Girl Defective (16 page)

“Laughed. And did this.” He held his pinkie finger acrook.

I put my arm around him; he froze, and I retracted it. “Pratt by name, prat by nature. They're dickheads. All of them, dickheads.”

Gully half smiled. “Mouth.”

We crossed the highway and tripped along St.
Kilda's wide and leafy backstreets. Everything looked different somehow. Like a layer had been stripped off the world. I felt tremulous, on the edge, but also weirdly happy. I shunned the new townhouses with their manicured gardens and gave all my love to the fifties flats with their pockmarked plane trees giving shade to the shady. The wind was blowing and the palms were swaying. The sun felt sharp-hot on my skin.

Someone wolf-whistled. “Hey, girlfriend!”

Nancy was perched on an old armchair that had been shifted onto the nature strip. I saw the silver scarf first, and then the photograph flashed in my mind. She sprang over to us and then stood there, slightly out of breath. In addition to the scarf, Nancy was wearing a floppy black hat and sunglasses and a man's business shirt over cutoffs.

“Are you incognito?” Gully covered his mouth with his hand, spy-talking.

Nancy bent to his height and spy-talked back. “Affirmative!”

She moved so I could clock the contents of her bag: two bottles of champagne. “Courtesy of the Purple Onion. Let's get stinko.”

I took Gully by the shoulders. “I've got to check in with Agent Cole, KGB, talk turkey, get intel, you savvy?”

“I want to come too.”

“You can't.”

“Why not?”

“Because we're going to be talking about periods,” Nancy said loudly.

Gully went red. His lip trembled like he was about to cry. “Hey! I'm joking,” Nancy said, but Gully was already trudging away. After a few steps he turned back. “What about fish and chips?”

I waved him off. “Tell Dad to start without me.”

The greenhouse was jungle-steamy; the perfect place for an assignation, if that was what we were having. Nancy and I collapsed on the bench and smiled at each other. My stomach flip-flopped. She took a bottle out of her bag and popped the cork. It flew up and I imagined it shattering the ceiling and glass raining down, skewering the goldfish and making the paving slabs sing. This didn't happen. What did happen was I took a gulp and the drink went down the wrong pipe and came back up through my nose. Nancy drank like Dad on a bad night, like she'd been crawling across the desert for infinite days. She set the bottle down and released an epic burp.

“Your turn,” she said, like that constituted conversation.

Where to start? Otis and the photograph, Luke and the Fugg, Quinn Bishop and messes, the Ugly Mugs, the elusive Bricker, the sale of the shop, the end of the world.

I started with Mum's phone call.

“That's tough,” Nancy said. But her voice rang hollow. She didn't get it—she had no family, she moved around. She was like that Rolling Stones song “Ruby Tuesday”—I used to think it was exotic, but now I wasn't so sure. If you lived like that, what was to stop you from disappearing altogether?

I took a swig of champagne and rushed on to the next item. “So my friend Quinn showed me this website, called Otisworld, and it's photos of . . . stuff . . . but mostly girls.” I paused. “You're on it.”

Nancy put her hand to her heart. “Me?” But this was wrong; she looked surprised and flattered.

I nodded.

“Doing what?”

I swallowed. “Okay. You're naked.”

She waved her hand. “Oh, that. He put that up?”

I stared at her.

“What?” She rattled my wrist. “What?”

“Don't you care? Don't you care that you're naked and it's online and anyone can see?”

“First of all, not just anyone can see. You have to have a password. And no one who
knows me
is going to look at that. And even if they did, so what? When I'm forty and my arse is sagging somewhere down around my ankles, I'm going to be able to look back and say,
I used to be something
.”

“But it makes you look like nothing. Put like that,
with the pictures all rolling one after the other, it makes you look like nothing.”

“Sky, it's really not a big deal.”

I felt confused. Was it nothing, or was it something? Then I remembered Mia.

“There was a picture of Mia Casey, too. It was from earlier. She was with a group of girls. She had a scarf.”

I checked Nancy's neck. The lovebites were still there but faded. They looked like brown summer blossoms, like the end of something. Nancy was looking at me like she felt sorry for me. She clucked. “Poor dollbaby. Don't you know, the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom? Jim Morrison said that.” She leaned in. For a second I thought she was going to kiss me again. A pause like a canyon yawped between us, and then she laughed her donkey-honk laugh and I ducked my head, embarrassed that I was always getting so lost in her.

After that we fell quiet. Nancy smacked my arm and I smacked hers back. We went back and forth like that a few rounds. She took off her black hat and put it on my head, and then she stood, stretched, and sighed. She grabbed an overhanging palm frond and fanned herself with it, affecting the air of a jaded chanteuse.

“So, how is Otis?” I asked.

“He's beautiful. He's my soul mate.”

“Seriously?”

“No.” A crooked smile. “Let me tell you about Otis Sharp: He looks hot, but the guy has
isshews
. Number one: he can't hold his drink. Number two: he's more interested in looking than doing. Hence photo. Number three: he cries, like, all the time. You thought that was just part of the show, right? Well, let me tell you, it's real. Number four: his fat friend? Om-nipres-ent.”

She lit a cigarette and exhaled a gray cloud.

“So, you're not in love?”

