by Peggy Frew
Worthless, they called her. Kids said she’d give you a blow job for five bucks. That she’d sell you speed, or acid, good quality. ‘Hey, Worthless,’ guys would yell, ‘what’re ya worth today?’ And Anna would walk past, a half-smile on her face, like she was thinking of a different joke, a better one.
As far as Ryan knew, she didn’t actually do any of the things people said she did. A lot of bullshit rumours went around the school. But she did smoke at the tram stop at eight-fifteen in the morning like it was some kind of a performance, and she did jump on the tram that way, with her bitten nails and tiny skirt, dark circles under her eyes.
What was it with kids like Anna, who had to advertise their awkwardness, their ill-fittingness, wear it like it was fluorescent? Surely this only made things worse. Why would you be that way when you could choose quiet colours, keep things subdued? But sometimes, when he passed her in one of the wide, noisy school corridors, or at the tram stop or on the street near home, and he saw her ridiculous skirt, her shoes all tramped down at the backs, her gnawed nails, her untucked shirt and non-regulation bag, and, most of all, her fuck-off, fuck-you, fuck-everything face, he wanted to smile. He felt—not admiration, not really; it was simpler than that. It was almost a thrill, a rippling, airy feeling. It was a kind of delight.
There were only a few of them who still kicked the footy at lunchtime: Ryan, James Hanlon, Sam McKenna and Will Metcalfe. Everyone else now sat with the girls on the slope of grass behind the canteen. For this reason there was something reckless in the way they kicked. No pride was to be taken in it; quitting was imminent.
James stood, fingers fanned on the ball. ‘Coming to Shareen’s party, Macca?’
‘Nah, we’re going to Portsea.’
‘How ’bout you, Metcalfe?’
‘Yep.’ Catching the footy and then booting it, blue eyes slightly crossed, stringy hair lifting from his forehead.
Ryan took the mark, reaching, his knee finding James’s hip, boosting himself for a speccy, hands soft and ready, meeting the ball, bringing it down into the shelter of his torso, bringing his whole self into a curve and rolling, easy and slow, to the grass.
‘Nice one, Mute, ya bastard,’ groaned James from his sprawl.
Ryan lay with his eyes half-closed to the sun, the ball on his chest. Some year sevens pattered by, their voices reedy and insubstantial. Ryan could feel his own weight pressing him into the ground, the swathes of air required by his lungs, the roaring of his blood. For three years now he’d been taller than his mum, and hairy and deep-voiced since year eight. But it was only in the past few months that he’d found himself overcome by this private astonishment at his own body. He’d taken to admiring his arms after his shower in the mornings, although he could only fit them one at a time in the small, spotted mirror.
James’s shadow fell over his face. The toe of James’s shoe tapped the ball free. ‘How ’bout you, Mute-o? Coming to Shareen’s party?’
Ryan sat up. ‘Maybe.’
The bell rang. Ryan followed the others. He watched them, their shoulders, their mugging sideways lunges, the grey shorts silly on their big man-legs. My friends, he told his mum when she asked who he was going out with on a Saturday night. But this year, year twelve, something had turned in Ryan’s understanding of things, and a suspicion had crept in that these were not and had never been friendships, but place holders of some sort, an arrangement of convenience.
They’d reached the stage—despite not being ready for the sloping grass and the girls behind the canteen—of, at parties, getting drunk and saying things like, Hard to believe this is almost it, or, I wonder if we’ll stay in touch, or, when more drunk, You’d better stay in touch, ya bastard, or, I’m gunna miss you, ya cunt. But it was Will and James and Sam who said these things. Ryan didn’t say anything. And to him it sounded as if the others were following a script.
He had footy training after school and it was dark when he got home. His mum was still at work. He felt huge in the flat, crossing each room in three steps, his runners making sticky sounds on the lino. In the bathroom mirror his skin was shiny with grease and sweat. A new pimple was starting on his chin. Tenderly, delicately, he touched it.
‘Fuck this,’ he said, and went out.
He ran his usual loop, down the Avoca Street hill and through the park, around the cemetery, back up the hill. Then he did it again.
