Tin Heart

by Shivaun Plozza

  The thing about Laidlaw is, he’s a jerk.

  Maybe if I expand my tiny mind I might come up with a more insightful, articulate and witty way to describe him.

  Nope. Jerk.

  ‘I assume that you will begin reading the book this week.’ He’s got one of those trying-to-talk-around-the-silver-spoon-in-your-mouth posh voices. ‘Can I dare assume, Mr Oro?’

  ‘Marlowe won’t have to read it,’ says Eddie. He meets my eye from across the room and I realise hyena wasn’t the right animal for Eddie. You know how sharks have got those dead eyes? Maybe Eddie fell into the Pacific and was accepted into a school of sharks and turned half-shark because, seriously. Those eyes. ‘She already knows it by heart.’

  People laugh and it feels like the air gets sucked out of the room, like their laughter sucks the room dry. You can apparently live three minutes without air. It will cause irreparable damage to your brain and by god it will hurt, but you’ll live. It feels like the laughter lasts three hours.

  ‘At least she can read,’ snaps Zan.

  ‘At least she can suck my –’

  Laidlaw slams his whiteboard marker on the desk. ‘Enough! Do I need to send you both to the principal’s office?’

  Eddie picks at the cracked vinyl on his pencil case like he’s peeling off a scab. ‘No, sir,’ he says, grinning.

  Zan says nothing.

  And me? I’m looking for a rock to crawl under. One with a Narnia-stye escape hatch.

  Laidlaw twists back to the board. ‘Right,’ he says. The marker squeaks as he writes. ‘I’ll make a list of possible conversation starters to get you rolling. Then let’s get on with it, shall we?’

  I let out a long, shaky breath but I can’t let go of the table. If I do, I’ll run. I’ll run and I’ll never come back. Maybe I’ll go to a school where no one knows who I am and I can start again. I can write my own story. The story of an unremarkable girl.

  Zan elbows me. ‘He’s an arsehole,’ she whispers.

  I grimace. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I mean it. An actual arsehole,’ says Zan. She leans in. ‘He doesn’t even have a brain. Just an empty space where the shit is stored.’

  While Laidlaw’s back is turned, I pull out my sketchbook and draw Eddie Oro as the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. A speech bubble says, ‘If I only had a brain.’ A bird is pooping on his head.

  I slide it along the table while studiously admiring the whiteboard. The only indication Zan has seen my drawing is a snort disguised as a cough. I know Eddie is watching us but I suddenly feel brave. I have Zan beside me and I have Luis’ heart in my chest. Maybe.

  ‘Hop to it, gang,’ says Laidlaw.

  The corner of Zan’s mouth lifts in a wry smile and I commit the look to memory. She taps a finger to my drawing. ‘You’re so good,’ she says.

  I’m yet to discover how to take a compliment without self-combusting and right now is so not an exception. I rub my cheeks with both hands. ‘I’ve had plenty of time to practise.’

  It’s true. There wasn’t much else I could do lying in bed, sometimes for weeks at a time. Pip gave me my first sketchbook. Well, Mum paid for it but he picked it out. I drew Hannah and Professor Kirmani and the orderlies and other patients. I’d just lie there and draw. For hours.

  ‘Can you draw me?’

  ‘Really?’

  She nods. ‘But draw and talk at the same time. Cos I want to hear what happened with that girl and her brother.’

  She doesn’t call him my possible donor and I wonder if she thinks it’s easier, less morbid, if she thinks of him as a regular boy, not someone dead, not someone who might now make up a part of me. I wonder if that’s why I’m so desperate to know him. So I can think of him as just a boy too.

  I pull out my sketchbook and start. Every time Laidlaw walks past we say something random: ‘But why did you create me?’ or ‘I never asked for you to make me and now I have to live through this hell?’ He nods approvingly and walks on and I go back to drawing and telling Zan about Carmen.

  ‘You gave her a fake name?’ Zan picks at the corner of her English book. ‘That’s kind of . . .’ She scrunches up her face but the right word never comes.

  ‘It is very kind of,’ I say. ‘It’s the worst kind of in the history of kind ofs. But it was too hard. She was so . . . nice. And she was talking to me, so how could I not talk back?’

