Chapter Text
The email had come through to my work address. After a moment of surprise I realised why; I’d changed my personal email shortly after the wedding, when Sarah had told me I should make it look more professional, instead of like a teenager’s gamertag. My old email address had been retired, to lie forgotten in some far reach of the internet, and I hadn’t spread my new one around very widely. I knew for a fact that Joel was one of the people I hadn’t given it to.
I sat in front of my work computer for what felt like a long time, mustering the courage to click the email open. When I managed it at last, I was relieved that the message was short.
Sender: Joel Mason
Subject: In town
Hi Simon,
I found this address online on one of your articles. Just wanted to let you know that I'm flying in to Auckland on Wednesday 13th and I’m here until Monday 18th. Would be great to see you if you have time.
Joel
With Joel, nothing was ever simple, and I spent half an hour reading and rereading those few words, trying to tear every shred of meaning from them. He was making an effort to be polite and casual – probably a good thing, since our work emails were visible to everyone. He wasn’t sure how I’d respond, so he’d written it to be open without creating an expectation. He hadn’t written a valediction, and there was no automatic signature. Frankly, the whole thing told me next to nothing.
How would I respond, I wondered? Yes, we’d been close once, but we’d drifted apart as we’d grown older. My fault, I knew. I’d never been able to bring myself to reach out to him again. His email felt like a second chance, if I could bear to take it. Emotions swirled in me, strong but confused, hope mixed with dread. Would I be better this time? Was my life here strong enough, if the past threatened to wash it away? Was the chance to renew a broken friendship worth the risk?
I thought of Sarah, when she’d gotten on the plane at last. Tears had been running down her cheeks as she told me she loved me. ‘I understand,’ she’d said. ‘I’m sorry.’ She’d looked beautiful, with her blond hair in a ponytail, and her simple black clothes. I hadn’t wanted to let her go, but I understood, too, and watched her until she was out of sight. I’d stayed to see the plane take off, carrying her back to Canada.
Sarah would have told me that hope is always more important than fear, but that hadn’t helped her, or me, when it mattered.
Finally, with many hesitations and back-trackings, I wrote my reply. Would he note every word the way I had? Was he waiting anxiously, or did he just not care, only reaching out because he thought he should? No. He’d hunted down my work email, so he had to genuinely want to see me.
Hi Joel,
I am free the weekend of the 16 th . Do you need a ride from the airport? My work hours are fairly flexible.
Simon
I didn’t let myself think before pressing send. It was twenty minutes later when I got the reply. Opening it was easier this time, now that the ice was broken.
Hi Simon,
My flight lands Wednesday at 2:30pm, I was planning to get a taxi to my hotel in the CBD1, but getting picked up would be great.
Joel
I let out a breath. There would be a little bit of traffic, but not too much at that time of day. At most, it would be a forty minute car ride. I could do that. If it went well, perhaps we could even have lunch or something on the weekend. And there it was; the welling hope in my chest, and the black terror that surrounded it. I took my glasses off and cleaned them on my shirt with trembling hands. I nearly dropped them twice before I fumbled them back onto my face.
I gave myself another few minutes to get myself back under control, then I stood from my desk and went over to Maggie’s office. As usual, the door was open. When I tapped on it, she looked up and smiled at me. ‘Simon. Come on in.’ She nodded at the door, signalling me to shut it behind me.
I did so, then took the chair opposite her. ‘I wanted to check if it was okay for me to finish early on Wednesday,’ I began.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Your email got flagged through to me because you didn’t reply straight away.’
‘Oh. Sorry about that.’
She laughed. ‘It’s not a problem, Simon, but it means I can bring up all that annual leave you’re hoarding. You’re owed more days than the rest of the staff combined. Why not take Thursday and Friday off, make a long weekend of it?’
I squirmed. ‘Maybe another time,’ I said. ‘I don’t think this is that sort of visit.’
‘Well, it’s up to you.’ Maggie sighed, then looked straight at me. ‘Look, I’m concerned about you. You haven’t had a day off since the divorce, and that was over a year ago. I’m supposed to look after my employees, and you worry me.’
