Finding Abby

9

When Finn's sister Izzy sees my wrist, she gets all matter of fact but reckons it's only a sprain. She gives me a packet of frozen peas wrapped in a tea-towel to hold over it and tells me I need to get an X-Ray if it doesn't start to get better by tomorrow. She cleans up my cuts and they hurt but I'm good. Just embarrassed and feeling weird. There's the outside me acting normal but the inside me feels wired like I'm constantly scanning the horizon for a lighthouse. Finn hovers around looking at his phone until we're done. To make me laugh, he shows me a picture Alex sent of some of the cheese at the exhibition he's at.

We go back to his bedroom and I take the opportunity to properly check out Finn's room before I make the conscious decision to sit beside him on the bed where he's opening up his laptop. It feels comfortable being close to him.

He's got a huge poster of some kind of slick red sports car hanging above his desk. Next to the wardrobe is a messy pile of clothes that contrasts with three pairs of trainers he's lined up neatly along the wall. His doona cover is a sort of Hawaiian silhouette of a surfer and some palm trees. A tall stack of half-read novels, their spines creased back, sits on the floor by the bed.

"Going for a world record for novel reading, O'Connor?" I ask, picking up the top one. It's by Tim Winton. Some short story collection I haven't heard of.

"I like reading," Finn grins, and his neck flushes. "Anyway, this isn't about me. This is about you."

I put the book back on top of the pile and try to see what's on Finn's laptop. Before he lets me see what's on the screen, he turns to me.

"Okay," he says, looking at me with serious eyes, "when I went for a drive with Ben, I kinda grilled him."

I raise my eyebrows.

"Did you know he was in a band?"

"Yeah, he played a song last night," I nod. "He was good. He said they play a few gigs every now and then. Nothing serious."

"Yeah, not the band he's in now. Did he tell you about his old band?"

"What old band?"

"The Disappointed."

"Who's disappointed?"

"No. It's Ben's old band. The Disappointed. It's the band he used to be in."

"Never heard of them."

"They're not famous or anything now, but apparently they were kinda big around the local Melbourne scene in the early Nineties."

Now I'm listening.

"I remembered there was a band on your mixtape I didn't know."

"Which band?"

Finn gives me a look that says I need to pay more attention. I hold the tea-towel with the peas up to my forehead to remind him I'm feeling delicate. It feels fresh. Sharp. "Keep going," I say.

"So, Ben's old band is called The Disappointed," he explains. "A couple of songs on your tape are by them."

I frown.

"Did you bring the tape with you?" he asks.

I rest the bag of frozen peas on my knee and dig the tape out of my pocket. Finn is right. At the end are two songs by The Disappointed.

"When I got home," Finn continues, "I did some searching, you know, to see what I could find about them." Finn turns the screen of the laptop round so it faces me. "And I found this."

It's a video. It's titled: 'The Disappointed live at The Tote 1992'. It only has 72 likes. And no comments. Finn presses play. It's really bad quality. In the dimness I can make out a band playing on a small stage to a packed audience. The camera moves around, jolting, shaking and zooming in and out on the stage. Every now and then the dark shape of someone's head blocks the stage.