The Intern

by Gabrielle Tozer

‘Fine,’ I smirked. ‘You know, you’re super cheesy. Did anyone ever tell you that?’

  ‘Only every day.’ He grinned, showing off straight teeth and soft pink lips. ‘Now, let’s begin … Wait! I need a mic.’ As James leaned over to the windowsill behind us and picked up a half-empty water bottle, I searched his face for flaws — a crooked nose, tiny ears or bad skin. But he didn’t have any (at least any visible ones). All I discovered were a couple of to-die-for dimples and a light powdering of freckles. I was a goner.

  He raised the bottle to his lips, holding it like a microphone. ‘Welcome to James, everybody, the show where I get to ask the questions — wooo yeaaaaah.’ He feigned a crowd cheering while I laughed.

  He turned to face me and my stomach danced with anticipation. There wasn’t a real crowd, there weren’t any cameras or directors or a million viewers watching from home, it was just me and him. Yet I couldn’t have been more terrified.

  ‘Josie,’ he began, running his hand through his hair, ‘this is your first exclusive interview so it’s only fair we go back to the beginning. Way back. Tell me about your most humiliating childhood incident.’

  ‘Wow!’ I spluttered. ‘Aren’t you meant to butter me up with compliments and freebies first? Maybe I do need that beer.’

  James smiled. ‘You’ll get your payback, remember.’

  ‘You can bet on that,’ I said, and paused to come up with a good answer. It was a toughie. My life was an ongoing series of humiliating incidents wrapped in a box of shame and tied with a bow of awkwardness. ‘Well, there was the time I got chased around a shopping centre by Santa Claus. Or would you prefer the tale of the little girl who ate so many liquorice allsorts on a school trip that she, er … Actually, that one didn’t happen. Urban legend, I swear.’

  James leaned forward, holding the water-bottle mic to my lips.

  ‘We clearly need to hear about both,’ he said, adding some more fake cheering. ‘See the audience is gagging for it. They love it!’

  James wanted humiliation, so I served it up for him on a platter, with a side of disgrace for good measure. I revealed that the Santa who’d chased me and Kat through the shops was actually my sweaty excuse for an uncle who’d decided it would be fun to terrify us while onlookers screamed with laughter. I told him how my liquorice allsorts overdose had resulted in an unfortunate incident on the bus that bestowed on me the nickname Josie Brown-Pants for the rest of primary school. (Bless Mum for sending me to a high school where no one knew me.) I even ’fessed up to him about my love of writing, my dreams and my obsession with stationery. I didn’t mention Dad leaving, though. I couldn’t.

  The craziest part wasn’t that I handed over morsels of information I’d never even told my best friend, Angel. What blew my mind was that James listened, really listened.

  And he laughed. When I told him about Kat locking me outside the house at age twelve in nothing but my training bra and baggy white knickers, he laughed so much his tea splashed all over the carpet and coffee table. But he didn’t seem to care. He simply clutched his stomach, laughing, mouth wide open.

  When the clock on the living-room wall chimed three, he jolted up and announced he had to go to bed. I’d been stifling yawns for hours, but hadn’t wanted the night to end.

  He walked toward his bedroom, stopping to say, ‘Well, that’s episode one of James complete. Can’t wait for the first ep of Josie,’ then disappeared, leaving me alone in the lounge room.

  ‘James!’ I whispered loudly. I wasn’t sure why I was worried about noise; Tim still hadn’t come home.

  James poked his head around the door. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Sorry again about that whole thinking-you-were-here-to-rob-or-murder-me thing.’

  He paused, then smiled. ‘Night, Josie.’

  He disappeared again, signalling the end of a night that would go down as one of my top favourite experiences of all time. A gorgeous guy had sat next to me for hour upon hour, laughing at my jokes, flirting with me and flashing his baby blues. As I made myself comfortable on the couch, I couldn’t help but smile. Life was giving me a break. A tall, shaggy-haired, hilarious break.

  The sound of a truck screaming toward the apartment window woke me. I burrowed myself deep under the sheet and waited for imminent death. It’d be a dramatic way to go; I’d probably make the nightly news or at least a small filler article in the paper. I pushed away the fact I was going to (a) die a virgin; (b) miss my own eighteenth birthday; and (c) be found wearing hand-me-up Sesame Street PJ boxers with matching faded singlet. Hopefully the journalist covering my death would take pity on me and not mention that part.

