But in fact, Louie was in for a surprise. When she, Jeremy, Mo, Dion, Jay, Vika, Julie and Geoff arrived at the school hall there, immediately ahead of them being introduced to the principal, was Willa. She was with Marcus, the fencing guy Louie had met once, and he was wearing a white tux.
Willa looked absolutely stunning. Louie felt her breath disappear at the sight. She was in a long green velvet dress, and had wrapped her hair in a black and green velvet band, so the red poured out the back in ringlets like flame.
“
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil,
” quoted Louie, overcome.
“Pardon?” said Jeremy, and when she didn’t reply he shook hands politely with the principal and her husband.
Mo was instantly by Louie’s side. “Are you all right?” she asked her.
“No.”
“I didn’t think she was coming.”
Louie closed her eyes for a moment. “Neither did I.”
“Oh, Louie.”
“It’s okay. I can handle it. I just don’t want to have to speak to her.”
Mo was wonderful. She was on one side of Louie all night, Jeremy on the other, but still Willa seemed to be everywhere. The dark green with the white tux looked so striking, and a number of people admired them. Louie tried not to watch, but there they were, laughing with Ms. Rosen, talking to people Louie didn’t even know, dancing, helping themselves to supper.
Louie danced and talked with Jeremy, trying to distract herself, but she knew she was talking nonsense. Jeremy didn’t seem real. He was every bit as nice as Mo had promised, which made it worse. She didn’t want to be using this guy to get through the night, knowing she would never want to see him again, but every time she looked at him that’s what she saw—someone temporary, almost cardboard, someone she could move around the hall as a sort of shield against Willa and Marcus.
Almost every minute Louie knew exactly where they were in the hall. Then, at one point Louie stopped dancing with Jeremy, stopped and stood in the middle of the hall gazing frantically around. Marcus was talking with one of the band, but Willa was nowhere.
“What’s up? You lost something?” asked Jeremy, puzzled.
“Ahh—mmm,” stammered Louie.
“Do you want to sit down?” He took her hand and led her towards some seats. At that moment Willa came through the door from the foyer and scanned the room looking for Marcus. Her eyes met Louie’s and Louie thought she’d never felt so desperate before in her life. She gazed at Willa, begging her to do something, come over and take her away from all this, but Willa frowned and looked the other way. Jeremy was trying to steer Louie into a spare seat he’d found, and she followed him, her vision blurring with tears.
God, I can’t cry now!
While Jeremy was getting her a juice, and Mo was trying to distract her with some story about Dena Masons boyfriend Greg being thrown out, Louie followed Willa’s every move. The band started up a slow number and Louie watched as Marcus asked Willa to dance.
Say no, please say no.
They moved onto the dance floor. Marcus had his arm around Willa’s waist, he held her close, his face against her hair, talking. One hand held hers, the other rested on the base of Willa’s back and began to slide back and forth very slowly. Louie fixed her eyes on it, feeling every touch through her whole body. She didn’t even hear Jeremy ask her to dance.
“Come on, Lou, we’d better go.” It was Mo. “Lou,” her voice was stern.
Louie looked up. Mo was standing in front of her, but all Louie could see was Marcus’s hand on Willa’s back.
“Let’s go.”
Jeremy was standing too, looking at her oddly.
Mo took her arm and pulled her quickly through the foyer to the toilets.
“You’ve got to get out of here, Lou. You’re going to lose it.”
Louie felt the tears begin.
“No, don’t cry! Don’t, please.” Mo grabbed a tissue out of her sleeve and dabbed at Louie’s face, then enfolded her in a hug. “It’ll be all right. Let’s just get away from here, eh?”
A couple of other girls were looking on, interested. One of them gave Louie a particularly sympathetic look and said, “Hey, listen, guys just aren’t worth it, you know?”
Louie nodded dumbly at her, then looked at Mo and they both burst out laughing. Once Louie had started she couldn’t stop the mixture of laughter and tears, and the two other girls lifted an eyebrow at each other and walked out. Louie and Mo collapsed into further hysterics. It was a long time before Louie could control herself enough to actually blow her nose, then Mo helped fix her make-up, they found their coats and bags and headed back out to the others.
“I don’t want to go to Vika’s party,” Louie confessed to Mo.
“That’s okay. But can you drop us off there?”
