‘Hey.’
‘Holy shit, what are you doing in here?’ I scrambled backwards in bed against the wall, clutching my blanket around me.
Jewel was sitting against my closed bedroom door with a cup of tea. She smiled. ‘Your dad let me in. He was on his way out for lunch with Mr Carr. He thought you’d want to sleep in.’
I looked at my alarm clock. ‘It’s lunchtime already?’ I sighed and stared at Jewel. ‘So what are you doing in here?’
‘I said your dad—’
‘That only answers how you’re in here,’ I said. ‘Why you are here is what I want to know.’
Jewel frowned, then got up off the floor and sat, cross-legged, at the foot of my bed. She sipped her tea and nodded at another cup on my bedside table.
I picked it up. ‘Thanks. I like your dress.’
Jewel patted the dress. It was red and fell to her knees, clinging perfectly to her. Her golden-brown hair hung loose to her shoulders, wavy and messy.
‘Thanks. I borrowed it,’ she said.
‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘True Grisham?’
‘How’d you know?’
‘Grade 6 graduation.’ I grinned.
Jewel laughed. She slurped the last of her tea and set the cup on my dresser.
‘Is it all right if I sit next to you?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ I said. I moved over so she could sit down. It was cosy, because I had a single bed. She tucked her legs under the covers beside me, and one of them ended up sort of on top of mine.
‘You slept in your clothes,’ she said.
‘Yeah. I do that a bit.’
She grinned at me, flashing all her teeth.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘It’s your birthday,’ she said. ‘You’re eighteen.’
I nodded and grimaced. ‘I know.’
She laughed. ‘Why aren’t we out having a champagne breakfast?’
‘Um, because it’s lunchtime?’ I drank the last of my tea and reached past Jewel to set the cup on the side table.
As I sat back, Jewel grabbed my arm and held me halfway. Then she moved her hands from my arm and grasped my face, and our noses touched.
‘I’m sure they offer champagne with lunch as well,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t treat me like a sick person, Jewel,’ I said. ‘If I were just like everybody else, you wouldn’t be here right now. You’d have given me the flick for being the prick that I am.’
Her hands didn’t move from my face, and she didn’t move either. Our noses still touched, and we both stared at one another.
‘You’re not like everybody else,’ she replied, ‘and I’m not treating you like a sick person.’
‘Jewel,’ I said. I moved my hand to her waist. ‘I think—’
‘I warned you about that, didn’t I?’ she said. ‘Thinking.’
We both laughed. Then when the laugh ended she tilted her head and kissed me softly on the mouth.
She leant away. ‘Here are your options. Option number one, we stay in bed all day. Option number two, we go out and do all this stuff I’ve got planned. Now, I’m not fussed which you choose. It’s your birthday, so you get to pick. However, me leaving is not one of these options, and it’s necessary that we spend the day together.’
‘If it’s my birthday, then shouldn’t I be able to send you away?’ I asked.
‘If forced to, I will handcuff myself to you.’
‘You have handcuffs?’
She grinned. ‘No, but we can get in to adult shops now, so I could easily acquire some.’
I laughed.
We kissed twice more. Jewel’s hands dropped from my face and I fell back.
‘I love you, Jewel,’ I said.
She looked down, away from me. ‘I love you too, Sacha.’
‘I can’t help but think that you’re behaving differently from how you would if circumstances were a little more normal.’
She looked up at me now. ‘What’s normal, anyway? Hey?’
‘You know what I’m talking about.’
‘I feel happy with you, Sacha,’ she said, ‘and I feel like I’ve been depriving myself of the right to be happy for as long as I remember. Because I was the kid who lived when her brother died. Instead of living the life he didn’t get to, I lived like I was already dead, like I was him. This has got nothing to do with you being sick, Sacha. I just love you.’
‘Don’t cry,’ I murmured. Then I laughed quietly. ‘Did True put make-up on you?’
‘Do I look like one of those test bunnies?’
I shook my head. ‘No, it’s just a different look for you.’
We lay there with our arms around each other for either a very long time or no time at all. I wasn’t sure which.
‘Sacha,’ Jewel murmured, ‘can you tell me about…about the cancer?’
I didn’t say anything for a while. I just listened to her breathe, and me breathe, and the refrigerator whirr noisily in the kitchen.
‘It’s scary,’ I said, finally. ‘I feel sick.’ I opened my mouth to speak again, but nothing else came out.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Please tell me.’
I frowned. Then I spoke, the words tumbling out all disjointed and so quiet I could barely hear them.
‘We caught it too late,’ I said. ‘I think I knew, though. I’ve felt like crap all year. People just thought it was me still grieving because of Mum, but it must’ve been the cancer as well. It’s too far gone. The doctors are willing to treat me, or at least make the way out nicer, less painful. I’m going into hospital the day after tomorrow.’
‘Oh,’ she murmured.
