The Do-Gooder

by Jessie L. Star

  "You ready?" Fletch asked me and, when I saw that Daz had Mum occupied, I knew that I was.

  I didn't say anything as we left through the backdoor and headed for the car. A ringing sort of numbness had taken over and the people saying their farewells as we passed them sounded tinny and far away.

  As we climbed into my car and Fletch started the engine, comments to the tune of 'must feel good to drive a real car rather than that shitbox of yours' occurred to me, but I didn't have the energy to share them. Besides, I was the one being driven away drunk from her brother's memorial so I wasn't really prepared to strike out for fear of the legitimate return serve I could be offered.

  And speaking of drunk...I could really feel that Scotch catching up with me now. Lolling my head back against the seat, I watched Fletch as he drove. Every other second or so his profile was highlighted by the orange streetlights and I found myself fascinated by these glimpses; at the contrast of his face being so rapidly lit and then plunged into shadow. I was sure there was a metaphor in that somewhere if I wasn't so out of it to formulate it.

  As we turned onto the highway, I belatedly realised that we were following the path I'd wandered most often during the nights when I couldn't stand being in the house with my dying brother anymore. The way the lights were flashing turned suddenly sinister; a reminder of the patches of brightness I'd tried to avoid as I'd slunk along by the road, mired in misery. I'd been scared back then of the dark and the dangers that might have lurked in it, but more afraid of the nothingness that waited for me at home.

  The reminder of that loneliness; the feeling of being stuck between two, equally shit, alternatives, hit sharp and hard, tearing through my numbness like it was tissue paper. And if we'd got onto the highway a minute or so ago, that meant...

  "Stop the car!"

  Fletch looked over quickly and, presumably, seeing how serious I looked, indicated and pulled onto the verge.

  "What-?" He started to ask, but I didn't hear how he finished the question as I was concentrating on fumbling desperately at the seatbelt release button. Once I'd freed myself, I threw open the car door and started to stumble back down the emergency lane towards the intersection we'd just passed.

  I didn't stop when I heard Fletch shout after me, I didn't need to, I knew he'd follow me.

  Once I reached the traffic lights, I slammed my palm against the pedestrian button, the metallic clang more familiar to me even than my mum's embrace had been. I jiggled anxiously in my heels as I waited, staring at the red light in the shape of a man that was holding me in place, stopping me from plunging into the racing traffic. He had a lot of power, that red man.

  And speaking of men with power, I felt Fletch draw up beside me. I reached for the warm solidness of him automatically, my hand pressing against his thigh, fingers pinching a fold of his denim jeans and hanging on tight.

  "My dad always says that I'm an attention getter, but I'm not really," I said tightly, before he could ask me what I was doing. "Not like Donny was. Everyone saw him; before he was sick, especially afterwards."

  "Babe..." I barely heard him over the thundering traffic, but it was there, that word reaching out to me in confusion. I didn't know whether what I was saying was going to clear up his bewilderment, but I needed to keep going. I hadn't given him anything when he'd tried to ask me about my course a few days ago, but I could give him this, the knowledge of these nights I'd spent out here on my own, even if it didn't make any sense.

  "And it wasn't that I resented Donny, exactly," I continued, haltingly. "It was just that my mum needed to be with him, and Dad was at work and everyone at school hated me and..." I swallowed thickly. "I'd have weeks where it felt like I'd been forgotten, like no-one had seen me. And, when it got to me, I'd come out here and I'd press this button. Because," I pointed up as the red man turned green, "the light would change and, for a second, everyone had to stop for me. Action/reaction, you see? If the light changed then I knew my existence had had some sort of impact."

  With a tug on his jeans, I pulled Fletch out into the road with me, and we walked the length of the highway, watched by the six lanes of traffic I'd stopped. I'd barely made it halfway before I realised I was crying. Big, fat tears rolled down my face in silence and I let them without feeling embarrassed because it wasn't about being emotional, it was just biological. If it was natural to bleed when cut, why shouldn't it be natural to cry when shattered and drunk and just plain over it?

