His olds look absurdly pleased when he tells them where we’re going, and though I know it’s because this means Tai has improved, I almost wish they’d throw in a lecture on sex and drugs, just for normality. Tai’s almost bouncy as we walk down the street, and I stare, though I’m trying not to. When we get to the beach he takes off his shoes, rolls up his pants, and walks into the water. He turns and grins at me, ‘Come in.’
I walk down to the water and tentatively stick a toe in. The season might’ve changed but the water is still icy. ‘Don’t sharks feed at night?’ I ask.
‘Nah. And besides, what’s the worst that could happen? I die before the ten months is up?’
‘I thought you said it was twelve months?’
‘That was their guess a couple of months ago. So I guess we’re down to ten months now.’ He smiles like it doesn’t matter.
I open my mouth to say . . . what? I stare up at the inky sky instead. Oh god. Oh, Tai. You have no idea how sorry I am.
He shrugs, trying to be careless but missing somehow.
‘On the bright side, they say this is the healthiest I’ll ever feel again, so we’d better make the most of it, right?’
I wade into the water beside Tai, wrap my arms around him. ‘We will,’ I promise.
We linger at the beach. It’s Friday night, so my curfew has been temporarily lifted. I head back to Tai’s place with him to grab my stuff before going home, and when we walk in the door Mia’s standing in the kitchen, holding two bits of paper up in the air.
‘Which one do you like better, Tai?’
‘Uh, they both look the same. What are you doing?’
‘Trying to choose the paper for your birthday party invitations.’
‘Right. You do know that’s not for, like, another month.’
‘Exactly.’ Mia pulls a face at him. ‘What do you think, Juliet?’
‘Um, the left one. Definitely the left one.’
‘You think so too!’ Mia beams and I look over at Tai, who’s shaking his head in disbelief. We go to the front door and Tai kisses me goodnight.
• • •
The next day I go to Gen’s in the morning, and we get ready to go into the city, shopping for formal dresses. While we’re doing our hair she tells me about this guy Lina’s obsessed with, someone she kissed at a party and practically wants to marry now. Gen reckons that Lina watched too many Disney movies as a child. Gen’s had a handful of boyfriends whose mums have all disliked her piercings and claimed she’s a Bad Influence. Gen thinks the whole thing is hilarious and has declared that dating high school guys is a waste of time. Her dad is relieved she doesn’t have a boyfriend because he doesn’t want to talk to her about sex and she’s pretty keen to avoid that too. As she’s threading her fingers through clumps of knotty black hair, Gen looks up at me.
‘Have you and Tai . . . you know?’
I know, all right. ‘Not yet. I just . . . It doesn’t feel right yet.’
Gen ponders that for a second, then nods. ‘Good for you.’
Her dad drives us into the city, cursing at the roadworks and the bus drivers who don’t look before pulling out into the traffic, making everyone slam on their brakes. We wander from store to store, looking through racks and racks of formal dresses, trailing our fingers along them.
‘It would be so much easier to be a guy,’ I say, pointing at something traffic-cone orange and covered in ruffles.
‘Yeah, I know. Hire a suit and pick a tie colour. Done in – what? Ten minutes? Easy. Hey, how about this one?’ Gen grins and points at another dress, green and shiny.
‘Um, maybe if I was a mermaid? With some seaweed in my hair or something?’ I pull a face. ‘Hey, who are you going with?’
‘I don’t know,’ she shrugs. ‘I keep hoping someone will ask so I don’t have to think about it. Not someone horrible, though. You’re lucky, you know you’re going with Tai.’
‘I don’t,’ I admit. ‘I don’t know if he’ll be in hospital then, or what.’
Gen nods sympathetically, but we’re both kind of glad when a sales assistant comes over and interrupts us.
‘Anyway,’ I say, when the assistant has gone, ‘I’m more worried about what to get him for his birthday. It has to be special, you know? But everything I think of is lame.’
‘So why don’t you just ask him what he wants?’ Gen suggests. ‘Go on – text him now.’ I do, and when my phone beeps we both dive to open it.
