Alex as Well (11 page)

AT LUNCHTIME AMINA asks me if I’m ready to run. She’s looking straight at me. Interested in me. Smiling. At me.

‘Sure,’ I say. I’m still not sure what she’s on about, but I’m so glad I didn’t stuff it forever with the stupid licking thing that I’m pretty much happy to go along with whatever. I suppose it’s something to do with her being Sports Captain.

Amina takes me down to the oval at the back of C block. There are about ten other students, all in their sports uniforms. Ty is there. He’s stretching. He stops when he sees me.

‘I was just thinking about you,’ he says. He gives me this look that’s so intense it feels like my skin is burning. I wonder if I look at Amina like that.

I smile back at him, not sure what to say. I don’t think I want to know what he’s been thinking.

We’re going to run one hundred metres, just Amina
and me. I nod as if I know what all this is about, but the truth is that I always avoided sports days, with all the having to get changed and being wimpy and soft.

I don’t have shoes, so I take off my boots to run barefoot.

Ty lines me up next to Amina. She crouches down. I copy what she does. She’s looking ahead, lithe, focused, cat-like. A little aths veteran, obviously.

‘Go,’ he says.

Amina is gone. I can see the muscles in her thighs when her shorts hitch up. She has her arms tight next to her sides. But I catch up with her. I try to make my stride really long. My heels are smashing into the dirt, and my chest is on fire, but I am catching her. It feels incredible. I can feel all my muscles, and the wind in my face, and my heart beating, but, at the same time, I can’t think of anything except running. I run as fast as I can. Totally in the moment. I can’t remember the last time I did that.

We’re side by side. She peeks over at me, then she grins and spurts ahead. She’s amazing. She doesn’t move like normal people. She’s an athlete. She’s doing something special with her breathing. She’s had serious training.

Suddenly she stops, because that was a hundred metres. I don’t know what a hundred metres is. We walk back. My heart is racing. My limbs are all tingly. I might have a heart attack.

‘Fifteen seconds,’ Ty says.

Amina nods.

‘Is that good?’ I ask. My breath is ragged and short like a cat hacking up a fur ball.

She shrugs. ‘It’s ok, for a girl.’

‘Good enough for regionals?’ Ty asks Amina.

Amina looks at me for a minute, considering. She has a tiny arc of perspiration under her hairline. ‘I’ll put you in the relay if you like.’ As though she’s doing me a favour. ‘I can’t have you dancing on people’s toes who qualified through the carnival. But you should train, and then the other girls will see that you have ability.’

Ty is smiling his head off. ‘Girl, you can run!’ He high-fives me. ‘Now you need to learn how to breathe.’

I open my mouth and close it again.

On the way back up to class, Amina is excited. She is talking about the training we will do together and old rivalries she has had on the track since primary school—people I will meet at regionals, but I have to stop her.

‘Amina, I would love to train with you, but I can’t be in your team.’

‘Of course you can! Can’t means “won’t try”, that’s what my old coach always said. You’re good, you just don’t know it. But I knew it when I saw you. You have the build for athletics. You’re very strong and lean. It’s the best shape.’ She takes my forearm between her thumb and index finger. She is grinning at me, thinking that I doubt my ability.

‘That’s not it. I just…’ I trail off.

Her eyes widen. ‘You don’t want to? Is that what you are saying? You are lazy?’

‘No, no, no,’ I protest. ‘I’m not lazy, I am happy to train with you. I would love that, but I don’t want to compete.’

She stops still. ‘Why not?’

Yeah, why not? Alex asks.

Because when they find out I used to be a boy there will be trouble.

When they find out?

That’s where all this is heading, isn’t it? Someone’s going to discover it somehow—about the noodle, and it will all turn to shit. But it would be worse if I represented the school at regionals as a girl. Much worse. People won’t just freak out. They’ll be enraged.

‘Because I don’t want to.’

Amina wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. Her shoulders slump. I’ve disappointed her, and it kills me.

‘I’m sorry, but I—’

She holds her hand up, silencing me.

‘Thanks for letting me know.’

Amina doesn’t talk to me after that, and not even as though she’s pissed, more like I am simply not worth getting to know.

WHEN I GET home the house is dark. Dad is in the study shuffling papers.

‘Where’s Mum?’ I ask.

‘She’ll be back in a few days,’ he tells me.

They have finally carted her off to the funny farm, Alex says, and we are both so relieved.

‘Is she in hospital?’ I ask.

‘What? No, no, no.’ Then he laughs. ‘No, she’s just gone away for a few days.’

‘Where?’