  Moments later, it was apparent death hadn’t plucked me from the lounge room. There was no shattered glass. No broken furniture. My matching PJs would remain unreported, which pleased me most of all. I poked my head out from beneath the sheet and looked around. The living room was exactly as it had been the night before: two teacups on the coffee table; my bag open, its contents strewn over the carpet; the TV gleaming in the corner.

  I hadn’t been completely wrong. There was a truck. A loud one. But it was outside, which made sense, really, considering a truck would’ve needed serious Spider-Man powers to make it through a second-storey window. The truck’s engine revved as it stopped and started in front of each building. Welcome to the city, it roared, scolding me for trying to sleep in. Throaty male voices cut through the noise, yelling to each other about rotting fish, folks who were ‘too lazy to recycle’ and arguing about whose wife had the best butt.

  The garbage truck chugged away and the room was quiet for a moment. My phone beeped, bringing me back to the present. When I checked it, I found a text from Tim: Can you come in for a sec? Bring juice.

  I shook my head, untangled myself from the sheet and walked to the fridge. The two-litre bottle of pineapple juice wasn’t hard to spot; except for an out-of-date carton of milk and a half-eaten kebab there wasn’t much else in there. I grabbed the juice, picked up a plastic cup from the counter and walked to Tim’s room. I knocked on the door and heard a mumbled ‘Come in’.

  Tim was spread-eagled on the bed, staring up at an old-fashioned ceiling fan that whirred and rattled with every spin, his slim body encased in a pair of skinny jeans. His eyes were half-open and his hair was rumpled into a mousy brown mess. An untouched burger and half-drunk beer stood on the bedside table.

  ‘Cuz, long time no see,’ he croaked, as though he’d eaten a packet of cigarettes for dinner. Something told me he may have. ‘Help. Juice. Mouth.’

  I unscrewed the lid and reached for the plastic cup.

  ‘No,’ he murmured, pointing to his mouth. ‘Straight in.’

  I paused for a second, aware of the absurdity of the situation. Oh well, I thought, first time for everything. I hovered above Tim, pouring juice into his mouth. The yellow liquid splashed onto the bed around him. After what felt like hours, he held up his hand for me to stop.

  ‘Lifesaver,’ he said.

  I breathed through my mouth to avoid smelling the BO-beer-burger cocktail again.

  ‘Popeye has spinach, I have juice,’ he said. ‘Thanks. Normally James brings it in, but he ducked out early for work, I think.’

  Damn, I thought. I’d wanted to see him again before I headed back home.

  ‘Ah, man, what a night. I didn’t wake you when I got home, did I?’

  ‘Nope,’ I lied, jolted back to 4.19 am when Tim had crashed through the front door, screaming with laughter on the phone to someone called Luca. He’d tripped over the mannequin as he stumbled around in an attempt to find his room, before mistaking the kitchen bench for his queen-size bed. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d had to get off the couch to push him in the right direction.

  ‘Cool,’ he said. ‘So, ah, it’s nice to see you.’

  ‘Yeah. You too.’ If nice meant suffering sleep-deprivation.

  ‘So, how was your interny thing? You CEO of the company yet?’

  I sighed. ‘Yeah, good. Pre
tty good. It was fine.’

  ‘So it was bad?’

  ‘No! Well … the office was amazing, the deputy editor was nice …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I felt like an ugly sore thumb all day. Plus, they forgot about me so I didn’t leave the office until seven thirty. The other girls were all beautiful and … Oh, who am I kidding? I stained my dress, they didn’t let me near a computer and I had to wash bikinis. It was awful.’

  Tim wriggled into a black scoop-neck T-shirt that he’d selected from the floor. ‘So quit.’

  ‘What? No, it’s for uni. I can’t.’

  ‘Can.’

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘I can go all day. Can, can, can. Look, quit, don’t quit — it’s up to you.’ Tim took another swig of juice. ‘Anyway, it’s been good catching up again after all this time, huh?’

  I nodded, even though my catch-up with Tim had consisted of a hand-scrawled note, five minutes of chitchat and hand-feeding him pineapple juice. Coming to the city had been good. In fact, it had been great. It just had nothing to do with catching up with Tim.

