It’s like I’m talking to Zac. I say so.
‘Well, he didn’t get his humour from his father, I can assure you,’ Sue says. ‘Anyway, I actually came by to ask a favour.’
She’s going to ask if I sold Zac drugs.
‘Do you think you could, and feel free to tell me to bugger off, but do you think you could maybe, possibly, get the boys who were with Isaac that night to speak with me?’
I exhale so hard I deflate.
‘I tried to reach out to them through the school, but Barton doesn’t want to get involved, and the parents are being . . .’ She scrunches her face. ‘If the roles were reversed, I’d . . . But that’s all hypothetical. I have questions. Real questions. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since you and I had lunch. I don’t like not knowing much about that night.’ She chews on a thought. ‘You don’t know anything, do you?’
‘No,’ I blurt.
‘Mm.’ She taps her knuckles on her thigh. ‘I just want to know what my baby’s last hours were like.’
My phone’s screen lights up my corner of the dorm. It’s pushing midnight and I’m in bed, scrolling through my conversations. I’m looking for the group chat with Marty, Ex and Omar. It’s buried under weeks of new messages, just above my convo with Mom. I message them.
Dunno how I’ll convince them to see Sue, but I’ll worry about that when they’re standing in front of me.
I quit the convo and tap Mom’s. The last message was the morning I woke in Gerringong.
Hughes stirs. ‘Dude, it’s like . . .’ He gives up on figuring out how late it is. ‘Go to sleep.’
I turn the screen brightness down. I’m staring at my convo with Mom. There isn’t much to it before Zac died, a couple of questions from her and single-word responses from me. I’d never wanted to send more, but Sue . . . Every time I see her, I remember what I’ve done, why Zac isn’t here any more. If Mom didn’t want to leave, she wouldn’t of sent me here, I wouldn’t of met Zac, I wouldn’t of . . . None of this would of happened.
I want to ask what changed. We used to be tight. She used to say the most random shit. I used to love hearing her voice. She never lost her accent. She didn’t sound like anybody else. If I still had that, I would still be in Gerringong and Sue would still have Zac.
I want to blame her. I want to tell her this is all her fault.
It’s not. I’m the guy who knows a guy. It’s on me.
But I want to hurt her for leaving. Same time, I want it to be like it used to. I want more than a couple of questions and single-word responses.
Jacs would say some shit about elastic bands. It’s true. I feel ours tightening, pulling me towards Mom. Only, I don’t know what to say or how to start.
‘Oi, Hughes?’
Silence.
‘You awake?’
He makes an unfriendly sound. That’s enough for me.
I can divvy up the boarders into two groups: ones whose parents live too far and ones whose parents are too rich. Hughes’s folks are in London.
‘Dude, what do you message your mum?’ I ask.
‘What are you on about?’ His words are muffled by the pillow.
‘Like, what do you say to someone you don’t see or talk to?’
‘I just fucking message her.’
Not sure what else I was expecting.
Marty, Ex and Omar are spending their Saturday arvo at Kev Tran’s seventeenth barbecue. I hang by the toilet block on the edge of the park. I pull my hood down and send a group text. Don’t want anyone else to know I’m here. It’s fucking bleak.
The three of them look up from their phones at the same time. They walk over in a line.
‘Dude, you should come over. The food is ace,’ Ex says.
‘I’m not here.’
He laughs. ‘Look at you, all phantom and shit.’
Marty tilts his chin in. ‘Do you have –?’
‘No.’ I find I feel less like punching him in the face when I don’t look at him directly. ‘I need you guys to man up.’
Ex laughs. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Zac’s mum. She wants to know what happened that night.’
‘Um.’ Omar shakes his head. ‘Dad’s lawyer said not to say anything.’
I’m running out of faces I don’t want to punch. ‘You’re not gonna get in shit. She just wants help filling in the blanks. For closure.’
