Freia Lockhart's Summer of Awful Read online

  “You know, I’ve never thought of it before,” says Vicky, “but you remind me of a wombat.”

  Relieved to be talking about anything other than breast cancer, I joke, “Because I’m short and hairy?”

  “No, because you retreat into your burrow when you’re scared or you don’t know how to deal with something.”

  I know she couldn’t possibly have meant to sound so harsh, but that doesn’t make me feel any less insulted.

  We get back to the entrance gates before Mrs Soong arrives, having spent the last half-hour in virtual silence. From the hopeful little smile Vicky gives me every time she catches my eye, I can’t tell whether she understands why her remark has upset me so much, but I don’t have the energy to explain myself to her. It hasn’t helped that the butterfly house was the last stop on our tour, and all I could think about while Tina and Billy were trying to trap the poor creatures between their hands was being there with Dan, and how precious our time together felt back then.

  At home, there’s a note from Dad saying that he and Gran have gone to the hospital and will be back around seven, and that Dan called. It finishes with a PS: Don’t let Rocky out of his cage unless you want to clean the floor again. As if on cue, Rocky lets out an almighty screech from the corner. I give him the death stare and go to use the phone in the hall.

  “Do you think I’m a wombat?” I ask when Dan answers.

  “Sorry, what? This is Freia, right?”

  “Vicky said I’m a wombat. She reckons I go into my burrow and hide when things get tough.”

  Dan laughs. “I thought you liked wombats.”

  “That doesn’t mean I want to be one! I know I’m not the most upfront person in the world but, come on, a wombat! She made it sound like I don’t care about Mum’s … situation.”

  At the mention of Mum, Dan stops laughing. “I don’t know Vicky that well but I don’t think she’d hurt your feelings on purpose. Why don’t you ask Siouxsie or Steph what they think? They’ve been friends with her for a long time.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know; I just can’t.” I do know why I can’t talk about it with Steph or Siouxsie (if Sooz is even talking to me – I haven’t heard from her since she stormed out of Switch). I can’t ask them because if I did, they might think I was bitching about Vicky, which is one of the things I’ve vowed not to do, having spent hours listening to the Bs moan behind each other’s backs. Not that I’m bitching to Dan; I’m just venting because I feel bad enough about Mum already without Vicky adding to it. And because I’m not a wombat.

  “Would a ride make you feel better?” asks Dan. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to show you.”

  We meet at the park ten minutes later. Without saying a word, Dan wraps his arms around me and hugs me to him tightly. If I wasn’t so paranoid about Gran coming home early and spotting us, I’d happily stay there all afternoon.

  “Where are we going?” I ask when we finally pull apart.

  “All I’ll tell you is that it’s in Brightside. The rest is a surprise.”

  I’ve never ridden to Brightside – partly because it’s in the opposite direction from my house to Switch, the Metro, school and anywhere else I have reason to go, and partly because there’s nothing to do there. Brightside’s one of those suburbs that looks like it didn’t exist before the 1980s and was pretty much abandoned before the start of the twenty-first century. I remember going there in primary school for someone’s birthday party at the Best Fun Ever Play Centre (a misnomer, even by Year Four expectations), but I haven’t set foot in it since. By the look of the row of shops with matching For Sale signs and the empty car park outside the supermarket, neither has anyone else.

  “Are you sure this is the right direction?” I ask when we pull up at a red light. “The only surprises I can imagine around here are nasty ones.”

  Dan grins. “Trust me. All will be revealed very soon.”

  He pushes off as soon as the light turns green, giving me no choice but to follow him to this mystery destination. We ride down the four-lane road for a few hundred metres more, my anxiety growing with every truck that rumbles past me. I’m paying so much attention to not getting squashed under the wheels of a big rig that I almost don’t see Dan turn into the driveway of a disused factory.

  “Almost there,” he calls over his shoulder, ignoring the huge Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted sign.

  At the back of the factory Dan gets off his bike at a missing section of fencing and wheels it between two bushes on the other side. He reappears to take my bike through, holding back the bush with one arm so that I can follow, and we step into a park. It’s nothing like Parkville Park, with its neatly mown grass and big, shady trees and prize-winning rose garden, but it’s definitely a park.

