Dare You

Sometimes it’s as if it never happened, as though a pair of scissors had cut last summer from my life.

At first that suited me; I didn’t want to talk or even think about what had happened. But now, as the days become longer and the sun pours heat back into the earth, the memories pour back too.

Memories of being Ruby, Khaden and Sas.

All last summer I had the feeling something big was brewing. The sensation was as gentle as a butterfly wing-beat, easy to ignore with so much else going on. Now I recognise that constant flutter as a warning. If I’d listened to the warning, would everything be different now?

I need to find the starting point, unravel the carpet that was our friendship and try to discover where it began to fray, where the spills became stains, impossible to shift. Where the whole thing became threadbare.

Where we—Ruby, Khaden and Sas—were broken.

Khaden found the last can of soft drink at the back of the fridge, behind his dad’s beer. He ripped open the can and drank, bubbles fizzing up his nose. Khaden closed the door and took a deep breath, sucking up the calm that filled the empty house. He knew his dad, Mike, would still be at work and that his brother, Taj, would be either at band practice, drinking with Joey or hanging out with Salena. Not that it mattered where they were. All that mattered was that he was alone.

In his bedroom he set the empty can on his bedside table and made for his guitar, a beacon in the chaos of discarded clothes, sheet music and unmade bed. Khaden settled into the beanbag under his window and began strumming random chords, which soon morphed into his current favourite song to play, David Bowie’s
Changes.

He’d first heard it at one of Mike’s ‘legendary’ barbecue
nights. At least that’s what Mike called it when Wayne and Sally and their daughters came around for dinner—a ‘legendary’ barbecue night. After the meal, and after the mozzies or cold had forced everyone inside, Mike would scatter his vinyl records across the floor and select songs to play to the kids, songs that they just ‘had to hear’. Bowie, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, The Kinks, even The Ramones. Though Khaden didn’t admit it to Mike, he loved the raw sound of the old music.

Not long after the night Mike had played
Changes,
Wayne and the girls stopped coming around. Mike hadn’t played his vinyl since and their home had become a train wreck of beer, silence and anger.

Changes.

The changes weren’t only at home. Something had changed between Ruby and Sas, too. They used to finish each other’s sentences and talk forever about movies or guys, but now Ruby and Sas picked at each other like crows over road kill.

Even stranger than Ruby and Sas’s bickering was the new feeling Khaden had every time he was with Sas. Just thinking about her made something swoop in the pit of his belly and spread to his fingertips. It never happened when he thought about Ruby, or if just he and Ruby were together—only with Sas.

The
Changes
chords had just drowned out the turmoil in Khaden’s head when the back door slammed, ripping him out of Bowie and dumping him back in reality.

‘Khaden, did you hang out the washing?’ yelled Mike from the kitchen.

Khaden put his guitar back on its stand and took a biology text from his school bag.

Mike’s heavy footsteps thudded down the hall. ‘You hear me?’ he said, standing in Khaden’s doorway.

‘Hey, Dad.’ Khaden lifted the biology text. ‘Doing homework.’

‘And the washing?’

Khaden stared at Mike’s red face and oil-covered hands and T-shirt. He wondered what had happened to Mike. He used to smile, crack ridiculous jokes, be laid-back and slow to anger, but not any more. Not for a long time.

‘The washing? Sorry. I forgot.’

Mike shook his head and stalked from the room, leaving behind the smell of sweat, oil and beer.

The space between the library and the science labs, tucked away from the oval and netball courts, had been our place since we were in Year Seven. On this grass slope, the three of us had planned holidays, laughed about Lyndal Reicher’s pink hair, discussed Mr Meyer’s disappearing wedding ring and argued over whether Jessica Lonsdale had been pregnant, or if it was just a rumour.

Today we lolled on the slope like seals, Sas beside me, left arm flung over her eyes to block the sun. Khaden was on the other side of her, his school shirt wrinkled and untucked. They both looked so untroubled. I envied them.

‘I love summer,’ said Sas, her voice like honey.

The backs of my knees felt sticky, and my arms ached from leaning back on them. I leant forward and studied the crisscross pattern the grass had left on my palms. ‘It’s November, so technically it’s spring.’

‘Spring, summer. Whatever,’ she said, stretching. ‘It’s hot.’

‘Hey, it’s less than a month ’til summer holidays.’ As Khaden rolled onto his back, his shirt bunched under his hip. ‘Cool, huh?’

‘Is that all?’ I turned to face Sas. ‘We still on for the beach in January?’