‘I enjoy my job!’ I protested. ‘But I’ll keep it in mind. If anything comes up this week, I’ll let you know that I won’t be in.’
‘I’d be happier if you booked a holiday, but I suppose that’s as good as I’ll get from you,’ she said, looking defeated. ‘Take care of yourself, Simon.’
Back at my desk, I wrote back one more short email.
Hi Joel,
No problem about picking you up from the airport, 2:30 on Wednesday. See you then.
Simon
And I added my phone number, and my personal email address, below my name.
By the time Wednesday came around, I was a mess of nerves. I dressed carefully in the morning, in pressed trousers and a long-sleeved, tucked in shirt. I barely managed to eat any lunch, and ended up putting half my tub of supermarket caesar salad in the bin.
‘I would have eaten that,’ Olivia said tartly from the desk near the door.
I left at 1:30, with the excuse that I wouldn’t be late, but I’d forgotten how expensive parking was at the airport, so I drove around the block twice before finding a supermarket carpark that I could sit in until Joel’s plane got in. I didn’t even know where he was flying from, but I could pull up the arrivals schedule on my phone. There were a couple of domestic candidates. Maybe he was flying from overseas. Nowhere with a time difference, obviously, because he’d been replying to my emails on Monday in real time.
Eventually the time passed, and I felt justified in pulling into the airport carpark. I took the parking ticket, found myself a free space, got out and locked the car. It was a bit tight with an SUV sitting on the white line on the passenger’s side, but it would do. I wouldn’t be long. I made my way across the tarmac lot and into the terminal.
The building wasn’t busy, not at this time of day. I passed the check-in lines and baggage drop offs. Quite a few people seemed to be using the self check-in stations, which had seemed a novelty when they’d been installed a couple of years ago. Beyond the departures area was the large double doorway for arrivals. I settled in to wait, a little self-conscious.
I hadn’t seen Joel since my wedding to Sarah, almost four years ago. I’d invited him, because I’d felt that I should, and we hadn’t spoken much. He’d congratulated me, of course, but hadn’t stayed long at the reception. He’d known a couple of the guys, obviously, but when I’d thought about it I’d realised that he wouldn’t have seen them since he’d left our high school so abruptly. I couldn’t blame him for finding it strange.
And suddenly there he was, walking out through the gates, gazing around like he was lost. I found myself grinning – a huge, uncontrollable grin – and I waved to get his attention. He saw me and grinned back, looking relieved. He was in the middle of a crowd of travellers, all of whom had bags, and it took a minute for him to get free of them to approach me.
When he finally did, the grin fell away. His limp had worsened, and he was actually using a cane now. He was towing a wheeled suitcase, taking each step carefully, then jerking the case after him. It took me several seconds to pull myself together enough to hurry forward.
‘Want me to take that?’ I asked.
‘Thanks,’ he said, letting go of the handle. ‘It’s not heavy, just awkward.’
I tugged it towards me. ‘I’m parked out there,’ I said, nodding towards the carpark. ‘I can bring it closer, if you want.’
‘No, don’t,’ he said. ‘I need to move after being in those little seats.’
‘Was it a long flight?’ I asked.
‘Only from Christchurch,’ he said.
‘Is that where you live now?’ It came out more sharply than I’d intended, and he gave me a strange look.
‘I rent a little place about an hour’s drive from the city,’ he said quietly. ‘I moved there a couple years back, and yes, maybe it was because I wanted to get away. Can you really blame me for that?’
I couldn’t, so I shook my head and kept on walking. Joel could read me like a book, and it was no consolation that I could do the same to him. It would have been nice to think that I’d changed in the intervening years, but apparently I hadn’t.
‘This is me,’ I said at last, gesturing towards my car. I unlocked it with the remote and opened the boot for the suitcase.
‘Nice,’ Joel commented.
I swung the boot shut again. ‘I forgot to pay the ticket,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
The machine was close. I fed the slip of paper into it, and it wanted $8 for a half hour period. I fumbled with my card, and it took three tries for it to register. Under my breath, I muttered curses at it, knowing as I did that my anger was mostly at myself. Joel wanted to play nice. He knew that I was tense and uncomfortable, and he was being patient, and that was what was bothering me. I’d offered to pick him up in good faith, and I already couldn’t seem to keep myself from screwing it all up for us both.
