Friday Brown (15 page)

‘Really?’ I choked out.

‘He said you were pathetic, if you must know. So is that what I did? Did I make you do something you didn’t want to?’

‘No,’ I lied out of pride. I rephrased it to convince myself. ‘It’s no big deal.’

‘Wish wants to save everybody,’ she said. ‘But he and
Malik hate each other. It’s impossible. I can’t have them both.’

Carrie and Darcy wandered in.

Arden closed up.

A few minutes later AiAi was bouncing off the walls and Silence was brooding and Joe was trying to make conversation with anyone who’d listen.

I felt squeezed out. I went to our room and made my bed, quietly, so I wouldn’t disturb Bree.

She woke anyway, blinking and groaning.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘S’okay.’

I picked up another long hair from my pillow and wound it around my finger until the tip turned purple. When I released it the sudden flow made my finger throb. I dressed slowly because my hands weren’t working properly, fumbled with my laces, one of them so frayed it snapped. I rethreaded it and tied a minuscule bow that barely held.

‘Where did you go last night?’ Bree asked.

‘Shower. At the Y.’

‘No, after that. I woke up and you weren’t here.’

‘I was here all night,’ I said. ‘Right there, next to Silence.’

‘Whatever you say.’ She winked.

‘No, really,’ I protested.

I remembered the dream and wondered if my subconscious could spirit my physical being away, if I really wished I was somewhere else.

I found Silence on the stairs again, papering the walls.

‘What’s up?’ I asked him.

He flashed me his notebook. He’d been writing. There was a page full of scrawl, a neat, tight first sentence that turned into lopsided scribble, as if he’d written it in the dark. The final sentence ran off the paper.

I sat on the step next to him.

‘Can I see?’

He shook his head and glanced furtively at the wall.

I looked up. There was a page of his writing plastered over the top of his hero clippings.

I am nothing.

I feel like nothing.

I want my life to matter.

What if one day I’m gone and nobody ever knew I existed?

‘You’re quite the philosopher,’ I said gently.

He grabbed my arm and squeezed it, a sudden move that made me flinch.

‘What? What is it? Has something happened?’

He shook his head fiercely and pressed a fist against his temple, as if there was a voice inside his head.

I felt the same frustration and helplessness that I used to feel when Vivienne started rolling down her slope, throwing our gear into a suitcase, flipping her thumb on a highway somewhere. Why did everyone have to be so goddamn
needy
? I knew that feeling of panic, too. I was hard-wired to run when I cared too much.

I prised his fingers from my arm and stood up. ‘Look, I don’t understand. I can’t help you. I don’t know what
you want from me—I’m barely holding it together myself.’

He slumped. Snapped his notebook shut. Squeezed his eyes shut.

‘I have to get going. I’m still short this week. Will you be okay?’

Silence nodded but I knew he didn’t mean it. Still, it was enough for me to disengage, to walk away from him. I felt guilt, followed by relief that I could still do that. Walk away.

At about nine, we all left the house and headed off to ‘work’.

What started in the spirit of freedom was beginning to feel like a cycle of pointless wandering. Incarceration in a wide-open space: no bars or locks, but a prison just the same.

The city was cloudy and grey. The people were moody and miserable and I spent ages trying to write something inspiring. I ended up with a numb backside and three stilted lines. Nobody gave me money.

On a whim, I went to the university and hung around for a few hours outside the library building. I lolled on the grass with students, mingled with the swarm between classes. I bought a coffee in the student cafeteria, thumbed through books in the library and smiled at strangers. I gave myself a new name, a new address, a new look, a new personality, a new past.

For three and a half hours I pretended to be someone else.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

By early afternoon I was back at the squat. I felt jumpy.

I punched the trapdoor open and it swung back hard, into my shoulder. The grass was flattened all over the backyard. Dying off. A workman stood on a ladder behind the house next door. I ducked and tried to slink past, but he spotted me. He waved and, a reflex, I waved back.

In my absence, a towering stack had appeared in the cellar, under a tarpaulin in the corner beneath the stairs. A battered jerry can was tipped on its side and the air smelled strongly of petrol.

I ran my finger around the nozzle and sniffed.

