Frankie (14 page)

I sort my clothes into piles: keep, donate, burn.

Most things end up in the keep pile even though it's all stuff I'd forgotten I owned. I try on pretty much everything, struggling to remember why I bought it and convincing myself it really does look good. Who wouldn't want an oversized jumper with a giant middle finger on the front? And those acid-wash boyfriend jeans are so going to come back in style.

‘How are you going?' asks Vinnie, pushing the door open and peeking in.

My stack of ‘keep' clothes has tumbled and is blocking the door. I scoop the pile out of the way.

‘What the hell are you wearing?' she says. She pushes in further and blinks at me. ‘You're wearing a dress.'

I look down at myself: it's blue, floral, kind of tight and with a sweetheart neckline. ‘Yeah. It's going into the donate pile.'

‘Looks pretty on you.'

‘Then it's definitely going.'

I catch a t-shirt I want to ditch trying to sneak back into the ‘keep' pile so I separate the stacks.

‘Not that I'm complaining,' says Vinnie, ‘but what brought on this little cleaning spree?'

I unzip the dress and pull it over my head, dropping it on top of the ‘donate' pile. ‘Just thought it was time.'

Vinnie raps her long nails against the doorframe. ‘It's Friday,' she says.

I hold up a pair of black jeans. There's a rip in the knee of one leg that almost goes the whole way round. I drop it in the ‘keep' pile.

She's trying to look casual. Failing. ‘What are you doing tonight?'

‘Working.'

‘After work?'

‘Grounded.'

‘So you're actually planning on sticking to the rules?'

‘Of course.'

‘Cara not doing anything?'

‘She's grounded too.'

‘Ha! What she do? Get an A minus?'

‘Talking in class. Her third detention this month. I want to ask her mum if she still thinks
I'm
the bad influence.'

Vinnie eases onto her knees and starts sorting through the ‘donate' pile. ‘This is so pretty.' She's holding a pink skirt Nonna bought me a few Christmases ago. Nuff said. ‘You're keeping this, aren't you?'

I grab it out of her hands and dump it on the ‘burn' pile.

She sighs. ‘How about What's His Face? I'm guessing you plan on seeing him again?'

Hey, Xavier has graduated from God Knows Who to What's His Face. That's a big step up.

‘I haven't heard from him.' All too true. And all I can do right now is wait for my genius poster idea to take effect. I expected the phone to ring straight away – even if it was just the crazies. But nothing. Not for two whole days. Which has given me plenty of time to go searching for more pieces signed with X Marks. I've found five, including purple-skinned girl and bird-flipping angel. The angel piece was even cooler in the daylight, with a multi-coloured geometric background and a creepy all-seeing eye just above her head.

Vinnie's folding the clothes in my donate pile but she's watching me.

I grip a t-shirt in my hand. It's faded black, holes all through it but it's one of my favourites. ‘What if . . .'

I drop the tee into the keep pile and grab another black one and pull it on. I guess I have a style.

‘What if what?' asks Vinnie.

I try sorting through my words in my head – keep, donate, burn. It takes me a while but Vinnie just waits.

‘What if someone you knew might have done something bad,' I say. ‘And maybe they weren't answering their phone and no one knew where they were. Would you worry about that?'

Vinnie watches me with her forehead all crinkled. ‘Maybe,' she says, speaking slow and careful. ‘Maybe they don't want to be found. Maybe someone like that – someone who does bad things – is better out of your life.'

‘I'm speaking hypothetically,' I say.

She nods. ‘Of course.'

‘And I don't mean bad like murder or anything. I mean maybe he's a bit misguided. Like, he doesn't have a clear sense of right and wrong. Because no one taught him.' I think about Bill Green. What kind of dad would he be? Would he have marched Xavier all the way to school and made him apologise to the girl whose lunch he buried in the sandbox because she used his pencil without asking first? I look at Vinnie. ‘What if part of the problem is the guy just wanted to do something nice so that I – so that people would think he was good?'

Vinnie grips hold of my hand and squeezes. ‘Whoever he is, I'm sure he'll show up eventually. And if he doesn't? His loss.'

She smiles and I think about asking her the biggest ‘what if' in my head. What if he can't show up? What if . . .

I reach for the sweetheart dress, saving it from certain death by plopping it on top of the keep pile. ‘Don't say I never listen to you.'

