Clancy of the Undertow (11 page)

I half-fall off the bike and double over coughing, grasping for Angus's old sports bottle that's clipped to the frame. I squirt it in my scrunched-up eyes and down my throat. It's lukewarm and tastes of plastic and it's absolutely disgusting. Eventually my breathing gets back to normal and I throw the bottle away. I'm covered in red smears of dirt and my throat feels like an industrial rubbish chute. As the dust clears a familiar shape emerges in the distance. The tall shape of the observatory. I wheel the bike over and lean it against the metal base of the tower.

I just need a moment to myself. A moment to think things over. The sun has lost its sting now it's late afternoon, so I decide to climb to the top.

As I'm going up the steps, I fantasise—for the millionth time in my life—about when I have a car and I can escape whenever I want. Properly escape. I've saved all my money from work, and once I turn eighteen I'll get my share of Grandpa's money as well. With a car, in the time it took me to cycle out here, I could be in a completely different town. I could be a stranger sitting in a cafe, walking a new main street. I could be whoever I want to be.

I get to the top of the observatory and the echoes of my footsteps on the metal fade away and I can't see any stars but I can see the hazy hills on the horizon and the wheat fields and the tip of Barwen Presbyterian poking up above the rest of the town. I realise I've never actually been up here. It's always been the domain of Angus, and therefore a place not worth worrying about, but the the truth is, it's actually pretty impressive. Relatively speaking.

‘Wow,' I say to no one in particular. Then I say it again. And again. It's just me and the open air so I say it again, louder. And then I shout it. My voice empties into all that space and it feels really, really good. I open out my arms like in the movies and scream as loud as I can and I feel tears pricking at my eyes, like
why have I never done this before?

Then I see the speck of a car coming over the hill and I quickly lean back on the rail so it looks like I'm just resting there or whatever and not shouting like a lunatic. The car gets closer and it's like a bad dream because it's a brown Monaro. It gets closer and there's the polaroid windscreen and I'm thinking shit shit shit cause I'm up here like a sitting duck and the car's slowing down and no he must have seen me and can't I have one nice moment in my life without it being ruined the very next second?

The Monaro goes past slowly and I will it to keep going but it stops twenty metres ahead and I wish that I'd spent some of my car money on a phone—even the fifty in my pocket might have bought me a really shitty one—and I could call the police
right now
. I grip the warm metal of the railing as the car reverses back towards me. I try to calculate the distance to the ground, whether I could somehow land safely and jump on the bike and escape.

The car door opens before I can think of anything else but instead of Buggs unfolding himself it's Sasha. She's in a black T-shirt and blue cutoffs and my fear is replaced by something else entirely.

First thought: why isn't she wearing black jeans like she always does? Second thought: what the hell am
I
wearing? I don't know the answer to the first question but the second one is easy: an old singlet that used to belong to Angus that says
Porky's Bar & Grill
on the front, footy shorts and my eternally daggy boots with their soles flapping off.

Bloody hell. The back of the singlet, I now remember, has a drawing of a pig with a monocle and top hat holding a knife and fork, licking its lips. I never thought about whether the pig knew it was about to become a cannibal or not. Either way, pigs are out to get me this week.

‘Hey!' Sasha calls up.

My throat dries up. This is only the second time she's ever spoken to me. The first time was at the supermarket when I was staring at a Toblerone trying to talk myself out of buying it and blocking the checkout and she said
Are you going to buy it or hypnotise it?
and I didn't realise it was her until she went past me and her perfume was amazing and who spends so long analysing a chocolate bar anyway?

‘Hey, hello?' She thinks I haven't heard her.

I peer over the edge.

Sasha waves to me. Sasha Strickland waves to me.

I wave back and somehow croak out, ‘Hi.'

‘I saw you up there as I was driving past.'

‘Right.' I laugh, like we're making sparkling conversation.

She squints up into the sun and her nose crinkles at the top. ‘Just wanted to say I'm sorry to hear about your dad and that.'

‘Oh. Thanks.' Some small part of my brain tells me that she's lying, that she's got something to do with the spray-paint and the cops and all the rest but the big part of my brain tells the small part to shut the hell up.

