Girl Next Door Read online

  So far we've sold a Dinnigan dress of my mother's for eighteen dollars and a vacuum cleaner for fifteen dollars, and haggled over a stick blender. I wanted seven dollars, but the neighbour from four doors down only wanted to pay three-fifty. Annie from the granny flat bought a pinch pot I made in year seven for fifty cents.

  An older woman stares intently at a canvas my brother and I painted when I was about three. She's hoping it will be by someone famous and we won't know how valuable it is, but in the end she decides it really is just a finger painting. There's been some interest in our clothes dryer and my funky silver pedestal fan, but so far, no takers.

  It's pretty humiliating. I'm glad Declan is with me.

  'So three days this week I put on my school uniform, and then after Mum went to work, Bryce Cole and I went to the track. Twice it was gallopers and the other time we went to the trots. So far I'm about even, but he's promised to teach me how to do a quinella next time. Do you have any idea how much you get if you win that? It's amazing! I don't understand why there aren't more people doing it.'

  Declan jiggles his knee. 'I think I have cancer.'

  'Don't use the C-word, it's bad luck.'

  'That's not the C-word,' he snorts.

  I keep my eye on two young boys who've just arrived on bikes. They're looking furtive. 'Why do you think you have cancer?'

  He shifts in his seat. 'I have a dry mouth. I'm thirsty all the time. I'm so tired.'

  'Maybe you don't drink enough water? It could be hormones. It's a boy thing. Will never gets out of bed before noon,' I counter.

  'Will sleeps late because he's up all night arguing online.'

  This from a boy who has a sign on his bedroom door that says: Can't talk now. Someone on the internet is wrong.

  'We don't even have the net any more. And he wasn't arguing, just shooting stuff,' I say.

  'I've lost five kilos,' he continues. 'I get blurred vision. I could be going blind. Do you have any idea how scary that is? What if I had a car accident?'

  'You don't drive yet,' I say. 'You could get your eyes tested.'

  I met Declan the day we moved in. The moving truck was parked outside, we'd just stepped out of the car with the goldfish in a bucket and the first words he said to me were, 'I'm dying.' I believed him! I even got teary. He was so pale and thin with dark all around his eyes – but when I looked more closely at him later I discovered it was all make-up.

  Declan wears foundation. He calls it his 'lotion'. He buys the really expensive men's range stuff at the Clinique counter in Myer, which is just dumb because if he's going to be non-gender specific as a statement, then he should be happy to call it foundation and just buy the cheap stuff at Coles.

  'Get me a drink, will you?' I ask.

  He glares. 'I have cancer and you don't even care.'

  'We don't have anything to drink at our place. And I have to watch those little kids stealing our stuff.' I point to the boys, who have their backs to me. One peeks over his shoulder.

  'Oi!' I shout, standing. They jump on their bikes and pedal furiously. I can't tell what they've stolen. I guess it doesn't matter. I don't even know what we have left any more.

  'If Bryce Cole makes so much money betting on horses then how come he hasn't got his own house?' Declan asks.

  I don't know the answer. I look up and see Declan's mum staring at us from her lounge room.

  'Your mother so hates me,' I observe.

  Declan's mother is twitchy and insane. I don't think it's fair that she hates me, so I do my best to add to her insanity by randomly tilting the pictures on the wall, or de-alphabetising her books-by-the-metre when she's not looking.

  Declan sees her too. He stands up. 'That's it. Let's drink beer in the roof.'

  Annie from the granny flat agrees to take over the garage sale.

  Sometimes Declan and I sneak into my roof space and drink his dad's beer. We don't like beer, so we have a few sips and then leave the rest. We're sure that if we try hard enough we can learn to like it, and then we'd be cool at parties, if ever anyone invited us to one and we needed to drink beer.

  There are about fifty open beers in our roof space. We've lined them up in the lowest part so we don't accidentally knock them over (really accidentally – not Finsbury accidentally).

  Declan and I sit there in the dark on boogie boards we've balanced over the beams. If Mum knew they were up here she'd make us drag them down and sell them.

  'Try imagining that it's lemonade,' Declan suggests.

  I close my eyes and take a big gulp. The beer Declan has brought today is light and very cold, but still sour. 'It's okay,' I say. 'What about if we put cordial in it?'

  'We can't take cordial to the party,' Declan says. 'That would not be cool.'

  'We could bring it in a hip flask.'

  Declan holds his nose and drains the bottle. He places it on a new beam – the empty bottle beam. 'It's not so bad. Now your turn.'

