Marcia was grateful not to have to run the gauntlet at the local primary school with her son, but merely grunted in reply as Calli tentatively offered to drop him off. The mother hugged the little boy and kissed his forehead with her coffee breath, still clutching the mug in her left hand as she swallowed a cocktail of prescribed drugs meant to alter her mood, but mostly failed.
The children beat a hasty retreat and set out down Achilles Rise and through the intersection onto Discovery Drive. “Has she got a big case on again?” Jase asked, referring to his mother’s role as a lawyer. Calli nodded enthusiastically but had no idea anymore. Marcia rarely spoke about anything, preferring instead to rage about small wrongdoings at home, usually aimed at her eldest daughter. Calli often wondered if Danny had also been the buffer in his role as eldest, but it hadn’t seemed that way. Marcia didn’t like her attractive daughter and made it abundantly clear. Calli had taken to working extra hard at school, desperate to secure a university place in a city far away from Hamilton. As a bright Year 12, she only had three more terms of this year remaining and then next year to survive. Then she would be gone. A tug on her hand as Jase spied a fluffy cat and pointed, caused her heart to constrict painfully with sadness. He was the one bright point in her life and the only thing she would miss about the city.
The route to school, once rural, was now bisected by a road that cars drove along at 80km. But the pavements were huge and set back from the grey highway, separated by a large grassed berm and as promised, Jase skipped and ran and covered the distance swiftly. He came back for Calli’s offered hand to negotiate the busy roundabout as Resolution Drive intersected Borman Road and then skipped off again, his Thomas the Tank Engine backpack bouncing up and down on his slender shoulders. Calli’s heavy bag contained text books and work folders. She sincerely wished all she needed to carry was her lunch and a change of shorts and undies. “Swap with you, Jase,” Calli grinned, offering him her weighty bag and he smiled at her through sultry eyes and kept skipping.
Another small boy loped past her, catching the corner of her bag with his shoulder as he went. He listed a little as he lolloped along and Calli reasoned it was clumsiness rather than on purpose as she stopped to readjust the strap on her shoulder, feeling the weight dragging her spine sideways excruciatingly.
“Sorry,” came a male voice from behind her. “He was running to catch up with his friend.”
Calli looked harder at the dark mop-headed child, now tagging Jase on the back. The calliper on his right leg was quickly evident against the tiny tanned calf underneath it. Her heart sank into her sandals. They lived next door and would have heard Marcia’s shrieks about their damn dog earlier. “It’s fine,” she said, her manner brusque and formal. “Just an accident.” Calli deliberately didn’t look at the teenager striding quickly next to her. She already knew he was good-looking, hair the colour of black coffee, casually tipping over speckled brown eyes. A ready smile and a cute dimple had turned in her direction a few times, but she ignored it. Her mother would rant if Calli even looked his way.
The little boys were less than fifty metres ahead, but being silly on the pavement. The concrete walkway narrowed to account for the roundabout and as Jase giggled and leaped around, he came dangerously close to the edge.
“Jase!” Calli screamed as a car began negotiating the roundabout and her brother lurched again, but the sound of the traffic dulled her voice and the boys didn’t hear her cry.
The man-boy next to her ran as she covered her face with her hands. All that remained of him was a khaki green satchel, hastily flung on the ground. He crossed the dividing tarmac path with ease, reaching the two boys in a matter of seconds, yanking them both away from the traffic to safety and keeping hold of them in a tense grip. Calli gulped as Danny’s death worked its way back up her throat, filling her head and leaking out of her eyes and nose shamelessly. Relief was there somewhere, but for the moment, all she could feel was the awful blackness, descending down over her eyes and filling her lungs with oxygen-stealing fingers.
By the time Declan returned to the place where his bag lay in a heap on the path, dragging the little boys along with firm hands, Calli bent double, gasping for breath, seeing Danny’s face as he turned to wave to her before he died. Inside her head, she heard the lorry’s engine brakes and the muffled thud as her beautiful older brother’s body became crushed underneath the enormous wheels. It replayed over and over in her vision like a scratched DVD. Calli’s body froze, even as it sweated and she felt physically sick.
The sound of the metal caliper scraping on the pavement told her the children were obeying Declan’s sharp order to ‘sit,’ which crept through the sound of Calli’s own heartbeat and her violent, ragged breathing. The little boy’s leg brace made the unusual sound some more as he shuffled around on the ground. Both boys were utterly silent and Calli knew if she looked at Jase, he would cry. A tear dripped off the end of her nose, surprising her. Calli hadn’t registered she was crying and fought to contain the terrible animal noises that grappled to escape from her mouth.