She gives me a lopsided grin and pats my cheek, hoisting herself to standing. ‘That's my girl. You just focus on what you're going to say at that meeting and everything else will sort itself out.'

I nod. I own a blue, floral, too-tight dress with a sweetheart neckline – what can go wrong?

__________

Vinnie heads downstairs to open and I grab my mobile, scrolling through the list of numbers until I hit the one I think is Marzoli's. So much for burying his business card in bin juice.

I stare out the window while I wait for him to answer: rooftops are my rolling hills and chimneys are my towering trees. What if, what if, what if.

Marzoli answers on the fifth ring by barking his name.

‘It's Frankie Vega.' My words are all hacked up with uncertainty – I am, after all, calling a cop for help. Again.

Wherever Marzoli is, there's a lot of traffic. ‘Speak up,' he says, voice crackling.

I shout-whisper my name, conscious of Vinnie downstairs. Conscious of my shift starting five minutes ago.

There's a long pause and I wonder if he's dropped out. I can hear him breathing though.

‘Can you hear me?'

‘Just wait,' he says. In a couple of seconds the traffic noises stop and Marzoli's heavy breathing subsides. ‘All right. Talk.'

‘My brother. Do you have any news?'

‘I'll be there in a second, Peters,' shouts Marzoli, not holding the phone far enough away from his face when he does. ‘Look, I'm busy here,' he says, talking to me again.

‘Any news?'

‘No. Do you have any information for me?'

‘I haven't seen anything about Xavier in the papers. Harrison Finnik-Hyde was booted to page six today, but it was still an entire page more than my brother had.'

Marzoli holds the phone too close to his mouth, muffling his voice. ‘Do you know how many people go missing each day? They can't all get a front page.'

‘Just the pretty ones. And the rich ones. Are you even looking into it?'

‘Of course I am but I've got another burglary here, Frankie. I'm up to my neck in this.'

It sounds like a door opens – the traffic noise increases, then stops. Some guy starts yapping away to Marzoli.

‘I've got to go,' he says. ‘I'll call you if anything comes up, all right?'

I don't get a chance to tell him I don't believe him. I don't get to tell him to go to hell because he hangs up.

Buttons meows from down the corridor, high-pitched and accusing, and for once I agree with him. You're an idiot, Frankie Vega.

I go through my call log and delete the whole conversation. Like it never happened.

If only my brain was more like my phone. It would be nice to be able to touch a screen and have all my unwanted memories dragged to the trash, deleted forever. Xavier's disappearance? Straight to the garbage. Steve Sparrow? A three-point shot for the bin. Juliet? ‘Are you sure you want to permanently erase items in Trash (You can't undo this action)?' Yep.

Buttons meows again. He probably wants to be fed but that's not my job.

My job is downstairs, making kebabs.

My job is forgetting about Xavier, focusing on The Meeting, getting into uni and marrying a fat bald rich guy who'll never cheat on me.

My job sucks.

The third time I break a glass, Vinnie points to the back stairs. ‘Get out of here, you clumsy clod. You'll do me out of business.'

It's a wonder Vinnie didn't chuck me out yonks ago. Along with murdering three glasses, I've stuffed up five orders and sworn at four dickhead uni students.

Vinnie tsks me. ‘Just go to bed. You look like Nana Mouskouri after she's been dragged backwards through a wood chipper.'

‘Insults don't work if you have to google them.'

Vinnie's Propane Passion lips curl into a snarl as she thumbs at the back door. ‘Get.'

If I had a death wish I'd poke out my tongue but I don't, so I nod obediently and scoop up the broken shards with the brush and spade conveniently stashed under the counter from the last two incidents. I'm happy to have scored early release – I just wish it was for good behaviour.

As I head out back, some old guy gives me a garlicky salute as I pass. Guess I didn't stuff up his order.

When I'm through the back door it bashes into my arse as I pause in the space between the Emporium and the staircase: I'm one set of stairs, fifteen steps, two corridors and three doors away from sleep. And the closer I get to bed, the more like a sloth zombie I feel. Can't. Wait. For. Sleeeeeeeep.

When I let myself into the flat, Buttons trots up and meows at me for the whole three seconds it takes him to realise I'm not Vinnie. I glare at him until I realise he's pillow shaped and fluffy and could come in handy if I decide to collapse right here, right now. He trots away, tail lifted so I get the full arse view.

It's like you
want
me to hate you, you fuzzy little turd.

