Questions Not Answered
I waited until I could hear Dad snoring in his recliner before I rang Topps. I didn’t want Dad to listen in. ‘Hey dude,’ I said when Topps answered. Even though there was five in his family, Topps always answered the phone at his house. I think it’s because a cordless phone sits right next to his computer.
‘Hey,’ he replied absent-mindedly. After hearing that far away voice, I knew immediately that Topps was either playing World of Warcraft on his PC; updating his homepage or fiddling around with something technical such his remote-control car motor that was always in need of repair.
I love talking on the phone. It’s much better than face-to-face. I just feel more comfortable and free to speak my mind. Skye is my best phone-buddy. We can talk about everything and anything, seriously, for an hour without stopping for breath. It’s one of the reasons I’m not allowed a decent mobile, though I’m planning on getting a Motorola this Christmas from Dad. At the moment I have to put up with a pre-paid phone that is at least five years old and dies at random times throughout the day.
My all-time phone record? Last summer when Skye had come back from the Gold Coast with an awesome story about almost drowning in the surf. It took two and a half hours to tell it.
Now Topps, he’s different. He loves to talk but on the phone he’s really average. He’s always distracted and never listens to what I’m saying. ‘Ah…huh…yep…okay,’ he’d mumble as I waxed on about the store or an assignment or my dad’s latest bad mood. Boys just don’t get phones.
This time, however, he listened.
I explained about the visit by Detective Rooks and Crass being fairly unhappy about it. Then I told him that according to the store computer Robert Keppler had rented almost three hundred DVDs in the past year – most of them for free.
‘How does he get DVDs for free?’ asked Topps after I had explained how so many of his DVD listings displayed CREDIT $0.00 and how easy it was to credit customers for rentals. ‘You think Crass rents them all to him? Crass doesn’t exactly come across as a generous sort of guy.’
‘Dunno. Perhaps Crass feel sorry for him because he’s unemployed?’ Although, I thought, his smart arse cracks this afternoon said otherwise.
Then I remembered the previous login name I saw: KAT. I asked Topps who it could be. He knew immediately. ‘Only the second best looking chick who ever worked at the ‘Loon.’
‘Do you have a name Topps, or are you going to start drooling down the phone?’
‘Of course. Who could forget her? Caitlin Allende.’
Caitlin Allende. I knew who he was talking about. Caitlin Allende of the swirling blonde hair and the blue eyes and the school uniform that was just a little too small. A very deliberate ploy, I felt, to show off her long, tanned legs. She was in Year Twelve and had played the lead role of Sandy in the school production of Grease. I thought her rendition of “Hopelessly Devoted to You” sucked, but Topps loved it and sang it at school the next day all through our game of indoor hockey.
Being incredibly beautiful, popular and two years old than me, I had never spoken to her. Topps wanted to change all that.
‘We should talk to her, you know,’ he said. ‘She suddenly left The Video Saloon several months back. I was heartbroken, of course. It’s like losing your first true love.’
‘Give it a rest Topps. You’ll make me throw up. Why would we want to talk to her anyway?’
‘She could help us out. Give us some clues. Perhaps she knows something about the stash of DVDs in the basement? Hey, you could also apologise to her too.’
‘For what?’
‘Taking her job. You replaced her.’
‘Should it be a verbal or do you want me to write a formal “sorry”?’
‘Verbal will be fine.’
I thought it was a dumb idea to speak to Caitlin, even though she had, like Crass, rented out DVDs to Robert for free. A coincidence? Still, I thought it was pointless and I definitely didn’t want to tell her about the stash in case she told Crass or Vince.
‘C’mon Stace, this is like one of those awesome Secret Seven books we read in primary school where the kids solve the crime,’ said Topps, all excited. ‘We’ve got to take this further by talking to Caitlin.’
Before I could tell Topps how much of a stupid idea it was, Dad barked from the living room: ‘Stacey, would you get off that phone! You’ve been on it for ages!’
‘You just want an excuse to talk to Caitlin,’ I said, trying to finish off the conversation. ‘She isn’t that great.’
‘Hey, I never said she was. After all, I said she was the second best looking chick at the Video Saloon.’
