“Is that true?” Jenni’s mum asked her.
Jenni had her face pushed into Na’vi’s neck. “Did you miss me, girl? You didn’t miss me, did you?”
“I hate to think how much that cost,” Jenni’s mum said.
“Don’t get me started.”
“Thanks for driving them.”
“No worries.”
“See you soon. School holidays coming up.”
“Oh yeah. Can’t wait.”
—
Late that night, just after two, Elise was woken by a text from Zach. You up?
She squinted at the screen, then shoved her phone under the pillow without answering. Five minutes later it buzzed again.
See ya
Elise sighed and rolled onto her back. The sticker stars above her were all faded; it had been hours since she turned off the light.
Im slee—she was writing back when the phone rang in her hand.
“I got sick of typing,” Zach said, “so I just called.”
“Okay. What’s up?”
“Not much. I can’t sleep.”
“How come?”
“I dunno. Darren crashed here last night, and we played Wii all day. Now every time I shut my eyes, it’s like I’m playing that FIFA game in my head.”
“Oh yeah, I hate that.”
“Have you actually had that before?”
“Yeah, it used to happen all the time when I played Cactus Ninja.”
“Oh, good. I thought I was going crazy. I told my mum and she started looking it up on WebMD.” He laughed. “Are you in bed?”
“Yep.”
“Me too.”
“Cool.”
“Where’d you guys go last night?”
“Just home.”
“You left so early, you missed everything.”
“Yeah, I saw Sara-Jane’s pics. Looked like you guys were getting pretty coze.” Zach didn’t respond to that. Elise heard a rustling sound, like he was turning over in bed.
“We’re having another party in the holidays. My dad’s going away. You have to come.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not going to, are you?”
“I dunno. I’d have to check.”
“With who? Jenni? I’ll ask her, too.”
“Okay. Don’t call her now, though. She’s probably sleeping.”
“What’s the deal with you guys? Holly told me you haven’t been answering her messages.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“You should be careful, Lise. You don’t want to lose all your friends.”
“Whatever. It’s not like I’m gonna lose Jenni.”
“Yeah, you’ll always have Jenni. And Na’vi.”
“Exactly.”
“And I’ll still be your friend, even when you’re acting like a total freak.”
“Nah, I’m good with Jenni and Na’vi.”
“Wow. Such a smart-ass.”
“You love it.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I do. It’s so annoying. Good night, Lise.”
“G-N.”
—
After school on Tuesday, Elise’s mum took her to see Dr. Alonso, the pediatrician she’d been going to since she was born. He was still her doctor but he hadn’t looked directly at her since she’d gone through puberty.
“I don’t mean to overreact,” Elise’s mum said, sitting in the chair beside her in his office, “but she’s been acting a bit different. We were worried it’s chronic fatigue or something.”
“Elise?” Dr. Alonso stared at something just to the left of Elise’s elbow. “Have you been feeling differently?”
Elise shrugged and leaned her head over to the left, to try to get within the doctor’s line of vision. “I dunno,” she said. “I just haven’t felt like going out as much.”
“Any changes in diet or lifestyle? Are you a vegetarian or anything like that?”
“No.”
“Everything’s okay at school? No problems keeping up with classes? Any issues socially?”
Elise tilted farther to the left. The doctor shifted his gaze accordingly. “No, it’s fine.”
And just when she thought the guy might be legitimately cross-eyed, he turned and looked directly at her mum. “And everything’s okay at home? No major changes?”
“No. I mean, we’re busy as usual, but that’s nothing new.” She looked over at Elise. “Lise is the only thing that’s changed recently.”
The doctor said he would do some blood tests. He also suggested starting Elise on a low dose of an antidepressant, to even out any chemical or hormonal issues she might be having.
“I dunno,” Elise’s mum said. “We’re not really big believers in that sort of thing.”
“Yeah, I haven’t heard good things,” Elise said. “But do you have any Xanax? Or isn’t there something for ADHD that curbs your appetite?”
