I unfurrow my brow and turn the page. ‘Nothing.’
‘Well, stop squinting. Why aren’t you wearing your glasses?’
‘They are in my room.’ I turn the page even though I have not been reading.
‘By the way,’ Mum says, turning the cut-out around to face me. ‘Have you met Hector?’ Her fireman bookmark is the length of her forearm.
I laugh. It would be difficult not to. ‘You are going to give Dad a complex.’
Mum cackles. She is at her happiest when she is playfully stoking Dad’s insecurities. It is the best time to ask, ‘Is it all right if I stay at Ryan’s house on Friday?’
INT. TRAIN CARRIAGE – AFTERNOON
SUPERIMPOSE: FRIDAY
Ryan has Squad after school, so Harley and I are the ones heading down south to pick up the car. It is the first true test of the new regime, Harley and I alone for hours.
He puts his bag down but does not sit beside it. Instead, he starts to undress.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask.
The train rocks. He unzips his bag. ‘Getting changed. We can’t break into Barton in our uniforms,’ he says.
‘Yes, but we can change at Isaac’s?’
He stops unbuttoning his shirt. That had not occurred to him. He shrugs and peels it off anyway.
‘I’m half-done,’ he says.
There is a black stain all the way down the side of his body.
‘What is that?’ I ask.
He looks at it. ‘My tatt,’ he says.
I would not have thought it was intentional, but now that I look closer, I can see it is a series of faded intricate lines, melting together.
‘A tree with roots,’ he explains.
‘As opposed to a tree without?’
He scoffs and the tattoo disappears behind a black shirt.
INT. ISAAC’S KITCHEN – AFTERNOON
I emerge from the bathroom, having changed out of my uniform. When Harley looks at me, I try not to seem too smug, only palatably smug, because it is important that he understand I am always right.
That said, borrowing Isobel’s truck from Mrs Roberts had been his idea, and an inspired one. There was no way Isobel would lend it to us directly, but if she thought Mrs Roberts needed it, and Mrs Roberts then sneakily passed it on to us, she would not be a roadblock.
Mrs Roberts makes us tea. I enjoy it. Harley sips his with reluctance. He is only drinking it because Mrs Roberts was the one who brewed it.
When she offers the key, I snatch it before Harley can.
EXT. SUPERMARKET CAR PARK – AFTERNOON
Harley is out of the truck before I have even pulled the handbrake. I shut the door and follow after him. I assume we are here for supplies, snacks and a drink that is not tea, until Harley sits on a cement wheel stop in one of the free parking spots.
‘Why?’ I ask.
‘We have some time to kill before Squad finishes,’ Harley says.
Not really. By the time we drive into the city, we will have twenty minutes up our sleeves, max.
‘Zac and I used to chill here sometimes,’ he adds.
Ah. I walk over and sit beside him.
He chews on the inside of one cheek and watches the people filing in and out of the supermarket.
‘Where did you find that photo of Isaac and me?’ I ask. ‘I take it, it was you who supplied it.’
‘It was,’ he says. ‘Sue had it.’
I picture him struggling to finish the tea. ‘It is good you see her.’
He scrunches his nose. ‘It isn’t really much, in the scheme of things.’
‘Well, no. It is not as if you blackmailed Xavier, Martin and Omar into meeting with her, because you threatened to tell the school you sold them essays,’ I say. ‘No, that would be impressive.’
‘How did you even know –?’
I confess what I overheard at Kevin Tran’s party, and add, ‘Are Ryan and I your cronies now?’
‘Please, stop saying that word.’
I smile. This is fun, but I feel I ought to be serious, given that he has brought me to a place he used to share with Isaac. ‘It was good, what you did for Ryan, leaving school to tell him what happened in English.’
‘I’d want it to be. I have detentions flying out my arse for skipping so many classes.’
‘And the article . . . I have not thanked you for it, have I?’
He is still silent.
‘Thank you, Scott Harley. Like it or not, you are a good person.’
‘Shut up.’
‘You are.’ The compliment alone makes him squirm, so I add, ‘Unless I am trying to make a movie. Then you are the worst person alive.’
Harley smirks. ‘It did need more traffic cones.’
‘Maybe.’ Not at all.
He relaxes a little. ‘Why don’t you make another movie if you love them so much?’ he asks.
Point of View was tough work, but when it all came together in the end, it was one of the best feelings. But I had to borrow a camera from the school last year, and I would need to buy a computer that could handle the strain of video editing.
‘You’ve got enough essay money, don’t you?’ he asks.
I do the sums in my head. If I lease the equipment, I probably do.
