Mark Argyros always smells of chlorine. If you opened his pencil case you’d find a secret stash of moisturiser because the pool water dries his skin out. Everybody says he’s going to the Olympics. Everybody except Mark. ‘I just want to be someone who doesn’t get up at four am,’ he told me. He did have his hand up my top at the time, though, so maybe he wasn’t thinking straight.
‘Who let you out?’ Cara juts out her chin.
‘Alveraz dismissed us early,’ says Mark. ‘What’s your excuse?’
‘Period pain,’ says Cara, loud enough for the whole school to hear.
The boys all groan. ‘Rank,’ says one. I don’t know his name – he’s a PopAsia boy-band wannabe. But he gives Cara an approving once-over. I catch her giving him the same. Please god, not another one.
Mark is working overtime to catch my eye. ‘Hey, Frankie.’
‘It’s Paul, right?’
He smiles. He’s got perfect teeth. ‘Nah, it’s Mark.’
I give myself a face-palm. ‘Right, knew it was an apostle. So, which one of these dudes is Jesus?’
I look from one scrawny sidekick to another, but all I get back from them is a collective ‘huh?’
‘Hey, aren’t you that chick who beat up Steve-o?’ says boy-band dude.
‘Is your brain constipated, dumb arse?’ Marks snaps. He steps up to me and chlorine fills my nostrils. It brings on a brain full of hey, remember that time you and Mark (censored). He’s changed a bit since we dated – taller, black hair clipped short, jawline sharper. I usually make it a point not to look at the guy, so I haven’t been keeping tabs on the good things puberty’s been doing for him. But he’s also kind of the same. He’s Mark. And for some reason we’re talking again.
‘I wanted to call,’ he says. ‘When I heard about Steve. You okay?’
I meet his eyes for zero point three seconds. I haven’t been this close to him in approximately one year, two months, five weeks, four days, three hours and thirty-seven minutes. Approximately.
I drop my gaze to my boots, frowning. ‘Well, this has been an awesome reunion but I really need to get to my AA meeting.’
Cara swots my shoulder. ‘You know that’ll be around school by period five.’
‘Fran-chess-caaaaar?’
Everyone spins round: a Year-Sevens-caught-behind-the-shelter-sheds-smoking spin. Square-Tits is poking her head out the glass doors. She crooks a finger. ‘Inside, please.’
I wonder if the adults think I’m contagious.
‘Now,’ she adds, ducking back in. Presumably for another hit of white-out.
‘Stay,’ says Mark. He grins, lightly tapping his folder to my arm. ‘Stay and tell me what Collingwood’s Most Notorious has been up to.’
I thought I’d trained Mark not to talk to me, not to look at me, not to be nice and trick me into forgetting why we broke up. But no, looks like someone needs a refresher course in Stay Out of My Life 101.
I step out of his reach. ‘I’ve mainly been killing. Mostly I do it to appease His Dark Lord – he’s such a demanding master, it’s all blood and gore and sacrifices and orgies – but sometimes I do it just for funsies.’
Only Mark laughs. Cara rolls her eyes.
‘Sounds cool,’ says Mark. ‘Maybe you can invite me along some time.’
Vinnie reads these romance novels and the guys in them are always ‘smouldering’ – their eyes burning into any unsuspecting girl, like they’re fitted with lasers or something. Obviously Mark’s been reading the same books as Vinnie because he shoots me his best smouldering gaze. Maybe his current girlfriend, Ava, is into the laser eyes but it does nothing for me. It makes me think about Year Eleven and what happened behind the science block. And Ava’s online hate campaign.
‘Well, I’m sure your girlfriend would love that,’ I say. My voice is extra perky, like I have a cheerleader stuck in my throat. ‘Maybe Ava can come too and we’ll just take turns basking in your glorious company. Apparently I’m okay with sharing.’
It could be the cold or maybe it’s a wayward spark from his smouldering eyes; either way, Mark’s cheeks flush red.
Yeah, that’s right, jerk. I haven’t forgotten.
‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ he says, an out-of-control inferno raging in his cheeks.
‘Does she know that?’
He opens his stupid gob to stutter a response but doesn’t get the chance.
