Duncan forms a pouch with his t-shirt and throws in as many shells as possible. “I want an older woman.”
“Sure, kid. How old are we talking?”
“Like, sixteen.”
“Wow. Calm down.”
“Hey! I think I could pull one.” He balances his pouch with his left arm and flexes with his right. “I’m basically a man now.”
I scoff. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Never.”
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My lighter kisses the cigarette. The flame eats the paper and licks the filter. It nibbles the tips of my fingers and disintegrates in black clumps. Embers are carried away by the wind.
If I reach my hand out the window, I could touch the rat carcass that hangs between the fork of a tree branch. Yellowed bones, exposed, held into place by the bare minimum muscle it needs to not fall apart. A butcherbird hung the rat’s body a few days ago. It came back and hacked away at the tissue. Peeled off ribbons of flesh. Once satisfied, the songbird flew away, leaving the decomposing rat behind.
I adjust the tarpaulin on my lap. Piles of ash pool in the centre of the blue, plastic surface. This blue is vibrant, a contrast with the sky now milky with cataracts. Shitty midwinter weather.
Something inside my chest rattles. Moans. On the wall, I’ve tally marked the days that have passed since I attended therapy. Seventeen days. Engraved them with a butcher’s knife. When was the last time I ate something?
I look at the dead rat. Its ribs are spread like angel wings.
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“Where do you go when you need somewhere to retreat to? To be safe? It could be a real place or imaginative.” She rests her eyes on me. They sear into my stitches. When her face falls, my body deflates. “Nobody is obligated to share, but I would love it if you all considered the question.”
“How about where you go when you want to stop retreating?” Sugar questions. She pokes at her skin like she’s dialing a rotary phone. “When does feeling safe become running away?”
Dr Edwards rests her elbows on her knees. “Great questions. From one perspective, a safe space is somewhere you can go for comfort. From another, it’s a place for you to work yourself out on your own terms. No judgement. You can think, feel, whatever you want.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be here?” Daniel asks.
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“What’d she tell you?”
“To bring these.” Sugar removes a stack of clothes from her satchel, hands steady like she’s balancing glass, and places them on the desk. They are immaculately folded in plastic sleeves. No creases. No fuzzy shit.
“What the fuck are those?”
“She said they were yours.”
Before I join Sugar, I look through the glass on the door again. The cameraman slides himself down the wall and stares at the anchor-man’s stool. Kick it. I can see it on his face. He wants to.
He tucks his leg underneath him. Coward.
“I’ve never seen those before in my life,” I say without looking at the clothes.
Sugar removes them from their sleeves and pushes them closer to me.
A baby blue cashmere sweater with a white button down and dark brown slacks. Leather shoes. “You’re joking.”
She shrugs. “Anything is better than those hospital sweats.”
“Even these?” I pinch the cashmere.
“Even these.”
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Neon circles break through black fog. The harder I press my eyelids together, the more circles come. White light. I can’t fight it. I try to open my eyes, crusted shut, and am blinded by brightness.
My brain is a bruised peach.
Jackhammers outside, cracking through granite. And cars honking. I focus. Cars honking at traffic lights and jackhammers cracking through granite. Beeping monitors.
The stitches across my throat and face fire up like cast iron branding when I try to gulp. My trachea narrows and it feels like I’m choking.
I wiggle my toes. Pinpricks.
“Frankie.” A familiar voice floats around in the yolks of my mind. Wrinkly palms rest on my forehead. “Your eyes are fluttering. Are you awake?”
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“The sole function of a heart is to pump blood throughout the body. If too much blood is lost, the heart is impeded, interrupting its systematic loop,” he said. The nurse couldn’t keep the grin off her face as he spoke. “We only hold twelve pints, and once we have lost enough, our hearts lose purpose.
But blood, much like love, is not synthetic. You cannot manufacture it within the confines of a laboratory, no matter what chemical compounds you combine.” He gestured towards my drip. “You cannot will it into existence, no matter how potent your desire. There is no substitute – in order to share it with somebody you have to give it away.”
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I dig into the wood on the underside of the table. The wood splinters and wedges between my chewed nails and keeps going.
One of the men – the man in the middle, the biggest man – sticks his finger out as if he thought of something special. He wants people to lean in. I can see the light bulb hovering above his Johnny Bravo head. “Join us for a shoey in his honour!”
He reaches for his muddy steel cap boots, unlaced the left one, shouts, “He would’ve wanted this,” and brings it to his face. I can feel Vivian pulling at me and I know Colin is doing something with his arms, but I’m not looking at them. Or listening. I can’t hear anything.
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It’s too perfect; I want to knock it all down.
The books climb halfway up the wall, spines out and alphabetical, like a city of miniature skyscrapers. Hand-bound with cracked brown leather. Black leather with blue binding. Hardcovers with yellowed dust jackets. Thick volumes, thin volumes.
A waft of smoky chocolate and tobacco fills my lungs.
We slither around the towers. “My gramps runs a printing press back home,” Vivian says. “Local stuff, pretty cool.” She stops me with a gentle hand on the shoulder. At our feet lies two novels. The first, open in the centre and dog-eared, and the other, displaying intricate stitching and gold-leaf printing on the cover. Death Sequence, Vivian Cornish. She kneels, taking the open book like a newborn, and sniffs the paper as she thumbs through the pages.
“Crime?” I ask.
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In all honesty, I wasn’t going to come. Group therapy. I mean, seriously? And then I thought of the little custard and sugar powder cake in the little tupperware container that my mother baked and that silly, hopeful smile on her face. In cursive silver letters taped to the lid: ‘I love you. I’m proud of you for taking this step forward.’ I just had to come. I just had to.
Ten to four.
By the eastern wing of the community hall is a row of shrubs, a flower garden, and a bench. I have been sitting on it, digging my nails into the wood and counting people as they pass by. Nine, so far. Most of them tourists. Peachdale’s population has steadily climbed in the recent years. Some families have settled, but like most sane people, they come, breathe in the small town air, take pictures of the bay and the mountains, and fuck off back to Sydney and Melbourne.
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On the morning after my fourteenth birthday, I was hungover and bored shitless. My father wouldn’t let me leave the house, lest I be an embarrassment. Tarnish the family name. He locked himself in his office and told me to behave. As if I were a docile puppy.
I got my white lighter, sat in the living room, and set myself on fire – much more entertaining than swallowing rat poison or watching the local news – and as I observed the flames dancing up my leg hair, all I could think of was how much I preferred the scent of burning plastic. When the smoke alarms were roused, my father dragged his imported-leather feet across our floorboards, ripped the batteries out of the alarm, and hushed, “You could be a little quiet next time.” I doused myself with chocolate milk and looked at my watch. 8:01am. The cartoon about that responsible crustacean just started. He’d probably be snapping about the importance of saying please and thank you.
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