Flesh & Blood Read online

  I smoothed the chain down on her neck. It really suited her. “Everything will be okay,” I said, returning her smile. “I know that because you keep telling me.”

  She laughed soundlessly. “It’s not going to be okay, though, I’m not going to finish my HSC,” she said, sounding defeated. “You know that, don’t you? Even despite all of this? I’m doing really badly on all my assessments and it’s nearly the middle of the year. If my fees aren’t paid, the only reason to keep me in the school is if I do well and raise the average marks for the school ranking. That is, like, so far from ever happening it’s not even funny, which means I’m only still there because the school is waiting to get paid and they think Mum and Dad have heaps of money.”

  “So we have to get your grades up,” I realised, remembering that 52% she’d showed me in April. Shit, I had to think. “Okay. Okay. Your exams aren’t until October, right? That’s… four, five months. And if you’re not failing your assessments, you can still do moderately well from now on, right?”

  “Yeah, if I get, like, 100% on everything. Which is totally not going to happen, by the way. I am so behind.”

  “Well, I was dux of my school, and Sarah is smart and has some pretty smart friends, I’m sure we can get you over the line in four months.”

  Bree didn’t look convinced. “That’s if Cloverfield doesn’t kick me out after I hand in all the major assessment tasks at the end of semester and they’re all shit.”

  I gave her a look. “Hey, if I can figure out how to convince my mum everything’s fine between Henry and me before July, you can write some amazing assignments before then. But,” I said, standing up.

  Bree looked up at me from the bed with those big blue eyes. “But?”

  I put the box with the tablet in it on her lap. “But it means you’re not leaving stuff until 9pm on Sunday night. Come on, plug that thing in. Let’s see what we’ve got to work with.”

  FOUR

  In my head, I’d had all these heroic visions of helping Bree finish top of her class to glowing praise and the ‘Most Improved’ banner across her photo in the yearbook. Well, after we’d set up Bree’s tablet and she’d shown me some of her homework and assignments, that idea died a swift death.

  Her homework was intense. It was so intense and so demanding that I began to slowly recall in agonising detail all those nights I’d spent sobbing over my own books in year 12. Just looking at all the questions on Bree’s screen was making me sweat. It was no wonder she hadn't done any of it.

  Rob wandered past the kitchen table to grab another beer at some point and peeked over Bree’s shoulder while we were hunched over the screen. “Jesus,” was his assessment. “Now I remember why I dropped out.”

  “You dropped out?” Bree asked him, sounding surprised.

  “Yep,” he told her as he disappeared into the kitchen and called back, “in year 10 so I could take an apprenticeship. And I still earn more than Sares. Or I will when Waterbank re-opens, anyway.”

  “Not helping, Rob,” I said dryly as he walked back past with his fresh beer. He toasted us with it, and I ignored him. “Well,” I told Bree, sitting back and crossing my arms at her checklist of assignments. “You weren’t kidding about how behind you are.”

  “It’s okay if you don’t think you can help,” she said quietly. “I kept the receipt, we can always return the tablet so you don’t feel like you made a giant mistake spending all that money on me when it won’t do anything.”

  I hugged her. “Stop it, we can do this. Fuck. Okay, open the Maths homework and I’ll see if I can remember any of it.”

  Sarah finally got home while I was scrolling through the questions, and she bustled over to the kitchen table with a lot more energy than she’d had this morning. I glanced up at her. “You look better.”

  She laughed once. “That’s because I’m on every cold and flu tablet in the chemist. I think I just paid off his mortgage. So, I’m not actually sure if I do feel better or if I’ve just consumed so much pseudoephedrine that I’ve phased into another dimension. Either way…” She shrugged. “My presentation was spectacular and Sales are idiots and will definitely waste everything I taught them. What are you guys doing?”

  I passed her the tablet. “Bree’s homework.”

  Sarah scrolled up. “From February,” she noted in her best school teacher voice as she tabbed down the page. “Fantastic. Good to see that you’re up to date with—what the hell.” She stopped scrolling. “What is that? It looks like a modern art.”

