Pulling the Moves Read online

  ‘Friggin’ hell,’ goes Leanne.

  I can’t say anything. I’ve never seen such an awful cake in my life. I feel a sneeze coming on. The place seems to be full of dog hairs.

  Mum pays a small fortune for the cake and I carry it carefully on its silver board to the car.

  ‘Will I put it in the boot?’ I ask, blowing a couple of stray dog hairs off Mum-Barbie.

  ‘Sam. Of course not. That would be unhygienic. And the boot reeks of two-stroke.’

  Mum spilt the lawn mower fuel a week ago and the boot still smells like a petrol station.

  ‘Put it on the seat next to you. And be careful.’

  ‘I’ll have to put the wedding gear in the boot, then.’

  ‘No, that’s no good, our clothes will smell of two-stroke. Put it on the front seat so I can tie the seat belt round it, and Leanne can sit in the back with you and hold the clothes.’

  I put the cake on the front seat and Mum pads it with a towel and puts the seat belt round it.

  Leanne gets in beside me and squashes the clothes by sitting on them. Maybe we won’t have to wear them if they’re un-ironable, so I don’t say anything.

  ‘Off we go,’ says Mum.

  She drives like a snail with arthritis.

  ‘Mum, you’re doing 40 k in an 80 k zone,’ I go. ‘Can’t you speed it up?’

  ‘I want to get this cake home safely,’ she says. ‘Woops! I think the lights are going to change.’

  She puts on the brakes gently. There’s a screech then a thump. We’re jerked forward, then back again. Some idiot’s ploughed into the back of us. The cake’s thrown violently against the seat belt. The bridal party gets chopped off at the knees as the bottom slides under the belt and hits the dashboard with a thump.

  ‘My cake!’ screams Mum.

  ‘My neck,’ moans Leanne.

  ‘My nose,’ I yelp, blood squirting all over my T-shirt.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asks the young guy with blond dreadlocks, peering in at us. ‘Sorry. But I was only doing 80 k and suddenly there you were, right in front of me, stopping at a green light.’

  ‘Amber,’ said Mum, gazing with tears in her eyes at her cake. ‘Here, Sam. Use this towel. Are you all right, Leanne?’

  ‘My neck’s broken,’ says Leanne.

  ‘Whiplash,’ I go.

  But it turns out it’s just been jerked a little bit and after we drive onto the side of the road Mum gives it a massage to make sure it’s okay while we wait for the cops. I lose the plot after that. Our boot’s bashed in like a squashed sardine can, but the old Falcon’s drivable.

  ‘She was drivin’ too slow,’ says Dreadlocks.

  ‘And you were driving too fast,’ says the cop, who’s gazing in our window with an awed look at the mangled cop car cake and the headless bridal party.

  ‘Are you the … er … woman who’s marrying Steve Ransome on Saturday, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes,’ quavers Mum. ‘And that was our cake.’

  ‘Er … I’m sorry,’ says the cop, trying not to laugh.

  ‘Er … I’m sorry, too,’ says Dreadlocks, ‘but you were stopped at a green light.’

  ‘I’ll let the insurance company do the arguing,’ says Mum tiredly. ‘Let’s just go home and have a nice hot cup of tea.’

  Leanne and I get back in the car. I look at her, she looks at me. At least there won’t be a Cop Car Wedding Cake to die for on Saturday!

  We roar up the driveway. Leanne and I lug the wedding gear inside while Mum gets down on her hands and knees and tries to scrape bits of cake and icing off the carpet and dashboard.

  ‘Maybe you could glue the heads back on,’ I say, as she comes into the kitchen holding our headless bodies in her hands. Tears plop onto the Barbie bride.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ says Leanne. ‘Pass them over here. Where’re the heads? Sam, go get the heads.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Just do it.’

  I find the heads and bring them inside. Leanne’s waving a tube of superglue in the air like it’s a magic wand.

  ‘Simple,’ she says as Mum snuffles into her mug of Earl Grey tea. The headless dolls are lined up along the sink and Leanne’s glued their heads on. ‘You can’t even see the cracks where they’re joined.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I go. ‘It’s totally unnoticeable that you’ve got Steve’s head glued on back to front.’

  ‘Oh, LEANNE.’

