Clancy of the Undertow

by Christopher Currie

  ‘It’s actually pronounced quadrats,’ says Glenn, any personal prejudice against me overridden by his need to be the most pedantic person in the room.

  ‘You’ll know some of this, Clancy,’ says Mr P without looking up, ‘but I don’t have time to start again.’ His voice is flatter than usual, the tone he usually reserves for when DD knocks something over during an experiment.

  I hurry over to the group and Nancy shuffles over to make room for me. ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  Mr P keeps working, hunched over a segmented wooden box filled with different seeds, telling us what he’s doing, what we should be recording, but I’m too busy watching everyone else.

  ‘Now you can try it yourselves,’ says George Parry. ‘If you go in pairs you can find a plot and start your measurements.’

  Nancy grabs my hand and pulls me towards her. I smell perfume. ‘We’ll go together,’ she says. ‘Come on.’ She leads me down the other end of the greenhouse, and when we’re out of earshot of the others, turns to me, her eyes wide. ‘I’m so glad you came,’ she says.

  ‘I had to take my brother’s bike,’ I say, then wonder why this is something she needs to know.

  ‘I had no idea about the…about your dad. I didn’t know the family stuff was that. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘That’s…fine.’ She’s apologising to me? This isn’t right. I feel the urge to cry and laugh at the same time.

  ‘It must be horrible.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t thank you and your mum,’ I say. ‘For the lift home.’

  ‘Oh, that’s fine. Was everything okay? With the police?’ She lowers her voice to a whisper.

  ‘Yeah, everything’s…’ Everything’s what? Okay? Horrible? The same as ever? I push my finger into a seedling container, keep pushing until I can feel the bottom. ‘It’ll be okay.’ I try on a smile and my lips feel like they’re cracking open.

  ‘Well, if you need to talk to anyone…’

  I dig my finger around in the dirt, wishing I could follow it down to the centre of the earth and stay there. Why is it making me feel so sad that someone’s being nice to me? I grit my teeth but the tears start to come out. My head’s shivering as I’m trying to keep them in and then my whole body’s shaking.

  Nancy almost pushes me through the plastic flap and back out into the open air, moments before I break down, howling like a freak and I can’t stop it because she’s rubbing my back and somehow this just makes it worse.

  19

  When I look up, when I think it’s safe to open my eyes again, Nancy’s wearing sunglasses. We’re sitting under a tree and my whole body feels emptied out.

  ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘I’m so sorry you had to see that.’

  She shakes her head. ‘It’s good to let it out.’

  I peer up through the branches of the tree and the sunlight scatters everywhere. I feel really, really lost. I’ve never cried like this in front of anyone, let alone someone I don’t know. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I guess.’

  ‘We can stay here for as long as you need.’

  I sit up and try to surreptitiously deal with all the horrendous fluids leaking from my face.

  ‘I’m glad you came today,’ says Nancy. ‘I mean, it’s fun, but Glenn keeps staring at me.’

  ‘It’s so rare for him to see a girl he didn’t download.’

  Nancy laughs. ‘This is why it’s better when you’re here.’ She leans back. ‘It’s cool, though. Nature Club. I never had anything like this in Brisbane.’

  ‘It’s cool?’

  ‘You’ve got no idea. I feel like some of the people at my old school had never seen a tree.’

  I hold my eyes open like they need air as well. ‘Yeah, well I do like it. I guess that’s sort of lame.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just, you know, look around sometimes and think Do I come here just to feel comfortable?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I make fun of Glenn and the rest of them, but at the same time I still think I’m not as happy as they are. I don’t even fit in with the misfits.’

  ‘Why don’t you think you fit in?’ Nancy is holding a leaf. She’s torn it up carefully so that only the central vein is left behind.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m just crapping on.’

  ‘No, it makes perfect…I get it, totally.’ She spins the leaf spine between her fingers.

  I go, ‘It’s just my default setting, I guess. Feeling like I’m going in one direction while everyone else is going the other.’

