by Brown, Honey
‘Are you all right?’ he asks. ‘Because tell me if this is not all right.’
‘It’s all right,’ she tells him.
‘Rebecca, I’m twenty-two, you’re sixteen, you’ve had a terrible day …’
It doesn’t stop him.
The smell of Aden Claas? Impossible to say, but strong, because he’s unwashed: oily hair and salty skin, faint trace of aftershave. And in that place behind his ear, where his hairline meets his neck, he has his initials tattooed – A. C. – in slanting text, as though he knew that’s where she’d go looking for him. She presses her nose and lips against it, blinks away the prick of tears. It’s silly, she knows – she’s emotional, the day, the night, thoughts of her mother – but it’s like he says: it feels right. Why else would they be doing this?
He undresses her in the bedroom, kneels with his clothes on and kisses her stomach, moves his mouth down to between her legs. It’s not the first time someone’s done it, but it’s the first time it’s felt good. She forgets to be self-conscious, holds his shoulders for support. It’s so good it culminates into something near to an orgasm, not the intensity of those she has alone, but it’s more than she’s ever had with a boy, or ever hoped to have.
He tells her to lie on the bed. He has sure hands and avoids all the most obvious spots. He says warm words against her skin, tells her she’s got a beautiful body, turns her over and runs his hands over her back, down over her bottom.
He says with his lips against her shoulder, body pressed in behind her, ‘I haven’t brought anything with me. Are you on the pill?’
She shakes her head.
‘Have you got any condoms?’
‘No.’
He puts his hand between her legs and rubs her as he talks.
‘You’re wet,’ he says, as though this should automatically lead to her having some sort of protection in the house.
‘Sorry.’
He smiles against her shoulder. ‘Don’t be.’
What she understands then is that he’s not there to muck around. Unlike the boys she’s been with, who would fondle for hours if you let them, who seem to have no goal or direction, he unzips his jeans and takes them off, asks if she’s done it from behind before. Rebecca shakes her head.
‘I’ll be gentle. I won’t come inside you.’
Virginity lost on the night Joanne Kincaid went missing. Face down on the bed, doggy-style. The gradual easing in, and the muttered words You’re tight. Sex then, unmistakably. One hand holding her hip and the other hand on her shoulder, like in the movies, and not the sort of movies you see at a regular cinema. It hurts and it’s her fault, all she has to do is tell him to stop, but she doesn’t want him to stop. It’s good to get it done.
Although the dogs are barking and there’s the sound of a car idling out in the driveway, Aden changes position, takes off his shirt and has her lie on her back in the middle on the bed. He makes sure she’s comfortable, and then kneels and guides himself inside her again, glancing at her face. ‘Does that hurt?’
She shakes her head.
‘Does it feel good?’
She wets her lips and answers yes, and, strangely, having said that, it does feel good for a second.
He says Fuck between his teeth, puts his bare chest against hers, slides his arms around her and holds her from underneath, tucks his face into her neck and her hair.
Missionary position.
She discovers he likes it best when she moves, that he has a rhythm, and that he increases the speed and penetration when she grips his back and arches against him. He groans and mutters things, tells her it’s good, tells her she feels good, touches her breasts, kisses her neck and jaw.
Keen to learn, taking mental notes, Rebecca watches him come on her belly, his chin to one side, face screwed up, strange final strokes she wouldn’t have thought would make a man come, not the big wank, wank, they go on about but something more efficient and precise, interesting, leaving her feeling as though she’s witnessed something special.
He opens his eyes and looks at her, blinks and smiles lazily, makes a low growl in the back of his throat.
As aggressive as he sometimes seemed during the height of it, he is gentle and grateful after it. He curls in behind her and hugs her, says again that she’s beautiful, that she’s got the best body, Great tits, he whispers in her ear.
When they go out, Nigel is in the yellow hatchback, motor running, radio on, the seat back and his feet up on the dash. He winds down the window and eyes them.
He says, ‘That’s disgraceful, Aden! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’
Aden turns to Rebecca. ‘I’ll come and get you in the morning. If they find her during the night, do you want me to ring you?’
‘Yes.’
‘God, that’s filthy,’ Nigel goes on. ‘Really lowbrow stuff. I’m insanely jealous. How’s it going anyway, Rebecca? Lost any more local identities tonight? I got a couple in mind you could make go missing for me.’
‘Do you want your jumper?’ Rebecca asks Aden.
‘Looks better on you, you keep it.’
He is in two minds on the step, caught between leaving or leaning in to kiss her. He looks over at the car.
‘Shit, Rebecca,’ he says, and she can’t help but smile.
Shit, Rebecca seems to be her lot in life. Boys will forever be saying that to her, with that regretful expression on their face: wishing she was someone else, a few years older, anything but exactly what she is. It’s understandable. It hurts.
‘Why,’ he says as though reading her mind, ‘can’t you be older?’
‘I’m old enough.’
‘Nigel’s right, you know – I am a bastard.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘I’ve never had a girlfriend longer than two weeks. I probably should have told you that. I’ve got a really bad track record.’
‘I’ve got a really bad reputation – is that the same thing?’
‘Sort of.’
