Malaise

by Max Henry

  Why the hell wouldn’t he have put it on? I stand the fork on end, and then lay it down, trying to come up with a reason why he would have left it off, but nothing eventuates. Just as Mum said, it’s so unlike Den—he was safety first, always, when it came to riding his dirt bike.

  “It’s a freak accident,” Dad explains, fooling nobody. “We can’t get wrapped up in the why or how.”

  Yet that’s the only place I want to be. Den wouldn’t have knowingly risked his safety by riding without a helmet, down the main street nonetheless. Just the chance of being pulled up by the cops would have been enough for him to strap up. Something doesn’t sit right; my gut says there’s more to this than we know, and since when has my gut ever put me wrong?

  “The officer that attended the scene said the bus hit him on the left side,” Dad says, “and given they now know he was deaf in that ear, they think he didn’t hear it approach.”

  “But who was at fault?” I ask. “Who pulled out in front of whom?”

  “It’s inconclusive,” Mum states.

  “What?” I look to her, hoping she’ll elaborate.

  “They’re unsure if he crossed from the bus’s right, or if he was trying to overtake it. The driver can’t help as he said he never saw Den, only realised what happened when he….” She swallows hard and closes her eyes. “When he felt the impact.”

  “Shit.”

  “Meg.”

  “Come on, Dad.” I drop the fork and run my hand over my face. “Ditch the pretences, okay? I think if there’s one time in our lives we should be able to swear, this is it.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” He pushes his plate away, appetite seemingly lost.

  I eye the pancakes left on the plate before us and I want to eat them, but there’s a gaping void where my desire to do anything should be. I don’t know what I want right now… other than for Den to walk in the front door.

  “Your father and I talked last night and we’ll apply to the school for special consideration if you’d like to delay your exams.”

  I shake my head at Mum. “No. It’ll be good to have something to think about.” Because God only knows I need my mind on anything but this right now. “Am I excused?”

  “You haven’t eaten anything,” Mum complains half-heartedly.

  “Neither have you,” I point out.

  She assesses the table before us as though the idea never crossed her mind. “I suppose I haven’t.”

  The two of them remain seated in silence as I get up and head to my bedroom to get shoes on. Neither one even makes so much as an effort to ask what happened to my arm. Because when one of our family will never come home, who cares, right?

  This is how life will be from here on out—I can feel it: an empty nothingness between three people who should be thicker than thieves, a hollow existence with no real reason to try and stick together other than it’s what we’ve always done.

  I shrug on Den’s black hoodie, cover it with my denim vest, and then pocket my keys and wallet. The murmur of their voices cuts through the floor as I toe my boots on, leaving the laces loose and hanging at the sides. I don’t have a plan, or even a thought on where I might go. All I know is that I’ve been home for half a day and already I have to get away from here.

  Too many ghosts of people lost for me to handle—none of which belong to Den.

  SEVEN

  Light rain peppers my face as I turn the last corner toward Cedar Park with a bottle of Smirnoff gripped in my fist. I’ve come here for respite since I was old enough to be allowed to head out alone. Trees line the four sides of the rectangular parkland, and an octagonal band rotunda sits amidst a carefully planned out maze of colourful shrubs and flowers. My feet slip on the painted steps as I climb to the cover of the wooden structure, alone save for a few pigeons perched high in the exposed beams of the roof. Graffiti dots the white lacquered surfaces, and the council rubbish bin has long since been ripped off its brackets, leaving a patch where the paint isn’t as worn as the rest.

  It’s my second home—what was our second home.

  The concrete chills my legs as I kneel at the first panel to the left of the stairs and run the fingers of my burned hand over the etched initials: DA. Den Andrews. The memory of the day we lay here scratching our names into the wood with our school maths compass is as fresh as though it were yesterday. Den had been held after school for detention, and like the lonely lamb I am, I’d waited for him to get out so we could walk home together.

