by Markus Zusak
“Yeah.” She nodded and stayed where she was. “I was at a friend of mine’s house.” Then she slipped it in. “And then we went over to this guy’s place — Dale.” Dale.
Why was that name so familiar?
Oh no.
Oh, great.
“Dale Perry?”
Dale Perry.
Greg’s mate.
Typical.
A hero like that.
I could tell she really liked the guy. More than me. He was a winner. People liked him. Greg did.
Though he could depend on me.
“Yeah, Dale” she replied — confirming my worst fears — nodding and smiling. “You know him, do you?”
“Yeah, I know him.” It dawned on me then as well that this Rebecca Conlon was most likely one of the girls in the group at Lumsden Oval, on that day that seemed decades ago now. There were a few girls like her there, I remembered. Same real hair. Same real legs. Same … It all made sense. She was local, and pretty, and real.
Dale Perry.
I almost mentioned that he’d nearly burned my ear off just over a year ago but held it back. I didn’t want her thinking that I was one of those completely jealous guys who hated everyone who was better than himself — which actually was exactly the kind of guy I was.
“My best friend reckons he likes me, but I don’t know….”
She went on talking but I couldn’t bring myself to listen. I just couldn’t. Why in the hell was she telling me this anyway? Was it because I was just the plumber’s son and I went to an old state school while she most likely went to a Saint something-or-other school? Was it because I was the kind of guy who was harmless and couldn’t bite?
Well, I came close.
I almost stopped her to say, “Ah, just go away with your Dale Perry,” but I didn’t. I loved her too much and I wouldn’t hurt her, no matter how much I myself was hurting.
Instead, I asked if she knew Greg. “Greg Fiennes or something?”
“Fienni.”
“Yeah, I do. How do you know him?”
And for some reason, all these tears started welling up in my eyes.
“Ah,” I said. “He was a friend of mine once,” and I turned away, to keep working and to hide my eyes.
“A good friend?”
Damn this girl!
“My best friend,” I admitted.
“Oh.” She looked through my back. I could feel it.
I wondered if she was getting the picture here. Maybe. Probably. Yes, probably, because she left then with a far too friendly “Okay, bye-ee.” Had I heard that before? Of course I had, and it gashed my throat with reality.
The whole altercation didn’t drive me through the day like the disappointment of last week had. No, this time I limped through it.
I felt something awful in me.
Limping on.
Dad saw me and gave me a serve for being so slow, but I couldn’t pick it up. I tried like you wouldn’t believe, but my back was broken. My spirit was crushe
I had the chance to tell her off.
I could have hurt her.
I didn’t.
It was no consolation.
As I worked, I constantly had to pull myself together and it was such a struggle. It was like every step was out to get me. Blisters on my hands started opening up and feeling kept creeping into my eyes. I started sniffing at the air to get enough in my lungs, and when the day was over I struggled out from under the house and stood there, waiting. I really wanted to collapse to the ground, but I held it together.
I felt itchy, dirty, diseased — by simply being me. What was wrong with me?
I felt like the dog that’s got rabies in this book I was reading in school, To Kill a Mockingbird. The dog, it’s limping and slobbering all over the road and the father, Atticus, he surprises his son by shooting it.
I’m walking along top a fence line that seems to stretch for an eternity. Somehow, though, I know that it will stop at some point. I know it will last as long as my life.
“Keep walking,” I tell myself.
My arms are out to keep me balanced.
On either side of me, there is air and ground, trying to get me to jump down into it.
Which side do I jump?
It is early, early morning. It’s that time when it’s still dark but you know the day is coming. Blue is bleeding through black. Stars are dying.
The fence.
Sometimes it’s stone, sometimes it’s wood, and sometimes it’s barbed wire.
I walk it, and still, I am tempted by each side that flanks it.
“Jump,” I hear each side whisper. “Jump down here.” Distance.
