And it’s true that all Tai wants to do lately is sleep, or at least pretend to. His room is always dark, and he barely talks.
Sam goes to visit one day and sends me a text afterwards. Well that was awkward. How do you do that every day?
How can I not? I reply.
• • •
While Tai’s hibernating, Gen is doing the opposite, throwing a huge party for her eighteenth.
At the party, there’s this guy. He’s smiling and chatting, openly flirting. And I know I shouldn’t, but I flirt back.
He asks me if I have a boyfriend and I don’t know what to say, eventually managing, ‘It’s complicated.’ It’s not exactly the truth, but it is complicated – Tai hasn’t felt like a proper boyfriend in a while. The guy laughs. ‘You’re a little young for complicated, aren’t you?’
If only you knew, I don’t say. It’s refreshing, talking to someone who doesn’t know about Tai. We have a drink together, and then he kisses me so intensely that I’m left breathless.
He whispers, ‘Want to get out of here?’
I’m so tempted to say yes, to escape, be somewhere else, be someone else for a while. I’m about to take his hand and go when Rae appears beside me.
‘Juliet, what are you doing?’
He says, ‘She can do whatever she wants, right?’
Rae ignores him, staring at me. ‘What about Tai?’
Now the guy is staring too. ‘Who’s Tai?’
‘Tai is . . . he’s my boyfriend. He’s dying. Though he might as well not be my boyfriend because we’ve barely spoken in weeks, and if I didn’t go over to his place I’d never see him. He never even texts me anymore. And if he wasn’t dying I would’ve broken up with him for that, but he is, so I can’t, because that wouldn’t be fair to him. It’s not fair to me, either, but that doesn’t seem to matter.’
The guy goes off to find a less complicated girl, while Rae wipes mascara off my cheeks as I sniffle. ‘I just wanted to forget for a little while. And he was so nice to me, and it’s so hard sometimes.’
I’m all cleaned up when Gen comes over, glittery and vodka high, hanging on the arm of the piercer. ‘Hey, you two. Great party, right?’
I smile at her and I know she can tell that everything isn’t okay, but I understand when she doesn’t want to ask, doesn’t want to do that tonight.
• • •
I see Gen again two days later. Uni results have gone up, and I’m too scared to look. I’m scared that I didn’t do well enough to get in, scared I did get in. When Gen rings to tell me she got in to the course she wanted, I confess that I haven’t looked yet.
She turns up at my place half an hour later and makes me log on to the website. I close my eyes.
‘You did good, Juliet!’ she squeals. ‘Second preference. Bachelor of Human Services.’
When I realise that she’s not joking, we dance around the bedroom, laughing and happy. Mum comes to see what all the noise is about, and when she hears, she jumps around the room with us, shrieking too. I can’t remember when I last saw Mum so happy.
After a while, Mum leaves to get us celebratory takeaway, Indian, and while she’s gone Gen produces Sneaky Vodka from her bag.
‘To us,’ I toast, ‘and our brilliant intelligence.’
‘To next year,’ Gen adds, holding up her own glass.
I hesitate a moment before I touch my glass to hers. ‘Absolutely.’ I look at Gen. ‘I wish I could call Tai and tell him.’
She shrugs. ‘Do it.’
I flip my phone around in my hands for a couple of minutes then make the call. As usual, he doesn’t answer.
‘Hey, Tai,’ I say to his voicemail. ‘I just wanted to tell you I got in to uni, my second preference. Um . . . yeah, that’s pretty much it.’ I’m about to hang up but then something surges through me, and things that have been left unsaid for weeks burst out.
‘Actually, you know what? That’s not it. I don’t know what you’re going through, Tai. How can I? But I’m trying to be there for you, I really am. But I need you to be there for me, too – that’s how it works. So maybe you could remember that. You’re not dead yet. And I don’t want to remember us like this.’
I hang up the phone, and try to remember to breathe.
‘Feel better?’ Gen asks.
I don’t know if I do or not. I just hope it has helped.
Tai
Our first fight, the first big one as a couple . . . it sucks. Photos go up on Facebook of Gen’s eighteenth and I look through them. I refused to go, but at the same time I kind of resent being left out.
