I stare at the ceiling and all my guts twist and tense with embarrassment, and then gratitude. I’m grateful that drunk Ava is occasionally capable of making the right call. I’ve done a fair amount of stupid shit in the grip of ‘grief-based choices’ lately but I’m glad I don’t have to add having sex in a playground to the list.
I remember telling Lincoln I wanted to do something fun and him saying, ‘Aren’t we doing something fun?’ before I stood up too quickly, which made the egg spin and me fall out, landing hard on my hands and knees. I look at my hands. They’re puffy and red and they sting from the bits of gravel and sand still in them. My knees too, covered in dried blood where I’ve met with something sharp.
I remember Lincoln piggybacking me through the park and then getting a phone call about some other party. Him rolling a joint and us walking for what felt like hours and how he tried to hold my hand but it hurt so I pushed him away and he got pissed off with me. Then I remember screaming at him in the street and crying. Messy loud crying and him trying to get me to be quiet, and holding me as I pushed him away.
I remember getting to some guy’s house who I didn’t know and feeling really shit and drunk and stoned and sick and telling Lincoln to take me home.
I turn my head and look at him. He’s sound asleep and breathing through his nose. His eyelashes are so long. I feel nauseous and sad. It’s pretty much how I’ve felt since it happened.
Ever since Kelly and Lincoln’s dad rang my dad at 5:37 a.m. I know because they called the house phone; it woke me up and I immediately checked the time. Seven minutes later Dad came into my room and whispered, ‘Aves, are you awake?’ I knew immediately that something wasn’t right but I thought something must have happened to my grandparents because Dad’s eyes were full of tears that had just started to spill onto his cheeks. I sat up and stared at him and he swallowed so hard that I could see the muscles in his throat move. It was like everything slowed down waiting for him to tell me that something had happened to my Yiayia, so when he finally said her name, when he finally said, ‘Kelly has—’
It was a wrecking ball to everything in my life up until that point. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t really hear what he was saying, just the rush of my brain whirring, liquidising, dropping down into my heart, making it so heavy it broke. Only my heart didn’t just break, it shattered. Complete oblivion. She died. That’s all he said.
‘Kelly has—Aves. She died.’
She died thirty-one Sundays ago. I know because I’ve counted. And now, every Sunday feels like this. Starts like this. All thirty-one of them.
My hand’s wrapped in ridiculously obvious bandages because of my stupid drunken stack on Saturday night. The left one is infected. I had to go to the doctor and get antibiotics and then another lecture from Dad about me basically not being a dick anymore.
‘I know you’re hurting. I’m hurting too,’ he said. ‘It hurts. But you’re not an idiot, Ava. Don’t start acting like an idiot now because you’re sad. Life goes on, kiddo. You’ve got to find a way.’
Part of me knows he’s right, I have been acting like an idiot, but the other part of me is just pissed off with him for not understanding. For making out like I should know how to behave when my best friend dies. I feel like I’m doing the best I can just by gritting my teeth and getting on with it. In fact I’m pretty bloody proud of myself and how I’ve managed these last few months, because if you’d told me that Kelly was going to die I probably would’ve told you that I would’ve died too. In some ways I think I have. Parts of me, anyway.
‘Why am I paying you if you can’t even work today?’ Ricky’s shaking his head as he looks at my bandaged hands. I can’t get them wet, which also conveniently means I can’t wash any of the gross salad buckets in the sink, or hose the floors or clear the drains.
Before this year, the thing that would make me the saddest was if I was rostered to work on a Friday or Saturday night, because working at Magic Kebab on a Friday or Saturday night is its own special kind of hell. Drunk people yelling stupid shit about ridiculous things, being obnoxious and gross. Guaranteed some girl in a micro skirt would spew at the entrance and then try and fight another girl, holding her glittery heels in her hand. While their disgusting boyfriends stand on the side and make dumb comments about joining in.
If I had a dollar for every time a meathead guy said the words, ‘Smile, beautiful,’ to me…Well, I’d no longer have to work weekends at Magic freaking Kebab.
