All I Ever Wanted (5 page)

‘So you came here? Safe? Not exactly a move up, was it?'

‘I like it here,' she says, eyes wide. ‘My dad was the planner for this estate.'

Oops. I nod at her clarinet case. ‘You still play?'

She smiles, a tight little twitch at the corners of her mouth. ‘It's not the kind of thing you can just give up when your parents have paid for a thousand lessons.'

‘Oh.'

She seems to consider something, then shakes her head, dismissing it.

‘What?' I push.

‘Can I show you some stuff?'

‘Sure.'

‘You're into music, right? I mean, you're always wearing those punk band T-shirts and you've always got your iPod on.'

‘Yeah,' I say. I don't tell her that the T-shirts were a part payment for a drug debt. Or that I listen to bizarre world music and uncool audio books like
A Year in
Provence
or
Travels with Herodotus
. Would she even have heard of an instrument like a
tsabouna
or a
hurdy-gurdy?

Kate heads down another hallway. The walls are covered with those studio portraits, the kind where you get made up like a model for free, then they charge you a fortune for the photos. Because they know that you know you'll never look that good again. The Mullen family portrait hangs in the centre, askew, but that's the only imperfect thing about it. They're all blue-eyed, Viking-blond and smiling. They
touch
each other, each linked to the next by an arm around a waist, a hand on a shoulder, a knee, like the symbol for infinity.

We pass a closed door on the right and I feel a pull in my gut. Assuming it's Jordan's room, I could be just metres away from the package. I could ask Kate for another drink, grab it and run, but she's going into her room and she's smiling shyly and I can't break her trust, not like her brother broke mine.

I figure Kate's room hasn't been redecorated since she was six. There's rocking-horse wallpaper and a princess bed under a billowy canopy. There are innocent things: a Cabbage Patch doll, rows of stuffed toys, a poster of two kittens and a puppy, a plastic butterfly chime. Lots of pink. I feel like I'm being sucked into a time warp and it's kind of nice. Like the first time I had fairy floss. It looked inedible but then it exploded on my tongue with all that sweetness. I've never had a room like this.

Kate's looking at me, waiting for a reaction. ‘I know, it's a bit much, isn't it?'

She opens another door that I expect is a walk-in wardrobe but it's another room. Decked out in black. Black walls, black desk, and in the middle of it a huge computer with a screen the size of the pub telly. Speakers and amps and things with lights and buttons.

‘Can you listen to something for me?'

She boots the computer and while she waits for it to start up, she pulls out a beanbag and pats a shape for my bum with her foot. Maybe Alice in Wonderland felt like this. Weirded out but willing to go along for the ride.

Then she closes the door and switches off the lights. All I can see is a skinny strip of brightness under the door and a bar of lights on the screen that looks like the graphic equaliser in Matt's old ute. Music starts: bass, strings, pipes. It starts simply, then layers start piling on top of each other, except I can still hear the original tune. It sounds like club music, but there's a classical element that I can't quite catch. The music peaks, then the layers ebb away one by one until all that's left is the original tune. It's beautiful and I want to hear it again.

‘What do you think?' Kate's voice in the dark.

‘Love it. Replay please, deejay.'

I can hear her smile. ‘I'll play you another version.'

I kick back in that beanbag and just listen. Kate loops the music. I'm relaxed and happy and naturally high. In the back of my mind I know that this is wrong and I have somewhere I need to be. Like laughing at a joke, then remembering that somebody died. Guilty pleasure.

She turns on the lights and takes a bow. I look at all that gear and the pride on her face and the penny drops.

‘That's you? Playing the clarinet?'

‘And the other stuff.' She points to the computer.

For the second time in an hour, my jaw hammers like I've swallowed a pill.

‘That's amazing.'

‘You think?'

‘I think.'

‘I like to write music.'

She says it as if it's nothing. She's everything I try to be, except she has that thing, the thing that sets her apart from ordinary people.

‘Do you have anything else?'

‘Heaps. But I'm still working on them.'

