Girl Saves Boy

by Steph Bowe

  ‘I didn’t know this was your house,’ he said. ‘I’m not stalking you.’

  He sounded genuine, but, you know, stalkers always sound genuine. I wanted to say that to him, make a joke. But I didn’t. I turned towards him and we were silent for a few moments.

  Then I asked, ‘Would you like to go out for coffee with me?’ In this light, cheery tone that came from nowhere. Not a hint of monotone sarcasm.

  He paused and looked at me, perhaps trying to judge whether or not I was serious. And his eyes were like hollow stars, the way they sparkled, such a pale grey that it didn’t seem like he had irises at all.

  He mumbled, ‘I don’t drink coffee.’

  I smiled. ‘Me either. I should have asked if you’d like to go for a hot chocolate.’

  ‘You mean now?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘All right.’ He smiled uncertainly. ‘And, um, sorry about the gnome.’

  ‘You already said that. Don’t worry about it. I’ll drop by Bunnings later.’ Not that I’d ever been to Bunnings Warehouse in my life, but, hey, why the hell not? I could get run over by a forklift there and end this farcical existence of mine.

  But, standing there with that bizarre boy, I didn’t want to be run over by a forklift.

  Instead, I wanted to have coffee, or hot chocolate, with the garden gnome thief, the boy whose life I had saved.

  The replacement gnome would have to wait.

  SACHA

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about sex.

  But before you go assuming I was some kind of pervert (which I wouldn’t blame you for assuming: I was beginning to be suspicious of it myself ), there was more to it than that, so much more.

  Somehow—I was having a freaky out-of-body experience at the time and didn’t quite recall how—Jewel took me to a little smoky café under the haberdashery, the little smoky café that no one can remember the name of and probably breaks all kinds of health regulations.

  A tall, broad-shouldered woman wearing a deconstructed Che Guevera T-shirt (it was slashed to the point where I had trouble making out ‘Revolution’) sashayed across the room, handed us a couple of menus and told us to sit wherever we wanted.

  There were a few people seated at tables, some smoking, most wearing clothing rarely seen in the respectable outer eastern-suburbs. One man looked like he was wearing a sack.

  The walls were painted a deep green; incense was burning. A guy played guitar in a corner, at the same time having a heated discussion with a woman who had short, spiky grey hair. It would have been homely if not for the cigarette smoke.

  Though I felt like we were intruding (we could have been in someone’s lounge room, not a place of business), Jewel sat down in an armchair, dropped her bag at her feet and gestured for me to sit opposite her. There was a low table between us. She looked at the menu—handmade paper with vegan dishes and no prices scrawled on it—and I looked at her.

  I was very surreptitious about it, naturally.

  I was thinking how strangely beautiful she was, and why she’d asked me out for coffee.

  I was thinking about leaning over and tucking her hair behind her ear.

  I wanted to hit myself for being such an idiot.

  She coughed.

  ‘You all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ She smiled. ‘It’s just a little smoky.’

  I wanted to touch her lips. They were lovely.

  Do you see what I mean about thinking about sex? This was the closest I’d ever been to a girl who wasn’t True Grisham (True Grisham, who, in spite of her beauty and intelligence, I wasn’t attracted to in the least. It’s a mystery—maybe it was the height difference, or just the fact that we’d been friends since primary school).

  And, I don’t know, there was something so special about Jewel Valentine. A strange sort of fierceness in her eyes, her fingernails trimmed so short, plain silver studs in her ears, and no make-up, like she couldn’t care less.

  Every feature of hers was beautiful and unique.

  We ordered organic fair-trade soy-milk hot chocolates, because nothing else but coffee was available. When the tall woman with her cut-up T-shirt put them on the table, and I leant forward to pick mine up, my fingers brushed Jewel’s. And my heart wanted to leap out of my chest. I kept on tapping my toes nervously.

