We See the Stars Page 4

  She took the biscuits and when she bit into them she smiled so wide little crumbs fell onto her jumper. ‘Thanks, Numpty,’ she said.

  Out on the oval a couple of girls started yelling at each other, and a boy got in the middle to try to break up the fight. Cassie watched while she wiped crumbs off her mouth with the back of her hand. The Glad Wrap was all sweaty, and it slipped on my skin.

  ***

  Superman stood in the doorway holding my schoolbag, but I wasn’t really sure that my legs would make it that far. Cassie had punched my arm as she walked past my desk to go home, and I could still feel the heat of it under my sleeve. There was a paper bird tied to a string hanging from one of the lights, and the fan was making it flap its wings and go around in a circle, and each time it neared the window it stretched its beak out to try to reach, and it opened its mouth and made a song for the open air.

  ‘You sleeping over, Simon?’ Ms Hilcombe asked, and the sound of it came up through the floor and into the legs of the desk, then inside the wood and in towards my eardrum. It seemed like it came from far away. I felt the bees tingle up and inside my arm veins. She came over and leant down, so that her face was right in front of mine. Her eyes were brown but with a ring of green right close to the dark bit, and her frizzy hair stuck straight out from the sides of her face.

  ‘Seriously, though, are we waiting for someone?’ she asked.

  I watched the air from the fan push up against the little hairs on her face. Her nose had tiny black spots across the tip, and there were red bits around the nostrils. She’d put lipstick on but she’d missed and gone over the skin by the left corner of her mouth. I closed my eyes and felt her breath on me, and the collar of my shirt made my skin itch around the back where my hair was.

  ‘You can stay as long as you like, of course; I just don’t want someone to be worrying about you.’

  I felt my tummy roll, and there was a push coming from inside my chest that made my bones creak when I breathed.

  ‘We can just sit here together, maybe,’ she suggested. ‘At least it’s cooler in here.’ She put her hand right on my skin and I felt the burn in it, but I swallowed and sent my breath down into my feet. ‘Don’t say anything, if you don’t want to,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind.’

  I watched her face pull into a smile when I looked up at her, and I felt my tummy go light enough that I could stand up and move my legs.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and she stood back up again. ‘Okay, well, thanks for keeping me company.’

  I walked past her to get my bag to go, and as I left the little bird broke off its string and went straight for the window, and for a moment it looked like it might slap into the glass, but just at the last second Superman pulled the window open, and it got through to the outside without breaking its neck.

  Five

  Davey got used to having his crutches at school, but he never used them around the house, not even when Grandma yelled at him for thumping up and down the corridors. One night after school Grandma came over and saw that he’d made long scuffs on the lino in the kitchen, and she made him sit alone in the living room without a radio or any of my comics until teatime. After dinner Davey was still cranky because he couldn’t have a bath with his cast on, and he’d never really liked to have showers, and he wouldn’t let Grandma wrap the cast in Glad Wrap in case it came loose under the water.

  While Grandma and Davey were yelling about his bath, Dad grabbed his keys and tilted his head for me to follow him, and he was already unlocking the car by the time I’d found my thongs and caught up to him.

  ‘Why do we still do this, Simon?’ Dad asked. His hands were gripping the steering wheel tight, and he was driving the same way out of town that we always did, down the highway and out past the dam. I sunk down into the front seat and put my head on the window, so that the vibrations from the car went up through my neck and jolted my head around, and mixed up all my thoughts into a single big one, full of words and little bits of dust and honey, and the sound of Davey’s cast thumping along the footpath when we walked home from school.

  On the first lookabout we ever went on I had to sit in the back seat so that I didn’t accidentally hit Dad, and I didn’t start to feel better until we’d left Main Street behind and you could start to see the sheep and the cows. He’d taken me out in the car because the counting wasn’t stopping the angries, and Mum was worried that Davey was still pretty little, and she couldn’t hold both of us and stop me howling and yanking on my hair.

  ‘Look!’ Dad had said. ‘Simon, look, do you see the mountains?’ He pointed out the window to where the paddocks turned from brown grass to rock and the mountains rose up sharp out of the ground and covered in trees.

  I had only been just tall enough to see over the car door through the window, so I was mostly just looking at sky. I watched the telephone poles going over the car, and the wires looping up and down between them. If I thrashed around too much in the back I would accidentally whack into Davey’s car seat, and when it slammed into the side of the car Dad would turn his head to stare at me, but he never said anything while I was having an angry, and instead he’d just keep an eye on me until the burning let go of my legs, and I could feel it start to slip away from my skin, and down through the floor to the road, so that it would get sucked underneath us and caught on the tyres.

  It had been close to Christmas, and about half an hour past the dam Dad took the turn-off to a little town. He stopped the car and helped me to climb over into the front seat, and then we’d driven around the streets looking at the decorations. We looked into the windows of the houses and watched the Christmas lights blink on and off, and we counted the blues and the reds and the greens, and by the time we turned around to go home my eyes were scratchy from the sleep in them, and it had got dark but stayed hot, so that when I looked over at Dad the lights from the dash lit up his face, and the breeze from the window pushed his hair around the top of his head.