  We’d always been close for brother and sister. So many siblings at school spent the whole time bickering and avoiding each other, but not Den and I. Only two years separated us, so we’d always been into the same kind of things—probably helped by my tomboy tendencies. Den taught me how to skip stones, kick a footy. He showed me how to tighten the chain on my bike, and helped build a tree house that the two of us were consequently banned from because it was too unsafe. He had his own group of friends, but one thing he was never short of was time for his sister.

  I turn and sit with my back to the panel, legs kicked out in front of me, and do the same as I do every single time I come here for a distraction: pick out the new graffiti. The wind whistles through the inch gap between the bottom of the panel and the concrete floor of the rotunda. I wriggle Den’s hoodie lower over my kidneys and tuck the full bottle of spirits into my lap as I heave a deep breath.

  The liquor merchant on Seventh is a go-to for high school kids. The greasy old creep who runs it isn’t averse to supplying minors with a single bottle of their choice, as long as that minor is a girl who plays on his perversion for a youthful body. I watched girl after girl in our senior year lean over the counter and lay on the charm, time and again, before I decided to give it a go myself. The whole experience leaves me feeling as though my skin crawls with parasites, but so what? I’ve got a bottle of vodka sitting on my legs that I wouldn’t be able to legally buy for another month yet.

  My fingers are numb as I try to uncap the bottle. I cup them over my mouth and huff on them a few times while I eye a couple walking across the park. They carry on, oblivious that I’m here, and leave as I set the metal cap down beside me and take a long pull of the acidic liquid. Fire burns a trail straight to my stomach, and I take a moment to hack up half a lung before I hazard another swig of the good stuff.

  Oblivion, here I come.

  I wouldn’t call myself a big drinker by any stretch of the imagination. I’m not a stranger to the odd drop, but including the fiasco at the bonfire, this would make the third time in my life I’ve set out drinking with the express intention to get blind drunk. Tipping my head back, I smile up at the heavens and shake my head. “You can’t judge, big bro.” Den spent more weekends drunk with his friends than he did at home with us as a family. And yet, my parents still saw him as the golden child. Because what he did outside of the drinking was what mattered to them. He had a good job, an apprenticeship as a fitter-turner underway, and he never once showed them disrespect: a kiss for Mum before bed, a helping hand for Dad whenever he needed it, and nothing but love for his little sister.

  I swipe the tears away with the back of my hand before launching another attack on the vodka. My stomach roils, but I shut it down with another long pull and slide down the wall until I’m lying flat on my back, bottle upright on the concrete to my right, still in my grasp. I stare up at the ceiling, focused on the marks and cracks in the timber, yet not really taking anything in as I ponder the question that’s gotten louder in my mind the last few weeks.

  Where do I go from here? What do I do now that school’s pretty much over?

  I know I need escape—that’s the constant message screaming in my subconscious. I need a change of scenery, something fresh, and people who don’t know me. I need a chance at friendships and a social life, at being happy, because fuck knows that’ll never happen in this shithole of a town.

  But where do I go? I’ve got no real plans for university or college; only dreams. Couldn’t afford
it even if I knew what I wanted to study. But what options other than furthering my education do I have? Whitecliffs isn’t exactly known for its numerous job prospects. Most girls when they leave school end up working at the supermarket—like I already am—or get a job stitching workwear at the factory over on the east side. Those who leave here and become something of worth are few and far between, celebrated as heroes by a town that is so ingrained in doing things the way we always have that nobody would know an opportunity if it slapped them upside the face.

  I don’t want that mundane path of “normality.” Fucked if I know what I do want, but staying here isn’t a part of it. I see a future, grey and murky, unclear yet distinguishable in one aspect: it isn’t spent living in Whitecliffs.

  My eyes slip closed and I clear my mind by focussing on the gentle whoosh of the wind as it creeps in around my head. Rain glances off my face every so often, pushed in on the breeze. I should shuffle about and pull my hood up so I don’t end up sick on top of everything else, but lying here in this kind of starfish position has some strange meditative quality that I’m digging about now.

