‘Jumped or fell is worse. Did he jump on purpose? Did he jump on purpose but die by accident? Or did he fall? They can’t just say he jumped or fell and leave it like that.’
Dad hands the phone back. ‘Get them to change it,’ he says.
‘I tried calling, but didn’t get past the front desk. I gave the lady my number anyway.’ I turn the mobile over in my hands. ‘They got it wrong. He didn’t kill himself.’
Dad’s quiet for a while. ‘I’m sure he didn’t.’
‘I killed him. Not on purpose, but . . . I killed him.’
‘What do you mean?’
On my first night at Barton, Mom tried calling. I was pissed, so I lay on the bed and let her call vibrate out. The phone fell off the side. I went to grab it and noticed the number scratched into the bed’s wooden frame . . . He was a solid contact. He had this new stuff. I wasn’t up for it on Sunday, but Zac wanted to give it a go. He must of. The boys noticed he was more than drunk. When people find out what it was, they’re gonna ask where he got it . . .
‘I . . . just encouraged him to do stupid shit.’
‘That’s why you’re here?’
I look at him. ‘Would you stay?’
‘It’s not your fault.’
Easier said.
‘What will you do?’ Dad asks.
‘What would you do?’ I ask.
He thinks. It’s like he lays out every word he knows, and only speaks when he’s picked out the right ones, in the right order. ‘I think,’ he says, ‘whatever you need to do, you can’t do from here.’
There’s a train at half-past five that gets me to Kogarah before eight. It’s a hike from there to Zac’s place. There’s enough time to chicken out. I don’t. I stop in his driveway.
I take a deep breath and pull back my hood.
I’m not going to wait for them to find something in Zac’s system. I’m going to tell them everything.
The front door opens and my heart cramps. Zac’s sister steps out, her overnight bag on one shoulder. She’s startled when she sees me.
‘Hey, Isobel.’ I tried calling her Izzy once, it didn’t go down well. She made the face she’s making now, all creases.
‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ she asks.
‘Yeah. I . . . Your parents are home, right?’
She forces a smile. ‘They’re not really seeing people this morning. It’s been a busy few days and they just need to get ready for today.’ She aims her key at the red truck on the street and pushes the button. The hazard lights blink. ‘I’ll tell them you came, though.’
On her way past, I ask her how she’s going.
‘Honestly?’ Isobel turns, annoyed I haven’t left. ‘I’ve been better, Harley.’ She squints. ‘Why are you here?’
My throat is dry. ‘I –’
‘I thought I heard a familiar voice.’
Isobel and I look over at the house. Sue’s standing at the door, one hand on her hips, the other shielding her eyes.
‘Is that you, Harley?’ she asks.
It’s like Isobel wants me to say, ‘No.’
I hesitate. ‘Yeah?’
‘Come on in.’
‘Actually . . . uh . . . Isobel was gonna give me a lift back to the station.’
‘Yeah, I was.’
‘Nonsense. Nobody’s in a rush,’ Sue insists.
Isobel massages her temple and surrenders. She locks her truck and starts the walk back. ‘Come on.’
Sue hangs by the door. I keep my head down, but when I get to her, she pulls me into a tight hug. ‘Thank you for coming.’
I’ve never been inside Zac’s house without him. It’s like when one of your earphones craps out, and after being so used to stereo, suddenly, you can only hear mono. It feels . . . off. Sue leads us to the dining table, to Warwick.
‘Look who I found outside,’ she tells her husband.
He shakes my hand firmly. ‘Harley.’
I’m happy to stand, but Sue tells me to sit. ‘Isobel’s friend Zoey brought over muffins, help yourself.’ She points to the container on the table. ‘Did you want anything to drink?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
‘You sure? Just ask if you do.’ She eases into the seat beside Warwick’s. ‘How are you feeling?’
Guilt burns a course inside me. I did this. And they’re asking me how I am.
‘I’m okay, how are you?’
Sue looks to her husband. He chews on a muffin slowly. ‘We’re . . . It’s such a shock, and not quite real yet.’ She breathes through her nose. ‘How are the others?’
