by C. J. Duggan
“Aww, come on.”
“NO!”
Adam circled us, and chanted in his best imitation of a caveman voice while fist pumping the sky.
“Toga! Toga! Toga!”
We were about to pummel him in a joint beating when he tripped on the hem of his sheet and went flying in a very inelegant fashion that had him sprawled on the concrete, revealing his board shorts underneath.
I suppose we should have checked if he was okay, and not mortally wounded. We would have done so, too, if we weren’t crippled by fits of laughter. Ellie even snorted. That made us laugh even harder, to the point that we all but forgot about Adam who lay there, possibly bleeding to death. But he wasn’t. He leaned back, and squinted up at us with a wry smile spread across his face.
We bent down, offered him a hand to get up and helped him dust his once-white sheet off. His mum would not be happy.
“And that, my friend, is the perfect reason why we are not going in a Toga,” I said.
***
According to Ellie, it was always important to make a grand entrance at a party, to have all eyes turned to us. In fact, she revelled in it. As soon as we arrived, Ellie was on the lookout for John Medding, who was hosting the break-up gala. He was your everyday sporty boy – popular, pretty cute. He would usually hook up with a girl when he had some Dutch courage from a few beers. He would then choose to never make eye contact or speak to her again. This was my forecast for tonight, given I had seen it a dozen times before, but Ellie didn’t think that far ahead. For now her gaze circled the party.
I wanted to dance. I loved dancing. I wanted to move until my feet were blistered and every time a song I liked blared out of the speaker, my heart sank.
The makeshift dance floor was housed in an industrial-sized shed, filled with gritty machinery emitting the faint smell of oil. The large space was shrouded in flashing disco lights haphazardly hooked up to a twisted extension cord leading to God knows where. I had lost Ellie in the commute from the main house into the crowded shed. The party was massive! Obviously not an exclusive Year Eleven break-up party like originally planned, I couldn’t even spot a familiar face. I busied myself with grabbing a Coke from one of the eskies when Ellie bounded excitedly up to me.
“I’m going for a walk with John,” she whispered.
I didn’t share her enthusiasm.
I watched Ellie walk hand in hand with John, until both were engulfed by the blackness of the night.
Instead of dancing like I wanted to, I found myself doing my usual best friend stakeout, perched on the bonnet of a car, legs crossed, staring anxiously towards the woods that surrounded the Medding property. Worse still, I was expected to be ‘entertainment’ for Zeke Walker, John’s best mate. He caused the car to dip as he sat next to me on the bonnet.
Having realised that we were to be left alone together while Ellie and John went and ‘admired nature’, his presence caused me to slide to the furthest edge of the bonnet. I had played the friend part before, left with whatever prospective best friend belonged to the boy Ellie was crushing on. I had even kissed a couple to pass the time, but as Zeke skulled the remnants of his beer can, crushed it against his head and let out an almighty belch, I nearly fell off the bonnet in an effort to get away from him.
Ellie, you owe me big time!
Zeke, who was quite beefy and had a tendency to squeeze his pimples in class without apology, was one of those vile boys that had been put on this earth to make girls cringe.
“So, do you wanna fuck?”
This time I did fall off the bonnet, shocked at the out-of-nowhere question. He must have read the disgust in my look as he shrugged.
“You know that’s what they’re doing.”
I ignored him. If I ignored him, maybe he would go away?
“That’s what John said anyway, he said that …”
“I don’t give a shit what John said,” I snapped. Here was another one. John had clearly heard that rumour. He assumed Ellie was a sure thing. They both did. I was angry at Zeke and John for believing that. And I was angry at Ellie for not caring what they thought.
“Whoa, touchy!” Zeke said.
I wanted to stomp off, to leave Zeke, the belching idiot, to himself. But I felt uneasy and wanted to be there for Ellie when she came back, make sure she was okay. I wouldn’t just leave her.
Silence fell over us again, except for the occasional belch or spit. Finally, it seemed that Zeke got bored with my enthralling company.
