by Melissa Keil
Mike shoves open the door and walks in without waiting for me. I weave through everyone else and bolt after him.
‘Hi, Julie,’ Mike says, shooting a half-wave at my mum, who is hovering in the lounge room in her slippers.
‘Hello, Mike! Sam!’ Mum’s eyes are rimmed red, but Mike is already in the middle of a conversation with her about the new lilacs in the front yard. I say a silent prayer of thanks for my best friend; Mike has become the guru when it comes to dealing with my mum and her weepiness. I am not so useful.
‘Hey, Mrs K,’ Adrian says, bypassing Mum and heading for the kitchen.
‘Adrian – Allison, hello! It’s been a while.’
‘Hey, Julie,’ Allison says quietly. ‘D’you mind if I use your bathroom?’
‘Of course not, hon, you know where it is. I was just –’
And then Mum stops talking. Camilla walks through my front door, straightening her yellow dress and peering around her curiously. A slow, broad smile spreads across Mum’s face as I begin to feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience. Before I can say anything, Camilla holds out her hand.
‘Hi, Mrs Kinnison. I’m Camilla. It’s nice to meet you.’
Mum shakes her hand. ‘Please, it’s just Julie.’
If Camilla notices Mum’s puffy eyes, she doesn’t react. ‘Julie. Your place is lovely.’
Mum smooths down her hair. ‘Oh, you have such a pretty accent. Where are you from?’
I’ve heard Camilla recite this speech to various hangerson, but she doesn’t seem to mind. ‘Well, I was born here, but I grew up in England. We’ve been living in the States for the last couple of years. My dad and I are a bit nomadic.’
She smiles at Mum. Mum smiles at her. Mum smiles at me. Then she smiles at Camilla again. I smile at no-one. I’m finding this love-fest somewhat disconcerting.
Mike clears his throat. ‘We brought food. I’m going to help Adrian.’ He disappears into the kitchen.
Camilla is still looking around the foyer. Something catches her eye through the lounge-room door, and a really strange thing happens to her face. ‘Whoa. You … have a baby grand?’
I glance into the lounge as well. ‘Mum teaches piano. Do you play?’
‘Um, a little. We haven’t had a proper piano since London, though. They’re a bit hard to schlep in a suitcase. Do you play?’
‘Sam used to be wonderful,’ Mum says. ‘But he’s probably a bit rusty now, aren’t you, hon?’
I grunt noncommittally.
Mum hurries into the lounge and brushes some imaginary dust from the piano keys. ‘Would you like to play, Camilla?’
Camilla walks over to the piano. She runs her fingers lightly over the keys and plays a few choppy, random notes. She glances back over her shoulder, really briefly, and another odd thing flickers across her face. For a split second, that self-assured mask wavers. I would swear, for just a second, she looks almost shy.
‘No, that’s okay. Wow. This is a beautiful instrument, though.’ She plays a few more notes with one hand, a light tune that I don’t recognise. ‘You’re lucky, Sam. I can’t believe you can play her whenever you like and you don’t.’
Mum looks like someone has told her that Santa will shortly be arriving with that guy from Pride and Prejudice in tow. ‘I know! He really was wonderful when he was little. I have the cutest video of him practising when he was six –’
‘Mum! Jesus, I think we need to study now.’
‘Oh, okay, of course. I’ll help with the snacks and then I’ll be out of your hair.’
Mum skips into the foyer. From the corner of my eye I can see that she’s trying to get my attention. I keep my eyes determinedly on the bookshelves of DVDs in the hope that she will give up and go away. Unfortunately, my concentration wavers. I glance at Mum. And my mother actually points at Camilla, and then gives me a thumbs-up. Two-handed. Both thumbs.
Despite the fact that the smile on her face is the first proper one I have seen in ages, I sort of wish my mother was, at this moment, on a mountaintop in Brazil. She closes the door behind her.
‘Your mum’s nice,’ Camilla says. She turns away from the piano and drops onto the floor near the coffee table like she’s been here a hundred times before.