I drag my feet to my room and go through the whole getting ready for bed routine in a sloppy fashion. I crawl under my doona, excited about all the awesome sleep I'm about to score.

And then . . .

Bam!

I'm toothpicks-propping-my-eyes-open awake. Long-haul-truck-drivers-high-on-speed awake.

It's like someone force-fed a chipmunk a shitload of speed and said, ‘Hey, want to be in charge of this girl's brain?' And the chipmunk was all like, hells yeah, and started cranking out all my worries in one big chaotic mess.

Where the hell is Xavier?

Is Vinnie going to hate me if I get expelled?

How come no one's phoned up about my awesome missing posters?

Did Xavier get sick of me? Is that why he skipped out? Or has something happened to him?

What the hell was Nate doing at the Tate McClelland Hospice?

How has Marzoli kept his job this long?

What is the actual point of guinea pigs?

I punch my pillow into shape and try about fifty different positions. I scrunch my eyes shut and let Elliott Smith serenade me through my earphones. But now that chipmunk is speeding down memory lane and panic floods through me in hot, shivery waves.

I get up and furiously pace the apartment, freaking out Buttons.

When will Vinnie be done?

Was that a noise in my room?

Is Xavier throwing rocks again?

Shit – was that English essay due today?

I flip on the TV and for the five minutes I get to watch an 80s cop show I feel slightly better, but then it ends and there's a newsbreak – wars, bushfires, politicians in bitch-fights and Harrison ‘I like to hog all the news' Finnik-Hyde. Still missing. Still rich and brilliant at violin. His friends have been called back in for ‘questioning'. They shuffle past the cameras with their pressed shirts, combed hair and furtive glances. They look so guilty I want to throw the remote at the telly. I throw a cushion at Buttons instead.

After a few minutes of Zen-breathing I grab my phone and call Cara.

She answers, mouth full. ‘Yup.'

‘What do you do when you can't sleep?'

‘Get shitfaced and throw marshmallows at the neighbour's cat.'

I look at Buttons – well, I look at his tail because it's the only part I can see on account of him having sought refuge behind the armchair. We have vodka, but do we have marshmallows?

‘What's up?' she says. I think she's eating chips – whatever it is, it sounds crinkly and crackly. ‘Can't decide which non-boyfriend to have a sex dream about?'

I don't even have a comeback – just a sigh – so Cara flips straight into business mode. ‘Right. You're coming over here. Now.'

‘Faye's going to love me fronting up at this hour.'

‘Then I'm sneaking out – we're
both
sneaking out – and we'll go to Dights Falls and we can throw marshmallows at the ducks.'

I pick at the end of my top, a New Order t-shirt that I've had since it was more like a dress. ‘Don't know. Seems like a waste of marshmallow.'

In truth, I'm not really worried about the marshmallows – they taste like fairy poo.

It's Vinnie.

It's always Vinnie.

It's always me disappointing Vinnie.

And when I think about Xavier and his epic slide from ‘hey, awesome, I got a cool new brother' to ‘shit, my brother is a thieving arsehat', I realise we've got another thing in common: we were both born to disappoint. The only difference is, Vinnie didn't want anything to do with Xavier. She knew he was trouble just like she knew the same about me. But she took me in. I was the
only
one she let in and here I am about to . . .

Great. Something else to keep me awake at night.

‘Do you think people are born bad?' I ask.

‘Jeez, you really are in the shit.'

‘You study Bio, right? Is there a bad gene? If you put Xavier and Juliet's blood under a microscope, would you find a teensy little black-clad gene smoking a cigar, stroking a cat and talking in a German accent?'

‘First: why are movie villains always German? Either German or Korean. That's legit racist. Second: Meet. Me. At. Dights. Falls. Now. We'll swear at the ducks. We'll call them fat-lips and beady-eyed mermaid rats and give them a complex about their fat duck arses.'

I splutter a laugh but I'm grimacing too because I really should say no. I should hang up, count sheep and just get over myself. Sneaking out and getting drunk is The Wrong Thing. I
know
this.

I know it in the same way I know churros are ninety-nine per cent fat and will go straight to my thighs via my arteries.

And yet . . .

‘You win,' I say, and Cara squeals. I imagine chip crumbs flying out her mouth.

‘This is so awesome. We haven't done this in forever. I'll get the marshmallows, you bring the booze and we'll –'

‘Wait. How is that my job?'