  It was scaring me, this intensity I was feeling over a near-stranger—a beautiful near-stranger who saved my life, but a near-stranger all the same.

  The hot chocolate was, as promised, hot, but too hot, and I scorched the inside of my mouth. When it did cool down, my tastebuds were still burnt, and I couldn’t taste it at all. Not that I could have tasted anything in the state I was in.

  The guitarist stopped playing, and was replaced by music that sounded vaguely Bollywood. A few more people wearing interesting hats and op-shop clothes came in.

  They smiled at us—Jewel and me, the too thin and the too short one. I felt stupid, sitting there in my school uniform, but Jewel made hers look like a costume—like she wasn’t really a schoolgirl, just dressed like one for fun.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said to her, trying to break the silence between us.

  I wasn’t sure whether the silence was awkward or easy, but I wanted to say something, in case she decided I was boring.

  Which I was, but I lied to myself and told myself I could fool her.

  She smiled and, after a pause, said, ‘So, you and garden gnomes?’

  I didn’t expect that. I probably should have. Maybe she’d only invited me out for hot chocolate because she liked freaks. Should I play it up or play it down?

  I wasn’t going to stick with the truth. The truth was worse than anything. I could lie and say I was gay and had a long history of dating older men who resembled garden gnomes, and that would be better than the truth.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Garden gnomes. What do you steal for a hobby?’

  She smiled again, eyes flickering from her drink and up to me. I wanted her to keep smiling at me.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’m actually quite a fan of plastic pink flamingos. We should start a garden-ornament thieves support group?’

  I laughed. ‘So, do you have a real hobby?’

  She sobered a little. ‘I like to draw.’ She seemed reluctant to divulge this, cringing after she’d said it, like she was afraid of how I might react.

  She went to continue, the words on her lips, but she stopped and looked down, suddenly shy.

  Confused but curious, I filled the quiet. ‘Could I see something you’ve drawn?’

  She smiled at me. ‘Maybe. One day.’

  I wasn’t sure whether this was good or bad.

  Beside the table, I could see the edge of what might have been a sketchbook, but it could also have been one of her schoolbooks, peeking out the top of her satchel.

  I leant forward and pulled it out, waving it at her, teasing. It was a sketch book.

  She leant over and tried to snatch it back. She looked nervous.

  ‘There’s no problem if I have a look, is there?’ I let her take it.

  She sat there, staring at it, weighing it in her hands. Then she stood up and walked around, perched on the arm of my chair and handed it to me, her face blank.

  I opened it and began to turn the pages.

  There were portraits and nudes and sketches in charcoal and grey-lead. Sparse lines created the images, nothing out of place, everything perfectly in proportion.

  They were amazing.

  I looked up at her. She leant in, scrutinising each drawing, her mouth open in concentration, and her hair fell across her shoulder and brushed my cheek. She was so close, but not touching.

  ‘These are amazing,’ I said. ‘Or did I just say that?’

  She half-smiled, then suddenly she drew back when she noticed me looking at her. ‘Thank you,’ she said in a neutral voice.

  Our fingers touched again as she took the sketchbook, closed it and slipped it into her bag.

&nbs
p; She sat down again and picked up her hot chocolate.

  A loose leaf of paper had fallen out of the sketchbook. I glanced at it before I held it out to Jewel.

  ‘That looks exactly like my friend’s mum,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’ Jewel took it from me and tucked it carefully into her sketchbook. ‘Geraldine Grisham. I forgot to give it to her.’

  ‘You know Geraldine?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’ She drank what remained of her hot chocolate. ‘Are you finished?’

  Jewel left a ten-dollar bill on the table.

  ‘Thanks. Do you have a job?’ I asked.

  ‘My grandparents left me a bit of money,’ she said, as if she resented this.

  Every little thing she said about herself, I put away in a file. I imagined I was an FBI profiler. I took each detail down and committed it to memory. I tried to formulate an identity for her from the things she gave away. I tried to figure out if she kept secrets. What her family was like. Whether she’d had many boyfriends. What she wanted to be when she grew up.