I’m not sure what to do, so I sit on the floor on the opposite side of her. I unpack my bag and stack my books in order of size. Then I shuffle the books around again. I suddenly find that the polished surface of the coffee table is one of the most interesting features of my house, and I can’t believe I haven’t actually noticed this before. I see my reflection. I look like an idiot. I clear my throat.
Camilla drops her books onto the table with a thump. ‘Are these all yours?’ she says, waving at the shelves.
‘Mostly. Yeah.’
‘Wow.’ She stands up and runs her fingers along the DVDs. ‘And they’re alphabetised? How OCD of you.’ She tilts her head and peers at the spines. ‘Horror, horror, sci-fi, horror, zombie – I’m noticing a theme here.’
‘I like movies,’ I say weakly.
She laughs. ‘Yeah, I’m getting that.’
I scramble up beside her. ‘No, I mean … I study them. It’s sort of what I want to do.’
She tugs out a random German horror. ‘Screenwriting?’
‘Um, yeah. Maybe. I guess.’
‘And so, have you written anything?’
‘Sam’s written loads,’ says Adrian as he shoves open the lounge-room door with his knee. He’s carrying one of Mum’s good trays piled with fruit and chips. Mike and Allison follow behind with glasses and a giant bottle of Coke.
Camilla slides the DVD back into the shelf. ‘Really? Like what? Can I read something?’
‘No!’ I feel my face start to burn. ‘I mean, I’ve only been playing around with ideas. Nothing I have is good enough.’
‘That’s crap,’ Adrian says. ‘Sam’s stuff is awesome. The new one’s going to be ace – it’s about these three guys, and an asteroid that crashes –’
‘Adrian, Jesus, Camilla doesn’t want to hear about it!’ I’m not sure how red my cheeks are, but I’m thinking beetroot probably doesn’t cover it. I look at the piano and hope that when I turn around again, the four people behind me have miraculously turned into house plants. I agonise over showing even Mike and Adrian my movie ideas – Allison has never seen anything. The thought of Camilla Carter seeing my stuff makes me want to vanish into the peach carpet.
I turn around. Camilla looks at my face for four long, painful seconds. I have no idea what is ticking behind her eyes.
‘That’s okay,’ she says mildly. Then she flops onto the floor again.
The other three settle themselves around the coffee table. I wait for a moment till I think my face has returned to its normal colour, and then I join them.
Mike opens his textbook with a frown. ‘So. Should we start with a practice quiz?’
Camilla straightens her shoulders. ‘Consider me some weird little alien who has crash-landed on planet Australia. I need the local customs explained to me. Maybe with diagrams.’
‘We have faith,’ Allison says shyly.
‘Diagrams can be provided on request,’ I add, just because I feel like I should say something. Camilla gives me a mischievous grin.
‘Anyway,’ says Adrian, ‘you’re probably more like Spock in The Voyage Home. You know, when they go back in time to 1980s Earth and –’
‘Sorry, Camilla,’ Mike says. You’re gonna have to learn to filter the Star Trek references from Adrian’s conversation.’
Camilla narrows her eyes. ‘That’s the one with the whales? I know it’s not the best Trek movie, but I still liked it.’ She giggles, probably at the various looks of incomprehension on our faces. ‘Okay. Study time, then.’
And so, we study. Well, sort of. Mostly we eat, and answer Camilla’s questions that are half about history and half about us. We work for an hour and thirteen minutes and then give up on the pretence of studying altogether.
; ‘So how did you end up at Bowen Lakes?’ Adrian asks, cramming the last of the grapes into his mouth. ‘It’s a pretty crap school. Isn’t your dad loaded?’
I’ve given up trying to keep him in line. So far Camilla hasn’t seemed either offended or weirded out by him. A definite, if curious, plus one.
Camilla leans back against the floral couch and stretches out her legs. ‘Well, believe it or not, journalists don’t get paid a fortune. Dad grew up around here, and BLS was the closest public school that’d take a late enrolment. We were supposed to come back before Christmas, but then Dad ended up going on tour with this band and – anyway. I had to go to school somewhere.’
I drain my glass of Coke. ‘So is your dad planning on sticking around?’
She shrugs. ‘Who knows? He’s kind of unpredictable. He gets antsy if he’s stuck in one place for too long.’
