Second Shot
Terri-Anne Green Baps (physiotherapy), Cumberland College Grad Cert Social Science (Creative Writing), University of Newcastle
An exegesis and novel submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Faculty of Education and Arts School of Humanities and Social Science University of Newcastle
15 October 2015 Statement of Originality
The thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. I give consent to the final version of my thesis being made available worldwide when deposited in the University’s Digital Repository**, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. **Unless an Embargo has been approved for a determined period.
Signed ______
Date ______
ii
Dedication
For the men in my life— Philip, David and Jonathan.
iii Acknowledgements
Thank you to my co supervisors, Dr Kim Cheng Boey and Dr David Musgrave, Kim Cheng for his keen critical eye and David for steering me back to the path of young adult fiction.
Special thanks to my writing buddies from the Writer’s Dozen who have provided much-needed feedback, support and the occasional cattle prod when my confidence in writing or enthusiasm waned, particularly Pamela, Monique, Angella and Yvonne, who have been with me from the start, and Annabel, who read my novel with fresh eyes.
This thesis was edited by Elite Editing and editorial intervention was restricted to Standards D and E of the Australian Standards for Editing Practice.
iv Contents
Statement of Originality ...... ii Dedication ...... iii Acknowledgements ...... iv Contents ...... v List of Abbreviations ...... viii Abstract ...... ix EXEGESIS ...... 1 From Ahab to Augustus Burroughs: Narratives of Trauma, Amputation and Transformation ...... 1 Chapter 1: Writing Trauma and Disability ...... 2 1.1 ‘Crash Writing’ ...... 3 1.1.1 Outcomes, and Aftermath in ‘Crash Writing’ ...... 3 1.1.2 The Crash in YA Fiction ...... 6 1.1.3 The Original Crash...... 7 1.2 Writing the ‘Unspeakable’: Trauma Theory ...... 9 1.3 The Real Story: Amputee Life Writing ...... 14 1.4 The Critical Lens of Disability Studies ...... 16 1.4.1 Past and Present Perceptions ...... 17 1.4.2 Corporeal Representation and Narrative Prosthesis ...... 18 Chapter 2: The Evolution of Amputee Literature ...... 21 2.1 Amputee Fiction and Fact: Historical Perspectives ...... 21 2.1.1 Whalebones and Gold ...... 22 2.1.2 Soldiers and Pirates ...... 24 2.1.3 World War I ...... 26 2.1.4 World War II: A Hero Emerges ...... 30 2.1.5 From Hero to Superhero: Birth of the ‘Super Amp’ ...... 31 2.2 The Amputee Hero’s Journey in Fiction and Reality ...... 32 2.2.1 Flawed Protagonists and Anti-Heroes ...... 34 2.2.2 Fake v. Real: The Prosthetic Struggle in J. M. Coetzee’s Slow Man ...... 35 2.2.3 Amputation as ‘Horror’ ...... 37 2.2.4 Function and Dysfunction: ‘Post-Amp’ Stories ...... 40 2.2.5 The Wounded Warrior Returns ...... 42
v Chapter 3: Why YA? ...... 46 3.1 YA: Features and Function ...... 46 3.1.1 Audience, Themes and Form ...... 46 3.1.2 Point of View: Whose Story is This? ...... 47 3.1.3 All About the Emotion ...... 49 3.1.4 Growth, Change, Belonging and Hope ...... 49 3.1.5 Gatekeepers and Quality Control ...... 51 3.1.6 For the Sake of Reading ...... 52 3.2 YA Fiction and the Portrayal of Disability ...... 53 3.3 Amputee Characters in YA Fiction ...... 55 3.3.1 Izzy Willy Nilly ...... 56 3.3.2 Shark Girl and Formerly Shark Girl ...... 57 3.3.3 Soul Surfer ...... 60 3.3.4 The Running Dream ...... 60 3.3.5 Cinder ...... 63 3.3.6 The Fault in Our Stars ...... 64 Chapter 4: Summary and Conclusion ...... 67 Works Cited ...... 70 Works Consulted ...... 78 SECOND SHOT ...... 81 Chapter 1: Jessica—Friday Night ...... 82 Chapter 2: Dylan—Friday Morning ...... 94 Chapter 3: Jessica—Friday ...... 101 Chapter 4: Dylan ...... 109 Chapter 5: Dylan ...... 117 Chapter 6: Jessica ...... 123 Chapter 7: Dylan ...... 129 Chapter 8: Dylan ...... 136 Chapter 9: Dylan ...... 144 Chapter 10: Dylan ...... 151 Chapter 11: Jessica ...... 158 Chapter 12: Jessica ...... 167 Chapter 13: Jessica ...... 178 Chapter 14: Dylan ...... 185 Chapter 15: Dylan ...... 190
vi Chapter 16: Jessica ...... 199 Chapter 17: Dylan ...... 208 Chapter 18: Dylan ...... 216 Chapter 19: Jessica ...... 222 Chapter 20: Dylan ...... 227 Chapter 21: Dylan ...... 231 Chapter 22: Jessica ...... 236 Chapter 23: Dylan ...... 238 Chapter 24: Jessica ...... 239 Chapter 25: Dylan ...... 246 Chapter 26: Jessica ...... 248 Chapter 27: Dylan ...... 249 Chapter 28: Jessica ...... 264 Chapter 29: Dylan ...... 267 Chapter 30: Dylan ...... 279
vii List of Abbreviations
AA Alcoholics Anonymous
BID body integrative identity disorder
BKA below knee amputation
CBT cognitive behavioural therapy
DFC Distinguished Flying Cross
DSO Distinguished Service Order
IED Improvised Explosive Device
NSW New South Wales
PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder
QLD Queensland
TBI traumatic brain injury
YA young adult
viii Abstract
The aim of the creative component of this research project was to explore through the medium of a contemporary young adult (YA) novel the impact that a motor vehicle accident can have on individuals, relationships and families when serious permanent injuries such as traumatic amputation are sustained as well as examining the psychological and social context of amputation. The novel, Second Shot, traces the aftermath of a single vehicle accident from the perspective of two of the adolescent occupants, one of whom sustains a below-knee amputation.
With the dual threads of road trauma and amputation the exegesis examines selected examples of crash writing and amputee narratives from the critical perspectives of trauma theory and disability studies. It then traces the development of the amputee protagonist from the 1860’s through to contemporary works, with particular reference to the reciprocal relationship between prevailing cultural attitudes and the way amputees are portrayed. The amputee protagonist has evolved from villain to wounded warrior hero with many permutations in between, including everyman, anti-hero, super-hero and cyborg. As the creative component is a YA work, the final chapter examines features of YA fiction in general before critically analysing the major YA novels in the ‘amp lit’ space in which the creative work, Second Shot is situated.
In the last decade there has been a marked increase in the publication of amputee narratives. This has coincided with both an increasing presence of amputee athletes and public figures in the media and popular culture as well as the high visibility of wounded warrior amputees resulting from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The now considerable breadth and variety of amputee or amputation narratives is an area that has untapped potential for further critical evaluation.
ix
EXEGESIS From Ahab to Augustus Burroughs: Narratives of Trauma, Amputation and Transformation
1 Chapter 1: Writing Trauma and Disability
The creative component of this research project, Second Shot, set out to explore through the medium of a Young Adult (YA) novel the impact that a motor vehicle accident can have on individuals, relationships and families when serious permanent injuries are sustained. The main protagonist of Second Shot, Dylan MacKay, is a talented soccer player on the verge of a professional career and as a result of the accident his left leg is amputated below the knee. His best friend Jake suffers a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and Jessica, the girl driving the car, escapes with only a broken arm but carrying the burden of guilt and blame. Since Dylan is the main protagonist, his journey forms the main focus of the novel and as a result the creative work is more specifically concerned with the physical, psychological and social dimensions of traumatic amputation.
An injury such as a traumatic amputation plunges both the individual and their family into a time of intense physical and emotional challenge and can lead to a crisis of identity. By its very nature amputation involves pain, grieving and loss. It brings up issues of body image, including societal reactions and attitudes to an altered body as well as the individual’s feelings about their own body and how it defines their very humanity. The individual must now incorporate the status of amputee into their identity. Where before they were a whole intact human, now they are a human with a missing part that needs to be supplemented with something non-human, namely a prosthesis. Issues of identity and body image are of heightened importance in adolescence and are common themes in YA works, hence YA was chosen as an ideal genre to explore the issues that new amputees face. This crisis of identity is even more acute in Second Shot given that the main protagonist’s self-image and future plans were wholly based on pursuing a professional football (soccer) career.
The accompanying exegesis ties together the dual threads of motor vehicle trauma and amputation that are explored in the creative work. In addition, since the creative component is a YA novel, elements and features that denote a work as YA are also examined. Theoretical approaches to writing trauma and disability are discussed and used to underpin the subsequent critical analysis of amputee literature. The main thrust of the exegesis is the literary representation of amputees and amputation. Amputation has the potential to provide a potent physical and symbolic representation of wounding and loss. It also lends itself to narratives of resilience and hope. It is not surprising then that amputation has attracted the attention of a broad spectrum of writers. Amputee protagonists have featured in literature from the late 19th to the 21st century spanning many genres including classic works, horror, contemporary realist fiction, literary fiction, thrillers, crime fiction, poetry and YA. The exegesis investigates some
2 trends and findings that emerge from a critical examination of both historic and contemporary amputee literature, tracing the development of the amputee protagonist from villain to super- hero. The last decade has seen a huge leap in the number of works that fall into the category of amputee literature; ‘amp-lit’ is defined by the author as works that may focus directly on amputation as a subject, or works that include an amputee protagonist to some extent. Despite the breadth and volume of the work now available amputee literature is an area that has received little critical attention in its own right but would seem to offer much potential for further study.
1.1 ‘Crash Writing’
Popular culture glorifies the car crash, particularly in film and video games. In the virtual world, the baddies crash and burn, the heroes walk away unscathed, and resurrection is just the click of a reset button away, yet for anyone involved in a serious car crash the reality is very different. Surviving intact is never guaranteed. For many, the car crash is a dividing moment in time that splits life into before and after in a brutal and traumatic way. According to the Australian Automobile Association, every year on Australian roads there are approximately 1100 people killed in motor vehicle accidents and an estimated 32,500 who sustain serious injuries requiring long-term care and treatment. While the death toll is widely publicised and has been steadily reducing, the impact and pervasiveness of road-related trauma is less well known despite how frequently it occurs and the onerous financial and human costs involved. Behind the statistics lies a huge range of tragedy and drama, which can provide ample material for a novelist to explore.
One would expect that since the car crash is such a common event there would be myriad novels that explore its consequences and aftermath. Surprisingly, this is not the case. For example, in 2010 at the start of the research for Second Shot, Barnes & Noble’s website listed a meagre 20 books with a car crash theme that were published in the preceding two decades and readily available, compared to over 7000 with a serial killer theme. Perhaps it is the very nature of its frequency, the sheer commonness of the event that makes the car crash and its realistic aftermath a less popular subject than a Hannibal Lector. Perhaps it is a bit too close to home. A car crash is, in fact, something that could happen to anyone, any place, any time and the motor vehicle is the real serial killer lurking in our midst.
1.1.1 Outcomes, and Aftermath in ‘Crash Writing’
Before writing a novel set in the aftermath of a car crash, a reading of other novels with a similar topic was undertaken to provide context and direction for creating a new work. Just as there are a variety of possible outcomes with any real car crash, there are a variety of novelistic outcomes explored in ‘crash writing’ works. Death and traumatic brain injury (TBI) are the
3 most commonly written about outcomes, but spinal cord injury and traumatic amputation are also represented. The amount of detail surrounding the actual car crash varies between authors and works, but in every book reviewed for the current research the actual moment of physical impact was always included at least briefly, and often at the beginning of the book. Some works focus more on the background or antecedents to the crash, but more commonly, car crash themed novels focus on the aftermath and resultant physical and psychological effects.
In keeping with these common conventions, Second Shot also starts with a car crash, a single vehicle that flips off the road. It then sets about exploring what happens to the three teenage occupants in the aftermath while also gradually revealing how the crash came about so it is concerned with both antecedent and effect. As noted in the introduction the main protagonist, Dylan, is a talented football player, an only child whose family is very invested in his pursuit of a professional career. Due to the crash Dylan sustains a Below Knee Amputation (BKA), his best friend, Jake, suffers a TBI, while Jessica, the girl driving the car, escapes with a broken arm. These plot circumstances were chosen in order to explore issues of guilt and blame and the effects on, family dynamics, relationships and friendships when a permanent injury is sustained. As a work of young adult (YA) fiction, it is not intended as tragedy but as a story of resilience in which the identity and self-image of all the protagonists are challenged and gradually re-formed.
The fracturing effect of road trauma on families and the resultant disruption to identity are themes that are also taken up by Richard Powers in his 2006 novel, The Echo Maker. Not only does Powers’ novel explore the effect of road trauma on an individual’s identity within a family, it also questions the very nature of identity itself. One of the key characters, Mark Schluter, suffers a severe TBI after his car runs off the road. His sister Karen puts her life on hold to care for him while he recovers. Mark improves quite well physically, but his memory has huge gaps and he is left with a rare disorder called Capgras syndrome, which renders him unable to recognise the significant others in his life, believing them to be impostors. As a result, Mark no longer accepts Karen as his sister, and he experiences ‘a profound disruption to his sense of continuity’ (Van Loon 20) due to the damage to his brain. In response to the situation, all of the other characters also struggle with their own sense of identity, their own narrative or perception of who and what they are. Powers seems to be making a case that for everyone the process of constructing ‘the self’ is flawed and vulnerable rather than fixed and secure or, as Van Loon comments, that ‘selfhood is profoundly unstable’ (22).
This issue of disruption to personal and family identity is also apparent in the YA novel The Story of Tom Brennan (2005) by J. C. Burke. Burke’s story is not directly about the immediate victims of a car crash or the perpetrator, Daniel Brennan, but rather it is the story of Tom, Daniel’s younger brother, narrated from his first-person perspective. Daniel crashes his
4 car after a night of drinking and partying, killing two other teenagers and paralysing his cousin, Finn. Daniel is sent to prison but the whole family is effectively punished when they are forced by the weight of community outrage to move away from their small country town, deal with the consequences of the crash and begin the slow process of rebuilding their own lives. By using an innocent bystander as the narrator and focus of the novel, the author is able to avoid the black- and-white casting of characters as perpetrator and victim and successfully explores the spreading effect of a car crash on individuals, families and entire communities. This slant-wise telling is particularly effective for a YA novel as it avoids the preaching or worthy intent that could occur if written from the victim’s point of view. Tom is close enough to the perpetrator to evoke both anger and empathy, whereas, if the novel had been written from Daniel’s point of view, reader empathy may have been more difficult to gain.
More conventionally, novels such as Steven Lovely’s Irreplaceable (2009) and Jason Wright’s The Cross Gardener (2010) look at the car crash from the victim’s point of view, or, if the victim dies in the accident, the victim’s family’s perspective. In general, such ‘grief journey’ novels trace the period of time surrounding the accident and the weeks and months afterward.
Writing from the point of view of the perpetrator is a task that Michelle Huneven takes on in her novel Blame (2009). The main character, Patsy McLemoore, is a young college professor with a drinking problem whose life is radically altered when her car mows down two Jehovah’s Witnesses in her driveway. Patsy cannot remember the accident but is found guilty and sent to prison for 18 months. On her release from prison, Patsy returns to her former job and sets about trying to make amends, financing her victim’s son’s college education, and becoming a stalwart of the local Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) chapter. When her therapist asks why she comes to therapy, Patsy replies, ‘Guilt,’ … ‘How to live with Guilt’ (167). The novel pursues themes of forgiveness and atonement. Patsy is unable to forgive herself until it is finally revealed, years later, that someone else was driving the car at the time of the accident, a vital fact that Patsy was too drunk to remember. In some ways, the revelation is a little contrived and seems to be saying that the only way to be exonerated from guilt is to actually be not guilty. Despite this contradiction, the novel explores the impact of living with guilt and is a rare example of a ‘crash novel’ written from the alleged perpetrator’s point of view, raising interesting questions about blame and reparation.
Second Shot, by way of comparison, is narrated from two points of view, from what initially seems to be ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’. However, the relationship between Dylan and Jessica is much more complicated than these simplistically assigned roles and as the plot unfolds, just as in Huneven’s Blame, the notions of guilt and responsibility become blurred and shared.
5 Road trauma involving adolescent drivers and passengers can strike a chord of primeval fear in any parent waiting for their child to arrive home and sadly at times literary depictions of road trauma are based on real events. One such reality-based project is the 2010 play, Engine, by Balodis and Louis. The play was written and developed in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales (NSW) in response to the tragic deaths of four local teenage boys in 2006. Although it uses fictional characters it is based on the real experiences of the families involved. Engine is an emotionally raw and poignant exploration of the impact of a fatal accident on families, but it goes beyond merely telling the ‘story’. It uses four boys as the chorus and as eerie crash-test dummies re-enacting the scene of the crash. The chorus actors are drawn from local high schools, and the play toured northern NSW and southern Queensland (QLD) with the intent of changing behaviour as well as to entertain and inform. The circumstances surrounding the real crash that the play is based on had a particular relevance to the writing of Second Shot because the laws in NSW that prevent Provisional license holders from taking more than one passenger after 11 pm were enacted due to political and community lobbying that was led by the father of one of the boys killed in the crash.
1.1.2 The Crash in YA Fiction
The car crash is rarely a subject in children’s fiction, and when it does feature it is more often used as a device to prove the child protagonist’s bravery and/or worth and to help them affirm their place in their family. Death is rare and while injury may occur, everyone is patched up and on the road to recovery at the end. Examples of this include William Taylor’s Crash! The Story of Poddy (2000) and Betsy Cromer Boyars’ The Glory Girl (1985). YA fiction, by contrast, is darker and more realistic, concerned with the tragic as well as the heroic. While YA crash novels may offer hope and resilience, there are no truly happy endings. J. C. Burke’s above-mentioned The Story of Tom Brennan, for example, is marked by gritty realism and devastating outcomes such as quadriplegia, imprisonment and death, moving gradually from despair to a more optimistic future and tone.
One of the most well-known and commercially successful YA crash novels of recent years, Gayle Forman’s If I Stay (2009), begins with a car accident in which the 17-year-old narrator, Mia, is the only member of her family to survive. Mia’s own life is hanging in the balance, and while suspended in a comatose state she takes on the role of an omniscient narrator. Mia is able to view her body and external events as though she is separate from her body, an outside observer and witness, much in the way that people who survive near death experiences describe out-of-body sensations. The narration swings between ‘real time’ in the few days immediately following the accident and flashbacks to Mia’s pre-crash life in order to illustrate the life she has lost.
6 As Mia gradually realises the extent of her loss, she must face an enormous decision: whether it would be better for her to ‘stay’ and face a life without her family or to join them in death. The novel’s dilemma revolves on the premise that choosing to live or die for Mia is an act of will under her control. Unlike other novels set in the aftermath of a crash, If I Stay does not trace a character’s journey from disaster to resilience. Instead, it explores the immediate impact of grief and the courage needed to begin facing life under the weight of devastating loss.
Karen Tayleur’s YA novel Six (2010) also begins with a car crash, a crash that involves six occupants and only five seatbelts. It is narrated from six different points of view, each occupant of the car having some share in the narrative; however, the majority of the narration is from 17-year-old Sarah’s point of view. At the start of the novel, we know that the crash has occurred but have no details of the circumstances or outcome. This partial revelation enables the author to build tension and suspense as the novel then jumps back six months in time, gradually piecing together the sequence of events that cause and culminate in the crash. By the conclusion we find out some answers but are left with a profound sense of pointlessness and waste, making the novel a tragedy in the true sense of the word. This is in contrast to The Story of Tom Brennan and If I Stay, which deals with equally tragic consequences but ends on a more optimistic note. While a bleak outcome might be seen as more ‘realistic’ it runs the risk of providing a less satisfying resolution, robbing the reader of an emotional payoff. Having invested time with characters who have suffered misfortune, there is a desire for something to come out of the experience—not necessarily a clichéd ‘happy’ ending but some growth or change to have occurred. If a car crash novel offers nothing to salvage from the wreckage then the question remains, what was the point of it all?
1.1.3 The Original Crash
Any examination of novels about car crashes would be incomplete without reference to J. G. Ballard’s 1973 novel Crash. In this novel, the main characters repeatedly watch and/or recreate car crashes for sexual gratification in a Freudian acting out of the repetition compulsion and the death drive. With voyeurism and the fetishisation of the car crash as its subject matter, Crash is both a critique and an example of society’s fascination with the car as an instrument of destruction and excitement, what Brottman and Sharett describe as ‘the impulses of western consciousness toward the worship of catastrophe and self-annihilation’ (127). David Cronenberg’s film of the novel, also titled Crash, met with controversy and moral outrage when it was released in 1996, borne of what Chaudhuri ascribes to the ‘ambiguous feelings that the fantasies in Crash explore—exactly that kind of uneasy fascination that draws us to the road accident’ (63). The linking of sex, wounding and death, as well as the seeming lack of empathy and emotion shown by the characters, is perhaps most shocking to the viewer and reader, but this is also, according to Ballard, the main point of the novel. In response to criticism, Ballard
7 explained that he viewed Crash as being about ‘the death of affect’ (Sage 49). In an interview in 1975, Ballard made the following comments about the reaction he intended to provoke:
They [the readers] were supposed to be disturbed. When I set out to write Crash, I wanted to write a book in which there was nowhere to hide. I wanted the reader, once I’d got him inside the book, never to lose sight of the subject matter … I say all these things in order to provoke the reader and also to test him. (qtd. in Goddard and Pringle 94)
Like the experience of combat, a car crash can evoke conflicting emotions of fear, euphoria and guilt for both participants and observers. There is nothing quite like a brush with death to energise and reaffirm, to make one feel more ‘alive’. However, in Crash this post- accident reaction is diverted into a repetitive obsession with sex and simulated death rather than a positive drive to embrace life. The characters are trapped in a collision between opposing and contradictory forces. With each crash and sexual encounter, they are both revitalised and deadened, connecting physically but remaining emotionally distant. There is a tension between wanting to feel deeply and a denial of all feeling, between being in control of urges and responses as opposed to being out of control. Ballard draws the reader into this conflict, uncomfortably blurring the lines between participant and observer. In a novel about the nature of voyeurism, he forces the reader into a voyeuristic relationship since the very act of reading the graphic and repetitive descriptions of sex and car crashes turns the reader into a voyeur.
Crash, the novel, ends on a nihilistic note with the narrator contemplating his own suicide after the death of his accomplice Vaughan. In this way, it differs from the majority of car crash novels which, as discussed, usually offer some kind of hope, or reassembling of life. The cars, characters, bodies and society in Ballard’s dystopian vision remain destroyed or deeply scarred. As Brottman and Sharrett comment, ‘Sexuality in Crash does not lead to birth and renewal but instead represents an emblem of chaos and alienation’ (131). There is no healing aftermath, no reassuring emergence of hope, only repeated death and wounding. Crash is uncompromisingly bleak, which may be another reason for the negative reaction of critics and audiences. Just like watching a real car crash, watching Cronenberg’s film or reading Ballard’s book are difficult and confronting experiences.
Although Crash is a very different work to Second Shot, it raises some relevant issues. The first issue is the effect of a car accident or trauma on an individual’s sexuality. The main protagonist in Second Shot, like any new amputee, must reposition his sense of identity and sexuality in response to his ‘maimed’ body. Like the wounded car crash survivors in Crash, amputees can also find themselves the object of fetishisation, but this is only briefly alluded to in Second Shot as it is a work of YA fiction. Another problematic issue that Crash raises is the
8 element of voyeurism involved in creating a work that centres on a car crash and trauma. It could be argued that what marks a work as voyeuristic versus compassionate is the quality of empathy that is portrayed or evoked. In Ballard’s Crash, the characters are remarkable for their lack of empathy and true connection, which in turn makes it difficult to empathise with them. They witness and recreate other people’s trauma while showing no apparent concern or emotion for the people involved. Their behaviour seems monstrous, not only because they stand and watch and do not look away, but more significantly because they watch without attempting to help and do not show any outward sign of caring. Their capacity for feeling and compassion has been blunted by repeated exposure to and re-enactments of trauma which would seem to concur with Ballard’s previously noted assessment of his novel as being about ‘the death of affect’ (Sage 49).
When a car crash happens in real life, a crowd inevitably gathers and onlookers are often dismissed as ghouls. If the driving force behind the behaviour is to experience a vicarious thrill from someone else’s drama, then such criticism is well deserved. However, if the driving force arises from concern for the occupants and a desire to be reassured that they will be okay, then such behaviour is more difficult to criticise. To what extent then is writing a novel about road trauma like looking on and not turning away? Again, motivation and empathy are critical to resolving this question. If the aim of a novel about trauma and disability is to make the reader feel deeply for the characters, to make them care about what happens beyond the screeching brakes and the flashing lights, then it could avoid the criticism of providing pleasure from other people’s pain. Ballard’s Crash, however, strives to do the complete opposite, drawing the reader in to the characters’ perverse obsessions and making the reader almost complicit in the act of deriving erotic pleasure in the victims’ suffering. Where most novelists aim to make you ‘feel’ for the characters, Crash achieves the antithesis of empathy, eliciting a disturbing combination of fascination and horror. By virtue of the novel’s very lack of feeling, Ballard’s aim would seem to be not to make you feel so much as to make you think.
1.2 Writing the ‘Unspeakable’: Trauma Theory
The question of how to write about trauma has been a subject of much debate arising from an evolving understanding and often contradictory interpretation of the psychological effects of exposure to traumatising events. The DSM-5 defines a traumatic event as one that involves ‘actual or threatened death or serious injury, or sexual violence’ (271). The trauma can be either directly experienced or witnessed. Hence both a serious car accident and the experience of amputation fit the definition of a traumatic event. The reaction to traumatic events is commonly one of fear and horror. Witnesses or participants often struggle to talk about or record the events, leading psychiatrists such as Lenore Terr (46–47) and Besser van der Kolk (507–518) to the conclusion that trauma can either block the laying down of narrative memories 9 or the ability to recall such memories, even though the memories may be stored in visual or sensory form. They proposed that this can then result in a repression of memory or ‘traumatic amnesia’, where the individual is unable to remember and hence talk about the event. The memory may remain repressed or ‘buried’ permanently, but traumatised individuals can also later experience random intrusions into conscious memory in the form of repetitive flashbacks that literally re-enact the event as is the case in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Taking up these theories of repressed or ‘buried’ memories, literary trauma theorists developed their own concepts about how trauma could and should be represented in written form. Caruth’s 1996 book, Unclaimed Experience, had a pervasive influence on approaches to both writing and critiquing the literature of trauma, even though many of van der Kolk’s ‘scientific’ conclusions upon which Caruth’s theories were based have since been reinterpreted and debunked in the light of more recent evidence. The literary trauma theory postulated by Caruth operated under several assumptions. Drawing from Freud, Caruth (2-6) saw trauma as a wound that punctured normal psychic integrity, an event characterised by confusion and chaos leading to fragmentation and a disruption of self. Since traumatic memories were believed to be ‘unregistered’ in narrative form, they were seen to elude straightforward verbal representation, resulting in events that are unspeakable and memories that are ‘unclaimed’. True-life accounts of trauma were thus limited by this ‘unspeakability’, and imaginative literature was proposed to serve the role of ‘speaking trauma’ for those unable to narrate their own experience.
Hartman argues that imaginative literature can serve as a way to ‘read the wound’ of trauma, placing literature in a privileged position as primary translator and recorder of other people’s pain (537). Paradoxically, the way to do this, according to Caruth’s approach to trauma theory, was to recreate the disruptive experience of trauma, not just by recording but by transmitting the experience to the reader, employing literary techniques such as flashback, fragmented narrative and aporia in order to convey the same sense of confusion, fragmentation and chaos. Literature could thereby provide a means of connecting with the ‘Other’ via speaking and listening ‘from the site of trauma’ (11). As Forter notes, such an approach can effectively make the reader or listener a vicarious participant in the traumatic event (259). Miller and Tougaw criticise this approach from an ethical perspective for effectively repeating the trauma in order to provide a ‘suspicious thrill of borrowed emotion’ (qtd. in Modlinger and Sonntag 7).
The question at stake would seem to be how to define the boundaries of an ethical approach to writing trauma: to what extent can a writer really know how it feels to experience a particular trauma and how much should a writer strive to make it feel like the ‘real’ thing without verging on titillation or appropriation? Modlinger and Sonntag’s position is that ‘art can mirror the nature of traumatic memories … but should not be a claim to co-ownership of real trauma’ (9). In a similar vein, La Capra proposes that literature should attempt to induce not
10 ‘trauma’ itself but what he terms an empathic unsettlement (40-41). He distinguishes between identification, which runs the risk of blurring the boundaries between subject and reader, and empathy, which may unsettle a reader as they come to appreciate another’s pain but still provides enough distance so as not to collapse the distinction between the ‘self’ and the ‘Other’ (78-79).
Koopman argues that trauma writing which seeks to mimic the disruptive and confusing elements of traumatic experience can actually have the unintended effect of creating too much distance between reader and subject, alienating the reader and resulting in a lack of empathy (240). There would seem to be a delicate balance to strike between conveying the confusion and chaos of trauma but not confusing the reader in the process and causing a loss of engagement and connection. Koopman proposes that La Capra’s empathic unsettlement provides a way to achieve this balance by treading a middle ground between ‘a conventional engaging narrative which allows readers to understand the represented other, and disrupting techniques which make clear that understanding the other can never be complete.’ (237)
To complicate matters further, more recent scientific evaluation calls into question many of the assumptions on which earlier trauma theory and literary trauma theory were based. In 2003, Harvard psychiatrist Richard McNally published Remembering Trauma in which he reviewed over 300 scientific studies involving trauma and memory and concluded that traumatic amnesia is a myth—while victims may choose not to speak of their traumas this does not mean they cannot remember:
The notion that the mind protects itself by repressing or dissociating memories of trauma, rendering them inaccessible to awareness, is a piece of psychiatric folklore devoid of convincing empirical support (275).
McNally argues that while survivors may struggle for words, this is because traumatic events are by nature difficult to speak about rather than evidence of an inability to remember. If anything, memories of trauma are often heightened and vivid in their detail. The ‘fight or flight’ response has the effect of making an individual hyper-aware and as a result memories may be loaded with excessive detail and vibrant intensity (48-61). Along with heightened sensory awareness, the unfolding events can seem ‘unreal’, as though the event is happening in a dream. There may be a sense of time slowing down and of spaces seeming larger or distorted, contributing to a sense of detachment and an ‘out-of-body’ perspective—all common phenomena that are collectively labelled peritraumatic dissociation (182). So although trauma can have a warping effect on memory, it does not destroy memory as previous theorists contended (Pederson 340). This newer understanding of how trauma is encoded in memory can actually give a novelist more depth and conflict to work with than the older idea of a
11 traumatised individual with ‘amnesia’. The conflict for a traumatised character who may vividly remember a traumatic event then centres on when and how much to reveal, as well as dealing with the implications of their memories and revelations.
While the concept of traumatic amnesia has been found to be lacking in evidence, this does not mean to say amnesia surrounding a traumatic event does not exist. Concussion, TBI, a lack of consciousness and/or the use of pain killers and anaesthetic agents can all have an amnesic effect, but this constitutes an organic amnesia that is biologically based. This is the scenario for two of the vehicle occupants in Second Shot. They do not remember the crash and the hours immediately before and after it. Conversely, Jessica who was fully conscious throughout, has the experience of heightened memory along with an unwillingness to retell the full events. She actively tries to conceal the memory in order to protect people, whereas Dylan is plagued by his lack of memory and inability to make sense of events.
In the absence of organic amnesia, any difficulty or inability surrounding the narration of trauma must be due to factors other than a failure of narrative memory. A study by Gray and Lombardo found that written narratives of a traumatic event were longer and more vivid than narratives by the same individuals of pleasant experiences, negating the idea that trauma is more difficult to relate than other events, at least in written form. When comparing different individual’s accounts, Gray and Lombardo showed that the complexity of narrative was most closely correlated with writing ability and scores of verbal intelligence. Not surprisingly, those with higher verbal and writing skills were better at articulating their trauma. Gray and Lombardo also note that participants in their study gave written testimony where anonymity was guaranteed, whereas in any face-to-face recounting there is likely to be more ‘anxiety disclosure’ which can affect the length, complexity and coherence of what is disclosed (181). Even for the most articulate individual, verbally relating a traumatic event can be physically and emotionally daunting when other people are watching and listening. It can be a natural response to try and contain an event by not speaking about it or skipping over more difficult details, especially if there is cultural or social pressure to do so. Any ‘unspeakability’ may therefore be more related to the difficulty of giving a verbal account, which, as Balaev suggests, may be an outcome of cultural values and ideologies rather than a neuro-biological phenomenon (6).
Trauma survivors may be greatly concerned with how other people will react to their stories and what they will think of them. This is particularly true for trauma arising from more taboo areas such as warfare, rape and incest, where the survivor may be more likely to self- censor arising from an impulse to either protect the listener or their own reputation, not wanting to burden others with the memories they carry. Memories that are overladen with a sense of self-blame, guilt, shame, or complicity may be even more difficult to articulate as McNally highlights (85). This concern about burdening or shocking others is one reason why trauma
12 survivors often find it easier to talk within the context of a support group or to another person who has either experienced a similar event or is an ‘experienced listener’. Such contexts provide implicit non-judgemental understanding and a sense of safety to promote speaking of difficult things.
Traumatic memories can in fact be modified and controlled using recounting techniques. As Foa et al (675) have demonstrated in their study of rape victims, therapy such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which encourages repeated recounting of the trauma in a ‘safe’ context, can be utilised to effectively diminish the intensity of traumatic memories and the distress they cause. Being able to describe an event gives back some control over the experience. As Pederson (338) notes, remembering and telling the story is an act on the part of the narrator that helps them shape events into some order or sequence and helps the process of remaking themselves and incorporating the narrative of the trauma into the narrative of their own lives.
In the aftermath of traumatic amputation, new amputees are encouraged to both write things down and talk to counsellors, social workers and other members of the medical team as well as to other amputees as part of the process for psychologically incorporating the trauma and dealing with memories, feelings and concerns that arise. In Second Shot, all these strategies are built into the narrative. Dylan develops an informal mentoring relationship with Bill, an older amputee who shares his hospital room. He has counselling sessions with the social worker who also encourages him to keep a journal. An interesting point to note is that with amputation the visual evidence of the trauma always remains. Physical pain and the absence of a limb are not memories that can be put aside. Trauma can also ‘haunt’ an amputee in a biological sense via the phenomenon of phantom limb pain or sensations where the brain retains a corporeal memory when the body part is no longer there.
Judith Herman identifies three stages in the process of recovery from trauma: firstly, the ‘establishment of safety’, secondly, ‘remembrance and mourning’, and finally, ‘reconnection with ordinary life’ (155–213). As with any model that breaks down a complex process into stages, the stages are not fixed and sequential but often interweave and overlap. The first stage includes the tasks of establishing safety and stability in one’s body, environment, relationships and life. This involves setting goals of recovery, learning how to tap inner strengths and draw on other available resources in order to restore some control over one’s life (155-174). The second stage involves remembering the trauma itself as well as life before the trauma occurred, and mourning any resultant loss sustained. It is in this stage that developing a narrative of trauma may be a strong focus as the individual incorporates both the facts of the trauma and what it means in their life and the way their future might be (175-195). In the third stage, the tasks are of reconnection and renewal. The individual must develop new relationships and a new
13 sense of self. In this stage, people are often concerned with finding what Herman terms the ‘survivor’s mission’ (207-211), something that gives a sense of purpose and direction for moving forward with an altered life plan.
1.3 The Real Story: Amputee Life Writing
The narration of an experience such as traumatic amputation in biographical or autobiographical form provides evidence of the fact that it is perfectly possible for individuals to tell of their own trauma and even open their personal trauma to external scrutiny. Contrary to previously proposed theories, trauma is often vividly remembered and, although difficult to articulate, it is not unspeakable or out of conscious control, ‘speechless fright that divides or destroys identity’ (Balaev 1). On an individual level amputee life writing may be part of the process of reclaiming identity. It may also relate to Herman’s identification of a common task in the third stage of recovery from trauma, namely that of ‘finding their mission’ since many amputees who publish their story do so, not for their own benefit, but in order to educate and help others.
Amputee life writing tends to fall into two categories. In the first category are life stories by ‘regular’ amputees, where the amputee in question has built a productive but fairly ‘normal’ life. Examples of this are It’s a Matter of Balance by Kenneth Garrison and My Decision to Live by Nader Elguindi. Garrison wrote his autobiography from the perspective of both a lower-limb amputee and a prosthetist. He lost his foot due to cancer at the end of high school, the same age as the protagonist in Second Shot, and he recounts his early fears over interacting with girls, the effect on his self-esteem and the sudden alteration in life plan due to the timing of the amputation. Elguindi’s book evolved from his motivational speaking engagements, which places it on the ‘inspirational’ side. Elguindi was training to be a nuclear submarine engineer in the US Navy when his motor bike accident happened. Although he was unable to return to his former role in the navy, the narrative focuses more on the struggles of his earlier life and how they shaped him to be able to regroup, refocus his goals and achieve success in a new career.
The other common type of true amputee stories are more classic heroic tales of courage and survival that tell of an amputee achieving beyond-normal feats. Some more well known examples include Reach for the Sky (Brickhill), the biography of WWII flying ace Douglas Bader, One Unknown, the autobiography of Gill Hicks who survived the London Underground terrorist bombing, and 127 Hours Between a rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston who amputated his own right hand after it became wedged by a boulder when on a solo climbing expedition. Other autobiographies by less well known amputees who have performed feats of amazing physical endurance include One Step Beyond by Chris Moon, Unthinkable by Scott
14 Rigsby and In a Single Bound: Losing My Leg, Finding Myself and Training for Life by Sarah Reinertsen. Scott Rigsby is a motivational speaker and counsellor who became the first double amputee to complete the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon. He set up a non-profit foundation to inspire and enable physically challenged individuals and athletes. Chris Moon is a soldier-hero persona who survived capture by the Khmer Rouge only to lose his right arm and leg while clearing landmines in Mozambique. Less than a year after leaving hospital, Chris ran the London Marathon, raising money for charities that assist people with disabilities. Many marathons later, including most of the world’s most gruelling endurance races, he now works as a motivational speaker. Sarah Reinertsen lost her leg in childhood due to a congenital limb deficiency but became a track Paralympian and the first amputee to compete in the television reality program The Greatest Race in 2006 and she also completed the Hawaii Ironman.
All the above authors mention in their books the benefit of having contact with another amputee ‘mentor’ soon after their amputation, which offered a timely glimmer of hope that a full and rewarding life is possible. Most amputee organisations run formal peer support programs and train volunteer amputees to assist and support other amputees in the acute phase after surgery or injury, or at any time they may need guidance (e.g. The US Veteran’s Affairs Wounded Warriors Project and Limbs4Life in Australia). The autobiographies written by amputees seem to be a natural extension of this mentoring process, a way for an amputee who is further along the track to light the way for others to come.
As well as being written by amputees, such memoirs are also written for amputees in two different but complementary ways: firstly to help other amputees deal with the challenges and problems unique to amputees, providing reassurance, inspiration and motivation; and secondly, amputees tell ‘their story’ to a wider audience of people who are not amputees in order to show what it is like to live life as an amputee and to illustrate that an amputee is more than the negative sum of their missing parts. It is probably no coincidence that many amputee authors are also involved in the business of motivational speaking, which influences the tone and content of the work. While there is a need to present the story with honesty, warts and all, if the intent is to provide hope and a positive message then sometimes there is a tendency for the darker moments to be modified with the wisdom of hindsight.
With so many amputees telling their own stories, the question arises, what can fiction offer that a memoir or biography does not? How can a writer represent the truth of traumatic experience if they have not experienced such a trauma themselves? While creative literature can no longer lay claim to be the only way to give trauma victims a voice as Caruth or Hartman’s reading of trauma might suggest there is still credence for imaginative literature to play some form of role. Non-fiction and fiction engage a reader in different ways. Although life writing has the credibility of literally being ‘true’, the subject is always the ‘Other’, which places the
15 reader at a certain distance, but with fiction the reader has more capacity to imagine themselves in the situation of the character. In support of this concept, research by Comer-Kidd and Castano (1-4) has borne out fiction’s ability to promote empathy and improve theory of mind, an effect that is more apparent with reading fiction (particularly literary fiction) compared to reading non-fiction. Theory of Mind involves both the ability to detect and understand the emotions of others and the ability to infer their intentions and beliefs. (1) Fiction has the ability to delve into the very intimate and difficult spaces that memoir sometimes tones down or avoids in order to protect real people. Where life writing usually presents a story from one point of view, fiction can present a story from different angles and multiple points of view while providing a tight narrative arc and structure that ‘true-life’ accounts may lack. Fiction is able to both borrow from real life and enlarge on it and has the freedom to combine elements from many different true-life stories to make a composite that is richer and more dramatic than any single true-life story may be. Since it is not bound by the circumstances of one individual and how things actually were, a fictional narrative of trauma is free to explore how things could be and invites the reader into this speculative space. Paradoxically, by not having to stick to ‘literal truth’, fiction by its very artifice has the capacity to address a wider ‘truth’.
The relationship between trauma fiction and biographical works could thus be viewed as one of complementary coexistence. The fact that people can articulate their own experience does not negate the role of the writer; rather, it re-frames the role from that of the only communicator of trauma to that of expert communicator, someone who is able to transform an individual story into a universal story with wider application and resonance. While trauma is certainly not beyond narration for those who have lived through it, fiction, as Pederson comments, is still well positioned to ‘communicate our hardest hurts’ (349).
1.4 The Critical Lens of Disability Studies
While literary trauma theory examines how the experience of trauma can be expressed, transmitted and represented, disability studies is concerned with how ‘disability’ is represented in literature and in the culture the writing both arises from and reflects. Both these critical perspectives share common ground and pay close attention to notions of artifice versus truthful representation, as well as the use of other people’s pain for artistic purposes. Mitchell and Snyder see the role of disability studies as recognising, claiming and interpreting disability stories and providing ‘the critical lens that refracts social realities and artistic goals informing the deployment of disability’ (178). They also argue that in contemporary times the stories and images that depict ‘disability’ have greater influence in shaping attitudes than in the past, since most people obtain more information about the lives of people with a disability through media and literature than from any person-to-person interaction (166). This confers the responsibility for analysis and critical interpretation not only on academics and literary critics but also on the 16 individual author who is ‘writing disability’, establishing a certain expectation to ‘get it right’. This is similar to the responsibility that arises from writing about trauma.
1.4.1 Past and Present Perceptions
Social perceptions of people with disabilities have varied across cultures and times, and it is helpful to have an understanding of the historic depictions of disability before exploring contemporary work. The disabled have been viewed and depicted in a variety of ways, from the wholly negative, such as evil, damaged, defective, subhuman, objects of pity or charity, and unattractive or ugly, through to the seemingly more positive, such as possessing special gifts or compensations, being extraordinary by way of ‘overcoming’ their disability and as heroic figures or ‘super-crips’ (Covey 3–28).
Apart from the notion that people with a disability are inherently evil, many of these perceptions still persist to some extent today, although the depictions may be less overt than in previous eras. A marked tendency to depict the disabled as inherently heroic and ‘overcoming’ their disability is particularly pervasive in both contemporary writing and popular culture. In looking at the literature that specifically features amputation/amputees these perceptions may be apparent either in the way the characters are depicted or in the way characters struggle with societal attitudes or their own inner doubts and internalised beliefs. An amputated limb is frequently viewed as ugly, defective, or unattractive and a prosthesis as a means for overcoming this difference or lack. Fictional amputees are often portrayed to be ‘over-compensating’ for their physical lack by performing feats of endurance, bravery or heroism, a tendency which will be further discussed in the analysis of amputee fiction in Chapter 2.
Keith points out that the Ancient Greek culture had a pervasive effect on cultural attitudes to disability, for it was in Greece that the notion of the ‘perfect’ body, the ‘Olympic ideal’, became accepted along with the idea that imperfection should be destroyed (16). Disability, at the very least, was viewed as unattractive or ugly. This attitude of striving for physical perfection and idealised beauty is perhaps even more pervasive in current Western culture, as evidenced by the rise in body-enhancing practices such as cosmetic surgery and orthodontics, in the glorification of models and athletes as perfect male and female forms, and in the doctoring of visual images with techniques such as airbrushing to conform to an ‘ideal’ of the perfect body. These cultural attitudes affect how an individual views him/herself and also how they are viewed by others. After an injury such as limb loss, the quest for inner and outer acceptance is a key part of the struggle that the injured person must face and an important component of the narrative tension when writing a disability such as amputation.
17 1.4.2 Corporeal Representation and Narrative Prosthesis
Narratives that feature physical disability of necessity are concerned with corporeal representation; how society, characters and authors view and conceptualise ‘the body’ in relation to society and the self. Garland-Thomson proposes that the disabled body has been used in literature in a way that sets it even further apart from an idealised ‘normal’ body, which she terms ‘normate’ (6). She argues that when the disabled are cast according to a single stigmatic trait, ‘representation thus exaggerates an already highlighted physical difference’ (11) and can effectively objectify disabled characters. Too often, a character’s disability ‘cancels out other qualities, reducing the complex person to a single attribute’ (12). Garland-Thomson maintains that using disability for its symbolism dilutes a more complex and ‘real’ rendering of characters so that even though disabled characters are often represented in the literary canon, the reality of ‘disability’ is more complicated than the representation (12).
Garland-Thomson also argues that the whole concept of ‘normal’ in terms of the body is of questionable value since ‘normal’ is not a fixed definable point but encompasses a broad array of difference (14). Derrida draws attention to the limitations of binary opposites and how language creates arbitrary division on the basis of either/or classifications such as normal/abnormal, ability/disability, positive/ negative, which shape the way we think. Dividing things into two opposites ignores all the spaces in between and oversimplifies natural variation. So if a body is not considered ‘normal’ it is automatically viewed as ‘abnormal’. This binary way of thinking places concepts and people on either side of a dividing line rather than on a more realistic sliding scale that encompasses great diversity. The divide does not just separate the haves from the have-nots, the disabled from the able-bodied; it can also cast one side as lower or lesser in value, assigning a lower status to the disabled body because of this perceived bodily lack (Garland-Thomson 22).
Mitchell and Snyder, like Garland-Thomson, note that the disabled body features prominently in literary works, but they also maintain that this prominence is an artificial construct, a ‘narrative prosthesis’ (175). A prosthesis is a fabricated object that seeks to replicate or replace a missing body part; thus a narrative prosthesis is a literary fabrication that seeks to replicate or replace the real experience of disability with fiction. They argue that ‘a prosthetic intervention seeks to accomplish an erasure of difference all together’ and at the very least ‘return one to an acceptable degree of difference’ (Mitchell and Snyder 6–7). Thus narrative works that in particular push a normalising agenda and position disability as a wound needing healing or a fault needing fixing act as a prosthetic device that addresses this perceived lack.
Mitchell and Snyder’s criticism of disability fiction as narrative prosthesis relates both to quality and quantity. The sheer volume of disability narratives can give the false impression
18 that disability is well represented, but this does not take into account any parameters of quality. It would be reasonable to assume that a work that treats the complexity of disability on a superficial level is akin to a prosthesis that is purely cosmetic, one that ‘looks’ like the real thing but has limited use or value. However, a prosthesis can operate on far more levels than the purely cosmetic. It also has the capacity to enhance or extend experience by providing an interface between the disabled body and the external world. Narrative depictions of disability that are closer to ‘reality’ also function as a prosthetic device but in a much more enhancing and positive sense of what a prosthesis can be, a trend that has become more apparent in contemporary literature, which Mitchell and Snyder note as follows:
postmodern narrative does not seek to fully repair or resolve a character’s impairment but rather delves into the social, personal, political, and psychological implications of impairment as bequeathing a social awareness. This yields a literature teeming with disability as a matter of identity, perspective, and subjectivity. As a result, we will contend that disability studies bears responsibility for recognizing and assessing the productive possibility in our era's approaches to figuration and narrative of disability. (166)
This approach rates different narratives according to prosthetic outcome and intent in order to make a judgement regarding their ‘quality’. An important distinction to make when critically examining the relationship between prosthetics and the ‘disabled’ body is the difference between enabling a person to ‘do’ normal things versus attempting to make them ‘be’ normal or at least ‘look’ normal. When the aim is largely to be or look normal, functional ability and physical appearance are tied to a person’s perceived worth and identity, forming part of an ableist drive to erase any difference. Conversely, when the focus of a prosthetic is to allow a person to ‘do’ more and have greater choices, the prosthetic becomes an enabling entity, not erasing but accommodating difference.
It could be argued that any story is a type of prosthesis, a fabricated device trying to represent and replace the real. The challenge for the author then is to try and make their ‘prosthetic creation’ functional and enhancing, honest and ‘real’ as opposed to purely cosmetic, limiting and ‘fake’. Issues around normalcy and identity invariably feature when a novel engages on some level with notions of disability. It is the way in which these issues are approached or depicted that is at issue as far as disability studies and critical literacy are concerned. It is all too easy to use disability as a plot device or a form of symbolic shorthand for struggle, wounding or loss, but this may be at the expense of more fully realised characterisation. A writer needs to question whether the character is presented as a whole, rounded and complex individual and not just used as a symbolic trope or a disabled cliché. Questions such as these can highlight potential traps and provide a set of standards for best
19 practice or benchmarking against other authors and works in the field. The biggest test might be the reaction of amputees or the amputee community as a determinant of whether an author has succeeded in presenting a work of fiction that reflects the emotional, social and physical reality of amputation.
Another problematic issue in disability literature is the pervasiveness of the ‘super-crip’ representation. While fictional and real-life media depictions of individuals with disabilities doing extraordinary things would seem to be positive and empowering, the sub-text of such depictions can be more limiting than empowering. In the first place, any ‘super-crip’ depiction creates, as Booher notes, ‘an expectation that all disabled bodies should (and by assumption, can) achieve’ physical performance at a high level (72). Secondly, the hidden implication is that the disabled body or individual can only be valued when they ‘overcome’ the limitations of their body to achieve not just the ordinary but to accomplish the extraordinary. This concept of the ‘super crip’ is particularly relevant when examining literature that is concerned with amputees or amputation since modern prosthetic technology has allowed amputees to perform previously unimagined physical feats.
As discussed in the introduction, the literature of amputation is an area that has received little attention as a topic in its own right. As part of an attempt to address this lack, Chapter 2 provides a historical overview of amputee literature, tracing the evolution of the amputee protagonist from the 1850’s until the present time. Specific examples that illustrate this evolution are discussed and analysed with particular reference to Mitchell and Snyder’s concerns that fictional depictions of disability often comprise a form of narrative prosthesis, a fake substitute that does not truly represent the more complex reality of disability.
Since the creative work is a YA novel, Chapter 3 provides an overview of the features that denote a work as YA before critically analysing examples of YA amputee fiction. The author’s own novel is compared to these existing YA novels and placed within this context. The exegesis concludes with suggestions for future creative avenues to explore as well as potential areas for further critical evaluation.
20 Chapter 2: The Evolution of Amputee Literature
2.1 Amputee Fiction and Fact: Historical Perspectives
The way in which disability is represented in fiction both influences and is influenced by prevailing cultural attitudes. Evidence of this two-way interdependence is apparent from an examination of how amputees and amputation have been depicted from historical texts to modern works. The following discussion will trace the evolution of the amputee protagonist with reference to the social and cultural forces that have shaped literary depictions. The amputee protagonist has evolved from largely negative depictions to more positive portrayals, from being cast as pirates, villains and flawed heroes through to wounded warriors, athletes, cyborgs and super-heroes with many permutations in between. Of particular relevance is the formative impact that armed conflict and developments in prosthetic technology have had on the lived experience of amputation and the way in which amputees are represented and viewed.
Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, survival after amputation was low due to complications arising from blood loss, shock and infection. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, human bodies were increasingly placed in the way of potentially maiming machinery. This factor, in conjunction with the development of anaesthetics in the mid-1840s, resulted in a concomitant increase in people both needing and surviving amputation surgery. Anaesthesia had the added benefit of giving surgeons more time to construct a stump that had a better length and covering of bone to allow for the wearing of a prosthesis, so along with the increase in amputee numbers there was a parallel increase in the number of manufacturers of prosthetic limbs. As an example, The Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park had its own section devoted to artificial limb makers with 50 different exhibitors participating (Guyatt 309).
Despite the often elaborate workmanship involved in their crafting, prosthetic limbs were largely hidden beneath the long skirts and trousers of middle- and upper-class amputees in the Victorian era. Custom-made limbs were expensive and only of use to those who could afford them. Working-class amputees had to make do with cheaper, cruder versions or simple wooden peg legs. In fact, surgeons created different types of stumps for different classes of people in expectation of the types of prosthesis they could afford to buy, thus entrenching poverty since once given a ‘poor man’s stump’ an amputee would never be able to use a more sophisticated one even if they could later afford it (Warne 83). If an amputee was unable to earn
21 a living, they were often reliant on charity or begging; hence, the most visible amputees were naturally viewed as objects of distrust or pity rather than as subjects for works of literature.
2.1.1 Whalebones and Gold
In 1851 the most famous historic text in which an amputee and amputation were central to both the plot and themes was published, namely Herman Melville’s Moby Dick or The Whale. Ahab, with his prosthetic leg fashioned from the jaw of a whale, was cast by Melville as a ‘crippled villain’, obsessed by a megalomaniacal quest for revenge against the great white whale responsible for the loss of his leg. His amputation and reaction to it are used to drive the plot and to provide much of its symbolism, both setting up and reinforcing existing perceptions of amputees. As Mitchell and Snyder point out, in Moby Dick Ahab’s amputation is presented as the cause of his flawed personality and reckless behaviour rather than the other way around, that is, his flawed personality as the cause of his reaction to the amputation and subsequent behaviour (12). While Melville does portray Ahab as a complex and intelligent individual, he is still ultimately defined and destroyed by his amputation and reaction to it.
Prior to the publication of Moby Dick, a satirical poem by Thomas Hood about a female amputee had achieved popular status and fame. Published in 1840 in New Monthly Magazine Hood’s poem, Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg, featured a young heiress who upon losing her leg in a riding accident convinces her wealthy family that she would only wear an artificial leg if it was made of gold. To keep her happy, the family commission a golden leg even though its cost ties up a considerable portion of the family fortune:
A prodigious sum of money it sank
She stood on a Member that cost as much
As a Member for all the County!
The poem relates how Miss Kilmansegg becomes famous for her leg and attracts many suitors and eventually a husband. The husband turns out to be a gambling, bankrupt Count who pressures her to replace the leg with a wooden one so he can access the gold. Miss Kilmansegg refuses to give up her golden leg, so while she is sleeping her husband steals it and beats her to death with her own leg before making his escape. The poem was written as a general criticism of avarice as is evident in the following lines:
While half of the young—ay, more than half—
Bowed down and worshipped the Golden Calf
Warne suggests that the poem is also a commentary on the locking up of wealth into bank reserves in the form of gold bullion, which was a highly contentious issue at the time (93).
22 While the poem is intended to be humorous and satirical, it still conveys powerful mixed messages about amputees. Hood draws attention to the way disabled veterans were largely ignored:
To gratify stern ambition’s whims,
With hundreds and thousands of precious limbs
On a field of battle we scatter!
Sever’d by sword, or bullet, or saw,
Off they go, all bleeding and raw,-
But the public seems to get the lock-jaw,
So little is said on the matter!
Whereas Miss Kilmansegg is portrayed in a wholly negative light, as spoilt, greedy, selfish, vain and ‘cold at heart … For gold she had lived, and she died for gold’. Even her brutal death receives little sympathy, being ruled as ‘suicide’ since she was killed by her own leg. In many ways Miss Kilmansegg is a female precursor to Ahab. Both characters’ obsessions surrounding their amputated limb lead to disaster; the loss of both life and limb in Miss Kilmansegg’s case and, in the case of Ahab, the loss of his boat, his life and most of his crew.
A female amputee was doubly handicapped since her disability severely limited her marriage prospects, an unfortunate reality that receives more sympathetic literary attention in Sarah Smith’s 1859 Household Words story, ‘The Lucky Leg’ (Warne 95–97). Mary, the female amputee protagonist is ‘a cripple with no money’ (Smith 375) and therefore unlikely to find a husband. Her prosthetic leg turns out to be a lucky leg when she attracts and marries a wealthy widower because she is an amputee. This would seem to turn the assumption surrounding her marriageability on its head. However, the widower’s previous wife was an amputee who stipulated in her will that he could only inherit her fortune if he married another woman similarly ‘afflicted’, turning Mary into a marriageable prospect solely for the retention of wealth. Although Mary is a far more empathetically drawn character than Miss Kilmansegg and the story has a ‘happy’ ending, both Hood and Smith depict female amputees as being considered desirable only if they provide access to wealth, a fictional representation that would have both reflected reality and reinforced opinion.
Characters such as Ahab and Miss Kilmansegg certainly did not enhance public perception of amputees. Moby Dick was published prior to both the Crimean War of 1854–1856 and the American Civil War of 1861–1865, and it is interesting to speculate whether Melville would have taken a different slant on amputees had it been written after these two wars, which saw a sudden enormous and unprecedented increase in the numbers of amputees. 23 2.1.2 Soldiers and Pirates
In the American Civil War alone, there were an estimated 35,000 soldiers who survived amputation surgery (Ott 26). Prior to the war there was no government-sponsored program to purchase limbs for veterans. Gradually federal, state and local governments on both the Union and Confederate sides began to provide limbs or funds to purchase limbs, but the supply was totally unable to keep up with the unprecedented demand. This meant that at least initially, the majority of veterans had to fund a limb from their own resources or to go without. Access to prosthetics was thus still largely determined on the basis of wealth and social class (Davis McDaid 123–136).
Over the course of the American Civil War, as wounded soldiers returned home with missing arms and legs, dozens of anonymously penned short stories appeared in Harper’s Weekly, such as ‘Sally’s Choice’, ‘The Empty Sleeve at Newport’ and ‘An Arm for a Heart’. The stories all feature unmarried Union soldiers harbouring the hope that the sweetheart they left behind will still want them despite their missing limb. These stories set the prototype for the ‘wounded warrior’ amputee romance. More of the stories feature an upper-limb amputee, or ‘empty sleeve’ as it was termed. The usual ratio of lower- to upper-limb amputation is 4:1 in favour of the lower limb (Ott 14). However, the American Civil War was an exception to this rule with upper limb amputation being more common. The Harper’s Weekly stories follow a formula where the amputee protagonist invariably struggles as DeBrava suggests, ‘with notions of male self-sufficiency and with the idea of depending on a woman he once hoped to protect and govern’ (49). While the wounded heroes may still want the woman they do not want her pity. On his return to Newport in the full swing of Summer Ball season, Captain Harry Ash’s inner thoughts are revealed as follows:
he hated the endless questioning and commiseration… the admiring pity of simpering misses and stout mamas… (‘The Empty Sleeve at Newport’ 534)
There are recurring conventions in all the stories: the returning amputee soldiers view themselves as cripples unworthy of love and yet still hope to win the hand of their beloved. Although tempted or pressured by family to choose another suitor rather than take on a damaged man as a husband, the wooed woman in the end accepts the marriage proposal. The stories verge on propaganda, urging women to view returning veterans as war heroes deserving admiration and honour rather than as ‘cripples’ deserving spurn or pity, positioning a missing limb as a badge of courage instead of a mark of inadequacy and loss. This is explicitly stated in An Arm for a Heart when Ethel Darricott declares to her beau, returned amputee hero, Captain Howard Revere:
one who loved you would love you all the better, esteem it all the more an honor to be
24 your wife, because of what the whole country would recognise as a badge of glory. (746)
The choice of ‘Revere’ for the hero’s surname was most likely deliberate, reinforcing the writer’s intent to laud the wounded hero. To what extent the Harper’s Weekly stories sought to influence opinion or simply reflected prevailing attitudes is impossible to separate. Rather than a romantic happy ending, the reality for many amputees was grim, with poor job prospects, poverty and social stigma being all too common (Davis McDaid 132–136). Certainly poorer amputees were often reduced to dire circumstances, unable to find work when they were competing against able-bodied competition. All too often amputee Civil War veterans had to rely on the charity of family, patchy government handouts or begging in order to survive and with the end of the Civil War the wounded warrior amputee hero fell out of fictional fashion...
Despite romanticised depictions of the amputee hero, there was a strong cultural pressure to both hide any corporeal deficiency and to endeavour to compensate for the effect of its lack. An 1863 essay by writer and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes in Atlantic Monthly, titled ‘The Human Wheel’, provides insight into prevailing attitudes towards bodily ‘lack’ and prosthetic limb use at the time:
There is an absolute demand for a certain comeliness of person throughout all the decent classes of society.
In an age when appearances are realities…it becomes important to provide the cripple with a limb which shall be presentable in polite society where misfortunes of a certain obtrusiveness may be pitied, but are never tolerated under the chandeliers. (574)
With outward appearance being of prime importance, one of the principal aims of a prosthetic limb was to allow the amputee’s ‘lack’ to be hidden away from ‘civilised society’, that is, upper- and middle-class society, whereas for a man in working-class circumstances the aim was to restore his body, and therefore himself, to usefulness. Advertising brochures of various limb makers of the era such as A. A. Marks or Douglas Bly in the USA (Mihm 291) illuminate this class divide in their use of before-and-after photographs of amputees with and without prosthetic limbs attached. The photos, aimed at middle- to upper-class amputees, emphasise the prosthetic limb as a means to conceal the reality of amputation and allow the amputee to ‘pass’ in society, whereas ‘working-class limbs’ are shown with the amputee engaged in some form of work, depicting them as a means to ensure continued employment. For working-class amputees, a well-fitting prosthesis could be the difference between finding work and gaining some financial independence as opposed to a life of penury reliant on handouts. Unfortunately, prosthetic limbs of the time often did not live up to their advertised claims, especially if the fit was not adjusted for the individual amputee, so as Davis McDaid (136)
25 notes, for many working-class veterans, particularly in the rural South, the post-war battle for physical mobility and economic survival was just as difficult as the war itself. Not surprisingly, amputees lost cultural heroic status just as swiftly as the romanticised fictional heroes disappeared from the pages of Harper’s Weekly.
After a brief appearance on the literary stage, the amputee hero was supplanted by a villain again with the publication of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island in 1883 in the form of the pirate Long John Silver. Long John Silver lost his leg in the Royal Navy and gets around on a wooden leg. Like Ahab, he is a complex and contradictory character who changes loyalties swiftly but is also physically courageous, careful with money and saves Jim Hawkins from being tortured and killed. Although Silver is a morally ambiguous character, the popular impression of him is as the archetypal villain, the very essence of an untrustworthy pirate, further perpetuating the perception of the amputee as untrustworthy and unstable. With both Ahab and Long John Silver, there is a symbolic parallel between the outer man who is physically unstable, whose balance is challenged, and the inner man whose character and psyche is unstable, a man not to be trusted. This concept plays to the Victorian-era emphasis on outward appearances as a marker of the man which Mihm views as a causal factor in the drive to keep physical disability hidden (287-288). Alternately, Long John Silver could also be seen as a lovable rogue. As a Scottish-British writer, Stevenson would have been less influenced by the sad reality of Crimean or American Civil War amputees, and the character of Silver could be interpreted as part of a romanticised literary tradition of English pirate villains.
Thirty years after Treasure Island was published, the amputee pirate villain crops up in Britain again in J. M. Barrie’s 1911 novel based on the play Peter and Wendy. The character of Captain Hook personifies evil and menace, further anchoring the perception of an amputee as a villain, deserving of his fate, particularly as it is the hero, Peter Pan, who cuts off Hook’s hand in a sword fight and feeds it to a crocodile. As a children’s story, the character of Hook is a more black-and-white villain, less nuanced and sympathetic than Ahab and Long John Silver; Hook is a ‘baddie’ through and through.
