:: chapter
four ::
“Tay?”
I started a little at the sound of my sister’s voice before looking back over my shoulder. Avery stood just inside the open front door, not far from where I stood at the railing of the verandah. I’d been standing there thinking for at least the last fifteen minutes as I watched the rain falling from the sky, raindrops splashing on the gleaming roof of Dad’s Pathfinder. I couldn’t help but notice that she looked a little worried, which had me instantly on my guard. Whatever she wanted to talk to me about, I knew it couldn’t be good. “Yeah?” I asked warily.
“Zac and Isaac want to talk to you,” she said. “They’re in your old practice space and they don’t look very happy.”
“Great,” I sighed. I had a decent idea of why my brothers were pissed off at me, and it only reinforced my decision to keep my TAFE application to myself until after Christmas. “How annoyed do they look?” I asked as I turned away from the verandah’s edge.
“Like they might deck you if you don’t get down there right now.”
“Of course they do. I’m not sure why I expected anything else.” I managed a small smile for my sister, and once I was within her reach I drew her into a hug. “Thanks Ave,” I said. “Better warn Mum to have the first aid kit on standby, yeah?”
Avery let out a small laugh. “Yeah, okay.”
My brothers were waiting for me in our old practice space, just as Avery had said. As I walked through the open door I could see that Zac in particular looked practically ropeable. I had no doubt I was in for one hell of a lecture from both of them.
“What’s this about you applying to TAFE for next year?” Zac asked the instant I had closed the door behind me. My brothers were sitting on the worn, dark brown leather lounge that had lived in our practice space ever since the three of us had claimed the games room beneath the house as our own, the day we had moved in nearly fourteen years earlier, the two of them staring at me with undisguised fury in their eyes. There was no doubt about it – they were well and truly pissed off at me.
“Who said I applied to TAFE?” I asked evenly. I claimed a high stool for myself as I spoke, curling my bare toes around one of the rungs to keep myself steady.
“This did,” Isaac replied, and he held up a battered envelope with a blue, white and black Illawarra Institute of TAFE emblem in the top left corner, and with my name and address typed in black on the front.
The same envelope that I’d been carrying around with me for nearly two months.
“Where the hell did you find that?” I asked, unable to hold back the anger that now coloured my tone. “You’d better not have gone through my backpack Isaac, or I fucking swear to God-”
“You left it out on the >dining table,” Isaac snapped, cutting me off.
“And you read it? That’s private! You wouldn’t like it if I went through your shit!” I almost yelled, glaring at the two of them. They both flinched, and I grinned inwardly. The two of them – hell, my entire family – were well aware of my temper and knew that I could out-glare our mother given half a chance. I had demonstrated my ability to do so on more than one occasion. “Yeah, I did apply to TAFE for next year. I haven’t heard anything back yet though, so you don’t have to worry. I probably didn’t get in so what’s your fucking problem?”
“Our problem is that you didn’t talk to us about it!” Zac burst out. “If you’d told us you were thinking about going to TAFE, we’d have been behind you one hundred percent.”
“Speak for yourself,” Isaac said. “What’s even the point of going to TAFE? You already dropped out of uni.”
“You know exactly why I dropped out, Isaac,” I snapped. “Don’t you dare hold that against me. It is not my fault that my own body decided it wanted to fuck up my life and land me in hospital for seven of the longest fucking months of my life.” Here I raised my voice. “And nor is it my fault that I ended up stuck on fucking chemotherapy for two and a half fucking years!”
“Neither of us ever said it was your fault, Taylor,” Zac said, ever the peacemaker. “We know it wasn’t. Nobody is blaming you for any of that.”
“Well he seems to think it was entirely my fault,” I muttered, feeling very mutinous. I jerked a thumb at Isaac, and he gave me the finger. “Oh, that’s fucking mature. How old are you again?”
“Cut it out, both of you,” Zac ordered, sounding eerily like Dad. “Why didn’t you talk to us about this, Taylor? We could have worked something out.”
I shrugged, well aware it was a non-answer. “I don’t know. I guess I thought you’d both tell me to forget about it. You both know why I decided to go to uni, right?”
“So you’d have a backup in case the band ended,” Zac replied. “Is that why you applied to TAFE?”