  Bree tilted the tablet so she could see. “That’s De Moivre’s Theorem,” she said. “It’s fucked.”

  Sarah spent a few seconds staring at it. “Okay,” she said. “I have a pretty good memory, and I don’t remember that at all. Are we sure it’s maths? There are so many letters in it, it could be English. Like, x, y and z, I’m okay with, but why does it start with an ‘i’?”

  “Maybe the equation has evolved so far that it’s become sentient?” I offered.

  Bree giggled at us. “‘i’ is for ‘imaginary’. It’s an imaginary number.”

  Sarah stared critically at it. “Imaginary, right. Because it’s not as if maths could be any less applicable in real life, now we have to teach kids pretend numbers, great. What is this, ‘Solve to find ‘I’?” She read aloud, “Please help this lost little number find its meaning? What is this, psychology? Oh my god.”

  “On the bright side,” I said, “given that they’re imaginary numbers, maybe we could just hand in a blank sheet of paper and tell the teacher the answers are imaginary, too?”

  “I tried that,” Bree said. “And he told me I wasn’t funny and that there’s always one student every year who tries it.”

  I liked this guy less and less, seriously. “Did you tell him he needed some imagination? Maybe your imaginary numbers are so creative and unique he’s unable to fully appreciate them.”

  Sarah was still trying to wrap her head around that theorem. She tilted the tablet sideways, squinting at it. “Min, do you understand any of this crap?”

  “I wrote Bree’s name up the top,” I told her, and pointed to it. “I even spelt it right. Does that count?”

  She gave me a look and then asked Bree, “What about you, do you get any of this?” Bree just laughed bleakly. “That’s what I thought,” she said, and put the tablet down on the table so she could take her mobile out of her handbag. “I’m calling the cavalry.”

  Bree looked blankly at me, and I shook my head and shrugged.

  Sarah put the phone to her ear and I could faintly hear it ring a couple of times before someone answered. She was grinning. “Hello, yes, I’m looking for a weirdo who does maths for a living and has no life?” She laughed at the response. “Shut up, Gem, you know I love you. I need you to come and do that whole maths thing over at my place, though, because Bree is learning about fake numbers and Min and I have no idea.” She looked blankly at us for a second as she listened, and then her eyes narrowed. “A non-trivial what? No, I don’t know if that’s part of it. What the hell is that word, anyway? Is that even a word?”

  “Maybe it’s an imaginary word,” I suggested.

  Sarah rolled her eyes at me as she said to the phone, “Gem, I’m way too wrecked for your long maths words. Come over, will you? It’ll take an hour, maybe. Two, tops. See you soon!” She hung up and smiled at us. “Guess who’s coming to visit?”

  Before Gemma arrived, Sarah and I opened a blank Frost International Project Management Timeline, put our heads together and tried to figure out how the hell we were going to structure Bree’s study to get her assignments done in a month while also catching her up on all the homework she’d missed out on. We were still going when Gemma walked casually through the back door. She had a big pile of textbooks under one arm and a bottle of champagne in the other, and she put it loudly on the table directly in front of Sarah. “Fancy a drink?” she asked with an innocent smile. Clearly, Sarah’s hangover had been a topic at work.

&nbs
p; Sarah gave her a dirty look and was about to say something when Bree piped up, “You look really pretty, Gemma!” She was looking directly at the skin that was exposed by Gemma’s off-the-shoulder jumper and all the freckles on it. “You have really pretty shoulders, they look nice in that top.”

  Gemma’s alarm was admittedly hilarious, and Sarah burst out laughing. “There’s one she hasn’t heard before. We’ll have to put that in your Tinder, won’t we, Gem?”

  Gemma recovered. “I do not have a Tinder,” she said, dumping several kilos of textbooks on the kitchen table in front of Bree, deliberately not making eye-contact with her. Her cheeks were a bit red.

  “Well, maybe that’s your problem.” Sarah was still grinning. “Maybe we should make you a Tinder.”

  Gemma just sighed at her. “Can we get straight to where I help Bree with her homework and skip the part where you mess with me?”

  I couldn’t help chiming in with a wink and a low voice. “Messing with you is the best part, though, Gemma.”

