The Summer of Kicks Page 16

  Stalk me baby, one more time

  ‘Woah … hey, I’m vibrating.’ Reece reaches a hand into a pocket to respond to the muted buzz of his phone. ‘Score!’ He shouts, his fist celebrating. ‘Looks like the Pant-R-Us team can handle the day without me.’

  And I’m glad. I’d rather take the bus trip alone today. Give me time to cool off. Sort things out, maybe. I don’t know. I feel like someone’s just emptied the contents of a hundred jigsaw puzzle boxes into my head – pieces falling face-up, face-down, interlocking and unlinking, scattering everywhere, and it’s my job to sort them all out. I’ll go to work and I’ll do my four hours and I’ll just try and sort through this crap. Ellie, she’s not rostered on today, and I feel like the universe has my back for that one. Just me and Scene, and another random or two working the coffee section. People I don’t really know and don’t really need to know. And that suits me just fine.

  Walking to the bus stop, I lift my head slightly to the sky. There are no clouds about, but I feel like it should be raining. Some kind of miserable, pissy drizzle. Meteorological karma, but it’s not. It’s just another hot December morning.

  Head down, face in her phone, Mikayla’s waiting at the bus shelter. Of course she is. Immediately I want to turn around and go back home. Hide behind a bush, anything to avoid contact with her, but I don’t. I have to go to work, so I keep moving forward.

  ‘O-M-G. Starrphyre,’ she says, her head peeling away from Twitter or Facebook or whatever the hell she’s doing. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

  The bus is due soon. A minute. Two minutes maybe, and I wish it would just get here. I regret not having my headphones or a book or something that would send her the message that I don’t want to listen to her crap today, that I just want to be left alone.

  The bus is late.

  Dad texts me. A list as long as my arm of songs by his band and now he’s asking for the names of all the members of the Velvet Underground. Lou Reed. Who else? That John guy. And Mo something? Or is it someone Morrison? I can’t think. I check my phone and five minutes have passed since I arrived. Five minutes of Mikayla’s constant rambling about God knows what. I can’t listen to it, not today.

  ‘I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even know what to do, Starrphyre, and I guess it’s really her problem and everything, but I don’t know – how would you handle it?’

  ‘What?’

  The bus pulls in and as the doors gush open, we trudge towards the steps and climb inside.

  ‘I mean, if you liked somebody, but …’ Mikayla plonks down, scooches over and I kind of have to join her. ‘… you didn’t quite know what to do about it?’

  And we’re talking relationships. Perfect. Guys and girls and crushes and feelings and sex and drama and cheating and lies and I just can’t escape. It’s like a tsunami of emotions that I can’t outrun. I lean my head into the seat in front, breathe out loudly, like I’m trying not to hyperventilate.

  ‘Are you OK? Starrphyre?’ Mikayla’s hand is on my shoulder. It’s gentle and calming, and I say nothing. The vibrations of the bus feed through the seat into my forehead and for a minute or so I stay like this. For what it’s worth, Mikayla’s hand on my back and the silent space she’s giving me, they seem to be just what I need.

  ‘Are you all right to talk?’ she says. ‘I mean, if you want me to shut up …’

  ‘No,’ I manage. ‘No, it’s actually OK.’ I lift my head up. My fingers find a deep indent running horizontally across my forehead and I try for a moment to massage it away.

  ‘Hey, Mikayla,’ I say. And I’m feeling better now. Well, not better, but calmer, I guess. ‘Can I … can I talk to you about something?’

  Her face is instantly the mugshot for anticipation and eagerness.

  ‘I don’t want you to, you know …’ and I can’t believe I am doing this. Confiding in Mikayla Petschler. ‘Don’t think I’m weird or anything,’ I say. ‘Not that you would, well, maybe you would, but I mean … I hope you won’t …’ I sound like an idiot.

  ‘Just say it,’ she says, grinning. God knows what she’s thinking.

  ‘OK, so what I need is maybe some advice. A female’s opinion, I guess.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About … girls,’ I say. ‘See, there’s a girl I know.’ I’m starting with Candace. ‘A girl at school that I guess I’ve kind of liked for a while.’

  ‘Ooh, go on,’ Mikayla says, her face all excitement and misplaced hope.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s not …’ I begin, realising that I have to be clear now. I’ve seen enough movies and read enough books to know that when people start to ride the roundabouts of hypotheticals and maybes, confusion and conclusion-jumping run rampant.

