Peeling the Onion (17 page)

The phone goes again now and Jenny sings 'Happy Birthday' into my ear.

'Fashion Girl's having a sale—do you want to check it out, since you're all cashed up?' It used to be a regular Saturday-morning thing—Jenny, Caroline and I wandering around the shops, trying stuff on that we knew we'd never buy—laughing ourselves sick and dreaming about the day when we'd have some real money. 'Costa will come if I make him, but the poor guy's heart just isn't in it!'

'Guess it's time I gave him a break. Let's go—shop till we drop!'

Dad looks worried at 'drop' but gets the look from Mum—
'She's finally doing something
—
don't stop her now!'
I don't think I was supposed to read it, but it's okay. Today everything is okay. I don't even mind that now he's obviously worrying about the bus and trying to figure out how to ask if I'll manage.

'Could you give us a lift in when Jenny gets here, Dad?'

He lightens up so much he has to put on his strict father voice to hide it. 'Oh well . . . since it's your birthday.'

'We'll get the bus home—and it's okay, I can manage the step!'

'I'm sure you can,' Dad says dryly.

'Happy birthday, darling,' Mum says, giving me another hug, and for a minute the three of us stand there grinning at each other, with tears in our eyes. It feels as if someone should come up with an incredibly profound statement, something about my being eighteen and alive, and the meaning of life and how I'll discover it in the end.

'Ben's remembered how to sit!' Matt screams, skidding across the kitchen tiles with the dog behind him. 'Sit, Ben! Sit!'

The dog hesitates for a second—and sits.

'Stay!' Matt shrieks, dancing around the table and then out of sight into the lounge room. 'Is he still sitting?'

'Yes!'

'So can he come inside again? Now that he's trained?'

'It looks like it,' Dad agrees.

A confusion of red pyjamas and black fur begins waltzing ecstatically around the floor—the profound statement might have to go unsaid.

A moment's panic when the doorbell rings. It's Jenny's mum, who I've been avoiding since I flushed her book down the toilet, but she just wants to say happy birthday and give me a small quartz crystal. I'm not so sure about the miracles she promises, but it's pretty.

Jenny's got a card and air of suspense, stepping carefully around the collapsed heap of Matt and Ben to admire the presents spread out across the breakfast table and add a tiny package to them. Mum makes another cup of coffee and Bronny leans against my chair to watch me open it; Jenny and I have shared enough Christmases and birthdays for them to know her knack for finding something special.

Silver glints from the tissue paper as I unwrap a pair of earrings. A filigree silver ball dangles on the chain of each one; inside is another filigree ball, and inside that is another, and another and another . . . . The last one is a tiny silver kernel.

'It's true, you know,' Jenny says. 'There
is
something real inside.'

I hug her, blinking back tears. 'Thanks, Jen.'

'Can you open them up and take out the little ones?' Matt wants to know. Mum quickly retrieves them and drops them back into my hand.

'I think you should wear them always,' Bronny decides.

'So do I; they're fantastic.'

Jenny follows me into the bedroom, where I stop playing with them for long enough to put them on, admiring the way they twinkle out from under the new, springy layer of hair. 'The new Anna!'

Dad drops us at the door of Fashion Girl, at the start of the mall. I'd forgotten how close and crowded the shop was; how daunting the rows of clothes can be when you don't know what you want. I'm not ready for decisions, the finality of choice, and let myself be sucked into the whirl of Jenny's enthusiasm in her quest for my new look. Jeans, sweaters, baggy silk pants with flowing jackets, slinky after-five dresses, tiny kilts and A-line mini-skirts—if it's there, try it on, is Jenny's motto. Her final choice is a feathery, sleazy purple number that make us giggle so hard the sales assistant sticks her head in to ask how we're going. ('And when?' adds the look.) 'Perhaps if you could decide whether you're looking at sports wear or evening apparel,' she snaps, 'it would be easier to find something to suit.' She flips the bundle of clothes off its hook and closes the curtains with a snap.

'We've been told,' whispers Jenny. 'You think we should crawl out and beg forgiveness?'

