The Spite Game

by Anna Snoekstra

  “I’m nineteen,” he said.

  “But Aiden can’t be much over thirty.” I started attempting the math in my head.

  “Don’t try to work it out,” he said, serious now. “It’s gross. They were just kids playing at being adults. My mum’s parents were really religious, so they made her keep me.”

  He passed me the wine, and we continued walking. I wondered whether Bea already knew Aiden was Evan’s dad.

  “What do you think that guy’s deal is?” He looked toward the lit-up windows of the house across from Nancy’s, changing the subject ungracefully. I knew a man lived alone there, surrounded by family portraits.

  “I heard he murdered his whole family and buried them under the house,” I said. He looked at me and my stomach twisted and puckered. I had revealed myself already. But Evan only whistled low through his teeth.

  “Do you want to hear a story?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  He sat down on the front lawn of one of the empty houses, and I sat next to him, swigging from the bottle again, my stomach starting to loosen.

  “So this friend of mine, she was on the last train to Frankston. She got on the carriage at Richmond, and it was basically empty. There were these two big guys near the door, and a middle-aged couple down the other end. So she went and sat across from the middle-aged couple, as you would, right?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said.

  “So it’s really late, and the couple are dressed nicely, like they’ve just gone out on a date. The woman is leaning on the guy’s shoulder, and his arms are around her, but she just keeps staring at my friend in this really weird way.”

  “Where was she going?”

  “Who?”

  “Your friend?”

  “I don’t know. Home. Anyway, so my friend smiles at the lady but the lady doesn’t smile back. She keeps looking away, and then looking back, but the lady is still staring at her in the real creepy way.”

  “Weird,” I said.

  “Shut up—you’re ruining the flow.”

  “Don’t tell me to shut up. How old are you?” But I smiled and leaned back on my elbows.

  “So eventually my friend is like ‘What?’ But the lady doesn’t reply, so she goes ‘Can I help you with something?’ and the husband looks at her and is like ‘Sorry, my wife has drunk too much,’ and the lady just keeps on staring. Then the train stops at the next stop, and one of the big guys grabs my friend and pushes her out with him onto the platform.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah. And she’s all screaming and stuff, and the man tells her he’s actually a cop. He says that the husband murdered his wife on the train half an hour ago.”

  He took the wine from my hand and swigged it, grinning at my open mouth.

  “Wait, so hang on,” I said, “the woman was dead? That’s why she was staring?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  He nodded.

  “But wait, so he killed his wife on the train? Wouldn’t there have been blood everywhere.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But didn’t your friend find out? Surely she’d be a witness or something?”

  He cocked his head. “It didn’t really happen to my friend. Just makes the story sound better.”

  “What?”

  He grinned. “It probably isn’t even true. It’s just an urban legend. It’s a good story though, right?”

  I shook my head. “That’s one of the most fucked-up things I’ve ever heard.”

  “Really?”

  I thought for a second. “Actually, probably not.”

  So I told him the story about the man who had dressed up as a clown and murdered little boys, which he’d heard before, and the twin sisters who’d killed their mum together, which he hadn’t. I expected him to ask me how I knew all these stories of murderers and psychopaths, but he didn’t. He just told me some of his own in return.

  “This is so morbid,” I said eventually.

  “Yeah, Bea and Aiden would hate it.”

  “Do you think it’s weird to be kind of interested by this stuff?”

  I expected him to say yes, that we were both being creepy and inappropriate, but he didn’t.

  “Not at all. I mean, people actually do this stuff. Real humans, like you and me. It’s fascinating to think about what gets them to that point, don’t you think? Where you’re ready to do something so evil to another person?”

  “I guess.” I leaned back on the grass, staring up at the moon in the clear sky. It looked a little too big, too low, like we were in a painting and the artist hadn’t gotten the proportions quite right.

  I wondered if he’d consider what I’d been doing to Theodore as an evil thing. Following him around, looking in through his window. But no, it was Theodore who was in the wrong here, not me.

  “We’ve almost finished it,” he said, showing me the near-empty bottle of wine.

  “Yeah,” I said, “we should probably get back.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, getting to his feet. “Let’s see if they’ve gotten to the holding-hands stage yet.”

  Walking backward toward my house, he smiled at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Nothing.” But he was still smiling.

  10

  It can be overwhelming when a chapter in your life ends. The last day of school or the day you quit your job. Even when it’s something you don’t exactly enjoy, it’s still sad when a stage of your life has ended—done and dusted, kaput. I felt sad that morning. But it was the best kind of sadness, the most exquisite, the most rare. It’s not often, at least for me, that things end in victory.

  I took the tram down Swanston Street toward University of Melbourne. Squashed in near the door, hot air pushing through the vents, wet parkas squeaking against wet parkas, backpacks smacking into shoulders, sweating from the body heat, I wasn’t frustrated. I got off with all the other students, and almost felt like one of them. Usually, it was the opposite. I would feel so conspicuous, so obviously not where I was supposed to be. But in that moment, I felt like I imagined they did every day. That my whole future was ahead of me, that anything was possible.