“Okay,” her mum said, standing up. “We’ll all discuss it at home and come back.”
—
“I don’t wanna go back,” Elise said afterward. They were at a café across the street from the clinic. Elise’s mum was drinking a mochaccino. Elise had a chai latte with honey. “He’s gross.”
“He’s not gross,” her mum said. “He’s a hundred years old. He has kids older than you are. Didn’t you see the photos? You girls—you think everyone who looks at you wants to sleep with you, and everyone who doesn’t look at you wants to sleep with you. Honestly.”
Elise didn’t respond. She dragged her chair halfway around the table and leaned her head onto her mum’s shoulder. “What are you doing?” her mum said. “You’re weirding me out.”
Her mum smelled exactly the same as she had when Elise was little: a mixture of apricot moisturizer and the mouth rinse they used at the orthodontist’s office where she worked as an assistant.
“Can I have the foam off your coffee?” Elise asked.
“No,” her mum said. “I want it. Why don’t you get your own?”
“I don’t want my own.”
Her mum tilted her cheek over until it rested on the top of Elise’s head. “Elise Ashleigh Jensen,” she said. “What are we gonna do with you?”
“What I really want?”
“Yeah?” Her mum sat up. She put her coffee cup on its saucer. “What?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I won’t.”
“You already are!”
“I can’t help it. As soon as someone says not to. But go on, tell me.”
“I kind of wanna go back to horse camp.”
“Seriously?” her mum said. “The one in Daylesford?”
“Just for a few days.”
“Wow. I don’t even know if that place still exists.”
—
The girls insisted on sitting in the backseat together, even though Jenni’s mum complained that she felt like a taxi driver.
“It’s not like we’ll pay you at the end or anything,” Jenni said.
“How are they playing Prince on the golden oldies station?” her mum asked. “You girls know who Prince is, right?”
It was Saturday morning and most of the traffic was going in the other direction: people coming into the city to shop or go to the football match. They took the Monash Freeway to the West Gate Bridge. The girls looked back at the skyline as they left it behind. Half an hour later they were passing housing developments they’d seen advertised on TV. IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU’D BE TEEING OFF ALREADY, the signs said. Half an hour after that, they were driving through countryside, past green fields where cows stood around chewing grass and staring out at the road, as though they were the scenery.
Elise and Jenni had each packed leggings, boots, flannel shirts, woolen scarves, gloves, and parkas. Elise had half a gram of weed and some rolling papers. Jenni had a six-pack of Vodka Cruisers rolled inside her sleeping bag. Both girls remembered what they used to bring to horse camp: a Ouija board, stuffed animals, a ton of junk food, and a torch with extra batteries, in
case they wanted to tell ghost stories, or in case they got scared walking from the dining hall to the cabin at night.
They remembered all that but somehow it didn’t occur to them that the other girls at horse camp were going to be the age they had been back then—until they pulled into the campground and saw a group of girls kicking a ball to one another across a soggy field. They looked really young: ten, eleven, twelve.
“Great,” Jenni said.
“Can we get a cabin to ourselves?” Elise asked Margot, the older woman who ran the camp, when they went into the office to register and pay.
“Most of the cabins are closed up this time of year,” Margot said. “But I’ll put you in the emptiest one, just a few other girls in there. They’re all friends, from Castlemaine. They’ll probably just keep to themselves.”
Jenni’s mum tore a check along the perforation and slid it across the desk. The girls walked her back to the car. “Have fun,” she said as they pulled their bags out of the trunk. She was about to climb into the driver’s seat when Jenni came over and gave her a hug.
“Whoa.” Jenni’s mum lowered her hands onto her daughter’s back slowly, as though the girl might detonate at any moment. “I don’t think you’ve hugged me since the day I said you could get a dog.”
“That’s not true,” Jenni said, letting go.
Her mum waved out the window as she circled out of the car park. “Text me if you need anything,” she called. Then she pulled her hand back into the car.
