Christian

by Sebastian Scott

  Kat throws a big birthday extravaganza at her parents’ house, and proceeds to get royally smashed. Petra is knocking back jelly shots, and taking photos of kissing couples. ‘Art proect,’ she tells me, slurring a little. Even Abigail is there, dancing with Sammy. Kat’s sleaze of a boyfriend shows up with a whole bunch of rich, rude people. I don’t drink. All I want to do is leave, but something keeps me there. Concern for Kat, I tell myself. I’m not waiting for Tara.

  The house fills up with people, but Tara doesn’t show. And then Kat disappears and so does Kat’s sleazy boyfriend. I go looking for her, worried she’s not handling herself very well.

  Upstairs I hear Kat slurring, ‘Lukas, I don’t want to do this. Are you listening? Get off me.’

  I charge into her room, grab him and shove him towards the door. I put myself between the two of them. ‘She wants you to leave, all right?’ For a moment I think he’s going to pick a fight but he’s too gutless for that. He slinks off, like the total loser that he is.

  Kat looks like she might throw up. I lead her downstairs to get some fresh air, and to try and sober her up. ‘What are you doing drinking like that? Do you think it makes you look cool?’

  ‘No,’ she says, in a small voice.

  ‘It doesn’t. It wrecks things. And that guy–did you even like him?’

  ‘Not really. I just … I wanted for the first time someone to like me.’

  Then I feel bad about yelling at her. She’s shaking a little. I give her a bottle of water. ‘I’ll go get Ethan.’

  ‘No, don’t. He’ll freak out. He’s probably with Tara anyway. Because he’s perfect. And she’s perfect. And perfect people attract each other.’ She looks at me, big-eyed. ‘I’m seriously not perfect.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m not perfect either.’

  ‘I always thought you and I were the same,’ she murmurs.

  She kisses me. I should push her away. Or … I wish I could enjoy it more, like pas de deux. I wish I could be this person. I wish I could get Tara out of my head. Finally I pull away. I glance around.

  Our timing couldn’t have been worse. Tara has arrived at last and is looking straight at us. Our eyes meet. She runs from Ethan’s side, like Cinderella at midnight. I run after her. But I totally fail to find her.

  I don’t know what happens next at the party (because what happens to me is that Lukas and his mates start to lay in). This is what I find out later. There was a photo from that day on the beach. Petra took it. I don’t think she even knew it was us. But someone (Sammy tells me it was Abigail) sent it to Kat’s phone and Ethan and Kat saw it. And, in the time it takes a whisper to travel round a circle of kindergarten kids, the whole school knows.

  Like I said. There are no secrets.

  Ethan and Tara break up.

  ‘So?’ Sammy says. ‘The path is clear. She’s all yours.’

  I shrug. ‘That’s not what she wants.’

  ‘Tara doesn’t know what she wants.’

  ‘Well, I’m not putting myself out there anymore. I’m not a masochist.’

  It’s not my choice. But I can live with it. It’s easier this way, without the hot and cold, up and down, to and fro. Life is more stable when Tara and I are ‘just friends’. That’s what I say to Sammy.

  He rolls his eyes. ‘You keep telling yourself that,’ he says. ‘One day you might even believe it.’

  CHAPTER 11

  It’s weeks later. We’re all rehearsing for the showcase for the school board. For some reason we just can’t get it right, and Miss Raine loses it.

  ‘Rehearsal’s over,’ she snaps. ‘I’m sick of the sight of you.’

  Tara protests. ‘Surely the principals could stay back and–’

  ‘Out!’

  She gives us the rest of the day off. I decide to get some distance between me and the Academy and Tara and I end up on the same ferry. Only Tara would use the ship rail to practise her five positions.

  ‘You’re rolling forward on your right foot,’ I say.

  Tara looks annoyed. ‘Did they send you to spy on me?’ I guess she means Kat and Sammy, who’ve been riding her about practising too hard. Ballet fever, they call it.

  I smile. ‘Yes, Training Bra. Because the whole world revolves around you.’

  She stares at me. For a moment I think I’ve pushed her too far. And then …

  She smiles.

