by Melissa Keil
‘Maybe you never said it out loud. I don’t have to be a genius to draw some inferences.’
Toby fidgets with the seams of his sweatshirt. ‘Why do you even care?’ he says suddenly. ‘It’s not like anything other people do bothers you. You don’t yell. You don’t cry,’ he adds, as if this is some sort of revelation. ‘You never cried, not even when you were little. You don’t even really laugh.’
I gape at him. ‘Say something funny, dipshit, and I might.’ Toby blinks. ‘Did you just call me a dipshit?’
I glare. ‘Yes, I did. You obviously put a tonne of weight into the fact that I don’t throw my emotions around like Blanche DuBois –’
‘Blanche who?’
‘Oh, so not the point! But, if you’re weighing up what you think of as evidence and drawing bogus conclusions, you are, quantifiably, a dipshit.’
I don’t know if it’s the dusty, disused heating, but something tickles at my nose. I sneeze, feeling suddenly feverish. It’d be just my luck to come down with some exotic plague, on top of everything.
I rummage in my pockets for a tissue. ‘And to answer your question, yes, Toby. It bothers me.’
Toby just stares. Suffice to say, I can’t read his face. I think it’s sort of appalled, and maybe sort of fascinated, too.
‘You don’t ever say that, though, do you? You’re just always jammed inside your head. You don’t behave like anyone around you matters.’
I rest my forehead on the table, still sniffling. ‘I don’t do a lot of things, apparently. I don’t fight with my best friend, and I don’t go to parties with nice people who I’m a total zero in front of, and I don’t kiss boys. I definitely do not do that.’
I raise my head a fraction. Toby’s eyes widen. ‘Is that what this is about? A … a guy?’ His jaw tightens. ‘What guy? Sophia, did he do something? Did he –’
I sneeze again. ‘Settle down, Captain Jack. He didn’t do anything. It’s all me. And this is not about a guy. It’s about you, and me, and the fact that my presence seems to be as appealing to you as a uranium enema.’
Toby seems to unclench a little. Sweat is darkening the hair around his temples, plastering strands to his face. He takes off his glasses and clears his throat. ‘Right. Well then.’
For a moment I think he’s going to stand, and mumble one of his customary curt dismissals. But then he digs in his pockets and holds a dry handkerchief out across the table. Of course. Toby is the only person on the planet under ninety who still uses hankies. I take it and blow my nose, then look up at my big brother through slightly clearer eyes.
‘Better?’
‘No. Not really. But thanks.’
Toby’s jaw twitches. ‘I’m not as smart as you,’ he says, as if the words are being pulled from some distasteful corner of his brain. ‘I’m supposed to be smarter.’
‘Because you’re a boy?’
‘Psh, no! Because I’m older, and, and I’ve worked my arse off, and I should not be tanking fricking Business Taxation –’ I sit up straighter as my brother sinks, defeated, in his seat. ‘Wait, what? You’re failing? How?’ I think back over one of the rare moments when Toby actually talked about his life. ‘Last time Mum asked, Viljami said you guys were “killing it”. Unless, you know, that means something else in Finnish –’
Toby slumps even further. ‘Yeah, well, turns out Viljami might actually be full of paska. I don’t think he’s handed in one assignment this semester …’ Toby sighs, his chin finally hitting the edge of the table. Brown eyes peer at me through cockeyed glasses. ‘What do you want me to say? I’m just about managing to keep my head above water, but I almost don’t care because I’m so bored studying superannuation, I sometimes fantasise about running up to the podium and pantsing my lecturer, just to break the monotony.’
I shake my head, as if I can force this information to compute by jiggling it into the proper slot. ‘Toby, if you hate it so much, why are you still there?’
He struggles upright again. ‘What else am I going to do? Drop out? Start something new from scratch when I’ve got no idea what I’m even into anymore?’ He glares at me defiantly. ‘It’s a good course. It’s the best option I have. Excuse me for giving a shit about my future.’
I baulk. ‘You think I don’t?’
He throws up his hands. ‘How should I know? You never say. And you always look unhappy lately – how am I supposed to know what you’re thinking?’