Although Moby Dick, Treasure Island and Peter and Wendy were each published thirty years apart, they all captured the imagination of their times. They have become enduring classics preserving the implicit connection between amputation and character deficiency, whereas the short stories of the Civil War era, which cast amputees as returning heroes deserving of love and honour, were ironically quickly forgotten.
2.1.3 World War I
The next leap in amputee numbers occurred with the advent of another armed conflict, that is, World War I. The surge in amputee numbers prompted different responses in different
26 countries. Anxious to avoid the post-Civil War scenario with huge waves of amputees unable to afford prosthetic legs, the U.S. Council of National Defence created an artificial limb laboratory to provide a steady supply of replacement limbs and the government allocated funds to cover the cost of a prosthetic limb for every amputee (The New York Academy of Medicine).
The US Army set up a new Division of Physical Reconstruction in order to foster reintegration for wounded veterans rather than a dependence on welfare. As a means of fostering and publicising this aim, they began publishing a highly illustrated rehabilitation magazine with depictions of amputees in June 1918. It was titled Carry On: A Magazine on the Reconstruction of Disabled Soldiers and Sailors. The magazine was based on a British publication, Reveille. Both magazines had the express purpose of presenting the positive potential of rehabilitation rather than negative impressions of loss and lack. As Linker observes, the photographers at Carry On in particular ‘obscured, more than they recorded, deformity’ (326) and presented amputees blending in and performing everyday, ‘normal’ activities or work-related tasks. Along with the accompanying stories, this deliberate photographic ‘normalisation’ of amputees was part of an agenda aiming to convince the public that ‘disabilities could be cured—and indeed disappear—through a proper regime of physical and vocational rehabilitation, thereby making the pension system obsolete’ (Linker 326–7).
Despite these worthy intentions to promote inclusion and reintegration, cost factors impinged on reality. Two orthopaedic surgeons came up with a mass-produced limb, designed to be one-size-fits-all. It was known as the Liberty leg. As a prosthesis it was a failure, since a custom fit is essential to get a well-fitted and comfortable leg, but as a budget saving and propaganda tool it was a success. At a cost of only $20 compared to the $100 that had been allowed for, the leg was a bargain and allowed amputees to walk off troop ships rather than be carried or wheeled off, thus hiding the magnitude of the problem (Linker, ctd. in Jones). Yet again, the wealthy could afford a custom-made prosthesis that offered a better fit than the Liberty Leg, while the less well-off were not so fortunate, repeating the pattern that occurred in North America during and after the Civil War.
In Germany, there were also economic concerns that the existing pension system could not cope with the burden of a huge influx of amputee veterans. According to Schlich, on the German side there were 67,000 amputees as a result of WWI. German doctors saw it ‘as their patriotic duty to heal the broken bodies of war’ (Perry 75). Operating on the belief that any disabled man could be returned to his profession, the medical profession set about developing new prosthetics that were designed solely for function, inventing more than 300 prosthetic devices (Schlich).
27 As Perry explains, the German rehabilitation philosophy valued a man purely in terms of the work he could do; returning a man to useful employment being viewed as in his own best interests as well as in the best interests of the state, particularly when there was a labour shortage due to the war. For upper-limb prostheses, the German response meant totally abandoning any attempt to mimic the appearance of a human limb. The equipment or machinery a man had to use in his occupation were the prime considerations in upper-limb prosthetic design, so limbs were developed that turned the arm into a tool holder, with sockets where tools such as planes, saws, pliers and wrenches could be interchanged without any attempt to reproduce the grasping capabilities of a human hand. Men who worked in factories, farms and workshops were literally turned into extensions of the machinery they worked with. Looking at images of the upper-limb prosthetics developed in post-WWI Germany, they could easily be mistaken for cyborg creations from twentieth-century science fiction and represent an early example of a true melding of man and machine (Perry 89–93). Some photographic examples can be viewed online in the Schlich article on German WWI prosthetics in the references.
In Britain there were 41,000 amputees resulting from WWI, which also required a massive expansion in the limb-making industry (Guyatt 311). Through public fundraising, a hospital was built specifically for the ‘convalescence’ of amputee servicemen at Roehampton in London, with selected limb makers awarded contracts and given workshop space on site. Roehampton became the focus of developments in prosthetic technology and formed the British model of the amputee rehabilitation centre, which integrated medical facilities, limb manufacturing workshops and vocational training. The model was replicated throughout the country to try and meet the unprecedented demand. Of equal importance to developing work skills at Roehampton was the introduction of amputee sport, such as amputee football played on crutches and various athletic events. Carnivals were held that featured not only the usual walking and running events but also hopping races for single-leg amputees and chariot races for double amputees. As Guyatt comments, ‘sport not only gave disabled ex-servicemen something to do, it also acted as morale-boosting public spectacle’ that was reported eagerly in the press for a public hungry for good news stories to counterbalance the all too evident bodily destruction wreaked by the war (317). The games at Roehampton are an example of an early attempt to represent amputees as physically capable through the medium of sport and were a precursor to amputee events at the modern Paralympic Games.
Another important technological advance to come out of this era in Britain was the development of the Desoutter metal leg, made out of duralamin, an aluminium alloy that is light but strong. The advantage of the Desoutter leg was that it weighed much less than a wooden leg, conserving energy expenditure; though more expensive, it was also very durable and readily repaired (Guyatt 315–320).
28 Despite positive press images of amputees retraining for work and participating in sport, amputees and amputation do not figure in the literature of the 1920s and 1930s, which may have been part of a national desire to put the war behind and move on. As Ruth Leys observes, ‘the history of trauma itself is marked by an alternation between episodes of forgetting and remembering’ (15), an observation that is also salient in regard to public awareness of war- wounded amputees.
One of the starkest commentaries on the physical and psychological impact of amputation to come out of WWI is Wilfred Owen’s poem Disabled, written when the poet was an inpatient at Craiglockhart War Hospital being treated for shell shock in 1917. The first three lines of the poem describe the subject’s physical condition and hint at his inner despair:
He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn
The middle verses of the poem range over the subject’s memories of playing football, going out on the town, enlisting and going to war, before returning to his present dependent and melancholy state in the last verse:
Tonight he noticed how the women’s eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come
And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?
Owen’s short poem transforms its amputee subject into a powerful symbol of wasted potential and loss. It is not until Pat Barker’s 1991 novel Regeneration that WWI amputees are revisited in literature. Barker’s novel, also set at Craiglockhart War Hospital, uses historical events and real people such as another war poet, Sigfried Sassoon, as well as Wilfred Owen himself as characters, the two poets having met when their stays at Craiglockhart overlapped. In Regeneration, the amputee patients are not lead characters but are used as a visible symbolic reminder of the physical toll of war in contrast to the novel’s main area of concern, the invisible internal damage to a man’s psyche.
The effect of dysfunctional psychological and social adjustment following WWI is also addressed in Winifred Weir’s 2009 autobiographical poetry collection, Walking on Ashes. Weir’s father survived Gallipoli and trench warfare in Flanders but lost his right arm due to gangrene following a mortar wound in 1918. The amputated arm healed, but his psyche did not,
29 and the father’s struggles with his internal demons became the whole family’s struggle. In the poem ‘Goodbye’, Weir describes the family dynamic as ‘a home where lives have been ravelled with war’s bitter thread’ (44). The poems are a very poignant study of the damaging effects of an individual’s trauma on a whole family. When an amputee is unable to rebuild a happy and meaningful life post-injury, family life can become a repeated refrain of loss.
2.1.4 World War II: A Hero Emerges
Both Barker’s Regeneration and Weir’s Walking on Ashes are based on real WWI veterans, men who were both physically and psychologically damaged by the war, tragic figures and broken men rather than triumphant heroes. It was not until WWII that the wounded warrior amputee hero re-emerged but rather than via a fictional hero it was the wartime exploits of Douglas ‘Tin Legs’ Bader, flying ace and attempted escapee from Colditz, which helped to resurrect the image of the amputee hero; no longer an object to be pitied or derided, a ‘lesser being’ unable to fully function, but a person with extraordinary abilities to endure and overcome adversity. Bader lost his legs when he crashed his RAF Bulldog fighter in December 1931. He was subsequently discharged from the RAF but allowed to re-enlist in 1939. After his accident, Bader was not content to just learn to walk again using ‘tin legs’ that were the descendants of the WWI Desoutter legs, but also taught himself to drive a car and to play golf to fulfil his need for speed and competitive drive. During the war he was considered one of the RAF’s best fighter leaders and tacticians. When he was shot down over France, his German captors held him in such regard that they organised for new legs to be flown over from Britain to replace the ones damaged when he crashed. Bader was awarded the DSO and bar and D.F.C and bar as well as the Legion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre. During his war-time flying career he was competing against and outperforming fully able-bodied men in the toughest of arenas where mistakes resulted in death. Although his biography Reach for the Sky: The Story of Douglas Bader (Brickhill) was not published until 1954 with a movie adaptation soon after, Bader’s fame was already well established during the war due to both his flying skill and larger-than-life personality.
Bader’s fame coincided with the publication in 1944 of Captain Ted. W. Lawson’s autobiography Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. Lawson lost his leg after crashing into the Pacific on the first allied raid over Tokyo. The propaganda value of this book was quickly capitalised on and it was made into a movie with Captain Lawson receiving a DFC and Purple Heart. As a counterpoint to the hero status accorded Lawson and Bader, Hollywood, to its credit, also presented the other side of the story in the 1946 movie The Best Years of Our Lives which was based on a 1945 blank verse novel by Kantor Mackinlay, Glory for Me. The movie depicts the difficulties that returning veterans face as they try to readjust to life after discharge. One of the characters is a double upper-limb amputee played by Howard Russell, a real veteran who lost
30 his arms after they were burnt in an explosion aboard the ship on which he was serving. Sharing similarities with the Civil War stories in Harpers Weekly, Russell’s character is mostly concerned with whether the girl he left behind will still love him now that he has hooks instead of hands, but the deeper struggle is for self acceptance in the face of prejudice while his girl fights to convince him of the steadfastness of her love.
Although Hollywood was willing to present the difficult reality of life as a post-war amputee the media in general only presented ‘amputee stories’ as positive, uplifting news items. Serlin relates the example of Billy Wilson, an Army Air Corp private who had both arms and legs amputated after a plane crash. Once fitted out with prosthetics, he became ‘a kind of poster boy for the plight of thousands of amputees who faced physical and psychological readjustment upon their imminent return to civilian life’ (49), even being photographed with Miss America 1945 in a brand new Valiant car that General Motors had designed to be driven by bilateral amputees. In the growing Cold War environment, amputees like Wilson were used by the media as ‘powerful visual and rhetorical symbols’ (Serlin 49), which transmuted their combat-acquired disabilities into the ultimate embodiment (or perhaps disembodiment?) of heroism.
2.1.5 From Hero to Superhero: Birth of the ‘Super Amp’
While the post WWII decades of the 1950s and 1960s had real amputee hero stories to tap into, there was no need for any fictional representation. The amputee as heroic wounded warrior was already firmly entrenched in the public consciousness, but this still viewed the amputee as an ‘ordinary’ man who rises to a great challenge to achieve extraordinary things. The next narrative leap forward launched the amputee from the status of ‘ordinary’ hero to that of extraordinary being or ‘super-hero’. This came about with the publication of Martin Caiden’s 1972 novel, Cyborg, which was the first in a series of futuristic novels on which the better- known The Six Million Dollar Man television series was based. In Cyborg, an astronaut and test pilot Steve Austin crashes in the Nevada desert, losing both his legs, his left arm and left eye due to the crash. As part of a radical project to fuse man and machine, Steve’s body is reshaped by technology and cybernetics to become a super being capable of feats beyond the capacity of a ‘normal’ human body, such as running at speeds just over 60 mph (100kph) or swimming under water for several hours thanks to an inbuilt oxygen supply. The end result is a body that is a hybrid of man and machine, a ‘cyborg’, and Steve’s role is to carry out secret and dangerous missions for the good of America and, of course, at this time of Cold War tension, for the benefit of the ‘free’ world.
Caiden’s novel and the television series spin-off gave birth to a whole sub-genre in science fiction and film based on the concept of the cyborg. It also implanted the idea that technology can somehow transform an amputee into a truly super being with capabilities
31 beyond that of an unmodified body, when in fact, the reality, some 40 years after Cyborg first appeared, is that even with the most advanced prosthetic technology, functional performance for an amputee is only just beginning to come close to ‘normal’. A double amputee still cannot run quite as fast as the fastest ‘able-bodied’ man and yet, the myth of the super-crip or what could be called the ‘super-amp’ persists.
The pervasiveness of this myth was evidenced in the build up to the 2008 Olympics in South Africa when Oscar Pistorius, a South African double amputee was attempting to qualify and be accepted to run in the Olympics rather than the Paralympic Games. Although he did not qualify in 2008, he was initially denied even the chance to compete on the grounds that he had an ‘unfair advantage’ due to his prosthetic limbs. This claim was later proved to be incorrect, when subsequent scientific studies showed that the energy costs from having less muscle available for propulsion outweigh the advantages gained from the energy-storing properties of the high-tech ‘blade’ running prostheses (Ossur). Despite the refuting evidence, this notion of the super-amputee, a modern day bionic man, firmed in the public imagination with Pistorius becoming widely known as ‘the Blade Runner’. It is ironic that amputees were initially excluded from the Olympics because they were ‘lesser beings’, unable to compete against able- bodied athletes on the basis of performance, but now that technology was finally enabling an amputee’s performance to come close to ‘normal’, an attempt was made to exclude them on the basis of being ‘super-beings’.
Pistorius did go on to qualify for the 2012 Olympics and made it to the semi-finals of the 400 metres and the finals of the relay. However, in a case of life being stranger than fiction, he reached notoriety when he fatally shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day 2013. He was convicted of culpable homicide in 2014 and sentenced to five years in jail. Thus Pistorius’ ‘story’ and his spectacular fall from grace demonstrate a reverse heroic trajectory from iconic hero and super amputee to convicted murderer. His ‘story’ harkens back to nineteenth-century perceptions of the fictionalised amputee as an unstable damaged character, creating disaster for himself and those around him. As Young (Oscar Pistorius and an Unfathomable Crime) notes, the ‘Oscar Pistorius we cheered at the 2012 Olympics was a fictional character’, a product of media and cultural pressure to create idealised role models of disabled athletes, when the reality is that very few people can live up to such an idealised image.
2.2 The Amputee Hero’s Journey in Fiction and Reality
Traumatic amputation lends itself to fiction and the novel in particular, because any amputation ‘story’ has an inbuilt trajectory of challenge and change that conforms to the narrative ‘arc’ of the ‘hero’s journey’ as outlined by Vogler in 2011. In this journey the protagonist is faced with a big problem, encounters a series of difficult challenges and obstacles
32 as they try and achieve an important goal which culminates in a black moment when all seems lost. At the end of the journey the protagonist is fundamentally changed in some way and comes to a deeper understanding of self, providing a satisfactory story resolution and (usually) a hopeful ending even though the original goal may not be met. The circumstances around a traumatic amputation fit this narrative arc very well, particularly for stories that follow a character on the pathway from just before, or close to, the time of the amputation. Here we see the character struggle with personal disaster and progress towards adjustment. The person is literally ‘broken’ in a physical sense and must be put back together. They also face psychological as well as physical challenges and may struggle with issues of body image, their sense of usefulness and self-esteem as they grieve for their lost limb and former life. Not only has the amputee’s body been forever altered, their place within family relationships and within society is also altered and they must either find their way back to their ‘old self’ and old life’ with an altered body or, begin the often difficult process of reinvention, the journey towards finding a new life and a new self.
Horgan and McLachlan propose a staged model for the process of psychological adjustment after amputation, with each stage presenting different challenges and issues (845- 846). They identify four stages:
1. The pre-op phase: only applicable when the individual knows in advance that amputation is to be performed.
2. The immediate post-op phase: characterised by variable responses ranging from emotional numbness, distress and devastation through to relief at having survived a life threatening event.
3. The intermediate rehabilitation phase: where the reality of the loss is beginning to sink in as the amputee is faced with pain, functional difficulties and the loss of a physical part of themselves. It is often a period beset with obstacles and setbacks as well as grief reactions such as anger, disbelief, pining and mourning. The intermediate phase is also when a new amputee is trying to incorporate three variant body images; that of their pre-amputation body, their post amputation body without a prosthesis and their post- amputation body with a prosthesis.
4. The long term adaptation phase: where the amputee is discharged from regular visits to rehabilitation and is facing long-term adjustment to life as an amputee just as access to professional support is reducing.
This phased model is relevant to realist fiction since the phase the amputee character is at when the story is set will influence the nature of the external challenges presented and the
33 likely internal struggles the character will face. Since the intermediate phase can take a period of one to two years most ‘amputation journey’ novels end at this point.
Some examples of ‘Amp Novels’ that follow the Hero’s Journey story structure and deal with the early and intermediate phases post amputation include Nicholas Evans’ The Horse Whisperer (1995) and two YA novels, Izzy Willy Nilly (Voigt, 1985) and The Running Dream (van Draanen, 2011). The YA works will be discussed in more detail in the following chapter which specifically looks at amputation in YA fiction. The other common feature in all these novels is that they have a young adolescent girl as the protagonist although it is statistically far more common for young males to experience traumatic amputation than females. In the case of The Horse Whisperer, it is 14-year-old Grace Mclean who loses a leg. Grace is out riding her horse Pilgrim on a quiet country lane with another friend when a truck ploughs into the girls, killing the other girl and her horse and severely injuring Grace and Pilgrim. Grace is struggling to come to terms with the horror of the accident, the loss of her friend and the loss of her leg. In an act of desperation Grace’s mother Annie seeks help from legendary horse ‘whisperer’, Tom Booker, because Pilgrim has become aggressive and dangerous since the accident. The physical rehabilitation and emotional recovery of the wounded girl and wounded animal are intertwined. While the novel is primarily about healing after trauma, the underlying amputee story became overshadowed by the horse whisperer phenomenon that swiftly permeated popular culture.
Second Shot, while also fitting the mould of hero’s journey like these three novels, differs in that it features a male teenage amputee protagonist. The following discussion will look at texts that also feature a male amputee protagonist although, in contrast to the way amputees are often lauded and cast as heroes, these ‘heroes’ are more in the mould of anti-hero, or at least very flawed heroes indeed.
2.2.1 Flawed Protagonists and Anti-Heroes
The underlying premise of any romance is that love conquers all. Terry Gamble’s portrayal of a WWII veteran in her novel The Water Dancers sits in stark contradiction to this premise. The Water Dancers also features a ‘wounded warrior’ amputee, Woody March, but in this case, the male protagonist is more wounded and flawed than heroic and the love story with his nurse Rachel Winnapee is blighted by complications of race and class. Woody’s older brother and family heir is killed in the war and when Woody’s ship is torpedoed and he loses his leg, he becomes addicted to morphine. On his return Rachel becomes his nurse and they fall in love. Even though Rachel helps Woody to wean off morphine and find the motivation to walk again, his mother sabotages the relationship because ‘you just don’t marry the Indian maid’ (123). After she is forced to leave, Rachel secretly bears an illegitimate son. Woody marries someone more ‘suitable’ but slips back into depression and addiction.
34 Gamble’s novel explores the problematic aftermath of trauma and the propensity for self destruction if a new sense of identity or purpose is not regained. Woody’s amputated leg comes to represent the whole family’s sense of loss, wounding, and unresolved grief. His loss of identity and self-determination are also representative of the plight of Rachel’s Native American community which has lost its land and struggles to maintain its traditions. Hence, Gamble’s novel relies heavily on the symbolic value of amputation for its narrative themes. The illegitimate son, Ben, later fights in the Vietnam War and on his return has his own difficulties with adjustment so the novel is also an examination of how the scars of war can repeat through generations. Current research affirms the vital role that family support plays in limiting the negative psychological effects of depression or anxiety following amputation (Ferguson, Richie and Gomez 932; Horgan and McLachlan 844). Although done with the best of intentions Woody’s parents act in ways that actually limit their son’s independent choices and destroy his happiness, his mother thwarting his relationship with Rachel, a theme that is relevant to the plot and theme of Second Shot where the protagonist’s mother also attempts to block contact with the girl she feels has ruined her son’s life.
2.2.2 Fake v. Real: The Prosthetic Struggle in J. M. Coetzee’s Slow Man
The amputee anti-hero in Coetzee’s 2005 novel, Slow Man, is Paul Rayment, a 60-year- old divorced photographer, living alone in Adelaide who loses his leg and his will to live after he is knocked off his bicycle. Rejecting all the urges of the medical staff and his few friends Paul stubbornly refuses to be fitted with a prosthesis, using a walking frame to get around on one leg instead. This is because he is repelled by what he perceives as the ugliness of his stump and of prosthetic legs in general. His inability to reconcile with his altered body image results in his rejection of the accepted model of rehabilitation. Consequently Paul needs help at home and falls in love with his much younger and much married, home help/personal care attendant, Marijana, and although his romantic overtures are rejected he seeks to make himself important to her by funding her teenage son’s education.
Slow Man initially follows the conventions of the hero’s journey novel but then spins off into post-modern meta-fiction that plays with notions of reality and invention. About half- way through the novel the character of Elizabeth Costello is introduced; a character from a previous novel who is a novelist herself and Coetzee’s fictional alter-ego. Elizabeth Costello appears and reappears in a parallel attempt to move Raymond along, to ‘fix’ him and to move and ‘fix’ the plot. The reader is never sure if Elizabeth Costello is meant to be a real character or rather, a representation of the writer’s own struggle with his characters and with the act of writing itself. As a character she is particularly confusing if the novel is read without any prior knowledge of the characters previous ‘history’ in the author’s work. When Elizabeth Costello arrives on Paul’s doorstep she declares,
35 you came to me, that is all I can say. You occurred to me – a man with a bad leg and no future and an unsuitable passion. That was where it started. Where we go from there I have no idea. (85)
She is used as a plot device to prod the main character into action, to goad and to question him, and to offer some kind of hope and resolution, but also as a parallel debate on authorial control; a debate over whether an author can control his characters or their fate and at a broader level, whether we as humans have control over our own fate.
To some extent, Coetzee echoes Melville’s Ahab with his central figure of a wounded individual on a self-destructive path, whose perspective on life has become distorted in the wake of the loss of his leg. Ahab’s obsessive quest to take revenge against fate in the form of the great white whale is perceived by others as madness, a madness resulting from the traumatic amputation. His whalebone prosthesis is symbolic of his obsession to fight and ‘overcome’ both his disability and the cause of his loss. Paul, on the other hand, rejects using a prosthesis at all, refusing the expected course of action, to ‘fight’ against the constraints of his disability. In the modern context, it is this lack of action that is perceived by others as madness. Rayment’s cut- off leg and rejection of a prosthesis is symbolic of how he has become cut off from society, from friends, lovers and his past life, a man left with only one leg to stand on in a physical, emotional and metaphorical sense. However, unlike in Moby Dick, the disability itself is not presented as the cause for Paul’s behaviour; rather, it is implied that his passivity is a product of his personality, stage of life and past choices. Coetzee thus uses amputation as a metaphor of wider loss and a struggle for relevance.
There is a strong cultural push for individuals to take personal control over their own fates and to ‘fight’ against and ‘overcome’ their disability. The wounded hero must be seen to battle on, a notion that most amputee fiction pays homage to in some way or form. The character of Paul rails against this ‘ableist’ imperative when he refuses rehabilitation and use of a prosthesis, but this is actually counter-productive for his own ability to function, further adding to his social isolation.
Coetzee’s Slow Man has received scant critical attention, particularly compared to his earlier novels set in South Africa (C. Smith 1). Many reviewers, while admiring the writing, were perplexed by the meta-fictional aspects, particularly the role of the character of Elizabeth Costello. Thorne views the novel as a ‘post-modern experiment’ that ‘pokes fun at fiction whereas Hope sees it as a novel where the writer ‘lets us watch him seeking to turn his fictions into flesh—and then lets us see why he fails’. However, if the novel is read in terms of a prosthetic struggle between the fake and the real then the author introducing his ‘alter-ego’ Elizabeth Costello adds another dimension to the novel’s underlying concerns. Paul Rayment’s
36 rejection of a prosthesis takes on a new level of meaning if it is viewed in the context of the author’s rejection of traditional narrative structure. Throughout the novel there are multiple layered arguments over accepting or rejecting what is fake and constructed to replace or represent what is real. It is no coincidence that Paul’s previous profession was in photography, a profession built on the construction of images and highly concerned with aesthetics and appearances. Paul rejects the use of an artificial construction, a prosthesis; Coetzee rejects the use of traditional story structure, a ‘narrative prosthesis’. And yet in writing a novel using amputation as its thematic trope and manipulating his characters in ways that seem to serve the purposes of the author’s experiment with the fictional form rather than the purposes of ‘the story,’ he could be accused of being guilty of using the disability as a form of narrative prosthesis in the negative sense that Mitchell and Snyder describe.
Just as the character Paul wrestles with how to make sense of and direct his own life story, Coetzee and his fictional novelist Elizabeth wrestle with how to tell Paul’s story, how to ‘move him along’, and become unstuck. The dilemma facing both author and character is that if the conventional devices that provide structure and support are abandoned, then the ability to function and connect are placed at risk. A prosthesis may indeed be an artificial construct but it provides a way to connect the corporeal body and provide a bridge from the ‘flesh to the world’, just as a novel or narrative prosthesis (in the positive sense of the term) can provide a bridge from the ‘flesh to the word’. The novel’s resolution offers some hope of reconnection and adaptation for Paul when Marijana’s husband and son modify a bicycle so that it can be pedalled with his hands instead of his legs. This symbolically opens up the possibility that both the character of Paul and Coetzee the novelist can find an alternative mode of ‘transportation’ rather than the culturally expected structural ‘norm’.
2.2.3 Amputation as ‘Horror’
Another novel that entwines both amputation and a novelist’s struggle to create is Stephen King’s 1987 novel Misery. In King’s classic horror tale, the protagonist, Paul Sheldon (another Paul) is a popular novelist. Paul is held captive by Annie Wilkes, a former nurse (and current psychopath), after she rescues him from a near-fatal car crash. Annie is upset that Paul killed off her favourite character, the ‘Misery’ of the title, and insists that Paul resurrect the character and write another book featuring Misery Chastain. It soon becomes apparent that Annie is unhinged and not just because she seems to mistake the character of Misery for a real person. After Paul tries to escape she punishes him by amputating his thumb and using it as a candle on a birthday cake. When he tries to escape again Annie amputates his leg with an axe. Paul Sheldon literally becomes the ‘wounded hero’ body part by body part, and must use the only weapons a writer has to survive, namely his ability to craft a story and out-think his crazed
37 Number One Fan. In the tradition of Ahab, Paul then seeks not just to save his own life but to take revenge on the person who caused his wounds.
Lenore Terr, writing on the effects of ‘repressed’ childhood memories, notes that when King was four years old he was playing on a railroad track with a friend. The friend was hit by a freight train, his severed body parts carried home in a basket. After the event, the young Stephen wandered home alone, unable to speak or tell anyone what had happened, although his mother told him about it later. Terr then postulates that although King does not remember the incident, it was, according to her theories of repressed childhood memory, ‘buried’ in memory prompting him to subconsciously return to the trauma in adulthood by repeatedly writing of the horror of dismemberment (207-8). Conversely, McNally would argue that rather than being repressed or buried, the memory was simply forgotten. According to McNally’s summary of research evidence it is normal to have no memory of events from infancy to the ages of 3-4, a phenomena known as childhood amnesia (43-48). Hence any influence the event may have had on King’s writing would be more likely from adults around him discussing the incident at a later time.
Either way, this is not to suggest that all writers who write about trauma are re-writing something buried subconsciously, but certainly all writers draw on their own experiences of emotional and physical pain when writing a novel about trauma. King himself stated in his book On Writing (109) that when he wrote Misery he was struggling with a dependence on alcohol and cocaine and saw the character of Annie Wilkes as a metaphor for the way his addictions held him captive as he struggled to break free.
King returns again to a troubled amputee character facing his demons in his 2008 novel Dumas Key. The main protagonist Edgar Freemantle, self-made construction millionaire has his right side smashed in a work site accident resulting in a crushed skull, mangled leg and the amputation of his right arm. Dumas Key chronicles the physical and emotional difficulties he faces in the aftermath of the accident, including memory loss, aggressive and erratic behaviour due to the brain injury which results in the breakdown of his marriage, and his own suicidal thoughts. The first half of the novel provides a raw, honest and insightful depiction of a man struggling with the sequelae of traumatic brain injury and amputation, chronicling the disruptive effect this has on his psyche as well as on his relationships and the more concrete circumstances of his life. Amputation is used largely to inform the character of Edgar and to provide the impetus for him to relocate to Florida, setting up the rest of the novel’s journey through classic paranormal horror. Edgar’s head injury means he has difficulties with memory and this loss of memory and identity are also a major theme. Again there are parallels with the writer’s own life, King having been seriously injured after being hit by a drunk driver when he was out walking the back roads of rural Maine. Like the character of Edgar, he had a long period of pain and
38 physical rehabilitation after the accident, and it is possible that this experience was a source of inspiration for Dumas Key.
Amputation is used as a both a vehicle of horror and an explanation for the killer’s psychopathic motivation in Stetz-Waters’ crime novel The Admirer (2013). The killer has an amputee fetish and longs to create his own idea of a ‘perfect’ woman based on a picture of a double amputee he saw as a child. He forms a relationship with a young woman, Cassie who wants to have her legs surgically removed. When Cassie finds out she actually has a condition that is treatable and changes her mind, the killer ties her to a railroad track to create his own amputee. Of course the killer does not stop with one victim and plans a new method of achieving his aims involving the infirmary wing of an old asylum and a few trusty hacksaws. In this work of crime fiction the amputees are purely victims so we do not get to know them as characters, except in the retrospective piecing together of the crime. However, the novel does engage to a certain extent with the phenomenon of ‘devotees’ and ‘wannabees’. Devotees are people who admire amputees and are sexually attracted to them, whereas ‘wannabees’ are people who are able-bodied who want to become amputees. This is usually associated with a psychological disorder called body integrative identity disorder (BIID). In this rare disorder the body part in question has failed to be integrated into a person’s body schema and is perceived as not ‘belonging’ (Karczmarczyk and Nowakowski 61). In some ways BIID is the opposite of phantom limb phenomenon where a part that is absent is perceived as still being present.
The phenomenon of devotees is a contentious area as it brings up issues surrounding the boundaries between where a sexual attraction to physical difference is considered ‘normal’ and when it becomes fetish or a paraphilic psychopathology. A study conducted by Limoncin et al. found two subgroups among devotees: the first who were attracted to amputees on the basis of the physical aspects of amputation, and for whom the presence of the disability was a requirement for arousal; and a sub group who ‘are not sexually attracted by the disability per se but rather by the way people with disabilities deal with their condition (“their adaptability, fortitude, courage and ability to overcome obstacles”)’ (53). Some devotees have engaged in unethical and predatory behaviour, setting up websites that feature illicitly gained photographs of amputees which they trade and sell without the amputee’s knowledge or permission. On the one hand, as Barreda discusses, sexually objectifying an amputee for their physical difference is seen as wrong by a majority of people, but on the other hand amputees still want to be seen as sexually attractive. In counter reaction to the more predatory behaviour, amputees have set up their own websites, such as amputeegoddess.com. They feature pictures of amputee models who are willing participants and earn an income from downloads of their photographs, thus controlling their own images and how they want to be presented as sexual beings.
39 So although it fits the genre of crime novel, The Admirer raises challenging ideas surrounding the way an individual can become totally lacking in empathy and where sexual attraction to a disfigured or disabled body becomes psychopathology in a similar vein to Ballard’s Crash.
Another novel with a very flawed amputee protagonist is Ken Well’s 2001 novel, Junior’s Leg. Junior, the main character, has his leg torn off in an accident on an oil rig. At the start of the novel he is living in a trailer on the edge of a snake-infested Louisiana swamp having squandered all the insurance money from his injury. Junior is a rude, bigoted, out of work, one-legged drunk; not exactly hero material; his one redeeming feature being his self- deprecatory humour. Junior’s current circumstances reflect everything that could go wrong in a person’s life following an amputation. The novel certainly does not trace the classic path of wounded hero overcoming adversity; however, it is ultimately a tale of redemption. Despite his flaws, Junior’s character is transformed through love in the unlikely form of a mixed-race heritage (black, white, Indian) albino woman named Iris Mary, who turns to Junior for help when she flees a boss she suspects is caught up in organised crime. Junior’s Leg is the story of an amputee anti-hero finally finding the hero within. At the start of the novel Junior rarely wears his prosthesis but the more he connects and engages with Iris Mary the more he wears his prosthesis. His relationship with his prosthesis comes to symbolise both his reconnection with his inner self and his reconnection with the outside world.
2.2.4 Function and Dysfunction: ‘Post-Amp’ Stories
The previous discussion has looked at novels that use the circumstances of amputation as pivotal to the plot and/or theme. There are also examples of works of fiction that are not strictly about the circumstances surrounding the amputation but certainly being an amputee is an integral part of the characterisation and also used and alluded to within the plot. These are more ‘post-amp’ stories set in the Long-term Adaptation phase, stories where the amputee is getting on with their life.
Two examples of amputee protagonists who fit this profile are Juan Cabrillo, the central character in Clive Fusser’s Oregon Files Series and to a lesser extent, Sam Blackman in Mark DeCastrique’s Sam Blackman Mysteries. Both these protagonists are below-knee amputees (BKA), which for practical purposes means they are able to walk and run with more ease than an above knee amputee. This aspect of their amputee status is important because these wounded warrior heroes are not just alive and kicking but are portrayed as ‘kicking ass’.
Juan Cabrillo is an ex-CIA operative who is Captain of a specially fitted-out ship whose crew are hired to carry out covert paramilitary operations. He lost his leg as the result of an accident on a mission. Although he is essentially a mercenary, Cabrillo’s team are always
40 working for the ‘good side’ against ‘the bad’. Since it hails from the ‘thriller’ genre Cabrillo is a cross between James-Bond-at-sea and a more human version of the six-million-dollar man. When on a mission he uses his prosthesis to conceal weapons and any small special equipment he might need, thus using his prosthesis to enhance his ability to operate as a covert operative. As well as concealing weapons his prosthesis is also an actual weapon itself; the heel of his ‘combat leg’ has been designed to fire a single shot 50 calibre round. Cabrillo is the ultra tough hero who refuses to let his amputee status restrict his life in any way. Cabrillo may not quite be the six-million dollar man but he is very much his literary descendant. As the Captain of a multi-million dollar high-tech ship, leading his crew on near impossible secret missions, he is continuing the ‘super-amp’ mythology like his predecessor, Steve Austin.
Conversely, DeCastrique’s character of Sam Blackman is a more realistic ‘everyman’ portrayal, although he is still a heroic, wounded-warrior amputee. Blackman opens his own private investigation agency after he loses the lower portion of his leg in Iraq. What is interesting from the amputee perspective is that the author always describes what Sam is doing with due reference to the amputation; for example, putting his leg on and taking it off when he changes clothes or goes to bed and changing legs from his sports leg to his comfort leg depending on the detective task at hand. These details are woven quite naturally into the narrative and add to the impression that Sam Blackman is an ‘everyday’ kind of amputee hero. For instance, Sam’s issues with stump pain, emotional pain and other people’s reaction to his amputated leg also feature in the narrative. However, like the more ‘action man’ figure of Juan Cabrillo, Sam Blackman also uses his prosthesis to his advantage, for example, concealing a gun in his prosthesis in The Fitzgerald Ruse. At a crucial moment he whips off his leg, grabs the gun, shoots the villain and saves the day affirming his ‘wounded hero’ status and hopping off into the sunset with ‘his girl’ under his arm.
As this discussion has suggested, amputee protagonists have generally been pigeon- holed into hero or villain status, although the heroes may be deeply flawed and the villains not all bad. One amputee protagonist who is a very contradictory figure is Eva Peace in Toni Morrison’s 1973 novel Sula. Eva is an omniscient matriarch figure, controlling and stitching together a disparate group of lives. It is rumoured, and not refuted by Eva, that after being abandoned by her husband she stuck her leg under a train for the insurance money which she then uses to provide an ongoing income to support her children. Garland-Thomson categorises Toni Morrison’s work as ‘black women’s liberatory fiction’, fiction that is populated by strong independent black women. She even goes so far as to suggest that Eva’s engineering of her own amputation is a marker of her determination and strength, stating, ‘Ahab’s amputation enslaves him while Eva’s amputation frees her from poverty’ (116). Eva is certainly a survivor and she embodies the myth that a mother would ‘cut off her right arm to save her children’ (or in Eva’s
41 case, her leg) but the same ruthless drive to save her children later culminates in a shocking act. When Eva’s youngest son returns from WWI with a drug habit and set on a rapid self- destructive decline, Eva’s solution is to hasten the process. She douses him in kerosene and burns him alive in the middle of the night, a crime that is never investigated or punished. Eva is a complex dichotomy of murderer and saviour, sinner and saint. Her disability is not shown to be the cause of her ruthless behaviour, but a prescient example of the lengths to which she will go in order to maintain control over her world. In some ways Eva is a female version of Melville’s Ahab, an amputee megalomaniac, leaving a swathe of destruction in her attempts to master fate.
2.2.5 The Wounded Warrior Returns
As already noted, wars in other eras have all resulted in an increase in amputees but individual and social responses to amputees has varied in the wake of different conflicts. Just as individuals may choose to try and forget past traumas in order to move forward and rebuild their lives, this can also occur as a collective choice at a societal level. After the American Civil War and WWI, hiding disability and forgetting the trauma was the consensus response, so any post literary connection with amputation was very limited as it served as but a painful reminder. As Guyatt comments with reference to the British response after WWI, ‘amputation was one of the most visible reminders of war and in its concealment the country could begin to move forward seemingly cleansed and guilt-free’ (32). After WWII, another response was evident, namely to downplay the negatives by glorifying the heroic side of war in literature and films and the stories of real-life amputee heroes such as Bader and Lawson were used for this effect. Thus amputees were used as positive role models, negating any need for fictional amputee heroes.
The Vietnam War in which the USA and Australia were directly involved from 1962 to 1972 also saw a leap in amputee numbers although on a much smaller scale than the two world wars. The conflict in Vietnam, however, saw veterans subjected to a very negative public response. Unlike the hero status accorded to WWII veterans, soldiers returning from Vietnam were vilified instead of lauded, condemned by those who opposed the war for having participated (even though they were largely conscripts) and condemned by its supporters for having ‘lost’ the war. Hence the Vietnam conflict was never likely to supply a new flourishing of an amputee warrior hero. Instead, the end of the war in 1972 coincided with the publication of Caiden’s novel Cyborg. This futuristic vision of the super-amputee hero arose not from the usual wounded warrior tradition but from other cultural forces, in particular the USA’s space research program. Significantly the character of Steve Austin is a wounded astronaut, not a wounded soldier. His body is not destroyed by conflict, but in a NASA test flight. It is from pushing the boundaries of a technological future that his body is damaged and subsequently ‘re- engineered’, culminating in a neuro-biological melding of man and machine.
42 Now once again due to conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, there has been a sudden spike in amputee numbers. Kevlar body armour protects vital organs but cannot protect arms and legs from the force of an IED or suicide bomber. While the numbers are nowhere near that of a Civil War or WWI scale, amputee veterans are highly visible in the media and actively participate in controlling their public image and perception. The image projected is one of strength, perseverance and enablement through technology, with events such as the Invictus Games first held in London in 2014 serving to meet this aim. The Invictus Games are for wounded and sick military veterans, many of whom are amputees. As a British initiative, with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry as patrons, the movement could be seen as a modern version of the emphasis on sport as rehabilitation instituted at Roehampton after WWI. According to the Invictus Foundation website:
The Invictus Games harness the power of sport to inspire recovery, support rehabilitation and generate a wider understanding and respect for those who serve their country.
Events such as the Invictus Games and the Paralympic movement, as well as the high profile achieved by individual amputees in other sporting events such as major world marathons and the Hawaii Ironman, are examples of how amputees are seeking to change social attitudes and expectations by illustrating what they can achieve, rather than what they are unable to do. Such physical achievements would not be possible without the marked advances in prosthetic technology that have occurred, spurred on by the needs of a new group of young and physically active wounded servicemen. Again the symbiotic relationship between prosthetic technology, armed conflict and social forces is evident, but in this era amputees themselves are more in control of how they wish to be perceived and use sport as a PR medium.
As well as in sport, amputees have also had a visible presence in popular culture as participants on reality television series. Booher cites the examples of Heather Mills on Dancing with the Stars in 2007 (66) and Sarah Reinertsen who appeared on The Greatest Race in 2006. Reinertsen’s television appearance then led to her involvement in a series of ad campaigns in 2007 for a Lincoln car based on the notion of ‘dreams’. The ads used the visual motif of Reinertsen’s running prosthesis to symbolise speed and performance. (Booher 68-69). While positive media representations of prosthesis-wearing female amputees would seem to be a good thing, Booher draws attention to an inherent polemic:
Positive images of women with prosthetics in popular culture increase representations of difference, which in turn (one hopes), increases acceptance of said ‘differences’…. However, as a cultural model, the seeming preference for only representing certain kinds of people with prosthetics (i.e., those who fit the ‘supercrip’ narrative) also
43 represents a potentially problematic normalizing. (70–71)
So while amputees may be more visible, the ‘type’ of amputee has a narrow frame of reference.
One manifestation of the growing prominence of amputees in the media and popular culture has been a marked surge in amputation/amputee literature. At the start of research for this creative work and exegesis, there were quite a limited number of fictional works that featured amputees or amputation. Approximately 20 works were identified that could be categorised as such. There were also around a dozen biographical or autobiographical works that featured amputees and were relatively readily available.
Between 2009 and 2011, when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their peak, there was a doubling in occurrence of amputation: from 91 in 2009 to 196 in 2010 with reference to US troops (Wallace 32). It was around 2009 that the surge in amputee fiction began to emerge, particularly romances and stories that featured a ‘wounded warrior’. This has burgeoned to the point where there is now an actual category of ‘amputee romance fiction’ listed on Amazon. A search of Amazon in July 2015 yielded 374 titles under the category of ‘amputee fiction’, 125 under ‘amputee romance fiction’ and 20 under ‘amputee YA fiction’. The already large category of amputee romance is actually an under-representation, as the majority of traditional romance-specific publishers such as Harlequin-Mills & Boon and Silhouette do not make their books available through Amazon so the number of published amputee romance works is probably higher than the Amazon figures indicate.
On closer inspection, a large number of titles on Amazon are self-published, particularly those only available as eBooks, and as a result the standards in terms of writing craft, story and depiction of amputee characters are quite variable. The majority of amputee romances feature US service personnel with the wounded warrior protagonists being mostly male and often Marines or Special Forces, such as Navy Seals and Army Rangers: for example, Rhonda Nelson’s The Soldier, P. J. Sharon’s Heaven is for Heroes and Robyn Bradley’s What Happened in Granite Creek. Other countries’ troops or Special Forces do not seem to feature, despite the fact that British, Australian and many NATO countries contributed significant forces to the conflicts. This US-centric focus may be partly explained by the fact that the major romance publishing houses are US based and have strict specifications for their heroes and heroines. While characters of other nationalities can feature in romance fiction (particularly Mediterranean billionaires and Middle Eastern sheiks), when it comes to military heroes there is a pronounced North American skew. While this may partly be attributable to publishing house preference, if this were the only factor at play it would not explain the largely American heroes that feature in the self-published domain. It is quite likely instead that this reflects underlying
44 cultural forces, supported by the fact that nearly all the modern authors that feature a wounded amputee warrior are North American by nationality—largely female in the case of romances, and male in the case of thrillers or detective novels.
In the wake of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, wounded warrior heroes, of which amputees have been a highly visible element, have once again become symbols of national heroism and sources of patriotic pride in the US ‘war against terror’. The difference now compared to previous post-war periods is that modern prosthetics have truly enabled a high level of physical functioning so the reality is closer to the myth. Depending on the level and number of amputations, amputees are commonly able to achieve a high level of physical function making it easier for writers to cast their amputee protagonists as physically capable heroes. In addition, the increased media presence and public profile of amputees is not restricted to military veterans but encompasses a more diverse range of amputees. This broadening of representation in traditional and social media is also reflected in a greater diversity of amputee protagonists in contemporary fiction, a broadening in representation that hopefully will continue even if the flurry of conflict-era wounded warrior heroes fades away.
Amputee protagonists have also become more common in YA fiction. The following chapter will specifically examine YA works that feature amputees after first looking at the features and parameters that denote the YA genre.
45 Chapter 3: Why YA?
3.1 YA: Features and Function
3.1.1 Audience, Themes and Form
When setting out to write a work of YA fiction it is important to have some familiarity and understanding of the genre and what parameters might mark a work as YA. YA fiction is currently treated as a separate entity to children’s and adult fiction with its own defined space in publishing lists, book review websites and on library shelves, but this has only been the case since the 1960s. According to Nimon and Foster (5), although works written specifically for teenagers had been published since WWII it was S. E. Hinton’s 1967 novel The Outsiders that became a prototype for the ‘new realism’ and kick-started the modern incarnation of YA. It is beyond the scope of this exegesis to examine the history of YA as a genre. Instead, this chapter will firstly examine some of the features of YA in its current form, as this has more relevance to the development of the creative work. Secondly, examples of YA fiction that engage with amputees or amputation will be critically evaluated and compared with the writer’s own work.
YA fiction is fiction written for teens, published for teens and largely marketed to teens although it is written by adults who imagine life through teenage eyes. Like children’s fiction, it is a genre defined by its intended audience and while the content, and complexity of language are obvious elements that differ between children’s fiction and YA, the distinction between YA and adult fiction is less obvious.
As Feeny declares, YA fiction has often been viewed as ‘dumbed-down’ adult fiction but such a perception is a false one. According to Cole, the length of a YA novel is usually between 200 and 300 pages, making it shorter than adult fiction, but the language or vocabulary is not necessarily impoverished by comparison, nor is subject matter or theme a marker of difference (49). Researchers such as Flaherty and Chisholm have noted in their quantitative and qualitative analyses that YA novels readily meet high standards of complexity when all the parameters of style, syntax and subject matter are taken into account (5–6). Although vampires, romance and high school angst remain popular topics, YA fiction also tackles complex themes and difficult issues such as war, date rape, cancer, eating disorders, suicide, bullying, sexual identity, body image, disability, death and loss. The YA ‘genre’ is a heterogeneous mix, giving rise to some contention about whether it should be classified as a genre at all. Romantic comedy, contemporary realist drama, historical fiction, fantasy and paranormal works all share
46 the YA space, but there are some conventions and expectations including sensibility, voice and point of view that unify this diversity and are distinguishing features of YA.
3.1.2 Point of View: Whose Story is This?
As well as being written for teenagers YA fiction is also generally written about teenagers and written from a teenage sensibility and perspective. This idea of being narrated through the filter of a teenage sensibility is a crucial element in defining YA. In Belbin’s opinion, ‘a story about young adults told in hindsight through a mature adult mind’ is an adult novel, but if it is ‘narrated through a young adult consciousness’ then it is a YA novel (141).
Not surprisingly, when the point of view and outlook of the narrator is so crucial, the majority of YA fiction is written in the first person with a single narrator. The effect of this is to lend a sense of immediacy and authenticity to the narrative voice. As Sturm and Michel assert, the use of first-person perspective ‘heightens the complicity of the reader’ (40). It also invites intimacy and empathy and provides a direct line into the narrator’s feelings and thoughts. As well as first-person narration, another common convention is the use of present tense. This has the added effect of making a reader feel like they are living the experiences along with the character as they occur, further adding to the sense of immediacy. In fact, Cohn (qtd. in Feeny) estimates that 65 per cent of YA fiction uses the first-person present-tense convention, so while not mandatory, it is certainly widespread. With the adoption of first-person narration, authenticity of ‘voice’ then becomes critical. The voice must be both engaging and convincing if a reader is to believe that the story presented is indeed being perceived and told through adolescent eyes.
The importance of an ‘authentic voice’ alludes to an inherent contradiction in YA fiction, namely that it is written for and about adolescents but written by adults adopting an adolescent ‘voice’. In this way the adult author is writing from behind what Cadden argues is a mask of authenticity, since ‘the so-called adolescent voice is never—and can never be—truly authentic’ (‘The Irony of Narration in the Young Adult Novel’ 146). The adult author is in effect asking the adolescent reader to ‘trust what I have to say even though it is based on a deception’, which has ethical implications as Cadden also proposes (147). Double-voiced texts, can present equal voices and differing alternative interpretations that allow the reader to come up with their own answers. However, with a single-voiced text, which is more common in YA, there may be no alternative position other than that of the narrator. Cadden suggests that a way to counter any inherent ‘fake authenticity’ in the representation is by allowing an open-ended interpretation of ‘truth’ in the narrative. This idea has parallels with Mitchell and Snyder’s notion of narrative prosthesis, and the way to avoid ‘fake authenticity’ is by rendering complex and nuanced characters to allow fiction to represent a wider ‘truth’.
47 One of the first decisions an author must make in crafting a novel is to decide who is telling the story and whose story it is they are telling. Second Shot was originally conceived as 17-year-old Dylan’s story, a story where the car accident and resultant leg amputation throw his world, his plans and his view of himself into chaos, creating a physical and existential crisis for not just himself but also for his whole family. Since the drama extended beyond one individual, the first two drafts were written as ‘family drama’ and attempted to explore other perspectives and voices, including those of his parents and the other teenage occupants of the car. This involved experimenting with multiple points of view that shifted between past and present tenses, and first- and third-person perspectives, to find the best way for the story to be told. However, with multiple points of view the novel lacked cohesiveness and seemed to suffer from an identity crisis. After several frustrating drafts, the decision was made to return to the original conception of the novel as a work of YA fiction, which then dictated that it be rewritten entirely from a teenage point of view in both the technical and psychological sense of the word. The change from five down to two narrators narrowed the focus of the novel but also had the effect of concentrating the internal conflict and at the same time sharpening the emotional intensity.
While it is more common in YA fiction to adopt a single narrative voice, in the case of Second Shot there were two equally strong voices that demanded to be heard, namely, those of Dylan and Jessica. While they were both narrated using First Person, present tense was used for Dylan in order to lend more immediacy to his story and to allow the reader to literally ‘walk in his shoes’, whereas past tense was used for Jessica to provide a slightly distanced perspective. Given that her strategy to cope with difficult situations is to rationalise, intellectualise, and to try and distance herself from emotion, this seemed more in tune with her pattern of behaviour and thinking. The variation between tenses in Dylan and Jessica’s narration was also used as a way to distinguish the voices.
Writing a novel from two points of view, particularly from both a male and female perspective, is a challenging task since it can be difficult to develop voices that are distinct and ring true for their age, personality and gender without sounding like the author’s own voice, an issue that arises from the ironic nature of adults writing YA fiction as previously discussed. With dual narration there can also be issues in maintaining a balance between the voices so that one does not drown the other one out. It is a frequently used technique in popular romance to write chapters that alternate between hero and heroine in order to build romantic tension. While Second Shot certainly has elements of romantic tension (boy/girl relationships being a key concern of adolescence), this technique was too artificial a construct to be adopted. Instead, chapters were narrated from the point of view of whichever character had the most at stake at that point in the novel, the shifts in narration akin to two people on a see-saw—sometimes one taking the upper position, sometimes the other—allowing the reader to make their own
48 decisions regarding the veracity of each shifting point of view. As previously discussed, this shifting viewpoint can be an advantage of a double-voiced text as it allows alternative interpretations for the problems presented via the fictional world.
3.1.3 All About the Emotion
High emotional intensity is an important feature that is also cited as being a key factor in YA fiction since it mirrors the intensity of feeling common to this stage of life. Coats suggests that successful YA authors ‘honour the energy of the emotions’ that are true to the experience of adolescence (321), describing adolescence as ‘a liminal state that is fraught with angst, drama and change anxiety’ (325). Not having the adult experience to compare and rationalise the effect of potential outcomes, adolescents view problems with an exaggerated sense of the consequences. Even the minutia of life, such as an untimely pimple eruption, has the potential to create high drama. When crafting YA fiction, emotional intensity can arise from the nature of the conflict or the situation the characters are in (i.e. the observable external drama of plot), or it can arise from within the characters’ internal worlds. Either way, the stakes need to be high so the circumstances surrounding a car crash, where friendships and lives are at stake, are able to deliver emotional intensity from both external plot and internal character parameters.
As well as heightened intensity of emotion, adolescents also experience wider and more frequent emotional swings. Blakemore, Burnett and Dahl conclude that this is due to both brain- based factors as well as changes in hormone levels. During adolescence, the brain is undergoing reorganisation. The frontal lobe, which is responsible for reasoning and decision making along with the ability to control impulsive behaviour, is still developing. Without the dampening and controlling effect provided by a mature adult frontal cortex, the limbic system, an area of the midbrain that drives emotional responses, is more of a controlling force (Yurgelin-Todd 253). As a result, adolescents are much more likely to blurt things out and regret it later, and much more likely to act without thinking and react to others in an emotional way. Add to this the hormonal changes that occur with the onset of puberty, the fluctuations and surges in oestrogen and testosterone that those changes bring, and the adolescent is primed to feel things more intensely than at any other time of life. Thus the emotional intensity that is a key feature of YA fiction both reflects the reality of life for a teenager and engages with the drives and preferences of the adolescent brain.
3.1.4 Growth, Change, Belonging and Hope
Adolescence is also a period of life that is characterised by growth and change, starting with the physical changes of puberty. The resultant burgeoning sexual awareness then leads to a series of ‘firsts’: first crush, first love, first experience of sex or physical intimacy, first rejection and first broken heart. It is also generally the first time an individual gets a driving licence and
49 the first time (for most people) that they are exposed to drug and alcohol use. Adolescence provides both increasing freedom as well as increasing responsibility at a time when the individual is torn between competing drives: the drive to break free from the constraints of childhood and parental control as opposed to the need for security; the drive to stand out and express their individuality as opposed to the drive to blend in and find their tribe. As Coats comments:
As a body of literature YA fiction is organised around the same sorts of tensions that preoccupy the physical bodies and emotional lives of its intended audience… [It highlights tension] between growth and stasis, between an ideal world we can imagine and the one we really inhabit (316).
With its focus on growth arising from change, YA fiction has evolved from an earlier tradition of Bildungsroman, or the Coming of Age Novel. This literary trope follows a character’s transition from childhood to adulthood, from a state of ignorance to understanding as the protagonist moves towards ‘enlightenment through personal struggle and reflection’ (Cadden, ‘Genre as Nexus’ 310). This transition may be brought about through a series of challenging external events or initiated by the adolescent’s own actions and disaffection, their own pre-primed internal trigger for change.
Cadden views the goals of a YA novel as the ‘triumph of a unified self able to grow, the integration of a self partly determined by society, or the discovery of a self (self-consciousness) that is almost purely socially determined’ (‘Genre as Nexus’ 310). Hence growth in the individual typically does not occur in isolation but occurs within the wider social context where the adolescent protagonist is situated. Trites draws attention to the added dimension of power relationships, noting that ‘growth takes place in the context of power—who has it, who doesn’t and what must be negotiated in order for the adolescent to gain power in his or her culture’ (319). So as well as being an exploration of an individual’s position in a social context, of how they fit in and belong, YA literature is often concerned with an individual’s power or lack thereof within the societal domain, be it a story about bullying and the high school pecking order, struggles against parental expectation, or organising an uprising against the controlling hegemony in a dystopian society. While character growth and change are often key features of YA, they are not essential. As Trites also comments, works of YA literature usually ‘operate under the imperative of growth but may just “tell stories”’ (320).
Another commonly cited feature of YA fiction is that as a genre it tends to offer some form of hope, even though a protagonist’s problems may not be fully resolved and a ‘happily- ever-after’ ending is not expected or anticipated. Green argues that YA fiction ‘should be honest without being hopeless…hopeful without being dishonest’ (18), satisfying both the need to be
50 authentic and a desire for optimism. Allied with hope, YA fiction can also provide reassurance and safety even though it may explore dangerous or difficult terrain. In an essay examining the potential for YA fiction to be a liberating force for girls, Iyer states, ‘YA literature assures teens that the world is capable of understanding and sympathizing, and that it can provide a safe space to explore the unknown, including the unknown parts of oneself’ (20). As Sturm and Michel assert, teen readers seek ‘familiarity to help them feel they are not alone’, while they also want ‘novelty to broaden their horizons and to play with future possibilities’ (41). YA fiction can thus provide both a launching point to explore wider oceans as well as a safe haven in the metaphorical adolescent storm. In addition, by providing teens their own space in the literary landscape and by the fact that it exists at all, YA fiction sends a powerful message that teenage stories matter and their voices need to be heard.
3.1.5 Gatekeepers and Quality Control
YA fiction is both blessed and blighted by the fact that as a literary body it has numerous layers of gatekeepers with their own agendas. Parents, educators and librarians are the main purchasers of books for teens so publishers must appease separate ‘consumer’ interests and choose books that teens themselves want to read as well as books that the adult gatekeepers want them to be reading. The positive aspect of having more parties interested in YA fiction other than young adults themselves is that YA works are, as Iyer states, ‘held to higher standards of accuracy and authenticity in their portrayal of the teen experience than adult fiction featuring teens’ (21). It could be argued then that rather than being ‘dumbed down’ or ‘lit-lite’ this extra layer of quality control has the effect of improving the quality of the YA ‘genre’ as a whole. The negative aspect of so many gatekeepers is that a certain level of censorship can creep in with value judgements being placed on creative works as either ‘suitable’ or ‘unsuitable’, ‘worthy’ or ‘unworthy’. This is not to say that YA fiction must have a message or lesson. In fact, overly didactic work fails the YA reader test, teens having a particularly acute sense of the condescending, preachy or inauthentic. As Iyer maintains, ‘overly didactic fiction will probably lose its reader in fewer than twenty pages’ (21).
The gatekeeper effect can impose a conscious or unconscious pressure on an author to self edit or censor. Word choice, particularly when it comes to swearing was something carefully considered in the writing of Second Shot with the author concluding that the plot circumstances depicted would not ring true without the odd ‘F-word’, but at the same time an abundance of swearing, although realistic, could quickly become distracting, pulling the reader out of the story. As well as in regard to language choice, authorial decisions also needed to be made regarding the sexual content and the level of graphic description given the intended age of the audience. In writing Second Shot the author strove to achieve authenticity without veering toward shock or titillation which can be an anxious path to tread.
51 Not only do individual books come under the microscope for value, suitability, and merit there is also wider debate about the purpose and value of YA fiction in general. A writer has the power to elicit strong emotions in their readers, the power to inspire critical thought and questioning, the power to facilitate understanding of another’s point of view and recognition of the humanity in others. One of the functions of fiction as discussed in the opening chapter is to enable and improve the ability to empathise. This is particularly important in our age of selfies and culturally entrenched narcissism. John Green argues that YA fiction has an important role to play since it allows teens to not only identify with characters and see themselves more clearly but also to escape themselves: ‘to escape the prison of consciousness and learn to imagine the Other complexly’ (‘Does YA mean Anything Anymore?’ 24
While it may be parents and schools making purchasing decisions, teens are increasingly able to exercise their own choices and power in the electronic space of online book reviews and social media which enable them to directly comment on the books they are reading. Social media acts as a very rapid form of word-of-mouth advertising. It also allows new ways for readers to connect with authors, enabling direct feedback and engagement between reader and author, bringing the relationship into closer proximity, which adds another dimension to the sense of responsibility that YA authors may already feel towards their readers. Markus Zusak states that he feels it ‘truly is an honour and a privilege to be a Young Adult Writer’, and that his writing for this age group is born of a ‘desire to create a book that lights a fire – the right book at the right time in that ridiculously raw period in a person’s life’ (330). Thus it could be argued that authors themselves are the ultimate gatekeepers for YA fiction, providing the portal by which their readers can discover other ways of being, thinking and feeling through the fictional realm.
3.1.6 For the Sake of Reading
‘Young adult literature can be a way to both read the world and read the word’ (Curwood 16). This quotation encapsulates the dual function of YA fiction in the educational domain. YA fiction can be used as a way to stimulate discussion and critical thought by way of opening teens to other ways and other worlds, but it can also be useful in improving and maintaining literacy. Though not always explicitly stated as an aim, a pivotal role of YA fiction is to keep teenagers reading so they will progress from reading fiction for children and ‘graduate’ to tackle adult works. Thus parents and educators view YA fiction as having an educative role independent of content, educative in the sense that it maintains and fosters a growth in reading ability. Belbin even asserts that ‘all YA novels are aimed at emerging readers (and that) this is one of the qualities that makes them YA novels’ (138).
52 Belbin also conceptualises YA fiction as a literature of transition, a bridge between children’s and adult fiction, noting that as a YA author ‘you are writing for an audience that you want to disappear, to move on’ (143), as they inevitably grow up and leave adolescence behind. Similarly, Coats notes that YA literature is often viewed as ‘a house you pass on the way and not a destination in and of itself’ (317). While this may still be true for a large proportion of readers who will read YA fiction for a few years then abandon it, the increasing adult readership of YA would seem to counter this argument.
While YA fiction may indeed be a launch pad to adult fiction, it would increasingly seem that readers deem it to be a worthy destination in and of itself. YA fiction is an area of publishing that has experienced unprecedented growth. Between 2002 and 2012, YA sales grew by 120 per cent (Feeny). Part of the growth can be explained by the phenomenon of blockbuster series such as Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games, but part of the growth can also be attributed to the increase in the adult audience. Publishers Weekly reported a 2012 study that showed that 55 per cent of YA fiction was bought by over 18’s and 78 per cent of these were buying for themselves. Benedetti (2011) discusses some of the proposed reasons cited for this trend. These include the fact that YA fiction quickly engages the reader and the emotional intensity and ‘newness’ of experience that attracts adolescent readers can also appeal to adults. Other proposed explanations are that parents may read YA fiction to both ‘vet’ what their teens are reading and find a medium to engage with their teens, and then may continue to read YA as an enjoyable genre in its own right. Given such growth in adult readership and apparent popular appreciation for YA fiction it would seem appropriate, as Coats suggests, for YA to now be discussed and critiqued as ‘a destination literature rather than an in-between phenomena that is useful for pedagogical applications and/or diverting entertainment’ (317).
3.2 YA Fiction and the Portrayal of Disability
There is strong evidence to suggest that disability is well represented in YA fiction. A 2009 analysis by Koss and Teale found that 25 per cent of the books in their representative sample of YA works included a disabled character (566). Breaking this 25 per cent down further, half the disabilities represented were mental illness, a further quarter were physical disabilities, and a quarter were related to various diseases that resulted in disability (Koss and Teale 567). Given that adolescence is a time of life when issues of body image and identity are major preoccupations at both an individual and collective level, it is not surprising that authors would be attracted to writing about characters with a disability, since disability can magnify and complicate these universal issues. It would seem that disability is certainly well represented in YA fiction in terms of quantity and, if anything, possibly over-represented, which raises the need to query whether Garland-Thomson’s argument that disability has in fact been over- represented for its symbolic value is correct. 53 As already discussed, the focus and drive of disability studies and critical literacy has been to analyse and question literary representations of disability by looking at the underlying assumptions behind such portrayals. This is part of a wider political movement for ‘disabled’ rights, a movement that both drives and reflects changing cultural attitudes and, as a part of this drive, there has been increasing demand for literature that rejects ‘ableist’ narratives and offers counter-narratives which position disability in a more expansive and less restrictive way. In order to promote fiction that achieves these aims, awards such as The Schneider Family Book Award have been established. The Schneider Award is an annual prize for the best children’s and YA book that ‘embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience, portraying disability in a positive way’ (ALA website)—‘positive’ portrayals being ones that assume high expectations for the disabled character, depict them acting on choices, building on their strengths, able to make positive contributions to society and developing reciprocal relationships with others rather than dependent relationships. Schneider Prize winning books often turn up on classroom reading lists and library shelves as teachers and librarians seek to use texts for critical analysis of disability in the classroom and encourage teens to read about the experience of disability.