  I think about the photo of blurry, background Luis. I tried to draw him but that didn’t work. He refused to become more than a hazy, indistinct smudge. Details are important. The curve of the jawline. The little lines around the mouth, between the brows, at the corners of the eyes. But he’s just an out-of-focus boy who keeps walking away from me, no matter how much I want him to turn around.

  Zan looks sidelong at me. ‘But don’t you – if you created me then why did you forsake me?’ She bashes her fist on the table.

  I jerk back in surprise. ‘What?’

  Laidlaw’s shadow falls across me.

  ‘Oh. Ah. I mean, I didn’t forsake you.’ I splay my hands across my drawing. ‘You, ah, you just didn’t meet my expectations.’

  He nods, making impressed noises before moving on.

  Zan crosses her eyes at me and I laugh.

  ‘Speaking of creating . . .’ I hug the sketchbook to my chest.

  ‘Promise you won’t go all Frankenstein’s monster if you don’t like it?’

  She shrugs and I take that as a ‘yes’.

  I turn the sketchbook around.

  Zan leans in close. She pulls the sketchbook out of my hands, slumps back and lays it on her lap. She stares at it for, no joke, a minute. Silent.

  ‘I look . . .’ she says. ‘I look like someone just farted.’

  ‘No one farted. You look defiant. Like you won’t take crap from anyone. Like you’re Superman. Or woman. Or whatever.’

  ‘Is this how you see me?’

  ‘I think you’re bad-ass. Look what you did to Eddie.’

  She frowns.

  Oh crap. She hates it. We’re not going to be friends any more. She’s going to walk over to Eddie, apologise for taking my side and they’ll band together to make my life hell and I’ll have to change schools but Zan and Eddie will tell people at my new school to hate me and I’ll have to change to another school and another school and another school and each time I change I’ll have to re-start Year Eleven so I’ll never get to finish high school and I’ll be an eighty-year-old unpopular dork and then I’ll die.

  After the longest time, she says, ‘Can I keep it?’

  Oh.

  ‘Sure.’

  She rips it out and tucks it into her pencil case. ‘There are perks to being friends with an artist,’ she says.

  And this time when the fire department have to come and hose me down I’ll tell them not to bother – I’m self-combusting with joy.

  ________

  Things I do which I shouldn’t:

  1. Read Carmen’s old blog again

  2. Pour over her Insta feed again

  3. Daydream about seeing her again

  4. Spy on Leo (this one’s not about Carmen but I have this theory you can tell how bad his day’s been by the state of his hair and I need to confirm if my hypothesis is true. Which means it’s scientific and therefore legit.)

  5. Repeat all of the above.

  Dinner is beetroot risotto with a side of ranting. Some random on the street made a snide remark about Pip’s punk-pirate princess costume today and Mum hasn’t let up about it, from the starter salad to the raw vegan cheesecake. But Pip’s not worried. He’s just excited about a new toy that Vivienne bought for Brutus. A teeny tiny piñata full of treats. The stinking rat loves it.

  ‘I’m going to write a letter,’ says Mum. ‘To the local paper.’

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘Because this neighbourhood is going down the drain. First, someone dumped a fish head through the shop letterbox – I mean, who would do such a thing? And now random people are saying horrendous th
ings about my baby.’

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘Maybe I should put myself in the running at the next council election. With that kind of platform I could –’

  ‘Mum!’

  She looks at me like she’s only just worked out I’m sitting there, like she just came out of a twelve-hour tantric trance.

  ‘Can we change the subject already?’ I swallow the last forkful of raw cheesecake. Besides, I know exactly who shoved the fish head through our letterbox.

  ‘This is important, Marlowe.’

  ‘I know it is.’ I glance at Pip who’s building a fortress out of his cheesecake. Maybe he plans on letting Brutus run around in it. ‘But I think we’ve covered it. Consider it seared into our brains.’

  She places her wine on the table, carefully. ‘Well, what do you want to talk about, Marlowe?’

  No joke, we used to have a ‘discussion box’ where we’d have to write a topic on a scrap of paper, post it in the box and each night Mum would empty it on the table and one of us would pick a topic. Like a conversation lucky dip. We don’t do it anymore, not since it became obvious that the choices were only ever going to be: ‘Why is eating meat so bad?’ (Mum), ‘Why was David Bowie so awesome?’ (Pip) and ‘Why do we have to do this?’ (me).

