7
IT’S FRIDAY MID-MORNING and I’m still in bed when there’s a knock on the front door. I ignore it because it’s not for me. Mum and Dad have taken today off because they’re both working this weekend. The knock is either one of Mum’s friends popping in for a cuppa or the delivery guy with one of Dad’s unnecessary home-office accessory purchases—a pen holder shaped like a volcano, maybe, or a submarine-inspired tape dispenser.
Mum’s voice calls down the hall. ‘Lucy? Someone’s here to see you!’
My jaw tightens in mild panic. I’m not a fan of unannounced visitors. Who the hell is it? The first person I think of is Lockie—I’m wanting and not wanting it to be him with equal force. Maybe he’s finally taken up Mum’s teary offer to ‘visit any time’, to ‘please stay in touch’. Or maybe he’s come to apologise. To tell me he wants to be a maybe-thing again. But he always came round the back door near Charlie’s room so it couldn’t be him, could it? It’s been eleven months Lucy. Get over it.
It could be Rach. A comforting warmth spreads through me until I remember we barely acknowledge each other anymore, making it highly unlikely she’d turn up at my house.
The third person that runs through my mind, stupidly, is Ben, come to return Ninja’s cardboard box. But that’s ridiculous because he’s angry with me, and he doesn’t know where I live.
I jump out of bed, flatten my hair, rub a finger over my teeth like that’s an acceptable alternative to a toothbrush. Then I barrel towards the front door before Mum has time to recruit this mystery person into being my friend.
It’s not Lockie or Rach or Ben. It’s Jacinta. She’s got headphones dangling from her neck and a bright pink scrunchie in her hair.
‘Hey!’ I say, surprised that I don’t hate that she’s here.
‘Hey,’ she replies, and her tone reminds me that I’ve been ignoring her messages all week. I did plan on getting back to them, once I’d processed the trauma of Sunday at the sanctuary and could face the world again. It just hadn’t happened yet.
Mum’s standing there in her coral-patterned apron she bought on our holiday to the Great Barrier Reef, a smudge of flour on her cheek.
‘Oh, um, this is my friend Jacinta,’ I say. ‘She used to catch our…the bus.’
Mum’s smile is radiant. I know how worried she’s been about me not having a social life. Sympathy and guilt twist tight in my chest.
‘Hi, Jacinta,’ Mum gushes. ‘It’s so nice to meet you.’
‘Hi, Mrs Evans.’
Mum’s expression catches for a second, probably because she hasn’t been called that for a while, then she waves a hand around. ‘Oh, no. Call me Kathy.’
Jacinta’s gaze flicks to me. ‘Okay…Kathy,’ she says.
Mum hovers for a moment, smile frozen like she’s in some kind of delirious shock. Like she’s a weird, emotional robot with a glitch. I glare at her and she finally takes the hint to leave us alone. She calls over her shoulder as she wanders back to the kitchen. ‘You’re welcome to some toast or cereal if you haven’t had breaky, Jacinta. Ginger snap cookies ready in an hour.’
I hope Jacinta hasn’t caught the wobble in Mum’s voice.
‘Your Mum bakes? That’s very wholesome.’
I shrug. ‘It’s less of a housewife thing and more of a work thing.’
‘Your Mum’s job is in cookies ? Is she hiring?’
I snort. ‘My parents are real estate agents. They bake for open houses so the places smell like a home . Apparently, people can be conned out of a million dollars with a single waft of their childhood.’
‘Duplicitous and delicious. I like it,’ Jacinta says, still staring after Mum. Then she turns back to me. ‘So, you look like garbage. No offence. I mean, if you weren’t incapacitated beyond the ability to message back for some reason I was preparing to be pissed off at you, but it’s hard to be mad at someone in a food-stained…’ She points at my crumpled, oversized T-shirt hanging to just above my knees. ‘Is that a narwhal?’
If it had been Lockie at the door I’d like to say I would have died of embarrassment, but he’s actually already seen me pantless in my narwal T-shirt. This was not intentional on my part, obviously. It was a 2 am hallway run in. It was the night of our first kiss, a few weeks before Charlie died. I blink that memory away.
‘I went through a whale phase,’ I tell Jacinta. ‘Narwhals are the unicorns of the sea.’
‘And I’m here for them,’ she says. ‘I am. I just usually make a habit of changing out of my sea-creature PJs before answering the door.’
‘I’ve had a week,’ I say. Then I realise something. ‘Hey, how do you know where I live?’
‘I, ah…’ she glances down at her scuffed, camouflage-print sneakers. ‘I followed you home from the overpass the other night.’
‘Woah. Okay, stalker!’
Jacinta crosses her arms, leaning into one hip. ‘Well, you drank like half of that bottle in twenty minutes and almost fell off the edge of the planet!’
I wince. ‘Maybe keep your voice down?’
‘Sorry,’ she says, a decibel lower. ‘Anyway, you wouldn’t let me walk you home, remember?’
‘Vaguely.’
She sighs. ‘Well, anyway , I followed you in case…I dunno. In case you got lost or something.’
I laugh. ‘Lost? Cint, a three-year-old could solve the non-maze that is these suburban streets.’
She stiffens. ‘Yeah? Well, you can tell that to my dad. It took us nine hours to find him the last time he wandered off.’
I swallow, but the lump in my throat won’t go down. ‘Sorry.’
Her shoulders relax a little. ‘It’s fine. I mean, that’s why he’s where he is now.’
‘Right. Fair.’ I take a deep breath, trying to suck oxygen from the awkwardness. ‘Well, thanks then. For following me.’
‘It was probably overkill,’ Jacinta says, embarrassed.
