A Little Wanting Song (20 page)

“It’s good to see you, too, Rose. I arrived home today. Now, I’ve got a question for you. Were you even going to tell them?”

“I was waiting for the right moment.”

“That moment has long passed. I might have been able to help, if you’d let me.” She nods back at the door. “Your parents are waiting.”

Mum starts as soon as she sees me. “You are grounded.
You are grounded until you’re old and your teeth are sitting in a glass next to your bed and you’re wearing scuba suit underwear. And then, if I’m not dead, you’re grounded some more.” Anger sets fire to her skin. “You lied to us. Flat out lied!” she yells. “What were you planning on doing, running away and paying for the fees yourself?”

“It’s a scholarship,” I say.

“I know what it is. Mrs. Wesson told us. What I want to know is why
you
didn’t.”

“I tried. I asked if I could go on exchange. You were too busy cutting fucking carrots to listen properly. I asked about the scholarship and you wouldn’t even talk about it.”

“Don’t you fucking swear at me. I’m not stupid, Rose. That day at the caravan park was after you’d lied and cut school. Go to your room. Stay there till I call you out.”

“I won’t go to my room!” I yell. “I’m going to that school. It’s got the best science program in the state and I got in and I’m glad because it means I won’t be you, working my arse off at some shitty job.”

“That shitty job pays for your food.”

“Fuck you. I hang out the washing. I cook dinner when you’re working. I look after your sister’s kids.”

“That’s enough, Rose,” Dad says.

But it’s not enough. It’s the best feeling, yelling at her, smashing the air with things I’ve been thinking for years. “You work all the time. You don’t even read the paper anymore. I have nightmares where I end up like you. Pregnant and stuck here.”

Mum holds the back of the chair. Dad’s mouth is a circle. “I want to leave with Charlie at the end of the summer. I want to live with her and Mr. Duskin and go to school in Melbourne.”

Mum leans her head against her hand. “You won’t be going with Charlie at the end of the summer. I rang Mr. Duskin to make sure he knew that you two might be planning something.”

“What did you tell him?”

“The truth. That you’d known about this scholarship since before school ended, that I thought you were desperate enough to do anything to get away.”

Her words sink in. I taste metal. “Don’t you get what you’ve done? Charlie will think I used her.”

“From what I can see you did use her, Rose. Take a good look at yourself. If she’s hurt, there’s one person to blame.”

“You had no right to tell her.”

“I had every right. I’m your mother.”

“Well, I always said Charlie Duskin was lucky.”

Mum walks into the kitchen. I walk out the front door. Through the living room window, I see Dad standing with his hands held out in front of him as though he were holding something that suddenly disappeared.

Dad’s sitting in the kitchen in front of a chocolate cake and a pot of tea when I get home. He’s heard. Mrs. Butler must have told him that I saved Dave, and he’s baked a cake to celebrate.

“Did Mrs. Butler ring?”

He nods, and I’m waiting for him to say he’s proud. When he does that, I’ll tell him how much I miss him. I’ll bring him back from wherever it is he’s been. “She’s worried about Rose, Charlotte. If you know anything, you have to tell me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Rose’s parents know about the scholarship. They know she’s been planning to leave at the end of the summer. Has she mentioned anything to you about running away?”

“No,” I say, and I finally hear the chord that’s been missing from our friendship. C-sharp. Cats cry in that note, lonely late-at-night
calls, hungry for company. “Of course,” I say, more to myself than him.

“Of course what, Charlotte?”

“She didn’t tell me.” I want him to understand why this is so terrible, but he can’t because he doesn’t know me. He sits there looking through those tiny square glasses, and I feel my anger rising like blood from a cut deep as bone. It’s taken seven years to get to the surface, but now it’s spreading out, over Rose, over him. “Don’t you get it, Dad? She was using me so she could move to the city. Hang out with Charlie Dorkin, be nice to her, and she’ll ask her dad if you can go with them at the end of the summer.”

“Charlotte, calm down. You don’t need friends like that.”

The song we’ve been singing switches from acoustic to electric. I write loud, angry chords on the spot and send them out to him. “How would you know what I need? You never ask me. Did you know Dahlia doesn’t talk to me anymore? She got sick of me because I sit at the edges and I don’t do anything.”

“What are you talking about? Dahlia’s your best friend.”

“She hasn’t rung me once since I’ve been here. Haven’t you noticed? I don’t blame her, either. I let people walk over me. I lie rather than sing at a school concert, when I could blow those guys away.”

“Of course you could blow them away.”

“How would you know? Gus knows more about me than you.”

“Is that why you stole the cigarettes? To get my attention?”

I think back to Dad watching me cry, to needing his help and not getting it. Unbelievable. Fucking unbelievable. “Why didn’t you stop me? Dave’s dad would have grounded him for a week.”

“You want me to be like Mr. Robbie?”

“I want you to be someone.”

He doesn’t speak, so I yell. “What’s the point of anything if all you do is think about Mum? You might as well be dead, too.”

We’re on opposite sides of the table waiting for the next thing to happen. Neither of us knows what that is. Dad gets up and walks out like he always does. “What, no money?” I ask. He keeps moving to his room.

That’s okay. Dad and I have always been the quiet ones. Mum was the talker. She’s dead, and she talks more than we do. I walk into my room. I stare at all the things Dad hasn’t said to me over the years. CD after CD after CD. I open a bag and put in as many as I can fit.