He scratches his head and leans back in his office chair. ‘Fiji.’

‘Fiji?’ I think he might be joking. It’s hard to tell, but she can’t seriously have just decided to pack up and go to Fiji since this morning. Can she?

‘Fiji? Like the island?’ I clarify.

‘Yes.’

We stare at each other.

‘Did you know she was going to Fiji?’ I ask.

He looks away. ‘I had a few days off, so it seems fair that she has a few days off too.’

‘When do I get to have a few days off?’ I ask.

He rubs his face. ‘Alex, don’t start.’

Start what? Alex’s hackles are up. But it’s not worth it. Aren’t we glad she’s not home?

‘I don’t really feel like cooking. How about we go out for Indian tonight?’ he suggests.

‘Can I go as…What I mean is, do you care what I wear?’

‘Do you care what
I
wear?’

I hesitate. ‘Why? What are you going to wear?’

He looks down at his work shirt. It’s a bit crumpled, but it’s all right.

Upstairs I wipe off most of my makeup, because I know it will make him happy. I still have long hair, but I could be a boy. I could be either. I change into jeans, a hooded T-shirt and sneakers.

We walk down to the Indian a few blocks away. We don’t say anything on the way there. We just walk.

Inside we grab a table near the window. It’s early. They’ve only just opened. One of the waiters is still making up the tables. Dad munches on a pappadum. And then he tells me about what happened at work.

‘I had to do a quote at a chemical plant, so I arrive and it’s all top security with guards at the gate and special
keypads into every door. I met the guy I was supposed to see at the reception desk. These places are really quite vast so we walked a long way to his office. On the way he’s telling me about his wife and kids, how he has little toddlers, and they’re driving him nuts. He takes me into a little room and on the table there is a shoebox.’

The lady comes to take our order. I order a dal, and Dad gets a vegetable korma so we can share, which is awesome, because he’s respecting me wanting to be vego. She hands me a soft drink and Dad a beer.

‘A shoebox?’ I prompt. I hunker down over the straw.

‘Yes, and inside the shoebox there are all these little tiny cardboard pieces of furniture.’

‘Like a diorama?’

‘Exactly. “This is the room we need the quote for,” he says to me. I told him that I needed to see the actual room, because it doesn’t just matter what size the room is, but where it is, and whether gases or particles need to be exhausted, and the power supply, physical space for the unit, and so forth. Then he said he couldn’t show me the room because it was top secret.’

‘What do they make there?’

‘Fabric softener,’ he says.

‘And that’s a secret?’

‘Apparently. Then I told him that I couldn’t quote on the air conditioner unless I could see the actual room. I promised that I wouldn’t tell anyone. So he rang his boss and they agreed that I could see the room, but I had
to promise not to look. This guy took me down to the room and then he made me stand in the doorway, but I had to keep looking down the hall. I wasn’t to look at the room directly—he wanted me to look at it with my peripheral vision.’

‘Was he joking?’

‘No joke. So I gave him a quote based on not quite looking at the room.’

‘Do you think you will get the job?’

‘I hope not! I don’t know how we’re going to get in there and install it without looking.’

I chuckled, not even because it was that funny, but because he’s making conversation with me as if I was an adult, and there’s no tension, we can talk about our day and have a meal together and relax. He’s better when she’s not around. This will be good. We can bach it for a while, Dad and I in the house together.

Our food arrives, and Dad dishes out the rice.

‘I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are weirdos everywhere, and they can hold jobs, and have families, and be successful.’

Then he casts me a sidelong glance.

Did he just call us a weirdo? Alex asked. The spoon is in mid-air over the plate. Our eyes lock over the table. He totally did.

I shake my head. ‘What the hell was that?’

‘Alex, I’m trying to help you. I’m being supportive…’ he starts, but you know what? I don’t even care.

‘Cht!’ I say, like Cesar Millan.

I push back from the table and walk out.

‘Alex!’ he calls out. ‘C’mon sport! I’m trying to find ways we can talk about it!’

YOU WANT TO know what the YouTube thing was that made my mother have an asthma attack and leave the country, don’t you.

I’m just going to tell it really fast.

Ever since I started at Joey’s I had a special note from my mother that I didn’t have to get changed or shower with the other boys. I was supposed to use the staff toilet. Everyone was kind of curious about why that was. I wouldn’t talk about it and the teachers got all panicky when the other kids would jack up about it. I don’t know how much they were actually told, but I guess they figured out I was deformed all by themselves.

