A Little Wanting Song (18 page)

“I stole the car back. I was the one driving,” he says, his words floating into mine; if I move at all, we’ll be kissing, and I want to kiss, but I’m not sure where that leads to in here.

“You were only driving because I couldn’t.”

“You can’t drive?” he asks.

“I’m only sixteen.”

“So am I. We’re old enough to have our learner’s.”

I’m nothing but aching now and I wonder if he’s done this before and if I’m allowed to ask him that or if there are rules that I don’t know. “Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“I haven’t done this before much. At all, really. That is. If we’re doing what I think we’re doing. And not just, you know, standing in the dark.”

He laughs, but I don’t feel stupid. I feel electric because his lips feather mine when he moves. “Do you want to go back?”

“No,” I tell him. “I want to stay like this. Exactly like this.”

We hover. Lips feathering. Chests spinning crazy. Skin burning. After a while I take out my iPod and give one earpiece to him and keep the other for me. I put it on shuffle and voices swirl around us and it’s the strangest feeling. I’m nowhere and somewhere at the same time. The last song we listen to is one of mine. He doesn’t know it and I don’t tell him. I feel stranger still. As if the singer and me are different people.

We walk home and he holds my hand and tells me about the car he’s doing up at his job, about how the something or other connects with the thingumajiggy. I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about and I don’t care as long as he keeps talking.

At my door he grins and says goodbye. He calls back from the gate, “Hey. Charlie. I haven’t done it a whole lot, either.”

“It feels like you have.”

“Maybe I’ve just thought about it more than you,” he says. There’s no way I can sleep tonight, no point even trying. I grab my guitar and sit outside and close my eyes so the world is dark.

Wait a Little Longer

If you wait a little longer
I’ll be getting closer soon
I’m really very close

So please don’t move

Got some things to say
And you’ll be hearing from me soon
I’m not that far away

So please don’t move

I’m writing almost-love-songs
That I’ll be singing to you soon
They’re really close to ready

So please don’t move

Even in the early hours, I don’t sleep. I get up at six and wait in the kitchen for Dad. At seven he walks in, puts on the kettle, and stares out the window while it boils. “Good morning, Charlotte.” He talks to his reflection.

“What friends did you visit last night?” I ask.

“Jessie and Tim Bell,” he says without turning around.

“All night?”

“We talked till about one a.m., I think.” He pours his coffee. “Did you and Grandpa watch a movie?”

“I hung out with Rose and Dave. We went to the river.”

Dad faces me. I’m getting closer and closer to what I want to say. Grandpa walks in. “Morning, you two. Summer storm
coming. It’ll be here by tonight. Big one. Don’t be out in it, Charlie.”

“No, Grandpa.”

“I’m off to get a part for the fridge,” he says. “The thing isn’t working properly. Something’s off in the kitchen. Could one of you open the shop?”

“I will. Dad doesn’t look like he’s in the mood.”

“So, what happened last night?” I ask, wandering round while Charlie counts the till. “Did you make your move on Dave?”

“Kind of,” she says with her eyes on the money. “How did you and Luke get together?”

“He kissed me in Year Six. A hit-and-run in this game of chasey. My face was still burning when I got home. Mum thought I had flu. I waited two years for him to do it again.”

“Were you nervous?”

“Did you hear me? I waited two years. It might have been nerves, but it felt more like desperation.”

“So how did you get him to kiss you?”

“I think I said, ‘You idiot. Kiss me.’”

“I was the one who didn’t kiss last night,” she says.
“I came close. The freaking cicadas were singing Barry White, and I couldn’t do it.”

“Who’s Barry White?”

“Love god. I’ll play him for you sometime,” she says. “How do you get to that last bit?”

“Again, I say, two years.”

“I’ve never kissed anyone, so it’s been sixteen years for me.”

I never had a problem going that last bit, but hearing that won’t help her. “Maybe you ease into it,” I say. “Take it a step at a time.”

“That’s what Dave said.”

“Dave’s a good guy.”

“Dave’s a great guy. Maybe I should just trip and land with my lips on his face.”

“Yeah, but Dave doesn’t usually get subtle,” I say, and then we’re doing that silent laughter thing, out of control at the thought of Charlie throwing Dave into the pool, her bikini top off and him still not getting it.

“Will you and Luke work it out?” she asks when we’ve settled.

I pick up a book of maps and flick through to one of the city. “I want to be as far away from him as possible, and when I’m away I wonder what he’s doing.”

“Do you go find him?” she asks.

“I don’t need ESP to know half the time he’s somewhere acting like an idiot.”

“So why do you like him?”

“Because the other half of the time he’s acting like Luke. He’s making me laugh and wearing that sleeveless T-shirt.”

“I was always jealous of the way he looked at you.”

“I was always jealous of you leaving here at the end of the summer.”

“You never really know what someone else is thinking,” she says. I nod and put down the map.