“Pretty much,” I replied. “I just…I don’t want to be left without any options, you know? My HSC won’t count for shit if I have to get a ‘normal job’.” I made air quotes around the last two words as I spoke. “I’m really just hedging my bets a little. I honestly want to do music for the rest of my life – that bit hasn’t changed – but if it turns out I can’t then at least I’ll have something to fall back on.” I dropped my gaze down to my bare feet. “It’s just…this is something I need to do for me. Nobody else.” I shrugged again, hitching my right shoulder up toward my ear. “It probably doesn’t make sense to anyone aside from me, but that’s why I’m doing it.”
I slid down off my stool and shoved my hands into the pockets of my shorts, and started pacing across the room. “I’m working off the assumption that I didn’t get into the course I applied to do. I was told I’d hear something within eight weeks, and it’s been almost that long now. If I do get in, I’d only be doing it part time. The course runs four days a week if you’re doing it full time, from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon, but odds are I’d only be in class for two of those days. I had to get special permission from the department head to apply as a part time student. Rest of the time I’d be free for doing band stuff.”
“So what did you apply to do, then?” Isaac asked. A lot of the heat had faded from his voice, but I could tell he was still more than a little pissed off.
“Design, at Wollongong TAFE,” I replied. “Look, it was either go to TAFE or apply to join the Army Reserve. I was torn between the two, if I’m going to be completely honest with you. And I didn’t think either of you would appreciate it if I rocked up here and told you both that I was being shipped off to East Timor or the Solomon Islands, or wherever it is the Army sends their reserves these days. At least this way, I’m still at home and I can come up here whenever you want or need me to.” I stopped pacing for a few moments. “And before either of you ask why I’m not doing it at Newy TAFE, keep in mind that I haven’t lived up this way since” I counted backwards to make sure I had the year right “2007. It’s better for my sanity if I stick relatively close to home. Besides, none of the TAFEs up here are running the specific design course I want to do. It was going to be either Lidcombe, Nepean, St. George, Wollongong or the Design Centre in Enmore, and Wollongong won out.”
I ran my hands through my hair, suddenly feeling very defeated and tired. “I don’t expect either of you to understand my specific reasons for doing this. We…” I let out a quiet sigh. “We’re probably going to have a fair bit of downtime coming up. The regional tours don’t take up all that much time, and neither would that tour of New Zealand we’re planning to do next year. I’d just be sitting around twiddling my thumbs most of the time, and you both know very well that I don’t like being bored. I’d probably end up getting my ear pierced again or something like that just so I had something to do.”
“Yeah, and that was such a good idea last time,” Zac snarked.
I gave Zac the finger. “Fuck you,” I retorted with a grin, and he snickered quietly. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what my plans were for next year,” I continued. “I should have discussed it with both of you before I submitted my application, not months afterward. I know that. But it’s like I said – I’m doing this for me, not anyone else.”
“So long as you tell us when you get accepted into the course, we won’t hold it against you,” Zac said, holding up a hand when Isaac opened his mouth. “And before you say anything, you will get in. They have rocks in their heads if they knock you back. You have absolutely nothing to be worried about.”
“I thought I was supposed to be the optimist in this band, not you,” I said as I opened the door of the practice space.
“Yeah, well, things change,” Zac said from behind me. “And anyway, I’m not being optimistic. I’m just telling you the truth.”
And as it turned out, Zac was right.
The oldest daughter of one of my neighbours was sitting on the front steps of my house when I arrived home the next afternoon, with what looked like a bundle of envelopes clasped in her lap. Once I had rounded the corner back into Pioneer Road from the garage at the back of the house, I dropped my duffle bag into my front garden before climbing over the low brick wall that blocked my house off from the footpath. At the same time, Kelsey had got to her feet and was jumping down off the front step onto the front path. I winced as she landed awkwardly. “You all right there, Kelsey?” I called out as she steadied herself.
“Yep!” she called back. “Did you have a good Christmas Mr. Hanson?”
“I did, yeah,” I replied. “You know that it’s all right to call me Taylor, don’t you?”
“Mum and Dad said it’s rude to call adults by their first names,” Kelsey said. She rocked back on her heels a little, hands clasped behind her back, and studied me. “And I don’t like being rude.”
