Page 39 of Nothing Without You

‘Get it yourself, Sissy. I’m sick of providing for Stoner and his dickhead mates. They’re sponges. What does he ever give you?’

Peace purred. ‘He gives her love.’

‘Yeah, you and every other chick he sleeps with.’

The conversation had turned into an argument. Sissy stormed off and started drinking with some of the other older kids who were there. As usual, it was a mixture of different aged partygoers, and Evie watched some of the kids from school have skolling competitions before vomiting in the bushes nearby. They seemed to know she was connected to Bob, and it was almost as if she was special because of that connection. The area she was living in was isolated and sparsely populated, but the younger crowd knew what was going on and who was with whom. She pushed her chest out and took large sips from her wine glass. She was new, from down south, and she was Bob’s girlfriend.

She peered through the crowd on the veranda, looking for him. Tonight, she had dressed especially for him; a short, white denim skirt that barely covered her bottom and a knitted bikini top made out of red cotton. Her tan had darkened over the previous weeks and she was starting to feel as though she looked like a local. Tim sauntered over and offered her a smoke, the thickly rolled joint too good to refuse. They passed it back and forth, and she giggled when he made a joke. Suddenly, a hand that came from behind her snatched the smoke out of Tim’s hand, and she turned around to see Bob puffing hard, drawing down the paper quickly until there was hardly anything left.

‘Hey, man,’ Tim said. ‘That was mine.’

Bob put his arm around Evie and drew her in close. ‘And this is mine.’ He smirked at Tim, who shook his head and turned away. Evie tried to talk to Tim, but he had already run down the stairs. She watched as he walked through the crowd and onto the track that led out through the rainforest.

Bob’s lips were on hers but when they drew apart, she questioned him. ‘What did you do that for? Tim’s a good guy.’

Bob was drunk as well as stoned. He wrapped himself around her. ‘You’re mine, remember.’ She was aware that a group from school were watching, and she let Bob kiss her again. When he led her into his bedroom, she followed. He hadn’t forgotten her. She was still his girl.

Chapter Forty-Three

Before Evie knew it, year 11 was finished and she had turned seventeen. Not only did she have her licence, but her father had sent through enough money to buy a car. The new yellow Datsun she bought from a car yard in Cairns was her pride and joy, and she loved the freedom it gave her.

She and Bob had been together for over a year, and she was well used to the routine of partying, drinking and doing whatever drugs were passed around. Although her mother was always at home to make her dinner, she had grown more and more distant, and rarely smiled or was interested in anything Evie was doing.

‘I reckon your mum has depression,’ Sissy said one day, after making Evie a cup of herbal tea. ‘She looks like she listens to what we’re saying, but she’s not really listening. Has she got a broken heart because she’s not with your dad?’

Evie laughed. Her dad. The one who rang every week and listened as she lied about everything she was doing at school, at home and on the weekends, or any other night she went out. He had no idea, and some days she pretended she didn’t hear the phone ring. A couple of times she purposely knocked the handpiece off the base, so that it couldn’t ring and he would think they were on the phone. His weekly calls turned into fortnightly calls, and even those she tried to avoid. She was a different person from the one he had last seen, and there was no way she was going to go to Sydney to visit him. She told him she had too much study to do, but really she didn’t want to be away from Bob.

As the first months of year twelve went by, her schoolwork fell further and further behind. The only teacher who seemed to care was her Science teacher, Miss Mosely. ‘Evie, please. Don’t get drawn into the drugs and alcohol. Those parties out at the band house are bad news. You have so much potential.’

Miss Mosely had always been her favourite teacher, but one day Evie became tired of her lectures. ‘You know Miss Mosely, you’re always telling me what I should do. Maybe you should go out and have some fun. I don’t want to end up just working, or doing what you’re doing. I’m on an adventure.’

Miss Mosely had not got angry, which made Evie even more determined to stop her from telling her what she should do. ‘Evie, when you arrived your marks were high, but now you’re not even passing, and your mother won’t come in for an interview. What’s going on? You only have a few months of school left.’