  I point to the asphalted cul-de-sac to our right, lined with identical brick bungalows. “We could have come down there.”

  “I know, but this way’s more fun.” Dan starts wheeling his bike down the hill. “Come on.”

  So far this cheer-up surprise is having entirely the opposite effect on me. I trudge after Dan, avoiding the sharp shards of broken brown and green glass and discarded condoms and other signs that this is one of those places Mum won’t let me come because it’s where young people go to Get Up To No Good. By the time we reach the path that runs along the river, I’m inclined to agree with her.

  Dan gets back on his bike and takes off without waiting for me.

  “I hope you’re not planning to swim,” I say when I catch up, “because nothing on this Earth would get me into that stinking brown water.”

  “No swimming, I promise.” Dan continues down the path.

  “Then what are we doing here?”

  Dan doesn’t answer until he comes to an abrupt halt next to a willow whose drooping branches brush the ground. “This is it.”

  I duck my head to follow him into the depths of the tree’s canopy. The air inside the shaded dome is a few degrees cooler and smells like leaves and fresh dirt; there’s no hint of the sulphurous stench of the river, even though it flows less than two metres in front of us. I glance around, noting the empty orange juice bottles, takeaway containers and cigarette butts scattered carelessly around a bare patch of earth. When Dan pulls a tartan rug from his backpack and sets it in the bald spot, I guess that the rubbish belongs to him.

  “Is this some kind of hideaway?”

  “You could say that,” says Dan, sitting down and nodding to indicate I should do the same. “I come here when I need some space to think. I found it just after Mum moved out. Hardly anyone ever comes to this part of the river since the only fish in it are floating belly up, and even when they do they can’t see in here.”

  “So, is this where you bring all your girlfriends?”

  Dan lies on his back and tilts his head to look me in the eyes. “You know I’ve never had another girlfriend, Fray. And I’ve never brought anyone here before. Ever.”

  If he’s trying to charm me, it’s worked. I kneel and move towards him until I’m close enough to straddle his hips. Pinning his hands to the rug, I lean over him. His eyes sparkle in the semi-darkness. He smiles. It would be so easy to tell him how I feel about him right now. So, so easy, I think as I kiss his cheek and then his earlobe and then his lips.

  When I move towards his neck Dan exhales heavily. “Fray, I’ve got some news.”

  Based on recent experience, the word “news” sets off alarm bells in my head. I sit up abruptly and roll off him. Dan sits up, too, and shakes his head sharply so that his fringe flops over his eyes.

  “What is it?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “You know how I told you that Dr Phil’s been hassling me to visit Mum?”

  “He’s making you go?”

  “I’m taking the train up tomorrow.”

  Before I can stop her, Hysterical Girlfriend breaks her shackles and shrieks, “Tomorrow? That’s New Year’s Eve! We’re goi
ng to see the fireworks! Can’t you put it off, even for a day?”

  Dan picks at the corner of the rug, not making eye contact. “I’m really sorry, Fray, but I have to go. There’ll be other fireworks, I promise.”

  Signs Hysterical Girlfriend is on the loose

  You can’t stop the thoughts in your head blurting out of your mouth.

  The rational side of your brain shuts down and the shrieking/blubbing side takes over.

  Any semblance of self-control flies out the window.

  No amount of reassurance can make you feel better.

  20

  I don’t know why I have a sudden urge to bake when I get home, but I figure it’s better than curling up on the sofa bed and crying, which feels like my only other option right now. When I go to collect ingredients from the pantry I spot a jar of peanut butter. Not the one-hundred-per-cent-nuts-and-nothing-else gloop that Mum gets from the organic grocer, but real, salt-and-sugar-added stuff. Dad must’ve bought it without thinking about the consequences. If Mum sees it tomorrow, it’ll go straight in the bin. Unable to bear the thought of so much bad-goodness going to waste, I add it to the pile of chocolate, flour and sugar cradled in my left arm.