  ‘Stressing not’, says Leanne and gives it a twist. She’s probably wishing it’s the real Steve’s neck. Leanne likes him okay but she doesn’t really want a cop for a stepfather. It’s a full-on embarrassment.

  ‘There. His head’s right now. Just leave them all to dry.’

  ‘But what’ll I do about the cake?’ sobs Mum. ‘There’s no time to bake a fruit cake and get it iced. And Delmonti’s want four hundred dollars to do a wedding cake and you have to book at least three months ahead.’

  ‘We could buy a Woolies Wonder,’ says Leanne.

  We all look at each other and shudder. Once Mum was in a hurry to buy me a tenth birthday cake. In the cake department of Woolies she saw this fantastic basketball court cake with plastic players on it, so she rang the bell for service. No one came so she grabbed the cake from behind the display case and rushed up to the check-out.

  The check-out chick looked up the price from her list and rang it up, no problems. The hassle came when we tried to cut it and found it was a cardboard dummy.

  ‘Gee, Mrs Studley, I thought my mum was a rotten cook,’ Cooja had spluttered with his mouth full of icing-covered styofoam and cardboard. ‘This is worse. This is the driest cake I’ve ever tasted!’

  I sigh, remembering that buying a cake in a hurry is a good idea, not.

  ‘I’ll ring up Bin’s dad at the hot bread shop,’ I go. ‘He can probably whip up a big sponge cake, whack a heap of cream all over it, and the plastic bridal party can stand on the top.’

  ‘Oh,’ wails Mum. ‘It sounds awful.’

  ‘It sounds coooool,’ says Leanne, who’d agree to anything so Mum’d shut up.

  Let’s face it, anything sounded better than a cop car cake. Anything’d look better than a cop car cake. But the taste was another thing. Bin’s dad makes great bread but the Strachans’ hot bread shop is not famous for its sponges and cakes unless you like them chewy. The eclairs are like gobstoppers and the jelly cakes tend to bounce if you drop them accidentally. Still, we need a cake in a hurry. A cheap cake. Mum’s already wasted a fortune on the smashed version. Which reminds me. I go back to the Falcon with a baking dish and dump the shattered cake into it. I take it back into the kitchen, munching on a chunk.

  ‘It tastes okay,’ I say. ‘Here, have a piece.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Mum, and starts bawling again.

  I have to cheer her up. I ring the hot bread shop and Bin answers.

  ‘There’s been a major disaster,’ I say. ‘The wedding …’

  ‘Steve’s jilted your mum,’ shrieks Bin. ‘I just know it.’

  ‘No, Bin, it’s …’

  But, too late. She’s screaming it out all over the shop and it’s packed with customers because it’s ten to nine and they’ve got this Clear the Oven Sale at a quarter to nine every Thursday night.

  ‘Will you shut up and listen?’ I yell into the phone. ‘The wedding cake got smashed accidentally. Can your dad whiz up a cake, iced and all, ready for Saturday?’

  ‘I dunno. I’ll ask.’

  Mr Strachan comes to the phone and I give him the details. He seems to be thrilled by the challenge. No problems: he’ll do a lovely double-decker sponge, creamed, with white icing. I hang up.

  Then I go back into the kitchen. Mum’s blubbering over the food blender. She’s whipping up her Health and Vitality Slimming Drink of brewer’s yeast and fruit juice. Leanne’s disappeared, probably to go and get her hair done.

  ‘It’s okay, Mum. Mr Strachan’s making another cake.’

  She starts bawling even louder. I’ve heard that br
ides get pre-wedding nerves. I can’t leave Mum like this: she just might try and stick her head in the blender. I sigh and tromp back to the phone and ring Strapper to tell them I can’t make it. I’ll be glad when this wedding’s over!

  LEANNE

  Outa home-hell to the hairdresser’s. I’m only getting a quick trim: the fancy hairdo’ll be on Saturday. Mum won’t let me wear it down. She says I’ll look like a tart. It’s got to be piled up, and she’ll be there beside me getting her hair done and watching every move.

  Why my mother feels the need to get married I’ll never know. Steve’s a nice enough guy I suppose, but he’s going to move in. Living in the same house as a cop will be the pits. Maybe I’ll move out and get a homeless kid’s allowance and all. It’d be great.

  I haven’t got time to change, or I’ll miss the bus.

