by Tina Shaw
So when Roxy had asked if I was free on Saturday night, I could quite honestly tell her, ‘Yes’. She said she’d meet me in the Foodtown carpark at seven. ‘Great,’ I’d said, imagining the whole night ahead of us – me and Roxy. My brain was already feverishly coming up with ideas. Probably best to avoid things like paint ball or ice skating, but sitting in a café together would be brilliant. I could finally get to know Roxy. and I’d be out with a girl.
I just hoped Roxy wouldn’t mind a quiet evening out. Something that didn’t involve cars, parties, alcohol and/or drugs. There were all sort of things I wanted to talk to her about. Would she be a girl who liked talking about stuff?
Early Saturday evening I was showered, and had worked about half a tub of gel into my hair. I was wearing a loose shirt over my new distressed jeans. In all modesty, I looked pretty good. Smokin’.
I lay down on the bed and linked my hands behind my head, trying to calm my beating heart. I didn’t want to stuff this up by getting all faint and breathless. In forty-three minutes’ time exactly, I would be meeting Roxy. I’d ride into the Foodtown carpark on my Vespa and there she’d be, waiting by the entrance to the supermarket. I’d pull up in front, and slide off my helmet. I’d nod (real cool, not giving too much away) and she’d walk over to talk to me. We’d chat there for a bit, next to my Vespa. I’d crack a couple of jokes, to break the ice. Then I’d offer to buy her a frappuccino.
Yeah, that was a good plan.
We’d sit opposite each other, sipping sweet and frothy frappuccinos, and talking. It’d be good if there was a big quarry, like in that movie Garden State with Zack Braff, and we could go there and talk about life, death, pizza, movies, chewing gum. Then this huge rain storm would burst over us (like in the movie). It’d be wild and exciting. We’d run for shelter, but get soaked through (except actually I’d walk, ’cause I try not to run, or get soaked through in rainstorms). Roxy would be laughing and happy – and then I’d kiss her.
When it came to saying goodbye, I’d suggest we get together again soon. Somewhere a little more romantic than the Foodtown carpark. Down by the Avon, for instance. I could just see it: lying on a rug under a tree, the river gurgling away at our feet, picnic things in a basket, maybe even a bottle of wine for Roxy.
Sweet. It’d be a real date, with a girl.
I tried to imagine how she would smell, whether she’d be wearing some kind of nice perfume, like the other day in the corridor. Maybe I’d be able to smell her hair. It’s kind of weird, but I’ve had a thing about how a girl’s hair smells, ever since primary school when Lisa Keeley let me play with her hair one lunchtime. It was luxuriously thick and smelt of icing sugar. I bet Roxy’s hair smelt nice. Would I be brave enough to touch it? To lean in and kiss her?
Just then a loud slam brought me back. Then raised voices came from the lounge.
‘I asked you to mow that lawn two weeks ago – what is your problem?’
Ryan’s response was muffled.
Mum’s voice rose to a screech. ‘What did you just call me? Ryan! You get back here this instant!’
Footsteps on floorboards. The front door slammed shut.
I poked my head out of my bedroom in time to see Mum hurtling out the front door. It slammed shut a second time. Uh-oh, they were out on the street now, and snatches of conversation came to me.
‘Get James to …’
‘How is James supposed to … when he’s got a …?’
Then this beauty from Ryan: ‘It’s always about his heart …’ He was coming over loud and clear now. ‘That’s the problem. I’m here too, you know.’
I turned guiltily back to my room as Ryan’s car blasted noise and fumes all down our street. He was right, of course, it was all about my bloody heart.
At five to seven, I pulled into the Foodtown carpark. There were a lot of shoppers around. At the edges of the carpark were the cool guys sitting on top of their cars, watching the traffic on the main road and checking out each other’s engines and mags. Even if my heart was A-okay, I still wouldn’t rate because I only drove a scooter.
There was no sign of Roxy.
I parked my Vespa near the entrance to the supermarket, and took off my helmet, doing everything real slow. Maybe I’d arrived too early. Checked my watch. It was 6.57.
