Girl Saves Boy (10 page)

‘Please, please, please don’t give me that crap,’ I muttered. ‘Did you get a handbook of things to say to kids when their sibling dies or something? It was a while back,
Mum
. A decade changes things a bit.’

‘I don’t have the patience for you.’

‘Obviously. That’s why you sent me away. Bet you wished you’d never had kids in the first place; bet you wished he’d never been born, I’d never been born. Bet…bet you forgot about me altogether once you sent me to Grandma and Grandpa. You resent that I’m here. You’ve got your own life and it’s bigger and more interesting than me. I’m not dead, Mum, even if you wish I was.’ The words tumbled from my mouth before I even thought them. I spat them out, my shoulders tense, blinking back angry tears.

They were the same words my father said to me ten years before.

She opened her mouth to reply when the front doorbell rang. She was shaking, her unlit cigarette fluttering in her unsteady hand. ‘You get that. I’m going outside for a cigarette. Don’t forget to sort out that burnt stuff.’

She picked up her lighter again, swept past me and out the back door, sliding it shut behind her. In the backyard, she was lit dimly by the moon and I could see her, walking away from me until she disappeared around the corner of the house.

I stood there a moment longer, then turned and walked up the hall to answer the front door.

There was a short boy and a tall girl on my doorstep. The boy was holding a plastic lobster and the girl was grinning at me.

Then the plastic lobster moved and I realised it was most definitely alive.

Sacha and True.

‘Jewel,’ said True.

‘True,’ I replied.

‘We need you to give us a lift,’ she said, glancing meaningfully at the lobster, and then at my mother’s car sitting in the drive. ‘It’s of
utmost
importance.’

‘Life or death,’ added Sacha. ‘A race against time.’ He held the lobster up into the light for me to see. It looked psychotic.

I only paused for a second before I said, ‘In that case—’ and grabbed the keys dangling from the hook beside the door. ‘Let’s go.’

We drove towards the bay, Sacha and True taking turns to hold the lobster and tell me about how they stole it from the Chinese restaurant.

‘I wouldn’t say “stole”,’ said Sacha.

‘You don’t mean to say we’re
borrowing
him, do you?’ I asked, eyeing the lobster. It writhed. It was bizarre.

Sacha replied, ‘Emancipated. Liberated. Rescued. We’re noble and brave, not thieves, Jewel. Robin Hood is to the poor what we are to crustaceans.’

‘This is a one-off, Sacha,’ said True. ‘We’re going to let this little guy go, and that will be the end of our adventures stealing from Chinese restaurants and giving to the ocean.’

‘How do you know it’s a boy?’ I asked.

‘We don’t. And we’re not game to check,’ said Sacha.

‘How
do
you check?’ I laughed.

‘
Exactly
,’ he answered, though it wasn’t much of an answer at all.

We parked under a streetlight and made our way towards the pier. When the footpath became sandy I rolled up my jeans and slid off my shoes. Sacha skipped across the beach, looking back at us and smiling, awkwardly clutching the lobster.

It wasn’t dark on the beach—there were streetlights dotted along the road opposite, as well as a pub and restaurants and coffee shops all lit up and filled with people. The moon was large and bright, and its reflection in the water made the ocean look silver.

I was almost afraid of what I’d see if I looked into the water.

True yelled out to me, so I pushed the thought from my mind and ran to catch up with them. The only people on the beach, a few dog-walkers and night-joggers, were keeping to themselves, and the noise from the strip of shops across the road felt distant.

On the beach, staring out to sea, I could imagine I was anyone, on any coastline, at any point in history or into the future. Even though water had been a contributing force in ruining my family, right then the ocean made my life and everything in it seem full of possibilities.

True and Sacha were already most of the way down the pier, but I was careful as I followed them. Each time I took a step I glanced down between the planks to the water beneath. There was a biting wind, not strong enough to move the pier, but I was convinced it was swaying.

Sacha was kneeling at the end of the pier, and he was looking back over his shoulder and calling me.

I caught up with them and knelt down at the lower level of the pier with Sacha. I felt uncomfortable that close to the water. True was still grinning madly at the preposterousness of what we were doing. I smiled back at her.

‘We need to say something meaningful before we set him—her—free,’ said Sacha.

‘It’s not a funeral,’ said True, leaning on the railings of the pier, a few steps from us.

