The whole day was about to slip by without one ‘Happy Birthday’, which was how it should have been, I guess. ‘Sad Birthday’, ‘Devastating Birthday’, ‘Most Tragic Birthday Ever’, would have been more appropriate. The house was quiet, as if it was relieved to have got through the day. It was too much. I had to get out. I needed to breathe air from the world outside, the world where people still ate dinner together and went off to work and school, the world where everything was the same as it was yesterday and would be the same again tomorrow.
I thought about calling out to Dad and telling him I was going for a walk. It was after six. Uncle Scott was making noises in the kitchen, but there was no sign of dinner yet. By this time, Mum would have had dinner on the table, and we’d all be sitting around talking about our day, fighting over the last potato, Ray and me arguing about who washed and who dried the night before. Mum never let me go out after dark. She let Ray, but said I was too young to be wandering the streets. She said it was different for Ray, he was older, and besides that he could drive. He had his own car now. I don’t think Dad had ever thought about if we should or shouldn’t be allowed out at night, or what time we should be in bed.
I grabbed my grey jacket from the wardrobe, the one that was lined with sheep’s wool. It was probably too hot to wear it, but I didn’t care. Nan – my mum’s mum – had given it to me for my birthday last year. Then two weeks after that, Nan had died. She had a massive heart attack, like a bullet had been shot straight in and blown everything to pieces. Dad had said he thought it was the best way to go. ‘Better than having half a heart attack and ending up in one of those vile nursing homes where you can’t even wipe your own arse,’ he said.
At the time, Mum had been devastated. For weeks after, I would go to sleep to the sound of her crying.
I pulled the jacket on over my school shirt, felt the soft wool warm against my skin, smelt the eucalyptus Mum had used to wash it in. Doing up the buttons, I wondered how Nan would have coped if she was still here. Would she have come bustling around making us all warm stew for dinner, giving us big wet kisses on our cheeks and endless hugs? Or would she have collapsed in a heap, like Dad, and slowly imploded on her own sadness, not really caring what happened to any of us at all?
I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked down the hall to the front door. I could hear Dad in the lounge room – he was crying – and Uncle Scott was talking. I thought again about calling out and telling them I was going for a walk, but I was going whether they said I could or not. It was better to go without a fight.
The darkness which would have scared me two days ago and made me want to run back inside, or at least take someone with me, was a relief, like the cool air-conditioning of a shop on a stinking hot day. It was an inky black night. In the country, you’d almost have to walk with your arms stretched out in front of you, so you didn’t bang into anything, but here, in beachside suburbia, there was always light from somewhere: a streetlight, a porch light, a car driving by – enough light to trick you into thinking it wasn’t really dark at all.
My skateboard was sitting there next to the front door, its deck resting up against the wall, my black helmet on the tiles beside it. I stood there, hesitating before I grabbed it, searching for the flutter of excitement that always came with the board, particularly when I knew I was going on the streets, going on an adventure. But there was nothing, no excitement, no fear, just a dullness that couldn’t care less. I shrugged, glad I didn’t have to argue with myself about whether skating the day after my mum and little sister had been blown to pieces was the right thing to do or not. If I felt nothing, then it couldn’t be wrong. I grabbed the skateboard but not the helmet and started to walk down the porch stairs. That was when I heard Mum’s voice, as clear as if she was standing on the step behind me … ‘Luka Kelly,’ she said, ‘you get yourself back here this instant and strap that helmet on your head. There might not be much up there, but what little there is, is worth protecting.’ I hesitated and then stepped down onto the path.
‘Luka.’ The voice was so real I had to stop myself from turning around. ‘Luka,’ Mum said again, ‘I mean it. You get yourself back here and put your helmet on, or you’ll be sitting in your room for a month.’ And then she said something the alive-and-breathing Mum would never have said: ‘Isn’t two dead in the family enough for one week?’
Without turning around, I let the skateboard drop to the footpath and land on its four wheels. I stepped on with one foot and pushed with the other. I couldn’t hear Mum’s voice anymore, but I could imagine her standing there on the front step, her hands on her hips, yelling after me. And then, when I kept on going, her yelling into the house for Dad to come and get me, for him to run after me and stop me from skating off into the darkness without a helmet. I turned right at the bottom of our footpath, lifted my back foot and put it on the skateboard, letting the board roll down the slight slope, click-clacking over the lines in the path.
