by Fiona Wood
‘I’m not coming unless people are totally dressing up.’
‘It has to be dance music or no one will dance.’
‘If it’s just dance music I’m not coming.’
‘There better be good food for twenty bucks or it’s a total rip-off.’
‘There better not be food or it’ll just turn into a food fight.’
‘There better be no teachers inside or I’m not coming.’
‘You need security and door checks or people are just going to get trashed, and if anyone munts on my new dress, they are dead.’
‘What kind of loser would spend a Friday night at a lame school dance?’
All the canvassing does is make us realise that no matter what we decide some people are going to hate the social and probably hate us, too. Once we cover the event insurance and security, and throw around a bit of decoration there’s not going to be much money left over for food and music. We don’t know how much exactly until we start selling tickets, so we put that job on the top of the list.
‘We’d better book Vile Bodies, too,’ Estelle says.
Jayzo nods.
‘Who?’ I ask.
‘The band, jerk-off.’
‘I don’t even know them.’
‘It’s mostly some Year Twelves. Now, food . . .’ Estelle’s acting like this is a done deal.
‘Wait up, what kind of music do they do?’
‘They’re good. They do their own stuff and okay covers.’
‘What about all the people who only want dance music?’ I say.
‘Tough,’ says Jayzo.
‘But why don’t we get a DJ? Then they can play different music and cover a few more bases.’
‘Let’s vote,’ says Estelle, getting annoyed. ‘Two against one. Now can we move on?’
I’m getting annoyed too. ‘That’s a completely half-arsed way to figure this out,’ I persist.
‘What have you got against democracy?’ she wants to know.
‘Nothing, but you’re not exactly representing your constituents, if you want to get technical.’ I look at my list of ‘canvassed’ opinions. ‘At least half want electronic dance stuff.’
‘The band is available, reliable, affordable and good,’ she says. She’s not budging and Jayzo’s on her side. So why do I care? I’m not even planning to go. I’ve got an overdeveloped sense of trying to do the job we’ve been given. I shelve it. Who cares?
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Let’s have pathetic Muse covers and no one dancing all night. It’ll be great.’
‘Fine! We’ll play Daft Punk in the break. Happy?’
‘Ecstatic.’
Estelle and I head to reading group.
‘You got here five minute ago,’ she says. ‘Why do you think you’ve got a clue?’
‘I didn’t ask for this job,’ I remind her.
‘Me neither. And it’s your fault I’ve got it!’
That’s rich. She really did grab that book after I picked it up.
‘Try your fault.’
‘Huh! Typical!’
‘You wouldn’t know what’s typical for me.’
‘I know all I need to know.’ She says it as though she’s written me off.
‘You don’t know anything about me.’
‘I know you had me under surveillance. Then coincidentally you turn up in my attic.’
‘It was a coincidence.’ I sound so plausibly indignant. ‘And it was mean to say what you said to Janie. I didn’t blab to her about your attic room.’
‘Keep up the good work and you’ll be human one of these days.’
During reading group Estelle and Janie are hatching something. Even with my healthy level of paranoia, I can tell they’re not talking about me. But something’s up. I hear a couple of phrases floating into the ether, ‘. . . only chance’, ‘. . . underage’, ‘. . . they never check’.
Lou pokes me in the ribs. ‘Pay attention, will you? You’re distracting me.’
‘Do you know what they’re talking about?’
‘Don’t know, don’t care. Hey, I’ll meet your friend.’
‘Great.’
‘Don’t get all excited. I’m only doing it out of self-defence. My mother heard about the social and she’s trying to set me up with some loser son of a friend of hers. What’s his name again?’
‘Fred.’
Lou looks at me looking at Estelle with a mixture of pity and irritation.
‘Why don’t you just ask her, for God’s sake?’
‘Who?’
‘Estelle, dummy. She can only say no.’
‘That’s what she’d definitely say, so why bother?’
‘Because maybe then you can stop obsessing about her.’
