by Kate Gordon
Roz takes my hand. ‘It’s not our turn yet, Resey,’ she says, gently.
‘I know,’ I say. ‘I’m going.’
‘Where?’ asks Melody. ‘We have to go to class?’
I shake my head. ‘No.’
‘But … Ms Newall said … and you need to make an appointment …’
I shake my head again. ‘No.’
And before either of them can stop me, I run down the aisle and out the back door of the hall.
Outside, the sky is an almost insulting shade of brilliant blue.
The breeze is soft. The sun is gentle and mild.
It’s all too nice.
The sky should be full of clouds and crows.
He didn’t love me. He didn’t decide to stay.
I hear the other students spilling out of the side doors of the hall. I have to get out of here before a teacher spots me.
I break out into a run towards the school gates. I run through them, out onto the road.
I don’t know where I’m going. I only know I can’t be here.
But I have to be here, don’t I? I have to stay. I have to attend my classes. I have to find normal, somehow. I have to go on …
I have to go back.
I slide down the brick wall surrounding the school grounds. I drop my head to my hands.
‘Tiger?’
I don’t look up. I know her voice. It’s the only voice I can imagine wanting to hear right now. Belonging to the only person I can handle seeing me like this. The only person who feels like safety.
Her arms are around me and they’re home. ‘What are you doing here?’ I murmur into her hair.
‘If I tell you I’ve been parked across from the school all day, like a creepy stalker, would that shock you?’
‘Not even a tiny bit,’ I tell her.
‘Come with me, my darling,’ she says. ‘I’ll take you home.’
I shake my head. ‘I have to go back. I have to go to class. I just needed … a break. But I’m going back.’
‘Tomorrow,’ she says. ‘Tomorrow, you go back. Today, you’re coming with me. You’re coming home.’
Chapter Nineteen
And so Auntie Kath and I sit on the back porch of our house.
I’m bundled up in one of Kath’s fluffy dressing gowns. When we got home she made me go straight to the shower (‘Everything feels better when you’re clean and warm and dressed in something fluffy’). When I came back downstairs, she was pouring boiling water into enormous mugs.
She indicated with her head that I should follow her to the porch.
There was already a tray of biscuits waiting.
‘Did you make these?’ I ask her, biting into a plump gingernut.
She shakes her head, blowing on her tea. ‘No, Tiges. Crusty’s at Wivenhoe made those. I’m … not in a baking mood today.’
I take another bite. I know it should taste delicious, but it feels as if I’m chewing chipboard. I put the rest of the biscuit down on the arm of my chair and drink some tea.
For a little while, we sit in silence. I watch a blackbird bobbing about on the lawn, searching for worms; a cat tightrope-walking on a fence across the road.
‘Was school … bearable?’ Auntie Kath asks me.
‘Before I did a runner, you mean?’
I turn to face her. She looks pale and tired. She isn’t in her painting clothes today. She hasn’t made any art today. She’s in wool leggings and a vintage Stevie Nicks t-shirt. Stevie’s huge, haunted eyes stare at me through a thick blonde fringe. A black beret sits atop her head. She looks like she knows.
But how can anyone really know what it feels to go through this?
How can anyone go through this and survive?
‘There are going to be counsellors at school,’ I tell her.
‘I know,’ she says. ‘Ms Newall called me. She said she’s made you an appointment with Megan Koetsveld tomorrow.’
Mrs Koetsveld is the school counsellor. She’s also married to Grace, one of Auntie Kath’s friends from uni.
She’s lovely, but …
I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I can’t. I can’t talk about it. If I talk about it …’
Auntie Kath nods, slowly. ‘I know. I understand,’ she says, quietly. ‘If you talk about it, you’ll fall—’
‘Completely apart,’ I finish, in a whisper. I look up at her, pleadingly. ‘Could you call Ms Newall back and say …’
Auntie Kath looks down at her tea. She puffs up her cheeks and blows out. ‘Tiger, I don’t know … All the kids are meant to have a session; at least one session. And you were closer to Wally than anyone. They’ll be expecting you to …’
Before I can protest, she goes on. ‘But I understand, Tiger. We all process this stuff in our own way. When your mum left … it was like grief. It took me a really long time to … well, I’m still not over it. But I was a real mess for a long time. And all my friends said that I should go and see someone, but I just couldn’t. For months, afterwards, I pushed them away; got furious at them whenever they suggested it. Finally, I went, though. I saw someone. I talked. And it did help. But I had to go when I was ready.’
‘I’m not ready. I just need to …’
Fade away. Be a shadow. Be nothing. Feel nothing. Lock my heart away.
Auntie Kath stares at me for what feels like forever.
She nods. ‘I’ll call Rachel,’ she says, using Ms Newall’s first name. Auntie Kath used to babysit Ms Newall when Kath was a teenager. ‘I’ll call Megan, too. I’ll make sure she makes time for you when you decide you need it.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. And I try and say it in a way that seems okay; a way that seems positive. A way that says, I will go and talk to Ms Koetsveld soon.
