by Kate Gordon
“I was never enough for Viggo,” I say. Jed has moved closer. I can smell him. He doesn’t smell like fancy aftershave like Viggo does.
He smells like Jed.
It’s better.
“You are enough,” Jed says. “Just as you are. Except …” he presses a finger to my forehead, “for that little voice in your head that says you aren’t. That voice has to go.”
I take his finger from my forehead and press it to my lips. He brushes the finger across my cheek, so slowly, so softly.
And then he leans in.
And it’s nothing like my kisses with Viggo. It’s not business-like. It’s not brief and to the point. It’s gentle and lingering and so very comfortable. So right.
“Well, this is unexpected.”
I break away from Jed. Leaning over to peer in Tallulah’s window, a wry smirk on her tired-looking face, is Em.
“Em! Oh my Ben …” I squeak. “What are you even doing here?”
“Watching you and Jeremy make out,” she says, laughing. “Which is not at all the vision I had when I thought of coming back to Tassie to rescue you.”
“Rescue me? I—”
I realise I still have my arms around Jed’s neck. I give him a brief smile—one that I hope says “we’ll continue this later”—and remove my arms, wrapping them around Em instead. “You came home from your holiday early for me?”
She nods into my hair “I thought when you didn’t return my calls that something was really wrong. I was worried. And plus, I have information. About Viggo MacDuff.”
“We’re not talking about Viggo MacDuff,” I say, choosing to forget that Jed and I will be talking about Viggo soon. Or, at least, we would have been if Em hadn’t shown up.
“Oh, I think you’re going to want to hear this. See, I think I told you I ran into someone in Queensland. At a party, for my cousin’s birthday?”
“Who?” I ask. “Not Viggo?”
“No,” a voice says from behind Em. “Me.”
I crane my neck. “Kacey?”
“I’m here too, by the way,” says Patience, waving at Kacey’s side. “Em and Kacey came over to ask where you were and, at first I wouldn’t tell them because I knew you were on a romantic date with Jed, but then they told me what they knew and … Sorry, sis, I just had to. Because you’re going to want to hear this.”
Fifty-One
I lift a shoulder. “And?”
“Didn’t you hear me?” Kacey asks. “I said Viggo kissed me!”
“I heard.”
Her perfectly plucked eyebrows shoot upwards. “You knew?”
“I didn’t know. But I’d been thinking it was a possibility. You obviously thought he was the bee’s knees. I thought you might try it.”
Kacey shakes her head furiously. “Me? No. No way! I didn’t try it. He tried it. I never liked him, Connie. Not like that. I mean, I thought he was hot when he first started at school … and yeah, I thought he was smart and … well, I wouldn’t mind if some of that rubbed off on me. But I would never have tried anything with him. He had a girlfriend—you. And I like you. I’d give anything to be friends with you.”
Now I am shocked. “Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? We’ve been hanging out lately, right? And I mean, I know we’ve never been exactly friends before but how could we have been? You and Jed were always a party of two—and I know you called us the überclones—and then you were hanging off Viggo like a puppy dog. I thought that was a bit weird because I never picked you as a girl who’d go all doormat. But I figured you saw something in Viggo that I didn’t. I thought he must treat you nicer in private than he did in public.”
“He never did,” Patience snaps.
“Why were you always so flirty with him?” I ask. “If you didn’t like him?”
Kacey looks at her fingernails. They’re painted bright pink, with palm trees and pineapples alternating on each finger. “I didn’t mean to be,” she says quietly. “I don’t think I know any other way to be with boys.”
“Oh, come on!” Patience cries. “Enough of all the deep-and-meaningfuls! Tell Connie what you told Em, Kacey! Tell her what you told me.”
“When I turned Viggo down, he got kind of angry,” Kacey says. “He kind of … yelled at me. Called me worthless, stupid, ugly …”
“Holy crap.” My hand is pressed to my mouth. “He didn’t … hurt you?”
