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by Tanya Paterson


  “What? Why would you do that?”

  “You. Almost. Died. Alex.” Charles said the words slowly, letting the weight of them sink in. “I think a family intervention was well overdue. One young death in our family is one too many. No more. Not if I can help it.”

  I swallowed hard and fixed my eyes on a spot on the floor. I felt sick. Did Charles suspect there was more to my accident than everyone knew? Had he guessed the truth? No, I thought not. I hoped not. Because that would be bad. Very bad. My parents would definitely locked me away if they knew. I swallowed the panic and wondered what I should do but Charles hadn’t finished with me yet.

  “You’ve got everything going for you, Alex. You’re intelligent, good looking, girls chasing after you left-right-and-centre but it’s like none of it seems to matter to you. You don’t care about anything or anyone. You pretend you do but Maria and I can tell you don’t. And it’s making you self-destructive and a danger to yourself.”

  Charles must have assumed my silence was confirmation because he continued.

  “This life your parents and Jeremy have all mapped out for you…their big dreams…you don’t want any part of them, do you?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut as if I could disappear behind my lids. Charles took that as my answer.

  “Have you told them how you feel?”

  I couldn’t speak. Finally I nodded my head in confirmation.

  “And did they listen?”

  I shook my head.

  Charles swore under his breath. I’d never heard Charles swear before. He was usually so maddeningly even tempered. Then before I could register what was happening, Charles reached out and wrapped both arms around me and pulled me into his embrace. Instinctively I tensed, alarmed and uncomfortable because I was not accustomed to physical contact, especially not from family. Especially not in kindness, or concern, or comfort. I couldn’t recall the last time my mother or father hugged me. Properly hugged me. Not the stiff, arm around my shoulder my father bestowed me every November when we posed for his Christmas card photograph, or the bony embrace my mother would grant when she wanted to demonstrate to some acquaintance what a caring and affectionate mother she was. Once I’d started prep-school my parents stopped all gestures of kindness. They also stopped encouraging and praising and all that was left was cold formality, civility and disappointment.

  No, Charles didn’t embrace me as I expected. His comfort was given out of deep affection and concern, and so warm and genuine that I was disarmed.

  “Well I’m listening,” he said. “And things are going to change.”

  I felt tears stinging my eyes and shifted uncomfortably but Charles held me as if he was trying to hold me together, and as he did so and told me that ‘everything was going to be alright’, that he ‘would fix things’, I felt myself slowly coming undone. The gaping black hole in my chest that swallowed my pain now felt like it was being reversed and dangerously close to releasing the emotions I’d worked so hard to hide and lock away. The events of the past few hours, days, weeks, were the catalysts that threatened to turn me inside out.

  I knew I couldn’t live my life according to other people’s expectations anymore. The lies, the pretending, the posing, trying to be someone I wasn’t – it was destroying me. I’d given my pound of flesh a hundred times over and I had none left to spare. To my surprise a sob reverberated in my chest but I clamped down on it hard and willed my eyes to dry. I would not cry. I never cried. I wouldn’t start, even now.

  Charles released me and held me at length, hands gripping my shoulders while he studied me for a long moment.

  “So what are we going to do about this then?” he asked, more to himself than anyone. I answered anyway.

  “There’s nothing to do. I don’t have a choice.”

  “Oh, I’m sure we can think of a solution. I promise you we will.”

  I noted how he kept saying ‘we’ not ‘you’. Charles was speaking as if we were in this together. As if I could count on him as an ally.

  “But first things first,” he continued, dropping his hands and sitting back on the sofa, a solemn expression on his face. “You and I need to reach an agreement. No more drugs, Alex. I will not go through that again and I will definitely not let Maria go through it again. It stops here. Now. If you promise me that, I will promise we’ll do everything we can to help you.”

  No more pills or powder. No more release. If I made this promise I would have to mean it. The real challenge was – could I stop?

  Have you ever tried going without? You might like yourself better if you did.

  I had nothing left to lose and a small part of me deep down still held home that I might have something to gain. So I would do it for her. Somehow, I would make it up to her.

  “I promise…no more drugs.”

  Charles nodded. “Good. Maria and I will think of a way to deal with your parents.”

  Good luck with that, I thought. I didn’t rate his chances, but at least he was willing to try. For the first time in a long, long time I was beginning to think that someone in my family actually cared about me and not about what everyone expected of me.

  Charles stood up saying, “I’ll leave you to enjoy your last hangover then,” he smiled, trying to lighten the tension in the room and motioned to the forgotten sandwich. “Better eat that before the flies do.”

  I nodded and Charles walked towards the door, turning just as he reached it.

  “Oh, about Hayley,” he started and I automatically stiffened, the loss returning at the mention of her name. “My advice would be – just be yourself. There’s a great guy in there Alex – let him out. And whatever you do, don’t give up.”

  I could only nod in reply before Charles turned and left. He didn’t know that ship had already sailed. Or had it?

  Don’t give up.

  Just be yourself.

  CHAPTER 29

  HAYLEY

  He tried to talk to me first thing Monday morning at the school gates.

