My Life and Other Massive Mistakes (4 page)

I think I must have done something wrong in a previous life, and payback is standing on my front doorstep.

‘To-om!' she sings. ‘Open u-up!'

I am in my lounge room, peering through a crack at the edge of the curtain. The TV mutters in the background. Stella Holling is on the veranda holding a large white box. She is freckled, skinny and short, with a chocolate-smothered mouth. She is wearing pink-and-white bunny ears on her head. I never thought she'd come here again. A man should feel safe in his own home.

‘I know you're in there,' she says. ‘Kissy, kiss-y!'

Stella Holling has been in love with me since second grade. One time, not too long ago, she tricked me into kissing her on the lips in front of about 50 high-school boys. It was the darkest day of my life. I still scrub my lips with soap every night but it doesn't wash away the pain.

At least, that time, we were in the playground. There were witnesses. Today, I'm home alone. Mum and my sister Tanya are out shopping. They'll be gone for hours.

I eke the curtain open a little more.
The chocolate smeared around Stella's mouth scares me, it really does. It's Easter Monday and I'll bet you 50 bucks she's been stuffing her gob with cheap chocolate for two days straight. And you know what the main ingredient in cheap chocolate is?

Sugar.

Stella goes cuckoo when she eats sugar. I once saw her scale the school flagpole after a handful of M&M's. Mr Barnes, the maintenance guy, had to climb the 13-metre extension ladder to save her.

I've been dodging Stella's phone calls for weeks. Every afternoon she rings me ten, 12, sometimes 20 times. Usually she doesn't say anything, but I know that wheezy breathing when her throat is thick with chocolate.

And it's been getting worse. On Thursday I ignored ten calls, then I picked up and screamed, ‘Whaddya want, you creepy freak?' But it wasn't Stella. It was Mum. And she was
really angry because I hadn't been answering the phone. I told her I'd been in the bath and she said, ‘You haven't willingly taken a bath in your life, Tom Weekly.'

There's no way I could say that I didn't answer the phone because of Stella. I did that once and Mum rang Stella's mum, and they decided we should all get together to discuss the situation. She invited them over on a Saturday afternoon. The mums ate biscuits and drank tea and had the greatest time of their lives, while I was left to entertain Stella and show her around the house. She tried to kiss me on the cheek the second we were out of our mothers' sight and I screamed. Mum said, ‘Stop being a baby, Tom.'

Me! A baby! I'm one of the toughest guys I know.

After Stella and her mother left, Mum said, ‘Now that wasn't so bad, was it? Little Stella's not too scary for you, is she?' And she made
me feel like I actually
was
a baby, which I'm not.

I know one thing for sure: Stella Holling is never setting foot inside this house again.

She pounds on the front door. ‘Let me in, Tom. Please. I just want to give you your Easter present.'

She's staring right at me now. She knows I'm watching her from behind the curtain. She opens up the big white box. She bats her eyelashes, which makes me shiver. She reaches into the box and pulls out the largest Easter rabbit I've ever seen. It's the one from the window of the French patisserie on Jonson Street. It is smooth and wrapped in gold foil with a bright red ribbon around its neck, and the second I see it I know that I must have it. I have not eaten a single sliver of chocolate this Easter. Mum decided to give our Easter egg money to charity, so I went hungry and a kid in some faraway land got a rooster and a
set of pencils. I know I should feel happy for him, but it's hard.

‘Can I come in now?' Stella asks.

I move away from the window. I need time to think.

I want the rabbit but I cannot kiss Stella Holling. Not again. The question is, how do I get the rabbit without the kiss?

I go to the front door.

‘Stella?' I call out.

‘Yessy?' she says.

‘You can leave the rabbit on the doorstep. Thank you for coming over … Happy Easter.'

I wait.

I listen.

I pray.

She giggles. ‘You don't think I'm going to just leave this big, bootiful, expensive wabbit without seeing you in the flesh, do you?'

‘Um … maybe?'

She giggles again. ‘You're so silly, Tom. That's why I love you.'

‘I would prefer that you didn't say that, Stella.'

‘Why?'

‘You know that I love Sasha,' I tell her for the millionth time.

‘No, you don't. You just think you do.'

‘Pretty sure I do.'

‘Oh, Tom. You don't know what love is,' she says. ‘You're just a boy. When we get married –'

‘We're
not
getting married, Stella. For the last time, we are
not
getting married.'

‘Not now, Mr Silly,' she says. ‘It's not even
legal
to get married at our age. But when we're old enough … I've planned the whole thing. We're going to have –'

‘ARE YOU GOING TO GIVE ME THE RABBIT OR NOT?' I shout.

Awkward pause.

‘I will if you show some manners and don't act like a greedy, ungrateful little
piggy
.'

This is going to be more difficult than I thought.

‘Just drop the rabbit on the doorstep and take three large steps back,' I say. ‘Then I'll –'

‘You drop the attitude and wash your mouth out with soap and water!' she snips. ‘I'm getting the feeling you don't want to see me, Tom, which upsets me.'

