our school and parked out the front. He turned the engine off and sat there.
‘What exactly are we doing?’ I asked.
‘Waiting.’
‘For what?’
‘Morning tea, when everyone comes out, we’ll go and talk to her. All nice and everything, just a few questions.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘You know where she sits, don’t you?’
‘Nah.’
‘Ah … don’t be a jerk, you do.’
I did know where Leah sat – most of the time it was in the library by herself, hiding in one of the back corners on a beanbag behind a book. But I wasn’t about to tell Ray that. With a bit of luck, Leah wouldn’t even be at school. If it really was her brother who’d blown up the kindy and she knew it, or even guessed it, she’d be at home wondering how the hell she would ever set foot outside her front door again. And if it wasn’t, which I was almost sure it wasn’t, then there was a good chance she was off trying to find her brother anyway.
The bell rang out across the playground, sharp and loud. Kids dressed in green- and blue-checked shirts dawdled out of classrooms, chatting, kicking at stones, dragging backpacks along the asphalt. It was weird to see so many kids being normal, going through the routine of their day like they always had.
‘There she is!’ Ray said.
‘What? Where?’
Before I’d even spotted Leah, Ray was out of the car. He left his door wide open, ran around the front of the car and hopped over the fence.
‘Ray! Wait up!’
But he didn’t stop.
I walked after him, my head down, not wanting to attract attention. The fact that I didn’t have my uniform on was bad enough, worse was the possibility that some of my friends might see me, come up and want to say something, but not know what to say. Like Tom. Or even worse … I’d start crying. Bloody Ray.
When I caught up to Ray, he was agitated. He had Leah cornered between the maths block and the English block. She was looking past him, as if she was trying to pretend he wasn’t there. Or maybe hoping someone would come and rescue her. Her scraggly, lank hair hung over her face; her backpack slung over one shoulder.
‘Look,’ Ray was saying, ‘it’s not as if you’re in trouble or anything. We know it had nothing to do with you – you can’t help the family you’re born into – but we’re just trying to work out what happened, that’s all. You’d do the same if it was your mum and sister who’d been blown up. You’d want to know what had happened, wouldn’t you?’
Leah didn’t even shrug her shoulders. It was hard to tell whether she’d heard Ray or not.
‘So, do you know? Do you know where your brother is?’
She still didn’t answer.
‘You got trouble hearing or something?’ Ray was a good head taller than Leah. He was standing close enough to be intimidating, to lean in over the top of her. His hands were shoved deep in the pockets of his low-slung jeans, as if he wanted to be careful of them, wanted to make sure they were stored away where it would be hard for him to access them.
I wanted to tell him to back off. That she could hear just fine. Tell him she wasn’t talking because she was scared, scared that if she said the wrong thing, he’d start laying into her, as if she was a boxing bag at the gym. Instead, like the coward I am, I stood behind him embarrassed and awkward, scared of what would happen if Ray’s anger turned towards me. Kids were giving us sideways glances as they walked past, whispering, some of them pointing. Leah wasn’t that well known, didn’t seem to have any friends, but it wouldn’t be long before someone went and got a teacher.
‘All I need to know, Leah,’ Ray spoke slowly and clearly as if he might have been speaking to someone who was hard of hearing, ‘is if you’ve seen your brother. If he’s been home over the past few days or not. That’s all; it’s simple. Either you have or you haven’t.’
Leah looked at Ray for the first time. There were tears in her eyes, her bottom lip shaking. She mumbled something that was hard to understand.
‘What?’ Ray said.
Leah swallowed, gulped at air, and said, ‘We haven’t seen him for three days. Dad’s worried sick – even though he keeps telling me he’s not, I know he is.’
‘Worried, is he, Leah? That’s no good, no good at all. Horrible when someone goes missing, isn’t it?’
Leah sniffed hard and wiped at her eyes.
‘So where was your brother the last time you saw him? And how was he? I mean, did he seem agitated? Upset? Or was he calm and all blissed out, like nothing was ever going to worry him again?’