  At Manly beach we see a bunch of kids organising themselves into a game of beach cricket.

  ‘Imagine being like that,’ Tara says. ‘All they had to do today was go to school, come home, maybe fit in some homework.’

  Sounds all right to me. ‘What do you want them to be doing?’ I ask.

  ‘I’d just … I would hate not having a passion.’

  I laugh. ‘They’d probably feel sorry for you if they knew what you did.’

  Tara frowns. ‘It’s not all work. I have fun. A lot of fun.’

  I roll my eyes. ‘Yep, okay.’

  ‘You don’t think I have fun?’

  ‘Okay go. Right now. I want to see you do fun.’

  ‘I can’t suddenly do my own fun.’

  ‘Of course. You need friends.’ I jump onto the sand and walk over towards the game. ‘Hey! Hi!’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Tara says.

  ‘My friend here would really love a game. Is that cool?’

  Tara jumps up. ‘Actually he’s too shy to ask, but he’s the one who can’t wait to join in.’

  ‘You can both play,’ says a pretty, laidback girl about our age. She looks out from under the brim of her cowboy hat. ‘I’m Shelley.’

  I gesture at Tara. ‘This is Tabitha.’

  She snorts. ‘He’s Cecil.’

  I like Tabitha and Cecil. They don’t care about dancing. They don’t watch the clock. They do fun.

  At the end of the game Shelley walks up to me. ‘I put my number in your phone.’ She flashes a smile, and adds, ‘If you feel like playing again.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I tell her. ‘I just might take you up on that.’

  Tara stands with her arms crossed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You just can’t help it, can you?’ she says, when Shelley and her friends have gone.

  ‘Help what?’

  ‘Flirting.’

  ‘That wasn’t flirting.’

  ‘Well what about her? I told her you had a girlfriend. That’s like hussy behaviour.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I don’t mind. Frankly, Cecil, you can flirt with as many–’

  I kiss her. This time there’s nothing to stop us. No Ethan. No let’s be friends. There’s just this–the beach, the day, the afternoon. The girl. This great girl. The kiss.

  ‘Hey?’ Tara says on the ferry.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You know how I’m not allowed to look at my watch?’

  ‘We’re fine. We’ve got ages.’ I lift up her arm and look at her watch. Oops. ‘This ferry’s slow, huh?’

  Tara looks at her watch. ‘We’re dead. I’m swimming.’

  I grab her round the waist. She turns around to face me. I kiss her again.

  We run through Circular Quay and up the streets. Through the park and past the boarding house. I hold her hand, and we run, laughing, the two of us. We’re us, I marvel.

  We’re almost there when she falls.

  I hear her scream. She’s fallen heavily down a flight of stairs, I see her leg twist as she lands. She sobs with pain.

  ‘Tara, talk to me, are you okay?’

  She can’t answer. She clasps her knee and I see the pain turn to fear in her eyes as we both register that something serious must be wrong.

  I’ve lifted Tara so many times over the year and this time it’s as if she weighs nothing, I’m functioning on pure adrenaline. I run, carrying her, the last few hundred metres to the school. My heart slams against my ribs as I hurl myself through the corridors towards the sound of music. I burst through the doors, right into the middle of the showcase. T
he dancers freeze. Everyone in the audience stands up and stares at us.

  ‘Get Dr Wicks. And call an ambulance,’ Mr Kennedy orders.

  ‘Put her down. Gently,’ Miss Raine barks. ‘You could have done more damage carrying her like that.’ The adults take over. I’m pushed aside. I step back. ‘Tara?’ I say. But my voice is lost.

  CHAPTER 12

  When Kat and I go to see Tara in the hospital, we don’t know what to expect.

  ‘She might be angry with me,’ I say to Kat. ‘It was my fault we were late. She wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t …’

  ‘She’s probably more depressed than angry,’ Kat says. ‘Or just, you know. Catatonic. Ballet withdrawal.’

  Actually, Tara is sitting up in bed.

  ‘I’m making a list,’ she says, brightly.

  ‘A list,’ says Kat, catching my eye. ‘Lists are good.’

  ‘What kind of list?’ I ask.