I was wondering what to do – maybe kill some time in the supermarket? – when I saw her. She was on the other side of the carpark, standing next to a car. It was definitely Roxy, I’d recognise her anywhere. So I started making my way over there, dodging through the parked cars and trying to avoid getting slammed by the laden shopping trollies.
It wasn’t playing out quite how I’d pictured it, but that was okay. She had turned up, and that was the main thing.
Halfway across the carpark, I realised she was with a bunch of guys.
They were standing round the open hood of a black Holden Commodore. It was like a scene out of that old movie West Side Story. The tough dudes, the molls. But even then, I didn’t think too much of it. Maybe she’d got a ride here with an older brother and his mates, something like that. It made sense that she’d wait with them, rather than stand by herself at the supermarket entrance.
As I got closer, she said something to one of the guys. They closed the hood of the car, and she climbed up on it, perched there like a girl in a car magazine advertisement. That was when I nearly turned back.
But I couldn’t. It was Roxy, and we’d made a date. Her voice had spoken husky words into my shell-like ear. And stupidly, I was still thinking she was going to go out with me.
And besides, she’d seen me by now. Another guy offered her a pack of cigarettes. She slid one out, then bent her head over the flame, her hands cupped around his. When he stepped back, she looked right up at me. Her eyes were steely grey, and there was no welcoming smile.
‘Hey,’ I said. A classic greeting, especially when you don’t know what else to say.
‘So here’s our Peeping Tom,’ said Roxy, blowing smoke.
The other guys stared at me. My heart was fluttering randomly in my chest, and I knew immediately, without her saying anything else, that I should just turn around and get the hell out of there. But I didn’t.
Instead I said, ‘Excuse me?’
She didn’t beat around the bush. ‘What were you doing hanging round my house the other night?’
Her eyes drilled into me, and I felt about as distressed as my jeans. What a dork I was, a real idiot, standing there with my gelled hair and new jeans.
I managed a careless shrug, even though my face was burning. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘My kid brother caught you. Spying on me.’ She crossed her legs and sucked on the cigarette, watching me the whole time. The guys, like a pack of hyenas, were staring at me, salivating. ‘He said you were lurking in the bush, spying on our house. You a pervert, or what?’
That bloody kid. Talk about bad luck. I should have bluffed my way out of it, made up some story. For a nanosecond I even tried to think what Ryan would do. But of course Ryan would never be in this kind of situation in the first place. A cold feeling ran through me; had she told Ryan?
‘I was worried about you,’ I mumbled.
A strange light flickered in her eyes. ‘Sorry?’ she said sharply. ‘You were what?’
The hyenas had started snickering, enjoying the free show. So this was why she’d wanted to meet me in the carpark. This was where they came every Saturday night – to compare their pathetic cars, and eye up the talent – before they went on to some place more interesting. God, I was so stupid.
‘After the thing on the bus,’ I said, starting to sound incoherent. Get out, I told myself, while you can still salvage some shred of dignity.
‘What thing?’
‘That guy, hassling you.’
She threw back her head then and laughed. Light gleamed off her ash-blonde hair. She pulled her knees up to her chest and snapped the cigarette butt into the air. It bounced on the as
phalt and one of the guys stepped forward to crush it. These guys might have been her personal male harem, doing everything she wanted. Ryan was wrong about her having a boyfriend: she had a fan club.
‘Hey,’ said Roxy, ‘I can take care of myself.’
She slid off the car, and went round the other side of the Commodore. She got into the passenger seat and didn’t look at me again. That was definitely my cue to leave. The interview was over.
As I started walking back to my Vespa, one of the guys shouted after me. ‘Yeah, mind your own business, dickhead.’
My step didn’t even falter. I may have been dying inside, but I walked evenly all the way back to the Vespa and pulled on my helmet. Clint would’ve been proud of me.
‘Hey Bubba, why the long face?’
‘Marlene, please don’t call me Bubba,’ I said from my perch behind the till.
There was a numb feeling inside me that no amount of tough talk from Marlene was going to budge.
It was a quiet patch at the shop. I felt sick and weak and tired. I knew I ought to get home and go to bed, but I just couldn’t face my empty room and solitary DVD entertainment. Up on the screen behind the counter, the latest romantic movie was playing, like a mockery of my doomed evening. Date? What a joke. A bitter laugh escaped my lips.
