Underdogs: Three Novels

by Markus Zusak

  There would be no distractions.

  No regrets.

  It was still afternoon when I made it down to Central Station, bought my ticket, and headed for the underground. Platform Twenty-five.

  Standing there, I waited at the back of the platform till I felt the cold wind of the train pushing through the tunnel. It surrounded my ears until the roar entered me and slowed to a dull, limping sigh.

  It was an old train.

  A scabby one.

  In the last carriage, downstairs, there was an old man with a radio, listening to jazz music. He said hello to me (a very rare event on any form of public transport), and I knew that things would have to go right today. I felt like I’d earned it.

  My thoughts veered with the train. My heart held itself back.

  When Hurstville came, I stood up and made my way out, and to my amazement, I found Octavia’s street without any problems. Usually when it comes to directions I’m an absolute shocker.

  I looked at each house, trying to guess which one was number thirteen Howell Street.

  When I made it, I found the house to be nearly as small as where I lived, and red brick. It was getting dark, and I stood there, waiting and hoping, hands in pockets. There was a fence and a gate, and a close-cut lawn with a path. I began wondering if she’d come out.

  People came from the station.

  They walked past me.

  Finally, when the same darkness as the previous day overcame the street, I turned away from the house and faced the road, half-sitting, half-leaning on the fence. A few minutes later, she came.

  I could barely hear the front door open or her footsteps coming toward me, but there was no mistaking the feeling of her behind me when she stopped and stood within reaching distance. I shiver even now as I feeling of her cool hands on my neck, and the touch of her voice on my skin.

  “Hi Cameron,” she said, and I turned around to face her. “Thanks for coming.”

  “It’s okay,” I spoke. My voice was dry and cracked open.

  I smiled then, I remember, and my heart swam in its own blood. There was no holding back anymore. In my mind, I had gone over moments like this a thousand times, and now that I was truly in one, there was no way I could blow it. I wouldn’t allow myself.

  I went along the fence and into the gate, and when I made it over to Octavia, I picked up her hand and held it in mine. I raised it to my mouth and kissed it. I kissed her fingers and her wrist as gently as my clumsy lips could.

  Her eyes widened.

  The expression on her face came that little bit closer.

  Her mouth merged into a smile.

  “Come on,” she said, leading me out the gate. “We don’t have long tonight,” and we moved onto the path.

  We walked down the street to an old park, where I searched myself for things to say.

  Nothing came.

  All I could think of was utter crap like the weather and all that sort of thing, but I wasn’t going to reduce myself to that. She still smiled at me, though, telling me silently that it was okay not to talk. It was okay not to win her over with stories or compliments or anything else I could say just to say something. She only walked and smiled, happier in silence.

  In the park, we sat for a long time.

  I offered her my jacket and helped her put it on, but after that, there was nothing.

  No words. No anything.

  I don’t know what else I expected, because I had absolutely no idea how to confront this. I had no idea how to act around a girl, because to me, what she wanted was completely shrouded in mystery. I didn’t really have a clue. All I knew was that I wanted her. That was the simple part. But actually knowing what to do? How in the hell could I ever come close to coping with that? Can you tell me?

  My problem came, I think, from being inside aloneness for so long. I always watched girls from afar, hardly getting close enough to smell them. Of course I wanted them, but even though I was miserable about not actually having them, it was also kind of a relief. There was no pressure. No discomfort. In a way, it was easier just to imagine what it would be like, rather than confront the reality of it. I could create ideal situations, and ways that I would act to win them over.

  You can do anything when it’s not real.

  When it is real, nothing breaks your fall. Nothing gets between you and the ground, and that night, in the park, I had never felt so real. I’d never felt so lacking in control. It the way it was, and the way it always would be.

  Before, life was about getting girls (or hoping to).

  Not about getting to know them, or actually getting what they were about.

  Now, it was much different.

  Now, it was about one girl, and working out what to do.

  I thought for a while, trying to find the elusive breakthrough of what to say. Thoughts pinned me down, leaving me there, to think about it. In the end, I tried convincing myself that everything would turn out. Nothing turns on its own, though.

  All right, I told myself, trying to pull myself together. I even started listing the things I’d actually done right.

  I’d chased her down on the train the day before. I’d spoken to her and said I’d stand outside her house.

  God, I’d even kissed her hand. But now I had to talk, and I had nothing to say. Why don’t you have anything to say, you stupid bastard? I asked myself. I begged inside me. Several times.

  The disappointment in myself was bitter as I sat on a splinter-infested park bench with her, wondering what to do next.

  At one point I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  In the end, I could only look at her and say, “I’m sorry, Octavia. I’m sorry I’m so bloody useless.”

  She shook her head, and I saw that she was disagreeing with me.

  She said quietly, “You don’t have to talk at all, Cameron.” She looked into me. “You’d never have to say a thing and I’d still know you’re big-hearted.”

  That was when the night burst open and the sky fell down, in slabs, around me.

  GETTING THE GIRL

  I think about it hard — about silence and getting the girl.

  Getting.

  Getting.