‘The others?’
‘Ryan and Miles.’
I have no idea. I haven’t spoken to them since Monday. ‘Oh, they’re . . . doing okay.’
Her face goes soft. ‘That’s a relief.’
I force a smile and Sue recognises something. Her mouth hangs open.
‘You smile exactly like him,’ she says.
It’s like the words reach inside me and stop my heart. ‘Sorry, can I use the loo?’
‘Sure.’
I can’t get up fast enough. I shut the toilet door and breathe out everything that’s in me.
I picture my confession, my sentences collapsing into each other coz I need to get it out: I fucked up and I’m sorry.
Three hours ago I was certain I’d be able to. Now? Not so much. And the window’s too small to climb through. I know coz Zac and I tried. Well, Zac tried. He got his head and one arm out before announcing he was stuck. I just laughed, you know, for moral support.
If it had been me, he would of told me to suck it up. And it might of worked.
‘Suck it up, Harley,’ I try, thinking it might summon some dormant courage. But it’s not the same.
When I get back to the table, I tell Sue I’ll have a muffin. I have five. With my mouth full, I don’t have to say a word.
I walk the main road back to the station, feeling like a screw-up. A three-hour train from Gerringong, and now, a three-hour trip back, all so I could choke and not tell them.
Ace.
A red truck approaches the kerb and slows to my pace. Isobel looks through the passenger window. ‘How are you getting there today?’
Huh? Oh. The funeral. I didn’t think that far. I was going to Zac’s, telling the truth and . . . I didn’t think about what’d come next.
Isobel stops and pulls the handbrake. ‘Let me drive you. Please.’
She undoes her seatbelt, leans over and opens the passenger door.
I look down at Dad’s hoodie and jeans. ‘I’m not really dressed.’
‘Like Isaac gives a shit,’ Isobel says. ‘Now, if I hang here, the coppers will book me, and if I leave without you, my mum will kill me. Your move.’
Isobel rents a one-bedder a little closer to the city. Her sofa tries to eat me when I sit on it. She apologises. The place came furnished. She says she won’t be long. I’m welcome to watch TV, if I like. She glances around. ‘The remote is . . . somewhere.’
I tell her I’m fine.
After a minute or so, she calls my name.
‘Yeah?’
‘Can I ask you something?’
I hesitate. ‘Sure.’
‘Why did you come by today?’ She reappears, barefoot and in a black dress. ‘I mean, you didn’t walk all that way from the station just to eat muffins with us, right?’
There’s no use in lying to her. Whatever I couldn’t say at Zac’s place, I have to say now. I push myself to the edge of the cushion so the sofa isn’t collapsing in on me. ‘I came over to tell your folks –’
‘Wait. Let me guess.’ Isobel licks her bottom lip. ‘You were going to tell them you were there on Sunday. Tell them you always brought booze over.’
It hits harder than a punch. My confession hasn’t started yet and it’s already backfired. ‘I was going to apologise.’
‘That’s even better.’ She collects her hair in one hand and ties a ponytail. ‘Make yourself feel good, even though you’ve
probably fucked their lives. Noble.’
There is a fake calmness in her voice, cracking around the edges like she wants to scream at me.
‘What else can I do?’ I ask.
Isobel comes closer and asks for my phone.
‘What?’
She holds out her hand. I give it to her. She swipes the screen and sighs.
‘Unlock it?’
I reach over and enter my PIN. The home screen fills in. She goes to Contacts.
‘I’m giving you Mum’s number,’ she says. ‘You’re going to call her and take her out for lunch or something. And you’re going to sit there while she tells you about her day, which will be shitty, but she’ll dress it up so you don’t worry about her. And you will tell her about your day. And when she asks about her son, you will share appropriate, heart-warming stories. If you have none, you will make them up.’
‘Honestly, I think one of the other guys would be better at that.’
‘Didn’t you hear her? You smile exactly like him,’ Isobel says. ‘You’re Isaac’s mate, and he’s rubbed off on you. Stuff apologies, that’s what Mum needs.’
