Transformation of Minna Hargreaves, The (3 page)

I rang my friends.

‘Min!’ Lizzie gasped. ‘What about Seb? A whole year? You know the stats on long-distance relationships and yours has hardly started.’

‘Thanks for your support,’ I snapped.

‘Oh, sweetie! I’m sorry, I really am.’ I heard her take a huge breath. ‘Listen — you can come and live with me. I’ll ask Mum. It’ll be fun.’

Colour filtered back into my world. I wanted to hug her. ‘Thanks, Lizzie — but are you sure? I mean, it’s a whole year.’

‘Course I’m sure.’ I could almost see her shaking her hair back (red right now, with blonde highlights). ‘Mum won’t mind.’

God, I wished my parents were like hers. They trusted her. They weren’t always on her back. They would never even think about an idea as dumb as this one.

I rang Addy. ‘You
can’t
!’ she shrieked.

‘Don’t stress,’ I said. ‘Lizzie says I can stay with her.’

Addy was still gasping. ‘I can’t believe your Dad would even think about it. It’s awful — and Min — what about Seb?’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘It just rips my heart out even thinking about it.’ I swallowed. ‘Look, I’d better phone Jax.’

We said nothing for a second. Jax was going to take it hard. It seemed every day she was falling harder and harder for my idiot brother.

I phoned her, told her I had some horrible news. ‘A year,’ I finished up. ‘A whole year stuck on some idiot island. All four of us.’

But the first thing she said was, ‘Oh, Min — you poor thing! A whole year away from Seb. That’s cruel.’

I choked up. That was so Jax — always thinking of others and not herself. ‘Jax, I think I’ll be okay.’ I told her about staying with Lizzie. ‘But what about you? Noah’s going to be gone for so long.’

She was quiet and then she sighed. ‘It’s not like we were going out or anything.’

It wasn’t fair — life sure dealt a bad hand to Jax, what with her crazy mother, and now Noah was being taken away from her before anything could really get going.

An island. In the middle of Cook Strait. No thank you, Father dear.

Friday morning and the last day of term. Didn’t see
either of the parents or the brother. Ran to meet my friends on our corner. Lizzie danced around and the other two wore huge grins. ‘You can stay! Mum says yes!’

We hugged and yelled and did no work all day. The relief of it. I hadn’t realised I’d been so worried. I spent interval with Seb but didn’t tell him about the island. Why waste good time on something that wasn’t going to happen? Then I wondered if I should tell him because it would be so much easier to be together when I was staying at Lizzie’s. Interval ended before I had made up my mind.

We went back to Jax’s house after school because her mother would be at work. Didn’t do much, just hung out. The rule was that I had to be home by six. I got home at seven. Mum didn’t show. Noah of course was where he always was — absent. Dad was as well, so what was new?

I heated my dinner in the microwave and shut myself in my room. I was not going to spend twelve shitty months on some idiot island and that’s all there was to it. End of story. However, I felt it’d be strategic to keep out of Dad’s way on the grounds that if he didn’t see me he couldn’t bombard me with reasons why this would be the best thing ever for me, how it would be the making of me and how I’d look back on it as one of the defining moments of my life when I was old. Except I wouldn’t live to be old because I’d die of boredom and a broken heart, which he obviously hadn’t allowed for.

What I hadn’t allowed for was his sneakiness.

Saturday morning at some undefined but definitely uncivilised hour:

Dad: (makes huge noise at my bedroom door)

Me: (disappears under blankets, pillow and ancient teddy bear)

Dad: (flings open door, thunders in, dumps something on the floor, pulls blankets etc. away from my head, shouts) Breakfast, Min. You want to eat it or wear it?

Me: Go ’way piss off it’s still night.

Dad: The TV woman’s coming in fifteen minutes. She’ll have a camera crew with her. You want her to talk to you here or in the lounge?

That got my attention. I shot upright, all the better to yell and glare and throw things — with a bit of luck he’d end up wearing the breakfast he’d so kindly (huh!) brought me.

