“Govi…you did tell him it was Ella that was interested, right?”
Govi nodded. “Yeah, totally.”
I gave him a look that told him I didn’t quite believe him.
“We talked about you. But I told him it was Ella who was interested,” he said persuasively.
But, it seemed like maybe Eli hadn’t quite grasped the difference between Ella and Chloe (much like the rest of the world). He spent the rest of the afternoon winking at me or smirking at me or finding excuses to brush past me. Thankfully, there was little talking going on. He obviously realised talking to me was a waste of his time.
We were testing out our first tree, with the card around the bottom of the drama block, then another layer, and the three of us were trying to attach the third layer of cardboard cylinder to the top. I held the card up while Govi stapled it and found he’d run out of staples. The tree was a little bit tall for me, granted. But I wasn’t entirely convinced it warranted Eli’s next action.
I was standing on tip toes while I held the card in place and Govi wrestled a new string of staples in the stapler, and I almost over-balanced. But then hands were on my waist and lips were by my ear.
“Need some help?” There was nothing innocent going on in that head with that tone of voice, I can tell you.
I pulled away so fast, I did over-balance and ended up falling through our tree so far. I crushed the top of the trunk under me and my legs got caught on the drama block as I toppled over it and took it with me. I was pretty sure my whole body went red and I wrapped my arms around my head. I was going to have a lovely bruise on my leg.
“Gin, you right?” Govi asked suddenly, sounding concerned.
“Sure, Gove. Fine,” I mumbled.
I snuck a look at Eli and saw nothing but teasing flirtation on his face. He knew the effect he had on me and he wasn’t shy about using it to his full potential.
Rotten, no good–
“Elijah?” I heard Milly call.
He gave me a wink and sauntered away in a manner than I was sure was supposed to make me appreciate his arse. I was ridiculous enough that I did.
Govi crouched beside me. “You good?”
“I don’t think he got the right message, Gabriel,” I said through gritted teeth, looking to him for an explanation.
Govi paled and his eyes went soft. “Uh, yeah. I’m sensing that, too. I’m sorry, Gin…”
I sighed, any annoyance I felt at Govi disappearing. You just couldn’t stay mad at those sweet nut brown eyes and that boyish charm.
“It’s fine. I mean it’s not fine. But I’m not angry with you or anything. I get the feeling Elijah Sweet will only do whatever Elijah Sweet wants to do.”
Govi huffed and we both looked towards Mr Flirt. “I get the feeling you understand him far better than he’d like.” Govi stood up and held his hands out to me, then pulled me to standing. “Look, I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, just hold firm.”
“What? You think I’m going to fall for that wank?” I asked.
Govi smiled, but there was a hint of sadness in his eyes. “I haven’t met a girl yet who could withstand his flirting.”
“Well, you hadn’t met me.”
Govi’s eyes warmed. “True. If anyone can manage it, it’s you.” He brushed my hair off my face. “I’ll talk to him. Get him to ease off. He’ll probably get bored in a day or two. Don’t be offended by it, it’s just his way.”
I looked into his eyes and smiled. “How are you two such good friends but so different?” I asked.
Govi shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, I can be exactly the same as him.”
“Then why aren’t you?”
His smile softened, became somewhat tender. “Dunno. There’s something about you, Chloe Cowan, unfortunate name or not. I can’t be fake around you, I can’t be that shallow prick.” He shrugged again. “Guess I just like you.”
“I like you, too.” I smiled.
“As much as you like Eli?” he teased.
I shoved him. “Shut up, or maybe I’ll prefer the shallow prick.”
“Eli will be pleased,” Govi snorted.
“How did Quicksilver get together?” popped out.
Govi smiled and talked while we straightened up the scrunched tree. “Well, we met in Year Eight in music. Eli was always the confident ringleader and Lake, Ramsey and I were just drawn to him. We started hanging out and got talking music, then we realised we had the perfect makings of a band. So we started playing other people’s stuff and eventually started writing our own.”
“Do you still play other people’s stuff?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. We play other stuff for fun and at some gigs, it fleshes our stuff out and crowds like to hear songs they know from bands they don’t. The gig in November will just be our stuff, though.”
“And the formal?”
“Bit of both I think. We’re not playing all that long, it’s just a bit of practise and we wanted to hang out with our mates for at least some of our last formal, but I don’t know if we have enough polished songs to play just our own. We probably do, but we’ve got a few more in the works to be ready for November. Although,” Govi huffed a sardonic laugh, “we’re about to get into the all-night rehearsals if our esteemed front-man has anything to say about it.”
“What? You mean he actually puts hard work in?” I asked, surprised.
Govi nodded. “Totally. I know he doesn’t look it, but when something really matters, he’ll move heaven and earth for it.”
I snuck yet another look at Eli as I held the card up for Govi. He was certainly not looking anything like the sort of guy who knew anything about hard work. And to be honest, I didn’t want to know that he was. My brain already went to mush around him, I didn’t need to risk my heart doing the same.
“I think we need to look at different bases,” I said to take my mind off Eli.
“Any ideas?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m working on it.”
My mind was successfully off Eli, but my eyes weren’t.