A way that stops Auntie Kath worrying.
A way that makes it look as if I’m not a tangled pit of snakes inside.
‘Melody’s mum said that the funeral time has been arranged,’ Auntie Kath says. ‘Sunday morning. Will you—’
‘Of course,’ I say, quickly, attempting a smile. ‘We’ll all go. It’s the right thing to do.’
‘I’ll be there,’ she says. And then, softer, ‘I’ll always be there by your side, Tiger. I’ll always make sure you’re okay.’ The last thing she says, I know, is for herself as much as it is for me. ‘It will all be okay.’
Chapter Twenty
I do up the buttons on my black cardigan.
I brush my hair and tie it back.
I straighten my black skirt.
I pick the balls of fluff from my stockings.
I fasten the clasps on my black shiny shoes. I buff them one more time with the square of sponge.
I make sure my fingernails have no dirt beneath them.
I check there’s no food in my teeth.
Auntie Kath made me eat breakfast.
I scan myself in the mirror.
I don’t care about the flat chest or the wide belly or the bumpy nose or thin lips.
I care only that I look how I feel inside. No colour, no life, no hope.
The letter he left me said he wanted no tears. It said he wanted people to smile when they thought of him.
I don’t care what he wanted.
He left us with no colour.
No hope.
No him.
I don’t love him anymore. I can’t love him anymore.
They said he wrote letters to his dead dad.
I begin letters and throw them away. I write poems and burn them.
What use is poetry? All it does is show us beauty, but nothing is beautiful.
Words are empty.
I check the buttons on my black cardigan.
I pin back the four loose strands of hair.
I straighten my black skirt.
&nb
sp; I pick imaginary fluff from my stockings.
I buff my black shiny shoes one more time with the square of sponge.
I make sure my fingernails have no dirt beneath them.
I check that there’s no food in my teeth.
Auntie Kath made me eat breakfast. Toast. Jam. Tea.
It is this day. This black day.
‘It will be okay,’ Auntie Kath whispers.
She takes my hand.
I want to drop it. It feels too tight.
It all feels too tight; too bright; too much.
I want to run.
Dear Mum,
Can you hear me screaming
Wherever you are?
Chapter Twenty-One
Hannah’s face is void. There are no tears. None of the howling I expected.
She is empty.
She is like me.
She holds another of his guernseys as if it’s a security blanket. I think of his favourite one in my bottom drawer. I don’t know if giving it to her will fill the hollow or empty it more.
Or fill it with something that’s worse than emptiness.
Melody is on one side of me and Roz is on the other. Peter walks in front of us with purpose. He is wearing the footy boots Wally gave him. He is determined to do what Wally asked in the note.
He’s smiling.
Peter’s made a mixed playlist of Wally’s favourite upbeat songs—everything from Ball Park Music, to John Butler Trio, to Mark Ronson. The priest said it was okay.
Peter’s happy for now, because he thinks he’s doing what Wally would’ve wanted, and this makes him feel like Wally’s death has some meaning.
We read Wally’s note.
We all did.
He said it wasn’t our fault.
He said it was to do with dreams.
He said the game the scout came to was the best game of his life.
He said that it didn’t mean a thing.
Next week, he might play the worst, or he might never play a good game again, or he might play a hundred great games—but, in the end, what did it matter?
Because the bad games will come eventually. They come to everyone and then what?
Then sixty years of slow descent.
Sixty years of wanting to be with his dad.
He wanted to get there sooner.
He wanted to fall.
Nothing has meaning, he said in the note, in his careful handwriting. Or, if it does, it only has meaning for a small moment. Then it’s gone. All you’re left with is a guernsey and a pair of footy boots and maybe a trophy or two. Nothing good stays. Everything fades. And that’s worse than ending quickly, while people still love you.
Then he’s written out the rest of the poem that was on his brown and gold guernsey. And I know it now. I remember. It’s called Nothing Gold Can Stay. I remember, now, how when our English teacher asked us what it meant, Wally raised his hand. ‘It’s all about how nothing—especially things that are perfect and beautiful and magical—can last forever. Most beautiful things only stay for a really short time. That’s what makes them so precious.’
Nothing Gold Can Stay.
I feel like I might vomit. Because he gave me a clue and I didn’t see it. I didn’t know the rest of the poem, and I didn’t take the time to look it up before … If I had, I could have stopped it.
And I thought that this would be the worst part of his note but it wasn’t. Because then he wrote something about me.
The best kind of person is to be like Champ. Because she is so many things; she’ll never fade. She is Champ; she is Tiger; she is Resey. She’s everything. She’s her smile. And she’s knowing that there is something good in the world and it’s inside her. I’d rather go now, while I’m still making somebody like Champ smile like that. While she has one magic, awesome, secret memory of me to hold on to. While she still thinks I’m special. Before I’m nothing at all.
Somehow, everyone in this church knows about the note, even the ones who didn’t read it. And I don’t know if Melody told or Peter, or Roz or Hannah or even Holland, who read it too. I don’t know if he told the boys at practice and they told everyone else.