Anna and Junie Worth lived in a two-storey house partway down the hill. No other kids from school lived in this neighbourhood; most lived in the other direction, in quiet suburbs with big houses and flash cars and nice lawns.
On his second loop, passing Anna and Junie’s house, he saw that the lights had been turned on in one of the upstairs windows. Their house was big for the area, but shabby. A tall tree grew in the front yard and the two upstairs windows could only be glimpsed through it from certain angles. Although he had no way of knowing, Ryan assumed that these were Anna’s and Junie’s bedrooms.
Girls’ bedrooms—such mystery. He’d glanced in at Cassie Dean’s once at a party and it had been like something from a movie—white wrought-iron bed, frilly pillows, teddy bears. He tried to use this setting sometimes for a fantasy about Melanie Geare—her legs against the frills, her school dress undone—but it didn’t usually work. It was the teddy bears; he’d remove them, but they kept reappearing.
He didn’t picture bedrooms like that inside Anna and Junie’s house. If he tried to picture anything, all he got was the two girls standing there, one in each room, and the rooms empty.
On Saturday night he went to Shareen’s party. He met Will and James at Brighton Station at nine-thirty—because early was not cool, Will said—and they walked through the hushed streets, past the big, tidy houses. Will had on a long-sleeved Quiksilver top and Quiksilver trackies, with Blundstones. James was all in Stüssy; his hair was wetted down and he smelled like Lynx.
‘Don’tcha own any other shoes, Mute?’
‘Sleep in them, do ya?’
No response was expected of Ryan—he knew this. There was nothing behind these jibes, no real malice or cruelty. It was just something they had to do, his so-called friends, another script, a way of staying at ease, of filling space.
Between the station and Shareen’s they shared most of a small bottle of Southern Comfort. A heat came into Ryan’s stomach, a hum to his fingertips.
Shareen’s mother was at the open front door.
‘Hello, boys,’ she said. ‘Come on in.’
She was one of the sporty mums, short hair and arms with slim muscles, a fine gold chain at the base of her tanned throat.
‘How’s your mum, Will? Tell her she needs to get that knee fixed so she can come back to tennis. We’re missing her.’
‘I think it’s better,’ said Will. The Southern Comfort bulged in his pocket. ‘She’s taken the strapping off, anyway.’
‘Good to hear.’ She ushered them through. ‘Out you go. Everyone’s out the back.’
There was a swimming pool, and a tennis court. A table with plates of snacks that nobody ate or even went near. Also, a rectangle of lawn that was being treated like the slope behind the canteen, except in darkness and with closer sitting, a bit of lying down, and even a couple of entanglements.
Some drama was taking place—girls hobbled urgently back and forth in their miniskirts and precarious shoes. Alicia Matthews emerged from behind a trellis flanked by Cassie Dean and Juliet Rodham, mascara tears black on her cheeks.
Ryan stood by the tennis court fence with Will and James and they finished the Southern Comfort. He looked for Melanie and saw her, eventually, sitting on a bench near the pool with Kristy Williams. James went off and came back with vodka and orange juice in a two-litre plastic bottle. It was strong, and after two swigs Ryan didn’t want any more—the cyclone-wire fence was already wavering, the pool gently slipping sideways.
‘Come on, Mute, ya wuss,’ said Will. ‘What’s the matter with ya?’
‘I’m going to the toi
let.’
Ryan went into the house, into the back room, which was half a kitchen and half just a big space with two leather couches and a glass coffee table marooned in the middle of it. There was the smell of flowers, and hot pastry. Shareen’s mum was behind the kitchen counter, doing something to the oven. She turned and smiled, but then didn’t smile so much when she saw it was Ryan.
‘You okay there?’ she said.
None of the parents ever knew Ryan’s name. Sometimes he got introduced, but they never remembered.
‘I’m looking for the toilet, please,’ he said.
‘There’s one out the back.’ Shareen’s mum opened a cupboard. ‘In the cabana.’
Ryan went out again. Had he misheard? Wasn’t a cabana a kind of sausage? There was a small building at one end of the pool—maybe that was what she’d meant.