Needy McNerdleton
“…money just ruins it.” Rica said as we narrowly avoided being run over by some Year Nines on the way to morning break on Tuesday.
We were discussing our aspirations. Again. It was a debate we had regularly. Neither of us were trying to change the other’s mind – it was impossible anyway – and the debate was pretty well always the same, but our friendship seemed to thrive on irrelevant disagreements.
“Money also helps you pay bills and buy food,” I reminded her.
“Buying food sort of goes against the whole starving artist aesthetic,” she commented as she popped an M&M into her mouth with a cheeky grin.
“Oh no. Wouldn’t want to ruin the aesthetic. It’s not like Byron had money to spare or anything.”
“It only counts as money if you make it from your craft.”
I shook my head as I threw myself against the wall out of someone’s way. “No I think it goes to show you can still be a brooding, melodramatic wanker even with shit tonnes of money.”
“Poets are different.”
I laughed. “Poets aren’t different. They do what you do, but with words not pictures. Dancers do it with movement. Musicians with sound. You all have the fundamental same qualities, you just use a different medium. And I refuse to believe that a lack of money will make you better for it.”
“Well it’s a lack of money or some horribly traumatising experience. Take your pick.”
“How are you so talented and yet so stupid?” I asked her. I didn’t need to smile so she knew I was teasing, but I did.
She snorted. “I like to think I’m in the young and naïve portion of my career.”
“Exactly. A fancier way of saying stupid.”
She nudged me with her hip as she laughed. “No. Hopeful yet despairing, cautious but reckless, confident yet doubtful.”
I nodded, thoughtfully
. “Maybe I am cut out for the artistic life after all.”
“Because you’re also standing at a crossroads, knowing you have your all to give and praying it will be enough?”
“Because I’m also mentally unhinged.”
We burst into laughter and it wasn’t the first time I was glad that Rica understood my self-deprecating humour. I was comfortable in who I was and, even though some people didn’t understand it, I could laugh about it. After all, when it was a choice between laughing and crying, laughing felt more like I was in control, it felt more assertive, it felt like I was the master and not the slave.
“You could be worse,” Rica said and I nodded.
“I could. In five years’ time I could be you, poor and in a loft surrounded by my unbought paintings while I eat my third pot noodle of the day.”
“Unlike actual you who will be lost under six of my paintings eating your fifth pot noodle of the day?” she teased.
I nodded. “Yes. Because what else is a starving artist without a dependant?”
Rica snorted. “Of course. Why would you go and get a job with that Commerce degree so we can have a two bedroom apartment, when you can live off my incredible lack of wages?”
I shrugged. “It just makes more sense.”
“It really does.”
“Chloe!” wafted to us and I turned without thinking.
I didn’t think about the fact that only one person ever called my name in the corridors of Winters and she was standing right next to me. I didn’t think about the fact that the voice was masculine. I didn’t think about the fact that I was in the middle of laughing nigh uncontrollably, completely at the mercy of everything that was Chloe Cowan and not the cultivated outside I reserved for everyone but Rica, Super-G and Aunt Bow.
I turned, an unbashful smile on my face, and unintentionally locked eyes with Eli.
There was a split-second moment where it felt like I’d caught him off-guard or something, a rare moment where the real Chloe had been seen and not found wanting. But that was stupid because it was Elijah Sweet and I neither wanted nor was he capable of seeing any version of me, real or otherwise.
My smile went from possibly insane to very much bashful and rather annoyed as he gave me that stupid half-smirk.
“Are you two having fun without me?” I heard Govi’s voice again and dragged my eyes off Eli to look at him.
“Us?” Rica asked innocently. “No. Definitely not. We wouldn’t dare.”
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” Govi said, pointing at her.
Rica frowned as she cocked her head to the side. “What is that from?”
I sighed heavily. “Please don’t tell me we have to do ‘Hamlet’ next year.”
“Of course you know,” Rica said as Govi nodded once.
“Okay. I won’t.” He looked between Rica and me. “On an unrelated note, for reasons unknown I will have a spare copy of ‘Hamlet’ for anyone who might require it next year…” A pause. “Just sayin’…”
“Can I chose not to do English next year?” Rica asked.
Govi thought about it. “No…?”
“Not at Winters,” Eli said. “I tried.”
It was like him speaking seemed to break some spell and suddenly I wasn’t the only one who was hyper aware that Eli Sweet and Govi Costa were talking to two veritable nobodies in the school corridor. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see everyone who walked past us looked at us in question – some of them, I was sure, were wondering who we were and if we even belonged in Winters and, if we did, why they hadn’t noticed us before.
“Hi Eli,” one girl said as she walked by, batting her eyes and pouting at him.
“Hey,” he responded, kicking his chin towards her, raising his eyebrow, and giving that sexy half-smirk. Then, as though we hadn’t all just watched him making eyes at another girl, he turned it all on me.
“No shame, mate. No freaking shame,” Govi chuckled under his breath and I wasn’t sure if he was chastising Eli or praising him. I had a feeling it was a little of both.
I pulled my eyes off Eli’s smoulder before the use of my legs followed my brain to Hawaii, and remembered Govi had called my name before.
