Girl Saves Boy

by Steph Bowe

  Jewel

  ‘I can’t believe I paid five bucks to sit in a giant teacup for ten minutes,’ I said as I sat down, tucking the skirt of my dress under me.

  Sacha laughed. It was that sort of the-joke-isn’t-funny-but-this-is-awkward-so-I’d-better-laugh laugh. It was still nice, though. The teacups started whirling slowly and I felt a bit dizzy but tried to focus.

  From the teacup, I could see the market stalls and the food stands, the school grounds filled with people. The sun was bright and warm, and all the buzzing activity seemed to spin around us. The teacup was painted with swirling intricate designs covering the outside. On the inside, it had a metal base, and was painted a plain white.

  ‘Do you ever think of how big the people who drink out of these cups must be?’ Sacha asked.

  I laughed this time.

  As long as I tucked my legs in, our knees didn’t touch. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. It was the first time I’d worn a dress in forever. I smoothed out the skirt, over and over. I felt like an idiot. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t girly, or feminine, or anything vaguely like that.

  I looked up, and Sacha was staring at me. He smiled. It wasn’t creepy; it was something else I couldn’t name. No one had looked at me like that before. It was kind of lovely. I didn’t want it to be, but it was.

  ‘You don’t wear make-up,’ he observed.

  My hand came up to my neck. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Sacha. ‘I mean, I like that. Makeup’s kind of demeaning anyway—why do so many girls go to all this effort, when most guys don’t give a second thought about the way they look themselves?’ He swallowed.

  I smiled. ‘I’m just lazy.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  There were heaps of people around us making lots of noise, but we were quiet—like the eye of a storm, I guess.

  ‘Whenever I read the newspaper—you know the classifieds up the back?—I read those lonely hearts ads,’ I said, just speaking, not thinking about what I was saying at all. ‘Is that weird?’

  Sacha shook his head. He opened his mouth, about to speak, then he closed it again, smiling. I started talking again.

  ‘I think, you know, that’ll be me one day,’ I said, looking down and staring at my hands, fidgeting in my lap. ‘I’m going to be forty-five, fifty, and unmarried. I know it. It’s not even like I care about marriage, it’s not like it’s something I’d even consider in the next ten years or ever, as long as I had a partner. But I’m afraid of being old and alone. Does that make sense?’

  Sacha nodded. ‘You’re not necessarily going to become that, Jewel.’

  ‘But those people—the desperately lonely ones— were kids at some point, weren’t they? I think they were like me.’

  ‘Would you rather be desperately lonely or stuck with someone you hate?’ Sacha said.

  ‘Oh, I hate playing “Would you rather?”’ I said. ‘Anyway, you’d just leave someone if you hated them.’ Our knees were touching.

  ‘Not if you were old,’ said Sacha. ‘You’d be afraid of being alone again. But I think you’d be better off a strong person alone, rather than dependent on someone else. People can be happy on their own.’

  I recalled how I’d found out that first night by the lake that Sacha’s mother was dead. ‘Is your dad single?’

  He smiled. ‘Are you planning on hitting on my father?’

  I laughed out loud this time. ‘No.’

  Sacha smiled wider then said, ‘He’s got a partner. But I’m not happy about it.’

  ‘You know that’s completely classic, right?’ I said. ‘It’s in every second Disney movie made. Kid objects to father’s new girlfriend.’

  ‘Not girlfriend,’ said Sacha. He had—unconsciously, I think—leant closer to me. He smelt nice. I could make out every tiny blemish on his face. Instead of this being ugly or unattractive, it was simply imperfect.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  He paused. Maybe it was for effect, or maybe he was reluctant to say it out loud. Perhaps a bit of both. I wasn’t sure. ‘Mr Carr, our Art teacher.’

  ‘Holy shit!’ I laughed, unbelieving. Then I caught myself. ‘I’m sorry.’

  What was it Mr Carr had said? ‘I know his family from outside school.’ I didn’t know what to think. Or say. Or do.

  Sacha smiled. ‘It’s okay.’ He looked at my hands too and said, ‘I like your gloves.’

