Smashed (12 page)

He swaggers over, just as the two young kids behind him start to cry, and plants himself down next to me. Up close he’s in one shocking mess. His hands are shaking so badly he can’t pull the wrapper off the straw, and finally he gets so frustrated he just attacks it with his teeth. And his leg won’t stop jiggling, like it’s got electricity charging through it to give it life. When he finally glances up at me with his drug-crazed eyes he’s looking mean.

‘You creep,’ he says.

‘What the hell is that for?’

His head is at it now, shaking to some private tune, and he’s having trouble forming words. ‘I’ve just been to see Don.’ He tries to stare me down, but there’s no way
he can hold focus long enough. ‘You’re a shithead little liar, you. You told me you didn’t touch him, but now I hear that you’ve been nicked.’

He’s slurring all this out at the top of his voice and the people sitting close to us are looking around. I can’t believe he’s saying this.

‘You’ve got a cheek,’ I snap. ‘I heard your stupid phone call, Carl.
You
were bloody there that night, well after me. He was only slightly bashed around when I found him. Where were
you
?’

Carl’s up from the table, sweeping the tray and all his stuff onto the floor in one dramatic movement. ‘Me! You lying little Asian git …’ He wrestles his hand into his pocket and produces two pink-coated pills. They sure as hell aren’t Ritalin, and he pops them both into his mouth and swallows them down with a defiant little smirk. ‘I went there, okay …’ For a second he closes his eyes, and sways like a storm-tossed tree in front of me. When his eyes re-open, his pupils are so enlarged he almost looks non-human. ‘But I didn’t bloody munt him, man — nah, that was
you
!’

The duty manager is hovering, and I’m scared that soon he’ll call the cops and blow my bail. I push out past Carl, so bloody furious I don’t care if he comes after me or not. 

Carl obviously sees this as being weak, and sneers to the whole damn audience of customers, ‘Watch the wittle wabbit wun …’ He draws an imaginary six-shooter from his belt and lines me up along its barrel. ‘
Wun wabbit, wun wabbit, wun, wun, wun
…’

I’m out the door by now but, bugger him, I won’t run off. I wait until he swaggers out, fires his imaginary gun at me and blows off the smoke.

‘I saw you, you little arsehole,’ he snarls. ‘Running off. I tried to chase you but you were so pissed there seemed no point. Later on, I started worrying just what you’d done …’

‘I’d done nothing, you psycho.’

‘Bullshit, man.’ Carl starts to cough so bad he doubles over and hurls a slimy gob of spit onto the footpath. ‘I couldn’t even find the poor sod at first, I thought he’d gone. But then I saw him underneath the boating club …’

He coughs again, gasping for air between each spasm. I’m so shocked by what he’s just said that all I do is stand there like an idiot and watch him choke. Sound pulses in and out in waves, and I have to grab a rubbish bin to hold me up.
What does he mean?

As his coughing starts to settle down, it’s like a switch is activated in his brain. He laughs and starts up a bizarre knee-slapping dance, the kind of thing those crazy
morris dancers do with white hankies and bells on sticks, and the sounds erupting from him now are high-pitched, painful, chesty grunts. His eyeballs are close to spinning around inside their sockets and it’s obvious he’s fully smashed.

I’m still trying to put the pieces of his accusation together in my head when he hollers ‘
Hi ho Silver
’ and dashes out between two cars. It’s a miracle he isn’t hit, and he stands up on the concrete strip in the middle of the road and starts to lean right out into the traffic, just to make the drivers sweat. Now there are car horns blaring, and he’s doing that same stupid dance out in the road. He’s starting to look awfully sick swaying like hell so, in the end, I run out and grab his arm.

‘You loony!’ He’s trying hard to fight me off but, up close, I can see the colour’s leaching from his face. I’m terrified he’ll pass out and get run over by a car.

‘You gonna try’n kill me too?’ he snarls. He twists from my grasp and weaves out onto the road on the mall side of the street where, luckily, there are no cars. But he trips now, slamming down onto the asphalt, and just lies there, stoned and lame. The lights further down the street are turning green and there’s the sound of traffic approaching, so I run out after him and try to drag him towards the safety of the other side. He’s heavy as hell,
bloody near unconscious and foaming mad.

‘You total useless jerk …’ I use the anger of my words to give me strength, totally freaking when I realise that the line of cars is looming fast and I’m really struggling to get him over to the side — but then the weight seems lighter and I look around, amazed to see that someone’s come over to help.

It’s Danica! Don’s sister! I can’t believe she’s here — and helping. ‘Thanks,’ I puff.

