Tigers on the Run

by Sean Kennedy

  “Is anybody on this bus incapable of being a smartarse?” Dec cried.

  “No,” we all replied in unison.

  THE BUS was quiet, except for the sound of somebody snoring.

  “You awake?” Dec murmured.

  “Could anybody sleep through that?” I asked.

  “You always say that I snore.”

  “Yeah, but it’s cute when you do it.”

  “That’s just because you love me.”

  “There are plenty of people who love each other who would just as gladly kill each other over snoring.”

  “Well, it’s the one fault of mine you’re unfailingly polite about.”

  “Oh, stop, you’re making me blush.” I rested my head on his shoulder and my hand upon his knee.

  “Do you think we’re going to get Micah home?”

  “You told his parents you would. And you don’t break promises.”

  “I try not to. This could be the one.”

  “Declan Tyler, stop doubting yourself. You’re the only person Micah will probably listen to.”

  “Probably.”

  “Okay, cross that word out.”

  “But we don’t know. It could just be a big waste of time.”

  “We won’t know until we get there, so there’s no use continually stressing over it until we do. Besides, you’ve tried everything you can possibly do, so it hasn’t been a waste of time.”

  He rested one hand upon mine and squeezed it, the other safely guiding the steering wheel. “Thank you.”

  “I like you much better when you’re not angry at me.”

  “I like myself much better when I’m not angry at you and blaming you for shit I’ve had a hand in.”

  “Excellent. We’re in agreement, then: we both like you.”

  “Boofhead,” I heard him say as I drifted into sleep.

  “WAKE UP, Simon,” Dec said to me through a haze. “We’re here.”

  “You were talking in your sleep,” Jasper sniffed.

  “He does that sometimes,” Coby said.

  “Oh, does he? How would you know?” Jasper did not look happy.

  Coby rolled his eyes. “Oh, get over yourself. We’ve been friends for years.”

  “What was I saying?” I asked Dec, who in no way looked perturbed.

  “Nothing really. Just you were talking to Kylie and asking her to perform at something.”

  “Really?” I didn’t remember a thing about it. “What, a function?”

  “A party.” He looked a bit cagey, but I put it down to nervousness now we were finally here.

  As he got out of the car, Fran leaned in. “Your wedding.”

  “What?” I cried. “Oh please tell me Jasper and Coby—”

  “No, they didn’t hear that bit.”

  I believed her; if they had, the mocking would have been merciless.

  Another thought hit me. “It was Dec, right? That I was marrying?”

  “You didn’t say.”

  That was a relief. At least I didn’t say Liam Hemsworth’s name aloud, for instance. That could have made Dec return to his former frostiness.

  “Come on, bridezilla,” Fran said.

  “That is both homophobic and misogynistic.”

  “The two usually go hand in hand,” Fran sighed.

  Chapter 17

  “WELL, THIS is it,” Dec said as we amassed on the veranda.

  “Maybe us all standing here will frighten him,” Fran pointed out.

  “We haven’t come all this way to wait in the car,” Jasper griped.

  “We’ll just hang back a bit,” Fran said quickly, before I could yell at him.

  The three of them moved off and congregated under a tree.

  “Ready?” I asked Dec.

  He nodded, and I knocked at the door.

  It was now past one in the morning, but we were answered far quicker than I expected.

  A shirtless guy stood there, looking far older than eighteen, with abs that could grate cheese. “Who the hell are you?”

  “We’re the local welcome wagon,” I jumped in before Dec could. “We believe you have a new resident!”

  “Who?” the guy asked.

  “We want to see Micah,” Declan said, in a strictly no-nonsense tone.

  The guy took in the small gang amassed at his front door and just beyond in the yard. “Micah who?”

  “Oh, this kid’s good!” Jasper yelled. “But he’s lying. Take it from years of journalistic experience.”

  He didn’t look like a kid.

  “You write a gossip column,” Fran reminded Jasper.

  “Hey!” Coby poked her.

