Call Me Evie, page 9
“Not to talk to strangers.”
“Oh, well, you know my name now, so I’m not really a stranger.” I push my hood back so she can see my face. “What happened, Awhina? Why were you crying?”
She is staring at the ground. “I made him angry at me.”
I swallow hard. “Who?”
“My dad. He got angry at me.”
“What did he do?”
“He hurt me. That’s why I can’t go to school today.”
I wince. “Does he often hurt you?”
She scuffs the ground with her shoe. Then, as if it takes all the courage in the world, she looks up at me and gives the smallest of nods.
“Where do you live?”
“Down the hill.”
“Where?”
“I’m going home,” the girl says, suddenly shy. She begins walking briskly away down the hill. I could go after her to see if I can help, but it’s easier just to hope that she will be okay. I savor her name in my mouth. Ah-fee-nuh. The car is still parked up on the shoulder of the road, the white sedan with a rental sticker in the corner of the back windscreen.
The black-clad man stands near the mouth of our driveway, a cigarette hanging from his lip. I can’t be sure, but it looks like the man who was near our place a few days ago. I pull my hood back up.
He walks toward me, holding something up to his eye, something small and square. The camera lens finds me. I look down the road and realize I am too exposed. I turn and start back toward the house, beginning to run. Clicks machine-gun behind me. I quicken my pace and turn into our driveway. My heart is thundering.
The shed door is still closed. I fly up the ladder, tip over the window ledge, and tumble down hard onto the floor of my room.
“Jim,” I call toward the shed.
There’s no response.
I close the blinds, then curl myself into a ball on my bed and rock. Where is he?
“Fuck,” I say. Then I say it again, louder, and again, louder still.
The back door slides open. For a second I’m chilled to the core. I think, They’ve come for me and now they’re inside.
“Kate,” the voice calls. It’s Jim.
I rush to my door as the lock slides and the door opens. I fall into his arms, racked by sobs. I realize he is holding me, that I want him to hold me. Don’t trust him. But what choice do I have? “It’s okay,” he says. “What happened?”
“Where were you?”
“I was just in the shed,” he says. “Did something happen?”
“No,” I say. “Nothing happened, I—” The sobs shudder through my words. “I was scared that you’d gone. I don’t know what I thought. I heard someone outside.” My chest flutters. The pain and fear wash over me like the angry sea. He holds me tight, containing me. My throat constricts. It’s a full attack coming on.
“Hey,” he says, more softly than I’ve heard him speak. “It’s going to be okay, I’ve got you. Breathe with me.” He places his hand on my back.
We sit like that for some time. My chest rises and falls as I breathe in and out.
When everything is calm and still, he pries my arms from around his neck and stands.
“Kate, can you make me a promise?”
“What is it?”
“Promise me that if you ever feel like you are going to do something rash, you’ll just pause and take a few breaths.”
Sagging in the fatigue from the unspent adrenaline leaving my bloodstream, I utter the words, an empty promise: “I will, yes.”
“I heard you calling when I was in the shed and came straightaway. That’s all you need to do. Just call out to me.”
He leaves my room and I hear him walking up the hallway. Then comes the knock of his tools being dragged out from beneath the sink. I go to my bed and sit there waiting to see what he will do. In the door frame he aims the electric drill at the roof and tests the battery.
“Trust me and I will trust you. If I tell you to go to your room, you go there and stay there until I say you can come out, understand?”
I nod.
“Say yes.”
“Yes. I understand.”
I stand and watch him drill. When he’s done, I follow him as he carries the dead bolt down to the kitchen and slaps it on the counter. “All right,” he says. “I’m going to put this away for now. Please don’t make me regret it.” He opens the fridge and takes out the ingredients for my juice. The juicer grinds to life. He begins feeding the vegetables through, then the fruit.
“You’ve been eating everything I make?” he asks, speaking loudly to be heard over the din.
“Yes,” I reply.
“Good,” he says, killing the juicer, holding the glass out to me. “Let’s see how much weight you’ve put on.”
We go to the bathroom and I stand on the scales. He leans over my shoulder to read the number, then scribbles it into his notebook.
“You’re getting better, Kate. That’s almost four kilos. Not bad for less than two weeks. Soon, when you’re feeling up to it, we can talk more about what happened that night back in Melbourne.”
