by John Marsden
I saw Susy Thieu the moment I arrived. I assumed she’d given school the flick for a few days, same as me, but it turned out she was with the PLC ski team, training for the inter-schools. Within three minutes she introduced me to six guys, so I was set. I knew I wouldn’t be seeing much of Mummy and Daddy, let alone little brother, for the next week.
I’ve got a theory about skiing, and that is that you improve over summer without having to do anything. In other words, whatever standard you’re at when one season ends, you start the next season at a higher standard. It’s not very logical, but I honestly believe it works that way. So I felt good the next morning. I’d had the skis tuned and waxed and whatever else they do to them, the snow was good, I’d been on 195s for half of last season and was confident, so I just went for it. The weather was lousy: windy and cold, with bad visibility, little ice particles blowing straight into our faces. Hardly anyone was around. Mark came with me but Mum and Dad were still in bed.
For three hours we skied our asses off. Mark’s better than me, technically, but I’m more aggressive, and that morning he really had to struggle to keep up. ‘Suck on it, little brother,’ I thought, skiing straight onto yet another lift without him.
‘What’s the hurry?’ he asked me at one point. ‘It’ll still be here tomorrow, you know.’
I didn’t know what the hurry was. I still don’t. I wasn’t thinking about it. I just wanted to go as far and as fast as I could. I flashed past people at Concorde speed, not caring if I ran them off the slopes or into trees. I made my knees work like they were on springs. I skied every slope on the mountain, and invented a few runs of my own. ‘You’re crazy,’ Mark said as he caught up with me in the lift queue, still huffing and puffing from a great route I’d just found, down the side of McCaskills Shoulder.
He was right, of course, and my being in here proves it. Except I more or less know why I’m in here. I don’t know why I was crazy that day. But suddenly it was over. Suddenly I felt the numb coldness of my face, the burning red skin, the sand-blasted cheeks. I felt the ache of my knees. I felt the rumbles of ravenous hunger in my stomach. I turned to Mark.
‘I’m going back,’ I said.
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ he grumbled.
I wasn’t actually asking, just telling, but I think he was too wrecked to know the difference.
The rest of the six days was totally different to that first morning. I hung round with Susy and the PLC squad, stole their guys off them—well, tried to—gave my fake ID a huge workout, partied, skied, and partied some more. You don’t have time to get tired because everything just keeps happening around you and all you’ve gotta do is hang on to the roller-coaster and not think about how tired you are and how long it is since you last had a sleep.
Somewhere in the world right now I guess people are skiing and drinking and partying and cracking on to each other but in here our one pathetic attempt has ended with Cindy stabbing her wrist till she’s got bloody gashes all over it and then being taken off in an ambulance to a closed ward.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I was telling Oliver all about our skiing holiday and he sat looking at me with his brown calf eyes and a little smile on his face. When I’d finished he said, ‘God, if Marj could hear you now.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, although I knew.
‘I haven’t heard you talk that much since . . . well, I’ve never heard you talk that much.’
‘I don’t want to end up like Cindy,’ I said.
It’s sad when you look at Oliver and his beautiful big eyes and you realise how beautiful he must have been before he got anorexia. I know looks aren’t everything, and I’d rather have a guy with personality than looks, any day, but it’d be such a bonus to have both. I remember reading an article in a magazine about what it’s like to go out with a stunning-looking guy, and all these girls who’d done it were saying how it’s good but sometimes they’re up themselves or other girls try to take them off you or no-one notices you any more. One girl said the guy could never walk past a mirror without stopping to look at himself. Another one said a girl came up to her and whispered, ‘How could you ever catch a guy as gorgeous as that?’, which must have been nice for her self-esteem.
Still, I wouldn’t mind giving it a go. I think I could handle the pressure.
Anyway, Oliver said to me, ‘So what did go wrong with your family? It all sounds perfect to me.’
‘Perfect? You’ve got to be kidding.’
‘So what went wrong?’
‘Are you serious? Do you really not know?’
‘Why should I know? You never say anything in Group, and even when we talk by ourselves, it’s like there’s a whole big area that you avoid.’
