by Melissa Keil
I close my eyes. Music swells through my ear buds. I may have been listening to the same song on repeat, possibly for the last few hours, possibly longer. It’s torturous, but probably the karmic juju I deserve.
I feel Sam shuffling around to the side of my bed. He tugs out one of the buds and leans down, pressing it to his ear. And then, the giant tool-faced git bursts out laughing.
‘Jesus. Are you serious?’ he says through demented cackling.
‘Leave me alone,’ I mumble. ‘I’m busy. I am grieving.’
‘No, you’re not,’ he says between snorts. ‘What you are doing is lying on your bed, in the dark, listening to Air Supply and feeling sorry for yourself. You are being a twelve-year-old emo. From 1982.’
I yank the headphones out, music still blaring. A sudden fury whooshes through me as I bolt upright, smacking my head on the bottom shelf. Sam takes a hurried step backwards. He looks like he’s trying not to piss himself laughing.
‘What are you doing here, Sam? Shouldn’t you and Camilla be, like, brushing each other’s hair or, I dunno, picking out names for your future babies or something?’
He blinks a couple of times, then shrugs. ‘She’s put her foot down about Leia. I’m still working on it. As for what I’m doing here – Camilla made me come. Apparently, this is a guy situation. Although I’m not sure what sort of situation calls for two guys to hang out in the dark listening to eighties ballads, so Josh, please, can you turn off the music? I think some of my testosterone just evaporated, and dude, I’m not sure I have that much to spare.’
And despite everything – despite the fact that my heart feels like it’s been blowtorched – I laugh. It comes out as a painful croak. I flick off the music and toss my phone onto the floor. Sam clicks on a lamp, and dazzling light floods the room. I flop onto my back and peer at him through splayed fingers.
He sits at my desk and glances around. ‘Hey, cool poster,’ he says, pointing at my Mandrake the Magician frame.
I shrug. ‘It’s stupid. It’s a stupid bloody thing for a grown guy to have on his wall. Take it if you want.’
‘Yeah, nah,’ he says dryly.
‘How did you even get here? How d’you know where I live?’
‘Bus, train, tram,’ he says evenly. ‘Your sister let me in. And Camilla tracked you down. Actually, Camilla dragged me into the city and railroaded Amy.’ He smiles wryly. ‘When she’s in the right mood, I think my girlfriend might be the only person on the planet who’s scarier than your boss.’
I grunt. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered. Anyway, I can pretty much guarantee you’ve got no advice that’s gonna be of any use to me.’
‘Yeah, advice isn’t exactly my thing. I’m not the most useful guy when it comes to this stuff. But believe it or not, I think I know what you’re feeling.’
‘You have no idea –’
‘Like getting kicked in the nuts, repeatedly, by a giant with a steel foot would be less painful?’
‘Nice metaphor.’
‘Accurate?’
I sigh. ‘Yeah. I suppose.’
Sam hoists his arse onto my desk. His eyes follow mine to the distant blue ceiling. ‘Josh, Camilla is …’ He shrugs with a sheepish smile. ‘Camilla is my person. But not because I think she fell out of the sky or anything asinine. We got really lucky. And, if circumstances were different – if her dad moved somewhere else, or if I was a bit stupider – we might never have happened. Circumstances, dude. Like, statistically, how many people are likely to end up hanging in an abandoned campsite that doubles as a serial killer’s lair, or building their house on an Indian burial ground –’
I groan. ‘Please, I’m begging you, no horror movies –’
He holds his hands up. ‘All I’m saying is, there are a thousand scenarios in which Millie and I could be passing each other as strangers on the street. And yeah, occasionally I wake up in a sweat thinking about that, but my point is – I don’t think it was fate. I think it was luck. Luck, and that bizarro chemical thing, and not being a complete arsehat. And timing.’
‘Right. Timing,’ I echo. I bury my face under my pillow again. I think I can safely say that my timing isn’t stupendous. Who am I kidding? If it were to rely on its current brilliance, my timing would probably see me strangled in my own straitjacket, drowning in an underwater torture cell, my face eaten off by tigers.