  ‘What was it this time, buddy?’ Dad had asked, after my blood had gone cool again.

  ‘Don’t know,’ I said. I never could really tell.

  ***

  Out on the back road we went up past the last houses before the highway, up around Mr Justfield’s farm and then Mrs Freeman’s house, which was the last one along the fence line. I watched out the window for Mr Justfield’s cow, but the grass had grown longer since Mrs Justfield died and Mr Justfield barely came out of his house anymore, so if the cow had been there and lying down you’d never know it. Sometimes you could hear her crying over the top paddock and down into the street, and Grandma would complain that Mr Justfield never milked her, and sometimes she’d say she was tempted to go up there herself and either milk it or shoot it, and then she’d laugh and say she wasn’t sure if she meant the cow or him.

  ‘There’ll be no point now,’ Dad said, and I turned to look at him watching Mr Justfield’s paddock, too. ‘If you milked her now it’d be sour as anything, just judging by what she’d have to feed on.’

  Mrs Freeman’s house had a tall fence all along the side of it, so that even if she’d wanted to Mr Justfield’s cow couldn’t get in, and her grass was cut neatly all up to the side of the road. A rosebush grew beside the mailbox, and I wondered if the postie had to wear special gloves when delivering Mrs Freeman’s letters to protect him from the thorns.

  We kept driving, and it got darker, and Dad turned on the radio but couldn’t pick up anything except static, and in the end he just drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and hummed to himself. I put my head back on the seat and closed my eyes.

  As we got closer to the next town the trees started thinning out again, and we turned off the highway beside the little church on the corner of the road. There was a sign out the front that used to say something, but it only had a few letters now and not enough to make up proper words.

  ‘Y’know the first thing they build when they start a new town, after they’ve dug the holes to wee in?’ Dad said. ‘They build the c
hurch. Then they clear a spot for the cemetery. Can’t have all those bodies just rotting in the street.’

  I looked out the window at the small graveyard full of stone crosses and old wooden ones with their paint peeling off in the heat.

  ‘After that they build the pubs,’ Dad said, and he laughed a bit and slapped the steering wheel.

  He went quiet again, and as we drove into the little town we saw houses in the headlights, and streetlights over the top glowing orange.

  We turned down the street after the general store, and then took a right off that one to go up the hill. We stopped away from the streetlights, in the darkness behind a big tree. Dad turned off the engine and slumped down in his seat, then he pushed on my shoulder so that I would do the same. The house with the brick fence and the white lace curtains still had a light on over the porch, and you could see the outline of someone watching telly in the front room.

  There was movement in the window and Dad went as still as a statue. A woman came to the window and closed it, and even with the light on you could see her dressing-gown, which was pink and white with flowers, hanging loose over her nightie. Dad took a little breath in from behind his teeth, and I felt a wave come up through my feet and crash on the inside of my belly, and the foam of it came up and got caught in my throat, but if I coughed I’d give us away, so I swallowed it down with the salt and the seaweed.

  ‘There you are,’ he said, just under his breath. The lady was about Dad’s age, and she stood at the window for just a second, and then she was gone.

  For a long while Dad just sat waiting, and then when the porch light went off he sat back up straight. The air had got stale while we sat there, and I kept swallowing but it was hard not to choke on the foam. There was sweat coming out from my armpits, and when I put my nose there it smelled like old socks and Grandma after she’d been in the garden doing the weeds.

  ‘Yeah, okay, hang on,’ Dad said, and he leant over and wound the window down on my side. I felt the warm air on my face and up under my T-shirt.

  We took the quick way back to the highway, with the radio still on before the static hit, and with my eyelids heavy enough to close on their own, and the wind in my ears drowning out the rest of it.

  Six

  I lay on top of the doona and tried to blow cool air down my arms, but I could feel my sweat on the sheets and my eyes felt burnt and rusted if I blinked them. Davey had the window open by his bed but there was no breeze, and the heat outside wasn’t going away just because it was nighttime. If I rolled over it was cooler for a bit, but then that side of the bed warmed up and I had to turn over again. In the end I got up, and for a while I just stood at the window over Davey’s bed. The trees weren’t moving in the backyard, and Superman paced up and down next to Davey’s tyre swing. I could tell his legs were feeling restless, so he had to move around. I could still see him pacing until I turned and opened the bedroom door.

  I went on tiptoes down the corridor and into the kitchen, and I let the water from the tap run over my hands and along the inside of my arms. I reached up and patted some onto the top of my head, and little drops ran down into my eyes and down my nose. It felt like they dried instantly, and I kept putting more on, until my hair was wet enough to stick to my head. I cupped some water in my hand and tried to drink it, and I dropped a little bit on the floor.

  ‘Simon?’

  I turned and saw Dad standing in the doorway. He had on a singlet and his underpants, and his hairs stuck out like spider legs. ‘Can’t you sleep, mate?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. A bit of water ran onto my earlobe and my skin pushed up into goosebumps. I lifted my finger to brush the water away.

