by Tina Shaw
She looked interested. ‘How d’you mean?’
But I couldn’t tell her; it was too dorkish.
‘Go on, what is it, this “zone”?’
I shifted my butt on the branch, holding onto a thin branch above my head for balance. The branch felt cool and smooth under my hand. It was real sweet up here, among the leaves, like being in a tent. We were hidden away from the world, all alone, just me and Roxy.
Roxy’s eyes were on my face, listening. ‘You know, if I’m waiting for a test at the hospital or something, I shut my eyes and it doesn’t matter where I am, whether it’s the smelly old hospital or school or whatever – ’cause I’m there …’ I petered out, feeling stupid. I’d said too much.
But Roxy still had a serious look on her face, like she was thinking about what I’d just said. The dappled light moved over her face like water. ‘What kind of place is it?’ she asked.
My cheeks went a bit hot. I’d never told anyone about this before. ‘It’s … a clearing, away in the bush. And there’s this lake in the clearing …’
Roxy’s eyes gleamed in the dim light. ‘What kind of lake?’
‘Well, it’s extremely clear,’ I said, seeing it in my mind, ‘so you can see right to the bottom.’
‘Which is sandy and white, like pumice sand,’ said Roxy, in a sing-song voice.
‘How d’you know that?’
‘’Cause it’s hardly going to have a yucky, muddy bottom, silly!’
‘You’re laughing at me now.’
And actually, she was laughing. ‘Go on, tell me what else.’
‘No, I’m not going to,’ I said, pretending to sulk. Truth was, I was having a great time up there in the tree with Roxy.
‘Go on, or I’ll tickle you.’
I saw myself laughing so hard I fell out of the tree – donk, donk, donk – all the way to the ground, then splat. Maybe I’d gone a bit pale, because Roxy quickly said she was just joking. She took a drag on her cigarette and looked off into the leaves. We sat in silence for a few minutes. It was starting to get a bit uncomfortable, and I was racking my brains for something interesting to say, when Roxy said: ‘I went to a real nice lake once.’
‘Yeah?’
‘A couple of years ago, when Mum was still around, we had a holiday up in the North Island. She’s into the Great Outdoors. So she dragged us off into the mountains. And there was this lake. Way up in the bush. We had to walk for ages to get to it.’
‘Was it in a little clearing?’
Roxy gave a small laugh. ‘No, silly. It was way big. It was so cool. There was bush all around, no houses or people or anything …’ Her eyes had gone a darker, silvery grey. ‘We rowed a boat way across the lake, and there was a little island, and we climbed up a ladder onto the island … and you know what?’
I realised I was holding my breath. It was like listening to a fairy tale. Roxy’s eyes met mine. She smiled faintly.
‘What?’ I breathed.
She grinned again. It was nice when she grinned, maybe because she didn’t do it very often. ‘There was this little tiny lake on the island,’ she hooted. ‘It was a lake on an island in a lake!’
‘Cool.’
She looked so happy, like another person. That must’ve been a really good time for her, visiting that lake.
Roxy glanced over at me, and there was a different kind of light in her eyes now. An inquisitive, considering light. ‘So d’you have to go to the hospital much?’
I shrugged, and shifted on my branch. My butt had gone numb. ‘Check-ups, that’s all.’
‘For your heart?’
‘It’s no big deal.’ I hunched into myself. ‘I need an operation, that’s all.’
Roxy screwed up her face. ‘I’d be scared of somebody cutting open my heart. Yuck. Aren’t you scared?’
All the time, I felt like saying. But I really didn’t want to talk about my heart. To change the subject, I said:
‘That guy, at the bus stop … is he a friend of yours?’
‘Not any more,’ she said, looking through the branches at the pool.
I wasn’t too sure what to say next, and my mouth blundered on. ‘Your dad seems an okay guy.’
Her face closed like a slamming door. I instantly regretted it. The atmosphere had undergone a radical change.
‘What would you know?’ she muttered, her eyes narrowed like she was going to cry. ‘You only met him for what – two seconds? You don’t know what he’s like.’
