B-brave. At least, I think brave is the word Bailey was trying to say, instead of courageous.
‘Yes.’ Ms Ralph looks relieved. ‘Yes, that’s right.’ I’m not sure if she was asking Bailey to read aloud, or if she asked him a question, but I figure he’ll give up now, while the going’s good.
But to my surprise, he says, ‘They have no names. The man and the b—’ He barely hesitates before substituting ‘his son’ for ‘boy’. I turn slightly, watching the flare in Bailey’s cheeks as he carries on. ‘It’s like they don’t trust anyone enough to tell them their names.’
B-brave. B-boy.
‘Yeah,’ Wiremu Wright says. ‘Because they’re living in a world where they can’t trust anyone.’
Bailey nods, his eyes straying briefly to mine, then away.
‘That’s one of the important themes of the book, isn’t it?’ Ms Ralph says. ‘Naming and memory.’ What she says after that starts to sound pretty interesting, but my brain is wandering again, trying to put together the pieces of the Bailey puzzle.
B-brave. B-boy. I wonder how many other words he can’t say. He must have a whole thesaurus of substitute words in his brain. Except for his own name, Bailey, how does he get around that?
That’s when I realise I’ve never heard him use his own name, not once.
That evening I decide to finish reading The Road, even though it’s so depressing it makes me want to slit my jugulars. The Road is two hundred and eighty-seven pages long. That’s not a prime number, because it’s divisible by seven and by forty-one. I’ve already read sixty pages, though, so I have two hundred and twenty-seven left to read, and that is a prime number.
Maybe that’s a sign. Of what, I don’t know.
I’m a fast reader, so I finish the book before I go to sleep. But I don’t go straight to sleep after reading the book. I’m thinking about a man and a boy with no names in a world where they can’t trust anyone. I’m thinking about a boy with a name he can’t pronounce.
I’m thinking about a boy in ways I’d never, ever admit to anyone.
That gets me feeling all hot and bothered, so I decide to get up and make a cup of hot chocolate, even though it’s three minutes to midnight. When I slip out of my room, I see a line of light beneath the lounge door. I draw closer and hear my parents’ voices.
They don’t sound happy, what’s new?
I know I shouldn’t listen, know I should go back to my room. But once I’ve started listening, I can’t stop.
‘How many times, Denise?’ Dad’s voice sounds odd, like he’s about to explode, or cry, or both. I’ve never heard him sound like that before.
‘Pete, don’t.’
‘Don’t Pete me!’ my father roars. I stumble back, my hands flat against the wall. ‘This is a complete …’ His voice drops again, so I can only pick up fragments of what he is saying. ‘… you get it … can’t recover …’
Mum starts sobbing, even worse than the other night. ‘Please,’ she says, ‘let me tell them in my own time.’
Dad’s voice reverberates through the wall again, low and deadly.
‘… jump into bed with someone else … not covering up for …’
Flattening myself against the wall, I try to make my mind go blank, try to unhear the words. But they’re parasites eating into my brain, so I start reciting Fibonacci numbers.
Zero, one, one, two, three, five, no no no, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, thirty-four, fifty-five, eighty-nine — who is someone else? — one hundred and forty-four, two hundred and thirty-three, three hundred and seventy-seven, six hundred and ten, nine hundred and eighty-seven — stop it, stop it.
There’s a thud from down the hall, where Alfie’s bedroom is. I guess my parents hear it too because suddenly the lounge door opens. I stay where I am, my heart pounding so loud it feels like it’s about to explode.
Mum stares at me, her hair straggling over her puffy eyes.
‘Oh,’ she says, her hand fluttering to her mouth. ‘What have you— Oh. Felix, it’s not what you think.’
I can’t bear to look at her, at this person who has betrayed our family in a way I can’t quite comprehend, so I turn to my father, standing behind her. He’s still wearing his work clothes, even though it’s after midnight. His shirt is rumpled, his shirt-tail poking over the top of his belt. I spot a suitcase at the foot of the couch, Dad’s car keys and phone sitting on top.
‘Where are you going?’ I ask. I wait for Dad to say, I’m not going anywhere. Instead, he opens his mouth and says the words I’ve been dreading for the past year.
