by Kate Gordon
Girl Running, Boy Falling
© Kate Gordon, 2018
Published by Rhiza Edge,
An Imprint of Rhiza Press
PO BOX 1519
Capalaba QLD 4157
Australia
www.rhizaedge.com.au
Cover Design by Rhiza Press
Layout by Rhiza Press
Ebook ISBN:9781925563672
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Prologue
The sky is butter, gold, a dream.
We sit on Grandma T’s backstep eating warm ginger cake, fingers sticky and shining. The sun is lying down to rest on Grandma T’s chook shed and we have dirt on our bare feet. Dirt on our fingernails too, and Wally has mud like war paint on both his cheeks.
I haven’t told him. I like it.
‘I’m buggered, Champ,’ he says, stretching his brown arms above his head.
‘You’re weak,’ I tell him, and he elbows me in the side.
‘I’m too tired to think of a witty retort.’
‘Weak and lacking in imagination.’
He growls at me, then laughs, and I am full of infinitude. Because this is us. This is me and Wally and dirty fingernails and chooks clucking and Grandma T pottering about in the kitchen.
This is sky and summer and freedom. This is everything.
‘Fine then. Witty retort.’ His eyes search the sky. He looks back down, smirking; clears his throat. ‘How’s this?’ And then he goes and quotes TS Eliot—a poem about time and memories and exhaustion and transformation. ‘TS Eliot, Champ,’ he says. ‘How’d you like them apples?’
And this is why. This is why. Because of the brown eyes and the football hero status. But also—more—because he can quote TS Eliot, just like that.
‘Eh,’ I say, because I’m good at feigning casual, ‘I’ll pay it. You know he left his mentally-ill wife to be locked up in an asylum and never visited her.’
‘Harsh,’ Wally whispers, exhaling. We sit in silence for a perfect moment.
Wally leans over and picks a leaf from the kaffir lime tree we just helped Grandma T pot. He holds it to his nose and inhales. ‘Wow,’ he says. ‘Here. Smell it.’ He passes it to me. ‘We should make a curry together out of this.’
‘I’m not too good at curries,’ I admit. ‘I’m better at baking. Maybe I could make a kaffir lime syrup cake, or a kaffir lime and coconut pudding?’
I take the leaf and hold it to my nose. It smells like this day; it smells like the endless sky.
‘Ahhh, Champ,’ Wally says, like he knows my thoughts. ‘Do you ever look at the sky and think that’s where we belong? Like maybe the world is the wrong way around and we’re meant to be up there, floating?’
If Peter were here, or Melody, they’d laugh at Wally for saying such a crooked thing. If Peter or Melody were here, Wally wouldn’t have said it at all. He only ever talks like this with me. And I always answer him seriously.
With the others—with everyone else—Wally is the tough Nick Wallace: the joker, the footy player, the coolest kid in school.
With me he’s soft as that leaf and he talks in poems. So I must be a bit special, right?
‘I like being on the ground,’ I admit to him. ‘I like having my feet somewhere stable. Up in the sky, you’ve got nothing holding you. You’d never be home.’
Wally doesn’t reply to that. He looks away, squinting into the sun. I worry that I’ve said something stupid. Again.
‘It’s because I’m boring, I know,’ I say. ‘Because you’re the sort of person who flies and I’m just me, stuck down here with her feet on the ground.’
‘No,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘It’s better, being like you. You’re solid. You’d never float away.’
‘Tiger!’ Grandma T calls out. Wally suppresses a smirk, the way he always does when Grandma T or Auntie Kath call me that name.
Even though it’s my proper name. Even though it’s the name I’ve been called the longest, years before teachers called me ‘Therese’, Wally called me ‘Champ’, or anyone ever called me ‘Resey’. I have lots of names because I am lots of things.
So many different pieces. As many pieces as there are leaves in this garden.
I’m the girl who goes to school; the girl who works at Woolies. I’m the girl with the lead role in the college musical. I’m the girl who plays lead clarinet in the senior concert band. I’m the girl who likes to read poetry. I’m the friend. I’m the canteen volunteer. I’m the footy fan; the baker; the niece.
