Darkwater (14 page)

Fact: I want to go back to the way it was.

I wrote those words in my diary after I returned from Sonia's because, despite my determination not to be scared, I felt wary as I rode through the back streets from her place to mine. I rushed from streetlight to streetlight, grateful for the spill of white before I plunged back into the darkness, relieved when I finally reached our gate and saw that Dee and Tom were home.

But that wasn't all that had seeped through me. Getting to know Nicky during this time had been like a beacon for me, an excitement that had kept me buoyed. That was gone now. Putting a face to his girlfriend might have made me feel all the more foolish for ever hoping he would want to be with me, but still I missed the way that hope had made me feel, no matter how pointless it might have been.

I closed my journal and got into bed, the night held at bay by my small reading lamp. When I switched it off, I wanted only to sleep. But I stayed awake for hours, thoughts of Lyndon, Nicky and Daniel all colliding with each other in a confused tangle that kept me turning until long past midnight.

The next morning I woke tired, my head still heavy with anxiety.

Downstairs, Tom was making breakfast in bed for Dee. He was humming to himself, the radio on the kitchen windowsill tuned to the news station.

‘Are you gonna make me a tray too?' I asked, looking at the neatly laid out toast, jam, butter and a cup of tea. ‘I'll have a juice though, and some cereal.' I picked up a slice and took a bite.

He hit me on the head with the newspaper, before making his way carefully out of the kitchen, laden tray balanced precariously on one arm, the newspaper under the other. Sammy, who was underfoot, was kicked out of the way, and then I heard him, heading up the stairs, singing at the top of his voice.

I sat at the kitchen bench, uncertain as to how I was going to pass the weekend. I considered practising my skateboarding out the front. I was improving, there was no doubt about it, but I was still hopeless when it came to steep hills. Secretly I harboured a vision of me swooping down to the school, the rush of air cool on my face as I cut in on Nicky, not looking back at him as I leapt off and kicked my skateboard up into my hands in one smooth movement. Not that such a demonstration would be likely to impress him. What he seemed to like was a small and pretty gymnast who knew how to cry.

As the phone rang, I leant across to pick it up, assuming it would be either Sonia or Cassie wanting to make plans for the day.

It wasn't.

The woman's voice sounded strained as she asked for Dee.

‘I'll just get her,' I replied. ‘Who's calling?' This was what Dee insisted we ask, because more often than not she didn't want to speak (she hated the phone) and when we came to her she would wave us away, mouthing the words ‘I'm not in', leaving us to tell some half-baked and appallingly transparent lie.

‘It's Mrs Jenkins,' she told me. Her voice choked. ‘Ray's wife.'

I'd never heard of either. I left the phone off the hook and went to the bottom of the stairs.

‘PHONE!' I shouted.

There was no response.

‘
PHONE!
'

‘Who for?' Tom called back.

‘Dee.'

I walked away. If she didn't want to talk, she could get Tom to tell her lies for her.

About fifteen minutes later, as I was adding my bowl to the new pile of dishes by the sink, Dee came down, her hair still wet from the shower, her face pale. She hadn't put on any make-up, which wasn't unusual for her, but she looked more washed out than I'd ever seen her. She searched for her keys on the bench, asking me if I could help, and because she seemed so distressed, I did so without complaining.

‘Where are you going?'

‘To visit Ray.'

I had no idea who Ray was.

‘He's one of the builders who helped out with the ban on the development.'

‘And what's wrong with him?'

She paused for an instant, putting her bag on the bench, her keys now in her hand. I could see she was uncertain as to how much I should know. I'd never even met the guy, so I didn't understand the hesitation.

‘He's in hospital,' she eventually said. ‘His wife called to tell me he was bashed up last night.'

The crack in Dee's voice was barely discernible, no more than a slight break in her words, a hairline fracture running through the syllables, but it was enough to make me realise how anxious she was.

‘He's in a coma.'

At that moment, Tom came down, also with car keys in his hand. He wanted to drive Dee, insisting she was too upset to go on her own.

