I ride past Charlie at the gas station and meet Luke and Dave out the front of the milk bar. “We missed the last bus because of you,” Luke says, and keeps saying it till I want to glue his stupid mouth shut. “We could be on our way to the movies right now if we’d been a second faster, but no, you had to wave at one last car.”
“She gets it, all right?” Dave says, but he’s pissed off as well. The best way to spend Sunday is at the movies. How was I to know Mrs. Holly agreed to bring us home if we got ourselves there? “No one said you two had to wait. Could have left for the bus without me.”
“Can’t even get chips.” Luke nods his head at the milk bar. “Shop’s closed again. I’m going home. Coming?” he asks me.
“There aren’t any more buses, Rose,” he says, and I’m yelling on the inside: Don’t you think I know that, Luke? Don’t you think I know that every day in this place turns out exactly the same as all the rest?
“There’s nothing to wait for,” he says. “No buses or cars. Nothing.” He shoves the last word in my face.
“See, Luke, now I’m sure there’s something to wait for because I’ve known you for sixteen years and you’ve never, never been right.”
“I’m right this time. You could wait all day and nothing’s coming round that corner.” He starts reading from the bus timetable. “Ten-fifty. Last bus on a Sunday.”
“Shut up.”
“Next bus, nine a.m. Monday morning.” I kick his knee out from behind him so he bounces forward. “Right, you asked for it,” he yells, and I start running a second too late. Dave shakes his head and sits down to watch while Luke grabs my T-shirt and drags me back to the timetable. “Say I’m right.” He’s shouting and laughing at the same time. “Say it, Rosie. For once say, ‘Luke, you are right.’” He holds my shirt tighter and hacks up spit in the back of his throat. “Say it or wear it, Rose.…”
Before I give in, I hear wheels on gravel. Luke and I look up as the old blue Ford stops in front of the shop. Charlie stares at us through the window. She hugs her guitar tight. “What were you saying, Luke?” I ask.
“That’s not worth waiting for. Just Charlie Dorkin back in town. Must be summer.” He hunches over and brushes his hair forward into his face. “Who am I?” he asks.
I open my mouth to laugh but catch the sound in time and push it back in my throat. “Shut up, Luke.” I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. Charlie arrives for Christmas every year and leaves two or three weeks later. Mum loves her. She’s been on my back for years to make friends with Charlie. The Duskins are probably the only people in the world Mum and Dad might let me go to the city with. I could stay with her. Let’s face it, I’d be doing her a favor. I’ll probably be the only friend she’s ever had.
“Her name’s Charlie Duskin,” I say.
“What do you care?” Luke asks. “You’re the one who said she was weird in the first place.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before I started comparing her to you. Let go of my top, idiot.” I push him off and leave both of them at the bus stop. I walk close enough to Charlie on my way past for her to see me smile.
Her eyes always bothered me when we were kids. They still do. They make mine ache trying to see where they end. She used to watch Dave, Luke, and me when she came to visit. Once she spent the whole summer spying on us from her gran’s plum tree, staring out from the branches with those shiny possum eyes. She never asked if she could join us; she hid in the leaves and watched, licking juice from her fingers.
“Charlie’s lovely, Rose, and all on her own when she comes down for the summer.” Mum said almost the same thing every year.
“She doesn’t want to be friends. She spies on us,” I answered once. “If I spied on people, you’d kill me. She gets to do whatever she likes. She doesn’t have jobs around the house. Nothing.”
Charlie would sit next to her dad in the shop and eat whatever she liked and he never told her it was nearly time for dinner. “I’m going to the river,” she’d say, and he never hassled her about when she’d be back.
“You’ll learn the hard way,” Mum said, and I knew I’d gone too far. I didn’t mean I wanted Mum to die. I meant Charlie didn’t have it as bad as everyone thought she did.
Her gran invited Luke and Dave and me over once a few years back. Mum told me I had to go. She made me wear this dress that itched and shoes that pinched and I was so pissed off that I made Dave and Luke promise not to talk to Charlie when we went inside. I didn’t want to be friends with her and no one could make me.
I remember one time when she came to my house. I think it was in Year 7. Her gran had sent her over with a message for Mum. She knocked and Dave, Luke, and I came out of the door. I told her Mum was inside, and the three of us kept walking. Dave hesitated, but he followed in the end. It felt good to leave her on the step. I couldn’t stand how desperate she was to be part of us. If she’d told us to piss off, maybe I would have liked her more.
She doesn’t spy now. She walks around town looking like this is the last place in the world she wants to be. Maybe she and I actually have something in common.
Maybe we can use each other to get what we want this summer. I’ll give her a bit of what she’s been staring at all these years and she can take me with her when she goes. I’d do anything to get to the city. Even hang out with Charlie Duskin.