Beautiful Mess

by Claire Christian

  Gideon is dumbfounded, he kind of stutters his answer. ‘I, I, I should?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I should. But—’ He stops himself.

  But? But what? He has a girlfriend? I don’t think he has a girlfriend. He thinks I’m hitting on him. Am I hitting on him? I don’t think I’m hitting on him. I’m definitely not hitting on him. Do I need to make it really obvious to him that I am definitely not hitting on him? I don’t know what I’m doing. I think he’s funny. I like the way I feel when I’m around him. I’m curious.

  ‘But?’ I ask. I finally find the cigarette among all the other shit in my bag and begin the hunt for a lighter.

  ‘I don’t have a phone,’ he says and I don’t even bother to look up because I know he’s joking and he’ll tell me the real reason soon. Like, he thinks I’m too fucked up or he’s moving to Botswana to work in a commune and he won’t get reception so there’s no point.

  Gideon doesn’t say anything. I look at him. Holy shit. He’s serious.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well. You should add me,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t have the internet either,’ he says with a smile and a deep breath out. He jams his hands in his pockets and looks at the ground.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Really.’ Gideon doesn’t look up, he keeps looking at the ground, making patterns in the dirt. His curls bounce with each movement of his foot. He’s tall. Taller than me, taller than Lincoln even. And he’s skinny. Not like you can see his ribs skinny, but still skinny. His jeans are like super tight and they’re tucked into these shiny black boots and his long-sleeve shirt is probably five sizes too big. It suits him, though. He doesn’t look like anyone I know. If anything he looks like the long-haired retro musos on the cover of Ricky’s vinyls.

  Gideon doesn’t say anything. So I don’t say anything. No phone and no internet. Maybe he is actually from the seventies and I’m in some weird time parallel universe thing. Great, that’s all I need this year, to become friends with some time-travelling guy. I have to smile at that.

  ‘If you don’t want to talk to me you can just say no,’ I finally say, and I start the search for the lighter again.

  ‘No—’

  ‘Oh!’ I take two steps back. Wow.

  At least he was honest. He doesn’t want to talk to me, and who can blame him? I mean I am pretty fucked up at the moment and it doesn’t take a detective to work that out.

  ‘No, I mean, no I do want to talk to you—’

  ‘Cause that’s fine. I just thought that…’ I kind of mutter. Actually I don’t know what I thought. Or why I even asked in the first place. I don’t even care.

  Only I do, because I have that feeling in my stomach, that rejected feeling, the one that I swear every time I put myself in a stupid situation like this that I’m never, ever going to do ever again because it’s too embarrassing. When I’d try and tell Kel about this feeling she’d shrug and tell me I was an idiot, tell me she had no idea what I meant. And she didn’t because no one rejected Kelly. Not boys. Not girls. Not teachers. No one. Only Kelly’s brain rejected Kelly.

  Gideon takes two steps towards me. ‘Ava? I really, actually, like swear on both my mothers’ lives that I don’t have a phone.’

  ‘Or the internet?’

  ‘Or the internet.’

  ‘A house phone?’ I ask.

  ‘Who has a house phone anymore? Um. No,’ he says, trying to lighten the mood.

  ‘We do,’ I say.

  ‘Oh,’ Gideon fumbles. I don’t know why we still have a house phone. It’s only telemarketers and my Yiayia who ever call it.

  There’s a silence. An awkward silence. I feel around in my bag again for the lighter and find it in the front pocket. Finally. I light it and take a deep drag.

  ‘How come?’ I ask.

  ‘I thought I’d see what life was like without them,’ he says, nodding, with his hands in his pockets.

  I take another drag. ‘How is life without them?’ I offer the cigarette to Gideon and he shakes his head.

  ‘I’m still deciding.’

  I’m intrigued. What would make anyone in their right mind want to know what life was like without a phone and the internet? Gideon is nervous around me. I like that about him. People are never nervous around me. I’m nervous around them. Around everyone, but not Gideon. I wonder if there’s some kind of quota between two people where there can only be so many nerves, and because Gideon fills the quota between us I don’t have to feel them. I don’t feel much lately, apart from really angry or kind of numb, but around Gideon I feel this sense of…control, almost. Not like I’m controlling him, but confidence, like I’m in charge because he’s so nervous.

