Alex as Well (7 page)

AT HOME MY mother serves me a tiny individual vegetarian cannelloni for dinner. I inspect it. There is no meat in it. ‘Thanks!’ I say, smiling at her.

‘You eat it all up now,’ she says, patting my hand.

She and Dad are having a meat one, but that’s ok with me. We sit at the dining table together. The telly is on in the lounge room, and we all look towards it. Dad is being fussy with the condiments, grinding the pepper and sprinkling parmesan. I push the cannelloni around my plate. It’s nice, but I’m working my way up to telling them about my day.

‘You can use the side of the fork first, and then you should push the fork into it, like this.’ My mother demonstrates.

‘Huh?’

‘You’re using your fork like a shovel.’ She scoops the air.

‘What’s the diff?’ Alex asks.

‘You should hold your fingers softly, and point your index finger. You should—’

I interrupt her. ‘Can we just eat? Please?’

‘I’m just saying, that’s all. The tines of the fork should face down. If I don’t tell you these things, then who is going to?’

‘There’s a fashion parade on at school,’ I tell them.

They look at me.

‘And I’m going to…umm, be a model,’ I say.

‘As a girl?’ my dad asks, still holding a pinch of parmesan above his plate—frozen in time.

I shrug. ‘I haven’t seen the clothes yet, but I guess. Since I am enrolled…going there as a girl.’

You need to bring up the thing about the enrolment. About the birth certificate. Alex whispers in my ear. Do it now.

I know, but it has taken all my courage to tell them about the fashion parade. I push the crumpled permission slip across the table. ‘One of you will need to sign this,’ I say, as if I don’t care.

They trade a look. The form is closer to Dad. He picks it up and reads it. ‘Dear Parent, please give permission for your son slash daughter to participate in yada, outside school hours, yada, images will remain the property of the boutique, yada, collect your child from the school grounds…’ He quotes on one exhaled breath. He pulls a pen out of his breast pocket, ready to sign.

My mother places her fork on the edge of the plate and stares at him. ‘Shouldn’t we discuss this?’

‘What are your objections?’ he asks.

She opens her mouth and glances at me. I study my meal.

I am afraid of her the way you would be if you were in the path of a demented grandmother swinging her shopping bag. It’s not her power—it’s her unpredictability.

‘It’s just clothes, Heather,’ he says softly.

‘It’s NOT just clothes!’ she shrills.

‘Honey, there is no one right way to eat cannelloni,’ he says.

‘Of course there is!’ she says, thumping the table. ‘How do children learn not to be pigs at the table if their mother doesn’t teach them? This is not about now. When he is older he is going to want to know how to eat at the dinner table in polite company. He doesn’t understand that now.’

They glare at each other in silence.

‘You said we were going to support each other,’ she adds.

Without looking at her he signs the form. I slip it back into my pocket.

About the birth certificate, Alex reminds me.

Shut up already. There’s always
.

WE CATCH THE school minibus to the first rehearsal. There are ten of us. Amina, Julia and I are the youngest. There are three girls from year ten and four from year eleven. Miss Angela is at the front, and another teacher—a balding man that I haven’t met before—drives the bus. When we arrive he pulls out a newspaper and tilts the seat back a little more.

Will we go bald? Alex asks. Because Dad is balding and Poppy—our mother’s dad—was bald too. I put my hand on the crown of my head. Plenty of hair there now. But. Something else to worry about.

I assumed the shop doing the clothes for the fashion parade would be a normal shop in a mall somewhere, but it’s a warehouse with shiny insulation lining the ceiling and spinning whirligigs that chop up the light. There are clothes on wheelie racks lined up higgledy-piggledy everywhere. In the middle there is a stage. I’ve seen this
before in a bridal shop. You stand on the little dais and somebody fixes your hem. It’s not a normal shop—they must do mostly online orders.

The stylist arrives and stands in the background while Miss Angela talks to us.

‘Let me make this clear,’ she begins. ‘I don’t want you to be sexy. It’s not appropriate. When you walk, you need to walk as though you’re late for class. There is to be no cleavage, or upper thigh. The principal is coming to the dress rehearsal, and if he doesn’t like the tone, then he will cancel the show, and we won’t be allowed to do it again. So let’s see your walk.’

We line up and walk up and down the shop. ‘No, no, no. Less hips,’ Miss Angela counsels us. ‘More like this,’ she says, pointing to me.

‘She walks like a guy,’ somebody mutters.

In the background, the stylist, Lien, starts putting together outfits.

‘This is about making money,’ she explains. ‘The audience will be given order forms and they can tick off clothes in the sizes they want, and hand them in as they leave. This means we’re doing clothes your mother would wear and school-formal dresses.’

