Living With Leanne (5 page)

I make a tossed salad with the lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and cucumber. I heat the griller like I’ve seen Mum do, and cut up the fruit for a fruit salad. I should’ve bought cream or ice-cream, I’m thinking, as I put the rolls and margarine onto the table. I hear a car coming and then the motor cuts out. Doors slam as I put the steaks under the griller. Voices. The thump of surfboards against the van. The door opens and Nathan pokes his head in and sniffs.

‘Yum.’

Rick and Mattie follow. They’ve had a rad day, great surf, and they’re starving hungry. They start on the bread rolls while I turn the steaks over. Then they’re ready and we eat. The dozen rolls and steaks and salad disappear fast. So does the fruit salad. And they’re still hungry so I bring out the loaf of bread and the cheese and they get stuck into that. They talk about tubes and tunnels and funnelling out and drops and filthy surf until my head spins. It’s worse than being with Sam.

I must be looking bored.

‘Want to come with us tomorrow?’ Nathan says.

Mattie looks annoyed. His red hair’s all spiky with salt and his nose is already peeling; he looks like an angry tomato. Rick doesn’t look too thrilled either. He sweeps his dark hair out of his eyes and looks edgy. For them it’s okay if I stay at the van and clean and cook but those two don’t want me tagging along spoiling their fun.

‘I’d rather stay here,’ I say quickly, and they look relieved.

‘In that case, you’re ringing your family,’ says Nathan.

‘I will soon.’

‘Now. I’ll drive you to the phone box.’

‘No. I’m not … ready.’

‘You’re as ready as you’ll ever be.’

‘No.’

‘You phone
now
or you’re outa here.’

I’m stunned. I face him angrily, hands on hips. He looks grim. I glance at the others. Mattie looks down, picks up a scrap of bread and wipes his plate. Rick looks scornful.

‘Selfish little creep aren’t you?’ Rick says. ‘Couldn’t give a dog’s breath whether your family’s worried sick about you.’

‘You don’t understand …’

‘No.
You
don’t understand. The worst thing in the world
is not knowing if someone’s alive or dead. It’s a living hell.’

He gets up from the table and storms off outside.

‘His girlfriend disappeared three years ago without a trace,’ says Nathan quietly.

‘Yeah? Well, that’s his problem, not mine.’

‘I can’t believe you just said that,’ says Nathan, turning away from me. Mattie makes this snorting noise.

‘Okay, okay,’ I feel awful. ‘I’ll ring.’

But it’s too late to take the words back; Nathan walks me to the phone box and although I try to make conversation he won’t answer. He just keeps plodding along beside me like he wishes I’d vaporise off the planet.

‘I’m sorry,’ I grab at his sleeve. ‘If I could take that back I would. I didn’t mean it.’

Nathan stops.

‘You need to start thinking before you put that snappy tongue of yours into first gear,’ he says. ‘Here’s the phone.’

‘I haven’t got any change.’

‘Call reverse charges then.’

‘How … ?’

‘Oh, get real, Christine. Phone the operator and tell her it’s a collect call.’

He’s furious. But how’s a fifteen-year-old kid supposed
to know about long-distance reverse charges? Then I remember he thinks I’m eighteen (or a bit less). He walks off and leans against the nearest tree.

I phone the operator and go through the process.

‘Leanne Studley,’ I go when she asks who’s making the call.

Next thing Mum’s on the line.

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Leanne. Where are you?’

‘Never mind. I just want to let you know I’m okay, perfectly safe and …’

‘Why, Leanne? Why?’

She sounds as angry as AC/DC in a power strike.

‘I need space.’

‘Space?
Space
? That’s what you’ve got between the ears! One great empty vacuum. You act like you’re five instead of fifteen. Now, listen, this is what I want you to do. Go to the nearest police station. Tell them there’s a Missing Persons out on you, and … what’s that, Steve … ? Oh, okay, and tell them …’

I crash down the phone so hard that the booth shakes.

He’s
there, Steve the super snoop cop! Well, they can all drop dead! I crash out of the phone box and there’s Nathan looking
livid
.

‘Now what?’ I snap.

The conversation with Mum’s shaken me up. A Missing Persons? Great!

‘So. You lied.’

‘Huh? What are you on about? You heard me. I did it. I phoned home.’

‘I wasn’t talking about that, Christine. Or should I say
Leanne Studley
!’

He’s overheard me!

‘Okay, so I gave you a false name. I had to know if I could trust you.’

‘How old are you?’

‘I told you. Eighteen.’

‘You’re lying, Leanne.’

‘Okay, okay. Sixteen. Well, nearly.’

‘What? Fifteen?’

He’s totally shocked. He grabs me by the arm and hauls me back along the street to the van. He pushes me inside.