Finally, the machine gave me the paper back, with another barcode printed on it which would get us through the barrier. ‘It’s not your fault,’ I murmured to the machine. ‘I’m going to do better now.’
When I got back to the car, Joel was still standing beside it, looking embarrassed.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘The gap’s too narrow,’ he said, nodding towards the SUV beside my car.
I had to back the car out before he could get in. ‘Thanks,’ he said, settling his cane beside him. ‘And thanks for picking me up.’
I bit back the sharp answer. ‘It’s no problem.’ I paused as I got the car moving towards the exit, then made myself go on. ‘It’s good to see you again. I’m glad you got in touch.’
He chuckled. ‘I was a bit worried when my first email bounced, but I saw your name on the bottom of a news article online, so I figured I’d give that a try.’
‘Sarah didn’t think anyone could take my old address seriously,’ I said, feeding the ticket into the slot. The barrier arm raised, and I slid my car beneath it.
‘How is she doing? I only met her at the wedding.’
‘We got divorced,’ I said, changing lanes to head towards the motorway. ‘She wanted to move back to Canada, to be with her family. That was a bit over a year ago now.’
‘Shit. I’m sorry, Si.’
I checked my wing mirror, and moved over another lane. ‘You should be. It was your fault, you know.’
There was a long silence. We were on the motorway before Joel replied. ‘I don’t even want to touch that, do I?’
I laughed, giving him an out. ‘You really don’t,’ I said. ‘So, what brings you to the city?’
He relaxed again. ‘There’s a few things I need to do. I’ve got a lawyer’s appointment and a hospital appointment, both on Friday, those are the main things.’
‘Sounds serious.’
‘I hope they aren’t. I’ve been putting the lawyers off for a while now, and the hospital is just routine. There’s a specialist here that my GP wanted me to see.’ He sighed. ‘Figured that I should get everything done in one go.’
‘Makes sense.’
There was another long silence as I moved around a truck.
It was my turn to speak still. ‘Are you seeing anyone else from the old days while you’re here?’
‘I don’t think so. You’re the only one I really wanted to keep in touch with after everything. Even at your wedding it was strange seeing the guys from school. They all knew what happened, and it was like they were still children about it.’
‘They seemed like children even when we were young,’ I said. ‘After you left I never got close to anyone, and I knew that in theory they were my age and weren’t stupid, but none of them ever talked properly. None of them had ideas like we used to.’
‘It was like that in the system, too,’ Joel said. ‘At first I thought that the other kids would be– well, we’d all have issues, and I thought it would make it easier to get close. No one was nasty or anything, but none of them were interested in things like we were.’
‘We were strange, weren’t we?’ I said, taking a familiar exit. ‘Not even the adults knew how to handle it.’
‘Did I ever tell you about the counsellor they made me see?’ Joel asked.
‘I know you said you’d seen one, but you didn’t go into detail.’
‘It was pretty rubbish. I don’t even remember the old guy’s name, but he acted like I’d never put a thought together in my life. I knew that everything was a mess, and he tried to sort it all out for me, but I don’t think he once told me anything that I hadn’t already thought for myself. So then I just ended up wondering whether his assumption about all teenage boys was wrong, or whether I was different.’
I pulled into a side street and started looking for a place to park. ‘Probably a bit of both,’ I said, scanning the parked cars. ‘I don’t think we were ever normal, but adults always seem to think kids are dumber than they actually are.’
‘True. Where are we?’
‘Round the corner from my apartment, not far from the CBD*. I forgot to ask where you were staying.’
‘Oh. I’m booked into the Ellicott. Let me check the map...’ He dug his phone out of his pocket. ‘Didn’t you buy a house further out?’
I looked out of the window as a car rushed past. ‘Sarah and I bought together, but when she left we sold it. She wanted the money to take with her, and I couldn’t have afforded the mortgage by myself. It was enough for a deposit on something a lot smaller.’
‘You could have gotten a flatmate,’ Joel suggested.
I shook my head. ‘Some things don’t change,’ I told him. ‘Do you know where we’re going yet?’
