Inbetween Days (16 page)

‘Don't!' I felt woozy. I scooted backwards, leaned up against the dry corner of the screen and closed my eyes.

‘I won't know if I can get it to work until we have power,' Jeremiah called up to us. ‘Why have you stopped?'

My eyes creaked open. He had finally came out of the room, coated with dirt and sweat. He frowned at the top of the screen. For a smart guy he couldn't see the obvious.

‘We can't reach,' I called back. ‘We're too short.'

‘We're too wasted,' Roly said, and flopped onto his side.

Jeremiah climbed the ladder and inspected our work, and us. From his sour expression, both were way below standard. ‘Don't roll off and die,' he said, nudging Roly with his foot.

‘That would be very inconsiderate,' I agreed. I figured Jeremiah had thirty kilos on Roly and me—that was the only possible explanation for him being able to stand, let alone pick up the roller and carry on painting after all that warm beer.

I closed my eyes again and kept them shut even when I heard the whisper of a wet brush, slopping paint into my dry corner. ‘Do you want me to move?' I mumbled.

‘No,' he said. ‘Stay there.'

The brush kept moving. Lulled by the hum of insect song and by the booze in my blood, I let myself go limp. I dreamed we were all asleep on the platform, curled up on our sides, while the forest grew tentacles that wrapped around us, scooping us up into hammocks like gumnut babies.

I could have stayed in the fantasy hammock forever, but I leaned forward just in time to throw up over the edge of the platform.

Roly stirred and sat up. ‘Are you okay?' Half his face was sunburnt, the other half patterned by the knots in the wood.

I laughed and coughed and threw up again. ‘Sorry.'

‘Don't be. I may join you. Where's J?'

I levered myself into a half-standing position and hung onto the wobbly rail. ‘I think I need to go home.' It was getting dark, which shouldn't have surprised me, but given the time I'd lost, passed out, it was unexpected.

Headlights came on. The ute moved and came to a stop near the bottom of the ladder. Roly skidded down on his backside. Jeremiah offered to carry me but I made it down by myself.

‘Are you okay to drive?' I asked him.

‘I only had three. You two knocked off most of the carton,' he said.

‘That explains a lot,' I moaned. My temples throbbed.

Roly got in the back and lay flat like a starfish. ‘I want my mother.'

‘I want my mother, too,' I said.

Jeremiah passed me a bottle of tepid water and helped me into the front seat. ‘I'll go slowly,' he said. ‘Tell me if you need me to stop.' He drove with one hand, pinning my forehead against the headrest with a huge palm to keep me upright.

‘It's okay. I can do it,' I told him, but when he let go, my head hit the passenger-side window and my cheek slid down the glass. I saw the screen, much brighter than it had been when we started, with about a metre from the top still unpainted, and one dirty patch in the bottom right-hand corner—left behind, a rough outline of a grey girl, her arms draped over her knees and her head slipping to one side.

‘How did I get home?'

Trudy and Thom looked up from where they were cuddling on the banana lounge in front of a movie.

‘What time is it?'

‘It's almost midnight,' Trudy said, wearing her neutral expression. ‘You've been asleep for about seven hours.' She paused the movie and disentangled herself from Thom.

‘How do you feel?' Thom asked. ‘That must be some hangover.'

I blushed. With some effort, I focused on his face and blushed again. He was nice-looking, with kind eyes and blondish stubble on his chin, a nice mouth and a nice nose square in the middle: nice, nice, nice. I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water. I sipped it slowly in case it came back up.

Trudy followed. ‘You don't have to be rude,' she hissed. ‘He asked you a question.'

My brain felt as if it was rattling in my skull. My mouth tasted of beer and vomit. When I commanded my body to move, it did what I asked, but grudgingly and three seconds later. I sipped another mouthful and paused to see what would happen. So far, so good.

‘You don't remember anything, do you?'

‘Leave me alone,' I said. I remembered leaving the drive-in earlier. Nothing after that.

‘You stink. Have a shower. And warn me next time if some weird bikie person is likely to turn up on my doorstep carrying my wasted sister. I nearly attacked him with a pair of scissors.' She pressed a cool hand to my cheek. ‘You could have been dead for all I knew. That's what I thought at first—you were dead.'

