Leaving Jetty Road (10 page)

Now I nod in answer to her question.

“Guess what color sweaters Lise tried on today?”

She grins. “Hmm . . . Let me think. Could it have been black?”

Tim reaches past Dad across the table and helps himself to another roast potato. (It’s actually kind of weird having Tim here for dinner: he’s just started going out with some girl he met through a mate at work, and he hardly ever comes home. Not even to sleep.)

“She’s weird, your friend Lisa,” he says.

“Lise,” I say crossly. “Not Lisa.
Lise.
”

“Whatever. She
is.
Does she ever actually speak?”

“Not around you. I mean, who
would?
”

“She’s looking very fit and toned these days,” Mum remarks.

I glare at her. “What d’you mean?”

“I thought perhaps she’d gone on a bit of a diet, that’s all,” she says mildly. “You know—lost all that ‘puppy fat’ Jen Mawson’s always scolding her for.”

Mum doesn’t like Lise’s mother. It’s not surprising, I suppose: they’re total opposites. Not that I blame her, to be honest: I don’t like Lise’s mother much, either.

“She’s just getting fit,” I say defensively. “She’s taken up running. You know—that thing
you’re
not supposed to do?”

But unluckily for me, Mum fails to rise to the bait. She rests her elbow on the table, fork in her other hand. She’s got that annoying, concerned,
mulling
look on her face.

“So you don’t think she’s deliberately trying to lose weight, then, Nat?”

“Not that I know of,” I snap.

Shut up,
I’m thinking.
Shut up, shut up, shut UP.
It drives me crazy the way my mother interferes. Lise is
my
friend:
I’m
the one who’s supposed to know what’s going on in her head. Besides, what about me? What about what’s going on in
my
life?

So I don’t tell her about the bus trip home today with Lise.

We didn’t say anything to each other after she refused the ice cream. In the bus, we sat facing each other, not talking. Lise stared out the window intently. I sighed and shifted uncomfortably opposite her, trying to catch her eye. They say that’s the sign of true friendship, don’t they?—that you can sit comfortably with someone and not say anything at all. But I wasn’t comfortable. I’ve never felt like that with Lise before. It was like I was sitting with a
stranger.

Just before the bus reached her stop, Lise stood up, pushing her arms through the straps of her backpack with a grimace.

“See you, Nat.”

“Yeah. See ya.”

She squeezed her way down the aisle, pushed the door open, climbed off the bus. Through the window I saw her stop by a nearby telephone pole to tug at her sweater, pull it back down underneath her backpack. She trudged around the corner as the bus pulled away, head down, not looking back at me, not waving.

All I could think, all the way home from there, was: Something is wrong. Lise, Lise, I
know
something is wrong—

chapter sixteen

Rainy afternoon

“Y
ou want to go out on the porch?”

I come and join Josh at the sliding door.

“It looks a bit
cold,
” I say doubtfully.

He picks up my hand, threads his fingers through mine. “You big wuss.”

It’s a Sunday afternoon—dark, blustery, the rain sleeting in at the windows. I shouldn’t even be here, to be honest: I should be refusing all invitations at this stage and staying home to study. (Yes, I admit—even I am succumbing to the panic-study bug now: I’m getting so behind with my schoolwork, it’s not
funny.
) But when Josh rang in the morning as usual and invited me over, I just said
yes.
I couldn’t say no, that’s the thing; I just couldn’t resist him. I can’t
ever
resist Josh.

Today he’s been teasing me, trying to find out about the dress I’ve bought for the Formal, which is next weekend. I told him it was going to be a surprise. Now, standing at the porch door with me, he tries again.

“Let me guess. It’s black and slinky.”

I shake my head.

“Green. Velvet.”

I smile.
No.

“All right, then. It’s a big, swirly gold number, with
sequins.
”

“
Josh!”
The idea of me in sequins is too revolting to contemplate, and I give in at last. “As a matter of fact, it’s pink.”

He raises an eyebrow. “What, like—shocking pink?”

“
Pale
pink, thank you very much.”

He looks at me, considering. “
Baby
pink.” Then he sees my face, says hastily, “I mean—I didn’t mean—”

“What
did
you mean?” I ask pointedly.

“You’ll look great, Nat,” he says quickly. “I know you will.
Whatever
you wear.”

