Zac and Mia (8 page)

The cabbie gives me a discount but it’s not the ‘you’re a cute chick I want to impress’ discount. It’s a ‘you’re on crutches’ discount. ‘Mascara’s down your face’ discount. Sympathy. Shit, I’ll take it if it means seven extra bucks in my pocket. I need it more than him.

I press the doorbell three times and rub my cheeks with the sleeve of my jumper. It’s Shay’s dad who opens the door. He puts on frameless glasses, checks the clock on the wall, then inspects my face under the sensor light.

‘Sorry Mr W., is Shay here?’

‘Maya?’

‘Mia.’

He nods, remembering. It’s been a while.

‘You’re blonde.’

‘Yeah. You like?’

‘Very nice. What have you done to yourself?’ He’s looking at the crutches.

‘Netball injury. Stupid, huh? Shay said I could crash here. If I needed to.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Yeah.’ I hold up my backpack. ‘I know it’s late. Sorry.’

He checks the clock again, scratching his chest. ‘They’re inside.’

‘They?’

He shrugs. ‘End of term.’

Shit. Shay I could handle. A group’s something else.

‘I thought you quit school.’

‘I went part-time, for the diploma. I’ll be catching up next year …’ I have answers for everything.

‘You’re okay then? You’re not in any … trouble?’

I snort as if it’s a joke. ‘Me?’

Shit, if I started thinking about the trouble I’m in, I’d choke. Maybe I should just turn and leave. Catch a ride with another sympathetic cabbie. But where?

‘Well, come in,’ he says. ‘It’s late.’

In the games room, furniture is draped with clothes, blankets and girls I know well. Chloe is on the couch and Erin and Fee are lying on mattresses. Shay stands by the television with DVDs in hand. They pause for too long when I enter, checking each other for approval. What unsaid things are passing between them? How much do they know?

I wish I was a ghost. I would just float out of here. I wouldn’t want to haunt them.

Shay drops the DVDs and steps over the mattresses to hug me. I hold onto my crutches, unable to hug back.

‘Mia, you remembered.’

The end-of-term movie marathon was the brainchild of Shay and me in year 8. It was just the two of us then, scoffing Pods and Twisties and hot chocolates, allowing other girls to join us if they met our criteria. Over the years, Tim Tams replaced Pods. Baileys was added to milk. These nights became stuff of legend, inspiring guys to drive laps of the street and shout out things to embarrass us. They were the reward for ten boring weeks of classes with teachers who kept us separated.

In the bathroom, Shay hands me a cleansing wipe. My reflection shocks me; I keep forgetting I’m someone else. Mascara smudges onto the wipe.

‘I would have invited you,’ she says, inspecting her eyebrows in the mirror, ‘but I thought you’d gone. You didn’t reply to my texts.’

‘I’ve been with Rhys. You know what he’s like.’

‘You still going to Sydney?’

‘Tomorrow,’ I say. ‘My aunt’s expecting me. I’m catching a bus.’

‘You realise you could fly.’

I smile at her. ‘Where’s the adventure in that?’ Besides, flying would mean passing over my ID.

Shay’s watching my reflection now. ‘It’s not the same without you. Are you coming back?’

I shrug.

‘Mr Perlman says if you’ve quit school, your mum needs to come in and sign something.’

‘She did already. Relax.’

My face clear, I turn towards the room where the others have rearranged the mattresses and sleeping bags. They’re in tracky-dacks and T-shirts, but Chloe wears a singlet and Peter Alexander boxer shorts. Her legs are tanned and toned and freakishly long. She bends to pluck a Tim Tam from a packet, then puts it between her teeth and gives me a chocolatey smile. She used to envy me, once.

‘Mia, you can have this one,’ says Fee, pointing her glossy red toenails at the mattress closest to the bathroom. Since when did Fee get invited to movie marathons? ‘In case you need to get up in the night.’

She’s trying to be tactful. The last time someone asked about my ankle I told her to fuck off. Then I took off.

