by S. K Munt
Hunter snorted. ‘Can I read it?’
‘Could you read, with a fist down your throat?’ Hunter laughed, and then Ryan chuckled. ‘I’m sorry.’ He turned to Hunter, his arms hanging limply at his sides. ‘I don’t want to be Callie’s boyfriend, well, at least I don’t think I do. And even if I did, I wouldn’t risk what we all have together by trying to keep her to myself.’
‘Well that’s a good thing,’ Hunter said. ‘Because I’d kill you before I let you take such a risk. Just like I expect you to snap my neck if I ever try anything like I tried tonight again.’
Ryan rubbed his temples with his hands. ‘Yeah well… how are we both going to make it to grad alive then, Hunter? Because I can’t even look at her without wanting to throw her down on the nearest surface. You’ve been off and so she sang with me and holy crap…’ He sank back down onto his bed. ‘Holy crap- that girl can sing me hard…. That husky thing...’
‘I know.’ Hunter was actually jealous that Callie had sung with Ryan. He sat down on Ryan’s desk. ‘She’s changed, hasn’t she? It’s not just the physical thing. She’s like… more alive or something.’
Ryan scratched behind his ear. ‘Yep. And whether she knows it or not, everything she’s doing is sexy; the clothes, the dancing-’
‘That thing with the tights!’ Hunter added.
Ryan groaned. ‘I almost stopped living.’
‘Okay so we can’t help but look,’ Hunter surmised, ‘but we just need to agree to keep our hands and lips to ourselves.’
‘By not drinking around her- ever again.’ Ryan agreed.
‘And not walking her anywhere or driving her anywhere alone.’
‘Which means you can’t miss any more practices and you need to stop being a shitty best friend in general so I’m not stuck with her by myself so much.’
‘Agreed.’ Hunter conceded. ‘But it also means, that we either need to get her a boyfriend, or get you a girlfriend as a distraction.’
Ryan screwed up his nose. ‘That seems like a dog thing to do.’
‘You wanna be a rock star?’ Hunter reminded him. ‘Well you better start treating girls like groupies and get some of that frustration out of your system before you break down our system completely.’ He thought of Reece’s greasy arms wrapped around Callie. ‘And I’m not sure I could handle seeing Callie dating either. I mean, what if she falls in love with someone and we lose her? We have to be her mates- good mates... who punch anyone she tries to hook up with.’
Ryan tousled his hair in frustration. ‘We’re going to lose her anyway, Hunter. We’ve got just over a year left of school. You think go-getters like Callie’s parents are gonna let her rot in Horizon?’ He shook his head. ‘I want to go to AVPAC, and Callie’s talented enough to get her to Broadway...’ he looked away. ‘Maybe she needs a boyfriend so we can stop fooling ourselves into thinking that this arrangement is forever.’
Hunter felt a flicker within his chest, echoing the slide-show of what would never be that had just danced behind his eyes. He’d always just assumed that he and Ryan were going to hold true to their childhood dream of ‘making it’ together and take Callie along with them. But he’d imagined them on the road, not at AVPAC in Araulen Valley. That was a proper, grown up dream- musicians attending a Performing Arts Academy and getting real degrees.
But it was so far removed form his fantasies of diners and motor inn’s and a Combie van and he felt bereft for the loss of it. There was nothing Heavy Metal about a diploma!
But of course, none of their parents were going to settle for less. God why hadn’t they discussed any of this? How did Ryan know that Callie wanted to take her U. S Green Card over to Broadway? When had his friends grown up, and left him behind?
Suddenly, Hunter felt like the future was rushing up to knock him down and Bush’s lyrics about not letting the days go by were hitting him hard. How were the three of them gonna stay the three of them, now that he had Meredith and Callie and Ryan were looking towards their futures? He was going to have to make changes: big changes, and his life was going to start to suck as a result.
The easiest and most painless thing to do would be to dump Meredith and make the most of his last year with his mates before Meredith shattered the trio’s rituals and dreams for their senior year- like how they’d get to prom, and what they usually did on Valentine’s Day- with her own demands. But what if being single around this new, sexy version of Callie Clay made it impossible to sit next to her without imagining her lips all over his-
‘Hunter? What’s the matter?’ Ryan’s voice sounded weighed down with descending sleep, which was how Hunter’s eyelids were beginning to feel.