  ‘It’s, you probably know, everybody knows. It’s Candace McAllister.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says. Her gaze drops to the ground and I feel like I’ve just popped her party balloon.

  ‘That’s a truly groundbreaking scenario, Starrphyre. Congratulations on being one of the masses,’ she says. ‘Now is that the extent of your issues or is there more, Mr Famous YouTube Star?’

  ‘No, that’s not it,’ I say. ‘There’s someone else. A different girl.’

  ‘Two-timing dirtbag!’ Mikayla snaps, but her expression quickly lightens. ‘Just kidding. Tell me about lucky lady number two.’ And she’s smiling. ‘Have you spent any time with this girl or is she just another crush from a distance?’

  ‘No, no, she’s, you know …’ I begin. ‘She’s real.’ Ellie’s in my mind now. Her dark hair and I can see the dusk light bouncing off her face. She’s radiant. She’s … ‘She’s really different. I mean, this girl I know a little bit better. We’ve talked. And we get along really well, and it’s easy with her – so easy, like I don’t even have to try, and when I look at her it feels kinda like it’s right, you know? Like it’s …’

  ‘Magic?’ Mikayla suggests.

  ‘I don’t know. Does that sound dorky?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘I just … I really like her,’ I say, ‘but I don’t know exactly how much I like her. I don’t know. Yesterday I wasn’t so sure, but today – I think I like her a lot. Maybe.’ I don’t even know if I’m making any sense.

  ‘But there’s more,’ I say, and Mikayla’s gaze is locked on me. I get the feeling she’d listen to me recite the alphabet for a week straight if I was willing to do it. ‘With Candace, I’ve liked her since forever. It’s so stereotypical – the dorky guy with the hots for the popular girl. It’s like a syndrome. But you know Candace – she’s all perfect and super-popular and she’s nice and she’s kind and funny …’

  ‘And this is Candace McAllister we’re still talking about?’ Mikayla says. ‘Kind and funny?’

  ‘The truth is that ordinarily she wouldn’t be able to spot me in a line-up, but then last night—’

  ‘Last night?’

  And I’ve stepped too far. I can’t go here with Mikayla, can’t bring her into my circle of trust. Not with this.

  ‘Ooh, what happened last night?’ she asks.

  ‘Last night? What? Nothing,’ I lie. The bus takes a hard right, changes course, and I follow its lead. ‘No, I was just … it was something I heard on the radio.’ And I have to come up with something plausible now. Something believable. ‘I was listening to Mum’s show. She was talking about relationships and what to do if you like two people at the same time.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ she squeals. ‘She was talking about you, I assume?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘And what did you take away from your radio experience?’

  ‘Nothing. It was crap,’ I say. I look past Mikayla, out the window, not focusing on any one particular thing, but pretending to. ‘I don’t know, I guess what I want to know is how to choose. How to stop thinking about both girls at once.’

  ‘Well, ask
yourself this,’ Mikayla begins. ‘If you had to make a choice on the spot – both girls come to you together, The Bachelor-style, and declare their undying love for you – which girl would you choose to be with and who would you send home?’

  The likelihood of that scenario playing out is somewhat slim at best. But honestly? If I had to choose?

  ‘OK, this is going to sound naff,’ Mikayla says, ‘but I think you already know the answer, my love-confused little friend. Now, I know that I may not be the best person to offer you dating advice, given that my last relationship was with Robbie Stammers in year one, but what you need to do is simple,’ she says, poking me somewhere near my left nipple with two of her fingers. And her voice is soft and understanding now, like she’s suddenly somebody’s nanna. ‘Listen to your heart,’ she says. ‘Ask yourself which girl you’d rather spend time with – the girl who’s going to look freaking fantastic as your date to the formal, or the girl you can talk to, share your thoughts with? The girl you’ve already made a connection with?’

