‘Do you think so? It’s sort of a punk thing. I always thought I’d look like… like I didn’t care.’
‘That’s the whole point of punk, to look like you don’t care. Stupid, really, ’cause it takes so long to get right.’
There’s just the two of them and Kirsty’s quietly pleased about this. She’s been part of Chloe’s group for months now but only in the last couple of weeks have they really begun to talk. Chloe is taller than Kirsty by five centimetres, at least, and there’s an elegance in the way she walks that Kirsty has been trying to copy. She had to do something after catching sight of herself as she passed a department store window in the city. How long had she been slouching like a bag-lady?
There’s something about Chloe’s nose, though, that stops her from being beautiful. It’s not quite centred in her face or something, and that means Kirsty doesn’t have to be second best wherever they go.
Kirsty’s hair is what they’re talking about but Chloe has been circling around an entirely different topic for a while now, probing, testing, teasing.
‘So there’s nothing much happening with Dylan, then?’
‘That’s not what I said,’ Kirsty replies with a slight smile. ‘I said I haven’t seen him today, that’s all. Might have a meeting or something. Save the planet club or whatever. On our first date he went on way too long about some blog he’s into on renewable energy.’
Chloe throws back her head, making a face at the sky. ‘He needs to get his head straight about the important things in life.’ In case Kirsty is in any doubt about what those things are, she stretches out her arms wide enough to encompass them both and pouts in that ‘look-at-me’ kind of way that actresses have. ‘He’s not bad to look at. Better than he realises, I’d say. What do you think?’
‘Um,’ sighs Kirsty, not wanting to give too much away, though she’s enjoying it. How often has she had a chance to talk like this, to be the centre of attention? ‘Yeah, he’s okay. Not exactly a movie star…’
‘What about those green eyes, though? I wouldn’t mind going for a swim in those myself,’ says Chloe, exaggerating the dreaminess in her voice and nudging Kirsty playfully at the same time. ‘If you don’t want him…’
This is totally outrageous, of course. Chloe would never try to take Dylan away from her. She has a boy of her own, anyway. He hasn’t earned a mention so far and Kirsty decides it’s time that he did.
‘What would Byron think of being two-timed?’
‘Who says he’d find out?’
They laugh, knowing neither of them could ever be quite so callous, an easy laugh that allows the touch of a hand to an arm.
‘Dylan came round to see me on Sunday,’ says Kirsty, wanting to keep things going.
Chloe’s impressed, as she was meant to be. ‘And?’
But there is no ‘and’, not that Kirsty can share. It was a mistake to mention Sunday and she’s suddenly furious with herself for being so careless. Kirsty has built a high wall between the two parts of her life. On one side are Chloe and the girls, on the other Ian Cartwright. If she lets her new friends see across that barrier, there will be no more invitations to cup cake parties at morning recess. She’ll be the moody girl in the corner again, the one with problems. She had every intention of keeping Dylan on the good side of that wall, too, until he turned up last Sunday.
‘Did you go for a walk?’ Chloe asked, pushing further.
What’s Kirsty going to do?
‘Did you kiss him?’
Some luck at last! Chloe’s given her a way out and Kirsty feels the relief glide over her like silk. ‘Of course not!’
‘Ah, but you wanted to,’ Chloe goads her.
Kirsty pouts and plays along, begining to enjoy herself again. ‘Maybe I did. Maybe I will next time.’
She doesn’t tell Chloe that she’s never kissed a boy. Too many obstacles in the way before. There are lots of things she wants to do, thrills she wants to experience, mostly just the fun of being a girl. She’s nearly sixteen and for years it’s felt like she couldn’t do what other girls her age were doing. To hell with that! Kirsty Beal is alive and raring to go, she wants to shout across the school yard, and Chloe Rosen is her way into everything she’s missed out on.
5
Tim Beal makes a sandwich
Tim stands at the kitchen bench. The ingredients for his sandwich form a horseshoe in front of him. He’d buy his lunch like other kids if he had the money, but what little he gets his hands on he keeps for stuff you can’t buy at the school canteen.
