Yellow (20 page)

I crawl back into Mum's arms and watch the dreams flutter by under her eyelids until it's properly morning. When she wakes I take the key from the coffee table in the living room and kneel down to unchain her from the bed.

‘The detox is up,' I tell her, biting my lip. She touches the spot where the chain had rubbed this last little while.

‘Hallelujah,' she replies drolly.

She has a shower and I catch my reflection in her cracked dresser mirror. I feel a million years older than I did yesterday. I can't believe I'm only fourteen. I feel like lines that you get from living are written all over me, except that they're etched on the underside of my skin, so you can't see them just by looking at me. Mum gets out of the shower and she's wearing the fresh clothes that I washed a few days ago. She smells like the bed sheets that are folded up in the linen cupboard. She smells like she wants to keep me safe.

‘Are you going to help me, or what?' she asks as she pads over to the living room. I follow her, confused. She heads over to the liquor cabinet.

Oh God no.

Please no.

She takes the last two bottles out of the cabinet and carries them into the kitchen. I think she's going to take a glass and pour herself a drink.

Shit.

I want to stop her. I don't know what to do.

‘Don't think for a second I'm condoning what you did, those chains were bloody uncomfortable,' she tells me as she passes a bottle of gin over to me. I'm just staring at her, confused, as she unscrews the lid from the bottle she's holding. It takes me a moment to realise what she's doing, but then I understand. I unscrew the lid from the bottle in my hand, and we both start pouring the gin down the sink. The drain drinks it up.

‘Knock knock,' calls a voice from the front door. I open it to find Willow standing there on my patio. ‘You're quite the celebrity today, I saw you in the paper,' she says. I shrug, embarrassed, and stand aside so she can come in. I don't know what to say so I chew my lip as Willow clocks Mum pouring the alcohol down the sink.

‘Hey there, Judy. Did Kirra tell you how to taper off alcohol like my dad did?'

Mum shoots me a wry look.

‘She did indeed,' deadpans Mum. ‘I'm sorry, have we met?'

Willow raises an eyebrow at her.

‘Uh huh. The social. You were telling me about your cupcakes, and how you wanted to give me beer. I declined, politely of course.'

Mum buries her head in her hands. ‘Oh God.'

Willow hoists her lips up into an amused half smile. ‘You were very sociable.' Then she turns to me, and her face has settled back into that serious expression of hers. Her grey eyes have melted into a molten sort of silver as she furrows her brows. ‘So the thing is, I've been ignoring your calls for over a week now, but it's kind of defeating the purpose, because it can't hurt you any more than it's hurting me. Can we chat?'

A small smile creeps onto my face. ‘Hells yeah, sweet dollface child.'

Willow narrows her eyes. ‘Are you mocking me?'

I grin and shake my head. ‘Never!'

She sticks her tongue out before laughing, and starts to head outside. I turn back to look at Mum before I step out the door, and I see her staring at the fridge, or rather, she's looking hard at the page I'd ripped out of the yellow pages and stuck up there weeks ago, the one with the local Alcoholics Anonymous ad circled in thick red ink.

Willow and I are sitting on the swings at the park. She lights a cigarette and looks hard at me as the smoke forms a fog around her.

‘So unless construction has suddenly become thrilling to you, I can't imagine why you'd be at McGinty's scrap pile,' she says, her eyebrows raised questioningly.

I kick at the dirt below me and wonder what to reply. I look over to her and shrug. ‘You found a hole in my alibi, huh officer?'

Her gaze doesn't flinch, and I sigh. ‘So you know how I can never lie when I'm looking a person straight in the eye?'

She nods. ‘You'd make for a terrible spy.'

I nod back, mock seriously. ‘I would. It's a shame because I always wanted to be a Bond girl.' She doesn't smile, and I take a breath to try to keep my voice steady. ‘Anyway, I'm going to tell you something, and you probably won't believe me, but I'm going to look you in the eye the whole time, and I promise you it's the truth.'

She takes another drag and nods. I keep my gaze on her. ‘So remember down at the creek when I told you my life was complicated . . .'

My eyes never flinch as I tell her about everything, even though tears spill down my face and do little dives off my chin. At the beginning she rolls her eyes.