—
The other girls were already in the cabin when Elise and Jenni got there. They were sitting on three different top bunks, listening to music, and passing around a big bag of corn chips. Elise and Jenni had heard them talking when they opened the door, but they’d stopped as soon as the older girls came in. The one closest to them was playing Candy Conspiracy.
“Do you have phone reception out here?” Elise asked her. “I can’t get any.”
“I can sometimes get 3G. But this isn’t a phone, it’s an iPod touch.” The girl smiled. She was pretty, in a freckly way, but she was going to need braces.
“I’m Elise, this is Jenni.”
“Naomi,” said the girl.
“Dylan.”
“Indira.”
Elise and Jenni took the bunk bed at the back, near the bathroom. “Can I have the bottom?” Jenni asked.
“I wanted it,” Elise said.
They scissors, paper, rocked it. Jenni was paper and Elise was paper. They played again. This time Jenni was paper and Elise was scissors. Jenni threw her bag up the top and sat down on Elise’s bed to change out of her flats and into her riding boots.
“ ’Cause you’re a glow stick, girl,” a Disneyish pop song played through the tiny speakers on Indira’s bed. “Gonna light up this whole world.”
“What grade are you guys in?” Jenni asked.
“We’re in fifth grade and Dylan’s in sixth,” Naomi said.
“How do you know each other?” Elise was in the bathroom, in front of the mirror, reapplying her eyeliner.
“Me and Dylan are family friends, and me and Indira are in the same class at school.”
“Cool.”
“What year are you in?” asked Indira.
“Tenth grade.” Jenni stood up and stomped her feet to get them used to the boots. Elise zipped up her makeup bag.
“Ready?”
“Yep. Let’s go.”
They left the cabin without saying goodbye to the younger girls.
—
The horses were standing around in a paddock across from the dining hall. There were about ten of them, all with their heads down, grazing. The girls plucked bunches of long grass out of the ground on their side of the fence and held them over toward the animals. The horses looked up. A few stood staring at them. Some went back to huffing at the ground. “Come here.” Both girls shook the grass in their hands. Jenni made kissy sounds with her mouth. Eventually, a few horses wandered over.
The one that came to Elise was acorn brown. “Hey,” she said, “are you hungry?” The horse ate the grass straight off her palm. She used her other hand to rub the white patch on its forehead.
Two horses approached Jenni; one was dusty brown with a black mane, the other one was white. At first she liked the brown one better but it tugged the grass out of her hand with its mouth, swooshed its tail, and walked away. The white one stuck around, letting her thump her hand against its side. It had long eyelashes, and its little teeth were all squashed together in its mouth, reminding her of a dolphin’s.
“That one’s Snowflake,” said Margot, squelching over in her gum boots. “You can ride her if you want.”
“What’s this one called?” Elise asked.
“Glen.”
Margot told them their riding group would be the two of them and the other girls in their cabin. Their ride leader would be her daughter Bridget, who lived in Melbourne and had come up for a few days to help out.
The girls found Bridget in the stables, brushing down a black horse that was rolling its eyes with impatience but standing still. Bridget didn’t notice the girls until they said hi.
“Oh, hey.” She smiled at them. She was petite and wore pigtails. She was probably in her mid-twenties. “Do you girls need to pick your horses?”
“No, we did already. But we’re just wondering. We’re in your riding group—”
“Great!” said Bridget.
“We’re just a bit worried. Because we’re pretty experienced. I mean, we’ve been here before.”
“We just want to trot and canter and that, and we’re worried that the girls in our group—they’re younger and they might be more at the beginning stage.”
“Okay. Margot told me you’re all intermediate, but I’ll check with her again. The ride today is just gonna be, like, a stroll, so everyone can get used to their horses. Tomorrow we’ll get into the more intensive stuff.” She laid a saddle mat onto the horse’s back. The horse stamped a foot. “Shh,” she said.