It’s Marty’s turn to laugh. ‘You want us to man up? We had to talk to journos. We had to go see the coroner’s counsellor. Where were you? Not here.’ Asked and answered. His eyes narrow. ‘And what are we supposed to say? That our mate Harley ordered some dodgy shit and Isaac took it without telling us? Is that what she wants to hear?’
‘That’s not what I –’
‘So you want us to smooth over that part?’ Marty asks. ‘Stick our necks out, but cover your arse?’
‘No, I . . .’
‘You what?’ Ex asks.
‘Yeah,’ Omar chimes in.
‘I want you to tell her he was happy,’ I spit. ‘That’s what I want you to do, make her think her son wasn’t with three total fuckwits when he died.’
Jacs breaks a corner off my brownie. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’ She drops it into her mouth. ‘You should’ve eaten it faster.’
Every couple of Sundays, she studies at the State Library. When she gives up after a few hours, she texts:
We end up meeting in the library cafe. We order a brownie each, coz we know there are proper meals waiting for us at our boarding houses. She finishes first and taxes some of mine. It’s all pretty routine.
She hasn’t mentioned Thommo yet. I’m glad. Don’t know how to tackle it.
‘Oi, isn’t that your mate from the other night?’ Jacs asks.
Ah, crap.
‘The weird one,’ she adds.
I check over my shoulder. Miles is sitting three tables away. He’s on his phone.
‘That’s him.’ I turn back and my brownie’s gone.
Jacs tries to smile and chew at the same time. ‘Go over,’ she mouths.
‘I’m good.’
She stretches the elastic band around her wrist.
I don’t budge. ‘Nope.’
She releases the band and kicks me under the table. ‘Ow! Jeez. All right.’
I budge. I walk over and say, ‘Hi.’
He doesn’t look away from his phone when he says, ‘Hello, Harley.’
I glance at Jacs, she mimes me sitting down. I don’t want to. She scowls. I sit.
‘Had a good day?’ I ask.
‘Mm.’ He scrolls down.
‘What are you reading?’ I ask.
‘An article.’ I fully expect him to just keep giving me the bare minimum, and then, out of nowhere, comes a full sentence. ‘I am not sure if you saw this when you went off the grid. They wrote an article about Isaac after he died. It comes up when you search his name. Half of it reads like an ad for the school, and in the other half, they interview your cronies.’
Marty, Ex and Omar. They’re not my cronies, they’re more . . . essential others. Two guys drinking in a backyard is just sad, but five? That’s a gathering.
‘I come back to it, hoping there is something I missed.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
He slides his finger up and down the screen. ‘They mention Ryan. They backflip to mention Isaac was friends with a celebrated swimming champion. Your cronies start their sentences with we, and you are a part of that, so they speak for you. But me? Nothing. It is like I did not factor into his life at all. Mrs Evans says he was in the pilot young filmmakers programme. I was accepted into the programme, not him. I wrote the submission. I jumped through their hoops. I was selected. He just acted in my film. I understand that the school wants to mention their programme and spin that he was a promising actor lost before his time, but could they not have tried to tell the full truth? Is acknowledging that I played any part in his life from Year Seven to now really that hard?’
‘The way they write about the night, they keep it vague. They say . . .’ He clears his throat and I know which part he’s about to quote. I say it with him.
‘Jumped or fell.’
He stares at me. For a second, we’re in synch. I feel the elastic band. It pulls me, and I swear it pulls him too.
‘So you have seen it?’
‘Yeah.’ I swallow hard. ‘I tried calling them to take it down. Can’t get past reception.’
That gets a smile out of him. ‘Maybe we need to storm the bassteal.’
I laugh. ‘Yeah.’
He sips his drink and I take out my phone.
Search: storm the bassteal
The search engine returns results for storm the Bastille.
I have first period off on Monday. Instead of heading to campus, I storm the Bastille – a massive tower near Wynyard Station. RBS Media’s on level six. I follow the suits into the foyer, to the elevators that travel to the lower floors.
