Gracie Faltrain Takes Control

by Cath Crowley

  ‘Then stop worrying about what everyone else thinks. Stop trying to make her into another Jane.’

  Good advice, Mum. Just a little too late to stop the Gracie Faltrain express. ‘She won’t talk to me anymore. She kicked me out of her house on Saturday.’

  ‘I have a feeling Alyce is the sort of person who will let you fix things. So is Martin, eventually.’

  ‘How do I fix things, though?’

  ‘Gracie, haven’t you learnt anything from your father?’

  Don’t read the last page of the book first? ‘I don’t know. What was I meant to learn?’

  ‘He’s been proving himself to us all year, working to get our trust again. Find a way to go back to who you were. The old Gracie Faltrain did things wrong, you fought to make the world how you wanted it to be, but you never lied. You never cheated.’

  She stares out of the kitchen window. ‘Some friends are so good they come back better than before when you test them, like lemons and oranges. They need a harsh frost to sweeten them up.’ She turns to me. ‘I can’t tell you that Alyce and Martin will forgive you. But they’re worth fighting for. It’s not spring yet. Cut the garden back. And see what happens.’

  I guess Mum means lose the crap bits of me and see what’s left. Maybe if I flower like magnolia, Martin and Alyce will like me again.

  It’s unlikely. Alyce won’t look at me today. She’ll never believe I’ll be anything but grey and bare. There’s an empty desk next to her in maths, but she doesn’t shift her books so I can sit down. It’s wrong to be in a classroom and not talk to her. It feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone, where last year never happened. Martin and I never got together. Alyce and I never became friends.

  ‘Heard you don’t have a date for the dance anymore, Alyce,’ Annabelle calls out from her seat at the back. ‘Loser.’

  Some things haven’t changed. I open my mouth to shout something but I stop. This is Alyce’s fight. It’s Alyce’s life. If she’d turn around and ask me to help I’d do anything. But that’s the thing. She’s never asked.

  ‘Freddy,’ Annabelle calls out as he walks in. ‘Alyce needs a date for the dance.’ The whole class laughs, except for four people: Freddy, Alyce, me, and Flemming. Everyone is looking at Flemming, wondering what he’s going to do. I know he has been copping it from his mates ever since it got out that he liked the biggest nerd in the class. But that big nerd helped when you needed it, Flemming, I want to yell at him. Now save her.

  But people always save themselves first. They make all those movies where the hero risks his life to find the kid in the burning house and carry him out, but how often does that actually happen? In the real world, it’s so much easier to cut someone loose. It’s easier to run. And afterwards you can tell yourself a whole bunch of lies so you don’t feel bad.

  I hate the thought of Alyce choking in her burning house, the flames shooting up against a sky bloody with heat. She turns back to look at Flemming. And he does what 99.95 per cent of the population would do.

  ‘Go on, ask her, Freddy,’ he says. And then under his breath, but loud enough for Annabelle’s entire crowd to hear, ‘Vomit boy.’ Flemming stands on the footpath with the rest of the crowd and watches Alyce burn.

  I know how I would have acted in Alyce’s place. I would have slammed my books down and walked up to Flemming and done some detailed dentistry on his two front teeth. I’m the same person that I saw behind the change rooms, slamming my fist at the enemy.

  I look around at the class, all calling out and cracking jokes. They’re lighting every last match in their box and tossing them at the fire. Annabelle and Susan are toasting marshmallows, loving the sticky sweetness of Alyce’s embarrassment. Flemming’s face is a little too hot. He looks like he’s about to run. This is the real world I wanted Alyce to live in. These are the people that I wanted her to fit in with.

  The thing is, Alyce doesn’t burn. She doesn’t even singe. She moves her books so Freddy can sit next to her. She smiles at him. And while everyone’s still laughing at the idea of her and vomit boy dancing together, she leans over and lends him her pen.

  Martin’s not on the field when I walk up to practice this afternoon. The rest of the team is crowded around Coach. ‘Faltrain, I need to talk to you,’ he says.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘When did you last see Knight?’

  ‘Saturday. Why?’

  Coach puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘His dad came to talk to me this morning. Martin didn’t go home last night.’

