Gracie Faltrain Gets it Right (Finally) (3 page)

Faltrain looks the way I felt when I arrived home in Australia. I expected to walk back into class like I'd left to take a bathroom break. Turns out people change when you disappear to the toilet for two years. Turns out they switch classrooms to follow their chosen career path. Alyce is studying to be a lawyer with a side interest in physics, Faltrain is pretending to study while she lives a double life as a World Cup soccer star and I want to be a journalist with a Pulitzer Prize on my mantlepiece. We're all in different classrooms.

I know how Faltrain feels. It's hard when things change. It took me a while to get the hang of making new friends. I came back as the girl who left ‘like years ago'. Jessica Bandercoft walked past me at the start of the year and whispered to Angela Comb, ‘I thought she died.' Faltrain says it's hard to come back from social outcast. Try coming back from the dead sometime.

The truth is I was in a social coffin way before I came
home. Think sixteen-year-old girl squeezing into a Barbie tank top and pink convertible. That's how well I fit at school in the UK. I wasn't Gracie Faltrain's friend, or the girl you could count on to put Annabelle Orion in her place. I arrived as someone without a history. I forgot how to be me. If you forget that, people figure it out for you and chances are you won't like what they decide.

‘Jane Iranian acts like she's so good because she's from Australia,' Veronica White said one day. The old me would have shot out a snappy comeback. But the old me was gone.

I've never been as lonely as I was in England. I remember we read about a guy who'd been transported to Australia and sent to a prison on Goat Island, a place in the middle of waters where sharks bred. He escaped over and over and in the end, when they couldn't stop him, they sat him in a box that was chained to a rock in the middle of all that water. ‘At night they closed the lid,' the teacher said. ‘They pushed food at him on long poles. The sharks circled.'

I couldn't stop thinking about that guy. A couple of kids said the worst thing about it would have been the sharks swimming past; a couple said it would have been sleeping in that box at night. But I knew the worst thing would have been living out there alone. He had no one to count the sharks with, no one to turn to and ask, ‘Why do they call this place Goat Island? Looks nothing like a goat.' Life's about having someone to talk about the goats with. You can stand almost anything if you have that.

By the time Veronica White had closed the lid on my box, though, Faltrain had convinced herself that I didn't need her. She stopped calling.

I was alone in the dark when Alexander Hood asked me out. ‘You're funny,' he said, and his smile shone a little light through the cracks. ‘Saturday night, at the movies near Regent Station.' He wasn't there but the rest of my class was. I forgot life's golden rule: expect the unexpected or you'll wind up on a street in England wearing a new Gap top and jeans you can't afford wishing you were back in your box.

I was so desperate to fly to Australia and leave that memory behind that I forgot I'd have to leave other things behind, too. Like Dad's Sunday breakfasts full of French toast and maple syrup and Mum mumbling under her breath while she read the paper. I had to leave conversations with my brothers that rolled on about parties and politics and new girlfriends and boyfriends and the thawing of the icecaps in Antarctica.

At the start of the year I spent a lot of time like my grandma, shaking my head and longing for the good old days. It's not surprising people weren't lining up to have lunch with me. While Faltrain was starring in soccer and Alyce was saving the world I ate alone.

I remember the day I worked things out. I was in the yard, missing the times when Faltrain and I would hang out twenty-four seven.

And then Faltrain sat next to me and asked, ‘Do boys actually think all the time like girls do, or is there empty space in their head till they speak?'

‘Maybe they run a DVD up there between thoughts.'

Alyce arrived and said, ‘They've conducted scientific tests on boys that reveal a similar level of concern about adolescent images but a lesser willingness to discuss them.'

‘Huh?' Faltrain asked.

‘Guys think about stuff, too,' I translated.

I thought, without a doubt, the three of us should have hooked up at school earlier. I thought, at this moment, this is exactly where I want to be. I want to see how Year 12 ends. I want to be there watching when Faltrain qualifies for the state team. I want to be there when Alyce scores the highest entrance rank in the known universe. And without a doubt, at the end of the year, I want to be home with my family. The great thing is, I can do all those things. It feels good to know who I am and where I'm heading.

Mrs Young's already helping me find journalism courses in the UK. I'm actually excited about going back: to home, to family, to travel in Europe. I feel like I've got a GPS built into my brain now: a personalised street directory guiding me home. Okay, GI Jane would be sexier than GPS Jane and probably get me more dates on Saturday night, but you work with what you've got.

‘I wish I was more like Alyce sometimes,' Faltrain says before she leaves my room tonight. ‘Nothing like this ever happens to her.'

It's like I said, though. ‘You work with what you've got.' You can't use someone else's GPS to guide you home. It doesn't work that way. If yours is on the blink you wait. Sooner or later it'll kick back into action. There'll be a little light moving. And you'll find yourself on the map again.

