Always MacKenzie

by Kate Constable

  ‘All right, mate?’ Ted asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ Mackenzie let out a shuddering breath.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘I – I think so.’

  They hugged, a quick firm hug, and Ted gave her a brotherly pat on the back. And then Ted was gone.

  Mackenzie sat beside me, leaving a gap between us. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Here we are.’

  I said, ‘Ted’s lovely.’

  ‘Yeah. He is, he really is. We just clicked, you know, I think we’ll be friends forever.’

  ‘Friends forever, eh.’ I could hear the hard edge to my own voice.

  The faint hum of traffic drifted up to us from the street below. My breath was shallow and my heart was thumping, as if I were scared of what was going to happen next. And I was scared. But at the same time suddenly I knew I wanted it, I was dizzy with wanting it.

  ‘Here’s the thing,’ whispered Mackenzie. ‘I did want to kiss you. I’ve wanted to kiss you ever since that night under the stars.’

  My heart beat very fast. It was a surreal moment. The world seemed to tip upside down, as if the city lights had swung overhead to become a universe of stars. There was a pause that seemed very long, but probably only lasted a few seconds, before I remembered that Mackenzie was waiting for me to reply. I swallowed. ‘I – I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘What I’d like you to say is, that’s great, Mackenzie. I feel the same way.’ She gave me a tight, unnatural smile, and with a shock I realised that she was terrified.

  Instinctively I laid my hand on her arm. ‘I do . . .’

  ‘You do?’ Amazement and relief broke over her face. ‘You do?’

  I’d never had such power over another person before. It was like playing with explosives: one wrong move and I might blow us both to smithereens.

  ‘I do,’ I said softly. ‘But . . .’

  Her face fell. That was one thing about Mackenzie, you always knew exactly what she was feeling. No, that’s not true. In fact, most of the time, I was starting to realise, she wore a mask that showed the same emotions as everyone else, the expected emotions. She was always acting.

  But now she was letting me see the true Mackenzie underneath, raw and vulnerable and absolutely real. She was letting me see everything, trusting me with the biggest secret of all. It took my breath away.

  In a small voice she said, ‘But?’

  ‘Hang on . . . let me get this straight . . .’

  ‘Not the best choice of words, Jem.’

  ‘I guess not.’

  We were quiet for a minute. ‘So have you wanted to kiss – any other girls? Have you actually—’ ‘No – I mean, yeah. No. No one else.’ She let out a deep sigh. ‘But I always had an idea, at the back of my mind.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said uncertainly. Then I remembered, and my voice hardened. ‘But why did you tell everyone that I was a dyke, that I made moves on you?’

  ‘What? I never said that! Why would you think that?’

  ‘Attack is the best defence? I don’t know. Rosie Lee said—’

  ‘Oh, Rosie! Well, that explains it.’ Mackenzie pushed back her hair. ‘Use your head, Jem, you’re supposed to be so smart. Rosie’s been jealous of you since the day we met. Since the day we became friends, anyway. She was always my best friend, since primary school, and suddenly you come along and you’re all I can talk about, all I think about, the only person I want to spend time with – of course she was jealous.’

  My face was burning. All I think about, all I can talk about. I couldn’t take it in, that Mackenzie felt that way about me.

  I said, ‘Rosie’s got bulimia.’

  ‘What? Really? Are you sure?’ Mackenzie stared at me, then closed her eyes. She took a deep breath before she opened them again. ‘Bulimia. Oh, God! I’ve really dropped the ball with Rosie. I haven’t been a very good friend to her this year. Too – preoccupied. Oh, Rosie.’

  ‘She needs help. Georgia’s trying, but she can’t do it on her own.’ ‘Yeah.’ Mackenzie rubbed her face with her hands. ‘Okay. Will you – will you help me? Though I’d understand if you didn’t want to,’ she added quickly.

  ‘I don’t know how much Rosie wants my help, to tell you the truth. She’s giving a pretty good impression of hating my guts.’

  ‘She doesn’t hate you. She’s just insecure.’