  The colour drains out of the afternoon until it’s black. I practise like this. In the dark. Running into shadows.

  ‘Faltrain, are you okay?’ Flemming asks after practice.

  I can’t answer.

  ‘You should go home, in case Knight calls.’

  His hand on my shoulder is light and warm. It doesn’t match with the person on the field who runs next to me, ripping heads and arms. It doesn’t match with the person who dumped Alyce. He’s like a mirror, smashed on the ground, reflecting different bits of sky.

  If you put all those parts together, though, Flemming makes perfect sense. Everything he’s done lately, in soccer, with Alyce, has all been for the same reason: he’s scared of losing. He’s scared of being beaten.

  ‘Martin won’t call,’ I say. ‘He’s not coming back.’

  ‘You don’t know that, Faltrain.’

  ‘Yes I do.’

  There’ll be a game on Saturday, and Martin won’t play. I’ll have to get up every morning and go to school and Martin won’t be there to say, ‘Faltrain, stop stuffing around, you’ll be late for class.’ I’ll never see him again but he’ll be the stupid voice in my head for the rest of my stupid life and I’ll never be able to shut him up. And there’s no one to blame but myself.

  ‘How do you know? What happened?’

  ‘I lied to him, about his mum. I tried to find her after I promised I wouldn’t. I was too much of an idiot to see that he needed to forget her . . .’ The words running out of my mouth barely make sense to me. ‘And Alyce won’t talk to me, either. I made her feel like crap because she’s different. Just like you did.’ The end of my sentence spins from my mouth like a knife and finishes with the point aimed at Flemming. ‘How can you like Alyce as much as you do and hurt her?’

  ‘I made a mistake asking her to the dance, that’s all, like you did looking for Knight’s mum. People make mistakes, Faltrain.’

  Yeah. They do. Except what we did was deliberate. Martin told me a million times to stay out of it. He begged me. And I kept going. I kept pushing. He told me to stop playing dirty and I didn’t care. I wanted to win. Just like Flemming. He knew what would happen if he asked Alyce to the dance. If he couldn’t follow through he should have kept his stupid mouth shut.

  ‘That’s crap,’ I say. ‘Annabelle told you to take Susan.’

  ‘You think I’d do something because Annabelle told me to?’

  ‘I think you would if your mates agreed with her. Alyce is worth a hundred of Annabelle and her friends. She was the best thing that ever happened to you.’ My voice is loud. It’s full of everything I’ve done.

  ‘Calm down, Faltrain.’

  But I can’t. It’s all messed together, now. Me, what I did to Martin. Flemming and what he did to Alyce. ‘I don’t want to be calm. She trusted you and when it really counted, you let her down.’ Just like I did to Martin.

  ‘No one told me what to do.’

  ‘You wanted to dump Alyce the week before the first dance she’s ever been asked to?’

  ‘I told you. I made a mistake asking her. I’m sorry.’

  His voice is too close to mine. I can hear myself saying to Alyce and Martin over and over how sorry I am. But it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t fix anything.

  ‘You deserve everything you get,’ I say. We both do. I slam my fist into his face and clip the side of his mouth. I catch him off guard, and he stumbles backwards. He sits on the ground and wipes a red trickl
e from his lips. There’s blood on my knuckle. I don’t bother wiping it off.

  ‘Get up,’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get up. Or don’t you like it so much when you’re the one getting hit?’

  ‘You want to fight me?’

  ‘Get up.’

  ‘I’m not punching a girl.’

  I kick his leg. Hard. ‘Too scared to fight?’ I kick him again, anger racing through me. This is what I am. This is how I solve things. This is what Martin saw in all of us. ‘Hit me,’ I yell, swinging my words around him. ‘You’re hopeless. You’re hopeless at school and the only thing you can do is play soccer . . .’

  The look on Flemming’s face tells me I’ve found the other reason he won’t go to the dance with Alyce. Annabelle is just the surface, the skin. The other reason is the blood of it. I cut way down deep to get to it. I don’t care about the mess.

  ‘You’re too stupid for her. That’s it, isn’t it? She’ll spend time with you and find out what an idiot you really are. You can’t even think of what to say when you’re with her . . .’

