The next morning, as she left home early to be on time for baroque ensemble practice at school, Vân Ước tried to stop wondering about her father’s words, It was hard for her, and took a moment to breathe in the cool morning of what would be a melting-hot day. The sun shining at a low angle through the deserted playground, the damp grass, the stand of gum trees that, if she framed her eye line just the right way, could make her feel that she was back at Mount Fairweather.
Matthew, setting out for a run, minus beret, whipped past her, giving her braid a playful flick, a habit that had riled her seriously in primary school and still did, in a watered-down way.
“Hey, wait,” she called.
“What’s up?”
“What’s with Nick? Why’s he being such an idiot?”
“Code of the bros. Can’t talk.”
Vân Ước rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, okay, I know. He’s doing nangs and pills and not much schoolwork.”
“Have you said anything?”
“I’ve said stuff, but he’s not listening. He’s pretty much hanging with River and those dudes now.”
“God.”
“Yeah.” Matthew shot her a but what are you gonna do about it? look, and ran off.
As she walked out the gates, she was distracted; no one liked seeing someone they’d known since little-kid days take a turn for the stupid.
She looked down, focusing on one of her silver disks embedded in the footpath. She had just squatted down to examine it, hoping there would be some unclouded morning light for photography this weekend so she could get a shiny, east-side-lit image, when a large shadow created an annoying obstruction. She looked up. If she were ever to swear aloud, this was a classic WTF moment.
“Why, Billy? Why are you here?”
“Walk you to school?”
She stood up and stalked past him, angry.
He caught up, trying to relieve her of her turtlelike backpack. She yanked it away and tried to walk faster than him. Not easy. He was a boy with a long stride. She looked back at the apartments anxiously. Someone would be seeing this, for sure.
“How did you even know what time I’d be leaving home?”
“You’ve got baroque ensemble rehearsal.”
She stopped and turned to face him. “Let’s recap…”
“It’s not baroque ensemble rehearsal?”
She pinned those baby blues with her most penetrating look. “Just yesterday, you acknowledged that you didn’t know I came to Crowthorne Grammar in year nine?”
“Yeah…”
“So, I was there, but you couldn’t see me… or you didn’t notice I was there.”
“I guess.”
“Last term we were both at Mount Fairweather—could you even tell me what house I was in?”
Billy looked at the sky. “Nope.”
“It was Reynolds. So, close quarters for a whole term, only one-quarter of the year level there, and you couldn’t have located me if you needed to. And yet now—out of the blue—you’re virtually stalking me.”
“I wouldn’t use that word.”
“Last week you followed me into the girls’ bathroom, Billy. What would you think if you were me? Honest answer.”
“I’d be thinking, Can this be a mortal, or is it a god of rowing, recently scouted by Brown, walking next to me, trying to carry my backpack against my will?”
“That is pretty much on the money, if you replace god with stalker,” she said.
Hmmm, stalker of rowing, majorly dumb comeback. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice.
She was a patient girl, someone with all too much practice at delaying gratification, but she was getting really sick of not knowing what was going on.
“Given this agreed-upon reversal from complete lack of awareness of my existence formerly to annoying overfocus on me now, would you agree it’s reasonable for me to wonder why?”
Unless he was a great actor, and she’d seen no evidence of that to date, Billy was surprised at her vehemence.
“I don’t get why it’s a problem.”
Was it possible that someone could go through life assuming the whole world loved him? Expecting to be welcome wherever he happened to turn up?
“Our class does a group double take when you speak to me. Haven’t you noticed that people are a little surprised? Why are you speaking to me? Following me around at school? Coming to my place at dawn?”
“I don’t know. I really liked hanging with you last night.”
“That was homework, not hanging.”
“It was a homework hang.”
She couldn’t help smiling. This was, after all, her number one mew boy, giving a very good impression of bending over backward to be nice to her.
“And we had food. That really takes it from homework to a hang in my book,” he said confidently. Because, of course, his book would be the book.
They walked on. She would have given a great deal at this moment to spend sixty seconds inside his brain.
“If you’re smiling, does that mean I can hold your hand?”
She reapplied the frown. They were walking along Albert Street, her usual route to school, where there were countless people who might report back to her mother by lunchtime today at the latest; despite the fact the street was almost deserted at this hour, she knew the windows had eyes.
“No!”
She stopped and turned to face him. “Just tell me what changed.”
“What what?”
“Exactly when did I go from being invisible to being visible?”
This was his cue to say that he’d gradually been noticing her over the last year or so—he hadn’t wanted to be obvious in his attentions, but he knew by now that, though quiet, she was smart; though shy, she had a sense of humor; though not a self-promoter, she was a dedicated, passionate artist…
Billy smiled. “It was that class—the first week back, when the visiting writer came. The one with the pink hair?”
Vân Ước stopped dead. It took a huge effort to retain her cool, but she managed it. Just. “Yep. Yep, I remember. So, what was it that made you notice me?”
Billy nodded and looked into the middle distance as though he were trying to replay the scene in his mind. He looked puzzled. “It was like you suddenly had a spotlight on you.”
“So, just to be clear: it was a sudden thing more than a gradual thing.”
“Can’t answer that—because who knows what’s been going on subliminally and for how long? Am I right?”
God, of all the annoying times for him to become reflective. “Billy, just concentrate on that particular class—what else did you notice about me, if anything?”
“The best way to put it, I guess, is that it was just blindingly obvious that you were the most interesting person in the room.” Billy smiled the addictive smile. “Apart from me.”
She felt sick to the pit of her stomach. She had to force herself to breathe in to avoid a footpath vomit. She needed to sit down, fast, and put her head between her legs.
It was like being pulled apart with no chance of reconnecting the two halves again. Wasn’t this proof that her most ridiculous, improbable fantasy was being delivered to her on a plate? But how could she—she could not—believe in the means by which the fantasy appeared to have been delivered? A little glass vial? A wish being granted? This was not a phenomenon of the real world. She knew it as well as she knew her own name.
Her name, Cloudwish—could that have anything to do with anything? Of course not! Things inside her head were hectic and preposterous.
A tram stop seat saved her from falling in a heap. “Shazbat,” she said as she sat down, slipped out of her backpack straps, and dropped her head between her knees.
“What the fuck’s a shazbat?” Billy asked fondly. “Are you okay? Did you have breakfast?”
She lifted her head. “Shazbat is an alien swear word from an antique American sitcom called Mork and Mindy that Jess’s parents got in a DVD collection of old TV shows. I’m fine. I had a humongous breakfast.” She dropped her head again. Circulation normalized. Reengaging with her backpack, she stood up.
“Are you really okay?” Billy asked, touching her shoulder gently.
“Yup,” she said, and risked giving him her first unguarded smile. She had to figure all of this out, but, hell, why not enjoy the aberration while it lasted?
Billy appeared to be appropriately dazzled, and she widened her smile in response.
Bizarro world, I’m moving in, she thought. Who knew for how long?