The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay (10 page)

I can't sleep. I lie awake blinking into the dark. I keep thinking about the brochures. That booklet. Part of me feels really, really bad about snooping. The other part of me wants to understand why Nick McGowan has brochures on depression and suicide in his room. I start to wonder again what happened to him over the summer, wonder if the rumours are true, that he actually tried to kill himself. I try to picture Nick going into a shed and taking an overdose of anything. Frankly, I just can't picture it.

I start to think about suicide. I remember the time Rhonda Daniels told a group of us in the day room that if you want to slit your wrists you have to slice up the arm, not across like everyone thinks. Even in
Hamlet
, Ophelia drowns herself in the river because she finds out Hamlet doesn't love her and that her father has been murdered. I think about drowning. The thought of it just makes me shudder – not being able to breathe. I used to hate it when my Uncle Dave would hold my head under the water in the pool as a joke. If I was going to kill myself, that's not the way I'd do it. Not that I sit around thinking about killing myself. Although there was one time when I thought about it briefly. It was when I was really stressed about my grades last year in Year 11. It wasn't a great year for me. In Year 10 I'd been able to get high grades without really having to do any work. I sailed through. I love
d
Year 10. But that all changed in Year 11. Everything was harder. Teachers kept talking about grades and final results. Despite having achieved distinctions in the Westpac Maths competition in Years 9 and 10, now I couldn't keep up with Advanced Maths. Things were just that more difficult. To make things worse, my skin was psychotic and my face was constantly red and blotchy.

There was this one week in particular when everything was really shitty. I put a huge amount of work into a Biology assignment and got a really bad mark. In English Leo Bremmer dropped a pencil on the floor and looked up my dress. He told all the other boys that I was wearing pink undies. And that I had fat legs. And at the same time Mum and Dad were on my back about everything. I remember one night, just sitting in my room crying. We had swimming the next day and I was going to have to be in swimmers in front of Leo and the other boys. All I could think about was that I didn't want them to see me. See my legs. And then after a while I'd cried so much that I was numb and for a few seconds I thought about what it would be like to end it all. Fade to black. Kill myself. To not have to be here to deal with this.

But it was a thought that came and went pretty quickly. I realised that if I killed myself it would bloody hurt. Plus I'd never get to see what happened between Bronny and Henry on ‘Neighbours'. I remember mentioning it to Zee the next day at morning tea and she heavily advised against it. She said she'd miss me, for one thing. She'd thought about suicide once too, she said. When her parents split up on the first day of Expo last year. But she realised she was too lazy to even kill herself. Who could be bothered? She also pointed out that knowing our luck, we'd kill ourselves the day before we got a prize for something. Or just days before we were destined to meet our soulmates. Or won the trip to New York that we'd both entered in
Cleo
magazine. She was right. Not that either of us won the New York trip, but I did win ten dollars on a scratchie later that week. And she kissed someone at a Melissa Etheridge concert. As for swimming, I wore a pair of maroon board shorts over my swimmers and nobody said a thing. A week later, another five girls followed suit.

I wonder if Nick McGowan is thinking that this is as good as it gets for him. That there are no great moments round the corner waiting to happen. No New York trips. No ten-dollar scratchies. No rock-concert kisses. No board-shorts solutions. Just a long, lonely highway of being pushed into doing something that he feels he can't deliver.

And a girl who won't sign a form. A girl he lives with who won't help him.

Thursday morning Dad offers to give Nick and I an early lift to school since he has to be in the office for a conference call and I'm still on gate duty for the rest of the week.

I sit in the front passenger seat. Nick sits behind me. I can't look at him. I feel like I know too much and that he'll know, just by looking at me, that I was snooping in his room last night. So as soon as Dad starts the car, I immediately reach for the radio, turn it on. No matter how much Caitlin and I beg, Dad won't let us listen to FM104. It's the ABC all the way with my father. So we spend the twenty-minute drive to school listening to callers phone in complaining about the cost of buses. The rubbish-bin collection schedule. Our Lord Mayor's hairstyle. For once, I'm just grateful that there is something to fill the silence. For once not caring that it's an AM station.