‘Yeah, I’ve got it. You want to go right up here.’
I swung away from the kerb. ‘So, what about you? Any flatmates, or a partner, or anything?’
Joel was still staring at his phone, and he didn’t look up at me. ‘No flatmates. Occasional girlfriends, but nothing that ended up serious. You know. Go straight through the next lights.’
‘Going to tell me that that’s my fault in return?’ I asked lightly.
He shrugged. ‘We were just kids who fucked up, right? We didn’t know what would happen. And it’s a waste of time to put the blame where it should actually have been.’
‘Easier said than done,’ I pointed out, then changed the subject. ‘Next lights?’
‘Left,’ he said. ‘The hotel’s near the corner.’
I flicked on my indicator. ‘Got it.’
‘There should be a place to pull over. There, look, a loading zone.’ Joel pointed, and I pulled the car over and stopped it. For a moment, we just sat.
‘Well, thanks again for the ride,’ Joel said at last. ‘It’s good to see you.’
I nodded. ‘Yeah. You too.’ And then, with the complicated emotions overflowing inside me, I found myself adding, ‘I’ve really missed you.’
He stopped with his hand on the door handle, and looked back at me. ‘I miss you too,’ he said quietly. ‘I miss what we had.’
‘Yeah,’ I said again. ‘Um. How about dinner tomorrow night? I’ll cook.’
‘That would be really nice,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to – I can buy us food if you’d rather.’
‘No, don’t worry. It never feels worth doing nice meals just for myself, so I want to. Just don’t blame me when it’s terrible from lack of practice.’ I got out of the car and walked around to the boot. I had his suitcase out before he’d gotten himself and his cane sorted.
‘Shall I bring anything?’ he asked politely.
‘Maybe something to drink,’ I said. ‘But don’t worry too much. I’ll pick you up. Five o’clock here?’
‘Sounds like a plan.’ Joel took the handle of his suitcase. ‘I’ll see you then.’
‘See you,’ I said, and got back into the car. I drove away without looking back.
I’d gotten myself caught in roadworks and the one-way system, so it had taken quite a while to drive home. Tomorrow I’d have to get to the hotel from the other direction, to make it a shorter trip. It gave me plenty of time to regret what I’d done. Opening myself up to the possibility of being friends with Joel again was dangerous, and he should have known that. I should have known that.
By the time I’d parked my car in the underground lot beneath the building, I felt exhausted. The bubble of happiness which had risen in my chest had faded, and in its place was the familiar emptiness.
I missed Sarah.
Sarah would have stuck some food in front of me, and maybe a glass of wine, and she would have asked me what was wrong. I’d have told her, as best I could, and she would have hugged me, then told me a story or something from her day, something to make me laugh. I would have thought how lucky I was to have her. She’d been my lifeline, my connection to the world. I should have fought harder to keep her, given her everything she’d ever wanted. When she’d left, I’d felt like I was drowning in a world that was too big for me, again.
Once inside, I dumped my bag on the kitchen bench and went straight through to the bathroom. I looked a mess. My hair had decided to stick out in every direction, my glasses were smudged, and my skin was pale, except where stubble was beginning to show across my chin. I looked even worse when I took my shirt off.
‘Yep, no wonder she left,’ I told myself as I turned the shower on. ‘You sure put a lot on her, Simon.’ When I took my glasses off and left them by the sink, my reflected image changed into a soft blur of flawless skin. It was better that way.
I spent longer than necessary under the warm water, letting it wash away the complications of my life. Afterwards, I shaved, thankful again for the electric razor Charlie had given me for Christmas, then, wrapped in a dressing gown, heated an oven meal for dinner. As I ate, I looked through one of my old cookbooks. It had been a while since I’d made anything more complicated than a one pan stir fry. Eventually, having settled on meatballs, I washed my cutlery and settled back on the couch to watch TV. At least, living alone, I was able to keep my apartment reasonably clean and tidy, so I wouldn’t have to do much to make it presentable. Finally, when it was acceptably late, I went off to bed.
