The Summer of Kicks Page 15

  ‘I’ve heard that name somewhere before,’ she says. I’d be willing to bet that she’s heard it every time they call the roll. Or on YouTube. Or at some stage during the whole Grease thing. She smiles, right at me, and brushes her hair behind her ear. ‘It’s a girl’s name though, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Probably. My parents were idiots.’ It’s my standard response, but she doesn’t seem to pay any attention, at least not to the actual words I’m saying.

  ‘You know what? We should have a drink,’ she says. Candace McAllister. Candace McAllister says to me that we should have a drink. And now I’m on a couch, thigh-stapled to Candace McAllister, soon to be drinking something – cordial? tea? beer? – with Candace McAllister. Me. And her. There’s a pounding in my chest and it’s only natural – completely normal – that my body is thinking beyond the parameters of G-rated thoughts about her. With a smorgasbord of buff testosterone-tanks walking around this movie-set house with their ass-cracks jutting out of their boardies like bookmarks, she’s chosen me to sit next to. Me to have a drink with. Right now I’d drink week-old solution from Nan’s denture glass if Candace served it to me. I’d drink it down and smile and tell her it was delicious and happily ask for another.

  A guy I recognise from school – a year-twelve kid, Kane something – prances over to us, holds out a tray of half-filled plastic cups, and Candace and I both reach out to take what he’s offering.

  Kane the tray guy steps back to continue flowing through the crowd, but Candace grabs him by the wrist.

  ‘No, no, no,’ she says. ‘Not so fast.’ She stretches up and places her cup, already empty, on his tray where it rolls and mingles with the others. ‘I’ll have just one more, please,’ she says. My guess is that these aren’t drinks number one and two for Candace. She nurses the new cup between her hands, and as Kane dances off through the crowd to the beat of something clubby, I bring my cup to my mouth, and reluctantly sip. The drink tangs and burns on my tongue. It’s hot, but not in a spicy way or in a temperature-related way. I’m not familiar with the flavour, but I guess it’s somewhere in the ballpark of vodka or gin. Straight shots. Candace knocks hers back, her face to the ceiling, eyes closed. The plastic cup is empty, but she licks at the rim, taking all that it has to offer, then discards it, the cup tumbling backwards, beyond her forehead to the floor.

  ‘So, Sssstarrphyre,’ Candace says. Her eyes stop to focus on me, she moves her face a few finger-spaces closer to mine and, as her left leg crosses her right, her skirt rides higher up her thigh. I look, because I have to, but don’t want her to see that I’m looking, even though she probably knows I’m looking and might have even crossed her legs on purpose so that I would look, and if she did, would it be pervy to look, or rude not to? I try to half look, with just one eye, while keeping the other eye on Candace, and I’m sure I must look like a massive idiot, but Candace seems not to notice. ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ she asks. ‘You know, anyone you’re seeing?’

  Ellie.

  Of course I think of Ellie, and of course I’m confused because right up until the moment we kissed, she was everything. But here I am and Candace McAllister is close enough that I can feel her breathing on my face and I don’t want her to stop breathing on my face, so I say to her, ‘Sort of. I … not really.’

  ‘Not really?’ Candace asks. ‘So there is someone?’ And she’s smiling, devouring what I’ve just told her like it’s some delicious treat.

  ‘It’s like I said. There’s kind of someone,’ I say. ‘But you know. Kind of.’

  ‘And you like her?’

  I do. I like her a lot. At least I think I do. But do I want Candace to know that? And with the hollow feeling of guilt my gut has been harbouring since the crash-and-burn kissing incident, I’m finding it hard to pinpoint exactly how I feel about Ellie, even to myself, so I’m hedging my bets here – keeping both dreams alive just in case one doesn’t work out. Some people would justify it as ‘keeping my options open’. Mum would call it ‘relationship juggling’. Too many balls in the air, she’d say. And in all of life’s situations, you need to be in control of your balls – not the other way around.

  I’m pretty sure that the back-end of that advice didn’t have a single thing to do with the fine motor skills required to keep numerous spherical objects airborne at any given time, but I get the underlying theme – don’t try to be too tricky because that’s when everything you’re juggling can come crashing down around you.