  I wanted to know more. I wanted to know everything.

  We left the smoke and stepped out onto the street—the haberdashery was closed now, and it was dark. It was very peaceful.

  She began walking down the street.

  After a few steps, she turned and asked, ‘You coming or what?’

  ‘I live the other way,’ I explained.

  She was surprised, I think. Expected me to live closer to her house, wondered why I’d walked out so far.

  I wanted her to ask, and I wanted to be able to talk to her some more, and I wanted her to want to know as much about me as I wanted to know about her.

  I wanted too much.

  She looked awkward. ‘Oh, all right. Bye,’ she said.

  I stood there and watched her walk away. When she was outside the chemist, I called out to her.

  ‘Are you going to the school fete on Saturday?’

  This was what was going through my mind, over and over, like a chant, an incantation: You’ve got nothing to lose.

  She turned around, as if she didn’t know whether to walk back or not. She stayed where she was. It was so quiet in the street, we could speak normally and still hear each other, quite a few metres away.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s pretty good. Real community sort of thing and all, but they get good bands in at night. And the teacups and the other rides through the day are great.’ I smiled at her.

  ‘I might come along then.’

  ‘All right.’

  She paused and smiled and glanced at the ground. ‘I’ll see you then.’

  I didn’t know whether to feel elated or depressed. I watched her walk away down the street and around the corner.

  Then I went my own way, under the streetlamps. And, as unclear as things were before, they only became more clouded.

  And I still thought about her eyes and her lips and her hair and her smile and I wondered what was wrong with me, apart from the obvious.

  Sacha’s Favorite Foods

  His mother’s bacon & eggs breakfast

  Chinese takeaway

  Cheap Wednesday Pizza, a tradition started by his dad

  Barbecues at Little Al’s house

  Geraldine’s signature zucchini slice

  Jewel

  There was water all around me, and I was standing on it—I was walking on it. I was walking on water.

  The water extended as far as the eye could see in every direction, nothing but water and sky, gentle blue. Complete silence. I don’t know why, but I was wearing a pristine white dress that twirled around my legs in the breeze.

  I walked, and I walked. It was like walking normally, on a hard surface, but it wasn’t logical. I could walk on water, but it made no sense.

  Suddenly darkness fell. I could hear waves tumbling. The water had been still only moments earlier. The moon was dim.

  The waves churned beneath my feet and I swayed, unsteady, then I slipped down into the water.

  I was submerged for a moment, submerged in total darkness and silence. Then I burst through the water’s surface and choked down as many gasping breaths as I could before another wave could toss over me and push me back under.

  As I paddled the water, it became almost sticky. I looked around and, in what little light there was, I could see that the water had turned to blood. The type of blood you get from a large wound, leaking uncontrollably when you get a deep cut, when you’re in a car accident.

  I’ve never cut myself, but I imagined that if someone was to try to kill themselves that way, this would be the blood to ooze out.

  My white dress was stained red.

  My head dipped under again, and I got a mouthful of blood. When I resurfaced, I retched and retched. The inside of my mouth was warm and sticky. Metallic. Salty.

  I could make out two bodies near me, floating. Two boys. My brother, and Sacha.

  ‘Jewel!’

  My brother was spluttering, still alive. I gasped and splashed towards him, and the blood thinned out to water, and the moon lit up everything.

  When I got over to him, I realised it wasn’t my brother at all. It was Sacha.

  ‘Where’s my brother?’ I panicked.

  Sacha started treading water beside me. ‘He’s dead, Jewel, he’s dead.’ Then he disappeared.

  And then I woke up.

  When I was young—really young—I used to think that the kids who had money, who were popular at school and who did well at things must have had horrible home lives—abusive parents or nasty siblings or lived in cupboards under stairs.