  Once we'd reached the other side, Fletch pressed the button that would stop the traffic for our return without saying a word, but the arm he wrapped around my shoulders was strong and reassuring. Some latent sober, sane Lara considered shrugging him off, but I didn't. Instead, I leant my head back against his chest, finding that it was suddenly too heavy for me to hold up on my own.

  "I don't want to go back to my place," I said quietly, partly because it was true and partly because I wanted to hear him say it again.

  "I'll take you wherever you want to go."

  ----------

  She cried the whole way back to his place. Not big wrenching sobs or anything, just a steady trickle of wetness down her face that shone as they drove under the streetlights.

  He'd known the memorial birthday thing was going to rip into her, but he hadn't foreseen this. Her face as she'd waited for the pedestrian light to change for her...how could anyone foresee that?

  But, shit, she hadn't felt seen? Beautiful, strong, terrifying Lara hadn't felt seen? Had spent nights validating her existence by means of a set of traffic lights? He'd been holding back from her over the past few days, worried about her reaction to the Salida phone call and struggling with confronting her over his Saskia suspicions, but it felt so petty now. It was all surface crap compared to what she'd just let him in on.

  Pulling into his car parking space at Yolinda Grove, he watched Lara robotically go through the motions of unclipping her seatbelt and stepping out onto the asphalt. He wasn't sure where she was at re the touching thing now, so he just shadowed her down the steps to his flat, reaching past her to open the door when the handle seemed to stump her.

  They crossed over the threshold, but then she stopped dead, staring unseeingly into the empty space lit only by the blue light from the microwave display.

  "You OK?" He asked, a redundant question, but one that he felt needed asking anyway. He wasn't expecting any sort of reply, so was taken aback by the way she shook her head.

  "I'm tired, Fletch," she said, as if surprised to realise it. "I'm really tired."

  She sagged and he gave up any pretence of giving her space, scooping her up into his arms and carrying her to his room. He had a momentary flash of the last time he'd done this, but the memory of their past times together was nothing like their current reality. Lara felt boneless in his arms, a stark contrast to the stiffness that usually radiated from every line of her body, but he knew it wasn't comfort that had her relaxing. It was sheer exhaustion.

  Nudging the door shut behind them, he set her down gently and reached for the zip on the back of her dress. It was only then that he noticed that she'd ignored the instruction from her mum to wear colourful clothes to the memorial; she was dressed in solid black. He got that.

  The sides of her dress peeled away revealing a long v of pale skin, but her exposure in that moment didn't make her look sexy, she just looked incredibly vulnerable. He was extra careful as he drew the material down her arms and body, and helped her step out of the puddle of fabric at her feet, finding himself irrationally scared that just touching her would leave a mark. She remained unblemished, however, externally anyway, and he was able to tear his eyes away from her for the moment it took to grab one of his old t-shirts out of a drawer and pass it over. As she wordlessly took it and started to pull it on, he threw back a corner of the doona on his bed so she could crawl in.

  He toed off his shoes and followed her onto the mattress, fully dressed, curling himself around her back so that she was completely hidden from an
yone but him. He thought she'd like that, he'd never seen her like this and knew that was a deliberate move on her part, a side to her she'd usually rather die than expose to the world.

  His room was dark and, before his eyes adjusted, there was only the sound of her uneven breathing, and the feel of her pressed against him to judge where she was at. And where she was at was not a good place.

  She lay silent and still for a long time, but there was no suggestion she was actually getting the rest she seemed to need so much.

  "Do you remember him?" She asked suddenly, after almost half an hour had passed. "Like, actually remember Donny, not all the stuff that went on around him? Because I'm not sure I do."