* * *
• • •
It’s dark when I wake. I have no idea how long I have slept for, but I know it’s still nighttime. The light is on in the hallway; a voice comes from the lounge.
“It needs to happen sooner rather than later.” A murmur just clear enough to make out. Slowly I rise from my bed and press my ear against the crack between the door and the door frame. “I’ve got her with me. But does anything change, I mean the longer it takes?” He’s on the phone. “What will they do with her?” His voice is steely. “Then what? I mean what legal options do I have if things go pear shaped?”
I ease my door open and creep up the hall. He sighs. “She’s healthy, I’m keeping her healthy. It’s her brain that’s the problem.” One more step and the floorboard creaks.
He turns, his eyes widening when he sees me. “Let me call you tomorrow. I’ve got to go. . . . Yep, will do. Bye.” He hangs up.
“Kate,” he says. “What’s going on? Can’t sleep?”
“Who was that?” I ask. “Who was on the phone?”
“Just settling some affairs, nothing to worry about.”
“Why are you up so late?”
“Late?” He glances at his phone screen. “I guess it is getting late.” Then the cold weight of his eyes falls on me. He’s not wearing his glasses. “I suppose you’re not the only one losing sleep these days.”
I lean against the dark wood-paneled wall in the hallway. “I want to use the Internet. I want to see what they’re saying.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too soon. You’re not stable.” Annoyance is visible on his face now. His brow creases. “You don’t even remember what happened.”
“I know, but I just want to see what they’re saying.”
He sighs. “You have to see things for yourself. It’s not enough that I tell you, is it?”
I don’t know how to answer, so I stand there until he waves me closer, turning toward his desk. He opens the laptop, and I watch his fingers punch in the password. There is a P and an E but his fingers travel too quickly for me to pick up anything else. He opens an anonymous browser. I watch him as he chooses a city from a list; if anyone could see this search, they would think we were in São Paulo, Brazil.
“I give up, Kate. I don’t know what is working and what’s only making it worse.”
He clicks on a message board with hundreds of messages. The title is Kate Bennet. I take a breath to quell my nerves before sitting down on his office chair. I was convinced he wouldn’t show me and now I’m here, with the screen loaded before me. I can’t look up.
“You don’t have to do this, Kate. I don’t think you’re up to it.”
He doesn’t want me to look and so I must. I swallow, a tension coiling in on itself inside. I exhale and look at the screen.
If I encounter this virus, I would love to dispatch her. One bullet. That’s all it would take. Hundreds of likes.
She’s pretty hot, but clearly crazy. I’d still fuck her, but then again she’d probably consume me like a praying mantis after.
Lol.
So true.
Let’s start crowdfunding a PI to find her. She can’t have disappeared.
Does anyone know where she is?
She won’t have gotten that far. Maybe Sydney—it’s not hard to hide.
Can someone share the tape? It’s been taken down . . .
Try this: http://www.vilefile.com/share/kate-bennet-leaked or if you have a Tor browser you can buy the HD version on the dark web.
I’m shaking. My inner organs have plummeted. In their place is a cold vacuum. Jim only shows what he wants me to see.
“Click it.”
“What?”
“The link,” I say, steadying my voice. “Click on the link. I want to see it.”
He closes the lid of the laptop, stands, and wraps me in his arms. “It’ll be fake. The video has been taken down.” He gazes into my eyes, his jaw firm, his nostrils flaring.
I scream so loud that he covers my mouth.
“Shh,” he croons. “Let’s go to bed.”
“No!” I yell. “Don’t you tell me what to do. You’re not my father!”
I collapse to the floor and he comes down with me. He holds me like he’s sinking and I don’t have the energy to push him away.
“You’re being nasty,” he whispers. “You don’t want me to get angry.”
We stay like that until I have nothing left, no energy, no tears, just a trembling in my chest, in my limbs, in every cell.
BEFORE
Thirteen
Was it something I said?
That was the first message I read from Thom in two weeks. I had other messages from Willow and school friends too. Thom and I had exchanged texts for the better part of a month, the flirtation gradually growing. At first it was the inclusion of a single x at the end of each message. Then he began to call me babe. We hadn’t seen each other again but did it matter? We realized that we lived within walking distance from each other, it was only a matter of time, then Dad confiscated my phone.