There were lights on in the houses. I could see straight into the lounge rooms and kitchens of other people’s lives. In nearly every window, there was the flicker of the TV. Every house looked so normal: families sitting down to dinner; families watching their favourite show. I wondered if any of them knew that tomorrow, or the next day, or perhaps the day after that, everything could change and the word ‘normal’ might not be able to hold them together anymore. Or were they just like me yesterday, having no clue of what could be around the corner, unaware that taking things for granted was a mistake?
I put my foot on the path and stopped the skateboard. A man, probably about the same age as Dad, was standing in front of his TV. I couldn’t see what he was watching, but I could see the colours flicking on the screen. His hands were holding his face. His body was jerking just the way Dad’s had when he was crying. He started yelling something that I couldn’t hear, pacing up and down in front of the TV and punching his fist into the air. I stared at his rage, embarrassed for him that I was looking in on such a private moment, but I was unable to take my eyes away.
A breeze picked up, blew straight onto my cheek, like a kiss from someone a long way away. I put my foot back on the skateboard and rolled down the rest of the slope.
For the first time, I thought about the families of the other kids killed in the bomb blast. I’d met a lot of them at Jazzie’s kindy. Last term, I’d had a week off school for a throat infection that had become a sore ear. Mum had made me go with her to drop Jazzie at kindy and pick her up. Mum used the excuse that she didn’t want me sitting at home by myself when there could be a nasty temperature on the way. In reality, though, she wanted me to see where my sister went to kindy, wanted me to make a fuss, wanted me to make Jazzie feel special. I wasn’t interested: as far as I was concerned, Jazzie got to feel special often enough.
That first day when Mum insisted I come in the car, I didn’t get out when we got to the kindy. Mum bustled about getting Jazzie out of the car. She plonked her up on the footpath with her backpack and sheets bag, and the snakeskin in a container that she’d brought for show and share.
When Mum realised I wasn’t there, she came back to the car. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Waiting for you to come back.’
‘No, you’re not. Get out. Come and see where your sister goes to kindy.’
‘Probably not a good idea; I’m pretty sick, remember? You were worried about high temperatures and delusions. Might scare all the little kindy kids if I go all funny in front of them.’
Mum wasn’t laughing.
Jazzie, with the backpack on her back that reached down past her bum, and the drawstring bag full of sheets in her hand, was smiling at me from the footpath. She waved. I lifted my hand and gave her a half-hearted wave back.
‘Now, Luka.’
‘All right. All right.’ I sighed, undoing my seatbelt and opening the car door.
Jazzie ran over when I stepped out of the car. Her hair, which was too big and curly for a three-year-old, bounced in a tight ponytail at the back of her head. She slid her free hand into one of mine. ‘Want to see where I put my bag? Then I can show you where the sheets go.’ I let myself be pulled along to the gate.
Jazzie’s kindy was in a quiet street set up on a hill just a block back from the beach. If you stopped and stood still, you could hear the waves crunching down on the sand, smell the salt in the air and feel the cool spray coming off the ocean in the breeze. The paling fence that went all the way around the kindy was painted an aqua and covered in a mural of fish. There was a dolphin, a shark, and a whale too.
Mum reached over the gate and undid the safety latch, holding the gate wide so we could all walk in.
‘Come on!’ Jazzie tugged at my hand again, clearly trying to make me run. ‘Don’t you want to see where my bag goes?’
I couldn’t help but laugh at her excitement over a bag hook. I now let myself be dragged into a half-run.
We walked past a big sandpit with buckets and spades, trucks, and watering cans. Opposite the sandpit were a series of rope bridges linked together by wooden platforms and then two swings at the end.
‘Come on!’ Jazzie said again, pulling me.
‘I’m coming. I’m coming.’
She led me into a small room full of lockers. Every locker had a picture of a different animal over the top of it.
‘This one,’ she said, ‘this one’s me.’ She pushed her bag into the locker space that had a picture of a green frog above it. ‘And this is where I put my sheets.’ She walked over to a large cane basket that was already half-full of sheets.
‘Cool,’ I said.
Jazzie smiled.
