Odds

Russell Boey’s Odds was the winner of the secondary schools division of the Sunday Star-Times short story competition, judge Paula Morris praising it as ‘‘affecting and persuasive, with strong characters. The writer demonstrates a dynamic sense of scene a

Warning: there is some use of graphic language in this story.

Ihate parties. I hate the stink of alcohol and vomit, the noise and the sh.t music, and the idea that there are people f...ing in the next room. This one’s my second, and after throwing my guts out in the first, I was convinced it wouldn’t happen. But Sarah’s an exception.

It didn’t take much persuading. All she had to do was smile in her crooked way.

The thought still makes me shake my head as I look around at the mess. I don’t know why she does these things to herself. Then again, she’s 20 tonight, and I suppose everyone’s entitled to a few mistakes.

I watch her for a little while, gracefully mingling with a crowd that spills slurred well wishes from their mouths. She always manages to be graceful, even when she’s stumbling half-dead with her hair in a mess and streaks of makeup running over her face.

Someone that I’ve never met vomits at my feet. When I look back up, she’s vanished from my sight, leaving nothing but dim lights. I find myself sighing when I walk out, quiet as a ghost.

‘‘Get any action?’’ Jack snickers, when I ease open the door to our tiny room. The flashing of his laptop screen is enough that I raise my arms up to block the light, almost snarling at the strobe. I hear him curse into the screen as I make my way to my bed. I didn’t drink, but I feel sick all the same. ‘‘What’s the game?’’ I mutter. ‘‘Souls. You know, the hard one.’’ I shake my head into my pillow. ‘‘Don’t you get sick of dying over and over?’’

‘‘Some of us don’t give up too easily, eh, Scott?’’

My mouth hangs open for a few moments, trying to come up with some adequate retort. But denial rarely is. ‘‘I guess not. Night, Jack.’’ ‘‘Night.’’

The next day, she’s tied her hair back into a ponytail and looks as pure as ever. She lowers herself beside me on the grass under the shade of an ash tree, smiling softly. ‘‘Studying?’’ ‘‘Yeah.’’

‘‘You’re boring, you know.’’ ‘‘Yeah. How was your night?’’

I see the way her eyes change when I say it, the dark blue sparkling with some girlish joy. ‘‘Great. We went gambling. I hit a jackpot on one of the slots.’’

It’s hard to smile at her. I’ve never been good at lying. ‘‘What’re the odds?’’

‘‘You tell me, genius,’’ she says with a playful grin.

‘‘I’m sure you can work it out,’’ I reply, burying my head in my book. The numbers are cold and indifferent, but at least I can understand them.

She’s still sitting there when I lower it again, eyes staring off into some unseen distance. ‘‘Maybe.’’ She turns her face to mine, and the shadows from the tree boughs cast strange phantoms over it, wistfulness, regret. ‘‘Do you remember when we used to stargaze, Scott?’’

‘‘Yeah.’’

‘‘I wouldn’t mind doing that again some day.’’

I can’t tell if she’s being serious or not, and she doesn’t give me the chance to work it out. Instead, she stands and walks away, distant as some foreign star.

We don’t talk much these days, not the way we did in school. Back then, we’d sneak out to share my dad’s telescope, and watch the stars twinkle endlessly until dawn. Now she’s changed, and I haven’t, and sometimes I wonder which one of us was wrong.

Jack tells me to forget about her. He has. We’re not in high school any more, and the three of us aren’t what we were then. I tell him that video games are for children, and neither of us do much good.

When winter comes, she doesn’t wear a coat out. I watch her walk past my window, disappearing into the grey, hands rubbing against goosebumps on her arms. She cradles her textbooks, almost as fresh as the day she bought them, as if to remind her of something that she used to be. She looks back through furtive glances, and never at my foggy window. I warm my hands over the heater and continue working, but these days numbers are the last things on my mind.

It almost comes as a surprise to me when she calls. Her name on my phone, the picture of her smiling face, is such a foreign sight. Jack glances up as he sees me scrabble for the phone on my desk, dropping my pen into the spine of my book.

‘‘It’s going to get you nowhere,’’ he says.

‘‘Piss off,’’ I reply, as I answer the call. ‘‘Sarah?’’

‘‘Hey, Scott.’’ Her voice is muffled, drowned in the clamour of speeding cars. Each word she says is hesitant. ‘‘Can you pick me up?’’

I cock my head, and Jack sniggers a little. The cars race by on her side of the phone. ‘‘Where?’’ Hesitance. ‘‘The casino.’’

We sit in silence. The engine of my dad’s ancient car protests in the cold. Her eyes glance up and down between the mirror and her bare legs, rubbing her arms and shivering despite herself. She didn’t want to sit in the front, as if trying to defy me, as if she was some child that I was punishing.

‘‘You come here often?’’ I finally ask, never taking my eyes from the empty road.

She bites her lip. She was this nervous when we went to our school formal, I remember. Looking at her now, eyes ringed and dark, I can’t see the girl in a white dress. ‘‘Often enough.’’

‘‘Why?’’

‘‘Because I enjoy it.’’ She sticks her jaw out, and I shake my head.

‘‘You enjoy this? You’re clever enough, Sarah. You know this won’t end well. If you don’t trust me, trust the odds.’’