“Screw this. I have better things to do. I’ll find out later how he went.”
He walked back to the party; I glared at his back and fought to contain my anger.
“PIG!”
He flipped me the finger without a backward glance. I hated him, I hated him and I hated John Medding and all his stupid friends that waited in the wings for all the details. That was the only reason Zeke had stuck around, not out of concern for anyone’s wellbeing, but to be the one to get the goss hot off the press.
Jerk!
I wanted to march into the woods, and yell for Ellie, when I heard the distant snap of twigs. My first thought was that maybe Ellie was headed back to the party. But my eyes soon adjusted to that of a darkened silhouette. The long confident stride of the stranger momentarily paused as if they had noticed me. My own form was clearly lit by the disco lights that flashed behind me. The stranger’s walk slowed, appeared more guarded. They continued towards me, the lights that flickered from the party gradually lighting his face with an array of pulsing hues of colour. My tension should have ebbed at the sight of just another late gate-crasher to the party; instead, I sat transfixed. My heart stopped. I knew that face; it was a face I had always known. A face I hadn’t seen in a really long time.
My head spun at the sight and the memory of Toby Morrison. A boy I had never spoken a word to, a boy I had always admired from afar. He closed the distance between us. He looked at me for what was probably the first time, though I had looked at him constantly. I held my breath as he stopped by the car, our eyes locked in a long moment, his lips parted with what would be our first exchange. I breathed in deeply and braced myself for the moment, the moment I had waited for as he finally spoke …
“Get off my car!”
I almost toppled over as I slid off the bonnet, mortified. He reached out to steady me as he laughed.
Was he laughing at me?
“Whoa! Easy there.” He smiled wickedly. “Don’t stress, I’m just messing with you. It’s not really my car.”
He steadied me with a gentle touch to my upper arm. A scorch mark burned into my flesh even after he removed his hand.
It was then that I realised I had a fist full of Toby Morrison’s T-shirt gathered in my hand with a white-knuckled intensity. I must have grabbed a hold in an effort not to fall flat on my face and further disgrace myself.
Toby’s eyes flicked down to his bunched T-shirt with an air of amusement. His brows lifted in a ‘Do you mind?’ gesture that caused me to let go as if I had been electrocuted. Being electrocuted surely couldn’t have burnt more than my flushed cheeks at that moment. I prayed that the bad lighting masked them.
Toby half laughed as he plunged his hands back into his pockets and stepped to my side; he tilted a fraction closer as if he was about to reveal a secret.
“Relax … I would never own a Holden.” He winked and then turned his confident stride towards the party.
I watched his figure as he retreated, and took a deep breath as if I had forgotten to breathe ’til now. My head whirled.
What had just happened? Toby Morrison had just talked to me. And had we just shared a joke?
Or rather he had made a joke, and I all but fell over and stared all googly eyed at him like an idiot and not said a word.
NOT. ONE. WORD.
I watched as his figure became smaller, but still clear enough to see that he was stopped every few feet with people and hand grasps and pats on the back. Everyone knew Toby Morrison, and I seri
ously wanted to, too.
When Toby Morrison disappeared into the thick of the party crowd, I took a moment to firstly move far away from the car, whose ever car it was. I needed to analyse what just happened, play by play, detail for detail. His smile, his look, his laugh, and his hand on my upper arm that I swear had burned into my skin.
My back rested against the chill of the cement water tank. I cupped my cheeks and felt the scorching burn of my skin.
A distant rustle interrupted my thoughts, and I noticed two figures had emerged from the woods. John was doing up his belt and Ellie was three paces behind readjusting her skirt, her hair all in disarray. John walked straight passed me and headed for the party. I guess the silent treatment began now and extended to Ellie’s friends. I waited for Ellie, who seemed surprised to see me still waiting for her. I plucked a twig out of her hair.
“Why aren’t you dancing?” Her voiced sounded sleepy.
“Oh you know, I don’t have a dancing partner.”
Now was not a good time to do the responsible, chastising, best friend speech. I could see that she looked past my shoulder, wondering where John had gone.
