There’s a dog wearing a bow tie waiting for me on the whiteboard. I add a speech bubble: Woof! My nose scrunches up as I stand on my tippy-toes and scrawl love hearts in the top right-hand corner for Kurt, then write: See you tomorrow night. PS: If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check your phone!
I squiggle in an extra heart, then look at my phone, willing it to ring or buzz. Still no missed calls or messages. Dammit, Kurt. Get back to me.
He left the house early this morning — apparently he’s helping Ryan with something — so we didn’t have a chance to talk in person about the last-minute road trip, but I’ve left him four missed calls and a text message: Something’s come up so I won’t be home until tomoz night. Call so I can explain. Lx
All Kurt wants is honesty, and all I want is to give it to him. Every last drop of detail. Milo. Sal. Woody. The grand gesture. All of it. But he doesn’t seem to want to hear about it.
I call him again. No answer. Again.
I scan the room for anything I might have forgotten for the trip. Jelly snakes hidden in a stack of Kurt’s stuff on his bedside table. Perfect. Furry tartan cat ears hanging off the hook behind the door. Hilarious. Red lipstick on my chest of drawers.
In the middle of the chaos, I notice a bag of pot and papers spilling onto a framed photo that’s fallen down.
Swallowing hard, I sweep the loose pot into the bag and wipe down the photo with the back of my hand. My heart pangs. It’s the shot of me and Mum at Dubbo Zoo. I’m about six, missing my two front teeth and have a butterfly painted on my cheek. Mum’s tiny butterfly. She beams up at me from the frame.
I stand the photo back up and clear everything else out of the way. When I look closer, I notice a small scratch on the glass. My jaw tightens and I glare at the bag of pot, as though that will somehow make it disappear. Despite what I’d told Kurt at the cemetery, no amount of ‘easy money’ is worth feeling like this.
Mum would know what to do. She’d know what to say too. She always did. I stare at the photo again, willing the answers to come to me. Wondering whether I should call Dad, even though he’s as useful as a cactus; whether I should admit what’s going on to Milo; whether I should tell Kurt it has to stop or else. Because it has to stop or else. I can’t try to convince myself any longer.
There’s no response from Mum to any of this. No magical, enlightened moment of knowing what to do. Of course there’s not. She just keeps smiling at me.
My bottom lip quivers.
Milo
An hour into the trip and Layla hasn’t stopped screeching along with the radio. She doesn’t know most of the words, just jolts between lead and backing vocals, filling the gaps with nonsense. Usually it’d annoy me, but with the wind blowing in my face, my bare feet on the dashboard and Durnan a hundred kilometres behind us, nothing’s touching me. Not even the fact I got a last-minute text from Murph and he’s back in Durnan for the night, crashing at his dad’s townhouse. Of all the weekends in the calendar, he has to pick the one when I’m out of town. Timing, huh.
Everything else has gone to plan. Layla and I took the work car without a hitch — no alarms, no wild police chase, nothing. For my alibi, I told Mum and Dad I was staying at Murph’s so they won’t wait up. Trent is camping with mates ‘off the grid’, according to his not-off-the-grid status update, so no-one will even realise the car is gone.
With every loose end sewn up, I’m free to fantasise about the grand gesture.
How happy Sal will be when she sees me running in slow-mo towards her across the uni car park.
How I’ll finally be the guy who did big things.
How sweet it is to road-trip to Canberra with Layla.
No, brain. No.
‘Hey, is there any gum?’ Layla asks, pinching my arm. ‘Trenticles has gotta have something in here.’
I rummage through the glovebox. Scrunched-up cheeseburger wrapper. Trent’s boxers. No sign of gum.
Wait. Trent’s boxers.
I drop them on the mat. ‘Jesus!’
‘What? What is it?’ she asks. ‘A spider? They’re harmless, dude.’
I reach down, grab the elastic between my thumb and forefinger, and wave the boxers next to her.
She cackles. ‘Oh my God, get them away from me!’
I fling them out the window, watching them flap in the wind before being sucked away out of view. ‘I need to sterilise my hands.’