There’s Juliet and Gen getting ready, standing on chairs to hang balloons, posing in the mirror, showing off their dresses. Juliet with the girls, holding up a plastic martini glass and grinning at the camera. A random photo of the backyard . . . and there she is, almost out of frame, sitting with some guy. His arm is around her and she’s smiling at him, not even noticing the camera. The next shot, he’s whispering in her ear, arm still looped around her shoulders, and she’s laughing at whatever he’s saying. They’re not doing anything besides sitting next to each other, too close to each other, but he’s got his arm around her and if they were strangers to me I’d think they were a couple. I feel the anger building in me and I grab the phone, dial her number.
‘Hey, Tai.’
‘Nice party photos, Juliet.’
‘What?’ I can hear the smile drain from her voice at my tone and I feel absurdly pleased with myself.
‘Who the fuck was he?’
‘He? Who are you . . . Oh. It’s kind of a long story.’
‘Well, seeing as I kind of don’t have a long time before I, you know, die, how about you tell me the short version?’
She sighs heavily. ‘There was a guy there, a friend of a friend of Gen’s I think, and we talked and stuff.’
‘Stuff? Stuff like shared a drink? Or stuff like went and fucked each other?’
‘Tai!’
‘You haven’t answered the question,’ I say.
‘No!’ She sounds exasperated. ‘We didn’t have sex. He kissed me, and it was wrong, okay, and I’m sorry, but that was all that happened.’
‘He kissed you and then you kissed him back, right?’
‘Yeah.’ Her voice is small.
I can’t decide what to say first, so I just let it all out, about how she can’t even wait until I’m dead to get another boyfriend, how she’s not a very good girlfriend, how . . .
‘Hey.’ Her voice is starting to crack and I know I’ve made her cry (happy, now?). ‘Tai, I know it was wrong. I’m sorry. But you’re supposed to be my boyfriend, and you . . . you just don’t care. You never even text me back half the time, you never want to hang out, you never want to talk or ask me how I am, you don’t want to listen to music like we used to or anything. You act like you don’t even want to see me. I know it was wrong, and I’m sorry, I swear – I just . . . someone actually wanted to talk to me, to put their arm around me because I was cold. Someone wanted to kiss me . . . and you haven’t been that someone for a long time, not since schoolies.’ She’s crying now, I can hear muffled sobs, then she says, ‘I’ve got to go,’ and hangs up.
I hit redial again and again, but she won’t answer.
Shit. What have I done? I’m deflated now. Everything she said was right – it’s nothing I didn’t know. I’m staring at my phone and notice the little message icon in the corner. I listen to a voicemail from her, from last night. How she got in to uni and needed me there, needed me to celebrate with her. Shit. I try to call her again, and she still won’t answer. Hey. Call me. Please. I’m sorry, I text her, wondering if she’ll reply or not. She doesn’t.
That night, I log on to Facebook, and there are more photos of her at Gen’s. Just her and Gen, this time, dyeing each other’s hair in the bathroom. Gen and Juliet clinking cans of Diet Coke, probably doctored with Sneaky Vodka, eyes lined with eyeliner to match their black fingernails. Juliet’s eyes look red underneath
it, I know she’s been crying but it still comes as a surprise. In the last photo they’ve got their arms around each other, and Gen is kissing Juliet on the cheek.
That’s what you should’ve done, a long time ago. But now you’ve gone and fucked things up, haven’t you?
‘Oh, piss off,’ I say to the voice in my head. Juliet won’t answer her phone – but what about Gen?
Gen, I type. Tell Juliet I’m really sorry. I fucked things up.
The reply comes faster than I was expecting, and doesn’t make me feel any better. Yeah, you did.
I give up on the phone, put it down beside me. There isn’t that much I can do besides sit in my room feeling sorry for myself. After a while, I text Juliet again. I’m sorry. Come over? Not tonight, but soon?
(Just don’t break up with me, I don’t say.)
Eventually my phone beeps. Yeah. Okay.
