Kill the Possum Page 3

  ‘What are you looking so serious about?’ asks Jarrod McLean. He’s a bit of a mate - the guy Dylan pairs up with whenever a partner is needed in science or PE. He’s grinning as he says it and that makes it easy for Dylan to shoot back a quick reply.

  ‘Nothing I can tell you about without getting arrested.’ He forces a smile onto his face and pumps his eyebrows a couple of times to complete the effect, leaving Jarrod to play along with a look of mock jealousy.

  Dylan doesn’t go round to see Kirsty after school, though, because he doesn’t want to turn up uninvited for a second time. He’s unsure where their relationship sits right now.

  The next day, she’s there, filing through the gate as the bell sounds. No chance to speak to her then, but at the morning break he tracks her down in the yard.

  ‘I missed you yesterday,’ he begins with a tentative smile. ‘Look, about Sunday.’

  Kirsty interrupts him. ‘I’m sorry about that, Dylan. I didn’t know you were going to be there. I would have warned you, told you to come round another time. About what happened… I’m so sorry, all right?’

  What’s she apologising for? Her father had caused the whole thing, deliberately. He’d come there to abuse them, to draw the stutter from her brother and drive her mother into her bedroom, crushed like some kind of beetle. It wasn’t Kirsty’s fault. She was a hero, really, stood up to the bastard in a way the other two couldn’t and he starts to tell her so.

  ‘No, Dylan, you’ve got it wrong,’ Kirsty cries suddenly, cutting him off. ‘Ian’s not my father.’ She shudders at the suggestion. ‘Oh, God, no.’

  ‘But your sister, Melanie…’

  ‘Yes, he’s her father. She was born after Mum remarried. My real father died when I was seven.’

  ‘Your father’s dead,’ he says, repeating words without thinking about how they might hurt. A dead father. Was that any different from a father who might as well be dead? Not a question he can ask Kirsty, is it? Not a real question at all. ‘So that guy wasn’t your father,’ he mutters, suddenly off-balance as though the ground has shifted under his feet. A minor earthquake threatens to realign the emotions of these last few days. ‘That explains about the names, then, I suppose.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘On Sunday,’ he says, now forced into his own explanation. ‘That guy’s name was Cartwright, but you’re…’

  ‘Yeah, my real father was Tom Beal.’

  ‘Cartwright’s your step-father.’

  ‘He was my step-father. Mum divorced him two years ago.’

  ‘You mean he’s been doing this to your mother for that long?’

  ‘Longer. It started before the divorce, long time before.’

  Dylan’s face takes on the bewildered stare of Sunday afternoon.

  ‘Not always that bad,’ Kirsty assures him. ‘We had to go to court not so long ago and it’s been really bad since then.’

  A figure approaches from behind Dylan. He hears the footsteps but pays no attention until Kirsty’s eyes switch to the intruder and turning his head, finds Mr Jorgensen zeroing in on the girl.

  ‘Tim’s not at school again today. Yesterday as well,’ says Mr Jorgensen.

  ‘He’s sick, got the flu or something,’ Kirsty tells him and all three of them know it’s a lie.

  ‘You tell your brother from me, Kirsty. If his attendance record doesn’t improve, he’ll be suspended.’

  Beside him, Dylan snorts down his nose in a half-laugh, then regrets it when Jorgensen inspects him coolly for signs of insolence. The teacher moves off.

  ‘Sorry,’ Dylan says to Kirsty. ‘I’ve always thought it’s a joke how the punishment for not coming to school is not being allowed to.’ He wants to laugh openly now but cringes instead when Kirsty doesn’t see the funny side. This makes him think about Tim Beal until understanding hits him with the clarity of a punch. ‘If the school knew about Sunday they’d cut Tim some slack, maybe even help him.’

  ‘You won’t say anything to Jorgensen, will you?’ There’s a fear in Kirsty’s eyes that even Cartwright couldn’t inspire.

  ‘No, of course not, but there’s this thing called an AVO.’