He went the long way round, because this took him right past Melanie. There she was, laughing at something Kristy had said, her legs crossed, all bare and awesome. As he approached she got up. She didn’t have stupid shoes like the other girls. She had sandshoes, except black, and her dress was drifty, red, with little white flowers on it.
‘Toilet,’ Melanie said to Kristy.
‘Come straight back,’ said Kristy.
Melanie laughed, and moved towards Ryan. ‘Hi,’ she said, brushing past.
‘Wait,’ said Ryan, and she stopped. He pointed past Kristy at the little building. ‘Isn’t the toilet in the, in the … um.’ He didn’t want to say the word, in case he had it wrong.
Melanie looked at him. ‘The what?’
‘Never mind.’
‘O-kaaay.’ She made a quizzical face, then shrugged.
‘Thanks for taking such an interest, but I think Melanie can find the toilet by herself,’ said Kristy from the bench.
Ryan’s ears burned. He stumbled past and into the darkness of the entry to the shed, or cabana, or whatever it was. From there he watched Melanie skirt the pool and go into the house, and through the glass door saw Shareen’s mum smile and nod and point to a room off the kitchen, which Melanie entered, closing the door behind her.
There were possible explanations. Maybe Shareen’s mum was making all the boys use the outside bathroom, not just Ryan. Maybe there had been someone already using the inside bathroom when he’d asked. Maybe Shareen’s mum had nothing against Ryan personally, but just didn’t know him, whereas she knew Melanie well. But all of these were beyond Ryan’s reach now.
‘Fuck … you,’ he whispered, very quietly, staring through the glass at Shareen’s mum. Then, ‘And fuck you,’ super soft, directed at Kristy, who was slurping through a straw at something in a martini glass.
He entered the cabana, which had a television and sun lounges and a bar with nothing in it. Through a door in the far wall was the toilet. Fancy soap and a basket on the floor containing a pile of toilet rolls, the kind with little embossed flowers on them. He closed the door and locked it. Stood looking into the large, clean mirror. His pimple shone. He rolled his shoulders, made fists with his hands.
A vision entered his mind, uninvited, like the teddy bears with Melanie on Cassie Dean’s bed. His mother doing the accounts, up late, her hair frizzing under the kitchen light, the worry in her shoulders, the dirty-white bathrobe. The way she read his report each term, frowning, long breaths going in and out of her nose, and the relief in her smile—Well done, Ry!—that didn’t make the tightness in his gut go away. His mother serving dinner in her tracksuit and ugg boots, taking only one chop for herself. You have the rest, love, you need it. Her uniform on its hanger, her white shoes staying clean in their plastic bag. The Tiptop sandwiches she made for them both each morning, Vegemite and margarine.
He unzipped his fly, took out his cock and pissed at length, turning a full, slow circle, spraying the closed toilet lid, the walls, the door, and finishing with an extra good dousing of the toilet paper rolls.
Then he went out and past Kristy and across the tennis court. In a hidden corner he climbed the back fence and dropped down into the street.
He caught the train back to Windsor. The park lay, silent and dark and dangerous, the path winding into trees. He could have gone around it, but he didn’t. His body felt agile and strong. No one was going to fuck with him. In he went, the air cool on his hot face. He didn’t see anybody, but he kept an eye out—it was hard to know what might be going on in those shadows. Somewhere very far away there was the slow uncoiling of a siren, but inside the trees it was very quiet.
In the centre of the park was a cleared area with a children’s playground and a toilet block, above which a harsh light burned, showing the sign that said men, and an entrance, black and still. He kept on, and was nearly through and into the next lot of trees when something moved, over to one side. He turned. It was Anna Worth, perched on one of the playground ladders, her hair pale, her face shadowy.
He stood like a dolt. What was the protocol here? Did they ignore one another? But this wasn’t the tram stop—this was the park, in the middle of the night.
Anna made the decision for him. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Did I scare you?’
‘No.’
‘You sure?’ The playground equipment was made of dark timber, barely discernible from the trees behind. She almost appeared to be floating.
Clumsily, he crossed the tanbark. ‘What’re you doing here?’
