The Whole of My World (24 page)

‘About what, Shell?' He sounds tired, like he isn't really listening. He studies his drink – something murky brown.

‘It's not your fault, you know.'

‘So everyone keeps telling me.'

‘Well, they're right. No one's blaming you,' I lie, convinced that after the pain has faded and more time has passed, the memory of Mick's mistake will fade and people will realise it's about the team, not just Mick. In the end, it's always about the team. ‘It'll get better.' At least this much I know.

He turns on me then, his face so angry that, for a split second and for only the second time in my life, I feel physically threatened. ‘You might think you know everything, Shell, but you don't.'

‘I don't mean –'

‘What? You don't mean
what
?'

‘Nothing. I don't know what I mean.'

‘Of course you don't. You're just a kid who thinks she knows everything. But you don't. Not about this, anyway. You know full well that even if they're not saying it to me, they're saying it to themselves – to the world. And they're right. Of course it's my fault. It's
entirely
my fault. And that's why I'm standing here on my own and why I won't be back next year. Not here, anyway.'

‘What?'

‘I'm talking to other clubs. If they'll have me.'

‘You can't leave Glenthorn! It's too early to worry about this stuff. It's just happened. It's still new. Don't think about next year yet. It's too early.'

‘Actually, it's too late. I've made up my mind. There's nothing to say.'

‘How can you leave?' The idea is so ridiculous to me, so
unnatural
. This is where he belongs. Where we all belong. This is . . .
home
. Doesn't he know that? ‘They won't let you go,' I add, desperate to believe it.

‘You're kidding, right? What do you think will happen? We'll all shake hands and put our heads down again for next year? Shrug it off and move on like nothing's happened? We lost! That's why we play – to win. And if we don't win, we've failed. It's that simple. Black and white. Probably the only thing in life that is.' He looks at me closely, like he's measuring me. ‘I mean, that's why people love it. It's so easy to divide the game into good and bad. Win or lose. Right? Well, we lost. We lost the only sure thing we've known. We have to pay for that.
Someone
has to pay for that. And I'm putting up my hand before someone else does it for me.'

His eyes are so red I can hardly see his pupils. The lights are bright and flashing. The room keeps turning like we're in a whirlpool. I can't feel my feet and my blood is sludge in my veins. I'm so upset I can't speak. I don't know what I'd say anyway.

He looks at me, half disbelieving, half guilty. ‘Did you really think nothing would change?'

I try to shake my head, no. No. Things
always
change. All the time. Especially the good things – things that make me happy. I learnt that two years ago. But I can't say it out loud. That will make it so completely true and irreversible that I wouldn't know how to wake up tomorrow. ‘What about me?' I say instead, my voice small and weak.

Mick gapes. ‘You? What about you? This isn't your life. It's
my
life. For you, it's a game. For me, it's what I do. It's
everything
.'

‘It's my life too,' I whisper.

‘Your life?' Mick holds out his hands before me in a kind of surrender. ‘Your life hasn't even started yet.'

No. I guess it hasn't. Or it did start and then it stopped. But he doesn't know this. Not any of it. This is the moment I should tell him. This is the right place to say that my mother and twin brother were killed in a car accident. That I was meant to be in the car with them – we all were – but I'd cracked it with Dad, in front of Mrs McGuire. It was right before Angus's game, a twilight tournament that I'd normally play. Dad had just told me he wouldn't support Jacko's appeal against the tribunal. That I was to be done with footy, full stop.

It was our thirteenth birthday, which was supposed to be a celebration, but for me it was the beginning of the end. It wasn't planned like that, I knew even as I ranted at Dad, but I didn't care about anything right then. The humiliation, the frustration. They kept telling me I was different suddenly when I felt exactly the same inside. Like my body was weaker somehow, less than it was, all because I was becoming a woman. But I had to keep going – forced to watch Angus's games because that's what families do.

I remember Mrs McGuire's face, the gentle understanding, the kindness and the concern. I hate that she'd heard me that day. ‘Why did I have to be a twin?' I'd screamed at Dad, Mum safely tucked away in the canteen, taking her turn on duty. The only witnesses were Dad and Mrs McGuire. And Angus, of course. Angus, who bore the brunt of it because he didn't want me to play. Josh had stuck up for me, but Angus never did. I wouldn't have to be there if I wasn't a twin, I'd reasoned. So it was Angus's fault I was hurting. I blamed it all on Angus. ‘I wish you never existed!' I'd screamed at him in the seconds before I stormed off. ‘
I wish you were dead!
'

And then I ran, until my lungs hammered in my chest and my legs were mush. Dad had left Angus's game to come after me, catching up to me when I finally slowed down. We didn't speak the whole way home. It's the closest I think I've ever felt with him. He knew what I needed and truly understood.

And when we got home we talked. And I cried. And he said he'd see what he could do, but that rules were rules and there was usually a good reason for them. He didn't ask if I'd go back to catch the end of Angus's game. He just stayed with me until I was okay.

It was the only Raiders match he ever missed. I think about that a lot.

When the game should have ended, Dad and I waited for Mum and Angus to come home.

And waited.

The eerie twilight descended and Dad shifted from quiet patience to concern. We headed back to the ground, on foot again, walking faster this time. We didn't get very far. We stopped when we saw the car, or what was left of it, crumpled around a light pole, a truck twisted on its side a little further ahead. Ambulances, police cars, chaos. They tried to divert us, to turn us around, until Dad said the words that changed our lives forever. The words that marked the beginning of the end. ‘That's my family.' His voice was flat and dead, the life seeming to have leaked from him the same way it was leaking from my brother. My mother was already gone by then.

