“Why don’t you call Lise?” I say slowly.
Mum stares at me, bewildered. “Me?”
For one moment—for one long moment—I hesitate. I’m a conflict avoider, right? Then I take a deep, angry breath. Not anymore, I’m not.
“Yeah, you, Mum,” I say savagely. “You’re the one she comes and talks to, aren’t you? You’re her special friend. You talk to her.”
Mum sucks in her breath, short and sharp.
“Lise isn’t my ‘special friend,’ Nat,” she says. “I’m sorry if you feel that way, but—”
I interrupt her, my voice rising.
“I heard you talking to her that day she came over. What did she say to you?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t tell you that. It was private. What she told me, she told me in confidence.”
“Private.” “In confidence.” There they are again, more of her beautiful catchall phrases. I am so sick of her soothing terminology, her simple little solutions.
I push my chair away from the table, stand up. Anger washes over me now in strange, hot waves.
“How can you say that?” I shout. “Look at her. She’s wasting away! What’s private about that?”
We stare at each other across the room.
“Nat,” says Mum. She gestures to me, a small, familiar conciliatory gesture: Come back. Let’s talk about this. But there is no way I am talking to her about this. There is no way I’m talking to her about anything.
I move hastily away from her. In the doorway, I turn back.
“You should’ve done something, Mum,” I say bitterly. “She came to you, and she trusted you. You should’ve done something.”
Then I turn and walk out of the room.
My mother, the social worker. The so-called expert. How could she have gotten things so wrong?
chapter twenty-seven
Josh
That night, I dream of Josh. I dream he’s riding into Perth and I’m waiting for him at the finishing line. (There won’t be a finishing line in reality, of course: it’s his own private race. But this is the way it is in my dream.) He has his head down, and he’s pushing his pedals harder than he’s ever pushed them before.
I jump up and down, cheering him on, but he doesn’t look up. He crosses the line, and he has this big, huge smile on his face; but he doesn’t look up—
I wake up, panicking. It’s only a dream, I tell myself. A dream. It’s just been so long since I’ve seen him.
Then I remember what happened yesterday. I remember the exam, and I remember Lise, and I remember the argument I had with my mother. Anger swells up inside me again. Hell, I am so angry with my mother.
In the morning, I think about calling Sofe. But then I remember that she has an exam this morning; in fact, she’d be in there right now, scribbling away. I probably won’t get to see her again properly until the exams are over: we don’t study many of the same subjects. As for Mum’s advice—to call Lise and talk to her—there’s no way I’m following that. She’s wrong, Mum. Talking doesn’t help. It doesn’t help Lise, anyway.
All morning, I try to study for my own next exam, which is in two days’ time. (I mean, that’s what exam week’s about, isn’t it? Cramming in, before each exam, all that work you should’ve done during the year?) I put my books on my desk, then spread them out on the floor, then pile them up on my desk again. Nothing works, though. I just keep thinking of Josh.
He’d understand, I think. He’d understand how I feel: about Lise and about Mum. He knows me. He does: he just knows me.
In the end, a couple of hours after midday, I pack up my books, leave a note on the kitchen table: Caught the tram to Glenelg. Back for dinner. The exams can wait. I have to see him; I have to talk to him. It’s been too long.
Outside, it’s hot: waves of heat splash against my skin as I traipse down to the tram stop. In the tram, my flesh sticks to the red vinyl seat through my clothes. My thoughts are dazzled, heat-drenched: I think of Josh, and of Mum, and of Lise, and of the exams to come. Then I give up and just think about Josh. Right now—right at this moment—he’s all that matters to me. All I can think is, If I can just see him, things will be all right.
But when I arrive at the café, its door is locked and the “Closed” sign is up in the window. I peer through the glass: the lights are all off and the chairs are stacked on the tables. An early finish for Josh, then, because of the heat. He’s probably at home right now, listening to one of his yodeling albums, lying on the floor with his shirt off and his feet up on the wall. (I can hear him saying, in that sexy, teasing voice of his, “It’s cooler on the floor, Nat. Didn’t you know? Heat rises.”)
