Girl Saves Boy (21 page)

That afternoon, I was in the sunroom at True’s house, talking to Geraldine, when the phone rang.

Geraldine went to the kitchen to answer it, while I stayed in the sunroom and stared out across the backyard.

It was a quiet, bright afternoon, and the teachers state-wide had gone on strike for better pay, which meant a day off school for us—True was studying in the other room, and I was chatting to Geraldine about anything and everything while she chain-smoked after a morning’s gardening.

Sacha hadn’t been at school on Wednesday or Thursday, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask Mr Carr whether he knew where he was. If he was in hospital, I don’t think I could have taken it. So I’d stumbled through two days of school alone. True and Al had avoided each other since Tuesday.

Geraldine came back to the sunroom.

‘You want to come down to the police station with me?’ she asked.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But why?’

She grinned. ‘Sacha got arrested for stealing garden gnomes.’

I raised my eyebrows.

True appeared in the doorway. ‘I’ll come, since you’re taking the car, but can you drop me at the library afterwards?’ She tugged her hair back into a high ponytail.

Geraldine grabbed her keys. There was a knock on the door. True answered it. It was Little Al.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ asked True.

‘I was in the neighbourhood, and I just wanted to have a chat’ said Al, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

‘We live in the same neighbourhood, Michael,’ said True.

Geraldine interrupted. ‘Sacha’s been arrested for stealing garden gnomes. We’re going to pick him up from the police station.’

‘You serious?’ asked Al, incredulous.

We piled into the car. Geraldine drove. I sat in the front passenger seat, and True and Al sat in the back. Geraldine stuck a cassette tape into the player—it was a pretty old car—and an INXS song blared out.

‘Mum!’ groaned True. ‘Turn it down a bit.’

Geraldine grinned at her in the rear-view mirror, and lowered the volume.

She shook her head. ‘Garden gnomes.’

Three INXS songs later (how had I remained unaware of the fact that Geraldine was a huge INXS fan?) we got to the police station, to see Sacha sitting on the park bench out the front with Mr Carr.

He waved as we pulled up.

Everyone got out. Geraldine, True and Al wandered over, and I leant against the bonnet of the car. Geraldine and Mr Carr exchanged hellos.

‘So what happened?’ grinned Al. ‘Were you there to witness his arrest, Mr Carr? Were there handcuffs? Did they say “You have the right to remain silent”?’

‘I warned you not to steal from people’s front yards during the day, Sacha,’ said Geraldine.

Sacha shook his head. ‘I was at Bunnings. I needed to replace Jewel’s gnome that I dropped. I didn’t mean to
steal
them.’

‘How many did you steal?’ asked Al. He was smiling broadly, his eyes lit with excitement.

‘I didn’t get away with any,’ said Sacha. ‘I tried to take four, and I dropped three. I got off with a warning.’

I stepped closer. ‘Why didn’t you just steal the gnome from someone else’s yard?’

‘Because, Jewel, I returned them all this morning, and that would have destroyed the point.’

‘You
returned
a bunch of garden gnomes just so you could
steal
some this afternoon?’ said Al. ‘You’re nuts.’

‘I know.’ Sacha smiled. His eyes flickered over the group but avoided me.

‘Ha,’ said True. ‘This was a complete non-event!’

‘I thought you were coming along because you needed to go to the library?’ said Geraldine.

True nodded. ‘I also wanted to see if Sacha had finally lost his mind.’

Geraldine shook her head. ‘So are you giving our little shoplifter a ride home, Jason?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Sorry to inconvenience you.’

‘No worries.’

‘I’m going with you guys,’ Al said to Sacha and Mr Carr. ‘I’ll see you later on, True?’

True nodded.

‘We’d better head off then,’ said Geraldine. ‘Don’t steal any more garden gnomes, Sacha!’

‘I won’t,’ he said, and smiled at Geraldine. Then he looked at me, and we stared at each other, until I turned and walked to the car.

This is what I dreamt that night:

I was swimming again in that endless sea, and the water was thick with blood. I was treading water—blood—in dim moonlight.

Waves started to crash over me so loud and fast I couldn’t hear anything and couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know which way was up—there was no light, only blood.

Someone grasped my hand and dragged me up. My head was above water and I was spitting and spitting out all that blood, but I didn’t spit out blood; I spat out water.