She hands me my phone and heads back into her room. I stare down at Sue’s fresh contact entry.
I sink deeper into the pew and glance around. Our entire year is here, along with the Barton middle managers and a couple of teachers. They’ve framed one of his school pictures and stuck it on a bed of flowers. ‘Flora,’ Zac’d say.
Looking around, anybody who didn’t know Zac would reckon he thought the school was hot shit. I guess that’s the point though. When he died, a model student from one of Australia’s most exclusive schools took his place.
I check my phone.
I’m going incognito in the back row. Well, I thought I was . . .
Brother Mitchell’s talking, so I turn the phone over. He gets us up to sing a hymn and tries to pitch it as something Zac would of wanted. Yeah, this funeral, definitely what he wanted.
I don’t sing. I tear my thumbnail with my teeth and catch some dude looking back at me. It’s Thommo. He nods slowly and I blank him.
His mum whispers something and he turns around. I sit down before we’re told to.
Sue walks up to give a speech and my phone vibrates.
I try to focus on what Sue’s saying, but my mind drifts to the motorboat club. It might be good to have our own do, without the Barton song and dance. And I’d be where Zac last was.
The front door closes. Dad drops his keys into the glass ashtray by the door. His boots are heavy on the hardwood floors. Coming closer. The shopping bags rustle. He puts them down on the counter.
‘You’re here.’ He sounds surprised.
I’m lying on the sofa, staring past my feet and out the window. ‘Where else would I be?’
He starts to unpack the shopping. ‘I just thought, if you were going all that way . . .’
‘Nope.’
When he’s stored everything, he crumples the empty bags into a ball. ‘Have you spoken to your mother?’
I stare down the last remaining bottle of red in the bottom of the pantry. If I drink it, that’s today sorted, but what about tomorrow? And the day after that? I settle for a walk instead. I end up on the strip of shops and cafes leading to the coast. There’s a Help Wanted sign taped to the window of Bev’s Buns. I pop in. The place smells like coffee beans and fresh bread. I ask Bev about the sign, and she asks if I have hospitality experience. I tell her I don’t, coz I know if she had a better option, she’d of taken the sign down by now. She says she doesn’t have time to teach someone how to make coffee.
‘That’s fine. I’ll just make bad coffee.’
She laughs and asks me when I can start.
On the way out, someone texts.
I want to tell her I got a job, but I can’t without talking about the funeral.
There are three rush periods at Bev’s. Right before the last train people can catch to make it into Sydney before nine, at lunch and after school. It’s a shit-storm the first day, but I get the hang of it. I realise, if I burn their milk one morning, they’ll only order a bagel the next.
Bad for Bev, good for Harley.
I check my phone when it’s quiet. Jacs still texts.
It reminds me of Sue. I lean against the coffee machine. I have her contact entry open. My finger hovers over Dial.
‘Did you go to Kiama?’ I didn’t even notice the guy waiting to be served. ‘Scott Harley, right?’
I force a smile at him.
‘I knew it was you.’ He squints a little. ‘I thought you went off to some fancy Sydney school. What are you doing here?’
Working. I’m working. I’m ... sneaking out the back to make a call.
Bev pops her head out the door. ‘We need you in here,’ she says.
‘One sec,’ I mouth.
I’m sitting on a milk crate next to the bin with my phone to my ear. Five calls to the Herald Daily and still no progress.
‘I get that the article’s weeks old, but it’s the first thing that comes up when you search his name.’
The receptionist tells me to leave my number.
‘I already did that and no one got back to me . . .’
I give up on making calls. Jacs still texts.
I imagine Jacs cackling at the shitty play while I burn the milk on purpose. Someone passes the window. Someone I know. I put down the jug and vault over the counter. I stack it a bit, recover mostly and stumble out of the bakery. The sky’s bruised purple and pink, and his grey tracksuit practically screams.
‘Thommo?’ I call.
The guy looks back at me and I stop. He has a stubbled moustache.
Definitely not Thommo.