  When you’re young and dirty, everything’s about getting your hands on a girl … or at least, that’s what people say. It may not be what they think, but it’s what they tell you.

  For me, though, it feels like more than that. I want to hear her, and know her.

  I want to understand.

  What to do.

  What to say.

  I don’t want to stand in naked silence, pathetically unaware of how to be. I want to cut myself free. I want to shake myself away from the silence, and I want it n.

  Yet, I think, as usual, I’ll have to wait.

  And you never know.

  Maybe one day I’ll understand.

  One day I’ll get the girl.

  One day I might even get the world … but I doubt it.

  CHAPTER 10

  Sarah knew.

  She could tell by looking when I came in that night, she reckoned. She told me right away, when I tried to slip past her on my way down the hall to Rube’s and my room.

  It was funny.

  Unbelievable.

  How could she be so sure — so sure that when I came in, she could stop me and shove her hand to my heart and say with a grin and a whisper, “Tell me, Cameron. What’s the name of the girl who can make your heart beat this fast?”

  I grinned back, shocked and shy, amazed.

  “No one,” I denied.

  “Huh,” and a short laugh.

  Huh.

  That was all she said, as she took her hand off me and turned away, still smiling.

  “Good for you, Cameron.” That was what she said as she walked away. She faced me, one last time. “You deserve it. You really do, I mean it.”

  She left me to stand there, remembering what happened right after the slabs of sky fell down around me.

  For a wh
ile, Octavia and I remained on the bench, as the air grew colder. Only when she started shivering did we stand up and walk back to her house. At one point, her fingers touched mine, and she held on just faintly.

  Before she went in, she said, “I’ll be down the harbor on Sunday, if you feel like coming. I’ll be there around noon.”

  “Okay,” I replied, already imagining myself standing there, watching her play the harmonica with people throwing money onto her jacket. Bright blue sky. Climbing clouds. The hands of the sun, reaching down. I could see all of it.

  “And Cameron?” she asked.

  I returned from my vision.

  “I’ll wait for you.” She let her eyes hit the ground and arrive again, in mine. “You know what I mean?” I nodded, slowly.

  She would wait for me, to talk, and to be with her the way I could be. I guess we could only hope it would just be a matter of t

  “Thanks,” I said, and rather than let me watch her go inside, Octavia stayed at the gate and waved each time I turned around for one last glimpse of her. With every turn, I whispered, “Bye Octavia,” until I was around the corner, on my own again.

  Memories of the ride home are shaded by the haziness of a train ride at night. The clacking of the train rolling and turning over the tracks still rides through me. It gives me a vision of myself sitting there, traveling back to where I came from, but a place that would no longer be the same.

  It was strange how Sarah could sense it immediately.

  She could see the change in me straight away, in the way I existed in our house. Maybe I moved or spoke differently, I didn’t know. I was different, though.

  I had my words.

  I had Octavia.

  In a way, it seemed like I wasn’t pleading with myself anymore. I wasn’t begging for those scraps of alrightness. I just told myself to be patient, because, finally, I was standing somewhere close to where I wanted to be. I’d fought for this, and now I was nearly there.

  Much later in the night, Rube came home and collapsed like always into bed.

  Shoes still on.

  Shirt half-undone.

  There was a slight smell of beer, smoke, and his usual cheap cologne that he didn’t need because the girls fell over him anyway.

  Loud breathing. Smiling sleep.

  It was typical Rube. Typical Friday night.

  He also left the light on, as always, so I had to get up and switch it off.

  We both knew good and well that Dad would be waking us in the morning when it was still dark. I also knew that Rube would get up, and he’d look rough and tired and yet still pretty damn good. He had a way of doing that, my brother, which annoyed the absolute hell out of me.

  As I lay there, across from him, I wondered what he would say when he found out about Octavia and me. I went through a whole list of possibilities, because Rube was likely to say anything, depending on what was happening at the time, what had previously happened, and what was going to happen next. Some of the things I thought of were:

  He’d slap me hard across the back of the head and say, “What the hell are y’ thinking, Cam?” Another slap. “Y’ don’t do that sort of thing with y’ brother’s old girlfriend!” Another slap, and one more, just in case.

  Then again, he might just shrug. Nothing. No words, no anger, no mood, no smile, no laugh.

  Or he might pat me on the back and say, “Well Cam, it’s about time you pulled y’ finger out. maybe he’d be speechless.

  No.

  No chance.

  Rube was never speechless.

  If there was nothing he could think of saying, he’d most likely look at me and exclaim, “Octavia!? Really!?” I’d nod.

  “Really!?” “Yeah.”

  “Well that’s just bloody brilliant, that is!” The situations merged through me as I fell down slowly into sleep. My dreams collected everything up until a hard hand shoved me awake at quarter past six the next morning.

  The old man.

  Clifford Wolfe.

  “Time to get up,” said his voice, through the darkness. “Wake that lazy bastard too.” He jerked his thumb over at Rube, but I could tell he was smiling. With Dad, Rube, and me, calling each other bastards was a term of endearment.

  The job was right on the coast, at Bronte.