  Candace leans in to me and the look on her face suggests that she’s enjoying this. It’s like a game she’s playing. If I had to guess, I’d say that she wants me to have a girlfriend – that’s what’s interesting to her. She’s relishing the potential challenge ahead, looking forward to the power that comes from taking something that belongs to someone else. And, as her face nears mine, I’m so out of my depth. I’m four years old and I’ve been thrown into the deep end of the pool, and all I want is my arm-floaties or a swim-ring or something to help me from drowning, but nothing like that – at least not here – is within reach.

  ‘Well, here’s my question for you,’ and her right hand is on my knee now. ‘Are you going to be a good boy or a bad boy?’

  I don’t know what to think, or even if it’s possible to think because Candace McAllister is touching my leg, telling me to forget about … about what happened earlier tonight, and she’s here, she’s right here, and I don’t have a clue why this is happening, how any of this is possible, and I’m not really sure exactly what to do next or even how to do it. Shit. All I know is that the girl I’ve thought about for so long, dreamed about and hoped would someday talk to me, is moments from my lips and her hand is reaching for my face. Her lips. My face. And we touch and her eyes, I’d never really noticed, always assumed that they were blue, but up close, in this light, they seem to be more green than blue, and I don’t know how I ever could have missed such a monumental detail. Her charcoal-shaded eyelids, her black lashes, have closed over those eyes now and this is it. I’m sixteen and I don’t know how it’s taken so long or how it’s come around so quickly, but we’re about to kiss. This is the moment when some jerk-off is going to come bounding over and bounce me off the couch or spill a jug of Fanta on me, but it doesn’t happen. Our lips touch, mine and Candace’s, and we kiss, and around us the buzz of the party continues, the noises are muffled, but still present, and I know not to overthink this, hope that she doesn’t notice the huge L-plate on my tongue, and I have every reason to believe that she knows what she’s doing in this department, so I allow her to take the lead and as she finds my tongue with hers, gently at first, I obligingly follow it with mine. Her face moves, so close to mine, and her eyes are still closed and I know this because mine are open and I’m watching her for just a moment and I follow suit. I close mine now, get lost in this kiss, and my pulse increases to the point that I think my heart might explode.

  ‘Mm,’ Candace says as she breaks away and the instant we’re done, I’m comparing what’s just happened to my kiss with Ellie. I now have a point of reference – a new experience. A notch on the wall to offer some perspective. If this kiss was a roller-coaster, twisting and crashing, hurtling along rickety wooden tracks, threatening to derail, sending chills as it lifts and climbs, shakes and terrifies, makes and destroys you, and scares you shitless while filling you with more adrenaline than your veins can handle – Ellie’s kiss was one of those fibreglass animal rides at the supermarket that you slide two bucks into. Comparatively. Worlds apart. And now Candace is looking at me and it’s me who’s wondering if I’ve done a good enough job for her. If I kiss like a horse. If I’m her Ellie.

  She’s smiling. That has to be a positive sign but I wonder if she’s only smiling because she thinks I’m an idiot because my kissing technique was more comical than impressive, but ‘Not bad,’ she says, and I’m happy to accept that.

  ‘Hey, Candace,’ some guy says
. He’s standing behind us, his face is now between ours, and the back of his head has eclipsed my view of Candace. I instantly hate him. ‘Come on, they’re about to do the bonfire.’

  ‘Start without me,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a bit of a headache. Probably just tired. I think I’m going to head upstairs and lie down for a bit.’

  ‘OK,’ the back of the head says. ‘Check ya.’ And he’s gone and I have no reason to hate him anymore.

  Using my knee as a push-off point, Candace stands, stretches, and even with her face crumpled up like it is, she’s beautiful.

  She walks to the stairs. This is the part where I go outside and uncomfortably hang out at the fringe of the cool circle while Candace disappears for the night. I’ll find someone to talk to, maybe. With a bit of luck there’ll be someone else out there on the very outer rim of cool, and we can strike up a conversation. Something mundane that I won’t be listening to because my mind will be on that kiss, and those eyes, and the girl who’s upstairs, just a few metres away, while I’m down here shooting the breeze with some unfortunate knob that I have zero interest in.

