Fireball (23 page)

‘Having fun?' she asked.

‘Not really. Where's Chris?'

One of her cups was empty, now. She peered into it and frowned.

‘He's ignoring me. He's acting weird.'

‘Oh.'

She finished off the other cup, then held them both up.

‘Time to reload.'

I watched her go. Wherever she went, mannequins trailed after her. It wasn't her fault, really. She couldn't help that most guys are aggro perverts who walk around with a permanent hard-on. Later on Chris had to deck this one guy. There were tons of other scraps, too. That's the problem with toga parties. If you get a bunch of drunken assholes together with all these half-naked girls, there's obviously going to be problems. The whole place started to spark and crackle with this crazy violent energy. Jules had built the bomb, and the girls acted like a sort of primer. The only thing missing was the detonator.

I'm not saying Chris was entirely innocent. A mob needs a leader. Everybody knows that. But the leader can't take all the blame for the mob. I mean, how could one guy fight two dozen cops and tear a house apart all by himself? Not even Chris could do that. It's pretty obvious that he had plenty of help. The only difference was that none of the help got arrested. A handful of them got thrown in the drunk tank, but just long enough to sober up. Not us. We were stuck in there all night. Bates must have loved that. I'm pretty sure he wanted them to pin the whole thing on Chris – the usual suspect. It almost worked, too.

Halfway through the party I found Chris standing alone on the back porch. He was hunched over the balcony rail, staring into the darkness.

I snuck up behind him in my ghost costume.

‘Boo.'

He didn't even smile.

‘What's up man?' I asked.

‘I'm sick of this.'

‘Me, too. Let's blow this pop stand.'

‘There's nowhere to go that's any better.'

Then he puked. It wasn't much – barely more than a gag. I guess he'd had too much punch. Or maybe the party was actually nauseating him. Either way, this mouthful of orange vomit spattered onto the patio below us. There were a bunch of mannequins down there.

One of them looked up.

‘Nice shot, buddy.'

‘Shut the fuck up or I'll kill you.'

I winced. I thought we were in for a fight, but the guy decided to play it safe and avoid a beat down. Him and his buddies sidled away. Chris didn't relax, even once they were out of sight. He clenched and unclenched his fist, as if he were crushing a tennis ball. He'd already punched out that treat for perving on Karen and I knew more fighting was on the way. I just didn't know how much more.

36

Jules got a bit weird in the week before his party.

Come to think of it, Jules has always been a bit weird. When we were younger, one thing he used to do was buy Chris's clothes off him. Seriously. His parents gave him all this super expensive clothing, but he only wanted to wear Chris's old jeans and hoodies and t-shirts. He'd pay twenty bucks for an outfit. Chris didn't mind. Most of his clothes he got at second-hand shops, anyway. I found the whole thing pretty bizarre. I mean, me and Chris had pretty similar taste, but I wouldn't have wanted to wear his clothes.

But basically, Julian had a tendency to get all obsessive like that, and Karen brought it out in him.

‘Hey, sex-kitten. Are you in bed?'

It was after the funeral that he started phoning her.

‘Julian?'

‘That's right, gorgeous.'

He phoned her every night. I called her occasionally, too, but I only called when I wanted her opinion on something. You know – like the weather. He called her for no reason at all. The phone would ring and Jules would be on the other end, talking in this low, sultry voice.

‘What does he talk about?' I asked her.

‘Nothing. That's the problem.'

I grinned. ‘Maybe he's after midnight taps.'

She hit me, playfully. ‘Don't ever tell Chris, okay?'

I wouldn't have, if Jules had left it at that. But he took it too far, like always. He showed up at her house with a bouquet of flowers. He did that twice. He also texted little poems to her. They weren't cute poems, either. They were creepy. I know, because she showed me one. It went:
I am the bee, fast and strong. You are the flower, soft and delicate. I will pollinate you, little flower.
Me and Julian had been friends for a long time, and I'd always thought that he was an okay guy. But when I read that, I had to admit that he was a bit of a nutball.

Occasionally, Karen caught him following her. She'd be over at Park Royal, or in Pacific Centre, and all of a sudden Jules would be there. He always acted surprised that they'd run into each other. Who knows? Maybe he really was surprised. Maybe they just happened to frequent the same shops. But it seemed pretty damned suspicious to me. He usually ended up offering her a ride home. She accepted once or twice, too. Just for kicks. She told me all about it. In the car, he rolled down the windows and played his dad's Frank Sinatra CD for her. No fucking joke. I bet he thought that was super romantic.

‘Doesn't it creep you out?' I asked her.

‘Oh, he's harmless. I think it's kind of cute.'

He was about as cute as a sex maniac, or a serial killer. Him and his bees and his fucking Frank Sinatra music. I'd had enough. That afternoon, I told Chris everything.

‘Are you shitting me?'

‘No, man. She didn't tell you because she thought you'd kill him.'

He laughed. We were down in the Cove, fishing off the government dock.

‘Are you?'

‘Am I what?'

‘Going to kill him?'

Chris checked his line and squinted at the water. ‘That would be too easy.'

I snickered, like an evil little sidekick. He was right, of course. There'd be no point in giving Julian a beat down. At the same time, this was too bizarre to let slide. Chris had to do something, and he did. The next time the four of us were together, he clarified things for Jules. We were in my basement, watching a movie. It was a stupid creature feature about killer leeches. None of us were into that kind of stuff any more – it just seemed boring.

