Give Me Four Reasons (3 page)

Rochelle, Elfi and Jed are too busy laughing to notice my red face and the tears of shame in my eyes.

‘Don’t worry, Paige,’ Jed says. ‘We know you’ll guard these Passports with your life.’

Yes, my very clumsy life.

3

‘Mum!’I call, placing my school bag gently on my bed. I don’t want to do any more damage to the Passports.

‘Mum!’ I call again, walking down the hallway. There is no answer. There are no strange cars parked out the front of our house, so she doesn’t have a client with her. Unless it is someone from the neighbourhood. I tiptoe along to the spare room. No candles or incense are burning and the CD player is not playing its usual mystical music.

I know! Mum is hiding from me in the kitchen, ready to spring out and shout, ‘Surprise!’ She said that she was going to throw a special afternoon tea party for me to celebrate the end of school. Just the two of us.

I have been looking forward to it all day. Finally, a chance to sit down and talk to someone about how I’m feeling now that I’ve finished school.

I tiptoe into the kitchen and peek around the corner, ready to catch Mum out and give her a huge hug. But it is empty, too. So is the fridge—not that I expected to find Mum in there. I was looking for the cake and slices she said she would make. But there is nothing. Not even a note.

‘Fliss?’ I yell, wondering if my sister is home.

Silence.

I stare out the kitchen window at the backyard. Nobody’s out there, either. I try to see my reflection in the glass. I am pale and ghostly. I suddenly have a weird thought. Am I dead? Did I get hit by a bus on the way to school this morning and now I am a ghost going about my usual business? Perhaps that’s why nobody noticed me all day.

I wonder if I should run down to Dad’s funeral parlour and check his books. If I was dead, he would have recorded it.

But the funeral parlour is downtown and it’s too hot to walk there now. So I just go back into my bedroom, open my school bag and look at the top edges of the four Passports. They are still there. Jed wouldn’t have asked a ghost to look after them, so I guess I’m alive after all.

I take my uniform out of my bag and stare at it. I had wanted to keep it as a reminder of today. But now I think, do I really want to remember today? No one else will remember my part in it.

I turn the uniform over and read what Rochelle wrote on the back in thick, black marker:‘
track three
’.

It is the number of a song on one of Dad’s old CDs. The CD is an autographed copy of
INXS: The Greatest Hits
. Dad showed it to me for the first time a couple of years ago.

‘Why would you want to listen to the music of a dead guy?’ I’d said.

Dad had put the CD in the player and skipped to track three, a song called ‘Don’t Change’.

Then my usually quiet father had taken me by the hand and sung the words of the song right into my face. ‘
Don’t change
,’ he kept singing. ‘
Don’t change
.’

When the song ended he collapsed on the sofa and pulled me down next to him.

‘That song’s a classic,’ Dad said. ‘It’s all about sticking to your beliefs and staying true to yourself. Don’t change who you are for anybody, Paige.’

I had quickly grown to love the song and I’d borrowed Dad’s CD so often, he eventually gave it to me. I played track three for my friends whenever they came over. Even though it’s old, there’s something catchy about it. Rochelle, Elfi and Jed think so, too. They all dance and sing and play mad air guitar whenever it is playing.

I love the song but I never dance or sing. I have two left feet. And Rochelle once said my singing voice sounds like a rusty car door opening and closing. So I always just tap my feet and nod my head and enjoy the song in my own quiet way.

I get the CD from my collection, put it into my CD player and skip to track three.

Then I catch a glimpse of myself in my dressing-table mirror. I look kind of pale and out of focus. No wonder nobody notices me. What’s to notice? I stomp over to the CD player and turn the music up, almost as loud as it will go.

I start to jump around my bedroom. I leap and twist and screw up my face. And then I start to sing. The rusty car door opens and closes. ‘
Don’t change …
’

I watch the girl in the mirror as she dances. She is someone to be noticed. She is someone to be reckoned with.

‘Paige!’ a voice shouts.

I freeze. My mother is standing at my bedroom door. Her wavy brown hair is pulled up in a loose bun so that most of it falls out around her large silver hoop earrings. She is wearing my favourite dress of hers—the long, flowing indigo one with yellow moons and stars all over it. I scamper over to the CD player and turn off the song. I am puffing and panting and my face is burning.

‘Are you all right?’ Mum asks.

I run over and hug her. ‘Can we have our tea party now?’ I ask.