“Did you want something?” I asked him.
Govi blinked, looking adorably confused. “When?”
“Just now. When you called out. Did you want something?”
He looked at Rica for a moment as though he didn’t understand the question and she might have the answer. “No. I don’t think so.”
Now I was confused. “Oh. Then why did you call out?”
“To say hi.”
“Why?”
Rica whacked me, which was our terribly original code for ‘shut up, you’re being weird and not in a good way’. “Hi.” She smiled widely at him and he gave her a warm smile in return.
“Are you guys heading to lessons now or…?” Govi petered off and looked between us as he waited for an answer.
I didn’t really hear Rica’s reply as my eyes shifted to Eli, who was watching me with a combination of arrogant humour and cocky confusion, and who seemed uncharacteristically quiet.
Not that I actually knew what his character was like. I was relying solely on rumour and assumptions I made based on nothing but his appearance. But everything I’d heard and assumed suggested Elijah Sweet was not a guy who sat back and let his drummer do all the talking. It suggested he was an overly confident, casual young man who liked to make every situation about him. So why was he just standing there and watching me as my cheeks went hotter and hotter?
And I was fully aware that I was also standing there and watching him while his cheeks remained a perfectly normal, unemotional colour. But I couldn’t help myself. He was hot and, like many creatures on our planet, I liked to look at attractive things even when they infuriatingly knew they were attractive. It brought me joy. Which, in hindsight, sucked because then Eli would definitely pass the Marie Kondo test.
Just as I was about to win the struggle to pull my eyes off him, he leant towards me.
“I’m not just for looking at. You can touch, if you like,” he said quietly as Rica and Govi chatted about their art teacher.
I blinked. “I… You… What?” was all I managed, despite my internal outrage – at both his audacity and my idiocy.
Eli’s honey eyes burned brightly as he searched my face and I swallowed hard. There was a battle of wills playing out here and I had come very much unprepared. Eli had wills in spades by the look of it and he knew it. He knew it and he was perfectly happy to use it on whoever he needed to get whatever he wanted, deserved or not.
Like Ella.
That was familiar. That I could contend with.
I felt some of my confidence returning, along with some of my brain function.
“No touchey,” I answered. The fact I managed to keep a straight face and superior, determined tone through such a pitiful response was exceptional. Especially when Eli failed to hold back his laughter.
But he did pull away, nodding as he said, “Sometimes even I believe you.” He was all suave sophistication as though one word from him would topple my known universe. “But do you?”
I frowned. “Excuse me?” I huffed.
“Oh shit…” Rica muttered, obviously hearing my tone.
“What?” Govi asked.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Rica shake her head. But my eyes were focussed on Eli. My head to mouth connection might have been spotty, but I was going to attempt to put the smarmy twat in his place.
“Gin…” Rica said slowly, plucking at my elbow.
“No,” I said firmly.
Eli’s eyebrow rose in humour. “No?” he chuckled.
“No,” I repeated pointing at him. “You don’t get what you want just because you want it.”
He gave me a look of mock-surprise. “Oh really?” he asked and I nodded. He gave me a single nod, then looked around the cor
ridor. “Hailey!” he called.
“Hi Eli,” a girl in the year below me giggled back at him.
He kicked his chin at her and winked and she giggled again. “You want to go out this weekend?”
Hailey pulled her books to her chest as she bit her lip, looking at him through her eyelashes. “I don’t know how Jack will feel about that…”
Eli rolled his eyes. “Baby, I promise you won’t even remember Jack by the end of the night.”
She giggled again and I felt all hope for the universe dissolving.
“Eli…” Govi hissed at him, all warning this time.
Eli waved a surreptitious hand to Govi, acting to Hailey as though all his attention was on her. But I saw his eyes slide to me with a cocky look of victory.
“What do you say, Hails?” Eli cooed and she grinned.
“Okay.”
He nodded. “Great. We’ll talk later.”
She nodded. “Okay.” She gave him another smile, then headed off.
Eli turned back to me, his arms out to his side in a clear display he wanted kudos.
“No,” I said forcefully. “What did…? Are you…? Ugh!”
Eli sighed. “I so thought we’d made it to full sentences. But I suppose jealousy can be an odd beast.”
“Jealousy?” I spluttered.
Eli nodded and I had the singular impression that him asking out Hailey was supposed to have done more than just proven his point that he could indeed have anything he wanted when he wanted it. It was also supposed to have made me jealous.
“Jealous?” I repeated. “The only thing I feel after seeing that is disgust.”
He was genuinely surprised by that. “Why?”
“Eli…” Govi muttered as Rica mirrored but with my name.
But neither Eli nor I seemed inclined to listen to them. “Because you just actively encouraged her to cheat on Jack.”
“You don’t know that they’re dating.”
I blinked, taken aback for a moment. “You don’t know they’re not.”
Eli shrugged. “True.”
“And yet you suggested she go out with you anyway?”
“It’s not for me to put labels on another person’s relationship. If she wants to go out with me while she might be with someone else, that’s their business.”
The Stand-In: my life as an understudy Page 7