Tin Heart

by Shivaun Plozza

  Ugh. What have I promised?

  My phone pings. It’s Carmen. My heart rate shifts gears from a granny-in-a-Volvo to a teen-male-behind-a-Lamborghini when I see Carmen’s name flash on my screen.

  I’m always waiting for the text that reads: What the hell? Just found out who you really are and am looking into hitmen right now. But it’s just her wanting to know if I’m still alive or have I ‘carked it from mortification?’

  The second I left Leo in the backyard yesterday I sent her a text: Help. Just asked Butcher Boy out. Dying of shame.

  And the texts have been flowing between us since.

  I don’t know how to deal with boys, I told her.

  Pull up a chair, little one, for I have Opinions™.

  Tell me more, tell me more, tell me more.

  We swapped Grease puns for the rest of the night.

  Safe.

  Silly.

  Without consequence.

  There’s another ping: Call me when you get a chance. We need to talk strategy for the party. Clothes, hair, seduction methods. Butcher Boy won’t know what hit him :)

  Seduction?

  ‘Weganmaypopcorn,’ blurts Pip. He shakes his head, loosening up his words. ‘Popcorn,’ he repeats. ‘For breakfast. And I made bingo cards. Every time someone says “Fabulous” you score bonus points.’

  Bingo?

  In five minutes??? I text.

  ‘“Project Runway” finale,’ says Pip, jiggling his legs. ‘Remember? You promised.’

  If there was a Guilt Trip of the Year award, then Pip would place first, second and third and they’d subsequently redesign the award in his image and rename it the Philip Jensen Guilt Trip Award for Outstanding Puppy Dog Eyes and they’d start each year’s ceremony with a montage of his best pouts.

  Normally I’d be happy to sit down with him, but the problem is I’m in the middle of my first-ever boy emergency. I can’t TiVo that and deal with it later. And even though the does-he-or-does-he-not-like-me thing is next-level excruciating, it’s also ten thousand times better than the will-they-won’t-they-call-about-a-new-heart thing that used to be my life. So I kind of want to crawl into a bathtub filled with my current feelings and swim around in them for hours.

  I slip past Pip and head down the steps. ‘Can’t it wait, Pip? I’m in the middle of something.’

  Carmen texts: It’s a date! Wait, does Leo know about this??? You two-timing hussy!!!

  I laugh as I hurry down the stairs and call over my shoulder to Pip that we’ll watch it soon.

  I don’t hear his answer, but maybe he doesn’t say anything.

  ________

  At school, Zan is absent. I send her the usual, ‘Just tell me you’re not being eaten by cats and I won’t worry’ text, but I don’t get an answer. Zan’s like that.

  At break time, I hide in the library but I have to change spots repeatedly because Eddie Oro keeps finding me and pretending he needs help with his English homework. ‘How do you think the Monster feels, Marlowe?’ he says, while the Cerberus giggles behind him.

  I contemplate hanging out with Pip, but I spy him in the quad making up dance routines with his friends so I pass. Hard pass.

  I find a new hiding spot: under the boughs of a willow tree behind the junior girls toilets. I have finally found a portal to Narnia; you slip between the curtain of leaves and you’re in a whole new world. There aren’t any fawns or witches or lions, but it’s quiet and no one can see I’m on my own.

  I pull out my sketchbook and draw.

  I draw Luis – I know how to draw him now, that smiling, laughing, living smile. Drawing brings you close to people. Because you can’t really tell that it’s the fullness of a person’s bottom lip or the curve of their nose or the particular way they tilt their head that makes them uniquely them until you draw them. I really need to get Luis’ mouth right – I can’t seem to capture it. You’d think seeing as though every time I close my eyes I see Luis’ happy, smiling face I’d be able to get it right. I should be able to draw him in my sleep. Sometimes, I think I do, because I wake up so tired.

  Luis’ top lip was much thinner than the bottom and when he smiled it stretched right out. But maybe it’s the space around Luis’ mouth that’s the problem. Like that little dip between the top lip and the nose. What’s that called? His was pretty deep. I tap my pencil against the paper. Maybe it’s the chin. Maybe I haven’t got that right.

