The Summer of Kicks Page 12

  ‘Picnic blanket would have been a plan,’ Ellie says.

  ‘Ah, fear not.’ I carefully unfold a miniature paper napkin, no bigger than my hand, and place it on the sand at her feet.

  ‘So gentlemanly,’ she says. ‘And thank you also for assuming my bum is small enough for that to be adequate.’

  ‘Actually it was for both of us. Two appropriately sized bottoms, one slightly undersized picnic blanket. We can make it work, but we’ll have to squish together.’

  She looks at me with those eyes and they approve of my suggestion.

  I rustle through the plastic bag to retrieve our Mexican dinners as well as the assortment of plastic cutlery and two bottled waters.

  ‘Mmmm …’ I say. ‘I love fah-jee-ters.’ At home we always call them that. Never fa-HEE-tahs. It’s just a dumb family joke, but it’s out there now, and all I can do is hope Ellie doesn’t take it the wrong way.

  ‘Sounds like body parts,’ she says with a giggle.

  It’s a well-documented fact that Mexican food ranks as the number two most inappropriate impress-a-girl food available to mankind, second only to gnawing on a zebra carcass, Bear Grylls-style. Unless you’re with the kind of girl who’s impressed by that sort of thing.

  ‘Hey, shoes are looking cool,’ Ellie says, and she’s commenting not just on my shoes, but on the recent changes I made to them. KISS. AC/DC. Van Halen. Band logos scrawled all over the left one.

  ‘Did you do that?’ she asks.

  ‘Yeah, you know. Just scribbling around.’

  ‘Looks neat. Although, you’ve made a terrible mistake,’ she tells me.

  What did I do? I quickly check it, but the letters all seem to be in place.

  ‘You’ve covered the classics, my little friend, but this shoe definitely gets filed under seventies and eighties rock. On the other shoe, the blank one, you need to explore something a little more our generation. Kurt Vile. The National. Get some Foals on there, boy.’

  My eyes are watering and there’s hot chilli sauce dripping down my face. I don’t want to look like an idiot, so I quickly wipe my jaw against my sleeve. Now I look like an idiot.

  ‘I’ll get to work on it,’ I say, and as I look at her right now, at all of her, I’m trying to work out the injustice of girls maturing more quickly than guys. I mean, here she is and it turns out that we were spat out of the baby factory the very same summer. She’s the same age as me, but she’s a woman, fully formed and shapely with all the bits that are nice to look at, and staring back at her is this dorky man-child, all thin and gangly with enough zits to be noticeable, hit-and-miss shaving once every five or six days, and absolutely zero muscle tone. You’ll grow into yourself, Mum says. You’re still a boy. But the girls my age aren’t still girls, Mum. They’re women. Hot-blooded, toned, super-hot teenage schoolgirl-women. I have no idea where to look or what to look at. I know where I want to look, but being inappropriate on a first date can go one of two ways: either things move forward at a fairly rapid pace or you come off looking like a depraved, creepy sex-fiend. I’m pretty sure I’m not ready for either right at the minute. Instead of staring at her face, her legs or the print on her shirt, I stare down at a completely non-sexy patch of dirt by the base of a poinciana tree.

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘What? Oh. Um … worm,’ I say, without thinking. Awesome. Good choice. Worm. Not weird at all.

  I might as well have said penis.

  As we stand up from the sand, I reach a hand out to her, to help her up.

  ‘Again with the gentlemanliness,’ Ellie says. ‘You’ll get a reputation.’ She grips my palm and as she stands we share a look. It’s a look that says, ‘We’re holding hands now and that’s OK.’ As we walk, her left hand, which is slightly smaller than mine, is soft and cool in my right hand, and it’s something so simple, yet so spectacular.

  ‘I know you’re in a band,’ she says, and we’re now at the bus stop, the next six-thirty-one on its way in two minutes.

  I nod.

  ‘And you play, let me guess, the tambourine?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That’s exactly right.’

  ‘Knew it,’ she says, smiling. ‘And what are you called, you know, supposing I had the urge to come and see you play somewhere?’

  I can’t say Infinite Nipples. It seemed like a great name at the band meeting, but the thought of saying it out loud to Ellie makes me realise it’s one part perverse and nine parts stupid.

  ‘Um … the jury’s still out,’ I say.

