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Authors: Jessica Davidson

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic

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BOOK: Everything Left Unsaid
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‘You mean the pinkie swear you forced me into when we were thirteen?’

She pulls a face and turns her head to watch a couple wearing matching outfits jog past, but it’s pretty obvious she’s still waiting for an answer. I pretend to think about it.

‘Maybe. Alex dared Sam to wear a dress, so who knows, I might take him instead.’

She goes to throw a chip at me, then spots a one-legged seagull pretending to look like it’s starving and pegs the chip at it, instead.

‘It’s faking, Juliet. It’s totally got the other leg tucked up in its feathers. You sucker.’

‘Hey, if a seagull can come up with a ploy that clever, it deserves the chip.’

I can’t help smiling at her, and she frowns from behind her sunglasses. She probably thinks I’m laughing at her about the seagull thing.

‘What?’ she asks impatiently.

‘Nothing.’ But I want to say
‘everything’. Everything about you. How you take pity on hapless seagulls
.
The freckles that spread across your shoulders, the way you
fit in my arms just right, the smell of that perfume you wear. I think I’m falling for you
.

 

 

 

Juliet

I’m about to throw something at Tai, who still looks like he wants to laugh at me, when he glances at his watch and pulls a face. ‘We need to go.’

‘I don’t want to.’ I pout. ‘Do you really have to go? Can’t we just stay here?’ I push him to the ground and pin him there by lying on top of him.

Tai groans. ‘I have to go, Juliet. It’s Sam’s birthday. His eighteenth.’

‘Oh, fine, be all logical then.’ I sit up again, hug my knees and look at the waves. Tai sits up too, and elbows me in the ribs.

‘Hey, don’t be like that. And anyway, I’ll see you at his place tonight, yeah?’

‘Yeah, I’ll be there.’ Sam’s birthday is in two parts – skirmish with a couple of mates this afternoon, then an actual party tonight. ‘Is it true his olds have hired a security guard?’

‘Dunno. They were pretty full-on about nothing being said on Facebook, though. They’re still paranoid.’

‘I’ve got no idea why. Who doesn’t want five hundred strangers puking in their linen cupboard?’

‘I know, right?’ He grins. ‘I’d better go.’

We chuck the paper from the chips in the bin, grab our towels, and walk home.

I study for a while, like I promised Mum so she’d let me go tonight, before taking a shower. When she knocks on my bedroom door half an hour later I’m still wrapped in a towel.

‘What’s wrong, honey?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know what to wear,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve got nothing to wear.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ Mum smiles.

‘It’s true, Mum. And my skin is feral – look.’ I point to a pimple on my chin that’s been lurking for ages and has finally erupted just in time for tonight. ‘And my hair is weird.’

‘I didn’t even see that pimple until you pointed it out.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘And your hair is just dry from the salt water and because you dye it so much. Get dressed and I’ll put some of my leave-in conditioner in it.’

As she’s combing the conditioner through my hair Mum remarks in that So Not Casual But Trying To Be way, ‘You really want to look good tonight, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

She finishes with the conditioner and I can sense her smiling. ‘You’re beautiful, Juliet.’

‘I wish, Mum.’

‘So who’s the boy?’

‘What boy?’

‘The boy that you want to impress tonight. It’s not Mick again, is it?’

‘No, it’s not him.’

She looks at me expectantly.

‘It’s Tai,’ I admit.

‘Oh.’ It’s more surprise than anything. ‘So you and Tai, you’re . . .’

‘We’re kind of going out. But it’s new, and stuff. Don’t make a big deal out of it.’

‘I suppose I should’ve seen it coming,’ she says. ‘Do you remember when the two of you decided to get married in the first grade?’

‘No.’

‘He borrowed Mia’s wedding ring while she was in the shower – she was frantic looking for it. We found the two of you in the backyard, kissing. You’d done your own lipstick and Tai was wearing Mia’s heels.’

‘Get out.’

‘It’s true. I’ve probably got a photo somewhere. So you and Tai, huh?’

‘Yeah.’ I grab a bottle of nail polish, and start filling in the bits that have chipped away. ‘I really like him.’

• • •

Mum isn’t as weird about it as I thought she would be, which is good, I guess. I can tell she’s tempted to give me a lecture on the way to Sam’s, but she just smiles, gripping the steering wheel, and says, ‘Have a good time, Juliet.’

