‘I’m trying to get this finished off before class, that’s all.’ Another lie.
‘You’ve been hiding all day. You really don’t want to risk hearing anything, do you?’ He saw straight through me and my lies.
‘No. I don’t. Sorry, I can’t. You understand, don’t you?’
‘As crappy as it is, yeah I do. I’m not sure they do, though.’ He nodded toward the table. ‘They’re all wondering why you’re sitting over here on your own in what, they’ve said, is a typical Lucy tactic of avoidance, getting a wet bum from the soggy grass too.’
‘Crap. I am too.’ We’d come to that time of year where no matter the hour or how much the sun shone, everything remained wet. Tyler helped me up and I tried in vain to wipe the moisture off my pants.
I placed my hand on Tyler’s arm. ‘How you doing? You okay?’
‘Not really.’ He shifted his feet, casting his eyes down.
‘Oh.’ I didn’t know what to say; I couldn’t ask for details – I didn’t want them. I cared, but I simply couldn’t do anything for him – as useless as a band-aid on a bullet wound. ‘Sorry, Tyler.’ I dropped my hand from his arm and, like a traitor, wished to be anywhere else but beside him.
‘Yeah. Me too.’
I grew increasingly scared. The what-ifs haunted me from a different angle this time. What if I lost Tyler?
I spent Monday and Tuesday afternoon at the shelter, helping Patty so I wouldn’t have time to think of the crash. It didn’t work, and on Tuesday night I dreamed of the plane crash again.
My heart slammed into my chest. A flurry of activity surrounded me as flight attendants rushed to lock trays into place and return potential missiles safely behind locked doors. Only one door stood between me and Tyler’s dad.
I wanted to hurl, but instead I swallowed back my unease for what lay ahead.
The plane pitched downward; it had already begun.
I unnecessarily ducked out of the way as a flight attendant reached above me – I was invisible. I fell forward and hit my head on the metal cupboards overhead. Then, with unsteady feet, I stumbled with the slope of the plane to the door leading to the cockpit. My hand trembled as my fingers clutched the doorknob, and as it turned, the door flew forward and I tumbled into the cockpit with a scream. I landed heavily into an ungraceful pile on the floor.
‘Oh God, my leg! Friggin’ hell. That hurts.’
No one noticed my sudden arrival or my obvious agony, my leg sat twisted at an odd angle. I didn’t move from where I’d landed, but I managed to brace my arms behind me and pushed myself into a half-sitting position. I looked straight across at Tyler’s dad and recognised him immediately. It could’ve been Tyler twenty years from now. Beside him, directly in front of me, another pilot with Ken-doll hair, far too clean and shiny, worked in a state of panic. He had a young voice, full of inexperience and maybe a touch of fear. They threw words around, words that made little sense to me.
‘Altitude data isn’t working.’
‘Disable the autopilot.’
They were controlled, swivelling in their seats to administer some sort of operation.
The plane pitched up, and my body slammed into the back of the cockpit door.
I woke with an overwhelming sense of failure. All those people died, their lives over, and I’d woken in my bed ready to start a new day, all the while avoiding the truth that might save them. It felt wrong, and the desire to do something about it surged. I slammed my fist against the wall. No. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I’d rather watch them die ten thousand times than lose Tyler.
I was being more selfish than I’d ever been in my life, because this plan, to keep him here, prevented him from truly being happy. He’d have his dad back, and his mum would be whole again. Regardless of what he said to me, they were his family, I wasn’t. He could live without little ol’ me, but would he ever be fine again without his dad?
It went against every instinct to make others happy. I heard Granny Tess’s voice in my head, her warning not to use the dreams for selfish acts. But this was different. I was being selfish by preventing a dream. Surely nothing was wrong with keeping things how they were?
Tyler meant everything to me. I had Granny Tess, and she understood what I lived with, but without Tyler, who would I be? I didn’t want to return to the person I’d been before he made me a better version.