  ‘The Jury’s Still Out?’ she says. ‘Very cool. A name without having to commit to an actual name. I like it. Who came up with that?’

  ‘Actually, me,’ I say.

  ‘I’m guessing the bus will be here soon,’ she says, underneath the darkening Thursday sky. She pauses and looks up at me, like she’s waiting for something.

  Oh God, she’s waiting for me to kiss her.

  Fantastic. Holy crap.

  And I’m standing in this surreal moment, just seconds away from taking the giant leap forward from two people who work together, to having shared our first kiss, and she’s right here, waiting for me. Wanting me.

  Someone else is, too.

  ‘Starrphyre?’

  What the …?

  ‘Over here, honey.’ A zippy red Mazda 3 has slowed to a crawl. Although the driver is a little hard to make out, the car itself offers some clues. Plastered in Breeze FM logos, it also features a larger-than-life photo of my mother’s head with the words Sheila Sweet – How’s YOUR sex? stretching from the tail-lights to the front bumper. It’s as subtle as a nuclear bomb.

  ‘Mum! What the hell?’

  ‘Oh my God – that’s your mother?’ Ellie says, attempting to stifle a laugh.

  And before I know it, I’m in the car, and the moment is gone. Safely buckled up, I stare out my window, watching the repetitive dance of streetlights as they come into view and blur away. I’m not an independent young guy about to kiss a girl. I’m not anyone who matters. I’m a little boy again and my mother is in the driver’s seat.

  We twist through the streets that lead from the centre of town to our house. It’s only a seven- or eight-minute trip, but when we pull up in the driveway, step out into the familiar sounds and smells of my ordinary existence, Ellie and our almost kiss seem so far away that I wonder if they even happened at all.

  Chapter 20

  ‘Thank you, Chicago – we’re the ...’

  ‘Any progress on the plus-one invitation?’ Mum asks, pouring rice milk into a bowl of organically ticked cereal and sliding it across the benchtop towards me. ‘You’re not leaving yourself a lot of time. Unless you meet someone at the party tonight – you never know.’

  I sit down at the breakfast bar, mindlessly thumbing the spoon handle anti-clockwise around the bowl, watching it part the ancient grains like Moses did the Red Sea. I’m thinking about a plus-one, but it’s not for Mum’s Christmas lunch. Reece and I are on the come-if-you-want list for Candace’s end-of-school thing at her house tonight, and this time last week I would have been drooling like a dog with no lips at the thought of even being invited, but ever since the other day with Ellie, I’m not sure how much I even want to be there. It’ll be me, Reece and all the beautiful people. Candace ignoring me spectacularly and me fake-enjoying myself, feeling more out of place than a suntan in a Twilight movie. It’s the Christmas plus-one that Mum’s talking about, but I don’t so much want to tell her about Ellie. Actually not at all. Because once I share it with my mother, it’s out there and the experience will cease to be completely mine – as if talking about it will dilute how I feel somehow – so for now I’ll keep Ellie to myself.

  ‘Well, look at you,’ Mum says, elbows touching down on the benchtop, looking into my eyes. I’m staring into my bowl, giving off nothing. At least I think so. ‘You’ve already m
et someone, haven’t you?’ Mum says. But it’s a statement, not a question.

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘You’re a terrible liar, Starrphyre,’ she says and her smile reads like a diagram of satisfaction. ‘Where did you meet her?’ she asks. ‘I’m assuming it is a she?’

  ‘Hey? God, yes,’ I say, and I’ve walked right into her trap.

  ‘A girl? That’s wonderful, darling – I’m so proud of you,’ she beams. ‘Now you remember, you talk to me. Anything at all. Feelings, emotions, chlamydia …’

  ‘Nice,’ I say. ‘As soon as an infectious disease pops up, I’ll be sure to rush you a swab sample.’

  ‘I’m just so happy for you, darling. A girl,’ she says again and she’s gone a little gushy and it’s kind of nice, I guess.

  ‘But … there’s something else,’ I begin.

  ‘Something else? Something else what?’

  ‘Well, there is a girl,’ I say, ‘but there’s … there’s kind of another girl, too,’ and I’m telling her now about Ellie, and about Candace as well, and within minutes she’s extracted every detail about each girl that she’s deemed necessary to enable her to carry out her maternal advice-giving session.

