I head straight for the back room when I get to Switch, Parkville’s only decent cafe. Dan’s at his usual table, exactly where he was the first time I saw him, the day Nicky took me there for our weekly tutoring session and she pointed out the Parkville High boy with Mick Jagger’s lips and Joey Ramone’s hair. I wasn’t sure it was such a great combination back then, but now I definitely see the appeal.
While Dan finishes his requisite daily serve of lasagne, we compare how little work we did in classes today and conclude that the last week of the school year was an utter waste of time. I don’t mention the run-in with Belinda. Dan saw the Bs at their worst during the co-production of My Fair Lady our schools put on this year. He couldn’t understand why I was trying to be friends with them then and he doesn’t get why they still bother me so much now.
“At least I managed to put my last Computing Studies lesson to good use,” he says, pulling some printed pages from his folder. “I looked up all the bike trails within fifty kilometres of Parkville. I thought we could do a few long rides – take a picnic and head for the hills for the day. Somewhere parent-free.”
I smile my agreement. Dan’s dad recently moved his child psychology practice to their house so that he can keep closer tabs on his wayward son. And uni holidays have started, which means that Mum and Dad are home a lot more, so the time Dan and I get to be alone has been limited to when we’re at Switch or in the local park, neither of which is exactly private.
“Sounds perfect,” I say, suppressing the urge to add that spending time with him is what I’m looking forward to most these holidays.
“Walk or ride?” asks Dan as we unchain our bikes.
“Let’s walk. It’s too hot to ride.” Besides, walking takes almost twice as long.
“Did I tell you I got Malone back for giving me detention every day last week?” says Dan as we wheel our bikes side by side towards Parkville Park, the unofficial halfway point between our houses. “He thought he’d won but when he tracks down that fishy smell coming from under his filing cabinet on the first day of term, he’ll know who had the last laugh.”
Dan’s battle with his deputy principal has been going on since before we met. I think it’s pointless, because teachers have all the power, but Dan won’t let it go, even though it means he spends hours in detention each week instead of with me.
“Do you want to be sent to boarding school?” I ask.
“It’ll never happen – the Academy’s just another one of Dad’s empty threats. By the time Malone finds that tuna sandwich, my father’ll have moved on to something else. Right now he’s too busy nagging me to go and see Mum to care what I do at school.”
“Your mum?” I can’t hide the surprise in my voice. “Do you want to?”
“As if. She didn’t want me around before, so I don’t see why I should play the good son just because she’s panicking about the baby arriving next month. Anyway, Stepdag Steve made it pretty clear that I’m not welcome in Little Ridge.”
Dan’s barely spoken about what happened when he took off to his mum’s house on the coast without telling anyone, except to say that when he got there she and her new husband were busy turning his room into a nursery. It was before we were going out, or even good friends, so I didn’t feel like I could drill him for details at the time, but I know it hurt Dan that her immediate reaction was to call his dad and tell him to come and pick up his son.
“Dr Phil wouldn’t make you go, would he?” I ask, thinking that surely a child psychologist wouldn’t believe it was a good idea to send his own son back to the mother who’d rejected him. Then again, if his bestselling book Raising Them Right: How to handle teenagers (aka my mum’s parenting bible) is anything to go by, Dr Phillip Fairchild isn’t nearly as concerned with how kids feel as he is with them doing what their parents want them to.
“He says he’ll respect my decision but he’s still trying to guilt me into it. He keeps saying Mum feels bad about what happened and that she wants us to spend time together before the baby comes.”
“Maybe she does.”
“Maybe I don’t.”
After four months together, I know Dan well enough not to push the conversation. Forcing him to talk when he doesn’t want to only makes him clam up more. Besides, we’re almost in the middle of the park, at the tree where we had our first real kiss.
He stops dead in front of it and smiles mischievously. “Want to take a detour?”
Yet again, I am astounded by how quickly teenage boys’ moods can change. Siouxsie reckons it’s all the testosterone; apparently, they can’t go more than forty-five seconds without thinking about sex. That said, Dan isn’t the only one who’s keen to relive old times. We lean our bikes against the path-facing side of Our Tree and meet each other on the more secluded side. The tree is a big old Moreton Bay fig, which, judging by the graffiti carved into it (Jim loves Elsie, Sara loves Ty, PK 4 BJ 4eva, et cetera, et cetera), we’re not the first couple to claim as our own.
Dan leans back against the rough bark and opens his arms to me. Even though he’s done it many times now, seeing him there, waiting for me, makes me catch my breath. I take a step closer and reach my hands to meet his. Our fingers entwine as he draws me in. For a moment I am outside my body, watching from a distance. I see us as I’m sure the adults passing on their way home do: a couple of scrawny kids playing grown-ups. But then Dan’s arms wrap around me and his chest presses against mine and our lips meet, and I am back in my body, feeling every millimetre of skin that joins us, even through our clothes. We kiss cautiously at first, as if we need to get reacquainted, to remind ourselves that we know what we’re doing. But this isn’t like our first kiss, when we fumbled and didn’t know what to do with our hands and we bumped noses and clicked teeth. We know each other now.