A road trip. Okay. Maybe without the road part. But you and me, on holiday somewhere. Anywhere. No parents. No doctors. Just us.
After I’ve read the text I look at Gen, speechless. ‘How am I supposed to get that? Our parents will never let us. Jesus, Tai.’
Gen thinks for a minute. ‘Schoolies. It’s the perfect excuse for the two of you to go away together.
‘Yeah, except Tai barely shows up to school now.’
‘Yeah, but he did for, like, eleven years before that. He deserves schoolies. Didn’t you guys book, anyway?’
‘Nah, we were going to get one of those last-minute deals, remember? But then Tai got sick and we forgot.’
‘Yeah, well . . . serves you right for picking Tai over us.’ She’s teasing. ‘You guys can’t even crash with us now – we got a one-bedroom place and I’m totally not sharing the lounge with you two.’
A sense of defeat begins to overwhelm me. ‘This is impossible, Gen. How am I supposed to do this?’
Gen thinks for a second, then smiles. ‘Absent father guilt, baby.’
• • •
Two days later I’m sitting on the kitchen bench at Dad’s, explaining to him how when Tai got sick we forgot to look, and now we can’t afford anything that hasn’t already been booked out.
Tina comes in halfway through my little speech, dumps her shopping bags on the bench and listens. Just for her I add a bit about how Mum doesn’t understand – she doesn’t even remember what it’s like to be a teenager. Dad self-consciously runs his hand through the latest grey patch in his hair, before muttering, ‘It wasn’t that long ago.’
I sigh, and Tina says, ‘You should arrange their accommodation, Mark. Don’t you remember being that age? Juliet’s a good girl. And Tai’s . . . you know. Go on. Let them have their fun. Don’t you have a friend with a holiday unit down the coast?’
When Dad grudgingly agrees, I begin to think I’ve underestimated Tina. I even agree to let her take me shopping before we go, and she gets dorkily excited about it. I so want to ring Tai and tell him, but I make myself wait, desperate to keep the secret until his birthday.
Tai
Juliet’s planning my birthday present, I can tell, but when I ask her she just smiles and changes the subject. I don’t think she’ll be able to get what I asked for, and I kind of regret not asking for something simpler, seeing as no-one can get me what I really want. Everyone’s making such a big deal out of it. It’s exhausting pretending to be excited about it, but I’d feel bad if I didn’t, especially for Mum, who’s all caught up in these party plans and happier than she has been for a while.
Even Juliet seems happier lately. Really, if it wasn’t for the tumour, life would be great. It’s pretty good in spite of it, I guess; the surgery helped a bit. Not as much as I thought it would, which would probably freak me out if I let myself think about it too much, but I try to just steer my mind back to the fact that right now, life is okay. I show up to school on the last day of term – only because I want to break into Juliet’s locker, hiding a rose in there with a note attached. Come with me to the formal? She finds me outside English and tackles me into a hug so fierce my bag hits the ground. ‘You’re awesome, Tai.’
• • •
One day, we’re hanging out in my room, listening to music through our headphones, when my phone beeps with a text. When I finish replying, I look up to see Juliet watching me curiously from behind an energy drink that’s almost half the size of her head.
‘Sam,’ I inform her. ‘He asked if I want
ed to go fishing or something. We might go tomorrow.’
‘I hate fishing.’ She shudders. ‘There’s the worm thing, and then there’s the dead fish thing. I don’t know how you can—’
She’s interrupted by another beep, and when I start laughing Juliet reaches over, wrenches the phone out of my hands, reads it aloud. Yeah, tomorrow’s good. Have a good one mate – hope you get blown. She looks at me, confused. ‘Is that like a fishing thing – blown, like, blow them all out of the water or something?’
I try not to laugh at her. ‘Nah, blown like a blow job. Sam’s got a new girlfriend: he’s obsessed.’
‘Oh.’ There’s a pause as this sinks in, then she asks, ‘Does he think we . . . do you guys talk about that?’
‘I bet I talk to my mates about it as much as you talk to the girls about it. But I don’t tell them details. Well, I wouldn’t, if there was anything to tell.’ It’s a diplomatic answer, and I feel kind of pleased. Good one, Tai.