  ‘You want the bottom line?’ Mum says, and again, it’s not a question. ‘You can’t string along two girls at the same time. There’s no room for hedging your bets when it comes to relationships. Make a choice. Make a good choice and make it now.’

  And it sounds so easy, so straightforward. But it’s anything but.

  ‘So Constance?’

  ‘Candace.’

  ‘Right. The girl with the party. She’s popular and beautiful, correct?’ I nod. ‘Well, here’s my two cents’ worth of what I know about popular and beautiful. You can spend your time chasing looks, going after the cutest girl in school, but she’s more than likely just going to turn out to be a total B-I-T-C-H. Excuse my French.’ Mum often excuses her French. Uses it like a free pass to potty-mouth town. ‘It makes no sense hooking up with a sour-faced Little Miss Nasty just because she looks good in or out of a pair of jeans. It might be an impressive addition to your CV, but in the long term, that’s not what you want to come home to. You want something to stare at? Buy a painting. What you’re really looking for is someone who sees you.’

  I’m taking the bus out to band practice at Hemmo’s today because despite Nan’s prediction of a heatwave, it’s a mild twenty-one degrees, the sky all patches of grey and white, like hundred-year-old photographs. It’s raining too, although not enough to actually dampen anything, but still spitty enough to make a ride on the six-thirty-one and a switch-out to the six-thirty-two appealing.

  Fritz is off today and in his place behind the wheel is a woman with dangerously red lipstick and blue-grey eyeshadow, applied with the same gentle touch used by circus clowns the world over. Empty seats are everywhere, but towards the back, the high seat above the wheel arch is half occupied.

  ‘Hey, Mikayla,’ I say tentatively and I’m kind of counting on the fact that she likes me a little and maybe that will soften the blow. I pull into the adjacent seat, and she says nothing. Nothing for a long time.

  ‘Hey, look—’ I begin, but she cuts me off, like she hasn’t heard me at all.

  ‘I know we’re friends,’ she says, and I nod guiltily. ‘But I trusted you. I put my trust in you, you know?’

  I know.

  ‘So what am I supposed to do with that?’ Although technically it was Hemmo who added the Brittney Pigs name to the clip, it was me who stole the name in the first place, me who let her down, and I’m in a situation now that I didn’t foresee at all: scrambling for Mikayla Petschler’s trust.

  ‘Mikayla, I’m sorry about your band name.’

  ‘Me too,’ she says, and her words are short stabs, quick and abbreviated, designed to find their mark.

  ‘It was a total accident,’ I say, and she looks at me and there’s very little on her face that translates to belief or forgiveness. I adjust my sail. ‘We’re having another band meeting,’ I say. ‘Maybe you want to … I don’t know … come along?’

  Mikayla lifts her head. For just a split second I see her hand and consider reaching out to it. I’m pretty sure that if I touched her hand she’d come around. Forgive me, maybe.

  ‘And you think that’ll fix everything?’ she says.

  ‘Well …’ I stumble, her hand’s still there. Still calling out for comfort. ‘It could be a start.’

  Mikayla Petschler, bus-stop stalker, turns to face the window and the buildings blur past, their stiff lines and harsh geometric outlines morph into an unrecognisable smear. Where one boundary ends and another begins is impossible to make out – clarity, it seems, will be restored only when the ride has stopped.

  We pull in near the primary school. An elderly man climbs on, his coat is bulky and unnecessary, even on a day like today, but like old people do, he’s preparing for the unexpected. He doesn’t want to be caught out. Good on him.

  ‘So,’ Mikayla says. ‘You’ll text me the address?’

  And I haven’t held her hand. I haven’t blurred the lines. I’ve just given her space.

  ‘Don’t need to,’ I say, and I offer her a genuine smile. ‘We’re getting off at the next stop.’

  The bingo cage rotates with what has become a familiar metallic rattling sound and the first square of paper falls out.

  ‘Fresh,’ says Bailey, seemingly excited. ‘Hey, that’s one of mine.’

  The second spin produces the word love.

  ‘That was one of my words too,’ Bailey says. ‘Hey, it looks like we’re Fresh Love. Awesome.’