I yelled. I glared. I yelled some more.

He just grinned and said, ‘She’s due at ten.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You’ve got fourteen minutes.’

‘Dad!’ He barely paused in the doorway, but I kept yelling anyway. ‘I am not talking to anybody because I am not going to any island ever, except maybe Fiji or Tahiti. Understand?’

‘Thirteen minutes, and they’ll have my permission to come in here with the cameras,’ was all the answer I got to that.

I toyed with the idea of staying right where I was. I didn’t really think he’d let a camera crew loose in my bedroom, but then again, he was apt to go a bit crazy when he got his mind fixed on some dumb project and right now he had a fanatical gleam in his eye.

I got up. I ate my breakfast (toast, cereal and fruit, the preparation of which hadn’t caused him to break out in
a sweat). At five minutes to ten, I jumped in the shower. I took my time. At 10.48 I wandered out to the lounge — hair gleaming, make-up immaculate and my outfit showing very clearly that I was a city girl, not some conservation bunny. I wore the low-cut jeans my
grandmother
Hargreaves loathed. My earrings reached my shoulders, and my black top showed off my figure.

Dad grinned at me. ‘Well, that’ll make an impact on the screen.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s immaterial, because I am not going to be part of your idiot scheme.’ And anyway, as far as I could tell, the telly chick hadn’t waited around.

I turned my back on him and phoned Jax because she was the only one of my friends who’d be out of bed at this time on a Saturday. I’d hardly got started when Mum showed up. ‘Is that woman here yet?’

Dad shook his head. ‘She’s due in five minutes.’

That penetrated my conversation with Jax. ‘My father is a conniving liar,’ I told her.

Then the doorbell rang and the room filled up with a red-headed woman called Cara, a guy toting a camera and another with a fistful of lights.

‘Gotta go,’ I told Jax.

‘Mum!’ I said. ‘I am not doing this. I’m not going to that island. Doesn’t Dad get it?’

She rubbed her head. ‘I’ve told Wes I’ll listen to what Cara has to say.’ She gave me a look that said
cool it and behave yourself
. ‘It won’t commit us to anything to listen, Min.’

I gave her a look that said
You can’t fool me. I know you hate this idea as much as I do
. She looked pretty haggard,
like she’d been up all night worrying about it. How dumb was that? Just say no. Dead simple.

The man with the lights took his time. Cara, who didn’t bother introducing us to the two guys, flitted around being gracious and patronising to Mum and oozing charm at Dad.

All right, I thought, I can do this — I too can ooze charm and graciousness, and if I chucked in a dash of maturity and intelligence it wouldn’t hurt. When they’d finally fussed enough, I was ready for them. I sat down. I fixed a picture in my head of Seb watching the film, and I smiled.

I asked intelligent questions carefully phrased as hypothetical hypotheses.

‘I see.’ I smiled at her. ‘That’s all been most helpful. Thank you and I have no more questions.’ I’d be willing to bet everything that this whole brilliant idea was all hers — she looked to me like a reincarnation of a medieval torturer.

Mum took over. ‘I’m ninety-eight per cent certain I’m going to refuse to do this.’

Cara smiled her patronising smile, while mine was more of a relaxed one tinged with triumph.

‘Do you have any questions anyway?’ Cara asked.

‘No,’ said Mum. ‘I don’t.’

Dad just didn’t get it. When they’d all packed up and gone, he said, ‘Well, what do you think? Doesn’t it sound like just the most amazing opportunity?’

Mum gave it to him straight. ‘I’m not doing it, Wes. It’s outrageous.’

I cheered.

Dad didn’t seem too worried. ‘We don’t have to give them a definite answer till Monday. Think about it, Liv. That’s all I ask.’ He grinned at her. ‘Noah’s keen. You’d be depriving him of a life-enhancing experience.’

Life enhancing? He had to be joking.

I decided to go over to Jax’s house but, of course, we had to do the whole drama of where was I going and could I be trusted first.