  ‘We’re having a formal.’

  ‘A what now?’ Kat says. She mouths denial at me.

  ‘A school dance.’

  ‘We go to the school of dance,’ Kat says. ‘It’s sort of what we do. Did you bump your head when you fell?’

  ‘I think a formal’s a great idea,’ I say, firmly.

  ‘Do I have to–?’ Kat bleats.

  ‘Yes,’ says Tara firmly. ‘Foofy hair, big dress, blue eyeshadow. All of it.’ She looks at me. ‘You’ll be my date, won’t you?’

  I smile, relief washing over me. ‘I think I can manage that.’

  I keep waiting for Tara’s mood to change. But all she can talk about as the weeks pass is this Winter Wonderland formal. She doesn’t seem to care about dancing at all. She never talks about her knee. If anyone brings it up she changes the subject to fairylights and finger food.

  ‘I just want to live in the now,’ Tara tells me. ‘As in run up to the café now and get me an ice-cream. Lame-Celebrity Ballroom is about to start.’ She suddenly has a schedule of television shows she has to watch.

  Don’t get me wrong, I like this Tara. She lives in the present, fully in touch with her sense of fun. She’s stopped stressing all the time, stopped taking everything so seriously. Well, except the formal. And bad reality TV shows.

  But as the formal gets closer, I start to realise that every time I try to talk to her about her knee she clams up.

  One day I catch her deep in conversation with Ethan. Tara looks serious. As I approach, he makes an excuse and leaves. I bristle. Despite the fact that we are all trying to be grown-ups about it, I can’t help feeling jealous of Ethan, their history.

  ‘Did I interrupt something?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tara says. My heart sinks. ‘He was asking me about my knee, and no one has in the last five minutes, and I so badly wanted to talk about it.’

  I laugh, but I can’t help feeling uneasy.

  I follow a long chain of phone calls, talking to people whose cousin knows someone who knows someone whose babysitter’s brother might be able to get hold of a snow machine. I finally find the last link in the chain and secretly book it for Tara, who has never seen snow. It’s like, if I can fulfil this one dream, if I can help her make this one night perfect, everything will be all right. We can try and get back to that afternoon on the beach, before all this happened.

  I walk into the studio, ready for class, as a bunch of third years leave. Ethan’s still there, cooling down.

  ‘Hey,’ I mutter.

  He tilts his head, as though deciding whether or not to speak. ‘How’s Tara?’ he asks eventually.

  I’m immediately defensive. ‘Fine,’ I snap.

  ‘It’s just we were talking last night, and she seemed pretty upset.’

  ‘Well it must just be you then. She’s all right with me.’

  ‘Have you even asked her why she hasn’t got her plaster off yet?‘

  ‘Is it hard hanging around for scraps?’

  Ethan smiles, his smug, entitlement-rich smile. ‘Mate, your girlfriend came to me when she needed someone to talk to. Not sure what you mean about scraps.’

  Tara hobbles in on her crutches. I wonder if I see something pass between her and Ethan as she enters the room and he leaves, or if he’s just messed with me so much I’m imagining things.

  She asks me to skip class with her.

  ‘I can’t. I have to keep up attendance.’

  She nods. For a moment she looks disappointed, tired.

  ‘Hey, are you okay?’

  She shrugs. ‘Couldn’t be better.’

  Ethan’s right. There’s something going on. For some reason she doesn’t want to talk to me about it. But she can talk to him?

  ‘You know what I think your problem is,’ Sammy says, as he shrugs himself into his suit jacket.

  ‘You going to headshrink me now? I thought you didn’t want to be a doctor.’

  ‘You thought she was going to blame you. And then she didn’t. But you still blame you.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘My problem is Ethan.’

  Sammy opens his mouth to speak.

  I raise my hand. ‘End of story.’

  Sammy’s not wrong. I do feel responsible for her fall. I also feel guilty for enjoying her injury, as if I’m cheating on Tara with this new seemingly carefree Tara. Old Tara would never have asked me to skip class with her. She would hate being benched.