‘Well, yeah. I wouldn’t either.’ Juliet takes a sip of her drink and stares at some invisible spot on the wall before looking at me again. ‘Do you want me to?’
Hell, yeah. Let me just rip my pants off. I shrug. ‘Only if you want to. I don’t want you to if you think you have to or something like that.’
‘I wouldn’t know what to do.’
‘You and Mick . . . you two were together for ages. You never . . . ?’ I stop. It’s hurting my head – or maybe my ego, I’m not sure which – to think about Juliet doing that to Mick, rhymes with Dick, which is how he acted most of the time.
She shakes her head, no we didn’t, and then kisses me.
‘Tai? I want to.’ It’s kind of quietly spoken, as she peeks out from beneath her hair. It’s a Juliet move, that.
She stands up and comes over to me, kisses me on the mouth and reaches for my boardies.
‘Maybe we should lock the door,’ I mumble, so she does.
When Juliet pulls open my boardies the rip of the Velcro sounds so loud I’m sure my olds will be at the bedroom door in about two seconds flat, and I grab Juliet by the shoulders. Wait. There’s no knock, though, no parent asking what we’re doing and why do we need the door locked to do it, but I say, ‘Maybe we should plug one of our iPods into the speakers, get some music on.’ I lean over and do that while a small giggle bursts out of Juliet.
‘Sorry. I can’t help it that you’ve got loud pants.’
‘Give me some warning next time,’ I say, ‘and I’ll wear quieter ones.’
Afterwards, we lie on the bed together, and I wrap my arms around her. ‘I love you, Juliet.’ I can feel her smiling.
‘I love you too, Tai.’
• • •
The plan was to drive up the coast a bit to a beach that’s good for fishing, but as I’m getting ready that morning my phone beeps.
We have a transport problem, Sam’s written. Got done for speeding last night and my olds took my car keys off me.
Shit. How fast were you going?
120 in a 100 zone. The fine is a couple hundred bucks.
Ouch. Guess we’re not driving anywhere, then.
Nah. Want to meet at the local?
Yeah, okay.
The local is a muddy riverbank with more mosquitos than fish, the kind of place where you have a higher chance of getting malaria or seeing an old guy’s bum crack than actually catching anything. But despite that, I end up at the river, wrapping my fingers around a bit of fish, hooking it onto the end of my line to use as bait. We’re probably not going to catch anything, we both know that, but it’s fun all the same. Sam baits his hook too, throws the line in the water, and watches it hopefully.
‘So I took Nikki to the movies last night,’ he says.
‘Yeah? What did you see?’
‘I’m still not sure – some girl one. You know, where you walk out afterwards and they hate you because you’re not romantic like that?’
‘Yeah, I know the ones.’ It’s a common guy experience. Take girl to movies. Let her pick the movie even though you’d rather take out your own eyeballs with a stick than watch that. Buy her popcorn. Watch the movie. And then listen to her complaining that you don’t bring her flowers in the rain or buy her jewellery or whatever Mr Cutie-Pie in the movie did.
‘What did you get up to last night?’ he asks.
‘Not much. Juliet came over and we hung out for a while. Listened to music and stuff.’
‘I don’t know how you guys do it,’ Sam says, staring at his fishing line. ‘Don’t your olds drive you crazy with all that leave-the-door-open-and-keep-a-metre-away-from-each-other stuff?’
‘They don’t really do it anymore,’ I admit. ‘Juliet’s mum does; that’s why she usually comes to my place. My olds don’t care if I shut the door, as long as I don’t die.’
‘Lucky bastard,’ Sam mutters, and then there’s a silence that’s almost awkward. ‘Shit. Sorry, Tai. I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘It’s okay. I know what you meant.’ I reach up and touch the back of my hat, where the tumour is, before realising what I’m doing. I quickly grab the fishing line, hoping Sam didn’t notice.
‘So they really let you shut the door, hey?’
‘Yeah. Last night we even had it locked for a while.’ I grin at the look on his face while he tries to come up with a reply to that piece of information, before settling on, ‘That’s not fair. That’s so not fair.’
