Well, not anything. That makes him sound kinda shallow, which he’s not. He knows how to be serious too. Even when we were kids he was a good listener. I remember this one time when I was ten, I was upset because Greer Kirkpatrick had given everyone at school Christmas cards except for me. Sebastian let me cry about it, and he didn’t laugh once. Instead, he got this little crease in between his eyebrows, and he said that if he ever met this Greer Kirkpatrick, he’d kick dirt straight into her no-good, card-hogging face. The next day, underneath my pillow, I found a handmade Christmas card covered in pink glitter, signed from my ‘secret Santa’. I knew it was from him.
Because that’s the other thing about Sebastian Lee. He’s sensitive and thoughtful – far more than most people realise. I didn’t even fully understand it myself until I read his poetry. He doesn’t know about that little fact, of course. It happened a few years back, when I was looking for Aerogard inside the Lees’ cabin. Everyone else was outside, and Sebastian’s bedroom door just happened to be open and his notebook just happened to be on his bed, so I just happened to wander in and take a peek. What I saw was his soul. And it touched mine.
Which brings me to one final thing about Sebastian Lee: I’ve been in love with him since I was thirteen years old. Probably earlier. It was the poetry that really pushed me over the edge, though. I felt like I was carrying around this private, beautiful part of him. Like I was closer to him than ever before. Ironically, we’d kinda drifted apart by then. His mate Beamer had started coming on holidays with the Lees, and Sebastian was always off with him. When we were together, I got real awkward. Not that he seemed to notice. At least, he didn’t say anything about it. He didn’t say much to me from there on out, actually. But it went both ways. Like I said, I was awkward. I am awkward. Can’t-form-a-coherent-sentence-and-instead-communicate-solely-in-squeaks level awkward.
Just like the squeak I let out yesterday when I saw the tampon that had been in my nose seconds before hit his beautiful, perfect arm.
It turns out he had walked up to our cabin from his family’s about the time I was shoving tampons in my nostrils. He had reached Anna just as I was running around the car, screaming like a drunken lemur. He was looking at me with wide eyes right around the time the tampon hit his beautiful, perfect arm. It all happened in the space of about ten seconds. That’s all the time it takes to destroy your life.
Anna was also staring at me with wide eyes and a mouth to match. She was the first of us to speak.
‘Maisie, what are you doing?’
I opened my mouth but all that came out was one of those prolonged squeaks.
And then. AND THEN.
Sebastian Lee reached his beautiful, perfect arm down to the ground and plucked that tampon up by its string.
Sebastian Lee held out his beautiful, perfect arm with that tampon dangling at the end, and said, ‘I think you dropped something, Maisie.’
And then. AND THEN.
He cracked up. And Anna cracked up. And Anna casually put her hand on his beautiful, perfect arm.
Just like that. Like she was the one who’d known him her whole life, when they’d just met ninety seconds before.
I tried to muster up a laugh myself. Just more squeaking. Apparently that reminded Sebastian Lee why he was standing in front of our cabin in the first place.
‘Hey, Dad wanted me to see if you guys were up for dinner tonight? He’s staked out the barbie.’
‘Seb! How are you, love?’ Suddenly Mum was there, wiping her hands on a tea towel and giving Sebastian a kiss on the cheek. ‘That sounds great. Tell your dad we’ll be there in about half an – Maisie, what on earth are you doing? Get that thing out of your nose!’
Oh. Yeah. I still had a tampon in one nostril. I hastily yanked it out. Sebastian Lee shook his head and let out a breath that sounded like it would have been a laugh if he could be bothered to make it one.
‘Cool. Well. Catch youse later.’ He walked away and I watched him go, feeling like if I died right then and there I wouldn’t even be mad – I’d be grateful.
I turned back to Mum and Anna, who were both shaking their heads too.
Yeah. The trip got off to a GREAT start.
*
We were late to the barbecue because Anna couldn’t decide what to wear. I’d changed out of the tights and t-shirt I’d worn for the drive into . . . fresh tights and a t-shirt. Meanwhile, Anna was on her fourth outfit change.
‘That looks awesome,’ I said as she rolled her eyes and peeled off the crop top she’d paired with tiny denim shorts.