I sit up. ‘God, you’re right, Sam. I mean, seriously, what the hell am I doing? I can’t make a decision beyond the next five minutes. I can’t think about anything after this year without my brain melting. I have shit hair. I live in a bloody cupboard. I am a loser, a joke, the tail end of a failing trick that’s gonna fizzle into nothing –’
Sam rolls his eyes. ‘Josh, do you think you could maybe focus on one crisis at a time?’
‘Where do I start? Sophia was the one thing I was certain of.’ I hear the words come out of my mouth. They sound pathetic even to my ears.
Sam grimaces. ‘Right. Well, maybe then – there’s your problem?’
I blink at him. Without my glasses on, everything is blurry, yet something hovering on the edge of my vision seems to suddenly become clear.
I know that what I’m feeling for Sophia is real. That thing, the sad crush I had before I knew her properly, has been replaced by something solid and true, and the thought of letting it go makes me feel like I’m sinking. But while I’ve been pouring all my energy into thinking about her, I have successfully managed to ignore the fact that it is now September, and I still have no plan, no ambition. I have written off the rising terror that I have totally crapped all over this school year, because as long as my attention was misdirected, nothing else needed to matter. I remember Camilla’s irritated words from what seems like a lifetime ago. Maybe I have been unfair. And not just to Sophia.
I dig my palms into my eyes. ‘Sam … maybe you’re right,’ I whisper.
Sam dusts his hands. ‘And she says I suck at this stuff,’ he mutters under his breath.
I look around my room. It looks like a tomb, and smells like a tomb’s dirty sock basket. It’s so small in here, my little cave, made smaller by my blockade of books and broken clocks, which I always meant to learn how to fix, but somehow have still never got around to.
I reach for my glasses. ‘Sam, man, I think something might have died in here. I mean, something other than my pride and heart and all hope for the future.’
Sam rolls his eyes. ‘Dude, the theatrics? I don’t think I’ve included anything that melodramatic in any of my scripts. And I have one where a staffroom of teachers gets eaten by a horde of mechanical slugs. But yeah, it reeks in here. Can we go somewhere else? Your sister said I looked like a Yaoi character. I don’t even know what that means. But I’m not sure it’s supposed to be flattering.’
I swing myself off my bed. The room sways; whether from days of inertia, or the shock of an epiphany, I can’t say. I grab my mobile, noting approximately eighty-five thousand messages from Damien, and not all of them featuring Harry Potter gifs.
‘Yeah. Think I need some air. And, ah, I have this mate, I guess, who I should say hey to.’ I send Damien a text, and am immediately spammed with replies. I sigh, but I can’t help but chuckle, too. ‘You should meet him. Picture Adrian’s taller, more disgusting cousin.’
Sam’s eyes widen. ‘Jesus. This I need to see.’
He hands me my jacket. Stepping out of this room feels dangerous, a confident statement I’m not sure I’m ready to make.
I take a deep breath and crack open my door. ‘All right. So plunged the Bolsheviki ahead, irresistible, overriding hesitation and opposition –’
Sam wrinkles his nose. ‘Dude, do you ever get the feeling that we might not be the coolest people in the universe?’
I laugh. ‘Yeah. I reckon that’s pretty much a given.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The illusion of spacetime
Time, as it is annoyingly prone to do, passes. I manage to kill a whole swathe of it with
Doctor Who, and even a bit on the vague pretext of studying for the upcoming Drama exam. But mostly, it’s maths that saves me.
Perelman is an arsehole. I mean, how hard is it to return an email? I briefly consider tearing down his photo, but after some reflection, I draw a pink Sharpie moustache on his beardy face instead, and leave it where it is – right next to the two of hearts that seems to mock me, but which I can’t find the will to discard.
I ignore my brother, and my brother ignores me. It’s like we have slid inexorably into parallel dimensions, passing each other with just the barest suspicion that the other exists. It’s fine. I bury my head in my work, powering through the extended reading in my university syllabus, which actually proves interesting enough to distract me from everything, including Elsie, who refuses to make eye contact when I see her at school. I don’t know what to do. I find myself frozen next to her in Bio, walking towards her in the corridor and then, at the last moment, fleeing in the opposite direction. I just can’t face her telling me again how badly I have let her down. But more than anything, I know how selfish I am being; the solid foundation I have propped my back against is suddenly absent, and its loss is more than I can grasp. It’s my problem to deal with alone, though. I may not fully understand why, but I do know that I have hurt Elsie enough.
