‘I went home for a bit, spent some time with Dad.’
The cogs of Sue’s brain churn. ‘You’re down south, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
The cogs churn some more. ‘You didn’t come in just for lunch, did you?’
I owe her.
‘No, I was on my way back.’
‘Good, because otherwise I’d feel guilty about doing this.’ Sue takes the next left and parks outside the massive servo with the built-in burger place.
I mind a booth by the window. Sue returns from the counter with two meals, and when she sits, she empties our fries into one heap on the tray. ‘I’m only going to have a few,’ she says.
I grab my carton and pop it open. She’s ordered me a double cheeseburger, but it’s a bit of a stretch to say something so small is double anything.
‘They shrink every year,’ Sue says, lifting hers. The cheese has melted up one side of the bun. ‘What a sad, little thing.’ She takes a bite and then quickly takes another. ‘Tasty though.’
I bite into mine. She isn’t lying.
She smirks as she chews. ‘Do you –?’ She reconsiders, swallows and starts again. ‘Do you remember the first night we met?’
I draw a blank. From this far, all the times I crashed at Zac’s have blurred into one.
‘You and Zac went out after we went to sleep.’
‘Oh.’ I remember it in parts . . . Marty’s free house, the party, Zac and I hitting the turps hard, sneaking back in around two . . .
‘I have never heard two people make so much noise in my life,’ Sue says.
‘We were stealthy.’
‘You managed to wake the neighbour’s dog.’
‘That’s right! We were raiding the pantry. He wanted popcorn.’
Sue nods. ‘I was finding kernels on the floor for a week.’
‘And when you came down . . .’ I remember thinking she’d blow up. Mom would of, but Sue didn’t. She sat Zac down at the dining table and sent me to bed with a glass of water. When I woke up, Zac was still downstairs. I could tell they hadn’t moved all night. They were playing cards. When Sue noticed me, she pushed up off the table and asked what we wanted for breakfast. ‘What was with that?’ I ask. ‘I mean, I know it’s a punishment, but I don’t think I get it.’
Sue sighs and puts down her burger.
‘When you’re pregnant,’ she says, ‘everybody tells you it will all click as soon as the kid pops out. Baloney. You have an inkling. You remember what your parents did wrong, and you try not to do that. You read the books, so you know what the experts say, but when you’re in that room with this fragile thing, you’re on your own. You don’t really know what you’re doing, but he relies on you, so you just do it. And you give him everything you have. You love him like he’s still this fragile baby, even when he has BO and talks back to you. But as much as you want to, you can’t be there all the time, and, well . . .’ It’s like she’s stolen all the air out of the world and it’s hard to breathe. She gasps and blinks down at her lap. ‘He was drunk, you both were. He was in Year Nine, but he’d grown up. I knew whatever line there was before adulthood, he’d crossed it. In the morning, he’d be different, we’d be different. I didn’t want to yell at him, I didn’t want to send him up to bed, I didn’t want to waste my chance to stretch his childhood just that little bit longer. So, we played go fish, like we used to.’
Sue clenches both fists for a second, like she rips herself from there and then, the dining table opposite Zac two years ago, to here and now, the booth of a fast-food restaurant attached to a servo.
‘I wasn’t punishing him.’ Her voice cracks. ‘He was on the edge of the rest of his life and I wanted to sit there with him. It was . . .’ She can’t find the right word, so she leaves it as is. ‘It was.’
She blinks away and raps her knuckles on the table. ‘Isaac would probably tell me I’m embarrassing him,’ she says.
‘No . . .’
She smiles a little, which makes my chest feel less heavy. ‘Don’t lie.’
‘I’m not.’
‘It’s what mothers do.’ She grabs a fry. ‘I’m sure yours embarrasses you regularly.’
‘Mm.’ I can’t tell her we’re not close. That’d be slack. She’s broken up over losing what Mom and I have tossed away.
It’s not the same though.
Sue waited up with Zac.
Mom left. She didn’t even offer to take me with her.
On a street of townhouses, the boarding house is a string of six merged into one – dorms upstairs, communal areas downstairs. It never used to be yellow, that’s new. There’s always something to paint or renovate at Barton.
