he was on the lookout for me as well. I’d be kind of touched if I wasn’t such a hard ass.
I glance down at my hands, touch my face self-consciously, and wonder whether Brenda sees.
The dogs are still going mad as Ryan backs his rusting, white four-wheel drive onto the road and slides out to shut and chain the gates and let Brenda into the front seat. She is a happy blur of accessories, coltish legs and motion as she throws herself into the car without turning to see if I’m coming. As she slams the door shut, Ryan tilts his head towards the back seat behind Brenda’s and snarls, ‘Keep your head down, whatever you do.’ I nod tightly, still embarrassed that he seems to know me better than I know myself. We both get into the car then, slam the doors.
We set off through the dark, wide, unremarkable streets of Paradise, with its generous plots of land, its regular-looking, two-car houses spaced at even intervals.
‘I so can’t wait to get out of here,’ Brenda mutters, her shining gaze fixed on Ryan’s profile, like a blind woman whose sight has suddenly been restored. ‘It’s a place where whales and old people come to die.’
‘Or tree-changers like my folks,’ Ryan murmurs, his eyes fixed on the darkened road ahead. ‘I wish we’d never come here, moved away from the city. Maybe it would never have happened …’ As I watch through the thick, woolly fringe of Carmen’s hair, Brenda puts a hand lightly on his arm with a slight pout. ‘But then we’d never have met, Ry!
Lauren and I used to make plans all the time about how we were going to escape here right after school finished, and take you back with us, to the city …’
‘And now there’s no escape for any of us,’ Ryan murmurs and Brenda’s fingers tighten briefly on him like claws. ‘So where are we going, Bren?’
‘To Mulvany’s,’ she says, swinging around suddenly to look at me.
I’m ready for her, though, and stare fixedly through the side window so that all she sees is the side of Carmen’s head, our palely glowing profile shielded by a mass of dark hair.
I hear the slight jangle of Brenda’s earrings as she turns back to Ryan, and feel more than see the curl of Ryan’s lip as he exclaims, ‘That dive! Since when did “the gang” start hanging out at Mulvany’s?’
‘Since Mr Masson thought it would be a great idea to show the St Joseph’s girls and their teachers a “good time” at Paradise’s “one and only international karaoke lounge”.’ Brenda’s tone is derisive. ‘It’s so lame. Like all they’d ever want to do in this town is sing, right, Carmen?’ The word sends a thrill of apprehension down my spine. ‘Sing?’ I mutter.
‘Sure,’ Brenda purrs happily. ‘If Tiffany Lazer thinks she’s going to hog the spotlight tonight, she’s in for a shock. That’s why I had to make sure you were coming, Carmen. You’ll put her right back into her box. The music teachers all get hard-ons every time we have one of these inter-school concerts,’ she adds, lip curling. ‘And when “singers of the calibre of the young women of St Joseph’s are visiting” — to show us yokels a thing or two — the music teachers get positively orgasmic. Though it wouldn’t be too much of a punishment getting into Paul Stenborg’s pants. Everyone tries hard enough, and rumour has it that he doesn’t always say no. He’s always taking his little favourites out for “coffee”.’ Her voice is malicious, or maybe it’s just envy, pure and simple.
What she’s saying isn’t really penetrating my consciousness though. Sing?
I swallow hard as we pull into the crowded car park of Paradise’s one and only international karaoke lounge.
‘I can’t do this,’ I hiss at Ryan’s broad back as we leave our coats with the barely dressed coat-check girl and pay our cover charge of twelve dollars a head, unlimited soft drinks included.
As he turns to look at me, Brenda tugs hard at his hand and says brightly, ‘Come on, Ry! This may turn out to be fun, after all.’ We pass some seedy-looking, middle-aged punters at the bar, who check Brenda out with more than a little interest, as we head towards a private function room out the back. It’s decked out cheesily with coloured helium balloons and two twirling disco balls that fleck the walls and ceiling with broken light. The space is dominated by a wall of video screens in front of which is a small, maroon velveteen-bedecked stage. Two of the kids from Paradise High are half-turned towards the bank of televisions, crooning sickeningly at each other: my … endless … love. There is good-natured snickering and heckling from the tightly packed crowd of drink-clutching teens at their feet.