  ‘Er, maybe don’t mention all this to our mums?’ he suggested, waving a hand around his bedroom.

  I laughed. ‘Got it. Look, I’d better pack. I’ll see you out there, okay?’

  I walked back to the lounge room, stopping only to brush my fingers over James’s closed door.

  5.

  My best friend from high school, Angela Michaels (or Angel as she’d asked to be called since discovering yoga, lentils and meditation), hated being ignored. In her mind, nothing said ‘Stuff you’ like a hot guy not noticing her edgy new haircut or, worse, not being invited to an incredible party.

  ‘I can’t believe Holly Bentley forgot me again,’ Angel whined, flicking through a copy of Sash magazine as we lounged on my bed the night I got home from my first trip to the city. ‘Everyone will be there except us. We have to get in.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Wasn’t this all meant to end after high school?’

  After years of countless rejections, I was used to not being invited to parties. Being six months younger than most of our year hadn’t helped my social status. When my classmates were hooning around as P-platers, I was still getting dropped off to events by Mum, usually with Kat in the back seat, waving me goodbye with her tongue poking out and a flash of her middle finger.

  My social life took an even bigger step backwards when the eighteenths began and everyone could legally drink. On the off-chance I scored an invite, I’d have to head home around ten or eleven, when the others headed to the local pub or trashy nightclub. I’d be tucked into bed before the stroke of midnight, like Cinderella, although switch the ugly stepsisters for a popular little sister whose fake ID had already got her into at least two of the town’s clubs. As my best friend, poor Angel was left with the unappealing choice of braving the pub without a wingwoman or calling it a night. Nine times out of ten, she chose option two.

  As far as our year was concerned, we were still invisible — and Angel couldn’t stand it.

  She glared at me, her cropped black hair showing off her piercing hazel eyes. As much as she’d tried to recreate herself since Year Twelve ended, her eyes told a different story. Her haircut may have screamed ‘I don’t give a rat’s’ but underneath she was still my blonde best friend who’d wanted to be a vet before she just scraped through school with a pass. The same girl who’d had her heart shattered by one of the popular guys, who broke up with her at a school assembly because she was ‘too weird’. Brutal.

  ‘Angel, seriously? Isn’t it time we stopped caring?’

  ‘You do know Pete Jordan will be there?’

  ‘So?’ I shot back.

  ‘The guy you’ve been obsessively pining for since Year Eight, even though he vom—’

  ‘Don’t say it.’

  Angel pretended to zip her lips, but seconds later unzipped them. ‘You need to hear this. Alana dumped him a week ago. He’s alone. He’s lonely. He’s alone and lonely. You know what that means?’

  I sighed. Angel hadn’t given up. Not even close.

  ‘Angela!’ I hissed. ‘Shut up. You could wake Mum.’

  ‘First, it’s Angel. And second, well, I’m just saying it could be fun.’

  ‘Fine, I’m in. Can we change the topic already?’

  Angel waved the Sash mag in the air. ‘So, how was it, anyway? Lots of babes and stuck-up bitches?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘I knew it.’ She shook her head. ‘Any scrag fights over lipstick?’

  ‘Shuddup, you.’ I rolled my eyes and bit my tongue to resist telling her how much the first day blew. Little Miss Arts Student would just arch her eyebrow and say ‘I told you so’. Since she started uni, Angel had been up on a soapbox, spouting her opinions to anyone who’d listen, and even those who wouldn’t.

  I didn’t mention meeting James either. For now, I wanted to keep that lovely little memory to myself. Especially because a small part of me suspected I may have hallucinated the whole thing. Guys like that didn’t talk to me for hours on end. They just didn’t.

  Angel threw down the magazine. ‘Wow, I can’t read another page of that. Do you really want to write stories on how to make a guy moan in bed?’

  I shrugged. This was just another outburst in a long line of outbursts. And she was partly right — I didn’t want to write stories about how to make a guy moan in bed: (a) because it would be a death sentence if I ever wanted to be taken seriously as a journalist; and (b) well, I had no idea how to make a guy moan. Squirm, run and never call? Sure. But moaning? Not so much.

