by Nova Weetman
‘I just had an email about diabetes camp.’ Mum turns to look at me. I can tell she’s using her professional face because she knows this subject is not one I want to discuss.
‘I’m not going,’ I tell her.
‘Your dad and I think it would be a great opportunity for you,’ she says, standing up and reaching out to rub my shoulders. Whenever Mum is trying to win an argument, she groups her and Dad together. I bet he knows nothing about it.
‘Nope.’ I step back.
‘Honey, you want more freedom. This is the perfect chance for that.’
‘I want to go to a sleepover party, not go on a camp with a bunch of kids I don’t know.’
‘We’ll talk about it later,’ she tells me, and I know there’s no point arguing because if Mum makes a decision, I will never win.
I’ve never been on a diabetes camp before. Only a diabetes excursion and that was bad enough. One day on a bus with a bunch of super-smiley, hyped-up carers who paired us off depending on what we were wearing. I had to sit next to this teenage girl called Charlie who had piercings in her tongue and was about six years older than me. There were no girls my age and I said three words for the entire day.
I lift up my t-shirt before Mum can do it for me and start squeezing my stomach to find a good spot for the new line to go in. Sometimes it feels like my body is a giant pincushion being stabbed by tiny metal pins. Line changes happen every few days. It’s not as bad as it sounds. There’s an infusion set that delivers insulin from the pump to my body, and it has a cannula that goes just below the skin on my stomach. The cannula is inserted using a needle but the needle comes out and the cannula stays in.
‘Can I do it?’
Mum gives me her don’t-be-ridiculous look and grabs the line inserter, a reservoir and insulin.
‘I’d like to do it,’ I say quietly. I’ve been begging Mum to teach me how to do it myself for the past six months, but she keeps finding excuses. She’ll always find excuses.
‘Diabetes isn’t something to take lightly …’
I sigh without even knowing I’m sighing. I’ve heard this speech so many times. ‘Yep. I think I know that.’
‘Hold your top a bit higher,’ she says impatiently.
Mum holds the inserter in place and presses the button, injecting the needle into my skin without me having to see it. It doesn’t hurt. Tonight it just makes me sad.
I hear Jenna’s key scratching in the lock, like it always does because Dad had it cut at the cheap locksmith instead of the fancy one. When she comes in she’s beaming and her cheeks look pink.
Jenna and I look nothing alike. She’s short with muscles and long dark hair, and I’m tall and thin and blonde. She’s like Mum and I’m like Dad.
Mum finishes up and I quickly smooth down the front of my t-shirt, not wanting my sister to see the pockets of fat that have developed near my bellybutton because of the insulin going in. The nurse at the hospital tried to reassure me it was a totally normal part of being a diabetic, but the rest of me is all skinny and stretched out, and no one else I know has that kind of puckering across their stomach.
‘You’re late, Jenna,’ says Mum, standing up.
My sister rearranges her expression and fiddles with her backpack to stall for time. I shoot her a look over Mum’s shoulder, one I hope explains that I’ve covered for her.
‘Yeah, double choir,’ she says finally. ‘And now I have maths homework.’ She starts up the stairs.
Maths homework is probably a code for going to spend the next hour texting her friends, but Mum says nothing as Jenna vanishes. If only I could waft through the house without interrogation.
‘I’ve got homework too,’ I tell Mum. I dash back into the kitchen and retrieve the invite from the compost. Tomato seeds are stuck to it and it’s a bit soggy, but I smooth it out and take it upstairs.
Our bedroom is huge. It’s probably one of the biggest rooms of the house, which is how we come to still be sharing. A long brown leather couch my parents bought when they first got married divides the room. Jenna has the left side and I have the right. Sometimes at night when I can’t sleep, the sound of my sister breathing or snoring makes me feel safe. She keeps threatening to move downstairs into the study, and every time she says it my heart speeds up like when I’m having a high. I’d hate it if she wasn’t here, but of course I can’t tell her that.
