One of the things I like the most about living on my own, and a fair distance from most of my family at that, is that I’ve actually been able to establish some semblance of routine for myself. Things can get very unpredictable when all nine of us are within close proximity of one another, and it’s even worse on tour. Coffee tends to be my best friend and my saving grace at times like that.

But my family being what it is – nine crazy Novocastrians with a penchant for springing surprises on each other when we think things need to be livened up – my routine never quite stays that way for very long. Especially when it’s Avery doing the livening-up.

The train rolled into Corrimal station right on schedule, gliding to a stop alongside the platform just after ten past twelve, and I got up from my seat as the doors opened. A blur of blonde hair, blue denim and black hurled itself at me moments later, causing me to reflexively open my arms wide. It slowed down just short of knocking me off my feet, but not far enough to keep from knocking the wind out of me.

“Jesus, Ave,” I managed to croak out once I could breathe again. “What’s the hurry?”

“Missed you,” Avery said cheerfully. She gave me a bright, sunny grin, her smile reaching all the way to her eyes.

“You missed me,” I scoffed. “Uh-huh. You just want a free lunch.”

“I can get a free lunch at uni anytime I like, dearest brother,” Avery said, and she stuck her tongue out at me. “Speaking of, I’m hungry and I haven’t eaten since I left Sydney. What’s for lunch?”

My immediate response was to poke Avery in the ribs before slinging an arm around her shoulders. “I think you’ll like this place,” I said as the two of us walked down the platform toward the station exit. “The website’s a little suss but it looks interesting enough.”

“You’ve never been there before, have you?” my sister asked.

“Nope. First time for everything, right?”

The Northern Distributor was mostly devoid of traffic – it being midway through Monday, I wasn’t exactly shocked by this – so it wasn’t long before we arrived in Wollongong. The carpark on Kenny Street, on the other hand, was absolutely packed with cars. “You should have met me at Wollongong or Fairy Meadow instead,” Avery said as I drove up to the roof of the carpark and started hunting for an empty parking space. “Could have caught the Shuttle in and you wouldn’t have had to pay for parking.”

“Shut up,” I grumbled. I finally located a spot right next to the door that led down into the Gateway and pulled my car into it. “And don’t even tell me I should have parked in the Woolies carpark, I’m not fucking paying to park there. I don’t care if it is practically across the road from the mall.”

“Wasn’t going to say a word,” Avery said. Out of the corner of her eye I could see her raising her hands before herself in seeming self-defence.

Crown Street Mall, I discovered as we stepped off the escalator down from the Gateway, was teeming with people – store employees and office workers, students from the local high schools, TAFEs and the university, parents with their kids (or so I assumed), and a busker outside of David Jones playing their guitar for the lunch time crowd. “So what is this place called?” Avery asked as we walked past the Amphitheatre stage and turned right into Church Street. A short walk down the hill past the chess board and the little arcade of shops brought us to an alley with a half-open wrought-iron gate partly barring the way in.

“The Hideaway Café,” I replied as I led the way into the alley, past a steel staircase that went up the side of the nearby arcade and a bunch of potted plants.

“Fitting name for it.”

I hadn’t been lying to Avery earlier – I’d never been here before. The closest I’d ever got was walking past its alley along Church Street to get to the mall, the Greater Union cinemas on the corner of Church Street and Burelli Street, and occasionally Woolworths if I couldn’t be bothered waiting until I got a little closer to home. It was really just curiosity on my part, and I could only hope I wasn’t going to regret it. I knew that Avery would get her own back the next time it was her turn to pick where we had lunch if this particular café was anything less than spectacular.

“Mum wants to know what you have planned for your birthday this year,” Avery said once a waitress had taken our lunch orders, and another waitress had brought our drinks to our table.

I glanced sharply at Avery over my coffee. “I already told Isaac that I don’t want a massive production for my birthday, Ave,” I said, keeping my tone even. “I’m only turning thirty – Jess is turning twenty-five this year, that’s a hell of a lot more important than thirty. Mum should be focusing on her instead of me.”

Avery shrugged and sipped her peppermint mocha frappé. “I don’t think Mum believes you, to be honest.”

“She never does,” I muttered.

“Can you really blame her, though?” Avery put her glass down on the table and looked right at me. “She didn’t get to put on a party for your twenty-first because you were laid up with the flu or whatever it was, remember?”

