Making my way down the sand, it looks like any regular day here. The Suck-ups on one side, George and Maddy (I’ll deal with her later) somewhere in the middle, and the Cedars – my real destination – on the other side, talking over each other in a crazy-loud fusion of English and Arabic.
Avoiding the eye contact of anyone on the sand, I keep my stare towards the red gum and my feet marching into unfamiliar territory. I’ve maybe only ever been over here once or twice, to scab some coin from Sufia. Or a lift home with her maybe.
The first (and probably only) person to recognise me is Ricky P. ‘Cuzzzzie!’ he shouts, wrapping his big arm around my shoulders. I hope he’s not my cousin. Because that would also make him Sufia’s cousin and that would be gross. ‘What’s doing, Layla?’
Sufia turns around at hearing my name; she’s been in D & M mode with her best friend, Aisha. Who may or may not be an actual cousin.
I wriggle out of Ricky P’s hold. ‘Hey, are you ignoring me?’
She abandons Aisha and puts her pretend-confused face on. ‘What? As if. Come over here.’ She says that last bit quietly and pulls me off to the side of the group.
‘What have they got planned, Sufia? How bad is it? Imogen said —’
‘Shhh . . . I don’t want them to think I tell you anything.’
‘Why? ’Cause I’m an outsider?’
‘Well, you don’t exactly act like an insider, do you, cuz?’
I don’t feel like that’s entirely my fault. The Cedars have never seen me as one of them. I never even stood a chance. They’ll always see me as the traitor who celebrates Christmas with her other family. Or the dope who can’t put a sentence of Arabic together without stuffing it up and accidentally calling someone a goat.
‘Can you let me in on this one . . . please?’
‘Okay, fine,’ she says, widening her eyes at me in an exaggerated way. ‘I made it up.’
‘To Imogen? You just made it up about there being some retaliation plan?’
She nods. I can never tell when Sufia is lying because she’s such a pro at it. Just ask her parents.
‘Why would you do that?’ I ask.
‘I’m just doing my part in this shit fight. What are you doing about it?’
I feel awkward standing here. And not because we both know I haven’t done a single thing about it. But because I know Maddy and George and everyone else on the beach can see me ‘hanging out’ at the Cedar base camp. There’s a good view from this camp, though. An overview of the whole beach pretty much – from the small dirt carpark behind the kiosk to the side of the boatshed and the greenish of the river beyond.
Sufia insists we stop talking now (‘I have a heatstroke headache’) and invites me to sit. ‘It’ll be good for you,’ she says. ‘To hang with us for a change.’ But I politely decline. I think there’s somewhere else I need to be.
Maddy can see me walking over. Despite the fact she has sunnies on, I know she can see me clearly. Even though she’s pretending not to. George puts on her sunnies, as if she’s slipping on an invisibility shield. Poor George. I know she feels even more uncomfortable than I do.
I have two options here, I realise, while I’m taking my time across the sand. I can try again. I can try to make her understand my feelings about Daniel and why she should be feeling them, too. Or I can let it go. I can let it not be such an issue that she’s choosing to swap saliva with a coward. But can I really?
Time’s up. I plonk myself down on the end of George’s towel, no decision made.
‘They haven’t sent you over here as a mole, have they?’
If this was me and Maddy a few weeks ago, I would laugh (mainly because I can’t imagine the Cedar Army ever choosing me as their trusted mole). But the me and Maddy of today is different. She’s different. There’s slightly more spite in her words.
‘I doubt you’d give me any intel, anyway,’ I say.
‘I’m not angry, you know,’ Maddy snaps, everything about her voice suggesting otherwise. ‘And neither is Daniel. He should be pissed at you for attacking us the other day, but he’s not. Because that’s the kind of guy he is.’
I have to press all my teeth together really hard inside my mouth to stop from blurting out what kind of guy I think he really is. Again.
Maddy is looking at me, her sunnies creating a safe barrier between us. ‘You don’t like him? Your problem, L. I don’t tell you that you shouldn’t be wasting your time on a guy who has a girlfriend somewhere, do I?’