  ‘Hmm.’ I wasn’t so sure.

  ‘Anyway, I don’t want to talk about Rosie now.’

  ‘No, me either.’

  Talking about Rosie’s insecurity reminded me of how I’d felt when I’d discovered Mackenzie had a boyfriend. I said abruptly, ‘What about Ted? You guys seem so – so perfect together.’

  ‘Oh, I love Ted, I do. But not like that. And he knows, he knows how I feel. About – you.’ Her hair swung forward as she bent her head, hiding her face. I was glad of that; I wasn’t sure I could have had this conversation except in the dark.

  I fixed my eyes straight ahead at the city lights that sparkled to the horizon, and heard my stiff little voice say, ‘Did you kiss him?’

  Mackenzie laughed wearily. ‘Oh, yeah. What, did you think we just held hands? Yeah, and it was nice. But it wasn’t . . .’ Her voice trailed away, then she said, ‘I want to be normal, Jem. I want to be like everyone else. I don’t want to be an old butch dyke with a shaved head and overalls . . .’

  I couldn’t help laughing. ‘You have to meet my mum’s friend Anna. She’s the most elegant, cool, amazing person. She’s not like that at all.’

  ‘Really?’ Mackenzie sounded doubtful. Then she sighed. ‘God, if my dad finds out, he’ll freak. That was why – I shut you out. I realised that I – realised how I felt about you, and I was scared. I was so scared of being – like that. And scared that you’d tell me to get lost. I dropped all those hints, but you never seemed to catch any of them. So I guessed you didn’t feel the same . . .’

  ‘I just never even thought about it,’ I said honestly. ‘It never occurred to me.’

  Her voice shrank to a whisper. ‘I couldn’t even talk to you. And I’m so sorry, Jem. I’m so sorry.’

  There was a lump in my throat. I tried to swallow it.

  ‘Mackenzie, if you didn’t tell Miss Ezard I was – if you didn’t tell her I’d, you know, gone after you . . . You did speak to her, though, didn’t you? About Rosie? I heard you threatened to leave if Rosie got expelled.’

  ‘If Rosie—?’ Mackenzie half-gasped, half-laughed. ‘I said I’d walk out if you got expelled.’

  ‘What?’ I clutched at the concrete block we were sitting on while the world rearranged itself again. So Maid Marian had tried to rescue Robin Hood after all . . . ‘But the story was—’

  Mackenzie waved her hand impatiently. ‘Maybe someone heard me say my friend and assumed it was Rosie, who knows. God, no wonder you wouldn’t talk to me, if you thought I’d done that after I made you go to Ms Wells. Not that it did any good. Just got us both on bonds.’

  ‘Well, we’re still here.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She kicked her heel against the concrete.

  ‘I can’t believe you did that, for me. That was so brave.’

  ‘Nah, that was nothing. It was the only thing I could think of. Anyway, it’s true, I didn’t want to stay at school if you weren’t there, I couldn’t stand it.’

  There was a pause while Mackenzie’s words disappeared into the cool night air.

  Then I said quietly, ‘Mackenzie, I just don’t know if – if this is me. I never thought about it before.’

  Mackenzie turned her head away, and her voice was flat. ‘So you are telling me to get lost.’

  ‘No! No, I’m not . . . I just need some time. I need to think about it.’

  She turned back to face me. ‘Just tell me, Jem, I can take it. I’ve imagined this so many times. Sometimes you tell me to back off, but then sometimes you lean over and . . . kiss me . . .’

  There was an electric silence.

  ‘If I do kiss you,’ I said firmly. ‘It won’t be because a room f
ull of boys are getting off on it.’

  Mackenzie laughed, her own proper happy laugh.

  I said, ‘You’re Mackenzie Woodrow, you’ve got everything. Why would you even look at me?’

  ‘Are you kidding? You’re smart, and funny . . . I don’t know, just – your hands, the shape of your hands – the way you always walk so fast, like you’ve got somewhere important to go. Your hair, how it springs straight back out when you tuck it behind your ears.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Your mouth.’

