Girl Saves Boy (13 page)

‘But shouldn’t she be allowed to go out with guys even so?’ I asked. ‘It’s not as if she’s obliged to return the feeling.’

He swallowed. ‘I guess. I just thought…I don’t know, maybe she could have said, ‘“Look, I’m going out with this guy. You’re going to have to get over this crush.” She’s never said anything to him outright.’

‘Shouldn’t you just let them sort it out on their own?’

He frowned. ‘Do you have to be so clever? God, I’ve been trying to figure this out for five years, and now you come along and you’ve got all the answers.’ His eyes were twinkling as he spoke.

I laughed, shaking my head. ‘I guess that was why she was being weird just before,’ I said.

‘Probably a contributing factor to her weirdness,’ he shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

After a few moments he smiled at me and asked, ‘Do you want to dance?’

‘I can’t dance to save my life,’ I said.

Sacha nodded towards adults and kids laughing and twirling, a few drunkenly.

‘I highly doubt that matters,’ he said and stood and grasped my hand, pulling me up with him.

He dragged me over to where there was some free space and where the music was noisier. As soon as we got there, the song ended.

‘Oh,’ I sighed. I tried to walk back to our seats, but Sacha held tight to my hand. And, as much as I wanted to go and sit down, I didn’t want to let go.

‘We’re waiting for the next song, Jewel,’ he said. ‘You’re not getting out of this.’ He grinned.

‘Seriously, I look like a fish having an epileptic fit,’ I said. ‘Not pretty at all.’

He just grinned wider.

The band started the next song, and it was slow. Awkwardly, I put my hand on Sacha’s shoulder. He put one hand on my waist and grasped my other hand in his. We swayed slowly, barely at all, and I looked everywhere but at him.

Little Al caught my eye and came over. He was cradling his sister’s baby boy.

‘Hey, kids,’ he said, ‘guess who’s the designated driver tonight in my family?’

Al nodded in the direction of his mother, who was loudly recounting an anecdote to a couple of cornered teachers. David and June—Al’s dad and his girlfriend—were laughing just a little too hard to be sober.

Sacha smiled. ‘You?’

‘Yes.’ Al grinned back and bounced the baby. ‘If I’m lucky, they won’t tell everyone their names; otherwise, people will start associating me with the funny drunks.’

‘Hey, it’s the best kind of drunk to be,’ said Sacha.

‘I beg to differ. Every time Mum goes over the limit she retells the birth of each of her children, thinking she’s being funny. It was okay until she did it at her work Christmas party and got sacked.’

‘They fired her for telling everyone about having children?’ I asked.

‘It was pretty gory. Plus, she projectile-vomited in the office. Ruined a couple computers.’

‘Nice.’

‘My family’s got style, Jewel Valentine,’ Al winked. ‘Anyway, I think it’s a bit loud here for Bobby.’ He smiled at the baby, who was looking around, expressionless but alert.

I’m not sure whether the song was especially long, or if it only felt that way, but it sure seemed as if we’d been dancing there for ten minutes already.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t like it; I did—Sacha’s smile, his hand warm in mine, his other hand against my waist, the night itself, the music—but, God, my heart was going to leap out my throat if I wasn’t careful. When we moved, I panicked that I’d step on his foot, or I’d lean too close. I was nervous the whole time. I worried my palms were sweaty or my breath was bad. That this close it’d be completely obvious how terrible my skin was.

I had one memory of my parents dancing. It was after my brother had died, and my parents had been sleeping in separate rooms (if they were sleeping at all). Everything was upside down and inside out. Then one afternoon I came out of my room to find them slow-dancing silently in the living room. There were three drained wine bottles on the kitchen bench, and they were dancing to an old CD. From this, my eight-year-old mind concluded that things were getting better, my parents would be happy again, we could re-form as a family around the hole that Ben had left.

I was wrong.

As always, I was incredibly, achingly wrong.

After my parents slow-danced in the lounge room, three things happened in quick succession, so fast I barely had time to register what was going on: my dad disappeared, my mum overdosed, I was sent to live with my grandparents.

‘I really like you, Jewel,’ said Sacha. When he spoke, his breath was warm against my face.

‘I really like you, too,’ I said.