  Angel stood up and smoothed down her hair. ‘Anyway, I’m off to see someone about getting us two invites to Holly Bentley’s party. Promise me you’re excited.’

  I made cheerleader hands. ‘Promise.’

  Angel glanced at herself in the full-length mirror. ‘Urgh, when will yoga make my butt shrink already?’

  ‘You have a great butt.’

  ‘You’re too kind. My butt and I thank you.’ She grinned. ‘Anyway, gotta run! Love you.’ She pranced out, leaving me alone on the bed with Sash magazine. I picked it up and flicked through a few pages, wondering how I was going to make myself go back next week for another long day of domestic drudgery.

  Mum charged ahead in the supermarket, scooping up apples, spinach and loaves of bread. Kat and I trailed behind, pushing the trolley. Mum muttered to herself, glanced down at her shopping list, checked the shelf, then tore off to another aisle. For Kat, this signalled pouncing time.

  She turned to me, hands on hips. ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, what?’ I replied, pushing the trolley past her.

  Kat pulled at my arm. ‘Why won’t you tell me how Sash was? You’ve ignored me the last four times I’ve asked.’

  ‘Like I said, it was fine.’

  ‘Fine is Mum’s attempt at stir-fry. Fine is going on a date with a cute guy with a boring personality.’

  ‘Okay, it was more than fine. It was very fine. Uberfine.’

  ‘You told them that story about pooing your pants after eating all that liquorice, didn’t you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘What, then? Did being that close to gorgeous magazine people cause your brain to implode?’

  A screaming child at the other end of the aisle smashed a carton of eggs onto the ground. The mother was wearing stained tracksuit pants and looked washed out. She exhaled a sad, tired sigh that I translated to mean ‘Here we go again’. With Kat pushing me for an answer, I felt like slamming a carton of eggs onto the ground, too. But the poor mother had enough problems without worrying about her child’s tantrum being infectious.

  Kat wouldn’t give up; she just talked more, louder, faster.

  She cornered me by the frozen vegetables for my interrogation. ‘Seriously, what went down? I’m your sister. You’re supposed to share these things. If you did spill the dirt on that embarrassing liquorice thing, I promise I won’t tell anyone. Well, no o
ne except Tye because, well, I’ve already told him. C’mon, Jose. You can trust me.’

  I rolled my eyes. The last time Kat had said those infamous four words, she’d ended up lopping off ten centimetres of my hair and creating a fringe that resulted in an emergency trip to the hairdresser. Trusting Kat was about as safe as trusting a pickpocket with a cute smile. I never knew when she was going to strike, and by the time I realised she had, it was always too late.

  ‘Mum’s taking a while,’ I said, ignoring her tirade.

  Kat muttered, ‘I’ll find her,’ and stormed off. Her speedy exit left me alone to daydream. Out of nowhere James’s face appeared in my mind, sending a wave of heat through my body and causing me to blush. I focused on a tin of tuna to distract myself. Canned in spring water, great, I thought, but within seconds James had launched himself back into my brain. I wondered what he was doing at that moment. Watching movies on the sly at work? Listening to his jaw-droppingly large music collection? Having lunch with Tim? Definitely not daydreaming about a seventeen-nearly-eighteen-year-old called Josie. Or could he be?

  My phone beeped and for a minute I thought the universe had answered my wishes. But no, not today. The message was from Angel.

  Still waiting to hear back about the party, but it’ll be so on. Petey baby better watch out. You’re gonna be hot, hot, hot.

  Confused, I scrolled down for more detail but there was nothing there.

  Beep, beep! My phone went off again. I saw a pic of a teeny-tiny black miniskirt with the caption ‘Can’t wait ’til Josie wears me while making out with Pete.’

  Makeover round two appeared to be in full swing and Angel was on a mission to reduce the centimetres of material I clad my body in. There was no way I was wearing that skirt. I’d worn bigger pairs of undies. I was halfway through a message to tell Angel where to shove the skirt, when —

  ‘Found her,’ Kat said behind me, dragging Mum by the arm.

  ‘Sorry, love. Got distracted near the yoghurts,’ Mum said, whisking the trolley away from me. ‘Now, what do you want for dinner? Let me cook your favourite. Your big achievement deserves a celebration.’