Hot waves of longing rush over me. I stand there on the pavement, hesitating. Josh’s house is five minutes away, if you stick to the street instead of going via the beach. But we always used to walk the long way home together, via the beach, after work. Suddenly I want to prolong this moment on Jetty Road, prolong the pleasure of thinking about him, getting excited about seeing him again.
I head down toward the beach. At the roundabout, I cross over the tram tracks to the brick-paved plaza just in front of the beach. I walk slowly across it, past families eating ice cream at the green picnic tables. Seagulls circle and swoop in front of me, scavenging for leftover chips and discarded hamburgers. Ignoring them, I drift on, dreaming of Josh, past the last table and out onto the beachfront lawns.
A couple of women in their twenties are sitting at a table on the terrace outside the hotel; they glance up at me as I head toward the jetty. They’re sipping at colorful drinks in tall, ice-filled glasses, gossiping. One of them rests her elbow on the table, leans over, says something, and the other one laughs—a long, languid, summer-lazy laugh. I think again, sharply, of Lise: of the times we came here, the secrets we told each other. (What about the secrets she told Mum?) Hastily, I look away from the women, back out to the beach.
It’s then that I see him. He’s sitting on the brick wall that borders the sea, not fifty yards in front of me. He has his back to me, but I’d know that tall, slight, broad-shouldered back anywhere. At the sight of him, I feel the old, familiar flurry of wings in my stomach.
It’s Josh, and he is not alone.
The girl beside him on the brick wall is small and wiry, with dark, curly hair. They’re sitting very close to each other. So close, in fact, that his hand is on her thigh. As I stand there, taking this in—trying to think, trying not to think—he leans into her and they kiss.
Deeply.
On the mouth.
All thoughts of Lise flee from my mind. For one long, sickening moment, I stand and watch them. My mind tumbles, stumbles on the truth. Julie. I know instantly that it’s her.
Then, slowly, I turn around and trudge back toward the tram stop. I don’t run; I don’t hurry; I don’t look back. I notice, surprised, how heavy my feet have become, dragging on the hot afternoon pavement. My stomach lurches and rolls. In my head, there is only one word: Josh. That’s all I can think. Josh.
Back at the roundabout, while I wait for a gap in the cars, the world suddenly heaves. I bend over and throw up, onto the street. It feels like my whole soul is being wrenched out of me. Afterward, I straighten up, cross the road. I wait quietly at the tram stop, then sit with my head smearing the window on the way home. I can still taste the vomit in my mouth; I can smell it on my breath.
Josh—
chapter twenty-eight
One good reason
I throw up again several times when I get home. The third time, Dad comes into the bathroom, looking sympathetic.
“What’s the matter, Nat? Did you eat something bad?”
He’s like that, Dad: he’s good with sick people. When I was a kid, it was always him, not Mum, who’d come into my bedroom if I had a temperature. He’d put a damp cloth on my forehead, offer to read me stories. He had such a comforting voice.
Now I shake my head in answer to his question, wipe my mouth with a piece of toilet pap
er. I don’t think I’ve ever been sick so much in my life.
“Josh broke up with me today.”
It’s the closest I can get to saying the truth out loud. After I’ve told him, I turn away and walk into my bedroom. I close the door and lie down on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. I want to cry, but I can’t. I feel too sick to cry.
My eyes close almost immediately, and I sleep. It’s a long and deep sleep, and totally, totally dreamless.
In the morning, when I wake, the queasiness has passed and my stomach has settled. I lie in bed, listening to the familiar sounds of the house: the roof creaking, a floorboard shifting in the hall outside my room, the kitchen tap dripping.
When I get up, I find a note pinned up for me on the fridge. It’s in Mum’s handwriting:
Nat—
If you’re still not well today, go to the doctor, okay? I’ve left the medical card and some money for you on my bedside table.
Love, Mum xxx
P.S. Dad says try some of his ginger tablets. They’re good for the stomach.
