‘Honestly, I’ll be dazzled by anything that’s not fossilised.’
‘No, I mean do you want them chewy, or more like cake, or like fudge?’
‘Wait, you can do that on purpose?’
‘Sure.’
‘Can I have fudgey?’
‘Yeah. It’s easy. You just need more egg.’
Aggie gasped and slapped her forehead with her palm. Then she walked to the fridge and took out a carton of eggs.
‘I forgot to put these in.’
She groaned and knocked her head against my shoulder. It felt nice.
I pulled up my sleeves and mixed the batter. I spilled some on the bench and on my wrist.
‘Hey, holy shit, nice watch,’ Aggie said.
I just shrugged and poured the batter onto a greased tray. I put the tray in the oven and we went back to her room.
‘So what’s the deal with you and Vic? Is he your grandfather?’
I shook my head.
‘Oh, so he’s like a family friend or something?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Are you living with him?’
‘Not anymore.’
‘Oh. That’s a shame. It was good you were there. I’ve never seen anyone visit him. He seems a bit lonely.’
‘His wife passed away.’
‘I know. It’s so sad.’
‘Do you know how she died?’
Aggie shook her head.
‘All I know is that she went in her sleep. I think it might have been an aneurysm or something?’
Aggie started talking about something else, but I wasn’t really listening. I kept thinking about Vic waking up and turning over to say good morning to Edie. I imagined him trying to wake her up, and realising that she had died right next to him. I almost started to cry, but then the oven timer went off.
Aggie bounced off the bed and clapped.
‘Brownies!’
I followed her to the kitchen. I pulled the tray out of the oven and tested the brownies with a knife. They came out really well.
Aggie reached for the knife to cut into them.
‘You have to leave them for another ten minutes at least,’ I said.
‘But they smell so good!’
‘They still cook while they’re cooling down. If you eat one now it’ll be a bit underdone.’
‘I’m learning so much. Can I enshrine your creation on Instagram?’
‘Okay.’
Aggie took a photo with her phone.
‘Hey, I’ll tag you.’
‘I don’t have an account or anything,’ I said.
‘Seriously?’
I shrugged.
‘Of course you don’t,’ she said. ‘Because for you, baking brownies while looking ridiculously fashionable isn’t some cynical excuse to draw attention to yourself on the internet, it’s just who you are every damn day.’
‘That’s not it,’ I said.
‘It totally is. Anyway, I’m not as modest as you, so I’m going to show you off to my dozens of followers, half of which are seedy men from Mumbai. But if you ever want to see how famous you get, my Instagram is “memedoomer”, except, like, meem is spelled like meme and duma is spelled like doom-er, because, as you know, I’m a very lame person. Can I eat it now? Please?’
I smiled.
‘No, not yet.’
‘Okay. How about just this piece that fell off?’
Aggie raised one eyebrow and cut a piece off the end. She blew on it and put it in her mouth and I got nervous.
Her eyes went wide as she chewed.
‘Holy fucking shit! Sam! This tastes amazing! How did you do that?’
‘They’re pretty easy,’ I said. I was relieved and happy that she liked them.
Aggie’s brother walked into the kitchen. He was in his late teens and he looked like he had just woken up. He was tall and chubby and wore glasses. I stepped closer to Aggie as he opened the fridge door.
‘This is my new friend Sam,’ Aggie said. ‘Look, he made brownies.’
‘Hey,’ he said without looking at me. He drank from a bottle of orange juice then walked back out.
‘He has no interpersonal skills. I’ve diagnosed him with, like, six behavioural disorders, but he refuses to see anyone about them.’
‘Shut the fuck up, Aggie,’ he called out from another room.
‘See?’ Aggie laughed quietly, and I smiled because she had called me her friend. Nobody had ever said that about me before.
When they were cool, Aggie cut six brownies and put them on a plate. I started cleaning up, but Aggie made me stop. We went back to her room. I felt bad about leaving the kitchen a mess, but Aggie didn’t seem worried.