‘STACEY!’ my dad bellowed from the family room. I heard him shift on the recliner. I used it as an excuse to hang up on Topps. I didn’t want to hear who he thought was number one.
I went and apologised to Dad. I’d virtually sat on the phone this week. Better to say sort, it would save a beery lecture later on. Still, if we had broadband I could use Skype for free.
‘Stacey,’ he said, ‘you know how tight money is at the moment.’
‘We’re not exactly at the starving stage Dad. You make us sound like we’re like, totally poor. If we can afford beer, we can afford a few phone calls.’
Dad, cut, shrunk back down into the couch. ‘They’ve reduced back my hours at the store. So it’ll be fairly tough going this month until they need me again full-time for Christmas.’
Dad worked at a hardware store out of town. One of those giant warehouses that blight the landscape. He used to be manager of the tradesperson’s accounts but quit when Mum died. He couldn’t handle the stress. Now he shelves nails and helps answer customer queries about outdoor acrylic paint. I don’t think he enjoys it.
It’s one reason I was so happy to get the job at the Video Saloon. I hated asking Dad for money and this way I earned my own cash. If it wasn’t for my job I’d never get to the cinema, never get any new clothes and I’d even struggle to buy my magazines each month. I’d even paid for a birthday present for Skye last month because I didn’t want to ask Dad for any money. If I wanted anything, I had to pay for it. How we’d afford the text books for school next year when the workload started to really increase, I didn’t know.
I’d be jeopardising what money I did earn by telling him about the DVDs, that’s for sure.
‘Don’t worry Dad,’ I said, patting his hands. I drew them over my shoulder and hugged him. Something I don’t do so much anymore. He hugged me back and I could feel his bony ribs. He’d lost weight this year. He was skinnier than me. It made me feel sort of sad. I felt his bristles rub against my cheek. He had bad skin. Wrinkled and blotched and tight with worry. His grey hair looked limp. His general appearance was not helped by a boring, daggy grey tracksuit than hung off him like a scarecrow.
I think I got over Mum’s death a whole lot quicker than he has. In fact, I don’t think he’s made any progress at all. I read somewhere that men fall into two categories: men who want to look after their women, and men who just want to be loved by them. Dad is definitely in the second category. He relied on Mum a lot. I guess Dad was always a bit of a dreamer, a romantic. She was the hard-headed, no nonsense one who ran the house, paid the bills, made the tough decisions and even bought his clothes. I guess I take after her. I get over things and just keep working. Boy, the ways things are going it’ll only be a few years until I’d be buying his Bonds undies for him.
Mum was a primary school teacher. A good one. She was always busy, always running around organising picnics and school dances and our camping holidays to Lakes Entrance. I don’t think any of us could believe it when she got cancer. Except her. She told me before she died she always knew she had been living on borrowed time. It’s why she hated wasting it, why she was always so busy. Something had happened years before. A scare. Or more. I never did find out exactly what. It was the reason she couldn’t have any more kids after me. Something to do with her ovarian tubes.
Anyway, out came the library books, the therapies, the all-natural pills and meetings with self-help groups. But it didn’t do any good. She hung in there for a long time. The cancer was like a see-saw. Up, down, good, bad, temporary remission, hospital. Dad fell apart soon after, although everyone else thinks he’s more-or-less held it together. But he hasn’t. He doesn’t play in his night tennis competition anymore, he can’t face Lakes Entrance even though we used to spend almost a month down there every year for as long as I can remember; he dresses badly and he has to force himself to even smile. The only thing he still does is fish, but most of the time he comes back empty handed. I think he just sits by the Yarra River (his favourite fishing spot) and stews.
God, it’s hard to see your dad down so badly. Although it has made me more independent. I don’t know any other fifteen-year-olds who do the laundry, cook spaghetti bolognaise dinners and buy the groceries every week. I just want to get on with life. That’s what Mum would have wanted. I try to tell him that, but there’s a barrier between us. I just don’t feel like talking about these sort of things. I can talk for hours about gossip, school, TV. Just not feelings. That’s probably why I have a boy as my best friend. I feel freaky talking about feelings. I like action, as the saying goes, not words.
Dad sighed. ‘I have to get back on the treadmill,’ he said. ‘Back to some decent work. I owe it to you.’