Kacey looks up at me, eyes shining. “Not physically. But … a couple of the Landcare people walked in while he was going off at me. It was just before a meeting, see, and they came in and … he stopped. Stopped yelling. But I noticed his hands were all tight. In fists. Like he might have hit me if the others hadn’t arrived. Or, at least, like he wanted to.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Kacey shrugs, her chin trembling. “I wanted to. But I didn’t want to hurt you. And I thought … maybe it’s a one-off. Maybe you two had a fight, or he was stressed about something … I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt because … well, he’s Viggo MacDuff. Everyone looks up to him. And, plus, I liked you, so I wanted to believe he was actually a good boyfriend to you …”
“But …” Patience gestures with her hand for Kacey to keep going. “Go on! Go on. Tell her the rest. Tell her about the video.”
Fifty-Two
We sit together in the park where Jed and I used to play as children, and we talk about revenge.
There’s Jed, Kacey Kuusela, Em, my little sister and there’s me. We sit on the swings and on the rocking cars opposite, and we drink corner shop slurpies, and we talk about all of the ways we could destroy Viggo MacDuff.
There’s a video.
After Viggo tried it on with her, Kacey confided in the überclones. They convinced her that it couldn’t be a one-off. They convinced her that she had to look into Viggo’s history and find a way to make him pay. I think Jed and I underestimate the intelligence of the überclones. Either that or they’d watched John Tucker Must Die one too many times.
Anyway, Kacey did start investigating. And it turns out she might have a career in front of her as an academic researcher, because she dug up all sorts of dirt on Viggo.
Although the fact that she’s a whiz at Facebook definitely helped, and that might not be quite such an asset in the world of academia.
But what she found out is this: there have been other girls like me. Girls plucked from obscurity and changed to fit a mould made by Viggo MacDuff. Girls he charmed and then discarded when they began to annoy him.
The first one was four years ago. He’d been at this for a while. None of them had lasted as long as I did, though.
A couple of the girls … he hurt. Like he hurt me. One of them caught the incident on video and posted it on YouTube.
The girl threatened to tell everyone who the guy in the video is. You only see his back, but if you’ve spent hours studying his back as he walked in front of you, you’ll have no problem identifying him.
That’s why he and his family left Sydney. The “study tour to Europe” was only a front. The MacDuffs did go to Europe for a few months, until the furore died down. And then, when they came back to Australia, they moved to sleepy little Bangarra. Where they thought Viggo’s past couldn’t catch up with him. Trouble is, Viggo’s a leopard whose spots are welded on. His past became his present.
“He hurt another girl, didn’t he?” Em says sombrely. “He hurt you.”
“Don’t try and deny it!” cries Patience. “I saw your ribs.”
“I think it’s time you told us the last memory,” says Jed. “Then we can work out how we’re going to take this guy down. Once and for all.”
And so I tell them.
Fifty-Three
Memory 25
I tell them how Viggo arrived at my party, at nine, when the party started at seven. He gave me no apology, and told me straight up that he could only stay half an hour. He had “other commitments” that night.
I tell them how he did
n’t bring me a card, or a present. I tell them how he wasn’t in costume, even though it was meant to be a pirate party.
I tell them how, when my dad came to shake his hand (something I now know would have been a strain for him, considering how much he hated Viggo), Viggo rolled his eyes and shook it as if he was under extreme duress.
I tell them how he refused to play the party games Jed organised, calling them juvenile.
How he kept checking his watch.
How he asked me to turn the music down.
How he told me—three times—that he’d have to leave soon as he had “important things” to do.
How he drummed his fingernails on the arm of his chair, and sighed and clicked his tongue.
How, finally, I got sick of it.
“Come with me,” I said.
I grabbed him by the elbow and marched him off into the next room. Everyone watched. Everyone knew I was pissed off. Everyone knew Viggo was going to get it, big time.
Several people gave me the thumbs-up.
