"The do-gooder, yeah?"
I really wasn't sold on that as a moniker, but it was basically accurate so I nodded curtly.
"Great. Cool. Awesome." He bobbed his head and I waited a moment to see if he was going to follow up all that positivity with an actual point. When it became apparent he wasn't, I moved things along myself.
"Glad you approve. So is there something I can do for you?"
If possible, he became even shiftier at this direct question, and looked around again before muttering, "Yeah, I guess so. It's just...I don't really know how to surf."
I looked him up and down, noting again that his whole presentation practically screamed 'I'm a surfer'.
"OK," I said slowly. "So do what every second guy around here does anyway and pretend that you do."
"Yeah, I've been doing that," he admitted, crouching down so that he was closer on eye level with me. It's just that my cousin's coming up for a visit and I may have run my mouth off a bit about-"
"Being a waves-bitch?" I finished for him and he nodded, somewhat shamefacedly.
"Yeah, so I need someone to give me some pointers. I don't have to be any good or anything, I just need to look like I've been doing it for a while. I've had a couple of lessons, but they just focus on the basics and safety and stuff." He made a face as if he couldn't think of anything more pathetic than 'safety'.
"So you're after more strut than substance," I clarified and he nodded, apparently relieved that I'd got it so quickly. "Well, I'm sure I can find someone who gets that." I flicked to a new page in Big Blue. "So what's your name?"
"Aidan."
"Alright, Aidan, put your number in there," I chucked my phone over to him. "I'll dig around and find someone for you."
"Thanks heaps." His fingers flew over my phone's screen before he passed it back to me and then jumped as a female voice called his name.
"Damn, that's my girlfriend," he hissed, pushing up out of his crouch, but staying low enough that he was still hidden by my car. "I thought she'd shop for ages yet. I've gotta go." He started to scuttle away, but then reappeared to ask, "You won't, you know..."
"Tell anyone?" I finished for him. "No, your ineptitude is safe with me."
"Great," he said breathlessly. "I'll wait for your call."
"Bye, Aidan." I gave a little wave, that was more like a shoo, and then he was gone.
Not a moment too soon either, it transpired, as my newest good-deed recipient had barely gone over to make his apologies to his girlfriend when my passenger door was wrenched open and Saskia plonked herself back into my car.
It only took a split second for me to close Big Blue and push Aidan to the back of my mind, Saskia's interaction with Zannie far more interesting to me than some wannabe surfer.
"So?" I couldn't help asking, despite my earlier thought feeling very much like Saskia's mother.
"If you think I'm going to drop down to my knees and thank you, or anything, you can forget it," was her snapped reply.
Ah, these Townsends were real charmers.
"I don't want you to thank me," I pointed out, placing Big Blue on the backseat and then starting the car. "I want you to not screw it up."
"Look, she's basically just asked me to do slave labour for her, no big deal, I'll see if I can fit it in." Down went the visor for the mirror again, and out came a makeup bag. "I have a life, you know. Russ isn't going to like it if I'm suddenly spending all my time in some stupid store."
Stupid store? It'd been her bloody Mecca a moment before.
"I take it Russ is Lizard Boy?" I asked and she grunted her assent, widening her eyes as she dragged another coat of mascara across her lashes. "Well, in that case," I said sharply, "I suggest Russ sticks it up his arse."
Capping her mascara with a decided pop, Saskia threw the tube back into her bag. "God," she drawled, "considering you and Fletch are supposed to have this dramatic lust/hate thing going on, you say the exact same stuff. The pair of you are so dramatic."
For a split second I considered that Saskia's deteriorating attitude meant the meeting with Zannie had gone badly, but then I saw the way her legs were anxiously jiggling up and down and thought again. If you were used to not so great things happening to you, it was sometimes harder to deal when good things did appear in your life. I knew that, and it looked like Saskia did too.