‘He would hardly have brought me home if I was dead,' I said. ‘So how did I end up in my room?'
Please don't tell me ranger Thom put me there
. At this rate I would never make eye contact again.

‘Him. He carried you in there—the bikie. What are you doing hanging around people like that? What are you getting into?'

I stepped back. ‘Can you not yell at me? My head hurts. And you mean Jeremiah. He's our neighbour, remember?' I refilled the glass and made moves to crawl back into bed. ‘I can't face a shower right now.' I stumbled along the hallway with Trudy close behind.

‘
Who?
' she said.

‘It was Jeremiah and Roland Bone, so you don't have to worry. Out of the three of us I'm by
far
the worst influence.'

I threw my body onto the bed, which was a mistake—by now my brain was a walnut. I felt it bash around in there as if the fluid had all dried up. I put the pillow over my head. Muffled silence, except for Trudy's breathing, like a birthing cow.

I lifted my head. ‘God, are you still here? Go be with Thom. I'm fine.'

Trudy lunged. She grabbed my arm and dragged me off the bed. I hit the floor, bellowing. Trudy hauled me up from behind, digging her fingers into my armpits and shoving me along in front of her like a sack of manure. At the bathroom door she gave me one hard shove. While I leaned over the basin, she ran the shower.

She elbowed me in, fully clothed, without waiting for the water to run hot.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Six days before Christmas, I handed over the last of my money to Trudy. We weren't speaking much, other than to snap at each other about Christmas dinner, which was suddenly a big deal—to her, anyway.

‘I'm going to make profiteroles. You know, like cream puffs.'

‘Knock yourself out,' I said.

‘I won't be eating any, though,' she added and patted her stomach, as if I needed reminding that I had an incredible disappearing sister. ‘I'm on a roll.' She stared pointedly at me, lying on the couch in my pyjamas. ‘Maybe we should just take a fruit plate.'

I turned away. ‘I don't care. Do whatever you want.'

‘You should try caring sometime. Like, about how you look, how you speak, and about that permanent arse-shaped dent you've made in the couch.'

‘I'm getting an education.'

‘Watching B-grade documentaries?'

‘Did you know, seahorses are monogamous and mate for life?'

‘Whoopee-doo.'

‘A blue whale's tongue can weigh more than an elephant.'

‘Fascinating. And pointless.'

‘Just putting my arse-shaped dent into perspective for you.'

‘I give up.' Trudy shook her head.

I stopped feeding Ringworm. I hoped he would just fade away, or at least start turning up at somebody else's window. I stopped counting because there was so little left
to
count. I set up the abacus on my windowsill to keep me from sitting there, and one night I put the doll's toilet on Trudy's pillow to remind her that things didn't cease to exist just because you outgrew them, packed them in a cupboard, or found something new.

Four days before Christmas, Trudy told me that Mads was moving in with us. She couldn't afford the rent and bills without help and, since she and Mads worked together, they could carpool to save petrol—oh, and would I mind moving into the junk room, since I was freeloading?

‘It's tiny. It doesn't count as a bedroom,' I moaned.

‘It will have to do.'

‘Are you asking me, or telling me?'

‘We don't have a choice,' she said.

‘You mean I don't have a choice.'

‘Shift your stuff, Jacklin.'

Thom was kind enough to help me move my furniture. He was
always
nice, even when Trudy and I were spitting and tearing tufts out of each other. He never took her side and he even threw the odd sympathetic smile my way.

‘There's not going to be much room for anything other than your bed in here,' he said.

‘I know. It's a cell with a window.'

‘I've got a little sister,' he confided as we slid my mattress along the hallway. ‘We get along much better now we live apart.'

‘Trudy wasn't here for half my life,' I exaggerated. ‘We hardly know each other. I was basically an only child.'

‘Where was she?' he asked.

He really didn't know.

‘Travelling,' I said. ‘Backpacking.' At that moment, Trudy came out of the kitchen and I followed through with some of Ma's choice descriptions. ‘Gallivanting. Shirking responsibility. Slack-arsing around.' I waited until she tuned in, then I added, ‘Whoring around Europe.'