‘Felix, your mother and I are separating.’
CHAPTER 4
BAILEY: MIDDLE EARTH
Thursday is one of those rare Wellington days without a breath of wind, the air warm and syrupy. I can’t wait to get home from school so I can peel off my sticky socks and shirt. Jack and Harley follow suit, and we lie beneath the pohutukawa tree on the back lawn, melting ice cubes on our bellies. Maddy is sitting on the porch with her phone. She’s in a foul mood because she wanted to go to the beach with some new friends, but Mum wouldn’t let her.
‘You haven’t done your homework.’ Mum’s voice drifts from inside, where she’s folding the humongous pile of washing in the lounge.
‘I can do it in the morning,’ Maddy calls back to her.
‘Maddy, there’s no beach, OK? It’s a school night.’
‘I’m thirteen, not eight,’ Maddy grumps back, but her voice is quieter now, probably because Dad’s ute is pulling into the driveway. The seesaw in my chest starts to rock.
Libby runs out of the house, yelling, ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ After getting out of the ute, Dad scoops her into his arms and puts her on his shoulders. His face is relaxed, his limbs loose-jointed. The seesaw in my chest steadies. Dad’s in a good mood, so the rest of us are too. All except for Maddy, who’s disappeared inside the house with a face that could collapse the Twin Towers.
‘Want to grab the T sauce, Bailey?’ Dad opens the passenger door and Libby, peering over his shoulder, chortles.
‘Fish’n’chips!’ She claps her hands. Jack and Harley leap up, as if they were twins rather than eleven and seven, and race each other to the ute.
I stand up, stretching until my elbow joints pop. ‘P-pay day?’
‘Pay day,’ Dad confirms, strolling up to the front door to kiss Mum. She’s leaning against the doorframe, her blonde hair falling around her face. Dad sets Libby down and runs a paint-splattered hand through his thinning hair. His skin has darkened to the shade of a walnut shell from all those hours painting in the summer sun. Maddy’s jealous of Jack and me for inheriting Dad’s olive skin. All she got was his rapid-fire temper.
‘Jesus, it’s hot,’ he says. ‘I could kill a beer.’
The seesaw tilts a little when he says that. Not a lot, but a little.
It’s never just a beer.
‘I’ll get it,’ Harley says, running inside. I wish he wouldn’t do that. I wish I could stop getting so uptight about it. Because we’re all in a good mood, except for Maddy, who’s practically never happy anymore.
Dad sheds his overalls and tosses them onto the porch. ‘How was school, bud?’
‘OK.’ I reach for the glass of melting ice cubes and stick one in my mouth. ‘Can we go for a swim at Eastbourne after dinner?’ There’s a pier there. We drove out on Boxing Day, but it was grey and windy, and no one really felt like swimming. Today, though, has to be the hottest day of the year, easy.
Dad sits on the doorstep, taking the beer from Harley. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Why not?’
‘Yesssss!’ Jack says, holding up his hand, and Dad gives him a high-five.
‘See,’ Dad says, his eyes on mine, ‘this place ain’t so bad.’
‘Frickin’ Hawaii,’ I say, rolling my eyes as I slouch inside to get the tomato sauce. When I come back out, Harley has unwrapped the fish’n’chips on the lawn. Everyone descends on them like seagulls, including me.
All except for Da
d, who says he’s thirsty and goes inside to get another beer.
The morning sun slants through the blinds, spilling stripes across the caravan’s Formica table. Maybe I should drink coffee. Maybe my brain would work faster if I did.
‘Konnichiwa. Watashi wa B-bailey desu.’ I stick my pencil between my teeth, leaving dents in the wood. It needs sharpening, but I barely have time to practise my speech for Japanese class, let alone try to find a sharpener. ‘Last summer, uh, kyonen no natsu—’
But before I have time to announce what I did last summer, which to tell the truth was fuck all, I hear my father’s heavy footfall on the caravan steps.
‘Do you know what time it is?’ He’s using his quiet voice, which means he’s mega pissed-off, at what or who I don’t know yet. I take the pencil out of my mouth.
