All I Ever Wanted

by Vikki Wakefield

  The door opens.

  ‘Little Dodd,’ Feeney says, like he’s identifying me by genus and species.

  ‘I need your help,’ I mutter.

  ‘Indeed. Come in.’

  I’ve never been past Feeney’s front door before and I’m not sure what to expect. He shows me into a sitting-room that’s eerily feminine. Someone else must live here. Someone who collects miniature teapots and red glass sculptures that look like blood clots and half-formed embryos.

  ‘Sit,’ he tells me.

  I move to a couch covered in a plastic sheet. It crackles rudely when I sit. Maybe all this froth is just designed to throw his victims off. Maybe he’s a serial killer.

  ‘How’s Mother? Does she know you’re here? You’ll tell her I can’t call her but I’m thinking of her,’ he orders, without waiting for my answer. ‘Rudy, some tea, please.’

  I look around, but there’s nobody there. My stomach is twisted in knots and I’m thinking that this was a very, very bad idea.

  ‘Someone has a birthday coming up soon, I hear. Seventeen. The cusp of it all.’ He plays his fingers over some imaginary instrument and it is this that freaks me out the most.

  ‘I need some gear,’ I say, because I have to say something, or run.

  ‘Gear,’ he says in a mild tone. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Little Dodd.’

  I hear the crescendo of a boiling kettle, the slosh as it pours and the clink of a teaspoon. I hold my breath.

  The doorway is too small for the man who comes through it. He ducks, squeezing his elbows together to make room for the tray he’s carrying. On it, a teapot and two ridiculously tiny cups. I’m having another Alice moment.

  ‘Here, Rudy. Thank you.’

  The giant places the tray on the table between us. There’s a bulge where a gun would be if it was strapped to his outer thigh and another where his legs end in steel-capped boots. His eyes are ice-cold and empty. Suddenly, the Feeney fear factor makes a whole lot of sense.

  Hot tea pours like truth serum down my throat and I blurt, ‘I lost the package. I lost it, and I can’t tell Mum.’

  ‘You lost it, or it was taken?’

  ‘Taken,’ I confess.

  Feeney tuts. ‘So, why do you want gear?’

  ‘To trade for it.’

  Feeney and the giant exchange a look. ‘That stuff can be replaced. I’ll make a phone call,’ he says, sighing. ‘I’ll deal with this. You just go about being seventeen.’

  I get the impression Feeney knows everything. I think that he can make just about anything go away, including Welles, but I’m so close. So close to rewinding this week.

  ‘I’m going to meet him at the lake, on Sunday. At two.’

  ‘You don’t go. You stay home, you leave it alone,’ Feeney says. ‘I’ll take care of it. Okay, Little Dodd?’

  I nod.

  Feeney insists I finish my tea and actually pats the top of my head when I leave.

  ‘Chip off the old block,’ I hear him say, as the door closes behind me.

  SEVENTEEN

  Jordan is sitting on the curb around the corner.

  ‘What happened? What did you tell him?’

  ‘It’s done,’ is all I say because I don’t want to talk about it.

  ‘Did you mention my name?’

  ‘Maybe. Accidentally, just one time,’ I lie.

  ‘Shit,’ he says and takes my hand. ‘Come on. I need a drink. My place is closer.’

  He holds my hand the whole way, leading me like a child. Every few steps I have to jog to catch up and my chest aches with the effort of trying to breathe normally. His hand is warm and hard and mine fits inside it like it was meant to be there.

  I follow him into the cool, silent house. He leaves me at the bathroom door and I hear him clanging about in the kitchen. I wash my hands and face in the dinner-plate basin and pat my cheeks with the apple-scented towel. In the mirror, my face is flushed and my eyes are bright. It’s obvious—I am still in love. No amount of treason will change that. You can’t just switch off attraction.

  He calls me to his room and hands me a beer. My hands are in my pockets and I’ve bitten the inside of my cheek. It’s all I can do not to lean over and breathe him in. He’s so close.

  ‘So, what now?’ he asks.

  I take a mouthful of beer and it slides down, cool and bitter. ‘I don’t know. I suppose he’ll turn up on Sunday. He wants the stuff so he’ll show.’