I’m the first person into the lift. Everyone fills in after me and mine’s the first stop. The doors open and nobody moves. There’s some awkward manoeuvring, then I’m out. The lady at reception is sitting on a tall stool at a taller desk. Behind her, several wall-mounted screens transition between the homepages of RBS’s websites.
I pop my bag off my shoulder and approach.
How do you storm a Bastille without an angry mob? Make them think you’re meant to be there.
The receptionist is too bubbly for how early it is. ‘Hello there.’
‘I’m here to see the editor.’ I tap my knuckles on her desk.
She opens a messaging program, clicks the search field and asks, ‘Which one?’
I blink at her. ‘Which one?’
‘Yes, which editor?’ Her hands hover over her keyboard.
‘Oh. The main one.’
Her brow creases. ‘Is someone expecting you?’
I hesitate. ‘Not exactly.’
‘I see.’ She pulls her hands back. ‘Our editorial staff don’t usually meet with readers in person. They’re exceptionally busy.’
‘No worries, I can wait. I’m free till, like, half-past nine. I’ll just set myself up over here.’ I’m already dragging my bag to the quirky Mad Hatter’s tea party set-up tucked to the side.
‘Sir, that’s not . . . Sir?’
I sit in the massive armchair by the window and check my nails, coz that’s what people who don’t give a fuck do.
‘Hello, Frank.’
I look up. She has her headset on. She explains the situation to some guy named Frank, and then responds to whatever he says back with sounds.
‘He has a backpack, but he’s a schoolkid so I don’t think that’s . . . Fifteen, I think.’ She makes a couple more active listener sounds, and then says, ‘All right.’
I perk up. That seems promising.
The receptionist peels off her headset and comes around the desk. Her heels clack a path to me. She smiles. ‘I just spoke to my manager. Unfortunately, all the early morning staff are tied up in the pitch meeting.’
‘I can wait.’
‘He’d like me to call security.’
I wait by the main entrance. I’m not ready to cave and say I failed. I can’t undo Mom sending me to Barton. I can’t stop myself from finding the number scratched into my bed. It happened. Zac died. But they don’t have to say he jumped. That sounds like he did it to himself.
I have the Herald Daily’s ‘Meet the Team’ page open on my phone. There are serious black-and-white pics slammed against quirky bios (Calvin Briggs is our political editor. He likes Question Time, hamburgers and Fridays.). It makes me hate Calvin and his friends, but I look for them. When I see anyone who sorta looks familiar, I scroll through the bio pics, and I’m either wrong, or they’re already gone.
I have to give it my best shot. If I’m late to second period, so be it. I’ll come up with a good excuse.
‘Sorry I’m late, sir. Couldn’t find my shoe.’
Thommo’s a no-show at recess. I spend it lying on the bench, getting rays. Evans comes past, says it’s a bench, not a sunbed.
I sit up. She’s walking around the yard, flanked by a guy in a flannel shirt and jeans. She leads him through the cluster of benches and I eavesdrop. ‘The boys hardly use these at breaks any more, as you can see. They eat in the halls, where they’re closer to the power outlets and air-conditioning. I would love to transform this whole corner into an oasis. Some greenery, built-in stools. Something more alive. So even if they’re not out here, at least it looks good.’
‘Let me see.’ The guy starts sketching with one finger on his tablet.
‘You’re getting rid of the benches?’ I ask Evans.
She glances back at me. ‘Not getting rid of, repurposing.’
Sounds like splitting hairs.
‘The boys taking Industrial Tech will have a field day stripping them back and recycling the timber.’
The guy tilts his tablet so she can see.
‘Yes, something like that, only . . .’ Evans explains her vision in more detail.
I stare at Zac’s initials scratched into the corner of the table.
I pass Miles in the corridor and ask if he’s seen Thommo.
‘Ryan was not in Modern History this morning.’ I wonder if anyone’s ever told him about wasn’t. ‘He is probably sick.’
Miles tries to piss off to home room. Before he can, I ask, ‘How was the rest of your Sunday?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘My night was all right. A bit slow.’
‘Please stop.’
‘What?’
He sighs. ‘You and I are not friends, Harley.’