‘Don't get weird, Stella. It's just –'

I hear footsteps moving across the veranda.

‘You still there?' I call.

Nothing.

‘Stella?'

Silence.

I go to the window and peek out.

A breeze picks up, making Mum's hanging pot plants swing from side to side. The veranda's empty. She's gone.

The gate squeals at the side of the house.

The back door is open. I run, sliding across the floorboards and into the kitchen in my socks. Stella appears in the doorway and I slam the door shut, sliding the deadbolt across.

The next second Stella jams her head and an arm through the cat door. ‘I love you, Tommy. Meowww!' She licks her paw and laughs her head off, then tries to scratch me.

I kneel down and push her shoulders, but she pushes back. I shove and she shoves back.

‘Da putty tat's coming for you, Tommy,' she says. ‘Meowww!'

She scratches me and my cheek squeals with pain, so I shove even harder and wrestle her out of the cat door, then latch it.

Stella goes straight for the window over the sink. She rests the chocolate bunny on the wheelie bin and hoists herself up to the ledge. I slam the window down. She screams. Her fingers are trapped in the gap beneath the frame. I lift it a little and she pulls out her fingers, holding them up – red, gnarled, witch-like. Her freckles grow a darker shade of brown.

‘YOU!' she shouts, pointing a twisted finger at me. She picks up the bunny and rips
off its ears, jamming them into her mouth, foil and all, and starts munching. Even through the closed window I can hear the metal scraping against her teeth. Then she turns and runs.

‘Stella? Stella!'

I head out of the kitchen and down the hall. I check that the windows are locked in Tanya's room, my room, Mum's room. But I know it's not enough. Stella will stop at nothing to kiss me. She's only human. She probably has blueprints of the house. She's probably inside already. This thought freaks me.

I hear a ringing noise, but it's not the phone. I sneak back up the hall and into the lounge room. I stare at Mum's desk next to the fireplace. Her laptop is ringing. Nan is the only person we video call. Maybe she'll save me. I grab the mouse and click ‘Answer Call'.

‘Nan!' I say, but you know whose head pops up?

‘Kissy, kiss-y,' Stella says, rolling her terrible eyes, gnashing her terrible, chocolate-coated teeth and wiggling her pink-and-white bunny ears. Her eyes spin. She has an earless rabbit under her arm. I don't recognise the dead, brown bushes behind her.

‘Where are you?' I ask.

‘Wouldn't you like to know?'

‘How did you get my mum's username?'

She laughs like I've told the world's funniest joke. Then she snarls, ‘Kiss me or the bunny gets it.'

I stare into the frightened rabbit's gold-foil eyes and I know that I must save it. That rabbit wants
me
to eat it, not Stella. My stomach groans with a deep chocolate hunger.

‘My mum's gonna be home any minute,' I say.

‘No, she's not. You're lying to me, Tom.' She holds up the rabbit.

‘No, I'm not!'

‘Stella Wella doesn't like her husband lying to her.'

‘I'm not your –'

Stella snaps off the rabbit's head and bites off its nose.

‘Hey!' I scream.

She ends the call.

Seconds later, the lights go out.

The TV and computer screens snap to black.

The fridge rattles to an eerie silence.

There's a scraping sound on the kitchen window.

Then a thump on the wall.

And a knock at the back door.

The lights flicker back on and then fall to black again. Terror rises in my chest and I feel the wax in my ears go all hot and runny.

There's a loud
bang
from the bathroom and I run down the hall. I put my ear to the door; I know she's in there. I can picture her
creeping through the window. I have to stop her. It'll be difficult because when Stella eats sugar she displays superhuman strength.

Without another second's thought and with no concern for my own personal safety, I fling the door wide and strike a karate pose. ‘Hi-YA!' I knew my yellow belt would come in handy sometime.

The room is empty. No Stella. No rabbit.

I check behind the door. I flick the shower curtain open. No one.

I hear a loud, insistent knock on the front door of the house. A pounding, like she's going at it with a jackhammer, trying to knock it down. I've had enough. I can't live like this, like an animal, cowering inside my own home at Easter time. I need to confront that freaky, freckle-faced stalker.

I go to my bedroom, peel back the rug, open my trapdoor and dig around to find my monster mask. It has wrinkled green skin
with lumps of pus and sores all over it and a shock of wild, white hair. I'll scare the life out of her, she'll drop the rabbit, I'll grab it – or what's left of it – and in two minutes' time I'll be sitting on the couch with my friend the bunny rabbit.

I pull the mask on, close the trapdoor, roll the rug back into place and creep up the hall towards the front door. It's hard to see through the eyeholes and I bump into the hall table. Stella's pounding suddenly stops. There's a muffled flop and the house is silent.

My heart somersaults in my chest. I stand behind the front door and take the deadbolt knob between my fingers. I'm ready for anything. I breathe steadily and, in one quick motion, I rip the door open. ‘RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!'