Jenny flung an arm over me and snuggled into my side. ‘That’s okay,’ she said. ‘My parents would never have let me try for a scholarship anyway. They’re such small-towners. Nah, I’m just scared.’
‘Of what?’ I asked. ‘You said you thought the exams went well.’
‘I hope they went okay. I’m pretty sure. No,’ she said, her eyes all bright and terrified, ‘I’m scared that I might get everything I want.’
We lay there, with everything we needed and wanted, under the stars and the space hardware and a big wise old moon.
It was two in the morning. I wandered away from the hubbub and looked around until I found Jarrod by himself in the front yard, leaning against a car with no wheels. I slipped my arms around him. ‘Can you stay at mine tonight?’
‘Course. They won’t even notice I’m not there.’
I wondered if his family knew about me, if they even knew anything he was up to, and I asked him this as we walked home.
He got kind of huffy, and curt, and said roughly, ‘I don’t know what they think I’m doing. I don’t even know if they believe me about all my work, even.’
‘How do they think you get money?’
‘Probably think I steal it or deal drugs or something.’
I had a sudden terrible feeling. ‘Do you?’
‘No, Gus Garnett’s your man for that.’
‘Really?’ Gus was Emma’s older brother.
‘Yeah, why, do you want something?’
I shook my head. ‘No! Not that. I just never thought he’d do that.’
‘It’s always going to be someone.’ Jarrod shrugged.
I wanted to think about this some more, about how people got into various things, what it was that made Gus Garnett become the town drug dealer, but I also wanted to keep talking to Jarrod about his family.
‘What did your parents think about you leaving school?’
‘They expected it.’
‘Did your brother and sisters finish?’
‘My brother went right through to the end of year twelve, but only just, and ended up getting an apprenticeship with Dad till he got done for drink-driving. A couple of times. He’s in prison at the moment. Kimberly left school when she got knocked up, but she went back to TAFE and that’s how come she got the job at the dentist. Erin finished, though – she’s down at Warrnambool doing nursing. I think my parents were so happy that she’s doing well that they didn’t really give a shit about me. She’s the friggin’ golden child.’
‘I didn’t know your brother was in prison.’ How had that news escaped me? The rumour mill was apparently not what it used to be. Either that or guys going to prison just wasn’t newsworthy gossip around here.
He opened his mouth like he was going to keep talking, but then closed it again. After a pause he continued. ‘My brother is a dickhead,’ he said with resignation.
I didn’t say anything.
We walked on, a heavy dew all around us.
It felt so grown up to tuck into bed and to go to sleep next to him. We tiptoed in, trying not to wake anyone. I knew Mum was cool, but I wasn’t sure how cool.
Jarrod jumped onto one side of my bed, stretched out, put his hands behind his head and said, ‘I really like this side.’
I crawled into the other side, letting my thongs drop to the floor at the foot of the bed. The mattress dipped and squeaked and I rested my head on Jarrod’s chest. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Dunno. I like being near the wall, maybe.’
My side was closest to the window. With the curtains open there was a cinematic expanse of night sky on display – constellations for light years. ‘I like this side.’
Jarrod moved his arm tight around me. ‘Don’t go escaping through that window.’
I raised myself onto my elbow. His eyes were closed. I kissed him and we slept.
I dreamed I was on a plane. I was nervous and excited and heading somewhere, somewhere.
I spent hours googling New York City: places to stay, places to go – all the highlights and lowlights and bright city lights. I spent my night in the glare of the computer screen and I travelled by Google street view through the Village, the Lower East Side, around Central Park – I practised the routes I would take.
New York City! Somewhere a girl could get lost, but still be part of the crowd. A place where the poor and the rich could inhabit the same space and where you could stay out all night and meet interesting people and eat interesting food. I’d catch the subway and I wouldn’t be frightened of people or of terrorist attacks, because it isn’t worth worrying about things like that.
In New York City the trains run all night.