  You know that intentional touching you do when you first like someone? Brushing against their arm, accidentally-on-purpose touching their hand, putting your hand on their shoulder? I hadn’t done it, because I’d never felt that way about someone. I’d never allowed myself to. But I knew about it.

  I wanted to touch Sacha, and the way I was feeling was kind of scaring me.

  Sacha picked up my hand in his and my breath caught in my throat and he asked, ‘Did you make them?’ He was touching the wool, and I knew that he was touching the wool because the wool was soft, but all I was thinking was that my skin was underneath the wool and that he was stroking my hand.

  I shook my head. ‘My grandma did. She died. A little while ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He nodded and looked at me and smiled, then the teacups whirled slower and he rested my hand back in my lap. I stared at my hand, and I was buzzing with a sort of nervous energy.

  We were quiet until the teacups slowed to a stop, and we both sat frozen, each of us waiting for the other to get out. Sacha laughed and said, ‘You first.’ I smiled and stepped out, trying not to brush against him as I passed.

  Little Al and his sister were waiting for us.

  ‘Are you coming with us?’ Sacha asked.

  ‘We’re going to ask to have our faces painted like Spider Man,’ Little Al said. ‘It’s going to be awesome.’

  Without the forced intimacy of the teacups, I suddenly felt awkward. ‘I’d better catch up with Mum.’

  For a second, Sacha didn’t respond. Then he said, ‘All right. See you later on, Jewel.’

  They walked off towards the face-painting stall, and I went in the opposite direction, trying not to look back over my shoulder.

  My grandma died at home.

  Everyone always says they want to die at home, surrounded by family and friends. That’d be nice enough for the person dying, but pretty distressing for the family and friends present, watching somebody you love slowly die.

  Add to that the fact that no one ever dies at a prearranged time. So odds are everyone will have to hang around all day and night to fulfil your dying wish, but some people still have lives, so that would be pretty selfish, wanting everyone there for your last breath when they have jobs and school to go to.

  I wouldn’t want to have my family and friends around me when I die. I want it to happen quickly and brutally and shockingly. Spontaneous combustion. Struck by lightning. Something brilliant. Amazing. Utterly unique.

  Death at the height of your career is paramount to fame. For musicians and artists and writers and princesses. A car crash. Choking on your own vomit. A cocktail of drugs. That’d be my choice if I ever became famous, really famous, and wanted to make a lasting impression.

  Even though I’d like to be an artist, I don’t think that’s what I’m aspiring to become. I just want the freedom to live the way I want. Fame is limiting. Wealth would be a hindrance. Anonymity is the important bit: nothing to tie you down or hold you back. No family. When I leave home, my mother will be the only person left behind—no grandparents or siblings or cousins to consider. She won’t mind, I don’t think. She will have moved on by that point, I hope.

  I was sitting in the lounge, in the big chair, when Grandma died. The nurse was out buying cigarettes. Near the end, Grandma had twenty-four-hour in-home nurse care. But the nurse was a bit of a bitch, and read Vogue and smoked most of the time she was there. I guess it wouldn’t be much of a job, though—sitting around in a stranger’s home, waiting for them to die.

  I put on Grandma’s favourite Christmas carols CD, even thoug
h Christmas had been months before. I thought she was sleeping. She slept a lot, near the end.

  The kitchen was piled high with casseroles, cakes and slices from Grandma’s friends and neighbours. I couldn’t eat anything. I felt sick just looking at the mountains of food. Most of it would be wasted.

  Later, I went into Grandma’s room. I patted Grandpa—that is, his ashes sitting in an urn on the mantelpiece—and knelt beside Grandma’s bed and stroked her hair.

  After a while, I realised she didn’t have a pulse.

  And I kept thinking, She died listening to Christmas carols. Imagine slipping away listening to Tony Bennett’s rendition of ‘White Christmas’.

  There were worse ways to go.

  When the nurse got back with her cigarettes, I was curled up in bed next to Grandma, sobbing.

  Grandma and Grandpa had looked after me for ten years: they’d not just fed me and clothed me and sent me to school, but they’d loved me and cared for me, and now they were both gone.

  Mum didn’t come when Grandma was sick, or for the funeral. She said we were, I was, too far away.

  It’s hard to believe that was only a few weeks ago.

