Amanda did that horrible, hiccupping head nod again. A part of me recognized how tormented, how haunted she looked. How drained and beaten. Another part of me saw her as something else: something cold and deceptive. Something I didn’t want to be around.
The rest of me . . . the rest of me . . .
I shook my head, teeth clenched, and tore my eyes from the woman in front of me, fixing them instead on the photo in my hand. Tanner grinned up at me, thrumming with life and energy and playful joy.
“Bren . . .” Amanda’s choked voice filled the silence. “I had no choice, don’t you see? I’m desperate. We’re desperate. It’s not just Tanner that needs you, it’s me as well. I need you.”
“You can’t do that,” I growled from the floor. My eyes felt full of burning sand. The image of Tanner blurred. “You can’t do that.”
“But she did, Brendon,” Chase said. “As fucked up as it is, she did. And now it’s time to step up and show us what you’re going to do about it.”
Six
Beeping and Whirring Constantly
When I was eight years old and in awe of my older brother, Ben – who could do an ollie on a skateboard without falling off even once, already had his green belt in taekwondo and was allowed to stay at home alone when Mum needed to race to the shops to buy milk – I got into a fight at school.
A new kid, Gregory Blake, had joined my class a month earlier. He’d moved from the big city and was having difficulty with the playground dynamics of our small country school. Gregory was shy, a little wimpy, and wore glasses. I was tall for my age and already stronger than most boys in my year, let alone boys in the years above me. I was also playing football twice a week, for both the school and the local youth club. In other words, I was not only a tough bastard physically, but a school hero. (Our school was all about footy. Soccer players were shunned for reasons I still don’t understand.) Gregory Blake decided, in his first week at school, that I was his best friend.
He followed me around like a puppy, and bought stuff for me from the school canteen. I’d only have to mention I’d like a packet of chips and he’d be at my side a few minutes later with them. It took me quite a while to realize, I’m ashamed to say, that he wouldn’t spend his lunch money on his own food in case I casually mentioned I wanted something.
Gregory’s parents were rich. Not more-money-than-God rich, but better off than anyone else’s parents at our school. But Gregory’s parents rarely did anything with their son. They didn’t come to any school events, nor wait for him to finish class inside the school grounds, like the other parents. It wasn’t until years later, when I was old enough to truly ponder Gregory’s behavior, that it dawned on me he was lonely.
Because I’ve never been a horrible kid, I never told him to go away. My other friends – friends I’d had since kindergarten – thought he was annoying. I just shrugged and let him tag along.
He skimmed the surface of my daily radar, filled the hole in my stomach whenever the food my mum packed wasn’t enough, and occasionally said something funny enough to make us laugh about the other boys in the playground. Those somethings were most likely too witty to go over our heads, but eight year olds are not discerning in their humor. When Gregory said Richie Gribble was a “mouth-breathing, knuckle dragger” we all laughed ourselves silly. My “real” best friend at the time, Lochie Perkins, laughed so much snot came out his nose.
The next day after school, Richie Gribble cornered Gregory outside the sports equipment shed and beat the crap out of him. He was found crying and bleeding by the school groundskeeper. He’d pissed his pants, had one of his front teeth broken, and his glasses were nowhere to be seen.
He never came back to school.
The kids didn’t know what had happened until the day after the fight. No one knew where Gregory went. He never contacted anyone at school to let us know.
I found out what Richie had done, halfway through our afternoon art lesson, when Lochie leaned over and confessed he’d told Richie at footy practice what Gregory had said about him. I remember looking at Lochie like I didn’t know him. Like he was a stranger. I’d slept at his house more than once. We’d shared our lunches since we were five. I knew everything about Lochie, about how he was going to be a racing car driver when he grew up, how he didn’t like when his big sister walked around the house in just her underwear, and how his doodle sometimes got hard when she did, which made him feel weird.
Lochie was no friend of Richie Gribble, nor was he a dobber. And yet, here was my best friend fessing up to the fact he’d told Richie what Gregory had said about him even though we both knew Richie would hurt Gregory because of it.
Why?
When I asked Lochie that very question, he shrugged. “Dunno.”
That afternoon – outside the same sports equipment shed where he’d beaten Gregory – I turned Richie’s nose to a mushy, bloody pulp. Knocked him on his arse.
That night, as Mum sat beside me on my bedroom floor, her hand resting gently on my back, disappointment on her face, I understood something far beyond my eight years: I wasn’t just angry at Richie for beating up Gregory. I was angry at Lochie as well. I’d taken my disappointment with my best friend out on the school bully, and while my big brother crowed about it the next day, and told everyone he was proud of me for sticking up for a friend, my disillusionment with Lochie tainted the joy I felt at Ben’s approval.
Lochie had betrayed the trust of someone who’d been “with us”. Sure, Gregory hadn’t ever been to either of our houses, but he’d sat with us at lunch, he’d shared his food. Lochie had eaten more than one Frosty Fruit icy-pole purchased by Gregory. Gregory had been hurt because his trust had been betrayed, and for reasons my eight-year-old brain couldn’t truly fathom, I’d been hurt as well. And that betrayal had made me angry enough to hurt someone in retaliation.
I’d regretted it the moment it happened. The second Richie fell to the ground – blood and snot spreading over his top lip in a disgusting mustache, tears leaking from his eyes, his hands trying to protect his face as he blubbered “No stop I’m sorry I’m sorry” over and over – I regretted it. But I never said sorry to him. And I never had a sleepover at Lochie’s place again.
I need you to understand the significance of this little window into my personality. I may no longer be that eight-year-old boy with blood on his fists and righteous anger in his heart, but I still have the same core values and opinions. And I still – no matter how much I wished otherwise – have the same visceral reaction to my trust being shattered.
And what I’d just learned, what Amanda had just told me?
Yeah, my trust was beyond shattered.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was on my feet, towering over both Chase and Amanda. Furious. I’m a big guy. I’m not called Brendon the Biceps in any kind of ironic way. I’m a big guy with a latent strength beyond the norm, and I was pissed.
Torn apart.
Everything I thought I knew about Amanda, every opinion I had . . .
It wasn’t just that either. In the few hours since discovering I was a dad, I’d ridden an emotional rollercoaster the likes of which I’d never experienced before. I’d ridden that fucking rollercoaster and, in patented Brendon Osborn optimism, saw the best in it. I’d accepted I was a father, I’d accepted my life had irrevocably changed, but I’d moved beyond the loss of holding Tanner as a baby to already placing myself in his life. Running with him, playing with him. Living life large with him.