The Whole of My World (27 page)

 

 

The ground is racing beneath my feet. My arms pump to the drubbing of my heart. I'm flying again. Alone for the moment and faster than ever. The pounding suddenly becomes louder and then there's an echo – another pair of racing feet, the thumping rhythm drawing closer to me.

I steal a glimpse over my shoulder. Josh has made up ground. I push harder and faster, the wind whipping my breath from me, blood throbbing in my ears. I pull away, further than before, and cross the line two metres ahead. Hands on my head, I bend over, exhausted. All I want to do is curl up on the ground and wait for my breath to resume a normal pace, but years of training won't let me. I stand tall, opening my lungs to their full capacity, hands high, gripping each other at the base of my skull, opening my airways just that tiny bit wider. And breathe.

Josh's face is red. He really pushed himself and it shows.

I grin at him, delighted to beat him for real.

‘I held back,' he gasps, matching my stance almost exactly.

‘Ha!' I chortle. ‘Like you'd tell me if you didn't.'

A wicked smile crosses Josh's face. ‘Best of three?'

I laugh and shake my head. I can still beat him – just – but there's no way I can do it twice. I'm okay with that, too. Knowing the things I can do and the things I can't. Dad says you have to take the ball that comes your way and make it work for you. ‘Not on your life, Josh,' I grin. ‘Not on your life.'

We wander over to the long grass and plonk down by the chain-link fence. He wants to say something, to apologise. After the Ginnie incident I began avoiding him, ignoring his calls and visits. He quickly worked out something was going on. She must have told him. They're not friends anymore, which is fine by me.

The thing is, Josh didn't say a word to Ginnie. He knew what it meant for me to start again. To walk into St Mary's, horrible as it was, and be complete. A singular, complete person. Not the half that's left behind, not the surviving Brown girl or the twin with the dead brother. Just me. Just Shelley Anne Brown. For a while there, I managed it too.

But I shouldn't have kept Angus a secret. Somehow I have to live with this – I have to keep him in my life, even as I make it entirely my own. I don't know how I'll do that yet, but at least I don't have to do it alone.

So I showed up at Josh's house this morning, enjoying the shock and quiet apology I saw in his eyes when Mrs McGuire let me in.

‘Someone at the club probably said something,' Josh says, breaking into my thoughts.

‘I know.'

‘But she's a cow for saying all that.'

‘I know.' I don't want to talk. I just want to lie here and let the breeze cool my hot cheeks, feel the soft grass against my skin and listen to my heart beating.

And Josh's. My head is close to his chest, barely touching, so that I can feel his heart pounding. And even though we've been resting here for some minutes now, it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all.

I smile to myself secretly. I did that. I'm doing it still. I'm making someone's heart beat faster, and it doesn't hurt at all.

 

Two weeks after the grand final, I visit Tara at her home to see how she's doing. She looks good, or much better than she did on grand final night, despite the plaster cast on her elbow and the disorder of her room. She broke her arm when she fell in the press box. No one knows when or how, but it can't have been long before we got there because she'd been spotted only half an hour earlier back at the party, according to Red, who's the only reliable witness.

Tara's room is stacked with neat boxes, ready for their move. Mr and Mrs Lester are getting a divorce. They're selling the house so Mrs Lester can move back to where her parents live in the country and she's taking Tara with her. Tara doesn't know what school she's going to yet, or if they'll stay near her grandparents. She says she doesn't care. Either way, she's happy to leave St Mary's.

Dad told me that Mrs Lester is getting help – with Tara, and with her problem. I hope she meant what she said at the hospital, and that seeing Tara so sick scared her enough to make sure it never happens again.

I know it has for me.

‘What about your dad?' I hand Tara the last of her albums, full of pictures of Glenthorn players – whole generations of men who have pulled on a Glenthorn jumper are wedged between the pages of Tara's thick albums.

She takes a long time to answer. ‘He used to buy me a present every time he went away.' She pushes one of the large boxes against the wall, stacking a smaller one on top of it, and smiles thinly. ‘I got a lot of presents.'

‘If it's okay with your mum, we can meet up over the holidays. You can stay with Dad and me. And, of course, when the footy season starts, at the games . . .'

Tara nods. We both know this won't happen. Or it might, every now and then, but it won't be the same. She'll start a new life because she has to and I'll make this one work better because I have to. That's what we do.
Pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off and get back to position
.

I'm not sure I ever want to set foot at Fernlee Park again, but I don't say that out loud – that's the kind of thing you can't take back once it's said. ‘Angus . . .' I say quietly. It's still shocking to hear his name spoken out loud. To say it myself. But it gets a tiny bit easier every time I do. ‘My brother Angus was eleven minutes older than me.'