‘No! It’s…it was sweet,’ I say, and I mean it.
We stand there for a second, me still holding the front door open to the bright morning, before Jacinta says, ‘Anyway. Sorry to just turn up at your house. I’m getting the feeling that’s not your thing. I just wanted to make sure you were, you know, alive. And you are.’ She gives me a semi-ironic thumbs up. ‘So I’ll go, I guess. Text me if you want to hang ou—’
‘No,’ I blurt out. ‘Don’t go. I mean, we can hang out now.’ I glance down the hallway then lower my voice. ‘I have to tell you something.’
She smiles. ‘Oooooh. This sounds like it’s gonna be good.’
I lead Jacinta down the hallway past photos of me and Charlie as kids—Christmas carols in the park wearing glow sticks around our necks and wrists, the two of us stuffed into bright yellow life jackets in a kayak on some lake—then past my brother’s closed bedroom door with its novelty cricket-ball handle Dad got him for his eleventh birthday. I get that eerie feeling again. With the door firmly shut, Charlie’s room is a place where time stands still. Schrodinger’s cat. For all I know he’s in there, headphones in, squeezing his stress ball, studying into the night for an exam he’ll never sit. I notice Jacinta trying to read my expression and remember with a stomach jolt. Can she sense anything? Can she feel the weight of what happened? Does the whole house hum with Charlie’s absence?
‘Is your brother here?’ she asks, as if reading my mind.
‘Nope,’ I say, praying neither of my parents heard that question.
We reach my room and I shut the door behind us. I open the curtains and let in some fresh air. Light falls on the Mammals of South America poster above my bed, turning the tapir’s fur all glossy.
‘Wow,’ Jacinta says, looking around at my bomb-gone-off bedroom. ‘I’m glad I came because you’re clearly depressed.’
I laugh, way too hard, but at least she sounds like she’s joking. ‘Just a slob,’ I say, wondering if it was a bad idea to allow my loner’s haven to be breached.
Jacinta flops down on my unmade bed, kicking off her shoes. She brushes a strand of hair from her face and I see her wrist is a rainbow of iridescent smudges; she’s been playing with eyeshadow colours in a pharmacy again.
‘So?’ she says.
I lean back against my desk, chewing the inside of my cheek. ‘So, yeah. Sorry I didn’t reply to your messages yet. I was kind of…’ trapped in a spiral of overthinking? ‘…lying low.’
She makes a face like, ‘go on’.
I pause, wincing at the memory. ‘He recognised me.’
Jacinta raises her eyebrows. ‘Um, I’m gonna need more than that.’
I tell her about taking Ninja to the sanctuary and being all excited to save her and maybe even get a job there. Then about the director and that mortifying moment of recognition. Then about him looking at me like I was pond scum and banning me for life in front of his son. The words come out in a messy jumble; the whole thing upset me more than I even thought. I don’t tell Jacinta about the grief-induced dingo-whisperer delusion. The story is embarrassing enough.
‘Wow,’ she says when I finish. She’s pulled my doona around her head as if to shield herself from the horror of it all. Then she looks nervous. ‘Wait, you don’t think Swervey Pervey will report us to the cops or anything do you?’
I snort at the nickname and shake my head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Jacinta groans, clearly feeling for me. ‘Okay, so that’s very humiliating and I’m sorry you had to live through it. But that’s not an excuse to ignore my messages.’
I open my mouth, thinking for a moment about blaming her: the flashing was, technically, her idea. But she didn’t exactly chain me to the overpass and pull my top up. I look down at the carpet, grasping for words to explain the hope I felt at the sanctuary—as if it was possible for things to get a little better. Then that hope being snatched away. ‘I know. I’m sorry. It was just…a really shitty day.’
Jacinta frowns, like she knows there’s more going on, but she doesn’t push it. She chucks a sock at me, which I catch. ‘Yeah, well, friends are meant to, like, help on shitty days, you know?’ she says.
She’s probably right, but when being alone is your safe space, being distant your default, it’s hard to remember that. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’
‘Anyway,’ she goes on, ‘that director guy sounds like a real dick. I mean, the guy’s job is nature. He probably sees koalas going at it every day. He should not be freaking out about a couple of mammaries. Get over it, mate.’
I laugh, and something unfurls slightly in my chest.
Jacinta glances around my room. ‘So. You obviously didn’t have any plans today. Anything fun to do at your house? Did I see fancy patio furniture in your backyard? We could, I dunno…lounge? Is that what people with fancy patio furniture do?’
I hesitate. I actually really want to hang out with her—she’s already magically managed to lift some of my fog—but we can’t stay at my house. It’s too risky. I don’t want her to know about Charlie. She’ll either treat me differently or hate me for lying or both. Besides, I need to apply for more jobs before it becomes clear to my parents that the sanctuary isn’t hiring me.
‘I’m meant to be looking for jobs,’ I say. ‘Want to come with?’
Jacinta shrugs. ‘Sure. Beats the nothing I had planned. Plus I’ve got the car for once. Mum doesn’t need it until three.’
‘Cool.’ I wonder, not for the first time, why Jacinta doesn’t seem to have any friends. Then again, she probably wonders the same about me.
I get changed into a clean T-shirt and a respectable-length denim skirt, tame my hair, print off a few copies of the half-arsed resume I promised Dad I’d do this week, and call out to Mum when we’re already halfway out the door. We jump in Jacinta’s car—a P-plated, old sky-blue Volvo named Nacho that smells like spare change and stale ciggie smoke—and, after three attempted starts, we’re rocketing down the street with the windows down and a Colleen Hoover audiobook blasting.