I Had Such Friends

by Meg Gatland-Veness

  “Honestly,” I said. “No one had a hope of getting past you.”

  He parked the car and we got out, taking our towels. I took my camera and Peter took the water bottle he’d stolen from the match. He didn’t get the football out. Either he felt like he’d played enough for the day or, more likely, he didn’t want to play with me anymore after being reminded what it was like to play with guys who knew how.

  The walk down was tricky. I tripped over a stick and scratched my foot. It bled a bit but I ignored it. Peter had taken on things much bigger and tougher than sticks that day and he hadn’t complained. He could have had a broken rib for all I knew. I was also on the look out for snakes. I had never been a big fan of snakes since I found one in our laundry. It was sleeping on the washing machine. I was in there at night to use the spare toilet because I didn’t want to wake everyone up. When I noticed it, my scream was so shrill, Dad thought it was Paige getting attacked, except Paige never screamed like a girl. That was my job. Dad had to coax the snake onto a broom handle and carry it outside. I always used the upstairs bathroom after that. Fuck waking everyone up.

  The beach itself was tiny. I think sometimes nudists went there, and fishermen, but that day it was empty. Except for us. We didn’t swim for long; there weren’t any waves there because it was so enclosed. I took a photo of Peter with his football. He was kind of awkward and it turned out a little blurry because he couldn’t really stand still. But the lighting was top notch.

  “Can you show me how to work it?” he asked.

  “My camera?” I asked, befuddled. No one had ever asked to use my camera before.

  “Yeah, whatever, you don’t have to. I’d probably break it anyway.”

  “Sure.”

  So I taught Peter Bridges all about the flash and the zoom, how to adjust the aperture and shutter speed and how to focus the picture manually. He actually managed to take a decent shot of my towel on the sand. I still have that photo in my wallet.

  We went back into the water when the heat got too much. “I went on another date with Annie Bower,” I told him. I found it much easier to talk and swim when I wasn’t being battered about by the waves.

  He nodded. I knew he wasn’t thrilled about me dating Charlie’s girl, but she had to move on sooner or later and better with a guy like me than some creep. But maybe I was a creep just by dating her.

  “I had dinner at her house.”

  “Classy.”

  I smiled. That was good. He was making jokes about it so he couldn’t hate me that much. I wondered then if maybe he liked Annie too and that he was jealous. I wouldn’t have been surprised. She was beautiful and funny and cute and smart and so unbelievably nice. I didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me sooner. And of course, he couldn’t date her now, not after what happened to Charlie. It all made sense. Peter was floating on his back. He didn’t look heartbroken and upset, but he was Peter Bridges.

  We got out of the water and lay on our towels in the fading afternoon sun. The sun was low enough not to burn me but I put on extra suncream, just in case. At the beginning, I’d been embarrassed to be so sun safe around Peter when he’d probably never put on suncream in his life. But with skin as white as mine, going out without it was just plain stupid. And it was better to look sissy than bright red.

  Peter lay on his back with his arm draped over his eyes. I was on my front with my chin resting on my folded arms. We lay in silence for a while. A comfortable silence. Silence was our thing a lot of the time. We felt safe in silence. After a while I started to speak and somehow I just couldn’t stop until it was all said. The words fell out and toppled over the top of each other. “I had a sister,” I said. I don’t know why I chose that moment to tell him, out of all the silences we had shared.

  He was silent. One thing I loved about Peter was that he never said too much.

  “She died,” I said. And the finality of it nearly stopped my story right there.

  And it was weird, but I hadn’t ever told anyone else about Paige before that day, at the beach, with Peter Bridges. Not even Martin. And still Peter was silent. But I knew it was an attentive silence. I knew he was listening.

  “She was seven, I was twelve. My parents were out on the farm, it was school holidays, harvest time. We were about to watch TV on the floor in the living room. We weren’t usually allowed to watch TV during the day, but Paige’s favourite show was on so we were going to anyway. It was the most rebellious thing we ever did together. I was always on edge, checking the window every two minutes to make sure my mum wasn’t coming in to cook dinner.”

  “What show was it?” he asked.

  It was strange to hear his voice in the middle of my story. For a moment, I had forgotten he was even there.

  “Raggy Dolls,” I said.

  He nodded as if he approved and allowed me to continue. He didn’t sit up or turn to look at me or pat me on the shoulder or anything. He hadn’t moved since I started. That was good of him. I don’t know if I could have done it with him watching me.

  “We had been playing outside in the sprinkler. We’d almost lost track of the time and we had to run back inside to catch the beginning of the show. Paige tried to sprint up the stairs to go to the bathroom so she wouldn’t miss the opening song.”

  Every day since then, I’d asked myself why she hadn’t just gone to the laundry rather than running up the stairs. It would have been quicker to go to the laundry, but she was probably still scared of the snake.

