Smashed (5 page)

‘You’re absolutely sure of this?’ He’s begging me to deny it.

‘Yep.’ Exhaustion sweeps over me again. Having to cope with Carl’s shock as well is just not fair. ‘Rita won’t talk to the cops. She won’t even come home from Sally’s.’

He’s tearing at the eczema on his arms, drawing blood. ‘But he’s — but …’ Suddenly he slams himself on the head with both hands, so hard the noise is like a gunshot in the room. It must have bloody hurt him, cos he reels — almost falling over — before he throws himself down on our couch. ‘How could he do that?’

I don’t even bother answering. It’s clear the question’s not for me. He just sits there, staring at the floor, slowly shaking his head from side to side.

Carl’s gone by the time Mum and Dad get home, their faces unreadable as they walk into the lounge.

‘How did it —’

I don’t get any further, cos Mum puts a finger to her lips and shushes me. Then I see why. Rita slides in through the door behind them. She’s very pale, her hair a crazy tangled afro, and she has these huge pools of black beneath her eyes. She doesn’t look up, just slinks quietly through the lounge and down towards her bedroom.

Mum follows her, shrugging at me as she passes. Dad
goes over to the sideboard and takes out the unopened bottle of whisky one of his clients gave him about three Christmases ago. He carries it through to the kitchen and returns with three glasses — handing one of them to me.

‘Here, I reckon we all need one of these.’ He swigs some down, shuddering as he swallows it, slightly gagging. He never was a drinker, Dad.

‘What happened?’

‘Well, he admitted it — right in front of both his folks.’ He drinks again, this time managing it without the gag.

I take a tiny sip: he’s poured it neat. It burns a track right down to my stomach, where it smoulders. ‘Carl said he saw you’n Sidney almost fighting.’

Dad grunts. ‘If Don needed a defence for being such an arsehole, Sidney sure as hell would provide it.’ He shakes his head. ‘That’s not a scene I’d like to have to go through again.’

‘What happens now?’

Mum comes back in, and I’ve never seen her look so old. She takes the third glass of whisky off the coffee table and sculls it. ‘God knows,’ she answers, on Dad’s behalf. She slides down onto the couch between Dad and me and puts an arm around each of us. ‘But right now our main concern is Rita.’

‘You mean Don gets away with it?’ I take another tiny
sip, more to swallow back my outrage than anything.

Dad lets out a bitter snort. ‘Never you mind about Don, mate … Revenge is best served cold.’

I’m still mulling over what this means when we collectively jump as the phone starts to ring. ‘It’s okay,’ I assure Mum and Dad, ‘it’ll be Carl.’

I pick up the phone and he starts right in. ‘I’ve arranged to meet him tomorrow night — we’re s’posed to be going for a burn around the wharves.’

‘What time?’ Something cold and hard is forming inside me. Hearing Carl makes it real.

‘Ten.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Rowing club.’

‘Okay.’ My heart’s starting to race again, but this time it’s pumping me full of courage. ‘Thanks.’

‘What time shall we meet up first?’

I take a deep breath, letting it out real easy before I answer him.

‘You stay home.’

I
have the most terrible night’s sleep I’ve had for years. I can’t stop my brain whirling around, thinking about Rita and Don and what the hell I’m going to do when I meet him tomorrow night. It’s not like the olden days, when if someone did your family wrong you’d challenge them to a duel with pistols or to swords at dawn. No amount of slapping Don across the face with lacy gloves is going to solve the problem here. It’s going to take some stauncher stuff, and staunch has never been one of my strengths. In fact, I’m struggling to think of
any
strengths except a twisted, rambling brain.

I mean, I understand the biology behind the whole knight-in-shining-armour-charging-up-to-save-the-damsel-from-the-dragon thing — how heroism and sacrifice are programmed into us in case we need to save the next closest genetic copy of ourselves. If we all had clones we’d be racing around trying to defend them with our lives, cos it wouldn’t matter if we died — our clones would be an almost exact copy, so what would it matter if we carked it
in the process of defending them? Siblings, though, like Rita and me, share merely fifty per cent of our genetic material … so does that mean I’d leave her trapped inside a burning building cos I’m genetically programmed to save
me
first? Hell no. That’s another place where Darwin got it wrong. Rita’s worth hundreds of me.

Besides, it’s my fault —
mine
— that, just as I was trying to get into Jacinta’s pants, I was leaving Rita open to Don’s attack. Would he have tried it if I’d still been there?
No
. Would I have done my best to flatten Don if he had?
Abso-bloody-lutely
.