‘Well, you didn’t seem to have a problem taking a guess,’ I mutter. ‘What were your exact words? I’m selfish. I don’t feel anything.’
Toby exhales. He suddenly seems to find Dad’s fridge magnets fascinating. ‘Sophia, those things I said … well, yeah. I shouldn’t have.’
I shrug. ‘Maybe I deserved it.’
Toby looks like he’d rather be on the receiving end of that uranium enema than having this conversation, but he straightens his shoulders.
‘So … you had a date?’ he says uncertainly.
It’s my turn to slouch into my chair. ‘I don’t think it was a “date”. It was a thing that I sucked at, because apparently I suck at all the things. Maybe you didn’t mean it, Toby, but you were right. Mum and Dad should have shipped me off to one of those experimental labs when I was a kid. I might as well be just a brain in a jar. I shouldn’t be allowed to interact with normal people.’
‘When did I say any of that?’
‘Boxing Day, lunch. I was five. You were going through your My Little Pony phase. You used to wear sparkly gel in your hair and Princess Luna pyjamas.’
‘Christ, you never forget anything, do you?’ He folds his arms on the table. ‘You’ve really been holding onto that? I’d just seen The Matrix, and you’d eaten the last Choc Wedge. I was mad. I didn’t mean it.’
I force myself to meet my brother’s eye. ‘Why don’t you just say what you mean, Toby? Don’t equivocate. I’m really bad at figuring that out.’
Toby’s brow furrows. ‘I don’t understand you,’ he says slowly. And then, curiously, like he’s been holding onto the question, ‘Sophia, what are you afraid of?’
I unleash a snort of humourless laughter. ‘You want a list? I’m afraid of wasting my life. I’m afraid that I’m just synapses and neurotransmitters, but maybe there’s nothing else there. Maybe that’s all I am? I know that I’m not easy. I’m grouchy and strange, and there are so many people, Toby. So many people who can do the exact same things I can. Why would I be any different? What makes anyone think I have something special to add?’
Toby is gaping at me. ‘Sophia – is that – why would you think –’ He shakes his head. ‘That is the most I think I’ve ever heard you say since puberty.’
‘Then I guess we can add brain farts to the list of things that suck about me,’ I mumble.
Toby glances at Mum’s Elvis clock above the stove. ‘You know, Sophia, when you were, like, two years old, you were obsessed with this crappy stuffed pig toy. You’d carry that thing around with you everywhere.’
‘Mr Pinkerton. I remember. I don’t know what happened to him.’
‘He’s in a box in the shed with all your primary school stuff. I put him there when we moved.’
‘You did?’
Toby shrugs. ‘Mum was going to give him to the Salvos, but I thought … maybe you’d want him again someday.’
‘Why would you do that?’
Toby takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. ‘Because everyone thought you were too advanced for kid stuff, but you loved that pig. You were a contradiction, always.’ He gives me that pained look again. ‘I was really excited to have a sister. But I never … got you. You know?’
‘I know,’ I say, hugging my arms around myself. ‘I’m not what you guys wanted –’
‘No, stop. That’s not what I meant. Don’t be stupid.’
And even though I’m shaky on the inside and out, I chuckle. ‘Toby, I don’t think that’s a word anyone’s used on me before.’
Toby’s smile is small a
nd wry. ‘You might be brilliant, Sophia. But yeah. Sometimes you are also pretty stupid.’
We sit in silence as the house warms, balmy air from the vents sending bits of fridge detritus blowing around the kitchen. I contemplate my brother. His body language still screams tension: shoulders hunched, sharp chin tucked in. But his face is less pinched than I have seen it in ages. I remember, suddenly, the last time I saw him looking so sheepish.
For my fifth birthday my parents took us to the zoo. I was going through an insect phase, so the only thing I was interested in was observing Ornithoptera richmondia up close – the Richmond birdwing butterfly, the largest subtropical butterfly in the country. Toby stood in the middle of the butterfly house with this glassy look on his face, eyes fluttering like he couldn’t decide where to look first. I remember him standing on the suspension bridge, mouth agape, until a Sapho longwing flew into his eye, whereby he burst into tears and we all got dragged to the otters instead.