In Emyvale the sweets last all night. When I couldn’t sleep, I ate. Each time I went out to run an errand for Mum or to go for a walk, I’d stop by the supermarket and buy lollies – chewy jubes, raspberries, musk sticks, M&Ms – and I stashed them all in the bottom drawer. I was insatiable!
I threw a scarf over my bedside lamp, so it cast a pinkish light across the room, and I burned essential oils and I listened to music from another era. Who could care about exam results and getting top grades when there was life and music and experiences to be had?
There was a part of me that wanted to be an artist, but because I couldn’t draw or paint all that well I didn’t know how I would go. I wasn’t a writer, or at least I couldn’t be bothered dedicating time to it, though I always got okay marks for my creative writing assignments at school. While I was no musician, I could be in a band. Maybe they would let me play the tambourine and sing back-ups. Perhaps I should take up Nick’s offer to go to Austin.
The funny thing – curious funny, not ha-ha funny – was that I did want to go to university! I wanted to have all that. I’d read Queen Kat, Carmel and St Jude Get a Life. I’d read Maeve Binchy’s Circle of Friends; it did, unfortunately, make me want to be a student in Dublin in the 1950s, though. But at this point I just couldn’t, just couldn’t face university. Why read about the world when I could get out there and actually see it?
These were the kinds of things going through my head over and over as I stayed awake at night. Whatifs. Whatif I had stayed at St Thomas’s? Whatif I had made a huge mistake? Whatif law had been my future and whatif now I’d mucked it all up?
I could do whatever I wanted now.
But whatif what I wanted was to go to university? Whatif that wasn’t an option anymore?
I could buy a plane ticket, though. I could go anywhere a plane would fly me, or a train would slide into a station. There were so many things I wanted to do; it was overwhelming. I wanted to eat life, chew it right up. The lollies made my blood sugar scream.
I became so tired but sleep did not come. My eyes became itchy. My back got sore. I prowled around the house in the dark in my Explorer socks and pretended I was Mary from The Secret Garden looking around the one hundred locked rooms of Misselthwaite Manor.
There were so many books I wanted to read.
I would never read all the books I wanted.
I would never get to do all the things I wanted to do.
Sometimes it felt like I would never experience anything. In my more rational moments I knew that everything was yet to really start and I had plenty of time, but in the dark wee hours I could not possibly be rational.
One hot night, Jarrod and I jumped the fence to the local pool. It’s all outdoors, nothing fancy, with grass patches along the sides. In the summer the whole town would migrate here, but never before nine or ten in the morning. And at midnight there was nobody.
We climbed a big old friendly gum tree, whose branches bade us safely over the barbed wire atop the fence.
They cover the pool overnight, and uncover it again in the morning: the heavy tarpaulin peeling back reluctantly from the water, shucking and sucking (it makes the sound I imagine people make when they
eat oysters) as they wind the wheel, revealing the cold blue water underneath. I have a horror of pool covers. Surely one day they’ll pull it back and discover some grisly find – a drunken teenager on a dare to run across the plastic drowned underneath. Heebie jeebies.
I wouldn’t get in and I wouldn’t let Jarrod in either. We just sat in the kiddie pool and splashed and talked.
‘So results come out soon?’ he asked.
‘Yup. Two days.’ I tried not to let my fear of failure or my self-disgust show on my face. ‘Ah well, the future’s up to fate now.’
‘Screw fate. What do you want to happen now?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Whatever you want.’
Today it didn’t seem sweet that he would just go along with my plans. I wanted him to have more oomph.
I lay back and let the water cover me. I wished he would tell me something exciting he’d come up with himself.
I held my breath as long as I could and as my lungs became tight and I worried that I’d forgotten about why I’d left St Thomas’s and about what I was going to do next and how I was going to have to come up for air in a minute and I realised Emyvale was trapping me like a tarpaulin over a swimming pool and I could see a shimmer of colour above me that was Jarrod and what if I never breathed again?