‘Meet Leanne Studley, age fifteen.’

‘I knew it. Jail bait. Betcha there’s a Missing Persons out on her, too.’

‘That’s it. She’s outa here.’

I can’t believe this is happening.

‘Go,’ says Nathan. ‘Now.’

‘But …’

He drags me out to the annexe, gets my bag, shoves my stuff off the annexe ropes into it and tosses it at me.

‘You’re trouble, Leanne. And we don’t need it. Goodbye.’

‘But … it’s dark. I’ve got nowhere to go.’

I start to cry. I’m standing there clutching the bag and he goes back inside the van and shuts the door. I stand there sobbing quietly. Then the door opens. They’ve changed their minds! I know Nathan really likes me. He can’t let me go off on my own in the dark.

‘Here.’

A wad of money lands at my feet.

And the door slams shut in my face.

Living without Leanne is fantastic. She’s been gone a week now and I’ve got two bedrooms to myself. Apart from Mum stressing out that Leanne’s met with foul play and been murdered under a bridge (what’s new?) everything’s lovely and quiet. I’ve taken over looking after her lupins and they’re still listening seriously to the Gunners every day for ten minutes and growing like Jack’s beanstalk. Tomorrow I’ll measure them for Miss Rosewall. Mum’s spread the word that Leanne’s got a highly infectious disease and can’t go to school and can’t have visitors but some kid from Year 9 went to the cop shop and saw her photo on the Most Recently Missing Persons’ wall and the rumours are flying. Lucky for me the photo was taken two
years ago and it doesn’t even look like Leanne because I went and had a look. I mean, who needs a missing sister? It’s embarrassing. I’ve spread a rumour that it’s another Leanne Studley.

Then all these other weird stories are flying round the school! Some kids are saying she’s got AIDS and some are saying she’s been abducted by a rich Iranian prince and some are saying she’s on the run to King’s Cross and some are saying she’s a speed freak and gone into a drug rehab centre and some are saying she’s home in bed with the chickenpox. I think the two Year 12 dudes, Cameron and Drenton, are spreading all the bad goss.

I’m in our home room at Bennett High and it’s the start of a new day.

‘That sister of yours is a living legend.’

Cooja’s my best mate.

He’s got a certain gleam in his eye.

‘Forget it,’ I say. ‘You’re s’posed to be on with Cathy, aren’t ya?’

‘It’s becoming seriously boring.’

‘Yeah. Well. One thing Leanne is not and that’s boring. But she likes older men.’

‘How does she know whether she likes younger guys if she hasn’t tried any?’

‘Well, it’s all hypothetical, isn’t it, seeing as she’s living in a phone box somewhere.’

‘Yeah?’

‘That’s her last known address.’

‘Cool it. Here comes Randy Andy.’

He’s our home group teacher. For the first term he kept sporting these massive hickeys on his neck. Now he’s hick-eyless and probably single again because his temper’s absolutely foul. Or it could be his hair transplant that’s making him edgy. He was wearing a hairpiece but suddenly he’s got these neat rows of hair like wheat in a paddock sprouting from his head. He gets real aggro when Belinda hums the jingle from Hair Fusion.

The thing about teachers with problems is that they give us kids a hard time. He calls the roll. Boring. He reads out the Daily Bulletin and it’s the usual drivel about netball try-outs and late library books and changed canteen prices. The bell goes for first period and we troll off to a double period of English.

We’ve had a teacher change because one got pregnant and left.

‘Must’ve been one of those immaculate conceptions,’ said Cooja when we were told the news. ‘She was just so posh ya can’t imagine …’

The great news is we’ve got Miss Heatherton.

Miss Heatherton is a babe. She’s got long blonde hair which she sometimes wears hanging down and sometimes piled up on her head. Either way is excellent. She’s got bright blue eyes, a different shade from my ex-girlfriend Belinda’s (hers are contacts), a wide smiley mouth, nice skin … I’m not good on descriptions. She’s slim without being skinny. And she’s super intelligent. She does PE sometimes and runs the surfing elective with Mr Borganio who’s also a top guy. They’re going together.

The thing about Miss Heatherton is she tries to make stuff interesting.

‘Okay,’ she says, ‘English is not just spelling and punctuation and reading good literature. English is the language of our culture, and with that come social issues, the way of life we enjoy, values, rules, manners and courtesies.’

‘Der,’ says Boxie (alias Francis Boxenhead but no one ever calls him that or he loses it and punches out pain like it’s the end of the world).

‘Exactly,’ says Miss Heatherton. ‘Sounds dead boring, doesn’t it? But it needn’t be like that.’

She bends down and picks up this bunch of boxes.

