by Kate Gordon
Melody and Roz took off their boardies and tee shirts as soon as we arrived and ran into the waves. Peter pretended he was checking his phone, while twisting his arms into muscle shapes to impress the private school girls in their Tigerlily bikinis.
Wally and I sat on the dunes. Just us. I was intending to swim until I saw that Wally wasn’t going in. He hadn’t even brought bathers with him—he was still in his jeans.
‘Not up for a dip?’ I asked him.
He shook his head. ‘Got a big graze in the final, remember? When Pedda got me with his boot. Swear he did it on purpose, the bastard.’
‘He wouldn’t do that,’ I said, even though I wouldn’t put anything past Pedda. He was kind of a bastard. ‘He’s on your side.’
‘Pedda’s only on one side and that’s his own,’ said Wally, rolling his eyes. ‘Anyway, I gave into temptation last night, and picked some of the scab off. Now it’s all raw again and I don’t think salt water would be too much fun.’
‘Wuss.’
‘Yeah, you’re probably right. What’s your excuse?’
I shrugged. ‘Rather talk to you.’
Wally grinned. ‘Let’s talk. Let’s talk about why whales beach themselves or refugees or the US election or—’
‘All the fun stuff,’ I said, laughing.
‘All the big stuff,’ he corrected me. ‘Sometimes, I just need to talk about the big stuff. Otherwise, it gets stuck in my head and I can’t get it out.’
‘All right,’ I said, feeling a little thrill. Wally wanted to talk to me about the important things. The others got football and rock music and school. I got the things that mattered.
He looked down at the sand, drew an infinity symbol with his finger. ‘Would you believe I write poems?’ he said, quietly. Before I could answer, he hurried on. ‘They started off as letters, but they’re poems, really.’ He shoved his finger deep in the dirt. ‘Don’t tell anyone.’
He wrote poems. He was funny and smart and an amazing footballer and he had those eyes and he cared about stuff and he wrote poems.
‘I—’
Wally patted his belly. ‘I’m a starvin’ Marvin, Champ. Can we go get some Samboys or something?’
‘I’d kill for a Frosty Fruit,’ I admitted. ‘I’m so hot. But—’
I wanted to talk more about whales and Wally’s poems.
I wanted to stay right there with Wally, in this little bubble of us forever.
But Wally stood up and extended his hand. It was rough and hard. A footballer’s hand. It felt so good in mine.
And he held my hand the whole way up the beach to the takeaway shop. And we were … us.
Just us.
And I was falling.
Fallen.
He never did show me his poems. He read me other ones. He read me all the poems from all the famous writers.
He never showed me his.
And I wonder now, if he ever really showed me anything of his real self; the Wally beneath the skin, behind the eyes.
Dear Mum,
I’m falling.
Stop me falling.
Didn’t you ever think
That this was your job—
To hold me in your arms and stop me
Before I crash?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Auntie Kath sits with me in the car, telling stories of my mum and how she loved me.
‘Tell me it again,’ I whisper, my head on her shoulder. ‘All of it from the beginning. From when she fell pregnant.’
‘I always thought it was weird when people said that,’ Auntie Kath says. ‘Like pregnancy is some Wonderland you reach by falling down a rabbit hole.’
‘Tell me about the Wonderland,’ I say. I’m tired now. I’m so tired. I want a fairy tale.
But it wasn’t a fairy tale, of course. I know that. I know all about my beginning.
I know it began normally. She bought a high chair and a car seat and a change table and booties and little hats and suits that snapped up at the bottom. She was determined to breastfeed; use cloth nappies, not disposables. She carried me during the day in a fabric sling in her arms. She would sleep with me in the bed with her, in a little box they found to make it safe.
She was going to be good at this. Birdie Geeves was good at everything.
Even before her belly got huge, she was practising songs to sing to me. She was reading stories to the bump.