Then Sacha was sitting beside me and stroking my hand, saying over and over and over again, like a prayer, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, everything’s okay.’

This time, Sacha didn’t disappear. But my brother was still gone.

S
ACHA

‘Hey.’

‘Holy shit, what are you doing in here?’ I scrambled backwards in bed against the wall, clutching my blanket around me.

Jewel was sitting against my closed bedroom door with a cup of tea. She smiled. ‘Your dad let me in. He was on his way out for lunch with Mr Carr. He thought you’d want to sleep in.’

I looked at my alarm clock. ‘It’s lunchtime already?’ I sighed and stared at Jewel. ‘So what are you doing in here?’

‘I said your dad—’

‘That only answers
how
you’re in here,’ I said. ‘
Why
you are here is what I want to know.’

Jewel frowned, then got up off the floor and sat, cross-legged, at the foot of my bed. She sipped her tea and nodded at another cup on my bedside table.

I picked it up. ‘Thanks. I like your dress.’

Jewel patted the dress. It was red and fell to her knees, clinging perfectly to her. Her golden-brown hair hung loose to her shoulders, wavy and messy.

‘Thanks. I borrowed it,’ she said.

‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘True Grisham?’

‘How’d you know?’

‘Grade 6 graduation.’ I grinned.

Jewel laughed. She slurped the last of her tea and set the cup on my dresser.

‘Is it all right if I sit next to you?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ I said. I moved over so she could sit down. It was cosy, because I had a single bed. She tucked her legs under the covers beside me, and one of them ended up sort of on top of mine.

‘You slept in your clothes,’ she said.

‘Yeah. I do that a bit.’

She grinned at me, flashing all her teeth.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘It’s your birthday,’ she said. ‘You’re eighteen.’

I nodded and grimaced. ‘I know.’

She laughed. ‘Why aren’t we out having a champagne breakfast?’

‘Um, because it’s lunchtime?’ I drank the last of my tea and reached past Jewel to set the cup on the side table.

As I sat back, Jewel grabbed my arm and held me halfway. Then she moved her hands from my arm and grasped my face, and our noses touched.

‘I’m sure they offer champagne with lunch as well,’ she whispered.

‘Don’t treat me like a sick person, Jewel,’ I said. ‘If I were just like everybody else, you wouldn’t be here right now. You’d have given me the flick for being the prick that I am.’

Her hands didn’t move from my face, and she didn’t move either. Our noses still touched, and we both stared at one another.

‘You’re not like everybody else,’ she replied, ‘and I’m not treating you like a sick person.’

‘Jewel,’ I said. I moved my hand to her waist. ‘I think—’

‘I warned you about that, didn’t I?’ she said. ‘Thinking.’

We both laughed. Then when the laugh ended she tilted her head and kissed me softly on the mouth.

She leant away. ‘Here are your options. Option number one, we stay in bed all day. Option number two, we go out and do all this stuff I’ve got planned. Now, I’m not fussed which you choose. It’s your birthday, so you get to pick. However, me leaving is not one of these options, and it’s necessary that we spend the day together.’

‘If it’s my birthday, then shouldn’t I be able to send you away?’ I asked.

‘If forced to, I will handcuff myself to you.’

‘You have handcuffs?’

She grinned. ‘No, but we can get in to adult shops now, so I could easily acquire some.’

I laughed.

We kissed twice more. Jewel’s hands dropped from my face and I fell back.

‘I love you, Jewel,’ I said.

She looked down, away from me. ‘I love you too, Sacha.’

‘I can’t help but think that you’re behaving differently from how you would if circumstances were a little more normal.’

She looked up at me now. ‘What’s normal, anyway? Hey?’

‘You know what I’m talking about.’

‘I feel happy with you, Sacha,’ she said, ‘and I feel like I’ve been depriving myself of the right to be happy for as long as I remember. Because I was the kid who lived when her brother died. Instead of living the life he didn’t get to, I lived like I was already dead, like I was him. This has got nothing to do with you being sick, Sacha. I just love you.’

‘Don’t cry,’ I murmured. Then I laughed quietly. ‘Did True put make-up on you?’

‘Do I look like one of those test bunnies?’

I shook my head. ‘No, it’s just a different look for you.’