I press my student ID against the sensor by the door. The lock whirrs and I let myself in. It’s half-past two. No one’s around. Guys won’t start drip-feeding in for another hour, and Olive and Jo won’t be in till four. I raid their fridge. Two bananas and a tub of yoghurt with Toby written on the side.
My dorm’s the closest to the stairs. I work the handle with my elbow and lean into the door till it opens enough to slip through. Without me keeping him in check, Hughes has taken over the entire room. My bed’s covered in his crap – footy gear, crumpled shirts, underwear. I scoop it all in a heap.
When he wanders in at five, he asks who dumped his shit on the floor. Then he sees me lying on my bed, one leg crossed over the other, polishing off Toby’s yoghurt.
‘Ah. Sorry, man,’ he says. ‘We thought you weren’t coming back.’
We have dinner at pensioner o’clock. It isn’t even dark outside. The other Year Elevens ask questions, but I brush them off. Collins makes this big scene, raises his glass, welcomes me back. Corny as.
I’m up and showered by six-thirty to avoid Collins’s countdown. The mess hall is dark. It’s just me and the sound of Olive and Jo trading barbs and cackling in the kitchen. There’s nothing in the bain-marie yet, so I grab a banana from a bowl on the nearest table and duck out.
It’s drizzling, not enough to warrant heading back upstairs to fetch my umbrella, but enough that if I see someone with their own, I’m gonna sneak under. I buy a coffee from a hole in the wall on the way and nurse it. When I get to Barton, Evans is bantering with the ladies at the front desk. I step through the sliding doors and her eyes zero in on the large cup in my hand. I stand frozen. Her eyes follow the cup as I slowly slide it inside my blazer. I hold it there and watch her. She watches the coffee-shaped lump beneath my uniform.
‘I’ll drink it quickly, miss.’
‘You had better.’ I go to weave around her when she holds out her arm to stop me. ‘Before you . . . I’ve asked Mr Ford to make some time to see you this morning.’
‘Now?’
‘Ideally.’
I kind of wish she’d confiscated my coffee and been done with it.
I must look pissed. She smiles. ‘Welcome home, Scott.’
The Twelvies have one volume: loud. Year Seven kids can’t get wet or they melt or some shit, so they’re all crammed in the corridor, screaming at each other. I charge through them. I remember coming down this way with Evans, my first week at Barton. She was taking a group of us to an after-school detention cleaning a Visual Arts room. Zac walked beside me, pale and freckled like the moon with the measles.
‘Haven’t you only been here like two days?’ His mouth hung open, his braces alternated between purple and silver from tooth to tooth. ‘What’d they get you for?’
‘Skipped sixth period on Wednesday. Went to the movies.’
‘Alone?’
‘What did you do?’
‘I walked into Mr Sheldrick’s German class and asked what year it was. When a kid told me, I was all like, “My time machine worked!”’
‘That got you a detention?’
He hesitated. ‘I try to interrupt at least one of his classes every day. We have a special relationship. He hates me, and I try to give him a nervous breakdown.’
‘That’s . . . weird.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m Isaac.’
I misheard. ‘Zac?’
‘Isaac,’ he repeated.
I shrugged. ‘Zac’s better.’
I collide with a scrum of Twelvies hanging by the door to the yard. It’s still raining. They can’t decide whether to grow a pair or stay inside. I look out. There’s a row of dickheads passing a footy and some loner sitting on a bench in the corner.
Thommo.
Thommo came with Zac. What we have is mostly built on him being more tolerable than Miles. I mean, sure, there’s that sweet spot between three and four drinks where we click, one on one, but that’s it.
He’s a swimmer.
It’s his out for everything. The recess we met, Olive and Jo packed me way too much chocolate cake, so I offered him some. ‘I’m a swimmer.’
My reply was instant. ‘Oh. Lucky. This kid back home ate mud cake, drowned the next day.’ And that’s become our blueprint. When he takes himself too seriously, I just take the piss. He’s a swimmer. I’m a joker.
