‘She’s joking,’ Rae said, loudly enough for the woman to hear. ‘How are you, Jo? I haven’t seen you for a few weeks.’
‘I’m good, just so much homework. No time to breathe.’
‘I’m going to give VCE a miss,’ Jane said.
‘We’ll see about that.’ Rae smiled at her daughter and Jane frowned.
‘I’m going to be a pro skater. I don’t need school for that.’
Rae winked at Jo. Jane elbowed her mother. ‘Just wait and see.’ And all three of them laughed.
‘They might have degrees for skateboarders by the time you finish school,’ Jo teased.
‘But she thinks she’s already an expert,’ Rae said.
The bell in the kitchen rang. ‘Argh, sorry, I have to go,’ Jo said. ‘I’m sure you’ll get a table soon. See ya.’
‘Bye, Jo,’ Rae said. ‘Say hello to your mum, I haven’t seen her in ages.’
Jo headed for the kitchen, where the meals for one of her tables were ready to serve. Then a table asked for the bill and another table for water and a third, a large group of what looked like an extended family, wanted to order. By the time she had a chance for a breather, Jane and Rae had been seated at the other end of the restaurant. She was run off her feet for the next half hour and didn’t get a chance to talk to them again.
Jane had said ‘like family’, but they weren’t family, even though until recently she had spent at least one, sometimes two, nights a week eating and sleeping at their house over the last six years. If she and Ash stopped being friends, she wouldn’t any longer have anything to do with Ash’s family. What would they be to her if she and Ash stopped being friends? Would they slip away, become acquaintances, and then finally strangers?
Normally Jo worked an eight-hour shift, 7.30 to 3.30 or 8.00 to 4.00, but her boss, Ted, had reluctantly agreed to a five hour-shift, because she needed to finish her English essay.
It was a mild spring day, except for the wind — almost a gust that, even when the sun pushed through the clouds, kept the temperature down. Normally by this time of the year, Melburnians could be heard yearning for warmer weather, but the city was still reeling from the Black Saturday bushfires in February. One hundred and seventy people dead, thousands of homes and hectares of land destroyed. As Jo left the café, she heard a couple talking about the fires and their hope that this year the holiday season would come with cooler temperatures and more rain.
Jo walked home through the shopping centre to the beat of The Black Eyed Peas’ ‘Boom Boom Pow’. The lyrics were complete nonsense, but still she loved the song. She thought about all those people enjoying their Saturday off and resented having to do homework. But it was just a few more months. ‘Once you have the certificate, you’ll be ready to go on with your real lives,’ Jo’s school principal had declared at one of her regular pep talks with the senior students. Jo thought this was an odd thing to say to students, considering some would fail and some would not do as well as they hoped. What would it mean if she failed — would she become stuck like some rabbit in headlights, fixed to the spot, never able to move, or would she be doomed to repeat VCE again and again, Groundhog Day–style, until she got it right?
As she approached her front gate, Jo slowed and looked up at the West Gate. The high-wind warning lights were flashing and the traffic was slowed to a crawl. She took her earphones out, and immediately the music was replaced with the rumble of the traffic, the sputter of exhaust pipes, and the squeal of brakes. Across the road the oil tanks cast a sombre shadow. She sighed and headed inside.
Mandy was at work, so Jo spread her books on the kitchen table. Then she opened her laptop and stared at the screen. She was contemplating whether to work on her History assignment — on the goals and consequences of Lenin’s New Economic Policy — or her English essay on the nature of reality. The essay was due first, but she’d been avoiding it. The question, ‘Is every reality open to interpretation?’ was to be answered with reference to Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love, a strange and difficult novel she hadn’t finished reading, and with reference to current events. Keeping up with the daily news was imperative. Her mother had signed up for a subscription to The Age, even though Mandy’s preference was for the Herald Sun and they couldn’t afford two newspapers. Most days Jo didn’t open the paper, and it remained in the tight cylinder the delivery guy threw from his car into their front yard every morning. Over the months, these dusty corpses accumulated in the corner of the laundry. Still procrastinating, she sent Ash a text message: Do you want to come over early? Work on the essay? Jo found it easier to get homework done if they worked together.
‘The next-door neighbors are having a family reunion. There’s like hundreds of them. And loud Greek music. It’s a nightmare, can’t get anything done,’ Ash said when she arrived. Her hair was up in an untidy bun and she was wearing her gym pants and a tight pink t-shirt.
‘Oh God, no, sounds painful. Did you bring your clothes for tonight?’
‘I need to go to the library before it closes, to get a couple of books for my Legal Studies essay. I’ll go home and get my clothes on the way back. And I haven’t decided what I’m going to wear yet.’
‘Have you started the essay?’ Jo asked as Ash emptied the contents of her backpack onto the table: books, notebooks, her laptop.
‘Just rough notes. You?’
‘Just starting. Haven’t finished reading the novel yet. I mean, a novel about a stalker? Anyway, I watched the film.’
‘Jo…’ Ash frowned, pointed her finger at Jo, and mimicked Mrs Hunt’s British accent. ‘The movie isn’t the book, and you can get into all sorts of problems in the exam.’
Jo scowled. According to Mrs Hunt, their English teacher, the degradation of the English language could be traced to Hollywood, and it was criminal the way movies dominated the culture, and now even the government had decreed that students study films as part of the curriculum: films don’t, can’t, replace literature.
‘A few more months. Read the novel,’ Ash said.
‘I will.’
Ash’s phone rang.
‘Hey, glad you called,’ she said. Her smile, the dimples, signs of her obvious pleasure. ‘No, this is a good time. Just at Jo’s, working on the English essay… No, all good…
‘Kevin says hi, I’ll go outside,’ Ash said and mouthed, ‘Sorry,’ as she headed towards the back door. She sat on the edge of the deck, pulling her knees to her chin and leaning her back against a post. As she settled in, she lowered her voice and only an odd word or a laugh made it as far as the kitchen.
On top of the stack of Ash’s books there was a red Moleskine notebook: Ash’s journal. Over the years, Ash’s journals had changed in shape and size — with lines and without lines, with arty covers, with plain covers. Kevin had introduced her to the Moleskines. ‘Kevin says that real writers use Moleskine notebooks, like Hemingway and Oscar Wilde,’ Ash told Jo. They were standing in a stationery store and Ash was spinning the Moleskine stand.
‘Really? Any women writers? I thought writers were poor — these are so expensive. At Bill’s Bargains they have notebooks for two dollars.’
‘Not this good, Jo. It’s my journal, I write in it every day.’ Ash caressed the cover and gave Jo a pleading smile. ‘Can I borrow ten dollars?’
Jo picked up the notebook and ran her fingers over the cover. When they were younger, Jo often asked: ‘What do you write about?’ And Ash read out humorous pieces about her parents or their teachers. She read Jo her lists: stupid things I said this week that I can’t take back, things I’ll do when this fucking year is over, by the time I’m 40 I’ll… She documented their lives: the notes they passed in class, the boys they had the hots for, and the Sunday afternoons Mandy coaxed them into watching daggy old films like Singing in the Rain. Once she said, ‘I’ve got a Jo list’ and read out a sample: Jo lets me tell her all my bad jokes and she laughs. Jo’s there when I need her. Jo makes the best meatballs and spaghetti (and I should know because my nonna is Italian). Jo doesn’t care that she doesn’t get As. Jo can keep a secret. Jo loved that list. Ash loved her unconditionally.