Clancy of the Undertow Page 4

  I go over and stand next to Glenn, who tips his cap back, points to a tree and says, ‘Number one. The larch,’ which I know is from Monty Python but today I ignore it. Nancy comes over and joins us, and George Parry starts talking about the day’s experiment but I can’t stop my brain now. My thoughts are tumbling around like socks in a washing machine. A little heart jump at the idea that Nancy would become a friend, soon cancelled out by what I know is reality, that when school starts up she’ll immediately be adopted by the popular kids. Anyone from a town bigger than Barwen is pure gold to them, anything that suggests sophistication and glamour and all that Sex and the City bullshit they’ll never have but eternally pretend they will.

  ‘That all make sense?’ says George Parry.

  Everyone nods, and Tom and Olive are already writing in their matching notebooks. I pretend to follow along, but I’m already hating today. Hating Nature Club, the one place in the world I thought was a purely hate-free zone.

  10

  I spend the rest of the day in my room, which isn’t unusual in itself, but I can tell Dad’s still home because I hear the shower going some time late in the afternoon. I assume he’s on a late shift, but I don’t hear his boots on the stairs or the sound of the car starting up. I hear Angus shouting at Titch downstairs, Titch screaming back, Mum trying to calm them down. It’s super weird for all of us to be home at once, especially in the holidays. I try to block out my family—and my own swirling thoughts—by lying on the bed, under the doona, with music turned up loud on my headphones and holding a fantastically bad biography on Dolly Parton I got from the library way too close to my face so I can read it which is fine because there is no way I’m getting glasses on top of everything else. I’m listening to a playlist I’ve made called Good/Hopeful Heartbreak.

  Some time around five pm, Angus bursts into my room.

  ‘Get out,’ I say automatically. We have an agreement, my brother and I. Neither of us goes into the other’s room, ever, and this way both of us avoid the inevitable destruction of our favourite possessions.

  ‘We gotta be downstairs.’

  I pretend not to hear him. ‘I said get out.’

  ‘Seriously. You gotta be downstairs now.’

  ‘Fine where I am, thanks.’

  Angus doesn’t throw anything at me or punch my leg, which is usually his next move. He just goes, ‘Clancy. Seriously.’

  This is when I know something’s actually up. I take off my headphones. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘You just…you just gotta come downstairs.’

  He walks out of my room and I throw on a jumper and slippers. Even before I get downstairs and walk into the lounge room, I know this has something to do with last night. I suppose I’ve been waiting for it.

  Angus is on the big sofa and Mum’s on one of the lounge chairs. Dad’s in his recliner, slumped down. He’s got bruises and cuts all down his legs. He looks up when I come into the room and…he’s been crying. His eyes are all red and his hair’s still wet from the shower. He doesn’t say anything, just stares at a point somewhere over my shoulder. My heart starts going a million miles a minute. It’s a scene so familiar—Dad, after work, crashed on the couch, wearing footy shorts and the threadbare singlet his old cricket team printed up for their end-of-season trip—but everything about it is wrong.

  Angus says, ‘She’s here, okay? So what’s going on?’

  ‘Give me a second, mate,’ says Dad, the first words I’ve heard him say for days.

  ‘Okay,’ says Angus. ‘I’m just—I don’t know—worried.’ It’s weird to hear him talking quietly.

  ‘Darl?’ Mum looks over to Dad, who doesn’t meet her eyes. I can see the baby-white of his scalp between the wet spikes of his hair.

  ‘Can you sit down, Clancy?’

  ‘Where’s Titch?’

  ‘He’s in his room. He…can you just sit down, please. Now.’ She puts on her forceful teacher’s voice. I sit down next to Angus on the sofa. ‘Your dad’s been involved in an accident,’ Mum says. ‘Yesterday. On the highway.’

  ‘Jesus,’ is all I can say.

  ‘I’m fine,’ says Dad in a monotone. His eyes are still fixed on the back of the room.

  ‘The car okay?’ says Angus, and I punch him in the arm. ‘I mean, shit. As long as you’re okay.’ He tries to catch Dad’s eye. ‘That dickhead Buggs was shouting something about you. When we were driving back last night.’

