My Private Pectus (16 page)

Frantically I pull at her clothes. I want to hold her, feel her naked against me. I want to break through my fears. She grabs at my shirt. She kisses my stomach, my chest. My skin tingles and finally I know I can do it. I twist my hands in her thick hair in absolute excitement.

Then there's a flash of light. Blinded for a second, I look out into the darkness. There're sniggers and forced whispers.

‘Hey, everyone,' The P screams, holding up a camera. ‘It's Sticks and Sam, and they're goin' for it!'

I try to pull my shirt down, but Sam's head is in the way. I put my hands on her face and push her away. She falls backwards onto the sand. I twist my jeans straight as people gather about.

Mike's standing there, grinning wildly. ‘You dirty dog,' he says.

Sam grasps my ankle. ‘Jack!'

I shake my leg. ‘Get off!' I yell.

She clutches tighter.

The P and Steve hold the camera so they can see me and Sam on the screen. Mike is beside them, looking at me proudly, holding his beer to his chest.

I rip Sam's fingers from my leg then run at The P. He thuds backwards onto the sand, still laughing. Lying on top of him, I try to pry the camera from his hand, but he grins as he squirms. I shove a forearm under his chin. With his airway choked he groans and wheezes. He writhes like a wounded animal, trying to shake me off. I drive my knee into his stomach and repeat it until he pleads with me to stop. Steve grabs me around the chest, but I ram my elbow into his neck. With both hands, I pin The P's arms down. ‘Stuff you!' I yell at him, my spit landing in his face. He lets go of the camera and I take it, hold it up, ready to strike his face. He turns his head and covers his cheek with his free hand.

People stand around, silent, too shocked to do anything. Feeling their alarm, I lower the camera and get off him. Sam looks at me, runs towards me, reaches for my arm, but I tear it away.

I'm not done yet.

Onlookers follow as I go around the dune and hurl the camera into the fire. We stand back and wait. It bubbles and hisses, the batteries explode in blue-green sparks, sending everyone scurrying.

Then I head to the house and slam the gate behind me. People in the backyard turn at the noise. The P's car glistens under the street light beyond the other fence. Going inside, I take a tub of melted ice-cream from the kitchen bench and go back out. I kick away the stake that holds the gate shut. It swings open and I pelt the ice-cream at his car. The plastic tub shatters, a creamy ooze slides down his windscreen and onto the bonnet. But that's still not enough. So I pick up the stake. I hold it high, above my head, ready to ram it down like a pile-driver. Then a hand grabs me.

‘Jack. That'll do, mate.' It's Ryan. He keeps holding my arm. ‘Just put it down.'

My breath is rapid, shallow. I keep looking at the car. I want to smash the windscreen, wreck the lights, destroy the whole bloody thing.

Ryan grabs the stake and loosens my grip. He throws it away. Then he grabs my shoulders and looks into my face. ‘Go back and find your girl,' he says.

I kick the grass and turn away.

But when I get back to the fire, Sam is gone.

‘I think she went that way,' Mike tells me, pointing at the surf.

‘Did you try and stop her?'

‘Chill out, Sticks,' he says. He's still grinning.

I look out across the spit of sand, towards the breaking surf. It rumbles. Lines of rolling white froth boil in the moonlight.

As I jog across the spit, I slow down near a figure, lying still in the dark. I run on, out to the beachfront. I need to find Sam, let her know everything's okay, brag about what I did to The P's car. I call her name and run further down the beach, not sure why she'd come all this way. There's a surf lifesaving tower only a hundred metres away, but when I get there and stand under its metal frame and call her name, I get no response. Panting, waiting in the silence, I replay all the things that just happened. They go in reverse from the figure on the sand, to Ryan and the stake, the blaze of the camera, and finally to Sam and my hands planted firmly on her face.

Now more desperate, I walk back and pass the person again, still motionless in the shadows. Nearing the house, the music is even louder than before. Some gatecrashers have got the barbecue blazing, the hot plate removed. They throw plastic cups, bottles, grass and wood into the flames, which roar and shoot sparks like fireworks into the sky.

Inside, I check our room, but she's not there. I go to the dance floor where there're bodies all around, sweating, writhing to the music. There's a couple in the middle, pressed together, their faces all over each other, but no Sam. I head back out to the barbie, look over and see The P at his car, hosing it off. Ryan's nearby, watching, clearly loving the moment. The girl that came with The P is standing by the gutter, talking on her mobile. I turn around and stare at the movement inside through the window. I've no idea where she's gone. Moving closer I press my hands to the glass. Through it, beyond the dancers, I see her in the kitchen.

