by Kate Gordon
Jed catches the wobble in my chin.
“Okay, Connie-girl, if you go along with my perfect plan I have to de-Viggo you, then you get to be a lime spider,” Jed promises. “I know you love lime spiders.”
“Do I still have to do my twenty-five memories?”
Jed nods. “Twenty-three, I think it is now. And yes, I think you should do the memories as well as my stuff. I think it will … help. In fact, I think we’re due for the next one.”
“Okay.” I lie back on the sand. “You’ll like this one, anyway. It involves Emily again.”
“By the way, you know how I went on about how Emily’s hot?” Jed says, lying down beside me. “I was just trolling you.”
“It’s okay.” I throw him a sideways look. “You don’t need to apologise. Em’s everything. She’s perfect, just like Viggo. They’re the same. And we’re the same.”
“Imperfect people?” Jed gives a half grin.
“Yeah. But you’re still awesome.”
“So are you. I love your imperfections.”
“Of which there are many, as we have established. But are we going to talk all night about how defective I am, or do you want to hear me talk?”
“I want to hear you talk,” Jed says. “I’m not Viggo MacDuff.”
Eight
Memory 3
I went over to Em’s house with Beezus after school. Emily has her own ferret, called Ferretto Rocher. Bee and Ro have regular play dates. They’re brothers from another mother.
While they bonded, Emily and I made huge mugs of Milo and cold milk, loaded up our plates with Emily’s famous sultana scones, and dissected our days. Emily asked me the same first question every time we caught up:
“So, have you kissed Jeremy yet?”
“I’ve told you a million times, he prefers ‘Jed’,” I said, reaching over to wipe away Em’s milk moustache. “And I’ve also told you a million times, the likelihood of me and Jed getting together is about equal to finding the Tardis in the middle of the Bangarra mall.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Jed interrupts. “We can dream. One day there will be a TARDIS just for us …”
“Jed?”
“Yep? Oh, okay. Sorry. You talking. Please resume.”
Emily sighed. “It’s tragic you feel that way. You two are destined.”
I changed the subject. “So, how goes it at St Snooty’s?”
Emily rolled her eyes. “Same old. This year is no different from any other year. Same tragic uniforms. Same depressingly healthy canteen food. Same pressure to be excellent at all of the everything. Oh, there is one good thing, though: they’ve started offering a new sculpture elective, and I convinced Mum to let me ditch Advanced Calculus to enrol. I think she’s finally coming around to the idea that I’ll be studying Fine Arts at uni, not architecture. Yay for life goals. You and me, kid. We’ll both rule the art world. The world is our oyster. Which, by the way, is such a weird expression, isn’t it? Like, who wants an oyster, really?”
Thinking about oysters made me think about squid ink, which made me think (after a brief wave of nausea) about Viggo.
Thinking of Viggo made me blush.
Emily giggled. “Look at those cheeks! You are so thinking of Jeremy and how you secretly love him.”
“I am so … not,” I said truthfully.
“You paused. You’re thinking about Jed!” Emily pulled back her spoon and flicked Milo at me. It hit me, conveniently, on the mouth.
I licked it off. “Yum. Thanks, Em. But I am not thinking of Jed.”
Em narrowed her eyes. “Someone else then?”
“No. Well …”
And just at that moment my phone buzzed.
Saved by the ringtone.
I held up a finger as Emily stage-whispered, “Is it Jeremy?”
I frowned down at my phone. “Unknown number.” Tentatively, I answered. “Connie’s phone. You may talk if you are the shit.”
“But you won’t be for long,” Em whisper-sang. This is why she’s my best friend—she recognises all the Ben Folds references.
I heard laughter down the line. “Well, that is certainly an unconventional phone manner, Constance Chase.”
A whistling noise started in my ears. I felt hot and cold and like I needed to sit down.
Right. Now.
Viggo MacDuff was on my telephone. And I had just sworn and referenced an obscure indie pop song from 2003.
Emily noticed the look on my face. “What?” she whispered.
I shook my head at her. I sat, shakily, on one of her kitchen stools. I put my phone on the table and looked down at it.