Ray was talking as if he was a policeman gathering evidence. I wanted Leah to walk away, to tell Ray it was none of his business, tell him he should get himself a police badge before he started asking questions. But she didn’t.
Instead, she said, ‘Him and Dad had a big fight and he just got up and walked out. Didn’t tell us where he was going or when he was coming back.’
‘Did he take a bag with him?’
Leah was really crying now, her skinny body shaking. ‘It’s so quiet.’
Ray went to repeat the question.
‘Leave her,’ I said, more firmly than I meant to. ‘She doesn’t know anything.’
Ray ignored me. ‘Of course she knows something, don’t you, Leah. You can’t live with someone in the same house and not know what they’re up to.’
Leah had gone back to staring past him. I realised she was looking at the steps to the library.
‘Does he have a computer, or a notebook that he writes in? Have you been through his room, seen if there’s anything that might tell you where he’s racked off to?’
I wanted to reach past Ray and grab Leah’s arm, pull her clear of him. Tell her to get the hell out of here. But instead, I stood there while Ray kept going. His words were getting faster. His hands rubbed up and down the sides of his jeans. It was the first time I realised how tired he was, noticing the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. ‘Ray, let’s go. You’re tired. Let’s go home and have a rest.’
‘Yeah, right, who the fuck can rest when every time you close your eyes you see your little sister and mother being blown to pieces?’
I didn’t see Mr Gardener, my form teacher, walk up behind us.
Ray jumped at the weight of Mr Gardner’s hand on his shoulder.
‘Ray, Luka.’ His voice was firm but somehow also respectful.
Ray didn’t turn around. His eyes were still locked on Leah.
‘I was so sorry to hear about your mum and your little sister.’
Ray didn’t try and shrug the teacher’s hand off.
Leah moved to the side and started making her way past Ray, squeezing herself between the wall and Ray’s stare. Then, when she was clear enough, she made a sprint for the library stairs.
Mr Gardener didn’t seem to notice Leah’s panic, her flee for safety. He came around the front of Ray so he could make eye contact with both of us. ‘I don’t know how you begin to cope with such a horrific loss,’ he said, a look of genuine pain on his face. Then, as if he suddenly remembered where we were, he asked, ‘You two boys aren’t back at school yet, are you?’
‘Nah, not yet.’ Ray looked back over his shoulder in the direction Leah had gone.
‘So, just visiting?’
‘Sort of,’ Ray said.
‘Anything I can help you with?’
‘Nah, we were just having a chat with Leah, catching up.’
‘Oh. Right.’ Mr Gardener was one of those teachers who insisted on seeing the best in kids, even when there was nothing good at all to be found. ‘Well, if there’s anything I can do, anything at all, let me know, okay?’
Ray wasn’t listening; his eyes were roaming the playground. He hadn’t seen Leah go into the library.
‘Thanks, Mr Gardener,’ I said.
He reached out and ruffled my hair as if I was a kid in the first grade. ‘You’re welcome, Luka.’ He turned to walk towards his staff room, then stopped and turned back. ‘I forgot to tell you. We’re having a ceremony here next Wednesday, a memorial for everyone that was lost in the bombing. Maybe you’d like to come and bring your dad and anyone else who wants to come? Don’t feel you have to, just if you want to.’ Then he turned and walked back to his office.
Ray was quiet on the way home. The radio was off. He sat behind the wheel, leaning forward slightly, chewing the inside of his bottom lip. After a while, he said, ‘Doesn’t seem right, does it?’
‘What?’
‘His sister’s still alive while our sister’s in a thousand fucking pieces.’
‘You don’t know that Leah is his sister.’
Ray glanced at me. ‘Yeah, I do, Leah is Mathew Jacobsen’s sister.’ He said it slowly, as if I was stupid. ‘You know that.’
‘No, I mean you don’t know that Leah is the sister of the bomber. You don’t know that Mathew Jacobsen blew up the kindy.’
‘Yeah, well, it seems pretty obvious. The police mentioned his name as one of their suspects, and then young Leah tells us he’s been missing for three days. Not too hard to join the dots together.’
‘That’s a job for the police, not you.’