  Or is that the vodka?

  Whatever it is, it’s calming, and that’s an emotion I’m not so well acquainted with at the moment. The gentle tug of the bottle being removed from my weakened hand brings me out of my semi-asleep state.

  “What the fuck?” I sit bolt upright, head spinning, yet still ready to throw down with whomever is taking my hard-earned booze.

  “Mind if I have some?” Jasper holds the bottle up before him as he drops to his arse beside me.

  “Be my guest,” I snap. “You were halfway to doing so anyway.”

  He chuckles, whipping his head to the left so his hair moves out of his face. I shamelessly gawk at his bobbing Adam’s apple as he takes a guzzle of the vodka.

  “I heard about Den,” he casually drops as he wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “Sucks, Meg.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “I feel shithouse that the last time I talked with him we were arguing.” He passes the bottle back over, and then hooks both elbows around his knees.

  “If it’s any consolation,” I say, “he didn’t hold a grudge.” All I remember is that the two of them fell out over a dodgy part for Den’s bike that Jasper sold him, but Den never spoke much of it, which was a good indicator that he’d let it go. If something got to Den, you’d hear about it. Daily.

  “How you doing?” Jasper turns his head to face me, and I wilt under his intense gaze.

  I hold up the bottle of Smirnoff in response.

  “Right.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry about your hoodie.” I pick at the corner of the label on the bottle. “I’ll buy you a replacement.”

  “Pfft.” He waves a hand through the air. “Don’t worry about it, Meg. Consider it a trade for my slack arse being too wasted to drive you home.”

  “I heard the party got shut down.”

  “Don’t they always?” he says with a chuckle.

  I wouldn’t know, considering I never got invited before now. “I guess.” Not that it would have been of any concern to him. While all the other minors were being dragged over the coals, I’m sure Jasper would have been safe and warm in the back of daddy’s patrol car.

  Jasper shuffles on the spot, turning his body so he faces me. His brow furrows and my head spins with not only the alcohol humming through my system, but all the things he might be about to say, none of which are good.

  “So….”

  I tip my head to the left and study him, my eyes burning from the struggle to focus properly. Guess the alcohol’s doing its job then. “So, what?”

  “Brett Carver.”

  Here we go. “What of it?”

  “You know his whole family are a bunch of criminals, right?”

  My face heats, the pressure in my chest immense. “Criminals that were the only ones to help me when I got second-degree burns to my hand and arm.”

  Jasper’s gaze drops to the bandage, mostly covered by Den’s dark hoodie. “How is your arm?”

  “Great. Thanks for asking,” I snap. “I’ve been told that if I take good care of the burn it won’t scar much, just change the colour of my skin, so yeah, I’ve got that to look forward to.”

  He runs a hand over his face and then back through his forming dreads to push them out of his eyes. “I’m sorry, Meg. I didn’t mean to come off as an arsehole. I just….” He breaks away, turning his head to stare out through the far gap in the panels. “I didn’t like the idea that you were alone with that guy.”

  “You made that pretty obvious at the time if I remember right,” I whisper.

  Silence hangs heavy between us, only the sound of gentle rain peppering the rotunda roof saving us from complete nothingness.

  “I should get going.” Jasper pushes up to stand and jams his hands in his pockets. “You need a ride home?”

  “No. I’m fine, thanks.” I ignore the fact he’s staring down at me and focus on a rainbow-coloured tag opposite instead.

  “Well, I guess I’ll see you at school during exams.”

  “Yeah.”

  He moves away, out of my peripheral vision, and it strikes me: how did he know where to find me? If he offered a ride, then he obviously wasn’t just strolling past. “Jasper,” I call after him.

  He backtracks up the steps. “Yeah?”

  “How did you know that I was here?”

  His gaze dances over the rotunda floor as he rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “You’re always here when you’re sad, Meg.”

