Gracie Faltrain Takes Control (8 page)

‘Flemming?' I say when he picks up the phone.

‘Yeah?'

‘It's Faltrain. I forgot to give you Alyce's number at practice.' I read it out to him.

‘You left pretty quick,' he answers.

‘I had stuff to do.'

‘Me too. I told Dad I'm getting a tutor and he said I can play in the Firsts, if I hand in all my overdue assignments. I have to come home every night, though, and do work.'

‘That sucks.'

‘You're telling me. Knight and Annabelle were going to the movies after practice and I have to come home and write about some stupid guy who kills his wife because he's jealous.'

Hold the phone. Hold anything. ‘He went to the movies with who after training?'

‘Annabelle.' Flemming's voice turns as soft and flaky as fish.

‘When did they organise to go to the movies?'

‘Look, maybe this is something you need to talk to Knight about. I don't know the whole story.'

‘So now there's a story about the two of them? Since when do they have a story?'

‘Faltrain, you need to calm down.'

‘I have to go, Flemming.'

‘You're not going to do anything stupid are you?'

‘Just worry about your homework.' Let me worry about Martin and Annabelle.

‘I'm going out to see a film, Dad,' I say as soon as I've hung up. ‘I really need you to drive me.'

I don't talk on the way. I watch the lights racing past us and let them blur together. Martin is mine, Annabelle. Mine with a capital M.

‘Are you all right, baby?' Dad asks before I get out.

‘I'm fine.'

‘Do you need to be picked up?'

‘Martin will be taking me home. I'll be back by nine.' This won't take long.

I slam the door and walk towards the café where I know they'll be waiting until the film starts. I catch sight of them before they see me: Martin and Annabelle sitting alone together. I've never felt so sick in all my life. First she takes Nick, then she tries to take soccer. She's not taking Martin.

I walk up to the table. ‘Faltrain, what are you doing here?' Martin looks more than surprised. He looks scared.

‘I think the question is: what are you doing here?'

‘Seeing a film. . .'

‘Do you want to come too, Gracie?' Annabelle asks.

I lean in as close as I can to her face. ‘Get lost, Orion.'

‘Faltrain, what's wrong with you?' Martin asks, pulling me away from her.

‘I think we all know the answer to that question,' Annabelle says.

‘Don't you have somewhere else to be?' I ask, clenching my fist.

‘Can you give us a minute?' Martin asks her, and she walks off in the direction of the toilets.

‘Coward,' I say to him after she's gone. ‘You can't even tell me to my face.'

‘Tell you what?' His voice is a kite floating above us, high and tangled.

‘You're cheating on me with Annabelle Orion.'

‘Are you crazy?'

‘Flemming told me everything.'

‘I don't know what he told you, because there's nothing to tell. Anyway you're the one acting like you want to break up.'

‘When I want to break up I'll tell you. Annabelle's a cow, Martin. She's only here to get back at me.'

‘Not everything is about you, Faltrain. If you weren't such a cow we could have gone to the movies together.'

‘I was a cow for a good reason. Annabelle's a cow for no reason. There's a huge difference. And anyway, I'm here now. So tell her to get lost.' My voice is cardboard, crunching in my mouth.

‘You can come with us, but I'm not telling her to go.'

Annabelle walks back and sits down. ‘So, are you coming, Gracie?' If I leave now then she's won. Don't smile too soon, though, Orion. You're ahead in the first half. But it's nowhere near the end of the game.

Martin sits between us, his elbows squashed close to his chest. Annabelle offers him chips and he takes a huge handful. Stop feeding my boyfriend, I want to yell. He doesn't even like salt and vinegar chips. He likes chicken. I'm in the middle of my worst nightmare and I can't wake up.

‘You don't even like that flavour,' I hiss at him before the film starts. ‘You like chicken.' I shove the packet I'm holding into his face.

He takes another handful from her. ‘Thanks, Annabelle.'

He's loving this, I think. I lean over and snatch her chip packet. I empty every last one over his stupid, grinning head. ‘How do you like them now?' I yell, and leave before the film even starts.

It's Mum who answers the phone when I ring. ‘Slow down. I can't understand you. You're where? On the corner of what? I'll be ten minutes.' I have to hand it to her; she knows how to
respond to an emergency call. Take the details and drive. Ask questions later. She's at the corner in eight minutes. Record time.

‘Dad said he took you to meet Martin. Do you want to talk about what happened?' She takes her eyes off the road and looks at me for a second. ‘You're as white as a ghost.'

A ghost is what I'll be on Monday morning, when everyone finds out what's happened. Martin doesn't belong to me anymore. It'll be like seeing Annabelle arrive at school wearing my lucky soccer shirt, bragging about how many goals she kicked. Has the whole world gone crazy? I can actually feel my eyes about to launch themselves out of my brain with all the pressure that's building up.

‘Right, Gracie Faltrain,' she says, pulling over to the side of the road. ‘Talk.'

‘He was there with Annabelle Orion.'

‘And you think that means he's breaking up with you?'

‘He was eating salt and vinegar chips. From her packet.'

We pull back out onto the road. ‘Did you ask him why he was there? Maybe they're just friends.'

