Girl Saves Boy Read online

  Steph Bowe was born in 1994 and

  lives in Melbourne. She writes a blog:

  heyteenager.blogspot.com

  Girl Saves Boy is her first novel. She does

  not condone the theft of garden gnomes.

  steph bowe

  girl

  saves

  boy

  TEXT PUBLISHING

  The paper in this book is manufactured only from wood

  grown in sustainable regrowth forests.

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  www.textpublishing.com.au

  Copyright © Steph Bowe 2010

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under

  copyright above, no part of this publication shall be

  reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval

  system, or transmitted in any form or by any means

  (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

  otherwise), without the prior permission of both the

  copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published by The Text Publishing Company, 2010

  Cover design by WH Chong

  Text design by Susan Miller

  Typeset by J & M Typesetting

  Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Author: Bowe, Steph, 1994—

  Title: Girl saves boy / Steph Bowe.

  Edition: 1st ed.

  ISBN: 9781921656590 (pbk.)

  Dewey Number: A823.4

  For my beautiful family.

  Thank you for helping me become who I am.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Jewel

  Sacha

  Jewel

  Sacha

  Jewel

  Sacha

  Jewel

  Sacha

  Jewel

  Sacha

  Jewel

  Sacha

  Jewel

  Sacha

  Jewel

  Sacha

  Jewel

  Sacha

  Jewel

  Sacha

  Jewel

  Sacha

  Jewel

  Sacha

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Jewel Valentine

  There was a boy in the lake.

  At first, I thought he was my brother, but then I realised he was way too big to be a ten-year-old boy. Even in my mind my brother will never get any older.

  That’s scary, isn’t it? To realise you’ve lived a whole eight years longer than your older brother ever could.

  I wasn’t imagining him. There was a real, flesh-and-blood boy drowning in the lake. No illusions. No hallucinations.

  I stopped breathing, paralysed. Panic and fear spread through my body.

  And he wasn’t fighting against it, either—he was sinking, down, down into the inky water. Soon only the top of his head was visible.

  I kicked off my shoes and splashed in. My jeans dragged and my legs went numb. I swam frantically towards the boy, the water deepening as I got closer to him, the muddy floor of the lake slipping away beneath me. I reached him and, treading water, pulled him above the surface, cradling his head. He looked so peaceful, like he was sleeping, his hair spread out on the water, his eyes closed.

  I swam back to the shore, towing him at my side, and in those seconds I felt as if I were making up for what I didn’t do for my brother.

  I couldn’t let this boy die as well.

  Jewel

  My brother’s last word was: ‘Polo.’

  My grandfather’s last words were: ‘I feel better than ever. Stop fussing.’

  My grandmother’s last words were: ‘Jewel, pop the kettle on, love.’

  As far as I knew, my father was still alive, but the last words he uttered before he left my mother and me were spoken to me.

  He said, ‘You should never have been born.’

  My father was a good man. My brother’s death broke him. But those six words he spoke when I was eight years old have tainted my life ever since.

  I tend to notice the idiosyncrasies of life—the small details, the little ironies. Like engagement rings in pawnshop windows and second-hand wedding dresses advertised for sale, never worn. Or the fat woman in the queue at the supermarket, a six-litre tub of chocolate ice-cream in her trolley, and her Weight Watchers membership card falling to the floor when she fumbles for her credit card.

  It’s the small things that show who people really are. Hopeful, hopeless, frail and unsure—they never change, they never learn. They know marriages so often fail, but they take the risk, because there’s always the chance it will work for them. They promise to change—their diet, their lifestyle, their wicked ways—but the next week they’re back at Coles stocking up on high-calorie comfort foods and spending the night sobbing in front of a movie starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.

  That’s why I realise I’m an alien.

  Don’t get me wrong—I love Sleepless in Seattle as much as the next person—but the same rules don’t apply to me. I don’t take risks. I don’t rely on other people for my happiness. I don’t waste my time on Hope or Faith and, if I keep my standards low enough, I’m always pleasantly surprised. I lack the traits that allow other people to believe in illusive, non-tangible things like God and World Peace.

  I like the inevitable, not chance. Things that are going to happen whether we want them to or not, things that we can rely on, like Death.

  I’m an alien, from somewhere else, looking in. I like it that way. I know my place in the world: on the outside.

  You can judge nearly everything about a person from their opening lines, the first time they meet you, or the first time they’ve seen you in ten years.

  Rachel’s opening line was: ‘Sorry, I got caught in terrible traffic. A car flipped over on the highway. Awful.’ She was panting through it; she’d obviously run from the car park into Arrivals.

  I picked up my suitcase and we hugged awkwardly.

  There was a foggy memory in the back of my mind that a whiff of her perfume had awakened (who doesn’t change their perfume for ten years?), of her holding me above her head and spinning around and laughing. But it was the type of memory that might have been an ad I’d seen, still frames linked together, like a muted dream sequence.

  While I’d been away, I’d grown taller than her. Only by an inch, and we were both still small (I was a measly five foot two), but the last time I’d seen her, ten years ago, I’d been half her size.