The stable arms of the boy next to her forced her to stand upright. Air whooshed back into her lungs and to her embarrassment, he pulled her face into his collarbone and held her, as though understanding the grid reference for a place in which Calli had so entirely lost herself. They embraced for a while until the foot and road traffic increased and Declan became aware of people staring. He lifted Calli’s chin and used the cuff of his school jumper gripped around his thumb to brush the tears and snot away from her face. It was a tender action and his face was one of concentration and so compassion laden, his concern almost unpicked her again. Shouldering both Calli’s heavy school bag and his own, Declan pulled at her arm and made her walk. “Stay with us!” he commanded the boys gruffly and the five year olds obeyed, linking hands as best friends and walking just a few metres in front. Calli knew she should say something, but thank you seemed pathetic to her internal ears, even before the words could fall from her mouth. So she focused on scrubbing at her swollen eyes with a crumpled tissue from her blazer pocket and concentrated hard on taking decent breaths as the spasm in her lungs released its hold. “You ok?” he asked her once and she nodded gratefully.
“Sorry,” she managed finally, feeling a complete idiot. They trooped along in silence, navigating Borman Road and finding themselves almost at the primary school nestled at the foot of lush, green, rolling hills in the northernmost suburb of the city.
“Sorry Dec,” his little brother called back over his shoulder as they neared the front gates, his small face a mask of sorrow. The older boy did a curious uplift of his face, a kind of upside-down-nod and it seemed to settle the child, who resumed his brisk walk alongside Jase, his ungainly leg swinging out at a peculiar angle. Calli worked on her breathing and tried to renegotiate her equilibrium with some success.
At the gates, amongst the yummy mummies driving SUV’s which disgorged a single child and the ones in leggings and flip-flops, Calli and Declan stood out like beacons in their school uniform. To Calli’s surprise, Declan reached down and kissed his brother, Levi on the forehead and ruffled his hair.
Jase buried his face in his sister’s stomach and hugged her hard. “I love you, Calli Walli,” he whispered and smiled up at her. A soft breeze stroked his white-blonde hair, bringing the scent of the Tasman Sea with it and his pale, freckled skin seemed to shimmer ethereally. It acted as a physical kick to Calli’s chest, as fear of losing this brother too, cut through her sensibility like a knife. Her lower lip wobbled and tears rose unbidden to hover on the edges of her eyelids. Jase looked suddenly fearful.
“Go,” Declan said roughly to him, pressing him away from the distraught girl. “Levi’s waiting for you. Look.”
With the sudden realisation his friend found it hard to stand for long periods, Jase’s kind nature prevailed and he skipped quickly up the front path to the other boy and taking his arm, led him inside the building. Calli raised a hand to wave to him, hoping he would look back at her, but he didn’t, suddenly preoccupied with the newness of his day. She put her useless hand back down, embarrassed at having betrayed herself in front of this stranger so monumentally.
Declan walked hurriedly away, knowing the distance between the primary and high schools was greater than the time they had left to cover it before being marked absent. But Calli seemed rooted to the spot, blatantly in the way of mothers with buggies and baby car seats, who were forced to move around her like flood waters around a boulder. Managing the unwieldy school bags, Declan retrieved her, gripping her fragile wrist and hauling her towards him, almost colliding with a babbling group of tiny females who scattered out of the way of the bigger children with awe.
Calli was tugged none too roughly down the street, gradually coming back to life and checking the time on her phone as she panicked about being late.
“I cut across country,” Declan informed her, turning through a partially open field gate and picking up the pace. The ground was stubbly and rough going, evidently decimated by the cloven hooves and hungry mouths of cattle. Calli followed him sheepishly, tripping over lumps of hardened mud and trying desperately to avoid the cow dung which littered their path. After ten minutes of skirting paddocks, she was surprised to find herself at the back gate of the high school.
“This gate is locked,” she said, bemused as Declan stuck his arm over the high, solid gate.
“It is,” he said, turning to smile smugly at Calli as he felt around for a bolt on the other side. There came a grating sound and click, upon which the wooden panel swung inwards with a creak. Once they were through, Declan shot the bolt home again and held his arms wide, palms upward like a proud magician. “It saves about ten minutes of walking round by road. I do it most days.”
“That’s awesome,” Calli beamed, relieved. She glanced back at the position of the bolt on the gate and frowned. “I probably wouldn’t be able to reach from outside though. I’m not tall enough.” She sounded wistful and strangely sad.
“You’ll be right,” he said, his expression kind and inviting, “just make sure you walk with me and Levi if you have to drop your brother again.”