She helps me drag Carl across to the taxi stand and opens up a cab door. We bundle him awkwardly into the back seat, and Danica stays with him while I run back to the money machine. I hand the driver twenty bucks, but he’s unimpressed until Danica presses another ten dollars into his hand and pleads with him to take Carl to the A and E. The way she talks so reasonably to him reminds me of Rita, and I find myself calming down too — despite the fact the driver’s got a bloody cheek taking so much money for a trip a few hundred metres down the road. But this is the only way I can think of keeping Carl safe and shifting the burden of his psycho fit to someone else.

As soon as the taxi pulls away, Danica storms off too.

‘Hey! Wait!’ I run after her, reaching out to stop her.

‘Piss off,’ she snarls, and steams away.

I’m left standing there like a total dork, trying
to process what I’ve learnt from Carl, but it’s far too complicated to unravel right now. I go after her again, nearly bowling an old man in my rush. ‘Please. Just talk to me …’

She swings her head around, not even stopping to reply, her eyes dark and forbidding. ‘Got any more mates you want to put in hospital?’

‘Hey, that’s not fair!’ I’m jogging along beside her now, but she still won’t stop.

‘Fair!’ she snorts. ‘You think my brother lying there half dead is fair?’

I go to answer her, but the thought of Rita’s long night of prayer shuts me down. Not half dead, I want to say, but the fact he’s paying
something
seems
almost
fair.

She must be reading my mind, cos the look of disgust that crosses her face is like a slap. ‘
Thanks
.’

‘Hold on. Hold on — you haven’t even given me a chance …’ I plead. ‘I don’t want
anyone
to die.’

‘You’re such a liar.’ It’s like she’s made her judgement call and nothing I can say will help.

The venom of her words paralyses my legs and I’m left watching Danica disperse the crowd in front of her like an ice-breaker set for the Pole. Nobody is stupid or desperate enough to step in front of her … nobody, that is, except some stupid, desperate loser like me.

T
he problem is I’m probably not even supposed to be talking to Danica, because of those stupid bail conditions. But I really,
really
need to tell her that it wasn’t me. I fling myself forward and cut in front of her so she’s forced to stop. ‘Please — just talk to me for a moment … I promise you, I’m really safe.’ I hold up my hands in a kind of surrender signal, and try to look my pathetic best.

She just stands there on the footpath with her arms crossed tight and doesn’t speak. But she hasn’t run away yet so I take it as a sign to forge ahead.

‘I really didn’t beat up Don … I know the police have told you stuff, but I swear to you it isn’t true.’

She grunts and shifts her hands onto her hips. ‘Why the hell should I believe you?’

It’s a seriously good question and I know that if I don’t come up with the perfect answer, all hope is gone. I can almost hear a clock ticking inside my head as I sift through all the potential arguments and replies. But they
all sound unconvincing and the thought that this one short-arsed girl can turn my great debating brain to jelly freaks me out. It’s like her eyes have sucked all logic from my head. I mean, I don’t even know her. She’s the absent sister of my ex-best friend, and I’m writhing on the footpath in front of her and it’s like standing here with my clothes off. That’s how naked and pathetic Don’s
brown-eyed
sister makes me feel. Naked … yes, that’s the key. I guess I have to take off all the bullshit and lay myself bare.

‘Look at me,’ I say. I do a clumsy spin in front of her, holding out my puny arms. ‘I’m a freak. A nerd. I haven’t got the strength — or guts — to beat up anyone, especially Don …’

‘But the cops,’ she fires back, ‘and Carl …’

‘The cops,’ I interrupt, ‘are grasping at the closest straw. And, as for Carl …’ An involuntary shudder sweeps through me, when I recall Carl’s terrible words.
I didn’t bloody munt him man — that was you …
underneath the boat club
… ‘Please — come and have a coffee with me — let me tell you the whole truth.’ At any other time I wouldn’t have the guts to ask a girl out for coffee but, right now, it feels like the most important thing I’ll ever do. For some strange reason it really, truly matters to me that Danica knows the truth about my innocence. I stand there
sending full-on thought messages to her:
please, please, please
.

She drops her gaze, staring down at the footpath as she worries at a bit of dry skin on her bottom lip. Then she fires her laser eyes back up at me. ‘It’s really true that Donald raped your sister?’

‘Yes.’

I can tell this is a big deal for her by the way her eyes cloud over and her head drops down towards her chest. She gnaws at that bottom lip again, leaving a smear of dark red blood. ‘Okay …’ She scans the shops in both directions, pointing to a hippie café down among the main Newtown shops. ‘You buy me a hot chocolate and a pie, and I’ll give you the chance to talk.’

I find myself nodding and grinning stupidly.

‘But,’ she warns, ‘just watch your step.’

She charges off in the direction of the café, leaving me to run after her like some love-struck twit. Carl, and all his pill-popping, will have to wait.

