This is How We Change the Ending

by Vikki Wakefield

  The card makes sense. The dog shit doesn’t, but I’m sick of worrying about Merrick and whatever makes him tick.

  I crawl out of bed at seven and tidy the kitchen instead.

  ‘Hey, bub,’ Nance says, sleepwalking to the table. ‘Did you wet the bed?’

  ‘No!’

  She laughs at my red face. ‘I didn’t mean it. It’s just something my mum used to say whenever I got up early.’

  Nance is always telling me things her mum used to say. She misses her a lot. Her parents live in a small town somewhere north, and they must be nice people because Nance has that way about her. I reckon she was the kind of kid who had a pony.

  Nance told me her parents don’t think much of Dec: her mum once said he has the manner of a man just passing through. But they always send the boys presents on their birthday and at Christmas, and they send me twenty dollars because I’m technically their step-grandson, although I’ve never met them. Apparently they’re waiting for Nance to come to her senses. It could be a long wait. And they’re wrong about Dec. He would never leave us.

  ‘Dec’s taking Jake to the races,’ Nance says.

  ‘When?’ If Nance said Dec was taking me to the races too, I reckon my jaw would dislocate. ‘Why?’

  ‘I told him he needed to do more things with the boys.’ She lifts her chin. Like me, she’s not sure yet if she has been brave or stupid. ‘So he’s taking Jake.’

  ‘Not Otis?’

  Her lips twist. ‘You know O wouldn’t settle.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’ll be fun for Jake.’

  Fun? Dec will be at the bar all day with his mates while Jake eats food off the floor and talks to strangers, and Nance will hold Otis until Jake comes home, because that’s all she can do when they’re separated—hold him tight while he thrashes, until he eventually falls asleep sucking on his bitten tongue. And Nance won’t figure out until much later that asking Dec to do something that wasn’t part of his plan costs all of us.

  I know. I was once the kid who ate food off the floor.

  I want to tell Nance all of this, but I don’t. She’s an optimist. She doesn’t know Dec like I do. I make us instant coffee instead.

  ‘You are ace, Nate McKee,’ she says, and takes a sip.

  There’s a squawk from the bedroom. Otis is awake and hungry.

  Dec yells, ‘Nance!’

  Nance puts down her mug, sighs, and pushes away from the table. I can count the hours of missed sleep by the lines around her mouth and eyes, and she makes the mistake of going to the toilet before she goes to pick up Otis. By the time she flushes, Otis has just about blown the roof off with his screaming.

  Dec staggers into the kitchen wearing only jocks, looking for a fight.

  ‘Fuck’s sake!’ he yells. He sees me, sitting with my hands wrapped around my mug, and no Nance. ‘Do something.’

  ‘Do what?’

  Nance shoots down the hall behind him. Otis goes quiet.

  Dec lights a smoke and repeatedly smacks his palm against his forehead, as if there’s a thought in there he can’t quite reach. ‘Is that shit gone?’ he says. ‘That shit better be gone.’

  I scurry off to make sure I cleaned up properly—and there’s a fresh pile on our verandah.

  I’m about three seconds from scooping it up and flinging it at Merrick’s window, when there’s a snuffling sound from above.

  I look up to see Kelly’s snout. She’s smiling.

  Mystery solved. Looks like the old dog has a new trick, although how Kelly could fit her rump between the rails to back one out, I will never know.

  Again, I borrow Clancy’s shovel and spread the poo around the base of Nance’s dying hydrangea. After that, I pick up Margie’s butts from the bottom of the stairs so O doesn’t eat them. I don’t know how she misses the paint tin on her balcony; after about a hundred thousand cigarettes she should be a crack shot.

  Inside the flat, Dec’s still yelling, so I look around for something else to do to avoid going inside.

  Merrick was right: I’m a pacifist. I’m not built to fight. I’m afraid all the time. If I was a few years older and she wasn’t already married to my old man, I would marry Nance. Not because I want to get jiggy with her or anything—I just love love her. She’s good. The boys are good. Nance and I deserve each other.

  School without Merrick and Brock Tuwy is almost bearable. I find myself humming in Science and daydreaming in English; I know I’m at least partly responsible for Merrick’s absence, but being hyper-vigilant takes energy and being invisible takes focus—it’s kind of nice to just be. Without Merrick.

