The Harper Effect

by Taryn Bashford

  On the day of the final we face each other astride the bench seat in the famous changing rooms. The timber lockers create a hushed wall around us. ‘When you first step out there, it’s overwhelming,’ says Colt. I remember how overwhelming the Hisense Arena was, but that was third round and not packed out, and a much smaller stadium than the Rod Laver Arena. I want to knot my fingers with Colt’s for reassurance, but he’s all match-psyched. ‘Stay prepared. The stadium is bigger than you realise when you’re the one on court. You’ll twig that thousands of people have come to watch you. But keep settled. Remember Purple Time.’

  ‘I told you, I lost Purple Time.’

  The official beckons us and we make our way into the tunnel, lined with the giant-sized faces of past winners. ‘You didn’t get it back?’ asks Colt.

  ‘Sort of. My Purple Time became you.’ Colt frowns. I bump shoulders with him, even though there’s a TV camera trained on us. ‘It’s okay. It was time to leave the woods.’

  I almost reach for Colt when we step out on court, though. The stadium is so huge it’s like being swallowed by a whale; beyond the rising walls of faces is the open mouth of sky above.

  In mixed doubles, the weak link is almost always the woman, and Grigor and Katarina aim close to 80 per cent of their returns at me. They work to tire me – then they’ll target Colt. We use the same strategy. But I’m fitter than ever and used to returning Colt’s massive serves, meaning even Grigor’s doesn’t faze me. What I’m not prepared for is Grigor’s serve as it slams into my shoulder when I’m not even receiving.

  Colt’s beside me in an instant. I’m more shocked than anything, legs shaking. ‘I’m okay,’ I say, lifting the shoulder up and down. Grigor comes to the net to check on me; he’d risked losing a point – to hit me his aim had to be way off on purpose.

  ‘Watch it,’ says Colt, pointing his racquet at Grigor. Grigor dismisses him with a flick and saunters back to the baseline. Colt and I communicate using codes and remember the bond rope. We fist-bump between points. Colt suggests new strategies behind a tennis ball held to his mouth. But half an hour later, when we’ve just won a tie breaker, Grigor’s serve slams into my arms, again when I’m not receiving. This time the crowd boos and hisses, and Colt throws down his racquet and marches to the net, seemingly determined to rip Grigor’s hand off so he never serves again. Grigor stays back, shrugging repeatedly to the umpire.

  I play-punch Colt’s arm. ‘Don’t, Colt. I’m fine. Stay focused.’ Colt clenches and unclenches a fist, glowering at the ground. ‘We got this. Just fly with me.’

  The corner of Colt’s mouth quirks up. He cuts to me, then Grigor, then the spectators. The crowd roars then chants, ‘Colt and Harper,’ until our names mesh together into one: ColtandHarper. I feel superhuman. Queen of the jungle.

  Grigor and Katarina don’t have a hope – they’re not only fighting the crowd, but Colt and I flow together like we’re each other’s shadows.

  It works out that I get to serve for the match. Colt passes me a ball, kissing it first. The spectators erupt until the umpire instructs them to take their seats.

  At the baseline, before I perform my usual five-ball bounce, I check in with the player’s box. Milo leans forward, elbows on juddering knees, fingertips covering his lips. Dad’s arm surrounds Mum. I smile on the inside. After everything, they’re here, supporting me and loving me. I’m the luckiest girl in the world.

  Bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce.

  I toss the ball dead straight, flick my wrist and launch the fireball across the net. Grigor returns it down the middle. Colt shouts, ‘Purple child.’ I take the shot, forcing Katarina back to reach the high ball. She lobs it, but creates an ideal opportunity for a drop shot from Colt.

  And that’s it. We’ve done it. We’ve won the Australian Open. Laughter bubbles out of me. Colt ditches his racquet. I rush at him and he lifts me, spins me, and the world whirls in a kaleidoscope of colour.

  At our celebration dinner, everyone’s upbeat. Dad even mentions Aria – she’d changed to an earlier flight and now she’s in love with Rome, where she’s landed a job as a cloakroom attendant at the Teatro dell’Opera. Colt wants to move his dad into a better neighbourhood and admit him to the best rehab centre until he’s cured. Milo is nicknamed Magic Milo by the media for creating us out of fairy dust, and Colt is no longer portrayed as moody and short-fused like his father. Now he’s the hero, protecting his partner – on court and in life.

