Six (7 page)

‘Soccer?’ said Aunt Elya.

There was a moment’s silence in the kitchen as the sisters looked at my mother.

‘David Beckham,’ she said.

‘Ahhh.’ There was more nodding and the kettle was filled and put on to boil again.

So my brother was allowed to be a soccer player while I had to be a doctor.

If someone asked me what I wanted to do when I left school, I’d say I want to be a doctor. It was automatic.

But I didn’t want to be a doctor. I was tired of the idea. There were so many other things — so many — that it made me dizzy sometimes, just thinking about it. When I woke each morning I could feel the blood just fizzing in my veins with the possibilities.

In dreams I remembered that I could fly. Like it was a natural thing that I had just forgotten I could do. I would fly over snow-capped mountains — no plane, just me — with outstretched arms, soaring and dipping over a foreign landscape. Below me were people I knew, and some I didn’t, so small they looked like ants scurrying about their business, unaware that I was looking down on them. There were so many places I hadn’t seen. So many people I had yet to meet. I wasn’t sure how I was going to fit everything I wanted to do into just one life.

And then there was Finn.

YEAR 12 JOURNAL, DAY 8

1.20 p.m.

I love English Language class.

Today Finn talked to me. He touched me and talked to me and asked me for help with a question that he seemed to know the answer to. I don’t know if I made this up but I think he may have even smiled at me. Something’s changed and the idea of Finn and me is not just an unattainable dream anymore.

On our way to the next class, Poppy said, ‘Maybe you should see the careers counsellor.’

‘Do you mean the nurse?’ I asked. I felt like I had Finn fever.

‘The careers counsellor,’ she repeated.

‘Why do I need to see the careers counsellor?’ I asked. ‘I’m going to be a doctor. I know what I have to do to be a doctor.’

‘Oh, Sarah.’ Poppy shook her head with a laugh. ‘You’re not going to be a doctor.’

Then she skipped the rest of the way to class, like a five-year-old.

And just for a moment I hated her.

I hated that she thought I had a choice.

Autumn leaves are

falling down

falling down, falling down

Autumn leaves are

falling down

my fair lady

SOMETIMES YOU CAN miss autumn here in the ’burbs, for the warm days can stretch on forever. A sure sign that summer has gone is the end-of-season sales at Silver Valley Shopping Mall where prices are slashed, slashed, slashed to the bone. The days are still long in autumn, but the sun loses its kick and the light is kinder to the eyes. Here and there a timid red leaf will wave a flag of surrender before it drops to the ground, but mostly the trees are still green and the summer flowers are giving it one last fling. Some girls start draping their school scarf around their necks from the first day of autumn, but that’s usually more in an effort to hide make-out hickeys than to keep warm.

I drove around the local streets that autumn with my aunts in their automatic transmission cars, trying to log enough hours to sit my driver’s licence. My family only had manual shift cars and I’d given up trying to work the clutch and the gears while still obeying the road rules. It was like my brain could only do one thing at a time. Aunt Elya was very bossy and made me drive about 20 kays an hour, gasping if I dared to go any faster or if I made a mistake. Aunt Aisah surprised me by being very cool and laid-back.

‘Very good, good girl Sarah,’ she would coo. ‘Perhaps next time, though, around the corner a little slower. I’m sure our neighbours would like to keep their letterbox.’

If I had a favourite aunt, which I’m sure you’re not supposed to, it would be my Aunt Lili. Aunt Lili was my youngest aunt and the most likely to take my side if ever I was in trouble. She would always give me a secret wink and argue my case, even with my dad, which my mother would never dare do. Before she got married I used to have sleepovers at her flat where we’d watch romantic comedies and eat caramel popcorn until my teeth ached. I’d always thought she would be the one I would turn to for driving lessons, but that autumn my Aunt Lili was the size of a hot air balloon, pregnant with her first child. She was a constant presence on our home horizon and Mum was spending a lot of time with her, which left a lot of Mum’s jobs to me. Dad was often at the Council for this meeting or that, so some nights I would just heat up a dinner that had already been prepared for Jefri and me. Other nights I’d have to go to the local supermarket, which sat like a pink fluorescent mushroom among a field of cars, to shop for an instant dinner.

Sometimes I’d talk to Cooper with his shifting eyes and nervous smile. Sometimes I’d see Nico in the deli and we’d say a few words, mainly about Poppy or school. We didn’t mention The Woods, but it was there between me and Nico, an uncomfortable secret.

Cooper once asked me about YouTube and video blogging, but I didn’t know much about it except for the music videos or crazy cats playing pianos that Poppy insisted I watch. He seemed disappointed, but smiled and led me onto another subject as if it didn’t matter. I found it hard to read Cooper. Sometimes he could be so warm, sometimes he flattered or confided in me. But all the while I felt like there was another Cooper underneath that facade. A Cooper with an agenda I could not even guess at. Even when he punched his mobile number into my phone one night, just in case I ever needed it. I never had any intention of using it.