Jenna’s already kicked off her shoes, pulled on an old pair of pyjama pants and is curled up on her bed with her laptop open and headphones on. I edge around the couch and step on enemy territory. She looks up at me and slowly shakes her head, warning me not to come much closer.
I reach forward and snatch the headphones from her ears, tangling the cord in her hair and causing her to yelp as she tries to pull the strands free.
‘What the, Riley?’
‘Sorry,’ I tell her, dropping the headphones and sitting down on the edge of her bed.
She finishes untangling her hair as her phone beeps. I watch her eyes read the screen and a smile wash across her face.
‘Jenna?’
‘Yeah?’ She’s now texting back, not looking at me.
There are so many things I want to ask her but none seem like they’re solid candidates for questions she’d happily answer.
‘Double choir?’
She laughs and tosses her phone back down. I wait for her to confide in me, to tell me the real reason she was home late. Instead, she picks at the edge of her fingernails and I see the skin’s all scabbed and red. She’s been doing that since she was little. It drives Mum mad.
I touch her finger to stop the scratching and she gazes up slowly, like a sleepy lizard.
‘Mum won’t let me go to Lina’s sleepover,’ I say, knowing she’s the only person I can tell this to.
‘Mum won’t let you do anything.’
‘True.’
‘We have to get that sorted before high school,’ she says.
Her phone beeps again and I wait for her to lose interest in me. But she tucks her legs up underneath her and watches me.
‘What do you want?’
It’s not a question I get asked very often. ‘I want freedom.’
Jenna doesn’t laugh, which makes me love her more than usual.
‘Okay. We have to begin Operation Lying Riley,’ she says with a smile.
I smile back and clock that she’s wearing more than one stud in her left ear. ‘Did you get another piercing?’
She touches her ear and then nods. ‘Yeah. Left ear only.’
‘Does Mum know?’
‘Does Mum care?’
‘You’re so lucky,’ I say, flopping down on her bed.
‘We need to find you a hobby that she thinks is important so you can pretend that’s where you are,’ says Jenna.
‘I have netball but she always comes to the games! And she’s never going to let me do any of the things I want to do. Like roller derby or AFL. She’d worry too much about my pump being knocked.’
Jenna shrugs. ‘Maybe something that’s not a contact sport?’
‘Like double choir?’
‘Yes. Exactly.’
‘Are you actually in a choir?’
‘Sometimes.’
I laugh. ‘Okay, so what will Mum let me do?’
‘That’s the problem,’ says Jenna dramatically.
‘She wants me to go to diabetes camp.’
‘Shudder,’ says Jenna.
‘Yep.’
‘But it might be fun …’
I stare at my sister, trying to make the second piercing in her ear suddenly explode. I thought she was on my side. ‘No. It won’t be fun. It’ll suck.’
Jenna shrugs and I know my time is coming to an end. Her phone has started beeping again. She picks it up and starts texting and I accept that my wind
ow has closed. I go to thank her for her advice but she’s pulled her headphones back on and can’t even hear me.
‘Riley, set the table please,’ shouts Mum from the bottom of the stairs.
‘What about Jenna? It’s her turn,’ I yell.
‘I asked you!’ Mum lobs back.
‘Hey, Riley,’ says Dad when I stomp into the dining room. He’s sitting at one end of the table checking his emails on his laptop. He’s only just come home. How can he have more emails?
‘Hey, Dad.’
‘Good day?’ He shuts his laptop and looks up.
I shrug. ‘Okay.’
Dad doesn’t baby me like Mum does. He sort of goes along with Mum but he doesn’t often get involved. Besides, if he got worried about every hospital appointment I had, he’d be even balder than he already is. With him I do things, like play card games, kick a soccer ball, or go for a laneway walk.
‘Quick game of UNO?’
Dad loves UNO. Me? I can leave it. But he always seems disappointed if I say no.
‘No time,’ calls Mum from the kitchen. ‘Dinner in a minute.’
