I look at the photos on the wall behind her and see my Year Twelve class of last year. It feels strange seeing myself in the picture but still being here, still a schoolkid. It makes the text around the photo congratulating us on finishing seem like a lie.
‘I thought at the start of the year that I should keep a very close eye on you, make sure you’re progressing OK,’ Miss Mailey says.
She speaks slowly, like I’m a bit stupid, but I don’t think she’s trying to be patronising or anything, it’s just how she talks when she’s trying to be maternal, which doesn’t come naturally to her. Distracted, I try to work out how old she must be. She can’t be much more than forty. Maybe that’s why a lot of teachers seem to dislike her, because she seems too young to be their boss.
‘It’s good if you’re keeping an eye out for me, but I’m fine, really,’ I say.
‘I think you’re doing a very mature thing being back here this year.’
‘Well … I hadn’t really thought of it like that. Listen, is this about when I walked out of geography?’
‘No, I hadn’t heard about that. Look, Mrs Gregory says you’re easily distracted in maths, listening to your music and talking, but apart from that all your other teachers were very positive about how you’re going in class when I spoke to them.’
‘I’ll try harder in maths, I suppose.’
‘OK, that would be helpful. But it’s the big picture I’m worried about. What are your plans for the end of the year, Tim?’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to schoolies.’
‘That’s not what I was getting at. But yes — it’s probably best avoided.’
‘I want to study sound engineering,’ I say. ‘But if I can, I want to go to university first.’
‘I think that’s sensible. It’s good to have a fallback option.’
‘University isn’t a fallback option. I just want to meet people and learn stuff, and see if I can do it.’
‘Well, anyway …’
‘And uni parties are meant to be pretty epic.’
‘Tim, come on.’
‘And they have classes on how to take a joke.’
She gives me a look that seems to say: OK, I deserved that. Miss Mailey is pretty alright sometimes.
‘OK, Tim. And you’re living with your uncle — is that going to continue?’
‘Yeah, I don’t see why not. I work at his shop to pay my way. He said I can stay as long as I want.’
She purses her lips and I know she’s trying to think of some way to change the topic smoothly, but she can’t think of anything, so she just comes out and says, ‘Tim, I’ve got a letter from your father that he wants me to pass on to you.’
I watch as she takes a plain-looking envelope from her desk and places it in front of me. It has my name written on it in pen and the writing is so familiar, with this quality that I can’t quite describe or put a name to but which I don’t forget.
‘Now, officially I’m not supposed to be passing things on to students like this, but you’re an adult and you can make your own decisions about how you want to deal with this.’
‘I don’t want it,’ I hear myself say.
I’m surprised by how I feel, or more by what I don’t feel. There’s no anger, no resentment, not even really any annoyance that he’s trying to worm his way back into my life in this sneaky way. There’s still some shock that it’s gone down like this, but I can’t really feel anything at all about the letter, or about him.
‘Well, that’s your decision,’ Miss Mailey says after a long pause. ‘I’ll keep it here for you in case you change your mind.’
‘Thank you,’ I say and I watch her slide it back into the drawer under her table.
She turns to her computer to let me know I can go back to class. Back to my strange new life, back to reading 1984, and away from the unperson my father has become to me.
Mandy
Liam ambles out onto the porch and looks at me with surprise. Not unpleasant surprise. I fold my arms across my chest.
‘Why don’t you come in? It’s great to see you,’ he says.
‘Yeah, well, I’m not here for a social visit.’
‘Um, alright. We’ll go to my room, I suppose.’
We walk past his parents, who don’t seem to register my presence. He doesn’t offer me a drink, which is typical of him but also a pet hate of mine. Nobody offers you a drink when you go to their place these days.
He sits down on his bed and I take the chair in front of his computer. There’s some inane hippie pattern moving across the screen and I wonder if this is his latest phase. He’s had a lot of short-lived enthusiasms over the past year or so:
Anti-globalisation protests
B-grade film festivals
‘Witch house’ bands
Books imported from Amazon that claim to reveal how we are all being slowly poisoned and stupefied by chemicals sprayed onto food crops
My best friend.
I notice a Joy Division poster rolled up and poking ostentatiously out of his wastepaper basket. He catches me looking at it as I’m trying to decide what to say and remembering how he came to see the movie about Joy Division with Alice and me on a day that was as grey and wintry and loveless as the city in the film, and how I felt like a third wheel, the clingy best friend holding Alice back.
‘I’m completely over Joy Division,’ he declares. ‘That stuff seems good when you’re first getting into guitar music, but then you realise it’s just someone positing their masculinity in a totally emasculated and non-threatening context.’
‘Are you joking?’
‘Now I just listen to Kid A over and over again. Radiohead have reinvented what a band can be in this post-everything world. All other music is unnecessary.’
‘Hmm.’
‘But now I’m much more into Eastern philosophy anyway …’
This goes on for a few minutes and I tune out until the end of his mini-lecture.
‘Anyway, it’s good to see you on your own, Mandy. I feel like we never really got the chance to connect, you and me.’
