CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Maybe I don't want to live in a world where my innocence is so assured. (Silverchair)
Raisa seems to take my comment in stride, which is brilliant. She's a bit brilliant.
Her head tilts upwards, looking at the stars with renewed interest, and she reminds me of a guitarist on stage, looking down at the fretboard like it's an alien they've managed to tame. Raisa has that sort of magic in her eyes all the time, I think, but right now I see it so clearly it makes my head spin. She swims over to me, closing that three feet of unbearable distance, and kisses the end of my nose.
"Will Joel be worrying about us?" She asks, but she sounds distracted.
"Are you really fifteen?" I blurt. I know she'll hate me for asking, but I need to know.
"I am fifteen, I promise." She nods, as if cementing the fact. "Why do you ask?"
"You just look sixteen, that's all."
Raisa gives me a look like she knows exactly what I'm on about. She shrugs it off, though, and starts to wade over to the shoreline. "Joel has to go and catch those kids who stole his car," she explains, back turned toward me, face out of sight. "C'mon, Nathan."
And, like the leader she is, I follow her.
-
Joel's managed to keep a crowd happy, which I didn't expect, especially seeing as though I'd previously thought the most pub rock-like songs in his repertoire were the most poetic of Patti Smith. But there he is, standing on the stage, belting out the lyrics to 'My Generation' by the Who, going too fast and singing a bit too high, his smooth voice not really dealing with the harsh words he's spitting.
He collapses over the mic stand after the last few bars of the song, exhausted, his curly hair stuck to his forehead. The small mass of people—twenty, thirty by now—give cheers and whistles. It's clear nobody wants to take his place. "Any requests?" He asks, though he's out of breath. I check my watch and I want to tell Joel it's nearly ten o'clock and we should really go now, but I don't want to break him from this weird alter-ego-type trance.
Someone in the audience yells out 'Lennon!' to which Joel shakes his head and says, "Nah," like he's indifferent, like it's not a privilege to perform. He's acting like a total douchebag but everyone seems to love him for it.
"Powderfinger!" a girl shouts, and it's not until I turn to my left to see where Raisa's gone that I realise Raisa was the one shouting, having moved closer to the stage a meter or two.
"Why are you damp?" Joel ducks away from the microphone to whisper.
"I went swimming." Raisa whispers. Joel nods apprehensively and stands back up.
He adjusts a capo on the third fret of his guitar—it's beautiful, a piece of art in more ways than one—and he pushes some of the hair out of his face.
I'm in awe for the next three and a half minutes. The only reason I know the song is because of triple j's insistent playing but I do know that drums and bass and generally, three other band members, are an instrumental part of it. I don't know how he does it but Joel makes his one guitar sound like an intact band, picking enough notes to institute a weird kind of bass line that does the job pretty well. His onstage presence is so much larger than the skinny, tall thing he really is.
When he dismounts the stage, bowing to the crowd and blowing kisses to a group of giggling girls sitting in a booth in the corner, I ask him: "How can one person can sound like an entire band?"
"Years of practice, my friend," Joel says enigmatically.
Raisa appears not long after. "Did you find out where your car is?" she asks.
Joel shakes his head. "The kid who had my guitar said he wasn't with the blokes who took my car. He was tagging along, he said, and they drove off before he could tag any further."
"That's ideal," says Raisa. "Did he say where they were going?"
"Nope." Joel affirms. "He was, actually, other than giving me my pride back, totally useless."
They're both silent for a few seconds. I check my watch. "Guys, the fireworks." I interject.
Joel makes an 'oh,' noise like he's completely forgotten, which, really, isn't wholly unbelievable. "Sorry, Nathan. I didn't know we were still doing that."
"Do you still want to do it?"
"Yes."
"More importantly," Raisa pipes up. "Joel, what the hell? I thought you played Van Morrison and Ben Folds and that was it?"
"No, I play some pub rock too." Joel sounds a bit wounded. "The Beatles, I can do some Deep Purple, a bit of Midnight Oil. You know, whatever keeps the crowd happy."
This is amazing new information. I ask him, "I heard you doing an acoustic thing for a Sex Pistols song."
"I thought you'd never heard of the Sex Pistols?" Raisa says.
"Oh, I just heard that song on the radio ages ago, I didn't know it was the Sex Pistols. Learned it by ear, thought it'd be nicer if it involved finger-picking more than power-chords and there it was." Joel replies smugly.
I nod appreciatively. "It was beautiful, Joel. Really."
We've been walking for a while now, and when I look up from the ground I'm met with the ocean and the sea and a sand dune meeting a dusty road with a park bench placed upon it. Joel and Raisa sit next to each other, and I sit on the end.
"Where did you guys go?" Joel asks the both of Raisa and I. "Did you kiss in a bush some more?"
"Nathan is beginning to trust me, Joel," Raisa says. "And it's a really odd feeling to have someone trust you after earning it being the only thing on my mind for the past few hours." She sighs. "Odd not meaning bad. I mean, like, an odd kind of wonderful, like butterflies, like pride but not."
"And odd kind of wonderful." I echo. "That's poetic."
"Well, I'll have you know I do sound like an arthouse movie." Raisa smiles at me. And I smile back.
There's a few minutes where we talk together as a group, about everything and nothing, but I zone out and concentrate on Raisa's words. An odd kind of wonderful. A weird sort of perfect. The epitome of ironically happy. Against all odds, we are.
Raisa's next axiom is that we catch the train, since that way we don't catch a bus that stops every three seconds. I'm not too keen on travelling on Sydney public transport at nine p.m., but I aspect a tall, sweaty Joel and a tough looking Raisa, and think that I'm probably going to be okay. And it's weird to think that way: I don't think I've ever done it before.