So I didn't push her on her conversation with Zannie. I did, however, push her on keeping our interaction a secret from Fletch, which she agreed to with a roll of her eyes and a 'duh'. It was difficult to tell with her, but I thought she would keep the confidence, possibly because she appeared to be the only other person who hated Fletch's lectures as much as me.
In reward for her silence, I offered her the same as she kept shovelling on the makeup and then demanded to be dropped off at the bus mall. Ten to one she was planning on making her way to Lizard Boy's side, but I held my peace.
It was early days.
----------
They were bratty and annoying and an all-round pain the arse, but the thing about little sisters, Fletch mused that Monday night, was that when they asked you to come pick them up, you still went.
He'd been crashed out on the couch with Daz and Jai when he'd got her text demanding a lift home and there'd been raised eyebrows all round. Usually Fletch was the last person Saskia seemed to want anything to do with, a state of affairs not helped by what she viewed as his overreaction to the mint situation with Lara the other week. She'd been pretty clear in expressing her feelings over that whole drama and he hadn't seen her since, despite dropping in to his old home every now and again to try and keep some semblance of contact going with his, rapidly disintegrating, family.
It was just starting to get dark beyond the orange glow of the streetlights and rain was drizzling against his windscreen when he spotted Saskia standing in the bus shelter she'd directed him to. Her body language shouted to anyone who saw her that they approached at their own risk; a stance reassuring to an older brother, although he could've done with it not being displayed on some random backstreet in the gathering gloom.
"So, to what do I owe this honour?" He asked as he pulled up and she threw herself in beside him, her lip curling in disdain as it always did whenever she deigned to travel in his trusty wagon. "You and Lizard Scum have a fight or something?"
"What makes you think I was with him?" She immediately bit back. "It's not like I'm at his beck and call or anything."
"You're not?" He asked and she bristled.
"No. I had some stuff to do after school and it turns out he was busy too." She shrugged, but the movement wasn't accompanied with her usual dismissive zeal and he knew she was lying.
"I call bull on that," he said bluntly. "What's up? Trouble in paradise?"
"You don't know anything about it and if you're going to be such a prick I'm walking home," she wrapped her fingers around the door handle to make her point. "I was going to do that anyway, but then I thought 'hey, Fletch is a boring loser who wouldn't have any plans, I'll just get him to pick me up'."
Yes, she was in fine, snotty form, but he couldn't be entirely sure that jumping out of the moving car wasn't something she was capable of. Besides, that calling him had at least been on her list of options was enough to make him take all the heat out of his words as he replied, "Yep, that was me, just sitting there hoping I'd be lucky enough to spend a few precious minutes with my delightful sister today."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shoulders relax slightly. "Of course you were," she said boldly, "just being this near me makes you slightly less of a sad sack."
He laughed, she turned up the music, and for a few minutes, it was like old times before their mum had up and left on them and Saskia had gone from your basic moody high-schooler to full on rebellious teen. They hadn't exactly been best friends before this transformation, but they'd got along in a vague sort of way. At the very least they'd been allies in a household bookended by a mother who cared more about the welfare of
endangered Tree Frogs then that of her own children, and a father so thoroughly discontented with the way his life had turned out that he was prone to sulks that sometimes lasted weeks.
The silent accord was doomed to be short-lived, however, as Saskia, seemingly apropos of nothing, turned to him and said, "Hey, what happened with you and Lara Montgomery after you accused her of giving me pills?"
He jerked in surprise at the ambush mention of Lara, but some basic self-preservation saw him managing to keep the car on the straight and steady. Once he was sure he wasn't going to crash into the road barrier, a whole host of responses to her question passed through his mind. Eventually, however, he just went with the truth. "I apologised to her."
She snorted. "Bet that hurt."
"You have no idea."
His growl should’ve made it more than clear that it wasn't a topic he wanted to pursue, but Saskia seemed perfectly happy to ignore the warning.
"So you apologised and it sucked, but the make-up sex was at least worth it, right?"
"What?" He risked a quick, incredulous, look over at her and was met with a defiantly unapologetic gaze.