  I wonder if this is how Kel used to feel. She’d flick her long hair back over her head, roll her neck back and shake out her shoulders like one of those girls in a Bond movie. She’d drag long and hard on her cigarettes and tie her T-shirts in knots above her belly button. Kelly didn’t give a fuck. When she decided she liked Faye Donaldson it was on. Even though Faye Donaldson had never kissed a girl. In actual fact, I don’t think Faye Donaldson had ever kissed anyone.

  ‘She’s beautiful, Aves. I don’t think anyone has ever told her she’s beautiful,’ Kelly said.

  ‘Her mum, probably,’ I told her.

  ‘That doesn’t count.’ She’d stubbed out her cigarette on the ground and took her iPod out of her pocket. I was sitting on the ground on the edge of the oval at the back entrance to the school. Kels held out her hand to me and I took it, and she pulled me up. Looked me right in the eye.

  ‘Imagine going your whole life without anyone telling you you’re beautiful.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to tell her.’ Kel placed the ear buds in my ears and hit play and I stood watching her as she walked over to Faye Donaldson, who was just waiting, unsuspecting. I watched Kelly talk to her for a bit. I watched Faye smile and reply. Then Kelly must have told her she was beautiful because Faye blushed and looked away. Kel closed the gap between them, tucked Faye’s hair behind her ear and then she kissed her with both hands on her cheeks. Sweet, slow, lovely. Not for very long, but long enough. Finally Kelly pulled away and kissed her on the cheek and smiled, and then started the walk back to me. All the while some acoustic ballad blaring in my ears and me feeling like I was watching a movie, some high school romance, play out in front of me. I shook my head as Kel smiled and hooked her arm through mine. She took one earpiece from me and put it in her ear as we walked off together.

  Faye came to the funeral. Or at least the service part of the funeral. Kelly had a traditional Maori funeral. Or as traditional as they could make it without actually being in New Zealand. They set up a marae in their lounge room where the coffin lay open for two days, and on the third day we had the actual service. They wanted it to be at the house but too many people were going to come so they had it in this big church hall. During the two days people came and visited and saw her and she was never left on her own. I slept in the room with them all on the second night, and by sleep I mean lay staring at the ceiling or holding Lincoln’s hand.

  I was the only kid from school who went to the house. I think people were freaked out about seeing her in her coffin. I don’t blame them. I was so scared of seeing her. I didn’t know what to expect. I wasn’t sure if I’d cope, and the last thing I wanted was to upset everyone even more. But Dad came with me and as I sat on the couch taking it all in, Dad sat with Kelly’s dad, Greg, next to the coffin and they both cried. Dad whispered something to Kelly as he kissed her forehead and big fat tears dropped from his eyes. Tina looked at me and gestured for me to come over. I remember this nauseous kind of feeling rising up from my toes to the tip of my head and then back down again. I nodded and cried and sat next to her and she put her arm around me as I looked at my friend.

  Kelly didn’t look like herself. Her brown, brown skin was greyish now and she was so, so s
till.

  Over the two days Kelly’s family sat around and played guitar and cried and talked to her. I found it so hard to say anything with everyone around but I’d steal little moments where I’d just hold her hand and I’d try and will my brain to understand that she was actually gone.

  At sunrise on the third day there was a ceremony where Kelly’s aunties sang songs and people said prayers and they put the lid on the coffin. I will never ever for as long as I live forget the sounds Tina made as she sat hugging the coffin. It was more than a cry, it was a howl. More animal than human. Sometimes when it’s really quiet I’m positive I can still hear it, as though it’s burnt into my soul. That’s what pain sounds like. We watched as they put the coffin in the car; I think that was the worst part. I couldn’t stop my tears, and my legs folded underneath me so Dad stood behind me with his arms around my waist, holding me up, and then the hearse drove away and I would never see my beautiful friend again.