Raisa, Joel, and I, in that order, take turns to point and laugh at the graffiti on the walls of the train station. Some of the best are, "You're all sluts," "Hayley, u cunt," and a creative take on Kurt Cobain's trademark, "God Is Gay."
Someone has spray-painted over it in a different colour, so God Is Gay becomes God HaTes Gays. Lovely.
"Nathan, look at this." Raisa says, and beckons me over.
There's a number, and then the words: call for good times and adult fun, Penrith area.
Joel appears behind us. "Nathan, mate, I dare you to ring it."
"I don't have my phone!" I blurt. But Joel rolls his eyes.
"There's a payphone at the entrance." Raisa butts in conveniently.
"Thanks." I say sourly.
Joel deposits 50 cents in my hand. "Raisa, how long till our train arrives?"
She checks her watch. "Fifteen minutes."
"Go, Nathan!" Joel pumps his fist in the air and starts leading me toward the telephone box. I can already the feel the pulsing, disgusting feeling in my chest. Like something terrible is dripping, drowning me from the inside. There's a good sense of me to say, no, this isn't fair. Joel, you always make me do stupid things and frankly I'm sick of it. But that doesn't make me say it. Raisa follows me to the telephone booth.
"You don't have to do this." She says, softly, like I'm fragile, like a single harsh word could break me. But instead of feeling comforted I just feel angry. I liked her better when she was harsh and had rough edges. Being all soft and smoothed in your words...she's only like that because she knows what's happened to me.
"Don't," I say.
"Don't what?"
"Pretend I'm fragile." I say, opening the booth's door. "Because I'm not."
The truth is, I am pretty fragile, and I do cry way too easily, and I do get anxious over stupid things, but I would never admit it aloud, especially to Raisa. Girls don't like boys who cry.
And that's the only thing running through my head as I dial the 'adult fun' advertiser. What if they charge me for calling them? What if they—
"Hello." Someone answers the phone, but it's not the low-lying female voice I'd expected.
"Hi?" I squeak.
"Jim isn't available to take your call right now, but leave a message after the tone and he'll get back to you." Oh, it's just an automated response. I go to hang up but before I can, the tone dings. "Shit, I just..." I mutter, stumbling to end call.
"So what happened?" Joel shouts.
I step out of the booth. "I don't know. Whoever he was wasn't there."
"He?" Joel laughs, "Imagine if he'd picked up, that would have been hilarious."
"I'm sure." I allow him.
There's the sound of screeching and I turn my head towards it. "Is that ours?" I ask Raisa, but she's already gone, through the train's doors, flashing her ticket.
-
"Will you stop tapping your feet?"
Joel slams a foot down on mine, and I want to shout but it dies somewhere on its way out. "Shut up!" I hiss. "You can't go around treading on people's feet."
"Thanks for the manners lesson." Joel rolls his eyes. There's a stretch of silence, other than the snoring of someone in the booth behind us, and the muttering of someone on the other side of the carriage. They look as though they're having a really important conversation, except no-one else is there. Joel says, "So what are you so scared about?" and I give him a look.
"I don't understand."
"You're always tapping." He says. "Chewing your fingernails, bouncing your knee, all those mannerisms in the key of frightened. Even if we aren't in a dangerous situation."
"That's not true." I say. "This entire night has been a dangerous situation. You have not been able to see me in a safe situation."
"Then how come I'm not tapping?"
"Um," I look sideways at Raisa, hoping for some answers, but her eyelids look heavy and all she does is wink sleepily at me, which, you know. Helpful. "Because you've got built-in caffeine receptors?"
Joel's eyebrows furrow together. "I asked you why I'm not tapping, not to quote Star Trek at me."
It's my turn to laugh and roll my eyes. "I don't know why you aren't in a constant state of anxiety, Joel. Really, if I were you, I wouldn't question such a good thing."
"Is it a good thing?" Joel frowns. "I never get how important something is until I've made fun of it and everyone's angry with me."
"Joel," I say slowly. "Can I ask you a question? Don't get offended."
"I will get offended, but I promise I'll try not to look it. Go on."
"Do you have ADHD?"
I don't mean to diagnose him, actually, Doctor Joseph used to tell me not to do that. He said you can't judge someone by their natural behaviours, which was weird, because that appeared to be what he did for a living. But it adds up, doesn't it?
Joel ruffles his hair, like a nervous habit. "Nathan, can I ask you a question?"
"Yes?"
"Do I look offended?" He points to his calm face. "Because I am."
"I'm sorry."
"He does." Raisa says, her head settling on my shoulder. "Joel, you've got ADHD, haven't you?"
"Stop doing this." Joel warns.
I begin to worry if Raisa is as terrible at reading people as I fear she is. "Your silence will only incriminate you further." She says.
"It won't incriminate you." I say quickly. "I wasn't trying to incriminate you or discriminate against you or anythingiminate you. I was just curious, you know what? It doesn't even matter, just leave it. Yeah, leave it."
Joel stamps down on my tapping foot. This time I do shout, and the person snoring behind us gives a sniffle of disturbance. "I have not been diagnosed, if that's what you mean, but people have flung the phrase at me."
"Don't worry, Joel," Raisa says comfortingly. "We're all crazy."
I wonder briefly what Raisa's element of crazy possibly could be, but by the time I decide to ask her, she's fallen asleep with her arm across my chest and her cheek smushed up between my shoulder blade and the back of the seat, and honestly, I've never seen someone so beautiful.
-
author note: you aren't "crazy" if you've got adhd!!! nothing makes you crazy!!! you're all beautiful people. raisa is just making a joke.