We’re not close, but I thought I saw him in Gerringong, and fell over myself trying to get to him. Which is weird. I dunno, it’s kinda like there’s this pull . . .
I sweep the Twelvies aside with an arm powered by puberty and push open the door. It’s chilly, but that’s what the coffee’s for. I sip and walk.
Thommo’s scratching at the table. He looks beat. I go to ask what’s wrong but lose my nerve.
‘Jeez, who died?’ I ask instead. I sip my coffee. ‘I’m back.’
‘I can see.’ He straightens up and pops his chest out. Look at those pecs. I bet he’s a swimmer. ‘You been good?’
It’s not the sort of question you answer truthfully. ‘Yeah, had fun back home.’
‘Sweet.’ He does a neck roll. His muscles must be tight. Just a hunch, reckon he’s a swimmer. ‘I’m well.’
‘Good.’
‘Yeah.’
And there’s a sec where we stare at each other.
‘Well, I’ve got to go.’ I point over my shoulder, back the way I came. ‘Evans wants me to see Ford. I just came over to . . .’ I trail off. I came over, I didn’t walk past. I came over on purpose.
And I don’t know why.
‘Just on my way, that way.’ I point past him, at nothing.
‘Righto.’
Ford wants to have a casual chat. He isn’t wearing a tie. I know. He has lots of questions, none of them about Zac. He wants to know how I’ve been, what Dad’s been up to, whether I’ve heard from Mom. He starts talking about the cultural ethos of Barton, the support network, then someone knocks at the door. A kid in Year Eight who was supposed to see him at lunch, but can’t coz of Band, and . . .
I tune out. My eyes wander right, to a shelf cluttered with stuff from a recent Nepal trip, framed family portraits and a collection of Barton House function programmes – all marble-stained A4 sheets folded once and formatted the same. Their covers have the school crest, and then, in the same tired font, the school motto, the event name. Sports Assembly. Father and Son Breakfast. Isaac Roberts In Memoriam. The programme from Zac’s funeral. I never saw it on the day.
I open it up. The order of ceremony is interrupted by photos of Zac, from toddler to teen. I turn to the back and there’s a photo of us, hanging outside the movies, our drinks cropped out.
The door shuts. Ford starts apologising and I slip the programme between my seat and my bag.
I have double Business Studies first. It all happens as per usual. No one takes their books out coz no one gives a toss. I sketch a potential tatt in the margins of my planner while Buchannan takes the roll. He works his way from Anderson. When he gets to me, he welcomes me back with a nod. After Okins, he moves right through to Smith.
‘He’s on his way,’ Okins answers.
He skipped past Roberts. That’s the way of it now, I guess.
I leave the tatt unfinished.
Buchannan lets us out a couple of minutes into recess. Guys are trying to do whatever they usually do outside, inside, to avoid the rain. The corridor’s a mosh pit that reeks of body odour laced with cologne.
I use the subtle art of persuasion to get a guy off my locker. ‘Move.’
I enter my combo, and force of habit, I look over at Zac. We’d be shouting the end of our Business Studies conversation, but he isn’t there. His locker’s open. A kid tosses in his chocolate wrapper.
‘Oi!’
He doesn’t hear. I bulldoze the world between us. I pull him around by the shoulder. I recognise his face. He’s in the year below, Devon or Daniel or –
‘Dickhead, what was that?’
His face is all screwed up. ‘What was what?’
I open 308. There’s a half-eaten sausage roll on a bed of wrappers in there. They’re using it as a makeshift bin.
‘Do you even –?’ It gets caught in my throat. Dickhead and his mates blink at me. The stupid xylophone bullshit bell starts, and the guys piss off.
One of them coughs, ‘Loser.’
While the others open their lockers, I find the nearest bin and pull out the liner. It’s heavy and its contents swish. I claw the crap out of 308 and into the bag.
Noah unlocks 310.
‘Have you seen this?’ I ask him.
‘Yeah.’
Does everyone seriously not give a shit? Is that how quickly this place forgets someone?
I drop the heavier bag back in the bin and go to my locker. I grab the crumpled programme I nicked from Ford’s office and turn to the back. I tear from the bottom, around the pic of Zac and me.
