A Little Wanting Song

  To Nancy and Joe Davis, and to Jessie and Tom Crowley—

  My beautiful grandparents

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - Charlie

  Chapter 2 - Rose

  Chapter 3 - Charlie

  Chapter 4 - Rose

  Chapter 5 - Charlie

  Chapter 6 - Rose

  Chapter 7 - Charlie

  Chapter 8 - Rose

  Chapter 9 - Charlie

  Chapter 10 - Rose

  Chapter 11 - Charlie

  Chapter 12 - Rose

  Chapter 13 - Charlie

  Chapter 14 - Rose

  Chapter 15 - Charlie

  Chapter 16 - Rose

  Chapter 17 - Charlie

  Chapter 18 - Rose

  Chapter 19 - Charlie

  Chapter 20 - Rose

  Chapter 21 - Charlie

  Chapter 22 - Rose

  Chapter 23 - Charlie

  Chapter 24 - Rose

  Chapter 25 - Charlie

  Chapter 26 - Rose

  Chapter 27 - Charlie

  Chapter 28 - Rose

  Chapter 29 - Charlie

  Chapter 30 - Rose

  Chapter 31 - Charlie

  Chapter 32 - Rose

  Chapter 33 - Charlie

  Chapter 34 - Rose

  Chapter 35 - Charlie

  Chapter 36 - Rose

  Chapter 37 - Charlie

  Chapter 38 - Rose

  Chapter 39 - Charlie

  Chapter 40 - Charlie

  Chapter 41 - Rose

  Chapter 42 - Charlie

  Chapter 43 - Charlie

  Chapter 44 - Charlie

  Chapter 45 - Rose

  Chapter 46 - Charlie

  Chapter 47 - Rose

  Chapter 48 - Charlie

  Chapter 49 - Rose

  Chapter 50 - Charlie

  Chapter 51 - Charlie

  Chapter 52 - Rose

  Chapter 53 - Charlie

  Chapter 54 - Rose

  Chapter 55 - Charlie

  Chapter 56 - Rose

  Chapter 57 - Charlie

  Chapter 58 - Rose

  Chapter 59 - Charlie

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Dad and I leave town in the early dark. It’s the second Sunday of the holidays, and we pack up the old blue car with enough clothes for summer and hit the road. It’s so early he’s wiping hills of sand piled in the corners of his eyes. I wipe a few tears from mine. Tears don’t pile, though. They grip and cling and slide in salty trails that I taste till the edge of the city. It’s our first Christmas in the country since Gran died.

  At six o’clock the sun rises and lights the car from the outside. Blinds us almost. Dad squints through his glasses at the road, but me? I close my eyes. I like things better when I listen. Everything in the world’s got a voice; most people don’t hear hard enough is all. Sunrise sounds like slow chords dripping from my guitar this morning. Sad chords, in B-flat.

  “Open your eyes, Charlie love,” Mum whispers. “You’ll miss out on the day.” Not a lot to miss out on, really. My days have been sort of shaky lately. Like a voice running out of breath. Like a hand playing the blues. Like a girl losing her bikini top in the pool at Jeremy Magden’s final party for Year 10 last week, if we’re getting specific. Mum says look on the bright side. Okay. I guess I was only half naked.

  The thing that really kills is that the party started so well. I was talking and making jokes and the words were rolling easily, and I thought: I’ve done it. I’ve found that thing, whatever that thing is, that most people have but I don’t.

  “Check out Alex checking you out,” Dahlia said, and we laughed. I felt good because it sounded like she wasn’t mad anymore. And a guy was finally looking at me, not straight through to the other side. There was this beat under my skin, a little disco weaving through me. That’s how it is when I’m alone and playing the guitar, but that’s never how it is in a crowd.

  Only, that day it was. I had the first line of a new song in my head. A song about a guy and a party and a smile. The words were in my mouth and the tune was in my blood, and it felt so loud I thought: If Alex kisses me, he’ll hear it singing through my skin.

  And I wanted him to hear. Because he grinned electricity through my bones, when most days I play solo and acoustic. Because Dahlia’s new friends might like me if I had something other than music to talk about during Louise Spatula’s post-party analysis.