Getting our bags out of the boot, Nick and I don't speak. Then I stand on the footpath and watch Dad's car do a U-turn. As usual I make sure that I wave goodbye as he heads off to the city. Then he's gone and it's just me and Nick. I walk ahead and keep thinking that I need to break the silence. As I walk through the gates, I hear myself saying, ‘Are you catching the bus this afternoon?'

When I get no reply I turn around to hear Nick's response, only to see his back. He's walking down the road in the opposite direction, towards the train station.

‘Hey!'

He doesn't turn around. Just keeps walking.

‘
Nick
!'

I throw my school bag behind a tree and chase after him. Which means that I'm panting by the time I reach him.

‘Where are you going?'

‘Dunno. Today I thought I might catch a movie over there.' He points to the Eldorado Cinema across from the train station.

‘I'll sign the form.'

‘What?'

‘If you come back to school with me I'll sign it. I'll sign it now.'

I'm preoccupied all morning because of that form. Knowing that Maths in Society is period three. Knowing that Nick McGowan is going to hand in that form to Mr Verney. In French Mrs Lesage talks about our first-term French exam – and instead of listening and taking notes, I sit there and keep writing my mum's signature over and over in the back of my French book. Is the P too big? I suddenly can't remember how Mum does her ‘r's. Will the ‘Patricia Hill' scribbled on that change-of-subject consent form look fake? Will Mr Verney crosscheck it against some other form my mother has signed in the past?

My stomach twists and pulls and I feel decidedly unwell. I'm tempted to pack up my things and go back to Rocking Horse Records – swear some more at the sales assistant, offend some more nannas.

An adult hand appears from behind me and flips my
Action
French book to the appropriate page. I look up. Mrs Lesage raises her eyebrows at me.

‘
Pardonez-moi, madame
,' I mumble.

She keeps walking to the blackboard and starts yakking on about a talk we have to give – in French – about a famous French person.

I look down at my French book, at the practised signature, and suddenly remember that Mum always writes her ‘r's with a small loop on the left. I didn't do it that way.

A little voice inside my head whispers,
There's a train to the city at seven past ten.

Okay. So as soon as this class is over I'm going to head for the station. I've done it before. Who's gonna stop me?

The bell goes.

The class immediately stands up, but Mrs Lesage says, ‘
Asseyez-vous, s'il vous plait
' and makes us all sit back down and copy down our homework for tomorrow.

When she says, ‘
Tu es libre pour aller
,' it's like she's waved a chequered flag at a speedway. Students rush for the door like the desks are on fire. Except me. Today my legs are like lead. With each step towards the Maths classroom I tell myself that it would be okay for me to get the train, how high my chances of getting away with it would be. Even when I'm standing outside the Maths classroom, watching my classmates go inside, a voice in my head keeps saying,
Go now. It's not too late
.

Then Mr Verney and his Roadrunner tie round the corner. ‘Inside, please,' he says to me and to Janine Poulous who's in the middle of a deep and meaningful with her boyfriend, some Year-11 guy.

I go inside. Take a seat. The way I always knew I would. But Nick's not here.

Mr Verney shuts the door. ‘All right, folks, show me the homework you did from yesterday.'

He's changed his mind. Realised that swapping over to Maths in Society is not the answer.

The knots in my stomach begin to loosen just as Nick McGowan races through the door like someone breaking in to save hostages. He looks around, runs his fingers through his hair and, suddenly self-conscious, jams the piece of paper he's holding into his mouth while he uses both hands to tuck in his dishevelled shirt.

Mr Verney looks pointedly at his watch and says, ‘Ahhh, Mr McGowan, how nice of you to join us.'

‘Sorry, I was with Mrs Ramsay. She told me to give you this.' Nick hands over to Mr Verney the note that now doubles as a dental record.

Mr Verney purses his lips in a sceptical fashion. Reads it. Nods.