‘Yeah, that’s right, but they’re not doing it, are they? So, while they fumble around searching for their arseholes, I’m supposed to just sit by and pretend that everything’s okay? Hunky-dory fine. My mum and little sister are dead, but hey, life goes on, what’s the big deal?’
I stared out the window and counted the seconds between each telegraph pole as they flicked by. There was no point talking to Ray, not when he thought he was right and the rest of the world didn’t have a clue. Mum used to say he had anger management issues. She tried to get him to go to counsellors, but he always refused, said that she was his counsellor, that he didn’t need anyone else. Mum thought Ray probably had ADHD, but he’d never been diagnosed. She reckoned Uncle Scott was similar when he was a kid, although it was hard to see the similarity now. Maybe Ray would turn out to be a control freak like Uncle Scott, his house all neat and tidy. Hard to believe. When I would complain about Ray, she would tell me that I had to be kind and patient. Kind and patient were all well and good when you weren’t the person he was working things out on.
‘You’re a gutless dweeb, Luka. You know that? You always have been. I thought at one stage you might grow up and grow some balls, but it’s never gunna happen, is it? You’re always going to be Mister Nice Guy who doesn’t want to rock the boat.’
A footpath ran next to the road we were driving along, butted up against messy suburban gardens. There was a mother walking along with her kid on a tricycle.
‘Look at you: your mother and your sister are dead and all you can think about is – don’t upset anyone, don’t make anyone feel uncomfortable, don’t ask any awkward questions. If that’s the way you want to run your fucked-up little life, then that’s fine with me, but don’t expect me to be part of it. I won’t sit by while those lazy fuckers who call themselves a police force sit around doing nothing.’
I lunged without thinking, not knowing I was doing it until I felt the seatbelt brace against my full weight. I lashed out at Ray’s face with my fingernails, finding his right eye and digging in underneath the eyelid, pulling it away from his eyeball, scratching at the soft, wet tissue.
The car swerved and then jerked but kept going forward.
I felt the hot wet heat in Ray’s eye before he grabbed my hand and flung it away, his eyelid snapping back into place like a thick piece of elastic.
‘What the fuck!’ Ray was driving with his right hand and nursing his wounded eye with his left.
I managed to get completely free of the seatbelt and squash myself up against the windscreen where I could come at Ray from almost in front of him. My punches were short because I didn’t have enough room in the car to bring my fist right back, but they were sharp and landed with a sting. There was blood dribbling from Ray’s nose.
‘You’re going to make me crash, you little fucker; get the fuck off me!’
I hit harder and faster. It was as if I’d gone back to being seven, when Ray would tease me so bad that I couldn’t stop myself from lashing out. I had little sense of the car pulling over and stopping; the only thing I was aware of was Ray and my fists.
My head was pulling back ready to king-hit my forehead into Ray’s nose when his hand wrapped itself around my throat and jammed me up against the windscreen. I could still breathe, but I could feel the blood collecting in my head, pulsing in my temples.
Ray didn’t look at me. ‘Enough,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Do you hear me? Enough.’
I didn’t nod or agree. I concentrated on slowing my breath that was racing in skittish little bursts and stared straight out the back windscreen. Ray’s hand held me there a few seconds longer, like a splattered moth, caught on the glass.
When he did let me go, my head spun, a swirl of darkness. I crawled back into the passenger seat, hugging my knees to my chest. When my head had eased, I opened the car door.
‘Shut the fucking door and put your seatbelt back on.’
It took me a few seconds to make my body do what I wanted it to, to uncurl myself, grab my skateboard off the floor and step out of the car.
‘Fine, fucking fine. Go get fucked, Luka.’ Ray reached over and slammed the passenger door closed, then he hit the accelerator hard, making the tyres screech.
I didn’t go straight home. I spent the afternoon at the beach with my ‘skatey’ in my lap, staring out at the waves. The swell was good, nice rolling waves that chased along a green lip, but it was packed. So many people were there that it would have been impossible to catch a wave unless you wanted to have an argument.
