You Can't Always Get What You Want.

• Jennifer Ward, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2010

The restrictive polyester of her navy school uniform itches against her back while the Kingswood’s vinyl seats radiate heat. Frustrated, Deborah winds down the stiff window. The noise of the weekday traffic competes with Christy McVie’s voice on the radio.
Deborah cautiously reminds her mother, “Don’t forget my swimming race on Saturday”.
Her mother’s reply did not shock her, “I’ve already made plans with Richard,” defensively adding, “don’t forget that even though I have been dealing with a stomach bug, I dropped you into school the other morning”.
As the Kingswood halts outside the “Mitchelton In-door Swimming Pool”, her mother off-handedly mentions that Richard will pick her up after training. She cringes at the thought of her stepfather’s crooked smile and the smell of stale cigarette smoke stained in the seats of his Ford Falcon. As she steps out of the car, the oppressive humidity hits her and she looks up at the overhanging clouds searching for the relief of an afternoon thunderstorm.

In the changing rooms, Deborah’s diary falls out of her school bag. Cut out images of formal dresses and hairstyles from magazines fall onto the changing room’s damp floor. She intentionally steps on the saturated images remembering her mothers comment;
“You know Deb, Farrah Fawcett’s curls wouldn’t suit your round face.”
She cannot ignore the date written in bold at the top of the page ‘October 27, 1975.’ She stands and stares as if in recollection. It was three weeks from the date when she had seen the positive test stick.

Standing on the starting block, she feels nauseas looking down at the water. The shrill sound of the whistle signals the beginning of training and she dives in. Every muscle begs to quit, while her mind is preoccupied on the image of the test stick and the accompanying thoughts.
“What will Mum say to me? I’ll become even more invisible”.

In the bathroom, Deborah catches a glimpse of her blood shot eyes in the grubby turquoise framed mirror. Hearing the wet footsteps of the other girls approaching, she rushes to a shower cubicle. Wrenching the cream, plastic shower curtain closed, she is finally alone. The rusty shower handles dig into her hands as she attempts to turn them on. Finally, the narrow and hard water shoots down, pricking her skin like needles and hammering her back. Buckling under the pressure, she slides down and relies upon the rough, unhygienic wall for support. She cowers in the corner of the shower as all of the girls begin to sing the Rolling Stones hit, “You can’t always get what you want”. Deborah’s mind travels back to the 27th of October.

It had been a Thursday night and Deborah was left standing alone in the kitchen to set the table for dinner. The smell of cheap fish and chips saturated with oil was suffocating her. The tub of tomato sauce was barely indistinguishable on the burnt orange kitchen bench. Her hands were clenching onto a knife and sweating from her grip it slipped and pricked her finger. She escaped to her mother’s bathroom where the smell of fresh nail polish exacerbated her feeling of suffocation. Putting on a bandaid she went to throw out the wrapper. Canned laughter from the sitcom echoed throughout the house and mockingly rang in her ears as she discovered her mother’s secret. There nestled in the waste was a test stick, signalling a positive sign.

Sitting in the shower, she still feels cloaked in oil, acetone and rejection. After waiting fifteen minutes for all of the girls to leave, Deborah drags herself up off the shower floor. Outside, as expected there is no sign of Richard’s car. Standing motionless on the dusty sunburnt ground she waits. Waiting for someone to remember to her, and waiting for someone to remember to tell her.