I Heart You, Archie de Souza

by Chrissie Keighery

  There’s a little frown on Mum’s face and she tilts her head to the side. She’s still looking at me. It’s kind of intense.

  ‘Edi’s not a baby anymore. How about we let her figure that out,’ she says, and she doesn’t say it like a question. It’s like, for once, she’s not waiting for Dad to agree with her. Dad comes around to the front of the couch. He looks confused.

  ‘You’re not making any sense, Alisha,’ he says. He starts walking towards their bedroom. ‘Come on, we’d better get some sleep. Edi, I’ll help you with your maths tomorrow.’

  I roll my eyes. Dad did the maths level I’m at about a hundred years ago. He doesn’t seem to get that everyone uses different methods now.

  Mum gets up from the couch. I can’t believe it, but she’s actually rolling her eyes too. Just a little bit.

  ‘Edi. The sun’ll come out tomorrow,’ she says, and suddenly I want to cry all over again, because I’d almost forgotten. When I was little we used to watch Annie together all the time, and it drove Jai and Dad mental. I actually wish, for once, that Mum would stay up with me for a while. I don’t ask her to, though. It’s probably better if she just goes to bed. I could end up spilling everything. And regretting it.

  ‘Night, Mum,’ I say.

  She walks down the hallway behind Dad.

  When she’s halfway down the hall she stops, then turns around and says, just loud enough for me to hear, ‘Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun.’

  The sun does come up the next morning. It seeps through the gaps in my blinds when Jai calls at 7 a.m. The phone call is only quick because he’s in between classes. He just wants to check how I am. I think he’s pretty confused when I tell him I really am okay and that he’s not allowed to tell Mum and Dad I called, but he seems relieved too. It’s nice to know he cares. I go back to sleep afterwards.

  At nine o’clock there’s a knock at my bedroom door.

  ‘Go away,’ I say, but the door swings open and Dad’s standing there.

  ‘Come on, Edi. Rise and shine. I’ve got two hours before I have to go into work. Let’s get onto that maths revision since your tutor didn’t show last night.’

  I groan. There’s no point protesting. I’ll be doing maths with my muesli.

  He gives me five minutes to organise myself. We sit at the kitchen table with my books. It’s actually not as bad as I thought it would be. Dad has a different way of getting to the answers than Mr C has taught us, but I kind of get it. In fact by the end, I feel like I’ll probably do okay in the test on Monday. Finally, he checks his watch and gets up from the table.

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ I say. He hasn’t said anything about it but he normally plays golf on Saturday mornings. I’m pretty sure he cancelled so he could do this with me, and it makes me feel a bit bad. Now he’ll be going straight from this to work. It’s not much of a Saturday, really.

  ‘You’re welcome, Edi,’ Dad says. He goes to get his car keys out of the tray and turns back, like he’s deciding whether to say something or not. ‘You’re a clever girl, you know.’

  It comes out sounding small and he’s out the door before I can say anything back, but it’s funny how it seems to nuzzle into my heart. From Dad, that’s the ultimate compliment.

  The sun really has come up. I feel pretty good. Archie will call today and things will be totally back on track.

  Mum’s out, but she’s left me a list of things to get at the supermarket. I check my phone in the cereal aisle. Nothing. I check my phone in the toiletries aisle. Nothing. I check my phone in the queue. Nothing.

  That’s the way it is all day. I’m still checking my phone just before I go to bed.

  Nothing. Zip. I check out his last text. Call u soon.

  When is soon?

  I have a haircut booked for Sunday. Just a wash and a trim. I have my phone in my hand as Audrey shampoos my hair.

  Archie might have run out of credit, or forgotten that he was supposed to call me?

  Audrey lifts my hair into one giant, shampooed spike.

  ‘Can you wait for a sec?’ I say. I have an idea. I’ll take a photo of me like this on my phone and send it to him. It will be funny, not heavy. Like Leo’s photo from the change room. Hazel and Leo do it all the time — communicate.

  Audrey takes a pic for me. I look like an alien. It’s perfect. I add a bit of text at the bottom. Call me x.

  Audrey is doing the trim when my phone beeps.

