20
THE NEXT DAY dawns with a misty, humid rain, the kind that clings to your skin even if you’re not out in it. Nimbostratus clouds. I eat some Weetbix in the kitchen and try to push my parents’ fight out of my mind. And how the pressure of acting like they’re coping for me is tearing them apart and the fact that none of us is okay, but we can’t talk about it. Instead I think about Ben. Wonder if I should message him. How soon he maybe wants to see me again. Just the thought of him is a kind of slow-burn life bomb, distracting me from everything else.
When Mum returns from back-to-back spin and yoga she enlists me to help her haul all the indoor plants onto the back deck so they can get a proper soaking. The exercise endorphins and her orange activewear have miraculously morphed her from the mess I saw in the hallway last night to someone resembling a person who is doing fine. I’m grateful, because it helps me pretend I imagined what I heard last night. As we work, filling the deck with monsteras and mother-in-law’s tongue and the ones with huge round leaves I grew up calling UFO plants, Mum tells me about all the ridiculous, low-paying jobs she had in her twenties.
‘I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life at your age,’ she says. She was going to be a psychologist, an abstract artist, a teacher. And it’s not that she sounds unhappy about what she’s chosen, but if Dad is all faith, fate and meant-to-be, as if someone else is in control of life, then Mum is more I-wonder and what-if, like life’s possibilities are endless. I don’t know which idea I like best. They both make me uncomfortable.
‘Do you think there are parallel worlds?’ I ask Mum randomly, brushing some soil off my jeans onto the deck. ‘Like, that there are other versions of us living completely different lives right now? One where you have too many pet ferrets instead of too many houseplants?’
Mum wipes rain-misted hair from her forehead and smiles sadly. I know what she’s thinking: it’s the kind of question my brother would have asked. She might also be thinking: Is there another universe where Charlie is still alive, still asking these kinds of questions? She might even be thinking: Is there a world in which I did become a psychologist, and I had a client the day of that party, and Charlie decided he couldn’t be bothered going if he didn’t have a lift, and so none of this ever happened because every single decision we make, tiny or huge, affects the outcome of our entire lives in ways we can’t predict or even imagine? Or maybe that’s just me. Anxiety and uncertainty stir in my stomach and I wish I hadn’t brought it up.
‘Well,’ Mum says, pressing her lips together in thought or maybe, possibly, trying not to cry. ‘I don’t think we can know for sure. What’s that phrase?’
‘An absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.’ Dad used to say that when he thought Charlie or I were sneaking extra snacks from the pantry but couldn’t find the wrappers. Charlie later commandeered the saying in relation to the existence of intelligent life in other galaxies.
‘Right,’ Mum says. ‘I mean, people were positive the earth was flat until not that long ago, right?’
I chew my lip. ‘Okay, so, by that logic, everything we think we know could be wrong? Thanks. That’s comforting. I kind of just wanted you to say no.’
Mum gives a little laugh and pulls me into a one-armed hug. ‘Sorry, sweetie. I was trying not to quash your intellectual curiosity, but I’m almost positive there’s no world in which I have even one pet ferret. Why? What do you think?’
I pause for a second and I realise I don’t have an answer because I never let myself wonder about this kind of thing long enough to find out what I think, so I shrug and tell the truth. ‘I have no idea.’
After we finish the plants I’m on the couch, eating a cheese toastie while drafting and deleting messages to Ben. An email pops up on the screen. It’s from a woman named Briony, one of the wildlife carers I’d contacted before New Year’s asking about volunteering. Wildlife carers look after sick, injured or orphaned animals in their home, hopefully rehabilitating them for release back into the wild. Briony only lives two suburbs away.
My wife Sandra and I would be thrilled to have you come and help out on an afternoon or two a week, Lucy. We can always use an extra hand. How does Wednesday suit?
I reread the email three times, with a hopeful, hesitant hum running through me. Someone is going to let me work with animals? Without any experience? And it’s not just walking a neighbour’s dog?
I wipe the toastie grease from my fingers on my T-shirt and I’ve almost finished writing back an enthusiastic ‘yes thank you, thank you, thank you’ reply when Dad plonks down on the couch next to me. I look up from the phone. He’s wearing an ironed shirt because he’s just come back from a church service.
‘Good news,’ he says, slapping his knees with both hands and sounding like an entirely different human from the one I overheard last night. ‘Your mum and I have settled on this year’s Summer Day Do fundraiser recipient.’
‘Oh yeah?’ I say, feigning more interest than I feel.
He pauses for a moment, like he’s imagining a drum roll, and I realise he’s pretty excited to tell me. ‘Franklin Sanctuary!’ he says.
I sit up straighter. ‘Seriously?’
The skin around Dad’s eyes crinkles at my expression. ‘Yep. The plains-wanderer breeding program to be exact.’
Suddenly my nose itches, and I try to stop my eyes from welling up. ‘Oh, wow. That’s…that’s so cool. Um, thanks.’