She wanted so badly to blurt out that her life before she came to North Queensland had been ruined; her father liked men, her mother slept with a teacher from her last school and, most importantly, the boy she had loved was having sex with another girl. Her life had turned to shit. Until they moved. Now she had cool friends, she partied most weekends and, most of all, she took a deep breath, she had an older boyfriend in a band and … he wanted her to move in with him.

Not even Sissy or Peace knew about that; and, she took another deep breath, there was no way she would tell Tim or Arlo. The boys spent most of their time fishing or diving; and now that Tim had his licence, they said they were going in his old VW Kombi down to South Australia. ‘Where the swells are huge, and the winter waves are big and pumping.’

Tim hadn’t talked to her much since the night Bob snatched the joint from him. He’d gone all weird after that, and the girls said he wasn’t going to supply them with dope any more. ‘Strange, alright,’ Sissy said. ‘He’s stopped smoking and he reckons he’s dropping out of school, going to surf down south and then go and work in the bauxite mines in Weipa. Says we’re all wasting our lives here and the pot’s killing our brains.’

When Evie looked at Sissy, who was sitting cross-legged and drawing heavily on a plastic Orchy bottle filled with ice, she wondered if perhaps Tim was right. A cut-off hose poked out of the bottle and Sissy tried to stuff more dope into the cone attached to the top. ‘Shit,’ Sissy moaned. ‘Someone do this for me.’

Evie leaned over to help. Sissy’s eyes were narrow slits, and her face was covered in sores that looked like mosquito bites. Stoner had taken off to Melbourne to his brother’s place. The word was he was running from the police, who wanted him for drug trafficking. ‘Not just dope,’ Peace said. ‘He’s been using heroin and selling it.’

Evie took notice of what Peace was saying after that. ‘You don’t think Sissy’s been using heroin, do you?’ It was one thing smoking dope and occasionally trying some of the mushies, but heroin was another thing. She’d seen a couple of boys at one of the parties shooting up, and she felt nauseous at the sight of the needles sticking out of their arms. One of the kids who used to go to their school had overdosed a couple of months before. Even though she hadn’t known him well, she cried at the memorial they held at school for him.

That was why the band was splitting up. Stoner was going to Melbourne, the other two guitarists were moving to Brisbane, and Bob was leaving, but he was unsure where to go. He told her about his plans to move a few months before school finished for the year. She stroked his arm. He sounded down and she wanted to make him happy. ‘I want to go further south,’ he said. ‘Get away from here.’ He was extra nice to her that night, and she enjoyed having him to herself, rather than having the house full of people.

When she lay next to him, she wished he would hold her, kiss her and look into her eyes just like John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John looked at each other in the movie ‘Grease’. It was her favourite movie, and she had been to the cinema several times with Peace and Sissy to watch it. She loved the story of Danny and Sandy. Sandy changed for Danny, and they fell in love.

She gazed at Bob. Surely if she stared at him and snuggled up, he would do the same in return. But he didn’t. There were no sweet words whispered about her being the one who he wanted, nor did he look at her like she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Instead, he lit up a joint, the smell wafting throughout the room as he puffed heavily before blowing the smoke towards the ceiling. It was summer and the fan above them was broken. A whiff of his sweat annoyed her, and she wished he would shower more regularly. Sometimes she loved him so much she couldn’t bear to be away from him, but other times he frustrated her and made her angry when he ignored her.

There were occasions when he flirted with other girls and paid them more attention than he did to her. A couple of times she had caught him coming out of his room with another girl who was new to the area. A few weeks ago, it had been a blonde backpacker from Sweden, who worked at the restaurant in town. Bob looked surprised when Evie was there, outside his door as he walked out.

The Swedish girl was drunk and hung off him. Her clothing hung off her like it had just been thrown on, and Evie was suspicious that they had been in his bed together.

Bob had kissed Evie though, right in front of the girl, and asked what she was doing here. ‘Hey babe. I thought you were going to Cairns to shop with the other girls,’ he said. ‘Isla is new to Australia, and I was just showing her around the house.’

Evie didn’t buy his excuse and she remained silent, the other girl smiling sweetly at her as they walked back to the group who were sitting in a circle on the loungeroom floor. One of the other boys took Isla’s arm and led her to a chair on the veranda, where she curled up and promptly went to sleep.

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