  It’s so cute. It’s a photo of Archie on the soccer field, smiling and kicking the ball up to his own hands. Pezza is behind him, making rabbit ears. One of the other players must have taken it.

  I hold it out in front of me and stare at it, keeping my head straight so that Audrey can do the trim.

  I must have stared at it for too long. ‘Oh my god, Audrey,’ I moan. ‘You’ve cut it too short!’

  Audrey looks at me in the mirror. ‘It’s great,’ she says. ‘And anyway, we got rid of all the split ends.’

  My photo staring has cost me about five centimetres of hair. Plus, there’s no text underneath saying when he’s going to call. But I don’t care. At least he sent it, and he was smiling, which means everything is all right.

  If he hasn’t called by five, I’ll call him. No big deal.

  It’s ten past five when I go into the caravan to make the call. His phone rings.

  Brr, brr.

  I’m just going to be bright and cruisy. I’ll ask him how his soccer game went today. I’ll ask him how his family dinner went on Friday night. I’ll tell him about my haircut from hell …

  Brr, brr.

  ‘Hello? Is that you, Edi?’

  It’s not Archie’s voice. It’s a girl’s voice. My heart thumps. Eliza.

  ‘Why are you answering Archie’s phone?’ It just jumps out of my mouth.

  ‘Oh, it is you, Edi,’ Eliza says breezily. ‘Archie’s not here right now. He’s just gone to get us a snack and we’re pretty busy actually, so now might not be a very good time …’

  ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘Oh, per-lease,’ Eliza says, ‘take a chill pill. We’re doing our project.’ The way she says project is so annoying. It’s all soft and sexy, like they’re on a date or something.

  ‘Who is it, Eliza?’ It’s Archie’s voice in the background. The next bit is muffled, like someone’s placed their hand over the receiver. And, honestly, it’s at least a minute before he comes to the phone. It feels like they’re discussing me. By the time he takes the phone, I’m furious.

  I remember when I did the dare at Archie’s party and sat on his knee for a whole round of truth or dare. How Eliza said at the top of her voice, That round is over, Edi. You can get off Archie’s lap now. If she hadn’t said that, who knows what might have happened? Maybe Archie and I would’ve started going out together that night, and we’d really get each other by now. None of this stuff would even be happening.

  ‘Edi?’ Archie says. ‘I was going to call you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Oh … um … soon,’ he says. ‘I’ve just been pretty busy and …’

  ‘Yeah, doing your project.’ I say it like Eliza just said it and as soon as it comes out of my mouth, I wish I could stick it back in.

  ‘Oh my god, Archie,’ I can hear Eliza say, and it’s hard to work out exactly what she says next, but it sounds like, ‘Needy much? Needy Edi.’

  ‘What did she say?’ I demand.

  ‘Nothing,’ he lies. Then there’s a hand over the receiver again and more muffled talking. My breathing is fast and shallow and it echoes over the phone line. It’s ages before he comes back.

  ‘Okay, Edi. I don’t really get what’s going on here, but Eliza’s out of the room now.’

  I try to calm myself. To slow my breathing.

  ‘Archie, she’s a —’ I’m about to say exactly what I think of Eliza, but he cuts me off.

  ‘Edi, do you think things are working out between us?’ His tone is exactly the same as it was t
hat time I asked him to pause the PlayStation and he snapped at me. But he got over that. Didn’t he?

  It’s a punch in the chest. Archie might be delivering those words, but they don’t sound like his words at all. I bet they’re her words. They wind me.

  ‘Yes,’ I say and I sound like a kitten mewing.

  ‘Really?’ he says. ‘I’m not so sure.’

  I don’t like where this is heading. Not one bit. I need to cut it off. I need for the next bit not to happen. I need to be able to talk to him without her being around. Not just out of his room. Nowhere near him.

  ‘Let’s talk about this tomorrow. I have to go,’ I say. ‘Mum’s calling me.’

  I hang up my phone. Lie back on the bed, look up at the cloud picture.

  It will be okay, I tell myself. Things just got a bit off track this weekend. I know we like each other. And I get on so well with his mum and dad.

  I’m his quella.