He’d shown me how to dream good dreams, not only at night, but in reality too. I dreamed of a future where I didn’t have to hide from the world, and I dreamed of a future with him. This selfishness would only be temporary but felt like a necessary stance to take, because there was no way in hell I’d be giving him up without a fight. En garde.
*****
We walked silently beside each other, heading inside to find a table, the others not far behind. It had been a fun morning of gliding down the mountain together, but boarding was a silent sport, and most chatter went on inside your own head – easy to pretend everything was normal when we didn’t have to speak.
The week had left my body aching from a strain so taut, not even a run could ease it. I’d become jumpy and paranoid whenever anyone spoke to me. I worked on Thursday and Friday night, again hoping the busyness would distract me from my thoughts. But all it did was give me a different place to think, and on Friday night I was there again, in the cockpit, and then in seat 41H as the plane went down.
I missed Tyler. Missed seeing him, missed being with him, so when Max asked if I’d be joining them on Saturday on the mountain, I remembered his promise that he wouldn’t say anything, and said yes.
But now we were alone, and without the shield of goggles, gloves, and beanies, we were exposed.
‘Are you going to talk to me at all today?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean? I’ve talked to you.’
‘You know what I mean. You’re running away, and I haven’t even given you any reason to.’
‘Yes, you have. You know and I don’t.’ I stopped and turned to him.
‘So you are not talking to me on purpose. If you don’t talk, I won’t talk, is that it? Lucy, I haven’t given you any reason not to trust that I’ll keep my promise. What happened to our agreed trust until proven otherwise?’
‘That’s not safe in this situation and you know it. It’s probably not safe in any situation, actually. Ever see Silence of the Lambs?’
‘I am not Hannibal Lecter.’ He started to laugh, and the fight in me wavered. I walked through the doors into the crowded cafeteria and spotted a table.
I had to raise my voice to be heard over the din. ‘I’m talking Buffalo Bill. The guy who lures women into his truck because they have no reason not to trust him.’
‘I’m not luring you into a trap, Lucy, even though every part of me wants to talk to you about this, I wouldn’t do it, not when I know how important it is not to. And if you think I would, then we’re in big trouble.’
‘I don’t think that, Tyler. I do trust you, I’m just afraid,’ I said, slumping at the table. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you.’
Tyler dropped into a seat opposite me, waiting for me to continue.
‘You remember the dream in Sydney, when you were surfing and I left?’
‘Yeah?’ He watched me intently.
‘I didn’t just go. I ended up back on the plane again. And then Sunday night when we…you, heard the news I dreamed of it again. Then again on Tuesday and again last night. That’s six times.’ My eyes pricked with the fear and sadness of what that meant, and my voice caught. ‘I’m afraid I’ll keep dreaming it until I change it. Like that’s what’s meant to be.’
His eyes moistened, and he blinked back his own heartache. ‘You really think you’ll change it if you know?’
‘I don’t know. But just in case, I need to lay low while the world is frantic over the story. Will you let me do that?’
‘Of course I will,’ he said. ‘But what do I do in the meantime? Pretend you’re not here? Pretend there isn’t so
meone who will make me feel better just by being there? Act like everything’s normal?’
I couldn’t help but notice the sadness and maybe a touch of bitterness in his words. I wished I could take away his pain. I wanted to be the person he needed and deserved – I couldn’t. I was afraid my voice would tremble when I spoke, but I had to answer him.
‘Yes.’ The word came out soft, painful.
I jumped when Sean dumped his gloves on the table. ‘What got into you two?’
‘Shut up, Sean.’ I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to hear or see his gratification that things in paradise had gone to ruin.
Across the table, the unmistakable hurt in Tyler’s eyes sliced through me like a barb. I wanted to rip it out, to take it back, but it was stuck. Like the fish hook I caught in my leg as a child: it would be equally as painful to remove it, but eventually it had to come out – it couldn’t stay there forever.
— 30 —
‘Is everything okay with you and Tyler?’ Max cornered me as I arrived at school the following Tuesday.
