Girl Saves Boy (3 page)

I love art and the freedom it offers, and I love last words for the way they provoke my mind—I could drift on a train of thought for years, if there was no need to eat and drink and go to school.

I wish they recorded the last words of ordinary people—you can’t find any of those on the internet or in libraries. How unimportant you seem if you don’t do something that society values, if you never grow up and have the chance, or if you aren’t ever given the opportunities others receive, then your last words have no significance.

I came back home to Rachel—Mum, sorry—because I had no one else left, because I hadn’t finished school yet, because I didn’t want to live on my own. I’d just turned eighteen but I was still treated like a child. I was too stubborn to keep a job for long—I couldn’t even work part time in a greengrocer’s— and art was the only thing that mattered to me.

Now that I was back in the suburbs, I just wanted to disappear far away—to a cramped apartment in a dreary part of London, perhaps—and be a struggling artist, sitting with my charcoal and my canvas in the doorways of abandoned houses, drawing. Or in New York City, sleeping on the couches of talented but as yet undiscovered playwrights, drinking coffee all night and speaking rubbish and getting high.

I wanted to run away from this suburb I’d lived in as a young child, which still haunted me with memories, the happy ones hurting me more than the sad ones. But I couldn’t go back to my grandparents. The years living with them on a farm outside a town in rural Victoria were now only bittersweet memories.

My room hadn’t changed while I’d been away, but my mother had. After ten years without her (phone calls were a rarity near the end), it was so strange to call her Mum. When I’d left, she was still ‘Mummy’. She had been plump and had worn aprons and scrunched up her nose when she was concentrating on something. She’d had rosy cheeks and brown curls and got flustered easily.

After ten years Mummy had become Rachel, small and gaunt, falling-out brown curls, sallow-faced, always on the verge of tears, it seemed. What had once been a pretty sort of fragility had become instability.

I looked like my father—my sleek dark hair and olive complexion came from him—but the different-coloured eyes were my own personal curse. Everyone felt like pointing them out, whispering to each other.

In ten years I’d changed too, from a bright eight year old with too much energy and a fondness for crayons to an anti-social and friendless eighteen year old who drew in charcoal and any sharpened pencil.

I was once Jewel Valentine, her whole future ahead of her, each eye a different-coloured diamond, each day starting with vigour for life, like every child. Then I became Jewel Valentine, disenchanted, lonely, victim of the Curse of the Beautiful but Strange.

I knew how I looked—it didn’t have any positive influence on the way I felt about myself. I was five feet and two inches tall, but my height wasn’t the part that mattered, wasn’t the part that bothered me. It was how sharp my features were, the fact that my eyes were so striking, the way my hair fell.

It was these things that drew people in, but it was my personality that pushed them away. I wished they hadn’t noticed me in the first place. I was alone by choice, but I hadn’t counted on that causing me to feel lonely.

One thing that always annoyed my teachers, back when I was living with Grandma and Grandpa, was my lack of involvement. I didn’t want to join teams. I didn’t want to take up basketball or robotics or join the anime club. Also (and teachers never say it, but you know they want to), I’d never had a boyfriend. It wasn’t as if I was gay, either; I hadn’t had a girlfriend. (It was kind of trendy and edgy then to say you were gay, or bisexual, or any of those other words people use to let you know that their sexual desires and the types of people they are attracted to aren’t the norm.) I think it would have made Mrs F happy if she had walked in the front gates of the school one day and seen me locking tonsils with someone of any gender in my year. I probably should have done that. Just to find out. Just to get them off my back.

Nothing scared teachers at that school more than a potential teenaged sociopath. They thought I was going to walk in to school one day with a loaded gun and kill a bunch of Year 10s and say it was because I didn’t like Monday.

Actually, I kind of hated Wednesday, like it was there to intentionally piss me off, sidling in between Tuesday and Thursday, mocking me with its innate Wednesday-ness.

But where would I have got a loaded gun from anyway? I lived a bit out in the country, so I could have got a rifle off a farmer, but that’s not the weapon of choice in killing sprees, from what I’ve seen of late-night true-crime shows (the ones that always claim to have new and damning evidence, but never do).