I lean out. There’s a line of bodies half-in lockers. ‘Does anyone have tape?’ I ask.
There’s no response.
‘Tape?’
A hand swings back with a roll in it. I tax two strips.
‘Thanks.’ I’m already walking.
I slap the photo against 308 and tape the sides down.
Let them try to forget him now.
Collins stands up at dinner. I bury my face in my hands, anticipating another toast.
‘Gents, as you are no doubt aware, tomorrow, we will be entertaining the lovely ladies from Sacred. The seating arrangements are up on the wall, familiarise yourself with your spot before then. And it goes without saying, we expect quality behaviour from each and every one of you.’
Yeah, good one.
The boarders snigger. For most of them, it’s their only exposure to the opposite sex beyond teachers and the catering ladies. When confronted with Sacred chicks, they either act like total knobs or collapse into themselves and wait for the girls to go away. It’s like watching baby animals trying to walk for the first time, but the teachers keep organising it, probably for a laugh.
I take the scenic route to second-period Visual Arts. I pass Zac’s locker on the way and stop. There’s a second photo, stuck to the left of mine. Two guys by the pool, one in togs, the other dressed and wholly unimpressed by the wet arm around his shoulder.
Thommo put up his own pic. I look from Zac and me, to Zac and Thommo . . . The pictures rhyme.
I should of been clearer, told him not to bring anyone else. I walk into the cafe and see Miles is with him. I wanna bail, but Thommo waves at me. As if hanging out wasn’t going to be awkward enough, he’s gone and invited a torture expert with a briefcase of pliers and shit.
Great.
‘Yo.’ I dump my bag and fall into the chair.
Thommo says, ‘Hey.’
Miles doesn’t say anything. He looks.
I don’t make memories of Miles. There’s nothing worth keeping.
But I know he makes memories of me. Everything I do is filed away in that big mind he keeps telling us he has.
When he looks, I see what he thinks of me. I’m dumb. I’m a no-hoper. I’m some fucking dropkick. Just coz I’m not in his box.
Just coz I don’t say, ‘Should have.’
Yeah, he looks. But I live. And he resents that.
‘So, how was your day?
’ I ask Thommo.
‘Pretty uneventful.’
He raises his glass and Miles looks.
‘All right, if you’re just gonna stare at me, out with it,’ I tell him. ‘Give me your worst.’
‘You killed him.’
Thommo chokes on his water. ‘Shit,’ he coughs.
Miles’s eyes are vacant. I push down the guilt. I suppress the thought of Sue without a son. I am not wounded. My eyes are blank.
‘That’s it?’ I ask. ‘What else you got?’
I wonder how many times he’s rehearsed what he’d say if he ever saw me again.
‘You only thought about what was good for you. Whatever he asked for, you got for him. He overdid it and you never had the guts to pull him up, because he was your ticket to a place you could crash on the weekends.’
Thommo inhales, wide-eyed. The waiter approaches. I tell him we’re not ready. He wanders off and I lean in. ‘Is that really what you think?’
‘Yes.’ Miles sits tall. ‘You pushed us out.’
Thommo shakes his head. ‘Don’t drag me into this.’
I work with it. ‘He was there.’
‘Me, then,’ Miles corrects himself. ‘You pushed me out.’
‘Mm.’ I cock my head to one side. ‘You’re a wet blanket, Miles. And all you can do with a wet blanket is leave it out to dry.’
It hits harder than I expect. His voice trembles. ‘That is not fair.’
‘Not as fair as saying I killed him?’
‘You were his dealer,’ Miles snaps.
My eyes narrow. ‘And you were the alternative.’
Miles stammers. I ease back. Thommo says, ‘Christ.’ He pulls the laminated menu out from under my elbow and turns it over. Seeing this, the waiter kicks off the wall. ‘This ends now. We’re breaking bread.’ The waiter gets to us before Thommo’s had time to peruse. ‘Do you have bread?’
‘We have croissants?’
Thommo blinks. ‘We’re breaking croissant.’
‘One croissant?’ the waiter asks.
‘With three plates.’
The Sidekicks Page 10