But part of Hunter was awake- wide awake and Hunter had to roll on his side to press himself into the mattress, trying not to imagine Callie’s blood-flushed, virginal lips taking the pressure off the area of annoyance for him. ‘Oh I was just thinking that I’m in hell… ’
Ryan snorted. ‘Just count sheep man. Just count some fucking sheep.’
Hunter laughed, thinking about the song lyrics: ‘I want to be inside you Callie,’ and knowing that issues aside, Ryan understood exactly what he was going through. ‘One,’ he muttered for his friend’s amusement alone. ‘Two…’
8.
By Monday afternoon, Callie had decided that her best friends had taken to sniffing glue, because she had never seen them act so out of character in her life. Ryan Weaver, who usually walked as though he were lounging, was perky and upbeat, bouncing around like a Cocker Spaniel, strumming mindlessly at the Sitar Marnie had brought in to show him, an instrument her Pop had picked up while stationed in India during the Boer War, and when Ryan proved to be completely useless with it, he changed tack and started flirting with Marnie instead!
This can’t be happening! Callie thought, trying to seem incredibly interested in her meat pie while attempting not to overhear Ryan flirt for it was quite lethal; his voice got all low and husky, and his fingers rested on Marnie at every opportunity. Marnie was a goner from the first tickle under the chin of course, blushing and giggling like one of her Taylor Hanson posters had leapt off the wall and wrapped itself around her face.
Hunter was no better. He’d brought Meredith over to eat with them and spent the entire time whispering into her ear while running his hands up Meredith’s bare thigh until he was grazing the hem of her too-short school dress. Of course her two mates would take breaks from their wooing long enough to get all hyped up about ‘The’ gig that Friday night, but mostly, all they did was nauseate Callie and she saw right through it; they were making it clear that they weren’t into her.
Under normal circumstances, Callie would have been delighted that she was back to being treated like one of the boys again. But the problem was, they were only making the estrangement between them even harsher by putting on fronts Callie didn’t need to see to get the picture. She thought she would inevitably relax- she’d hoped that she’d come away from lunch feeling eighty percent better about her friendships- but her tolerance for smoochy-woo-woo crap out of her laid-back buddies hit an invisible ceiling somewhere at the halfway point of recess when Hunter agreed to go to a Savage Garden concert with Meredith in February and said that Callie and Ryan would be ‘psyched’ to go with them! Callie she got to her feet, pushing her tasteless pie to Ry, who had a bottomless stomach.
‘What do you mean you want to take me to a diner?’ Meredith suddenly demanded, making an awful face. ‘If you get big enough to tour America, you’re taking me to The Plaza, Hunter Marks.’
‘Naturally yeah but… diners are so cool.’ Hunter grinned at Meredith. ‘A jukebox, pink walls… I love that retro crap.’
‘You are so weird.’ Meredith giggled, then kissed him quickly, and Callie couldn’t take it anymore. ‘But I like the pink walls. In fact, I have them!’
‘Hey guys, I have to bail. I need to speak to Mr Bank’s about our assignment on Tomorrow When The War Began and then try and answer the last essay question before f
ifth period.’
Ryan stared at her through Marnie’s spectacles, which he’d been ‘trying on.’ ‘Sure I can’t help you with that? I did it last term.’
But Callie shook her head. ‘It’s the phrasing of the question I don’t get. He’s really the only one who can straighten it out.’ She tugged her hat down, so they wouldn’t see the lie in her eyes. ‘Later okay?’
Hunter and Ryan exchanged a look and Callie almost groaned inwardly when she realized that they had discussed her at some point. God what had been said? Did they think she was a big ho? Were they afraid she was going to follow them around all lovesick because they’d tossed her some crumbs of affection?
‘Okay man, catch yah later,’ Hunter said, already nuzzling Meredith’s golden hair again.
‘Have fun.’ Ryan wiggled the glasses on the bridge of his nose, then turned to Marnie as he pulled the pie towards him: ‘So, do they suit me?’
