The Last Girl (2 page)

‘Here, Brendan,’ Stephanie said, handing over Dad’s last Christmas gift. ‘You should love these.’

Her voice matched her lips. I wasn’t imagining emotional mind movies for her anymore. Maybe what had just happened was a minor relapse, residual madness, nothing to worry about, resolved now. Dad dragged his gaze from his phone and squished his little reindeer bag.

‘A bottle of single malt?’

A desperate dad joke, even by his standards.

‘Socks,’ he said as he lifted the footwear from the gift bag, face screwed up like a soothsayer getting bad entrails.

‘No,’ said Stephanie. ‘They’re Soxies!’

She pointed at the cursive stitching. ‘See, it says So Soxy!, Too Soxy!, and, my favourite, Sox On Legs!’

Dad tried for a grin but came up with a grimace. ‘You shouldn’t have.’

I guess those stupid socks
were
physical manifestations of what ailed the planet and I could’ve seen the apocalypse in them any time I cared to look. Thirty per cent cotton grown from patented corporate seeds and harvested by peasant kids. Seventy per cent polyester spun from the war and corruption of Middle Eastern oilfields. Chemically dyed and machine-woven in some belching factory whose toxic waste gushed into freshwater rivers. Sorted and packed by serf workers deprived of democracy. Pallets piled into containers and trucked to cargo ships that ploughed across dying oceans in clouds of particulate. Process reversed at ports of destination: containers and pallets and boxes and packets broken down so Soxies could fulfil their destiny as stocking filler destined to become landfill.

You-shouldn’t-have.

As Dad said it again, I knew the socks didn’t trouble him politically, socially or environmentally. They troubled him economically. Not as items of global trade but of personal trade. His and Stephanie’s relationship was a series of transactions based around sex, status and stuff—and she wasn’t keeping her end of the bargain.

Except I couldn’t know any of that. Dad hadn’t spoken again. Wasn’t speaking now.

Haven’t-touched-me-in-months-This-some-sort-of-joke?-
Nothing-but-time-and-my-money-to-spend-First-the-book-
Now-this-crap-This-is-what-I’m-worth?

I rubbed my eyes. This was like accidentally pushing the wrong button on the remote so the director’s commentary comes on.

You-shouldn’t-have!-You-stupid-shallow—

‘I thought you’d think—’ Stephanie started to say.
It-was-
funny.

Her mouth tightened. Her eyes narrowed. ‘What did you call me?’

Behind her venom I heard—
thought
I heard—whispers of desperation.

I-should’ve-gotten-him-something-better!-Should’ve-left
David-earlier!

Lightning-etched flashes of my stepmother with her personal trainer bombarded my mind. Yesterday afternoon, while I’d been crying in bed and Dad had been working and Evan had been at special care, Stephanie had gone to David’s city apartment. Her plan had been to break it off and get busy with Christmas shopping. But him listening to her so beautifully was like a form of seduction and the hours had gotten away from them. Stephanie raced home, feeling guilty as hell, swearing never again, his bouquet of marigolds on the front seat. She was nearly through the front door when she realised she didn’t have gifts for me or Dad. So she rushed to The Grocery, grateful my episode meant I wouldn’t be on the checkout, and grabbed the book, the socks, my CD and the reindeer bags, telling herself she could spin these last-minute purchases into thoughtful-sounding presents.

Dad, Stephanie, me: my hallucination had us all hooking in and out of her tumble of thoughts and emotions in the nanosecond it takes to light up a neural network.

But my delusion didn’t just include the three of us.

Man-nude-Mummy-Daddy-silly-angry . . .

I couldn’t believe it. My mental illness had taken me inside Evan’s head. I was inventing a reaction to him being in
their
minds. There was no coping with this crazy. No way to hide it. Did Dr Jenny make Christmas Day house calls with her straitjacket? I laughed loudly like the mad girl I’d become.

Dad and Stephanie didn’t hear me.

Or Evan as he announced, ‘Goof! Goof! Goof!’ and tipped his bucket of golf balls across the floor.

My father and stepmother only had hate-filled eyes for each other.

Dad spasmed and for a second I thought he’d been electrocuted by a wayward Christmas light.

‘You’re having an affair?’ he whispered. ‘With some
gym
guy?’