  I make my usual brownie recipe and pour it into the battered and stained baking tin before gently stirring through the peanut butter with a spatula. Well, I start off gently, but the nutty texture makes the peanut butter want to clump, rather than make the pretty swirls I’d pictured. I try using a fork to scrape it through the chocolate, rather than stirring it in, but it’s still pretty lumpy. Then Boris arrives and starts whingeing for his dinner, which means it’s six o’clock. If I’m going to get these brownies cooked before Dad and Gran get home, I have to get them in the oven now, so I give up on the swirling and hope that the heat will somehow melt the lumps evenly.

  “Just give me a couple of minutes,” I say, hoping Boris is feeling reasonable.

  He lets out a long, pained meeee-ow to tell me that he’s not, which Rocky immediately mimics. “Reee-row, reee-ow, reee-ow,” sings Rocky, bouncing on his perch. Boris pauses to give him the death stare before repeating his plea more loudly, and the two of them are soon in such fierce competition that Boris doesn’t even notice when I empty a tin of Senior’s Feast into his bowl.

  I get my portable CD player and earphones from the study and crank up the volume on the Good Things mix that Siouxsie made me for my birthday. I wish I’d thought of washing up to music years ago. Aside from shutting out the cat/bird cacophony, I’m surprised by how many dance moves you can do with your hands in soapy water. Plus, the scrubbing brush makes an excellent microphone.

  Cleaning to music is so much fun that I figure I may as well try to get Mum’s study back to a pristine state while I’m at it. I’m dusting the desk and belting out the chorus to “Rock the Casbah” when Dad walks in. I stop singing and push my earphones back.

  “Hello, Sausage, do you have something in the oven? It smells like a peanut factory’s burning down.”

  The downside to cleaning with earphones on: you can’t hear the oven timer when it rings.

  The sky was still a tiny bit light when I went to sleep last night, and blazingly blue when Dad knocked on the study door a few minutes ago to tell me he was off to fetch Mum. He sounded chirpier than he has since Mum first told us she was sick.

  Things I don’t want to do today

  1. Scrape burnt chocolate and peanut butter off the baking tin.

  2. Tell my friends I’m not coming to the New Year’s Eve picnic that was my idea in the first place.

  3. See in the new year with an annoying old bag and her demented bird.

  If Mum wasn’t coming home today, I’d leave the blackened baking tin for a while longer and spend some quality moping time on the sofa bed, where I’ve been for approximately the last thirteen hours. It was probably a bit melodramatic to burst into tears over burnt baked goods and storm off to the study but, after the day I’d had, a more rational response didn’t come to mind.

  Dad was pretty understanding when I told him that I’d clean up in the morning and that everyone should just stay out of my way until then. I guess he had no choice since I’d locked the study door behind me. No doubt it’ll be held against me next time I beg for a lock on my bedroom door, but I needed to cocoon myself to get some thinking space.

  Dan said he was catching the early train to his mum’s, so he’s probably at the station by now. I wonder if he called last night. Part of me hopes he did, just so whoever answered could tell him that I was already asleep and he’d know that his going away wasn’t keeping me awake at night … and that my uncontrollable crying yesterday afternoon was purely a symptom of being overtired.

  I go upstairs for a shower but Gran’s in there, either with Rocky (ew) or doing bird impressions (freaky). On the upside, at least this way I’ll be able to get the baking tin scrubbed without her watching over my shoulder to make sure I’m doing it right. But when I get to the kitchen I can’t see the tin. It’s not soaking in the sink, it hasn’t been stowed out of sight in the oven and it’s certainly not on any of the spotless counters. Ziggy comes in from the garage while I’m searching through the cupboards.

  “Morning, Fraymond. Over your PMS yet?”

  “Shut up, rodent.”

  “I’ll take that as a no.” Ziggy pulls off his T-shirt and wipes his armpits with it. “What are you looking for? If you mess up the kitchen, Gran’ll kill you. She made me eat breakfast outside so I wouldn’t leave crumbs.”

  I press my lips together to keep from smiling. “I can’t find the brownie tray. Dad must’ve hidden it away so Mum doesn’t see it.”