Chloe slides onto a mattress with Erin and the two of them decide on the order of viewing. Comedy, horror, comedy, romance, horror. I’m alert to every word, not wanting to miss a whisper.

‘Fuck.’ Shay is still in the bathroom, pincering the skin on her cheek. ‘Pimple. See?’

‘No,’ I say, swinging closer. There’s nothing there.

‘Brandon’s party is tomorrow. Erin!’ she yells, ‘you got that ti-tree stuff?’

I laugh. It’s funny. ‘Shay, there’s nothing there.’

‘I’m not turning up to Brandon’s with a Siamese head on me.’

She squeezes her cheek and I realise she’s serious. Erin runs in with the ti-tree gel, applying and fussing as if this emergency is real. As if it matters.

I feel I’m watching through a glass bowl. Is this how life is for them? Is this how it was for me?

Am I the fish, or are they?

Through the night, the four girls switch positions on mattresses and pass around packets of food. I only eat the salted popcorn: lollies give me stomach cramps and chocolate still reminds me of wax.

Chloe notices. ‘Are you on a diet, Mia?’

A diet? I’d forgotten the word.

‘You shouldn’t be. You’re skinny.’ Shay says this like it’s a compliment.

I eat a waxy Tim Tam for the sake of it, then take another. I’d eat anything to keep their attention off me. I’m hoping they’ll just shut up and focus on the movies, but their conversation drags on and on:
Mr Perlman sucks; I’m going to get implants; I hate my split ends; Joel’s too good for Beth; I want a tatt here, but I don’t know what; does Chloe’s brother like me?; my nails keep chipping; can you see my cellulite?; I’ve got to lose three kilos before Brandon’s formal
.

Their dialogue is broken with laughs and farts and snorts. I feel like I’ve lived this night before. Even the horror film, when finally played, is predictable. Horror? Not even close.

They
are the fish, I realise. I see them in their
spotless bowl, swimming around in shallow circles. I used to cherish our group above all else, protecting our precious in-jokes from others who looked on in envy. These girls—and the other half-dozen guys and girls who ruled the bench outside D Block—were my world. We were real and loud and fearless. Our histories are etched into the wooden slats of that bench.

But now it’s me who’s looking in, though not with envy. How to lose three kilos in a week? I could tell them how to lose three kilos in a day. Split ends—are they kidding? And who the fuck cares about pimples? When your scalp itches like mine, your leg throbs like hell, and food still makes you want to spew, you stop looking for pimples that aren’t there. You stop laughing at jokes that aren’t funny. You stop thinking of ‘skinny’ as praise.

When I pretend to sleep, I hear the whispers not meant for me:
Did you invite her? Why has she been such a bitch? You were just trying to help. Rhys deserves better. Like Brooke
.

After the last movie ends and whispers turn to breaths, I check my phone. There’s a new SMS from Mum.

I delete it and put the phone down. The time pulses: 2.59 a.m. Three a.m. It makes me wonder if he’s awake too. Zac. It’s been over three months. Long enough for him to forget me.

I hope he’s sleeping. I hope he’s not lying awake like me, too pathetic for tears. I hope he’s sleeping so deep that not even dreams can find him.

Fuck, I need to
think
. Plan A relied on my mum being a normal person. Plan B expected my boyfriend to be a man. Plan C was Shay and other girlfriends who always promised to do anything for me.

What I need now is a Plan D. D for desperate. D for do or die.

Before dawn I pick my way through them. The ends of my crutches find spaces between smooth limbs and curled palms. I step over long hair splashed across plump pillows. They sleep like babies. I’m not mad at them. It’s not their fault they don’t know better.

I swing above them and into the kitchen. Near the microwave is a handbag and, in it, a red purse. There’s a cropped photo of a happy young Shay, and two hundred bucks.

‘Sorry,’ I whisper. Another quick escape. Another mark against my name. This time, I’ll have to go further. I’ll go east, for real. As Mum said,
Sort it out or leave for good
.

I catch a bus to Central Station, then buy a ticket for as far as I can afford. It’ll have to do, for now.

A woman vacates the front seat for me.
Reserved For Disabled Passengers
,
the sign says. I take it.

