All That I Remember About Dean Cola

by Tania Chandler

  I only had one key — for the back door. I took it, on its Supergirl ‘S’ keyring, from my bag and handed it to Frank.

  Smoky-metal fumes mingled with the coffee aroma as Frank zipped a spare key for me.

  I thanked him and said I had to go.

  Anna glanced at her watch. ‘Dean not be much longer.’

  I’d changed my mind. Dean would be angry with me for coming here. ‘I’ll come back another time.’ I picked up my bag and rushed out.

  I threw the stupid card into the bin on the street, and ran-walked towards Target, hoping Mum hadn’t already left, and she wouldn’t hit me for missing the school bus.

  At the end of Broken River Road, Mum turned the Fairlane into our driveway, and crunched towards the house, slowly to avoid stirring up too much yellow dust. Barky and Glinda ran to the fence, barking and bleating. I got out at the gate, and dragged it open, hipping the pets away. When the car had driven through, with dog and goat chasing it, I latched the gate behind me.

  Trudging towards the house, I saw something red on the front doorstep. A bouquet of flowers? I bolted across, school bag slamming against my back.

  Red roses! A dozen, wrapped in red tissue paper. I hugged them carefully, sniffed them, and read the card.

  To Sidney

  From your Valentine xo

  WEDNESDAY 15 FEBRUARY 1989

  Maybe the roses were what Dean was out delivering while I was at Cola Hardware yesterday? I know, I know, they’re not from him. But what if they are? I should ring to ask if he sent them, then he might be jealous knowing that somebody else is interested in me. I bet they’re from Brett, trying to win me back. Maybe they are from Dean. I’m going to pretend they are, even though I know they’re not, so I can be happy for a while.

  THURSDAY 16 FEBRUARY 1989

  I’m up to the middle of ‘The Bell Jar’. Esther can’t sleep either. I really liked the writing at the start, but I’m bored with this bit — just Esther moping around, being miserable & contemplating suicide, but never getting around to doing it.

  My diet is working. I’ve lost another kilo! I’ve been skipping lunch & doing lunchtime aerobics at school.

  FRIDAY 17 FEBRUARY 1989

  Mum & I had another fight. I was changing the vase water for my roses when she hit me again & called me a selfish, stupid bitch. & I’m not allowed out this weekend.

  I know she didn’t mean it, but she’s right: I AM selfish & stupid.

  Esther finally attempted suicide in ‘The Bell Jar’ — with sleeping tablets. Now she’s in an asylum.

  SATURDAY 18 FEBRUARY 1989

  Mum made me a black skirt with a side-split & a top with long sleeves (to cover the bruises she made on my arms?). & she changed her mind — I am allowed out tonight! I’m so happy.

  Maybe Dean will want me again. Petra & I will go to Jay Jays & I hope he’s there. I want to fuck him. Seriously. Imagine if Dean read this! He would think I’m such a stupid bitch because he doesn’t want me, but the way I write sounds like I think he does. Petra reckons it’s different for guys — they don’t care who they fuck. So if he wanted it, he could have it from me.

  Petra wants to do it with Christos. She’s so in luuurv. Christos, Christos, Christos. I’m so sick of hearing about him. I kind of get what she sees in him: good-looking, attentive, nice. & being from the city he’s more sophisticated than all the dickheads around here. He’s the perfect guy really, but there’s something weird about him — his energy, his eyes. It’s hard to explain — like he looks at you, but doesn’t really see you. Must just be me because everybody loves Christos.

  THE REGULARS were at Jay Jays. But no Dean Cola. No Christos either.

  Fricky said Coke had gone to a twenty-first in town.

  ‘I want to go to that party,’ I said, sipping my West Coast Cooler.

  ‘I’ll drive ya,’ said Fricky.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He sculled his beer and turned to Petra. ‘Comin’, Pet?’

  Petra shook her head. She was waiting, hoping Christos would turn up. I left my drink for her to finish.

  I should have known that going alone with Fricky was a bad idea, but I wanted to see Dean so desperately.

  The car park was always dark and deserted. I crossed my arms, hands in armpits, while I waited for Fricky to open his ute. It smelled like a farm and, when he climbed in, too much cheap aftershave. I wound down my window.

