Loner

by Georgina Young

  Owl City on repeat.

  The kids love it. They slip over on their skates as they clutch each other’s arms and squeal: not again!

  Lona talks to the uncoordinated kids clinging to the rail around the edge of the rink. They stagger past her, taking about fifteen minutes for each circuit, pushing their wheeled feet forward fearfully.

  ‘I like your hair,’ the timid girls say.

  Lona’s just redyed it and it’s currently radioactively blue. She thinks: just wait. To all the girls who aren’t brave enough yet. It’s coming. The not giving a fuck.

  With the lights pinging off the sad, grimy disco ball, Lona is right in her element. Fleece-lined collar popped on her denim jacket, hot pink Wayfarers from the lost-and-found box. She plays a slow song because she’s a sadist who enjoys flinging that awkwardness at the tweens and watching them struggle to slow dance in their skates.

  Around 8.50 p.m., Pat waves her arm from behind the canteen counter and taps her watch. Lona leans over the microphone they use for calling out fouls in roller hockey and breaks the inevitable bad news: last song folks.

  The kids are hyped up on raspberry lemonade by this point and they wail in dismay. Most Fridays Lona manages to squeeze in four or five last songs before Pat sends her husband Bill over to disconnect the AUX cord.

  Parents arrive and kids are pulled by their arms into cars, or if they’re anything like Lona was, they struggle to pull their parents away from a car-park gab-session.

  Lona chucks her skates on and rolls around the rink with a big, hairy mop, pushing all the plastic cups and chocolate-bar wrappers together. Pat leaves the flashing lights on and it’s almost like Lona’s some kind of show that people have paid to see. She does a couple of fast laps with the mop swizzling, then a victory circuit with it held over her head.

  ‘Lona,’ Pat calls, ‘lock up when you’re done, all right?’

  There’s a part of her that wishes someone was waiting for her, elbows on the edge of the rink. Saying things like come on I want to get home and that’s it I’m going, even though they’d never, never leave without her.

  She slices to a stop and bows. The lights are on and the place is empty. It’s just her.

  Hold on a second, she calls out to no one. I’m coming.

  She swaps her skates for Docs and switches off the lights on the way out. Her bike is chained up outside. She tucks her skates in the basket and kicks off. Home is a ten-minute cycle away.

  Sampson’s 21st

  Sampson has his 21st upstairs at a pub in North Melbourne. Lona brings Tab along as her plus one. Tab is wearing a kaftan. Lona is wearing a denim skirt and an oversized t-shirt with Sick Sad World daubed on it in green fabric paint. She’s got two of her jacket buttons done up so it’s impossible to read.

  ‘Which one is Sampson?’ Tab asks.

  Lona points across the room. ‘That one.’ He’s got a blazer on over blue jeans and his face is tomato red with the attention or the five already-consumed beers. Lona waits for him to look up and see her, but he’s deep in conversation with someone she doesn’t know.

  She has bought Sampson a cheap, pointless gift. Season two of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D on DVD. Because it’s better than the shit first season, she wrote in the card. He’s most likely already seen it and he could’ve pirated it for free anyhow if he wanted it. Lona wants it to be very clear that she doesn’t care and she didn’t think it through, even though she spent two months working out how to make it very clear that she doesn’t care and didn’t think it through.

  She leaves the present on a table stacked with bottle bags. If this was a girl party it would be fifty individually wrapped vanilla-scented candles. Lona is not going to have a 21st for this very reason.

  ‘I’m going to get a drink,’ Tab says, glancing at the bar.

  Lona nods. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Sampson spots her as she passes, very determinedly not looking in his direction. ‘Lona!’ he says. ‘Hi!’ She looks at him like she’s been startled out of some very important task—Oh, hi, Sampson—as if she’d forgotten this was even his party.

  Then his arms are around her before she can even process how they got there, and he’s squeezing like holding her really doesn’t intimidate him. She thinks: holy shit. Lifeless arms suddenly squeezing back. It’s over before it should be.

  She says, ‘This is Tab.’

