  ‘Right now things are a little rough,’ I admitted, knowing that my eyes must have looked like cherry tomatoes.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Just … nothing. Really,’ I said.

  Of course I longed to tell him everything. I wished I could just bury my head into his chest and let it all out. But I didn’t. People don’t want to hear that stuff.

  Lachlan looked at me, but didn’t push it. ‘Come for a stroll?’ he said after a moment.

  The answer blurted out of me. ‘Yes.’

  Lachlan smiled. ‘I like the way you made that yes sound exactly like a yes.’

  To anyone watching we probably looked very peaceful, walking along like that in silence. And I suppose I did feel peaceful, but it was an exhausted kind of peace. The sort that comes from being so empty that you can’t feel anything at all.

  ‘You promised me something,’ said Lachlan after we’d been walking for a while.

  ‘What?’ I said, thinking back over our conversations. ‘I didn’t promise anything.’

  ‘Well, it was almost a promise,’ said Lachlan. ‘You said you’d swim with me in the ocean one day. So how about it?’

  ‘You’re joking, right?’ I said.

  ‘Nope.’ Lachlan held out his hand. ‘Come on.’

  ‘I can’t.’ My voice had begun to rise. ‘I can’t.’

  If I went into the water all those horrible feelings would swirl up from below, pulling me down, pulling me back to where I began. I was supposed to be taking baby steps, not great big freakin giant leaps into the deep end.

  ‘Nothing will happen to you,’ said Lachlan, those brown eyes looking at me steadily. ‘I won’t let it.’

  ‘No bathers,’ I croaked.

  Wordlessly, Lachlan put his towel on the ground. He unzipped his jacket, kicked off his shoes and started striding towards the ocean.

  ‘Lachlan!’ I was laughing then, but it was a nervous kind of laugh. ‘Stop!’

  But Lachlan kept going – fully clothed, just like I had that morning after Dad left. It was only when he was waist-high in the water that he finally stopped and turned around. He cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘Come on, Olive,’ he called. ‘Come and keep me company out here.’