While this impetus to represent disability accurately, honestly and positively can be a worthy aim, there is a hidden trap for an author writing in the space, which can arise despite the most altruistic and genuine motivation. With educators looking for texts that can foster critical thinking around disability, awards that promote ‘positive’ portrayals of disability and publishers looking for the latest trend (‘sick-lit’ being fashionable thanks to the success of The Fault in Our Stars) then there is a chance that authors will write to this trend and either consciously or unconsciously adopt a bias of political correctness. In attempting to avoid negative stereotyping, authors can be at risk of overly positive stereotyping. Positive stereotyping can be problematic and therefore limiting because it is still a stereotype, pigeon-holing people into pre-conceived expectations of who they are, what they should be and how they should act.
Stella Young, the late disability rights activist, railed against what she termed ‘inspiration porn’, the idea that simply by living their life disabled people are somehow inspiring to those who are not similarly disabled (We’re Not Here for your Inspiration). Allied to this is the notion that disabled people are inherently more noble or brave or persistent, less complaining, and more accepting of their lot. As Young argues, there are plenty of people with disabilities who are downright unpleasant, angry and not inspirational at all. Somehow the notion persists of people bravely ‘battling’ against their congenital or acquired misfortune, glorifying the concept of ‘overcoming’ or ‘conquering’ their disability. Ironically, since the disability is an integral part of the person, in any battle to overcome it, they would in fact be battling themselves. Linton argues, ‘because it is physically impossible to overcome a disability,
54 it seems that what is overcome is the social stigma of having a disability’ (228). Young argues that disability is more something people learn to accommodate rather than defeat and yet there is a whole industry around inspirational speakers that buys into the ‘wounded warrior’ view of disability and positions the purpose of the disabled as being to motivate and inspire those who are not similarly afflicted. While such narratives view disability in a ‘positive’ inspiring way, there is still a subtle ‘ableist’ subtext at play.
Author John Green expresses discomfort with this idea of stories that are written to ‘inspire’ others in the following comments:
I like cancer books but here’s what bothers me: there is often a sick person who suffers nobly and bravely and in the process of dying so beautifully teaches the healthy people around him or her important lessons about how to be grateful for every day…
I wanted to write a cancer story that was about the sick people, not the lessons the healthy learn from them, about people who are disabled and human, who experience love and sex and longing and hurt and everything that any human does. (‘Does YA Mean Anything Anymore’ 22)
While Green’s comments are in reference to books about cancer, the same comments could equally apply to fictional works about any disability. This relates to the idea of presenting a wider ‘truth’ in fiction. There is a world of difference in writing something that honestly explores the full human experience of a disability or illness—the good, the bad, and the indifferent, the frustrations as well as the triumphs—compared to writing something that is artificially inspirational. A work of fiction with too much emphasis on positivity while ignoring the dark side risks becoming ‘untrue’, veering towards Young’s concept of ‘inspiration porn’. Yet with too much negativity and doom and gloom, the work risks losing empathy for the disabled character, being criticised for casting disability in a negative light and committing the crime of being politically ‘incorrect’. These are similar issues to those previously discussed in regard to concerns when writing about trauma. When writing about illness or disability, there is a similar imperative to strike the right balance between La Capra’s ideal of ‘empathic unsettlement’ (41) and at the same time avoiding sentimentality or voyeurism.
3.3 Amputee Characters in YA Fiction
Since such a large percentage of YA fiction features a physical disability it would be reasonable to expect to find amputees and amputation represented in the body of work especially since it is a topic that naturally lends itself to many of the concerns of adolescence such as difference and belonging, body image, self-concept and identity, striving for independence and dealing with setbacks and loss. In 2010 at the start of the literature search for this exegesis there were only two amputee-related novels that could be classed as YA, namely 55 Cynthia Voight’s 1986, Izzy Willy Nilly and Kelly Bingham’s 2009 Shark Girl. Both of these novels feature a female teenage protagonist who has recently experienced a traumatic amputation and follow their early struggles to adapt to an altered life. In the ensuing four year period, there has been an increase in YA texts with amputee characters although nothing like the surge in numbers of adult ‘amp’ fiction books. Additions to works in the field include two single titles, namely, Formerly Shark Girl, Bingham’s 2011 sequel to Shark Girl and The Fault in Our Stars, John Green’s 2012 cancer-amputee romance.
There are also two series published that follow an amputee protagonist across different settings and scenarios: The Lunar Chronicles, Marissa Meyer’s sci-fi fantasy take on traditional fairy-tales and the Soul Surfer series, Rick Bundschuh’s teen Christian ‘inspirational’ novels based on the life of Bethany Hamilton, the real-life ‘shark girl’ and competitive surfer. The following discussion will examine these works in more detail but will only include the first books in both of the series, namely Meyer’s Cinder and Bundschuh’s Clash...
3.3.1 Izzy Willy Nilly
For 23 years, Izzy Willy Nilly was the only YA novel in which amputees or amputation featured. The ‘Izzy’ of the title is 15-year-old cheerleader Isobel Lingard, popular, pretty and perfectly nice. Her dream date with senior Marco Griggers turns into a disaster when to save face she lets Marco drive her home despite the fact he has been drinking. One bad choice leads to disaster, with Marco crashing his car into a tree and after initial attempts to save her right leg fail, Izzy has to undergo the below-knee amputation of her right leg. At one level the novel operates as a morality tale with its don’t-get-in-cars-with-boys-who-have-been-drinking, message but the ‘lesson’ lies in the story and not in authorial moralising.
The novel was written in 1986 and to some extent shows its age in terms of the attitudes and expectations of the characters to women, race and disability. Societal expectations and outcomes for amputees have changed dramatically in the ensuing 30 years in line with advances in prosthetics and the more positive profile that amputees themselves have carved out in the cultural consciousness. Although far from an up-to-date depiction of post-amputation treatment the novel is still surprisingly relevant in terms of the emotional struggles facing a new amputee as well as wider teen issues of peer-group pressure, shifting friendships and loyalty and the gulf between how people present and how they feel. It does not gloss over Izzy’s difficulties, doubts and struggles with body image or the awkwardness of friends and family who either coddle or avoid her.
As old friends become more distant, Izzy forms a connection with Rosamunde, a girl perceived as an ‘outsider’, a girl that Izzy ignored in the past since she was not part of the popular crowd. Her new friend shows a genuine interest in and concern for Izzy. She is at times
56 brutally blunt but encouraging, and it is through Rosamunde’s friendship and total acceptance of Izzy for who she is rather than ‘what’ she is (an amputee) that Izzy starts to navigate the changes in her life and view her altered self and her future more positively. Her friend Rosamunde is overweight and does not conform to notions of an ideal female body, nor does she seem to care about how she looks or what other people think, whereas cheerleader Izzy has been more invested in her physical appearance. Izzy really struggles with how her altered body looks and how she thinks other people will perceive it. In seeing herself as now ‘abnormal’ Izzy has internalised an ‘ableist’ narrative along with the idea that if a part of her body is missing and/or abnormal that she herself is somehow lacking and abnormal. Rosamunde challenges these false perceptions and provides a fledgling counter-narrative along the lines of ‘true friends see the real you and don’t care about the packaging’.
The final scene in the book has Isobel confronting Marco in order to warn another girl about what he is really like. Marco has shown no remorse for what he did and has even tried to blame Isobel for the car crash. When Isobel confronts him, she does it not as a victim but as someone who is taking power into her own hands. After the confrontation, she has an epiphanic moment:
I knew that however much Marco’s intention was to hurt me, you wouldn’t call someone a bitch if you just dismissed her as crippled…….Oh, wow, I thought. It was the richness of it, the richness in me; there was so much more than before. Better too, I had to admit it, although if I could have gone back and changed things I wouldn’t have hesitated for one minute to do that. (326)
Izzy is no larger-than-life hero but a ‘nice’ ordinary girl, a protagonist to whom teenagers can still relate and her story is that of a relatively small life that catastrophe forces to grow bigger. In the final paragraph of the novel Izzy imagines herself taking her first few tentative steps on two feet again although one is real and the other one fake. This provides a final metaphor for her emotional journey and character growth; she is now better able to recognise in others what is fake and what is real, which friends are false and which ones true, gaining new insight and understanding through her own experience of hardship and loss.
3.3.2 Shark Girl and Formerly Shark Girl
Shark Girl, a YA verse novel, traces the first year in the life of 16-year-old Jane Arrow, following a near fatal shark attack after a day at the beach with her mother and older brother Michael. Michael saves her life by pulling her from the water but not before the shark has taken most of Jane’s right arm. Since Jane’s limb loss involves her right arm, her newly acquired disability is more obvious than a lower limb amputation, heightening issues of body image and other people’s reaction to her different shape and form. Jane is also right handed and a talented
57 artist, which adds more layers of struggle and conflict as she tries to learn to use her left hand and deal with the possibility that she may not be able to achieve her former dreams and life plan, a theme that is also explored in Second Shot.
Shark Girl looks closely at the early difficulties of new amputees; the stares, the awkwardness of friends and strangers and the need for the newly disabled to be cast in the role of putting other people at ease about their disability.
Everybody that comes by, everyone who calls…
I end up having to tell them it’s okay.
I’m tired of saying it’s okay. (Bingham, Shark Girl 30)
It also shows Jane’s struggle re-entering society given the highly visible nature of her amputated arm:
Eyes stare, dart away, flit back again.
Rigid backs from those pretending not to see.
Walking through the halls,
I am Moses, parting the Red Sea.
I am a leper, come to town.
I have the plague. (Bingham, Shark Girl 155)
Jane’s challenge in this intermediate phase of rehab is how to accept and take control of her body, manage her own expectations of herself and fit back in at school.
The sequel, Formerly Shark Girl, was written in response to readers’ requests to find out what happened next and covers Jane’s final year of high school, the second year after losing her arm. Now Jane’s struggle is more about how she will make choices and take control of her future, manage the expectations of others and fit into the wider community once she finishes school. This corresponds to Horgan and McLachlan’s long-term adaptation phase of rehab (846) and to Judith Herman’s third stage of recovery from trauma when survivors are often concerned with finding their purpose or mission in life (207-211). On the one hand, Jane wants to pursue her former dream of becoming an artist but is afraid that she will never be as good as she was or still wants to be. On the other hand, she thinks she would like to be a nurse, to be able to help people the way her medical team helped her, but she is torn between the two options.
Since the shark attack and dramatic rescue were captured on amateur video and screened nationwide, Jane’s story has become public property. However, Jane politely resists any media demands to ‘tell her story’ but the media go ahead and publish stories about her
58 anyway. This raises debate around the ‘right’ of the public to know personal information, the morality of voyeurism surrounding trauma, and the intrusive effect public ‘ownership’ of an event has on the individual concerned. In many of the unsolicited letters Jane receives from members of the public, the messages seem well-intentioned, offering support and best wishes for her future, but the letter writers often reveal the reason for writing is due to their own issues rather than concern for Jane. They nearly always tell Jane what an ‘inspiration’ she is to them personally, as well as to the community at large. Although Jane never responds to the correspondence from strangers and tries to ignore it, the responsibility of being someone’s ‘inspiration’ weighs heavily on her, adding to her conflict when trying to decide between two careers: artist or nurse.
Formerly Shark Girl shows Jane taking more agency, more control over determining her future and defining who she is. Although worried about failure, she works hard at not allowing either the disability or her attitude to it to limit her choices. When she develops a relationship with Max, the unattainable heart throb of the first novel, she realises that he is afraid of rejection just as much as she is. The mutual attraction between them also allays her fears that she will always miss out in the romance stakes due to her disability. With Max’s support she is able to face her fear of the water, finally returning to the beach where she was attacked. Unlike the usual romantic scenario in ‘amp’ fiction where the male wounded warrior is helped back to a full life through the love of a girl, the relationship is flipped in Bingham’s novel, with a female amputee being helped by her boyfriend. Further developing the disability counter narrative, Jane is also able to help and support Max with his own difficult family issues. As with Voigt’s character Izzy, Jane receives a lot of help from those around her but ultimately finds the strength to cope with the challenges of life after amputation from within her own character and inner reserves.
In an interview posted on Mother Reader regarding the route to publication of Shark Girl, Bingham discusses how she was faced with an unusual ethical dilemma. Just as she finished the manuscript in 2003, the shark attack occurred on Kauai, Hawaii in which 14-year- old surfer Bethany Hamilton lost her left arm. As Bingham states, ‘It was quite a shock. I couldn’t believe something that I had been writing about…something that seemed so freaky and random’ had actually happened. Not wanting to take advantage of someone else’s real pain she put the manuscript away in a drawer, only submitting it for publication a year later at the urging of writer friends. Hamilton published her own biography Soul Surfer in 2007 using her ‘story’ as an opportunity to inspire others as an example of the positive power of her own Christian faith in helping her return to surfing and reclaiming her life’s dream.
59 3.3.3 Soul Surfer
This fictional series, unlike Bingham’s Shark Girl, is actually based on the life of Bethany Hamilton and is written by a family friend, a surfing pastor from Kauai where she lives. Given the author’s occupation and Hamilton’s own strongly professed Christian faith, the series fits the sub-genre of Christian ‘inspirational’ fiction. Unlike YA, each novel is written from multiple third-person point of view as well as omniscient narration rather than the YA convention of first person. However, the characters of Bethany and her friends are all in their early teens, which could place the works as YA; as such it is included in this discussion.
Where the Soul Surfer books are more akin to children’s fiction is in their didactically resolved endings, formulaic plots and tendency to authorial intrusion. In Clash, the first book in the series, a new girl, Jenna, moves to Bethany’s town. Jenna is a troubled teen who is missing her old friends, fighting with her mother and desperate to make some new friends. After overhearing Jenna swearing at her mother in the car park Bethany decides she wants nothing to do with a girl like her. To Bethany’s dismay her friend Malia suggests that she give Jenna some surfing lessons. When Jenna shows up at the beach with a second-hand board Bethany ignores her to go surfing with her friends from the Hanalei girls’ surf team, friends who do not want their close-knit group muscled in on by outsiders. Bethany’s conscience niggles at her but by the time she returns to the beach to offer Jenna some help, the new girl has unwittingly waded out into the most dangerous part of the beach and is swiftly carried out by a rip. Bethany is the only one who can reach her in time. Our amputee heroine paddles out to the rescue, saves the day, invites Jenna into their group, helps teach her to surf and wins the upcoming surfing contest with one perfect wave despite only having one arm. By the end of the book, Jenna has formed a truce with her mother, become a surfer and a Christian inspired by Bethany’s example while Bethany and her friends have learnt not to exclude people but to be inclusive and welcoming, the lessons all neatly tied up in a feel-good bow.
Unlike Biblical parables, however, which allow for readers to infer meaning and draw their own conclusions, the author takes every opportunity to interrupt the story with sermonising. The evangelical agenda infuses the narration and dialogue with a preachy tone, which could alienate any potential YA audience. While the series certainly portrays a teen amputee in a positive light and the characters are not without faults and flaws, the overall tone is so ‘overly positive’ it comes across as unrealistic and the disability counter narrative is buried underneath an avalanche of evangelical positivity.
3.3.4 The Running Dream
This novel by Wendelin Van Draanen won the 2012 Schneider Family Book Prize and in some ways could be viewed as an updated, more politically correct version of Izzy Willy
60 Nilly. Again the main character and narrator is a teenager facing the aftermath of a traumatic amputation. The novel has not one but two female adolescent characters with a disability; 16- year-old runner Jessica Carlisle who loses her right leg at the start of the book after the track team’s bus is hit by a truck, and the slightly younger Rosa, a girl in her maths class with cerebral palsy.
The first part of the book focuses on Jessica in the aftermath of the accident. Here the author presents a realistic portrayal of the pain and physical challenges Jessica faces as a new amputee, as well as her inner emotional turmoil. After finding out about her leg she comments, ‘the pain in my leg is nothing compared to the one in my heart’ (Van Draanen 11). A few days later, after trying to get to the toilet hopping on her walking frame, Jessica does not make it in time and empties her bladder all over her clothes. After her mother and a nurse have to change her she collapses back in bed. ‘I manage a weak smile then close my eyes, destroyed’ (Van Draanen 15). Hence Van Draanen does not shirk portraying the unpleasant realities of early- stage limb loss. Carrying through the running theme Jessica likens the difficulty of coping with the pain and her post trauma weakness as like being stuck on ‘rigor mortis bend’, the hardest section of a run when your body stiffens and seizes up and you don’t think you will make it to the end. After the initial flurry of well-wishes and visitors dies down the reality of hospital and physio sets in. Jessica’s room is filled with balloons and flowers but it doesn't take long for the flowers to wilt and the balloons to deflate, symbolic of her own shrivelled hopes. At this stage she has convinced herself she will never be a runner again and secretly wishes she had died in the accident instead of facing life as an amputee.
Thanks to her running background and high level of fitness, Jessica recovers quickly on a physical level and soon returns home but hits a period of depression, developing a dependence on pain killers when she realises that her life has changed forever: ‘The only time I feel halfway normal is when we're at the kitchen table. It’s like seeing each other from the waist up helps us forget about the stump lurking beneath the surface’ (Van Draanen 52). Jessica returns to school with her best friend Fiona’s help since she needs to use a combination of wheelchair and crutches until she can be fitted for a prosthetic limb. Here the book becomes a wider examination of some of the issues facing people with a disability; how difficult it is to negotiate ramps in a wheelchair, to use crutches up and down stairs, or to find a suitable bathroom, how it feels to be parked at the back of the class in a wheelchair, separate, alienated and largely ignored.
In maths class, she is seated next to Rosa, the ‘other girl in a wheelchair’ who Jessica realises she has previously ignored. Owing to her cerebral palsy, Rosa’s speech is difficult to understand but this belies her intelligence. It is through Rosa’s patient tutoring that Jessica is able to not only gain a better grasp of maths and improve her grades but also to gain a better
61 insight into the experience of living with a disability and the politics of exclusion. The maths tutoring is a metaphor for their whole relationship as Rosa takes on the role of teacher and they meet as equals for the first time. When Jessica is unsure of how to approach people, Rosa advises. ‘Smile…If you’re friendly, they’ll be friendly’, Jessica, the narrator, comments. ‘This is not easy for me. And it seems backward. But I don’t want to be treated like I’m invisible, so I try’ (Van Draanen 99). This aspect of the storyline reflects Garland-Thomson’s assertion that learning to become ‘supplicants and minstrels’ is one of the most difficult things for the newly disabled to adjust to (13).
Owing to legal issues surrounding liability for insurance costs, Jessica’s family must pay for her medical bills and new prosthetic leg, which places them under financial strain. This highlights an important rights issue for amputees. Those who are well covered by insurance have access to the most appropriate technology to enhance their lives but those without insurance coverage must either go without, self-fund their equipment needs, or rely on charity. Jessica is desperate to be able to run again but at $20,000 the cost of a ‘blade’ running prosthesis is prohibitive. The track team take it upon themselves to help raise the money to purchase a running leg, effectively turning Jessica into a ‘charity case’. At their first car wash fund raiser Jessica finds herself in the role of ‘beggar’ and ‘supplicant’, exposing her prosthetic limb to passing motorists, despite her discomfort in doing so in order to attract more attention and sympathy. Her ‘story’ becomes a local news item which enables the fund raising aim to be achieved, although this also means that Jessica becomes complicit in ‘displaying’ her newly acquired disability. Jessica is prepared to go along with this if it means she can finally achieve her dream of running again, raising questions surrounding whether the ends can justify the means, particularly when owing to the blade-like appearance of a running leg, Jessica herself expresses doubts wondering, ‘Is running worth becoming a cyborg?’ (Van Draanen 144)
The last part of the book casts Jessica in the role of ‘disability rights activist’. On realising that Rosa has never experienced the ‘buzz’ of competing in a race, Jessica decides to enter a ten mile race pushing Rosa in her wheelchair. Her aim is to both get across the finish line and also get across a message about disability, namely the importance of seeing the person with the disability first and not just seeing the disability. Since this is a feel-good positive, uplifting disability story, Jessica trains hard and succeeds in her goal. Given that it is only eight months since the accident and amputation, credibility is somewhat stretched, but just like Rosa sitting in her wheelchair; the reader happily goes along with the ride. Ironically, while Jessica’s aim is to highlight the importance of getting to know the person that goes with the disability, we don’t really get to know Rosa that well. Another criticism is that while Jessica has to work hard to achieve her goals she does not really suffer any setbacks in the pursuit of those goals. Due to these aspects the novel to some extent is open to the criticism of being ‘too good to be true’, of
62 presenting a story that tastes of vanilla when the authentic flavour of disability is a lot more like rocky road.
3.3.5 Cinder
In contrast to realistic portrayals of amputees in contemporary settings, Marissa Meyer’s 2012 novel Cinder stakes new territory in ‘mashing-up’ genres. It is a futuristic sci-fi novel married to the classic tale of Cinderella, comprising the first part of a series that borrows from other fairy tales such as Red Riding Hood and Snow White. Where The Running Dream’s Jessica worries about looking like a cyborg, Cinder actually is a cyborg. At the start of the book, Cinder is a mechanic in post-World War III New Beijing, who supports her stepmother and two stepsisters with the proceeds of her mechanical skills. While she spends her days fixing machines, Cinder’s own body is also part ‘machine’. Cinder has no recollection of her early life but later it is revealed she was saved from a fire (hence Cinder) in which both her hands and one foot were severely damaged and were replaced with prosthetic parts that are wired into her own nervous system.
Cyborgs—part human, part machine—are common in New Beijing but do not have any legal rights or status, being effectively ‘owned’ by someone fully human, in Cinder’s case, her stepmother Adri. This casts amputees and those with prosthetised bodies as an underclass which is used for experiments in trying to find a cure for the devastating plague that is sweeping New Beijing. Due to her amazing ability to fix anything mechanical, Cinder meets the handsome Prince Kai when he brings his old childhood android along to be fixed. In gratitude he invites her personally to the ball. Following the Cinderella tradition, Cinder’s stepmother Adri is cruel to Cinder. When the younger stepsister Peony dies from the plague, Adri blames Cinder, confiscating her new prosthetic foot so she cannot leave the flat, let alone go to the ball. Accustomed to relying on her own skills and resources, Cinder does not wait for a fairy godmother to come to her rescue. Instead she commandeers her dead stepsister’s ball gown, straps on her old prosthetic foot and drives herself to the ball in an old-fashioned car she rescued from a junkyard instead of arriving in a hover, the usual mode of transport for the times. Instead of a glass slipper, it is her old prosthetic foot that she loses on the steps of the Palace, leaving her crippled and stranded as well as exposed, her secret cyborg identity suddenly revealed.
Meyer’s Cinder is both an ordinary and an extraordinary amputee hero. She is a working girl who has issues of low self-esteem and self doubt centred on her body and appearance. Acutely aware of how her prosthetic parts mark her as ‘inferior’, she covers her prosthetic hands with gloves to conceal her cyborg identity. She is convinced Prince Kai would be repelled by her if he knew she was part metal and plastic, an attitude of self-loathing she has
63 internalised from the way her stepmother treats her and the way amputee cyborgs are treated in the wider society of the story world:
Even if she did find dress gloves and slippers that could hide her metal monstrosities, her mousy hair would never hold a curl, and she didn’t know the first thing about make- up. She would just end up sitting off the dance floor and making fun of the girls who swooned to get Prince Kai’s attention, pretending she wasn’t jealous. Pretending it didn’t bother her… She was cyborg, and she would never go to the ball (loc 409).
The casting of cyborgs as an underclass provides a novel way to explore the politics of difference and power structures. While the novel is fantasy there are allegorical parallels with real issues that affect amputees. For example, Cinder has to beg her stepmother to keep her new prosthetic foot, which has parallels with how amputees have to beg medical insurers, government agencies or charities to obtain the equipment they need to function well. She is constantly reminded by her stepmother at how grateful she should be for the accommodations the family has made to supposedly meet her needs, which is not that different to how disabled populations are supposed to be grateful that any ramps or building design or accommodation is made by society to meet their needs.
When we first encounter Cinder, she is technically skilled but downtrodden. She hides her appearance, is ashamed of her prosthetics and secretly rails against her status within her step-family and wider society, but does not act to change the situation. By the end of the novel she is actively challenging her oppressors, rejecting her stepmother’s control, championing a disability counter narrative, fighting injustice against cyborgs and trying to save Prince Kai from the Lunar Queen’s plan to kill him and take over the world. Cinder’s character growth takes her from ‘kicked-down’ to ‘kick-ass’, from lesser being to emerging super-being on the verge of discovering her true power. True to the tradition of cyborg amputee superhero, Cinder does turn out to have hidden powers but Meyer subverts the fairy tale ending. Cinder does not get her Prince as Prince Kai is forced to make a choice between sacrificing Cinder to the Lunar Queen, and saving his people. The ending is left hanging like the severed wires that dangle from Cinder’s severed prosthetic foot, paving the way to continue the story into the next novel.
3.3.6 The Fault in Our Stars
Where all of the previously discussed YA ‘amp novels’ have female teenage amputee protagonists, John Green’s 2012 novel The Fault in Our Stars is the only example that deviates from this mould. While the narrator, Hazel Lancaster is 16 and female, the other main character, 17-year-old Augustus Waters, is a male amputee who lost his right leg to bone cancer. The fact that he has an amputated leg is an integral part of the character and the story but the focus is not on amputation but on living with cancer. As well as coming to terms with an existing loss the
64 characters must struggle with their own fragile mortality and the likelihood of even greater loss in the future.
Despite dealing with teenage cancer and death, Green approaches his subject and characters with ironic humour: ‘Osteosarcoma sometimes takes a limb to check you out. Then, if it likes you, it takes the rest’ (The Fault in Our Stars loc 176). This is both his introduction to the type of cancer Augustus has as well as a foreshadowing of events that are to come. The protagonists meet at a support group for teen cancer patients, when Isaac, another boy in the group, brings his friend Augustus (Gus) along. Isaac has a rare form of eye cancer and is in imminent danger of losing his remaining eye but the bone cancer that claimed Augustus’ leg seems to be in remission. Since he now has a prosthetic leg Augustus no longer dreams of being a pro basketball player but he does not imagine himself to be on his last legs either. Initially his task seems to be adjusting to life after cancer whereas Hazel’s prognosis is much bleaker. Hazel has metastatic thyroid cancer temporarily held in check by an experimental (and fictional) drug phalanxifor. The drug has halted the progression of the cancer but not eliminated it and cannot undo the existing damage to her lungs, so Hazel is reliant on using portable oxygen in order to breathe. Hence all three characters have a visible marker of the disabling effect of their respective cancers, Isaac with his glass eyes, Hazel with her oxygen cannula and cylinder and Augustus with his prosthetic leg, albeit usually out of sight hidden by his jeans.
Augustus relates to Hazel how he spent the last night before his amputation shooting basketball hoops for hour after hour. This is the only time he intimates the pain and shock of the loss of his leg and with it, his sporting dreams. Soon after this revelation all three friends meet at Augustus’ house to console Isaac, who has been dumped by his girlfriend just before he is about to lose his remaining eye. When Isaac explodes with frustration and rage, tipping over his chair and slamming into pillows, rather than trying to calm him down Augustus encourages him to smash something more breakable. Isaac happily obliges and smashes all of Augustus’ basketball trophies lined up on the shelves. Augustus admits he hates basketball now and wanted to get rid of the trophies but didn’t know how to tell his father the way he really feels.
There are some similarities between The Fault in Our Stars and Second Shot but also some fundamental differences. Like Augustus, the male protagonist Dylan also has a promising sports career pre-amputation, although instead of basketball his sport is football. The emotional core of both novels is the deepening attraction and relationship between the two teens, between their strong desire to be together and the fear that this may cause further pain. Second Shot has a pivotal scene in which Dylan buries his trophies and throws all his football boots out his bedroom window in a fit of rage, a scene not dissimilar to Isaac’s trophy-smashing frenzy (although the scene in Second Shot was written before The Fault in Our Stars was published). The trophy scenes in both novels have key symbolic value. In Second Shot, Dylan literally
65 buries the trophies, symbolising the burial of his former aspirations and dreams. Jessica quietly rescues the trophies, returning them to Dylan at the conclusion of the novel symbolic of a return to hope and acceptance. Second Shot begins with disaster and loss but ends with reconciliation and healing. In contrast, The Fault in Our Stars begins with a glimmer of optimism and healing but ends with separation and loss, binding the characters together all too briefly before death pulls them apart in the end. Here the trophy smashing scene is also symbolic. Although it provides an emotional release for the characters, there is no restoration or restitution. They can only stand by and watch as their past dreams for the future are destroyed.
While all the other examples of teen amputee fiction largely follow a template of renewal after loss, Green’s novel follows one of tragedy, the loss of a limb paling in comparison to the loss caused by death. Given the novel’s subject is cancer, a happy ending would not pass Green’s own YA fiction authenticity test. All three teens surviving their respective cancers would have provided a much more hopeful and miraculous ending but not an honest one. Augustus’ death is a sad and tragic outcome but it is also realistic. Even so, the novel is not devoid of hope. There is an unstated premise that love, no matter how short or bitter-sweet, is worth pursuing and that love by its very existence is its own reward.
66 Chapter 4: Summary and Conclusion
This exegesis has explored topics that are relevant to the creative work, Second Shot, in a variety of ways. As the novel is set in the aftermath of a car crash, an examination of selected ‘crash writing’ was undertaken. Other fictional works centred on a car crash were discussed and analysed, including some examples from contemporary realist YA fiction, with reference to the outcomes presented, point of view of narration and issues addressed. A common thread in these works was the exploration of how both individual identity and family dynamics were disrupted, as well as how lives could be rebuilt in the wake of road trauma when individuals are struggling with blame, guilt, grief and loss.
Writing about any fictional traumatic event or a disability such as traumatic amputation places a certain responsibility on the author to ‘get it right’. Hence a brief review of trauma theory and disability studies was undertaken. An ongoing debate in trauma theory is how best to represent trauma in narrative form and how the memory or lack of memory of a traumatic event can impinge in the aftermath of such trauma. Traumatic events are often remembered in heightened detail, and there is evidence that talking about or writing about such an experience can help an individual to make sense of the experience. This can also provide some validation for the role of author, since a fictional account of trauma can come to represent a generalised ‘truth’ and a wider understanding for the experience of trauma, or, as Hartman expresses, it can provide a way for ‘reading the wound’ (537). Disability studies also draws attention to the need to represent disability in a way that depicts the true complexity of personal, psychological, social and political aspects of the disabled body. Concepts such as ableism in narrative, the overuse of disability for its symbolic value and the notions of narrative as prosthesis were explored both in the negative critical sense and in the positive empowering sense of how a prosthetic creation can be employed.
Since Melville’s Ahab, writers have been drawn to the symbolic and dramatic potential of amputation, but the literature of amputation as a specific entity has received only patchy attention. Chapter 2 provided an overview of how amputees and amputation have been represented from the 1850s up until 2015, and revealed some repeated trends. There seems to be a complex relationship between literary depictions of amputees and societal perceptions, with such depictions both influencing and being influenced by prevailing attitudes. Male amputees were initially cast as pirates and villains, and females as only desirable if their lack of a limb came attached to wealth. While the American Civil War gave birth to the first appearance of wounded warrior amputee heroes, by war’s end the literary heroes had departed when reality set in. WWI saw a huge increase in amputee numbers and rapid development in the fields of
67 prosthetics and rehabilitation, but in a world anxious to forget about war and its unpleasant by- products, this did not translate into literary form apart from a few bleak depictions of amputees in war poetry. WWII saw the creation of real wounded warrior heroes who could actually out- compete able-bodied men in terms of courage and heroism, and these realities were turned into biography and film. The 1970s gave birth to the space age, and with it the amputee cyborg superhero was born. Gradually, with the development of greater awareness of disabilities in the 1980s and 1990s, more diverse literature of amputation appeared, encompassing literary works, redemptive tales of recovery both autobiographical and fictional, as well as works from the genres of horror and YA fiction. Even so, by the end of the 20th century, amputation as a subject and amputee protagonists were both still fairly uncommon in contemporary literature.
The first decade of the 21st century heralded a new era of highly visible amputees. As in previous eras, the armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan provided a spike in amputee numbers resulting in both rapid technological innovation in prosthetics and changes in the way amputees were perceived. Instead of hiding their prosthetic limbs, amputees now publicly display them. This could be viewed as part of a drive to change the status of amputee from disabled to enabled and to include prosthetised bodies in the range of human corporeality. Growing out of this increased cultural visibility there has been a flourishing of ‘amp lit’, to the extent that amputee fiction and biography have their own separate categories on book buying websites such as Amazon. The past decade has been something of a golden age for literary representations of amputation. The amputee protagonist in more recent times has been represented as a complex, diverse and capable being and is now featuring across a wide range of genres. Amp Lit and the amputee protagonist, it would seem, are finally coming into their own, particularly in the genre of YA fiction where amputees feature in stories of resilience following struggle, stories of redemption, reinvention and ultimately of hope.
Since Second Shot is a work of YA fiction elements that define it as a genre were analysed in Chapter 3. Current examples of YA fiction that depicts amputee protagonists were then discussed. YA as a genre is characterised by growth, change and emotional intensity. It tends to question the status quo and the nature of identity in a social context, while providing realistic but optimistic and hopeful outcomes. Hence it is no wonder that a complex and powerful subject such as traumatic amputation can find a place in YA to call home. One unusual aspect pertaining to YA fiction in the ‘amp-lit’ space is the lack of male teen amputee protagonists, with Green’s Augustus Burroughs being the only example represented in a traditionally published work. Young males are statistically much more likely to experience a traumatic amputation than any other population group, and male amputee protagonists are much more common in novels for adults. The YA genre, by way of contrast, has an over- representation of female amputee protagonists. This may be due to the fact that authors gravitate
68 towards a female protagonist to suit their much larger female audience. It may also just be coincidence, given that Cinderella was traditionally a female character and Bethany Hamilton, on whom the Soul Surfer series is based, is also female. Whatever the explanation, this lack of male teenage amputees in YA fiction leaves gaps for other authors to fill. With a male teenage amputee protagonist as well as an equally strong female protagonist, Second Shot has the potential to fill such a gap.
Another glaring lack in both adult and YA amputee fiction is a more global perspective on the amputee experience. In all the novels discussed, the amputee protagonists have lost a limb in a variety of ways: through road trauma, shark attack, work place accident, cancer and military conflict. However, natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunami, as well as the man-made hazard of land mines account for large numbers of traumatic amputations worldwide and are yet to be depicted as causative agents for amputation in fiction. The effect of land mines in particular could make for a powerful exploration of the enduring legacy of conflict and the ethics surrounding their use. There is also an opportunity to examine the nature of amputation and prosthetics in other countries, cultures or settings, either real or imagined, as well as the potential to use amputee protagonists to explore cultural attitudes to amputation and prosthetised bodies across different societies and cultures.
With the game-changing potential of modern prosthetics, amputee stories are no longer focused on loss or deficiency. Instead contemporary ‘amp-lit’ provides a rich source of stories that engage with identity, resilience and a reimagining of the body and the self, no matter its shape or form. It would seem that while some ‘amp-lit’ works may still be guilty of Mitchell and Snyder’s criticism that stories that feature disability act as a form of narrative prosthesis and fail to represent the true complexity of disability, there are also many examples of narratives that live up to Mitchell and Snyder’s expressed hope for a more nuanced and realistic alternative, namely ‘a literature teeming with disability as a matter of identity, perspective, and subjectivity’. (133) From Melville’s Ahab to John Green’s Augustus Waters, the amputee protagonist has come a long way.
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80
SECOND SHOT
By T. A. Green
81 Chapter 1: Jessica—Friday Night
For an awful split second I could see it coming. The car skidded and I knew we would crash. I screamed as the car lifted and flipped over, slamming us from side to side until we hit the ground with a brutal thud. Pain shot up my arm, sharp and vicious. The seatbelt had me pinned. My heart pounded.
Outside it was black. No lights. No houses. Inside, it was all jumbled chaos, hard to make things out in the shadows of moonlight with everything so twisted and smashed. I was jammed hard against the centre console, the gear lever digging in to my knee, the car tipped on its side, the slightest movement setting off more jabs of pain. Dylan was underneath me. Silent. Still.
I smelled petrol. And booze. So strong it made me feel sick. The engine thrummed loudly, still running. A wave of panic rolled over me. What if the engine caught fire and we were stuck? Wincing, I shoved at the driver’s door, why the hell wouldn’t it open? I grabbed for the keys and shut the motor down, and as the engine died Dylan moaned, an awful noise, like an animal in a trap.
‘Dylan…Jake? Can you hear me?’
Dylan moaned again.
Nothing from Jake in the back.
I stretched out my hand to feel for Jake’s breath, almost crying with pain at the effort. His eyes were closed, his face pale, an angry gash at the side of his head, but when I felt a faint heat on my hand I knew he was still breathing and a huge surge of relief flooded my chest.
Until I took a closer look at Dylan.
Oh God!
I had to look away.
Take a deep breath.
Try not to puke.
Then make myself turn back.
I couldn’t see his left foot, it was stuck between the dash and a tangle of metal, but I could see the shin bone sticking out, a mass of mangled flesh, blood spurting. I felt sick again.
82 Where’s my phone? Gotta get some help. I hit the horn with my elbow, five or six times, the sound blaring into the night. Please, somebody, hear it. Have to stop the bleeding.
Compression.
That’s what you do to make it stop. That would mean touching his leg.
Touching his leg there.
My stomach heaved at the thought but it had to be done.
Bracing myself with my legs so I didn’t land on top of Dylan, I unclipped the seatbelt, grimacing as I reached for his shin. I pressed my hands where the blood was spurting out, only looking as long as I had to, pain stabbing up my left arm, fingers wet and dripping. Dylan moaned again, his body jerking with the pressure. I pressed as hard as I could but the blood just kept coming. This wasn’t going to work. I needed something to tie around his leg. I leaned on the horn again, getting more and more desperate as Dylan fell silent and his body went limp.
‘Hold on!’ I screamed. ‘Don’t you dare die on me!’ I pressed harder. He twitched again, refilling my hope and in a sudden flash I knew what to do.
I took my bra off and tied it to his leg, the cups folded over the gaping wound with the straps pulled tight. It seemed to work, the bleeding slowed to a trickle but in the middle of it all Dylan’s phone started to ring. By the time I fished the phone out of his back pocket the ring tone had stopped and a message flashed across the screen.
Missed call from ‘Home’.
Hands sticky and shaking I dialled the emergency number.
Location? Anyone trapped? Anyone injured? So many questions.
The operator kept me talking on the phone until a little while later I heard a siren, faint at first, then coming closer until it was blaring so loud my ears hurt and then it suddenly stopped. A light hit me through the shattered glass of the windscreen, blinding at first, until my eyes adjusted and a man’s face emerged from the light.
‘Can you hear me?
‘Yes,’ I yelled back, though it came out little more than a squeak.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘Only my arm but the door is stuck and my friend’s leg is trapped and bleeding a lot.’
The paramedic tried the lock and shone a torch over the door.
‘What’s your name?’
83 ‘Jessica.’
‘Jessica have you got the keys?’
‘Yes?’
‘There should be a button on the keys...’
Of course. How stupid! I pressed the button and the lock popped up.
‘Good girl. I’m going to open the door now.’ Another siren sounded in the distance as the paramedic opened the door, lifting it up like a submarine hatch and letting in a sudden rush of cold air.
He helped me clamber out the door so he could get to Dylan. When my feet hit the ground they almost buckled underneath me and the cold set off a bout of shivers. The other paramedic put a shiny silver blanket around my shoulders, but I couldn’t stop shaking. ‘What are your friends’ names?’
‘That’s Dylan in the front and Jake in the back. I think Jake hit his head and is unconscious.’ The ambulance man passed the IV bag and some plastic tubes to his partner in the car. ‘Stay here,’ he said before climbing into the back seat to check Jake. More sirens, a police car, a tow truck, another ambulance and finally a rescue vehicle descended and hemmed us in. One of the new paramedics led me away from the crash, checked me over more thoroughly and put my left arm in a sling. Despite the blanket, my whole body was shivering, teeth chattering uncontrollably.
‘W-w-what happens n-n-now?’ I asked.
‘We’ll get the boys off to hospital, then you need that arm x-rayed.’
I pulled the blanket closer, shrinking inside, wanting to hide from it all. It was so unbelievable. It didn’t feel real and yet the pain in my arm was real enough and the police car was real enough and the ambulance and the rescue truck and all the questions.
It started raining, a cold biting drizzle that settled on the shoulders of the emergency workers where it glinted under the harsh halogen lights. At some point the emergency crew pulled out cutting gear, filling the night with a high-pitched whine. A temporary screen of white plastic was put up around the crash site. It blocked out the sight of what they were doing but not the horrible sound. The cutter droned on and on, metal grinding against metal. Couldn’t bear to think what was happening to Dylan behind that screen. A young policewoman approached. She had to shout right into my ear.
‘Are you up to answering a few questions?’
I nodded.
84 ‘You were driving?’
I nodded again. Hard to speak with my stomach churning and my throat all seized up and my teeth still yammering.
‘I need to check I have all the occupants’ details so we can notify next of kin.’
Shit! Next of kin! I clutched at the policewoman’s arm.
‘They can’t be dead! They were breathing when I checked them. They were breathing!’
‘Don’t worry, it’s not that.’ She gave me a pat. ‘We just need to tell their parents they’ve been injured.’
Don’t worry? Was she for real?
The constable had Dylan’s wallet in her hands. ‘The boy in the front seat, is that Dylan Mackay?’
‘Uh-huh and in the back is Jake Sinclair. They’re best friends. It’s Dylan’s car, well his Dad’s actually, but they both had something to drink so I drove instead.’
‘I have to ask you to do a breath test.’
She pulled a packet out of her pocket and opened it. I had to count to ten into a tube and wait for her to check the result.
‘Zero. That’s good,’ she said sounding slightly surprised.
‘I don’t drink. I’m not eighteen yet. It was an accident. I can’t really explain...’ How could I explain?
The constable scribbled a few notes on a pad.
‘You don’t have to make a statement now. First we need to get you to the hospital to have that arm checked out and call your parents.’
‘There’s only my mum. Can I ring her? Can she take me to the hospital?’ I did not want to go in the ambulance. For one, if we had to pay for it, we couldn’t afford it, for two, ambulances were for people who were really hurt. I just had a busted up arm. For three, I really wanted my mum.
My mum was far from being the perfect mother, but right now I needed her badly. I couldn’t face all this on my own. It was too awful. I made the call on the police constable’s phone, seeing as my phone was lost somewhere in the wreck.
‘Mum. I’ve been in an accident’— I heard her draw in a sharp breath— ‘but I’m fine. Can you come and get me?’ I finished in a rush, trying not to cry or I wouldn’t be able to stop.
85 ‘I’ll be there straight away,’ she said, and with her promise, a small trickle of relief seeped inside. Mum would be here soon. The boys would be fine. This nightmare would eventually end.
The first ambulance had already gone, taking Jake away, while the noise of the cutting droned on.
‘How far away did you say you live?’ the constable asked.
‘A few blocks,’ I was embarrassed to admit. Where on earth was she? Was she even coming? For once in my life couldn’t she be like other mothers and keep her promises? I should have known better. You could never rely on her. I looked away from the crash to the other side of the road. Traffic was being directed in single file around the accident scene. The street on this side of Westwood oval had no houses, only straggly bush and thickets of lantana until you hit the playing fields up ahead out of sight. Apart from matches and training nights there wasn’t usually much traffic. Not a single car had passed when I desperately needed one but now there seemed to be a whole great procession driving by, coming to gawk. Finally, at last, Mum showed up.
The policewoman let her under the cordon of plastic tape. Before Mum reached me the ambulance lady drew her aside. I watched her frown, her hand tighten around the strap of her shoulder bag and her eyes jump back and forth from me to the shrouded wreck. She shifted her bag onto her other shoulder, brushed a few stray hairs off her face, head nodding to whatever the ambulance lady was saying. Then she came over to where I was sitting in the front seat.
‘Oh my poor baby!’ she said.
‘Thanks for rushing over,’ I muttered under my breath, pushing my anger below the surface while relief took hold.
‘I didn’t realise how bad this was…you didn’t say on the phone it was quite like, like this.’ She motioned with her head to all the mayhem around us as she helped me climb out of the seat. Another car drove past and some low-life took a photo of us out the window. Whipping her head around she yelled after the car, ‘what is wrong with you people?’ giving them the finger. ‘Animals! Just animals,’ she added with a venomous hiss.
By now my arm was throbbing badly and the queasy feeling was back. After thanking the policewoman and the paramedic, she walked me over to our old Subaru. I didn’t think I would need help to just walk but my legs were all wobbly. It was just as well Mum had a hand under my good elbow and an arm around my back, hitching the blanket up from where it slipped off my shoulders. ‘Front seat okay? I’ve got the girls in the back.’
‘You brought them here? Why’d you do that? What a dumb thing to do!’
86 ‘It’s not exactly easy to get a babysitter at this hour you know,’ she snapped back, bristling and defensive. My mother was here all of five minutes and already we were fighting.
‘They’ll have nightmares.’
‘They’ll be fine. They can’t see anything. Besides, I’m more worried about you.’
More worried about me? Now that would be a first.
Two pairs of eyes were glued to the window, noses squashed flat and haloed by breath- fog. She held open the door and peeled out the seatbelt. The twin-inquisition began the moment I gingerly eased into the front seat.
Milly startled at the sight of the sling. ‘What’s that?’
‘What did you do?’ Amy said.
‘It’s nothing,’ I reassured them. ‘My arm’s a bit banged up and they need to check me over at the hospital.’
‘What’s all that red stuff all over your hands?’ Amy blurted out. Her darting eyes missed nothing. Mum shushed her and banned any more questions in the car, which gave me a little time to sit and think. Not that I wanted to think. It was better not to think, not to imagine. What if Jake or Dylan’s injuries were really serious? What if one of them died? What then? The rain-spattered window glistened with tiny droplets, throwing back my own reflection while everything else was blurred. I stared out into the night but all I could see was my own sunken eyes, wide and scared. Twenty minutes later we pulled into Westwood hospital. On the outside it seemed no one was about; hardly any people and even fewer cars. Mum helped me into Accident and Emergency, which, compared to the ghost town outside, was bulging with bodies. The girls gave me a sleepy kiss, made a beeline for an empty row of chairs, stretched out and made themselves comfortable. In matching pink dressing gowns and fluffy slippers, Barbie pillows tucked under their heads, they looked like they were settling in for a sleepover party.
I’d never been to a hospital emergency room before but I’d watched enough medical dramas to know what to expect.
I looked around the room, trying to guess why all these other people were here in the middle of the night like me. Why would you want to be here if you had a choice? A black eye, a bunged up knee, an old man with a wheeze so loud you could hear it from across the room. Then some guy walked in wearing pyjama pants and a singlet; fortyish, pretty big, looked like he loved his Big Macs more than his lettuce. His face was grey and one hand clutched his chest.
‘My chest hurts’, he said banging on the clerk’s window. Straight away the triage nurse hurried him through the security-coded door, not bothering to stop for the paperwork.
87 ‘You have to have a heart attack to get any attention,’ the guy with the swollen knee said. It was loud enough for the whole room to hear. An old lady with the wheezy man gave him a filthy look.
‘They’re doing their best,’ she said. ‘There was a bad car accident. A car load of teenagers. We passed it on our way here.’
I cringed at the explanation and sank further into the seat. The clock on the wall said three-nineteen. A few more hours to daylight. Not that you would know in here. Night and day were all the same. After the man’s outburst, everyone went back to watching a re-run of Judge Judy, all eyes glued to the TV screen high up on the wall.
When Mum finished giving my details she came and sat next to me. I automatically stiffened to protect my injured arm from contact, anticipating a misguided motherly hug or a barrage of questions, but for once in her life Mum did not say a word. Instead she adjusted the blanket around my shoulders, put a hand between my shoulder blades and started to rub my back. It was soothing and comforting, just what a mother should do. Not what I expected. After a while my shoulders relaxed a bit and I rested my head on her shoulder.
Ever so softly Mum began to sing, a tune I recognised instantly: ‘From a Distance’, an old primary school choir standard. Normally I’d beg her to stop embarrassing me in public, I mean, just because you sing in a band doesn’t mean you have to sing all the time, the woman has no shame, but the pain and the shock must have been getting to me. I closed my eyes and let the melody wash over me, trying to pretend we weren’t in a crowded waiting room but I was back home in my bed and five years old and Mum was singing me back to sleep after some nightmare. Conversation in the waiting room stopped. Even the old man’s wheeze seemed to recede as everyone listened while pretending not to. Mum’s voice was warm and rich but with broken-glass edges that brought a lump to my throat. Wouldn’t you know it? After all that had happened, all the horrible things I’d seen, it was Mum’s singing that made me want to cry. By staring at a sprinkler in the ceiling I held back the waterworks. Just. Her voice softly faded into the last poignant line. If anyone knew how to milk the last drop of drama out of a moment it was my mother.
If it was a movie the whole room would have broken into applause and if I was watching the movie my eyeballs would be rolling, but this was real life, my life, which had totally spun out of control. Milly tugged at mum’s sleeve. ‘I’m busting,’ she announced to the room. Trust Milly to upstage Mum. Now I wanted to laugh but it hurt too much. Better if I could just curl up and die.
88 Mum sighed, stood up and took Milly by the hand, adjusting my blanket before they went on their hunt for the bathroom. While they were gone the triage nurse stuck her head over the counter,
‘Jessica Wilkinson?’
‘Yes,’ I said, rising with difficulty from the chair, gathering up the trailing blanket and forgetting not to use my left arm. A sharp jab of pain quickly reminded me. I felt the blood drain from my face when I straightened up. The nurse grabbed a parked wheelchair, made me sit down and wheeled me into an examination room. At last it was my turn to see the doctor.
The doctor looked young. And exhausted.
Her I.D. said, Amanda Cho RMO. The nurse put a probe in my ear which took a reading and beeped, a blood pressure cuff squeezed my right arm and a small frown creased the doctor’s forehead when she looked at the result. Doctor Cho unhooked the temporary sling and I looked down at my forearm. Bad idea. It was a strange twisted shape with a lump in the middle.
‘Does this hurt, does this?’ she said while she prodded me all over.
‘Only my arm.’
‘When was the last time you had something to eat?’
I had to think. That would be at the party. Some chips and dip with a glass of coke.
‘Around nine.’
Six hours ago I was dancing.
Doctor Cho frowned, scribbled some notes and walked off.
If only I could go back and stop this from happening, make the whole nightmare go away. I closed my eyes to block the bad thoughts out but it did not help. If anything it made it worse. Images came flooding back like a horror movie on replay. Reliving the crash my hand automatically shot out to save me, sending a violent jolt of pain up my arm. I couldn’t stop myself from crying out.
‘Arrgh!’
‘Are you okay?’ the nurse asked.
I nodded keeping my eyes wide open now, staring at the smiley-face pattern on the bed curtain. A different strategy was needed other than thinking. If I thought too much I would go insane. Someone was moaning in another cubicle. Was it Dylan? Or Jake? What had happened to them?
Doctor Cho came back into my cubicle.
89 ‘Did you work on my friends?’ I blurted out, ‘Did you save them? Can you tell me how they are? Dylan and Jake.’
‘I can’t tell you much,’ Doctor Cho said.
I sat bolt upright on the bed and kind of grabbed at her sleeve.
‘But you don’t understand. I have to know. I was driving.’
There was a shift in the doctor’s expression like the temperature on her face dropped ten degrees.
‘It’s not that we don’t want to tell you…’
That’s when I kind of lost it.
‘Just tell me!’ Stupid cow. Pushing myself up to sit with my good arm I forgot I was still attached to the blood pressure cuff and the sudden movement wrenched the cord free of the machine. ‘What kind of doctor are you? Could they die? Will they live? Did I kill them?’ My voice was getting shriller and louder but I didn’t care. I had to know. I needed to know! The nurse picked up the tube and got me to lie back down, taking my blood pressure again.
‘They’re both in surgery and we don’t know much yet,’ the doctor said, although she wouldn’t look at me when she answered. ‘There’s never any guaranteed outcome but they’re both young and healthy and getting the best care.’
It wasn’t much help. To be fair, there wasn’t anything that would help other than to be told that both the boys would be fine.
I looked down at my hand. The white cotton blanket was all bunched in my fingers. The blood pressure cuff suddenly released, restoring circulation to my good arm with a painful throb. The nurse read off some numbers to the doctor. Neither seemed to react so I guessed my blood pressure must be fine.
‘When can I go home?’
‘That depends on the x-ray. If your arm is broken and it’s a straight-forward fracture, we’ll put a back slab on and then you can go.’
‘My little sisters are out there with my Mum. They’re a handful and she needs my help to look after them.’ The doctor looked up from her clipboard and for the first time it was like she was actually looking at me, not just The Guilty Party. The Driver. The one who rolled the car and nearly killed her friends. She put down her folder and looked me in the eye, finally sprinkling a bit of empathy my way.
‘You’re the one who’ll need some looking after,’ she said.
90 All of a sudden I had to vomit. The sensation hit so quickly there was no time to ask for a bowl. Leaning my head over the side of the bed I spewed my guts up, all over my hair, all over the bed, leaving a big stinking puddle on the hard vinyl floor. I think I got some on the doctor’s shoes because once she knew the nurse had it covered she got out of there pretty fast. Can’t say I blamed her. It was a horrible mess.
Home at last. Mum peeled me out of that stupid blue dress.
‘Bin it,’ I told her. I hope to God she did. I remember lying in bed looking at the clock and seeing the numbers change to five-fifteen. I was exhausted but my head was such a whirl how would I ever get to sleep? Thank God for codeine. It dulled the pain, but even better, it knocked me right out. When I finally woke up it was twelve-twenty-two. Stripes of sunlight slashed the rug by my bed. Oblivion was great while it lasted but once awake there was no luxury of forgetting, not even for a fraction of a second. My arm throbbed and my hair stank of spew bringing the events of last night rushing back.
‘Mum!’ I yelled out, louder and louder, until she finally heard me and came running with Milly slipping in front of her. ‘I need a bath. Can you help me with this thing?’
Mum wrapped my cast in plastic bags while the twins ran the water, filling the bath with strawberry-scented bubbles. They offered to wash my hair, which was sweet but the thought of my eight-year-old little sisters playing nurse maid and giggling when my boobs poked up through the bubbles was not very appealing so I did it one-handed, which was just as well. Something about the heat and the rising steam and the smell of strawberries made me burst into tears. Once I started to cry I just couldn’t stop so I stayed in the bath until my skin turned to wrinkles and all the bubbles crackled and dissolved. I shivered and pulled the plug staying in the tub while the water drained away, watching it swirl in a frantic circle until the dregs were sucked away and disappeared.
Now that I was clean and all out of tears the first thing I wanted to do was to call Tamara. I had to ask Mum if I could borrow her phone. It took a while to remember Tamara’s number.
‘It’s me. I’m using Mum’s phone.’
‘Have you run out of credit again? I’ve been trying and trying to ring you. I’m dying to find out what happened with you and Dylan, you lucky thing…’
I cut her off.
‘Something awful has happened.’
91 ‘He didn’t dump you already? The bastard.’
‘Much worse than that. I crashed the car.’
‘No! His dad’s car? How bad?’
‘Really bad.’
‘You okay?’
‘Yeah fine but Dylan and Jake are in hospital.’ It was hard to keep control of my voice. I had to fight the big lump in my throat.
‘Hospital! They okay?’
‘That’s just it. I don’t know yet. After the ambulance took them away I don’t know what happened.’
‘The ambulance! Oh my God! Jess. I’m coming straight over.’
Tamara took one look at me propped up on my bed with my cast up on a pillow, the bin next to me overflowing with tissues, and her mouth fell open.
‘What’s with your arm? You said you were okay.’
‘It’s nothing. Just a bit of a break. It’s the least of my worries.
Sitting on the bed she gave me a one-sided hug while I chewed at my thumbs, my stomach hollow and churning all at once.
‘If you don’t want to talk about it…’
‘No. I mean yes. I do. It might help.’
‘What if I comb your hair while you tell me?’
My hair is long and black and very curly and hard to handle at the best of times. I hadn’t bothered to try and tame it after my one-handed shampoo job. Now it was tangled and knotted but at least the smell was gone. While Tamara set to work on my hair I told her about the crash. She pretty much let me tell the whole thing without interruption, which was probably the longest stretch she’d ever gone without saying something in her life. When I finished she stopped combing. ‘Oh Jess,’ was all she said, picking hair from the teeth of the comb.
‘I don’t know what to do. I have to give a statement to the police tomorrow,’ I said, pulling my knees up to my chest.
‘Just tell the truth. It was an accident.’
92 ‘But Dylan and Jake have been best friends forever. I shouldn’t have taken them both in the car. It’s my fault this has happened.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘But what if...’
‘Don’t even think like that.’ Tamara scraped my hair back into a pony tail. ‘Why does your hair smell of strawberries?’
‘Bubble bath.’
‘Well…you know it’s always a chain of events that causes an accident, never one single thing.’
‘Says who?’
‘Air Crash Investigation. We need to go back to the beginning.’
I rolled my eyes. Tamara watched way too much reality TV, but even so it was a good idea to think back. It might help to get things clearer in my mind and at the very least it was a distraction from thinking about what was going on with Jake and Dylan right now and imagining the worst. We put on some music in case the twins were eavesdropping and we went back over the last two days, starting with school on Friday morning, Friday morning when all this stuff with Jake and Dylan began.
93 Chapter 2: Dylan—Friday Morning
I hate this weather. I’m sweating already.
I come down the stairs with my bag full of books, rehearsing conversations in my head. I have to pick my moment or I’ll blow this big-time.
‘Happy Anniversary!’ I say, sliding onto a kitchen stool.
‘You remembered!’ Mum says.
Like she’d let me forget.
Then she gets all emotional and crushes me into a hug; chinking bangles, loads of perfume and a big kiss on the cheek. Next, I get a man-hug from Dad. At least it’s a good start, getting in the good books.
Mum starts humming to a tune on the radio and Dad joins in at the top of his voice singing, ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’. Crazy all right. And pretty bad. His singing is not exactly in tune. Now they’re both singing and Dad spins her around the kitchen. I keep spooning my porridge. They dance over to the toaster and Mum flips the catch, letting loose the smell of fresh toast. Dad finishes the song with a drum solo on the bench before sitting down to his toast and coffee as if nothing unusual just happened. Are all parents this weird or just mine?
‘Can I borrow your car to go to a party tonight?’
‘But our anniversary’ Mum frowns.
‘Exactly. You won’t want me around and since we don’t play until Sunday…’
‘Whose party?’ Dad cuts in.
‘Nick’s.’
‘Will his parents be there?’ Mum asks.
‘You’re such a school teacher.’
‘Well?’ she says, in her Deputy Principal voice, which of course just proves my point.
‘Yes his parents will be there.’ (Sort of)
‘Will there be alcohol?’ Dad chimes in.
‘Probably. Half the kids are already eighteen.’ I take another bite of my peanut butter toast.
94 ‘But what about the other half?’ Mum says, her coffee cup hovering in her hand.
‘You know how it works. They get to do the driving. This is the twenty-first century, not back in the eighties.’ Though from the music around here you’d have to wonder. Her coffee cup chinks as it lands. Dad is tapping one finger on the handle of his spoon. I think I’m giving the right answers but not so perfect that they get suspicious. For instance, if I said there’d be no alcohol at all they’d know straight away it was bull. I keep munching my toast. Dad stops tapping so I know he’s not finished yet.
‘How many are going?’ he says.
‘Not many. About forty I think. Mostly just guys from the school team.’
Dad has more questions. Of course. He interrogates murderers for a living. What hope do I have?
‘Have they organised security?’
I roll my eyes. ‘You are such a cop. Do you want me to ring his parents and ask?’ I start to pull my phone out of my pocket.
‘Don’t worry. It’s okay,’ he says.
I try not to look too relieved. ‘I thought you’d be glad to get rid of me... You know, a bit of anniversary time on your own?’ I add in some eyebrow-waggle for a bit of extra emphasis.
‘Cheeky sod,’ Dad fires back, tossing a piece of crust my way. At this point, judging by the glint in his eye, I think I’m good to go. I throw the crust back and score a perfect goal right in the middle of Mum’s coffee.
‘Oops.’
‘Dylan!’ she says, tutting as she fishes out the soggy crust all covered in froth. It does look a bit disgusting.
‘Well can I go?’ They haven’t really given me an answer.
They glance at each other. I don’t know about other people’s parents but mine have got some telepathic communication thing going on. It’s only a glance but somehow from that one brief look at each other they are silently agreeing on conditions.
‘All right,’ Mum says. ‘You can go. But home by eleven.’
‘Eleven! Gimme a break.’
‘You heard your mother. Eleven. You still have to play on Sunday.’
‘But Dad, I hardly ever go out! Especially mid-season.’
95 I think Mum wants to stick to her guns but Dad pretends to think about it for a minute.
‘Twelve. No later. Your mother’s right. You can’t afford a bad game. The spotlight will be on you. You’ve worked too hard to throw it away now.’
Mum starts to clear away the dishes, which basically means end of conversation, no point arguing.
‘I said I’d take Jake. If that’s okay.’
‘Alright’, she says, her shoulders relaxing a little. Our mothers have known each other forever, and because he’s so smart at school Mum is under the impression that Jake is Mister Sensible. I’m waiting for another round of questions but the washing machine saves me. The spin cycle shudders to a halt and Mum disappears into the laundry. While she’s busy pulling shirts out of the washer, Dad leans in closer. Here we go, round two of the inquisition.
‘I was seventeen once you know… Bit of a party animal. I know how these things work.’
Oh crap. He’s on to me. I hold my breath and decide silence is my best option.
‘So who’s the girl?’
‘There is no girl.’
He’s giving me this weird look. Parents really have no idea.
‘I don’t expect you to be a saint. I just want you to be careful and make sure you have a Plan B. And ring me if you need to. Okay? I’ll always come and get you, no matter what time or what I’m doing.’
‘Yes Dad. Don’t worry. It’s only a little party.’
He’s just about to go into full-on lecture-mode, but thankfully Mum comes back from the laundry and she’s humming that same tune and of course Dad can’t help himself. He has to join in and starts up his bad singing again, grabs her by the wrist and pins her with a big sloppy kiss.
‘Get a room,’ I groan.
‘We plan to,’ he says with a wink.
And that’s when I know the night is mine.
I grab my backpack, toss my lunch box in the front compartment and head for the door before they have time to change their minds. The whole thing was easier than I expected. I’m so
96 relieved and only the tiniest bit guilty. I didn’t really lie exactly, just stretched the truth a little. Nick’s parents will be home but only until six and the party doesn’t kick off until seven. What parents don’t know won’t hurt them. It’s just a bit of fun, a few friends from school, a few drinks. No biggie. It’s all good.
The bus stop is only a block away but I need to get a move on. I hurry past a long row of two-storey houses. I hear the beep of a car being unlocked and a garage door grinding on rollers that could do with a bit of oil. It’s eight in the morning and everyone in the neighbourhood is leaving or getting ready to leave. Mum toots the horn as she passes. I could get a lift with her to school but it’s bad enough going to a school where your mother is the Deputy Principal, without being chauffeured to the teachers’ car park as well, and the bus does have its attractions.