He wanders over to the stereo to put some music on, comes back to me, opens the sliding door. We stand in the doorway, looking out onto the porch, feeling the wind brush against our cheeks. I hum to the music, singing the lyrics under my breath.

“You’ve been hanging around me too long,” he says, wrapping his arms around my waist and pressing his knees into the backs of my thighs, maneuvering me out onto the porch. “You know the words to all my albums.”

We sit down on the wooden decking, our backs against the brick wall of the house. There’s a native creeper twined around the porch posts; its leaves flap wildly in the wind. I snuggle into Josh, trying to stay warm.

“So, what’s the latest on
Home and Away
?” he asks.

This is one of our regular conversations. I fill him in on the last week’s happenings.

“
Must
get a TV one of these days,” he says sarcastically when I’ve finished.

Josh thinks TV is evil. Literally, like
—evil.
It saps your creativity, he says; it’s just a huge marketing exercise. It programs you into thinking the way “they” want you to think. Sometimes I can see what he means—just like I can see what he means about the problem with McDonald’s and KFC. But I never tell him this. I like watching
Home and Away
too much.

“So anyway,” I say, “I think they’re going to get back together again in a couple of weeks. You can see it a
mile
off.”

Josh moves closer into me, not answering. He puts his hand on my thigh, just resting it there, and I can feel the weight of him through his hand, his warmth. It makes my skin tingle.

“You wearing perfume?” he asks me.

“Yeah. D’you like it? It’s called Rainforest.”

He buries his head in my neck. “You smell wonderful.”

Soon we are kissing—slowly, but with this sweet, tugging warmth growing between us. Josh’s hands are everywhere, and everywhere he touches me, I grow warmer. This is the Josh I think about at night in bed, or when I close my eyes at school and daydream: his skin, his breath, the brush of his hair across my face, his hand on my breast.

I pull back, suddenly shaky. “I should go. I’ve got
masses
of homework.”

The faintest look of irritation washes across his face and then is gone. He smiles. “Right now? You sure?”

I hesitate. “Walk me to the tram stop?”

The thing is, I’m
not
sure—not at all. Things have changed: kissing’s not enough anymore, even for me.
Soon,
I tell him silently. I promise it to myself, too:
Soon, soon . . .

chapter seventeen

Health kick

O
ne lunchtime Sofia and I sit in the rec room, gossiping. It’s a Thursday, so it’s just the two of us: Lise has choir on Thursday at lunchtime.

“It’s Lise’s birthday soon,” I say.

“I know. The day after the Formal.”

I’m surprised. Sofia’s usually hopeless with dates.

“Is she doing anything this year?”

I sigh. “She
says
she doesn’t want to. She
says
she’s got too much studying.”

Sofe rolls her eyes. “I would never have guessed.”

“I was thinking we could have a breakfast party for her.”

“You mean like a surprise one?”

I shake my head violently, appalled at the thought.

“Lise
hates
surprise parties. I just thought—something small, you know? You, me, and Lise, at my house or something. On the morning after the Formal. We could each bring something to eat.”

“Sounds nice,” says Sofia absently.

We’re sitting on the big, wide windowsill on the far side of the room. I lean with my back against the glass, looking out over the rest of the room, which is full of other Year 12s eating lunch. Sofe has one leg tucked underneath her on the sill, facing side-on to me, peering out through the window across the yard, toward the library.

“She’s vegan now, you know.”

Sofia pulls her other leg up to her chin, pulling her skirt down over her knee as she does so. “Who?”

“Lise.”

“Since when?”

“She told me the other day,” I say, shrugging. “She said it was the
next logical step.
”

I expect her to groan and roll her eyes, in typical Sofia style, but she doesn’t. She gazes out the window thoughtfully.

“Well, she’s got a point.”

“Yes, I know, but—”

She turns back to me. “But what?”

I hesitate. I don’t know how to say what I want to say. The thing is, despite what I said to Mum the other day, I can’t get rid of that picture of Lise, standing there in Rundle Mall, shivering with cold, saying, “Those size 12 jeans would be too tight for me.” I keep seeing the expression on her face when I suggested we have an ice cream: that look of panic, of guilt, of
fear.
It reminds me of Jessica Fuller—popular, pretty Jessica Fuller, darling of the trendy “in” set—who got anorexic last year and spent all her lunchtime pacing manically up and down the schoolyard, with her stockings falling in looser and looser wrinkles around her legs. All she ever said was, “I wish I was
really
skinny.” She looked so ugly. So
sick.