I’d been keeping a plastic water bottle under my bed half filled with liquor I had skimmed from the bottles in the hallway cabinet. I got the idea from Willow. We had drunk together and I thought next time I would provide the booze. I’d originally gone to her house to confront her; I wanted to know why she lied to me about Thom and Sally, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. I didn’t even tell her about bumping into Thom and the text messaging that followed. Instead, up in her room she pulled the alcohol out from beneath her bed. We sat against her headboard watching The Bachelor on her iPad and passing the bottle back and forth. With a buzz in my chest and the alcohol’s lacquerlike effect on my thoughts, we cackled at the desperate contestants. I was confused and annoyed about the lies she told but I knew that I wasn’t ready to have that conversation with her. It was, after all, through Willow that I had made so many of my other friends, and without her I wondered if I would still have any of them. Besides, I was just happy that Thom was back in my life.
When Dad found the liquor cabinet open, he realized the seal of a previously unopened bottle had been broken. I’d only just got full-time phone privileges, which meant I could FaceTime Thom late into the night and fall asleep as if he was there, beside me. Then my phone was gone again.
How could I lose Thom so soon after all this time? I nagged for him to give it back, reaching for it in his hand. I wouldn’t leave him alone until he snapped. You want it that bad? Here it is. He took it in his fist and pitched it across the room so hard it shattered against the marble backsplash in the kitchen. I rushed over and took all those broken pieces to my chest so my fingertips bled from the broken glass.
When he came home from work the next day, he had a white box. Inside was a brand-new phone, the next model up from my old one. “I’ll give it to you in two weeks but only if you behave yourself, and it comes with two conditions.” He counted them with his fingers. “No passcode on the phone, and you talk to me if you ever want to drink alcohol or anything like that, okay? You’re growing up, I get it, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things.”
After two weeks, at the breakfast table he handed me that white box. I opened it up and plugged my SIM card in. That’s when the messages I had missed from Willow and Thom came through, but it was Thom I cared most about.
OMG Dad took my phone. He found out about the booze stashed under my bed. I’m so sorry! I missed you.
He replied almost instantly. I saw you hadn’t posted on Instagram or Facebook so I thought something was up. I knew you wouldn’t just blow me off. ;) I was tempted to walk up your street and try to guess your house but thought that would be too stalkery.
I was grateful he hadn’t. I didn’t know what I would tell Dad if Thom knocked on the door. His next message popped up before I could reply to his previous one.
Glad you’re back online, even if you did set my plans back two weeks.
Plans, huh?
Well by now I would have asked you for a date. But I guess that’ll just have to wait.
I considered my next message carefully. I couldn’t help but wonder why he had chosen me. I imagined the way his body had changed since our swimming days.
That’s lucky because I probably wouldn’t have said yes so soon. Out of curiosity what would this date involve?
I was thinking we could take a walk.
Something was blooming inside. I smiled.
A walk? Really? I think I might almost be ready for that. Almost.
Dad came into the room carrying two plates. “Eat up or you’ll be late to school.”
We sat together at the table. I felt the phone vibrate in my lap.
Do you think you will be ready this weekend?
Dad cleared his throat. “Not while we’re eating, please, Kate.”
“Sorry.”
I put the phone back in my lap and felt it vibrate again. I couldn’t do anything but scoop my omelet into my mouth and chew faster.
My school friends were candid with their parents about boyfriends and parties. But it wasn’t like that with Dad; I felt a kind of shame. Maybe it was because we only had each other. Would it have been different if Mum were still alive? My closest family members were Grandma up in Wagga Wagga and my mum’s sister, Lizzie, in England. I hadn’t seen Aunty Lizzie since the funeral when I was only five, although we had Skyped sometimes on birthdays. After Mum died, Aunty Lizzie flew over and stayed with us for a month. There were times when Dad and Aunty Lizzie would begin talking and gradually their voices would rise until they were both yelling and I would block my ears and bury my head beneath my pillows. Then she went back to England.
“Look after your new phone at school, Kate. It’s not cheap, that thing.”
“I will, Dad.”
Squares of light fell through the window, rising partway up the fridge. It was a clear day and the jagged angles of the cityscape stood out stark against the September sky.
