Frankie

by Shivaun Plozza

  ‘Miss Lam? You’re not in my Year Seven class, are you?’ He drops his books on the desk. ‘I know I only gave you a B+ last year but surely things aren’t so bad that you have to repeat Year Seven English.’ His smirk falters when he spots me skulking in the corner where I’d jumped the second he’d walked in. He does an actual double-take. ‘Francesca?’

  I stare at him; I can’t even open my mouth.

  ‘No,’ says Cara. ‘It’s Frankie’s twin.’ Her voice is so sweet and innocent I almost believe her myself. If I have a long-lost half-brother there’s no telling how many sisters I have. ‘They look so much alike, don’t they?’

  As much as Mr Tran is a pompous old fart who loves the sound of his own voice, he’s also pretty good at communicating his feelings with a single sardonic look. Like the one he gives Cara this second.

  Cara shrugs. ‘Worth a try.’

  ‘If I leave now we can just forget this ever happened, right?’ I say.

  I can see him weighing up his options. Along with his regular teaching job he’s also the Year Nine coordinator and was witness to one of the very few times I’ve ever let anyone see me cry. Steve Sparrow had stuck his hand up in Sex Ed and suggested to the stuttering, blushing Mr Drysdale that Frankie Vega could take over the class since her mother was a – Steve didn’t get to finish because my pencil case found its way across the room and into his face.

  I got two days’ suspension and Vinnie marched down to the school with steam coming out of her ears. She stormed into the office and I could hear her going toe-to-toe with Vukovic while Mr Tran sat with me in the corridor. He didn’t say a word, he just sat there, arm around me while I cried. Not because of Steve. Because Vinnie was still going in to bat for me even after everything I’d put her through. Because she was still on my side.

  Mr Tran nods his head in the direction of the back door without a word and Cara and I grab our stuff and run.

  ‘You’re heading straight to your period five class, aren’t you, Cara?’ he says.

  ‘Absolument,’ Cara calls over her shoulder as I push her out the door.

  We’re a tangle of giggling, wide-eyed, disbelieving girls as we tumble into fresh air and land with a clang against the bike-shed wall.

  ‘Holy shit that was close,’ says Cara. The second bell sounds.

  ‘You’re going to be late.’

  A wicked smile crosses her lips. ‘So why don’t I just not turn up at all?’

  ‘No way. I’m not here to get you expelled too.’

  She waves the posters under my nose. ‘But these aren’t going to get stuck up on their own, now, are they?’ She grabs my arm. ‘We’re in this together, Frankie babe,’ she says. ‘Besides, you can’t stop me.’

  Ain’t that the truth.

  ‘Do you think it’s smart to post your number all over town?’ asks Cara. She holds a poster to the telephone pole. I wrap the sticky tape around it several times.

  ‘I told you, you don’t have to help.’ I break off the tape with my teeth.

  ‘I’m just worried about all the phone calls you’re going to get. Middle of the night, heavy breathing. “I’ve found your brother. Come and get him – he’s in my pants.” ’

  ‘We’ll be lucky if anyone even notices these.’

  It’s been next to impossible to find a wall, a pole, a shopfront or a fence that isn’t already wallpapered with adverts for yoga, sex lines, shitty bands playing in shitty pubs and rooms for rent. There’s a constant visual noise in this place. Everything shouts to be heard – the people, the posters, the traffic, the sirens. If Collingwood were a kid it’d be diagnosed with ADHD.

  I shove the posters under my coat to keep them from getting wet as we walk through the drizzle.

  ‘Do you think it’ll work?’ Cara has already asked me this. Three times.

  ‘Better than doing nothing.’ I grab her arm to stop her. ‘Here.’

  There’s a large fence cordoning off a construction site. Under the tagline Your dream starts here is an image. It’s a dreamy landscape of children playing in a garden, a four-storey apartment block in the background – it’s got that eco-friendly Scandinavian look. The kids are perfect and their parents are too. They’re talking and smiling and they’ve got white skin and are wearing pastels. Idyllic. The drug dealers are just out of frame, I guess.

  Cara and I peek between the cracks in the boards; they’ve dug way down so I guess the place is getting underground parking. Maybe a gym.

