The Yearbook Committee (28 page)

She grunts.

‘But obviously you're still good at keeping your cards close to your chest.'

Her face reddens, and her eyes fill with tears. I drop her hand and wipe my own on my pants. I'm so sweaty, and my heart is beating loudly in my chest.

‘We used to be married,' Mum says, turning to me.

‘And pregnant,' Stan adds.

‘Jellybean,' I say, filling in the puzzle.

Stan raises his eyebrows. ‘He knows?'

‘No,' I correct him. ‘I've been snooping.'

‘So where's Jellybean now?' I ask.

‘We killed him,' he whispers.

‘Stan, don't start that again,' she says. ‘Please.'

‘Start what, Anna? It devastated you, but you went through with it anyway. You couldn't care for a baby with Down's
syndrome. Or you could, but you just let the doctors bully you into believing you couldn't.'

I look at her, shrinking down into her seat.

‘I didn't know it would hurt so much,' she says.

‘You forget how well I knew you,' he says, as he reaches for her hand. She looks at him sadly. ‘How much I fought to be with you. Despite our differences. We could have done it.'

‘Well, why didn't we?' she asks.

‘Because you said it was your body, your choice . . . whatever the line was,' he points out. ‘I had to respect you.'

‘But you couldn't respect her enough to stay?' I say, finding my voice. For her, for me, for Jellybean.

‘He stayed, he stayed,' she says, giving him a half-smile. ‘For ages. And for months I would wait, see if I was given another chance. I bought ovulation kits and made him shelve his business plans — I was desperate to fall pregnant again.'

‘And then one day I told you I couldn't take it any more,' he admits, swallowing. ‘And I left.'

‘I found out three weeks after you walked out,' she says sorrowfully.

‘And you didn't think I deserved to know?' he asks, hotly.

‘You were so adamant,' she says defensively. ‘You were convinced we had done something so bad that it would never happen for us again. And you never called me.'

‘You could have told my lawyer!'

‘I was done!' she says. ‘Just like you said you were. I left you free to concentrate on your business, build another life. You had already sacrificed so much for me.'

‘I was so happy fifteen minutes ago,' he says, looking at her. ‘I thought I had left you in the past. But now you're back,
wrecking my present.'

He shakes his head and starts to walk away.

‘Wait,' I say. ‘What about me?'

He stops for a moment and looks at me sadly. ‘Your mother made a decision for her family,' he says, cocking his head towards her. ‘And I have another family now. One that wants me around.'

He disappears as quickly as he came into my life, and I shrink to the floor, gasping for air, alone again.

         
Tammi Kap
is sorry.

The smell hits me first and I know I'm in a hospital before I even open my eyes. When I do, my fear is realised: Dad is with me, sitting in a chair on the other side of the room.

‘Thank God,' he says, exhaling. ‘Your mum and I have been worried sick.'

‘So how much trouble am I in?' I ask.

‘Do you really want to know?' he replies, standing up.

‘Well, if I'm going to be stuck here for a while yet, I might as well have something to mull over,' I say bitterly.

‘Hey,' my father roars, coming over to me, ‘don't you dare take that tone with me. I'm not the one who put you here. What were you thinking, Tamara? Honestly, what went through your head?'

‘Let's say, hypothetically, you really wanted to know what “went through my head”,' I say. ‘I promise you that you wouldn't be able to handle it.'

For a moment, he's silent. Then he says, ‘Do you know what it's like for me? I go out and police the meanest, grittiest people
and parts of this city, yet I have no control over my daughter. Do you know how humiliating that is? Do you know what it was like, telling people at the station my daughter had to have her stomach pumped because she was taking drugs at a party? I had to be the father that I have felt sorry for countless times over the years; the father who discovers their kid has done some stupid thing and not come out of it the same. Or not come out of it at all.'

‘Look at me, Daddy — I'm still the same,' I say.

He walks across to the door. ‘Not to me you're not,' he says, before leaving.

I must doze off because when I open my eyes again, he's back where he was. In the chair near my bed. My protector. Guardian of my life. I don't know if I should love or hate him for it. I'll probably never know.

