Give Me Truth (8 page)

The things you do for friends. This afternoon Glenna and I watch Megan play in the netball semi-final. I didn't try out for netball because I saved myself for hockey. I wasn't picked for hockey and now I hate sport. Glenna doesn't care for it much either. If someone threw a ball at her she'd scream. In between great netball moments she scribbles in her notebook. It's a poem about sex, she says. Glenna has a rich fantasy life.

Soon the game is over and Megan's team has been thrashed. ‘But hey,' she says, ‘it's not about winning or losing. It's about who looks best in their uniform.' She throws up her hand. ‘I vote for me!'

Afterwards we go back to Glenna's place because it's her turn to feed us. She scrounges up cold sausages
and lemonade.

‘Lemonade?' Megan scowls. ‘Come on. Look harder.'

‘Beer?'

We reply with eager nods.

‘You got it.'

Glenna burrows into the fridge and comes up with three stubbies.

‘Here,' she says, handing them out, ‘but if my mum and dad come home, hide them. They've got this big thing against me drinking.'

‘Typical,' Megan comments. ‘Parents are such hypocrites.'

How right she is. Hypocrites. Like a father who tells his daughter all her life to be honest and then, first chance he gets …

‘We should drink to something,' Glenna suggests. ‘Clink our bottles together – make a toast. You want to do that?'

‘Okay.' Megan goes first. ‘My toast is to good times.'

‘To good times,' we chorus and tap our bottles against each other's.

Glenna is next. ‘I propose a toast to love.'

Megan's eyes bulge. ‘Love? Have you suddenly got a boyfriend?'

‘No.'

‘You have so – you can't lie to me – who is it?'

‘It's too early to talk about.'

I recall her sex poem and blurt out, ‘Have you done it with him?'

‘No!'

There's that telltale redness again. It's like a neon sign flashing
GUILTY GUILTY
.

‘And if I have it's no one's business! Okay? Far out! You two are unreal! You're even worse than my parents!'

‘But who is he?'

‘Mister Nobody!'

‘Come on, Glenna. You can't tease us like that. We won't be able to sleep tonight.'

‘Tough.'

I can remember us holding hands as we crossed the road, little girls together. Glenna had her hair in plaits then. Megan was gangly and shapeless. I was the solid, bossy one, who told them when it was okay to cross. We were the kids who hugged each other in celebration because we all had nits at the same time. If you can hug for nits, you can hug for sex.

‘Come here.' I hold out my arms and they are as good as magnets, snaring first Glenna, then Megan.

‘This is nice.' Glenna's head rests on my shoulder. ‘But we really haven't had sex. We've only kissed. Once.'

Megan steps back, looking disappointed. ‘Is that all?'

‘Yes – I told you but you wouldn't believe me.'

‘Of course we wouldn't believe you.' I say, breaking off from the hug. ‘You're making a toast to love and writing sex poems. What else would we think?'

‘Sex poems?' Megan has the tone of an outraged school principal. ‘No one told me about that.'

‘Oh, give me a break.' Glenna shakes her head. ‘I write all kinds of poems. And as for a toast to love, I just want it to happen. For all of us. Is there something wrong with hoping for that?'

Megan clenches her eyes shut. ‘I'm not very happy with you, Glenna.' She pauses to blow her nose. ‘You're deliberately trying to make me cry. But it won't work.'

It works.

I flop into an armchair, swig my beer, and hunker down into the cool leather as low as I can. Megan and Glenna copy me. It goes unspoken but I think each of us has pretty much the same feeling. In this crack in time nothing can touch us; not school or boyfriends or even families. For now the world stops and the only thing we want is what we already have-friendship.

‘Hey.' Megan crashes into the reverie. ‘You didn't give us
your
toast, Caitlin.'

My mind flies straight to Mum and Dad. I want to make a toast to forgiveness, to giving someone another chance, but they'd be straight onto me with questions and I'd tell them everything. Can't take a chance on that.

‘Here's to us.' Smiling, I clink my bottle against theirs. ‘To us, forever.'