There are some highlights, though. Like Ricky, who inherited the business from his dad and is the funniest person I know. Dead set. Ricky has a dickhead policy. The dickhead policy is simple because there are two levels of dickhead: ‘Class A dickheads’ and ‘Class B dickheads’. If you are a Class A dickhead we fill your kebab with jalapenos or Ricky’s homemade hot chilli sauce. The pleasure of watching stupid drunk girls with their tongues lolling out trying to work out why their faces are on fire is totally my favourite thing ever. Class B dickheads just get charged more. Ricky always works the till and he adds an extra ‘0’ to their order. So their $8.50 kebab costs them $85.00. They never realise. Ever. On those nights Ricky gives us cash-in-hand tips.
Okay, so maybe Magic Kebab isn’t actually that bad.
When Kel died, I found a bottle of homemade chilli sauce on my doorstep with a note that read: For the dickheads. Love Ricky.
‘Because you love me,’ I say to him now.
‘It’s true.’ Ricky pauses, his big round face nodding as beads of sweat roll down the sides of his moustache. ‘Now clean the windows.’ With one swift push he jams a bottle of window cleaner in my hand and struts off humming.
I like cleaning windows. And mirrors. It’s a weird sense of satisfaction because it’s really clear if you’ve done a good job. Like actually bloody clear. So many things in life don’t feel like that. Especially at school where there are contradictions all the time. They want you to speak up for yourself, but only if you say what they want to hear. They’re constantly talking about maturity and us behaving our age but then they’re trying to make us choose what we want to do for the rest of our life right now. It’s so dumb.
Dad and I had to sit in Mrs Bryan’s office the other day while she told me that all of the staff and students were concerned for me and how they really wanted to do everything in their power to help, but only if I stuck to the school rules and behaved like nothing had happened and didn’t tell everyone to get fucked in assembly. She made it clear she was doing me a favour by not taking further action for my emotional outburst. Then she told me I needed counselling. Dad sat quietly, taking it all in. Occasionally apologising or thanking her for understanding or explaining that we’re doing our best to navigate this difficult time.
I just sat with my arms folded, scoffing at all the bullshit. They don’t know what to do. The school keeps palming it off. I don’t want therapy—a lot of fucking good that did Kelly. And I couldn’t care less if I upset a bunch of Year 7 students. I am upset. That was the whole point.
The strategy they came up with was for me to go back to doing a shortened timetable for a few weeks. Mrs Bryan told us she was concerned about how much school I’d missed and even suggested that I might have to repeat. Dad wasn’t aware of how much school I’d actually missed because I keep wagging and coming to work instead.
I used to do okay at school. Bs and Cs in most of my subjects. I don’t love any of them though, and I have no idea what I want to do when I leave. No idea. Not like Kel. She had it all mapped out.
‘I’ll give myself ten months to save and then I’ll leave in October on my birthday. There’s no point going until we’re eighteen anyway.’ Kelly looked at me, flicking through a magazine sitting on my bedroom floor, her long dark ponytail swishing.
‘I’ll be away for at least five years and I’ll tick off all of Europe. I’ll meet some cute English guy and fall crazy in love and then he’ll come back here with me and we’ll buy a Transit van and travel around the whole of Australia.
He’ll then, like, propose to me at Ayers Rock and we’ll get married and like have a million babies and how funny is it going to be when we’re mums?’
I laughed at her and scrunched my nose. ‘Some cute English guy?’
‘He’ll be my best souvenir, plus Aussie guys are so gross. I can’t wait to see the Eiffel Tower and I want to do that tomato festival in Spain and run with the bulls. Girls aren’t meant to do it, but fuck that,’ she said, jumping to her knees and leaning on the edge of the bed, ‘and I want to go to Amsterdam. It’s legal to get stoned there, Aves, like on the street, and there’s no cars, just bicycles. And you’ll be there.’
‘For five years?’ I laugh.
‘I’m not going on my own. Besides, what else are you going to do?’ She nudged my leg with her hands so I’d scoot over and we’d both fit. ‘Come, Aves. We can meet brothers and we won’t get a Transit van, we’ll get an old bus and we’ll transform it. Can you imagine?’
