Chapter Twenty-three

The next morning I meet Sophie, Teddy, Christina and Elliot at the shopping centre. The beginnings of a beard have formed across Teddy’s jaw.

‘What?’ he says. ‘Christina thinks it’s sexy.’

Christina flushes and buries her face into his shoulder and three seconds later their tongues furiously attack each other.

‘Guys,’ says Sophie, ‘if you can’t hold yourselves together, you can leave.’

‘Sorry, babe,’ says Teddy. ‘Won’t happen again.’ This, of course, is a lie.

We get drinks from a coffee shop and gather around one of the tables. Christina is the centre of the conversation, as we don’t really know her particularly well. She works at an animal rescue centre, looking after the dogs that are up for adoption – training them, walking them and feeding them.

‘We always try to find them good homes because we can’t sustain good lives for all the animals we’re looking after, but it’s always bittersweet when the dogs leave. I become so attached to my babies. It’s hard to say goodbye,’ she says. Personally, she owns three dogs: a labrador, a border collie and a kelpie.

I feel kind of bad while she’s talking. I’d chalked Christina up as a promiscuous, cheerleading bimbo, but the more I find out about her, the less accurate my initial impression seems to be.

‘What do you plan to do this year?’ Elliot asks her.

‘You mean, what will I be studying? Hopefully I get into vet medicine. My ATAR was right on the borderline, so we’ll find out next week, I guess.’ She shrugs.

My nerves about uni offers have been building, but for a very different reason than before. I have my heart set on arts now. I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get an offer.

The waiter brings out our coffees.

‘Wow, he’s cute,’ says Christina. ‘Who here is single?’ Her eyes flicker between Sophie and me.

‘Nobody would be interested in an eighteen-year-old single mother of a twenty-one-month-old,’ says Sophie dismissively.

‘Oh don’t be so hard on yourself. Go for it,’ Christina says, but Sophie shakes her head and sips her drink. Christina lets out an exasperated groan. ‘What about you?’ she says, turning her attention to me.

‘Nah, not my type,’ I say. This is true because I don’t have a type. I mean, the guy’s cute and all, but I just have no desire to talk to him beyond ordering coffee.

‘Well, Teddy here,’ she says grasping his hand, ‘is just lucky I’m spoken for. Otherwise I’d be all up on that.’

Maybe she does have a bit in common with her boyfriend, after all.

‘If a handsome stud muffin like that isn’t your type, what is?’ she asks me.

I exhale, because I can’t really be bothered explaining it. ‘I don’t really have a type …’

Sophie smiles behind her coffee cup; she’s heard this rant before.

‘But everyone has a type,’ insists Christina.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Looks have never been overly important to me. The more I get to know somebody, the cuter I find them. Assuming I don’t begin to hate them, of course.’

‘So you don’t admire certain body types from afar? If you could build your dream guy with the perfect personality, what would he look like?’

She’s persistent, that girl.

‘I guess,’ I say, ‘if I had to describe him …’ I pause, before speaking as quickly as I can. ‘Six feet tall, strong jawline, capable of pulling off an even stubble, born in nineteen-eighty, charismatic, Canadian-born, acting type. Believable in anything from romantic roles performing iconic rain-kissing scenes, to smooth-talking-womaniser roles picking people up with the Dirty Dancing move, to nineteen-forties-police-officer roles working to bring down a gangster.’

There’s a pause. Teddy is clearly trying to figure out if I’m being serious or not.

‘Are you talking about Ryan Gosling?’ asks Christina.

‘No,’ I say, with an expression of mock surprise on my face. ‘Of course not.’ I make no effort to conceal the lie. I genuinely don’t have a serious answer to her question.

‘Have you heard from Nessie since you broke up?’ asks Sophie, mercifully shifting the focus away from my ‘dream guy’.

‘No,’ says Elliot.

Maybe it’s selfish but I always like when people lie to others after telling me the truth. It makes me feel … trusted. Elliot probably just doesn’t want to talk about it but I like the feeling all the same.

Once we finish our coffees, we browse the shops for a bit. Teddy buys a couple of movies and Elliot some new socks.

‘You guys up for bowling?’ asks Sophie as we leave the fifth consecutive store where we buy nothing.

‘I’m in,’ I say.

‘Me too,’ says Christina.

The boys don’t get an opinion.

The bowling alley is across the street from the shopping centre. As Teddy is the only one not wearing thongs, the rest of us borrow a pair of Elliot’s new socks so that the bowling shoes won’t be super-uncomfortable.