 

Late-night phone calls to Lanny become a regular thing. Finally I get past seeing only the flaming red hair and the cornball jokes. That was an outline. Now he's coloured in, he's real. But still he's not my boyfriend, no matter how much Megan and Glenna go on about it. As I keep insisting to them, I only like him. Full stop. He's thoughtful, and, in his own rough-headed knockabout way, he's sweet. I feel I can tell him anything.

Tonight we're rambling at top speed over topics ranging from animal cruelty to the existence of God, to the colour of Lanny's socks and my underwear, to the HSC, to jobs, and finally, to the meaning of life.

In summary – Lanny thinks that some cricket player is God. He wears green socks. (Lanny, not God or the cricket guy.) I wear plain knickers, white and blue, but because he'll never find out the truth, I tell him they're lacy and red. I'm going on to do the HSC. He isn't much into school. I'm thinking of being a pharmacist. He's going to work in his cousin's door factory. And he hates cruelty to animals, same as me. ‘But,' he adds, ‘I'd kills animals in the wild and eat them if I was starving. Not koalas, though.'

‘Too cute and cuddly?' I say.

‘Nah. Too much fur.' His voice crackles down the
phone. ‘You'd be pullin' it out of your teeth all night.'

I tell him he's weird. He says he already knows.

As for the meaning of life, Lanny is still trying to figure it out, but he suspects it has something to do with cars and cricket. I'm one jump ahead of him. I know that the meaning of life is happiness: finding it, sharing it, losing it, finding it all over again.

‘You happy?'

‘Most of the time. You?'

‘Same.'

‘What would you give it – life – out of ten?'

‘I dunno. Depends.'

‘On?'

‘On when. Like, school days would be a five or six. Weekends, holidays, they'd be a twelve. What would you give it?'

‘Same … except sometimes at my place even weekends and holidays are bad.'

‘Why's that?'

‘Aw, you know, family stuff.'

‘You want to talk about it?'

‘Yes I do, but …'

‘What's holdin' you back? I'm the only one that's gunna hear.'

I hide under the blankets of my bed, the room as dark as a cave. It feels safe here, safe enough to let the words stumble out to find him.

‘Well, my mum and dad … I think they're going to split up.'

‘Jeez. Sorry, Caitlin. What's been happenin'?'

‘Fights. Arguments. Mum's been really angry for so long. Now they're not even talking to each other. I've kept hoping they'd work it out. I told myself all they needed was more time. But the longer they stay together, the worse it gets. I don't think they've got any chance, Lanny. I wish I knew what to do.'

‘I'm comin' over.'

‘It's ten-thirty.'

‘I'm comin' over.'

 

The house is still. Mum and Rory are in their bedrooms and Dad's legs jut over the edge of the couch. He doesn't stir as I tiptoe past him and open the front door.

I sit on the doorstep for ten minutes, more and more regretful that I confided in Lanny. It's a mistake. You don't share your big secrets with someone unless that person is special to you. That's what he must be thinking right now as he drives over here. He's going to get so hurt if I'm not careful. You give a guy like Lanny hope and then snatch it away, it's not fair.

The mobile is in my hand and I hit his number.

‘Caitlin?'

‘I don't want you to come here, Lanny. Turn around
and go home. We'll talk some other time.'

‘I'm almost there.'

‘You're not listening. I don't
want
you here.'

The words spring out like sharpened knives. He's silent and, I imagine, bleeding.

‘I'm sorry. I just don't want you to get the wrong idea.'

‘What idea's that?'

‘That there's something going on between us – I mean, something more than friendship. I'm not going to lie to you. Okay? At first I was glad you were coming over. Then I realised it was for purely selfish reasons. It had nothing to do with wanting
you
, Lanny – oh God, that sounds so bad. I was being a baby. I just wanted someone to hold my hand and you were closest. But it's no more than that. I like you – a lot. I don't want to hurt you. Do you understand what I'm saying?'

‘No. You'll have to tell me all over again.'

‘What do you mean?'

A car turns into our street.

Lanny.

He stops in front of my house, leans across the seat and opens the door. ‘Now do you want to run all that past me one more time?'

‘I appreciate you coming over here. But I'll be fine now. Just talking to you was enough. Please go home.'