Jake is waiting at the bus stop. He always beats me. He beats me at everything. Except sport. Which annoys him. But that’s the way it is and the way it’s always been. The bus rumbles up. No time for talking till we get on board and take our usual seats, third from the back on the driver’s side where we can check out all the passing cars as well as Lucy Hamilton’s legs. She crosses and uncrosses them and Jake can’t take his eyes away. At school they call her The Pump because she’s great at pumping up your balls but you never get to score. Or so they say. I wouldn’t know. I don’t really have the time to score with girls. I’d like to of course, but football has to come first. Jake’s tongue is hanging out and I give him an elbow nudge.
‘What?’ he protests. ‘She laps it up. Wouldn’t you love to get your head between those?’
‘For about five minutes then you’d have to run before she had a chance to dig her claws in.’
‘Claws could be good.’
I give Jake a kick and he changes the subject.
‘So are we on?’
‘All fixed. I’ve got Dad’s car. Only snag. I have to be home by twelve.’
‘Hmmph. Twelve’s a bit crap.’
‘Best I could do. Big game Sunday.’
There’s a pause for a moment where we both look out the window. I know Jake has something on his mind. We’ve been friends since we were four years old and I can read him like a book. He takes a deep breath so I know this is big.
97 ‘It’s just… I was hoping we could take Jess to the party?’
‘You haven’t gone and asked her already?’
‘I was kind of hoping you’d ask her for me,’ he says with this sheepish grin.
‘Ask her yourself.’
‘But it’s not my car remember.’
He has me there.
‘Besides, she’ll say yes if you ask. You’re lab partners.’
‘So?’
‘And she’ll say yes because it’s you, Mister Sports Star. All the girls would.’
‘No they wouldn’t.’
‘Of course they would.’
I hate when he says stuff like that.
‘Well Jessica wouldn’t. She hates sport. How do you even know she wants to go to the party?’
‘I don’t. But she will if you offer to pick her up. It’s on our way. She only lives two streets back from the oval.’
‘So you’ve got this all figured out?’
‘Well it makes sense…’
‘No it doesn’t. I’m happy to give her a lift but I’m not going to be your wingman. If you want her to come with us, you ask her.’
‘Can’t you? Go on. For me?’
I shake my head. ‘I’m not doing your dirty work.’
‘But I’m driving you home so you can have a good time and all I want is this one small favour.’
Now I get where this is going.
‘So you won’t drive home unless we take Jessica? Is that how this works?’
He pats me on the shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t say it like that. It’s just a mate helping a mate.’
‘You know she’s not interested in you.’
He smiles his determined smile, which I should know means trouble.
98 ‘She’s not interested yet. But she will be.’ He turns his hands in to point at his body, which by any stretch of the imagination is kind of scrawny.
‘How could she resist?’
‘Dickhead.’
Even when Jake’s pissing me off he makes me laugh. The bus is now outside the school gates. I shake my head again and join the crush of kids surging down the aisle. It’s easier to go with the flow.
Chemistry is my second most hated subject. Unfortunately I have to do it because it’s the only subject choice that fits in with getting to training. If it wasn’t for the fact that Jessica is my lab partner I would be seriously bombing out.
Jessica. Same Jessica Jake has the hots for and wants me to set him up with. I’ve kicked myself so many times for agreeing to one of Jake’s schemes but it’s too late to back out now. We’re doing an experiment where we time and measure the boiling point of different liquids. It seems a pretty useless experiment to me. Who cares if water boils before oil unless you are cooking chips? In between measuring and taking temperatures I bring up ‘The Subject’.
‘You going to Nick’s party tonight?’
‘Maybe,’ she says, concentrating on pouring. ‘So long as Mum doesn’t get a last-minute gig and I’m not stuck with babysitting the twins.’ Jessica’s mother is a singer and she never mentions a Dad.
‘Want a lift?’ I say, cool on the outside, all burning up on the inside. ‘I’ve got my Dad’s car.’
Her hand pauses from taking notes in her lab book. She looks right at me and I watch her eyes flick across my face. It’s unnerving, worse than a Mum or Dad stare and that’s saying something.
‘Tamara said she’d take me.’
‘I thought since I live so close it would be easier…’
‘Yeah. Maybe.’
‘Don’t worry. If you’ve made other arrangements already…’
She picks up another beaker full of liquid and gets me to hold the next test tube. I think she has forgotten what I said until we finish pouring and the next liquid is on the Bunsen burner. Then she leans back in her stool.
99 ‘Okay. What time will you pick me up?’
It catches me out. I haven’t thought that far. ‘Oh…ummm say six-thirty?’
‘So you know where I live?’
‘Yeah, Jake told me,’ I blurt out.
‘Oh crap,’ she says jumping up from the stool, turning the Bunsen burner off with one hand and sticking a thermometer into the test tube with the other. ‘Nearly made a mess of that.’
It’s exactly the way I feel.
‘About the party,’ I say, all ready to explain what’s really going on but the bell goes and she grabs up her books.
‘Six-thirty,’ she calls out over her shoulder.
‘Jake’s coming,’ I say but Jess is already gone. I sit flicking my ruler, talking to an empty stool.
Jake finds me after class and pounces. ‘Well? What did she say?’ If he holds my shirt any tighter he’ll rip the thing off.
‘She said okay. I’m picking her up.’
‘Yes!’ he says pumping his arm.
‘I wouldn’t get too excited,’ I start to try and explain, but same as with Jessica it’s like I’m talking to air.
‘Thanks mate. Gotta go,’ he says before I barely get two words out. ‘Sort the details out later.’ He runs off to his next class on the other side of the school doing a series of spins along the way like a puppy chasing his tail. Well he is chasing tail I guess. Not that I think of Jessica as tail. She’s not that kind of girl. She’s more serious and focused, which is a good thing to have in a lab partner. And if this all goes pear-shaped I am so screwed. Both my best friend and best lab partner will hate me.
I know I should set this straight before tonight, but it’s too hard to bring it up so I chicken out.
100 Chapter 3: Jessica—Friday
‘Oh. My. God. I don’t believe it! Dylan McKay? He’s taking you to the party?’ Tamara said with a squeal, uncrossing her legs and clutching my forearm, effectively clamping me to the bench like a vice. ‘He’s so hot. That’s so amazing.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ I said, glad we were seated in a quiet corner of the quadrangle nowhere near Dylan’s group. ‘He’s not taking me to the party. He’s just taking me.’
‘What’s the difference?’ Lee said.
‘Everything.’
Tamara still hadn’t let go of my arm. ‘This is so exciting. He’s picking you up and taking you to the party in his Dad’s car. That hot little red thing built for speed.’
‘And for parking,’ Lee added suggestively.
‘I told you it’s not like that,’ I insisted. ‘It’s not a date. He’s just giving me a lift. Besides, I am so not his type. And anyway, who makes out in a cop’s car?’
‘It might add to the spice,’ Lee said.
‘Firstly, we won’t be making out. Secondly, it’s not a date and thirdly…’
Tamara finally let go of her death grip and spun around, standing up to face me, hands on hips, all fired up.
‘Well why would Dylan suddenly offer you a lift out of the blue? Answer me that?’
A kookaburra sitting in a spindly gum broke into a loud peal of laughter as if to emphasise her point.
‘Yeah. Good question,’ Lee echoed.
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. We’re lab partners. He’s just being nice?’
Lee shook her head and rocked on her seat. ‘Not buying it.’
‘Tell us exactly what he said,’ Tamara ordered.
I stopped to think for a moment, taking a swig from my water bottle before recounting the conversation with Dylan.
When I finished, Tamara and Lee nodded at each other, all smug and knowing.
101 ‘He so asked you out. I think he’s just shy,’ Tamara said. ‘If you think about it, Dylan’s always got girls hanging around but he’s never had a proper girlfriend so he must be shy.’
‘Or gay,’ Lee said, which was greeted with a withering look from Tamara. ‘Just thought I’d throw it out there.’
‘How was he acting when he asked you?’ Tamara said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, was he acting nervous, tapping things, rocking his chair?’
I thought back, conjuring up the moment in my mind. At the time I was both too surprised by Dylan’s offer and too busy trying to keep track of the experiment we nearly wrecked to pay much attention to anything else. As I was thinking, a stray tennis ball rolled in front of me, an escapee from a game of handball. Picking it up I lobbed it right back.
‘He was kind of twitchy.’
‘See!’ Tamara crowed, jumping up and down on the metal bench seat before sitting back next to me and pumping my arm. ‘I told you so. He asked you out in a round-about way because he’s shy and doesn’t want to get hurt. That’s why he was acting nervous.’ She looked from Lee to me, nodding her head. ‘Yeah?’ Lee nodded along with her. I picked up my bag and hugged it to my chest, not nodding but not shaking my head either. I still thought my friends were reading way too much into this but there was some logic to their argument. Maybe, just maybe, my friends were right. For a brief giddy moment I was almost convinced.
As the end-of-lunch buzzer sounded, we all stood up from the bench, stretching the stiffness out of our legs. Of course they weren’t right. Dylan was just being nice. It was the only rational explanation. Number one, offering someone a lift does not mean anything more than that. Number two, the Dylan Mackays of this world do not ask the Jessica Wilkinsons out. Hot popular sports star asking out invisible geek girl. Never gonna happen. And yet, in a secret corner of my heart, a little flag of hope had been raised. All this term I’d been helping him with chemistry, getting hot and flustered when he looked at me, loading up on breath mints in case our heads came too close. When I thought about it he did start to wear more aftershave and maybe look at me more than he looked at the books. Walking back to class I was unable to quell the flutter in my stomach. What if my friends were actually right?
‘I couldn’t wait any longer to tell you,’ my mother said as I stepped out of the shower.
‘Mum! A bit of privacy!’ I clutched at a towel. She certainly could pick her moments.
‘You’re such a prude. We’re all girls.’
102 Turning my back I towelled off quickly and shimmied into my underwear. Mum was unbelievable sometimes.
‘I bought you a dress.’
‘A dress?’ This could be bad. Very bad. I never wore dresses.
‘To wear to the party. I saw it on sale and thought it would look fabulous so I was going to save it for your birthday but I want you to have it now.’
My mother’s idea of ‘fabulous’ was something with glitter or sequins or feathers. Very un-fabulous in my book. Mum was speaking so fast in her excitement she was just like a little kid, even holding my hand and giving it a squeeze. Now this was getting a little freaky, my mother practically dragging me out of the shower desperate to get me into some party frock. Arrrgh!
‘I wanted to treat you, to say thanks for all the help you give me with the girls. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
Blah, blah, blah she raved on. So she buys me a dress and lays on the guilt trip. The ‘fabulous’ dress better not be too diabolical or it would be impossible to pretend to like it. Inwardly I groaned but did as she asked letting myself be propelled into the bedroom wrapped in a towel. ‘Ta-da!’
There it was. The Dress. Laid out on my bed. Bright electric blue.
No sequins. (Thank God.)
Short. Quite short.
Made from stretchy cotton with a thick black zipper that ran all the way up. Exactly the sort of dress most mothers would ban from the house. I had a sneaking suspicion that she-who- could-never-resist-a-fashion-bargain had actually bought the dress for herself although it was a size too small, hoping she could squeeze into it. But thinking such thoughts would be cynical and uncharitable, I decided to take the whole dress thing at face value as Mum’s way of showing she cared.
‘Try it on,’ Mum said, undoing the zip and handing it over. Reluctantly I stepped between the folds of bright blue fabric and pulled up the zip. One good thing about the zipper was that you could pull it up high enough to cover your cleavage and the stretchy fabric had a flattening effect so my boobs did not look quite so enormous.
‘Now turn around and look in the mirror.’
‘Yes, yes, turn around,’ Milly said. The twins had appeared like ants scenting sugar. They hated to miss out on anything. Slowly I turned around to face the mirrored wardrobe,
103 reluctant and curious at the same time. I hadn’t worn a dress since I was thirteen after a series of unpleasant incidents that I never actually mentioned to my mother. Some things are best left unsaid.
‘It looks fabulous,’ she gushed, managing to keep the I-told-you-so out of her voice but failing dismally to keep it off her face.
I hate when my mother is right. I stared at myself in the mirror, finding it hard to reconcile the glamorous image that stared back with my usual trying-not-to-be-noticed reflection. It was a great dress. The electric blue accentuated the colour of my eyes and the tight fit accentuated my curves while still covering up enough to prevent the need for constant tugging and hitching. It looked pretty hot.
‘Now try on the heels.’
‘Uh-uh. No way. I don’t do heels.’
‘Just try them on. Heels are fun.’ That was Milly talking, the eight-year-old fashion expert and before I knew it Amy and Milly had sat me on the bed, grabbed a foot each, and ambushed my toes into a pair of towering black heels. A very Cinderella-ish moment.
‘Do a walk like on Next Top Model,’ Amy pleaded. ‘You know, like this.’ She did a perfect imitation of a catwalk strut complete with hand on hip and hair flick. That girl watched far too much television. What choice did I have? It was one thing to argue with my mother but impossible to argue with the twins. I was outnumbered and out-manoeuvred.
‘I’ll try them on but that doesn’t mean that I’ll wear them.’
Rising unsteadily to my feet I took a few wobbly paces. My legs did look about a million miles long in the heels but I had the balance of a drunk giraffe if I tried something radical like actually walking. I kicked off the heels and fished out my favourite boots from under the bed; black ankle length lace-ups.
‘Not the boots!’ Mum wailed sounding mortally wounded.
‘Yes the boots. I can’t walk in those.’
‘Well at least let me do your make-up.’
‘We can help?’ Amy said.
‘Uh-uh. Only Mum can do my makeup.’
‘Not too much gunk,’ I said plonking my butt on the bed.
‘I’ve been doing this for years.’
‘For your face, not mine.’
104 ‘And stacks of other people. We always had to do each other’s makeup out on the road with a band.’
‘That was stage makeup. This is just some dumb party not an opening night. So lay off the goop.’
A makeup kit had magically materialised in Mum’s hand and I dutifully held still while my face was attacked.
‘Trust me darling. Everyone puts on a face when they go out in the world. Even you.’
‘I do not put on a face.’
‘Yes you do.’
‘I don’t wear any makeup.’
‘But not wearing makeup is part of your look.’
‘I do not have “a look”,’ I said in my defence, though it was hard to protest with my head tilted to one side and a mascara wand pointed at my eyeball. Mum turned to the twins, mascara brush momentarily suspended.
‘Does Jess have “a look” girls?’
The little traitors nodded.
‘Which is?’
‘Black jeans,’ Amy said.
‘Big shirts,’ Milly said.
‘Serious face,’ Amy said.
‘No make-up,’ her mother said.
‘Ponytail,’ Amy said.
‘And you carry your books like this,’ Milly added, doing a perfect impersonation of me with a book clamped across the front of my chest which I did it to try and hide my huge freakish boobs. My family wasn’t through humiliating me just yet.
‘And what you are saying to the world with ‘your look’ is, take me seriously. I don’t do girly. Get your eyes off my boobs and notice my brain.’
‘Are you quite finished?’
Mum ignored me. She was on a roll. ‘But who says you have to look drab to be academic? Who says you can’t like maths and nice clothes?’
105 ‘And your point is?’ I said, looking up, much more aware of the movement of my eyelashes thanks to the weight and stiffening effect of the mascara.
‘Shush and relax your lips,’ Mum said, unwinding a deep pink lipstick. ‘All I’m saying is don’t be afraid to be you but part of you is being a woman. You just have to find your own style and own it, not hide all your gorgeousness away. There. Done. Now take a look. What do you think? Stylist to the stars?’
I rolled my eyes, pulled my hair tie off my wrist and started to put my hair up into my normal ponytail.
‘Leave it out,’ Mum said intercepting the hair tie with one quick snatch before finally stepping out of the way of the mirror.
I stood up to look.
‘Is that me? I can’t believe it.’ The dark mascara made my eyes stand out like bright blue beacons and the pink lipstick led your eyes up to my face, away from the boobs, which was always a good thing. My one victory over my mother was the boots. They were quirky but it worked as a package and let me stand without fear of falling flat on my butt.
‘Go slay him baby!’ Mum said.
‘There is no him to slay.’
‘Isn’t a boy picking you up?’
‘He’s just a friend.’
‘Oh really. What’s his name?’
‘Really. It’s Dylan. He’s my Chemistry lab partner. Not my type at all.’
‘So why is this Dylan picking you up? To discuss chemistry?’
‘Because he lives close. Just the other side of the football fields. He’s just being nice.’ My mother had a very infuriating smug look on her face. She was always reading way too much into anything and everything. ‘Bye Mum,’ I said leaning across to give her a peck on the cheek. ‘I’ll wait outside.’
‘No you won’t young lady. Let him come to the door.’
‘No way! This is not a date.’
‘Then I’ll wait outside with you.’
The twins had taken the opportunity to raid the makeup bag and were busily painting each other’s lips and eyelids with more colour than a Matisse painting.
106 ‘Out of my makeup you two!’ Mum barked. While she was distracted I tried to make a quick dash for it. I had my hand on the door knob ready to turn when a voice yelled out. ‘Just stop right there!’ Was that for me or for the twins? I reached out to turn the handle and was stopped in my tracks, not by mum’s voice, but by a loud knock of the brass door knocker. If I was quick I could grab Dylan and make our getaway but I wasn’t quick enough. My mother was right behind me. I pulled the door open.
MaxiMum embarrassment.
‘Oh hello. I’m Carolina, Jessica’s mother. You must be Dylan.’
Except it wasn’t.
If I had those stilettos on I would take great delight in stomping on her foot right about now. Instead, in my heavy black boots I was stapled to the spot.
‘Afraid not. I’m Jake. Here to pick up Jessica. Dylan’s waiting in the car.’ It was a good recovery from Jake. A hand pushed into my back and got me moving, my brain still trying to process what was going on.
‘Well go on. Invite him over. I’d like to meet the boys giving you a lift.’ So subtle the way Mum emphasised the ‘s’ in boys, a technique I planned to inflict on Dylan now the surprise was over and the anger at being misled kicked in. I strode down the path to Dylan’s parked car. He jumped out and opened the back door. Like a bloody chauffeur.
‘My mother wants to meet the boys who are picking me up.’ At least he winced a little when I hissed out the plural but then he stood awkwardly by the car door giving me a funny look.
‘Jess. You look… amazing.’
‘Yeah whatever.’
‘About Jake. I meant to tell you he was coming.’
‘You two are joined at the hip. Everyone knows that.’ I was scrambling to cover my disappointment. I hustled him up the path desperate to get the whole meet-and-greet thing executed in the least painful way possible. Mum went in to showbiz mode, all gushy and flirty. Jake turned on the charm. Dylan flashed his dazzling smile but barely said a word. Never, ever again would I bring any male within sniffing range of my mother. She went completely stupid around any half-decent-looking guy. We all walked down the path to the car. The twins had crept out, their faces covered in makeup, grinning up at the boys through lipstick-smeared faces so of course I had to introduce my two little sisters.
107 ‘Dylan McKay… I know that name.’ Mum snapped her fingers. ‘That’s right. Of course. The footballer. I read about it in the local paper. Congratulations on getting in to The Marlins. They’re Jessica’s favourite team. Did she tell you that?’
‘I didn’t know you like football,’ Jake said. I desperately tried to give them all the hurry-up but Mum was not about to be diverted.
‘Oh yes. Big fan. She used to play until she was about thirteen. She was great on the wing. Played reps and all. And then she just stopped. I never did understand that.’
‘We need to get going,’ I said, cutting off the conversation before my mother made me want to kill her even more. Then if things weren’t already awkward enough, the Terrible Twins made their strike. Amy turned to Dylan. Milly tapped Jake on the sleeve. Then they both asked the boys in a little sing-song voice, exactly the same question at exactly the same time.
‘Are you my sister’s boyfriend?’
Jake burst out laughing. Dylan smiled and looked at his feet. I died a thousand-and-one- deaths. Make that a million and one.
‘We’re all just friends,’ I stammered, my face a brighter pink than my lipstick.
‘Kids! Who’d have em,’ Mum said with a laugh.
‘Nice to meet you Mrs Wilkinson,’ Dylan said, making moves to go. Obviously he couldn’t get out of there quick enough. Jake took his cue and jumped to attention, holding the rear passenger door open while Dylan climbed behind the wheel. As Jake walked around the car to get into the seat beside me, Mum leaned in and whispered in my ear, ‘Just friends? But which one is just the friend?’ My face flushed an even deeper pink if that was humanly possible. Jake buckled his seat belt. Dylan shot me a glance from the rear view mirror as he pulled away from the kerb. Before we even made it down the street my phone message alert went off.
It was tempting to ignore it and turn my phone off but curiosity got the better of me. When I looked at the message it was all of two words.
Be careful.
Now she goes all parental?
About seventeen years too late.
108 Chapter 4: Dylan
I try to open my eyes and roll over.
Nothing happens... For a moment I am so shit-scared. I even think, maybe I’m dead? I tell myself don’t be stupid; dead people don’t feel this horribly crap. I’m flat on my back and my body is cold, freezing cold and heavy as a concrete slab. Yet strangely, my left leg is burning, like it’s been blasted with a blow torch.
I want to call out but my mouth is parched, my lips stuck with gunk, and there’s something hard in the back of my throat. The thirst is unbelievable. Everything hurts.
Left leg, definitely the worst.
I try and move again. Still nothing.
I give it another shot with all the effort I can muster, pushing, squeezing, straining and this time my legs move the merest fraction. Should be good but it’s bad. The tiny movement sets off an intense burst of pain. Apparently moving is not such a great idea. Now what? I definitely need a new plan. I try to swallow to moisten my mouth but the thing at the back of my throat makes me gag. It feels like I’m choking.
A surge of panic overrides the pain and next thing I’m kicking and thrashing all about although I still can’t see where the hell I am. I hear voices and running feet. A hand grabs my arm and holds it steady. Someone I don’t know says my name. A sudden cold hits me inside my chest, then runs down the length of my arm. Eventually my body goes still; my limbs give up fighting and the strength ebbs away. Two voices talk over me, female and fuzzy, gradually becoming clear enough to understand.
‘He’s getting restless. They’ll have to bring him out soon.’
‘Who’s going to tell him?’
‘His parents, as far as I know.’
Don’t they know I can hear them?
The words go around and around in my head. Who’s going to tell him? Tell me what? If I could just stay awake I could ask them. I try to hold on. I can’t fight anymore. It’s too hard; too hard and too cold. I slip anchor, drift away and sink again.
109 Next time I wake up properly. My head throbs and my mouth has the whole furry fungus thing going on. The hard thing at the back of my throat is gone but the pain certainly hasn’t. The pain is like nothing I’ve ever had before and I’ve had my share of injuries. I’ve broken bones, ripped ligaments, scraped acres of skin but this is the worst. This pain is throbbing and burning and raking, outside and inside until it swallows you whole. Once again I try to open my eyes but they are hit with a sharp stab of light, so bright, so intense I have to bunch them back up only letting the light in a little at time.
The first thing I see is Mum. She’s sitting next to me and leaning forward so her hair is falling in front of her face. I can see the caterpillar line down the middle, the edge between her real hair colour and the dye, like a tide mark. She hates that line. Dad is standing on the other side of the bed
‘He’s awake,’ she says, kind of excited. Our eyes connect, mine still fighting to focus, hers all bright and shiny. Whatever I’ve done, it must be pretty bad.
‘It’s okay Dyl.’
She hasn’t called me that for years. She’s talking real soft and kind of clucking, reaching for my face and stroking it with the side of a curled finger, same way she did when I was a little kid. ‘You’re in the hospital.’
I kind of figured.
She swallows, swipes at her eyes, and pins me with a stare.
‘But you're going to be okay.’
She throws the word like a life raft, something to cling to, something to save me from the swirl of pain and worried faces. I want to believe her but my head is fuzzy and my whole body hurts. A nurse slides in beside her; big shoulders, watch pinned to her blue uniform, name badge hanging from her collar. It says,
Cheryl. Clinical Nurse Specialist. ICU.
The room is mostly white—white walls, white ceiling and a glass window, but the window doesn’t look to the outside. It looks in to another room with a desk area that I can just glimpse through a chink in the curtain. There’s a screen like a TV with green lines and blips. Lots of cords coming out of me and machines. A blue chair. A wash basin. A big pump bottle of pink hand-wash. I glance down at my body but it's all covered up with a white sheet and a white blanket. I'd really like some water. Trying to speak, only a croak comes out but somehow Mum knows what I need. Holding an ice cube in a tissue she wipes it along the inside of my mouth, little drips trickle through the cracks of the lip gunk. That water is the best water I’ve ever tasted my whole life. 110 ‘Do you know what happened?’ Dad says.
‘No.’ My voice is so hoarse it’s barely there. Dad nods, watching my face, and puts his hand over mine. Can’t remember the last time we held hands. It worries me more than the whole hospital thing.
‘You’ve been in a car accident. Friday night. Do you remember?’
You’d think you’d remember something like that but no, I don’t remember. I shrug one shoulder. Error. More pain. Dad keeps talking, keeps holding my hand, using his Cop Voice, all professional and calm. It doesn’t calm me down. The Cop Voice is making me more nervous. I wish he’d yell at me instead for whatever dumb thing I’ve done.
‘Your left leg was injured pretty badly. It will probably hurt a lot and Cheryl can get you something for the pain,’ he says, squeezing my hand harder. He’s really scaring me now. If I look at his face all I can think of is Jenga, that game where you stack blocks of wood higher and higher until you put one a tiny bit wrong and the whole thing comes down with a crash so instead I look at the bare white wall at the end of the bed while his slow steady Cop Voice fills the room.
‘Your chest will hurt too because you busted a couple of ribs and punctured a lung. That’s what this drainage tube is for.’
Something wrong with my leg. He’s not wrong about the chest hurting bit. I try and sit up and a pain stabs at my side, so sharp it makes me gasp.
Dad breaks out of Cop Voice for a moment. ‘Don’t try and speak. Just squeeze my hand if you need a top up for the pain.’
I squeeze his hand, closing my eyes to make all this go away while Cheryl fiddles with a little machine by the bed. Waves of pain are still coming at me and I shake all over, which triples the pain if that is even possible, then after what seems an incredibly long time but is probably only a few minutes, the pain finally starts to ease. I try to speak and after the ice, my voice sounds husky but at least some words come out.
‘My leg. What did I do? It’s like it’s on fire.’
I glance up at Mum. I wish I didn’t. Her eyes are red and rimmed with dark shadows and she looks about a hundred, all shrunk and anxious. Dad’s Cop Voice continues.
‘Your leg got crushed in the accident. You lost a lot of blood.’
‘How bad?’
He’s taking forever. I wish he’d just come out and say it. I have to know. How long will I be out? Does the coach know? Will it affect my contract?
111 Dad shifts his weight and clears his throat. Hurry up already! What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong? The monitor blip gets faster and faster. The nurse looks from me to the screen. Nobody makes a sound. Dad’s Cop Voice goes a bit shaky.
‘I'm afraid I have some bad news.’
Here it comes.
A trolley rattles past the window. Dad waits for it to pass before he continues.
‘Your leg was trapped... The emergency crew had to cut it out. The doctors tried to save it...’
His fingers squeeze my hand tighter but he doesn’t look at me.
‘I’m sorry son. There’s no easy way to say this. They had to amputate your left leg below the knee.'’
The beep on the monitor goes insane.
No!
It can’t be true.
Amputated?
What is this bullshit?
I can still feel my foot.
Nurse Cheryl draws the curtains around the bed.
‘I’ll give you a moment,’ she says ducking out through the curtains.
This can’t be true. It’s impossible. I can feel my foot and it’s on fire. Mum goes to say something but I cut her off although it hurts my throat.
‘I want to sit up.’
‘I'll get Cheryl back,’ Dad says.
The nurse comes back with Dad and uses a control pad to raise the head of the bed. My head goes light. A few specks swim at the edge of my eyes and I think I might pass out. Mum asks if I’m dizzy but it goes away. They’re freaking me out. I’m trying to get my head around what they’re telling me. Then she plumps and adjusts the pillows. As if pillows are going to make any difference.
‘Are you okay?’ Mum says.
‘I need to see my leg.’
112 ‘Are you sure?’ Mum says, turning a tissue over in her hand.
I close my eyes and nod. I have to see it to believe it. My foot still feels as if it is there. While Cheryl peels the covers from the bed cradle I don’t look down but fix my eyes on the wall again. I feel cold air hit my right foot but not my left one. I can’t look, not while everyone is here. I stare at the wall. GO AWAY. I want to yell. I don’t want anybody watching. ‘I'd like to be alone for a while,’ I say.
Mum doesn’t want to leave, you can see it all over her face, but finally Dad says if that’s what I want they’ll come back later. Mum kisses me, her face wet against my chin stubble. Dad gives my hand another squeeze and leads Mum outside.
My eyes haven’t left the wall yet. I’m torn between wanting and not wanting to see if this monstrosity, this impossibility could be real. The nurse is hanging around. Which bit of alone doesn’t she get? She starts talking while she fiddles with some tubes.
‘The end of your leg is covered in what’s called a rigid dressing. It’s like a plaster cast. It’s better for keeping swelling down and protecting the stitches so that’s all you can really see at the moment.’ She hands me a buzzer. ‘If you’ve got any questions, I’ll be just outside at the nurses’ station.’
Still staring at the wall I nod.
The hospital gown ends halfway down my thigh. There’s a little gap before the plaster begins. The nurse is right. It does look like a cast for a broken leg except for one unmissable difference. Around about mid-shin level, abruptly, the plaster cast stops.
This is my leg.
Or what’s left of it.
And it’s true, there’s no foot at the end.
I feel sick, the way you do on a carnival ride when you’ve been hurled around and thrown upside down. If I don’t lie down again I really will throw up. I hit the buzzer and Cheryl comes back.
‘Can I roll on my side?’
‘Sure. I’ll give you a hand. It’s always a shock,’ she says lowering the bed. She grabs another pillow and helps me to roll onto my right side by bringing my hip over and supporting my plastered-up leg.
‘When you’re on your side you can have a pillow under your stump but you can’t have one when you lie on your back.’
113 I don't really pay attention to what she’s saying about the pillows. I can’t get past the word she just used.
Stump.
I pull the sheet all the way up to my ears, close my eyes tight and bite my hand. I can’t handle this. It’s too much. I want to go back to sleep but how can I possibly sleep? How can I do anything when I’ve only got one foot? Not much call for one-legged footballers. My life is over. Ruined. Totally fucked.
After a while Mum and Dad tiptoe back into the room. I keep my eyes firmly shut. I know they’ll want to talk. I don’t want to talk. How is talking ever going to help?
Eventually I have to open my eyes.
Mum rubs my hand. ‘Hey. How you feeling?’
‘Pretty shit.’
She keeps rubbing my hand. ‘Are you in pain?’
‘It hurts all the time but at least now I know why.’
‘Anything we can get you?’ Dad asks.
'Nope.’
‘Anything you want to talk about?’ Mum says.
‘Nope.’ But there is a lot of stuff I want to know.
‘Did they have to take my foot? I mean, wasn’t there something else they could do?’
I think I’d rather lose my hand than lose my foot. Mum sinks in the blue vinyl chair and Dad winces as if I have hit him.
‘The doctors didn’t have much choice. They did everything possible to try to save it but there wasn’t enough tissue to save,’ Dad says.
‘How did it happen? I’m a good driver. Really careful.’
A glance passes between them.
‘Do you remember anything?’ Mum says and starts rubbing my hand.
‘I'm not sure. I’ve been having all these crazy dreams. In one there’s cars flipping over and sirens and some guy coming at me with a chainsaw but there’s also snakes on the ceiling and this cat that keeps coming and sitting on my head so I don’t know if any of that stuff is real.’
114 Mum is still rubbing my hand when she speaks. ‘The doctors said you might not remember much. It’s the trauma and the anaesthetic and the pain killers. The drugs can also give you hallucinations.’
‘Do you know what day it is?’ Dad asks.
‘No idea. Last thing I remember was school on Friday.’
‘Today’s Tuesday. The accident was late Friday night, well early Saturday morning.’
‘Tuesday.’ I do a quick calculation in my head, pleased that at least I can do a simple sum. ‘So there’s three days in my life that are gone?’
Not to mention a big chunk of my leg.
Mum’s hand stops moving like it’s thinking about those lost days. I try to sit up a bit and they both jump in to help.
‘So what did happen?’
Another glance flashes between them. Dad rests his elbows on his knees, hands together like he’s saying a prayer which is funny since he doesn’t believe in God or religion or magic spells; says they’re all one and the same.
‘You went to a party on Friday night… with Jake.’
I have a vague memory of that. At least I remember talking about it with Jake on Friday. Oh God no. Jake! What have I done?
‘Was he in the car?’ I blurt out in a panic.
‘In the back seat…’
‘The back seat?’ I don’t get it. ‘Why was he in the back? He never sits in the back when I’m driving.’
This time the look that goes between them is about as subtle as a red flag. Mum is chewing at her lip. Dad keeps talking in his calm cop voice that has all the feeling vacuumed out of it.
‘You weren’t driving,’ he says.
‘I always drive.’
‘Not this time.’
‘So who was?’
Mum butts in. ‘A girl from school. Jessica Wilkinson.’
115 The sensation of being on a carnival ride is back again, things flashing past me, no fixed bearings everything whirling around. I take a deep breath and get a wicked stab of pain in my side. ‘Are they okay?’ I really don’t like the look on Mum’s face. Her lip is kind of shaky. Dad sticks to his cop voice but won’t look at me. Now he is staring at the wall. Please, please, don’t tell me they didn’t make it.
‘Jake has a head injury.’
‘How bad?’ I manage to squeeze out, tears stinging at the back of my eyes.
‘We won’t know until he wakes up,’ Dad says, ‘but the doctors are hopeful.’ I let this information seep in, afraid to ask any more questions but I have to know more.
‘And Jessica?’
‘She’s fine,’ Dad says. ‘She walked away.’
‘But why was she driving?’
‘We don’t know all the ins and outs yet,’ Dad says.
Mum changes the subject.
‘Aunty Julie and Uncle Dave and Carly and Tom all send their love. They wanted to come straight down from The Gold Coast.’
I nod, too tired now to care. ‘How’s Jig?’
‘Fine. Kerri next door is looking after him. Probably feeding him rump steak.’ I smile briefly at the thought of Jig scoffing rump steak but the smile is totally obliterated by the next thought that crosses my mind. Jig and me are running buddies. All of a sudden I am absolutely exhausted. After fighting so hard to be awake, now all I want is to go back to sleep. I don’t know if I fall asleep straight away. That’s the thing with falling asleep, you don’t know the exact moment you switch from light into darkness, from awareness to oblivion. What I do know is that I have another dream, a dream that sounds like a perfectly nice dream but is more like a cruel trick of my mind. In my perfectly nice dream I am running along a perfectly white sandy beach.
In my dream I still have two feet.
116 Chapter 5: Dylan
They don’t give you any time to feel sorry for yourself. There’s a lady beside my bed who says she’s the amputee physio and her name is Cathy. She’s about Mum’s age I guess, oldish but not real old. I just know whatever she does is going to hurt.
‘You’re probably hoping you’ll wake up and this is all a bad dream,’ she says, reading my thoughts, ‘but I’m afraid it’s my job to get you up and moving.’
I notice she says, up and moving, not up and walking.
‘Have you had physio before?’
‘A few times. I play football.’
‘Good,’ she says. You’ll have an idea what to expect.’
‘Pain and torture?’
‘We have that reputation,’ she says with a laugh. ‘Totally undeserved of course. You’re an athlete so you know there’s always a bit of pain when you’re trying to get better or stronger or fitter but too much pain is counter-productive and can stop your progress. I want you to tell me if anything hurts too much. Does that sound fair enough?’
‘I guess so.’
At least she’s being straight with me.
She raises the back of the bed and helps me to sit forward a little. I’m shocked at how hard it is and how much my ribs and left leg hurt. She gets me to move my good leg first then try tensing up the thigh muscles on my left. Not much happens. It’s just jelly.
‘Don’t worry,’ Cathy says. ‘It’s a good start. You’re doing really well.’ I’m sure she uses that line on everyone. Next she asks me to roll onto my right side. She lowers the bed and gets me to hold the side of the mattress with my right hand while I turn over. I swear it feels like there’s a knife in my side. Once I’m propped on my right with plenty of pillows she helps me to hold my left leg up and move it forward and back. I can’t make my leg move by myself and it’s so frustrating. We keep on at it and after the first few tragic attempts my muscles start to join in and do a bit more of the work.
We’ve only been going ten, fifteen minutes maybe and it feels like I’ve done an hour’s work out. Cathy says if it wasn’t for my busted ribs she’d get me on my stomach to do some stretches and butt exercises. ‘Are you ready to try sitting over the side?’
117 ‘Sure. Why not?’
The nurse comes in to help. I sit forward again and Cathy helps me swing my legs over the side. It’s the strangest feeling once I’m sitting up. The change in position makes the blood rush to where my leg ends. It feels like a sausage in a pan about to explode, but it also feels so good to be sitting up properly. My right foot is touching the floor, taking some weight and helping me to balance, but because the plaster cast goes above my knee my left leg is sticking straight out, staring me in the face.
‘How you doing?’ Cathy says.
‘Think I can handle it.’ Famous last words. I look down at my right foot and give my toes a wriggle and it hits me that I’ll never wriggle my left toes again. Suddenly the room turns wobbly. Cathy quickly braces me by the shoulders.
‘Bit dizzy,’ I confess and they guide me back to the mattress. I’ve never been so glad to be horizontal in my life.
‘We’ll do the rest later,’ she says.
What rest? I’m about to ask her but she is already out of the room leaving me with Cheryl, the nurse. Cheryl checks my catheter.
‘When can I get that thing off?’ I snap.
‘Later today.’
‘Does it hurt when it comes out?’
‘It’s a bit uncomfortable but not really painful.’
Not sure if I totally believe her. Having a big tube pulled out your dick can’t be fun. I feel a tug on the tube as she adjust the covers. There’s something kind of disgusting having your own pee attached to you in a plastic bag. It’s bright yellow and already half full.
‘Then can I go to the toilet?’
‘Once the physio says you’re safe to get up.’
‘And if not?’
‘Nothing wrong with using a bedpan or a bottle.’
The idea of peeing in a bottle is not that bad but pooping in a plastic bowl and having it carted off with a paper cover all steaming like a microwave dinner is totally gross.
‘What’s that thing?’ I ask when Cathy comes back with a pile of stuff on a trolley.
‘A plaster saw.’
118 ‘Haven’t you sawn off enough?’
She gives me ‘a look’ like one of Mum’s looks.
‘I have to take this cast off and make you a removable fibreglass one that lets you bend your knee and later start taking some weight through your stump.’
Cathy explains what she is doing as she works, filling the basin with cold water and laying out shiny packets of casting stuff.
‘These removable rigid dressings are better at controlling swelling than just bandaging it up. The swelling is worst a week after surgery and then settles down around week three. If we control the swelling well, there’s less pressure on the stitches, faster healing and less pain. You also get a better-shaped stump for fitting a temporary prosthesis.’
‘Pros-the-what?’
‘Prosthesis, otherwise known as an artificial limb.’
Bit of a tongue twister but I do like the idea of less pain and faster healing. The quicker I get out of here and get my life back, the better.
Cathy marks out a ‘y’ where she’s going to cut down the front of my plaster. I’m not so sure about this saw.
‘What if you slip?’
‘I never slip,’ she says, and shows me how the saw can’t cut skin by turning it on and holding it on her forearm. ‘The blade vibrates. It doesn’t spin like a circular saw. The worst that can happen is it can get a bit hot.’
‘Ready?’
I nod. I can hardly make a run for it. The saw slices through the plaster like it’s cutting a loaf of bread. It doesn’t hurt but it sure is loud so I don’t hear Dad walk in. My dad just loves his power tools and sticks his head where he can watch the action. His hands are in his pockets, but it must be killing him to stand back while a woman is in control of a saw.
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘I left her asleep in the waiting area.’
Good. It’s better with just Dad around. When the cutting is finished, Cathy peels the cast open like a clam shell and I feel the air hit my stump. I look at Dad before I check out my leg trying to gauge from his face how it looks. ‘It doesn’t look too bad,’ he says. ‘Except for your knobbly knees of course.’
Here goes. Time to face it. The stump.
119 I look down.
The end of my leg looks like a flipper that’s been bitten by a shark. Holy fuck is the first thing that jumps into my head. It’s worse than I thought.
‘It’s lost a bit of weight,’ is all I say.
‘Pretty neat stitching,’ Dad says.
He’s right. Maybe if I look at it as if it does not belong to me, as if it is someone else’s body, someone else’s leg, I can cope. The stitches are dark and run along the front of my shin. As far as I can tell, the doctor has pulled up a flap from the back of my calf to cover the shin bone and stitched it all together at the front. ‘When do the stitches come out?’
‘Ten days post-op so about another week.’
‘Can I touch it?’
Not that I actually want to. It just seems the right thing to ask.
‘Not over the stitches. There’s a risk of infection but you can touch it anywhere else,’ Cheryl says.
‘Massage and rubbing help to desensitise the leg,’ Cathy adds.
Truth is, I am scared to touch it. So I have a quick feel and tell myself it’s not so bad. Cathy makes a few hurry-up moves and gets on with the business of making the new cast.
She puts on a thing that looks like a sock without a heel, more padding and then she covers the whole thing with plastic wrap like she’s wrapping up a sandwich. Finally some cotton stocking stuff is stretched over the lot using this wire frame so my poor leg doesn’t get so pushed and pulled about. After the padding is done Cathy makes the cast by rolling on what looks like a sticky blue bandage. As the fibreglass sets, it quickly gets hot so it feels like my leg is being cooked. The finished cast comes to the middle of my kneecap at the front but is lower at the back so I can bend my knee. After a few minutes she taps on the outside with her fingers. The cast has already gone hard.
‘Amazing stuff’, Dad says. Five minutes later Cathy slides the whole thing off, takes off the plastic wrap and checks the edges. By now my leg is throbbing. She puts another layer of sock over the stump and then slides the finished cast back on holding it all in place with a stretchy tubular bandage and a strap around my thigh.
‘All done,’ she says. ‘One removable rigid dressing, or RRD for short.’
120 Just as well. The stump feels like a Pit-bull has latched onto my leg. More painkillers and a lie down would be good. Before she goes, Cathy gives me a list of instructions for how to look after the cast.
When Mum comes back from her nana-nap, she wants to know everything that happened and reads the instructions at least six times. It’s hard to have a school teacher for a mother sometimes. My lunch turns up and she cuts up the food, and when she sees that I’m perfectly capable of sticking a fork in my mouth Dad reminds her I’m not the only one who needs to eat and sleep.
‘We should go home,’ Dad says.
‘We don’t have to go if you don’t want us to,’ Mum says. ‘We’re happy to eat at the canteen.’
Apparently they haven’t left the hospital since I got here. They’ve been camping out in some room for relatives the whole time.
‘Go home. I’ll be fine.’
‘But what if—’
‘You heard him. He’ll be fine.’
Mum glares at Dad but she lets it go. So long as they don’t stand there arguing over my bed I don’t care.
‘Alright, but before we go, I need to know what you want me to say,’ Mum says, fiddling with the catch on her handbag.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’ve had so many emails and phone calls, it’s too much to reply to them all so I thought I’d do one email and send it to everyone to pass on, but how much do you want me to tell them? We’ve just said you had a punctured lung and surgery on your leg.’
‘So nobody knows about this?’ I nod at my leg.
‘Only the relatives and Jake’s family.’
‘And Jess?’
‘We haven’t spoken to her so I wouldn’t know.’ There’s a glance from Dad across to Mum. How the hell would I know what to say? I shrug. The ribs cane real bad. Keep forgetting how any little chest movement hurts.
‘Say whatever you like. People are going to find out eventually.’
121 There’s that look again passing between them. I close my eyes and think about the implications. What do I want people to know? How do I want them to treat me? One thing’s for sure I don’t want pity.
‘The facts. Just tell them the facts. Below knee amputation. Doing well. That’ll do.’ Dad puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘Is there anything we can get you from home?’
‘A new leg,’ I say.
Mum looks like I shot her, picks up her bag and looks away. Dad folds up his paper and tucks it under his arm. Kisses and goodbyes. The usual stuff until finally they are nearly out the door.
‘There is one more thing…’
Dad stops mid-stride and Mum pivots around.
‘Yes?’
‘Tell everyone I’ll be back on the pitch next season.’
‘Sure thing,’ Dad says. Mum bites her lip, not exactly a big vote of confidence. Don’t know why I even said it. Maybe to say screw-you to this whole legless gig. I listen to their footsteps fading. A loud peal of laughter drowns them out before they are totally gone. It’s change of shift. One lot of nurses replacing another. New voices, a surge of energy, more trolleys on the move.
I lift up the covers to let in some light and peer down at my leg. I have this idea that the more I look at it the more I will get used to it and the easier it will be but so far it isn’t working. How am I supposed to play football? What the hell am I going to do now? What girl is ever going to want me like this? The only thing that stops me from bawling my eyes out is the thought of how much it would hurt if I start to cry. Holding back the tears makes my nose go all runny. I wipe the snot on the sheets and bite my lip. I rack my brains going over the last thing I do remember. Friday breakfast, then school on Friday, both are pretty clear. I get to Friday evening, the night of the party. Then it’s blank until I wake up here.
122 Chapter 6: Jessica
‘Have you heard the news?’ Tamara gasped down the phone.
‘What news?’ Every day since the crash she’d been ringing me with all the latest gossip and rumours but there was a new urgency to her voice that had not been there before. As soon as she opened her mouth I could already tell this was something huge.
‘You know my brother’s friend has a cousin in the Marlins Youth team.’
‘And?’
‘And the coach sent them an email last night. I don’t think I can even say this.’ Her voice got all choked up.
‘Just say it.’
‘He…they…the doctors amputated his leg.’
It’s hard to describe that moment. It was like being hit by a huge wave, going under, everything churning, sucking you down. You can’t breathe, you can’t scream, you can’t kick, you just drown. I could hear Tamara sniffing and crying quietly but I was too knocked out for tears. From the bottom of the black wave that had come crashing over me a single thought, like a bubble of air erupted to the surface. Could this be true? ‘Can you get hold of the email?’
‘I’ll ask my brother.’
‘Thanks. I can’t talk now.’ I slid to the floor, knees buckling, back against the wall clutching the phone in my hand.
Oh God! What have I done?
123 Subject—UPDATE ON DYLAN
Louisa Mackay 25/03/2015
A huge thank you to all our family and friends who have been such a fantastic support in this difficult time... For those of you who don’t know the details, Dylan was involved in a car accident on Friday night coming home from a party with two friends, Jake and Jessica. Jessica was driving as both the boys had been drinking. We are not sure yet exactly what happened as Dylan can’t remember but for some reason the car swerved, hit a ditch and rolled, causing Dylan’s left foot to be crushed and trapped. He also broke multiple ribs on the same side. One of the ribs pierced his lung, causing it to collapse, and another broken rib ruptured his spleen. He lost a lot of blood, and it was touch and go for a few days, but the good news is that he is now sitting up and starting physio though he is still in intensive care. The bad news is that his left foot was too badly injured to reconstruct and the surgeons had to perform a below-knee amputation. He has terrific doctors who assure us this will not slow him down too much. He should be running around in six to twelve months and he plans to be back on the pitch next season.
Once he moves to the ward in a few days he will be able to have visitors. We will let you know when this is the case. Our thoughts are with Jake and his family who is making good progress from a head injury. We have been overwhelmed by all the cards and flowers and well wishes. Many thanks again to all those who have provided such wonderful practical help and support.
Mike and Louisa Mackay on behalf of Dylan
Tamara sent the email twenty minutes after I got off the phone. One thing for sure, bad news travels faster than Ebola. I was still reading it over and over when Lee called me up.
‘Have you seen Facebook yet?’
‘Not yet.’ Her question sent a shot of foreboding arcing through my already wired nerves.
‘Then don’t look.’
‘What’s on there? What have people been saying?’
‘Just promise me you won’t look. It’s just a bunch of trolls that don’t know shit.’
124 As Lee rang off I heard Mum on the landline in the background. Of course the next thing I did was jump on the internet but as I was about to sign in to Facebook our connection suddenly went dead. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
‘Mum!’ I yelled. ‘Did you kill the connection?’
She stuck her head around my door.
‘Tamara called me,’ she said. So the answer then would be yes, she did pull the plug on our wireless modem.
‘I can still use my phone to log on you know.’
‘Your friends are only trying to look out for you,’ she said coming into my room and sitting on my bed.
‘I can handle it you know. I’d rather know what people are saying than not know.’
‘It’s up to you, but trust me, I think you should stay away from all of that. Let things blow over for a few days at least. Sometimes it’s best not to know.’ While she was talking, Mum somehow slipped my phone out of my hand. Grabbing it back I pulled up the Mackay’s email to show her. While she read the whole thing, I chewed my thumbnail and watched her expression. Her eyes hardly needed to move as they scanned the tiny screen but I knew which bit she was up to by the way her lips changed. At the worst parts I could see the edge of her top teeth dig into her bottom lip. When she finally finished reading, she looked up at me as though she was the one in pain.
‘Now do you see why I don’t want to go back to school!’
‘Oh honey,’ she said. Her lips started to tremble. She threw her arms around me and I buried my head in her shoulder and just bawled.
‘Are you here to arrest me?’
The police car couldn’t have arrived at a worse time. The girls had just got home from school and Mum had a singing student, Madison, belting out scales with a voice that owed more to Mum’s teaching than natural talent and even then the high notes could peel the paint off the walls. When I opened the door I could see all the neighbours peeking through their blinds or checking their letter boxes. Since I’m not eighteen I had to drag Mum out of the lesson so I had an adult present for the whole Jessica Wilkinson we’re arresting you for blah blah, anything you say may be taken down in evidence, blah blah blah. Madison was supposed to keep practising her scales but it had gone suspiciously quiet in the music room, and in the kitchen the twins were loudly whispering. That made three sets of big ears busy eavesdropping.
125 Mum and I were sitting on the big lounge, the two constables sitting opposite in single chairs. They didn’t want to sit but Mum made them. I think she did it to make me less scared. ‘We need you to accompany us to the station to be charged,’ one constable said. ‘You’, meaning me and Mum. Of course she couldn’t leave the twins on their own or just dump Madison out in the street so it was a bit of a stalemate.
‘Is this the usual thing?’ Mum asked, ‘to just land on someone’s doorstep with no warning?’
‘We called and left a message before we left,’ the same constable replied, shooting a nervous glance at his colleague. Come to think of it I did hear the phone ring earlier but Mum had told me to let all the calls go to the machine.
‘How come you have to arrest me instead of just sending a Court Attendance Notice?’ I asked. I’d been reading all the traffic lawyers’ websites so I knew the usual procedures.
‘Yeah? How come?’ Mum jumped to my defence.
‘There’s been a few developments in the case. The nature of the occupants’ injuries are now more established…’ one constable started to say.
‘This is way over the top.’
‘We have to follow the orders we’re given,’ the other one butted in, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
‘Nothing to do with the fact that there’s a policeman’s son involved of course?’ she added with a sarcastic snarl. She was probably right but not exactly tactful, and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to knock her off her high horse and they’d slap the handcuffs on both of us and drag us off kicking and screaming, and when Mum screams she really screams, using her super- loud rock-chick voice. Just then, before I got done for resisting arrest, Madison’s mother arrived in her SUV and offered to stay and mind the twins. Of all the mothers to come to the rescue it would have to be her. She was one of those Professional Mothers: P&C, netball committee, local Girl Guides, the works. Nice lady. Big heart, bigger mouth. By tonight the whole world would know the cops had come to get me.
Down at the station the arresting officers took us in a back entrance for ‘processing’. They put me on the phone to a Legal Aid solicitor who explained the score, which pretty much went like this.
I was being charged with Dangerous Driving and Negligent Driving.
They could use my statement in court against me (duh).
I could get my own solicitor and the police had to wait for them to turn up, OR
126 I could use Legal Aid over the phone instead.
I could plead guilty or not guilty.
I didn’t have to enter a plea until the first hearing.
I might have to pay bail.
My photo and fingerprints would be taken.
An adult (mum or a solicitor) had to be with me at all times.
I just wanted to get this over with so I went with the Legal Aid solicitor over the phone option, not that it changed how the interview went. Any time I thought about the accident I could see Dylan’s mangled leg in my head and now the thought of his leg being gone for good made me physically ill. The police wanted me to explain everything over again but my throat was so choked up I could hardly talk. All I could do was nod or shake my head to each question and say over and over, ‘Whatever I told you the first time.’ I didn’t want to talk about it now or think about it ever. I didn’t want the crash in my head any more than it already was. Finally the interview was over but not the whole ordeal. There were photos and fingerprints to be done, all part of the ‘process’. This part of the process made you feel even more of a criminal. They don’t use ink anymore to take fingerprints. They just shove your fingers in a scanning machine like at the supermarket. Ink or no ink, it still branded you, marked you. My fingers and face were now in the digital filing system forever, only to be removed if my innocence was proved in court.
Over the next two days I tried to catch up on some school assignments but all I could think about was Dylan and Jake. How were they doing? What was happening? When could I visit? All the waiting was sending me totally insane. I deliberately avoided news websites and social media but then the local paper landed slap bang in the middle of our front lawn. Whacking me in the guts with it would have had a similar effect because plastered all over the front page was a huge photo of the smash, my smash, our smash, with all the gory details about Dylan inside. Seeing that photo brought the whole thing flooding back, not that it had gone away. I don’t think the memory of what happened when we were trapped in the car would ever go away even though I wished it would.
At least for now my broken arm gave me an excuse to stay at home and hide from the world but sooner or later I would have to go back to school. I was pushing for later. Mum was pushing for sooner. She might as well roll me in blood and feed me to the piranhas. That would be better than the slow nip of schoolyard death. The only time I left the house I bought a present for Dylan, a little stuffed ball on a piece of elastic, and posted it to the hospital. I didn’t send a
127 card to say it’s from me in case he hated it. Or hated me. As soon as I posted it the second thoughts hit. What was I thinking? He’s lost his foot and I sent him a ball.
In the meantime Mum called Jake’s mum, Liz. They knew each other since Jake’s little brother sings in the school choir with the twins. Liz told her it was touch and go at first but now he was stable he was being transferred from Sydney so he could be closer to home. He was still in the coma but once he was back on the coast I could come visit him. Jakes’ family want all his friends to come and help with his therapy to get him better. We hadn’t heard an official word from Dylan or his parents, not being on their email or Christmas card list. Can’t say I blame them. It stands to reason. If I was them, I would hate me too.
128 Chapter 7: Dylan
I try to tell the doctor I don’t need a social worker but it seems I don’t have a choice. Things have to happen the way they have to happen. I’m only the patient. I don’t get much say in it and the whole world wants to tell me what to do.
Her name is Megan. She seems nice. She’s only pretty young. She’s also pretty hot and she kind of stands out because she only has one arm. Well, one full arm. Her right arm ends just below her elbow and there’s a few mini fingers on the end. It’s really really hard not to stare. I wonder if they chose her specially for the job or if she volunteered, but I don’t say anything. Let her do the talking. Talking is her job, not mine.
‘I’m not going to ask how you’re feeling,’ she says.
Good. I’d rather talk about football.
‘But I will tell you what some other young guys have told me who have lost their leg and some of that may resonate with you. Everyone is different and deals with things in their own way. There’s no right way or wrong way to cope, but if you feel you are ever really struggling I might be able to help. One thing that a lot of people say is that the thing that helped the most was talking to another amputee, someone who has been through something similar and come out the other side. Is that something you might be interested in?’
‘I dunno. Maybe. Can’t I just talk to you?’
‘Technically I’m not an amputee. I was born this way,’ she says.
Now I feel really awkward. That wasn’t what I meant.
‘I meant, can’t I just talk to you because that’s your job?’
Now it’s her turn to wear the awkward hat.
‘Oh. Yes of course,’ she says, recovering well. ‘It’s just an option. Have a think about it and let me know. It can be pretty overwhelming at first. It’s a huge shock.’
Understatement of the year that one.
‘Some of the things people describe feeling are numbness, anger, despair and disbelief, often all those things at the same time.’
She pulls a little booklet out of her folder. Her eyes are the most vivid blue I’ve ever seen. I wonder if they are real or coloured contacts.
129 ‘I’ll leave this little information book for you to look at. When you’ve been through a big trauma it can be hard to process and remember things. It’s often easier to read a little bit at a time.’
She’s got that bit so right. I ask the nurses the same questions about a million times. ‘The other thing you might find helpful is to start writing things down.’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘To get things off your chest. A guy I saw who lost his leg in an oil rig accident started a “what’s pissing me off file”. He reckoned it was the best way to vent his frustrations. It works for some people.’
‘I’m not much of a writer.’
‘Doesn’t matter. It’s not for anybody else to read.’ She doesn’t say anything for a while. Just lets me think about things.
‘I could ask Mum and Dad to bring in my iPad.’
‘You can’t use the internet while you are still in ICU but I think you can use your iPad for other things if you have wireless turned off.’
‘So I can’t go online and show everyone my new selfies?’
‘Afraid not.’
‘Hmmph.’ That’s what they do around here. Build you up and get you excited and then go and drop you back down. Not that I want to share any selfies. I just want to see what all my friends are up to. Have something normal again.
‘You’ll be out of here soon and you can get a wireless connection on the ward,’ Megan says.
This is good news. Then she adds a strange comment.
‘Don’t be in a rush to go on line. Some of the stuff you see on the net about amputation isn’t always helpful. There’s a list of good sites at the back of the booklet.’
She tells me she’ll come and check on me for a short visit every day. Except the weekend. I tell her I have no idea what day it is or what time it is anyway. In Hospital World there is no time, just drug rounds and meals and endless people making you do stuff.
Of course Megan’s comment about not being in a rush to go online makes me want to do exactly that. It’s the first time I notice I’m in internet withdrawal. I don’t know how parents ever survived without it.
130 She picks up her folder, getting ready to go, and tucks it under her short arm. It’s really hard not to stare.
Wednesday Day 5 6am
Trying the writing thing.
So freaked out and in so much pain. Can’t get comfortable no matter what position I try. Still can’t believe this has happened. Everything was going fine. Everything I ever wanted. Then this. The only thing I’m any good at is playing football. How’s that gonna work with an artificial leg. I feel like a freak. Can’t stand looking at my leg. And then there’s Jake. He could have brain damage. He could be spastic or a retard. I want to go back in time and make this not happen. Sometimes I even wish that I was dead.
1pm
Catheter out. Felt like pissing a garden hose. More physio with Cathy. Started out ok. Painful to sit up as usual. She brought this old-person walking frame thing. Stood up a few minutes on my good leg. Feeling fine and then things went bad. Pain. Horrible pain in my left side. I could feel myself start to black out which is strangely a nice feeling. Scans and loads of doctors later they decided it must be the spleen still bleeding a bit. Now I’m stuck with more lying in bed. Only allowed to do a few leg lifts. Apart from the usual pain I feel fine again now. I think I could do more if they’d only let me. Must be getting better I’m going crazy. And if I see another card or bunch of flowers arrive I think I will throw them at someone
Thursday Day 6
9am
Good and bad news. No ward move yet but I can start getting out of bed again. No more bed pans. Yay! Bed pans are shit. Can’t wait to have a proper shower and wash my own balls.
11.30am
Shower time. Bit of a process wrapping up the RRD but it was so worth it. Had to sit in a plastic chair on wheels and the nurse gave me the hand-held shower nozzle bit and let me do most of it on my own.
Best thing since I got here.
131 3.05pm
Room so covered with cards and crap Mum’s run out of places to put them. More and more stuff keeps arriving. Balloons and teddy bears. Do they think I am five years old? Get Well Cards. Get well? Really? What’s with that? The ‘Thinking of You’ option isn’t much better. Don’t think of me. Don’t worry about me. Don’t pity me. Just leave me alone to get on with it and fuck off! I hate all the cards but Mum loves to open them. Card after friggin’ card saying come home soon, so sorry, boo hoo but not one of them mentions the ‘A’ word. AMPUTATION. It’s the smelly old man sitting on a bus that everyone pretends isn’t there.
One good thing. Someone sent a little stuffed football on some elastic like a bungee. No card or sender’s name so I don’t know who it’s from. I love that little bungee ball nearly as much as I hate those cards. When I crack the shits I use it like a wrecking ball and smack all those suckers down.
3.30pm
Megan visited again. It’s funny but I’m getting used to how her arm looks now. Asked her why she doesn’t use an artificial arm (or prosthesis as everyone around here calls it). She said they weren’t very good when she was growing up so she stopped using one but then when she started running in the Paralympic team she used to wear a running arm for pushing off at the start and for balance. The Paralympic team! Respect.
4.15 pm
This place is starting to really piss me off. Cathy gets me to stand up in a frame but I’m not allowed to hop and push it. She takes it away after physio. I got into trouble because I got out of bed and swivelled on my good leg holding onto the furniture to get my bed tray because some idiot left it too far away! After that this hot O.T. brought me a one-arm wheelchair and showed me how to use it. Easy. AND THEN SHE TOOK IT AWAY. What was the point of that?
9pm
Asked Mum to take me to see Jake tomorrow. They moved him here from North Shore yesterday. Closer to his family. He’s off all the machines but still in the coma. Not sure what to expect.
11 pm.
Can’t sleep. Too much pain. Pain in my stump. Pain in my missing foot. I can handle it during the day when so much is going on but at night I’m biting my fist and sweating like a pig.
132 Friday Day 7
8.20am
Great news. It’s on. Busting outta here and moving to the ward.
Nothing around here ever goes to plan. All set to go see Jake and they suddenly need my bed Right Now. A heap of doctors and nurses come to say goodbye. I’m not good with that farewell stuff. I let Mum do the kissing and hugging. A nurse comes up to get me and take me down to the ward in a wheelchair.
Hospital Policy.
Hospital Policy sucks. It’s not even a hot nurse, it’s a Graham. He calls me ‘buddy’. Buddy! What the hell? All set to hate him until he sends Mum and Dad ahead with my stuff. Graham seems to know I don’t want them fussing around. He covers me up with a blanket and gives me a plastic container full of my food-stash to hold then he wheels me down the corridor and into the lift.
First time I’ve been out where people can see me.
I look straight ahead, tap my fingers on the plastic lid, don’t want to see if anyone is looking at me or noticing my leg. The blanket slips. I snatch it back up. Probably a waste of time. It’s pretty obvious there’s only one foot sitting on the foot plates. The lift seems to take an awfully long time.
Just shoot me now. Far fucking out. No one told me I would have to share. The Vascular Ward is where they dump us amputees. I’m the youngest here by about seventy years. There are four beds in the room, four patients including me. Here’s the real kicker, I’ve counted twice but I make a total of only five legs.
Mum and Dad have already unpacked most of my stuff. iPad on the pillow (Dad). Vase of flowers on the drawers (Mum). On the shelf a row of those bloody get well cards. (Mum and Dad arrrgh!) Can’t escape the things. I thought I’d be itching to send a tweet as soon as I got here but what can you say about this?
All unpacked. The bed beckons. Fresh sheets and blankets make me want to lie down. I feel exhausted and all I did was sit in a chair and get pushed around.
Pain killers wearing off.
133 Dad and Graham help me get onto the bed. Every centimetre of the movement hurts. There’s a trick to holding your stump up so you don’t smash the end when you hit the bed. A trick that I haven’t quite mastered. I bang the end. Every time. It’s like hitting your funny bone. Only much, much worse. Just to be stubborn and show them I can look after myself I roll over and face the other way, determined not to let them see how much it hurts.
‘You okay mate?’ Dad says.
‘What the fuck do you reckon?’ I blurt out. Mum flinches. Oh shit. I actually said that at the top of my voice. Great way to settle into my new ward.
I get Mum to draw the curtains. Bed curtains are my only escape, the only way I can peg out some private space because I really do want to be left alone at least for a little while.
Not in any great rush to chat with my roomies.
