Being Jazmine (Invisible Series Book 3) Read online

  “Do you want one?” She picks a cup from the cupboard and holds it out to me.

  I shake my head. “Thanks, but no.” I gesture towards the door of my bedroom. “My bag…”

  “Do what you need to do,” she says, and I disappear into my room. On the bed is the bag I packed yesterday, full of everything I’ll need for two weeks with Grandma. It’s nothing special. Jeans, a few shirts, jumpers and a jacket in case the weather changes. I’ve put my swimsuit in. Even in winter, in July, you can sometimes get a nice day at the beach, if the sun shines. Maybe Gabby would be up for a swim. I think about my best friend and smile. She’s not crazy keen on getting wet unless it’s hot enough to dry you off in ten minutes, but I think I could possibly twist her arm. She’d complain the whole time, I know, but I wouldn’t hear her with my hearing aids out, so I’d just laugh at her.

  “It’s such a waste you moving to the coast if you don’t want to swim all year,” I told her last time I was down and she was standing on the beach, refusing to go in with me. “Most people would kill to live here, and all you want to do is hang out in a shopping mall.”

  She sniffed haughtily, but I knew she was hiding a grin underneath. “Say what you want. At least I know who I am. I like the mall. With Gabby, you know what you’re getting.”

  It was true. And I loved that about her. She might be nuts, loud and ridiculous, but Gabby is always totally upfront. In your face. Saying what she thinks. For example:

  “You totally look like a minion.” (Her to me, when I experimentally tried on some denim overalls in Just Jeans last holidays.)

  “Omigosh, I feel like vomiting.” (Her to me, so loudly that other people turned around to look at us, after I showed her a splinter that got into my toe, and was half sticking out.)

  “That’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Dad must be mental.” (Her to me, after we wasted our money on some comic book remake that her Dad recommended we go to.)

  What would Gabby have said about the wedding today, if she’d come? She’s already told me, multiple times, in her big voice that she thinks it’s, like, so cute that my mum got engaged. One time, in the same breath, she said that if anything ever happened to her Dad, and her mum got remarried, she’d probably just die because it would be so weird, right?

  I screwed up my face and didn’t answer.

  Truth? One day I’m really excited. Pleased for Mum and happy for Geoff. The next day, though? I’m scared. And more than that. Much more than that. There are words for my feelings about it that I’ve only written in my journal, and never told anyone. Words you can’t say out loud, because they’re dangerous, because they change things.

  Words like, alone, terrified, lost. Tired, confused, ungrateful. And the hardest one of all to admit: betrayed.

  I can’t tell Mum. Gabby wouldn’t understand. And I can hardly tell Grandma, not with all the feelings she must have about my Dad — her son — dying, and her daughter-in-law finding someone else. It must be like losing him all over again. I peek out at her, through the gap in the door. She’s picked the biggest mug we have to make her tea in, and she’s sitting, sipping it, looking away from me. I can’t see her face, but I can see her posture; she looks old today, and sad.

  I throw a few extra things in my bag: my pyjamas, my journal and the only pen I can find on my desk. A towel, and some socks. One time I went to Grandma’s, I forgot to take extra socks, and only had two pairs of undies with me. It was an embarrassing mistake I won’t be making again.

  I sit down on the bed, press everything down, and zip up the bag. The effort seems to take a lot out of me, and when it’s done, I lie flat on my back, looking up at the ceiling. I’m tired.

  And I’ve been tired for a while.

  I think back. I wasn’t tired when I was in the play, back in seventh grade. I wasn’t tired much, even with all the problems with Liam (although I did spend two whole days in bed, but that was mostly fear, not fatigue.) When did the tiredness start? Because in the last few months, all I’ve wanted to do is to close my eyes. At school, in class, I’ve started getting called on by teachers. “Jazmine Crawford? Are we keeping you from something?” or, “Wakey, wakey, Jazmine. Are you still with us?” At home, I’ve been going to bed early every night, pretty much since Year 8 began and Geoff started coming over regularly in the evenings. Maybe it’s being a teenager; Mum says stuff about adolescents needing more sleep than kids, but I don’t know. No one else I know, not the twins, Caitlin and Olivia, or Alvin, or any of the kids at school seem to want to sleep like I do. Or if they do, they’re not telling anyone about it.

