A Little Wanting Song (21 page)

I run home, arms open, face up to catch the rain. I shake the water off on the porch and go take a shower to heat my freezing skin. I call Dahlia. “It’s Charlie.”

“I know who it is. What do you want?”

A whole lot of things. “I’m calling to see how your summer’s going.”

“Good.”

If a person hadn’t been there all the time when I was lying and treating Dahlia like she belonged to me, they might think she was being harsh. But I was there. I couldn’t lose her like I lost everything else, so without a word I made her feel bad for spending time with Louise. I planned sleepovers on nights when I knew there’d be parties, and I made her choose
between new friends and me. I made her stand up for me instead of standing up for myself. She ignored me that day at Jeremy’s party because I wouldn’t say something to Louise and she was sick of me acting that way.

I keep talking and hope that sometime in the conversation we shift into who we were before things became like that. “So my summer’s good, too. Kind of good. Strange, actually. I gave Dave Robbie mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after a snake bit him.”

“Shit.” She thinks about that for a second more. “Shit.”

“I know.”

“That’s practically a kiss. You’ve practically kissed him.”

“I almost kissed him for real. At night when we were walking by the river. We danced to some songs on my iPod. He didn’t know it, but one of them was mine, the song I wrote, that time you stayed over.”

“The one about sex?”

“It was never about sex, Dahlia; I told you that at the time.”

“It was definitely about sex.” Her voice is muffled, and I know she’s pulled the phone into the hall closet to talk where her parents can’t hear. “I kissed Jack Baker last week,” she says. “It was bad. I kept thinking, Is it this bad because I’m bad or is he bad or are we both bad together?”

“Maybe you have to practice.”

She thinks about that. “Better than practicing the piano, I guess. What else is going on? Is Rose still a bitch?”

“No more than Louise.”

She doesn’t answer for a second or two. “You should have told her she was a bitch at the party.”

I stare out the window at the tangled garden. “I know. I think I’ll spend less time with her next year. Maybe more time with Andrew Moshdon and some kids from music.”

“Maybe audition for the final concert?”

“Maybe. I might try to get a band together. I’m singing at the local talent quest this Saturday.” Until that second I hadn’t decided.

“That’s so cool.”

I hear her walking out of the closet and into the kitchen. “What are you eating?” I ask.

“It’s hard to say. Mum’s been baking. I need your dad here to cook for me.” She chews some more. “Or does hanging with Louise less mean you’re cutting me, too?”

“We’ll work it out. We’re in Year Eleven. The in-crowd shouldn’t matter so much.”

“I don’t like Louise because she’s the in-crowd. I like her because I like her. I wasn’t mad at you because you weren’t part of the in-crowd.”

“I know.”

“Do you know?” she asks, and I can see her standing there like she did that day when those guys called us losers.

“I do.” Some things take a while to know, that’s all. “You want to hear my song about Dave and me?”

“Yeah. Just hold on a sec. Mum’s asking when you’re coming home.”

“Tell her soon.” And I play the first chord.

*   *   *

In my dreams tonight, the breeze is Mum’s hair tickling my skin. But when I open my eyes, Dad’s sitting on the chair near my window. “Is it morning?” I ask, blinking sleep away.

“Not quite, Charlotte.”

The blue and silver light and the softness of his voice make me feel like I might still be asleep. “I dreamed of Mum,” I say, and wonder if I’m talking about a dream in a dream.

“I do that all the time,” he says. “Especially here.” He looks at my guitar. “She says, ‘Can you believe we made a daughter who sings like that?’ I have to say that I never heard.”

I get up, and my feet wobble on the way over like feet do when you walk after sleeping. I take the guitar and sit next to him in the blue light. There’s honey on the air, set free from the jasmine by the storm. I play one of my songs. He taps his foot while I strum, and I feel like things might be changing, so I add an extra verse.

“So beautiful, Charlotte,” he says.

“What’s the bag for?” I ask.

“I’m going camping one last time.”

“I’m singing at the talent quest on Saturday.”

He looks at me, at my guitar. “I’ll be there, Charlotte,” he says, and walks out, leaving the door open. He comes back after five minutes. “Charlotte, if Dave Robbie visits again, leave the door like that.”

“Sure thing, Dad.”

Close to How

You’re a ghost now
Falling
Through the dark
Trapped in rocks and dirt and water
You’re a ghost now
And when I ask you why
You say sometimes death don’t let us die

Sometimes life won’t turn out like we want it
Sometimes life won’t turn out like we want

He’s a ghost now
Living
In the dark
Trapped by rocks and dirt and water
He’s a ghost now
And when I ask you why
You say sometimes death don’t let us by

Sometimes life won’t turn out like we want it
Sometimes life won’t turn out like we want

But sometimes in the honey night
Blue voice sweet and circling high
You forget the rocks and dirt and water
While you sing softly to the sky

Sometimes life turns out close to how we want it
Sometimes life turns out close to how we want

Luke and I sit at separate tables outside the shop. He turned up for lunch a couple of hours ago and never left. He’s turned up most days this week and sat staring at the hills. “What are you writing?” he asks today.

“Some lyrics for a song about this place.” It’s not the one I’m singing for the show; it’s about him and Rose, but I don’t say that.

“Must be a pretty quick song,” he says. “About this place.”

I give him a laugh because he looks like he needs it. “Have you seen Dave today?”