  When Zan turns up at school two days later she takes one look at my hair and says, ‘Brilliant.’

  By period five English she’s only just stopped bringing it up every five seconds. She rests her head on the library table and pretends to sleep. We’re walled in by our folders. We’ve dubbed our little cave ‘Marlzania’, a land where teachers, dickheads and English essays are banned. We’re supposed to be researching but the only thing on my mind is tonight. Because it’s Thursday, which means it’s Kari’s party, which means it’s date night.

  When I told Zan about Leo and the non-date date, she stared impassively at me for ages.

  ‘Hang on,’ she said, ‘are you waiting for me to be surprised that you have a thing for him, like I didn’t work it out the first time you mentioned his name? I can fake it, I guess.’

  ‘Shut up. We’re just friends.’

  ‘Sure. I believe you.’ She drew a circle in the air around her face. ‘This is me believing you.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do tonight when Leo stands me up and you’re off sucking face with Kari?’ I whisper.

  Zan frowns. ‘Sucking face? Seriously?’

  I laugh, earning a hush from Mr Laidlaw. He eyeballs us before making a beeline for a pair of Year Sevens passing Flowers in the Attic back and forth.

  I lean over and grab a sharpie out of Zan’s pencil case. On her forearm I draw a tree with spindly, crooked branches and then a fox because Zan once said they were her favourite animal. On her other forearm I start drawing an eye, Zan’s eye. She turns her arm, this way and that, looking at the tree and the fox while I finish the eye.

  ‘I want the fox for real,’ she says.

  I draw in silence until the eye is done.

  ‘I know what you can do when I’m with Kari,’ says Zan, inspecting the eye. ‘You could talk to Carmen.’ She says it like it’s nothing, like ‘Yeah, whatever, who cares?’ But there’s no code-breaking needed to work out what she means by ‘talk’.

  ‘Don’t you think?’ she says.

  I place the sharpie back in her pencil case.

  Zan sits back. ‘Are you going to ignore me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said you should talk to Carmen. Kari and me were texting last night. She reckons Carmen’s really down right now because Luis’ anniversary is coming up. Have you seen her?’

  I shrug. ‘She seems good. Happy.’

  ‘Kari says Carmen’s in denial.’

  ‘No. She just wants to be able to remember all the good things. I don’t think that’s so bad.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, but an uncertain edge creeps into my voice and messes everything up. ‘Yes,’ I say again, firmer this time and like I really believe it. ‘I know Kari reckons she’s down about it, but maybe that’s just because Kari keeps bringing stuff up. If she’s so hot about Carmen getting over Luis, then maybe she should stop going on about it.’

  If a brick wall could look unimpressed then I know what it’d look like. ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘Tell me you like talking about your feelings.’

  Zan glances at her pencil and back to me. ‘There’s a difference between not talking about something and repressing it.’

  ‘Hey, Marlowe,’ says Eddie from the other side of the folder wall. ‘What did you get for question five? “How does the monster’s hideous appearance symbolise issues in wider society?” Is that why you got that ugly haircut?’

  I look over the wall and he’s leaning back on his chair, to the point of almost tipping, to the point
of me wishing he would tip, to the point of me feeling tempted to give him a helping shove.

  ‘Piss off,’ says Zan.

  ‘Make me, butt-face.’

  ‘Butt-face? How do you come up with such genius?’

  ‘Quiet!’ hisses Laidlaw.

  Behind the folder wall, I open my sketchbook, gripping my pencil. I know that Eddie is a jerk as sure as I know baby bunnies are the cutest creatures on earth but it doesn’t mean his words don’t cut deep. They will carve up my soul in little slices and cuts and gashes that are prone to infection.

  ‘Ignore him,’ says Zan.

  I nod.

  She bumps my elbow, but I keep sketching so she bumps it again.

  ‘What?’

  She pulls my pencil out of my hand and holds it out of reach.

  ‘When Eddie says shit like that you believe it,’ she whispers. ‘You think you’re Frankenstein’s monster. But you’re wrong. This isn’t Frankenstein. I mean, sure, you’ve got that scar and a heart that you weren’t born with but this isn’t some dumb gothic nightmare. This is the Yellow Brick Road. You’re living in The Wizard of Oz.’