‘I would need a cast,’ I tell him.
‘Well, you know my terms.’
A woman wheels a trolley past us towards her car. It makes Harley laugh a little.
‘Zac and I used to hop in trolleys and take turns riding,’ he says.
‘I am not riding around in a trolley.’
EXT. SUPERMARKET CAR PARK – AFTERNOON SUPERIMPOSE: SEVEN MINUTES LATER
I sit in the trolley. Harley pushes me. I grip the metal grilles at the front and feel every bump and groove in the bitumen. The trolley is only moving as fast as Harley can run, but when I close my eyes, we are speeding. I release the metal grilles, one nervous hand at a time. I hold my arms out.
I am smiling.
INT. BURGER JOINT – NIGHT
We find Ryan in a booth near the kitchen, picking at the only salad they have on the menu. He slams his fork down when he sees us. ‘There you are! What took you so long?’
We spent longer than we should have riding trolleys, then we hit traffic, then we had to find a parking space in the city.
‘Chill,’ Harley says. ‘We can’t waltz in yet, there’ll still be sad-sack teachers there.’
I sit down and Harley says he needs to use the bathroom, only he says it with more vulgar words.
‘You hungry?’ Ryan asks.
‘Not really.’ I am beginning to feel more and more nervous about what we are about to do.
‘You’re not wild on this, are you?’
I shake my head. I understand why we are doing it, I just wish there was another way, one that did not risk so much. I tell him so.
‘You can’t avoid risk. No matter what you do, it’s possible something bad can happen,’ he says. ‘Like, I was so petrified people would find out about me. I didn’t want to tell them and risk what I had.’ He hesitates on the edge of specifics. ‘I was seeing this guy. He said he could wait for me to come out, but I made him wait too long. I stuffed it up. I lost that chance.’ He shrugs. ‘Who cares if we get caught? To hell with risk. Let’s just do it. Life is short and I don’t want to lose any more chances.’
This is the first time he has opened up about liking guys. I am compelled to follow up.
‘The guy . . . Have you told him you came out?’ I ask.
‘I went to his house with flowers. I wore this polo he bought me, navy blue with little white anchors on it. It was his favourite.’ Ryan clears his throat. ‘He’s happy for me, but he has someone new.’
Harley appears, holding two beer bottles. He slides into the booth and passes Ryan a drink.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask. ‘It is illegal for them to serve you alcohol.’
‘They don’t need to know that,’ Harley whispers.
I try to look stern. ‘Fines apply.
’
Ryan and Harley clink their bottles together.
EXT. BARTON HOUSE DRIVEWAY – NIGHT
The truck pulls up to the garage entrance. My arm extends out of the window. I press the security pass against the reader. The door rattles as it rises.
INT. SERVICE ELEVATOR – NIGHT
The elevator climbs slowly. My stomach churns. If a security guard spots us, we are done for. Harley leans against the back, like it is a regular Friday night for him. Ryan is enjoying this way too much. He is shifting his weight between his feet. He punches his chest to amp himself up. I blame the one beer.
‘If we get arrested, is Jacs comfy with having to visit you in prison for smooches?’ he asks.
‘Shut up,’ Harley says.
‘Smooches?’ I ask.
‘They’re dating now,’ Ryan explains.
‘Oh.’ I do not know how that works. When I met Jacqueline, she was flirting with Ryan. I think. Happy to leave that in the too-hard basket.
INT. CORRIDOR – NIGHT
There is something so unsettling about seeing a place you have only visited in the daytime, at night. What is usually bright and bustling is dim and empty, lit only by every third overhead light.
I keep alert. My heart rages. Ryan is not helping.
When he turns the key to unlock the double doors to the courtyard, he reminds us that they may be alarmed.
‘Wait, what?’
He pushes the door open.
There is no alarm. I exhale.
EXT. COURTYARD – NIGHT
We jog side by side across the yard. I picture the shot tracking behind us, one uninterrupted take. I imagine the screen splitting in half. On the other side, the security guard charges down the corridor with whatever harmful weapon guards are legally allowed to carry. My chest tightens. No. The security guard stands at a coffee vending machine in the staffroom. That is better. He is watching his paper cup fill with a watery black coffee. He is not a threat.
I check over my shoulder. The building is a dark mass against a darker sky. I search the windows for any sign of the security guard. I do not see him, and I hope that means he does not see us.
Harley and I grab one side of the picnic table, and Ryan, the other. He lifts highest.
‘Lift!’ he hisses.
‘I am lifting!’ I insist.
Harley sniggers. ‘You don’t even lift, bro.’
‘Shut up,’ Ryan and I say.