‘Hey, you know Mrs Boyd knocked on our door yesterday.’
‘Mrs Boyd?’
‘The woman who accosted you on the street. She came to warn my parents about this young troublemaker she saw coming out of Vic’s place.’
‘Really?’
Aggie laughed.
‘I told you. She’s a menace.’
‘Do you think she’ll call the police or something?’
‘For what? Occupying space in the universe?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I doubt she wants anything to do with the police anyway.’
‘Because of her husband?’
‘Do you want to know why he went to jail?’
‘Okay.’
Aggie sat forwards and dusted crumbs off her lap.
‘You might have actually heard the story. It made the news everywhere. It’s crazy. So, their house got burgled a few years ago while they were still home. I mean, it must have been genuinely frightening. Like, I’d feel sorry for her if she wasn’t so irritating. Anyway, it essentially turned Mrs Boyd into a hyper-vigilant ball of paranoia. She got sensor lights and cameras installed everywhere, deadbolts and security windows, the whole thing. Then Mr Boyd goes a step further. I don’t know if he was like, totally emasculated or just embarrassed by having his stuff taken and not being able to intervene, but he adopts this rescue dog called Marvin, which was a ridgeback or something and insanely aggressive. Marvin barked constantly, and they couldn’t take him to the park because he tried to eat anything that moved. The only creature Marvin didn’t want to straight up assassinate was Mr Boyd, so he had to take Marvin out for walks late at night while there was nobody else around. Anyway, late one night he’s walking Marvin through the neighbourhood, like, six blocks away from here, and he hears a woman calling out in distress from inside a house. She’s like, ‘Stop, please, God no, stop, please!’ So Mr Boyd figures it’s probably the same burglars from his place, right, and this time he’s going to stop them. He tries the front door, but it’s locked, so he opens the side gate and runs to the back of the house with Marvin. He shoulder-charges the back door and goes through the house. He bursts into a bedroom and finds an older woman tied to bed, her clothes all ripped, and there’s an older man standing over her. So Mr Boyd pushes this guy, hard. And Marvin goes fucking crazy and starts attacking him, like, really savage. The woman on the bed starts screaming, and the man is begging for help, trying to fend off Marvin. Then Mr Boyd looks around and sees, like, these sex accessories or whatever on the bed and realises he has completely misinterpreted the situation and he’s just barged in on a married couple who just like it spicy and are in the middle of some fetish roleplay. So he tears Marvin off this man, who is panicking so much that he can’t breathe. The woman is still tied to the bed and she’s, like, shrieking. Mr Boyd locks Marvin in a bathroom and calls an ambulance, and here’s the thing: the man has a massive coronary infarction and dies on the way to the hospital. And even though Mr Boyd explained that he went in there to save this woman who he thought was being attacked, he’s charged and convicted with trespass and manslaughter. Seriously. He got three years. Not only that, the woman sued him in a civil trial and got this huge payout.’
‘When does he get out?’
‘That’s the other thing. He was rele
ased in like eighteen months, but he was a totally different person. He divorced Mrs Boyd and moved to Bali and now she’s this bitter neighbourhood despot.’
‘What happened to Marvin?’
‘Good question. I assume they put him down. That’s what they usually do when a dog attacks somebody, right?’
‘I guess. I feel sad for him.’
‘Marvin? Are you kidding? I don’t. He was an arsehole.’
‘It wasn’t his fault. He was abandoned. He was probably scared and worried all the time, and that’s why he was so aggressive. He didn’t belong anywhere. I don’t know. Maybe it was for the best that they killed him. He never really had much hope. Maybe Marvin felt relieved in the end. You know, because he didn’t have to be afraid anymore.’
Aggie went quiet. She looked at me for a long time. I worried that I said the wrong thing. Then she nodded.
‘I didn’t think about it like that,’ she said.