  If making a simple choice was the extent of the situation, the simplest, truest version of my problem, the answer I could work out on my own. Hell, it’d be a no-brainer. But Mikayla doesn’t know about the lead-up to the kiss with Ellie, and then the awkwardness of the kiss itself. She certainly doesn’t know what happened with Candace at the party last night. If she did I don’t know that she’d be talking to me at all. Had I had the foresight to talk seriously with someone – Mikayla or anyone else – in the space of time between the kiss and the party, maybe I would have done things differently. But the horse has already bolted. I’ve done the deed. I haven’t given Mikayla all the information, but I guess I’m just trying to right what’s in my head, and I was kind of hoping Mikayla would say something that would allow me to justify what I did. But nothing can. The past is done and it lives with you for all time. Every mistake you make in life goes down on your permanent record, and as much as you might want to, you can’t erase any of it.

  Any experience – good or bad – wrap it up and label it, Mum says, but make damn sure you learn from it. So what have I learned?

  I guess I learned pretty quickly that it only takes one night to transform you from a loveable dork into a cheating asshole douchebag.

  Great lesson.

  A-plus to the skinny kid.

  The bus pulls in to its allocated stopping space at the mall, and after talking to Mikayla, I am actually feeling a bit better. Not as heart-attacky as when I first climbed aboard.

  ‘Hey, I’ll see you,’ I say, and out loud my voice sounds kind of chirpy. I take a left towards Vinyl Analysis and Mikayla peels off in the opposite direction. ‘Oh, and thanks for the advice,’ I say, but honestly, although I’m feeling a little better, I’m really none the wiser. It’s like I’ve asked her to teach me how to dance the tango and she’s handed me a multi-page printout of the steps required to build a birdcage.

  ‘No thanks necessary,’ she says with a wave. ‘Most of it I stole from Cosmo.’

  Chapter 26

  The beautiful and the damned

  It’s 10.51. Nine minutes to kill. Grab a juice and sit somewhere or head in to work early? I feel like a juice, feel like something in my belly, but if I go and sit somewhere and try to think things out with a nine-minute deadline, that’ll probably just do my head in. The straight-to-work option seems the better plan. Four hours of fairly mindless album filing, customer serving and floor sweeping. I’ll have the bus ride and the walk home to sort through the Ellie–Candace crap. For now I think I just need the music – the vibe of the store. Turn up, tune in and drop out.

  The store looks empty and it’s quiet so far. Quiet except for the girl from LASH belting out from the speakers that she doesn’t want to grow up, wants to get out, be taken away, and I can’t help but side with her.

  ‘Morning, butt-wipe.’

  ‘What?’ I’m almost at the door to the back room. The door where I first saw Ellie, struggling with a box. Before I knew her name or anything about her. Before any of this huge fricking mess had started.

  ‘Oh. Hey.’ Scene’s at ground level, rearranging or fiddling with something in the cupboard underneath the eighties radio rock album bay. Whatever it is, it’s out of sight, and I don’t really care anyway. ‘Just you and me today?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ Scene says and I nod my approval.

  ‘That’s, um …’ I point to the speakers that sit flush with the ceiling. ‘Nice track.’

  ‘OK, you got me,’ says Scene, and I don’t really know what he’s talking about. He pulls a hand from the cupboard, holds up a CD cover of LASH’s The Beautiful and the Damned. ‘Only album they ever made,’ he says, ‘and never had a vinyl release, not as far as I know, but it’s a bitchin’ tune for a Sunday morning.’ Immediately the CD cover goes straight back into hiding. ‘Uncle Spike would go ape-shit if he knew I was playing CDs, dude, but sometimes the moment calls for access to a greater playlist,’ and he slides the cupboard door shut, pulls himself up and air-guitars off towards the counter. And even at Vinyl Analysis all is not as it seems. Turns out there are secrets everywhere. All around us, an ocean of deceit, and it doesn’t take much to dip your head below the surface to see what’s really going on.

  I’m shuffling through a pile of twelve-inch discs. Indie – twenty-first century. Bat for Lashes – Two Suns, Bon Iver, Jack White’s Blunderbuss, Tame Impala, Drive-by Truckers, Alt-J. Some of this stuff I’ve never heard, but any one of them could be my new favourite band. I could be just one song away from a life-defining musical moment, hooked after three and a half minutes. I remember the first time I heard The Black Keys’ El Camino, the dirty thump-shuffle of ‘Gold on the Ceiling’ – a little bit borrowed from old-school blues, a Doors-y keyboard riff, a splash of early ZZ Top even, a classic old sound, but somehow really fresh and new and it’s funny to think that a few tiny decisions could have changed the entire flavour of the song. They could have decided to go with other influences. Hip-hop instead of blues. Taylor Swift instead of ZZ Top. Mozart instead of The Doors. Even if the song had the exact same lyrics, the same intention, it would have turned out to be a much uglier beast. It just comes down to choices. Make the right choice and you can create magic. Make the wrong choice and the consequences can be disastrous.