‘Just put a tracking device on me, why don’t you?’ I shouted.

‘Believe me,’ said Mum, ‘if I could, I would.’

I escaped in the end but only after she’d checked that
there really was a water polo tournament that Seb might be in. She rang the pool and asked which teams were competing. I couldn’t believe it. I slammed out of the house and ran all the way through the rain to Jax’s house.

Addy and Lizzie turned up halfway through the afternoon and then we all beat it because Jax’s mother was stressing about the loud music and
please don’t wear so much make-up and talk about boys, you’re such a negative influence on the little girls,
who as far as I could tell really liked a bit of negative influence mixed in with their mother’s organic, GM-free, family-values lifestyle.

‘BeauTox,’ said Lizzie.

‘And I’m having chocolate,’ I said. ‘I need it to
compensate
for a stressful morning.’

‘It’s going to be okay, though?’ asked Addy. ‘I mean, your mum hates the idea too, doesn’t she?’

I nodded. ‘Thank goodness. But I won’t feel really safe until we get past Monday.’

Lizzie scoffed, ‘Get a grip. What can happen between now and Monday?’

The three of us yelled at her. ‘Don’t say that,’ Jax added. ‘It’s tempting fate.’

Lizzie spread her hands. ‘Look, it’s no drama either way because Min’s going to stay with me if they do go.’

We calmed down and discussed whether I should tell Seb. ‘Nothing to tell,’ said Lizzie. ‘Leave it.’ She was so sensible — if only I could be that controlled and on top of things.

Dad didn’t show for dinner that night until after I had eaten, and Mum had played around with her food yet
again. Noah was at work. He came home stoned and happy. Couldn’t Mum see it? I shrugged. None of my business.

Sunday rolled around. I lay in bed dreaming about Seb. He’d be getting over a hangover right now so I’d wait for him to call.

My phone went. But it was Lizzie, not Seb. ‘I’ve got this cool idea!’

I listened and as I did, my gut tightened. This was it. This was the day. I could do it. It was time. ‘Come over to my house,’ she said. ‘Then, when S rings, you’ll be sweet.’

‘Okay,’ I said, and my voice came out croaky. ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’

Mum thought the tournament was for the whole weekend, how dumb was that?

I didn’t do the clothes and the make-up this time. I learn from my mistakes. Mum scanned me from top to bottom and sideways. ‘Very well, Min. But be home by six.’

For form’s sake, I yelled and did the
you don’t trust me you’re such a cow
routine before I took off out the door.

The rain had stopped but it was now blowing from the south, as cold as my mother’s heart. I ran all the way to Lizzie’s which is up a hell-high hill, but when I got there, I couldn’t sit still. She smiled at me. She understood.

She made us sandwiches for lunch. I couldn’t eat anything. My phone rang twice:

Addy: Can’t come over. Going shopping with Mum.

Jax: Can’t come over. Have to babysit the kids.

Usually we went and hung out at her house when that happened. ‘Lizzie and me’ll come over,’ I said.

Lizzie grabbed my phone. ‘Sorry, Jax. We can’t. Important things happening.’ She rolled her eyes and told Jax that today was when it was all going to happen.

I grabbed the phone back. ‘Yes, we can come over. We’re on our way.’ I hung up and headed for the door.

Lizzie caught me up. ‘Fine for you! Seb’ll call. You’ll be off and leave me stuck with the brats.’

But I was in no mood for a Lizzie tantrum. I kept running. Just before we got to Jax’s house, Seb called.

‘Hiya, babe. What’s up?’

‘I’ve escaped. Just for the afternoon,’ I said, before I could chicken out.

Lizzie heard his laugh boom out of the phone. She gave me a smirk.

‘Where are you? I’ll come and get you. Just give me half an hour to eat.’

I’d die if I had to sit around and wait that long. ‘No. It’s okay. I’ll walk to your house. I’d rather. Truly.’ And I turned around and ran, away from Lizzie and her bright, knowing eyes.

