Next day, I’m catching the train back to Melbourne. It’s been arranged. Ruben drops Kite at school then takes me to the train station, but I’m not too sad to say goodbye this time because not only have I been well and truly kissed, I’ve a good feeling I’ll be back to join the circus. Ruben says he’ll be ringing me in the next couple of days to let me know.
It’s only as I’m saying goodbye to Ruben that I suddenly remember Harold Barton’s letter. I’d been so distracted by my own excitement that I’d forgotten all about it.
Ruben reads it right there on the platform. He raises his eyebrows as he reads and then looks at me, surprised.
‘Did you know what this was about?’
‘No.’ I begin to feel worried.
‘He wants to join the circus.’
‘Harold Barton!’ I couldn’t believe it. ‘Harold Barton wants to join the circus? How? I mean, what does he do?’
‘Apparently he juggles. He says here he can do tennis and other tricks.’
‘He never told me that.’
‘No. Well, I think the lad holds his cards quite close.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean there’s quite a lot you wouldn’t know about Harold Barton because he hides it, but he’s had a tough time.’
‘A hard time? I thought he had it easy. He looks like he does.’
‘Yeah. I know he gets lots of things. His parents spend money on him because they feel guilty they don’t get on; in fact I think they’re estranged. His dad is a difficult man. Very troubled. I don’t think he’s really able to father Harold at all. In fact the circus would probably be very good for Harold. Why don’t you tell him to give me a call?’
‘Is his father mean to him?’
‘I don’t know exactly what goes on. I just know it’s a difficult home life for Harold. He’s not as tough as he seems.’
All of a sudden there’s a lot of things I want to ask Ruben because I have a feeling he knows stuff, I mean the underneath stuff, the great lurking realness. But my train has arrived and he’s ushering me towards it. For one thing, I’m wondering how he knows all that about Harold. Has he spoken to Harold? I even remember once Harold asking me about my dad and I wasn’t being very friendly because I always assume with Harold that I have to be ready for an attack. Maybe Harold really wanted to talk. Poor Harold, I think to myself, and it almost shocks me to have a sympathetic thought for Harold Barton.
But I’m happy to wriggle into my seat on the train because I can sense a bit of thinking coming on and there’s nothing better than a train ride for getting the mind in a loose and rambling mood. Before I even start on Harold Barton, I want to go over the night before’s spectacular kissing event.
I stare out the train window and immediately plunge down like a deep-sea diver into my memory of it and swim in a floating, winding way through the words and feelings and moments as if they are a strange shimmering wonderland. But somewhere in the wonderland there’s an awkward and unexpected bend, something I can’t just glide through or know how to negotiate. It comes after the kiss which, of course, eventually stopped, since everything does have to stop some time, or at least change and become something else, even though there are some moments you want to just keep going on and on. I don’t know how it stopped, I just remember Kite looking at me and I think our eyes were still kissing, or if eyes had hands then our eyes were holding each other, and Kite said, ‘Hey, I really like you, Cedar.’
I didn’t say anything, except I smiled and kissed him right on the soft spot near his eye. I don’t know why I didn’t say anything; maybe I didn’t want to just copy or follow. Instead, I looked down at our hands, which were wound up together. And then Kite stood up, heaving me up with him. He led me inside, and that’s when we came to the hard corner. He took me to his bedroom.
At the door he turned towards me.
I said, ‘Where are we going?’
It was obvious of course, but I’d begun to feel like everything was getting deep way too fast and I needed a moment to work out where I was.
He grinned and whispered, ‘Come and lie on my bed,’ and I grinned too, because what could be better than to kiss and press your whole body close all at once?
But what if things went even further? What if he put his hand up my shirt and discovered I had only small boobs? What if he didn’t like me anymore after that? Maybe he’d only just decided he did like me and I didn’t want him to change his mind now. But if I didn’t go and lie on his bed, would he think I was a boring old prude? In fact, was I being a boring old prude? Was I being backward? I breathed in. Come on, Cedar, I said to myself. If someone’s going to love you, they have to know you, small boobs and all.
‘Okay,’ I said, just like that, just because I didn’t want to be a scaredy cat. And just as we began to plunge into the bedroom, Ruben emerged from the bathroom in his blue spot pyjamas and we all stopped moving and stood there in the hall, trapped in this feeling that Ruben had just caught us out, and even Ruben didn’t know quite how to act or what to say. The first thing that happened was Kite let my hand drop and Ruben smiled softly and coughed and said he thought we should both be in our own beds by now, and he looked at Kite and said he’d assured my mother that he’d take good care of me while I was staying with him. Kite just grinned and turned me by the shoulders towards my room.
‘She was just on her way,’ he said.
‘Good night,’ I said, and off I scurried, leaving them to sort out their father and son stuff in the hall.
Once I got into my own bed I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed, and even now, as the train chugs along, I can’t work it out.
When you really, really want someone to like you, you do everything you can to make yourself likeable. Some people, like Marnie, put on make-up to look more appealing. Others, like Harold Barton, flash their new enviable things around, as if those things are extra limbs of themselves. Whereas someone like Caramella has the opposite strategy. She tries always to deflect attention away from herself by wearing big T-shirts and by being always more interested in you.
It’s normal to hide your real self away under make-up, or shirts, or with things or diversions. My way of making myself likeable is to put on an act. With Kite, I act like I’m not jealous or like I’m not scared, and last night I was even prepared to act like I’m not shy about certain possible physical things that could happen between a boy and a girl, when really I am. I’m very shy, actually.
So, what happens if you make a boy like you, but it’s the other carefully constructed version of you that he likes; the one with lipstick on, or the one with the Wonder Bra, or the one with the bold, brave, easygoing, very cool act? What happens if he likes that you and not the real you, the shy, uncertain you? How long can you keep wearing your lipstick? How long can you hide the real you?
And if boys do it too, what version of Kite am I in love with anyway? What is he hiding from me? Is he really as great as I think he is? For instance, just because he kisses me doesn’t mean he isn’t kissing Lola as well. When I think about it, Kite sure doesn’t give much of himself over. We’ve never even spoken together about feelings, or us, and that’s because I can tell he wouldn’t like to speak, so I make it easy for him to keep himself to himself. But, come to think of it, what I really want is to sit down and talk without hiding or pretending or putting on an act.
It’s not as easy as you think to be yourself, and I mean your true, quaking, bumpy, hurtable, hungry self. Maybe what you really are is just a shape, like this:
which is always changing, always aiming to become a more defined and certain spectacular shape like this:
though really what you need to become is just more comfortable with the shape that you are:
because even that shape will keep changing:
and changing:
