Cracked

by Clare Strahan

  At a run, I hurl my bag at them. It bounces off Rob’s shoulder. He turns towards me and Keek wriggles out of his grip, but he doesn’t run off. He leaps on Robbo and punches him hard, twice.

  A roar comes out of me – a prehistoric response of my own, I guess, and I wade in, grab at Rob and push Keek away. I’m screaming, not even words, and inside my fear and rage and the blur of faces, I glimpse Natalie looking pale, and Rosemary and Ellen smirking.

  Keek’s face is bright red and streaked with dirt. ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ I bawl in his face. My spit flies out to join up with his tears.

  ‘Clover—’

  Fight.

  ‘Please go.’ My voice is hoarse and high-pitched. It hurts my throat. ‘Go!’

  Keek grabs up his bike from the dirt and is gone. I round on Robbo, who shouts, ‘That’s right you little fucker, off you run.’

  ‘I hate you,’ I scream, and try to punch him.

  He grabs my wrists and holds me off. ‘Settle down. It’s not my fault your faggot boyfriend had a go. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Yeah,’ shouts Pete Tsaparis. ‘He’s lucky Robbo didn’t kill him.’

  I struggle against arms that could toss me up a tree. ‘Let me go.’

  ‘I didn’t even want to have a go at the little shit.’

  ‘He’d better watch his back,’ pipes in Pete.

  ‘Why should I believe anything you say, you pig?’ I spit the word. I wish it were a knife plunging into Robbo’s heart. Wish I were a teacher to kick him out of school. Wish I were my dad – big enough to humiliate him with a look. Or better still, smash his stupid laughing face in.

  But it’s the crowd that’s laughing, not Rob. He shoves me away and I land in a heap. ‘Whatever,’ he says. ‘I’m over it. Come on boys.’

  And off they go. The three Herbs follow and I wonder where Katie is. Only Natalie looks sorry. The crowd breaks up. Mark Creswell, Trung and Alison Larder sit near me on the asphalt.

  After a long silence, broken only by the bell and my sniffling, Mark says, ‘Want a carrot?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘I’ll have one,’ says Alison. Then, like an afterthought, ‘We’re late.’

  Mark says, ‘Yes, we are,’ and crunches, thoughtfully. I sit up and lean against his bulk, soft and warm, and sniff.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask, though a big part of me doesn’t want to know.

  Alison untangles herself from Trung’s arms and sits in his lap. Why had I thought it strange that they were going out together? Why shouldn’t they? I envy them. Mark takes a second peeled carrot and observes, nodding, as Alison tells the story.

  ‘Robbo told Rosemary that Keek told Cho that you have crabs and Cho told her brother and her brother told him and Robbo said he turned you down because of the crabs and that you freaked out and ran off drunk from Eldrich’s party calling Cho an effing slut and that you were going to cave her head in and then Katie Marshall told Rosemary she’s full of shit and everyone thought Rosemary was going to cave her head in, but Sutcliff caught Katie swearing and sent her off to Berty and then Rosemary told Cho that you were going bash her and Cho told Keek and Keek and Cho had a big fight and then Keek told Robbo to eff off and Robbo told Keek to eff off, but he wouldn’t and that’s when you turned up.’ She sighs a big breathy sigh and kisses Trung. ‘Did I miss anything?’

  Trung shakes his head. ‘Nah, that’s about it. But Keek was off his nut. He definitely threw the first punch. Keek, I mean.’

  ‘Keek doesn’t fight,’ I say. ‘And I’ve never bashed anyone in my life.’ And, crabs? It’s like hearing a story about somebody else.

  Mark nods sympathetically. ‘Sure you don’t want something to eat?’

  Trung stands up, pulling Al up with him. ‘We’d better go. My parents will die if I get detention.’

  ‘They won’t die,’ says Mark.

  ‘No, seriously,’ Trung replies, earnestly. ‘They’ll die.’

  I can’t help noticing that getting up makes Mark puff like he’s climbed a hill. Trung offers him a hoist up, but he shoos him off.

  ‘Tell Katie I’m sorry she got into trouble,’ I say. ‘Tell her to please not get in a fight with Rosemary. I – will you make sure?’

  Alison shrugs. ‘I’ll try.’