I wanted to lean in and kiss him right then. I think we both were thinking it. But we both hesitated, and the song progressed to another verse, and we continued to dance. The moment disappeared—it didn’t pass; it just vanished.

‘Have you seen
Groundhog Day
?’ I asked. ‘Where Bill Murray keeps on reliving the same day over and over?’

‘Yeah, why?’ Sacha said.

I shook my head. ‘This is the day I’d choose to relive, if I got the option.’

‘Why today?’

‘Well, the weather’s been perfect. It’s the weekend. There’s this awesome fete to attend. You’re here—’

‘I know. I’m wonderful, right?’

‘Shut up,’ I laughed. ‘If I did it over, I wouldn’t spend most of the day up a tree, and I’d get my face painted.’

Sacha didn’t laugh this time. He just smiled. ‘You know they have fetes and carnivals everywhere, all the time, don’t you? There’s probably one on next weekend somewhere, where you can get your face painted.’

‘Isn’t it your birthday next weekend?’

‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘Did you do anything special for your eighteenth?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not really a party person. Have you got anything planned?’

‘Kind of. Well, no. It’s hard to work it when you’ve got two friends and one hates the other. And I’m friends with you, too, now. But you like them both, don’t you?’

I nodded.

‘So we just need to stop True hating Al,’ he said. ‘Then after that we can bring peace to the Middle East, stop global warming and then, I don’t know, go bowling for my birthday.’

‘I like bowling,’ I said.

‘As long as you enjoy peacekeeping, we’re good to go.’

I paused for a moment then a whole lot of words tumbled out of my mouth without permission.

‘When I was about eight, my dad left. But in those weeks beforehand, before he left, he and my mum fought. A lot. There were alternating periods of this all-out screaming, violent fighting, and complete silence, where they’d each sit in a separate room and cry and cry and cry.’

Sacha asked, as softly as he could without the music drowning out his words, ‘Did other things happen? Like, what led to them being like that?’

‘There are always other things,’ I said. ‘I tried to be peacekeeper. I was eight. I tried to talk to them when they were crying, tried to help. Then, when they shouted and threw things, I hid. I blamed myself, always, for them eventually breaking up. I thought I could have fixed things, could have sensed things going bad earlier and stopped them, stopped it from ripping our family apart.’

‘You know what they always say,’ said Sacha. ‘“It’s not your fault.” Your parents still both love you; the problem’s just between them.’

‘I never got that talk. My dad disappeared.’

‘Oh, Jewel,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to say I’m sorry for you, because everyone says it so much, it’s lost its meaning. But I am. I really am.’

‘Shit,’ I mumbled. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you all this. You don’t need it. And after your mum…’

‘Hey, this is what friends are for,’ he said. ‘That’s another thing everyone says too much, but it’s still true.’

The song had ended, and another, more upbeat one had begun. Still, we didn’t break apart. My hand remained on his shoulder and his hand on my waist gripped tighter. We were close—much closer than we had been at the start of the song.

Suddenly, someone else gripped my arm and turned me to face them. Al’s mother flung her arms around me and hugged me, then leant away, smiling broadly.

‘I wish my son was going round with a girl as lovely as you—what’s your name again?’ she asked, then winked at Sacha. ‘That True Grisham’s so… aloof? Is that a word? Aloof?’

‘She’s nice when you get to know her,’ offered Sacha. ‘Both Jewel and True.’

Sal grinned at him. ‘I love you, kid. Have I told you that?’

Just then, it suddenly began bucketing rain.

S
ACHA

The rain was hammering down.

Everyone ran and squeezed under the covered veranda at the front of the school, or in the marquees, grabbing picnic blankets and chairs, scrambling as they tried not to get drenched.

I lost sight of Al and his family almost straightaway; I couldn’t see an arm’s length in front of me. Big fat raindrops were cascading over me, the rain coming down fast. In moments I was completely soaked.

Jewel grasped my hand and began pulling me along, as the downpour became torrential.

We were running in the rain, and I couldn’t see, and the asphalt underfoot was slippery, so I was convinced we would slip, but still I followed her.

We got to the stairs at the back of D-block. Jewel tried the door and, for some reason, it was unlocked.

She grinned at me—we were shielded by an overhanging roof above, so I could actually see her now—her hair was sopping wet and clumped around her face, her clothes drenched.

