The Accident (17 page)

The last two hundred metres are a sprint to the station. Leaves crunching under our feet, both of us panting, straining to push ahead. We reach the bridge as a train rattles past underneath, and come to a stop in the middle, under the fluorescent street lamp. We watch, trying to catch our breath, as the last few carriages of the train filter past beneath us. It’ll be a while till the next one. Turramurra Station is pretty quiet.

‘Beat you,’ she grins, breathing deeply, fingers interlaced behind her head.

‘Yeah, yeah.’ I drop down onto the broken concrete path and lean against the wire mesh behind me, closing my eyes as I try to slow my breathing.

I hear her footsteps. She paces for a few more seconds, then she drops down beside me. Both of us sit there for the next minute or so, not talking, just trying to catch our breath. I’m more of a long-distance runner than a sprinter. That last hundred metres or so really took it out of me.

I open my eyes and find her watching me. Not just that, but looking me over, somehow. Smiling in a way that makes me feel like she’s up to something.

‘What?’

‘You’re cute.’

I mutter a silent thanks that my face was already red from the run. I don’t know if she’s teasing me or trying to hit on me or what. She grins sheepishly and turns away as if she’s embarrassed, and I don’t dare ask her. I don’t know how I feel about it, I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond. Yeah, she’s attractive, but she can also be scary as hell. And unpredictable. I don’t know what she’ll do from one day to the next. Do I want to go there?

She jumps to her feet, shaking herself off. ‘We should go, we’ll get cold.’

We head back home, jogging in silence. She mutters a goodnight and disappears into her house, leaving me standing out between our two driveways, wondering.

I almost knock over Morgan coming in the front door. She follows me into the kitchen. Lauren’s at the counter chopping vegetables for a stirfry.

‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Just out running.’

‘With Kayla,’ Morgan adds, plopping down on a bar stool.

‘Seriously?’ Lauren’s eyes narrow.

‘She and Will have a thing,’ says Morgan, as if it’s helpful.

‘It’s not a thing!’ Too late, because I can feel my cheeks starting to burn.

‘
Seriously?
’ Lauren repeats.

‘It’s nothing. We just went out running, that’s it.’

I feel like a fraud, a liar, as the words come from my mouth, even though I don’t really know myself what’s going on.

Lauren stares at me. I feel almost like she’s trying to stare me down, eyes boring into me as if she’s reading my thoughts. I squirm internally, feeling the stress coming off her. Did she used to be wound this tight?

‘God!’ Morgan bursts out. ‘Who cares?’ To Lauren: ‘Just because you don’t have any emotion doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t. It’s about time he learned to have some fun.’

I look at Lauren, expecting an explosion. But if she’s exploding, it’s on the inside, jaw tightening, eyes dark and sharp. She looks down at the hand holding the knife and slowly unfurls her fingers, dropping the knife onto the chopping board. Then she steps back and pushes past me, out of the kitchen.

I find her in the bathroom. Just standing there, staring at her reflection in the mirror with a sort of dull, tired hatred.

‘You need to be careful.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of her. Careful of getting close.’

‘There’s nothing—’ I start to protest, but cut myself off, knowing it’s pointless. Morgan’s already spilled the beans. Part of me is so desperate to unload that anybody will do, even this sister. ‘It’s just…She’s different. When I’m with her I feel like I’m actually alive.’ She, more than anybody else, should understand that.

‘That’s what you need to be careful of. Soon as you start thinking you need somebody…It’s powerful, you know. Having somebody who will hold you at night and tell you they love you…It’s powerful. You’d sooner sit in that groove the rest of your life than move out of it.’

I haven’t heard any of this before. It doesn’t surprise me, though. It makes sense, really. It explains why she’s become the way she has.

‘You got out,’ I point out quietly, horribly uncomfortable to be having this conversation. But grateful, I guess, to have an explanation at last.

‘Yeah.’ She reaches for the handtowel, wringing it between her hands as if she wants to tear it in half. ‘It was like severing a limb.’