  “You look good. The sunglasses are working. You can do this,” Dahlia told me. And I really thought I could. I was confident. I was ready.

  “Just remember,” Louise said, “a blow-up doll could get Alex.”

  I was stuffed. “Thanks. I won’t keep that in mind.” But I did keep it in mind. If things went badly, Louise would make sure everyone knew it and I’d be a step below plastic for the rest of my high school life. Dahlia took Louise inside so I wouldn’t have an audience, but she did it too late. My disco disappeared. I walked across to Alex, humming a song I called “Fuck” because that was the only word in it.

  The chorus was moving through my head and I was so busy humming I didn’t see the football game. I walked straight through the middle. David Amar threw the ball; Joseph Ryan sprinted to get it and collected me on the way. I ran in front of him for a couple of seconds, and then I ducked and rolled into the pool. Unexpected, sure. But not entirely uncool.

  It was kind of funny. Till I realized the force of the fall had loosened my bikini top and it was impossible to find in the middle of all the water-bombing that was going on around me.

  Swimming along the bottom, I forced my eyes open and searched through legs. I could have done something creative with a couple of chip packets and a leaf at that point, but I had nothing. Absolutely nothing. Except a little voice inside me screaming out for one, just one, normal encounter with a guy. Or at least abnormal with clothes.

  I figured my best chance was to move slow and hope no one noticed. Usually that’s the way it goes for me at parties so it wasn’t like I was asking for a miracle. I raised myself out of the water and walked to where I’d left my towel. Louise was outside by then but I was elevator music behind her and she didn’t notice a thing. I was feeling kind of lucky.

  Till I saw a packet of tissues sitting on the chair where my towel had been. A packet of freaking tissues. I’m not entirely lacking in optimism, though. I pulled out a couple. My hair dripped and a second later they disappeared in my hands. Turns out “Fuck” is a song for all occasions.

  “Oh my God, Charlie, your boobs are hanging out!”

  “No shit, Louise,” I said as every boy in Jeremy’s backyard fired up his tracking equipment and locked his eyes onto my chest. “Boobs” is one of those words, like “fire” or “gun” or “free money.” You just have to look.

  And Alex looked.

  And Jason Taylor let out this squealing laugh and Louise joined in and then so did everyone else. “You should have shown me the bikini in the fitting rooms at the shop,” Louise said as she stretched out on her towel. “I would have told you not to buy it.”

  And that was it. I was sucked into the Louise Spatula time machine and spat out into Year 3 where I’m handing over coins to kids because she told them I should pay to be their friend. I remembered Dahlia saying to me in Year 5, “From now on, they pay you.”

  Her eyes said the same thing at Jeremy’s party as she handed me a towel. I took my clothes to the bathroom. I stared in the mirror for a while. I did that thing where you turn and spin back and try to catch yourself by surprise. See you how the world does. How a guy called Alex might. Not spectacular, sure. But not entirely unspectacular
.

  I got dressed and walked back to the pool thinking, Stuff you all. You’ve seen my skin, big deal. Big fucking deal. Unless you were born wearing designer jeans and T-shirts, someone’s seen yours, too. I planned on saying exactly that, only Louise got in first. “Welcome back, four-eyes.”

  It was breathtaking, and in the worst kind of way: it took my breath. Jason pig-laughed again and Dahlia shifted her towel toward Louise. “Your hair’s dripping on me, Charlie,” she said. I told her I was leaving and she told me goodbye. Not see you tomorrow or see you later. Goodbye. A flat, hard endnote.

  Dahlia came to my school a few weeks into Year 5 and we clicked. I hadn’t clicked with anyone before her. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because there was never an even number of kids in the class and I was too shy to push into a pair.

  Being on my own before Year 4 wasn’t so bad. On the bright side I never had to share my lunch, which was always first-class since my dad’s a chef and he made it every day. But I came back from the summer holidays pretty desperate for a friend.

  Dahlia heard me one lunchtime, playing my guitar. I was sitting on the steps near the classroom, doing this cover of a Johnny Cash song Mum had taught me. “How come you’re sitting on your own?” she’d asked.