  For two days he’s known about these three magical letters and he still hasn’t found out what the ‘a’ and the ‘o’ stand for. Doesn’t matter. He knows what they’re for. ‘They protect wives from abuse. The police get involved,’ he says, aware that these are his mother’s very words. ‘If he goes near her, he ends up in court.’

  Kirsty rounds on him like a terrier. ‘You know all about it, do you? Jesus! You think all we’ve got to do is turn up at the police station and they’ll give us an AVO. I wish it was. But Ian’s brother’s a policeman. He’s put the word around among his mates and if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s what happened at the Committal.’

  Dylan has heard that word before. He thinks back to Sunday. Cartwright mentioned it, as a kind of weapon to taunt Mrs Beal. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Oh, Dylan,’ says Kirsty, the anger draining from her as quickly as it appeared. ‘Such a bloody mess.’ She touches his arm with a tenderness that arouses him. ‘Look, I’m sorry I shouted at you. You were just trying to help, I know. But it’s… it’s too hard, okay,’ she says with a sigh and falls silent.

  Dylan won’t get any explanation from her now. His hands slip unconsciously into his pockets. ‘I wish there was something I could do, that’s all,’ he says, aware of his own impotence.

  Kirsty shakes her head, smiles in wry defeat and they part without a word of farewell.

  Kirsty looks in the mirror

  Kirsty doesn’t go straight to class. She delays the moment by heading into the toilets and finds there’s a queue.

  ‘Hi, Kirsty,’ says a girl already on her way out. ‘Where were you yesterday? My mum made cup cakes to share for my birthday. It was like being in Year Five again.’

  She’d been missed. The girl doesn’t know how good this makes Kirsty feel. She squares up to the mirror and likes what she sees - sandy blonde hair that she could do something with if she only knew what, pimples under control and after a year or two of hating the lines of her body, she’s decided they aren’t too bad. The boys seem to notice. She’s seen them looking and likes the feeling.

  You’re quite pretty, she tells her reflection silently.

  She thinks about Dylan Kane and regrets snapping at him about the AVO. He was only trying to help and they don’t get much of that from anyone these days. He’s a nice boy, the first who’s worked up the courage to ask her out, although he wouldn’t have been her first choice. Came as a surprise, really, but he’s all right. Gets a bit intense at times about all the causes he believes in. They’ve been to the pictures, twice, and went into the city to hang out with the crowd from school one Saturday night. There were some awkward moments but they’d just give her something to laugh about later over a birthday cup cake.

  She thinks about what Ian said to goad them both. A boyfriend. Is Dylan her boyfriend? He seems to care about her, even if he is a bit thoughtless, like turning up at their door on Sunday afternoon. It was cute in a way, she thinks, with a sideways wriggle of her lips. If only he hadn’t arrived at that moment. He wasn’t to know, though, was he. Dylan’s just clumsy, sort of like a big Labrador puppy. She used to dream of waking up on Christmas morning to a puppy licking her face. Instead, she had to live with a Pit-bull.

  It’s her turn for a cubicle. She sits down and thinks of menacing dogs, Ian Cartwright the worst of them, but his lawyer was no different. That bloody Committal. What a disaster that was. Mention of it alone can slice her up inside worse than any knife might cut her skin.

  Then she’s back in front of the mirror again, but this time her reflection brings no joy.

  4

  Dylan hears a possum in the ceiling

  ‘I wish there was something I could do.’

  The words he’d said to Kirsty taunt Dylan as mercilessly as Cartwright tormented the Beals. There isn’t really anything and he k
nows it. He feels utterly powerless.

  He promises to be as sympathetic as he can then gets mad at himself. Sympathy, holding the girl’s hand, gentle words when she’s feeling down, it sounds like a cop-out. What good’s that when the real cause of the problem is still there?

  Anyway, Dylan’s no good at words and gestures. Give him a problem and he’ll solve it. A guy thing, maybe. He’s been like that for as long as he can remember, earns his grandfather’s praise for it when they get out into the backyard, doing things. Together they’d got that little solar-powered car working last Christmas. He was good with that kind of problem.

  The thing with Kirsty is different. People talk about relationships, or girls do, at least. Among the guys he knows girls are just something they talk about, mostly in the abstract, like there’s a race of strange creatures called girls.