‘I’m not obsessing,’ I say.
She rolls her eyes. ‘And I don’t have pimples.’ Like Fred, she can read me like a book.
‘Anyway, I’m not planning on going.’
‘Yeah, you’re going. You’re on the committee. You’re setting me up with your friend. So, jeez, you’re in it up to your elbows.’
After school, I take Howard to the vet. I’ve got sixty bucks and I figure that should just about cover the bill. Wrong. I come out with two types of bad news and a hundred dollar deficit.
The vet examined and X-rayed Howard, and found he has a ruptured cruciate ligament in his back leg and pretty bad arthritis. The prognosis is awful. Pain will increase. Mobility will decrease. Medication might help, but a year’s supply is more than a thousand dollars. An operation where they put in a prosthetic tendon might help. That would cost at least fifteen hundred dollars, and there’s no guarantee it’ll even work.
The vet suggested that given Howard’s age, things might get to the point where I have to consider putting him down. But she said ‘euthanise’ him, as though that makes it any better. Howard’s not getting any younger, I’m not getting any richer and I have no idea what I should do.
By the time we get home I’m crying. Howard is so waggy, limping along beside me, tail up in the air. It’s just unbearable. It’s as though he’s saying, I love walking with you, Dan. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
Or maybe he’s just saying he opposes euthanasia. Which you would, in the circumstances.
Estelle is arriving home. She waits till we get to our gate. I have time to sniff and wipe my face. I’m pretty sure she can’t see I’ve been crying.
‘Hey,’ she says.
‘Hi,’ I croak back.
‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing – it’s just Howard’s sick.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘It’s his leg.’ I’m too choked up to explain it.
‘Vets can do anything these days. There’s even chemotherapy for dogs.’
Exactly what I would have thought back in the land of money.
She leans in and gives me a quick kiss on the cheek. It’s over before I’ve even registered it’s happening.
‘Does that mean I’m forgiven?’
‘Not even close.’ But she turns back to me as she reaches her front door. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll fix him up.’ And she’s gone.
I take Howard inside, realising that the kiss bears no resemblance to an actual kiss. Those girls are always giving each other kisses and hugs. Even so, yesterday it would have made me feel a lot better than it does now, weighed down as I am by the understanding that I live in a household where expensive vet treatments are as impossible as Estelle kissing me like she means it.
Howard deserves an extra ear rub and tummy scratch and he gets them. I can’t work out a solution to the problem. I’ve got enough saved to pay the hundred dollars I owe but that wipes out the puny nest-egg fund. I could cover the medication, so long as I keep my shifts up. But the operation’s out of reach. There’s no way I can put that much money together.
I feel a useless aching wash of anger and sadness that my father isn’t here to fix things. I can’t figure this out on my own.
I’ve tried to jam memo
ries of him in a box I don’t open. But I let myself have a dip in now. I imagine we’re having a guy night. Sometimes when my mother went to Thursday night Pilates class and then to dinner with the Pilates women, we used to make a deliberately unhealthy meal together, the sort she’d never eat. My dad used to say, ‘It’s our duty, Dan. We’re providing balance in the universe.’
We’d go shopping and get some kransky sausages – they’re really fatty and cheesy. We’d get onions and potatoes and cook up a massive batch of fried onions and chips and have two or three hot dogs each, with pickles and mustard and sauce. Strictly no green vegetables or salad allowed. We’d drink Coke and do huge, loud burps, like we never did around her. Then we’d clean up, air out the kitchen, bin all the evidence and watch a DVD together, something with good fights and car chases, the kind she hates.
On this sort of night I could ask my dad, ‘What are we going to do about Howard?’ and he’d say, ‘Sounds like he needs that operation. Leave it with me.’ Problems were solved as easily as that. It’s like remembering a fairytale, or remembering a time I believed in fairytales. I had no idea how easy life was.
Letting myself remember these things makes me feel worse. The closed box policy is a good one. I still hurt. No less than when he left.