My anger had grown more like a swirling furnace in the pit of my stomach. Ellie faked indifference, something she always did when boys treated her that way.
“Have you seen Adam?” she asked.
I wanted to be snide and ask how could I? I had been busy hanging out with foul Zeke.
Except for my run in with Toby Morrison!
All of a sudden I didn’t feel so angry anymore.
“You know Adam. If we were fashionably late, he’d be later.”
We headed towards the thudding of the music, and weaved our way through the mass of bodies. I was acutely aware of the snickers behind their hands as they looked Ellie up and down. Guess news spread fast at the hands of John Medding. If Ellie noticed, she didn’t let on. Instead, her head bobbed to the music as her eyes searched for Adam. I looked as well, but my gaze also searched for Toby, who wasn’t anywhere. I wondered what he was doing at a Year Eleven break-up party, he had graduated from high school years ago. And more importantly, where had he gone?
We made our way past the shed and headed towards the house, opening the back door to be flooded by the pounding of a stereo. We slid past the crush of bodies wandering into what looked like a dimly lit, stuffy rumpus room filled with sporting memorabilia.
“Ellie! Tess!”
We turned and saw Adam in the distance, his body higher than everyone else’s as he was dancing on a billiard table with a bunch of tarty-looking Year Ten girls. They appeared to be wearing more make-up than they were wearing clothes, and he wasn’t so much dancing with them as wedged between them. They all jumped up and down which was a mean feat for that many people on such an apparatus.
Ellie and I shook our heads at the sight. Adam owned the platform with his bad rhythm and beer in hand, decked out in his mangy Toga. The only one still dressed like that at the party. Ellie and I recognised it as exactly what it had been meant: a sign of rebellion.
“Can you believe it?” Ellie shook her head.
I laughed at the sight. I could believe it, actually.
“Hey, look, I’ll be back in a minute. I’m just going to see where John got to.”
I cringed. Sometimes Ellie only saw what she wanted to. “Ellie …” but she cut me off.
“Back soon!” She kissed me on the cheek and disappeared through the crowd.
I hated watching her go, watching her move towards her impending doom. As I worried, I felt the distinct caress of alcohol-infused, hot breath on the back of my neck. A clammy pair of hands blocked my vision.
“Suuurpriiiseee,” a voice slurred in my ear. I broke free and spun around to see the bloodshot eyes of Scott Miller.
I screamed inside my head and frantically looked for an exit.
“Hey, Tessh. You’re looking mighty fine tonight.” His eyes moved over me with a slow caress in a way that made me feel dirty.
“Now, I have a bone to pick with you,” he swayed slightly as he waggled his finger at me, a dopey look of mock anger on his face.
Why on Earth did I ever go out with him?
“Wow, with me? That’s fresh.” I crossed my arms. I was doing the thing my mum said over and over again: ‘Never try and reason with a drunk person’. But a part of me wanted to know more about this bone. Another of mum’s sayings was ‘A drunk man speaks a sober man’s mind’.
Scott pursed his lips together and screwed his face up in an over-the-top action that made him look ugly.
“I have a confesshion to make, Tesh.”
“That you’re an asshole?” I said.
He dramatically waved my sentence away and stumbled into me so he could whisper into my ear, which came out as more of a drool.
“I love you. I alwaysh have, alwaysh will. Hic!”
Oh, vomit!
Maybe that saying was wrong; maybe a drunk person just spoke bullshit. That’s what I counted on, but then I saw the raw look in his eyes.
Oh God, was he welling up?
“Why did you break up with me? Do you think I want to be mean to you? You jusht give me no choish.”
Before I could retort, I saw his lips pout and they came in for the kill.
Oh no no no …
I tried to maneuver away, but he had me literally backed into a wall, and past Scott’s face that loomed towards mine, out of the corner of my eye I saw that we had caught a group of people’s attention. We had caught Toby’s attention.
I wanted to die a small death.