I took the steps back up to my bedroom two at a time, tense with anticipation. I opened Thom’s message.
So?
I messaged back.
Where and when would said walk take place?
My suggestion for said walk would be this Saturday in the city.
It had been six weeks since I’d seen him, so surely a few more days wouldn’t matter. But I already knew that Saturday couldn’t come soon enough.
* * *
• • •
When the day came it was blustery. Leaves worked themselves into gutters, blocking drains so puddles crept up onto the road. I had settled on jeans, dark flats, a white top beneath my good black coat. I did my hair, ironing out the flicks and curls at the tips, but spent the most time on my face: foundation, Willow’s eyeliner, a pale lipstick, the tube of mascara I had bought with my pocket money. All just to make it look like I hadn’t given it much thought at all. Dad cocked one eyebrow when I came down the stairs.
He drove me into town, pulling in near the gallery Thom had named. I had told Dad I was meeting Willow and a few others. The girls. I guess he was just happy it was a gallery and not the mall.
The street bustled with the standard Saturday fare: women in yoga pants, men with groomed beards. A homeless man thrusting his cup out toward the passing crowds.
The exhibition looked quiet from outside. A few people floated from one piece to the next. Then I saw Thom. He stood alone near the window, gazing at something on the wall.
I moved in beside him and spoke in a French drawl. “Hmm, the angles and light, it’s magnificent.” Leaning in, I added, “If you look closer, you will find this piece pays homage to the impressionists.”
He didn’t turn from the picture, but his grin crinkled his eyes. “You know, if that wasn’t so ludicrous, you could pass as someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.”
“Who says I don’t?” Now he turned to face me.
“Maybe I just hope you don’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t need me to teach you.”
He was dressed in black skinny jeans, a black T-shirt, and brown boots that had lost their shine. Over the T-shirt he wore a dark tweed coat with the collar up. He didn’t dress how most teenage boys did. He dressed like the guitarist in an indie band. I hadn’t known I’d be into that kind of look.
“You made it.”
“I did.”
“That accent was a thing of beauty,” he said.
“I take French.”
“You would get on with my mum then. She was born in France.”
“Oh, well, you know my name now, so I’m not really a stranger.” I push my hood back so she can see my face. “What happened, Awhina? Why were you crying?”
She is staring at the ground. “I made him angry at me.”
I swallow hard. “Who?”
“My dad. He got angry at me.”
“What did he do?”
“He hurt me. That’s why I can’t go to school today.”
I wince. “Does he often hurt you?”
She scuffs the ground with her shoe. Then, as if it takes all the courage in the world, she looks up at me and gives the smallest of nods.
“Where do you live?”
“Down the hill.”
“Where?”
“I’m going home,” the girl says, suddenly shy. She begins walking briskly away down the hill. I could go after her to see if I can help, but it’s easier just to hope that she will be okay. I savor her name in my mouth. Ah-fee-nuh. The car is still parked up on the shoulder of the road, the white sedan with a rental sticker in the corner of the back windscreen.
The black-clad man stands near the mouth of our driveway, a cigarette hanging from his lip. I can’t be sure, but it looks like the man who was near our place a few days ago. I pull my hood back up.
He walks toward me, holding something up to his eye, something small and square. The camera lens finds me. I look down the road and realize I am too exposed. I turn and start back toward the house, beginning to run. Clicks machine-gun behind me. I quicken my pace and turn into our driveway. My heart is thundering.
The shed door is still closed. I fly up the ladder, tip over the window ledge, and tumble down hard onto the floor of my room.
“Jim,” I call toward the shed.
There’s no response.
I close the blinds, then curl myself into a ball on my bed and rock. Where is he?
“Fuck,” I say. Then I say it again, louder, and again, louder still.
The back door slides open. For a second I’m chilled to the core. I think, They’ve come for me and now they’re inside.
“Kate,” the voice calls. It’s Jim.
I rush to my door as the lock slides and the door opens. I fall into his arms, racked by sobs. I realize he is holding me, that I want him to hold me. Don’t trust him. But what choice do I have? “It’s okay,” he says. “What happened?”
“Where were you?”
“I was just in the shed,” he says. “Did something happen?”
