As soon as I got off the phone to Razz everything went into fast forward. Mum started ironing some clothes and I wolfed down half a sandwich then threw myself in the shower. Just as I was finished getting dressed Mrs Zorzotto arrived with a pretty cool jacket Razz had bought specially for the night as well as some roses he’d got for Sally. Then, less than an hour after agreeing to the whole thing, I was being dropped off by Razz’s mum at the Nofkes’ house.
Mrs Nofke met me at the door and took me into the lounge room. I was there talking to her and Mr Nofke about Razz’s accident when Sally came in. I could tell you plenty of things about her. I could tell you the colour of her dress and what it looked like. And I could tell you about her long dark hair and how it was lifted up off her shoulders. I could tell you all that kind of stuff. But none of it would come close to telling you how beautiful she looked.
‘Hey,’ she said with a smile.
Her smile was beautiful too. But there was something missing from it. And it was missing because of me. It was missing because I wasn’t the one that Sally Nofke really wanted to be smiling at right then. I wasn’t the one she wanted to look beautiful for.
I ‘hey’-ed her back and handed over Razz’s flowers. I told her how great she looked but it sounded pathetic and I frantically searched my mind for something better. I came up with, ‘Really great’. Genius! Watch your back, Billy Shakespeare. There’s a new kid on the block! Sally blushed a little bit, then Mr Nofke left to get himself ‘organised’ to drive us to the dance and Mrs Nofke said she’d better ‘pop those roses in some water’ and then Sally and I were alone.
As soon as her parents were gone, a little crease formed in the middle of Sally’s forehead as if she was feeling a pinprick of pain and her smile went all crooked. ‘Thanks for doing this, Ishmael,’ she said. ‘You don’t mind too much, do you?’
‘Mind? Are you kidding? I went to all the trouble of putting a contract out on Razz and hiring a hit man to throw him head first into a wall, didn’t I?’
I know what you’re wondering – How does he come up with them? At least Sally was nice enough to manage a laugh.
‘Thanks, Ishmael. But really, I’m sorry for dragging you into this. You probably had heaps of other things you wanted to do.’
The amazing thing was that Sally seemed to actually believe there was a possibility this could be true.
‘Well, Mum did want me to clean out the bottom of the budgie cage, so I was pretty disappointed about missing out on that. Anyway I’m the one who should be saying sorry to you.’
‘You? Why?’
‘For not being Razz.’
Sally shook her head.
‘Well then, I guess I should apologise to you too, shouldn’t I? You know, for not being Kelly.’
We both smiled then and I tried to imagine Kelly Faulkner standing there in front of me, but the image kept fading into Sally.
‘You know what I think we should do?’ she said. ‘I think tonight we should forget about who we’re not and stick with who we are and just have fun. What do you think?’
‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ I told her.
‘Then here’s to our plan and here’s to us,’ Sally said, holding out an imaginary glass. I followed her lead and we clinked two invisible drinks together.
And for quite a while that night, our plan worked just fine. In fact I was enjoying myself so much that I started to feel a bit guilty. Here I was dancing, laughing and chatting with Sally while Razz was stuck in hospital thinking I was a hero.
I didn’t deserve that title. True heroes had to face big challenges. They had to be put to the test. How could I be a hero then? Spending time with Sally Nofke at the Lourdes Semi-formal was easy. I wasn’t being tested at all.
But I was about to be – and severely.