Zac and Mia

by A. J. Betts

  He doesn’t offer his flat, at the back of his parents’ house, even though he used to smuggle me in there before. Before.

  ‘Screw you,’ I say, pivoting and slamming the door of his precious car. ‘I’m too good for you, anyway.’ I punch at the door with the solid end of a crutch. A panel gives way so I do it again. ‘Too hot for you, Rhys. Everyone says that.’

  My brain corrects me. Said, not says. Everyone said that.

  ‘I’m still hot, Rhys. I’m still fucking hot.’

  He reverses, and I hit the car again. I want to smash his windows, smash him too.

  Dirt and gravel detonate as he spins and speeds away, leaving me with two crutches and a backpack in a dark, dark forest.

  I’m glad it’s dark. It’s so dark I can’t even see myself.

  13

  ZAC

  No one mentions my award on the drive home, and by the time we’re in front of the TV, ice-cream bowls in our laps, it’s ancient history. During Better Homes and Gardens, Mum, Dad and Evan talk about olives. I’m grateful for the way they act like tonight never happened, like everything is normal.

  On cue, Bec calls my name through the door. It’s Friday night and the shit needs clearing, after all. She has a driver hooked over her left shoulder and a three-iron over her right. I pull on gumboots and grab torches, then we follow the beams past the houses, the store, and up along the paved path to the pens, where sheep and goats form woolly clumps, settling into sleep. Bec shines her torch over the ewes, checking if any are close to birthing.

  She swings her light to the alpaca pen too, where five are sleeping, their front feet folded beneath them. The other three sneer and move away. Even the original alpaca, Daisy, scowls.

  We hook the torches to fence-posts to light up the path. Then Bec lines her club against some pellets and shuffles into position.

  Roo poos are perfect missiles, dry and compact enough to get good air, even when fresh. Sheep and goats, on the other hand, leave stodgy, moist mounds that explode on impact. Sheep-shit golf never ends well, so we leave them in the pens along with their owners.

  It’s the wild roo shit that annoys Mum because it gets everywhere—in the pens, the shop’s entrance, the customer toilets, the new pavers, under the seats and along the main walkway, from one end of the petting farm to the other. Roos can jump any fence to help themselves to feed, leaving enough ammunition to keep us busy each Friday, clearing the way for weekend visitors.

  Pregnancy may have altered Bec’s stance, but her swing remains smooth and fast, sending each pellet over pens and most of the olive trees below. I reckon she harbours dreams of becoming a pro golfer. The media would love her, asking for recounts of her training regime: a thousand pellets every week.

  ‘Evan’s going to get his heart broken,’ she says.

  ‘Again? Where’s this one from?’

  ‘France. Have you seen her? Twenty-one and super-cute.’

  ‘So Dad’s hiring French girls to pick instead of me?

  You know what that does for my ego?’

  ‘There are six backpackers, Zac. She’s not just for you.’

  ‘Shit, it’s not like I’ll chop off a limb.’

  ‘Doctor’s orders.’

  The comprehensive SO YOU’VE HAD A BONE MARROW TRANSPLANT: WHAT NOW? booklet has been memorised by everyone in my family, including Evan, whose reading is usually limited to Zoo Weekly. Thanks to this booklet I’m banned from contact sports, running, quad biking, physical labour and operating mechanical equipment for twelve months. Homework, unfortunately, is deemed safe.

  ‘It’s picking olives, Bec, not motocross.’

  ‘Anyway, I’ll need your help with feeds. Dad’ll be busy with pickers, and there’s a busload of tourists coming. First day of school holidays …’ she adds, as if it’s slipped my mind. As if.

  ‘How am I supposed to meet a hot backpacker if I’m up here with toddlers?’

  ‘I’ll send out spies,’ she says. ‘Actually, there is a German picker.’

  ‘Nuh. Given my marrow, that’d feel … incestuous.’

  ‘There might be an Italian. Or a cute Kiwi. I’ll investigate.’ Across the torch beam, my sister’s scheming. ‘You could do with a fling.’

  Bec’s got no idea of the surplus of girls in my life already. At school I’m a novelty—an older guy come back to repeat a year. In study periods, they beckon me over to their desks, asking for help with topics I should already know. But there’s more to it than study: girls can sniff out vulnerability. I see the way they look at my scars. They’re careful with me, as if I’m covered in warning labels. Achtung. Fragile.

