The Beauty Is in the Walking (11 page)

The sun worked its way under my eyelids earlier than I wanted it to on Saturday. Too late I pulled the curtain across and rolled away from the window, but my mind was already kicking into gear so I sat at my desk and tried a bit of Biol. Exam block wasn't far away. I was thinking about breakfast when Dad knocked on my door.

‘Hey, studying at seven on a Saturday morning. You've changed your tune.'

‘Just want to do well. They're the last exams I'll ever do.'

I hadn't thought about it like that until the words were out of my mouth. My last exams ever, so why did I want to do well when I'd start at Merediths whether I aced every subject or bombed like a B-52?

‘You want bacon and eggs?' Dad asked. ‘Mum's still asleep, so it'll be you and me and the newspaper. There's something on the front page you might want to see.'

I was hardly going to give up bacon and eggs to revise Mendel's Law of whatever, but his last comment had me out of my seat quicker than usual. ‘What's in the paper?'

‘You'll see,' he said, teasing me now. ‘After your demo at the cop shop turned sour on you, this should make you feel better.'

He should have had a stopwatch on me as I sprinted up the hall. Absolute world record and we're not talking the Paralympics, either.

‘Holy Jesus!' I breathed, leaning over
The Advocate
. FLICK-KNIFE CLEARED, was the headline. The article beneath said forensic tests had ruled out Mahmoud's knife as the weapon used in the mutilations. There was nothing about Mahmoud himself being cleared, in fact no mention of his name at all and that cut through my excitement even before it had taken hold.

‘He still won't be able to come back, poor kid,' I said, ‘but it gives the finger to those detectives. Makes things better for me, too. Now I can have another go.'

‘Another go at what?'

‘At stopping all the crap about Mahmoud. Palmerston has to know he isn't the one,' I told Dad, snatching up the newspaper and shaking it in front of his eyes. ‘Everyone in town should admit they were too quick to judge him.'

I was caught up in my own enthusiasm, which was why the doubt I found in his eyes brought me down with a thump.

‘What? You think I'm wrong?' I asked, more hotly than I should have.

‘No, looks like he's innocent, sure, but . . .' He searched for a way to explain and frowned when the right words seemed elusive. ‘People are scared because of this Ripper thing, Jake. They're not thinking straight, maybe, but if you go hard over this . . . I don't know . . . seems like rubbing our noses in it, don't you reckon?'

After breakfast I logged on to see whether kids around town had begun to pick up the news, but it was too early yet, so I thought I'd hurry things along with a status update that might fan out across town.

When that was done I picked out individual posts that had turned up when Mahmoud's knife was first confiscated. My heart was back in the game now and pumping hard with an anger I did my best to keep out of what I wrote. Better to pick apart each accusation line by line until all the distortions and just plain bullshit crumbled to dust. I was in the clouds that morning, fired up and downright amazed at the words my fingers put on the screen.

By late in the morning, comments had begun to turn up.

So he didn't use his flick-knife. Doesn't prove anything. No one from Palmerston would cut open an animal like that.

That was the second one to come in and it pretty much summed up the rest – most of them, anyway. At least it didn't come decorated with the four-letter stuff that some kids aimed at Mahmoud and at me for that matter.

Late in the morning Amy rang. ‘Hey, I read the paper like you said to on Facebook. You must be feeling better, eh? Dan and the rest won't be so mad at you now.'

So they
had
cried off deliberately on Friday. Amy didn't realise she'd given herself away and already she was circling around the reason for her call.

‘What are you up to?' she asked.

‘I'm waiting for you to come over and help me study.'

Not even Svenson could come up with a word for the sound that came back at me. ‘Laugh' doesn't capture it and ‘gasp' sounds like she was shocked, when what she really expressed was the joy that comes when you've got just what you wanted without knowing you wanted it.

‘I'll get Mum to drive me,' she said, and for half an hour after she arrived we did go over stuff Miss Jenkins had hinted would be in the exam. All through that half-hour, though, my laptop stayed open on the desk beside us and I couldn't help leaning over to check each new message. Finally, Amy had to ask.

‘What's with your Facebook? Mine's never that active.'

I had to either close it down or tell her how I'd spent the morning.

‘Let me see,' she demanded and I showed her my careful demolition of all the false stories that had built up around Mahmoud.

‘This stuff is fantastic, Jacob, the way you can make your point in words . . .'

‘I don't know how many people I'm convincing, though. Have a look at these,' and I showed her the abusive comments.