‘Sam!' I yell and tap on the window. ‘Sam!' But of course she doesn't hear me. I race around the corner and through the door. Yet again I make my way across the dance floor. I can see her through the bodies. The fridge is open, shedding a soft light. There's someone behind her—checked shirt, black jeans—but the face is obscured as people move around me. The fridge door closes and the light fades. I move to the edge of the dance floor where I stop. I can see who the figure is. He's pulling Sam towards himself, firmly, slowly, like he really wants her. Unlike me, there's no uncertainty in the way he does it, no clumsiness or second thoughts. And Sam lets him hold her, draw her in, as if seduced by his confidence. She smiles at him. Then they turn away, his arm around her shoulders. They disappear down the hallway. I follow, but stop when they go into the room. He shuts the door. It's Mike.

I clench a fist and start down the hall.

‘Jack!' The voice is strong, panicked. ‘Jack!'

I look over my shoulder. Cuppas is there, panting, his face red. ‘It's Gez,' he slurs, swaying, but his eyes are strangely alert. ‘It's Gez and he needs you.'

‘Get lost, Cuppas.'

He gulps, stumbles closer. ‘He's frothing at the mouth,' he slurs.

I think about the booze bong, the joint Gez smoked. Mike's pills.

‘Where?'

Cuppas turns and makes his way out, steadying himself on the walls. But before following I look back at the door. My mind is full of static. I feel vague, lost. Crushed. But my best mate needs me.

Cuppas tries to run across the yard, but he sways, stumbles, then collapses near the back gate that leads out to the beach. He crawls to a body. A few people stand over it.

Gez is lying there with a yellowish film on his cheeks and lips. His eyes are closed. I kneel beside him, open his eyelids. Vacant. Glazed in the soft light from the moon and the house. I feel his pulse. It's slow. Real slow. His breath bubbles through his vomit. I wipe it away with my hand. His lips look blue, but it's hard to tell in this light. He stops breathing. For a solid fifteen seconds he does nothing. And just as I get ready to depress his chest, his body shudders violently and he breathes again. Still slow, shallow. He stays unconscious. I look up at the drunks standing around, their mouths open.

‘Ambulance!' I yell. ‘Call the friggin' ambos!'

Most of them continue to stare. Cuppas says, ‘We have.'

‘And?' I'm frantic. ‘How long ago?'

He shrugs.

‘Shit!' I yell.

I grab Gez's arms then start pulling. Cuppas, although drunk, somehow finds enough balance to join me. We take an arm each and drag Gez halfway across the lawn. A few spectators stand by, some follow. But Cuppas and I go step by step, pulling backwards, getting Gez closer to the road and the cars. We go through the front gate, past The P who's still hosing off his car. Getting to the Pissan, I open the back door. After pushing Cuppas out of my way, I lift Gez's shoulders and head and try to pull him inside after me, but don't have the strength. His eyes are still shut. I can't tell if he's breathing.

‘Jesus!' I yell. I reverse across the back seat, out the other side and run back around and join Cuppas. We each grab one of Gez's legs, lift and push him in.

‘Go get Mike and find out if Gez took any pills. Then get him to call me.'

He stares at me blankly.

‘Go!' I scream.

‘Where are you going?'

‘The hospital!'

‘But what about the ambos?'

‘Where the heck are they, Cuppas? Why aren't they here?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Did you even give them an address?'

He sways as he talks. ‘I can't remember.'

‘Jesus!'

I get into the car. Noise rings in my ears, my limbs are heavy, I feel nauseous. I twist and look at Gez sprawled across the seat. He coughs. Spew runs down his cheek. I grab his hair and turn his head sideways to clear his mouth. At least he's breathing, I think as I start the car. I rev the motor then slam it into gear. The tyres scream, the Pissan lurches and I speed off.

I get to the main road, where I see a blue cross and an arrow pointing to the hospital. Gez groans in the back. The car shudders around corners, the back-end fishtails, the motor screams in protest. I pull into the emergency bay, next to an ambulance. A paramedic comes out of the glass doors.

‘C'mere!' I yell at him as I get out.