  And so Candace McAllister heads for the staircase. She’s holding the rail and she’s made it up three, maybe four steps now, and I’m still on the couch. Candace takes another step, then turns her head back over her shoulder towards me and offers me a smile. ‘Follow me?’

  The squares I face are empty. Every one of them. Nine squares, devoid of invited talent, and I know why. The lights on the set have dimmed. All that remains of the studio audience are the tumble of paper cups and scrumplings of confectionery wrappers that await the swift sweep of the long-handled broom into the cleaner’s dust-pan. The show is over. There’s no one qualified to offer me advice here. It’s virgin territory, both figuratively and literally. I lean towards the mic, decide to switch it off, but a flicker of light – crimson neon – catches my eye. Square seven, bottom left. The silhouette of what is evidently a woman moves from stage left, seats herself, and a spotlight follows her lead, illuminates her.

  ‘Your next question, I believe, is for me, Starrphyre,’ she says.

  Of course.

  It’s my mother.

  ‘You need to ask me some specific questions here, darling. But don’t waste them,’ she says. ‘I don’t have all day.’ She wants me to skip the obvious ones and dig a little deeper. I can guess where she’s going with this. I ask away.

  ‘Candace …’ I begin.

  ‘Wrong,’ says Mum.

  ‘Ellie?’

  ‘Go on,’ Mum urges. ‘You’re on the right track. Tell me about Ellie,’ she says. ‘And I don’t want facts. I want feelings. Express yourself.’

  ‘Ellie …’ I start. I’m flying in the dark, but I have to work this one out. ‘It felt – it was weird. Not bad weird,’ I correct, ‘just weird because that first date was just so instant, so … so perfect. With the coffee, and then the dinner, and we were talking, and she was so nice, so cute. That night I could have spent forever just watching her, watching the sun fade across her face and God, she became beautiful right in front of me, right while I was watching her, she just … she was beautiful – and I have no idea how I didn’t notice it before then. How does that even work?’

  ‘And the other girl,’ says Mum, ‘I assume that the reason you’re struggling to make a mature decision, the right decision, is because you have exactly the same feelings for this other girl, too?’

  Mum is poking the embers, stirring up the coals to see which ones will spark and which ones will fade out, crumble and die. I’m sure it is a technique she’s used before. I’m sure she has a name for it. But the name in my head now is Candace, and straightaway I’m making comparisons. For four years she’s occupied my head, been like the Survivor immunity idol, something to strive for. A seemingly impossible mountain to conquer. She was the Alps and I was Hannibal without a map and with both feet tied together and a herd of elephants that had buggered off to Bali for the winter. But tonight at the party, I’d been handed a GPS, someone had unbound my feet and attached jet packs to my team of pachyderms, and the prize of Candace McAllister had become mine. Well, mine enough.

  ‘So what do you do,’ I ask, ‘when you’ve been waiting your whole life for one girl to notice you, and then she, well, she does more than notice you, but you’ve just kind of fallen for someone else?’

  ‘Well, that, my darling, is the million-dollar question.’

  Chapter 24

  Sunday bloody Sunday

  ‘So, you had a good night then, Starrph, hehe?’ It’s 9.15 and Reece is on my doorstep. I’m blurry as hell. Pyjama bottoms. Slitted eyes. Epileptic hair. The sleep fairy was a cheapskate last night, paying me only the briefest of visits. And her absence made way for the hard-to-ignore Candace-McAllister-action-replay fairy.

  ‘What the hell?’ I say, squinting into the sunshine. I’m trying to get my head around who he is and why he’s here. ‘What are you doing?’ I say, as the play button inside my head kicks into action. As the new day scratches at my eyelids, forces them to open fully, the real events of last night are beginning to crystallise. Slowly, like the small sleeve of a cotton dress being slipped across and down a bare shoulder, the memories are shifting from a dream like haze and into sharp focus.