  Back at the fete, I didn’t go in search of my mother. I had no idea where she was: probably with friends, and she’d probably already left. She hadn’t adjusted to having a child again, even though I was hardly a kid any more.

  A little way from the basketball court, I found a tall, sturdy tree, with branches low to the ground. I climbed to a branch that was wide enough to sit on. With my back to the trunk and the thick branches of the tree around me, I felt safe enough to rest my sketchbook in my lap, without becoming unsteady or falling from the branch. I was sheltered.

  I’d climbed high enough to see the school oval, the stalls sprawling across a couple of basketball courts, the stage set-up, the street closed off for the fete and choked with people laughing and talking and eating. I could smell Mexican food and hear a band playing a polka, and I could see stilt-walkers. Everyone was small from where I was, but I could still distinguish their figures.

  I decided—as I sketched some the things I could see, and some things I couldn’t—that it wasn’t worth befriending Sacha Thomas, that I was being stupid, that I was inventing something in my head that didn’t exist. Who would want to be my friend anyway? I was turning his kindness into something different altogether.

  I also thought about death; that was always on my mind. My brother, my grandmother, my grandfather. I thought about my dad; God knew where he was. I felt empty. I was lonely by choice, I reminded myself; I was choosing this path.

  The sun dipped low in the sky, and then disappeared altogether. I drank in the pink-orange sunset. People left and others arrived. Streetlights came on and special lanterns were lit on the oval. The moon was half full, and clouds rolled across the sky.

  It got cold, but I didn’t want to climb down, didn’t want to leave. It was so peaceful up there, just me and my thoughts, all meandering and crisscrossing and limitless. Everything was going on below me, and I was above it. I could imagine I was powerful.

  When I thought I’d better go home—it was so cold and, who knows, maybe Mum was wondering where I was—I looked down to try to plot how I’d get back to the ground. There was someone with a torch standing at the bottom of the tree.

  Sacha looked up. ‘Hey,’ he said softly.

  SACHA

  Jewel reached out and grasped my hand as she climbed down, then turned to face me. We were standing too close, and we both took a step back at the same time.

  ‘You didn’t get your face painted,’ she said. In the lights from the fete and the moon, only half her face was visible.

  ‘What?’ I said, ‘Oh, nah. Spider Man was Al’s idea.’

  ‘I thought so,’ said Jewel. We walked back towards the centre of the fete—all the stalls and rides had been packed up and those who had stayed were hanging around the basketball court near a temporary stage, where a rockabilly band was now playing.

  ‘Should we get something to eat?’ I asked.

  ‘That’d be great,’ said Jewel. ‘Any longer up that tree and I would have died of starvation.’

  I grinned. ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  I glanced up. But no, it wasn’t True; she was just saying true the opposite of false.

  ‘Sorry if you didn’t enjoy yourself today,’ I said to Jewel. ‘I realise it’s probably a lot more fun if you know most of the people here.’

  ‘No, I had fun,’ she said. ‘Sorry if I was weird, disappearing and hiding in a tree.’

  I shrugged. ‘Weird’s okay with me.’

  ‘Good, ’cause there’s going to be a lot more of it.’

  I laughed.

  We reached the basketball court. The band was set up at one end, and clusters of teachers, students, families and friends were in front of the stage. Some people had picnic blankets; others had folding tables. Around the perimeter of the court were small marquees selling wine and food.

  We stood at the edge for a moment, until I spotted Al, standing on a chair and waving crazily at us. He was probably tall enough without the chair, and now he towered over everybody.

  We made our way over to him. He was with a couple of his sisters, a brother, and his mum. The music was a loud cover of a song I recognised but didn’t know the name of. The band was pretty good, all dressed up in 1950s stuff.

  ‘Hey!’ Al yelled over the music. ‘I saved you seats.’

  Jewel and I sat down, Jewel smiling uncomfortably and holding her satchel in front of her like a shield.

  Al’s brother Mason leant towards us. ‘You kids hungry?’

  Before we could reply, he’d got up. ‘I’ll grab you some sausages in bread. Anyone else? Miri?’

  Al’s older sister was breastfeeding her baby. ‘Get me one, too,’ she said.

  Our chairs were set up in a rough semi-circle around a picnic blanket. Maddie slept in her mother’s lap.

