A Shot at Freedom (11 page)

In the dark, Brooke crept out of the bedroom, and down the hallway clutching her mobile. No one had called. Her parents. David. Nobody. Pressing the phone to her chest, she ignored the time flashing in the corner of the screen, and gathered her composure as she punched in the numbers.

“Brooke?” her mother breathed down the
line.

Brooke imagined her tip toeing from the bedroom into the hall, in her p
yjamas, hair tousled, rubbing her eyes.

“How did you know it was me?”

“It’s the middle of the night. It was either going to be you or the police.”

“Well, it’s me.”

Silence reigned between them.

“I take it you don’t want to talk?” Brooke asked.

Another quiet moment. “You called me,” her mother finally whispered.

“Do you want to go back to bed?”

“No – No. I’m awake, Brooke.”

“I can hang up.”

“No. I’m glad you called.”

“You haven’t cut off my phone.”

“I want you to be able to contact us - If you need anything.”

“I need something.”

“What?”

“Money.”

Her mother sighed. Brooke heard it and wanted to throw the phone. But she held on tight until her fingers ached.

“Mum?” Brooke prompted.

“We can’t give you money Brooke. We can come and get you if you want to come home. But we have to rule the line at money.”

“Is David there?”

There was a long silence.

“Don’t lie to me Mum. Is he there
? In town?”

“Not that I know. I spoke to his mother today. She hasn’t heard from him.”

“You spoke to his mum?”

“She’s suffering Brooke. She’s going to go to jail.
They’ve charged her with manslaughter.”

“
David’s dad was alive when we left.”

“Are you sure about that Brooke?”

Brooke shifted uncomfortably in the leather couch. She didn’t know what to say. “So you can’t give me money, Mum?”

“No, Brooke. We want you home.”

“I can’t come home until I find David. The money will help me find him.”

“If you come home he’ll know how to find you.”

“He has my mobile number and he hasn’t called.”

“
Then that should tell you everything you need to know,” her mother said. “You’ll be safer at home.”

“
Thanks for your help. If I hang out long enough David will call me. I’m going to find him,” Brooke snapped, and hung up. She sat in the dark, not willing to face defeat but was stuck with the deadness of it anyway.

Chapter
Seventeen

David

It was the cheapest tarp David could find in the hardware. Inside his tent on the hillside in the rainforest he made a border using fist sized rocks and curled the edges of the tarp over them, all to keep the run-off from flowing like a river through his sleeping bag. As usual, David heard Gloria before he saw her. She was humming and tapping her way along the path. He sat in the open doorway watching, waiting for her to find him.

She
didn’t speak to him. In her hand was a long stick. She limped over to him as though it was a cane, lifting it as she approached the tent. Sucking in his cheeks he watched her shadow from the inside, circling the tent dragging the stick along the fabric. “Don’t tear my tent.”

“
Wouldn’t be hard. It’s pretty thin. We get windy days here you know. Don’t know what you’re going to do in cyclone season.”

He rolled his eyes and waited for her to make it back round to stand in front of him
again.

She crossed
one leg over the other and lowered herself down to the ground. With her eyes raised to the sky, she tapped her temple with her finger exaggerating her thoughtfulness. “I have a great idea.”

“I don’t need another one. The last one had both of us beaten
up by your hottie of a boyfriend.”

“Ah, you noticed. He’s not bad, eh? That’s why I’m with him.”

“Don’t kid yourself.”

She waved the air between them
. “Anyway, focus.” She wiggled forward on her bottom until she was right in front of him.

He let her take his hands.

She squeezed them. “My cousin, he owns a bar in the main street, the hottest one out.”

“
Ahh another hottie.”

“The
bar
is hot
.
And you can work there after hours. My cousin’s sick of the clean-up. The cops don’t come anywhere near the place after about three unless he calls them. You can start work about three thirty. Close is at four. Clean the last of the glasses, pull up the mats, hose the place out, mop. Toilets will be the worst.  Then you can grab some sleep in a back room, ‘til he opens again at 10:00.”

“
For no pay.”

“He’ll pay you. Cash under the table. Whatever he has spare.”

David snorted, and reached back in his tent for a bottle of beer. “Sounds like a place to stay.”

“Well, it’s better than
camping up here in the dark with all the rain we get here.”

“
I’ve fixed the rain thing,” he said, lifting the tent flap to show her the tarp with the rocky border.

“When was the last time this tent saw
some good rain?”

He looked up at the pin pricks of skylight streaming in and shrugged.

“He’ll have a camping bed in the back room for you. I think you should take him up on it, at least until you can buy yourself a better tent.”

***

The glasses rattled and swayed as David stacked them as high as he could and wove through the crowd. When he was a kid, his dad used to take him to the pub and sit him in the corner with a pink lemonade and chips. It kept him occupied while his father downed a few rums. David loved to watch the bartenders, loving the way his father joked with them, like they were mates. They were the only people he ever saw be friendly to him.  When he got home, he raided the plastic cups in his mother’s kitchen and practised stacking them to see how many he could carry. Plastic was less dangerous than the glass. So was being a kid back then. It was simpler. That was when the money wasn’t so tight. They still had some land. Things weren’t that bad. His mum did most of the worrying and he was young enough to play dumb, spending his days running free through the paddocks with Brooke.