Once I’ve ordered Danica’s hot chocolate and a double shot of coffee for myself, I start to get the guilts about dumping Carl into that taxi and not going with him. So
I call up Carl’s mum at home and tell her what’s been going on. She’s remarkably calm — I guess she’s had plenty of calls like this before — and thanks me like I’m some kind of war hero, instead of just a cowardly potential crim who didn’t stand by his old mate.

‘Any idea what he’s taken?’ Danica asks, when I end the call to Mrs S. ‘I saw him at the hospital with Don — he was so off his face when he arrived I thought they’d call security and chuck him out.’

‘Dunno,’ I reply, relieved that she’s prepared to chat. ‘I’m not what you would call a drug expert.’

‘Neither,’ Danica says, though she follows it with a bitter laugh. ‘I used to take anything that came my way, but since I moved to Nana’s there’s been no need.’

‘Need?’

I watch as she draws some kind of blind down between her feelings and the outside world. ‘Forget it,’ she mumbles, and takes a huge bite of her pie.

For a while I’m content just to watch her eat. She has these really straight white teeth, and when she chews it tweaks the dimples in her cheeks. I can tell she’s kind of embarrassed by me watching, cos she wipes her mouth obsessively with the paper napkin after every bite. Only when she’s finished does she meet my eyes.

‘So?’ she says. ‘I’m waiting for your alibi. Why should
I believe you’re innocent when the cops reckon you’re the one?’

‘Just hear me through …’

I tell her everything, right from the start. About Lance’s party (but leaving out the details of Jacinta and me). About finding out about Rita’s rape. ‘I didn’t even believe it when Dad told me. Truly. Didn’t think Don would do that.’

Danica shifts uncomfortably on the hard wooden bench seat. ‘It’s …’ Her eyes flick up to my face, then dodge quickly away. ‘I’m sorry.’

I decide to leave it well alone, moving straight on to explain, step by step, all I can remember from the hazy night of the assault. The greenbelt. Blanket Man. The endless walk down to the waterfront. ‘I just bloody can’t remember what happened between then and when I woke up on the hill.’

Danica’s eyes have narrowed, like she’s trying to see through what I’m saying to the real truth. ‘Did you want to hurt him?’

‘Hell yeah!’ There’s no point lying about this; it’s obvious from the way my voice grew all wavy and choked up when I talked about Rita that I’m far from over being mad. ‘But I promise you, it wasn’t me.’

‘If you really can’t remember, what makes you so
sure?’ She sips at her hot chocolate, and a fleck of white froth sticks to her lip. My tongue automatically licks my own lip and she must realise what’s happened, cos she blushes this really cute shade of pink and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

I’ve been asked this question so many times over the last day or so, and all I’ve ever said is,
I just am
. But I’m not certain Danica will buy this.
Why
am
I so sure?

I close my eyes and take my mind back to the moment I woke in the greenbelt … to the stumbling, miserable, confused way I rambled along the walking tracks and back roads until I reached home. The key to my certainty is held in here. Something about the way I felt. The shock. The sickness that rolled over me in sweaty waves. The shame. That was it!
The sense of shame
— but not at what I’d done. Just the reverse. The shame of failure, right down to the core of all my cells. I’d gone to face the dragon in his den and didn’t have the guts to follow through.
That’s
how I knew I couldn’t have beaten up Don, despite the evidence of blood and any eyewitness reports … that sense of shame.

‘I wanted to defend Rita — to make him understand how much he’d hurt us all. But, in the end, the sight of him was just too much. I bailed out.’ I glance up to see if she understands what I’m trying to say. 

She nods. ‘Sometimes when something’s too awful to remember we just block it out.’ She doesn’t say this as an accusation. In fact, there’s a sadness and a pain in her voice that sounds way too grown up. How old is she, anyway? Fifteen? Sixteen?

I’m still thinking about this when, suddenly, she stands. ‘I’ve gotta go.’ She heads straight for the door while I’m still slugging back the last of my coffee, and I have to chase her yet again.

‘Where’re you going?’

‘The hospital.’

‘I’ll come too — check up on Carl.’

‘Whatever.’ She ploughs down the street, hardly slowing her pace to check for traffic. I can’t get another word out of her until we reach the hospital.

‘You wanna come with me?’ I ask. I don’t hold out much hope, so nearly miss the raising of her eyebrows that signals ‘yes’.

We enter the A and E, and are hovering at the reception desk when Carl’s mum wanders past with a takeaway coffee in her hand. ‘Oh, Toby, hi! Come through, come through.’ She leads us in through the security doors to the part with all the cubicles. ‘They’ve pumped him out. God knows what he took this time, but he’s clearly in a real mess. I’m glad you called.’ 

‘I’m sorry we didn’t come right away.’ I feel the need to get this off my chest, but she doesn’t seem in the least upset.