  Heaps of people from school came to the funeral. Heaps of kids that made no sense were there. There were girls who hated Kelly standing there crying and I remember so desperately wanting to tell them to get fucked. But I didn’t. I stood with Dad and felt like a heavy zombie. I didn’t say anything to anyone except Faye Donaldson, who came up to me.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Ava.’ She was looking at the ground.

  ‘She meant it, yeah?’ I told her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She thought you were beautiful.’

  Faye took a big shaky breath in and she squeezed my hand, nodded, and walked off.

  I draw back on the cigarette and look at Gideon. ‘So what do you do if you meet a girl?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Meet girls. I didn’t think. I don’t have a plan.’ He takes his hands out of his pockets and they move about wildly as he talks. They match the energy in his words, like they’re dancing and his words are the music. I’m kind of mesmerised by it and I want him to keep talking.

  ‘How do you talk to anyone?’

  ‘I don’t.’ He shakes his head and his hands fly up like they don’t know either and then they hit his thighs and make a clapping sound. I throw the cigarette on the ground and stand on it.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, I do. My family. But. They live in my house so—’

  I cut him off. ‘…It’s easy.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He kind of half-chuckles, so I half-laugh too, but it’s mostly air, not a real laugh. Kel reckons you always know what I’m thinking because it’s on my face. I’m not a good liar. I think it’s my eyebrows—they kind of have a life of their own. I blame my Pappou for my Greek eyebrows; they’re his eyebrows.

  ‘Do you at least have a TV?’

  ‘Yeahhhhh,’ Gideon says, like I’m an idiot.

  ‘Phew,’ I grin. ‘I was beginning to think you were really weird.’

  Gideon laughs, nervous but genuine, and I smile and bite my lip and wonder how I’ve never met him before.

  ‘So now what?’ I ask. A four-wheel drive pulls up just near us and beeps its horn.

  ‘That’s my mum.’ Gideon smiles. ‘Do you need a lift?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay.’ He nods and takes two steps away before pivoting around on the toes of one foot. ‘School? I can see you at school.’

  ‘I don’t really. I’m not really. I don’t know about—’ I stop.

  ‘After all the stuff?’ he says. Of course he knows about ‘all the stuff’. Probably saw my performance at assembly and knows about Kel. That’s why he’s being so nice to me, doesn’t want to send me off the rails. The car beeps its horn again, he takes two quick strides towards it and waves, holding up five fingers and then a thumbs-up.

  But when he comes back the feeling from before is gone. I don’t need Gideon’s sympathy. I don’t need anyone’s sympathy. What I need is my mate back. That’s what I need.

  ‘Okay. Um. A letter.’ Gideon is bouncing and catches me off guard.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll write you a letter. What’s your address?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, and then you can reply. If you want. And I’ll see you here. At work.’ He’s talking really fast, looking at me, rubbing his hands together. I’m perplexed and perplexed is what is all over my face. My eyebrows are having a field day with this guy.

  ‘Are you even?’ I laugh. ‘Are you even real?’

  ‘Yes. What’s your address?’

  I reach inside my bag, take my payslip and rip off the corner with my address on it and hand it to him. He clutches it and holds it in his hand.

  ‘Good. Cool.’ He smiles, still bouncing.

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Letters,’ he says, pacing two steps away from me, then turning back again. ‘Goodnight Ava.’

  And he walks away, gets in the car and goes. I watch until the headlights on his car become tiny yellow specks and I do something I feel like I haven’t done in a very long time. I breathe. A long, hard, loud exhale out of my mouth, and I smile. Not because of Gideon, though; because of something else, because of how I feel. Normal.

  ‘Ava, I want you to tell me in your own words what you think happened today,’ Mrs Bryan says, staring at me from across her desk while my dad puts his hand on my shoulder and I close my eyes and breathe through my nose.

  ‘Trevor Lane called her a psycho bitch,’ I say.

  ‘Called who?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘Ava.’ My dad stops me and squeezes my shoulder.

  I’m furious. My knuckles are bleeding, my stomach muscles hurt and my throat is on fire from screaming. If Mr Barnaby hadn’t pulled me away and literally carried me down to the office as I punched and screamed and hurled my body around I would’ve surely killed Trevor. I’d overheard him whispering about me, about her under his breath. Saying he was glad she died. As I explain this to Mrs Bryan, she cuts me off. ‘Now Ava, I’m sure that Trevor didn’t—’

  ‘He said it. He meant it. He’s a fucking idiot.’