‘There’s something I’ve always wished I had said to my mum,’ I whispered. I grasped Jewel’s hand and our fingers intertwined.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘I’ve wished, ever since her funeral, that I could tell her how incredibly beautiful she was,’ I whispered. ‘I want to say to her, “I forgot how beautiful you were, because I saw you every day.” But now I don’t see her every day. Not any more.’
After a moment, Jewel asked, very quietly, ‘What happened to her?’
‘She was anorexic,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t starvation, though, it was her heart. It just…failed on her one day. The doctors thought she already had a heart condition, and the stress she put her body through with the eating disorder triggered the heart attack.’
Jewel squeezed my hand gently.
‘I found her. In the kitchen of our old house,’ I murmured.
‘Oh, Sacha,’ she said. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’
We were quiet again, for a long time.
‘What do you want to do today?’ asked Jewel, finally.
‘I’d like to go out,’ I whispered. ‘And maybe, maybe we could stay in bed another day.’
‘That sounds like a plan,’ Jewel whispered back.
Sacha’s Favourite Scents
Freshly mown grass
His dad’s morning coffee
Dewy early morning air, on the way to school
Chlorine at the school swimming carnival
His mother’s perfume
After I’d got dressed, I locked the house and we got in the car—Jewel had borrowed her mum’s for the day.
‘Tell me where we’re going,’ I said.
‘Lots of places,’ she said. ‘A whole bunch of things. Lunch first, then whatever else you want to do.’
We drove through the suburbs, down the tree-lined avenues that were abuzz with activity—people mowing lawns, walking dogs and burning calories on their morning run. There were kids riding bikes and playing in front yards and one group of little girls having a teddy-bears’ picnic in the driveway of a house. All red brick and faux sandstone, neat lawns in the front and trees dropping their leaves all over the road.
The sun was high in the sky and warm against my face. The breeze cooled the car, rushing in the open windows.
As we passed through the suburbs, the house lots became smaller, and more people were in the streets, and fewer people had garages. When we reached the city, we drove down back streets, past terraced houses, all alike, crowded in together.
When we paused at a zebra crossing, for a mother with a baby in a pusher and a little boy clinging to her arm, Jewel turned to me. ‘Do you ever think about last words?’
‘I guess I might have,’ I said. ‘Not really though. Do you mean my last words or famous last words?’
Jewel looked through the windscreen again and turned right at an intersection. ‘Everyone’s. The last words of normal people, people who weren’t famous. Their last words are never recorded. I hate that. It’s like they’re less significant than someone who might have acted in a couple of movies.’
‘Why is it so important to record last words?’ I asked.
Jewel waited a few seconds. ‘What were your mother’s last words, Sacha?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I was at camp. I’m not sad that I didn’t hear her last words. What I care most about is that I didn’t stop her from dying.’
Jewel nodded. ‘I’ve always thought about the last things my grandparents said, my brother said. Like there was some message behind it. I always think about what I’d say.’ She was quiet again.
‘What would you say?’ I asked softly.
‘Of course I can’t plan it. I don’t know when I’m going to die,’ she said. ‘But I hate to think I’d say something awful, and that’d be how everyone would remember me.’
‘I don’t think everyone would judge you based on the last thing you ever said. It’s the other things you do. It’s who you are. Last words are insignificant compared to that. And if you’re not famous, and it’s not recorded, then what does it matter?’
‘What does anything matter if you’re not remembered at all?’ asked Jewel.
‘Oh, Jewel,’ I sighed. ‘You’ll be remembered, I’m sure. The important bit is having a good time while you’re here, as well as doing good things.’
Jewel laughed weakly. ‘Christ, you should write a self-help book.’
We stopped at a red light and she turned to face me again. ‘What would your last words have been, if you’d died that night in the lake?’
I had to think about that for a minute. ‘I’d already said goodbye to Dad, before I left home.’ I paused. ‘But it doesn’t matter, because they weren’t my last words. I’m still alive. I’m still here.’
Jewel nodded. ‘You’re right. You’re here.’
Neither of us spoke for the rest of the drive. Occasionally I reached over and grasped Jewel’s hand, to make sure she was there, that she was with me. We drove through the city and towards the bay.
Ten minutes later, we stopped across from the beach, outside a fish and chip shop.
Jewel leant towards me. ‘We’ll have lunch first. I know you were probably expecting some ritzy restaurant or something, but are fish and chips all right?’
‘Fish and chips are great,’ I said. ‘Perfect, in fact.’
She smiled.
We got chips, a big bundle of them with lots of chicken salt, because everyone knows you only eat the fish so you can have the chips, and on birthdays all remotely healthy eating options go out the window.
We walked down the boardwalk to the beach, which was packed with people. There were people swimming further out, and families with young kids splashing in the shallows—some toddlers without bathers, squealing and laughing in their parents’ arms. There were couples lying on the sand and a group playing a game of volleyball. Jewel and I took off our shoes and I rolled up my jeans, and we ate the chips as we walked along the sand.
