Something Else Entirely

2 - He can be more a temperamental teenager than I am.

Sadie and I stayed up most of the 11-hour flight to Honolulu while the others were out cold. I used to think that Dad and I were a lot alike, but that was nothing compared to Sadie and I. We could be talking about the most nonsensical shit for hours and still have more to say, diverging off onto countless tangents about nothing in particular, while still learning so much about each other and having her teach me so much about life with every sentence that comes forth from her mouth. The woman just exudes wisdom with every breath she takes.

I could tell she was growing tired now, though. She was talking through closed eyes, her voice was a fraction more soft than usual, and she was starting to struggle to form coherent sentences. She was staying up just for me at this point, and I wasn't falling asleep, clearly way too buzzed from the cabin pressure and general excitement about going on a plane for the first time.

I pulled my bank card out of the wallet in my back pocket and pressed it into the card slot in the seat in front of me, paying for my access to the movies and TV shows available, even though there was only about 3 hours remaining. The smart thing to do would have been to pay for this earlier so I actually got my money's worth, but talking to Sadie is priceless, and I don't mind paying the cash to watch a movie or two.

I put on Into the Wild purely based on the cover artwork alone, which looked like one of those arthouse films Sadie always likes so much and Dad is forced to endure for her sake. It was actually a damn good film, except for the bit where McCandless killed and cut into a moose in the Alaskan wilderness. Madden finally woke up around that exact time and looked over only to be mortified by seeing that on the small screen. He had grown up eating vegan as a result of Sadie making the shift as a teenager when she started working at this amazing vegan café, Greenies. So this particular footage, which I assumed to be the real deal given how gory it was, grossed him out to no end.

I respected their decision to be vegan a whole lot, especially considering Sadie was such an amazing cook that she even made even tofu taste amazing, and I had made a similar shift over to the green side almost as soon as they moved in. Dad had been vegetarian his entire adult life, clearly having been influenced by Sadie's early veganism, meaning we ate vegetarian in the house anyway before they came to live with us.

People always say that being vegan is a good way to lose weight, but those people clearly don't know how to cook like Sadie does. I swear I've put on like 15 kilograms since they moved in and she started teaching me how to cook like her. Dad is convinced it's just that I've actually developed some muscle on my bones over the year, but I've actually been quite self-conscious about it, especially in the lead up to being topless for a month in Hawaii. Sadie, alternatively, just says it's a good thing. "More padding for when you get tackled in footy so I don't have to pull my hair out worrying about you breaking a bone."

Our first game of the season, I thought the poor woman was going to have a heart attack or stroke or something for all the stress she was feeling. I was supposed to be playing Under 18s considering my age, but I was half decent so was getting selected to play for the Senior side with Dad and Tanner from the very start of the season, which meant Sadie was doubly stressed as I was so much younger and smaller than the legitimate, fully-grown men I was playing against. She was so used to watching Madden play against little kids with a similar weight, height and body mass index to him, and it was taking some adjusting for her to get used to the size difference.

I used to play Australian Rules Football when I was a lot younger; but as the drugs took over at home, there was less money available for luxury items like physical fitness, nutritional food and football registrations for the year. I loved playing so much, but had no money myself to pay for the yearly fees until I started working with Dad; and even then, he refused to let me use my own money to pay for it. "Footy is a family tradition, Jetty, and you're a growing young man. You need to do some kind of exercise to keep fit."