‘Yeah, when you’re ready, Dad. You don’t need to rush things.’
This wasn’t true. I wanted him to get back to full-time work. I wanted him to be able to buy me a decent birthday present instead of a Sanity record voucher I got this year. I’m in year ten, but I’m still getting primary school presents. It didn’t even buy me a full-price CD! I want to come home without seeing him staring emptily at the car racing on the box, or staring out the window as he shovels a saucepan of baked beans around. Most of all, I want to be able to be a daughter, not a surrogate mother. The fact I’m an only child makes it worse. I’ve got nobody else to help me out.
‘Stacey, I have to get a move on. We’re not saving anything. Your mother’s money isn’t going to last forever,’ he said.
That’s what’s saved us. Mum’s life insurance. Her superannuation insurance wasn’t much, but it still paid off the mortgage so we now own our house. But the insurance, I think, let Dad off the hook. He preferred moping around and not dealing with stuff. Two years after she died he still only works a couple of days a week. The money has dwindled and if this continues we’ll really be stuck. I know he hurts. I know he even suffers a bit of depression from time to time. But what sort of life does that leave me with? A dead mother and a dad that’s all worn out.
‘Then what about looking around for another job?’ I said. ‘There’s some decent stores around that’d need full-time work.’
‘Stace, it’s not that easy. I’ve tried, but…’
I let him trail off. It’s always the same. Spell out the problem and then discuss why it can’t be solved.
The next day at school Topps virtually dragged me towards the Year Twelve home room where Caitlin was most likely to be. He was that excited.
‘I thought computer geeks weren’t interested in girls,’ I said as we walked to the portable. It came out more cutting than I meant (both about him being a geek and being uninterested in girls), but I was feeling uncomfortable and silly about talking to Caitlin and I felt angry at Topps because of it. What, exactly, were we going to ask anyway?
Topps wasn’t an easy boy to upset. He never had been. ‘C’mon Stacey, you’ve seen Revenge of the Nerds’ he said. ‘Remember that line: “All jocks think about is sport. All nerds think about is sex”’. There’s an honest truth about that quote.’
I pretended to be unimpressed and told him I’d never seen Revenge of the Nerds.
It’s hard to say if Topps is really a geek or not. He loves computers, he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of movies, he can ace a test without studying and he wears glasses that don’t suit him. Also, he can’t play sport to save himself, except for badminton, and prefers to listen to video game soundtracks and electronica created by MySpace weirdos than Video Hits. But he’s confident and friendly with strangers, which is decidedly un-geekish. And he’s not a real geek because he wears Globe skate shoes and Ever Tough shirts his mum buys him. I think he’s a unselfconscious half-geek/halfcool sort of guy, a bit like a werewolf that uncontrollably changes at every full moon. It’s a fairly good personality mix.
We’ve been best friends since year seven. We hooked up in the first week during a game of softball. We both sat on the fence at the end of the batting line trying to avoid playing. ‘Don’t you think softball is, like, illogical,’ he had said. ‘It doesn’t make sense. You hit a ball, you run around a diamond and you just end up back where you started.’
‘I’m thinking of making it more interesting by just running to first and doing a handstand on the base,’ I had said.
‘I’ll give you a can of Sprite if you do.’
‘You’re on.’
But I never got the chance. I got struck out and the ball was thrown to first base before I took a step. I wouldn’t have done it anyway. It takes a lot for me to do something that makes me look ridiculous.
From then on we clicked. We’d been through a lot together: the infamous shepherd’s pie food poison outbreak at school camp, the school bus crash last year that broke Trevor Gilchrist’s nose; Helen Dudley’s birthday party where Topps ignored me after I’d replied ‘true’ when asked the question: ‘You’d rather kiss road kill than Peter Topolski, true of false?’, and as a result we didn’t speak for the rest of the night. And of course, my mum’s death.
So he’s been a good mate.
We found Caitlin reading over school notes. Year twelves seemed to do nothing but exams and homework. One of her friends – Becky someone, I think – was with her. They both looked up at us in surprise.
‘Hi Caitlin,’ said Topps. ‘I was wondering if we could talk to you for a minute?’
