It's Not You, It's Me

by Gabrielle Williams

  ‘But I don’t play anything,’ April had said when Trinity and Susie Sioux proposed starting a band. ‘And I can’t sing.’ ‘What about drums? You just bang at ’em,’ Susie Sioux suggested.

  ‘Well, what does leave me with?’ Heather said. ‘Triangle?’ Susie Sioux had laughed. Unimpressed, Heather had refused to even consider joining their band.

  Holly squatted down on the floor, unclipped her guitar case and took out her new Lotus. She plugged it in, then hoisted the strap over her head and arranged her shoulders, feeling the comfortable weight.

  ‘Nice,’ Susie Sioux said.

  Holly smiled down at her guitar. ‘Yeah, she’s a beauty.’

  She wondered how much longer she was going to be here, in this place. She was really going to miss these girls. Even thinking about not seeing them, especially Susie Sioux with her Zoe energy, pained her heart.

  Susie Sioux fiddled with her bass guitar, the size of it swamping her small frame. Her choppy black hair fell over her pale face, her fringe cut so long and so sharp it threatened to slice off her eyelashes. A cigarette dangled from her red lips.

  The three of them had been standing in their favourite record store on Beeswitch Street when the tinny Japanese opening riff of ‘Hong Kong Garden’ by Siouxsie and the Banshees spilled through the speakers. They stared at each other, wide-eyed, loving how cool it was. Two minutes and fifty-two seconds later, Susan Watanabe had found her inspiration. It was a pivotal hair-deciding, name-changing, lipstick-choosing moment. Back at her house, with Trinity and April in attendance, she cut a long blunt fringe into her black hair, layered on black eye make-up and smeared bright-red lipstick across her mouth. Welcome to the world, Susie Sioux.

  April was not immune to the influence of female rock gods either. Her hair could have come straight off the head of Cherie Currie on the front cover of the Runaways album.

  And Holly herself had black tips dyed in homage to Debbie Harry.

  The three of them had crowded into the bathroom at Trinity’s house, the pot plant precariously balanced on the edge of the bath. Her hair was loosely pulled into two pigtails, the tips sitting in two cups of black hair dye. Her shoulders ached from having to sit like that and not move until the dye took.

  April flipped the drumsticks over her knuckles like some kind of rock’n’roll cheerleader, then fumbled them onto the ground. She looked up at Susie Sioux and Holly and grinned. ‘Rock’n’roll!’ she yelled, then picked her drumsticks back up and started banging at the drums, throwing her entire body into it. Though there wasn’t much musical ability involved, Holly couldn’t fault her energy. April stopped and looked over at Susie Sioux, who started playing something on her bass, the twang of it a reminder of something Holly couldn’t quite put her finger on. Susie Sioux stopped and looked over at Holly, waiting for her musical reply.

  Something in her body picked up the cue, and Holly found herself playing the same notes back to Susie Sioux on her Lotus. Then stopping.

  Susie Sioux played some fresh notes.

  Holly copied, her guitar giving the notes a different flavour.

  Then Susie Sioux.

  Then Holly.

  April started hitting the drums, a simple rhythmic backdrop to both the guitars.

  Then Susie Sioux.

  Holly.

  SusieSiouxHolly.

  SusieSiouxHollyAprilmayjune.

  SusieSiouxHollyAprilmayjuneSusieSiouxHolly Aprilmayjune. The three of them slowly merging musically until they were playing something that was part song, part riffing, part singular vision.

  And then, without anyone counting them in, without Holly even realising it was happening, the three of them were playing a song in perfect synchronicity. And then another. And another. Song after song, a roll call of all-female bands: the Bangles, the Runaways, the Go-Go’s.

  The volume was cranked up as loud as it would go and Holly found herself enveloped by the music. New pathways were being created in her brain, memories being forged in this new world, the person called Holly Fitzgerald becoming more and more abstract with each passing chord. She ran her fingers over the steel strings, a pleasant pain pressing into her calloused fingertips, being here in this body, in this moment. Each lyric she sang vibrated deep down in her core, making the entire width and breadth of her skin fizz. Music echoed from the speakers back in through her pores, creating a feedback loop of sound and beauty and phosphorescence and forgetfulness.

