Saving Francesca

“Oh, like you really plan drunken snogging at parties,” I say.

He has the audacity to look hurt.

“Is that all it was to you?” he asks.

“Thinking about it now, yes.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

“Fine. Then I think I’ll stick to my plans in the future. I get results out of my plans.”

“Really. Like your rugby game plan? That really works.”

“Oh, that’s very low. Is that why you come along and watch? To remind me of my failures?”

We don’t speak for a moment, but I’m not ready to walk away yet.

“You won’t understand about that night,” he mutters.

“Try me.”

“Okay. I—”

“If you even dare say it was because you were drunk, I can’t promise you where this will go.”

“Why not? You did. Anyway, I thought I was going to be justifying my actions without you interrupting.”

“Then hurry up.”

“I don’t want you to think I do that all the time,” he says, sounding a bit strained.

He’s very stressed. I have caused that stress. I am jubilant that I have caused that stress.

“Why would I think otherwise?”

“Because,” he says.

Because?

“Don’t you do legal studies? Aren’t you in mock trial? Does the argument ‘because’ usually work for you?”

He doesn’t even have the decency to be shifty-eyed. He just stares straight at me.

“You were drunk, Will,” I say after a moment. “I wouldn’t expect you to even remember anything.” I turn to go.

“If I was sober, you would have been impressed,” he says, repeating my words from that night.

“But you weren’t. And I’m not,” I say firmly. “And if you think that I am praying at night for you to ask me out, just dream on.”

I walk away, so proud of myself that I can hardly contain it.

Dear God, please please please let Will Trombal split up with his girlfriend and ask me out.

The prayer becomes my mantra all night. By 6:30 in the morning my eyes are hanging out of my head and I trudge to the bathroom, half-asleep.

On the way back I pass the living room, where the CDs are lying around on the floor.

They’re a combination of my mum’s and dad’s and mine and Luca’s, anything from the Jam to Britney Spears (not mine, I swear to God).

I come across the Whitlams’ Eternal Nightcap, and it reminds me of being in the car on one of our road trips to the Central Coast, when the four of us would sing the whole way. Our favorite song was “You Sound Like Louis Burdett,” and we’d sing it at the top of our voices. My mum would even let us sing the line “All our friends are fuck-ups,” and Luca would sing it the loudest because it was the only time we were allowed to swear.

I loved those times on the beach at the end of the day, when the sun was gone and our sunburn would make us shiver in the cool breeze. Luca and I would lie against my parents, licking the salt off their arms, and we’d stay like that until twilight. They’re the magical moments I remember. The moments of brown bodies and salt water– curled hair, of fish and chips on the sand, of sunblock smelling of coconut, of stinging cuts on our feet from jagged rocks, and mostly of the four of us not needing anyone else in the world.

And I remember the nights of listening to their heavy breathing from the other room through the paper-thin walls of the rented house we were in. Listening to their cries and groans.

“Why is Mummy crying?” Luca would ask me.

“Because she’s so happy,” I’d answer.

I put the CD on and lie back on the carpet, closing my eyes, but then I hear the thumping of ru

I beckon him over. “You put one on,” I say.

He looks through the collection and then holds one up. “Not until tomorrow, though,” he tells me.

My mother’s rituals become ours. One morning it’s You Am I’s “Heavy Heart,” and another time my dad puts on Joe Jackson’s “A Slow Song,” because that was their wedding waltz.

We play Smashing Pumpkins and Shirley Bassey and Jeff Buckley and even Elvis. I try to find music that belongs to me, but I realize that Mia’s music has become mine. Mia’s everything has consumed us all our lives, and now Mia’s nothing is consuming us as well.

After we play our music, we get ready for school, going through the motions, getting on with our lives.

And then the worst thing happens.

I get used to it.

chapter 15

IN DRAMA, MR. ORTLEY plays “Venus.” It’s the version by this sixties band, Shocking Blue. And suddenly, out of nowhere, Thomas Mackee starts to dance. Later he tells people that he thought he heard “I’m your penis” rather than “I’m your Venus” and that’s why he got up. But, as usual with Thomas Mackee, you never know the truth.

Thomas Mackee on a dance floor is totally uninhibited and hysterical to watch. Despite his lanky slobbiness, he moves well. He makes the most ridiculous faces as he twists, his mouth in an O shape, and we’re laughing so much our stomachs hurt. He manages to combine the most outrageously physical moves, and they work. At a dance party you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near him, but here he has the whole space to himself and he relishes it. I look at Mr. Ortley and he’s laughing just as much as we are, and I wonder if this is one of those perfect teaching moments he tells us he’s been waiting for.

Thomas Mackee loves music. I can tell by the way his body reacts. For a moment I feel a bit of envy because I think I want to be out there making a fool of myself as well. His rhythm is erratic, and in my head I just can’t follow the groove. And then somehow we make eye contact and it clicks.

Don’t do it, I tell myself. My ex–Stella friends, like Michaela, would think I was a dickhead. A show-off. A loser. I can just imagine them, exchanging looks that say more than enough. It’s how they’ve stayed popular for so long. By not doing anything that will make them look like fools. They never leave home without their safety nets and I think, good for them, but the thing with safety nets is this. I got tangled in them so many times and the Stella girls always seemed to leave me dangling, upside down, to the point where I almost couldn’t breathe anymore.

So I dance.

Thomas makes aV with his fingers and he turns it around and points to his eyes as if to say “focus,” and I do, matching his moves, swaying to his beat. The guitar arrangement on the song is fun and it’s easy to change direction. Everyone is clapping the beat, and there’s something so uncoolly cool about it. It’s like geographical humor. You just don’t get it unless you were there. Thomas Mackee has a sense of the ridiculous and it’s contagious, and I’m sure if he were forced to, he’d admit that he’s spent a lifetime making up these moves in his bedroom. Was he hiding in there as well? Was he shaking off an image he’d constructed for himself?

He tires, and I catch Siobhan Sullivan’s eye and then I take her hand and we’re in Year Seven again, making up the moves that made so much sense at the time. There’s a recognition in her eyes, and being best friends with her is the most vivid memory I have of St. Stella’s, and for one split second I can’t remember being friends with anyone else.

At the end we take a bow, and for the rest of the day whenever someone from drama class walks past me in the corridor, it’s hard not to grin.