I’d always had a fascination with waves and the ocean. Mum said if she didn’t watch me when I was little, I would make my way down to the shoreline and get tumbled along by the next wave that rolled in. She said any normal kid would have been in tears, but I would giggle as if the waves were tickling me instead of trying to crunch me into the sand.
The beach was scattered with young families. There were beach umbrellas, towels, buckets and spades, the smell of sunscreen, kids laughing and crying.
There was a family sitting near me: a mum and four kids. The youngest was a baby, not a tiny baby who had just been born, a bit bigger than that, but not big enough to walk yet – she had the whole crawling thing happening. Her mum, who had one of those big, floppy straw hats on, was trying to insist that the baby stay on the towel. The baby wasn’t listening though – she was much more interested in picking up handfuls of sand and eating it. The three older kids were boys: two of them were building sandcastles and then jumping on them. The third one, the one closest to the baby’s age, kept wandering down to the edge of the water, with a bulging soggy nappy between his legs, making his mum get up and chase him. Three boys and then a girl.
The mother with her floppy hat started laughing at something the baby had done. She lifted the baby up in the air and kissed her on the belly, blowing raspberry after raspberry until the baby was giggling so hard that her body was writhing and squirming.
I watched and wondered if the mum had kissed the boys in the same way when they were babies, wondered if she’d loved them as much as she loved this baby girl. Had she cried each time she’d found out she was having another boy? Did she only keep having all those boys so she could finally get her girl?
My mum cried when she found out she was having another boy, when she found out she was having me. She cried for six hours straight, devastated at the thought of me. It’s not something Ray said to make me feel bad, it’s something I heard Mum say herself, to one of her friends over a long cup of coffee, not long before her and Dad decided to have Jazzie.
The little boy with the soggy nappy wandered back to the towel and giggled at the baby being held up in the air. The mum turned to him and smiled. ‘Do you want to fly too?’ she asked, lowering the baby back down to the towel. ‘Do you want to fly too?’ The little boy squealed and pretended to try and run out of his mum’s reach, squealing even louder when she caught him. ‘Up you go then, my spaceman, up you go!’ She lay back on the sand, lifting her arms straight above her head, making the little boy turn and dip as if he was some sort of miniature superman. His face went red, his legs kicked out behind him in delight. He giggled and giggled.
When I finally got home it was dark. Ray’s car wasn’t there. The light on the porch was on, spotting the three steps up to the front door, as if to say, ‘Come on, hurry up, it’s late. Get yourself inside.’
Uncle Scott was in the lounge room with the TV on. The room smelt like a florist’s shop. We’d run out of room in the kitchen and flowers were now starting to fill up the lounge room. There were vases of flowers balanced along the wide ledge of the windowsill, flowers stuck in pots and jugs next to the TV, and more bunches on the coffee table that Uncle Scott had his feet up on. There were pale-yellow roses, bright-orange flowers with long, thin petals, tiny purple flowers, and tulips: lots and lots of tulips – Mum’s favourite.
There were cards, too, slotted into the wooden venetian blinds, like Mum had always done with the Christmas cards.
‘Hey,’ Uncle Scott said when I walked in, not taking his eyes away from the football he was watching.
‘Hey.’
‘Where you been?’
‘Nowhere, just hanging around.’
‘Really? Wasn’t what I heard.’
I kept my eyes on the TV and didn’t say anything.
‘Ray said you attacked him in the car while he was driving. Said you nearly killed the both of you.’
Uncle Scott was looking at me now, clearly waiting for me to say something. I stared at the football.
Ray didn’t usually dob. He said it was a loser’s way to get revenge. His normal pay back was to strike when you were least expecting it, like pulling your pants off in the pool and taking your towel when Mum had one of her friends over for coffee.
‘So?’ Uncle Scott said.
‘So, what?’
‘So, what have you got to say?’
‘Yeah, we had a fight. That’s what Ray and I do, fight.’
‘Never seen Ray that pissed off over a fight with you, or that bruised. He’s got a black eye, a swollen nose, and scratch marks down his cheek.’
‘Serves him right, he’s a dickhead.’
‘Luka, don’t talk like that.’
