Smashed (4 page)

She sniffs impressively and stalks past me, heading
for her painting room. Dad wipes crystals of rock salt off the table into his thin brown palm.

‘I really didn’t think, Dad —’

‘That’s her point.’ He sighs. ‘It’ll be fine. Give her a moment or three to calm down, then take her in a cup of coffee.’

Neither of us talks as we clear the dishes off the table, stack the dishwasher and rinse the pots. It’s like we’re both praying that it won’t be long before the sun shines again, now the storm has done its worst.

Rita’s sure not helping, though. She’s left her dinner plate untouched outside her bedroom door. I consider going in to check on her, but when I tap she bellows out, ‘Go away.’

Now every female I care about has screamed at me within the last few hours. Stuff them all.

I throw myself onto my bed and force myself to blank it out. I can’t afford to let them screw up my exam.

Surprisingly, the following morning passes pretty peacefully, apart from my exam nerves. Rita has
high-tailed
it off to her friend Sally’s again, and Mum has shut herself into the sun porch to paint. She’s nearly
finished the cubist image, and is down to the final small brushstrokes for which she’s known. She has this way of painting something so well formed you think it’s finished, then she does a whole extra layer on top of it — these tiny strokes that wiggle and weave across the canvas and transform whatever she’s painted into a living, moving, vibrant thing. She loves this part, so I figure she’s calmed down a bit from yesterday or she’d be slashing paint around on a much bigger scale.

She cooks me lunch too, scrambled eggs and mushrooms, insisting as always that I eat really well before I take on an exam. I try to cram a few last facts into my head but, really, I know all I need to. The three hours of the exam seem to fly past. I’m still adding extra little notes when the supervisor calls a halt. I love this feeling — like everything I need to know is in my head and I can call on it and use it on demand. It’s a control thing. When all else around me is rubbish, I can rely on my brain to process information and regurgitate it with impressive ease. I know it sounds vain, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s the only time I really feel comfortable inside myself. Like all my brain neurons have switched themselves to high gear and are humming perfectly.

When my bus arrives at Courtenay Place after the exam, Carl is swinging off the bus stop. I’d completely
forgotten we’d agreed to meet, and the sight of his smirking face fills me with dread. He looks like he’s been waiting there for hours, judging by the pile of cigarette butts at his feet. And he probably has; he’s been unemployed again for months now.

Rather than have him blab my shameful story to the world, I hurtle off the bus and drag him away from the queuing crowd.

‘So, Young, you dirty sod!’ He digs me in the ribs so hard I’m almost winded. ‘Tell old Carly-boy the works!’ He’s watching my reaction, and is hyped as hell.

‘Forget it,’ I snarl. ‘It’s not like you don’t already know.’

‘Know what?’ He’s looking genuinely puzzled, which can only mean he
doesn’t
know. Only now I’ve walked right into it, and can’t escape.

‘Come on,’ I hedge, ‘I need a coffee.’

He dances excited circles around me, drivelling on about how the noise-control people carted off Pagoli’s stereo and revealing who screwed who, until we’re settled in a corner of Bings Diner with the local drunks. He’s almost bursting out of his flaking skin as I stir my coffee round and round, trying to form the fateful words. I think about lying to him, but he’ll find out anyway, so what’s the point?

When I finally tough it out and start to talk, the true
Carl Sissons makes a show. All signs of humour drop away, and he’s sitting there with his mouth hanging open, groaning, as I tell it.

‘You poor bastard,’ he whispers. ‘So close … and yet so far …’

But then the psycho Carl rides again, and he starts to roll around the table, laughing. He’s trying to talk, but the hilariousness of my pathetic life sweeps him away.

I’m not in the mood for this, so just get up from the table and stalk out of the diner. From the bus stop I can still see him in there, re-enacting my humiliation for a couple of tramps at the next table. There are times when I truly hate him, and this is one of them.

Later, as I walk through the front gate at home, the first thing I notice is an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway. Inside, Dad is sitting at the kitchen table with Rita’s school friend Sally Ritchie and her mother. They all look like someone’s died, their faces tight and mouths set in grim, ugly lines. Rita’s nowhere to be seen. Sally spots me first; she blushes an incredible shade of vivid pink and turns away.