  But it’s not gentleness I’m after. Or sympathy.

  I mis-swing and a pellet shoots off at an angle, rattling the roof of the coop and setting chooks into a flap.

  ‘Just a fling,’ Bec says, trying to read my thoughts. ‘It’s not on your banned list …’

  ‘A set-up from my sister? Awesome.’

  ‘You’d want to work on your personality, though, considering your sporting ability’s gone to pot.’

  I smack a crap so hard it whistles into the dark like an unexploded firework. It feels amazing.

  ‘Lucky,’ Bec says.

  Then she leans on a gate and lets me whack the rest of them, every satisfying one.

  Hey Zac

  How’s it going, champ? Happy belated 18th.

  Life back to normal yet?

  Listen, you gotta become an electrician.

  Working three days a week is the duck’s nuts.

  Heading to Wedge Island this weekend for annual Bombing Range trip. Classic.

  My 9-foot longboard’s waiting. Next time you’re in Perth, you gotta try. Birthday treat.

  Catch ya then

  Cam

  I tap my pen at one of the new postcards advertising The Good Olive! Olive Oil and Petting Farm. I wish I could tell Cam that life’s brilliant, but I can’t.

  ‘This could change things,’ Patrick had said on my last day in hospital. ‘You’ve been stuck in a room for forty-seven days—’

  ‘Thirty-three with my mum.’

  ‘Yes. What was I saying?’

  ‘Change.’

  ‘Yes. You might.’

  ‘Look at this … do you think my hair’s growing back orange?’

  ‘Emotional changes,’ Patrick said. ‘Not just physical, Zac.’

  ‘I am emotional about it.’ I’d laughed, skimming a hand across my head. ‘Leukaemia twice, German marrow, and now a born-again ginger. That’s bloody unfair.’

  Then Mum arrived, and I grabbed my bag and bolted. The elevator dropped us to the ground floor, where we followed the green arrows to the exit. Outside, the width of the world dizzied me. No walls! Instead there was freedom. Cars. Ticket machines and bollards. Traffic lights. Traffic. The blue of the ocean. Eighty kilometres an hour. Mum and I kept the windows down all the way home and I couldn’t suck in enough air.

  And when the car finally pulled into home, with its new and improved The Good Olive! Olive Oil and Petting Farm sign, I could smell chicken shit from fifty metres and it was sweeter than anything. I knew better than to admit this, of course—my sanity was under scrutiny as it was. Then my Jack Russell barked and tried to slobber me, but Evan held him back while the others hugged me in turn, and I felt like the luckiest German beer wench to have ever lived. To ever be allowed to live again.

  I went back to school, though I’d sleep through periods five and six. I was even grateful for homework because drawing demographic data and analysing economic plans meant I was normal, like every other year 12 student with deadlines and exams, with my life moving forward in a solid black line from A to B to C.

  Which is why I don’t want these April holidays to happen. Without the structure of school, time doesn’t function like a solid black line at all. Time plays tricks. It can mess with you. When you least expect it, time can loop back on itself, like a giant rubber band. Time can tap you on the shoulder. If it wants
to, it can pick you right up and fling you right back into Room 1, with its needles and bleach and nausea and Mia. Mia. Shit. Where is she? Is she okay?

  That tap on the wall. Her angry, desperate tap and uncensored questions.

  Has her hair grown back? Did she go to her formal in a wheelchair? Has she moved on, the way she’s supposed to, laughing and flirting in the mall on weekends? Is she showing off her scar with pride yet? Has she forgotten about me, the way she’s meant to? The way I was supposed to forget about her?

  But I don’t know because she’s not on Facebook. By the time I’d arrived home and had the Welcome Back Zac dinner, then found a quiet hour to log on—Was I dreaming or did you join me in the night? Are you a sleepwalker, or did you mean to? How did it go today?—her Facebook profile had been pulled. At first I thought she’d unfriended me, but when I searched her name, I realised she wasn’t anywhere. She’d erased herself.

  How can you share someone’s secrets, sent back and forth in the quiet of early mornings, but not know basic stuff like the suburb they live in or their phone number? How can someone vanish from your life so easily?