‘But you must have seen it in the newspapers.’
‘Oh, sure. But I don’t remember much about it. I didn’t know I was going to meet you one day, so I didn’t take a lot of notice. It was one of those big financial scams, wasn’t it?’
‘Thanks a lot.’
I don’t know why I said that. I hadn’t minded him saying it was a scam, not really. After all, that’s what it was, and now everyone knows it. I think I just said it to make him feel guilty. It’s so easy to make Oliver feel guilty. It’s almost a game.
‘Oh sorry, sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
He didn’t say anything for a while, which made me feel guilty, then. Maybe that was his game I don’t know. We just sat there, smoking.
‘Well, anyway,’ he said at last, ‘I don’t know much about it, that’s all I was trying to say.’
‘But Scranton resigned.’
‘Oh, yes, I remember. That was because of all that stuff, was it?’
I was amazed. This had been a part of my life for so long that I couldn’t believe there were people out there who hardly noticed it. People who only read the sports section of the paper, only looked at the evening news to see the horror and murder stories; people who yawned any time you mentioned politics or business. Oliver’s an intelligent guy: it just happens that he’s not interested in that stuff. He and millions like him. Maybe all the fears I’ve had, that the staff and patients in here were too interested in me, kind of spying on me, were just my imagination.
It reminded me also of something I used to wonder about a lot. It’s like that song in Camelot, the musical we put on at school: ‘What do the simple folks do?’ I used to wonder what it was like for people living ordinary lives, where their parents worked in offices and factories and stuff, and they washed the car every Saturday morning, and going to, like, Sizzlers was the biggest thrill of their week. As far as I know none of my friends ever wondered about this stuff, which is another reason I think I’m a bit of a freak, like I don’t belong. But I was fascinated by it. What do the other people do? How do they talk to each other? Why do they watch those terrible shows on TV, like ‘Bloopers’ and ‘Make-a-Date’? I mean, do they really like them? How can they care so much about some stupid football team that they go along dressed in special jumpers and scarves to watch them train, for Chrissakes? I mean to watch them train! And hanging around shopping centres all the time, after school and weekends even, I mean what’s that like? Being totally rapt in the fact that your boyfriend’s got some revved-up, purple, chrome-gleaming, fat-tyred, over-painted panel van. Maybe I really am a snob, but it’s not that exactly. I mean, they’d have as little understanding of us as I have of them. I just want to try to get a grip on it.
Maybe I will when I get out of here.
Oliver’s not that much different to me, really. I mean, not in his background. Sure he lives out in Spicers Gap, but he goes to a private school, Risden, and his father’s an advertising executive. His real father I mean: his current stepfather owns a McDonald’s, the one before that ran a trucking company, and the one before that had a meat-processing company. Four fathers. Oliver’s had so many changes of name that now he doesn’t have a surname. He decided about six months ago that he would just
be known as Oliver, nothing else. He’s the only person I’ve ever met who doesn’t have a surname. He’s even made the hospital take his stepfather’s name off his files, so now they just have Oliver on them.
He’s strong in so many ways, like that, with his name. People who don’t know him well, for example Cindy, think he’s weak, but that’s not the whole story. I suppose you’d have to say it takes a lot of strength not to eat. I don’t think that’s a weak thing to do. Especially for a boy. I’d never heard of a boy with anorexia till I came in here, but Marj says it’s quite common. Oliver doesn’t look too bad at the moment, and he is eating three meals a day, but there were times when he was shocking: they wouldn’t let him out of bed for a week at one stage, just after he got admitted.
And the way he kept going after me this morning, that was pretty strong. ‘So what did go wrong with your family?’ he asked again.
‘What went wrong with yours?’ I asked back, trying to throw him off the scent.
He laughed. ‘Marj would call that a very red herring, a scarlet one. You know what’s wrong with mine. I talk about it in Group, you don’t.’
I was getting scared, like I was going to spill my guts, and I didn’t want to. But I did want to, too.
We were already late for Group, so we ground out our smokes, left two more butts on the pile of disgusting dirty old ones already there, and went. For once—the only time ever in history—Marj was late too. She arrived at the door at the same time as us.
