Lullaby (8 page)

‘Other people?'

‘Counsellors. Duty teacher. Mrs Struthers.'

‘You don't talk about her much.'

‘She was worried, but she didn't know what to do about it. I suppose that's normal,
for adults. She threw a party. That was her best idea.'

‘A party?'

Maggie's eyebrows rose up above her glasses. I liked the way they came and went.

‘Not a party for dropping classes. She wasn't that hopeless. A party for his athletics.
We both loved to run. He trained harder than I did; he had a way of getting lost
inside his head. He could go for hours.'

‘And he had some success?'

‘He won a couple of races at the regional level. It wasn't a big deal, he'd done
it before, but Mrs Struthers thought she should accentuate the positive. She told
us we could invite any friends we wanted to, only we didn't want to, because we could
see in advance it was going to be a train wreck. Which made it an empty-train wreck,
I suppose.

‘Our uncle and auntie flew in for it, which rather blew the “only about athletics”
cover. And Mrs Struthers didn't understand the school cloud properly, so she posted
a message, inviting people, but, I almost don't want to think about it—it went…

‘There's an academic flow, where only the disconnected gather, and that's where the
invite ended up. They all turned up, seven strangers who were not used to getting
invitations. Then there were some people from the street, and at that stage Mrs Struthers
worked part-time at the boat club, she was a cook, so some of her workmates came.
The food was the only good thing.

‘Imagine a cake in the shape of running shoe, with candles on it. And there's no
song to sing, and nobody's thought whether you're meant to blow
the candles out,
or give a speech or clap. Nobody knows anybody else, or where to look. The only thing
we had in common was the knowledge that this was Mrs Struthers' desperate way of
saying to Theo, it doesn't matter that you're not smart, like your brother is.

‘We're so very proud of you, is what she finally said, before the wax met the icing.
Theo wanted to disappear, and so did I. Mrs Struthers knew it was a disaster. That's
what killed me. She came to me in the kitchen and whispered—we're proud of you too,
you know that don't you?

‘I said, thanks for the party, Theo really appreciates it. Then I had to leave, because
I could see if I left that big lie hanging there, one of us was going to start crying.'

Telling that story was as excruciating as it had ever been. I don't understand that,
the way the awkward moments never lose their cutting edge. With something big, like
your parents dying, the pain dulls with time. Somehow the simple act of living absorbs
it. But that party could have happened yesterday.

Maggie understood. There was a look in her
eyes, not sadness exactly, but perhaps
regret, that she'd made me tell it. Understanding. Was she letting her guard down,
or was I just getting better at reading her? It was hard to tell.

8

‘You said two things changed,' Maggie said. ‘School and girls. Tell me about the
girls.'

We'd arrived at Harriet. From Harriet, it was a single jump to Emily, and one more
would land us in this room. I felt the past rushing up at me, compressing in a Doppler
howl of pain. It was Maggie's job to make me stand and face it.

‘Harriet was the girl with the ferret, and I had a crush on her. You asked me before,
how I felt about the group. At first it was about being loyal to Theo. Then it became
about being with Harriet. The first time I skipped a lesson, it was for her. She
let us know she was going to play sick and was looking for company. A gap opened,
and I stepped through.

‘We sat under the trees by a stream that ran
along the edge of the property. It was
one of those spring days where the heat of the sun takes you by surprise, and suddenly
everything seems possible. I suppose I'd imagined we'd sit and talk and she'd be
surprised by how funny I could be. Mostly though, we lay on our backs and looked
up at the willows, and let the ferret run all over us. Its feet were sharp and it
smelt of piss. I hated it.

‘In picture books, it's the creatures with small heads you can't trust. But I didn't
complain, because wherever it walked, Harriet watched: along my chest, my stomach,
down my leg. She studied every centimetre of the journey. Then she took it, and held
it up to her chin and kissed its treacherous little nose, and it was my turn to look
at her.

