Saving Jazz (16 page)

But, as I am wont to do, I digress. I was at the exam room waiting for the examiner to open the doors when I saw Casey. She was sitting with a group of girls, also waiting to go in. Her long blonde hair, pulled back into a high ponytail, glinted in the sun as she was regaling them with some story. It was when she stopped laughing that her eyes darted across the courtyard and she saw me. I think the look was shock, then surprise, and I realised I was holding my breath until she smiled at me. It was a genuine and warm welcoming smile that showed me without doubt she didn't have the same scorn and derision I imagined those back at Namba High had for me. I watched her excuse herself and come over to me, a slight skip in her step.

‘Is that a lovely Jasmine Lovely I see before me?' she said, opening her arms. We embraced and I pulled back to look at her. Since my self-imposed exile I had not run into one person from that world.
I had removed Facebook and Snapchat from my life when I'd removed Jack from it. There was nothing good to be had from sitting hundreds of kilometres away and watching the actions of people you formerly knew. I'd made my exile complete once I'd found out that Annie had survived. The need to know, which had once driven me, I'd driven from me. And though I created this blog after I left Greenhead, I've never tagged any real names, and no one from Namba has ever commented nor tried to get in touch with me via it. I had no idea what anyone there was up to.

‘How are you?' Casey asked.

‘Good. Nervous,' I said, and then I was automatically embarrassed — she might think I meant nervous about seeing her. I waved a hand to the exam room. ‘Exams.'

‘I know,' she nodded. ‘Lit.'

‘Why are you here?' I asked.

‘I left Namba, after you did,' she said as the examiner opened the doors. ‘I couldn't stand that small town — full of small-minded people. I've been studying Distance Ed — travelling with my father.' She nodded to remind me. ‘He's in the Army.'

I too nodded, as though I remembered, but truthfully I had fairly erased that type of information from my memory. ‘So we're in town for the exams, then off to Dubai for a few months. And you?'

I shook my head. I didn't want to sit down and recount all my post-Greenhead life. ‘Distance Ed too.' I pointed to the door. ‘We've got to go in.'

‘Sure,' she said and linked her arm through mine. ‘How about we catch up after — in three hours we'll probably want a latte, we can go to Skinny Cow.'

I nodded, despite the overwhelming urge to flee. ‘Sure,' I agreed. I was a staunch Chicco supporter — but I wasn't taking Casey there.

We sat across from each other in the coffee shop. I had a skinny latte and Casey a long black. She seemed so mature, sophisticated, older. But when I reflect on it, that was always her distinguishing feature — her ability to rise above everyone else, not get caught up in other people's dramas.

‘What do you want to know?' she asked me after we had exchanged pleasantries and the unavoidable finally came up. It had to. My whole life since Greenheadgate had been shaped by that one event.
Where I was now and what I was doing was a direct consequence of that night — so it was inevitable that we would go over everything.

‘How is Annie?' I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. Saying her name had made me feel light-headed and slightly queasy. I looked suspiciously at my coffee.

‘They made the decision to turn off life support because she was recovering,' Casey said, filling in all the blanks no one else could. ‘The doctors told her parents that Annie could sustain her own life, without assistance. But when her cousins were posting it on Facebook they wanted people to think she was going to die. They wanted to punish you.'

‘Me?' I asked.

‘And Tommy and Jack. They were furious with the sentences. There was a lot of turmoil in town over the fairness, or lack thereof, depending on which side you were on. They knew she would survive, but what they didn't know was at what cost.'

‘And?' The dread overwhelmed me. I wanted the outcome to be good, of course I did. My culpability was enormous.

‘She's changed,' Casey said gently. She hesitated
when she saw the tears in my eyes, but I waved her on. I couldn't protect myself from the truth, and I didn't want to. I guess I needed the punishment too. ‘At first it looked like she would never speak again, but slowly she has learnt to read and write.'

‘Oh God,' I said.

‘They say she has the intellect of about a nine-year-old. But she is happy and learning every day. Who knows?' Casey said optimistically.

I thought of my friend Annie, the girl with the wicked sense of humour and a talent for acting. I thought of the laughs we used to share, the secrets we told each other, the experiences we'd had. That girl was gone. And now she was someone else. And this was what we had done.