‘Oh sure, it's all a ghostie's fault,' she mutters, but I just nod and keep talking and I don't look away, and slowly she stops looking unimpressed, she just studies my face and she doesn't interrupt again, she lets me keep going, right up until I tell her about chaining my mother up to the bedpost.

‘You did
what
, you midget lunatic?' she splutters. ‘That's like, ridiculously illegal, not to mention, you know,
dangerous
. And batshit crazy.'

‘So my mum kept telling me.'

She blows a smoke ring and I keep going. Finally I tell her about what I learnt yesterday. By the time I'm finished I'm shaking, and my voice is strangled, trying to keep the sobs inside of me, but my eyes never look away. It takes a while for her to talk. The seconds stretch out achingly as she stubs out her second cigarette. She leans her head against the chain of the swing and looks intently at me as her hair swoops over half her face. I bite my lip and will her to say something.

Anything.

She doesn't.

Her metal grey eyes just become less and less solid, and when a tear escapes from her eye it reminds me of mercury spilling from a snapped thermometer.

‘Please don't say I'm a liar,' I whisper. She shakes her head.

‘Weirdly, I believe you, K. It's totally insane, but you can't lie that well. You just can't. You've either completely cracked it and you're hallucinating, or we really need to look up our friendly neighbourhood exorcist in the yellow pages.'

Something like the lovechild of a sob and a laugh escapes from my throat. Willow gets up from the swing and moves over to hug me.

‘Jesus bloody Christ, I so should have been there for you, sweet pea,' she mutters into my hair. ‘I should have answered your calls. I was an awful friend.'

I pull back from her arms.

‘No, I win the awful friend trophy. Remember Noah's party?'

She nods very seriously as she digs into her pocket and hands me a crumpled-up tissue.

‘A charming drunk, you are not.'

We meet each other's eyes and crack up, our laughter shaking the park from its morning stillness. I realise that for the first time ever, I don't feel like I'm being buffeted about by the world anymore, grasping onto snapping branches as I'm blown from one thing to another. I can feel the earth holding up my feet. I can feel gravity settling down on my shoulders. And I know that if the storms do return, well then Willow and I will take turns sheltering each other from the winds, because that's what friendship is.

Term two passes, and even though I'm now the crazy girl who punched Cassie in the nose and threw up all over the eucalyptus tree at Noah's party, I'm also the town hero who saved McGinty's life. The two things sort of cancel each other out. Willow and I have been accepted as a valid, separate group in the school's unofficial social hierarchy, although I'm pretty sure we sit somewhere near the bottom. People call us Willowandkirra, or Kirraandwillow, our two names spoken in the one breath, as though we are some spliced together chimera creature, like the ones you read about in books on Greek mythology. The minotaur – part man, part bull. The griffin – part eagle, part lion. Willowandkirra – part Willow, part Kirra. Days shuffle past, and I realise that school has shifted sideways somehow while I wasn't looking, and year nine is no longer wedged inside a special corner of hell. While you could never describe it as heaven, not by any stretch of the imagination, it's a perfectly okay sort of purgatory to wait the years out until adulthood comes knocking.

Mrs Thomas is at the front of the class with her chalk-smeared bosoms and a bottle-green pashmina.

The bell rings.

‘Kirra, you'll stay behind after class, please,' says Mrs Thomas as I'm gathering up my books. I can't think of what I've done wrong. God knows I've learnt never to forget to do my homework again. When the other students have slouched out the door I wander over to her desk where she's staring hard at my last assignment. I take it from her fingers and look down at it – I scored a hundred per cent. Full marks. She taps her bright-red fingernails on her desk, and she looks hard at me through her green, square-framed glasses. I can see those marks around her eyes again, the ones that look like little willie wagtails have hopped about on her skin and left footprints.

‘It's curious, isn't it? How a student can go from ranking middle of her class to suddenly becoming top of her year in only the space of one term?' she says. I bite my bottom lip. I don't know what to say. My voice is hesitant.

‘Are you accusing me of cheating?'

Slowly, Mrs Thomas shakes her head.

‘No, Kirra, I'm telling you that students like you are what make all of my grey hairs worth it.' The small hint of a smile twitches around the edges of her lips. She starts to shuffle her papers in that brusque way of hers, and without looking up at me she continues speaking. ‘You do seem to have shot yourself in the foot, though.'

I look at her, confused. ‘How?' I ask.