  When my phone beeps I don’t look at it for a while. But then I wonder if it’s Archie, wanting to apologise. I pick it up. Look at the screen.

  I think we should cool it for a while, Edi. Sorry. Let’s be friends.

  All I want to do is lie there. And cry. But so far, there are no tears.

  ‘Edi, dinner’s ready.’ Mum’s at the caravan door. She walks in and sits on the bed. ‘Edi, are you all right?’ she asks.

  I breathe out. Just when I need some space, there she is. ‘Yep,’ I say quickly. It’s not like Mum would get it.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ she says. It’s really awkward because she doesn’t say stuff like that and it sounds really forced. I don’t want the tears to come in front of her. We just don’t do that stuff in my family.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ she repeats, ‘I know something’s going on with you.’ She pats my knee stiffly, like I’m a pet. I think about Archie’s mum after his soccer match, squeezing his cheeks together and kissing both sides. Completely natural. ‘Archie is your boyfriend, right?’ She says it like she’s solved a crossword puzzle. Like she’s got the answers when really she knows nothing.

  ‘Actually, no. No, he isn’t.’ It comes out more harshly than I meant it to sound.

  Mum gets up. That’s all she has. ‘Okay, come in for dinner, then,’ she says.

  It’s really late, but I send a group text to Hazel, Jess and Limps from my room after dinner. Just so they know. Just so someone knows how I feel.

  Then I think about how I ditched them on Friday night, and hope they still care.

  And that’s when, finally, I find my tears.

  They’re all waiting for me at the school gates on Monday morning. Hazel. Jess. Limps.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Olympia hugs me.

  ‘What a dog act,’ Jess says. ‘Breaking up with you by text. Like, some guys do it on Facebook and that’s even worse. I know a guy who just changed his status to single and that’s how the girl knew they weren’t together anymore. Well, I actually don’t know the guy but I … hey, your haircut is awesome, Edi. It’s very Cleopatra. Where did you …’

  ‘Edi,’ Hazel interrupts Jess. ‘Seriously, are you all right?’

  I nod. It’s only a small nod because I’m not sure if I am all right.

  ‘We’re going to stick with you as much as we can today, Edi,’ Hazel continues. ‘I think it’s probably best if we try to avoid Archie. If you see him, just pretend you don’t.’

  ‘Yep,’ Olympia says. ‘That’s the plan. Plus, we all just went in and asked Pip if we can use the drama room at lunchtime to practise that skit we’ve been working on.’

  ‘Pip said yes,’ Hazel adds, ‘though I don’t think she really believed us about the practice.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we don’t really need to practise, cos we know it already,’ says Jess, ‘Which means we can have an emergency meeting and no-one else will be around, so it can be private. We can figure out what to do and then you’ll feel better.’

  ‘So you just have to make it until lunchtime, Edi,’ Limps says and she’s standing close to me and checking out who’s coming through the school gates like she’s my bodyguard or something.

  You’d think I would have used up all my tears last night, but there’s a prickling in my eyes that feels dangerous. They’re treating my broken heart as an emergency. I’m not sure I deserve it.

  The first bell goes. Hazel and Jess walk in front of me and Limps walks behind.

  It’s almost like being carried.

  I work really hard all morning. The sort of hard work that blocks out everything else. I’m pretty sure I ace the maths test. I put so much into my English comprehension questions that they’re twice the length of anyone else’s.

  At recess, Jess and I walk to the library. People talk behind their hands as I pass them and it’s awful. I suppose everyone knows he’s broken up with me. News travels fast at our school. I try not to pay attention, but a girl from our year whose name I don’t even know yells out at me.

  ‘Edi,’ says Anya, or Angela, or whoever she is. I brace myself for whatever’s coming. ‘I really like your haircut. You look awesome.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say quietly. Now I wonder whether the rumour is that Archie has broken up with me because of my new haircut, when he hasn’t even seen it yet. I keep walking.

  For once, I’m glad that Jess has a million things to say and even though I’m not really listening, at least it’s something to distract me from the whispers.