  ‘Whose twenty-first is it?’ I said as I buckled my seatbelt.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Dunno. Thought we’d just drive round till we find a house with heaps of cars parked out front.’ As we drove out of Jay Jays’ car park, Fricky shoved in a cassette — some headbanger-thrash music — and sang along, playing the drums on the steering wheel.

  We chucked a couple of laps around town, but didn’t find the party. Fricky pulled up beside the lake, behind Damian Wilson’s hotted-up, old maroon EH Holden, which was parked in a row of other cars. ‘Just gunna have a chat with Damo,’ Fricky said.

  I frowned.

  ‘Only be a tick. Leave the music on for ya.’

  I turned down the offensive ‘music’, and lit a cigarette. A warm breeze rippled the lights from the caravan park shining on the lake.

  Damo stepped out, and pointed at parts of his car while Fricky nodded. Then they leaned against the side, smoking and having their chat. I could see the back of a blonde female head in Damo’s passenger seat; she was swigging from a bottle. Fricky kept glancing back at me.

  A black car drove past, beeping its horn, and Fricky and Damo waved.

  They were still chatting when I finished my cigarette. I butted it out in the ashtray and lit another.

  A red car did a burnout at the southern end of the lake, and Fricky and Damo cheered along with the line of other guys leaning on parked cars.

  The same cars had chucked at least five laps of the lake, and I’d chain-smoked four cigarettes, when the blonde girl staggered out of the passenger side and around to Damo. She was one of those skinny, pretty girls who wore bodysuits under jeans with strategic rips below a knee and bum cheek. She pressed her body against Damo’s, long hair feathering down her back.

  A passing car slowed and the passenger yelled out, ‘Is that what a car like that gets ya?’

  They laughed. The girl stood on tiptoes, whispered in Damo’s ear, and he nodded. Time to go. Damo reached around the girl to hand something over, and Fricky put it in his shirt pocket.

  ‘Finally,’ I said as Fricky swung back into the car. ‘Can we please go back to Jay Jays now?’

  ‘Yeah, all right. Chill.’

  Damo’s car pulled out, and drove left towards the nature reserve where couples went to fuck. Fricky turned up the music and chucked one lap of the lake before heading back to Jay Jays.

  He took the shortcut across the ancient bridge, and along the winding road that comes out at the old drive-in. But we didn’t come out at the drive-in. Halfway across, Fricky veered onto a dirt track that led to the river. He stopped in the middle of nowhere, turned off the lights and the ignition, but left the music playing.

  ‘Turn it down.’

  He did, clicked on the interior light, and pulled from his shirt pocket the something he’d got from Damo. A joint. He held it up like a dog treat for a puppy. He lit it, and took a few long drags, making exaggerated ‘good shit’ faces. I pretended that it wasn’t the first time I’d smoked dope when he handed it to me. Petra said she’d been stoned heaps of times, and from bongs as well as joints. I held it between thumb and fingers, like Fricky had. The tip sparkled when I sucked in smoke. Bitter lawn clippings, rancid vase water — disgusting. It burned my throat. I coughed, took a few more drags, and handed it back to Fricky.

  When we’d finished the joint, Fricky got out and went for a piss.
r />   Darkness in the bush has a heaviness, a presence. I imagined it, sticky, wrapping around the ute like a spider’s web trapping a bug. I was glad then for the shit music, equalising the sounds of my heartbeat, and the increasingly loud mumblings in my head.

  Fricky was taking a long time. The wind blew something across the roof — maybe leaves or a small branch. I remembered that stupid story we used to tell each other in Year 7: about the guy leaving his girlfriend to wait in the car while he went to find a petrol station. The guy didn’t come back, and the girl heard strange scraping and dripping sounds, which turned out to be —

  ‘Boo!’ Fricky lurched back into the car.

  ‘Fuck! Don’t do that!’ I wasn’t sure why I laughed.

  He laughed louder and stretched out his arm behind me. The cheap aftershave smell grew stronger. He suggested I get into the back seat with him, which sounded like the funniest joke ever.

  ‘Petra does,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not Petra.’ I fought to control the grin growing across my face.

  ‘We don’t have to go all the way. You could just give me a head job.’

