Rockoholic (33 page)

“Sorry I asked,” he says and I blush. I want to tell him about the BFD. He’ll kill me but before he kills me he’ll at least try and sort it out. Make me feel better about it. If I cry, Mac might not shout at me. He’ll hug me. He always hugs me when I cry.

I wish I knew what love felt like.

Watching Jackson on the DVD for the first time felt like love. My chest felt thundery and I kept rewinding. And I just wanted to kiss him. I just wanted to do nothing else but kiss him for the rest of my life. But when I look at Jackson now I don’t feel like that at all. He just feels like a very annoying elder brother and the last thing in the world I’d want to kiss. When I look at Mac, I think I want to rewind. I actually want to touch him in some way. God. Weird or what? But I do. I keep rewinding.

Jackson promises Cree we can go up to the top pond and feed the swans. He wants to see where Grandad used to swim. Grandad’s become a bit of a hero in Jackson’s eyes and I know, I just know, he’s going to jump in, too, if there’s no one around. It’s all part of this newfound freedom thing. He’s going to jump off the stage and crowd surf for a bit. He’s going to suck out all the marrow from life, do all the carpe diem stuff my grandad did. He’s been asking about my grandad a lot the last few days and he says he’s going to live life like he did.

Nobody’s going to stop him doing anything from now on. The garage won’t contain him for much longer. Even though I haven’t told him he’s leaving tomorrow, he still seems ready to go.

At the back of the formal gardens there’s a wooded valley and along it runs a stream that connects the lower and top ponds by landscaped waterfalls. As we walk through the valley along a stony track, going against the flow of the river, Jackson’s running after Cree, who’s squealing and getting all excited, and her laugh is like falling pennies. The sun glows down. It’s the perfect day. She toddles after the rolling ball on the path ahead of us and, for the first time in days, Mac and I are alone. We have time to talk. But it’s weird. I can’t look at him without imagining things. How it would be if we were together. Like,
couple
together. Kissing and stuff. Kissing him all the time. All this saliva comes into my mouth when I think of it. I check my chest. It’s a bit thundery.

“It feels like we haven’t been anywhere, just us, for ages,” I laugh. I’m nervous. I’m never nervous around Mac. My cheeks explode and I put my hand up to scratch the side of my face nearest him so he doesn’t see.

Mac flaps a fly away from his face. “I know.
He’s
kind of taken over.”

“
He’s
asked me to go away with him, when he leaves.”

Mac says nothing. Eventually he laughs. “How’s that going to work, then?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. He just asked me.”

“So you’re going to leave with him? You’ve known the guy two weeks.”

“I haven’t said I’ll go. It’s a pretty amazing offer, though. Isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Sure. What have you got to stick around for, after all?” he says, with more than a hint of sarcasm threaded through his voice. “Regulators is your life, that’s what you say, right?” We come across a large clod of dried mud on the path. He kicks it out of the way.

“It’s not like that. He just asked me. It’s just an option.”

“You’ll go, I know you will. He’s everything to you.”

“No he’s not.”

“He is, you love him to bits. That’s why he’s here, isn’t it? To be your dream man and ruin my life.”

“What do you mean, ruin your life?”

“Forget it.”

“No, what does that mean, Mac? Tell me you want me to stay here with you.”

I stop walking. Mac carries on for a bit and then stops and turns around, his arms flap once against his sides. “You waited all day to see his concert. You kidnapped him. You were willing to sell your soul to the BFD. I can’t compete, can I?” He turns and keeps walking.

“Why would you want to compete?” I say, gaining on him, but he doesn’t hear, or if he does, he doesn’t show it. “Say I do go with him. Wouldn’t that be better?”

“No, it wouldn’t be better.”

I want him to say something,
anything
to make me believe what Jackson says is true. I want him to say he loves me so much he couldn’t bear it if I left. So I push the button. “I think I’m going to do it. I think I’m going to leave.”

“Fine. Do what you want,” he says, walking faster.

I don’t know what to say. But I don’t have to say anything, because at the next moment the most frightening noise I’ve ever heard is suddenly in my ears.