  I turn the blank postcard over in my hands. What would I write, if I knew her address? Would it sound casual like Cam’s: Thought I’d drop you a line …? Or would I tell her more? That normal isn’t normal anymore, and that I don’t know if it ever will be. That I’m still in semi-quarantine. That I’m afraid of school holidays, and spending two whole weeks on my own.

  Mum opens my door. Since hospital, she no longer bothers to knock. ‘Do you want to have a party?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Next week. Get the rellies over, and your friends.’ She stirs the contents of her bowl in slow motion, already planning it. ‘Matthew and Alex would come. And Rick …’

  ‘They’re away,’ I remind her, taken off to Perth or over east, for work or study. ‘Didn’t you have ice-cream already?’

  ‘Your new friends at school. They’ll come, won’t they?’

  ‘Depends on the booze.’

  Mum points her spoon at the Bone Marrow Transplant booklet pinned to the corkboard above my desk. Alcohol: banned substance number two.

  ‘For them,’ I say.

  ‘Maybe just the rellies then. A barbie. It’d be nice to celebrate your hundred-day benchmark, don’t you think?’

  A party is the last thing I want. If one hundred days of ‘normal’ is to be celebrated, isn’t that kind of missing the point?

  I say yes, mostly for Mum’s sake, but partly for my own. A party might give me something else to think about.

  Something other than her.

  14

  Mia

  The cabbie gives me a discount but it’s not the ‘you’re a cute chick I want to impress’ discount. It’s a ‘you’re on crutches’ discount. ‘Mascara’s down your face’ discount. Sympathy. Shit, I’ll take it if it means seven extra bucks in my pocket. I need it more than him.

  I press the doorbell three times and rub my cheeks with the sleeve of my jumper. It’s Shay’s dad who opens the door. He puts on frameless glasses, checks the clock on the wall, then inspects my face under the sensor light.

  ‘Sorry Mr W., is Shay here?’

  ‘Maya?’

  ‘Mia.’

  He nods, remembering. It’s been a while.

  ‘You’re blonde.’

  ‘Yeah. You like?’

  ‘Very nice. What have you done to yourself?’ He’s looking at the crutches.

  ‘Netball injury. Stupid, huh? Shay said I could crash here. If I needed to.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I hold up my backpack. ‘I know it’s late. Sorry.’

  He checks the clock again, scratching his chest. ‘They’re inside.’

  ‘They?’

  He shrugs. ‘End of term.’

  Shit. Shay I could handle. A group’s something else.

  ‘I thought you quit school.’

  ‘I went part-time, for the diploma. I’ll be catching up next year …’ I have answers for everything.

  ‘You’re okay then? You’re not in any … trouble?’

  I snort as if it’s a joke. ‘Me?’

  Shit, if I started thinking about the trouble I’m in, I’d choke. Maybe I should just turn and leave. Catch a ride with another sympathetic cabbie. But where?

  ‘Well, come in,’ he says. ‘It’s late.’

  In the games room, furniture is draped with clothes, blankets and girls I know well. Chloe is on the couch and Erin and Fee are lying on mattresses. Shay stands by the television with DVDs in hand. They pause for too long when I enter, checking each other for approval. What unsaid things are passing between them? How much do they know?

  I wish I was a ghost. I would just float out of here. I wouldn’t want to haunt them.

  Shay drops the DVDs and steps over the mattresses to hug me. I hold onto my crutches, unable to hug back.

  ‘Mia, you remembered.’

  The end-of-term movie marathon was the brainchild of Shay and me in year 8. It was just the two of us then, scoffing Pods and Twisties and hot chocolates, allowing other girls to join us if they met our criteria. Over the years, Tim Tams replaced Pods. Baileys was added to milk. These nights became stuff of legend, inspiring guys to drive laps of the street and shout out things to embarrass us. They were the reward for ten boring weeks of classes with teachers who kept us separated.

  In the bathroom, Shay hands me a cleansing wipe. My reflection shocks me; I keep forgetting I’m someone else. Mascara smudges onto the wipe.

  ‘I would have invited you,’ she says, inspecting her eyebrows in the mirror, ‘but I thought you’d gone. You didn’t reply to my texts.’