  Forget safety in numbers. I’m safer on my own.

  I stare out the window. The sky is full of dirt.

  ‘If you know the answer, speak up,’ Mr Reid is saying. ‘Mr McKee? Thrill me with your acumen.’

  I’m not sure what the question was, but I think I know the answer.

  ‘Anthony Hopkins,’ I say.

  Mr Reid raises an eyebrow. That means he wants me to cite my references.

  ‘Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.’ I put on a Southern accent for a bonus point. ‘“Why do you think he removes their skins, Agent Starling? Thrill me with your acumen.”’

  The entire class laughs. My neck gets hot.

  Across from me, Ruby Ames whispers to Takesha Phillips. I can read her lips: He’s so fucking weird.

  I wait for Mr Reid to detonate. Instead he shushes the class and seems to drift off into a catatonic state.

  Ruby takes a chance and says it louder. ‘You’re weird, you know that?’

  I cross my eyes and let a bit of spit dribble from the corner of my mouth. I lean forward. ‘I know.’

  Ruby recoils.

  As a general rule, I try not to let the meanness in. It’s in my blood, I know, but I can keep it dormant if I try. Unlike herpes simplex, which is fancy for cold sores. I have one coming; I can feel its tingle on my bottom lip.

  It feels good to push back.

  Mr Reid keeps me after class again.

  ‘You like films?’ he asks.

  I shrug. ‘They’re all right.’

  ‘But not poetry. Or essays.’

  ‘I like essays.’

  ‘Then what’s your excuse? Let me have it.’

  I’m drawing a massive blank.

  ‘The mighty pen,’ he prompts. ‘The less mighty sword.’

  Shit. All the stuff with Mim and Merrick and Brock Tuwy—I genuinely forgot this time.

  ‘I like reading essays. I don’t like writing essays.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Screw it. What would Merrick say?

  ‘It takes time away from my personal development.’

  I think he’s going to ask me to elaborate, but he doesn’t. He laughs. At me. I hate that.

  ‘But you like films,’ he says when he’s finished laughing.

  ‘I thought we covered that.’

  ‘So you’re not entirely prejudiced against the arts.’

  ‘Art isn’t real.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘I dunno. Science. Politics.’

  ‘You don’t think art can be political? Isn’t art the stuff of life? Truth? Reality? Doesn’t art mirror, mimic, expose, question, illuminate—life? And you don’t think it’s real?’

  He’s wearing a self-satisfied expression. I’m his daily dose of validation.

  ‘I see where you’re going with this.’ I laugh too.

  ‘Where am I going?’

  ‘I checked out a few scenes from Dead Poets Society. “But only in their dreams can man be truly free. ’Twas always thus, and always thus will be.” Right?’

  He leans back in his chair and interlocks his fingers. ‘I think you’ve been flying under the radar for too long, Mr McKee.’

  ‘No flying here.’

  He nods slowly. ‘Okay, Nate. I have to assume things are tough for you at home.’

  Tough? Tough? He’s got the vernacular. He’s assimilated
.

  ‘I have to assume you wear a skirt on weekends.’

  ‘Whenever the fancy takes me,’ he says. ‘Not only weekends. So, you owe me an essay.’

  ‘You said any form I like.’

  ‘Essay. You need the practice.’

  He watches me go with his fingers laced together like a church and steeple.

  I felt mean, pushed back and nobody died, and I’ve decided to blow off detention. This day just keeps getting better.

  Nance and Dec are having dinner together in the kitchen while I play with the boys in the lounge room. Nance set candles on the table and everything, but Dec made her blow them out. He’s just doing time until he can head to the pub.

  Nance is disappointed—I can tell by the way she’s scraping her fork back and forth against the plate.

  We live in the dark most nights. Dec thinks the cops do flyovers in helicopters using heat sensors, so they can tell if there’s an unusual amount of light and heat coming from one source. His grow-room—my bedroom—is bright enough to be taken for Christ’s Second Coming if anyone should open the door. Green commerce, Dec calls it. He says his weed is for cannabis oil—medicine for people with MS and epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease—because the government is dragging its arse on passing legislation and people are suffering.