I send Mum and Dad away. Thank God for coffee, stretch out to pull my iPod off the drawers by the bed, select some death metal music, ram the bass and the volume to max. The scream of the singer and the thrashing guitars help to block out the pain just a little. Distraction helps. That’s how pain works, Cathy explained. When your brain is busy with other things the pain is not quite as bad. I can only hope it’s enough to get me through the next twenty minutes when I get my next hit of oxycontin. And after the drugs, more physio.
I’m a lucky guy.
Night 7
10.30 pm
It’s not a good night. I miss ICU where I had my own nurse and when you hit the buzzer something actually happens. I never knew old guys snore and fart so much. The nurse was late with my drugs so I needed an ice pack on my stump to tide me over. It helps with the stump pain a bit but it doesn’t help the phantom pain.
I try mind games. Making lists like this one:
AMPUTEE’S FAVOURITE SAYINGS
Kick the bucket.
Run along.
Stand on your own two feet.
Put your best foot forward.
134 Get a leg up.
You’re pulling my leg.
Step up to the plate.
Jump to it.
Hop to it.
Take it in your stride.
Walk tall.
3am
Need the ice again. You wouldn’t believe that something that isn’t there could hurt so much. The pain is so bad in my phantom foot. If it was still there I would want to cut the damn thing off. Ironic since now I know cutting it off doesn’t stop it from hurting.
4am
Pain not too bad but still can’t sleep. Thinking about Jake. Jake and Jessica. One minute I’m really looking forward to seeing him, the next minute, nothing but dread. I’m hoping he’s awake and can tell me more. I add another phrase to my list. Two steps forward and one step back. Or is that the other way around? One step forward and two steps back?
8am
They move me to a two-bed room. Apparently I make too much noise moaning and keep everyone awake. That’s a mighty feat in the room of mega snoring and farting. Now it’s just me and Bill. Bill lost his leg above the knee years ago. Now he’s worn his other knee out and he’s having a knee replacement. Haven’t spoken to him yet. The cleaner filled me in. Plenty of time for chat. Later. Not.
135 Chapter 8: Dylan
No more stalling over this one. I want to do it on my own but Mum insists on coming with me. I’m waiting in the wheelchair ready to go. Jigging my foot, watching the clock.
‘All set?’ she says, grabbing the handles of the wheelchair.
‘I can do it myself.’
‘But it’s quicker…’
I cut her off with a filthy look and flick the switch on the side of the wheelchair back to one-hand drive. Yes it’s slow but so what? There’s no rush. Mum falls in behind me taking little steps to match my pace while I concentrate on pumping the lever forwards and back, pushing as fast and as hard as I can.
‘It’s on the fifth floor,’ she says.
‘I know. I’ve been there. Remember?’
She bites at the sarcasm. ‘But I wasn’t sure how much you remember.’
‘Too much,’ I say.
She goes quiet. Which suits me just fine. We’re at the elevators now. I position myself to press the button, but Mum leans over the back of the wheelchair and hits the arrow for going up. Thanks Mum. Not. The elevator is as slow as ever to arrive at the floor and the inevitable crowd builds up. I feel the stares all around me. Do my best to ignore them; lean on my hand, avoid eye contact, keep my face a big blank. People stand back out the way extra politely and let us get in first. I know they’re looking. Sideways, eyes darting. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to stares.
Mum does a smart thing and backs me in while some old guy holds the door with his hand so at least I’m facing the front like everyone else, but it’s kind of claustrophobic when you’re totally hemmed in and all you can see are elbows and arses. We reach Level Five. Everyone moves apart to let the guy in the wheelchair through. I keep my hand on the controls and push myself out. Don’t look back. Go straight ahead. Turn right to the big white doors.
We wait to be buzzed into ICU. Not just anyone can wander in and out. While we’re waiting a choking feeling comes over me, like someone’s holding a pillow over my head and I’m fighting for air. I make myself take slow breaths. Push the feeling away. Didn’t think coming back would affect me like this.
136 Mum speaks to the ward clerk over the intercom to release the electronic lock. She holds the door open while I wheel through. Cheryl spots me from way across the other side of the nurse’s station.
‘Well look at you! You scrub up all right.’
‘Bit better than the last time you saw him,’ Mum says.
‘Just a bit,’ Cheryl says looking me over. ‘What brings you back so soon?’
‘I’m here to see Jake.’
‘And here’s me thinking I’m the star attraction,’ she says with a wink.
‘How’s he doing?’ Mum asks.
‘All going well, we’ll bring him out of the coma tomorrow.’ Mum nods and listens, though her fist is bunched up. This was me in here only a few days ago. It’s not easy to come back. ‘Room four,’ Cheryl says. ‘Sally’s looking after him. I’ll take you in.’ She commandeers the handles of the wheelchair. I don’t argue. In here, the nurses rule. At the moment I’m glad she’s taken over since I’m worried about how this will go. I spot Liz in the room, Jake’s Mum. She is standing by the bed moving his right arm up and down like he’s a puppet and she’s the puppeteer. Her hair is a bright red mess, her face pale and streaky.
‘Dylan!’ she says, almost dropping his arm, eyes shooting up as we enter. She rushes over. ‘It’s so good to see you, thank The Lord. We’ve all been praying so hard.’ She has this Irish accent that has never left her. Good Catholic to go with the accent, so it’s not like she’s new to this praying stuff. Unlike us. I even caught Dad muttering and looking up although he says he doesn’t believe in any of that. Liz gives me a careful hug, straightens up, takes one look at Mum, and I think they’re both going to lose it. They stand there for ages holding each other. Too much hugging for me. I leave them to it and wheel up close to the bed.
It’s hard, real hard, looking at Jake. A heap of his hair is gone. It must have been shaved. He’ll die when he sees it. He loves his hair. He’s off the ventilator but the feeding tube is still in. The heart rate monitor is bleeping, slow and steady, a row of green spikes. If it wasn’t for all the bandages wrapped around his head you could think he was simply asleep.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t think I could talk right now.
Mum and Liz are doing plenty of talking, catching up. It sounds so normal. So many times Jake and I had to hang around waiting while our mothers were going on and on. I listen in on their conversation. They don’t seem to notice, seem to have forgotten I am here at all.
137 ‘The doctors told us he might not make it,’ Liz says. ‘Started talking about donating his organs but I told them I had faith he would pull through. I could feel it in my heart. He’s going to be fine. We’ll do it. Whatever it takes.’
They are hugging again. Now their bodies are closer the words are muffled, further away so all I catch are the snippets.
‘Brain damage.’
‘MRI.’
‘Locked in.’
‘Don’t know.’
Snippets I wish I didn’t hear. It all sounds horribly bad. I look down at where my foot used to be. At the stump.
Christ Jake. What the fuck happened? You were supposed to be driving. How did we end up here?
It’s not like Jake’s about to tell me. For the millionth time I wish I could remember. I close my eyes and give it another try; the party, the accident… trying to make some of it come back. There’s nothing. A blank dark hole. So much I can’t remember. I open my eyes. Bright lights. The smell of hand-wash. Hollow footsteps on the hard vinyl floor and my heart starts to thump again. I know how it feels to be lying in that bed.
I rock the wheelchair back and forth on the spot, the fingers of my right hand clenching the metal rim; anything to stop my mind from going back there. There’s a stack of CDs in a pile on the bedside table. I start leafing through them one-handed, and when Liz starts to talk I nearly jump right out of my skin.
These days, it doesn’t take a lot to make me jump.
‘The doctors say that it helps if we play familiar music,’ she says. ‘He needs lots of stimulation.’
I hold up a CD. ‘The Corrs? Stimulation? More like bore him to death.’
‘Dylan,’ Mum says, a little shocked but Liz laughs. I’m always ribbing her about her taste in all things Irish.
‘I see you’ve lost none of your cheek,’ she says. ‘You know very well that’s my favourite. We play it all the time at home.’
138 ‘Don’t I know it,’ I say, and she gives me a little nudge which lets me know it’s still safe to crack a joke. Liz is like my second mum and all Jake’s brothers and sisters are like the big family that I never had.
‘Why don’t we get a coffee?’ she says to Mum. ‘And Dylan can keep Jake company.’
‘On my own?’
‘He won’t bite,’ Liz says.
‘But what do I do?’
‘Talk to him,’ Mum says.
‘Play some excellent Irish music,’ Liz says.
‘What do I talk about?’
‘Anything. It doesn’t matter,’ Mum says.
‘Things you remember, misdeeds of your youth. Lord knows there were plenty of those,’ Liz suggests. ‘School stuff. Anything you like. Alistair’s been reading poetry and reciting the Periodic Table.’
That is so Jake. And so Alistair, his equally nerdy little brother.
They give me a peck on the forehead, grab handbags and walk out the room. Now it’s just me and Jake. My best friend. My partner in crime. My leg starts to throb. The walls seem to shrink. I have trouble remembering the Times Tables let alone the Periodic Table. That’s chemistry stuff, more Jessica’s department.
Jessica. She would know what happened, could give me the answers. The thought opens a trickle of hope which quickly shuts off. Answers to what? Nothing changes. My leg’s gone. Jake’s head is a mess. A bit of his skull is in a sterile box waiting for the swelling in his brain to go down before the surgeon can stick it back on like a piece of jigsaw. Knowing how this happened changes none of that.
I’m not good at lists. Never have been, except for lists about sport. The only list that comes to mind are famous Man United players. ‘Cantona, Beckham, Rooney, Van Persie, Christiano Ronaldo,’ I say out loud. We always argue about who was the best. Jake says Ronaldo, just to annoy me since he went to Real Madrid. I say Cantona, but Dad says there was no one better than Georgie Best.
That’s as far as I get before my voice seizes up. For a second I think Jake’s eyes are twitching until I realise it’s a trick of the light. He has a room with a small window and there is one strong beam of sunlight shining across his face in an arc.
139 I squeeze my hands together, fingers folded over, pressed under my chin.
Please God. If you exist and you’re not a complete bastard, I know you used to do miracles and stuff. I’m not asking for my leg back. Too late for that but if it’s not too much to ask, we just need this one little thing. Jake’s a smart arse and all but he doesn’t deserve this. If you can possibly, possibly do it, we just need the old Jake back.
I cross myself like I’ve seen Liz do all the time, not sure if it only works for Catholics. I don’t know the rules. I don’t know how you’re supposed to pray or if it’s just a big load of bull. But at the moment, sitting here with Jake, just me and him, well, it’s all I got.
In the end I put on some of Liz’s ‘excellent Irish music’. Not the Corrs. I go for the Cranberries. Although it was written in the nineties before we were born, the music is playing my feelings. It is angry with a sad bitter edge. The singer’s name is Dolores. Not exactly Irish. In Italian it means pain. I’m surprised I remember that from school. I flip open the lyric sheet. There’s a picture of the band sitting on a couch at the edge of the ocean, stuck in the shallows. The water is flat and dark and dreary, the sky above still filled with thick black clouds but there’s a streak of blue sky in the middle and a huge rainbow stretching over it all.
I think I imagine Jake’s leg move under the sheets. I watch like a hawk but it doesn’t happen again. I don’t know why but I start tapping in time to the music, tapping my hand against his shoulder so he can hear it and feel it and some part of his brain will light up and connect. I must have had the music loud because I don’t hear any footsteps. Suddenly, I sense someone standing behind me.
I spin the wheelchair around.
Jessica.
‘I didn’t want to interrupt…’ she says.
I turn off the music and explain. ‘His mum says it helps.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘I’ve been visiting.’
One of her arms is in a cast, her other hand rolls the bottom of her shirt, curling it in towards her body.
‘Visiting Jake?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘But not visiting me.’
She shifts her weight from one leg to the other and looks quickly out the door.
‘I wanted to but…’
140 Something tilts inside me. ‘But you didn’t.’
‘Your parents wouldn’t let you have any visitors,’ she says, her free hand at her mouth, chewing her thumb.
‘I can have visitors now.’
She pulls her hand away from her mouth and starts rubbing the side of her plastered arm. ‘I’m not supposed to…
‘What?’
‘Talk to you.’
She is still standing at the door. I spin my wheelchair around further to face her front on. She hitches her bag back up over her shoulder.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s complicated.’ She looks out the door over her shoulder. ‘Ask your parents.’
‘But there’s things I want to know about the accident.’
A look comes over her face like I’m holding a baseball bat and about to whack her.
‘I better go,’ she says and bolts out the door. I try and catch her but I’m too slow and I swear at the stupid wheelchair. I swear at my fucked up leg. I swear a lot and I don’t do it softly and at the moment I don’t care who can hear. By the time Mum and Liz come back I’m really fuming.
‘So how did you go?’ Liz asks.
‘He had another visitor,’ I snap.
‘Father Michael?’ Liz says.
I shake my head. ‘Jessica,’ I say while I’m watching Mum’s face, noticing her eyes widen and her eyebrows draw in.
‘She was early,’ Liz comments. ‘And she didn’t stay?’
Mum butts in. ‘Are you talking about Jessica Wilkinson. The Jessica who…’
‘She helps out. She’s been reading to Jake.’
Mum’s mouth is kind of flapping open and she can’t hold back. ‘I can’t believe you let her see Jake!’
‘Why not?’ Liz says. ‘Why wouldn’t we?’
Mum glances down at me and back at Liz. ‘You know she’ll be charged.’
141 ‘So.’
‘We’re on opposite sides.’
‘I didn’t know we were taking sides. If she wants to help I’m not going to stop her.’
‘But she did this.’
‘It was an accident.’
Now Mum looks like she’s going to explode. ‘Unbelievable!’ she says, throwing up her hands. Liz has positioned herself between me and Jake, standing like a guard at his bed. I’ve never seen our mothers like this, claws drawn and hissing. Liz’s tone drops down to a growl and her accent gets even thicker.
‘Jake needs all the friends he can get. He’s not like Dylan. He doesn’t win popularity contests. We don’t have the luxury of refusing help.’ Without taking her eyes off Mum, she makes a point of dumping her handbag in the middle of the chair so no one can sit there. ‘Whatever happens I’d rather have her with us than against us.’ Without waiting for a reply, she turns her back on us and starts moving Jake’s arm again, like she was doing when we first came in.
‘Well you can do what you like but that girl’s not coming anywhere near Dylan. Hasn’t she done enough?’ Mum grabs my chair and starts shoving me out the door.
‘Do I get any say in it?’
She sticks her hand up. ‘Not now Dylan. Don’t start.’
I brush her hands off my wheelchair, so angry I want to knock her to the ground.
‘I told you,’ I hiss, ‘I don’t need you to push.’
We get back to the ward and I’m still seething. Nothing is said about what just happened. Typical of my family. If it’s bad you pretend it’s not there. Like all those babies Mum lost. Never mentioned. Never asked me how I felt about that. Every time she had another miscarriage I crept around the house or escaped to the oval. Tried to be extra good so I wouldn’t make Mum cry.
Now I want to make her cry. Jessica is the one person I desperately want to talk to and she tells me I can’t. I’m not having it. No matter what she says. I’m nearly eighteen. Then nobody can tell me what to do.
She’s sitting in the chair by my bed and madly texting. Probably telling Dad all about what just happened. If I try and speak to her we’ll have the world’s biggest fight.
142 Graham is on this shift. He comes to give me some pills and then the orderly comes to fetch me to take me to physio. Mum puts her phone in her bag, gets up and starts to follow. I spin the wheelchair half a turn to block her.
‘I don’t need you to come.’
‘But,’ she says, ‘it’s no trouble and it’s your first time in the gym.’
‘You don’t get it. I don’t want you to come,’ I practically yell at her. I’m so angry I actually enjoy watching her crumple in a pathetic heap, but then I feel bad and then angry at her all over again for making me feel guilty when all I did was say exactly how I feel. It gives me the shits, all this asking how you feel and then when you tell them they go and get all upset. WTF?
When I get back to my bed Mum is waiting. She doesn’t say a thing about Jake or Liz or Jessica. Doesn’t even ask about the gym. Suits me fine. I don’t want to speak to her though I’m supposed to ask her to bring in a pair of shoes. Cathy was quite specific. It has to be a pair.
Finally Mum leaves to go to the bathroom. I write a message to Jessica but can’t bring myself to send it. Too many feelings at war. Mum blames her. Obviously. Maybe I should blame her too but when I saw her something grabbed me inside. I pick up my iPad and start surfing random stuff. And then I see it. A headline. My mouth goes all dry.
HORROR TEEN SMASH – A-LEAGUE HOPEFUL LOSES LEG.
There’s a picture. I can see the number plate. Dad’s car, his beautiful red Commodore. It’s on its side, wedged in a culvert of terraced sandstone rocks. All smashed up. I can hardly bear to look. I scroll down from the photo to read the article underneath. Then the comments. How could people write this stuff?
‘What are you reading?’ Mum asks, coming back into the room.
‘Nothing,’ I say and slam the cover shut.
143 Chapter 9: Dylan
‘How do you deal with all the staring?’ I ask Megan.
It’s after lunch and she has taken me out for a coffee. Sounds like no big deal but with me in the wheelchair with my half a leg and her sitting next to me with her half an arm, we certainly get some stares.
‘Good question,’ she says with a sigh.
‘Do you ever get used to it?’
‘I’ve had it all my life but I’d have to say I still get sick of it. I get so many people ask what happened to my arm. Mostly they’re just curious and I politely explain I was born with it this way. Kids especially want to know. It’s their parents that get embarrassed. But if it’s the tenth person to ask me about my arm that day, by then I’m pretty over it and not so patient.’
‘Do you ever try to hide it?’
‘I used to, especially when I was a teenager but this length arm is pretty hard to hide. Legs are easier. You can just wear trousers so you can choose if and when you want to hide or reveal.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.’
‘You’d be surprised what you can get used to,’ she says. ‘Usually it doesn’t bother me much.’
‘Except when?’
She looks down at her coffee and fiddles with the spoon, the two little fingers on her short arm curled around the top of the cup.
‘Except now and then someone does something that still upsets me.’
‘Like what?’ I ask.
Her fingers tap on the cup.
‘Like when I’m sitting on a train and some guy gets out his phone pretending to text when all the time he’s taking a photo of my arm.’
‘That’s horrible. I’d have wanted to deck him.’
‘Yeah. That’s pretty much how I felt.
144 ‘So what did you do?’
‘I stared him down to embarrass him into looking at me but of course people like that will never look you in the eye. To them you’re a missing body part more than a person.’ She takes a deep gulp of her coffee and it really is so hard not to stare. ‘I’m probably not helping much,’ she says putting the cup down. ‘Things like that don’t happen too often.’ She puts on a bright face and changes the subject. ‘You learn pretty quickly that you’re not the one with the problem… it’s them.’ Reaching across the table she taps me lightly on the hand. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll soon figure out what works for you. Is there anything else you want to ask?’
There is one thing I’ve been wanting to know but I’m not sure how to bring up the subject. In the end I simply blurt it out.
‘I want to know what happened to my foot. Like what did they do with it and where is it now?’ Her blue, blue eyes are looking right at me like a pair of arms ready to catch me when I fall.
‘It’s in the morgue until you give permission to have it cremated.’
‘Oh.’
It’s not the answer I was expecting.
‘Cremated huh?’
‘Some people like to say good bye before it goes,’ she says. ‘You can go and see it or hold a little service.’
I tell her I’ll think about it. Cremation seems so final. I might need some time to get used to the idea.
This is the first time I’ve ever been to a funeral apart from my gran’s. We meet in the hospital courtyard garden, Mum, Dad, Megan the social worker, and me. Megan carries a box carefully under her arm. The box is shiny and black, like a coffin, with roses from our garden on top. It’s four o’clock at the end of a hot day, the sun just dipping behind the building, leaving the courtyard cooler and darker but still much hotter than inside. Under my hand the metal rims of my wheelchair are heating up. My palms are sweaty and I’m starting to wonder if this was a good idea. The plan is for everyone to say a few words, Megan’s suggestion. She’s done this kind of thing before.
‘So my foot’s in there?’ I say pointing at the box.
‘Certainly is,’ Megan says.
145 ‘Is it wrapped up or something?’
‘In a biohazard bag. Part of the regulations.’
Hospitals have rules about everything.
‘You can take a look if you want to,’ she says, handing me the box before I have time to decide what to do.
‘Is it pretty mangled?’
‘Yes,’ Dad says quickly.
‘You’ve seen it?’ He nods. I didn’t know that Dad had seen it. He never said. ‘What do you think I should do?’
‘It’s up to you,’ Dad says. ‘It might be a bit confronting but it might also help you to accept there really was no chance of saving it.’
I weigh the box in my hands, surprised at how light it feels, weighing up which way to go.
‘No. I don’t want to look. I want to remember my foot the way it was.’
As well as the black box Megan has brought a supermarket carry bag. She pulls out two candles and a box of tissues. She places a candle on each side of a wooden bench seat, setting it up like an altar. I put the box in the middle. Mum props a photo in front of the box. I didn’t know she was going to do that. The photo is a close-up shot of my foot just as it’s about to take a kick.
‘When was that taken?’ I ask.
‘Don’t you remember? Under 11’s Grand Final. The shot when you kicked the winning goal.’ Dad has an amazing memory for every goal I ever scored.
‘Yeah, actually… I do.’ We all go silent for a while, remembering. Dad stares off into the distance. Mum stares at a fountain next to the timber bench, one of those balls where water spills from a hole at the top. My eyes keep going back to the same place, back to the photo of my foot.
Megan hands me a lighter and I light one of the candles. At first the flame is weak and threatens to peter out but as the wick burns down a little, the yellow flame takes a stronger hold. I light the next candle and hand the lighter back.
‘Who wants to kick things off?’ I say.
‘Dylan!’ Mum says, shocked. She’s so easy to wind up.
146 ‘What? Can’t I make a joke at my own funeral?’ Now she gives me ‘the look’.
‘Why don’t you go first? It’s your foot,’ Dad says.
‘I wrote some stuff down. It might be a bit long.’
‘Take as long as you need,’ Megan says.
‘Okay, I warned you.’ I pull my speech out my top pocket, unfold it and smooth out the creases. I’ve been working on it at night when I can’t sleep. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write. ‘Here goes,’ I say, taking a deep breath.
‘We had some good times together my left foot and me; kicked a lot of balls, climbed a lot of trees, collected a good share of bindies and a lot of dirt. We jumped into swimming holes, even off a water fall once, which you don’t know about Mum, but we survived okay. We kicked a lot of laps of Westwood Olympic Pool, caught a few good waves at the beach, ran more k’s than I’d like to count. I miss my left foot so badly every minute of every day. I miss lots of little things like jumping out of bed without having to think about it or kicking my shoes off and rubbing my foot on Jig’s fur but the thing I miss most of all would have to be juggling a ball. I thought I would have my foot forever. Never imagined I could lose an actual part of me, the one part I really need for what I want to do and what I want to be. I would do anything in the world to have my foot back, even go for City and give up on United. I want it back so badly but I know it’s gone forever and there’s nothing I can do to change that.’
I turn the paper over since the writing didn’t fit all on one page and at the same time my eyes drift up and I get the full frontal photo of my eleven-year old foot kicking that bright orange ball. I have to take a slow breath to start up again and keep reading the next bit.
‘The doctors told me I nearly died in the accident. I wish I did, until I think about what that would mean. Never blowing out any more birthday candles. Never having any kids of my own. Never listening to any more bad Dad jokes. Never eating Mum’s meatballs again. I guess what I’m trying to say is that being alive and missing a bit of me is really, really hard, but better than not being here at all.’ I look up from the paper. ‘That’s about all I want to say.’ Mum and Dad are standing next to my wheelchair. Mum’s mascara’s not looking too good. ‘Told you it was long.’
‘It was perfect,’ Dad says. Not a very Dad thing to say.
‘Oh Dylan,’ Mum says, breaking away from Dad and giving me a face-crushing hug. The problem with being in a wheelchair is you only come up to everyone’s waist. I hate that so I stand up on one leg to give her a proper hug. She seems so little. I tower over her. My arms wrap all the way around her and easily overlap.
147 ‘Careful!’ she shrieks, like I’m two years old and about to run onto the road and under a truck. Bringing her voice back to normal she says a bit sheepishly, ‘you might fall over.’
‘I’m fine Mum. I reckon I could still pick you up.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ she says nudging me back in my chair.
‘I better say my bit next,’ she says fishing around in her handbag, pulling out a few sheets of paper with lots of tiny writing. Then she folds them back up. Actually, I don’t need these.’ She stands like she is talking at school assembly, her voice quivery and thin, the folded paper shaky in her hand. A mynah bird lands on the fountain balancing precariously on the slippery wet ball, drinking from the stream of water as it spills down the sides. Mum clears her throat and begins.
‘I just want to say that every parent is thrilled and excited when their child takes their first wobbly steps. I can see it now, the white Bonds romper suit that never stayed white for long, your big gummy smile, with two front teeth poking down so you looked like a walrus, arms out to the side tight-rope walker style, the look of determination on your face as you pulled yourself up on the coffee table and took off, into wide open space, chasing after a ball of course. It wasn’t just those first steps. I loved watching every new thing that you mastered, like learning to go down the stairs on two feet instead of your bottom, learning to kick a ball, run after the dog, ride a bike and throw away the training wheels. Now, because of what’s happened, we get to watch all those firsts all over again. No doubt, in a lot of ways it will be harder and tinged with sadness but when we watch you take your first steps with a new leg, when we see you running across the oval or riding down the hill on your bike again we’ll be so proud of you and maybe even more thrilled and excited than we were the first time round.’
I hope she doesn’t expect me to say something. I don’t think I could talk right now. Mum leans over and kisses me on the top of the head. My eyes are focused on the candle slowly shrinking as it burns. Wax is dripping into the cracks of the timber bench but the yellow flame is still going strong.
‘Geez Louise, how am I supposed to talk after that?’ Dad says.
‘I’m sure you’ll find something to say,’ Mum says back. ‘You always do.’
Ain’t that the truth?
‘If you don’t want to say anything that’s okay Dad. You don’t have to.’ I give the impression of letting him off the hook but really I’m not sure I can handle any more... So much sadness in one small space.
‘No, no. I do want to say something but I haven’t written anything down. It’s all here,’ Dad says, tapping his heart with his fist then he grabs my hand and Mum’s hand, squeezing 148 them as he talks. ‘I’ll keep it short,’ he says. ‘We all loved your foot. Maybe I loved it too much for what it could do, how well it could kick or pass or score a goal instead of because it was just a part of you. In my job I see families go through terrible things and I always wondered how they do it, how they survive. Yet somehow they do.’ He gives my hand another squeeze. ‘We’ll get through this… Now can we blow these bloody candles out? The smoke is making my eyes all watery.’
‘Go ahead,’ Megan says, motioning to me.
Dad lets go of my hand. I lean forward and blow them out one at a time. Two puffs of smoke spiral upwards and disappear into the air. I pick off flakes of candle wax from the bench seat with my thumb but some has seeped too deeply into the grain to dig out. Megan picks up the black box. ‘I’m afraid I have to take this back,’ she says. ‘I’ll leave you guys to it. The crematorium will let you know when the ashes are ready.’
I’ve been doing okay until now. I look up at the sky, still bright and blue. It doesn’t seem right.
‘Thanks for organising this,’ Mum says to Megan. ‘It means a lot.’
This is the final goodbye. I don’t look as she walks away carrying my foot in the shiny black box. I insist on wheeling myself back to the ward although I don’t stop Dad from opening and closing the heavy door that leads from the courtyard and back into the corridor. My ribs are definitely feeling better but not up to anything real heavy.
I did not think I was hungry but the smell of dinner tells me otherwise.
‘I can’t wait to get home,’ I say. ‘I’m hanging out for a bowl of your spaghetti and meatballs.’
‘Gee thanks,’ Mum says. ‘And here’s me thinking you were missing me but really it’s the meatballs.’
‘Your meatballs are the best. Anybody would miss them.’
‘Such flattery. I can bring you some in.’
‘That would be great.’
I like it when we talk about normal stuff. I want life to be normal again. There’s no reason most things can’t get back to the way they were. Once I have my new leg and get walking again I can get my life back. If I think it enough, surely I will believe it and surely it will be true.
Back in my room my meal is waiting on the tray over the bed.
149 ‘Did you order the chicken?’ Bill says. ‘It’s not bad. Not as good as KFC but not much can beat the Colonel.’
Mum and Dad leave for home, a moment that always pulls me in two directions— relief for some time on my own, and dread for the lonely hours ahead. Bill likes to chat but snores so loudly it keeps me awake at night and what seems possible and hopeful in the busy daylight hours is another thing entirely at two a.m. I sit up in bed to stretch out my stump, pulling the tray in closer. The roast chicken aroma is making my mouth water. I lift off the green plastic cover; pick up the fork ready to tuck in.
My stomach churns.
It’s a leg.
150 Chapter 10: Dylan
Five of them. I hear them coming down the corridor and pick out the voices before they hit the room; Nick, Jay, Baz, Cody and Spike, same core guys from school that I’ve been playing with for years. I’m sitting up on the side of bed, just finished dinner. Got my new shrinker on so at least the stump’s covered. Nick, as usual, leads the way. When they walk in the room and see my leg there’s a brief look that passes across all of their faces. It’s a mix of shock and horror. No surprise there. It’s the same way I felt when I first saw my leg, but there’s also something else no matter how much they try to hide it.
I pretend I don’t see it although it churns me up inside. Nick is the best actor and recovers the quickest.
‘Macca!’ he says. ‘Good to see ya, you didn’t half give us a scare.’ He gives me knuckles and goes for our usual slap on the back. I have to block his hand before it connects.
‘Gotta be a bit gentle. The busted ribs aren’t all mended yet.’
‘Geez sorry mate. I didn’t realise.’
‘Good one Nick,’ Bas says. ‘Trust you to put your foot in it.’
The look on Baz’s face is just priceless when he realises what he just said.
‘Thanks Baz. Thanks a lot,’ I say. ‘Real sensitive.’
‘I’m so sorry man.’ The poor guy looks like he just ran over my dog. I could let him squirm a bit longer but I’m not that much of an arsehole. I keep the hurt look on my face just a little longer before I let him off the hook.
‘Don’t worry about it. I was only… pulling your leg,’ I say with a ‘ba-boom’.
‘Ohhhhh,’ Spike groans. ‘You had us going for a while.’
Everyone starts laughing and the awkwardness clears. What I’ve noticed is that my amputated leg is like a big fart in the room. Everyone knows it’s there but no one wants to mention it until the owner of the fart, namely me, makes light of it and suddenly it’s okay. Cody finds my little boomerang ball and starts pinging it into Jay’s back. Jay turns around and does a header.
‘That’s the first time I’ve seen you do a header,’ Nick says and the whole room agrees. Very loudly. From that point on it feels like we’re back to normal. My friends are still my friends and we say the same old shit. I wouldn’t want it any other way. They all crowd around;
151 Bas settles himself in the armchair, making himself at home. Nick perches on the armrest and fiddles with the stack of get-well cards. Spike parks his butt next to me on the bed. Jay and Cody stay standing, mucking around with the ball.
‘So when are they letting you outta here?’ Spike says.
‘In a few days with a bit of luck. The ribs and spleen have held things up but I get my new leg hopefully tomorrow and then I can do rehab as an outpatient.’
‘That’s good,’ Nick says.
I can see Spike looking down at my stump and I know he’s itching to ask questions. Pity, I hate, but curiosity, I can live with. ‘Want to take a look?’ I say.
‘Do you mind? I’ve never, like, seen one before.’
‘An amputation?’
‘Is that what I’m supposed to call it?’
‘It’s called a residual leg. Or a stump. Or just a leg.’
‘Stump, like in tree stump?’
‘I hadn’t thought about that before but it’s the same concept. The stump is the bit that’s left when your leg is cut off same as when a tree’s cut down.’
‘What’s the funny rubbery thing on the end of the…stump?’ Spike asks saying the ‘stump’ word like it’s made of glass.
‘It’s called a stump shrinker. It’s silicon though it looks like rubber. It helps the wound to heal and keeps down the swelling. It’s better and easier than using bandages. It just peels on and off,’ I say.
‘I’m glad you explained all that,’ Jay says. ‘I thought it looked like a great big condom.’ Of course the whole place breaks up after that.
Nick gives Jay a tap with his foot. ‘A thing that size would have to be a condom for a donkey,’ he adds and we break into fits of laughter again.
I grab my side with my pillow, trying not to wince too much. It’s good to have a laugh but it’s still really painful. ‘Thanks guys,’ I say. ‘That’s gonna give me all sorts of wrong images every time I take my shrinker off.’
‘We aim to please,’ Nick says with a shrug.
There’s a bit of a conversation lull; not surprising after topics like that. The only sound is the ping, ping, ping of my boomerang ball against the palm of Cody’s hand. I get the distinct
152 impression Spike would like me to take the shrinker off and see the actual stump and for a fraction of a second I’m about to do it, show off my scar and let them see the whole thing in all its glory. Yet when it comes to the crunch I can’t do it.
‘So does it hurt much?’ Bas says.
‘A shit load,’ I say. I’m not gonna lie. ‘But it’s slowly getting better.’ I flick the top of my shrinker. ‘My little “donkey-con” here has helped a lot.’
‘Donky-con. Not bad. I like it,’ Bas says.
So now my shrinker has a new nickname. I’ll have to be careful I don’t blurt it out in front of Cathy. Then again, she’d probably laugh. I’m sure she’s heard far worse.
‘So when you get your new leg you’ll be able to walk around and stuff?’ Spike asks.
‘Once I get the hang of it. People with a below-knee amp run marathons and climb Mount Everest and pretty much do anything they want.’
‘Play football?’ Jay says.
‘That’s what I’m planning.’
‘Good. We need you back on the school team. We don’t want to lose to those North Shore wankers in the State Cup.’
It’s hard to tell if he really believes it or he’s just saying it to make me feel better. I want more than anything to get back on the pitch, more than anyone could ever know but I really don’t know if I can do it.
‘Until I get my fitness back I could always go in goals,’ I say.
‘Hey. That’s my position,’ Nick protests.’
‘Exactly, I couldn’t kick any worse with one foot.’
At this point, before Nick can do his full fake indignant act, a nurse sticks her head around the door.
‘Visiting time finishes in ten minutes,’ she says. ‘Dylan needs his beauty sleep.’
‘That’s for sure,’ Nick says getting me back for my goalie crack.
Cody fishes his keys out of his pocket.’ You heard the lady,’ he says. ‘We should make a move.’ They all promise to visit again, but I tell them to visit me when I get home which will be real soon.
I don’t want them to go back and tell everyone I’m miserable, so I tell them how great it is to see them, keeping up the whole positive, this-won’t-slow-me-down act. I want my mates to
153 treat me like normal. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. I know it will take time for them to get used to how my leg looks but I can’t handle their misery on top of all my own shit.
Nick hangs back behind the others, hands fiddling with the zip on his hoodie. Obviously there’s something on his mind. One thing being an amputee gives you is super-sensitive radar but it doesn’t take a genius to figure this one out.
‘What’s up?’ I say, giving him an opening.
‘There’s something I really need to say.’
‘Shoot,’ I say. ‘Fire away.’
Nick pulls his hoodie zip right up and plunges his fists into the pockets. ‘What I want to say is that I’m really sorry. If I didn’t have that stupid party this wouldn’t have happened. I feel like it’s all my fault,’ he says, fists grinding deeper into his pockets.
‘I’m sure it wasn’t your fault but I don’t remember anything about that night.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘Oh. I didn’t realise.’ Nick’s hands lift out of his pockets and he’s just about to say some more but Spike comes back right at that moment.
‘Are you coming?’ Spike says impatiently.
‘Yeah sure,’ Nick says, chasing after Spike but before he runs out the door he taps the edge of my table. ‘Talk later.’
‘Later…’ I say, no one even mentioned the accident or all the crap in the news. I sink back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling, scrunching up the blankets in my fist while my mind races and leaps to a million conclusions. Maybe someone knows something and they’re not telling me? Maybe everyone knows and they’re keeping something back. Maybe I’m just being paranoid and there is nothing to know. There’s no point asking Mum or Dad. I need to do my own investigating but it’s a bit hard when they still won’t leave my wheelchair by my bed.
‘Bill,’ I yell. ‘Can I borrow your wheelchair?’
‘What’s up bud?’ he says.
‘I need to go out for a while and I know they won’t let me go on my own.’
‘Okay. If you think you can push it. Be my guest.’
‘We’ll soon find out.’ Life would be so much easier without the busted ribs. For a second I contemplate trying out Bill’s crutches but it probably would be too hard just yet so I
154 furniture hop across the room and slide into his wheelchair. It’s a nice light sports model. I find I don’t really need to use my left arm that much, more to steer than anything and it works fine, even easier than my one-arm chair which is much heavier and more cumbersome than Bill’s.
‘Do you mind if I ask where you’re going?’ he says.
‘To see Jake. They’ve moved him to a ward.’
‘Okay. I’ll cover for you if anyone comes looking.’
‘Thanks Bill. You’re the best.’
It’s not easy to sneak away in a wheelchair in one way because you are easy to spot but in another way it’s pretty simple. The wheels glide silently and a wheelchair is not exactly an unusual sight around here. I make it out the ward without a hitch, up the lift, all the way to the neuro ward. I don’t even have to ask what room Jake’s in because I hear some of Liz’s good old Irish music playing and all I have to do is follow my ears. By the time I burst into the room I’m pretty worked up. And then when I see Jake sitting up in bed looking almost normal, it’s all I can do not to turn into a blubbering mess.
‘Well look what the cat dragged in,’ Liz says.
Jake gets this grin on his face and says, ‘Fate: protects fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise.’
Anyone who didn’t know Jake would think the head injury had scrambled his brains but as soon as he says that line I know his brains are fine. Only Jake would spout a Star Trek quote just after he nearly died.
‘You’re such a dickhead,’ I say.
‘Then I guess that makes us fools,’ he says with the grin still on his face. He tries to sit himself further up in bed. It’s then I notice his arm is all bent up and stiff and only one leg works. Liz has to help him a bit.
‘Last time I saw you there were tubes up your nose and you couldn’t talk. It did have its good points,’ I say.
‘Last time I saw you,’ Jake starts then pauses, a puzzled look on his face. ‘Well, I don’t really remember the last time I saw you. When was it?’
‘ICU. I came to visit. So you don’t remember?’
‘Only in my dreams.’
‘Do you remember the accident?’
155 ‘No.’
‘Me neither. The party?’
‘Not a thing. Though apparently I was off my face.’
‘Says who.’
‘Everyone who was there. Haven’t you checked back on Facebook?’
‘Not that far,’ I say, not wanting to admit that after one quick look I’ve been avoiding Facebook. I hate being the topic under discussion.
‘Do you want a seat?’ Liz offers.
‘No thanks, the wheelchair is fine.’
She gives me a funny look. ‘I said do you want a sweet?’
‘I do,’ Jake pipes up. ‘Butterscotch.’
‘Your favourite.’
‘My favourite,’ he says. ‘I remember that.’
I take one out of the roll of Werthers and we both sit and suck for a while. I turn the sweet over and over on my tongue. I don’t know about Jake, but I am thinking back to when we were little kids and we ate two whole packets of Werthers that he nicked from his Mum’s stash and when Liz caught us I swallowed too quickly and nearly choked and Liz did the whole Heimlich manoeuvre thing. Our eyes meet and from the glance we exchange I know he is thinking the same. We’ve been friends so long, we don’t need to talk. I know what he’s thinking. He knows what I’m thinking. So many memories we have are shared. There’s some things he remembers better than me, some things I remember better than him. If neither of us remembers, it’s not important. Except for this. This one thing that nearly killed us and neither one of us can remember a damn thing.
‘I start at the gym tomorrow,’ he says.
‘I don’t get it. I always drive,’ I say.
‘You were pissed too,’ he says.
‘The gym’s good,’ I say. Two conversations at once but we both can follow. Some of the pieces are falling into place.
‘So that’s why Jessica was driving,’ I say.
‘Why don’t you ask her?’ he says. ‘All I know is what I’ve been told. Apparently we got our wires crossed about who got to drink and who got to drive.’
156 ‘And so she did?’ I say.
‘And here we are,’ Jake says.
‘How are you going?’ Liz says, changing the subject and giving me one of her intense Liz looks. She has a way of staring you in the eyes, searching out your secrets. I guess you get good at that stuff when you have five kids.
‘Pretty good,’ I say. ‘I have the first fitting for my leg tomorrow. You might see me down in the gym.’
‘Will your mother be there?’ she asks.
‘Probably. She usually comes in the mornings and evenings and Dad in the afternoon.’
‘Jake’s right you know, you should talk to Jessica.’
I shift uncomfortably in the chair. ‘That might not be easy.’
‘I know,’ Liz says giving me another one of her famous looks. ‘But nothing important ever is. I know your mother blames her but what about you?’
‘I don’t know what to think.’
‘So talk to her.’
‘I plan to,’ I say.
There’s just one problem with my plan.
How do I talk to Jessica and keep it from Mum?
157 Chapter 11: Jessica
Back at school was the last place I wanted to be and yet, here I was. Only a week since it happened. The longer you leave it the harder it will get Mum insisted. Easy for her to say. This new responsible parent thing was really getting stale.
I leaned against the grey cinder-block wall, my backpack beside me on the asphalt, right arm in its sling, my stomach a hive of nerves. Tamara and Lee promised to meet me behind the senior’s toilet block so where were they? They should have been here ages ago. I was just about to blow the last of the credit on my phone and blast my so-called best friends for letting me down when a text message from Tamara came in. Sorry. Bus broke. B late.
If they didn’t show up soon I’d have to go it alone. As if on cue the buzzer for roll call sounded. Peering around the corner of the toilet block, I scoped the path I’d have to take. One Jessica Wilkinson against the whole of Westwood High. The odds weren’t exactly stacked in my favour. Slinging my backpack over one shoulder, I ripped my hair-tie out, ponytail abandoned for the safety of hair covering my face. My heart started pounding. I can do this. I can do this, I kept telling myself as I brushed the dirt off my skirt and stepped out from behind where I was hiding.
First I had to make it across the covered outdoor area, which at the best of times was like swimming downstream against the salmon. Keeping my sights set on the science block up ahead, I could feel heads and eyes all turning my way. Out of the corner of my eye I saw people talking behind their hands, pointing and whispering, bodies parting around me then closing in behind, stares and comments being hurled at my back like so many stones.
Funny how I used to be one of the invisibles tiptoeing around the edges at school. I was half-hoping that nothing had changed but who was I kidding? That was never going to happen now. The big problem was not just what I had done. The big problem was who I had done it to.
Dylan.
Soccer star.
All-round nice guy.
Deputy Principal’s son.
By the time I got to roll call I was already late. There were hardly any vacant seats apart from a few up the front of the room and wouldn’t you know it, Mr Hardy (probably trying to be
158 nice), took one look at my sling and pointed out a chair, even asking one of the boys to carry my bag.
Please God save me from people trying to be helpful! Mr Hardy couldn’t have picked a worse seat. It was right in front of Lucy Hamilton and a few of her group. As I sat down, someone let out a hiss. I did not imagine it but no way was I going to turn around or react. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Roll call dragged on at the best of times but today it was excruciatingly slow. Being a Wilkinson meant I was right near the end and by the time Mister Hardy called my name my throat was so dry I could barely squeak out a ‘here’.
At last the class got up to leave. Lucy Hamilton sprang out of her seat and picked my bag up from the floor.
‘I’ll carry that for you,’ she said ever so nicely, ‘since we both have Ancient History next.’ Once we were out in the corridor and out of sight of Mr Hardy, Lucy turned to me with a smile. ‘I have to go to the bathroom before class,’ she said, taking off and racing ahead leaving me empty-handed. Ancient History was in the next building, up two flights of stairs on the third floor, so I should be grateful not to have to carry my bag but past experience had proved that you could trust Lucy Hamilton about as much as a brown snake.
Making my way up the stairs some boys shouldered past, one tripping when he came level and jostling my broken arm. He was all apologetic but it felt kind of deliberate. It was one of Dylan’s football friends. Spike.
At last Tamara came rushing over to meet me.
‘You got my message?’
‘Yeah thanks. What happened?’
‘Flat tyre. We had to wait for another bus and all squeeze on. Where’s your bag? I’ll carry it for you.’
‘No need. Lucy Hamilton took it ahead for me.’
‘Lucy? Are we talking about the same Lucy?’
‘Yeah. It did seem way too nice.’
‘Well maybe she feels a little bad for you after all that’s happened.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Or she’s doing it to suck up to the teacher.’ That was the more likely option. Tamara helped to settle my nerves by chatting on about school stuff as we made our way to class. Having Tamara walking next to me gave me a mental and physical shield. I wasn’t alone. Someone was on my side because sides had definitely been drawn. All the self-righteous fingers of social media blame were pointed directly at me.
159 Lucy was busy reading a textbook by the time we made it to class. I walked up to Lucy and started to thank her for bringing my bag, but before I could finish the sentence Lucy clapped a hand over her mouth.
‘Oh no! I clean forgot. I hung it up when I went to the toilet and I must have left it there. Oops. Sorry.’
Yeah right. I kept a blank face although I was churning inside, torn between wanting to burst into tears and giving Lucy a good hard kick in the shins.
‘I’ll go get it,’ Tamara said, giving Lucy a filthy look. Tamara was all for getting the bag straight away but Miss Ellis came in and made us all sit down.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘We can get it later.’
The lesson was about the trial of Socrates. Just the thing to cheer you up: a guy sentenced by his peers to death by hemlock. At least it was quick. In high school they have far more brutal methods of execution. Death by a thousand slow cuts.
After class, we hurried to the girls’ toilets as quickly as my broken arm allowed. It still hurt if I moved too fast. Lee met up with us on the way. We found my bag in the very end cubicle, hanging on a hook, all unzipped and flapping open, books and notepads spilt all over the floor. That was bad enough, but true to form Lucy had one more surprise in store.
Somehow, my lunchbox had ‘fallen’ from my bag. Smack in the middle of the toilet bowl. The lunchbox lid was snapped open and it sat there half-submerged, half-floating, the soggy plastic wrap around my sandwiches not exactly a promising sign. Tamara reached in to fish my lunchbox out, holding it up to drip for a moment.
Lee pointed at the toilet and shrieked.
‘Oh crap,’ Tamara said dropping my lunchbox which cart wheeled onto the tiles, sending water and who knew what flying across the room.
‘Exactly,’ Lee said. ‘How disgusting.’
‘I should have known she’d do something like this.’ I was so horrified and angry I was shaking. The lunchbox wasn’t the only thing lurking in the toilet bowl.
‘What do you want to do?’ Lee said herding me away from the scene of the crime.
‘Throw it in the bin.’
‘Why don’t you throw it in her face?’ Tamara said, picking the lunchbox up off the floor with a wad of paper towels and dropping it into the rubbish bin by the door. Lee wrapped an arm around me, coiling her other arm through my elbow.
160 ‘You should report her. That’s bullying.’
‘No. That would only make it worse. The best thing I can do is ignore it. Bullies feed on getting a reaction. Half their fun is watching you hurt.’ No matter how much it hurt I would never let on.
I knew coming back to school was never going to be easy. I expected no one but Lee and Tamara would speak to me. I expected the whispers and snide remarks. I was quite prepared for open hostility and to be called every name under the sun but I didn’t expect it would get quite this bad so soon. How naive could you be?
‘Look, I don’t want you two being dragged into this. It could get pretty ugly. Everyone blames me for what happened so you really don’t want to be seen with me.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Tamara snorted. ‘You weren’t the one who got drunk. You were the one trying to help out.’
‘We’re your friends,’ Lee said. ‘We’re not going to let Lucy run you out of school. She’s such a two-faced bitch.’
Lee then proceeded to sort all my books, smooth out the crumpled papers and neatly reload my bag.
‘Is my phone in the side pocket? Mum will kill me if I lose that phone.’
Lee hunted through all of the pockets while we watched with mounting anxiety. Sudden sinking feeling only goes a tiny way to describe it.
‘It’s not there,’ Lee said.
‘Is it still turned on?’ Tamara said.
‘I think so.’
‘We’ll soon find out, Tamara pulled out her own phone and dialled my number. A few seconds later came the sound of a muffled ring tone.
‘Hear that?’ Tamara said.
‘It’s coming from the toilet,’ Lee said.
‘But I checked in there,’ Tamara said. ‘I’ll go back and check again. It could have fallen somewhere.’ Once she was in the cubicle she called my number again.
‘Found it,’ she said a minute later. ‘But I just can’t quite reach it’
‘It wasn’t in the toilet too?’ I blanched at the thought.
‘No. It wasn’t in the toilet.’
161 ‘Where is it?’ Lee said.
‘Do I have to spell it out? Use your imagination. How many places are there to stash something in a girl’s toilet?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lee said. She wasn’t exactly the quickest on the uptake.
‘The sanitary bin,’ I said.
‘Bingo.’
‘Oh gross. Total bitch. You know I can still do a mean karate throw if you want me to?’ Lee said.
‘Don’t worry Jess, I’ll go get the cleaner and tell them the phone accidentally got dropped in,’ Tamara said. ‘Meet you at lunch at our usual spot. Hurry up or you’ll be late for next class.’
Next class I sat up the back on my own and heard absolutely nothing the teacher said. I kept on thinking and wondering, what would they do to me next? Lunch break couldn’t come soon enough.
I hurried as fast as I could to our usual lunch spot, hoping to get there with at least my dignity intact. Lucy Hamilton waved from across the quadrangle with a big smirk on her face so I waved back pretending everything was fine making sure she could see my backpack. A flicker of confusion ran across Lucy’s face, giving me a brief moment of satisfaction. I almost regretted throwing the lunch box away. Sitting with it on my lap and eating something would have totally messed with Lucy’s head.
Even though I told them to stay away I was so relieved to see the girls waiting for me and minding me a spot. I wouldn’t blame them if they dropped me since disaster seemed to be coded into my DNA and yet rather than run for the hills Lee bounced up and presented me with a chicken burger.
‘Hope you like chilli sauce,’ she said.
Tears welled up when I looked at that burger, ready to take a bite.
‘I thought you liked chilli sauce?’
‘I love chilli sauce,’ I said, half-laughing, half-crying ‘but I love you guys more.’
‘Well dig in,’ Lee said, folding back the paper wrapping so I didn’t have to struggle with one hand. ‘You’re looking too skinny. Don’t want you going all anorexic on us.’
I bit into the soft squishy bun, only eating to not seem ungrateful, but here in our usual spot under the paperbark tree with the warm tasty chicken filling my empty insides, chilli sauce
162 dribbling down my hand and dripping off the bottom of the white paper bag I found out I was hungry after all. Tamara filled us in on what happened about my phone, talking so fast it was hard to keep up.
‘The cleaner wouldn’t help, not his job apparently, so I got some gloves and antiseptic wipes from food tech and then broke into the sanitary bin and fished the phone out.’ With a ‘ta- da,’ she held out my phone. ‘Don’t worry. I also wiped it about twenty million times. Tell you what though, that’s one job I never want to do again.’ We looked at each other and burst out laughing.
‘That’s really ick but really kinda funny. How can I ever thank you?’
‘Easy,’ Tamara said. ‘You didn’t have much credit left, so I put twenty dollars on just so you can download some kick-ass song and play it right in front of Lucy Hamilton. That would really make my day.’
‘I’m so lucky. I don’t deserve you.’ I was getting a bit choked up again which seemed to be becoming a bit of a habit.
Tamara raised her eyebrows. ‘Eat your burger and give me a break.’ We finished lunch, talking about anything and everything except the last few weeks. It almost felt like life was back to normal, nothing bad had ever happened and I was invisible again. And then the buzzer went. I still had the afternoon to get through. Slipping my hand into my pocket, my fingers curled around my phone I imagined Tamara in the bin with her gloves on and almost managed a smile.
When I got home all I wanted to do was lie on my bed and flop, but my mother had cancelled her first singing student and like a sit-com version of the perfect mum was waiting to pounce as soon as I got in the door.
‘How was your day?’ she said taking my bag. ‘I made some cookies. Want to lick the bowl?’
Cookies? She never baked cookies.
‘No thanks. I’m not hungry. I just want a drink of water.’ I hunted for a clean glass in the dishwasher.
‘So how was it? Your day? You didn’t answer.’
‘Not too bad,’ I shrugged.
‘I spoke to the school counsellor. Sure you don’t want some? They’re peanut clusters. Delicious.’
163 ‘What did you do that for?’ I said, turning the cold tap on hard.
‘I think it would help to talk to someone.’
I took one gulp, slammed the glass down and started unstacking the rest of the dishwasher. ‘I don’t need counselling. I can handle things on my own.’
‘Sit down sweetie, I’ll do that.’
Mum steered me to a kitchen stool and took over the unstacking, not taking her eyes off me the whole time. I fiddled with the edge of my plaster, which was loose now the swelling had gone down, locking my face in to not-listening-mode. ‘Why don’t you give it a try?’ Mum persisted. ‘You never know, seeing the school counsellor might actually help. It can be easier to talk to a stranger than people who are close because you don’t have to worry about their feelings.’
Just when I thought she was clueless Mum surprised me with a flash of insight. For a moment I was almost tempted to tell her how bad the first day back had been but just as quickly dismissed the idea. No matter what they tried to do to me I could handle it. I didn’t care what they thought or what they said. Having other people blame me didn’t really bother me. It was nothing compared to how I blamed myself.
I took a few more sips of water and, using my arm as an excuse, disappeared into my own little room, kicking off my shoes and stretching out on top of the purple patchwork quilt that Mum had found in the back of some op-shop in Newtown. At least there was order in here; all my books arranged alphabetically, school folders lined up according to subject, the wall planner neatly filled out, and every assignment’s due date marked with a red star. Picking up my phone, I couldn’t wait to check if the phone credit had gone through so I could talk to my friends again.
It had.
Thanks to Tamara.
And then the banked-up text messages began to come through. Each message different but with a similar theme.
Maimer.
Life wrecker.
You’ll get yours.
Piss off c***.
164 Just as well I was lying down. Each time the text alert sounded I felt my stomach ball into a hard knot. I knew I should turn the phone off.
Who was sending them? Who was doing this? Hardly anyone knew my number.
I snatched up my phone and scrolled through the menus until I found the last sent text message.
And there it was.
Don’t blame me. It wasn’t my fault. Blame Dylan he shouldn’t have got drunk. JW
A message sent from my phone to all these other numbers.
It wasn’t hard to figure out who the culprit was but what proof did I have? No one would believe it wasn’t from me. And now all these people knew my phone number and could send messages back, or ring me up and generally make life hell any time of the day or night. I’d have to change my number. The message alert beeped again. The smart thing would be to ignore it. I picked up the phone and rolled on my side, heart skipping a beat when I saw who it was from.
Dylan.
I sat bolt upright. Oh no! Did they send that awful message to him too? He must really hate me now. Maybe death by hemlock would not be too bad.
NEED 2 TALK. CAN U MEET ME?
P.S. MY PARENTS DONT KNOW.
DYLAN.
I stared at the screen. He wanted to meet me.
I threw my phone down and flopped back on the bed, hugging my old Care Bear pillow to my chest. Closing my eyes, all the images of that night in the car came flooding back and merged with the events of today. It all swirled around in my head: the car, the lunch box, Dylan’s leg. Everything up-ended. A gaping bag. A gaping wound. Blood and screaming and sirens and lights and crowds of people and hostile stares.
I needed to see Dylan, if only to say, I’m sorry, so, so, sorry. I needed a chance to make amends, to let him see I would do anything to help him, to make up for what happened, for wrecking his life. After agonising for a few minutes about what to reply, I finally settled for a message that was short and to the point.
GET CAST CHANGED WED 11. MEET 12.30?
165 My fingers rubbed over the purple velour of my patchwork quilt, hunting for something soft and familiar to hold onto while I waited for his answer.
Thirty seconds later Dylan replied.
PERFECT.C U THEN.
Perfect? Why ‘perfect’?
WHERE?
LWR GRD. COURTYARD GARDEN. DON’T TELL ANYONE.
Don’t tell anyone?
OK. WED 12.30. C U THEN.
I rolled off the bed, my mind spinning. There was no point trying to do any homework now since my concentration was totally shot. I lay on the bed going over and over things in my head. No matter how hard I tried not to think about it I couldn’t stop my mind drifting back to that night, the night of the party, Dylan and Jake and me in his dad’s car.
166 Chapter 12: Jessica
It was weird in the car after the boys picked me up. Jake kept making jokes and being his usual idiot self and all the while leaning closer and closer and staring at my legs out of the corner of his eye. I put my bag between us and tugged down my skirt. At this rate my legs would be covered in Jake-drool by the time we got to the party. Dylan kept glancing in the mirror and I kept pretending not to notice. What an idiot I was to think Dylan might like me. It was obvious now what was happening. He was setting me up with Jake. I was well and truly ambushed. How dumb can you be?
‘Is that booze?’ Jake asked, motioning to the bottle-shaped hump in my bag.
‘Coke.’
‘Perfect. Dylan brought a bottle of rum.’
‘I thought you were driving,’ I said, staring straight at the mirror and waiting for Dylan to glance up. Which he did, ever so briefly, before his eyes flicked back to the road.
‘Driving there,’ he said. ‘Jake’s driving home. We have a deal.’
‘So you two have a deal. What about me? Did you think to ask me if I was okay with this?’
‘We’ll still take you home.’
‘How? What about the one passenger rule after eleven?’
‘We thought Jake could do a shuttle run. He’ll take one of us home first and then the other.’
‘Did you now?’
‘If that’s all right with you,’ Jake said.
Dylan tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Jake rubbed his palm on his leg while I sank in the seat, lower and lower. I didn’t like either option. If Jake drove me home first, Dylan would be back at the party waiting to hear how he went and Jake could make up some bullshit story that would be all over Facebook in minutes. If I went home last that would mean being alone in the car with Jake with plenty of time for detours and me in this stupid short dress with a zip all the way down to Tasmania. When I didn’t answer Dylan started talking again.
‘I’m happy to go home first. I’ve got a twelve o’clock curfew,’ he said. ‘Then you can stay longer at the party,’ 167 ‘Whatever,’ I said crossing my arms. ‘I’m easy.’ Not exactly the best way to phrase it. ‘I meant, it’s no difference to me.’ I shrugged trying to look indifferent and cool about it while all the while I was seething inside. I was so mad at Dylan for not being straight with me, even madder at Jake for not having the guts to ask me out by himself, but most of all I was mad at myself. It was pretty stupid to listen to Tamara and think that someone like Dylan would have the faintest interest in someone like me.
The rest of the drive was an uncomfortable silence that not all the loud music on Dylan’s iPod could fill. I avoided looking up at the rear view mirror and pressed my body right up against the door, handbag clamped firmly between Jake and me; staring out the window at the big houses on this side of town. I thought Dylan’s place was big but some of these were just enormous. Nothing on less than an acre. Big fences and gates and lots of squared-off hedges. Nick’s parents must have been loaded. I was so far out of my league. Mum’s cryptic text message flashed into my mind again. Be Careful. Be careful not to make a complete fool of myself? Too late for that.
The damage was already done.
As soon as we hit the party, I bolted to the bathroom for two reasons: one, to give me some time to think, two, to give Jake the brush-off. It didn’t work. When I opened the bathroom door, there he was, still hovering around, like a dog circling the table for scraps. Was it flattering, desperate or creepy? I was going with creepy. I was also going with Plan B. Find-A- Friend.
‘I promised Tamara to meet up when I got here,’ I said, ‘so I’ll catch you later.’
‘I’ll help you look,’ Jake said as I made to leave.
He really was Mr Persistent.
As we traipsed from room to room in the big sprawling house, he was harder to shake than my own shadow. Unfortunately I didn’t find Tamara, although I did spot Dylan with a bunch of his football mates and that slut Lucy Hamilton pawing at his arm and giggling like she’d already sunk too many Vodka cruisers. Jake was a nice guy and all but he was no Dylan. I tried to give him the hint so many times, but he wouldn’t take it.
‘Enjoying the party?’ he asked, somehow having backed me up against a wall beside a billiard table. A full-size billiard table. Who has one of those in their house?
‘Not really,’ I said and watched his face cave in. Then my inner nice kicked in and I added. ‘I don’t go to parties much. It’s not my thing.’
168 ‘You might have fun if you gave it a chance,’ he said turning on the puppy-dog eyes.
‘Trust me. Parties are over-rated.’
‘How do you know if you hardly ever go?’
Where did I begin to explain? It could take hours, hours that I did not want to spend with Jake. Letting out a sigh I gave it a shot.
‘My mother was in a rock‘n’roll band until I was ten and she had the twins. She was a single mum so I got dragged around to all their gigs.’
‘That sounds awesome.’
‘Yeah real awesome. Hours driving from gig to gig in a clapped out van, trying to sleep in dingy dressing rooms backstage with some groupie only minding you so she can score with the drummer. Counting the bottles of vodka to work out how long the after-party might last and how long before you get dumped back in the one-star motel room with the lumpy bed and your Barbie sleeping bag. Yeah. Parties are awesome.’
‘So why did you come if you hate them so much?’
Good question. Why did I come? I shrugged one shoulder.
‘I thought this one might be… better.’
‘I could make it better.’ Jake said, leaning in closer. He slipped his arm around me and at the same time slipped his tongue down my throat. I was so taken by surprise I couldn’t move for a moment then all I wanted to do was run. I shoved Jake away with my forearms.
‘What was that all about?’
‘Kissing it better.’
‘Back off. That’s not what I want.’
‘Yeah it is.’
‘No it’s not.’
‘Could have fooled me.’ He started to get a hungry look in his eyes that set my radar spinning. I quickly put my half-empty glass of Coke between us. ‘That dress... Your hair... You look so hot.’
‘Hot? Now you mention it, I am really hot. What I could do with is some ice.’
‘Ice?’
‘Can you be a sweetie and get me some?’ Sweetie was the word mum used to get a man to do what she wanted. ‘Thanks so much.’ I practically pushed Jake away and frog-marched him
169 to the kitchen. As soon as he was out of sight, I sneaked outside and hid at the shadowy end of the pool, in between a large pot plant and an over-sized speaker. Something I wasn’t overly proud of but was totally necessary. This was way too complicated. I had no idea how to ditch a guy, let alone ditch him gently when he was supposed to be my lift home. Stupid party.
I peered around the edge of the potted fig. Its trunk was twined the way you see in expensive gardening stores, three strands coiled together like a long thick plait. Two guys I barely knew stared at me from the other side of the foliage.
‘Hi,’ one said, his eyes mentally undoing my zip. The other guy offered me a drag.
‘Want some?’
‘No thanks.’ I recognised the smell instantly thanks to my rock‘n’roll upbringing.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ one of them offered.
‘No thanks. I’ve brought my own.’ I was not going to be stupid twice. It must have been the first toke of the night because they were both still relatively sensible. Funny how I walked past these two a million times in the corridor at school and never got so much as a nod or hello, and yet here they were being super nice and offering to share their stash. The pool was now surrounded by bodies, lots of people I didn’t recognise at all. Word must have leaked out about the party. As the party quickly swelled the music cranked up louder, which made standing right next to a speaker a conversation killer, not to mention, a form of ear drum torture, so making an excuse about meeting someone I went in search of a quieter place to hide out.
For the moment I couldn’t see Jake but I spotted Dylan in the middle of a group, beer in hand, watching the football on a giant TV. Typical sports nuts. Who goes to a party and watches the football? It was then that I noticed it was Dylan’s team playing, The Marlins. That explained a lot. I was probably one of the few people that knew he was offered a contract to start with them straight away, but his Mum chucked a fit about him leaving school early and he signed a deal to fit training around study until he finished his final exams and could play full time. There were all sorts of rumours flying around that he was holding out for a better offer from another club, but there was no way Dylan would play for anyone but the Marlins. He’d told me all about it when I was helping him with some chemistry. From across the room I noticed that although he seemed to join in the conversation his eyes actually never left the screen. While he watched the play, his body moved ever so slightly, mirroring each kick, anticipating each tackle, not even aware he was doing it. Fascinated I made the mistake of standing there too long.
