Chapter One

The Indigo Girls

Penni Russon

Zara

I spent the whole long drive to Indigo plugged into my iPod and texting Sooz. Sooz wanted to know what my brother, Ivan, was doing. All my friends have a crush on him, he’s kind of good looking, I guess. And he’s got this whole doesn’t-talk-to-anyone thing going on, which girls seem to find irresistible. I try and tell them he’s a complete dork but they never listen. Like in the car, Ivan had his PDA out, flicking around the little pen thing that you use to write on the screen. ’Cause you need an organiser when you go camping. As if. Why can’t he just have a PSP like a normal person? It bugs me. I didn’t answer her texts about Ivan.

Kayla texted me too: poor baby – she always calls all of us baby, secretly it annoys me – two weeks of family torture. At first I wasn’t going to answer her text either. But eventually I punched in a totally non message. It seemed too rude not to say  anything. After all, as far as she knew, we were still friends. Then Sooz again: See you on the flip side. The flip side? What did that even mean?

Dad was driving. Mum was just kind of staring vacantly out the window. Dad was talking but he wasn’t actually talking to Mum, or to anyone for that matter, it’s just this pointless airfi ll thing that he does, a running monologue about petrol prices and fishing and car accident hotspots and the dangers of roundabouts. Did I mention that my dad is a cop?

About three years ago, my brother Ivan and I noticed that my parents don’t talk anymore. Not to each other. They talk to us, of course, and sort of through us. I don’t even know if they realise. But Mum will be in the kitchen and she’ll say, ‘Could you ask Dad to start the barbeque?’ and I’ll go into the lounge room and ask him even though Mum could lean across the kitchen bench and call through the open door to ask him herself. He’s, like, sitting right there! Or I ask Dad if I can go shopping with Kayla and the other girls and he says, ‘Well, I don’t know, Zara. Ask your mother. Has she got any plans this afternoon?’ And I’m like, but you live  together. And you don’t know if she ‘has plans’? I don’t say this, though. What’s the point?

One day, it was just me and Ivan in the kitchen. He was biting into a sandwich, he totally inhales two loaves of bread a day. I asked him, ‘What about when they . . . you know?’

He almost spat out his food. ‘Zara! I’m eating here. They don’t. Do they?’

‘Well, they’ve done it at least once in your lifetime or I wouldn’t be here,’ I pointed out.

‘You’re so disgusting.’ I snorted. ‘In complete silence, though. That’s sort of spooky. Like Stepford Wives.’

Ivan leaned on the counter, his shoulders shaking with laughter. ‘Or they mutter away to themselves. “Oh my, is that the time . . . now I really must . . .” Or like when they’re in the car, “Now, did I mean to go left or right here?” only they’d be saying . . .’

‘Don’t!’ I yelled, alarmed that he would get more graphic. He tried to say more, but he couldn’t get it out he was laughing so hard. I covered his mouth with both my hands, whimpering between laughs, ‘No! Nooooo.’

Mum walked in. ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked, smiling like she was ready to share the joke but with this almost desperate  edge, like the girls at school who aren’t popular but want to be.

Suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore, for either of us. The last laugh wheezed out and Ivan took his sandwich into the lounge room to eat it. I picked up my mobile, flicking through the address book like it was suddenly crucial or something, so I didn’t have to look at her face. Do they even love each other? I mean, are all old people joyless like them? Or is it just my parents? Tilly’s parents aren’t joyless. They really like each other, you can just tell. I bet they talk all the time, about books and movies and stuff. And about Tilly and Teddy of course. Do Mum and Dad talk about me and Ivan?

So anyway, we arrived at Indigo and found our spot near the toilets and the kiosk and we all got out and Dad winched up the caravan, and Mum started setting out the stove and the cups to make tea because that’s what they always do. This is, like, their life. And Ivan stayed in the car with his PDA and I looked around for Mieke and Tilly but I couldn’t see them. So I leaned against the car, looking bored. It’s an art to look that bored. Botox-bored, Sooz calls it. People spend thousands on plastic surgery to look like I did right then.

Mum made tea and these sort of spongy, flabby tomato-and-cheese sandwiches.

Finally Tilly rocked up, waving like crazy out the window of her car and I dropped the bored expression and flipped up a wave.

That was when I got the text message. I almost didn’t read it because I thought it was Kayla again, and Kayla was a million miles away, back in Melbourne. But it wasn’t Kayla, anyway. It was Mieke – to both Tilly and me.

Just found out yesterday that I got a late place in Drew Svenson’s summer class. He’s an awesome painter. Happy face but sad face. Not coming to Indigo for another whole week! Oh no. Mieke xx

I read the text through twice. I don’t know why, but I felt this heavy pit in my stomach. Part of Indigo, a huge part, was Mieke. Without her it would be . . . different.

I wasn’t interested in different. I mean, I was happy for her and stuff, if this painter was so great. But why did she have to go to school in the holidays? It had never been just me and Tilly before. I mean, Tilly’s nothing like me. What if it wrecked everything?

I was about to turn my phone off when another message came through. I had my fi nger on the off button – I nearly ignored it. I should have, because it was another one of those messages, the kind I’ve been getting lately – from ‘number withheld’.

This one said: You are a pricktease.

‘Everything all right?’ Mum asked.

‘The batteries are running low.’ I deleted the message and switched the phone off. When I looked up, Ivan was
watching me. The freak. I gave him a look, then stared at my nails. Bored. Bored. Botox-bored.