I stayed at Aggie’s for hours, mostly listening to her talk. She was really smart. Late in the afternoon she plugged her phone in to charge, and I remembered that I left my phone at Vic’s. I had to go back.
I told her I had to leave.
Aggie walked me to the door. Then she held her arms out and gave me a hug. I flinched at first, but she felt really warm and soft.
‘Thanks for making me brownies, Sam Watson.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘Come over again?’
‘Sure.’
Aggie closed the door. I liked her.
I put my head down and walked fast past Mrs Boyd’s house. At Vic’s, I took a deep breath and knocked on the door, but he didn’t answer. I knocked again. He probably didn’t want to speak to me.
I went around the side and climbed onto a bin and looked through the garage window. The Kingswood was gone. I worried that he wasn’t coming back and it was my fault.
I sat by the front door with my knees pulled up to my chest and made myself as small as I could. I waited until it started to get dark. Lights in the houses across the street turned on one by one. I looked at my watch. I thought about going back to the overpass.
Then, finally, Vic pulled up.
He got out of the car to open the garage door and he saw me. He put his hand on his chest.
‘Jesus wept,’ he said. ‘Don’t run off like that.’
‘Vic, I’m really sorry. I just wanted to say that. I’m going to go and leave you alone. I just need to get my phone. But I wanted to tell you I was sorry as well.’
Vic sighed.
‘It’s alright mate. Come on inside.’
I followed him in. He hadn’t even locked his front door.
Vic turned on the lights and pulled out a seat for me at the table. He looked really tired.
‘Sit down,’ he said.
‘Do you want me to get changed first?’
‘No mate. It’s fine. Come on. Sit.’
I sat down and pulled my sleeves over my wrists.
Vic scratched his beard. He looked uncomfortable.
‘I’m sorry I got worked up and gave you a fright,’ he said. ‘It was just a shock to me, seeing those clothes. I thought you were being funny, making a joke of her.’
‘I wouldn’t do that. I’m really sorry. I just didn’t think. I won’t wear them again, I promise.’
‘No, no. Look, if that’s what you want to wear, you can wear them.’
Vic looked at the mauve jumper.
‘It’s nice to see them out and about.’
‘You really think so?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You don’t think I’m …’
I went quiet.
Vic frowned and shook his head.
‘Mate, you’ll have to forgive me. I’m not very good at this. I was your age a long time ago. The world’s very different now. But I know that Edie would love that you were giving her kit a run. She would’ve …’
Vic cleared his throat and tapped the table. Then he kept going.
‘She would’ve enjoyed having you here. She missed having someone like you in her life. She’d be fussing all over you right now.’
‘Really?’
‘My wife used to see a sale rack and go weak at the knees. She bought more clothes than she had places to wear them.’
‘Her wardrobe is really beautiful.’
‘It’s all lost on me, mate. Never had much of an eye for that sort of thing.’
‘Vic, you really honestly wouldn’t mind if I wore some of her other clothes? It’s not going to upset you?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘If you like them, you’re welcome to them.’
My hands were shaking, and I put them under the table and squeezed them between my legs. I blushed.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
Later, I got undressed in front of the vanity mirror.
I looked at my body. With short hair, my head looked smaller and my neck looked longer. There were bruises all over my body. Some were big and red and purple. The smaller ones were green and yellow. My skin was really pale. I hated how straight and bony my shoulders were. I hated my ribs. I hated my thin hips. I hated my arms and the veins that ran up my wrists. I hated my flat chest. I hated my cheekbones and I hated my jaw and I hated the lump in my throat. I hated my penis. I hated my legs and the thick brown hairs that grew from my thighs to my feet.
I looked away and folded my arms and sat on the bed and felt sick in my stomach. I realised I was in a strange house with a man I didn’t know. Vic was nice to me, but I didn’t know why. I felt lost. I thought about my mum and my chest seized up. It had only been a couple of days, but I missed her really badly. I wanted to call her, but I knew I had ruined everything and I couldn’t go back. I was on my own and it was my fault and it made me feel small and afraid. It was hard to breathe and the room started to spin. I closed my eyes tight and dug my nails into my palms but it didn’t work.