  He says, ‘Nice to meet you.’

  He’s drunk, which matters. Lona is not, which also matters. The latter could be easily rectified, but Lona has borrowed her mum’s car and is the designated driver for the night. The simple, undeniable maths is:

  P-plates = no alcohol = a shit time

  Lona has long been known to drive to parties that promise to be massive piss-ups. It’s not that she doesn’t like a drink. Hell, she’d kill for one now. But she relies on being able to leave when she wants to, when the night’s kicked her every which way and she just wants to go home and stew in it.

  She’ll take the shit time every time, just so long as she’s got an exit strategy.

  ‘Happy birthday, Specs,’ she says.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that,’ Sampson says, brow furrowed, then there’s a hand on his shoulder turning him around and there’s another person who wants to see him and tell him that they’ve seen him because that is what birthdays are for.

  ‘Drink,’ Tab repeats eagerly, drumming two fingers on Lona’s arm, and the bar once again, as always, becomes the horizon.

  Black forest cake

  Martin introduces himself as Sampson’s best friend. Sampson has never mentioned Martin to Lona. She stops herself from telling him this. He explains that he is currently rehearsing for the lead role in a community theatre production of The Boy from Oz.

  He demonstrates a high kick and sings the first few lines of ‘I Go To Rio’.

  Lona smiles politely and feels dead inside.

  At ten o’clock, someone taps a microphone and the speeches begin. Sampson’s father conducts his entire speech with his arm hooked around his son’s neck. He can’t believe his boy is a man. He can’t believe his boyman has so many beautiful lady friends. Chen, a school friend, talks about World of Warcraft and chess club. He too cannot believe that Sampson has so many beautiful lady friends.

  Martin grabs the microphone and pulls a two-page script out of his pocket. Looks are shared by people all around the room. Lona enjoys the parts when the jokes fall flat.

  Sampson thanks everyone for coming. His mother brings out a cake with sparklers already half fizzed down their stems. The happy birthday song is sung, as is the one about being a jolly good fellow. Chunks of chocolate sponge and cream are handed around on napkins. Sampson cannot bear to face any of his many beautiful lady friends. He stands in the corner with his brother and drinks another five beers.

  Lona finds herself trapped amidst the nebulous net of people she used to have classes with at uni. She gets twitchy when she’s separated from Tab. She doesn’t know who to look at before she opens her mouth. She’s pathetic, but she already knows that, so there’s no point in telling her.

  Her mouth has conversations about typography design and screen-printing and nail polish. Sim says, ‘I haven’t seen you since Rach’s birthday.’

  Lona says, ‘I wasn’t invited to Rach’s birthday.’

  Rach says, ‘I love your boots, Lona.’

  Tab materialises beside her, just in time. She puts a hand on Lona’s shoulder and insists that this is the best goddamn black forest cake she has ever goddamn eaten in her goddamn life.

  Tab likes turning into Holden Caulfield at parties.

  Lona introduces everyone and everyone compliments each other’s dresses and Tab becomes the centre of everyone’s world. It’s what she does, what she’s always done, sucking the room in like a black hole, except not a black hole, more like a swirling, colourful maelstrom of light.

  Martin hovers close to Tab, glancing at the side of her face and nodding when she says
things, as if he’s testing out what it’d be like to be her boyfriend. Lona presses her lips together and glances over her shoulder to see where Sampson is.

  Lona wishes Martin was standing close to her. She wishes anyone was standing close to her. The sound of her former classmates laughing at Tab’s stories is skin peeling.

  Kings Way

  Martin, Sim and Rach jam in the back seat of the Honda, and Lona gives them a lift to the station. Tab flicks through the CDs in the console like she’s done a thousand times before, and, like she’s done a thousand times before, she settles for the radio.

  The car gets hot fast with all of them in it. Martin, Sim and Rach bundle out at Flagstaff, proffering salutes and promising: we’ll catch up soon. The word soon has been well and truly desecrated by false niceties. Lona understands that it now means something closer to: if we have to.