Charlie and I had suggested Franklin Sanctuary before, but Dad was never interested. He thinks humans’ lives are inherently more important than animals’. Maybe he’s had a change of heart.
‘And, hey, look,’ I say. ‘I think I found a job. Kind of.’
I show him my phone and as he reads the email from Briony, his smile broadens in a way that gives me a glimmer of hope. I know he’s faking it for me, but maybe if I’m a decent enough only child, maybe if I look like I’m doing all right, there might be less pressure on him and Mum and they can figure their own stuff out.
‘That’s really great, Luce!’ Dad says, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder. His hands smell of leather-bound Bible. Then he stands up and picks up my plate of toastie crumbs. ‘Wanna watch the cricket with your dad today? Start of the third test.’
I grimace, wishing I could replace that part of Charlie for him but also not wishing it so hard it makes me care about the cricket. It makes me think of the time I went into Dad’s office to print something when I was eleven, and I saw a book on his desk called How to Parent Teenage Girls. I looked around to find the book on teenage boys but there wasn’t one, and I remember thinking that was stupid and also wondering what was so difficult about parenting me rather than Charlie that meant he needed a special guidebook for it. But now that I think about it, I guess it’s kind of sweet he cared about getting it right.
‘Probably not,’ I tell Dad, who’s waiting for my answer. ‘But thanks.’
‘Fair enough.’ He smiles sadly and I feel a touch of guilt, but as he’s leaving for the kitchen my phone buzzes which distracts me. It’s a bunch of messages from Rach. At first I assume they’re in the group chat, but a second later I realise they’re only to me.
Hey!
So I was wondering if maybe you want to hang out this weekend
Whatever you want to do
I mean whatever you feel up to. If you do feel like something
But no worries if you don’t!
I stare at the phone, rereading her words, an awkwardness that never used to exist between us, even for a second , pulsing from my screen. Then I shake my head, hot frustration in my veins. Why does she do this? Why does she act like we’re strangers? And why does she still act like Charlie died yesterday? It’s as if we can’t have an interaction without her oozing pity all over me. And the more I pull away the more intense she gets, which makes me want to pull away further. This isn’t us!
Before I can decide if I’m even replying to that, my phone buzzes again. This time it’s a DM from Lockie, because apparently everything is happening all at once today. As soon as I open it and see how long it is an electric jolt shoots through me. Before I even start reading, I know—I know it’s the words I’ve been waiting an entire year for.
Hey Evans okay here goes. Ever since I saw you at the shopping centre that day I can’t stop thinking about you. You just looked so happy with your mate and I dunno. It reminded me of before when everything was just good and easy. But then I thought that was over you know? Except it looks like you’re doing good now? But then this Ben guy’s been all asking for your number and inviting you places and driving you home. But then you sent me that xxx on New Year’s Eve. I dunno. Maybe you’re not over this either. I guess what I’m saying is maybe I still like you? And maybe we should hang out?? Ahh. This is so hard to write. Anyway it was so crap at school last year and I’m sorry we couldn’t talk more and stuff. I had such an off-limits crush on you. You’re probably reading this right now thinking I’m weird so I’m gonna stop. But just think about it because I’m thinking about you. Lockie xo
I read the message three times over, hands shaking. It’s still super vague, but I wonder if this is the most Lockie’s talked about Charlie since it happened. Since the funeral, I’ve never overheard him mention it. Never seen him cry. Charlie once told me he had no idea that Lockie’s parents were going through a messy, year-long divorce until he went to sleep over and his Mum’s stuff was gone.
You just looked so happy. Maybe I still like you. Maybe we should hang out.
Is this what I’ve been waiting for? Yes. Because Lockie has a piece of my heart I don’t know how to get back. Maybe we could go back to how things were, and then it might feel like I didn’t lose everything all in one go.
So why do I wish my feelings for him would disappear?
I chuck my phone down on the couch cushion and jump up, pacing the room with a sudden tearing sensation in my chest as if I’m being yanked apart, pulled between everything before and everything after. I once read something about indecision and anxiety being basically the same thing to our brain, that having too many choices is a very direct road to suffering. Like, you think it’s freedom to have a thousand brands of soft drink to choose from but our minds actually interpret that as chaos.
I flop back down on the couch and pick up my phone. I decide to ignore both Rach and Lockie and do the only thing that doesn’t make the tearing sensation worse. I message Ben.
Want to hang out tomorrow? I could give you a fruit education
Less than five minutes later he messages back.
Yes but you should know in advance that I gag in the presence of overripe bananas
We organise for him to pick me up, then I tell him about my new official title of wildlife carer and Dad’s sudden love for plains-wanderers. We message back and forth for the next hour. I hold the screen close to my face and let the memory of the almost-kiss flood me again, let it expand inside me until it’s all there is. When he has to go to work I shove my phone down the side of the couch, grab the remote, turn on Netflix and ignore the fact my parents haven’t been in the same room together all day. Not even for a second.