“Okay, sweet,” Elise said. “We just wanted to make sure, because—”
“Yep,” said Bridget, in a tone that could have been bitchy and could have been businesslike. “Got it.”
—
But once Snowflake and Glen were saddled up and the first ride had started, the girls were just happy to be sitting on their horses. They didn’t care how fast they were going, or even where. Bridget had given them all quick instructions in the beginning—reminded them to hold both reins loose in one hand, tug on the left rein to go left, the right one for right, and to pull back on both and say “whoa!” if they wanted their horses to stop. All five girls had paid attention, had sat and listened with straight backs and the balls of their feet pushed out into the stirrups. But none of it was necessary. The horses knew the terrain well, and they walked along in a loose group without any guidance.
Bridget led them through a few open paddocks and up an incline, into some bushland. The path was narrow here, and the horses formed a single line. It was a bit of a climb, and Bridget told the girls to lean forward, to make it easier on the animals.
It was quiet, except for the sound of the horses’ feet on the wet leaves underfoot, the breathy sounds they made with their mouths, and the occasional thump of a kangaroo bounding out of the brush, away from them. The gum trees made the air smell like Vicks VapoRub. Every now and then, they passed a pile of horse droppings left behind from a previous ride. The younger girls would point it out to one another and laugh. Jenni leaned forward and rubbed Snowflake’s neck. “Hi, girl,” she said. Elise stroked Glen’s mane. It was sticky and tangled and she couldn’t get her fingers through. He tossed his head until she stopped trying.
—
There were about fifteen other girls in the dining room at dinner, all of them younger than Elise and Jenni. The two girls took a table by themselves. They had just started eating their lasagna when another tray was plopped down beside them.
“Do you mind if I sit here?
” asked Bridget. “Margot and the other group leaders eat in the kitchen, but all they talk about is work. And when you grow up at horse camp and you come back to work at horse camp, it’s the last thing you want to talk about after hours.” Bridget smiled and rolled her eyes.
She wasn’t eating lasagna; she had made herself a Greek salad in the kitchen. As she chewed, she asked the girls questions about themselves. Where they lived in Melbourne (Murrumbeena), whether or not they had siblings (Elise didn’t; Jenni had a half brother from her dad’s first marriage but he lived in Perth and she only ever saw him at Christmas), what they did for fun (“Um, you know, just go to Highfern and hang out with our friends and stuff”), whether or not they had boyfriends (“No”), and what they wanted to do after they finished school (neither of them really knew. Jenni thought maybe marketing. Elise liked taking photos but obviously that wasn’t really a job you could count on getting, so she wasn’t sure).
Bridget was very encouraging about all of this: the marketing, the photography, the not knowing. She herself was doing a master’s in community development at Deakin Uni.
The girls hadn’t made up their minds about her. She had changed into a stripy Saint James top and tight jeans, which they liked. But the community thing sounded so boring, neither of them even bothered asking what it was.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Jenni asked her.
“I have a girlfriend, actually,” she said.
Jenni and Elise shot each other a quick look. “Like a girlfriend-girlfriend?” Jenni asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Like a partner.”
Her partner’s name was Jade. She was two years older than Bridget, and they lived together. Elise asked what they did for fun, and Bridget said lately they’d been staying home a lot because they were saving up for a trip to Cambodia. “We’ve been watching heaps of TV shows. Jade’s obsessed with The Wire at the moment. And sometimes we go out with friends.”
“Like, to a club or to bars?” Jenni asked.
“Just to our local pub,” Bridget said. “Nothing crazy.”
“Are your friends guys or girls?” Elise asked.
“Women mostly. Other gay couples. Oh, and one straight guy. Felix.” Bridget shook her head. “Poor Felix.”
The girls were starting to lose interest in the whole thing when Bridget smiled at them and said, “It’s so cool that you guys are such good friends. Female friends are really important, I reckon. How long have you two known each other?”
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