  ‘I’ve been with Rhys. You know what he’s like.’

  ‘You still going to Sydney?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I say. ‘My aunt’s expecting me. I’m catching a bus.’

  ‘You realise you could fly.’

  I smile at her. ‘Where’s the adventure in that?’ Besides, flying would mean passing over my ID.

  Shay’s watching my reflection now. ‘It’s not the same without you. Are you coming back?’

  I shrug.

  ‘Mr Perlman says if you’ve quit school, your mum needs to come in and sign something.’

  ‘She did already. Relax.’

  My face clear, I turn towards the room where the others have rearranged the mattresses and sleeping bags. They’re in tracky-dacks and T-shirts, but Chloe wears a singlet and Peter Alexander boxer shorts. Her legs are tanned and toned and freakishly long. She bends to pluck a Tim Tam from a packet, then puts it between her teeth and gives me a chocolatey smile. She used to envy me, once.

  ‘Mia, you can have this one,’ says Fee, pointing her glossy red toenails at the mattress closest to the bathroom. Since when did Fee get invited to movie marathons? ‘In case you need to get up in the night.’

  She’s trying to be tactful. The last time someone asked about my ankle I told her to fuck off. Then I took off.

  Chloe slides onto a mattress with Erin and the two of them decide on the order of viewing. Comedy, horror, comedy, romance, horror. I’m alert to every word, not wanting to miss a whisper.

  ‘Fuck.’ Shay is still in the bathroom, pincering the skin on her cheek. ‘Pimple. See?’

  ‘No,’ I say, swinging closer. There’s nothing there.

  ‘Brandon’s party is tomorrow. Erin!’ she yells, ‘you got that ti-tree stuff?’

  I laugh. It’s funny. ‘Shay, there’s nothing there.’

  ‘I’m not turning up to Brandon’s with a Siamese head on me.’

  She squeezes her cheek and I realise she’s serious. Erin runs in with the ti-tree gel, applying and fussing as if this emergency is real. As if it matters.

  I feel I’m watching through a glass bowl. Is this how life is for them? Is this how it was for me?

  Am I the fish, or are they?

  Through the night, the four girls switch positions on mattresses and pas
s around packets of food. I only eat the salted popcorn: lollies give me stomach cramps and chocolate still reminds me of wax.

  Chloe notices. ‘Are you on a diet, Mia?’

  A diet? I’d forgotten the word.

  ‘You shouldn’t be. You’re skinny.’ Shay says this like it’s a compliment.

  I eat a waxy Tim Tam for the sake of it, then take another. I’d eat anything to keep their attention off me. I’m hoping they’ll just shut up and focus on the movies, but their conversation drags on and on: Mr Perlman sucks; I’m going to get implants; I hate my split ends; Joel’s too good for Beth; I want a tatt here, but I don’t know what; does Chloe’s brother like me?; my nails keep chipping; can you see my cellulite?; I’ve got to lose three kilos before Brandon’s formal.

  Their dialogue is broken with laughs and farts and snorts. I feel like I’ve lived this night before. Even the horror film, when finally played, is predictable. Horror? Not even close.

  They are the fish, I realise. I see them in their spotless bowl, swimming around in shallow circles. I used to cherish our group above all else, protecting our precious in-jokes from others who looked on in envy. These girls—and the other half-dozen guys and girls who ruled the bench outside D Block—were my world. We were real and loud and fearless. Our histories are etched into the wooden slats of that bench.

  But now it’s me who’s looking in, though not with envy. How to lose three kilos in a week? I could tell them how to lose three kilos in a day. Split ends—are they kidding? And who the fuck cares about pimples? When your scalp itches like mine, your leg throbs like hell, and food still makes you want to spew, you stop looking for pimples that aren’t there. You stop laughing at jokes that aren’t funny. You stop thinking of ‘skinny’ as praise.

  When I pretend to sleep, I hear the whispers not meant for me: Did you invite her? Why has she been such a bitch? You were just trying to help. Rhys deserves better. Like Brooke.

  After the last movie ends and whispers turn to breaths, I check my phone. There’s a new SMS from Mum.

  I know uve been here. $130 missing from jar. Come sort it out or leave for good. No more sneaking. Grow up!