  ‘Hey, when you’re done with that, go get that box of records out the back,’ Scene calls out to me. He’s on the stepladder, putting up a new poster he’s just pulled out of a mailing tube. Prince, Purple Rain. A reprint.

  Out the back, there are dozens of boxes of records, piled almost to the ceiling.

  ‘Which one?’ I ask.

  ‘You’ll see it,’ Scene says. ‘It’s just by the sink. Red box.’

  ‘Hey,’ I say, looking back to the poster. ‘You really think Prince qualifies as rock? “Purple Rain”, sure I get that, but what about “When Doves Cry”? “1999”?’ I suggest. ‘That crappy song “Cream”? And “Kiss” is a great song, but rock? It doesn’t make a ton of sense.’

  ‘Well,’ Scene says, lining up the staple gun and forcibly pulling the trigger. ‘He’s released more than his fair share of tasteless shit in his time, I’ll give you that.’ He shoots another staple into the wall. ‘More than anyone should be exposed to, but Rolling Stone ranked him at something like number thirty in their top one hundred guitarists – ahead of James Hetfield, Robby Krieger, Frusciante, Slash, the dude from Dire Straits, The Edge – he’s a fricking legend guitarist. And you wouldn’t come across anyone who didn’t wish they’d written “Purple Rain”. So the little dude rocks in my book.’

  I slot the last of the indies into their allocated spaces and head out back. By the sink is a red milk crate, holding dozens of albums, and I carry it with both hands out into the store.

  I place the crate next to a pile of albums on the counter that look like they’ve already been sorted. LL Cool J – Bigger and Deffer. N.W.A.’s
Straight Outta Compton. Beastie Boys. Public Enemy. No produced-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life Kanye West stuff in there. Eighties rap was raw. Just a couple of simple beats and a vocal. No mucking about. Straight and to the point.

  ‘What are you doing, dude? Don’t leave it up there!’ Scene says, and he’s sounding like I’ve just led a baby out of a ten-storey window and left it to play on the ledge. He points to the red crate of LPs on the counter. ‘Jesus, man, stick that down on the floor. Behind the register – and don’t take your eyes off it. That stuff’s worth a fricking fortune.’

  I do as I’m told as more customers pour through the door and I wonder if sometimes the universe is talking to me. Or maybe it’s God. Or paranoia. But the song that’s pushing through the speakers, filling the air in Vinyl Analysis, is ‘Heartbreaker’ – Alabama Shakes. And she didn’t know. She couldn’t know. How was she supposed to know I was a heartbreaker? Hell lady, I didn’t even know.

  Being here today, away from Mum and Rue and Reece and Ellie and everything else, is just what I needed. The bus home will be my think-tank. I’ll think then about Ellie and how to tell her – what words to say. Better to take the time to choose the right ones, rather than let an unplanned moment seal your fate. I can figure it out, write it down, then maybe call her later tonight. That’s probably the best plan.

  ‘Hey, Ernie,’ Scene says. ‘If Box Girl shows her face on the vinyl side of the planet, let her know that today I’m taking requests. Whatever she wants to hear is cool.’

  ‘Holy crap, is Ellie working today?’ but Scene’s response is unnecessary because on the coffee side I see her. Bending, resting a coffee and then another in between a couple by the window. She turns my way and I’m not sure if she’s seen me, but my first instinct is to hide. Shit. She can’t be working today. Crap. Should I let her see me? Pretend I’m not here? Go home sick? I consider waving, but drop my hand before it really gets going. I turn, head to the storeroom, but turn again, straight back to the counter. Just keep swimming. I’ll work. Head down. Maybe she won’t see me. Crap, of course she’ll see me. I’ll be hovering here for almost four more hours. I’ll avoid eye contact. I can’t ignore her forever, so I’ll think of what to say and then go over and talk to her later. And what is this – the soundtrack to my life? Of all songs from Bat out of Hell, Scene is now spinning ‘Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad’ – and the girl in Meat Loaf’s lament is telling him she wants him, she needs him, but there’s no way she’s ever gonna love him.