“Get a room!” screeches a familiar, half-broken voice behind me.
Dan’s right hand lifts from the small of my back; I guess that he’s giving my little brother the finger. “Ignore him,” he whispers, kissing the spot near my ear that always makes me shiver.
But when we hear the cackle of adolescent male laughter that indicates Ziggy isn’t alone, we pull apart. Ziggy and his best friend, Paul “Biggie” Biggins, are clutching each other and pretending to kiss with their tongues hanging out. The rest of their friends practically wet themselves at the display.
“Oh, Daniel,” squeaks Ziggy in a high-pitched voice. “You’re such a hunk. I could suck face with you all day.”
“Me too, Freia,” says Biggie. “Except your breath stinks.” He pushes Ziggy away and they crack up again.
“Don’t be jealous, Zig,” says Dan. “You’ll get your turn one day.”
Ziggy pretends to gag. “Isn’t there a law against that?”
“He didn’t mean with me, idiot,” I say, cursing my brother’s mission to wreck every good moment in my life. “What are you doing here anyway? Didn’t Mum say if she caught you playing footy in your school uniform again, you won’t get any Christmas presents?”
“She’s the one who told us to get out of the house,” says Ziggy, passing the ball to Biggie. “She’s got PMS big-time.”
Ever since Ziggy learned about periods in Health and Development, every time Mum or I are in a bad mood, he blames PMS. He thinks it’s hysterically funny. Dad knows better than to comment.
“You’d better hope you get a little sister,” I tell Dan as we reclaim our bikes.
I brace myself as I turn my key in the front door of the nondescript brown-brick terrace I’ve lived in my whole life, just in case Ziggy was telling the truth about Mum’s bad mood. She’s been in a bit of a funk for the past couple of weeks, ever since she found out she didn’t get the promotion she applied for at uni. She claims she doesn’t care that it went to a man who’s ten years younger than her and is better known for his column in the Sunday newspaper than his articles in literary journals, but she hasn’t been herself since. Vicky reckons she’s having a midlife crisis about turning fifty-five earlier this year. I’d argue that it’s ten years too late for that, but Mum’s such a health nut she could well live past a hundred.
Turns out, I needn’t have worried. Mum’s tucked away in her study with the door closed, reading or researching, or whatever professors do in their holidays. I go to my room, take off my hideous green-and-brown checked uniform and throw it in the direction of the laundry basket, which, true to my basketball record, it misses. I make a mental note to retrieve it sometime in the next six weeks, before pulling on shorts and a T-shirt and flopping onto my bed next to Dad’s ancient cat, Boris, who pretty much only leaves my room to eat or use his kitty litter these days. Boris opens one eye to give me the feline death stare, sighs and goes back to sleep.
I pick up the photo I keep on my bedside table. It’s the one Steph took of me and Dan at the cast party for My Fair Lady – our first kind-of-real date. We’re sitting on a bench in Belinda Sinclair’s backyard, twisting to face each other, both laughing, and Dan’s hand is on my knee. Until that night I wasn’t even sure he liked me.
Now I’ve got much bigger things to think about. Like, how do you know when you’re in love, compared to, say, just really wanting to spend twenty-four hours a day kissing someone’s lips off? And at what point after this profound realisation should you tell them? They should teach you about this stuff in school. Forget learning irregular French verbs and what the green light symbolises in The Great Gatsby. In five years time I bet neither of those things will make any difference to me, whereas I can see myself still questioning whether I’m actually in love or just deluded by hormones.
I can’t talk to my friends about it because that’d violate the unspoken don’t-go-on-about-your-boyfriend code we have.
I remember what it was like having to listen to the Bs whinge about how their latest male victim wasn’t paying them enough attention or adoring them enough or whatever. They went on and on about it, knowing how much Kate wanted a boyfriend and how jealous she was of them. I’m not about to do that to my new friends, even if none of them has expressed any sign of envy.
Possible reactions if I tell Dan I love him
1. Best-case scenario: agreement, followed by we’re-in-love snogging marathon.
2. More likely: awkward silence, followed by I-really-like-you-but … speech.
3. Frighteningly possible: awkward silence, followed by swift change of topic and pretending the L-word was never uttered.
This is what I hatehatehate about having a boyfriend: the hours wasted dissecting our relationship to attempt to guess where it’s going, trying to keep my inner Hysterical Girlfriend at bay.
The only way to calm my brain at times like this is to dance until I’m not thinking about anything any more. A year ago I would’ve turned to Kylie Minogue’s Greatest Hits for comfort, but thanks to Dan and Siouxsie, my music collection’s increased tenfold. I put Ramones Mania into my CD player, crank up the volume on the tinny little speakers and press play, but I barely manage a warm-up wiggle before the shouting starts.