by Andrew Daddo
Emily was finally released and placed on firm instructions to take things easy. If there was even the hint of something new, it was straight back to hospital.
After almost two weeks at home and not a murmur from the growth, Emily asked to go back to school. ‘Mornings only,’ she said. ‘Just to start with, and if it’s too much I’ll just come home.’
She almost laughed because of the amount of times she’d wanted to miss school by pretending to be sick when she was younger. But sitting around the house with her mum and Astrid asking if she was okay all day was driving her crazy. And, she was bored rigid. Emily wished she could go back to the Tan and walk the dog and bump into Hendrix.
Radio silence had followed the meltdown. She was waiting for him to call. She didn’t want to be the first to make contact in case he had moved on.
She needed to think of something else.
There was a flurry of ‘How are you?’ and ‘Where you been?’ from the Strippers that lasted from the front gate to the Button, where the girls made room for Emily and begged to know everything. She hadn’t even made it to her meltdown before the girls had drifted back to their phones and their own lives.
Emily hadn’t wanted to talk about it, anyway. She was getting enough sympathy at home; it’d be good to be treated normally at school. She changed the subject.
‘This is not me, but one of my friends in Benalla,’ she said cautiously. ‘She met a boy, and he was cool and she thought he liked her. But then he said he was busy with other stuff and couldn’t spend time with her right now, but he would be able to in a little while. You follow?’ Lola nodded, the others watched on. They were interested again. ‘He’s dusting her, isn’t he.’
‘Completely.’ Brandy laughed. ‘Like, soz. But who’s sixteen and too busy to follow up a girl? Exactly no one. Especially not a sixteen-year-old boy because they’re usually gagging for it.’
‘Gagging for it?’ giggled Lola. ‘Not all boys are gagging for it. Maybe your friend’s boy is, and that’s why he’s busy. Get it? Because he’s too busy gagging for it.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Emily, hoping it was a joke. ‘He’s not like that.’ But then, in the back of her mind, a little voice asked, Was he gay? She hadn’t even considered that. He might actually like running with her dog, more than walking with her. If he liked her, he’d walk with her, wouldn’t he? She shook the thought out of her head. ‘Nah, I doubt it. He’s some kind of athlete and he’s got big competitions and, like, it’s the busiest time of year, and –’
‘That’s that then.’ Lola gave Emily a stink eye. ‘Because there is no such thing as a gay athlete.’
Brandy jumped in. ‘How about the gay athletes who don’t know they’re gay?’
Emily put her hands out, fending them off.
‘I don’t think he’s gay.’
‘So you know him. That’s interesting.’ Lola feigned surprise. ‘But, it’s not your friend’s friend, is it? We’re talking about your not-gay friend, right?’
Emily trod water and tried to soften the blow. ‘No. Yes. Well, no. He’s not really anything, yet.’
Kitty pulled her face out of her phone and said, ‘But you want him to be something?’
‘I think so,’ said Emily. ‘So fingers crossed he’s not gay, because that would be a shame. He’s got a great body, though.’
‘Just ask him. It’s simple. You send him a Snapchat saying something like Hey, Legend. I can’t believe you’ve got a boyfriend!’
‘I’m not doing that!’ wailed Emily.
‘Wait.’ Kitty waved both hands at her in a calming motion. ‘Straight after, like two seconds later, you send another one saying, Oops, wrong Legend. How are you anyway? Have you got a boyfriend? Gags. Something like that. You just have to start talking to him by accident, then you can talk to him for real.’ Kitty smiled like she was happy with herself.
‘That’s genius, Kitty,’ said Brandy. ‘You should do that, Em.’
Lola nestled closer to Emily. ‘You should do it now. Like, this moment. Like, let’s do it now!’
Emily shook her head.
Brandy joined the chorus. ‘It’s guaranteed foolproof.’
‘Who is he, anyway?’ said Kitty. ‘This man of mystery you pretend not to be interested in.’