  I burst out laughing again.

  I couldn’t understand what he said next. Language suddenly didn’t make any sense, but I could read anger in his expression. My thoughts stopped connecting with my words, and I couldn’t speak. My heart beat faster, too fast. Parts of me started to separate. My head tried to get away from my body. Fricky’s face changed — it turned red like a demon’s and started to melt.

  I fumbled with the door handle, scrambled out of the car, and ran through the bush. Voices told me to go to the river to be safe from Fricky, who was a subject of the Devil.

  I heard the Devil’s subject chasing me, so I ran faster. Grass, prickles, bushes, trees, and other things it was too dark to see scratched and pummelled me.

  The Devil’s subject was too fast; he caught up and tackled me to the ground. I tasted dirt.

  Driving under the streetlights past the old drive-in, I saw the scratches on my hands and legs. There was a decent cut on my knee, just above the cut from Mahersy’s party, and I could feel a graze on my chin. Fricky had scratches on his face too. There was a leaf stuck in his spiky hair. He said I’d freaked out after smoking the joint, and he’d had to calm me down. I couldn’t remember that.

  ‘I have a phobia of blood,’ I said quietly. ‘I think I must have fainted when I saw my knee.’

  He frowned and didn’t speak until we got back to Jay Jays’ car park.

  ‘Swear you won’t tell Christos what happened,’ he said as he turned off the ute.

  ‘Why?’ Not that I really knew what had happened, or had any intention of telling.

  ‘What do you reckon?’

  I shrugged, still not sure what he was on about.

  ‘Swear!’

  ‘OK, I swear.’

  We stepped out of the ute, and walked around to the pink-neon-lit doorway of Jay Jays.

  Inside, Fricky hurried away in the opposite direction.

  THURSDAY 23 FEBRUARY 1989

  Mr Haigh says I’m very talented & should consider going to university after high school, to do a Bachelor of Arts with a major in creative writing. I don’t even know what that means exactly. Nobody in our family went to uni, unless you count Uncle Colin — he had a science degree. Mr Haigh gave me a gift — a book wrapped in green tissue paper: ‘The Great Gatsby’. He said he was going to lend me his copy, but it was dog-eared & covered in annotations; there was a sale at the bookshop so he bought a new one for me. It’s one of his favourites. He’s so kind. He told me to think about this question while I read: Why did F. Scott Fitzgerald call it ‘The Great Gatsby’?

  I’m sick of Petra. She’s in most of my classes this semester. She is so annoying & fake & she thinks she knows everything. She said really loudly in class that my Valentine’s roses were from Mr Haigh. So immature. I’ve been hanging around with Kim Carmichael who’s in Year 11. Kim’s not smart, but she’s pretty, popular & fun.

  Jimmy Barnes is playing at The Exchange (the new nightclub that’s just opened) this Saturday, but tickets are sold out. Bummer.

  I’m up to the penultimate chapter of ‘The Bell Jar’. Esther lost her virginity, & haemorrhaged. I’m sure that doesn’t happen very often, but it’s made me terrified of ever having sex.

  I’m also a bit terrified of Mum’s bonsai trees, after Frank Cola’s spiel about sphagnum moss (I think that’s what they’re potted in). It doesn’t look like Mum’s been watering them, so hopefully they’ll just die.

  The dreaded swimming carnival is on at school tomorrow — where all the girls pretend to have their periods.

  KIM POUTED at the smudged mirror in the sunglasses stand, the triangular tag on the glasses dangling against her nose. She turned her face to the left, to the right, and lifted her chin. The young pharmacy assistant watched us.

  ‘Such a shame to miss Justin Maher winning all the events, like he does every year,’ Kim said.

  I sniggered. We were wagging the school swimming carnival.

  ‘And you fainting.’ She laughed loudly.

  Last year, a kid had slipped over on the concrete, hit his chin, and bitten through his tongue. Blood everywhere. And yes — ha ha — I’d fainted.

  Kim selected another pair of sunglasses.

  ‘They suit you,’ I said.

  ‘Nah. Gunna get Ray-Bans soon as I quit school and start working.’ She replaced the glasses and spun the rack, too hard.

  I glanced at the pharmacy assistant; she was frowning.