  ‘Angus!’ Mum glares at my brother.

  ‘Shit,’ says Dad. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ He puts his head in his hands.

  Mum gets up and goes over to him. ‘It’s okay, darl.’ She rubs his back, going around in circles, and it’s the only sound we can hear.

  ‘Anyone else hurt?’ says Angus.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Dad says. ‘Don’t know why we’re all here like it’s a bloody courtroom.’

  ‘Bob, please.’ Mum stares at him like she can make him look up, but he doesn’t. ‘I want them to hear it from you, rather than from someone else who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.’

  My pulse hammers my temples.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Dad says. ‘It’s fine.’ But then he lifts his head. He looks so faded. ‘Actually, it’s not fine. It really isn’t.’ His eyes suddenly look so dry that I close mine, rubbing them. He says, ‘I was in…involved in an accident. I’m fine. But two people died. Two…young people.’ He scratches at his singlet and a moment later a patch of red appears, just below where his old nickname, Tucka, is printed. ‘I was working. Out on the highway. Traffic control. These two kids. Not kids, but…your age, teenagers. Driving.’

  Now I’m just staring at him like, holy shit.

  Dad rubs his eyes and his uneven breath tells me he’s about to cry. ‘They went past me. There was a grader. They didn’t…’ He starts to sniff violently. He notices the stain on his singlet. ‘Fucker won’t stop bleeding.’

  I remember the red smear I noticed on Dad’s work shirt. I steal a glance at Angus, who looks just as confused as me.

  ‘I was on duty,’ says Dad. ‘That time of night, there’s only one car every half hour. We’d closed a lane. They just shot through. The grader’s this huge bloody truck and of course you can’t hear anything when you’re driving it. These kids in the car, they clip it and go off the embankment. You can’t…’ He stands up. ‘I need a drink.’

  Mum says, ‘I can put some dinner on.’

  ‘Not hungry,’ Dad says. ‘I’m going out back.’ He stands up, looking unsteady on his feet. His bowed, hairy legs.

  ‘Darl, can you just stay for—’

  ‘Nah, I gotta go.’ He staggers out of the room and we hear the back door bang its familiar triple-rattle.

  It feels like it isn’t real, like it’s a dream or I’ve fainted or something. My brain can’t catch up.

  ‘What the hell?’ goes Angus. ‘What happened? Why’s he bleeding?’

  Mum smooths down her pants. ‘The main thing is he’s fine.’

  ‘So these kids in the car,’ says Angus. ‘They didn’t run into Dad. He let them through? They went straight into this grader?’

  ‘It’s very sad, yes.’ Mum keeps nodding her head.

  ‘So why’s he look like he’s been in a car crash? His legs all cut up and shit?’ Angus’s voice is back to usual, the tone that means he thinks he knows better than everyone else.

  ‘He tried to help them, Angus. The car went off the road. He tried to get them out of the car.’

  We hear the grumble of the shed’s rollerdoor from the backyard. The whack as it slams back down.

  ‘Which way was it facing?’ I say.

  Mum’s mouth wavers. ‘Which way was what facing?’

  ‘His sign.’

  Mum sighs, her lips making a pah sound before releasing the air. Her sound. She doesn’t answer.

  ‘Was he telling the cars to stop or go?’ I’ve got tears stinging my eyes.

  ‘I don’t know, sweetie.’


  ‘Did he tell you which way?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Jesus,’ says Angus. ‘Jesus.’

  11

  I have dreams full of flying knives and wake up early all knotted into my bedding and the air smells like too-ripe fruit. I untangle myself from my sheets. There’s something deeper to the smell, an unfamiliar chemical edge. I’ve left my window open a crack and I realise the smell’s coming through it. I pull back the curtains and it’s only just light, but already there’s something not quite right with the front yard.

  One of the sleepers that line the sides of the driveway is off-kilter and then I see the glint of something red right below the window and I shank a breath because it’s my bike, its frame mangled up, the front wheel bent at a mad angle. It’s been run over, clearly. More than once.

  I throw on a jumper and run downstairs and when I open the door I realise quickly the chemical smell is fresh paint. All along our front wall, partially covering one window, someone’s sprayed MURDRER.