‘What’s going on?’ There are such bad vibes in the
room my heart starts beating wildly and I have to draw up a chair really quickly. Dad’s gaze follows my progress, and it frightens the hell out of me to see tears glinting there. ‘Where’s Mum?’

Mrs Ritchie jerks her head at Sally and they both stand up. ‘Ring me, Paul,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry to have been the bearer of this news.’

By now I’m about ready to start yelling, but I wait until Dad’s walked them to the door and pulled it shut.

‘What the hell …?’

Dad sits back down, an ancient, beaten Chinese man. ‘It’s Rita,’ he starts, his voice cracking. ‘Sally says she was … that someone … slept with her … forced her … when she was drunk, on Saturday night.’

‘It’s impossible! Who would do that?’ My voice is so full of disgust and disbelief it sounds like someone else, not me. ‘Tell me who?’

Dad stands up then, and drops one hand onto each of my shoulders. His chin wobbles as he tries to form the words. ‘That’s the really awful part … apparently it was … Don.’

I
can’t believe what Dad is telling me.

‘You’re joking! There’s no way Don would do that.’
No chance
.

‘I’m sorry, mate. It seems he did.’

‘Maybe someone’s just stirring …’ But even as I say this, fragmented memories from Saturday night stampede into my head. Don perving through the rear-view mirror of his car. Don saying something — what was it? — about how nice she looked.
She!
I thought he was lusting for Jacinta, when all the time he had the sicko creepy hots for Rita. And
I’m
the gormless idiot who asked him to look after her.
What had I done?

‘Rita
told
you this?’

Dad pats me on the arm and sits back down. He shakes his head. ‘No. That’s the part that’s hurt your mum. Apparently she told Sally, and Sally told
her
mum. They came around here about an hour ago. I walked in on it.’

‘Is it possible it isn’t true?’

Dad sighs, and it sounds like he’s expelling his
last breath. ‘Sally said Rita was hysterical — that it was coming back to her in tiny bits.’

‘But couldn’t she have got it wrong?’

‘We’ll have to wait till your mum comes home. She finally managed to coax Rita to go with her to the
after-hours
doctor.’ Dad wipes a hand across his eyes, like he’s trying to wipe away what’s taken place. ‘Whatever’s happened, she’s totally traumatised. She took off down the street when Mum tried to ask her about it, and nearly got hit by a car. When Mum managed to drag her home, she noticed all these bruises on Rita’s arms.’

‘You mean …?’

This is too much. Before Dad can even answer, my legs are carrying me out the door and I’m thundering down the back yard. Past the empty carport. Past the shed. Past the veggie patch. Past the clothesline. Everything seems red-filtered and I can only see what’s directly in front of me. The back fence is looming and I still can’t stop. I slam myself into it, head first — hoping, I suppose, this will somehow knock me back into a more sane dimension.

It doesn’t hurt much, but I can’t keep my balance and my knees seem to buckle under me. I slide down the rough-sawn timber, and small splinters of wood tear at my forehead, nose and cheeks.
He can’t be saying that
. He
can’t mean Donald Donaldson, my co-best friend for the past seven years, got my little sister pissed, enticed her into bed and
raped
her.

Suddenly my head is hammering so hard I can’t hold back these stupid tears. I’m sitting here like some blubbing little cry-baby and I hurt so much inside it’s like each sob drives a cross-bow arrow deep into my chest and twists it.
How could the bastard do this?
He’s known Rita since she was about eight … she’s like
his
little sister.
It can’t be right.
I mean, even if he
was
keen on her, and drunk as hell — and there’s no doubt in my mind he was pissed that night, he always is — he wouldn’t try to hurt her.
Would he?
I
trusted
him to get her home. To keep her safe. Oh, man!
Please don’t let this be true
.

By the time my brain connections stop fizzing and steaming and trying their best to pop apart, I realise it’s growing dark. My head still hurts like hell and the grazes on my face are stinging in the rising cold.

A car pulls into our driveway, its high beam flaring like prison search lights. As the engine stutters to a halt, a car door creaks open, then slams back shut again. Only once. Is Rita refusing to get out? The thought of her sitting there alone in the car is so awful that I’m finally forced to my feet. But I’m terrified to face her too — it’s
my
fault this has happened and there’s nothing I can do to take it
back or put it right. But when I reach the car, I see it’s empty.

