Page 20 of Just Say (Hell) No
Two possible answers. He couldn’t have said which was right, but maybe his answer had been written a long time ago. Maybe when he’d been given three younger sisters. And maybe on the night his dad had stood in front of a door holding a deer rifle.
“Good as gold,” he said.
“Yeh? Seriously? Brilliant.” Ella smiled, and he saw all the bravery in it, and all the terrible, unseeing youth. “You’ll see. It’s a perfect plan.”
There were just a couple problems with Ella’s plan.
First, Marko’s new house wasn’t exactly guest-ready. He’d been planning to get to it over time. By which he’d probably meant, “When the season’s over.” Next December.
Second… well, everything else. Just taking on a kitten had seemed like a major change in his routine. What wasthisgoing to be?
Play what’s in front of you. It’s not forever. She’s not an elephant. Maximum gestation nine months.And she was looking too much like that five-year-old clutching her Barbie.
“Bedroom,” he told her. “Unpack. And then you can ring your mum.”
“I thought…” She looked up at him like the big brother he almost was, and there was that tug again, the strings his family had around his heart. “I was hoping you could do it. You could explain. She’ll listen to you.”
“No.” This, he knew for sure. “I’ll sit with you while you do it. Start as you mean to go on. This is your start. But first…” He got off the stool, put his kitten back into his pocket, and picked up Ella’s duffel. “You unpack.”
She followed him up the spare modern staircase and into an expansive bedroom, where he set her duffel on the bed and said, “Here you are.”
“Uh, Marko…”
“I have sheets,” he said. “A towel as well. Somewhere. Hang on.” He found them on a high shelf in his closet, then thought a second and dug out his sleeping bag. When he came back, Ella was sitting on the bare mattress, her shoulders drooping. He dropped a white towel and facecloth, a set of white sheets, and the sleeping bag beside her and said, “There you go. Oh. Hangers.” Another trip to his bedroom. He found five extra. “Right,” he said once he’d put them on the bed with the rest of it. “Sorted.”
“OK,” she said.
It didn’t sound all that cheerful. He said, “I told you. We’ll talk about the rest tomorrow. One step at a time. For now, unpack, get yourself…” He waved a hand around vaguely, and the kitten shifted on his shoulder. “Settled. Showered, or whatever, and then come down so we can ring your mum. Last thing, then bed. You’re almost there.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s just…” She looked around.
“Oh.” He considered that. “Huh. You mean that it’s not decorated.”
“I mean that it’s notanything.Sorry, but… Caro said your house was flash, and itis,but…”
He could’ve been offended, but he’d heard his share of female commentary and female expectations. So he just said, “A bed, four walls all your own, a window, a ceiling light that works, because I put the bulb in myself, and a private bath.Withtowels. Also a million-dollar view of the sea. You should’ve seen my flat in Dunedin when I first went to play for Otago. A mattress on the floor, a couch that probably had to be burnt when we moved out, and a bath shared with three mates, each of them filthier than the last. Took my showers on tiptoe for fear I’d catch something disgusting. Consider yourself lucky. Besides, we can do a bit of a shop on Sunday.”
He sighed a little inside. He was seeing his gypsy on Sunday morning, his one full day off. He’d planned for an entire uncluttered afternoon, in case their breakfast morphed into… more. Now, unless Nyree’s dream date was shopping for furnishings with a pregnant schoolgirl, that wasn’t going to be happening.
He wondered if Ella still liked Hello Kitty, and got a bona fide shudder down his spine.
Comfortable, yes. Of course she should be comfortable. But he was going to draw the line. It was his flash house and his money, and it was going to be done to his taste. No pink. No flowers. No mouthless cats.
He made the bed himself, in the end, while Ella was in the bath. If he hadn’t, he’d had a feeling she would have lain down on the bare mattress. She looked that knackered. After that, they sat side by side there, Ella in pink flowered flannel PJs that promised nothing good, future-décor-wise, and Marko with his kitten, and she rang home.
“Mum?” she began, and Marko could hear the rapid, high-pitched sounds on the other end with no trouble at all.“No,”Ella said. “I’m withMarko.Didn’t Caro tell you?” Another minute, then, “Well, I am.Yes,in Auckland. That’s where heis.”Another pause. “With my birthday money, of course.Yes.I’mfine.”And after a long few minutes of quacking, “Iwantto finish school. That’s thepoint.I’ll come back after. After winter term, I guess. Sometime in there.”
Finally, she held out the phone with a sigh. “She wants to talk to you. Dunno why I had to do it. She never listens to me anyway.”
Marko recognized that for the narkiness it was. Too tired, too young, and too scared. He took the phone and told his aunt, in his calmest, most in-control tones, “Hi, Jakinda. She’s here. She’s all good.”
“I rang her up after school,” Jakinda said, her voice missing all the lower-register tones. This was going to be fun. She was only five years older than Marko, but at times, he felt that much older. “Because she ran out of the house this morning like it was the last time. I didn’t have a good feeling. No answer.Ever.And when I got that robocall they do from the school saying she’d bunked off all day, I rang your house, because she’d said she was going there, but she wasn’t there, and Caro was so odd, I rang the police. They said she’s sixteen, and she’s allowed to leave home and stay on her own as long as she isn’t in danger. How did I know shewasn’tin danger? How didtheyknow? They didn’t, that’s what. Your mum and dad have been just as frantic. You might have told me sooner. I’ve been beside myself. And Caroknew?Why would she keep it a secret, when shesawhow worried I was? All she would say was, ‘She has a plan.’ Some helpthatwas. Imagine what the two of them might have thought was a good plan.”
Marko would’ve been willing to bet that his mum and dad hadn’t been as frantic as all that. “As it happens, though,” he said, “she did have a decent plan.” He brought the intensity levels down the same way you did in a match. By breathing in, breathing out, and refocusing on—yes. The plan. Then you communicated it. Calmly. Settled everybody down and gave them the belief, and no panic stations. “They decided she should come stay with me until the baby’s born, go to school here away from the gossip, and have the baby adopted here as well, so she won’t be running into the mum and dad—and the baby, too—on the street. Then go home with a fresh start. Sounded reasonable to me. How does it sound to you?”
He got her to pause, anyway. “The gossip will still be there,” she said. “Mackenzie College has two hundred pupils. They all live here. They allknowher. There’s no outrunning this. You did your school in Dunedin. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“I was born there. I went to primary school there. I know what it’s like. It won’t be a secret, but it won’t be the same as if she’d stayed, either. Nine days’ wonder.”