‘That's awful,' she muttered, pointing at one of the worst. ‘Do you really want that sort of thing on your page?'

‘They're not all like that,' and I scrolled to one that said,
Way to go, Jacob
.

‘Why don't you set up a separate page?' Amy suggested.

As soon as she said it I saw the sense and in moments I had a name for the page –
Mahmoud Rais is Innocent
; in my head I was already designing the layout. A page would be a Net version of the knife protest, a way to say the crimes weren't solved yet and it wasn't fair to pick on Mahmoud as the only suspect.

When it was done Amy moved to my bed and sat with her back against the wall. ‘Do you have any movies on your laptop?' she asked.

I didn't. Our download limit was too small. ‘I've got an old Jim Carrey movie.'

‘Great.' She didn't even ask what it was.

I joined her sitting up on the bed with the laptop between us like I'd done so many time with Mitch.
The Truman Show
was weird at first. Instead of pratfalls and the kind of cringing laughs you'd expect from Jim Carrey, he started off with cheesy cheerfulness that seemed to be forced on him. Ten minutes in I figured out this was a totally different kind of movie, sort of serious, about a guy whose whole life was a reality TV show and he didn't even know it.

My attention slipped, or did I just become more aware of Amy beside me? I stopped taking in the screen
and turned to watch her, our shoulders touching, hips, thighs, too. She knew I was doing it and rotated her foot to rub against mine. I kept staring at her until she turned to face me.

I wanted to kiss her – a long, lingering kiss. We'd lie flat with our arms around each other and it wouldn't matter that Mum and Dad were on the other side of the wall because that would be everything I wanted, anyway – the warmth, the closeness, Amy's soft curves and the willing way she would kiss me back. I would happily lie like that for hours, the rest of my life. . .

Never happened, though. Amy went back to the movie and I didn't have the nerve to draw her face towards me again with my hand. I tried Svenson's game, with words.

‘Amy,' I whispered, ‘you make me happy.'

She went red in the face and kissed me, a quick peck on the lips before I even knew it. Yeah, it was fun, but I wanted more than a quick peck and
I
wanted to make it happen, not wait for her.

‘No one says the things you say, Jacob.'

An A plus at last, I thought.

Moments later Mum knocked on the door. ‘Would you like a drink, Amy?' she asked. ‘I don't suppose Jacob has offered you anything.'

She went off to get us Cokes while we settled back with
The Truman Show
. It was further along by now and poor Truman was starting to suspect the people around him weren't genuine – all sorts of obstacles would pop up
in his way if he tried to leave the town where they kept him prisoner. My sense of injustice was pricked, just as it had been for Mahmoud. Go Truman!

Amy wasn't really into the movie so much and once we'd done with Cokes we studied Biol until she went home about five. Only one message had turned up on our new Facebook page, from Chloe, saying it was a great idea and she'd asked everyone she knew to ‘like' it.

I doubt Chloe had friended Svenson on Facebook. Most likely she simply told him about the new page at school on Monday, but however Svenson found out he sent a message to the new page at three-thirty-two on Monday afternoon when he would still have been at school. Nothing extravagant – just congratulations for making a stand and a few comments agreeing with others. He didn't identify himself as a teacher at our school or even a Palmerston resident, which meant only locals from town would have known who he was.

This might seem like an unnecessary detail, but that was the surprising thing: I had imagined only kids we knew from around town would show any interest, yet there were messages from people who didn't live anywhere near Palmerston. There was even one from America, for God's sake. Maybe it wasn't true to say
Mahmoud Rais is Innocent
had gone viral, but I was certainly chuffed.

Then came Tuesday. Classes that week were our last before the exams and mostly there were hints about what to expect in the paper mixed in with farewells and
reminiscences. Svenson was relaxed, even had us laughing as we looked back on the year. When his eye fell on me, he seemed especially pleased.

‘You've come on more than anyone, Jacob. I hope you'll explore what you're really capable of next year and that means uni – you understand that, don't you?'

This wasn't the time to tell him about my job at Merediths. Then somehow he was telling the others about the page I'd set up to support Mahmoud. ‘Perfect name for it,' he said, venturing down the aisle towards me to show his enthusiasm. ‘
Mahmoud Rais is Innocent
. A brave thing to say around town at the moment. People don't want to know and it's all too obvious why. You all see that, I hope.'

He'd been talking to the whole room, but now he locked eyes with me, as though this was between the two of us alone. Even the tone of his voice became personal in a way teachers don't often speak to students. ‘Well done, mate, you're one of the few people in Palmerston ready to admit The Ripper is one of your own and not a convenient outsider.'

He was mouthing what I thought, but even as he said it I remembered Dad's words.
Rubbing our noses in it
.

When he moved on to a different topic, I dared to glance around me and if a groan didn't quite escape between my lips it was there, deep in my throat all the same. Many of the faces around me smouldered at what Svenson had said, even kids like Alicia Greaves who'd joined my knife protest and, since they didn't have the
balls to confront him openly, they turned their sullen fury towards me.

We didn't find out until later, but at the very moment Svenson was praising me in front of my classmates Soraya, her mum and her auntie were approaching Palmerston's only supermarket. After a week pretty much imprisoned in their home, both families were low on supplies, but with Mahmoud gone and after Saturday's article about the knife they judged it safe to do a grocery run.

The first shouts of abuse came before they'd collected a trolley, but the woman stood a way off as though she was afraid to confront the three of them on her own. They ignored her and steered their way up and down the aisles only to find every face laden with hostility while some simply fled in the opposite direction. The foul-mouthed woman followed them into the supermarket and soon attracted a companion. The manager couldn't silence the pair and, with so many bystanders showing their allegiances in their eyes, perhaps the manager didn't try as hard as she might. Leaving their half-filled trolley in the vegetable aisle, the women returned home in tears.

Everyone in town heard about it, but if I could picture the incident in detail it was because Chloe got the story from Soraya and posted a full description on the Mahmoud page. On Thursday, Soraya's dad and his brother stormed into the meatworks and threw their uniforms in the foreman's face. By midday both families were gone from Palmerston for good.

Mahmoud Rais is Innocent
began to build up a small following and on Monday and Tuesday, at least, every comment was supportive, whether it came from a name I knew or not. Then, as though taking their cue from the screeching women in the supermarket, anti's began to turn up. Some were no more than rants in four-letter words, but a few simply warned we were being too soft on Mahmoud.

Again, I carefully pointed out where rumour had hardened into fact, working like a kid dismantling a Lego house – first take off the roof, then remove the interlocking bricks one layer at a time until finally there is nothing left.

By Friday, though, I had to stop and concentrate on my exams. So, a weekend of study. Everyone was doing the same. Amy sent me a text at eleven on Saturday.
Three hours already
.

I texted back.
I started at dawn
.

Liar
, she replied.

U 2
, I shot back.

All right. 2 hours, and I've handcuffed my ankles to the desk.

It was a way to stay connected and I loved it.

After dinner on Saturday I called her just to hear her voice.

‘My dad's like a five-headed bear with a migraine in each one,' she said.

‘Because of the meatworks?'

‘Yeah, the workers are dirty he's cancelled their shifts and when it's not the killing-floor guys it's the farmers on his back because no cattle were sold at Friday's auction.'

Our new Facebook page didn't get a mention, but after the call I logged on to see what had been added, which was easy because the answer was zippo! No one had time for this when the exams were about to start and, besides, did it matter anymore if Mahmoud was innocent when he wasn't coming back? I wondered whether to take down the page altogether.

Sunday was a repeat of Saturday until I would rather sit a year of exams than look at another book. Amy's texts trailed off and I had almost forgotten the phone on the desk beside me until it pinged late in the day with a message from her.

U need to check Facebook.

I guessed she meant Mahmoud's page and logged straight on to find two new comments. The first was from a girl, or maybe it was a woman, named Laura Ignatio. From an earlier comment I knew she lived in Melbourne.

Anything new in the Palmerston Case? You guys have gone quiet.

Svenson had posted a reply:

For weeks Mahmoud Rais has been subjected to vilification in his absence and the only people to offer an opposing voice have been Jacob O'Leary and his supporters on this page. Now the Rais families have been shamefully attacked as well and, understandably, they have fled. This has already had repercussions for the town and they will only get worse. Palmerston relies on its meatworks, yet it has driven out the very people essential to its survival and there is little chance of luring replacements to town when the new men can expect the same treatment. Palmerston's folly may well lead to its demise. Shakespeare couldn't have scripted events more tragically.

I rang Amy.

‘You should take it down,' she said.

‘The whole page?' I had been thinking about it, after all.

‘No, just Svenson's rant and block him from the page while you're at it.'

‘I don't know. I haven't censored anyone else, even the swearing.'