And I think, in this moment, that I understand something about my brother. Dropped in the middle of a butterfly house, or, say, a lecture on n-dimensional Euclidean geometry, I understand exactly what’s happening. There’s a language that makes perfect sense to me. But for someone who was unfamiliar with advanced topology or the greater subdivisions of the order lepidoptera, I suppose it might be a bit overwhelming. When I think about Toby’s wide-open face, the moment of what even I could recognise as wonder before he was winged in the eyeball, I think I understand something else, too. Toby lost in the butterfly house is me most of the time.
I may not understand the technicalities of people – their behaviours are a mystery, their mating habits confound the hell out of me, and yes, okay, I get a little freaked when they come too close to my face – but that doesn’t mean I’m not fascinated. Occasionally I catch myself gaping at them, confused, but still mesmerised. And sometimes, I even think they’re beautiful.
I take an unsteady breath. ‘Toby. You are a pain in the arse. You have terrible taste in music, and I really wish you would learn to part your hair in a way that doesn’t make you look like a brown Friedrich from The Sound of Music. But … I love you.’
Toby’s face turns a shade of purple. ‘Aw, come on. You don’t need me to say that Brady Bunch stuff. When has that ever been us?’
I stare at him.
‘Right. Well then.’ He coughs. ‘Me too,’ he mumbles.
I push my chair back. ‘Toby – do you think we could … maybe go do something? I mean, something other than homework. Just for a little while? I think I really need pyjamas and Matt Smith.’
Toby stands and scrubs his palms on his jeans. ‘Is he the one with the scarf?’
I scowl. ‘Tobias, how is it that we both emerged from the same uterus, and yet you have not managed to glean even the vaguest Who knowledge?’
Toby rolls his eyes. ‘I’ve been busy retaining useful information. Or trying to. Not all of us have unlimited capacity to squander on angst and dudes –’
I shove him in the shoulder and he stumbles sideways into the fridge. His face is neutral, but I think he might actually have been trying to crack a joke.
‘Hey, Sophia?’ he calls out. I pause in the kitchen doorway and turn around. Toby clears his throat again. ‘You’ll be okay. You know that, right?’
Statistically, no, I don’t know that at all. There is every possibility that I will graduate with sweeping aces like everyone expects, but then stumble into my adult life and meet a sliding series of failures and disappointments. There is more than a slim probability that everything that is exceptional about me now will turn out to be redundant. Fact: If you throw a group of geniuses in a room, someone has to be the dumb-arse.
‘Sure, Toby,’ I say with a conviction I’m not sure I’ll ever truly feel. ‘I’ll be fine.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The potential of free particles
I have never wagged school in my life. It’s not that I’ve feared the wrath of my teachers, I’ve just always had this vague suspicion that some unknown catastrophe will befall me if I break the rules. The strange thing is, I return to school, and not one person comments. Life seems have continued apace without me, and a week passes without any side-eyes or questions. I suppose I should feel insulted, but instead, I’m oddly comforted. No-one notices me or cares what I do, and the realisation is strangely liberating.
Of course, no amount of epiphanies can assuage the fact that there are still six weeks of school to go, and my problems have not miraculously solved themselves.
I’m standing in the swirl of lunchtime chaos, trying to decide which way to go. I’ve been spending most of my lunch breaks in the new library, having discovered this really great documentary on Hilbert’s Tenth Problem, which Mr Simpson, our librarian, has been letting me watch in one of the AV rooms. Today, though, it’s sunny outside, and I’m feeling particularly antsy.
I glance to my left, my eyes drawn through the crowds. Joshua is at the far end of the corridor, wrestling with his bag. Damien is beside him, as he always seems to be lately, nattering something that makes Joshua smile.
By now I should be used to the erratic heartbeat every time I catch a glimpse of him. I don’t know why it hasn’t gone away yet – logically, lack of proximity should have diminished it. But the ache is still there, novel and raw.
