Crossing the Line Read Online Free PDF Page B

his face. He looks like one of those characters in a kids’ puppet show, with beady glass eyes and shiny cheeks the colour of ripe tamarillos.
    ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude or anything. It’s just . . .’
    He’s back in control. Leans forward again. ‘Does it worry you that you might have offended me?’
    ‘No. Why would it?’
    He waits expectantly as if he knows I’ve got more to say. Maybe I have, but not this time. Now my mind clangs shut, as does my mouth, my big fat mouth.

6

    M att’s rattling around in the kitchen when I arrive home.
    ‘Hi!’
    ‘Hi, yourself. Want a cuppa?’
    ‘Yeah, thanks.’
    By now Matt knows how I like my coffee: white, strong, two sugars. I watch him potter about, getting out the mugs and pouring milk. He flicks a long honey-coloured strand of hair from his eyes.
    ‘Hmm,’ he says, studying my face. ‘You don’t look too good, anything wrong?’
    ‘No, not really. I’ve just come from seeing Freudie Babe.’
    Matt places the mug in front of me and grins.
    I like him a lot; I’m even starting to think of him as my best friend. Maybe one day I should tell him . . . He doesn’t talk all that much, especially when Amy’s with us, but he’s thoughtful, perceptive. I think we know each other pretty well now.
    He blows on his coffee to cool it. ‘They always want to dig inside your brain, those doctors . . .’
    ‘Absolutely.’
    ‘You know, when Mum and Dad and Jenny were killed . . .’ He gulps. Those words are still hard to say. ‘Well, they took me to a shrink.’
    I pet Persia as I wait for him to continue. Matt often pauses between sentences as if he needs to have some control over his thoughts. Or perhaps it is his feelings.
    ‘I suppose I wasn’t ready. Refused to say anything about the accident, about the funeral, how I felt. Didn’t say a single word.’
    ‘Good for you.’
    ‘Five sessions we sat there. The place had a really nice ceiling . . . and the patterns on the carpet were good too.’
    ‘So what did he say?’
    ‘Nothing much. Although it was a she, actually. Doctor Joy, can you believe?’
    ‘What a hoot!’
    Matt’s face lights up. ‘Yeah. It was funny. Doctor Joy . . . man, was she hot! I tell you, it was very hard to concentrate on what she was saying. Let’s just say there were some big distractions . . .’
    We both laugh. Then he sits in silence, thinking back to those days, maybe to his family. I watch his fingers – slender and elegant – stroke the side of his mug as he stares into space. We each took different roads to get here, but we’re still in the same place, owning the same kind of scars, feeling the same kind of hurt.
    ‘Feel like a hug?’ I say it softly. It surprises me as much as him.
    ‘A hug? Yeah, that sounds pretty good.’
    There’s such a wistful look on his face that my heart clenches. I wrap myself around him. He holds me loosely, his arms looped around my back. There’s nothing passionate going on here – neither of us game enough to plunge into deeper water but there’s a closeness that I’ve rarely known. Matt doesn’t say anything, just keeps holding me. I wonder if I should reach my face up to his and kiss him. All I have to do is move a fraction of an inch . . . but I can’t.
    ‘We should clean the kitchen,’ I hear myself say over his shoulder. ‘It’s disgusting, all this junk.’
    ‘Um, yes.’ He breaks away from me. ‘Okay. I’ll help you.’
    We carry on as if nothing has happened, but we know it has. My heart is going glump, glump, glump and I have to sit down.
    Later, when he leaves for soccer training, I go back into my room, and put on my CD of Three Men and a Gun. I give myself a serve for being chicken. You idiot! So weak! But there will be another time for me and Matt – I have to believe that. I lie awake for ages before sleep claims me.

    The front doorbell rings and I spring out of bed. It’s Jan. She comes around once a week to see how we’re coping and