  He jogs down the steps and strides over the grass to the park gates as I sit in shock, replaying his words in my mind. I guess I’m not as invisible as I thought, after all.

  EIGHT

  Den’s bed has become my favourite place to hide out when I’m home. Mum and Dad seem to stay the hell away from his room—maybe out of self-preservation? Either way, it gives me somewhere to get away from their lifeless stares and pointless conversations.

  I don’t want to talk about who’s winning the latest hit talent show on TV.

  I don’t want to discuss what we’ll have for dinner tonight.

  And I don’t want to talk about how pretty the fucking flowers are this time of year.

  So I hibernate. I stay holed up in Den’s bed, that smells a little less like him each day, and listen to music. Mostly his playlists on Spotify, and sometimes mine when the memories become too real and his absence hurts too much. It’s all I can do to keep him with us, because Lord knows my parents don’t want to talk about him.

  Made that mistake at breakfast yesterday when I dropped the lid of the milk bottle into my bowl of cereal.

  “Remember how Den used to always do this too?”

  “If you haven’t got anything useful to say, I’d rather you kept quiet, Meg.”

  So I spent the day out and about again, anywhere but home. Wandered the streets, ate a muffin at the café on the main drag, and bought another litre of vodka to chase it down on the riverbank. Fair to say I was lucky I could walk the straight line that is our path to get to the door last night. Also fair to say Mum and Dad were none too impressed when their least favourite child arrived home drunk on a Sunday night, and with grass stains on her leggings.

  But what did they do about it? Nothing. Didn’t say a damn word. Two days now I’ve drunk myself to a state of confused bliss where I can’t make out what’s a memory and what’s my imagination at work, and do they intervene?

  No.

  Should I blame them for my choices? Definitely not. But fuck, their daughter is screaming out for somebody to pay attention, to care and give a shit, and they turn their backs on me.

  Literally.

  So I drink a little more. I’m contemplating taking up smoking to see how much that’ll rile them up. All I want is my fucking caregivers to do exactly that: care. “How have you been sleeping, Meg?” is all it would take. One sign that they’re concerned about what goes on in my head t
hese days.

  Forty dollars in my pocket and I know how I’m going to spend it today—buying two bottles on the way home: one to drink, and one to stash in Den’s room for the inevitable after-dark funk.

  First—I have to get through the fresh hell that is school on the half week before exams.

  The quad’s stacked with people when I arrive at the gates; we find out what our exam schedules are today. The dean fusses with his things at the bench that lines the outer wall of the science rooms, papers stacked in copy boxes to his left, and the principal to his right, talking on her phone.

  I hear the bitch-pack approach before I see them.

  “Here she is—Clutzerella.”

  “How’s the arm, Hollywood?”

  “Bitch can’t hold her drink.”

  “Heard she was making moves on Jasper all night.”

  I glare at the perfect princesses as I walk by, envisioning all the ways I could rip out their faultless hairstyles and smear off their overly shiny gloss. Beats me how Cassie can be the one who got dragged off unconscious by the boys’ school football team, and yet here I am, the person who’s being ridiculed by her. What kind of fucked up logic is that?

  “Meg!”

  I turn away from the whispering bitches and spot the dean cutting a path through the students to where I am in the centre of the quad.

  “Do you have a minute?”

  Does he honestly expect me to say no? “Sure.”

  He comes to a stop before me, standing an easy head and shoulders taller, but hardly intimidating given his slim runners’ physique. “We’ll just duck into the principal’s office, okay?”

  I nod like the good little doggie I am and follow as he leads us in the admin building, cringing at the fact we have to pass the bitch-pack again to get there. Four pairs of eyes track my movements as I follow Mr Beale. I stumble when Amelia shoots out a hand and shunts me on the back of the shoulder, hissing “Weirdo.” But I don’t pay mind, and I sure as hell don’t show a reaction. Acting out only eggs them on. Fuck them. They aren’t worth any more time than I’ve already given the bitches.