• • •
Sam comes to visit the next day, pulling up in the driveway in his car. It’s dinted now, and Sam says something about a reversing mishap. The guys have started joking that the engine is kept running by rats, but he still loves it.
‘So weird to think I only made it through two driving lessons and you’ve got a whole car.’ I grin, but it makes him shift uncomfortably.
‘Yeah, I guess.’
I don’t want to piss him off like I did Juliet, so I remember to ask, ‘Hey, how’d you go with uni?’
His face lights up into a grin. ‘Yeah, really good, got my first preference.’
‘That’s great!’ I smile back like I mean it, but we both know I’m faking.
Juliet
I go over to Tai’s on Friday night, feeling apprehensive. I stick my head round the kitchen door to say hello to Mia, who’s knitting.
‘Is that Fred, still?’
‘No, Juliet, Fred was finished a long time ago. These are just some spare arms, so they’re ready when I need them.’
‘Oh. Is Tai in his room?’
‘Where else?’ She sighs. ‘See if you can coax him out, will you?’
As usual, Tai’s room is dark. I don’t need to wait for my eyes to adjust before I find my way to his bed – I’ve done this enough times now. There’s just enough light creeping through the crack in the curtains for me to see that Tai’s awake and sitting up on the bed.
‘You’re dressed,’ I say, surprised. ‘You know. In actual clothes.’
Tai grins. ‘Want to go for a beach walk?’
He’s slow, and shaky on his legs, but we make it to the beach and sit on the steps that lead to the sand. The air is cool, and I’m starting to shiver, but Tai’s sweating from the exertion. I’m beginning to feel like I’m sitting with a stranger until Tai pulls me into his arms, and then it’s all familiar again, and we talk like we used to. This – this is the Tai I know. This is the Tai I need.
Tai
Juliet’s been crying again. Story of my life at the moment. Even when I suggest the beach, we walk there like strangers, like we’re part of something broken that might completely fall to pieces if we push too far, too fast. My head throbs with every step, and I’m grateful just to make it to the beach, sit down on the steps.
Juliet sits beside me, looks at me anxiously. ‘Look, Tai, I’m really sorry about that guy – it was stupid and—’
‘It’s okay. Really. I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you. Sorry I wasn’t with you when you found out about uni – I should have been. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Well, apart from that. I just . . . it’s just – it’s hard. It’s so hard sometimes.’ She reaches out, takes my hand. ‘I guess the doctor did tell me I was so broken I couldn’t be fixed, right?’
She grimaces. ‘I don’t know why things are so different from how they were at schoolies. We were so happy then, and now – now we’re just falling apart.’
I don’t know either, girl, I think. Maybe they did something to me. I mean, they are messing around in my brain. Maybe it’s the new painkillers. Maybe it’s the fact that I have to watch you lead the normal kind of life that I should be living. I get to watch everybody else plan out their lives and what they’re going to do next year and all I get to plan is a funeral. And maybe . . . maybe I don’t want you to hurt so badly when I do die that I’m pushing you away now.
‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘I don’t get it either.’ There’s silence for a little bit, and then I pull her in closer. ‘So tell me about uni.’
• • •
Later that night, long after Juliet has gone, when the house is quiet and dark, when even Texy is asleep, I switch on my computer and go online, typing near death experiences into the search box. Some of them are crazy, kind of impossible-sounding, with fields of daisies and dead relatives appearing and passing through time tunnels and stuff. Others aren’t too bad. They talk about feeling warm and peaceful – about it being okay. Some of the stories tell how, when they’re told they have to go back, that it’s not their time yet or whatever, they’re angry because it’s just so peaceful and good, they don’t want to leave it.