‘Not in the traditional sense, no, but we –’
‘We did not get along when Isaac was alive. There is no reason to force it now.’ He tucks in his chin and walks off.
I feel the pull of the elastic band.
I dump my bag in the back corner of the room and sit next to Hughes. Mama Thommo watches from the front. Pill would of had to wait five minutes or do some clapping gimmick to shut us up, but with Mama Thommo, Head of English, it’s practically instant. It’s her stare, makes me think all that kept her from becoming a contract killer was some quirk of fate.
‘Right,’ she begins. ‘The more observant of you have noticed I’m not Miss Pill. Well done.’
‘Where is she?’ Jai asks.
‘That’s none of your business. Has Miss Pill assigned you any work for this period?’
We all say, ‘No,’ in unison, except for Paul.
‘What was that, Paul?’ Mama Thommo asks, leaning closer to the guy sitting in the front row.
‘Paul, you cock!’
The class laughs and Mama Thommo grimaces. ‘Charming.’
‘We’re working through a past half-yearly exam paper this week, Ms Thomson,’ Paul repeats.
‘You don’t say. Funny how the rest of the class forgot that.’ She walks to Pill’s desk. ‘Papers out, get started. I have things to mark but I’ll be poking my nose around later.’
Hughes groans. ‘Trust us to get the one sub who’ll actually make us do something.’
Mama Thommo starts marking the roll and I check out. I stare at the patch of wall above the whiteboard. Between names, she tells me to start working. I groan and pull my bag closer.
‘Try not to look like you’ve been wounded in battle, would you?’
I groan again.
‘Shut up, Scott.’
I have an exercise book I use for everything. It’s covered in drawings, the corners have curled over, and there’s a ton of loose sheets in the back. I flick through them, looking for the exam Pill gave us.
‘Miss, what if I don’t wanna work?’ Hughes asks.
‘Then you can make up the time at lunch,’ she says. ‘Would you prefer that?’
‘But it’s gay, miss.’
I freeze and wait for her reaction. Does she know abou
t Thommo? Is there anything to know?
She removes her glasses. ‘I don’t understand. Do you mean it’s a lighthearted, merry exam paper? Or is it attracted to exam papers of the same sex?’ She pauses. ‘I’m hoping you don’t mean it’s pointless, boring and no fun, because for that, there are perfectly good words like pointless, boring and no fun. When you equate the way someone loves to something you don’t like, you betray your limited vocabulary, which deeply offends me as Head of English, and you harm your peers who may not love the way you do.’
Someone says, ‘Shut down.’ I think it’s the same guy who called Paul a cock. It doesn’t get as many laughs.
‘Relax, miss. Most teachers let us say it,’ Hughes says.
‘Well, they shouldn’t,’ Mama Thommo snaps. ‘That’s your sensitivity training done. Do your work.’
‘Like, we don’t care if anyone’s gay. We’re cool with Ryan. He can be whatever.’
There’s a sec where she doesn’t say anything. Her eyes drift to me. Shit. This is the first she’s hearing of it. My heart goes nuts and I try not to give anything away. She opens her folder.
‘Mark, you’re disrupting the class,’ she says.
Fuck. I need to get to Thommo. Now.
I tap the open door and Collins looks up. ‘Don’t you have class?’ he asks.
‘Toilet break slash I wanted to double-check something. You’re not allowed to give me another student’s address, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Right.’ Never thought I’d ever regret not going to Thommo’s seventeenth. A non-alcoholic movie night hosted by a teacher. Not my kind of party. It’s exactly Miles’s kind of party. Probably why he went.
‘What room is Miles in right now?’ I ask.
I loiter by the glass panel until Miles looks up from his work. His forehead creases. He thinks I’m trying to force a friendship, but whatever. This is bigger than that. I wave him over. He mimes, ‘No.’
I insist. He shakes his head.
Right.
I let myself in. Miles sits on the far side of the room, mortified.
Higgins asks if he can help me, and I ask Miles where Thommo lives.
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