  I can’t help it. I laugh.

  ‘It’s true,’ she says. She jabs my arm with the pencil. ‘Tin Man.’

  Laidlaw snaps his fingers at us. ‘Jensen. Cheung. If you can’t work together you’ll be moved.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  I pretend to take notes from a book, any book. Turns out it’s the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I look up ‘wart’ and slide the book over to Zan and mouth ‘Eddie’, tapping my finger against a very graphic picture.

  She flips over the pages until she lands on ‘wizard’. She looks pointedly at me. I poke out my tongue.

  I’ve never read The Wizard of Oz but I’ve seen the film about a thousand times because it’s Pip’s second favourite (behind Labyrinth). I don’t see how a book about magical lands and fake wizards and evil witches and cowardly lions has anything to do with me. I’m all about the lightning strikes and dead bodies and evil scientists.

  Laidlaw disappears again to round up the Year Sevens who are back for more Flowers in the Attic, and in the margins of my English book I draw a picture of a lion with Leo’s head. And then I draw a three-headed flying monkey-beast, a distinctly Eddie-like munchkin and Zan as the Scarecrow.

  I tap my book. ‘Is that what you mean?’ I whisper.

  ‘You’re hilarious,’ says Zan in a bone-dry voice.

  ‘You love it.’

  ‘I tolerate it.’

  ‘Like I “tolerate” Leo?’

  She nods. ‘Exactly like that.’

  A school bag plonks on the table in front of us, knocking down half our wall. We both jump.

  One third of the Cerberus is standing there grinning at us. I look around for the other two but they’re nowhere to be seen. Is this a glitch in the matrix?

  ‘Hey, Skye,’ says Zan.

  Skye pulls up a chair and squeezes between us. ‘What’s up?’ she says. I’m forced to move out of the way to fit her in, which means the remaining half of the wall collapses – the queendom of Marlzania is no more.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Zan.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say.

  Skye points to my English book. ‘Hey, that’s cool,’ she says. ‘Who’s Leo?’

  I cover the drawing with my hand. ‘No one.’

  ‘Jeez, you two are so secretive with your mothers’ club.’ She goes to grab the book, but I pull it into my lap. ‘Show it.’

  ‘It’s just a drawing,’ I say.

  ‘No shit,’ says Eddie, leaning over to look.

  ‘Piss off,’ says Zan. ‘No one asked you.’

  ‘Is it your boyfriend?’ asks Skye. She looks around like she’s making sure no one is listening when really she’s making sure everyone is.

  ‘No way,’ says Eddie, leaning back on his chair. ‘Any guy who copped a feel of you would run a mile.’ He leans back like he just asked how my day has been.

  Zan throws my pencil at Eddie’s head.

  ‘Fuck off, lezzo,’ he says.

  It happens fast – so fast I sit there afterwards and replay it, trying to make sure it actually happened. But at the same time it’s slow, like that moment in an action film where the cop who’s two days from retirement jumps into his car and his partner realises it’s a trap but he can’t turn, can’t run, can’t yell quickly enough to save him from the car exploding.

  Zan bolts to standing. She reaches across the table and shoves Eddie hard. His arms windmill as the chair topples backwards; he lands with a crash so loud it smashes through the silence of the library. For a second, he’s splayed on the floor, face scrunched up, like an overturned bug that can’t right itself, and there’s silence.

  I wonder if now would be a good time to run over and squash him.

  And then everybody gasps and laughs and points and Laidlaw charges over and Eddie scrambles to his feet with a look like he could actually kill.

  ‘Bitch!’ he says. ‘I’ll fucking get you.’

  Laidlaw slides between them. ‘Take a seat! Take a seat!’ Laidlaw grabs Zan by the arm. ‘Ms Cheung? Go to Ms Delavan’s office.’

  ‘But he –’

  ‘Now, Ms Cheung.’

  Zan turns and slowly packs up her things. It’s quiet again, like a holding-your-breath-and-waiting-to-see-what-happens-next kind of silence. And in that silence I think of all the things I should say.

  Eddie started it.

  He provoked us.

  He used homophobic, discriminatory language.

  He’s a world-class arsehole.