We lay there with our arms around each other for either a very long time or no time at all. I wasn’t sure which.

‘Sacha,’ Jewel murmured, ‘can you tell me about…about the cancer?’

I didn’t say anything for a while. I just listened to her breathe, and me breathe, and the refrigerator whirr noisily in the kitchen.

‘It’s scary,’ I said, finally. ‘I feel sick.’ I opened my mouth to speak again, but nothing else came out.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Please tell me.’

I frowned. Then I spoke, the words tumbling out all disjointed and so quiet I could barely hear them.

‘We caught it too late,’ I said. ‘I think I knew, though. I’ve felt like crap all year. People just thought it was me still grieving because of Mum, but it must’ve been the cancer as well. It’s too far gone. The doctors are willing to treat me, or at least make the way out nicer, less painful. I’m going into hospital the day after tomorrow.’

‘Oh,’ she murmured.

‘There’s something I’ve always wished I had said to my mum,’ I whispered. I grasped Jewel’s hand and our fingers intertwined.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘I’ve wished, ever since her funeral, that I could tell her how incredibly beautiful she was,’ I whispered. ‘I want to say to her, “I forgot how beautiful you were, because I saw you every day.” But now I don’t see her every day. Not any more.’

After a moment, Jewel asked, very quietly, ‘What happened to her?’

‘She was anorexic,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t starvation, though, it was her heart. It just…failed on her one day. The doctors thought she already had a heart condition, and the stress she put her body through with the eating disorder triggered the heart attack.’

Jewel squeezed my hand gently.

‘I found her. In the kitchen of our old house,’ I murmured.

‘Oh, Sacha,’ she said. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

We were quiet again, for a long time.

‘What do you want to do today?’ asked Jewel, finally.

‘I’d like to go out,’ I whispered. ‘And maybe, maybe we could stay in bed another day.’

‘That sounds like a plan,’ Jewel whispered back.

Sacha’s Favourite Scents
Freshly mown grass
His dad’s morning coffee
Dewy early morning air, on the way to school
Chlorine at the school swimming carnival
His mother’s perfume

After I’d got dressed, I locked the house and we got in the car—Jewel had borrowed her mum’s for the day.

‘Tell me where we’re going,’ I said.

‘Lots of places,’ she said. ‘A whole bunch of things. Lunch first, then whatever else you want to do.’

We drove through the suburbs, down the tree-lined avenues that were abuzz with activity—people mowing lawns, walking dogs and burning calories on their morning run. There were kids riding bikes and playing in front yards and one group of little girls having a teddy-bears’ picnic in the driveway of a house. All red brick and faux sandstone, neat lawns in the front and trees dropping their leaves all over the road.

The sun was high in the sky and warm against my face. The breeze cooled the car, rushing in the open windows.

As we passed through the suburbs, the house lots became smaller, and more people were in the streets, and fewer people had garages. When we reached the city, we drove down back streets, past terraced houses, all alike, crowded in together.

When we paused at a zebra crossing, for a mother with a baby in a pusher and a little boy clinging to her arm, Jewel turned to me. ‘Do you ever think about last words?’

‘I guess I might have,’ I said. ‘Not really though. Do you mean
my
last words or famous last words?’

Jewel looked through the windscreen again and turned right at an intersection. ‘Everyone’s. The last words of normal people, people who weren’t famous. Their last words are never recorded. I hate that. It’s like they’re less significant than someone who might have acted in a couple of movies.’

‘Why is it so important to record last words?’ I asked.

Jewel waited a few seconds. ‘What were your mother’s last words, Sacha?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I was at camp. I’m not sad that I didn’t hear her last words. What I care most about is that I didn’t stop her from dying.’

Jewel nodded. ‘I’ve always thought about the last things my grandparents said, my brother said. Like there was some message behind it. I always think about what I’d say.’ She was quiet again.

‘What would you say?’ I asked softly.

‘Of course I can’t plan it. I don’t know when I’m going to die,’ she said. ‘But I hate to think I’d say something awful, and that’d be how everyone would remember me.’

‘I don’t think everyone would judge you based on the last thing you ever said. It’s the other things you do. It’s who you are. Last words are insignificant compared to that. And if you’re not famous, and it’s not recorded, then what does it matter?’