  “I wasn’t messing with her!” Bree protested. “I just think women should compliment each other more, and Gemma looks really pretty today!”

  Gemma groaned and put her face in her hands as she sat down beside Bree. “Why did I come, again?” she asked no one in particular, before resurfacing and pretending to ignore Sarah and me. “Bree! Show me this homework of yours.”

  After Bree handed the tablet to her and they’d scrolled through the whole syllabus together, Gemma sat back and made a face. “I don’t really use any of this stuff day-to-day in Risk, we mainly use statistics,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve studied it, but I’m going to have to brush up on all of that before I can teach someone else how to do it.”

  “How long will that take?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “A week, maybe?” She patted the thick textbooks on the table. “This is not exactly bedtime reading.”

  I felt like I’d got off lightly. “Well, I studied all the same prescribed texts in VCE, so I’m good to go right now with English,” I told them. “I’m probably okay with Psychology, too.” I didn’t say why. They probably already guessed; everyone knew Henry had a psych master’s.

  Sarah made a face. “I guess that leaves me with Chemistry,” she said, and then added sarcastically, “Yay! So how are we going to roster this?”

  Once we’d all crowded around the tablet for the better part of an hour and set out who was going to be spending time with Bree and when on the Timeline, we all sat back and stared at it. For an hour’s work, it was very involved.

  “That is one seriously beautiful timeline,” Sarah commented, considering it. “Look at it. I think I should take it to work and make everyone admire it.”

  Across the table from us, Bree was slumped in her chair looking really worried. “Not that I’m not super grateful and your timeline isn’t really colourful and all that, but why are you guys doing this? Do you really want to spend, like, hours and hours teaching me how to do chemical equations?”

  We all looked at each other. It had actually never crossed my mind to not help her, but I suppose it was a reasonable question to ask of the other two.

  Sarah leant forward. “I have this thing where if my friends need help, I don’t abandon them,” she said as if she was explaining a really difficult concept. She patted Gemma on the back. “And Gem here has nothing else to do, so…”

  Gemma rolled her eyes. “Just don’t rely on Sarah too much, okay?” She told Bree. “Apparently she’s getting so much sex that it might be difficult for her to keep any of her other commitments.”

  Rob must have been eavesdropping because he laughed loudly from the couch on the other side of the room. “Okay, I think that’s my cue to fuck off and go to bed,” he said, standing and stretching. “You ladies—” He gave me a bit of an uncomfortable look. “Whoops, sorry, and gentle… person, enjoy your evening.”

  “’Gentle person’,” I repeated sceptically when he was gone. I think I was grinning a little.

  Sarah chuckled. “Well, ‘Gentleman’ isn’t right, is it?” She stopped me when I went to tell her it was fine, adding, “I’ve got it! Ladies and Gentlemin. I’m a genius. Right, who wants a very non-alcoholic drink to celebrate that timeline? I have coke and a big selection of really pretentious green teas.” She stood up and put her hands on her hips.

  I loved how she needed to specify ‘non-alcoholic’. “I’ll go with a pretentious tea.”

  “I’ll have all the alcohol you guys aren’t drinking,” Bree said grimly after Sarah had disappeared into the kitchen. She was still slumped in her chair with her chin resting on her collarbones.

  “You’re going to do fine,” I reassured her, reaching across the corner of the table and taking her hand. “Better than fine. You’re going to do great, and I’m going to be sitting in that audience when you get your certificate, and I’m going to clap really loudly for you.”

  I must have been smiling, because she mirrored it and laced her fingers with mine. She didn’t look like she believed me but she nodded reluctantly anyway, smiling up at me from underneath her long lashes.

  “—Yeah, I’d better head off, actually,” Gemma said suddenly, standing. I’d forgotten she was still there for a second, and I felt a bit bad about sharing a moment with Bree in front of her. I remembered oh-so-well what it was like to be around lovey-dovey couples all the years I’d been single.

  I made a face. “Sorry, that was a bit insensitive.”

  “We’ll stop, I promise, we'll just be normal,” Bree added, looking worried and withdrawing her hand.

