And unless I discover some unknown sport I hugely kick arse at, or win Australian Idol, which is highly unlikely, I’ll be stuck on the wrong side of the red carpet for the rest of my life.
But right now I’m on the wrong side of the road, and if I’m going to get to Coach Tom Geraghty’s pointy little house, I’d better cross. So I do, to see Electra for the last time ev– I can’t say it.
It’s hard to believe, almost impossible, but Coach Tom Geraghty and Mrs Coach Tom Geraghty have gone out for the evening, leaving me and Electra alone in the, er, house.
‘Did they fill in the Travel Book?’ I ask, surrounded by empty, accusing chairs, silently accusing trophies, and that stupidly accusing pouffe. ‘And if they didn’t, I want to know why.’
Electra, in jeans, bare feet and a long-sleeved T-shirt, stands between me and the gas fire. Already she has tears on her face, as if she has given up any hope of a happy ending, which isn’t a good sign. But it’s what I expected, because I’m in the same sad, leaky boat.
‘No, I don’t think they did.’ She tries to smile, looking about as cheerful as the only kid at kinder who’s failed to score during the annual Easter Egg Hunt, and believe me, I’ve lived that story. ‘They just went. I don’t know when they’ll be back. Not late. Knowing them.’
There’s a certain point in a guy’s life when you just stop crying. You just don’t do it anymore, unless something horrendous happens, like a football injury so bad that you can see your bones, or your dog gets hit by a car, or your entire family, apart from you, gets vacuumed up by a tornado. You just do not cry.
But I’m crying now, because I know Electra is someone I love who I didn’t really expect to love, because I don’t love anyone else other than my family, and maybe Trav a bit, and Dot, and Mrs Travis, in a nice way, and perhaps Ms Inglis if I’m being completely honest – but when I look at Electra, I know how I feel about her does not apply to anyone else in the world, except perhaps Amelia-Anne, but I can’t bring her into it, as I can’t deal with that while I’m trying to deal with this.
‘I wish I wasn’t going.’ Electra wipes her eyes with wet knuckles. ‘I should never have agreed. It won’t work. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.’
‘It will work.’ I say this, knowing it’s the truth. ‘It’s not dumb. It’s smart. You’ve gotta go. Because your running is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and up there you’ll fly. You’ll just be running faster and quicker and better. Well, maybe just faster or quicker, as I doubt they’ll let you do all three. You’ll have to pick one. Because some of the other girls might want to be quicker or better if you’re going to be faster.’
A joke. By me. At this point. Guts.
Electra looks at me as if I’ve said something that’s either surprisingly brilliant or surprisingly stupid.
‘I love you, Marc.’ Her eyes shine. ‘For all the things you’ve said and done ever since I’ve been here. You saved me. You looked after me. You kept me going. I’ll never forget it.’ And she cries again, like a kid who doesn’t realise that crying’s something you try to stop as soon as possible.
‘Only because of you.’ I look at her and see a special, standalone girl whose life is made complicated a hundred times over because she is so quick that the whole country will want to see her run. ‘You’re a beautiful girl. I knew it the first time I saw you. And you were only walking. Slowly, too.’
‘Oh, Marc,’ she says, and then whatever else she says, she says into my shirt, as if she’s making sure it goes right through my skin and into my heart, where no one else will ever hear it, but where it will always be. ‘You’re so dumb. I’ll miss you so much.’
‘It’s all right,’ I say when I know it isn’t. ‘It’ll work out,’ I say, knowing that it most probably won’t. ‘I love you,’ I say, because that is true, and will stay as true as it can, forever.
We lie on Electra’s single bed in her pointy little room, too sad to do anything but stay close. It’s as if we know that doing anything else would only take our minds off what’s most important, and use up precious time. And although the room is small, and the door’s locked, it’s the whole wide world outside that I can feel, because there are so many places in the world that Electra will go that will be a long way away from wherever I am.
We use kisses for words, exchanged in the soft mess of tears, the two of us caught in a trap that works by keeping us apart. Then, finally, we hear a pointy little car drive into the pointy little carport.
‘Time to go,’ I say, standing. ‘I think.’
‘I guess.’ Electra sits up and squeezes my hands. ‘Goodbye, Marc. I’ll always miss you.’