I hold tight to my backpack. Inside is my mobile
and charger, iPod and headphones, lip gloss, mascara, foundation, two T-shirts, trackpants, five pairs of undies, deodorant, driver’s licence, $416.80, a tube of pawpaw gel, a tub of Vitamin E moisturiser, and half a pack of OxyContin.

The bus shakes as it warms itself up and lurches us into the cold, blue city. In every street, I see the ghost of myself staring back.

I wish I’d packed a pillow to lean against the window. I wish I had more painkillers. I wish I had more money.

More than anything, I wish I had a better fucking plan.

‘Morning, sunshine.’

Bec hands me a bucket and a long pair of gloves. I know I’m supposed to wear them while working with animals, but do they have to be pink?

She notices my reaction. ‘Would you prefer Dad’s blue ones?’

‘God, no.’ We both know where those have been—Dad’s approach to animal husbandry is disturbingly hands-on. I snatch the pink gloves, pull gumboots over my trackpants and follow her.

Our buckets chink with bottles of warm milk as we make our way up past the pens of goats and sheep. Most are awake, munching placidly on grass.

We get a noisier reception in the hayshed. In one cage, week-old lambs bleat and push at each other, greedy and desperate. In another, three-day-old kids
jig on back legs. They’re stupidly cute, with gummy eyes and snotty nostrils. Their entire bodies shake in anticipation of a feed, making me laugh. It’s almost worth getting out of bed for.

Bec offers bottles to the lambs so I take the others for the kids, who pull so hard at the teats I have to hold my ground. For a few minutes there’s nothing but a choir of wet sucking. Yeah, this is worth getting out of bed for. But as soon as the bottles run dry, there’s total baa-ing, bleating madness.

The birds are even louder. I unlatch the doors and roosters hustle past, crowing insults at the world.
Short-man syndrome
, Bec calls it, as they strut by. In the coop, chickens flap and squawk, as if this is a rude shock rather than the usual morning ritual. They flee the cage and scatter themselves across the hayshed and out to the grass, where they peck at leftover grains, and shit like they own the place.

I move from cage to cage, refilling containers with fresh water and scattering handfuls of hay. Even ferrets, those evil, baby-eating doorstoppers, are easily pleased with food and water.

There have been births in the night—I find two tiny guinea pigs and four fluffy chickens. There’s been a death too—the week-old rabbit that lasted longer than anyone expected. I lift out the runt and its siblings fill the gap.

The sound of an engine cuts through the commotion. It’s Dad who’s driving the ute, towing a trailer loaded with rakes, tubs, ladders and ground sheets. On
a quad bike, Evan rumbles close to the hayshed, sending up a cloud of dust, crap and disgruntled poultry.

‘Nice gloves,’ he shouts, before doing a doughnut and scooting down toward the Leccinos. I give him a pink finger but I reckon the intended impact is lost. What an arse.

‘Ignore him,’ says Bec.

‘He doesn’t have to rub it in.’

Of all the jobs on the farm, picking is the best. Picking means long days of mucking around with Dad and backpackers with nicknames like Beaker, Suni, Giraffe and Wookie. Picking means setting nets under trees and raking at branches until the nets turn black with olives. Evan will inevitably show off with the pneumatic rake, shooting olives like bullets into unsuspecting faces. Then on hands and knees, they’ll all pull out twigs, leaves and rotten olives, and share stories from around the world. I’d give anything to be down there, hearing the first squeal of whichever girl mistakes a roo pellet for an olive, and the first yelp of whichever guy gets spooked by a frill-neck lizard. I want to see the tray overflowing again and again, to look back on an empty row and see what we’ve achieved, then end the day with aching muscles and new friends made and the sound of the Oliomio processor that goes into the night, Mum and Dad at the controls, sharing a bottle of wine to celebrate the first crush of the season.

But I’m stuck up here with fluffy animals and pink rubber gloves. I scan the sheep cages for babies or dead bodies, but see neither. Either way, they’d have to
be removed: newborns need to be taken away from opportunistic foxes; corpses have to be hidden from the sight of tourists. There were complaints last year when half a lamb was discovered by hysterical children. Visitors prefer their lambs to bleat, not decompose, apparently.