  But today I’m up for it.

  ‘How about why swimming sports are just an excuse to reinforce low self-esteem in young girls, forcing them to wear revealing swimwear and opening them up to harsh, soul-destroying criticism.’

  For a second Mum looks totally impressed. She nods her head and there’s this glow in her cheeks like, haven’t I raised an amazing daughter to ask such probing, feminist questions and I guess that makes me a pretty amazing mother, doesn’t it?

  But then her eyes narrow into slits and the glow vaporises – shoomp!

  ‘Don’t you have swimming sports tomorrow?’ she asks.

  ‘Yep,’ I say. ‘So you’ll need to write me an excuse note, obviously.’ I’ve never participated in school sports and I don’t intend to start now.

  Pip drives his fork through the centre of his construction and the whole cheesecake fortress collapses. ‘Oh man, you should see my costume for it. It’s the best.’

  ‘What would you need an excuse note for?’ says Mum. ‘You’re well enough to participate. In fact, the exercise will do you good. You’re supposed to keep up an active lifestyle, Marlowe, doctor’s orders.’

  I throw my arms up in disgust. ‘But, Mum, I can barely swim and I hate the way I look in bathers.’

  As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realise my mistake. This is now a ‘Kate Jensen Cause for the Betterment of Humankind’. There’s no way back. I have just turned this into a Save Marlowe from Hating Herself extravaganza.

  ‘You have a gorgeous body, Marlowe,’ says Mum, leaning forward to enfold my fist in her hand. ‘Every body is beautiful, all the more so for its flaws.’

  ‘In theory, sure.’ I pull away from her. ‘In La La Land, but not in reality.’

  ‘You can’t run away from your problems,’ she says, picking up her wine and swishing it around the glass. ‘Facing them head on is the only way to build resilience.’

  ‘I’m not going,’ I say, glaring at my empty plate. ‘I can’t swim. I feel sick. I’m allergic to chlorine. Swimming carnivals are an excuse to encourage unhealthy competitive behaviour towards my peers. Pick whichever excuse works for you.’

  Mum laughs. ‘It was your idea to go to mainstream school, Marlowe. I offered home-schooling but you said that was for weirdos. I’m quoting you. I think I have it on tape somewhere.’

  Why can’t she understand what I’m asking, really asking, without me having to say it? ‘This is unfair.’

  ‘Life is unfair, Marlowe. Ask a refugee. Ask anyone living in poverty. Ask one of the million cows slaughtered annually for food.’

  ‘You’re really going to make me go?’ My voice rises. I flinch at the shrill edge.

  But Mum nods like she knows better. Like I’m just young and I don’t get how much wiser she is but I’ll figure it out one day.

  My life would be so much easier if she actually was a carefree hippie. But she’s not. She’s a ruthless dictator.

  ‘How can you do this to me?’ I shout. ‘How come you get to control what happens to me? That really sucks!’

  Mum jerks at the volume of my voice. ‘Marlowe!’ she scolds and then she laughs because she doesn’t take me seriously. She rolls her eyes and tells me to be less dramatic.

  Dramatically, I stomp to my room and slam the door.

  ‘My costume is sea themed,’ Pip calls after me. ‘That’s all I’m telling you.’

  I try to distract myself by doing homework. I skim a chapter of Frankenstein before throwing it across the room. I read it years ago anyway.

  I stare at the pictures on my walls for half an hour. At the newest drawing. A blurry, distant boy with his back to me, forever walking away.

  With a sigh I stand and rummage through my drawers. I haven’t needed a pair of bathers for ages so it takes me a while to find the last pair I owned, bunched up in the back of my underwear drawer.

  I hold them to my front and look in the full-length mirror. I used to love them. Blue and white stripes, a fifties-style boy leg and low scooped neck. Too low now.

  I trail a finger down the centre of my chest, over my dress, along the pathway of the scar that’s hidden beneath. I haven’t shown anyone – not even Mum. I don’t look at it, either, and whenever Professor Kirmani or Hannah uncovered the bandage to check how I was healing I would turn my head.