  It feels a bit dorky but Sammy and I wait at the bottom of the stairs. I practically hear his jaw hit the floor when he sees Abigail. But I only have eyes for Tara. She looks awesome. Her silver dress glitters. I cannot take my eyes off her face.

  ‘What if I said I had a surprise for you?’ I ask her.

  ‘I’d say me first.’ She shows me her leg. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t notice.’

  ‘You got your cast off?’

  ‘Yeah, it was actually long overdue. Boring story.’

  So bore me, I think. But she says nothing else.

  The formal’s a success. Everyone’s here and dressed up, everyone’s dancing. Tara and I watch from the sidelines while she rests her knee. Somehow, even though she’s gotten her formal, she’s distant, not even really here. We stand not talking. She doesn’t seem to notice my mood. She’s too caught up in her own thoughts.

  The music slows down and she leads me out onto the dance floor.

  ‘Are you sure you should be …?’

  ‘It can handle one dance.’

  Like we’re in a relationship of three–me, Tara and her knee. Four if you include Ethan.

  ‘How would I know?’ I snap. ‘I mean, I’m not–what? Sensitive enough? Smart enough to know the details?’

  She shakes her head, genuinely mystified. ‘I don’t get why you’re so caught up on this.’

  ‘You spoke to him, right? Had a little heart to heart. About your knee.’

  ‘Yeah, but you don’t need to be jealous. He just gets it.’

  ‘Gets what?’

  ‘That side of me. The dancing side.’

  ‘And I don’t?’

  ‘No, you’re like the other–I don’t know how to explain it properly.’

  ‘No, it’s pretty clear. He gets you. I don’t.’

  She steps back. ‘You know what? You don’t have a right to know about my knee or my dancing. If you hadn’t made me stay at the beach playing cricket, then we wouldn’t have been rushing and none of this would have ever happened.’

  ‘That’s what you think?’ It’s a relief that she’s finally said it.

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ she cries. ‘Except everyone keeps telling me that I’m wasting time. That I have to choose.’

  I remember something Abigail told Sammy. That there are two kinds of girls at the Academy. Those who have boyfriends and those who are serious about ballet.

  I nod. ‘Let me make it easy for you then,’ I say.

  As I walk away, the snow starts to fall. I turn back and meet her eyes. Paper snowflakes swirl around her. She blinks, and the connection is lost. It’s over. This time we’re r
eally done.

  CHAPTER 13

  At first I was dancing for my mother, and then because it was a condition of my bail. And then I was dancing for Tara. And without Tara suddenly I don’t want to dance at all. I start running again, harder, faster than ever. I push myself to my pain threshold and then try and find it again, and again. Harder. Faster. I jump fences, and scale walls, sprint up concrete balustrades, running like I’m being chased.

  I miss classes, not intentionally but because I run so far, by the time I turn around I know I’m going to be too late to make it. It’s not just Tara. Legal Aid ring to tell me that my lawyer is coming to the school.

  When I get to the café for the meeting, still sweating from my run, it’s someone I don’t recognise. He looks up at me and gathers his papers together, shouldering his bag.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘Where’s the other lawyer?’ The one who reminds me of Mum.

  ‘She’s been reassigned.’ There’s that familiar feeling, that people are playing hot potato, and I’m the potato. The lawyer sees my expression. ‘It’s okay, she gave me your file. The court hearing’s been set for next Friday.’

  He walks and talks, he’s clearly ready to leave. He has been waiting for me for a while so I can’t blame him. He hassles me about getting a reference from the school. But I’m distracted.

  ‘What do you give me? Sixty-forty? Fifty-fifty?’

  He looks at me quizzically.

  ‘That I’m going to juvie?’

  He explains that as long as Aaron supports the story–that Aaron planned it, that he brought the knife–it will be fine. I frown. I haven’t seen or heard from Aaron since the morning after he crashed at the Academy.

  The lawyer reads my expression. ‘Is he planning on skipping out on his court date?’ he asks, alarmed.

  ‘No,’ I lie. ‘He’s solid.’

  ‘Good. Now get that reference, all right?’

  When he’s gone I try to call Aaron. It goes straight to message bank. I leave another message. I’ve been trying to ring him all week, ever since Legal Aid made contact.