alex

My locker looks so small now that it’s empty. I’ve taken the lock from the front and left all the stickers and graffiti. I sort of like the idea that some part of me will live on after I’m gone. Jake has managed to avoid me for the most of the day. I know he’s feeling weird about me leaving, but I wish we could just hang out like normal for the last time.

I know I should be moving a bit faster because class is about to start but I don’t want to. I’m pulling out all the empty chip packets shoved right down the back of the locker when Lucas whacks me on the back in a sort of affectionate way.

‘See ya round, Alex.’

‘You just broke my shoulder,’ I say.

‘Don’t change. We like you the way you are,’ adds Tien with a grin.

‘I’ll be back. And I’ll send you an invite to my sixteenth next year.’

‘With all the rich kids? Awesome,’ says Tien.

‘Strike that. I won’t bother inviting either of you.’

Tien smiles and gives me half a hug. It feels strange having guys I’ve known since prep saying goodbye to me like I’m leaving the planet.

‘We’re heading to the skate park after school …’ I say to Lucas and Tien, knowing even before Tien pretends to salute me they won’t come. They never do.

‘Bye,’ I shout as they get swallowed up in the swarm of students already celebrating the end of year before their final classes.

‘You okay?’ Ellie’s peeking out from behind my locker door.

She has her ‘smart look’ empty-frame glasses perched on her head.

‘Yeah. Nah. Dunno.’

She nods. ‘It’s a funny feeling, isn’t it?’ Of course she totally gets it. She’s moved schools three times already because her dad gets posted to different places.

‘Yeah. I guess I hadn’t really thought about it properly, even though I knew it was coming. I just kept putting it off in my head.’

‘At least you aren’t moving states.’

‘True.’

‘And this way you get more holidays.’

‘Also true,’ I say, thinking of the extra weeks at the beginning and end of each year.

I slam the door but it doesn’t shut. It’s never shut properly. Ellie taps the locker next to it. Jake’s locker. We’ve had adjoining lockers since we started high school.

‘And Jake?’

‘Ignoring me. No, not ignoring me. Ignoring the fact I’m leaving.’

‘How very Jake of him.’

The thing is, I know why he’s ignoring it, but I can’t really explain it to Ellie. He thinks I’m leaving him here to be alone with the freeway, with what happened. He thinks that because I’m moving I’m escaping it all. It’s not true. I’ll just take it with me wherever I go, but I get why he’s feeling deserted.

Ellie must interpret my silence as sadness because she stretches up and kisses me on the lips. Usually she’s all weird about us kissing at school. She thinks it’s bad form. So I reach for her, sliding my arms around her back and pulling her closer, until she’s leaning on me up against the bank of lockers. Then she stops and moves away.

‘School rules, Mr Cormack. No kissing in the corridor,’ she says with a smile.

‘So expel me.’

Then Ellie grabs my hands in hers and looks serious for a second. ‘Wish you weren’t leaving.’

‘Yeah, it sucks.’

‘We’ve only just found each other.’

‘I’m only 19.2 kilometres down the road. You make it sound like I’m dying.’

‘I know, but it still sucks.’

I like knowing Ellie doesn’t want me to leave. ‘Do you want to hang out at the skate park later?’

Ellie pulls a face that I know means she’s about to take the piss. ‘You asking me on a date?’

‘Yep. I’m all class.’

The bell goes and Ellie practically shoves me down the corridor towards English. Seems bizarre I’m even bothering to attend. As far as last days go, it’s been a pretty ordinary one. Sass’s friends were organising some sort of going-away party for her. All I get is double English and a cold meat pie.

*

Jake is showing off. He’s doing every trick he has, maybe so that Ellie can see how great he is. This is the first time we’ve hung out all together in the skate park and I can sense Jake is feeling strange about it. Maybe that explains why he’s behaving like a dick.

‘Check this one,’ he calls to us. I don’t look but Ellie does. She must realise I’m not watching him because she elbows me playfully in the side. This must be what it feels like to have a child who wants you to watch them all the time.

‘My turn,’ says Ellie.

As Jake rides up out of the bowl, Ellie grabs my board.

‘It’s really hard, Ellie.’

‘Yeah, I bet,’ she says, smiling.

Jake looks at me like he’s waiting for me to tell her not to do it. As if.

‘It’s not for beginners,’ says Jake.

Ellie laughs and I want to kiss her.

‘I can ride a board, Jake.’

‘Yeah, but …’

‘But nothing. Just tell me what to do.’

Jake shrugs. ‘You have to drop into the bowl …’

‘You mean I have to ride off the edge and into that hole over there?’

Jake laughs and I get a twinge of jealousy. Ellie can lighten him in ways I can’t now.

‘Come on, I’ll show you,’ says Jake.

‘I’ll watch,’ I say, walking over to sit on the edge of the small bowl.

Ellie and Jake skate around to the other side. Ellie looks right on a board. She’s a good height and she knows how to stand without looking awkward like I do. I’d never admit it to Jake, but I always feel like this big tall beast on this flimsy little plank of wood with wheels. The dimensions are all wrong.

Ellie’s animated and chattering about something and Jake’s head is bent, trying to catch her words. Seeing them together like this makes me wonder how I’ll feel next year when they’re still here, and I’m not. Jake says something I can’t quite hear, which makes Ellie laugh. And then without waiting for him, she rides straight off the edge and drops perfectly into the bowl. Jake follows her in and shows her the basics of the trick. Their voices float up towards me in grabs.

‘I’ll sit out to give you room,’ says Jake, heading up to where I’m sitting. ‘I didn’t know she could skate that well,’ he says to me.

‘Yeah. She rides a unicycle. She has better balance than me,’ I say.

Jake laughs. ‘That wouldn’t be hard.’

Once I would have laughed too. Punched him lightly in the arm or dropped his board off the edge so he’d have to go get it, but now I just give him a look. But he doesn’t notice. He’s too busy watching her.

‘She’s amazing, Alex. She can do tricks it took me years to learn,’ he says as we watch her skate fast towards the quarter pipe.

‘She’s going too fast,’ I say, jumping up.

‘Nah, she’s right,’ he says. ‘She’s judged it perfectly.’ And she hits the bottom of the pipe, gets airborne, grabs the board as it comes down and lands neatly on the back.

‘El-lie!’ yells Jake as he skates towards her, like he’s going to swing her around in a circle. ‘You did it!’ Then he stops suddenly, right in the middle of the pipe, as if he’s just realised she’s not his girlfriend. Ellie is skating towards him, but before she can reach him, he turns and skates away. She looks confused and gives me a shrug. I shrug back, even though I know it’s because he likes her. I don’t want him to feel like that, like he’s trapped in the middle of us, like he doesn’t know how to be. I have to be better around him. Make him feel included.

‘Impressed?’ says Ellie as she skates over to me, taking me away from worrying about Jake.

‘Always.’

She leans up and kisses me on the mouth. I slide my arms around her and pull her close. But after a few seconds I notice Jake behind us, so I stop and move away. He watches us for a moment and then he jumps on his board and skates off to the other part of the park. And I feel so torn.