Trudy gasped and gave me a dead arm.

‘
Ow!
'

I punched her back. It must have hurt because my fist throbbed and her eyes welled up.

‘Separate corners, ladies,' Thom said.

He didn't need to tell me. We were already there.

Mads moved in the next day. She turned out to be an unexpected ally—she was a fan of my all-day pyjamas and agreed with me that being with Thom was making Trudy lose her edge. And she watched documentaries with me for hours.

‘So what's a group of porcupines?' Mads asked.

‘A prickle. But the best one is—get this—a
flamboyance of flamingos
. There's also a murder of crows, a bale of turtles, a knot of frogs, a wisdom of wombats and a shiver of sharks. '

‘No way.'

‘Yes way. And let's not forget a fever of stingrays, a memory of elephants, and a tower of giraffes.'

‘Where do you get all this stuff?'

I tapped my skull.

‘You are a bloat of hippopotamuses!' Trudy called from the kitchen.

Mads got up reluctantly. ‘I have to get ready for work. It's my turn to drive. Will you record that one about the lemurs for me?'

‘Of course. I've seen it twice but I could watch it again.'

Trudy threw Mads's car keys at her head. ‘Pull your finger out. You're going to make me late.'

‘Scientists have discovered that rats laugh.'

‘No way.'

We were late for Christmas lunch. Trudy nagged me to help her make the pro…prof…cream puffs. She'd fussed for ages but they deflated as soon as she took them out of the oven. We tried to puff them back up by injecting extra cream, but they fell apart before we'd even left the house.

Of course, it was my fault we were late. My fault that the cream puffs exploded.

Ma opened the door looking harried. ‘Girls,' she said. She wore a yellow apron and her grey-blonde hair was parted in the middle, plaited and coiled at the nape of her neck.

‘
Fräulein
,' I said.

Trudy jerked her elbow into my ribs. ‘
Frau
,' she hissed.

Ma patted her hair. She looked nervous. I caught the scent of her hairspray, mixed in with the familiar smells of Christmas: spice, doughy Yorkshire puddings, the meaty odour of the perennial pork that Trudy and I both hated but Ma had insisted on serving up, every year, for as long as I could remember. I prayed there was apple sauce.

‘Merry Christmas,' Trudy said and held out her bowl of limp salad.

‘Merry Christmas,' I echoed, offering my tray of cream shrapnel.

Ma recovered and examined Trudy: thinner, dressed conservatively in three-quarter pants and a white shirt, her make-up just a dab of colour here and there. Then me: my hair had grown out to a jagged mess and the colour was a startling orange. Nothing I owned complemented my hair, or vice versa, so I opted for a green dress over torn black tights. At the very least, I looked festive in a Halloween-ish way. My outfit, my expression, those oozing cream puffs—it all added up to a sight so offensive Ma took a step back.

I showed my teeth.

‘Your friend Thom is already here,' Ma said, and held the door open to let us in. ‘He was early,' she said witheringly.

Trudy, to her credit, didn't bite. She swanned past Ma, gripping her salad. I thrust my tray into Ma's hands and followed. I counted nine ghostly rectangles on the wall just inside the door.

‘Little stranger.' Dad told me off with a smile, and drew me in for a hug. He paid no attention to how I looked but then he never had. He grabbed Trudy, too, but she was halfway through an apology to Thom and she pulled out of Dad's embrace.

Thom had a plateful of Ma's mince pies in front of him. I knew from experience that they smelled heavenly and tasted mostly like orange peel once you got past the sugar and the pretty crust. He caught my eye and pulled a face. I put my fingers down my throat just as Ma was checking me over again.

I slumped into a chair and popped a bon-bon with myself.

Dad smacked my hand. ‘You're not a kid anymore. Your mother will want you to leave them until after we've eaten.' He poured wine for everybody except me.

Once again, I was too old for some things and not old enough for others.

I expected the next half-hour or so would be barely tolerable—Ma would get busy in the kitchen and Dad would make dad jokes. Trudy and Thom would play footsies under the table until the food was served and the real fun could begin. But my theory was blown when the doorbell rang.