‘He can't be friends with her and me.'

‘You can't own people. You can't make them do what you want them to.'

I twist the ring Martin gave me around and around on my finger.

‘Gracie? Do you trust Martin?'

‘He fixed the tryouts and lied to me. He was at the movies with Annabelle.'

‘He fixed the tryouts to protect you,' Mum says, turning the car in the wrong direction. We drive along a road that's mostly dark, dotted with tiny reflectors to mark the way.

‘Where are we going?'

She swings into a car park. ‘Falconer Lake.'

‘I never even knew this was here. How come it's so close to our place and you've never taken me before?'

‘We have. When you were a kid. You know, last year at the Championships, I saw the way Martin looked at you, and my stomach fell about twenty floors. I knew he meant business.'

‘He's changed since then. He doesn't even play soccer like he used to. He just stands in the goal square, watching.'

‘And you think that makes him a coward?'

‘Maybe.'

‘You think that I'm a coward, too, I guess, for going slowly with your father. That's what you meant the other day, in our fight about your soccer.'

The car feels smaller all of a sudden. The engine's on and the heater's running. I could write on the windows with Mum's breath. I shrug. ‘You explained already. You're fixing things.'

‘We are. A little every day. Gracie, I remember we went to a huge barbeque at this lake one weekend. Everyone else was already here when we arrived. All the kids were playing at the edges of the water. I was still getting things out of the car and you just took off. Your dad chased you, but he was too slow.

‘You ran up to a rock at the edge of the river and water-bombed in. We thought you'd broken your neck for sure and then you bobbed to the surface like a cork, waving and calling your dad a chicken because he wouldn't go in. You were so disappointed with the day, because none of the other kids would jump. Everyone at that barbeque thought you were crazy.'

‘Thanks, Mum. I'm glad we had this little chat.'

‘The point is, not everyone wants to risk their neck. Doing things differently doesn't make you a coward. It makes a
person who they are. Let Martin explain about Annabelle.'

‘He won't talk to me. I emptied a packet of chips on his head.'

‘I expect he'll get over that.' She starts to back out of the car park. ‘You've done worse. Trust Martin to tell you the truth. And then trust your own judgement enough to believe it.'

That's good advice, I think as we pull into our driveway. The light from the back porch casts a faint glow over us as we walk towards the door. It was dark for most of last year, but Dad put a new globe in when he came home. Mum still walks slowly and carefully, even though she doesn't have to anymore. Because now we can see.

‘Dump her, Martin,' Annabelle says after Faltrain leaves. I'm laughing too hard to answer. Faltrain's straight down the line, that's why I like her. Besides, if she was really angry, she'd have thrown her Coke as well.
Martin Knight

I'm up early this morning, ready to ride over to see Martin. He arrives at my house as I'm wheeling my bike onto the street.

‘Going somewhere, Faltrain?'

‘It can wait.' I lie my bike down on the nature strip and sit next to it. Martin drops down beside me.

‘It was Mum's birthday yesterday,' he says eventually.

Perfect. It was his mum's birthday and I emptied a packet of chips over his head. Bad girlfriend. Or I guess bad ex-girlfriend.

‘I just didn't want to go home last night. You left straight after practice and Annabelle was there . . . Things are getting better; Dad's trying. But some days I just don't want to go home, because I know he'll be there trying so hard it hurts him.'

‘Martin, something happened to you at the end of last season, didn't it?'

‘I had a fight with Dad, before I left. I told him how sick I was of everything – him, and Karen, and the house. I was so
tired of him using us to lean on and giving nothing back. I walked in after the Championships and the house was sort of clean. Karen said he'd been out looking for work. He started trying.'

‘You're allowed to want more than that, Martin. Let me help you find your mum. We could put an ad in the paper, see if she replies. You could ask her why she left.'

‘No.' His voice is a sharp kick.

‘Why not? You told me once that your dad spends his life looking backwards. What could be worse than that?'

‘At least he's looking now. Before, he was staring into space, not seeing anything. Meeting her again – it'd kill him. I know it.'

‘But what about you and Karen?'

‘Faltrain, there's a difference between wishing Mum had never left and wishing she'd come back.' He looks past me to the house across the street and grinds his teeth. He's slowly scraping her out of him. Just like his dad did. ‘Promise me you won't do anything.'

But if I do that, then I'm saying it's okay that you're only half as happy as you could be, Martin.

‘Promise, Faltrain.'

‘I promise.' I hug him with one arm. I keep the other shoved down deep in my pocket, fingers crossed tight. ‘You can trust me.'

To win a little you have to risk something. To win big you have to risk it all.
Gracie Faltrain

‘My name is Martin Knight. I'm seventeen years old and I'm looking for my mother. Her name is Alison Knight and she is forty-five years old. She is also the mother of Karen Knight. If you're out there, Mum, I need to talk to you. Is that right?'

The man on the phone reads my advertisement back to me. Now is my last chance to pull out.

‘That's right. I want to run it for two weeks. How much will that be?'

‘Ninety dollars. How are you paying?'

‘MasterCard. Helen Faltrain.'