And then there is Joshua. My unsolvable problem, my messy-haired mystery. I see him in the corridors, and in the back of the Biology lab, and after school, walking across the carpark that feels like it will be wet for the rest of eternity. Occasionally our eyes will meet; accidentally, or at least, I think accidentally. Sometimes he gives me a tiny half-smile; most of the time, he looks away. Sometimes I think he looks sad; sometimes, when Damien is yammering in his ear, he laughs, and the sound never fails to turn my head. But there’s something in his demeanour that’s different, too, something more serious, like his focus has turned elsewhere. I have no idea where his head is at. I guess I wasn’t prepared for how strangely … amputated that would feel.
Of course, the entire mess that is my life can be summarised by one irrefutable fact: I am still stuck in the hell that is Drama. I’m muddling my way through, still stumbling towards my exam, still convinced that my imminent failure will be the thing that sends my life spiralling from its dysfunctional state, to full hermit-living-in-the-storeroom-of-the-Maths-faculty phase.
Ms Heller is unrelenting. She captures me one day after class, just as the lunch bell rings, a firm hand on my arm. I pull away, glaring, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Ms Heller looks, if anything, like she has reached the end of her tether, too.
‘Sophia, stick around. Let’s chat.’
Damien pauses in the doorway. He gives me a look that I think might be sympathetic before Ms Heller shoos him away.
‘Sure. Whatever,’ I say, slumping into a chair. I don’t think I was ever a petulant kid, but I’m feeling decidedly irritable, and not in the mood for another futile pep-talk.
‘Okay,’ she says, taking a deep breath. She stands in front of me, hands on her hips, multiple bracelets jingling. ‘We are running out of time. I know you weren’t exactly thrilled to be in this class, Sophia, but I honestly thought I could help you. But now I’m starting to think that you’re so resistant – I’m starting to wonder if this was the best move.’
Oh, you’re only realising that now? And I thought I was bad at reading people.
I cross my arms. ‘So what do you want me to do?’
She twists her hair up on top of her head, squaring her shoulders like she’s preparing for war.
‘I want you to trust me. And I want you to try. Okay?’
She gestures for me to stand. I feel something brewing deep in my gut, something hard, something defiant. It’s not panic. I don’t know what this feeling is, but I stride up the stage stairs with a distinct frostiness gathering in my bones.
She makes me march from one end of the stage to the other, blowing air through my lips in noisy raspberries. She makes me hold an empty cup and saucer in my hands, pretending to sip invisible tea in various states of joy and suffering. I do it all, feeling further and further removed from myself. But then she hands me a monologue from A Streetcar Named Desire. (‘I took the blows on my face and my body! All those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard!’ Seriously, what in ever-loving Christ does this have to do with my life?)
I have had enough.
I come to a standstill at the edge of the stage, where a sole year eleven is practising the flute in the orchestra pit.
‘No.’
Ms Heller pauses. ‘Excuse me?’
I see her face, the growing confusion. It almost makes me backtrack, this awful sinking feeling that comes with the knowledge I am letting someone down.
But then she takes my arm again, heedless of the tension it so clearly generates in my body, and she ushers me to the back of the stage, where a giant mirror sits propped against a wall. It’s just me, my blank reflection, and Ms Heller’s earnest face over my shoulder.
‘What do you see, Sophia?’
I cross my arms again. ‘I see myself. I see brown skin. Teeth. Lips. Zygomaticus muscles. Eyebrows that my cousins are always trying to get me to pluck. What am I supposed to be seeing?’