Well, she kind of just did. And Referee George can see it’s no longer just words I’m trying to hold in. ‘Alright,’ she says, sitting up on her towel. ‘How about everyone just agrees that we keep conversations girls only . . . for a while. No talk about anyone of the male variety, no dirty kissing of boys in the dirty river in front of each other, no cancelling of plans because of guys, either. What we don’t see can’t hurt us. Yeah?’
‘So, let’s all just play pretend?’ I ask.
‘Sounds good to me,’ says Maddy.
It doesn’t sound good to me. It sounds like the easy, uncomplicated, rubbish option that everyone seems to be choosing lately. The ‘let’s just not look at it so that it’s not real’ option. And it’s crap that George, of all people, is suggesting we join the club.
Maddy and George are both waiting for me to respond.
I look around us, at all the pieces of this game, at the players. Carina is up by the entrance to the beach, eagerly chatting to a passing-by Mr Hyman, who looks like he’s just trying to walk his dog. She can’t even stop being a suck-up in the school holidays. Jordan is leaning on the empty kiosk counter with his phone stuck to his ear. Laughing. Probably his girlfriend. Sufia is now waist-deep in the river, whispering to Aisha behind one hand. Not that she needs to bother; no one else in the river is paying the slightest bit of attention to her, anyway.
‘Fine,’ I say reluctantly. I’m out of fight for today.
We’ve broken a record, Mum tells Aunty Kath. The longest number of consecutive days above forty degrees, she says. ‘Of course, everyone in the office is using up sickies because of it.’
Mum and Aunty Kath are sitting at the dining table with a cup of tea and slice of carrot cake each. Given it’s mid-morning on a Thursday, Mum has clearly chucked a sickie, too.
The smell of freshly baked carrot cake is filling the whole house. My favourite. It’s been ages since Mum has done any baking. I’ve already eaten two fat slices, and I’m too lazy, hot and full to get off this lounge now.
‘I think it’s making everyone go crazy, you know,’ Mum continues. Aunty Kath is quietly eating her cake. She does everything quietly, especially around Mum. She never had any kids to bring out the shout in her, and Tayta once claimed that it’s outrageous my mum’s sister never tried to get married. ‘The frozen food aisle at Woolies is just ridiculous, what with everyone who doesn’t have air-con using it to try to keep cool. The kids who work at those checkouts are so cranky they’re forgetting to scan things. And you know what I saw on one of those morning shows the other day? Apparently when the temps go up, so do crime rates! That would explain those Lebanese kids letting off dangerous bungers down at the river at all hours of the night and sending a girl to hospital.’
Has Mum forgotten I’m here? I peer up over the back of the lounge. ‘How do you know about the bungers?’ I never told her that’s what Daniel used. And she hasn’t hinted she knows about it until now.
Mum quickly gets up from her chair and snatches away their plates, while Aunty Kath still has her fork in her mouth. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Mum is hurriedly washing up the plates in the kitchen sink. ‘It was Imogen Meyer’s younger sister, wasn’t it? Yes, I saw her mum – what’s her name again? – at the fruit shop.’
‘You saw Mrs Meyer? Who told you that some Lebanese kids had let off the bungers that hurt Shontel?’
‘Something like that. It doesn’t matter who said what.’ She pivots around to face us, drying her hands on a floral tea towel
.
This has got me off the lounge. ‘It matters a lot actually, Mum. That’s not even what happened! You don’t even know —’
‘Layla, don’t you go getting involved.’ She’s pointing her finger in my direction now as Aunty Kath squeezes through to the sink, fork in hand. ‘If they want to be silly, you stay right out of it.’
Silly. I think it’s got a bit more out of hand than silly. Silly boys, silly girls, silly Lebs . . . silly me.
‘If that’s what the parents all think, then that’s . . . that’s really shit.’
Mum shakes her head and starts packing away the leftover cake in a Tupperware container.
Aunty Kath brushes past me. ‘No Chinese whisper is ever what it seems, is it?’ she says softly, in an attempt to dodge Mum’s ears. ‘If you feel there’s something worth proving right, then good for you.’