“Dollbaby, love is a fiction. Love is, like, those pictures from the seventies with the kids and the flares and the big moony eyes. Of course I'm not in love. I'm working an angle.”

I laughed, but Nancy looked serious. The way she talked, it was like all those movies she'd watched had seeped into her system. I couldn't tell when she was quoting and when she was being herself. I should have been feeling relieved. Otis meant nothing, and summer could go back to being summer—but even as I thought this, I knew it was all wrong.

Nancy snapped the branch of the palm. It made a sharp cracking sound. She said, “That party I went to with Ray. Your dad was there with some foxy redhead, looking very loved-up.”

“That's Eve,” I said faintly.

“And that reminds me.” She dug in her bag and brought out a piece of paper. “For your dad.”

Dear Bill,

I'm writing to apologize for not looking out for Sky when we went out last Friday night. Sky's my good friend and I'm not used to having good friends, but that's not really an excuse. I let you down and her down, and for this I'm truly sorry. I hope you'll let me take her out for her birthday—nothing crazy, I promise. Just two grand old girls having a grand old time.

Nancy

“Okay?” she asked.

I looked at her, feeling weird. “Okay.”

She opened the second bottle and passed it along. I was already woozy, but I kept drinking. And the more I drank, the less weird I felt. Then we were laughing again, and nothing was serious and we were in the moment and the moment was everything. Outside, the sky grew dark; birds were convening in the fig tree. Nancy's phone pinged and she had to lam. I weaved along the path, gulping air. The grass in the dark looked like velvet. I lay upon it and stared up at the sky. The stars were spinning. I might have hugged a palm tree before puking.

Back at the flat Dad and Gully were playing Jenga. I pulled out a chair a little too forcefully, and the tower trembled. They froze. Dad kept his eyes on the block
he was trying to pry out of the pile. “Where have you been?”

“At the gardens.”

“You're supposed to see Gully all the way home.”

“He only had to walk two blocks. He's not five.

“You have to tell me when you're going out.”

“I was being spontaneous.”

The tower remained. A triumph.

Dad said, “You missed fish and chips.”

Missing fish and chips was tantamount to treason.

“I wasn't hungry.”
You let Mum sell the shop.
I thought it, but I didn't say it.

Dad eyeballed me. “Have you been drinking?”

“No!” I snorted. “Have you?”

I could stare Dad out—his right eye started twitching after three seconds. He looked down.

“Nice hat,” he muttered.

I thrust Nancy's letter at him.

Dad read it and put it on the table next to his glass.

“Sky, Sky.” Gully was touching my arm. “Sky, Sky, Sky—”

“What?”

“I ate your flake. It was good.”

I
WAS HUNGOVER AGAIN.
I was beginning to see how Dad could get used to it. The headache was bracing, but the floating feeling that went with it was almost pleasant. I felt wispy, insubstantial, like the world was spinning but I was standing off to the side. The feeling stayed with me as I dressed; it followed me to breakfast, where the idea of food was ridiculous. I drank water and watched Gully hunched over some project, humming as he worked. The air around him felt frenetic. I had to sit down. I put my hand in my pocket, and my fingers felt something—Luke's wristband. I slipped it on my wrist and promptly forgot about it.

“Gully, what are you doing?”

“I'm making a sign.”

He flashed the cardboard.

WANTED: INFORMATION

Do you own or have you seen a white Jeep? Sticker on the back says love live local. Come into the Wishing Well,
ask for Agent Seagull Martin, Special Investigations Unit, in collaboration with SKPD. Reward.

“What's the reward?”

“There's no reward,” Gully replied. “That's the bait.”

“Clever.”

“I know.”

“What are you going to do when you find the Bricker?”

“Make a citizen's arrest. Hand him over to SKPD.”

“Let me put it another way: What are you going to do if you
don't
find him?”

But Gully didn't want to hear that. He hummed louder. He filled in the block letters that had already been filled. The humming and his hand moving up and down did something to me. I reached over and put my hand on his. I pressed hard.

“HEY!” Gully cried. “Don't do that.”

Dad appeared in the doorway. “What's going on?”

I took my hand back. “Nothing.”

Dad moved around me to the coffeepot. He poured a cup and sipped at it, his eyes never leaving my face.

“Is there something you want to tell me, Sky?”

“No. Is there something
you
want to tell
me
?”

Dad looked at Gully. “Gully, can you excuse us?”

Gully gathered his work and huffed off to the living
room.

Dad hunched across the table. He had Things To Say. I braced myself.

“Skylark. Last night. Not good. You're supposed to be grounded. And I don't want you drinking.”

“I wasn't drinking.”

“I think I have some experience in this area.”

I looked at him straight.

“I want to go out for my birthday.”

“I can't stop you.”

“You could try trusting me. How am I supposed to find my people if I don't go out anywhere?”

Dad's eyes narrowed. “Your people?”

“Mum's always saying,
Have you found your people?
You found yours. Eve said you had a whole gang. But all I've got is Nancy, so you should cut me some slack.”

“Maybe you're right.” Dad sighed. He put his coffee cup in the sink and looked around. The kitchen had gone back to its bombsite state. He gave me a bleak smile and offered his arms up for a hug. I resisted. Was he going to tell me about the shop? I stared at him, willing him to tell me. I tried telepathy.
I know. I know Mum sold us down the river.
It didn't work.