  Jasper shrugged. “Still means I know a liar when I see one.”

  “I’m not lying!” the guy choked.

  “Besides,” Jasper said, as much to himself as any of us. “I’m much more than a gossip columnist. I write about half the stories in the paper now.”

  “Rupert Murdoch must be shivering in his boots.”

  “Focus!” I yelled over my shoulder, and turned back to the guy. “Look, Jeff, and I assume it’s okay to call you Jeff? I have to say my esteemed colleagues and I don’t believe you. You don’t want trouble, do you, Jeff?”

  “Seriously?” Declan asked. “You’re trying to threaten him?” He sounded more amused than anything.

  “I’m twenty-two!” Jeff said.

  “You’re a baby!” Jasper broke in.

  “Twenty-two?” I asked Declan. “This is getting worse.”

  A sound from the side of the house made me twist my head to the left, in time to catch sight of Micah jumping out of a window and tripping over his feet.

  “We have an escapee!” I yelled.

  “Fuck,” Jeff hissed.

  Declan took off in pursuit. Micah might have been far younger than him, but Declan still kept in shape (and his “shape” was far above most normal people’s concept of keeping in shape). As Micah ran zigzag to try and avoid him, Dec followed suit, nimbly coming within arm’s reach.

  The rest of us, on the porch, watched in awe as we saw Declan Tyler™ on the field again, in his prime, chasing down an errant ball, throwing himself into the air—

  Oh, fuck. Throwing himself into the air!

  “Dec!” I yelled, running after them. “You’re not twenty-seven anymore!”

  “He’s only thirty-two,” I heard Coby yell. “He’s not a grandpa!”

  He may not have been a grandpa, but he’d had four operations on that dicky knee alone. I had visions of him crumpling on the ground and having to get rushed to a hospital for more surgery.

  But Dec brought Micah down in a glorious tackle that would have been played in that night’s highlights package had it been on the ground of the MCG and not some dusty bitumen road in Lorne.

  “Dec! Are you okay?”

  “I think I hurt my knee!” came back the muffled reply.

  “Fuck your knee!” Micah shouted. “What about my fucking back?”

  “Then you shouldn’t have run!”

  “I came here to get away from you all, you didn’t think I’d run away when I saw you here?”

  I had now reached them. “That’s gratitude for you.”

  “Fuck you!” But I could see tears in his eyes and he blinked them away furiously.

  “Watch it!” Dec warned him as I helped him to his feet.

  “Don’t even think of taking off again,” I told Micah.

  “What? Are you going to tackle me this time? I think Jasper’d have more of a shot.”

  “That’s just mean,” I said to Dec.

  He hooked an arm around my shoulder, and I worried at his need to rest on me. “I thought so, too.”

  “I could beat Jasper in a foot race, couldn’t I?”

  “Honestly, I think you could.”

  “You two are very fucking cute.” Micah still lay sprawled on the ground, refusing to get up.

  “Thanks, I think so, too,” replied Dec.

  I knew then that the Team of
Us™ had fully reformed again.

  Dec let go of me and crouched beside Micah. “You have got to stop running.”

  “I couldn’t stay here.”

  “I’m sure Jeff would disagree.” I was trying to be nice.

  “Jeff?” Micah finally sat up, and looked at me with a face full of fury and heartbreak. “Jeff?”

  “Yeah, the guy at the door—”

  “That guy wasn’t my boyfriend. That was Tony, who I only just met tonight. He’s the guy I caught my boyfriend fucking when I got here!”

  By now the others had caught up with us. Faux Jeff was joined by another guy, who was looking rather sheepish.

  “You must be Jeff,” I said, pointing to the new one.

  “Yeah.”

  “Great conversationalist,” I said, and knelt down beside Micah. “Truth be told, I did think Jeff looked a little bit too old for you at the door.”

  “Not really helping, hon,” Fran said, now appearing over Jeff’s shoulder with Coby and Jasper.