  Declan holds my nose for me, and I squeeze my eyes shut, imagining 7Up. I scull as much as I can, but only get halfway. Then I swallow wrong and start coughing. I'm trying to cough quietly because no one is supposed to know we're up here. In the semi-gloom I can see Declan shaking his head.

  'Do we have to learn how to drink beer?' I complain. 'No one is going to invite me to any parties. Not any more.'

  'You could be my date.'

  I laugh. 'No one is inviting you to any parties either.'

  He doesn't answer and I feel bad. Declan never talks about any of the kids from his school – not anyone specific. When I picture him at school I imagine him at the edge of a group of guys who let him hang around because his mum volunteers at the canteen and can get them free stuff. But he hardly ever goes to school. He avoids it, so it could be worse than that.

  In my mind's eye I can imagine other boys challenging him to fight, knowing he'll back down, but doing it just to show him up. He hasn't said anything. It's just a feeling I get – like, why did he choose to be friends with me instead of Willem?

  We sit silently until my beer goes warm.

  'Declan, are you really sick?'

  He's tugging at his shoelaces. I can't see his expression.

  'It might not be cancer exactly, but it's something. Nobody believes me.'

  'I believe you,' I say.

  He scoots over on his boogie board and kisses me on the cheek. 'Finish your beer, Jenna-Belle.'

  5

  POLITE

  The fee for dinner at Declan's is having to eat with his parents. Most of the time I can convince him to make me a toasted sandwich before they have their sit-down meal, but sometimes Declan thinks if he has to suffer, I do too.

  Declan's mum really uses all those knick-knacky domestic devices. She hands out paper serviettes in a little paper serviette dispenser and has condiments in a special silver condiment rack that spins. She has matching coasters and placemats. She floats camellia flowers and candles in a decorative bowl in the middle of the table. Declan's mum prepares each meal as though she's being judged in the North Shore Mother of the Year award.

  She serves the meal on platters as though it's Christmas time. First she brings around the appetisers – figs wrapped in crispy prosciutto. When we each take one she waits for us to tell her how much they rock.

  Then she sets down the main meal – separate platters of preserved lemon veal cutlets, minted broad beans and brown butter mash – and serves Declan's dad. She sits down and instead of eating she twists and fidgets at the jewellery on her wrists and fingers as though they're shackles. My mother used to do that with her jewellery when she was anxious – before she sold it all.

  Sometimes when I catch Declan's mum out of the corner of my eye I think she looks a bit like my mother except ten years older. It's not even her features, it's more the way she carries herself – as if you could balance a pineapple on the top of her head and it wouldn't fall off. It would look silly, but everyone would be too polite to ask about it.

  Thinking of D
eclan's mum brings something else embarrassing to mind. There was this one time – way back when we first moved in – when I came home from school and neither of my parents were home. They'd given Willem the key, because he was supposed to be the mature one, except he had gone to a friend's house, but still I knocked on the door, just in case. Nobody answered, and then I went around the back and knocked on that door. Still no one home.

  There was no way to break in because we have grilles on the windows and a super security system to protect all those kitchen appliances and jigsaw puzzles I was talking about, plus all the stuff my parents bought five years interest free – most of which Mum has since sold, even though we haven't paid for it. But anyway, I was so mad that they'd given Will the key and I was locked out for two whole hours.

  I didn't have anything to do. So I started growling and throwing myself against the back door like they do in the cop shows, and screaming and crying.

  I did that for ages and then from behind me Declan's mum says, really quietly, 'I don't think they're home.' And then she just stood there watching me be completely humiliated. As if I'd be throwing a tantrum like a three-year-old if I thought someone was watching.

  That's the way she always looks at me, all the time – as if she's caught me doing something weird in private, which is another reason she reminds me of my mother. There was this thing about the laundry, and my mum.

  Declan's dad is a proper North Shore dad. He drinks designer beer, plays golf and is some kind of hot shot executive. Over dinner he asks Declan about school. He wants to know about sport and what subjects Declan is going to choose for next year.

  He encourages Declan to do mock trials, and play cricket. He wants Declan to be a blokey old-boy. It's strange because he's not a big, blokey man either. He always suggests that Declan talk to Will about joining the cadets. He should swap sons with my parents. Declan is never going to join cadets. He's not going to do mock trials, even though he loves arguing. Declan is not a joiner.

  It's painful that they don't know Declan at all. It's painful because they're not real. Every conversation is like the courteous banter you have with someone you've just met and will never see again. It's a bus stop conversation. They look like a family, but it's as though they've just come together to do an advertisement for the tableware.

  Usually I just keep my head down and eat as much as I can without stretching the bounds of neighbourly courtesy.

