Saving Francesca

“Me’s easy. Me got on a train and ended up in Woy Woy. You’s difficult. You’re pla

“Kind of interested in you,” he laughs, as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “I’m kind of interested in calculus and ancient Roman warfare. You don’t use words like kind of interested to describe how I feel about you.”

“You always say it’s complicated,” I say, turning to face him. “Make it simple for me.”

He thinks about it for a moment.

“Okay.” He has that calculating-a-math-problem thing written all over his face.

“‘Simple’ is breaking up with my girlfriend. I thought it would be much more complicated but it wasn’t. I wish I had done it earlier, but there were tons of reasons, logical ones, for going out with her. Everything was nice. Not dramatic, not emotional, not feeling like a yo-yo or comparing someone you’re crazy about to stationery, it was just nice. I’d look at her and think, nice. Nice body, nice face, sex would be nice… .”

“Will,” I interrupt. “Do I need to hear the ‘sex would be nice’ stuff? I had a bit of a mini-breakdown yesterday and you’re not cheering me up.”

“Yes you do, because breaking up with her was so easy and breaking up with you would be like, I don’t even want to think about it.”

“We haven’t even started going out together and you’re thinking of breaking up.”

“But that’s it. When I think of you, I think of future stuff. I think of this is it and I’m not supposed to think this is it at my age. I don’t look at you and think nice. I look at you and think, oh my God, I want to hold her and never let her go. I think, sex—right here, right now—”

“Frankie!”

My dad is behind us and Will swings around in shock, instantly getting onto his feet and staring up at my father, who is glaring.

“We’ll be leaving in five minutes,” he says, eyeing Will.

“Papa, this is Will.”

My father nods, taking in every detail, and then he goes inside.

Will sits down, stu

“He heard the sex bit.”

“If you said the word ‘sex’ to me and I was standing a thousand miles away from him, he’d hear it.”

I laugh, because I can’t help it. I can’t believe I’m talking about having sex, and I know this sounds slack, but I just love it when Will’s all confused and rambling.

“Am I making sense?” he asks.

“Weirdly enough, yes.”

“Last year on Reflection Day we had to write down what our foundations were and whether we thought they were strong enough to get us through unfamiliar territory, and I thought, shit no. Go overseas and have my whole world back here change? No way. I didn’t even know who I was here, so what made me think that I’d know who I was over there?

“But we had to do the list again this year, so I went for it. I didn’t put down Sebastian’s, because school’s not going to be there next year, nor is being a prefect or choirboy or rugby loser or anything else. And that freaked me out, because I wondered, what am I if I’m not all those things? But I stuck to three truths. The first is that my family loves me. It’s unconditional, and I know this because of the way they’ve dealt with things in my older brothers’ lives that they don’t believe in but support. Secondly is that I’m good at building things, and thirdly is how I feel about you, but more than anything how I feel about me because of you.

“Sometimes you look at me and it’s like all the bullshit gets stripped off and I’m left with what’s underneath and I kind of like what I see. Someone who actually fails. Someone who has absolutely no self-control. Someone who says real dickhead things like ‘this is complicated.’ I like that part of me, you know. I like the fact that I know I can’t control you or how I feel about you and that doesn’t freak me out.”

“I love it when you’re demented like this.”

He’s unstoppable. “But sometimes I get terrified and think that everything may change and I won’t know where to fit in when I get back, after I’ve spent a whole lifetime fitting in. Or what if that dickhead Mackee and that psycho Hailler grow a brain and you start finding yourself attracted to them, if you aren’t already?”

“If you stay behind, the whole change thing might happen anyway,” I tell him. “The not-fitting-in stuff. Certainly not the part about me being attracted to Thomas and Jimmy.”

He kisses me softly and just stares. I get a bit embarrassed because it’s so intense.

“What are you looking at?” I ask.

“Why, I’m looking at you, miss.”

Oh my God. He’s quoting a romantic scene out of The Last of the Mohicans.

“I thought you only watched it for the massacres,” I say, gri

“I watched it again. Although you can’t go past that last scene when he guts that guy.”

“Oh, I think I can.”

We laugh for a moment.

“Thank God for e-mail, right?” he says. “It’s not that far when you think about it.”

I shake my head.

“Write me letters, Will. Write me long letters.”

I feel sad. No matter what he’s said, I still feel sad and I want to cry because I’m losing him at a time that I’ve actually found him.

“If I asked you to stay, would you?” I ask later as we’re standing by his car.

“Maybe I would, but I don’t think you’d ask me. But I swear to God that I’ll be on the first plane back if you ever need saving from anything… .”

I shake my head again.

“You go and shake your foundations, Will. I think it’s about time I saved myself.”

chapter 34

IT’S ALMOST THE end of term three and the Year Twelves are on their way out. I can’t believe that my senior year is about to begin, but I’m looking forward to it, despite Will going and even with my mum the way she is. I stand talking to Will and without thinking, we’re holding hands. Mr. Brolin approaches us and puts us on detention for breaking the “hands-off” policy, and while he’s writing in our diaries, we’re killing ourselves laughing, which makes him angrier.

Later, I’m standing in the middle of the courtyard, just watching everyone.

I love this school. I love how uncomplicated it is and the fact that we come from almost two hundred suburbs, so we have to work hard at finding something to hold us together. There’s not a common culture or social group. There’s a whole lot of individuality, where it doesn’t matter that we’re not all going to be heart surgeons and it doesn’t matter whether you sing in a choir, or play a piano accordion, or lose dismally at rugby league, or are victorious in basketball. I remember a poem we’re studying. I think it’s Bruce Dawe. About constants in a world of variables. That’s what this place is, I guess. And it might be mundane, but I think I need the constant rather than the variable at the moment.

“A good day or a shocker?” Mr. Ortley joins me.

“A good one. There’ve been a few in a row now.”

“The music department is going to do a musical next year,” he tells me, rolling his eyes like I would.

Justine is ru

I sigh, shaking my head. “I have to give Justine a lesson in holding back,” I tell him. “She’s just way too enthusiastic.”

She grabs my arms in excitement.

“We’re doing Les Mis.”

I scream hysterically, clutching her as we jump up and down.

Siobhan and Tara walk toward us. “You guys are so uncool. I don’t know why we hang out with you,” Siobhan says.

Justine and I do a medley of songs for them, and then we listen to Tara explain the conspiracy theory behind her being elected one of next year’s leaders.

“They want to control me,” she tells us.