Golden Boy (16 page)

And then Max sighed and rubbed his hands over his face and I said, ‘Why are you sighing at me?’

And he said, ‘Sorry, no, I wasn’t sighing at you, Daniel. I’m just trying to revise.’

I said, ‘Fine, I’ll go.’

And I went upstairs. Then later I came down and yelled at Mum that I could do the exam and if Max finds everything so easy why don’t they just give him the scholarship without the exam. I asked Max if I was any stupider than him and he said no, but then he said he had to work and he’d talk to me later, but then he never did and Mum wouldn’t read me my bedtime story because I kept asking when Max was going to come in and talk to me. I told her I didn’t want to hear what she had to say to me, I wanted to hear what Max had to say, because we’re brothers and he never lies to me.

Mum got hurt and she said, ‘I never lie to you’, but she said it sort of confused, like she didn’t know.

Then she went to bed.

This morning I told Max I was disappointed with him for not coming in to see me at bedtime.

He said he was sorry. Then he said, ‘I like talking to you about this stuff, but sometimes I really have to revise and do school work. Why don’t you write it down during the day, if you think you’re going to flip out at someone, and then you’ll remember to talk about it to me in the evenings, and if there’s an evening I miss, we’ll make it up the day after.’

I frowned. ‘Go on.’

‘And we’ll, like, work out solutions together. And talk about it. I don’t mind,’ he said, smiling. Mum looked at him like he was amazing. I rolled my eyes. But I like talking to Max.

So I thought about this for a minute and then I said, ‘OK.’

Max gave me a big hug. He got the car in with us this morning, so that he could revise before he went. In the car Mum played Max’s CD of The Strokes, which we all like, so we were happy when we got to school.

Mum gave me a kiss and I waved to them as the car went away. Then I turned and gave the school a once-over. Miss Jameson, my nemesis, was standing in the window. I was going to glare evilly at her, but then I remembered I promised Max I’d write stuff down rather than flip out. So I put my bag down on the tarmac of the car park, got out my workbook, and wrote: ‘Miss Jameson nemesis looking at me from evil HQ (her office)’.

I saw a movement in the corner of my eye, and I noticed Miss Jameson walking down the path towards me, so I put everything in my school bag and put it on my back. Everyone at school has
Ben 10
backpacks but I have a
World of War
backpack.

‘What are you doing out here, Daniel?’ Miss Jameson says.

And I smile at her like an angel and say, ‘Just making notes for a story for school, Miss Jameson’, and she looks confused and I skip past her, grinning to myself, and go to my classroom.

‘
P
ens down,’ I hear from the front of the exam hall.

I’m shaking and sweating. I still have to finish my answer. I go to put my pen down and have a thought: I’m so obedient. I just put my pen down. I just lie there for Hunter.

I look up to the front of the room. The adjudicator is picking up people’s papers and not looking this way. I quickly scribble the rest of my answer. I put my pen in my pocket. Done.

I see Sylvie’s copper-caramel head up front. Her chin rests on her hand, and she’s looking out the window Hunter walked past earlier. I can see the outline of her lips and cheek. I look out the window.

‘Thank you,’ the adjudicator murmurs, when he walks past me. It’s our cue to stand up. We file out from the back first, out a different door.

‘Hey, it’s your cousin,’ says Todd.

Ahead of me, Hunter is leaning against the door of a classroom. He’s waiting for me, just past the exit of the hall, in a corridor lined with light green flooring. It gives everything a cold hue. He looks sharp, tall, together, still. People part to let us walk towards each other. He raises a hand to Todd, who nods, then leaves us alone. They all know Hunter as my cousin. As I get closer, I feel like I’m being pulled on a track, that it’s inevitable that I must walk up to him. How could it not be? Everyone is watching. Everyone knows we’re close. They expect us to say hi. I feel eyes on us. Everyone stares. A metre away and he looks me up and down slowly, swallows and adjusts his tie again.

‘Hi,’ he murmurs, his voice deep, his hand touching the back of my blazer firmly, and reaching across my shoulders. I feel it stroking sideways from the back of my right shoulder to my left. I feel him pulling me closer. ‘Y’alright?’ he drawls.

I nod, not knowing what to say.

‘Missed me?’

I don’t reply. I notice some people watching us, so I put on a smile and nod at Hunter. I try to say something, but I find I can’t. I chew on my lip, remembering to keep smiling, and feel my face getting hotter and hotter.

‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ he says.

I open my mouth. I look over to where people are watching us, as they walk by, dozens of strangers passing us in a stream on their way to classrooms. I try to speak. I try again. I shake my head. My whole body feels heated. I feel like I’m sweating in my armpits and my socks.

‘I can’t,’ I say quietly.

He frowns. ‘What’s wrong with you? Why you being so uptight?’

I shrug, still grinning. Smiling and smiling like my mouth is cut into that shape. I imagine the corners sliced away at the sides, the lips locked into a perpetual clown grin.

He leans in and whispers in my ear. ‘Is it because I saw your junk?’ He darts out from my ear and grins at me. As if it’s funny. As if it’s no big deal.

I imagine Hunter again above me, looking at all that. All that mess. My cheeks burn and I feel my face about to buckle. I pull my hair in front of my eyes with my hand and turn in towards Hunter so the people passing can only see my back.