“I’d just had surgery, Ave – and can you please not remind me about that?” I asked, my voice pained.
Avery gave me an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”

“I don’t really care about why, Ave. It doesn’t change the fact that I still don’t want a major production for my birthday. Dinner out at a restaurant or something, I can live with that, but I’m drawing the line there.”

“That’s all Mum was planning on anyway, I think. What was that Italian place you like up in Newy?”

“Northern Star Café,” I replied. “It’s in Hamilton.”

“Thought so.” She grinned at me, a little evilly I thought, and I was immediately on my guard.

“What exactly are you planning, Avery Laurel?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at her as I spoke.

“None of your damn business, Jordan Taylor,” she retorted, using both my first and middle names as I’d done with her. “You’ll find out when your birthday gets here.”

“The Saturday after my birthday, you mean,” I corrected. “I have class on my actual birthday.”

“Well that sucks. You can’t blow it off?”

I shrugged. “Probably, but I like my Thursday classes. And I don’t really want to deprive my friends of the opportunity to embarrass me at lunch.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Avery said, evidently remembering something. “Mum said that if you want to invite a few friends from TAFE up, her and Dad are okay with it.”

“Even if they’re fans?” I asked, my tone dubious, right as a waitress brought our lunches out to us – Avery’s Tandoori chicken wrap, and my Moroccan chicken burger. “Thank you,” I said to the waitress as she set the two plates down on the table.

“You’re friends with fans?”

I shrugged and bit into my burger, swallowing before I spoke again. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because a lot of your fans are rabid screaming teenie fangirls?”

“Ruby isn’t. Lisbeth is a bit but Ruby yanks her into line whenever she even comes close to that point.” I toyed with the fries on the side of my plate. “I kind of like Ruby,” I said quietly.

“But you haven’t told her yet because you’re too chickenshit,” Avery said.

“No, I haven’t told her because we haven’t even been friends for a month yet. I don’t want to scare her off.”

I could tell that Avery wasn’t quite convinced by this. “Bullshit. You’re shit-scared of what she’ll do if you tell her that you like her.” She picked up one of her fries and pointed it at me. “That excuse of yours about not wanting to tell her this early is a cop-out. You remember how Isaac and Niks met, right?”

“Of course I remember, I was there,” I reminded my sister, and mimed chucking a guitar pick at her head.

“Yeah, and they went out on a date the next evening. Remember?”

“He’s always been braver than me around girls though,” I said. “Plus he doesn’t tend to attract the crazy ones. I do, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Avery shrugged. “I suppose that’s true.” She then proceeded to study me, her head tilted a little toward her right shoulder. “You really are freaked out about what she’ll do if you tell her that you like her, aren’t you?”

“Just a little bit,” I admitted. “It’s just…we’re friends. And I don’t want to wreck that.”

Avery was quiet for a little while as she ate her wrap, alternating bites with sips of her frappé. It was almost as if she was considering what I had just said. “Why don’t you tell me about her? Like, what drew you to her in the first place?”

“You know, I don’t think I should be discussing my love life or lack thereof with my little sister.”

She scoffed at this. “I’m hardly little, Taylor. I’m like ten centimetres shorter than you. Come on, spill.”

I didn’t answer straight away, choosing instead to finish off my burger. “She didn’t freak out on me,” I said when I had finished eating. “Not when we met right before the last Wollongong show, and not at TAFE on my first day. Her friend Lisbeth did, but she didn’t. Plus she’s smart and she makes me laugh. The fact that she’s absolutely gorgeous, that’s just icing on the cake.”

“She sounds like one hell of a girl,” Avery said, her tone contemplative.

“Yeah, she is,” I agreed.

“You going to invite her to your birthday? Seeing as you’re friends and all that.”

“I want to, yeah. I’m just not sure how Mum and Dad would react to it, though. I know you said they’re fine with me inviting friends from TAFE, but when you consider that at least two of those friends are fans…” I shrugged.

“So ask them. Ring Mum up when you get home, see what she says. I really don’t think she’ll say no.”

I let out a quiet sigh. “All right, I’ll call her. But if she tells me not to ask them I’m blaming you.”

I was as good as my word. Late that afternoon, almost as soon as I got home from dropping Avery off at the train station, I fished my phone out of the pocket of my jeans and dialled my mother’s mobile number.

“Good afternoon Taylor,” Mum said to answer her phone.

“Hi Mum. I was wondering if I could ask you something.”

“Of course you can, Tay. You know you can ask me anything.”

I took a few moments to very carefully consider what I was going to say. “Avery told me that you said I can invite a few friends up to Newcastle for my birthday this year,” I said as a sort of preamble.