‘Can I come back? To hear them?' I'm surprised to find I mean it.

‘I'd like that.' She blushes.

She shuts down the computer and we go back to the kitchen. Everything gleams and I know I must be a great, dark blotch in all that white. A stain. Kate pours another cool drink and cuts a wedge of lemon. She drops it into the glass and slides it across. I can see her measuring her words before they come out.

‘I meant to thank you. Last year. For sticking up for me.'

I don't want to embarrass her, so I nod but don't say anything.

‘When Todd Pearson sent that “One time, at band camp” poem around. You know, the one about me and my clarinet…you know.' Her face is strawberry-red. ‘I just wondered, how did you get him to apologise like that? In front of everybody.'

‘Oh, it wasn't that hard. Pearson's a dick.' I shrug it off.

‘No, really. I need…I mean it must have been…'

I feel an unreasonable anger. She's so goddamn persistent.

‘Kate, do you know anything about my family?'

‘No. I mean, I know…No. I try not to listen to what other people say,' she says, but her gaze skitters away.

Her discomfort tells me that she knows. That she wants me to tell her none of it is true. And I can't. I scrunch my fists and let my usual defensive reaction take over. I open my mouth and the words fly out.

‘We're not very nice people,' I say. ‘We sell drugs and we lend money to poor people who can't pay it back and then when they can't pay it back we take their stuff and sell it. For more money. Sometimes if they don't have money or stuff, we hurt them. And we have a fairly solid reputation for hurting people, so chances are Todd Pearson took a look at his options and decided on public humiliation over pain and disfigurement. That's it.'

She could be a chameleon, the way the pink drains away from her cheeks. She's bloodless now, blending into the background white.

I laugh and the sound is ugly. I know I've ruined this fragile beginning, my only link to Jordan. That's what I'm here for, isn't it? The package?

‘So, now you know. Can I use your bathroom again? Then I'll be out of here.'

I don't wait for an answer and she doesn't move from her stool. The closed door beckons. I expect it to be locked, but the handle turns. I hold my breath as the airbrushed family stare at me. Is it breaking and entering if you're already in the house?

I see a guy's room, guy things and I smell a guy smell. I don't see the package. I look under the bed and have a quick poke in the wardrobe, but nothing. On the very top shelf, wedged between a surfing mag and a uni syllabus, is a familiar glittery rectangle of red. When I pull it out, the rest come too. My cards. Every one.

I can't leave a piece of myself in that room, so I take them. I run out of that house leaving the door wide open.

SEVEN

The next morning, for the first time ever, I decide I can't wait for the holidays to be over. At school I have people telling me what to do, giving me direction. There are timetables, expectations: eat now, write this essay, dissect this, analyse that. Usually, the sheer promise of an empty day is thrilling. I can get up when I want to, wear whatever I like, ride the feeling until something happens.

I don't want to get out of bed. I lie there for ages, but I can't get back to sleep.

It's the second day in a row that Mum hasn't been home. Her shopping bags are gone so I'm guessing she'll be trawling the reject shops, enjoying the air-conditioning. I'm sure she's avoiding me. Sometimes it feels like we breathe the same air, but we exist on different planets.

There's no milk, so my coffee's black and bitter. There's no noise, so I switch on the radio. There's no hot water because the service is on the blink, so I have a cold shower. On any other day, in this heat, it might be refreshing, but today it just pisses me off.

I take some meat from the fridge: unearthly red on the outside, but brown and dead when I cut into it. It smells okay, though. Good enough for a monster.

The wood pigeon babies are gone. All that's left of the nest are a few sticks and strands of cotton wool, like it's been dismantled. It could have been the wind. I wonder if they were ready to fly, if they're safe.

The doggy-door at the back of the shed is still propped open. If Gargoyle had gone he would have dislodged the stick. I make plenty of noise to let him know I'm coming.

He's sitting up, ears cocked, tail stiff. Instinctively, I hold my breath when I go in, but he's not interested in me. He wants the meat. Drool hangs from his jowls and drops to the floor with a dull splat. He gulps the meat without chewing and the lump inches down his throat in a solid mass. It's like watching an anaconda swallow a goat.