And I’m crying again. This can’t be healthy. I’m drowning. Everything feels so relentless and impossible. It’s like trying to run with no traction. There’s no one to depend on, no one solving problems, no one picking up the tab, no one to pass the buck to. There’s just me, with no money, and no solutions – and my mother, with a failing business, a Thom Yorke obsession, and a need to be protected from any more bad news.
There’s porridge on the stove in the morning. And the smell of cinnamon. A cooked breakfast is usually a sign of a positive frame of mind. My mother is sitting with the bills folder open in front of her.
‘Dan, I have no choice. I’m applying for the job at Phrenology.’
‘Fantastic.’ I wonder if this means there’s a chance for Howard’s operation. But it’s short-lived.
‘I’m on final reminders for half of these. I just can’t pay them. And the bank’s not going to keep coming to the party unless I can rustle up a bit of income.’
‘Do you want me to tell Ali?’
‘No, thanks, sweetie. I’ll go and see him today.’
She looks resigned rather than happy, but at least she’s going to apply. I hope Ali hasn’t found anyone in the meantime.
Estelle comes out of her gate as I leave, and we walk to school together. Why the sudden comradeship? I’m suspicious. Maybe she did notice I was crying yesterday and has decided I’m a pathetic charity case. I can live with that.
Walking along beside her all I can think is lucky old disc boy, with his damn flippy hair.
‘Are you angry?’ Estelle asks.
‘Me? No. Why?’
‘You look really angry.’
‘Just . . . thoughtful.’
I keep stacking on these desirable attributes. Fainter. Stalker. Tearful. Thoughtful. Disc boy’s list probably runs more along the lines of athletic, sexy, good sense of humour. I’ve got a good sense of humour. Why can’t I think of something funny to say?
We stomp on in thoughtful silence.
When we get to school, she fixes me with a pointed look and says, ‘Maybe I have been too quick to judge you, Dan.’
‘R-right.’ What’s this about?
‘So, how would you like another chance?’
‘Sure.’ I’m hardly going to say no to a death row reprieve.
‘Home economics room at recess. We have a proposition for you.’
‘Okay.’
There’s no point in pretending I can concentrate on earth sciences. I’m burning with curiosity and anxiety. Is the film back on the drawing board? I can’t act to save my life. But I’ll try anything if it means time with Estelle.
The home economics room has its own smell of rancid butter and cheap spray-on bench cleaner. They’re waiting for me.
‘First up, you are sworn to secrecy, whether or not you agree to be part of this.’
Fair enough, commercial-in-confidence, creative privilege and all that.
‘Okay, yeah.’
‘Well, swear then.’
‘I swear I won’t tell anyone about . . . ?’
‘What you’re about to hear.’
‘What I’m about to hear,’ I say, looking from one face to the other.
They look at each other, agreeing to go ahead.
‘You’d better sit down.’
‘Janie put her film in a competition.’
‘Hanging on the Telephone. Short crime narratives you download on your phone.’
‘And she found out on Tuesday she’s one of ten finalists.’
‘Congratulations.’ So far, I can’t see where I come into this.
‘I get to go to Sydney for the announcement of the winner.’
The girls look at each other.
‘That’s where we have a couple of teeny little hitches.’
‘How teeny?’ I ask, becoming suspicious.
‘Janie used her fake ID to enter. You had to be eighteen or over.’
‘And I have to go to Sydney, but I can’t tell my parents. No way they’d let me.’
‘So, what are you going to do?’
‘We pooled our money to get the bus ticket.’
‘And we’ve told my parents that I’m staying over at Estelle’s.’
‘We do it all the time.’
‘They never check up on us.’
‘The bus leaves at five-thirty tomorrow morning,’ says Estelle.
‘Then I go to the awards and screening, and I’m back on the overnighter to Melbourne.’
‘So Janie will come back to my place. My parents are never home when I get home from school.’