Dad winks at me, amused that Mum is listening in on our conversation from a room away.
I toss the cutlery wildly onto the table, resenting the fact that Jenna gets away with doing nothing.
‘Taking it out on the forks, Riley?’ Dad asks, straightening up my effort, and almost earning a smile.
‘Actually, I want to talk to you,’ I tell him. ‘About Lina’s sleepover party.’
‘I already said no,’ calls Mum from the kitchen.
‘I have two parents!’ I call back.
Dad winks at me, and inside I’m quietly high-fiving him. ‘What’s the party?’
As fast as I can, before Mum can storm in and shut me down, I tell him. About the fancy hotel, the breakfast, the in-house movies.
‘Sounds impressive,’ says Dad, cleaning one of the forks on his work shirt.
‘Her mother doesn’t understand diabetes,’ says Mum, barging into the dining room with a large pan of steaming fish curry.
‘Lina is Riley’s best friend,’ says Dad, stabbing a piece of fish from the pan and eating it. ‘Maybe we don’t need to criticise her mother, Tina.’
I wait for Mum to snap at him. She hates it when he starts sampling the food before dinner’s been served. Actually, she seems to hate lots of things that he does.
‘Get the rice, Paul,’ says Mum in her frustrated doctor voice.
I pull at my plastic diabetes alert band that always confuses the netball umpires. Each week they tell me to take it off, and each week Mum storms across to explain that I can’t. If I collapse then the ambos need to know what’s wrong with me. She’s been telling them this all season and you’d think they could just remember.
‘You can invite Lina here for a night and we can take her out somewhere for her birthday,’ says Mum, turning her attention to me as she starts dishing up plates of food.
‘No. It’s not the same, Mum. I have to be there,’ I say, hating how whiny and high-pitched my voice sounds.
‘You’re not staying over at a hotel without one of us,’ says Mum, finishing spooning the curry into four bowls.
As Dad comes back, I risk a look at him, hoping he understands my silent plea for help. I can’t tell Lina that my parents won’t let me come. It’s a social disaster. And I’ve pulled the sick card so many times lately that I’m amazed my friends still invite me anywhere.
‘What about if I pick her up early?’ asks Dad.
‘What’s the point in going then?’ Mum says.
‘Yeah, Dad can pick me up early. At eleven,’ I say quickly.
‘There’s no point in going if you aren’t sleeping over,’ she says.
‘Please, Mum,’ I beg, imagining all the hours that I’ll miss out on.
‘Nine,’ says Dad. ‘She can have dinner and watch a movie and then I’ll bring her home.’
Mum looks at me and I can see her considering the idea. Nine isn’t great but it’s better than nothing.
I hold my breath, thinking she might actually agree to it.
Finally, she nods, and I grin at Dad, mouthing my thanks to him.
‘No swimming,’ she tells me. ‘I don’t want you disconnecting your pump.’
‘Okay.’
‘And I need to know what you’re eating so I can work out all the grams,’ she says.
‘I can work out the grams,’ I tell her, imagining how Lina’s mum is going to feel about writing out a menu plan.
‘No, Riley. If you want to go, you work with me on this. Okay?’
I nod. I’ll agree to anything if she lets me go. Six hours are better than nothing, and I know I have to take my small victories where I can.
‘And you’re going to diabetes camp,’ she says quietly.
Something snaps in my head. ‘No. I’m not!’ I yell.
‘Riley!’ Mum snaps back.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.’
‘Why don’t you want to go?’ Dad asks, sampling the curry again.
I try to work out what to say, how to frame it so he understands. Then I give up and plough in.
‘Just because I’m diabetic doesn’t mean I want to hang out with other diabetics. Having diabetes in common isn’t going to make us friends,’ I tell him.
‘But you might enjoy being the same as everyone else,’ says Mum.
Sometimes I fear for her patients. It’s like she sees the world as a series of Venn diagrams where we are only connected to the people we share traits with. I’m not like everyone else in Mum’s head. I’m in the curve for the diabetics, and a smaller curve for the diabetics with blonde hair who happen to be good at public speaking and play a mean game of netball.