I bit back a laugh. “Would it help if I told you that Taylor is my middle name?” I said. “Not my first name? Jordan’s my first name. My mum and dad just thought my middle name suited me better.” Kelsey shook her head at this, and I let out a quiet chuckle. “I suppose that’s fair.” Here I peered over Kelsey’s shoulder at her little collection of envelopes. “What’s that you’ve got there?”
“Mum and Dad got your mail for you while you were away,” Kelsey replied, and she handed the envelopes to me. A bright pink hair elastic was wound around them to keep them together. “They said they’ve got the key for your letterbox when you want to come and get it.”
“Thanks, Kelsey,” I said, and she gave me a wide smile. “I’d better get all of this inside – you say thank you to your mum and dad for me, okay?”
Once Kelsey had disappeared back around the corner, I picked my duffle bag up and headed inside. I had never been more relieved to be home – the drive between my parents’ house and mine had been a lot more exhausting and hair-raising than usual, and I had vowed almost as soon as I had reached the bottom of Appin Road that the next time I needed to go to Newcastle I was catching the train up. I dropped my gear just inside the door and pulled it closed behind me, leaning against it once it was locked and closing my eyes for a little while.
My mobile phone vibrated in my pocket right as I started to drift off, startling me back into full awareness and almost making me fall over. I’d completely forgotten I’d left it on silent during my drive, not wanting to be distracted. I straightened up and fished my phone out of my pocket, unlocking the screen to find a text message from Mum – Did you get home okay? I answered it one-handed as I walked through the house to the lounge room, the bundle of my mail in my other hand.
Just got home, yep. Never driving that far again in one afternoon. I’m catching the train next time. I sent the message and sat down on the lounge, setting my phone aside so that I could go through my mail. Most of it was the normal mail I got near the end of each month – bills for my insurance, internet and mobile phone, a notification that I had mail in my post office box waiting to be collected, even a few Christmas cards that had arrived after I’d left to head up to Newcastle. One of the envelopes caught my eye – it was identical to the envelope the confirmation of my application to TAFE had come in, and I nearly dropped it. This was it – the letter I’d been waiting for since the beginning of November.
“Calm the fuck down,” I told myself sternly, having realised I was on the verge of having a panic attack. “It’s not the end of the world if they’ve knocked you back.” I closed my eyes for a few moments, took a deep breath and ripped the envelope open, unfolding the single sheet of white paper that was inside. “Here goes nothing…”Dear Taylor,
Certificate IV in Design Part Time at WOLLONGONG COLLEGE
Congratulations on your successful application. You have been offered your first preference shown above. Details of the outcome of other preferences are shown at the end of this letter.
I stopped reading after the first full paragraph – those first few lines told me all I needed to know for the time being. “Holy shit,” I whispered, staring at it. “Holy shit…” My right hand started shaking as I picked my phone up again, unlocked it and dialled my parents’ home phone number.
“Hello?” my youngest sister said to answer the phone at the other end of the line.
“Hey Zo, it’s Tay,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice from shaking. The last time I’d been this anxious I’d been sitting in Dr. Torrens’ office, waiting for the results from my latest battery of tests. It wasn’t a feeling I liked. “Can I talk to Mum please?”
“Yeah, hang on,” Zoë said, before yelling out, “Mum, Taylor’s on the phone and he wants to talk to you!”
“Way to wreck my hearing, Zoë,” I muttered. “It’s not like I need it for anything…”
“Good afternoon Taylor,” Mum said a couple of moments later.
“Hey Mum. I-” I broke off as I tried to find the words I needed. “I got a letter from Wollongong TAFE,” I said at last.
“Oh? What does it say?”
I swallowed hard before I answered. “I got in.”
“Oh Taylor, that’s wonderful! Well done!”
I grinned, even though I knew very well my mother couldn’t see it. “Thanks, Mum.”One Tuesday morning in the middle of January, roughly two weeks before classes began, I was on my way home from the beach when my phone rang. Living so close to the beach, unless I was going for a surf I didn’t see the point of driving there most of the time – instead, I either walked or (as I’d done that morning) I rode my bike. I let out a quiet groan and hit the brakes across the road from Towradgi Park Bowling Club, parking my bike alongside a telegraph pole before fishing my phone from a pocket of my boardshorts.