Out there, somewhere, I can hear dogs barking, although their voices seem human. They bark and when I look all around me I can’t see them. I can only hear barking that forms an audience for my journey along this fence.
Purple in the sky.
Pins-and-needles legs.
Shivers down my right side.
Concussion thoughts.
Footsteps.
Alone.
Take one after the other.
Barbed wire now
Where do I jump?
Who do I listen to?
Daisy sun, maroon sky.
First part of the sun — a frown.
Last part of the sun — a smile.
Dark day.
Thoughts cover the sky.
Thoughts are the sky.
Feet on fence.
One side of the fence is victory….
The … other side is defeat.
Walk.
I walk, on.
Deciding.
Sweat reigns.
It lands on me, controlled, and drips down my face.
Victory one side.
Defeat on the other.
Clouds are uncertain.
They throb in the sky like drumbeats, like pulses.
I decide —
I jump.
High. High.
The wind gets me, and high up, I know that it will throw me down to the side of the fence it wants.
Wherever I land, soon enough, I know I will have to climb back up and keep walking, but for now, I’m still in the air.
CHAPTER 14
Where did I go from there?
What did I do?
How did things turn out?
Well, this is basically the end, so the answers should be in these next few pages. I doubt they will surprise you, but you never know. I don’t know how
smart or thick you are. You could be Albert Einstein for all I know, or some literary prizewinner, or maybe you’re just middle of the road like me.
So we might as well cut to the chase — I will tell you now how things pretty much finished up in this wintry part of my life. The end began like this:
Moping.
I did it for the whole of Sunday, and on Monday at school. Something churned in me, start in my stomach and rising till it was reaching its arms up to strip my skin from the inside. It burned.
On Wednesday at school, I had a bit of a conversation with Greg, mainly because of the beaten-up look of his face.
“What happened to you?” I asked him when I ran into him in one of the walkways.
“Ah, forget it,” he answered me. “Nothin’.” But we both knew it was really pretty obvious that the fellas he’d bought the gear for were still unimpressed by his efforts, even after he’d come through with the money.
“They got you anyway, ay?” I asked. I smiled mournfully as I said it and Greg smiled as well.
“Yep, they got me,” he nodded. His smile was a knowing, ironic one. “They decided on giving me a hidin’ for the inconvenience I’d caused them…. The original guy was out of gear so they had to go somewhere else. They weren’t impressed.”
“Fair enough” was my conclusion.
“I s’pose, yeah.”
We parted ways a few moments later, and looking back at him, I looked at Greg and tried praying for him, like al
l those prayers I had made earlier on in this story, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Don’t ask me why. I hoped that he was okay, but I couldn’t summon the strength to pray for it.
What good had my prayers done anyway?
They sure as hell hadn’t helped my own cause too much — but remember? I never did get around to praying for myself, did I? Maybe that’s what was behind it, though. Myself. Maybe the only reason I’d prayed for others to begin with was to bring myself good fortune. Was that true? Was it? No. No way. It wasn’t.
Maybe the prayers did actually work.
It’s quite probable when you think about it, because back home, Sarah had started talking on the phone to replace the intense getting-off sessions on the couch, Steve was starting to walk again, Rube had sorted himself out a bit, Mum and Dad seemed happy enough, and no doubt Rebecca Conlon was happy fantasizing about Dale Perry….
It seemed that everyone was going along just fine.
Except me.
Quite often, I found myself chanting the word misery, like the pitiful creature I was.
I whinged inside.
I whined.
I whimpered.
I scratched at my insides.
Then I laughed.
At myself.
It happened when I was out in the evening, after dinn
The sausages and mushrooms were settling in my stomach and amongst all the anguish I was carrying around, a very weird laughter broke through me. As I lifted my feet over the ground, I smiled and eventually placed my hand on a telegraph pole to rest.
Standing there, I allowed the laughter to come out of me, and people coming past must have thought I was crazy or drugged or something like that. They looked at me as if to say, “What are you laughin’ at?” They walked on quickly, though, toward their own lives, as I stood paused amongst mine.