We went inside. The hall was eerily quiet and empty, and almost pitch-black. It seemed like a bad, low-budget horror movie: some guy with a nerdy name and a hockey mask was going to kill us slowly and painfully and a lot of tomato-sauce-type blood would go everywhere.

I felt along the wall until I found a doorhandle. I opened the door and felt beside it for a light switch. Jewel bumped into me as I reached the switch and turned it on.

The fluorescent lights flickered three times before they illuminated a classroom. In fact, I think I had Legal Studies in there. Jewel ran inside, found the heater and fumbled with the buttons, trying to turn it on. After a few chilly minutes, it shuddered to life, breathing out a gust of cold air before it warmed up.

She grinned at me again. Her eyes were shining and her teeth were chattering.

With the lights on, I wasn’t as concerned about the undead as I was about getting caught.

‘Do you think we’re allowed in here?’ I asked her.

‘Who cares?’ she said, teeth still chattering. ‘It’s cold. Don’t be such a worrywart.’ She sat down in front of the heater, and I sat beside her. ‘I’m glad I don’t wear make-up,’ she said, wiping water off her face.

The rain slammed down on the roof. It was white noise, consuming everything else.

Jewel peeled off her gloves and my soaked jacket and put them over the heater, then started squeezing water out of her hair. My own hair was plastered to my head.

‘When I lived in the country with my grandparents,’ Jewel said, ‘they would
kill
for this sort of rain. But here, you know, it’s just kind of inconvenient, especially in the middle of a fete.’

I shrugged. ‘Livened things up.’

She turned and smiled at me, and we looked at each other longer than would be considered comfortable, but neither of us looked away. Her hair was still wet and her dress clung to her tightly.

‘Thank you for saving my life,’ I murmured.

‘The rain isn’t
that
bad,’ Jewel replied.

‘I wasn’t talking about that. I meant the other day.’

‘I know.’

She didn’t speak for a moment. Then she looked straight at me. ‘Why were you out there?’

I swallowed. ‘I was trying to kill myself.’

‘I didn’t intend to sabotage your plan,’ she said. We spoke quietly. Although the rain was loud, we could still hear one another. I couldn’t hear any other people, though. I could imagine we were the only people left in the world, and the thought was probably a lot nicer than it should have been.

‘I’m glad you did.’

‘Why drowning, though?’ she asked, her voice quiet. ‘Why not pills or hanging or cutting?’

She was right: it wasn’t like we didn’t have the drugs necessary to kill me. It wasn’t as if we didn’t have ropes or razors. Why drowning?

‘I don’t know,’ I murmured. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

I was surprised she didn’t ask me why I was trying to kill myself, only why I chose the method I did.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said, ‘but I think Jeff Buckley drowned. Walked into a river on New Year’s Eve with his guitar, or something. Then again, that’s probably just some romanticised story someone made up about it. Though Jeff Buckley seems the sort of guy who’d want to kill himself in a tragic-romantic way.’

‘Virginia Woolf drowned herself as well,’ I replied. ‘Filled her pockets full of rocks to keep her down.’

‘Was she crazy?’

‘Sort of, I think. I think you would have to be, at least a little bit, to try to kill yourself.’

‘You aren’t crazy.’

I smiled. ‘Thanks. That’s reassuring.’

‘I don’t mean to pry, but shouldn’t you be in a mental facility right now, or seeing a counsellor at the very least? After trying to kill yourself, I’d assume they’d want to help you.’

‘I told them it was an accident,’ I said. ‘It’s better that way. But Dad and True and Al pretty much figured it out anyway.’

She still hadn’t asked me why I did it.

‘Do you think that you chose drowning because that’s what you were already predestined to do, and I was already predestined to be there and save you?’ she asked. ‘God, now I sound crazy.’

I laughed. ‘Maybe. Or maybe I can’t handle the sight of blood, hate pills and can’t tie a knot.’

Jewel laughed and shook her head. ‘I can’t believe we’re talking about this and laughing. Bizarre or what?’

‘It’s an adrenaline reaction,’ I said, ‘like when people get giggly after a serious accident.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I learn stuff hanging around Little Al.’

Jewel stopped trying to tug the water from her hair and went through her satchel. ‘Thank God,’ she said, holding up her sketchbook. ‘It’s dry.’

‘Would you mind if I had a look again?’ I asked.