  Maybe it’s normal.

  Maybe I’m just making a fuss over nothing.

  I pick myself up and go out to the kitchen.

  “Just got to get my toothbrush, and check the garden, okay?”

  Grandma turns around in her chair. She looks worried. “Is someone going to water it for you?”

  “The neighbour said she would.”

  “Because if it gets windy, or it doesn’t rain, everything might —”

  I nod. I know. “It’s okay. I’ve sorted it.”

  She stands up. Slowly, like she’s tired too. “Can I see?”

  I grin. “Of course.”

  My grandma is a gardener, like me. Apparently the green thumb skipped over my Dad, who couldn’t keep a cactus alive (true story), but I’ve got it, for sure. Since I started my garden, after I was in the Secret Garden play at school, I’ve been hooked.

  My grin fades. “Although you’ll be disappointed.”

  Grandma raises her eyebrows. “Why so?”

  “When Geoff talked about a move, I stopped planting.” I hang my head. “I didn’t want to get attached to something, and not be able to take it with me.”

  “Will the move be soon?”

  “I think so. A bigger house, more garden. Probably in about six weeks or so.”

  Grandma nods.

  “I mean, the garden sounds great,” I say, before I even realise I’m talking. “But then I think about this garden, and I know it’s tiny, and scrappy, but I kind of don’t want to leave it.”

  Grandma puts her arm around me. “So show me.”

  I take her through the laundry and out the door and down the two concrete steps to my garden at the back. I’ve been working on it for just about a year, and no one would recognise it as the scruffy, dust-and-concrete patch it was before. Even the neighbour stuck her head out her front door a few months ago as I was going past on my way to school one day, and flagged me down.

  “Hey, Jazmine, is it?”

  “Yes?” I was worried; had I been annoying her with the smelly compost I’d been using?

  “I just wanted to say.” She had a look on her face like she felt a little guilty. “I mean, I saw what you’ve done to your backyard.” A car drove past and I lost the next part of what she said.

  “Sorry?” I asked.

  There was a slight question on her face, and she spoke a bit louder. “…I was doing my washing, and I looked over. I couldn’t help but see it. I wasn’t trying to be nosy.”

  “Oh, it’s okay,” I said. I smiled, to make her feel better. “I mean, that’s fine.”

  “Well, it looks great,” she said. “It’s you who’s doing it, right?”

  I nodded. “I kind of like it.”

  “Well you should keep going. Because it’s wonderful. You’re obviously very good with plants.”

  I laughed nervously. “Um, thanks?”

  “Come do my garden,” she said, and then laughed. “Ha ha. Jokes. But if I could pay you, I’d get you over for sure.” She’d turned and gone, and I’d had a warm feeling in my heart for a while after that.

  There’s a tap on my shoulder. It’s Grandma. “You’ve done a lot of work out here,” she says.

  “It’s just really the roses that are left,” I say. “I didn’t put in any annuals this year.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Once you all get to the new place and figure out
where you belong, you’ll know what to plant.” She grins at me. “You’ll be able to put down roots.”

  “Very funny,” I say. But I’m not really laughing inside.

  This is the whole problem.

  Now that Geoff and Mum are married, where do I belong?

  And how will I know, when I find it?

  “I think I’m ready to go,” I say to Grandma. “Bag’s packed and everything.”

  “Okay,” she says. She looks around again, pleased. “Well, this is nice, anyway.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  We go back into the house and I lock the laundry door. I take my bag from my bed, and Grandma and I head down the hall to the front door.

  “Hang on.” I put my bag down and duck into Mum’s — I mean, Mum and Geoff’s — room. “I won’t be a sec.” I slide open Mum’s closet door and stand on my tiptoes to look at the top shelf. The bracelet is there, pushed up against a scarf, like it’s got nowhere else to be. I reach my hand up, pull the bracelet over towards me with my finger tips, bring it down and slide it into my back pocket.

