‘Your mum’s car is so cool!’ Ben said. Biddy’s car was painted with flowers. Her year-four art class had done it a couple of years ago. Biddy thought she was being creative, Dad said she just wanted her rust spots hidden.
‘Yeah,’ Evie said. ‘I helped do it, you know. Those year fours were crummy at doing flowers. Crummy.’
Ben bit his lip, like he was trying not to laugh, and nodded very seriously. ‘Yeah, I’ve heard that about year fours. Crummy.’
‘Crummy,’ Evie agreed.
‘That’s your stepmum?’ Ben asked me.
I nodded. I didn’t say anything, feeling suddenly deflated. It wasn’t that I wanted to forget my mum or anything, it was just that sometimes I got kind of sick of being the girl whose mum and brother had died. Sometimes, I just wanted to have the sort of family that didn’t confuse people. The sort of family people didn’t have to think too hard about. Particularly with Ben. Although he probably knew all about my mum and Jamie by now.
***
FROM THE DIARY OF GWENDOLYN P. PEARSON
What I don’t tell anybody – not even Loretta – is that losing Mum feels like yesterday, because I remember everything about her. I remember what she looked like, how it felt when she wrapped her arms around me. What she sounded like.
But that’s why I don’t like talking about Jamie.
Because I can’t remember his voice. And it hurts in a completely different way from being able to remember Mum so clearly that half the time I expected her to clatter into Biddy and Dad’s kitchen and ask what I was doing there when I should really be home, with her.
I can barely remember Jamie at all, and it makes me feel terrible. How can I not remember him more? I remember the twanging sound of his violin, trying to drown out the sound of Mum and Dad. The rosin smell of his hands. But that’s almost it.
Once, a year ago, someone asked me about my little brother and I’d frowned in confusion. I’d thought they meant Evie. ‘Who?’
***
Evie, Ben and I walked along the beach for a while. I made sure I walked a little distance away from Ben. If Evie hadn’t been with us, I would’ve run. Running always calmed me. Walking made me jittery. Particularly right now, when I couldn’t get Mum out of my head.
I thanked the universe for Evie, who was busy asking Ben every question that popped into her head.
‘What’s your favourite class?’ she asked.
‘Hmm.’ He frowned. ‘I dunno. Science maybe?’
Evie looked really disappointed. ‘Gross.’
‘Well, what do you like?’
‘Art.’
‘And what’s your favourite?’ he asked. I thought he was still talking to Evie until Evie elbowed me in the ribs. He was looking at me, waiting for me to answer.
I cleared my throat. ‘Um. PE, maybe. Although Mr Hounds is pretty awful.’
‘She likes running,’ Evie said, sounding disgusted. ‘You’re pretty tall. How tall are you?’
‘Six foot.’
‘My brother, Tyrone, is six foot four.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Evie kicked at a mound of sand. ‘He’s practically the height of two regular humans.’
‘That’s gigantic,’ Ben said. ‘Does he fit through doors okay?’
‘He has to duck,’ Evie said. ‘It’s very sad. Watching him duck all the time.’
I glanced at my watch. ‘Evie, we should get back home.’
‘Why?’ she demanded, tugging my arm to look at my watch. She scowled at the time. ‘Oh. Well, that’s okay. You want to come to dinner, Ben?’
‘Um . . .’ He glanced at me uncertainly. I crossed my arms.
Evie yanked at his sleeve, like she’d known him forever. ‘Come on! Please! I can show you my comics! You’d know all about comic artists, living at Songbrooke.’
‘Yeah. It’s just non-stop comics at Songbrooke,’ he said dryly.
Evie raised her eyebrows. ‘Really?’
‘No. But there’s a lot of mould.’
‘Come on,’ Evie said, grabbing his sleeve with both hands and tugging with all her might. ‘You can see my brother! You can watch him ducking!’
‘Um. Okay,’ Ben said. He looked at me. ‘If it’s alright with your mum.’
‘Of course it is!’ Evie cried. ‘She’s an art teacher! She loves everyone!’
***
I had to stop to do up my shoelace just as we were getting close to home. Mostly, I was hoping they’d be inside by the time I got there so I could take off my smelly shoes in private. I thought about texting Loretta and seeing if she wanted to come over, too. But honestly, after the whole harmonica line, I didn’t think my nerves could take both of them together for a whole dinner.
