I sat with my knees to my chest, and my arms wrapped around them. Little Al and his family had all got up to dance. The new band playing was louder than Al’s dad’s band. So it was just me and Sacha sitting together.
Some parents with young kids had gone home, and new people had arrived. Teachers I recognised from school wore more casual clothes, and a couple of them were stumbling drunkenly and laughing a little too hard.
Sacha noticed me watching the Maths teacher. ‘It’s always entertaining when teachers get drunk. She’ll have a couple more red wines and the students will never let her live it down,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ I laughed.
He turned and smiled at me. ‘Are you cold?’ he asked.
I was wearing only my dress, Volleys and knitted gloves. It was pretty chilly now; I could see my own breath, a whispery cloud in front of me.
I nodded.
He shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to me.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘What about you?’
‘I layer.’ He pointed to the long-sleeved shirt under his T-shirt.
I smiled and pulled the jacket on. It was fleecy and still warm from him.
We watched Little Al spinning to the music with his baby sister.
‘What I love about Al,’ said Sacha, ‘is the way he just doesn’t care what you think. He does what he loves and what he wants to do, and who cares what happens. I wish I had that sort of…is the word unselfconscious? Unselfconsciousness? It’s bloody long.’
‘I don’t think he’s that self-assured,’ I said. ‘The people you usually think are the bravest are often the most scared. He probably works really hard to be the person that he is.’
‘I think I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘Like when he freaked out today.’
‘What did he freak out over?’
‘We saw True kissing a stranger earlier today,’ he said. ‘Unexpected, right?’
‘Ha, there’s a bit of gossip to spread,’ I said. ‘Why did Al freak out, though?’
‘He’s kind of in love with her.’
‘Are they…together?’
‘No. And they never have been,’ Sacha said. ‘It’s a five-year unrequited crush.’
‘Does she know about this crush?’
‘She’s known from the start. He announced it over the loudspeaker during term two of Year 7.’
‘But shouldn’t she be allowed to go out with guys even so?’ I asked. ‘It’s not as if she’s obliged to return the feeling.’
He swallowed. ‘I guess. I just thought…I don’t know, maybe she could have said, ‘“Look, I’m going out with this guy. You’re going to have to get over this crush.” She’s never said anything to him outright.’
‘Shouldn’t you just let them sort it out on their own?’
He frowned. ‘Do you have to be so clever? God, I’ve been trying to figure this out for five years, and now you come along and you’ve got all the answers.’ His eyes were twinkling as he spoke.
I laughed, shaking my head. ‘I guess that was why she was being weird just before,’ I said.
‘Probably a contributing factor to her weirdness,’ he shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
After a few moments he smiled at me and asked, ‘Do you want to dance?’
‘I can’t dance to save my life,’ I said.
Sacha nodded towards adults and kids laughing and twirling, a few drunkenly.
‘I highly doubt that matters,’ he said and stood and grasped my hand, pulling me up with him.
He dragged me over to where there was some free space and where the music was noisier. As soon as we got there, the song ended.
‘Oh,’ I sighed. I tried to walk back to our seats, but Sacha held tight to my hand. And, as much as I wanted to go and sit down, I didn’t want to let go.
‘We’re waiting for the next song, Jewel,’ he said. ‘You’re not getting out of this.’ He grinned.
‘Seriously, I look like a fish having an epileptic fit,’ I said. ‘Not pretty at all.’
He just grinned wider.
The band started the next song, and it was slow. Awkwardly, I put my hand on Sacha’s shoulder. He put one hand on my waist and grasped my other hand in his. We swayed slowly, barely at all, and I looked everywhere but at him.
Little Al caught my eye and came over. He was cradling his sister’s baby boy.
‘Hey, kids,’ he said, ‘guess who’s the designated driver tonight in my family?’
Al nodded in the direction of his mother, who was loudly recounting an anecdote to a couple of cornered teachers. David and June—Al’s dad and his girlfriend—were laughing just a little too hard to be sober.
Sacha smiled. ‘You?’
‘Yes.’ Al grinned back and bounced the baby. ‘If I’m lucky, they won’t tell everyone their names; otherwise, people will start associating me with the funny drunks.’
‘Hey, it’s the best kind of drunk to be,’ said Sacha.
‘I beg to differ. Every time Mum goes over the limit she retells the birth of each of her children, thinking she’s being funny. It was okay until she did it at her work Christmas party and got sacked.’
‘They fired her for telling everyone about having children?’ I asked.
‘It was pretty gory. Plus, she projectile-vomited in the office. Ruined a couple computers.’
‘Nice.’
‘My family’s got style, Jewel Valentine,’ Al winked. ‘Anyway, I think it’s a bit loud here for Bobby.’ He smiled at the baby, who was looking around, expressionless but alert.