‘‘Because that’s all you ever trust, Scott?’’ she retorts, sitting bolt upright. ‘‘Your calculations and your numbers?’’ ‘‘Maybe. Look where we are now.’’ I see her bite her lip again, then sit back, closing her eyes with a shake of her head. I press down on the accelerator hard.

Jack knows better than to talk to me when I get back. He shuts his laptop and goes to his bed, sparing me from his usual jabs. It isn’t much help, but I appreciate the sentiment.

I don’t sleep. My mind wanders back to older times, fantasies – meeting out where no-one would ever see us, her eyes twinkling with strange light to meld with the stardust, thinking that this was love and that it would last forever.

I dwell on them until I hear a knock on my door, and slip out of my bed to answer it. She stands in a borrowed coat with her hands thrust awkwardly into pockets, still shivering to herself. ‘‘What?’’ I ask.

‘‘I’m sorry. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. I’m sorry.’’

She kisses me softly. She tastes of beer. Her cheeks are wet, and she’s so cold it stings, but I don’t pull away. Then she runs, disappearing into the night.

I shut the door quietly and slip back into bed. Jack told me once that my mind wasn’t made to understand love, that it was too logical to wrap around such an uncertainty. But this is love, this feeling, this ache. Not starlit nights in the fields, not serenades by an ash

tree, not sex in the dark. Just this and no more.

We still don’t talk. These days it’s too cold to go outside and sit by the ash tree. My phone doesn’t ring.

I only hear from gossip that she’s left. The phone sits silent on my desk. None of it’s a surprise.

Three years later, the same phone sits by my side. By night I watch the stars at an observatory, sighing at the impassive skies.

I spend my nights there, and my days dreaming. When I was a boy, before the accident, my father told me that the first star of the night granted wishes. Sometimes, watching them spurting flares, I wonder which one it was that failed me.

I still think I’m dreaming when my phone rings. Her face, preserved in the crispness of a clear night, has almost faded from my memory.

I pick the phone up cautiously. ‘‘Hello?’’

‘‘Hey.’’

Her voice is the same as ever – lilting, strangely sweet, enough that my breath catches in my throat. Just enough, but she doesn’t hide the hoarse sadness in it. ‘‘Can we talk?’’

I take a moment to find the strength to reply. ‘‘I’m busy, Sarah.’’

A pause. ‘‘Please?’’

Three years, and I still can’t say no. ‘‘Sure. I-’’

‘‘I know where to find you,’’ she mutters, and silence greets me over the line.

She’s changed, but she hasn’t. There’s something haggard about her now. Her rimmed eyes are almost a mask. Her coat is ragged and torn. She walks like she barely has the strength to stand on her stick-thin legs, graceless and clumsy. But when she smiles, one half of her thin lips raised crookedly, she is all she ever was.

We talk. She says it’s funny how our lives turned out, mine like it was always meant to be, hers some mess that she can’t piece together. Strange, talking to the girl I love about f...ing another man for money. The stars, their courses charted for them by some careless god, seem to laugh at the irony.

I haven’t seen Jack since we graduated, and we have nothing much to talk about when we’re sitting in the sterile corridors of the hospital, counting minutes on clock hands.

‘‘You still play games?’’ I ask awkwardly.

He snickers. ‘‘We’re not kids any more, Scott.’’

No. We’re here to see the first of our friends die, after all.

A white-coated doctor opens the door beside us, and then gestures us in silently. Like scarecrows we stand and walk, swaying on wooden legs.

She reminds me of childhood when we enter, lying with her thin smile spread over her face. She’s clean, and rested, for the first time that I’ve seen in years. Her eyes sparkle with so much more life than the sick body can hold. I don’t cry. I spent the tears too early, on foolish fantasies like romance, things that cannot be beneath these skies.

‘‘You brought a friend?’’ she murmurs, her voice hoarse, a stifled cough racking her body.

Jack stares, as if wondering how we ended here. He makes his decision in an instant. ‘‘I’ll leave you two to it.’’

With that he steps away, closing the door softly. She stares at me a little longer, her eyes severe. ‘‘Haven’t you got anything to say?’’ she mutters.

I think for a moment. Last words hold more gravity than stars, enough to crush a cosmos. ‘‘Did I ever tell you that I love you?’’ The words come easily, tumble, even as I look at her wasted body. They will mean nothing in hours, days at best. But they’ve never meant anything, and I accepted that long ago.

Her smile, half crooked, breaks over her face again. Her breath is soft and faraway. ‘‘Sit with me.’’

I pull a chair to the side of the bed. Her small hands are calloused, skin cracked, but I take one anyway, like clutching bark. I say nothing. I’ve said all I ever needed to say to her.

She snickers once. ‘‘You know what’s funny about probability, Scott?’’ ‘‘What?’’

‘‘It never goes your way.’’ When we first met, I was wearing a black coat that had belonged to my father days before and hiding tears behind the lens of his handheld telescope. I caught her eye from the window of her house, on the far side of the field that I stargazed on. It felt like a sort of fate.

Years later, we stood on the same plains and kissed for the first time. She smiled her crooked smile and said: ‘‘I think I’m pretty lucky.’’

She kisses me softly. She tastes of beer. Her cheeks are wet, and she’s so cold it stings, but I don’t pull away. Then she runs, disappearing into the night. I shut the door quietly and slip back into bed.

ILLUSTRATION: ALISTAIR HUGHES