  He thought about it, giving her question the consideration it deserved. "I don't know," he answered truthfully after a moment. "It feels like I've got all these sound bites about him stored away for days like today. Stories about him taking on waves that were too big for him, or that time he superglued himself to Amy McCallister during woodwork class. And they're all true, they just seem to get less real every time I tell them."

  She turned slightly, her face a pale oval in the dark as she looked up at him. "So why do you keep telling them?"

  He pushed her fringe out of her eyes and his fingers came away wet. She'd either started crying again or she'd never stopped.

  "Because someone has to," he replied distractedly as he continued to brush away her tears with the back of his knuckles. After a few seconds of this, her hand rose up and she gripped his, holding him still. For a moment he thought she was telling him to stop, but then she slowly laced her fingers through his and said quietly,

  "Tell me."

  And so he did, regaling her with the times out on the board when Donny had gone too hard on a wave and Fletch had been terrified he'd have to tell his mum that he'd been swallowed by the ocean. That he remembered the way Donny got jack of being sick all the time, but that, most days, her brother seemed to get that that was just the way it was. That he hated being put down into the same grade as Lara because of all the school he'd missed and yet had lorded it over all his classmates when he was the first to be able to go for his driving test. A test he'd promptly failed for taking a corner so fast Donny swore the car had gone up on two wheels.

  Fletch talked until his voice was hoarse and his chest ached from having to relive all of his snapshot memories for the second time that day. He didn't stop, though, until he felt the very last shiver of tension leave her shoulders and heard her breathing even into sleep, and then he stretched out carefully alongside her.

  He was knackered, but forced himself to stay awake for as long as possible. He needed to keep vigil, to make sure that the existence of the beautiful, damaged girl beside him was acknowledged by more than a God-damn pedestrian light.

  Chapter 17 – Talk to Me

  When I opened my eyes some time later it was less like waking up, and more like being hit by a truck.

  I felt so disorientated and sore in fact that, for a second or so, I actually lent credence to the idea that Fletch had waited until I was safely asleep and then bundled me into the clothes dryer and set it to high. But, no, I didn't need Fletch's intervention to make me feel dried out and bruised, I could manage that all on my own.

  There was still a faint sliver of moonlight gleaming around the edges of the block-out blind hung before Fletch's window, but the best indicator I had of the passing of time was that I could feel myself hovering between still drunk and severely hungover. It was a precarious place to find myself, although it paled in comparison to the dawning awareness of Fletch’s heavy weight still curled at my back.

  That was precarious; a support and protection that I was bound to screw up, either literally now by shifting and waking him, or figuratively in the future by just being me. This ominous prediction added another thump to the headache of Scotch and embarrassment I could already feel building momentum in my skull, and I clenched my hands into Fletch's pillow wishing it would just go away. It didn't, of course, and I was annoyed at myself for even hoping something so pointless. What had happened had happened, no changing that, the only thing in my power to prevent at this point was the worst of my hangover.

  Sliding carefully out from underneath Fletch, I didn't wait to see whether my withdrawal had woken him, but padded quickly out in search of a bathroom, shivering as the cool night air kissed my bare limbs. It was a small flat, so I thankfully found the tiled space I was looking for almost immediately. Flicking on the sputtery fluorescent light near the door revealed a cold, damp room, tidy enough, but with a mouldy smell to it that suggested it hadn't experienced a proper clean in a long time.

  It was far from a welcoming space, but as I locked the door securely behind me, I'd never been so grateful of four walls and a door before. I was in no headspace to prod my psyche over whether I regretted letting Fletch in so conclusively in the hours previous, all I knew was that I needed to reconstruct myself in peace. And this looked to be the place to do it.

  Crossing to the sink, I cupped my hands under the tap and forced myself to swallow palm-full after palm-full of metallic-tasting, icy cold water. I accompanied this hydration with a couple of paracetamol I found in the cupboard under the basin, hoping it would go some way in staving off the after-effects of my prolonged crying jag and alcohol consumption.