‘Thanks, Mum.’

There aren’t five hundred people in Sam’s backyard, but there are a lot. I find Tai in the middle of a crowd, lifting up his shirt to show off the bruises from the skirmish.

As the others drift away I wrap my hands around his neck and he kisses me. ‘You look really good tonight,’ he murmurs, fingers in my hair.

‘So do you,’ I whisper, pulling him in.

‘Get a room, you two – just not in my house.’ It’s Sam. He swaps Tai’s empty beer bottle for a full one and presses something fluoro with vodka in it into my hand.

‘Happy birthday,’ I call after him as he wanders off.

‘So apparently we got married in first grade,’ I tell Tai.

‘Really?’

‘And you were wearing your mum’s heels.’

‘What?’ Tai pulls a face at that piece of information.

‘There’s probably photographic evidence, somewhere. I could so blackmail you one day.’

Alex comes up to drag us into a drinking game. It’s one of those ones where you have to concentrate, following on from what the last person says, and if you mess up you do a shot. I can’t concentrate on the game, though, so I give up and leave them to it, and go looking for the bathroom.

Tai meets me in the hallway. ‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine. I just don’t want to end up throwing up on your shoes.’

‘You’re not still thinking about assignments and stuff, are you?’

‘Nah, not that.’
It’s you, Tai. The way you kissed me tonight. The fact that ever since you and I became something more, something bigger than Just Friends, it’s hard to concentrate on anything else, hard to think about anything but you
.

 

 

 

Tai

The morning after Sam’s party, Mum corners me while I’m ransacking the bathroom drawers. It seems there was a lecture scheduled that no-one told me about.

‘What are you doing, Tai?’

‘Trying to find where you hide the Panadol. I’ve got a headache.’

‘You’re not hungover, are you?’

‘No, Mum. You always ask that.’

She opens a cabinet, reaches in, and passes me the box of Panadol. ‘So I didn’t get a chance to talk to you about this thing with you and Juliet.’

Oh god. I so don’t want to do this. ‘There’s not really a lot to talk about. It’s not really a
thing
.’

‘I know, and it’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it, but—’

‘There’s nothing to talk about, Mum.’

‘All I’m saying is that this is your last year of school, and you really need to make sure you’re not getting too distracted. Either of you.’

‘I won’t,’ I promise. ‘I want the uni thing too, remember?’ Unlike Juliet, who’s got no idea and will probably decide what she wants to do when she fills out the application, I’ve got it all worked out. Sam and I both want to study engineering, maybe even at the same uni. And then I’m going to go and work overseas for a few years. All I need are the marks for it.

‘Okay, Tai,’ she says, even though it sounds like she’s not quite convinced.

‘I have to go do an assignment now,’ I say, but I don’t mean it. My headache is seriously bad and I just want to sleep it off.

• • •

When I wake up the next morning my head is still pounding and I want to throw up.

Mum knocks on the door, opens it. ‘Time to get up, Tai.’

‘I can’t go to school today, Mum,’ I tell her. ‘I still have a headache.’

‘Not a very convincing reason not to go to school, Tai.’

‘Mum, I’m serious – it really hurts.’

‘Take a Panadol,’ she suggests.

‘They’re not working.’

‘Okay,’ she says doubtfully. ‘But if you do anything that makes you seem even slightly better, I’m driving you to school.’ When she leaves the room I close my eyes and try to sleep it off. The headache doesn’t go away, but I feel a bit better after I spew.

When I still haven’t got out of bed by the time my brothers get home from school Mum sends Hendrix in to poke me.

‘You’re so faking it,’ he says, face pressed up close to mine.

‘Am not.’

‘Are you hungry, Tai? You haven’t eaten all day.’ It’s Mum, from the doorway.

‘No.’

Mum frowns and comes over to feel my forehead, like I’m a little kid.

‘You’re
always
hungry, Tai,’ Hendrix says.

‘Yeah, well I’m not today.’

‘Can I eat your dinner?’

‘Yeah, if you want.’

‘Dessert too?’

‘Fine with me.’

‘That’s it. I’m making a doctor’s appointment for first thing in the morning.’ Mum’s starting to look decidedly worried now.

I groan. ‘You can’t. I have to go to school tomorrow, at least for the morning – I have an assignment due. They take ten percent off for each day you’re late.’