A car arrives early. Doors slam and kids squeal.

‘Good luck.’ I hand Bec the wheelbarrow. School holidays are tough on everyone, especially the animals, who get squeezed like toys.

I go in the other direction, swinging the dead rabbit up to the northern end of the farm.
No Entry
,
the gate warns, separating the farm from the bushland next door. The Sydney-based owners have left the property the way they bought it twenty years ago: a thick mess of bottle brushes, sheoaks, marris and grass trees.

I figure if I bring dead bodies to the vixen, she won’t be so tempted by the living. I know she’ll be watching me. She would have smelled the warm runt hanging from my glove. She’ll be keen—she’s got babies of her own to feed.

I wonder if she can smell me too, the way the girls at school can: not death, but weakness. Vulnerability. I wonder if she senses I’m not as strong as I should be, caught in limbo between sickness and health.
Achtung. Fragile
.

When she comes, she’s low and smooth. She watches me carefully, even though she knows I won’t hurt her. She recognises me from before, then pads further out,
dissecting me with her eyes. She knows all about me, it seems.

I lob the runt and it hits the ground between us.

‘Go on, have it. But stay away from the pens.’

She snatches the runt and scampers back through the bush. It’s a simple transaction, without sadness or guilt. It’s just the food chain made real.

I’ve been told not to think about death but it’s not easy. The booklet advises me to
Recite positive affirmations. Stay in the present. Make plans for the future. Keep yourself busy
. I shake the fence just to hear it rattle.

I’m well
, I tell myself.
I’m fine. And so is she
.

‘And that one over there is a baby.’ It’s Bec’s voice that eventually finds me. ‘You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but he’s a friendly beast with a gentle nature. He’ll eat a pie right out of your hand.’

In a huddle, tourists snicker. Children giggle, enjoying the joke.

Bec smiles smugly. ‘Though I’d recommend keeping your distance. His breath can be bad in the mornings.’

I scratch my bum theatrically and jump off the gate. I walk past them, letting myself into the emu pen to collect the three green eggs that have rolled to the fence. I hand them to Bec then leave her to supervise the feeding of the emus.

‘Keep your palm flat!’ I hear from the hayshed. I
snap off the pink gloves, drop them in a bin and head for home, passing the shop and alpaca pen. Mum’s walking towards me with a tray of hot scones.

‘Feel like making twenty cups of tea?’

‘So tempting,’ I say, ‘but
Pride and Prejudice
is waiting.’ English homework has got to be useful for something.

‘Still?’

‘I can’t rush it. It’s not like your
Fifty Shades of Grey.’
But Mum’s already out of earshot, the scones steaming behind her.

Sometimes that’s all it takes—a smell—to lasso me back to Room 1. A hand curling over my shoulder and Mia curving into the back of me. Her vanilla breath in the night.

It stops me in my tracks.
Breathe
, I remind myself.
Stay in the present
.

A joey sidles up to me and sniffs at my fingers. I show her an empty palm and give her a scratch behind the ears, even though I’m not supposed to. When she’s bored with me, she jumps towards the old shed and sniffs inside.

Crammed with fifteen years of useless junk, the shed is a danger-zone of outdated farm equipment and crap left over from the last owner. There’d be rats and rusty nails and other hazards best avoided by a person with a compromised immune system.

So I go in and let my eyes adjust. A small stepladder sways when I climb it. From here, I see stacks of timber, reminding me of year 10 Woodwork. I used planks like
these to build a coffee table for Mum. It took me a term and a half to finish it, and then I built another one for Bec for Christmas. There’s good timber going to waste here, but how many coffee tables do people need?

The idea takes shape before my eyes: a baby’s cot. Bec hasn’t bought one yet, and I know she’d prefer something handmade. Best of all, a baby’s cot would be ambitious and time-consuming—exactly the kind of project I need to keep myself in the present.

To keep my mind off her.