Smashed (2 page)

Carl takes the Ritalin from Rita’s hand and brandishes it in front of him, the jester displaying some precious artefact for all to see. His tongue is out and he’s dangling the pill over it when he stops. ‘One more thing …’ He waits for me to answer, but I’m stuffed if I’ll oblige. ‘The Lady Rita may go to the ball?’

Rita turns to me, her face flushed with excitement.

What can I say? I nod. ‘Okay … but only if Mum and Dad agree.’

I know I sound like some old fogey spoil-sport, but she’s only fourteen!

Carl whoops with delight and swallows the Ritalin in one dry gulp. Don starts the car again, laughing like a half-cut garden gnome, and everyone is back to normal, except for me.

Now I’m stuck with phoning up Jacinta, and I haven’t got a clue what to say.

M
um is painting in the sun porch when I dredge up the courage to pick up the phone. Her brow is creased into deep furrows as she concentrates, but she’s got this kind of radar for when things are up, so I turn my back on her to make the call. I could probably wimp out and text Jacinta, but I’d never know if she had received it and besides, I’d rather get it over with in one short suicidal act.  

‘Hello?’  

‘Hi, it’s Toby Young here.’ My throat has gone all tight, and my voice sounds watery and weak.  

‘Oh … hi.’ Jacinta sounds about as excited as a prisoner on death row. What happened to the swooning Don talked about?  

‘I was just wondering …’ The hand of social death is tightening around my throat each time I speak. ‘… about Lance’s party … are you gonna be there?’  

‘Lance Pagoli?’ Now she sounds more interested.

‘Yeah.’ I can hear her breathing into the phone and it’s then I realise Mum is listening. It’s not that she’s moved or anything. But there’s such a sense of quiet in the room that when I speak again it sounds as though I’m whispering through a megaphone. ‘It’s his eighteenth tomorrow night and I wondered if you’d like to go?’

‘Yeah! What time?’

‘It starts ’round nine.’ I’m almost sure I hear Mum sigh with relief and then the dry scritch-scratching of her paint brush as she works again. ‘Don’s got his car fixed, so we can pick you up?’

‘Cool! I’ll see you then.’ She hangs up without even saying goodbye, which is just as well. My knees are buckling like they’ve been unscrewed and I’m feeling sick. Jacinta Matthews! Bloody hell!

I don’t turn to look at Mum before I leave. She’s humming now, a self-satisfied, jaunty little tune that rubs in just how totally pathetic she must think I am. I know she’s worried by my lack of a social life, but you’d think I was a thirty-year-old virgin from the way she acts. She’s more damned happy when I bring a friend home than when I got accepted into uni two years ahead. Where’s the serious parental logic in
that
?

But at least I’ve made the phone call now and Jacinta has agreed to come. I can’t believe it. I’ve idolised her for
the last year, and I never thought I’d have a chance. The fact that she is two years older than me makes it even more far out. I bet when Mum and Dad first opted to put me up two years at school they never thought for one second how that might impact on my pool of girls. As if being an Asian midget weren’t bad enough, they had to cripple me with being young.

Only now it hits me. Asking out Jacinta was the easy part. What will she expect of me? I know I shouldn’t, but my thoughts rush straight to me and her out on some balcony (I’ve got Baz Luhrmann’s
Romeo + Juliet
stuck in my head from Year 12 English) and she’s leaning up against the wall, and I’m putting my hands onto her shoulders and I’m moving in, so slowly, for the kiss …

‘Toby, love …’ Mum’s sneaked up behind me and interrupts the second that I’m metaphysically tasting sweet Jacinta’s mouth. I feel the blush from hell light up my face. ‘Lance’s parents will be there, won’t they?’

‘Of course.’ I still can’t look her in the eye, in case she sees Jacinta there. And of course she reads this as a kind of code for telling lies — it never would occur to her that I might have a secret, independent thought system inside my head.

‘Maybe I’ll just ring his folks …’ She picks up the phone book and I’m about to stop her when I realise this
isn’t about me at all. It’s about Rita.