‘Fine. Tomorrow afternoon, then.’

While the rest of the family is eating dinner, I go for a shower, hoping the heat of it will help. It does, sort of, and when I’m back in my room, getting dressed, my phone beeps at me.

Where were you today?
It’s Juliet.

Sick
, I text back.

Faker
, comes the reply.
Bet you did the thermometer-under-hot-water trick and started your English assignment
once your olds went to work
.

I’m grinning as I text her back.
Damn. Should’ve thought of that. Serious caffeine consumption here tonight
.

 

 

 

Juliet

The next day, Tai practically happy-dances out of the school gates for a doctor’s appointment, leaving me to an afternoon of double history without him. ‘You’re not even sick, Tai. Not doctor-sick, anyway. You just want to get out of school for an afternoon.’ Mia’s not usually the paranoid type but I’m convinced she is now. Anyway, it’s the middle of winter –
everyone’s
sick. She’s probably got that serious Last Year At School vibe that my mum’s got, too. They’re desperate to get us all through it, unscathed and uni offer in hand. Homework diaries are checked, curfews are policed and minor ailments require a GP visit.

• • •

At the bus stop on Wednesday morning Tai’s looking smug, although there’s something else I can’t quite pick behind the smile, not at first anyway. Tai tells me that the doctor checked his throat and listened to his chest, and then noticed how Tai was leaning in, head tilted to one side, to listen to some of his questions. Then the doctor checked his ears and asked some more questions. Instead of sending him away with a prescription for painkillers, the doctor gave Tai a referral for a brain scan. We sit on the bus in silence, sharing headphones, music up so loud it takes away any need to think. It takes the entire bus trip for me to process what he’s told me, and it’s only when we’re about to get off that I’ve found something to say about it all. He’ll be fine, I know it. The scan will show up nothing, of course. Rae’s mum gets migraines all the time – heaps of people do. Tai’s probably just stressed, that’s all, worn out and tired. I tell him so, and he nods a little too vigorously.

‘Yeah. I’m fine. Just year twelve and everything. Either that, or I’ll die young and leave a beautiful corpse.’

‘That’s not funny, Tai.’

An appointment is made for the scan, next Monday, and for the most part I forget all about it. Our mid-semester exams start in just over a month, and, like every year, I’m cursing myself for not studying more, for not listening more in class, for passing notes to the girls when I should’ve been listening. But this isn’t just any year – it’s the last.

Mum insists that I have to go to uni, and though I’m not entirely sure if she’s right, I don’t know what I’d do instead, so uni it is. Tai and I have worked it all out. We’re going to apply to the same uni, rent an overpriced apartment together, and live on coffee and two-minute noodles. And in between semesters, we’re going on a road trip. We don’t know where yet, just that we’re going.

The night before the scan Gen comes over to my place. She has spent the weekend packing. Her dad didn’t get the lounge suite, but Gen decided to live with him, so he doesn’t care about leaving behind expensive Italian leather anymore. Mum is slightly horrified by this news when I tell her at dinner.

‘But who’s going to buy her tampons? And iron her school uniform?’

‘They have an ironing lady, Mum. And she buys her own tampons.’

Mum starts muttering darkly about Dad and her own lack of an ironing lady, so I excuse myself, saying I have to study.

Instead I spend the night staring blankly at my history textbook.

I know Tai’s fine, really, but I’ll feel a lot better when the scan is over.

July

Tai

I don’t sleep the night before the scan; at least it feels like it. I don’t know why I’m so antsy about it – if it was something bad, I’d know, right? That’s what I keep telling myself, but there’s just enough fear there to take the edge off the certainty and leave something hollow and unsatisfactory in its place.

When I was a kid, maybe about eleven, and Hendrix was a baby, Dad took me out fishing with him, making a big deal out of me being a big kid now there was a baby around. He let me scale a fish I caught, and I was so busy trying to get it perfect, show him how well I could do it, that I didn’t notice I was cutting into my thumb until there was blood everywhere, all over the fish. I had to go to the doctor’s and when they put the stitches in, I cried – not because it hurt or because of the needle but because I’d messed up scaling the fish, let Dad down.

If I didn’t realise I’d cut my thumb, it’s possible there
is
something there, maybe something that’s been there for a while, maybe something bad, that I’ve got no idea about.