‘Try me,’ I said.
Her glance flickered over my face, checking me out. I could sense her hesitation. As if she was figuring out whether she could trust me or not. There was something else there, too. Something I didn’t understand.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty good at listening.’
She lifted her shoulder slightly and leaned forward to stub out the cigarette on a branch. When she spoke, her voice was so low I could hardly make out the words.
‘Ever since Mum left, he’s been weird. One minute he wants me to act like a grown-up, and do everything round the house, like Mum used to. Next minute he’s treating me like a little kid. That’s the worst part. He won’t let me go out, he tells me what friends I can see and which ones I can’t. The other day he even took my mobile off me.’
Roxy looked up then, and I got a fright: her eyes were burning with hate.
‘I don’t blame her, for going away,’ Roxy said in a fierce voice, ‘I’d go too if only I …’
‘What?’
She lowered her chin, closing up. ‘Nothing,’ she muttered.
‘Could you go stay with your mum?’ I asked, trying to be helpful.
Roxy made a funny noise, and started to move. She was pushing past me, all legs and arms. I had to slide back to let her past. I clutched onto my little branch, hoping I wouldn’t lose my balance.
‘I’ve got other plans,’ she said over her shoulder.
As quickly as I could – if you could call a sloth quick – I clumsily followed her back down the tree, panting from the exertion. She’d reached the ground before I was even halfway down.
Thankfully I managed to get out of the tree without busting a valve, and plopped down onto the grass, relieved to be back on terra firma. Roxy was standing a short distance away, talking into her cell. I was worried about her: she’d been so intense in the tree, so angry. But when she glanced over at me, she looked fine again. Well, okay, at any rate. Her eyes were blank, as if I was a complete stranger.
‘Can you drop me at the mall?’ she said. Any closeness we’d had up in the tree had vanished.
‘I guess so,’ I said.
I instantly regretted it: no spare helmet. If we got caught, I’d be in trouble. But it was too late. Roxy had already made her arrangements with whoever it was on the phone. I couldn’t back down now. At least it was Sunday so there shouldn’t be too many cops around, and I could take the back streets.
We walked in silence back over the grass to my Vespa.
I was still thinking about Leo, and why she hated him so much. I really couldn’t see what there was to hate about Leo, unless he … No, that was even more unbelievable. I wanted to tell Roxy about my own dad, but this was obviously not the right time.
Still, I was puzzled by the whole thing. ‘For what it’s worth,’ I said, hearing the words issue from my mouth like there was no tomorrow, ‘actually, I thought he was an all right kind of guy, your father.’
Roxy’s eyes flashed with disgust. ‘Jesus, Griffen,’ she spat, ‘then why don’t you go form a club with him! It could be the new Nazi party.’
‘Uh-ha,’ said Clint Eastwood, chewing on a wad of tobacco.
She stopped, hands on hips. ‘Don’t uh-ha me! What do you know about it?’
‘Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.’
‘Who’s side are you on, anyway? If I say my father is a bastard, then he’s a bastard, all right?’ Her eyes were steely-hard. She was like another kind of girl altogether.
Roxy’s face, even her shiny lips, had gone really pale. ‘You don’t know what’s he like,’ she said in a hard, low voice. ‘You wanna know something? I hate him.’
Her vehemence stopped me in my tracks.
Then she was walking past my bike, her body rigid, down the middle of the hushed street. The houses could have been cardboard, the day make-believe.
‘Hey,’ I called, ‘don’t you want a ride to the mall?’
All I got was her raised finger as she stormed off down the street. Shite. I spat out my wad of tobacco, shaking my head at the strange complexity of women, and swung myself into the saddle.
9
Mum had her feet up on the couch, reading a book. Something about teenage boys, by the look of it. She was always reading self-help books. They looked like a waste of time to me, but she was hooked on self-help. Last week it was that men from Mars book. And she didn’t even have a man from Earth hanging around.
I flopped down into the armchair, exhausted. ‘Hey,’ I said.
