Outside In

by Chrissie Keighery

  outside IN

  outside IN

  BY Chrissie Keighery

  Outside In published in 2009 by

  Hardie Grant Egmont

  85 High Street

  Prahran, Victoria 3181, Australia

  www.hardiegrantegmont.com.au

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

  A CiP record for this title is available from the National Library of Australia

  Text copyright © 2009 Chrissie Keighery

  Cover and text design copyright © 2009 Hardie Grant Egmont

  Cover illustration by Sarah Hankinson

  Cover design by Sonia Dixon

  Text design by Ektavo

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Author dedication:

  To Johnno. Our friend.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  JORDAN

  LEE

  SAM

  MEREDITH

  JACK

  CECILIA

  RENEE

  OUTSIDE IN

  AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  jordan

  Jordan was back at school. After her rest.

  She lay down, reclined, feeling the spikes of grass through her school dress. Orange Sunny Boy drops watered the ground from her uplifted hand. The slope overlooking the basketball court was dry and brittle, other than the dripping Sunny Boy drops. The bright sun promised more of the same.

  Wednesday. Which still came after Tuesday and before Thursday, as though everything was right with the world.

  As though the sound of her mum tossing and turning in the king-sized bed, alone, didn’t matter one bit. As though the pieces of Jordan’s life could be picked up by a breeze and that was just the way it went.

  Whatever.

  Jordan sat up slightly, leaning back on her elbows. The boys were bouncing and tossing and running and sweating. Jordan didn’t get it. Why bounce and toss when you could just lie back and watch the clouds making pictures in the sky? Why run and sweat when you could just sip the melting juices of a sweet Sunny Boy?

  ‘Jack just got another goal!’ Lee’s voice, as was usual when she talked about Jack, was way over the top. The pitch always went an octave higher. Talking to him, she kind of sounded like a duck.

  ‘Hooray for Jack, then,’ Jordan said out of the side of her mouth. She moved her wrists to dance invisible pompoms. ‘Rah, rah, rah.’

  Lee tucked a wild blonde curl behind her ear and blinked three times. She was ready to take offence. To wonder if Jordan was hanging it on her.

  Lee, how she cared about everything. Exhausting.

  ‘Come on, Jordy. Let’s have a game with the boys?’ Lee was quick to hurt. Quick to forgive. ‘If you feel like it, that is.’ Her head loomed over Jordan.

  ‘Yeah, let’s. We’ve only got twenty-two minutes of lunchtime left,’ agreed Cecilia, straight mousy bob leaning into Lee’s big blonde mop. ‘I think it would be good for you. Unless you don’t want to, Jords? It’s up to you, really.’

  ‘Australia has voted,’ Meredith joined in, amping up the volume. Her arms waved frantically, blocking out the last patch of blue sky.

  Jordan rolled back. She played dead. Her friends were all so fricking … enthusiastic. So pumped up.

  She glanced up the slope at a chunky silhouette between sun and shade. A girl, sitting alone. Not bothered. For the first time, Jordan wondered what it would be like to be one of the anonymous kids. One who didn’t get hassled like this. Peaceful, perhaps? It was a thought she would have liked to continue.

  To float in.

  To drown in.

  But her friends were too annoying to let her be. Within seconds, there were three of them pulling at her arms. Very unbalanced it was, too. Meredith and Lee on the right, and tiny Cecilia trying to take the burden of her left side.

  ‘All right already,’ Jordan groaned. ‘Do you reckon I can have my arms back, though? I might need them for the game, you know.’

  ‘You think that would really make a difference, Miss Unco?’ Meredith stirred.

  Jordan rolled her eyes. There was a little pang as she walked down the slope to the basketball court. A sort of reprieve that still happened sometimes. When, for a moment, she forgot what had happened. What punishment he had doled out. While Jordan and her mum tried to figure out their crime.