‘No one,’ said Emily. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
But he was someone, and she couldn’t let it go. Later, she tried to remember exactly what Kitty had said, typing the message into her phone. She nearly sent it. Almost. Hendrix wasn’t gay, he was just busy. She’d looked him up online and found he’d won the race and qualified for the State Championships. He was a proper runner, of course he’d be busy. He had training and school and whatever else proper runners did with their time. And her mum had said he’d be in touch when things settled down a bit. Those were the words she’d used.
If things didn’t settle down, then stuff it, thought Emily. Too busy for me, his loss.
His father kicked training into a gear Hendrix didn’t know he had.
His days went something like train, replenish, school, train, study, sleep, repeat. Physically he was a rat on a treadmill and had never felt better. The only pothole was Emily. He tried not to be pissed she hadn’t been in touch since Districts and told himself it was understandable. He couldn’t see he’d done anything wrong. He’d taken her to the hospital, he’d wanted to stay but wasn’t able to. He’d rubbed her back, she’d kind of cooed.
It didn’t stop him checking his phone constantly, and worrying he’d missed his chance by not visiting her at the hospital. It should have been an easy thing to do and would have said so much. But the message had been pretty clear. His father had told him Emily would be in touch with him when she was better, and that might take a while. His dad had sat him down and told him what Emily’s mother had said: She’d need time to recuperate from whatever steamroller had flattened her.
‘She’ll be okay, Hendrix,’ he’d said. ‘For her, this is not a race across a line, it’s bigger than that, and she needs all the time and room she can get, mate. That’s all her mum said. Besides, it’s not as if there isn’t a world of things for you to do in the meantime. By the time she’s back on deck you could be State Champion, National Champ, even. Don’t lose sight of that. Not now, not ever.’
Hendrix knew it made sense but hated the sound of it, anyway.
His father held his eye and whispered, ‘Don’t live to regret what you could have achieved, live to remember what you did.’
He was right, Hendrix knew it. He cursed himself for being selfish. Emily would be in touch when she was ready. It was just the longer it took, the more he worried that day might slip off the calendar.
He was at the kitchen bench, somewhere between a bowl of cereal and English homework, when his phone beeped. Hendrix couldn’t have been more surprised by the message.
Don’t you want to run my dog?
Out of the blue, just like that. As if nothing had happened and it hadn’t been two weeks since he’d seen her. He fought the urge to respond immediately but his fingers had a mind of their own, flying across the screen of his phone.
‘Bugger it,’ he said aloud as he typed.
Yes. When?
He pressed send before he had a chance to think about it.
How’s now?
Now’s good.
Good’s good. See you at the corner. It’ll take me thirty minutes to get there.
Same.
Hendrix closed his exercise book and pushed it across the kitchen bench. He cleaned his teeth hard enough to turn the spit pink, put on a fresh t-shirt and deodorant, and messed up his hair. It took less than thirty minutes to get to the bottom corner of the Tan. Emily still wasn’t there after forty minutes. He started to think she was taking the piss. And as the thought took hold and started to eat away at his confidence, she arrived. She was alone. No dog to walk, just her. And she walked straight up to him like she was in a hurry, her hair pushed back the way it would be if she was
in front of a wind machine. She kind of smiled at him as she approached, but didn’t slow down as she got closer. Before he knew it, she was right there, placing a hand on each side of his face and pulling his head toward hers. She had hold of him and kissed him hard on the lips.
God, Hendrix was glad he’d cleaned his teeth.
Their first kiss was nothing like he’d expected. In his mind, it’d been darker, softer even. He’d imagined they’d be somewhere private, like his house or hers, not out in the open. And this was a closed-mouth kiss. She just banged her lips onto his and pushed her head forward. Then slowly, once the shock was over, her lips parted, and his followed. It was the last thing he was expecting and the best thing ever. It felt like ages, easily long enough to get him up and going, and then she gently pushed his head back so she could look at him.
‘Well, that answers that question – you’re not gay, are you.’
‘No,’ he laughed, utterly out of his depth.