“I did say that, yes. Are there a few friends you want to ask?”

“There’s four that I definitely want to ask – I’ll have to see about the rest in class tomorrow.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “There’s just one problem, though.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Um…” I hesitated for the briefest of moments. “Two of them are fans.”

“I see,” Mum said. She didn’t say anything for a little while after that. “Taylor, stop pacing.”

“What?”

“Stop pacing,” she said, sounding faintly amused. “I can hear your shoes squeaking on the floor.”

I stopped mid-stride right in front of the kitchen sink, completely unaware I’d even been walking around my kitchen. “How did you even hear that?” I asked.

“I’m your mother,” Mum replied. “Now, these two friends of yours who are fans – do you trust them?”

“As much as it’s possible to trust someone I’ve really only known for three weeks. One of them is kind of rabid around me, like she never really grew out of being a teenie, but the other is pretty much sane. Ruby yanks Lisbeth into line whenever she gets out of hand.” I almost started laughing when I remembered what Ruby had done the first day I’d had lunch with her and all of her friends. “When Lisbeth realised who I was at lunch on my second day at TAFE, Ruby leaned across the table and slammed her hand over Lisbeth’s mouth. She barely knew me at that point, and she was already protecting me.”

“I think I like this Ruby,” Mum said, and I grinned. “If you want to invite them that’s fine by me, and I’m sure your dad won’t mind. Is there anywhere in particular you want to have dinner?”

“Not particularly. Just make sure it’s somewhere with wheelchair access, Ruby has a bit of trouble with stairs.”

Before we finished our chat roughly ten minutes later, Mum asked me about something I hadn’t even thought about since I’d met Ruby.

“Tay, I know this isn’t something you like talking about, but do Ruby and Lisbeth know?”

I didn’t need to ask Mum what she meant – the unspoken meaning in her words was clear. “Lisbeth probably does,” I replied. “She’s pretty clued-in. Ruby, though…I don’t know, to be honest. I’d have to ask her.” Knowing my luck though, she has no idea, I thought resignedly.

And as it turned out, I was right.

The next time I saw Ruby at TAFE was more than a week later. Rather than eating in the campus canteen as I normally did, my destination that Thursday lunchtime was the library – my art class was due to meet there after lunch, and so I felt it was worth my while getting there a bit early. I was walking across the pavers to get to the library itself when I saw Ruby wheeling herself through the nearby breezeway, Sadie keeping pace at her side.

“Ruby!” I called out, and was greeted with a tired smile when she looked over at me.

“Hey,” she said once she had drawn level with me. “Thought you’d be in the canteen with everyone else.”

“I have class in the library this arvo,” I explained. “Figured I’d eat here instead. Feel like joining me?”

“If it means I don’t have to drag myself up that hill, I’m all for it,” Ruby replied. “I…” She took her hands off her wheelchair’s hand rims and dug them into her closed eyes. “I don’t even know why I came today. I should be at home in bed right now.”

“You definitely don’t look well. You want me to drop you home?”

Ruby shook her head. “Not yet. I got a taxi here, didn’t trust myself driving – if Lis can’t drop me home after class I’ll consider taking you up on it.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” She smiled at this. “Come on, let’s go inside. I want to ask you something.”

The two of us bypassed the library’s café area entirely – its chairs weren’t all that comfortable, and there wasn’t a lot of room for Ruby’s wheelchair – instead heading into the library itself. The library had two lounge areas barricaded off from the main floor area, both of them set up with two lounges and a coffee table apiece, and we ended up hanging a left into the nearest one as soon as we had gone through the security gates. “Okay, what did you want to ask me?” Ruby asked once we were settled side-by-side on one of the lounges, Sadie keeping guard over her mistress’ wheelchair.

“My parents are having a birthday party for me next Saturday evening in Newcastle,” I replied as I unwrapped the tinfoil from around my sandwich. “And I was wondering if you’d like to come.”

“You want me to come to your birthday party?” she asked, and I nodded. “Wouldn’t your parents have a problem with that? Considering I’m a fan and everything.”

“That’s what I thought at first. But I rang my mum last Monday afternoon after I dropped my sister off at the train station, and both of them are totally fine with it. I did get a little of the third degree over it, though – Mum wanted to make sure I trusted you and Lis before she gave me the okay.”

“You trust me?”

I was a little taken aback at Ruby’s tone – she sounded more than a little uncertain and shocked. “I trust you,” I told her. “Remember what you did at lunch on the first Thursday of term?”