“Good morning Zac,” I said to answer my phone, once I’d checked who was calling.
“Hey Tay. Are you busy today?”
“Well, I’d planned to go to Officeworks to stock up on notebooks and shit for TAFE, but I guess that can wait until tomorrow. What’s up?”
“Isaac and I are on our way down there – we just got to Central.”
“You’re what?” I asked. “What happened to giving me advance warning?”
“What, this isn’t advance warning?”
“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered. “Zachary, advance warning is at least two days. You’re giving me barely two hours.”
“Don’t call me that. You’re not Dad.”
“You’re disrupting my routine without giving me advance warning, Zachary. I’ll call you whatever I damn well please.” I let out a sigh. “Okay. What train are you two planning on catching down here?”
“Not sure. Hang on, I’ll ask Isaac.” There was a brief period of quiet before Zac’s voice sounded in my ear again. “Train leaves just before five to eight. Gets to Corrimal at twenty-five past nine.”
I swapped my phone to my other ear and checked my watch – its face read ten minutes to seven. “Jesus Christ Zac, how early did you two leave Newy?”
“How early did you get up this morning?”
“I asked first.”
Zac let out a sigh that sounded very put-upon. “We caught the ten past four from Broadmeadow. How long have you been up?”
“Nearly two hours. It’s good practice for when I start TAFE.”
“You get up at five o’clock in the fucking morning?” Zac asked, sounding shocked. “Who are you and what the hell have you done with my brother?”
“Yes, Zachary, that’s how early I get up. I’m not lazy like some people I could name.”
“Ha-fucking-ha.” I could almost see Zac scowling at me. “Anyway, we’re going to go find some breakfast before we head down your way. I’ll text you when the train’s leaving.”
“Yeah, no worries. I’ll see you two in a couple of hours.”
Just as Zac had said, the train my brothers had said they would be catching from Sydney rolled into Corrimal station right on schedule at twenty-five past nine. I got up from my seat on platform two as the train’s doors slid open. They were among the first off the train, and were two of the only passengers not toting surfboards and bicycles or scooters.
“You went surfing this morning, didn’t you?” Zac asked almost as soon as he was within my earshot, his tone almost accusing.
“I went for a swim, actually,” I replied. There were precisely two reasons why I would willingly consider dragging myself out of bed before six o’clock, and they both involved the water. It took a hell of a lot for me to get up earlier than that for any other reason, with coffee being my main incentive. “I’m not enough of a masochist to do it for any other reason.” I eyed my brothers and raised an eyebrow at them. “So exactly how long were you planning to be down this way? Considering it takes you, what, at least five hours to get here on the train, I can only assume you’re not planning on heading back home today.”
“A couple of days, probably,” Isaac replied. He was adjusting the shoulder strap of his duffle bag as he spoke. “Would be a bit of a waste of a trip to turn back around again this afternoon.”
“No shit Sherlock,” I snarked. “Well, come on then.”
Back at my place, I put the kettle on to boil while the two of them dropped their gear off in their rooms. Even though I didn’t often have family staying with me, it had been a no-brainer to set myself up somewhere with more than three bedrooms. That way I was able to keep one bedroom as mine and a second as my office, and leave the other two rooms for my brothers or sisters whenever they came down for a few days, or even my nieces and nephews.
Once the kettle had boiled and I’d made coffee for the three of us, I fetched my iPad, stylus and Bluetooth keyboard from my office and joined my brothers at the kitchen table. “I think we should work out when we can tour,” I said as I typed my password to unlock my iPad. “It’s entirely possible that I’m going to have a fair bit of leeway, what with being a part-time student and all – I plan to talk to my teachers about it during my first week of classes, but I don’t see why they’d have any issues with me taking a few weeks off here and there. I can probably submit my work online – I’ll just have to make sure I have enough data for my mobile broadband, that’s all.” I opened up Chrome and tapped on the bookmark for the TAFE student calendar. “But just in case I can’t take any time off during term, we need to work out here and now when I’ll be free to go on tour.”
“When do you have time off, anyway?” Zac asked.
Once the TAFE calendar had loaded, I quickly scanned the 2013 term dates. “Autumn break is between the thirteenth and twenty-eighth of April,” I replied. “Winter I’m off classes between the twenty-second of June and the thirteenth of July, and spring break is the twenty-first of September and the sixth of October. Last day of classes for the year is the twenty-ninth of November.”