Halfway through I heard this wet noise, like a cat licking milk. I looked over. Chris and Karen were kissing. They had their mouths open and I could see their tongues. I could see that and I could see Jules. He had a sick expression on his face, as if he'd been punched in the stomach. Before the movie even ended, he made an excuse and went home. I didn't. Chris and Karen kept kissing. It was almost like they'd forgotten I was there. I sat back and watched. It was ten times better than the movie.

37

Bates came back with the sole intention of shutting the party down. That much was obvious. Otherwise he wouldn't have brought a dozen cops with him. If there had only been a few people in the house he still would have broken it up. Of course, there weren't just a few.

There were at least a hundred – maybe more.

‘Jules!' somebody yelled. ‘Those fucking cops are back!'

A bunch of us herded towards the door. Something was going to happen. You could feel it. Julian jostled his way to the front. He could barely stand. His toga was in tatters and his laurel crown sat at a funny angle on his head. Chris and I followed, keeping him upright.

People pressed against the windows.

‘Jesus – there's six squad cars out there.'

‘Here they come!'

Knock-knock.

‘Who is it?' Jules said.

We all snickered. He could barely talk.

‘It's the police!' The voice was muted, weak. ‘Open up!'

Jules did. There was a cluster of them on the porch. Bates stood at the front, with a smug little smile on his face. You could tell he'd been waiting for this all night. On his coffee break, he'd probably snuck into the toilet to pull his goalie and fantasise about it.

Jules grinned. ‘What's up, Batesy?'

‘We're shutting this party down. Clear everybody out.'

‘What?'

‘You heard me.'

Jules was dumbstruck. You could see it in his face. This was his big night, his coup. He honestly couldn't believe they were breaking up his party. He didn't know what to say.

Chris did.

He said, ‘Fuck you, pig.'

And slammed the door in his face. Boom.

Somebody brought a camera to the toga party – one of those little digital video cameras. If it weren't for that, we wouldn't really know what happened that night. But I saw the footage, and the camera caught it all. When Chris locks them out, everybody cheers. A second later, the cops break down the door – they kick it right off its hinges. I've never seen anything like it. The door goes flying and they pour in, this blue wave that crashes against the group of us gathered in the hall. They pull out their nightsticks and start hitting at random. When you study the tape, it's pretty obvious that those cops had absolutely no plan. They just assumed that if they thumped a few people and busted a few heads, then that would be the end of it.

It wasn't. People started fighting back.

On the video, Chris is at the very front, swinging his fists in a windmill. Then the windmill connects with the face of this one cop who's wearing glasses. Bam. The glasses go flying, like a frightened grasshopper jumping off his face. I'm in the frame, too – stumbling around in my ghost costume. I look pretty hilarious, actually. You can tell that I can't see a goddamn thing. I walk straight into this scrawny cop, who grabs me for no reason.

I remember that part pretty well, but I didn't know it was a cop at the time. I just thought he was some gearbox trying to fight me. We wrestled for a bit and around us everybody else was doing the same thing. That was when the cops totally wet the bed. In the middle of that madness they busted out their mace and started spraying it everywhere. I'm not exaggerating, either. They really did spray it everywhere: all over us, all over the house. They even managed to get each other. Basically, the whole thing was one giant fuck up.

Looking back, it's a miracle that nobody got shot.

38

‘Come on – let's see who can hold their breath the longest.'

That was another thing about Julian. He loved having stupid competitions.

‘Fuck off, Jules.'

Chris, Karen and I were lying around Julian's pool, letting the sun pound us flat against the stone patio. But Jules couldn't relax. He kept standing up and sitting down, standing up and sitting down. Also, he was drinking from this giant water bottle. He must have guzzled at least a litre of water before he mustered up the courage to whip off his shirt. Normally he did that sort of discreetly, because of his birthmark, but just then he was dying to show off his overblown muscles. He flexed them for us as he paraded back and forth across the patio. He'd been working on his fake tan, too. I don't know if he'd been popping pills or hitting the tanning salon or what, but either way his skin was getting pretty orange.

‘You're chicken,' he said to Chris.

‘Fuck off, Jules.'

‘You think I'll beat you.'

‘Fuck off, Jules.'

There was no way he'd convince Chris. Not a chance.

Karen said, ‘Would you guys quit bickering?'

We were just like a family. A dysfunctional family on the verge of breaking down.

‘You guys are such pussies,' Jules said.

He still couldn't get over them kissing. I bet he'd been awake all night thinking about it. The only response he could come up with was this competition. Obviously, it meant a lot to him.

I stood up. ‘Fine. You go first.'

‘Right on, man.' He clapped me on the back. ‘You can use my watch to time me.'

His watch looked like something out of a science fiction movie. There were dials and levers and about six hundred buttons. He showed me which button to press for the timer. Then he eased himself into the water. His birthmark looked darker underwater, almost like blood.

‘All right,' I said, starting the clock, ‘go!'

‘I'm not ready, yet.'

I reset the clock while Jules took these deep breaths. He breathed in and out for about a minute, closing his eyes on every exhale. I didn't think he'd ever stop.

‘Tell me when you're going, man.'

‘Okay. Now.'

He went under. I started the clock a little late but I didn't tell him that. It was his own fault for having so many buttons on his stupid watch. He didn't need the extra time, anyway. He held his breath for over two minutes. Even I was impressed. The thing is, I'm pretty sure he'd spent weeks practising, waiting for the chance to show off to Karen. That would have been just like him. At the end he popped up, heaving and spluttering.