Moments later a nurse arrives with a stretcher and the three of us haul Gez onto it. She asks a bunch of questions about how much he's drunk, if he's had any drugs.

‘Lots of alcohol,' I tell her. ‘But I don't know about drugs.'

‘Can you find out?' she asks.

Someone wheels Gez away.

I feel my pockets for my phone, then realise it's gone. Maybe I lost it in the dunes, I don't know. ‘I'll go back to the party,' I tell the nurse.

She shakes her head. ‘Tell me the address and I'll send the police.'

‘Please, don't do that,' I say.

‘How good a friend are you?' she asks.

I push on my eyes and give her the address.

‘And what's your friend's name?' she asks.

‘Gerald Fraser.'

‘Age?'

‘Eighteen. Today.'

She shakes her head again as she scribbles it down. ‘I'll be back later,' she says.

I take a seat in the waiting room of emergency and stare at
Rage
playing on a TV hanging from the ceiling. The volume is off. The place smells of Dettol and bleach. An elderly woman is nearby with a resigned look on her face; a young couple sits silently, his hand on her knee, as if waiting for news on someone; a woman sits back in her chair, holding a damp cloth to a bruise on her cheek. Then there's me, smelling of booze, ice-cream and smoke.

On the TV, Snoop Dogg mouths silently, looking cool and emotionless. Almost-naked girls rub their flat stomachs against him. I think of Sam and Mike. About the conversation us boys had that night above the cliffs. Mike said he'd seen Sam in the corner store and thought she liked him. At the time I thought it was just a joke, but now I'm convinced it's true. He rubbed himself just at the thought of her. I go outside and yell at the night.

About an hour later, after returning to the waiting room, a nurse finds me.

‘I need to call Gerald's parents,' she says. ‘Do you have their number?'

‘Is he okay?'

She leans towards me. ‘Alcohol poisoning,' she says. ‘We're not sure if he took any drugs, but we've pumped his stomach, and he's responding well.'

‘Is he awake? Can I see him?'

She shakes her head. ‘He woke up briefly, but was still too intoxicated to know what's going on. He's asleep again now. We'd prefer that he just slept for a few hours. That number, do you know it?'

‘It's three a.m.,' I say.

‘We've got to call.'

‘I could find it in a phone book.'

So she leads me to an office where she gives me a directory. I find the number. The nurse calls and breaks the news.

‘He's okay,' she says. ‘It was alcohol poisoning. His friend—' The nurse peers at me.

‘Jack.'

‘Gerald's friend Jack is here. He brought Gerald in.' Then she gives me the phone to retell events.

Gez's mum is panicked, but I tell her everything's okay. ‘I'm on my way,' she says.

‘Don't rush,' I tell her. ‘He's okay, come in the morning.'

‘No, I'm coming,' she says.

I go back out to the waiting room, but ten minutes later the nurse comes and gets me again. ‘It's your dad,' she says. I swear under my breath.

‘Gerald's mum just called me,' he says. ‘You all right?'

‘Yeah, Dad, I'm fine. Gez is too. Apparently.'

‘So you took him to the hospital?'

I tell Dad the story, of Cuppas taking me to Gez and the ambulance that didn't come. ‘I had no choice, Dad. I just wanted to make sure he was all right.'

‘And he is all right?'

‘Yes,' I tell him again.

‘Do you need me to come up? I'll catch a cab or get Roger to bring me up. I'll work out something.'

‘Just come up with Gez's mum.'

‘She's gone already.'

‘Don't bother, Dad, I'm fine.'

‘You sure?'

‘Yes,' I say, getting annoyed.

‘You will come home as soon as you can, right?'

‘Just let me and Ryan clean the shack up first. I'll see you later, sometime this afternoon.'

It's first light when Ryan comes in. ‘What's up?' he asks me. ‘Mum called. She'll be here soon.'

‘I thought she was gonna be here hours ago.'

‘I talked her out of coming up in the dark.'

‘When?'

‘She called me two hours ago.'

‘Why didn't you come then?'

He grins. ‘The party, man, it was wild. I couldn't risk leaving the shack.'

I find the nurse and introduce her to Ryan. We ask to see Gez. She tells us where to find his ward.

Gez sits up in bed as we come in. He's pale, his eyes dull.

Ryan grins at him. ‘Thank God you're all right,' he says. ‘Some party you missed out on. Coppers and everything.'

‘Really, the coppers came?' I ask as if I had nothing to do with it.

