One Step

by Andrew Daddo

  ‘I hate avocado with anything.’

  ‘That’s what she said you’d say.’

  The whole kitchen and lounge room was full of the best smell ever: cutlets. Mum’d made peas and mash on the side, too. ‘Sorry,’ she said when I came in. ‘I didn’t mean that, you know.’

  ‘Orright,’ I grunted. ‘How many are we allowed to have?’

  ‘Didn’t mean what?’ asked Hayley.

  ‘None of your business.’ Mum smirked. ‘It’s between me and Dylan, isn’t it, darling?’ She had her hand on the dish holding the cutlets. ‘You still love your mummy, Dylan?’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ I said. She was talking to me like I was a baby and it was funny and nice and a bit of a surprise.

  ‘Then you can have three cutlets. Do you love your mummy, Hayley?’

  ‘You know I do, Mumma,’ simpered Hayley, plunging her fork into one cutlet but getting the one underneath as well.

  ‘Then you can have three cutlets, too.’

  ‘I love you, Mumma,’ said Ronnie. ‘But I only want one.’

  ‘Then one it is.’ Mum took two for herself and left at least half a dozen in the dish.

  ‘Is Dad coming home?’ I said. ‘I thought he was at a conference for a few days.’

  ‘Conference Schmonference,’ said Mum with a sadder smile on her face. ‘Too bad, so sad. More for us. It’s a special occasion, isn’t it, Dylan?’

  Hayley swiveled her head like she was out of some horror movie. ‘Special occasion? For Dylan? What special occasion’s he got?’

  ‘Can I say?’ asked Mum. And before I had a chance to share my own news, Mum was, like, ‘Dylan’s got a big party this weekend.’

  ‘Who’s party?’ said Hayley.

  ‘Gracie Chilcott,’ I said, in as offhanded a way as I knew how. ‘It’s not like it’s a party, it’s just a little-’

  ‘Gracie Chilcott? Are you kidding? She’s like one of the queen bi-atches of Year Nine. Why would you want to go to a party at her place?’

  ‘You don’t even know her.’

  ‘Is she?’ went Mum. ‘Is Gracie Chilcott a bi-atch? I thought she was lovely. Is it her birthday? Is she fifteen or sixteen? Oh my God, if she’s sixteen she’ll be driving soon. She’s fifteen. Will her parents be home?’

  I thought it was impossible to dull the joy of cutlets.

  ‘All I did was get asked to a party. That’s all I know, orright. And she might be a bitch to you, but she’s nice to me.’

  I got online and searched ‘cool clothes right now’ and spent the time I should have been doing homework looking at conflicting fashion opinions. How could T-shirts and hoodies be cool and uncool at the same time?

  Google dragged me in and held me under.

  I went from looking at clothes to the fastest way to get rock hard abs. Could I get them by Saturday? Probably not. There was a site with a thing that steams the gut fat right off your body.

  I reached down and felt my own stomach. There was a bit there, not a handful or anything like that, just a bit. I’d rather have muscles, of course. Dad once busted me trying to conjure some out of the bathroom mirror and assured me they’d come. Eventually. He said he’d been a weed until the end of high school. Besides, we were told by this body expert not to do weights until Year Ten because it’ll stuff up our development, so I couldn’t exactly get ripped if I couldn’t work out.

  The swimming and diving were keeping me in okay shape, but it’d be better to be a bit tighter.

  Could I get ripped in two days? There was a site saying you have to eat small meals every two hours and stay off result-sabotaging foods like chips and chocolate, and fast food. Well, duh.

  The thought of food got my guts rumbling.

  Dinner had settled an hour and a half ago; there was easily room for some non-sabotaging cereal to settle everything down.

  Mum was in the kitchen, and she hated that I ate cereal at night-time. She was at the bench, swiping the screen of her phone in her OCD way.

  She was in front of the bowl cupboard, so if I asked her to move she’d say, ‘Why?’ and I’d say, ‘No reason,’ and she’d say, ‘You want a bowl of cereal, don’t you.’ I should say to her, ‘I am going to have a bowl of cereal’ and be all empowered about it. Mum’d say, ‘Have a carrot,’ I’d be, like, ‘I don’t want a carrot,’ so she’d go, ‘Have some dip, some celery, a biscuit and cheese, anything other than cereal, it’s not good to eat that much milk and cereal.’