  Trung shakes his head. ‘As if they’re going to listen to you.’

  ‘I’ll make sure,’ says Mark, and I hug one of his arms.

  I’m a coward, but I can’t stay at school. I go home, tell Mum I don’t feel well and let her put me to bed.

  I don’t feel well.

  Later, wrapped in my doona and cuddling a hot water bottle, I ring Katie. ‘Rosemary didn’t hurt you, did she?’

  ‘Nah. Robbo told her not to.’

  His name makes my guts ache. ‘Rob?’

  ‘Yeah. I told him Hercules told me to tell him to tell her to back off. And he reckons he’s sorry. He even asked me to tell you that.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yeah. But now he’s going out with Rosemary.’

  Is that what it’s all been about? Me, Katie – all of it? I think of Rosemary’s smug face. They deserve each other. Lucille treads circles on my trailing doona and settles with a sigh. ‘Shit, Katie. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m okay. Ellen’s more upset, I reckon. What about you?’

  ‘I don’t care. I hate him. You smell, dog.’ I push her off.

  ‘Keek and Cho broke up.’

  It’s as if the phone zaps me. ‘Why?’

  ‘Dunno. They had that big fight and now they’re broken up.’

  ‘Did you talk to him?’

  ‘No. But you should.’

  ‘No.’

  Unfazed by rejection, Lucille pushes her nose under my hand for a pat and fixes her worried eyes on me. How does she know when I feel like crying?

  ‘When are you coming back to school?’ Katie says.

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  But I don’t feel well the next morning, either.

  Mum is suspicious. ‘Are you sure nothing happened while I was away?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Drugs?’

  ‘Good one, Mum. I’ve got the flu or something.’

  I’m happy to stay in bed, to prove it.

  I can only keep up the staying-in-bed thing for so long. I get restless. Lucky for me, Mum has work and I spend most of the time watching TV at Mrs T’s. But I can’t resist an invitation to Katie’s on Saturday, even though it jeopardises my chances of having next week off too.

  Katie’s house is strange. Lots of grass-mat flooring and a fake palm tree in the corner. Is no one normal?

  ‘It’s my dad,’ she says, handing me a Milo in a pineapple-shaped glass. ‘He collects Polynesian kitsch.’

  ‘Why?’

  Katie rolls her eyes. ‘There is no sane explanation for parents.’

  We sit in her room, which is as neat and girly and blonde as she seems at school. Her major interests seem to be make-up and Justin Bieber. ‘I talked to Keek,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, yeah. What did he say?’

  ‘He said he doesn’t think you’ll ever speak to him again.’

  ‘He’s right. Did he say why?’

  ‘No.’

  I’m sweaty and disembodied, sitting here staring at her dressing table with all its compartmentalised eyeliners and hairclips and lip glosses. If I tell her I lied to her about my parents, she won’t want to have anything to do with me. I feel my pulse beating in the silence.

  ‘Don’t be a dick.’ She shoves me with her pink-socked foot. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘What Keek told Cho about my mum getting pregnant on a one-night stand. It’s true.’

  ‘So, your dad doesn’t live in England, then?’

  ‘I don’t know where he lives.’

  ‘Gawd, it’s like Home and Away. A bloody saga.’ Katie flops back on her pillows. ‘Your mum’s all right, Clover. I wouldn’t freak out too much. My parents got married bec
ause they were pregnant with my brother – Mum’ll tell you. She’s always reminding Dad. And Robbo hasn’t said anything to anyone about that side of things. Not that I’ve heard, anyway. Just the crab story.’

  I cover my face with my hands and tip sideways, groaning.

  ‘At least Sanda’s saying he doesn’t know anything about it,’ she offers. ‘Says if anyone has a problem they should go see Robbo.’ She pats me. ‘I don’t think he meant to hurt you.’

  Doesn’t want me to tell everyone his middle name is Hercules, more like it. ‘Maybe,’ I concede. ‘But he knew all those dickheads were in the hallway listening to us. Probably watching, too. Yek.’ I feel slimed by the thought.

  Katie pokes me. ‘What about Keek?’

  I don’t want to talk about Keek. ‘How are Rosemary and Robbo going, anyway?’