‘I feel sick,' I looked at my coffee and willed what I'd sipped not to come up. ‘This is my fault.'

Casey nodded. ‘Jazz, I'm not going to blow smoke up your arse. You're too smart for that. You were a part of it. But we all were.'

‘I was a major part,' I said angrily, but not at Casey — at myself. Of all the times I'd wished I could change things, at that point I'd never wished it harder.

‘We all were,' Casey said again. ‘The way we all
behaved. The things we did and said. The times we were so drunk and acting stupidly. I, more than others, get that. Most of us were luckier than you and Jack — even Tommy. We all did things like what you did that night but we got away with it.' I nodded. This was exactly what Frank had spent the last two years convincing me of. But it was still hard to accept — even now. Especially now.

‘And now I'm sitting my exams. I'm getting on with my life, I've got an awesome boyfriend, I'm planning on studying and travelling, and what has she got?' I could hear my anger with myself rising again. ‘Fucking Crayolas and My Little Pony.'

‘Yes,' Casey nodded, ‘but she also has a family who loves and supports her. Who are there for her.' Casey held my eyes for the longest time. ‘Sometimes other people have things we don't.'

‘It makes me so mad,' I said tiredly. ‘How can I go into the next exam and try my hardest when Annie doesn't even get that opportunity?'

‘How can you not?' Casey said. ‘How can you not try your hardest? Seriously, Jazz, how many casualties do there have to be? At some point you have to move on and let go — I know, I feel like I'm
singing the Disney song from
Frozen
, but it's true.'

I nodded. I agreed with her, but the idea of making my life better when I had all but totally destroyed Annie's made me sick to my very core — and sure that I would never, ever totally recover from what I'd done that night.

I made it through the rest of the exams fairly easily. Like I said, I was well prepared. What I wasn't prepared for were the waves of nausea that continued to wash over me when I was least expecting it, especially in the middle of the Calculus exam. It was fear, dread and self-loathing bundled with an indescribable sadness. I had never felt so dreadfully sad in my life before. I guess it was the reality, the final outcome, the last consequence. No one had gotten off freely. Jack had finished his month in detention and returned home to Greenhead, a totally different boy to the one who entered its doors before. I heard from Aunty Jane, who kept in contact with my mother (more on that later), that Maria said he was now harder and more introverted. The prankster had gone, replaced with a steely coldness. There were no more jokes from
Jack, he had finished with his loose approach to life. He didn't stay in Greenhead long, couldn't settle, and even though his parents remained there he was now living with his grandmother. I didn't wish anything but happiness for Jack — I couldn't change the fundamental affection I'd always had for him — but I knew there was no place in my life for him. It would always be a constant reminder of our stupidity, our carelessness. Our dreadfully pathetic selfishness. I hoped one day he'd be able to become happy again.

Tommy was another story. I'd heard (again from Aunty Jane) that Tommy had entered the revolving door of correctional systems after his first initiation into it. Aunty Jane said that Tommy had been back inside, on car theft charges. She wasn't clear on the details, but it seems that the friends Tommy made in his first year in detention became the group he hung with outside of there. And as the old adage goes, when you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. Tommy, it would seem, was teeming with them. I had no sympathy for Tommy. I didn't care about his future, and when I heard his name my lip would curl with derision. It wasn't hard to blame him for everything that had happened. And no, dear reader, I'm not
negating my role in the incident, I'd never do that. As I've stated before, it is something I have to live with for the rest of my life. But at night when I was seized with panic that made it hard to breathe I would go over the events in minute detail. If Tommy hadn't recorded what we did, and if the images hadn't gone viral, all we would have had to do was apologise to Annie. I doubt she would ever have forgiven us, and I know we would have wounded her profoundly, but if she hadn't been made the source of such public and extensive ridicule and hate, I believe she would never have tried to end her life. She would never have ended up brain-damaged. I guess some will argue (and I await those comments) that the emotional damage we would have done to her would have been permanent and far-reaching — and maybe that's true. Maybe I am always looking for a way to reduce my guilt. But the way I see it, by posting those photos and video, Tommy turned it into a public spectacle, a reality show that all of us became unwitting participants in. I hated him with a passion I never thought I was capable of.

