Saving Francesca

“It’s depression, Frankie.”

“I don’t understand. Sad people with sad lives are depressed. Mia’s not one of them.”

Angelina takes hold of my hand.

“I think everything’s just shut down on her. Maybe for one reason or maybe for a thousand. It’s kind of like a grief, and it’s not a puzzle that you’re supposed to work out on your own, Frankie. But I’ll tell you this. Mia is not going to get better being looked after by her mother. You have to find a way of getting back home. For you and Robert and Luca and Mia to get back together—and then you start from there.”

“But I don’t know how,” I whisper, trying not to cry. “I just want to go home and I don’t know how.”

“Then find a way,” she says firmly. “I love No

I see No

I need to find a way home.

chapter 12

I’VE BEEN AT my no

My dad rings me one morning and tells me to contact Mia’s university and ask for the rest of the term off.

“I thought you said she was out of bed,” I say almost accusingly, as if my dad’s lying.

“She is, but she’s not ready to go back. Just ring them and we’ll talk about it later.”

“Why can’t you ring them?”

“Because I’d like you to.”

“Papa, they’ve got degrees, not machetes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He sounds harassed. With me. Am I the one who’s locked herself in the house? Since when do I have to fix things around here?

“We can’t keep on telling people that Mummy has the flu.”

“Then tell them the truth, Frankie.”

The truth? I haven’t said the truth out loud yet, and I don’t know how to go about doing this. I’m in Year Eleven. I’m sixteen years old. I don’t want to call up my mother’s boss and tell her she’s not coming in for the rest of the term. I don’t want to use any of the terminology out loud. I’ll say it one thousand times to myself, but I can’t say it out loud, because if I do, it means it’s real. Nervous breakdown. Depression. Nervous breakdown. Depression. Such overused words until it actually happens. How many times has Mia said, “I’m having a nervous breakdown, kids”? How many times have I said I’m depressed? Too many times to count. Nothing close to the reality of it at all.

The depression belongs to all of us. I think of the family down the road whose mother was having a baby and they went around the neighborhood saying, “We’re pregnant.” I want to go around the neighborhood saying, “We’re depressed.” If my mum can’t get out of bed in the morning, all of us feel the same. Her silence has become ours, and it’s eating us alive.

I want to stay in bed for the day and not go to school, but I can’t bear the idea of Luca being there alone. So I turn up for second-period English. My teacher, Brother Louis, has set us some study questions based on Henry IV, and we work on our own. I hold my pen in my hand, but I don’t do the work. I haven’t slept all week and I can’t even see straight.

Brother Louis stands by my desk and looks over my shoulder. He’s in his sixties and knows every text we’re studying inside out. I’ve never met anyone who knows so much about literature. I’m not used to Brothers. At Stella’s we didn’t even have nuns. But he’s the kindest man I’ve ever met, and he’s the only person I do homework for because I couldn’t bear it if he was disappointed in me.

“Would you like to go to sick bay?” he asks quietly.

I shake my head.

“Then go to Ms. Qui

I collect my books and walk out, and I’m so tired that I feel weepy.

Ms. Qui

“Do you want to go to the counselor?” she asks gently. It’s as if she knows what’s going on and I don’t know how, because I couldn’t imagine my father ringing up the school and revealing anything. Then I realize it’s because of Luca.

“Is my brother okay?”

“I haven’t seen your brother. Do you want me to?”

“No.”

“Will said you were a bit down.”

Oh God. Will Trombal thinks I’m a charity case.

“Can I just lie down?”

“I think the counselor—”

“Please, Ms. Qui

And that’s how I spend my day. Sleeping in Ms. Qui

But when I open my eyes, it’s one day down the track, and for the time being, that seems to be enough.

During a House meeting the next day, when Will Trombal stands in front of us talking, I’m all ears. Whether it has to do with the night at my no

When he finishes speaking, Ms. Qui

chapter 13

A GUY IN Year Twelve has a party and invites all the girls in Year Eleven. No one in our group of four mentions it until the very last minute.

“I don’t think I’ll go,” I murmur to Siobhan when she asks.

“Why not? It’s two guys to every girl.”

Wow! Two Sebastian guys. Dream come true!

“It’d be good to make an effort,” Justine says.

“Maybe,” I say with a shrug.

“How would you get there?” Siobhan asks me.

I shrug again. “Probably my father. You?”

“Obviously not my father. He’d probably insist on coming in and giving everyone a Breathalyzer.”

Siobhan’s father’s a cop. He runs the station over at Marrickville and puts the fear of God into those who work under him, especially his family. He liked me in Year Seven. “Make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid,” he’d tell me. I never liked that about him. Just that certainty he had that Siobhan was always going to do something wrong.

Siobhan gets wasted at parties. It was always the thing you heard about her in Year Ten. She’s the type that constantly imagines herself in love with some loser and then she ends up getting shit-faced and crying in the toilet.

When I think about it, my mother was never threatened by Siobhan Sullivan’s reputation.

“People with lost personalities will suffer a great deal more than those with lost virginities,” she told me one afternoon after Siobhan was suspended from St. Stella’s for cutting school in Year Ten and going to the beach with a couple of the St. Paul’s guys.