She shrugs. He grins. He pulls her into a kiss. ‘So we make a good pair,’ he says.
Nigel heckles them from the car.
After he’s gone, Rebecca thinks how Joanne Kincaid might find it inspirational, or a coming together of good energy. At the very least she wouldn’t think of it as boring.
12
Zach is up before dawn, not having really slept. Unlike his aunt Belinda, who he suspects sleeps soundly in her old bed, who was quick to turn up on the doorstep last night, who probably revels in the absence of his mother. He catches her in his father’s room laying out his clothes – her grey hair and sloping shoulders, backside sliding away into her legs. She asks, ‘How are you today, Zach?’
His father is in the shower and Zach is able to answer, ‘How the fuck do you reckon I am?’
Zach waits until his father leaves and then he starts out across the paddocks. The sky is bleached out in the corners. He walks through the tussocks and up over the rocky outcrops, cuts through a stand of bush.
Birds sing and the air seems electric, things click and rustle in the grass. It hurts to breathe. He arches his shoulders, tries to get his breath, keeps touching his hand to his chest like people with asthma do.
Standing by Rebecca’s side gate is a quieter, more subdued replay of the day before – the grey house, the blue sky above it, low rays warming the jagged edges of scrap metal in the front yard, the dogs scratching and whining in their cage. It’s not as intense as yesterday. The heat’s been taken out. He half expects Rebecca to come out of the front door in a longer, more modest T-shirt, one covering her underwear; he waits, sure that it will happen. He looks at the drawn curtains in her bedroom window, runs his hand over the corroded metal gate and down to the latch.
The dogs break the lull. They explode with noise in their enclosure; they jump against the wire and run back and repeat it like animals half-mad with captivity. Zach opens his mouth to speak, but finds he has no voice. He swallows and tries again.
‘Hey guys,’ he says.
The barking becomes less furious. They stick their noses through the wire and snort for his scent.
There are sounds of a person, seemingly twice as heavy as Rebecca, walking around inside the house. Zach turns to double-check that the truck isn’t in the shed. He checks down towards the road for other cars. When he feels sure she is alone he goes up and knocks on the door.
She is in a dressing-gown, tied tightly at the waist, her hair in a rushed ponytail, and her face glossy from being washed.
He starts by saying, ‘I got you out of bed again.’
She looks past him out into the yard. ‘Is your dad here? Is your mum back?’
‘No, on both counts.’
That same blank look from the night before returns to her face, as though she’s uncertain who he is – not the Zach she knows from school, not the boy she touched on the bus. ‘I wanted to apologise,’ he says, ‘about last night, about what I said. Can I come inside?’
Her eyebrows draw together.
‘Rebecca, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I said. I’m sorry I acted like I did. I was trying to work out if we …’ he motions back and forth between them, ‘if we’re together.’
‘I don’t think we’re together, Zach.’
‘Can I talk to you?’
‘Yes.’
But she doesn’t invite him in. After a moment of them both standing there, looking off in their own separate directions, Zach says, ‘I got the impression last night there was something between you and Aden.’
‘Don’t you see how all this is really strange to me? Last night all you do is insult me and tell me your mum isn’t missing, and now you turn up here saying she is missing and you think we’re going out. I still don’t know if she is missing or not. You accuse me of doing the wrong thing – well, what was I meant to do? She was acting strange. She was upset. She didn’t even go inside the restaurant. I thought it was pretty serious.’
A sharp pain shoots across Zach’s forehead. He rubs between his eyes. ‘Can I talk to you?’
‘We’re talking, aren’t we?’
‘Can I come inside?’
She backs up and opens the door wider; she turns her head away. ‘Fine,’ she says.
She leaves him to walk in alone and goes into the kitchen to light a cigarette. She leans against the bench in her dressing-gown, with her arms folded and the ashtray by her elbow – a picture of Housing Commission white trash. All that is missing is a grubby toddler on her hip.
Zach sits at the kitchen table.
‘So?’ she says.
‘What?’
‘Tell me.’
‘About my mum?’
‘Yes, about your mum.’
‘Why are you talking down to me all of a sudden?’
‘I guess I’m a bit confused. You’re hard to keep up with. I don’t think this is really the best time for us to be talking about going out. If that’s what you actually want?’
Zach feels his top lip curl. ‘This is beautiful, isn’t it – a Toyer knocking a Kincaid back.’
‘If you’re gunna be a prick …’
‘I’m not being a prick. I am actually – believe it or not – trying to tell you what’s going on. I’m trying to be honest with you. I’m trying to tell you that my mother —’
‘No,’ she says suddenly, ‘actually, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be any more a part of it than I already am.’
Zach narrows his eyes. ‘What?’
‘It’s all right for you, but I live in your father’s house. My dad can’t find a place that’ll take his truck overnight – we can’t afford to lose this place. I’m already worried that your dad’s going to have us kicked out of here. I know you were upset earlier, and I figure your mum was upset for the same reason … about Aden, I guess … and I can imagine something like that would upset a family like yours.’
‘Like ours? What, wouldn’t it upset your rock-solid family?’
‘Finding out I had a half-brother – no, it wouldn’t.’