  ‘They’re like an old married couple, bickering away. She’s so jealous. She doesn’t let him get away with anything. I think the only reason she hasn’t tried harder to hurt me is because he told her not to. They’ll probably grow old and fat together.’

  ‘She already has a fat arse,’ I say.

  ‘And he’s got a fat head.’

  I love Katie when she’s gleeful, but her face falls.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Rosemary is mad with me for yelling at her at that stupid fight. She’s got this Facebook thing going about whether I should be allowed to hang out at the footy or not.’

  ‘What thing?’

  Katie drags over her laptop and brings up Facebook. ‘Look at this.’ It’s a long inbox message from Rosemary, calling me and Katie total sluts and crapping on about loyalty and how miserable she’s going to make Katie’s life if she doesn’t ‘prove’ that Rosemary’s her best friend by apologising for ‘being such a liar’ at the fight.

  Rosemary’s status says Bitches who lie about there mates should stay the fuck away from Fernwood FC, and a whole lot of people have ‘liked’ it. There’s a conversation about it on her wall and I can almost feel the knives stabbing out of the screen into Katie’s heart.

  For the first time in my life, I’m glad my mother is so uptight about Facebook. There’s a vibe coming out of the computer, heavy and mean and . . . forever.

  ‘That’s the wrong “there”,’ I say.

  Katie shoves me gently with her shoulder. ‘I don’t think that’s the point.’

  ‘It’s horrible. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Will you be there on Monday?’

  ‘Maybe.’ But I know I’m going to stay away as long as humanly possible. ‘Be sick too, and come around to mine.’

  Katie closes the laptop. ‘Maybe.’

  It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m working up a sore throat for tomorrow.

  Mum knocks on my bedroom door and peers in.

  ‘Keek’s here.’

  ‘No. I’m not talking to him.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to tell him that yourself.

  Now sort it out, you two.’ She shoves him in and shuts the door.

  I open it again and tell him to get out.

  But Mum’s still there. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Clover, I don’t know what’s going on, but it takes guts to come to someone’s house and say you’re sorry, so . . .’

  I glare at her, and she tapers off.

  ‘So good luck,’ she finishes, and leaves us to it.

  I’m not saying anything. I can’t even look at him.

  I sit at my desk with a black pencil and draw a heavy-lidded eye.

  ‘I . . .’

  I draw a knife around it so the eye is in the blade, near the hilt.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  I make the knife stab into a heart. But not a cheesy pretend heart – a real one with ventricles and atriums, aorta and veins.

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  I throw the pencil, my beautiful black Lyra pencil, right across the room. ‘You got that right.’

  Keek’s voice rises. ‘We were drinking and, I don’t know. She was upset and . . .’

  I pick up a crimson pencil and colour in the heart. That’s what I love about Lyra pigment: the harder you press, the richer the colour. The blood from the heart fills up the eye.

  ‘I was trying to . . .’

  I retrieve the black. I need it to outline the blood, dripping from the wound, dripping into the crack.

  ‘Fuck, Clove, please don’t ignore me.’

  ‘You promised.’ My voice breaks open and the tears show through and I hate myself for being so weak and stupid to trust anyone, ever. Especially Rob. I flush to think that Keek must’ve heard I’d been in that sleazy bedroom with him.

  ‘I didn’t mean – I was trying to explain you. She promised she wouldn’t—’

  ‘Explain me?’

  ‘Fuck.’ He sits on my bed and puts his head in his hands.

  ‘Explain me? Explain what?’

  ‘Why you’re so . . .’ He trails off, grappling with fresh air.

  ‘So what? So what?’

  Then he shouts. ‘So angry!’

  ‘I am not angry.’ I yell, of course, and feel my face burning and my eyes bugging out of my head.

  Mum bangs on my door. ‘Clover!’

  What the hell? It sounds like she’s kicking it.

  I fling it open, furious, but her arms are full of Lucille wrapped in a towel.

  ‘What’s happened? What’s wrong?’

  Mum’s face is hard, as if she’s frozen. ‘I don’t know.’ She points with her chin to the kitchen. ‘Get my keys and open the car.’

  I follow instructions. ‘Mum, I’m scared. What happened?’

  I get in the back. Mum leans in and passes in Lucille, who shivers and moans on my lap.

  Keek stands on the nature strip with his face full of tears. He looks about ten.