I had hoped the house would be empty but Arden rarely went out during the daytime and Malik always slept then.

Darcy was in the kitchen, making a coffee. She jumped. ‘Shit. What are you doing here?’

‘What’s all that stuff in the cellar?’ I asked.

‘How the fuck should I know?’

‘Charming.’ I spun on my heel and went into the bedroom. It struck me that the house was just as dusty, rotten and mildewy as when I’d first arrived, but by now I was used to it. I couldn’t smell it anymore. It was the smell of blankness. Emptiness.

As usual, Silence and Bree had left their beds unmade. Carrie’s and mine were made. A corner of Silence’s notebook was sticking out from under his pillow. I pulled out the notebook and flipped through the pages. It was nearly full and the last few blank pages were scarred with outlines of words from the pages before. Silence had a whole lot more going on in his head than he could say out loud. His frustration was there on every page; in places the pen scored right through the paper. Some phrases stood out more than others:

Today I caught Darcy and Malik together when Arden wasn’t here. Darcy isn’t the same anymore.

He didn’t elaborate on what he saw them doing.

Carrie said her teeth hurt and she wishes she had her old ones back.

I found another girl in the train station. We saved a baby. Darcy doesn’t like her. I like her. She looks so much like Amy.

Amy? His sister?

Friday showed me how to climb a tree. The world looks different from up there.

Joe sleeps like a dead person. I don’t feel safe. I can’t sleep without someone watching over me.

Was that why he’d started sleeping in our room?

Nothing.

I am nothing.

On the last few pages, this was his recurring theme, as if he’d fallen into a place of darkness.

Reading his words left me feeling unsettled. So many gaps to fill in. I tucked the notebook back under his pillow.

I jumped up to stick the peeling corner of newspaper back onto the window, but I couldn’t reach.

A hand stretched above my head and I caught the whiff of male underarm.

I fell back.

Malik stood there. He pushed the loose corner back onto the Blu-Tack and turned around. He was wide awake, obviously had been for some time, and he reeked of petrol.

‘Hey,’ I blushed.

‘Hey,’ he said.

‘Where’s Arden?’

He rolled his eyes towards the ceiling.

‘Sleeping?’

‘Nuh.’

My skin was crawling. He stood directly between me and the door, wearing an empty stare that screamed sociopath.

‘Well. I gotta…’

Malik put out a hairy arm to stop me. He looked me over crudely.

I was flustered and sweating. It was like I was trapped underneath, trying to break surface tension. My vision was smudged, my hearing distorted. I was panting and he took it for something else.

Malik’s jeans were partly unzipped as if he was halfway through dressing or undressing. When I made eye contact his pupils dilated until they were whole.

I took another step back and measured the distance between my foot and his crotch.

Arden appeared. ‘What’s going on here?’ she asked. Her eyes landed on me, ran up and down, darted to Malik, back to me again.

Darcy sidled up behind her in the hallway.

‘Jesus, Malik. Lay off the sniff,’ Arden said.

I was so grateful to her for coming when she had that I staggered past Malik and stood next to her.

Arden’s fist shot out and connected with my jaw.

I flew backwards. I landed on my side on top of Carrie’s mattress. The release of tension followed by the shock of her punch made me burst into noisy tears.

Malik sniffed. He zipped up his jeans and stomped out.

Arden stood there a moment longer, barely moving. She said calmly, ‘You’ll be all right.’ As if I deserved punishment but she hadn’t meant to hit me that hard.

Darcy looked shocked. She stared after Malik with an expression of distaste.

The pain set in a few seconds after they had left the room. Aching, throbbing, and the sensation that some of my teeth were in the wrong place. My bite was off. I wiped away tears with the hem of my shirt and noticed that my zipper on my jeans was also riding low. Is that what Arden had seen? Is that what she’d thought?

The punch, Malik, Silence’s notebook—it was all too much. I’d never been hit. Not ever. Even when Vivienne was furious, she’d never reacted like Arden just had.

I stuffed my things into my backpack. I gave in to the despair that had been threatening to spill over for weeks. There was no point trying to keep it inside. Maybe that’s how it had felt for Vivienne—all those times I’d thought she was at her lowest, it hadn’t been that at all. She hadn’t been draining away, she’d been spilling over.

