‘Rodney!’
He spins around. The slope of his cheekbones is so familiar I could draw them with my eyes closed. I look quickly at Donna and wonder how she manages, living with a ghost. Her arms are crossed on her sunken chest and her right foot taps up and down, and in that movement I sense the long nights, the broken dreams and the hopeless crying that I’m sure have been her life for the past decade. The basketball rolls off the side of the concrete court, coming to rest near the base of a tree. Rodney’s chest heaves and perspiration shines on his face. He walks towards us and his eyes are level with Felix’s. He is taller than Jacob was. Broader. He wipes the sweat from his forehead up into his hair, giving it height. He is stunning. A cloud passes over the sun and we are thrown into shadow.
‘Hi.’ He shrugs. ‘What’s up?’ He sounds relaxed but his eyes dart between the two of us and he scratches at his neck.
‘These people want to talk to you about the teacher, Rodney. It won’t take long.’
She looks at Felix pointedly, ignoring me completely. I must remind her of Jacob, of that terrible time. She strikes me as the kind of person who would do anything possible to keep her feelings at bay. I wonder again about the note, where Jacob put it. I look up at his old bedroom window and wonder whether the room is a shrine to him, whether there are still photos of me in there, or whether she’s stripped it bare, disinfected it, destroyed it, in an attempt to clear her house of her broken, dead son.
‘Okay. Here?’ Rodney gestures to where we are standing.
‘How about over there?’ Felix points to a worn-looking outdoor setting near the back fence.
Rodney shrugs again, the universal language of the young. ‘Sure.’
We sit. There is nothing for our hands to play with, and both Rodney and I twist our fingers in our laps, scratch at our legs, pull at our hair. Felix folds his hands together in a tight ball and leans forward. Donna stands a few metres away keeping watch, her eyes shining like marbles.
‘Now, we know you spoke to the police last week, Rodney,’ I begin, ‘but we have some more questions for you, okay?’
‘Okay,’ he says.
‘We’ll probably repeat a lot of stuff but it’s really important that you are honest with us,’ I say. ‘You know that, right?’
He swallows and nods.
‘Okay, good,’ I say. ‘So. Tell us about your relationship with Ms Ryan, Rodney.’
Rodney itches at his wrist and looks at Felix carefully. ‘She was nice. A good teacher.’
‘Just nice?’ Felix asks.
Rodney’s dark eyes glance my way and then back to Felix. I swat at a mosquito. Blood smears across my arm.
‘I liked being in her class. She was sort of different, I guess. Like, sometimes it didn’t seem like we were at school.’
‘What do you mean? Because it was fun?’
‘Yeah, I guess. She sort of made everything seem more important or something. I dunno. Probably sounds stupid.’
‘Not at all. Drama is the kind of subject that needs someone with a bit of imagination, right?’ Felix says.
‘Yeah. Everyone wanted to be in her class. She was really good.’
‘So she’s gone from “nice” to “really good” then?’
Rodney leans back heavily in the chair. ‘Whatever.’
‘Did you ever see her outside of school?’ My voice, higher than Felix’s, is almost lost in the sticky heat.
He blows air through his lips, reminding me of Ben. ‘Sometimes. You know, because of the play.’
‘What, like rehearsals and stuff?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. Sometimes we stayed back late after school. Even went in on weekends if we needed to. Everyone was really committed. We still are. We have a rehearsal later tonight for the extra show we’re doing in the new year. We’re, like, doing it in her honour.’
‘Yes, we were at the memorial. We saw you speak. It’s a very nice gesture,’ says Felix.
‘Are you close to Maggie? She seems like a nice girl.’ I feel an odd prickle of envy as I imagine Rodney, so like Jacob, touching Maggie’s face, her tight young body; running his long fingers through her silky white hair.
‘We’ve been in school together forever. We’re friends.’
‘Ever been anything more?’
He rolls his eyes gently. ‘We sort of went out for a while last summer. It was only a short thing. We decided we’re better as friends.’
‘Who decided?’ I ask.
Donna walks over to the basketball and picks it up, dropping it noisily in a large plastic tub. Thunder rolls ominously in the distance. ‘Rodney’s very serious about his schoolwork and his basketball,’ says Donna. ‘He doesn’t have time for anything else.’
Rodney continues as if she didn’t speak. ‘Mainly I decided, but it really wasn’t a big deal. We just went out a bunch of times. Movies, a few house parties. Like I said, it wasn’t for very long.’
‘Was she upset when you guys broke up?’ I keep my voice light. I want to ask whether he told her the same way Jacob had told me. I wonder whether his decision had shattered her world into a million little pieces.
‘I don’t think so. She hooked up with this guy Matt a week later.’
‘Love moves fast, huh?’ Felix laughs and sends a soft glance my way. ‘Maybe she was trying to make you jealous. Maybe she felt like you’d moved on to bigger and better things? That maybe you wanted someone more mature?’
Rodney scowls childishly. ‘You’d have to ask her, but I don’t think so. She kind of has a girlfriend now.’
I sense Donna’s eyebrows lift.
‘Okay, okay,’ Felix says. ‘Tell us about the play. You’re Romeo, right? That’s a pretty big role.’
‘Yeah.’ Another shrug. ‘I like acting. I love basketball too, but I want to do drama after school, like an arts college or something, so it was good to get the lead. The play is different from the original. It’s set in Australia in the seventies. Like in the city—Sydney, I guess. Jasmine is the Juliet character, from a really rich family. And she has really strict parents that she doesn’t relate to. I play Ricky, who’s the Romeo character. He’s poor and heaps younger.’
‘Younger man with an older woman? Very progressive. It sounds pretty cool. Different.’ Felix raises an eyebrow.
‘It is. Ms Ryan wrote the whole thing. I reckon it could get picked up by a studio or something. It’s way better than a high school play.’
‘Sounds like you thought she was pretty amazing.’
His eyes drop. ‘Yeah, like I said, she was a great teacher.’
‘Did you ever see anyone get angry with her? Did she ever tell you about being scared of anyone?’
‘Um, no. I mean, you know, we didn’t talk that much really.’ He pushes his fingers through his hair again. ‘I mean, I know that there were issues with the school. Our principal, Mr Nicholson, he supported the play, I think, but there were problems making it happen. Funding stuff. I saw them talking about it sometimes, kind of arguing. Rose was really upset about it.’
‘Rose?’