‘We would have the best time.’ I laughed, thinking about all the sorts of crazy shit we would get up to.
‘We could have a double wedding.’ She grabbed my hands, looking like she was about to explode with excitement. ‘Would you have a double wedding?’
‘With you?’ I squealed. ‘Oh my god! We can walk down the aisle together with our dads.’ I stared at her, mouth wide.
‘Holy shit, Aves,’ Kelly shrieked, ‘our life is going to be so amazing.’
Our life is going to be so amazing. Right.
I’m completely in my own world when Ricky yells from the back of the shop, ‘There’s a new dishie starting tonight. Help him out.’ He steps to the side and standing next to him is a tall, skinny guy with curly hair that covers his forehead but it’s short at the back and sides. He’s got one arm wrapped around his elbow and he’s biting his lip. He looks nervous. I roll my eyes at Ricky.
‘This is Gideon!’ Ricky shouts, and the new guy turns and looks at me then immediately looks away. Dishwashers at Magic Kebab never last because it’s the shittest job ever. They all realise within a couple of weeks that washing up salad dishes and crusty meat trays and hosing out manky drains is nothing like the easy and luxurious position that Ricky led them to believe it would be, and they quit. All of them. As I make my way out the back I wonder how long this guy will last. I’m going to guess not very long by the looks of him.
‘You’re new.’ A girl appears and slams a bright purple apron into my chest. When I finally have a chance to register her face I realise I know who she is.
I swallow. ‘Yes.’ I’m feeling nervous in the way that new things and pretty girls combined make me feel. I start sweating.
‘Welcome to Magic Kebab.’ She looks at me and I stare at her and in my head I’m screaming at myself to be normal and not to be weird and to say something funny, but all that comes out is ‘Thank you?’
After my last session with Robbie he made a phone call to a friend of his, Ricky, who owns Magic Kebab, and asked if he needed any help. It turned out he did and I was told to drop in and have a chat, which turned out to be more like a short encounter than a chat.
‘What’s your name, Skinny?’ Ricky asked as soon as I’d walked into the shop.
‘Gideon.’
‘Gideon? Okay. Your job would be to wash up, sweep, maybe cut some tomatoes. No serving. All out the back. Good?’ Ricky turned around and went back to shaving a big doner kebab.
‘Yeah.’
‘You can wash up, yeah?’
‘Yes. Yup.’
‘Good. Come on Thursday afternoon. Wear old clothes. Good? Good.’ And he walked out the back and left me standing there on my own. I wouldn’t have got so worked up about the other job interview if I knew that’s how easy they were.
‘What school do you go to?’ she asks.
‘Yours,’ and she raises her eyebrows at me. Great first impression, Gideon, you look like a stalker.
‘What grade?’
‘Twelve.’
‘Are you new there too?’ she asks. Excellent. She has absolutely no idea who I am. Why would she, though? I have no idea who I am. I don’t know why Ava Spirini would have any idea who I am.
‘I came in Year 9.’ I follow her as she walks a few steps and waits for me at the cold-room door.
‘That’s not new. What’s your name?’
‘Gideon.’
‘Where is that from?’ She wrenches the big silver latch on the door and forces it open and I just stand watching her. She’s really pretty. Like really, really. She has wild sun-kissed brown hair that twists and curls and sits on her shoulders, but with this blunt fringe that just makes her dark eyebrows and big, big brown eyes stand out more. She has olive skin and broad shoulders and she’s short. She only comes up to my chest.
‘A musical,’ I say.
‘Really?’
‘And the Bible,’ I mutter and wish I hadn’t.
‘What’s it about?’
‘Well, there’s this guy named Jesus and he—’
‘No, the musical.’ She smirks just a little. I know because I watch the corner of her mouth ever so slightly twitch. It only lasts a couple of seconds but I know it happened. I know it happened because my gut kind of tensed when it did. While I’m busy thinking about the feeling in my stomach my mouth starts a ramble that I have absolutely no control of.