The attendant places us in lane sixteen. Each of us grabs a ball from the rack and prepares for our game. I get us bottles of Fanta while Elliot keys in our names to the system – putting himself first – and the game is underway.

On the fourth frame Sophie bowls a strike, and she’s more surprised than anybody.

On the fifth frame, Teddy changes balls. He initially picked the heaviest one he could find, presumably to show off his strength, but it backfired badly when he almost toppled over every time he released the ball.

‘So tell me more about your trip,’ says Christina. ‘Any hot summer romances, flings, or one-night stands?’

‘Sadly, no,’ says Elliot.

I stand up to bowl and score a lucky spare.

‘Probably the biggest let-down of the trip – no loving,’ I say sarcastically. ‘Opposites attract, or so the scientists tell me, so where were all the hot people swooning all over me?’

‘The clear logic here is that you’re the hot one,’ says Teddy.

The girls and Elliot laugh – I hope at Teddy’s flirtation, because laughing at the implication is borderline offensive.

‘Dude,’ I say, shaking my head.

‘That was smooth,’ says Christina, and she climbs off his lap for her turn to bowl.

I’m well aware the compliment only came because Teddy likes to prove himself to be a connoisseur of pick-up lines, but I smile a little. It somehow seems less forced than what he usually comes up with.

We paid for two games, so after Teddy wins the first, Elliot, Sophie and I all immediately prepare for the second but Christina jumps at her boyfriend and blurs the line between making out and intercourse.

Elliot throws his empty Fanta bottle at them and says, ‘Enough with the PDA.’

They break apart and flip Elliot off in perfect sync. After one last peck, they return to their relatively tame position of lap-sitting. I thank the heavens for the (presumably) four layers of clothing between them – underwear, shorts, skirt, underwear – because anything could happen without the material barrier.

Somehow, I score one hundred and sixty-three in the second game, courtesy of a few lucky strikes, and I win comfortably. Teddy comes last, earning himself a sympathy saliva-coating. Two Mountain Dew bottles strike him and Christina simultaneously.

The foyer of the bowling alley has a bunch of arcade games. We all battle it out in a virtual racing game and I become exceptionally glad that Teddy hadn’t driven to Queensland. He can’t even work out gear changes on a simulated car that’s programmed not to stall.

Christina isn’t much better, so the pair of them race against each other while Sophie, Elliot and I explore the other games. I beat Elliot at air hockey, Sophie beats me at a shoot-’em-up game and Elliot crucifies me at Dance Dance Revolution.

‘Suck on that, Janson. Remind me: of the two of us, who is the trained dancer?’

I punch him in the arm and announce that I’m ready to leave. Sophie and Elliot agree, but the lovesick puppies are hooking up on one of the racing consoles.

‘Ditch ’em?’ Elliot suggests.

So we leave the arcade to wait outside for them to realise we’ve left. No word of a lie, it takes a full twenty minutes before Elliot’s phone rings, with Teddy asking where we are.

They only realised we ditched them when an employee asked them to move so others could use the game.

‘You guys are pathetic,’ I say when they walk through the door. ‘Twenty minutes. Really?’

‘We’re expressing our affection in a perfectly natural way,’ says Teddy. ‘No need to be jealous.’

After arriving home, I pull out my phone and tap on Marjolijn’s name. I shut my bedroom door and lie on my bed while it rings.

‘Jennifer!’ she answers in a cheerful tone. ‘So wonderful to hear from you, mijn engeltje. Did you return home safely?’

‘Yeah, we got back yesterday. It was a tiring drive. How’s the show going?’

‘Very well, thank you. All is going to plan and there have been no dramas.’

‘When are you coming down to Melbourne?’

‘Tomorrow. We have our last show here tonight, then a break for a week, and then we begin performing in Melbourne.’

‘Would you like to come around and have dinner one night before the show starts? My friend – the one you spoke to on the phone – would love to meet you and I think my family would, too.’

‘Jennifer, that would be spectacular.’

I give her my address and we make plans for Friday night.

After I hang up I realise I probably should’ve run that by my parents first.

Mum’s reading a medical journal on the lounge when I ask her. She peers at me with a raised eyebrow. ‘You want me to allow an immigrant into this house?’

I certainly hadn’t expected that response.

Before I can say anything, she begins to laugh. ‘I’m kidding. Of course she can join us for dinner. Your father and I would love to meet her.’