While he’s talking a text comes in from George, letting me know that she’s going home with Rachel. I wave to Lola and Hiroko and tell Martin that I’ll drive him home.
‘It’s possible the party wasn’t a great idea,’ I say as we get to the front door and walk through onto the front lawn where Greg is standing with Amy.
‘They just keep turning up around me. He’s doing it deliberately.’
‘I like Rachel better than Amy,’ Martin says, as if that’s even relevant.
‘Rachel doesn’t let you speak in the car,’ I remind him.
‘She lets me choose the radio station. She lets me eat in the car. She stops if I need to buy something on the way home. She just doesn’t let me talk.’
Before I can reply, Greg calls over to me. ‘Couldn’t find the bathroom?’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Greg,’ Amy says, which gives me some small hope that she will realise, in time, that he can’t not be an idiot because that’s how he’s made.
‘I’m not the one who wet myself,’ he says.
I should be mature and walk away from Greg. But I’m not mature, as evidenced by my life. I pick up the garden hose that’s sitting by my feet. It’s got a pressure nozzle, which is convenient. I don’t hose Greg all over. I get him where Rachel got me. Exactly there. It gives me great satisfaction that I’ve probably ruined a very expensive suit.
While Greg’s yelling, Martin and I walk to the van, get in, and drive away.
The sense of satisfaction lasts till the first set of lights. And then I start thinking about Rachel.
Rachel
I’ve lost those octaves
What have I lost? What have I lost? Only everything, you complete moron. I’ve lost more than you, that’s for sure. I’ve lost Cal; I’ve lost my old mum, the old me. I’ve lost an entire ocean. That’s seventy-one per cent of the earth, that’s ninety-nine per cent of the biosphere. I’ve lost ninety-nine per cent of the biosphere, and you’ve lost Amy.
You’ve lost a girl who, the last time I checked, dotted her i’s with tiny little self-portraits. A girl who checks her reflection in the mirror every second minute of the day. A girl who watches you fall on the floor in front of her and doesn’t help you up.
I’m throwing myself through the crowd, my mind on the car, on my getaway, on maybe driving off and leaving this city behind, leaving the job and Henry and Rose, when George tugs the edge of my t-shirt and asks for a lift home.
I pretend not to notice that she’s crying. I tell her Henry’s in the backyard, and that she should look for him. I’m not going home. I don’t know where I’m going, exactly, but it’s not back to the bookstore or back to the warehouse.
She looks hurt and walks away past a group of shining girls. ‘What are you wearing?’ the tallest girl asks George as she passes, and then laughs. George looks different, sure. But a thousand times better than them, with her black dress and gold tights and that streak of blue shocking the darkness of her hair. She says something to them, but she’s outnumbered, so when they call her a freak, she starts crying. They laugh even more.
I recognise the tall girl. Cal and Tim pointed her out to me in their school yearbook once. ‘Stacy basically runs the place,’ Cal said. ‘If she doesn’t like you, no one likes you.’
‘Does she like you?’ I asked them, and Tim answered that she was, fortunately enough, unaware that they were alive.
George clearly isn’t in that fortunate position. Cal would hate me for not helping her. I have this impossible feeling that he’s actually here, watching. Who are you Rachel? How did you get here?
I walk the short distance and pull George from the girls. Her hand is small and warm. It holds me back like it needs to be held, so I don’t let it go. I don’t let go all the way across the lawn, past Amy and Greg, past people sitting on the fence. I hold it till we reach the car.
After she gets in, she texts Henry to let him know that she’s with me, and then she silently puts away the phone.
‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘If you want, tell me.’
‘I was talking to Martin,’ she says. ‘We were hiding in the top floor bathroom to get away from the crowd. God, Henry’s an idiot. He didn’t even check if it was formal. So, Martin’s there with me, his knees leaning against my knees, and he’s talking about funny things to make me laugh. We’re talking for ages, and it’s great. I don’t talk like that with anyone – at least not face-to-face. And then he leans in and kisses me.’ She puts her boots back on the dash, and pulls her knees in close, folding up.
‘It took me by surprise, so I pushed him back, and he hit his head and then it got weird. He said he thought that’s what I wanted and I was embarrassed so I told him he needs to get over himself because he thinks he’s hot, which he doesn’t think, and then he left before I could fix things and now he feels like an idiot when I’m the idiot.’
‘Why are you the idiot?’ I ask.
‘Because I did sort of want to kiss him, but at the same time I like someone else.’ She looks at me with mascara-smudged eyes. ‘But the “someone else” isn’t really an option. I mean, I want him to be an option, but I don’t know if he is.’
George is a lot like Henry when she starts talking about something. It’s not all that easy to follow her line of thought.
‘The guy that I like writes to me in the Letter Library,’ she explains. ‘He leaves – at least he was leaving – letters between pages 44 and 45 of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.’ She pulls her shirt open a little so I can see the sky-blue 44.
‘Do you know who he is?’ I ask, thinking that the guy she has on her skin could be anyone.
‘I think I do. I’m pretty sure. He hasn’t come to get the letters that I’ve left in the book for a while so I’ve stopped leaving them. I haven’t stop waiting for his, though.’
‘You’re certain that Martin didn’t write them?’ I ask, and she says she’s certain he didn’t.
It’s a shame. I like Martin and he seems to like George plus he’s here, which this letter writer isn’t.
‘I lie in bed thinking about him, you know?’ she asks, and I do know. I haven’t felt that way for a long time, but I know.
‘What would you do?’ she asks, and it occurs to me that George can’t have that many good friends if she’s asking me that question. ‘If it were you . . .’ she says.
I think back to that night when I was desperate for Henry. When Lola and I were laughing and breaking into the bookstore. In hindsight, it wasn’t my best idea.
‘I’d play it safe. I’d wait and see.’
Since she doesn’t know about the letter that I wrote to Henry, I just tell her that I loved someone once, who didn’t love me back. Then I met a boy called Joel, who did. I tell her how good it is when someone you like wants to spend time with you. Real time.
‘Did you sleep with Joel?’ she asks, and it feels as though George and I are alike. We’ve both had great brothers but no sisters to ask about things like this. George seems young tonight. She is young. She hovers on the edge of her seat, waiting to hear my answer.
‘I did,’ I say. ‘After a while and when I was sure.’
She asks me about it, so I tell her. And as I do, I almost feel how I did that first night that Joel and I were together in his room. His parents were away. We’d already decided. His hands moved over my skin in velvet jolts. The actual act was okay the first time, but it got better as we knew each other more. The parts that I really miss came after sex, when we’d lay together in our warmth, talking about the future. ‘It’s a big deal,’ I tell her. ‘People might tell you it’s not, but it is.’
Drunk boys in tuxedos cartwheel across the road in front of us. Girls, sheeny and strapless, applaud.
‘I like your dress better,’ I say to George, and start the car to go home.