  “Hayley, I need to talk…”

  “There’s nothing to talk about, Alex.”

  “I want…”

  “It’s none of my business, ok?”

  “But….”

  “Gotta go. See you later.”

  I hurt so much I couldn’t even think his name.

  All weekend, I’d indulged in non-stop self-flagellation for letting my stupid schoolgirlish imagination get carried away. At the same time I was angry with him for leading me on and betraying my trust. Worst of all, my self-confidence lay in shreds.

  One of my core self-beliefs was that I was a good judge of character. Like my mum said, I got a feeling about people. I knew Pete was gay even before he did. I’d known Dave was a creep even before he tried to pin me to his bedroom floor. Just like I’d known he was pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

  But I was oh so wrong.

  He hadn’t been pretending. And I’d stupidly, stubbornly, arrogantly convinced myself he was this different person deep down inside that only I could see. He’d tricked me. He really was just another typical guy out to screw as many girls as he could.

  God, I’d been a spectacular idiot.

  I ran away from everything that reminded me of him.

  I stopped my early morning swim and instead started running. I took extra shifts at Juicy Bits and worked more nights at The Golden Dragon. I even went to Rainbow Reef with Pete (as promised) and sat in the corner all night while Pete made out on the dance floor with a guy old enough to be his father.

  I did everything I could to avoid him and erase last past few weeks from my existence. But I couldn’t avoid him entirely at school and there was no escaping him in English or in the library. I heard his name mentioned while I was in the cue for the water fountain, walking to classes, in the girls toilets, at the lockers, amongst the mass of bodies fleeing through the school gates at the end of every day.

  He might have been the most popular guy at school but not everyone was singing his pra
ises. Apparently after I’d left Dave’s party all hell had broken lose. Ally, Krista and Rachael had brought their claws out in a massive cat fight and none of the girls were talking to him or each other. No doubt they would get over it in a week or two – it wasn’t the first time something like this had happened within their group and it wouldn’t be the last. I tried not to listen to the details. It was all so trailer-trash-tv that I made myself tune out.

  I tried to tune out everything to do with him.

  I didn’t do very well.

  The really sick thing, the thing I hated the most, was that no matter how stupid I felt or how much I told myself that he was a bastard or how angry I was (mostly at myself)… I’d fallen in love with him. And no matter how much I wished I could, I couldn’t turn those feelings off. My chest ached every time I allowed myself to glance at him – painful not because of what had happened but because I missed him. Sometimes I felt an overwhelming longing threatening to tear me inside out. Insanely – psychotically – my feelings seemed even stronger than before the party.

  It was worse than pathetic, it was perverse and masochistic.

  I hated myself for feeling that way.

  More than anything I wished I’d never gone to Dave’s party and life could go back to the way it was before; before he told me he liked me and before I realised I loved him.

  But as Pete always said, you can’t can change the past, only the future.

  One Sunday afternoon, a few weeks after the party, Mum and I were walking with the dogs back to the house after checking the repairs to an old Southern Cross windmill that stood at the far end of the mango orchard. The ancient pump had finally given up and we’d had a replacement installed the day before.

  “What’s up, Hay?” Mum asked, cutting to the chase, as we walked through the banana trees towards the house, stepping carefully as snakes liked to sleep coiled up under the fallen palm leaves.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on Hay. You’ve been down for weeks now. What’s going on?”

  I didn’t answer.

  What could I say?

  Oh, well, let’s see…Alex has broken my heart because he’s not the person I wanted him to be and now I feel like an idiot because I know I shouldn’t still be in love him but I am and I feel stupid and wish I could turn back time and never have met him.

  Instead I asked, “Do you wish you’d never stopped here that day and that you’d just kept on driving?” I was referring to the day Mum met Dad. She’d taken a wrong turn while looking for the beach and had driven her Beetle into Dad’s farm to ask for directions. Mum and Dad both used to say it had been like a lightning bolt – love at first sight. But after Dad started drinking and the bank threatened to foreclose and things turned bad between them they never mentioned love again. I’d always wondered if Mum wished she’d never met Dad that day. If she wished she’d just kept on driving.

  “No, I’ve never wished that,” she smiled warmly, understanding at once. “If I’d never met your dad, I would never have had you and your brother. The two of you are the reasons for my existence. I can’t imagine life without either of you. I don’t regret a thing.”

  “But he…” I hesitated, grasping for the right word, “changed.”

  “Yes he did. Alcoholism is a disease, Hay, you know that. And even though those years weren’t easy….”

  “That’s an understatement,” I muttered darkly.

  Mum stopped in her tracks and smiled at me. “Even though those years were hard, for all of us, I don’t have any regrets, Hayley. Every day I thank God and Allah and Buddha and Krishna and everyone else that I have you and your brother because the two of you mean everything to me and I love you both more than my life. Our family is worth any hardship. Besides, we’re doing alright now, aren’t we? Just look at how far we’ve come.”