‘And I have that signed consent form,' says Nick, reaching into his back pocket.

‘You're just full of forms today, aren't you, Mr McGowan?'

Nick hands him the form, smiles weakly, and says, ‘Yes, sir.' Meanwhile, I resist the urge to vomit as I watch Mr Verney's eyes scan down for the requisite signature. Nick doesn't even look nervous.

‘Very well. Welcome to the magic and the mystery that is Maths in Society. You can have this textbook until you get your own.' Mr Verney hands Nick his copy of
Let's Learn Maths!
by D.M. Barry (who thinks that adding an exclamation mark to a title makes Venn diagrams and prime numbers more exciting. Go figure).

Book in hand, Nick turns now to face the class, looking for a seat. Our eyes meet. Nick mouths,
Relax
! His eyes are amused, full of daring, telling me that we've gotten away with it, as though we're the new Bonnie and Clyde. Then he winks at me.

Mr Verney lets out an impatient sigh. ‘Do hurry up and take a seat, Mr McGowan.'

‘Sorry.' Nick makes a face at me as though Mr Verney is quietly mad. I can't help but smile back.

Then he takes the spare seat next to Sarah Neele and the lesson – the idiot's guide to trigonometry – begins. And I realise we've gotten away with it.

Zoë spends our entire lunch hour trying to convince me to come up to Indooroopilly Shoppingtown after school. She has to work in her mother's shop from four until six p.m., and reckons she'll die without any visitors. I haven't told Zoë about the brochures I found in Nick's room, or about the consent form I signed for Nick. I'm not sure why – although I suspect that it's easier telling other people's secrets than your own. Plus if I talk about it out loud, it'll seem even more real – and wrong. And at the moment I'm convincing myself that it'll all work out okay: Nick will eventually tell his dad that he's dropped down to Maths in Society, Mr McGowan will accept it, and my parents will never find out. I'm not ready for Zoë's honesty. Sometimes it stings like Detol on a gash.

When I walk into CopperWorld Zoë's serving a customer, so I take the opportunity to look around. It's a strange shop. Zoë's mum has owned it for as long as I can remember. It's a shop that seems to specialise in gold-painted pot-plant holders, plastic flowers, touch lamps and fake mahogany full-length mirrors – ‘in crap', as Zoë likes to say. Zoë reckons this shop sucks the life right out of her. She spends most of her days accidentally chipping the furniture when she vacuums and then colouring the scratches in with a black Nikko pen.

Finally Zoë's at the till, ringing up a wooden hat stand. It's another few minutes before the customer has left the shop.

‘Hey,' she says, walking over to me while simultaneously opening out a plastic fern. I can tell by the look on her face that she's worried about something.

‘What's up? What's wrong?'

She sighs dramatically.

‘Nothing.'

‘Zoë!'

‘Well . . .'

‘Well . . .'

‘Well I just asked the Psychic Lettuce what my future holds, and it said, “You will live alone with sixty guinea-pigs. And they will all be called Peter.
”
'

‘Hang on a second. You asked what? Did you say
Psychic Lettuce
?'

She puts the fern down.

‘It's a lettuce that predicts your future. I found it at the games arcade next door.'

‘Lettuce as in vegetable? As in iceberg and romaine? There's a lettuce in this shopping centre claiming to have psychic abilities?'

‘Yes.'

‘Where?'

Zoë grabs my hand and leads me out the door – but not before flipping the ‘Back in five minutes' sign on the shop door and locking it behind her. She proceeds to drag me to the games arcade two doors down. In between the motorbike game and the Space Invaders is a black machine with
Psychic Lettuce
written on the front. Stepping up to the machine I see that a cartoon lettuce complete with googly eyes and a mouth – a lettuce that frankly looks drug-fucked – is offering to tell me my future.

‘Do it!' Zoë pushes me in the arm. ‘Do it!'

‘Alright.' I rub my arm defensively. ‘What do I have to do?'

‘Put in forty cents and then when it says, “Tell me my future, Lettuce” you hit the big red button.'