His mother left ten minutes ago in their battered Corolla to drop Melanie at her primary school, then go on to work. It’s the same every morning, with the house suddenly quiet after the departure of his younger sister, the older one getting herself ready in the bathroom or the bedroom. They’ll take the bus together from the end of the street in… he checks the clock above the fridge… twelve minutes.
Tim’s sandwiches never vary, peanut butter with a sprinkling of extra salt that his mother’s always on his back about. His hands move through a routine so familiar his mind is free to wander where it likes. It focuses on Sunday afternoon.
No, no, he’s exhausted by all that. Instead he tries to remember his real father. He creates pictures of himself playing with a man, not in this house, which they moved to seven years ago after Melanie was born, but the house where Tom Beal lives. Tom, Tim - only the middle letter different.
Tim loses himself among memories of piggy-back rides and tickling games, even though he was too young to know his father as anything but a wasted figure in a hospital bed. But there were games before Tom Beal’s strength was stolen from him. His mother told him about them as she stroked the pages of the photograph album, the one she’d made especially, after the divorce from Ian Cartwright.
His real father wasn’t as big as Ian, not that it matters. Tom protected them, like men are supposed to do. No one hurt the Beals while he was around to be their shelter. Deliver us from evil. The words come from a prayer Tim knows by heart, though he can’t recall which one.
Tom Beal died before his time and painfully, too, Tim has learned since. Such a death has to mean something. Lately, an idea has been growing unmanageably in Tim’s mind, that his father took a bullet for the ones he loved, that he died so they could go on living. Men protect their families. Change one lousy vowel and Tim becomes Tom. He wishes he could change that easily.
While he screws the lid back onto the jar of peanut butter, he lays out his thoughts beside the finished sandwich. Ian Cartwright likes to use his fists. He’s managed to keep them under control since the divorce, but the lava still bubbles inside him, ready to erupt.
Tim sees how it would happen. If he provoked Ian so that words gave way to punches, they’d have the evidence they need to show the police, evidence even a cold-eyed lawyer couldn’t deny. He sees himself with his shirt raised while his ribs are photographed, seated on a chair to steady him while the flash marks out the bruising to his cheek bone, his mouth.
Who did this to you? a policeman asks. What a bastard. We’ll go arrest him as soon as we’re done here. One more, let’s get a good shot of that shiner.
Cartwright wouldn’t be allowed to torment them after that. The man of the house protects his family. Hovering over his peanut-butter sandwich, Tim Beal glows with pride.
He shakes the sliced bread back into the packet, twirls the weight with a deft flick of his hand and slips the little square tag around the twisted neck. Then he takes a kitchen knife from the drawer, to cut the sandwich in two.
This is when reality comes panting up behind him. He’ll kill you, it sneers. Maybe you won’t die, but you’ll wish you were dead. You can’t control how much he hurts you. You can’t say, okay, a black-eye, some broken ribs, a cut on my cheek. Thanks, you can stop now. It would be worse than anything he’d suffered years ago and that was bad enough.
What stops him more than anything, though, is Cartwright’s rage. Tim wears his memory of i
t like a skin. He’d seen it again only last Sunday yet that was just a peek, the merest glimpse of how angry the man could become. In one of his rages, Ian Cartwright’s brutal face could ram more fear into Tim’s quaking body than a thousand fists. He shakes now, just thinking of it.
How pathetic, he spits at himself, to be more afraid of the man’s anger than his punches.
Tim becomes aware of the knife he’s holding. With his free hand he feels the blade, testing its edge - not a razor’s sharpness, but fit for most jobs. The movement of his own arm draws his eyes to the scabs above his wrists. He touches the tip of the knife to the most recent, still livid and painful. It’s a pain he can stand.
He moves the tip away from his forearm and changes the grip. The handle is enclosed tightly within his fist now, the blade protruding towards the sandwich. He raises it to shoulder height and without hesitating plunges downwards.
Footsteps. Kirsty has joined him in the kitchen. ‘Did you kill it?’ she asks from the door of the fridge.
Tim Beal looks down at the cutting board, at the sandwich stabbed in the heart and the blade that remains embedded when he loosens his grip. It’s just a joke and he echoes her sarcastic tone, putting on a cowboy’s drawl from a Hollywood western. ‘Yep, this sandwich ain’t goin’ to bother us no more.’