Is that what’s going to happen to Lise?

“Sofe,” I say carefully, “d’you think Lise is all right?”

Sofia looks puzzled. She shifts uncomfortably on the sill. “What d’you mean?”

“Well, like—have you noticed how much
weight
she’s lost this year?”

“Yes,” she says immediately. “She looks really good.”

“I s’pose—”

“Don’t you think? She’s always gone on about how fat she is. And she’s never exactly been fit, has she? Good for her, I reckon. We could
all
probably use a bit of exercise.”

“Yeah,” I say, unconvinced.

A look of impatience crosses her face.

“What’re you trying to
say,
Nat?”

“I just—Lise
worries
me sometimes, you know? I keep thinking—”

But I can’t bring myself to say the actual word. I mean, maybe I’m wrong about the whole thing. It’s like tempting fate: if I say it out loud, I might make it happen.

“It’s just a health kick,” says Sofia. “That’s all it is. She won’t stick to it. No one ever does.”

“Yeah,” I say again. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I’d
better
be right,” Sofia says darkly.

In the background, the school bell rings, its shrill electric tone dulled by the babble of lunchtime voices. Sofia unfolds herself from the windowsill, stretches backwards from her hips, her arms above her head.

“So what’re you going to make for Lise’s birthday?”

I stand up with her. “Well, I
had
thought of baking a chocolate cake—”

“Yum.”

“But she doesn’t eat that stuff anymore!” I wail. “She’s
vegan.
”

We make our way out of the rec room into the passageway. When we reach the stairs, Sofia stops suddenly and leans against the handrail, pondering. Then she says slowly, “I’ve got the
best
vegan chocolate cake recipe at home. I found it on the Net. D’you want me to get you a copy?”

“Vegan chocolate cake?” I say doubtfully.

She laughs at the expression on my face. “No, for real—it’s delicious. Lise’ll
love
it.”

“You reckon?”

“I promise. You’ll have her totally
begging
for more.”

I mean, what can I say? If I can find a recipe that makes Lise eat second helpings—that’ll prove to me that I’m wrong about her—I’ll try it.
Whatever
it is.

chapter eighteen

Formal

“S
mile!” says the photographer.

We’re standing in a booth in the foyer, Josh and I, outside the main hall. Behind us, a queue of people has formed; everyone wants to have a photo they can stick in their album and write
Year 12 Formal
underneath. I put my head on Josh’s chest and beam from ear to ear at the camera. There’s a flash, and then the photographer says, “All over now. You can pick the photo up at the end of the night.”

We stumble out of the booth into the main hall. There are glittering silver balls hanging from the ceiling, colored crepe streamers, balloons, flashing lights. The music is loud—surprisingly loud;
satisfyingly
loud—and the dance floor is already crowded. The dancers, swishing and swaying in their silk dresses and sleek tops and tails, look like gorgeous, exotic, alien fish.

Josh and I turn back to each other. I take his hand.

“You look so
cute
in pink,” he whispers into my ear.

“You don’t look bad yourself,” I say.

In fact, he looks so stunning he makes my stomach drop. His blond hair falls in a short, thick curtain over his forehead and his legs are a mile long in his black trousers. I can even see his muscles ripple faintly through his white shirt. (He’s been cycling and training really hard recently, and it
shows.
) The two dimples swim up and down his face when he smiles, like tadpoles.

“Come on,” I say quickly. “Let’s dance!”

Colored lights wash over our skin. The music pours through us, bathing everyone in a humming, pulsing throb. We swim through the crowd, out onto the dance floor.

Coming off the dance floor to get our breath back some time later, we catch sight of Sofia and Nick over at the drink table. Sofia waves.

I tug Josh’s hand. “You want to go over and say hello?”

Josh smiles down at me. There’s sweat on his forehead, and his hair is damp. He’s every bit as good a dancer as I’d hoped.

“For sure. Anyway, I’d
kill
for a drink.”