I stand by the fridge in my pajamas, at a loss for words. If I hadn’t argued with her the other day, I wouldn’t have felt like I missed Josh so much, you know? And if I hadn’t missed him so much, I wouldn’t have gone to see him yesterday. Which would mean, I think now, irrationally, I wouldn’t have seen what I saw.
I don’t bother with a note back to her, and I leave the tablets on the kitchen table, untouched.
I’m going back to Jetty Road again. I’ve got to see him.
Again.
* * *
Some days you can hear the sound of the ocean from Jetty Road, even as far back as the café. Today is one of those days, hot and still, the sky a deep, pulsating blue.
I march down the street toward the café, ignoring the sea and the sky. I head through the open door of the café. The place looks deserted—it’s too early for customers—but I can hear someone moving about in the kitchen. A plate clatters, and the fridge door groans open. Then I hear the sound of someone humming. Yes, humming.
I go straight behind the counter, without calling out.
Josh is in the kitchen: he’s standing at the stove, his back to me. At the sight of him, I feel my knees crumble. How could he? How could he? I take a deep breath, steeling myself.
“Where’s Michael?” I demand, without bothering to say hello.
He swings around at my voice, startled. “Nat! I didn’t hear you come in.” His expression is unreadable. “Um—he’s gone to the bank. Aren’t you supposed to be at an exam or something?”
“My next one’s tomorrow,” I say.
He looks confused.
“I thought you weren’t coming back till they were over.”
“I wasn’t,” I say grimly. “I need to talk to you, Josh.”
A shadow crosses his face, and if there’d been a part of me that didn’t believe what I saw yesterday—and there was, there was; how could it be true?—instantly it’s gone.
“Now?” he says quietly.
“Now.”
He doesn’t protest. He can see it in my face already, I think; he knows I know.
He follows me out through the kitchen door, into the tiny backyard. I plunk myself down on the cement doorstep. Reluctantly, he sits down next to me. The yard is so small that there’s only enough space, between us and the tin fence, for a couple of broken, discarded chairs from the café and the rusting refuse bin in the corner. His knee is squashed against my thigh, and there’s no room to move away.
For a moment I can’t bring myself to speak.
“I saw you and Julie.”
He’s silent. I plunge on.
“It was Julie, wasn’t it? Yesterday. On the beach with you. Kissing.”
Still he doesn’t answer.
“Well? Was it?”
“Yes.”
I sit there next to him on the step, wordless, staring at the refuse bin. Its lid is propped open, and bags of rubbish from the café spill out of it. A sudden memory slides into my mind: Josh and me, doing the last of the cleaning in the kitchen one afternoon; late winter, darkness already fallen. I’d switched off the CD player, and in the quietness that followed, we heard cats foraging around in the bin outside the kitchen. They hissed and spat at each other, fighting over leftover food or lost territory. Josh came up to me, put his arms around my shoulders. “Cats fighting,” he murmured into my ear. “The strangest, loneliest sound in the world.” He was right. It is a lonely sound.
I have so many memories like that of him in this place—
Next to me, Josh shifts uncomfortably on the step. His closeness—the feeling of his leg against mine—is almost unbearable.
“How long?” I say at last. “How long have you and Julie—?”
“A couple of weeks.”
“Have you slept with her?”
“Yes,” he says quietly.
There is a pause.
“It was only once, Nat. It was only—it was just last night.” He hesitates, then says quickly, “I didn’t want you to find out like this. I just saw so little of you over the last few weeks. You had your exams. And I was training with Julie every day. It just happened.”
I squeeze myself against the wall, away from him.
“Screwing around doesn’t just happen,” I say bitterly. “You make it happen.”
Then my breath snags on something in my throat. Screwing around. They’re not even my words; they’re his. You don’t screw around when you’re in a relationship, Nat. You just DON’T . . .
I take another breath, suddenly shaky.
“I suppose you think we just happened—”
His silence hurts more than any words. I hear my breathing filling it, ragged with the first blinding tears.