  He’s never been interested in any particular one before Kirsty, not a real one he could talk to and go places with, one he could touch instead of dream about in vague and shameful wonder. Asking her out was a bit of a game, to see if he could do it, to beat the other guys to the punch. It went okay so he asked her out again. Is that a relationship? After they walked away from one another in the yard yesterday, without a wave or a see ya, he wonders whether they still have one.

  He senses the same uncertainty that plagued him near her house, when he lingered behind the trees, waiting to know his own mind. It’s easier fixing solar panels and circuits with his grandad, except they don’t smile at him like Kirsty does when he manages to say something funny.

  It’s amazing, really, that Kirsty can smile at all, when there’s that static in the background of her life. It’s not even his business but he has trouble getting Sunday out of his mind. And he’s only seen it once. It has to have been going on for years. Kirsty told him as much.

  He takes a sudden breath and finds his fists clenched. He has to will them to relax and even then, his mind won’t let the memories rest. He gets into bed and discovers the inside of his skull is lined with a video screen that plays back Sunday afternoon on a permanent loop. He wakes in a tangle of sheets and lies there, worrying about how the Beals can be protected from that bastard.

  It’s not right. A father shouldn’t treat his family that way. Then he remembers that Cartwright isn’t Kirsty’s father, and the Beals aren’t his family any more. But still… they would have called him Dad, wouldn’t they? The little sister, Melanie, still does, most likely. Was there love once? Did Cartwright ever feel what a father is supposed to feel for his children? Maybe it’s not such an automatic thing. He was being naive to think that way. No love, no feeling.

  His thoughts circle back on themselves obsessively. He tries to sleep and has almost surrendered to sheer exhaustion when a sound above his bed snatches him back at the last moment.

  ‘Bloody possum,’ he whispers.

  By the time the possum goes silent above him, the new day’s light is strengthening behind his curtains, sneaking enough gold and silver around the edges to banish the last hope of sleep. The furred outlines of his room begin to grow more detailed until he can pick out the computer on his desk (secondhand - his Mum’s not rich, as she never fails to remind him) and on a shelf above it, the little car with its distinctive flattened top.

  It’s the solar car that finally chases off his unwanted memories of Sunday. His eyes rest on it while his mind fires off in directions that make no sense at first. He doesn’t know why, but it’s suddenly there in his mind, oddly powerful and demanding, the memory that his father gave him the kit.

  He rolls off the bed, balancing lightly on his feet until he has the drawer of his desk open. There’s the iPod he received the Christmas before and if he keeps hunting he’ll find the CD he was given the year before that. Rage of Evil. Exactly what he’d wanted each time. It was pretty amazing that his father had scored three perfects hits like that. Not that his father had given him the presents in person. That job had been sub-contracted long ago.

  These thoughts work up their own momentum. ‘Eric and Fiona,’ he says into the motes of dust swirling in the narrow shafts of sunlight. Of course, why hadn’t he seen it before. Hello! Wake up, Dylan. ‘It was them, my grandparents. Must have been, ’cause my bloody father wouldn’t have a clue what to get me.’

  And although it’s a trivial discovery, Dylan Kane is flushed by the same anger that woke him an hour earlier.

  Dylan finds Tim under the ghost gum

  The next day he sees Kirsty in the school yard and alters course quickly before she sees him. He can’t believe he’s evading her and resents the shame of what he’s done. Maybe their relationship is over after all and while his mind is too stubborn to accept it, his body can’t keep pretending.

  Theirs is a big school, built to cater for the housing estates that have grown around it, so he shouldn’t have any trouble staying out of her sight. The classroom blocks divide the yard into blobs of space mostly invisible to one another, each unofficially assigned to one year level or another. Dylan slips into an open quadrangle long ago ceded to the year below his. Beneath a gnarled tree that overhangs the fence, he spots Kirsty’s brother.

  Without really knowing why, he sets out across the cracked asphalt, steps onto hard dirt scuffed clear of even the hardiest grass and calls, ‘Hi.’

  Tim Beal is staring out into the deserted street and doesn’t see him coming. He turns around abruptly at the sound of the voice and scrapes his back against the knuckled trunk.