  I don’t see Archie at all, thank god. I don’t know if I’d be very good at ignoring him. The weirdest thing is that I do feel like I tried hard with him. But it didn’t seem to do me any good. I must have done something wrong, even if I can’t work out what it was.

  School work is way easier than real life. At least most of it makes sense.

  As soon as Limps and I walk into the drama room at lunchtime, something shifts inside me. It’s like there’s been a ton of bricks inside my chest all morning where my heart should be.

  There’s something about the drama room that makes me feel good. For starters, Pip has put up posters of theatre shows and movies all around the walls. There’s Marilyn Monroe with her white dress blowing up, a huge smile on her face. There’s James Dean looking moody and Zac Efron and Lindsay Lohan.

  There are also loads of giant cushions on the floor instead of chairs and tables, so you can really get comfy. But the main reason I like this room is because of the classes we’ve had in here with Pip. We’ve done role plays where I can forget I’m Edi Rhineheart and become someone completely different.

  I wish I could be someone else right now. But at least being here is soothing. At least here there’s no danger of running into Archie.

  ‘Edi,’ Limps says, arranging four cushions into a circle. ‘I reckon that Eliza made Archie break up with you.’ She pauses, cushion to her chest, and looks right at me as though she’s really sure of what she’s saying. ‘It’s totally obvious that she’s into him. Anyway, he’d be mad to like her. You’re, like, ten times prettier.’

  I sigh and flop onto a cushion. Limps makes it sound like her declaring I’m prettier than Eliza is kind of the end of it all, and nothing else really matters. She might be partly right about Eliza. I am pretty sure that she likes Archie, but I don’t really think he likes her back. Not in that way. I feel like I’m missing something.

  ‘You’re better off without him,’ Limps tries again.

  I shrug. I don’t feel like I’m better off without him. And, honestly, Limps hasn’t even had a real boyfriend, so I don’t think she understands.

  The door slides open. I get a bit of a shock when I see that Alice is here with Hazel and Jess. I mean, she’s great and everything, but she’s not part of our inner circle, the caravan crew. It makes me bristle a bit, but then I look at Hazel. She’s raising her eyebrows at me and tilting her head slightly towards Alice, just so I can see, and I think I know what’s going on. Alice knows Archie as a friend. It kind of hurts to admit it to myself, but she probably knows him better than I do. Haze
l must have brought her along in case she can explain things a bit.

  Hazel sets a cushion next to me and motions for Alice to sit there. I glance over at Limps. She’s set her cushion down and she’s crossing her arms and biting her lip. I can’t tell if she’s mad at Hazel for organising this, or mad at herself for not organising it.

  Jess and Hazel sit across from us. When Alice sits, she pulls her school dress over her knees. It reaches right down to her ankles. Her school shoes are lace-ups, like the boys wear. One of them is untied. The rest of us have T-bars. I make a mental note to point that out to her some time, since she’s asked me to tell her about fashion. Jess and Hazel start talking about something. I don’t really listen.

  ‘Sorry to hear about you and Archie,’ Alice says. ‘Hazel told me.’

  ‘Oh, so Archie didn’t tell you himself?’ I ask.

  ‘No, I haven’t seen him since Friday night,’ she replies. I feel disappointed. I was kind of hoping he would have told her why he broke up with me. But if she hasn’t spoken to him since Friday, that seems unlikely.

  ‘He broke up with me,’ I say.

  Alice nods, like she knows that too.

  ‘I don’t know why,’ I say, and there must be something weird about my voice because Jess and Hazel stop talking and look at me.

  ‘I don’t really know either,’ Alice says, but there’s something about the way she says really that makes me think she might know. Or that she might have figured it out, even if Archie didn’t tell her himself. Maybe she’s been able to spot something I haven’t.

  ‘I thought things were going well,’ I say. ‘Like, I got on really well with his parents.’

  Alice nods slowly, like she’s taking it all in. But there’s a little frown on her forehead. ‘Mmm, yep, I do remember him saying you had a cooking class with his mum,’ she says softly.

  ‘It’s really cool how she taught you to make pesto,’ Jess says. ‘I like pesto. I had it one time at this restaurant, though, and they made it a really light green colour and honestly it looked like snot and … oops … sorry.’