I got out the plastic lighter that I stole from behind the supermarket. I made a flame and kept it burning until the metal around it went black. Then I pressed it against my thigh. When I took it off a small strip of my skin tore away. I heated the metal again. The piece of skin smoked and smelled awful. I held the lighter down where I was bleeding and it made a small hiss. I closed my eyes again and I gritted my teeth and I started to feel better.
Venus and Mars
When I was really young I used to wear my mum’s t-shirts with nothing else except underwear. They went all the way down to my knees. I liked the bright colours and patterns and all that soft fabric around me. I liked the way the neckline was so big that it exposed my shoulder. Sometimes I cinched the waist with a belt. My mum would dress me at the start of the day in fitted clothes she got from op shops, but I always took them off and went to her drawers. She had a royal blue crushed velvet t-shirt that I wore every chance I got.
My mum worried that I was just trying to mimic her, because our world was so small and I didn’t have any other role models. She took me to the park sometimes and made me play with other boys. I was shy and I didn’t care about trucks or dinosaurs or water pistols or ball games. But I tried hard because she told me that this was what boys liked to do.
I hated my school uniforms, which were always shorts and polo shirts. In my first year of school I took a pleated skirt out of the lost property box and put it on. My teacher made me take it off and told me that boys and girls had to have separate uniforms, like players on different teams.
When I was in year three, I was taken out of class by Mrs Barnes, the school counsellor. She took me to her office. She had sandy grey hair and was really thin and looked at me without blinking. I thought I was in trouble. She asked questions about my long hair, about why I had no friends, about my mum, about my dad, about things I liked and didn’t like. Then she asked if I was a boy or a girl.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m just myself.’
She asked me again. It was a question other kids al
ways asked when they were teasing me. I knew that being a girl was something weird and wrong and shameful.
I told her I was a boy.
She went out of the room for a while, and she came back with an envelope. She told me to give it to my mum when I got home. I opened it as soon as school ended. It said that I should see a psychologist. I ripped it into little pieces and threw it away.
I tried harder to fit in, but there wasn’t a space for me. I didn’t know how I was supposed to be. It was like I was born speaking a language that nobody else could understand, but I couldn’t talk any other way. So I stopped speaking, and I learned how to be invisible.
One night a couple of months after speaking to Mrs Barnes, I was watching cartoons on the iPad I stole from Gabby. Bugs Bunny was being chased by a little bald man with a gun. To trick him, Bugs disguised himself as a woman in a green jumpsuit and red lipstick, and he danced and sang a little song. It gave me a strange queasiness in my stomach and I got tingles all down my neck. I watched it over and over.
My mum was out, so I went into her room and found a green summer dress. I had never put on a dress before. Then I went into the bathroom and tried on her red lipstick. I pressed my lips together with a tissue between them, just like she always did. I stared at myself. I had never felt pretty before, and I liked it.
I put on a pair of low black heels and spent the next few hours swooshing and dancing and singing that little song: ‘Can’t you see that I’m much sweeter? I’m your little senorita.’
My mum came home around midnight and caught me. She was really angry. She said she could hear me singing from the bottom steps of the apartment block. She grabbed me hard by the arm and marched me towards the bathroom. She smelled like licorice and cigarettes and perfume. When her heels fell off my feet she dragged me the rest of the way. She scrubbed at my lips and told me that if I ever wore her clothes or her make-up again she would leave me out on the street. Then she pulled the dress up over my head so fast that my arm got caught and the seam ripped. She yelled at me for a long time about how she had no privacy and nothing for herself and that I made everything difficult and I didn’t respect the sacrifices she made.
I didn’t dress up again for a few months after that, not even in my mum’s t-shirts. I thought about it every day, though. I wanted to feel that way again, but I didn’t want her to abandon me.
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