The Protected

by Claire Zorn

  ‘There going to be adults at this party?’

  I glanced at him. ‘I think so. Yes.’

  ‘Do you want me to pick up Charlotte? I can give you both a ride, it’s no trouble.’

  ‘No. She’s there already, helping set up.’

  ‘I haven’t seen Charlotte in ages. How is she going?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Met any other cool people at school?’

  ‘Not heaps.’

  ‘Well, Tara must be a good friend if she invited you to her birthday party.’

  ‘It’s not a birthday party.’

  ‘Oh. Still, she’s obviously a friend.’

  We drove on in silence while I redid my hair four times.

  *

  Tara’s house was at the end of a long street flanked by bush on either side. It was twilight by the time we arrived and despite the dry summer heat, in the front yard was an upturned oil drum, hungry flames shooting up from the fire within. People gathered around it, laughing in the orange glow. The bodies of two old cars were parked in the long grass. Tara’s house was a white-washed weatherboard place. People milled around on the front porch and driveway. I couldn’t see Charlotte.

  ‘You sure this is it?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Yeah. Um, I think so.’

  ‘I might just pop in and say hi to the parents.’

  ‘Oh no, Dad. Really? No it’s fine.’

  He gave me a look. ‘Hannah, I’m not going to drive off and leave you here until I’ve spoken to … someone.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll just go home. Yeah, let’s just go.’

  ‘Go? No way! You’re not going home. You look beautiful. I’ll just say hello to the parents.’ He got out of the car and headed up the driveway. I felt like I might throw up. Dad waved to the kids on the porch and strode into the house and I watched them laugh at his back. I wondered whether there was any way I could hide in the front yard somewhere so I wouldn’t be connected with the weird waving man. He reappeared then with a thin blonde woman in a long swishy skirt. I am not exaggerating when I say he pointed at the car and gestured enthusiastically for me to come up to the house. So I did, with the eyes of the growing crowd fixed on me.

  ‘Hannah! This is Tara’s mum!’

  She was wearing a lot of black eyeliner. She didn’t so much smile as assess me with a smirk similar to Tara’s signature expression.

  ‘All right,’ she said and turned and disappeared into the house.

  ‘Good stuff! See you, Spanner.’ He gave me a kiss then jogged down the stairs with a nod to the other kids.

  I took a deep breath and headed inside. The house was lit with candles and hanging lanterns. There was the scent of cherry blossom and hair product. The music was beyond loud and when I caught a glimpse of Tara she was wearing what appeared to be a black negligee as a dress. She smiled artificially.

  ‘Hi Hannah! Did your daddy say you could stay?’

  I laughed as if she was joking.

  It was okay for the first hour or so. I found some of the girls I’d been at primary school with. I got a seat and a cup of Coke and managed to make my head move in a way that wasn’t totally unrelated to the beat of the music. Charlotte even hung with me for a bit, until she was pulled away by Tom Carey, an older guy who really knew how to wear a T-shirt (and take it off, as it turned out for Charlotte). I saw Katie arrive in a totally different outfit to the one she had left home in: tiny shorts and a white singlet over a silver bikini top. She saw me, but ignored me as if we were strangers.

  Pizzas arrived and it was in the kitchen that I bumped into Amy. Literally. She was talking to someone, her back to me. It was crowded and someone pushed past me and I bumped into Amy. She spun around, grinning at first, until she saw it was me.

  ‘Oh my God. Hannah McCann totally just grabbed my arse!’

  People stopped talking, turned to look.

  ‘You little perve! Get off me!’

  I stepped back, confused. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Oh my God. Did you guys see that?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tara’s mouth hung open. ‘I can’t believe you fully groped Amy.’

  ‘You can’t do that, Hannah! You little lezzo perve. Oh my God.’ Amy held her hands up, shaking them like she’d touched something gross. Then she rushed out of the kitchen.

  ‘Okay,’ Tara said, giving me her best dead-animal stare. ‘You totally have to leave. Like, right now.’