‘Benny's right. There's nothing wrong with you. Go home.'

Thump.

I think we're friends now. When I squat next to him, he's taller than me. I keep my eyes on a spot to his right and stretch out my hand, fingers curled under. I'm shaking a little bit. I can feel his warm blowing, then a cool wetness on my knuckles.

Growl.

I snap my hand back. He's amused, and that makes me braver. I inch my hand to the top of his head and rest it there. He flattens his ears but doesn't resist.

‘It's okay,' I tell him. ‘I'm not going to hurt you.'

I know that this is as close as I'll ever get. He's broken in ways I'm not. The kink in his tail, the skew in his back leg, the hollow in his side where his ribs have caved in. He tolerates my hand because he chooses it.

When I take it away, he relaxes.

Thump.

I hold the shed door open for a minute. ‘Go on. Go home.'

He looks at me, does a doggy pirouette, then drops onto his blanket with a sigh.

I leave him there and go inside the house, grab an apple and spray-bottle of water, then sit out on the front porch in an old armchair that's hammocked from hours of porch-sitting. Heat hits me like a slap. The sun blazes behind thin sheets of cloud and the air is a blanket over my face. This summer will never end. I spritz myself until the bottle is empty and my skin is tight and dry.

The postman crams a wad of envelopes into our letterbox and burns on past. I wonder if he gets danger money for delivering in this street. Further up the road a couple of Tarrant kids are taping ‘lost dog' posters to the light poles. The one in front of our house is blank. I feel a twang of guilt. Just a little one.

I shuffle through the mail and find a letter addressed to the house next door. M. Hale. Our ghostly neighbour. I wonder what the initial stands for. Lola isn't her real name, but I have to call her something.

I know about most of our neighbours. We've lived here nearly all my life. The house next to us on the other side has been empty for a year and a faded condemnation order is stuck to the door. There are single mothers with kids in plague proportions and cars that don't run; ancients that dodder about like empty husks with their Zimmer frames and their predictable routines; families like us whose kids have grown up and moved out, but not away. Matt and Dill share a house two streets along and Mum still goes over to do their washing and put the bins out.

I know a lot about Benny. I know he sometimes doesn't eat for days. He has a toe missing and a twenty-centimetre scar on his belly from a spear gun. I know he came down from the Top End sometime in the seventies and got stranded. He had a wife, but she bailed. He likes full-strength beer but he'll drink light if he has to, it just means he has to double up. I know there's more to Benny than just being an old drunk, because I've seen his curses come to pass and I've seen him make broken birds fly. Like the time the old Italian guy behind Benny poisoned Mrs Tkautz's apple trees because he said they were stealing sun from his tomatoes—Mrs Tkautz still picks glorious, abundant fruit year after year. Mr Benetti hasn't picked a single tomato since Benny climbed over the fence and pissed on his patch. Mum says the piss was a nice touch but purely for dramatic effect—the ground would have turned fallow from a malicious thought if that's what Benny wanted. So the legend goes, anyway.

I know Mrs Tkautz could afford to move to a nicer area. She drives a new Hyundai and her purse always looks fat and heavy and her hair is always done. I know she had a stroke because her face droops on one side like a shirt that's slipping off the hanger. I know she hates children. I know she hates me.

I know Mick Tarrant beats the crap out of his wife and kids and nobody stops him.

Of Lola, I know almost nothing. We hear the phone ringing, mostly at night. We reckon it's men calling and the sounds we hear give us a fair idea what they're calling for. Mum has a theory: if you've lived next door to somebody for two months and never officially met, best leave it that way because it could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

I'm feeling bored and twitchy, so I take the letter to her door. I knock twice, but there's no answer. I'm about to walk away when there's a scuffling sound and the door opens a crack. Bleary panda-eyes in old make-up, a scruffy dressing gown and men's slippers. Her hair is short, burnt-orange, bed-head style—but that could be because she's just woken up.

‘Hi,' she says.