'Suits me. Crawling's good—not so far to fall!'

'As long as you don't land on her "evening apparel".'

The woman watches us leave, glaring again as I stumble against a swaying rack of new season's shirts when my stick catches the base. Maybe she thinks it's the fashion statement of a slightly crazy adolescent—which is the best birthday present a cranky sales assistant could give me.

Jenny leaves me to have a rest for the afternoon; she'll be back later to go out for dinner. It was my choice—going out for a romantic dinner with Hayden, Jenny and Costa, or the whole family plus Hayden and Jenny. I chose the family night.
Had my subconscious already decided?

Go ahead and do it. It's the right thing, it has to be done—has to be done now. Just pick up the phone and do it!

'Can you come over?'

'Is something wrong?'

'I need to talk to you.'

Threaten the kids with death if they don't leave us alone. Bronny rolls her eyes and Matt sings his favourite version of the wedding march; Hayden and I go out to the bench under the silky oak.

There's no easy way to do this; all I can do is blurt it out like a speech prepared for assembly.

'It's not working. I wanted to be with you because you're part of the way my life used to be—but I've got to stop pretending—it isn't like that any more. And you're—well, I guess you've got your reasons for wanting to be with me, but it's not love.'

The problem with working scenes out in your head is that the other person isn't always reading the same script. You forget that they might argue.

'Look, I know you've been pretty down lately, but I don't mind; I figure you'll snap out of it sooner or later. I don't care that much about going to parties and stuff anyway.'

'That's not the point!'

'You mean how you're not very interested in—you know?'

'Sex?
I'm
not interested?'

'That sort of stuff,' he mutters. 'But it's okay; that'll work out when you're healthier.'

'We never even kiss! How strong do I have to be?'

'How can I kiss you when I'm so scared of hurting you any more than I already have? All I can think about is what if we're pashing on and I push your neck a bit too far and break it again?'

Finally
—
the truth.
'That wouldn't happen,' I say more quietly, my anger dying in the face of an overwhelming sadness, for him, for me, for the people we used to be.

'Maybe—but just hurting you'd be bad enough! I've seen you when your neck goes into spasms—I'm not going to risk causing that.'

'So why are we going out?'

'Because . . . . look, it's your birthday and I care about you—isn't that enough?'
and he looks so hurt I almost want to change my mind, but I can't, pity is not what a relationship is supposed to be about. On either side.

'I've thought a lot about this, Anna—I really mean it.'

I can't do this! Too hard, too hard . . . but I
know
I'm right.
'Hayden, we've been through a lot together and I'll always care about you—but we never really had a relationship. Maybe we would have if the accident hadn't happened; maybe it would have been great. But it's not—it's no good for either of us. We've got to break up.'

He gets up from the bench, shoulders tensed. 'You know your problem, Anna? You want everything to be perfect. We could have had something good if you'd just given it a try!'

The anger takes me by surprise. So does the present—a small square box with the jeweller's gift wrapping—and the kiss. I'm crying as he turns out of the driveway, but I've lost the last tiny doubt that this was the right thing.

Despite the death threats, Bronny and Matt are both plastered to the family room window. 'Anna and Hayden sitting in a tree,' Matt begins to chant. 'K-I-S-S-I-N-G.'

'Great; you can spell. Where's Mum? I've got to tell her Hayden's not coming for dinner.'

C
HAPTER
14

L
uke's waiting for me after English. It's the first day of spring, and a re-run of the first time he picked me up—the rest of the world disappears and all I can see is Luke, in jeans and a denim shirt, leaning against the car in the sun.

Luke!
How could I have been so stupid? His name sings in my head; my body's flooded with the feelings that I've been trying to hide since the day I kissed him. Half of me wants to run and throw myself into his arms and the other half wants to disappear in the opposite direction because I don't think he could ever feel the same way—
did he kiss me back, or was he just being kind?
I tell myself to act natural but by the time I reach the car I can't remember what natural is.

He asks about my birthday, and I mumble some answer without really looking at him. I'll just have to learn to deal with my feelings—shove them down, push them away—because the worst thing of all would be not being able to talk to him any more.