She glanced up over her reading glasses with that faraway look she got when she was thinking hard about something. ‘Hello, love.’
‘Mum,’ I said, picking at the arm of the chair, ‘do you think, if Dad was still alive, we would all have got on okay? I mean, me and Ryan and him.’
With a frown, she put her book face-down on her leg. ‘I don’t know, James.’ Her lips had gone tight. It wasn’t the most welcome subject. Then, with a sigh, she made an effort. ‘I like to think so. But then, well, relationships can change. Things happen as boys grow up, you can’t always predict how it’s going to go … What makes you ask?’
‘Oh, nothing. I was just thinking how not everybody gets on with their parents, that’s all.’
She nodded, tapping her fingers on the cover of the book. Maybe she was thinking about Ryan, who wasn’t the easiest person to live with. Sometimes Mum and Ryan had shouting matches. Usually over Ryan staying out too late, when she’d told him to be home at a certain hour. I knew she worried about him driving under the influence. She was always telling us her ‘alcohol and speed’ stories. About crashes, kids in hospital and so on. But Ryan never took any notice. It went in one ear, out the other. Me, I figured it didn’t apply. I was hardly likely to get trashed and wrap my Vespa round a power pole.
Mum said thoughtfully, ‘Some parents find it a bit tough bringing up teenagers. One day you’ve got a cute little kid on your hands, next thing that cute kid has turned into … well … a Ryan. It’s not always easy knowing what to do. And maybe, if he’d been around, your father could’ve sorted Ryan out.’
I nodded sagely, hoping she’d say something more transparent. ‘But Dad?
She gave a crooked smile which could have meant anything. ‘I like to think that at least your father might have tried.’
I rested my head on the back of the chair. Climbing that tree had really taken it out of me. It felt like I’d been zapped by an energy-sucking machine.
‘Are you feeling all right, son?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, not all that sure if I was. Pictures of Roxy were swimming through my head, making me feel dizzy and a bit nauseous. ‘It’s just been a long day … think I’ll go lie down.’
I made it to the bed, feeling really weak, but without fainting. There was an ominous fluttering in my chest, and the breath was rasping in my throat. I lay on my back, hoping that if I stayed completely still my heart would start to calm down. I tried going to my lake, but the room went black instead.
The lights wavered back on.
There was medicine I had to take when I felt sick like this. But it was on my desk: about a zillion miles away on the other side of the room. I turned my head in that direction and gazed at the bottle of tablets. They were plainly visible next to my lamp. I tried willing the bottle to levitate across the room towards my outstretched hand.
Fortunately Mum materialised about then by my bed. She took one look at me (my lips were probably blue by now), grabbed the bottle of tablets and shook two out into her hand. ‘Open up,’ she said. I felt like a kid again and it was time for that cough medicine that tasted like strawberry milkshake. Then she popped them into my mouth and held the glass of water for me.
‘You’ve been overdoing it, haven’t you, James?’
She picked up my wrist and glared at her watch, counting. Her fingers felt cool on my skin. With her long face and long thin hair, she looked uncannily like Saruman. It was probably just as well she nursed prem babies, she would’ve scared the crap out of any adult patient. Maybe I started grinning, because she said: ‘This is no laughing matter, young man,’ trying to sound severe. Anyway, I wasn’t laughing, I didn’t have the energy. ‘You just stay there, don’t move a muscle, I’m going to ring Doctor Brad.’
Move? That nearly did make me laugh.
I closed my eyes, and a dizzy image of Roxy’s father unfurled beneath my eyelids. He was out in the middle of the sea, perched on top of his boat and wearing an admiral’s hat. His knees were banging against his chest. He was pointing off into the distance, as if he was trying to tell his little ship which way to go. But the jade green ocean was heaving and pitching the little wooden boat about too violently. Leo, just managing to balance on top of the small boat anyway, had to hang onto his hat and couldn’t even point. Then I noticed a great big wave rearing up behind him, glassy green like the waves in surfer movies. Look out, I tried to shout. But my voice wouldn’t work. He couldn’t hear me. He was riding that boat now like a bronco pony in a rodeo. The wave was going to crash down on him any second.