  My mother had become a stranger.

  My new counsellor’s opening line was: ‘Watch out for the bird shit.’

  I liked Geraldine—the day after I’d arrived back in the outer-eastern suburbs of Melbourne that I’d left a decade ago, I’d found someone who wasn’t uptight and constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown. Less than twenty-four hours with my mother and I was ready to take a breather, even if it involved talking about my feelings and other things that hide in my inner cupboards.

  Geraldine had dirt on her hands. We sat in the sunroom at the back of her house, looking out onto her backyard, her pride and joy. She told me she was a keen gardener. I thought she was in her mid-fifties, though I’m not good at judging age and she could have been older. She was tall and broad-shouldered, and I got the feeling she could be intimidating if she felt like it. She had hair the colour of steel wool, and when I met her she wore a green velour tracksuit. She was semi-retired, she said. She used to be a psychiatrist, working in an office and earning a hundred and sixty bucks an hour
.

  ‘Better than a prostitute,’ she laughed.

  Now she was charging twenty dollars like a ‘trannie turning tricks at a truck stop’—her words, not mine—and talking to moody teenagers in her sunroom so she could afford the mortgage repayments.

  ‘Since my husband died, I need to be there for my daughter.’ She didn’t say it sorrowfully, like someone mourning. She was disarmingly open, and I liked that.

  I also liked her because she swore in my presence, even though she was old and I was young. I liked her because her wrinkles were fantastic to sketch. I liked her because she smelt earthy, even though I was pretty sure it was only horse-dung fertiliser.

  We drank sugary tea and I sat on the couch, my knees tucked in to my chest. All afternoon I drew in my sketchbook, while she spoke about herself.

  I didn’t speak much. My opening line was: ‘Really?’ which was a weak effort, even for someone like me, who aspires some day to be homeless and anonymous in a big city, owning nothing but a sketchbook.

  Probably not the most ambitious goals, but at least I’ve got some.

  I’ve never been one to think ahead—it didn’t worry me until that Saturday evening at the lake that I’d be going to a new school the following Monday, where teachers would probably badger me about my mental health and Goths with unfortunate piercings would attempt to befriend me.

  That evening, I needed to get out of the house and the lake was my favourite place. I couldn’t believe my mother was still sane after living in our old house for ten years—the red-brick house where we had held my brother’s wake, where that fine April morning my father had yelled those words that broke my heart—the house I had disappeared from. In that house, she had stayed on alone.

  It was strange, but for the first time I felt bad for someone other than myself—for her, even though I barely knew her any more.

  I walked along the quiet streets, past the corner shop and through the park. It reminded me of one of those lakes you see on TV, advertising those communities that get built in the middle of nowhere, as if they’re fine places to live, with jazzy promotions of people riding bicycles, some kids playing basketball and a young couple cradling a baby in a park near a lake.

  Then I saw him. And I don’t think I had much of a choice past that moment, and I’m not talking about how I saved his life.

  The boy in the lake’s opening line that evening was: ‘What?’

  But I didn’t blame him—he was probably eloquent and funny and smart when he wasn’t drowning and on the verge of unconsciousness.

  SACHA

  The first time we met, Jewel Valentine saved my life.

  There was sudden and forceful pressure on my chest, and someone pinching my nose and pulling my chin down, and then a mouth against mine, filling my lungs with air.

  Had I not been barely conscious, I would have made one of my usual lame jokes that I reserve for doctors’ appointments and sending to the Reader’s Digest. Something along the lines of: ‘Maybe you could take me out to dinner first?’

  As it was, I had an intense throbbing pain in my head, a lack of sensation in my extremities and the curious feeling that my lungs were filled with water. Everything was dark.

  Again, the pressure against my chest—I could hear someone counting unevenly, choking back breaths between each number. It was a girl.

  I could feel coarse grass beneath me, a rock jutting into my lower back, and I could hear the water lapping at the edge of the lake. I opened my eyes and spluttered a mouthful of lake water, algae and all, onto the ground beside me.

  Night surrounded us like a blanket, and the girl knelt beside me, her eyes filled with concern. Moonlight reflected off the lake and distant streetlights glimmered on quiet suburban avenues. It was autumn: leaves littered the ground around us, and the night was cool.

  The girl sat back on her heels, scraping wet hair from her face. Her mouth hung open, gasping for air. She stared at me.

  Feeling incredibly vulnerable on my back on the bank, I rolled onto my side. My water-logged jeans and T-shirt clung to me like a five year old to its mother on the first day of school. Except this five year old was as heavy as lead.

  I heard a car door slam, a shouted argument, and a night bird’s call. I listened to civilisation, or more accurately outer suburbia, continuing as it always had, completely unaware that a life had almost been lost.

  I stared up at the girl. She was soaked too, her long caramel-coloured hair dripping with water. In the moonlight I could see that her eyes were two different colours—the left, sharp electric blue, and the right, deep brown—and that she had full lips, a small, sharp nose and perfectly curved cheeks.

  The only thought in my head was that she was stunning.