“Sure.” Louie paused as they reached the foyer. The dance was finishing and people were already pouring out of the hall. “But what about Jeremy?”
Mo paused with her and scanned the crowd. “Hmm,” she said after a moment. “That problem might solve itself.” She indicated to their left. Jeremy was leaning against a wall talking animatedly with Dena Mason, who was beaming back to him at about a thousand volts.
“Oh, Louie.” Jeremy smiled nervously when they appeared. “I wasn’t sure where you’d got to. You know Dena, don’t you?”
Louie and Mo nodded and Dena smiled sneakily.
“We used to be in the same cross-country team,” Jeremy continued. “Um, Dena says there’s a party at her place now. Do you think…?”
“You’re very welcome to come,” Dena invited them smoothly.
“Thanks,” said Louie. “But you know, Jeremy, I’m feeling a bit tired. I’d rather just head home now, though if you want to go on to Dena’s, that’s fine. Honestly.”
Jeremy looked extremely awkward. “Well … umm…”
“I mean it,” Louie assured him. “I’ll give you a lift if you like.”
“I can give you a lift,” offered Dena. “There’s plenty of room in my car.”
Jeremy looked from one to the other and decided not to angst. “Okay,” he shrugged, accepting Dena’s offer. “If that’s okay with you, Louie, it’d be sweet.”
As they left Louie saw two things. One was Jeremy heading towards the official photo corner with Dena Mason; the other was Willa huddling under Marcus’s black greatcoat as they hurried across the carpark in the rain.
Music was already blaring from the old villa on the hill. The front door stood open to the ram, as did the windows, and people were standing under the shelter of the wide verandah, talking, drinking, dancing. Yellow light spilled onto their faces and Willa thought they looked ghoulish.
Inside it was all faces, bodies, cigarettes, glasses, bottles. The music thumped into Willa’s ears and she could feel the heavy vibration through the floor, the tinny ringing of the walls. She spotted Kelly and Kevin and they waved. Kevin looked bleary-eyed already.
Marcus found them a spot on some floor cushions and Willa reluctantly joined him. This was the bit she had been dreading most, especially since it was the bit Marcus had looked forward to most. He handed her a can of beer.
“Here’s to your one and only school formal,” he toasted, then tore off the tab with a pluss.
Willa took her time drinking the bitter liquid, thinking if she kept the can at her mouth, Marcus wouldn’t be able to kiss her. Then she lit a cigarette on the same premise. Kevin paraded past them with Kelly blissfully in tow.
He yelled something at Willa over the music. She couldn’t understand it. The third time he repeated it right into her face.
“Ya happy?” he screamed. His breath was hot and foul-smelling. Willa nodded to get rid of him. He winked and gave Marcus the thumbs up.
Willa tried to get Marcus to join others dancing in a separate room, but he wouldn’t go. She suggested it would be quieter outside on the verandah, but he didn’t want to lose their seats. In the end she gave up and let him kiss her. It wouldn’t be too bad, and if she let him do it for a while she could go home.
What she hadn’t counted on was the effect of another person’s mouth on hers. As soon as their lips touched, Willa thought of Louie. Her head was filled with how different Marcus felt; how rough his face, how dry his lips, how big his tongue wallowing in her mouth. For a moment she had to fight off nausea, then she screwed up her eyes and concentrated on getting through it. It was quarter to one; Willa reckoned by one-thirty she could ask Marcus to take her home.
Whenever she couldn’t bear it any longer, she pulled away, smiled at Marcus and took a breather. She smoked several cigarettes and opened but didn’t drink about four cans of beer. If she saw Kelly or Simone she desperately tried to engage them in conversation but sooner or later Marcus would draw her close again, and plant his mouth on hers.
She guessed it was about one o’clock when it happened. Willa was just thinking she could go to the loo for a while and crib a few minutes, when she heard a disturbance. Pulling away from Marcus, she opened her eyes and saw Louie standing in the door opposite, dripping with ram.
Kevin was beside her, smiling and pointing at Willa but Louie didn’t seem to be listening. Her eyes were fixed on Willa, her face a death mask.