‘Your ice melted,’ Jake said, sliding up behind me. He was more persistent than a curry fart.
170 ‘Oh. Sorry. Forgot about that.’ It sounded lame but I was done with being nice. Clearly nice wasn’t working.
‘So where were we?’ Jake said, resting one hand on the wall and leaning in closer. Not that again. I took a step sideways looking desperately for another escape route. Thankfully, I spotted Tamara walking into the games room and frantically waved her over.
‘Oh my god, Jess, you look amazing! I love your dress!’ Tamara put one hand on my shoulder. I grabbed her hand and reeled her in.
‘Excuse us,’ I said to Jake, dragging Tamara a few metres away.
‘Where have you been?’ I hissed.
‘Dancing. And looking for you. Where’s Dylan? I thought you two…’
‘You thought wrong. He just wants to watch football and write himself off.’
‘You don’t look too lonely.’
‘That’s the problem,’ I wailed. ‘You have to save me’.
‘Why? Jake’s pretty cute. You two would make a great couple.’
I rolled my eyes at Tamara. ‘Give me a break.’
‘Come dancing then.’
‘I can’t dance in this dress.’
‘In that dress you won’t have to dance. Just stand there and bounce a bit.’ I pulled a face back at Tamara.
‘Please. I need your help.’ Holding a glass full of ice, Jake sidled back over.
‘Thought you might want some more,’ he said, emphasising the ‘more’ with a glint in his eye. He tipped some ice into my glass, spilling a cube down the front of my dress. I let out a squeal as the ice hit my boobs, grabbed my chest and flicked it away.
‘Dance floor,’ Tamara said, grabbing me by the hand and towing me to the centre of the sweaty throng. Jake followed. Of course. ‘I see what you mean,’ Tamara said under her breath. ‘Don’t worry. Leave it to me.’
Coming through with flying colours in the BFF department, Tamara kept Jake busy with her best dance moves, wedging herself between me and him if he angled in too close. Gradually I was able to edge my way to the outside of the crowd, mumble ‘bathroom’, take a turn in the opposite direction and make my getaway up the stairs. It’s hard to tiptoe in boots but somehow I managed the impossible. Just why I was tip-toeing I couldn’t say, but it seemed the
171 appropriate thing to do in someone else’s house with thick cream carpet all the way up the spiral staircase and doors fanning off in all directions. My aim was to be as far from everyone as possible. I tiptoed to the door farthest away from the top of the landing, knocked twice, just in case I was interrupting something, turned the handle and slowly pushed it open.
Dylan was sitting on the edge of a king-size bed, the kind you see in a Harvey Norman catalogue, all matchy-matchy covers and a litter of perfect pillows.
‘I thought you were watching the football.’
He pointed up at the wall to a screen tucked away in a cabinet. ‘I am. It was too crowded down there.’
‘What happened to wanting to party? Or was that just an excuse?’
‘I am partying,’ he said holding up a half-empty bottle of bourbon and a plastic cup. ‘Excuse for what?’
‘Not telling me you were setting me up with Jake.’
‘Oh that. I meant to explain. I just didn’t know how to bring it up.’
‘That’s a really pathetic excuse’
‘Sorry.’
I stood right in front of him. ‘Oh no. You don’t get off that easily. I’ve spent all night trying to avoid him and when that didn’t work, trying to give him the brush off until I finally ran up here when he wasn’t looking. I feel really mean.’
‘He’ll be fine. Believe me, Jake’s got a thick skin. If it’s any consolation, can I t-tell you a secret?’ he said, slurring his words more than a bit.
‘So what’s this big secret?’
‘Well’, he said, swaying ever so slightly. Yep. He was drunk. ‘Actually… I’m hiding too.’
‘From all your fans?’
He was too far gone to pick up on sarcasm.
‘Don’t tell anyone… but I’m hiding from…’
‘Lucy Hamilton?’ I said, finishing the sentence for him. ‘Serves you right.’
We both burst out laughing. ‘So what do we do now?’
Dylan flicked the remote control in his hand to another channel.
172 ‘Wanna watch a movie?’ He patted the space next to him on the bed. ‘Plenty of room.’ That had to be an understatement, the bed was huge.
‘I better take these off.’ Sitting on the edge of the bed the other side of Dylan I leaned down to pull off my boots, conscious of Dylan’s eyes on my legs. I should have put leggings on. It was awfully hard to pull a pair of boots off in a tight short dress no matter how stretchy it was.
‘Want some help with that?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said tugging at the left one. It came off easily but the right boot had other ideas. As I bent down to loosen the laces Dylan leaned down at the same time, bringing us head to head.
‘It needs a good pull,’ he said grabbing my heel in one hand but in his slightly wonky state he misjudged the amount of force needed. As the boot came off in his hand he fell backward onto the floor dragging me with him. I landed on top of Dylan’s spreadeagled body just as the door handle turned. We both looked up. An unspoken ‘uh-oh’ passed between us. I rolled off him and we scrambled to our feet, quickly resuming our previous TV-watching position on the bed.
Lucy Hamilton stood at the doorway, pink-painted fingernails planted on her hip.
‘Busted,’ Dylan said in a very loud whisper, while I tried and badly failed to suppress a giggle.
‘There you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
Lucy strode towards him, bleached teeth flashing. She suddenly stopped, acknowledging me with the merest nod.
‘What are you doing in here?’
I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or to Dylan.
‘We were… busy,’ Dylan said with a drunken giggle.
‘Busy?’ Lucy said.
‘Yeah. Busy,’ Dylan said again, pulling me in closer.
‘With her?’ She made her sound like something you’d wipe off your shoe.
‘Her name is Jessica,’ Dylan said. I was so busy cheering on the inside. I was totally taken by surprise when Dylan turned my head towards him and pulled my body in tight. My heart thumped wildly as our mouths collided, and in that startling moment I forgot all about Lucy Hamilton in her little short skirt and bright pink nails. I was only aware of Dylan, his hand
173 cradling the back of my head, fingers threaded through my hair, his arms circled around me, strong and steady and firm. His tongue tasted faintly of bourbon, making my insides swirl.
As we fell back on the big wide bed, scatter cushions tumbling to the floor, Dylan’s hand pushed its way up my skirt. Alarm bells were ringing but they were easy to ignore. We were so absorbed in each other we barely noticed Lucy Hamilton stomp out the room shutting the door with a slam. Later I heard the door handle jiggle but it wasn’t enough to make me turn. One thought in my head looped over and over, don’t stop, please, don’t stop now.
How long we were together I couldn’t be sure. It seemed both like forever and hardly any time at all. In my wildest dreams I could never imagine being with Dylan on a strange bed in the middle of the night, a party thumping below us with the taste of his skin on my tongue and the heat of his hands on my thighs. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to be together and everything else ceased to exist until the outside finally intruded and Dylan’s phone suddenly rang.
He leapt off the bed, scrambling to find it. The sound was coming from somewhere on the floor. It must have fallen but damned if we could find it. Just as the ring tone ceased, I spotted it inside one of my boots. Dylan snatched it up and checked who rang.
‘Shit. It’s Mum. We better go. Look at the time!’
‘What’s the panic?’
‘I’m over curfew.’
Curfew. I’d never had one of those. My mother lived for the day I rolled in at three a.m. although it hadn’t happened yet. I tried to tidy up the bed and the cushions but Dylan dragged me by the arm.
‘Aren’t you going to call her back and explain?’
‘Shit no. She’ll pick I’ve been drinking.’
‘So?’
‘You don’t know my mother. Where’s Jake? He’s got the keys.’
We found Jake getting stuck into the punch.
‘You know that punch was spiked?’ I said.
‘Yep,’ he said sculling his drink. ‘Good. Isn’t it?’
‘What the hell?’ Dylan yelled. ‘We had a deal.’
174 Jake turned his back and poured himself another glass full. Dylan spun him around, grabbing the drink off him and tipping it back in the punchbowl.
‘Now what are we supposed to do you dipshit? You’re supposed to be driving home. You’ve broken our deal.’
‘Don’t call me a dipshit you douche bag. So I’m the only one who breaks deals?’ Jake grabbed the bottle of bourbon from out of Dylan’s hand and took a good long defiant swig. I felt a surge of panic. I knew too well how narrow the tipping point, from happy-drunk to total pain- in-the-arse.
‘Where’s the keys?’ I said to Jake.
‘In myss pocket. Myss front pocket.’
‘Hand ‘em over,’ I said.
‘You’ll have to gets them,’ he smirked.
I stuck my hand in his pocket and fumbled around.
‘Bit more to the centre will do nicely.’ He wiggled suggestively. Tempted as I was to drop him with a nut-cracking twist, I resisted, trying to keep things calm. Keys in my fist, I herded Dylan out the door and towards the car. Jake followed. Drunks are such a pain.
‘I’ll drive,’ I said, shoving Dylan in the front passenger seat. ‘You stay here,’ I barked at Jake. ‘I’ll come back for you later.’
Standing watching the whole thing was Queen of the Bitch Brigade, Lucy bloody Hamilton. Never happy if she wasn’t causing trouble.
‘Told you,’ Lucy said to Jake.
Told him what?
‘She can’t wait to get her hands on his cock,’ Lucy added with a smirk. What the hell was that cow spreading around?
‘I’m coming too,’ Jake said, yanking the back door open and jumping in. By now a small crowd was gathering and I didn’t know what to do.
‘Get out,’ I growled at Jake, hoping he wouldn’t make a big scene.
‘Not moving,’ he said with drunken determination.
‘I can’t take you both. I could lose my license.’
At which point Jake started singing at the top of his voice Take me to church, I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies … So much for the quick getaway.
175 Dylan pulled out his phone with a sigh. ‘I’ll call my Dad. He’ll come get me.’
‘But he’s a cop and—’
‘Don’t worry. He promised.’
While Dylan was on the phone, Jake got louder and more obnoxious, winding down the window and stretching his legs across the back seat.
‘Take me too Jess. Me and Dylan always share.’ He puckered his lips ready for a kiss.
‘More like, Dylan goes first and Jake gets the leftovers,’ Lucy Hamilton called out from where she was standing beside the car, her arm hooked through the arm of Dylan’s mate Nick.
‘Shut up,’ Dylan snapped, his ear glued to his phone.
I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife. Offer me that deathless death. Good God let me give you my life, Jake sang loudly in the background, drawing a crowd like fruit flies to a rotten banana.
‘Dad’s not answering,’ Dylan said. ‘Just take him and come back for me.’ He started to open the door to get out and I pulled him back.
‘I can’t take him on my own when he’s like this.’
‘Let’s just get out of here then. Any more of this and I’ll want to kill him,’ Dylan said.
‘Yeah. Me too. A gag would be good.’
Dylan was still texting, Jake still singing at the top of his voice and the crowd was still hanging around for the finale of the free show. I shuddered to think what Lucy Hamilton would be spreading, apart from her legs of course, but then, who was I to talk?
What the hell. Without looking back, I let out the handbrake and put my foot down, quickly glancing in the mirror, watching the gap widen between the crowd of people and the shiny red car. I’d never driven anything this powerful or this fancy. Oh shit, if I put so much as a little scratch on it…
I flicked the radio on to try and drown Jake out and we were hit by a blast from the seventies, a Kiss song Mum used to cover with her band.
I was made for lovin’ you baby…
Yet another reminder this was Dylan’s dad’s car. Instead of being drowned out by the radio, Jake just sang along, totally off-key, blasting straight in my ears, fist bunched up into a fake microphone, body sprawled across the leather of the back seat.
I was made for lovin’ you baby; you were made for lovin’ meeeee!
176
I was made for lovin’ you baby. You were made for lovin’ me.
*
I fell asleep with that song torturing my brain. Why is it that the good songs never linger; it’s only the bad ones that haunt you until you want to scream. Another whole day of school to get through tomorrow and then it was Wednesday. Wednesday, the day I was getting my plaster changed. Wednesday, the day I’d agreed to meet Dylan. I tossed and turned all through that night and the next one. The dark circles under my eyes I smothered with makeup but no matter what I did I looked a wreck. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t think properly. What should I say? What would he say? How would he feel?
177 Chapter 13: Jessica
I had to wait an hour at the fracture clinic before the doctor saw me for all of twenty seconds, flicked his eyes over the x-ray and told the physio to put on a full cast. Old cast off, new one on. Just like that, all over in fifteen minutes. They churn out casts like they’re pumping out pizzas. I chose pink for my cast, pink being Amy’s favourite colour, not realising quite how pink it would be. We’re not talking a nice pastel Barbie shade of pink here; we’re talking full-on fluoro! The doctor said I could ditch the sling but I was not used to the sight of my bright pink arm as it swung when I walked. I kept it close to my side after the first few wild swings. If I wasn’t careful I could knock some poor person over. Since it was over so quickly I had a bit of spare time to fill, which only meant more time to get even more nervous about seeing Dylan. Maybe this whole thing was a really terrible idea.
There were crowds of people around the coffee shop so I decided to go and find the courtyard and eat my lunch there. It wasn’t easy to find but it was pretty empty, with only a few patients, going by the dressing gowns. An old guy was hanging behind some bushes like a perve but my nose quickly told me he was just out sneaking a smoke. You could smell it a mile off. He had to be about a hundred years old so there was probably no point trying to quit. There was a timber bench on the opposite side of the courtyard which looked like a perfect place to wait. The bench was next to a fountain and partially hidden from view by a large bottlebrush, but I could still see when anyone who came in or out. I dug my lunch out of its brown paper bag— one avocado and vegemite sandwich plus a mandarin—paper bags being more environmentally friendly than plastic wrap. Couldn’t say I felt particularly hungry, but then I hadn’t felt hungry for weeks.
I tried to plan in my head what to say to Dylan but still did not have much of a clue. It all depended on how he reacted. Suddenly a Lilli Pilli tree came alive with screeching and movement, hundreds of birds startled and re-settled, then just as quickly faded back into the greenery to nibble at the pinkish-red fruit. While I chewed my sandwich, thoughts scattered by the birds, a trail of ants marched along the grooves of the timber bench already on the hunt for my crumbs. A dead centipede lay across a crack in the paving. Ants swarmed over the carcass, breaking it up into pieces, carting each segment like a coffin, one little black piece at a time. I was so lost in thought just watching those ants that Dylan was halfway across the courtyard before I noticed.
Now here he was. Right in front of me. What do I do? What do I say? My heart was racing. Standing up to meet him, I went with the first thing that jumped into my head.
178 ‘No wheelchair?’
‘They let me use these for short distances,’ he said, indicating a pair of crutches with gutters where you rest your elbows.
‘So what’s short?’
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Do you want to stay here? It’s not too hot?’
‘I’m fine. I like the fresh air. What about you?’
‘I’m fine too.’
Seeing Dylan upright for the first time was more confronting than seeing him sitting in the wheelchair. The bottom of his jeans was folded up and pinned, his half-a-leg swinging in the breeze. A lump the size of an orange lodged inside my throat. Dylan lowered himself slowly to sit on the bench, leaning his crutches neatly on the end. The front of his T-shirt was damp and his forehead was dotted with beads of perspiration.
‘Are you sure you’re okay? You look awfully sweaty.’
‘Yeah. I’m good. It’s an amputee thing. Less surface area so you sweat more.’ The lump in my throat got even bigger. He was so matter of fact. I looked down at the ants again and started picking at something that was stuck between the cracks of the timber.
‘Wax,’ Dylan said absently.
‘Someone must have lit a candle,’ I said examining the deposit under my nails.
‘Probably,’ Dylan said, tossing some crumbs to the birds. He let out a sigh and I waited for him to speak. Not so much because I thought he should start the questions, more because I did not trust myself to talk.
‘So... How you been?’ he said.
‘Okay, I guess. You?’ No prizes for originality but what do you say in a situation like this?
‘How’s your arm? It looks very…’
‘Pink,’ I shot back, relieved to see it raised the hint of a smile.
‘I didn’t really figure you as a pink kind of girl.’
‘Definitely not, but it’s Amy’s favourite colour.’
‘Pink suits you,’ he said, a teasing tone in his voice. ‘You should wear it more often. Does it hurt much?’
179 ‘A little,’ I said. ‘What about your leg? Does it hurt much?’ How dumb a question was that? I couldn’t begin to imagine how bad it must feel.
‘It did at first but now it’s not too bad,’ Dylan said. ‘The phantom pain is worse.’
‘Phantom pain? I’ve read about that. It must feel weird.’
‘It’s weird all right, but the doctor says it will ease off. They tell me the brain takes a while to adjust to the fact that something is gone.’
Not so strange really if you think about it; the things that are gone causing the most pain. The lump in my throat wasn’t budging. Dylan kicked at a crack in the pavers with his heel, sending ants scattering in hundreds of directions, throwing their neat ordered lines into chaos.
‘This is going to sound crazy,’ he said, ‘but I can’t help thinking that if I could remember what happened it might help my leg to remember too and the phantom pain will go. Stupid huh?’
‘I don’t think it’s so crazy,’ I said, glancing up at Dylan’s face wrinkled into a frown, thinking that my problem is the total opposite. Instead of forgetting, I remembered all too well.
‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you, to help fill in the blanks.’
‘So what do you want to know?’ I said, hitching my bra strap back onto my shoulder. ‘So I know where to start.’
‘Not much. Only that you were driving my car when it crashed. I was in the front and Jake was in the back and we were coming home from the party. Apparently I got pretty wasted.’
‘I wouldn’t say wasted. Just a bit drunk. Do you remember anything about the accident at all?’
‘No. Or at least I don’t think so. I have these strange dreams. Maybe stuff is buried and it might come back.’
‘Do you remember the party?’
‘Not a thing. Jake’s the same.’
‘Yeah I know,’ I said, biting my thumbnail. ‘We’ve talked.’
Dylan picked up my discarded paper bag, scrunching it into a ball. With his right foot he began to juggle it, making the paper leap and turn before he launched it high enough to reach out and catch it with a snap.
‘So,’ he said, ‘how did it happen?’
180 My fingers were curled around the bench. Leaning forward I took a deep breath. If I looked at Dylan I would burst into tears so I looked down at the ants again.
‘I can’t really tell you much. It’s a bit of a blur for me too. All I remember is turning around for a second then when I turned back the car was in the wrong lane and heading for a big tree. I must have pulled too hard to correct and… and we rolled. I’m so sorry. It was so stupid. And that stupid text message that said it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t me who sent it. I’m not trying to get out of taking the blame. You must hate me.’
I scrunched up the hem of my uniform for something to hold, bunching and twisting it, waiting for Dylan to say something. I put my head down so he couldn’t see my face. He started kicking the scrunched-up paper bag again, saying nothing. Eventually he missed a kick and the paper ball rolled away out of reach. I stood up and fetched it, sat next to him and handed it back. Our hands touched briefly but he jerked his hand away, crushing the paper into a tighter ball.
‘I don’t hate you.’
When he said those four words my self-control almost deserted me. I grabbed the edge of the bench, holding it to anchor me, while the ball on the fountain spun around and around.
‘I don’t hate you. I’m just confused.’ He kicked at the paving with his heel again. ‘Why was Jake drunk too? We never do that. We look out for each other. And why didn’t I just call my Dad? He would have come got me.’
‘You did.’
His head suddenly jerked up.
‘What?’
‘You did call your Dad when we found out Jake couldn’t drive. Then when he didn’t answer you sent a text message too.’
‘So I tried to get Dad and he didn’t answer?’
I didn’t want to cause any trouble in Dylan’s family so I kept right on talking.
‘That’s why I drove you home. I was trying to help. I keep thinking if I hadn’t done that, maybe the accident wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have been there in that exact spot at that exact time. And no one would have been hurt. Don’t blame your dad or Jake. You guys have been friends forever. If you want to blame someone, blame me.’
There were only a few centimetres of space between us but I could no more reach across that gap than if we were galaxies apart. I desperately wanted to bury my head in his chest and hug him and kiss him and tell him how I really felt, but there was no point doing that. The only hope I had left was to limit the damage, to try and make up for what I’d already done.
181 I fumbled in my pocket for a tissue and blew my nose.
Dylan’s hand was squeezed tight around the scrunched up paper bag. It was now so compressed it was more flat than round. The fingers of his other hand had found the remnants of candle wax and he was rolling it into tiny balls. He pressed a ball of wax between his thumb and forefinger then swiftly flicked it away.
‘How’s school?’ he said.
‘Not too bad.’
‘Liar,’ Dylan said, catching me by surprise. ‘I’ve seen the comments on Facebook.’
‘I quit Facebook. Just a bunch of trolls. They think they know but they don’t know crap.’
‘And all the newspaper stuff?’
‘I don’t read it.’
‘You’ve been pestered by reporters.’
‘Mum tells them to piss off.’
‘Me too. Well, Mum and Dad do it for me. This is nobody’s business but mine.’
Dylan picked up his crutches and laid them across his lap. The crutches had bright red gutters to rest your forearms in and an even brighter multi-coloured psychedelic pattern all over the stem.
‘Are they hospital ones?’ I asked taking the opportunity to talk about something that wasn’t so hard.
‘Nup. The hospital ones are all grey. Mum found these on the net and bought them for me. She’s become quite the expert on everything to do with rehab. She drives the nurses and therapists a bit mad. You know Mum. Always the organiser. I think she’s bored. I told her to go back to work but she wants to wait until after I come home.’
‘So when will she be back at school?’
‘As soon as I can convince her that I’m injured and not crippled. If everyone would get that through their head it would be a lot easier for me to just get on with it.’
We sat for a while not saying anything, contained within our own thoughts, watching the lorikeets strip fruit from the Lilli Pilli, watching a plane track across the sky and pass the sun; the old smoker finished another cigarette and stubbed it out with the heel of his hand.
182 Dylan cocked his arm back and launched the paper ball across the courtyard, aiming for a bin ten metres away. The paper plopped in dead centre.
‘How was that shot?’
‘What about you? When are you going back to school?’ I asked.
‘Not sure. Depends.’ He didn’t offer any more information and I didn’t want to push. ‘I never thought I’d say this but I actually miss Chemistry. Do you think you could send me some notes and stuff?’
‘Sure but I’ve got a new email account you won’t recognise,’ I said scribbling it down on his hand. Obviously there was no need to explain why I’d changed my account.
‘Great,’ Dylan said standing up with his crutches and swinging his leg, or at least, what remained of his leg. ‘I must be so far behind.’
‘Better get going,’ I said, brushing the last of the sandwich crumbs from my skirt, ‘or I’ll miss my bus.’
‘Bus?’
‘I lost my licence.’
‘Oh. So what about when you have to take the twins to dancing and stuff?’
‘I can’t do it anymore. Mum’s booked them into after school care and taken on more singing students to pay for it.’ Just to add to the guilt. ‘At least now I have more time on my own which is good.’ I hoped I was doing a better job of faking it than I did before. What I didn’t tell him was that my mum needed to take on more students to pay my legal bills and couldn’t afford the girls’ dancing lessons anymore. As we walked across the courtyard, I couldn’t help but notice the sound of his walk, step-tap-step-tap-step-tap, foot then crutches alternately striking the ground.
‘Hey wait up,’ he said. We hovered near the thick glass door, standing at the edge in the heat. ‘There’s something Jake’s mum said that kinda stuck with me.’
‘What’s that?’ Shielding the sun from my face with my hand I looked into Dylan’s deep brown eyes and my heart shifted.
‘She said that you have to live with this as much as we do.’
Something jolted between us like an arc of current, over in an instant but undeniably there, his eyes on mine, stripping my soul naked.
‘So when do I see you again?’ Dylan said.
‘You want to see me again?’ I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice.
183 ‘Sure. Why not?’
‘But what about your parents?’
‘My life. Not theirs.’
I pushed the big glass door and held it open while he crutch-walked inside. The air conditioning hit with a blast of cold air sending a shiver of gooseflesh down my arms.
‘Are you sure? I don’t want to cause any more trouble.’
Looking down the long cold corridor, Dylan replied. ‘I’m not sure about anything anymore. So nothing to lose.’
After turning the corner we parted, the step-tap-step-tap of his crutches echoing down the hall. I had to run to make my bus, leaving me all sweaty and panting before I climbed on board and headed for the back seat. I thought of Dylan going back to his hospital bed, lying under the sheets in a lonely white cocoon, while the low autumn sun slanted through the window of the bus, warming my back with the dying heat of late afternoon.
184 Chapter 14: Dylan
Lying back on my bed looking at the ceiling again. Someone changed my sheets while I was out and they have that stiff, straight-off-the-laundry-trolley feel. Keep thinking about Jessica. What she said. How I feel. Why did I go to that dumb party? Why was I so desperate to get pissed? Why did Jake go and get shit-faced if he was driving? Still way more questions than answers.
The only thing I know now that I didn’t know before is that, like everyone else, my dad let me down.
I start attacking the flowers, yanking them out of fancy arrangements, ripping out ribbons and green stuff by the clump. By the time I’m finished there’s a big pile covering my table, dripping stems, decapitated flower heads and buried thorns. My thumb is bleeding where it was stabbed by a bunch of roses. Not sure what I hate the most: roses with thorns or the big trumpet shape flowers that make me cough they stink so much. I lean on the table and start pushing it across the room, hopping all the way to the hand basin, leaving a trail of slimy water behind. I get to the basin and stop. Using both arms like wiper blades, I swipe everything into the bin, watching the soggy mess plop to the bottom, burying the paper towels under their weight.
‘Having a clean-up?’ Bill says.
‘Something like that.’
He goes back to reading his paper and watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire? I start ripping and tearing up all my cards into tiny little pieces until there’s a huge mound in the middle of the bed. ‘Going to a wedding?’ Bill says.
I look at him blankly.
‘The confetti?’
‘Very funny.’ Picking up a handful from the mound I toss it at Bill. He’s right, it does look like confetti. He doesn’t flinch while I spray him with paper, just keeps filling in his Sudoku like nothing’s going on. I realise I have a slight problem.
I can’t get into bed.
‘Try the pillow slip,’ Bill says. The man’s a genius.
So I pull my pillow out of its pillow slip and stuff the shredded bits of card inside and cart it on the table across to the bin. I do one full load then go back for more. Halfway through
185 tipping out the next load the bin is already overflowing, so I crack the shits and tip what’s left in the pillowcase into the sink and turn the tap on until it mushes down into one big glob. There’s still a pretty big pile left on the bed, so I just stuff what I can into the pillow slip and leave it there.
Mum and Dad both come in after dinner. First thing Mum says is, ‘Where’s your cards?’
‘Gone,’ I say.
‘Gone where?’
‘I wanted to keep them. All those lovely messages and letters…’ Dad’s already spotted the bin and the basin, his cop’s eyes piecing together the evidence.
‘They were my cards, not yours,’ I snap.
‘But…’ she comes back.
‘They had to go.’
Not sure if it’s my murderous look or Dad’s tug on her sleeve that makes her finally let it alone. Then finally she notices that the flowers are gone too and there are petals and bits of paper all over the floor. She starts picking them all up, cleaning up the mess. While she is out of the way I ambush Dad.
‘Can I borrow your phone? I want to see if your carrier gets better reception in here than mine.’
He hands his phone over. I check back through his messages and call log and there they are, the missed call from that night and the unanswered text message. Cold, hard evidence.
I can’t begin to describe how I feel. I’ve always looked up to my Dad. Handing his phone back, I make sure the text message from the night of the party is still showing.
‘So when were you going to tell me about this?’ I demand.
He runs his fingers through his hair and shifts his weight to his other leg.
‘Tell him what?’ Mum chimes in, fresh from picking up the mess on the floor.
‘Go on Dad. Tell her. And while you’re at it maybe you can explain why the message I sent you isn’t on my phone anymore?’ I aim the words like daggers, straight for the throat.
Mum snatches the phone out of Dad’s hand and she reads the message.
CAN U PICK ME UP?
‘When was this sent?’ she says with an edge to her voice.
186 ‘The night of the accident,’ I say.
Mum sinks to the bed with the phone in her hand, back legs buckling like a dog with a tick. I take this as my cue to attack.
‘So Dad, all that stuff about having a Plan B, call me any time and I’ll come and get you was all bull-crap. When I called you didn’t answer. You didn’t come.’ Dad’s head is down. He won’t look at me or Mum.
‘I’m so sorry… I let you down. I put my phone on silent for a while and then I must have forgotten to take it off. I didn’t realise until it was too late.’
Mum rounds on Dad, with barely contained fury. ‘You left your phone on silent! Why the hell did you do that? You never do that.’ Her voice is getting louder and louder. Dad pulls the curtains closed and tries to shush her, which does not go down too well. As if pulling the curtains is going to help? Dad drops his voice so low it makes it hard to catch the words.
‘It was our anniversary. Don’t you remember?’
A look of horror dawns on Mum’s face. ‘You put your phone on silent because we were… Oh my God! So Dylan’s like this because we were having sex! Jesus Mike…’ Dad tries to calm her down but it is so not working. ‘Just when were you planning on telling me about this?’ she slams her bag on my bed sending paper scraps jumping off the sheet.
‘Yeah Dad, when?’
‘When the time was right,’ he says, backing up into the curtain.
‘And when would that be?’ Mum’s not letting up.
‘I thought Dylan had enough to deal with.’ His voice trails off.
My arms are folded and I shake my head.
‘That’s a pathetic excuse. All my life you’ve been telling me to man up and fess up to things. You are so full of it.’
‘But Dylan,’ he starts.
‘I’ve had enough of your shit. Just go!’ I yell and point to the door. He looks back at me like a boxer on the ropes. ‘You heard me. Piss off!’ Normally Mum would get stuck into me if I ever spoke to Dad like that but she turns away refusing to look at him.
Dad yanks the curtains open and heads for the door.
‘We’ll talk later,’ he says, ‘when we’ve all calmed down.’
187 ‘Aren’t you forgetting something,’ I yell after him. ‘You forgot this.’ I throw him the phone and he catches it with a one-handed snatch.
‘Oh Dylan!’ Mum says turning to me with a trembling lip.’ I didn’t realise. How…how did you find this out? Why didn’t you just call me?’
‘Jessica. We’ve been talking.’
‘That girl! As if she hasn’t done enough already. I don’t want you talking to her. You hear me?’
‘Don’t start,’ I say lifting the sheet up over my ears. ‘This is exactly why I didn’t call you. You always over-react. Go bitch at Dad instead of me. He’s all yours.’
Bill is watching an American sitcom on his TV, Modern Family. From under the sheets I hear canned laughter and the echo of Mum’s heels running after Dad down the hall. Under the covers my whole body is shaking, shaking with anger and pain.
The only one telling me the truth is Jessica. She’s the only one prepared to cop any blame. Once I calm down a little I fish out my phone and send her a message.
THX 4 COMING. GOOD TO TALK. IT HELPED.
ANYTHING I CAN DO. JUST ASK, she replies.
There’s a message on my phone from Dad but I don’t open it. I keep my head buried under the covers until Modern Family ends and a whole game of Rugby League goes by. If I didn’t have to sit up to swallow my pills I would have stayed there hoping to use up all the oxygen and slowly suffocate, but the nurse pulls back the curtains. There’s always a curtain Nazi on every shift. If they’re closed, it means I want them closed, not flung wide open. First thing I see is Bill sitting over the side of his bed with his knee bent and stump hanging down. If I did that, Cathy would go nuts.
‘How you doing bud?’ he says.
‘How come you can get away with sitting like that?’
‘I’m a hard case. They’ve given up on me. And it’s mainly the first two years you have to be really careful because that’s when the stump is being shaped. Mine was shaped a long time ago.’ He eases himself into a wheelchair and propels himself the few metres to my bed. I don’t have the heart to tell him to go away even though I want to curl up and go to sleep, but I don’t want to talk about my family meltdown either.
‘How long ago did you lose your leg?’
188 ‘Thirty-two years ago. April 1st. Funny huh? But it makes it easy to remember the date.’
‘So what happened to you? A car accident like me?’
‘I was a coal miner. Underground. In the mine where I worked the ground was always wet. Some are like that, groundwater seeps through the cracks. Coal mines are huge accidents waiting to happen. We had big open containers called a shuttle car that the coal is loaded into. To cut a long story short, someone didn’t connect something properly and my leg got in the way of a shuttle car full of coal. The shuttle car won. I was forty-two, three kids, mortgage, a boat, the whole shebang. They tried to save it. Didn’t work, eventually amputated so I had two long years of being off on compo while the doctor’s phaffed around.’
‘So you went back to work as a miner?’
‘No. They wouldn’t let me do that. Wanted to pension me off, but I had a good boss and he fought to retrain me. Thank God he did because I was hitting the booze, feeling useless, taking it out on the family. I was a real prick to be around. Don’t know why Jan didn’t divorce me. The prosthetics weren’t as good then and I had a lot of trouble with my stump. Still do. Anyway. When I finally got back to work they put me in the training section as the Safety Trainer. There’s nothing quite like pulling off your leg to give old stumpy a scratch to get the message through. Feel free to stand up and stretch your legs at any time, I used to say.’ Bill has a wicked grin on his face.
He picks up my bungee ball and starts batting it into his palm. ‘Things didn’t turn out so bad in the long run,’ Bill continues. ‘I joined the mines when I was an apprentice at sixteen but once I started in training I went and got some certificates and a diploma in OH&S and ended up running the whole training section, which I would never have done if I’d just stayed underground. Life’s funny like that. You can think you have your whole life mapped out and then hit a big road block. It can take a while to find a way to get past it, another path, another way to go around. It’s hard but the new route can even be better.’
He stops talking and pats the end of my bed, putting my bungee ball back down. ‘Enough of the sermon. I need to lay an egg.’ He gives me a wink and wheels himself off to the bathroom. ‘You might miss having those flowers with all the perfume by the time I’m finished in here.’
Bill has a talent for bringing things back to basics. So glad they put me with him.
189 Chapter 15: Dylan
Day 13
7am
Mum and Dad both left messages. Not talking to either of them. I’m guessing Dad slept in the spare room last night. Be interesting to see if they turn up here together.
10.30
Gym sessions kill. I have to walk around this low, square, padded table thing called a plinth. Cathy adjusts the height to match the length of my stump and around and around I walk; right foot on the ground, left leg on the vinyl, getting used to taking some weight. We throw balls and do other things to work on balance and then more ‘walking’ around the plinth. First forward. Then backwards. Cathy loves backwards. Anything that works the glutes.
Sounds easy but after doing it yesterday for a little while, every time I move I find a new pain. Strangely I like it. It’s just muscle soreness. You know it doesn’t last forever. You know you’ll get a payoff in the end.
1.45pm
New devious torture. Physio student attaches contraption to my left leg. It’s basically a big plastic cradle for my stump with an aluminium pole and a foot on the end. The length is adjusted and it’s all strapped on. Then I wheel up to the parallel bars and stand up. Feels a bit weird. The closest thing I can think of is walking on those plastic stilt things when you’re a kid. But it’s great to be back on two legs. Well, sort of on two legs.
But wait…there’s more. Next they strap a resistance band to the bottom of the ‘leg’ thingy and I work my butt with side leg raises and backward leg raises. Three sets of twenty on my first day. I’ll do five sets tomorrow. The stronger your butt, the easier it is to walk so my plan is to have the strongest butt in the world.
4.20pm
Mum turned up on her own. No Dad. First weekend home is going to be a barrel of fun. As well as the Big Fight, also having a fight with Mum and Cathy. I don’t want a wheelchair when I go home. Not now, not ever. I can get around on the crutches or on my knees. Mum has a whole long list of reasons we might need a wheelchair. I told her she can come up with all the reasons in the world but I’m still not having one at home. Her and Cathy both do the we’ll- leave-it-for-now-but-he’ll-come-round-later look. Have I got news for them. I’m not changing my mind. NO WHEELCHAIR. They don’t know how it feels. In a wheelchair people pretend not
190 to see you or treat you like you come from another planet. Unless you’ve spent a day in one you can’t possibly understand what it’s like. Why can’t people stop trying to run my life?
Home for the weekend tomorrow. The Big Fight has blown over but still fighting about the wheelchair. The rehab gym is packed. I’m on some floor mats trying to do a one-arm hover. I get to five seconds and collapse. Jake is watching from his wheelchair.
‘Useless,’ he yells with a big grin on his face. ‘Is that all you got Mackay?’
An old lady practising her sit-to-stands almost misses her chair and falls over.
‘He’s my best friend,’ I explain, which doesn’t help. She looks more confused. ‘We always give each other heaps.’ I roll on my side and start some leg work with Velcro weights strapped to my right ankle and left thigh. At the same time Jake’s physio stands him up at the other end of the parallel bars. His right leg is a bit twisted up and they spend ages getting it flat by rocking from his hips to even his stance. I know all about that weight shift stuff. Cathy drills it into me. Funny how we both have to learn to walk all over again. I never imagined either of us ending up here.
Cathy calls my name and I look up.
Mum is wheeling what looks like a tricycle without any pedals. Jake spots her in the mirror at the end of the bars and yells a greeting to her reflection.
‘Hello Mrs Mac!’
It doesn’t half make her jump. I don’t think she noticed Jake was standing there. She gives him a little wave but seems like she’s on a mission and keeps heading my way with the three-wheeler.
‘What’s that?’
‘A knee scooter. We thought you could try this instead of a wheelchair. I hired it to test out.’
Cathy gives me a demo and shows me how. Then she adjusts it for my height. The trike-scooter-thingy is bright red and has a padded section where you put one knee. The handle bars are high so you don’t hunch over. You ride it just like a scooter, pushing off with your other leg. I get on and do a few laps of the gym.
‘So you like it?’ Mum says.
‘Yeah it’s good. Does it fit in the car?’
‘They fold up really easily so you can take it anywhere.’
191 We go back in the gym and she gives the thumbs-up to Cathy. In the mirror I catch sight of Mum and she is actually smiling. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile since the accident.
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Much better than a wheelchair.’ Jake is watching the whole thing, much to his physio’s frustration, who is trying to keep his mind on the job.
‘Can I have a go?’ he says.
‘Hey, yeah,’ I say. We always used to share each other’s bikes. It’s a bit of a struggle to get him on the thing. Lucky Toby, Jake’s physio, is built. Cathy helps keep Jake’s weak hand on the handlebar while Toby gives him the feel of taking weight through his right knee. Once Jake is all set up they take off, Toby walking behind the scooter, holding Jake by a belt with handles strapped to his waist. Jake is doing the pushing with his good leg and Cathy helps him to steer. ‘Pity your Mum’s not here to see this,’ Toby says to Jake and I notice my Mum tense up.
‘Is that Jake’s phone?’ she asks, pointing to a little pile of belongings.
‘Looks like it,’ I say and she picks it up, takes a few shots and a quick video.
‘For his family,’ she says.
Why can’t she just say it’s for Liz? If Jake and I had a stupid argument like those two, they’d be telling us to grow up and act our age.
After a few slow laps they have to haul Jake off. He’d be going round and round all day if he had his way.
‘Fun hey?’ I say, as he rolls onto the big blue plinth where I am sitting and watching and we give each other a knuckle tap.
‘Awesome,’ he says, ‘but you know what?’
I know by the look on his face what’s coming next.
‘What?’
‘My lap pooped all over yours.’
I burst out laughing.
‘Arsehole,’ I say.
‘Yeah, but a fast one.’
It almost feels like old times.
I don’t know what I was expecting but it doesn’t look any different. I come through the garage on my crutches and there’s a football at the bottom of the stairs right where I left it.
192 That’s a bit of a punch in the guts. Mum’s always nagging me to put my stuff away. Mum looks over at me nervously.
‘I can move it if you want but we thought you wouldn’t want anything changed.’
I nod. My mouth is dry. I want my old life back even the bits that might be hard, the things that remind me I’ve got a long way to go. Next I spot the knee-scooter and I have to take it for a spin. If I rode a bike or a real scooter through the house Mum would have a fit, but she nudges Dad’s arm and they both look pretty happy to see me zooming around the dining room and kitchen. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen them touch since the Big Fight.
I use the crutches to make my way upstairs but quickly figure out it’s quicker to bum- shuffle up the stairs and leave the crutches at the top. Hopefully I won’t need them for much longer. On Monday we go to the prosthetist’s rooms to get my interim leg.
I look through every room of the house like I used to do after coming back from holidays. When you’re a kid it’s like you need the reassurance that all the things you love are still there, that the important stuff hasn’t disappeared while you’ve been away.
I can’t spot anything missing, but there are a few new additions like a rail in the bathroom and a plastic stool in the shower. You can get a thing called a wet leg to wear in the shower and for swimming, but there’s no point getting one until most of the swelling has gone down, which could take anywhere from six to twelve months, so in the meantime I’m stuck with the stool. The bed in the spare room looks like it’s been slept in. Checking under the pillow I find Dad’s pyjamas. In one corner of the room there’s a pile of unopened presents and cards addressed to me and on top of the presents is a scrapbook that Mum has obviously been working on. On the outside she’s written ‘Dylan’s Progress’. I open it up and flick through the pages. It’s about half-full (so far) of photos and clippings. Photos of me in ICU. Photos of me in rehab.
I slam the scrapbook shut and toss it back. I have no idea how she found the time to do this, but I can’t say that I’m surprised. My whole life Mum has photographed everything I’ve done, and I mean everything, bath shots, potty shots, we’ve got the lot. She kept every ribbon I ever won, every press clipping that mentioned my name, every edition of the school newsletter where the soccer team results were listed.
My bedroom is exactly the same. My collection of football boots all lined up in the cupboard, my trophies still on the bookshelves along with a stack of Football magazines. It’s good they didn’t have a big clean-out, but at the same time I’d be lying if I didn’t say it’s awfully hard seeing the whole lot right in front of my eyes. In one way I see all of this as ‘my past’, dead and buried, gone along with my leg. Yet another part of me still sees all things football as my future and isn’t ready to let go yet.
193 Mum is cooking my favourite dinner, meatballs and spaghetti. We haven’t even had lunch yet. A whole Saturday stretches ahead of me. A Saturday with no sport. A Saturday with nothing to do.
Lying on my bed, hands under my head, oval noises drift in through the partially open window—the odd whistle, a few cheers, a ball being booted, all the sounds I know so well. I’ve laid here so many times, eyes closed and dreaming about playing for United, projecting images from my head onto the ceiling, imagining my future as a series of highlights on Match of the Day. Yet even while I was dreaming of kicking the winning goal there was always the niggling fear that I wouldn’t be good enough, so many doubts to drown out the dreams but getting injured never even entered my head.
From my window you can see all the way across Westwood Oval to the northern end goals. At our end big gum trees shield the houses from being pummelled with stray balls, but they don’t block the noise. At the other end are the canteen, the change rooms and a car park before the start of a large bush reserve. If you get up really early, sometimes a wallaby ventures from the scrub leaving little hard pellets behind, and if you look close enough, you can see a faint imprint of their claws in the dew.
I close my eyes and let my imagination go. In my mind I feel my boots tapping the ball as I dribble it, hear the roar of the crowd as I turn on a defender, lungs gulping for air as I sprint for the goal and take the shot.
I cover my face with my pillow. It deadens the noise from the oval but I’m still nailed to a bed full of memories.
Two more days and I get my leg.
Night 15
Back in my room at the hospital. Pretty depressed to be back. Bill’s in a bad way after his surgery so I help him out by getting the nurses and fetching things for him and stuff. He reckons having a knee replacement is nearly as painful as an amputation but I think his amp was so long ago he just doesn’t remember. At least helping Bill I feel useful.
194 Day 16
Monday rolls around. Good news and bad. Since the weekend went well I can go home whenever I want and come back to do therapy as an outpatient. Bad news. Leg not ready until Friday. Do I stay and wait for my leg or do I go? Go of course. Though it ruins my plan to walk out of here.
New plan: Go home Wednesday. Get leg Friday. So last day here tomorrow.
I’ll kind of miss Bill. Monday night is a bad night again for Bill, so once the football match on TV is over and there’s not much else to distract him we start talking and somehow it gets around to sex.
‘So how do you do it?’ I ask.
‘The usual way,’ he says. ‘I’m not really into the kinky stuff. None of that whipped cream or cucumbers for me.’
He cracks me up.
‘That’s not what I mean. I mean, do you take your leg off, leave it on? How does that work?’
‘Depends how much of a hurry you’re in,’ he says. ‘My missus wasn’t always the patient kind.’
Unfortunately I’ve seen Bill’s missus, who reminds me a bit of my dead grandma. Way too much information.
‘So it doesn’t affect your’ – I’m struggling to find the right word — ‘performance?’
Now Bill peers over the top of his glasses at me and gives me a funny look. Nowhere to hide in a room this small. ‘I don’t know where you had your sex education but let me set you straight, it’s not your leg that you do it with.’ Then he sits up and swings his leg over the side of the bed and his voice changes to a serious tone. He switches off his TV. ‘Seriously, the leg has never been a problem for me and Janey. Most of the time I take it off. Sometimes I don’t depending on the situation. When you love someone, you work with what you’ve got, and the mechanics don’t matter. I reckon a bad back would be more of a disability in the bedroom department.’ We both ponder this for a few moments then Bill comes out with another classic. ‘Or a small dick.’ We fall about laughing, which is not that good since laughing still hurts my ribs. ‘The one thing I know about sex is that in the bedroom everyone is naked,’ he announces to the whole world.
195 Then Bill goes on to explain himself a bit more. ‘What I mean is that everyone is a bit vulnerable when it comes to sex, well, meaningful sex as opposed to a quick roll in the sack. Most people are self conscious about their bodies but that’s only half of it. People are afraid of rejection, no matter if you’ve got one leg, two legs or three. Anyone who says they’re not is lying. If you want to get close to someone you have to take a risk, but it’s worth it and believe me, they’ll be feeling just as nervous and vulnerable as you.’
From the man who makes fart jokes an art form, this is getting pretty deep. I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation like this with my Dad even. Something about being an amputee makes people cut through the bullshit. Bill stretches his operated leg out wincing as he tries to get the knee to bend.
‘I guess so,’ I say and while I’m watching him do his exercises thinking I should do some too, he keeps on talking like he can see right inside me and he understands what is really bothering me about all this.
‘I’m kinda guessing maybe you don’t have that much sexual experience to draw on?’
‘Not a lot. Too busy playing football.’ The truth is, my sexual experience with an actual other person is pretty much zero. I don’t think wanking counts.
‘Well then,’ he says, ‘now you can make up for lost time. If I was your age and half as good looking as you, those nurses would have to watch out.’ At this point I scrunch up a piece of paper and toss it at him, which immediately turns into a game of air ping pong. He’s such a competitive dude. In between the ping and the pong he throws another left-field comment at me.
‘Just stay away from those women who get their rocks off on amputees. Some real weirdos out there.’
One more kernel of wisdom from The Book of Bill.
Next day its finally time to go. I do the rounds thanking everyone on the ward and in rehab. Don’t want any fuss or I might blubber. Mum brings in cards and bottles of wine for my doctors and Gary and Megan and Cathy and the hot O.T. I let Mum do the present handing-out and use stump pain as an excuse not to go with her. She takes a big box of chocolates up to ICU and a bunch of flowers for the ward. All the money she spent I reckon it would have been better to buy a knee scooter and give it to the gym. Something useful. But she doesn’t ask me. Bill punches me on the arm and tells me to ring me if I want to talk or I miss his jokes. Funny thing is, I probably will. I want to go home but I’m also a bit scared about leaving and I know Bill gets it. It’s normal to be injured in here. Out there. I’ll be the freak.
196 The leg is great. My prosthetist, Dave, has done an awesome job. He shows me how to put it on, which is called ‘donning’, as opposed to taking it off, which is called ‘doffing’. Donning and doffing? Strange words.
Dave stands me in the bars to check the alignment. If the angles aren’t right it can mess up your walking, not to mention your stump. Cathy puts me through my paces, so to speak. When I take those first few steps I can’t really describe how it feels. It’s a bit like walking with the detachable foot but much smoother. I want to keep looking down to check where my foot is.
‘Look straight ahead,’ Cathy says. ‘Concentrate on getting the feel through your stump and thigh.’ Of course I can’t feel where the prosthetic foot is.
At first I am hitching a bit as I try to walk but Cathy jumps onto that straight away.
‘You have to trust the ankle to do its work,’ she says. ‘The leg is designed to let the shank roll over the foot just like a real shin-bone rolls over the top of your foot.’ That’s the technical explanation. It’s technical alright, much harder than it looks. The closest thing I can think of is that it’s like suddenly having to drive a manual car when you’ve only ever driven an automatic. You have to pay attention to every little movement, every single step that you take because it doesn’t just happen without thinking about it. For the first time in my life I don’t totally trust my balance and I’m even a little bit worried about falling over. I’d hate to fall and smash my new leg and go back to square one. That would suck.
I keep practising in the bars and after a few laps I reckon I could walk without holding on, but of course they don’t let me do that yet although I think it would be easier than using two crutches because my ribs are still quite sore. Mum films the whole thing on her iPad to show to Dad. That way she doesn’t have to tell him about it and actually talk to him.
‘It’s not a race,’ Dave tells me. ‘Don’t be too impatient. If you try and push things too fast the stump won’t cope and your skin can break down.’
‘Okay. I’ll take it slow,’ I promise, though the glance that exchanges between Dave and Cathy tells me that neither of them believes that for a minute.
When it’s time to go I really don’t want to. I want to keep working on my balance and walking. I want to keep seeing what I’m seeing in all the mirrors on all the walls.
Standing on two legs.
Looking whole again.
When I first saw a prosthesis I thought it was the ugliest looking thing. They really do look peculiar when you see them on their own. What I know now is that as soon as a prosthesis
197 is attached to a body it no longer looks like a random part, instead the part and body blend together to make a whole.
I look almost normal.
I beg Dave to let me wear my new leg home in the car.
He agrees as long as I take it off as soon as I get back, check my skin and do a bit more stump massage.
‘How was that?’ Mum asks on the way home.
‘Pretty good. Dave’s done a great job. It fits really well.’
When I have to take my leg off at home my stump feels naked. So I do some massage and put it back on to show Dad what I can do when he gets home.
Of course I should have listened to Dave about not overdoing it. A new prosthesis is like a new pair of shoes. You have to wear it in gradually.
By the time I go to bed the sides of my stump are all red and sore. I am so so so pissed off. Here I go again. One step forward and two steps back.
I grab my phone and send Jessica a message.
MY HOUSE 2MORROW AT 1? HAVE NEW LEG. MUM WILL BE OUT.
The moment I send it I have second thoughts.
198 Chapter 16: Jessica
I’d never been inside Dylan’s house before. Sure I’d seen it trailing around the housing estate with the twins in tow on their bikes, but until recently, apart from Chemistry, we moved in different worlds.
The house was sandy coloured, two-storey brick, concrete driveway, double garage, squared-off gardens with box hedges and cordyllines in red and green rows. A patterned path led up to a tiled veranda. I stood in front of the door on a thick coir welcome mat and pressed the doorbell twice, setting off an electronic chorus of ‘Greensleeves’ followed by a bark. The bark was not deep enough for a big dog but wasn’t yappy enough for a little one. Between barks there was a funny whirring noise. The whirring stopped.
The barking got louder.
The door opened with a whoosh of rubber on tiles.
There he was, as gorgeous as ever, a black fluffy dog going mental at his feet. It was hard to stop my gaze from going straight to his leg so I deliberately looked into his eyes. His eyes smiled back, nervously.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘No crutches?’
‘I got new wheels.’ He was standing astride a cross between a tricycle and a scooter that he rode on one knee. ‘Don’t mind Jig.’
‘Pretty accurate name.’
‘He’s not normally quite so crazy, but he doesn’t know if he’s coming or going what with everything. You know how it is.’
‘Yeah. I know.’
‘That looks fun.’ I pointed to the scooter thingy.
‘It’s great to get somewhere fast. Follow me,’ Dylan said, ‘or I could give you a ride?’
‘Pass,’ I said.
‘You can’t trust a one-legged man and his dog?’
‘I trust the dog,’ I said rolling my eyes and then he took off. He wasn’t joking. That thing could go really fast. It was a struggle to keep up as he led me through the house to a large open-plan kitchen and family room at the back.
199 ‘Don’t worry. No parents. It’s just us and the dog.’ Knowing we were all alone together was not exactly reassuring, considering what happened between us before. Something in his eyes made me wonder if perhaps he did remember but there was nothing to gain by dredging things up. So many things could unravel just when they were starting to heal. Time to get back to the main reason I was here.
Chemistry.
‘I brought all my notes from the last three weeks.’
‘Let me show you this before we start,’ Dylan said.
He jumped on the scooter contraption and rode it to the far end of the family room, grinning at me through the reflected surface of the enormous television screen. I expected some scooter tricks but Dylan climbed off and steadied himself by holding one handle bar.
‘I want you to watch me walk.’ Shoulders squared he strode carefully across the room, the concentration on his face reminding me of a tightrope walker. ‘What do you think? Do I still have a limp? I can’t tell unless someone watches me.’ The words tumbled out in a rush, total opposite of the slow halting way he walked. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.
‘Not that I can see.’ Wrong answer. His whole posture deflated.
‘But?’ he said. ‘I can tell there’s a but.’
‘It’s just your rhythm. It looks fine but doesn’t sound quite even.’
‘How did you pick that? That’s what my physio says.’
I shrugged. ‘I can hear it. I’ve been listening to Mum’s singing students for so long. It’s just a timing thing. You can be singing the right notes but if the rhythm is out it doesn’t have the right flow. You spend a fraction longer on one leg so instead of one-two-one-two, nice and even, your ‘one’ lasts a bit longer than your ‘two’. Does that make sense?’
Dylan started to pace across the room.
‘You’re right. I didn’t notice. I‘m so busy trying to just walk and not fall over.’
‘I could clap it out for you. It helps with singing.’ I tapped out a one-two rhythm, trying to match his speed but keeping the cadence more even. His tongue stuck out a bit and he had a frown of concentration on his face while he tried to walk in time to my taps. The first two laps he was all over the place and his frown tightened. It wasn’t working. Out of desperation I started counting the beats out loud. By the look on his face he was counting too, not out loud, but silently in his head. ‘One-two, one-two, one-two, one-two, on and on, over and over until gradually over the next few laps the frown and tension disappeared.
200 ‘Jess. You’re a genius. Don’t stop.’ I kept on tapping. He kept on walking and the rhythm of his feet came into synch with the clap of my hands. For a few perfect laps each step was even and smooth. Then out of nowhere, the halting limp came back and the tension in his body reappeared.
‘Something wrong?’
‘It’s just rubbing a bit. Better stop. If I do too much my stump swells up and gives me hell. Do you mind if we sit on the couch to do some study so I can put my leg up?’
‘Happy to help. That’s why I’m here.’
I set my chemistry books up on a coffee table while Dylan propped his leg on some pillows on the lounge. Because of the space his leg needed we had to sit jammed up real close, so close I could smell lemony shampoo, so close I could see a faint scar on the back of his wrist where the drip had been drilled into a vein.
Chemistry.
I had to keep my brain focused on compounds and reactions. Nothing else. Not the taste of his skin on my tongue, not the heat of his breath in my ear, not the gentle tug of his fingers as they caught on a snag in my hair. I could not let myself think about any of that. We could never go back to that night
‘So what’s a catalyst again?’ Dylan asked. ‘I can never get this right in my head.’
‘A catalyst is a substance that causes a chemical reaction to happen in a different way than it would without the catalyst but isn’t affected by the reaction.’
He threw his hands up in exasperation. ‘That just doesn’t make sense to me. How can something change things and not be changed at all?’
Good question. ‘It just can. It’s chemistry not philosophy.’
‘But you get my point?
I nodded. ‘I get your point but it’s just the way it is.’ I tapped my finger on the open text book. ‘It says so right here.’
After about twenty minutes Dylan started to fidget.
‘Sorry. But my stump’s really swelling up. I need to take my leg off and check it.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I wasn’t sure how sensitive he was about the whole process. He’d only had his new leg for a few days. ‘So do you want me to leave while you do it?’
He shrugged. ‘Stay if you want.’
201 ‘Do you need some help to like… get your gear off?’ The words blurted out before I could stop them. He gave me a look full of double meaning.
‘Thanks for the offer but I think I got this.’ Dylan busied himself with releasing the suction that kept his prosthesis attached, carefully easing the leg off. By now his foot was in his hand ‘That feels better,’ he said, peeling the stretchy cover off the end of his stump, leaving his amputated leg fully exposed.
He straightened out his knee and inspected the bit where his shin ended. ‘Just a bit swollen. I have to watch out for blisters. My skin is still getting used to taking weight.’ His fingers automatically began to massage upwards from the bottom of his stump, seeming to forget that I was still there. My mind suddenly flashed back to the last time I saw his leg… all mangled and bloody with the bone sticking out. I looked away and shuddered.
‘I can cover it up again,’ Dylan said. If the pain wasn’t obvious in his voice it was certainly etched into his face. ‘I know it’s hard to look at.’
‘It’s not that… It’s perfectly fine the way it looks now. It’s just… I have these flashbacks, like nightmares of back then, in the car. I had to stop the bleeding or you would have…so I had to look and it was…well, you know. Kind of gory. Well, really gory actually. Do you mind if I touch it?’ My hand reached out automatically for his leg, not waiting for permission, just reacting. He didn’t brush it away so I left it there and kept trying to explain. ‘It’s amazing how good it looks now, all healed up. I want to touch it. If that’s okay with you?’
Dylan was looking down at my hand so I couldn’t read his face but the next thing he did was place his hand on top of mine and guide it.
‘If you really want to help you just push upward like this.’
‘Would it be better with some massage cream?’ I said spotting a bottle of Sorbolene on a side table. Dylan reached over to get it and handed the bottle to me.
‘Yeah I’m supposed to use it to soften the scar.’
My plastered-up arm meant I had to mostly work one handed so I squirted some cream onto my palm and knelt in front of Dylan.
‘Like this?’ Using my plastered arm I held the end of his stump and cupped my other hand around his calf massaging the cream upwards to just above his knee before releasing and starting at the bottom again. The calf muscle was already thin and wasted although the end of the stump was puffy and swollen. Dylan shifted his bottom on the couch to adjust his position.
‘Is that too hard?’
‘No. It’s fine.’
202 ‘Are you sure?’
‘I can take it.’
‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘You’re actually pretty good.’
‘Then why are you so tense?’
‘I’m not tense.’
He was perched on the edge of the couch by now, body corded with lines of tension, fingers digging into the fabric.
‘What am I doing wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Don’t give me that. You’re so tight I must be hurting you or something.’
‘It’s not hurting.’
‘Well relax then.’
‘Okay. Okay.’
‘You’re still not relaxing.’
Dylan glanced up at me briefly then picked at his nails.
‘It’s not you. Or the way you massage. It’s me that’s the problem.’
Although I was busting to bombard him with questions, I waited; if he wanted to tell me more he would tell me. If he didn’t, well then that was his call. He shifted again on the seat but sank back a little on the cushions. A frown rippled across his forehead, so brief you could easily miss it. He took a deep breath. I held mine for a moment as if I was waiting to catch it. The dog lifted his head off his paws and looked up at Dylan, sensing the shift in his mood. Dylan didn’t look at me when he started talking. Instead he looked into the dog’s eyes. My fingers kept on massaging. ‘Apart from the nurses and physios and stuff, no one else has seen my leg like this, let alone touched it.’
My fingers momentarily stopped.
‘Not even your parents?’
‘They’ve seen it of course but I don’t let them touch it.’
‘Oh.’
203 I just kept on massaging. He didn’t seem to want to say anymore. At first his muscles still felt very tight but gradually he started to relax, his head sinking against the padded back of the couch.
A pink scar ran in a horizontal line across the front of his stump.
‘Is it OK to touch the scar?’
‘I’m supposed to massage it heaps to keep it from getting stuck down.’
I ran my fingers lightly along its length, trying to hide the fact that my insides were all knotted up. That scar was the hardest thing to look at.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said.
‘I don’t have to but I want to.’ Keeping my eyes down, I tentatively worked my fingers across the taut line, circling and stretching, easing a little deeper, trying not to cause him more pain.
‘Is that okay?’
Dylan nodded. The dog sighed and stretched out on a brown shaggy rug.
‘The thing with scars, there’s more than what you see on the surface,’ I said. ‘I can feel yours all the way to the bone.’ I glanced up at Dylan, catching a look on his face that made my heart wobble before quickly looking back down to his leg, going back to touching without talking, wondering if how I was feeling was being transmitted through my fingers. Much as the sight of the scar was hard to look at, everything else still looked mighty fine. His calf muscles might have withered but the muscles of his thigh were just how I remembered them, firm and hard and clearly delineated, my mind circling back to memories I needed to ban. ‘I’ve gone a bit deeper,’ I said. ‘Is that still okay?’
‘Actually, you’re pretty good. Where’d you learn to massage?’
‘Mum. I used to do the band.’
A huge grin spread across Dylan’s face. ‘You did the band? I’ll remember that for future reference. Are you blushing?’
‘No,’ I said, clearly lying, face as pink as the cast on my arm. ‘Just remember I have the power of pain in my hands.’
The grin was still plastered all across his face, the first true smile I’d seen that made it to his eyes.
‘That’s what I love about you Jess; so smart, so tough, and yet so naive.’
204 I poked out my tongue and worked a bit further above his knee. Did he really say that’s what I love about you?
Suddenly Dylan’s hand reached out to my wrist, arresting the motion. ‘I think that’ll do,’ he said.
‘But if I go a bit longer I can get the swelling down some more.’
He gave me a look that made me go squirmy and hot. ‘Believe me, things wouldn’t be going down,’ he said, making my face burn up. ‘Are you blushing?’ he said which was a bit hard to deny when my face must look like a human tomato.
‘Apparently some bodily reactions just can’t be controlled,’ I shot back. Two could play the innuendo game.
‘Is that a bad thing?’ Dylan said.
‘That depends how you define bad.’ I wiped the excess massage cream off on my legs watching his eyes follow where my hands moved. ‘My mother warned me about boys like you. And she should know. She’s had more boyfriends than hamburgers.’
Dylan burst out laughing, then his mood swiftly changed.
‘Seriously Jess, I hope it helps.’
I looked at him puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I hope touching my leg helps with the flashbacks. Flashbacks suck.’
‘Yeah. I could do without the nightmares.’
‘Let me know how it goes.’
‘I will.’
‘Better get back to the books then,’ he said. ‘Mum’s on my back about falling behind with school.’
Dylan rolled the stump shrinker back over his stump. I opened up my chemistry book which fell open at the last page we worked on.
‘I have nightmares too,’ Dylan said out of the blue, his hand unconsciously rubbing where his prosthesis connected. ‘I have this dream I’m on the operating table and I hear people talking about clamps and what to cut and stuff. I hear this noise like a saw. It’s really loud. And I smell burning. Except I don’t think it’s a dream exactly. I think I woke up on the operating table.’
My stomach was no longer knotted. It was stone.
205 ‘Seriously? Could you feel anything?’ I was horrified at the thought.
‘Luckily, no, but the smell was bad enough and not being able to move was… I don’t know how to explain. I’ve looked it up on Google. Other people that this has happened to say it’s like being trapped inside a corpse. You can hear and smell but you can’t see or talk or move. I couldn’t feel any pain but I knew that the burning smell was me. I know now that it’s from when they cauterise the ends of blood vessels to stop bleeding but I didn’t know then what was going on. All I knew was that it was my leg they were burning and cutting and I heard somebody talking.’
‘Could you hear what they said?’
Dylan nodded. ‘They said, “what a mess. Still want to buy your son that car?”’
‘That’s awful.’ I didn’t know what else to say. I felt sick to my stomach. Hard to believe what Dylan was saying. As if Dylan hadn’t been through enough. ‘Did you say anything to the doctor about it?’
He shifted position on the couch, the dog taking it as a cue to come running to his owner and position himself for a pat.
‘What’s the point?’ he said, absently stroking Jig’s curly black head. ‘I don’t want him to think I’m going to sue him or something. He did save my life. Besides, my parents would really freak out if they knew.’ He pulled the scooter closer, the dog and his scooter surrounding him like the curve of a shield.
‘You’re the only person I’ve told.’