  I felt myself blush again. It was so weird to hear Mackenzie talking about me like that, perfect Mackenzie; to think that she’d noticed me, watched me. That she wanted to kiss me, that she’d thought about kissing me. Weird, but not – disgusting or anything.

  ‘And you’re the one who’s brave.’ Mackenzie nudged me. ‘Robin Hood.’

  ‘Me? Are you kidding? I could never stand up in front of the whole school like you do, I couldn’t act in plays and recite poems. I can’t talk to strangers like you do. That’s brave.’

  ‘No, I’m confident. There’s a difference. You’ve got courage, real courage. You don’t care what other people think, you wouldn’t let it stop you. That’s what I don’t have.’ She snorted suddenly. ‘I didn’t want to be in that stupid concert. I don’t want to perform. I want to cook. I don’t want to act, and strut all over the stage, but everyone expects me to, and I don’t know how to get out of it. So I got Dad to kick up a stink about Charles Le Tan and say I had to go and see him instead. I wasn’t brave enough to just say, no, I don’t want to, this is what I want to do. I’m a coward, Jem. And that’s why I ran away from you. That’s why I ran away tonight.’ She searched for my eyes in the dim light. ‘But you came after me, you’re here now, because you’re brave. If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking. I’d still be pretending everything was okay, that there was nothing going on between us.’

  ‘There isn’t anything going on between us,’ I said.

  Mackenzie said, ‘No. But you’re still here. You haven’t run away. So . . .’ She hesitated. ‘Are you, at least . . . thinking about it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I whispered. ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  We were both silent then, for what felt like a lifetime.

  At last Mackenzie said softly, ‘Okay. That’s enough for me, for now.’

  I could feel my heart banging so hard I was surprised Mackenzie couldn’t hear it too. Courage, I thought. If Mackenzie and I were going to be . . . a couple, we were going to need plenty of that. There – I thought it. I let the words run through my mind.

  Cautiously I let myself imagine a little more. It would be so good to have a best friend again . . . I imagined touching Mackenzie, kissing her. My heart beat even harder.

  I reached over and picked up Mackenzie’s hand and held it. Mackenzie drew in a breath, then she moved her thumb softly across the back of my hand. Shivers ran through my whole body.

  For a long time we sat there, just holding hands. I felt as if all the electricity that lit up the streets and towers of Sydney was tingling through my blood. The whole world, the entire mysterious universe, had shrunk to this, to the clasp of our two hands. And I realised this was all that mattered, this was the only real thing in all the world; this moment contained the whole world in it. If I were a poet I could write about that.

  I said, ‘Look at the stars.’

  ‘There aren’t as many as there were at Heathersett River.’

  ‘They’re still there. We just can’t see them.’

  ‘The lights are too bright,’ said Mackenzie. ‘The stars are invisible.’

  ‘Just because they’re invisible doesn’t mean they don’t exist.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘One day,’ I said. ‘There will be only light.’

  ‘You remember that?’

  ‘Of course I do. I know it off by heart.’

  ‘Really?’ Then Mackenzie whispered, ‘A season of stars?

  Forever?’

  We sat, holding hands beneath the stars, and our faces turned towards each other, and I wished that the moment could last forever, the moment that held everything in it; when hope multiplied like stars, and anything and everything was possible, before our paths narrowed and divided and carried us away into the future, before any decisions were made or words were said that made us into the people we chose to be; before any promises were made or broken; the moment that was already speeding away from us, the moment before we kissed.

  about the author

  Kate Constable was born in Melbourne. She spent some of her childhood in Papua New Guinea, without television, but close to a library, where she ‘inhaled’ stories. She studied Law at uni before realising this was a mistake, then worked in a record company when it was still fun. She left the music industry to write the Chanters of Tremaris trilogy: The Singer of All Songs, The Waterless Sea and The Tenth Power, as well as a stand-alone Tremaris novel, The Taste of Lightning. Kate lives in West Preston, Melbourne, with her husband and two daughters.