by Pip Harry
‘You couldn’t do this one thing for me?’ asks Ebony as she brushes past on the way out of the store. ‘When I do so much for you?’
‘What have you done for me lately?’ I say.
‘You’ll see. Let’s go.’
Outside the shop an ambush is waiting.
Collie cruises the footpath on a skateboard. He skirts the heels of passers-by before expertly turning in the other direction, making a scraping sound on the concrete. An older woman jumps in fright. This amuses Collie.
Leaning up against a wall, his head dipped into his phone, is Ebony’s boyfriend Beau. ‘Beau! Collie!’ says Ebony. She drapes herself over Beau, who struggles to lift his head from his phone.
Collie stays on his board, barely even acknowledging us. He’s wearing long checked shorts and a faded brown T-shirt. A trucker cap is pulled down over his famous blue eyes. He smooths carefully manicured sideburns down the sides of his face. There’s no doubt he’s hot, but I feel nothing. No butterflies. No heart hops. Nada.
When he’s finished preening, Collie flips the board up to his palm. ‘Hey,’ he says, looking directly at me.
After a twenty-minute debate, everyone agrees on Japanese for a group dinner so we go into the city to a sushi-train-slash-bar. The place is rammed and nobody seems to want to give up their stools. We’re hanging out the front and it’s freezing and Collie keeps complaining about being starving.
Ebony is still ignoring me, but I’ll get back in her good books if I settle on a partner tonight. More specifically, if I invite Collie to the formal immediately.
Next to the sushi place is a Chemist Warehouse. A couple slopes towards it unsteadily. They look like they’re holding each other up. If one let go, the other would topple over. The guy has a rat’s tail hanging out the back of a dirty cap and his teeth are brown and rotting. His girlfriend has pockmarked skin that looks like she’s been picking at it. Some of the sores are covered by Band-Aids.
Collie nudges Beau and they share a private joke and collapse laughing. I overhear Collie call them druggie povos, which makes my blood burn.
The chemist security guard moves in as the girlfriend tries to enter the store.
‘She’s right, mate!’ shouts the boyfriend. ‘Wants to buy something in ya store. Let her go …’
‘Methadone clinic is that way!’ shouts Collie, pointing in the direction of the Cross. The direction of Hope Lane. All I can think of is Zak and how he’s probably off his head in the city tonight, too.
The boyfriend seems completely beaten down. Like even a few steps would exhaust him. ‘Got any money?’ he asks our group listlessly. ‘Me girlfriend needs dinner. She’s hungry.’
‘Yeah? Get a job then you loser,’ Collie says. He high fives Beau and I can’t hold my tongue any longer.
‘Don’t call him a loser, you don’t even know him,’ I say to Collie.
‘Yeah, but he’s a useless junkie.’
‘He’s a person,’ I say. ‘With a name and a family.’
‘So you’re into saving the povos, Nola? Cool. I like that.’
I’m wondering if Collie and I are about to have a street scuffle when our party is finally called out by the Japanese girl on the front door.
‘Irrashaimase!’ the staff shout as we hustle inside out of the cold.
‘So, Nola?’ Collie says, sidling up next to me as sushi chugs past on a conveyer belt. ‘You gunna ask me to the formal or what?’
‘How can I put this,’ I say slowly, putting a hand on Collie’s arm for emphasis. ‘If there was a catastrophic, flesh-eating virus that wiped out the entire male population, but you were somehow immune, I still wouldn’t take you to the formal.’
He pauses to take in my burn, shrugs and taps Kara on the shoulder. ‘Hey, Kazza, you got a formal date yet?’
The first chance I get I slip away from the sushi train and back out into the night.
The couple are still huddled together outside the chemist. They’re holding hands and he’s stroking her hair. Maybe she needed something important from the chemist. Maybe she’s hungry and sick.
I cross the road to a McDonald’s – deciding on three large burger meals and two coffees. As I pay for the meals I think of Eddie. He would have knelt beside the couple and talked to them. Asked them if they were okay and given them the address of a couple of local shelters. Emptied the change in his pocket, even if he knew they would use it to score. He’s the guy I want to be with tonight.