‘You don't feel like going for a ride in my brilliant car?'

‘One day I will. Not now. It's very late.'

‘Did I tell you that I finally decided on a name for it?'

‘No. What's it called?'

‘I named it after you.'

‘Caitlin?'

‘Not quite – I'll show you.' He digs into his pocket. ‘I got this guy I know to make a little tin nameplate – here it is. I'm going to glue it on the front of the glove box. Only charged me twenty bucks. Check it out.'

He hands me the nameplate. In silver letters it says
Hunny
.

‘Good, eh? See, it's because I think you're a hunny. Beautiful, you know? So I named my car in your honour.'

I'm too touched by the thought to correct his spelling.

‘You don't mind, do yer, Caitlin?'

This guy. He sneaks up on you. I keep pushing him away and then he says or does something that wrecks all my plans. There's no stopping him. He's like the Terminator. I reject his every move and now he uses his secret weapon – his precious car – bad spelling and all. It's very unfair of him to be so nice.

‘It's sweet of you, Lanny. Thank you.'

‘Then will you come for a drive with me?'

I hesitate, but then … ‘Why not?' I clamber into the car. ‘It's not every girl who has a car named after her.'

‘Cool!' He grins like a kid on Christmas Day as he switches on the ignition key. But the grin slips away as he turns off the key. ‘I forgot,' he says. ‘Almost out of petrol. I'll have enough to get home, but that's it. You want to just sit with me for a while? You don't have to talk if you don't feel like it.'

I nod and lean back in the seat, realising more than ever that I enjoy being around Lanny.

‘Sometimes, real late, I sit on the back steps at home.' He pauses to listen. ‘This is
exactly
what it's like.' He whispers the next bit. ‘Even the night is asleep.'

Like all of us, there are many different shades to him. Usually I see the firecracker side. Bright lights and noise. Always something to say. Forever going for laughs. Now he's calm and it flows into me. Soon I'm telling him more about Mum and Dad. It's like I'm murmuring secrets into a pillow, the way I've done so many times, only now there's a friend listening and caring. I can't bring myself to talk about the affair. ‘
Dad did something pretty bad'
, tells him enough. The thing I hear myself saying the most is that I'm scared. The only life I've known, that Rory's known, is about to end. It's a plane falling out of the sky and we're directly underneath it. Yes, I'm scared.

‘It's going to be okay,' he says.

They are scarecrow words. There's nothing inside them at all. Sometimes just saying them is enough to chase off your fears. But not this time.

‘No, it's not, Lanny. I know you're trying to help but you don't understand what it's like.'

‘I might. You never know.'

The way he says it, I think I
do
know.

‘Did you have the same thing happen, Lanny?'

‘Yeah, but a long time ago, so it doesn't really count now.'

‘Of course it counts. Will you tell me about it?'

‘Not a lot to tell. The old man left when I was nine.'

‘How did you handle that?'

‘I didn't – not very well, anyway.' Lanny winds down his window. He breathes in the crisp air as though he needs it before he can continue. ‘Bawled me head off for a while. Dunno why I bothered now. He wasn't worth it.'

He stares ahead at the windscreen as if he's nine years old again.

‘Do you still see him?'

‘No way. Haven't for years. Don't want to, either. He's a loser. Used to hate him for runnin' out on us. But I don't anymore. Wouldn't waste me time thinkin' about him. Now he's nothin'. Not even dead. He doesn't exist.'

I tell him I'm sorry.

‘Nothin' to be sorry about,' he says. ‘Not a thing.'

I command my tear ducts to stay shut, but they don't listen.

‘You're going to be all right, Caitlin. Don't be sad.'

I don't tell him that the tears are more for him than
me. My dad is always going to love me, as I'll love him. Right now Lanny is the one who needs the scarecrow words, but I can't think of any. There is only one thing that might work, one dangerous thing.

I kiss him. On the lips. My eyes are closed and so are his. It's a sort of toes-in-the-edge-of-the-water kiss. Careful. Testing. I'm prepared to plunge in deep. I think I want to. But I don't feel anything, like you're supposed to. It's a friend's kiss and he knows it because he doesn't try to take it any further.