‘Do you want to come down for a sec?' she says. ‘I'd come up, but…' she points to her strappy sandals.

I stare at her legs for a second too long. ‘Sure,' I say, and make my way back down the stairs in a way that says
I'm invited down from the tops of observatories all the time
but also
don't leave don't leave stay right there don't move
.

21

It's like a dream and I'm sure it
is
a dream when Sasha asks me if I want to go for a milkshake. It's a fifties dream, maybe. Malted milks and polka-dot dresses.

‘There's this place I go to out on the highway. The roadhouse?'

‘Yeah.'

‘It's, like, super scummy but they do these milkshakes that are, like,
incredible
.' Her eyes open wide when she says
incredible
and she's got these blue eyes like
how blue can I possibly be
?

‘You got anything you need to bring, or…'

I glance back quickly at Angus's bike and shake my head. He never uses it anyway. Besides, who's going to steal such a shitty-looking bike?

‘Cool,' she says. ‘Get in. Sorry about the mess.'

I open the passenger door and it's a weird feeling because it's Buggs's car, but at the same time it's the place I've imagined being inside so many times, down at the skate park, Sasha changing out of her work clothes and into her black jeans. The Monaro's interior is not how I've imagined it. I pictured a gleaming chrome dashboard that Sasha checked her lipstick in, dark panelled wood that ate the light. In reality, it's a normal looking car. The floor on the passenger side has sand on it and a Chupa-Chup stuck to the carpet. A couple of tissues stick out of the glovebox.

I steal a glance at Sasha's cheek. She puts on enormous sunglasses, which I now immediately want a pair of. They're not Chanel. They're too cool for that. The passenger seat isn't lowered like the drivers seat, which is a bit weird. She pulls out onto the highway.

‘So everyone's being shit to you, right?'

‘Sorry?' I pull on my seatbelt.

‘Cause of your dad's thing. Like, no one's going to the makeup place.'

‘Oh, you know. It's just some people.'

‘I knew that girl who got killed, Cassie. A real princess. You know her parents are like
super
rich?'

‘I didn't know that.' I'm beginning to feel a little sick in my stomach. Sasha is a really bad driver and the souped-up engine lurches the car every time she changes gears.

‘Like, she was a year below me? And she was always getting special treatment when she sat in on our classes. She was going to graduate early but she didn't.'

‘It's pretty sad.'

‘Yeah I guess. And the other guy was, like, Buggs's second cousin through marriage or something? They never did anything together or anything like that. They didn't hang out.'

Sasha speaks really fast and the engine keeps whining so I can't understand all of what she says.

‘Piece of shit!' Sasha hits the steering wheel. ‘Like, why can't this just be a
normal
car? You drive?'

‘No. Not yet.'

‘It's a pain in the arse. Cars are so expensive. Like, Buggs and his dad fix them or whatever? But if I had to pay for it, it would be, like,
super
expensive. You smoke?'

‘Yeah. Um, sometimes,' says the Disney princess.

Sasha tries to wrestle a pack of cigarettes from a pocket in her shorts but can't quite manage it. ‘Can you get 'em out for me?' She keeps flitting her eyes between the cigarettes and the road.

Shit shit shit
. ‘Sure.' I reach over and try to get the packet out without touching her.

‘Lighter's in there as well. Help yourself.'

‘O-okay.' I fish out the cigarettes with my thumb and forefinger, being super careful to just touch the packet. But I can't get it out without feeling her leg through the pocket. I feel like I'm about to pass out, but then I get the packet free, a hairband wrapped around it holding the lighter in place.

I haven't smoked since Angus's going-away party at the start of the year. I light one up and hand it to Sasha, who takes a huge drag. I try to light one for myself but for some reason my hands are shaking and the lighter won't fire a second time. Eventually I get it to work and I wind the window down so I can take tiny kid-puffs without Sasha noticing.

We get to the roadhouse and Sasha doesn't slow down as she swings into the carpark. She parks at an angle over two spots. ‘Honestly, I drive like an Asian sometimes.' She laughs, and it's beautiful, and I laugh as well despite the joke not really being a joke. ‘Buggs hates me driving his car, but fuck him, you know?'