Callie walked away quickly, blinking back tears while feigning interest in the gum trees above. She was not a crier, and the guys couldn’t see how they were getting to her because that would be acting like a ‘chick’ and that’s what they probably thought they were rebelling against! It was all so unfair! She hadn’t made a move on anyone and yet they were treating her like she was the leper! And after the way both had looked at her over the weekend; like she was special, their sudden rejection felt like tripping down an unseen step.
Callie was not used to feeling so emotionally spastic, and so she inhaled deeply and told herself that the heaviness in her chest was being caused by the gathering thunderclouds above- not her slowly breaking heart.
When Callie stepped into Mr Bank’s classroom, going through with her ruse about needing to speak to him even though she’d finished the assignment a week ago, she halted when she saw the impossibly adorable blonde from the disco meandering around the empty classroom, staring at the prints on the walls. ‘Oh shit.’ Callie said, without meaning to. ‘You’re here.’
The woman pivoted to face her, and when her eyes settled on Callie, she looked neither taken aback nor angry. In fact, she smiled, her glossy lips making the kind of shapes girls paid good money for.
‘I guess I earned that greeting.’ She said, and Callie noticed for the first time, that she had the trace of an accent too or rather, the absence of any accent at all. Her voice was melodic, but she didn’t emphasis the same syllables as Callie or anyone she knew would have, Canadian, U. S., Aussie… her voice was devoid of inflection and yet it sounded more animated than any Callie had ever heard. She waited for the woman to apologize for acting like a freak, or shed some light on the mistaken identity thing, but she did neither. Instead, she turned away and said: ‘You have a very talented teacher Callie.’
‘Are you a scout or something?’ Callie asked, leaning against the door.
The girl laughed, bracing herself against the window frames which were an institutional-beige color that was flaking off. ‘No. It’s not his teaching talent I’m interested in- but his writing skills.’
Callie scratched her head, needing to do something. She hadn’t known that Mr Banks was the kind of writer who had feelers out, and it made her think of how literary her little town was becoming. She’d overheard Marnie mention something at the party the other night about starting to write a novel… had that been right? Now Mr Banks had someone sizing him up for his own skill? Callie made a mental note to mention both aspiring authors to her mother who had connections up the wazoo. ‘So you’re what… an agent?’
‘Oh hell no.’ She turned, folded her hands behind her back. She was wearing an elegant, off the shoulder white dress which looked like it had been created for her, to cling and hang just so to every perfect curve. It also looked ridiculously out of place in the dingy classroom. ‘Surely you can come up with a more creative guess than that?’
Callie shrugged. ‘Not really. Mum says that fifty percent of the agents she’s encountered have an inflated sense of self importance and, well- ’ she smirked at the woman. ‘You kind of fit that bill to a tee.’
Fury darkened the girl’s blue eyes again, and not in the descriptive sense but in the literal sense. They did not narrow, and her pupils did not dilate- the actual hue flashed from pale blue, to navy, then back again and Callie shifted back, blinking rapidly. ‘Coming from the most entitled little brat I’ve ever met, that’s kind of amusing.’ The strange woman advanced on Callie, her lips forming a sneer again. ‘I’ve met the kind of authors your mother would bow to, Miss Clay, so both of your opinions are worthless to me.’ She said Callie’s name like it was an in-joke. ‘And I can see that you haven’t learned a fucking thing about controlling that temper or that mouth of yours- not a thing!’
‘Learnt from what?’ Callie felt herself well-oiled hinges buckling. ‘What is your childhood trauma, lady? First you pounce on me like you have this big vendetta that I’m not aware of, then you say it’s a mistaken identity thing, like I have a Doppelganger or something but now you’re back to vilifying me? It doesn’t make any sense!’ She stepped towards the woman, her intimidation turning to rage. Everything in her life was a mess but it hadn’t been- not until she’d set eyes on this woman. She didn’t know how or why but something inside her, something sharp inside her, told her that it was all this insidious woman’s fault! ‘Did I knock over your cup of milk in grade-school or something? What is your problem?!’