"Oh come on," she groaned, "you must have taken advantage of all that tension."
He shook his head, his sister the last person he wanted to talk about this with. "Jesus, Saskia, give it a rest."
"What?" She protested. "You're allowed to stick your nose in my love-life, but I can't do the same to you?"
"Lara is not my love-life."
"Fine," she shrugged, "sex-life, whatever."
"She's not..." he stopped himself, knowing that arguing was useless, and instead asked, "Where's this coming from?"
"Just catching up on my favourite soap opera." She smiled a little self-satisfied smile. "Don't forget I spent my formative years watching you two sniffing around each other. So what do you reckon? If it wasn't for the dead brother thing would you have made a go of it?"
He grimaced, his jaw tensing as he ground out, "You don't know anything about it. You were 12 when all that went down."
"Yeah, 12," she scoffed, "not blind."
He was so busy trying not to snap something he'd regret in reply, he almost missed the turn-off to her street. He caught himself at the last minute, though, indicated, and then turned onto the road leading to their family home, relieved that, one way or another, the conversation was coming to an end.
"That was a long time ago," he said flatly, pulling the Station wagon up outside the familiar brick bungalow. "Trust me, at this point Lara is more likely to show up at my door with a knife than a saucy smile."
"Or a fun combination of both." Saskia had unbuckled her seatbelt and was already half out of the car before he'd had time to react to this response. She didn't seem to be done, either, as she leant back down in the doorway and added, "If you ask me, you're going to end up doing each other so you might as well save time and get on with it."
And, with that, she slammed the door and sauntered away towards the house, leaving him to point out to an empty space that, actually, he hadn't asked her.
Chapter 8 – A Common Enemy
The rest of that first week with Saskia continued in much the same way it had begun. I became a regular at the high school gates¸ sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the over-protective mothers who seemed to think teenagers needed help finding their way home. It wasn't home I was directing Saskia towards, though, it was back to Za-Za's where I dropped her off knowing that that was pretty much all the involvement she was going to allow me.
I took it as a good sign that she didn't fight me on being ferried to the store, because she sure as hell fought me on everything else. After our last confrontation, I couldn't muster up the energy to feel sympathy for Fletch, exactly, but I did occasionally consider that Saskia wouldn't be the easiest sister in the world to have.
After snarling refusals to thank me, her favourite game seemed to be dropping Fletch into conversation when I was least expecting it and prodding me about him until I was just about ready to explode. At first I'd wondered where she'd stumbled upon this strategy, but as the week went on, I figured that she used it because it got her the best reaction, not that I didn't try my damndest to remain unmoved.
So I'd meet her at school, she'd scowl, change out of her uniform, work the conversation round to how she thought Fletch and I were destined to have hot, rage-fuelled sex, and then jump out at Za-Za's without so much as a wave goodbye. Fun times.
We fell into this routine so quickly, it was actually a surprise when Saturday rolled around and I realised that Saskia wasn't on my list for the day, Stefano was.
Knowing my evening was taken, I spent the day significantly depleting the goodwill pot as I shopped for various things I needed to enact the good deeds I had on my list. As per always, the cost of various requests outweighed the balance of donations from my recipients, so it was lucky my dad kept that guilt money coming.
Having been Stefano's 'girlfriend' when his nonno and nonna came to visit for coming on two years, I knew what was expected of me. Accordingly, I extended the shopping trip to include the purchase of a richly purple dress that sat in loose folds across my collarbones, cinched in at the waist, then fell down to a respectable, just-above-the-knee, length. Teamed with a soft grey bag, matching pumps, and my hair down in loose, dark curls, it was the perfect, gently girly, outfit for winning over a couple of devoutly Catholic grandparents. Not that I needed to win them over, they bloody loved me.
Back at my room that evening, I was putting one last shimmery sweep of blush across my cheeks when there was a sharp knock on the door.
