Smashed (15 page)

I slink back past the school now, and am almost at the end of the road when someone behind me yells my name.

‘Toby?’ It’s Danica! She’s running towards me, gaining fast. ‘Some girls in my class told me there was this cute
Asian guy looking for me, so I figured it must be you!’

Cute?
Blood is rushing to my face faster than a pig to mud, and I can feel my mouth stretched into this tragic puppy-dog grin. ‘Yeah.’ To make the whole thing even worse, my voice decides it’s time to do a Freddie Mercury and rockets up about two octaves as I speak. ‘I … I just wondered what had happened … with Don?’ I’m sure my face is pulsing red now, and I feel like such a pig for using Don as my excuse that I can’t meet her eye.

She smiles then, obviously impressed at my thoughtfulness, and I feel an even bigger creep. ‘The news is good.’ She holds out her hand for my pie, which I hand over like a witless slave. She undoes the wrapper and takes a bite. ‘He’s coming in and out of consciousness — and seems to understand what’s being said, although he hasn’t talked yet.’ She takes another bite, then hands the pie back to me with a little sigh. ‘Thanks,’ she murmurs. ‘I blew my allowance on train fares and I’m starving.’

‘Have it all,’ I insist, pushing it back into her hand. ‘I’m not hungry anyway.’ Now I’ve overcome my embarrassment enough to think, I’m struck by the
sleep-deprivation
shadows under her eyes. ‘Are
you
okay?’ I ask.

She shrugs. ‘I guess … Hey, how was court?’

I tell her what happened as we stroll back towards
her school. Just being beside her makes me feel more calm, like I can handle the real world again. It’s something about the steady way she looks at me — like she thinks I’m capable of anything. All I can think about is that I don’t want her to go back to class, to walk away.

‘I don’t suppose you’d skip this afternoon and come with me?’ I plead. I’m grasping at straws here, trying to come up with anything that will sound sane. ‘I thought maybe if you could talk to Rita …’

She stops in her tracks. ‘Did you tell her about me?’ she demands, and I can’t tell if she’s pleased or not. If I play this wrong I’m in the crap.

‘No …’ I leave it hanging in the air, to wait and see how she’ll respond.

‘Good.’ She says nothing more for a while, just eats the last of the pie and stares steadily at the ground, running her toe along an ant-filled crack in the footpath. The ants fan out around this new obstacle, taking the danger in their stride. No panic. No global catastrophe. Maybe ants have some good features after all?

‘Yeah, okay, I will,’ she says eventually. ‘But I’m not going to skip class. I’ve got Art History this afternoon, and I really don’t want to miss it, eh?’

I’m impressed.
No one
I know, except me, refuses an excuse to skip class. In fact, she’s putting
me
to shame.
‘Cool.’ If I race back to varsity now, I’ll probably still make it in time for Stats. ‘What time do you want to meet?’

‘Four thirty? At Frank Kitts Park?’

‘Done,’ I agree, and have to force myself to not grin when the moment’s passed. I scrabble around in my pocket and offer her a pile of change. ‘Here, use this for the train fare in.’

‘You sure?’

‘Totally …’ I hurry on now, to avoid any further embarrassment. ‘I’ll get hold of Rita, and meet you there.’

‘Okay.’ She leaves me with a smile, and I make my way back to the train station in a bubble of warm, excited air.

It’s only then I realise there’s one big problem with this plan. How will I convince Rita to come with me to meet Don’s sister? It could be that I am really screwed.

My ultra-clever solution, after running through every lame excuse  invented in the history of world deception, is not to tell Rita why I want to see her. She arrives around quarter to four, and we make our way to Queens Wharf for a coffee. She’s looking really ragged, like she hasn’t brushed her hair for days. 

‘So,’ she says, once I’ve filled her in on the status hearing. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve got someone I want you to meet … someone who’s kind of been through what you have …’ My plan, my
other
great piece of intellectual cunning, is not to tell her Danica has anything to do with Don. Okay, it’s kind of like a lie — but not. If she asks me I’ll admit it, but I’m pretty sure this meeting won’t happen if she sniffs out the truth before they meet. I’m counting on the fact that Danica’s way more cute than Don and literally half his size. So, although their eyes are pretty much identical, without some other obvious clue I’m hoping Rita won’t suspect.