Tara stops packing and faces me.

‘We used to play footy together, Angus, Josh and me. For the Raiders for a while and just for fun.'

Tara seems afraid to move.

‘I miss him,' I say. ‘I miss them both. My mum and Angus. How we used to be, you know? I thought that if I didn't talk about them, I could start again. Dad and I both thought that. I didn't really expect him to make them disappear the way he did – to take all the pictures and the memories and to lock them away – but after a while, I got used to it. And it did seem easier, somehow, to just start again.'

‘Draw a line between last week and next,' Tara says quietly.

I smile. ‘Yeah.' I look up at the tower of boxes and around at the chaos of her room – at all the bits and pieces that form a life. I run my hand along one of the albums, the smooth cover lined with a fine layer of dust. I rub my fingers together.

‘Do you think you can?' she asks. ‘I mean, really?'

‘No, not really,' I say, thinking it through carefully. ‘You can't draw a line in time. It doesn't work like that, like something you can organise or stack in towers. It's more like . . .' I hunt around for something that makes sense. Something that shifts and slips through space. ‘Like
sand
.' That's not quite right but it's the best I can do. ‘All the tiny bits move when you separate them, but grains escape and blow about, and soon you can't see the line anymore anyway.'

‘My mum's stopped drinking,' Tara says. ‘I don't know if she'll last . . .' She holds out her hands, turning them up like she wants me to fill them.

‘It's something,' I say, and she nods.

I'm not sure we'll ever understand what it all means, or what's going to happen. All we can do is make the best of what we know, and just keep going.

There's a knock on the door and Mrs Lester pops her head in. ‘Your dad's here, Shelley.' Mrs Lester looks younger today. And . . . hopeful.

After she closes the door I smile apologetically at Tara. ‘It's Josh's presentation night. I promised I'd go. He's convinced he'll win – cocky bastard.'

‘Yeah.'

The silence hangs between us, neither knowing what to say next.

‘I'd better go,' I say.

Tara nods, and manages a tight smile.

‘I'll see you later.' I turn to leave, but she stops me at the door.

‘Yeah?'

In her arms is her glorious duffle coat. I stare at it, not knowing what to do next. ‘It doesn't fit me properly anymore,' she says, and pushes it towards me.

‘Are you kidding?' It seemed to fit her perfectly on grand final day, barely three weeks ago.

‘No. It's yours.'

I shake my head. ‘You can get another year or two out of this. You're not that much taller than me.' I laugh, nervously. I'm touched by this, even though I can't accept it. I can't imagine what this costs Tara – to give me her coat, to risk my rejection. I realise too late that I shouldn't have protested.

Tara presses it against me. ‘Take it.'

I stare down at the coat in my arms, overwhelmed. ‘Thanks,' I say, my voice made small by such an enormous gift.

 

Dad and Mrs Lester are chatting in the living room as though they've known each other forever, except when I get closer I notice that Dad has his hands shoved deep in his pockets like he doesn't know what to do with them. I don't think he's all that comfortable inside this mansion, just like me when I first came here. Now that I know its secrets, though, I'm not quite so intimidated.

We say goodbye to Mrs Lester and Tara, Mrs Lester raising an eyebrow at Tara's duffle coat, which I'm already wearing. ‘Nice coat,' she says, her eyes swinging back to her daughter.

‘I've outgrown it,' Tara says with a shrug. The defensiveness isn't there anymore and the contempt seems to have gone, or at least to have softened. I look at them standing side by side – not touching, but leaning towards each other, as though at any moment they just might. It's a new week. A new season. Anything is possible.

 

I watch the Glenvalley streets streak past us through the car window. The gaps and wide, empty roads don't seem as suffocating as they used to. I wind down the window, push my face out into the cold rush of air and breathe deeply. It feels good.

We pull into the twilit car park at the Glenvalley Raiders' home ground and park behind the clubrooms. Dad slams the car door hard when he gets out – too hard. Then he opens it and slams it again, as though it didn't work quite right the first time. He's nervous. This is the first time he's been back since Angus was playing for the Raiders. Since Mum and Angus died. He's seen the people, the players, the officials and other parents – at the funeral, on the street, at school functions – but not here at the club. I slip my hand into his, thinking that I can't remember the last time I held his hand for no reason. Then I realise that it's for all kinds of reasons. His fingers stiffen at my touch. For a second, my heart squeezing impossibly tighter, I think he's going to pull away. But he doesn't. Instead, his hand closes around mine.