  ‘Mum said she can get me a job at Target,’ I said. ‘Unless I go to uni.’

  ‘Uni! Bullshit,’ Kim scoffed. ‘If there’s nothing good on the noticeboard at the CES next week, I’m gunna put my name down at the cannery.’

  I followed her to the perfume shelves. ‘Let’s play a game,’ she said, holding up the tester of Drakkar Noir. ‘Who smells like this?’

  I shrugged.

  She squirted the fragrance onto her wrist and held it under my nose. Sharp, soapy, herbal. I still didn’t know. She sniffed it and closed her eyes. ‘Mmm. Mahersy.’

  ‘Justin?’

  ‘No! Gareth. Duh.’

  We tried more of the men’s fragrances. Fricky was unmistakably Brut. Christos was English Leather, or maybe Aramis. I couldn’t find one that was Dean Cola.

  ‘Fruit Tingles!’ I picked up a roll of lollies from the counter display.

  ‘You right?’ Kim said.

  ‘That’s what he smells like.’

  ‘Coke?’ She laughed. ‘You really like him, dontcha?’

  My neck felt hot.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Kim called to the pharmacy assistant. ‘You got any aftershave that smells like Fruit Tingles?’

  ‘What brand?’

  ‘Not sure. Can you go ask your manager?’

  The pharmacy assistant narrowed her eyes.

  Kim stared back harder and put her hands on her hips. ‘It’s for my dad. He wants me to get two bottles of it.’

  ‘All right.’ The pharmacy assistant headed towards the door at the back of the shop.

  Kim shoved the bottle of Drakkar Noir into her bag, and slid a few packets of Fruit Tingles into my pocket. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  I ran out after her.

  FRIDAY 24 FEBRUARY 1989

  I got my hair cut, long layers around my face. Next time I might get tips like Kim. I’m still doing lunchtime aerobics & reading the newspaper every day. How can Dean resist me now? If he still doesn’t want me, and I take Mr Haigh’s advice about writing, one day maybe I’ll get back at Dean by using him as a character in one of my novels. My Buddy Willard (a character based on one of Sylvia Plath’s real-life boyfriends).

  I finished ‘The Bell Jar’. Esther’s friend hanged herself. It ends w
ith Esther going into a room for the interview that will decide whether or not she gets out of the asylum. I’m sad to have finished that book, empty, like I have lost a friend. I try not to think it was personal, that Esther was really Sylvia Plath, or I would cry. I’m crying anyway. I feel like there’s a bell jar over me some days too.

  I started ‘The Great Gatsby’. It’s also semi-autobiographical. Do all writers use parts of their life in their work? Nick Carraway’s great uncle had a hardware business (a sign?). I like that Daisy’s face is ‘sad & lovely’. & how she murmurs softly to make people lean closer to her. I’m going to try that.

  Petra rang to see if I could go to the Blue Light Disco with her tonight. Seriously. As if!

  I LIT a cigarette and stared across the table into Kim’s half-finished vodka and raspberry. She’d gone outside with Mahersy what felt like an hour ago. Afraid of alcohol after recent reactions, I sipped a lemon, lime, and bitters. The bartender had told me there was alcohol in bitters, but only a tiny bit. If anybody asked, I’d say it was a Long Island iced tea. I looked around Jay Jays, couldn’t see anybody I knew. Maybe I should dance? The floor was packed; nobody would notice if I danced by myself.

  I extinguished my cigarette in the ashtray, left the unfinished drinks, and headed over.

  ‘Celeste?’ A guy about Mum’s age, in pastel colours with a sweater draped over his shoulders, blocked my way, grasping my hand. ‘From Sale of the Century. You’re the model, right?’

  I shook my head and told him that I wasn’t.

  ‘Oh, I’m so embarrassed.’ He scanned the room. Looking for Celeste? ‘I’m Joe.’

  ‘Sidney.’

  ‘Like the city?’

  ‘No, with an i.’

  ‘You’re not here by yourself, are you, Sidney?’

  I murmured softly, like Daisy, that I was waiting for my friend to come back.

  Joe leaned closer. ‘This joint’s full of little sixteen-year-olds. It’s nice to meet somebody over eighteen.’