Free Stan by C.J. Duggan Page A

would probably
electrocute myself. Maybe I could sneak back to my caravan and have a deep,
peaceful night’s sleep? What was he going to do about it? Tell my mum and dad?
Actually that’s probably exactly what he would do, and the last thing I needed
was to ruin their weekend and for them to come home to yell at me. No, I would
just ride it out, ride him out.
    Listen to the
music, it couldn’t go forever.
    Twelve a.m.—boom-boom-boom.
    Stan be damned.
Ringer, Ellie be damned. My parents be damned. Let him ring them, dob me in and
sabotage everyone’s weekend; I couldn’t care less. I had had enough, for the
sake of my sanity and the ringing in my ears, I couldn’t take it anymore. I
yanked the covers off and skimmed my way to the door, not easy when you’re mad
as hell. I grabbed blindly for the door handle, whipping it open, blinded by
the hall light and blasted by the music, the music that blared from Stan’s
room, the door wide open. All the better to deafen me with. The combination of
the loud music and Stan’s upbeat singing, singing I could barely believe was
still going all these hours later.
    The night they
drove old Dixie down
    And the bells
were ringing
    The night they
drove old Dixie down
    And the people
were singing
    They went,
"Na, na, la, na, na, la"
    I stood in his
doorway, watching on in disbelief as a sprightly Stan lay against his bed head,
air drumming in only his boxers. No shirt, no pants. Just sitting quite
comfortably, empty stubbies of beer by his side. He didn’t even miss a beat
when he saw me standing in front of him, my arms crossed over my singlet top.
My anger had morphed into disbelief as I watched Stan unwind in a way I had
never seen. I thought he might have been embarrassed; instead, he sang louder,
reached over to his beer and saluted me.
    “The Band,” he
yelled over the music. “My absolute favourite.”
    No shit,
Sherlock.
    I smiled sweetly,
nodding with interest as I walked casually over to the stereo player, lifting
up the CD cover and reading the back of it with mock interest.
    I reached over and
innocently pulled the cord out of the wall, plunging the room into the most
delicious silence. My ears were ringing.
    “Hey!” Stan
exclaimed in outrage.
    “Enough is enough,”
I yelled back, mostly because I was still deafened. I yanked the other end of
the cord out of the stereo.
    “Consider it
confiscated until tomorrow,” I said sternly.
    Stan’s mouth gaped
in horror. “I gave you pizza. I gave you water.”
    “You’re drunk,” I
said.
    “Not nearly
enough,” he glowered, squinting into his empty stubby.
    “It makes me
laugh; beer is always the answer, is it?”
    “I don’t know. It
seemed like wine was the answer to all your prayers last night.”
    I felt the minimal
humour I had held in the victory of the cord slip away. “I don’t like you very
much when you drink.”
    Stan looked at me,
really looked at me stone-faced, glowering in a way I half expected to look at
me all the time, not just now. “Yeah, well, I don’t very much like you at all.”
    I hadn’t expected
the way those words would plunge into my heart, the way they made me feel so
wounded by the way he had declared it with such a serious undercurrent of anger
that went far beyond his stereo cord.
    I didn’t get him
at all. Was he nice? Was he sweet? Or was he like all the boys I had ever
known, the douchebags that were all about the boys and fishing trips and beer.
I started to believe that the Stan I was seeing before me was maybe the real
Stan—the one only a certain few got to see—the unhinged Stan that listened to
music in the comfort of his own little shack on the edge of the caravan park.
    And as I thought
all these things, a quick character assessment rolling through my thoughts,
Stan spoke again, swinging to his feet and standing rather steadily considering
all the empty stubbies next to his bed. He stood in front of me, his eyes
looking down at me, deep, smouldering, as if he