I’m not sure whether the song was especially long, or if it only felt that way, but it sure seemed as if we’d been dancing there for ten minutes already.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t like it; I did—Sacha’s smile, his hand warm in mine, his other hand against my waist, the night itself, the music—but, God, my heart was going to leap out my throat if I wasn’t careful. When we moved, I panicked that I’d step on his foot, or I’d lean too close. I was nervous the whole time. I worried my palms were sweaty or my breath was bad. That this close it’d be completely obvious how terrible my skin was.
I had one memory of my parents dancing. It was after my brother had died, and my parents had been sleeping in separate rooms (if they were sleeping at all). Everything was upside down and inside out. Then one afternoon I came out of my room to find them slow-dancing silently in the living room. There were three drained wine bottles on the kitchen bench, and they were dancing to an old CD. From this, my eight-year-old mind concluded that things were getting better, my parents would be happy again, we could re-form as a family around the hole that Ben had left.
I was wrong.
As always, I was incredibly, achingly wrong.
After my parents slow-danced in the lounge room, three things happened in quick succession, so fast I barely had time to register what was going on: my dad disappeared, my mum overdosed, I was sent to live with my grandparents.
‘I really like you, Jewel,’ said Sacha. When he spoke, his breath was warm against my face.
‘I really like you, too,’ I said.
I wanted to lean in and kiss him right then. I think we both were thinking it. But we both hesitated, and the song progressed to another verse, and we continued to dance. The moment disappeared—it didn’t pass; it just vanished.
‘Have you seen Groundhog Day?’ I asked. ‘Where Bill Murray keeps on reliving the same day over and over?’
‘Yeah, why?’ Sacha said.
I shook my head. ‘This is the day I’d choose to relive, if I got the option.’
‘Why today?’
‘Well, the weather’s been perfect. It’s the weekend. There’s this awesome fete to attend. You’re here—’
‘I know. I’m wonderful, right?’
‘Shut up,’ I laughed. ‘If I did it over, I wouldn’t spend most of the day up a tree, and I’d get my face painted.’
Sacha didn’t laugh this time. He just smiled. ‘You know they have fetes and carnivals everywhere, all the time, don’t you? There’s probably one on next weekend somewhere, where you can get your face painted.’
‘Isn’t it your birthday next weekend?’
‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘Did you do anything special for your eighteenth?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m not really a party person. Have you got anything planned?’
‘Kind of. Well, no. It’s hard to work it when you’ve got two friends and one hates the other. And I’m friends with you, too, now. But you like them both, don’t you?’
I nodded.
‘So we just need to stop True hating Al,’ he said. ‘Then after that we can bring peace to the Middle East, stop global warming and then, I don’t know, go bowling for my birthday.’
‘I like bowling,’ I said.
‘As long as you enjoy peacekeeping, we’re good to go.’
I paused for a moment then a whole lot of words tumbled out of my mouth without permission.
‘When I was about eight, my dad left. But in those weeks beforehand, before he left, he and my mum fought. A lot. There were alternating periods of this all-out screaming, violent fighting, and complete silence, where they’d each sit in a separate room and cry and cry and cry.’
Sacha asked, as softly as he could without the music drowning out his words, ‘Did other things happen? Like, what led to them being like that?’
‘There are always other things,’ I said. ‘I tried to be peacekeeper. I was eight. I tried to talk to them when they were crying, tried to help. Then, when they shouted and threw things, I hid. I blamed myself, always, for them eventually breaking up. I thought I could have fixed things, could have sensed things going bad earlier and stopped them, stopped it from ripping our family apart.’
‘You know what they always say,’ said Sacha. ‘“It’s not your fault.” Your parents still both love you; the problem’s just between them.’
‘I never got that talk. My dad disappeared.’
‘Oh, Jewel,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to say I’m sorry for you, because everyone says it so much, it’s lost its meaning. But I am. I really am.’
‘Shit,’ I mumbled. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you all this. You don’t need it. And after your mum…’
‘Hey, this is what friends are for,’ he said. ‘That’s another thing everyone says too much, but it’s still true.’
The song had ended, and another, more upbeat one had begun. Still, we didn’t break apart. My hand remained on his shoulder and his hand on my waist gripped tighter. We were close—much closer than we had been at the start of the song.
Suddenly, someone else gripped my arm and turned me to face them. Al’s mother flung her arms around me and hugged me, then leant away, smiling broadly.
‘I wish my son was going round with a girl as lovely as you—what’s your name again?’ she asked, then winked at Sacha. ‘That True Grisham’s so… aloof? Is that a word? Aloof?’
‘She’s nice when you get to know her,’ offered Sacha. ‘Both Jewel and True.’
Sal grinned at him. ‘I love you, kid. Have I told you that?’
Just then, it suddenly began bucketing rain.