To be honest, I don’t even know what I’m looking for, what I’m hoping to read. I just want to know what it’ll be like when it happens, and no-one can tell me. The last time I asked the doctor about it, Mum had to leave the room because she started crying. Dad just kind of blinks a lot and stares at the ceiling. The doctor’s answer kind of helps, I guess. He said that in the lead-up I’ll probably get a lot more tired, want a lot more painkillers to help with the pain. That I mightn’t feel like anything to eat or drink and that I probably won’t get out of bed. That I might not have the energy to reply to people talking to me, even though I can hear them okay, and I’ll probably sleep a lot. The most important thing, he stressed, looking more at Dad when he said it, is that I let them know what the pain is like, let them help me with that. He looked genuinely sorry for me when he said that and it’s not too hard to see why – his waiting room is always full of old people; the youngest person I’ve ever seen there is years older than Dad. When I’m sitting in there, everyone gives me funny looks, assuming it’s Mum or Dad with the problem, not me. It must suck to be this doctor. You’ve made progress, Tai, I think wryly, feeling sorry for the guy who told you that you were dying.
SUMMER
December
Juliet
The week the shops start playing Christmas carols over the speakers, Tai gets admitted to hospital, for his final cycle of chemotherapy. Tai starts falling asleep while I’m there visiting, and I’m trying to pretend it’s because he’s so comfortable around me. I know it’s not true, not really, but the lie feels better than the truth does.
When I’m not at the hospital, Gen and I go Christmas shopping together. She picks out a present for her boyfriend, Bryn, the piercer, while I deliberate about what to get Tai, wondering what you’re supposed to get someone who can only sit, and watch, while the rest of the world carries on around them.
While I’m visiting the hospital one day, and Tai is asleep, I sit with Hendrix and River as they write their letters to Santa. River’s letter is simple – he asks for Tai to be better, and lots of toys. When I read Hendrix’s letter, I have to bite the inside of my cheek, willing myself not to cry. He asks for Tai to be better, of course, but in the next line he asks Santa to make his mum stop crying and his dad smile again.
‘What do you think of my letter?’ Hendrix asks.
‘It’s a good letter, Hendrix . . . but that’s a lot, even for Santa.’
He sighs. ‘Santa only brings presents, doesn’t he?’
I shrug. ‘I don’t know. It’s worth a try, I guess.’
• • •
It takes two weeks for the doctors to discharge Tai from the hospital this time, and every day I get more sceptical that the medication is even working, though I never say anything to Tai. He’s having more scans and stronger painkillers that never quite seem to work – not completely. Back out in the real world, Tai seems thinner, and paler, and he never lingers outside, telli
ng me he’s tired, he wants to sit down. While I’m dressed in little summery dresses, sweltering in the heat, Tai’s in his black jeans, even a jacket.
‘Aren’t you hot?’ I ask him.
‘Nah. I think the drugs have messed with my thermostat. And these are pretty much the only pants that fit me anymore.’ He tugs at the belt loops, pulling them back into place, flashing a sliver of pale skin with a hip bone jutting beneath. People have started to stare, whether they mean to or not, at someone so young, who looks so sick, so . . . dead. I stare back at them until they get embarrassed and look away, but it doesn’t help.
One day, Tai tells me haltingly that his mum and dad are taking him and his brothers away for a week over Christmas, and I smile at first, until it clicks. It’s probably selfish to want to intrude on their family time, their last family time, but I can’t help it – I want to.
Mum makes me help her bake stuff, decorate a million cookies, put up the tree . . . whatever she can think of to distract me, saying, ‘It’s Christmas, Juliet.’ Cheer up, she means. I draw sad faces with icing on the gingerbread men until Mum elbows me in the ribs. We drive around in the car looking at a zillion gaudy light displays, and I pretend to be interested while texting Tai.
Dad invites me over to his place on Christmas Eve, and when I get there Tina is waiting at the door.
‘How was schoolies, Juliet?’
‘It was . . . it was good, really good. The best time I’ve had with Tai in a while.’
‘How is he doing?’ It’s gentle, but I still want to cry.
‘He’s sick. Every time I see him he’s sicker, and his parents have taken him and his brothers away for Christmas. It’s like what I want doesn’t even matter. It’s just happening to me and I can’t do anything about it.’
I’m ready to burst out crying when Dad appears. I swallow the lump in my throat and try to smile back at him. We do the dinner thing, and after I’ve thanked them for my presents, a bracelet and stuff for uni, then said goodnight, I go home.
Everything Left Unsaid Page 16