‘Then, Estelle’s got this attic . . .’
Estelle looks at me. Our secret. She hasn’t told Janie about my trespass.
‘Janie’s going to hide up there, get up at five, and go to the bus depot.’
‘Only . . .’ They look at each other again. This is obviously where I come into it.
‘My mother’s an incredibly light sleeper and downstairs is all alarmed at night. And it shows a record of when it’s switched off and on . . .’ begins Estelle.
‘So Estelle thinks we can get out through your attic. She says there’s a tree that just about touches the back of your house. I could climb down that.’
‘No,’ I say.
22
WITH OLIVER’S KEY IN my pocket, I’ve got a better plan. I suggest Janie hides out at Oliver’s until it’s time to go, Estelle comes out via my attic to avoid her security alarm, and I go with them to the bus depot.
‘We don’t need you to come,’ says Janie.
‘What if you get harassed by a carload of random thugs?’
‘We won’t,’ says Estelle.
But they end up agreeing that it’s not a bad idea to have a tall male and a loud dog in tow wandering the streets in the pitchblack early hours.
As I go over the plan with them it strikes me as dangerous, illegal, crazy and bound to fail. It seems risky to assume that just because their parents never have rung up about sleepover arrangements that they never will ring. And Janie looks her age – fifteen with too much make-up – so won’t it be obvious to the people running the competition that she’s faked her ID? That’ll blow things out of the water, for sure. And I’m not even half convinced that it’s safe for her to be in Sydney all by herself with nothing on her but a fake ID. What if something happens to her? No one will even know who she is.
They think I’m worrying about nothing and I have to hand it to them, they’ve done their homework. They’re usually not allowed to have school night sleepovers but Janie has been laying the groundwork about the demands of our earth sciences project so she has permission for a Thursday and Friday night sleepover. They’ve timed the walk to the bus depot: twenty minut
es exactly. They’re packing lunch and snacks, and have a ten dollar allocation for a takeaway dinner.
Estelle’s mother is in the middle of preparing a catalogue for some exhibition of Asian artefacts. Estelle knows this is a reliably vague and distracted time for her.
We’re still fine-tuning the plan when I realise I haven’t even seen the film. So they show me. It’s a murder mystery. They’ve used stop motion photography with three Barbies and a Ken doll. There are also two Power Rangers in the cast with the disconcerting ability to flip their heads around one-eighty degrees to display either a face or a mask. The final character is played by ‘tongue lasher’, an action figure with the ability to throw out a long, lizard-like tongue. The punch line is that all the suspects have conspired in the murder. It’s pretty funny.
I’m due at Phrenology, so I have to race off at the end of the day. As I leave, Estelle hands me an envelope. I feel the telltale shape of a ‘thank you’ chocolate frog. Nice. I stuff it in my pocket and rush into work with about a second to spare, just avoiding a blast from Ali. He’s keen on punctuality.
I go into the kitchen, dump my backpack and grab one of the black aprons we all wear, and there’s my mother so engrossed in conversation with Anne that she barely registers me. Anne flicks her eyes towards me for half a second: warmth, approval. Big relief. Maybe we’ll avoid getting the essential services cut off after all.
It’s an added bonus, my mother being in the café just now; it means there’s no chance of Estelle and Janie being spotted when they climb the fence and install Janie in the stables. As I clear tables and juggle crockery, I’m hoping they won’t lose the key or forget the alarm code. I’m feeling some qualms about letting them use Oliver’s place. Although it wasn’t something we discussed, he didn’t say I couldn’t hide someone in there. In an emergency.
It’s a busy post-school shift, a blur of Smarties biscuits and milkshakes, so I don’t remember Estelle’s envelope until hours later when I’m going to bed and I feel it crackle as I get undressed. Inside the envelope with the chocolate frog, now soft from my body heat, is a note. I eat the frog – a bit yuck because I’ve just cleaned my teeth – and read the note, which says, in Estelle’s backward-sloping writing:
