Crashing Down (5 page)

It was the English teacher who had coined his nickname. Mr Cruz was new that year and on his first day, reading out the roll, he'd called, ‘Douglas'.

Everyone knew JD hated his name.

‘Just Doug will do,' he'd said so politely.

And Mr Cruz had nodded, altered the roll and said, ‘Well, Just Doug, do you mind if I call you JD for short?'

After that it'd stuck; in fact, no one called him Doug at all anymore, it was as if he'd always been two initials.

And now JD is a hero — the guy who'd kept his
head, even with a broken neck.

‘I can't believe it,' Lucy says, aware everyone is now watching her. ‘What about Carl?'

Wayne shrugs. ‘I don't know,' he says sheepishly. ‘At the time — I'm sorry, but I thought he was dead. In fact …' — Wayne frowns, remembering the scene — ‘it was raining real hard when they got him out and I didn't recognise him. It wasn't like he was mangled or nothing, it's just he looked so big and old. I swear I thought he was about twenty-five or something. I didn't even realise it was Carl and JD. They wouldn't let us get too close — the cops and stuff were there, cutting them out. It was pretty bad.'

Wayne stops speaking and puts his head down. Lucy can't tell if he's embarrassed or upset, and realises it's the latter when she sees him surreptitiously wipe his eyes.

The bell sounds for their last period and everyone moves more swiftly than usual.

Lucy is heading towards the car park to meet her mum, when Ben stops her.

‘Hey, we're trying to get in to see JD when they'll let us. Do you want to come too?'

She nods gratefully. ‘I would really like to come,' she says.

Ben pulls out his mobile. ‘Gimme your number and I'll text you.'

Neither one acknowledges that, in all the time she and Carl have been going out, his friends have never contacted her.

That night Lucy texts Lydia and Georgia to say that she won't be online. She can't think about anything, not until she knows where things are with Carl — and JD. She hopes it's soon. Lydia and Georgia haven't probed her about what happened the night of the ball. She is glad she didn't tell them the details of her argument with Carl: that she hadn't been able to answer his question. And neither does she want to acknowledge to them that her plan yesterday had been to split up with him for good. It makes her feel so guilty, such a bitch.

She calls his parents and gets Mrs Kapuletti.

‘Lucinda, cara mia,' Mrs K says. ‘How are you?'

Unlike Mr K, who was born in Melbourne, Mrs K
came to Australia when she was twenty-one, a friend of the Kapuletti family and, from all photographic evidence, model material. Her English was good, although Mrs K would occasionally lapse into a hybrid of Aussie-Italian. Particularly when she was stressed.

‘Okay. Any news?'

‘He sleeps, like an angel,' Mrs K says. ‘I worry. I hope his head is not changed.'

Lucy knows she's referring to brain damage, and hates this thought. ‘It won't be, Mrs K — he'll be fine. Dad said so.'

‘Your father, he is a knowledgeable and wise man, no? I put my faith in Jesus. He will watch my Carlo. He will bring him back, like before he was.' Mrs K sounds close to tears. Lucy wants to rush around there right now and comfort her.

She'd loved Carl's mother from the first day she'd been invited to their house. Mrs K had embraced her warmly. ‘Lucinda,' she'd said, even though Lucy's name was just Lucy. ‘She is very beautiful, Carlo. You look after this girl. Yes? You treat her like the princess.'

And he always had. Every month, flowers and a
card declaring his love.

Ever since, Mrs K had made a fuss of her, piling her plate with food, more food — her way of showing love. ‘You eat, Lucinda. You eat like the sparrows.' Her back garden was a mix of vegetables, herbs and flowers, and she loved tending to her plants. ‘It remind me of home,' she'd sometimes say rather wistfully.

Lucy clutches the phone, swallowing tears.

‘Will you call me if — when — Carl wakes up?'

‘As soon as he's opened brown eyes, I will call,' Mrs K promises before ringing off.

Lucy doesn't know what to do. She should study, but that seems impossible. Anyway, if she doesn't know her subjects now, she never will. She considers googling terms like
coma, broken neck,
but remembers the time she googled
stomach pain
and it came back with frightening results like bowel cancer, intestinal cancer, Crohn's disease. Despite this, she finds herself typing
prognosis for coma patients
into the search box. Better to be prepared for the worst.

Another sleepless night. Lucy stares at the ceiling, dry-eyed and remembering how it was with her and Carl. How exciting it was in the beginning. How it went from anticipation to something more.

One night after they'd been seeing each other for several weeks, they went out for dinner — not the usual all-you-can-eat places that most of her friends went to on dates but a real restaurant, with a menu and a wine list. She shook her head at his offer of alcohol; she didn't really drink and, besides, she was underage. He ordered a beer. It surprised her — being on P plates, he had a blood alcohol limit of zero — but she said nothing.

After dinner they went back to his house. His parents were already in bed. She was staying overnight in the spare room, as a group of them were heading to a music festival in the morning. He led her to the room and fussed around, making sure she had everything.

‘Alright,' he said eventually, ‘goodnight.'

‘Goodnight,' she said from the bed, where she was nervously perched, sensing that something was about to happen. He leaned down and kissed her, the same deep and exciting kisses as before, and then dropped his hands to her breasts. She was excited, so she let him, but flinched in surprise as his hands slid her dress down and worked her bra off. But he continued to be gentle, although the intensity of his kisses increased. She lay back on the bed as he rested above her, feeling her body, kissing her face and neck.

‘So beautiful,' he murmured against her skin. He was totally hard; she couldn't ignore it against her leg. Her dress was bunched around her waist, her bra off and all that was between them were her lace knickers and his Levis.

She felt his fingers under the elastic of her
knickers and tensed. He immediately stopped. ‘Okay?' he asked, his dark brown eyes looking into hers. She nodded, ignoring the confusion in her head. Yes, she wanted this. But what if? What? Then his fingers were touching her and she was telling herself to relax.

‘Show me,' he whispered into her hair. And despite her embarrassment, she guided his hands until he got it right.

Afterwards, he lay next to her, his erection still visible through his jeans.

‘Bedtime,' he said, kissing her again. She nodded, almost surprised he hadn't wanted her to return the favour, but relieved as well.

In the morning Lucy wakes to waves of nausea. She rushes to her toilet, heaves violently, then slumps, exhausted, against the toilet bowl. She wants to think it's something bad she's eaten, but she hasn't eaten much at all. A sudden thought occurs to her and it is terrifying.

At recess she is sitting outside the common room with Ben and Big Al. It's a beautiful day, warm and sunny. Lucy kicks her shoes off and lets the sun hit her legs.

‘Mr Tan is coping pretty well with JD's condition,' Ben says. ‘But he's really worried that JD is convinced Carl's dead, despite what everyone tells him.'

‘Oh.' Lucy watches a line of ants, some carrying food pieces ten times their size. They are awesome to watch. ‘Why?'

‘At the crash he couldn't get Carl to speak. Didn't know he was just unconscious, I guess. Mr Tan says we can go Saturday afternoon — asked if you wanted to come too.'

‘I've got work tonight and Saturday,' she says, evasively. She wants to see JD but is also scared.

‘JD specifically asked for you,' Al says softly.

She wants to look away but knows how that will make her appear. Guilty.

‘I finish at one.'

‘I'll pick you up at two,' Al says finally.

At the end of lunchtime, she is confronted by Tasha and Taylor, two of the school skanks.

‘Hey, how do
you
feel?' Tasha asks, and by the tone of her voice it's not out of concern.

‘Yeah, not too bad,' Lucy says, walking on quickly. She's late for class. Her Chem teacher had kept her behind for a ‘little chat'. That made all her teachers now.

The verandahs are deserted. Tasha and Taylor
have either been smoking or scoring a few bucks behind the gardener's shed, Lucy thinks meanly.

‘If it were me, I'd be gutted having put my boyfriend and his best mate in hospital,' Taylor says snidely, looking at Tasha for support.

‘Yeah, well, if you ever had a boyfriend, hospital would be a good place for him,' Lucy says angrily. ‘Having CT scans to see if
he
has permanent brain damage.'

She pushes open the door to the library and sits at one of the computers. They're just a pair of bitches, she thinks to herself. But they've finally voiced what everyone is thinking, but no one will say.
This is your fault, Lucy. Look at what you've done.

Unable to hold her fear in any longer, she leaves school without signing out.

Lucy searched each room when she arrived home early, but the house is empty.

She sits on the toilet lid and looks around the bathroom. She has known this room for twelve years. It's been white, off-white, beige, and is now yellow. The tiles have changed, too, from tiny ugly brown ones to these cream handmade tiles,
imported
from Italy, darling,
her mum says, pretending to be pretentious. It's been Lucy's domain for the last five years, since Emma left to move in with Graham; later, after finding Graham in bed with her best friend, Emma had relocated to Europe. These days it's Lucy's towels and clothes on the floor. Her own makeup spread across the counter. Her own twenty-minute showers, with no one hammering on the door.

This is the room she'd spent over an hour in, for that first date with Carl. Changing her eye makeup — too heavy, then not heavy enough. Backcombing her hair — too high and eighties, then too flat. And twisting each way to see if her bum looked big in those jeans she wasn't sure of, but both Lydia and the saleslady said were flattering and totally hot. This is the toilet she spewed in the first time she'd had too much to drink at a party, only this year. This is the mirror in which she'd watched him watching her, the first time he ever saw her totally naked.

She shudders and her flesh prickles. She flips the box in her hand. What to do?
This
is a first she had never imagined.

She opens the box, surprised at her shaking fingers, and scans the instructions. It's
straightforward. A no-brainer. She pulls out the first foil-clad stick. There are two — she hopes she doesn't have to use them both. She uncaps the plastic and holds it between her fingers. Lifts up the toilet lid, unzips her jeans, drops her knickers.

He had told her they would be safe. He knew what he was doing. She shakes her head.
Carl.
Maybe he had got careless. She'd known the first time he'd been unsure of how to put it on. But nothing had gone wrong that time, had it?

She pees on the stick. Feels the urine warm against her fingers. So gross. She tries to shake it off. After placing the stick on the foil wrapper — she doesn't want wee on her vanity — she washes her hands.

That white face in the mirror, wide-eyed — surely it can't be her.

‘It'll be okay,' she tells her reflection. ‘This won't happen to you. You'll be alright.'

She wishes she could blame him, be angry at his selfishness. But she knows that's not true. She'd been a willing participant. She eyes the stick warily. She can't see the control window. She feels ill. ‘But,' she says, watching her reflection, ‘it'll be good. So just look.'

She picks it up and stares at the window.

Lucy can't get away from her problems, because most of the late-night staff at Coles are from her school. At work that night, new rumours about the accident are circulating — the biggest one being that Carl was stoned. She prays this isn't true, despite his obvious stoner behaviour that night, but knows the hospital would have tested him for drugs. There are also whisperings about Lucy. She can't bear being the talk of the school — and now it's likely to get worse.

It panics her to let this new problem into her head, so she blocks that out too. She moves through the checkout area, acknowledging the regular shoppers with a false smile, helping the girls with
transaction problems in a muted voice. She focuses on the task at hand, trying not to think about the other test — the confirmation one, the one she'd hoped not to need — that is hidden away in her bathroom cupboard. But her body is telling her as surely as any test. She shakes her head.
Don't. Don't think about it. Wait for Carl to wake up first.

Finally her shift is over, four hours that felt like four days. She crosses the car park to her Honda — she'd made the decision not to let this accident shake her confidence, that now, more than ever, she needed to be able to drive. She slumps behind the steering wheel. Suddenly she feels so dreadfully alone. She can't talk to Lydia and Georgia for fear of blurting it all out. It's not that she doesn't trust them; it's having to say it and make it real — she refuses to give
it
a name. Not yet.

She should be concentrating on the road, but her thoughts keep wandering off track. She can't stop thinking about their first time. Where all of this began.

His parents were out, and despite the fact that it was only six in the evening, Carl's bedroom was dark,
shrouded in its heavy curtains. He gently undressed her, kissing her and touching her — fulfilling the entire repertoire they had created over the months. She eased off his T-shirt and ran her hands over his taut chest — he was ripped, and the feeling of his muscles thrilled her. He unbuckled his belt and dropped his jeans. His eyes fixed firmly on hers. His erection stood straight through his underpants; she couldn't help but look. She'd felt it other times, even been brave enough to touch the skin; it had felt really weird. It didn't need much touching to spring into full life — it was always at some level of hardness. She had commented on that once, how he always seemed to have a hard-on, and he'd laughed. ‘Only when I look at you, or think about you,' he'd said. But she'd never really seen it before outside his clothing.