  I wonder, Who is this girl? She sounds like she’s calm and certain. On the outside, anyway. Inside, it feels like I’ve built this enormous sandcastle and I’m waiting to see how long it’ll stand before the tide erodes it away, like it was never there.

  ‘I’m sorry. I really am,’ he says. He plugs his phone into a charger and tosses it to me. ‘Give me your mobile number. I’ll come with you on Sunday, make sure you’ll be okay.’

  I lob it back. ‘I don’t need your help.’

  We play hot potato with the phone until we’re both grinning. I give in and key my number into it.

  ‘Look, I don’t usually have anything to do with all that stuff,’ I say. ‘I don’t know how you knew I had it and I don’t know why you took it, but that was the first time I ever picked up drugs.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘You don’t believe me? Oh, that’s right. I’m you people.’

  ‘Look, I did something stupid and I paid for it. I just don’t want my sister involved. Stop stalking her and I’ll help you.’

  ‘Stalking her?’

  It’s funny and I laugh out loud, a manic giggle. He’s got me all boxed up in a brown, shabby little package, like the one he stole from me. He thinks his sister has shiny paper, hospital corners and a big pink bow.

  ‘Why do you want it back so much, anyway? Seems to me you’d be better off just letting it go.’

  ‘It’s mine and I want it back.’

  Vengeance. Revenge. Call it what you like. I’m done with letting things go. Now I’m breaking rules. Nothing happens when you play it safe. You just get stagnant.

  I ask, ‘Why did you get mixed up with them, anyway? Since we’re playing true confession.’

  He sighs. ‘They stole my car. I had no insurance. I heard from someone else that they had it, that it was being stripped down, so I went and bargained to get it back.’

  ‘So, what did they make you do?’

  ‘A few things. Illegal things. Anyway, we watched you leave Feeney’s and Welles was convinced you were picking up gear. He couldn’t get it any other way and he knew you wouldn’t stop for him so he told me to smile and talk to you. To see if you would stop. And you did.’ He shrugs.

  I don’t tell him that I stopped because I thought he’d finally noticed me. Since that moment, my precious rules were broken and now I know there is no going back.

  ‘I’m not what you think I am,’ I say, defiant.

  ‘What are you?’ he taunts.

  He sits on the bed and his jeans pull tight across his thighs. Longish hair flops into his face and I want to brush it away, so I can see his eyes. Right now, it doesn’t matter that he’s the enemy.

  ‘Just a girl,’ I say.

  He stares at me. ‘Say that again.’

  ‘You heard.’ I meet his stare as the penny drops.

  ‘That was you?’

  ‘Yes.’ I finish the beer and put the bottle down on the side table.

  I sit next to him on his bed. Our weight rolls us in toward each other and there’s a patch of mingled breath between us. Warm and sweet.

  ‘You’re shaking,’ he says.

  ‘I’m scared,’ I admit.

  His eyes flare with interest and something else.

  This is what it’s all about. Taking chances. Sucking the nectar out of life. Since I’m breaking all the rules, I might as well have my dream on a plate.

  ‘I’m scared,’ I tell him again.

  He takes both my hands and rolls me lengthwise, onto the bed, leaving my arms above my head. His fingers ru
n down along the inner skin, to my elbow. Baby soft, barely there. Our heartbeats smash together, his hard and steady, mine like a running rabbit. His hands work down, dragging over my hips, then back up to my waist.

  His kiss, when it comes, is softer and warmer than anything I have imagined. I could drown in it. I want to let go of everything, every nagging little part of me that wants to stop because this is the vortex. The quicksand that I could fall into, willingly, and never leave. The end of me.

  Cool air on my skin as he pulls my top over my head. I feel the spread of goose bumps like a rash. He takes off his T-shirt and I get to look at him, most of him, lean and brown and smooth. He looks back at me as if I’m a beautiful thing, too.

  ‘You’re cold,’ he says, touching my skin with the back of his hand.

  ‘Yes.’

  He pulls the quilt over us and our heat stops rising and stays. Now, I can feel the full weight of him and softer pieces of me fit into his hollows and curves. Is this how it is? That you feel like you could just sink into each other and be whole?

