Screw Loose (2 page)

‘Yep!'

He wasn't.

‘Good. We expect players to wear them at all times. We do surprise checks. If you're going to be caught with your pants down, particularly in airport security, we want good publicity. And think about what I said with regards to Candibelle. If she's got her claws into you, mate, the club could find you a new girlfriend, you know. We've got spares. You just have to register.'

‘No thanks, Paul.' He was surprised how firm he sounded.

‘Well, think about it. And another thing – we've put you in the players' review:
Cinderella
. You're going to be Cinderella.' He hung up.

Angelo threw the phone on the bed and it bounced against the wall. He began a bit of vicious shadow boxing. He'd love to bop Vasilevski, show him where to get off. He flopped onto the floor for a few push-ups. It was going to be hard flying down to Hobart regularly for training, hard obeying all their little rules, hard to even remember them, but he was starting to see that the hardest thing would be trying to explain his girlfriend to these people. He sighed.

Angelo had no trouble with Zeynep being a Muslim, and it wasn't her fault that her parents were nuts. He didn't even mind that she was obsessive-compulsive – hey, he was a bit phobic himself. But now that he was famous, things had changed. If only she was a bit more normal, it would be heaps easier. What if he wanted to take her to the Brownlow at the end of the year? Would she want to wear a headscarf or a veil so her parents didn't recognise her on national TV? Would she start cleaning the toilets during an ad break? She was the only kid in the school who did voluntary yard duty,
every day
.

Perhaps he should go back to Georgia. Well, perhaps not. She was Zeynep's best mate, after all. No, he'd stick with the one he really cared about. He was hooked on Zeynep: he thought about her all the time. Why? The eyes, the skin, the hair, the sweet little body, the voice. He was gone for her. Oh, man, no way would he give her up.

Chelsea Dean had told him life gets easier when you're famous. Well, it hadn't.
Dump your girlfriend. Cinderella!
What was that all about? Some sort of punishment? And his broken finger meant he'd probably miss
seven
games. This morning, life had got heaps harder. He decided to ring Joshua. Josh always had the answers – gay guys always did.

NUTBUSH

C
HELSEA
D
EAN OPENED
the front door to her parents' substantial riverside residence and was assaulted by booming reception-centre music. Surely her mother wasn't at home this early? She stood in the hall, her school bag suspended above the marble floor, and listened. The music vibrated through her whole body. Suddenly a man began shouting. It was not her father's voice.

Her bag slapped to the marble as she stepped into the living room. There was her mother, a can of beer in one hand, doing the
Nutbush
! The man wore overalls and sported a greying ponytail. Her mother was dancing with a tradesperson.

As Chelsea stared, her mother and the man simultaneously jumped ninety degrees, legs wide apart, to face her. Three pairs of eyes locked and a stupid grin fell from her mother's face.

‘Chelsea!' Her mother quickly tippy-toed over to the Bang and Olufsen and fired the remote.

Silence.

‘Home from school so soon, sweetheart?'

The tradesperson was dabbing his forehead with a dirty handkerchief.

‘What's this? A wedding reception?' Chelsea's voice was as flat and hard as a frozen sea. Her parents were exceptionally difficult people.

‘Darling! I've always wanted to learn the
Nutbush
,' her mother slurred as she slid about the parquet floor in search of her shoes.

‘Mother, you're drunk in the afternoon!'

‘This is Mr Ryan … the sauna repairman.' Her mother waved her hand airily.

Mr Ryan wiped his hand on his overalls and winked at Chelsea.

Chelsea screwed up her eyes and stared back. She wondered if Brenda, their housekeeper, had witnessed this awful behaviour.

‘Mr Ryan fixed the sauna in a flash, so he had time to teach me the
Nutbush
.' Her mother repeated a few silent
Nutbush
steps and mumbled, ‘…city limits.'

Chelsea clamped her teeth together. Her silly mother had her hands on her hips and was waving her bottom about.