‘Because your place is practically a bottle shop. Don't think I don't know about Vinnie's stash.'

Shit.

I mean really.

I mean for flip's sake.

I've got to feel guilty about sneaking out
and
stealing from Vinnie?

‘She'll
know
if something's missing. She'll sense a disturbance in the force.'

‘She'll get over it. She'll be like, whatever, at least it's not another broken nose I've got to pay for.'

‘Have you met Vinnie?'

‘Point is, my mum's going through this green-juice-yoga-quinoa phase so she even poured the cooking sherry down the sink and I don't have money and I don't have fake ID so we're, like, actually being forced to do this.'

My head rolls back, eyes locking on the cobwebs clinging to the ceiling, and the whole thing – the enormity of it all – whooshes through me. I can't sleep. I can't quiet my head. I can't not
be
me. I can't shift that speed-freak chipmunk out of my brain – he likes it there. He's talking about moving in. I can't find my brother. I can't. Can't. Can't. Can't.

‘Fine. I'll score us booze. But I'm not happy about it.'

There's another chip-spitting squeal as Cara celebrates down the end of the line.

‘Meet you at the falls in thirty minutes,' I tell her.

When I hang up I catch Buttons giving me greasies. He has no idea how close he came to being a marshmallow bullseye so what's he being all pissy about?

‘I can't tell the difference between your arse and your face,' I tell him, but he just flicks his tail at me.

I sneak into Vinnie's room, looking over my shoulder the whole time. There's no telling what time she'll close up – it depends on how many drunks are craving kebabs.

Under Vinnie's bed is a pirate's treasure cave. If that pirate's idea of treasure is booze, bad romance fiction and chocolate. I grab a little of each; the romance novel is so we can read passages out and play the euphemism drinking game – one shot for every throbbing member. That ought to keep that little chipmunk bastard at bay.

Before I leave the flat I shove a couple of pillows under my doona in a humanoid shape – Vinnie hasn't checked in on me since I was ten but with my luck this will be the night. Plus, it's what they do in the movies, isn't it?

When I'm down the bottom of the stairs I peek through the little window. Vinnie's chatting to a drunk and carving the meat. She's throwing her head back as she laughs, bottle-blonde curls doing the happy dance. Good.

It takes maximum effort to shrug off the guilt as I push through the gate and into the alley.

Where it's cold.

The kind of cold that I really
could
write a book about.

I cut through side streets and alleys, power walking in an effort to stay warm.

There's a heap of people about. It's Friday after all. Or Saturday now. My little pocket of Collingwood is bursting with late-night activity – some legitimate and some way south of legitimate. Up the other end of Smith Street, I'd be walking past organic cafes, tapas bars and designer stores that charge my entire life savings for a shirt that looks like Buttons got to it first. Down this end, two-dollar shops, tattoo parlours and an overflowing Salvos donation bin dominate the landscape.

The cold wind slaps me about – apparently it has views on me sneaking out too. Pity it can't do anything about the Xavier-shaped tumour forming in my head.

Sure, he has dimples, bought me dumplings and went to shitloads of trouble trying to impress me. Sure he's maybe the best graf artist in town. But he stole, lied and vanished. A certain other blood relative did that to me fourteen years ago and I couldn't give a shit what's happened to her.

A group of boys whoop at me from across the street, offering to do things to me that boys like them don't know the first thing about. I'm tempted to tell them that. But rule number one when walking the streets at night is don't talk back to crazy. Or anything wearing a hoodie. I just walk away, leaving a chorus of laughter in my wake. I wonder if that's what Xavier's like. When he's with his mates.

When I reach the track that runs along the river, I'm not surprised to find actual fog settling over the water. The kind of fog that's besties with Jack the Ripper. There are lights along the path, tall silver posts that look like giant dentist drills and they glow orange. The creepiest shade of orange you can imagine. My breath shoots out in little grey puffs as I hurry along the rambling path, a wide curve beside the Yarra, stretching all the way to Dights Falls.

A Cara-shaped shadow starts dancing about on top of the Old Turbine Mill when I get close.

‘I've got Malteasers! Fucking ducks won't know what hit 'em!' The packet crackles as she waves it over her head.

I exhale. A tiny piece of awesome settles into place and I feel like I maybe have enough strength to get through whatever tonight's freak out is.

I wave the bottle as I reach the top of the path and she cheers.

This is the best idea ever.