Breaking Her Rules

Chapter 50

The Australian summer hits hard. Without school, the days have started to blend together. On one of those hot days, some time after the funeral, the six of us meet in the park with the train. There are children playing in the playground. It is strange that life goes on around us. We sit in a circle on the grass and we share stories, because we've all agreed that the stifling heat of the church and the rigid posture of Julian's father, and the sobbing figure of his mother, did nothing to celebrate Julian's life. So now we sit and talk about everything. For Ainsley, Lucas and I, the stories go back as far as we remember, to when we were children and played together every day. For Harrison, his stories start later, when he first started making friends with Julian, and for Watson they start when we all began our high school life.

Watson tells us about one of his first memories of Julian, something that has stuck with him for so long because it struck him. I imagine little Julian, who as a thirteen-year-old had shaggy black hair and smooth olive skin that made girls jealous. He had those milky green-blue eyes and dark, thick eyebrows and lashes. Watson tells us how despite the fact that Julian was always little for his age, and Lucas and Watson were much bigger than him, he dragged them both aside and made them both swear they would never ask little Emily out on a date, or kiss her. And they'd sworn, because that was the power that Julian Whitney had over them. It had all been for nothing, and that little pact may have ruined everything, but at the time Julian had been firm on his word.

Then Ainsley says, 'I just realised something. Dime's the Limit had a song called "Rose Garden", remember?'

I know the song, but I don't know why she has brought it up. Lucas speaks the lyrics, and when he gets to the second verse Ainsley stops him.

'She brings me a dowry of red roses

And tells me they need water and sun

She says our love is the garden

The flowers will die when we're done.

So I promise to tend to our love

And bring our garden to life

But all the water and sun I give

Can't protect our garden from strife.'

'The roses are the band,' Ainsley says. Nicoletta brought George the band. But "the flowers will die when we're done". If Nicoletta and George broke up, the band would die. And it did, didn't it?'

'So Nicoletta made George promise to care for their relationship, for the sake of the band,' I say.

'So Julian made us promise never to fight over Em, because he knew it would ruin our friendship,' Lucas says, looking at Watson. 'And his own mother made George promise to look after their relationship, because otherwise it would ruin the band.'

'And neither of those promises worked,' I say. 'The band broke up, and look at us. We're broken, too. Just not in the way Julian thought. We're broken in the same way our parents were.'

I pluck blades of grass out of the ground and scrunch them into balls, frustrated.

'Luke, can you please tell a story?' I ask after a while, because I'd rather listen to the good times again.

Lucas tells stories of when they were on the soccer team together as kids, and Julian was always the best at soccer, and he made Lucas cry once because he accidentally kicked him in the shin.

'Do you remember when you boys decided you wanted to learn to skate?' I say. 'And you bought cheap skateboards, and they had crappy designs, and Julian hated the way his board looked. So he unscrewed the wheels and he painted this amazing mural of a punk mermaid and this huge sea dragon thing wrapped around her. And then you guys all wanted skate boards painted like that too, and he charged ten dollars.'