I’m losing my nerve in the face of his incredible ability to be a douchebag, but I also feel there’s a strange kind of disconnect between how he looks and how I feel towards him. There’s something helpless about his face that leads you astray, like you can’t believe that anyone with that floppy fringe and those Clark Kent glasses could be such an emotional vandal, carelessly hurting someone you care about.
‘I don’t like how you’re acting towards Alice,’ I say.
He looks surprised again, and this time it’s in an unpleasant way.
‘She always deserved someone better than you and you were a jerk to just suddenly dump her. Now you’re messing with her emotions by calling her up and giving her false hope and I don’t think it’s fair at all.’
I look up from the spot on the floor I’ve been staring at and find it’s now him who can’t look me in the eye.
‘Look, it’s unfortunate what happened with Alice,’ he says, ‘but it just wasn’t meant to be. One day I just had a moment of clarity and realised that she wasn’t right for where I’m at in life right now.’
‘A moment of clarity? Like a drunk?’
‘I think you’ll actually find that it’s ex-alcoholics who have what’s referred to as a moment of clarity, looking back on their previous misbehaviour —’
‘You can’t make her think that you’re still fascinated by her, and then get weird on her all of a sudden.’
‘I don’t really know what you’re referring to.’
‘You called her the other night and she thought you wanted to talk with her again.’
‘Well, I did want to talk again.’
‘As friends?’
‘Honestly, I’m exploring a new relationship and I’ve felt a bit unsure of myself. I always feel more confident after talking to Alice. She gives good advice.’
‘But did you tell her all that?’
‘Well, not all
of it …’
‘So you used her for advice on your new girlfriend? That’s one of the douchiest things I’ve ever heard. Did you tell her you were seeing someone or not?’
He suddenly becomes very interested in looking at his fingernails. ‘Mandy, you seem to have become a very judgmental person.’
‘Great. Well, thanks for the lecture, it’s been so enlightening, really, but I’m going. Sorry to waste your time. Oh and by the way, Joy Division are amazing. They always were.’
That’s as close to a stinging put-down as I have, and I leave before all my courage is completely spent. I creep past his parents, who look a little bemused to see me, and as I walk to my car I see him watching me from his window, more confused than actually offended, but I don’t care. Alice, sweetie, I gave it my best shot, I really did.
When I get home, I see Tim sitting in the street outside my house and I feel a bit of a rush of excitement. But it soon fades as I can see he’s down.
‘I’ve got to tell you something that’s pretty messed up,’ he says.
‘OK,’ I say, wanting to delay him saying whatever it is. I don’t even know enough about breakups to know the warning signs, how they play out, what I’m supposed to do, what I can do to stop it. It makes me feel sick to think that this is going to be over before it began, before I could even properly call him my boyfriend. I yearn for what I didn’t realise were golden days. Last month, last week. Before whatever it was that’s gone wrong.
We walk to my room without words and I sit down on the bed. He paces around for a moment and I offer him the chair, but he doesn’t seem to notice and just sits on the floor.
‘It’s about why I’m repeating Year Twelve after everything went to shit last year.’
‘Oh?’
‘He came to our house the night there was trouble.’
For a moment I have no idea who the ‘he’ in that sentence is. It takes me a few beats to realise he’s talking about Dad. It’s sucker-punch city. All of a sudden my mind is racing. There must be so many people my dad recognises from his police days, so many times he’s walked down the street and the person walking towards him is somebody he’s seen at their worst or most vulnerable. He knows the terrible things they’ve been caught up in, the worst things they’ve done. I realise as well there are so many things I don’t know about Tim, so many questions I didn’t ask and gaps I never filled in because I was afraid of what I might find. I feel choked up.
‘What do you mean, trouble?’ I ask.
‘Well … I heard this yelling one night when Mick got home from the pub.’
‘Mick?’
‘He was — well, he is my dad. He got home late and was being really loud. I’d gone to bed, but he woke me up with his yelling. That was nothing new, but this was worse than usual. Then I heard this dull thudding noise against the wall and I knew something was really wrong, so I got out of bed and came down the hall …’
Tim
I’m finding it hard to get the words out now. I knew it would be hard, but not as hard as this, not as physically wrenching. I feel crushed, my voice is strangled and weak, unrecognisable as my own.
‘Then I saw my mum … she was slouched against the wall with blood coming from her nose and he was standing over her like he was going to kick her. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I felt like I was going to die. I can’t tell you the shock of it … I just blanked out completely, I was so mad I thought my heart was going to burst, it was racing so fast. I don’t even remember the next few minutes, but apparently I jumped on him and started throwing punches. He was drunk and out of control so he hit me back and I ended up with a cut on my face and broken ribs, but I didn’t feel any pain until afterwards, until long after it was all over. There was a massive hole in the wall and I didn’t even know how it got there or anything. It was chaos.
‘This big Pacific Islander guy called Junior lived next door and he came running into our place and grabbed Mick and pinned his arms back. He had a spare key to ours but I didn’t know that then, so I didn’t get what he was doing there, it was all really sudden and confusing. Then I was getting some frozen peas out of the freezer for Mum to stop the bleeding, she was just dripping blood onto the floor and quietly crying and it was so horrible. I thought Mick had run away or something, but he was just outside. Some of the neighbours had called the police and they happened to be in the area. They put him in the paddy wagon, then one of them came into the kitchen to see if we were alright. That was your dad.’