  Nancy doesn’t say anything, just pushes the sunglasses up onto her head. There’s a Chanel logo on the side, giant, so you won’t miss it. Her blouse has lace swirling all through it in delicate, repeating patterns. It’s amazingly nice and I know I’ll never own anything like it. Everything about her is so shiny and perfect and what is she even doing here? She doesn’t even realise she can do so much better. I notice I’m picking at the sole of my shoe where the glue has come off and whip my hand away like I’ve been burnt.

  ‘You okay?’ Nancy’s face has a look of soap opera concern.

  ‘Fine. Just allergies.’ This, of course, makes no sense. I squint my eyes up at the greenhouse, hoping that Mr P will come out and tell us to get back to the experiment. There’s no movement from the door.

  Nancy clears her throat. ‘Do you, um, do you not have many friends here?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In Barwen. It feels like, maybe, it’s hard to make… real friends somewhere like this.’ She shrugs, her shiny hair shaking and I think of Mum steepling her fingers at the dinner table, hoping to have a chat, just us girls.

  ‘What do you know about it?’ I say.

  ‘I just…I don’t know.’

  Why am I even talking to her about this stuff? Someone I’ve only known for five minutes. Something in my stomach turns over. ‘You don’t know anything about me,’ I say. I hear the cop laughing at Dad, saying, sure he knows the drill.

  ‘No need to be defensive,’ says Nancy. ‘I’m just trying to be nice.’ Her face is all scrunched up like, it’s not my fault you’re a crazy bitch.

  ‘Yeah well thanks for trying to be my friend, but I’m just fine, actually.’

  ‘Which is why you’re still crying. Clancy, I—’

  I dig my nails into my palms. ‘Don’t pretend like you know me. You come here thinking you’re better than everyone just because you’re this amazing person from the city.’

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘You find this country freak you can buddy up to just so you get a good story for your friends.’ There’s kind of a warning signal going off in my head but also a louder angry drone that has built up for so long I can no longer deny it. ‘Everyone thinks I’m this fucked-up weirdo with no friends who can’t talk to people or have relationships just because I don’t want to dress up like a slut and give out handjobs every day.’

  ‘Clancy, I—’

  I’m still talking, and it’s all coming out. ‘I don’t get my self-worth from getting attention and I don’t go to parties because I don’t get them and somehow it’s my fault that I can’t do all this stuff. Everyone’s expected to like the same things and enjoy dancing and getting your eyelashes curled and being so fucking happy about it all.’

  Nancy holds up her hands like someone in a reality show. ‘Forget it,’ she says. ‘Sorry I took an interest.’

  ‘You took an interest? Sorry I wasn’t a good enough hobby for you.’

  ‘Jesus. No need to be a bitch about it, just because you’re going through some stuff.’

  ‘You don’t know shit about what I’m going through. Fuck you and your fucking sunglasses.’ I jump up and the sole on my stupid shoe bends back and nearly trips me over. ‘Fucking hell!’ I kick the ground over and over and over until my big toe stings and I’ve started crying again.

  I look back at the tree and Nancy’s gone. A noisy miner breaks the air above me, shaking a branch as it takes off. My face burns. I can actually feel
my pulse high up in my cheekbones and I hate the world just a little bit more, just that extra sour amount. Nancy will have gone back to the greenhouse and when someone asks where’s Clancy? she’ll just twirl her finger at the side of her head, like bitch be crazy and everyone will laugh and I’ll never be able to come back to Nature Club ever again.

  And part of me knows I’ve been the world’s biggest idiot, getting angry at Nancy when she’s done practically nothing wrong. But, really, what is everyone’s obsession with knowing everything about me? Why can’t people just mind their own bloody business?

  I hobble off towards the front gate because I’ve probably broken my toe. This is good, I think. I’ll just go home, go to my room, and never come out. I’ll order pizzas and get them slid under the door. I’ll read books and sleep and listen to music until I die of boredom and then the coroner can examine my body and talk into her little tape recorder and say what a fucking freak. Glad I didn’t have to know her.