“No,” I say. “Nothing happened, I—” The sobs shudder through my words. “I was scared that you’d gone. I don’t know what I thought. I heard someone outside.” My chest flutters. The pain and fear wash over me like the angry sea. He holds me tight, containing me. My throat constricts. It’s a full attack coming on.
“Hey,” he says, more softly than I’ve heard him speak. “It’s going to be okay, I’ve got you. Breathe with me.” He places his hand on my back.
We sit like that for some time. My chest rises and falls as I breathe in and out.
When everything is calm and still, he pries my arms from around his neck and stands.
“Kate, can you make me a promise?”
“What is it?”
“Promise me that if you ever feel like you are going to do something rash, you’ll just pause and take a few breaths.”
Sagging in the fatigue from the unspent adrenaline leaving my bloodstream, I utter the words, an empty promise: “I will, yes.”
“I heard you calling when I was in the shed and came straightaway. That’s all you need to do. Just call out to me.”
He leaves my room and I hear him walking up the hallway. Then comes the knock of his tools being dragged out from beneath the sink. I go to my bed and sit there waiting to see what he will do. In the door frame he aims the electric drill at the roof and tests the battery.
“Trust me and I will trust you. If I tell you to go to your room, you go there and stay there until I say you can come out, understand?”
I nod.
“Say yes.”
“Yes. I understand.”
I stand and watch him drill. When he’s done, I follow him as he carries the dead bolt down to the kitchen and slaps it on the counter. “All right,” he says. “I’m going to put this away for now. Please don’t make me regret it.” He opens the fridge and takes out the ingredients for my juice. The juicer grinds to life. He begins feeding the vegetables through, then the fruit.
“You’ve been eating everything I make?” he asks, speaking loudly to be heard over the din.
“Yes,” I reply.
“Good,” he says, killing the juicer, holding the glass out to me. “Let’s see how much weight you’ve put on.”
We go to the bathroom and I stand on the scales. He leans over my shoulder to read the number, then scribbles it into his notebook.
“You’re getting better, Kate. That’s almost four kilos. Not bad for less than two weeks. Soon, when you’re feeling up to it, we can talk more about what happened that night back in Melbourne.”
* * *
• • •
It’s dark when I wake. I have no idea how long I have slept for, but I know it’s still nighttime. The light is on in the hallway; a voice comes from the lounge.
“It needs to happen sooner rather than later.” A murmur just clear enough to make out. Slowly I rise from my bed and press my ear against the crack between the door and the door frame. “I’ve got her with me. But does anything change, I mean the longer it takes?” He’s on the phone. “What will they do with her?” His voice is steely. “Then what? I mean what legal options do I have if things go pear shaped?”
I ease my door open and creep up the hall. He sighs. “She’s healthy, I’m keeping her healthy. It’s her brain that’s the problem.” One more step and the floorboard creaks.
He turns, his eyes widening when he sees me. “Let me call you tomorrow. I’ve got to go. . . . Yep, will do. Bye.” He hangs up.
“Kate,” he says. “What’s going on? Can’t sleep?”
“Who was that?” I ask. “Who was on the phone?”
“Just settling some affairs, nothing to worry about.”
“Why are you up so late?”
“Late?” He glances at his phone screen. “I guess it is getting late.” Then the cold weight of his eyes falls on me. He’s not wearing his glasses. “I suppose you’re not the only one losing sleep these days.”
I lean against the dark wood-paneled wall in the hallway. “I want to use the Internet. I want to see what they’re saying.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too soon. You’re not stable.” Annoyance is visible on his face now. His brow creases. “You don’t even remember what happened.”
“I know, but I just want to see what they’re saying.”
He sighs. “You have to see things for yourself. It’s not enough that I tell you, is it?”
I don’t know how to answer, so I stand there until he waves me closer, turning toward his desk. He opens the laptop, and I watch his fingers punch in the password. There is a P and an E but his fingers travel too quickly for me to pick up anything else. He opens an anonymous browser. I watch him as he chooses a city from a list; if anyone could see this search, they would think we were in São Paulo, Brazil.
“I give up, Kate. I don’t know what is working and what’s only making it worse.”
He clicks on a message board with hundreds of messages. The title is Kate Bennet. I take a breath to quell my nerves before sitting down on his office chair. I was convinced he wouldn’t show me and now I’m here, with the screen loaded before me. I can’t look up.