  ‘Go back to bed, then, go on,’ Dad said. He reached over to the tap and put some water in his hands, and when he drank it he didn’t drop any. I stood on my puddle by the sink, and my toes sponged it up through my skin and into my feet, and when I walked I heard it slushing around in there, and if I stood on something sharp I could spring a leak.

  I went to the bathroom and did a wee, and when I went back out to the kitchen Dad was gone. I got back on my tiptoes and headed to my bedroom, but when I looked over my shoulder before I went in, I saw that Dad was still in the corridor, with his hand and his forehead resting on Mum’s bedroom door, and his face shut up tight with a padlock.

  ***

  The thing about walking to school early in the morning is that there’s no chance of running into any of the other kids, and even though you have to climb over the fence down by the side of the oval, where the wood has come away from the post just enough to squeeze through, you still get to have all that grass and space and air to yourself. If it’s raining you can sit under the tree and listen to the drops hitting the hood of your raincoat, and you can feel the water going down beneath your collar and around past your ears. If it’s warm you can sit with your toes in the grass on the oval, out in the open and under the sun, so that when you lie back and put your hands over your eyes they glow red and hot from the blood in them. When the other kids arrive they won’t know how long you’ve been there and that for a little while the oval completely belonged to you.

  When Ms Hilcombe walked into the classroom there was still ten minutes until nine, and I had my head down on my desk so that I could look closely enough at the wood to see all the twigs in it, and the way the little grooves and cuts across the top made patterns for dust to get caught in, and for your skin to catch and get trapped along the inside, and for the skin of anyone who had ever sat there to be caught up too, so that when you sat at the desk you were always with someone, and you were never alone. I had been sitting at this desk for a couple of weeks already, so there were probably already bits of me in there as well.

  ‘Oh, Simon!’ Ms Hilcombe said. She stopped in the middle of the room so quickly that some of her tea fell out of her cup, and the peppermint smell stayed in the air for the rest of the morning. ‘You’re here early,’ she said.

  Superman sat on the carpet with his legs crossed, where you have to sit when it’s show-and-tell or story time. He rubbed his hands along his knees because they always got stiff if he sat still for too long.

  ‘You don’t want to be out with the other kids?’ Ms Hilcombe asked.

  Superman and I looked back at her. My tummy was heavy, and some honey had started to leak out of my honeycomb, so that I felt queasy and sick with the sweet of it, and my fingers started to shake when I pressed them into my legs.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you do,’ she said.

  Ms Hilcombe came and sat down at the desk next to me then, and I could feel the warmth from her against my arm.

  ‘Hey, can I suggest something?’ she said, and I nodded. ‘What about if we did something different?’ She got up and walked back over to her desk. ‘I have this book; it’s for…well, for kids like you, and you can just work through it.’ She held it up. It was a workbook with a picture of a koala on the front.

  ‘Some of it might be a bit simple, I guess—like, some of it is just colouring in—but there’s also maths and things, so if you like you could just sit and work while the rest of us get on with class?’ Ms Hilcombe looked at me with her eyebrows raised high on her forehead. She brought the book over to me and put it on my desk. ‘I just thought that then you wouldn’t have to worry about the other kids,’ she said.

  I looked around at the desks where everyone else sat. Nick’s desk had graffiti he’d carved into the wood with his compass, before Ms Hilcombe had taken the compass off him and put it away in a drawer. Sarah’s desk had flower stickers that she’d brought in from home. Jeremy’s desk was just normal, unless you sat down and lifted the lid and saw that he’d stuck a picture of his favourite football player there and had written his own name over the top in white-out. He tried to keep it hidden in case Ms Hilcombe told him to take it off.

  I looked down at the book in front of me, and the air flew into my face when I flicked through the pages, and for a second I thought that I might cry r
ight there at my desk in the third row, with Superman sitting with his sore knees on the ground on the carpet and Ms Hilcombe watching from just an arm’s length away.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, when she saw my face.

  I heard footsteps coming towards the classroom, and there were voices in the corridor outside the door.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just that for our next project we’ll be doing group work, and I thought…’ She bent down in front of me, and some of her hair fell out of the bun at the back of her neck, and it was frizzy so it bounced in front of her eyes as she spoke to me. ‘I really want us to be friends,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve had a rough trot and I want to help. I just…’

  Nicole and Sarah appeared in the doorway, but they stopped when they saw us.

  ‘Come in, girls,’ Ms Hilcombe said.

  They came in and sat down at their desks.

  Ms Hilcombe took the book back off my desk and went and put it away. Superman shifted so he could stretch his legs out straight in front of him, but he had to keep pulling them in when the other kids came in and walked past.

  For the rest of the morning we watched a video about the war. Nick and Jeremy made helicopter and machine-gun noises with their mouths, and then after a while just started making fart noises with their armpits until Ms Hilcombe told them to be quiet. Sarah and Nicole kept talking about how sad the war was, and how they were going to go and protest Vietnam, but Nick said there wasn’t much point since it was nearly over, plus no-one actually cared what they thought. He had to spend a lunchtime on the steps outside the staffroom for it, but he still said that he was right. Ms Hilcombe sat at her desk at the back of the classroom. She had a long skirt and bracelets on, and they knocked together when she lifted her arm up to rub at her neck.