‘I'm sorry, Dad,' I say quietly. ‘Really. I know I stuffed up.'

‘I know teenagers, Tammi. I know they want to experiment. I know you're a good kid, but you made a foolish choice. A choice that could have cost you your life.'

‘I know, but I thought I was being careful,' I point out.

‘Careful how?' he asks.

‘I took a tiny bit of the pill. A really small dose. I didn't drink, and I stayed with friends.'

He scoffs. ‘Tammi, when you say you stayed with “friends”, who exactly are you referring to? Half of the party were off their faces when the cops arrived.'

‘Cops? At David's house?'

‘How do you think you got here, Tamara?' he asks, bitterly. ‘Cops and paramedics. Thank God.'

‘Come on, Dad,' I beg. ‘You were young once. Plus it's not like I took anything illegal.'

‘Tammi, you took a synthetic drug!' he exclaims. ‘They're sometimes worse than the ecstasies and the heroins and the meths. They haven't been around long enough for us to know their dangers.'

Woah.
‘I had no idea,' I say. ‘I was told they were herbal.'

He sits on the edge of the bed and holds my hand. ‘Did you give them to your friend?' he asks.

‘Yeah, why?' I ask.

‘She hasn't woken up yet,' he says. ‘And she might not.'

‘We had the same amount,' I say, my voice hoarse. ‘So how come I'm awake and she's not?'

‘I'm not sure,' he says, getting up. ‘Other people might take the same thing and be OK. Doesn't make it worth the risk.'

I go quiet and bite my lip.

‘That orange drink your friend Lauren made you? Gillian's was spiked,' he explains, pacing my bedside. ‘I only know because Lauren told me. Apparently it was supposed to be part of some joke. They wanted to film her doing something stupid and play the video at the formal. I don't get your generation, in all honesty.'

‘We're not all the way you think we are,' I whisper.

He shrugs and leaves the room.

When he returns, it takes a lot of effort for me to try to sit up.

‘Any news?' I ask.

‘The doctors say it was the combination of alcohol, that drug you gave her and whatever they used to spike that drink that caused her vitals to shut down. I'm sorry, honey, but she didn't make it.'

I start to cry silent tears that turn into sobs, and then howls. Howls that I'm sure they can hear in the next ward. I cry for what
seems like ages — until the sun fades into blackness, until my father leaves. For hours and hours, I cry for her lost youth, and for my own, which took hers away, until I have no tears left to weep.

The next day, I'm allowed to go home. There are flowers all over the house. I cut every single flower off its stem one by one and burn them in the backyard. Mum doesn't say anything when she comes home and sees my destructive art.

Two days later, Ryan, Charlie and Matty come to visit.

I cry as soon as they walk into my room. Every single one of them looks haggard, gaunt.

‘I'm sorry,' I whisper.

‘Hey, it's not your fault,' Matty says, while Charlie sits next to me and rubs my arm.

‘I gave her the pill,' I tell them. ‘It
is
my fault.'

‘No, because if she just had the pill she might have recovered, like you did,' Ryan says. ‘You didn't know about the prank.'

‘And, what, now her trolls get away with it?' Matty asks.

We all go quiet.

‘Do you think they will even learn?' Charlie says bitterly.

Ryan doesn't say anything, and neither do I. I can't defend them any more.

‘It could've been any of us,' Matty says, sullen. ‘How many of us really think about what we're doing when we're trying to play a joke or prove a point?'

‘I bet they don't think that way,' Charlie says. ‘They'll still refuse to see it. Their part in all of this.'

‘I don't know,' Ryan says, shrugging. ‘I can't speak for David, but Lauren — well, let's just say she's learnt her lesson.'

Charlie rolls her eyes. ‘Too little, too late, don't you think?' she says bitterly.

They look at each other for a moment and she shakes her head, then looks away. He has the pained expression of a person that can never do anything right.

‘Come on, guys,' Matty says quietly, his deep voice cutting through the tension. ‘Gillian wouldn't want this. Any of it.'

I nod and look down at my lap. ‘She cared about this yearbook so much. She'd want us to stay friends.'

‘And she'd want us to be there for Sammy,' Matty adds. ‘Can't we focus on that?'