  ‘What the hell were you doing?’ she demanded. ‘You almost drowned. God knows what would have happened if I hadn’t been here.’

  Woozy, and having swallowed more polluted rainwater than was sensible or hygienic, I couldn’t remember why exactly I had been in the lake. I couldn’t fathom why this strange and beautiful girl would take it upon herself to save me, either. I felt like a damsel in distress. Mostly, I felt like a complete and total idiot—an incredibly lucky complete and total idiot.

  I rested my head back against the ground. It was uncomfortable, but it was better than the world spinning every time I tried to look around.

  She pushed my hair out of my eyes. ‘Sorry. I called triple 0 on my mobile. Ambulance is on its way. I’m…wondering what you were doing swimming in a lake at the park at this time of night with your clothes on. Remember the little boy ten years ago who drowned here?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry. Just trying to make small talk. Keep you conscious. It’s…it’s what I used to do when my mum overdosed and I had to wait with her for the ambulance.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ I managed to ask.

  ‘I’m Jewel. As in gemstone, or the singer. Jewel Valentine. You?’

  I coughed again, emptying my lungs of the remaining micro-organisms I had unwittingly consumed but that would probably be a delicacy in some Eastern European country.

  Jewel frowned.

  ‘Sorry. Sacha Thomas. Nice to meet you, Jewel-as-in-gemstone.’

  ‘Lovely to make your acquaintance, Sacha. Are you going to thank me?’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks. You know, for saving my life and all.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ replied Jewel. ‘I often go for a night jog in the park and save teenage boys from drowning in the lake.’

  Even though I was struggling to keep my eyes open, I managed some weak humour: ‘You get off on performing CPR on vulnerable young boys?’

  She grinned. ‘Each to their own.’

  I smiled back, but only for a second, because my head was so clouded and heavy, and every expression made it ache.

  ‘It’s cold, isn’t it?’ I murmured.

  ‘Oh, shit. Hope you don’t get hypothermia.’ She picked up a battered leather jacket that I’d thought was a rock.

  She helped me lean forward a bit and slipped the jacket around me. It fitted, so I figured we must be around the same size, and it was comfortable and warm.

  Jewel held my hand in both of hers and rubbed my palm with her thumbs, trying to warm me up.

  ‘They should be here any second now,’ she reassured me.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ I asked.

  She hesitated a moment. ‘Isn’t that a question you should answer?’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘I came out here to think. I like the quiet in the middle of the night. I’m one of those classic loner types who will end up assassinating someone.’

  ‘My mum used to have a joke about thinking,’ I said, staring up to the sky and tracing imaginary dot-to-dot with the stars. ‘I’d say something like “I’ve been thinking…” and she’d say “I warned you about that, didn’t I?”’

  ‘Did she die?’ whispered Jewel.

  ‘Yeah. How’d you guess?’

  ‘You said “used to”
. Past tense.’

  ‘You’re observant. She might’ve stopped making that joke, though. It got old fast.’

  ‘When did it happen?’ she asked, ‘God, sorry I’m so insensitive. You don’t have to answer that.’

  ‘It’s fine. It was last year.’ I was shivering. I wasn’t sure whether it was from cold or something else.

  She nodded and I closed my eyes a moment. When I reopened them Jewel Valentine was gone, and instead a young male paramedic leant over me, shining a torch into my eyes and asking me what year it was.

  ‘Year of the Ox?’ I offered.

  Hospital Signs:

  Please Do Not Pick the Flowers

  Wash Your Hands

  Turn Off Mobile Phones and Radio Transceivers Now

  Please Keep It Down—Our Patients Need Rest

  Keep Out! Falling Fruit May Cause Injury

  That evening in the hospital, after Jewel had rescued me, the first person to visit me (besides my father) was Little Al.

  Little Al’s real name is Michael Mitchell. He dislike the alliteration—it sounds too much like Eminem or Marilyn Monroe or an Afterburn theatrical wrestler. Imagine the white trash screaming as the presenter yells: ‘Michael “The Man” Mitchell faces off The Undertaker!’

  The ‘Little’ in Al’s nickname makes sense as soon as you see him. Though Little Al does not look, or act, like any kind of wrestler, he is six foot two, thin but not sickly like I am. Kind of scrawny if you saw him wearing board shorts down the beach, but he holds himself in such a way that you know he doesn’t care. Sometimes I wonder why I put myself through having such a tall best friend—as if I intend to make myself seem even smaller—at a measly five feet six inches I look like a dwarf even without Al’s help.

  Al is short for Albert, as in Einstein, a name I christened him with, because for as long as I’ve known him (all the way back to our first day of Year 7, when he decided to adopt me as his sidekick) he’s been obsessed with Chemistry. I’m talking about the Bunsen burners and chemical reaction type Chemistry, not speed dating and romance, although Al would try to convince you otherwise, being the smooth operator he thinks he is.

  Staying after class every day, he didn’t have me convinced for long that he was down in the Science lab only because he had a huge crush on Mrs Ford. Even though Mrs Ford was a bit of a babe. Once I saw her leaving school on the back of a motorbike.