‘I’m just off to a movie with Jen,’ she’ll call from the hallway, blocking my view of the open door.
Jen is her sister. Who hates movies.
‘Hi Graham,’ I’ll call out.
‘Um. Hi Will,’ Graham, on the doorstep, will call back.
The whole masquerade has become its own pathetic ritual.
I flop onto the couch beside her. ‘Nice bathrobe.’
‘Don’t you have homework to do?’
‘I’m doing so well my teachers gave me the weekend off.’
‘So you’ve finished your major work as well, I take it? I’d love to see it.’
‘I’m just waiting for the paint to dry. It’ll be ready in an hour. You’ll be around then to look at it, won’t you?’
Mum is silent.
I victory punch a cushion.
Don’t think I’m blind to the fact that Mum’s whole no-date masquerade is entirely for my benefit. I get that it’s related to the first time Graham picked her up for dinner and I threw a frying pan in the vicinity of his leg. I wasn’t aiming to hit him. I am not a monster. I was just a bit reckless in letting the frying pan slip out of my hand while pirouetting on the linoleum.
Mum slides a piece of paper off the side table. ‘Do you know anything about this? It came in the mail from the school.’ She holds it up.
I glance at it. ‘Looks like an invitation to another fundraising night,’ I say. ‘What is it this time? A two-hundred-dollar-a-ticket karaoke night to raise money for another state-of-the-art science lab? Or a three-hundred-dollar-a-ticket medieval paintball weekend to buy Rosemead a fleet of racing yachts?’
‘A cabaret-themed dinner,’ Mum says. ‘For another swimming pool, it says here. You know, I wouldn’t mind going to at least one of these things before you leave school, if only to see what they’re like.’ She sounds wistful.
I level a stare at her. ‘Except you’d need to sell a kidney to afford it. Seriously, Mum. You pay enough in fees as it is.’
Mum sighs and folds up the flyer. We turn back to the news.
The evening bulletin is full of tragedy, as usual. New South Wales has lost the State of Origin again. A federal politician has been sprung emerging from a sex club. A breakfast television host has worn a revealing dress to an awards ceremony.
After those headlines the real news starts. There’s a report on the aftermath of a recent earthquake in Nepal: shots of flattened villages and teeming hospitals. Apparently foreign aid has been slow to arrive. First World governments are such jerks.
If that wasn’t cheery enough, the latest plane crash story comes on. This one’s been running for over a week now. They show the footage of the crash scene again: a rescue worker picking up a cabin bag from the rubble and dusting it off to reveal a Disney character; a close-up of a dead passenger’s passport open to the photo page.
It’s the passport photo that brings home the human tragedy, and makes my tongue turn as dry as chalk.
The headshot stares out grimly as if she knew all along what would happen. You think your life is the worst? Think again, says her face.
My heart starts up a crazy beat.
‘You don’t need to watch this.’ Mum looks worried.
‘It’s not as if it didn’t happen just because I’m not watching,’ I say, swallowing.
‘But maybe you’ll think about it less.’
‘It’s research. It’s the topic of my major work.’
‘You mean the one you finished tonight and therefore no longer need to research?’ She readjusts her robe with a small smile, like the one she gets when she beats me at Canasta.
As the news story cuts to a scene of distressed relatives crying at an airport, the phone rings in the kitchen. ‘Why don’t you answer that? It could be Nat.’ Mum prods my arm when I don’t respond.
‘Maybe it’s Graham calling to say he’ll be late.’
‘Late for what?’
You have to admire her commitment to the ruse. I stand up and walk to the phone.
‘How are you, Will?’ says my father down the line.
Damn. ‘Couldn’t be better.’
Dad laughs in an overly cheery way. ‘That bad, huh? It’s horrible to hear your voice.’
‘It’s fabulous to hear yours.’
The worst thing about these calls is how upbeat Dad is. I prefer the way he was before he left us for Naomi: suavely dismissive with a misanthropic edge. Pre-Naomi, Dad loved nothing more than ripping to shreds the latest exhibition of some poor emerging artist over a bottle of Scotch.
‘How are you going at that school your mother insisted she spend all her life savings to send you to?’
Dad hates Rosemead almost as much as I do. It’s been a long-standing theme in arguments between my parents, even before they split. Mum’s position is that schools like Rosemead guarantee a good education and opportunities, whereas Dad has always said they’re a waste of money and breed a ‘dangerous elitism’.
Whenever they used to have this argument I wholeheartedly agreed with him. I still do. But then Perth happened and I fell out with Dad, and leaving my old school for Rosemead after year nine like Mum wanted suddenly seemed like a good option. It was a way of getting back at Dad, for starters. If I’m honest, it was a way of solving some other problems I was having, too.
‘Oh, you know. Topping all the classes. Winning all the awards. Same old,’ I tell Dad.
He pauses. ‘And on the friend front?’
I clear my throat. ‘Couldn’t be better. Just last week I won the Most Popular Kid in Class trophy. Matter
