Girl Next Door

by Alyssa Brugman

  Will's tucking in to his Quarter Pounder, as if he's cool with that. He mustn't have the gut knot. The smell of my McChicken makes me want to heave.

  About four years ago we went on a camping holiday to this place called Wombat Crossing, which was unusual for us. Mum preferred to go to resorts where there was a pool and a cocktail bar; you could order a masseuse on the room service menu and, of course, there was a kids' club, so they could go off and see boring grown-up stuff without us whining.

  Dad preferred the resorts too – they always had a nine-hole golf course. But Wombat Crossing was a place that Will found on the internet. There was assorted wildlife in all the pictures. They had grass skiing, windsurfing and all that outdoorsy Boy Scout stuff that Will is into, so we went.

  It must have been off-season, although I don't know when would be on-season for a place like that. We were the only ones staying there, aside from the caretaker who was a hundred years old.

  It wasn't camping camping. We stayed in a cabin, but there was no electricity and we washed from a bucket that you filled with warm water from the billy on the gas stove or the barbecue fire outside.

  Mum hated it, but we never laughed as much as we did that week – usually at the look of dismay on Mum's face every time she made a new discovery, like if we didn't keep the door shut then all the wildlife would come inside, and wouldn't want to leave. Possums and wallabies might look cute, but they have fearsome teeth and claws, and make sounds like a lion cub when you try to pick them up.

  Dad and Will made bad jokes, particularly about the long-drop toilet.

  We attempted to bake a damper. It was disastrous, but we ate it anyway, because we were starving, and afterwards Mum tried to order pizza from her mobile, but they wouldn't deliver so Dad had to drive out and meet them on the main road. By the time he got back it was cold, but we ate it anyway, and then went straight to bed even though it was only about half-past six. Willem and I had to share a room and we played Joke Jeopardy in the dark.

  Wombat Crossing was awful, but we managed to pull together and make it work. Or maybe I just remember it more fondly the more time passes. The people that we were at Wombat Crossing seem about a million years away from who we are now.

  'I went back to my old company,' Dad begins. 'I wanted to see if they'd filled my place yet, and unfortunately they had, but I caught up with a . . . a colleague of mine for lunch, and she said she knew of some openings . . . some positions . . . A few jobs that were going.' He's blushing – stumbling through it. 'We had lunch . . . a few times, and we got talking. You see, we'd worked together for a long time and we hadn't realised, and things got complicated pretty quickly. I never thought, I mean I always . . . You have no idea until you find yourself there, really.'

  'Complicated?' I say. I can see Will's face in the side mirror. He's frowning over his fries.

  'So do you kids like this Bryce Cole fellow?' Dad asks. 'I mean, is he nice to you?'

  Will grunts. 'He's nice to Jenna-Belle.'

  'What does that mean?' He flicks a look at me over his shoulder.

  'It doesn't mean anything. Will's a dickhead,' I say. 'Go back to this colleague.'

  Dad stares straight out the front window. That's why he didn't let us eat in. He didn't want to look at our faces while he told us this stuff.

  'See, now that we weren't working together my colleague felt that she was finally at liberty to . . . and I never knew she felt that way. I had no idea! Believe me. And you know things weren't going well with the business. I had very low self-esteem. Then your mother with the . . . baby. Has she said anything to you about that?'

  'I went to the hospital with her,' Will said. 'She was only there overnight.'

  'Did your mum say anything about . . . anything?' Dad asks.

  He's searching for something. There's a secret – something they haven't told us. Something else.

  'Well, anyway.' He sighs. 'It was very different with you kids. This time it really was a rock-bottom moment for me.'

  'Are you trying to tell us that you're sleeping with your secretary?' I blurt. 'Seriously? I thought that was a joke! It's a joke, isn't it?'

  Will is still frowning, and he's stopped eating. He's getting the gut knot.

  Dad sighs. 'I'm feeling intensely conflicted right now. I really feel like your mum and I need a time-out.'

  'Who uses expressions like that?' I say. 'Are you channelling Oprah? Jesus!' I'm smiling, because people don't talk like this. He's having a lend of us.

  Dad ignores me. 'The important thing is that this is not about you kids. You're probably going to be angry for a while. I know I am. But I've come to accept that sometimes in your life you really need to just stop right where you are and think about whether your life is heading in the direction you want it to go, or if you're just living day-to-day, because you'll find . . . You wait and see – you'll wake up one day and think, My God, my life is halfway through and what am I doing? I know it sounds like a cliché, but isn't it a cliché because it's true?'

  'So, what happens now?' Will asks. His face has gone white. There's a twitch in the muscle on the side of his neck.