‘Must be hard,’ Allison says. ‘Leaving your friends behind all the time?’
Camilla looks at her Moleskine notebook. She’s doing some sort of music-note doodle thing in the margins. ‘Sometimes. We haven’t really been anywhere long enough. I’ve got lots of Facebook friends, but they’re mostly some nice people who’ve already forgotten about me.’
I store away the inflection in her voice for later analysis.
‘And your boyfriend? Leaving him behind must have sucked,’ Allison says quietly.
I glance at Camilla’s phone, which is resting on the coffee table. Her wallpaper is a picture of a floppy-haired guy, presumably floppy-haired Dave the Boyfriend. He looks sufficiently dark and brooding: one of those I-play-guitar-and-write-crap-poetry guys that girls seem to be into.
Camilla nods. ‘Yeah. That was weird.’
Weird. Interesting choice of adjective.
Adrian’s phone beeps. ‘Sorry, guys, gotta go. My sister’s picking me up. It’s pizza night,’ he says. ‘Need a ride, Al?’
Allison gathers her books. ‘Yeah. Should probably go. I’m working breakfast tomorrow.’
‘Where do you work?’ Camilla asks.
‘Um, just at this cafe. I waitress. It’s a bit dodgy.’
Allison has worked at Schwartzman’s for almost a year now. Schwartzman’s is a local diner, famous for its wonky formica tables, its clientele of grumpy old men, and its coffee, which is possibly the worst in Melbourne. It’s close, though, and the sort of place no-one from school would be caught dead in. It has proven to be a viable after-school alternative to Alessandro’s office.
Mike closes his history folder. ‘I’m gonna go too.’
‘Why? It’s not like you’re training tonight,’ I say.
He shrugs. ‘No, but I have stuff to do.’
‘Stuff?’
He looks at me with his blank face, but I can tell it’s close to becoming his blank-annoyed face. ‘Yeah. Stuff.’
‘Okay. Cool,’ I say. It is definitely not cool.
Normally Mike and Adrian’s exit would be marked by nothing more than a half-wave as the door slammed behind them. This evening there is a flurry of goodbyes, and Mum reappears and flutters around everyone like they’re going on safari, and Camilla and Allison are both juggling their phones, exchanging numbers because apparently they now have plans to ‘do something’ together.
Then suddenly everyone is gone, and Mum disappears to answer the house phone which is ringing with what feels like frenetic speed, and I am standing in my lounge room, alone, with Camilla.
‘I should go too,’ she says. ‘Need to jump on the bus before it gets dark. I still keep getting lost. Are the streets around here supposed to look the same?’
‘Yeah … they may have been designed with the uprising of the robot clones in mind.’
‘And the topiary? What did trees ever do to these people?’
‘Well, I think it has something to do with wrestling nature into submission. It’s like, hello, natural world, you think you’re so great, but can you grow a tree that looks like a moose?’
She laughs. ‘I shouldn’t complain, though. It does beat living in an apartment building with a couple hundred grumpy New Yorkers. And we have a garden for the first time in ages, which is nice. No topiary in sight,’ she adds quickly.
I can’t imagine how someone could move from New York to Bowen Lakes and still look as cheerful as she does. ‘Do you miss it?’ I ask.
‘New York? Well, we were only there a year. Sometimes I miss the energy, but this place has an energy all of its own. And everything is useful.’
‘Useful?’
Camilla starts to gather up her books. ‘I just meant that every place has its own … energy,’ she says lightly.
I perch on the edge of one of the couch armrests. A billion questions are circulating through my head. I select the most innocuous one. ‘So, then, have you always lived with your dad?’
She shoves her books into her satchel. ‘Yep. Pretty much since I was a baby. Mum is – well, she’s really into shoes. She’s not really into kids.’
I’m running out of context for this conversation. I rack my brains over the movies that I know, but I’m struggling to find a non-zombie or -vampire reference for a mum who’s ‘not really into’ kids.
Camilla swings her bag over her shoulder. ‘So. Point me towards the bus?’
‘Sure. I’ll walk you.’ It seems like the polite thing to do.
She smiles. ‘Thanks, Sam.’