I keep grinning. You don’t know half of it, Sam.
I’m brought back to earth by Sam whacking me on the back, hard.
‘Sorry, mate. Mosquito.’
‘Yeah, sure. Any excuse, huh?’
He holds out his hand, palm up, to show me the squished bug, the blood.
‘Anyway, I bet I can catch more fish than you.’
‘You’re on.’
• • •
When I get home I go into the backyard to hose down my fishing gear. Mum’s there, standing on a ladder, yelling instructions to Hendrix and River, whose arms are full of fairy lights.
‘Save me, Tai!’ Hendrix yells. ‘Mum’s been making us do work all day for your party and it’s the weekend.’
‘Yeah, save us, Tai!’ River adds, throwing his arms up dramatically and almost losing his armful of lights.
‘You were the ones that spent all your pocket money and then asked for more,’ Mum says, ignoring their theatrics. ‘You want more pocket money; I want help setting up. Everybody wins.’
Hendrix looks at River and twirls his finger around near his temple. River bursts into a flood of giggles and drops his lights.
‘You have to pay me for every one you break, River,’ Mum says, and he scoops them up while I head inside.
Juliet
Gen and I spend Sunday afternoon lying on her bed, listening to music.
‘I am so burning my textbooks when school finishes,’ she says.
‘Nah. Sell them. You’d get far more joy from the money.’
‘Money can’t buy happiness, Juliet.’ She wags a finger at me.
‘I dunno – I’d be willing to get really, ridiculously rich and test that theory.’
‘Pretty sure you have to be a poor uni student first.’
‘I can handle that. I like two-minute noodles.’
‘Plus those little sachets of dried veggies have to count for something, right?’
‘For sure. Plenty of nutrition in dehydrated peas. I can’t believe we’ve nearly finished school.’
‘Finally. Not looking forward to the exams, though. I so can’t wait for schoolies.’
‘Yeah, me either.’
‘Have you told Tai yet?’
‘Nah, I’ve actually managed to keep it a secret.’
Gen raises her eyebrows. ‘Impressive.’
‘I know, right? Hey, are you ready for the formal?’
‘I guess. I’ve still got to get a necklace. I can’t believe Tai’s parents are paying for a whole stretch limo.’
I shrug. ‘I guess
they figure they won’t have to buy him a car or pay for uni. A limo is kind of cheap in comparison.’
‘You always do that.’ Irritation flashes in her eyes.
‘Do what?’
‘No matter what we’re talking about, you always make it about how Tai’s dying.’
‘Well, sorry. But he is, and it’s kind of huge and messing with me.’
‘I know.’ Gen reaches over, grabs me by the hand. ‘I’m not trying to be a bitch. It’s just hard to think about all the time, you know?’
‘Yeah. I know.’
October
Tai
On the night of the formal I shower, dress in the suit that I picked out on the weekend, and fumble with the tie. Mum flaps around me, fussing, before sending Dad in to fix it. River and Hendrix are racing around madly, and when I go into the bathroom to put some cologne on and brush my teeth, they follow.
Hendrix wrinkles his nose. ‘I don’t think you’re meant to use the whole lot, Tai, you don’t smell that bad.’
‘Thanks, Hendrix.’ I look in the mirror, wondering if it’s even worth putting some gel in my hair, before deciding it’s not since I’m wearing a hat to cover the weird patches that haven’t grown back properly yet. I can’t quite face cutting all my hair off. And besides, I’ve kind of got used to the hat.
There’s a knock at the front door. River squeals with excitement and leaps off the edge of the bath, where he’s been sitting watching me. A minute later he’s back, dragging Sam by the hand.
‘Hey,’ Sam says.
‘Hey. You scrub up pretty good.’
‘Yeah, you too.’
‘You’ve got matching hats,’ River says. He reaches up to steal mine and perch it on his own head. Sam’s cool; he doesn’t stare like everyone else, and just smiles at me easily before removing his own top hat and inspecting the damage it has done to his carefully sculpted, sandy-blond spikes. I let River wear mine until there’s another knock at the door and then I snatch it back. ‘My turn.’
Everything Left Unsaid Page 10