  ‘You’re Tim, aren’t you? I’m Dylan. I go out with Kirsty.’

  On Sunday he hadn’t paid much attention to Tim, apart from the obvious thing, that he was younger than Kirsty. A year, no, more like two years younger, he’d decided, making the guy fourteen, maybe. Funny how you can go to the same school, use the same toilets, the same canteen and never even notice someone.

  There are no distractions now and out in the open there’s more light, enough for Dylan to pick out the kind of smooth, pale skin that girls would kill for. The large eyes that watched Cartwright’s every move are hooded against the midday glare and perfectly still. On Sunday they’d jumped around in their sockets like pinballs.

  Dylan thinks the guy is blowing him off and half turns to go.

  ‘I know who you are,’ says Tim, but he falls silent again, leaving Dylan unnerved and his skin pin-pricked by sweat.

  ‘Good to see you’re over that bug Kirsty told Mr Jorgensen about, eh,’ Dylan says with a grin to show he’s in on the scam.

  Nothing from Tim. Dylan realises he’s making a fool of himself and begins to regret coming over to this twisted, unhappy tree. Maybe he should just walk away with his hands in his pockets and forget about the Beals forever.

  He can’t do that, though. He was there on Sunday. ‘Why don’t you move interstate?’ he says. ‘Go somewhere that bastard won’t find you.’

  ‘We can’t. Mum’s not allowed to take Melanie out of the city without his permission and Ian won’t give it. We’d have to leave Melanie with him and…’ He shook his head. ‘No way.’

  ‘Has he got a new wife? Someone to look after her?’ Dylan is thinking of his own father.

  Contempt shoots down Tim’s nose and he turns his head away.

  Okay, that’s an answer. ‘He’s on his own, then,’ says Dylan. ‘So why does he want a little girl living with him all the time? He’d have to pay for child care and the rest.’ There was a long list of ‘the rest’ that he knew by heart after years of listening to his mother recite it to anyone who would listen.

  ‘Jesus, you really are thick,’ Tim Beal snaps at him. ‘He doesn’t want Melanie so they can be daddy and daughter together. When he takes her for weekends he dumps her on his own mother half the time. He wants custody of Melanie so he can shove it in our faces.’

  There’s a rage in Tim’s words that Dylan recognises. It’s his own.

  ‘Look, about Sunday, I just think what he did was… I couldn’t believe it. I’m sorry. I hope you don’t think I
stuck around because I’m some kind of voyeur. I’ve never seen anyone act like that, never knew anyone…’ He was going to say how he wished there was something he could do, but caught himself in time.

  Sunday is almost visible between them. Dylan wonders whether Tim holds the memory in his head as vividly as Dylan does. It had been going on for years for Tim, hadn’t it? How could he bear to hold it in his head the way Dylan had done for only a few days? The sympathy he’d felt for Kirsty leaches out of him, flowing unseen around her brother.

  ‘I don’t know how you stand it. Must be awful, the way he baits you. He kept at you and at you until…’ He doesn’t want to humiliate Tim the way Cartwright had done so he lets the stuttering slide away unmentioned. He feels Tim’s eyes locked onto him and worries that he’s already gone too far.

  ‘It’s hard,’ says Tim, without anger or embarrassment. His voice is calm, in fact. He’s leaning his back against the tree again, more relaxed now. ‘No one knows what it’s like. The police don’t believe us and even the social workers have stopped coming around because of what happened at the Committal.’

  There it was again. The Committal. What was it, Dylan wonders, what happened? But Tim isn’t about to tell him any more than Kirsty.

  ‘Nobody knows what goes on when he brings Melanie back every second Sunday.’

  ‘Except me,’ says Dylan Kane.

  Kirsty talks about her hair

  On the oval, the Year Nine boys play touch football, a handful of girls practise goal shooting on the crumbling court nearby. Other bodies move slowly in the heat and still more remain in the shade beneath the buildings or under the fig tree near the science block. Kirsty Beal is one of these and beside her is Chloe Rosen.

  ‘You should do it, you know. It would look so much better,’ says Chloe.