‘Here,’ I say to the couple, handing them the food. The guy takes the paper bags and the hot drinks. He smiles at me.
‘Hey, thanks,’ he says, immediately unwrapping the burger and handing it to his girlfriend. ‘You want to eat with us? I’m Ray. This is my wife, Kerry.’
‘Hi, I’m Nola,’ I say, taking my meal and sitting down with them on the street. ‘How’s your night going?’
‘Ah, you know what, Nola? It just got a little better.’
Ebony calls as I’m getting into a cab and heading home. ‘Why did you do a ghostie?’ she asks. A ghostie is disappearing before the night is over. Ebony hates it.
‘I wasn’t feeling it tonight.’
‘Why didn’t you ask Collie to the formal? He said you were a real cow about it, too.’
‘You know what, I think I’ll go to the formal by myself,’ I say, deciding on the spot that I’m done with colour schemes, hair appointments, make-up artists, corsages and ridiculous expectations.
‘You can’t go to the formal by yourself.’
‘Yes, I can. Watch me,’ I say.
‘Fine. See you at school.’
At lunchtime my group is missing. I go to our usual couches and even though I’m ten minutes after the bell, they’re empty. I sit down and wait it out for a while, then text Ebony.
Where RU? On my lonesome here.
I wonder if she’s holding a grudge about last night. I send a suck-up message with a funny cat gif.
Sorry about last night. Can we talk about it?
Finally she messages back. I open it up, confident I can sort this out with some more grovelling. The formal is getting out of hand. Once it’s over, we can go back to being best friends again. Her text punches a hole in my gut.
TBH, Nola, we don’t want to sit with you anymore. Usually when Ebony uses TBH (To Be Honest) it’s to tell me something nice. It isn’t to kick me out of the group.
What??? Are you serious?
You insulted Collie last night. You never come to formal meetings. I’ve been doing all the work. You don’t seem to care. So we decided … Sorry.
Sorry? I feel like I’ve fallen off a cliff. Taken the long freefall through the air. Hit the dirt and rocks on the bottom. Now I’m lying broken and dazed. Okay, I know what she wants. I’ll play the game. I’ll start over.
I’ll ask Collie to the formal.
Too late. Kara already did. You can go by yourself. Isn’t that what you wanted?
I picture myself at the photo booth on my own. Posing with myself, no penguin-suited guy on my arm. Sitting at a table watching my former friends dance in a blue haze, with their cute partners and their perfect, matching photos. Status update: ‘Having the BEST time at the formal with these girls #squadgoals’.
I’m not going to the formal at all then.
That’s probably for the best.
I storm across the oval to Ebony’s locker. I know the combination. Her birthdate and the name of her guinea pig. I punch it in and the door opens onto all her organised neatness.
I could shred her immaculate homework folder, steal her Kikki K markers and deface her locker with rude words. Instead, even though I’m boiling over, I slam the door shut. This is a fight I can’t win, and I’m not sure I want to anyway.
During legal studies, I absorb the stares of my classmates as they note I’m not partnered up with Eb
ony, like we have since we were twelve. Kara is in my place, whispering in Ebony’s ear, giving me the evil eye. The speed and efficiency of the coup is dizzying.
In the common room, Lolly approaches me. ‘I’m really sorry about that text,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want them to send it. I told them it was immature.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, I guess. It’s weird not to be friends with Ebony anymore. It feels like a break-up. But worse, because I’ve lost you and Kara too. All of you.’
‘You haven’t lost me,’ says Lolly. ‘I’m still your mate.’
Mr J stops me in the halls for a ‘quick chat’. Word travels fast in the teacher’s lounge. ‘I heard about you and Ebony. Relationships between adolescent girls can sometimes be … complicated,’ he says, looking concerned.
‘I’m fine,’ I say brightly.