  It’s the usual non-event trip into town. I sit up the back and look out the window. Rows of houses, all the same. Cars with different brand names, but all looking the same. This city’s a terminal hole. Nothing to do, no one worth getting to know.

  I wish I was back on the run to Noosa. It was exciting, hitch-hiking with the surfers, meeting up with this Koori girl, Alicia, who helped me find my dad (who was a waste of space), then driving back home with Danny and the crew.

  Danny’s a great guy. He was Victoria’s Most Wanted, did car burgs and all sorts of stuff because he was really mixed up, but then he started going straight. He met me up in Noosa and we just clicked. Then when we came back he stayed at our place for a while. But he decided the only way he was going to get it together was to go up north to the elders to learn about his roots and his culture. I write to him nearly every week but he never writes back, except for one postcard when he got there. He mightn’t even get my letters.

  But at least my life’s better than Sam’s. What a serious loser!

  I wheel into Andrea’s salon and skim-read a couple of Cleos while I wait. You can learn a lot of life stuff from Cleo, certainly more than Mum ever tells me. She probably thinks oral activity’s some kind of dental check-up. I read about how to get a man to commit, why males don’t bond, what to do when he doesn’t notice you, why he never comes back after the first date, and ten ways to lose five kilos in a week.

  Then I get shampooed and get my ends trimmed as Andrea blabs on about some new guy she’s tuning, Barton Someone. He sounds a like a first class gooba. She’s not sure whether she’s going with him or not: he’s told her he’s got four other babes hanging over him. Well, I wouldn’t stand for that. I’d have to be number one, special, not number five in some harem. Andrea’s lost it.

  As I leave I shove the article about “How to get your man to commit” under her nose. It sounds like she needs it! Although I don’t know whether Danny and I are still hot. But then guys don’t seem to like writing letters. According to this article in Cleo I just read, guys don’t like phoning for a casual chat, either. It said, “Males use the phone as an investment to further their careers or sports networks. They mainly talk about work. Females, however, use the phone to extend their friendships and feminine bonding.” I guess that’s why Danny hasn’t phoned, either.

  I don’t really care, do I. Do I?

  Right now there’s these five guys trying to click onto me. There’s Jake, he’s kinda cute, but a bit short, and Bruno, but he’s a bit too up himself. Toby’s okay, but a bit too serious. Lynton’s full-on into basketball, and everything else comes second, including any girl he goes with. And Darren’s tall, sporty, a bit of a pirate: he’d be a real look except that he’s got crooked, yellowish teeth and bad breath. Cleo hasn’t said anything about tactfully telling a guy he’s got bad breath.

  Bit of a shame they’ve all got major faults. If I could wrap all their good bits together in the one package I’d have the perfect guy.

  I must sound like I’m up myself, but guys do like me, it’s a fact of life. And I like being liked by them. I’m not gorgeous looking, but I guess I’m okay. I work at the blue-eyed, dumb blonde look, trying hard to hide the fact that I’ve got brains. When I nearly won the Young Achiever Award by growing gigantic lupins for a science project it was the worst moment of my life. That, and discovering that my dad didn’t want to know me, or my Koori friends.

  Unbelievably, Mum was cool when she met Danny for the first time: it blew me away.

  But is he still my boyfriend? Am I supposed to wait forever? I guess we didn’t have a firm understanding: he left, didn’t really say if and when he’d be back. He hasn’t contacted me. I guess he isn’t my boyfriend. This means I haven’t got a boyfriend.

  Nearly everyone I know’s got a boyfriend at the moment. I’m nearly sixteen and no boyfriend. Help!

  But then if I did some serious spadework on Lynton … I’m sure I could get him to forget about basketball and footy and running for a while. I’ll be the only girl in history who’s able to get his mind off sport and onto sex. Anyway getting Lynton to toe the Leanne Line’ll be a snap!

  Okay, Lynton’s the go. That’s it, I’ve made up my mind. I’ll click onto Lynton.

  I stroll out of the hairdresser’s and run into Fern, my best friend. She’s looking particularly gooby in white jeans and a blue top. Pear-shaped girls should not wear white jeans. Should I tell her? No, it sounds like I’m being bitchy, especially as I’m wearing white jeans myself.

  ‘Thought you had to baby-sit,’ I go.

  ‘Er … it got cancelled.’

  ‘You could’ve phoned, but.’

  ‘Well … I didn’t have time.’

