The Best Thing by Margo Lanagan Read Free Book Online Page B

was going to attack him!
    He dropped his jaw. ‘Now, that’s not very nice, is it?’
    ‘E-ed.’ His mate was a step closer, the other two hanging back and watching.
    I felt myself going off my brain. ‘Did I ask for your stupid whistling, your
“compliments”?
I was just walking down the
street,
for God’s sake. You guys all think you’re God’s bloody gift, don’t you? Think every girl’s just
hanging out
for compliments! Well, we’re not! We couldn’t give a
stuff
what jerks like you think!’
    ‘It’s okay,’ said the other guy at my shoulder. ‘Ed, fuck off now, hey?’ But I was just as angry at him! I didn’t want his stupid
protection!
    ‘What’s
she
getting so upset about? She’s not so great-looking anyway. No tits, no nothing.’ Ed started sidling off.
    I yelled at him, ‘Who
cares,
you moron? Better than having no
brain!
’ My knees were shaking with rage, and I had to
charge
past him up the street so he wouldn’t see.
    ‘Geez, you’re a dickhead, Ed!’ I heard the mate say.
    After a pause to think, Ed yelled back, ‘Geez, you’re a wimp, Dino!’
    ‘Hey—’ Pug was catching me up.
    ‘And you can bugger off, too!’ I said to him. I just wanted to get away before the tears started, didn’t want
any
of them to see me crying.
    ‘It’s okay. I don’t want to hassle you. I just don’t want you to let that fuckwit get to you.’
    I couldn’t see him through tears
vrooming
up to my eyes.
’You’re
the fuckwit, hanging out with such a jerk …’ My voice gave out and I had to face the fact that I was crying.
    ‘Really he’s okay. He just goes stupid when there’s girls around.’
    When there
are
girls around, idiot.
    I had to wait at the corner of Lennox Street for cars to pass, and the shaking came up from my knees and took over; I gasped and sniffed and wanted to be somewhere all on my own where I could howl as loudly as I wanted. Instead I licked up the tears and slimed the back of my wrist with my nose. ‘Oh, go
away,
’ I told him as he started crossing the road with me. ‘For God’s
sake!
’
    ‘Hey, sit down for a minute, eh.’ He pointed to a park bench. I nearly tripped over the edge of the path, and he touched my elbow to steady me. ‘Come on, you can’t hardly see where you’re goin’.’
    He sat down at the other end of the bench, which I guess was better than standing over me, but I still wished he wasn’t there. I was ashamed of cracking up—I just wanted to get
away.
    I was mopping at my face with a been-through-the-wash tissue I’d found in my pocket when he spoke again.
    ‘You don’t want to take any notice of Ed. He’s a
immature
bastard. Doesn’t know when to stop.’
    ‘Pretty hard
not
to take notice, when he’s parked right there in your
way,’
I pointed out.
    ‘Yeah. Sorry. He just goes stupid, like I said.’
    He was trying really hard to make things better. I remember thinking what a
serious
person he seemed, in spite of the fact that he could hardly string a sentence together.
    I can still call him up from then. He had a neat haircut—neat as in short and neat as in cool, and he
wasn’t
wearing a back-to-front baseball cap like the other three
dudes.
His black hairgleamed in the sunshine. His face—well, the memory of his face is all mixed up now with seeing his face in other sorts of places and lights and ways, but the eyes stuck with me, so pale, and the lashes and eyebrows so dark. He looked so clean, somehow, and cool, in spite of the steamy weather—I was damp all over, not just around the eyes. I noticed how fit he was, too, not puffed-up muscle like a gym junkie or anything, but I remember staring at his shoulders and arms, following the curves of them.
    ‘It’s just that I wasn’t expecting it, that’s all,’ I said. ‘And, you know, some days you wake up feeling strong, and some days you just can’t cope with things like that.’
    He nodded without looking at me. I saw a little smile on the side of his face.