  Tab skims blues and rock and ’80s pop on the tuner. Lona drives Kings Way until it becomes Princes Highway and Princes Highway until it becomes Dandenong Road. She revises the night in her head.

  Tab says, ‘Well, I finally met the nerd from uni.’

  Lona considers telling Tab that she is in inexplicable, debilitating love with the nerd from uni. That she has been ever since Sampson first sat down next to her in Illustration for Narrative over a year ago.

  She swiftly decides against it.

  They drive most of the way not-talking. It’s ok because it’s them and they have a rule that they don’t talk when there’s nothing to say. Having nothing to say is all right, contrary to popular belief.

  Tab’s mellow, no longer the girl at the party with the unwieldy anecdotes and the laugh that hits the ceiling. She presses her thumb to the window over and over, leaving prints that’ll make Mum flip. Lona doesn’t know what she’s thinking. Tab would tell Lona if she was in inexplicable, debilitating love with someone. She’d tell her if she was upset, or if Lona had a bit of spinach in her teeth.

  But there are other things. There are always other things.

  Things we keep to ourselves.

  Sunday night

  Grandpa watches all the shows about people in the English countryside peering over each other’s fences and being murdered by their reverend’s illegitimate son. The television is now almost constantly switched to the ABC.

  In the evenings Lona tends to look up from whatever she’s reading long enough to see someone get stabbed with a golf trophy or clobbered over the head by the complete works of Shakespeare. Mean old men are constantly being discovered in empty wells after being strangled to death with a violin string, and every second weekend someone tries to open a florist that makes them numerous enemies in the village.

  On Sunday night, Father Brown is unceremoniously shunted for a documentary about wealthy people struggling to import five hundred kilos of Peruvian pinewood into Wales to convert an old signal tower into an eco-friendly storage-container home.

  Lona can tell that Grandpa is quietly devastated.

  He switches off the TV and then stares at the blank screen. Mum wheeled his walker over beside the bookshelf before when she was straightening the carpet. He cannot reach it. He is waiting to see how long it takes for someone to notice.

  ‘What are you reading?’ he asks Lona.

  She is reading a medieval fantasy novel about a courtesan who spends a good portion of the book engaging in sadomasochistic sex. She is not about to tell her grandfather this. She says, ‘It’s got kings and queens in it. And witches.’

  Grandpa nods. He looks sad and Lona can’t help feeling it’s because his eyesight’s shot and he can’t read anymore. Lona’s caught him a few times now, staring longingly at their bookshelves, which are stacked haphazardly with everything from Kafka to Dan Brown. Mum reckons he used to get through a hundred books a year. Every time Lona shushes her parents when she’s reading Mum says: just like your grandfather. It’s no wonder he’s been attempting to numb his brain on Midsomer reruns.

  ‘You want me to read you some?’ Lona offers.

  Grandpa frowns, as if she’s broken some unspoken agreement: never to acknowledge he needs help in any way. She shrugs like it’s no big deal and he shrugs back like ok what the hell.

  She reads to him from where she’s up to. Thankfully the passage contains less fellatio and more political intrigue. The characters all have French names that sound alike, and they are constantly smiling with just the edge of their mouth and muttering wry quips under their breath. Vulgar topics such as bastard sons and trysts are spoken of inside the chambers of the wealthy and there are murmurs of a threat to the monarchy. There are always murmurs of a threat to the monarchy.

  Lona glances up and notices Grandpa is back to staring at the blank TV. He clearly couldn’t care less if Lord Emmanuel Bernard is outed as an illegitimate heir to the throne before his coronation. She turns a couple of pages and bites her lip. ‘Look, the smut is unbelievable, but I don’t think you’d appreciate it much…’

  Grandpa looks over at this.

  ‘Although erotica is only derided because it’s driven by female consumers and authors,’ Lona says, parroting Tab. ‘Did you know that taste is just internalised misogyny?’

  Grandpa sniffs in this small way that is almost a laugh. He’s thinking: kids these days. Or maybe just: this kid this day. But he’s stopped thinking for a minute about not being able to watch Father Brown and not being able to read and not being able to use his leg and not being able to live in the house that he built with his own two hands.