‘And I’ll always miss you.’ I squeeze her hands back. ‘See you, Electra.’
And then, because I cannot face the Coach Tom Geraghtys, I leave like Romeo, but in reverse, out the side window; which might one day make a good story for Ms Inglis, but I’m sure as hell not prepared to share it with her any time in the near future.
I drop to the ground, turn, and get one more kiss, too sad to describe, before I walk out through the silent, silver garden, away from a house that was probably never real in the first place. And only once do I look back, and see the light in Electra’s room, her little bedside lamp with the freakin’ cowboys on it that has watched over her every night since she was little, go out.
And then we are alone.
Separate.
In the dark.
50
Trav and I go to his beach house at Blairgowrie on Friday night. We travel down some famously bad train line to some famously bad suburb that doesn’t seem so bad to me, then catch a bus along the peninsula. The sight of the sea through the ti-trees, and knowing we’ve got three whole days to kick back by ourselves, lifts me some way out of the dead zone where I’ve spent the entire week; where not even the sight of Ms Inglis in high shoes and a tight jumper could lift my game.
But now, in Trav’s house, with a beer and the fire going – all Trav’s houses have open fires, even the one in Noosa – I feel fractionally better. There’s no school, no homework, no parents, no Gretchen, and only me and Trav doing whatever we like for three days, which will be nothing much at all.
‘Pity we couldn’t bring Dotty.’ Trav stokes the fire with some sticks that might’ve been a garden sculpture, we’re not sure. ‘She loves catching those freakin’ seagulls. But evidently the neighbours have taken out a restraining order on her after the cat thing.’
Dot chased a next-door cat so far up a tree it actually fell out, which I didn’t think cats were supposed to do. Still, if it had concentrated harder, it wouldn’t have.
‘Pity Ms Inglis couldn’t come,’ Trav adds, stubby filled to the brim with firelight. ‘That’d cheer you up. Her coming out of the fourth bathroom at midnight. Hullo, Marc. Would you like a tequila?’
I almost laugh but end up only nodding. I stare into the fire.
‘Still.’ Trav rips open a bag of pretzels. ‘You never know what might happen. Like, down the track. Or up in Canberra. Maybe. One day. Whenever. Whatever. Whoever. Something, someone, I dunno. Want a pretzel? They’re nice but a little weird. Like wood.’
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I say, taking a few. ‘Who knows? Not me. I know nothin’.’
And for once, not knowing anything is exactly the right answer, because really, it’s impossible to know what’s going to happen anywhere, any time, to anyone. So, points to me for nailing that.
Great.
Saturday is a blindingly blue day, nearly warm. Trav and I are sitting on the balcony eating stale cereal, watching a massive container ship come up the channel, its name being the Oceania Brave, which is cool, so more power to it, I say.
‘Shit, it’s a nice day.’ Trav tips his cereal over the balcony. ‘Let’s go down the beach. My phone won’t work here.’
We leave the bowls where they are and cross the road, me carrying the footy, Trav carrying his phone, the water glittering, hard and sharp-looking.
‘You ringing Hailey?’ I bounce the ball on the grass next to the sand. God, it hurts even to say someone else’s girlfriend’s name.
‘I am,’ Trav says. ‘Because I had to promise to tell her how you are. Jesus. She’s like the Flying Doctor. She’s freakin’ everywhere. But I think you can tell her yourself.’ He hands me the phone, a new one, red, flat and expensive.
I tell Hailey that I’m all right, although I’m not, and we hang up because she understands that I have nothing to say. Then Trav and I head off down the beach, climbing over little wooden breakwaters, handballing to each other, looking at water that’s so clear I know we’ll end up swimming, although we don’t have boardies on, and it is winter.
In the distance Melbourne’s a ghost city, pale and grey, but ahead of us, quite clearly, I can see a girl on a white towel who I’m sure I recognise.
‘That’s Antonella Lockwood.’ I point. ‘Remember? From the car yard. Luke the Tool Lockwood’s sister.’ I’m sure it’s her, sitting cross-legged, wearing a hat and reading a book.
‘Oh, yeah. ’ Trav cradles the footy, studying her. ‘Music girl. The kooky one. Well, you go and talk to her. And I’ll shoot across to the milkbar and get us some breakfast. Got any money? Will I get her a coffee or what?’