There was one kid who wouldn’t let it go. Roger Bloody Sullivan. He had to know. He really thought he had a right to know why I used the staff toilet. He was so angry and indignant when no one would tell him. Seriously, it would have been easier to get changed
with the other boys, and just wear a really long shirt or something.

After school one day, Roger Bloody Sullivan and two of his mates herded me down to the laneway behind the old people’s home, next to the stormwater drain. They held me down and tore off my school pants and undies, and then they threw them over the fence, into the drain. I had to climb over the fence naked from the waist down, and then scrabble down the concrete side into the drain to get my pants back, and I’m shoving my leg in and the stupid things were wet and inside out, and kept wrapping round my leg like a snake, and I’m trying hard not to cry, but I was anyway, I could feel the snot running over my lips, and one of them filmed the whole thing on his phone and then uploaded the clip on YouTube.

It goes for four minutes and fifteen seconds.

They are not even laughing. Sullivan says, ‘Toldjuz,’ at the beginning, and then all you can hear are cars going past on the bridge and the pathetic sound of me crying. They film me in silence and with disinterest, as if I am an exhibit in the zoo.

After that I stopped taking my medication, because it wasn’t making me feel any better.

SO THAT’S WHY I left that school.

It’s dusk now and I don’t really know where to go so I just start walking. I pull my hoodie up over my head and shove my hands in my pockets. My phone beeps in my pocket, but I don’t get it out. I keep walking.

It will be a text from my dad. He might be apologising, or maybe it will be another accusation of how I am hurting them just by existing. I don’t want to know.

Yes, I have noticed how they keep telling me that I’m hurting them. It’s obviously some kind of pact. But it doesn’t occur to them to consider how they’re hurting me.

The worst thing about tonight is that he waited until I’d let my guard down to jab me in the eye. I’ve got so used to bracing against whatever they’re going to say next. I’m not just angry with him, but angry with myself for thinking that the conversation might not have barbs in it.

It hurts. It makes my heart feel racy and sore like after I did the hundred metres with Amina.

Our dad used to make us wrestle to ‘man up’. I hated it. He would pin me by the arms and it was terrifying, being trapped like that. I’d scream and buck, and try to knee him. I think secretly he got a kick out of hurting me, the way I couldn’t stop myself from pushing those kids over in daycare. The only thing I could do back then was pinch him, and then he’d get all shitty. I enjoyed pinching him. The way he flinched away from it. I’d really get my nails in there.

See, we hated each other even way back then.

It’s abuse, isn’t it? I’m not being a pussy. But it’s not the sort of abuse I could go to the Department of Children’s Services about—my father wanting to wrestle with me, or my mother insisting that I eat French toast. I think that sort of thing would put me fairly low on their list.

You were there, you saw. They don’t love me. They don’t even like me. What scares me is that I’ve heard people who aren’t loved can’t love. Does this mean I can’t love Amina? Is this why I am being so mean to Sierra? Are we always going to be alone, Alex and I? Maybe I’m a psychopath.

You’re not a psychopath if you worry about being a psychopath, Alex informs me, as if he is the authority.

How do you know?

Because psychopaths don’t worry about whether they are psychopaths. Psychopaths don’t worry about what
other people think of them.

Since when do you know so much about psychopaths?

Trust me, you’re a freak, but you’re not a psychopath.

I put one foot in front of the other on the footpath. I breathe in every four steps and out every other four. I wish I had my iPod. I imagine I’m listening to it. I walk to my own beat and sing under my breath.

I don’t know what to do, or where to go. Do I go home? What for? I can’t even go to a motel or something because I left my money at home. I don’t have anywhere to go. The more I walk the further away from home I am getting. I will have to go there eventually.

A man walks past. ‘Hi there, cutie pie,’ he says in a voice that totally creeps me out, then he spins on his heel and ghosts me.

I ignore him. But I pull out my phone, as if I am answering it.

‘Hello?’ I say, and then I look at the oncoming traffic, as though I’m looking for a particular car. ‘Yeah, pull over, I’ll jump in.’

I stop abruptly, and he strolls away backwards, grabbing his crotch and gesturing. I stare intensely at the traffic. Once he is gone I check the stupid message, but it’s not even from my dad. It’s from Amina.

Hey you.

You know that expression about your heart skipping a beat? Mine does that.

Did she send that just now? Or did she send it the
other day when I was feeling so bad? Do I answer? What’s something smart I can say?

My thumb hovers over the keypad. I don’t know what to say to this girl. She makes me dumb.

S’up? I text.

I stand on the kerb, waiting, staring at the screen. Nothing.

Argh! She’s killing me! But I am smiling now. My heart hurts still. It hurts in a good way.