‘Her black shirt matched her hair, a night sky for the star sparkle of her silver
chains. The ferret climbed over her breast, and I stared. It tiptoed across her ribs
and traversed her stomach. I watched in delight, observing the spring in the skin
beneath her naval. There was a strip of flesh, two fingers wide, between the end
of her shirt and her jeans. She could have pulled her T-shirt lower, but she didn't.
The ferret scampered across the shiny
point of her hip bone, and there was a moment
when one of the feet disappeared into the gap between waistband and girl. Even as
I watched, I knew I'd never forget it. The image would always be a part of me.'

I stopped, embarrassed to have told more than the story needed. I remember being
aware that I was presenting myself to Maggie, giving her permission to stare.

‘What happened?' she asked.

‘I fell in love, I suppose.'

‘Did you tell her that?'

‘No, I had to get to the next class.'

I blushed when Maggie laughed.

‘And later?' she asked.

‘With Harriet and me? Nothing. We were friends. She said I wasn't like other boys,
that she felt like she could talk to me about anything, which at thirteen sounds
more hopeful than it is. Perhaps she was just playing with me. I've never been able
to work that out.'

‘But Theo knew.'

I still don't know how she worked these things out so quickly.

‘You want to tell the story?' I asked.

‘I'm sure I wouldn't capture the mood. What did he do?'

‘Theo?' I asked.

Maggie nodded.

‘Short answer: he fucked her.'

Now came the sex questions, and I would answer or I wouldn't. And if you'd asked
me before, if you'd asked anybody who knew me, they would have said I'd go quiet.
But there's something about a woman just waiting, looking at you. A smart woman.
I had her attention, and I wanted to be worthy of it.

‘Long answer?'

Theo's dying. That's all this is about.

But nothing is ever only about one thing.

At first it was as if I wasn't there. The voice was mine, but some part of me had
left the room.

‘Theo and I had the same taste in porn. We preferred the old-fashioned images, women
posing alone, in flat 2-D, sometimes without colour. He liked to project them onto
the bedroom wall from his Palm. We'd lie back and take them apart, one detail at
a time: the faces, the smiles, the curves and proportions. Once, Mrs Struthers walked
in on us, to say it was late and we should be quiet. I
remember her blinking into
the blue light, oblivious to the invitation spread across her face.

‘Theo liked talking to me about girls: his latest obsessions, his elaborate plans
to win them over. He had sex before I did, and he wasn't shy about sharing the details.
But he never asked me for my own stories, and I never offered them. I think he knew
I needed protecting.'

‘From what?' Maggie asked.

‘Shame.'

‘What did you have to be ashamed of?'

‘Nothing, probably,' I said. ‘But that doesn't lessen the fear.'

‘The fear of what?'

‘Being ashamed.'

She let it go. I think perhaps shame is different for men, more terrifying.

‘Things changed,' I said. ‘After Mrs Struthers threw that party. That's when I think
of it starting. Theo became more fragile, easier to offend. At one stage I thought
it was the drugs. I tried to talk to him about it, but he became aggressive, said
I was scared of living. He said, if I didn't relax soon, I'd miss out on being a
teenager altogether. I've often thought, if you averaged out our two approaches
to
growing up, you'd have it about right.

‘We started to fight in a way that was new, more vicious. And afterwards, it wasn't
the hurt or the anger that stayed with me, but the loneliness. I was able to believe,
for the first time, that he might not always be there. I'm sure he felt the same.
That sort of loneliness is so dark, so frightening, there's a part of you that wants
to jump into it, before you're pushed.'

‘So you began to actively undermine the relationship?'

‘No.'

I wasn't sure that was true.

‘But we both knew we could. The possibility of destruction hung there, like the
gun over the mantelpiece in the opening act of a play. We understood the temptation.

‘Then one night there was an image shining on the wall, a woman not much older than
we were, staring out across the decades. I saw it straight away, and so did Theo:
the uncanny resemblance to Harriet. Theo's face lit up with trouble.