It took me forty-five minutes to run to Seb’s house. The wind blasted in my face for most of the way and the rain came back ten minutes into the journey. The wind burrowed into my clothes and chilled me. Twice I stopped. I could tell Seb I’d changed my mind. He loved me. He’d wait.

And each time, when I started running again, I heard Lizzie’s voice telling me how Sherry Faulkner had the hots for him, or Petrina Berry, or half the girls in the school, and how I’d better cement my love for him if I wanted to keep him.

I would do it. It was the right thing.

I sprinted up the nineteen steps to his house and hammered on the door. I waited while the wind blew
wild and free and insistent. I hammered again, then remembered the doorbell and jabbed that. Seconds passed, slower than my heart beats by a good ratio that I was much too stressed to work out.

The door opened. It was his mother. ‘Hello, Minna! My goodness, you’re soaking. Come on in and we’ll get you dry.’ She hustled me inside the house and into her bedroom. ‘Here you are. Put that on.’ She handed me a dressing gown. ‘Pop your clothes in the dryer when you’ve changed, and I’ll tell Seb you’re here.’

I took off my clothes and had to clamp down on the hysterical laughter that lurked in my throat. This wasn’t how I’d imagined getting my gear off in Seb’s house. I was stuffing my clothes in the dryer when he turned up.

‘Hiya babe, get a bit damp? Should have let me collect you.’ He wrapped his arms around me and gave me the sort of kiss that swept all my doubts away. I wanted to do this.

His mother called from the kitchen, ‘Bring Minna in here, dear. She’ll need to get something warm inside her.’

Seb whispered, ‘I’ve got something hot she can have.’

I choked and he gave me that twinkling, heart-breaker smile that melted me all through from my backbone out. He grabbed my hand and towed me into the kitchen.

His mother fussed. ‘Seb, where are your brains? Get Minna a towel to dry her hair.’ She smiled at me. ‘Such pretty hair too — the shades of autumn leaves. Do you colour it?’ She shook her head. ‘No, I thought not. Ah, to be young and gorgeous again!’

Seb rolled his eyes but got me a towel and perched himself on a stool beside me at the breakfast bar. Mrs King handed me a mug of soup. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to drink it, but I held it cupped in my hands and let the warmth soak in.

She was cooking — making a birthday cake for Seb’s grandmother, she said. She chatted as she measured and stirred. I chatted right back and it was warm and peaceful and happy there in that kitchen with the boy I loved beside me. Seb didn’t seem in any hurry. He moved his stool closer so that he could sit with his arm around me. I smiled at him. I would keep this moment forever in my heart.

I did drink the soup because I discovered I was hungry. Seb took the empty mug from me. ‘Want some more, babe?’ His eyes quirked as he asked and so it was a different question I answered.

‘Yes. Please.’

He ran a hand down my spine as he ambled towards the soup pot on the stove.

My phone vibrated in the pocket of the dressing gown. A text from Jax. I read it, holding it below the level of the bench because Mrs King didn’t need to know I was the sort of girl who couldn’t leave a text unread for two seconds.

N here. Unconshis. Can’t wake him. Help
.

I gasped. Seb and his mother looked at me. I flapped a hand. Jax. I had to call her. ‘Explain in a minute,’ I said.

My heart was thumping again but this time it was a painful, squeezing thump. My idiot brother. He’d really done it this time.

‘Jax, what’s happened?’

Her voice was high and panicked. ‘He just turned up. About ten minutes ago. He was acting strange — I thought he was drunk and I told him to go home because Mum’s going to be home soon, but he got to the door and fell down and now I can’t wake him. Min, can you come?’

‘I’ll be there.’ I hung up and faced Seb and his mother. I told them what had happened.

Mrs King ran for the laundry. She hurried back and pushed my warm, damp clothes at me. ‘Get dressed. Seb will take you.’