  ‘We’ve got a couple of Poirot DVDs in the cabinet,’ she tells him. ‘I can put one on for you, if you’d like. I think we have Murder on the Links. I mean, I know it’s no Death on the Nile, but…’

  He nods. ‘Thank you.’

  She stands up and notices that his walker is by the bookshelf. She moves it back over to the couch where he’s sitting.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she says.

  Limbo

  Pujita from high school is leaving for America in three days. She invites everyone she has ever known to farewell drinks at a bar in town. Tab wants to go because: we may never see her again. This does not overwhelmingly matter to Lona or Lona’s general sense of wellbeing, but she agrees to show up at some point after work.

  They’ve got two birthday parties running simultaneously at Planet Skate on Saturday afternoon. One is a group of horrendous eight-year-olds. The other is a group of even more horrendous nine-year-olds. Lona holds sticky hands as she guides tentative skaters around the rink, and she drags orange cones around for the most loathsome of all activities: fun activities.

  ‘Kill me,’ she says to Jodie as they stand at either end of a limbo pole.

  Jodie shakes her head. ‘Nuh uh, otherwise who’s gonna kill me?’

  Pat has got a So Fresh: The Hits of Summer 2003 plus the Biggest Hits of 2002 CD on a loop in the stereo. Highlights include:

  a) The Ketchup Song

  b) Kelly Osbourne covering ‘Papa Don’t Preach’

  Lona’s only getting paid to be there until six, but she stays late, as usual. She helps Pat take the rubbish to the dumpsters out back. ‘You got anything on tonight?’ Pat asks as they heave bursting black garbage bags over their heads into the dumpster. Pat worries for Lona, the way most adults do. They don’t like it when children drink and party and have sex, but they are unnerved when children don’t drink and party and have sex.

  ‘Yes,’ Lona says. ‘Dull conversations with people I barely know that make me feel like banging my head against a brick wall. You mind if I do a couple of laps before I leave?’

  Pat blinks. ‘Just remember to set the alarm this time, all right?’

  Like

  Lona does a few laps bent over, arms pumping like a speed skater. She clasps her hands together and shakes them in the air like a winner. She gets out the stack of cones and chucks them down in the centre of the rink. Winds through them forwards, then backwards. She pirouettes on one foot like a figure skater. Like a dancer. Like like lik
e. The girl is spinning.

  She comes to a stop and she is breathing heavily, sweating. She chucks a sniff under her arm. Right pit smells worse than her left. Always has done. She’ll chuck some deodorant on before heading into the city. No big deal.

  She starts rolling again without even meaning to. The floor has a very slight tilt. It’s a constant source of debate and consternation among the roller hockey teams that play here. Because sometimes just a very small tilt can make a difference, or so the loser always claims.

  She does a slow turn. Glides on her skates. The phone starts ringing from behind the front desk. Lona ignores it. A minute later it starts up again.

  She can’t roll on the foam mats that cover the floor outside of the rink. She has to trudge in her skates, lifting her knees as if she’s wading through a Shakespearean river of blood. She gets to the phone just before it rings out for a third time.

  ‘We’re closed,’ she says.

  ‘Go home,’ Tab’s voice tells her. ‘Get dressed. I’ll see you soon.’

  Left field

  Through sheer will and determination, Lona still manages to be late. She blesses the assorted saints and demons that ensure the Cranbourne/Pakenham train line is almost always experiencing major delays or track works.

  At Melbourne Central she stops for sushi and eats it out the front of the State Library. She can see the bar across the street from where she’s sitting. She’s pretty sure that she can hear Tab’s hyena laugh.

  She finds them all out on the balcony. She is enveloped suddenly by a sick, sinking sensation that she is back at school. It’s not that she didn’t like school. Lona preferred school to almost anything that’s happened since. It’s just something about the way the girls curve their shoulders in to converse in whispered, coded insults. It’s the boringness of talking about other people instead of books and television.