“This morning. That scary nurse with the mustache kicked me out.”

“I’m visiting this afternoon if you want to go together. Two against one scary nurse with a mustache.”

“Yeah, okay. Not sure two’ll be enough. It’s a big mustache.” He keeps staring at the hills. “Dave’ll be unbearable when you leave. He goes on and on about you. It’s like being hit by a cricket bat. No offense.”

“None taken.”

His eyes stay on those hills, even though he can’t see Rose from here. “You’re not taking her with you?”

I shake my head. “She’s staying.”

“She’s not staying,” he says, kicking at the dirt. “Even if she stays, she’s not staying. Her mum and dad did it in the back of a car, you know? Had her when they were young.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“A Holden. Good car. I think maybe that’s why she wouldn’t do it with me. Didn’t want that to happen to her. I wouldn’t care about not doing it with her, if she’d get back together with me,” he says.

A yellow car drives past the shop, and I watch it go. The day’s a hazy blue. “That’s where Rose used to sit,” Luke says. “Right where you’re sitting.” A fly lands on the table and doesn’t move. “I know,” I say, staring at it. I imagine day after day of sitting here.

“I’m bored to death,” Luke says, and I nod. Like Gus told me, you don’t always understand people, so you gotta understand yourself. Then maybe you take what you worked out about yourself and use it to figure out other people.

“I want things, too,” Luke says.

“Like what?” I ask, even though I get the feeling he’s not talking to me.

“I don’t know what. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want them.”

Antony rides over and stands in front of us. “Shit, things must be quiet.”

“Shut up, Antony,” Luke says. “I’m talking to Charlie.”

There is something kind of likable about him. “You want some free chips?”

He grins. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“What about me?” Antony asks.

“She doesn’t give everyone their chips for free,” Luke says.

I ride on Luke’s handlebars to get to the hospital. “You should bring your bike down next Christmas,” he says.

“I’m asking Dad to buy me one for my birthday,” I tell him, and he goes through what I should buy and how much I should pay.

He’s still going on about it when we walk into Dave’s room. “Charlie’s getting a bike for her birthday. I said a hybrid’s better because she can ride in the city and country.”

“No more riding on people’s handlebars?” Dave asks.

“Nope. I’m taking to the road.”

“Better wear a helmet.”

“This jelly is shit,” Luke says.

Dave throws a magazine at him. “I was saving that.”

Luke throws it back, and the nurse walks in and tells us to
be quiet. “She’s why women should shave,” Luke says. “Close shave.”

“It’s the new millennium,” Dave says. “They don’t have to shave.”

“I think the venom went to your brain,” Luke answers. “It’s making you hallucinate and think that you’re Rose. You’ll be trying to kiss me next and then calling me a dickhead after you’re done.”

“The venom of fifty snakes could not make me hallucinate enough to kiss you. But you are a dickhead.”

Luke turns on the TV.

“So I’ll be well enough to go to the talent quest Saturday,” Dave says. “You’re going, right, Charlie? We should all go together.”

“I’ll meet you there. I’m going with Grandpa. With Dad, too, if he’s back in time.”

“Something special you’re doing before you leave?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Something special.”

Luke goes, but I stay awhile longer. I watch Dave sleep and do a little writing and thinking. Hospitals used to remind me of Mum. Not because I’d ever seen her in one. I imagined her there, though. I imagined her being rushed in and saved. I imagined that over and over in the month after she’d gone. I didn’t play music. I imagined that moment.

And then Mum’s friend Celia mailed me that Stones album we danced to. I remember that summer Dave talked about, the one when I started wearing my Walkman. I remember
because I’d worked out how good it felt to block the world. I even wore it sometimes at dinner with Dad. He made a little sign when he wanted me to pass the salt.

“What are you doing?” Dave asks, opening his eyes.

“I’m sitting here thinking about dead people.”

“I like how you come in here to cheer me up.”

“I like it, too.” I pass him some water.

“I keep having this dream about snakes,” he says.

“That’s normal.”

“The snakes are wearing little hats.”

“Okay, that’s not so normal.”

He takes a sip and thinks for a bit. “What’s normal?” The snakebite victim high on painkillers makes a really good point. “Stop thinking about dead people,” he says, and drifts back to sleep.

I take the advice of the snakebite victim high on painkillers, since he seems to be making sense. I make a New Year’s resolution list. It’s not one of those I’ll-be-good lists. It’s a list of killer things coming up this year. I don’t have to think all that hard to write it. I let the good stuff fall on out of me.

Finishing my song for Saturday, standing up there and letting it roll out and hit the audience, hit them and vibrate on their skin. Giving Dave his CD before I go home. Kissing him and having the stars go harmonic. Heading back to the city in the early morning, sun raining pink. Stopping at the gas station and stocking up on candy for the trip home. Sharing some with Dad and playing him some tunes I think he might like. Telling Dahlia about the summer and not telling Louise to get stuffed
because, really, who cares about her? Calling Andrew and asking him to meet me out the front of school on the first day of Year 11. Lying in the sun in the quad on the last days of summer. Studying music. Getting a band together. Paying Beth to give me real singing lessons. Working and waiting for new releases that can be mine before anyone else’s. Sitting with Gus and talking about musicians who are the biz. Seeing bands. Singing.

I stop writing when the nurse comes in. “He goes home Saturday morning,” she says. I make “keeping out of hospitals” the last thing on my list.