  When we get back to the hotel, close to eleven, Colt whispers, ‘Meet me in the bar.’ My legs turn to milkshake.

  But it’s not Colt who’s waiting for me.

  ‘There she is,’ Jacob shouts when he sees me, rising from the bar stool. He claps, slow and deliberate. A few people pretend not to notice. He lifts the wine bottle next to him and swallows a long swig.

  ‘Jacob?’ I tread closer, uneasiness splashing through every organ.

  ‘I’m just about as great as always. Thanks for asking.’ This time I hear the slur in his words. He glugs from the bottle again. ‘And thanks for the birthday card last week. My eighteenth was a blast.’

  Oh no. ‘I’m really sorry. I was so focused on – it’s no excuse.’ I tug him out of the bar and across the lobby. When we get outside he stumbles into a heap on the pavement. Red wine sprays onto my white jeans. Jacob hoots and rams the neck of the bottle to his eye, as if looking into a telescope.

  ‘Gone,’ he says, rolling the bottle away. It gathers speed across the concrete and thumps into a streetlight, spinning off again. He gets up, an octopus arranging its tentacles, and steps forward as I step back.

  ‘You’re tanked. What’s going on, Jacob?’

  ‘What’s going on is that I don’t care. Why should I, Harps?’ His bloodshot eyes narrow into slits.

  It’s early February and I don’t have a clue what he’s decided to do now he’s not going to the Con. ‘I’d suggest going for a walk to talk but maybe tomorrow,’ I say. ‘You need to sleep it off. Tomorrow, yeah? Where are you staying?’

  ‘What’s there to talk about?’ He snarls at me, revealing wine-stained teeth. ‘Aria’s three thousand miles away, you’re busy letting every media outlet in the world photograph you sucking face with Colt, and I’m left behind with nothing.’

  That would hurt. I hadn’t even thought about how it must feel for him to see Colt and me kissing, out of nowhere on some news bulletin. I’m so cruel. Thoughtless. Something inside me collapses, crinkles into itself, becomes very small.

  ‘You forgot about me pretty fast, didn’t you, Harper? Not even one text.’

  ‘That’s not true, but I don’t know how to – to be with you anymore. I don’t know how to be your friend.’ It takes everything I have to stop myself reaching for him.

  His anger-saturated face crumples with tears. ‘I thought you loved me.’

  ‘I do. I always will.’ But the words turn rabid on my tongue when I think of Colt. ‘We’re the Raggers,’ I add. ‘All for friends and friends –’

  Jacob seizes me, shakes me hard, breath sour in my nostrils, as though he’d slept inside that wine bottle. ‘The Ragamuffins are gone. Everything’s gone. Except – I still love you.’ He doesn’t stop shaking me and I go ragdoll limp. I scrunch my eyes to avoid seeing the pain sprawling across his face.

  My mouth warps and tears rush my cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry, Jacob.’

  ‘Is that it? That’s all you’ve got to say to me? You’re sorry?’ He slaps my face. His expression instantly reels from angry to remorseful. ‘Shit, Harper –’

  Suddenly furious, I wrench my arms from his grip just as there’s a flurry of motion next to me, then a stinging flesh-on-flesh sound. Jacob jerks away and is then lying flat on the pavement with Colt hanging over him, a fist poised mid-air.

  ‘No, no, no, Colt.’ I lunge forward. Colt straightens. I drag him backwards, canvassing for camera f
lashes. Jacob stumbles upright. Too drunk to weigh up Colt’s strength over him, he butts into Colt’s stomach. Colt stays firm and shoves him back, but when Jacob pounces again Colt punches hard and the crunching sound makes me wince.

  ‘I mean it, Colt. Stop.’ I run into Colt from the side, pushing him away from Jacob, who’s staying on the ground this time. ‘He’s wasted. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.’

  ‘He hit you. What the hell’s going on, Harper?’

  ‘Don’t get the wrong idea. Nothing’s going on. He was in the bar when I went to meet you – he’s angry. He saw the stuff in the media – you and me –’

  Colt’s face moves from open to sealed-up rigid. ‘He’s in love with you. Do you love him?’