‘I promise I’ll keep an eye on her, Mum. Carl and Don’ll be there too. We’ll all make sure she’s okay.’

She smiles at me then, and I figure I have read it right. ‘Thanks Tobe.’ She laughs. ‘I know — you’re both nearly adults … but it’s all so new to me as well.’ She plonks a kiss onto my head and returns to her painting — a cubist mish-mash of a face.

I can’t really blame her for her concern. Genes again. To think that something so warm and constant as a mother’s love is programmed into her merely so those little puppet-master genes can be spread. Whole species — the whole way that society is structured — comes down to the force that makes them want to replicate and to survive. Once you get this through your head, every action in the world seems so much simpler to understand. You gotta love how science works.

Don’s car is revving in the driveway as we finally escape from Mum. Rita’s playing it really cool, as if she goes to parties with me every night. In fact, she’s ten times calmer than me. Picking up Jacinta on the way seemed such a good idea when I suggested it, but now the prospect of
an audience to my awkwardness really sucks. My only consolation is that Carl’s meeting us at Lance’s and I won’t have to put up with his leering winks till then.

Jacinta appears at the front door of her house before we’ve even pulled up outside, and she rushes to the car like she’s almost keen. I’m so busy trying not to stare at the way she’s bursting from her low-cut top I can hardly speak. She squeezes past me with a grin, and into the back with Rita. ‘Hiya all.’

She’s wearing so much
eau de chemical
I have to wind the window down, but bloody hell she looks good. She’s curled her thick blonde hair just like a movie star and her make-up has turned her eyes an icy blue. I can tell that Don thinks she’s looking hot as well — he’s peeking into his rear-view mirror and grinning like Jim Carrey in
The Mask
.

We’re about two blocks from Lance’s place when a thumping vibrates through the car. Don pulls up quickly, sticks his head out the window, stares towards the back and groans. ‘Oh man!’ He flings the door open and storms out, kicking at the tyre in his fury. ‘Lame.’

I climb out too, to see if I can help, but hoping that the answer’s no cos I don’t have a clue about how to fix anything to do with cars. Jacinta and Rita climb out as well, and we’re all just standing there staring at a tyre so
completely flat the rubber’s flattened down like road-kill.

‘You gonna change it?’ Jacinta asks. She’s checking her watch and a little frown line is forming through the make-up on her forehead.

‘The spare’s back at home.’ Don kicks the flattened tyre again. ‘I took it out to check it and forgot to put the damn thing back.’

‘So? Leave it. It’s a heap of junk anyway.’ Jacinta obviously hasn’t got the faintest clue just how much Don loves this car.

‘Better not,’ I counter. ‘We’ll need it later to get home.’

The last of the evening light is fading, and a chilly breeze is stirring up the trees along the street. Jacinta rolls her eyes at Rita and takes her hand. ‘Come on,’ she says, ‘we’ll walk to Lance’s and leave these two to sort this out.’

‘But —’ Rita’s going to argue, but Jacinta’s turned her eyes on me and I can see impatience and disgust creeping in.

I panic. ‘That’s cool,’ I say. ‘Good idea.’

Rita’s eyes widen — she must be able to read that I’m getting psyched. She nods. ‘It shouldn’t take us long — we’ll meet you there.’

Jacinta taps the boot. ‘You got some beer?’

Don nods and whacks it open, revealing an
astounding stash of alcohol: beer, mixes and an untouched bottle of 42 Below. Jacinta plucks the vodka from the pile and tucks it under her arm without a please or thank you. ‘See ya,’ she snaps, and starts off down the street with her shoes slow-clapping on the footpath to underline she’s
not
impressed.

Rita turns back to me and shrugs. ‘You want me to ring Dad?’ There’s disappointment in her eyes too, like if she doesn’t get to the party right now some unknown force will never let her go again.

‘Nah. You go. It won’t take long.’ I’m trying to sound nonchalant and manly, but there’s no point. Jacinta’s already out of range and Rita’s running hard to catch her up. Great seduction skills, man. You played the fish onto the line then lost her.

