Saving Francesca

“How come?”

“I think I want to stay home for a while.”

I was a bit shocked. “Really! Since when?”

“Since I don’t see enough of you guys, and when I do I’m marking or tutoring.”

“As long as you don’t drive Daddy and us crazy.”

She laughed. I don’t know why, but I joined in, and we sang songs from Les Mis, dramatically, at the top of our voices, all the way home. The next day at school I told Michaela and the girls about the musical.

They did this thing where they looked at each other and their eyes did a bit of a roll.

“What?” I asked.

“The musical?”

“Yeah?”

“It’ll take up your afternoons,” they said. “What about our plans to play basketball at the Police Boys’ Club with the Burwood boys?”

“Maybe we can do that next term.”

“That’s a bit selfish, Francis. Postponing something we’ve pla

“We desperately need you,” Laura said. “You’re our tallest player.”

“I’ll work around it,” I promised.

“Anyway, girls in the choir are going to go for the musical. They’ve got fantastic voices.”

“Mine’s not that bad, you know.”

I could see them looking over my head again, but I don’t know what look they were exchanging.

Three weeks later, I stood in line with my audition piece. If you’re going to audition for Eponine, you do “On My Own,” and luckily Luca and I have inherited good voices from my mum’s side of the family. I had hammered every note at home, and I felt confident. But I was also uneasy, and the idea of my friends coming to school with all the stories of playing against the boys, and all the fun I’d miss out on, made me feel sick. As I watched the competition, the pit inside my stomach grew bigger. I was better than these girls and I was going to get that part. I was more sure of that than anything else.

So I walked out.

At the door, I came face to face with Justine Kalinsky, holding her accordion.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’ve changed my mind.”

She clutched my hand. “You can’t.”

But I walked past her and stuffed my audition piece in my locker and met my friends and listened to them have a discussion about how gorgeous Natalia’s hair was, and that afternoon when I got into the car, it was as if Mia knew, because the mood was so different from three weeks before. I lied to her and told her that I didn’t get the part, but I don’t think she was listening.

“I’m going to take the university job,” she told me flatly.

“You don’t seem happy.”

“I’m just tired. A bit sad, you know.”

She was fighting back tears but tried to smile.

“I’m a bit sad too,” I told her.

And we cried all the way home. Just sobbing together, almost hysterically, and I pretended that I was crying because of my grandfather and because I didn’t get the role of Eponine, and she told me that she was crying because she was so torn about staying home and hanging out with us in the afternoons.

Both of us were pretending.

And I know why I was, but I can’t work out what her reason was.

chapter 27

MY DAD FORGETS to pick up Luca and me from a nighttime recital at the cathedral, so we make our own way home. At 10:30, I hear the key in the door and wait for him to come in.

“Where have you been?”

He looks surprised to see me standing there.

“I went to a council meeting. Why aren’t you in bed?”

“Since when have you gone to council meetings and since when have they finished at 10:30?”

“Since Mia couldn’t. And I was giving Hildy and Emma some advice about their wall foundations.” He’s still in his work clothes, and I’m following him around as he pulls off his dirty boots and puts them outside.

“Oh great,” I say, “now the whole neighborhood is going to talk about what you’re getting up to with other women.”

He walks back into the house and looks at me, stu

“They’re lesbians, Frankie. There’s nothing to talk about.”

“So if they weren’t lesbians, there’d be something to talk about?”

“Why are we having this ridiculous discussion?”

He opens the fridge and takes out some stuff for a sandwich.

“How do you know they’re lesbians, anyway? Are you an expert now, or do you just go around generalizing like every other ignorant person out there?”

“Oh, so now I’m ignorant? When did this come about?” he snaps.

“When you started laboring under misapprehensions about two women with short hair who choose to live together,” I say, trying to use as many big words as possible.

“You mean the two women who said to me, ‘Would you be able to draw up some building plans for the Gay and Lesbian Association that we belong to?’ ”

He looks at me as if to say, are you finished now that I’ve won this discussion? But I won’t let him win.

“You forgot to pick us up from the recital.”

“Shit,” he mutters to himself. “Did Luca get home okay?”

“Thanks to me he did. He thinks you’re not interested in his choir stuff.”

He disappears into Luca’s room and he’s in there for a while.

I’m trying to calm down, but I can’t. I don’t know why I’m so upset. Mia forgot to pick us up tons of times, and I never questioned her when she came home from a council meeting.

He walks out again and continues making his sandwich. Once upon a time, I would have done that for him.

“Why did Mummy take the job at the university?” I ask him.

“Because it was offered to her.”

“But for a while there, she wasn’t going to take it. At the begi

“I don’t remember, Frankie. Go to bed. You’re tired.”

“Whenever you suggest things, it’s always about putting away the problem but not fixing it.”

He turns and looks at me.

“I’m not going to have this discussion with you while you’re upset,” he says evenly, but I can tell that deep down he’s seething.

“We’re never going to have this discussion, are we?”

“Go to bed.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to pretend that everything’s okay!”

“I’m not going to say it again.”

“Luca and I are sick of pretending. We’re sick of no one telling us anything. What’s going on in his head is probably worse than the truth, but you don’t care.”

“I don’t care? About you and Luca?”

“You just care about us when everything’s okay, but when it’s not, you don’t even know who we are!”

I’m hysterical now, but I can’t help it and I don’t want to stop.

“Keep your voice down!”

“Or what? The neighbors will find out that you can’t fix everything?”

“What do you want from me?”

He shouts it and we’re both stu

Is it Mia? I can’t tell.

And I hate him and love him and curse him and feel sorry for him, all at the same time.

chapter 28

THE THEORIES ABOUT why Will hasn’t asked me out are getting wilder by the end of the week, but Siobhan’s suggestion is the most ridiculous.

“It’s not another woman,” she says.

I’m already shaking my head. “He’s not gay, Siobhan.”

“It’s God.”

We’re sitting on the bus and I hear Thomas groan behind us.

“Why couldn’t I have lived in the eastern suburbs?” he says.

“How is it that you can listen to that crap and us at the same time?” I turn to face him for a moment, and he puts the Discman on full blast.

“Please explain,” I say, turning back to Siobhan.

“It’s simple. Remember the video we watched about people joining the nu

“Convent.”

“Whatever. Remember one of them said she went around, her mind tortured for months while she was making the decision. She had to tell the guy she was dating as well as her parents, who desperately wanted grandchildren.” Siobhan looks at me. “He’s going to join the priesthood or the brotherhood.”