  It’s kind of sick when you think about it, but what I figured was that life should be fair—everyone had to have good and bad things in their lives, and no one could have a wholly good life or a wholly bad life because that would upset the balance of things.

  I know now that I was wrong.

  I haven’t spoken to anyone about my brother, apart from school counsellors who forced me to splutter sparse details (because it’s so goddamn healing), and brief words with Grandma and Grandpa, which weren’t as bad as the student welfare counsellor asking me to bare my soul for her, but were still incredibly uncomfortable for me—I don’t think that will ever change.

  I was never openly blamed for my brother’s death, but I could tell people thought it. I’m not a mind-reader, but in the piteous looks I was given at the funeral, the sneers from old ladies who’d heard the rumours, I felt it. I heard it. I knew they were thinking it.

  Because even though I was an eight year old, someone needed to be blamed.

  That’s because of a basic fact: old people die. Grandparents and distant relatives. People with heart disease and failing lungs and colon cancer.

  Children die too. Little bald kids in hospitals. Not kids full of life and vitality like my brother. Not so unexpectedly, randomly.

  When I think about it—which is a lot, even though I try not to; I can’t get it out of my head—it could have been me in the child-sized coffin. The old ladies could have been casting looks at my still-alive brother, looks filled with suspicion and resentment. I think it would have been worse for him, since he was older.

  And I always think, Why me? Why did I live?

  When I was young—before his death—I had my sick ideas about the world being completely fair. As I got older I had this idea that everything that happened was meant to happen that way and it couldn’t be changed. Both ideas were ridiculous, and now I don’t believe in anything.

  I think a lot—when all you do is draw and go to school and sleep, and you don’t have friends or a proper life, you do a lot of thinking, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it feels like it sometimes, and I feel like a lonely, horrible beast that no one would ever love. Could ever love.

  I think about what would have happened if my brother had lived, and I had died instead? What if we had both survived?

  I’ve had dreams where my brother doesn’t die that day, where our lives go on per
fectly. Our parents stay together. Our grandparents come and stay with us for holidays. I stay at my school.

  These dreams stopped when I was twelve or thirteen and I gave up on the idea of things being good again. Now that I’ve come back to live with my mother, they’ve reappeared, and I dream them when I’m lying in bed at night, trying to get to sleep.

  In dreams of my brother still alive, our parents are still together—I still know my father and he’s a good man, my mother is still the mother I remember from my childhood—and my brother’s well and truly finished school and I’m finishing school. I’ve got a spot lined up for a Fine Arts degree next year. My brother’s becoming a lawyer or a doctor or something equally smart and important. He’s got a girlfriend who’s a lot like True. I’ve gone to the same school as True growing up, and we’re such good friends we’re going to live together. I know that boy Sacha, and we’re good friends as well and maybe even more.

  Then I fall asleep and I get the nightmares, then I wake up and get the real world, and I can’t decide which is worse. I don’t know how much longer I can endure either.

  My dreams can never be reality. Not one part of them. Coming up with these grand schemes that involve dead people and strangers is an exercise in futility. I just feel worse in the morning, remembering the plans for the future I’ve concocted in my head the night before.

  People always say all the right things:

  ‘Don’t blame yourself.’

  ‘He’s in a better place.’

  ‘Everything happens for a reason.’

  ‘It’s okay to grieve.’

  ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’

  All these words are empty. They mean nothing. They’re printed in self-help books on grieving and healing that you find in clearance bins outside bargain book shops and newsagents. They’re just words, and they don’t do anything and no one cares that much.

  All the offers and kind words stopped when I went to my grandparents. Originally, I was going to come back and live with Mum after a few months. But gradually, Grandma and Grandpa’s became home. After a while, Mum stopped calling so much.

  Of course, I wonder where my father is now. At least I know that Grandpa, Grandma and my brother are dead and buried. Who knows where my father is? Is he dead or alive? Who even knows who he is?