My mind had his thoughts screaming with self-righteous hurt and anger at Stephanie’s mental picture of David.
I-gave-
you-everything!-This-is-how-you-repay—

Beneath Dad’s fury was the big regret.
Robyn-wouldn’t-
cheat-Should-never-have-let-her-go.

My mum: Robyn. My secret hope: Dad and her would get back together. My poor sick brain: creating this wish-fulfilment fantasy. But knowing it wasn’t real didn’t stop my skull from echoing with Stephanie’s scorn and Dad’s fury.

Her:
I-knew-it-You-still-love-that-druggy-psycho!

Him:
How-long-you-been-slutting-behind-my-back?

Her:
Now-I-know-why-you-don’t-talk-to-me-or . . .

Him:
Is-he-better-in-bed-is-that-why?

‘Well, you’ve never—’ Stephanie shouted.
Satisfied-me-
like-he—

Dad launched himself at her. They hurtled across the floor. Tumbled into the French doors in a crunch of splintering wood and shattering glass. The Christmas tree slumped against a wall, baubles breaking, lights flickering. Whatever was wrong with me had gotten so much worse. Auditory delusions had become visual hallucinations.

Dad was on top of Stephanie. Maybe in reality he was tickling her as payback for the Soxies. Maybe they were laughing instead of screaming. It’s not what I was seeing and hearing. He looked like he was killing her.

‘Stop!’ I yelled at them and myself. ‘Stop!’

Stop!-Stop!-Stop!

They didn’t hear me. They didn’t stop.

Dad throttled. Stephanie scratched.

I-gave-you-everything-You-cheated-you-cheap—

Get-off-This-is-assault-You’re-hurting-Can’t-breathe
.

Her face turned purple as he clamped his hands tighter around her throat.

Evan was crying or laughing, I couldn’t tell which. Either way, I had to make this stop. Without thinking, I snatched a golf club from the floor.

‘Dad, stop!’

He shuddered as he pressed his weight down.

I-hope-it-hurts-you . . .

Stephanie’s bloodshot eyes bulged over his shoulder.
Please-
Danby-hit-him-hit—

Dad turned his head just as I swung the putter and cracked him hard across the temple.

TWO

With just a dozen shopping days till Christmas, we worker bees were abuzz with activity in The Grocery. Slicing ham in the deli. Spritzing fruit for that dewy look. Gift-wrapping cosmetics. Ensuring the imported towels were properly fluffed. Manning and traffic directing the checkout. Not that I was complaining. Working at The Grocery was my ticket to freedom and added two hundred dollars to my name each week that had nothing to do with Dad or Stephanie. Other GenZees might be stuck in the nest until they were thirty but I’d be flying the coop as soon I finished school. Destination? As & Es, baby. Asia. Americas. Africa. Europe. Everywhere Else.

Work was more fun than it had any right to be because Jacinta had started there the same time as me. Faced with oh-so-serious supervisors and even more self-important customers, my best friend and I amused ourselves with a furtive semaphore of rolled eyes, cheesy grins and spirit fingers. We made it our mission to make fun of The Grocery.

My theory was that its name had been contrived so the snobby clientele could sound down to earth when they said, ‘I’m just popping out to The Grocery for a few things.’ But the place was far from humble. This consumer temple had fake marble columns and banners along the colonnade that celebrated the excess of success. Big lips smooched a strawberry, a Champagne cork rocketed from bubbly froth and silver platters glistened with sashimi and caviar. Jacinta and I joked that The Grocery would sell panda prosciutto and whale wagyu if it was legal—and that Beautopian gourmands would gobble up the endangered delicacies just because they were so deliciously expensive.

Those seduced through The Grocery’s sliding doors entered a cornucopia where they weren’t ‘customers’ but ‘clients’ to be waited upon by the finest teenage ‘consultants’ that minimum wages could buy. Soft downlights, polished floorboards, scented candles and a classical violinist in the liquor enclave convinced them they’d rewarded themselves with a shopping destination superior to the plebian tap-app-scan-it-yourselfmarts. Beautopians bought it—literally. Coiffed women and their moisturised men purred up in European hybrids and wafted through the store sipping complimentary coffees as they hunted and gathered organic strawnanas and wild-farmed salmon.

But on a mid-December Saturday afternoon The Grocery’s usual tranquillity was disturbed by a young couple arguing a few feet from where I was arranging cans of Canine Cuisine.