  ‘Get in, Keek,’ Mum says.

  He gets in beside me. The dog shudders and he puts his hands on her. ‘Lucille,’ he says.

  Mum looks at us in the rear-vision mirror. ‘I don’t know what – she got up and peed everywhere – but it was like water. Then she started walking in circles – staggering.’ Mum starts the car twice and it makes a bad sound. ‘Shit,’ she says. ‘Calm down.’

  We arrive at Animal Emergency the same way everyone after us arrives – tearful and desperate. And we wait the way everyone waits; quietly. Mum, Keek and I have our hands on Lucille. She shudders from time to time, then stillness. We freeze, waiting for breath.

  A man whose dog has already disappeared down the corridor can’t stop himself from crying, comforted by the awkward patting of another man. They are older, like grandfathers. I want to draw them. The vet nurse emerges, looking grim. The crying man’s face is too scared and hopeful to bear. I lay my cheek on Lucille so I won’t have to see, but I can’t block out the sound of his heart breaking.

  Keek’s phone rings. It’s his dad. When he goes outside to talk, I watch him through the window, my cheek still on Lucille. Keek’s hair is a fireball in the sun. A corona. Rob and school seem small and cold and far away. Not warm and close and real like Keek, coming back in to sit next to me, his leg pressing mine. I want to say something, but my throat is a desert, my voice cattle bones in the sand.

  A different vet nurse introduces himself. Lucille is gone from under me, carried by a man wearing a pale-blue cotton suit with white rubber shoes. The shoes whimper on the linoleum as they disappear down the corridor.

  Nothing to do but watch hell and salvation unravel, or read The Australian Women’s Weekly.

  Mr McKenzie is in the doorway. Mum glances up at him, then away. I think for a minute he’s going to beckon Keek from there, without a word, but he comes in and sits on the other side of Mum, leaning forward to speak to us.

  ‘Hey son. Clover.’ He touches my mother’s arm. ‘Anything I can do?’

  She dissolves like sherbet in the shower and Keek’s dad puts his arm around her and holds on and her face falls like cloth against his collarbone. Like the toll of a melancholy bel
l, I’m struck by the thought that my mother has no mother.

  Mum sits up and sniffs, pulling herself together, but Mr McKenzie keeps his arm around her, the back of his hand near my shoulder, close enough to see its ginger hairs. Keek and I exchange a glance of mortification; he’s as stiff and uncomfortable as I am. We’re rescued by the vet, inviting us down the corridor to where Lucille lays on a metal table.

  There is nothing she can do; Lucille is going to die. She’ll ‘put Lucille down’ here and now, if Mum agrees.

  ‘Is she in pain?’ Mum asks, her hand on the dog’s head, her thumb stroking one ear.

  ‘I can give you something for the pain,’ the vet says. ‘But her kidneys are barely functioning. It can only get worse. Eventually, nothing you could administer at home will be strong enough to stop her suffering.’

  ‘But she might die naturally? Before that happens?’

  The vet concedes with a noncommittal nod. ‘She might.’

  Mr McKenzie carries Lucille to the car and we take her home, to the lounge, to a bed fit for a queen; fit for dying naturally.

  Mum sits by the bed on a footstool, stroking Lucille’s head. I sit on the floor, one hand on the dog, the other on my mother. ‘She looks terrible, Mum.’

  Mum offers a grim smile and squeezes my hand but seems inward, locked up, gone to some place I don’t know. ‘I’ve seen worse,’ she says.

  Aunty Jean is in England and will be for the next month. I never thought I’d miss her, but I do. She sends a bunch of flowers and a get-well card addressed to Lucille Stinkbottom. Mum smiles. Mrs T, back from Sydney with a fistful of baby photos, is in and out all day, bearing food, tutting at the dog. She is in favour of euthanasia.

  ‘Selfish,’ she says, wagging her finger.

  ‘It’s my decision.’

  I’ve never seen Mum arc up to Yiayia before. I want to run in and wave my arms, make them stop, but I’m fascinated, too.

  ‘How much longer? Another day? A week? It’s wrong.’

  Mum massages her temples. ‘I can’t do this today.’

  But Mrs T isn’t one to take a hint. ‘Your mother—’ she begins.