When I was eight, my mother had remarried, and she and her new husband had bought a house in the suburbs. My younger brother Charlie and I had to move schools. I hated it, but my brother didn’t mind so much. He always had been more laid back than me. I didn’t like my step-father, Barry, either. He was a typical guy, I guess, and he liked to have a few drinks and watch sports with his mates. The house was large, but not that large, and as I lay in my bed at night, every noise from the lounge would reach me.
It hurt.
I’d been sensitive to noise for as long as I could remember. When I was five or six, I’d throw tantrums if I could hear someone breathing in the next room. Snoring, music, movies, anything that made noise when I was trying to sleep, would destroy me. Even the softest of sounds would be torture, worming their way into my brain and taking it over. It would get so that I couldn’t think. When I was young, my parents understood that I wouldn’t sleep unless it was quiet, and usually went to bed fairly soon after I did. After my brother came along, I just had to live with it. It killed me, lying there night after night, unable to sleep, unable to block the noise out, tears running into the pillow as I got more and more exhausted. I hoped they never knew how much it hurt, because the alternative was that they just didn’t care.
My step-father was a builder, and as a bonding exercise, we’d built a treehouse together, in the big puriri2 that overlooked the street. A wooden ladder led to a large platform. It had two walls, so it was sheltered from the prevailing winds, and the other two sides had half-height railings. The roof was solid, and hardly leaked at all. He’d even put up a piece of pipe, cut in half lengthways, to act as a gutter along the open edges.
Charlie had been pleased; his heart had been won. He’d spent the afternoons up there, throwing bits of stick down at the footpath, trying to set up miniature trebuchets from twigs and rubber bands, which he’d calibrate to throw puriri berries at passing cars. They never worked right, but it kept him happy. I wasn’t so happy. Yes, the treehouse was very fine, and it was a gesture of good faith, but to me, it wasn’t nearly enough to counterbalance the noise. Those first months were hell, as I became ever more withdrawn, made grouchy by lack of sleep. I didn’t handle it well.
I think I knew, even then, that going on would kill me. I felt powerless to make any changes, but since just dealing with it wasn’t a long-term solution, it seemed like the rules could no longer apply to me. So one Thursday night, while the game was on, I used the noise of the television to cover my own noise. My sleeping bag was in my wardrobe, and I took that out. I put on a polar fleece jumper, and some sandals, then, with my sleeping bag and a pillow, I climbed lightly out of my bedroom window. I crept stealthily across the lawn and climbed the ladder into the treehouse.
It was cold, even with the sleeping bag, but it was quiet, and I slept soundly. I woke just before dawn, with grey light starting to show over the horizon, when the birds began to sing. Carefully, I snuck back to my room, and hid the evidence of my nocturnal adventure. No one knew, and I felt better than I had for months. After that, I crept out almost every night. I got good at piling clothes in my bed, with a dark shirt on the pillow, so that if my mother had looked into the room she’d have seen my shape. I don’t know if she ever did look, though.
The treehouse was the reason I met Joel.
It was a couple of weeks after I’d first started sleeping there, when I was woken by a dog barking, further down the street. I fumbled my glasses onto my face, then lifted myself silently up onto my elbows, looking through the slats of the railing. Someone was walking down the footpath, kicking a stone. He wasn’t hurrying. Once, he lost the stone, and spent half a minute trying to find it again. That was when I saw his face. I’d seen him around at school, but he was a year above me, so we’d never actually met.
After a while, he gave up on the stone and continued on down the street. I lost sight of him when he turned the corner at the end of the block. Slowly, I unfroze and lowered myself back down to the floor of the treehouse. The luminous hands of my watch told me that it was half past two. I set my glasses back down on the little shelf built into the back wall, and tried to go back to sleep.
It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I found a chance to approach him at school. My curiosity had gotten the better of me. I knew that children didn’t wander the streets late at night, not unless something was really bad. I shouldn’t get involved, but there was something I’d seen in his face that made me think that perhaps we had something in common. We’d both been driven out.
At last, I screwed up my courage. Both our classes were in the library at the same time, but they were spread out enough that I felt like we could have a private moment. He stared at me as I came towards him.
‘Hey,’ I said, trying to be casual. ‘How’s it going?’
