30
A MESS of cut out newspaper articles are scattered across my desk chair.
I’m sorting them into piles; anything even slightly related to asylum seekers sits on one side of my desk, on the other is anything about the climate crisis.
Right in the middle are stories about sexism and that’s just too depressing for words.
What a downer of an assessment. You’d think they’d want us all uplifted and positive leading into Year Twelve.
It should be all peace and calm yet only this morning I yelled at Matty for stealing my pen which was stuck through my top knot.
‘What was all that about?’
Paul leans in my bedroom doorway, his shoulder against the door jam, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. There’s a fine layer of sawdust in his hair and a dirty mark across his white t-shirt.
‘I’m just sick of my dad being such a workaholic which means you are too.’
‘I don’t need you to talk for me and I really don’t need you to embarrass me in front of your dad like that.’
‘Sorry for sticking up for you.’ I turn back to my articles.
‘When I need you to stick up for me, I’ll let you know. I’ll give you a hand signal.’ He smiles, trying to diffuse the tension coiling inside me.
‘I know the perfect hand signal,’ I say. ‘You want to see it?’
‘Don’t even think about it.’ He moves into my room, and I watch him take it in. It’s disconcerting and discombobulating.
Discombobulating. I scribble that down on a sticky note. He meanders across to my bookcase and picks up a framed photo.
‘Who’s who?’ he asks, and I point out Em and Sal. His hands move over the collection of tiny paper cranes Em gave me, the leftovers from her art folio assessment. He holds my jar filled with sea glass to eye level and twists an abalone shell against the light, its mother of pearl shimmering.
‘Can I have a go?’ He gestures towards the delicately painted Venetian kaleidoscope that Nonna gave me from an Italian trip.
‘This is supremely cool.’ He turns it slowly against his eye.
The glass beads clink – he’s so tall I can see their colours shifting in the light of my bedroom window as he holds it aloft.
The boys got gift after gift after gift from that trip.
Seriously, Nonna had three suitcases, two of which were filled with crap for my brothers.
All Nonna bought me was the kaleidoscope and the world’s ugliest earrings.
He stands in front of the open door of my wardrobe, his eye caught by what Mum calls my gallery, with its art posters, collages I’ve made from images I like, photos of my friends, my family.
‘Man, you look so beautiful here.’ He points to a photo of Sal, Em and me.
I’m wearing a long black dress, a split up one side revealing my thigh and the most painful heels that should never have been invented, let alone bought.
I grit my teeth just thinking about how much they hurt that night. ‘Was that your formal?’
‘Yep,’ I say. ‘I didn’t look like that for long, though. We pulled an all-nighter at Em’s.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘Well, pretty much all of us. There were bodies everywhere. Someone even slept in the bath.’
‘Where’d you sleep?’
‘I didn’t. JB and I were on Em’s balcony until the bakery opened, then we jumped on some bikes and bought croissants which I vomited as we were riding back.’
‘Nice,’ he says.
‘I know,’ I say, ‘I’m classy like that. JB had to hold my hair and he’s still traumatised.’
‘Who’s JB again? Scampo’s footy mate, yeah?’
‘My best friend. We went to formal together.’ I point to the photo of JB and I posing at the foot of the stairs. Mum took a gazillion photos that night before Dad eventually told her enough’s enough and took us to the pre-formal party.
‘You’re just friends? That’s it?’
‘That’s it. We have a pact across our year level: no seeing each other in that way unless it’s absolutely, positively unavoidable.’
‘Really?’
‘Is that strange to you?’
‘Hell yes,’ he says. ‘Has it ever been absolutely, positively unavoidable for you to hook up with this guy?’
‘We’re close, but not that close,’ I say.
He turns back to the collection on the wall. ‘I love this photo.’ I cringe as he looks at me as a cherubic toddler, crouching naked over a sandcastle that’s thankfully obscuring my bits.
‘Can you believe I actually remember that day?’ I say. ‘Mum was pregnant with Matty, and I remember Dad held me under the shower at the lookout to get the sand off me. I was throwing a tantrum because I didn’t want to go.’
‘So the temper isn’t a me-thing,’ he says. ‘Good to know.’
‘Well, the Paul-thing doesn’t help, that’s for sure.’ I slide down in my chair, slumped, and swing it slowly side to side. ‘But all we do is talk about me; I’m sick of it. What about you? What’s your earliest memory?’
He rubs the back of his neck and drops into the grey cotton armchair in the corner of my room.
He sits on the very edge of it, leaning forward.
‘Probably Mum and the old man fighting.’ He presses his lips together and looks down at the kaleidoscope in his hands, turning it gently.
‘That, or one of my brothers kicking the crap out of me, or each other.’
‘See, this is mortifying! This is exactly what I’m talking about,’ I say. ‘You know about how I vomit croissants and I didn’t even know you have brothers. How many? How old? What are their names?’
‘One, Michael. My other brother, Peter, died about five years ago.’
‘What? That’s horrible!’
He shrugs. ‘It is what it is, and now it’s one brother, he’s pushing thirty and he’s on the other side of the city.’
‘Do you see him much?’
‘Not if I can help it.’ He reaches across to my bedside table. ‘This isn’t the water bottle I bought you that day at Sadie’s, is it?’
‘It’s been through the dishwasher once or twice,’ I say.
‘You kept it?’
‘Of course. You’ve seen me picking up rubbish on the beach. Do I look like the type of girl that doesn’t reduce, reuse or recycle?’
‘That the only reason?’
‘Maybe,’ I shrug. ‘But we’re talking about your brothers. I can’t believe it. I’d die if I lost one of mine.’
‘You’d be surprised what you can live with or without.’ His gaze doesn’t leave the floor. The muscles in his jaw flex.
I rise from my chair and sit on his lap, hands on either side of his face. I kiss his forehead, on the verge of tears.
‘Oh, no you don’t.’ He pushes me away gently. ‘I can’t survive two run-ins with your old man today.’
‘Did he say anything?’ I sit on the edge of my bed.
‘Nope, we were both really careful to avoid eye contact,’ he says with a soft laugh. ‘I’ve never taken so much interest in measuring up timber.’
‘Which brings me back to my original question. I know you work for Dad, but you don’t have to work all the time if you don’t want to.’
‘I wish I worked for your dad permanently,’ he says. ‘I hate the crap I work on. Working with your old man would be the bomb.’
‘This is going to sound harsher than I mean it to, but answer me honestly: is working for my dad after the reno one of the reasons we’re a thing? I mean, I know there’s you and me, but is that another drawcard, maybe not the main drawcard, but you know what I mean?’
‘Are you freakin’ serious, Cat?’ He runs his hands through his hair. ‘Let me get this straight. You’re asking me if I’m using you to get a permanent job with your old man?’
‘Are you?’ My voice cracks.
‘No, Cat. I’m not. I’m helping your dad on the reno, and the fact that you’re my girlfriend is a bonus that I didn’t see coming. But good to know what you think of me.’ He walks out of my room.
I curl into a ball on the bed. In the kitchen below I hear him talking to Mum and Nonna before the sliding door opens and shuts.