‘What was he thinking? What’s happened in this car? I have so many unanswered questions.’
‘This is Trent, Lay. We don’t wanna know.’
She laughs again before something catches her eye in the rear-view mirror. I steal a look. A red station wagon is speeding up in the lane next to us, creeping closer as it attempts to overtake our car.
‘What a douche-mobile,’ she says, as the station wagon suddenly swerves back behind us. Keeping her eyes ahead, she points at the plastic bag filled with her stuff at my feet. ‘Chuck on the cat ears. It’ll calm me down.’
‘No way.’
‘I’m your personal driver and I say, “Yes way”.’
‘Five minutes, that’s it, then they’re off.’
I follow orders.
She side-eyes me and a cackle hurtles out of her mouth. ‘Good kitty.’
I let her have this one — even look in the mirror to straighten the ears — then return to watching endless kilometres of empty paddocks and rolling hills pass us by. My left arm is already pink from an hour of leaning on the open window. Dusk is coming. The sun edges down through the sky, bright and warm, eager to call it a day. I shut my eyes.
Layla slaps my thigh. ‘Nope, wake up! Have a snack to refuel. Passengers need to entertain the driver, that’s the rule.’
‘I put the cat ears on, didn’t I?’ I take them off and twirl them around my finger.
‘Talk to me, MD. I don’t want to fall asleep.’
‘Fine.’ I give in, cracking open a bottle of water. ‘Tell me something. Tell me about … tell me about your boyfriend. I don’t know anything about this guy. How long have you been going out?’
Layla’s hands tighten on the wheel. ‘I don’t know.’
‘How can you not know?’
She shrugs. ‘Never really paid attention to a calendar … I don’t know! One day we weren’t going out, one day we were.’
‘You must know.’
‘We’ve been on and off, and … when does it even count as being official? If I had to guess —’
‘You have to guess?’
‘Maybe like a year and a bit. Or just under a year? I’m probably making that up.’
Sal counts our relationship to the month. Seven months. One year and four months. Two years and two months. There was a point early on when she was even counting the weeks. Seventeen weeks. Forty-three weeks. That sort of thing.
‘Did you meet him at school?’
She laughs. ‘What, like you lovers? Nah, I wasn’t like head of the debate team and he wasn’t like captain of the footy team. We met through a friend of a friend, I guess you’d say.’
‘Okay. And what’s he like?’
She bites her bottom lip.
‘Come on. You’re the one who wanted to talk.’
‘He’s … he’s a guy. He likes … stuff. I dunno, how do you describe anyone really?’
‘Milo: handsome, intelligent, brilliant, genius. See? Easy.’ I raise an eyebrow to see if she bites. Nothing. ‘Geez. You could be a politician.’
‘’Cos I’m full of crap?’
‘’Cos you evade questions like a boss.’
‘Maybe it’s my turn to question you. Can Sal drive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then she’s already a million times cooler than you.’
She looks in the rear-view mirror, pausing for an extra-long second so I glance out the back window. The station wagon is kicking up dust as it closes in, trying to overtake again.
‘Maybe let it pass, Lay.’
‘Nah, they can learn
some patience. So, how did you meet Sal then?’
‘The debate team.’
Layla snorts. ‘Of course. You master debater with your — whoa! Stop speeding, you moron!’
I’m thrown forward in my seat as we swerve to the left to allow the station wagon to overtake us. My water has sprayed all over my jeans.
‘Damn,’ I mutter, shaking my head.
‘I can’t believe that car! What a steaming pile of —’
SMASH!
Something’s slammed onto the front of our car, hitting the bonnet. I’m thrown forward, my hands pressed against the glovebox, while Layla struggles with the wheel. A maze of cracks spreads down the bottom left of the windscreen. Above it, a thick wet smear of red.
Layla has lost control of the car — I know it before she even starts shrieking. Fear is trapped at the base of my throat. I can’t find my voice, not even to yell. Layla’s deep, unbroken screams pierce the air.