‘Ugh, I feel so fat,’ she said, grabbing at her taut stomach and pulling a face.
‘C’mon, it’s just a family barbecue. Who cares what you wear?’ I said, trying to ignore the familiar twist in my gut I get whenever Anna puts herself down like that. She just looked at me the way she does sometimes, like I’m an alien from outer space who can’t speak any Earth language, let alone English. I sighed and bent down to pluck a yellow dress from the pile of clothes she’d dumped on the floor.
‘Here, put this on, you always feel good in it,’ I said. I was relieved when she declared it ‘would do’. If there’s one thing my mum hates (in fact there are many things she hates but, you know, it’s a figure of speech), it’s lateness. She’d already grown tired of waiting and left without us, having freshened up and got herself looking like a million bucks in under twenty minutes. She’s the master of the quick change, my mum.
And the quick drink. She was on her second glass of wine by the time we got there. I know this because she said, ‘Took you girls long enough; I’m already on my second glass of wine.’
I said hi to Sebastian’s parents and his brothers Kane and Lincoln (they’re twins, and they used to be really cute, but now they’re eleven and just massive pests, so I avoid them as much as possible). I carefully and very deliberately avoided all eye contact with Sebastian Lee himself. Which was much less successful than it usually is, because he came straight over to talk to us.
‘How’s it goin’? Anna, right? We didn’t really meet properly before.’
She laughed and I quietly died inside all over again as the image of that tampon hitting Sebastian Lee’s beautiful, perfect arm flashed in my head.
‘I know,’ Anna said. ‘I can’t believe I’m finally in the presence of the famous Sebastian Lee.’
‘Famous?’
‘Oh, Maisie never stops talking about you. I’ve been waiting for this day for years. Ouch, Maise, why are you pinching me?’
Sebastian had this expression on his face, which I would have described as ‘bemused’, but Ms Singh spent a good twenty minutes lecturing us in class last term about how everyone misunderstands that word and that it actually means puzzled or confused. She said the decline of the English language made her want to sit down on the ground and weep (and don’t even get her started on those ‘dreadful slang words’ we all use). Meanwhile, I was contemplating whether I could get away with sitting down on the ground and weeping right there in front of Anna and Sebastian, when I got a strong whiff of BO and felt a heavy arm land across my shoulders.
‘Well if it isn’t Maisie Martin.’ Beamer. Ugh. ‘How’s your Aunt Flo?’
‘I don’t have an Aunt Flo,’ I started to say, but the smirk on his face suddenly made it click. The Tampon Incident. Sebastian had told him. The day really couldn’t get any worse.
Except, of course, it could.
Here’s the thing about Beamer: apparently he gets off on annoying me. Like last year, he attacked me with a water gun on one of the few days I ventured to the beach, when I very clearly didn’t want to get wet. Two summers ago, he kept flicking his eyelids inside out like boys used to do in primary school, because he knew it freaked me out. At least it was an improvement on the times he used to pick his nose and flick it my way. The first summer he came here, he seized every opportunity he could to snap the straps of my swimmers. In short, he is a disgusting, infuriating, grade-A pain in my butt.
So of course he barely left my side all night. I guess he’s realised his mere presence makes my blood boil and that’s his new tactic. When I pulled up a chair for Anna to sit next to me while we ate, Beamer said, ‘Aw, thanks, Maisie Martin, you shouldn’t have,’ and plonked himself down in it. He (deliberately) didn’t get the hint when I said, ‘I didn’t,’ so Sebastian carried two more chairs over to form a little circle with the four of us.
It would have been kinda nice, except Beamer didn’t stop talking. He launched into a monologue about the brilliance of the latest Fast and the Furious movie (which I happened to like, but I wasn’t going to let him know that), and didn’t let up for a good ten minutes. I shouldn’t complain, really, because it did give me the chance to inspect Sebastian up close without it being weird. As Beamer droned on, the rest of us ate, rolled our eyes (mainly me), occasionally laughed (mainly Sebastian), and I kept sneaking glances. At Sebastian, I mean. Not at Beamer. Blech.