‘What do you mean I’ll get fat?’ Blonde gym bunny. Tight abs on crop-top display. Pretty face twisted into an ugly snarl. ‘You bastard!’

‘I didn’t say anything!’ Sleepy dude. Board shorts. Barely looked awake.

‘I heard you!’

‘I didn’t say a word.’ The guy looked guilty as charged. ‘Seriously, Patty, I didn’t.’

‘You’re such an asshole!’

‘Sssh! You’re only two months along. You look great.’

She wasn’t having any of it. ‘I’m going to my mum’s. You can go to hell.’

Ponytail swinging, she stalked off, leaving the dude stroking a box of Celebrity Cat. He hadn’t said she was fat. He hadn’t said anything. Crazy pregnant-lady hormones: that was my guess. But then two similar spats erupted in the next three hours.

At the end of my shift, Jacinta was already in the staff room. Plonked in a beanbag with her head twitching behind Shades she could’ve been mistaken for a teen rock star in the throes of an overdose. But her rhythmic tics said she was playing
Snots
’N’ Bots
, her head and eye movements and alpha and beta waves harnessed to fire gooey boogers at the robot army marching across the inside of her lenses.

‘Jax.’

‘Yo.’

‘The weirdest thing’s been happening.’

I told her about the freaks who’d been squabbling about nothing.

Wet sneezes from my friend’s Shades announced that her Nasal Base was wiped. Game over.

‘Clear.’ Jacinta’s lenses went from tinted to translucent. She was looking at me now—albeit through an overlap of app info. ‘Are we outta here or what?’

We walked across Beautopia Point towards TYZ.

‘Well, it’s weird, right?’ I said.

Jacinta couldn’t have been less amazed. ‘People argue.’

‘I was there. I didn’t hear any insults.’

‘So you’re half deaf from all your mum’s punk crap.’

I gave her the finger. ‘It was spooky.’

She smirked and shook her head. ‘So you’ve taken too many knocks. Brain-damaged kids imagine the darnedest things.’

Looking at her dead-eyed, I adopted a drone voice. ‘You. Are. Correct.’

With a stiff cyborg hand, I showcased our suburb’s luxury residences blazing orange in the setting sun. ‘No one. Argues. In. Beautopia.’

Jacinta nodded sombrely. ‘To. Do. So.’ She genuflected at the fake colonial church steeple that rose over the Commons. ‘Angers. The. Mighty. Phallus.’

Our artificial paradise was good for a ton of laughs.

Beautopia Point was for squibs but TYZ helped make it bearable. Thankfully the place’s signage was overgrown by vines so we could ignore that our favourite hangout’s naff official name was The Youth Zone. You know, for tha kidz.

Jacinta got us drinks while I put on my pads and helmet. Up on the half-pipe I popped in my earbuds and pressed play on the vintage Walkman that Mum had given me so I could appreciate the mix-tapes she loved making for my benefit. Lee Ving wailed about having a war as I dropped down the transition, crouched across the bottom, pumped up the opposing arc, caught enough air for a three-sixty and then dropped back in. I wasn’t an innately talented skater but I’d gotten good because I’d give things a go and I bounced back from falls pretty fast.

Jacinta sat in the bleachers, head in social media. I joined her, gulping electrolytes.

‘They might’ve been spamming a product,’ she said, taking off her Shades.

I didn’t get her drift. ‘A sphincter says what?’

Jacinta grinned. ‘You are. I’m talking about the couples who were arguing? They might’ve been spamming. SPonsored Argument Marketing. They get your attention by having a fight while they’re standing near some product, or they mention it in passing. We absorb it subliminally. Pass it on. Next thing we know it’s viral.’

‘Are you for real?’

Jacinta nodded proudly. Marketing was how she was going to make her millions.

‘It’s not working very well,’ I said. ‘I didn’t brand-drop when I told you. But I guess that first guy
was
kinda fondling Celebrity Cat.’

‘There you go,’ Jacinta said. ‘You’re welcome.’

Her Shades chirruped.

‘But the others didn’t—’ I began.

‘Check this out!’

Jacinta’s lenses had the news: Mollie was throwing a VIP Christmas party.

‘We are so going,’ Jacinta said.

My heart was hitting speeds it never did skating. ‘Do you think he’ll be there?’