Dad was over at a friend’s place, helping him fix a fishing boat and Tyrone was probably out drinking. Or listening to the screamo bands that sometimes played down at the pub. So it was just the four of us.
Evie kicked off her shoes on the verandah. ‘Mum, this is Ben. He’s our new friend from Songbrooke and he’s really hungry.’
‘Just the usual amount of hungry,’ Ben said, tugging off his own shoes. ‘Nice to meet you.’
Biddy beamed at him. Her favourite thing in the whole world was a teenage boy who had manners. Tyrone was a perpetual disappointment in that department.
I loitered outside, but Ben waited for me, so I ripped off my seaweedy shoes and tossed them across the verandah. Ben raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything.
I yanked open the front door. ‘After you.’
Ben glanced at the picture in the hallway of Biddy and Dad getting married. They looked pretty happy. I mean, you’d never guess what Dad had been through, looking at those photos. Mostly, I was pleased for him. But sometimes his happiness made me so angry that I couldn’t even look at him.
In the kitchen, we sat down at the bench and Ben glanced around at all the teapots and knitting patterns and piles of paintings from Biddy’s school.
‘Tell me about yourself, Ben,’ Biddy said, lighting the stove with matches.
‘Do you need a hand with anything?’ he asked.
‘Oh, no. No, thanks. It’s all under control.’
‘Well, there’s not a lot to tell, really. My sister, Amber, and I are just staying with our aunts for a while. Except Grace is still winding up her work in the city.’
‘Elsa, isn’t it? Your aunt that’s been living here?’
He smiled. ‘Yeah, Aunty Elsa. She’s got an exhibition coming up, so she’s been pretty busy with that. But she’s felt really welcome here, I think. She loves this place.’
‘Huh,’ said Biddy. ‘And what brings you two down here? You missing your old school?’
‘No,’ said Ben, looking away from her. ‘Not missing my old school.’
I glanced at him then. I knew question dodging when I saw it. I was the question-dodging queen, after all.
‘Amber and Ben are from western Sydney,’ I told Biddy and Ben looked at me but didn’t say anything.
The flame caught and Biddy shook out the match. ‘Sydney! Gosh – you’d be struggling going from Sydney to this quiet old place! How are you coping?’
Ben shifted in his chair and started picking at the loose threads of the hoodie he’d pulled on over his school uniform. ‘Oh, fine. I actually really love it here.’
‘Not too bored?’
He glanced at me when he answered. ‘Not even a little bit.’
***
You think of people smiling with just their mouths and sometimes their eyes, but Ben smiled with his whole face. He smiled when Biddy made a joke and when Evie showed him exactly how tall Tyrone was. He smiled when a fairy wren scooted past the kitchen window. And he smiled whenever he looked at me.
Evie brought out her list of TYRONE REVENJ and adoringly plonked it down in front of him.
‘What should we do to get Tyrone back?’ she asked.
‘Your giant brother?’
‘Yeah. He hid all Gwen�
�s shoes.’ She pulled a face. ‘It was horrific, Ben. Like a nightmare.’
He snorted. ‘All of them? Where?’
‘Up a tree,’ I said, reaching over and closing the notebook. ‘Can we not do this right now?’
Evie ignored me. ‘I’m working on something big,’ she told Ben. ‘Something he’ll never be able to top.’
‘Huh.’
‘You’ve got a sister, right?’ Evie said, opening her notebook up again and uncapping a texta. ‘What stuff have you done to her?’
Ben shrugged. ‘Not much. We’ve never really pulled pranks or anything. We fought heaps when we were little, but nothing much these days.’
‘No pranks?’ Evie blinked. She looked to Biddy for support. ‘Mum! Ben and his sister have never done pranks!’
‘Their mother’s a lucky woman,’ said Biddy, tipping some soup into a pot to reheat. ‘I reckon all your pranks have knocked ten years off my life.’
‘What’s the worst thing they’ve done?’ Ben asked. I didn’t say anything, I was too busy just thinking that Ben seemed pretty relaxed, seeing as Evie had pretty much kidnapped him off the beach. He kept looking appreciatively around at all of Biddy’s weird little crafts and knick-knacks.