‘I guess so.’ I hand over ten bucks, all that I’ve got, and head off towards Antonella, hoping she’ll remember me, thinking she might not, and wondering how I’ll handle it if she doesn’t.
Antonella and I sit in the sun and talk, looking out at the empty boats, tiny waves chasing each other in to shore.
‘I put a dint in the car.’ Gently she scoops sand. ‘I don’t think I’m a very good driver. My dad wasn’t too pleased.’
‘Oh well,’ I say. ‘You’re okay, that’s the main thing. You can fix a car. That’s what insurance is for.’ I heard my dad say this to someone who’d crashed into the side of Uluru. ‘So how’s your piano going? It is the piano, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it’s the piano.’ Antonella laughs, her face protected by the portable shade of her hat. ‘Perhaps unfortunately.’
This is a statement that leads me to think that she’s a cool girl; maybe not a girl who other girls think is cool, but a girl who’s cool anyway, because she’s nice, she’s interesting, she gets it, and she’s good-looking in a way my mother would appreciate; as in pale, and no Paris Hilton hair.
‘Still.’ Antonella gently planes the sand. ‘But I have to admit I really like it. It’s me.’
‘Right on,’ I say, smiling. ‘If you like it, I like it.’
Trav appears with two chocolate-flavoured milks, and a coffee with a lid. In his top pocket he even has a sugar stick and a stirrer. I introduce them, Trav sitting, his knees white and scarred in the sun, as hard as hammers.
‘Marc said you like coffee.’ He hands it over, following up with sugar and a stirrer. ‘Blame him if you don’t.’
Antonella takes the cup. ‘I love it. Thanks.’
So we sit, letting the sunshine wash over us, the sound of each little wave like a kid’s poem, simple and cheerful, same rhyme over and over. And I think of two girls, one in the world, one who isn’t, one with fierce blue-black eyes, one who had twenty-four freckles on her cinnamon-coloured back, and I count myself lucky for knowing them both, and knowing that in some way I will always be their minder, for as long as I live.
Trav and I swim in our boxers, the water clear and freezing, the sand under our feet ridged like buried bones. And when I see a girl running along the beach, I watch her draw level then slowly run away until I can’t bear to watch her anymore, and have to dive under, surfacing, eyes stinging.
‘It’ll get better,’ Trav says, looking out to the horizon as if he was talking about the weather. ‘You’ll see.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’ I throw up handfuls of water that turn into a thousand diamond drops. ‘I mean, I’m handling it. But.’ We wade back to the beach, the sun warm on my skin, and the sudden tinny notes of a lead guitar shatter the silvery air.
‘That’s my phone.’ Trav stops, dripping like a big wet dog. He calls out. ‘Could you grab that, Antonella? Tell ’em I’ll get back to ’em in a sec.’
That’ll give Hailey something to think about.
Antonella answers the phone, then writes something in the sand before flipping the phone shut, and putting it on Travis’s jeans.
‘Travis, that was some guy who called himself a Football Development Officer,’ she says when we get back to our towels. ‘From some football club called some kind of dog.’ She looks at me. ‘He was also looking for number 24. Which I know is you, Marc, because I saw you practising at school once. I was waiting for my brother.’
I do remember that. Wow. That was a while ago.
‘Oh, yeah,’ I say. ‘You were reading a book.’
‘I was.’ Antonella looks pleased. ‘One of my favourites. I read it all the time.’
Trav opens his phone. He doesn’t seem too interested in what Antonella’s favourite book is, although I guess I wouldn’t mind knowing.
‘Don’t get too excited about this, Jarvy,’ says Trav. ‘These guys talk to a million players. And then invite you to a camp where they try to kill you.’
I think about the match where those AFL guys were, and how Trav and I played. I also remember the soccer girls on the oval next to us – because although I forget even more things than I lose, I don’t forget what’s important.
Then I look up the beach. The running girl has turned and is coming back, a small figure on a big white sandy stage; and although she’s not running fast, and doesn’t even look very fit, she’s moving through the world, defying gravity, on her own path.
I admire that.
She’s a star.
I watch her pass.
And run on into the future.
Which is all you can ever do.
Jarvis 24 Page 20