  I drop the bathers to the floor and step on them. Stomp and squash and screw them into the carpet. Why the hell am I still not able to be in charge of what happens to me? When do I start getting to make the choices?

  Control.

  It’s about that, isn’t it?

  I’ve never had it. It’s been up to doctors, nurses, medication, Mum, and waiting for luck to give me somebody else’s heart. I just don’t have what it takes to be in control of myself.

  I sit again, gripping the edge of the desk and breathing heavily. I frown at the blurry, hazy drawing of Luis pinned above my desk.

  What would you do, Luis? How would you take control?

  Pip is standing in the middle of our kitchen, wearing speedos and holding an octopus costume. Not just any octopus costume. A red octopus with piercings and safety-pins, ‘I heart Sex Pistols’ badges and a green mohawk. Apparently this is what happens when an alien octopus travels through time and lands in Britain in the 1970s where, instead of infiltrating the royal family as planned, he discovers punk music.

  ‘So am I putting this on?’ he asks.

  ‘No way, Pip,’ I say the same time Mum says, ‘Of course, honey.’

  He grins as he swivels and hurries upstairs, calling out to Brutus on the way past. ‘Octo-Punk is go! Repeat! Octo-Punk is go!’

  I turn back to Mum, who’s too busy humming and smiling and packing Pip’s lunch to notice my incredulous stare. ‘You’re not actually going to let him go out in that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I look behind me, under the bar stool, behind the toaster, checking if we’re secretly being filmed and this is an elaborate joke. I could image it going viral, people emailing it to each other with the subject line: MUST WATCH!!!! You’ll never guess what this mum lets her eleven-year-old wear!

  ‘Because it’s a swimming carnival, Mum. With actual swimming. How far do you think Pip is going to make it down the pool before he drowns? If he doesn’t get beaten up before he even gets there.’

  She shakes her head, screwing the cap of Pip’s water bottle extra tight. ‘You know you’re not angry about this,’ she says.

  ‘You’re angry because I’m making you do something you don’t want to do.’

  She’s right – of course – but it’s okay because I have a Plan. A dastardly plan.

  ‘You’re a dictator,’ I tell her, closing my Egon Schiele biography, relishin
g the heavy frumpt! I still don’t understand why she’s making me do this – she’s supposed to be on my side.

  Mum rolls her eyes at me. ‘Don’t be a daytime soap opera, Marlowe.’

  Pip waddles downstairs, engulfed in his costume. It covers all of his head and most of his torso with eight tentacles made of newspaper-stuffed stockings swishing down to his knees.

  ‘Seriously, Pip?’

  A muffled voice tells me, ‘The name is Punk. Octo-Punk.’

  It takes some manoeuvring to get Octo-Punk through the door and out the front gate. He waves goodbye to Mum and as we walk to the pool, we play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (except we call him Kevin Tofu) and I pretend to sing along to Life on Mars’. It’s all part of The Plan.

  When we get fifty metres from the pool’s front entrance, I casually tell Pip to go on ahead without me.

  He stops.

  He turns.

  His octo-punk eyes burn into my soul.

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  I kneel down, undoing and doing my laces. ‘Of course. Just have to . . . shoe.’

  There’s a particular way an alien punk octopus hovers. It’s menacing. And it’s not ideal when you’re about to skip school for the first time ever.

  Because that is The Plan: for the first time in her life, Marlowe ‘Goody-Two-Shoes’ Jensen is skipping school.

  But it all hinges on Pip going inside without me. The second he’s gone, I’m out of here and I’ll meet him at the pool entrance at three thirty and pretend I’ve been inside the whole time.

  ‘Go on, Pip,’ I say. ‘Everyone’s going to want to see your costume. Don’t keep them waiting.’

  The octo-punk eyes continue to burn. I only have two laces so this has to end now. ‘Go on, Pip.’

  ‘Who?’

  Le sigh. ‘I mean, Octo-Punk.’

  Pip jiggles up and down on the spot and squeals when he spies one of his friends waving madly at him from the pool gates.

  ‘People are going to wee their pants when they see my costume.’ He swivels – ‘See you later, alligator!’ – and hurtles towards his friend, rattling the whole way.