Look familiar?

Turn it off, I said.

You sure? You don't want to look just a
little longer. Harriet! Oh Harriet.

Shut up.

She would, I think, if you asked her. I think she'd let you.

‘He wasn't trying to hurt me. He was just having fun. But that's what hurt. That
I was fun to him. And not just to him. If it was that obvious, then surely they all
knew, Harriet too. That's shame. Theo didn't get it. He was confident with girls,
and when it didn't work out, that was their problem, not his. He moved on. Whereas
I fell in love too easily.'

A small shudder of shyness passed through me. Maggie pretended not to notice.

‘In Theo's head, all I needed was a little push to get me started. He made it his
mission to rescue me. I didn't want rescuing, and, at the same time, I did. And it
was better than fighting. I let it become his project, a way of pretending there
was still a future where our paths didn't diverge.

‘Theo would drag me along to parties where Harriet would be, but I was useless. He
should have just given up, but the more pathetic I was, the more determined he became
to be the hero. He organised a trip into the hills. He decided we'd go
for the whole
weekend: start at the gorge, get to the Forks before dark, then up over the ridge
and back down the mountain track. Since Mum and Dad died, we'd hadn't seen much of
the forest. I only remember one time with a school group.

‘Mrs Struthers thought our plan was all part of the healing process, that we were
looking to reconnect with our parents. And in that way adults have of dividing the
world up into good and bad, she decided it was an excellent idea. I shouldn't criticise
her, I got it wrong too. When Theo told me we were going hiking, I imagined star
prickled skies, burning calves, sausages too, and falling asleep exhausted. Until
he explained he'd invited Harriet and Georgia along. Georgia was the second girl
Theo'd had slept with, and they'd had an on-again off-again thing ever since. I liked
Georgia. She said what she was thinking and took no shit from anyone, not even Theo.
She wouldn't complain about the walking, or the food, or having to dig you own toilet.
Or the fact that this was no normal hike, that she was being used as part of Theo's
crazy project. Of course we started out all pretending there was nothing more to
it than four friends and the call of the wild. Even I, begin
ner that I was, understood
the way anticipation is sweetened by denial.

‘But then the pressure got to me. My pack grew heavy and I fell silent. I can't explain
why. Theo had done all he'd promised he would do. There was no work left, just play.
But somehow I contrived to resent him for it. I'm stitched together from pride and
fear, mostly. That's the shameful truth of it.

‘Fear of what?'

I don't understand how Maggie could be so smart, and yet so stupid.

‘Embarrassment, confusion, rejection, public humiliation. Take your pick.'

‘What happened?'

‘During the walk, I disappeared inside myself. Theo overcompensated, telling jokes
and playing tour guide, but I refused to come out. Inevitably, I suppose, I reached
a place where everything looked different, even Harriet. I began to wonder why it
was she'd agreed to come along, whether it was Theo she was really interested in.
I was being a sulky little shit. It was nothing more complicated than that. Somebody
should have slapped me.'

‘So what did happen then, if not slapping?'

‘You're laughing at me.'

‘I'm not.'

Her face was serious but I didn't buy it.

‘Do you regret the way you behaved?'

‘I'd lain beside Harriet and watched her stupid little ferret leave its paw prints
on her body, and I was being invited to repeat the experience, without the ferret,
or clothes. And I ruined it. Yeah, I regret that.'

I was trying to tell it the way an adult would, cool and detached, but my face was
burning up.

‘What else do you regret about it?'

‘Isn't that enough?' I asked.

‘How did you ruin it?'

‘The campsite was a grass flat by the riverbed, broken up by clumps of young manuka.
The scrub gave us an excuse to pitch the two tents well away from each other. That's
why Theo chose the spot. But I started to pitch right next to the other tent.

What are you doing? Theo demanded.

Putting up my tent.

Not here.

It's flat.