I stared at the TV. Paramatta were up twenty points; there was only ten minutes to go. Just as one of the forwards was about to touch the ball down for another try, I realised Mum was in the room: I could see her out of the corner of my eye sitting on the edge of the lounge chair, staring at the side of my face. She wasn’t saying anything, just staring. One of those cold, hard stares that said, ‘Don’t you dare talk to your uncle like that.’
If Uncle Scott wasn’t there, I would have turned around and told her she’d given up the right to tell me how to behave the second she walked into the kindy, the second she decided Jazzie was more important than me.
‘So, where were you?’ Uncle Scott asked again.
Mum was talking now, not in the room but in my head, hammering away. ‘Luka, don’t you be rude, be nice to your uncle or you’ll end up in your room.’
‘Around,’ I said, ‘just around.’
‘Luka, I want to know where you were. You’ve wandered in here, way after dark, after scratching your brother up pretty bad, and you seem to think that’s all okay. It’s not. If your mother was here, she’d have grounded you for a month. Just because she’s gone doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. Your dad was worried sick, and so was I.’
I looked towards the arm of the couch to see what Mum had to say, but she was gone. ‘Where’s Ray?’ I asked.
‘Out.’
‘Where?’
‘Gone for a drive.’
‘Where?’
‘Luka.’
‘You didn’t ask him where he was going, did you?’
‘He’s older than you.’
I folded my arms across my chest. ‘Where’s Dad?’
‘Bed.’
‘Yeah, real worried.’ I walked out of the room.
The kitchen was clean and tidy, everything wiped down and put away, but you could still smell dinner: meat and tomatoes and garlic. The oven was empty but still warm. I went to the fridge and pulled open the door, looking for leftovers. The shelves were jam-packed with baking dishes, casserole pots and rows of sealed Tupperware.
‘Some of it will have to go in the freezer,’ Uncle Scott said from behind me. ‘The one we had is in that plastic container there.’ He reached across me and pointed. ‘It was all right, some sort of beef stew. We had it with rice. I could put some rice on if you want?’
I pulled the container out, lifted the lid and smelt the brownie-red congealed mass. ‘Nah, I’ll just have this.’ I scooped two heaps onto a plate and stuck it in the microwave.
‘You should put a cover over that; it makes a mess if you don’t cover it.’
I ignored Uncle Scott and watched the plate go around and around, waiting for the fluorescent numbers to count down, hoping he would go away and leave me alone.
‘Your father had a bad day. He does care, but he’s not coping.’
Yeah, right, and I was skipping through a field of daisies.’
‘Be gentle with him, that’s all I’m saying. He’s lost everything.’
I concentrated on the plate spinning, still counting along in my head with the numbers that were methodically stepping backwards. Dad hadn’t lost everything: he still had me, and he still had Ray. I kept counting.
Uncle Scott came and put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. The microwave pinged. I waited for Uncle Scott to leave the room before I pulled my dinner out.
That night, I crept into Dad’s room and lay down next to him, curled up in the curve that had been made, night after night, by Mum’s sleeping body. Dad was lying on his side with his back to me. His body took up the length of the bed, one big shoulder squashed into the mattress while his other shoulder jutted awkwardly towards the ceiling. The sheet and blanket were folded neatly and tucked underneath his armpit, his arms folded across his chest. His breath was heavy with a whistling sort of sigh every time he breathed out. I watched the outline of his top shoulder move up and down. I wanted to wake him, snuggle up next to him and put my face against his back. I wanted him to wrap his arms around me and squeeze me tight like he used to when I was a little kid. I wanted to tell him about the dream that had woken me, where every time I looked at a photo of Mum and Jazzie, the picture faded until there was nothing left but a soft white haze. But I didn’t wake him. I just laid there and listened to him breathing.
The bed smelt of Mum. Not in the pillow – that smelt of Dad – but in the sheets. The smell of her fly-away hair, the flowery perfume she liked to dab behind her ears, and the smell of her skin: a smell that wasn’t from shampoo or perfume, a smell that was simple and uncomplicated, a smell that was Mum.
I lay there breathing in the scent of the sheets until I could feel her stroking my hair, until I heard her telling me to get some sleep.