My dad wanted to know if I were a boy or a girl. She didn’t. She wanted the surprise. She told him it didn’t matter, anyway. Not all children called ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ at birth are really that way. So what did it matter?
At twelve weeks, and then again at eighteen, she bled. My father carried her to the emergency room, crying. He was convinced I was gone. Mum never believed it. She was determined not to fail at this. They called them ‘threatened miscarriages’. The ultrasounds showed blood clots in her uterus, bigger than I was and sitting menacingly just above me. If they came loose in one go, I’d fall.
They didn’t.
They came loose in small amounts and flowed past me. I hung on, claws gripping hold of the walls of my little home.
They didn’t give me a name. She thought she’d know when I came what to call me. She said she couldn’t get a sense of me until I was in the world.
At twenty-four weeks she started cramping and bleeding again.
At twenty-eight weeks she went into labour. But I didn’t come. Five hours of contractions. Still I held on.
I held on for another six weeks and so did she.
She couldn’t fail.
But she was tired.
And I was born—very small, but otherwise strong. I wriggled and writhed in my tiny crib, with the blue lights shining on me.
I was happy. The nurses told Auntie Kath that: ‘She’s such a happy baby.’
I didn’t know she would leave me. I had my mum. That was all I needed.
‘Tell me about Wonderland,’ I whisper again.
Auntie Kath strokes my hair. ‘She sat there for hours in the nursery, with her hand pressed against the glass. Just watching you. She wouldn’t let them wheel her back to her room. She didn’t want to sleep. She only wanted to be with you.’
But she never gave me a name.
She sat there with her hand pressed against the glass for days, until they let her hold me. She held me so tightly while tears coated her face.
I hold onto knowing that she watched me, waiting to hold me.
I hold onto knowing that, for a little while, she loved me.
Her hand, pressed to the glass.
I hold that tight.
‘Is that what you want to hear?’ Auntie Kath asks. ‘About that time? Is that your Wonderland, Tiger?’
I close my eyes, and it’s his face I see, so close to mine. I can feel his breath.
So I don’t close my eyes.
‘I love you, Tiger,’ Auntie Kath says.
And then she cries.
I don’t cry.
‘Can I put on a CD?’ she asks me. ‘I could do with some music.’
I nod, my forehead pressed against Mabel’s window.
She rifles through her CD folder (Mabel’s too retro to have Bluetooth, of course) and extracts a black CD case with a yellow sphere in the middle.
‘No …’ I groan. ‘Coldplay? Really?’
‘I listened to this CD all the time when you were a baby,’ she says, pushing the CD into the slot. ‘It makes me think of tiny you.’
I shrug. ‘All right then.’
Chris Martin’s plaintive vocals slide out of the car speakers. And I let myself, just for a moment, turn off the part of my brain that tells me I should hate this mournful song. I let myself, just for a moment, mourn. I don’t know if I’m mourning Wally or my mother or myself—t
he old self, before all of it. Because all of us are done for. All of us are gone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mr Lohrey says, ‘You don’t have to be here, Therese. We can do other scenes. You won’t lose any marks for non-attendance today …’
He trails off. His eyes say everything.
He knows.
They all know. There’s a secret. They know I am important in Wally’s death. The letter mentioned me. I am part of this.
I look around the chorus. Some eyes are red from crying still, even though I don’t know if those kids even really knew him.
In death, they know him. In death, he belongs to them.
They went to his funeral. They clutched those booklets with his picture on the front.
He’s not flying. He’s tied down here in the hands and heads of all the kids who think they own him now.
But I was the only one he mentioned in the letter. And they all know. I’m supposed to be golden now. And everyone is treating me like I’m breaking or broken.
I don’t want that.
I can’t be broken if I’m nothing.
‘I’m fine,’ I tell Mr Lohrey. ‘I want to be here.’
Mr Lohrey nods. His voice is gentle and I hate it. ‘Whatever you need. It’s not a problem to change things. Even if you wanted to go and see Megan? Mrs Koetsveld? She said you haven’t been …’
‘I’m not going,’ I blurt. ‘I don’t need to go. I’m fine.’