“Of lemonade, naturally.” Every year, the drink table is patrolled by the ever-vigilant members of the Volunteer Parents Formal Committee: it’s strictly soft drinks and orange juice only.

The dimples bob around his mouth again as he follows me across the dance floor. “What else?”

Sofia’s wearing a purple silky-looking dress, low-waisted and narrow in a kind of 1920s style.

“Found it in a thrift store,” she tells me, beaming. “For twenty bucks!”

Nick, looking unusually clean-cut (as in, there are no loose hairs straggling out of his ponytail or falling over his face, and he’s even shaved), exchanges pleasantries with Josh about football while Sofe and I talk.

“How do they
do
that?” Sofia complains to me. “Two intelligent guys—wouldn’t dream of mentioning the word ‘pigskin’ to either of us, hey. But get them together in the same room for a couple of minutes and you’d think they never talked about anything else.”

“Part of their genetic makeup,” I say sardonically. “Along with facial hair and biceps.”

She rolls her eyes. “And a
total
lack of brains.”

The plan is for us all to leave together, dropping Josh off on the way; I’m to stay the night at Sofe’s. Nick’s driving, supposedly so he can drop Sofia and me off and then go on home himself. Realistically, though, I know I’ll end up being shunted into the spare room so he can sleep with Sofe.

As we talk, Josh’s arm snakes around my waist. I move closer into him, feeling his skin through his shirt.

“You want to dance some more, Josh?”

He groans, more for the benefit of Nick, I suspect, than from any deep-seated unwillingness to dance.

“Already?”
Then he pinches my cheek affectionately. “Come on, then.”

I wave at Sofia as we push our way back onto the dance floor.

*                  *                  *

Toward the end of the evening, the dancing between the two of us changes. Josh notices it, too: I can feel the sudden, smooth flowing of his movements with mine, the way his breath, like mine, is growing heavier. It feels as if we’re not dancing at all—like we’re connected to each other, somehow; like I’m giving myself to him, limb by limb. Everything swells; the music rolls through us like a warm, drumming wave.

“Come back home with me,” he whispers into my ear.

“I can’t,” I protest, weakly. “You know I can’t. Nick’s giving us a lift.”

“He’s dropping me off on the way. You could just get out with me.”

“But I promised my parents—”

His lips brush against my hair, my eyelids, my lips. “Sofia’ll cover for you.”

Laughter—weird, happy, excited laughter—surges up my throat.

“You don’t
really
want to stay at Sofe’s.” His finger moves across my lips, and his arm passes lightly—accidentally?—across my breasts. “Nat?”

He’s right, of course. Sofia
will
cover for me.

We sit side by side on the edge of his bed in our Formal clothes, like a brother and sister in fancy dress.

“Are you nervous?” Josh asks.

I nod. “A bit.”

“So’m I,” he says softly.

“But it’s not the same for you!” I protest. “You’ve done this before.”

He nibbles my ear. “Not with you.”

It’s not that I’m nervous, exactly, even though—I’ll admit it—I’m trembling all over. It’s that I’m scared of being disappointed, you know? This is something I want so, so much.

“Josh?” I murmur, as he unzips my dress.

“—Nat.”

“—I love you—”

His kisses chase around my neck, down my stomach. The words wash out of me from some faraway shore.

“I do. I love you.”

His fingers stumble only once—on the bra strap.
There’s something about men and bra straps,
I remember hearing someone—Sofia? my mother, after a few glasses of white wine?—say once.
They’re incompatible. Too much for the male IQ.
So I push Josh’s fingers gently away and undo the clasp myself.

Josh smiles. He doesn’t stumble again.

People say the first time—for a girl, anyway—is never any good. Mum told me this when she gave me her “Facts of Life, Part Five” spiel. (“Sex is like anything else in life, Nat. It’s a learning process.”) Even Sofia agrees on this one. “My first time was
crap.
Mate, I thought:
Never again.
”)

Well, people are wrong. For me, anyway.

There are some things you can’t describe, I suppose. Josh is gentle, and he jokes to put me at ease. I can see the shadow of his ribs rising underneath his brown, freckled skin, and he bathes me in his brown, laughing eyes. I feel a wave rise and sink inside of me.

And all the time, he says my name, over and over again: “Nat, Nat, sweet Nat—”