‘Oh,’ Mum says. ‘I forgot about that. I’ve been out at the shops.’

I wonder how a psychic can forget things.

Felicity suddenly howls from her bedroom. So she
was
in after all. I wonder why she didn’t answer when I got home.

Mum glides through the shared bathroom that connects my room with Felicity’s, and I follow. My sister is lying on her bed, holding her heart and groaning.

I run to her side. ‘What’s wrong, Fliss?’

Felicity turns away from me and groans again.

‘What’s wrong with her, Mum?’ I ask.

‘Adam broke up with her,’ Mum says gently.

‘He didn’t break up with me!’ Felicity screeches. ‘I caught him kissing Willa Sneddon.
I
broke up with him!’

Adam? Who’s Adam? I thought Felicity was going out with Joshua Madden. I pass her a box of tissues. ‘Is there anything I can do, Fliss?’ I ask.

Felicity snatches at a tissue and blows her nose. ‘No, Paige. I just want to be alone. With Mum.’

Mum looks at me and nods. ‘Perhaps you should start getting things ready for your party tonight,’ she says. ‘There are some bags of stuff for you on the kitchen bench.’

‘Thanks, Mum!’ I say. I’m surprised to find I am looking forward to my party. At first I hadn’t even wanted to have one. I hate crowds and noise. But when Felicity wheedled and whined about having a party to mark the end of her Year Ten, Mum and Dad gave in. Then they decided I should have a party, too. Mine is tonight and Felicity’s is tomorrow. I’m only having my closest friends over, but Felicity is inviting her whole class.

Mum turns away from me, back to Felicity. Then she reaches into her pocket and places a crystal on Felicity’s heart.

I walk back through our bathroom to my room.

‘Close the door,’ Felicity calls out.

* *

The kitchen bench is now overflowing with shopping bags. Most contain chips, biscuits, dips, soft drinks and ice-creams. I put the ice-creams in the freezer and the other things in the fridge and the pantry. Then I inspect the contents of the remaining two bags. The first bag is from Stylze, a clothing store that I love. I reach inside, wanting to go and cuddle my mother for being so thoughtful. I had wondered what I was going to wear to my party tonight.

I pull out a red dress made of some fabric that shimmers. I run to the mirror in the hallway and hold the dress up against myself. I strip off my t-shirt and shorts and try it on. The dress has tiny little straps and it comes all the way to the floor. But it is too tight, and makes me look kind of lumpy.

I twirl around in front of the mirror and nearly trip over the hem. It’s a lovely dress but I don’t know how to tell Mum that it’s not right.

Back in the kitchen, I find that the other bag contains a pair of strappy heels in a size seven and a pair of diamond stud earrings. At first I can’t understand why Mum would buy these things for me when she knows I’m a size-five shoe and I don’t have pierced ears.

And then I realise. None of this stuff is meant for me.

I rip off the dress and shove it back in the bag. Now I know why Mum forgot about our tea party. It seems that me finishing all those years at Juniper Bay Primary School was trumped by Felicity breaking up with some boy she’d been going out with for a couple of weeks.

‘
Arghhh!
’ I yell. ‘Hello, world, I’m here!’

4

I go out into the backyard and wander around aimlessly, trying to cheer myself up. It doesn’t really work because tears keep leaking out of the corners of my eyes. I’m dangling my feet in the swimming pool when I hear a car pull into our driveway. A few seconds later, my father opens the back door and steps out onto the grub-eaten lawn.

‘Hi, Dad,’ I mumble. I wipe my eyes, trying to hide the fact that I have been crying. ‘How was your day?’

‘Quiet,’ Dad says. He stands in the middle of the backyard in his undertaker’s clothes—a black suit, white shirt and black tie.

I laugh. Dad always says his day at the funeral parlour was quiet and I always laugh. Occasionally he’ll say ‘dead boring’or ‘dead busy’. He says you have to have a sense of humour in the funeral business.

He opens the pool gate and steps inside. ‘Bet it’s not very quiet in there,’ he adds, jerking his head towards the house. ‘Your mother phoned to say Felicity was upset.’

‘Fliss broke up with Adam.’

‘I thought she was going out with Leon Parsons.’

‘He was months ago, Dad.’

Dad shrugs. ‘I can’t keep up with her. Are you and Jed still together?’