‘Do you think maybe you should talk to someone? Someone professional,’ I suggested, a suggestion that was met with a withering look.
‘What would they know? All they do is talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk about your feelings. I hate talking about my feelings. I don’t want to go over and over the bad stuff. They don’t get it. There are things I can’t remember that I want to remember but mostly, all the other stuff, the really bad stuff, I want to forget.’ Abruptly he reached for his leg to put it back on. ‘Mum will be home soon. I’m supposed to be cooking. If I don’t start soon she’ll pull out another one of the dreaded mystery casseroles from the freezer.’
‘I better go,’ I said jumping to my feet. I got the hint.
As I packed up my books Dylan turned to look at me, a look that shone a torch right into my soul. ‘Do you think I’m right?’
‘About what?’
‘That it’s just better to try and forget?’
206 ‘If it helps,’ I said not having a clue how to answer. Standing up with his prosthesis attached, he was back to his full height and looking just like the old Dylan, but the old Dylan didn’t need to lean on a scooter, the old Dylan didn’t have any pain in his posture, any tightness in his jaw or distant look in his eyes.
The thing is, no matter how much you want to forget, I really don’t know if you can.
207 Chapter 17: Dylan
It’s four weeks since I came home, seven weeks since the accident. Everyone is on my case. Even Jessica.
We hook up every Wednesday afternoon when she is free and Mum is still at work. We’re sitting out by the pool, catching some rays while we go over some notes she’s brought from school.
‘Jake’s coming back to school next week,’ she tells me.
‘I know. He called me. He’s going to go two days a week.’
‘He’s coming back in his wheelchair and the school counsellor has organised teams of people to help him get up the stairs and walk when he has to.’
I know what’s coming next. So when are you coming back Dylan? Except Jessica doesn’t even bother with the question. She goes straight for the kill.
‘You’re chicken aren’t you?’
‘Bullshit I’m chicken. What would you know? You’ve got no idea what it’s like.’ I really want to throw that girl in the pool right about now. A dunk in the freezing cold water would serve her right. She slams the chemistry book shut.
‘Don’t I? I had to go back and face the music.’
‘It’s not the same.’
‘You’re right. It’s not the same. Everyone wants you to come back. They sure didn’t want me. I got hate mail, had my lunch thrown in the toilet, my phone chucked in the sanitary bin. Someone made up business cards that said Jessica Wilkinson Life Wrecker and left them all over school. So what could be worse than that?’ She pushes back her chair with a scrape, all fired up and stands awfully close to the tiled edge.
‘You don’t get it.’
‘So explain,’ she says.
‘I’ve still got lots of rehab to do.’
‘Jake still has rehab and he’s going back. You could go back part time like him.’
The thing I hate about Jessica is that she is so logical it’s really hard to argue with her.
‘That’s different.’
208 ‘No it’s not.’
‘I’m not going back until I can walk well enough without crutches or a stick or anything.’
‘So you are chicken or too vain for your own good,’ she says with her hand on her hip and her hair flung back.
I am so so tempted to push her in. She shifts even closer to the edge of the water as if she’s daring me to do it.
‘I am not chicken! I just can’t stand people making a big fuss. I want to blend in. You don’t know what it’s like to have people stare at you. I’m not going back until no one can tell.’
She has this look on her face like a teacher would give if you tried the old dog-ate-my- homework excuse. ‘You think I don’t know what it’s like to have people stare at me?’ Both hands are on her hips now, elbows sticking out like barricades. She’s blocking my path like some snappy annoying poodle.
‘Well okay. Maybe people stared at you when you went back, but they stared because of what happened and not because you look like some kind of freak!’ I’m yelling by now. Don’t know what brought that on, but Jessica has a maddening way of making me say stuff and giving my feelings away.
‘That’s so not true,’ she says.
She says she won’t come and help me with chemistry anymore. I’m thinking she’ll say until I come back to school but she doesn’t. She says I have to meet her at the mall on Saturday morning or else it’s all over. She knows I need her help with all my schoolwork. So I agree. I have no idea what she’s playing at, but this is Jessica we’re talking about here.
It’s crazy busy at the mall with sales. I’ve never seen it like this but come to think of it I’ve hardly ever been to the mall on a Saturday morning because I was always at sport somewhere or other. When he drops me off, Dad offers to stay with me but I explain over again it was the occupational therapist’s suggestion to start going to crowded places on my own to build up my confidence. It sounds plausible to me and Dad goes along with it. He promises to pick me up outside Kmart in two hours. Maybe this is the reason Jessica wanted to meet me here, to get me out in public more. I’ll probably bump into a heap of people I know, which I’m not so keen on, so I pull my baseball cap down over my face.
209 Jessica must have been watching out for me to arrive because as soon as Dad is out of sight she pounces. Though really, it’s more like she bounces. It’s all I can do to stop my eyeballs fair popping out of my head.
She has a red, tight, sleeveless low-cut top on and her boobs are so massive you’d think she must’ve had a boob-job, but you can tell for a fact that Jessica’s are real. They jiggle every time she moves. She walks towards me, and I don’t know if she’s doing it deliberately but she has this extra bouncy step-thing going on. Where do I look? I don’t want to stare but then again, it’s so hard not to.
‘Like the top? I borrowed it from Mum,’ she says.
‘Not your usual style but um… eye catching.’ She gives me a knowing smile like she can read my mind and knows what I’m really thinking.
‘So have I made my point?’
‘What point would that be exactly?’
‘Come with me,’ she says, walking off with her bouncy-bouncy strut.
‘Do I have to?’
‘Just shut up and walk.’
Now I can see why she’s bouncing as she walks. It’s the high heels. Jessica never wears high heels even though she’s pretty short and now I totally understand why.
She makes me do a whole lap of the mall. The place is swarming. I’m nervous people will bump me or a little kid will trip me over. Some of them are pretty feral, pushing and shoving with their trolleys. I almost wish I brought my crutches because my balance is not that good yet. Jessica has one of her psychic moments. I don’t know how she does it but she must have sensed how much I’m really packing it and twines her arm through mine so it doesn’t look like she is helping me. Instead it looks like we are boyfriend and girlfriend.
Looking about as we stroll around, I’d have to say that without exception, every guy in the whole of Westfields is staring at her. Even old guys and dads with little kids can’t help themselves and take a gawk at her boobs. Jessica is working her strut and pretending not to notice. Then she makes me sit down and disappears into the toilets. When she comes out, the heels are off and she has put one of her usual sweat tops on. I can’t believe the difference. Now no one stares at her except me.
‘You’re buying me a coffee,’ she says holding out her palm. I hand over some cash and she comes back with two regular cappuccinos from Wendy’s and a couple of cinnamon donuts.
‘How did you know cinnamon is my favourite?’
210 ‘I didn’t. It’s my favourite too. So, Mr Self Conscious, was anyone staring at you?’
‘Not really,’ I hate to admit.
‘But they were staring.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And what were they staring at?’
‘You.’
‘Mmm. Interesting. Didn’t you say to me once, “you don’t know what it’s like to have people stare because of the way you look”?’ she says, doing the quotation mark thing with her fingers.
I don’t say anything and we both eat our donuts. Jessica eats hers by sticking her fingers in the middle and eating her way around the hole. My donut eating is a bit more conventional; I start at the edge and chomp.
‘But when people stare at you it’s for a good reason,’ I say, brushing cinnamon off my fingers.
‘A good reason! Ogling my boobs?’
‘Well they are pretty freakishly awesome.’
‘Freakish? So maybe do you think it’s possible that you’re not the only one who might feel like a freak?’
‘It’s not the same,’ I say pointing to my leg. ‘I wasn’t always like this.’
‘And I wasn’t always like this,’ she says nodding down at her chest. ‘And it is the same by the way. We both know what it’s like to have people stare because something about our body is different. You don’t have dibs on the staring issue. I hate it too.’ Brushing the cinnamon from her fingers, she gives me a look so penetrating it could make the skin on your nose all blister.
‘The way I see it, there’s three ways to handle staring,’ she says, counting them off on her fingers. ‘Flaunt it, ignore it or hide it and sometimes one way works better than another. All you’ve been doing so far is hiding. Sure it’s a pain when people stare but it’s just the way it is. If you don’t want to be hiding your leg away for the rest of your life, you really have to just get over it and let people stare.’
She reaches into her bag and pulls something out, plonking it down on the table.
‘They’re my shorts. How did you get those?’
211 ‘Off your clothesline. Here’s where I say something along the lines of I’ve shown mine so how about you show yours?’ She rips her sweat top off again, reminding me of just how much she has to show.
‘You want me to put them on. In public?’
‘You can put them on in public if you want but I was thinking the men’s room would be fine.’ She stands up, looks at her watch and turns to look at me sitting at the little white table outside Wendy’s. She really knows how to put someone on the spot. ‘Don’t worry I won’t walk with you. Wouldn’t want to draw too much attention. I’ve got to go. Thanks for the coffee,’ she says, slurping the last of the cup. Dabbing at her mouth with a paper napkin, she has the final say. ‘Guess I’ll see you in school?’ She puts her top back on and, without looking back, she strides off and disappears into the crowd. No one notices the girl with the dark curly hair and the oversize jumper. No one would ever guess that it was the same girl as before. There’s no one staring at her now.
I look down at my shorts on the table, at the two empty coffee cups and the trail of sugar and cinnamon. Strangely it’s not the sight of her boobs I can’t get out of my head but the feel of her arm threaded through mine when we walked side by side. I sit for a while, drawing patterns in the cinnamon and just thinking.
A few minutes later Dad spots me sitting like Nigel-no-friends and slides in the seat Jessica just left.
‘Want a coffee?’ he asks.
‘I’ve already had one.’
‘So I see,’ he says. ‘How did it go?’
Dad doesn’t mention the fact that there’s two cups sitting in front of me. He must have noticed. Cops register that kind of thing.
‘A bit harder than I thought but not too bad since it’s so crowded.’
‘I got you some donuts’ he says. ‘But I see you’ve already had some.’ He points to the flecks of cinnamon on the table.
‘One more for the road,’ I say, biting into the still-hot donut, feeling like this is Groundhog Day. He’s looking at me like he’s waiting for me to spill. If he saw me with Jessica, why doesn’t he just say something?
There’s this cop technique where they don’t say a word. The longer the silence the more people want to talk and even though I know when Dad is using this tactic, I still fall for it every
212 time. He eats so slowly and silently, a few minutes later I give in and blurt out through a mouth full of donut mush.
‘You can tell Mum I’m ready to go back to school.’
Dad swallows and wipes his sticky mouth, wiping the stony cop face away.
‘That’s good to hear,’ he says. ‘When we get home you can tell her yourself.’
Then just as we get up to leave and push back our chairs, he ambushes me.
‘I wouldn’t tell your mother about the girl.’
‘So you saw?’
‘The whole of Westfields saw. Quite impressive.’
I hit Dad across the chest with my shorts.
‘Dirty old man.’
‘Mum’s the word,’ he says, zipping his lip.
When we get up to go, the shorts are still in my hand.
‘Do you mind if we stay a bit longer?’ There’s one more thing I need to do.’
‘Take as long as you need.’
I go to the men’s room and change into my shorts. Dad is waiting for me outside. When I walk out into the crowded shopping mall, he takes one look at me and says, ‘Sorry mate. She’s got better legs.’
We walk the long way to the car park. It’s not so bad. If people want to look I can’t stop them. It’s not like stares can kill. This amputee gig is not for the self conscious, but I think Jessica’s boobs win. They got more stares than my prosthetic leg.
Day 51 Monday
5pm-ish
First day back. Hitched a ride with Mum. Catching the bus without Jake wouldn’t feel right. She insisted on bringing the elbow crutches. I insisted on leaving them at the office. Sure I’d be fine.
Glad seniors wear long pants. Copped a few stares. Lots of pats on the back, punches on the arm. All that stuff.
Nobody mentioned the leg.
213 It gets tiptoed around. Had to make a few jokes to break the ice. People need training to treat you like normal. Bit tedious. Megan was so right.
Great to see Jake. First time face to face since hospital. Our mothers still not talking. Very mature. But Dad’s also still sleeping in the spare room. So there you go. Jake’s hair has grown back, but he’s kept it short. Pretty massive scar on his head. A bit Frankenstein. Shook me up more than I expected. It was all bandaged up before.
Jake is milking it for all he’s worth. Lots of girls buzzing around him to help out. Quite the celebrity. Like some king on his movable throne. And doesn’t he love it.
I said to him, ‘since when did you get so popular?’
He said, ‘well someone had to fill your shoes.’ His little harem didn’t know how to react. I told him the knock to his head didn’t make him any less of a smart arse so then we were pretty even. Like old times.
Spoke to Jessica at first recess. Jake said if people see us being friendly they might get off her case. It was Jake’s idea. Pretty smart. And he’s the one with the brain damage. It’s lucky he was so smart to begin with and has brains to spare. Apart from the wonky arm and leg (and the massive scar), you can’t really tell there’s anything wrong.
Overall not a terrible day.
The Worst Thing about it was that Mum was right. Should have kept the crutches with me. The stairs were the killer. My stump started to rub and by lunchtime it had blistered up so then I had no choice but to use the crutches for the rest of the day.
Bit pissed off.
I hate it when she’s right.
Though really, I was right too. I knew a whole day of school straight up would be too much but nobody listens to me. It’s my leg. I should know.
7pm
Read over what I last wrote. I sound like such a whiner. School wasn’t that bad. It was good to be back. I just need to start with a shorter day and work up, and Mum and Dad will have to trust I know what I’m doing.
One thing I’m learning fast. Bill’s best tip.
Happy stump = Happy day.
The opposite is also very true.
Painful stump = Crappy day.
214 In Amp World, the stump rules.
10.15pm
Seeing Jake today got me thinking about some of the stuff we did. Like the time we collected frogs and they escaped all over his house and his brothers and sisters had to help with The Great Frog Roundup. I took the blame so Liz didn’t ground him for life. Which she would have. One of the frogs got in her bed.
Ribbup.
215 Chapter 18: Dylan
She’s there. Waiting. Sitting cross-legged, leaning her back against the outside of the cricket nets and reading a book. Pride and Prejudice, it says on the cover. I picked this time and place because I was pretty sure we’d have it to ourselves. She’s wearing track pants and a sweat top. Good. That means she read the whole email. I dump the bag of balls and orange markers I’ve been lugging in front of her. Looking up from the book, Jessica giggles.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing much. You just look like how I imagine someone in this book would look.’ She closes it gently and tucks it in her bag.
‘I don’t know how you can read that crap.’
‘It’s a classic. We have to study it for Advanced English. This is study time you’ve pulled me away from, so it better be good.’ She stands up and brushes a pile of grass off her backside. ‘I take it the balls are part of the plan.’
‘You promised you’d help me.’
‘I did,’ she says.
‘And it’s true that you used to play soccer?’
‘A long time ago.’
‘Why did you stop?’
‘Long story.’
I unzip the ball bag and take out the balls, lining them up in two neat rows. A twinge of regret hits me suddenly, thinking of how many times I’ve done this before.
‘I’ve been practising at home in the yard but, well, you’ve seen it, there’s not much room with the pool and everything so I need some help to improve,’ I explain.
‘Why don’t you get your dad or one of your football mates to help? They’d be much better than me.’
Good question. How does she always manage to cut to the Big Issue or the things I’d rather not go into?
‘They’d take it too seriously and I don’t want any pressure. All I need is someone to feed me the ball so I can practise some kicks.’
216 ‘Doesn’t sound too hard. I can do that,’ she says picking up one of the balls. She starts kicking it and bouncing it off the outside of the cricket net without letting it touch the ground so I can see she actually might have a bit of skill.
‘I thought we could use the nets so we don’t spend half the time rounding up balls,’ I say. ‘That’s what I used to do with Dad.’
We start with some short passes to warm up which goes okay. Then I get Jessica to feed me cross-balls so I can do some longer and harder kicks into the nets and that’s when it becomes apparent I totally suck. Not just suck a little bit. I am seriously tragic. I try kicking with my right foot and kicking with my left. Either way I feel like a total retard.
If I kick with my left, I don’t have any control at all. The ball pings off the prosthetic at odd angles because of course I can’t feel when the ball strikes my foot. I have to keep looking and try to work out what angle to turn my leg and I have no idea how much force to use or how the ball is going to rebound off my foot. It’s getting awfully frustrating, so I switch and try kicking with my right leg. The problem with that is I’m not confident enough taking weight on my left leg and I’m shit-scared I’ll fall flat on my butt.
Jessica gives me lots of feedback; bit wide, too long, try and hit it with the side of your foot, that kind of stuff, which helps. She’s actually a pretty good coach and she’s got a nice accurate touch. Even so, I can’t seem to get the right angle of attack or any kind of force behind the ball.
While her ball skills aren’t too bad, she definitely runs like a girl. The whole top-heavy thing doesn’t help. And that’s another thing that is a massive distraction and is putting me off my shots. When she moves I’m watching her instead of the ball. A few times I get so distracted I have to grab the side of the practise cage so I don’t lose my balance. After a while, I get pretty jack of the whole thing and want to give it up as a bad idea, but Jess is trying so hard to help and I did ask her to come, so we persist. Ball after ball after ball. As soon as I’ve kicked all the balls to the end of the cage she runs past me and collects them all up.
‘Why don’t I just stand down the other end?’ she suggests. ‘It’s much easier if you just kick from a stationery ball instead of trying to trap and catch before you kick. You can concentrate on getting the force and direction right and not worry about timing or positioning to receive.’
‘Yeah. That would be easier.’ My brain gets a bit addled whenever Jessica is around and I get all flustered. ‘See,’ I say, ‘I knew there was a good reason I asked you to help.’
‘And here’s me thinking it’s for my scintillating company,’ she says with a grin.
217 ‘Scintillating,’ I say, making out I know what it means. Jessica has a habit of using ten syllables when two would do, but despite her love of complicated words, she is really good at simplifying skills and breaking them down into stages. Me, I’m more about doing things by trial and error until I get the ‘feel’ of what I’m trying to do. If I try and analyse things too much it mucks me up.
To my surprise I’m having more success doing it her way. I’m getting better at judging the angle and force to use to strike the ball. My frustration level is back under control and I’m getting in the zone. After a while, I start to get a bit cocky and move further back from the nets to make some longer kicks. I can’t use the cage for support anymore, but I don’t think I need it. It’s going alright until I mistime a kick with my right foot and the inevitable happens. My left leg buckles from under me and I land flat on my back, in a big crumpled heap.
‘You okay?’
‘Bit dented but not broken,’ I reassure her, hoping that I’m right. I didn’t hear any cracks and I can’t see any damage to my prosthesis, at least, none that is obvious. Rolling first onto my knees I push myself up, silently thanking Cathy for making me practise getting up from the ground so much. It’s a fact of life being a new amputee; at some point you’re going to fall over. The way I see it, if you’re not falling over, you’re not trying hard enough, not challenging yourself or pushing the limits.
By the fifth time I’ve had enough and call it quits. I really need to check my stump to see how it’s holding up. Finding a spot out of sight under a tree, I plonk myself on the ground and take my leg off. It hits me all of a sudden that I think of it as ‘my leg’ now, something that’s a part of me even though it’s detachable. When it’s on, my new leg feels like an extension of myself, which is good, but the downside is that when it’s off I feel ridiculously naked. The more I get used to it, the more vulnerable I feel when I take it off. Jessica comes and sits on the grass next to me, watching the whole process. She is a bit out of breath and her chest is rising and falling. Right there. In front of my face. I remember how she looked at the mall.
‘So who’s staring now?’ she says.
‘Can’t help it,’ I say.
I find myself leaning in towards her, trying to hold myself back, but there’s nothing I can do to stop.
Our lips brush.
Then her hand reaches behind my head. She pulls me hard against her mouth, tongues pushing and probing. No doubt about it. She wants this too.
218 Falling back on the grass we keep kissing and touching. Her hands move over my back, leaving sweeping trails of heat like a line of brush fires. My hands go exploring all her curves. I forget all about my leg. I barely notice the twigs and little rocks in the grass or the weight of her body on my arm. All I feel is my lips on her lips, my tongue on her tongue, my hands on all the bits I have so longed to touch, her hands against my hips moving lower and lower.
Then we both hear a kid on a bike.
‘What was that?’
We quickly sit up, wiping mouths, adjusting clothes, brushing grass out of our hair.
‘We better go,’ I say, grabbing for my leg, which is also covered in grass. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.’
‘Neither did I,’ she says, ‘but I’m glad it did.’
A strange feeling comes over me, like we’ve done this thing before. But you’d remember a kiss like that. You’d remember a body like that. You’d remember feeling the way I just felt. Wouldn’t you?
‘You’ve got grass on your back’, Jessica says, startling me out of my thoughts. I try to brush it all off but keep missing a bit, so she brushes between my shoulder blades and every time she touches me it’s like being hit with an instant zap, a charge of static electricity that makes my whole body fizz.
When I get home, I check the mirror in the entryway to make sure there are no grass specks or anything else to give me away. Mum’s home early and sees me with the bag full of balls. She has the mail opened on the kitchen bench in front of her and is holding a piece of paper, with a serious set to her jaw.
‘This came today,’ Mum says. ‘It’s a letter from the prosecutor. We’ve got a court date in six weeks and we need to do a Victim Impact Statement.’
‘What for?’
‘That girl has been charged with dangerous driving, but she’s pleading not guilty.’
I grab a glass and fill it with water, keeping my back turned to Mum while I drink.
‘They want medical reports but also a statement from you about how this has affected your life. The magistrate takes that all into account for sentencing.’
‘Sentencing? So you’re assuming that she’s guilty.’
219 ‘Of course she’s guilty. She was driving when the car left the road and rolled over. That makes her guilty.’
‘So if she is found guilty what can happen to her?’ I pull a loaf of bread and peanut butter out of the pantry then hunt down the margarine.
‘That depends. The prosecutor doesn’t think there’s enough evidence for dangerous driving, which is a more serious charge, but he thinks he can definitely get her for negligent driving. At most, it’s a fine of two grand or a prison sentence with a maximum of nine months.’
‘Prison? She could go to prison? Are you serious?’ I stab my knife in and out of the peanut butter jar, tearing the bread as I try to make it spread.
‘Yes. That’s why this impact statement is so important.’
This can’t be happening. They want me to say something on the record that might get Jessica sent to prison. I can’t let her go to prison. That’s the last thing that I want. I can still taste her in my mouth and feel the soft curves of her body. Imagine what some old dyke would do to her in prison.
‘Can we just talk about this later,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to think about it now.’ I can’t think about this now. I toss the sandwich at Jig and stomp up to my room. You can stomp really loud with a metal foot. I throw myself on the bed and slam my pillow with my fist.
I disappear into the garage and grab the weight bar, piling ten more kilos onto each end. Eminem on my iPod. The only way I can handle this right now is to block it all out with music and bench press the shit out of that weight bar until my whole body really really hurts.
My palms are sweating and my heart is racing all over again. It’s the next day in Chemistry. I still don’t know what I’m going to say. I know it was a mistake kissing Jessica, but it was so, so awesome. I can’t let her think something can come of this. It’s just impossible like that Shakespeare we had to do, Romeo and Juliet. Doomed from the start. It will be a miracle if we can get through this court stuff and still be talking. She must know about the Victim Impact Statement thing by now. Her solicitor must have told her.
How do I bring up the subject? How do I make her understand? In the end I take the coward’s way out and write her a note.
Sorry about yesterday. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.
I stick the note on her folder while the teacher drones on about different metals and the way they corrode. I’m not even brave enough to look at her face. She sends the note back.
Do you still want help with chemistry?
220 And then the note goes back and forth.
Yes. We can still be friends.
What about help with football?
I still need the practice.
You can say that again.
I breathe the world’s biggest sigh of relief. We can go back to how we were before, just friends, helping each other out.
Friends. That’s all. Nothing less. Nothing more, while all of this other crap goes down.
It’s easy to write things on a sticky note in Chemistry. It’s not so easy when I get home. On my desk there’s an information sheet, ‘How to Write a Victim Impact Statement’, with a sticky note from Dad attached to the front page.
This might help. Needs to be with the prosecutor in 2 wks.
I have two weeks, that’s all, to try and put into words how this whole thing has affected me.
The impact.
They don’t know the half of it.
I don’t want to do a Victim Impact Statement. I can’t even stand the term. I don’t want to be a victim. I want Jessica as my friend, not my enemy, and if she gets punished that won’t make me feel any better. It will only wreck everything and make me feel worse. If only things could be different. Who am I trying to fool? I don’t want to be just Jessica’s friend. I want to be so much more.
221 Chapter 19: Jessica
Mr Michael Hemphill, of Hemphill and Hemphill, was charging by the hour so he better be good at talking fast. I tried to convince Mum that Legal Aid was fine, but she insisted on getting my own solicitor since my ‘future rested on it’. That was debatable. No matter what happened in court, my future was always going to be shadowed by that one night. I’d already had an argument with Mr Michael Hemphill on the phone since he had to go to court for me and enter my plea. I wanted to enter a guilty plea to save having to appear in court. He insisted I should plead not guilty, and in the end I agreed just to get him and Mum off my back. Now we had a date for the hearing.
It wasn’t a big expensive-looking office, just a few poky rooms wedged between a hairdresser and a fish-and-chip shop, with old National Geographic magazines and legal pamphlets in the waiting area and one pot plant in the corner with a vine that grew all the way up the wall.
Mr Hemphill kept us waiting fifteen minutes. Mum was dressed in a short-ish leopard- print skirt with a tight black top. I had my school uniform on ready to go to classes as soon as we were done, so we were something of a contrast you could say. He pulled up an extra chair, moved a stack of papers and invited us to sit down. For a solicitor he was pretty solicitor-ish looking. Forty-something, blue-and-white pin-stripe shirt with a blue patterned tie, grey trousers and coat slung over the back of his chair. Mum crossed her legs in her too short skirt, flashing a little bit of leopard and a lot more thigh. Mister Hemphill either didn’t notice or had plenty of practice at not giving anything away.
‘The police prosecutor has sent us the brief of evidence. That’s all the evidence they wish to present in court and the list of witnesses they intend to call.’
‘Can I see it?’ I jumped in.
‘Of course. It’s quite long. Some of it is a bit confronting. Do you want to read it all now or let me summarise and take a copy with you?’
‘Take a copy,’ I said thinking of all those billable hours.
‘Read it now,’ Mum said.
There were medical reports, lots of statements; mine, Dylan’s, Jake’s (not that the statements told you much), and a big report from a private investigator, no prizes for guessing who organised that. I skimmed the pages until I came to the list of witnesses the prosecutor
222 intended to call. Then I stopped and looked at each name, mind racing, figuring out what the prosecution was after, calling these particular witnesses to make their case.
Lucy Hamilton (that cow, she probably volunteered).
Nicholas Tramonte (one of Dylan’s soccer mates, who had the party).
A bunch of names I didn’t recognise but one was a constable and another one a sergeant.
And then at the bottom.
Jessica Wilkinson.
‘Can’t I just plead guilty and avoid all of this?’
Mr Hemphill twirled his pen in slow circles on the desk.
‘That would not be in your best interests. As I advised you previously, the best strategy is to plead Not Guilty to both charges. It’s very unlikely you’ll get a conviction for the dangerous driving charge. The police have to prove that grievous bodily harm was occasioned; they have to prove that you were driving when the vehicle overturned and left the road.’
‘So it’s not looking good?’ Mum interrupted.
‘However,’ Mister Hemphill continued, ‘they also have to prove that the crash was due to the way you were driving. There’d be a problem if you were drinking...’
‘I wasn’t drinking.’
‘Or if you were speeding…’
‘I wasn’t speeding.’
‘In your statement you said you just lost control so we can put it down to a misjudgement. The onus is on the prosecution to prove otherwise. If they can’t, then the magistrate could find you guilty of the lesser charge of negligent driving but with what is referred to as a low level of moral culpability, which is a fancy way of saying you were not to blame.’
‘I know what it means,’ I said. I’d done my research on the internet. I could do without the condescending crap. I also knew that blame in the legal sense of the word didn’t make a blind bit of difference. The real judgement didn’t happen in the courtroom. The real judgement happened out there in the real world, in lounge rooms, in the schoolyard, in people’s minds. Out ‘there’, I was already guilty.
I tried to swap papers with Mum and see what the rest of the evidence had in store.
223 ‘I don’t think you should see this,’ Mum said, pulling the papers close to her chest.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s got pictures of the accident.’
‘Aren’t you forgetting something? I was there. I’ve already seen it.’
‘But… it might bring it all back.’
I held out my hand expectantly. Reluctantly, Mum handed over the rest. I wasn’t worried that seeing photos would bring it all back since in my head it had never actually gone away. This part of the evidence was mostly appendices and pictures. A diagram of the crash and the path the car had taken was included. Then there were photos. Lots of photos.
All in glorious colour. Tensing my stomach muscles to stop my head from swimming, I felt the blood relentlessly drain away while Mr Poker-face Hemphill droned on and on, oblivious to the fact that I was about to pass out. For once I regretted not listening to my mother.
‘Usually, for a first offender and someone your age, the magistrate will dismiss the charge or apply a caution, which means no penalty and no criminal record. That would be the best outcome.’
The best outcome? Was he serious? How could anyone look at these photos and not apply a penalty? They were even shocking to me.
‘And if not, what else can happen?’ Mum asked, rubbing her hands across the worn strap of her handbag and cutting across my thoughts. ‘Can, can my Jess go to prison?’
The solicitor paused for a moment carefully composing his words.
‘It’s possible, but not likely and of course we’d appeal.’
‘And what about a fine? Jessica looked it up and it said there can be a fine of three thousand dollars. We can’t afford that.’
‘Any fine is worked out according to what Jessica can afford on her income, not the parental income.’
I could feel the whoosh of air as Mum breathed out.
‘That’s good to know,’ she said nudging my leg, ‘isn’t it?’
Wasn’t she listening? There was still a chance I could go to prison. Prison. And maybe that’s what I deserved.
Mr Hemphill’s pen had stopped twirling and he was now scribbling on his pad. While he scribbled, I studied his computer screensaver, a perfect family holiday snap of Mr Hemphill
224 with his family posed in front of the Disneyland sign. He had a crappy office but could obviously afford good holidays. And who said crime doesn’t pay? I pulled my eyes away from the screen and tried to concentrate on what he was saying.
‘The only area where the magistrate could take a hard line is the fact that you took two people in the car and ignored the peer passenger condition under the provisional driver’s licence rules. That doesn’t look good and he may want to penalise you for that. Which doesn’t have to be prison or a fine,’ he added quickly, seeing the alarm go off on Mum’s face. ‘The magistrate can order community service or probation or a youth justice conference and can still decide not to record a criminal conviction, so I’m quietly confident things will go our way. Do you have any more questions or anything else you want to tell me that might help your case?’ His eyes jumped between the two of us and, noticing where I was staring, he turned his computer screen away.
‘Will I have to take the stand? My name’s at the bottom of the list.’
‘You don’t have to. We can provide a written response to evidence instead but often it’s better if you do testify because it gives you a chance to tell your side of the story and say how sorry you are. The down side is that you are then able to be cross-examined.’
He was watching me closely. Taking a leaf out of the solicitor’s playbook, I kept my face as blank as I could although my insides were churning.
‘It’s best to decide on the day whether to take the stand or not. It depends which way it is going, what magistrate we get, who else turns up in the court.’ His eyes flicked from me to Mum again.
Mum’s eyes were wide with worry. She reached over and squeezed my hand.
‘There’s only one thing that might need more explaining,’ he continued. I stared at my shoes. ‘It would help if you could explain why the car started to veer in the first place. That part really isn’t clear in your police statement and a good prosecutor will be all over that.’
‘Are we done?’ I said to the floor.
‘You’ll let us know when the court date is set so I can get off work?’ Mum said.
‘We’ll be in touch and keep you informed, Mr Hemphill assured us, trying to catch my eye. I looked at my watch, and following my cue he stood up to see us out. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be fine if you just tell the truth.’ Mum nodded and smoothed down her skirt, which reminded me I did have one more thing to ask.
‘What should we wear in court?’
225 ‘Something neat and tidy. And conservative,’ he added taking in Mum’s combo of leopard and cleavage. Any more leopard and that outfit would growl.
‘That was reassuring,’ Mum said once we were back in the car and on our way to Westwood High.
‘That’s one way to look at it.’ I leaned on my fist and looked out the window. Since the accident I was always nervous being in a car. I was actually glad I lost my license. The thought of driving sent shivers down my spine. It was hard enough being a passenger. My hand never left the grab handle, my eyes never left the road. I jumped like a startled cat at every bit of bad driving; when a car tail-gated us my grip tightened, cars cutting in and out of lanes made my foot hit the phantom brakes, and when Mum gunned the lights before they turned red, which she did with heart-stopping regularity, I would close my eyes and hold my breath until we were through. Every intersection held potential disaster; every journey brought a new set of fears. One day I might get over it but that day would probably take years and in the meantime I stashed my Gran’s old rosary beads in the centre console, hoping they would work like garlic and ward off evil in case the first aid kit I’d scraped together and put in the glove box was not enough.
Mr Hemphill’s words ran like an endless news feed through my head. The best possible outcome. What a joke. Standing up in front of Jake and Dylan’s families was the worst possible outcome. What if there were reporters at the court? It was more than likely. The whole ruined- football-career-story was just the fodder for dodgy current affairs programs. The solicitor didn’t even mention what to do if the press turned up! Better ask about that. At least, being under eighteen, my name could not be reported which in the scheme of things made no difference really.
Everyone already knew my name.
Everyone already thought they knew what happened.
Whichever way you looked at it, there was no best possible outcome.
Not for Dylan. Not for Jake. Not for me.
Contrary to what Mr Michael Hemphill thought, if I told the truth everything would not be fine. Every outcome sucked.
226 Chapter 20: Dylan
We keep meeting twice a week but we change venues. We start going to a park that is closer to her house but still close enough to my house that I can ride there on my knee walker. There’s not much at the park, only a small kids playground, a long stretch of grass and a few straggly gum trees, but there’s less chance that anyone will see us here, which is good. We string up a net between two of the trees to use as a goal, stick to football skills and a bit of talking.
We never mention the court case, even though it’s only just over a month away. Any other subject, Jessica is easy to talk to. Irony plus. She is also pretty good at football.
We’ve been doing some drills, a bit of dribbling, a bit of weaving in and out of cones. I am still not the best but slowly improving. Jessica flies around those cones. It’s a shame she gave it up.
‘You should try out for the girl’s team at school,’ I suggest.
‘Nah. I don’t play anymore.’
‘You should. You’re really good.’
She gives me a calculating look, which I’m getting to realise means she has something in mind. ‘I’ll try out for the girl’s team if you’ll try out too.’
‘For the girl’s team?’
‘Funny boy. You know what I mean. I think you’re ready to go back.’
‘Nah. I don’t play anymore,’ I say, mimicking her own excuse. She throws the ball at my head and I head it away.
‘You could at least go and train for fun,’ she argues. ‘Let’s make a deal. You train with the boy’s team and I’ll try out for the girl’s team. I think we both should have a second shot.’ As she says it, she boots the ball into the back of the net daring me to match her challenge. Of course I can’t resist. I line up the shot and send the ball screaming for the top-right corner. She raises an I-told-you-so-eyebrow. Too late, I realise I’ve just proved her point and maybe I am ready to give football a second shot. She makes me shake on it and do a little thumb and pinky thing as well to seal the deal.
‘Happy now?’ I say booting the ball at her. It gets a bit intense after that. It’s a one-on- one competition to see who can hold onto the ball before the other one can steal it. Pretty soon we are both sweaty and panting. We stop for a water break and I get to wondering aloud.
227 ‘Why did you stop playing? You’re really good.’
She gives me a smirk. ‘Long story.’
‘I got plenty of time.’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Yes I do.’
‘No you don’t.’
It’s one of those round-and-round kind of conversations. In the end I’m so eaten up with curiosity I drag her by the hand and make her sit on a seesaw, which is the only place around here to sit other than on the grass, and after the last time we sat on some grass together I’m not going there. She is down one end of the seesaw and I’m at the other, and we get into the whole, one side up while the other side is down scenario, trying to find a rhythm so I don’t end up just stuck on the ground with her up in the air.
‘So I’m listening,’ I say.
‘I quit because of the coach.’
‘Was he really that bad?’
‘Yeah.’ She is stuck up in the air at the moment.
‘You know I’m not letting you down until you tell me the full story.’
‘You don’t play fair,’ she says sticking her tongue out.
‘So spill.’
I have to admit I’m also enjoying the view from down here. Her legs look pretty good from this angle.
‘Okay. It’s like this. I was thirteen and these had really sprouted,’ she says, pointing to her boobs. ‘The coach was my friend’s step-dad and I used to get a lift with them to training. This night my friend was sick so I went on my own with him and I had to wait back while he stayed until everyone was picked up.’
I have a horrible feeling I know where this story is going.
‘Can we get off this thing?’ Jessica says. I climb off carefully and use my hands to counterbalance it and let her down gently. She goes and stands so her back is leaning against a twisting plastic slide. I follow but give her a bit of space.
‘You were saying?’
228 She sighs. ‘Well when everyone had gone he made some comment about there being something in my eye. The next thing I know he’s all over me, trying to kiss me, one hand up my shorts and the other shoved into my bra. I didn’t know what to do. It was awful. He’s supposed to be driving me home. He’s the coach. He’s got me cornered in the change rooms, groping me and slobbering all over me. Then I snap. I’ve still got my boots on so I kick him with the studs right in the shins. I wish it was the balls. Then I make a run for it. I run all the way home in my football boots which is a pretty long way, three or four k at least.’
‘So what happened then? Did you report him?’
‘No. I just quit. Made up some injury and never went back.’
‘What a sleazebag. I don’t get why you didn’t dob him in.’
Jessica is biting at her knuckles, her foot tracing patterns in the dirt. ‘I didn’t think anyone would believe me. There were no witnesses. He made sure of that. His word against mine. And he was my friend’s dad. Sometimes it’s better to say nothing and not make any trouble.’
The tough confident Jessica I know has disappeared. She would have been terrified. I can’t help it. I want to protect her. I put my arms around her. It seems the right thing to do and it feels perfectly natural to have her head resting against my chest and me stroking her hair. I think she might be crying and it’s breaking my heart. We stand there for a while until some little kids turn up. Zipping up the bag, she looks at the kids on the monkey bars. A little girl is swinging by her legs upside down and trying to hold onto her dress. She suddenly lets go of the skirt, flashing all her undies, and lets out a shriek before flipping to her feet.
‘Yeah. He was a real sleaze. Mum and his wife were friends too. I didn’t even tell Mum.’
‘You didn’t tell your mum?’
Jessica shook her head. ‘I was going to, but I didn’t know where to start and the longer it goes the harder it gets. I looked up a knee injury that’s hard to pick and limped around a lot. I didn’t want to ruin their lives and, besides, he would have just denied it all.’
‘I still think you should have told her.’
‘Sometimes it’s better not to know.’ She starts untying the nets from where they are tied up to the trees. I go to help her, picking at the knots.
‘I didn’t realise,’ I say.
‘I’ve never actually told anyone else. It’s not exactly the sort of thing you drop into a casual conversation. Oh by the way, have I told you about when I was nearly molested?’
229 The little boy swings from arm to arm across the monkey bars. The little girl, who looks like his sister, is right behind. She gets halfway across and her arms give out. Her hands slip and she falls like a stone.
230 Chapter 21: Dylan
I know what she’s trying to do, trying to push me past my fear. I get where she’s coming from but why does she have to interfere? Her tactics are so sneaky, they’re brilliant.
She doesn’t nag.
She doesn’t even mention it again.
All she does is take advantage of the most powerful tool in the universe…
Gossip.
She gets her friends to start a rumour then all she has to do is sit back and wait. Suddenly all these people are coming up to me and saying it’s great that I’m coming back to train with the team. The more I tell people it’s not happening, the more they don’t believe me. The more I say I’m not good enough yet, the more they all say it doesn’t matter. Actually, it does matter if I suck. It matters to me. Don’t want to be there if I’m not any good.
Yet here I am. Not sure how I’m going to do this. Do I change my stump socks and redo my leg out in public when we take a break or go somewhere private and miss the team talk? Either way it draws attention. In the end I decide to use my bag and a towel to cover me up a bit. Now that I have my proper leg I don’t want people to see me legless.
And then there’s the whole shorts thing. Again, I want to blend in so I go with loose track pants.
We start with the usual warm-ups. A few short passes in pairs, a few laps jogging around the oval. So far, so good.
Shuttle runs, I’m much slower than I used to be but not the slowest.
Dribbling and weaving, not great, but I hold my own. Been working on dribbling with Jessica. My stump is hurting a little and the socket is feeling tight so I must be swelling up. I think I should take off a sock. This happens all the time after I exercise for a while. Extra blood rushes to my stump and makes it swell up. Nowhere near as bad as in the beginning but enough that I’m constantly having to adjust to the changes in volume by putting on or taking off stump socks.
I do my towel trick on the sidelines covering up what I’m doing. So I don’t have to do this again later, I take off two socks, instead of one, leaving only a thin one covering my stump.
231 If it’s too loose I can always add one back later. It’s a bit of a rush job getting myself sorted because they are dividing into teams ready to play a practice game.
‘I want you at right back,’ the coach says. It’s where I would have put me. In the back you have more time to organise your run. You also do less running than in the midfield. When I played centre-mid I used to run my socks off.
‘No tackles today’, the coach says. The reason being they don’t want any injuries leading up to the first cup game. I suspect it’s also to go easy on me. This year our school had a really good chance to make it to the finals. But now, with me out injured…who knows how things will turn out? Teams sorted into red and blue bibs, we start to play. Our forwards are pretty good and the midfield cuts things off well, so I only need to do the odd covering run and jog around a bit.
And then it’s on.
We miss a shot.
They make a break; feed the ball up to the guy playing opposite me who comes charging down the left wing at full tilt. Spike goes for the intercept. The ball rebounds off both players and suddenly it’s heading right for me. There’s only me between the ball and the goal.
I swing my right leg back to boot the ball clear, striking the ball dead centre. A perfect shot.
Next thing I’m on the ground, rolling around like a Brazilian.
I look down and my foot is facing backwards.
It takes a moment to register that my leg has come off. It’s not attached to my stump anymore. The only thing that stopped it flying off completely was the elastic bottom of my track pants. What the hell am I supposed to do now? I look up and there’s a sea of worried faces in a circle around me.
‘You okay?’ Nick says.
‘Wardrobe malfunction,’ I say.
Someone helps me up. There are only two options; hop off the pitch or crawl. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. Leaning on Jay and Cody I do an assisted hop to the sidelines, hoping to god I haven’t destroyed my new leg. I pull it off to inspect it. No major damage that I can see, but I don’t want to take any more chances.
One disaster for the day is more than enough.
‘I’m done,’ I tell the coach.
232 That’s it. Finito.
He pats me on the back. ‘Good to have you back.’
After fixing my leg on properly this time, I pack up my gear. All I want to do is get the hell out of here, but Jessica is hovering on the other side of the metal mesh fence.
‘Happy now?’ I bark. The girl’s team were practising at the other end of the oval so they all would have seen the whole debacle.
‘You were fine,’ she says.
‘I was hopeless. Can’t kick. Can’t keep up with play. Can’t even keep my leg on. I was total and utter crap and don’t try and bullshit me and tell me any different.’ I don’t stick around to hear any more lies. Hitting the deck was the clincher. Trying to make a comeback was a dumb idea.
Riding my knee scooter home, I make a promise to myself. I’m not doing that ever again.
Turning into our driveway, Jessica springs out of the shadows at me.
‘Haven’t you got nothing better to do?’ I growl.
She must have ridden like the clappers to get to my house before me and sure enough her face is all flushed and I can see beads of sweat trickling down the ‘v’ of her shirt. She wheels her bike behind me.
‘Thought you might want company.’
‘You thought wrong.’
‘It’s early days,’ she says, following me up the driveway.
‘Just forget it Jess. You saw what happened. I can’t do it. It’s too hard.’
‘So you’re giving up just like that,’ she says snapping her fingers. ‘All that practising down the drain?’
‘I was tragic. I’ll never be any good. Not like I was.’
‘Oh get over yourself. I thought you said you didn’t care if you weren’t any good. You just wanted to play.’ She pushes her bike aside and lets it drop to the ground, the wheels still spinning in the air.
‘Well I lied. Of course I care. But it doesn’t matter now. I’m through with football. I’m done.’
‘Quitter.’
233 That’s when I lose it and shout.
‘Well if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be like this!’
‘Well actually,’ she says, ‘if it wasn’t for me you’d be dead!’
We stand in the middle of the driveway glaring at each other.
‘If you want to go on blaming me for the rest of your life, that’s your problem, not mine. And you want to know something else? Your trouble Dylan McKay is that you never had to try that hard for anything you wanted, but now that things are a bit tough you just give up.’
‘That’s not fair. You don’t know what it’s like. The pain I’ve been through. How hard I’ve tried.’ I walk away, trying to shake her off, but she follows me around the front yard pecking at me like a crazy magpie.
‘You’re right. It’s not fair. Life’s not fair. Poor little Dylan. You tried. You failed. It’s all too hard. Who could blame you for giving up?’
‘I know what you’re doing and it’s not going to work, all that reverse psychology stuff. I’m just being realistic. There’s no point wasting everyone’s time.’
‘Suit yourself.’ She shrugs and turns away.
She is making me so mad. I unzip my gear bag and yank open the wheelie bin. The lid hits the side with a clang. Turning the bag upside down, I dump the lot into the bin: boots, shin pads, socks, tape, Dencorub, it all tumbles on top of the whole freakin’ mess, joining last night’s smelly prawn heads and blue plastic bags full of dog turds. I give the bag a good shake to be sure it’s all emptied. Then I toss the whole sports bag in the bin for good measure.
‘Very mature,’ she says.
I storm inside and slam the door. I march up the stairs and go on a rampage, hauling every single trophy off my shelves and dumping the lot on my bed. I’m never going to play for Australia. I’m never going to play for The Marlins. I’m never going to play for the school team again, probably couldn’t even keep up with the under fives.
I’m not going to be the guy everyone pities because he used to be so good. I look down at all the jumbled trophies on my bed. Who needs all these useless reminders? I look out the window to the oval below. The sight of the goal nets in the distance seems to taunt me. Every little thing I’ve kept bottled up inside comes exploding out, and once it starts I just can’t stop. I slam my fist onto the window sill, barely registering the pain, then I snatch the sides of my doona together bundling all the trophies inside. Hauling it over my shoulder like a big Santa- sack I drag it down the stairs, past the pool, out the back gate and onto the oval.
234 There’s a big pile of mulch near our back fence all ready to be spread around. I spot a pitchfork speared into the side of the bark chips. Yanking it out, I set to work excavating a big hole at the bottom of the pile, stabbing and digging, trying to make a deep pit, but it’s a bit like digging out wet sand at the beach. Quick as you dig, it caves in and fills over, so I have to work furious and fast.
Once it’s deep enough I open out my doona. All the trophies glint in the light, statuette after statuette of mini footballers mocking me with their two good legs, mocking me with the way they shine. I start hurling stuff wildly. Trophy after shiny trophy disappears into the hole.
When there’s nothing left, I scrape the mulch and pine bark back over to cover up the hole; my only concern is that when the digger hits the pile of cheap metal it will make too much noise. I don’t want the operator to stop and notice what he’s struck. When the backhoe hits I want everything to be crushed. I am out of puff by the time it’s all done.
In another twenty minutes my mother will be home so there’s no time to hang around. I shake out the doona, which is covered in grass and bits of mulch, and go back to my room with it bundled under my arm. I flop on the bed, exhausted. I look up. My cupboard door is gaping open and it hits me right between the eyes.
All my old boots are still lined up in rows like they’re laughing at me, not letting me escape the past I want to leave behind. I don’t have time before Mum gets home to bury them along with the trophies but I’m still fired up and I sure don’t want those boots anymore. So I pile them onto my desk, punch out the fly screen and open the window with a shove. Then one by one I throw every single boot out that window, hurling them as hard and as far as I can. Some land on the concrete with a mighty crack, some crash into bushes. Some hit the pool like torpedoes and send up splash after splash. I crank up my music as high as it can go.
My heart is pounding as the music booms.
235 Chapter 22: Jessica
That Dylan Mackay was an idiot. An ungrateful spoilt brat. If he wanted to throw his football gear in the bin, that was his stupid problem. Turning my back on his house, I took off down the street on Mum’s battered old bike, my transport since you know when. Five minutes later I realised there was no bag attached to the handlebars. I must have left it in Dylan’s front garden. How did I not even notice until I was two blocks away? I turned around and pedalled back to his house, hoping to get there before his mum got home. There’d be fireworks if she saw me anywhere near her precious son. That would not be a pretty scene.
When I got there, my bag wasn’t in the front garden but I was sure it must be somewhere round here. Mentally I retraced my steps. Last time I remember having it I was standing next to him by the rubbish bins, so with that in mind I headed around the side of the house and there it was, leaning against the recycling bin. I must have put it down when we were arguing. I still couldn’t believe Dylan could throw his boots away. After all, it wasn’t just the boots. It was everything along with it that he was tossing aside. All those hours and hours of practice. All those hopes to get back to the game.
Part out of whim, part anger, part ‘how-dare-he’, I flipped open the lid of the bin. All sorts of horrible smells were brewing in there. I grabbed a stick from the garden and holding my nose I fished around. First thing I pulled out was his gear bag, quickly followed by his boots. The shin pads took a little more fishing. The rest, well too bad. I’d gone way above and beyond the call of duty ferreting around in all that garbage. Then as I hooked Dylan’s gear bag onto my handle bars I heard a strange noise coming from over the back fence. Curiosity got the better of me. Silently I unlatched the side gate. I crept along the side fence opposite the pool, staying hidden in shrubs until I hit the back timber-paling fence. Finding a gap formed by a knot in the timber, I peered through and couldn’t believe my eyes.
Dylan really was flipping out. It took a moment to figure out what he was doing; throwing all his trophies into a huge pile of bark chips.
At first all I could do was stand there and stare. If I tried to interfere it might make things worse. The gear in the bin was bad enough. Damn the idiotic sonofabitch. I could understand he was angry. About time, in my opinion, but really, this was a monumentally stupid thing to do. He was bound to regret it. I got straight back on my bike and rode like the clappers, legs pumping, heart racing, mind all in a turmoil.
236 I had the germ of an idea that just might work, but I couldn’t do it all on my own. I needed help, and there was only one place I could think of to go.
The Sinclair’s house.
237 Chapter 23: Dylan
It does look kind of funny. Football boots floating in the pool. More boots dangling from the bushes like Christmas decorations.
Mum doesn’t get the joke. She flings up my blind and rips my earplugs out.
‘Hey what the? I was listening to that.’
‘Not anymore. Talk to me,’ she demands, tapping her foot, hands on her hips, madder than a brown snake shedding its skin.
I turn over to face the wall. She pulls me right back.
‘Don’t you dare ignore me. What the hell have you done?’
‘I just had a clear out. You’re always nagging me to get rid of stuff. I don’t need any of that anymore.’
‘So you threw all your old boots in the pool? What is wrong with you? That’s not a clear-out, it’s a meltdown. You haven’t needed most of those boots for years, but you still kept them because they were important to you. You can’t just throw them in the pool!’
‘Well I did. So what of it?’ Shaking her hand off my shoulder, I fumble with the earplugs trying to put them back in.
‘I’m trying to talk to you Dylan.’
‘Well, stop talking and leave me alone.’
Mum runs a hand through her hair and paces the room turning away from the window, not appreciating my landscape design.
‘I don’t understand, what’s got into you?’
‘What’s got into me?’ I sit up and swing my legs over the side of my bed sticking my stump up in the air. ‘What’s got into me?’ I point at my leg. ‘Maybe this has got something to do with it. It’s over Mum. I finally realised. The big Mackay family dream is dead. No pro contract. No fame and glory. No Football. No point pretending anymore. All that stuff is gone.’ I kneel up on the bed and pull my blind back down. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. School’s more important than football. You were right all along.’
238 Chapter 24: Jessica
‘Give me one good reason why we should help,’ Jake’s mum said. She was halfway through peeling a huge mound of potatoes and didn’t miss a stroke when I burst in the door and told her what Dylan did. ‘It’s not like the Mackays have been helping us much lately.’ She did have a point.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘because it’s the right thing to do?’ Liz kept on peeling the potatoes, looked from me to Jake and back again. Her lips were pursed, discarded strips of peelings piling up in a slimy brown heap in the sink, little rivers of dirt-streaked water bleeding out from the sides.
‘Well?’ I said, ‘Just forget about it! Forget I mentioned it.’ I was wasting my time here. I jumped off the kitchen stool and leaned down for my bag. ‘I’ll do it myself.’
Wiping her hands on her apron, Liz took the telephone down from its cradle on the wall.
‘Phone your mum. Tell her you’re staying for dinner and we’ll drop you home.’
Gratitude flooded through me. Finally, an adult who acted like an adult.
Like something out of a bad spy movie, we crept onto the darkened oval watching out to make sure the lights in Dylan’s bedroom were not on. At Liz’s suggestion we had waited until six-thirty when the Mackays would be having dinner to launch the mission. She drove us to the car park, which was closest to the ‘scene’. Jake insisted on coming for the ride, though he was really only taking up space and not much help. Two of his brothers and two of his sisters came along to help, armed with shopping bags, garden gloves and spades. It was a good thing the Sinclairs had a people mover and we had some light from a weak half-moon. They weren’t exactly the quietest bunch.
I marked out the most likely spot to start searching. Then like a team of archaeologists we got to work, carefully sifting through the mound of mulch, hunting for Dylan’s buried trophies. Jake estimated there were forty or so. Luckily the mulch wasn’t difficult to sift through and it wasn’t long before the first trophies emerged. Some were a bit chipped and scratched but all in all, there was surprisingly little damage considering the treatment they’d had.
After each trophy was pulled out from the mulch pile, Morag, Jake’s eldest sister, brushed them off.
239 ‘Hey look at this,’ she said, holding up the trophy for Best Under 10 Player, ‘this one is missing a leg.’ Black humour or cruel irony? The jury was out on that score. After being brushed down, they were stacked carefully side-by-side into Woolworth’s shopping bags then ferried to the van as each bag was filled. It was Jake’s job to stand guard over the loot. Not that he made much of a guard, but it made him feel part of the process.
It took maybe an hour or so to get to the point where we thought we had recovered them all, though it was impossible to be sure. We could have spent all night searching through the whole pile for little extra gain so we called it a night at a tally of forty-eight trophies and pushed all the mulch back into the one big pile.
‘That was fun,’ Morag said, back at the car all flushed with success.
‘A-ha me hearties. Finding the buried treasure by moonlight. It doesn’t get any better than this!’ Alistair said.
‘And that pirate accent doesn’t get any worse,’ Jake quipped, as the rest of us let out a big groan.
The whole drive home we kept breaking into pirate voices, which continued throughout the whole meal. It was easy to see the attraction Jake’s family would have for an only child like Dylan, not to mention Liz’s awesome cooking. Her lamb stew with mashed potatoes was quickly demolished. Digging for buried treasure does wonders for the appetite.
Over dinner I noticed that Jake had a knife with a built-up handle to make it easier to hold. It must be hard when you’re right handed and that hand doesn’t do what you want. I found it hard enough when I just had a cast. Every so often one of his brothers or sisters would hold his elbow up a bit to help him manipulate the food on his plate but they didn’t take over and do it for him, and they all seemed to sense when and how much to help.
‘What are you going to do with the trophies now?’ Alistair asked, letting out a burp. Before I could answer Jake jumped in.
‘I want to keep them in my room then when that Mackay realises what a dipshit he’s been…’
‘Language!’ Liz said.
‘I want a photo of the look on his face when he sees them.’
‘I wouldn’t hold your breath,’ Morag said.
‘Dylan doesn’t visit anymore,’ the youngest girl said turning to me to explain. I knew their mothers had fallen out over me, but surely they should have patched things up by now? Jake made out he wanted to have one up on Dylan by hanging onto his trophies, but there was
240 also something wistful in the way his good hand played with the cutlery while he stared off into space. Maybe he was disappointed, maybe he was jealous, or maybe, he just missed his best friend. In all the drama after the accident, Jake had been overlooked. I was as guilty as everyone, concentrating so much attention on Dylan. Yet Jake had just as much, if not more to lose than a football career. He had a scholarship to go to Sydney Uni if he got a high enough score. It was a miracle that while the head injury affected his arm and leg, his mind was as sharp as ever. It would have been a crying shame if he didn’t get that scholarship, but after missing so much school it would be a big task. When it was time for me to go, Alistair fetched Jake’s walking stick and a sister hovered around while he stood up. Again they gave him just enough help to get going but not too much. I had to fight back my own instincts to rush in all the time. People have to learn for themselves. One thing I had learnt from just one meal in this noisy, competitive family was the reason why Jake tried too hard and talked too much. If you didn’t talk like your life depended on it, you didn’t have a hope of being heard around here. A fight broke out over whose turn it was to stack the dishwasher before we even made it to the door.
‘You know the best thing about being like this?’ Jake said. ‘I get out of chores.’
‘I heard that,’ Liz said. ‘Not for much longer. Game’s up. You can start doing your share.’
‘I’d break half the plates,’ Jake said which was probably true but from the look on her face it was a risk Liz would probably take.
Piling my bike into the people mover, Liz waved us off and returned to umpire the brewing dishwasher war. Marcus, Jake’s eldest brother, was driving me home. We pulled up outside my house and he insisted on helping me get my bike out of the van. As I was about to wheel it away, he grabbed my hand, staring at me with eyes so like Jake’s it was uncanny.
‘Before you go there’s something I need to say.’
‘Yes?’
‘I saw the photo on Jake’s phone.’
‘What photo? I said pulling my hand away.
‘Don’t worry. I got rid of it.’
Before I could find out what on earth he was going on about, Marcus jumped back in the van. The engine sputtered to life and he drove away
Taking two slow breaths, I brushed the hair off my face and prepared myself to go inside. I had to go and fake it in front of my family, fake that everything was fine, steady reliable Jessica on the outside, doubt and turmoil swirling and churning behind the facade.
241
Dylan didn’t get any better after his big hissy-fit. If anything he got a whole lot worse. He kept making excuses not to do our chemistry sessions, flat out refused to meet me at the park, hardly talked to any of his friends, slowly but surely disappearing inside his own skin. So sometimes you have to take things into your own hands.
I hoped to God I had the right police station. I asked for Mr Mackay the detective. The sergeant at the front desk tried to give me the brush off, said he was busy unless I had an appointment, but they weren’t going to get rid of me that easily. I said I would sit there and wait, no matter how long it took.
‘There’s no point waiting. I’m not even sure if he’s in.’
‘His car’s in the car park. Black Volvo.’ The sergeant’s eyes gave a little blink so I knew he must be in, although I didn’t know if his car was in the car park. That was just a lucky guess. The sergeant did his best to try and ignore me. ‘Why don’t you give him a ring and tell him I’m here. It’s about his son Dylan.’
Two minutes later Dylan’s Dad was at the counter. He wore a jacket and tie, not a uniform, and gave the impression of being an even tougher nut to crack than the desk sergeant. I twirled my plait to help me keep my nerve. If he didn’t recognise me he should know the school uniform.
‘Jessica, isn’t it?’
I nodded, dropping my plait.
‘It’s about Dylan. I need to speak to you.’
‘You know I shouldn’t talk to you about the case.’
Shifting my weight from one leg to the other, I glanced up at him. ‘It’s not about the case. I told the other police everything I’m going to say about that. This is about Dylan. I’m really worried about him.’
He frowned a little and lowered his voice. ‘If it’s not police business then it’s not really appropriate for me to talk to you here.’
‘Can’t you take a break or something? It’s really important.’ I looked quickly around the room. ‘There’s a coffee shop over the road. If you don’t think you should be seen with me here just meet me there in ten minutes.’ There was nothing else I could say to persuade him. Either he’d come or he wouldn’t. So I walked out the door.
242 He came. Spotted me straight away. I’d picked a corner table by the window so I could see when he left the building across the road, putting my school bag on the seat next to me. It was my security blanket. Cops made me nervous no matter how nice they were.
‘Skim piccolo latte,’ I said sliding a cup in front of him. ‘That’s what the barista told me you have. I put it on your tab.’
He looked a teeny bit impressed.
‘It’s not hard if you ask the right questions,’ I said. I’d just given him a great opening to start asking questions but instead he went for the silent cop routine. I spooned a few mouthfuls of latte froth and licked them off the back of the spoon. I tapped the table with my fingers. ‘I’m really worried about Dylan.’
He gave me a nod to continue.
‘I’ve been helping him with chemistry all year…’
‘All year?’
‘Yeah. Then he asked me to help him with his football.’
‘With his football? You?’
‘Strange. I know. He needed someone to kick balls to him, easy stuff while he re-learnt his skills.’
‘Why didn’t he ask any of his football friends, or me for that matter?’ He skulled the rest of his coffee. I glanced up from playing with my spoon.
‘I think he was embarrassed. He didn’t want to practise with them until he was at least not total crap. And believe me, to start with, he was total crap. But he was getting okay. Or I think so. And then. Well. It was a bit of a disaster. I talked him into having a go with the guys at school and the first training session he went to tackle someone and his leg came off. It was kind of funny and he made out it was hilarious, but then I followed him home and he told me he wasn’t going to bother anymore and we had a big fight.’ I have a habit of talking with my hands and I knocked the spoon and sent it flying. While Dylan’s Dad picked it up off the floor, I took a plastic shopping bag out of my school bag and pushed it across the table.
‘This is his.’
‘What is it?’
‘His boots and shin pads. He threw them in the bin then I went back later and took them out. You might want to give them a really good clean before he wears them.’ Dylan’s dad pushed his empty coffee cup aside and peered in the bag. It stank as he opened it. A lot.
243 ‘So what do you want me to do? If he doesn’t want to play I can’t make him.’
‘You really don’t get it.’
‘Apparently not.’
‘He does want to play football. He loves it. Dylan’s problem is that he thinks he has to be the best and if he can’t be as good as he was he thinks you’ll be even more disappointed in him.’
He sat back in his seat. ‘Disappointed in him?’
‘The whole football career thing. That was your dream. Not his. He went along with it to please you. He hated the pressure.’
‘That’s not true. What would you know?’ He sat forward again, really in my face. ‘He wanted it too.’
‘Did he? Did he really? Then why did he go in the toilets and vomit before every game? That’s what he told me.’ My eyebrows lifted up with the question. His were bunched in a frown. ‘Didn’t think you knew about that bit.’
‘Sure Dylan got nervous before a game but that didn’t mean he hated it. He loved football. He had what it takes. He had a great career ahead of him.’
‘And now he doesn’t. Thanks to me. That’s what you were think, isn’t it?’ I pushed the cup to the side and folded my arms. ‘Yet I’m the one he asked for help. Go figure?’
Dylan’s dad wrapped the plastic bag tighter around the boots and put it on his lap. His jaw was clenching but I wasn’t going to back down no matter how churned up I was inside. He looked up. I dared him to meet my eyes.
‘Why? Why did he ask you?’
‘When I should be the last person he asked? I don’t know. Maybe because I don’t give a crap about sport. Maybe because I’m the only one who listened instead of trying to tell him what to do. Or maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe Dylan’s worried he’ll go and disappoint you again.’
He picked the boots up off his lap and in a fit of frustration banged them back down on the table.
‘You don’t know a thing about me and my son!’ He glanced around the room when he realised he was practically shouting, then clamped his hands on the boots and lowered his voice. ‘Dylan has never disappointed me. I disappointed him.’
‘Well tell him that.’
244 ‘Alright I will! You’ve got a nerve after what you did to my son.’ He was almost yelling again, which was a bit scary, but I had to say what needed to be said for Dylan’s sake.