  Rube and I pretty much dug under the house all day, listening to the radio.

  For lunch, we all walked down to the beach and Dad got the obligatory fish ‘n’ chips. When we were done, Rube and I went down to the shoreline to get the grease off our hands.

  “Friggin’ freezin’,” Rube warned me about the water, but still he pooled it in his hands and threw it on his face and through his thick, sandy hair.

  Along the shore, there were shells washed up.

  I started shuffling through them and picking up the best ones to keep.

  Rube looked over.

  “What are y’ doin’?” he asked.

  “Just collectin’ a few shells.”

  He looked at me in disbelief. “Are you a bloody poofter or somethin’?”

  I glanced at the shells in my hands. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Christ!” he laughed. “You are, aren’t y’?”

  I only looked over and laughed back, then picked up a shell that was clean and smooth and had a gentle tiger pattern on it. In the center there was a small hole, for looking through.

  “Look at this one,” I said, holding it out to him.

  “Not bad,” Rube admitted, and as we stared over the ocean, my brother said, “You’re okay, Cameron.”

  All I could do was stare a few seconds longer before we turned back. The old man had already given us “Oi” to get us back to work. We walked over the sand and back up the street. Later that day, Rube told me some things. About Octavia.

  It started innocently enough, with me asking how many girlfriends he reckoned he’d had.

  “I wouldn’t know,” he answered me. “I never counted ‘em. Maybe twelve, thirteen.”

  For a while, there was only the sound of the digging, but I could tell my brother, like me, was going over the girls in his head, touching each girl with the fingers of his mind.

  In the middle of it, I had to ask him.

  I said, “Rube?”

  “Shut up — I’m tryin’ to concentrate.”

  I ignored him and kept going. I’d started now and I wasn’t going to stop. I asked, “Why’d you get rid of Octavia?”

  Rube stopped digging, and I could tell he was debating what to say in his mind. He gave me the answer. “To tell you the truth, Cam. She quit me. That night when she came back I was expecting her to cry and carry on like some of the others.” He shook his head now. “But I was wrong. She just came and really gave it to me. She said I wasn’t worth the effort.” He shrugged a moment, then spoke again. “The funny thing was, when she left, she looked so brilliant, I almost felt like running after her.” For the first time then, he met me in the eyes. “That’s never happened before. It was like, I don’t know, Cam. I think it was the first time I felt like I’d lost something good.”

  I nodded and stayed silent, and even started digging a bit prematurely. I thought about loss and gain and everything in between. And naturally, I forced myself to forget about it.

  What confused me most was how Rube could still be so calm about it. If it were me in his shoes, the agony of someone like Octavia breaking up with me would have left me in strips and pieces on the ground. It would have broken me.

  But that was me.

  For Rube, the next best thing came along, so he took it, and I guess there was nothing wrong with that. The only problem for Rube now, it seemed, was that the Julia girl came with some excess baggage. She’d come at a price.

  “Apparently she was still with some other bloke when she started up with me,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Some honcho from out Canterbury way.”

  “Honcho?” I asked. “What the hell’s a honcho?”

  Rube leaned on his shovel. “You know
all those guys out there — gangs, nicknames, chains. All that crap.” He smiled a moment, maybe looking forward to the challenge. “And apparently this guy’s after killin’ me for his girl losing interest in him. It’s not like I did anything wrong, for Jesus’ sake. It’s not like the girl told me she was already taken.”

  “Just be careful,” I told him. Once again, he could tell by the tone of my voice that I wasn’t a big fan of this Julia girl. He asked me straight out.

  He said, “You don’t like her, do y’?”

  I shook my head.

  “Why not?”

  You hurt Octavia to get her, I thought, but I said, “I don’t know. I’ve just got a bad feeling about this one, that’s all.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Rube responded. He looked over and gave me his usual grin — the one that always says everything will be all right. “I’ll survive.”

  As it turned out, I kept just the one shell from the beach. It was the one with the tiger pattern. At home, I held it against the light from our bedroom window. I already knew what I’d do with it.

  It was in my pocket the next day when I walked down to Central and caught the train over to Circular Quay. The harbor water was a rich blue, with the ferries trudging over it, cutting it, then allowing it to settle. On the docks, there were people everywhere, and plenty of buskers. The good, the brilliant, and the hopeless. It took a while, but I finally saw her. I saw Octavia on the walkway to the Rocks, and I could see the people milling around her, drawn to the powerful voice of her mouth organ.

  I arrived when she was just finishing a song and people were putting money into her old jacket, which was spread out on the ground. She smiled at them and said thanks, and most of the people moved slowly on.

  Without noticing I was there, she went straight into another song, and again, a crowd began to gather around her. This time it wasn’t quite as big. The sun surrounded her wavy hair, and I watched intently as her lips slid across the instrument. I looked at her neck, her soft flannel shirt, and stole visions of her hips and her legs through gaps in the crowd. In the song, I could hear her words, “It’s okay, Cameron, I can wait.” I also heard her calling me big-hearted, and hesitantly at first, then without thinking, I moved to the crowd and made my way through it.