‘Mother, only people who go to McDonald's in their pyjamas do the
Nutbush
.'

In Year 8, Chelsea had walked into a classroom one lunchtime to find every girl in her homeroom group doing the
Nutbush
– and they hadn't asked her! She had refused to learn that dreadful dance after that, despite their pleas. And she had vowed never to be seen doing such a ridiculous dance. Ever!

Her mother shrieked with laughter. ‘Don't be such a snob, Chelsea. I don't know how you turned out to be so la-di-da. You didn't get it from me.' She smiled drunkenly at Mr Ryan and nudged him with her forehead. ‘I love the
Nutbush
.' She waved her hands in the air again: ‘…city limits.'

‘Don't like McDonald's; don't wear pyjamas!' Mr Ryan said to her mother, who shrieked again, then staggered towards the sofa and flopped like a slack-stringed puppet into the cushions.

‘Mother!'

What was going on? Surely her mother wasn't conducting an affair?

‘You're a mate of my son's,' Mr Ryan said. ‘Craig Ryan.'

Chelsea tried not to react. ‘Really? I doubt it.'

Please no. Not Craig's father
. This was truly ugly. She had been trying to civilise Craig because, in his own unwashed way, he was very attractive and could be useful. She was, after all, born to rule others, as a teacher had once rather sarcastically snapped at her during a nasty little dispute that had ended in tears (the teacher's).

Chelsea stomped up the stairs, leaving her mother curled up on the sofa giggling into one of the tapestry cushions. Craig Ryan's father was facing the window, his shoulders bouncing.

She slammed her bedroom door, hard. Was her mother losing her mind? Her poor darling father was, this very minute, in Sydney working hard for them both. Sure, her parents did fight, but she had never dreamt that her mother would cheat on her father. There was simply too much to lose: the new Mercedes, the Port Douglas apartment, Brenda, the trips to Corfu and Africa. Her mother's stupid antics were putting their lifestyle at risk.

Chelsea threw herself on her bed and screamed into her pillows. This wasn't happening. She rolled over and swore, then looked up at the happy Barbies arrayed one tier above the other to the ceiling.

The Barbies were her consolation and her investment. Being without siblings she had, quite early in her life, begun seeking their advice. Now, after a decade of serious collecting, she had well over three hundred of them – and the picnic van. And most of them could be relied on to give sensible advice in a crisis. Some people had security blankets; Chelsea had security Barbies.

For instance, they had helped her through her expulsion from Mary Magdalene, and her two-week crush on football hero Angelo Tarano. And they'd known just how to persuade her father to take her to Daydream Island, and just how to get him to install a mirror ball above the spa. However, in the little matter of installing a lift in the house, their strategy –
Just
break your legs when you go skiing, and they'll have no choice
– was an example of the Barbies, in this case Surgeon Barbie, offering rather silly advice.

Just two days earlier, Chelsea had discussed with them the man in the living room's son – Craig Ryan. She was having a lot of trouble taming Craig, who'd continued to insist on showing interest in the most thoroughly bizarre creature in the entire school, Matilda Grey. The Barbies had been clear about Matilda – she was a threat to public health. As for Craig, Stewardess Barbie had advised the obvious – fight to get him, and fight dirty.

Chelsea got down Student Teacher Barbie, who was usually very perceptive, and sat her on her pillow beside Rapunzel Barbie – her current favourite, but a bit of a bitch. She stroked Rapunzel Barbie's hair and asked them both for help.

Student Teacher Barbie never spoke immediately – she waited until she could hear a pin drop – but she was quick off the mark today. She suggested an action plan.

One of Chelsea's most impressive characteristics, a characteristic that one day, she was sure, would help her become the
CEO
of a major company, was that she always went straight for an action solution. No sitting around moping. Student Teacher Barbie had taught her that.