Not Jed, though. Jed called out, “Wait, Connie-girl. Your favourite song’s about to start, on the mix-tape.”
“I’ll be back, Jeremy,” I snapped.
I remember that now.
And I remember the hurt in his eyes.
But, at the time, all I could think about was Viggo. And my anger.
I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was just the fact that I was dressed as a tough pirate queen. Maybe it was just that a year of being repressed was finally getting to me.
Maybe it was that Viggo really was being a Class A douchebucket and he needed to be called out on it.
Maybe I was a little bit drunk on the two birthday beers Dad had bought me.
Whatever the case, I was fired up.
“What in the Actual Hell?” I cried, not caring if Viggo thought I was blaspheming or being uncouth.
“What the hell me?” Viggo snapped, his voice low and cold. “What the hell you, Constance? You humiliated me! Dragging me out of there like that as if I was … lesser than you. As if you had control over me. As if I was some … servant. Some plaything. Don’t you know who I am, you worthless piece of shit?”
I jolted. Viggo never swore. He never talked like that. And his face … he looked so furious. So out of control.
Viggo MacDuff was never out of control.
I’d planned on saying more—calling him out for all of his rudeness that night, and for not buying me a present or dressing up or making any effort whatsoever. But now I’d forgotten how to speak. My lips were glued shut. I was terrified.
Viggo stepped towards me. “You useless, pathetic creature,” he growled. “How dare you attempt to humiliate me like that? How dare you attempt to bring me down in the eyes of my colleagues? How dare you presume you are important enough to do that? You are nothing. Nobody likes you. You are friendless. You are worthless.”
“J-Jed,” I whispered.
“What?” Viggo’s cold eyes locked on mine.
“Jed is my friend,” I whispered, trembling.
“Ha! Not likely, the way you’ve been treating him,” Viggo snarled. “You’ve barely spoken to him in a year. You’ve lost him, ‘Connie-girl’. And …” A corner of his lip twitched into a twisted smile. “After what you just did in there, you’ve lost me too. You’re completely alone now, Constance.”
He was at the door by the time I could get my feet to work. I ran after him, standing between him and the door. Tears were streaming down my face. “Please, no!” I begged. “Please, Viggo. Please! Don’t do this.” I grabbed at his shirt. He brushed me away as if I was a mosquito.
“Get off me,” he hissed.
“Viggo!” I grasped at him again.
“Get off me!”
Viggo pushed me, hard, in the shoulders. I sprawled to the floor. My heart was pounding.
Then, as I struggled to get up, he kicked me in the ribs.
“Pathetic,” he spat as I lay there, aching and cowering, curled in a ball on the floor. “It’s over. You’ve messed up big time, Constance. It’s over.”
The front door slammed.
I sat there for a moment, shaking.
I could hear the sounds of the party going on in the next room. I could hear laughing, cheering, squealing, singing.
Happiness.
I could hear it but it felt as if there was much more than a wall between it and me.
How could I ever feel happy again? Viggo was gone, and it was all my fault.
I dragged myself to my feet, wiped the tears from my eyes and went up to my room. I knew the people at the party wouldn’t come looking for me. They’d be giving me and Viggo “space”, not knowing that Viggo was taking all the space he needed—away from me.
Beezus was waiting for me on my bed. I scooped him into my arms and sat with him, rocking backwards and forwards, until I felt okay enough again to go downstairs.
I checked myself in the mirror on the way past. I looked all right. Face a bit pale, eyes a bit puffy, but nobody would notice anything was wrong with me. Not if they didn’t really know me. Which nobody downstairs really did, apart from Mum and Dad, and they were having “grown-up time” watching crime shows on iView in the kitchen. And Patience knew me, of course, but she was playing Trivial Pursuit with the two school friends she’d been allowed to invite to my party.
And Jed, of course.
Jed would know.
Jed always, instinctively, knew my mood. Even though we hadn’t been as close in the past year as we had for the rest of our friendship, I was still sure he’d sense that something was wrong.