That was when I decided that I had to decide something.
I had to decide what I was going to do, and what I was going to be.
I was standing there, waiting for someone to do something, till I realized the person I was waiting for was myself.
Everything inside me was numb, vaguely alive, almost as if it wasn’t daring to move, waiting on my decision.
I breathed out and said, “Okay.”
That was all it took.
One word, and sprinting home, I knew that what I was going to do was make it back, clean myself up a bit, and run the five kilometers to Rebecca Conlon’s place and ask if she wanted to do something on the weekend. Who cared what anyone thought? I didn’t care what Mum or Dad would say, what Rube or Steve would say, what Sarah would say, or what you would say. I just knew that this was what I had to do.
“Right now,” I emphasized as I ran, forcing my shoulders forward and going like I was after a fake rabbit. Sickness swept over me as I ran, as if food was turning to acid. Still, though, I ran harder and jumped our front gate and into our house to find.
Sarah on the phone.
Phone.
Yes, phone, I thought. Of course. Running all the way there and talking to her face-to-face seemed pretty scary by now, so the new plan was to get to a phone box somewhere. I got some change out of my drawer, wrote down the Conlon number on my hand from Dad’s work pad, and ran back out for the nearest phone box.
“Oi!” A voice followed me onto the footpath. It was Steve, from the porch. I hadn’t even noticed him when I’d come charging into the house. “Where y’ goin’?”
I stopped, but I didn’t answer his question. I walked back to him quickly, suddenly remembering what he’d said to me the last time he’d spoken from the porch, the night Rube and I returned the give-way sign.
“You guys are such losers.” That’s what he’d said, and now I walked up our steps and pointed a finger at him as he leaned on the railing and stretched.
I pointed at him and said, “If you ever call me a loser again, I’m gonna smash your face in.” I meant it, and I could see from the lookhe knew I meant it. He even smiled, like he knew something. “I’m a fighter,” I concluded, “not a loser. There’s a difference.”
My eyes stayed in his for barely another moment. I meant it all right. I meant every word. Steve enjoyed it. I enjoyed it more.
Phone box.
I took off again, obsessed.
The only problem now with the phone box plan was that I couldn’t exactly find one. I thought there was one at a particular spot on Elizabeth Street but it had been taken away. I could only keep running, this time in the direction of the Conlon place, until about three kilometers later, I found one. Had I run another two kilometers I could have talked to her in person after all.
“Oh, mate.” I stuck my hands on my knees when I made it to the phone. “Mate,” and I knew very abruptly that running there had been the easy part. Now I had to dial the number and talk.
My fingers were claws on the ancient dialer as I called up the number, and …
Waited.
“…ing.”
It was ringing. “Noth–ing.”
“Noth–ing.”
“Noth–ing.”
She didn’t answer and I had to explain to the person who did exactly who I was. “Cameron.”
“Cameron?”
“Cameron Wolfe, y’ silly old cow!” I felt like screaming, but I kept myself back. Instead, I said with quiet dignity, “Cameron Wolfe. I work with the plumber.” I realized after speaking those words that I was still very much out of breath. I was panting into the telephone, even when Rebecca Conlon was finally on the other end.
“Rebecca?”
“Yeah?”
The voice, her voice. Hers.
I stuttered things out, but not dumbstruck. I concentrated, and it was all done with purpose, with desire, almost with a severe, serene pride. My voice crawled to her. It asked. Squashing the phone. Go on. Do it. Ask.
“Yeah, I was wonderin’ …”
My throat hurt.
“Wonderin’ if …”
Saturday.
That would be the day.
No.
No?
Yes, no — you hear
Although, Rebecca Conlon didn’t say the word no when she rejected me for some kind of meeting between us on Saturday. She said, “I can’t,” and I look back now and wonder if the disappointment in her voice was genuine.
