How To Save A Life (25 page)

And I don't know if she can't remember or can't believe, but I hope that seeing that proof will be enough to drive it home. "Just going to meetings isn't enough." I try to soften my voice. "You have to actually try to give up, too."

"Smith and I—"

"Smith isn't really helping."

"He is!" The ferocity in her gaze is a slap in the face. "That man has done so much for me. Don't speak about him like that."

The words from the policewoman ring in my head, and I suck in a breath.
Here goes nothing
. "Mum, the other night he came into my room and watched me sleep."

Her face remains blank. "And?"

"And don't you think that's kind of creepy? He kissed my cheek."

"Lia, I think you're overreacting. He sees you as a daughter." She licks her cracked lips, and says, "He ... he lost his daughter. I can't imagine what that'd be like."

Her eyes go all wistful and glaze over with tears. I purse my lips. Am I just being overly sensitive? The man lost his kid, for crying out loud. The loss of someone you love can make the strongest person loosen their grip on reality.

My mum is living proof of that.

"He's even talked about buying you something nice for your eighteenth. He's a good guy, Lee Lee." Mum gives a small smile. "Please, can you let me be happy?"

And I can't say no to that.

I could never say no to that.

Twelve
days.

Twelve days until I play the piano in front the esteemed judging panel from VCA, the Victorian College of the Arts, and they decide if I am worthy enough to receive their scholarship.

Well, based upon that performance and my end of year grades, of course.

Six days.

Six days until I turn eighteen, and then that's one less lie, one less obstacle in the face of Jase and I. One less thing I have to hide.

I feel as if I'm walking on a tightrope, and if I can just make it to the end of this one song, I'll be okay.

But I can't let things slip.

Hell, is this a precise line to walk.

My hands fly across the piano this afternoon, every ounce of my body willing them to get there, to reach the notes they need to, to sing the songs they need to sing, and at the end of a gruelling four-hour rehearsal, relief beads my brow, along with perspiration. Because I did it. I played all the songs I need to for the scholarship, back to back, and they worked. And they sounded good.

When I get to my car, there's a note under my wiper. I grin as I look up at the bar. I can't help the small laugh that escapes me as I read yet another heartfelt letter that somehow captures all of me.

I AM PROFESSIONAL

I AM KICK-ARSE

I AM LIA STANTON!AND I SHOULD TOTALLY MAKE OUT WITH MY BOYFRIEND TOMORROW AFTERNOON … JUST SAYIN’

***

My birthday dawns like any other day. I wake up covered in sweat, the memory of a dream that's way too close to reality lingering in my mind. The calendar on the back of my door greets me though, makes me smile.

Only 123 more days ...

"Hello?" I ask as I walk downstairs to the kitchen. I throw my bag on the floor and make myself a bowl of cereal, looking around for any sign of life or disturbance that indicates Mum came home after her AA meeting last night.

Nothing
.

"Huh," I mumble. Apparently, Mum decided to stay at Smith's again.

I try to pretend that doesn't sting just a little bit. That she chose him over me.

My phone dings from somewhere inside my schoolbag, and I grab it out.

Happy birthday to my baby girl. Eighteen
—
wow! See you tonight for a special dinner. Love Mum xx

It's something. And it's a damn sight better than nothing.

***

When I pull up at school, there's an ambush waiting for me in the parking lot. Kat, Ellie and Ana are waiting in my usual space, Ana sitting on the wooden plank that denote the end of the car space, Ellie staring at her phone and Kat glancing surreptitiously over her shoulder at the imposing brick building behind us every few seconds.

I narrow my eyes. As far as I knew, the three girls barely knew each other.
What on earth ...?

The engine patters out and I open my car door, head tilted to the size. "What's going—"

"Get her!" Kat shrieks, and before I know it, three girls are launching at me, arms wrapped around my shoulders, waist and stomach as if I'm some kind of cream puff and they're trying to squeeze out my delicious filling.

"Happy birthday, lady!" Ana laughs, and soon they all break into this horribly off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday”, all the while keeping me locked in this embrace.

"Happy birthday to you-oo-ooou!" Kat yodels the last line, and I cringe.

"All right, get back in the car." Ellie opens the back door.

"What?" I look toward the school building. One of the admin teachers walks past the school gates, her gaze trained suspiciously on us.

"Get in, quick!" Kat hisses. She opens the passenger door in the front and dives inside. Ana clambers into the back, and even though I am fairly sure we're about to get busted for skipping school with an eye-witness report, I slide back into the front seat. I still haven’t forgiven Kat, but I do it because Ellie and Ana are my friends, and they’ve gone to all this trouble to organise a surprise for my birthday.

And because, y'know, it's my car.

"Drive the stupid thing!" Kat plays a drumroll on my dash, and I click the engine over. “Kat, I’m not …” I shake my head.

“I just want to be here for you, Lia.” She bites her lip. “Just let me try and make it up.”

I suck in a deep breath. I am still hurt, but I’m not angry anymore. And right now, after the battle I had last night, it seems easier just to give in. "Where am I going?"

"The beach," Kat answers, and I pull out of the parking lot and head out to the main road, driving toward the ocean.

It's a beautiful spring day, so warm it could be summer, and I wind my window down, fresh air rolling through the car. A song about parties and good times blares on the radio, and soon we're all singing along at the top of our lungs.

"And that boy he's so sexy," we all sing in unison the chorus's catch line as we wait in traffic lights. A guy in the car next to us offers a wink, resulting in more uncontrollable laughter and even louder singing.