  20

  Every time I pedal harder I hear my breath huffing in my ears. I’m not going home. I need to be nowhere. I need to have no one around me. I need space. As I come back into town I skip the skate park, loop around behind it and follow the river until it disappears through the weir and back into the bush. I come up past the tennis courts and follow the road that leads to the hospital, turning off onto the highway at the last minute. Flying down the slope, wanting to lose control.

  I hear the scream of a semi-trailer behind me and try to ignore it. Fuck this particular trucker. Then he blares his horn and I instinctively swerve onto the road’s shoulder and the second after I feel a rush of wind as the truck passes, kicking up dust and diesel and the smell of livestock. I watch the back of the trailer and the cloud swirls back at me and I get a big lungful of dust and grit all in my eyes. I cane the footbrakes and my toe hammers out a big bolt of pain.

  I half-fall off the bike and double over coughing, grasping for Angus’s old sports bottle that’s clipped to the frame. I squirt it in my scrunched-up eyes and down my throat. It’s lukewarm and tastes of plastic and it’s absolutely disgusting. Eventually my breathing gets back to normal and I throw the bottle away. I’m covered in red smears of dirt and my throat feels like an industrial rubbish chute. As the dust clears a familiar shape emerges in the distance. The tall shape of the observatory. I wheel the bike over and lean it against the metal base of the tower.

  I just need a moment to myself. A moment to think things over. The sun has lost its sting now it’s late afternoon, so I decide to climb to the top.

  As I’m going up the steps, I fantasise—for the millionth time in my life—about when I have a car and I can escape whenever I want. Properly escape. I’ve saved all my money from work, and once I turn eighteen I’ll get my share of Grandpa’s money as well. With a car, in the time it took me to cycle out here, I could be in a completely different town. I could be a stranger sitting in a cafe, walking a new main street. I could be whoever I want to be.

  I get to the top of the observatory and the echoes of my footsteps on the metal fade away and I can’t see any stars but I can see the hazy hills on the horizon and the wheat fields and the tip of Barwen Presbyterian poking up above the rest of the town. I realise I’ve never actually been up here. It’s always been the domain of Angus, and therefore a place not worth worrying about, but the the truth is, it’s actually pretty impressive. Relatively speaking.

  ‘Wow,’ I say to no one in particular. Then I say it again. And again. It’s just me and the open air so I say it again, louder. And then I shout it. My voice empties into all that space and it feels really, really good. I open out my arms like in the movies and scream as loud as I can and I feel tears pricking at my eyes, like why have I never done this before?

  Then I see the speck of a car coming over the hill and I quickly lean back on the rail so it looks like I’m just resting there or whatever and not shouting like a lunatic. The car gets closer and it’s like a bad dream because it’s a brown Monaro. It gets closer and there’s the polaroid windscreen and I’m thinking shit shit shit cause I’m up here like a sitting duck and the car’s slowing down and no he must have seen me and can’t I have one nice moment in my life without it being ruined the very next second?

  The Monaro goes past slowly and I will it to keep going but it stops twenty metres ahead and I wish that I’d spent some of my car money on a phone—even the fifty in my pocket might have bought me a really shitty one—and I could call the police right now. I grip the warm metal of the railing as the car reverses back towards me. I try to calculate the distance to the ground, whether I could somehow land safely and jump on the bike and escape.

  The car door opens before I can think of anything else but instead of Buggs unfolding himself it’s Sasha. She’s in a black T-shirt and blue cutoffs and my fear is replaced by something else entirely.

  First thought: why isn’t she wearing black jeans like she always does? Second thought: what the hell am I wearing? I don’t know the answer to the first question but the second one is easy: an old singlet that used to belong to Angus that says Porky’s Bar & Grill on the front, footy shorts and my eternally daggy boots with their soles flapping off.

  Bloody hell. The back of the singlet, I now remember, has a drawing of a pig with a monocle and top hat holding a knife and fork, licking its lips. I never thought about whether the pig knew it was about to become a cannibal or not. Either way, pigs are out to get me this week.

  ‘Hey!’ Sasha calls up.