She’s turning pretty bolshy, with her lids down low over her eyes and a sulky pout, but I don’t give her a chance to object. ‘She’s about your age, okay? And really nice.
And
she’s into art like you.’

Her jewel-green eyes study me suspiciously. ‘How do you know her? What’s her name?’

‘I met her through someone I know,’ I hedge, no longer prepared to call Don a friend. ‘Her name is Danica … she’s from Wainui.’ This is a good red herring and it’s sure to throw Rita off my case.

‘If she starts trying to tell me what to do, I’ll —’

‘She’s really cool. It’ll be fine. She understands how
you’re feeling — that’s all.’

Tears swim across the surface of her eyes. ‘Thanks, Tobe.’ She sniffs, and wipes her sleeve across her nose. I can tell how much she’s fighting not to cry. ‘It’s … hard … It’s like, if I don’t talk about it, then I can pretend it never happened — try to block it from my mind.’ Her eyes meet mine. ‘But I can’t, you know? It’s always there.’

I just nod and change the subject, to give her space, and we wander down to the harbour and share a tub of hot chips with the greedy gulls. Just before four thirty we cross over to the road side of the park to wait. My heart is clanging and I scan up and down the Quay for signs of Danica.
What if she doesn’t come?

I’m just starting to feel really tense when I see her heading towards us from the direction of the station. She waves as she waits to cross at the traffic lights, and we walk to meet her there, my face set in a silly grin. I can’t help it — it’s just so good to see her.
She came for me
.

The two girls greet each other shyly and I’m just about to suggest we have another coffee when Rita’s cellphone rings. While she’s talking I take the chance to whisper close to Danica’s ear, ‘She doesn’t know you’re related to Don. Is that okay?’

For a second Danica’s eyes cloud over, but I reckon she must understand how delicate this is, because then
she nods. ‘Okay.’

‘Sorry,’ Rita apologises as she finishes her call. ‘It’s just Mum checking up on me.’ She shrugs and rolls her eyes at Danica, who grins back.

‘I understand,’ she says. ‘My nana calls me all the time.’
Of course! She has a cellphone
. What a dick I am for not checking and asking for her number weeks ago.

Just then, a car does a screeching wheelie at the lights behind us. It rides up on the footpath and almost mows us down. I just have time to push Danica and Rita out of its path and jump myself before it bounces to a stop a few scant centimetres away.

‘What the bloody hell —’

The rest of my sentence stops mid-flow. The car looks exactly like Don’s old bomb. And now the driver’s door is being flung open and that loony Carl is leaping out. ‘Howdy, neighbours, howdy … what have we here?’

His eyes are so red-rimmed they seem on fire, and skin is flaking off his face like falling snow. ‘Jesus, Carl … you nearly killed us.’ If he blabs to Rita about Danica I swear to God I’ll throttle him.

He smirks from ear to ear and performs an overblown bow to them. ‘Ladies.’

‘What are you doing with Don’s car?’ As far as I know, the stupid bugger doesn’t even have his licence. 

‘Searching for you! You’re really getting hard to find.’ He dances over to where I’m standing and jostles close. ‘Look, you’ve got to come with me right now. It’s totally important … I reckon I can get you off the copper’s hook …’ He leans towards Danica and Rita and sends them both a cheesy grin. ‘Come on, girls. Get Useless Young here to listen up.’

The girls turn to look at me, and I can see both of them think that if Carl’s got a way to get me off the charges I’d be crazy not to let him try.

‘But you —’

‘
Stand by your man
…’ Carl croons at the top of his voice. Then he drops the psycho act and pleads, real straight: ‘Come on, man … this is your chance.’

He opens the passenger door and folds the front seat forwards. ‘Ladies, your carriage awaits.’

I can’t believe it, but both Danica and Rita clamber in like well-tamed sheep, then look at me expectantly like I’m the stupid one for holding out.

Carl’s already back around at the driver’s door and leaping in, so now I have no choice or he might take off with the girls and god knows what kind of stupid things he’ll do if I’m not there to help.

‘You better be serious,’ I mutter, as I’m forced to join them in the car. 

Before I’ve even fastened my seatbelt, Carl crunches the car back into gear and hurls it out into the traffic at alarming speed. ‘
Geronimo!
’

I
’m in such shock at Carl’s lack of driving skills it takes me a whole block before I summon up the means to speak. ‘What the hell are you doing with Don’s car?’ I demand.

