The Beauty Is in the Walking (18 page)

I lay on my bed until Tyke arrived about four.

‘You want to help me load my weights into the Red Beast?' he asked. ‘Moving into a bigger place next week, so I've got room for them now.'

Afterwards we sat on the tailgate sharing a Coke.

‘You know how you were going to take me to Schoolies tomorrow? No need. I'm staying here,' I told him.

‘What happened? I thought you were sharing with Mitch and the rest.'

‘My friendships are currently under review,' I said. Svenson would have been proud.

‘What about Amy?'

‘We broke up,' I said. Could you break up if you'd never really hooked up? Stuff it. I had enough questions to answer.

‘Hey, Tyke, that movie you told me about.
The Truman Show
. I watched it.'

‘D'you like it?'

‘Yeah, but what do you think Truman did once he'd escaped from under that dome?'

After a bit of eyebrow dancing and a pout of his lips he said, ‘Didn't matter. The movie was about his escape.'

It mattered to me – if I was Truman. I'd spent a lot of time thinking about escape in the last few days, not from Palmerston, from other things. It came to me after a while that I just had. Escaped, I mean. When I wouldn't get in Mitch's car and especially when I'd beaten Dan to get my cane back, something had changed. Same with Amy. I'd walked away. You didn't need legs for that kind of walking.

‘What am I going to do, Tyke? To be fair to Mum I have to stay here, but if I do I'm going to stare at the road out of town every day.'

‘You're serious about uni, then?' he asked.

‘No, it's gone way past that. It's about what I can do, whether I'm more than what people think I am, more than what
I
think I am.'

He listened while I told him about Mum on Sunday night and the decision I'd woken up with the next morning. I wasn't so sure it was decided anymore.

‘Do you have any ideas for me, Tyke? Do you know what I should do?'

‘Yeah, I know what you should do,' he said quickly, then left the words dangling there for a stretched-out moment. ‘But I'm not going to tell you. Time to man up,' he said with a final pat on my thigh. Then he went back into the house.

Watching him go, I knew there'd be no weeks of mulling things over. It had to be tonight. I wouldn't sleep until I'd made up my mind.

At six-thirty we headed for school – my last time in a school uniform. I hadn't sat in the back of Dad's car for so long and I spent the first half of the drive trying to remember the last time, but before I could settle that question I was searching even further back. When was the last time Tyke had sat beside me with Mum in the front and Dad at the wheel like happy families? The night we went to Tyke's graduation, maybe. Now we were going to mine.

Once we reached Meredith Street, my reflections changed tack. It was Friday night, the pubs were full and people were out on the footpaths – hardly a crush like I'd seen in cities on television, but enough to draw my eye. A week had passed since the third mutilation, the police were clueless and wherever two or three people stood talking I could guess their words. Who would do such a thing?

I knew and I wasn't going to tell. My childish words to Amy had been a promise, I'd decided in the hours since, and somehow that summed up the futility of everything I'd done. If Mahmoud had finally been exonerated, it was no thanks to me. I rolled my cane between my hands until the wolf's head faced me. What have you got to say about that? I asked. Could I have done better? Did I do anything at all?

Dad parked the four by four and together we mixed in with the other families making their way through the
gates. Tyke spotted a friend, another brother like himself, come to do the right thing.

‘Big night,' he called to his old classmate. I was to hear those words a lot over the next few hours.

The gym had been made over since this morning, the circus tent giving way to more sober decor, although the balloons had survived the cull and so had the big screen which was cycling through the same slideshow.

‘I have to go sit up front,' I told Mum and left the three of them to find seats.

Not that anyone was sitting down yet. I didn't want to mill with the rest and slipped out into the night air again instead. Even that wasn't enough and with my cane picking out its rhythm on the concrete I headed into the darkness of the undercroft until, on the far side, I could look up at the window of Svenson's classroom.

It wasn't like I planned to stay long or that I'd been driven there by the sense of exclusion I'd invented for myself that morning as armour against my own misery. That had mostly died away since leaving school. A lot of things had changed this afternoon. No, I just wanted the moment to myself, and if it was Svenson's window I picked out among the rest, then why not, since he'd handed out the rope I was using for my personal tug of war.

Tonight, I reminded myself. You have to decide tonight.

I wasn't going to get my moment, though. Footsteps made me turn, their particular fall telling me it would be a female silhouette approaching. The height confirmed it was
Chloe, although I knew her walk well enough to be sure without the easy clue. We hadn't spoken since my dust-up with Svenson, but she wouldn't have come after me if our friendship had died on the mugball court as I'd feared.

‘Big night,' I called.

‘So I've heard,' she shot back and immediately we were chuckling between ourselves in a conspiracy that no ears listening from the shadows would have understood.

‘Everyone's asking how I feel,' she said, once she'd joined me. ‘Either that, or they ask when I'm leaving for Schoolies.'

‘How do you feel?' I asked, to goad her.

She let out an exaggerated groan.

Then silence ate the next few seconds as though we'd lost track of whose turn it was to speak. Finally she offered a single word. ‘Restless.'

The word stunned me for a moment until I understood she was answering the question I'd only asked for a laugh. Even then, how could she know what the word meant to me?

She couldn't, of course. It had never occurred to me that others might be the same, not excited, or frightened or impatient, simply restless in a way that eluded explanation.