We barrel off the highway, crunching down on gravel before whipping through knee-level grass. Despite the fading pink light, I can see we’re hurtling towards a stand of trees.
‘The brakes!’ I manage. ‘Hit the brakes!’
This is it. This is how we’re going to die.
I wait for my life to flash before me but nothing comes.
Now we’re spinning like we’re on a ride at Disneyland.
And now I’m screaming.
My head whips forward then snaps backwards, whacking the top of my seat.
We’ve stopped. At least I think we’ve stopped.
I lean back against my seat, cringing at the ache at the base of my neck. There’s glass sprinkled across my feet, scratching my skin, but all I can focus on is the sound of Layla crying next to me. I haven’t heard her cry since her mum’s funeral.
Layla
Milo uses the light on his phone to inspect the damage to the front of the car. Cracked windscreen, bloodstains, dented bonnet, shattered glass. I linger a metre behind him, wiping away evidence of wet cheeks with my T-shirt, but I don’t bother pointing out that a windscreen wiper has been torn off in the crash. There’s enough to worry about.
The sun has set now. Our car is off the highway, wedged in a cluster of trees. I can make out the purring drone of traffic, but can’t see anything other than long grass, shrubs and a glint of moonlight squeezing through the tree branches. Milo and I are hidden away in the dark. Based on the circumstances, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
‘Do you think we killed it?’ I ask.
I’m not even positive what ‘it’ might be. Probably a roo. Hopefully not a roo. Although I don’t know what else I’d want it to be either. All I can think about is the crimson blood splattered on the car. I need Milo to hug me, to break through the air separating us, but he stays still as always, arms straight, hands heavy. I can’t seem to go to him either.
‘It came out of nowhere, I couldn’t see properly and —’
‘Don’t worry, Lay, it’ll be …’ He can’t finish his sentence. ‘You’re okay, right?’
‘I’m okay.’ I’m lying. ‘You?’
‘I’m okay.’ He’s lying too.
We’re silent, both staring at the car again. The air is dry, but my T-shirt is sticky. I’m hoping it’s just sweat. Milo is flushed, his hair is damp. He can’t stop shaking his head; can’t stop swearing in a low, deep whisper. It’s like he’s on repeat.
I can’t stop thinking what it must’ve been like the day Mum died.
Dried blood in matted hair.
Her lifeless body.
Twisted metal.
I dry-retch at the thought, crossing my arms as I try not to gag again. I exhale.
Milo’s gaze is on me. The corner of my mouth quivers in an attempted half-smile — a weak effort to reassure him I’m fine — before he breaks eye contact, like he’s intruding.
A moment later, or maybe a collection of moments — time suddenly means nothing — he reaches over and takes my right hand in his left. I don’t say a word, just let his touch warm my fingers and spread through my body.
I inch closer. It’s my turn to look at him, straining to see how he really is, but he’s too fast for me to catch his eye and his long lashes hide the truth. His shoulders are broader than I remember, and he’s taller too, or maybe I’m slouching, trying to disappear within myself, trying to disappear into him.
His fingertip traces semicircles over where the tears have stained my cheeks, before linking his fingers with mine to stop my hand trembling. Then, without warning or hesitation, he pulls me in so tight it’s like our bodies are melding together.
Milo
Layla’s nose is pressed against my chest, while her fingers dance against the small of my back. They’re there, then they’re not, like she can’t make up her mind whether to hold me or not. When she first curled into me, my heart was hammering — I bet she heard every thump through my T-shirt — but we’ve been standing like this, almost burying ourselves in each other, for so long my anxiety has thawed.
‘I’m a dead man,’ I say.
She pulls away, her arms loosening from around my waist. ‘Almost. You were almost a dead man. There’s a difference.’
I tell her Trent is going to kill me for stuffing up the work car, then bring me back to life so he can kill me again. I can’t even imagine what Mum and Dad will do if they find out. It’s simple. They can’t find out. They can’t.
She snuggles back into me so suddenly I’m caught off guard. There’s that familiar smell of coconut again. Jesus. It feels wrong to notice that now.