I threw my clothes on then ran for the car. Seb was such a good driver. We flew through the streets. He didn’t take his eyes off the road but when we had to stop at a light, he squeezed my knee. ‘Don’t worry, babe. He’ll be sweet.’

At Jax’s house he said, ‘Want me to come in with you?’

‘Yes. Oh, yes. Please.’

Together we ran up the path. Jax was at the door, her two little sisters wide-eyed behind her. Noah was sprawled on his back in the hallway. Seb bent down and rearranged him on his side. ‘The recovery position,’ he said. ‘Safer.’

I knelt beside him. ‘I can’t smell any alcohol and marijuana doesn’t do this to him.’ I shoved a hand into his pocket, then checked all of them. In the one in his sweatshirt was a small pill bottle. I held it up. ‘This has got to be what he’s taken.’ I jumped up. ‘Get the phone book, Jax. I’ll phone A&E and ask them if he’s going to
die.’ Or if I should just kill him right now.

It wasn’t simple getting an answer. I talked to a receptionist, then to a nurse, then to a doctor who went and asked another doctor. But the answer was okay. I looked at the others and gave the thumbs up. I hung up and let out a woosh of breath. ‘They said it won’t kill him, but that he’ll sleep for ages.’ I looked at Jax. ‘Best we get him out of here, wouldn’t you say?’

She just nodded, then she looked down at Noah snoring gently on the floor and her eyes filled with tears. She still liked him? Where was her brain? Then she whispered, ‘Why did he want to die?’

Oh god! I hugged her. ‘He didn’t — at least, the hospital reckoned he would have wanted to get high, but there’s a fine line between high and asleep.’

Seb slid an arm under Noah’s shoulders, hoisted him up into a fireman’s carry and headed for the car. I wanted to hug my boyfriend and slam-dunk my brother. Seb dumped Noah along the back seat.

‘Your folks going to freak out?’ he asked as he snapped the seat belt in.

I nodded. ‘Big time.’ I hoped Mum would miraculously be out and that Dad wouldn’t miraculously be at home.

Seb manhandled Noah out of the car. I ran to open the front door. No sign of Mum. So far, so good. ‘Along here,’ I told Seb. ‘Put him on his bed.’ I opened Noah’s bedroom door, darted to the bed, chucked the junk off it and helped Seb lower him on to it. Seb turned him on his side and put him in the recovery position again. ‘Seb,’ I whispered, ‘thank you so much. I just don’t know what I’d have done if you … if you …’ and I burst into tears.

He put his arms around me. ‘C’mon, babe. He’ll be sweet. Don’t stress.’

I tried to stop crying but it was so lovely with his arms around me and he was going away for two whole weeks and I wouldn’t be able to see him.

‘Minna! What is going on here? Who is this, and what are you doing in Noah’s bedroom?’ Mum. Of course.

Seb dropped his arms from round me like I’d become radioactive.

I wiped my face. ‘Mum, this is Seb and he helped me get Noah home.’

Mum skimmed a glance at Noah. ‘What do you mean, get him home? He’s sound asleep.’

I probably should have shut up, shrugged and got out of there, but her voice was loaded with suspicion. The look on her face showed that I’d been tried and condemned in the blink of an eye and it’s a wonder Seb didn’t die on the spot from poisonous mother vibes. So I did the dumb thing and explained. ‘He’s taken pills and A&E say he’ll sleep for hours.’ So suck on that. ‘And Seb helped me get him home.’

But did that make her apologise to him and smile? Not on your life. Her voice clanked with icicles as she said, ‘Thank you for your assistance, Seb. We’ll do very well now on our own. Minna will see you out.’

I would if I didn’t die of shame first. How could she speak to him like that? When I thought of how lovely his mother had been to me, it made me want to throw up, preferably all over my mother. ‘Sorry,’ I muttered once we got out of earshot. I couldn’t even look at him.

Seb gave me a hug. ‘Don’t sweat, doll. See you when
I get back from Aus.’

I pulled out a smile. ‘Don’t forget the koala. And the postcard.’