This is what I should tell Mick, and yet I don't. ‘It
is
my life,' I say quietly, beginning to cry. Silently at first, and then not so silently.

Mick looks confused and ashamed. ‘Pull yourself together, Shell,' he says.

I can't, though. There's no more of me left. Even the bits that remain are too small and insubstantial to matter. I'm just this mess of odds and ends, bits and pieces with no shape, no form. No glue.

I don't know how long he lets me cry before he takes me roughly in his arms, pressing me against his chest, telling me it'll be okay. That all of it will be okay. He's talking like a stranger, like someone who doesn't know me. I have the sudden, scary feeling that if I ever see him again it will be on the TV or in the papers, watching his life go on with another club, with other people, watching it from a distance just like everyone else.

I stop crying and push him away. ‘You have no idea,' I say, and leave him standing by the bar. I push the doors to the players' room open with an awkward bang, knowing that once they're shut I won't be able to go back in. And I don't care.

 

The temperature has dropped when I step outside. Forty or fifty fans have gathered on the footpath and the road outside, still dressed in their footy colours, most of them adults and teenagers, most of them drunk or drinking. The strains of the Glenthorn theme song are wobbly but persistent, punctuated by tired choruses of ‘Carn the Falcons!' and ‘Next year, fellas!' aimed at the sky.

I work my way through the crowd and cross the street, heading towards the rear of the stadium. The tall chain-link gates are open. I hear some familiar cheers echoing through the night as I take the stadium stairs.

‘Shelley!' I recognise Jim-Bob's voice coming from the Mayblooms Stand, although I can't see anything. The whole stadium is pitch black, but the noise and laughter suggests there's a large group holed up there.

‘Jim-Bob?'

‘Press box,' he calls back.

I peer through the dark, my eyes taking ages to adjust as I stumble up the stairs. The cool air seems to have shaken me up or loosened the drunkenness inside of me. Suddenly things aren't as clear as they were, and it's got nothing to do with the darkness. I stand up straighter, trying to clear my head. I can see enough to make out the cheersquad. They've lit a fire in the stands – a small one but it's enough to guide me the rest of the way.

‘Have you seen Tara?' I ask Jim-Bob, when I can finally make out his features in the fire's glow.

‘No.'

‘Anyone?' I ask the group. I only know about half of the people there. Bear is slouched in the corner, squeezed into a front-row bench. Bits of him hang over the edges and when I call out his name he can barely turn to answer.

‘Hey,' I say, squatting down beside him. I rub his head, a gentle noogie. He smiles vacantly at me. ‘Seen Tara?' I ask.

He starts laughing, stupidly, and I wonder if all he's taken tonight is alcohol.

‘Bear?'

He shakes his head, laughing deliriously, dangerously close to smacking his forehead on the iron railing in front of him. He leans against the railing, his whole body shuddering for a full minute before he looks up blearily and says my name.

I touch his shoulder. ‘Take care, okay?' I stand again and survey the mess of drunk and noisy teenagers. Legs and arms are entwined in a tangle of shared empathy. Everyone is hurting.

I turn to go but the world seems to tilt crazily to the left, and I feel the back of the bench crack against my hip, as though it's risen up to strike me. I find myself lying on the cold cement, my head pounding and spinning at once. I squint into the black, the light from the fire robbing me of my night vision for the seconds it takes for my eyes to adjust. I pull myself up again, touching the graze just above my hip, the wet blood sobering me. I remember my mission and decide that Danny is my best option. Even if she seemed annoyed with him at the game, Tara is drunk. Everyone's drunk. Anything is possible.

I call out for Danny, hoping he's more coherent than his friends. Someone tells me he's down on the oval, so I gingerly make my way down the stairs towards the flat below. The steps seem to shift beneath my feet as I pick my way over broken bottles and plastic recyclables. There are discarded Glenthorn scarves, a shoe, someone's beanie and even a jumper twisted around one of the benches. I stop to pull it free, hoping I can return it to its owner. I see the big number 5 on its back, see Mick's signature scrawled across it in black texta and decide whoever dumped this here doesn't deserve to get it back. I leave it down between the seats where I found it. I feel sick and dizzy. I need to find Tara.

Out on the oval, I find a group of cheersquadders I don't know well. I recognise Sharon and David, but the other faces are not familiar enough for me to pick them in the darkness. ‘I'm looking for Tara,' I say.

Sharon hasn't seen her, neither has David, but Red appears from nowhere beside me, her shiny orange curls almost glowing in the uneven light.

‘You all right?' Unlike everyone else, Red is sober. Apparently she doesn't drink, not even when we lose grand finals that we're supposed to win.

‘Have you seen Tara?' I suck in air, trying to get the spinning to stop. Deep long breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth. I see another group near the fence and head towards the boundary, Red following closely behind.

‘A while ago.' I've never been convinced Red likes Tara. In fact, I'm pretty sure she doesn't. But at least she's helping me. ‘She was pretty drunk and pissed off about something.'

In the dark, I've only just begun to recognise the shape of two bodies twisted up together at the base of the press-box tower. Danny and Kimberly. They've got their clothes on but they're so tightly wound around each other that it almost doesn't matter. Any hope that today's flirtation was in my head has gone. My heart races, imagining what Tara felt when she saw them. Because I know suddenly that she did. She would have been looking for them to make sure.

‘Where'd she go?' I'm trying to maintain focus, and the image of Tara freaking out is going a long way to helping, but it strikes in fits and starts. Red is multiplying before my eyes, like those cut-out paper dolls we used to make in primary school. I shake my head, which doesn't help at all.