Steve Sparrow comes flying toward us, jumping onto Mark’s back. ‘Speckie!’
‘Piss off, Spazzo,’ says Mark, shrugging him off.
‘Sorry, mate,’ says Steve. ‘Hope I haven’t wrecked your shot at Olympic glory.’
Cara leans into me. ‘Oh yeah,’ she says. ‘I can see how traumatised he is.’
‘Dude, check out your nose,’ says one of Mark’s sidekicks. He tries to jab it, but Steve dodges him.
‘Yeah,’ says Steve, ‘some bitch broke it.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, was that a dig at me? It was so subtle I almost missed it.’
Cara grips my arm, but she’s overreacting. There aren’t any heavy objects around. Not a Shakespearean tome to be found.
I give Cara a reassuring smile and mouth, ‘It’s fine.’
Apparently Mark is not as Zen as me, though. He steps up to Steve. ‘You call her a bitch again and I’ll break your nose a second time.’
Mark’s mates ‘oooh’ and ‘ahh’ and backhand each other across their chests. ‘Dude, it’s on,’ says one of them.
Steve holds up both hands. ‘Settle down, Swim-boy. Didn’t know you and Freakie were still a thing.’
My Zen smile is fading fast.
Mark digs the corner of his folder into Steve’s chest. ‘I just don’t like you calling her a bitch, okay.’
‘Not my fault, mate,’ says Steve, grinning. ‘It’s scientific. It’s what you call a girl dog. Look it up in the fucking dictionary.’
Clearly Mark’s mates aren’t as dumb as they look. It takes them a split second to grab Mark by the shoulders, a split second quicker than it takes Mark to swing at Steve. Steve snorts as Mark’s fist connects with air.
‘Why don’t you look up the definition for “prick”?’ says Mark, struggling in his mates’ grip.
Steve laughs. ‘Why? Am I gonna find a picture of you?’ And that’s when he pulls the most dickhead move imaginable.
He punches Mark in the guts while Mark’s arms are pinned behind him.
I don’t owe Mark anything. Really, I don’t. But I figure I owe Steve. And that’s why I grab hold of his shirt and thrust him against the office wall.
He tries shrugging free, reeling off insults at me – inventive stuff like ‘stupid bitch’.
I tighten my grip. ‘Oh please, please give me a reason to remove your balls and bequeath them to the Museum of Really Tiny Things.’
Someone grabs me around the waist and yanks me back. I kick out, my feet pedalling air – I lose my grip on Steve. I’m wriggling and yelling and digging my nails into whoever’s got me wrapped up. There’s a lot of noise and movement I can’t make out.
Except for Vinnie.
I can see her.
Watching me with an open mouth.
Turns out Red Bloody Murder was an appropriate choice of lipstick today.
‘Get her off school grounds,’ shouts Vukovic. ‘Now!’
Vinnie grabs me by the arm and wrenches. I think it was Mr Tran who had me by the waist because I glimpse corduroy as Vinnie yanks me toward the school gates.
Steve points at me. ‘She just attacked me for no reason. Psycho bitch.’
Cara’s yelling but I can’t make her words out.
Vinnie yanks me along, my wrist burning under her grip.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, but I don’t think she hears me. Maybe I only say it in my head.
When Vinnie gives the silent treatment it’s hard to ignore. It leaves a hole, which is kind of what silence is. A gap where something used to be. Laughter, chatter, noise. Love.
A Vin
nie-sized hole takes up the entire flat.
It fills the Emporium.
The drinks fridge hums extra loud to try and cover the silence. Not even the electric knife can cut through it.
Two days I have to wait until she speaks to me again.
‘Pass the milk, Francesca,’ she says.
It’ll do.
Later that night she comes into my room and sits on the end of my bed. ‘Princess? Mia principessa?’
I didn’t speak Italian when I first moved in with Vinnie and Nonna but I soon learnt. I worked out what ‘questa maledetta ragazza’ meant. It meant that my nonna apparently didn’t think much of me.
I don’t like Italian.
‘Mia principessa? Why won’t you tell me what that boy did?’
I pretend to be asleep, in my own little black hole.
‘Did he say something nasty to you?’