  Mum doesn’t understand that cereal is easy and filling, so I really needed a bowl from the cupboard. ‘I think Ronnie’s calling you, Mum,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty sure I heard her.’

  ‘Is she okay?’ said Mum, not looking up.

  ‘I think so. She said something about stabbing herself in the neck with some scissors, but if she can talk it mustn’t be that bad.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mum. ‘Look at this. Do you think you’d wear this colour shirt? I think it would look good on you.’ She held her phone out. There was a dude in an orangie-coloured shirt. It was open, he was ripped and hairless and had a jaw wide enough to land a plane on.

  ‘Um, not as good as him, I’m guessing, but it’s okay. A bit feminine?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ went Mum. ‘You mean lame. What about this one? This is a nice colour. You could wear this to the party, couldn’t you? Something like this?’ I looked at her phone, and there was the same guy in the same pose with the same shirt but it’d been photoshopped to a pale blue.

  ‘It’s okay. I suppose. What about Ronnie, Mum? She might be bleeding to death by now.’ I just wanted her to go so I could get my cereal bowl. If I was lucky, she’d be gone long enough for me to get a bowl and scoff my Weet-Bix without her knowing. As long as I got the milk in before she came back, she couldn’t do anything.

  ‘What?’ said Mum, pinching and pulling at her screen.

  ‘Ronnie, Mum. She’s calling you. She’s called about five times.’ She hadn’t.

  ‘Is she all right? Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘I did, Mum. Geez. You don’t listen.’

  ‘I do.’ She glanced up, but went back to the phone.

  ‘You don’t when you’re on your phone.’

  ‘I’m doing things for you, not for me, okay, Dylan? Is Ronnie in bed?’

  ‘She’s probably dead by now.’

  ‘What?’ said Mum. ‘What are you talking about?’ She dumped her phone on the bench and walked out of the kitchen.

  I grabbed a bowl, crammed my five Weet-Bix in, squirted on some honey and had milk in the bowl before she came back with a disapproving look all over her face.

  ‘Why would you say that about Ronnie? It’s stupid. She’s sound asleep.’

  ‘It was just a joke. You weren’t listening, anyway.’

  ‘Hilarious. It’s not as if I don’t try, you know. You could do more. It’s hard organising three kids on your own and doing the washing and the feeding and the planning.’

  ‘I know, Mum.’

  ‘Give us a mouthful, would you?’

  For once, I put the bowl in the dishwasher instead of having to hide it somewhere I’d forget.

  When the house was dark and quiet, Mum came in and sat on my bed. I quickly rolled onto my stomach and pretended to be asleep. She rubbed my back. ‘So, Dylan. This party. It’s exciting, huh? You awake, Dylan?’

  ‘Mmmm?’ I groaned, as if waking up. ‘Wha’ ma?’

  ‘The party. It’s exciting, isn’t it? Who’s going?’

  ‘I dunno,’ I mumbled.

  ‘But you must know,’ she said, rubbing my back as if it didn’t have any zits on it. ‘Boys and girls, right? What boys? Is that Hamish Banning going? I hope not. He’s a bit of a dick, isn’t he?’

  I had a love-hate thing with the way Mum tried to sound all cool.

  I didn’t know who was going, not really. I doubted Hamish would be at the party because he’d been suspended, so he’d have to be grounded. That should count Lurch out as well. Sully and McAcca’d be going, all the
girls would be there. Sampson, maybe. Ryan, doubtful. If I was allowed to talk about the party I’d have a better idea who was going, but with the no-dickhead policy there was no way I was going to be the one to spread the word and ruin it for everyone – especially me.

  ‘I remember my first party. Proper party, not any party,’ Mum said. ‘I went to heaps of other parties. We had a bunch of girls and it was like there was a birthday every two weeks, so we were forever going to Luna Park or Ocean World or the Pancake Parlor; but they weren’t real parties. Oh, there was this one, but –’

  As Mum meandered off into her story within a story within a story, the weight of sleep start to pull me away from the day. It was the gentle back rubbing and the drone of Mum’s voice.