  Gemma shook her head as she carefully picked up one of the heavy textbooks, presumably leaving the rest for us. “No, no, it’s not that. I had a really late one because of Min’s birthday last night so I’m really tired,” she forced a smile at me, which made me feel worse. “I probably shouldn’t have even come just now, but I’ve never found it very possible to say no to Sarah, so…”

  I laughed at that. “She probably would have just driven over.”

  “She definitely would have driven over,” Gemma agreed, laughing with me and self-consciously tucking a strand of auburn hair behind her ear.

  “Well, sorry anyway,” I said. “And sorry again about needing to read that again.” I nodded down at the textbook.

  She glanced down at it and shrugged. “I actually like number theory,” she told me. “It will be interesting to read this and go over it all again. I mean, it’s a total head-fuck, but that’s half the fun, isn’t it?” I gave her a bit of a strange look, and she grimaced. “Yeah, okay, I think it’s time for me to go before you try and have me committed. Bye.” She gave me a quick hug and then showed herself out.

  Bree was slumped again. “She hates me.”

  “Yes,” I said casually, as I sat back down again. “We all secretly hate you, Bree. That’s why we want to help you get your HSC.”

  “No,” she corrected me. “They’re helping you help your girlfriend to get her HSC. I’m just your plus one.”

  “Bree, you’re not just my plus one.”

  “Yeah, you’re more like Min’s plus-point-five,” Sarah said, carrying our pretentious teas out into the living room.

  Bree looked a bit worried that Sarah may have heard the rest of what she’d said, but Sarah wasn’t making any indication she had. She was concentrating on not spilling our tea while she put it in front of us. She had got to the rest of Gemma’s books before she realised that their owner was gone. “Wait, why are we minus one?” She looked accusingly at me. “Why did you let her go?”

  “Because detaining people against their will is a crime?”

  Sarah scoffed, turning to look at the clock. “It’s not even that late at…” She stopped, and her tone changed. “Okay, so it’s half-past eleven and that’s pretty late.” She looked across at Bree. “Isn’t it on your timeline that you’ll read fifty pages of Pride and Prejudice tonight?”

  Bree sighed and grudgingly stood up to grab he
r tablet. “Yes.”

  “Hey, none of that. Every page you read gets you closer to that certificate,” Sarah told her. “You’re nearly there! Focus on the prize, okay?”

  “Okay,” Bree repeated, looking directly at me. She gave me a little smile as she retreated to my bedroom with her sparkly purple tablet and pretentious tea.

  I relaxed against the back of the chair and took a sip of my own tea. “Thanks. I owe you.”

  “Nope, she owes me, unless you need help with your HSC, too.” She had a sip of her own tea and then looked critically at it. “Ugh, this is gross. It had better be as good for my poor liver as it says it is.” She had another sip and made another disgusted face. “Anyway, back to Schoolgirl: how the hell did she get so behind? When I was at school, the teachers used to make us get all our assignment marks initialled by our parents. And, I mean, my parents are pretty chill, but if they’d paid stacks of dough for me to go to an ultra-elite private school and I was getting 50% on things…” She shook her head. “I’m guessing her folks don’t know, yeah? How the hell is she hiding it from them?”

  I winced. It was tempting to tell Sarah the truth about how in debt they were because of Bree’s brother, but it wasn’t my truth. “They’re just very busy. I don’t think they’re home much.”

  Sarah made a noise. “Well, I guess that explains why she’s always staying over with you and why there’s no one at home to help her with stuff. Maybe she’ll never need to tell her folks at all if we can get her marks up.” Something occurred to her. “Oh, wait, that’s right!” She fixed me with a very intent stare.

  I froze, probably looking like a deer in headlights. “What’s right?”

  She inched closer. “Speaking of telling people, how’s your mum? That’s who left those messages, after all?”

  I groaned audibly. “Great. Thanks for reminding me.”

  She sat forward, very pointedly silent and waiting for me to tell her what was going on, so I did: everything about that awful phone call in the park. “God knows what I’m going to do,” I finished. “So, yeah, please don’t remind me.”