I wish my bed was in the frozen food aisle. Maybe I’d have better luck sleeping because I wouldn’t be stuck in a bedroom that’s been over forty degrees for the most consecutive days I can ever remember. The worst part is, I have nothing to do but think about all the lies that have been told lately. Including my own.
Mum opens my door, without knocking, and asks me if there’s something I need to talk about before she goes to bed. I add to the lies and say no. Because what’s the point? She won’t listen to the truth, she’ll just blame the Cedars because that’s what comes naturally. Then she’ll tell me it has nothing to do with me, when what she doesn’t understand is that it has everything to do with me.
She leaves my room a bit huffy. I guess I’m not exactly being friendly. She hates that about me, that I can turn the friendliness on and off so quickly. I once heard her telling Dad, a bazillion years ago, that I had more mood swings in a day than a bird has feathers. ‘It’s called teenage life,’ he’d said. I miss him being here to defend me.
I’m not the only person who needs defending right now, though. There’s a whole group of people copping everyone’s unfriendliness on the riverbank every day. Well, even more unfriendliness than usual. I know they don’t care, but I do. Someone has to.
I realise as I hear Mum trudging down the hall to the bathroom – where she’ll spend a decent half an hour applying under-eye cream – that I’ve been lacking in friendly encounters myself. From Imogen and Carina to Maddy and Sufia, I’ve become just like the Cedars. Getting sucked in to drama I didn’t start, getting blamed for having an opinion, getting too fired up.
But would changing my mood help any of it?
Just maybe, though, there is one person I can try being friendly to.
CHAPTER 6
Jordan is stacking plastic milk crates outside the kiosk. I watch him carry them for about three minutes before I ditch the cringey silence that exists today between Maddy, George and me.
‘Sooooo, can I get your opinion on something?’
Stack, stack, stack.
‘Sure you want my opinion? If it’s about dresses or hair colour, I’m going to be pretty useless,’ he says, wiping his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand.
I wonder if his girlfriend asks for his opinion on dresses and hair colour.
‘If it’s anything else, fire away.’
‘It’s about Daniel Mason-Johnson. Remember the guy I was telling you about the other day? Coordinator of the bunger attack and all that . . .’
‘Ahhhh, you’re not trying to cut your mate’s grass, are you?’
Stack, stack.
‘Oh my God, no way! Ew. No thanks.’
Jordan laughs at what he clearly judges to be an over-the-top reaction.
‘No, I mean more along the lines of . . . trying to get him to come forward. Maybe. Just getting him to hear me out, anyway.’ Saying it out loud, I realise how hopeless it sounds.
‘You could.’
‘Do you reckon he’d even listen?’
‘I don’t know the guy, but it’s worth a shot. As long as you keep your cool this time, LK,’ he says with a wink.
Stack.
‘Ugh. I feel like I lose either way, to be honest.’ I lean up against the kiosk doorway.
Out of crates, Jordan stands with his hands on his hips. ‘Oh, yeah, how do you figure that?’
‘Well, if I do try convincing him, I’m going to have Maddy and a bunch of other people unimpressed with me. And if I don’t get through to him, I’ve accomplished nothing to help the Cedars and I’ll be in their bad books. Forever most likely. They’re good at holding grudges.’
‘Hmm, and you should care about what anyone else thinks about you because . . .’
‘Because I’m already cursed with the fact I have to live here with these people! I don’t even know if evil-eye curses can get worse. Probably. Anyway, there’s this stupid trivia night at the YMCA tonight – some of the mums have organised it to “keep us out of trouble” in light of a recent event – I figure if he’s there, which he probably will be because all our parents are making us go, then I can pull him aside. Or something. You should come too, by the way . . . I mean, if no one has let you know about it yet . . . and like, you want to.’ I just blurt it out. My cheeks just as quickly respond to the blurting.
‘Cool.’ He nods. ‘Count me in.’
‘I haven’t been here since that time I pashed Sam Fitzpatrick, over in that corner!’ Maddy excitedly remembers, pointing to the side doors.