There were little kids Jazzie’s size everywhere. Some of them said hello, others clung to their parent’s legs. Jazzie grinned and said hello to all of them.
When she had finished putting everything away, she tugged me back outside. Mum had disappeared into the office. Jazzie kept pulling until we were at the swings. She stopped and looked up at me. ‘Push me?’
‘Yeah, okay.’
She climbed up onto the swing and swung her little legs back and forth, trying to get herself started, making the long chains on the swing wobble.
I grabbed the chains on either side, one in each hand, and pulled the swing back until it was as high as my chest. ‘Are you ready?’ I asked. ‘Ready to swing up into the sky?’
Jazzie squealed and laughed, and then I let her go. The swing arced up and back and up and back; I pushed her harder and higher.
Jazzie giggled and screamed out, ‘More! More!’
Little kids no taller than my waist came from everywhere. One kid jumped on the other swing and started pumping his legs like Jazzie had been, wiggling around at the end of the chains. So, I pushed him too, taking it in turn with Jazzie until they were both going almost as high as the bar. The other kids that had gathered made a line.
The kid in front started saying, ‘My turn? My turn?’
‘How about we give someone else a go, Jazz?’
Jazz glanced behind and looked at all the kids watching her. She held on tight to the chains and leant her head right back so her fuzzed-out ponytail hung down to the woodchips underneath. ‘My brother’s the best swing-pusher in the world,’ she shouted to all the kids. ‘He pushes you so high, you nearly touch the sky!’
When Jazzie hopped off, another kid hopped on. By the time the teachers were calling everyone in for class, I’d swung at least half of them in the line. Jazzie stood next to me the whole time, telling me what each kid’s name was, what they liked to have for lunch, and what their favourite book was for story time.
Charlie was the kid with the curly red hair and freckles dotted over his nose: he liked salmon sandwiches for lunch (which, according to Jazzie, stunk), and his favourite book was Where the Wild Things Are.
Hannah had straight mousy-brown hair tied back in a ponytail that was already starting to come undone: she liked Vegemite on her sandwiches and got a cheese stick with her lunch every day (sometimes she’d swap the cheese stick with Jazzie for a cookie, but only if the cookie had chocolate chips in it). Hannah’s favourite book was The Paw.
Dylan – with his hair cut so short you could see his scalp – didn’t speak much, according to Jazzie. She said that out of all the kids, she was the only one who could make him laugh. Dylan sometimes forgot his sandwich, and Jazzie said on those days she gave him half of hers. His favourite book was My Tiger.
There was also Jamie, Aiden, Alyssa, Sophia, and a tiny little girl called Ruby. All of them except for Dylan squealed when I pushed them high, and then they giggled as the swing dropped back down towards the ground, calling out, ‘More! More! More!’
By the time they went inside to start their morning circle, I was laughing too. I’d started to entertain a weird fantasy of me as a kindy teacher and all the kids following me in a line, chanting, ‘Kindy king! Kindy king!’
Mum caught me standing at the swings with a smile on my face. She smiled back and raised her eyebrows as if to say, ‘See?’
I turned and started to follow Mum to the gate, then felt a body hurtle into the back of my knees. Jazzie giggled. I turned around and picked her up, so her chest was snug up against me, her eyes almost level with mine.
‘Did I scare you?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
‘I don’t scare that easy.’
‘Yeah, you do.’
‘Prove it.’
‘All right, I will then.’
‘Jazzie, you need to come inside now.’ The teacher was standing in the doorway.
‘I’ll prove it when we get home,’ Jazzie said. She reached her arms up so I would lift her up onto my hip. Then she kissed me on the cheek, her lips all warm and puffy. ‘You’re the best,’ she whispered, and then she wriggled for me to put her down.
I stood and watched as she ran to the kindy teacher, her wiry brown curls bouncing at the back of her neck. She slipped her hand into the teacher’s. Jazzie was Miss Social who knew exactly how to get what she wanted.
My thoughts still on Jazzie and her friends, I didn’t see the old man, didn’t know he was there until my body thumped into his, making my board flip, launching me into the air. I heard him grunt and then moan. I wondered briefly if he’d collapsed to the ground or was still on his feet, if I’d hurt him, and then I landed with a thud in someone’s front yard. I didn’t realise until I hit the ground that I’d been crying while I was rolling and holding my breath, my lungs compressed. Lying there on the wet grass for a moment, everything went black. I tried to sit up, to stand, to see if the old man was all right, but all I could see were the kids swinging, up and down. All I could hear was them giggling and squealing, yelling for me to push them higher. All I could feel was Jazzie’s lips on my cheek, warm and soft. Real and alive.