I scoop my hand into the pool and splash at his suit. ‘Jed is not my boyfriend!’

Dad jumps out of the way of the water. ‘
Paige and Jed, sitting in a tree …
’ he sings.

‘Jed is not my boyfriend!’ I repeat and splash at him again.

‘I bet he’s coming to your party tonight though, isn’t he?’ Dad says.

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘and so are Elfi and Rochelle. It’s just going to be the four of us.’

‘I’m glad you and your sister are having these parties,’ Dad says. ‘You deserve to have some fun. Things have been a little … tense around here lately.’

Tense? I wonder what he’s talking about. Mum and Dad have had their usual rows, but all parents are like that. Though sometimes I wonder how they got together in the first place. Dad is so normal, and Mum is all spirits and crystals and chanting and belly-dancing. Dad jokes that they are a perfect team. She can read a person’s future and find out if someone in their life is going to die soon, and then he can slip a flyer from the funeral parlour into their letterbox.

‘And I know you and your friends will be very well behaved at your party,’ Dad continues. ‘All four of you. Though I will be watching that Jed through the kitchen window.’

‘
Da-ad!
’ I protest. But I enjoy his teasing.

Dad rolls up his trouser legs and comes to sit beside me at the edge of the pool. ‘So how was your last day at school?’ he asks.

I kick my legs, churning up the water. ‘Not great. There was a water fight, but I didn’t join in. And then everybody forgot about me. Even Mr Tovety got me mixed up with Fliss. And I couldn’t break into the circle of dancing kids all saying goodbye.’

‘Mr Tovety is a silly old fart,’ Dad says. ‘He’d be lucky if he remembered to put on his underpants every morning.’

I chuckle. Soon I am laughing and snorting. Dad always has this way of making me feel good.

‘And how can a tiny, quiet thing like you expect to break into a dancing circle of madness?’ Dad continues. ‘That would be like a mouse breaking into a circle of roaring lions.’

‘But sometimes I
want
to break into that circle of lions, Dad. Sometimes I
want
to be the one roaring and being noticed.’

‘Then do it, Paige.’

‘Do what?’

‘Roar and be noticed.’

‘But … but that’s not me.’

‘Then make it you,’ Dad says. ‘If you think that’s what will make you happy.’

‘Hey,’ I remind him, ‘you said we should always be true to ourselves. “
Don’t change
”, remember? We made that the motto of our group today.’

Dad sighs. ‘Sometimes change is necessary, especially if you’re no longer happy. Sometimes you have to change and find a new way of being you. That’s still being true to yourself.’

I look at Dad, suddenly feeling like we’re no longer talking about me.

‘Whatever you decide to do, Paige, just remember that I love you and I accept you for who you are. I hope you will always do the same for me.’

I stare down at the water. Hot prickles begin behind my eyes. I am so lucky. I might not be the loudest person at school but, with my dad by my side, I think I can do anything.

5

‘Jed!’I shout, opening my front door. He jumps back in fright. ‘I’m so glad that you could make it!’I give him a big hug.

Jed raises his eyebrows and stares at me. ‘You knew I was coming. I only saw you three hours ago.’

‘Yes, but that seems so long ago. How has your afternoon been? Anything interesting happen? My sister broke up with her boyfriend, whichever one he was this week.’ I laugh loudly.

Jed stares at me again. ‘Have you already started on the Coke, Paige? How many cans have you had?’

‘None,’I say, pulling him through the door. ‘Can you give me a hand to take out the food and fill the pool fridge?’

I drag Jed into the kitchen, load up his arms and hold open the back door for him. I smile to myself. The plan I came up with while I was getting dressed is already working. The mouse has started to roar. My friends are bound to notice me tonight.

‘So are you all packed?’ I ask him, as we empty packets of chips into bowls. I have put a cloth over the aluminium oval table that nestles into the belly of our jelly-bean-shaped pool. Earlier, I hosed all the leaves off the concrete pavers under the fence and into the backyard. I wrapped tinsel around the potted palm on the raised wooden deck at the rear end of the pool. I even decorated the ugly tin pool shed in the back corner with posters of our favourite bands. It all looks pretty good.

‘Yeah, but it’s kinda hard to get your head around packing jackets and gloves and boots while it’s thirty-five degrees outside,’ Jed says.

‘I wish I was going skiing in Canada,’ I say. ‘Will you bring me back a grizzly bear?’