‘Poor Sammy,' Charlie says, rubbing her temples. ‘Alone in that house with those parents. I was so focused on hating Lauren that I forgot about him. How's he doing?'

‘Better than his parents, I think,' Matty says. ‘Neither of them are handling it well, Gillian's mum especially. She kind of looks like shit.'

‘Shame it took all of this for everyone to wake up,' Charlie says. ‘What a fucked up world we live in.'

Everyone goes quiet, and I realise that their efforts to make me feel better have been for nothing.

Tears well up in my eyes again. ‘Distract me,' I say, my voice cracking. ‘Please. Tell me something else.'

‘Well, Charlie's my sister,' Matty says quietly.

‘Huh?' I ask, my head shooting up.

‘Turns out Charlie's stepdad, Stan, is my dad,' he says. ‘He and my mum were married once. She fell pregnant, but they found out at twenty weeks that the baby had Down's syndrome, so she had the baby aborted. And then she couldn't fall pregnant for ages,
so he left. By the time he was out of her life, a pregnancy test came back positive, and that was me. He never found out.'

‘Wow,' I tell him. ‘Is this why she's been a little down?'

‘Well, she actually saw him a year ago or so. He was shopping with Charlie's mum, and she panicked. And apparently I made the situation worse by introducing her to Sammy at work that day.'

‘But why would the abortion thing come up seventeen years later?' Ryan asks.

‘Some women feel immediate relief, others make peace with it really quickly, and then there are some whose grief hits years, even decades later,' Charlie says. ‘I think seeing Stan and Sammy after so many years in the one day was just the equivalent of a bomb going off in her system.'

‘That's scary,' Ryan says. ‘You never know what someone is hiding.'

We go silent.

A while later, Ryan and Charlie leave. Matty stays behind.

‘Are they a couple now?' I ask, gesturing to the door after they've walked out. Matty shrugs, but a hint of a smile appears on his face.

‘Well, they're not
not
a couple, if you know what I mean,' he says. ‘They go everywhere together, she bosses him around, and he looks like he's won the lottery when she does, even though they pretend to fight about it.'

‘So not everything has changed.'

Matty chuckles and moves from the chair to the edge of the bed. ‘I think they're afraid to come out and admit they're together; Charlie isn't even sure whether she's moving yet . . .'

He trails off. It's quiet for a moment, and I can tell he has something on his mind. Thankfully, I don't have to pry.

‘Was Gillian happy?' he asks. ‘Before it all . . .'

I swallow, then nod. ‘She was mad at Charlie,' I say. ‘But when she got to the party she just wanted to forget about it and enjoy herself. We were hanging out together; she was having a good time. She believed Lauren was really trying to patch things up. She was . . . optimistic.'

‘And you really didn't know the drink was spiked?' he asks. ‘Sorry — I'm just trying to make sense of it all.'

‘No, Matty,' I say quietly. ‘I promise I didn't. But I had the pills. I thought they were herbal.'

‘She didn't have to take it, though,' he whispers. ‘Please don't blame yourself.'

He looks at his watch and tells me he has to go. Despite their shaky meeting, Stan has agreed to let him meet his new half-sister today.

‘I'm happy for you,' I say when he tells me.

‘Happy,' he says, biting his lip. ‘I think that's a foreign concept to us now.'

I watch him leave, then curl up into a ball and wipe a tear away.

Hours later, I'm thinking about Ryan's words.
You never know what someone is hiding
, he'd said. And suddenly I'm not just upset, but enraged.

Everything about Mike makes sense: the enigmatic personality, hatred of the police, the two phones.

I hop out of bed and slip on my shoes, determined to have it out with him. After all, I know where to find him — every drug runner has a zone or a ‘hood'. Isn't that why he was always hanging around at the park?

I'm halfway down the hall when I realise I have nothing to fight with.

Dad once said to me: ‘Arm yourself with evidence, smarts and strategy to get the outcome that you want.' But right now, I have none of these things. And taking down one runner isn't going to get me the outcome that I want. If I want to make a real difference — to prevent another episode like the one I have survived, and which many others have not — I have to play the big game.