Then Lien asks us to strip to bras and knickers, and she will hand out the outfits.

The girls look around.

‘Well, come on then, get busy. We’re all girls here.’

And then they start undressing. Amina is undressing.
She kicks her shoes off. She reaches back to unzip her tunic. She turns to Julia. Julia slides Amina’s zip down. Amina slips the material off her shoulder. The tunic crumples to the floor. Even with the shirt on I can see the curve of her buttocks.

One of the year eleven girls has enormous breasts in a pink lace balconette bra. Everywhere I look there are breasts and buttocks. I spin around.

Now Amina is coming towards me, in her underwear. She has a hot, smooth, athletic body.

She reaches towards my zip. She has mistaken my turning away as a request for help. She is close enough to me that I can feel her breath on my skin and the warmth from her body.

Alex is shouting in my head.
They’re going to see! They’re going to see!

‘No!’ I shrink back from her.

It’s like some hideous porn cliché. It’s a nightmare. I squeeze my eyes shut, but I can still smell their perfume, and something else. A girl smell. It goes up my nose and straight to my groin. I cross my hands in front of the noodle.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Miss Angela asks.

They’re going to see!
Alex is hysterical. He’s sweating. He’s going to cry.

Shut up!

‘I don’t feel well,’ I whisper.

I’m so ashamed.

She stares at me, and then she draws me away from the other girls. ‘What is it?’ she asks.

I swallow. ‘I’m not wearing a bra,’ I confess. ‘I didn’t realise we’d have to get changed in front of other people.’ I fan my sweaty face. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just…I’m embarrassed.’

She scans my eyes and then she sighs. ‘Ok, I have an idea.’

Miss Angela draws the wheelie clothes racks into a triangle around me. It’s like a change room. ‘Better?’ she asks.

I nod at her over the coat hangers.

‘Anyone else like to make themselves a change room?’ she asks.

Nobody did. Most of them didn’t even look up. They were folding their clothes into piles by their feet, or on a nearby chair.

Julia looks at Amina and rolls her eyes.

Lien leans towards Miss Angela and murmurs, ‘Is this one going to be a problem?’

Miss Angela shrugs.

I pretend I didn’t hear.

Lien throws a red tartan suit over the clothes rack at me. ‘Here you go, princess.’

The other girls are pulling their outfits on, and finally everyone is dressed again. Think of road kill. Stinking dead carcasses, half mooshed with flies on. There. That’s done the trick.

I smooth the front of my skirt. Smooth, smooth, like the Clinique girl. Then I move the rack aside and I stride out in my red tartan suit and my steel-capped boots, and stop, with my hand on my hip.

Lien and Miss Angela exchange a glance. Miss Angela shakes her head.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘Nothing it’s just that—’

‘You look like the real thing,’ Lien finishes.

I’M GOING TO see Crockett today. I shave my legs in the shower. I’m not really sure where you’re supposed to stop, so I keep going. It takes ages. I’m definitely going to have to find a better way to do this.

I sing, ‘Hey, honey, take a walk on the wild side.’

I pull on some knee-high socks with my steel-capped boots. I drag out my old grey school shorts and the butterfly T-shirt. I pull my hair up into two cute piggies on the top of my head. I tie a football jersey around my waist by the sleeves.

In the mirror I look like a boy wearing his sister’s T-shirt. I put on really thick eyeliner and draw a star on my cheek with a pink texta. Then I draw little geisha lips. It’s weird. It’s a bit Gaga, and I love it. Gaga has given girls permission to be drag queens.

I wait until I hear the shower start in my parents’ en suite and then I run down the stairs. I pinch a twenty
from my mother’s wallet and leave a note on the kitchen table.

Running late.

Cya. A xx

My mother has left a bracelet on the kitchen bench. It’s silver with shiny, black flowers and a butterfly in diamantes. It’s just junk jewellery from Target, but it’s eyecatching, and it goes with my shirt. I undo the clasp and slip it around my upper arm. It looks hot. I can do this high-street chic. I’m like Gok.

I catch a bus into the city and check out the food hall, where our shop would be if we were dairy farmers from South Australia selling our boutique cheese in the city. Although, no one has asked me about my backstory for ages.

There are so many beautiful clothes. I go into Cue and try on a few dresses. The shop assistant is all excited. She thinks I’m going to buy something. She keeps throwing dresses at me over the change-room door. But I don’t have enough money on me, and when I leave without buying anything she is shitty.

I find a bedazzler for four dollars in one of those junk shops. I can’t believe it. Well, it’s a copy. It’s called a ‘Ka Jinker’. Onomatopoeia. Marketing genius. It comes with little coloured butterflies and glass buttons.

