Saving Francesca

I need to find the girls.

Tara’s the only one in homeroom when I arrive, and I’m kind of relieved. She always looks at things to do with other people’s lives objectively.

“You did nothing for your birthday, did you?” she snaps, furious.

At first I’m confused. Too much has happened since this morning on the bus. I realize that Justine’s told her about my conversation with the Stella girls.

“I didn’t want to talk to them—”

“Why does someone who gives so little think she deserves so much?” There’s a pinched anger in her face. It’s not that bitchy look I remember from the Stella girls when they were picking fights. It’s pure anger, and it’s all directed toward me. I see Siobhan making a beeline for us from the other side of the room, and I’m relieved that there is going to be some kind of reprieve.

“You’re a bitch, Francesca,” Siobhan says when she reaches me. “Why don’t you just go to Pius, where your ‘real’ friends are?”

I sit down at my desk and slowly take out my books. Justine walks in and sits where she usually does, next to me. I look at her, but she won’t look at me. I can tell she’s miserable.

“Justine, I didn’t—”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Francesca.”

I nod, and I feel tears welling up in my eyes and my lip trembling. I haven’t been friends with them long enough to be able to withstand a test. You pass tests like this five years into a friendship. But I think, this is it. This is going to be like in Year Seven. One day they’re going to say, “Remember how we were friends with Francesca Spinelli for two terms in Year Eleven?”

Or worse still, one of them will answer, “No. Who’s Francesca Spinelli?”

I can hear them talking about Justine’s punishment from her parents because of last night. Her parents won’t speak to her, on top of everything else. For Justine, that’s the worst thing.

The bell rings.

I’m numb. I walk the corridors in a daze and then there’s the exit sign and I just walk out. I go past the secretaries, past the front gate, past everything. Through Hyde Park, through the city, down Market Street, over the Anzac Bridge, and up Johnston Street.

I sit in a café in Booth Street and just stare into space until, after a while, I feel someone standing next to me and I look up and recognize Sue, Mia’s colleague from work.

“Thought it was you,” she says. I force a smile and she sits down.

“How’s Mum?” she asks gently. I just shrug, not really interested in lying.

“She gets out of bed sometimes,” I mumble.

“You know what I think?” she asks.

Just what I need. A theory from one of Mia’s friends.

I shrug again.

“The last eighteen months have been tough for her, Francesca, and with your grandfather dying and starting at the university at the same time as the miscarriage … Mia needs a vacation.”

She keeps talking but I no longer hear what she is saying. My head is reeling from just one word. Miscarriage.

My mother had a miscarriage? Mia lost a baby. We lost a baby. I can’t work out a word Sue is saying. It’s garbled and in another language. A language spoken by those who just don’t understand.

I stand up blindly and do what I’ve become an expert at today. I walk away.

I’m dead inside and I feel as if the world’s ending and I need to get home and I walk faster and faster because the people across the road will wave to me and only then will I know everything is fine but when I get there, they’re not there like they are every afternoon and every morning and every night and I want to know why because they have to be—because if things aren’t normal with them, things aren’t normal with me and I want to run over and bang at the door and tell them to come outside and eat their di

“What are you doing home, Frankie?”

I don’t know who he is anymore. I don’t know who anyone is.

“Why didn’t you tell us about the miscarriage?” I ask.

I see him stiffen for a moment and he doesn’t answer.

“Hello?”

“Don’t hello me, Frankie. We didn’t want to upset you.”

“Well, I’m more upset by the fact that you kept it from me.”

“It was over a year and a half ago.”

“I know exactly when it was. It was what I was trying to ask you about the other day, but you lied.”

“There was too much going on and we didn’t want to—”

“Did you ever talk about it with her?” I interrupt.

“She didn’t want to talk about it.”

“She always says that. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She’s said that a thousand times.”

“And I respect that.”

“But it means that she does want to talk about it!”

“I know Mia. I know more—”

“No you don’t,” I snap.

“What are you trying to say?”

“She’s not part of you. She’s part of us.”

“Don’t you dare say that.”

“You know nothing!”

“I’m not going to have a fight with you.”

“I bet she wanted to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

His shouting makes me jump, but I don’t back down.

“Yeah, but maybe she did. And maybe she wanted to talk about No

I’m hysterical. I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I can’t stop.

“You keep her all to yourself. You think you can fix everything by forgetting about it, but you just make things worse. It’s all your fault. You’ve kept her sick, because you don’t know how to handle it. Because you’re a weakling. Everyone says you are, and I believe it and Mummy could have done better than you and I don’t know why you just don’t fuck off now before you make it any worse.”

The look on his face is so devastating, but I don’t care. I want to hurt him.

I turn to walk out but my mum is at the door, looking horrified.

“Don’t you ever speak to your father like that again.”

I run out of there, to the people across the road, and I bang at their door over and over again, but no one answers and I keep on banging until there’s blood on my knuckles and then I run up the road as fast as I can because I need to find them.

But I don’t.

They’re gone.

I hear my father calling out my name, but I keep on ru

Everyone’s gone.

And I need to find them.

chapter 32

I DON’T CARE where I end up. I walk to Central Station and get on a train and then I sit there, watching the stops pass me by, all their names meshing into one, until the stops become infrequent and I know I’m out of the metropolitan area and I have no idea where I’m going or when I’ll get there. It’s like one of those mystery flights, except I’m in no mood for surprises.

I have two dollars on me and, in all probability, a fare evasion fine awaiting me on the other side of wherever. After what seems like hours, the train stops, but I don’t move. There’s not one other person in my car and I feel like the last person on earth. Finally, I step out of the car and look at the sign. Woy Woy. We’ve driven past the sign before on the way up to the coast with my mum and dad and Luca. The Woy Woy sign in the past was a good memory and I want to remember it, but I can’t and I say the words over and over in my head, hundreds of times, sitting there for hours and hours, trying to remember why the Woy Woy sign in the past was a good memory. But I’m not remembering anything at all. I’m just saying words in my head that mean nothing.

People appear again. It happens all of a sudden. One minute there’s nobody and next minute a train pulls up and hundreds of people get off and I realize that it’s rush hour and, like most of my days, I wonder where time has gone. I look at some of their faces closely, but they don’t look at me. They just walk or rush or talk or laugh, their heels tapping toward me, then in front of me, and then they pass me by. And that happens at least every half hour. The same thing. Not one person looks at me. They want to get home. It’s written all over their faces. And I keep on telling myself that after the next train comes I need to move. Need to do something, because it’s dark and my skin feels cold. But my brain has stopped ticking and I can’t even think of how to do that. In reality, it’s all about turning around and getting on the train on the platform behind me, but the first casualty of all this is the ability to operate logically.