Inside the kitchen, the glare of light is blinding. It takes me a moment to focus before I see that Mum is sobbing in Dad’s arms. He must send her some kind of signal that I’m there, cos she draws in this huge shaky breath and lowers herself into a chair. A feeling of dread, as huge as a bulldozer, crawls its way up my spine until it settles on my shoulders as I sit down opposite her.

‘Where is she?’

‘Sally’s.’ She shrugs and fights back a sob. ‘She threatened to run away if I didn’t drop her back there and leave her be.’

‘The doctor?’

‘She refused to let the doctor examine her. The most she would agree to was to take some pills.’ Mum sounds so hollow, like all the life’s been sucked out of her. I’m terrified to meet her eyes.

‘Are you sure she didn’t lead him on?’ I can’t help thinking of Jacinta and that cutesy little nightie thing. Would I have stopped trying if she’d led me on then said no? Well, if I hadn’t spewed, that is.

Mum’s palms smash down on the table top and she’s on her feet. ‘How dare you even think that? That’s not the point.’ She leans right over me. ‘There is no excuse —
no
excuse
— for him to have done this. She’s fourteen years old! Apart from anything else,
that
makes it against the law. And the fact that she was drunk makes no difference — she told him no!’

Dad puts an arm around her and pulls her back out of my face. But he’s not letting me off the hook either. ‘Even if she
had
said yes, it’s still a crime.’

‘She admitted to the doctor he … that he … punched her.’ Mum can hardly say the words.

Dad draws her close to him and hugs her. I watch as all her anger bleeds away until their pain is as transparent as two winter leaves. Seeing them cling to each other like this, so crushed, almost overwhelms me. They’ve always just handled stuff head-on before; never looked so powerless and broken down. It’s this, combined with the thought of Don’s great meaty fists on little Rita, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, that’s just too much.

Bloody Don.
Bloody Don
. ‘I’m going to kill him!’ I’m yelling this before the words are even forming properly inside my head. ‘I’m going to hunt the bastard down and smash his head in!’

I don’t even know where these thoughts are coming from — it’s like the ancient reptile part of my brain has taken over and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I can’t sit still; I start pacing the kitchen — forward, back, forward,
back — imagining my fists beating into Don’s sick, perverted face. I’m muttering the vilest of threats, but the words don’t register, and it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s the picture, the image of that awful scene, which possesses me. I keep thinking of how small and vulnerable Rita is … of his sweaty body forcing down on hers … his boozy breath …

‘I’m gonna make sure that sick, pathetic loser will never —’

‘Toby!’ Mum grabs me by the shoulders and stops me short. ‘Don’t talk like that.’

‘Did you ring the police? Are you going to get the bastard locked away?’

‘It’s not that simple, Tobe.’ Mum brushes my hair out of my eyes, and it’s such a familiar and soothing gesture it makes me want to howl out loud. ‘Unless Rita is prepared to make a statement there’s nothing we can do.’

‘That’s crazy! If she’s got marks on her —’

‘I don’t know, Toby. I really don’t know. I guess I’ll have to do some phoning round, but meanwhile, you must
not
resort to violence of any sort.’

‘Jesus! Don’t you understand? If I see him again — run into him — I don’t trust myself. I’ll have to bloody kill him if I see him — I know I will.’ My voice is cracking and shooting up about ten octaves. ‘You can’t expect me to
do
nothing
, Mum.’

It’s like my body is electrically charged from deep within and motion is the only way to relieve it. I break Mum’s hold and turn towards the kitchen door, punching it until the handle rattles and the hinges groan. I can see the skin splitting on my knuckles, but — honest to god — I can’t feel a thing. Some crazy person has invaded my body and is acting in a way that’s just not me.

‘Stop that! For god’s sake, stop that!’ Mum’s tissue-thin veneer of calm is breaking back down. ‘Violence is not the answer, Toby. Never is. Never was.’

‘What else am I supposed to do?
I’m
the one who let it happen,
I’m
the one who has to —’

Dad steps up behind me then, and presses his warm palm into the space between my shoulder blades. He speaks so softly I have to strain past the hammering in my head to hear his words. ‘If you see him, and you want to whack him, that’s fine with me. I’ll understand. Just don’t go overboard … one good punch, and walk away.’ The pressure on my back increases, and it’s as though he’s plugged himself into the anger source within my body, his hand the conduit to its safe release. ‘I’ll back you up — god knows, I want to smash the little prick myself.’

