The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay (16 page)

Nick's at the front door, searching his backpack when I walk up the driveway.

‘Hey. Can't find my keys.'

I hold up mine. ‘Anyway, looks like Mum and Dad are both home.' I nod my head towards the garage. ‘You should've just knocked. Which bus did you get? I didn't see you on the bus.'

‘None. Di Randall's mother dropped me here. They live on Chapel Hill Road.'

‘How was the excursion? Where'd you go?' I turn the key in the lock and push open the front door.

Mum and Dad are standing in the kitchen. Waiting for us. And there's a plate of choc-chip cookies staring at me from the bench.

‘We know what you've done,' says my dad. ‘Do you want to start explaining?'

‘Not really,' I say, in a jokey tone, but neither of my parents smile.

‘Clearly there has been some sort of cover-up going on.'

I look at Nick. He looks at me. Suddenly he starts talking.

‘Mr and Mrs Hill, Rachel had nothing to do with it. It was my fault. I just ah, I don't want to do Medicine anymore and so I decided that the only way to get through to him – you know, my dad – was to drop down to Maths in Society. There was a consent form. So I forged your signatures. And Rachel, I swear, knew nothing about it.'

My mum looks confused and says, ‘I'm lost.'

Dad says, ‘What has this got to do with the huge scratch we found today on your mother's car?'

And then I look at Nick and say, ‘We're dead.'

Dad goes on and on about how disappointed he is in both of us, how Nick's father and the school will have to be informed.

Nick's on the phone for the rest of the night. To his dad. Then to Mrs Ramsay. Then to his dad again. I barely get to see him to ask him why he took all the blame for the forged form, and to thank him. Instead, Mum and Dad pile me up with chores and Nick stays in his room, on the phone.

As I clean out Gipper's cage, I silently ask God to not let him leave – that if He lets Nick stay, I'll promise to start listening in Chapel every morning. And that I'll do the 40 Hour Famine every year for the rest of my life. But it's hard to tell if God's even listening. Or cares. I begin to wonder if I'd have more success consulting Zoë's Psychic Lettuce. I do the washing-up alone wondering if Nick is downstairs packing.

‘Can you zip me up?'

I look up. Fiona Curtis is looking over her shoulder at me while at the same time struggling with the back zip of her rainbow-striped polyester clown top. ‘These tops are just so ugly. We look like human beach balls.'

I smile weakly and zip her up.

‘Thanks,' she says, strapping on her red nose. ‘Are you okay? You seem kind of distracted.'

‘I'm just . . .'

‘Worried about how we're going to manage twenty eight-year-old kids? Me too. But with two of us in charge, I figure we'll be alright. I'll just go and get the placemats. Your wig's crooked, by the way.'

I watch her go – the human exclamation mark. I can't believe I've been rostered on to do a party with my nemesis. And they haven't even told us who won the Party Hostess Title – although Vivian Woo reckons we're finding out on Thursday. I stand and look at myself in the mirror. Fiona Curtis is right. My wig is crooked. But I don't care. I don't want to be here today, right now, doing this stupid party with these stupid kids. I want to be with Nick.

I rip open a packet of short red birthday candles and start to jam them, one by one, into the multi-coloured ice-cream cake that Fiona has brought out from the freezer. I haven't seen Nick since last night. He didn't get the bus with me this morning. And today he hasn't been in class. Zoë reckons that at midday, when she walked past Mrs Ramsay's office window, she saw Nick inside with some old, fat bloke who might have been his dad. And I just want to know what's going on, what everyone is saying – whether they're going to expel him, or suspend him. Or just move him to another family where the father's signature is a little harder to forge on forms and where the daughter isn't a willing accomplice.

And that's when it occurs to me, that the truth is I've gotten pretty used to having Nick McGowan around.

I put the cake back in the freezer. Fiona walks back into the room with a big grin on her big clowny face and says, ‘They're here. We're on.'

The party is a shock to me. Not because it's mayhem, as you'd expect with twenty eight-year-old kids all high on Coke and ice-cream cake. It's a shock because of how smoothly it runs. And, as hard as it is for me to admit, it's all thanks to Fiona. As I hand out the burgers and fries and fetch the drinks, Fiona has the kids wrapped around her little finger. She tells them jokes and makes them laugh and remembers all their names. Just when the kids are getting bored with Simon Says, she whips out a tape deck, puts on some Ratcat and plays a dancing game called Bob and Freeze. The kids love it. I love it. Fiona Curtis is like some kind of freak Mary Poppins clone dressed in a clown outfit.

When the kids are busy eating their burgers I turn to her and say, ‘I thought I was good, but you're incredible. These kids just love you. How do you do it?'

Fiona laughs and shrugs and says, ‘Dunno. I want to do primary-school teaching next year. I always just loved being with kids.'