Kirsty comes to his side; stares at the murdered sandwich. Taking hold of the knife, she pulls it free from the cutting board and slices the sandwich in two.
‘It’ll be all right, Tim,’ she says in a whisper, then raising her voice, she adds brightly, ‘If you’ve made some lunch, then you must be coming to school.’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘I’m glad,’ she says. ‘Jorgensen will be totally pissed off when he sees you. As long as you turn up now and again, he can’t expel you.’
Tim shrugs. That’s not why he’s going on the bus this morning. ‘I met that friend of yours yesterday,’ he tells Kirsty. ‘The one who was here on Sunday.’
‘Dylan?’
‘Yes, that’s him.’
Tim follows his sister through the front door and hurries beside her to the bus stop.
Kirsty is seen with Ferris Bueller
Kirsty has changed her hair the way Chloe Rosen showed her at school yesterday, teasing it with a comb after it dried to give a wild, edgy look. Tim doesn’t seem to notice as they walk to the corner, but she didn’t expect him to, anyway. Chloe will be on the bus.
‘Oh, wow, you did it! Looks fantastic,’ says Chloe as soon as Kirsty has flashed her pass at the driver.
Brother and sister separate. Kirsty stays pressed against Chloe by the crush of bodies while Tim is shoved further down the bus. Every time Chloe’s body sways out of the way, she catches a glimpse of him, so alone even though he’s surrounded by other kids from school and people on their way to work in the city. Some of these school boys are as big as the men. Not Tim. He’s so thin, so fragile. He speaks to no one, stares across the crowded bus at nothing in particular. She wishes she knew where his mind goes, but at the same time wishes she couldn’t guess.
She’s surprised that he mentioned Dylan as they were leaving the house. Her boyfriend. The word seems spoiled now, after it swilled around inside Ian Cartwright’s mouth on Sunday before he spat it out like phlegm to embarrass her. She didn’t see Dylan yesterday, the first day since he’s started talking to her that he didn’t come looking for her, even just to say hello. Has the shock of what he saw on Sunday put him off? He was certainly worked up about it when they spoke on Tuesday.
There’s no sign of Dylan once they step off the bus and into the school yard. Trailing behind Chloe as they shuffle into class she wonders whether he will seek her out at all. Does she want him to? She’s not quite sure. It’s a new kind of uncertainty that’s got hold of her. She just wants to know really, she feels as though sometime today she’ll get the results of an exam and find out how she’s done. Very odd, but exciting in its own way.
Then, while she’s sharing Chloe’s morning tea, she sees him. He gives her a tentative wave.
‘There he is,’ says Chloe, who spots him at the same time. ‘Look, he’s coming this way. I’m out of here.’
‘Chloe!’
But the girl has already abandoned her and though it’s embarrassing to be left so blatantly alone, she’s grateful, too.
‘Hope I didn’t chase her away,’ says Dylan with the shy smile that Kirsty likes so much. He has his hands in his pockets, elbows against his sides, a stance she recognises as distinctly Dylan Kane.
‘That’s Chloe Rosen, isn’t it,’ he says with a nod in the girl’s direction. ‘She’s watching us, by the way. Bit obvious about it, if you ask me.’ He says this without sounding put out. Simply a statement of fact.
‘She’s making up gossip about us,’ says Kirsty, letting her eyebrows dance above her own smile, which isn’t the least bit shy.
‘Never made it into the gossip columns before,’ says Dylan. ‘This will be my debut on MSN. Come on, we’d better give them something to talk about, eh?’
He turns Kirsty a little with a gentle nudge and now that both of them are facing Chloe, he puts his arm around her waist. ‘Paparazzi, do your worst,’ he calls out, making heads turn.
This is what Kirsty wants, the light-hearted stuff. This is the playful joy she wants to feel on her lips and under her skin. With the laughter comes the natural movement of her own hand until they stand with arms criss-crossed behind their backs. She likes the feel of her arm around him and the fact that there’s more than just Chloe watching. She knows now why hikers carve graffiti into places they’ve never been before. Kirsty Beal is here!