The battered car is still sitting where it landed. Layla hasn’t dared move it yet, and I’m not making my driving debut at the scene of an accident. I look over her head at the trees lined up in a cluttered row in the spreading dark. One tree, with its craggy trunk and branches spiralling into the sky, is within arm’s reach of the car. I try not to let my mind go there; the place where I think about what might’ve happened if Layla hit the brakes one second later. It’s taken this long to stop my heart from thrashing inside my chest.
‘Should we keep driving, or call someone?’ Layla mumbles.
I shake my head. Neither option sounds good when we’re two hours from Durnan and an hour from Canberra. I rule out my parents and Trent for obvious reasons. She rules out Kurt ‘just because’ and refuses to say much else about it. I rule out Dad’s insurance company ’cos I have no idea how that works. She rules out her dad’s girlfriend because she doesn’t want to upset her.
Looks like Sal’s it for now. My grand gesture’s in the toilet.
‘Hey, you’ve reached Sal,’ her voicemail chimes. ‘I’m probably doing something way more fun right now so please leave a message and I’ll try to remember to check it. If that’s you, Mum, yes, I’m looking after myself.’
I leave a voicemail and send her a few texts as back-up.
Half an hour passes and she still hasn’t replied. I scowl at my phone, which is rapidly losing battery, then try her number again.
***
Layla tries to talk herself into reversing the car out of the thicket. Her hands shake on the steering wheel, while mine shake in my lap as I try to ignore the jagged hole in the windscreen.
‘You’ve got this, Lay. Let’s take it slow, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ She’s chewing on the inside of her cheek so hard I’m worried there’ll be blood.
‘Sure you’re alright?’
‘Yep. Fine.’ Her bottom lip trembles. ‘Stop staring at me like that, Milo. I can feel you staring. Just gimme a sec.’
I watch as she sucks in short, sharp breaths, her hands tightening around the wheel, knuckles clenched.
Jesus.
Her eyes fill with tears again. We can’t drive anywhere tonight. I can’t put her through it, no matter how much I want to get home and deal with the fallout before we risk getting in even more shit.
I tell her to turn off the car and we’ll leave in the morning, then she grabs a b
ottle of water out of her plastic bag, leaps out of the front seat and clambers onto the boot with the cat ears on her head. I don’t blame her. Not after what happened to us. Not after everything with her mum.
Not that she’s brought that up. And I don’t know if I should bring it up.
Yep, just another day with Layla Montgomery where I wish I had someone whispering lines to me from the wings.
I lift myself onto the boot next to her. Our legs hang side by side and, for a second, as I lie against the back window, everything feels calm. Somehow the accident already seems blurry in my mind, like it’s a dream from a few nights ago and I’m struggling to recall it in full detail.
‘Kinda wish we had something stronger to drink,’ Layla mutters. She sighs. ‘We need to do something about that blood.’
And the dream’s a reality again.
‘We’ll sort it. Promise.’
‘Thanks, dude.’
‘Anytime. Well, hopefully not ever again … you know what I mean.’
‘I do. Hey, I was thinking … if we’re stuck here for the night, can we hold a memorial service? For Skippy?’
‘Serious?’
‘I don’t joke.’ Pause. ‘Fine, I always joke, but not about this.’
‘Not about roadkill?’
‘Don’t call him that. Or her. It might’ve been a her.’
‘You really want to do a funeral?’
‘I do.’
We lie in silence for a while before Lay repositions herself on the boot.
‘Hey, so we seriously could’ve died today, huh?’
‘Don’t say that.’ Hypocrite. I’ve been haunted by the same thought.
‘Hear me out,’ she says. ‘We nearly died, our phones are running out of batteries, we’re stuck in Trent’s dirty-jocks wagon, and you don’t get to see your girlfriend. Tonight blows. It blows hard. We need a little party for two to cheer us up, don’t you reckon?’
‘Here? In the middle of nowhere?’
‘Yes! Okay, there’s no cider or beer, but what good is sitting here doing nothing?’
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