‘What do you want?’ he asked, sounding impatient.
‘I wanted to talk to you,’ I said, looking around to try and tell him that I didn’t want anyone else to overhear.
He ignored that. ‘If you got something to say, just say it,’ he said.
I lowered my voice. ‘Okay, look, I saw you walking the other night. That’s all. I wanted to ask why you were out.’
Carefully, he put the book he’d been holding back down on the shelf. ‘That’s none of your business,’ he said coldly. ‘And you better not tell anyone else, got it?’
‘I wasn’t going to tell!’ I said angrily. ‘I only saw you because I snuck out too! I’ve been sleeping in our treehouse to get away from the house.’
He snorted. ‘Yeah, real rebel you are. What’s your name?’
‘I’m Simon.’
‘Joel. Now get away from me.’
The end of our conversation couldn’t have been made much clearer, I thought moodily, as I left him to it.
But that night, I was woken again by someone calling out softly from beneath the treehouse. When I’d put my glasses on and looked down, there was Joel.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, trying to shout a whisper.
‘I’ll tell you if I can come up,’ he answered in the same way.
I rubbed my arms. It was cold. ‘The ladder’s on the driveway side,’ I told him. ‘Take your shoes off at the top.’
He took a while to climb the ladder – fair enough in the dark – and he took his shoes off without arguing. ‘Where do you want me to put these?’ he asked.
‘On the shelf by mine,’ I said. ‘Are you cold? Get under the sleeping bag if you want.’
‘Thanks.’ And he did, sliding in beside me. I shivered at the rush of cold air, but we warmed up again quickly. ‘Sorry I was mean to you at school,’ he said after a while. ‘I was scared that you’d get me in trouble.’
‘You could get me in trouble just as much,’ I said. ‘My mum’d be so angry me if she knew I was out here.’
‘Same with my dad. But sometimes I just have to get out, you know?’
‘Yeah. I can’t stand how much noise they make, even at night. I can’t sleep in there.’
Joel rolled over, trying to get his head onto the pillow, and I shuffled it his way. ‘Is it okay me being here?’ he asked.
I considered. ‘I think so,’ I said at last. ‘I think you’re different.’
‘That’s good, then.’
‘So do you sneak out at night a lot?’ I asked.
‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘I can’t always, because Dad usually locks everything up. But when he’s angry he forgets, and I get to leave. I just have to be back before he wakes up.’
The way he said it made me go cold. ‘Angry with you?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh. Can’t you tell someone about it, like if someone was mean to you at school?’
‘He’s still my Dad,’ he said softly. ‘I just have to live with it, and take the chances I get to have a break.’
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I found his hand under the sleeping bag and held it tightly. After a moment, his fingers closed around mine. ‘I won’t say anything,’ I promised.
We lay like that for a long time, until I broke the silence again. ‘Are you awake?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. What is it?’
‘Do you want to know my secret? You have to promise you won’t tell either.’
He promised, so I lifted his hand and ran it along the skin of my forearm. It took a moment for him to realise what he was feeling, then he pulled away with a hiss. ‘That’s a bad secret.’
‘I know.’ I sighed as his fingers ran along my arm again, feeling the ridges and scabs. ‘It started as a distraction when things got bad, but... but sometimes I just do it because it makes me feel good.’
‘That’s not right,’ he said.
‘Neither of us is right,’ I told him. ‘If we were we’d both be asleep in our beds right now. But we’re not.’
He took hold of my hand again.
Looking back on it, I remember being surprised how well I slept on that first night, with Joel warm against my side. After that, he spent the night whenever he could get out of his house.
Footnotes:
1. CBD - the Central Business District. (No relation to cannabidiol.) Common abbreviation in NZ, maybe not everywhere else. Basically it means downtown, or city centre, or main shopping drag. In Auckland, this means Queen Street and its surrounds. ^
2. Puriri tree – a native tree that has pink flowers and small, hard, poisonous berries. They get eaten by kereru3. Are they actually poisonous? No clue. Probably an urban myth, but not gonna eat them in order to find out. ^
3. Kereru – a native bird also known as a wood pigeon, which makes a loud flapping sound when it flies. ^