‘So, I had a good time,' Brett says after the movie. He's nervous, even though he's kissed me ninety-five and a half times before. Once he sneezed in the middle. Tonight he swallows, and his Adam's apple bobs up and down. I think of little boats. When I'm nervous I can't think at all, my head empties and my body fills with fizz. I want Brett to make me nervous but he doesn't. Sometimes, to get in the mood, I think of exams when he's kissing me. It never works.

I tell Brett that I had a good time. I did; it wasn't a great time, that's all. The film was funny. Brett bought me popcorn. We had pizza with his football friends and their dates. I made a joke and everyone laughed. On the way back to his car I talked about how desperate I am to be accepted into the Young United Nations Program next year. Brett didn't laugh or look at me like I was strange. He quoted some shocking statistics about the number of deaths in Iraq. He's got a social conscience. He understands my jokes
about sub-atomic particles. He's very, very good-looking. I shouldn't be able to think; I should by fizzing inside.

‘I got you a present while I was on holidays,' he says. ‘There was this market near where we stayed.' I open it carefully and find a silk-covered book filled with empty pages. ‘You're always writing stuff. Now you can put it in here.'

‘It's beautiful,' I say, and he kisses me. I try as hard as I can to feel the same way about Brett as I did about Andrew. I think about kites in my chest and birds swooping through my blood. It's no good. I can solve quadratic equations while I'm kissing Brett. I know it's wrong, but sometimes I do. There are birds in my blood; they're chickens, though. I don't even think they're free range.

Andrew told me I was the smartest girl in the world last year when I was tutoring him, and the sun came out. The clouds that had hung over me for years left: ‘Loser Alyce, dog Alyce, you think you're good enough to sit there Alyce?' I saw them all blowing away. He asked me to the formal and they blew further.

He changed his mind, though. ‘You're boring, Fuller. I'm taking Susan to the formal instead.' Those clouds came back. Or, technically, new ones formed: giant cumulonimbus, the type that rain thunderstorms in summer. I walked out of the room with my head held high and then I hid in the toilets. I couldn't stop thinking that he'd broken up with me because I was a bad kisser.

I recited things from Science and Maths and English so I could stop crying before the bell. ‘The area of a square is the sum of its sides. Analysis of language is important because the true meaning of a text is not always overtly stated.
Clouds form when warm air mixes with the coldness of the atmosphere. They become too heavy and it rains.'

After a while, though, I thought about other things: my winter coat collection and my fund-raising idea for kids with cancer. I thought about the dress I planned to wear to the formal and how I liked the way I looked in it. I thought: you're very rude, Andrew Flemming, and unless we can conduct DNA testing neither of us can be one hundred per cent sure that the little bit of saliva hanging from our mouths was mine.

When Brett kissed me I knew from the look on his face that I'd done it right. Then I worked out the strange thing about kissing: one person can be flying while it's happening and the other person is standing on the ground looking up.

‘I liked you for ages,' Brett called down to me that first time we kissed. ‘Way before the comedy debate.' I stood on the ground while he floated above me and I thought, well, that really should count for something. So when he asked if I'd be his girlfriend, I called up to him that I would.

I made a list of all the things I like about him. He doesn't hit people in the face on the football field. He doesn't lean back on his chair and talk while the teacher's talking. He watches the news and gets angrier about military dictatorships than his football team losing. He knows I'm talking about the leader of the United Nations and not ordering takeaway when I say Ban Ki-moon.

I made a list about Andrew, too. I wrote all the things I don't like about him. He punches people. He calls women ‘chicks'. He thinks the suffragettes are a girl-band. He's eighteen and he hasn't enrolled to vote yet. He swears more
than is necessary and he doesn't always recycle. He broke up with me before the formal.

I remembered that list when he came up to me at the beginning of this year. He leaned in and I smelt grass and he said, ‘Go out with me, instead of Mason.' He was so close I thought I'd choke on all those birds crowding at my throat. I couldn't think clearly and I almost said yes. I remembered my lists in time, though. I remembered that Brett liked me enough to tell the whole football team. I remembered how excited he looked when I said I'd go to the Year 12 graduation dance with him. I shook my head at Andrew and left.

‘So I'll see you at school Monday.' Brett pulls away a tiny spider spinning a web from my fringe. ‘Must have been hanging there between us the whole time we were kissing,' he says. ‘I never even noticed.' He puts it gently on the ground. I watch it for a while after he's gone and then place it carefully back into the garden.

Dear diary
, I write on the first page of Brett's book and then I close it. Some things are too confusing to write down, even for me.

I took off at the end of Year 12 because I'd failed my exams and I couldn't face telling anyone. I took off because Dad had given me Mum's phone number and I couldn't figure out what to do with it. I was tired of thinking about her but I couldn't stop while I was living at that house.

I didn't plan for Faltrain and me to stay broken up, not at the start. I thought I'd be ready to be her boyfriend again when I came home. I went on and on about her for the first couple of towns. Then on the way to Dromana Joe swerved to the side of the road and slammed the brakes. ‘Will you shut up about her for five minutes? If you love her so much why don't we drive back so you can marry her?'