“I made Lis shut up.”

“Yeah, by slamming your hand over her mouth. And that’s when I knew I could trust you.” I twisted myself around so I was facing Ruby side-on. “You barely knew me, and you were already protecting me.”

“Most fans would do the same,” Ruby said, sounding almost dismissive.

“Honestly? I don’t think they would. It’s like…” I trailed off, allowing my gaze to drift over to the magazine display that encircled the lower half of the stairs up to the library’s first floor. “Over the last sixteen years, for the most part people have only liked me for what I am. They don’t really care about who I am. Since Middle Of Nowhere came out, I’ve been able to count on both hands the number of people who have been able to look past the fact that I’m a celebrity.” I placed particular emphasis on that last word, my tone sounding unintentionally distasteful. “It’s made it a little difficult for me to get to know other people – I can never be totally sure that they don’t have an ulterior motive.”

“That has to suck.”

I smiled wryly. “That is a massive understatement. Most of my friends, we went through primary and high school together. I still keep in contact with some of my uni classmates, but for the most part we’re not what I’d call friends.” I picked at the crusts of my sandwich. “So how about it? I really do want you to come – Lisbeth, Ella and Anthony as well if they like. I want my friends there, and you four are my friends, so…” I shrugged a little.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Ruby asked, before giving me a smile. “I’d love to come.”

“Awesome. I’ll let my mum know this afternoon when I get home.”

The two of us were quiet for a little while, allowing the sounds of the library on a Thursday at lunchtime to surround us – the librarians checking out students’ books, DVDs and CDs, a teacher overseeing their class at the computers in the information commons, a study group clustered around a table just past the reference section, even the photocopiers under the stairs working overtime to print out one thing or another. A quick glance at my watch revealed the time to be ten past twelve – I had twenty minutes left before my classmates would descend on the library, so I was going to enjoy the peace and quiet while it lasted. Ruby broke our silence just as the second hand on my watch swept past the twelve.

“Can I ask you something?”

“‘Course you can.”

I watched as Ruby twisted the hem of her T-shirt around her fingers. “A couple of weeks ago, Lisbeth told me you would have some idea of what I’ve been going through for the last eight and a half years. What did she mean by that?”

Were it anyone else asking me this question, I would tell them to look me up on Wikipedia and consider the subject closed. But Ruby was different – she was my friend, and so she deserved to hear it from me. “We should talk somewhere quiet,” I said as I scrunched the tinfoil that had been wrapped around my sandwich into a ball.

‘Somewhere quiet’ turned out to be upstairs in the library, at the long table right in the middle of the open space between two shelves of DVDs. The first thing I did as soon as I’d sat down with my back to one of the shelves was take my iPad out of my backpack, flip its case open and unlock it.

“I don’t really like talking about this,” I said as I opened my photos app and tapped the Albums button. “For me it’s like your chronic fatigue is for you, if that makes any sense.”

“No, that makes complete sense,” Ruby said. I managed a small smile and busied myself with hunting through the album marked 2002. Once I’d found the photograph I was looking for – one of me sitting up in a hospital bed, a dark blue CanTeen bandanna tied securely over my bare scalp and four long, thin plastic tubes snaking out of the collar of my T-shirt – I set my iPad flat on the table for Ruby to look at. She automatically bent down over it, her curls swinging forward over her shoulder. “It’s a little confronting, I know.”

“Who is it?” Ruby asked as she studied the photograph.

“Me.”

Ruby’s head snapped up so fast I thought she was going to end up with whiplash, and she stared at me. “That’s you?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I was nineteen when that one was taken.” I ran my left thumbnail along the edge of the table. “How much of 2002 do you remember?”

“You mean aside from the fact that it was hell on wheels for most of it?” she asked, her tone obviously rhetorical, and I let out a quiet laugh. “Not a lot aside from the HSC, if I’m going to be honest with you. I do remember seeing something in the paper about you being in the hospital for a little while, though. There were all these rumours flying about that you’d got yourself landed in a psych ward or something like that, but that was mostly from the idiots I went to high school with.”

“Oh that’s charming,” I said, unimpressed by this but not entirely surprised.

“Understatement of the century, that is.” She eyed me for a little while. “The bit about you ending up in hospital wasn’t a rumour though, was it? I mean, this photo” she tapped the edge of my iPad’s case “was obviously taken in hospital, so I’m guessing not.”