“Who is it? Say something, weirdo!” Emily hissed. Viggo’s tinny “Hello, Constance? Hello?” could be heard faintly coming from the table top.
“He sounds hot,” Emily hissed. “For pity’s sake, say something, Con!”
I gulped, took a deep breath and picked up my phone again. “Sorry about that, Viggo,” I said. “I—um—my ferret took my phone.”
Emily dropped her head to her hands. I wanted to be swallowed whole by some sort of enormous, temporarily land-dwelling sea creature.
“Con! Connie!” Emily was snapping her fingers in front of my face. She pointed at my ear, where I could hear Viggo chatting away about … something. I realised he’d been talking for at least a minute and I hadn’t heard a single word he’d said.
“… Constance? Does that sound feasible?”
I cleared my throat. “Um, okay?”
I had no idea what I was agreeing to. Viggo could be asking me if “Barbie Girl” by Aqua was the best song of the nineties.
He could be asking me to give away my Ben Folds Five CD collection or my complete set of Doctor Who DVDs, or to stop wearing my Snoopy Vans and dyeing my hair crazy colours.
I had no clue whatsoever. All I knew was that, when Viggo MacDuff asked me to do something, I was inclined to say “yes”.
“Excellent. So, Friday night then?”
I looked, wide-eyed, at Em. “What?” she mouthed. When I didn’t respond, she hissed, “Speak!”
I took a deep breath. “Yep Friday night awesomesauce see you then bye now all righty buh bye,” I blurted and quickly pressed the hang-up button, dropping my phone on the table as if it was made of hot coal.
“So. Not. Jeremy,” Emily said slowly.
I shook my head. “Not Jeremy.”
“Jeremy’s Other Best Friend?”
I nodded silently.
“Hottie MacHotterson.”
“MacDuff,” I corrected her quietly. I knew my cheeks were the colour of the raspberry jam Emily was slowly spreading on her scone, while never taking her narrowed eyes off me. “Viggo MacDuff.”
“You like the boy,” she said sagely.
“He’s … pretty,” I admitted. I cringed. “When did I become the girl who cared about that? I thought I liked indie musos with messy bed-hair and dorky glasses and too-tight Goodies tee-shirts. I thought I liked boys who smelled faintly of sweat and cigarettes and had bags under their eyes from playing gigs late at night. I thought I liked boys who disappeared for days on end while they wrote songs about girls called Georgia and rode around on vintage bicycles and only listened to vinyl and—”
“Enough.” Emily held her butter knife to my throat. “You like the boy?”
I nodded. “He’s smart, too. And polite and, like, refined.”
Emily’s forehead creased. “He sounds … fun.”
“Wait until you see his eyes …” I giggled. “They are dreamy.”
“Well, then.” Emily took a bite of scone. “Why didn’t you say so? No more need be said. Dreamy eyes? We have to find you a dress.”
Nine
We’re at my place now. We walked back from the beach. Thankfully in dry, warm clothes. Jed eventually came to his senses and realised it was actually too freezing. And that he liked his own biker boots too much to get them wet either.
We’re sitting on my front deck.
We may or may not also be drinking lime spiders. I just couldn’t get the idea out of my head and then Jed made me make them because, apparently, I “mentioned them fifty times in the space of half an hour.”
He said it could be the first of his “Adventures”.
The adventures are, he says, his foolproof means of curing me of heartbreak. And he has enough of them, apparently, for each of the rest of my memories of Viggo MacDuff.
The first one is to drink a lime spider.
“You are aware this is not a very adventurous adventure,” I point out, gesturing at our glasses. “You know nothing comes between me and junk food.”
“Except for Viggo MacDuff,” Jed replied. “Have you forgotten already? The boy would only let you eat multigrain bread. And no butter, only Tahiti.”
“Tahini,” I correct him. “And he never made me. I just … wanted to try something different. But now I have decided—all by myself—that I do not like tahini and I would like fizzy lime cordial and ice cream instead. It has nothing to do with Viggo.”