A cocoon. I bet caterpillars don’t hear anything wrapped up like that.
‘Did he try to hurt you?’
Vinnie’s psycho cat, Buttons, starts meowing from the corridor.
Two days of nothing and now it’s noise, noise, noise.
‘Talking about it will help,’ she says. ‘Doesn’t Daniel tell you that?’
Daniel, my shrink, tells me lots of things. Sometimes he just watches me, and waits for me to talk. ‘How does that make you feel, Frankie? Did that hurt your feelings? You can’t bottle everything up, Frankie. How much room do you think you have in there?’
Vinnie stands. ‘We’ll talk about this tomorrow,’ she says. ‘A serious talk.’
I roll over, twisting in the sheets.
I’m an astronaut in deep space, where no one can hear anything.
It’s late when I hear the first knock. I ignore it because I’m lying under my doona with Joy Division blaring and my nose stuck in one of Vinnie’s romance novels. There’re plenty of bulging man parts and sighing ladies. If I’d stolen the vodka from under Vinnie’s bed and played the euphemism drinking game I’d be dead by now.
Actually, even if I wasn’t living vicariously through trashy romance fiction I’d still ignore the knocking. It can’t be Cara because I’m grounded. I’m not even allowed to call Cara because she’s grounded too and, according to her mum, it’s my fault. What Cara chooses to do with a compass and Steve Sparrow’s penis is totally on her. Besides she only threatened to do it. And how can that be my fault if I wasn’t even there?
There’s another quick succession of taps. I’m ready to shout at Vinnie to go away when it dawns on me that what I’m hearing is tapping at my window. My window on the second storey of Terry’s Kebab Emporium.
I lay the book flat on the top of my bed and silence Ian Curtis.
There’s a long pause, a very long pause, and then – tap.
I edge off the bed and scurry across the floor like a proper spy. When I reach the wall, I slowly peek my head over the windowsill until I can see outside. A soft spray of light spills from the Emporium’s back window, illuminating the alley beside the shop.
I recognise him by his bright-blue high-tops.
I straighten and open the window, cursing as it creaks. I stick my head out and hiss. ‘What the hell, Xavier? You could have broken my window.’
He’s wearing a peaked cap under his grey hoodie and skinny jeans so tight they have to be for girls. His arm is raised, poised to throw another rock. ‘Throw down your hair?’
I try not to grin. I do not want to get sucked into this. Vinnie’s told me, in no uncertain terms, to keep away from God Knows Who. And I’m so far out of Vinnie’s good books as it is. What’s he doing here, anyway? How come he knows this is my window? I didn’t tell him I lived here. Dimples or no dimples, I’m still watching this kid for signs of demonic possession.
He juggles the rock. ‘So what’s up?’
‘Grounded, bored, pissed off and hungry. The usual. How about you? Just passing through the neighbourhood?’
He shrugs. ‘You coming down or what?’ He drops the rock. I can tell he’s grinning. He clasps his hands together in a prayer-pose. ‘Aw c’mon, you’re not going to make me beg, are you?’
Sigh. ‘Five minutes,’ I tell him. ‘I’m already in the shit.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ he says with a laugh. ‘And hurry up. My balls are freezing off.’
Nice.
__________
The gate clicks shut behind me. Xavier leans against the brick wall, tapping his foot.
‘Most people call first,’ I say.
‘Do most people bring dumplings?’
He stoops to pick up a plastic bag and grins. ‘Might be cold now, hey.’
That is definitely the way to my heart.
I grab the bag out of his hands and slide down the brick wall. We sit there, freezing our arses off in the alley, eating cold dumplings. I could get used to this.
I last four and a half minutes of small talk before I ask, ‘Are you going to tell me how you know where I live?’
He picks at a loose thread on his jeans. ‘What do you want me to say? I followed you?’
I stop chewing, mouth full of pork dumpling. ‘Wow.’
He grins. ‘Kidding. You told me you worked at the shop with the worst kebabs in Collingwood and, according to the net, this is it. So I hung out front for a bit, but Vinnie was inside and I didn’t want to talk to her because she looks scary. I came round here for a smoke and saw you through the window.’
‘You smoke?’