I turn away. There’s some sort of commotion happening near me, but I register only the hum of it. Way down the other end of the corridor, on my right, is Elsie. She’s looking at one of the hallway noticeboards, her black topknot neat and severe. Elsie has still not spoken to me; I have not worked up the courage to speak to her, either. The few times I have ventured to the old library at lunch, she hasn’t been there, but I have seen her a couple of times near the basketball courts with Nina and Marcus and their friends, looking blank and bored. Once, when the rain let up, I saw her sitting alone on her blazer on the edge of the East Lawn, her head buried in a textbook.
My feet are locked in place between these two people, as essential as charged electrons circling around me. But no, that’s not accurate, or fair. I am not the centre here. And I want no-one’s energy to revolve around me.
I glance at Elsie again. She’s still staring at the noticeboard, but even from here, I can tell she’s not really reading it. I square my shoulders. I need to step up to the plate, to grab the bull by the horns, to … well, I’m sure there are a thousand sports metaphors. I need to do something. I need Elsie to be my friend again. Anything else is unthinkable.
Someone jostles me, snapping me out of my fugue. The year-eleven boys’ soccer team is hurtling through the corridors on the way to practice, pushing through the crowd in a blue-and-white, Dencorub-scented herd. They’re trying to manoeuvre some giant mesh bags of equipment, and apparently lack both coordination and spatial awareness. They seem unaware that there are other people here, and the entire team seems to be trying to fit through at once.
It’s too crowded for me to move anywhere. A booted foot steps on my toe, and my face becomes jammed in a fragrant armpit. I try to stumble backwards, but the owner of the armpit grabs my arm and yanks me to one side. I find myself shoved against the corridor wall, eighty-odd kilos of soccer-guy pressed against me.
‘Let me go,’ I yelp.
‘Yeah, hang on,’ he says distractedly, his eyes on his teammates and their ineffectual activity. His bare thigh in barely-there shorts is pressed against mine, and his hand is clammy, and he smells like Gatorade. My lungs are trapped behind him, squashed against his back. I try to move but my legs have become liquid. Panic, blind and choking, rises from the depths of my belly. I can’t breathe. I can’t move.
Oh Christ, this is how I’m going to die. In the shitty school hallway, with a squashed egg sandwich in my pocket, asphyxiated by armpit sweat and without even a Cole Prize to my name –
‘Oi! Dude, did you not hear her? Or have too many kicks to the head turned your temporal lobe to mush?’
I force open an eye. Els
ie is standing just beyond the wall of boy, her hands on her hips. She scowls, gesturing impatiently. ‘Come on, dickhead. Move.’
The guy turns, and almost seems startled when he sees me behind him. He lets go of my arm quickly. I stumble towards Elsie, my breathing ragged, my heart pounding like it’s about to burst through my skin. Elsie all but scoops me behind her.
‘Get some peripheral vision, a-hole,’ she snaps.
The guy – who I now see is one of the clarinet players in the school band – looks briefly sheepish, before he is caught in the tide of the rest of the team and swept down the corridor.
I suck in a few desperate mouthfuls of air. A sheen of sweat covers my skin, slick and cold, but I keep breathing, until the panic ebbs into a quiet, woozy murmur.
Eventually I look up. But Elsie’s eyes aren’t on me. Joshua has materialised just a few feet away, his school bag discarded at the other end of the corridor. He glances at me, and at Elsie, and then back at me, his expression all twisted and torn. But then he looks at Elsie again, and something passes between them. Whatever it is makes his face relax. He smiles, just the slightest lift at the corners of his mouth. Then he turns and walks away.
My voice seems to have lost all volume. ‘Elsie,’ I croak.
Elsie shakes her head. ‘You need air. Come on.’
She walks ahead, sneaking looks over her shoulder as I follow behind. I inhale giant mouthfuls of the fresh, cool breeze as we push through the double doors.
Elsie turns with a flourish. ‘Are you okay?’
I close my eyes. ‘Yes. I think so. Thanks, Elsie.’
She shrugs. ‘You looked like you were going to vom right there on the floor. No-one needed to see that. Although, if you did spew over Tom Shaefer, I doubt anyone would complain. He’s a dick. And he can’t play clarinet for shit.’
It takes me a few moments of unhelpful navel-gazing to comprehend that Elsie is actually here, in front of me, not hurrying away or averting her eyes. I gather what remains of my wits before I lose my nerve.