There is a busker doing the statue thing.

There’s an income for someone with zero skills, Alex says.

I snigger. Yeah, because he didn’t even come up with the idea of being a statue.

Alex and I go into ‘undergarments’ in DJs. March straight in. It’s all coloured bras at the front, and then the big white spinnakers for the grannies at the back.

There’s a pale blue bra with little tiny orange flowers. It’s delicate and girlie. I get the cup size thing, because it’s common knowledge. I guess I’m an A, but there is a number too. I flick through them. They go from ten to eighteen. We’re going to have to try some on.

Yeah, baby! says Alex, rubbing his hands together.

I grab an eight, a twelve and a sixteen.

I crouch down to the undies. There’re G-strings at the front, and then hipster knickers at the back of the rack. They’re all lace with a little orange ribbon. I slide a pair out from behind the others so I can get a better look.

Woot! Alex loves it.

‘Boo!’ says a voice behind me.

Startled, I turn around. It’s Ty.

I’m holding undies. I try to put them back on the hanger, but I miss and they fall on the floor. I accidentally pull off a G-string, and that hits the floor too, so I drop the bras I’m holding, stand up quickly, and take a big step away from the undies.

‘Wow, you look hot!’ Ty says. He takes hold of my hand and lifts it up, as if he is asking me to dance.

‘Ta,’ I say, shaking him off. I hide my Ka Jinker in its plastic bag behind my back. He’s caught me off guard.
I’m having a mild panic attack, wondering if I’ve missed something. I don’t feel right today.

‘What are you doing here?’ I ask, taking another sidewards step away from the undies.

‘Dentist,’ he says, pulling a face. He introduces me to his mother. His mother! In the undies section! With the undies I was going to try on splayed across the floor! She’s probably forty-something. Voluminous skirt. Flat sandals. No makeup. A spinnaker wearer, for sure.

‘So you’re Alex.’

‘Hi,’ I say, blushing as she appraises me. She has a shirt on a hanger. She waves it in a way that indicates that she intends to try it on, and then she wanders off.

I take another step away from the underwear, but Ty’s eyes slide back to the rack.

‘Do you want to catch a movie or something after?’ he asks. ‘I’m only going to be an hour or so.’

‘I have a thing,’ I say, crooking my neck to the side.

‘Oh?’ His eyes flick towards the knickers on the floor.

I nod, but I don’t elaborate.

‘What about after the thing?’ he asks hopefully.

‘Not sure how long it’s going to take.’

A shop assistant whizzes up behind me and gathers up the undies that I dropped. I think about stopping her, and then I change my mind. I’ll do it another day when I have money.

‘I could wait,’ he offers.

‘I’m fine,’ I say.

He’s disappointed. ‘Maybe another time?’

‘Maybe.’

Ty picks up a bra on the closest hanger. He holds it up in front of me, and then he raises his eyebrows. I know that look. It’s the noodle-tugging look. It makes me feel yuck.

‘Ty, I, umm, I like girls,’ I blurt.

Idiot! Alex says. What did you say that for?

Ty laughs. ‘No! Are you serious?’

I scuff my foot. I don’t know why I said that. I’ve never been asked out by a boy before and I didn’t want to lead him on. I like Ty. He’s funny. I hope we can be mates. I guess I hoped that if I took the possibility of us being together out of the equation he might just like me for me.

‘You
are
serious!’ Ty’s mouth drops open, and I see the General Wood look cross his face again. He’s not deterred. He’s picturing me with another girl. If anything I’ve made it worse because now I am unattainable, and that makes me hotter. I know because that’s how I feel about Amina.

‘I haven’t exactly told anyone at school,’ I say, peeking at him from under my eyelashes. ‘But I know you like me, and I didn’t want you to think…I want us to be friends. And I’m not just saying, “can we be friends”. I like you. I actually want to be friends.’

Ty doesn’t understand. My words are going into his ears, but he’s not listening. And I’m not surprised because
they are stupid, empty words. It was a mistake.

He will tell. I won’t get to go to the sleepover.

‘Can we keep it between us?’ I ask.

Ty slides an imaginary zip across his lips.

But he will tell.

Of course he’ll tell, Alex snorts at me. He will text one of his mates before you’re even out of sight.

‘Well, I better go,’ I say, fleeing.

As I make my way through the lunch shoppers, I put my hand up to my temple. I’m getting a headache.

Ty took me by surprise, that’s all. I was having a day off today. I was having a dress rehearsal at being a girl, and he made me have to think about stuff I didn’t expect to have to think about.

But it will be ok. Won’t it?