Even after all this time I still wanted Tilly to like me the best. Or at least, I didn’t want her to like anyone else more than she liked me. Especially not Cassie. Especially not Ian.
‘What did you talk about then?’ I asked.
‘What?’ Tilly said. ‘To Ian?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I dunno,’ Tilly said. ‘Lots of stuff. He’s really interesting. Both of them are. Maybe if you were older they’d let you hang out with them too.’
‘You’re only eight months older than us,’ I said. I wrapped the string of my yoyo around my finger until the tip was fat as a thimble.
Wally came into the kitchen. He must have been listening from the couch. ‘He doesn’t even like you.’
‘Who?’ said Tilly, her yoyo smacking the lino.
‘Cassie,’ Wally said. ‘He’s only picking you up because your mum’s paying him.’
Tilly threaded her finger through the hole in the string and held the yoyo in her palm. ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘I’m not dumb.’
‘Don’t think for a minute it’s because he likes you.’
I sent Wally a brain message, a little glow of love. I tried not to let Tilly see the smirk on my face.
On the afternoon of Tilly’s birthday I got out my pencil tin and made her a card. I’d been thinking about what Cassie had said, about Tilly not having any friends at school. If she still hadn’t made friends then she never would. I still had a chance to sneak in, to trick her into thinking I was wonderful. I drew a birthday cake on the front and coloured it in, and then went over the filled-in colour with glitter, wrote ‘Happy Birthday’ in bubble letters on the front, a special message inside.
As I was putting on my shoes Cassie pulled into the driveway.
‘What’s that?’ Cassie said as he came up the stairs.
‘It’s for Tilly,’ I said. ‘For her birthday.’
‘I’ll sign it then,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, ‘make your own.’
‘Let me sign it.’ He grabbed the card off me, took a pen from the table.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But don’t take up too much space.’
I took the card and trudged over to the yellow house. ‘Happy birthday,’ I said when Tilly opened the door. I hid the card behind my back. She was in her school uniform, her skirt low on her hips, the button undone and the waistband rolled.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘What’d you get?’
Tilly shrugged. ‘I haven’t had presents yet. Not till Mum gets home.’
I whipped the card around. ‘This is for you,’ I said.
Tilly took the card. She glanced at the front but didn’t even look inside. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘Cassie only signed the card. He didn’t even help make it. He probably didn’t even remember it was your birthday.’
It was only then that Tilly opened the card, her eyes tracking over the note. She smiled, looked past me to our house. ‘Can I come over?’ she asked.
Cassie was in the kitchen. ‘Happy birthday,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ Tilly said, standing in the doorway. ‘I thought you’d forgotten.’
‘Nah,’ Cassie said. ‘Doing something special?’
‘Me and Mum are going out for dinner,’ said Tilly.
‘Sounds nice.’
‘Mum said I could bring someone, a friend from school, if I wanted.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Cassie said, filling up a glass of water in the sink. ‘Who’d you ask? Did Katie ask you to sit with her again?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t invite her,’ Tilly said. I wondered who Katie was, how Cassie knew who she was, why he cared. Tilly pressed her finger on a speck of glitter on the table. ‘Do you want to come?’
Cassie turned around, headed to the fridge. ‘I’ve got plans with Ian tonight.’
‘He can come too,’ Tilly said.
‘I don’t think that’s what your Mum meant.’
‘It’s my birthday dinner,’ Tilly said. ‘I can invite whoever I like.’
Cassie closed the fridge and wiped his mouth. He looked over at me. ‘What about Cub?’ Cassie said. ‘I’m sure she’d like to go.’
I looked up at Tilly, waiting for her to ask. I’d known the birthday card would work. But then I saw Tilly’s face and realised it was useless. I was useless.
‘No,’ Tilly said finally. She looked back at Cassie. ‘I didn’t ask her. I asked you. You and Ian.’
Cassie scratched his elbow. He looked out into the paddock, his eyes squinting as though it was too bright. ‘Check with your Mum first,’ he said. He wouldn’t look at me. He could have said no, if he’d wanted to.
I didn’t say anything, just went into my room and shut the door. I got out my pencils and paper and made Tilly a new birthday card. Except this one didn’t have cake and glitter on the front. I drew a picture of Tilly, fat and ugly, and wrote horrible things I’d never say out loud. It felt good to write such awful things, and I felt myself becoming lighter as I drew scribbles over her eyes, hair sprouting out of her nose and ears. I signed my name and put it in my special box, knew better than to give it to her even though I wanted to.
11.
THE FIRST FEW DAYS OF Christmas holidays dragged. Wally and I went to the dam, or made slime out of cornflour and food colouring. We opened all the windows and dragged the fan into the kitchen, but we’d still drip sweat onto the table and into the bowls of green paste as we mulched the water and flour with our hands. When Cassie was home Tilly followed him around the house, asking him what time he’d be back from work. Sometimes she’d come to the dam with us, or play Uno on the verandah, but when Cassie was around it was as if a switch flicked inside her and she became a different person, like she felt she was being watched on a screen, a big light shining over her.
‘I can’t believe you’re making slime,’ she said one day, poking her finger in a blob of green. ‘I used to make that in grade three.’
‘Don’t you have any friends?’ Wally said. ‘Is that why you’re always here?’
‘I have friends,’ Tilly said.
‘Who?’ said Wally. ‘Name one.’
‘You don’t have friends either. You two are just here together all the time like a pair of freaks.’
‘Knew it.’
‘Knew what?’
‘That you couldn’t name even one friend. I bet you’re the biggest loser in school.’
‘You’re so dumb,’ Tilly said, rolling her eyes. ‘Give me some of that.’ She reached over to the bowl in the middle of the table, sunk her fingers into the goo.
When Cassie bought us a totem tennis set as an early Christmas present we played in the afternoons when it cooled down. He said he got it from the shops, but the metal coil at the top was all rusted and the string connecting the tennis ball to the pole had started to wear away. Sometimes Cassie would play against himself, slamming the ball so hard that if it came back around and got him on the arm it left a bruise.
I’d lie on the grass when Wally and Tilly played together, listening to the tennis ball hammering against the plastic bats. Wally only liked to play Tilly so he could beat her, but whenever he missed the ball a few times in a row he yelled at Tilly, accused her of cheating. He’d throw the bat into the paddock and storm into the house. Tilly was better at it than any of us. She said she used to play proper tennis at her old school, that she was even better than the kids who’d been playing since they were born.
‘I had a whole box of trophies at home,’ Tilly said, untangling the rope that had twirled around the pole. ‘But there wasn’t enough room in the car to bring them.’
I propped myself up on my elbows. ‘What’d you do with them?’ I asked. If I had a trophy it would be the first thing I’d take if I moved away.