  Micah now got to his feet, swinging blindly for the real Jeff. “I’ll kill you, you fucking—”

  “Just try it—”

  “Enough!” Dec yelled. “Do you want the cops turning up here?”

  “Did I smell weed when the door opened?” Jasper asked. “I think the police would probably love to add that to anybody’s record if they were called out.”

  Tony instantly looked nervous. “Look, let’s just leave it, okay?” he said to Jeff, who didn’t look so convinced.

  “Yeah, run, you fuckhead—”

  “Micah!” Veins were bulging in Dec’s forehead. “Shut the fuck up, for once in your life!”

  He had obviously never spoken to Micah like that before. Looking a little bit like Bambi finding his dead mother, Micah crouched on the ground again.

  “Micah,” said Jeff, moving towards him. “I’m sorry. But this wasn’t working. You in the city, with me here. I was lonely.”

  “Then break up with me!” Micah mumbled into the ground. “Don’t keep pretending you give a shit when you’re fucking somebody else.”

  “How could I tell you over the phone?”

  “By dialling a number, like a normal person?” I asked.

  Jeff glared at me.

  “Just a suggestion,” I shrugged.

  “Just go!” Micah yelled. “Fuck off!”

  “We’ll take care of him,” Dec told Jeff and Tony, not that Tony seemed to care one way or another now the drama was winding down and he could probably go back to fucking Jeff.

  Tony grabbed Jeff by the arm, who looked back one more time at Micah but then moved off.

  “Oh, the drama,” Jasper whistled. “To be seventeen again.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “Seventeen sucked.”

  “It does,” Micah sniffed, and for the first time, we agreed with each other wholeheartedly.

  MICAH DIDN’T put up a fight as we got him in the minibus and took the road out of Lorne. All he said was that he wanted some food, and we stopped at the first open roadhouse we found along the Great Ocean Road.

  As he went off to find the toilets I asked Dec, “You don’t think he’s going to run off again, do you?”

  “No.” Then he thought about it. “I’ll be right back.”

  They returned a few minutes later as we were waiting for chips to fry and were sitting in the sorry excuse that served as the advertised restaurant space. Micah tore through his burger and chips—he said he hadn’t eaten since leaving Melbourne—and Dec bought him another plate.

  Now that Micah was with us, the mood had changed. Before, even though we knew this was a serious predicament, we had treated it as an almost-adventure. The brokenhearted and betrayed teen was now part of the gang, and everybody was more sombre.

  “I suppose you’re going to write all this up?” Micah asked Jasper as he swallowed a mouthful of chips with his coke. “It’d be a great story. Queer, fucked-up teen, once thought to be a potential AFL player, runs away from home to find his boyfriend screwing somebody else, and in the process screws up his own career.”

  “Micah—” Dec began.

  Coby jumped in. “Jasper came along because he felt bad about the article, and how it might have—”

  “Hey, I don’t see his mouth moving. You’re speaking for him,” Micah pointed out. “I haven’t heard him say anything.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jasper said.

  I dropped my fork, and it made a resounding clatter against the plate. “Please tell me somebody was recording that.”

  Declan placed his hand over mine to shush me.

  “Are you?” Micah asked. “Really?”

  “Yes.” Jasper looked down at his plate but looked up to meet Micah’s gaze again. “Sometimes when I write things, I don’t realise the enormity of it and how they might affect other people.”

  I wanted to interject, but Dec’s grip tightened.

  “What, like how you helped write that book of lies about Declan and Simon, and that fuckwit Greg Heyward?”

  “That was a long time ago,” Jasper said.

  Even Coby wasn’t rushing to his defence for that one.

  “And there were other… mitigating circumstances.”

  “What, did you have a hard-on for Greg Heyward?” For all his self-absorption, the kid was still pretty perceptive.

  “It was more—”

  “Micah,” Dec interrupted. “We don’t need anyone fighting our battles for us.”

  “But has he ever apologised to you guys?” Micah demanded. “He just admitted he likes fucking people’s lives up for his columns—”

  “I don’t like it,” Jasper said, desperately trying to get a word in.