Willa froze, staring back at her. Louie was still in her black dress, covered by a shabby duffel coat she’d got somewhere, which was heavy and sodden with rain. That and her wild expression made her look strange, a bit crazy. Louie’s eyes moved slowly to Marcus. Then her face went ugly and distorted and she stormed across the room yelling something, pushing a woman out of her way. Marcus and Willa stood up together and Willa opened her mouth to say something but nothing came out. It was too late. Louie reached them, screamed at Marcus, grabbed him, shoved him, and he fell over.
Willa heard herself yell out Louie’s name and then there was a general commotion. Someone tried to grab Louie, Marcus was jumping up off the floor, Kevin was smirking stupidly in the background. Willa met Louie’s eyes, streaming with ram and tears. “I can’t believe you’d do this,” Louie said, then shook herself free and ploughed back through the crowd.
Willa turned to Marcus who appeared to be more mystified than hurt, and opened her mouth to explain. But there was nothing she could say to Marcus, not now. There was just a huge dragging sensation in her stomach as if it was ripping apart.
She dropped her cigarette in an empty can and said simply, “I’m sorry, I’m very sorry,” and she stumbled through the people and out the verandah after Louie. Somebody yelled, “Where the hell’s
she
going?” then a door slammed on the pumping music.
It was pouring with rain. It splashed into Willa’s hair and face and she knew she was already shivering, although she didn’t think of the cold. She looked up and down the steep winding road and saw no sign of Louie. She didn’t even know whether she’d driven there or was on foot. Willa began running down the hill anyway. If she had to she could run all the way to the Metal Petal, and to hell with Susi and Tony Angelo. She ripped off her high shoes and ran in bare feet down the road. The loose metal cut into her feet, but the pain felt good and she ran faster, ram pelting into her velvet dress.
There was a gully on one side of the hill, houses banked up on the other. Below, the lights of the city jittered to Willa’s running. The road wound like a dark wet snake up, down and back on itself and felt to Willa like a journey in her head through the past few tortuous months.
Around a sharp bend she saw a cloud of white mist rising up from the gully. She was almost out of breath and pulled up to a stop. Then she saw it—the lights of a car, flaring up from the bush. The cloud wasn’t mist, it was exhaust, exhaust from the still running engine of a white Mercedes.
Willa plunged down the bank, ripping her dress on branches and grabbing gorse that tore her hands. The car was standing on end like the prow of a sleek white boat thrown up by the land. Things moved in milliseconds. Willa remembered snatching at doors that wouldn’t open. She could see a shape inside. She was banging both hands on the roof in frustration, then she was banging on a front door and a woman in a floral dressing gown was looking at her. She saw men, torches and Louie, being pulled, so slowly, out the broken windscreen and all around them white steam lit up by the torches as if they were standing on a cloud watching Louie going to heaven. She was sticking her fingers down Louie’s throat and wiping blood from her face, black sticky blood. She was gently removing a sliver of glass sticking out of Louie’s cheek. The glass pulsed red, so did the bushes and someone said, “Thank God, they’re here.”
Then she was at the hospital, and people were talking to her. The words bounced off her randomly though she tried to catch them one by one. Nurses were trying to take her away and she fought. She looked down at Louie on a bed. Louie looked back at her and tried to speak. She was alive.
Willa was sitting in a small room with people she didn’t know, when a priest walked in. He had soft brown hair and dark eyes and sat down beside her.
“You must be Willa,” he said, touching her shoulder.
“Yes.”
“I’m Father Campion, Louie’s parish priest. You know she’s going to be okay, don’t you?”
Willa stared at him.
“She’s out of X-ray and they had to fix a few broken bones, but there’s nothing internal.”
Nothing internal.
“Nothing wrong internally, I should say.” And he smiled. “She told me about you. Described you perfectly.”
“Can I see her?”
He nodded. “The doctor said she was asking for you. Willa,” he said, as they stood up, “her parents are there too.”
Willa frowned and walked with the priest along the quiet corridor to the room they’d put Louie in. She could hear his footsteps but her own feet didn’t seem to touch the floor. She looked down and noted absently that her feet were bare and swollen, covered in cuts.
They turned through the door of a small room and Willa saw Tony and Susi first. Tony stepped across the room and enveloped her in a hug.
“Willa, thank god. Thank god you found her. I’m so sorry,” he said and his voice went croaky. “I’m so sorry about everything.” He gripped her harder for a long moment then released her. “She would have suffocated if you hadn’t got her tongue out of her throat. I can’t believe it, she could have been dead.”