  Nance believes him. I’m not the only one who makes up alternative realities.

  I’m half-watching the news, sitting cross-legged on the carpet while I hand O different toys to keep him busy. Jake has wandered off somewhere. The carpet is brown and tacky with old stains and it smells like bong water. Nance tries to keep it clean but the boys are way ahead of her. Jake can be cruel—I’ve seen him tip drinks over just to see if Nance will react. Otis is the worst offender, but he’s just clumsy.

  ‘Nate,’ Otis says.

  He’s lying on his back, passing a plastic car from fist to fist.

  ‘Nate.’

  His hair is longer than Jake’s because he freaks out if you come near him with scissors.

  ‘Yeah, buddy.’

  He’s been saying my name for a few months now.

  ‘Nate.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s me.’

  It’s gone quiet in the kitchen.

  For some reason it pisses Dec off that Otis said my name before his. I’ve caught Nance repeating, ‘Dadadadada,’ trying to get him to say it, but he won’t.

  I catch hold of a slippery memory—my mum, whistling the theme from The Muppets, over and over. She’s ironing, barefooted. I’m small, so short my legs dangle because I can’t reach the footrest of the stool, and I’m blowing, making her laugh. There’s a cockatiel in a cage in a corner and it’s whistling back, off-key. She’s trying to teach us both. ‘Wet your lips and curl your tongue,’ she says.

  A chair scrapes in the kitchen and the image is gone.

  Otis rolls onto his stomach. ‘Nate!’

  I want to clap my hand across his mouth, but Dec’s standing in the doorway.

  ‘Yeah. Shh, mate. Look—a car. Car.’

  Dec grunts.

  ‘Nate!’

  Dec picks up his guitar, sits on the arm of a chair and plays a few riffs. Nance is doing the dishes, but she pauses to listen. Then he cuts to a familiar tune—one that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

  I used to think the beginning of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was about the most perfect piece of music ever written, but a thousand of Dec’s stoned renditions later, it makes me want to snip the strings with a pair of blunt scissors.

  I get up.

  Otis tries to flip over and can’t. ‘Naaaaate!’

  Dec closes his eyes and builds his tempo. We’re ruining his vibe, man.

  I scoop Otis up and carry him into the kitchen.

  Nance takes him from me, stacks him on her hip and keeps washing one-handed.

  ‘I can do the dishes,’ I say.

  ‘Nah, bub. You should go out.’

  ‘Nate!’ Dec’s calling me.

  ‘Go see Merrick,’ Nance says. ‘Go to Youth.’ Her tone is low with warning. She shoves me towards the back door.

  ‘Nate.’ Dec’s standing in the lounge-room doorway, holding a packed pipe and a lighter.

  ‘How many times, Dec? Can you please not smoke that shit around the kids,’ Nance says.

  ‘S’not for me.’ Dec holds out the pipe. ‘It’s for Nate.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Leave him alone,’ Nance says. ‘He doesn’t need it.’

  ‘He wants it, though. Don’t you, mate?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Pussy.’

  Nance sucks in her breath.

  Dec points the lighter at her. ‘Shut it, Nance.’

  Nance gives Otis a biscuit, carries him back to the lounge room and plonks him in his high chair. She comes back to finish the washing-up.

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ I say, looking at my feet. ‘You know that.’

  ‘It’s a rite of passage. You need to chill the fuck out.’ Dec pulls out a bar stool and pushes me into it. He flicks the lighter, sucks the flame into the bowl and blows smoke in my face. ‘Got it going for ya, no worries.’

  ‘Dec…’

  ‘I said shut it.’

  Dec’s watching me the way a cat watches a mortally wounded mouse. The shaking starts at my toes and builds; my knees are knocking together, my fingers are drumming on the counter, my teeth are chattering even though I’m not cold.

  ‘No.’

  He slouches, pushing his groin forward. ‘You think you’re too good for home-grown?’ He takes another toke and holds it in, speaking through wisps of smoke. ‘Too good for your old man?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This another one of my gifts you ain’t gonna bother to open?’ He smiles.

  I hold his stare. I don’t know how his teeth can be so white. Fight or flight—I can’t decide; I’m as tall as him now, but twenty kilos lighter. I’m bones; he’s ripped.