I walk down the hallway to his room. I stare at him through the open door. I put the bag down and pick up the first CD. I make sure he’s looking at me and then I take the disc out of the case and snap it. It sounds clean and sharp. I like it. I pick up the next one.
Snap
. I like that even more. I like the next and the next and the next even better. “Still nothing to say, Dad?” I ask. He’s sitting on the bed looking confused as music cracks in my hands. “Why are you so sad?” He doesn’t answer.

Some things take time. I walk to my room and click the clasps on my guitar case. I peel back the lid and take my voice
out and walk down the hallway. Dad’s still sitting on his bed, staring at the things broken around him. “What’s wrong with you?” I ask. “What couldn’t you have known?”

“Charlotte, you need to calm down.” But that’s not what I need. I raise my guitar high over my head. I hold it there, and it feels good to be doing something. I let go. I smash it toward the floor. I don’t see Dad move. I feel the weight of him on the end, catching the body before it hits the ground. I let go and he sits on the bed, holding my guitar. Holding it tight. Rocking a little. And I’m not mad at him for not talking anymore. Some things are better than words. “I’ll be back soon,” I say. “There’s something I have to do.” He keeps holding my guitar and nods.

I’m not angry at all anymore really. I’m not sad. I’m certain. I take the road that leads to the river. Sunset sounds hard tonight, like heavy chords coming from the sky. Heavy chords that say the player’s in control of the song.

“Charlie!” Rose calls as I walk toward her. The rain’s been gathering in the air all day, and its arms are heavy with water. Any second it’ll throw them open and soak us. Rose is a shadow in the half dark.

“You were lying all along.” My disappointment feels like salty ocean in my veins, but I can swim.

“I’m sorry, Charlie.”

“I told you things about Dave, about me.”

“Dave doesn’t know.”

“I know Dave doesn’t know. This is all you. How long were
you going to keep lying? Until you found someone in the city better than me who’d let you stay with them?”

“No. I wanted to stay with you.” Her hands beat at the air, getting faster as she talks. “The scholarship’s not the reason I wanted to be friends.”

“Even if that’s true, it’s too late now.”

“I don’t care anymore. Tell me how to fix things.”

“I don’t want to fix things with you. You’re not coming with us,” I tell her, and it feels good to walk away.

“I only lied at the beginning,” she calls. I take a last look back. The sky opens its arms and throws out the storm like old soapy water it’s used and finished with. She’s soaked and alone. I leave her huddled there. Some people aren’t worth crying over.

Charlie’s eyes aren’t hollow anymore. They’re rough and wide. “I don’t want to fix things with you,” she says, and I’m a hundred meters in the air with nothing below me. Rain hammers. She goes so fast she could be flying. My legs are stuck in mud, caught by all the dirt and dust in this place that’s been gathering for ages, set free by the storm. “Fuck this town!” I yell to no one and the sky cracks again and the water pours so hard I can’t see.

I climb into the old tree at the river. I hear Luke and Antony before I see them. I move as far as I can up the branches, and they hunker down beneath me where it’s dry. Every muscle in my body works to hold me steady.

“It’s pissing down,” Luke says. “We should make a run for it.”

“It’ll ease in a bit,” Antony answers.

They talk for ages without knowing I’m here. Luke says stuff like “Did you see Ferro hit that six on the weekend?”

And Antony answers, “Who do you reckon will win the next match?” It’s not the most exciting conversation in the world, but even if I could leave, I wouldn’t.

I want to fall down on Antony and push him to the side. I want to turn to Luke and tell him he really needs to get his hair cut a bit shorter at the back because it’s sticking up. I want to tell him important things, too, like I can remember stealing bricks from the place next to mine because I wanted to build a fence around the bottom of our tree house.

Mum caught us and I told her it was all my idea so Dave wouldn’t get into trouble. She didn’t believe us, though, and she must have been real mad because she called Mrs. Robbie and Mrs. Holly. Dave’s dad came and hauled him into the car and I could tell Mum felt guilty because she let Luke and me go to the river. We sat together under this tree and I made all these big plans to run away and Luke didn’t say it was my fault that Dave was in trouble. He let me talk and then took me to his house and his mum made us hamburgers.

“You and Rose getting back together?” Antony asks as the rain eases and settles into a mist. Drops from me hit Luke, but he doesn’t notice. “Not if you paid me,” he says, and the two of them leave. I slide out of the tree and scratch my legs on the way down. I run home. I need to get inside and close that door.

Mum and Dad are sitting on the couch, looking at a book. I want to say, I remember that. I remember how we read together about places far away.

“It’s the land of the midnight sun.” Mum’d point at the picture. It sounded so romantic, like impossible things could happen to people there. She made me feel like things could happen to me. I want to say, I remember other things, too. How Dad kept a chart on the fridge with all my assignments on it, big crosses marked out when I handed something in. He always put my grade next to it, even when it wasn’t good. “That’s my girl, Rosie,” he’d say. I want to ask them why they stopped. Why everything fun seemed to stop. I stand in front of them, dripping. They look up, and I get the feeling I could run my hands through both of them.

I go into my room and close the door. I imagine Dave’s face when Charlie tells him what I did. I hear Luke’s voice.
Not if you paid me
. I look at the protistans and play Charlie’s music. That voice spins out again, and I think of those silkworms in their cocoons and how sad I felt when Mum said I wouldn’t see inside. I never told her how one day I took one and boiled it. I cried so hard after it was done. I didn’t know I’d feel like that. I just wanted so bad to touch the silk.