‘If this man, Craig Ryan's father, is going to endanger your holidays and stop you being dropped off at the school gates each morning in the Merc, then he must be taken out!' Student Teacher Barbie barked now.

‘Yes, sabotage the brakes on his maintenance van,' Rapunzel Barbie ordered. Now that she was lying back on her pillow, Chelsea could see the awful van, with its awful slogan, from her window.
Just call Ryan and don't blame us for tryan
. No wonder the son couldn't speak properly. But she knew nothing about brakes, and the only person she knew who did, Craig Ryan, was hardly likely to sabotage his own father's car.

‘Cut off that hair!' shrieked Hairdresser Barbie from the third shelf. ‘Say no to ponytails on men!'

‘Yes! Great idea! I'm not competitive,' shouted Rapunzel Barbie, ‘but I hate men with ponytails.'

‘So do I!' Chelsea said aloud.

‘Then take the bastard out!' screamed Rapunzel Barbie.

‘Get a hit man,' said Student Teacher Barbie.

‘Khiem Dao,' Rapunzel Barbie suggested triumphantly, referring to one of Vistaview Secondary College's major criminals and charity cases.

Chelsea shook her head and put both the overexcited Barbies back. She lay on her waterbed. Her mother was cheating on her father. This was unacceptable, but murder wasn't the answer.

‘Attention the lot of you,' Police Chief Barbie called from the top shelf.

The room fell silent.

‘Just tell your mother you're pregnant and you don't know how it happened. Mothers always drop everything when they hear that – including their boyfriends.'

Of course. Who needed a school counsellor or a psychiatrist when you had the opinions of three hundred Barbies to choose from? She would tell her mother as soon as the childish creature sobered up. That would bring an end to Mr Ryan.

STICK
YOUR TONGUE
IN MY EAR

C
RAIG
R
YAN WAS RAPT
. Matilda Grey had invited him down to the riverbank after school. He'd accepted, of course – everyone knew what an invitation to the riverbank meant. Although it was possible that Matilda did not. They'd been kind of going out with one another all year, but going out with Matilda was a strange experience often involving races in the park and disagreements about whether they should jump into the pond together.

All afternoon he'd been daydreaming about this rendezvous, and in Maths his teacher had threatened him with watering pot plants after school. Of course Matilda had also asked about Arnold, his dog. Hopefully she wasn't more interested in his dog than she was in him. But either way, he was lucky. Matilda Grey, Australia's most famous teenage girl – a girl who'd been found living in the desert among dingoes – was hot for him.

Craig smiled to himself and whistled very quietly as he sauntered across the oval towards the river, his bag over one shoulder, his basketball under his arm. They were going to make a film about Matilda, and there was already a book – and in Japan, a series of mangas. In the pet food aisle of the supermarket where he worked there was a shelf with hundreds of identical pictures of Matilda smiling from the labels of
Dingoes' Dinner
. Her bright blue eyes sparkled cheekily from the label, and a bubble-caption rose from her mouth:
Yum!
It was one of the leading pet foods in Australia, and Matilda got royalties.

He liked her a lot. She was very fit from years spent sprinting after cats and cars. Her voice was lower than most girls', but it was quite soft and sexy; her hair was usually messy, but she was a natural blonde, so who cared about combs; her knees were scarred from crawling about in the desert with her mates, but she usually wore pants. A scarred, messy little blonde athlete – his kind of babe.

He could see her in the distance as he wandered down one of the tracks that wound through the old gums to the riverbank. It was a lovely winter afternoon. She was lying in the sun on a little patch of grass, her school bag beside her and her eyes closed. It wasn't that close to mating season, but he'd been invited to the river by a girl who maybe wanted to mate with him, alone, down here in the sun.
Perfecto!

She opened her eyes as he approached, then hoisted herself up on one elbow and turned her face to him, squinting into the light.

‘Howdy,' he said. He wanted to kiss her but thought better of it.

‘Craig,' she said, smiling at him. Then she flopped back and closed her eyes.