  Mum left.

  He stayed.

  I look away.

  Glass breaks.

  Nance yelps and Dec’s gaze slides over her. ‘Shit. What’ve you done?’

  She’s standing with her hand raised to the ceiling. Blood dribbles from her thumb to her elbow. ‘Cut myself.’

  I try to move, but Dec beats me to it.

  He grabs her hand, turning it over gently in his own.

  ‘Needs a stitch.’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ Nance says. ‘I’ll wrap it tight.’

  He kisses her nose. ‘It’s to the bone.’

  I stare at a pair of Jake’s sneakers sticking out from under the cupboard in the corner of the lounge room near the door to the kitchen.

  ‘Watch the boys,’ Dec says to me. He takes off his favourite Billabong singlet and uses it to bandage Nance’s hand. He picks her up and carries her away. The door slams.

  Underneath the cupboard, the sneakers move. Jake wriggles out. He comes to stand next to me and stares solemnly at the blood on the floor.

  ‘Ouch.’ Jake squats and runs his finger through a drop of blood. He looks up and rolls his eyes. ‘Nance did something stupid. Again.’

  SEVEN

  Nance needed four stitches in her thumb, and I’ve been trying to stay away from the flat as much as possible. Dec has been making me do all the things Nance can’t do one-handed, which is basically everything, because Dec is the man of the house and the man doesn’t do drone work.

  O’s nappies are the worst.

  Merrick is a ghost—I never see him. He’s not answering my texts. He isn’t at school, but that’s not unusual. Point taken: I shouldn’t have shoved him, but this is getting ridiculous.

  I go to Youth on Saturday night after dinner. Nights are getting cooler; no one out on their verandahs, and the streetlights are misty. I know every crack in the pavement, every mean dog, every car in every driveway.

  Deng and Cooper are standing under the spotlight in the car park, having a smoke. Deng and I cast the exact sa
me shadow—long, lean, with pinheads. Cooper’s is squat and lumpy.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Someone nicked the Goalrilla again,’ Cooper says. ‘Took the bike rack, too.’ He’s got his basketball jammed between his feet. He points to the space where the rack used to be. ‘Looks like they used an angle grinder.’

  I shrug. ‘No one ever used the bike rack anyway.’

  ‘Yeah, but a suit came and inspected. Macy must have reported it this time.’

  We go quiet. Macy is supposed to report all theft and vandalism, but the last time it happened she secretly crowd-funded to replace the hoop. It was easier. She says it’s hard enough to get funding without using the money to replace stolen stuff, or trying to justify why The Youth of Today continually Bite The Hands That Feed Us. As if the kids who come here and the ones who nick things are the same people. Well, sometimes they are, but mostly not.

  I’m willing to bet the Goalrilla is already on eBay. A few hundred, at least.

  Cooper pinches off his cigarette and flicks the butt into a bush, then has an attack of conscience and fishes it out. He puts it in the butt bin and sits on the kerb with his arms around his knees. ‘You and Merrick on the outs?’ he asks.

  ‘Kind of. I think he’s staying with his mum.’

  ‘Nah. Saw him with Tuwy last night.’

  My stomach drops. ‘What?’

  A police car does a slow cruise through the car park. Deng waves.

  ‘They hate each other,’ I say when the car’s gone. ‘Brock wants to kill him.’

  ‘I know, right?’

  Merrick is obviously alive and unhurt, but I can’t imagine why he’d hang out with Brock Tuwy. Unless Tuwy’s holding him hostage.

  ‘Where were they?’

  ‘Servo,’ says Cooper. ‘They bought slushies, then Brock and Merrick got in Toolio’s car.’

  Toolio is Brock’s mate, older, dropped out of school two years ago. His real name is Shaun Fallon. Nobody calls him Shaun to his face. Beats me why he thinks Toolio is better.

  Deng and Cooper are waiting for answers. ‘I got nothing,’ I tell them. I don’t tell them what I did to Merrick. ‘It’s a mystery.’

  We go inside.

  The centre is pretty empty for a Saturday night, but it’s still early. Tash is here, in her corner, headphones plugged in. She doesn’t look up. Macy’s cooking something in the kitchen. Whatever it is, it’s on fire.