It took hours to find Silence.

In a city that big, it should have taken even longer. He was a creature of habit, so I checked his favourite places first. The first time I went to the glasshouse he wasn’t there, but an hour later, he was. I caught him trying to scoop the fish into a jar. His balance was precarious, his sleeves wet to the elbow. His hair too, from trying to peer through the murk.

‘What are you doing?’ My question squeezed out between gritted teeth; my jaw felt wired shut, out of alignment. ‘Arden hit me.’ I hadn’t meant to spring it on him like that, but it came out before I could think.

Silence had caught one goggle-eyed goldfish. He tipped it out. It dived tail-first and disappeared. He watched it swim free then turned and hurled the jar at the square, greenish panes of the glasshouse walls. The jar shattered, but the panes held up.

‘I’m okay.’ I looked around but there was nobody nearby. ‘I can’t stay. For real, this time.’

I know,
he said on a sigh.

I was thinking,
It’s too late, I’m already attached.
I hated goodbyes.

Silence held up his hand. There was a spark in his expression that had been missing for some time.
I’m coming with you,
he signed.

‘But I don’t know where I’m going.’ I tried to stop the surge of excitement I felt.

I don’t care. I’ll come with you.

‘Me and you against the world, huh?’

He smiled.
Me and you.

We put off returning to the squat until it was dark. Silence bought hamburgers and we ate as we walked. He swapped his tomato for my onion and he gave me his hoodie when I mentioned the cold.

When I hesitated outside the cellar window, he held my hand.

Arden met us at the top of the cellar stairs. She launched herself at me. I cowered and nearly fell, but she was hugging me, her embrace a vice. I was stiff and
unforgiving but she folded me into her.

‘You’re back,’ she purred in my ear.

It sounded like a threat.

She stepped away from me and my heart did a stage-dive.

Wish was there. He was playing cards with Joe, whose face still looked collapsed in places, who still struggled with the stairs and moved like an old man.

Carrie and Darcy watched as if there was a thousand acres at stake.

Wish high-fived Silence and eyed me with friendly curiosity and not much else.

Barely moving her lips, Carrie said, ‘There’s beer in the sink.’

‘Chug-a-lug,’ cackled AiAi.

Silence grabbed a bottle out of AiAi’s hand and smacked him on the top of his head.

AiAi, drinking? Arden would never allow it. I raised an eyebrow but Arden seemed not to care.

‘Leave him alone,’ she said and twisted the top off a fresh one. ‘It’s only beer. Don’t be a killjoy. Look, it’s the old crew all together again. Cheers.’

The others followed with a chorus of clinks.

I went to the bedroom and dumped my backpack. I could stay there and sulk, or I could join in and go through the motions. Maybe even have a conversation with a guy who made me feel all thumbs and two left feet, instead of behaving as if I was an asylum inmate like I had the last time I saw him.

Except he’d said I was pathetic.

I wasted time rearranging my bed, changing into cleaner jeans and a T-shirt.

Back in the kitchen the air smelled like an old keg and everyone’s voices were louder than Arden would usually allow. It was like she’d scrapped all of her rules.

Bree wasn’t there. Malik wasn’t either and that suited me just fine.

I helped myself to a beer, even though I didn’t much like the taste, and sat next to Carrie.

‘Here she is,’ AiAi said as if somebody had just asked where I was.

‘Do you want me to deal you in?’ Wish said. He shuffled and split the deck like a pro.

‘Don’t do it,’ Joe butted in. ‘He counts the cards. If this was Vegas he’d get dragged off with a bag over his head.’

‘I don’t know how,’ I said. ‘I’ll just watch.’

‘Story of her life,’ Darcy snorted.

Wish dealt two cards each to himself, Darcy, Joe, Carrie and AiAi.

AiAi immediately turned his cards face up and showed everyone what he had.

‘Not yet, numb-nuts,’ Joe told him and flipped them back over.

I watched Wish’s face as he dealt. Sure enough, he seemed to be cataloguing the cards as they were revealed. He told everyone to place their bets—with bottle tops—and scooped the pile towards him when he won.