Biddy leaned against the counter, looking thoughtful.
‘The time Tyrone chopped off Loretta’s hair?’ Evie suggested.
‘No . . . I think that time Tyrone managed to drag you and your mattress onto the beach without you waking up.’
‘That was pretty impressive,’ I said.
Ben looked intrigued. ‘How’d he do that?’
‘No one knows,’ Evie said, all dramatic. ‘It’s a mystery!’
‘And the time he turned all the water in our water tank blue,’ Biddy said.
‘That was a double-up, though,’ I argued. ‘He put the herbicide dye in the school water supply, remember?’
‘Yeah.’ Biddy winced. ‘I remember.’
‘Mum!’ Evie said, sitting up very straight. ‘I have to make that cake for school tomorrow! I have to!’
‘I haven’t forgotten. I brought home flour.’
Evie relaxed. ‘Okay, then,’ she said. ‘Thanks, Mumma.’
‘How often do you go running?’ Ben asked me as Evie went back to her plans.
‘I try to run every day, but it depends.’ I didn’t want to tell him that I ran more when I was feeling stressed or sad. That sometimes I ran twice a day, just to keep calm.
‘How far do you go?’ he asked. ‘When you run, I mean.’
I sort of shrugged, not looking at him. Thinking of my cove and Wade’s Point and how I sometimes ran past town until every part of me was aching and my head was throbbing and I had to call Martin to come and pick me up. ‘As far as I can.’
***
Ben and I ate dessert in the lounge room while Evie and Biddy made a cake in the kitchen. I was thinking about that, how Evie might end up being a baker or something. That’s if she didn’t end up being queen of the whole universe. But I suppose she’d have to fight Loretta for that title.
An ad for a Tasmanian Certificate of Education expo in Hobart came up on the television. ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I asked, without really thinking.
‘I’m not sure,’ Ben said, looking suddenly tired. ‘My mum wants me to get into law, but it doesn’t really interest me. I like bodies.’ He blushed a little. ‘Like, how they work and stuff. I sometimes think maybe a doctor or something? Not that I’d stand a chance of getting in.’
‘Do you know what subjects you’re doing next year?’
‘Chem, physics, maths methods, specialist maths and English.’ He pulled a face. ‘I like how your school makes PE and Art and stuff mandatory, even if you’re not doing it for TCE.’
‘Really? It drives Loretta mad.’ I stretched. ‘She’d like to be at one of those fancy inner-city private schools that start prepping you for TCE when you’re in year seven.’
Ben snorted. ‘I couldn’t imagine anything worse. What about you? What do you want to do, I mean?’
‘No idea.’ I fiddled with the carpet. ‘Maybe something on the mainland. Maybe something here. I can’t work out what I want to do – it’s starting to freak me out a bit, actually. Loretta’s going to study law.’
‘She seems pretty clever.’
‘So clever.’
‘So, Biddy’s Evie’s mum?’ he asked, watching me over his bowl of apple strudel. He was on the couch and I’d sat down on the floor because being too close to him fogged up my brain. ‘And your dad’s Evie’s dad?’
‘Yeah.’ I fiddled with my spoon, not eating anything. ‘And Tyrone’s dad’s somewhere around Launceston, we think.’
‘Is your mum still around town?’
‘No,’ I said. I didn’t want to tell him, but I had to. When you’re the queen of question dodging, you get good at recognising the moments you can dodge telling people and the moments when you have to just grit your teeth and do it. ‘She died. A while ago now.’
He nodded at the photo on the mantel. ‘Is that her?’
‘Yeah.’ I looked at the photo and then quickly away. ‘That’s her.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was ages ago.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean it’s stopped hurting, right?’ He shuffled off the couch so we were both on the floor, cross-legged and facing each other. ‘I think that’s what’s wrong with the way people think about losing someone. Like you’re sad for a while, then you’re fine again. But the sad doesn’t ever really go away, does it?’
‘No.’ I brought my knees up to my chest. ‘It doesn’t.