Oh, urgh, Scott Miller’s tongue was in my mouth. How did this happen? I pushed into his chest with all the force I could muster.
“Get off me, you creep!”
“Aw, come on, Tesh.”
He reached for me again but stopped short. He spun around as an almighty crack sounded from behind him, followed by screams and chaos. The music stopped, panic set in as everyone looked around and wondered what had happened.
That’s when I heard it, the sound that made my blood run cold, a sound so loud it could be heard above all others. Adam’s agonised scream.
Chapter Five
“Pool tables are not meant to be danced on”
My dad’s disapproving frown pierced us in his rearview mirror, where Ellie and I sat slumped in the back seat. They had been woken in the middle of the night with a reluctant phone call to pick us up from the hospital. After the initial panic, relief soon followed in the knowledge that we were unscathed. Well, mostly unscathed.
“Poor Adam,” said Mum, more to herself than anyone else. “He looked as white as a sheet.”
I fought not to burst out in hysterical laughter as I thought to myself, yeah, whiter than his filthy Toga sheet. Thankfully, I managed to control myself.
I was exhausted. We dropped Ellie off at home, and I nodded off by the time we made it to our house. I was jolted awake by the slamming of a car door, and managed to stumble my way inside and crash into bed.
The only thing that had me escaping my parents’ fury was that I hadn’t actually done anything wrong. I had scared them half to death by calling them from the hospital, sure, but I needed them to look at the bigger picture: I wasn’t drinking or smoking or acting irresponsibly (aside from Scott’s tongue in my mouth but that was not my fault).
I must have looked troubled at breakfast the next morning, because Mum gripped my shoulders and gave them a reassuring squeeze.
“Adam’s going to be fine, honey.”
Oh yeah, Adam.
Guilt seeped into me at the thought that Adam had not exactly been in the forefront of my mind. Poor Adam! He had been joyously rocking out when the pool table broke in half. He had done so well to balance and not fall over his Toga, which he’d ended up tucking into his shorts, offering partygoers a sight that could never be unseen. But no, it was not the Toga that had been responsible for breaking his arm in two places.
“I spoke to his mum this morning,”
Mum said as she topped up my juice glass.
I straightened in my seat for the update. “What did she say?”
“Adam was pretty drunk last night.” Dad looked up from his newspaper, his eyes bored into me as if I was being interrogated.
“I hadn’t seen Adam all night,” I defended. “I was with Ellie.”
A fact that would not comfort my parents. Over the past year, they had slowly started catching on that Ellie’s taste wasn’t for alcohol, her taste was for boys. Ellie wouldn’t be the sweet, little, church-going, accountant’s daughter forever. Even parents talked, and, all of a sudden, I felt uneasy.
Before the conversation could turn in a direction I didn’t want it to, I excused myself from my parents’ knowing gazes. “Speaking of Ellie, I might just give her a call,” I said. “You know, to see if she’s okay,” and I scurried from the room.
One positive for Adam taking all the attention was that Ellie seemed unperturbed by the fact that John Medding was a giant douche bag.
Our telephone conversation was dominated by Adam and what had happened last night (minus my Toby encounter), but then it moved on to far less desirable topics.
“So what was with you and Scott? Seriously, Tess, what the fuck?” Ellie’s angry voice pierced through the receiver.
“Ugh, I know!”
I threw myself back on my bed wanting to erase the entire memory of last night. Well, perhaps not the entire memory. I thought back to Toby appearing out of the dark – the blue, yellow and red flashing disco lights shining on his beautiful smile. Me stumbling rather inelegantly off the bonnet. I cringed. So classy! At least I hadn’t burst into tears, that was something.
“Hey, did you notice some older people at the party?”
Ellie replied in a manner that had me imagining her shrug. “Older, younger, it wasn’t just a Year Eleven break up, I think anyone was invited.”
“But why would you want to go to a Year Eleven break up?”
“Tess, it’s Onslow. People go to the opening of an envelope; seriously, what else is there to do in this town?”
“I suppose.” I wrapped the cord around my fingers as I lay on the bed.