  Wednesday. From now on, Wednesday would be the day to toss her life into an overnight bag and lug it over to his new flat. She hadn’t packed Zebra. The toy she’d taken to every camp, every sleepover. The one that sat on her pillow at her real house, one eye falling out of its socket and barely any stripes on its worn-out fur.

  What was the point in pretending? Soft toys and beddy-byes were completely over.

  ‘Jordan, could you hang back after class? Just for a chat?’ called Mr Moulton, cowboy/English teacher, over the sound of the bell. He had retro sideburns and slicked-back hair.

  Jordan shrugged. Kept her head down so she couldn’t see the others as they left the classroom. The door slammed closed. Looking up she could see the backs of three heads through the glass pane. Her friends were hanging around. Staying close.

  Mr Moulton sat next to her on a plastic chair. Stroked his sideburns while her stomach constricted, tensed. She wondered if everyone had guessed what he was going to talk to her about.

  ‘Jordan? Here are the worksheets you missed out on,’ he said. ‘You’ve been away a bit lately, hey? How was your –’

  ‘Rest?’ Jordan finished for him. ‘It was very restful, thanks. Very chilled.’

  She thought about her week in limbo land. The days they’d given her off to recover from the shock had revolved around Dr Phil. She could get the show three times a day on Foxtel. BBQ Shapes and Fanta and the catchcry of the TV psychologist. ‘I want you to get excited about your life!’

  With a supply in front of her, she could just veg out on the leather couch. She could reach out to the coffee table for sustenance while they walked out their pathetic little lives on screen for the world to see. Shoplifters and alcoholics. Wife-beaters.

  Dr Phil would tell them what to do. ‘You’re not an evil man. What’s happening here is that this family needs a hero!’

  She had fantasised about parading her parents on Dr Phil’s stage. Making them sort out their crap in the neat space of an hour. Including ad breaks.

  ‘You,’ he would say to Jordan’s dad, ‘need to work out what’s important here. If you have to quit your job so you have more time for the family, that’s what you need to do!’

  Her dad would nod in agreement. He would mentally write his resignation letter. He would look lovingly at Jordan’s mum on the stool beside him. He would glance out into the audience, at Jordan in the front row, and give her a wave. And it would all be OK again.

  Except it wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘This family needs a hero!’

  But this family wouldn’t get one. Must have got lost in the post.

  ‘Jordan, I heard you’ve been having some problems at home,’ Mr Moulton continued, bringing her back.

  ‘Is that a euphemism, Mr M? I’m getting pretty good at them,’ Jordan said, gathering strength, using the word he’d taught them. ‘Are you talking about my parents splitting?’

  ‘I guess it is a euphemism,’ he said slowly, and she thought he might back off. But he didn’t.

  ‘Jordan, it’s natural to feel confused and sad when your parents split,’ he said, and he was reinforcing her words. As though they meant something. ‘I just
want you to know that I’m here if you need to talk. And I can also give you a referral to Ms Spicer. She’s good, you know.’

  Ms Spicer was the school counsellor. She was trained to talk. To draw out words.

  Her parents had talked to Jordan. Her dad particularly. How kind of him to inform her, now, when he’d already made his decision. He talked about how they’d both tried. But they hadn’t been happy for a long time. And everyone deserved to be happy, didn’t they? It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. They would both continue loving her, and being her parents and blah, blah, blah.

  He probably got the whole speech from a handbook. The Idiot’s Guide to Divorce.

  It had looked like a massive effort for her mum to lift her head from her hands. Her mum had looked different as she nodded and smiled a pale, fake smile.

  ‘I’m right, Mr M. I’m good,’ Jordan told him.

  She could see her friends were still waiting for her. She pointed. He nodded. She escaped.

  ‘Are you OK, Jordy?’ Lee fussed, her blue eyes full of almond-shaped concern. ‘Because you can talk about it, you know. It can help. When you let it go.’

  ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that,’ Jordan said, brushing away Lee’s consoling hand. She wasn’t about to parade her shit. Not to Mr M. Not to the school counsellor.

  Not even to her friends.

  ‘Let me guess. Mr Moulton wanted you to see the school shrink cos you’ve been such a retard lately,’ said Meredith, doing hand claps that didn’t connect. Her crossed eyes and lips-in-a-cat’s-bum shape were signature Meredith style.

  It brought a slow smile to Jordan’s face.

  Maybe everything was a joke, in the end? Nothing really seemed to matter.

  Anymore.

  Jordan wasn’t sure she wanted her dad to get out of the car. But she wasn’t sure she wanted him to sit there either, window down, tapping away to some stupid out-of-date song on some stupid out-of-date radio station. Especially in his suit and tie.

  She opened the boot and chucked in her overnight bag and her school bag.

  ‘Hi, Poss,’ her dad said, as she slid into the passenger seat. He was acting as though it was a regular event, this leaving work early to pick her up. What a Committed Daddy. Give the man an Oscar.

  Jordan reached out and switched stations.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Thought I’d cook carbonara,’ her dad said, motioning backwards. There were two plastic 7-Eleven bags sitting on the back seat. When her mum did the shopping there were loads more and she always used green enviro-bags.

  ‘I just have to finish off some paperwork. It’ll take an hour. Two at the max,’ he said.

  Some things never changed.

  They took a side street, and then turned onto the highway. Part of her pulled in the opposite direction, towards her real house. Ta-ta. Bye.

  Jordan stared out the window. Closing her eyes, she felt her head bumping on the glass in a rhythm.

  ‘It’s not far away. We take the next exit, and then it’s just up here.’

  He should be one of those navigating systems you stick on the dashboard.

  There was a tiny park at the bottom of the street. A little triangle with swings, a slide and a seesaw. The grass underneath it was impossibly green. Like an apology for the rest of the street being lined with concrete and bricks.

  Her dad pulled into a car park underneath the building. It was dark and cold, a place that locked out sunshine. Her dad opened a door leading up some stairs. It was an echo chamber in there.

  Jordan held onto the railing. Her dad walked in front, carrying the shopping and her overnight bag. The one that didn’t have Zebra inside it.

  In the foyer was a tricycle and a two-wheeler. They were covered with streamers and shiny bells. As if childhood existed.

  Jordan knew better. Childhood was just another illusion. Sooner or later, it would crack.

  Another flight of stairs. And another. ‘Now, you know this is just short term, Poss?’ he said over his shoulder. ‘It’s just temporary.’

  Like everything.

  ‘Can I use your laptop?’ Jordan asked as he put the key in the door.

  ‘Sorry, Poss. I need it to finish my work. Why don’t you settle in?’

  Jordan wandered down the hall and looked around the spare bedroom. ‘Why don’t I settle in?’ she asked herself aloud. Like a crazy person.

  She recognised a cakky brown doona and pillow case stolen from the bottom of the linen press at her real house. The scent of Earth’s Dolphin, her mum’s choice of washing powder. Safe for the Earth and great in cold water!

  The doona set was taken out when guests came to stay. Mainly when Nana arrived, dressed in bowling whites and equipped with little jars of Darrell Lea lollies. Bo Peeps for breakfast, dished out by kind old hands from under that doona. Secretly given. Secretly scoffed until only the blacks remained, stuck in little clusters at the bottom of the jar.

  Where would Nana stay now? Now that her dad had custody of the doona, and only one spare bed?

  Jordan pushed away the question and looked around the room.

  There was a chest of drawers, and an old wardrobe with the door half-open. Inside there was a heap of wire coat hangers with nothing on them.

  She unzipped her bag and changed into track pants and a T-shirt. She hung up her school dress. The she put a hand back into the bag and pulled out the photo.

  Should she put it up? On top of the chest of drawers? On the windowsill, between the two dead blowflies?