Instead of sleeping, like I should be, I text Juliet.
You awake?

Am now. You ok?

Yeah, just can’t sleep. Too much caffeine or something.

You can sleep in tomorrow. Lucky.

Yeah, I know. Wish the appointment was a bit later, could have a sleep in and a swim.

Stop it. Some of us have to go to school at the crack of dawn.

Sorry. Hey – what if something’s wrong?

You’d know. You’d have to know.

Yeah?

Definitely. How could you not?

I guess.

Night, Tai.

Night, girl.

• • •

At breakfast, Mum looks at me anxiously. ‘Are you ready, Tai?’

‘Yeah.’ I shrug.
No big deal
.

‘Lot of fuss about nothing, hey, Tai?’ Dad grins at me.

‘I reckon. At least it gets me out of biology this morning.’

‘Hey, Tai?’ River swipes a piece of my toast, and looks at me seriously. ‘What if, what if . . .
you don’t have a brain
?’ He starts to giggle.

‘I’ll have to join a gang of zombies and eat yours.’

He nearly chokes on the toast while Mum tells me off. Even so, I can’t resist doing a zombie walk towards my room when I go to get dressed.

• • •

Alherm Hospital is a maze of mint-green hallways, fluorescent lighting and grey furniture. When we find the radiology department Mum pulls the referral out of her handbag, directing me to one of the hard, grey chairs to wait.

The scan itself is okay. The nurse gives me one of those tie-up hospital gowns to put on and I lie in this big tube while it whirs and grinds. I wish I had my iPod or my phone or something. Instead I close my eyes and try to pretend I’m somewhere else, but it doesn’t work. I’ve never been any good at stuff like that.

When it’s over I put my clothes back on and toss the hospital gown in a basket in the corner. We’ve got some time to kill before the doctor’s appointment where I get the results, so Mum and I follow the signs to the cafeteria and look up at the menu.

‘What do you feel like, Tai? Lasagne? Fish and salad?’ Mum’s staring at the menu, shiny-eyed, gripping her handbag like it’s about to leap off her shoulder. Oh god, I think Mum is trying not to cry. I’m not sure I can handle that. I pretend to think about her question, but I’m not really hungry. Nerves, probably.

‘Um, lasagne.’

We take our trays to a table and sit down, but Mum ignores her plate of food and fishes her phone out of her bag, stabbing at the buttons like they’ve done something to irritate her.

I take a bite of lasagne. It’s like cardboard in my mouth. Mum’s still attempting to send a text and I’m not hungry, so I pull out my phone and check it. Juliet’s sent me a text.

How did it go?

I drum my fingers on the table, trying to work out what to tell her when I don’t really know anything yet.
Good, I guess. Just waiting for the report
.

There’s still ages to wait after lunch, ages spent sitting in a waiting room flicking through magazine after magazine. Some celebrity getting divorced, another one in rehab, a recipe for tuna pie . . . they’re all the same. Finally the door opens and the doctor calls us in. ‘Tai Hudson?’

I walk into his office, Mum following behind. It’s too cold in here. I shiver as he points to a chair.

‘Why don’t you sit down and we’ll have a chat about the results?’

I sit down, and watch him. He seems youngish and he smiles at me like he means it. But then he looks at the papers on his desk and hesitates. I’m vaguely grateful for the chill in the room, distracting enough to let his pause, the look of – sadness? – in his eyes slip by almost unnoticed. I wish he’d hurry up so I can get out of here.

‘Well, Tai,’ he says. ‘It appears we’ve found something a little . . . abnormal on your scan today.’

Uh oh.

He stands up and places a sheet of pictures from the scan onto a lit-up white screen behind his desk. Taking a pen from his pocket, he points to one of the pictures.

‘This here is your brain. And here, everything looks normal’ – his pen traces an invisible line along until it reaches an imperfect white circle – ‘but this part, here? It’s not supposed to be there.’

‘What does that mean, exactly?’ Mum asks. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

A knot settles deep in my stomach. I stare at my shoes.

‘We’ll have to do a biopsy to confirm the results, but I’d say it’s likely that we’re looking at a medulloblastoma.’

A what?
I look up at him.

‘It’s a kind of brain tumour, Tai.’