  I waited for Theodore to pass by to his applied chemistry class, but he didn’t. That was when I started to worry, though only a little. I thought perhaps he was still in bed having hungover sex. I’d seen it before. So I made my way to his dorm room window. It was closed. Pressing my forehead against it to look inside, I saw that his bed was empty, just tangled white sheets. Squinting, I looked toward the bookshelf, where the box of laundry sachets had sat, all this time, in between a chemistry textbook and The Catcher in the Rye. But there was nothing but an empty space.

  I got on the tram back down Swanston Street. Someone whacked into me with their backpack and I pushed them back.

  “Hey!” they said.

  I snarled at them, “sorry.”

  They gave me space then, all the way to Collins Street. I rubbed my arm; it had really hurt. The guy would have felt it connecting with someone, but he hadn’t even turned to check. That’s the thing about people. They don’t care if they hurt you. They’ll only notice if you hurt them back.

  When I got off I wasn’t sure where to go. I didn’t know where Theodore’s parents lived, if that’s where he was, and I didn’t want to go home. I’d jinxed it. After everything that had happened, I should have known by then that once I thought I’d won it really meant I’d lost. I could just imagine the look on Mel’s face if she could see me now. Fuck, Ava, she’d say, what the hell is wrong with you?

  I sat down on a bench and stared toward the campsite in City Square. It had grown since yesterday. There were probably close to a hundred people there, and lots more tents and small structures. People were sitting around, listening to someone spe
ak, but from where I was, the voice was clipped and lifted away by the passing trams. Every so often the crowd would call “yeah!” in unison.

  There was a large banner that had We Are The 99% written across it in black block letters. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t really remember what it was all about. I had just decided to go and get the bus home when I noticed him. Theodore. Like he’d been conjured from my own wanting. He was sitting with his legs crossed in the crowd, no shoes, watching. He wasn’t nodding along with the rest of the crowd, but fiddling with his phone in his lap.

  * * *

  By the time I got off the bus I had a new plan. It wasn’t as straightforward or as easy, though the chance of success was probably higher. But I would need help.

  The rain had made the surfaces of Lakeside look shiny. The gates twinkled before me, the roof of the convenience store glimmered and I could see inside to its empty white shelves. The barren hole of the lake had a good inch of brown water in it.

  I reached Evan’s house, and was relieved to see him sitting in the kitchen through the window.

  “Hey, neighbor,” I said.

  His face snapped up, startled, but he smiled when he saw me. “Do you make a habit of peeking in people’s windows?”

  I laughed. “Is Aiden here?”

  “Nah.”

  “Good, can I come in?”

  He grinned.

  * * *

  Evan made me a cup of tea. He had the heater on, and his kitchen was warm and smelled mildly of burned dust.

  “What are you working on?” I asked, looking over at the thick book open on the table.

  “I’m retaking my VCEs,” he said, his back to me as he poured the hot water into the mugs, steam rising around him. “Totally failed them. You don’t want to know my score.”

  “Trust me—you don’t want to know mine either.”

  He turned to look at me. “Can’t be that bad if you got into nursing.”

  I considered telling him then. Telling him everything. But he turned back around to grab the box of tea bags and I didn’t say anything.

  He put the mug of tea in front of me and a carton of milk in the middle of the table. He’d tied the string of the tea bag around the top of the handle. I’d never seen anyone do it that way before.

  “So were you at uni today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you put your forms in to go part-time?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” I said, twiddling the paper square at the end of the string around my finger. “I think I’m going to just defer the next semester.”

  “Pity,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  On the long bus ride here, I’d planned this conversation, but now that I was here in his kitchen, having tea, my request felt bizarre. He’d laugh at me. Or worse, he’d see what was really inside me. I took a sip from my mug, and the liquid was unexpectedly hot. I coughed, and it sounded loud against the quiet rasp of the heater.

  “You okay?”

  “Yep,” I said, rubbing a sleeve over my mouth. “Okay, I have a favor to ask you.”

  “I see. So you’re not just here for my A-grade tea-making skills?”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “Why do you tie the string on? It’s so crazy strong now.”

  “It’s so it doesn’t get into the tea, and then you don’t have to stick your fingers in to get it out and burn yourself.”

  “Yeah, but I did anyway.”

  “I thought you wanted a favor? You’re meant to be buttering me up,” he teased.

  “That sounds weird.” I leaned back in my chair to look at him. “It’s a big one.”

  “As long it doesn’t involve bashing in a door I think I’ll be okay. I didn’t exactly prove my manliness last time.”

  “No door bashing.”

  “Good.”

  “Okay, so there’s this guy at uni,” I said, not quite sure how much to say.

  His face fell. “Okay.”

  “No, I mean, not like that,” I said. God, I felt like such an idiot. I was sure my face was reddening, but I continued, “This guy is an absolute piece of shit. I think he’s dealing drugs and I want to, you know, expose him.”