  Dad doesn't say anything for ages, and then he puts both hands over his face.

  'God. This is really difficult for me.'

  I snort. I can't help myself, because it's a joke, right? Difficult for him?

  Dad sighs again. 'There's an opportunity for a job on a short-term basis, and I think I need to take it. I have . . . I've already accepted it.'

  He taps the steering wheel and I can't escape the feeling that he's trying to recall a rehearsed script.

  'I want to spend as much time with you guys as I possibly can. It may be difficult for us to see each other for a while, but it's short-term.'

  'Why?' Will asks.

  'I'm . . . The fact is that Heather and I are moving . . .' He takes a deep breath. 'I'm only here for a few days. I'm . . . The job is in New Zealand.'

  The knot lurches to the side and now my ears are ringing. I'm too shocked to say anything.

  When Will speaks his voice cracks. 'But what about our house? Where are we going to live?' Will looks as if he's been punched. I think he's going to faint.

  'Maybe it sounds selfish. It is selfish, but I haven't done anything selfish . . . I haven't done anything for sixteen years! Do you know how long that is?' He's looking at Willem now. 'You have no concept of how long that is because that's as long as your whole life.'

  Will scrambles out of the car. The half-eaten burger goes flying all over the dashboard and some of it sticks to the windscreen. He runs across the car park and a van has to brake suddenly to avoid him.

  'But this isn't about us,' I say.

  14

  HANSEN'S

  DISEASE

  All right, I'm ready. The most embarrassing thing ever – well, second only to the laundry thing. It's the reason why I don't exactly miss all those girls I went to school with at Finsbury, and why I wouldn't try to contact them even if there wasn't a lock on the phone. There was a party at Tanner Hamrick-Gough's house a while ago, when we were still normal, rich people living in a huge house full of stuff.

  Tanner's sister's friends were at the party too, and a whole heap of Tanner's parents' friends, because they were back from Dubai. I'd never been to a party like that before, where all the adults and their kids socialised. There must have been a hundred people, maybe more. They'd hired a barman and a jazz band. I only knew a handful of girls, because I was pretty new to the school. Anyway, a group of the younger people went out into the pavilion to play spin the bottle.

  Okay, in hindsight it's obvious that this was going to turn out badly, but I was trying to fit in, and several of the boys were pretty cute, so I agreed to play.

  Jasmina was picked first. She went into the sauna with one of the boys for about a minute. Everyone outside was laughing and trying to listen to them, but the walls were really thick in there, because it's designed that way, and there was music playing. When t
hey came out again the boy was blushing, but Jasmina seemed unruffled.

  I was picked next. I went into the sauna with a boy. He wasn't one of the really cute ones. Anyway, nothing happened. We just sat there on the wooden bench. He asked me if I'd ever had a sauna. I shook my head, and then we went out again.

  But when we got outside, they all grinned at us as though we had done something, and the boy gave a little thumbs-up to the other guys. I didn't say anything; I just smiled, because that was the game, right?

  Soon enough the bottle came around to me again, this time with a different boy. So I went back into the sauna. The first boy must have encouraged this boy, because he didn't even wait until we sat down. He leaned forward and kissed me, but just a peck. Then he tried again and I said, 'Time's up!'

  When I took my spin, the bottle pointed to one of the cute boys. We went into the sauna and sat down. He put his hand under my chin and kissed me. It was a really nice kiss, and so I let him kiss me more. He put his arm around my waist and drew me towards him so that our torsos were pressed together, and it was good, because that was the game, right?

  And then the sauna door swung open and Tanner Hamrick-Gough's ancient parents were there. The first thing I noticed was that the lights were on and the music had stopped. I blinked in the brightness and I could see all the people standing around craning their necks to see what was happening.

  Tanner said, 'Jenna-Belle has been kissing all the boys.'

  Tanner's parents made me sit in the kitchen and wait for my dad to pick me up. There were about five other grown-ups frowning at me over their champagne saucers.

  When Dad came they made out I was in the sauna all night and the boys came in one at a time to kiss me, and who knows what else? They told him that they'd never felt the need to supervise the young people so closely, because normally they played board games, swam in the pool, or sang songs on the karaoke machine.

  Yeah, right, and they finished the night with a prayer meeting.

  I can understand Tanner and the others trying to cover their butts with their parents, but for the next few weeks at school they carried on as though the night went the way their parents said, as though none of them had been involved. I know I did a lot of kissing, but technically I only kissed one boy, and it was only because the game had just started and other girls hadn't had a chance to have a turn yet. If they weren't there to kiss boys then why were they sitting in the circle?