Ms Heller closes her eyes. She exhales noisily. ‘Okay, let’s try this again. I am trying to light your fire, Sophia! I’m trying to get you in touch with yourself –’
‘Argh, stop! I’ve wasted enough time this year trying to touch myself!’ I grimace. I turn away from the mirror, Ms Heller narrow-eyed in front of me now. ‘Did you ever think that maybe I am in touch with myself? The things that make me happy – well, maybe they’re not the things that you understand, but – do you get that I never felt inadequate until people started telling me I needed to be fixed?’
My hands are trembling. But I feel my brain cracking open, like it has discovered proof of an equation that’s been eluding me.
I am not good at this. I am not supposed to be. The things that I am good at, the things that ‘light my fire’, might be narrow, and weird, and mysterious to almost everyone else. And sometime, someday, maybe I will suck at those things too. But at least they’re mine.
I am tired of hiding in my own shadow. I am tired of pushing aside the things that make me me, for some shinier version of myself that ticks everyone else’s boxes.
‘Ms Heller, I know you mean well, and I’m sorry I suck balls at this. But I don’t think you have anything else to teach me here.’
I push through the backstage curtain and descend the stage stairs. The flautist in the orchestra pit ignores me, lost in her own world as she blows a jaunty tune. I gather my things and walk outside. And then I keep walking, past the East Lawn and the old amphitheatre, past the main building and the carpark and the bench and the school gate and, heart hammering, I head home.
My house is, unsurprisingly, freezing. I dump my things in the kitchen and clock, with senses on full alert, the furious clack of a keyboard in the lounge, loud in the silence.
Maybe Ms Heller has actually managed to unleash something in me, something primal, something itching for release; or maybe recent events have obliterated any instinct for self-preservation.
I march over to the thermostat on the kitchen wall and flick on the central heating. It roars to life, like some monstrous beast in the ceiling has awakened.
The angry typing in the next room stops. A moment later footsteps barrel towards the kitchen, and then my brother appears, in all his frazzled glory.
He does a double take. ‘What are you doing here?’ he snaps.
‘I’m skipping school. What are you doing here?’
Toby strides over and flicks off the heating. ‘I’m working. Or trying to. And what do you mean, you’re “skipping school”? Since when do you wag?’
I glare at him. Like my hands are operating independently of my brain, I reach out, slowly, and turn the heater back on.
Toby narrows his eyes. He paws at the controls again. The heater
stops with a groan.
I hold my brother’s eye and, very deliberately, I reach for the wall. ‘I. Am. Cold. I’m sick of being cold. Viljami is an idiot. If you think freezing your balls off is necessary, then go stick them in an ice bath. Other people live here too.’
Toby’s whole face puckers, his oh-so-familiar sour-lemon look. He tries to grab for the controls again.
I shriek, a foreign sound like an insane banshee, and slap his hand away.
Toby squeals. He holds his hand to his chest, eyes wide and wounded behind his glasses. I reach for the heating again. He yelps, and slaps my hand back.
And then, like we’re two toddlers fighting over the last Lego, my brother and I are slapping each other’s hands in a frenzied, and frankly ineffectual, skirmish. Toby, five years older than me, glasses askew, hair flopping out of his side-part, looks exactly like he did at his last primary-school sports carnival – face averted, eyes closed, hands floundering wildly in the vain hope of pitching a shotput anywhere but onto his teammates or his own foot.
‘Toby! Stop it!’ I yell as his watch connects with my wrist bone. ‘Why do you hate me so much?’
Toby physically recoils. It’s such a definite movement that his glasses tilt even more precariously, hands frozen mid-strike. It would almost be comical, if it weren’t for the fact that this is my brother, reeling from his aversion to me.
‘I don’t … I never said … you hit me first!’ he splutters.
I stomp to the other side of the kitchen and drop heavily into a chair. ‘Yeah, well,’ I say sullenly as I rub my stinging hands. And then, because my brief Fight Club foray seems to have reduced my intellectual capacity to that of a moron, I finish, ‘you started it.’
I bury my head in my hands and massage my temples, expecting him to be gone when I open my eyes again. But then I hear the scraping of a dining chair. I look up. Toby flops down across the table from me, breathing heavily.
‘I never said I hated you,’ he says slowly. ‘I might not have an eidetic memory, but I’d remember if I’d ever used those words. And I haven’t.’