I went back to staring up at D Block.

‘You're looking at Svenson's window, aren't you?' she said.

‘I was wondering if I'd have stood up for Mahmoud if it wasn't for him. He was the first one to see something more in me, except for Tyke.'

‘Tyke?'

‘My brother. Everyone else . . . they . . .' Get it out there, Jake, I told myself. Your tongue will handle it. ‘All my life I've had people standing around me like . . . like a shield.' I'd almost said ‘dome'. ‘They're determined to take care of me, so the world doesn't break through and harm me. None of them have ever thought I might break out and do some damage of my own.'

‘Damage?' she asked uncertainly.

‘Just a way of saying things.'

Understanding flowed quickly. ‘I know what you mean. Like your protest with the knives.'

I was so glad she said ‘your protest' and not ‘our' or simply ‘the'. Here was that insight I admired so much in class, or was ‘envied' a better word?

‘I have to confess something about that. It wasn't about Mahmoud. It wasn't even about the injustice of what they did to him. It was about what
I
could do. I wanted to lead the way up those steps.'

Might as well get it all out there. Nothing I'd done for Mahmoud had changed a thing. I was working up the words when Chloe said, ‘Soraya wants to know why you took down her brother's page on the Net.'

‘Soraya?'

‘Yes, we've stayed friends on Facebook. I told her what you'd done and she followed it from the start. Mahmoud, as well. Jacob, he came to her room every day to read what you'd written, your careful demolitions of every false assumption, exaggeration, every lie. He never said
anything, but he only read your comments, no one else's. Soraya's sure of it.'

For a few moments I stared at her. ‘It never occurred to me,' I muttered. But the Net was like that. You never knew who was looking at your stuff. ‘Just what
I'd
written?' I asked.

Chloe shrugged. ‘That's what Soraya told me.'

Why? I was about to mouth the word, then swallowed it. Any kind of answer would sound too neat, too self-serving. Sorry, Mr Svenson, no clarity of meaning this time. I gripped the wolf's head in my hand and knew that some things couldn't be smoothed out into words. They were too personal even to leave your own body.

‘I'll put the page back up, if it means that much to him,' I said rather lamely, and after that I floundered in silence. ‘When are you leaving for Schoolies?' I asked finally, aiming for another chuckle maybe, or was it just to get us talking again?

Chloe did laugh briefly, but without any enthusiasm.

‘It's not Schoolies I'm thinking about, Jacob,' she answered, using my name in a deliberate way, it seemed to me. ‘It's after. I'm not coming back to Palmerston, you see. Dad's contract finished early. The packers are already here. I'll go straight from the coast to our house in Brisbane.'

So soon! I was surprised at how much the news shook me. I knew she was going, of course. She'd never left any doubt, but I'd counted on the days before Christmas while we lounged around watching the letterbox for our results.

She was waiting for me to say something, that I'd miss her, maybe, or we should stay close on Facebook, but those were the same platitudes we'd made fun of already. I was empty of words.

She must have guessed this because she launched right in. ‘Look, I know you're as tired of the question as I am, but what are you going to do next year?'

There is was, the bullseye of my restlessness. Tonight, Jacob, tonight.

Chloe seemed afraid I'd fob her off with a grimace. I half expected it of myself and when something different stirred inside me I was as surprised as she was. But the weight I'd carried like lead under my skin all week had lightened once I took my cane back from Dan. Chloe's story about Soraya and Mahmoud had tossed aside what little remained, leaving my entire body free, lithe, limber.

I fell out of such thoughts to find her waiting for my answer. She decided I wasn't going to offer one and in a voice that couldn't quite hide her trepidation she said, ‘What I'm really asking is, will we see each other again?'

Same question wanting an answer. If I tried my hand at uni we'd meet, we'd see where things took us, but if I stayed in Palmerston . . .

I stepped across the gap between us and with the cane keeping me steady I used my other hand to cup her cheek in my palm. Despite the darkness, I could see her surprise at this sudden intimacy, but she didn't flinch or back away.

Then I leaned the rest of the way and kissed her.

Chloe let my lips settle on hers and then she pressed forwards, just a little, and cupped my hand more closely against her cheek with her own. Our kiss lingered, but since I wasn't counting I had no idea how long.

When I straightened up she took a moment to breathe and said calmly, ‘I guess that answers my question.'

JAMES MOLONEY
is one of Australia's best-known authors for the young. He has twice won the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award, but one of his greatest successes has been in winning the hearts of children and teenagers with his brilliant fantasy adventures beginning with
The Book of Lies
. He lives in Brisbane, where he writes every day in a shed specially built in his backyard.

Angus&Robertson

An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
, Australia

First published in Australia in 2015

by HarperCollins
Publishers
Australia Pty Limited

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Copyright © Buena Vista Books 2015

The right of James Moloney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000
.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the
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, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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ISBN 978 0 7322 9994 1 (paperback)

ISBN 978 1 4607 0404 2 (ebook)

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Moloney, James, 1954– author.

The beauty is in the walking / James Moloney.

For young adults.

Detective and mystery stories.

Cerebral palsied — Fiction.

First loves — Fiction.

A823.3

Cover design and illustration by Darren Holt, HarperCollins Design Studio

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