Sacha looked up at her. ‘It’s a momentous occasion, True. Not like a funeral, more like a…citizenship ceremony. We need to say something brief, concise, but meaningful…memorable—’

‘Mr Lobster, I hereby declare you citizen of the sea!’ True proclaimed. ‘Something like that, you mean?’

‘No, no, no!’ said Sacha. ‘This is an important time in our lobster’s life. He’s getting out on his own, finally living his life, getting his feet wet, if you will—’

‘Get it over with, already!’ laughed True. ‘You could go on all night.’

Sacha hesitated a moment, then he lowered the lobster into the water. The lobster wiggled a little, and then disappeared from view.

‘Happy travels, little lobster,’ whispered Sacha, his hands still hanging over the water.

We all leant back, and then I stood.

Sacha looked up at me. ‘Was that the right thing to do? Will he live?’

I offered my hand and helped him up, and we were both standing with hands held just a moment longer than necessary.

‘I’m not exactly an expert on the topic,’ I said. ‘Why are you asking me?’

‘You seem to be someone smart,’ he said.

‘And Jewel has plenty of moral fibre, too,’ added True, ‘saving lives and all.’ She gave Sacha a look. I stuffed my hands in my pockets. ‘Could you shut up about that? It wasn’t a big deal. About the lobster—do you think it was freshwater?’

‘Shit,’ murmured Sacha.

‘A brief life lived free is better than a long life in a tank that ends in boiling,’ True pronounced.

‘True, True,’ said Sacha. ‘And you need to change your name.’

‘I think it’s a beautiful name,’ I said quietly.

‘Thank you.’ True smiled.

I dropped True off at her house and, after she got out, she came around to my window. ‘Thanks for driving us around, Jewel. We’re not usually this weird or demanding.’ She glanced at Sacha in the passenger seat. ‘The lobster was a one-off.’

Sacha mumbled to me, ‘True doesn’t have much of a sense of adventure.’

‘I heard that,’ said True. ‘See you.’

Sacha and I didn’t say anything to one another all the way to his house, except when he told me what street to turn down, murmuring ‘Left here’ or ‘There’s a right turn coming up.’ It wasn’t an uneasy silence. The radio hummed a Top 40 song.

Soon enough I stopped the car outside his house, the engine still thrumming as it idled. Sacha paused, perhaps not knowing what to say.

‘Thanks for the lift.’ He smiled at me. ‘I know it was a bit crazy tonight. Sorry. Like True said, we’re not usually like that. Honest.’

‘I had fun,’ I said.

‘Good.’ He smiled again; his smile was lit up by the lights on the dash and by moonlight streaming through the windscreen. I wanted to take a photo of all his teeth, the way he bit his lip in thought.

The smile fell slowly from his face and he glanced over at his house. ‘I’d better go in. I’ll see you at school in the morning. And you’re coming on Saturday?’

‘Yeah.’ I nodded.

Sacha got out and walked up to his house and waved before he went inside. There were lights already on. I sat there a moment, the engine still running, the radio still down low, a crappy house song playing.

I changed the station and drove home, and I thought of the ocean and of my mother with her own life without me for so many years, and of lobsters and True and Sacha.

S
ACHA

It was Saturday afternoon and it was sunny and noisy and glorious.

I was taking it all in. I was taking in all the ordinary things, all the things I once considered ugly. I was taking it all in and I was breathing out and, Jesus Christ, it was beautiful, but how did I never notice before?

I was holding the hand of Little Al’s younger sister, Maddie. Little Al was holding her other hand. We stepped and lifted our hands and Maddie swung between us, squealing as her frothy pink dress (a hand-me-down from older sisters, faded by the sun to an almost-white colour) swirled up around her.

‘We must look like a weird couple,’ Little Al said, glancing over at me. He wore a buttoned shirt and waistcoat, classic Little Al trying to be a bit crazy, and people kept on coming up to him, thinking he was one of the street performers.

‘That’s because we are a weird couple,’ I replied.

It was the fete that had my spirits up; there was no room for depression amidst all the market stalls and the enthusiasm, and with a jazz band playing. The school, usually deserted on a Saturday, was alive with noise and fun.

Giant pastel teacups spun in lazy circles on the school oval. We stopped swinging Maddie and she tried to tug Little Al towards the ride.