I noticed that Sebastian seems to have grown taller since last summer. His shoulders are broader and his hair’s a little longer too. Somehow, he’s even more gorgeous. As always, he wore a lazy sort of half-smile on his face. It’s his default expression. You know how there’s Resting Bitch Face? Well, Sebastian Lee has Resting Dreamy Face.
I watched as he worked his way meticulously around his plate. He ate food by food, saving his dad’s satay skewers – his favourite, since we were kids – until last. I asked him once when we were younger why he always ate the best food last, instead of gobbling it down first like I did. He’d grinned and said, ‘That means it’s the flavour that stays in my mouth at the end. It’s worth the wait, Maise.’
Worth the wait. Maybe that’s what I’d be to him too. Sebastian was all about delayed gratification. I could get behind some gratification myself, as long as Sebastian Lee was involved. After all these years, maybe –
‘What’s that little smile of yours about, eh, Maisie Martin?’ Beamer’s voice broke into my thoughts.
I looked up, startled, and realised everyone was looking at me.
I turned to Beamer, playing up the sweet smile on my face, and said, ‘Oh, I was just thinking about the thousand and one ways I could cause you grievous bodily harm with this fork.’
He nearly choked on his ginger beer, but his coughing quickly gave way to laughter. ‘She’s quite the kinky one, isn’t she?’
I felt my face heat up. I glanced over at Sebastian, who was chuckling and shaking his head. When he noticed me looking, he rolled his eyes, as if to say, ‘This guy, am I right?’ I grinned in return, and a beat passed in which it felt like everyone and everything around us fell away, and it was just the two of us sitting there.
Then Beamer broke in once again. ‘Anyway, as I was saying, The Rock –’
‘Oh my god, don’t you ever shut up?’ Anna said. She was smiling, but I knew Beamer was annoying her already. She’s not my best friend for nothing, you know.
Sebastian laughed and said, ‘He doesn’t, actually. He even talks in his sleep. I barely get a moment’s rest when we’re here.’
‘Ah, you love it,’ Beamer fired back.
‘Why are you here, anyway?’ Anna asked him. ‘Did you get abandoned for the holidays like me, or what?’
I reflexively sucked in a breath and glanced at Beamer. Anna’s words were a bit too close to the truth. Beamer’s never talked much about his life, but from what I’ve overheard, it’s like this: deadshit dad, drug addict mum, grandad died when he was nine, older sister pissed off overseas, leaving Beamer alone with his gran. And the Lees.
‘It gives his grandmother a break, poor woman,’ I heard Laura telling my mum when they first brought him to the Bay. She’d need one, having to put up with Beamer all the time.
I probably shouldn’t say things like that. But I mean really. He is The Worst. Anyway, he just brushed off Anna’s comment with a ‘something like that’ and went back to talking about exploding cars. He was fine.
I heard Sebastian say to Anna quietly, ‘What do you mean, you were abandoned?’ And she leaned in close to him and, I presume, told him about her mum’s obsession with her new boyfriend and how she, Anna, hasn’t seen her dad since she was little. Maybe she even got on to the subject of Dan the Dickhead. I don’t know, because all I could hear was Beamer’s foolish opinions about The Rock (he said he was the greatest action hero of all time, which is ABSURD. But what’s even more absurd is that I took the bait and ended up arguing with him for twenty minutes about why there’ll never be anyone greater than Arnold Schwarzenegger. So who’s the real fool here?).
By that stage Mum was on to her second bottle of wine and had got up and started dancing, lifting her skirt at the sides in the way she only does when she’s really drunk, to the whooping and cheering of Sebastian’s parents and even Beamer (ugh).
‘Go, Mrs M!’ he called out to her. To me he said, ‘Your mum’s a bit of a milf, hey.’
Which officially tipped me over my Beamer Tolerance Threshold. Anna was still deep in conversation with Sebastian, who was listening intently, that adorable little crease having made an appearance in between his eyebrows. I suddenly felt a bit ill. I got up and sat next to Sebastian’s dad.