Rose leaves to babysit, and I look through some back issues of
Rolling Stone
that Gus lent me for the summer. I’m circling bands I wouldn’t mind putting on Dave’s compilation CD when Antony walks in.

He picks up things and puts them down, then picks them up again. He curves his head around to look at me and licks his lips. I sit behind the counter and keep circling bands, looking up occasionally to see if he’s still in the store. He winds his way to the register until he’s close enough to bite. “Can I help you?” I say.

“No one can help you.” He laughs. He probably heard someone say that line on TV and has been waiting all his life to use it. He hates me, I see that. And yeah, maybe I could lie
to myself and say it’s because I tripped him up, but that’s not true. He treats me the way he does because he can. Antony knew what sort of person I was as soon as he saw me sitting out the front of the milk bar. He picked me for someone he could use; if he can’t do that anymore, then there’s no reason to be nice. “Did you hear me?” he asks.

“I heard you.” I keep leafing through my magazine.

“Something stinks in here,” he says.

“Didn’t smell before you walked in,” I answer. It’s an oldie but a goodie.

“Oh yeah?” he asks, which is old but not so good.

“Get out unless you’re buying, Antony,” Grandpa says, walking in the back way. It’s the oldest and the best.

I’m smiling, feet up, reading my magazine when Dave arrives. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“I’m sitting here thinking I’m not entirely uncool.”

“Will you be doing that all day? My dad’s gone for the afternoon. Mum’s given me time off for good behavior.”

“What are you going to do with your time off?” I ask.

“Teach Charlie Duskin how to drive.”

Driving looks so easy when someone else is doing it—you put your foot on the pedal, turn the wheel a bit, and sing with the radio. The only song I’m singing today is “Shit.” Occasionally I mix it up with a rendition of “Fuck” from the start of summer.

“Shit. Fuck. Shit.”

“Charlie, look out!” Dave yells as we jerk across the paddock. “The fence, shit, brake. Brake!”

“What foot?” I scream.

“The right!” He holds on to the side of the truck as we fly into the fence. “Your other right.”

“Sorry, Dave.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, twisting his neck around. “Just a bit of whiplash.”

“I told you I wouldn’t be able to do it.”

“No one gets it the first time.”

“Except for every kid in the country.”

“You should see Luke behind the wheel. Stop giving yourself a hard time.”

“Sorry.”

“And stop saying sorry. I’d rather you told me get lost than sorry.”

“Get lost, then,” I say, and start the car. “I’m driving!” I yell after we’ve lapped the paddock three times. “I am driving. Do you think your dad’ll be angry about the fence?”

“Do another lap. Let’s put off telling him as long as possible.”

If the day had a sound track, the main song would thump with a backbeat of laughter. It would be written and sung by Charlie Duskin. It would be loud.

But it wouldn’t be as loud as Mr. Robbie when he gets back early. “What the bloody hell were you doing in the back paddock, anyway?” he yells, and I hate the way he spits words at Dave.

“Practicing my driving,” Dave says.

“How did you hit the fence?”

“I got confused, between the accelerator and the brake.”

“You’ll have to pay for it. And you can spend this afternoon fixing it.”

“Yep.”

“You’re an idiot, Dave.”

“Yep.”

“You haven’t cut the grass in that paddock like I asked you, either. Snakes’ll be crawling through it if you don’t do it soon.”

The whole time Mr. Robbie’s shouting, digging with his voice, I hide like Dave said I should. I want to walk out there and tell him Dave wasn’t the idiot, I was, and by the way, neither of us are idiots. While I’m out there, I want to yell that it wasn’t Dave who stole the car, either. I come out of my hiding place too late, though. Mr. Robbie’s gone.

“Go home, Charlie,” Dave says, face bent against the wind that’s starting now. “It’ll rain soon. I have to fix the fence.”

He slumps on the ground outside the barn, and I turn my back. His knees are pulled to his chin, and his head is down, and I walk away because that’s what he told me to do. I stop at the gate, staring at the fence around Dave’s yard. I hear Mum telling me to go back.

Dave’s got his face to the wall when I sit next to him. He’s half crying, half holding it in. “I said go home, Charlie. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“So don’t talk,” I say. And I hold his hand while he washes the last sixteen years out.

We sit there for ages. Dave’s the first one to speak. “Your
dad’s not much better than mine. How come he hardly talks to you?” He and Rose are the only ones who ever said it like that before, just like it is. “I guess he misses Mum. He doesn’t talk much to anyone.”

“When did she die?”

“When I was nine.”

“That’s a long time to be sad.”

And maybe he’s talking about me and maybe he’s talking about Dad, or maybe he means both of us. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that someone else other than me is saying that something’s wrong. More wrong than her dying.

I stare across the paddocks that seem to stretch forever. Dave grips my hand tighter because now it’s my turn to cry. “I always wonder why some paddocks are green and some are dry when they’re right next to each other,” I say.

“Different things going on underneath,” Dave explains. “Some have got better irrigation.” It makes sense in a way I can’t explain.