In the way that I sometimes have of seeing too much, too quickly, I pick out a tight knot of adults clustered across the room, Miss Fellows, Miss Dustin, Gerard Masson and Laurence Barry among them, together with a few watchful parents whose eyes narrow collectively and speculatively as they alight on Ryan Daley’s tall figure. Other kids begin to point, stare and murmur as they spot him, too. Clearly, Ryan was never one of the choirboys.
Brenda practically drags him around the room on a victory lap. His eyes search for mine and he throws me an apologetic look.
There must be almost a hundred people here. I zero in on Tiffany Lazer, surrounded by the St Joseph’s faithful, and Brenda’s two henchwomen, Tod and Spotty Boy standing nearby. Spotty Boy hasn’t yet seen me, and I duck my head down and push through in the opposite direction, happy to stand on my own.
The lights are so bright in here I can relax on that score. I clock that there’s only one way in and one way out, and hope fiercely that, if no one sees me, I can hightail it out of here at the earliest opportunity. But I see another victim step up to the mike after a round of lazy applause greets the grating finale of the endless lovers, and I know I’m in trouble when a boy I don’t recall meeting thrusts a drink and a plastic-covered song list into my hand and says, ‘Where were you? We were all waiting. You’re almost up next. So choose already.’ I quickly scull the contents of my plastic cup, and the boy gives me a huge grin and two thumbs up. There’s something in the cola, I realise, because he’s making a secretive tippy tippy manoeuvre with his hand, his back to the adults across the room. Before I can say no to another, I’ve got a new cup in my hand and he’s standing there with expectant eyes, willing me to finish it.
‘Right under their noses,’ he says with satisfaction, tapping the side of his nose. ‘I’m Bailey, by the way.’ The taste of the adulterated cola isn’t unpleasant and, as I thumb through the sticky pages of the song list, I down three more drinks, thanks to sheer, fearful adrenaline. The guy’s eyes are wide with wonder as he melts away to keep me supplied with more.
I look up sharply as Tiffany begins to sing. It’s a song with a big, thumping chorus about survival and heartache with a driving, insistent beat. It’s a crowd-pleaser with the girls in particular — they’re all throwing their hands in the air and screaming along with the words, every single one of which they seem to have committed to memory. Of course, being me, I have no recollection of this song and remain unmoved in the heaving, thrusting bedlam.
Tiffany’s beat that stare finds me over the heads of the throng as she continues to belt out the words, and that cold feeling in my spine returns, the sense of being balanced on razor wire over the shrieking abyss.
Everything a freakin’ contest.
‘Man, you can put that shit away!’ shouts Bailey admiringly as he watches me crush yet another empty plastic cup in my hand.
That gives me an idea, and a moment later, I let my eyes roll back in my head as I fall to the ground. Like a tree crashing to the forest floor.
Chapter 13
A girl nearby screams, ‘Oh — my — GOD!’ as the boy, Bailey, shouts above me, ‘Shit, shit, shit! Someone help me here!’ I keep my eyes resolutely shut as a swirl of activity takes place over and around Carmen’s prone body.
‘How much did you give her to drink, Bails?’ someone hisses.
Bailey’s panicky whisper confirms I chugalugged eight bourbon-spiked colas in one sitting.
‘She’s probably in a freakin’ coma,’ exclaims a girl nearby. ‘She’ll need her stomach pumped out for sure.’ Someone bends to check I have a pulse. A touch so brief, there isn’t time for me to make a connection, and for that I am truly grateful. From the ambient smell of mothballs, however, I’m guessing it’s Laurence Barry who has taken it upon himself to gather me into his arms, cradling my head and shoulders off the floor. I continue to play dead for safety.