  I looked around to see if someone would come to my defence. Charlotte was there watching in the doorway.

  ‘Char …’ I waited for her to say something in the silence, to rescue me. She said nothing, just stared at me for a few moments and then turned away.

  ‘You need to go, Hannah,’ said Tara. ‘Now.’

  I went out the front door, down the stairs. Katie was standing on the driveway with a group of year twelves. She glanced in my direction and seeing the look on my face and that I was heading towards her, simply raised an eyebrow and mouthed the words ‘no way’. I gulped and ducked my head as I moved through the people. Katie would have seen me walk away, down the street in the dark. I walked to the end of the street, sat down on the kerb and dialled my dad’s number.

  He was speeding as he came down the street. He pulled the car over next to me and jumped out.

  ‘What happened? Hannah?! Why are you here in the dark by yourself? Where’s Katie?’

  ‘I just need you to take me home.’ The tears came then. I wiped at them, smudging Katie’s mascara across my cheeks.

  He put both hands on my shoulders and spoke to me softly. ‘Span, what happened?’

  I shook my head. ‘I just want to go home.’

  ‘Did Katie see you like this? Where is she? Why isn’t she with you?’

  ‘She’s … she’s back at the party.’

  ‘Did someone hurt you? Did some guy try something?’ he looked back up the road, as if for a possible attacker.

  ‘Can we just go?’

  ‘Hop in the car.’

  I got in and he accelerated down the street to Tara’s house. ‘Dad, no, please.’

  He pulled up and got out, leaving me in the car. The kids out the front of the house looked over and watched him walk up the driveway. Katie narrowed her eyes and gave him the same warning look she’d given me.

  ‘Katie? What’s going on? What happened?’

  I could see the look of dread on her face. She left the group she was standing with and came over to him, her expression somewhere between mortification and white anger. She said something to him that I couldn’t hear. Whatever it was, Dad didn’t like it.

  ‘Why was your sister down the end of the street, by herself, crying?’ he shouted.

  I could see her hissing at him to keep his voice down.

  ‘She was down there, by herself, upset! Why did you let her leave on her own like that?’

  ‘It has nothing to do with me.’

  He pointed to the car. She stormed down the drive and got in, slamming the door shut. ‘What the hell, Dad?!’

  Dad slammed his own door shut and started the car.

  ‘Dad! This has nothing to do with me!’ she glared at me. ‘Hannah! What the fuck?’

  ‘Watch your language, young lady!’

  ‘Why am I even here? What the hell did I do?’

  ‘What did you do? You let your sister leave that house, in the dark, by herself when she was clearly upset.’

  ‘Why is she my responsibility?’

  ‘She’s your sister.’

  ‘Yeah and she’s a social fucking retard.’

  ‘Katherine, you do not speak like that!’

  ‘It’s true! This has nothing to do with me.’ She shifted her death stare in my direction. ‘Thanks a lot, Hannah. How am I supposed to recover from that? Drag me down too, why don’
t you.’

  The next day I caught the bus to school as usual. I took my normal seat, third from the front on the right. Katie joined her friends in the back. I put my earphones in my ears and watched the road roll past.

  Something wet hit my back.

  I turned around, there were two Clones sitting up the back near my sister. They were smirking. The rest of the bus shrieked at the brown banana-goo seeping through my school shirt. I looked at Katie, she looked back at me, an expression I couldn’t read. She didn’t say anything.

  A message beeped on my mobile, private number. ‘Lezzo Pervert’ was all it said. I put it back in my schoolbag and tried to ignore the rest of the messages that were coming in – my phone was vibrating so much it nearly jumped out of my bag.

  I saw Charlotte in the corridor before homeroom. She didn’t look at me. She walked straight past. I turned around, followed her, practically ran to catch up to her.

  ‘Charlotte? Where are you going? Charlotte?’

  She was trying to stay stoic, but the years of our friendship pulled at her, I could see it in the way she hesitated.