I burst back into the midnight air.
‘Want to go?’ Jarrod asked.
‘Yeah. Let’s go.’
I wandered through town in a sleep-deprived, sugar-hangover daze, seeing the town in fractured December summer light. This place was a dead-end, but it was still buzzing with activity. There were hopes and dreams here, but also regrets and missed opportunities. Broken hearts and overgrown gardens.
I was walking past a house with a car with no wheels in the driveway and a big oil patch on the concrete, when I spotted Daniel looking into the open bonnet. ‘Hi,’ I called out.
‘Hey, Addie. Where are you going?’
‘Just the historical society.’
‘I’ll walk with you.’
Dan and Emma were going to stay in Emyvale. Work, study at TAFE in Warrnambool, grow up, all that. But stay. I was curious. ‘You still at the IGA?’ I asked.
Daniel walked wonkily, one foot on the footpath, one foot off. ‘Yep.’
‘Will you pick up more hours now school’s over?’
‘Yeah. I reckon.’
‘Cool …’ I couldn’t think of more things to say.
‘You sticking around?’ Dan asked.
‘In Emyvale?’
‘Yeah.’
‘No way.’ It came out like a gunshot. Hadn’t I said that right from the start? I’m only here until I can be not here. ‘I’m going travelling. Overseas.’
‘Cool.’ He jumped a small shrub. ‘What about Foreskin?’
‘You know, that nickname has got to go.’ I felt a twinge, somewhere behind my rib (as said Mr Rochester), but tried to be light and casual. ‘I don’t know. We’re super young. I don’t know if I believe it’s going anywhere, whatever it is we’re doing.’
‘You serious?’
‘How many people end up with their high school boyfriends or girlfriends outside of American movies? What about you and Em? What do you think will happen there?’
Now he looked really confused. I could see his brain cogs turning. ‘I don’t want to break up with her.’
‘It doesn’t matter, forget I said it. It’s just – I really like him, but … You know …’ I just shrugged. I didn’t know what to say.
‘I guess I get it,’ said Dan, and I hoped he did. Because I still wasn’t quite sure I got it myself.
Mrs Dobbs was waiting for me by the reception desk. ‘I wanted to show you the latest newsletter. It’s something of a doozy,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m quite proud of it.’
I laughed, but only on the inside. ‘And good morning to you, Mrs Dobbs.’
She pressed the papers into my hands. ‘Have a look over this, Addie dear. I suppose it’ll be your last one. Clive says you’ve done your time with us, is that right? I’ll make some tea.’
I sat at the reception desk, moving the feather duster onto the floor and spreading out Mrs Dobbs’s newsletter draft in front of me. I felt like I’d been turned upside down.
I’ve done my time? I hadn’t realised I’d be getting the boot. It shouldn’t matter. It was good timing. I suppose it made sense that Grandad wouldn’t keep paying me to be here since school was over. I had a nice little amount of cash stashed away now. Maybe I could get another job. It would be fine.
Jenny turned up, bringing me a milkshake. This was new. ‘Oh, good,’ she said. ‘You’re here. I bumped into your pop down the street. So here I am.’ She perched on the edge of the desk and let her legs swing.
‘You seem very chill,’ I said suspiciously. ‘Aren’t you nervous about results tomorrow?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It comes in waves. Sometimes I feel like I might throw up, but at other times I feel very, very calm.’
‘That’s good.’ I looked down at Mrs Dobbs’s newsletter. Front-page news was that it was Philip Moss in the 1944 tennis championship photo. He’d been home on leave! ‘I’ll be finishing up here soon. I think I’m going to miss it. In a weird way, of course.’
‘That’s sad. But were you planning to stay forever?’
I made a face. ‘I guess not.’
She grabbed the milkshake out of my hand and took a sip. Handing it back, she said, ‘I had a message from Mia this morning.’
I kept my smile inside. ‘What’s news?’ I asked casually.
