I Had Such Friends

by Meg Gatland-Veness

  I didn’t have a towel because I’d stupidly left it at home, so Peter lent me one of his.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, my voice still a little strange, like there was a slight delay between my brain and my mouth. “How the hell am I going to get home?”

  “Ah, I didn’t really think this through,” he said, and he apparently found my anger very amusing.

  “I’m serious! How will I get home? It’s easy for you, you only live around the corner. I’m out on the fucking highway!”

  “Stop it!” he said, almost doubled over. “You look like a fucking toddler when you’re angry!”

  “Do not!”

  Shit, I totally did too.

  “Well, I better start walking home if I want to get back before morning!” I said.

  “Yeah, it will take a while with those itty-bitty legs of yours!”

  I almost stuck my tongue out at him, but instead I stormed off. Peter’s laughter followed me a long way. He probably wouldn’t even go home; I bet he slept in his car that night with the patchwork blanket that still smelt like Charlie Parker.

  When I did finally get home, I spent ages trying to open the door silently and tiptoe through the house without knocking anything over, only to find that my mum was sitting on the sofa. I had Peter’s towel wrapped around my shoulders and my hair was still damp. I wanted really badly to wrap up in a doona and go to sleep.

  “Where have you been?” she said. She didn’t yell, in fact, it was more of a whisper than anything.

  “I told you, Mum, I was…” Shit, where did I tell them I was going?

  “Because Annie called here after you left asking if she could talk to you.”

  Shit. Foiled again.

  “Look, Mum, the thing is…”

  “Hamish, have you been drinking?”

  “Of course not, Mum.”

  I wasn’t even acting drunk anymore, but she must have been able to see it in my face. I probably had a drunk face.

  “Hamish! Tell me who you were with tonight!”

  I don’t know why she bothered to ask, she knew the answer.

  “Well, fine, I was with Peter. But Mum, you’ve got to give him a chance.”

  “A chance to get you drunk and drive you home in the middle of the night probably high on drugs? I haven’t told your father about this. I didn’t want him to lose any more sleep worrying about you. But you better believe that in the morning he’ll deal with you.”

  I didn’t argue with her anymore, I was far too tired. Instead, I told her I loved her and I went to bed. Sleep came even easier than lies.

  19.

  I was lying face down on my bed. It was Sunday evening and I had spent a whole two days out in the sun with the fucking cabbages. And that was only the start of my punishment. If I hadn’t needed it for my HSC, they probably would have taken away my camera.

  I had spent most of the day thinking about what had happened with Peter on the beach on Friday night. I still remembered everything perfectly, even though I had woken up on Saturday with a head that felt too heavy for my neck and a stomach that wanted nothing more than to be empty. Yet, somehow, I really felt like some Vegemite on toast.

  I couldn’t believe that he had kissed me. My first frickin’ kiss and it was from a guy.

  Jesus Christ.

  Not to mention the fact that I had a girlfriend. Shit. I would have to tell Annie what had happened. Now that would be awkward. “Hi Annie, just letting you know that I kissed the ex-boyfriend of your ex-boyfriend.” It was like a frickin’ soap opera.

  I opened a book and tried to read it, but I couldn’t pay attention to the words. I drank some more water. The Vegemite wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had.

  I managed to motivate myself out of bed and walk downstairs. My father was already in bed and my mother was sitting on the couch watching TV. I think that was her escape. When she was watching something that wasn’t real, she forgot about her shitty little life for a while. I bet it was terrible when she remembered again. I used to forget about Paige sometimes. I would dream that she was still alive, that she’d never fallen down those stairs, and when I woke up, just for a moment, I would think it was true. Remembering again was just as bad as finding out the first time.

  My mum must have noticed me, but I guess she figured I was getting a drink or something. She never would have guessed that I was going out. Yep, I was planning on going out.

  Where was I planning on going on a Sunday night? Well, I was going to walk to Peter’s house. Peter’s house? What the hell was I doing going to Peter’s house on a Sunday evening? Well, I wasn’t really sure. I didn’t think much about it at the time, I just wanted to see him.

  So, I was in the kitchen and my mum was on the sofa, but she had her back to me and I was trying to think of a way to sneak out of the house without her noticing. And I was also thinking, Why the hell are you sneaking out of the house, Hamish, you fool? You’re already in shit, don’t make things worse.

  But really, how much worse could things get? There wasn’t much else they could do to me. It was still a stupid idea but, for some reason, I just really wanted to see Peter Bridges that night.

  I arsed about in the kitchen for a while trying to concoct a plan. Eventually, I realised that no matter how many times I wagged school or stayed out late, I was still a good boy at heart and good boys rarely came up with stealthy plans for sneaking out at night. It wasn’t in our genes. So I walked back to my room, deciding to try my book again.

  On my way, I passed by the spare room. Paige’s old room. We hadn’t left all her stuff in there, untouched, like in the movies. Most of her toys and clothes were in boxes under the house. They got soaked through one year when we had really bad flooding and no one could bear to open them up and survey the damage. So there they rested, in a soggy heap. The window in the spare room had no flyscreen, as you know Paige took it out so many times for her puppet shows that it was just never the same, so we always had to leave that window closed to keep the mozzies and flies out. It was funny that none of us called it Paige’s room anymore. We never discussed that, it just happened. But, as you know by now, we didn’t discuss much in my family.