“All righty then,” says Jed. For a moment there’s silence as we eat. Then Jed says, “Well, hopefully, the more fizzy cordial you drink the better these ‘memories’ will get, because so far they’re sucking.”
“It’s just what happened!” I protest.
“Then what happened is boring!” Jed exclaims through a mouthful of ice-cream. Some spits on the floor. The boy is all class. “Seriously, I was after juicy dirt on the V man. And what I’m getting is, ‘Oh, this one time he called me on my mobile phone when I was at my neighbour’s house and I sang a song’. Really? Really, Connie? Was your relationship that unexciting that, out of a whole entire year, that is what you remember?”
“It was a pivotal moment,” I mumble. “Our first phone call. It was important. But there were many more significant and sensational memories. They are still to come. Besides, you are the boy who thinks drinking spiders is an adventure.”
“Like you, I am starting small,” Jed says. “Plus, you know, a spider is soft drink plus ice-cream. That’s pretty damn adventurous, Con. Pretty damn adventurous.”
“Your life is nearly as sad as mine,” I murmur sympathetically.
“Nope. I wasn’t dumped by The Perfect Man. Loser.”
I whack Jed around the side of his messy dark head. “And here I was feeling sorry for you for a second.”
“First time for everything, I suppose,” Jed says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I examine Jed’s face. There is no trace of his usual cheeky grin. He looks almost … glum. “Jed?” I press. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” he mumbles, digging the toe of his biker boot in the dirt. “Are you going to tell me another memory or not?”
I put down my spoon. I’m suddenly not hungry. Something is up with Jed and I need to know what it is.
“Jed, I know it’s not nothing,” I say. “I know you. I know when something’s not right.”
“Oh yeah?” Jed looks up at me, and the expression on his face is accusing, angry even.
Why is Jed angry at me?
Why is everyone angry at me?
Beezus leaps from Jed’s lap on to the table. She can sense tension and she doesn’t like it. She skitters across to me and plops on my knee, burying her little pink nose in the folds of my hoodie.
“You scared Beezus,” I say. “By being all angry. I thought you said you weren’t angry at me about stuffing up with Viggo.”
“Not everything is about Viggo!” Jed’s voice is raised. His eyes are blazing. He breathes out, shakily. “Forget it. Just forget it, Connie, okay? I’m sorry. Tonight is about Viggo. It’s about you and Viggo and your memories of him and you getting over him. Just forget the last five minutes ever happened, okay? My bad. So talk.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. “But are you sure—”
“Drop it, Constance,” Jed says, but his voice is calmer now. “Please? All I want in the whole world is for you to entertain me some more with another of your hilarious anecdotes about receiving phone calls.”
“I don’t only have phone-call anecdotes,” I protest. “Aren’t you curious about what happened that Friday night?”
“Actually …”
I raise my eyebrows, expectantly.
“No,” Jed finishes. “But you might surprise me.”
“Oh fine. But I need the toilet first. Here, hold Beezus. Don’t feed her any more waffles.” I pass a bundle of floppy ferret over to my frustrating best friend and go inside. On my way back outside, the phone rings. “Who in Ben Folds’ name rings at this time of the night-slash-morning?” I mutter as I pace over to the phone. I check my watch. It’s past one am.
If I was the optimistic type, of course I’d think it was Viggo, but Viggo’s never up this late. Also, he hates me. Also, I am not the optimistic type. So I know it’s not him.
Only one way to find out. “Speak, if you are big and important, or kiss my ass goodbye.”
“Well, that’s a lovely way to greet your favourite next-door-neighbour. Although I am pleased to hear the Ben Folds references have made a welcome return, post-Viggo.”
“Em!” There’s a lump, all of a sudden, in my throat. I wish Em was here. I force myself to sound cheerful. “Great to hear from you, chicken! All the way from the sunny north!”
“You sound suspiciously chipper.” I can almost hear Em’s narrowed eyes. “Did you and McSpunkNugget get back together?”
“No,” I moan glumly. I’m completely out of false sparkle. “He still hates me. But Jed is here and he’s cheering me up a bit, even if he is being slightly annoying.”
“Jeremy’s there? At this time of night.”