  Declan's dad doesn't notice that his wife hates me. Usually he doesn't seem to notice me at all. Tonight, however, he suddenly turns his attention to me. 'How are you doing at school, Jenna-Belle?'

  My mouth opens and closes like a goldfish's. Declan smirks. Has he dobbed? Is this a test? What does he know?

  'To tell you the truth, I think I could do better,' I tell him, sneaking my hand across the table to grab another dinner roll.

  'That's the spirit!' Declan's dad saws at his veal.

  'It would be "the spirit" if Jenna-Belle vowed to do better. Technically she's only confessing to being lazy,' Declan says.

  I mouth shut your face at him and slip the roll into my pocket.

  Declan's dad hasn't finished drilling me. 'I've noticed you have a new house guest. Is this fellow a friend of your mother's?'

  Declan's mum and dad are both staring at me, waiting for an answer as though it's really important. Declan's mum rests her cutlery on the edge of her plate and places her fingers softly on the edge of the table, as if it's a piano. She's sitting really straight.

  I think he's asking if Mum is sleeping with Bryce Cole. I don't really know how to answer, because I'm not sure if we're pretending that the people who rent our rooms are guests. I don't know why he's asking me anyway. Surely he can ask Mum in the car on the way to work?

  Now I'm wondering if the car-pooling must be really awkward for them both, because when we first moved in, Declan's parents and my parents had drinks and a few barbecues, and the occasional card game. They seemed to get along. And then all of a sudden they stopped the socialising. But the travelling to work together didn't stop. Could it be that my mum and Declan's dad have been driving to work together all this time secretly wishing to get out of the arrangement, but too polite to say so? Is the car-pooling the pineapple on everybody's heads?

  'He's um . . .'

  What can I say to Declan's mum and dad about Bryce Cole?

  'I don't know much about him,' I reply.

  6

  SHORT

  ODDS

  It's Monday and Bryce Cole and I are at the track. It's a nice day, but so far we're the only ones here. I have a soggy caesar salad and Bryce Cole has a steak sandwich.

  'Why don't you have your own house? How come you rent a room?'

  'Why do you rent one out?' he counters.

  I'm sipping post-mix lemonade through a straw. 'It's because interest rates went up. We were fine before that. Dad says it's always worse under Labor. He said last time interest rates were seventeen per cent.'

  Now that I think of it, that might have been the very last thing I remember my dad saying before he left. We were out at dinner. We still went out for dinner together once a week. There was a restaurant down the road called Zazzoom, with bamboo in pots, brown walls, white tablecloths, and timber venetians. They were playing the same music that you get in a day spa – Portishead on Prozac. They served the meals with a kind of hushed flourish, as though it was a religious experience.

  Willem had brought one of his friends from school, and I remember thinking 'football scholarship', because he was bulky and he had no table manners. He kept picking steak out of his teeth and pointing with his fork.

  A couple that Dad knew from golf came over to the table and they were talking about politics. That's the only conversation I remember from that night. Dad and Mum weren't talking much and I thought it was because they were embarrassed about Will's friend.

  To tell you the truth it actually took me a few days to realise that Dad had left. When you live in a monster house and everyone has their own space with their own stuff in it, and you eat when you want to instead of eating together, you can go for a few days without seeing each other. Also, when I asked 'where's Dad?', Mum responded with something cagey and distracted, but she had been cagey and distracted for months, so that was nothing new. She stopped going to yoga. She hadn't seen or even mentioned any of her friends for ages. Then I overheard Will asking too, and she said the 'gone to the country' thing.

  Then Will got shirty. 'Where in the country? Why didn't he ask me? I love the country. I could have gone too. Why wasn't I allowed to go?'

  Will has a friend at school whose parents have a macadamia plantation and sometimes Will and his friend go there to play soldiers.

  'You don't like the country, you just like shooting stuff,' I said.

  Will's face went red, mostly because he told me in confidence about them shooting bunnies, and he knew Mum would be horrified. 'I do not! Shut your face, Jenna-Belle. Were you there? No, you weren't, so what would you know?'

  Will had every right to be mad because he does love the country, and he genuinely would have wanted to go there with Dad. I was just being a pest, because it's my job as a younger sibling to prepare him for the rigours of the real world. And by the time we'd finished arguing Mum had left the room.

  Bryce Cole watches the television for a while. 'I had a house when interest rates were seventeen per cent.'

  'Is that why you lost it? Because of Labor?'

  Bryce Cole turns to me. 'I paid forty-five thousand for my house. How much did your parents pay for yours?'