Chapter 10: Friday Evening

Lightning crashes overhead and thunder roars. A single high soprano voice soars in wordless homage to the storm. The naked woman dances and spins. Her long hair blows wild and free in the blustering wind. The goblet and knife in her hands speak of some nameless ritual. Her naked dance is sexy, brazen, promiscuous, earthy, vulgar. She flings her arms wide and opens herself to the storm. A single bolt of lightning spears down and slams into the earth in front of her. Heat and light sear the front of her body with brilliance. Her back is plunged into cold dark mysterious shadows. The storm-tossed trees turn as one and a thousand voices call out a single word – “Bec!”

Huh!?

“Bec!!” I jumped in surprise and shock.

“Sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Mum stood beside me. She had appeared suddenly out of nowhere. I was quite sure she hadn’t been there a second ago. I glanced at my door to check if it was still closed and was surprised to see it standing open. Through the door I could see a hatless cat trying to do headstands against the hallway wall. She had her head on the floor and her bum sticking up in the air. As I watched, her black-stockinged legs kicked up and waved wildly in the air before crashing back onto the floor.

“I thought you promised to knock before coming into my room,” I said grumpily.

“I did knock, honey. I knocked several times but you didn’t answer. I could hear your phone ringing and you weren’t answering it so I thought I’d better check on you.”

“My phone?”

I looked at my phone – my shiny new cell phone. The little window told me that I had two missed calls – both from my best friend, Liz. I’d been so wrapped up in my art I ignored her calls. I felt really bad about that.

“I should call her,” I said.

“You can in a minute, honey. Why don’t you use the house phone, though? It’s an awful lot cheaper.”

Another crash sounded from the hallway.

“Angie, you’ll be sorry if you hurt that arm again,” called Mum.

“What’s the point of having my own phone if I use the house phone all the time?” I asked.

“The point is for you to have a phone when you go out so you can call us if you need us or so you can call your friends without having to find a public phone. There’s no point using that when you’re at home. The home phone costs half the price.”

“You don’t get it, Mum. The point of having my own phone is so I can sit in here and talk privately without worrying about prying ears and without Dad yelling at me to get off the phone.”

We heard a crash from the hallway. We both looked to see that Angie had kicked off too hard, flipped over and thumped into the wall. Her head had been too far away from the wall so instead of being in a headstand, she was folded in half with her head and shoulders flat on the floor and her hips and legs against the wall and pointing upwards. Her spine appeared to bend in the middle in a totally freaky way.

“Angie!” called Mum. Her voice was full of frustration. “Don’t you think it’s time for a new game?”

Angie answered with an upside-down giggle.

“Why don’t you play Dead Fish? That’s a great game! It’s really easy. Lie flat on the floor and pretend to be a dead fish. The game is to see how long you can lie perfectly still. Dead fish don’t move around, you see?”

Angie scrambled away from the wall and lay flat on the floor with her arms held stiffly by her sides.

Mum turned back to me.

“Maybe worrying about prying ears is a good thing because it stops you from saying things you oughtn’t be saying. And maybe keeping your calls short is a good thing because it means you save up things to talk about the next time you and Liz are together.”

I sighed in exasperation and tilted forward until my head banged against the suface of my desk.

“Never mind. Forget it,” I muttered.

“I’m simply pointing out that we pay for the house phone but if you make too many calls on your phone it comes out of your allowance.”

“Whatever!” I said into the desk.

There was silence for a moment.

“Mummy?” called the cat pretending to be a dead fish. “How long was that?”

Maybe it was a cat-fish – I mean a dead cat-fish – that was speaking!

“That was good, honey, but dead fish can’t talk,” Mum called out to Angie. “Now you’ll have to start the game again. See if you can last longer this time.”

The fish flopped over onto its stomach and lay still.

“Are you hungry? You missed lunch and the girls are planning to make pizza for dinner so who knows when that will happen.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said with my head still on the desk. “I ate lunch at Faith’s house.”

“I could fry up a fish. I seem to have landed a big one. And I think I’ll need to do something with it soon or the fish will go off. There’s a limit to how long I can keep this game going.”

I sat up. “Hey! Little Miss Cat-Fish! Come in here and give me a cuddle,” I called.

Angie sprang to her feet in a single motion and stepped forward but stopped at the doorway.