‘Hey. Board games,’ says Cathy, looking round to see if Cooja’s watching her. He isn’t. He’s writing BS on his arm with biro. BS. Barry Solomon? Brittany Salmon? Belinda
Strachan?
My
Belinda? I mean, my
ex
-Belinda? and Cooja? Whoa! Not suited at all!

Anyway the guts of all this is we’re going to play this game called ‘Manners’ which sounds like a total yawn but it’s actually better than anything we’ve done before in the history of my whole school life, English-wise.

We play in groups of four and we’re allowed to choose our groups: I’m with Belinda, Cathy and Cooja. Then Boxie’s an odd number (in more ways than one but never mind, he’s okay on his medication) so he ends up with us.

‘My go,’ says Cooja, grabbing the dice.

We nearly have a full-on brawl as Belinda explains with eyelashes batting so hard the cards just about fly off the board, that we all have to roll the dice and whoever gets the highest score starts.

‘I know that,’ says Cooja. ‘So I’m going first.’

‘Typical,’ giggles Cathy, moving closer and squeezing his arm.

Boxie winks at me. I’m lost. There’s something going on here and I haven’t quite twigged.

‘It’s an internal triangle,’ whispers Boxie in my ear. ‘How does he do it?’

Huh? Oh, he means an eternal triangle. Cathy, Belinda and Cooja? I’m stunned. I thought Belinda was still pining over
me
.

‘A six,’ goes Cathy as Belinda throws.

‘A six.’

That was my throw. It’s a play-off between Belinda and me.

‘You could be chivalrous and let her start,’ says Cathy.

Forget it. This isn’t a game of manners, it’s a game of power. I throw.

‘A six.’

Belinda throws.

‘A six.’

‘Aw. Come on. We’ll be here all day,’ says Boxie.

I throw again.

‘A six.’

‘Suffer, Belinda.’

She throws again.

‘A six. And I’m starting.’

‘That’s not fair,’ I go, but it’s too late. She throws a four and lands on ‘Risk’. She takes a card.

‘You made a rude noise in public, go back to the start,’ she reads out, and makes a farting noise. I grab the dice.

‘Clockwise, dork,’ goes Cooja, grabs it back and throws a five. It means I end up throwing last. Doesn’t seem fair to me and it’s certainly not good manners. I finally get to throw.

‘A six.’

‘Another six.’

‘I’m on a roll here,’ I say, as I throw a third six.

‘What’s with you, Stud? You got the devil on your side? Six, six, six?’

‘Manners from hell,’ goes Belinda, glaring at me.

‘Is it my fault that I’m hot?’

‘Ya might be hot on board games but that’s about all,’ says Cathy, and the internal triangle cracks up laughing. I’m starting to feel uncomfortable.

‘Don’t worry about them,’ says Boxie, rolling his dice after I’ve thrown a two. ‘They’ve got their own problems.’

The game’s okay. We get points and bonuses for answering correctly where proper manners are concerned and black marks for stuff like forgetting to say ‘Excuse me’ and yawning without covering your mouth and burping aloud and spitting and barging ahead of people. Before we know where we are the double period’s ended.

‘Now,’ says Miss Heatherton, ‘the thing is, I want you to carry these manners out away from the game, away from the classroom, into your everyday lives. We’re going to discuss your successes and failures during the next lesson on Thursday. Take note of how people respond to you when you are courteous and polite. We’ll use this information to do some writing.’

‘Der,’ says Boxie. ‘Knew there’d be a catch.’

But he doesn’t sound too disappointed.

We motor over to the canteen and start our usual pushing and shoving in the queue.

‘Hey,’ says Belinda. ‘Females first. Good manners.’

‘Yeah? What about feminism and equality?’ goes Cooja, grabbing her round the waist and giving her a squeeze. If looks could kill he’d be dead on the canteen floor. Cathy presses her lips together and glares at Belinda.

‘Whoa. This could get in-ter-est-ing,’ says Boxie softly.

‘Give us a buttered roll and a packet of Twisties,’ says Cathy to the lady.

‘Per … lease,’ we all chorus.

This manners thing could be habit-forming. We float over to a seat and sit. Cathy opens the roll and pours her packet of Twisties into it. Belinda’s up tight against Cooja. Then she spots her initials on his arm and nudges Cathy.

‘He loves me,’ she goes, pointing, giggling.

‘Get real,’ says Cooja. ‘B.S. stands for
Bestial Shock
the new thriller out by M.A. Carb.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

Cathy looks like she’s going to start bawling and Belinda looks smug.

‘I can’t stand this,’ says Boxie in my ear. ‘I’m outa here.’

‘Me too.’

We take off for faraway places, that is the locker room.