“In a strictly-platonic-as-always capacity, yes. So what? And oh, by the way, why are you calling me at this unFoldsly hour of the morning, from Noosa?”
“Gold Coast, actually,” Em corrects me. “My cousin Peta is having a birthday party, so Mum drove me down for the night. You have no idea how good it is to get away from my insane brother. He’s gone into Holiday Hyperdrive, and we have to make all of the sandcastles and do all of the swimming and all of the dancing and please can I pretend to be a dinosaur one more time and … gah! It’s exhausting! Anyway, so I owe Mum big time for driving me away from the mini maniac. Plus, you’ll never guess who else is here at the party!”
There’s a tap at the sliding door. I look out. Jed is standing there with Beezus, and what appears to be a large patch of vomited spider on his black tee-shirt.
“Em, I’m sorry but I have to go,” I apologise. “Beezus spewed on Jed.”
“Oh, poor Jed. That’s ferrets for ya. Little darlings. I miss Ferretto Rocher so much! But hey, back to—”
Jed holds Beezus up by the neck. His face is murderous.
“Sorry! I have to go. Jed is about to throttle Beezus.”
“But, Connie! Wait! It’s important! You’re going to want to—”
“I’ll call you back.”
I hang up the phone. It’s okay. I know Emily will understand. She has Ferretto. She knows how ferret ownership can spin your life into a strange but beautiful tumble of turmoil.
And I will call her back. Just as soon as I’ve placated Jed.
“Jed, please don’t kill Beezus,” I say as I walk outside.
“I’m covered in Beezus-juice,” Jed moans. “It smells like the fart of an Abzorbaloff.”
I wrinkle my nose. “You’re right. You do completely reek. But I warned you not to feed her any more ice-cream”
“I don’t think it’s spider spew. I think it’s something dead. Please tell me you have a tee-shirt I can borrow that doesn’t have some lame nineties’ band’s lame tour details on it?”
I shake my head. “Sorry, cowboy. That’s just how my tee-shirt drawer rolls. I’ll get you one of Dad’s.”
“Connie, I don’t think one of your dad’s accountant button-downs is going to go all that great with my biker boots.”
“Beggars covered i
n ferret spew can’t be choosers, Jed,” I say. “I’ll be back in a minute. Please don’t kill Beezus while I’m gone.”
I go back inside and up the stairs. I’m going straight to my parents’ room, to my Dad’s wardrobe, to get the dodgiest of his short-sleeved checkered work shirts for Jed to wear. I can’t wait to see the look on his face.
But instead of walking to the end of the hallway, to Mum and Dad’s room, I stop at mine.
I don’t know why. My bedroom door is open. I just go in.
The advent calendar is still on the floor, ripped and empty.
Viggo’s photo is still on my bedside table—him in his best Calvin Klein suit, smiling proudly at the camera, holding his School Dux certificate.
Taken the night I told him I loved him and he didn’t say it back.
A book Viggo lent me is beside it—Politics in Australia, 1901-1939. I didn’t get around to starting it before …
My eyes drift over to my CD collection. Along with my favourite nineties’ music there are now classical compilations—Mozart, Wagner, Brahms, Beethoven, Tchaikovski—all bought and listened to, over and over, so I’d know what Viggo was talking about. So I could talk back intelligently about the music he loved. Even though he never managed to like any of mine. But that’s okay. I know the music I’m into is nowhere near as worthy as the stuff he’s into.
Nothing I like is as good as the stuff Viggo likes.
Nothing I do is as good as what he does.
And without him I’m not as good either.
Now I’m not Viggo MacDuff’s girlfriend, I’m not in his light anymore. I’m just in my own boring brown murk.
I’m boring, just like I was before I met him.
I’m worthless.
I’m nothing.
I slide down the wall to my bedroom floor, ripping my favourite Spiderbait poster on the way down. I’d only just blue-tacked it back up.
Viggo hated all the posters on my walls. He thought they made my room look “juvenile”.
For the past year, I’d had framed prints on my walls, ones that “toned with the décor of my room”. They were grown-up and sensible and smart—all the things I’d pretended to be.