  Jordan sat on the cakky brown doona. Like a stranger in a hotel.

  The photo was of her mum and dad, Jordan standing in between them. They wore giant grins. Jordan’s looked like a mini version of her dad’s. Her mum’s dark eyes in her own face. The three of them were on skis, paused to race down a mountain.

  We haven’t been happy for a long time.

  It wasn’t taken that long ago, the photo. Maybe a year. It was on the holiday they’d been on before he started the dream job. Were their smiles faked, like everything else?

  Jordan tucked the photo back into her bag. She noticed she’d forgotten her pjs.

  How was she supposed to kill time in this hole? Smother it with a cakky brown pillow case? Hold it while it thrashed its last breaths?

  The floorboards creaked as she walked down the hall.

  The tapping on the keyboard stopped for a moment. He even turned around to face her. ‘Do you have everything?’

  ‘Forgot my pjs.’

  ‘Oh.’

  His body was half-turned back to the screen. His fingers were creeping towards the keyboard.

  ‘I might just go down to the park for a while,’ Jordan said.

  She could smell his relief.

  ‘OK, Poss. Go and have a play,’ said his back.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she muttered under her breath to the background of tapping keys. ‘I shall frolic joyfully in the sunshine.’

  Jordan opened the front door and looked around the landing. A sensor light registered her presence. There were two other doors on the landing. Two other flats. Other lives inside, she supposed. Pretend families with pretend children?

  She made her way down to the second landing. No sensor this time. Instead, a window. Jordan paused, she sat down. A poem her mum used to recite bounced around in her head. ‘Halfway Down.’ Halfway down the stairs.

  A poem about being contented. About being happy, just to be. Wherever you were.

  Her dad used to join in. When they were.

  A family.

  Jordan had known it off by heart. Now, the words were hazy. Ghost words …

  From her spot on the landing, Jordan could see the triangle park. An old man let his silky terrier off the leash. She could see him motion for the dog to sit. When it did, he pulled something out of his pocket. The dog leapt up to his hand.

  The old man patted the dog and started all over again.

  ‘That’s Frank. Dog’s called Wanda.’


  Jordan felt her body jerk. She hadn’t heard anyone coming.

  ‘Jack?’ she asked, looking up. Which was pretty stupid because it was definitely Jack. ‘What are you doing here?’ Her voice would have sounded more annoyed if she could be bothered.

  The flat was another universe. A parallel life. She shouldn’t have intruders from the other part of her life. That Jack was here, basketball Jack, seemed very wrong.

  Jack didn’t seem to notice her tone. He sat beside her, his extra-large sneakered feet tapping the landing.

  ‘Ha. I guess your dad had the same idea as mine,’ he said. ‘Not so far to school. Short-term rental available. Although my dad’s probably going to be here forever. I used to come every Monday night but had to change to Wednesdays. Alternate weekends too, depending on sport. You?’

  Jordan shook her head. It was none of his business when she had to stay in this dump. It was none of anyone’s business.

  ‘Frank’s got no idea how to train that dog,’ Jack added when Jordan didn’t answer.

  Jordan stared out. Wanda was up on two legs, spinning around. Sometimes, she’d get to four or five spins, like a ballet dancer, before falling back to the ground, regaining her balance and starting all over again. The treats were coming thick and fast.

  ‘Frank gives her treats for everything,’ Jack went on. There was criticism in his voice, but also something else. Jordan could tell that Jack liked Frank. She could tell that Jack even quite liked that Frank was too easy on his dog.

  ‘He’s a cool old man. Come on, I’ll introduce you,’ Jack said.

  He took the stairs, three at a time. Kind of bounced down them. Jordan wasn’t quite sure why she was following him.

  ‘Hey, good game today,’ he said, turning back as he reached the stairwell.

  ‘Yeah, I bet you don’t know too many people who can catch a ball with their face,’ Jordan replied.

  Jack’s laugh echoed.