  Susie Sioux’s mom came in to listen, holding a mandarin in her hand. Holly looked across the room at her, and her fingers stumbled on the fretboard. She lost her mojo as she experienced a flash of realisation. Susie Sioux’s mom was a medium. She channelled spirits, flipped tarot cards, held séances, communed with the dead. That was what she did for a living. That was where the ouija board had come from. It was a part of Mrs Watanabe’s kit. If anyone was going to pick Holly for a spiritual fraud, it was Susie Sioux’s mom.

  Holly felt trapped. Exposed. Her insides pulled taut like a steel string. She couldn’t be caught. Not now. She was so close to fixing things. Besides, she was here to play music. To practise songs, timings, check levels, prep for Susie Sioux’s party in a week’s time. She needed to erect a wall emotionally, so that Mrs Susie Sioux couldn’t see in.

  Holly adjusted her shoulders, cricked her neck, turned back towards the microphone and went back to playing, armour back on, soul issue tamped down. She got so into character she didn’t even notice when Mrs Watanabe left the room.

  6.32 pm

  April and Holly were putting on their shoes at the front door when they noticed Mrs Watanabe standing in the doorway. Running through her fingers was a black rosary. Her eyes were closed, and she swayed back and forth slightly. When she started speaking, it was in a vacant tone, like an automated message. ‘The Date of Resetting is in motion,’ she said.

  Holly’s cheeks instantly flushed hot, but in strange opposition there was the feeling of refrigerated water trickling down her spinal cord. Her heart was running away from her, but her legs were filled with sand.

  Mrs Watanabe knew.

  The Reset was in motion. Of all the babies born in Los Angeles on Friday, she’d found her little premmie baby-self in the humidicrib in St Anne’s. She’d seen Frances and Nathan. Her dad was alive! What were the chances? Her own golden blood was in a bag in the fridge of the hospital, waiting for baby-her to need it. It felt like everything was about to click into place. Once Trinity sent through Nathan’s address, Holly would go and visit her parents, sit down with them, talk to them, reset her entire future. The three of them a proper happy family. It was like a game of chess, set up, ready for the checkmate move.

  Except then Mrs Watanabe said, ‘When evil came to snatch her away, she was sent forty years into the future. But she’s still in danger.’

  Holly frowned. Shook her head slightly. That made no sense. Baby-her hadn’t been sent forty years into the future. If anything, she’d been sent forty years into the past. And then the coin dropped into the slot machine, all the ducks lining up in a row. Mrs Watanabe wasn’t talking about little baby-her in the hospital here; she was talking about Trinity. Forty years into the future.

  ‘You’ve been sent to break the evil,’ Mrs Watanabe intoned. ‘Only when that happens will the Reset—’

  Susie Sioux interrupted in irritation and embarrassment. ‘God, Mom, what are you doing? You can’t just turn up and start doing all your mumbo jumbo stuff out of the blue.’ She pushed April and Holly out the door. ‘April’s dad’s waiting out the front. Okay, bye, you guys. See ya.’

  The door shut behind them before they could even respond.

  ‘Whoa, that was weird,’ April said as they walked down the front path, Holly’s legs barely able to manage one foot in front of the other. ‘I’ve never seen her mom do that before. Have you? It was kind of cool. And strange. What’s the Date of Resetting? And who’s forty years in the future?’ April smacked Holly on the arm just before they got to her dad’s car. ‘
Oh my god,’ she said. ‘Remember the séance on Sunday, Help Trinity Holly? Do you think that’s got anything to do with this? Is that what she was talking about?’

  Holly shook her head, not able to get the words out.

  No, she wanted to say.

  But yes. That’s exactly what it was about.