I’m the girl who writes letters to someone who never returns them. I send away all my thoughts and memories—every piece of me.
And she never writes back.
Somewhere, far away, she takes the pieces and she makes them into a picture of who she thinks I am. I wonder if it looks anything like me.
I wonder how shit all my pieces must look to her. They must because she never writes back.
‘Coming, Grandma T!’ I call out.
Wally stands and offers me his hand, I take it and we walk to the kitchen, our fingers still laced together.
And I would soar into the sky with him. I would.
But he drops my hand when we walk inside, and starts talking to Grandma T about footy. If you didn’t know any better—if you were just watching from the outside, you’d think everything is normal.
Just a girl and her best friend and her grandma and sandwiches on a summer’s day.
You’d have to look really hard to notice that everything is broken.
Hi Dad,
See me running?
See how high I can jump to catch the ball?
See me reach for the stars.
See me jump over the moon.
Maybe, if I jump high enough, I’ll jump all the way to you.
Chapter One
‘Are you going to eat that?’
Peter is lolled on the desiccated grass. His ears are pink from the late winter sun. ‘You’re getting burned,’ I say.
‘It’s just the hair,’ he laments, patting his bushfire curls. ‘The curse of the ranga. You always look a little bit pink from the reflection or something. Whatever. I’m bloody hungry, though.’
He eyes the other half of my Vegemite sandwich. I squish it to bite-sized and push it into my mouth.
‘You’re a pig.’
‘You’ve already eaten two sausage rolls!’ I say it through a mouthful of sandwich. ‘Not getting any of this!’
‘You’re disgusting, Resey,’ Peter groans. ‘And mean.’ He turns his face back to the sun.
A thump beside me announces Melody’s arrival. ‘You’re burnt,’ she says to Peter.
‘What is it with you girls? I’m going to tan and then I’ll look just like one of those blokes off Home and Away and all the footy groupies will be begging for my sweet, sweet love.’
Melody tuts. ‘Someday soon, Peter, we are going to have a big talk about your obsession with the Grade Nine footy groupies. I’m sure there’s something Freudian going on there. Make a time to have a chat, okay?’ Peter shakes his head and closes his eyes again. Melody digs into her backpack and pulls out a foil-wrapped parcel. She passes it over. ‘From Mum.’
I take it gratefully. Mrs Kwong is the best cook in town.
‘She reckons you’re fading away to a shadow.’
I roll my eyes. �
�Unless Chinese shadows look much rounder than Aussie ones, she’s dreaming.’
Melody sighs. ‘Mum shows love through food. It’s pathological.’
‘And yet you’re still a supermodel.’ I’m not exaggerating. My best friend is greyhound-thin with legs that stretch for miles. Melody Kwong is the girl in the dreams of all the boys in town. Shame she’s not into boys. And all the other girls-who-are-into-girls are too scared to approach her because she’s heaven and they’re worried she’ll break their fragile hearts.
Melody doesn’t care anyway. She doesn’t want to fall in love. She thinks there’s something deeply psychologically wrong with those who do. She doesn’t believe in kindred spirits and she doesn’t believe in monogamy, and yet she’s been my soulmate ever since we first met.
Melody and I have been best mates since Grade One. She thumped down beside me on a tree stump where I’d been sitting, alone and terrified. ‘Melody Kwong,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘You look depressed. But don’t worry. I’m going to be a psychologist when I’m grown up. I can fix you.’
And she took me home that night to meet her mum, who was dressed like a rock star, and dancing in the kitchen to hip hop, while baking cupcakes. Melody introduced me as ‘my new bestie, Resey Geeves. She has problems. But don’t worry. I’m on the case.’
And her mum said, ‘Call me Lexi,’ and then, ‘You’re too skinny, Resey Geeves.’ And she gave me my first ever dumpling. I told her that my auntie liked to make oven chips and cornflakes, and that sometimes we had cups of tea and Cheezels instead of dinner. When Auntie Kath came to pick me up, Lexi took her by the hand, looked deep into her eyes and said, ‘You, my girl, need to learn how to cook.’