‘He thinks his life is over if he can’t be a pro footballer anymore, but there’s lots of other stuff he can do. Amputees climb mountains and go to the South Pole and one even ran in the Olympics. He just needs help to find something else in his life other than football.’
‘Like what?’ His voice was back to normal.
Gulping, I pressed on, saying my piece. ‘I don’t know. You’re his Dad. Do Dad stuff. Go camping. Ride a bike. Long walks in the park. Whatever. You’ve got a kayak in the garage and a whopping big basketball ring out the front, why don’t you shoot some hoops? Just fun stuff.’
‘How do you know what’s in our garage?’
At that point I thought it was time to go.
‘Anyway. Thanks for the coffee. I won’t take any more of your time.’
‘That’s it?’ he said.
‘That’s it.’
Nothing more to say. Except of course, see you in court, which was running through my mind but was best left unsaid. I pushed my seat back and stood up to leave.
‘I saw you at Westfields with Dylan that day.’
I felt my face flame at the thought. He knew and said nothing. What else did he know? My whole big tough-act nearly crumpled.
‘I know. I saw you looking.’
Which wasn’t true but he didn’t know that. I was so sick of Dylan and his screwed-up family.
‘Thanks for the coffee,’ I said.
My heart was pounding in my ears and I got out of there as fast as I could. If he was really mad at me he could make things extra bad in court. I took one quick look back over my shoulder.
Dylan’s Dad was still sitting at the table, his face was white and he was hugging Dylan’s boots, looking smaller and more crumpled and suddenly older.
245 Chapter 25: Dylan
Day?… Lost Count 41/2 months-ish
Dad’s gone all weird on me. He keeps finding stuff for us to do. He says I need some fun and not all rehab and school. I hope he’s not trying to do that bonding crap because he thinks he should. We shoot hoops. Have table tennis challenges in the garage. Now he’s fished out our bikes, changed the brake cables and oiled the chains. He wants to cycle with me to get fit.
How do you stop a prosthetic foot slipping off a bike pedal? I had no idea so I googled it. Surely someone else has had this problem before. Bingo. Heaps of suggestions. Toe cleats. Bigger pedals with ‘terror pins’ that stick in your soles. Terror pins? Velcro. The Velcro worked fine for now but I think I’ll try some of the other stuff too and see what works best.
Cycling Update. Dad wants to go riding every morning. At five a.m.! I’ve created a monster. And Mum bought him some Lycra! Ahhhhh! How did I deserve this?
My quads are looking pretty buff thanks to the cycling. Starting to beat Dad at table tennis. Getting better at moving side to side.
This weekend’s activity: kayaking. I’ll have to do that with my leg off. Haven’t got a wet leg yet. It will be good to get one for the shower and the beach when the shape of my leg settles down. It takes six months. Everything seems to take an eternity and you can’t hurry any of this up. It’s a pain in the bum.
Jessica Wilkinson does my head in. She won’t come over anymore but we still do chemistry in spare periods at the library at school. Okay. If that’s how she wants to play it. I’m fine with that. She never mentions about me playing again but she made the school team. I knew she would. I went and watched them train. She plays stopper and nothing gets past her.
I want to get back to snowboarding. I looked up how to modify your boots on Google and there’s lots of ways you can go. One thing I’ve found with this amputee stuff is there is always someone out there with suggestions. Someone who’s been down this path before.
246
Shooting hoops with Dad somehow turned into kicking a football. It was kind of automatic. When the ball rolled on the ground I couldn’t not dribble it. Next thing I knew we’re doing one-on-one’s in the driveway and when we run out of room we hit the oval.
Most awesome thing happened. Bill turned up to see moon a freakin’ Harley!! Mum’s face was priceless. He didn’t tell me he races motorbikes for kicks and wanted the knee replacement so he could keep racing. Knowing Bill, can’t say I was totally surprised. He told me about a motorcycle school for amputees. I so want to go. Mum would freak. Then again. Maybe not. Bill offered to take me for a spin on his bike. Mum looked like she was about to wet her pants so he took her first to show her how safe it is. She’d never admit it but she loved it. Then it was my turn. Freakin amazing!
Think they got Bill to come over to cheer me up or settle me down or both. Court hearing is next week. Five days to go. Jessica avoiding me. Jake doesn’t stop talking about anything else. Not sleeping too well.
247 Chapter 26: Jessica
Judgement Day. It’s freezing cold, the grass covered with frost. A war between Milly and Amy broke out over who had the most sultanas in their sultana bran. Mum appeared in a borrowed black skirt and jacket, more funeral than court but it covered her knees. I had on a navy skirt and white blouse, dressed like I was going for a job interview. I pretended to eat and in the end rinsed my breakfast cereal down the sink when Mum wasn’t looking. A friend was taking the girls to school which was just as well since we had to be at the courthouse by nine and the traffic was always horrendous and the parking was a nightmare and on and on Mum went.
Mum adjusted my collar, absently running her fingers down one of my braids, not commenting on the change of style from a single ponytail to two plaits. I was aiming for a bit more ‘conservative’, but the effect was more schoolgirl, more like the scared kid that was hiding inside. The coat I wriggled into was an op-shop number but still looked half-decent. Running my tongue over my teeth, I hit sharp remnants of peppermint. I wanted water. No matter how much I drank I still felt dry. At the last minute, I jammed a few wads of tissues in my pockets before opening the door to a burst of cold air.
The twins were still fighting but I insisted on a long hug. I might not see them again. Despite what the solicitor said, the magistrate could still find me guilty and send me to prison. We drove off in our Subaru with its sagging suspension and I looked back at the rented townhouse. It looked sadder than before; pot plants clumped at the door chained together by dust and cobwebs, the pathway strewn with leaves in varying stages of decay, the letterbox still leaning at a twisted angle, vandalised soon after the crash. Mum tried to fix it once but the very next day it took an even bigger hit so she gave up.
‘Don’t worry,’ Mum said, catching my eye in the mirror, ‘it will be fine. I have a good feeling about this.’
Well that makes one of us. I had a whole truckload of feelings ‘about this’ and all of those feelings were bad.
248 Chapter 27: Dylan
The new trousers are scratchy as hell. The courtroom is full to bursting so I can’t sneak in a quick scratch, though when I look more closely half of the crowd is Jake’s family. Jake is up the front sitting in a wheelchair. I can’t see Jessica yet.
The prosecutor has already explained how it all works, who sits where and how to talk to the magistrate in case he wants to ask questions about my statement. It’s not how I imagined a courtroom, not very formal, more like any old meeting room with chairs laid in rows and a table with bigger fancier chairs up the front. We have to sit up the front with Jake and his parents, the prosecutor between us, me near the outside aisle so my leg has plenty of room and I can escape. The impact statement is in my top pocket but I hope I don’t have to use it.
Jessica is led into the courtroom and the sheriff makes her sit in a seat that faces kind of sideways, a seat they call ‘the dock’. Our eyes lock for an instant and when she looks at me and I look at her it makes my heart jump, the way that you jump when someone blows up a paper bag and destroys it with one huge bang. Almost straight away the magistrate comes in, so I don’t have any time to dwell. We have to stand up as he enters the courtroom, and the court official checks we’re here for the right case.
Crown vs Wilkinson.
Everyone is looking at Jessica and while some people try not to make it too obvious, others stare at her like she’s the newest animal in the zoo.
Her hair is in plaits. I’ve never seen her wear it like that. I wonder how it would feel to unravel them and run my fingers through her hair, which sets me off thinking about a whole bunch of other Jessica-related stuff. I put a lid on those thoughts real quick. I can’t go there. I can’t think about that.
The prosecutor reads out the charges and the magistrate asks if there is any more evidence to offer up. Jessica’s solicitor hands him something, and then the first witness is called to the stand. He swears on the Bible, pledging to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me god. I didn’t realise they actually do that.
To start off the constable describes what they found at the accident, which I am finding hard to listen to. Jessica is looking down at her hands. Jake rocks the rims on his wheelchair. Dad sits with his fists on his knees the way that bodyguards do, like there’s a post shoved up his
249 shirt and he’s ready to spring at an instant. He is looking ahead, watching Jessica, just like me. I can’t really see what Mum is doing since Dad’s body is blocking the way.
After the constable gives his evidence, they move on to the medical stuff. The prosecutor wants to go over the details of our injuries but the magistrate hurries him along.
‘I’ve seen the photos. The grievous bodily harm is in no doubt,’ the magistrate says. ‘Let’s move on. Next witness please.’
I’m relieved. I don’t want all the gory details of what happened to me raked over in public.
The witness is Nick. He looks even more uncomfortable than me in a suit and tie, the whole formal bit.
‘So in your own words describe what you saw and heard when the defendant left the party on the night of February seventeen.’
Nick starts to talk and the fidgeting in the room stops.
‘Dylan and Jake were arguing about something. I couldn’t hear exactly what. They had both had a bit to drink.’
‘And then?’
‘And then Jessica tried to get Jake to sit down on a seat outside the house but he followed her and Dylan across the road. Dylan got in the front passenger seat, and while Jessica walked around to the driver’s side Jake got in the back.’
‘Even though there were red P plates on the car and it was after eleven o’clock?’
‘I don’t know what the time was. I didn’t have a watch on and I didn’t look at my phone’.
‘So what happened next?’
Nick’s hand goes up to loosen his tie. ‘Then Jessica got out and opened the back door and tried to pull Jake out. He was making a bit of a racket so I went over to see if I could help. There were a few people coming out to see what was going on.’
‘And then?’
‘Jake started singing so it was a bit hard to hear. Dylan and Jessica were talking. I asked if she wanted some help and she said, “no, I’ve got this.” Then she drove off.’
‘With both boys in the car?’
‘Yes.’
250 ‘No further questions Your Honour,’ the prosecutor says, looking smug. Jessica’s solicitor doesn’t have any questions either. Well really, what could he ask that would help? It doesn’t look good for Jessica. Nick has to leave the room when he finishes testifying. It’s the rule so one witness can’t influence another.
The next witness is Lucy Hamilton.
She gives me a little wave as she gets led in. No bowing to the magistrate from Lucy. She flicks her hair and Jessica scowls, looking like she’d happily throw Lucy in a pit of snakes. Those two hate each other, but I never did find out exactly why.
‘So on the night in question you were standing next to the car allegedly driven by the defendant.’
‘Yes. That’s correct.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t understand the question.’
‘Why were you standing there? Were you planning to stop them? To go with them?’
‘God no. I wanted to see what she was up to.’
‘By she, you mean the defendant?’
‘I mean her,’ she said pointing. ‘Jessica Wilkinson. I knew she couldn’t be trusted.’
‘Objection,’ Jessica’s solicitor jumps in.
‘Did anyone try and stop them?’
Lucy shrugs her shoulders dismissively. ‘There was no point. I heard her, I mean Jessica Wilkinson, say she would drive them both home. I saw Nick say something to her and she snapped at him. Said she’s got this. Then she just took off. Well they did all come together in the same car. Very cosy,’ Lucy says with a smirk, twirling her hair around one finger.
Not surprisingly, Jessica’s solicitor decides to cross examine. He stands up slowly and deliberately, strolls in front of Jessica and back to Lucy in the witness box.
‘So you saw them all get in the car but did nothing to stop them.’
‘Well, like I said, she took off. I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t want to interfere.’
‘You didn’t want to interfere?’
‘That’s right. It wasn’t my problem.’
‘So why did you interfere? Why did you send a text message?’
251 ‘I didn’t send any text messages.’
‘None?’
‘Not then. Not to her.’
‘But you did send a message to Jake Sinclair with a photo attached.’
‘I sent lots of photos that night to lots of people. It was a party. That’s what you do.’
The solicitor continues as if he hasn’t heard her response. ‘A photo that was bound to cause trouble…’
Lucy shifts her weight and brushes some hair off her face.
‘Objection. Relevance,’ the prosecutor calls out.
‘It explains the context and emotional state of the vehicle’s occupants prior to the incident.’
‘Get to the point,’ the magistrate says.
‘On the night in question, you sent a photo with a message to Jake with the intention of causing trouble?’
‘Yes. I mean no. Yes I sent him a photo but I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.’ Lucy’s confidence is melting faster than an ice cream.
The prosecutor gets the magistrate’s permission to describe the photograph ‘for the benefit of the gallery’.
‘It’s a picture of the defendant Jessica Wilkinson in a state of semi-undress on top of a bed, kissing one of the victims, Dylan Mackay, with a message that says, “with friends like these who needs enemies”.’ The whole courtroom leans forward to try and catch a glimpse of the photo.
The walls of the courtroom seem to shrink towards me, pressing closer, hemming me in. I can’t believe it. I can’t remember any of this. If it’s true, no wonder Jake wrote himself off. Why the hell didn’t Jessica tell me? I can’t look up. I can’t look at her face. And if Jake got the message on his phone, why hasn’t he said something? Have all my friends been lying to me? Has anybody been telling me the truth?
I sit in a daze, not hearing what the next witness says. Some private crash investigator. It’s all technical stuff until the end, when a question from the prosecutor gets my instant attention.
252 ‘So you said the most common reason for a vehicle to roll over is when an inexperienced driver drifts or swerves and then over-corrects the steering. Do you think there is evidence to support that in this case?’
‘Yes. The tyre skid marks on the bitumen and the tyre imprints in the gravel suggest the vehicle drifted across to the driver’s side then swerved back onto the road but over-steered and braked suddenly, causing the vehicle to roll.’
He points everything out on a little PowerPoint presentation like one of those road safety lectures they make you go to at school.
‘We’ve established that the driver had no alcohol in her system, the weather was good and it was a straight bit of road,’ the prosecutor says, before pausing and looking around the courtroom for effect. ‘What puzzles me then is why the vehicle swerved in the first place. Can you offer any other explanations? Like oil or water on the road?’
‘We checked that. No evidence to support it.’
‘An animal?’
‘Possible but not mentioned in the defendant’s statement, no evidence of animal tracks near the site or animal matter on the vehicle.’
‘She didn’t use the phone but what about leaning down to change the stereo?’
‘It’s quite possible. Driver inattention is a common contributor, which is why the peer passenger condition was introduced in the first place. There are numerous studies that prove that the more passengers, the greater the statistical probability of a young person being involved in a crash.’
The prosecutor lets all that sink in for a while.
Jessica is so screwed.
‘What about skylarking?’ he suddenly says.
‘The pattern of tyre skid marks was quite erratic, so skylarking is also highly possible but we can’t say for sure. You’d have to ask the defendant about that.’
‘Yes,’ the prosecutor says, swinging to face Jessica dramatically. He has the whole room in the palm of his hand. ‘We will have to ask the defendant about that.’ He lets the sentence hang in the air for effect. ‘Nothing further Your Honour,’ he says.
Jessica’s solicitor gets up to cross-examine. The private investigator doesn’t look bothered, probably having done these things a million times before. While he may not be nervous, I sure am. My palms are sweaty so I sit on my hands. I don’t know how Jessica can sit
253 there and stare into the distance. I try and catch her eye but she won’t look at me. I still can’t believe she didn’t tell me about what we did at the party. How could she not mention any of that? I tune back in to the proceedings. The solicitor is trying to pull the crash expert’s testimony apart.
‘These are all, as you say, interesting theories, possibilities, statistical research, but really what that amounts to is speculation without any proof.’
‘Apart from the erratic tyre marks,’ the witness interjects.
‘I didn’t ask you a question yet,’ he says, cutting him off. ‘Let me get this clear. From the research, a major cause of lapsed attention is from distractions to the driver from within a vehicle. Is that correct?
‘Yes that has been shown to be a significant factor.’ The solicitor prowls in front of the witness box, chewing the end of his pen like he is chewing an idea over in his head. Putting the pen down, he leans both hands on the table and levels a stare at the expert in the box. ‘So rather than skylarking, as you assume, isn’t it more likely that with two drunk boys in the car that there may have been some internal distraction? Something that momentarily diverted my client’s attention so that, as she says in her statement quite plausibly, she simply lost control?’
‘It’s possible. Yes.’
‘So a brief moment of distraction is just as possible as any of the other theories the prosecution has come up with?’
‘Yes.’
‘And doesn’t research also suggest that a stressful situation prior to driving is also associated with crashes involving young people?’
‘Yes there are a few studies that suggest stress as a factor.’
‘And would two boys fighting over you and the threat of public humiliation be considered a stressful situation?’
‘I can’t say I’ve ever been in that situation,’ the witness says and a laugh ripples through the crowd.
‘That does surprise me,’ the solicitor says, setting off another ripple of laughter. Mr Expert’s face turns tomato-sauce red. ‘People feel threatened when they’re embarrassed don’t they? And when someone feels threatened the survival instinct kicks in. It’s fight or flight. It’s perfectly natural for a person to want to get away. Wouldn’t you say?’ The solicitor is peering right at his face, examining where he has turned all red. The guy is squirming. ‘So jumping in the car and driving off was quite a natural response to a stressful situation.’
254 ‘Possibly,’ the witness concedes. When he steps down, he can’t get away fast enough.
Through all this Jessica’s face is a mask.
‘We’d like to call the defendant to the stand,’ the prosecutor says and the mask cracks. She looks like she’s about to step under a train.
Jessica takes the oath. The courtroom goes quiet. My heart pounds loudly in my ears. All the shuffling and shifting and whispering has stopped and you can hear the sound of traffic outside.
The prosecutor starts.
‘On the night of February seventeen did you knowingly drive a vehicle after eleven p.m. with Dylan McKay and Jake Sinclair as passengers, violating the peer passenger rule of a red provisional licence?’
Jessica nods and says ‘yes’ very softly.
‘I couldn’t quite catch that.’
‘Yes,’ she says loud and clear.
‘And as we have established, can you confirm that the vehicle driven by you left the road and rolled over before it became wedged in an embankment?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it was a straight bit of road?’
‘Yes.’ I can see her jaw clenching from here.
‘And you weren’t drinking or speeding?’
‘No. I’m a good driver. I’ve never had a fine or anything before.’
The prosecutor is doing his pacing thing again.
‘So tell me how does a good driver weave all over a straight bit of road, nearly hit a tree, roll the car and crash, permanently maiming her two passengers when she was only allowed to carry one passenger in the first place?’
Jessica stares at the far wall again.
‘I just lost control.’
‘Apparently you were doing a lot of losing control that night…’
‘Objection,’ her solicitor chimes in.
255 ‘There was no animal, no potholes, no defect with the vehicle, no external reason anyone can establish, not even a phone call to distract you, so if you weren’t driving in a dangerous manner then how could you lose control?’ Everyone in the room is on the edge of their seat.
Between clenched teeth, Jessica replies. ‘I just did.’
‘No further questions.’
Now her solicitor stands up. He lowers his voice and the whole room strains to hear.
‘I don’t need to remind you that under oath you must tell the whole truth, not part of the truth or a better version of the truth that you think may protect someone else. You must answer any questions fully that are posed to you by an officer of the court.’
A strange thing to say from her own defence.
‘I’d like to go back a little further so that the court can understand everything that happened. To begin with, how did you get to the party in the first place?’
‘In Dylan’s dad’s car. Jake and Dylan picked me up.’
‘So if there were three of you from the start in the car, what was the plan to get home so you didn’t break the peer passenger rule?’
‘I thought it was just Dylan picking me up. I didn’t know Jake was coming too. They had this scheme going on. Dylan was going to have a few drinks. Jake was going to stay sober and drive me home first, then come back and get Dylan.’
‘Sounds complicated. So what was the point of all this?’
Jessica glances nervously around the room.
‘Jake was trying to impress me. He kept following me around all night. I think he wanted me in the car on his own.’
‘And yet you ended up in the bedroom with Dylan?’
I watch as Jessica’s hands clench the side of her seat.
‘That just happened. We didn’t plan it. I went upstairs to get away from Jake and… and Dylan was there.’
‘And Jake found out and started drinking?’
‘Apparently. I didn’t know until later.’
‘How much later?’
‘Pardon?’
256 ‘When did you find out that Jake knew?’
Jessica’s eyes dart up like an animal in the dark, all scared when its cover is gone. She leans back and swallows. ‘I found out in the car.’
‘When you were driving home?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘How what?’
‘How did you find out?’
Her eyes dart again. ‘When we drove off, they were arguing. Dylan was angry with Jake for getting drunk and angry because he shouldn’t be in the car. Then Jake started on about how that would suit us to turf him out, then he was yelling and accusing us of, well, all sorts of stuff.’
‘So you lost control because they were arguing and you got distracted?’
‘Sort of.’
The solicitor’s voice is calm but insistent. ‘I need more than sort of. I need you to tell the court exactly what happened those few seconds before the car swerved. The whole truth.’
Jessica chews at her thumbnail.
I am waiting. We are all waiting, waiting to hear what she has to say. Jessica takes her thumb out of her mouth and pins her hands to her sides. Briefly she scans the room. For a split second our eyes connect before she tugs them away.
‘The argument turned into a fight. Jake kind of lurched forward from the back seat and grabbed Dylan around the neck and Dylan went wild. I was screaming, ‘Stop it, stop it,’ but they wouldn’t stop. They kept fighting and I’m trying to drive the car and pull over and the next thing they shove against my arm and my foot must have hit the accelerator and the car lurches sideways and we’re on the wrong side of the road and heading straight for a huge tree so I yank on the steering wheel and slam on the brakes. It all happened so fast and I tried so hard to stay on the road but then… then we crashed.’
The words all come tumbling out in a rush, faster and faster like my pounding heart. At the end Jessica’s head drops. A murmur passes through the room. I am too stunned to feel.
‘So the boys were fighting in the car and one or maybe both of them knocked the steering wheel out of your hands?’
‘Yes.’
257 ‘So why didn’t you say this in your statement to the police?’
She snaps her head up. ‘What good would that have done? Christ! Dylan had just lost his leg and Jake was in a coma. They didn’t remember. How could I say they did it to themselves, that they caused the crash? It was still my fault for taking them both in the car.’ Abruptly she stops talking. Outside, a car revs its engine, waiting for the lights to turn. In the courtroom there is deathly silence.
Dad puts his arm around my shoulders. I push it away. The car takes off so loud you can picture the rubber burning. The tyres screech and the engine roars. I sit like a robot. The magistrate waits for the noise to die. He doesn’t look that impressive. He doesn’t wear one of those big curly wigs. He doesn’t have much hair at all. If you passed him in the street you wouldn’t even notice him but in here he is the guy in the big black robe. He has the power. He is in control. He sweeps his eyes around the courtroom. I am sure he is looking for me but I do not want to be found. He levels a hard stare at Jessica. Then he goes on.
‘It’s up to the court to decide who was at fault and to apportion blame after taking into account all the evidence. No matter how well meaning your intentions, trying to hide the facts never works. The truth needs to come out.’
He looks up at the solicitor. ‘Is that all the witnesses?’
‘I think we’re done,’ the solicitor says, and Jessica is back to staring at the wall.
Both the prosecutor and solicitor make speeches summing up their sides of the story.
My ears are closed. I’m afraid that if I let any more in I will crack apart. Although the conscious part of my mind doesn’t remember that night, some part of me must. When Jessica described what happened in the car I could feel it, not just imagine it, but feel it. I could feel Jake’s arms around my neck when we were fighting. I could feel my shoulder slam into something hard. I could feel the car swerving and rolling and a terrible pain hit my foot. Somewhere buried inside me I can hear the sound of my own scream.
The magistrate delivers his verdict. I watch his mouth making the words. I hear his voice slice the thick sweaty air.
‘To the charge of dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm.
Not guilty.
To the charge of negligent driving causing grievous bodily harm.
Guilty.’
258 There is a gasp and someone behind me starts to sob. The magistrate beckons to the solicitor and prosecutor. They have a conversation which is mostly him talking while the tight- packed room takes in what he just said.. After a minute or so he bangs on his table.
‘Since all parties are agreed we will proceed straight to sentencing after the Victim Impact Statements are read.’ My hand goes up to my pocket, to the square of paper, all ready to go. He calls for a short break and everyone files out of the courtroom, making a beeline for toilets and coffee machines. Every second person is glued to their phone.
Outside the courtroom, Jake’s mum and my mum are hugging and crying. I slip into the men’s room unnoticed, and splash my face with cold water. Now I know the truth I wish I didn’t. It’s so sad and stupid that this whole thing happened. I’m so confused and angry. Angry at Jessica. Angry at Jake. And angry at me. The paper towels are jammed. I try to pull one out but all it does is shred into useless strips. Too many are stuffed into the holder. I punch the stack up to lift the weight off the bottom of the pile and wrench some free but cut my knuckles on the serrated edge in the process. I suck the blood from my fist and curse all public toilets. The door to the men’s room swings open.
It’s Dad.
‘There you are! We’ve been looking all over for you.’
Reluctantly I follow him out into the crowded foyer. People are milling around. Mum is still talking to Jake’s mum. I guess they have a lot of catching up to do. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jessica’s solicitor bring her out of a little room. I turn my head and for a brief instant our eyes meet. And then she’s gone.
‘You’ve got your statement with you haven’t you?’ Dad asks.
I nod and tap my top pocket. Neither Mum or Dad have read any of it yet. It’s time to go back into the courtroom and get this over with. At the last moment a rush of panic comes over me.
‘I can’t do it.’ I shove my statement in Mum’s hands. ‘You do it or just hand it in.’ Rushing out the door I hear Dad calling after me, then footsteps as he runs to catch up. The glass doors are heavy and swing in both directions. I shove them open and run out into the street, past the smokers gasping down a quick fag, dodging potholes that pockmark the pavement, stepping over a low concrete wall at the edge of the car park until I reach Dad’s brand new car.
‘Dylan! What’s up?’
‘I can’t go back in there.’
259 ‘That’s okay. I understand,’ he says all out of breath.
‘You don’t understand.’
I lean on the bonnet of his shiny black Volvo, a Volvo being the car you buy after your son totals your car in a terrible crash. I can see my face reflected in the glossy surface and Dad’s face behind me, frowning. He puts one hand on my shoulder and one on the bonnet next to mine. The winter sun has warmed the surface and heat radiates through my hands.
‘You’re right. I can’t begin to know how you’re feeling, but maybe if you tell me what’s on your mind I can help.’
‘I thought… I thought she cared about me?’
‘Your mother?’
‘No. Jessica.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m sure she does. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have tried to take all the blame.’
I slam my hands down on that shiny black bonnet, so hard it makes me wince. It’s a wonder it doesn’t dent.
‘If she cares about me then why the hell didn’t she tell me?’
‘So that’s what this is about.’ I pull my hands back and tuck them under my armpits. Dad wipes the bonnet with his sleeve where my fingers smeared the duco. ‘Do you want to wait in the car?’ he says, popping the door lock.
‘Yeah. Why not?’
I climb in the back and flop across the seat covering my face with a Manchester United cushion that managed to survive the crash and migrate to the new car. Picking at the cushion brings back so many memories. I bought the cushion for Dad when we went on a holiday to see his relatives in Manchester. Dad hits a button to slide down a window and pockets the keys. He doesn’t trust me not to drive away. I probably would, given half the chance. I’d drive far away.
‘I’ll head back in,’ he says, then turns back before he goes. ‘She’s not the first person to get it wrong trying to protect someone they love.’ Then he walks back towards the courthouse. I don’t care if Mum reads out the statement or not. All I know is that I can’t bear to look at Jessica or Jake or those two reporters from the local rag and talk about how life was before and how it is now. I take off my leg and roll up the itchy trousers looking at the pattern on the fibreglass cover of my new leg. The design I chose looks like netting to remind me to keep my eye on the goal.
260 Leaving my leg off, I lie back on the seat and stare through the open car window, watching a big black cloud play chicken with the sun. One moment it’s all warmth and sunshine, the next, the sun is smothered and inside the car turns dark. I shiver as my skin goes cold. Staring at the end of my stump, I can see the scar is already starting to fade. A few moments later the dark cloud passes. The sun shines through the window and the scar on my stump feels warm.
I don’t know why but I suddenly can’t stay here anymore. I put my leg back on and head back to the courtroom.
Mum is in the witness box. She clears her throat, puts on her reading glasses, the paper shaking in her hand. I typed the whole thing out, double spacing, easy to read. She looks up at the court then back at the paper. Then she begins.
‘This is the impact that the events of February seventeen had on our son Dylan. He asked me to read this out as he couldn’t do it himself. The words are all his.’
Before the accident I had one thing in my life.
Football. I was pretty good. Everyone said so and I had a contract to start with the Marlins at the end of the year. I wanted to be a professional so I didn’t try that hard at school. I didn’t have to. I had my whole future mapped out. Play for the Marlins first, then who knows where it would have gone from there? Play for Australia? Play for Manchester United? In my dreams. Maybe. Now I’ll never know.
Football was my whole life: training, playing, recovering, watching football on TV and a bit of school squeezed in. There was no time for anything else and I never thought about doing anything else with my life.
Then after the accident everything changed.
I nearly died. I nearly lost my best friend. I lost an actual part of my body. I couldn’t believe it when they told me they had amputated my leg. Well, how can you? It takes a while to sink in that it’s forever, although every little thing is a reminder, like getting out of bed, standing up, walking, trying to scratch an itchy foot that’s not even there anymore. I had a lot of pain and a lot of anger that I kept bottled up inside, but luckily I had a lot of help from great doctors and nurses and therapists and my family and friends. I also had a lot of time to do some thinking. Too much time and I got pretty depressed. On top of all the hard things that were happening, even worse was seeing what had happened to my best friend, Jake, not knowing if he would live or die, be able 261 to walk or talk again, or even remember that we used to be best friends.
Because I was so fit before the accident, I improved really quickly. Two weeks after I got my interim leg I could walk without a stick, another month later I started to run. My plan was to get back to playing football and it was going pretty well until I actually tried to play. I sucked. Really sucked. That was when I finally realised that my old life was gone for good.
I was pretty bitter for a while and not very nice to live with until, with a bit of prodding, I started trying new things and looking beyond football. I had a lot more time to study and my school grades improved. I’m thinking about doing sports psychology or physio now if I get the marks, which would never have entered my head before. So although I’ve had a lot of pain and a lot of low points there have been a few good things in with the bad. Talking to other amputees helped me to see that this accident has changed my life but not ruined it. It’s only ruined if I let it be ruined. I’m not Dylan the football player anymore, but I’m still me, Dylan, who happens to be an amputee. This is supposed to be a Victim Impact Statement, but I don’t intend to be a victim. I know from playing football that sometimes your first shot doesn’t go in; then you have to make the most of the rebound, you have to be ready for that second shot.
Mum looks up from the paper, which is a bit shaky in her hand. She spots me sitting right next to Dad, gives me a little nod and wipes at her cheeks. ‘That’s it,’ she says and gives me a smile. I’m glad I came back to hear it. No more running away.
The magistrate makes a speech before handing down his sentence but I’m finding it hard to listen. He points out that with a situation like this there are no winners or losers. He says all the occupants in the car made mistakes and contributed to the outcome, although Jessica was legally responsible because she was driving the car. Taking into account all the mitigating factors, he pronounces his sentence.
Peering over the top of his glasses he studies Jessica standing in the dock. Her body is stiff with tension like she is bracing for an oncoming blow.
‘In the matter of the Crown versus Wilkinson I sentence you to a twelve-month good behaviour bond and the suspension of your driver’s licence for a total period of twelve months. Do you understand the sentence?’
She lifts her head up but her shoulders have softened. ‘Yes Your Honour. I do.’
Suddenly people start moving. Rustling. Talking. Reacting. Busting to say their piece.
262 Mum squeezes my hand, hitting the sore spot where my knuckles bled. ‘What are you thinking?’ she says.
‘I’m just glad it’s over.’
‘If you told me the sentence this morning,’ Mum says, ‘I would have been mad as hell.’
‘But now?’ Dad asks
‘Now. It probably seems about right.’
I’d have to say, for once in my life, I agree with Mum, but that won’t make it any easier to forgive.
263 Chapter 28: Jessica
‘Jessica Wilkinson.’
‘Yes.’
‘You need to go to the Deputy’s office.’
‘Now?’ I gulped.
‘Apparently.’
A murmur rippled through the classroom and heads turned as I left the room. Anxiety prickled at my skin although I hadn’t done anything wrong. At least, not that I could think of.
The short walk across the quadrangle to the administration block was over far too quickly.
I knocked on the door marked ‘Deputy Principal’ and a muffled voice called out, ‘Come in.’
Come in, come in, said the spider to the fly. The words of the children’s rhyme spun through my head. As I walked in the room, Mrs MacKay, Dylan’s mother, peered over the top of her glasses and silently motioned to a chair.
I sat and tucked my hands under my legs, watching Mrs Mackay slide her fingers up and down a ballpoint pen.
‘You wanted to see me.’
‘Yes.’
An awkward silence followed that I was determined not to fill although I was bursting to know what was going on. I’d kept my head down all term and worked really hard so there was nothing school-wise this could be about. There was only one reason for me to be here. It had to be about Dylan.
‘I asked you here for two reasons.’ Mrs Mackay flicked the pen between her thumb and index finger before releasing a long deep sigh. ‘Firstly, I owe you an apology.’
An apology? Well knock me down with a feather. I wasn’t expecting that.
‘I needed someone to blame for what happened when really, it wasn’t fair to lay it all on you. When your child is terribly hurt and you have to watch him in pain, well, you turn into a tiger defending its cub.’
264 I sat there for a few moments, a bit stunned. Was she actually asking for forgiveness? Kiss and make up? Was she for real? I had to wonder what did she really want? There had to be something else. ‘And the second thing?’ I said. She didn’t seem to hear me so I tried again. ‘You said there were two things.’
Mrs Mackay laid the pen flat on the desk between us like a dividing line in a tug-o-war.
‘I want you to know I don’t have a problem with you seeing Dylan.’
I let out a snort, couldn’t help it. ‘Bit late for that. He’s not talking to me.’
‘I know. He’s not talking to anyone. He’s been miserable ever since the court case. Cut off all his friends when he needs them the most. I’m really worried about him.’
No shit? I shrugged one shoulder, hands still planted under my thighs.
‘Can’t really help you with that.’
Mrs Mackay’s fingers found the pen on the table and began rolling it gently back and forth, back and forth, hovering over an invisible dividing line. A text message beeped on her phone, which she ignored. Glancing at the clock, I wondered what would come first: the recess bell or the real truth of just what all this was about?
‘I saw that photo of you and Dylan…’
So did just about the whole world apparently.
‘So obviously you were… close.’
I shifted in my seat. ‘Yeah well that was before.’
‘I think you might be the only person who can get through to him.’
‘Not likely.’
‘Jake’s told me about how you rescued his trophies so I know you don’t want him to throw everything away...’ her voice trailed off. She looked at me with pleading eyes. Laying on the guilt. Staring at the wall, I chewed my bottom lip.
‘Don’t you think I haven’t tried? He unfriended me on everything. He won’t talk to me. He won’t look at me and just blanks me out. He treats me like I don’t friggin’ exist. I’m done with trying to help Dylan. Look where it got me. Look where it got him. Not exactly a good track record.’ The recess bell rang. My eyes hunted for the door.
‘He’s just hurting,’ she said in a slow tired voice. ‘He’s always done this. He goes quiet and turns in on himself. The thing is, we’ve all tried to help him. Individually. Which is my point. Maybe no one person can help him but together, maybe we can.’
265 ‘What if he doesn’t want to be helped?’ I said pointing out the obvious flaw in her theory.
She picked up the pen and tapped the end on the desk. ‘He does want help. He’s just too proud to show it. Believe me, I know my son.’
I wanted to help. I really did but what if it just made things worse? I sat and listened, polite and calm, as she talked and talked, silently wishing I’d taken my chance at the ring of the bell and bolted out that door.
‘So. What do you think? Do you think it can work?’
Looking up, I met her eyes, struck by how alike they were to Dylan’s, the same intense deep brown like dark bitter chocolate, so dark they were almost black. She wasn’t asking the impossible. She was asking the unthinkable. Mrs Mackay was asking me to hope.
‘It might work,’ I said, quickly adding, ‘but it could all backfire big time.’
‘So you won’t help?’
‘I didn’t say that. I said it’s risky.’
‘Yes. But you’ll give it another shot?’
266 Chapter 29: Dylan
It’s the first time Westwood High has ever made it this far. The Sydney North Region Final of the State Cup. Mum and Dad desperately want me to come and watch. They hit me with all the predictable arguments: school spirit, being there for the team, blah, blah. Supposedly it will be good for morale, but whose morale are we talking about here? Definitely not mine. It’s a two- and-a-half-hour drive through horrible Friday night traffic. All the way down the freeway my stomach is churning as the empty bush and walls of sandstone flash by, and now as we stop- start through Sydney traffic I pretend to be asleep.
I know I need to do this, like someone getting on a plane after a crash, but the closer we get the more I really don’t think I can.
At last we make it to the stadium. Find somewhere to park, gather up all our blue-and- white gear, wrap my face in a scarf, glad I can hide under layers of knitting. We’re up against Homebush, who won the whole thing last year and are the red-hot favourites again. It’s a proper synthetic pitch with a stand for spectators. Impressive. Better than anything we’ve got on the coast. I would have loved to play a school match on a pitch like this. With Mum being Deputy Principal and all, there’s a spot reserved for us right at the front of the stand, nice and inconspicuous. Not.
We’re really early but the stadium is starting to fill with loads of Westwood supporters. I’ve never seen so many blue-and-white streamers, blue-and-white clothes or blue-and-white faces. Maybe that’s what I need to do to blend in. Paint myself blue. All I can think of is that rugby league player who broke his neck in a bad tackle and how they trotted him out in his wheelchair to watch his mates play with the cameras on his face, everyone watching him and waiting for the tears to spill. At least no one knows that I’m here. I couldn’t stand to be turned into a sob story. Just when I’m getting settled, Dad drags me off to help get some drinks but by some strange ‘coincidence’ we take a wrong turn and end up outside the players’ change room. A big muscled-up door gorilla is blocking the way. He scowls at me. It’s pretty scary. Then Nick’s head pokes out from behind the door.
‘Come wish us good luck,’ he insists.
‘Good luck,’ I say.
‘Not just me. All the guys.’
‘I don’t want to get in the way,’ I protest.
267 Dad prods me from behind and Nick pulls me from in front and door-gorilla watches with folded arms, his beady black eyes daring me to argue, and before I know it I’m inside the change room, keeling over from the fumes.
Dencorub and deodorant. A potent mix.
That smell brings back so many memories, memories I’m not sure I want to face right now. I look around for an escape hatch but the only way out is back past the door-gorilla, which kind of rules that out as an option.
Being here, and not being part of it, feels very strange, like I’m disconnected—from my friends, from this room of wooden benches and concrete floors, from my own body. I get that feeling a lot, like I’m not inside my body anymore. It’s like the part that is ‘me’ has slipped up and away and is wondering who the hell this other guy is. Someone slaps me on the back and talks to me. I talk back, but it’s like it’s somebody else doing the talking.
Dad takes off across the other side of the room leaving me to ‘catch up’. I see these guys every day at school. What is there to catch up on? It’s so obvious what they’re all trying to do, trying to make me feel like I’m still part of the team, like nothing has really changed.
In a way it does feel like nothing has changed; same smells, same pre-match rituals, same guys stretching or pacing, picking their pimples or taking selfies on their phones.
Nothing has changed.
And everything has.
If things were different I’d be getting ready to play, pulling shin pads and socks on, lacing my boots up, gelling my hair, feeling sick to my stomach with the old pre-match nerves. Instead I pretend that I’m pumped for the team, watching them get ready, pretend that everything is fine, keep faking it.
It’s all fake. As fake as my leg. As fake as the words I hear myself say. ‘Good luck.’ ‘Go and smash ‘em.’ All empty words.
In the middle of wishing Spike good luck, the coach comes up and interrupts.
‘Get your gear on,’ he says.
‘What?’ I blurt out.
He can’t be talking to me. Can he?
‘You’re officially still on the team Mackay. You played the first game before you got injured so if I put you on the bench you can still get a trophy.’
Oh crap. He is talking to me.
268 ‘But I haven’t got any gear.’
‘Yes you do,’ Nick says throwing a shirt and a pair of boots at my face catching me so by surprise that I fumble the catch and the boots drop to the floor in a tangle.
‘You’d make a shit rugby player if that’s your best catch,’ he says.
Picking up the boots I notice something that’s impossible. These boots are the same ones I chucked in the bin weeks ago. My name’s written in permanent marker on the instep.
‘Where’d you get these?’
‘Your dad,’ he says. ‘Where else? The boot fairy?’
‘Get a move on,’ the coach says, ‘team briefing’s in five.’
My brain is only just registering all the ramifications of what just happened. No prizes for picking that this is a set-up. I chase after the coach before it’s too late.
‘I don’t need this. I don’t want to take up someone else’s spot.’
‘I don’t see how that can happen. If I put anyone else on the team they’d be taking your spot, not the other way around.’
‘But if you put me on the bench you’ll be down a sub.’
‘So?’
‘So what if you have to use all your other subs and you’ve only got me left?’
‘Then I guess you’d just have to play.’
‘How?’
‘Can you run?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can you kick?’
‘Sort of but—
‘Well, that’s better than half these monkeys here,’ he says with a grin before putting his hand on my arm. ‘Don’t worry. You’re on the bench. It’s great for the team to see that you’re back.’
‘But I’m not back.’
‘You’re back enough.’ He walks off and starts talking with the team physio, leaving me with my jaw flapping and nothing else coming out, like the fact that I haven’t played a game since I lost my leg. Not to mention that my leg is still a temporary leg and I don’t have a proper
269 running leg yet and there’s so many reasons why this is a totally insane idea, but then he clears his throat and announces to the whole room that I’m back on the team and my skinny little arse will be sitting on the bench.
This big roar goes up and there’s a swarm of guys around me, clapping and chanting my name.
‘Macca.’
‘Macca.’
‘Macca.’
If they don’t shut up soon I think I might cry.
I let myself get swept up in the whole craziness of it all, mainly because I’m too chicken to say I’m scared shitless and this is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of. The thought of running out on that pitch fills me with dread, but I can’t get out of it now. I put on the jersey and shorts, then the socks and shin pads. Finally, it’s time for the boots. Someone has even polished them and I can see my face in the toes. I don’t even know if they’ll fit over my prosthetic foot.
‘Don’t worry,’ Dad says suddenly, appearing at my shoulder as I loosen the laces. ‘It fits. I already checked.’
‘You could have warned me.’
‘Yeah maybe but then you could have backed out.’
‘I still might,’ I snap back.
‘That’s up to you,’ he says, ‘but sometimes it’s not just about you. Didn’t you feel the energy lift when the coach said you were on the bench? They all want you here. The team needs you here.’
I stand up and walk around to get the feel of walking in boots with my prosthesis. I can’t exactly ‘feel’ where my foot is so I have to go by the angle of my hip and my knee and the vibration and pressure further up my leg in order to tell what my foot is doing. Next I try a bit of jogging on the spot. So far, so good. It feels okay. The rhythm sounds right. If I don’t think about it too much I might pull this off and look like I actually belong in the squad. After all, I only have to sit on the sidelines, I keep telling myself. Spike dumps his gear bag on the seat next to me.
‘Your leg looks awesome,’ he says.
‘Can’t wait to see the look on the other team when you run out.’
I hadn’t even thought about that bit.
270
I’m nervous as hell lining up in the tunnel, made worse by the fact that I’m the last in line. The team starts to move and a huge cheer erupts. It sounds like the whole school is here and the stadium is full of great gashes of blue and white. At last it’s my turn to run out and as I hit the pitch the cheer gets even louder. Not just loud-loud. It’s insane-loud.
Standing lined up opposite the Homebush team, looking down at the row of jiggling boots, feeling as conspicuous as a pimple on a super model, I try and focus on keeping my weight evenly on both my legs. So many thoughts and memories lurk at the back of my mind. I shut the curtains on the thoughts that will derail me if I let them, thoughts that could turn me into a heap of blubber and nerves. I stare at the player across from me but everyone else is staring at me. Straight away the comments start to fly.
‘What’s with robo-boy?’
‘Is that thing allowed? Someone could get hurt.’
‘What the fuck is that?’
Before anyone else can leap in to defend me, I speak up. I can speak for myself.
‘It’s my new fucking leg, you moron. The old one got cremated if you really want to know.’
That shuts up the comments, though it doesn’t stop the mutters or the stares.
‘That’s enough,’ the ref cuts in, calling the team managers over and I see them all looking at me, with darting eyes that pretend not to look.
I don’t know what the rules say about prosthetics on the pitch. You’d think they’d have to be allowed or it would be discrimination or something. I hope our manager has already checked everything out because I so do not want to be sent off because of my leg even though I’m not going to play. The whole thing is just embarrassing and makes me want to smash Homebush so bad. While we’re all standing and waiting the whole team gives them the death- stare, daring them to say something more, anything, to set things off. There’s a whole row of jumpy bodies raring to go and all just bristling for a fight.
At last we’re all ready to roll and no one has said I can’t be on the team. The coin is tossed, ends decided, players take up their positions and all the subs leave the pitch, including me, at the end of the line.
Sitting on the bench, both my knees are jiggling and shaking when the whistle finally blasts. We take the kick off and I’m a spasm of twitches. The coach starts to pace with his hands behind his back, up and down, back and forth, eyes glued to the play.
271 A band starts up. It’s Westwood’s school band. Well at least the noisy parts of the band; trumpets and a drum and a trombone and all the swathes of blue and white sing along or shake streamers, or bang their feet. It’s louder and more crowded than half the A-League games. The crowd is really getting into the spirit of things, but the best bit of all is that although my leg is on full view no one is looking at me. All eyes in that big roaring stadium are on the action being played out on the pitch. Spike takes a run up the left wing and the crowd goes wild. Just outside the penalty box, he cops a hard tackle and goes down as hard as a tree, grabbing his left ankle and rolling around. I feel his pain. Automatically my hand goes to my leg, meeting the hard outer shell of my prosthesis. A scream rises and quickly dies not too far behind me, a scream that sends a chill all down my spine.
That voice. That cut-off scream. I’d know it anywhere.
I turn around to see where it came from.
Jessica.
She’s sitting with Jake, a few rows back and off to my right. Jake’s sitting in his wheelchair though he doesn’t really need it anymore. Knowing Jake he used it to get a better position.
Spike gets taken off on a stretcher, propping himself up on his elbows so it can’t be too bad and as he lifts his arm and waves to the crowd, there’s a big fat lump in my throat.
The match is a frustrating grind. Both sides have their chances but neither side can find the back of the net. We get the ball, lose the ball, get the ball, take a shot, miss the shot and so it goes on and on. With my thumb in my mouth, I bite the nail till there’s nothing left to bite. Our defence is all over the place. I don’t know how my parents did this all these years, just standing on the sidelines and watching. Watching is much harder than playing. Just watching is killing me. I swear I’m never doing this again.
Ten minutes before half-time, the coach makes a few subs and we’re looking good, pushing forward, we’ve got Homebush on the back foot, until another player goes down after jumping for a header. It’s Nick and he’s not getting up and from the way he landed it looks like he’s done his knee. The physio and trainer give the signal that he’s coming off, so now our two best players are gone. In an instant everything changes. I can feel Westwood sag, can see it in their posture, and before long we start to lose our shape and structure. It’s funny how you can just tell when danger is imminent, when things are about to go well and truly pear shaped. As the players sag, the sideline gets tenser. And then, sure enough, it happens. Homebush get a corner and smash one in the back of the net. The roar from Homebush is almost as loud as the
272 groan from the Westwood supporters and, as if right on cue, the ref blows the whistle. It’s half time and Homebush are up one goal.
Streaked with sweat and dripping with disappointment, the team straggles into the cave of the change room. All the energy has leaked out, like air from a party balloon; shrivelled and limp, too deflated to rise. The only thing that has stayed blown up is Nick’s twisted knee. It’s his MCL, according to the physio, which means he’s out for at least six weeks, so he sits in the corner looking miserable and in a bucket-load of pain. Spike’s foot is plunged in an ice bath so he doesn’t look too happy either. Gulping Gatorade, we gather into an awkward bunch. Hands in heads, backs leaning against the concrete walls we wait for the coach to either lift us or whip us. Some coaches love to point out your every failing, which seems a waste of time to me. Players know better than anyone when they stuff up and when things just aren’t working. What they don’t know is how to fix it, what to do to get back on top.
At first the coach lets rip and happy days are definitely over.
‘Don’t be a bunch of pussies and let them get on top!’ he roars slamming the back of one hand into the palm of the other to emphasise his point. ‘Stop letting them dictate the play. First to the ball. Keep it on the ground! You can’t win the ball in the air against a bunch of giants so stop stuffing around and play our game. Go back out there and show me you really want this!’
While he gives his pep talk, I take my leg off to check the liner. Nick lobs a ball my way and I kick it back using my detached leg like a bat. It looks pretty funny and the guys around me start to giggle just as the coach launches into another spiel. He flashes a dirty look to the gigglers.
‘How am I supposed to kick any arse around here if you guys don’t even listen?’
‘You can borrow this,’ I say, tapping our goalie on the butt. The whole room cracks up.
I think maybe I’ve pushed it too far with my demonstration of the advantages of a detachable limb, but the coach just shakes his head and throws his hands in the air. One thing for sure, the mood has certainly lifted like a shot of helium in the team balloon. Everyone is pumped and raring to go. You can feel the energy building, waiting to be unleashed. It’s like holding a garden hose with a nozzle at the end to shut off the water flow. You can feel the backed-up water pushing and straining and as soon as you turn the nozzle to ‘on’ the pent-up energy comes rushing out in a great big blast. It feels like nothing can stop us and for a moment I’m really stoked to be running out there with the rest of the team until I remember, I’m only here because everyone feels sorry for me. I’m only here making up the numbers.
273 While we wait in the tunnel for the ref to call us out, the coach has a quiet word to every player. I’m expecting a ticking off for mucking around, but when he comes to me he leans into my ear.
‘If all of the team had half of your guts, no team in the world could beat us.’ I feel such a phoney. I’m just as gutless as anyone. If only he knew how many times I wished I’d died in the crash because all of this is just too hard. It’s not like I went and climbed Everest or found a cure for brain cancer. All I did was lose my leg in a stupid dumb accident. Just trying to walk doesn’t make me a hero.
I don’t know what the coach says to the rest of the team but it sure does have an effect because from the get-go the boys are playing like demons. Less than five minutes in, we take a beautiful cross, which sets up an even more beautiful goal. All the blue-and-white fans with their blue-and-white streamers jump up and down and scream their heads off. The crowd is really going nuts.
And why wouldn’t they? With the score at one-all it’s now anyone’s game. Homebush get dirty, chopping ankles, pulling shirts, whatever they can get away with when the ref isn’t looking. For the rest of the game my heart is in my mouth. It’s all up and down, sudden hopes and missed chances, but no one can put the ball away.
The score is still level as the ninety minutes approaches and you can see everyone is already exhausted. Two minutes to go and the score is still one-all. Desperation takes over and the play gets ugly and aggro. Baz cops a knee to the back. At last, the full-time whistle blows, but now we have to play extra time, the last thing anyone needs.
This time, back in the change room, everyone is too knackered to talk. Battered and weary, swigging drinks and gulping for air, players slump against the concrete walls, not enough strength while they swig drinks or hit the menthol. The coach leaps straight into another rousing pep talk but it’s more than a pep talk we need; what we need is more like a miracle. He goes on about facing up to a challenge, not giving in, fighting your way back, all that stuff. I know he’s trying to inspire us. I get what he is trying to do. I’m only really half listening until suddenly I hear my name.
‘…take a leaf out of Dylan’s book and play like giving up is not an option.’
Here we go again. If only they knew.
The players drag themselves up and back to the pitch. I really wish there was something I could do.
274 Twenty more minutes of extra time means twenty more minutes of torture. I can’t sit still. I can’t help myself. I have to run up and down the sideline, half the time watching the pitch, half the time watching the crowd. It’s war in the stands. Homebush and Westwood hurl insults like spears, shouting each other down, stomping and stamping and hammering the metal rails with anything that makes a loud noise. On the pitch, both sides dig in and play defensively. The tackles are so hard you hear the ‘crack’ as boots slam against shin pads, the thud as speeding bodies collide. Players are dropping like flies. A twisted ankle and Homebush lose another player, a bad cork-thigh, and we lose another one of ours. Another casualty of war.
So now…
It’s only me left on the bench.
I look to my right, look to my left. Yep. Just me. Fast and intense, the play moves on rolling and shifting with every pass of the ball. The coach points at me and tells me to start warming up. Holy shit! He can’t be serious. I leap to my feet as Homebush have another crack and our goalie makes a spectacular save, just getting his fingers to the ball to push it above the crossbar. The whole stadium jumps out of their seats then slowly sink back with a sigh. We mount a counter attack, feeding the ball up to our striker who surges into a gap, but before he can get the shot away a massive defender takes him out with a bone crunching tackle. We get the free kick but lose our striker who limps off the pitch. Coach looks at me and points again.
‘Right Mackay. You’re on…’
Is he mad? He can’t honestly think I can play.
‘Take right back and I’ll move Smithy into midfield.’
Apparently he is mad. What the flip?
‘I’ve never played right back,’ I say, which is the least of my worries since actually I’ve never played since I lost my foot apart from that one terrible attempt at school.
‘It’s not hard. Just get in the way.’
Just get in the way! Easy for him to say. It feels surreal running out on the pitch, almost as if the last six months never happened. The crowd goes wild again, screaming,
Go Macca.
We want Macca.
Stuff like that. Totally embarrassing. Totally mad.
I know I can run pretty fast in a straight line. It’s the sideways stuff that has me terrified. What if my leg comes off like at practise that time? What if it goes flying through the
275 air and knocks someone out? Baz points out the player I need to mark. The game is on. I’ve got a job to do.
Thankfully the play is mostly up the opposite end to start with and I find out that when you’re up the back you do get a bit more time to anticipate where the play is heading. Despite being a bit slower off the mark, I can position myself okay. There’s one tense moment when Homebush’s right winger makes a break down the line, getting past our midfield and sidestepping our sweeper, leaving me the last player in our line of defence. I run flat out to cut him off, lunging at him just as he takes a shot.
Lurching at the ball, I miss it completely but it’s enough to put him off the shot. The ball sails wide of the goal mouth. The Blue and Whites breathe out a huge group sigh. By my reckoning, we’ve only got a minute or two left of extra time left to go. If it stays a draw we have to go to a penalty shoot-out, which is the most awful way to decide a match.
So of course, that’s exactly what happens. When the whistle blows, it’s still one-all.
So the game is over.
But it’s not.
Before the penalty shoot-out gets started, both coaches have to pick their line-up of shooters, the order in which players will take a shot at the goal. With five players injured, we are already at a disadvantage having lost most of our best shots. Taking a shot when it’s just you and the goalie looks easy enough, but it takes more than just skill and timing. It takes nerve. You have to decide in your head which way to send the ball then stick to your plan and not waver. Dad taught me to hit the ball hard and keep it low, low balls being harder to react to than a high ball especially when you load your shot with plenty of power. Not that I’m likely to have to shoot. I’ll be at the very end of the shooting order. It will all be decided before I get anywhere near the ball.
The coach calls out the order for taking shots.
I’m number two. Surely not. I open my mouth to argue but he silences me with his hand. What the hell is he thinking? Does he want to throw the game? This is taking the ‘you’re a hero’ line way too far.
As we line up in two single files, each team in their designated order, there is a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. The ref places the ball on the penalty line and our goalkeeper takes up his position in the net. Since each side uses the same goal and the same ball, the goalies have to take turns to face the shooter. The pressure on the keepers is huge and so is the pressure
276 on every player taking a shot. The whole match can be decided in a single flick of your foot. Homebush shoot first.
He runs up shoots, low and hard and… scores.
Half the crowd roars, the other half holds its breath.
Our first shot is next. It’s Baz. It’s looking good. My heart is pounding and I’m only watching. Yes! No! It hits the crossbar and bounces out. The crowd roars again but silence and tension quickly return. The goalkeepers swap over and the next player steps up to take his shot.
Homebush miss, but they are still one ahead.
Now it’s my turn. It’s up to me to level the score. Time seems to slow down as I walk up to the penalty line. Slow deep breaths do nothing to ease the wild galloping of my heart, the sense of panic clamping around me, the fear of failure stalking my thoughts. I tell myself that nothing that happens on a football pitch could ever be as hard as what I’ve survived. It’s a game. Just a game. Not that important. The lights in the stadium are bright and intense but as I glance up I catch a glimpse of the moon, a three-quarter moon which makes me want to laugh, a moon with a little bit missing. Perfect. I take it as an omen.
The crowd goes extra quiet. I plan the shot in my head. Thousands of eyes are on me. Not just because of my prosthetic leg but because this shot is so critical. If I score, we are still in the game.
The ref gives the signal. I take my run up. Little steps. Short and fast. I Swing my left foot as if I’m about to strike the ball but then plant it and take the shot with my right.
Hard and fast, low and angled, my hopes riding on its rapid arc.
With a crack it hits the back of the net.
Raising my arms above my head, I do a little dance and spin around in a circle, taking in the whirl of blue and white at the ground. From the roar and the screams of the crowd, you would think we just won the game but we have only made it even and you need to be two points ahead to win at this stage.
The shots just go one for one, save for save, miss for miss, stalemate until we have used up our first five shooters. Now whoever gets one ahead wins the game.
Player number six from Homebush lines up. The stadium goes quiet. A whole crowd full of people all hold their breath. He has a confidence about his posture and yet I’m hoping and hoping he will miss and Westwood get another crack. He takes the shot with so much force the ball rockets to the back of the net. The crowd goes into meltdown. Homebush screams and
277 roars. Westwood groans and sags until the band strikes up. It’s the Westwood High school song. I know Mum will be balling her eyes out in the stands.
Then it gets weird. The team should be shattered but they’re not. They come rushing around me and I get hoisted up Rugby match style and tossed up in the air like I’m in a mosh pit and when I land on my feet - well stumble is more accurate - someone drags me back up and we do a victory lap around the pitch, Baz holding up one of my arms and our goalie holding up the other. Even though we lost! Halfway around there’s a pitch invasion. A stream of blue and white pours onto the pitch still singing the school song. The announcer is completely ignored when he asks people to get off so by the time we get back to where we started the lap, we’re just swimming in bodies and covered in streamers like a corny Hollywood movie. Pretty crazy stuff when we should be crying into our shirts.
‘Don’t you idiots realise you just lost?’ some Homebush guy shouts.
‘Don’t you idiots realise we don’t care?’
It takes an eternity for the crowd to settle down. Mum and Dad push their way through the madness and we have this embarrassing family hug in the middle of the pitch. Embarrassing, not from the hug point of view, embarrassing because all three of us bawl our eyes out and laugh all at the same time. It’s like popping a champagne cork. Once the cork is gone you can’t stop all the booze and bubbles from pouring out. Cameras go off in our faces. Hopefully after I’ve wiped away the tears and snot with my jersey sleeve, but oh well, can’t help that.
I look up to where Jake and Jessica were sitting but the seats are empty. I half expect them to jump on me any moment now. Looking around, I can’t see them anywhere. The cry goes up for a team photo and somehow from out of the chaos we form up into rows, flash our teeth and try not to breathe in too deep and cop the smell of jerseys soaked with sweat and grime.
Finally we get to the change room and I can’t wait to hit the showers. The door-gorilla waves me in with a smile on his face.
Funny how things change.
278 Chapter 30: Dylan
Driving home Dad puts on a ‘Classic’ rock station (his favourite), so naturally I have to tease him about his choice of old-fart music although I also have to admit some of the songs are perfect for the moment. Who can go past ACDC’s ‘Highway to Hell’? We all belt out the chorus, punch fists, hit the air guitar, though Mum reminds Dad it’s a good idea to keep at least one hand on the wheel or he will be going to hell. Driving over Ryde Bridge, ‘Eye of the Tiger’ comes on and he nearly swerves into the wrong lane, proving her point. Mum yells at him. I laugh. He apologises and stops playing his steering-wheel drum. We sing all the way home at the top of our lungs, even when we don’t know all the words. Who needs lyrics when you can just make it up as you go along?
By the time we finally get home it’s gone midnight and Dad doesn’t bother to put the car in the garage for some reason, which seems a bit odd. I can’t wait to get my leg off and collapse into bed. As soon as we’re inside, I plonk myself on the bottom step to take it off. Jig covers me in smelly dog-breath kisses, his tail writhing with a life of its own while he has a good sniff of my sweaty crotch.
‘Can’t you wait and do that in your room?’ Mum says.
‘Nuh.’
Too late. The leg is off and so is the silicon lining. I’ve mastered this way of half- crawling, half-hopping up the stairs so I can get up there faster than they can walk it. Dad comes up behind me, shaking his head and carrying my leg for me. The door to my room is shut, which is pretty annoying. I never leave it shut. Mum must have shut it in one of her OCD moments. On my knees I reach up and turn the handle.
A shout goes up as I open the door. ‘Surprise!’
In shock, I pull the door shut again. Did I really just see that? How did Jake and Jessica get into my room? Dad hovers behind me still holding my leg.
‘What’s going on?’ I demand.
‘Open the door and find out,’ Mum says.
‘Go on.’ Dad nudges me forward.
279 Slowly I turn the door knob, pushing the door open to reveal Jessica and Jake sitting on my bed, stupid grins on their faces, which are still painted with blue and white stripes and totally clash with my zebra-print doona.
I walk into my room on my knees and finally stammer out a highly original question.
‘What are you doing here?’
Jessica points at the shelves in my bedroom. ‘We brought you these.’ Lined up on the shelves in row after gleaming row are what looks to be all of my old trophies.
‘But I —
‘Threw them out?’ Jake says
‘We know,’ Jessica says.
‘But how?’
‘Fairy Godmother,’ Jake says, pointing two hands at Jessica.
Of course it would be Jessica.
It always was. It always is.
The bottom of my blind bangs softly against the window, stirred by a breeze that blows in from across the oval. I thought I never wanted to see those trophies again, thought I was glad to be rid of them and yet having them back feels, I don’t know… right? Since I am still on my knees and she is sitting on the bed, our heads are at the same level. I look at all the trophies then I look at her and when our eyes finally meet it’s the strangest feeling; incredibly strong and at the same time, dangerously wobbly so I’m glad I’m kneeling and not balanced on one leg. I don’t know what this thing is between Jessica and me but the more I fight it the more it gets a hold. I look into her eyes and it’s like there’s no one else in the room, no one else in the world, just her and me.
‘Some of them are a bit damaged,’ she says. ‘We tried to patch them up. I hope you don’t mind?’ Her eyes hold mine for the longest time and my stomach does a big lurch.
‘That’s okay,’ I say as our fingertips touch. ‘I can live with a bit of damage.’
Her eyes light up and her lips curve into a smile.
There really is nothing more I need to say.
Just then, Tristan leans back and sets the roller blind flying up with a snap so loud I just about jump out of my skin.
‘Good one Jake,’ Jessica says with an eye roll. Everyone else is too busy laughing
280 ‘Well at least it got you all moving,’ Jake shrugs. ‘Don’t know about you but I’m starving.’ Dad has a stupid grin on his face as he helps Jake up to his feet.
‘There’s food?’ I look at Mum for confirmation.
‘Sure is’ Jake jumps back in. ‘Mum’s been cooking all day. She’s downstairs with all my lot.’ As if on cue the sound of music starts up. Some excellent Irish music. ‘Come on, before the pasties all go,’ Jake says over his shoulder as he limps out of the room.
‘And before the twins eat all the cake,’ Jessica adds.
They all leave me alone to put my leg on. My first alone moment all night. I look out the bare window, naked without its blind. The moon floods my bedroom with its light. Jessica is waiting for me at the top of the landing.
‘All good?’ she says.
‘All good.’
She nods her head to let me go first but instead I slip my arm around her, one hand on the curve of the timber railing, the other nestled in the curve of her spine. Music and laughter and the smell of hot pastry waft up in an overpowering wave. We take the stairs slowly together trying to find a rhythm as we go.
Left foot, right foot, fake foot, real foot, one after the other all the way down.
The End
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