Of course I wonder, because she went on to tell me that she couldn’t do anything on Sunday or the next weekend either because of some kind of family thing, or another thing of some description. No point pretending. She was giving herself some good safe ground to keep me at bay. See, I hadn’t even asked her about Sunday yet. Or the next weekend! The pain in my ear counted at me. The black sky above me seemed to come down. I felt like I was sucking in the gray clouds that stood above, and very slowly, the phone call faded out.
“Well, maybe some other time.” I smiled viciously inside the dirty phone box. My voice was still nice, though, and dignified.
“Yeah, that’d be great, ay.” Nice, great voice. The last time I would hear it? Probably, unless she was dumb enough to be at her house on the upcoming weekend when Dad and I would finish the job.
Yes, her voice, and somehow, I couldn’t be sure if it was so real to me anymore. It was too far out of reach now to be real.
“Okay, I’ll see y’ later,” I finished, but I wasn’t seeing anyone later.
“Okay, bye-ee,” adding insult to injury.
Hearing her hang up then was brutal. I listened hard and the sound was something ripping apart my head. Slowly, slowly I dropped the receiver down to leave it hanging there, half-dead.
Caught.
Tried.
Hanged.
I left it hanging there and walked away, home.
The way back wasn’t as bad as you might think, because thoughts fighting in my head made the time go past quickly. Every step left an invisible print on the footpath, which only I could smell on my way past in the future. Good luck.
Halfway there I notic
ed another phone box in a side street, sitting there joking me and laughing.
“Huh” was all I said to myself, as I kept walking and eased an itch on my shoulder blade with a tired hand stretching at the end of a bent, twisting elbow.
This time, I staggered into the front gate, stayed around a while, and went to bed at about ten-thirty.
I didn’t sleep.
I sweated, shivering, alone.
I saw things, plastered down onto my eyes.
Thrown into them.
I saw it all. Every detail. From a baseball and cricket bat, fluoride treatment, an empty signpost, dreams, fathers, brothers, mother, sister, Bruce, friend, girl, voice, gone, and into. Me.
My life trampled my bed.
I felt tears like hammers down my face.
I saw myself walking to that phone.
Talking.
Staggering home.
Then, close to one o’clock, I stood up and put my jeans on and walked barefoot out into the backyard. Out of our room. Down the hallway. Out the back door. Freezing cold night.
Past the cement and onto the grass, till I stood. I stood there and stared, into the sky and at the city around me. I stood, hands at my side, and I saw what had happened to me and who I was and the way things would always be for me. Truth. There was no more wishing, or wondering. I knew who I was, and what I would always do. I believed it, as my teeth touched and my eyes were overrun.
My mouth opened.
It happened.
Yes, with my head thrown into the sky, I started howling.
Arms stretched out next to me, I howled, and everything came out of me. Visions poured up my throat and past voices surrounded me. The sky listened. The city didn’t. I didn’t care. All I cared about was that I was howling so that I could hear my voice and so I would remember that the boy had intensity and something to offer. I howled, oh, so loud and desperate, telling a world that I was here and I wouldn’t lie down.
Not tonight.
Not ever.
Yes, I howled and without me knowing it, my family stood just beyond the back door, watching me and wondering what I was doing.
At first, all is black and white. Black on white.
That’s where I’m walking, through pages. These pages.
Sometimes it gets so that I have one foot in the pages and the words, and the other in what they speak of. Sometimes I’m there again, hatching plans with Rube, fighting him, working with Dad, getting called a wild animal by my mother, watching Sarah’s life stumble at the hands of Bruce, and telling Steve I’ll smash his face in if he ever calls me a loser again. I even see Greg’s bought stash going up through his chimney, drugging the air above his roof. One foot walks me toward Rebecca Conlon’s place and working there, and ringing there. One foot stands me in the picture where the strangled public telephone hangs, dead, with only the remains of my voice left inside it.