‘Mrs Ferretti is an excellent counsellor, Nola. This is more her domain than mine. Would you like me to make an appointment for you?’
‘No thanks, I’m right,’ I say quickly. I’m not about to spend an hour talking to our school shrink, with her worried, exhausted face, pamphlets and helplines.
‘Well, come and see me anyway, I wanted to chat to you about a study plan and find out how you’re going with your placement at Hope Lane. I’ve had great feedback from their side.’
‘Okay, I will.’
‘You know, Nola, a broken friendship can be a comma or a full stop – you get to choose.’
‘Sure. I know. Thanks Mr J.’
Mr J is a cheeseball, but he has a point. Is this the end of Ebony and I or is it a pause?
After school I work on an English essay, then stand in front of the fridge eating yoghurt straight from the tub. The creamy vanilla curdles with the sour taste of rejection and I let go of a spring of tears that’s been threatening all day. Blubbing into the cool air.
‘Nola?’ Mum calls out.
I shove the yoghurt back in the fridge and wipe my face with my palms. ‘Kitchen!’
Mum throws her bag on the counter with her keys and sighs. She takes the cork out of a bottle of red wine and pours herself a glass.
‘I’m thinking after the day that I’ve had, we order a large deep-dish meatlovers’ with garlic bread and Coke. Then we watch Game of Thrones, with ice-cream and popcorn.’
I try to hide my tears, but it doesn’t work.
‘Hey, hey,’ she says softly. ‘Oh Nola, what’s wrong?’
I let her put an arm around me. Dad’s right, she’s not good at the touchy-feely stuff, but at least she’s trying.
‘Ebony … text … kicked … me … out … formal … didn’t … want … to take … Collie … blue dress … didn’t want … wear …’
She steers me out of the kitchen to the lounge.
‘Sit here.’ She gets me a glass of water and I take a few sips. Luckily Mum can decipher my garble.
‘Are you telling me your supposed BFF dumped you via text message for not inviting a nasty-piece-of-work guy to the formal, and because you wouldn’t wear blue. Blue isn’t your colour. It makes your skin look witchy.’
‘I know! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her.’
‘Should I call her mother? Inform her that her daughter is a bully? Or should we sue? I know a really good litigation guy.’
‘Mum – calm the farm. Don’t call her parents.’
‘Okay, Plan B.’
She gets out her phone and orders practically every item on the Hot Pizza menu. Plus lemon cheesecake.
‘While we wait for our banquet to arrive, I’m going to share a story with you that I’ve tried to forget.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘It might make you feel better.’
‘Proceed.’
‘When I was fifteen I went to the beach at night with some friends. I thought they were my friends. Your dad warned me at the time that they were a pack of hyenas, but I didn’t listen. We were drinking.’
‘Drinking? At fifteen?’
‘Don’t be shocked. It was the eighties. Things were different then. I’d drunk a four pack of West Coast coolers and I was sitting on the beach, in the dark, talking to this one girl. A beautiful girl. Long legs in jean shorts. She reminded me of Jennifer Beals in Flashdance.’
‘What dance?’
‘Never mind. I was flirting with her and she was flirting back. I thought we were about to kiss. My first kiss. And right before our lips touched she said she had to go to the bathroom and would I wait for her?’
‘Did she do a runner?’
‘Yeah, but while we were talking she’d tied my shoelaces together.’
I picture Mum as a teenager. Her frizzy, dyed hair, acid-wash jeans and a baggy fluorescent T-shirt. Obviously a dyke. Waiting for a girl on a beach, who wasn’t coming back. My heart aches a little for her.
‘When I got up to find her I fell flat on my face, slammed into a rock, lost two teeth, there was blood everywhere. I was crying so hard and in such pain I couldn’t untie my laces. The bitch had done them up so tight. Know what she was doing?’
‘Watching.’
‘Yep. Watching with my friends and a torch. Thank god there weren’t smart phones back then.’
‘Mum, how did you survive it?’
‘I got my teeth fixed. Showed up at school and gritted them.’