I figure if you're lying, make it a big lie. I've got a month before the statement comes in the post. Live it up, Gracie Faltrain, I think. She'll ground you for a year. Even if I'm grounded it'll be worth it to save Martin.

I do remember that day Mum was talking about at Falconer Lake, parts of it at least. I leapt off the edge of that rock, and slammed myself at the water. It felt good to be freezing for a while and then warm inside a towel while I ate hot hamburgers.

And I remember all those other kids, paddling at the edges, who didn't know the half of it. To win a little you have to risk something. To win big you have to risk it all.

Hanging out with Fuller isn't as bad as I thought. ‘What do you do when you're not reading?' I ask her.
‘I work on cars,' she says. ‘And sometimes I read football magazines.'
‘You making fun of me?' I ask. You know, she's not bad looking when she laughs.
Andrew Flemming

‘Hi, Alyce?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's Andrew Flemming.'

‘Oh. Hi. It's Alyce.'

‘Yeah, you already said that. Look, Faltrain mentioned you might be able to tutor me.'

‘Yes, of course. That would be fine.'

‘Okay, then, so I'll see you after school. I can do half an hour in the library, before practice.'

‘And that was the whole conversation?' I ask Alyce as we're getting changed for sport.

‘Word for word. Was it okay?'

Sure. If you're a robot. ‘Maybe next time change “that would be fine” for “great” or “fantastic”. It's snappier. More fun.'

‘I said the wrong thing.' Her face crumples. ‘Boys never call me. How am I meant to know what to say?'

‘You did great. Anyway, the important thing will be this afternoon. What are you planning on talking about?'

‘His homework.'

‘Wrong answer. You need to talk about other stuff. Show him you're interested in things besides school.'

‘Like reading?'

‘Maybe something you both have in common.'

Alyce and I are quiet. ‘We don't have anything in common, do we?' she asks after a bit.

‘I'll find out what he likes. And then you can lie,' I say as we walk towards the basketball court.

Alyce and I stand in line waiting for the captains to pick teams. The teacher chooses different ones today. And Alyce still gets called out last.

‘Maybe you should tell Alyce to be herself with Flemming. Let him see her how we do,' Martin says when I ask him at lunch for the inside goss on Andrew.

Sure, Martin. And Santa Claus really comes down your chimney on Christmas Eve and leaves presents under the tree. I watched Alyce nearly kill herself scoring a goal today. For the opposite team. In a million years being herself will never work.

‘Come on; give me something to go on. I'll do the rest.'

‘Okay. He likes cars, soccer and football, and films about cars, soccer and football. He hates school.'

‘Thanks, Martin.' I can work with that. So can Alyce. All she needs is a little imagination.

 

‘But how can I talk to him about all that stuff if I don't know about it?' Alyce asks before she walks into the library after the final bell.

‘Do what kids do every day at school,' I say. ‘Make it up.'

‘I don't want to lie about myself, Gracie.'

For someone who spends all her time reading, Alyce doesn't have a whole lot of imagination. ‘It's not lying. You use most of the truth and mix it with about three-quarters of lies to make your life sound a bit more interesting.'

‘What parts should I lie about?'

How can Alyce be so dumb and so smart at the same time? She has no idea how to survive at school. It's like in soccer: there are some plays you have to keep to yourself until the last minute. If I was Alyce, and I'd been born with an IQ that was rocketing up the charts like a bullet, I'd keep it under wraps. I'm not saying I wouldn't use it, but you wouldn't find me sitting up the front of the class advertising myself as Einstein. I'd hang back, slouch a bit, pretend I didn't care.

In all the years I've known Alyce, she has cared about everything. In Year 6 she ran a stall at the school fete to raise money for the environment. In Year 7 she put leaflets in the school tuckshop about the evils of junk food.

‘Justine Fern did all that stuff, too,' Alyce said when I tried to talk to her about it last month. ‘She's just as smart as me. Why don't kids pick on her?'

Justine knows what every other person in the world does. Open yourself up as much as Alyce has over the years and you're an easy target for people who are out to make themselves look better by making someone else look stupid. Alyce gave away the key to herself years ago. And she never changed the locks.

I couldn't tell her that, though. It would hurt too much. ‘Justine Fern had the body of a twenty-one year old when she was five,' I said instead. And Alyce nodded sadly in agreement. It was mostly truth. With about three-quarters' worth of lies mixed in.

I can't tell you what happened between Alyce and Flemming in the library today because I wasn't there. What I can tell you is what happens after. Flemming turns up for practice half an hour late.

‘You think you can waltz in here whenever you feel like it?' Coach yells. ‘We've got our first big match at the end of this week. Give me five laps. Plus the five that everybody here on time has already done.'

Flemming smiles the whole ten laps.

‘Doesn't prove a thing, Faltrain,' Martin says.

But it does.

I have this feeling tonight that things are on the up. Alyce has made a tiny step towards Flemming. Martin doesn't know it, but he's stepping towards his mum. And on Saturday, we're going to show everyone who thinks that the tryouts were rigged that they're wrong. Watch out, Firsts. Here comes Gracie Faltrain.