I decide to speak to Dad and sort of ignore Mum. ‘Diabetes isn’t something we share. It’s not who I am. It’s just a tiny part of me,’ I say, feeling like I can finally explain myself properly. ‘Dad, you don’t go to a camp for men who work in accounting,’ I tell him.
‘But I wish I could. All those number games and trust exercises with tax exemptions!’ He laughs. ‘That would be hideous!’ he says more seriously.
‘Yep …’ I say.
Jenna whacks me on the back of the head as she walks in. She stands near my chair and raises an eyebrow.
‘That’s my chair, kid,’ she says like I’m ten years younger not two.
‘Not tonight, kid,’ I say.
Mum takes the spoon from me before I can scoop some more brown rice into my bowl. ‘Leave room for salad, Riley. Jenna sit down.’
‘I’m waiting for Riley to move.’
‘Jenna,’ Mum barks.
‘Fine.’
Jenna slams past me and sits down next to Dad. I smile as discreetly as I can and she gives me the finger. Just the usual dinnertime routine.
‘Put in forty-five grams for dinner,’ Mum says, looking across at my plate.
I put in forty. I know my body. I know my diabetes. Tonight, I’m doing it my way.
Meg
Tuna’s on special so I grab ten tins. I don’t really like tuna much because it reminds me of the cat we used to have, but it makes for an easy dinner, so I will eat it.
We also need baked beans and muesli bars and a bag of carrots and some apples. I grab a brown paper mushroom bag too because I need a new one for my breathing. It’s not as strong as I’d like, although it’ll do until I can find a better one.
Mum doesn’t go food shopping anymore so she gives me a shopping list and her ATM card so I can access her Centrelink payment that goes into her account on Wednesday morning. Mum says it’s good for my maths skills if I shop like this. I have to add things as I go to make sure I have enough money at the end. I can only use fifty dollars and it doesn’t go very far, although I usually make i
t work.
I was hoping the supermarket would stock shoes, but they only have thongs, and I’m not sure that they’d be any better than wearing slippers to school. Now that Lina’s started calling me Slipper Girl, I’m probably stuck with it. And it’s not like I have enough money to buy shoes anyway.
I toss a couple of packets of Cup A Soup and a loaf of white bread into the basket. It takes a minute to add it all up in my head. The numbers swarm and then fix when I can imagine them standing in columns like my brain is a fancy calculator. There’s enough money left over for a packet of the cream biscuits Mum likes and a small bar of chocolate for me.
I generally keep my head down in the supermarket after school. There are so many faces I spend my day avoiding, and it’s worse if I see them here. I hate them checking out what’s in my basket and seeing what I buy. Although for some reason, as I stand in front of the chocolate bars, I choose that moment to glance up and down the aisle. Maybe it’s instinct, or maybe fate is intervening, but right at that second, Riley looks down the aisle and spies me as I spy her.
It’s a Western-style standoff, both of us ready to shoot first. Although instead of shooting, I turn and flee, hurrying away from her, back down the aisle towards the checkout.
‘Meg!’
I speed up, passing the lollies so fast they’re just a blur of colour and sugar. After what’s been happening at school where her friends all laugh whenever I walk past and Lina makes jokes about my slippers, I have nothing to say to her.
I’ve nearly made it to the end of the aisle when she careers around me and swings her trolley across the aisle, blocking me in. For a second I’m not sure she’s going to stop her trolley. Maybe she’ll slam it into me and the trolley wheels will flatten my body into the shiny white floor.
‘Hey,’ she says.
I start to push past her, trying to get around the side. ‘I’m in a hurry,’ I tell her.
‘Just wanted to say hi,’ she says, sounding almost genuine.
I look up, noticing her blue eyes and messy ponytail. I’m not as intimidated here as I am at school, although I still don’t want to chat.