‘I’m not going to school tomorrow. I can’t.’
‘Sure you are.’
‘Who will I talk to?’
Mum gets up, comes back with the journal she gave me for writers group. ‘Write. Nobody bothers a person with a pen in their hand.’
‘That’s your idea?’
‘Give it a try.’
‘Mum, is there something wrong with me?’
‘No, why would you say that?’
‘This is the second time I’ve been dumped this year. Do I have some fatal personality flaw? Dragon breath?’
Mum shakes her head. ‘You’re shedding your skin. Making way for the relationships and the people that really count.’
I’d promised myself I’d let Zak come back on his own, but the weather report on the telly changes my mind. It’s meant to drop to four degrees overnight, with storms shaking down power lines and trees. I do a sweep of the city, looking for him, but I come up empty handed. I can’t help but imagine he’s freezing, all alone and sick. On the streets, the wind turns flimsy umbrellas inside out and whips rubbish out of bins. People are taking early marks, cramming onto ferries and buses before the rain sets in. I wait for a train to take me to Central. I’ve been here before.
Back then my thoughts had no sharp edges. They were blobby and sludgy. I’d sit on the benches for hours, studying the express trains. I was particularly interested by the please be advised this train will not stop at this station kind. The bullets of steel and glass that I was warned to stay behind the yellow line to avoid. I used to wonder what would happen if I didn’t. I walked to the edge once. My toes curled over it. I worked out it was exactly eleven steps from my bench to not having to live inside my brain for a second longer. Eleven steps to an explosion of my useless body on the tracks.
I don’t think like that today. I haven’t for a long time. The train arrives and I step onto it. Leaving the wild city behind.
Meredith has set up a mobile shelter next to her van to keep people out of the cold. It’s cosy and has lots of blankets and beanbags. She’s chatting to Ike, a skinny teenage boy with an owl tattoo on his neck. I’ve seen him around. He used to talk to Zak sometimes.
‘You’ve never read Harry Potter?’ Meredith asks, genuinely shocked.
‘Isn’t it a movie?’
She pushes the entire Harry Potter box set into his hands.
‘So he’s a boy wizard, yeah?’ says Ike. ‘That sounds l
ame.’
‘Give it a go. He has a pet owl.’
‘Five minutes, lady. I got to be somewhere.’
Ike sits on a beanbag and starts reading. He looks different. He’s not twitching or scratching. He’s still.
‘Hey,’ I say to Ike, and he glances up from the pages and actually smiles.
‘This is pretty funny. You read it?’
‘Yeah, I have. It’s brilliant. You seen Zak lately?’
‘Nah, not for ages. He shot through?’
‘I dunno. Maybe.’
I take off my backpack and unload the books I’ve read. Meredith stacks them back on her stall. ‘You want more?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘The same sort of thing?’
‘Maybe something different. Something real?’
‘Contemporary.’
‘Yeah, that.’
Meredith sifts through her piles and selects three books with pretty covers. ‘Here you go. Australian stories. I think you’ll like them.’
‘Thanks. I like your new shelter.’
‘We did some fundraising and the council got on board, which meant we could set up a permanent covered reading space. It comes in handy on days like today. I think I’ve got frostbite on my big toes.’
I stand there for a bit, shifting my weight back and forth on my feet.
‘Your son, did he ever run away?’ I ask.
Meredith sits down on a folded chair, motions for me to join her.
‘The first time was when he was seventeen. He got on a bus and went to Coffs Harbour on a bender. He was gone a few weeks. We’d been arguing at home. He was out of control. Violent. Reckless. When he left it was so quiet. I used to sit in his room and cry. I was convinced it was my fault. If I’d been a better mother I could’ve made him safe. If I’d been a better mother he wouldn’t have taken drugs. If I’d been a better mother he would be with me. We found him eventually. He ran out of money and my husband and I drove up there and picked him up. He was in a terrible state. Six months later it happened again. Each time he stayed away longer. Each time he was harder to find.’