She slips past me out of the bathroom. I feel bad for my sister—and I get what she’s saying—but she’s probably the last person I should ever take advice from. I’ve spent my whole life being dictated to, pushed and pulled by her gravity like a menial planet orbiting around a blazing, relentless sun. Since she left, I’ve veered off on my own course without even realising. And somehow, untethered as I’ve been, I survived.

I wonder about what happened to her. She’ll never tell me anything more than that. She wouldn’t think it’s my business, or that it affects anyone beyond her. The irony of it isn’t lost on me; after all, Lauren’s words and actions have probably done more to shape my life than anything else. Whatever happened to her has changed her, and her coming back has changed us. That’s just how it works. And there’s at least a small part of me that is unendingly grateful for her return, negativity and all; without it I might never have realised I’m not at her mercy anymore. That she’s not the only protagonist in our story.

In my own room, I go to the window and look out. It’s getting dark but before I draw the blinds I look upwards at the room I know is Kayla’s. The curtains are drawn but I can see light leaking around the edges, and I wonder what she’s doing, what she’s thinking, whether she sees as I do the way our lives are being bumped and buffeted by the lives of those around us.

before
after
later

Mrs Perkins is the careers adviser, one of those tiny, wrinkled old people who surprise you with their intensity. Remembers everybody’s name, too. Even when you drop in to her cramped office unannounced she seems to always have alarming amounts of information about you at her fingertips.

‘Eliat. I was wondering when you’d come and see me.’

Last time I was there she was helping me organise my mandatory work experience. She looks at me now, eyebrows raised. Expectant. I don’t know where to start.

‘I need a plan.’

‘Uni, TAFE or job plan?’

‘Uni, I guess.’

She wants to know what subjects I do, what sort of marks I’m expecting.

‘Science and maths,’ she muses. ‘I know we organised your work experience in a pathologist’s lab. Is that the sort of thing you’re leaning towards? Or medicine generally? You’ve set yourself up with the right subjects.’

Doctor Eliat Singleton: it’s got a ring to it. A completely implausible one. With Tash… Mrs Perkins reads my face. ‘No? What, then? This is your chance to choose. What do you want to do?’

It feels like too personal a question. Maybe that’s because I’ve only ever had one ambition bigger than myself.

‘Something to do with brains?’

My answer doesn’t faze her one bit. ‘What specifically? Psychology? Psychiatry? Or are we talking neuroscience of some sort?’

Problem is, I’m not sure. I don’t know which rock to look under first. ‘Something to do with how people remember, how they store memories…I just think that stuff is really interesting.’

I guess she’s heard weirder things. She nods, flips expertly through her UAC guide. ‘I know New South has Neuroscience as part of their Advanced Science degree…’

I leave with a list of options and a contact number for somebody at the university who works in Alzheimer’s research. Not exactly what I’m after, but it’s a start. And I can feel something. A sense of not being quite so hopeless.

Don’t have the courage to ask Rose-Marie how last night has affected the new rules, so I stay in Friday night. An exercise in arse-kissing, pretty much. An hour and a half playing with Tash, not just chase and tickle, but matching up those cards that Rose-Marie bought to teach Tash her numbers, and then we build a zoo using her plastic animals and wooden blocks. I can feel Rose-Marie’s eyes boring into the back of my neck the whole time, as if she thinks I’m just putting it on for her benefit. Maybe I am. I never feel completely natural with Tash when Rose-Marie is around. Always feel like I’m faking it. Pretending to be the parent she wants me to be instead of just being myself. Guess I’ve known from the start that just being myself was never going to cut it with these two.

I do my homework and then do the ironing without being asked. In bed, pyjamas and all, by half past ten. Izzy’ll just be warming up for the night.

In my bed, grab my laptop and rest it against my knees. Ready at any second to hide the laptop under the covers and pretend to be asleep, I start to go through the different university options I got from Mrs Perkins. It’s overwhelming.