‘It was just sitting there,’ he replies, cutting across two lanes to turn the corner into Taranaki Street. ‘He’s not using it and I had a need …’

‘You mean you nicked it?’

He flashes a maniacal grin at me then turns to talk to Danica. ‘Did you get the brains as well as the looks?’ he asks. She grunts, totally unimpressed. Not that he cares. ‘
Mama, she’s making eyes at me
…’ God knows where he gets all these ridiculous songs from, but he’s crooning at the top of his voice and throwing us around the car as he weaves in and out of traffic. An empty bourbon bottle rolls around beneath my feet, and I figure it’s Carl who’s drunk it, cos Don drinks — well,
used
to drink — almost everything
except
bourbon.

‘Where are you taking us?’ I ask, before he can start
up yet another verse of his lame song.

‘Makara!’ he announces, suddenly taking on the role of tour guide. ‘You’ll notice to your right, ladies …’ he runs a red light and launches the car across Willis Street and up a terrifyingly narrow road that links onto The Terrace, ‘… there’s nothing of interest at all to look at!’ He thinks he’s so hilariously funny he throws himself against the steering wheel and bangs his forehead on it while he laughs.

‘Watch out!’ Rita yells, as he nearly clips a cyclist. She’s turned sickly pale, and is clutching onto her seatbelt like a life-ring. ‘Could you slow it down a bit, Carl?’

‘
I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date
…’ Off he goes again, this time on some stupid children’s song about a rabbit who is obviously as psycho as him. ‘
I run and then I hop, hop, hop, I wish that I could find
…’

‘Listen, I don’t have time to go to Makara — I’m on a curfew,’ I try to tell him, but he seems to find this amusing as well, and slaps my arm.

‘Grow up, Young. Show some guts.’

We’re winding up towards Karori Tunnel now and I figure, other than leaping from a moving car, there is nothing for it but to settle in and go with him to Makara — about a half-hour drive to a rocky beach set on the edge of Cook Strait. Ordinarily I’d love a chance to escape the
city, but the thought of going there with a lunatic behind the wheel is deeply worrying.

Meanwhile, Carl reaches over and unearths the world’s fattest joint from the glove-box. ‘Ow, baby, come to Dada,’ he purrs. He puts it in his mouth and lights it up. ‘Niiiice.’

The smoke from his joint seems excessively sticky and strong. ‘Put that damn thing out,’ I snarl.

I reach across to snatch it out of his hand, but he swivels away from me, sending the car into a frightening swerve across the centre line. He’s chuckling like a lunatic, like he thinks the whole damn thing’s a game, and I realise that the consequences of trying to stop him smoking the joint are probably more dangerous than just leaving him be.
Fingers crossed
.

I try to roll my window down, but the handle’s broken. I remember Don going on about needing to start work on the interior next. The girls are shifting uncomfortably in their seats and working at the tiny wing windows to get some air.

‘My dad’s gonna flatten you, you idiot, when he finds out you’ve nicked Don’s car,’ Danica threatens Carl.

‘Your dad?’ says Rita, looking confused and shocked. She turns from studying Danica to me. ‘Don’t tell me she’s a
Donaldson
…’ She leaves the rest of her sentence
hanging in the air, as thick as the marijuana smoke, and tears well up in her eyes.

‘It’s not the point, Rits,’ I try to tell her, but she doesn’t hear.

‘This is just
great
, this is,’ she shrieks. ‘You tell me some big
lie
about caring for me, then do
this
?’ She’s twisting around in her seat, moving as far away from Danica as she possibly can get.

‘It’s not her fault that Don’s a jerk,’ I defend. ‘You should hear what’s happened to
her
.’

‘Oh
fine
,’ Danica breaks in, equally mad. ‘Tell the whole frigging world about my life, why don’t you?’ She closes her eyes, waving the smoke out of her face. ‘Listen, Rita,’ she says, ‘It’s not like you think …’

I can’t hear what else they are saying, as Carl starts on his own drama. ‘Confession time, partner,’ he spouts, between an almost constant toking-in of smoke. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what
I
did wrong, if you’ll come clean and confess too.’

‘I did bloody
nothing
wrong,’ I snarl.