  My throat furs up. I can’t breathe. Someone wrapped my head in cling wrap.

  I consider Colt’s straight, strong shape, holding himself like he owns the ground we stand on, yet inside he’s not half as strong. And I size up Jacob, whose beautiful face is covered in blood and gasping for air; Jacob who I’ve known most of my life and will always love. Jacob who is also injured inside except this time by me – I can’t let him hear me tell Colt I don’t love him. Seeing Colt and me together in the headlines is what drove him to this in the first place.

  Silence sucks at my brain.

  Colt’s face slams shut. He stalks toward the Harley, jumps astride it in one movement.

  Jacob sits. He reaches for me. ‘I didn’t mean to hit you – I’m such an idiot.’

  I should go to him. Colt guns the motor. It’s a split-second decision.

  I run after Colt.

  With every step my feet seem to grow into flippers. I stumble over Jacob’s discarded wine bottle, flying headlong, and crumple onto the pavement, hunching against the pain in both knees. Colt is suddenly there, lifting me to my feet.

  ‘Stop running away from me.’ I grab his wrist. ‘It’s complicated. And I can’t explain it in one sentence.’

  Something between rage and disappointment glues itself to Colt’s face. He snatches his wrist free. ‘Let me know when it’s not so complicated. Whatever’s between you and Jacob needs to be over.’ He twists away.

  I seize his arm and he tenses, jaw jutting, fists curling. If I was a guy he’d have decked me by now. ‘It is over. It never really started. But I can’t tell you I don’t love him. Just that maybe it’s not that sort of love.’

  Colt snorts, scuffs the pavement, eyes rolling like a riled horse. ‘Brotherly love? Is that it?’

  Words slur inside my mind, cling to my tongue. ‘Yes. Brotherly love. I guess.’ I’m sure it’s more, but it’s not as strong as what I feel for Colt.

  ‘Except if it weren’t for Aria?’ Colt’s voice is low, seething. ‘Tell me the truth. If she finds someone else, will you go to Jacob? If she weren’t in the picture at all, would you and Jacob be together?’

  The truth is a nail hammered into my heart. But he’s only half right, because that was the truth before I fell for him. Colt showed me a different love. Doubt clutters my brain and asks if perhaps I love Colt because I can’t have Jacob.

  The fact is I don’t know, and Colt can see it scrawled all over my face. He yanks his arm away, waiting for an answer. I stand, shaking and reaching for the right thing to say, but it’s as though he pushed me into a pool and I’ve forgotten how to swim. How do I explain that it was time to say goodbye not only to the Purple Woods but also to Jacob, except that I still love Jacob and no, it’s probably not brotherly love – I don’t know what sort it is.

  The sound of an engine revving startles me.

  The Harley. The shape of Jacob.

  Colt yells, ‘Jacob, stop.’

  The bike catapults up the street.

  My bones hollow out. Colt streaks past me. I run after them and when Colt stops, I keep going. But I’m not Superwoman. The bike accelerates away and I bend over, panting.

  The dead chomp of metal hitting metal, of rubber screeching on tar, makes my heart gag. Colt blasts past me. I take off after him, but then slow to a walk because I can’t bear to see what made that noise.

  Colt stays with me at the hospital until my parents arrive. I’m a blob in his arms and if he lets me go I’ll melt into a puddle on the floor. He can’t look at me and I can’t look at him, and as soon as Mum arrives he passes me to her as if I’m a parcel. He walks out the automatic doors of the hospital.

  We wait for news of Jacob and I watch the doors open and close, hoping Colt will walk back through them. Perhaps he’s getting coffee. But he doesn’t come back. Not that night or the next day or the next night or the day after that.

  Jacob is unconscious. The doctor’s lips move, explaining. But his words get crowded out by the only two words that matter: Don’t die.

  Jacob’s parents arrive in their expensive suits looking like they own the hospital. Everyone talks in whispers. I don’t want to hear anyway. I already know this is my fault. My eyes ache with the bright lights, night and day, and the smell of bleach and medicine make me sick to the stomach. The efficient walk-trot of the nurses annoys me, their smiles offend me.

  I watch Jacob through the window, shoving my hands into my shorts pockets. My fingertips brush something soft. It’s a bruised jacaranda blossom, the one I caught that night with Colt when the Purple Woods rained petals in the breeze. Jacob’s body is as lifeless as the blossom; tubes merge into him, bandages cover his head and half his body. I cradle the petal, afraid that if I let it go I’ll lose Jacob.