He waved, climbed into his car and was gone. I watched until he was out of sight.

‘Minna! What’s happened here? Tell me this instant.’ Mum steamed out of Noah’s bedroom. ‘What’s Noah taken?’

I dug in my pocket for the pill bottle and held it out. ‘I found this. He must’ve taken some.’ She snatched it from me, marched off, phoned our doctor, and got the same advice that I’d already told her —
let him sleep it off.

I waited for her to hug me and thank me for being adult and responsible and caring for my brother — huh! Some long wait that would be. She started right in on me.

‘All right, Minna. Let’s talk about the fact that you were with that boy when I trusted your word that you wouldn’t see him again outside school. Let’s talk about the fact that half your clothes are inside out.’ She stood there in front of me, her fists jammed on to her hips and her eyes firing red-hot lava in my direction.

I could do this. I could be calm and sensible and mature, even if she couldn’t. I explained that I’d been at Jax’s house, that I’d put my clothes in the dryer, that Noah came and collapsed, that I’d rung Seb and he’d come with his car to help me.

Mum didn’t say a word for about fifteen seconds, which is one long stretch of time. I opened my mouth to say
What?
but then her whole body seemed to cave in.
She turned away from me and started walking back to her studio.

‘What?’ I yelled after her. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong. You should be glad I helped …’

She stopped. Didn’t even turn around and look at me as she said, ‘Maybe your story is true, Min, maybe it isn’t.’

‘Mum!’ I howled, ‘you’re the one who goes on about trust. Can’t you just believe me when I tell you the truth?’

She did turn then, and she said very quietly, which was much worse than being yelled at, ‘Minna — I know for a fact that Jax’s family does not have a clothes dryer.’

I gawped at her, all the wind knocked from my lungs.

She nodded once. ‘Exactly.’ And that was it. She took herself off to her studio and left me gasping for breath in the hallway.

I shut myself in my bedroom. I was doomed. Even if I did tell her the truth, and even if I made her talk to Mrs King, she still wouldn’t believe me. It was so unfair.

I rang Jax, sent Addy a text, then rang Jax back and asked her to tell Lizzie. I just couldn’t face Lizzie mourning over how I’d blown away yet another opportunity.

I stayed in my room. I got hungry but Mum didn’t call me for dinner. In fact I didn’t hear her in the kitchen so perhaps there was no dinner, but no way was I going to ask her when we were going to eat.

Dad got home just after nine. I heard noises in the kitchen, then he bellowed out that grub was up, come and get it.

Wounded dignity, I decided, would be the way to go. I walked out to the kitchen, greeted my father and ignored my mother. We sat down at the table and ate the pizza Dad had brought home.

We finished, and I hadn’t said anything the whole entire meal. Mum asked a couple of polite questions and Dad babbled on about the stupid island and how, even if we didn’t go, he’d arranged to spend a couple of weeks there by himself and wasn’t that awesome?

Mum put down the slice of pizza she’d nibbled. I wish she wouldn’t do that — eat it or leave it is my motto. She spoke to Dad, not to me. ‘We’ll do it, Wes. We’ll all go to the island. For the year.’

I choked and spluttered, but thank goodness I had Lizzie. Dad whooped and hollered and carried on like we’d won the biggest lottery in the universe.

‘But Mum — why?’ I couldn’t believe she was actually agreeing. ‘You don’t want to do it! Look at you! You look as if you’re going to prison — you’re crazy.’

She didn’t respond to that, and Dad didn’t pick up on it either, I was interested to note. Instead, Mum said to him, ‘You might like to take a look at your son.’ She told him the Noah story, but left out the chapter entitled
Rescue by Minna
.

Dad shot out of the room, came back, sat down, didn’t say anything.

I stood up. ‘Well, you lot can go and play happy families on the island. Not me. I’m staying with Lizzie.’

Mum did look at me then. ‘No, Minna. You’re not. You’re coming too. We’re a family. We’re staying together and we’re all going.’