For several blocks neither of us speaks again. Carl’s driving is already so erratic I reckon he doesn’t need more distraction. Besides, my head has started pounding and I feel like there’s a wad of cotton wool between the place where my words are formed and where I’d spit them out
of my mouth. Behind me, Danica and Rita are deep in discussion, huddled together so close that, even though I strain, I can’t hear what they’re saying. Rita’s arms are firmly braced across her chest, and Danica is talking fast.

We’ve hit the end-of-day traffic heading back towards Karori now, and Carl slams his hand down on the horn. ‘Get out of my way, heathens!’ He pulls out of the queue and boots it up the middle of the road between the opposing lines of cars.

‘Jesus!’ I’m clutching at my own seatbelt now, suddenly extremely interested in finding a religion — fast.

Somehow, either through divine intervention or because I’m stuck in some warped cosmic joke I’ve yet to reach the punchline of, we make it through the jam and cruise out of the built-up area towards the coast. Carl has just about smoked the entire joint and I’m quite surprised he’s still able to keep his eyes open, let alone drive … but, to tell the truth, it’s like I just don’t give a stuff any more. The last few weeks have been so intense and stressed there’s something totally relaxing about settling back into my seat to watch the scrubby bush fly past.
Is it possible to get stoned by breathing in Carl’s exhaled smoke?
Oh, what the hell. If anyone deserves a little relaxation now, I reckon that someone is me.

From the back seat I can hear the quiet chattering
of the two girls. When I swing round to check on them, their heads are almost joined together and that sweet girl Danica is patting my little sister’s back.
Maybe my plan’s actually worked?
Danica meets my eye for just one second and I send her a beatific smile. But, instead of smiling back, she frowns and jerks her head towards Carl’s back.

‘You drive,’ she mouths.

The only way I can respond to this is by shrugging — I’ve never bothered learning how to drive. I can tell she thinks I’m a big loser, so I look away and close my eyes. Above us, somewhere up in the weakening light, I imagine seagulls following our escape to the wild west coast, their wings held steady on the thermal breeze.

Next thing I know, someone whacks me across the back of the head and I realise I must’ve drifted off. We’re bumping across uneven ground, and I turn to see Danica glaring at me fit to kill, signalling at me with her eyes for help. We’re well past the baches and houses that cluster at the entrance to the bay and now Carl’s trying to coax the car along the rough, loose-shingled beach. He’s smouldering behind the wheel, all sense of cheerfulness quite gone. Danica and Rita, too, sit tense and quiet as the car slews and grinds further and further away from any sign of civilisation. A quick check of my watch tells
me it’s already after 5.30 — and there’s no way I will make it home in time to meet my curfew now.
How the hell could I have slept?

I pull out my phone and try to make a call to Mum, but the signal hardly registers. It’s clear that Carl’s dumped me in the crap. Behind me, Rita holds up her phone to indicate she’s tried too — as has Danica, who nods as if to say,
What’s taken you so long to try?

‘No signal,’ she confirms, her lovely eyes nervous and round. She reaches over and puts a protective arm round Rita’s shoulders. Whatever’s gone on while I crashed out, at least it seems these two’ve sorted things out.

‘Carl … don’t you think this is far enough?’ I try to keep it conversational. There’s something disturbing about the way Carl’s acting — his hands clenched tight on the wheel, his face deathly white and taut. He’s whistling some kind of creepy tune between his teeth and it’s almost like he’s forgotten the rest of us exist.

‘Nearly over,’ he mutters, and brushes his gaze over me as if he suspects me of trying to plot against him. His eyes are the most horrendous bloodshot shade of red, like ink poured on water, and he has scratched a patch of eczema raw on his forehead. ‘There’s some things a man just can’t run away from.’

I’ve heard him say this before, in the same slow,
Yankee drawl he saves for his most favourite John Wayne quotes. Only this time there’s nothing funny about it — it reeks of truth and sends an icy trickle of anxiety down my spine.

Rita tugs at Carl’s t-shirt collar. ‘I need a pee, Carl,’ she pleads with him, but he shrugs her off.

‘I don’t believe in surrenders.’ He’s at it again, quoting John Wayne like some people quote the Bible.

Ahead of us, a great mound of shingle blocks our way. Carl revs the car, booting it forward as stones fly out from under the madly spinning wheels. The car surges up the hill, almost making it to the top before grinding itself into a shallow grave. The engine cuts.