I put in my forty cents. I click the big red button. The lettuce's eyes begin to whirl. Within seconds up pops the following message: ‘
You will discover a new use for empty milk cartons and be the first self-made billionaire under twenty
.'

‘
Ohmygod
! How lucky are you?'

‘Zoë, I am not going to discover a new use for milk cartons, believe me. And as for your prediction, you are not going to end up alone living with sixty guinea-pigs . . .'

‘Who are all named Peter.'

‘Right. You hate animals. And even if you
did
have sixty guinea-pigs, as if you'd call them all Peter.'

‘Yeah. I hate that name.'

‘Exactly. And you're gorgeous. Do not listen to an allegedly clairvoyant vegetable. Okay?'

And as I say that, Zoë pushes in another forty cents and smacks the red button again. ‘
Your grandmother will leave you a great big house . . . that's haunted!
' says the lettuce (who I suspect is doing tequila shots in between readings, because its eyes are becoming more bloodshot).

‘
Ohmygod
!' Zoë pushes me over. ‘A haunted house!'

‘Zoë!
Zoë
!' I snap my fingers in front of her face. ‘That lettuce is on drugs. Think about it. Your gran lives in a unit in Toowong. This is a stupid game developed by some stupid guy in America who is trying to suck money out of people. It's
not real
.'

‘You're right.' We begin to walk out of the arcade and back to CopperWorld. ‘And the Psychic Lettuce isn't half as accurate as
The Destiny Book
.'

I bite my tongue.

Zoë goes behind the counter of CopperWorld. I follow her.

‘Here,' she says, thrusting a hard-cover black book towards me. ‘Mum bought it for Megan's birthday last week. Think of a question and then open it up at any page.'

‘Alright.' Against my better judgement I close my eyes. What I should be asking is,
Will Nick and I get away with the forged Maths form
? But the question that keeps coming into my head is,
What does Nick McGowan think of me
? I flip open the book.

‘What does it say?'

‘It says, ‘‘Probably tomorrow”.' I try to keep the disappointment out of my voice. Stupid book.

‘What did you ask?'

I lie and say, ‘I asked, “Will Zoë shut up soon?
”
'

‘
Ohmygod
!
That is
tres
spooky!'

And just when I am about to prove
The Destiny Book
wrong by throwing it at Zoë's head and rendering her temporarily unconscious, the bell above the shop door jingles.

‘I just wanted to inquire about the sign on the window. The position vacant?'

We both turn and see a young woman standing at the counter.

‘What star sign are you?' asks Zoë, in a tone that makes her sound like a poor man's Nancy Drew.

‘Oh, um, Cancer?' she says, as though she's not quite sure.

‘Oh dear, well no . . .
obviously
. But thanks.'

The girl looks confused. ‘Oh, right, okay.' She wanders back out the door.

I look at Zoë, eyebrows raised.

‘What?'

‘What did you say that for?'

‘She wasn't aesthetically pleasing.'

‘What? You can't just dismiss someone based on their looks. You know she might have been great. She might have had heaps of retail experience.'

‘Riiight. But you can't possibly expect me to spend all day looking at that face. She looked like the Pope. It was creepy.'

‘She did
not
look like the Pope.'

‘The Pope with a perm.'

‘She did not look like the Pope with a perm.'

‘And she had dry and unmanageable hair.'

‘What's her hair got to do with it? You know, I think maybe you need to sit down and really think about the type of person your mum wants to employ. What qualities they need to have.
Retail experience
, you know.'

‘You're so blah.' She rolls her eyes.

‘Don't roll your eyes at me.'

‘Hello? Cranky Island, population: you. Anyway, before you got here I asked the Psychic Lettuce if you're meant to come to the cast party tomorrow night.'

I roll my eyes. ‘For the hundredth time, I'm
not
going.'

Zoë raises her eyebrows, crosses her arms and looks up at the ceiling.

‘Fine. What did the Great Lettuce say?'

She gives a smug little smile and says, ‘It said “Yes, absolutely”.'