“You don’t have to do this, Kate. I don’t think you’re up to it.”
He doesn’t want me to look and so I must. I swallow, a tension coiling in on itself inside. I exhale and look at the screen.
If I encounter this virus, I would love to dispatch her. One bullet. That’s all it would take. Hundreds of likes.
She’s pretty hot, but clearly crazy. I’d still fuck her, but then again she’d probably consume me like a praying mantis after.
Lol.
So true.
Let’s start crowdfunding a PI to find her. She can’t have disappeared.
Does anyone know where she is?
She won’t have gotten that far. Maybe Sydney—it’s not hard to hide.
Can someone share the tape? It’s been taken down . . .
Try this: http://www.vilefile.com/share/kate-bennet-leaked or if you have a Tor browser you can buy the HD version on the dark web.
I’m shaking. My inner organs have plummeted. In their place is a cold vacuum. Jim only shows what he wants me to see.
“Click it.”
“What?”
“The link,” I say, steadying my voice. “Click on the link. I want to see it.”
He closes the lid of the laptop, stands, and wraps me in his arms. “It’ll be fake. The video has been taken down.” He gazes into my eyes, his jaw firm, his nostrils flaring.
I scream so loud that he covers my mouth.
“Shh,” he croons. “Let’s go to bed.”
“No!” I yell. “Don’t you tell me what to do. You’re not my father!”
I collapse to the floor and he comes down with me. He holds me like he’s sinking and I don’t have the energy to push him away.
“You’re being nasty,” he whispers. “You don’t want me to get angry.”
We stay like that until I have nothing left, no energy, no tears, just a trembling in my chest, in my limbs, in every cell.
BEFORE
Thirteen
Was it something I said?
That was the first message I read from Thom in two weeks. I had other messages from Willow and school friends too. Thom and I had exchanged texts for the better part of a month, the flirtation gradually growing. At first it was the inclusion of a single x at the end of each message. Then he began to call me babe. We hadn’t seen each other again but did it matter? We realized that we lived within walking distance from each other, it was only a matter of time, then Dad confiscated my phone.
I’d been keeping a plastic water bottle under my bed half filled with liquor I had skimmed from the bottles in the hallway cabinet. I got the idea from Willow. We had drunk together and I thought next time I would provide the booze. I’d originally gone to her house to confront her; I wanted to know why she lied to me about Thom and Sally, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. I didn’t even tell her about bumping into Thom and the text messaging that followed. Instead, up in her room she pulled the alcohol out from beneath her bed. We sat against her headboard watching The Bachelor on her iPad and passing the bottle back and forth. With a buzz in my chest and the alcohol’s lacquerlike effect on my thoughts, we cackled at the desperate contestants. I was confused and annoyed about the lies she told but I knew that I wasn’t ready to have that conversation with her. It was, after all, through Willow that I had made so many of my other friends, and without her I wondered if I would still have any of them. Besides, I was just happy that Thom was back in my life.
When Dad found the liquor cabinet open, he realized the seal of a previously unopened bottle had been broken. I’d only just got full-time phone privileges, which meant I could FaceTime Thom late into the night and fall asleep as if he was there, beside me. Then my phone was gone again.
How could I lose Thom so soon after all this time? I nagged for him to give it back, reaching for it in his hand. I wouldn’t leave him alone until he snapped. You want it that bad? Here it is. He took it in his fist and pitched it across the room so hard it shattered against the marble backsplash in the kitchen. I rushed over and took all those broken pieces to my chest so my fingertips bled from the broken glass.
When he came home from work the next day, he had a white box. Inside was a brand-new phone, the next model up from my old one. “I’ll give it to you in two weeks but only if you behave yourself, and it comes with two conditions.” He counted them with his fingers. “No passcode on the phone, and you talk to me if you ever want to drink alcohol or anything like that, okay? You’re growing up, I get it, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things.”
After two weeks, at the breakfast table he handed me that white box. I opened it up and plugged my SIM card in. That’s when the messages I had missed from Willow and Thom came through, but it was Thom I cared most about.
OMG Dad took my phone. He found out about the booze stashed under my bed. I’m so sorry! I missed you.
