Life in Outer Space Read online

  And then, it is seven-sixteen on Thursday night, and I am in my lounge room watching The Fog with the volume way down low. Mum is out for dinner with Aunt Jenny; she’s not due back for hours, but I jump every time the headlights of a car beam through my front window. Camilla is catching a cab home from the airport because Henry is working. She promised to stop by, but I can’t imagine she’d want to do anything other than go home and unpack and –

  Another set of headlights glow in the window. This time, the light lingers.

  I stay where I am for seven seconds. At twelve seconds I attempt to stand, but end up hovering in this half-sitting pose, feeling a little dumb-arse. At fifteen seconds I hear the slamming of a car boot, and I find myself at the front door with my fingers on the handle before my brain really registers that I have moved.

  I hear footsteps thundering down the wet garden path.

  Camilla barrels through my door in a blur of suitcases and is already halfway through a conversation in the way she always seems to be when she breezes into my house. She untangles herself from her luggage and gloves and hat, dropping them one by one onto the floor, and then, all of a sudden, she is free. She gathers herself with a frantic breath. And she smiles at me.

  I don’t know if I move or if she does – it’s almost as if someone skipped a scene in my movie and I missed a bit of the action – but the next thing I know, my arms are around her. Her heavy winter coat is damp from the rain, and it feels like the actual Camilla is somewhere miles beneath layers of wool – but it is still her. And she is home. I want to tell her that I’m happy she’s back, but the first words that slip out of my mouth are bizarre, even by my standards:

  ‘You were gone for too long.’

  She pulls loose from my arms a little and peers up at me. Her face passes through a bunch of different things. For a rare second, it is serious. ‘I know.’

  She shrugs off her coat and shakes out her hair. Then she grabs my hand and tugs me into the lounge room, flopping onto the couch and pulling me down beside her. She shuffles closer, still holding my hand. I find that I’m not at all concerned about this invasion of my personal space. I find that my hand in hers is the best thing I have felt in weeks.

  ‘Okay, Sam. So tell me.’

  And so I do.

  I tell her about Mum and Dad, and the last couple of years of Mum’s sadness, and of Dad’s oblivious zombie-walking through everything, and how relieved they both seem now, and how pissed I have been with Dad for ages, and how sad I’ve been for Mum, and how I think I’m actually happy that it’s going to be just me and Mum from now on. I keep talking and talking, feeling like a giant balloon that’s slowly deflating. I talk until I have no more air left, till I feel empty and tired and still.

  Camilla has been watching me closely the whole time I’ve been speaking. Maybe it’s something to do with the cabin pressure in an aeroplane, but her eyes are flecked with colours I’ve never noticed before, tiny sparks of green and gold. Her eyes are way bigger and warmer than I remember.

  ‘Everything just feels really … tilted,’ I mumble.

  She squeezes my hand tightly between both of hers. ‘I’m sorry about your parents. I’m sorry I wasn’t here when it happened. I’m sorry it’s rained for ten days straight.’

  I don’t know why, but that is all she needs to say. I look down at our hands. ‘Camilla, I wanted to say … thank you. I’m not sure what I would have done if … you know. If it wasn’t for you.’ I swallow. Why do I suddenly sound like a four-year-old?

  I glance at her face. Camilla’s eyes seem to be focused on our hands as well. ‘I’m glad I’m back, Sam. Not sure if I could’ve coped with another day of Gabriella. At least I know what to expect from Henry. I’m almost excited about school. It’ll be a relief to get back to some kind of … order.’

  I turn my hand over absently. My palm lies f lat and warm against hers. ‘Status quo is good,’ I mumble.

  She smiles at me, but for a second something almost hesitant flickers across her face. ‘Yeah. It really is,’ she says.

  She lets go of my hand, and then she’s buzzing around again, unpacking the thousand presents she’s brought. I get knock-off DVDs and a miniature wind-up space robot from the Singapore Art Museum. She’s also brought me a Battlestar Galactica Commander Adama figure with a suspiciously inauthentic face. She waves it in front of me.

  ‘Does he look a bit …?’