  My heart falters and I want to be sick. I bend down until the nausea passes and go down the front steps and over to my broken bike. It’s covered with dew and there’s big scratches in the paint. Lighting Lady is finally dead. Even though so many of my waking hours have been spent devising ways to destroy her, the reality isn’t quite as satisfying as I’d hoped.

  Buggs, or his dipshit crew. My bike must’ve fallen off right in front of them when we went past the Cri the other night. I turn around and see someone’s sprayed a skull and crossbones next to MURDRER. I get a weird thrill when my brain goes, maybe Sasha did it. She wouldn’t have, though. She would’ve stayed in the car while Buggs and them tagged the house and dragged my bike up the yard. She would’ve just stared at her reflection in the adjusted rearview mirror. The idea that she’s been so close to me, though, is exciting and horrible at the same time.

  I step back and put my bare foot on the slimy clingfilm wrapped around our morning paper. I sit on the front step and unwrap it, carefully peeling back the sticky layers of plastic. The thin tabloid of the Barwen Chronicle unfurls and there, on the front page, are two giant words: Highway Tragedy. The accident would’ve happened after yesterday’s paper went to print, but they’ve wasted no time making up for it. There’s never any real news in the Chronicle, so when there is they go all out.

  There are two pictures below the headline and it shocks me to recognise the unmistakable colouring of our school photos, that awful mottled grey background. We only had them taken a few weeks ago, before we broke up for summer. The driver was in year twelve and I only knew him by his face. Charles Jencke. Blond, good-looking. He was on the footy and swimming teams and he had an acne streak that ran down from his fringe to the top of his cheekbone.

  I don’t need to read the caption under the other photo. Everyone knew who she was. Everyone knew Cassandra Lamaire. Top of the class, top of the school. She was always in the paper. The front page for science camps and academic medals. The back page for athletics carnivals and trips to state championships for middle-distance running. Always Olympic hopeful Cassandra Lamaire. Barwen royalty in the way Buggs and his family could never be.

  ‘Shit,’ I say under my breath. I skim the article for Dad’s name but it isn’t there. There’s a quote from the mayor saying how two lives have been ‘cut short too soon’. A few lines from the police about road safety, about an ‘ongoing investigation’. I flick through the rest of the paper, but can’t see any mention of Dad. Thank God. Buggs knew, though. His uncle was a cop, but even if he wasn’t, gossip works so fast in Barwen that Buggs would’ve found out soon enough. It’ll be all over town by the middle of the day.

  ‘You shouldn’t keep the door open.’

  I swing around and Titch is there in his awful Spongebob pyjamas that Mum can never convince him to throw out. ‘Get inside,’ I say.

  ‘You get inside.’

  ‘Why don’t we have some breakfast?’ I get up fast to block his view but he peers past me.

  ‘Why’s your bike all bashed up? Dad’ll be steaming.’ He grins.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Let’s go inside.’ I put my hands on his shoulders but he doesn’t move. His body is solid pudge, honed to deadweight perfection by a life spent in pursuit of sugar.

  ‘Why’s it smell weird?’

  ‘It doesn’t smell weird. Get inside.’

  He tries to step out and I block him again.

  ‘What’s out there?’

  ‘Nothing.’ We’re in an official grapple now, and I know my stick-figure frame is no match for him so I pinch his arm and when he lets go of me I knock him over.

  ‘OWWW!’ Titch makes it sound like I’ve chopped off one of his fingers. ‘That really hurt!’

  I slam the door behind me. ‘It’s too early,’ I say. ‘We don’t need to be up yet.’

  ‘You hurt me! I’m telling Mum.’

  Jesus Christ. ‘Let’s get some breakfast, hey?’

  ‘MUM!’ Titch shouts, still lying on the floor, ‘CLANCY PUNCHED ME AND PUSHED ME OVER AND IT REALLY HURT!’

  ‘You’re such a little baby. I didn’t even punch you.’ I realise then I’ve left the paper outside.

  Mum appears at the top of the stairs with almost superhuman speed. Her hair’s a bird’s nest of dirty blonde. ‘Do you know what time it is?’ she says.

  ‘CLANCY PUNCHED ME.’