‘Do you ever want to have kids?’ Jewel asked me.
‘I never thought I did,’ I said. ‘I mean, I like kids. I love Al’s little sister. But it didn’t seem like the sort of thing I’d ever want to do. Then as soon as I found out about…well, you know, I thought, Shit, I’m not even going to get the option. Maybe that’s how people who find out they’re infertile feel, even if they’d previously made the decision not to have kids.’
‘They could still adopt,’ said Jewel. ‘Or be a foster parent.’
‘I don’t think it would be the same,’ I said. ‘People are obsessed with this whole thing of their own flesh and blood.’
‘It’s the only reason we’re here, you know,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s looking for the deeper meaning in everything; everyone wants there to be some grand thing that’s behind it all. But there isn’t. The point of us being here is for our species to perpetuate itself.’
‘But what’s the point of us perpetuating?’
‘So we can keep on reproducing and growing stronger and bigger and evolving until we’re the biggest and the best and we knock everything else off the face of the planet.’ She grinned.
‘We’re doing a good job of it,’ I said. ‘So basically we’re only here and reproducing because our race is egotistical?’
‘Yeah. Nothing I didn’t know already.’
‘What about you?’ I asked.
‘Am I egotistical, do you mean?’ asked Jewel.
I shook my head. ‘No, about kids.’
Jewel didn’t say anything for a moment. I ate some more chips.
‘I haven’t thought ahead that far,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I want to have kids. But if I had the choice taken away from me…I don’t know. I don’t know.’ Then she smiled at me. ‘God, we’re having conversations about life, the universe and all that when we should be getting plastered. You’re eighteen!’
‘Nothing feels different,’ I said, shaking my head.
‘It never does,’ said Jewel. ‘Things change so slowly you don’t notice. Besides, we invented this birthday thing. As if anyone would change on a specific day.’
Jewel tossed a chip to a seagull, and a whole bunch of them swarmed and fought over it.
‘Do you ever…do you ever miss the person you used to be?’ I asked.
‘All the time,’ she said. ‘I miss being young. I miss the kid I was when Ben was alive. I don’t think I would have grown up and been like this had he lived. My life would have been different.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘You remember the lake where…’
‘Of course. That lake is where he died?’
‘Yeah. I was eight, and he was ten. It was during the summer, and we were playing in the lake, pushing each other around. Our parents were nearby, but not really paying us much attention. He was balancing on something underneath the water and it wasn’t stable. I pushed him a bit too hard, and he fell. God, I never meant to hurt him. He hit his head on a rock, and then he was underwater and dead.’ On that last word her voice cracked. ‘All I remember after that was the blood, and the lights of the ambulance, and all this shouting, and I was shaking so hard. At the funeral, I just felt numb.’
We’d reached the end of the beach. Jewel tossed the empty chip wrapper in the bin. We stood there a moment and she buried her face in my shoulder, whispering between sobs. ‘It was so long ago, I should have got over it. I should have got over it.’
‘Shh,’ I murmured, ‘it’s okay, it’s okay, everything’s okay.’
Jewel wiped her eyes. ‘Make-up didn’t last long!’ she sniffed, and we walked back along the beach holding hands, looking at everyone in the water, and making up stories about their lives.
‘See that guy there?’ asked Jewel, pointing to a man across the sand playing volleyball. ‘He’s a cross-dresser. Not right now he’s not, but by night he gets up to all sorts of shenanigans as his alter-ego Roberta. Roberta’s a red-head. She’s a sucker for a good pair of stilettos. She loves her jewels; she’s got a miniature spoodle—’
I laughed. ‘What’s a spoodle?’
Jewel gave me a look. ‘I can’t believe you don’t know what a spoodle is. It’s what happens when dog breeders decide to play God and make poodles and spaniels have babies. But Roberta, she loves her miniature spoodle, Donnie.’
‘But what’s that guy’s real name?’
‘His real name isn’t important,’ she said. ‘He feels like he’s Roberta. He keeps up this act—he plays volleyball with his daytime friends, works his office job. But on the inside, he is Roberta. Your turn.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘See that girl?’ I pointed to a girl up the beach. ‘She was born a man.’
‘Hey!’ cried Jewel. ‘You practically copied me. She doesn’t even look transsexual, anyway.’
‘They never do, the real ones. They call them “lady boys”. They’re incredibly popular in Asia.’
Jewel laughed. ‘You know that saying “born a man” makes no sense? It makes her sound as if she was born a full-grown man, not a baby.’
‘That’s because she was born a full-grown man,’ I nodded.
Jewel shook her head. ‘No, you have to stay within the realms of the possible.’
‘If a spoodle is possible, a man being born fully grown and turning into a woman is almost definitely possible.’
Jewel laughed again and squeezed my hand, and I turned and kissed her. We probably looked like stupid kids, but I didn’t mind, because I was so happy. What people thought didn’t matter any more.