  Day 8

  FRIDAY, 7 MARCH 1980

  6.54 am

  Holly had been awake for hours, mulling things over in her head. Why Trinity? She couldn’t see anything – no offence to her – particularly amazing about the girl. She was an ordinary teenager failing at school. But Mrs Watanabe couldn’t have been any clearer.

  When evil came… she was sent forty years into the future… You’ve been sent to break the evil.

  It was definitely Trinity who needed saving. Not baby-Holly.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Holly could hear Lewis chatting to Loolah. She padded over to the typewriter. She should write a letter. Tell Trinity what Mrs Watanabe had said. Don’t worry about getting me Nathan’s address, she would type. It’s not about me, it’s you. You were thrown forty years into the future because you’re in danger.

  But what made Trinity so special that the universe had intervened? Why her? Although Holly had to admit that there was a definite joy and light to being inside this body. She could feel it. She thought of the people who wanted to be friends with her. Of this life fully lived. Of the music that erupted from Trinity’s body.

  Even the Grim Reaper could sense it and was trying to douse the flame.

  Still. No offence. Why Trinity?

  And the other question was: Why Holly? Why send her back? Were they soul mates? Soul sisters? Family from a previous life? Why had she been chosen to break the evil?

  If she was going to tell Trinity what was going on, she needed to get it straight in her own head first. She’d write to her this afternoon, as soon as she got home from school.

  3.16 pm

  Friday detention.

  The day had passed in a kind of blur. Holly had felt as if she was barely there – more removed from things than she’d felt at any time since she’d woken up on the footpath last Friday. A week ago exactly. It was so strange to think of it. She’d been getting used to this life. Enjoying it.

  She sat with her chin in her palm, staring down at the words My Future written across the top of her page, copied off the teacher’s prompt on the blackboard. That was as much as she’d managed – two words scratched onto the page like a taunt. Because the fact was, her future had nothing to do with it: it was all about Trinity.

  She couldn’t say how long she sat like that – close to half an hour, perhaps – until suddenly her thoughts whipped into a furious anger and she started scribbling on the page.

  In the future, my best friend will have died. There will be bushfires and a virus and chaos. Grannie Aileen has gone. I couldn’t care less about Michael. I never did any of the things I set out to do. What’s even the point of writing about the future when it’s already done? Except it can be reset. And apparently it’s up to me to reset it. Sure. La-di-dah. No worries! As if! Why me? What am I supposed to do? Why has this been dumped in my lap? And why her? Why the two of us together? How are we connected? And apart from all that, how am I supposed to break the evil? What does that even mean? It’s—

  ‘All right, students.’ The teacher rose from the desk and gathered together the essays he’d been marking. ‘That’s time. Have a good weekend. Don’t be here next Friday. I don’t want to see any of your faces again.’

  Holly stood up, grabbed the piece of paper she’d been writing on and walked up to the front of the class. ‘Can I keep this?’ she asked the teacher.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘You’re more than welcome. I’m glad you found it useful.’

  She hadn’t found it useful. She just didn’t want anyone else ever reading it. She stuffed it into the rubbish bin at the bottom of the stairs, then walked through the front doors of John Marshall High School and out onto the street beyond.

  4.16 pm

  Holly was nearly at her house when she sensed a car crawling along behind her.

  She ignored it.

  The car sped up, then pulled into the kerb a little way in front of her. Holly continued walking along the footpath, still ignoring it, safe in the knowledge that there was plenty of traffic around. She couldn’t deny that the car seemed to be waiting especially for her, though. She clocked with a glance that it wasn’t Trinity’s dad – no blue GT stripe. She kept her eyes facing forward, but her peripheral vision continued scanning the car for clues: maybe was it one of the guys from school? Could be Mrs Glickman, even. It wasn’t Trinity’s mom, but it could be any number of other people. How would she know? There were so many things she still couldn’t say for sure in this life. But as she walked past the car, she registered that there was something familiar about it. She knew it from somewhere. It was long and boaty, like every single other American car in 1980, but still … She tried to place it, rummaging around in her memories, and then she realised. She’d seen it the other day, out the front of the hospital. It was Nathan King’s car. She glimpsed in through the passenger side window, and looking over at her from the driver’s side wasn’t a stranger. It was her father. The one man, out of all the thousands and thousands and thousands of people in the greater Los Angeles area, who she really wanted to talk to.