I like Jimmy. He’s okay – you know, for a parent. He makes terrible dad jokes all the time, but he’s also a total romantic. He came here from Malaysia to study in the nineties and ended up marrying Laura. One time, at a barbecue not unlike this one, when Mum was (of course) dancing, and Laura was dancing with her, I was sitting quietly between Jimmy and my dad. They’d had a few to drink, and I think they forgot I was there. They were watching their wives dance. Jimmy got this expression on his face that’s hard to describe. You know that scene in, like, every romantic comedy, where the girl is looking at a glorious view and says something like, ‘This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ and the guy says, ‘I know,’ but he’s not looking at the view at all – he’s really looking at her? Well, it was like that. Without taking his eyes off Laura, Jimmy said to my dad, ‘You know, mate, I fell in love with her the moment I saw her.’ And my dad said, ‘I know, mate.’ And something inside me ached, because I’d never seen him look at my mum like that.
Dad’s not like Jimmy. I don’t think he has a romantic bone in his body. He doesn’t like to talk about his feelings or make grand gestures. His love is quiet. But it’s there. I know it is.
I think . . .
No, I know.
I do wonder sometimes if my mum sees it, though. If she feels it. He seems to piss her off more than anything. Especially lately.
I was thinking about this as I sat there with Jimmy, half-listening to him talk about how much it sucked Dad hadn’t been able to come this year.
‘Still, at least he’s working instead of being laid off like half his colleagues, eh?’ Jimmy said.
‘Yeah,’ I agreed, but there was something else I wanted to say. ‘Hey, Jimmy?’
‘Hey, Maisie!’ He laughed at his own ‘joke’.
I hesitated for a moment, but I couldn’t keep the thought in any longer. ‘Do you think my parents are happy together?’
He looked surprised. He glanced up at Mum, who had dragged Laura up to dance with her, both of them pissing themselves laughing. ‘Yeah, Maisie. I think they are.’ He looked back at me. ‘Why do you ask? Everything alright at home?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m just being weird. Forget it.’
He smiled and ruffled my hair the way he has done since I was a little kid. Usually it annoys me. This time, it didn’t. This time, it made me want to keep talking. About how everything isn’t alright at home. About how lately, when Mum and Dad aren’t arguing, they’re barely talking to each other. About how I’m trying not to notice it, trying not to think about it. About how deep down, it really scares me.
But then Beamer was running past us, Kane and Lincoln following close behind, all of them yelling and laughing. And the moment was broken. The twins caught up to Beamer and tackled him to the g
round, hooting in delight. Jimmy got up to join them in a game of hide and seek, and I reluctantly agreed to play, too.
Meanwhile, Anna and Sebastian just kept talking and talking. I think she spoke more to him in one night than I have in years.
And as I crouched in the shadows, hiding from Beamer, who was ‘it’, a long-held fantasy of Sebastian looking at me the way Jimmy had looked at Laura that time – like I might be the most glorious view he’s ever seen – floated into my head. And I felt it slip away.
Later, when I asked Anna what she and Sebastian were talking about for so long, she said, ‘Oh, you know, just stuff. Nothing special.’ Then she said, ‘Maisie, you told me he was hot, but you didn’t tell me he was that hot.’
And I laughed. But I really wanted to cry.
*
Gosh that sounds mopey, doesn’t it? I’ve gotta snap out of it. Because you know who’s not mopey? Anna! My best friend, who has been mopey for weeks! The trip is working!
But . . . I think it’s because of Sebastian. And a part of me . . . a selfish part of me . . . wishes it wasn’t.
Because yeah. Today happened.
This morning, it was Anna’s turn to get annoyed at me for taking too long to get ready. Not because I wanted to look particularly special. I just wanted to look something other than awful.
There I go being mopey again. But you see, DJ, I have one swimsuit that fits me. It’s a black one-piece, and it makes my boobs look saggy. I hate it. I ended up putting an old pair of my dad’s board shorts and a big, loose t-shirt over the top of it. Fat chance (ha!) I’d be going swimming, anyway. Next to Anna in her tiny string bikini (Hot Girl™ approved) I actually felt like the sasquatch some of the guys at school call me. For a moment I questioned why I had even invited her. Because I’m a terrible friend.
What I Like About Me Page 2