  Mum threw her arms wide open and gestured at the farm around us – the ripe fruit hanging from the trees, the sunlight filtering down through the foliage, the butterflies fluttering from flower to flower – and laughed. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, savouring the sweet heady scents of our farm. This was as close to heaven as I could imagine. Yes, we were doing alright now. Yes, the people I loved were worth it.

  When I opened my eyes, Mum was watching me, smiling.

  “Sometimes, Hay,” she said, “you have to go through bad stuff to get to the good, just like that god awful durian fruit you love so much. We don’t get a taste of heaven without a experiencing a little hell first.”

  CHAPTER 30

  ALEX

  The six o’clock news was on the television.

  ‘Bushfires continue to ravage the region north of the Adelaide Hills. The death toll stands at seven but police expect that will increase as further dry weather is forecast. Meanwhile in the Northern Territory, Victoria River has been cut off by floodwater for more than two weeks. The army today airlifted a pregnant woman who needed urgent medical attention…’

  I turned away from the devastation on the screen and walked out onto the deck. Native bushland swept down to the bay and covered the surrounding area as far as my eye could see. In the past, bushfires had sweep through the Whitsundays but they’d never been as voracious as the fires down south which devoured hundreds of square kilometres; taking lives and homes, and consuming entire towns and national parks. They burned everything to the ground. But from those ashes, life would begin anew.

  Could I begin again?

  Hayley was never going to trust me unless I could prove to her that I’d changed. And I had, I could feel it. Something seismic had shifted inside me. I couldn’t go back to the way I was but I wasn’t going to convince Hayley of that overnight. It didn’t matter how long it took, I was determined to win back her friendship at the very least. I would do whatever it took to convince her I was different now. That I was me and I wasn’t an asshole.

  One step at a time, Alex.

  Weeks passed and true to my promise, I turned over a new leaf. I shunned the parties and other recreational activities. I found a new group of people to talk to and sometimes sit with at lunch although I was still on reasonably good terms – all things considered – with Dave and the guys.

  I tried to apologise to Ally for being a bastard and using her. I told her she couldn’t hate me any more than I already hated myself. Incredibly, she said she forgave me and even more incredibly, told me she wanted us to get back together. That was the absolute last thing I wanted and when I turned her down, she did the only thing she could in her position. She rallied her friends to reject and isolate me. Little did she know I welcomed their rejection.

  I deserved it.

  My faults and flaws were too numerous to tally. My vices too heavily outweighed my virtues. I was trying to tip the scales in the latter’s favour but I had a long way to go to make up for the reputation I’d worked hard to earn. It would take much longer for everyone to see the real me.

  Be patient.

  I also knew it would take time before Hayley would let me in again and I was prepared to wait as long as I had to for her. So I backed off. I didn’t pursue her. But at the same time, I still had to see her. Little things gave me hope that all was not lost in the fire. For starters, Hayley didn’t blank me completely. She avoided me as much as possible but she didn’t stop coming to the library, although she had moved to a table as far from mine as possible. Still, the fact she was there meant something, right?

  Hayley no longer went swimming in the mornings but that could have been down to the chilly starts rather than my presence. Even so, I religiously swam there every morning hoping that maybe today she would come, but everyday it was just me and the hardy pensioners.

  I still went to Juicy Bits after school and about once or twice a week Hayley would be working. She didn’t smile at me or make conversation, but at the same time she never refused to serve me.

  Then, about a month after the party I saw Sean at Juicy Bits for the first time since the dinner at their house.

 
“Hey Alex, long time no see mateeey. How’s it going? Where have you been and what’s up?” he asked without stopping to take a breath. I’d forgotten how affable he was and I couldn’t help but return his smile.

  “Hi Sean, yes long time, have been around and causing problems….you?”

  Sean burst out laughing. “Pretty much the same as you,” he said, leaning casually against the counter with one hand on his hip. “I’ve been flat out opening the new store on Hamilton Island plus there’s still the day-to-day running of the farm. I don’t think I’ve had more than five hours sleep in…”

  Sean was interrupted mid-sentence by a sharp knock on the shop window. Both of us spun around to see Krista and Rachael standing outside and peering in at us. Surprisingly, they were both smiling and waving as if they were happy to see me. Just as I started to wave back their expressions simultaneously changed into scowls and they both gave me the finger and shouted obscenities through the window. I didn’t do anything but stand there as they stalked off down the street. I’d had worse, I realised. Sean’s eyes were wide with disbelief.

  “Whoa, feel those vibes! You got some girl trouble Alex?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Nasty,” he said. “I feel for you mate.”

  I nodded grimly.

  “You know,” Sean continued, running a hand through his long hair, “it could have been my imagination but I thought you and Hayley had a thing. You seemed to be hitting if off at our house.”

  My heart felt heavy at the mention of that day. So many times I wished I could go back in time to that day and start over again, do things right, but I couldn’t change the past.

  “I thought we had something too,” I admitted. “But I screwed up.”

  “Ah, I see,” he nodded in realisation and surprisingly without judgement, then added happily, “Well you’re lucky then.”

  What? I thought. I admit I screwed up with his sister and he tells me I’m lucky?

 

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