Our Little Secret(33)

I think of the tepid champagne on the stone balcony, the wriggly pudginess of Freddy’s hips. “Nothing.”

“Okay.” He exhaled, like the whole muddle could finally be over.

“Is Saskia leaving forever?” The last word rose into a squeak.

“I guess.” He looked down at his feet. “Why don’t you like her?”

“HP, she’s so . . . vanilla.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ezra’s head appeared through the doorway. “We’re saying good-bye.” He glanced quickly from my face to HP’s. “You should come out here, bro.”

HP frowned like he wanted to say more to me, but instead we pushed through the doors to hear Saskia’s tinny accent. “I’ve made so many friends, you’s all have been heaps kind.”

She said it like this—koind. The people around her had hoisted her up to her feet; she stood on the bench cushion with her bony knees poking out of beach-bleached shorts. Her blue-elephant tattoo shimmered.

“I wish I could take you fellas back with me to ’Straya.” The first syllable of her country had vanished and the last one bounced. The pod of leering guys in the booth cheered and raised their beer bottles. “Look, I want to say a special thank-you to Hamish . . .”

Everyone looked around, confused.

“To HP . . .” More cheers. “For putting me up all summer! Here’s to you, Haym.”

I thought I might vomit into the neck of my beer bottle. To my left, HP raised his hand and blushed.

“And while I’m up here, I just wanted to give you this.” She arched forwards towards HP, an envelope in her outstretched hand. Someone took it and started passing it back to HP. “Fair dinkum. See what you think.”

While he opened the envelope, Saskia did this strange little curtsy of excitement. He pulled out an airline ticket, Qantas, the rigid white of it stark in the air.

“Jesus, Sask.” HP scratched his head. “How’d you . . .”

“Call it an investment,” she said, and she winked at me. At me.

The room erupted into whoops and hollers, with all the boys shaking HP at the shoulder like he’d just won a competition. He stood there staring at Saskia, who remained marooned in the booth. She battled her way over the back of the bench towards him.

“There goes your job at the high school,” I said to HP as Saskia arrived beside us.

“Look, you don’t have to use the ticket now . . . or at all. I can get a refund.” Her eyelashes looked longer with her head lowered.

“No, it’s super generous and nice of you, Sask, it’s just, I—”

“HP has a life here,” I said. “He’s—”

HP interrupted. “Actually, it’s just I never thought I’d travel. I’d always kind of ruled it out.”

Apparently, England didn’t count.

He looked at Saskia, his face open and shocked. She beamed at him. I stood watching them, feeling loss creep over me, slick like oil.

I didn’t say good-bye to anybody that night, although Saskia stopped me at the door—she must have been tracking my exit.

“I hope we can be friends.” Her entire face lit up like the sun.

I looked straight into her eyes. “Why don’t you ever say what you mean?”

She’d been sipping through her straw and coughed a little. There was a rearranging of goodwill features. “Angela. For starters, I’m not trying to—”

“You bought him a flight to Sydney!” My mouth felt flinty, like granite.

“He’s coming back, but . . .” The possibility hung pointlessly at the end of her sentence.

“But not without you,” I said.

“Haym really cares about you.” There was such an earnest arc to her eyebrows. It made me want to set them on fire.

“It’s a problem, isn’t it? Don’t worry; there’ll be plenty of time and space on the other side of the planet for you to reshape him.”

I walked away from her, straight home, without turning back once to see the look on her face.


Novak rubs his hands together. “It can’t have been easy.”

“Which part?”

“Competing with an all-expenses-paid trip to a different hemisphere. I can see why you don’t like her.”

“I don’t compete with her. She’s dull and predictable.”

He scratches his jaw. “So when did HP head down under?”

“The next month. It was kind of a flurry. I didn’t even see him again before he left.”

“Did you hear from him after? Was he as good a pen pal as Freddy?”

He’s being ironic. Novak thinks he’s driving this story. He thinks he’s ten steps ahead of me.

“We Skyped a couple of times, but Saskia was always right there in the background, butting in. They stayed at her parents’ place in Manly Beach and from what I could tell did nothing but surf and watch sunrises. I stalked her on Facebook. She wrote poems about water and light and posted them on her wall. Her security settings are child-like.”

“How long did HP stay over there?”

I pause. This is just pretense. Novak flicks through his file with his head down.

“Oh, here it is. Yes, okay, okay. So.” He looks up. “Did HP call you about his plans to wed?”