  Someone’s sprayed Open season on yuppies right above the tagline, but there aren’t many posters on the fence yet so I vote it’s a good spot. I unzip my coat and hand Cara a poster. I put the rest between my knees to free my hands while I pick at the sticky tape, trying to find the end of the roll.

  ‘Why did we cut you out of this photo?’ asks Cara.

  ‘I’m not the one who’s missing.’

  Cara holds the poster to the fence while I pull off long strips of tape and paste it down.

  Have you seen Xavier Green? Cara and I couldn’t think what else to write; it annoyed me that it rhymed.

  ‘Done.’

  I stand back to admire my work. Maybe putting up posters could be my future career. It’s probably not what Vinnie had in mind for me, but I think I’m pretty damn good at it.

  Cara links her arm through my mine and we keep walking.

  ‘So here’s the question,’ she says. ‘Do I go back for sixth period or just hang out –’

  ‘Holy shit.’ I dive behind a bin, dragging Cara with me.

  ‘What the hell?’ Cara breathes heavily. ‘I won’t skip sixth then.’

  I grab both her hands. ‘Don’t make a big deal, okay?’

  Her eyes grow wide. ‘What?’

  I peek round the side of the bin to check he’s still there.

  And when I say peek, I mean turn my head because I’m pretty much already completely exposed – this bin’s not wide enough to camouflage us both.

  ‘Nate’s across the street.’

  Cara’s eyes are so wide they’re about to pop out of her head. She’s grinning like a mad woman. ‘Where?’

  I pull her to my side. ‘See the punk poser walking like he owns the universe?’

  Cara breathes in my ear. ‘I see a bag lady, a hipster, a dude eating a pie, another hipster and oh – is that him? The tall guy in the skinny jeans who just got off the catwalk? He’s hot.’

  I screw up my nose. ‘Are you looking at the right guy?’

  Cara laughs but she’s definitely got her hot-guy face on – big eyes, flushed cheeks, biting her bottom lip. I try looking at Nate like I don’t already know who he is. Like if I had the pleasure of just looking at him from afar where he can’t open his mouth and ruin the illusion.

  He’s wearing The Jacket again today and a dark maroon shirt, buttoned all the way up. He walks down the opposite side of the street, moving pretty fast, weaving between people. Bumping lots of shoulders and earning glares and ‘oi’s.

  Cara squeezes my hand. ‘We’re following him, right?’

  My heart’s beating fast. Adrenaline. ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘For research purposes.’

  I chew my lip. ‘For Xavier.’

  Cara nods sagely. ‘Of course.’

  __________

  We’re lucky Nate is focused on wherever he’s going because Cara and I are shit at spying. We keep getting too close, then too far away, then tripping over each other. Cara giggles and I shush her. Loudly.

  ‘This is way better than Biology,’ says Cara. We hang behind a postbox and watch Nate hurrying down the street.

  I catch my breath. ‘Where’s he going?’

  ‘Ten bucks he’s going to a drug deal,’ says Cara.

  ‘Ten bucks he’s going to rob someone.’

  Cara shakes my hand. ‘You’re on. Now keep walking. We’re going to lose him.’

  At the next corner we pause and peek around.

  He’s crossed the road, hurrying toward large wrought
-iron gates. They’re really ornate, flowers and vines weaving through each other.

  We’re in a kind of industrial street so I’m starting to worry that Cara was right. And I don’t have ten bucks to lose.

  When he disappears through the gates, Cara and I grab hands and hurry across the road. We duck behind the brick gateposts and wait. Cara’s crouched behind me; I can feel her holding onto the back of my jacket.

  ‘Where is he?’ she whispers.

  I haven’t had the courage to look yet, just in case he’s right on the other side of the gate.

  Now that would be embarrassing. Not sure even Frankie Vega could talk her way out of that. Oh, hi, Nate! Fancy seeing you here. What, me? No, I’m not following you. I have an interest in local history and this building is actually the site of a particularly fascinating – No, I’m not buying it either.

  I shuffle – which is really hard to do when you’re crouched – until I get to the edge of the gatepost and then it hits me: what if he’s meeting Xavier?