Mr Lohrey nods. ‘All right. Maybe we’ll start with the dentist song then. Brad?’ Mr Lohrey looks over at Brad Petterwood, who has his arm draped over one of the wet-eyed chorus girls. He shrugs. He doesn’t care.
‘Excellent. Thanks, Brad,’ says Mr Lohrey. ‘I think that needs the most work. Then Downtown. Does that suit you, Therese?’
I wish he’d stop treating me like I’m about to crack.
‘I’m fine,’ I say, my voice rising again so it echoes in my ears. ‘Can’t you see I’m fine?’
Mr Lohrey gives a little nod. ‘Sure,’ he says, quietly. ‘Of course you are.’
A ripple goes through the chorus and moves up towards the stage.
‘Look. Look at her. She’s so not fine.’
‘She’s messed up.’
‘It’s because of Nick Wallace.’
‘They were best friends, you know.’
‘They must have been more than that. Remember the letter?’
‘Do you think they had sex?’
‘Do you think she’s crazy?’
‘She didn’t have her session. She wouldn’t go. I went to my session.’
‘SHE’S CRACKING. CAN YOU SEE HER CRACKING?’
They’re wrong.
I don’t feel anything at all.
I ignore the idiotic, pitying looks of the chorus as I march past them onto the stage.
I take my broom from a stage hand and I stand in my position: downstage left.
The music starts.
I am not me.
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘Hey, comrades.’
Rhino looks up from his pie and grins. Flo freezes. She opens her mouth, and I know she’s going to ask me if I’m okay.
It’s my first shift back at work … after.
I am okay. I am okay. I am okay.
I don’t want to have to say it. I want to escape. This is one of the only places where Wally is not. I don’t want him here.
Before Flo can speak, Rhino blurts, ‘On which side does a tiger have most stripes? On the outside!’
I am okay, so I laugh.
I am normal. This is normal.
My heart is in a box. I can’t even feel it, anymore. I am a shadow. I am okay.
‘That’s terrible, Rhino,’ I say. I sit down next to him and poke him on the arm. ‘So. How’s tricks?’
‘Chillin’,’ he replies. ‘Killin’.’
Flo is looking at us, confused. ‘Um, Tiger—’
I shake my head, lips pressed. ‘Flo, can … I just want things to be … just like how they always are, okay?’
Flo nods, slowly. ‘Okay. That’s fine. I get that you don’t want to talk. When my nan died the last thing I wanted was to talk about it.’
‘I’ve got another one for you,’ says Rhino. ‘What’s stripy and bounces up and down?’
‘Let me guess. A tiger on a trampoline?’
‘It’s no fun if you guess them,’ Rhino says, mock-angry.
‘Sorry,’ I reply. I’m grinning. I wasn’t expecting to be grinning today.
I turn to Flo. ‘So, tell me about your day.’
‘Seriously?’
I sigh. ‘Seriously, Flo. Please. I need normal. You get that, right?’
Flo smiles and squeezes my hand. ‘I get that. Right. My day, huh? Okay, so ...’ She looks at the ceiling. ‘Well, it was pretty cool, actually. I wagged science and walked into town with Allie—’
‘Your girlfriend?’
‘Ex.’ Flo smiles. ‘But we’re still besties so, like, “goals”. Even if she is already seeing Becca Hatami. I’m totally fine. Anyway, we went to Red Herring because she was after some new thongs and—’
‘Chloe Hammersmith, service twenty, register five, please. Chloe Hammersmith.’ Jamie’s voice whines on the PA.
Flo throws her fork into her Tupperware. ‘Ye Gods. I swear I could take that kid. I could totally take him and kick his little pimply arse and—’
‘Chloe to register five immediately. Chloe.’
‘I think he’s in love with you,’ says Rhino. ‘He never calls us like that.’