That's when I started writing postcards. I had piles of them because I kept forgetting to buy stamps. I told Faltrain about driving for hours with nothing but scrub on every side. I told her how it was always after I'd stopped looking that I finally saw the sun burning over the ocean. I told her
about the comet. How it looked like something different every time I saw it. Some nights it was a soccer ball, shooting downwards. Some nights it was the spray of water coming from the hose that time she soaked me.

I wrote every day until Joe and me met the homeless guy. He drew these amazing chalk pictures on the footpath. ‘Who's this?' I asked one night, looking at a woman so real the lines on her face dug into the concrete. ‘I can't remember,' he said. But every day her eyes stared at me as I passed. It seemed crazy for him to hold on to a face when he couldn't remember the person inside.

One night after that, I saw the comet and it was just a smudge in the sky. It didn't remind me of home or Faltrain or stuffing up at school or Mum or Dad or Karen. One day after that I stopped thinking so much about her. I surfed instead of writing. And I felt good.

I wouldn't have come home if I'd had a choice. But Joe had to get back by April, and I needed money. The map was the last thing I packed. It was spread out on the chipped table of the motel, full of places I haven't seen. I'm gone again as soon as I save a bit. Faltrain's a champion on the field now. She'll go all the way to state and past it. And I'm going somewhere else. I'm going back to that sand and ocean and burning sun.

After dinner tonight I sit outside and look at the paper with Mum's number on it. I'd put it on my desk before I left and there it was, covered in dust, when I got back. Dad and Karen are visiting her at the end of the year. I plan to be on the road again before they leave.

I throw the paper into the trees. ‘Litterbug,' she says.

I didn't hear her come in the gate. She drains the quiet out of the night, standing in front of me, that half smile on her face. I never told Faltrain about kissing Orion last year. We'd broken up by then but I knew she wouldn't see the fine line. I try to be casual and smooth my hair down a bit. ‘Annabelle.'

‘That's my name.' She points at my head. ‘It's still sticking up.'

Joe would say something like, ‘Sexy, isn't it?' He'd sound cool. I'd sound like an idiot. ‘Yeah, right. You're out late.'

‘I got my licence. Kally told me you were back.'

‘Who?'

‘My cousin. You met her last year.'

‘The soccer player?'

‘She was, before the school tryouts.'

I don't need Orion to go into details. I can imagine what happened if Kally moved in on the guys' soccer territory. ‘I didn't see her at the school game today.'

‘She was in Dan's car watching Gracie – you know, checking out the competition before the state trials tomorrow.'

‘Faltrain's the one to watch. She's the best player I've seen, guy or girl.'

‘She's not as good as Kally.' Annabelle's voice thins at the end and scratches the air between us. ‘Those guys knocked her down in the school tryouts and Gracie watched.'

Faltrain's a lot of things but she doesn't take down someone who's in trouble. ‘It wouldn't have done Kally any good for Faltrain to come to the rescue. You know
what those guys are like. She had to be good enough on her own.'

‘That's what Kally said but she doesn't know Gracie like I do. She didn't help because it was my cousin sinking out there.'

‘Do you and Faltrain even remember why you started fighting in the first place?'

‘She pushed me off the swing in kindergarten.'

It sounds so stupid that even she laughs. ‘I don't want to talk about Faltrain. I want a break. For good.' I feel guilty but I need to say it aloud. ‘Don't tell anyone.'

‘I won't,' Annabelle says, and I trust her. She never told anyone about the kiss and there must have been plenty of times when she wanted to throw it in Faltrain's face.

‘How was your trip?' she asks.

‘I only came back because I ran out of money.'

‘Aren't you starting uni this year?'

‘I'm deferring.' I don't plan on telling anyone about failing. ‘Did you see the comet?' I ask to change the subject.

She nods. ‘Mum and I drove to the country over summer to move the last of Kally's things to the city. We hiked into this rainforest after dark so we could see the glow-worms. They were all along the rocks, these little dots of light. They looked like stars. After we walked back out the comet was clear in the sky.'

It takes me by surprise how much I like the way she talks. When she's not firing comebacks at Faltrain her voice is quiet and full of things I haven't seen before. Listening to her is like waiting for that ocean to come into view. ‘You know a bit about astronomy, huh?'

‘My dad always said, “With a last name like Orion, you have a responsibility.”'

‘I guess so.' If I was Joe he'd be saying something impressive right about now. He makes picking up girls look easy. ‘You need to relax,' he said. ‘Girls like to laugh. That look on your face makes them cry, mate.'

‘So, I'll see you around?' Annabelle stands before I've thought of something else to say.

She starts her car and I watch her back lights disappear. ‘That'd be good.' Perfect. Tell her that now, after she's gone. At this rate I won't see any action till I'm fifty. ‘Try sixty,' I imagine Joe saying. ‘And mate, that's if you're lucky.'