‘She thought maybe she’d come down for New Year’s.’
‘What’s happening at New Year’s?’
‘The Emyvale New Year’s Eve street party,’ Jenny replied.
NYE Emyvale is a supremely daggy family event that we’ve all been dragged to for years. I burst out laughing. ‘Can you picture her?’
At that moment, Jarrod came through the door. He looked weird, kind of grimacing and mad-eyed.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘What’s up?’
He didn’t say hello. He just said, in a flat tone, ‘Why should I go out with you if you don’t think it’s going anywhere?’
It was like my whole body froze and burned at the same time. ‘You’ve been talking to Dan.’
‘I reckon you’ve been talking to Dan,’ he said with vehemence.
Jenny slipped off the bench and walked out the door without a word or a glance.
I felt like I’d fallen over unexpectedly. But how dare he come in here and yell at me? ‘Where do you think it’s going, this thing we’re doing?’ I asked. ‘I’m not even eighteen! Do you think we’re going to get married? Have babies? Don’t you think our lives are going to change? I’m just being pragmatic.’
‘You’re just being scared. You’re avoiding taking anything seriously as usual. Just because our lives are going to change, it’s no reason to dismiss this.’ He waved his hands from his chest to mine. ‘I love you.’
For the splittest of seconds the wind was knocked out of me. ‘We’re too young to love anyone.’
‘You’re being a baby, Adelaide.’
‘Shut up. Just think about it. What if this was it for us? For the rest of our lives. How boring would that be?’
I became aware of Mrs Dobbs and Bill hovering near the open kitchen door, looking alarmed and embarrassed. Jarrod and I were a car crash in motion they couldn’t walk away from. I grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the building. We walked away from town to take our argument elsewhere.
He wouldn’t look at me. ‘Have you just been wasting time with me? Killing time or whatever?’
We walked along the river.
‘No.’ I could answer that one quickly and definitively. ‘And it isn’t even that I want to break up with you, I don’t.’
I wanted to kiss him. I wanted him to listen to me. ‘I don’t.’
‘So what did you mean?’ He looked up now, and I stared right into his face, and tried to read it. There was hurt, for sure, and questions. He seemed older. ‘Is this because you’ve realised you actually want to go to university? And you’re worried you won’t get to go now?’
That hurt. I leaned against a tree by the riverbank and changed the subject. ‘Are you still thinking about the army?’
‘Why not?’
‘What d’you mean “Why not?”’ Ugh, my words and I were turning into a bad movie script. ‘It’s the army. You would be a soldier.’
Jarrod ripped bark from the tree’s trunk. ‘It’s good money, a career.’ He looked me in the eye. ‘I don’t want to chop wood or mow lawns forever, or try to work for my dad or have to stack shelves at friggin’ IGA.’
My brain whirred with frustration. ‘If you think they’re your only choices you are an idiot.’
I knew it was harsh the moment it shot out of my mouth. It wasn’t what I meant. I’d meant to say our options were infinite. We could learn to sail if we wanted, we could travel to London, we could work in a bar or a hostel … I was going to tell him how there was so much to do and even though life is short there’s time to do it all. I wanted to tell him how excited I was feeling about the whole future thing.
But before I could work out how to say all that, he scrambled up to his feet and stared at me, glared at me. ‘Fuck. You.’
I stood, glued to the ground, and watched him walk away.
I hardly slept that night. I guess it wasn’t unusual. Plus, there was the fight. And the fact that results came out at 7 am. I wasn’t ever going to check right away. But the more I didn’t fall asleep the crosser I became with myself, with the memory of exams, of misunderstandings, the whole concept of graduating school. My brain kept thinking about the ‘old girl’ who was going to talk to us at St Thomas’s that day, that day I made my escape. What had she said to the group? What wisdom had I missed? I felt feverish and in purgatory. I questioned every single one of my decisions, academic and extracurricular.
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