The woman took Callie by the shoulders and, in another display of incredible strength and utter madness- smashed Callie up against the window until she heard it fracture behind her. It knocked the wind right out of Callie, so much so that she couldn’t even articulate the agony with a cry.
‘I can’t work out-’ the woman seethed through clenched teeth. ‘-if I want you to slog along like this for another twenty years yet, enlighten you as to why I hate you so much- or watch you die.’ She cocked her head, smiling benevolently. ‘Though I’m pretty sure, from what I’ve seen, that you are going to die; you’re displaying all the signs that you’re on your way… and I cannot wait to watch it unfold now that I’ve found you.’ She slammed Callie a second time. ‘But regardless of what path you trip down Callie, you are going to stay off mine this time, or I am going to bring your death about as swiftly as I am able.’
Callie’s mouth fell open. As she’d never dreamed before, she’d never been forced through a nightmare either and yet suddenly, she knew this was what a nightmare was like: Nonsensical, out of nowhere, reality distorting, sweat-inducing terror stemming from nothing and threatening to lead nowhere. What if the woman was quite simply crazy? She knew Callie’s name and knew who her mother was, so could that be the link? An obsessive fan or obsessive troll? Or did this all come back to her birth mother? Callie wasn’t about to find out by being tossed out of a second story window. She drew back her foot and kicked the woman- hard. She felt the thick, unforgiving tip of her boot smack into the woman’s shin and she screamed, dropping Callie and hugging her injured leg to her chest.
‘Bitch!’ She seethed. ‘I hate you! You’re not as valuable as everyone thinks you are! You’re nothing! You little fucking c-’
And then there was a ringing in her ears, a clap of thunder and suddenly- Callie was in the room by herself, falling against the nearest desk and catching herself on the edge of it, feeling the fractured glass which had fallen crunch under one of her feet as her lungs collapsed. The world tilted, then swirled and when the thunder’s rumble increased Callie cried out and fell to the floor, hugging the rusted brown leg of the desk and sobbing as she fought to breathe- knowing that if she didn’t hang on tight, she was going to bolt in front of the entire school.
What’s happening? Oh my- what’s happening what’s happening? Callie squeezed her eyes shut and for the briefest flash of a moment, the atmosphere around her shifted. She was still on the carpet- she could feel the wiry, bubbly texture of it through her jeans- but suddenly, she felt wet. Not all over, like she was in a rainstorm, but soaking from her ribs down
. The water was neither warn nor cold but perfect, and the shadowy classroom felt bright- so bright that the light behind her eyelids was warm and red. She sucked in a breath, and her lungs expanded with traces of honeysuckle and roses so fragrant she could have swallowed the scent and been nourished by it.
No! Callie thought. The warmth, her senses- if she was losing her mind then her sub-conscious was making her think she would find paradise if she would just open her eyes and yet Callie was filled with a sense of dread so overpowering that she refused to see- she didn’t want to see because that guilty feeling was creeping back over her, scorching her. She just wanted to faint and wake up normal again.
‘Callie… Oh babe!’ The soft male voice broke on her name and it was just one more thing to feel guilty for. Callie sobbed, and then plunged her face into the perfect stream just as his fingers stroked her hair.
*
‘Fuck man she is losing it,’ Hunter’s heart was racing a mile a minute as he embraced Callie, trying to tug her away from the desk she was crouched beneath. But her grip was so freakishly tight that he was worried that if he lifted her, the desk would come with them! ‘Come on Callie,’ he changed tack, stroking her hair instead. ‘Hunter’s here. You’re okay.’
‘That was a bad one.’ Ryan knelt next to them on the classroom floor, his expression concerned as he attempted to pry Callie’s fingers off the desk, one at a time. ‘And we weren’t here Hunt...’
Hunter met his eyes, and they exchanged a look of guilt. Callie was alone because they’d scared her off. They’d known it the moment Callie had lied about the paper she’d already told them she had finished the week before. But they’d let her go, wanting to give her the distance she clearly wanted.
Then they’d heard the thunder and jumped to their feet like they’d been charred by it. Marnie, had come with them but Meredith had stayed behind, calling out, asking if they’d lost their minds and that it was just a little storm.