‘Seven-thirty,’ I say. Dad’s dressed in his painting overalls, a two-day layer of stubble on his chin. He leans in the doorway, drumming his fingers on the outside of the caravan.
‘Get inside and help your mother, would you?’ His eyes are red-rimmed. We never made it to the pier last night, because Dad was too plastered to drive us, and Mum was too tired. I should never have suggested it in the first place.
#Howtomakeyoursiblingscry. Yeah, great.
Holding up my notebook, I say, ‘I just need to f-finish—’
‘Well, you should have thought of that last night, shouldn’t you?’
I want to tell him I didn’t finish my homework last night because I was helping Maddy with her science homework, something Dad promised he’d help her with before he passed out on the couch. Dad’s right nostril is twitching, though, the way it always does when he’s on the verge of exploding. I grit my teeth.
‘OK, I’m coming.’ I should have taken my homework elsewhere, gone to school mega early or something. Should have, should have, it’s the story of my life.
‘I don’t know what you’re learning that shit for anyway,’ he says, as I follow him out of the caravan. ‘It’s not like it’s going to get you anywhere.’
A white flare of rage ignites behind my eyes.
‘S’pose that’s why you got a B-bachelor of Science. So you can p-paint.’
My voice is low, but not low enough.
Dad whirls around. ‘What did you say?’
I stop walking, my heart hammering. ‘N-n-nothing.’
‘N-n-nothing,’ he mimics. The world slows down, and tilts on its axis.
I should have kept my mouth shut. Should have, should have.
But sometimes I just can’t.
Here’s the thing about being punched. In the instant it happens, and the seconds afterwards, there’s no pain. Just a moment of confusion, what just happened?, followed by thick, nauseating shame.
It’s my fault. It always is.
‘You shouldn’t provoke him,’ Mum says after Dad peels out of the driveway, the stereo blaring. ‘You know what he’s like in the mornings.’
‘Yeah. Hungover.’ I’m sitting on the stool in the kitchen, holding a bag of frozen peas to my left cheekbone.
Mum sighs. ‘You know he thinks the world of you.’ It’s one of the sayings she likes to trot out when Dad loses it. He thinks the world of you. He’s had a hard life. Just because he likes a drink or two doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. Blah blah blah.
Maddy walks into the kitchen, her scowl disappearing when her eyes light on me. ‘You OK?’
‘Fucking wonderful,’ I say, and Mum doesn’t even tell me off for swearing, which is how I know what she really thinks of Dad sucker-punching me.
Maddy slings her bag over her shoulder. ‘You coming to school, Bailey? It’s eight-thirty already.’
‘Soon.’ I lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes. I’m hoping if I ice my cheek for a good ten minutes, there’ll be less of a bruise. ‘You go.’
‘Don’t forget your lunch,’ Mum says, and I hear the rustle of a paper bag. ‘Jack’s taken off already, can you walk the kids?’
‘Fine,’ Maddy says. She hollers, ‘Harley! Libby!’ and the kids stampede into the kitchen, scooping their lunch and drink bottles into their bags. Within a minute, they’re gone, and it’s just Mum and me. Once their voices have faded into the distance, I say, ‘Do you think he’ll ever go back to teaching?’
‘Bailey, don’t.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘That’s what I thought.’
It’s half-past nine when I arrive at school, so I go to the office to sign in late. When I say I don’t have a note the deputy principal sighs and says she’ll have to give me a detention. Great, just how I want to spend my lunchtime.
There doesn’t seem to be much point in rocking up to physics halfway through the period, so I retreat into the library to finish my Japanese homework. I don’t want to fall behind in my favourite subject.
I sit in an armchair near the window and pull my notebook and pencil out of my bag. It’s another blue day outside, but the wind has picked up, scrappy clouds drifting across the sky like shredded tissues. I’ve just translated the last sentence of my speech into Japanese — a semi-embellished account of our road trip from Auckland — when a balled-up piece of paper hits me between the eyes.
‘Huh?’ Turning my head, I see Ethan grinning at me.
‘You got study period too?’
‘Yeah,’ I lie.
Ethan steps closer, squinting at me.
‘What happened to you?’ He’s fingering his cheekbone, as if he’s the one with the black eye.