I don’t know what it is about Marj. She sniffs things out better than Checkers, and he was pretty good. He once flushed a rabbit out of a bush at Clifford College, just by smell. He hung around this bush for ages, making little excited whiffling noises, twitching his nose so hard I thought it’d fall off. ‘Checkers, come here,’ I kept yelling, but he wouldn’t come away, which was unusual for him. He wasn’t the world’s most obedient dog, but if you got really mad at him he’d generally make a bit of an effort to veer in your direction. Anyway, after about five minutes this rabbit suddenly came belting out of the bush at maximum revs, and the chase was on. Checkers had his ears back, he was flat to the ground and he was focussed. He chased that bunny all around Clifford College. It was funny and embarrassing at the same time. It was a Saturday and they had cricket matches on everywhere but Checkers stopped every game. It wasn’t just that he and the rabbit ran through the middle of each one, it was the fact that all the players were pissing themselves laughing so much that no-one could bowl a ball or hold a bat.
Soon the rabbit got so tired that it looked like the end of his bunny days, like he was off to bunny heaven. A few boys tried to help Checkers by making a dive for the rabbit, but he had a neat sidestep. That had already saved him a couple of times because whenever Checkers got too hot on his heels the rabbit would swerve and go in a new direction, and it took Checkers about ten metres to change course. So each time the rabbit would get a break on him again.
Things were looking terminally bad for the rabbit though. He was slowing right down, running out of puff. But just when Checkers was about to close on him, just when Checkers was opening his jaws for the big one, just as mothers were telling their kids to cover their eyes, the rabbit dived under the Science Block. At Clifford the Science Block is about two centimetres above the ground—well, say ten centimetres—and somehow the rabbit squeezed in there. Checkers had no hope. He’d been cruelly robbed, right at the moment when he thought he had it. He pulled up hard—he had to, or he’d have head-planted into the Science Block—and pranced around barking and yelping and sniffing. ‘That’s the way life is, Checkers,’ I told him, as I dragged him away.
Next weekend when I went there again to watch the second half of the game (it was Mark’s team playing), they had a new sign up: ALL DOGS MUST BE KEPT ON LEASHES. It didn’t say anything about rabbits.
But I was very impressed by Checkers’ nose. It’s not every dog that could have sniffed out a rabbit right in the middle of the city like that.
Well, I guess I’m even writing red herrings now, in here. So, back to today’s Group.
OK, we got in there, we had a little discussion about Marj being late, and about Oliver and I being late. We’re all meant to have very powerful feelings about anything Marj does, like when she’s away, like she so often is, or when she’s late, like she never is. But this time we at least got through that fairly quickly. Then, to my horror, she turned to me.
‘I think you’ve been quiet in Group long enough,’ she said. ‘I think perhaps it’s time you used the Group to help explore some of the reasons you’re in hospital.’
I was shocked, embarrassed, confused. She wasn’t normally assertive like this. She put pressure on me in subtle ways, and Dr Singh put pressure on in less subtle ways, for me to talk in Group, but I’d never heard her be so definite about it.
But the funny thing was, I sort of was ready to spill it. I nearly had to Oliver, outside, when we were having our smoke. If we’d been there any longer, I probably would have. I don’t know what it was, maybe just that the time was right, maybe I trusted them now, maybe it was not having Cindy there any longer, but I did have this powerful desire to let it go. So I sat there hunched over hoping she wouldn’t press me any more, hoping she wouldn’t ask any more questions, but also hoping she would.
There was such a long silence that I finally gave in, and broke it. They do that a lot here, use silence to make people talk. It’s pretty powerful, pretty effective. So at last I mumbled, ‘Everyone knows why I’m in here.’
Marj said, ‘Perhaps you could tell us in your own words.’