‘Sending him here was the best possible move. It’s fine.’ She sweeps back the curtains and Carl is lying there, out to it. ‘If you would stay with him while I go and fix Tom’s dinner, I’d be eternally grateful.’ She looks incredibly tired, her wrinkles forming dark, puckering shadows around her eyes and mouth. For all Carl’s crazy carry-on I’ve never heard her slag him off. She just seems to accept that he’s a lunatic and muddles on. ‘I promise I’ll be back by five thirty. Just ring me if he starts to wake.’

‘Of course.’ Carl’s dad expects his dinner on the table on the dot of five or he goes into a spewy fit. Mrs Sissons takes this, too. She couldn’t be more different from my own mum, who’d tell my dad to go and find a new slave if he ordered her to cook a meal and have it on the table at a certain hour.
And
she’d probably freeze him out.

She leans over and sweeps her hand across Carl’s brow. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ she whispers. Then, into his ear, ‘I love you.’

If you didn’t know Carl well, you’d never believe he had a mum who loved him and who told him so. He always acts so Mr Tough Guy. So ‘screw the world’. It makes me want to shake him just to wake him up
to what he’s got.

‘She’s nice,’ Danica says once Mrs Sissons leaves the cubicle.

‘Yeah,’ I agree. ‘Not that you’d ever hear
him
admit it.’

Laid out, with Danica and I sitting on either side of him, Carl’s skin is deathly pale, and the rings under his eyes now look bruised blue. He twitches and jerks in his sleep, his face contorting into painful scowls. I can figure why he’s in this mess — he will have freaked out at the thought of going to see Don and primed himself to avoid guilt. ‘Stupid twit,’ I mutter. ‘You’ve always got to go too far.’

In a funny way it’s kind of restful sitting here with Danica as the world bustles on outside the cubicle. The quietness doesn’t seem to have the same calming effect on her though, and she tears ferociously at fingernails already chewed down to the quick. But it doesn’t make her hands look ugly, like most nail-biters, cos her fingers are long and finely boned, although her hands themselves are small. There’s a couple of strange burn marks on her wrist. I stare at them, trying to work out their source until it strikes me, in a flash — they’re cigarette burns. It’s the only thing that seems to fit. I can’t stop looking at them now, wondering if she inflicted them on herself or if someone else did, which is even worse. 

‘How is Rita?’ Danica suddenly asks. Her eyes meet mine for just a second and then slide away.

‘Messy, I think. It’s hard to tell.’

She shifts in her seat until she’s facing the cubicle curtains, rather than me. ‘Did Donald ever tell you why I moved away?’

‘No.’ I think back to when I first met him, right at the time Danica must have been moving out. I can’t believe we didn’t talk about it, but not a scrap of conversation comes to mind.

‘Oh.’ She chews on the skin at the side of her thumbnail, deep in thought. Then she sighs. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘just so you know … Don shouldn’t have touched her — he was wrong.’ Her hands are shaking and I can see tears welling up in her eyes. Whatever’s going on here, it’s real intense.

‘Yeah.’ For some weird reason I get the strong feeling it’s best not to say much — it’s obvious she’s building up to sharing something really big, and if I say too much I’ll close her down. I have to fight back the urge to reach over and grab those tiny, shaking hands.

‘Me,’ she stammers out. ‘It happened to me.’ She jumps up from the chair now, while I’m still processing what she’s said, and paces round the cubicle. ‘My dad. From when I was ten until I left when I was twelve.’ She
stops by the curtaining, and peers out into the corridor rather than face me.

Holy crap.
My mouth just hangs open. Truly, I have no idea what to say.
Does she mean that Sidney, her father, raped her too? Over two years?
‘Did your — did your mother know?’

She spins around, the pupils of her eyes flashing dark and angry. ‘She bloody knew alright. It’s
her
who shipped me off to Nana’s when I cracked up at intermediate and blabbed it to the counsellor. Anything to shut me up and make no trouble for Dad.’

‘She got you out,’ I say. ‘She did do that.’

‘You know what she told me, when I pleaded with her to come home?
Men can’t help it
, she told me.
It’s just the way they’re made. It’s nature!
’

‘That’s rubbish!’

I think back to the awful barney we had in our Psychology tutorial last semester, where these two meathead guys tried saying rape was a natural part of male behaviour — a way for men to spread their seed. This one girl, Jill Watson, went psycho, screaming all this stuff about male-dominated societies and anti-women brainwashing. Normally these kinds of arguments are funny, but this one got intense as hell. Even our tutor jumped in on it, saying there was an ongoing debate
about whether rape was an adaptative behaviour that any boy might grow up to do … That’s when the whole class erupted and, one by one, the girls walked out. At the time I thought their carry-on was kind of lame — that they were over-reacting and reading it all wrong — but with what’s happened now, to Rita, and to Danica as well, I wish I’d had the balls to walk out too.