‘I was scrapping with my b-brother,’ I say, not even hesitating. Years of lying for my dad means I’ve got a whole library of excuses to trot out.
It was a play fight. I fell over. It happened at judo.
Ethan laughs. ‘He got you good, huh?’
‘Yep.’ The bell’s ringing. I slip my notebook into my bag, and stand up. ‘You off to class?’
‘Calculus.’ Ethan follows me out of the double doors. ‘It’s killing me already, and the year’s barely started.’
‘You’re year thirteen, right?’ I stick to the left-hand side of the corridor, averting my face slightly. I’ll get less people staring at my black eye that way. Like I said, years of practice.
‘Yeah, enjoy year twelve while it lasts. This year’s way too serious for me.’ He slows as we approach the science block, through the double doors to our left. ‘Hey, are you coming to Judo Academy tomorrow?’
‘Definitely.’ I smile, probably for the first time since I woke up. I don’t know how I’m going to manage the club judo after the two free lessons — I’ve hardly got the money to pay for it — but that’s two whole weeks away. I’ll implode if I don’t get out of the house this weekend.
‘Yo, Ethan.’ A guy wearing a black beret appears at Ethan’s elbow, and they fist-bump. ‘Are you coming to Joel’s party?’
‘Of course.’ Ethan nods towards me. ‘You mind if Bailey comes?’
‘The more the merrier,’ Beret Guy sings out before taking off again. I watch him catch up to a petite girl with a black bob, Bindi from my physics class, and sling his arm around her shoulders.
‘That’s Dallas,’ Ethan says. ‘And Bindi, his girlfriend.’
‘Uh-huh,’ I say, playing a game of join-the-dots in my head. Dallas is Bindi’s boyfriend, and Bindi is one of Felix’s friends. That means that maybe, just maybe, Felix will be at this party too.
‘So, do you want to come?’ Ethan asks.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I think I will.’
I’m late to detention. I was sure it was meant to be in room 31, but turns out my memory is dyslexic, and it’s in room 13. I wonder if that room number was chosen on purpose.
When I walk in, there are four people in there already, two juniors and a girl in the year below me who always smells of cigarette smoke. It’s the guy sitting by the window who catches my eye though. His profile is instantly recognisable — I’ve been checking it out for the past two weeks already — but I feel a jolt of recognition in my gut anyway. What
’s super-brainy Felix Catalan doing in detention?
After taking an ancient-looking textbook and a piece of paper off the front desk, I walk up and sit beside him.
‘Hey,’ I say. Felix’s eyes widen a little, as if I’ve startled him. I give him a brief smile, and open the textbook. The teacher up the front, who looks a bit like a St Bernard with her doughy-scowly face, sets a stopwatch and instructs us to start copying. Enthralling stuff.
Felix bends his head over his page. He’s left-handed, and he’s got incredibly neat writing, almost computer-generated in appearance. Trying not to stare, I rummage around in my bag for a pen, but somehow I’ve lost it between history and room 13.
‘Have you got a spare p-pen?’ I whisper. Nodding, Felix reaches into his bag and passes me a green biro.
‘Thanks,’ I whisper. He gives me one of his rare smiles back, but it fades once his eyes wander to the bruise on my cheek. So much for the frozen peas treatment — my black eye has only got more impressive as the day goes on. Flushing, I turn my attention to copying the ancient grammar text, which looks like something my grandma might have learnt from.
It is I who am sorry. It is you who are mistaken.
I’ve barely managed two lines before a piece of paper appears in front of my nose.
Were you in a fight?
I breathe out, and scrawl back: Sort of. Happened at judo club last night.
At the front of the room, Ms St Bernard is dipping her hand into a jar of blackballs, a look of intense concentration on her face. Felix slides the note back my way: How long did it take you to get to brown belt?
Me: Six years. How come you’re here?
Watching Felix out of the corner of my eye as he answers my question, I wonder if he’s noticed how our arms are almost touching. I wonder if he can smell me the way I can smell him — a faint tang of sweat, and oranges. My stomach is tumbling, tumbling. Hell, I can’t remember being like this around my ex-girlfriend, Olivia.
Or Dog, for that matter. No, don’t think about that. What a mess that was.
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