The Sound (11 page)

WTF? When?

Last year. She was a nanny.

Shit.

Don’t tell my mum OK?

Did they catch the guy?

Nope.

I bet it’s the dad.

The who?

Your dad. Mike the newspaper guy.

Haha.

Srsly. Be afraid. Be very afraid. It’s always the dad.

And just then, as though he’s been standing over my shoulder reading this whole conversation for the last half-hour, Mike clears his throat behind me. I slam the lid of my computer closed
and do this comedy leap to my feet almost sending a glass of water flying across the desk.

‘Oh sorry, Ren, I didn’t mean to scare you,’ Mike says, taking a step back.

‘No, no sorry. I was just um, busy, chatting to a friend.’

‘Just wanted to check in and see if you were doing OK,’ he says, eyeing the laptop.

‘Yeah. I’m good. Thanks.’ I glance at the door. I wonder if he can hear my heart trying to drill its way free of my ribcage.

‘You’re getting on with the kids OK?’ he asks.

‘Mmmm,’ I say.

‘Great, great.’ He inches back towards the door. ‘Well if you need anything, you just need to ask.’ He steps out into the hallway. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Night,’ I murmur.

Once he’s out of sight I cross to the door and close it, then I tiptoe towards the window, take hold of the chair and carry it back and wedge it against the handle.

The next morning I drive Brodie to camp and Braiden to childcare. I clutch the steering wheel in both hands, forget several times that I only need to use one foot as this car
is an automatic, and I chant ‘right, right, right-hand side’ the entire way. I do not crash which I think is more down to luck and the lack of stop signs than any actual skill on my
part.

As I walk Brodie through the little outdoor play area beside the building where camp is held, I spy Noelle Reed playing on the slide. She waits while a little boy sits down and then she gives
him a hard shove so he goes flying, shooting off the end of the slide and landing in the sand at the bottom head first. He sits up spluttering, purple-faced and crying.

Brodie inches closer to me.

I bend down to her level and look her in the eye. ‘Brodie, if Noelle does anything or says anything to you that you don’t like I want you to tell me or one of your camp teachers,
OK?’

Brodie nods. I take her hand. ‘Bullies suck, OK? You have to stand up to them or they just keep bullying. But you don’t have to stand up to them by yourself. I’ll help
you.’

I leave her there but not without a sense of disquiet. Brodie seems uncharacteristically subdued – she hasn’t asked me about Jeremy once all morning or fought with me about putting
on sunscreen. I decide to mention something to Carrie later about Noelle and her Rihanna-style influence.

I have the whole day free until pick-up time, so I decide that as I’m in town I may as well have a mooch around. I head down the street, past the place I bought the water and ran into
Jesse Miller, and on towards the harbour, glancing in the windows of some very expensive-looking boutiques as I go, though not daring to step foot in any of them because I’m not dressed in
black-tie clothing and I don’t shower in champagne.

I pass a bookshop that looks really cool (and not as intimidating) so I take a look inside, intending only to have a browse. It’s an awesome independent, the kind I wish we had back home
– it has high-backed armchairs and tables heaving with books, as well as a young adult section that makes me want to drool. At the back there’s a whole café area with sofas and
what looks happily like cake. I trawl the books for about half an hour, picking out two novels and another non-fiction about the 1970s disco scene in New York. I take them to the till and then go
and find a table in the café area and order a café latte with vanilla syrup and a chocolate muffin.

I plug my headphones in and curl up to start reading. I am starting to really love my job. Despite the fact that the dad might be a serial killer with a penchant for nannies. I am ostensibly
getting paid to read, go to the beach and drink coffee.

I decide I’m going to read for half an hour and then write a blog post but soon an hour has gone by – I can tell because the album I’m listening to starts to repeat. I glance
up to check the time and notice Jesse Miller standing by one of the bookshelves near the cash register.

I blink. It’s as unexpected as seeing Britney Spears giving a Ted talk. Jesse Miller doesn’t look like the kind of guy who reads. I mean, possibly magazines about bikes or ones with
girls half naked on the cover and words like ‘nuts’ and ‘phwoar’ in the title, but not books. I watch him from behind my raised hardback.