  “But she never made it to the top of the stairs. She slipped. She was still wet, she tried to get up there too quickly and she slipped. She fell back down and it wasn’t even that loud. You’d expect something as violent and awful as that to make a huge racket, but it didn’t. She just tumbled. She didn’t cry out or anything. She probably didn’t think to. She probably thought she would just get back up when she reached the bottom and try again. But she never got to try again. She never went upstairs again because she was dead. I didn’t see her fall but I walked over to check on her. Walked. I was so sure that she would be fine, it didn’t even occur to me to be worried yet. But she wasn’t moving. Her body was bent in a funny way and her neck was folded over the side of the bottom step. I knelt beside her, but I was too scared to touch her so I tried saying her name but it only came out as a whisper. When I realised that her eyes were still open, I knew it was bad. So I took her hand and tapped on it gently. It wouldn’t have woken her even if she were sleeping. And she wasn’t sleeping. I knew that. There was no tender moment when I was able to tell her how much I loved her and that everything would be okay. She was gone before I even reached the stairs. The last time I saw her was when she got up from the sofa. I don’t know if I was even paying attention. And somehow, I had to tell my parents. I thought about staying there until they came in, letting them find me there with her. I thought of going up to my room and letting them find her and making them tell me about it. I can’t believe I even thought that. Eventually I went outside. I wish it were because I knew it was the right thing to do, but really, I couldn’t bear to stay next to her anymore with those staring eyes and I didn’t want to sneak past her either to get up the stairs. I went outside to find my dad.”

  I’d wanted to tell him first because he always knew what to do. He knew how to get the snake on the broom without it biting everyone in the house. He knew how to fix the ute when the engine wouldn’t start just by jiggling the battery cables a little. He would know how to tell my mum properly.

  “I saw Mum first because she was already on her way back to the house. A few minutes later and she would have told us off for not drying ourselves before we came inside and Paige never would have fallen. She looked hot and annoyed and I didn’t know what to say. What could I have said? She must have seen by my face that something was up. Because she asked me what was wrong. She probably thought I’d broken something. I wasn’t crying; I must have been in shock or something. I only told her in three words. I didn’t build up to it, I didn’
t prepare her, I didn’t take her hands. I just said it. ‘Paige is dead.’ And I saw the emotions chase each other across her face. Confusion, shock, disbelief, pain and then what I realise now was hope. Hope that I was wrong. She ran inside. She didn’t scream when she saw Paige, or if she did, I was too far away to hear. I’d run off to find my dad. Those three words again. The same look. And then he left me as well. I walked back to the house. I didn’t run because I didn’t have any hope. When I got inside, my mum was sitting on the floor with Paige’s little body in her lap and she was crying in that heaving, shaking way and Dad had already called an ambulance. I told them she fell but I don’t know if they heard me. When the ambulance came, they put blankets around us all, even though it was a hot day. And we all went to the hospital. She broke her neck. It was instant, the doctor told us; she hadn’t felt any pain. I think that was supposed to make us feel better about it. None of us wanted to go home. We sat in the car for ages before we finally left.”

  Finally I stopped. I hadn’t realised, but I was crying. Not lots, not like Peter that time by the tree, but a bit. Because remembering that day, remembering having to tell my mum and dad that their little girl was dead, that always made me cry. I tried really hard not to think about that day.

  Peter still hadn’t spoken. He gave me a minute to wipe my face, pretending not to notice. What was nice about that was, not the fact that he knew I wouldn’t want him to see me cry, but the fact that he indulged me in that, that he didn’t just think I was a pussy who cried all the time.

  He didn’t hug me, which was good because I probably would have properly cried if he did. Sometimes you need to not dwell on these things for too long. Instead, he started to talk. He talked about the game, about football, about all the plays that they did, about all the tackles he made, about the kid who gave him an elbow to the head and how he paid him back by scraping his boot right down his shin. He told me about the coach getting on his case for missing training and how he had actually started going to practice recently because the finals were coming up. He told me how the coach had actually cried when they won and how they had all emptied their water bottles on him in the change room for being a sook. I didn’t understand half of what he said about the game. The footy slang went over my head quite a bit, but I didn’t mind.

  It wasn’t until Peter dropped me back at the payphone that he actually mentioned what I had told him. “I’m sorry about Paige,” he said. And it was so nice that he used her name rather than just saying “your sister”. I didn’t know what to say in response so I pretended to look for something in my backpack.

  “It fucking sucks,” he said, sincerely. “Thanks for telling me.”

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said, awkwardly, feeling exposed. I now understood why he hadn’t wanted to tell me about Charlie, or his mother. It was scary having someone know the things that made you vulnerable. But more importantly, I now understood this was what having a real friend was like. And I was slightly sad I’d never had that kind of honesty with Martin.

  When I got home the house was still empty. The house was always empty. Even when it wasn’t.

  16.

  I had to walk to the shops to buy bread. Peter had been at school quite a bit lately and he often gave me a lift home even if we didn’t stop at the beach first. I was starting to freak out about exams and he was excited about some charity football game coming up. He didn’t say he was excited, but I could tell that he secretly was.

  It wasn’t unbearably hot, for once, which was nice. In town, I saw a group of girls from my year at school. They were Annie’s friends, including Abbey, the queen bee. I thought perhaps Annie was with them. I imagined her emerging from the shop, like a tulip in a field of potatoes. They were getting petrol and had gone into the servo to buy ice blocks. None of them had lemonade ones. They were the cheapest. I knew because that’s what I got as a special treat when I was a kid.