  I opened the door and went inside. I tried to avoid that room as much as possible, for obvious reasons, but a flicker of hope had returned to me upon remembering her window. I didn’t look at the empty walls or the double bed that we replaced her little four-poster with. Even though I knew it was just my imagination, that room still smelt like my sister. Like fresh hay and Johnson’s No More Tears shampoo. The noise the window made when I opened it was phenomenal, but I hoped my parents would figure that I was just opening the window in my room. I jumped down into the garden bed. The night air felt good on my skin. I guess I could have warned Peter to let him know I was coming, but the spontaneity of it made me nervous and excited. My heart was beating so fast. I knew everybody said that, but it was, it really was.

  I walked to Peter’s house. It was even further than Martin’s. Peter lived on the other side of the town. The dodgy side. The lock-your-car-doors side. Walking through it at night was kind of scary, if I was honest. If Peter were with me, I wouldn’t have worried.

  When I reached his house, he was outside. He was taking plastic shopping bags out of his boot. It was a funny, domestic Peter. It was kind of endearing. But also more than a little bit heartbreaking, because I knew he wasn’t just doing it to help out around the house. He was doing it because he had no choice.

  He didn’t notice me at first so I watched him for a while. He managed to carry all of the bags at once with his key in his mouth.

  “Peter,” I said, when he reached the front door. I meant to yell it, since I was quite far away, but it didn’t come out nearly as loudly as I’d planned.

  He heard me anyway.

  He couldn’t speak though; his key was still in his mouth. But he smiled at me. He seemed a bit surprised to see me, but that made sense since I’d never been to visit him at his house before.r />
  He took the bags inside and I waited awkwardly outside the gate. He joined me after the time it probably took him to put the frozen things in the freezer. I like to think that he left the rest on the kitchen bench because he was anxious to see me.

  When he came outside, he only said one word.

  “Beach?”

  And we walked.

  “So, how’s it going?” I asked.

  He only nodded. “You?”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “And how did you manage to get out of your house?”

  “I snuck out!”

  “Bullshit!”

  “No, I swear, I climbed out a frickin’ window!”

  “What have I done to you?”

  “You’ve turned me into a monster.”

  We got to the beach but we didn’t go onto the sand. We stayed on the grass under the Norfolk pine trees.

  Peter sat with his back against a tree. I kneeled, slightly uncomfortably.

  “So, you snuck out of your house just to come and sit at the beach with me?” he said.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Nothing, I just thought there might be another reason.” He smiled in a sort of cheeky way. It made me nervous. I felt like all my internal organs had grown wings. It wasn’t like him to be this cryptic. “Because if there was another reason, then it would be better if you told me rather than leaving me in the dark here,” he said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  So Peter returned to his original state of avoiding words and just kissed me. And this time I was ready; this time I was expecting it. And I finally let myself think about the real reason I snuck out of my house that night. Because the only thing I had been able to think about since that night was Peter’s lips on mine.

  He only kissed me once, quite quickly. Then he leant back against his tree. I knew he was waiting for me to say something because I always said something. I was always the one to break the silence. I could think of a hundred things to say; a hundred things I wanted to tell him. A part of me didn’t want him to kiss me again. A part of me was worried that I wouldn’t know what to do. Peter had probably kissed hundreds of people before, basically every girl at my school, and Charlie of course, and I had as much experience as Martin Archer. And, as I’m sure you well know, that was zero.

  I thought he might be waiting for me to make the next move, like he was testing to see if I was ready. But after my hesitation, he gave up and kissed me again. This time, he didn’t taste like beer and cigarettes, which was nice. I had brushed my teeth before I left. Part of my brain must have known what my plan was when I left the house. His face was rough and his kisses were raw. It wasn’t a beautiful, romantic moment. I wouldn’t have described it as soft and poetic, but I wouldn’t have described Peter as soft and poetic.

  I was floundering though. As with all things, Peter was, once again, an expert and I was the moron who didn’t know what to do with his hands. It took me a little while before I started to over analyse and then I realised my hands were still by my sides, like a frickin’ statue, so I copied him and threaded my fingers through his hair. This was harder than it sounds because I didn’t think he ever brushed it. I was thinking too much.

  I don’t know if you want me to tell you everything that happened, but I will. We could skip this part if you want to but, really, it’s just getting good.

  It started with a lot of kissing, in-depth kissing, involving all parts of the mouth. And then Peter took his shirt off and, seeing as he was the expert in this area, I copied him. This was only a little bit emasculating. We concentrated on ears and necks and chests for a while. It was all new to me and, though I thought Peter may have been growing slightly impatient, he indulged my inexperience and took it relatively slowly. When he took his jeans off, I was very unwilling to follow suit, but Peter took care of that for me.