As I sat there thinking about that I made up my mind to say something about the whole mess with Rider Group. But when I did open my mouth I heard my voice say, to my big surprise: ‘I’m here because I killed my dog.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Checkers was not the brightest dog there was, I’ve never claimed that for him. Actually he was pretty dumb in a lot of ways. Finding the rabbit at Clifford College, that was about the smartest thing he did. He did an awful lot of dumb things. He nearly gave me a heart attack one day when we were in the park and I suddenly realised he’d taken off and gone right across the street and was sniffing around the Mannings’ place. Without thinking I called him and for once he spun around and came racing straight back. What I hadn’t noticed was a car and trailer coming along the street, quite fast. Checkers saw the car: that wasn’t the problem. The problem was, he didn’t see that it was towing something. He swerved around the back of the car and looked like he was going to run full pelt into the trailer. At the very last second, though, he saw it and somehow managed to launch himself through the gap. Talk about timing. I wish I’d had a camera. Considering the speed of the car, I don’t know how he did it, but I don’t think a hair on his body was touched.
I suppose I was the dumb one really, calling him without making sure the road was clear.
But no, he was no genius, Checkers. What he had, and what I loved about him, was his happiness, his friendliness, his loyalty. He bounced through life, looking for another adventure, another game, another person to love and lick and fuss over. Those crazy black and white squares: you could see them a mile away, spreading chaos and confusion. It wasn’t just Muggins, the Whites’ cat, who suffered. Down the street were the Owens, who had two borzois, dogs that looked like they belonged on the front cover of Home and Garden. They were perfectly groomed, perfectly beautiful, and perfectly boring. I never had Checkers on a leash in Argyle Street because it’s such a quiet neighbourhood and every time we walked along it, Checkers would make a point of trotting across the road to the Owens’ house and barking through the high fence at their dogs. There’d be an immediate eruption inside as the two borzois barked their lungs out. Checkers, having stirred them up, would trot happily away again, a look of quiet satisfaction on his face. For five minutes or more, until we were a couple of blocks away, I’d hear the barking of the beautiful boring borzois. I thought Checkers and I were d
oing the dogs a big favour, giving them the only moment of excitement in their day, but the Owens, who were as stupid and boring as their dogs, didn’t agree. They complained to Dad, and I had to take a different route with Checkers.
I knew I felt bad about Checkers’ death but I don’t think I even knew myself how bad I felt until I said it in Group. And I didn’t realise I felt guilty about it. Since Group, everyone keeps telling me that I shouldn’t feel guilty—but it doesn’t seem to help much. What you feel is what you feel.
When the snow holiday was over we went back to living in a fortress. And it really did become one. Dad had always refused to have a lot of security. ‘If they’re going to get in, they’re going to get in,’ he said. That’s what he used to say. Now we had a remote control lock, intercom, video camera at the front and back gates, a new security fence all around the property, and burglar alarms with flashing blue lights and loud sirens. A security company drove past about six times every night, and we had panic buttons to press that called them instantly if we ever needed them.
It was horrible. It made the house dark and horrible. I didn’t look forward to coming home any more and used to stay at school longer and longer in the afternoons.
For once Dad started to think getting Checkers might have been a good idea, because now Checkers could qualify as a guard dog. He probably became a tax deduction.
Checkers had gone berserk when we picked him up from the kennels. ‘He was very good,’ the lady said, ‘no trouble at all.’ But he’d lost weight. When we arrived to get him I saw him before he saw me. He was lying in his cage, on the strip at the front, with his nose almost under the gate and a little damp patch where he’d been breathing onto the concrete. I gave my special whistle that he always recognised, and his head shot up like he’d just touched a live wire with his tongue. He looked around wildly, his big eyes staring, trying to work out where the sound had come from. Then he saw me and he was on his feet whining and wagging his whole bottom, not just his tail. He kept pawing at the gate with his foot. When the woman started unlocking the gate, Checkers was down on his forepaws, still whining, like he couldn’t, wouldn’t, believe this was true until he was actually out. Then he got a glimpse of freedom. That was all it took. The woman had to sway out of the way as this mad collection of black and white leapt straight at my face. I ended up sitting on the concrete myself as Checkers climbed all over me, licking my face, making little crying noises, his welcome breath hot on my skin. It took about five minutes to get a lead on him. When I did, he dragged me to the car like I was a sled and he was a husky in a hurry to get to the South Pole.