  My throat dries up. This is only the second time she’s ever spoken to me. The first time was at the supermarket when I was staring at a Toblerone trying to talk myself out of buying it and blocking the checkout and she said Are you going to buy it or hypnotise it? and I didn’t realise it was her until she went past me and her perfume was amazing and who spends so long analysing a chocolate bar anyway?

  ‘Hey, hello?’ She thinks I haven’t heard her.

  I peer over the edge.

  Sasha waves to me. Sasha Strickland waves to me.

  I wave back and somehow croak out, ‘Hi.’

  ‘I saw you up there as I was driving past.’

  ‘Right.’ I laugh, like we’re making sparkling conversation.

  She squints up into the sun and her nose crinkles at the top. ‘Just wanted to say I’m sorry to hear about your dad and that.’

  ‘Oh. Thanks.’ Some small part of my brain tells me that she’s lying, that she’s got something to do with the spray-paint and the cops and all the rest but the big part of my brain tells the small part to shut the hell up.

  ‘Do you want to come down for a sec?’ she says. ‘I’d come up, but…’ she points to her strappy sandals.

  I stare at her legs for a second too long. ‘Sure,’ I say, and make my way back down the stairs in a way that says I’m invited down from the tops of observatories all the time but also don’t leave don’t leave stay right there don’t move.

  21

  It’s like a dream and I’m sure it is a dream when Sasha asks me if I want to go for a milkshake. It’s a fifties dream, maybe. Malted milks and polka-dot dresses.

  ‘There’s this place I go to out on the highway. The roadhouse?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s, like, super scummy but they do these milkshakes that are, like, incredible.’ Her eyes open wide when she says incredible and she’s got these blue eyes like how blue can I possibly be?

  ‘You got anything you need to bring, or…’

  I glance back quickly at Angus’s bike and shake my head. He never uses it anyway. Besides, who’s going to steal such a shitty-looking bike?

  ‘Cool,’ she says. ‘Get in. Sorry about the mess.’

  I open the passenger door and it’s a weird feeling because it’s Buggs’s car, but at the same time it’s the place I’ve imagined being inside so many times, down at the skate park, Sasha changing out of her work clothes and into her black jeans. The Monaro’s interior is not how I’ve imagined i
t. I pictured a gleaming chrome dashboard that Sasha checked her lipstick in, dark panelled wood that ate the light. In reality, it’s a normal looking car. The floor on the passenger side has sand on it and a Chupa-Chup stuck to the carpet. A couple of tissues stick out of the glovebox.

  I steal a glance at Sasha’s cheek. She puts on enormous sunglasses, which I now immediately want a pair of. They’re not Chanel. They’re too cool for that. The passenger seat isn’t lowered like the drivers seat, which is a bit weird. She pulls out onto the highway.

  ‘So everyone’s being shit to you, right?’

  ‘Sorry?’ I pull on my seatbelt.

  ‘Cause of your dad’s thing. Like, no one’s going to the makeup place.’

  ‘Oh, you know. It’s just some people.’

  ‘I knew that girl who got killed, Cassie. A real princess. You know her parents are like super rich?’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’ I’m beginning to feel a little sick in my stomach. Sasha is a really bad driver and the souped-up engine lurches the car every time she changes gears.

  ‘Like, she was a year below me? And she was always getting special treatment when she sat in on our classes. She was going to graduate early but she didn’t.’

  ‘It’s pretty sad.’

  ‘Yeah I guess. And the other guy was, like, Buggs’s second cousin through marriage or something? They never did anything together or anything like that. They didn’t hang out.’

  Sasha speaks really fast and the engine keeps whining so I can’t understand all of what she says.

  ‘Piece of shit!’ Sasha hits the steering wheel. ‘Like, why can’t this just be a normal car? You drive?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  ‘It’s a pain in the arse. Cars are so expensive. Like, Buggs and his dad fix them or whatever? But if I had to pay for it, it would be, like, super expensive. You smoke?’

  ‘Yeah. Um, sometimes,’ says the Disney princess.