‘Paul! You can’t condone —’

‘Leave it, Maeve.’ He pats my back and turns to Mum.
‘Give him time to process this. Besides, we’ve got a job to do.’

‘I guess.’ Her sigh is so intense the exhaled air could wear down rock. She passes cold fingers across my cheek. ‘We need you to sit by the phone — in case Rita calls. We’re going out.’

‘Where?’ I ask.

She picks up the car keys and holds the door open for Dad. ‘We’re going over to Don’s house,’ she says. Then it seems she almost grins — a bitter little ripple around the corners of her mouth. ‘I may not condone violence, but let’s just say I feel the need to look the sleaze-ball in the eye and curse him till his dying day.’

This, at least, is reassuring. This sounds more like the mother I know and love.

The house is so quiet it drives me nuts. I keep thinking about Rita hiding out at Sally’s place and it seems so crazy — she should be here, home safe with me. But that’s a joke.
I’m
the one who left her vulnerable. Toby Young, the world’s worst chooser of trustworthy friends.

I pick up the phone about ten times before I finally summon up the courage to call. Sally’s mum answers and
I know she’s trying to convince Rita to come to the phone, cos it takes an age before I finally hear Rita breathing on the other end.

‘Hey.’ I try to imagine how she’s looking. It seems a lifetime since I saw her dancing so happily beside Lance’s pool.

‘What?’

‘Are you okay?’ There’s a noise between a grunt and a snort — like she can’t believe I’d be so stupid as to ask. ‘Look …’

‘What?’

I take a deep breath then, trying to remember the grand speech I have planned. But my magnificent brain has turned to custard and all I can manage to blurt out is, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah.’ Now I can hear a little wobble in her voice. I’m about to launch in to the speech, which has miraculously sprung back into my mind, though my heart’s going about a million beats per second and I can feel the sharp, hot warning signs of wanting to cry, when she just hangs up.

Darwin would no doubt reckon that the fact we share so many genes is why Rita’s pain-filled voice is killing me. And I guess Darwin’s right, if it’s purely a matter of securing some kind of future for our shared genetic code. Kin-selected altruism he calls it, this automatic reflex to
protect family. But why does it have to hurt so much? Couldn’t we have been programmed to experience bloody great laughing fits when one of our genetic bondsmen or women is in pain? Wouldn’t the promise of a good old laugh be enough of a reason to help them out? Why did nature have to go and manufacture such a complicated and agonising thing as love?

The disconnect rings on, mocking me. But for some reason I can’t quite make myself hang up the phone. It’s the only link I have to Rita. I just keep holding the stupid thing, in case somehow she’s sitting there on the other end doing the same. I wonder if she’s crying too?

‘I would have wrote you a letter, but I couldn’t spell “yuck!”’
Carl’s singing nearly gives me a heart attack. Clearly he’s let himself in without knocking, and now he’s looking at me like I’m some kind of pus-encrusted leper. ‘What the hell is going down, dude?’

I hang up the phone and swipe my arm across my face to hide my girly tears. ‘Nothing.’

‘Like hell. I just saw your folks around at Don’s, and your Dad and Sidney are damn near having a stand-up fight.’

Oh man! Sidney could flatten Dad in about two seconds — where’s the justice in the world if he hits Dad? ‘Have you talked to Don?’

‘Nope. Sidney had him working Sunday, and there’s no way I was going to walk in on that dog-fight now.’ He laughs, and starts skipping around the room like a cartoon prize-fighter, parrying at the air and generally being a total dick.

I jump up and grab his fists. ‘It’s not bloody funny.’

There’s a moment when his eyes spark like he’s considering having a real go at me, but maybe he can see some kind of warning sign flash across my face, cos he stops, flicking my hands away and swaggering backwards cowboy-style.

‘Whoa there, liddle buddy.’ He perches on the side of a chair. ‘S’up?’

I’m not sure how to start telling him — not sure if I even
should
. But there’s no way I can be friends with Don any more, so I figure Carl needs to know. ‘After Rita got drunk at Lance’s party, Don raped her.’

Carl’s mouth falls open. He’s trying to form words, but nothing’s coming out. Any other time it would be funny. His face has gone a weird shade of pink, the top layer of flaky skin mottled like a blast victim. Next he’s up and almost running round the edges of the room, and I know just how he feels.