  ‘I can’t talk to you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you do something, Char? You were right there and they were saying that stuff, why––’

  She stopped walking, glanced around nervously.

  ‘Did you touch Amy?’

  ‘How could you even think that?’

  ‘It’s just a little creepy, Hannah. Why haven’t you made any new friends? Why are you so … so into me?’

  ‘Into you? What the hell, Char?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ She couldn’t look at me. ‘I feel sick, when I think about it, Hannah. I mean, we’ve slept in the same bed …’

  I stood there stunned, tried to put it together in my head.

  ‘I want you to leave me alone, Hannah.’

  And then she walked away.

  ***

  Anne’s pen doesn’t leave the paper as I speak. There is something weirdly validating about having someone write down every word you say as if it is crucially important. When I pause she looks over what she has written.

  ‘That must have been devastating, when Charlotte abandoned you like that. Not to mention your sister.’

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘How do you feel about what happened?’

  ‘Katie never had anything to do with me at school anyway …’

  ‘So you didn’t expect her to stick up for you? Hannah?’

  I look up at her. ‘She’s dead, I can’t …’ I let the sentence dissolve. I can’t picture Katie in the room anymore. She has gone.

  ‘What about Charlotte?’

  I can feel it in my chest, the sharp anger. I focus on the swirly pattern of the carpet.

  ‘Hannah?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t. Can we stop now? Can I go?’

  ‘If you want. But the way you feel about what happened isn’t just going to go away if you ignore it.’

  ‘I just want to go to class.’

  She smiles. ‘Fine. But you promised me no bullshit. Don’t forget it.’

  Eleven

  My career aspirations before Katie died:

  *Vet

  *Author

  *Catwalk model (this was the phase when I just said whatever Katie said)

  *Vet

  *Historian

  *Anthropologist

  *Author

  Seven-thirty on a Sunday morning and I hear a car pull into the driveway. Without getting out of bed, I peek out my window and see Nanna striding up the front path, arms laden with grocery bags. This time Grandad is trailing behind her. I hear Dad swearing under his breath as he goes down the hall to let them in.

  I find my slippers under my bed and pad out into the kitchen. Grandad has parked himself at the table and Dad places a mug of tea in front of him. The steam fogs up his glasses as he takes a sip.

  ‘There she is!’ Grandad says when he sees me.

  I give him a kiss on the forehead. ‘What’re you guys doing here so early?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, love, I’m here under captain’s orders.’

  The captain bustles over, dressed all in pastels, gold bracelets shimmering on her pink arms. She gives me a lipstick kiss on the cheek. Dad goes up the hallway, presumably to try to get Mum out of bed.

  ‘Now,’ Nan says. ‘Did you pack your golf clubs, Verne?’

  ‘In the boot,’ Grandad replies.

  ‘If you leave now you can get a round in before the heat turns up.’

  My mother walks down the hallway, hugging her dressing-gown around herself. Grandad stands up and goes over to her. He puts his arms around her and she leans her head on his shoulder. He murmurs something to her and she nods.

  ‘I was just saying if the men leave now they will get a round in before it gets too hot,’ Nan says.

  Nan always refers to Dad and Grandad as ‘the men’. As if they are a subspecies useful for fixing dripping taps and not much else. Mum doesn’t comment on the golf plans. She walks over to the kettle, pours hot water into a mug and takes it out onto the deck.

  Nanna sighs dramatically in a way that is pure Katie. ‘It’s going to be one of those days,’ she says to Grandad, with a glance towards me, as if I’m five years old and don’t understand what she’s talking about.

  ‘Um, I don’t know if Dad will be up for golf, Nan. He can’t, um, walk very far.’

  She raises her drawn-on eyebrows. ‘Perhaps it will do him good.’

  Grandad gives me a helpless shrug.

  My mother is sitting on the deck. She has perfect posture because my nanna used to make her walk around with a book on her head when she was a girl. Seriously. She is sitting with her back to the screen door, looking out over the gully.