  ‘Shut up, Faltrain,’ he warns.

  But I’m just warming up. It feels good to hurt Flemming like he hurt Alyce. And I want to get part of what I deserve for all the crap things I’ve done this season. ‘She uses words you haven’t even heard of.’

  His face is closing in like it did that day behind the change rooms. ‘I said shut up.’

  ‘She probably did most of the assignments for you, didn’t she? What’ll you do now that you can’t use her anymore? Cheat?’

  There’s a button in most people that turns them into someone else. It sends them spinning like a car, tyres blown on the freeway. Most people never know what they’ll do when they hit that point, because they spend their lives staying away from it. Like Martin. Like Alyce.

  Flemming hits that point now. He jumps up and grips the collar of my shirt, body knuckled with anger. Today I’m every person who’s ever told him he’s stupid, that he won’t make it.

  ‘You don’t know anything, Faltrain,’ he shouts. ‘You don’t know me.’ He pulls his fist back and swings as hard as he can. I shift my head to the right just in time. His fist sings past my ear and he stumbles forwards onto the ground.

  He sits up and blinks. He looks empty, like the person who was holding him up a second ago walked out, and he has to wait for the person who’s taking over to arrive.

  He meant to hit me. If I’d been a second slower he’d have broken my nose. We both know that. I can see now how easy it was for Flemming and me to end up where we are. And how easy it would have been to end up somewhere different.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asks after a while.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You don’t know me, Faltrain,’ he says quietly, staring at his fists.

  But I do. Because for the first time, I think I know myself.

  Mum and Dad are sitting at the kitchen table when I get home, their hands locked together. ‘Oh thank God,’ Mum says. ‘Were you with Martin?’

  ‘No. Coach told me he’s missing.’

  ‘Mr Knight called. He’s out of his mind with worry. Did Martin tell you where he was going?’

  ‘No. Did you say anything about what I did, about the letter?’

  ‘We had to, Gracie. The police need to know everything,’ Mum answers.

  ‘Was Mr Knight mad?’

  ‘He’s in shock, love. I said we’d take you over as soon as you came home, so you can tell him and the police what you know.’

  Everything’s unravelling tonight. I could tell you it’s like a ball of wool or string, or something. But I think a better description would be to say that everything’s unravelling like Gracie Faltrain’s life. I’m back at the beginning of the end of the last season. Again.

  There are more lights on in the house than I’ve ever seen before. It’s like Mr Knight’s worried that Martin will forget where he lives and need some reminding. ‘Come in, love,’ he says when he opens the door. He shakes Mum and Dad’s hands and thanks them for coming.

  Even though I’ve never met Mrs Knight, I always thought Martin was more like her than like his dad. I guess that was because Martin was always telling me stuff she’d said about soccer, about life, and he always seemed to be trying to do what she told him. All those things she said don’t add up to much, though. ‘Live like you play, Marty. Everyone’s desperate for something. You become who you set out to be, Marty.’ She left him with a whole life to live and a bunch of sayings to work out how to do it. Mr Knight did the rest.

  He’s polite to me and I don’t understand why. If someone had forced Martin out of my life I’d be angry. I’d shout. Punch. Kick. They wouldn’t deserve anything else. He takes my jacket and shows me into the lounge.

  ‘Gracie, Bill, Helen, this is Constable Rick Blythe. Gracie is Martin’s best friend.’

  Was, I think as I nod at Mr Blythe.

  ‘I was just saying, I can take down any information that you have, and circulate a description, but there’s not a lot we can do. Martin’s almost eighteen. All the evidence suggests that he has run away.’ He flips open a notebook. ‘Do you know what happened to Martin, Gracie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘Did he say anything to you about where he might be going?’

  ‘We weren’t speaking. He was angry at me because . . .’ I take a quick glance at Mr Knight. ‘I tried to look for his mum and he didn’t want me to.’

  ‘Did you find her?’

  ‘She sent a letter. At least I think it was her. Martin kept it.’

  ‘Is it possible that he would try to make contact?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He was angry at me because he didn’t want to have anything to do with her.’