  Her relief was immense.

  ‘It’s you,’ she said to him, placing a hand on the windowframe.

  ‘I thought that was you,’ he said, pushing his cap back off his face. ‘You had a lot to say the other afternoon. At the hospital,’ he added.

  She shook her head, trying to flick off the memory of how badly she’d handled it. ‘I just wanted to talk,’ she said.

  ‘Sure. We can talk. But we’re blocking traffic,’ he said, then leant over and pushed open the passenger-side door for her. ‘Get in.’

  She hesitated for the merest moment. Obviously Holly wouldn’t normally get in a car with a strange man, but this wasn’t a stranger. This was her father. This was her chance to talk to him, to potentially change her entire life with this one conversation. Sure, she needed to break the evil for Trinity, but maybe she could do a little something for herself as well.

  It went without saying that she got in.

  ‘I don’t have a lot of time,’ he said. ‘I’m picking someone up.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We can talk on the way.’

  In Trinity’s bedroom, the keys on the orange typewriter started to burble like a pot simmering on the stove.

  The beaten-up old Chevrolet had no seatbelts, which felt dangerous. What was it with the eighties? No bike helmets. No seatbelts. No safety. It was a manual, four on the floor, and Nathan drove faster than she’d have liked, cranking through the gears, the car lurching almost like an animal at every gear change. He was a man who enjoyed driving, being behind the wheel, she could tell.

  Her dad.

  He wasn’t saying much. He had his window wound down, one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting on the gearshift between them. It took all her restraint not to bare-faced stare at him. After all these years of looking at a photograph, here he was, in person. His cap gave him that overall boyish look she knew so well, but up close he looked older than his, what, twenty-four years? Twenty-three? She tried to remember how old Frances had said he was when they’d first met.

  ‘How old are you?’ she asked, almost without meaning to. It seemed, as it came out of her mouth, such a personal question.

  He slowed as he approached an intersection, crunched down from third to second gear.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll guess,’ she said, wanting to engage him in conversation. Wanting to be engaging. ‘You’re … twenty-four?’

  He went back up to third. Shook his head imperceptibly.

  ‘Higher or lower?’

  ‘You’re guessing. Not me.’ Up to fourth.

  ‘Lower.’

  He sho
ok his head.

  ‘Higher then.’

  Brainiac. He nodded.

  ‘Okay. Twenty-five?’

  He shook his head.

  Asking the questions had the advantage of meaning she could turn and look at him more openly. His hair was shorter, had been cut since the photo had been taken. He was cleanly shaven now, instead of backpacker messy.

  ‘Twenty-six?’

  She could see what Frances would have seen in him. He was slightly brooding. The type of man whose thoughts you couldn’t guess. The dimple in his cheek hadn’t revealed itself yet, but that was because he wasn’t smiling like he was in the photo. She wanted to make him smile. The dimple would feel like a reward.

  ‘Twenty-seven?’

  He nodded. A slight smile. Not enough to dimple.

  ‘What about you?’ he asked.

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘How old you?’

  ‘Guess,’ she said, wanting to keep the game going, but as the word came out of her mouth, she was swamped by the realisation of how strange it all was. He knew nothing about her. So why had he stopped to pick her up? Why had she got in the car with him?

  ‘Sixteen?’ he said.

  She didn’t answer, staring at him, trying to figure him out.

  When he’d first stopped, why hadn’t he simply got out of the car and talked to her there? He’d told her to get in because they were blocking traffic, but he could have just parked properly so he wasn’t blocking the traffic. What was a twenty-seven-year-old man doing picking up a sixteen-year-old girl?

  She shouldn’t be here.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked, grappling around for some sense of what was going on, starting to feel ‘yoi’.