Mandy
His parents always argued a lot, he tells me. His dad got angry when he was drunk, which got to be more and more often. He thought that was normal.
He tells me he saw his dad slap his mum in the face really hard when he was just a young kid. They were on holiday in Bali and his parents were having an argument that was something to do with the TV. For a long time Tim thought he must have misremembered it, and his mum always told him that he was confused and that it never happened. I don’t take in the exact reasons why he says his dad slapped her this time, they seem minor and irrelevant. Pretty much everything does. My world constricts, shuts down. I feel like blood is draining from my body as Tim talks. I want him to tell me this is some sick joke, or there’s been some mistake. I want to wake up and find this isn’t real. But it’s all too real right now.
I tend to think of the people around me as characters in stories. I always imagined Dad in some cheesy cop show where his job mainly involved drinking coffee and eating doughnuts in a car while he did stakeouts. I imagine Alice in some period drama, wearing a bonnet and a shawl, living in a stately home and waiting for a handsome suitor. But there are no characters here, no remote control to cut this show off and flick to another one. This is it. There’s no way out.
Tim
After I leave Mandy’s place, I head straight for home and straight for Spirit. I keep seeing her face, shocked and small as I’m telling her what happened, and I feel guilty, like I’m dragging her into this mess she never wanted.
She didn’t say much. She couldn’t. ‘I’m so sorry’ is all I remember her saying, over and over. The words ring faintly in my ears as I put Spirit’s chain on and head for Wentworth Park.
He runs me ragged when he gets into open space, zigging and zagging out of the tunnels beneath the abandoned bridge. As he pulls me along in a blur of stars and darkness and cold, moist air, I wish once more that my life could be this simple, that I could just do one thing and block everything else out. People think racing greyhounds run because they’re chasing the mechanical rabbit, but Spirit doesn’t run for any reason. He’s not chasing anything or running from anyone. Running is just what he does, who he is.
I finally collapse in the corner of the park, and it’s black and cold and there’s probably needles lying in the grass but I can’t think clearly, can’t focus on anything at all. I start to shiver and shake and Spirit just looks at me, oblivious, his tongue hanging out and a shiny sliver of spittle around his mouth, his skinny frame poised to run again.
I feel blank.
Blackness.
Nothingness.
They say the truth sets you free, but telling it to Mandy has just made me feel exposed. And horribly, horribly alone.
Mandy
I wake up from a dream and feel ripped by reality, as if I’d hoped Tim coming over last night was a nightmare that I could shake off, but that’s the one thing I can’t do.
I think about what he said as I struggle through half a bowl of cornflakes in front of the morning news. I have a picture of him, shaken and pale, twisting a piece of my bedroom carpet around his finger as he recounted that night. It’s seared behind my eyes as I wait for my laundry.
I tear up thinking of him as I absent-mindedly look through the pantry for something else to eat and forget what I’m supposed to be doing.
I call him, not knowing what I will say.
He doesn’t answer.
I try again.
I get his voicemail and
hang up.
You can’t ever help what you feel, and I know what I feel is small and stupid. Why me? I’m wondering. I feel let down, not by Tim, but by his father who dumped him in this situation and left him to hollow out from the inside. I feel resentful that it’s my boyfriend, or my friend, or whoever he is to me now, who is damaged in this way so he can never really be his own person, free of his father’s influence. I wish we could be one of those lucky, happy couples that I see around, girls from my school who weren’t any more clever, or giving, or pretty, or interesting than me or anyone else, but who met their perfect boyfriends and disappeared into some bubble of happiness that floats around the city and bounces past the likes of me.
All I can do is wish this hurt and confusion would go away.
Over the next few days, nothing feels good.
Tim and I can’t relate properly. I send messages to him and he doesn’t reply, or he replies a day later. There’s some spark that’s been snuffed out.
After Heather’s rare good mood at our karaoke night last week, she’s returned to being sullen and throwing things around rooms. Then her claim for Centrelink benefits is rejected after a marathon phone call and she’s even more infuriated. I sympathise, but I also know from experience not to get involved.
I go to work for a shift with Neesha and my manager, Melinda, who I find more grating than ever as she whinges at me for not promoting a special offer we’re doing. Apparently you can get a shake for only one dollar when you order certain sandwiches. Melinda is rattling through the same script to each customer with identical enthusiasm, and she can’t understand why I’m not getting with the program. But there are some things more important than special one-dollar shakes. Like just about anything.
During my lunch break, I take a sandwich for the homeless man but can’t see him around anywhere. I petulantly throw it in the bin.
I run into Thora and we go for a quick coffee in the food court.
‘I’m in such a bad mood,’ she says. ‘Just found out that tool from Death On A Sunday is doing some loudmouth skank with hair extensions. I’m over it all.’
You’re the Kind of Girl I Write Songs About Page 14