They separate and face one another again. ‘Don’t be so hard on Chloe,’ she says in mock complaint. ‘She’s nice, really. The first real girlfriend I’ve had for a long time.’
That sounded almost sad. Worse, it links them to the deeper sadness of Sunday afternoon. She has to change the subject and knows just how to do it. ‘Chloe thinks you’re cute. She goes on and on about your green eyes.’
Dylan greets this with such genuine astonishment that Kirsty is caught out by her own laughter. He doesn’t seem to mind that she’s laughing at him.
‘Really! My eyes, are you serious? I never thought about it.’
He’s recovered now and digging into his pockets again, he brings out a pair of sunglasses which immediately slip into place. ‘How’s that? Can’t see the green of my eyes any more. I’m safe from attack.’
‘Where’d you get those from?’
‘Long story with a bad punch line. Do I look cool?’ He strikes a pose that would make a Hollywood star blush. ‘Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, right?’
‘You’re too tall to be Tom Cruise.’
‘Everyone’s too tall to be Tom Cruise.’
It’s all so ridiculous and Kirsty loves it. She’d happily walk around the yard arm in arm with him while he puts on this act.
‘Actually, you look more like Ferris Bueller,’ she tells him.
‘Hey, that movie’s my personal style manual.’
‘Yeah, Tim likes it too,’ she says casually. ‘He’s seen it a dozen times, at least.’
Kirsty doesn’t realise what she’s done until Dylan takes off the sunglasses. The mischief isn’t there any more. What’s wrong, she thinks? Then understands instantly when he asks, ‘Is Tim at school today?’
‘Yeah, two days in a row. Almost a record for him,’ she says, trying to bring back the sense of fun.
‘You two must miss your father,’ he says.
This is a different conversation now and she has to meet it head on. ‘Yes, we miss him. Tim doesn’t really remember him, but I do.’
‘Cancer?’
She shakes her head. ‘Motor neurone disease.’ Even as a six-year-old, she could understand how awful it was simply to waste away. She doesn’t want to talk about this, doesn’t want the emotions needed to speak the words. ‘Your mother…’ she says suddenly. ‘You said she�
��s divorced too. She never remarried?’
The diversion works as she’d hoped. ‘No, not my mum. You haven’t seen her, have you? She’s what you’d call a big woman, if you know what I mean.’ He shrugs his shoulders and lets her fill in the blanks. ‘She’s happy, though, especially these days. Has a lot of friends from the choir she sings in. They’ve been on at the Cultural Centre a couple of times. Always rehearsing and that’s good. Let’s me have the place to myself.’
Kirsty’s pleased to see his lips curl up at the edges as he tells her this, even though he stares at his shoes as soon as he says it. He’s on the way back.
‘There’s just you, isn’t there?’
‘Yep, only child,’ and his head bobs up now, testing a smile. ‘Used to get a bit, well, the word I’m thinking of is crowded, if that makes any sense when there’s only two of us. But lately, I think she understands. Pretty good about it really. No more little boy stuff.’
Kirsty feels a deeper curiosity stir and she asks her next question, not to lead him away from her own life but because the answer will tell her more about Dylan Kane. ‘Have your parents been divorced long?’
His first reply is a grunt Kirsty doesn’t like the sound of. Then, ‘Forever,’ he snaps. ‘My father took off before I was one. Didn’t even hang around for my first birthday.’ Staring harshly at her now he delivers a bitter finish. ‘I’ve never met him.’
‘Never met him! Are you serious?’
‘Why would I lie? I suppose he was there when I was little but I’m hardly going to remember, am I. Talked to him on the phone a few times, but I’ve never seen him face to face. A present every Christmas and that’s it.’
These words come quickly, savagely. There’s more hidden amid the hostility but Kirsty is too stunned to pick it out.
‘He lives in a different city, then.’
‘Different country. In England. He was born there, came out with my grandparents when he was a couple of years old, I think. Anyway, he’s back there now, even got married again a few years ago. Just had a little boy. I’ll bet he hangs around for that kid’s birthday.’
Kill the Possum Page 4