  ‘But this party,’ she said. Her drone was replaced by a wistful, melodic memory. ‘This party was something else.’

  I batted off sleep and listened to my mother with the stealth of stillness.

  ‘It was Anthony Calliano’s house and I wasn’t allowed to go because I was only fourteen and Tony was sixteen and he was absolutely gorgeous. Skinny, tall, funny and very, very naughty. He was like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. The kids loved him as much as the parents feared him. I would have done just about anything for Tony – and he would’ve done everything to me. So I went, right? I had to sneak out of home, your grandparents still don’t know this, but I did the old pillow trick and three-quarter-closed door. I went out the window, the high one at the front of our house at Augusta Road. I had to climb down the verandah post, which was like a ladder anyway because of the trellis, and I went to Tony Calliano’s party. It was packed, but when I got there, he saw me walk in and he strutted straight over and he knew my name and kissed me on the cheek as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He smelt of cigarettes and some kind of booze and he asked me if I wanted to smoke and drink as well.’

  ‘Did you?’ I said.

  Mum stopped rubbing my back. ‘Ah, I thought you were asleep.’

  ‘I was, but I woke up. So, did you drink and smoke when you were fourteen?’

  ‘Course not,’ said Mum. ‘I wasn’t that kind of girl.’ She rolled her shoulders and I loved the smirk in her voice.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Night, darling.’ The smirk was gone. I shouldn’t have said anything. ‘Hey, listen, let’s go shopping on Saturday for something to wear to the party, okay? Something nice.’

  ‘Did you wear something nice to that Tony kid’s party?’

  ‘I did, you bet I did. I had a rah-rah skirt and a very short T-shirt top with “Choose Life” on it and I looked exactly like every other girl there.’

  ‘So, what happened?’ I said, rolling onto my back and clasping my hands behind my head. ‘Was it a good party?’

  ‘It was a very, very good party. Worth getting grounded for, but don’t tell your sisters that. Especially Hayley.’

  ‘Did Gran and Pop find your pillow person in your bed?’

  Mum laughed. ‘They didn’t, actually. I was caught out because I forgot to take my make-up off before I went to bed. And because I was nervous and I wanted to look really good but didn’t know any better, I put on heaps of pancake. I had thick, black eyeliner, eye shadow and I think I reapplied my rouge about every two minutes.’ Mum snorted. ‘Tony actually asked if I was okay because my cheeks were so red. He thought I was really hot, as in physically hot, and asked if I wanted to go outside with him for some fresh air, which I did, more than anything. Of course, I knew what going outside for fresh air meant, and I was so scared and so excited I said I had to go to the toilet. When I saw my face I realised he must have thought I was hot, not hot. So I tried scrubbing the rouge off which made my eye shadow and eyeliner run, and within seconds I looked like some drunk pirate – Jack Sparrow, you know? So I covered my face with my hair, put my head down and left. I ran the whole way home, climbed back up the trellis, jumped into bed and tried to wish the whole thing away.

  ‘God, I remember it so clearly. It was so embarrassing, I wished I was dead! I just put my head in my pillow and cried and cried because I’d made a fool of myself and I could have been with the Anthony Calliano. I blew it. When I went downstairs for breakfast in the morning, I had puffy eyes and streaky make-up and your gran knew what I’d been up to. She didn’t care that much, but your pop did. He grounded me. And that was when Tony got with that mole Winny Milligan and I’d missed my chance with the hottest guy ever.’

  ‘But didn’t you say you were fourteen and he was sixteen?’

  ‘I know,’ said Mum. ‘Cool, eh? Go to sleep. Let’s go shopping after your diving comp on Saturday. I’ll pick you up?’

  ‘Orright,’ I said. It sounded good. I should have said it sounded good. I could have been excited and interested and thankful, even, but it didn’t seem to fit the way everyone else is with their parents.