“I think we should hit Victoria first, during your autumn break,” Zac said. “Spend a couple of weeks playing shows down that way.”
“What about Anzac Day though?” I asked. “We need to make time for that.”
“So we go to Melbourne for a couple of days and go to the dawn service there,” Isaac said. “Problem solved.”
“I’d rather go to the service in Martin Place, but whatever,” I said with a shrug. I tapped out of Chrome and pulled up my iPad’s calendar, typing Victorian regional tour in for the second half of April. “Okay, winter break next – I’m thinking Queensland. It’ll be nice and warm so we won’t be freezing the whole time, and we can probably play a few outdoor shows while we’re up that way. I’m sure there’s a festival or two we can hit as well.” I paused, thinking. “Maybe we could fit a promo tour of New Zealand in after the Queensland tour?” I hedged. “Just Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington probably, we wouldn’t have enough time for more than that.”
“Be a bit cold there in winter, wouldn’t it?” Isaac asked.
“We can always rug up a bit,” Zac said. “And it wouldn’t be any colder there than it is here anyway. I think it’s worth considering. We haven’t been across the Ditch in a few years so we’re overdue for a visit anyway.”
“Okay, so Queensland and New Zealand in June and July,” I said, flipping through to June and noting this down in the last week of that month. I did the same for the first half of July. “I think we can hit South Australia in September and October, and save Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory for next year. We’re not going to have time for them this year – and yes, I know that’s entirely my fault,” I said before either Zac or Isaac could say a word. “But at least this way we’re not going to be rushing things.”
“I think we can fit in a proper tour of New Zealand near the end of this year as well,” Zac said. “You said it yourself, Taylor – you’ll be finished TAFE for the year at the end of November. We’ll probably start our summer break around the tenth of December, so that gives us nearly two weeks where we’ll have nothing scheduled. Perfect opportunity for a decent trip around New Zealand.”
“Works for me,” Isaac said.
“You just want to go skydiving again, you maniac,” I jibed. “So that’s all sorted then?”
“Yeah, guess so,” Zac replied. I quickly checked over each note I’d made on my calendar before clicking back to my iPad’s home screen and locking it. “Hey, can I ask you something?” he added.
“You just did,” I replied.
“You know what I mean.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, okay, you can ask me something.”
“Why exactly do you live here? Why not right in the middle of Wollongong?”
This was a question I’d been asked more times than I cared to remember. Nevertheless, my immediate response was to point toward the back door. “You hear that?” I asked.
“What, the train going past?” Isaac asked, and I shot him a look. “What? That’s what I can hear.”
“Other than that,” I said, trying not to sound exasperated. “You hear how quiet it is here? That’s why I live here. Okay, yeah, I could be living on Cliff Road and have the beach right across from my place, but I’d have traffic going up and down the road at all hours. I don’t want that. I lived in the city for twenty-two years – that’s long enough. I don’t even care that it takes me a quarter of an hour to walk to the beach. It’s a small price to pay for peace and quiet.”
“Fair enough,” Zac said with a shrug. He then eyed me with one eyebrow raised. “And what about that girl at the UniBar show? You know, the one who almost made you keel over in front of nearly a thousand people?”
“What about her?”
“You obviously have a thing for her. She got a name?”
“Far as I know she does,” I replied. “Zac, don’t you dare,” I warned when I saw Zac grab my iPad and flip the case open.
“What?” he asked, sounding defensive. “I only want to get on Facebook.”
“Yeah, and you’re going to hunt for that girl the first chance you get. I only know her first name anyway – she didn’t tell me her last name.”
“Oh, so you did meet her before she caught your eye,” Isaac said. “Come on then, spill – what’s her name?”
“It’s not going to do you much good,” I said. “She probably doesn’t even live around here.”
“Taylor, come on,” Zac wheedled.
“You sound like you’re seventeen Zachary, not twenty-seven,” I informed him, earning a scowl at the use of his full first name in response. “You’re both going to bug me about this until you go back home, aren’t you?”
“You know damn well we will,” Isaac replied.
I let out a sigh. “Ruby,” I said. “Her name’s Ruby.”