  ‘Still, it’s worth checking. Did the letter have a number or an address?’

  ‘It did, but I didn’t keep a copy.’

  ‘Maybe the paper . . .’ Mr Knight says, his eyes hopeful.

  ‘They won’t have read the replies; just forwarded them on. We can try, though. I take it you don’t have contact with your ex-wife, Mr Knight?’

  ‘I haven’t heard from her since the day she left. I have no idea how to find her.’

  ‘I do,’ Mum says. ‘I read the letter, and took down the number.’ She turns to me. ‘Call it instinct, Gracie. I had a feeling you might need a little help.’

  Call it instinct. Call it Helen Faltrain. Call it anything you like. Just call that woman.

  Mr Knight puts his head in his hands after the policeman leaves. I don’t say sorry, because it’s such a tiny word and it won’t be big enough to cover the hole I’ve made.

  ‘I tried to find her, too, after she left,’ he says after a while. ‘Martin was still a kid. She didn’t want to be found then, I guess.’ There’s not enough voice in him to make more than a whisper. I want him to get angry, to tell me I’m stupid, that it’s my fault Martin’s gone, so that everything is out in the open and I can feel better. But he doesn’t.

  I look around the lounge. The couch is new. The chairs are as well. I was with Martin when the family picked them out. I’d forgotten about that day until now. Karen looked like we were all going on a holiday when we got in the car. She was so happy, and I thought it was sad that something so small could make her that excited.

  But I guess the couch and chairs were a sign that they were all together, and planning on staying that way for a while. A kind of promise from her dad. The rest of the place looks tired and old. It probably hasn’t changed all that much since Mrs Knight left.

  Karen must have felt so happy after the Championships because her dad started moving through the water, wading forwards. And then I come along and sink him and she loses it all again. For everyone’s sake, I wish I could say something to hold Mr Knight’s head above the current. I can see now that he only has the energy to float, and that Martin leaving will be too heavy for hi
m.

  ‘Anyone want a cup of tea?’ I ask. They all nod, and I go into the kitchen for some air, some space from the things I’ve done. I’m dunking the last tea bag when I hear a chair pull out behind me. Karen is sitting, watching me, her head resting on her hands. Her eyes seem bigger today. Big enough to get lost in. ‘Is he coming back, Gracie?’ she asks.

  I stop dunking. I know I should answer, but I can’t, because I keep thinking about who she reminds me of, with those sad, wide eyes, and her small voice.

  ‘Gracie?’

  She’s Martin. All those years ago. Before I knew him. And just like that I step right into his life, into this kitchen with the faded yellow paint on the walls and the table full of cuts and knocks. I imagine him coming home that day, staring at her apron, hanging on the back of the door, still smelling of her, still full of her shape. I see Martin, a kid like Karen, with his head resting in his hands. ‘Is she coming home, Dad?’

  ‘I don’t know, Karen,’ I say. ‘I hope so.’

  People’s lives shouldn’t loop like this. It’s not fair. And I’m the one who set the escalator on go.

  ‘You didn’t make this mess,’ Mr Knight says before we leave. ‘It was here long before you arrived.’ Maybe, but I made it worse. And somewhere Martin is hurting because of it.

  ‘Why were you so late tonight?’ Dad asks while we’re driving home.

  ‘I got into a fight. With Andrew Flemming.’

  ‘A fight?’ Dad spins around and checks for damage.

  ‘It wasn’t his fault. I started it.’

  ‘Why, baby?’

  I finally let myself cry. ‘Because if I get what I deserve, then maybe Martin will come back.’

  ‘Oh, Gracie. Haven’t you learnt by now?’ Mum asks. ‘No one deserves to be hit. Whatever you’ve done, you don’t ever deserve to be hit.’

  All night I think about Martin’s dad. I keep wondering what he’ll say to his ex-wife if they speak. I can’t think of a sentence long enough that will fill the time she left.

  I don’t want to leave all that space between me and the people I love. I can’t talk to Martin, but at least I can try to fix things with Alyce. I can surrender my dignity and tell Jane that I need her, that her friendship is too important to throw away without even trying to save it.