  “Everything alright?” Grandma’s head pokes around the door, and I wheel around. Not guilty, but not innocent either.

  “All good.” I shut the closet door. It slides quickly and nearly catches my fingers. “Ready to go.”

  Chapter 3

  We don’t talk a lot in the car on the way to Grandma’s. I apologise and say I’m tired, and she says that’s fine, she understands, she’s tired too.

  “Weddings are exhausting,” she says.

  Life is exhausting, I think.

  When we get to her place and Grandma parks the car and I pull my stuff out of the back seat, I look at the view. It got dark while we were driving and now the lights are twinkling. Below us the town looks happy and sparkly, and all I can think about is Mum and Geoff, happy and sparkly together.

  I would never have said Mum shouldn’t marry him, of course, even if she’d asked me, which she didn’t. I wouldn’t have held her back or made a fuss — what would have been the point? But it’s weird. And hard, kind of. I take a deep breath in, turn away from the lights and go inside, where I tell Grandma I’m super tired, and would it be okay if I just went to bed early?

  “In the morning it will all feel better,” she says to me. “Because that’s what mornings are for.”

  In the morning, it does feel better. A least, a bit.

  Certainly, better enough to have a good breakfast (eggs benedict with avocado on the side: Grandma likes her breakfasts just as much as she likes every other meal of the day), and better enough to chat a bit while we sit inside at the kitchen bench; it’s too cold for the table on the veranda at this time of year.

  It’s not better enough to get rid of the lost feeling, though. It’s there, gnawing at the edge of my ribs. I can try to swipe it away, but it’s holding on pretty hard.

  “Can you drop me at Gabby’s about 11?” I ask. “She says she’s pretty much free every day these holidays. We’re going to hang out.”

  “Beach?” Grandma sips her orange juice.

  “Probably. At least on the sunny days.”

  The lost feeling will disappear when I talk to Gabby. I know it will. We’ve talked every holiday since she moved down here, and nearly disappeared out of my life. When I finally found her, I had to tell her she was crazy: of course I was her friend — it didn’t matter where she lived, or if she moved, and for sure we’d be able to keep in touch with each other even though we lived in different towns. It was a new thing for her to get her head around, with her family moving so often, and sometimes when I think about how I’m the first person she’s ever had a long-term friendship with, I feel warm. I did that, I think. I made that happen. “We belong together, you silly rabbit,” I told her, that day in her bedroom, when I’d detectived my way back into her house and her life, and was trying to convince her to talk to me.

  Now we see each other during holidays when I visit Grandma and text almost every day in the school term. Gabby tried calling me a few times but I hate talking on the phone — you just can’t see the person’s face or watch their mouth — so I told her ‘texting is better’. It took some explaining, because she’s never really understood much about me being hard of hearing, but when I just stopped answering her calls and texted back instead, she finally got the message. Gabby knows pretty much everything that goes on at my school now, and she keeps me up to date with hers as well. We just pick up where we left off, every single time.

  Grandma says she’ll drop me off at the corner we always meet at, and I grin when I see Gabby in the distance. Her smile just about covers her whole face, and when I get out of the car, she gives me a huge hug.

  “So, the wedding?”

  It’s the first thing she wants to ask me about, as we walk down to the beach. It’s colder than I thought - definitely colder now than a few days ago, at the wedding - and I’m glad I’ve brought my jacket.

  “It was… nice,” I say. “Pretty, I guess.” I hold out my silver bracelet so she can see it.

  “Ooh, lovely,” she says. “But I want more details about everything else. Dresses. Shoes. Cars. Flowers. Did you cry?”

  “What?” I turn towards her, to try to pick up her voice better.

  “Did. You. Cry?”

  I laugh and turn away in embarrassment. “Oh, um. No.” Then I get worried. “Why? Do you think I should have?”

  Gabby makes enormous puppy dog eyes at me. “Everyone cries at weddings. Don’t you know that?” She puts her two hands up to her heart. “’Cos they’re so romantic, and everyone’s so happy.”