‘It’s about these seven lumberjack brothers who live in the mountains who kidnap seven women and they cause this big avalanche so that the women can’t be rescued’—I pause, very briefly thinking that I’m finished, but no, my mouth has other ideas—‘then they spend the winter making the girls fall in love with them.’
‘How?’
‘What?’
‘How do they make the girls fall in love with them?’ Ava steps onto a small ladder to get something down off the top shelf and her T-shirt lifts up a bit, revealing her back, the waistband of her denim shorts and her undies. They’re blue. I close my eyes and quickly look away. Come on Gideon, get your shit together. Don’t be the creeper who loses it at the sight of real-life girl flesh and knowing personal details about them like the colour of their underwear.
‘Um. Snowball fights and flowers and they injure themselves so the girls feel sorry for them,’ I blurt. Ava makes a sound. I don’t want to call it a laugh, because I don’t think that’s what it was. It was more of a breathy sound out of her nose with the same smirk. She steps off the ladder and hands me a two-kilo tin of dolmades.
‘Oh, they sing, there’s singing too,’ I add and then there’s a silence.
Ava bends down to get something from the bottom shelf of the fridge.
‘That synopsis didn’t really do it justice,’ I mumble.
If ever there was time for a pep talk it is now. Every internal part of me that has had something to do with this abysmal attempt at conversation is now scolding the other parts of me that stood by and let it happen. What are you doing, man? they scream, get it together! I should be used to this by now though, my general flailing demeanour when it comes to conversation, because I’m just not good at it. I get nervous then I don’t know what to say or I say too much or say something stupid. And I never know what to do with my hands. If you add to this the extra level of excruciating rambling that happens because Ava Spirini is a girl my age then I’m basically the coolest guy ever.
I’m this shit around everyone, though, not just Ava. All human people. All the time. My brain has this habit of convincing me that everyone thinks I’m a hideous human who can do nothing right. Robbie repeatedly tells me this isn’t the case and how dare I be so narcissistic as to think people would give up worrying about their own crippling insecurities to devote any time to analysing mine.
‘It really didn’t.’ Ava stands and hands me a large plastic bowl filled with lettuce. I weigh up the pros and cons of just walking out the door with the lettuce and the tin of dolmades and never returning.
‘I’ve never met a Gideon,’ she says as she shuts the big fridge door.
&
nbsp; ‘I’ve never met an Ava.’ I smile and she smiles, and the biggest wave of relief washes over me because for someone with my track record, that wasn’t too bad. I didn’t look like too much of an idiot.
For the rest of the night, aside from her firing instructions like ‘Fill that’ or ‘Wash this’ or ‘Get me that’ we don’t talk.
I wash dishes until my hands go pruney and as I wash I watch Ava Spirini’s back and I think as far as jobs go this one seems to be okay.
I was probably one of the last people to find out about her friend, Kelly. Kelly Waititi. Kelly was beautiful. No, beautiful isn’t right. She was breathtaking. She had long jet-black hair and massive brown eyes and dark brown skin. I think she must’ve been Maori or Islander or something. She didn’t give a shit about anything. My locker was right near hers and this one time I was going home early for a doctor’s appointment or something, and while I was getting my bag she walked in, opened her locker and just started getting changed. She didn’t say anything, just stood there in her bra while she rifled around her bag for her dress, put it on, flung her bag over her shoulder and went to leave. Just before she got to the door she turned back to me, and asked, ‘Are you wagging too?’ I shook my head; she nodded and walked out.
That’s the only time that Kelly ever spoke directly to me, but I knew who she was. Everyone knew who she was, and I guess purely by association if you knew who Kelly was you knew who Ava was because they were always together. From what I know about Ava, she’s fiery but quiet and funny; everyone is always cracking up when they’re around her. Or at least they were. Lately when I see her at school she’s always on her own. I think she’s pretty. Like, really pretty. Noticeable; or at least I always notice her. At assembly last week she yelled at the top of her lungs for everyone to get fucked, and still managed to crack jokes as she stormed out the hall giving Mrs Bryan the finger.
Beautiful Mess Page 3