‘Yeah, looking for drugs.'

‘And?'

‘They found bugger all.'

‘What about Mike?'

‘Dunno,' Ryan says. ‘I reckon he took off out to the beach or something. Hardly saw him all night. I reckon he pulled.'

I sit by the bed; rub my palms on my knees and think of Sam.

‘Shame I missed it,' Gez says while lightly touching the drip in his wrist. ‘Never had one of these before,' he says.

‘How much did you drink?' I ask.

He shakes his head. ‘I don't know. Can't remember anything.'

‘Did you pop any pills?'

He pushes his sheet down a bit. ‘I don't know that, either.'

‘What's the hangover like?' Ryan asks.

Gez takes some water from the bedside and sips. ‘Lisa and I broke up,' he says.

‘No way!' Ryan says.

I look at Gez. It takes a while for it to sink in. He goes back to touching the drip. ‘Didn't see it coming,' he says.

‘What do you mean?' Ryan asks.

He looks at us, clearly annoyed he needs to explain more. But then it dawns on me: she dumped him. Lisa Patrick dumped Gerald Fraser.

‘How? Why?' I ask. ‘I don't believe it. What did she say?'

‘Nothing much. She just presumed I knew things were going cold.'

‘You mean she was too gutless to tell you earlier?'

He pulls his knees up. ‘I'm good at making friends with people who can't express themselves.'

I think about proving him wrong, telling him everything about Sam and me. But instead, I say, ‘Saw some good mags for the car.'

He lifts his eyebrows.

‘At Charlie the Hoarders. They're lying in the grass.'

‘How much?' he asks.

I shrug. ‘I can fix that light, you know, the one I smashed.'

He chuckles then lies back down.

‘I'm going back to the entrance,' Ryan says. ‘I'll meet Mum and calm her down before she gets up here.'

Gez closes his eyes. I breathe deep and consider the silence. I can still feel Sam's hands on my chest, her lips on my neck, the sweet smell of her breath. I can't stop imagining what Mike's done to her. I bet he sent me out to the beach just to get me out of the way. I should've taken Sam to our room after the garage. I could've held her in the dark, savoured every moment. She could've touched my chest, kissed it, done whatever she liked. In there it wouldn't have mattered. I would have been hidden and we'd still be together.

It's still an hour or more before we return to the shack. Ryan in the Pissan with me; Gez in his mum's car. He's in a hospital gown, his clothes in a plastic bag.

The yard's a mess with bottles and the grass is trampled. A few hung-over bodies walk about and talk mostly in groans. Little Birdy is playing on the stereo.

While Mrs Fraser stands in the yard, looking at the mess, I go with Gez to his bedroom, where he had his stuff. He fishes out his phone, checks for messages. He shows me a text from Ryan, abusing him for lying low all night. He finds some clothes, and then takes a shower. While he's in there, Ryan, Mrs Fraser and I start on the yard. We dump bottles into the recycle bin until it's full. I go across the street and take another one from the unit block. We fill that, too. Ryan hoses vomit off the concrete and into the grass. The whole place reeks.

‘Do you know if Sam's still here?' I ask him.

‘She went back early with Mike,' he says. ‘Man, what happened between you two? Must have been serious for her to go off with him.'

‘I just screwed up,' I say then go back inside to get my gear.

I pass Cuppas in the hallway. He's clean, but there are dark rings around his eyes. ‘I tried to call,' he tells me.

‘I lost my phone.'

He looks terrible: his skin is white, his eyes are bloodshot.

‘Thanks for getting me,' I say.

‘Gez would have done the same thing for me,' he says.

‘Gez would've done that for anyone.'

He nods.

‘Can I tell you something, Cuppas? I left him out there. I saw someone passed out on the sand. It was him, but I left him.'

He shrugs. ‘I went for a leak and there he was, so I brought him back. But if it wasn't Gez, if it was someone else, someone like you, I wouldn't have bothered, either.'

‘Thanks, Cuppas. You make me feel so much better.'

‘Sometimes, Sticks, I think you're just like me,' he says.

I nod. ‘Maybe you're right.'

Then he grasps both of his man-boobs, shakes them and walks away.

‘But not too alike,' I mumble.

I go to the bedroom. It's dark, the curtains are drawn. I flick on the light. The bed's been slept in, the sheets are messed up. Sam's stuff is gone.