When we reach the beach, the girls run from the car and onto the sand, and even though we're all from such different walks of life, it's as if the four of us have been best friends since birth. The girls force me to do all the usual things you do when you turn eighteen—I go to the liquor store, and buy us all some alcohol. Then I head into a small general store and buy a lottery ticket and a scratchy, taking them back out to the three girls leaning against my car. I even buy a packet of cigarettes, despite the fact that none of us smoke.

With our stash of eighteen-only items, plus a feast of lollies, chocolate and hot chips, we make our way to a spot behind the sand dunes, right where Jase and I had our first-date picnic. It's secluded here, hidden from the main road, which is probably a good thing, because even though the other girls had the foresight to bring casual clothes to change into, I'm still in my school uniform, thanks to not exactly realising I wasn't going to be at school today.

We all sit down and begin eating our snacks and drinking our raspberry and vodka ready-to-drink beverages, hidden from the world. It feels nice to do this. It's carefree, and fun, and kind of ... normal.

"So how did you guys all get together?” I ask.

“I got Ana’s number when I came into The View,” Ellie says, a triumphant smile on her face. “And then when I saw Kat at your car the other week, I hung around again the next day till saw her and got her details.”

“I should have told her we’re not …” Kat starts. “I’m sorry again.”

Ellie shoots me a curious look, and I shrug it off, then turn back to Kat. “It’s … I don’t know that I can be really friends with you, you know?” I gaze out at sea. “But it doesn’t hurt as much as it did then. And when I look back on it … maybe it was for the best. Now.”

A seagull calls overhead and swoops down next to our blanket. Ellie throws it a chip, and suddenly about eighty more birds join him, and soon it's almost like some kind of horror movie.

"Why'd you do that?" Ana waves her arms to try and scare them away, well used to the seagull multiplication rule (one seagull + one hot chip X your tolerance level for noisy demanding birds = the amount of seagulls you will receive to the power of three).

"Hey, if I was a seagull, I'd want someone like—wait, hold up!" Ellie snaps her gaze back to me. "You just said
now
."

I bite my lip. I hadn't meant to tell them about Jase.

"Spill!" Kat demands, leaning forward, and even Ana pauses in her incessant seagull shooing to give her full attention to me.

"I ... don't know what you're talking about?" I screw up my nose, and am rewarded with a slap to the ribs from Kat and a scoff from Ellie.

I guess I could tell them about Jase. I mean, what harm would it do, right?

"So ... I met this guy."

"That part we figured," Ana deadpans, and I shoot her a look.

"His name is Jase. He's twenty-two—"

"Twenty-two!" Kat shrieks, her eyebrows dancing up and down.

"And he owns a bar. The new one, Class, just down the road." I gesture loosely to the track behind us.

"Oh, I've been meaning to go there," Ana says, a veteran of the bar scene, being the far older and wiser age of nineteen. "I hear it's really good."

"He's done an amazing job with it," I gush, pride swelling in my chest at what he's achieved in such a short time. "I'm um ... I kinda told him I was eighteen, and I'm working there on the weekends."

"Whoa!" Ana's eyes widen. "God, does he need any other staff? I'd be keen."

"How'd someone so young get the money to start a bar like that?" Ellie frowns.

"I ..."
wonder why I haven't thought of that before.
"I don't know."

"I mean, I'm sure he didn't rob a bank or anything." She laughs. "Just curious."

"Well, he has been to prison ..."

Silence falls over the group, and the caws from the eight remaining seagulls have never seemed louder.

"That's kinda hot," Kat says, stretching out her legs, the only one apparently unperturbed by this information.

But the questions are mounting in my mind, and I'm starting to wonder if Mr Honesty isn't perhaps withholding some truths of his own. How did he get the money to start the bar? And would it be easy getting a liquor licence with a criminal record?

"Does he have huge muscles? A prison tattoo? Is he anything at all like Wentworth Miller in that show about the prison, where the guy has a tattoo and tries to break out—"

"
Prison Break
?" Ana interrupts Kat, and she nods eagerly.

"Does he look anything like that?"

I manage a laugh, and the tension is broken. "He has an amazing body." I close my eyes, thinking how firm and sculpted his stomach is, the way those muscles felt pressed up against mine. My eyelids flip open. "And he is hot. But not Channing Tatum hot."

"No one is Channing Tatum hot," Ellie says seriously, and we all nod and agree, a comfortable silence falling over our group once more at this universal truth.

"Ladies, I think it's time," Kat says, and Ellie and Ana nod. "Lia, close your eyes for a sec, honey."

I do as instructed.

Seconds later, something cool and heavy slides around my wrist.

"Open!" Kat says, and I do.

Clasped around my wrist is a beautiful silver chain bracelet, a delicate eighteen charm dangling from it. It's just the right size for my small wrist, and tears well up in my eyes. "You guys ..." I choke the sob back.

"Don't!" Ellie presses her hand to her forehead. "You know I'm a sucker for a sympathy cry."

"It's rea—ea—lly sweet," I sob-laugh, and it is. I can't believe how nice these girls are, and how perfect my life is in this one moment. I've got friends who care about me. I'm finally eighteen—it's one less thing to lie about to Jase, and I can finally get that damn licence to serve alcohol. Maybe things at home still aren't perfect, but after my confrontation with Mum last night, I feel better. I feel as if I can handle almost anything.

"Happy birthday to you," Kat leads the song, and soon they all start singing again as Ellie produces a cupcake from her bag, placing it in front of me and using a lighter to set the candle atop of it to flame.

"Happy birthday, dear Li-a ... Happy birth—"

But I don't hear the rest of the song.

Because Jase just walked around the corner. I smile, then I stop, because
oh my God,
I am in school uniform. And it doesn't take a genius to realise that no nineteen-year-old is still in high school.

My heart leaps into my throat. His mouth rounds in an
O
of confusion.

And then he looks pissed.