Their second biggest fear was that I was going to kill myself. They asked me a few times whether I was having ‘urges’ (clearly they weren’t talking about the sexual kind, because that would have been freaky and they don’t tend to continue Sex Education past Year 10—though before then they deliver it liberally: for five years they brought the same nurse in, and she gave the same speech, and we watched the same bad ’80s video, and we had the same awkward Q & A), which, literally translated, means: ‘Been writing emo poetry, Jewel?

Tried to slit your wrists, Jewel? Thinking about trying to OD on your grandfather’s arthritis medicine, Jewel?’ I didn’t say anything. Maybe I was an attention-seeker, I don’t know. I wasn’t going to kill myself— that would have destroyed my grandparents and pushed my mother over the edge (perhaps into a killing spree of her own) and, besides, I still held hope for my future as a bum in London or New York.

I love last words. I wonder what mine would be, as I lay in a gutter, grey-haired and derelict in London or New York. I wonder what the last words of that boy that I saved would have been if I hadn’t been walking past the lake that night, if I hadn’t saved his life.

S
ACHA

From the moment I woke up the following Monday morning, the stolen garden gnomes on my shelf accosted me with their mocking cheery smiles and flamboyant red hats.

That girl Jewel hadn’t let me be, and now not even inanimate objects would give me a break.

Every noise seemed magnified. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and the sound of my eyelashes rustling was almost deafening. Slivers of light poured through the slats in the blinds, patterning the beige carpet of my room. The sun was especially bright, and the surround sound was fifty decibels higher than it should have been. The world was in high definition, but I just wanted to turn the TV show off.

There was a clatter of pots and pans in the kitchen (the cupboard beneath the stove was a mess of aluminium frying pans and oven dishes that we rarely used, and that Dad was always accidentally knocking everywhere). I slumped out of bed.

Across the hall in the bathroom, I splashed my face with water, avoiding my own reflection, instead admiring the mould growing around the drain. Cleaning was my job—not that Dad had ever assigned me chores, but if I didn’t clean the bathroom semi-regularly a whole army of bacteria would grow in there and eat us when we attempted to shower.

Even a year after my mother had died, I still expected to see her in the kitchen. I still got that sickening crunch in my stomach when it was just Dad there. And don’t get me wrong, I love my father. But she was gone. Even in the house she never lived in I expected to see her when I woke up in the morning, chirping ‘Rise and shine’.

But there was only Dad, with too tight a smile, knocking the pots everywhere, turning a dipping egg into a hardboiled one, the way my mother never did.

‘Hey.’ I hovered in the doorway, massaging my neck. I always slept at bad angles.

Dad looked up. ‘Good morning, Sacha.’ He found the toaster and slammed it on the bench. ‘It’s gonna have to be Vegemite on toast today, buddy.’ His T-shirt was splattered with paint. There was a work in progress, as always.

‘You haven’t called me that for years,’ I said, sitting down on a stool at the bench.

He brought the tub of butter over, and I pushed the bread down.

Dad inhaled sharply. ‘I think you should stay home from school today. We have a lot of stuff to talk about. Especially about the lake on Saturday.’

‘I have to go. This is an important year. You wouldn’t believe the pressure the teachers are putting on us,’ I said, then jumped to another train of thought. ‘Do you think many people die from sticking a knife in a toaster?’

‘Are you trying to change the subject?’

I stepped away from the toaster and poured myself a glass of water. ‘Yeah. You know I can’t hang around here all day, Dad.’ I didn’t look at him as I spoke.

‘Sacha.’ Dad sighed. He massaged his temples. ‘You’re sick. Again. We need to figure out what we’re going to do. We need to talk about this. You’re going back into hospital in a couple of weeks, and you’re not going to be able to keep up with your schoolwork.’

I gulped back a handful of painkillers and the glass of water. I put the glass in the sink and turned to Dad. ‘Why are you being like this?’

‘What do you mean?’ he replied. It looked as if new lines had appeared on his forehead overnight.

‘Why are you suddenly so concerned?’

‘You have cancer, Sach,’ he said. ‘It’s kind of a big deal.’