He’s holding a paperback book in one hand while reading the blurb on the back of another. I can’t see what the books are and have an overwhelming desire to know. Jesse Miller gets
more and more intriguing by the minute.

I watch him take both books to the cash register and pay. Then, as I sink down further into my chair and try to twist out of view, he turns in my direction and heads towards the café
area. He doesn’t see me until he’s right in front of my chair then he does a double take and smiles as though he’s genuinely happy to see me.

‘Hey,’ I say, looking up at him from my curled-up position hiding behind my book.

Hey,’ he says, glancing over his shoulder towards the street.

‘It’s not outside,’ I say quickly. I know he is looking for the bike, expecting me to either have totalled it or to have left it unlocked. ‘I came in the car. I left the
bike in the garage at home. Under lock and key. And an armed guard.’

He turns back to me and grins and it’s my turn to do a double take. He looks way less like a violent offender when he smiles. ‘You drove? Did they warn the good folks at highway
patrol?’ he asks, still grinning.

‘Ha ha, that’s funny,’ I say, giving him an arch look.

I glance at the book he’s holding. It is
American Psycho
by Brett Easton Ellis. There is a deep, dark irony to this and I wonder if he realises it or not. I want to ask him why
he’s bought it but what if he’s bought it as a textbook? I notice the other book in his hand is a David Mitchell novel and there’s nothing that could be remotely construed as
ironic in the title so, to fill the awkward silence, I point at it and say, ‘I’ve read that. It’s really good.’

He glances down at the book as though surprised to see it in his hand. ‘Oh yeah, I like his stuff. Did you read
Cloud Atlas
? That’s one of my favourites.’

I stare at him and my jaw drops open. ‘That’s my favourite book,’ I say. I can’t believe he’s read it.

He doesn’t smile, he just studies me, frowning as if he’s pondering something, then he says, ‘You like music?’

I glance at him, to see if that’s a trick question, but he nods at the book I’m still holding – the one about dance culture in the 70s – and so I say,
‘Yeah.’

He studies me for a moment longer and I feel myself squirming under his scrutiny. There’s something about him which is deeply unsettling – as though he has all this energy leaping
angrily around inside of him desperate to lash out, struggling to stay contained beneath his skin. It makes me feel like a ball bearing that doesn’t know if it has a negative or positive
attraction so instead just spins like a pillhead on the spot.

‘There’s a band playing Thursday night,’ he says, ‘at The Ship.’

I stare up at him. Is he asking me on a date or is he just casually informing me that there’s a band playing at a place called The Ship?

‘OK,’ I say slowly, non-committally.

‘You should come. If you think you can cope with slumming it with townies.’

I frown up at him. What is that supposed to mean? Is it because he saw me with Sophie? Does he now think I’m one of them? A preppie rah? Immediately I feel my hackles rise. It makes me
mad. It’s like when people think you’re an emo or an indie kid or a trancehead – why this need to classify? Why can’t you like all types of music and hang out with all
different types of people (OK, except the tranceheads)? So I hold his gaze and say, ‘I’ll see you there.’

He nods, biting back a smile which is just enough this side of smug to make me want to kick him in the shins. ‘Cool, see you later then.’

He heads to the counter and I gather up my things with slightly trembling hands (which I put down to the caffeine/sugar hit), not knowing what I just agreed to or why.

On Wednesday Jeremy messages me on Facebook and asks if I want to hang out.

I spend half an hour instant emailing back and forth with Megan trying to work out the subtext of these three small words and another hour figuring out what clothes to wear for hanging out in.
Megan tells me to wear something that doesn’t reek slut but doesn’t spell nun either. As that would define most of my wardrobe it doesn’t help narrow things down.

In the end, because it’s the evening and we’re going to his house I choose a pair of jean shorts and a T-shirt that falls off my shoulder, which happily is no longer sunburnt but
rather a nice golden colour. I wear a bandeau bra because straps look tacky with an off-the-shoulder top and because Megan tells me they confuse boys looking to get to second base (they don’t
know whether to push them up or down. And if they push them up for a grope, she tells me, that’s when you have to make your excuses and leave because it means they’re both clueless as
well as thoughtless).

I’m not expecting to get to second base with Jeremy but I’ve had a long, deep and meaningful conversation with myself about reaching first. I figure that Megan is right and I should
forget Will and move on and what better way to do that than by kissing a hot American boy who opens car doors for me?