  ‘Mum,’ said Al. ‘This is Jewel. Jewel, this is my mum.’

  ‘Pleasure to meet you,’ murmured Jewel.

  Sal smiled broadly. ‘Pleasure to meet you, love,’ she said. ‘Jewel’s a beautiful name.’ Then she turned to Al. ‘Is this the girl you were telling me about who saved Sacha’s life?’

  Al nodded.

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ said Jewel.

  ‘It sure is,’ she said. ‘They give folks like you medals, Jewel. Don’t they, Al?’

  ‘Totally,’ agreed Al.

  ‘What’s the name of this band?’ asked Jewel, changing the subject.

  ‘Oh,’ said Al, ‘it changes every week. That’s my dad on the drums. He’s not just a pretty face,’ he added sarcastically.

  ‘Don’t say that about your father!’ Sal turned to Jewel. ‘Everyone in our family has many strings to their bows. And we consider young Sacha here a part of this family.’ She winked at me. ‘I’m Sal, by the way. Sal Mitchell,’ she said to Jewel.

  Sal proceeded to introduce Jewel to everyone in the family. Miri put her baby back in his pram and rocked it slowly. The band finished playing one song and started another.

  ‘You’ve got different-coloured eyes,’ Sal said. ‘Wow.’

  Jewel blushed.

  ‘It’s called heterochromia,’ said Little Al.

  Miri snorted. ‘How do you fit all this inside your head?’

  ‘Wikipedia?’ I asked.

  ‘I learnt it in Year 7 Science, all right?’

  ‘You did Year 7 Science in Grade 3,’ I said.

  ‘It’s simple,’ he said, nodding. ‘It’s Greek. Hetero—different. Chromia—colour.’

  ‘Does that mean…’ said Sal, smiling, ‘that I’m homochromic?’

  We all laughed.

  ‘Mum, stop being stupid!’ moaned Miri.

  Even though Al’s family was kind of obnoxious and dirt poor and so big you could get lost in it, I wished that it was my own. As much as I loved my dad, just him and me was
lonely, and lonelier still when it became him and Mr Carr, and me, separate from it all.

  Someone ruffled my hair. ‘How’s it going, folks?’

  Speak of the devil.

  Sal smiled and blinked repeatedly. ‘Mr Thomas, lovely to see you.’

  Dad stepped around and grasped her hand in an awkward hello. ‘Call me Tristan.’

  ‘Tristan.’ Sal fanned herself with her hand.

  ‘Mum,’ sighed Al, ‘he’s gay.’ Then he said to Dad, ‘She’s got the hots for you.’

  I laughed. ‘You’re a bit blunt, Al.’

  Sal frowned at him.

  Dad shook his head and smiled at us all, waving at each person in turn. He paused at Jewel. ‘I don’t believe we’ve met.’

  ‘I’m Jewel.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘You’ve got lovely eyes, Jewel,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, eyes downcast.

  ‘Where’s Mr Carr?’ I asked.

  ‘Jason’s just getting something to eat,’ he said. ‘Are you going to need a lift back home, Sach?’

  Al answered for me: ‘We’ll drive him back. We’ve got a few cars. Sorry about saying the gay thing. We’re not homophobes or anything.’

  ‘In fact, I’m homochromatic,’ said Sal.

  We all laughed again.

  Dad smiled faintly at me. ‘I guess you guys will be all right. See you later on, Sacha.’ He cast a final look around the group, pausing on Jewel, right next to me. ‘Don’t let my boy stay out too late, Sal.’

  ‘You know I look after him like my own son.’

  Dad smiled. ‘Bye.’

  After he left, Jewel leant close and whispered to me, ‘I like your dad.’

  ‘Most people do.’

  The rockabilly band finished their last song on stage. Al’s dad did a final roll of the drums, and we clapped wildly. Al got back up on his chair and whistled.

  When Al’s dad and his girlfriend returned to the group, Al introduced them to Jewel.

  ‘Jewel, this is my dad, David,’ said Al. ‘And this is June. Dad, June, this is Jewel.’

  Jewel shook hands with them both and murmured hello. They settled into their seats, and, once everyone had drinks, the noisy conversation resumed.