  If I thought my heart was racing before, I had no idea. There’s a rave going on in my chest now: doof, doof, doof, doof. A million beats per second.

  If he is meeting Xavier, what the hell am I going to do? Hug the little prick or slap him? No time to debate – just look.

  I peek round the corner. ‘Holy shit.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well, it’s not Xavier.’

  Nate disappears through the glass front doors of what’s actually a pretty modern building, despite the ancient-looking gates. It’s all aqua glass, white rendering and lots of curves.

  Cara peers over the top of my head, like she’s frozen mid-leap-frog. ‘The Tate McClelland Hospice? They put my pop in one when he had cancer. The only way you come out again is feet first.’

  Well that sucked all the fun out of our little adventure. No one told my heart though – the doof doof in my chest is still pounding.

  We stay crouched.

  ‘Do you think he’s visiting someone?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m sure he volunteers,’ says Cara. ‘He gives the old biddies sponge baths and reads erotic novels to them.’

  ‘Not funny.’

  ‘Please,’ she says. ‘You know he’s there to steal drugs. Or buy them. My cousin got sacked from an old folks’ home because she was stealing the dementia patients’ meds and selling them to ravers.’

  She stands, pulling me to my feet. I look over my shoulder but the glass doors stay shut.

  ‘Let’s just go eat churros,’ says Cara. She’s trying to pull me away from the gate, but I’m not budging. ‘Spying is really hungry work.’

  ‘But shouldn’t we wait and see what happens when he comes out?’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘I can tell you that without waiting. He’ll have a pocket full of drugs. Which means two things. One: he’s a dickhead, and two: you owe me ten bucks worth of churros.’

  I whack her arm.

  ‘I skipped school for you,’ she says. ‘Don’t be a Bitchy McBitch.’

  A car zooms past, splashing up water. We both stick up our fingers.

  ‘C’mon,’ she says. ‘Xavier’s not here, so what are we hanging around for?’

  Good question.

  She tugs me along the street. I’m a dead weight, looking back at the hospice while she drags me toward donuts.

  I wonder if the Tate McClelland Hospice is anything like Peaceful Pines where Nonna Sofia is. I hate that place. It stinks of pee and the people there scare me. I know it’s not their fault and one day it’ll be me sitting there wondering what day it is, but it freaks me out. There’s this guy who’s always in the shared lounge. It’s like his skin is melting – it droops, as if it’s already on its way out, detaching from the rest of his body because it knows death is so close. Nonna’s not so bad. She asks us every time when we’re going to take her home and it always makes Vinnie cry. ‘Why do you go there if it makes you cry?’ I ask her. She never answers.

  Cara and I are arguing about whose shout it is when it starts raining. We run, Cara squealing about her hair getting wet.

  At the corner of Johnston Street I stop.

  ‘Come on,’ she shouts. She’s got her jacket lifted over her head.

  On the traffic light is the first poster we stuck up. It’s been maybe an hour. Maybe two. Someone has drawn all over it in black marker. Xavier’s got a cock and balls on his face, devil horns and a Hitler moustache. The rain is making the ink run. You can’t read my phone number anymore.

  Cara grabs my arm. ‘Hurry up.’

  I let her drag me away but I’ve lost my appetite.

  I sort my clothes into piles: keep, donate, burn.

  Most things end up in the keep pile even though it’s all stuff I’d forgotten I owned. I try on pretty much everything, struggling to remember why I bought it and convincing myself it really does look good. Who wouldn’t want an oversized jumper with a giant middle finger on the front? And those acid-wash boyfriend jeans are so going to come back in style.

  ‘How are you going?’ asks Vinnie, pushing the door open and peeking in.

  My stack of ‘keep’ clothes has tumbled and is blocking the door. I scoop the pile out of the way.

  ‘What the hell are you wearing?’ she says. She pushes in further and blinks at me. ‘You’re wearing a dress.’

  I look down at myself: it’s blue, floral, kind of tight and with a sweetheart neckline. ‘Yeah. It’s going into the donate pile.’

  ‘Looks pretty on you.’

  ‘Then it’s definitely going.’

  I catch a t-shirt I want to ditch trying to sneak back into the ‘keep’ pile so I separate the stacks.