Georgie Porgie

puddin’ and pie

kissed the girls and

made them cry

When the boys came

out to play

Georgie Porgie

ran away

OKAY, TOM COOPER here. Vid blog 17 — A Day in the Life of a Legend. Today’s topic is…um…success. By the time I upload this series of vid blogs at the end of Year 12, things will have changed a lot. Maybe I’ll make more sense to all of you — the ones that I leave behind in good old Silver Valley.

Ummm, so, today some guy asked me how I do it. How I’m always hooked up with a gorgeous girl. I gave him a look that said, ‘I dunno what you’re talking about,’ and walked away, but he followed and tapped me on the shoulder.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I really want to know.’

‘Word of mouth,’ I said and left him with that.

So this is the truth about my success with girls. And listen well.

I chat up the girls’ mums, and they love me.

Hey Ash and Mez, if you’re watching this you know that it’s true. You get past the mums and it’s all smooth sailing from there. I smile a lot. It’s not hard to get on their good side. I use my manners. I hold the door open for them; they like that. I make myself useful.

You might wonder what makes it so easy to sucker them in. Their daughters aren’t always so…what’s the word…trusting. That’ll do. Maybe you forget stuff when you get older. I’m sure you do, ’cause my olds always bang on about these being the best years of my life.

It must be good to have amnesia.

I can’t wait to leave behind the ‘best years of my life’. Have my own car. Get out of here. Living at home is like living in jail.

‘When are you going to be home?’

‘Have you done your homework?’

‘Tom, where have you been?’

(Laughs)

Get your own life, I want to yell. Instead I smile. I smile a lot. I tell them what they want to hear. I mark the days off the calendar.

Two hundred and eleven days to go.

That’s when I finish school. They think I’m going to uni. They’ve got it all mapped out for me. A nice steady job. Living in the ’burbs, maybe somewhere near them. Oh yeah. That’s what I want to do.

As if.

I’ve got my own plans. I’ve got some money tucked away. Money they don’t know about. It’s gonna do their heads in when I leave, but maybe they should have thought of that when they only had one child. It’s too much. The pressure. Maybe they should have had a whole bunch of kids so they could spread their attention more thinly.

I don’t think you get how hard it is living like you’re some kind of…you know…small thing that lives on a microscope slide. I didn’t do science, so sue me for not knowing what it’s called. A microbe? An atom? Whatever. Anyway, there you are minding your own business and you feel something peering down at you, poking you to see what you’ll do next. If they don’t stop soon I’m gonna poke back. I’ve gotta get out before that happens.

Two hundred and eleven days to go.

I’ve got money. Got enough to get me out of this state, maybe even overseas. You might wonder why I just don’t leave. Leave now. Yeah, well, I’m not stupid. I didn’t hang around school for thirteen years just to blow it all near the end. I can keep it together. Get my piece of paper. Get some marks that might help me later on. Anyway, there’s always Virginia. Virginia Sloan.

Virginia Sloan’s mum loves me. I went for a job at the local supermarket in the deli section but Nico beat me to it. Instead, I work in the fruit and veg but sometimes I get to do other stuff like help the customers with their bags or clean up food spills in the aisles. I always offer to clean up. The other guys hate getting out that stinking bucket with the grey water that’s been there since forever and the stringy mop that just moves the muck around. But I don’t mind. Beats staying around all that green. And you can waste a lot of time cleaning up spills.

Virginia’s mum must work for some kind of charity, ’cause she always has two trolleys. It’s just basic stuff like flour and milk and sugar and that. I always help her to her car with the second trolley. She always laughs and says, ‘I must put my family on a diet,’ and I smile because I know — if you saw Virginia Sloan you would too — that the Sloan family isn’t getting through all that food.

So we laugh. Same joke every time. Then she tries to give me a tip and I back off and shake my head, but she gives it to me anyway, and I thank her a lot. Same routine every time. And sometimes she’ll ask me how school’s going and we’ll talk. That’s how I found out that Virginia Sloan is still going to ballet class on a Saturday morning. Been doing that since she was four. It figures, because if you’ve seen Virginia you’d wonder how she has such a great body. I mean, she could be in Hustler or any of those mags. I found out other stuff about her, too. Virginia likes horror movies. She sleeps in until late on a Sunday. She once went out with Finn Cashin (which I already knew) but her mum’s happy that that’s over now (which I didn’t).

So how’s life treating you these days, Fish?

Eighty-nine days.

That’s how much time I’ve got to get Virginia Sloan to go to the Year 12 Formal with me. I want to do a whole lot more than put on a stupid suit and take Virginia to the Formal, but you’ve got to start somewhere. I’m patient. I’ve been planning to take Virginia to the Formal for a while. Ever since I noticed her long, tan legs as she lay on the grass during Year 11 sports.