We get out of the car and I'm feeling sort of seasick even though we're nowhere near the ocean. Everything's going in super-speed, but I keep telling myself this is what I want, this is what I want. Maybe this is something finally going right, to balance out all the shitty stuff. Friends with Sasha Strickland, this is my reward.

Inside the roadhouse it's ice-cold. You can hear the air-conditioning roaring even before you go through the sliding doors. They only built it a few years ago and it's designed for big trucks stopping on their way up or down the coast between Brisbane and Sydney. The parking bay is enormous, and there's a whole football field of bitumen which is just for trucks to turn around in. When it first opened everyone in town went here even though it sells the same shit food as any other servo, just from inside a bigger building.

We go up to the counter and Sasha leans over so only her toes touch the ground. There's a tiny strip of skin between her shirt and her shorts, perfectly white. Her legs are much longer and a better shape than mine will ever be.

A guy comes to the counter and I realise it's Troy McCarthy, the guy I used to skate with. Son of Raylene, the shingle-skinned face of Barwen's Underhill Hate Campaign. ‘Hi there,' he says, not—understandably—looking at me, but at Sasha. ‘What can I get you?' Troy's face hasn't really changed from how I remember it: his features have just grown outwards with his face. He has his mum's tiny eyes, but on him they're kinder.

‘Two malt shakes, please. What flavour d'ya want,
Clancy
?' My name, her voice. ‘Caramel's the best.'

‘Caramel's great,' I say. Troy looks at me and sort of smiles. I go to say
hi
but it gets caught in my throat and he's already turned away by the time I go to say it again.

22

We're sitting there with matching milkshakes, Sasha and me. Somehow, things aren't going like I always thought they would. Firstly, she invited me, when in fact our first date was meant to be the result of a concerted campaign I'd waged to convince her of my attractiveness/ worth. Secondly, we're sitting face to face under twenty-four-hour fluorescents, with the unromantic buzz of air-con in our ears and endless flabby wedges of seated trucker's arsecrack as our view.

I've often walked past Sasha's mum's travel agency, where she works, even though I never went in. Hoping for a quick glimpse as I went past, a fleeting view of her profile: white blouse, blue scarf, spidery telephone headset.

Now I have her all to myself it's almost too much. There's no more mystery.

I've never thought about what her voice would really sound like, or how she'd have a tiny pimple beside her nose or how she'd spin a milkshake container a quarter-turn every few seconds like if she didn't it would disappear.

But then she smiles, and I go all warm, and I forget any doubts that this is the right thing to be doing.

‘So you've been here all your life?' she says.

‘In Barwen?'

‘Yeah.'

‘You're, like, part-Aboriginal though, right?'

This takes me by surprise. ‘Uh, like, an eighth or a sixteenth or something. I guess. Mum's dad's dad was or something.'

‘Just…your skin.'

I look down at my arm. Yellowy-brown, made blotchy under roadhouse lights. Me and Angus and Titch have all got it, and it just looks like we're dirty or sick. Neither one thing or the other, the same as the rest of me, halfway between
nothing much
and
what the hell?

‘What's your, like, tribe or whatever?'

I shrug like I don't know, but I've got a bookmark at home that Mum gave me ages ago with a dot painting on it and the word
Bundjalung
. Just another confusion. No one ever asks about it, though. It's kind of cool that Sasha does.

‘I'm, like, so white,' she says. ‘I wish I was more interesting.'

‘You're pretty interesting,' I say.

‘Yeah, right.' She examines her own arm. ‘But your dad, though,' she says. ‘Shit, right? How's he taking it?'

‘He's okay. Mum's worse.' I decide to try something.

‘Someone spray-painted our house.'

‘What, like graffiti?'

‘Yeah. About my dad. And like a skull and crossbones.'

‘Fuck, that's heavy. Some people are shit.' She seems genuinely concerned, but surely she'd know what Buggs gets up to? Maybe not. Maybe it wasn't Buggs who did it. ‘I mean, this town can be so
small-minded
.'