She smiled, that same smile she gave when boys yelled stuff at her. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said.
‘I’m … I’m going home. From a party.’ He halted by the roundabout. ‘Do your parents know where you are?’
‘Jeez.’ She jumped down off the ladder. ‘What are you, the police? Do your parents know where you are?’ She came over and got up onto the roundabout, reached down with a toe and gave a push. It began to turn and Ryan, on the opposite side, walked with it, slowly, a hand on one of the bars.
‘My mum’s asleep,’ Anna said in a softer voice. ‘Full of wine.’ She sat down cross-legged, facing out, away from him. ‘I get bored at night.’ She made a flinging gesture towards the sky. ‘Sometimes I like to sneak around.’
Ryan trod the tanbark. ‘Well, I reckon you’re crazy. You don’t know what kind of freaks you might find out here. Bad things happen in parks at night, everyone knows that. You’re asking for trouble.’
‘What’re you doing here then? Aren’t you asking for trouble too?’
He didn’t answer. There was no point. God, she was annoying. She was just determined to make life hard for herself. He sat on his edge of the roundabout and pulled his legs up. Around they went, back to back. A car gunned its engine, out on the road, and something shook the leaves at the top of one of the nearby trees.
‘Why would you want to hang out here anyway, all by yourself?’ he said, and was surprised by the anger in his voice.
‘Why would you?’
‘Oh, shut up! I wasn’t hanging out, I was walking through. Do you always turn everything into an argument?’
‘I just get sick of people telling me all the time what I shouldn’t do.’
The trees slid past, then the toilet block light, then the trees. The anger left, as abruptly as it had arrived. The heat of the alcohol was gone, too. He was tired, he wanted home, his bed. But he’d begun to feel as if he was dreaming, the way he did sometimes at the end of a long training session, when he knew that if he stopped everything would hurt, and so he just kept going.
‘I don’t get you,’ he said at last.
‘You don’t know me.’
‘Yeah, but I see you around, I see what you do. Why do you dress like that? Why do you make yourself so ugly? Wouldn’t it be easier to just, you know, be normal?’
No answer.
‘Junie doesn’t wear her skirt like that, she doesn’t swagger around smoking at the tram stop and showing off. She’s still—weird. Different. She’s sort of cold. But she doesn’t get too much of a hard time. Wouldn’t it be better to be like that? Like her?’
‘I’m not showing off.’
‘Well, what are you doing then?’
‘I don’t know. But I can’t help it.’
She put her foot down and started to push the roundabout faster. The toilet block light began to stretch into a long white snake against the dark.
‘Don’t,’ said Ryan, swivelling to face her. ‘I’ll spew.’
She ignored him. She jumped down, keeping hold of the bar, and began to run around and around in the shallow trench of tanbark, leaning forward, pushing faster and faster.
Ryan felt himself being forced back against the bar. The trees shot past, then the toilet block snake, then the trees—dark, light, dark, light. Anna’s footfalls pounded. She was laughing.
‘Don’t,’ he heard himself call again, weakly. His head tipped back and he shut his eyes.
Then Anna’s footsteps stopped, and there was a change in the movement of the roundabout—a shift in weight. In a furious silence they spun, and inside Ryan’s head he saw the outward force, a hollow cone, cool and grey, its sides flowing through him. His stomach heaved and he opened his eyes and there, opposite, against the dark-light-dark-light, were Anna’s knuckles, her hands on the bar, her white arms, the crown of her head. She was flying, face down, her body perpendicular to the ground, the spin sending her out, taut, like a flag.
It only lasted a couple more seconds, and then she descended, awkwardly, her legs dragging. Ryan unclenched and manoeuvred himself, lowered his feet. The roundabout slowed and stopped and he staggered on a diagonal to a tree and vomited, acid in his throat, at the back of his nose.
He stayed there for a while, spitting and wiping his mouth, and when he turned around Anna was sitting on one of the swings. He went over and perched on the lip of the slide. His edges felt blurred. The overcast sky was a very pale orange. None of this would exist in the morning, or at school on Monday.
‘So who was at the party?’ said Anna.