  As I lifted my head up, however, and caught sight of myself in the small, flecked mirror above the counter, I saw that just drinking some water and taking pain-relief medication wasn't going to cut it. I almost didn't recognise myself in the reflection, although I really should have as the stranger staring back at me looked just as empty and wrung-out as I felt.

  My eyes, especially, freaked me out, sunken as they were into my pale cheeks and surrounded by dark shadows that couldn't be attributed solely to the fact that my eye make-up had smudged. After a couple more seconds of study, I realised what it was that was shaking me so badly; my eyes looked like Donny's room had, ostensibly the same, but with something crucial missing.

  The almost theatrical nature of this thought was enough to bring me back to myself, and my eyes already looked more like mine as I rolled them at myself in the mirror. I wasn't going to be the drama-queen my dad seemed to think I was about this; I needed to pull myself together.

  In an effort to do just that, I wiped at the spidery tracks where my mascara had run, hoping to, at the very least, rub some colour back into my cheeks. This meagre effort, however, proved futile, and it became apparent that this, that I, was a job that required a complete start-over.

  Peeling Fletch's t-shirt over my head, I discarded my bra and knickers and climbed past the plain white, slightly scummy, plastic curtain to get into the shower over the bath. The taps were slightly rusted, but with a bit of effort, I managed to turn them and get the spray running to a temperature just slightly beyond comfortably hot for me. I let the water sear into my skin, scalding me clean, and slowly felt the numbness in my limbs start to be replaced with a tingling heat.

  It was as if I was breathing energy into my lungs along with the steam, and I found I was able to reach for one of the shower gel bottles on the edge of the tub without feeling like I was about to topple straight over. I opened the bottle and sniffed before recoiling and setting it quickly back down. It was obviously Daz's body wash and not at all to my taste. The bottle behind it, however, provided a much more welcome and familiar scent, and in a final push to wash off the veneer of panic and wretchedness that I felt coated my skin, I lathered myself in Fletch's shower gel.

  I hadn't considered what an intimate move this was until the warmth of the water and the smell of his body wash combined to make it seem like Fletch was in the shower with me. It wasn't a bad thought, actually, and I decided that, once I was a bit more myself, it was a concept worth exploring further.

  There was apparently some sort of correlation between my thoughts turning dirty, and my body finally feeling clean, and it wasn't long after that that I shut off the water and climb
ed out of the tub. Wrapping myself in the cleanest looking towel I could find, I rubbed a patch on the mirror clear of condensation and gave myself another hard look.

  It was a much better image to behold. Although my hair was now a dark, tangled mess after being exposed to water, but no conditioner, some colour was back in my face and my eyes looked less haunted. It wasn't anywhere near perfect, but I was willing to accept 'better' after the night I'd had.

  It was disconcerting not having the lotions and potions I usually lathered myself in post-shower at hand, but I made the best of it by gargling with some mouthwash and carefully picking the knots out of my hair with a comb I found. It was while I was digging about in the bathroom cupboards trying to find a basic moisturiser for my face at least, that I came across a spray-bottle of cleaning liquid and a scrubbing brush. Giving up the search for the moisturiser as a lost cause, I pulled my find out and looked around, every spot of soap scum suddenly thrown into stark relief.

  Well then. Shedding my towel and climbing back into my underwear and Fletch's t-shirt, I grabbed up the cleaning supplies and set to scouring the tiles, sink and bath like a woman possessed. With each swipe of the brush, with every tile that started to sparkle, I felt I regained a bit more of myself. I wasn't a 'feeler' I was a 'doer' and, while it obviously wasn't anywhere near a trade for what Fletch had done for me, I had to think I'd done something for him in return. A scum-free bathroom was something, right?

  When I realised I was wiping down the sink for about the fifth time, however, I had to admit that, noble as my intentions had started out, my actions had turned into a delaying tactic. I didn't want to leave the safety of the bathroom. And why would I? With the door locked and no windows it was like being in a bunker; a stronghold free from reality.