“Mummy said I mustn’t disturb you.”

“Hmm!” I glanced at Mum and looked back at Angie. “That was before, when I was doing my homework. I’ve finished now so you won’t disturb me. Come on.”

I held out my arms and Angie scampered into the room and slid onto my lap.

“Is your homework actually finished?” asked Mum.

I shrugged. “It’s not finished but I got a lot done. Then I did some drawing.”

Mum picked up my sketchpad and looked at the picture.

I bit my lip and cuddled Angie while I waited for Mum’s comments.

“It’s good to see you experimenting with mixing your mediums,” she said. “It’s important to keep trying new things. I like the way you’ve done it in a way that makes use of the differences in the two media to convey something about the image. Too many artists just combine things because they can. In this one, you might have overdone the silver paint. The lightning overwhelms the rest of the picture. It’s too dominant. I would have made the bolt thinner – that would have balanced things out a bit more. But on the other hand, I can see how you might have been aiming for that effect. If that’s what you wanted you certainly achieved it.”

From Mum, that was pretty close to praise so I was pleased.

I leaned down and blew softly into Angie’s neck below her ear. She giggled and jigged about to avoid it.

Mum was still looking at my picture. She sighed heavily.

“My poor little Bec,” Mum said softly. “All that anger. If I could save you from even a scrap of it, I would. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Mum.”

Don’t ask me where she saw anger in my picture. I didn’t put it there.

“On the plus side,” said Mum, “I would say over the last month your art has really advanced to another level. There’s a real emotional complexity coming through that wasn’t there before. I’m so pleased you’re getting a chance to work with a different artist at the college. We need to nurture this new seedling – feed it so that it can grow. Just like we need to feed this little pussy cat so she can grow.”

Mum reached down and squiggled her fingers into Angie’s stomach. Angie convulsed in my lap and banged her head back into my shoulder. It kind of hurt, but not a lot. Mum leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. Then she lifted Angie onto her hip.

“Are you coming with us or staying here for a while?”

“I might stay here.”

“Okay. You know where the kitchen is if you get hungry.”

“Sure, Mum.”

“Mummy, what do cats eat?” asked Angie.

“Well, sometimes they eat fish.”

“What do fish eat?”

“Well, some types of big fish eat little fishes.”

“What do little fishes eat?”

“They eat plankton.”

“What’s plantin?”

“The word is plankton. There’s a kuh sound in the middle. Plankton is like tiny little bugs that live in the water.”

“What does plan-kuh-ton eat?”

“Gosh honey, I don’t know. Let’s ask your father. He knows lots of weird things.”

Mum pulled my door closed behind her so I didn’t hear the rest of that conversation.

I smiled quietly to myself. Carefully, I packed all my pencils back in their box and put that and my sketchbook back in their place in a pile at the back of my desk. I put my notes for the English paper into my school folder and added that to the pile as well. A couple of other things needed tidying as well but soon my desk looked neat and organized.

Then I remembered that Liz had been calling me. I picked up my cell phone and sent her an SMS – tlk 2 u @ chat. Then I turned my computer back on and opened a chat window. While I waited for Liz to log on, I googled plankton and looked for information about what they eat. It turns out Angie’s question didn’t have a simple answer. Plankton aren’t a single type of thing. Plankton is the whole variety of tiny stuff that drifts about in the ocean – as opposed to swimming. So there is plant-plankton that don’t eat anything – they use photosynthesis like other plants. There is animal-plankton that eat plant-plankton and there is bacteria-plankton that live on rotting plants and dead animals – I don’t know if ‘eat’ is the right word for what bacteria does. The proper name for animal-plankton is zooplankton. That’s pretty funny because you wouldn’t need a very big zoo to keep zooplankton in. A flask from the science room filled with sea water would be more than big enough. Did you know all that, Dr K? It’s pretty interesting.

Eventually, I saw Liz’s online name appear. I closed down the window where I was reading about plankton and started chatting to Liz. We linked up and started a private chat. I’m going to translate it for you because we use a lot of shorthand – regular SMS abbreviations and also some of our own terms. Also, we don’t use our own names so if I showed you the original comments it would all be a bit confusing.

This is effectively what we said.