‘This is different,' said Amy. ‘Svenson's having a go at the whole town, he's practically gloating. It's not funny, Jacob. I told you about the cancelled shifts, didn't I? Dad says he'll have to lay off people soon.'

Gloating. It did seem a bit that way.

‘He mentions you by name, Jacob. It's like the two of you wrote that post together.'

‘But I don't even agree with him!'

‘Maybe not, but that's the way it looks.'

She had a point there.

‘Let me think about it.'

The whole phone call had bordered on angry, from Amy's end anyway, which didn't seem right and since I was done with study the way a bucket can't take any more water I said, ‘I'm taking Mindy for a walk, let her run around a bit in Meredith Park. You want to come?'

‘I'll bring Hermie,' she replied instantly, meaning the ball of noisy white wool her family had named after Hermione Granger.

There were families in the park and other dogs happy to play with our two while we sat on a bench, although they came back every few minutes to see if any more surprises had appeared from Amy's pocket. She was a softy around animals.

‘Do you think you can be in love with people on different levels?' she asked when we'd grown tired of complaining about exams.

‘Like levels in Angry Birds or Halo?'

She pushed at me gently for making fun of her. ‘Not video games. It's a serious question.'

I was having too much fun with her reaction to be serious. ‘Yeah, I suppose if you worked in a big building, you could be in love with a guy on the second floor and another one on the fifth.'

‘Jacob!' She pushed me right over this time until my head and shoulder were touching the seat. Her body
pressed down on top of me in mock anger, but if she thought this was punishment for dissing her she hadn't seen inside my mind. I loved the weight of her on top of me and the way her hair fell over my face.

‘Help, help,' I cried pathetically. ‘I'm being crushed by the most beautiful monster in the universe.'

The dogs rushed towards us, unsure whether we were really fighting or playing a game they wanted to be part of. Before I wanted her to, Amy sat up, pulling me after her. ‘I want an answer.'

‘Different levels?' I asked, reluctantly breeching the fun of the moment with some serious consideration. ‘You love your parents on a different level from, like . . . a girlfriend. Being in love is different from family, is that what you mean?'

‘Not really. I was thinking just about the romance thing. Is it all the same emotion and you're either in love or you're not, and if you are then you should want everything with that person?'

‘I haven't had a lot of experience, Amy. You're the only person . . . What do you mean by everything? Like every moment of the day, sharing each last little thing and all the tenderness you have inside you?'

‘Yeah, I get that part,' she said, although the confusion about the rest was as strong as ever in her voice. ‘But there's a lot to being in love, right – it's not just words and going places together.'

‘No, it's not,' I agreed. She had me going now. I didn't think she was talking about sex, but I couldn't help
thinking she meant the intimacies that a couple share when they're alone and that certainly wasn't us at that moment.

‘I think if you're really in love, then there's no holding back. You don't even think about picking and choosing. It's part of the fun that you don't have to, because everything about the one you love is just right.'

Amy didn't seem to like my answer.

‘Hey, just a theory,' I said in a put-on voice and with my arms splayed wide. I pulled them in quickly and reached for her hand instead. ‘So soft. The hands of a princess,' I went on in the same voice. ‘A princess should be pampered by those who adore her,' and using my other hand I swept back the curtain of her hair and pressed my face into the crook of her neck. Was anyone watching? If they were, they'd have seen me kiss Amy behind the ear.

‘You're nuts, Jacob, but you're fun to be with.'

‘Even if you can time my hundred metres with a sundial,' I said, drawing an uncertain grin that said she thought I really was nuts, but there was no point explaining Tyke's remark in the garage when her name had hung so lightly in the air.

I straightened up and immediately Amy leaned across and kissed me playfully on the nape of the neck. ‘There, we're even, but no way am I calling you my prince.'

The exam timetable was sticky-taped to my door with Monday afternoon circled in red, and to save Mum
coming back for me in the middle of the day I asked her to drive me to school as usual.

‘Good luck,' she said cheerfully, as I was clambering out.

‘Swap places?' I offered.

‘Not on your life,' she replied through a grim smile. ‘I hated exams thirty years ago. All yours now.'

I'd be done with exams soon enough, I reminded myself on the way to the library. Chloe arrived not long after and since I could see the screen of her laptop I knew she wasn't studying.

‘What are you up to?' I asked, going over.

She turned the laptop and quickly clicked through the websites she had open; they were all about universities. ‘I've applied to three unis. Just looking at the buildings and stuff and dreaming a bit to psych myself up for this afternoon. What about you? What did you put in for?'