  I watch Zan pack up her things, her hands shaking, unspoken, useless words burning a hole in my throat.

  As Zan leaves, the silence is broken with giggling and whispering and gossip.

  ‘You take a seat too, Ms Jensen.’ Laidlaw jabs the air with his finger. ‘Now.’

  ‘But it’s not fair,’ I say. I watch Zan walking away, her back straight, her shoulders squared off.

  ‘Ms Jensen?’

  ‘Zan didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘That’s not for you to judge, Ms Jensen. Now sit.’

  I sit, eyes downcast so I don’t have to see Eddie Oro and Skye and all those people with their hands over their mouths and eyes bright with excitement. I stare at my workbook and seethe.

  ________

  I wait for Zan after school, hovering outside the main office like a seagull near a picnic table.

  I send Pip off home without me and wait and wait and wait. Eventually Zan comes out of Mrs Friendly Ear’s office, her dad with his hand on her shoulder, steering her. Fast. But when Zan sees me she stops. Even from here I can see the cracks in the brick wall. Cracks that I think have been there all along but I was too self-involved to see. Her and her dad have an arm-waving conversation before she breaks away and heads over to me, arms folded, eyes on her black wedge high-tops.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, breathless. My hands are clenched into fists by my side. ‘What happened? When you didn’t answer my texts I thought it was all police and handcuffs and Orange Is the New Black.’

  It’s not as bad as that, though. Zan tells me she has three days suspension and a week of after-school detention. Plus her dad is threatening to send her to an all-girls school.

  ‘Because forcing me to stay home and then surrounding me with Catholic girls is really my nightmare,’ she says. Her humour – seeing the old Zan – unclenches my fists.

  ‘Did you tell them what he said?’

  She eyeballs me. ‘He’ll get told off, but do you think that makes a difference? You think it ever changes?’

  She doesn’t take her eyes off me and it makes my heart break.

  ‘I got to go,’ she says, turning away.

  ‘Are you still going tonight?’

  But she doesn’t answer. She just walks away.

  It’s so hot I want to crawl into an igloo and roll around on the ice for hours, naked. That’s what cramming a hundred people into a two-bedro
om Collingwood semi on a thirty-degree night will do to even the most prudish of girls. I don’t know anyone, and I’m worried the screechy techno is going to make my teeth fall out.

  I stand off to the side in the living room wondering how I can make it look like I’m at a party on my own on purpose and not because I’m a loser. I haven’t heard from Zan and I don’t know if she’s still coming or if she’s here and I just can’t see her or if she’s already been shipped off to a Catholic girls school in Siberia. And I haven’t heard from Leo and I don’t know if he’s still coming or if he’s here and I just can’t see him or if he fell head first into the meat mincer and is currently being put back together like one of those complicated 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles.

  I look for Kari or Carmen. People keep pushing past me: a parade of tight jeans and beards and tattoos and partly shaved heads. And each one of them looks me up and down: an eighteen-going-on-fourteen-year-old girl wearing a faux-suede green mini skirt, a white turtle-neck sleeveless crop top and the sparkliest damn ballet flats on earth, all from my trip to St Vinnies with Carmen. I look down at my shoes – it’s like a unicorn peed glitter all over them.

  I feel like I’m choking on smoke and heat and body odour. I stretch up on tippy-toes to scan the crowd; the only view I have is of some guy’s shoulderblades.

  I push through the crowd and into a courtyard. The music isn’t as loud out here but that only means you can hear a hundred conversations rambling at once.

  ‘Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Oof. Sorry.’ I squeeze through the crowd and straight into a girl in a baseball cap and a scowl. ‘Oof. Sorry.’

  It’s Zan. It’s Zan looking impossibly cool in her Zan uniform with her Zan expression and her general Zan-ness.

  ‘You’re here,’ I say.

  Behind Zan, Kari nods at me, then flicks her eyes away to somewhere in the distance. Somewhere more interesting than me.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come,’ I say.

  Zan hugs her bare arms across her chest and I notice she hasn’t washed off my drawings. ‘It’s Kari’s birthday. Of course I was coming.’

  ‘Your dad let you out?’

  ‘No. I’m in my room. Doing homework and trying to be a better person. You?’