Liz: Why aren’t we talking on our fancy new cells?
Bec: The Parents are giving me grief about how much it costs.
Liz: <pout> We only got them yesterday.
Bec: I know. <rolling eyes>
Liz: <shrug>
Bec: I have stuff to tell you about last night and this morning.
Liz: What?
Bec: It’s complicated. Better if I tell you next time I see you.
Liz: Okay. Tell me tomorrow.
Bec: Don’t let me forget to tell you.
Liz: No problem. Are you ready for tomorrow?
Bec: Mostly. I should get that dress from Tara now before her friends turn up.
Liz: Poor you. Having The Gang inside your house for the whole night.
Bec: <shrug> If I leave them alone, they’ll leave me alone – mostly.
Bec: What about you? Are you ready?
Liz: I guess. I’m nervous about the dance but we should be okay.
Bec: You’ll be great. You’ve been practicing forever.
Liz: My neighbor, Mrs Flasche, offered to do our hair. Can you get here by nine?
Bec: Sure. This is going to be fun. I’m looking forward to it. I love weddings.
Liz: Me too.
Bec: I better go and borrow that dress from Tara.
Liz: Okay, see you tomorrow.
Bec: Bye.

I shut down the chat window and went out looking for Tara. She was in her room, doing some last minute tidying.

“Hey!”

“What?”

“Remember how you promised I could borrow your silver formal dress for that wedding I’m going to tomorrow? I figured if I grabbed it now, I wouldn’t have to hassle you in the morning when your friends are here.”

Tara rolled her eyes at me as if I was asking her to do the most enormous favor when she was busy doing something else – which I guess I was.

“You promised weeks ago!” I reminded her.

She grumbled to herself as she fished through her closet. She pulled out the dress on its hanger. Then she picked out the matching pumps and thrust the handful at me.

“If you wreck those, I’ll make you suffer until the end of time.”

I shrugged. “Thanks. I’ll get out of your way.”

“Wait!” Tara looked at me with a critical eye. “You’re going to need a strapless bra to wear under it. Do you have one?”

“No.”

She dug into the back of her underwear drawer and pulled out a strapless bra for me. Then she handed me a pair of small round pads.

“You’ll need to fill out the bra a bit or the front of the dress will flop around and look stupid.”

I looked closely at the pads.

“These are for padding my bra? I’ve been using Kleenex and you had these all this time?”

She shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Well, thanks anyway.”

I went back to my room and hung up the dress and put the shoes and bra away.

Then I sat back down at my desk and opened up Google again. I went back to reading about plankton. I found out that there are some big plankton, too. Did you know they list jelly-fish as a type of plankton? And some types of jelly-fish are huge. I guess since they float around in the ocean and eat smaller plankton, they fit the definition. It means a single flask wouldn’t be big enough for my plankton zoo. That’s disappointing. I was having fun imagining a zoo in a bottle.

Google told me there was a video on YouTube that showed magnified plankton so I watched that. It was really pretty the way they float around in groups and how you can see the little eddies and swirls in the water from watching them move. Then when they’re magnified, you can see that some of them are see-through and some of them have colors and all of them are weird shapes and they flutter and twist and spin and flip in the most amazing way.

On the related videos list was a time-lapse video of coral growing. Coral is pretty too. On the related videos list for that was a slowed-down video of bullets punching through a piece of timber. That was kind of cool to watch with each bullet changing shape and all the bits of wood flying everywhere in slow motion. On the related videos list for that was an instructional video on how to pull apart and clean a handgun. I followed that link but I stopped it from playing right away because on the related videos list for that was a whole lot of similar videos including one for a gun like Dad’s.

I watched as a man with a bushy moustache and wearing a black Nirvana tshirt showed me how to load and unload the gun – including how to check for a bullet in the chamber. Then he showed me how to strip it down, clean it, put it together, load it and fire it. He had some good things to say about safety, like not pointing the gun at anyone even if you know it isn’t loaded. I figure it was exactly the same lesson that Dad and Dan must have gotten the first time they went to the gun range. I ran the video again – even though watching something once is usually enough for me. I didn’t have Dad’s gun in my hands to practise with but my hands remembered the feel of the gun so I had to imagine it was there and let my hands move through the air as I imitated the moves the man was making. I promised Dan that I wouldn’t do anything silly with the gun but it was cool to know how to pull it apart.