Calli nodded, feeling awkward, the memory of Marcia’s rants about Declan’s family next door reminding her of their precarious existence at the mercy of angry adults. Declan’s mother often worked nights and Marcia decided, therefore, she must be a prostitute, expressing her opinion loudly both inside the property and out. The lady next door always smiled nicely at Calli and never looked overdressed or tarted up. Calli had heard her playing with her children over the fence. No screaming or yelling came from their house. The noisiest thing she ever heard was the faint strumming of guitar music. Her cheeks graduated to an uncomfortably familiar pink and Calli hated her body for betraying her again. Declan didn’t seem to have noticed, trudging across the school field, still carrying both bags.
Maori features, a strong nose and huge, almond shaped, brown eyes flicked intermittently across to Calli. Declan’s role in the first fifteen rugby team dictated a muscular and well-toned frame, from lunchtimes spent in the school gym. He was a promising midfield player, named in the squad a few weeks ago for the upcoming season, the only Year 12 amongst the elite handful of boys.
“Will rugby practice start soon after school?” Calli asked, trying desperately to make conversation and give her face tones a chance to calm down.
“Next term,” he smiled down at her. “We’ve just been having weekend trainings up to now and running our own programs in the gym at lunchtime.”
“Did your dog get out last night?” Calli asked, keeping her voice casual, kicking herself inwardly at the stupidity of her question and the trouble such a discussion could potentially lead to. Declan looked down at her curiously.
“Our dog died about six months ago. She was quite old, so it wasn’t unexpected. We were all upset. Dad brought her home when I was little. I guess she was the last link to him.”
“To your dad?” Calli asked foolishly, mindful of the fact she’d never seen an adult male at their place. It was another reason for Marcia’s unkind fantasy that Declan’s mother was a hooker. The boy nodded a dark, melancholy action which betrayed a perpetual misery.
“He died when I was in Year 8,” Declan said, perhaps keen to dispel any erroneous conclusions about absent fathers or prison sentences. “We bought the house next door to you shortly after. Levi was only a year old.”
“That’s so sad,” Calli breathed with feeling and Declan turned a tight, painful smile in her direction. The words seemed to gush from him, sensing the empathy in the girl trotting to keep up with his long stride.
“Bowel cancer,” he blurted, “he fought it a few times but it kept coming back in different organs. He kept quiet about the symptoms the last time, until it was too late. He got real skinny, but we thought it was just all the stress of having Levi and coping with all the trips up to the pediatric specialists in Auckland. Mum’s a nurse...” Declan stopped dead in the middle of the rugby pitch. “She blames herself - thinks she should have noticed he was ill again.”
Calli had accidentally run on ahead in her attempt to glide along elegantly next to him, failing miserably as her pony tail bounced on her head like a rag doll and the side seam of her skirt worked its way round to the front. She skidded to a halt and whipped around to face him as Declan stood prone on the grass, staring at a daisy as though everything was its fault. He seemed lost, a body placed statuesquely on display while the mind wandered elsewhere through time and space. The fleeting thought stomped through Calli’s mind that two of her friends were already going to be jealous at the fact Declan had put his arms around her and now, well, what was she going to do now?
Reaching out, Calli took Declan’s clenched fist between her hands, feeling his skin soft and yet masculine like her father’s, even though he was only just seventeen. She remembered a few weeks back, some of his mates bringing in party poppers and shrouding him in the long, colourful strands out on the field at lunchtime for a laugh. It clung to his uniform and hair and he had taken the birthday surprise well, as they congratulated him on another annual milestone and slapped him heartily on the back. Declan had a tight knit group of friends who enjoyed safety in numbers in the volatile environment that was Hamilton North College of Education. Some of the boys were older, already Year 13 and selected for the rugby team but they met up at break times and stuck together loyally. The wider school sneered and mocked them for being ‘God botherers,' whilst envying the strong bond between them. A little knot of girls orbited around the males, safe in their comfortable universe, but strangely there was never any gossip. Nothing emanated from the ranks of the ‘chosen’ which could be used as missiles by the rest of the general populace. Calli’s friends drooled in Declan’s direction, watching the handsome boy from afar, but they would never dare to venture into his particular galaxy.
“We need to go,” Calli said gently, feeling as though she had covered his hands with hers for a lifetime, when it was a matter of mere seconds. He nodded and set off again, still carrying both bags, but his face showed a raw and childishly open grief.
By the time they reached the tennis courts, Declan had recovered and his usual jovial smile returned. He handed Calli’s bag over and his eyes crinkled pleasantly at the corners as he said goodbye. She felt momentarily stupid thanking him, but he brushed it off effortlessly. “See ya later, huh?”
Calli nodded gormlessly. They shared most of the same classes but bizarrely never spoke. Declan handed Calli a worksheet once in English, but that was about it. In Year 10, he was good-looking in that way boys have, something of the ‘x factor’ with the promise of better to come, but by Year 12, he was a fully-fledged hunk. If he only hung with a different group of friends, he could be the hottest date in school.