David imagine
d his father sitting at the bar, holding court with Darbie, Gloria’s cousin. It would have meant everything to him, just to see him treated with respect one more time. Bartenders were great at conversation. They were pro’s at never letting on what they were really thinking, hearing the same old conversation again and again. David wanted to be one. He wasn’t far off 18; if he stuck with this job, he could be one here. He unloaded the glasses onto dishwasher racks, conscious his boss was watching.

“Hey
kid,” Darbie drawled.

“It’s David.”

“Kiddo, what’s your poison?”

“Huh?”

“You want a drink?”

“A
Coke, you mean?”

Darbie
scooped up ice in a tall glass, and leant towards him with his hand behind his ear as though he couldn’t hear, “Coke and…?”

“
Rum.”

“Gotcha,” he said, mixing the drink and placing it within reach. “Just to
keep you working hard. If there’s a raid, you’re on your own, but for my sake you make sure you piss off out the back door. Got me?”

“Gotcha,” David
replied. He headed out onto the floor, clearing another couple of tables. On one, in amongst the debris of napkins, chip packets and beer soaked coasters, he found a phone. He looked over his shoulder both ways, pocketing the phone, justifying it as a tip, and cleared the rubbish.

***

It was hard not to think of Brooke as he wound up the hose and eyed off the toilet door. Those dunnies would be putrid. There would be no way she’d use them. When he opened the door of the males’, the vomit stench caused him to dry reach. He kicked the door open on each of the stalls. A toilet bowl had been cracked and blood caked the graffittied walls. David shook his head and went back to pour a stiffer rum and unwind the hose, again.
Spray a bit of disinfectant, hose it down, mop it out… open a window, let it dry out. Stuff it.

***

The door flung open, and the light from the hall fell across the bed. David was wrenched out of a deep dream, dragged back to his body with a thump. All he could manage was a squint of his eyes. For a moment, he thought he was back home.

“Dad,” he mumbled.

“You wish,” Darbie grunted.

“You want me to go?”

“Just letting you know it’s pissing down outside. So you can stay. You did a great job. Here’s a burger for your trouble.”

David looked down at the hamburger and chips on the tray. Fifteen dollars was pinned under the plate.
“One of the toilets was smashed.”

“What
, broken?”

“Nope
. Smashed.”

Darbie
grabbed a clump of his own hair. “Fuckin’ fights. It shits me.” He slammed the door, and David heard him calling down the passageway to the day chef. “Garth?”

David was left alone in the dark, blinking. The room
had to be an old storage room. There were no windows, just a vent, but it wasn’t a leaking tent. The phone was still in his pocket. It had three quarters of a battery and was still working. Whoever owned it hadn’t had it cut off. They hadn’t called to claim it.

He sent a text
and turned it off.

Chapter Eighteen

Brooke

At the dining table, Brooke was working through her resume and letter, making final adjustments. Beside her, Natasha flicked through the employment pages, scanning the adds, but spending more time doodling in the columns. It unnerved her, the way Natasha’s eye kept flicking over her work, reading bits of her applications. Books and ornaments strategically positioned as paper weights helped her cover some identifying information.

“Where are the boys?” Brooke asked her.

              As though she was jolted out of a daydream, Natasha straightened and smoothed out the paper. “Looking for work, supposedly. But I think they’re trying to get us a caravan lined up.” She lay her head down on the table, chewing her gum, and fiddling with the lid on the nikko pen. “So tell me, why are you bothering to look for work?”

“I
need a job, Natasha. You know? Money?” Brooke rubbed her fingers together.

“Why though? You have your whole life to be old and working. Now is not the time.”

“I’m going to stick with the plan David and I have always talked about living and working on an island. So when he rings me, he’ll see I could survive without him. He might even find work on the same island as me. Things could go back to the way they should have been all along.”

“He’s got to want you to find him. Otherwise I bet he’s gone someplace else like the mountains, getting ready for ski season
or something.”

“He wants me to find him,” Brooke said, reassuring herself as much as Natasha.

“The world’s a big place.”

“So why are you looking for work then? Why
bother looking at all these courses and things if you don’t want to do them?”

“So I can stay
in this place. I’m too young to work. I hate school. No one wants a fourteen year old – waste of time really -”

“You can get a tax file number at
fourteen. Cheaper wages -” Brooke felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. She jerked. The scissors flew out of her fingers across the table.

“Are
ya tryin’ ta kill me?” Natasha screeched.

But Brooke ran for the toilet, the only room with a lock. She pulled out the phone, dropped the toilet lid and sat down. A text.

Its me I’m ok ru

Greedy, s
he scrolled down for more. There was a phone number. Her hopes soared. She called it, but a message came back.
This phone is switched off….

She sent a text,  
C
all me I need you.

Brooke sat nursing her phone in her lap, jiggling her leg, willing for it to vibrate across her knee. When it was too much, she tried the number again.
This phone is switched off.
She bowed down low, dropped her head in her hands and groaned.

“Are you a
ll right in there?” Natasha called through the door.

Brooke sat upright
, alert. “Yes,” she shouted a little too perky.

“I just hope you aren’t stinking up the loo. I
cleaned it this morning.”

“I’m not,” Brooke s
ang out with fake cheer. She stood up, flushed the toilet, and washed her hands. In the tiny mirror hanging above the basin, her face peered back at her, flushed blotchy and pink. Her hair looked untamed. She hadn’t bothered much with her appearance since the night she’d left with David.