Postscripts (Chapter 3 Part 2: Tish)

“Whaddya mean, Chris?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. My cousin continues grinning at me, and tries to pull me out of the rocking chair.

“Misadventures! Escapades! Fun-times!” he exclaims. He crossed his arms and huffs. “Seriously, Tish. Don’t tell me you’d rather spend the day here.”

“God, Chris. You’re like a kid hyped up on red cordial.”

He gives me a sceptical glance and says, more softly than before, “It’s not like Louisa’s the only person you talk to or anything. You could be off hanging out with your friends, so why aren’t you?”

The thought’s occurred to me a few times, but I don’t answer Christopher. Instead, I pout and say with as much exasperation as I can, “Fine, if it’s that important to you. But what about your friend?”

“Alistair’s coming with us, aren’t you buddy?” I turn my head to the sight of the boy in question standing in the doorway of the rumpus room. Christopher continues, “And don’t think I don’t notice you dodging the question, Tish.”

“Noted,” I say.

“What’s happening?” Alistair asks. He has a bit of a deer in the headlights look about him, standing in the doorway. He has an on-edge kind of posture that’s not defensive so much as ready to bolt, and I wonder if he’s like this all the time, or if it’s just my presence that’s to blame. Maybe he’s one of those dorky guys who can’t talk to girls and Christopher is trying to boost his confidence.

Even though I wouldn’t put it past him, I’m really hoping that Christopher isn’t using me as a way of improving his buddy’s social skills.

“We’re going exploring,” Christopher says, as he crosses the room. He claps Alistair on the shoulder and turns to look at me. “Coming then Tish?”

I’m still sitting in the rocking chair. “Yeah, if you insist,” I say. I pull myself up and cross the room, slowly.

In the past, whenever I’ve hung out with Christopher and a friend of his, I’ve either felt like I was third-wheeling or being chaperoned. Standing with the two boys in the doorway, this time it felt a little like a mix between the two.

“So where are we going?” Alistair asks. Christopher leads us to where the rumpus room opens into the front entrance-way of the house. he throws open the fly-wire door.

“Not a clue,” Christopher says. His voice is placid and carefree, and he looks at me. “Grand tour of Fitzbury, maybe?”

“Hmmph,” I reply. “There’s not that much to see, Chris. What, there’s the post office, there’s the school, there’s the footy oval, and oh wait, there’s the end of our tour.”

“Fitzbury’s not all that bad.” Christopher’s tone is pointed, and he briefly gives me a dirty look. “You’re just biased cos you live here.”

“Maybe,” I mutter. “So what are we going to do, anyway?”

“Make it up as we go along, I reckon,” Christopher says as he leaps down the steps of the front veranda. The tired wood creaks and complains, and each impact reverberates through the boards beneath my feet. Alistair and I follow him, but with slightly less exuberance, and join him by the gate. “Left or right?”

I shrug. “Doesn’t make any difference to me.”

Christopher nudges me in the ribs, hard enough to make me stifle a cry. “Alistair?”

“I dunno,” he says, clearly uneasy about being given the duty of making the decision. He scans left then right, taking in the street in front of him. There’s not all that much there to help him make the choice – just more houses, all slightly set back from the road by identical rectangular nature strips and messy front yards. His gaze lingers on the intersection to the right of where we are standing. He says, “Um, right, maybe?”

“Excellent choice my friend,” Christopher says, with a smile for Alistair and a glare for me. He meets my eye with a look that says quit it. Again, I wonder what the point of me being here is.

To get him off my back, I turn to Alistair and ask, “So you go to school with Chris?” Ten points to me for stating the obvious, but Christopher stops glaring at me and I get a nod from Alistair.

“Yeah, we’ve got a few classes together,” he replies. “Or we did, last year anyway. Probably have a few this year too.”

“Poor Alistair’s gonna be stuck with me again,” Christopher says, patting his friend on the shoulder.

“The horror.” I pull a face at Alistair. “You poor boy.”

He smiles, and there’s a tentative hint of laughter. He asks, “You’re starting year twelve, aren’t you?”

“Don’t remind me,” I groan. I’d been doing a pretty decent job over the holidays of forgetting that I was on the brink of starting my last year of school. Getting myself into a state of denial wasn’t all that difficult because the thought of me, in year twelve, was such a bizarre concept that on some level, it made more sense for it not to be true.

“Any tips for surviving year eleven?” Alistair asks.

I laugh, and am about to respond when Christopher yells back to us from where he’d wandered ahead. He stands at the corner of the street, and gestures to one of the houses on the other side of the road in front of him

“I think I’ve worked out what we should do!” he exclaims.

“What?” I ask, as Alistair and I catch up to him.

Christopher points at the street sign on the other side of the road. There’s a roughly square piece of cardboard taped to it, with the words GARAGE SALE written on it in black texta. Below the words, there’s an arrow pointing right.

“Reckon we give it a shot?” Christopher asks. He’s got the same mad look in his eye that he had before.

“Sure,” I say.

At the same moment, Alistair says, “Okay,” and it’s decided, and together, the three of us cross the road.