  ‘Hi. Do you want something to eat?’ I sound like a waitress. May as well call her ‘ma’am’.

  She turns a little in her chair, looks up at me, her eyes dark and tired. She looks old. ‘No. Thank you.’

  ‘What’s Nan doing here?’ She has already brought food this week.

  My mother sniffs, takes a crumpled tissue from the pocket of her flannel robe.

  ‘She thinks we should sort out Katie’s room. She doesn’t think it’s healthy to leave it like a shrine.’

  I look at Mum, in her dressing-gown, arms wrapped around herself. Withered. She doesn’t really look like my mother anymore. I want to go back inside, but I am anchored there, next to her.

  ‘I don’t want to get rid of her things,’ I say.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Do you think we need to get rid of her things?’

  She shakes her head and I don’t know if that means she doesn’t want to get rid of Katie’s things or she doesn’t want to talk. I wonder if there’s any chance of me sneaking in and getting a few particular items out of Katie’s room before they find them. The back door slides open and Nanna sticks her head out.

  ‘Breakfast! Come on, Paula! Hannah!’

  The only time I ever eat porridge is when Nanna makes it. She cooks it slowly on the stove, not in the microwave like Dad tries to. She places a steaming bowl down in front of me, dollops a spoonful of honey on top. It doesn’t seem right for a summer’s morning. My mother moves hers around with the spoon.

  ‘I don’t know about this,’ she says.

  ‘It’s good for your bowels,’ Nan replies.

  ‘No, not this, I mean … I don’t know if it’s a good idea to go through Katie’s things today.’

  Nanna chews a mouthful of porridge, orange lipstick smooshing around on her lips. She swallows.

  ‘When are you going to do it then?’

  ‘I think Andrew and I should do it when we’re ready.’

  ‘Darling, I don’t think you should be counting on Andrew.’ Nann
a puts down her spoon and sips her tea. ‘The fact is you may well end up on your own.’

  ‘I’m not talking about this now.’

  I put my head down and shovel the porridge into my mouth, it settles in my stomach like wet cement.

  ‘You have to face it, love. I know it’s a difficult thing to do, but I don’t think you can move forward if––’

  ‘I don’t want to move forward.’

  ‘Well, that’s pretty clear.’

  Mum shakes her head, jaw tight. Her hand trembles as she moves the spoon around, stirring, stirring.

  ‘Hannah, why don’t you go and watch some TV, take your breakfast,’ Nanna says to me. ‘Go on, just this once.’

  I take my breakfast into the lounge room, keep the volume on the TV down low.

  ‘Have you spoken to the lawyer with him? Do you know what he has said to the lawyer?’

  ‘He was knocked unconscious. He doesn’t remember what happened. You know that, I’ve told you that.’

  ‘Is that what he told the lawyer?’

  ‘What? Yes!’

  ‘Were you there when he said it?’

  ‘Mum, for goodness sake. We are handling it, okay? Leave it.’

  ‘Well, from where I’m standing, it all looks like avoidance. Avoidance of reality. You can’t run from it forever. It’s only going to be worse for you if you carry on as if Katherine is about to walk back in the door. The first step you have to take is to sort out her things.’

  Mum doesn’t say anything.

  ‘The only way you are going to heal—’

  There is a crash – the cracking, exploding sound of porcelain hitting the tiles. I leave my bowl on the coffee table and go to the doorway. Mum stands there, bowl shattered at her feet, porridge splattered everywhere. Nanna makes a move to get up and clean up the mess. But my mother speaks, her words hard and forced.

  ‘How can I heal?’

  Nanna opens her mouth. Closes it again. Neither of them notice me standing there.

  ‘Go on! You tell me! You tell me what I can do to feel better, you’re so full of ideas!’

  ‘Paula––’

  ‘Maybe you can tell Hannah what to do, too. Because I haven’t just lost one daughter. I’ve lost both of them.’