  So happy. I take a breath in and let it out. “I didn’t cry. Actually, I couldn’t really hear what was going on. So I think I kind of missed the getting married part.”

  “You missed it? Omigosh, like that’s the most important thing.” She looks shocked for a second, and then smiles. “I mean, apart from the dresses, obvs. What were they…?”

  The wind picks up and blows my ponytail in my face, and I miss the last bit of Gabby’s question. “Um, like, a short blue one for Mum, and then for me…”

  “Not white?”

  “No, but…”

  “Flowers?”

  “She didn’t want a fuss.”

  Gabby’s face drops. “So not even a limo?”

  I shake my head. “It was just really low key.”

  “Oh, weird.” Gabby points down through the sandy path surrounded by bushland, through the beach, with its white sand and blue and white waves. “You’re not going to go in, are you?”

  “Not today. We can just sit on the sand,” I say, and then we pick our way across the path, trying not to get sand in our shoes, or in the rolled up legs of our jeans, until I overbalance in a sand pile, and accidentally kick some over Gabby’s whole left foot, and then we’re both laughing so hard and there’s sand everywhere and we don’t even care any more.

  We find a spot to sit, on a tuft of grass, where we can look right over the whole beach, from one clear end to almost the other end, although it’s disappearing into a haze of salt air.

  “Not as good as the mall, but so nice.” Gabby stretches her hands up and almost yells.

  I silently agree. The beach is one place that gives me back my energy. Maybe it’s the constant, pounding waves, or maybe the fact that the light and the salt and the air and the water are stronger than anything else. “You can go to the beach, but you can’t change it,” my Dad said once. “It will change you.”

  The breeze blows again, and I realise I’m on the wrong side of Gabby. When she talks, the sound of her words will blow right out of her mouth and away from me.

  “Can I swap?” I point to a grassy patch on the other side of me. “You sit here.”

  She looks annoyed at me, but does it anyway. “Did you hear that the Beat Boys are going to be touring this year?” She pulls at my sleeve so I have to look at her. “I can’t believe it. Can you imagine if they came here?”

  I give
her a slightly mocking ‘poor Gabby’ look. “You are so totally in love with that group. Seriously. I think you’re going to marry one of them.”

  She does a pretend swoon. “I’m going to marry all five of them. Imagine if that happened. My life would be complete.” She sits up. “You’d be my bridesmaid, of course.”

  “Great,” I say. “And you’d be married to five B-grade singers all at once.”

  “B-grade. As if. They’re totally the best.” Gabby grins. “But it would be a great wedding.”

  We sit together, comfortable in the silence. I hug my jacket around myself in the cold and count the pounding of the waves on the beach. Five. Six. Seven.

  “It’s so weird, you know,” I say, “about the wedding. It’s like something’s ended.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Just, like, maybe nothing will be the same. Ever.” I put my head down on my knees and wrap my finger around a long stalk of grass.

  “Things change,” Gabby says. She turns her back slightly away from me, but the wind brings the sound of her voice to me anyway. “It’s normal.”

  I break off the grass and flick it away, watching it dance on the wind until it falls, with a sudden rush, to the ground.

  “I know it’s normal. It’s just…”

  I don’t even have words to explain it. I know Gabby’s had a lot of change in her life, but at least every time she’s moved, she’s done it with both her parents. She might have had to change houses, but at least the people in them have stayed the same.

  “I just never thought my mum would want to find someone else.”

  Gabby shifts back to me. She looks softer, in her face. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “I’m just so tired.” It’s still true. Sitting here on the grass, even at the beach, I just want to lie down and sleep.

  “People do this. They get married again. And it could be heaps worse. I mean, you like him, right?”

  I pull a grass stem right out by the roots this time.

  “Of course. Yeah.” I twirl the piece of grass around. A tiny round nodule attached to the root flies around and around beneath my fingers. I imagine myself hanging on to it, twirling, faster and faster, flying around in the air, trying to hold on to what is supposed to keep me strong and solid. “It’s more than that, though.”