‘Damn it! Damn it!’ Carl beats the steering wheel, and the whole car shudders and teeters towards a dangerous backwards slide.

I fling the door open now and jump free, nearly falling as the stones roll out from under me. I push the seat forward. ‘Quick,’ I order the girls, ‘get out now.’

They scrabble out in a tangle of arms and legs, throwing themselves as far from the car as possible and skidding sideways down the hill. Rita is sobbing, and I wrap my arms around her for a moment, relieved we’re safe. Somewhere close by waves crash against the rocky shore and the sun reaches long tendrils of light towards
us as it sinks.

Carl is still sitting inside the car, rocking it, blaring the horn so it shrieks out into the evening with all the doleful power of a tolling bell. When he realises at last that he can’t dislodge the car, he drags himself out of it too and scrambles to the top of the hill, the light holding him in sharp silhouette against the sky.

‘Listen up, Einstein …’ he roars, ‘now’s your chance to clear your name.’

‘What the hell is he playing at?’ Danica hisses at me, but all I can do is shake my head. There’s nothing predictable about Carl at the best of times.

‘Here’s the truth then,’ he shouts, pointing at Rita and waggling his finger. ‘It was
you
, Rita,
you
I was thinking about …’ His voice is all choked up, and I think maybe he’s crying — something I’ve never seen him do in all the time I’ve known him. ‘I just couldn’t bear what he’d done to you. When Toby told me what —’

The rest of his sentence is lost as Rita turns on me. ‘You told
him
?
After promising you wouldn’t?’ Her eyes are flashing in the fading light and she truly looks like she’s possessed.

‘Hold on a sec,’ I defend. ‘
Technically
, I hadn’t actually promised you when I told him —’

‘I can’t believe you’d blab my secrets to that freak.’
She runs up to me and whacks me full steam across the back.

‘What is it with you, you loony?’ I counter. ‘One moment you’re wanting me to charge off and do Don in, but I’m not allowed to tell my friend so he knows what a shit Don is too?’

She’s getting ready to attack me again, when Danica steps in between us. ‘For god’s sake, shut up, you two. Didn’t you hear what Carl just said?’ She’s shaking her head with disbelief.

‘What?’

‘He just bloody admitted he beat up Don …’

‘You did
what
?’ I scream at Carl, scrabbling up the shingle to get at him. He starts lobbing stones at me, trying to put me off, but I just hold my hands up in front of my face and climb that mound right to the top.

Up close, it’s obvious he’s lost the plot. Tears are streaming down his face, which twitches uncontrollably.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt him, man. I just went there to give him shit —
I
care about Rita too …’

‘You nearly bloody killed him,’ I yell, shocked at how totally out of control I feel. ‘I could’ve been put in jail …’

‘You don’t get it,’ he weeps, all his stupid cowboy bravado completely gone. ‘I went there
before
you, punched him over a little. I admit I lost my cool — but I
didn’t — and I swear this — didn’t smash his head like that. I left him with a bloody nose …’ He’s writhing on the spot, unable to keep still as he speaks.

So who the hell did all the damage then?
‘But you went back!’ I accuse him. ‘I heard the call you made to get the ambulance — you went back after I left and did him over properly so
I’d
get blamed.’

He flies at me now, his hands out ready to go around my neck. ‘I didn’t touch him then, you slimy creep! It’s
you
who’s trying to set up
me
.’

This makes no sense, but I don’t have time to argue cos next thing he’s upon me, knocking me down.

As I’m struggling to keep his hands at bay, the shingle gives way beneath us and sends us tumbling down the other side, towards the sea. Somewhere behind us I can hear Rita and Danica calling out, but I’m stuck inside a scrum of flailing limbs, with stones flying in all directions, and I have to fight like hell to breathe. By the time we reach the bottom, both of us are winded and it takes a second for the steam we’ve blown to build back up.

Carl is up again first, dusting himself down. But I’m not letting him off so easily. There’s way more both of us need to say. ‘How do you know you didn’t just beat him up so bad before I got there that he coma’d out once I’d left?’ I spit at him. 

‘I don’t know,’ he yells, reeling around with his arms out like some crazy spinning top. ‘I don’t know anything, okay?’ He takes off down the beach, stumbling over rocks and driftwood till he’s right down where the water eats into the land.