‘Good.’ And she grabbed him again and let him have it. Tongues, teeth, everything. As far as first kisses went, it was epic. When it was done, when he thought he’d gone next level and it all really was up and out and a bit much, she stopped. ‘You could have had that a couple of weeks ago.’ She smiled. ‘Why didn’t you message me?’
He was dumbfounded. ‘I thought you were going to message me. Dad said I had to wait until you were ready, and then you’d be in touch.’
‘I’m pretty sure that’s what my mum said, too. Huh!’ Emily said. ‘So, we lost a bit of time. Oh well.’ She kissed him again. Slower, gentler. She pushed herself against him. ‘Hmmm,’ she went, standing back and looking at Hendrix from head to toe, then back again. ‘Definitely not gay.’
Hendrix felt the flush of embarrassment. ‘Where’s Lucky? I thought we were walking the dog.’
‘It was a ruse to get you down here, Hendrix. I knew you’d come for her, but wanted you to come for me. I’ll bring her next time.’ She added a funny laugh, a bit Austin Powers, a bit mad. ‘Come on.’
It had only been on the way there that Emily had made the decision to kiss him. There was still no news from Dr Harrington, which made her think things might have been worse than better. If the news was as bad as she expected, Emily decided she should get on with her life while she had control of it. If time was going to be a factor, she most definitely wasn’t going to waste a second double guessing things.
They headed along the Yarra, Hendrix letting his stride match hers, their hands finding each other as they swung.
‘You won your race,’ she said, bumping into him. ‘You’re, like, a really good runner. I knew you were.’
‘I did,’ laughed Hendrix. ‘And maybe I am. Or will be, one day. But what happened to you?’ And suddenly he realised that he hadn’t asked what had happened or how she was. He’d thought about her, worried, asked his father if he’d heard anything, but he hadn’t actually put it to her. ‘Oh my God. What did happen?’
‘Nothing,’ said Emily. ‘Well, something, obviously. Sometimes I get these headaches. That was a bad one. It’s fine now. All good, as they say in the classics.’ She took her hand back from his and folded her arms across her chest. ‘It was a shit one, though.’
Hendrix asked the logical questions. How often, how bad, what was the cause, that sort of thing. Emily batted the questions away with innocuous answers, trying to make it sound far less interesting than it actually was. She changed the subject, and asked about his running again. Hendrix countered with more questions about her headache and the stay in hospital. They danced around the facts, both avoiding any intimate details.
Emily managed to steer things to her former life as a Benalla girl, something she found easier to talk about. She took a selfie of the two of them and said she had to post it for her old girlfriends. ‘Rainey and Tess will fricken die!’
‘Here, I’ll get a selfie to send to my mates, too. There’s a few blokes I wouldn’t mind killing.’
Once they both had a picture on their phones they joked about what to say to their friends. In the end, the two of them added a hot emoji to the pictures and left it for everyone else to work out what was going on.
Emily clucked when she saw the time. ‘Sheeeit,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go. What are you doing tomorrow?’
‘Ah, usual. Training. School. Training.’ It sounded lame. Hendrix heard it as clear as a full-time siren.
‘Ditch it,’ said Emily. ‘I’ve got a surprise for you.’ She thought he hesitated, like, maybe she was rushing things, a stalker about to nail the prey. Hendrix literally knew nothing about her, and vice-versa. And yet, at that moment, it felt like she knew everything. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, then kissed him on the cheek. ‘Tomorrow? You can message me if you like.’
She left him standing at the corner of the Botanical Gardens wondering, What the hell was that? Then he whispered to himself, ‘I think I’ve got a girlfriend!’
Hendrix texted her before he got home.
Glad you’re okay. We with Lucky tomorrow?
You’ll be Lucky.
For Emily, it was as if the thought of Hendrix, the memory, the smell, the taste even, had punched her through the funk of the worst few weeks of her life. She wished he could have been with her when the doctor called. Dr Harrigton hadn’t given much away on the phone, but he did say it might be better if Siss didn’t come along.