  Now, just to momentarily digress, and I hate to say this, but, he was definitely bigger than me. That was awkward, you know? At least with a girl, you’d be the only guy there so you could at least pretend she wasn’t comparing you to anyone else. But with two guys there was no getting away from it, one of you was bound to be bigger. Another quite emasculating moment. I did eventually get over the emasculation. Peter was very good at distracting me that night. Not that mine was tiny or anything, it wasn’t less than proportionate but, you know, Peter Bridges was Peter Bridges.

  Anyway, let’s get back to the story.

  It was a long time before any underwear came off, and even longer before he was on his knees in front of me. I didn’t feel emasculated then.

  To start with, I tried to log everything he did in my mind so I could do the same to him, but then, when I felt his mouth on me, my brain lost all methodical function and it took me a while to even realise that my hand was on the back of his head, guiding him. And, since no one had ever, you know, done that to me before, it was all over fairly quickly. I thought I may have made some embarrassing noises.

  I wasn’t ready to go down there too, so instead I took him in my hand. This was one thing, at least, that I had experience with. Not on other guys, obviously, but, well… you know what I mean anyway, and by the time you were seventeen you pretty much had it down to a fine art. And, I don’t mean to brag, but he definitely enjoyed it.

  Afterwards, we lay side by side on the grass. I sat up and watched him. He was lying on his stomach and I could see all the muscles in his back. His body was like the guys you see on TV, the ones who advertise gym memberships. But Peter didn’t need a gym; he had those huge bags of sand to lug around.

  There were terrible scars on his back and his arms. I traced them with my fingers, wondering why I had never noticed them before. I guess that was why he always wore his hoodie.

  “Where did you get these?” I asked.

  “Nowhere,” he said into his arms. But he didn’t say it in an angry way. I think he knew by then that I would always make him tell me.

  “Your mum?” I asked, but I knew the answer.

  “Yeah,” he said and the words were muffled by his arms crossed over in front of his face. “Sometimes she threatens me with our steak knife. When I was younger, she didn’t just threaten me.”

  The euphoria I had been feeling was replaced with a nigh irresistible urge to cry. The thought of Peter as a little boy, cowering away from his mother looming over him with a knife in her hands was too much for me to handle.

  “You need to get out of that house, Peter,” I said.

  “And go where?” he said, turning onto his side so he could look at me. “Besides, she needs me, Hamish. Who would make sure she eats once in a while and who would pay the bills?”

  “You could come and stay with me,” I said, but I knew it was the stupidest suggestion I’d ever made. “Try and get her into rehab.” The word was harsh; I didn’t like the way it sounded when I said it.

  “Thanks anyway, man, but I doubt your parents would like that.”

  He was right, and I felt like a fool. I wanted so badly to help him, but Peter Bridges was not the kind of guy who wanted anyone’s help. He had looked after himself his whole life and he wasn’t about to let some weedy farm boy step in and take over.

  Besides, there was nothing I could have done. Or, at least, that’s what I told myself anyway.

  20.

  My parents, of course, noticed I was gone. When my mum went up to bed, she checked my room to make sure I was in it. I wasn’t, obviously. Regardless, when I got home they were both in bed. I doubted they were sleeping. Worried parents never sleep. They no longer waited for me on the veranda, or even in the kitchen. They were starting to give up on me. They were running out of ideas. Yet another thing to add to the list of reasons why I wanted to bawl my eyes out. Suffice to say, the open-ended punishment season continued. Those cabbages were going to be very well tended.

  At school on the Monday, I saw Peter playing football and I lingered to watch for just a minute longer than usual. He really was
amazing. He got to the ball before anyone else, even if he had to run from the other side of the field. When he kicked the ball, it would have blown a hole right through a building and when he jumped for a catch, he never missed, even if it was miles above his head. It took three guys to tackle him to the ground.

  But I wasn’t jealous anymore. I used to watch those guys on the oval and hate them for being everything I wasn’t. Now I didn’t care that my arms were like paper and my legs like chopsticks. It didn’t bother me that I couldn’t do a single chin-up or lift a bucket of water with one hand.

  I left the oval and headed for the little space outside the Science staffroom. Martin was sitting there with his headphones on, probably listening to Korean pop music. He saw me walking over to him but he didn’t take his headphones off. In fact, I think he may have turned the volume up.

  “Hey Martin,” I said as I dropped my bag on the cement and sat down.

  He didn’t respond. He was reading a massive textbook. I think it was for Physics.

  “Test today?” I asked, pointing to the book.

  Still nothing.

  Sometimes Martin was infuriatingly childish. He still gave me the silent treatment from time to time. It was a little bit ridiculous. I mean, what was the point? If I didn’t know what I’d done wrong, then how could I apologise?

  Also, in all likelihood, he probably didn’t have a test that day; he was just studying because he always studied. I think he enjoyed it.

  I once had to cancel plans to watch a movie with Martin because I had forgotten we were having a family get-together the same night. Not only was he mad at me for cancelling on him at the last minute, but he was also upset that I didn’t invite him. Now I don’t know about you, but I always thought that a family get-together involved, you know… your family, not your one super-geek friend. Martin didn’t talk to me for two whole days after that and it was only after I’d apologised that he announced he’d watched the movie by himself and that I had missed out on a great film.