  The doors open and close and Colt doesn’t come back.

  I sit through the searing pain of my heart breaking.

  But Aria comes back. The doors open and she rushes in with Dad behind her. She hugs me, her sobs echoing in my ears. My ribs cave in and crush my organs. Our tears mingle. We’re inseparable. Squashed into the same stained, plastic chair. But neither of us utters a word – or sees more than each other’s feet. Maybe Jacob senses we’re here, that if he just wakes up then the Raggers will be in the same room again. Because he opens his eyes.

  Mum and Dad make me eat snacks from the minibar in the hotel room when all I want to do is sleep. Mum fiddles and puts things in cupboards. Dad rambles on about Rome and how Jacob is lucky to be alive, and when Aria insists on taking a shower they consent, but me they must talk to. I guess it’s about riding motorbikes, or Jacob and me behaving ourselves while Aria’s here.

  Dad draws me to perch with him on the bed. ‘We want to speak to you before you see the news.’

  The news? Colt. I pull away and stand. ‘Just say it.’

  ‘Jamie Jagger is dead. An overdose.’

  Sagging next to Dad, I pinch the skin on the front of my neck. ‘When? Where’s Colt?’

  ‘Milo tells us it happened the day of your mixed doubles final. After Colt left you at the hospital, he took a call from Natalie and caught the next flight home.’

  I push my palms into my eye sockets to stop the tears. ‘Colt’s all alone, Dad.’

  The next morning Aria leaves for Rome. On the street outside the hotel, right where the Harley had been parked, she hugs Mum and bends to zip up her backpack. We’ve hardly spoken. Although we held each other in the hospital, I see now that was for Jacob; if we’d let go of each other, it may have meant letting go of Jacob. Maybe she blames me for the accident, too.

  She seems bare without the long hair and quirky hats. A rush of sorrow swoops through me. When she straightens, I hug her. Though she stiffens, she doesn’t pull away.

  ‘I’m proud of how you’ve turned your life around,’ I say. ‘You were always your own person – never in my shadow.’

  She sags into the cab and hugs a bag, staring ahead.

  The hollow in my chest expands.

  I find Milo in his room, hoping he’ll somehow fill the hollow before I turn into an empty space.

  ‘I’ve promised the press a
full statement if they leave you alone,’ he says. ‘You and I leave for Rio in a week. We must get home and back to training.’ He’s glancing through our schedule. ‘You’ve had a rough time, Dampfnudel, but Jacob is okay now, isn’t he?’

  ‘I guess. He’s being discharged next week.’ Home will be too still, too silent, without Aria and Jacob. Even the dogs will mope. ‘I’m worried Jacob drinks too much. Whenever he’s upset he gets tanked. And I’m worried about how Colt’s going to cope.’

  Milo’s features droop. ‘Many of us have crutches – we don’t believe we’re strong enough to cope without one. Jacob’s crutch is alcohol. But he has to learn it the hard way – by himself.’ He licks his lips and seems to pull his face into place again. ‘And Colt will cope. He always does.’

  ‘I love him, Milo. But I love Jacob too. What do I do?’

  ‘Which one is your crutch?’

  Jacob.

  It’s as if I’ve been trying to read a book written in Chinese and Milo has just handed me a translation. I want to hug him and absorb all his wisdom, but he’s busy counting out powders to make Milo Potion. I realise his words echo Mum’s – Jacob is my safe place, my pink love. But I hadn’t been ready to hear it back then. Whereas Colt taps into the core of me, waking the part of me that takes the world by its throat; he’s found his way into the deepest, fiercest corner of my heart.

  It’s time to let go of my crutch.

  On the morning after we return to Sydney I drive to Colt’s house. It’s 5 am. I knock on the door but no-one answers. Milo hasn’t heard from Colt in seven days. And he’s ignoring all my texts. I check for the key above the doorframe. It’s gone.

  Committing to a stakeout, I wait in the Jeep, my phone for company. I’ll stay all day if I need to. But it’s February and by nine o’ clock the temperature in the car is oppressive. I get out to cool off, standing in a light breeze on the raised porch.