We shuffle our feet across the courtyard.
Harley burps. ‘Sexy,’ he mutters to himself.
INT. CORRIDOR – NIGHT
We move slowly. Circles of white travel from one edge of the tabletop to the other as we pass under each light. It feels like progress. Slow progress.
‘Isaac would love this,’ Ryan whispers.
He would. I search for his carved initials the next time we pass under a light. I do not see them. I wait for the next light and check again. Nothing.
‘Wait, wait,’ I whisper.
‘What?’
‘Drop the table.’
We drop the table. I run my fingers across it.
‘This is not ours,’ I tell them.
The others search for the scratched initials. We cannot find them.
‘Shit,’ Harley mumbles. He burps again.
We haul the table back. My steps are short and panicked. We are making reverse progress.
EXT. COURTYARD – NIGHT
We leave the picnic table by the doors and sprint over. We run our fingers across the tabletops, squinting in the dark, searching for our table. We cannot find it.
Ryan’s phone goes off. The ringtone echoes in the empty courtyard.
‘Shit.’
‘Are you kidding?’ I ask. ‘You left your phone on?’
He takes it out and swears again. He angles the screen towards us and my heart sinks. Mum is flashing.
‘Why is she calling?’ Ryan asks. ‘She thinks we’re in a movie.’
‘Answer it,’ Harley says.
‘Do not answer it,’ I warn.
Light floods the courtyard.
INT. MRS EVANS’S OFFICE – NIGHT
As the Deputy Headmistress of Barton House, Mrs Evans deals with two types of students: delinquents and athletic achievers. She looks at us severely.
Tonight, we are the delinquents. She yawns into her hand and lists our offences, which include stealing a teacher’s security pass and keys, trespassing after hours and attempting to steal school property.
Ms Thomson reported her lost items on Friday afternoon. Had she not, Mrs Evans explains, using her pass to enter school so late would have registered as an abnormal activity and notified security. We were caught before we had even entered the car park.
Mrs Evans sighs. ‘I should expel you.’
I expect her to say she ‘will’ expel us. ‘Should’ is weird.
EXT. RYAN’S HOUSE – NIGHT
The motion sensors out the front detect the truck pulling into the driveway. The garden lights come on, illuminating a picnic table in the middle of the lawn.
Mrs Evans organised to have it delivered after I asked her to sell it to me.
I knew there was a smarter way.
The three of us stare at it, mostly in disbelief.
‘Fancy a test-drive?’ Harley asks.
We climb onto the tabletop. I almost sit on Isaac’s initials, I move to the right of them. Ryan sits tall, chest broad. Harley sinks back onto his elbows.
I sigh, satisfied. I like this series.
I imagine its course. Ms Thomson comes out here in the next few minutes to give us an earful. One Sunday, Ryan mans the barbecue, burns the lamb chops but serves them on this table anyway. On what would have been Isaac’s eighteenth birthday, we drive the picnic table to his parents’ place. Harley brings a case of beer and we toast him. They drink, I pour my bottle into the garden when no one else is looking. On Isaac’s twenty-sixth, we move the table to Ryan’s rooftop. He has moved in with a guy from his swim team. They lean into each other. They laugh. Harley reaches for a beer and Jacqueline slaps his wrist. She touches her growing midsection. If she cannot drink, neither can he. They have a boy. They call him Zac. Ryan has his own, two girls. We still have barbecues on Sundays. They become monthly. When the kids start school, it is harder to get time off work. We text. We message on Isaac’s thirty-second. We imagine what he would have been like. We forget his forty-ninth. By then, the picnic table is in my garage, underneath two decades of boxes. We wonder if it was always this hard to move. We sit on top and before the night is done, we carve our initials beside his.
I snap back into the present. I cannot wait to watch that series, even if it does not turn out exactly as I imagine.
We sit still. The garden sensor does not detect movement. The light switches off and we fade to black.
PENGUIN BOOKS
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
India | New Zealand | South Africa | China
Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies
whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2016
This digital edition published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2016
Text copyright © Will Kostakis, 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Design by Marina Messiha © Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2016
Cover illustration by Marina Messiha and Dean Proudfoot
Colour separation by Splitting Image Colour Studio, Clayton
, Victoria
puffin.com.au
ISBN: 978-1-76014-213-1
THE BEGINNING
Let the conversation begin...
Follow the Penguin Twitter
Keep up-to-date with all our stories YouTube
Pin ‘Penguin Books’ to your Pinterest
Like ‘Penguin Books’ on Facebook
Find out more about the author and
discover more stories like this at penguin.com.au
The Sidekicks Page 20