  Somehow our clothes end up scrunched at the foot of the bed and suddenly it’s all there, our skin, with nothing else between us.

  ‘Is this okay?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. Yes, yes, yes.

  I think of Tahnee and I feel close to her, even with the gap between us. I get it. I totally get how this can be more than anything, if only for a moment. I see how my disapproval has ruined it for her. My judgment must have been every bit as painful to her as those photos on her pinboard were to me. I know that I can be kinder, if she’ll give me a chance.

  I kiss him back. It doesn’t matter that I have no idea what I’m doing. I try to get as much of him as I can. His breath is ragged and fast and it makes me feel as knowing and sure as I’ve ever been, about things I’ve never done.

  ‘Just a girl. Hah.’ He shakes his head. ‘I had you all wrong, that’s for sure.’

  I go cold.

  It’s his tone. He might as well have slapped money down on the table. I don’t know whether to be offended or flattered that he thinks I know what I’m doing, that I can have this effect on a guy who obviously knows what he’s doing. I want to stop him. I want to tell him that this is special, that I have dreamed about him for years. I don’t want some clichéd, teenage cherry-popping ceremony. I want more than this.

  But he’s urgent now, running in a different direction. His kisses are hard and my neck hurts. He doesn’t notice that I’m still. He’s all over me, heavy and hot and hard.

  ‘Stop,’ I say, but he won’t.

  This is that point, the point where a girl changes her mind, but the guy and the police and the courts hear that just one minute before, she said yes. I was willing, I wanted it. I wanted him.

  ‘Please, I don’t want to do this.’

  ‘That’s not how it works,’ he says, his voice thick and mean.

  I put my hands on his chest and push.

  ‘No! Jordan, stop!’

  He keeps moving, his hands grabby and rough. My legs clamp together but he pulls them apart. I punch the back of his head, as hard as I can, two-fisted, kicking out with my legs. The quilt slides to the floor, limp. His elbow catches my cheekbone and I feel it sting and throb. There’s blood in my mouth that tastes like a decaying tooth. The inside of my cheek is mush.

  Our silent, grappling battle goes on until I feel myself getting weaker, like I’ve run a race. He’s all writhing muscle like a bag of pissed-off snakes and every limb I wedge between us, he finds a way around it. I should scream, but there’s no one to hear. This is how it’s going to happen.

  Then, a click, barely audible, but it may as well have been a gunshot. The door swings open.

  Jordan freezes.

  Oh, beautiful Kate.

  ‘Jesus, Kate. Can’t you fuckin knock? Get out!’

  She stands there, shock, embarrassment and betrayal on her face, as forever as ink. ‘Sorry,’ she says, and slips away, closing the door.

  That look hits me harder than my almost-rape. Is that what it was? Almost rape, disguised as a rite of passage? I clap my hands over my mouth—I’m not sure if I’ll vomit, or throw a Dodd tantrum—but I don’t want to do either. The moment calls for silence from me, and some kind of acknowledgment from him.

  He stands and runs his fingers through his hair. He picks up my clothes and throws them at me, facing away. ‘You can’t do that to a guy and just expect him to turn it off.’

  He speaks like it wasn’t him doing what he was doing. Like he had an out-of-body experience. I touch my cheek and realise how close I came to being changed forever.

  ‘So why did you stop?’

  ‘It wasn’t how I thought it would be,’ I say.

  ‘No, why did you stop sending the cards?’

  The cards? He wants to know why I stopped sending the cards? I’m sitting on the edge of his bed with my dreams and my dignity in a heap, and he wants to know why his secret admirer stopped sending him cards.

  ‘You’re unbelievable,’ I say.

  ‘I want to know.’

  I think for a moment. I may as well be honest. ‘Because you never looked at me. You didn’t even know I existed, you didn’t see me. It seemed stupid.’

  He smiles, and it helps when I realise that he looks like a wolf.

  ‘I tried to find out who sent them. I staked out the letterbox once, but that was the year you never came. I thought, for sure, you’d come back to see my face when I opened them.’

  I think of my original, perfect dream. The one about the naughty boy and the letterbox bomb. And how that dream just doesn’t fit any more.