  ‘Oi, kiddo, check your manners,’ Dad mumbles. The blinds cast long line shadows onto his forehead and it makes his furrow look even more intense.

  ‘Sorry.’ I look at Mrs Bryan. ‘Sorry. I’m just—angry. It made me angry.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I told him to shut his mouth.’

  ‘While Mr Barnaby was teaching?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then?’

  And then the slimy douchebag that is Trevor Lane looked at me with his greasy skin and eyes so dark they look black and sneered: ‘I wish you were the one who’d topped herself. At least the other one was hot.’

  My blood turned to molten lava and lifted my feet off the ground with such force that my fist connected with his face. The punch knocked him back onto the floor as I scrambled over the desk to hit him again. And again. It was around this time that Mr Barnaby lifted me under my arms and carried me out of the room.

  ‘You didn’t mean to hit him though, Ava?’ Mrs Bryan asks.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘But you were angry and sometimes when we’re angry we—’ I can’t believe she’s trying to pretend like it didn’t happen. This has been the main problem this whole time, everyone palming shit off like it’s no big deal.

  ‘I meant it. I did it on purpose. I think he’s vile. I’m not sorry. And I won’t apologise to him. I’d do it again.’ I look across at my dad, who shifts his chin slightly but I can see that he’s smirking.

  ‘Oh. Um. Well. In that case, Ava. You know that we have zero tolerance for any kind of physical violence.’

  ‘What about Trevor?’ I ask.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘What he said.’

  ‘I will speak to Trevor.’

  ‘But you won’t punish him.’ I shake my head.

  ‘We will take the necessary action and make decisions that are specific to his behaviour. I’m sure other kids in the class will v
ouch for what you’ve said, Ava?’ And I want to punch her now too. She’s such a patronising bitch. She thinks this is all my fault. She just hates me because I’m disrupting her day. She doesn’t actually give a flying fuck about me.

  ‘Ava, we need to expel you,’ she says like it’s the easiest thing in the world, like she’s just told me what day it is.

  ‘What?’ My dad jerks forward and puts his hands on the desk. I don’t say anything.

  ‘With your track record this year—’

  ‘I’m sorry, but this is bullshit,’ he puffs.

  ‘Dad,’ I say; now it’s my turn to touch his shoulder.

  ‘You know what she’s going through, right?’

  ‘Yes. We understand that Ava has experienced a trauma, we have all experienced a trauma, but I have other students to support. I think we have ceased being able to support Ava here. I think another institution would be best, in fact I’ve given Rahila Saeed a call at TAPs and she’s more than happy to meet with you.’

  ‘At TAPs?’ I yell, stunned.

  ‘I just think their program is better suited to your specific needs right now, Ava. At least to get you through Year 11 and then you can reassess what your options are at the end of the year. Year 11 is an important foundational year and I don’t want you to miss too much.’ She slides a bright red and yellow pamphlet over to Dad.

  ‘Her number is on the back.’

  She wants me to go to TAPs? TAPs stands for The Alternative Program. It’s a bludge school for the teenage mums, the bully victims, the weird kids with too many piercings who all work at Hungry Jack’s and the kids with the anger issues who—

  Who flip out in class and punch dickheads like Trevor Lane in the nose for saying stupid shit about their friend who died.

  ‘We’ll have a look.’ Dad stands up. I can tell that he’s pissed off; his lips are pursed tightly shut. I follow him to the door.

  ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t do more,’ Mrs Bryan says, still sitting in her chair as Dad spins, shaking his head and clenching his teeth.

  ‘Well, you haven’t really done anything to be honest, Mrs Bryan. In fact I’ll be getting in contact with the Department of Education to discuss how poorly MacGreggor College has navigated the death of Kelly, and how unsupportive and ineffective your pastoral care has been.’ Dad huffs out a big exhalation of breath and Mrs Bryan just looks dumbfounded. I smile. My dad is awesome.