‘Yeah,’ I said, slowly turning toward her in time to catch the disbelief in her eyes. ‘No, it is,’ I found a fake smile to go with my fake words. ‘I’m going through a little something right now; it’ll be all right soon. Nothing to worry about.’ My smile turned into a half-genuine one. I truly believed everything would be okay with a bit more time.
‘Why do you insist on pushing everyone away right when it seems you need them the most?’ she asked.
‘I don’t push you all away.’
‘You sure about that? You’re not the one left wondering when your friend’ll be back,’ Max said with more than a hint of hurt in her voice at my inconsistent, but persistent disappearing acts.
Where’d this come from? She knew me well enough to know my coping mechanism – I removed myself, always had. She’d seen it before, but I’d never noticed the effect it had on her.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said as we dodged the school crowd. ‘I don’t mean to hurt you. I need some time to work something out. You know me.’
‘I do know you.’ She frowned. ‘But does Tyler?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You distance yourself like this, and he might not be waiting around for you when you’ve made your way back to him. He’s been very quiet this last week, you both have. We know you like to go into hibernation occasionally, and you know, as much as we miss you and don’t understand it, we’ll still be there when you come back. We’ve known you a long time, we know what to expect, but you can’t assume everyone will accept it.’
‘Will accept me, you mean?’ I snapped.
‘That one aspect, yeah.’
‘Why not? I’d accept every part of him. Why is it too much to expect the same of him?’
Was it too much to assume he’d wait around, or had I been too blinded by the walls I’d placed around me to see clearly anymore? Regardless of what Max said, I was sure he’d wait for me, give me the space I needed.
I kept my music in my ears during my runs, at home, and out of class – and even in class if I could get away with it. My world had shrunk to the size of the space between my ears. It was the best form of protection I could come up with, and I didn’t care what anyone thought. It was a temporary fix to what could be a permanent problem. A problem I wouldn’t let happen.
I needed Tyler more than I’d needed anything in my life. I missed him, but I wished he could be more understanding about why I needed to keep to myself, why I had to avoid the knowing. He knew of my ability; I thought he’d want to protect us as much as I did. I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t on my side, and the lack of understanding began to form a big wedge of distrust between us.
Our world had never been filled with so much awkward, silent avoiding, both with him and everyone else. They all sensed something was up; you’d have to be deaf and blind not to feel the tension. Still, they pretended nothing had changed, because no one had said otherwise, but each day Tyler would be up one end of the table, me up the other. He, with a fake ‘all’s-cool’ smile on his face, me with earphones in as I pretended to keep busy – no one was fooled. I wished I could say it didn’t ache as much as it did. Every now and then we’d share a smile – the sad kind, where your mouth said smile and your eyes said cry. Every time I looked into his eyes I’d remember how much I missed him, how much we’d shared. We didn’t talk, we barely spoke at all anymore, we’d become a semblance of what we’d once been. Each time I saw the pain in his eyes I had to remind myself of what could be lost so I wasn’t seized by the enormously confronting fear that I’d made a huge mistake.
I’d been so confident in my decision that this was the only way through the shifting sand, but as Tyler distanced himself, my certainty wavered.
It had been two weeks since the news broke. Alone in my room at the end of another lonely day of avoidance, I wished I could be at work, so I wouldn’t have to think about how much I missed Tyler, and how much I’d messed things up. I’d begged Laurie for an extra shift, but she had enough staff on, and I’d already had heaps of extra hours recently. I considered sending Tyler a text, to tell him I missed him, but I wasn’t sure I had the right to. I didn’t know what to do. I lay on my bed, absently examining the paint on the wall. Maybe I could just lay here and infinitely feel sorry for myself.
Or maybe not.
A soft, unfamiliar tap on the door alerted me to the fact that someone other than Mum stood on the other side of it. I drew in a breath as I swung the door open to find Tyler there, and had to hold myself back so I didn’t leap into his arms.