  “No,” I said, loudly, interrupting him before he could give another self-serving spiel. “He’s never apologised.”

  Dec groaned.

  “What? It’s the truth.”

  Everybody was now looking at Jasper expectantly. He sighed.

  “That night on the bridge—”

  “When Simon pushed you off it?” Fran asked.

  “I did not push him off it!”

  Fran waved away my objection.

  “You’re meant to be on my side!”

  Before Fran could say anything, Jasper spoke up. “He didn’t push me.”

  Glad to have confirmation, I dismissively gave Fran’s wave back to her. “Don’t you remember when he gave that interview admitting it? Andrew O’Keefe said he should be ashamed of himself.”

  “Kochie remained suspiciously quiet,” Declan said, his long-time grudge against Kochie raising its head again. But we didn’t want to rehash that whole fiasco.

  “Let it go,” I said. “Jasper, continue.”

  “That night on the bridge you said a lot of things that were true, and I didn’t like them. So I was mad at you. And that’s why I avoided ever having to apologise to either of you for what went down with Greg.”

  “And I’m meant to be the child,” Micah said.

  “Maybe it was childish, but that’s just being fucking hurt,” Jasper told him. “And I was sorry. I’d been used, and instead of being angry at the fucker that used me, I settled on blaming someone else.”

  Nobody knew what to say.

  Jasper looked both of us in the eye. “I’m sorry, Simon. Dec, I’m sorry. For everything that happened back then, and the things that have happened since.”

  “I never wanted your apology,” Dec said. “At least, I never expected I’d get one. But, thanks.”

  Everybody looked at me. “What, am I supposed to thank him? For acting like a shit for years and now suddenly having a change of heart because a seventeen-year-old told him off?”

  “It’s not a sudden change of heart,” Jasper said.

  “Simon, be gracious,” Coby begged.

  “Gracious? Fine, Jasper, I accept your wholehearted, heartfelt apology.”

  “That didn’t sound very sincere.” Micah reached for the chips that were congealing on my plate. Now tha
t he had played his game with Jasper, I guess I was the next victim.

  “It’s as sincere as I can make it right now.”

  “That’ll do,” Jasper said. “I’m not expecting anything. But I’m with Coby, and I’m not going away.”

  He smiled at Coby, and puke, Coby took his hand.

  My eyes wanted to roll back so far in my head I don’t think they would have been able to return to their rightful position.

  “Okay,” Micah said. “Who’s buying me dessert?”

  “ARE YOU okay?” Dec asked me as we left the roadhouse.

  “Fine,” I replied. “I guess, as fine as I can be. You probably think I was being an arsehole in there, right?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. We have every right to be mad at him. But he’s right about one thing—depending on how long he and Coby last, Jasper Brunswick could be part of our lives for a long time.”

  “Kill me now.”

  “No, you’re staying with me.”

  “Okay, since you asked so nicely.”

  Dec grinned. “In this time we have to learn to put up with him, maybe he’ll be able to make things right with us. So you feel what you feel. I guess I’m still pissed about it all on some level, but I have to get past that too.”

  “I think what I have to keep remembering is that Heyward played Jasper as willingly as he played us.”

  Dec grimaced. “Greg was even better at playing people than he was football.”

  “But people eventually wise up to him. If Jasper can try, maybe one day Heyward will change as well.”

  “Simon Murray, you shock me.”

  “You’re the one who keeps telling me anything is possible.”

  “I do, don’t I? But if you really want Greg to stop having power over you, start using his first name.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Greg has no power over me.”

  “That’ll do for now.” And I was rewarded with a much-needed kiss.

  “Simon, can I talk to you a minute?” I heard Coby ask from behind me.

  “Meet you in the car,” Dec said, although I didn’t want him to leave.

  Coby looked nervous as I fell into line with him. “What’s up?”

  “I just wanted to know… are we fighting again?”