It looks like it’s going to be easier to reach first base than I first think because when Jeremy comes to pick me up at eight, he leans in for a kiss and I turn my head at exactly the
wrong (or right) moment and we accidentally end up kissing on the lips. I look away, embarrassed, but he holds on to my arm a little longer than is necessary, his face still close to mine, and
whispers, ‘Hi.’

I look up into his eyes. ‘Hi,’ I say back, feeling butterflies shiver up my legs and start partying in my stomach.

‘It’s good to see you,’ he says.

I smile and he takes my hand and leads me to the car. His hand. I am holding his hand and I’m suddenly so nervous I could puke.

We drive back to his house and he tells me all about the pre-med course at Harvard and how he wants to be editor of some review there. That gets us to talking about writing but it soon turns out
that he’s more into the academic variety – he was the president of his school year book committee whereas at school I wrote a blog about music which contained the odd bit of celebrity
gossip and notes on fashion – I keep quiet on this fact because I don’t think he’ll be that impressed. I also keep quiet on the fact that I ran into Jesse Miller and that he
invited me to a gig tomorrow night. I’m not sure why I don’t tell Jeremy. Actually, that’s a big fat lie. I know exactly why I haven’t told him; I accepted an invite from
the guy who put his friend in the hospital with a broken jaw and arm. Way to go, Ren!

Also, I haven’t decided whether I’m actually going to go to the gig or not. I only said yes to Jesse because I was distracted by the fact he reads books. And because I wanted to
prove to him that I’m not who he thinks I am (i.e. a rah). But once I was in the car, driving home, I realised that reading books doesn’t negate punching people in the face and that
what he thinks of me is completely irrelevant. Like I care what someone with a criminal record thinks of me.

I am still biting my lip about whether to tell Jeremy about Jesse when we pull into a driveway. Jeremy’s summer home is smaller than Tyler’s house but still bigger than my house in
London and it’s beautiful – wood-shingled and right by the beach. We get out of the car and Jeremy takes my hand again and says, ‘I thought maybe we could go for a walk on the
beach?’

He looks at me sort of nervously and I get that dip in my stomach as the butterflies decide to hit the dance floor one more time. ‘OK,’ I say. A moonlit stroll on the beach with a
cute boy who is holding my hand, or having to go inside and meet his parents and make friendly with Eliza. No contest.

It’s dark but the moon is almost full. The beach is quiet and we walk close to the water. The whole time I’m a ball of nerves waiting for the moment I know is coming; the moment when
he’s going to kiss me.

Eventually he leads me back towards the dunes where it’s a bit more sheltered and pulls me down beside him. I sit with my knees drawn up to my chest.

‘So, Ren, is that as in wren?’ he asks. ‘As in a small sparrow-like bird or as in Ren and Stimpy the cartoon characters?’

I look at him. ‘That’s a good choice you’re giving me there.’

I’m surprised he knows who Ren and Stimpy are. I only know because people of my mother’s age have been making jokes about that for a long time. Ren was a scrunch-faced,
amphetamine-eyeballed cartoon dog in the 90s.

‘You don’t remind me of a little bird,’ Jeremy says. ‘Or a cartoon Chihuahua.’

I look in the other direction. He’s hit a nerve. But I don’t want him to know it.

‘What?’ Jeremy asks, sitting up.

I shake my head. ‘Nothing.’

‘No, tell me,’ he says gently, his hand brushes my knee.

I take a deep breath and look up, feeling my cheeks starting to flare. ‘I’m just being self-conscious. I know I’m not small and cute like a bird.’

‘Says who?’

‘Just someone.’

‘Someone blind?’

‘My ex-boyfriend. He said I had fat thighs.’ I can’t believe I’ve just told him this. Awesome way to pull, Ren. Point out your defects and have him stare at them. Like it
wasn’t bad enough having Will give this as his primary reason for dumping me.

Jeremy actually laughs. ‘Are you serious?’ he asks, shaking his head. ‘You do not have fat thighs. They’re pretty much the sexiest thighs I’ve ever seen and
that’s not for want of looking and examining thighs. So any guy who told you you have fat thighs is a jerk. A blind jerk.’