  After she left, I lay there for a while trying to get the picture in my head of my very daggy, annoying Mum in a skirt that went rah-rah and a ‘Choose Life’ T-shirt with make-up dripping down her face like she was a wax doll too close to a fire. I couldn’t find it; I couldn’t imagine her as young and fun and sneaking out of the house. The person she was talking about was too far from the bossy, straighty one-eighty who told us to pick up and put away from the start of the day to the end of it. ‘Do your homework, contribute, contribute, contribute,’ that was Mum. This other, young Mum sounded awesome.

  I googled rah-rah skirt in the morning. Definitely not my mum. Not ever.

  Hayley and I walked to the bus stop together but didn’t talk. She put her buds in before we’d even left the house and sat up the front with one of her whingey friends. I hung out with my trombone in the middle of the bus, trying not to get too worked up about Saturday’s par-tay.

  Madison Ansey had been at the bus stop but we didn’t talk. She was busy with Ashley Smythe who was whispering everything so she either had a secret or wanted one. For sure I could’ve talked to Madison. We pretty much said hi at school now, like, in front of other people, which was cool. She’d be there on Saturday night. Ashley would, too. It was just easier to talk to Madison when Ashley wasn’t around. She hangs off Madison like she’s a life preserver and gives meaning to stuff that doesn’t have any.

  It was amazing to think how things had changed in a few days. It was like that ‘Cool Kids’ song came to life and gobbled me up.

  Madison and Ashley sat a couple of rows in front of me. Ashley had the window and was half turned in her seat so she could see who was looking at her.

  I couldn’t help watching them, especially Madison. The low sun was casting a spotlight on her, catching her hair and igniting it. I could see the red of her bra strap and remembered the front view I’d seen the other day in the dog park. I was embarrassed and thankful at the same time.

  Ashley looked around the bus, saw me, and snuck in for a new whisper that ended in Madison looking back and giving me a little wave. I waved back and tried to smile, but my mouth didn’t play along. It could have looked like a grimace or an attempt to catch dribble. Madison was good enough not to notice.

  I was already excited about the idea of Monday’s bus ride after the party. Madison and I might even sit together. That’d be cool. Who knows what could happen. If things didn’t work out with Gracie, Mads’d be a pretty top Plan B. Maybe I should ask her who she’s going to the party with, and we could go together.

  But what if she’s not invited? What if it’s like a really private party?

  I had to talk to someone.

  I worked through my contacts list for a couple of stops and sent a text to Ryan.

  He was straight back.

  What the hell? Then my phone beeped again.

  He was pretty weird and very intelligent, a combination that often made him hard to follow. He operated on another plane.

  That should do it, I thought, peeling my back off the vinyl seat. It was hot already.

  What the hell? Did win
ning mean he was doing something good, but just wasn’t saying? Was he staying in, was that winning? What was O&O? On and Off? Off and On?

  I tried to keep it light without sounding desperate to know what he was up to. For all anyone knew, he could be going to Gracie’s place as well. I waited for the ding of the message. It was cool when the phone rang or messages came through, the volume way up so everyone knew I was in the middle of a texting frenzy.

  But there was no quick reply from Ryan. Weird. He usually got back so quickly. I figured it was probably my phone, it’s so rank. When everyone else is able to belt out texts in no time, I have to stumble across my keypad like a rat full of poison. I’ve decided to get another one, a better one. School will have one of those get-rid-of-your-old-phone days so they can be donated to poor people in some other country and I’ll volunteer to be the collector, that’s how I’ll get a good phone. Someone’s always throwing out their old smart phone for the next smarter one.

  Still nothing from Ryan.

  I turned my phone-me-down off and rebooted, thinking that might help drag his next text out of the ether. It didn’t.

  ‘O&O’ had to mean something. I could google it if my phone wasn’t so crap. I’d tried to explain to Mum that it took me three times as long to send a simple text than anyone else, that I was falling behind in life. Along with all the other new nicknames I was in danger of racking up, the next might be phone-tard.

  Mum didn’t care.

  The bus filled. I took the trombone from the seat beside me and put it between my legs, then thought better of it in case the wrong person got on the bus and wanted to sit there. If the right person got on, I could move it then. It was hard to watch Madison and Ashley without looking like a stalker, but I did my best.

  Radio silence from Ryan. He must be on his bike.