  He pulls his shirt on and zips his fly. ‘Can I see you again?’

  In his face I can see a sliver of a future and a whole world of hurt.

  ‘What’s the point? Didn’t we just start in the middle? We never even had a beginning.’

  ‘We could try.’ He squats in front of me and touches my red cheek.

  Mum told me once that payback could set you free. The first step is hard.

  ‘Nah,’ I say. ‘We don’t fit.’

  Still, he tries. ‘We could go out. See how things go.’

  The next step is easier. ‘I don’t think so. I had you all wrong, that’s for sure.’

  He doesn’t look at me or say anything.

  Kate’s door stays closed. My hand hovers to knock, but I can’t face her. Not right now. I run out of there for the second time, but this time I leave a piece of myself behind.

  I walk home in a daze, lie on my bed and fall asleep. When I wake, I don’t move for a while. I just lie there with my eyes closed, feeling stiff and sore. It’s stifling. My lips still feel kissed.

  Instinctively, I know it’s night, but the insides of my eyelids are glowing red like I’ve fallen asleep in the sun. When I open them, the ghost stain in the corner of my room is red too. Fiery shadows dance on the wall. I turn over.

  After years of sitting there, broken, the lava lamp is working. Maybe Kate is wiser than she thinks. Maybe you have to shake things up so the pieces can fall into place. I smile and reach out a finger. Warmth seeps through the glass and the fluid blobs float around each other like jellyfish.

  Pushing.

  Moving.

  Finally.

  EIGHTEEN

  In the morning, the lava lamp is broken again. The wax lies in a blob, cold and congealed. There are faint blueish bruises on my inner thighs and my cheek is throbbing with its own pulse.

  I sit up in bed and open the slats. The air is still and the birds are quiet. An armageddon sky hangs low, almost close enough to touch. Unease runs laps in my belly.

  ‘You up yet? You’ve been in bed for over fourteen hours,’ Mum pokes her head around the door.

  ‘Soon,’ I groan.

  ‘What happened to my bread and milk yesterday?’

  Shit! ‘I got sidetracked.’

  ‘Typical. Anyway, I’m going out. Can you clean that shed for me? Get that box and s
tick it under my bed?’

  ‘What box?’ I ask, before the realisation hits me. One more day. Just until tomorrow, that’s all I need. If Feeney doesn’t come through, I’ll have to do something myself. Whatever else happens, at least I’ll be able to hand the package over when she asks for it. ‘Oh, that. Can I do it tomorrow? It’s like an oven in there.’

  ‘Yeah, tomorrow,’ she says, resigned. ‘And I’m expecting someone to drop off some forms. Can you hang around until they get here?’

  ‘What forms?’

  ‘Just legal stuff.’

  ‘Since when do you do anything legal?’

  She rolls her eyes.

  ‘Fine. I’ve got nothing better to do,’ I mumble.

  I put the pillow over my head. My mattress feels like a torture device. I’m intensely aware of every painful spot and no matter which way I turn, I can’t get comfortable.

  After a shower and breakfast I sit on the back step and strip peeling polish from my toes. I paint them Candy Pink but they look wrong—too pale and innocent—so I start over with Punk Purple. Much better. My phone beeps.

  I hope it’s from Tahnee, but the number is unfamiliar.

  Thought about u all nite. Jordan.

  My first text message from Jordan Mullen. As relationships go a first text message is a good opener. I try to dredge up an emotion other than regret but there isn’t one. Shame, maybe. We went straight to the complicated stuff, we never had the kind of beginning I wanted— everything is tainted with shame.

  I clean out the inbox on my phone. There have been no trains this morning, none that I’ve noticed. It’s eerily quiet and I feel so alone. I need Tahnee, even if it’s just to let her yell at me some more. I compose a heartfelt message in my mind but half an hour later I’m still sitting there with an empty screen. Stuff it. What do I have to lose that I haven’t already lost?

  Once I start, it’s easier.

  I’m sorry. I miss you. I haven’t been honest lately and I have so much to tell you. Pls come over. M. PS You are my best friend and I love you. Send.

  Next, I send a message to Kate.