  “Isn’t that it?” Ziggy points to a shiny silver tin on the bottom shelf.

  I pull it out of the cupboard to inspect it more closely. It’s the same size as my brownie tray, but it looks brand-new.

  Gran comes in with Rocky on her shoulder. “Scrubs up all right, doesn’t it?”

  “Did you do this?”

  Gran nods. “I managed to save most of the brownies, too. They were okay once I cut off the top and bottom layer. I think that recipe would’ve been a winner if they’d come out of the oven on time.”

  I open the lid of the plastic container she’s pointing to. Inside there’s a neat layer of brownies. They’re thinner than usual and covered in thick, shiny chocolate icing. The fact that they look and smell delicious makes my blood boil.

  “What gives you the right to mess around with my brownies? Do you have to interfere in everything?”

  Rocky clacks his beak at me menacingly and stands taller on Gran’s shoulder, but I refuse to be intimidated. I glare at the two of them.

  “Here we go,” mutters Ziggy as he leaves the kitchen.

  Gran’s voice is quiet. “I didn’t mean to interfere, Bloss. You were so sad last night, I just wanted to do something nice for you.”

  I just wanted to do something nice for you, nine words to which there is no comeback. “Oh … well … thanks.”

  “That’s all right. I always find giving something a good hard scrub therapeutic. It gives me something to take my anger out on, you know? Plus, it’s great for the arms – helps keep the dreaded bingo wings at bay.” She holds up her trim arm as evidence, waiting for me to smile, but I’m more interested in the first part of her explanation.

  “What were you feeling angry about?”

  “Oh, you know.” She walks towards Rocky’s perch, keeping her back to me as she settles him. “My daughter having cancer, not being with Archie on New Year’s Eve, missing my little flat and my friends at the villa … But you know what they say: busy hands still the brain.”

  “Well, thank you, but I would have done it myself.”

  Gran smiles and shakes her head. “You know what you are, Bloss? A control freak, just like your mother.” She turns back to making her tea before I can argue.

  At least I can cross the first chore off my to-do list, even if I didn’t do it myself. Now, onto the second.
I email Vicky, Steph and Siouxsie saying I can’t come tonight because Mum’s coming home. It’s not a lie, I tell myself as I hit send. Before I’ve even finished cleaning out my spam folder, a reply from Siouxsie arrives. She’s sick and can’t come either. I’m not sure what to make of it. At least I know she’s not cancelling because she doesn’t want to go if I’m there, but the Sooz I know would have to be on her deathbed to miss a night out with her friends.

  I race to open the door when I hear the Volvo pulling into the driveway. I don’t know what I expected – that the hospital would send her home with a wheelchair maybe, or at least that she’d need to lean on Dad – but I’m surprised to see Mum get out of the car and walk to the front door by herself. She notices me waiting for her and walks a little faster, enveloping me in her arms even before saying hello. She’s wearing her usual perfumed oil, but the antiseptic hospital smell still clings to her skin. Hugging her back, I try not to brush against the row of stitches I imagine running like a railway track across the right side of her chest.

  “It’s good to be home,” she says when she finally pulls away from me.

  Dad arrives, clutching Mum’s overnight bag and a plastic bag from the pharmacy. “I’ll just do a quick tidy in the bedroom,” he tells Mum. “I didn’t have time to make the bed before I picked you up.”

  “Already done,” says Gran, coming out of the kitchen wearing Dad’s apron and holding a large knife. “And I changed the sheets while I was at it.”

  Dad’s cheeks go bright red. Having glimpsed the state he left the bedroom in this morning, I’m not surprised: if it wasn’t for the queen-size bed, I could’ve mistaken it for Ziggy’s sty. Dad mutters thank you and takes Mum’s stuff upstairs.

  “I’ve got the kettle on for a cuppa,” says Gran, turning back towards the kitchen.

  “I appreciate you tidying up, but you really shouldn’t have gone into our bedroom,” says Mum when the three of us are sitting at the table with steaming mugs of tea and a plate of gingersnaps. “I think Terence is a bit embarrassed.”