“No, that bit was true. I was in hospital for…” I trailed off and frowned, mentally counting up the months I’d been stuck in hospital the first time around. “Counting the week I got to go home for Christmas, a little bit more than seven months.”

Ruby let out a low, quiet whistle. “Bloody hell,” she said softly.

“Yeah.”

“Is it okay if I ask why? I mean, if that’s not too forward of me.”

“No, it’s not too forward of you. You’re one of my friends – you deserve to know why.”

I unbuttoned my shirt and shrugged it off my shoulders, letting it hang over the back of my chair, and hooked a finger over the collar of the T-shirt I was wearing underneath. Pulling down on my collar exposed my right collarbone and the scar just above it. It had been almost ten years since I’d got it, but it was still very visible – a slightly raised, oval-shaped mark about the same size as my index fingernail that was a couple of shades lighter than my normal skin tone, sitting maybe a hair’s breadth above my collarbone.

“I had a central line for the seven months that I was in hospital,” I explained once my scar was covered once more. “I needed to have chemotherapy for about that long, and it was either get one of those put in or be jabbed with needles during every round of chemo.”

“You had cancer?” Ruby asked, clearly shocked.

I nodded. “Twice.”

Ruby’s eyes went very wide at this. “Twice?”

“Yeah. I ended up relapsing just over a year after I went into remission.” I ran a thumbnail along the edge of the table. “I had something called non-Hodgkin lymphoma – NHL for short. Mine was a particularly rare and aggressive form of it called T-lymphoblastic lymphoma. It…I would not wish it on my worst enemy, let’s just put it that way. I’m very lucky that I’m still here – I nearly died a few times.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ruby whispered. “I had no idea…” I watched her bite down hard on her bottom lip. “Clearly I’ve been living under a rock for the last ten or so years.”

“I tend to prefer to forget it myself, to be honest with you,” I admitted. “It was pretty awful both times.”

“When did you find out you were sick?”

“The first time?” Ruby nodded at this. “End of July 2002, about a week after I went back to uni after my winter break. I got sick a couple of months before that, though. Second Tuesday back at uni, I passed out right in the middle of class and woke up in the ambulance on the way to Wollongong Hospital with a splitting headache. I’d whacked my head on the edge of my desk and split it open.”

“Ow,” Ruby winced. “I’m guessing that’s why you dropped out of uni.”

“Yep, pretty much. Being stuck in hospital made it impossible for me to go to class – one of my flatmates brought my assignments with her when she visited so I could at least try and keep up, but I couldn’t focus on any of it. Decided just before Christmas that year that I was going to drop out and try again another time.” I shrugged. “Didn’t happen, but it doesn’t bother me. I like TAFE better.”

Ruby hid a smile behind her hand. “What happened after you got out of hospital?”

“Went back to Newcastle. I’d been stuck in Wollongong Hospital until then.” I didn’t speak for a few moments. “It sucked, for want of a better word, and not just because of the chemo either. My family visited as much as they could, but it’s a hell of a long way between here and Newcastle – it was mostly Isaac and Zac who made the trek, seeing as Mum and Dad were both working a lot of the time, and the rest of my brothers and sisters were in school. Mum and Dad did visit when they could, though. It was a hell of a relief to finally go home.”

“I bet.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Ruby studying me. “What about the second time?” she asked. “You totally don’t have to answer that by the way, if it’s hard for you to talk about it."

“I only just got the full all-clear a couple of years ago so it’s still a bit raw, yeah,” I said. “That happened around the end of April 2004. I, um…” I took a shaky breath. “I passed out while I was surfing, fell off my board and nearly drowned.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ruby whispered.

“Yeah. Scared me off going into the water for a while.” I suppressed a shiver at the ripple of anxiety that shot down my back. “It was much harder the second time I went through it, but I was a lot closer to home and my family so it didn’t bother me as much.” I studied Ruby for a little while. “You really didn’t know?”

She shook her head. “I live under a rock, remember?” She managed a smile at this.

I echoed her smile with one of my own. “I eventually made remission for the second time in May 2006, and I ended up spending the next five years just hoping it wouldn’t somehow happen again. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, basically. I learned the hard way that it could come back when I least expected it to. It still could, really, but I’ve been incredibly lucky over the last six years – I haven’t had any major scares, and I’ve ended up in hospital with the flu and shit like that a few times but that’s it. I’m still here, and – touch wood – I’ll be here for a long while yet.”

“I’m glad you’re still here, Taylor,” Ruby said.

“Me too, Ruby. Me too.”

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