And, maybe, part of me wanted him to sense it. Maybe part of me wanted someone to know that I was upset and ask me what’s the matter. Maybe I wanted to tell someone what had happened.
No, that wasn’t true. I didn’t want to tell just anyone what had happened.
I wanted to tell Jed.
But when I got back to the party, Jed was gone. So were a couple of other people.
“They went back to Jed’s house for a Star Wars marathon.” The girl from the American Civil War group—the sandwich girl—said this with a smirk and taunting eyes. Then she turned away.
“That’s fine,” I said, to nobody in particular, as I settled on the couch by myself. But it wasn’t. In previous years there was no way Jed would leave my party without saying goodbye, especially not to have a Star Wars session without me.
Not even my favourite Ben Folds song starting on the mix-tape Jed had made for me could cheer me up.
Instead, it made me feel even more miserable.
“I don’t get many things right the first time. In fact, I am told that a lot. Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls brought me here.”
“Here,” I muttered, fighting back a fresh wave of tears. “Alone.”
After the song finished, Jed’s voice boomed out of the CD player. “That one was for you, Connie-girl. From me. Because it’s how I feel.”
“Yeah, you feel like I’m a loser, just like Viggo does,” I whispered.
I knew the rest of the song went on to say happier things, things about being the luckiest person in the world because you got to be with the person you loved. But I knew that wasn’t the bit Jed meant.
Like everyone else, he thought I was pathetic. He thought I was stupid. He hated me. He had to. That’s why he left.
“No,” Jed says, and I’m suddenly aware that my face is coated in tears, and I see his is as well. I’ve seen Jed cry before—he does it when he’s listening to music, and he sobbed like a baby when Amy Pond was killed by the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who—but I’ve never seen the look of utter anguish that’s on his face now. “No,” he says again. “I left because I realised that night that I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take you loving him anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Stop saying you’re sorry!”
When I look at Kacey, I see she’s furious.
“Jesus. That fri
cking guy! That’s how he does it. He makes you feel like you’re nothing, like you’re worthless, like you’re always stuffing up and having to apologise for everything you do. He makes you feel like that so he can control you! Connie, I loved helping you choose all those outfits … at first. I loved it because I enjoyed, like, getting to know you, but even I could see after a while that those clothes weren’t right for you. It wasn’t good for you to wear them. I even tried to tell Viggo. Remember I asked him to come and talk to me that day about ‘Landcare stuff’. Yeah, I didn’t really. I wanted to talk to him about how I was worried about you. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t care. He just tried to make a pass at me instead.
“Guys like Viggo don’t care about us. They don’t care about anybody but themselves. They don’t care if they hurt you because you mean nothing to them. They just break you down and throw you away and leave you still feeling broken. It’s bullshit. It’s everything the feminists fought against. It’s what we should still be fighting against.”
I can’t help laughing. Kacey Kuusela the feminist? Life really is full of surprises. “I think I underestimated you,” I admit.
“I know.” Kacey lifts her chin and smiles. “People do. I’m an überclone. We’re shallow and vapid. But we’re not how you think. Jane is an epic cook—she wants to be on Masterchef. And Karen wants to play violin in the national orchestra. And I—well, yes, I do want to be a fashion designer, but I’m also passionate about the environment. I know everyone thinks I only joined Landcare because of the boys, but I didn’t. I want to create an environmentally friendly fashion line, using only sustainable fabrics, and contributing profits back into environmental causes. That’s my dream. What’s yours?” She raises an eyebrow.
I look at my Snoopy Vans.
Because I don’t know what my dream is, now I’m not with Viggo. Viggo had my future all mapped out for me.
Without him …
“She can be anything she wants to be.” My head whips around to look at Patience. “My sister is awesome,” she says, smiling. “She’s a brilliant musician, and an incredible artist, and you should read her stories! Oh my gosh, she could be the next JK Rowling if she wanted to be.”