‘They may not even let me see him,' she said. ‘But I'd like to leave him some flowers and I'd like to let Sylvia know we care, that we're there for him.' She told me they wouldn't be long.

‘If you go anywhere, leave me a note,' she insisted. ‘And make sure you keep the front door shut after we leave.'

She closed it behind her, leaving the hall beyond the kitchen in a darkness that still felt strange even though we had now been shutting it for some weeks.

Upstairs, Joe was still asleep. It wasn't unusual for him to stay in bed until well past midday, emerging foul-breathed and heavy-eyed to sit at the kitchen bench and eat bowl after bowl of cereal. I hadn't heard him come in from Kate's the previous night, which meant he would have been late.

I flicked through the scraps of paper by the phone, messages scrawled and then forgotten. There was a note Dee had written to herself, a reminder to ring Roxie, with the phone number next to it. I picked it up, dialling the first number and then pausing. I didn't know what I would say to Daniel if he answered, and the thought of trying to talk to him almost made me hang up. But I didn't.

The phone rang six times before it was picked up.

‘Yes?' It was Max, his voice loud in my ear.

I listened to him call out Daniel's name, shouting up the stairs, and again, I almost lost my nerve.

‘Hello?' This time it was Daniel.

I told him it was me, Winter. I just wanted to know if he was all right. ‘After yesterday.'

There was silence.

‘I'm fine,' he eventually said.

‘Okay.' I could hear the uncertainty in my voice. ‘If you need to, you know, come over, get out of the house any time, well, you can always come here. For dinner or whatever.'

He took a moment before he answered. ‘Dinner isn't going to fix anything.'

He hung up on me, and I was left, phone in hand, the beeps loud in my ear.

I sat for a moment before I pressed down the receiver.

I looked up at the ceiling, biting back the salty sting of tears. I had only wanted to help, but I felt like an idiot for thinking there was any thing I could do or say to make a difference.

I picked up the phone again and called Cassie, wanting to talk to someone.

Karen answered. ‘She's not up yet.'

I was about to tell her not to wake her, I'd ring back, but it was too late. I heard Karen thumping on the door to Cassie's room, before opening it and calling out her daughter's name.

‘Sorry about that,' I apologised.

Cassie's response was brief. She'd been awake, she said. She just wasn't up for talking.

She didn't sound okay, and when I asked her if she was all right, she began to cry.

I met her under the Gladesville Bridge half an hour later. It was close to her flat and it seemed to be the place she liked to hang out these days. The huge concrete pylons were bleached white and smooth, the grass underneath the bridge sparse, and often damp; it looked green from a distance but was, in fact, patched with dirt, a place where little would grow.

In front of me, the river widened. I sat down and leant against the swoop of the pylon and waited. It was different at this end of our suburb. This was where the peninsula joined the mainland. Up near the overpass, there were only flats, but if you took any of the small avenues or crescents down to the water, you found stone mansions, houses with gardens that sloped, green-grassed and bordered by neat beds, down to wide open bays. There were no waterfront caves and scrub, just an open expanse of turquoise, with small boats, white-sailed, bobbing on the smooth surface.

I could see Cassie walking towards me, and I got up, brushing the dirt from my jeans, raising my hand in greeting.

Her eyes were red-rimmed, the whites glassy, and she had tucked her hair behind her ears.

‘What happened?' I asked.

We walked out of the shade of the bridge and up to the higher slope of grass, where we were visible from the road. The traffic was a louder roar now, but there was at least sunshine, warm and soft, on our limbs.

She sat next to me, knees drawn to her chest, and looked out towards the intersection where all cars were directed towards the bridge, fed in a great stream back into the mainland and then the city itself.

‘You can't tell anyone.'

I promised.

‘Not even Sonia.'

I nodded.

And then, as she tried to talk, she only started crying again, barely able to utter any words.

‘Take a deep breath,' I told her. ‘It's just me.'

I had an idea it was going to have something to do with Grant Benson even before she told me the story. I had never liked him, and I had been surprised at Cassie's sudden declaration of love.