I opened my mouth to shout a warning, but nothing came out.
Disembodied voices. Like ghosts hanging out in my room. Rude ghosts. The conversation faded in and out of my consciousness. They were talking about a boy called James Griffen. I know who that is. Cool kid. Rides a Vespa. Movie buff. Plays a mean game of 40K.
‘… been running round after a girl called Roxy … getting serious, making a fool of himself … hanging round her place, spying on her … probably been drinking as well …’
Lies, all lies.
‘What?!’
‘I tried to warn him off … she’s bad news …’
‘What’s got into him? He knows he’s not supposed to …’
‘Yeah, he oughta know better.’
How smug.
‘And what does this girl think about James?’
Yeah, what does she think about him?
‘She thinks he’s a dork.’
I lurched into consciousness. Or maybe I was still dreaming. My mobile seemed to be ringing. I reached over to the bedside table and grabbed it, noting at the same time my digital clock clicking onto 2.30. That was a.m. It did appear that I was awake, still alive, and I really hoped it wasn’t a wrong number.
‘Yes?’
‘Griffen,’ said a sultry voice, which was promptly followed by a giggle. Heavy metal was playing in the background. It sounded like Disturbed.
‘Hello?’ I said, feeling extremely groggy. My head felt like it had been squeezed in a giant vise.
‘Grif-fen, like the magical bi-ird,’ the voice sang into my ear, ‘a bird that’s a li-on …’
Roxy.
More giggling. Then a clunk. Sounded like she’d dropped the phone. Then she lowered her voice and tried to sound really serious: ‘Listen here, Griffen …’ There was a really big blast of giggling, and more riotous noises in the background. She had to be with her friends.
With a sigh, I plumped up my pillow and listened patiently to the sounds of a bunch of really drunk girls. Roxy came back on again. I could imagine her trying to keep a straight face. ‘Okay, Griffen,’ she said sternly, ‘here’s the score: you have to apologise!’
‘Sorry?’ I had to apologise? That was rich. Maybe I was still dreaming, after all.
Another explosion of giggles. Disturbed was still crashing on in the background. Somebo
dy was shouting, ‘No – it’s you! You do!’
‘Oh yeah, right,’ murmured Roxy’s husky voice. She took a noisy breath. ‘All right, Griffen, here it is: I have to apologise – to you.’
Suddenly things went quiet at her end. Disturbed had been silenced. A door slammed. Footsteps. Some more melodic music came on, something with a tune. ‘Did you hear me – Griffen?’ she slurred.
‘Um, Roxy, apologise for what?’
‘For yesterday, of course,’ she hiccuped. ‘At the park.’ Another hiccup. ‘I was a bitch …’ Her voice seemed to be fading. ‘And I’m sorry … Griffen?’
Roxy’s voice, the music, the other girls – suddenly it was all gone, as if it had never existed in the first place. I stared at the phone, willing her to call back. But she had drifted off into the ether.
I opened my eyes to sunlight streaming in through my windows. Well good, I’d made it through the night. Mum would be pleased.
I rolled over onto my side, feeling rotten, and stared balefully at the light. Actually, rotten was an understatement. Make that crushed. Like an ant must feel after it’s been stepped on. There was a glass of water beside the bed, so I drank that off. It didn’t do much for the taste of the drug which was still bitter in my mouth. It was quiet in the house, which meant Ryan must’ve gone to school and Mum was probably having her second cup of tea in the kitchen. School was obviously out of the question for the J-Man today. But then, me and school weren’t exactly a hot item at the moment. I seemed to spend as many days at home as I did at school.
Hm, maybe I would stay in bed all day. There didn’t seem much point in getting up. According to Ryan, Roxy thought I was a dork. She might’ve called to apologise, but did it really count when you were drunk?
In fact, maybe I’d stay in bed for the rest of my life. I could see the headlines: Boy Wastes Away in Bed. That’d teach them.