  ‘Not that I’m complaining,’ says Vinnie, ‘but what brought on this little cleaning spree?’

  I unzip the dress and pull it over my head, dropping it on top of the ‘donate’ pile. ‘Just thought it was time.’

  Vinnie raps her long nails against the doorframe. ‘It’s Friday,’ she says.

  I hold up a pair of black jeans. There’s a rip in the knee of one leg that almost goes the whole way round. I drop it in the ‘keep’ pile.

  She’s trying to look casual. Failing. ‘What are you doing tonight?’

  ‘Working.’

  ‘After work?’

  ‘Grounded.’

  ‘So you’re actually planning on sticking to the rules?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Cara not doing anything?’

  ‘She’s grounded too.’

  ‘Ha! What she do? Get an A minus?’

  ‘Talking in class. Her third detention this month. I want to ask her mum if she still thinks I’m the bad influence.’

  Vinnie eases onto her knees and starts sorting through the ‘donate’ pile. ‘This is so pretty.’ She’s holding a pink skirt Nonna bought me a few Christmases ago. Nuff said. ‘You’re keeping this, aren’t you?’

  I grab it out of her hands and dump it on the ‘burn’ pile.

  She sighs. ‘How about What’s His Face? I’m guessing you plan on seeing him again?’

  Hey, Xavier has graduated from God Knows Who to What’s His Face. That’s a big step up.

  ‘I haven’t heard from him.’ All too true. And all I can do right now is wait for my genius poster idea to take effect. I expected the phone to ring straight away – even if it was just the crazies. But nothing. Not for two whole days. Which has given me plenty of time to go searching for more pieces signed with X Marks. I’ve found five, including purple-skinned girl and bird-flipping angel. The angel piece was even cooler in the daylight, with a multi-coloured geometric background and a creepy all-seeing eye just above her head.

  Vinnie’s folding the clothes in my donate pile but she’s watching me.

  I grip a t-shirt in my hand. It’s faded black, holes all through it but it’s one of my favourites. ‘What if . . .’

  I drop the tee into the keep pile and grab another black one and pull it on. I guess I have a style.

  ‘What
if what?’ asks Vinnie.

  I try sorting through my words in my head – keep, donate, burn. It takes me a while but Vinnie just waits.

  ‘What if someone you knew might have done something bad,’ I say. ‘And maybe they weren’t answering their phone and no one knew where they were. Would you worry about that?’

  Vinnie watches me with her forehead all crinkled. ‘Maybe,’ she says, speaking slow and careful. ‘Maybe they don’t want to be found. Maybe someone like that – someone who does bad things – is better out of your life.’

  ‘I’m speaking hypothetically,’ I say.

  She nods. ‘Of course.’

  ‘And I don’t mean bad like murder or anything. I mean maybe he’s a bit misguided. Like, he doesn’t have a clear sense of right and wrong. Because no one taught him.’ I think about Bill Green. What kind of dad would he be? Would he have marched Xavier all the way to school and made him apologise to the girl whose lunch he buried in the sandbox because she used his pencil without asking first? I look at Vinnie. ‘What if part of the problem is the guy just wanted to do something nice so that I – so that people would think he was good?’

  Vinnie grips hold of my hand and squeezes. ‘Whoever he is, I’m sure he’ll show up eventually. And if he doesn’t? His loss.’

  She smiles and I think about asking her the biggest ‘what if’ in my head. What if he can’t show up? What if . . .

  I reach for the sweetheart dress, saving it from certain death by plopping it on top of the keep pile. ‘Don’t say I never listen to you.’

  She gives me a lopsided grin and pats my cheek, hoisting herself to standing. ‘That’s my girl. You just focus on what you’re going to say at that meeting and everything else will sort itself out.’

  I nod. I own a blue, floral, too-tight dress with a sweetheart neckline – what can go wrong?

  __________

  Vinnie heads downstairs to open and I grab my mobile, scrolling through the list of numbers until I hit the one I think is Marzoli’s. So much for burying his business card in bin juice.

  I stare out the window while I wait for him to answer: rooftops are my rolling hills and chimneys are my towering trees. What if, what if, what if.