Marlene, who was pretending to be dusting, looked up.
‘You feeling all right, Griffen?’
I nodded, my eyes on the screen. Under cover of her dusting cloth, Marlene slipped two Moro bars off the display. ‘Here, maybe this’ll cheer you up,’ she said, passing me one. ‘It always does the trick for me.’
‘Won’t they be missed?’ I asked, peeling the wrapper open anyway.
‘Shoplifters,’ sniffed Marlene. ‘It’s those bloody kids who keep coming in here and nicking stuff.’ She pulled up a stool and we sat side by side, watching the dumb girl kiss the dumb boy on the even dumber TV screen.
‘Oh, them.’
‘Those kids’ were Marlene’s excuse to eat stuff. Not all the time, of course, that would be too obvious, but just when she got extra hungry.
‘Yeah, them. Little punks.’ She grinned. ‘One day we’ll get them on the camera, then it’ll be all over.’
A picture flashed into my head of Roxy’s friends stealing from the DVD shop, and us calling the police, and the police slapping handcuffs on and marching them off to prison, where all sorts of horrible things would happen to them, very slowly. I sighed. It wasn’t a very convincing fantasy.
‘Anyway,’ I mumbled, through a mouthful of Moro Bar, ‘what have you got to feel crap about, Marlene?’
She had a perfectly good heart, I was thinking – which is what I thought about nearly everybody. Lucky bastards had perfect hearts, and they didn’t even realise it.
Marlene gave a snort. ‘That question is almost too ridiculous to answer, Bubba. I mean, look at us …’ Her critical gaze swept over us. ‘My nickname is The Tank. No boy, excluding present company, of course, would be caught dead talking to me. Even when a boy rents a DVD, he tries real hard not to look me in the eye. The one and only boyfriend I did manage to get took off my with best mate.’ So that was what happened. ‘And you, well …’
‘Well, what?’ I mumbled, having trouble swallowing a big bite of gooey stuff.
She turned liquid brown eyes my way and stuffed the rest of the Moro bar into her mouth. ‘You’re a glub, glub glub.’
‘What?’
But a customer had come to the counter. Marlene got up to swipe his DVD and ring up his money. I knew what she had tried to say: that I was an invalid. Yeah, we sure made a good pair.
Marlene heaved herself back onto the stool. ‘I mean to say, life hasn’t exactly dealt you and me a fair hand, Bubba. I mean, where are the babes, the spunks, the big exciting futures? I’ll be lucky if I ever get out of this place.’ I knew Marlene was saving to go to varsity. She wanted to be a physiotherapist. Personally, I thought she’d make a good physio, kind of a cross between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Nurse Betty.
‘So are you gonna tell me why you’re so down in the dumps?’ said Marlene. She eyed me as as if I was a strange beetle she’d just noticed on the wall. ‘So? Spit it out.’
‘S’nothing,’ I grunted. Grunting worked for Ryan, when Mum wanted to talk to him. Marlene, however, was a world expert on grunting.
‘Girls, huh,’ sniffed Marlene. ‘It’s the age-old story.’
I thought she was going to go on, but a leaden mood had descended over The Tank. I wanted to say something funny to cheer her up, but I didn’t have the energy. On the screen a little dog was running round the girl’s feet and making her laugh. It was getting depressing in here.
To tell the truth, I didn’t really think of Marlene as a girl. I mean, sure she was female (if the dress was anything to go by), and she wasn’t that much older than me. But I never thought of her as going out with guys, or even going out full stop.
‘I’d better get going,’ I said, pushing off from the stool. I felt as tired as if I’d just swum across Cook Strait.
‘Yeah, good idea,’ muttered Marlene. ‘You look like shite.’
‘Thanks a bundle.’
The Tank showed her tiny front teeth. ‘You’re welcome.’
A guy came to the counter as I was heading out the door. ‘You’ll hate this movie,’ I heard her saying, ‘there’s no sex in it, and no hot chicks, either.’