CHAPTER FOUR
I sat up from my bed so fast that I felt dizzy and lay back down, clapping a hand over my eyes. I imagined splintering glass and metal and I shuddered. I glanced at my clock. It was just after three in the morning. I briefly considered going out for a run, but running this early wasn’t fun, even for me. Besides, my ear was still sore from Loretta yelling at me down the phone the night before about not inviting her over with Handsome Ben.
I grabbed my diary off my chest and tucked it carefully into the bottom of my undies drawer. I figured Biddy and Evie would probably snoop through it if I left it anywhere obvious.
I hardly ever got back to sleep once I’d been woken up by a nightmare. Particularly tonight, when I was so confused about Amber and feeling weird about Ben. I went into the kitchen, not turning on any lights until I had wedged shut the hallway door, wishing Loretta could somehow be here, too. That we could drink out of Biddy’s rustic clay mugs and whisper together until we felt sleepy again.
I pulled Mum’s photo down from the shelf and stared at it. We looked alike, Mum and me. We had the same dark eyes. Same flyaway hair that wasn’t quite brown and wasn’t quite red. She was tall, too. We both were. I looked at the photo, trying to find some sort of clue that she’d grow up to be the sort of person who could go two weeks without sleep. Who felt things too deeply and banged her wrists on the edges of tables. Who I always thought of when I encountered smashed windows and coloured scarves. Her hand was clenched in her lap. Did that mean something? Her eyes looked kind of sad, maybe. But it was so tricky to tell.
I cleared my throat and put Mum’s photo face down on the shelf.
I stared at Biddy’s tea shelf. I felt like a hot chocolate, but that always seemed to wake me up rather than make me sleepy. I helped myself to some chamomile tea and started tidying the kitchen. Nobody else seemed to mind when it was messy, but I hated it. I put things gently into the bin and scraped the plates and sorted and stacked them, ready to be washed when it wasn’t so early. I cleared the island bench and was wiping it down with tea-tree oil when the door cracked open. I jumped. Dad’s head poked in and he half smiled then yawned.
‘What’re you doing up, kiddo?’
‘Can’t sleep. You?’
He came in, shutting the door behind him. ‘I just got up for the toilet and saw the light on.’
/> ‘Want something to drink?’ I waved my chamomile at him.
‘No.’
‘I really don’t like chamomile,’ I said. ‘I always think I do, then I make some and nah.’
Dad was staring at his hands. ‘Oh.’
‘Dad, how’d you know you wanted to get into IT?’ I asked.
He looked startled. ‘What?’
‘Like, how’d you realise that was what you wanted to do?’
‘I dunno, Gwen. I just fell into it, I guess.’
I groaned. ‘That’s what every adult says. I just fell into it! It makes it sound so simple and easy and it’s not.’
‘It was a long time ago.’ He sighed. ‘Although, for a while, I think I wanted to be a marine biologist.’
‘A marine biologist?’ I repeated, smiling into my chamomile. ‘Really?’
He reddened. ‘I’d enrolled in the course, too.’
‘I didn’t know that! What happened?’
He huffed. ‘Well, I met your mum. And things were a bit of a whirlwind. You know what your mum was like. Then you came along and I needed something steadier than marine biology.’
‘How’d you meet Mum?’ I asked. My voice shook a little, but if Dad noticed, he didn’t react. It was a story I hadn’t asked to hear since I was very small. All I remembered was water.
‘On the beach,’ he said, smiling slightly to himself. ‘I got caught in a rip between here and Clunes.’
‘Idiot. Bet you were showing off.’
‘’Course I was! And snorkelling. I was trying to snorkel.’
‘You can’t snorkel here!’ I shook my head. ‘I’m ashamed of you.’
He chuckled. ‘Anyway, I got swept out and she dragged me back in. And I was all coughy and embarrassed.’
‘What did Mum do?’
‘Ripped into me about being a stupid show-off. I thought she’d only saved me so she could tear me to bits on the beach.’ He smiled. ‘She was something else, your mum. Something else.’
‘Did you ever try snorkelling off the coast here again?’
Dad was staring at the bench, looking sad. ‘Hmm?’
I tilted my head. ‘Why are you being weird?’
‘I’m not being weird!’
P is for Pearl Page 6