  I frown. Something’s not quite right here. Fern’s been my best friend since primary school. I can read this babe: she’s keeping something from me.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘Your hair’s nice.’

  ‘Come on. What’s going on? You’ve got this suss look about you, Fern.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Okay, then, if you insist. Let’s go have a Coke or something.’

  Fern looks at her watch. Now I know something’s up. Fern never looks at her watch, which is why I wonder why she wears it at all, except that it’s expensive and her father gave it to her. (I call him her ex-father because he doesn’t live with Fern and her mum, same as my father, and he’s definitely my ex-father as far as I’m concerned!!)

  ‘Aw, stop stuffing about and come on, will ya?’ I say, grabbing her arm. ‘I have to tell you about a big decision I’ve just made. I’m going to click onto Lynton.’

  ‘What?’ Fern stops and stares at me. ‘I thought you liked Toby.’

  ‘I told you, Fern, he’s too … dead.’

  ‘But … yesterday you were doing a full-on rave about him. And Darren.’

  ‘Darren? Knock-’em-dead-with-one-breath Darren? Imagine kissing him. Yuck. Reality check, Fern. No, it’s Lynton. I’ve made up my mind.’

  We keep walking. Fern’s scurrying along at a fast pace, which is unusual for her. She’s built short and chunky which is a major bummer: we can’t swap clothes. Not that I’d want to, mind. She has pig-awful taste. (I can think this because I’m her best friend.)

  ‘Slow down,’ I go.

  But we’ve reached Bruisers and we motor inside.

  There’s the usual crew hanging, so we do the “Hi” bit and grab a table. The air’s steamy with hot food and hot hopes. Bruisers is the local hang-out, and if you’re not seen there at least three times a week you might as well be dead in a coffin as far as your social life goes.

  ‘Betcha I can get a date with Lynton for Sunday,’ I say, as we order the Cokes.

  ‘Betcha you can’t,’ says Fern, looking at me with her dark eyes. ‘Well, leastways not after two.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he’s taking me to a basketball game.’

  ‘What?’

  I gaze at Fern, my so-called best friend, as the waitress puts down two Cokes.

  ‘When did all this happen?’

  ‘He rang me. That’s why I’m not baby-sitting. I’m mee
ting him here for a Coke. And like I said, on Sunday we’re going to see the Super Cats play the Devil Dogs.’

  ‘Well, talk about pulling the moves,’ I snap. ‘You know I’m keen on Lynton. You know I was just acting cool. You know he was just waiting for me to say “Yes”. And while I’ve been flat-out with this wedding bit, you go and spade him from under my nose. Some friend!’

  ‘You said you didn’t like him, he was too much of a sports freak.’

  ‘I didn’t say I …’

  ‘Hi, girls,’ says this male voice.

  Lynton.

  I look at him. He’s wearing blue Levis and a navy rugby top with a blue and white checked jacket. His blond hair flops over one eye. I always think he looks a bit like a sheep dog. Now that Fern’s got this date with him, somehow he looks more appealing.

  Maybe it’s the hassles at home, maybe I’m tired, maybe I’m just a born-again bitch, but I can’t help it. I saw him first!

  ‘Hi, Lynton,’ I coo, and flutter my eyelashes at him.

  He does a double take, because I’ve always more or less ignored him. Well, I didn’t want to play second fiddle in his sports orchestra, did I? But this is different. This is full-on war.

  ‘Hi, Leanne. Hi Fern.’ He sits down.

  ‘We’ve ordered,’ I say, ‘but then I could always go another Coke. And I wouldn’t mind some nachos.’

  ‘I thought you had to go, Leanne,’ says Fern in this “I wish you were dead” voice.

  ‘Soon. Soon. I can spare some time,’ I go, looking sideways at Lynton.

  Fern nudges me under the table. I ignore her. Lynton looks puzzled.

  ‘I hear there’s a really good basketball match happening on Sunday,’ I go.

  Fern kicks me so hard with her Blundstone. She nearly breaks my ankle.

  ‘Do you want to see it?’ he goes.

  ‘You’re taking me,’ snaps Fern.

  He looks from one of us to the other. Fern scowls. I smile very sweetly.

  ‘I can take both of you,’ he says.

  Over my dead body. Fern can take a hike up a high hill.

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Except that I thought Fern was going to be really busy on Sunday afternoon.’