What I just can’t figure is where this new Rambo trait in me has been hiding for the past seventeen years. If I’d felt this keen to smash in heads when I was six, Marco Walden would never have had the chance to flush my undies down the toilet at the swimming baths without a single peep from me; Joshua Treadwell would never have called me ‘Ching Chong’ for the whole of that endless Year 7. And if I’d had the guts to smash in Danny Blackmore’s face the time he down-trou’d me in front of the St Mary’s hockey team, I probably wouldn’t have gone on to develop panic attacks every time I spot one of their uniforms.

The really infuriating thing is that Don and Carl were the ones who rescued me — saw me as some kind of 
freakish pet — and have saved me from the role of victim ever since. But it’s not
entirely
one way. I’ve stuck by them, defended them when they’ve done stupid things like setting science labs on fire and Gladwrapping the staff toilet seats. The fact they knew
me
was probably their one redeeming feature in the eyes of the school. And Mum and Dad stood up for them! Told the school principal to take a hike when he phoned them and suggested they ‘were not the most suitable of friends’.

What am I supposed to do? Lie back and just take all this — accept I’m a walk-over like some mindless ant who doesn’t give a damn if their nearest and dearest proceed to eat them live?
They’re
prepared to hang bloated on the ceiling of their ant nest just in case their fellow ants decide they need an extra snack when food is scarce. Well, bugger that.

I can’t even add up the times I’ve included Don in family stuff when I’d rather not have but couldn’t resist the tragic way he’d mope and fish for invitations cos his own home life’s just so septic. He’s not only come to
my
birthdays, but weaselled his way in to Mum’s and Dad’s quite frequently, and
always
comes to Rita’s too. It makes me sick. Just when did he start liking her? Christ, he’d better bloody like her — the thought that he’d do that to her and not even
like
her is even worse … Well,
maybe not. Hell, I dunno.

I slam my fists into my pillow, imagining Don’s smarmy mug. Pulverising it. Muttering every evil
witch-doctor
curse I can dredge up as my hands fly. ‘You lying, cheating, perving —’

‘Toby?’ Rita’s standing at my bedroom door and I’m shocked to see it’s light outside. She’s looking at me, puzzled. ‘What happened to your face?’

Face? Oh yeah. ‘I had a run-in with a fence.’ Now that she’s reminded me, it hurts like hell. The grazes pull my skin tight, and talking only makes it worse.

She nods and turns to leave.

‘Rita — wait!’ I drag myself upright.

She isn’t keen to stay — hovers in the doorway, her arms across her chest, on guard.

‘You want to talk?’

‘No.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’

As soon as I say it I know it’s pathetic. I remember when Mum’s sister died, her friends would drop in food and ask her this same question. She’d always say politely, ‘No’. But one day I guess it got too much for her, cos she cracked and said to someone, ‘Could you talk to God and ask him for my sister back?’ Rita’s looking at me like she’s remembering Mum’s answer too.

‘I mean …’ I say. I want to think of something really brotherly and helpful, but I have no idea what.

I’ve never seen Rita look so closed before. It’s as though Don’s stolen the light out of her eyes; replaced it with a steely flint. ‘Forget it,’ she snaps. ‘It’s no big deal.’ She runs her big toe along the join in the carpet. Shrugs. ‘I’ve got to get to school.’ And with that, she leaves.

I can’t bear all these road blocks, so drag myself out of bed and chase after her. She’s standing in the middle of her bedroom, just staring off into space. ‘Hey sis …’ I try to hug her, but it’s like embracing a fencepost. ‘Somehow or other I’ll make him pay.’

She stirs a little when I say this — turns just enough so I can see the deep blue of sleeplessness under her eyes. ‘I’m okay,’ she says. ‘I just wish everyone would leave me alone.’ She pulls away to collect her schoolbag off the bombsite of her floor, and then turns back to me. ‘Just don’t go telling this to all your friends …’ She doesn’t meet my eye. ‘If word gets out, I’ll never,
ever
live it down.’

I think of Carl’s brotherly concern and almost tell her, but realise I can’t face her going psycho when she finds out I’ve already blabbed. ‘You gonna be okay at school?’

She snorts. ‘It’s athletics day. I’ll be out of there by lunchtime.’

‘If anybody gives you trouble, tell me, eh?’ I put on
my best Mafia voice, and swagger like a gangland boss. Usually she’d laugh out loud at bragging like this and strike a Mr Puniverse pose to mock me.

This morning, all she does is nod.

By mid-afternoon there’s no way I can concentrate on studying for my next two exams, so I fake it while I eavesdrop on a phone call Mum is making to some kind of rape-crisis place. She’s asking about counselling and taking notes, and by the way she’s talking I’m guessing there is no quick fix. When she finally gets off the phone, she’s sniffing fit to kill, and I find her crying at the kitchen table.

‘You okay?’ I put the kettle on to make coffee — if there’s one thing guaranteed to settle her it’s caffeine.

‘The scariest thing, Tobe, is that all the time we were being so calm and grown up at Don’s house, the only thing I really wanted to do was smash him and his bastard of a father.’