  ‘Asian?’ she says with a giggle. ‘Yeah, thought you’d appreciate. Okay, so I do have one more thing for you.’ She rifles through her jacket pockets. ‘I found this at a vintage store, so you know it’s not a Movie World souvenir …’

  She holds her fist over mine and drops something small into my hand.

  Nestled in my palm is a tiny movie clapperboard on a keychain. The front is a real chalkboard, the kind filmmakers used before they all went digital. If I had a tiny piece of chalk, I could even write the name of my movie on it.

  ‘It’s … awesome. Camilla, I don’t know what to say. Thank you.’

  Her cheeks turn pink. ‘It’s a keychain. Don’t cry.’

  ‘Shut up. That’s not what I meant. I just meant, thanks. Again. For everything.’

  She gives me a lopsided grin. ‘I’m really glad I’m home, Sam. For one thing, I haven’t seen a horror movie in weeks. I never thought I’d say it, but I might be experiencing some withdrawal symptoms.’

  I flick through the DVD pile she has given me and pull out the new Saw movie. ‘Are you in a rush to go?’

  She kicks off her boots. ‘I probably smell like airport. But I can stay for a bit.’

  She curls up on the side of the couch that she always defaults to. I stick on the DVD and take the other side. The movie rolls on the screen. Neither of us really watches it. Camilla has too many stories, and I’m finding that the movie chick getting sliced in half is not nearly as interesting as listening to her. Her voice fills my house, and I feel less and less like I’m swaying. I feel –

  What?

  Relief, for sure. I mean, that’s a rational response. Camilla is part of my everyday routine; a disturbance to that routine will produce a negative response, and a return to normality will produce a positive response. Objectively, it is perfectly reasonable that I would be happy she is home.

  But it’s something else, too.

  It feels sort of like that moment in the cinema, those few seconds of quiet when the lights dim and the babble of the audience fades. It feels comfortable, and familiar, and somehow just … safe.

  I think about the mess that is my life. I think about my Killer Cat people, lost and useless and pining for something that nothing in my screenplay could explain. I think about my dad, his confusion more destructive than any chainsaw-wielding psychopath. And then I think about how consistent, solid Camilla is the one thing left in my life that I understand.

  So I don’t let myself think about anything else. Because Camilla is home.

  Mike and Adrian come home from their holidays too. Allison is released from maths hell for our last few precious days of freedom. We sit at the park in the freezing cold, or at Schwartzman’s in the almost-as-cold, or at the Astor, which is showing a 1940s comedy double feature on Saturday afternoon. The Astor is icy. The movies suck. It doesn’t matter at all.

  We take blankets. We huddle beneath them and whisper alternative Tarantino-inspired lines over the top of the rapid-fire 1940s dialogue. Allison proves to be surprisingly adept at Tarantino lines, as well as producing a whole vocab of swear words that makes Adrian blush and Mike choke on a mouthful of popcorn.

  Camilla huddles sideways under a blanket with her cateye glasses perched on her nose and her knees touching mine. She pokes me in the side and giggles or groans whenever something particularly cheesy happens on screen, her eyes sparkling in the crackly movie-light.

  I feel like everything is exactly how it is supposed to be. Like nothing at all needs to change. And as soon as I think that thought, I freak.

  I h
ave seen enough movies to know how jinxes work.

  I really should have known better.

  The reason they call it a siren’s song

  I believe that in some parts of the world, events of actual significance are occurring. There are wars, and earthquakes, and people making scientific breakthroughs. But at Bowen Lakes Secondary, none of these things matter at all. Because the new semester is all about the Spring Dance.

  The fancy dress idea has been enthusiastically adopted, but there is much controversy over what constitutes Old Hollywood. Apparently people are interested in my opinion on this. Camilla ropes me into a committee meeting, where, after a lengthy debate that I somehow find myself in charge of, it is decided that 1980 will be the official Old Hollywood cut-off. While this is objectively incorrect, I have no interest in arguing since it means that Star Wars just scrapes in.