‘You're going to be getting the award for excellence in English at tomorrow's end of semester awards ceremony, and you've made it quite clear to me in the past how you feel about public displays of recognition.'

I blink down at her.

I'm really coming first in year nine English?

It takes me a moment to register what she's told me, and a strange feeling forms and stretches out its legs inside my chest. I'm not quite sure what the emotion is. There's panic there, of course, but there's something else too. I think it's pride.

‘Will they make me do a speech?' I ask her.

‘No, Kirra.'

I bite my bottom lip and shrug shyly. ‘I guess I've survived worse.'

Mrs Thomas looks up at me, and the smile in her eyes spreads down and pulls up the edges of her lips.

‘Very good,' she tells me, and even though she's trying to be curt you can hear the smile in her voice, too.

I'm walking out of the classroom, but just before I reach the door I stop and turn back around to face her. Mrs Thomas raises her eyebrows.

‘I used to hate you, you know,' I tell her. ‘For always singling me out and drawing attention to me.'

She puts down her papers. ‘No, you didn't, Kirra, you hated yourself. I'm just glad that you've developed better judgement.'

A small smile creeps onto my face and I turn to walk down the school corridor. I've topped the year in English.

Shit.

I don't notice all the other kids shoving past me, shouting and swinging their bags. I'm just wondering how I'm going to cope with tomorrow.

Last period is PE and the class is playing dodgeball. I hate dodgeball but I respect it in a way. All school sports are just an excuse for violence, really, whether it's the full-on tackle of rugby or the slyer ankle whacks of hockey or the sneaky scratches of netball. At least dodgeball is honest about it. It's all about running for your life until the thing that's flying towards your head eventually whacks you. The actual impact is the least awful part. Pain, I can deal with. It's the bracing yourself for it to happen that's the kicker.

‘So you've been looking like you're about to vomit since English. What did old Hitler in kaftans say to you?' Willow asks me once we've both been pummelled by a hurtling piece of inflatable rubber and we're made to go sit on the sidelines until the game is over. I tell her about the English award tomorrow, and silently, in slow motion, I bang my head against my bent knees.

‘You do realise that receiving an award is supposed to be an honour?'

‘I know, and I do feel proud, but you know, samurais used to impale themselves on their own swords in the name of honour too. Honour isn't necessarily without pain.'

We look over at Cassie and Lou in their elements, sneakers squeaking and ponytails swinging as they leap and catch and inflict injuries with the full sanction of the school authorities.

‘What if I puke up there, in front of everyone from school and their parents?'

‘You've already puked in front of everyone at Noah's party, don't you remember, sweet cheeks?'

I bury my face in my hands and Willow pats me on the back.

‘It'll be peachy. I promise. Are the parentals coming?'

‘I'll tell Mum, but I've kinda been avoiding Lark this last little while.'

The ball comes flying towards us but we've learnt to dodge and it goes careening over our head, so close you can feel the wind of it.

‘You're still mad at him?' she asks. ‘Holding grudges will give you cancer, you know.'

‘Says the girl who smokes.'

‘I'm also excellent at holding grudges, ask Cassie. And I mean, even my star sign is Cancer. I'm doomed, but you, little one,
you
have the chance to live long and prosper.'

I sigh and watch the PE teacher blow his whistle and point and march around the courts, a moustache like a neat little black comb bristles under his nose, and he's sporting knee-length socks paired with shorts. What is it with teachers wearing knee-length socks and shorts? Do they teach them that at university? I sigh again and pick at my nails.

‘Lark knew how bad Mum's drinking was, Willow, but he still didn't want me to stay with him. She's getting better now, but where was he when I needed him?'

Willow rests her hand on her cheek and she looks over at me seriously, her coffee hair spilling down her face.

‘Kirra, have you ever considered that maybe he did want to be there for you? Except he thought that your mum needed you more?'

I roll the truth of this around in my brain. It's an excuse, but it still doesn't excuse him. Anger steams through my veins and makes me trip on my words.

‘I am the child. Why did I have to be the responsible one in the situation?'

It's Willow who picks at her nails now, then she lies back onto the floorboards and her eyes stare up at where the rafters are, unfocused.

‘Because you don't get to choose your parents, K, and at some point you realise that maybe your parents just aren't able to parent very well, but we exist, and the only choice we've got in the whole situation is whether we're gonna love them anyway. It's as simple and messy and complicated as that.'