We get to the house and he follows me in.

'Your hair's so different!' he says suddenly. 'I mean, you look great—but didn't it feel strange, having it cut?'

'Not as strange as what happened afterwards.' And I tell him the whole story; I'm not quite as cold and shaky as when I told Jenny, but it's still not easy. I get up to stare out the window at the bees buzzing around the knot garden. 'The near-death experiences I've heard about on TV always sound peaceful and happy—but I hated this. I just didn't want to be dead! I felt so sure that I wasn't supposed to be in that tunnel—I was supposed to be with Hayden, outside the car.'

'You must love him a lot,' he says gently, 'to fight your way back to be with him.'

'I think it was the other way around. I thought I loved him because I wanted to be alive—I wanted to be one of the people outside the car, not the body they were trying to help! And later . . . I think it was part of wanting to be the same person I'd been before; pretending the accident hadn't happened.'

He's standing behind me, looking out over my shoulder, so close my body forgets it ever felt cold and terrified. 'When did you realise all this?'

'Friday night. I broke up with him on Saturday.'

'But didn't he buy you a ring?' he asks, his arm around my shoulder cuddling me so gently I almost think I've imagined it; I shake my head—realise I'm holding my breath, waiting to see what will happen, but then both his arms go around me and as I lean back against him his cheek is against mine, and nothing has ever felt so right.

And now somehow we're on the couch, and when I can breathe again the last of the doubts have disappeared. He's not afraid of hurting my neck, either. In fact I think we've just discovered a new cure for pain.

He pulls away for a second to look at me, framing my face in his hands. 'Last Friday night I saw him in a jeweller's shop . . . I've spent the last three days wondering what you were going to tell me today.' His face is pressed against my throat; I can feel his breath and the movement of his lips as he speaks; it feels as if his words are soaking straight into my skin. 'I listened to you, describing your dying . . . I'm trying to understand it, I want to feel what you've been through . . . but I can't, it's too much; I don't even know how to help you deal with it. You've been facing death, while I was worrying that I couldn't take it if you said I was going to lose you—and that this,' running his hands over my shoulders, undoing my tie and the top button of my white school shirt, 'was never going to happen.'

'You've thought about it before?'

'God, Anna! You don't want to know how much!'

Another long kiss, his weight pressing me into the couch, and when our tongues meet this time it's the most intimate, exciting thing I've ever felt. My mouth thinks it should go on forever, parts of me want to find out what else could happen—and my mind figures that this morning I didn't even know I was in love with the guy and sleeping with him this fast would be pretty tacky.

'I'd better get ready for physio.'

'I could help,' he offers, his hands on the next button.

I do it up again. 'I don't think that's the word you want.'

'You might be right,' he admits, and eventually lets me get up.

I'm bubbling for the rest of the day, so happy I'm surprised Mum and Dad can't read Luke's name imprinted across my forehead, but I'm not quite ready to share him yet. Easier to let them think it's the late birthday card that's made me feel this way.

Oma, Opa and Aunt Cisca are sending me a return ticket to Amsterdam; all I have to do is decide when. 'We know you're not very strong yet,' Cisca writes. 'If you want to wait till next year, when you finish school, that will be okay.'

Happy, excited, grateful—I feel all the things you should when you're handed tickets for an overseas trip, especially the one you've always dreamed of doing.

I'm nearly asleep before it hits me. My dream trip wasn't just getting to Europe—it was about all the things I'd do when I got there, like cycling around Holland. Now I need both hands to keep my balance on the physio's exercise bike.

Suddenly the whole impact of my birthday, that I've been staving off for three days, crashes down on top of me. I don't know if I'll ever do the things normal adults do—don't know if I can learn to drive, no idea at all about what I can do when I eventually finish school . . . I'll never even be able to vote if I have to stand in a queue!

Reality is so grey and grim it's hard to remember that I've just had one of the most fantastic days of my life. Hard to decide which feeling is true.

Maybe they both are. Maybe getting better won't be magic; no single experience is going to be the Abracadabra.