‘I’m quitting.’ He yanks the thread clean off. ‘Why are you grounded?’
‘There might have been an incident. I might have lost my temper.’
He laughs. ‘Like that, is it?’
‘Almost always.’
He shoves a dumpling in his mouth. ‘Last year I got suspended for punching some dickhead on the footy field. Teachers have got zero sense of humour, hey.’
‘Exactly. They shove a violent book like Macbeth down our throats but then get all antsy when you break a dickhead’s nose with it.’
He almost chokes. ‘You did what?’
‘The details aren’t important. The point is, I can categorically say that the pen really is mightier than the sword.’
He laughs. It starts me off too. Pretty soon we’re snorting dumplings and trying not to choke with laughter.
And I have to admit it feels pretty good. Not the choking part. That’s kind of uncomfortable. But the part where I get to trade stories with someone who gets where I’ve been and why I am the way I am. Because he’s that way too. That’s the really cool part.
Actually, the really cool part is that Xavier’s head hasn’t spun 360 degrees this whole time so I doubt he’s possessed. Yay.
Behind his un-possessed head is a high brick wall separating the alley from our neighbours. It used to be a Victorian terrace. Now it’s four storeys of yuppies living in dog boxes. Someone called ‘Jackknife’ has staked his claim on the wall, writing his name in bright-red paint. There used to be graffiti of a woman there: purple skin, large brown eyes, hair fanning around her in wild Medusa snakes of green, blue, orange and pink. I see glimpses of her beneath the red.
‘That’s a shame,’ I say.
He follows my gaze.
‘Used to be a really cool painting there. They should make it so you have to get a licence to do graf.’
‘It’s illegal, Frankie. They can’t give out a licence to commit a crime.’
Aw, bless his moral little heart.
‘So I got something else for you,’ he says.
‘Dessert?’
He pulls a white plastic bag out of his satchel and hands it to me. ‘It made me think of you.’
Whatever’s in the bag is thin but square. Like a big square of cardboard. I slide the plastic bag down and pull out something worth more than gold.
The picture on the front is black and white, maybe a print, maybe a drawing. A chisel-featured young man in shorts and a shirt has got his arms raised, captured right in the middle of beating
the large drum he’s got strapped to his chest. The name of the band is written in gothic lettering along the top. The name of the record, An Ideal for Living, runs vertically down the right-hand side, like it’s dripping from the ‘n’ in the band’s name. I’m holding in my hands the debut EP from Joy Division. Released all the way back in 1978, not long after they changed their name from Warsaw. Twelve minutes and forty-seven seconds of pure fuzzy punk beauty.
It’s gorgeous. Perfect. I’m certain it’s ridiculously expensive.
‘No way.’ I stare at the black-and-white drummer boy with my mouth open. I’ve been drooling over this exact record in The Vinyl Underground for ages. Phil, the guy who runs the shop, kicks me out for wasting his time on a regular basis. One time I worked up the courage to ask him how much it cost. He said, ‘More than you can afford, kid.’
‘S’posed to be rare or something,’ says Xavier. ‘Just a piece of plastic as far as I can tell.’
‘Are you kidding? They only pressed like a thousand of these so it’s ultra rare. Still bleeding it’s so rare. How the hell did you afford it?’
He looks down at his knees, hugged to his chest. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘A mate had it. He picked it up at some garage sale. Don’t reckon he knows how much it’s worth cos he traded it for four Eminem CDs. What a dickhead.’
I flip the vinyl over. It’s not like I don’t already have these songs but this is different. It’s a seriously awesome musical moment forever cast in vinyl goodness.
‘Your friend’s going to be pissed if he ever finds out how much this is worth. I mean, it must be hundreds.’
‘We could listen to it,’ says Xavier.
‘I don’t have a player.’
‘Then I guess I know what I’m getting for your birthday, hey.’ He’s watching me, shyness in the tilt of his head.
My birthday’s in December, months away. I try to picture what Xavier and I will be like by then. Once the newness has worn off and we start acting like real siblings – fighting, swearing at each other, dobbing each other in, arguing over trivial shit. I might actually enjoy it.
‘What?’ he says. Because I’m staring at him.
Frankie Page 4