He replied almost instantly. I saw you hadn’t posted on Instagram or Facebook so I thought something was up. I knew you wouldn’t just blow me off. ;) I was tempted to walk up your street and try to guess your house but thought that would be too stalkery.
I was grateful he hadn’t. I didn’t know what I would tell Dad if Thom knocked on the door. His next message popped up before I could reply to his previous one.
Glad you’re back online, even if you did set my plans back two weeks.
Plans, huh?
Well by now I would have asked you for a date. But I guess that’ll just have to wait.
I considered my next message carefully. I couldn’t help but wonder why he had chosen me. I imagined the way his body had changed since our swimming days.
That’s lucky because I probably wouldn’t have said yes so soon. Out of curiosity what would this date involve?
I was thinking we could take a walk.
Something was blooming inside. I smiled.
A walk? Really? I think I might almost be ready for that. Almost.
Dad came into the room carrying two plates. “Eat up or you’ll be late to school.”
We sat together at the table. I felt the phone vibrate in my lap.
Do you think you will be ready this weekend?
Dad cleared his throat. “Not while we’re eating, please, Kate.”
“Sorry.”
I put the phone back in my lap and felt it vibrate again. I couldn’t do anything but scoop my omelet into my mouth and chew faster.
My school friends were candid with their parents about boyfriends and parties. But it wasn’t like that with Dad; I felt a kind of shame. Maybe it was because we only had each other. Would it have been different if Mum were still alive? My closest family members were Grandma up in Wagga Wagga and my mum’s sister, Lizzie, in England. I hadn’t seen Aunty Lizzie since the funeral when I was only five, although we had Skyped sometimes on birthdays. After Mum died, Aunty Lizzie flew over and stayed with us for a month. There were times when Dad and Aunty Lizzie would begin talking and gradually their voices would rise until they were both yelling and I would block my ears and bury my head beneath my pillows. Then she went back to England.
“Look after your new phone at school, Kate. It’s not cheap, that thing.”
“I will, Dad.”
Squares of light fell through the window, rising partway up the fridge. It was a clear day and the jagged angles of the cityscape stood out stark against the September sky.
I took the steps back up to my bedroom two at a time, tense with anticipation. I opened Thom’s message.
So?
I messaged back.
Where and when would said walk take place?
My suggestion for said walk would be this Saturday in the city.
It had been six weeks since I’d seen him, so surely a few more days wouldn’t matter. But I already knew that Saturday couldn’t come soon enough.
* * *
• • •
When the day came it was blustery. Leaves worked themselves into gutters, blocking drains so puddles crept up onto the road. I had settled on jeans, dark flats, a white top beneath my good black coat. I did my hair, ironing out the flicks and curls at the tips, but spent the most time on my face: foundation, Willow’s eyeliner, a pale lipstick, the tube of mascara I had bought with my pocket money. All just to make it look like I hadn’t given it much thought at all. Dad cocked one eyebrow when I came down the stairs.
He drove me into town, pulling in near the gallery Thom had named. I had told Dad I was meeting Willow and a few others. The girls. I guess he was just happy it was a gallery and not the mall.
The street bustled with the standard Saturday fare: women in yoga pants, men with groomed beards. A homeless man thrusting his cup out toward the passing crowds.
The exhibition looked quiet from outside. A few people floated from one piece to the next. Then I saw Thom. He stood alone near the window, gazing at something on the wall.
I moved in beside him and spoke in a French drawl. “Hmm, the angles and light, it’s magnificent.” Leaning in, I added, “If you look closer, you will find this piece pays homage to the impressionists.”
He didn’t turn from the picture, but his grin crinkled his eyes. “You know, if that wasn’t so ludicrous, you could pass as someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.”
“Who says I don’t?” Now he turned to face me.
“Maybe I just hope you don’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t need me to teach you.”
He was dressed in black skinny jeans, a black T-shirt, and brown boots that had lost their shine. Over the T-shirt he wore a dark tweed coat with the collar up. He didn’t dress how most teenage boys did. He dressed like the guitarist in an indie band. I hadn’t known I’d be into that kind of look.
“You made it.”
“I did.”
“That accent was a thing of beauty,” he said.
“I take French.”
“You would get on with my mum then. She was born in France.”