That's when I find myself saying, ‘You deserve to win the Party Hostess title. I really hope you win it.'

Fiona Curtis smiles at me. ‘Thanks.'

Some freckly kid asks for another lemonade.

‘I'll fetch it,' I say to Fiona. ‘You stay here and entertain them.'

I move to leave, and then stop and turn around to face Fiona.

‘Is it true that you're related to Mrs Westacott? That she's your aunt?'

Fiona looks suitably horrified. ‘What? No, she was our neighbour at Brookfield, but that was years ago. Now we live in Moggill.'

‘Right,' I say and go and fetch more drinks.

Fiona is hugging all the kids goodbye when I'm wiping down the tables. And that's when I look up and see Nick McGowan sitting on the restaurant fence outside, watching me through the window.

I walk outside.

‘You never told me you were a twin,' he says, glancing over at Fiona. ‘It's so cute how you two dress the same.'

I roll my eyes and pretend to laugh and say, ‘Yeah, very funny. Actually FYI, that's Fiona Curtis.'

‘Really?' He takes another studied look at Fiona, who is still hugging kids goodbye. ‘So did you whip her ass? Is the Party Clown Crown yours?'

I shrug, ‘Dunno. Probably not. I don't really care anymore. She's actually very good – better than me. Imagine that.'

He laughs, ‘Imagine that.' And that's when Nick McGowan jumps down from the fence and stands in front of me.

‘I didn't see you at school today.' I give Nick a playful punch in the arm.

‘Yeah, well, that's sorta why I'm here. There's trouble in Denmark.'

I feel sick.

‘What? What do you mean?'

‘Dad's here.' He glances over at a Yellow Cab waiting in the car park. ‘He got the first plane down here this morning, and now he's taking me back home. The school have been really good. They were prepared to let me stay, but Dad and Mrs Ramsay think it would be better if I went back with him. To sort some stuff out. Do a bit of counselling. You know.'

I nod my head and look down at the ground not wanting Nick McGowan to see the tears filling my eyes.

‘The good news is that I think my dad finally gets that I don't want to do Medicine.'

I nod, and mumble, ‘That's good.'

‘Yeah. Yeah it is but I, ah, told Dad that I couldn't go without saying goodbye to you.'

I laugh and sniff and wipe the teardrops from my face. ‘For what it's worth, I'm really glad you came to live with us.'

And then Nick McGowan shoves a badly wrapped present in my hands and kisses my cheek and whispers, ‘I really wish I'd kissed you at that party.'

And the next thing I know he's walking away, towards the cab. Nick McGowan turns back around and says, ‘Best free feeling in the world: changing schools one week before the compulsory five-kilometre cross-country!'

He laughs and waves, and I watch as he gets into the waiting cab.

With the taxi out of sight, I open the envelope first. It's a picture of a freaky circus clown. Inside the card Nick's written, ‘You in 20 years? Rachel, you're the beetroot on my hamburger. Nick.'

I rip open my present and find two bright pink washing-up gloves. And Nick's recipe for beetroot and hommus dip.

I laugh out loud.

‘Who was that? He was totally hot.' I turn and see Vivian Woo emptying the restaurant bin. ‘And why'd he give you washing-up gloves?'

I look at the gloves, smile to myself and say, ‘It's a private joke between Nick and me. You wouldn't understand.'

Rumours started going around again about Nick McGowan pretty much as soon as he left our school that March. Rumours that my parents had found drugs in his room. Rumours that Nick and I had been caught having sex by the pool. Rumours that he was on ‘suicide-watch' in a funny farm in Rockhampton.

The truth is that Nick left Brisbane that day and started the following week as a weekly boarder at St Brendan's in Yeppoon. Close enough so that he could go home to Middlemount on weekends, far enough away that he didn't have to sit through Sam's daily ballet concerts in her backyard.

He never did change his mind about not wanting to be a doctor. Nick McGowan decided he wanted to be a chef instead and maybe open his own restaurant one day. A restaurant that specialises in lasagne and never puts less than three slices of beetroot on a hamburger. So these days, while I'm still battling first-year uni nerves and trying to navigate my way around campus, Nick's training as an apprentice chef for a guy called Mario in a little Italian café on Merthyr Road in New Farm. Which is all well and good, but just yesterday I met him at Dooleys Hotel and had to take the pool cue out of his hand, reminding him that he'd promised to make me dinner. After he shouted me a beer. We still debate the role of beetroot on a hamburger.

Nick McGowan only came to stay with my family for a few weeks in 1989, but it was enough time for me to realise that sometimes change is a good thing. That when you're looking for the truth it's always better to go to the source. That life isn't always better with a Party Hostess crown on your head.

And that the best free feeling in the world is when you find a new friend who you know you'll have with you for the rest of your life.