‘What about?’ she asked hesitantly. Obviously she had no idea who we were.
Topps looked at Becky and back to Caitlin. ‘It’s private,’ he said. ‘It’s about the Video Saloon.’
Caitlin gave Becky an exasperated look. Becky turned up her nose at us and left, obviously annoyed.
‘What about the Video Saloon?’ Caitlin asked, but before Topps could answer she looked at me. ‘Say, don’t you work there? You took over my job.’ She didn’t sound very happy about it.
‘Yeah, I thought it would be good if Stacey apologised,’ grinned Topps. ‘And while we’re here, I was just wondering, did anything funny go on before you decided to leave?’
‘What do you mean funny?’
‘Like, anything that was perhaps not one hundred per cent normal?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Stacey just has this feeling about the place, you know, that things are a bit weird. Like that guy, Robert Keppler. We wanted to know a bit more about him – like, he freaks Stacey out a bit, and I was sort of wondering, is he dangerous or what?’
‘I only worked there Friday and Saturday evenings,’ Caitlin said, ‘I don’t remember every customer.’
‘Horror movie fanatic,’ said Topps. ‘Likes the freaky stuff. Looks like that old wrestler, The Undertaker, if The Undertaker had gone on a Subway diet.’
‘Oh, yeah, him. Robert Keppler. I sort of remember. I dunno, I was only there six months. He seemed…harmless. I wouldn’t worry about him. Nah, he’s just a bit weird, that’s all. Why, has he been hassling you?’
‘No,’ I said, wanting to tie this pointless conversation up, ‘I just wanted to know.’
‘Hey Caitlin, why did you leave anyway?’ asked Topps as I took his arm and turned to leave.
‘My dad knows the manager of the new Blockbuster store. I’m going to be working there over summer.’
Which didn’t answer the question because the school year wasn’t over for a month and Caitlin left the store around four months ago. I surprised myself by speaking up again and asked, ‘How did you find Vince and Colin?’ I wanted to know if she’d seen either of them getting up to mischief down in the basement with the pirated discs, but I didn’t want to spell it out yet. I still didn’t feel I could trust Caitlin enough.
‘Oh, I dunno, I wasn’t there long, so…’
The morning bell interrupted us. Caitlin seemed relieved. She told us she had to go and quickly picked up her notes and rose from the bench. I saw Topps glance at her legs as she did. I gave him a nasty look and he shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “‘She’s wearing a really, really short skirt, what did you expect me to do?”
‘Thanks Caitlin for your help, we’ll see you round,’ Topps called after her. She ignored him. He seemed reluctant to leave but I dragged him away.
‘Seems a bit strange,’ I said to Topps as we walked to our homeroom. ‘Caitlin wasn’t telling us everything.’
‘Like what?’
‘I dunno. But she seemed uncomfortable, like she didn’t want to talk about it at all.’
‘Perhaps she was dazzled by my wit and charm?’ said Topps.
‘No, I’d reckon it was more freaked out.’
‘Why don’t we just tell her about the pirated gear?’
‘Because we don’t know all the facts yet. And that little discussion didn’t help at all. We didn’t even ask her about the free rental credits. Besides, I don’t feel comfortable talking about it with her.’
Truthfully, I was almost ready to ignore the pirated discs anyway. If Topps hadn’t been so pushy about talking to Caitlin, I would have never gone near her.
Later that afternoon during lunch I left Skye (Topps had gone off with his mates to the IT room) for a toilet break. As I walked into the toilet block with its harsh antiseptic smell and faded graffiti half-heartedly rubbed off by the cleaner I bumped right into Caitlin. She gave me a fright. ‘Oh, sorry,’ I said, a little shaken.
She ignored me. Instead she looked around, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear. She leaned over to me. I could smell sweet perfume and tangy shampoo on her skin. ‘Listen, I just want to add one more thing about that store,’ she said, almost whispering now. ‘I didn’t want to say anything in front of your friend, but watch yourself. Just keep your head down…’
Before she could finish her friend Becky called her from outside the toilet block. ‘Just watch yourself,’ Caitlin said hurriedly. She started to leave but stopped again, turned to me and said, ‘And don’t ask me anything about that store again, because I don’t want to talk about it.’