Flo groans. ‘That’s all I need. The cyborg love of the Jamienator. Awesome. See you out there, comrades.’
‘You go, girl,’ Rhino says. And he starts humming a tune. Flo and I look at each other, rolling our eyes.
‘“Break My Stride”,’ we say, in unison.
Rhino begins dancing to his own music, even throwing in a running man.
‘You’re an idiot, Rhinoceros,’ Flo says, but she’s smiling.
When she’s gone, Rhino turns to me. ‘You good?’ he says, casually.
I appreciate it. The neutral face. The eyes that aren’t full of pity.
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘I’ve got plenty going on. Musical, work, band, school. Keeping busy. You know.’
‘Keeping busy with all the boring stuff.’ Rhino takes a large bite of his pie and spits pastry as he asks, ‘What about doing something fun?’
‘I do fun stuff,’ I protest. ‘I do lots of different things. Acting, singing, clarinet, creative writing, art ... watching footy.’
‘Super,’ Rhino says, sucking a glob of tomato sauce from his thumb. ‘Props to you and your many extra-curricular activities. Your resume must be banging.’
‘You’re really having a go at me right now?’ I snap.
‘You said you were fine,’ Rhino counters.
‘I am.’
‘Well, then.’ He puts a piece of soggy pastry on his fork, pulls the fork back and catapults the pastry at my head. ‘Take that.’
‘You bastard!’ I pick the pastry from my hair and flick it back at him.
‘You won’t be calling me that tomorrow,’ he declares.
‘Oh yeah and why’s that?’
Rhino looks at his watch. ‘Better get out there. The Jamienator does not tolerate slackers.’ He inclines his head to one side and grins. ‘Hasta la vista, Latey!’ he says, mimicking Arnie’s robot voice. ‘I’ll be … hiding behind the bog rolls.’
He laughs at his own bad jokes. I roll my eyes.
‘What?’ Rhino asks. ‘That was gold just there. Comedy gold!’
‘Why won’t I be calling you a bastard tomorrow?’ I repeat, following him to sign on.
‘Because, tomorrow, you are not going to mu
sical practice or band or bloody Morris Dancing rehearsal—whatever it is you had planned. Tomorrow, you’re going out with me.’
‘I can’t,’ I protest. ‘I don’t have practice but I promised Melody—’
‘Do you want to do whatever it is you promised?’ Rhino asks, wiping his greasy-pie hands on his work pants, before pressing his index finger to the scanner.
I think about his question. Do I want to?
Melody wants me to come over to her place to ‘chat’ about my ‘pent-up feelings’. She says, if I won’t talk to a professional, I have to at least talk to her, because she is practically a professional. She says, if I don’t talk to someone it is going to have ‘horrendous consequences for your future mental health’.
She says that we should talk ‘at least once a week’.
She says it is her duty ‘as a feminist to ensure that my friends practise adequate self-care’.
She says that I shouldn’t feel like I am imposing on her, because it will be ‘excellent practise for my future career’.
She said a lot a more, but I wasn’t listening.
And Rhino’s right.
I really don’t want to go to Melody’s house tomorrow.
I really don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to be her ‘practise’.
And my mental health is fine.
He eyeballs me. ‘I know you, Tiger Geeves. And you and I shall be adventuring tomorrow.’
He gives me a little bow as he heads off to the express checkouts.
I’m on register thirteen because it’s the nicest one and I’m the broken duckling. I’m offered two breaks instead of one.
Even the customers are nicer.
I wonder if they know.
When an old lady asks me, ‘Are you all right, dear?’ I put her loaf of bread underneath her milk.
Rhino does stupid dances whenever he catches my eye. He’s the only one I don’t want to kick in the shins.
Just before the end of my shift, a boy comes in who looks exactly—and nothing—like Nick Wallace.
For a moment, my breath catches. But it’s only a stupid moment.
And after it, I’m completely fine.