My head spun and then came into a clear, crisp focus. There was pain at the base of my skull. I felt a nasty lump. I managed to sit myself up and put my head between my legs. The air moved in and out of my lungs easier, but I was going to vomit. Pictures of Jazzie and the kids kept playing through my head. I stood slowly, wondered where the old guy had gone, but before I could look, I was heaving. I stumbled to a garden bed at the edge of the yard and leant over, vomiting up the little amount of food I’d eaten.
Sweat prickled my skin. My head throbbed. My body gulped for air. I moved away from the stench of the vomit and sat down on the damp grass again. I didn’t hear the old man walk over.
‘Drunk,’ he stated. He was blocking the light from the streetlight.
‘No. Not drunk.’
‘You look drunk to me.’
‘Well, I’m not.’
‘Have you been sick?’
‘A bit.’
‘Either you have, or you haven’t.’
‘Yeah. Right.’
It was good that I hadn’t hurt him, and I knew I should be saying sorry, but I just wanted him to go away. To leave me alone.
‘There’s a name for people like you: hooligan. That’s what they call people like you. Drinking, roaming the streets at night, knocking old people over.’
‘Uh-huh.’ I kept my eyes focused on the grass.
‘Disgusting, leaving a mess like that in someone’s front yard. How do you think you’d feel finding someone’s vomit in your garden?’
‘Great, just great,’ I said, soft enough for him not to hear.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Yeah, well you better watch yourself. There’s been a lot of bad stuff going on round here. All those poor innocent kiddies gone, and people like you still here. Doesn’t make any sense, doesn’t make any sense at all.’
The sweat on my body had gone cold. My stomach didn’t feel sick anymore, just tight and sore.
‘Did you hear me?’ the old man asked.
I didn’t trust myself to speak. I wanted to get up and thump him hard in his stomach. Make him bend over. Make him struggle for breath. Make him shut up.
‘I said, did you hear me?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, to the damp grass.
‘I hope so, for your sake, mate …’ And then he turned and walked slowly up the hill I’d been rolling down.
Ray had always been the one who had a problem with rage. He would walk straight in and thump someone before he even thought about talking. Confrontation, though, had never been my thing, particularly the physical type. But sitting there on the grass, I had to stop myself from getting up and chasing the old geezer up the hill. I had to stop myself from knocking him to the ground and screaming at him over and over again, ‘My mother and sister are dead!’
Instead, I waited until he was halfway up the path, then I slowly got up, flicked my skateboard onto the concrete and rolled down the hill again.
From our house, Jazzie’s kindy was a ten-minute drive down back streets and across Creek Bridge. It was near the beach that Dad, Ray and I rode our bikes to for an early-morning surf – well used to, until Ray got his licence and insisted it was better to drive.
As I got closer to where Jazzie’s kindy used to be, there was an eerie stillness in the streets.
At the bottom of the road that led away from the beach, to the kindy, I flicked my skateboard into my hand and started walking. A soft breeze carried the smell of smoke and melted plastics. Halfway up the hill, I stopped. What am I doing? I hadn’t even planned to come here. Fear drew a long, lazy line up my spine, making my skin tingle.
It took a few moments to realise that my ears were straining, searching for something. At first, I didn’t know what, but then I realised it was voices. Not the people screaming or the police shouting to get back, but the kids: the kids squealing and giggling on the swing; Jazzie telling me her friends’ names and what they brought for lunch every day; Jazzie giggling and telling everyone proudly that I was her brother, not theirs, hers. And I was listening for Mum: not walking out of the kindy office like she did that day, smiling at me with her eyebrows raised, telling me it was time to go; not her screams or what she said to Jazzie while they sat together, locked inside the kindy, waiting. I was listening for the mum I’d heard on the step when I left home, the mum that had told me to put my helmet on, the mum that had yelled after me, telling me I was in big trouble.
I was listening for her to tell me that everything was going to be okay.