‘I know,’ I snapped. ‘Of course I know. I remember being sick. I know I’m sick now. But why are
you
being like this? You’ve been emotionally detached my whole life—off with the fairies, painting and crap, never even noticing half of what’s going on around you. You didn’t even notice when Mum was dying. But now you’re so concerned about me? Where did this come from?
Why are you being like this
?’ I glared at him.

‘It’s just you and me, now, okay? We’re going to work everything out,’ he said, looking down at the Vegemite jar. ‘Helen’s death was a tragedy, I know and I’m sorry, but now we need to sort this out.’

I shook my head and swallowed. ‘I can’t believe this. You killed her, you realise that? Now you suddenly want to talk?’ I spluttered.

‘You’re being ridiculous,’ Dad said. He crossed his arms and leant against the fridge.

‘I have to go to school,’ I said, leaving the room to grab my schoolbag.

‘Ignoring this won’t make it go away, Sacha!’ Dad yelled.

‘Worked pretty well for you when Mum was dying!’ I yelled back.

He didn’t kill Mum literally, but I couldn’t help but blame him.

He’d always been so distant, so lost in his own world, that he hadn’t noticed the changes in her. The changes she had made, I think, so that he
would
notice. The changes that went too far.

I hated myself for not seeing it coming either.

Now that I was sick again—the leukaemia back and worse than ever—he noticed. He wanted to help. I just wanted it all to end.

I wished he’d helped Mum. I wished we’d helped her.

True caught me by the sleeve of my school jumper as soon as I left homeroom, and spun me around.

I looked up at her. ‘I don’t appreciate being manhandled.’

‘It was Jewel Valentine, right?’ she said, pulling me clear of the doorway to stop me from being trampled.

‘You know what I don’t get?’ I asked. ‘Why people ask you a question when they know the answer already.’

True sighed and readjusted the clasp in her hair. ‘You drive me nuts.’

‘In an I-want-to-rip-off-your-clothes kind of way or…’

‘I went to the school registrar and guess what? Jewel Valentine’s starting school here today, and she’s in the same Art class as you.’

My eyes widened. ‘The office lady told you that? I’m surprised. Last time someone asked her to give them someone else’s timetable she read us this whole thing on the privacy act.’

‘
Us
?’

‘Little Al and me. He tried to get your schedule when he was fourteen. Can’t remember why, but I’m sure Al can…And I can’t help thinking you’re able to hypnotise people into giving you what you want.’ I shifted my books in my arms. Why did they have to make them so heavy? Couldn’t the people who wrote them have been more concise?

‘Everyone likes me around here.’ True shrugged. ‘Except the students. But I don’t like them either, so it doesn’t bother me.’

‘Then why so fascinated by Jewel Valentine?’ I asked. It felt strange to say her name. Like I was betraying some kind of secret between us—she had, after all, left before the ambulance arrived. I needn’t have told anybody about her. So why did I?

‘Don’t you want to meet her in a less life-threatening situation?’ True asked. So much for answering my question.

My mind said,
Yes. Yes, I would
. But I was afraid. I couldn’t tell True that.

I started walking down the hall towards my Geography class and True fell into step beside me.

‘Yeah, maybe, no…I don’t know. What do you think?’

‘I go and hypnotise the office lady for you, so you’d better keep going with Art—what are the alternatives, anyway? You’d lose a finger in Woodwork, and in every other subject they actually expect you to do work.’

‘Hey, I never really liked my left pinkie. It’s kind of stubby. Wouldn’t be the biggest loss.’

True shook her head. ‘I’ve got English Lit. Do me a favour and don’t go losing any body parts at least until I’ve got my university applications in. I can’t handle that kind of stress at the moment.’

‘I’ll hold off on it till next week, if it means so much to you.’

True smiled. ‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’

I was early to Art, my last class of the day, the one I always spent staring into the distance and ignoring Mr Carr.

I couldn’t draw well, but I stuck with Art because it was easy, because Mr Carr never failed anybody (he was twenty-four and yet to fall into the role of the heartless and jaded schoolteacher), and because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

Mr Carr was sitting on a stool behind the teacher’s bench.

He was focused on what he was drawing, and I slunk away to the corner of the room, sat down, dropped my bag at my feet and gazed out the window at uncoordinated Year7s playing soccer on the oval.