“We can still be good friends,” he says finally. His voice is soft, calm, appeasing as he trots out this last cliché. “Nat?”
But I am too choked to answer. We both listen—equally astonished, I think—to the strange, noisy, abandoned sobs coming out of me. After a moment, he sighs and stands up, having to press against me even to do this. He glances down at me, then pushes open the kitchen door and walks back into the café.
I don’t move. For a long, long time I don’t move. The sweet-sour stench of refuse drifts over to me from the bin, and there is plenty of room for me, here on the step, now that I am alone. Far off in the background, I hear the sound of the sea.
It’s a lonely, lonely sound, the sea. When I think about it now, I think that’s the loneliest sound in the world.
Michael’s voice over the phone later that day is unimpressed.
“It’s nearly Christmas, Nat. This is the busiest time of the year.”
It’s not like I even liked the job, I think bitterly.
“I’ve just sacked Loretta,” he goes on. “Finally. We really need you here. Give me one good reason why you have to quit your job now.”
One good reason? That’s easy. He’s long and lean and dark-eyed, and he’s probably standing at Michael’s elbow in his black-and-white checked pants right now.
My breath catches. I try not to let my voice wobble.
“I’m sorry, Michael. This is a temporary job. I don’t have to give you a reason at all.”
I mean, what else can I do? I can’t work with Josh anymore. I can’t stand near to him, smell him, look into his eyes.
I put the phone down, go back to my desk, open my books. That’s all there is left to do.
chapter twenty-nine
Everything
The next couple of weeks are a blur.
At home, I study for my remaining exams. When I’m not studying, I eat chocolate, watch TV, sleep, eat more chocolate. I don’t know why I eat so much chocolate, except that it’s sweet, smooth, soothing. It slows my tears.
Mum comes into the living room sometimes to interrupt my TV stupor. She sits down next to me on the sofa, offers her standard fare: talk, sympathy, understanding. When she does this, I push her away. I don
’t want understanding right now, especially not hers; I haven’t forgotten that argument we had about Lise the other day. Despite everything else that’s happened to me since, I haven’t forgotten.
One morning, though, when my parents and Tim are out at work, I call Sofe. I have this sudden urge to hear her voice—her brash, cheerful voice. Maybe she can make me feel better.
I speak flatly as I tell her what’s happened, trying not to cry.
“What an asshole,” she says angrily before I can even finish. “You are so well rid of him—”
Immediately I feel the tears gathering again. Her anger doesn’t help; it makes me feel worse. I say goodbye hastily and hang up. Maybe only chocolate can make me feel better, after all.
In between chocolate sessions, I put on my uniform, go to school, and take my exams. Once—only once—I see Lise there. She doesn’t come to any of the exams, but one day, as I’m crossing the schoolyard, I catch sight of her standing outside the library. She’s dressed in regular clothes, looking scrawny and wispy, as if the hot north wind could blow her away, and she’s deep in conversation with Jessica Fuller, whose hand is on her shoulder. Somehow, inevitably, I am reminded of Mum. Talking, I think briefly, with scorn—what good does THAT do? That’s what SHE did with Lise.
But the thought passes. I don’t go over to Lise and Jessica; I don’t wave; I walk straight into the exam room and don’t turn back. I know that I should, but I don’t. The truth is, I can’t think about Lise right now: her life, her future. There is no lasting room for anyone else inside this blankness of mine: I am consumed with the process of keeping myself alive, afloat.
I wanted everything with Josh, you know? Not just to be friends. Everything.
At night I lie in my bed in the dark, touching the places where he touched me. My skin feels cold without the warmth of his against it. I long for the brush of his lips across mine, the fresh, musty smell of his armpits after a bike ride, the warm tickle of his breath against my face. It feels like I’ve crash-landed onto a planet where I don’t belong. There is no map here, and the only person who could give me direction in this place—show me north, south, east, west, all the nooks and crannies in between—will never come.
Leaving Jetty Road Page 14