And I realize I’ve heard it before. From Jackson. It
is
Jackson.

Before I know what’s happening, Mac and I are running, sprinting along the track toward the sound. It comes again, and again, and we pick up speed. I’m trying to understand what he’s yelling, yelling all the time.
Scream. Scream. Scream. Scream.

And then I realize what he’s yelling.

Cree.

We sprint toward the top pond and, when we get there, Jackson’s just standing on the edge, combing the water frantically with his eyes.

“Where is she?” Mac shouts, pelting to the edge of the pond and plunging straight in, a great crash of water behind him. My hand automatically grips the moon rock in my jacket pocket. Cree’s nowhere. I scan the pond. It seems endless and still and dark with green weed. Cree’s pink ball bobs alone on the surface.

“She ran after the ball!” Jackson shouts at me. “She fell. I couldn’t get there in time — I didn’t see where she went in.”

At one end, the pond feeds into a small cascade, which sucks the water down into another smaller pool and from then on into the trench that runs right the way along the entire valley.

What if she’s caught in the weeds? What if she’s caught in the sucking pull of the cascade? It’s a ten-foot drop down into the next pool. That’s if she doesn’t drown before she gets there.

“She just disappeared. One moment she was in front of me, next she was gone.”

My heart is a huge hand thrumming its fingers on a tabletop. Mac’s not going to find her. I just know he’s not going to find her. I wait. What was it I learned in first aid?
In an emergency, assess the situation.
He bobs up and takes a huge breath.

“Where the hell is she?!” he screams out.

“She was right here!” Jackson yells back. “Oh God, no.”

“Why didn’t you jump in, you fucking coward!” He disappears back under the water before Jackson can answer. Not that he was going to answer. He’s scared. He hates water. I know that from when I pushed him off the bridge. I leave my body. I urge myself to wake up. Nothing happens. I wait. And I wait. I grind my fingers against the moon rock and pray for Grandad to guide me, tell me what to do. Mac bobs up and frantically down again but there’s nothing. I kick off my sneakers and lower myself down into the water. I bob up. I wait. I can just about feel the bottom with my feet. It’s gritty and scummy. My soles roll over rough rocks as my open fingers comb the water, desperately looking for clues. I breathe in and just wait. My heart bangs in my throat. The pond’s so murky I can’t even see my own hand. It feels like she’s been gone for an age, but it can’t be more than seconds.
There’s still time. There’s still time.

I could cry and never stop. But I keep looking, just standing there, stupid and helpless, looking, my hands swishing through the water, back and forth, back and forth. I just wait, I don’t know what for. I just know I should stay here, not dive under. Just wait.
Wait. Wait. You’ll see her, just wait. Don’t go under. You’ll see her. Just. Wait.

And then I see it. Fifteen feet away from me in a clump of weeds. A white sandal.

I dive straight under and swim blindly to where I saw the sandal and I reach out and I grab it — a sandal, a sock, a leg, a body, and then something tears. Pondweed. She’s stuck. I push her body up and feel the weed tear away from it, up, up, up toward the surface of the water. The weed covers my face, it’s over my mouth, it’s in my mouth. I swallow dirt. But she’s out. And I’m out with her. And I hear the beautiful noise of her crying so hard.

I stride through the weed and water toward the bank. I reach for dry land and claw my way up the mud with one arm wrapped around Cree. I drag us up out of the water, my heart beating so fast, my lungs pumping so hard, and I slump down onto the bank. I put my hands on Cree’s back and feel her ribs, her lungs working hard underneath. Her strong coughs ripping through her body. I sit up, I rock her, counting down the seconds. She coughs harder and throws up a bit. I sit her upright and rub her back. She cries my name. She says it perfectly, in between sobs and coughs.

“Dody.”

I scrape the weed away from her face as I hold her to me like the baby I always forget she is. I hold her close — I could hold twenty of her, she is so tiny. She coughs so hard her little white face bursts into purple.