‘Later, Mads,’ he said. ‘We should get something to…’

He didn’t say anything after that.

‘Eat?’ I volunteered.

He didn’t reply to that either.

At first I thought he was thinking, like he often did, about a science formula or the periodic table. The sort of stuff I never got—I’d dropped Science as soon as I could, even though Little Al had insisted he’d tutor me. But Little Al’s tutoring was more complicated and confusing than the actual Science work.

So as he stared into the middle distance, I assumed he was trying to work out the meaning of life, the universe and everything, or something equally baffling.

He wasn’t. He hadn’t moved. He was staring straight ahead. I looked in that direction too. I dimly registered Maddie tugging at my hand.

There was True Grisham—that girl, one of my best friends, totally dedicated to her future career— standing across the oval, near the rock-climbing wall, hand in hand with some guy (I have no idea who), smiling and laughing.

Little Al could have been comatose, but he was still standing upright. I was afraid he’d faint. He was a lot taller than me, and a lot heavier, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to carry him anywhere. Maddie wouldn’t have been much help either.

She tugged on my hand again. ‘Teacup?’

‘Soon,’ I replied.

Sometimes you see someone doing something that does not fit at all with your idea of that person. You realise that, a lot of the time, you don’t really know people, even one of your best friends.

Instead, you get to know a little bit about that person—the things they want to reveal, or inadvertently reveal—and then you make up a whole lot of rubbish that’s your idea of the person. So it’s not all that important who people really are. Honestly, you could end up spending your life with almost anyone, and it wouldn’t matter who—because the person they are to you is totally dependent on your view of them. Perhaps it was a good thing I decided against taking Philosophy as a subject this year?

My view of True Grisham was spinning on its head. My idea of who she was, and what she was, and what she did and why she did it, was completely screwed up.

The True Grisham in my head was smart, dedicated, hardworking. True Grisham was willing to sacrifice friendship and enjoyment to better her career. Yes, True Grisham had tunnel vision. Yes, sometimes what she wanted in life differed from what other people might want. Certainly, she needed to learn to have fun.

But True Grisham one hundred per cent did not have the time to be going out with boys. That was not part of True Grisham’s game plan. No, sir. She had made that clear.

I realised how little I knew True Grisham, the person on the inside. I feared now that she was just a caricature to me, all rough edges and a two-dimensional personality.

Or maybe the True Grisham I was watching across the oval, kissing the mystery boy, was just a clone of
our
True Grisham. The True Grisham who belonged to me, and, in a strange way, to Little Al, was in fact in the newspaper office right now writing an article, or improving her résumé, or doing some other serious, True Grisham-type activity that would advance her prospects.

We sat in the school sick bay.

It was empty, and the noise outside was dulled.

Maddie had found electrolyte icy-poles in the freezer, and was sucking on one. Little Al sat length-ways on the bed, with its tatty Wiggles bedspread and all, and I sat on the bed by his feet. He was clutching an ice pack to his head for absolutely no reason at all.

‘We’ve entered an alternate universe, Duck. There’s a tear in the space-time continuum. This isn’t our reality. Is my hair a different colour?’ He looked panicked.

‘No, Al, your hair is the same as always. And we’re still in our universe.’ Then I added, ‘I was at dinner with her the other night, though, and she didn’t say anything about this guy. Not a thing.’

The icy-pole in Maddie’s mouth was purple. She looked like she’d just eaten a bunch of blackberries.

‘I don’t know if my life will ever be the same, Duck.’ Al shook his head.

‘You’re being melodramatic, Al. Though I never thought that True would succumb to something as petty as hormones.’

‘Maybe he’s the son of a major newspaper proprietor?’

Neither of us said anything for a while. Maddie sucked noisily on her icy-pole.

‘Maybe she just likes him?’ I said quietly.

Little Al didn’t respond for a minute. Then he said, ‘I wouldn’t feel offended if she was kissing a girl, you know? But he’s a boy. So it isn’t as if she’s avoiding relationships; she’s just avoiding me.’

Before I had a chance to respond, the office lady came in to the sick bay and told us to get outside. Even if I had had the time to say something, I don’t know what I would have said to Al, or whether there was really anything to say. Sometimes the hardest person in the world to talk to is your best friend, because it matters so much.