She had walked home as she always did, up the road that led out of school and across the overpass. As she came to the other side, where the path dipped down to the shade under the bridge, she looked out for him, hoping (although she didn't admit this) to see him waiting for her in the place where they had smoked a joint together the previous day.

She paused in her story, and I could see her breathing in, not wanting to cry again.

‘I feel like such a dickhead,' she told me, not meeting my gaze but keeping her eyes fixed on the white railings that separated road from grass.

He was there, leaning against the pylons. From where she stood, up above, he seemed to be alone, but as she walked down the slope, she saw he had two of his mates with him.

‘I suddenly wished I hadn't come down,' she told me. ‘But it was too late, you know? I was there, and they could see me, and I just said “Hi” and thought I would look like a total idiot if I turned and went back.'

He asked her if she had a joint, and she shook her head, wishing she'd managed to nick one from Karen.

And then, as she continued towards them, he spat on the ground.

‘He told me to piss off.'

I didn't say anything, I just stayed perfectly still, next to her.

‘He called me a slag.'

She had lowered her eyes now and was staring fixedly at the hole in the knee of her jeans. I was about to tell her that he was the dickhead, that he wasn't worth worrying about, but she kept talking.

‘He told all his friends how easy I was. He told them everything we'd done the previous day. “Cassie the slut”, he called me, and they were all laughing. He said they should all have a go, not that I was worth it.'

I felt sick, and I edged closer to her, putting my arm around her shoulder.

‘What did you do?' I finally asked.

‘That's the worst.' Her long hair was covering her face, but I could see one tear, sliding, complete and round, down to the tip of her nose, where it stayed, perfectly still, until she wiped it away with her hand. ‘I should have given him the finger, I should have told him what I thought, I should have done something, but I didn't. I was scared and upset and I felt so ashamed, and I think I started crying and then I ran.'

We stayed silent. There was no sound except the constant rush of cars, and from somewhere, on the other side of the grass, the bark of a dog.

‘He's a total arsehole,' I eventually said.

‘I just wanted someone to like me.' She looked up at me now, her pale eyes wide and open and vulnerable in the glare of the light. ‘You know, I wanted someone to think I was special. And I thought he did.'

I told her that she
was
special. Her mum thought so, Sonia and I thought so, lots of people thought so. I told her all the things that people say when someone is upset, a rush of words that don't seem to mean all that much, that are like a soothing bland salve you put on an open cut in the hope of protecting that rawness from the harshness of the world. And then I stopped, and I took her hands in mine and I made her face me.

‘You know, you should be angry.' As I spoke, I felt the anger rising in me, a heat in my blood, my limbs firm, smooth and tight. ‘Where does he live?'

She looked at me, smiling nervously. And then she pointed to a high liver-coloured block of flats with white besser brick balconies. It was the block behind her own, the one next to Lyndon's.

‘Do you know which one?'

She shook her head.

I picked up my board and began to walk towards the road. She didn't follow me immediately, but when I reached the crossing, I heard her, right behind me.

‘What are you going to do?'

I turned to face her. ‘No,' I eventually said. ‘What are we going to do?'

She shook her head. ‘I don't want to see him.' And the look on her face was one of horror. ‘Truly.'

‘Why?' I asked her. ‘He's the one who should feel ashamed.'

The glass doors at the entrance to the flats were open, rolled up newspapers tossed into the lobby. The carpet was threadbare and the fluorescent light in the low stucco ceiling was still on, flickering and humming. I ran my fingers down the list of names, the plastic letters pinned into the plastic backing, all behind a glass case that had been cracked and never repaired.

The Bensons were on the fourth floor.

‘I don't want to go up.' Cassie was begging, looking genuinely sick at the thought.

The truth was, I hadn't really worked out what we were going to do, and now that we were here I was losing my nerve, probably because her fear was so obvious, and I didn't want to her to feel like she had made an even worse fool of herself. I was about to suggest something petty, like throwing a rock up to his window, or knocking on his door and running away, when I changed my mind. I hated him for what he'd done, and I didn't know why she should be the one feeling so awful.