“It’s OK, it’s OK, you’re all right,” I say to her, wiping her face and cuddling her tightly. “Cree, you’re OK. Jody’s here.”

“My . . . want . . . my . . . daddy.” She cuddles into me and she’s shaking so hard her hand keeps slipping on my rubbery arm. I look out to the pond. There’s no sign of Mac. He’ll kill himself trying to find her, I know he will. He’s always getting the third degree from his parents whenever Cree comes out with us. Make sure he changes her diaper every hour. Keep hold of her hand. Don’t let her wander off with any strange men.

Twenty seconds. Thirty. Forty. He’s not coming up. He’s not coming up.
Come up. Oh God, come up, come up, come up. Please.

Jackson calls something and runs over to where I’m sitting with Cree on the bank. I’m still looking for Mac.

“Oh my God, where is he?” I start to cry. Cree’s still howling and coughing in my arms, gripping on to me.

“Where is he?!” I shout at Jackson. He just stares at me.

And then Mac bobs up near the swan island and, as I close my eyes, my tears fall like never before. He searches around and sees us on the bank. I thank the sky above me. He front-crawls to where we are. Jackson sits down on the grass a few feet or so away. Mac wades out and runs immediately to me. He snatches up Cree and she clings on to him. I’ve never ever seen Mac cry before.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” he keeps saying, and his hand clings on to her wet blonde ponytail at the back. “It’s OK, Kenzie’s here, Kenzie’s got you.” Cree’s coughing and sobbing on his shoulder. The three of us are crying. And then I feel it. I feel the pain more than I’ve ever felt anything before. Another minute and Cree could have died. We could be pumping her lifeless little body on the bank right now. I thought I’d felt terror before. I thought I’d felt the worst I could possibly feel, but that wasn’t this. This is real. It burns like a nightmare.

Mac looks down at me. I’m shaking so hard and can barely see him through tears.

“You got her out?” he gasps.

I nod. I sniff. “I saw her sandal in the middle —”

He bends down and with Cree in between us he hugs me, grabbing my head with one of his hands. “Jody . . .”

I don’t think anymore. I lean forward and kiss him hard on the lips. It’s violent and wet-pond watery and at that moment all it means is sheer relief. “She’s OK,” I whisper as our foreheads rest on each other’s. “She’s OK.”

• • •

The four of us slop back along the path toward the parking lot. Jackson doesn’t say one word. But Mac says plenty.

“Stupid, selfish, idiot! Why weren’t you watching her? Why weren’t you holding her hand? Why didn’t you jump in before we got there?”

Cree starts whimpering on Mac’s shoulder. She’s looking at Jackson. Jackson’s got his head down, his hands wedged into the pockets of his Levi’s. Mac’s Levi’s.

“You don’t think about anyone but yourself,” he goes on at Jackson. “Why didn’t you go in after her straightaway? Because you care more about your own safety than anyone else’s, that’s why.”

Jackson yanks on his key string, the first time I’ve seen him do it in days. The sun is going out for the day and the grass in the shadows is cold to the touch. After a while, Cree’s little huffs are the only sounds on the air. Even the birds high up in the treetops seem to have stopped their incessant warbling.

We make it back to the car in silence. Mac hands Cree to me as he opens the trunk and we stand her up to get her out of her wet things, wrapping her up in the picnic blanket to keep her warm while we get her spare clothes out of her SpongeBob bag. She holds on to me as Mac changes her. She’s all shivery and so small, like a little pink shrimp. She keeps asking for her daddy, sometimes Mummy, but mostly Daddy, and she’s clinging to me hard. I ask her once if she wants a cuddle with Jackson while I go to the toilet before we set off, but she shakes her head defiantly. I don’t want to leave her, anyway.

We don’t report what’s happened to the staff at Weston Park, but there’s no getting away from telling Tish and Teddy about it. Cree doesn’t want to sit in her car seat so I cradle her in the back. Mac has the heating on full blast to keep her warm all the way down the motorway.

“You’re going to see Daddy now. We’re going back to your house and you can give him big cuddles.” I kiss her on her head and all at once there are tears on my cheeks.