And then neither of us moves. Camilla glances at my DVDs again. ‘So, do you have a favourite? I suppose it’s impossible for a true buff to pick just one favourite movie?’
‘It is impossible,’ I answer.
‘But if you had to narrow it down? Say someone had a gun to your head and your only hope of survival was to pick your –’
‘My top five all-time favourite movies?’ I grin. I don’t know why, but for a second she looks a little surprised. I hurry over to my shelves. ‘Well – and keep in mind that if I had to have just five I would probably be some kind of psycho mess, and, really, these should be broken down into the top five by subgenre –’
‘Subgenre?’
‘Yeah. You know, slasher, stalker, virus, monster, alien –’
‘I didn’t realise there was such subtle detail.’
‘You have no idea. It’s almost painful to pick a universal top five, but – here.’
I pull out my copy of The Evil Dead. ‘Best low-budget possession movie ever made. And it was written by Sam Raimi, who is cool beyond cool.’
She takes the DVD from me. ‘You’ll probably think I’m completely unworthy, but I’m not really into gore.’
‘But, see, that’s just it – it’s not just about gore! At least, not in the old ones, and the really good ones. I mean, watch the opening scenes of the original Halloween – there’s barely any blood, but it’s seriously some of the creepiest stuff ever filmed. You can splatter as much blood as you want, but unless you can give your audience a nemesis that’s truly worthy – then you’re basically just covering a screen with corn syrup and food dye. It’s not just about the killing. It’s what happens before and around the killing that makes a really great horror movie.’
She laughs and hands the DVD back to me. ‘I’ll take your word for it, Sam. Next?’
‘Well – okay, the original Alien. The first one was, like, the first real sci-fi/horror hybrid. And, you know, the alien-exploding-out-of-the-chest-cavity thing is unquestionably awesome, even though, okay, I guess it’s a bit gross. And then, if I’m picking the most influential horror movies, I have to include Halloween, cos it was written by John Carpenter. It really was the first great modern slasher film and everything that came afterwards was in some way a rip-off, I mean, after The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which –’
Camilla laughs again. ‘Wow, there are a lot of movies I haven’t seen. I guess I’ve never understood the appeal of sitting in the dark and having the bejesus scared out of me. Clearly I need to reconsider. What else?’
I pick another DVD off the shelf. ‘Well, you know
… Star Wars. The original one. It doesn’t have much blood. But it’s still … cool.’ I rein in my Star Wars worship. I think it might make me sound like a bit of a loser.
She takes the DVD from my hand. ‘Now this is one I can get on board with.’
I blink. ‘Are you telling me you like Star Wars?’
‘Are you kidding? I saw it for the first time when I was a kid. We’d just moved to London, and I was really, pathetically miserable. Dad took me to a revival at this theatre in Paddington. I saw it, like, fifteen times afterwards. I had the biggest crush on Luke Skywalker.’
‘I think we might have liked it for different reasons. But yeah, I saw it when I was a kid too. It is … awesome.’
‘Agreed,’ she says with a serious nod. ‘It would definitely make my desert-island-slash-radioactive-fallout-shelter-slash-death-row list.’
I stare at the cover of Star Wars. My brain feels like it’s experiencing a processing malfunction.
Mum appears in the doorway. She is smiling, but it’s twisted on the edges in a way that signifies she’s one step away from tears again.
‘Mum?’
‘Heya, kids,’ she says. ‘That was your father, Sam. He’s going out with your Uncle Richard tonight. So it’ll just be the two of us for dinner, again.’
‘Oh,’ I say. I’m unsure if the overwhelming urge to punch your father in the face is ever justifiable.
Mum smiles at Camilla. I wonder if Camilla has any frame of reference for my mother’s strange, sad smile. ‘So, Camilla, do you have big plans tonight?’
‘I did. I mean, not big plans. Dad and I were supposed to be going out for dinner. Dad’s working tonight, though. He has a gig. Or something.’
Mum seems momentarily distracted. ‘Oh? Well you should stay and have dinner with us.’
Camilla glances at me. ‘I don’t want to impose. Dad leaves money for pizza. I’m fine.’