‘Ah. Thought you were someone else . . . My bad.’
It wasn’t. I haven’t left Gerringong in weeks. I wake, I work, I sleep. Nothing exciting, but exciting’s overrated, I reckon.
I wake, and there’s a letter from Barton on the breakfast bar, dated last Friday. I skim it . . . in regards to Scott’s protracted absence . . . missed assessment tasks . . . how to best facilitate Scott’s return . . . Kathleen Evans. Her signature’s a mess.
Dad comes in, carrying a basket of dirty laundry. ‘They want to know when you’re going back,’ he says.
‘I got that.’
He clears his throat. ‘Any idea when that might be?’
Jacs sits on the edge of the Archibald Fountain. She’s on her phone. The plan’s to say something casual to make her look up, but before I can, she looks up on her own. Her forehead knots like she doesn’t believe I’m standing here.
‘Hi?’ I try.
She launches off the fountain’s edge and rushes at me. She throws her arms around my neck. ‘I was convinced . . .’ Her breath is short. ‘I was convinced I’d never hear from you again and . . . You’re back.’
She pulls out of the hug and punches one fist into my chest.
‘Ow!’
There are more punches, one for each word. ‘You. Can’t. Vanish. Like. That.’
I pull back. ‘Jesus, Jacs.’
She blows a stray hair out of her face and sits back on the fountain’s edge. I sit next to her but not as close as I used to.
‘Look, I get it,’ she says. ‘Zac died. It’s shit. But what you did, you control that. You didn’t say goodbye. You didn’t . . . Not even one text. You dropped me.’
‘I dropped everyone.’
She shakes her head. ‘I deserve more from you than that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Damn right, you are.’
A thought hits me. ‘Wait, have you been sitting here every morning, waiting for me?’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Yeah, I’m a regular Miss Havisham.’
‘Who?’
‘Dickens character, dumped at the altar, sits in her wedding dress for the rest of her life. Based on an Australian chick.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yup. Visited her grave near Newtown. The more you know.’
She leans in a bit. ‘No, I haven’t been sitting here. I just knew the text was good.’
‘That’s . . . manipulative.’
‘And ignoring me isn’t?’
She won’t let me forget any time soon. Not to burst her bubble, but it wasn’t just the text. There was other stuff . . .
‘Dad was threatening to have Mom come sort me out,’ I tell her. ‘And I was definitely about to get fired. I’m not a very good waiter.’
‘Never thought you would be.’
I laugh. She smiles.
Without looking down, she adds, ‘Your fly’s undone.’
When I see the familiar white four-wheel drive, I push off the tree. The car rolls to a stop, the passenger window comes down and Sue leans over. She looks past me, into the cafe she recommended for lunch.
‘It’s a bit of a shit-fight in there, isn’t it?’ she asks.
I blink. When Jacs left for school and I called Sue to suggest lunch sometime, I didn’t reckon she’d want to do today.
Sue glances at her rear-view mirror. There’s a car in her lane that isn’t slowing down. She clears junk off the passenger seat with a swipe of her arm. ‘Get in,’ she says.
I open the door and I’m careful not to tread on anything.
‘Don’t worry about that crap. I keep telling Warwick this isn’t his office.’ Sue releases the handbrake and accelerates before I’ve got my seatbelt on. ‘It’s a shame, that place does really nice salads,’ she explains, eyes on the road. ‘I’m sure your mother would have appreciated me taking you there. But now that I think about it – me getting a park, and then us finding a table – going there was a flight of fancy.’
‘I assumed you’d just walk from work.’
‘No, I’m twenty minutes from here. I told them to get nicked and that I’d be taking the afternoon off.’
I laugh. ‘Seriously?’
‘No, I . . .’ She takes a breath then begins again. ‘I told them I was seeing my son’s friend, and they’ve been very accommodating.’
That’s the reality check. And all I’ve got to meet it is, ‘Oh.’ Sue’s better at pushing past it. I reckon she’s had more practice. She changes the subject. ‘So, why aren’t you at school?’
The Sidekicks Page 9