  “Huh,” he said, “okay, that’s not what I was expecting. What kind of drugs?”

  “Not sure.”

  He took a sip of his tea, watching me over the mug.

  “It’s just,” I went on, “I thought if you went and bought some from him and I like, took a photo, or something like that, then we could send it to the Dean. Get him in deep trouble. Expelled maybe.”

  He put his mug down and looked at me properly. He seemed shocked. I guess that wasn’t what he thought I’d say.

  “Okay, wow, that is a big favor,” he said, “and while I’m honored I’m the person you think is the most convincing to be in this drug bust of yours, I need to ask. Why do you care if he’s dealing?”

  “I don’t think he’s just dealing them. I think he’s making them.”

  “Still,” he said, “I didn’t think you were such a concerned citizen. Are you protecting the youth of today? Who cares if this guy is dealing? It’s not really your business.”

  I took a breath. If I wanted him to do it I had to tell him something. “It’s not really about the drugs. It’s about, I dunno, payback.”

  “Oh okay, so this guy cheated on you or something?”

  “No,” I said, trying to find a way to explain it, “we went to high school together. It was him and this group of girls. They played this trick on me at a party. It was bad. He’s just, I don’t know... He’s just the biggest asshole in the world and he made my life hell but he just keeps on going around being a dickhead and getting away with it and I don’t think it’s right.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Wow.”

  I stared at my tea, wishing I hadn’t come. I had said too much, just blurted it all out and now I was exposed. He was seeing it. Seeing the nasty repellent thing inside that I was trying so hard to hide.

  When I looked back up at him, I was expecting him to be staring at me, but he wasn’t. He was looking at the table. He didn’t seem to be freaked out or disgusted. Instead, he just looked really sad. But then he looked up and the sparkle came back to his eyes.

  “Okay, so when do you want to do this thing?”

  11

  We caught the bus in together the next day. We could have delayed until the end of the week and gotten a lift with Nancy, but I couldn’t wait. The excitement was different from the day before. There was no exquisite sadness, no feelings of letting go and moving on. With Evan I only felt hot, jangling anticipation.

  “So the neighbors are starting to worry. No one has seen the whole family for a week, right? At the beginning of the week the lights are all on but, one by one, the rooms are turning black.”

  “Creepy,” he says.

  “Yeah. So they break in and of course—”

  “Everyone’s dead.”

  “Yep, except—”

  “The dog?”

  “No, the dad. He killed his whole family.”

  “That old trick. With what?”

  “I don’t know—a gun I think. Just pow, pow, pow. Yep, so he goes missing for ten years.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah. They think it’s a lost cause. But then they put his face on some American crime show, America’s Most Wanted I think. They, like, age his face to show what he’d look like now and the next day they get this weird call from this lady. The night before she’d been sitting there watching it with her husband and kids, and she looks from the picture to her husband and they look absolutely identical.”

  “Ha, that’s awesome. You know, I think they made a movie about that.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, just a couple of yea
rs ago. I think it had the guy from Gossip Girl in it.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “Nah. Do you want to watch it sometime?”

  I looked at him, my heart in my throat. “Yeah, sure. We can try to squeeze between your father and my sister on the couch.”

  “Gross,” he said, looking at me carefully.

  “Yeah,” I said, the fear dissolving. “If they got married, what would that make us?”

  “Oh God, don’t think about it.”

  “Would I be your aunt?”

  He turned to look out the window. It had steamed up and you couldn’t see outside. I worried that maybe I’d offended him, but then I heard the wet squeak of his finger on the glass. He was writing “Auntie Ava” and then drew a sad face underneath. I smiled and turned away.

  * * *

  Part of me had worried that the camp would be gone by the time we arrived. It was the opposite. It had gotten even bigger; the small square was now jammed with people. The tourists sitting at the overpriced coffee shop on the corner were taking photos of them.

  “Nervous?” he asked, as we approached.

  “Yeah. Really fucking nervous.”

  “Hey, don’t say that—you’ll freak me out. I’m the one who has to do this.”

  I wanted to tell him how much it meant to me. That if we fucked this up, I didn’t know what I was going to do. But instead I pointed out Theodore. He was sitting up on one of the black steps to the side talking to a girl.

  “He’s not what I imagined,” Evan said.

  “What did you imagine?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He took a breath. “I guess we should just do it now, then.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.” He looked at me, his eyes all crinkled like he really was afraid. But then he smiled and looked normal again. “Make sure you get my best angle.”

  Then he did it. He just strode right on over and tapped Theodore on the shoulder. I’d watched him for so long, he’d seemed untouchable. It had been like sitting in a cinema, the sounds and vision surrounding you, immersing you like you were really there. But Evan just walked on through the screen like it was nothing.

  Theodore turned to him. I felt sick. My skin was cold and hot and prickly all at once. My throat tightened so abruptly I made a retching sound.