‘Me! Oh, I'm staying here to work at Merediths.'

Chloe's face dropped. ‘You mean you didn't even fill out the forms?'

‘Why would I, if I'm staying here?'

‘But Mr Svenson was looking straight at you the day he talked about uni after the holidays.'

‘Yeah, well, Svenson's not working out my future. Mum wants to be sure things are okay for me when I'm out in the big world,' and I tried to make a joke out of it by sketching an extravagant globe with my arms. Didn't work.

‘Do you really need looking after, Jacob?' Chloe asked. ‘You get by just fine, as far as I can see. Maybe you
can take care of yourself more than she thinks. It's your life, not hers.'

That last bit was getting close to the edge. Chloe didn't know the hours, the kilometres, the dogged energy Mum had put in to make my life as free as it was and if she'd said any more I might have had a go at her about it. Would have been a shame because Chloe was only being a friend. It hit me at that moment what a friend she had become and that I wouldn't like to lose her any more than my group around the picnic table.

‘Just for argument's sake, if you did go to uni, what would you study?' she asked.

I stared at her blankly, because, honestly, I'd never given the idea a single thought.

‘Forensics, what about that?' said Chloe. ‘Your mind seems to work that way. The importance of evidence instead of guesswork like that business over Mahmoud's knife.'

‘I can't see myself working with the police,' I said, making a face. ‘The knife thing was to protest about injustice.'

‘Law, then,' she suggested. ‘Lawyers fight for that sort of thing.'

‘A lawyer. Me!' Lawyers were big time. I couldn't get my head around it, not at first, but in the slow seconds afterwards the idea kind of grew on me. Must have shown on my face, too, because Chloe ran with it.

‘Be a good fit for you – the way you've defended Mahmoud, you're a regular Atticus.'

‘What's an “atticus”?'

‘
To Kill a Mockingbird
,' she said.

I stared at her, now totally confused.

‘It's a book,' Chloe answered, a little exasperated, as though it was something everyone should know about. ‘It's a movie, too, so maybe it's on the classics shelf at your Blockbuster. You'll work out what I mean.'

‘A lawyer. Never imagined I could . . .'

‘You should do more imagining, Jacob. There's hundreds of things you could do, not just the lawyer thing. You're the one who should be checking out these sites,' she added, nodding at her laptop, and her voice now had lost its serious tone to let Chloe the friend come through, wanting the best for me.

She flicked from page to page, listing off ideas, and when she was done leaned back in her chair. ‘Well, have I changed your mind?'

I had to admit, she had me thinking, even excited. ‘But I've missed my chance,' I said, partly in disappointment, but also because it gave me an ‘out' and I didn't have to decide one way or the other.

‘You can still apply. Just have to pay a late fee, or whatever,' she replied, shifting the ground so quickly I was thrown off balance in a way that had nothing to do with CP. The restlessness I'd sensed in myself had taken a holiday since I put my arm around Amy, but there it was, jumping out at me from Chloe's laptop, not glossy pictures of universities – something harder to see that slipped right into me to connect with a loose end that was
flailing around inside my chest like a power line brought down in a storm.

There were more Senior shirts in the yard when Chloe and I ventured out to the canteen at morning tea. I looked for Amy among them, but there was no sign of her yet.

On the way back, paper bag dangling from one hand and with Chloe walking patiently beside me I glimpsed two figures shooting wildly across the playground. My CP warning system tracked them cautiously, not that it did any good when one of the boys circled behind us. Both boys were laughing. Probably just some end-of-year prank between friends.

The second boy came on, following his quarry in the same wide line behind us just as the first shot around my shoulder and took off in front of us at a sharp angle. I was watching him go when his pursuer followed, but this boy flung out an arm to use me as an anchor for his change of direction.

Bad move. He didn't actually tug me very hard, but then, he didn't have to. I tottered off balance and spun slowly clockwise with arms outstretched, fighting to stay upright like a ten-pin and finally losing the battle, landing on my bottom with enough momentum to send my shoulder into the dust. The paper bag spewed its contents across the spindly grass.

‘Oh sorry,' came a shout from somewhere above me.

The boy had come back, though not for the reason you'd expect.

‘I'm
really
sorry,' he said again, offering a hand to help me up.

‘Get away from him, you idiot,' said Chloe. She'd heard the note in his voice, too, and if there was any doubt she need only look at his face. The boy was my tormentor from the toilets and his expression left no doubt he thought the whole thing was a joke.