  ‘Mum, I need to talk to you.’

  ‘SHE PUNCHED ME!’

  ‘I don’t care,’ says Mum. ‘Your father is trying to sleep after an awful few days and you two are making noise like animals.’ She grabs at her head. ‘Just keep quiet.’

  ‘Mum, I need to talk to you. It’s about…what happened.’ My brain fizzes.

  ‘Darling, I can’t right now. I just need another hour’s sleep, and then we can deal with it.’

  ‘CAN I WATCH CARTOONS?’

  I close my eyes. Why is this crap always on me? ‘I was trying to keep Titch inside,’ I say, ‘because someone’s spray-painted our front wall.’

  ‘Cool!’

  ‘Shut up, Titch.’

  Mum’s hand falls to her side. ‘What?’

  ‘And my bike. Someone’s run over it. It’s busted it up and they left it in the front yard.’

  ‘I see.’ Mum gathers up her dressing gown, changes her voice into a teacher’s. ‘Titch, you can watch cartoons but keep the volume down.’

  ‘Sweet!’ Titch springs up, his debilitating injuries magically vanishing.

  Mum comes down the stairs.

  ‘What does the graffiti say?’ Her face is scrunched up like she’s thought of something disgusting.

  ‘It’s not spelled very well,’ I say.

  She pushes past me and goes out onto the verandah. Her face goes white. ‘Oh no,’ she says. ‘Oh no. Do not tell your father.’ Her finger’s pointing at me like I’ve already told him.

  ‘The paper’s there too. His name isn’t in it.’ I pick it up from the front step and hand it to her.

  She scans the front page, the disgusted look never once leaving her face. ‘We’ve got to clean this up,’ she says. ‘We’ve got to get rid of this before your dad gets up.’

  ‘What about my bike? How am I going to get to work?’

  ‘Put it under the house or something.’ Mum looks at the graffiti again. ‘Bloody monsters.’

  12

  Mum has to drop me into town for work and the whole way she keeps asking me if I’m sure I want to go. We spent nearly an hour trying to clean off the graffiti and we both still smell of metho.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I keep telling her. ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘But you don’t have to, sweetie. Not with everything that’s going on.’

  ‘There’s no one else who can work, though.’ This isn’t entirely true. Eloise could probably easily have worked today. There was no way I was staying home, though. The atmosphere was toxic and without my bike, work was my only way out.

  Mum hits me with a few greeting-card
racks’ worth of motivational quotes before we finally arrive. She parks a few blocks away from the shopping centre entrance.

  ‘Now you stay strong today, Clancy. Don’t forget, you’re a wonderful person.’

  ‘Right. Yep.’ I make my escape, reaching into the back seat for my backpack so I don’t have to make the moment last any longer.

  ‘Remember your soul is only—’

  I slam the door. I feel bad about this, but only slightly. One of the best things we learned in physics is how nature abhors a vacuum. Mum, in one of her manic moods, is pretty much the same. She keeps talking to fill up any empty space.

  I walk through the sliding doors and straight away realise the shopping centre’s air-conditioning has broken down again. Instead of the usual wave of coolness there’s stifling warm air. Bloody great. The air-con breaks down at least once a month, and it means people are going to be in shitty moods which means I’ll sell even less than usual which means six hours of complete and utter boredom.

  I raise an eyebrow at Knife Guy, but he looks like today has already defeated him. Pewter-handled letter-openers and the trapped heat of a couple of hundred people, not a great combination. I go up the escalators and everyone I see looks tired and worn out. I slump up to the Beauty Station and get a shock when I see Eloise standing behind the counter.

  ‘Did I get the roster wrong?’

  ‘No darling,’ she says. ‘I just had some things to do.’

  ‘Oh okay.’ I stash my backpack away. Now I don’t even have the station set-up—which I can usually stretch out to a good hour—to delay the boredom. If I was by myself I could pass the time in my own way. With Eloise hovering over me, it means thousands of menial tasks.

  ‘I am taking stock, darling,’ she says. ‘Inventory.’ She’s got on this tiny black jacket over her blouse that doesn’t really seem to serve any purpose other than to restrict the movement of her arms.

  ‘Didn’t you do inventory last week?’