Ten years on, Auntie Kath is still trying.
I bite into the pork bun. It tastes like a thousand little sparkles of something other and wonderful. Nobody knows exactly what Lexi puts in her pork buns. She won’t tell anyone, not even her daughter.
Melody pulls a dead dandelion from the ground and rubs it on Peter’s nose. ‘Where’s Wally?’ she asks.
‘Footy,’ Peter says, lifting a shoulder and dropping it lazily back down. He swipes the dandelion and twirls it slowly between his fingers. ‘Where I should be. Team doesn’t know what it’s missing out on.’ He says this even though we all know Peter sucks at footy. But he keeps trying for the team every year. He’s determined to make it someday.
‘You should give up on the football thing, Peetles,’ Melody drawls. ‘Find a new hobby. Hey! Maybe you should take up ballet instead. You’d look so cute in a little tutu.’ She reaches out and tickles Peter on the ribs.
Instead of punching her on the bicep, which is what I expect, Peter looks at Melody, sternly. ‘Nothing wrong with blokes wearing dresses.’
‘I’m the last person to say there was,’ Mel replies, crossing her arms.
‘Good. Glad to hear it.’ A thoughtful expression takes over Peter’s face. ‘Hey … lots of chicks do ballet, don’t they? Hardly any blokes. Maybe I should get myself some tights ...’
Now, that’s more like the Peter we know and love (despite his façade of misogyny, which, obviously, we never let him get away with).
‘Seriously, though, Peter.’ Melody’s wearing her therapist face now, her fingers steepled and her brows knitted. ‘We will talk.’
‘Right.’ Peter sighs. ‘I look forward to that.’
‘What would you do without me?’ Melody asks, shaking her head and stretching her long limbs under the sun that seems to shine just for her. ‘You’d both be emotional messes. Peter with his pretence of being a sexist pervert—which we all know is all a deeply-and-embarrassingly misguided attempt at self-preservation. You, with ...’ She grins at me, wickedly. I feel my cheeks burn. I shoot her a don’t-mention-his-name look. Peter doesn’t know how I feel about Wally. Because he is a clueless male. Which is usually annoying but, in this case, is completely useful. I don’t want him to know. He’d be all awkward about it, and the whole thing is awkward enough as it is.
‘So,’ Melody says, sweetly. ‘How are our beloved Hawks, Peter?’
Relief is in front of me, dancing in the air like a pink winged piglet.
‘Hawks are on track,’ Peter says. ‘The North Hobart match last weekend was a blip. It was an “away” game and it was bad weather.’
‘I remember,’ Melody grumbles. ‘Even my undies were soaked.’ She turns to me. ‘Tell me why I go with you again? I don’t even like football.’
‘Would you prefer it if we went to the women’s league matches, instead?’ I ask, glaring at her.
Melody rolls her eyes. ‘Well, that would be better. Something to look at, at least.’
‘Perving on all the girls in their footy uniforms?’ Peter says, grinning. ‘Hot.’
Melody crosses her impossible legs and clasps her slender hands around her knees. She leans forward. ‘You know, Peter, your preoccupation with my attractions is clearly an indication of your pathological obsession with me. And, since I will never be yours, it speaks loudly of deep-seeded attachment issues. Tell me, did your parents practise controlled crying when you were a baby?’
‘Huh?’ Peter looks at me in confusion. I shrug. I have no idea what she’s talking about, either.
‘Were you breastfed?’ Melody goes on.
‘Yuck!’ Peter shakes his head and plugs in his headphones, studiously ignoring us. ‘Bloody girls,’ he mutters before he loses himself in the Triple J lunch show.