‘You have no idea.’
‘If there’s more going on, then it’s none of my business. I didn’t say any more than I had to. And I don’t know any more.’
‘If you’re so keen on staying out of other people’s business, why did you ring the police? It’s a bit late to say you don’t like getting involved after you started the whole thing. And a bit late to take it back, now you’ve told everyone who’ll listen that my mum is suicidal and some sort of mental case. That’s not really staying out of it, is it? Thanks a lot for that, Rebecca.’
‘I said she seemed upset, that’s all I said. Kara tried to get on to your father. She tried ringing his sisters. When she couldn’t get anyone she rang the police. Aden said … We agreed it was getting late and something had to be done.’
‘No, please, tell me what Aden said – I’d love to hear what Aden said.’
‘He didn’t say anything.’
‘How long have you known him?’
Rebecca taps the ash from her cigarette. She stays looking down.
‘You do know he’s an unemployed dole bludger? Works as a waiter in that restaurant, sells dope on his days off. You do know the restaurant isn’t even theirs? Dad owns it. They’ve got no money, nothing.’
During the conversation the dogs have been whining and barking from their cage. The sound has reached a pitch and urgency impossible to ignore. Rebecca crushes out her cigarette. ‘I have to let the dogs out.’
The floor reverberates with her steps. The dressing-gown she has on is pink with small white flowers dotted over it. Her feet are bare and her soles are dirty. She leaves the door open.
Zach gets up and goes into the kitchen. He looks for a glass and gets himself a drink of water. The sink is tarnished, the benches lifting with dry rot. Some cupboard doors are missing. It’s hard for him to comprehend how people let a place get like this – do they not respect or look after anything? He knows Rebecca’s room is nice enough, but it seems to reinforce the fact that she only looks after herself.
She comes back in and says, ‘I’m getting dressed.’
When he starts to follow her she slows her steps. She glances over her shoulder at him.
‘Can I come?’ he says.
‘What? No.’
‘Why not?’
‘What do you mean why not?’
They stop together in the doorway of her room.
‘Because this time yesterday we were almost having sex.’
‘It was later than this,’ she replies, as though it has some relevance.
‘Oh, so should I come back at lunchtime? Is that the only time you put out?’
‘You’re unbelievable!’
‘And you think you’re not?’
‘Yes.’ She pulls a face. ‘Yes,’ she says again. ‘More believable than you – you can’t honestly go from insulting me and everything that happened yesterday to standing at my door expecting … I don’t even know what you’re expecting.’
‘Why do you all of a sudden act as if you’re older than me?’
‘You’re behaving strangely, Zach. I don’t know why you’re here …’ She starts to turn away.
He puts a hand on her shoulder and pulls her round to face him.
She reefs herself from his hold. ‘Don’t touch me! Christ! Don’t come over here and do that!’
‘I hardly laid a finger on you!’
‘What are you doing here? Who do you think you are? I know you’re only over here because you think I’m some lowlife who’ll relate to the violence or whatever in your life – well, I don’t relate to it, all right? I don’t get it and don’t want to get it. No-one touches me and no-one’s ever touched me. In my family no-one goes missing. You’re the same as your father – sitting there looking at me, thinking he knows me or has some right to speak to me the way he did.’ She rubs the top of her arm in what seems like an unconscious action. Her eyes are bright and her cheeks flushed with colour. ‘It’s self
ish – coming here trying to tell what has happened —’
‘Keep it a secret with me.’
‘Keep what a secret? I don’t even know what you’re talking about!’
‘I was serious, Rebecca – on the bus I was being serious. I would kiss you out the front of school, in front of anyone. I want us to go out.’
She looks off across the room. ‘I can’t believe you’re talking about this. Something’s happened to your mother and all you’re worried about is kissing out the front of the school? It’s not important.’
‘It is to me.’
‘More important than your mother?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Then perhaps you shouldn’t push me around and scream out in car parks that I sleep with anyone. You shouldn’t whistle at me from across the schoolyard and ignore me in class. You shouldn’t tell me things you know put me in a bad position. I don’t want to have secrets with you, Zach. And we’re not going out.’
Zach says, his voice rising, ‘You go on and have this superior attitude because you think you’ve got it so tough, you’re so self-righteous about all the terrible things in your life – well you’ve got no idea, you’ve never been hit. You said it yourself – no-one’s ever touched you.’
‘Great! So you come over and deliver that, right? Because that’s what I’m missing – I really need you Kincaids pushing me around. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what your father has done to your mother. Has he pushed her around? Is that what’s happened? Has he hit her? Is that what it is with you?’
‘You don’t want to know what it is with us,’ he hisses.
He puts his hands on her chest and pushes. He doesn’t realise how hard he’s pushed until her eyes are wide and she’s falling back. The bed behind her breaks her fall. She gropes for the mattress, but slips off the edge and lands on her side.
She scrambles up, pulling down her dressing-gown. ‘Get out!’ she screams. ‘Get out! Get out or I’ll call the police!’
She backs up further, bumps into her bedside table and knocks the lamp onto the floor. In a high, wavering voice she says, ‘I mean it, Zach …’