  Sharni Vane hooked up with Jonah Warrington over the holidays. Justin is now going out with some girl from a private school, but it doesn’t stop him trying to weasel his way in with Camilla. He tends to touch her arm a lot when they talk, which sort of makes me wish I had a taser. He actually tries sucking up to me like he hasn’t spent the last four years being a pus-filled tumour on the arse of my life. Justin and I have as much chance of becoming friends as Adrian has of captaining the Starship Enterprise. For Camilla’s sake, I am passably polite. Even if Justin is still a massive knob.

  Allison gets her long-awaited haircut. I think she may have been saving it for a new semester grand entrance. When she sidles up to me at my locker, I’m not sure who she is for four whole seconds.

  ‘Well?’ she says.

  Her fine blonde hair is gone. What remains is a short pixie thing in a shade of bright coppery-red. The new hair makes her eyes look twice as big. She actually looks sixteen. She looks great.

  ‘You look great,’ I say. I don’t know why my opinion is important, but Allison beams. There is much fluttering around her from Veronica and Annie, as evidently Allison’s hair is some sort of group achievement.

  Mum starts a teaching job on the other side of the city. She initiates a Thursday dinner-and-movie routine with just the two of us, and invests in an industrial-sized box of nicotine patches. She also hugs me at random moments, and turns Dad’s study into a yoga studio. I sort of wish she would wear less lycra around the house, but since she seems happy, I can let the lycra go.

  My father moves into a flat near the city. I avoid going there for three and a half weeks, until Mike and Camilla drag me onto a tram to visit him. Dad has set up his second room for me. It has a single bed and a set of wobbly Ikea furniture. He has also stuck a Friday the 13th poster crookedly on the wall above the bed. I’m not sure what to feel about any of this, as I’m not planning on spending a lot of time here. I hover uselessly in the middle of the room until Camilla squeezes my arm and then Blu-Tacks a photo above the nightstand. It is the slightly blurry shot of me and Mexican Lando, complete with giant sombreros.

  ‘Just in case you change your mind,’ she says.

  Camilla helps me buy a second-hand guitar so I can keep taking lessons with Jasper. In between Jasper sessions, she makes me practise some simple stuff and tries to look encouraging, but her face gets this pained look whenever I play and I feel a bit like I’m stabbing her in the eardrums with a fork. For some reason, Mike finds her zero patience with my musical incompetence hilarious.

  Mike and I hang out less and less. I don’t know how this happens. He goes to a normal gym and runs and lifts weights, but he has not set foot inside another karate class. We talk as much as we ever did at school, but it’s always about stupid, trivial stuff. I’ve been on the verge of bringing up the Travis-thing more than once, but the prospect of navigating that conversation with Mike makes me, predictably, wuss out. I keep thinking that whatever this is will fix itself – it’s Mike, so it just has to – but the weirdness has crept in, and I don’t know how to undo it.

  As the cold gives way to longer days and bluer skies, Camilla’s dad starts travelling more and more. When he’s home he prowls around their house like the walls are closing in on him, throwing half-sentences in our direction and generally being a morose pain in the arse.

  Camilla picks up a waitressing job at Schwartzman’s; she tells me that this is mostly so she has somewhere else to be other than hiding out at my house, but I suspect she’s just digging her heels in, for ‘insurance’ against her dad’s antsy-ness.

  I know she’s worried about Henry taking her away again. It’s not something I’m prepared to contemplate.

  The girls save the same green booth in a corner for us whenever they’re working. Adrian and I spend way too much time at Schwartzman’s doing homework or playing poker; the old regulars call it the kiddie table, but no-one really seems to mind.

  Killer Cats from the Third Moon of Jupiter ends up in the back of my wardrobe. I think it may possibly be one of the worst things ever written.

  I find that I’m not hating this new routine at all. Unfortunately, this new routine is not to last.

  •

  I read somewhere that significant events tend to happen on Thursdays. I don’t know the logic behind this. All I know is one sunny Thursday, my life as I know it is nuked.

  I’m in the lab at morning break, trying to fix a bug that has frozen all the printers. Camilla is perched on the desk, swinging her legs impatiently against my chair. She’s wearing one of the presents I gave her for her birthday: a necklace with two enamel sausage-dog charms that clatter against each other when she moves. I don’t know why she has a thing for dachshunds, but I’m grateful that all variations of weirdness are available on the net, if you look hard enough.