  ‘I thought I’d schmooze a ride to the mall with you. You’re working eleven to three, right?’

  It’s too early to know.

  ‘Well, me too, so we’ll bus it in together, then? Oh, hey, Mrs J,’ he says.

  ‘Morning, darling,’ Mum says, and Reece is in my house now, walking towards our kitchen. ‘How’s your love life?’

  ‘Smokin’ hot,’ he replies.

  ‘I’ll take that to mean non-existent, then,’ Mum corrects.

  ‘What? No way, Mrs J,’ Reece says. ‘You totally have that wrong.’

  ‘Sorry, darling, but in my experience, if you’re bragging about it, in truth you’re not getting any.’

  ‘Right then,’ says Reece. ‘This isn’t awkward.’

  ‘I’m just saying, young man, that if you’re not having a physical relationship with anyone – man, woman or otherwise – it’s best to keep it that way. For another ten or fifteen years at least,’ she says, smiling.

  ‘Nice. Thanks for the tip,’ Reece says.

  There’s a basket of clean washing just inside the doorway to the kitchen and I grab my Zeppelin shirt, poke my arms through and drag the unironed item over my head. I see my jeans and collect them too. A pile of shoes makes its home at the exact point where the hallway collides with the front door, and on any other day my Converse would be there, but today it’s just my black leather school ones, smothered by half a dozen pairs of brightly coloured women’s sandals and thongs.

  ‘Seen my shoes?’ I say. The morning is yet to present itself in high definition.

  ‘Is that a question I really need to answer?’ Mum says. ‘Your feet, your shoes …’

  Part three of that mantra are the words your responsibility, but I know the drill. It doesn’t bring me closer to my shoes, though, and with no energy or any hint of desire to search the house for them, I take the simple road and succumb to a day in school shoes.

  ‘Hey, B-T-dubs, Mrs J, that was an enlightening radio show last night,’ Reece says.

  ‘Oh, you caught it?’ she asks, cracking some eggs into the big silver mixing bowl.

  ‘In the car,’ Reece says. ‘On the way to the party.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Way to sell me out.’

  ‘Oh, calm down, honey.’

  ‘Calm down? You stuffed everything up!’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to apologise for my show, Starrphyre,’ Mum says. ‘As always, we covered an important topic and we had callers with some really positive strategies. If you were offended, darling, that’s actually your issue.’

  ‘Oh, don’t pull your psychological spin
crap on me, Mum. You talked about me. But not just me – me and Candace and Ellie.’

  ‘I didn’t mention any names.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Mum, Ellie was listening last night. Do you think I want her to know all that stuff? That stuff you said about Candace? Jesus, Mum, you just can’t use me as material for your stupid show. You can’t do that.’

  ‘If the subject is valid, then I can and I will. A lot of my listeners are your age, going through just the same things. I did it for a reason, my dear, and I stand by it,’ Mum says. ‘I just hope you were paying attention and that maybe you actually learned something.’

  ‘Don’t know if I learned much last night, Mrs J, but I’m pretty sure little Starrphyre did,’ Reece says. ‘I think he had quite an educational evening.’ He sends me a look, waiting for a response, but I don’t give one. I don’t feel like giving back to his stupid comment. I don’t really feel like anything and I think that I should at least be feeling something besides angry at Mum. I should be smiling about this, shouldn’t I? Feeling like the king of the world? I should have burst out of bed this morning Jimi Hendrix-style, shouting about kissing the sky and I should be hanging out for the walk to the bus stop with Reece so that I can tell him every single detail of last night with Candace. But I don’t want to. I want him to go home. I don’t want him to nudge me or to whoop-whoop or anything that falls into that category. To be honest, I don’t feel like it’s cause for a celebration. I kind of feel like shit about it. About how easy it was to just go along with what she wanted – to be drawn in by Candace. What was I thinking? Every touch, every look – and Ellie? Where the hell does she fit in all of this? And if she found out, if she knew? But she wasn’t there. She doesn’t know what happened. Nobody knows exactly what went on last night except for me and Candace.

  And until I get my head around it, it has got to stay that way.

  Chapter 25