Next morning, I was lying on my front like a beached surfie, snuffling into my pillow, when the alarm woke me. I put the pillow over my head, hoping to drown out the insistent bleating. No such luck. As I groped blindly for the clock, it fell onto the floor with a loud clunk. And it was still bleating. Then I realised the ringing wasn’t coming from the clock at all, but from the phone.
In my hurry to get to it, my legs got tangled up in the sheets and I sort of fell out of the bed. I dragged myself free, and staggered out to the hall.
The phone stopped ringing. Oh great, and it was only eight-thirty.
I went back to bed and prepared to dive back into oblivion. The bloody phone started ringing again. Didn’t people know it was Sunday, the day of rest?
‘Hello!’ I shouted into the phone. ‘Speak – what is it?’
‘That’s a nice way to answer the phone,’ a voice said smoothly.
‘Roxy?’
‘The one and only.’ Her creamy voice slid like a little worm into my ear.
Sudden vertigo hit me. I pressed my palm against the wall and leaned into it.
‘Roxy,’ I said suspiciously, wondering if I was still asleep. Last night’s five minutes of extreme humiliation and disappointment flooded over me like a tsunami. But I was too polite to say, What the hell do you want?
‘Look,’ she was saying, ‘I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to, you know … it’s just that, well, first of all I thought you were a pervert, then you kinda surprised me.’
She would be in her bedroom, lying on her back maybe, receiver held to her ear and looking at the ceiling with that cool, grey stare of hers. Just to remind me it was still there (and not to do anything rash), my heart was making little fluttery jumps, like there was a beetle trapped inside me trying to get out.
‘You aren’t making this any easier.’ Roxy’s voice insinuated itself through every cell of my body. A little knock came from my chest. Her voice was so soft and sweet on the phone. I could’ve listened to it forever.
‘Uh, no,’ I said, at the height of my conversational powers.
‘Look,’ she said reasonably, ‘do you want to come over to my place? We could talk.’
‘Um, all right.’
We made a time, and I went back to bed in a daze, thinking I didn’t know the first thing about girls. What girls had I known anyway? Lisa Keeley in primary school. But that was so long ago it didn’t count. Then there was a girl in Year Ten, who I took ice skating. The memory of that event was so embarrassing I’d completely wiped the girl’s name from my hard drive. She wore cute l
ittle black stretch pants, I remember that, and a purple beanie. We skated around a bit holding hands until I slipped, in spectacular fashion, and stuck one of my blades into her leg. She went flying across the rink, trailing blood and screaming. The screams resounded around the rink, bringing everyone to a standstill. I had no idea a girl could scream so loud.
So, I needed some advice about girls. And not from Ryan. I got the phone from the hall and lay back down on my bed.
‘Ajax? It’s me …’
‘Dude.’
‘Were you asleep?’
‘Are you kidding? My sister’s playing the oboe. Not even the dead could sleep with that racket going on.’ Now he mentioned it, I was aware of a piercing wail in the background.
‘Look, I wanna ask you something.’
‘Shoot.’
I cleared my throat, trying to think how to put it. ‘Well, it’s like this …’ The wailing grew and receded in an angst-ridden wave. I had a picture of Ajax’s sister walking around the house blowing her oboe. The whole Roxy thing rushed through my tired brain. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘there’s this girl …’
‘Yup,’ said Ajax. It actually sounded like he was going back to sleep.
‘Stay with me here.’
‘About a girl …’ His voice was faint.
‘Ajax, concentrate.’
‘What’s she like, this girl?’
‘She’s pretty hot, you know?’ Actually, neither Ajax nor I knew much about hot girls. They simply weren’t in our league. Ajax was going out with a girl at the moment, but she was far from hot. Not that that mattered. Emily was a really nice girl. Sometimes we all went to the arcade and played pinball.
‘Anyway, first of all I couldn’t speak to her, because of, um …’
‘A speech impediment?’ suggested Ajax.
‘Yes, that’s it.’ You’d think we were thirteen again! ‘And then she found out I’d been spying on her …’
‘Dude, you’ve gotta cut out that weird stalking thing – girls don’t like it.’
‘And then she publicly humiliated me.’