My counsellor told me the sadness I felt during those exams was grief.

‘I don't understand,' I said. ‘Annie didn't die. How can it be grief?'

‘You all lost something that night,' she said. ‘Tommy and Jack lost their freedom, you lost your parents and your self-esteem. And Annie, of course, lost the essence of who she was. You are grieving for her, as if she had died.'

When I heard those words there was no comfort in them. I don't think they were meant to comfort me, really. What my counsellor was doing, as she always did, was put things into a framework I could work through — until I had exhausted all the ramifications. In ways I hadn't realised, I had actually killed a girl.

After the meeting with Casey I had to adjust to this realisation. I know from the comments many of you have made on that last post that some see me as highly melodramatic — Annie didn't die, physically. But the girl she once was, the potential of her, we killed. I know now that that's what I've really been grappling with all this time.

And that brings us to the most confrontational day I've faced since, well, Greenheadgate. It was this that led me back to the blog to explain. A bit of a postscript, if you like.

Three weeks ago, I saw him.

It began with Aunty Jane needing a new car —
an eight-seater — to accommodate all the kids and me. We went to a car dealership. She test-drove the latest — it wasn't a sexy car but practical and functional, right — we got to the paperwork and the salesman John went to find the finance guy.

‘Back in a sec,' he said as he left the office. Aunty Jane and I sat in the partitioned office chatting about Louie's football results when he put his head through the doorway and said ‘Hi'. But that one word chilled my veins and had my head snapping around in a whiplash manoeuvre.

‘Hi,' Aunty Jane said. But my own greeting was frozen on my lips. He stood there, impeccably groomed, hair slicked down, holding out his hand. And the most amazing thing happened. I watched his face transform, the persona — the newly cultivated Tommy — slid greasily from his face to the floor, his hand actually went limp and he whispered, ‘Jazz?'

A visceral feeling shuddered through me. Tommy. Here. In front of me. Now.

‘Tommy,' I croaked, but to my delight it sounded derisive.

‘Jazz,' he said again.

‘Is there an echo in here?' I asked even more drily.

‘Hey,' he said and he slunk into the office and sat behind the desk. Aunty Jane watched this with slight contempt. Of course she knew who he was, she had consoled me over nights I couldn't sleep, when the only name I could utter was Tommy. Oh, trust me, she knew who he was.

‘Tommy,' she said assertively, reaching over the desk to offer her hand.

‘Hello,' a glimmer of his composure had returned. ‘Actually, it's Tom these days.'

‘Of
course
it is,' she said, and I smiled internally — there was nothing better she could have said. He was so flummoxed by our presence. He kept writing things down, then scrawling over them and rewriting. ‘Sorry,' he said eventually, looking up and wiping sweat off his upper lip, his hand ruffling his hair. ‘I need to get a new form. Back in a sec.' He walked self-consciously from the room. Aunty Jane smiled at me.

‘He seems a bit out of sorts. How are you?'

‘Strange,' I said. Because I hadn't laid eyes on him for so long, I'd kind of caricatured his appearance. In
my mind he had black demon eyes and no heart. But this version of him looked like a nervous and anxious boy. It was bizarre. Besides, the last I'd heard he was a dero on his way to an overdose. But no, here he was, working in finance at a car dealership — how did that happen? When he came back it was obvious he'd washed his face; his hair was slicked back down, wet. He put the new form on the table and apologised.

‘Mrs Lovely, I'm sorry for my awkwardness earlier. I pride myself on my professionalism, but let's not pretend that this encounter is not, perhaps, unsettling.' I found myself nodding — he sounded all grown up and like a politician. ‘I'm hoping, Jazz,' and here he made eye contact and held my gaze firmly, ‘that after we've finished here, you and I might be able to catch up with a coffee.' Again I found myself nodding. The idea of sitting down with Tommy was unnerving, to say the least, but it was that same compulsion you have when you pass a car accident and can't look away. Partly you look to see if it's someone you know, and whether or not they're alive. That's exactly the compulsion I felt. Do I know this guy? And is he really alive?