‘Max, don’t worry,’ he says, his tone changing, lowering, his smile gone. ‘I was so pissed I can hardly remember it.’

I look up. He seems genuine. He doesn’t seem like he’s lying. He looks concerned that I’m not talking.

‘Really?’ I say, swallowing. My throat feels like it’s swollen.

He smiles slowly and his eyes go to my temple and across my forehead and down to my lips. ‘Sure. Fun though, wasn’t it?’

Is he crazy? I shake my head incredulously. ‘No!’ I whisper, my voice breaking.

Hunter grins and pokes me in the stomach. ‘Come on, you loved it. All that moaning.’

‘Shut up! No I didn’t,’ I hiss.

‘Yes you did!’ he scoffs, looking a little confused, half-smiling, half-frowning. He looks at my lips again and he swallows. He’s nervous too. He shrugs, as if to say, ‘Well, never mind, it was just a bit of fun’.

A thought crosses my mind and I mutter, quietly, in horror, ‘You’ve not told anyone, have you?’

He shrugs.

‘Please, Hunter, please don’t, OK?’

He starts to grin, like he’s teasing me, and shrugs again.

‘Please!’ I say too loudly, then look down, look around, fiddling with the bottom of my blazer. I meet his eyes and beg him. ‘Please, please don’t tell anyone. If you do, everyone will find out about me.’

‘Shh, Max.’ He shakes his head.

‘Please, please, please,’ I beg him, moving closer to him, about to cry.

He takes pity on me. ‘Shh, quiet, OK?’ He touches my arm lightly. ‘I’m not going to tell anyone. Don’t be crazy. This is me, Hunter. Your secret’s safe with me, Max.’

It’s when he says this last bit that the timbre of his voice goes dark and threatening. I stare at him, absolutely rooted to the spot with terror, but he just looks normal. He looks as if nothing’s really wrong, as if he can’t understand why I’m so frightened.

Hunter squints at me searchingly. ‘We’re alright, aren’t we?’ he asks. I feel his hand on the muscle of my upper arm. He squeezes it gently.

I bite my lip, studying him. I give him a big smile. ‘Yeah, we’re OK, Hunter.’

A
fter the exam, bored, done, dusted, easy, I stare out the window at the day I’m missing.

‘Up,’ murmurs the dude at the front of the room, like I’m a dog heeling. I raise my eyebrows, and slowly, slowly, circle my feet around to the side of my chair, and lift myself out of it. I look back at him angrily and wander down through the hall to the door at the back of the room, which almost everyone but me has already left through.

I walk softly through it, opening it, and stop, holding the door. I feel like I’m in a movie, so cinematic is the scene in front of me. In the further reaches of the corridor, I see a river of uniformed older kids passing through from the corridor to a classroom. Another smaller river passes the other way, out of the corridor. These are people from the exam hall.

I am the only person at the end of the corridor, but between myself and the river are Max and his cousin. I am the observer, and I have the weirdest feeling, like this is a scene in a play and it’s telling me something. Everything looks staged: Max and Hunter being right in the middle distance, having the other people in the far distance, me being equidistant to them as the far distance is from them. Max is standing straight and stiff and facing Hunter, and the low light is making his hair glow very yellow, very prettily. It’s all over his face, a messy veil. Hunter is laughing, and his sharp face is turned into Max’s. They look like they’re sharing a secret joke. It just seems theatrical for a moment.

And then someone pushes through the door behind me and bumps my shoulder, and the moment is gone, the symmetry of the scene broken.

Hunter looks over at me, noticing I’m looking, and Max notices Hunter noticing me. I watch him follow Hunter’s gaze over to me, and I hold my hand up in a casual wave.

‘Hi,’ says Max, faltering, eyes on me.

Hunter looks away from me and smirks at Max. ‘I’ll catch you later.’

He starts to walk away, but then leans back, trying to catch Max’s eye. ‘Max, yes? OK?’ He touches his arm. ‘Max?’

‘Yeah.’ Max smiles weakly and shrugs. ‘’Kay.’

‘Bye,’ says Hunter, in exactly the same sweet tone Max said ‘bye’ to me on the field.

As Hunter walks away I walk up to Max. I know I look really steady, but I’m hiding nervousness. I’m really good at hiding nervousness.

‘You don’t look alike, but you can tell you’re cousins,’ I say, when I reach him.

Max frowns. ‘We’re not,’ he says. ‘Our parents are just friends.’

‘Oh, I thought—’

‘We’re not,’ he says again. He watches Hunter leave. I wonder if I can just walk around Max and run off. But then Max turns back to me. He beams sweetly.

‘How are you?’

O
n the Friday before Daniel’s tenth birthday, I’m in a bad mood.

I’ve been getting these moods, on and off. Just occasionally dipping down into hate and depression, thinking of Hunter and being intersex and everything. I remember Hunter above me, using the ‘he-she’ word (horrible horrible horrible), and I feel like it matters more now. I feel like for years my family has been pretending I’m normal. And I’m really not.

Usually I can deal with it, put it to the back of my mind, smile at everybody. But with these moods I’ve been having, I don’t feel like playing football or being around people. Being around people just means I have to make a huge effort to look happy when I feel really unhappy. I’m exhausted, but I’m sleeping heavily. I don’t really feel like doing much of anything. So on Friday at lunch, I go to the library to do my homework, hoping to get it all out the way so I can just sleep when I get home.