  ‘Sam, come on! It’s perfect outside and I need some sun. How much longer is this gonna take?’

  I ignore the thumping of her feet against my chair. ‘I don’t know. It’s very complicated and important. You don’t have to wait for me if you don’t want.’

  ‘Well, I have volleyball practice lunchtime. You have your mum tonight. I have a dance committee meeting tomorrow lunch. Dad and I are in Adelaide this weekend. When else are we going to hang out?’

  I lean back in my chair with a sigh. It does suck that she’s away this weekend. The Astor is screening The Shining, which I know she hasn’t seen before.

  ‘Blame Alessandro,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, I do. Seriously, how many times has he had food poisoning this year?’

  I laugh as I scroll through the printer configuration settings. ‘I know. Dude needs to learn that six-day-old pizza is probably not the healthiest breakfast option.’

  ‘You’d think someone who lives on a diet of Coke and kebabs would have a slightly tougher constitution.’ She balances her boots on the edge of my seat and swivels my chair from side to side. ‘But Sammy, do you have to do this now? Can’t it wait till Alessandro gets back?’

  I plant my hands on the desk at either side of her, holding myself in place. Camilla’s knee digs into my chest a little, but I resolutely refuse to let her move me again.

  ‘Oooh, tough-guy Sam,’ she says with a grin.

  I roll my eyes. ‘You know I get paid to do this job, right? And besides – what if the committee has some poster-printing emergency? Fixing this might be all that stands between me and the wrath of Sharni Vane. Seriously – I’m not willing to put my man parts on the line for you.’

  She winks. ‘God forbid I do anything to put your man parts in danger, Sammy.’

  Her mobile beeps before I can respond. She pulls it out of the pocket of her blue dress and frowns at the screen.

  ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Huh? Ah, yeah. I just … need to make a phone call. I’ll meet you back here in a min.’ She moves my arm out of her way and swings off the desk, hurrying from the room before I have a chance to say anything.

  I wait in the lab till the bell rings, but she doesn’t reappear. We have English next period, but I detour past her locker anyway. I can’t find her anywhere, and
no-one seems to have seen her. I duck into the classroom but Camilla’s chair is empty. Mike hasn’t seen her. Allison hasn’t seen her.

  She bolts into Mr Nicholas’s classroom seven minutes late and drops into the closest seat to the door. I know straight away that something is wrong. Her eyes are all wide and weird and her face is pale. I try to get her attention by staring at the side of her face, but she doesn’t look at me once. Mr Nicholas may have been speaking for some of the period, but all I hear is a vague rumble of sound in the background.

  By lunchtime she’s looking really sick. She dashes out of the classroom as soon as the bell rings, but I run behind her and corner her near her locker.

  ‘Camilla?’

  She jumps. ‘Oh. Hey, Sam.’

  ‘Hey … is everything all right?’

  She fidgets with the dog charms on her necklace. ‘Yeah. Everything’s fine.’ Her eyes are focused somewhere in the middle distance. The hand that holds the necklace is trembling.

  ‘You sure?’

  Camilla looks up at me for a moment. And then she grabs the sleeve of my hoodie and pulls me around the corner. She really does look awful. My palms start to sweat. I run through all the possible scenarios that could have reduced the unflappable Camilla Carter to the pale, wobbly thing in front of me. I’m thinking a family tragedy, a teenage pregnancy, or –

  Jesus, she couldn’t be –

  She takes a deep breath. ‘Sam, I think I might have done something stupid. Well, not stupid, just hasty, and now I’m kind of stuck and –’

  ‘Okay, tell me.’ For some reason, my voice is wobbling as well. I’m trying to remember that session with the Family Planning nurse who came in year nine, but I can only come up with a video of a screaming baby and some girl with braces talking about ruining her life. I have a feeling this won’t help. What am I going to do? Mike has money. He could help her. Maybe I could get another job, or –

  Camilla swallows. ‘I’m supposed to do this thing. I signed up for it ages ago, on a stupid whim, and now they’ve called me and I’m supposed to go tonight, but I don’t think I can. I can’t. I’m an idiot.’