Melody turns back to me, smiling smugly. She knows she’s won and Melody loves winning. Especially against Peter. ‘What were we talking about? Oh, right. Footy girls. Nope. Any girl who actually likes that Neanderthal sport—sorry, Resey, but you know it’s not my style. Dancing, though … I’ve been watching dance documentaries on YouTube and … oh, Resey, take me to a jazz ballet concert any day of the week and I’d be in heaven. Does that make me sound pervy? Like Peter?’ She sticks her hands out, flat-palmed, and wiggles them. ‘It’s just that I’ve discovered I have a thing for jazz hands.’
I try a laugh, but I know it sounds false.
Melody drops her hands and sighs. ‘Resey, what is your problem? It’s Wallace, isn’t it? It’s never anything but bloody Wallace.’
Of course it is. It will always be Wally.
‘I saw him come up to you after the game,’ Melody says.
I blush at the memory. Wally always heads straight for me after the game. I’m always the person he wants to talk to first.
‘He likes your baking,’ Melody hisses. ‘I hate to say it, Resey, but it’s your scones he’s after. And that’s not a metaphor.’
She lies back down in the sun. More loudly, she declares, ‘Besides, the scout’s going to come to a match any day now, and they’ll draft Wally, and then he’ll be off to the mainland and gone forever.’
Peter’s taken his headphones out. ‘You’d better believe it,’ he says and stares up at the clouds. ‘Some people are just born lucky, aren’t they, Resey?’
Chapter Two
Melody and Peter are bickering, as usual. It’s the normal stuff: Peter has to stop pretending to be a complete arsehole because some people actually believe him and, after the Me Too movement, there’s no excuse for even pretending to be a creepy letch. Melody has to stop trying to convert everybody because sometimes people don’t want to live inside a feminism echo-chamber. All is usual in the lunch spot. I’m trying to tune them out. I have the new Rainbow Rowell book—a present from Auntie Kath—and I’m trying to find a spare moment to squeeze in a couple of paragraphs before the bell rings for third period.
Except, as always, Melody won’t let me be. She wants me to talk.
‘I’m sure Resey would be an activist too,’ she says. ‘If she had the time.’ She looks at me meaningfully.
‘I know,’ I mutter, before she can say it, ‘I do too much.’
‘It isn’t healthy,’ Melody says, grabbing a chunk of her long dark hair and plaiting it loosely. ‘You’re young, Resey. You’re meant to be a menace to society. You’re meant to be having fun and causing chaos, before you have to put on that suit and make, like, Powerpoint presentations. Stop trying to be old, Resey. Stop scheduling every second. It’s harmful to your development. Be terrifying! Teenagers are meant to be terrifying!’ Melody secures her hair with a scrunchie from her wrist and regards me, one eyebrow raised. ‘How else are we going to fix the world?’
‘Monologue over?’ I ask, looking pointedly back down at my book.
‘Not even,’ Melody replies. ‘I could go on forever about the psychological implications of your passivity and your micro-managed life. Where should I start?’
I sigh. I really don’t want to get into another conversation about how I use extra-curricular activities as an ‘avoidance strategy’. This is another of Melody’s theories. She thinks I make my life busy so I don’t have to think about ‘the bad stuff’. By which she means my mum and dad.
‘I mean, when did you last come with us to the plaza after school?’
‘I’m—’
‘Busy,’ Melody finishes for me, and I can’t argue, because that’s exactly what I was going to say. And I feel terrible. I’m a terrible friend.
I am too many things and too many pieces and the friend bit of me is broken.
‘I’ll come today?’ I say, sheepishly. ‘There’s concert band practice on after school but I don’t have to be there. They’re working on pieces from the musical, and I’m in the acting cast, so I don’t need to learn them. I was only going to practise to help out with the Grade Sevens and Eights.’
‘You’re freaking Mary Poppins,’ Melody groans.
‘Shut up. I said I’d come shopping.’
‘Most excellent,’ Melody says, grinning. ‘I’ll let Roz know. We’ll hit the shops, like bam.’
Just then, as if hearing her name summoned her, the auburn head of our other best mate, Roz, appears in the distance.
And at her side is Wally.