The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay by Rebecca Sparrow

Day and Rock Hudson, hunting for each other and missing each other by seconds. As I leave a room, he enters it and vice versa. Then eventually we’d back into each other in the library amongst the shelves. Books would fall and we’d laugh and make up.
    I allow myself to imagine this scenario right up until Mrs Ramsay taps me on the shoulder outside my English classroom and asks if Nick McGowan is home sick today. I feel sick.
    â€˜Well, I left home early this morning because I was on gate duty, so . . .’ Please drop this. Please drop this .
    â€˜How is he?’
    â€˜Um, well . . .’
    â€˜I think those phone calls he’s been receiving from Sam have come as a bit of a shock.’ She flips open her diary and taps the page. ‘He was supposed to come and see me today at morning tea to talk about it all again – how he was feeling about the calls – but just tell him to come to my office at morning tea tomorrow. It’s important that he continues to talk this all through with me.’
    I say, ‘Okay.’ But what I really want to say is, What the hell is going on ?
    Something in my face must give me away. Mrs Ramsay is bending down now, trying to look into my eyes, touching my forearm.
    â€˜Is everything okay, Rachel? How are you finding it all with Nick moving in?’
    Oh God, she’s trying to do a hit-and-run counselling session on me. Outside my English classroom. With people walking past.
    â€˜I’m fine. Everything is okay.’
    â€˜Just okay?’
    â€˜Good. It’s good having Nick here.’ I look around as I say this, hoping no one is noticing that I’m talking to the school counsellor.
    â€˜So,’ her eyes narrow, ‘is Nick at home sick today? I realise it’s a half-day for you seniors but he still can’t afford to start missing class.’
    This is my chance, I realise. To tell her about the Maths in Society consent form, about the smoking, and the phone calls, about the fact that I am fairly sure Nick McGowan is wagging school today. And it’s the right thing to do. It’s what I should do.
    â€˜I think Nick may have woken up with a migraine or something. I left early so, I’m not sure.’
    Her brow furrows.
    â€˜Pretty sure. I’m pretty sure.’
    Her face immediately relaxes.
    â€˜Oh.’ She straightens back up. ‘Oh, well that’s alright then. Well just tell him to come and see me tomorrow and we’ll schedule in a new appointment time.’
    I pick some imaginary lint off my dress and say, ‘Absolutely.’

‘Hello?’ I walk out of the kitchen and into the lounge. ‘Anyone home?’
    It’s one-thirty p.m. and the house is completely empty.
    I kick off my school shoes and pad barefoot into the kitchen, on the hunt for some food. There’s a jar of almond bread on the kitchen bench, with a note from my mother sticky-taped to the lid. I pull it off. She wants me to bring the washing in off the line. I sigh. The fact that I’m in Year 12 and have an extraordinary amount of work to do seems to be lost on everyone these days. I grab three pieces of almond bread and wonder where Nick McGowan is right now. Wonder what he’s doing. And that’s when I spot him. Through the kitchen window. Barefoot in his grey school shorts, with his blue-and-maroon school shirt unbuttoned and hanging out, Nick McGowan is cleaning our pool. I watch him deftly manoeuvre the long, metallic pole of the scoop through the water, like some kind ofVenetian gondolier.
    â€˜What are you doing?’
    He looks up, over the top of his sunglasses and sees me standing now at the top of the steps, which lead down to the pool. I notice that his blond curls look almost white in the summer heat.
    â€˜The pool was dirty.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜So I decided to clean it.’
    â€˜Where were you today?’
    â€˜At school.’
    â€˜No you