  I said, “Just because.” And switched to a song I knew she knew and she hung around. Dahlia couldn’t play an instrument but she could really belt out a tune.

  And she could eat my dad’s chocolate cake faster than anyone I ever saw. “Watch this,” she said that first day. “I can eat and sing at the same time.” She shoved a fist-sized piece of cake into her mouth and sang what I think was Madonna. Kids stared, we were laughing so hard. She didn’t care what they thought of me. “Charlie’s funny,” she said. “And you’re all boring.”

  We’d have these sleepovers at my place where we’d turn up the radio and sing ourselves raw. We wouldn’t stop till Dad came in about three. Dahlia would freeze. Superwoman pajamas on, hairbrush microphone in hand, she’d ask, “Any requests, Mr. Duskin?” She took the quiet in our house and smashed it.

  Things were great till Louise came onto the scene. The teacher put her next to Dahlia in a class seating plan in Year 9 and things took off from there. Dahlia says she’s nicer than people think, but surveys taken suggest the opposite. Being dead is better than being the enemy of Louise—just ask Andrew Moshdon.

  One afternoon on the bus last year Louise said, “Can you move, please, Andrew? I want to sit next to Dahlia.”

  “Don’t see your name on the seat.” He turned his face to the window. Kids all around heard. Greg Forego whistled low. Andrew was a dead man.

  Next week at the school sports carnival he pissed in the pool, so the story went. Only he wasn’t anywhere near the water. He sat with me all day at the timer’s desk, laughing at my jokes and lending me his hat. The boys started calling him pisshead and the girls called him pig. Most guys would have gotten away with it, but Andrew was different. Andrew read in the library at lunchtime. He hated football. He was depending on Charlie Duskin to help him.

  The day after the rumors started he grabbed me in the hall. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I need you to tell people the truth about sports day.” He was talking like I could save him.

  I stared at his face and I knew what he felt and I said, “I wasn’t with you every minute of the day, Andrew.” He only looked confused for a second.

  Later in Year 9 he became the kid who farted in class. In Year 10 he was the guy who spat when he talked. I couldn’t have stopped it, even if I’d told, and telling meant pissing off Louise and losing Dahlia.

  I lost her anyway.

  I walked home the long way after Jeremy’s pool party. I hoped that if I took my time, there’d be a message waiting for me when I got in the door. A year ago Dahlia would have called and said something like “In the name of science, I have to know. What’s it like to be naked in front of a guy?”

  I would have said something back like “I don’t know, but in the name of romance I’m hoping it feels better than being naked in front of fifty guys.”

  There was no message. For years I’ve been Dahlia’s second half. I guess things change, though, so slowly you don’t notice the chord’s different. You’re playing B7 with added D and then D drifts away and all you’re left with is B minor. That’s a pretty sad key.

  So I pulled out my guitar case, cold and dimpled like the skin of an orange. I practice for hours most days, more when I’m sad. I click the clasps and peel back the lid and underneath it’s sweet. I play till the sound fills me, rich and gold and warm like the wood. It’s my voice: smooth and unscratched. I sing when no one else is there. I sing, beautiful and in tune. Pity I didn’t have my guitar with me at the pool; I could have used it for cover.

  I sat there after the party, singing some tunes and thinking about how I’d treated Andrew Moshdon last year. I looked up his number in the phone book and stared at it for ages, wondering about the best thing to say to a guy after you left him for dead and didn’t bother to look back till over a year later. Nothing sounded right so I rang and played it by ear.

  “Hey, Andrew. It’s Charlie,” I said, and all I got back was breathing. “Charlie Duskin.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “So. So you weren’t at the pool party today.”

  “That’s funny, Charlie. I can hardly talk I’m laughing so hard.”

  “I didn’t mean … I know you didn’t do that last year.” But there’s no good way to tell someone you believe they didn’t piss in the pool.

  “I have to go.”

  “You want funny,” I said before he could hang up, “try losing your bikini top in front of almost every guy in Year Ten.”

  There was one beat of quiet and then he said, “I don’t wear bikinis.”

  “Yeah, well, lucky you.”