Terry and Rose-Marie head to bed just before eleven, when their movie finishes. Half close the laptop lid, wait and listen for the footsteps on the stairs. Five minutes: nothing. Not sure whether I expect them to be keeping their distance or keeping a closer eye on me. In the end I guess I really don’t expect them to care.

Another couple of hours Googling and reading articles online about cognitive neuroscience, memory and infantile amnesia. Some stuff I haven’t read before. None of it answers my questions, just keeps me wondering. Read until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. None of the usual shitty mind-games, at least for one night.

Most of Saturday morning I spend actively avoiding being in the same room as either of them. The silence makes my teeth itch, and neither of them seems particularly keen to be around me anyway. Terry even takes himself off to play golf, which I know he hates. Whatever it takes to get away from me, apparently.

By afternoon I’m sick of being housebound. I test the waters, ask Rose-Marie if I can go hang out with April for a couple of hours. Either she’s tired of me being around the house or else she’s giving me enough rope, because she says yes. Besides, it’s a chance to exercise authority: dinner at home first and then I have to be home by nine-thirty.

Izzy is disgusted. ‘How are you supposed to have any fun and still be home by nine-thirty?’

Sit on her bed and watch her straighten her long foiled locks. Stupid, vain, blonde Izzy. But I don’t have anyone else.

When I tell her about the fight, she immediately jumps to my defence. ‘That’s stupid. She’s not their kid, she’s yours.’

‘Yeah, I know…’ Hear the doubt in my own voice.

She waves the straightener in my face. ‘Don’t tell me you agree with them.’

I know she’ll take my side, because she’s loyal and stubborn, but I’m not sure if I want her to.

‘They’ve done a lot for her…’

She pulls a baggie out of her desk drawer and chucks it at me. ‘That’s the end of it. You need it more than I do.’

I catch it, but then put it down. Shake my head.

‘They’ve really done a number on your head, haven’t they?’

I can’t explain it. This whole week has got out of control and all of a sudden I just feel tired of my life, the battle between who I am and who they want me to be. I hate having to act fake, pretend I would really spend hours doing mnemonics with Tash even if Rose-Marie wasn’t there watching. But I want to get on top of stuff, too. I want to feel clean. I’m tired.

Terry’s stretched out on the couch, tuned to the weather channel. On the screen is a spiralling cloud floating across the Pacific Ocean, Terry’s low-pressure system on its way. Rose-Marie’s sitting at the kitchen counter, stitching a button back onto Tash’s red overalls. Got her glasses on to see. They make her look closer to her actual age. The way she dresses, acts and talks, you’d think she was in her mid-thirties. She’s actually forty-five. Terry’s nearly fifty.

‘How was April?’ She’s trying to be civil.

I’m trying to sound natural. ‘Still crying her guts out over a boy. She’ll be all right. She was too good for him anyway.’

Terry lifts his head to look at me. Cocks an eyebrow. ‘I thought you said she was fighting with her parents.’

Just being a good listener? Or trying to catch me out? I don’t know. He’s looking at me like he doesn’t trust me one bit.

‘Yeah, she was going out with this guy who was twenty-five.’ Words roll off my tongue smoothly, almost without thinking. Too easy. ‘They made her break it off, kept saying he was too old for her.’

‘Twenty-five is too old.’

Shrug. ‘Not saying I disagree.’

Silence. Suddenly I get the feeling they’ve been talking about me. Wondering what I’m really doing, if they can trust me, if they can believe a word I say. Sometimes I don’t even know why I say half the rubbish I do. It’d be so much easier if I didn’t have to remember my own bullshit the whole time. Mostly it’s just habit.

Terry flips off the TV and leaves the room. I watch him go, wondering how long he’s going to be mad with me. Not the forgiving sort, apparently.

‘We were thinking of going into the art gallery tomorrow to see the Whitely retrospective. It’s the last day. Are you right with Tash?’