Gran and Rose have fought for the sake of fighting all the way back to when Rose was three, or so the family history goes. According to Gran, Rose swears too much, works too much, and doesn’t come home nearly enough.
‘If she’s sent you to me, you’re in trouble.’
‘I tried to pass Year 12,’ I say, in an effort to defend myself.
‘If you were trying, you’d have passed. You could pass Year 12 with your eyes closed.’
I think of myself lying out the back of school when I should have been in class – the sun on my face and the warm grass on my back. ‘My eyes were closed most of the time.’
‘Life starts again,’ Rose says, as if that’s something she can order.
When we get back to the car I notice a flyer tucked under the windshield wipers advertising a band called The Hollows. I know immediately that it’s Lola’s band. It’s the name she and Hiroko chose back in Year 9, when it existed only in their imaginations. It was written all over the covers of their exercise books, their folders, their school bags. Lola designed t-shirts and had them printed before the band officially existed.
I study the flyer while Rose packs the last of the shopping bags into the car. There’s a picture on it of the two of them at a bus stop, waiting with Lola’s bass and all of Hiroko’s percussion instruments. ‘Old friends,’ I explain to Rose.
‘Old friends write,’ a voice says, and I look up to see Lola standing there.
It’s not all that surprising since she lives close by, and she’s obviously here putting band flyers under windshield wipers. It feels like a small miracle, though, as if she’s slipped through the air from the past: short and curvy, long brown hair and olive skin. I want to hug her, but if I do that I might spill everything and cry right here in the parking lot.
‘It’s been too long,’ I say to fill the silence.
‘Way too long,’ she says, twisting an earring that looks, in the dimness of the car park, like a small nail. ‘I thought you might be dead.’
‘I’d have told you,’ I say. ‘If I were dead.’
She doesn’t smile, but she stops twisting the nail. If I told her about Cal, she’d forgive me immediately, but she’d feel guilty when there’s nothing to feel guilty about. Plus, it doesn’t feel right to blurt it across a grubby car park while Rose is packing toilet paper into the car.
‘Year 12 sort of took over everything,’ I tell her and she steps forward a little and touches my hair as if she’s just noticed that it’s short and bleached now.
Her eyes roam all over me, over my black t-shirt and jeans, over my skinny frame. She’s in a short silver dress and I try not to look as faded as I feel. ‘You don’t like it?’ I ask, running my hand over my hair.
‘I like it,’ she says.
‘Are you forgiving me?’
She stares for a while and then takes the flyer from my hands. ‘The Hollows are playing at a place called Laundry tonight,’ she says, scribbling her phone number on the paper. ‘Henry’ll be there, and if you’re really sorry, you’ll come anyway.’
She gives me back the flyer, kisses me on the cheek, swings her leg back over her bike and cycles off before I’ve got time to think of an excuse and say no. I can hear her shouting, ‘Thank God you’re back,’ as she pedals away.
I tell Rose about Lola and Hiroko as we leave the car park. Lola’s on vocals and guitar. Hiroko plays the glockenspiel and some other percussion instruments I can’t name. They do some covers but mostly they write their own songs. As I talk I can see the two of them in class, passing notes with lyrics written on them while the teacher isn’t looking.
I put the flyer in my pocket. I miss Lola, and I want her to forgive me, but there’s no way I’m going to Laundry tonight. Life’s depressing enough without seeing Henry and Amy kissing.
‘Speaking of old school friends,’ Rose says. ‘I bumped into Sophia the other day – your friend Henry’s mum? It was good timing too. I’d just found out that the job I got you at the hospital fell through, and when I mentioned it to her she offered you a job at Howling Books instead.’
Rose is speaking quickly, so it takes me a while to absorb what she’s saying, and then think about what it means. Working next to Henry for eight awkward hours every day. Even if we work different shifts, there’ll be no avoiding him. He’s always in the bookstore. He sleeps in the bookstore. He’ll be lying on the fiction couch talking constantly about Amy.
‘No,’ I say.
‘No?’
‘No,’ I say again, more forcefully. ‘Thanks but no thanks. Tell Sophia I found another job.’
‘Have you found another job?’
‘Obviously not.’
‘Then you’re taking this one. You start at ten, tomorrow morning. Sophia said she was looking for someone with people and computer skills, and that describes you perfectly.’
‘I no longer have people skills.’
‘This is true, but I chose not to share that with her. I didn’t share anything else, either. They don’t know about Cal. They don’t know you failed Year 12. They think you’re taking a year off before university. All they need is someone to catalogue the stock and create a database. You can do that, right?’
I can do it, I admit. I just don’t want to do it.
I don’t want to explain the humiliating situation with Henry, but since I don’t have a choice I tell her about liking him, about the last night of the world, Amy, the letter, my declaration of love, his ignoring my declaration of love. Any other human would understand why I couldn’t take that job.
‘You’ll just have to get over it.’
But Rose is not like any other human.
‘You want to hide. You want to be miserable, but that’s not happening. You’re taking the job at Howling Books. You’re not spending even one day lying on your bed staring at the ceiling.’ She parks the car opposite the warehouse. I get out and slam the door.
I’m more determined with every bag that I take inside that I’m not working with Henry. ‘It will be deeply, deeply annoying. It will be humiliating.’
‘It’ll be life,’ Rose says. ‘And you have to jump back in sometime.’
‘I’d rather clean toilets. Let me clean toilets. I beg you. Let me look for a job cleaning toilets.’ I start shoving cans onto shelves.
‘You still like him,’ Rose says, passing them to me.
‘I don’t still like him. I don’t like anyone.’
Maybe some people have loads of sex to help them get over their grief, but I went the opposite way. I broke up with Joel. I haven’t kissed anyone since the funeral. I don’t want to kiss anyone. I don’t want to see anyone kiss anyone. I definitely don’t want to see Henry kiss Amy.
‘This is my condition for you living here,’ Rose says, her voice running under my thoughts. ‘You get up every morning; you go to work. You either do that, or I enrol you in Year 12 again. You’re eighteen, so you can decide what to do. You can stay here and do what I say or you can move out.’
I put the last can on the shelf.