‘Can I come in?’ he said, shifting nervously on his feet.
‘Um, yeah, of course.’ I held the door open and he stepped into the room, stunned. My heart beat a nervous, unsettling beat. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yeah, I just needed to see you.’
‘I haven’t gone anywhere,’ I said softly.
‘Are you sure?’ His eyes glazed with tears.
The accusation that I hadn’t been there for him winded me like a kick in the guts. Except it wasn’t an accusation – I hadn’t.
‘I’m sorry, Tyler.’ We sat on the edge of the bed, leaving enough room for a third person between us. He didn’t say anything.
I broke the silence. ‘How are you? How’s your mum?’
‘Are you sure you wanna know?’ he asked with more of a questioning tone than an accusatory one. He was genuinely unsure if he was allowed to speak. I cringed inside. What a heartless bitch I must’ve seemed. Had I ruined something amazing by shutting him out? Had I ruined us in an attempt to save us?
‘Yes. I’d like to know how you are. I want to know you’re okay.’
‘But you don’t wanna talk about it, about that?’
‘No.’ My eyes flickered to the bedspread between us.
‘Do you realise that by you not knowing, I can’t be okay. I can’t share with you how I’m feeling because I can’t say what I need to. You’ll stop me before I start, and it’s like I’m keeping something huge from you. Like there’s a big secret between us, but I never put it there, and I really don’t want it there.’
‘If that secret doesn’t stay where it is, then you won’t stay here.’ My eyes filled with tears, begging him to understand.
‘What’s the point of being here if you keep pushing me away?’
‘It’s only for a little while; it won’t be like this forever. Eventually, people won’t want to talk about it anymore.’
‘You think it’s only some news story for me? This is my life. It’s my dad we’re talking about. It won’t ever be something I don’t want to talk about. You can’t have me when you want me, then push me away when you don’t. I’ve always been there for you, but now that I need someone, you shut the door in my face.’ He spat the words out, like a dragon breathing fire, and the heat burned. Suffocating shame engulfed me.
‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked, afraid of the answer.
‘I w
ant you to know.’
‘Do you know what you’re asking? If I know, I might change it, and then you’ll be gone.’
‘You said might. With the might, comes a might not, and I’m betting on the might not. It was a year ago. Maybe that’s too long. I can’t live like this. I lost my dad, I can’t lose you too.’
‘You haven’t lost me, I’m still here.’
‘But you’re not. You’re hiding away behind your earphones, and I’m afraid you’ll never come out. I may as well not even be here.’ I could hear the pain on his quivering voice.
‘Don’t say that. You being here is the best thing that ever happened to me. Even if it’s not quite the same at the moment, it’s still better than the alternative.’
‘Really? You’re not the one being pushed away.’ His words impaled me like a knife, and I grabbed hold of my stomach.
‘You’d rather not be here?’ I choked the words out, my voice cracking.
‘It hurts every time I see you and you walk away. Tell me you wouldn’t prefer to escape that pain.’
‘Of course I would. But I don’t get a choice. I’m the one who’ll be left behind. If you’re not here, you’ll get to go on and live your life, you won’t even remember me. But I’ll still be here, alone. You’ll be gone, ripped away in a single moment, but every wonderful, painful memory will stay right beside me. How am I supposed to live like that?’ Tears dropped onto my cheeks, and I blinked to see Tyler’s own moist eyes. ‘I would rather have you here and never speak to you again than lose you so completely without a trace.’
Tyler pulled me into his arms, right where I needed to be, and I sobbed. How could I lose this? This warmth, this love – him. Was it possible I’d already lost him, though? If we never spoke, what chance did we have of maintaining this closeness?
And just like that, I understood it perfectly.
I’d retreated, and without the sharing of every aspect of our lives, he’d pulled away too, and the intimacy had gone. We’d never get it back as long as I kept him at arm’s length. As always he made perfect sense. We couldn’t live like this, and I had to do something about it.
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