  ‘Not likely,’ says Scene. ‘That name bites ass. Spin it again.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Reece says. ‘If we go for word number three, we could end up with a name like Love Fresh Turds. Or Fresh Sasquatch Love.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Fresh Love? I think Fresh Love is a good name for a band,’ says Bailey and I see Mikayla sending him an approving look.

  ‘That’s because you’re a tosser, Bailey,’ says Reece. ‘What the hell was wrong with the Infinite Nipples?’

  ‘My mum wouldn’t let me be in a band called the Infinite … you know.’

  ‘Your mum’s a dick,’ Hemmo says to Bailey.

  ‘Dude, you can’t say that,’ Reece says.

  ‘You can if it’s the band name,’ Hemmo says and he leaps to his feet. ‘Thank you, Chicago – we’re Your Mum’s a Dick!’ and although clearly it’s Hemmo who’s a dick, it is still kind of funny.

  ‘OK, so what are we calling this freaking band?’ Scene asks. ‘Because Fresh Love is bullshit.’

  The cage rolls again and Buddha’s Gerbil spits out.

  ‘Buddha’s Gerbil?’ questions Scene. ‘How about ‘Buddha’s Ball Sack?’ He clutches his crutch to offer up a visual aid. ‘What do you think, Ernie?’

  ‘Classy, Sean,’ I say.

  ‘It’s Scene,’ he says. ‘And your mother’s classy.’

  ‘Hey, what about Mother’s Classy?’ says Ben. ‘In honour of … what’s your mum’s name again, Starrphyre?’ They all know perfectly well what her name is.

  ‘It’s Sheila,’ says Bailey.

  ‘She-e-i-l-a,’ Reece and Hemmo say in unison as if it was Candace McAllister they were talking about.

  ‘Your mum is so hot,’ Ben says with a smile. It’s a comment that earns him my right shoe in the side of his head, which he indicates was a small price to pay. ‘Sheila’s Hotness, anyone?’ he chuckles.

  ‘So that’s our new name?’ Bale asks. ‘Sheila’s Hotness?’

  ‘Sheila’s Ball Sack,’ says Scene. ‘Any takers? Anyone?’

  After much deliberation, we move away from the reference to my mother, and it is agreed upon that for the next undetermined time period, we will be known as Stroking Herman, but afte
r texting his mother for approval, within minutes Bailey receives a reply text that includes not only words like vulgar and inappropriate, but also a suggestion for a new name.

  ‘Salad Fever?’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ says Bailey. ‘Because it says that we’re fresh and exciting.’

  ‘Wait, wait, wait – who let this guy in here again?’ Hemmo laughs. ‘Seriously, Bale. Your name choices really suck.’

  ‘Balls,’ adds Scene. ‘They suck balls. From now on, little guy, you’re allowed to think up as many names as you like for your pets and your Barbie dolls, but the band names are off limits. Just stick to what you do best.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ Bale asks.

  ‘Um … we already covered that,’ Scene says. ‘Sucking balls.’

  Laughter ensues. Hemmo’s dad’s turntable is switched on at the wall. Scene carefully pulls The Doors’ Strange Days out from its sleeve, surveys the track listing and rests the needle on the brittle black plastic in the thin groove between ‘Horse Latitudes’ and ‘Moonlight Drive’.

  ‘OK,’ I say, as Jim Morrison makes a fifty-year-old suggestion that we swim to the moon. ‘Although mildly amusing, this isn’t getting us anywhere. We still need a band name.’

  ‘I’ve totally got one,’ says Reece, a huge smile spreading across his face. ‘How about We’re Going to a Party at Candace McAllister’s House Tonight and You Jerk-offs Aren’t Because You Weren’t Invited So Suck on That!’ and he punch-jabs a pointed finger in Hemmo’s direction.

  ‘No way!’ Hemmo says, looking to me for confirmation. I shrug, as if the party invite was a given and I see Reece nodding and smiling, arms folded, like he’s suddenly the coolest guy in the room. ‘Yeah, well, a thousand bucks says she doesn’t say a single word to you losers the whole freakin’ night,’ says Hemmo. ‘And, as for the band name, we’d never fit that on an album cover. It’s like fifty words.’ Hemmo’s smiling now. ‘Ridiculous.’

  The bingo cage is loaded again, but before any dubious word-twins pop out, Reece jumps up again.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ Reece says. ‘I’ve got a name for us, an actual awesome one.’