‘Cooja’s gonna get burnt. He’s playin with fire,’ he says. ‘Jugglin two women at once when they’re best friends is bad, bad news, mate.’

‘His problem.’

‘You still like Belinda?’

‘Nah. Well … dunno. I don’t want to go with her, but … I don’t want Cooja muscling in either.’

‘Top confusion, mate. Look, why don’t I give you Mandy?’

Mandy’s Boxie’s cousin who lives up the bush somewhere and he’s supposed to be going with her. I don’t need his cast-offs and I don’t need love at a distance, either.

‘Nah,’ I go, ‘I don’t need a woman in my life right now. There’s enough flak about Leanne without adding to it. I just want to live a peaceful, single, bachelor life.’

Boxie makes a snorting noise as the bell goes for the next period. We grab our books and rock on over to Science. Wish we were doing lupins but it’s frogs again, swimming in this stinking liquid, because they’re not alive are they? Dead as dinosaurs. We have to work in partners, hacking up these dead things, and I’m all set to work with Boxie as usual (or Cooja if he can peel himself away from his eternal triangle) but Cathy’s edged up.

‘We’ll work together,’ she says.

It’s a statement, not a question. Now what? I roll my eyes at Boxie who’s cacking away behind the Bunsen burners like he’s fit to burst.

‘Well …’

But she’s grabbed the frog in the tweezers and laid it on the board. She’s bending over with her dark hair practically dangling onto it, peering at it.

‘Wonder if it’s a male or a female?’ she says, prodding it with the tweezer tip between its little legs.

That’s the biggest turn-off I’ve ever experienced, I think, squeezing my knees together. I wouldn’t go out with Cathy Fletcher if she was the last living female on the planet. She’s still fiddling with the frog, playing with its armpits. I can’t handle this.

‘Er … I’ve gotta bail.’

I zoom outside to the dunnies and lean against the wall. My stomach’s going round in circles. It’s not the dead frog, I can handle that, it’s Cathy poking and prodding it.

Eventually I go back. I can’t live in the Men’s for the rest of my school life. I wander in, really cool, and the whole class gives a cheer.

‘My hero,’ screeches Cathy at the top of her lungs, and Micalinski the science teacher gives a sarcastic little speech about nerves of steel and operating theatres and people fainting at the sight of blood. Someone should tell him it’s
bad manners to be sarcastic. I must bring it up in Thursday’s English class.

The next period’s free so we go to the library for silent reading, I’m sitting alone in a carrel, trying to read our English text which is dead boring, when I get this note.

‘Hey, Stud. Wanna have a Coke with me after school? C.F.’

What is happening here? Cathy Fletcher and I are about as suited to each other as chalk and cheese. She is a total bimbo with the brain of a flea and I like girls with some intelligent conversation. Belinda isn’t the Brain of Bennett High but she certainly isn’t as brain dead as Cathy. Plus Cathy is supposed to be going with Cooja. There’s only one answer to this note.

‘
No
,’ I write and pass it back.

‘Why not?’ comes the reply.

One thing about Cathy Fletcher, she’s not shy!

‘Because!’ I write back.

‘Because why?’

‘Because I hate your guts,’ I’m tempted to write, but we’ve just done manners in English and I should be polite. I chew the end of my pen and think. Do I say ‘You’re the biggest turn-off since Dracula’s daughter?’ (True but cruel and hurtful: years of living with Leanne have taught me about cruel and hurtful remarks!) Do I say, ‘I’m busy doing
homework’? (I’ll sound like a wimpette extraordinaire), ‘I’ve got to help my mum after school’? (Mummy’s boy) or ‘I’ve got a doctor’s appointment’? (then she’ll think I’ve got some incurable disease and spread the word). While all this thinking is going on another note lands on my desk.

‘Cooja, Boxie and Belinda are coming too.’

Well, that’s a different story.

‘Okay,’ I write back just as the bell goes.

Boxie, Cooja and I clatter off to get changed for sport. We have a practice footy match all afternoon ready for Friday’s big game against North High, Bennett’s archenemy.

After school Cooja, Boxie and I meet Cathy and Belinda outside the gate. We walk down to Bruisers which is the local hangout in town. I’m next to Boxie, and Cooja’s got a girl hanging off each arm walking in front of us. The pace is fast because we want to get seats. This little excursion means I’ll miss the early bus and Mum’ll probably chuck a mental but sometimes you’ve got to go with the crowd or you won’t have any friends.

It takes about ten minutes to get there. Bruisers is already filling up with kids from different schools eyeing each
other off. Cathy and Belinda slide into a booth and look hopeful. This annoys me. Why do girls always think guys have to pay?

‘It’s good manners for you guys to shout us,’ says Cathy as if she’s reading my mind.