  I almost walked by and pretended not to see them. But then I realised that was my girlfriend over there. As her boyfriend, I could walk right up to her and say something. I was a bit afraid that she might ignore me, or pretend we weren’t together, or I would find out the whole thing had been a joke. I imagined giving a timid wave from a distance, just to be sure. But she would see me and her face would light up and she would wave back. I would walk over to her and say, “Hi Annie,” – my dad told me girls always like it when you call them by their name – “you look beautiful.” He also told me to use the word ‘beautiful’ rather than ‘pretty’, but that one was obvious – Annie surpassed pretty a long time ago. She would blush and look at the floor. Her humbleness was adorable. Then she would take my hand and introduce me to her gaggle of friends as her boyfriend. And not one of them would laugh. I bet she had been defending my honour, telling them that I was actually really nice once you got to know me. I couldn’t wait until the whole school found out. I was picturing the looks on the faces of all those jerks who took money from Martin and threw things at me and called us names.

  Then Annie would invite me out with them, which I would have to respectfully decline as I already had plans. Which wouldn’t be a total lie – I did have a very exciting plan to transport the bread from the shop to the house.

  But once they began piling back into the car, I realised that Annie was not with them. One of them accidentally got her ice block on another’s arm which caused a lot of hysterics. They drove away in a car full of perfume and ribboned presents. I wondered if maybe Annie was sick but then I saw her, she was holding a plastic bag of groceries and standing awkwardly behind one of the petrol pumps. I walked over to her.

  “Oh hi Hamish,” she said, and I got the feeling she didn’t want to be found.

  “Are you hiding?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” she said, “look I have to go okay, bye Hamish.”

  And she left. I realised as the car pulled out of the driveway that her seat had already been filled by another girl.

  The next day I studied for most of the morning. Our teachers were laying off on the homework to give us time to prepare for our exams. It wasn’t too bad; I found that I remembered most things already, which was reassuring. By around three, I was starting to doze off. I had been sitting on the veranda in the sun and it was so warm and cosy that I started to close my eyes. I woke up because the phone rang inside. I still had my book open in my lap with my pen poised ready to write.

  “Hey Hamish.” It was Peter. “I’m at the payphone, fancy a trip to the beach?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute.”

  I packed up my books. My towel was still in Peter’s car. I left a note for my parents, but again, they probably wouldn’t see it. It was getting far too easy to lie to them.

  Peter was leaning against the hood of his car. It was probably too hot sitting inside. I couldn’t tell if the bruise around his eye was new or not. I also wasn’t sure if it was just from football. I hoped it was, because the alternative made my stomach turn over.

  When we got to the beach, we swam for a while. Peter kept going out further to catch waves and I bobbed around where I could at least still see the bottom, if not touch it. I wondered if Peter could surf. I guessed he probably could; back when Charlie was still alive, he would have borrowed his board. If I’d had any money, I would have bought him a board for his birthday. I then realised that I didn’t even know when his birthday was. I would have bought him one anyway.

  When we went back in, a lot of people had gone home because it was after five. We sat on the sand to dry off in the last of the sun.

  “I saw Annie in town yesterday,” I said. “I didn’t really get to speak to her much, she was in a bit of a rush.”

  “Great,” he said, totally monotone.

  “Annie looked so pretty, you should have seen this new dress she had on. It was blue, but it was sort of refined, you know, not slutty or anything, and she was so modest about it.”

  “Yeah right,” Peter grunted. “I’m sure she’s the soul of
perfection.”

  “Annie is different to those other girls,” I said, offended. “She reads. And not just magazines, I mean proper good books, not even those ones they write just for adolescent girls. And she doesn’t act all superior like the others do. You know this one time, on the bus, Martin was sitting by himself and this other guy—”

  “Will you shut up about that fucking bitch, I’m sick of hearing her fucking name!” he snapped. And, somehow, I just exploded.

  “You’re just jealous! You’re jealous that I have a girlfriend and you don’t! And not just any girlfriend, but the prettiest girl in school! I bet you think it’s all a big joke, don’t you? That Annie Bower would date someone like me. Well she is, and you’ll just have to accept that she likes me better than you!” I had never yelled at him before, I’d never even been mad at him before, but Annie was special and I hated the way he talked about her. I had started to ramble though, I wasn’t even sure what I was saying.

  “Hamish,” he said, still angry, but not nearly as aggressive. “I don’t like girls.”

  And I didn’t have the sense to stop for a second and think about what he’d said. I was an idiot, by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed yet.

  “What do you mean you don’t like girls? Of course you do,” I said. It was common knowledge that in his earlier high school years Peter Bridges had taken the virginity of a good chunk of the girls in our year, and quite a few others, including some who were several years older. Not that I ever heard him brag about it, I’m sure he did at the time though. In fact, I thought one of those girls was Annie. Wow, I really didn’t want to think about that. Maybe she wasn’t one of Peter’s girls. I mean, she hadn’t even let me kiss her yet. But, well, maybe that was just because she found me slightly repulsive. I wouldn’t have been surprised.