Don’s calling up his dad on his mobile phone and it’s clear his old man is far from pleased. Eventually he hangs up and nods his head. ‘It’s sweet,’ he says. He pulls a beer out of the pile and opens it, jerking with his head to offer me one too, but I shake my head. In truth, I’m not much of a drinker — it takes about half the quantity all my friends drink to make me drunk. But I know refusing booze is social death, so when I can’t pull the lame age-restriction excuse I tough it out and try to save what little reputation I might have by aiming to stop short of spewing.

Don shimmies up onto the bonnet of the car to wait, and I clamber up beside him. We can see the girls crossing the road beside the school, and it strikes me that Rita’s grown taller — she’s nearly at Jacinta’s shoulders.

‘She’s looking really nice tonight.’ Don says this so respectfully I wonder if he’s lusting after Jacinta too. I’ve certainly never seen him let someone take his booze so passively before — it’s a bit of a worry. Don’s got two years on me and so he must figure he’s the first in line.

Only, what’s the point in arguing? Neither of us has a chance. It’s clear as daylight to me now, as Don downs his first beer and opens up another, that Jacinta Matthews only wanted me to get her in to Lance’s party. I feel so bloody stupid once I realise that I wouldn’t even bother going to the party if it wasn’t for Rita.

‘Give’s a sip?’ I swig down a mouthful of Don’s
lukewarm
beer, and shudder. It’s not the beer, though, that makes me sick. It’s me.

I think Don must be feeling it too, cos he starts talking about his car, and all the stages he has gone through to fix it up. It’s the Don equivalent of comfort food — the thing he does when everything else in his life is shit. As a consequence, he talks about it quite a lot, so I no longer have to listen hard — just grunt and nod occasionally to show I care. It’s just as well. I keep
thinking about the party, and worrying about Rita being there without me, and wondering how the hell I’m going to face Jacinta when we finally make an appearance.

Don’s sculled his third beer by the time Sidney, his old man, finally shows up. It’s now around 9.45 and Sidney would’ve started drinking about five. I used to have Don on about his dad driving when he was drunk, but over the years I’ve come to realise there’s no point. Besides, Sidney never acts drunk. He doesn’t slur his words, or get all rambly and sentimental like my Dad does, on the rare occasions when he drinks at all.

Now, as Sidney pulls up behind us, he brakes so hard his whole car lurches forward with a wheezy sigh. He flicks open the boot, his face set hard as concrete.

Don doesn’t muck around; he’s lugging the spare tyre out and heaving it over to his car. ‘Thanks Dad,’ he mumbles, careful not to meet Sidney’s eye. He’s crouched down, working at the wheel nuts already, and the defensive curve of his back is painful to witness.

Sidney just sits there, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and watching as Don, incredibly efficient, changes the tyre. All I have to do is pass the wheel nuts, but I slap them into his outstretched hand as though I’m a theatre nurse and he’s a surgeon. That’s the irony of being a brainy loser — every pathetic personal weakness
is so clear to me, the only way I can cope with it is to take the piss out of myself. Thankfully this has the added bonus of deflecting bullies, cos they’re never smart enough to get a bigger laugh at my expense than I do.

Don’s just putting the dead tyre into his boot when Sidney starts his car again. ‘Hey Donald,’ he calls, and beckons Don over with a jerk of his head. Don wanders over, leans down towards the open window and Sidney’s hand shoots out to give him a jarring smack across the face. Don staggers back under the force of it, still in shock as Sidney revs his car and wheelies off.

I’ve learnt not to make too much of this kind of thing — the fact I’ve witnessed it seems to hurt Don more than the actual beating — but it’s impossible not to ask, ‘Are you okay?’

He shrugs the question off, although there’s a huge red welt across his cheek and his lip is swelling up where it’s been mashed into his teeth. He tries to smile, which just makes it look more painful, and climbs back into his car.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s get the hell to that party.’