  But they all stuck to that story, even when they were by themselves, and it made me wonder if I remembered it wrong.

  And how come nobody rang the boys' parents and made them go home? How come it's okay for the boys to kiss girls, but it's not okay for a girl to kiss boys?

  Maybe I am a skank? Skanks probably don't know they're skanks unless someone tells them.

  I've noticed that when I'm not with those girls from Finsbury I don't wonder whether I'm a skank in denial. It's kind of like that joke:

  Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I go like this.

  Well, don't go like that then.

  So, by not hanging out with Tanner and Jasmina and their hangers-on I'm not going like that. Besides, after the whole 'vintage' call, it's clear they're not very sympathetic.

  Usually when I'm worried that I'm going to think about it I stick my fingers in my ears and close my eyes and go 'lalalalala' until it goes away, but what reminded me of it this time is that when Dad came to pick me up from Tanner Hamrick-Gough's party he didn't really say anything. I was expecting a lecture, but instead we simply drove home in silence. He just seemed tired.

  It makes me mad – madder – because I'd felt bad for him about that night. I'd felt guilty that he had to come and collect me and be humiliated in front of the other parents because his daughter was a skank.

  I'd assumed that he was preoccupied with how badly the business was going and how he couldn't provide for his family, but now I wonder if he was already 'complicating' Heather on a regular basis and didn't really give a rat's about how many boys I was kissing, or how bad our financial situation was.

  He was already planning his escape.

  There's a moving van parked across our lawn. I'm happy, then angry, then scared, then happy again, and then I realise it's Annie's sofa bed being carried down the alleyway instead of ours and I'm angry again.

  I head over to Declan's house so I can watch from his bedroom window and bitch about how Annie is abandoning us too.

  Declan is reading the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which he prints off the internet. I thought maybe having a chronic illness might make him back off a bit, but he seems more engrossed in death statistics than ever.

  'She could have told me that she was moving,' I grumble.

  'There were sixteen cases of the plague in the US last year.'

  'She's running away.'

  'Hansen's disease is on the rise. Hansen – H.' He flips through his medical encyclopedia. He finds the page, runs his finger down, and then his eyes widen. 'Leprosy! Hansen's disease is leprosy! Did you know there were one hundred and five cases of leprosy in the US in 2004?'

  'In a population of three hundred million! The odds are pretty long, don't you think?' I sigh. 'I just think Annie could have said something. We might as well have leprosy the way people are falling over themselves to get away from us.'

  Declan snaps his book shut. 'I didn't think you even liked her.'

  I rest my chin on the heel of my hand and stare at the truck. The removalists are shutting the doors now. 'I don't! I don't care what Annie does. She's a bossy busybody. I just think it's polite to say something when you're leaving.'

  'Jenna-Belle?' Declan interrupts.

  'Stupid old biddy. I'm not going to miss her, so I don't even know why I'm cranky. I hope Mum watches Single White Female before she rents out the granny flat again.'

  'Jenna-Belle!' Declan says again.

  'What?' I say, turning around. Annie is standing in the doorway. She has my pinch pot in her hand. 'Oh. Hello,' I mumble.

  Annie is kind enough to pretend she hasn't heard me. 'Your mother told me that I would need to look for a new place, and so I have,' she explains. Annie lays the pinch pot down on the doona cover. 'Do me a favour, will you? Don't ever sell this again. I've returned the finger painting to Willem.' She puts her hand on the top of my head. I can see she wants to say something else, but she doesn't. Instead she smiles at me, and then pads out the door in her leather sandals.

  'Bye, Annie,' I say.

  I see her cross the lawn and start her station wagon, which is stuffed with last-minute items and odd things that don't fit in boxes. I want to run after her and say sorry, because what I said just now wasn't fair. It's not Annie that I'm angry with.

  But I don't run down there. I let her drive away.

  I wonder how many times in your life you let people just leave without saying what you need to say, or what you should say.

  15

  THE

  SIEGE

  The sheriff doesn't look like Clint Eastwood after all. He's grey-haired and wrinkly and wearing a uniform like a traffic cop. There is no posse . . . yet.

  I see him knock on the front door from my bedroom window and so I run downstairs and out the back door. I run through Declan's kitchen, past his startled mother, and up to his room.

  'C'mon. The sheriff is here,' I gasp. 'I'm going to the roof space. Building a fort.'

  Then I run back home again and climb up into the ceiling. I thought Declan was behind me, but he's not. I wait for ages. I'm sure he's not going to turn up. I curse him for being a coward mofo, and then the cover slides back and two shopping bags emerge.