They filed in expecting to wait, but the nurse said the doctor was ready for them. Her mum’s mouth had been drawn tight from the moment they’d got to the hospital and her first tear fell before Dr Harrington had finished a tense ‘Hello’. Emily noticed her father’s bottom lip jutting out at an angle she hadn’t noticed before. She knew they’d been in contact with the doctor all along, so they had to know more than she did. In her mind, things could only go two ways: She was clear, or she was fucked. Given the mood in the room, she expected the worst.
Dr Harrington didn’t even start with, ‘How are you feeling, Emily?’ He launched straight into it, fingers steepled under his chin. He looked first to her mum, then her dad, then let his eyes rest on Emily.
‘Someone had a lucky escape.’ He nearly smiled. ‘That’s good?’ her mum said.
He nodded. ‘Lucky escapes are always good.’
Emily didn’t look at Mum in case it brought them both undone.
‘So look, there’s good news and bad. The good news isn’t as good as the bad news is bad.’ He drew a long breath, giving that a chance to sink in. ‘Bad’s winning, I’m afraid. But as you see in the movies, good can always fight back.’
Emily tried to get her head around the sentence, but it was hard to concentrate when her mum grabbed hold of her hand and properly burst into tears.
‘The good news is, we have options.’
His small smile to Emily barely registered. She was numb. When he’d said ‘bad’s winning’, a fog rolled through her brain and dulled the edges. She felt like she was going to pass out.
‘And the bad news?’ Her dad hadn’t taken his eyes off the doctor since they’d sat down, perhaps looking for something hopeful in his manner.
Dr Harrington turned to her father. He’d seen the light go out behind Emily’s eyes and knew from experience she’d heard about all she was going to hear.
‘The bad news is the one thing we were afraid of, Eddy. It’s incredibly rare, but it looks like the tumour has woken up. And it’s not happy.’
Hendrix tried to rush through the session. He didn’t want to shirk the training, just condense it, but that was impossible given his dad was there to supervise.
‘Process,’ his dad said. ‘Training is to finesse timing and process. It’s like you’re in a hurry, but this is not the place to rush, boyo. Rush on the track, Hendrix. Never rush your preparation.’
‘It’s just –’ He was shushed by his father’s raised palm. It was hopeless.
‘Try to think of it this way. If you’re building a house, you need the foundations, right? You’ll get to the
roof, but not before walls go up, because without walls, there’s no support for the roof. We’re building the walls, Drix. The roof’s coming. It’s a big roof, we’re going to –’
‘– need good walls,’ Hendrix barked into the mask. He was pushing hard on the stationary bike. Flat out for the first twenty seconds of every minute for forty-five minutes. The ultimate fat burn.
‘Have I told you that one before?’
Hendrix looked at his watch again. He’d planned to meet Emily in an hour, but the way this session was going, that would never happen. He couldn’t even get off the bike to reach his phone, and he was at least thirty minutes from the cool down. He’d stretch after, then refuel. It’d take forever.
‘Harder, get the cadence up, lift your heart rate.’
Hendrix finally got to his phone to see a text from Emily. It was about the same time he was meant to be meeting her.
Come on! We’re not getting any younger.
And another.
I’ve got a surprise for you!
‘Shit,’ he hissed when he saw the messages. He was late. Hendrix was out of his depth and caught in a rip without working out a way back to the shallows. He loved that Emily was always in a hurry. She tried to cram more into a moment than he’d thought possible. She was hungry for his time and attention, in much the same way running was.
He dumped his work-out gear on the floor, sprayed deodorant all over his body and threw on a clean t-shirt and shorts. If there was no tram he’d run back to the Botanical Gardens and undo the cool-down he’d worked so hard to get right. He knew he’d run Lucky, regardless.
Coming. Just finished a wall,.
Even though his text made sense to him, he realised she’d never get it. It was mysterious, though. She’d have to give him points for that.
Meet you at the top corner. Lucky’s ready.
From that first kiss, Hendrix had been hooked. He’d barely been able to think of anything else, and the closer he got to seeing her, the more he was overthinking things. He wanted to run to her but didn’t want to look like a dork. If he blew this, Hendrix worried she might have second thoughts. Good things like her didn’t happen to him, not without being part of a plan.