  And then I told him everything, about Alex and the skin disco, about the footy game and the tissues and Louise. I even sang him my song called “Fuck.” Andrew’s got a very cool laugh. I’d forgotten that.

  We made up a new song together. One about Louise. Turns out more words than you think rhyme with Spatula. “Sometimes singing makes you feel pretty good,” I said before I hung up.

  “You should sing it to her.”

  “Yeah,” I told him, in a way that could mean a few things.

  Jeremy’s party was a week ago and Dahlia hasn’t called once since then. I check my phone as we hit the freeway. Still nothing. Dad merges at the wrong speed and for a second I think it’s all over but then the cars around give us a lane to ourselves and Dad can drive any way he wants without horns blaring. The sign says we’ve got a while to go till we get there. Three hundred kilometers. The paper says it’s burning hot all over Australia today. The heat and Dad’s driving and the lack of messages on my phone make me feel like we’ve got a thousand kilometers ahead of us. At least.

  This place is as quiet as a ghost town on Sunday mornings. Ever since Year 7 I’ve come to the edge of the freeway on my own to watch the cars passing. The only noises are the birds and the wind and the people coming and going. Everyone drives through on the way from one place to another. No one ever stays.

  I don’t blame them. Of all the places in the world I could have been born, I got the drink and toilet stop capital of the world. Like my boyfriend, Luke, says, you got to be pissed about that. I am pissed about it. Some days I’m so pissed I throw rocks at the cars driving out because they get to leave and I don’t.

  “You’ll go if you want to, Rose,” Mrs. Wesson, my Year 10 science teacher, said this year. It takes a lot of wanting to get out of a place like this, though. It takes wanting so bad it’s all you care about, all you dream about, all you breathe. Some days I think it takes more wanting than I’ve got.

  The stupid thing is I should have been born somewhere else. Mum and Dad did it in the backseat of his car the night before she left on this big overseas trip she’d been planning for ages. I was on a plane
to London before I was a heartbeat. I was out of here. Then she brought me back.

  She waited till the beginning of this year to tell me that important piece of information. We were coming home from the driving-test place after I’d got my learner’s permit and I was going on and on about how jealous Luke and Dave would be when she blurted out, “I got pregnant in the back of a car, you know.” I nearly steered us into the path of an oncoming truck.

  “Shut up, Mum.” Who wants to think about their parents having sex?

  “I just don’t want you to do anything stupid, Rosie,” she said, and I turned on the windscreen wipers even though it hadn’t rained for weeks.

  “I’m not planning on it.” I gripped the wheel tight. The only driving I planned on doing was the sort that got me to the city. The car filled up with quiet and I took the shortcut home.

  I went to my room as soon as we got back. I didn’t want to talk about what Mum had told me, but she crept in later. She laid her head on the pillow beside me and her breath stole the cool of the night. I kept my eyes closed and pretended to sleep.

  “You weren’t a mistake,” she told me before she shut my door. But I was. Things might have been different for her if she’d kept going, if she hadn’t come back to a place still as air, a place where nothing happens. Things might have been different for me.

  When I was young, Mum and Dad made things exciting. They took chances. They watched sunrises. We’d walk through the dark, Mum’s fingers wrapped tight around mine, Dad’s coat brushing my knees. We were the only three people awake in a world half asleep and the air felt heavy with maybe. I knew any minute the sun would explode and color would spread across the sky. When I was about six, we stopped going. “We’re tired, love. How ’bout we have a lie-in?”

  I once heard Mum talking to her friends, saying, “Rose is exactly the same as me when I was young.” You’re wrong, I wanted to scream at her. I won’t turn out like you. I won’t think I’ve hit the big time because I’ve worked my way up from caravan park cleaner to caravan park manager. I won’t stop reading books and start reading supermarket catalogs.

  In Year 7 I started talking about the things I’d read to Miss Cantrell, my science teacher. She was the one who gave me the book on the cormorants in Brazil, long black lines swooping along the rivers, birds born to fly. Far out on the edges of the Pacific, the book said, there was another type of cormorant. These birds were almost exactly like the ones that lived in Brazil, except that they’d forgotten how to use their wings. “Why did they forget?” I asked her in class.