‘Yeah, well...’ Sas sat up and plucked blades of grass from the lawn. ‘The week at the beach is off.’

I frowned. ‘Since when?’

‘Things change, Ruby, okay? Dad has a life too.’ She spoke to the grass, her voice bitter.

Sas’s mum and dad divorced while we were still in primary school. The day her dad, Angelo, moved out, Sas came to my house for a sleep-over. Even though Angelo moved to Geelong and Sas, her three sisters and her mum, Lou, stayed in their Sykes Avenue home, nothing much changed between Sas and Angelo. They became closer, if that was possible, much closer than my dad and I have ever been. Sas spent most weekends with Angelo, and always came back full of stories about his silver Audi, plasma TV and the wireless speakers that played music in every room of the house. Then, a couple of months ago, Angelo moved to one of those small towns further along the Great Ocean Road, Lorne or maybe Airey’s Inlet, and Sas stopped visiting and talking about him. It was as if he’d died—just like our week at the beach seemed to have.

‘Are you still spending the summer with Angelo?’ I asked.

Sas lay back down, banging her heels into the ground. ‘Mum has signed up for summer school, which means I won’t be the part-time slave, but the full-time slave. She expects, no,
demands,
that I babysit my sisters, wash, clean, cook and iron.’ She growled like a dog and turned to look at me, then at Khaden. ‘Bet I end up writing her essays too.’

Khaden frowned. ‘That sucks.’

‘Sucks doesn’t begin to cover it,’ said Sas.

‘She does pay you,’ I said. ‘I mean, it could be worse.’

‘Like you’d know, Miss Perfect Happy Family.’ Sas glared at me. ‘My life is complete crap.’ She covered her eyes with her arm again.

I stared at the boys playing handball against the library wall. Their tennis ball bounced towards us and I pitched it back.

‘At least your parents haven’t cut your allowance just because you got a B+ for a Shakespeare essay. “You’re capable of an A, Ruby. You’re just as smart as Harrison.” Blah blah blah.’ I flicked the buckle on my T-bar shoes.

‘Can’t remember the last time my dad even asked about my results,’ said Khaden. ‘Only thing he ever says about school is, “Done your homework?”’

Sas’s breath out was loud. ‘Let’s do something.’

‘Nuh,’ said Khaden. ‘I’m staying here until the bell. Double Fink next.’

Sas screwed up her face. ‘Biology with The Fink. Gross.’

‘Yeah, well, I have Human Development.’ I shuddered. ‘Mrs Bosworth pacing and lisping for two lessons.’

Sas’s eyes flashed. ‘Why do you always think you have it worse than anyone else?’

I folded my arms. ‘What do you mean?’

‘No matter what’s happening, you always have it worse, Ruby.’

‘Hey,’ Khaden cut Sas off and stood, brushing grass from his uniform. ‘Let’s see what’s doing on the oval.’

Sas reached her hand towards him. ‘Pull me up.’

‘Coming, Ruby?’ asked Khaden.

‘Nah.’

Khaden shrugged. Without looking back, he and Sas strolled past the handballers towards the oval.

Last night I finished the final page of my tattered journal, and couldn’t wait to use the new one Nona gave me for Christmas. It must have cost her a bomb. It has a red-and-white patterned cover, thick and smooth pages, and a ribbon bookmark. It’s a serious journal, the type of journal that should be filled with important thoughts and ideas, not the black muck filling my head.

And what has caused the black muck, apart from Dad? Mum! I’m so mad I don’t know whether to kick the bed, vomit or scream, all because Mum and I had ANOTHER massive fight over
him.
She says I need to communicate with him, which means she wants me to phone him. A text, maybe, but a phone call? No way.

When I told Mum that, her eyes rolled up in her head and her nostrils flared. I was sure she was about to have a fit, but instead she launched into a ‘texting is no substitute for conversation’ lecture. So I suggested I email him, but that just
made her pace and lecture again, only this time she replaced ‘text’ with ‘email’.

It’s making my head spin. A couple of months ago, Mum was furious because I was spending too much time with him, now she’s going off because I won’t talk to him. She should be rapt I’m not talking to or hanging out with Dad because that means I’m home more, which means her live-in slave can do more cooking, cleaning, washing and babysitting. She should be chucking a party, not a mental.

The text and email lectures were bad enough, but when she started on me about writing him a letter—because writing with ‘a pen and paper would help me sort out my thoughts’—I was out of there. No way is snail mail going to make everything clear between Dad and me.

Anyway, what do I say?

Yeah, that’s going to help.