We haven’t been in here since our Blue Light disco days, back in Year Ten, when Maddy pashed everyone and I pashed no one. Walking in to the YMCA tonight makes me feel as tense as I did then. The pressure of the pash. I’d be able to feel it in my bones. Once again, the thought of talking to a boy is causing the tension to peak at an all-time high. I can’t even ask Maddy if Daniel is going to be here, thanks to our dumb pact.
‘Let’s check our team.’ George runs her finger along the sheet of names resting on a fold-up table just inside the entrance. ‘Uh-oh.’ She looks up at Maddy and me. ‘They’ve split us up.’
Of course they have. They probably assume if we’re not sitting with our friends that we’ll take this seriously and not muck around. This is basically our parents’ opportunity to school us as if they’re our teachers. When I look out into the hall, I see they’ve even invited our teachers. Miss Silverio, Mr Hyman and Mrs Wiley are gathered around one of the rectangular tables in nerdy teacher talk (I’m guessing) with my mum in very close proximity.
That would be the worst table to be stuck on, I think, until George breaks it to me: I’ve been put on Carina Campbell’s team. Which is destined to be the most suck-uppy of all the teams.
We say our see ya laters (Maddy also throws in an, ‘Oh my God, L, is your mum flirting with Mr Hyman?’), then head to our designated tables at the request of Mrs Meyer on the roving microphone. I’m not surprised she’s put herself up for Trivia Queen; she loves an audience.
‘Welcome, everyone!’ she says, in her best official voice. ‘Please find your tables quickly, so we can get started with our first round . . .’
Mrs Meyer rattles off the rules (there seem to be a lot of them), while I frantically scan the hall. Imogen, but no Shontel. My mum is still mingling with the teacher trio. A lack of Cedars, not that I had expected any of them to turn up. No Jordan yet, either. Daniel Mason-Johnson, on the same team as his parents.
Carina is psst-ing at me from across our table. ‘Layla, what are your strengths?’
My strengths? Tonight, I hope it’s the power of persuasion. ‘Ah, movies, I guess.’
Carina does a mental check, seems good with it, and moves on to the next person on the table. I can’t even see who is sitting next to me, across from me, around me; my eyes are fixed in one direction. And unlucky for Team Captain Carina, my concentration is probably not going to shift from it anytime during this round.
The first question is about World War One. A mass groan ripples throughout the hall.
My first instinct is to fake a sudden onset of diarrhoea. But it feels too early in the game, and I don’
t know that Carina will fall for it. Instead, I watch Daniel and his mum discuss what possible date the Armistice between the allies and Germany could have been signed. Well, she discusses it while he looks around for something to stab himself in the eye with. When Mrs Meyer calls for answers to be locked in, Daniel makes a break for it, heading towards the bathrooms out in the foyer.
I guess we’re going with first instincts. ‘Just going to the bathroom,’ I mouth to Carina, patting my tummy. I hope she doesn’t mistake it for a pregnancy-related emergency. Or see my face break out in a rash of lies. Not that it’s that much of a lie, when I do genuinely feel sick. This may not be the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, but the people of this suburb have their own armistice that needs to be signed. And my gut is not coping very well with it.
I catch up to Daniel just as he’s pushing open the door to the male toilets.
‘Hey . . .’
He swivels around, letting go of the door. ‘Look, I don’t want to get involved in whatever girl fight you and Maddy —’
‘Yeah, I don’t want you to, either,’ I say, trying to find the right (non-psycho) words. It repulses me to be this polite to him. ‘But there is something . . . something that I kind of think you should do. I mean, I’m not trying to tell you to, but just . . . there is something you can do.’
The door swings back into place. ‘About what?’
‘About the Cedars. About how the cops believe it’s them, when . . . when it was you.’
His face quickly morphs from ‘uneasy’ to ‘not bothered’. ‘I don’t see what the big deal is. They’re not actually charging anyone. It’s not like it can be pinned on any of them. So, it’ll just be an unsolved crime, yeah?’
‘You’re right, it can’t be pinned on any of them. But it still smudges their reputation, doesn’t it? Like, a black question mark hanging over their heads that won’t ever go away.’
Daniel shrugs one shoulder up to his ear, as if he’s taking care of an itch. The uneasy face is back.
Half My Luck Page 5