It’s quite a confession for her, given her own lecture to me. I know she knows what I’m thinking, cos she blushes so hard-out all her freckles merge. I’d love to say ‘I told you so’, but she’d never let me live it down — Dad’s
revenge-is-best-served-cold theory is Mum’s default mode.

‘So what’d his mum do?’

Mum shakes her head. ‘Poor Carol was in her pyjamas and dressing gown.
She
got what we were saying alright — told Donald straight up he could go to jail.’ She takes the coffee I hand her and blows air onto its surface before she sips. ‘She kept glaring at Sidney and muttering about somebody called Donna or something.’

‘Danica?’

‘Yeah, that’s the name.’

‘She’s Don’s sister. I met her once, when I first started college. She went to live with her grandmother. That’s all I know.’

‘Well, whatever the reason, it must’ve been pretty ugly, cos it’s sure as hell still a big deal with Carol.’

I can see Mum wants to talk the whole thing through with me, but the last thing I feel like right now is some
in-depth
dissection of Don’s screwed-up family life. Besides, there’s a clock ticking inside my head and the alarm is set for ten tonight. ‘I gotta go.’

‘But what about your studying? Your dinner?’ Her hands fly out, like she wants to hold me back. ‘I thought it would be good if we were all here tonight — try to get some kind of normality back.’

I hate that she sounds so desperate to put things right, when it’s obvious she’s really just as shocked as I am. ‘Sorry.’ I scuff a quick kiss across her hair, scared that if I’m any nicer it’ll set her off. ‘I’m out till late.’

I have no idea of where I’m going, but as I cross the lounge to grab my coat, I detour past the cabinet and slip Dad’s Christmas whisky under my sweatshirt. One thing’s for sure … the only way I’m going to be brave enough to meet Don face to face is if I’m pissed.

It’s not so bad, alcohol, once you get a taste for it. If I sip it re-e-a-al slow, it stops burning after the third glass and just tingles. And I seem to have overcome the spewing — if I don’t move one tiny centimetre for about an hour while the world does its spinning trick, it eventually settles and the nausea passes. I could get good at this. I could be bloody brilliant! The Einstein of Alcoholics. The da Vinci of da Visky! Ha!

I’m hiding out from the disapproving hordes, who eye the grazes on my face as if they’re the devil’s mark, and have set myself up in a corner of the greenbelt, up on Mount Vic. It’s beautiful below, the light refracting orange off the water with the last of the autumn sunset. I can see
the stream of ant-people down on the waterfront — all scurrying round, so absorbed in their little programmed lives. Like Dad, who got up this morning and put on his black suit and tie, off to help the rich hide their money from the taxman and get richer still. He’ll sit there all day, worrying about Rita, but it would never occur to him to call in sick. Puppets, all of us. Even me. Sitting here with my back to a freezing concrete reservoir, stressing myself about what I’m going to say — or do — tonight … but can I stop myself from doing it? Hell no.

My guts start rumbling like a sewer drain, but the whisky’s numbed my legs and it takes me several tries to scramble upright. I stash the bottle behind some scrubby bushes and bowl on down to Courtenay Place, buzzing now with the evening rush. I’ve only got a few bucks on me, so I make my way to Burger King, but my legs seem to have developed some kind of independent thought and refuse to do as they are told. They keep shooting off in the weirdest of directions, so I nearly fall over the Blanket Man who’s camping outside Burger King’s main doors.

‘Sorry man.’ It’s the closest I’ve ever come to him, and I’m half expecting him to leap up from his cross-legged vigil on the footpath and deck me. But he just looks up at me with his spaced-out eyes and grins a toothless, drooly grin.

‘S’okay, brother.’ I reckon he’s more pissed than me. He must be absolutely freezing, naked underneath his cruddy old blanket except for this weird nappy-loincloth thing that covers up his private bits. The council’s tried to move him on for years now, but he’s become a local tourist attraction and, judging by the row of bottles tucked up next to him, he’s doing absolutely fine.
Absolutely
Positively Blanket Man.
Way to go! Let the council advertise
that
on their fancy tourist website and watch the hits!

This suddenly seems so bloody funny I can hardly make my order, and some businessman is giving me the hairy eyeball as he picks his mega-lard-arse-burger off the counter next to me. I know what he’s thinking, looking at me like I’m some kind of Asian lower life-form who’s invaded planet Fat-and-White. I’ve been looked at like this all my life, and in the last few years I reckon it’s grown worse.

‘Fat man,’ I throw after him, reminded of that creepy Maurice Gee book we read at school.

Someone behind me sniggers and old Fatty turns a splotchy pink. So this is what it feels like, eh? Like Whoever-Up-In-Heaven is stomping on a lowly, useless bug.
I got the power!