‘A brain tumour.’ It sounds flat, and I have to force the words. My stomach is in knots, and my head feels heavy. It’s like I can feel the weight of the tumour now it’s been seen, been labelled and defined.

‘But what does that mean?’ Mum insists, gripping my hand. What she means is,
what are you going to do about it?

‘The next step will be a biopsy, where we remove a sample from the tumour to examine. We’ll have the results within a few days. That will help us know exactly what we’re dealing with.’

‘And then what?’ Mum’s voice is pinched. Thin.

‘We’ll send the results off to your GP, and on to Dr Dellar, the oncologist—’

‘Oncologist. You mean cancer.’

He rushes to fill the silence in the room, using phrases like ‘survival rates’ and ‘new treatments are being used all the time’ and ‘let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?’

He talks about the different surgeries and chemo, talking and talking until the room swims around me.

‘I think I’m going to pass out,’ I say. He offers me a glass of water and tells me it’s a normal reaction. He’d know, I guess. It’s a good thing one of us does, because I have no fucking idea whether seventeen-year-olds with newly diagnosed brain tumours usually pass out or not.

They pass words back and forth, but I don’t hear them. Somewhere during this conversation I got stuck on the word ‘tumour’ while they kept going and now I can’t keep up. I stare at the pictures from the scan, abstract swirls of black and grey surrounding that white space. They could be pictures of anything, but I’m supposed to believe those pictures are of me, of what’s
wrong
with me. ‘Abnormal’ is right. I manage to tune back in, and they’re scheduling a biopsy. The doctor looks at me.

‘Does that sound okay to you, Tai?’

I don’t answer.

In the car on the way home, Mum drives white-knuckled, without talking.

‘Mum?’

‘Tai?’ She’s staring at the road and won’t look at me.

‘Am I going to be okay?’

I’m waiting for her to say something reassuring, something so that it all makes sense, but she acts like she didn’t even hear the question, the way she does when my little brothers are being annoying. The rest of the way home, I stare into the windows of the cars driving past, trying to guess where they’re going, what the people in the cars are like, what they do – anything to distract myself from crying.

River and Hendrix have left a pile of plastic army men in different poses outside my door, and in the hurry to get into my room, to close the door and lock it, I stand on one. Swearing, I limp into the room and slam the door behind me. Pretending the tears welling are from the pain of stepping on the army guy only works for so long.

River knocks on the door, yelling out to me. I don’t answer. Eventually, the sound of his footsteps fade to silence.

I run my hands through my hair, pausing at the spot where the doctor said the tumour is. It’s been growing for years, he told me. How could I not know? How could I not feel it? I don’t understand that, didn’t even really understand a lot of what the doctor said.

It feels like a joke, the whole thing.

I haven’t even been sick, not really. I mean, I had that cough, but it probably had nothing to do with it anyway. And I’ve had headaches every now and then, but doesn’t everyone? And they weren’t even that bad; I didn’t go to the doctor for them or anything. But there it was, the whole time, growing inside me. I think about the biopsy, about a needle going into my brain. I never really screamed getting needles as a kid, was never petrified of them, but I don’t really want one in my brain, you know? But that’s the only way to know how bad this thing really is.

Mum calls me to dinner but I don’t want to leave my room, even though I’m starving. I don’t want to face them tonight.

Dad knocks at my door. ‘You’ve got to eat something, Tai,’ he says. His voice is subdued.

‘Not hungry,’ I lie.

There’s a silence, then I hear him walking away.

My phone beeps, but I ignore it. Probably Juliet again. Or Sam.

I know I should text Juliet, know she’ll be worried, but I can’t bring myself to do it. What am I supposed to say to her? Lie and tell her that it’s okay, that everything was fine? Or tell her the truth, say that it’s not fine, and I don’t know if it will be? Neither of those options is even slightly appealing.

I could probably tell Sam, I reckon, because he’s a guy, because I haven’t known him as long and don’t know him quite as well – because he’s not Juliet. As cool as she is, she’s not a guy, and it’s different somehow, it just
is
. I pick up my phone and open the text. It’s from Sam.

How’d you go, mate?

Not good, mate. Got a tumour
. I can’t bring myself to send it though; it sounds too dramatic and too real all at the same time. Got myself a trumour – that’s how River said it,
trumour,
like something whispered that turns out to be horrifyingly true.

BOOK: Everything Left Unsaid
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