But I know they know.
Because some of them look at me like I’m golden, and some of them look at me like I’m tarnished, and some of them look at me with pity in their eyes. To them, I’m the girl who was left before she even knew what it was to lose something; I’m the girl who was left again, now I know exactly what it is.
And the rest of them only know there’s a secret. They know something happened with Wally. To them, I’m gossip now. I want to kill the lot of them.
I don’t cry at the funeral.
I didn’t cry when I was left the first time. I didn’t cry then for her and I don’t cry now for him.
Inside, I’m bellowing.
I’m raging.
I’m not golden and I’m not tarnished.
I don’t want to be pitied.
They think what he wrote means he loved me.
He had a choice to stay or go, and if he loved me, he never would have gone.
If he loved me, he never would have written those words that make them look at me like that.
I hate him.
The funeral is packed with kids from our school; crying, hugging, wailing, letting it all out.
I will never be able to let this out. It will be inside me forever.
I hate them all.
I hate Ms Newall, who squeezed my arm and told me ‘my door is open’.
I hate Mrs Koetsveld, who didn’t say anything to me, but smiled kindly, sympathetically, and said something to Auntie Kath, which was—I know—about me coming to see her.
I will not come to see her.
I will not walk through Ms Newall’s door.
Hannah is empty now. Peter is full of purpose.
I am a shadow. When the sun comes out, I disappear.
And I hate him for it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Emma is at the wake at Wally’s house. Hannah’s house.
She’s with her best friends, Katherine and Nicole. She is crying—heaving sobs, shoulders shaking. Katherine is stroking her hair; Nicole is holding her hand. I feel sorry for her.
She still loves him.
Katherine and Nicole lead Emma out of the room and as they do, she catches my eye. She gives me a small nod and I return it.
She knows.
I look across the room to see Hannah talking to Mrs Koetsveld.
Mrs Koetsveld kisses Hannah’s cheek, then moves away to talk to some other teachers from school. She’s dressed in purple velvet with red resin bangles. She looks as though she thought this would be a different kind of party. She looks how Wally wanted us to look—colourful and happy.
Hannah is dressed in black. She glances towards me. I want to look away. I can’t stand to see the hollowness again, but I know I should smile and so I do.
She smiles back. There are tears in her eyes now and—for some reason—I think this is a good thing.
A light touch on my shoulder makes me stiffen.
I turn. Roz is biting her lip. Melody is by her side, holding her hand.
‘Are you okay, Resey?’ Roz asks.
‘I’m fine.’
They hover like trembling moths. They’re uncertain. I’m not acting the way I’m supposed to.
‘We need to talk about it,’ Melody blurts. ‘You need to talk to us. If you won’t talk to Mrs Koetsveld—’
‘I won’t,’ I tell Melody. ‘And I don’t need to. I’m fine.’
‘Well, I don’t think that’s true. You’re not fine. Peter’s not, either. But at least he’s dealing with it properly. He had his session … He said it helped a lot. Roz and I went, too. Peter has a follow-up next week b
ecause he’s still—’
‘He seemed fine,’ I say. My voice isn’t mine.
Or it’s the voice of who I am now.
‘He’s in the bathroom.’ Melody’s eyes look strange. They don’t look like her eyes. Melody Kwong’s eyes flash, sparkle, flirt and joke. These aren’t Melody Kwong’s eyes. Her voice is different, too. ‘Bawling his poor little guts out.’
‘I’ll go.’ I say. I don’t want to look at those eyes. I don’t want to hear that voice.
And I definitely don’t want to talk.
‘No, we didn’t mean you should … You have your own …’ Roz is glaring at Melody. ‘We can take it, Resey. I said we shouldn’t tell you. We can be with him. It’s—’
‘I’m going.’
I’m already walking towards Wally’s bathroom.
Hannah’s bathroom.
I stand outside and listen to Peter cry.
I put my hand on the door.
I breathe.
I go inside.
I don’t say a word.
My eyes stay dry.
I fold him into my arms. ‘I thought if I did what he wanted, it would feel better,’ he mumbles into my shoulder. ‘It doesn’t feel better. Fuck him, Resey.’
I don’t say a word.
My eyes stay dry.
After a while, Hannah’s body is at the door. She sees us, sitting there, curled into each other like a snail and its shell.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘For loving my boy.’
Dear Mum,
I don’t know if you know about Nick Wallace.
All you need to know is that he’s dead.
The funeral is over.
It’s all over.
That’s it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Except, I keep remembering him.
I’ll be doing ordinary things, like cooking dinner or reading my lines, and a memory will hit me like a speeding car.
We are at Jointley’s, drawing cartoon footballers on serviettes, making them kick Jaffas through plastic straw goals.
We are on the oval at school, staring at clouds, looking for shapes.
We are ... us.
One summer, between Grades Seven and Eight—a few weeks before school and football and everything that gave our lives their edges—we were all at the beach. We were carefree and wild, itching for our lives to begin again.