Although Stefano had said he would pick me up, I was instantly on guard with this request for entry; Stefano not being the sort to 'sharply' do anything, except perhaps turn over his shirt cuffs. Sure enough, when I opened the door, it was a very un-Stefano-like Stefano who greeted me.
He always went through a physical transformation when it came to his nonno and nonna's visits, but it wasn't just the removal of even the faintest smudge of eyeliner, or his unusually un-styled hair that was different that night, it was his expression.
"Christ," I looked him up and down in surprise, "what happened to you?"
"The earnest gays got to me." He strode into my room and I shut the door after him, feeling that the conversation to follow was not going to be for the ears of whatever random happened to be walking past out in the corridor.
"Ah, the earnest gays," I repeated in understanding. "They caught wind of tonight, hey?"
"Yeah," Stefano sighed. "I must have a leak somewhere. Now I have to go through my friends and figure out which one's gone over to the earnest side."
The earnest gays, as Stefano and I called them, were a group of gay rights activists on campus who were somewhat over-zealous in their quest for equality. They were a problem every time Stefano's grandparents came to visit and the reason Stefano had been sure to speak softly when he'd talked to me about it in the ref last week. The EGs had made the connection regarding my involvement in the semi-regular trips to campus Nonno and Nonna made pretty early on and had made sure Stefano knew how much they disapproved of the 'fake girlfriend' arrangement.
As far as I was concerned they should mind their own business, but Stefano was usually more circumspect. Not tonight, though, it seemed.
"I can't seem to get it into their heads that my nonni are not the target audience for their drama," he said tightly. "Outing me to them isn't going to change anything for anyone else. Nonna's already got one foot in the grave, I'd rather she didn't put the other one in convinced that I'm not going to get to go in the same direction in the afterlife as her. She's not hateful; she's ignorant and 90 years old and not going to understand."
His eyes filled with tears and I felt my chest tighten with anger that anyone would reduce the happy, fun-loving Stefano to this state of conflict.
"If I was in a relationship it might be different." Sinking onto my bed, Stefano stared down at his beautifully manicured hands
sadly. "I'd want them to know I was happy with someone, but as it is, I'd just be telling them about my random hook-ups. My sister doesn't have to go up to them and tell them the gender of her one night stands, why the hell do I have to?"
"You don't," I said, throwing my blusher down onto my dressing table crossly. "You don't have to explain yourself to anyone. It's your life, your choice, the earnest gays can go screw themselves."
He looked up at me, a small smile now pulling up one side of his mouth. "And this from the girl who refuses to raise even an eyebrow at being called a slut by the whole campus."
"Yeah, well," I shrugged, "as far as I'm aware, no-one's saying as much to my grandma."
"Lucky you." Stefano's voice was unusually dark, something he seemed to catch as he gave himself a little shake and bounced back up to his feet. "Ewgh! That little break-down was boring," he exclaimed, his tone soaring back to its customary pitch. "Don’t let me do that again. Come on, honey-cakes, let's crack on, shall we?"
Perhaps other people would’ve spent some more time checking that Stefano was actually OK, but that wasn't my style. Stefano was the upbeat, caring one, not me, and I was going to need to save all my acting ability for the evening spent with his elderly relatives. Besides, he didn't seem to want to dwell on the EGs anyway, if the way he broke into his usual charming smile and started to wax lyrical about my outfit was anything to go by.
We'd planned to meet Stefano's nonni at the Bay's one halfway decent Italian restaurant, the nauseatingly named Papa Joe's. It was a small place made smaller by the number of tables packed into the space, and the bright red of everything from the curtains to the napkins. Lending further poky charm, it was accessible only down a dark little alley and it was at the mouth of this that we waited for the taxi carrying Stefano's guests.
My companion, appearing to have fully recovered from his little moment in my room, was like an excited child, hopping from one foot to the other and craning his head round to peer into any cab that came close. I, on the other hand, kept a look-out for any sign of the EGs, a turning of my gut telling me that there was every chance they were going to use our 'date' to stage some sort of protest.
The Do-Gooder Page 9
