Looking back now at where things went wrong, where I began to lose my way, I can see it started at the pool party. Like Circe turning one thing into another, envy didn’t seem like envy at that point. It felt like longing, or sadness, or being out of place. It was only later that I realised these tiny trickles of ugliness had dripped into my mind, and by then I was knee-deep in the murky stuff.
19
EMILY
The only good thing about slicing my hand open is the fact that Daniel and Mum have been talking non-stop since we reached the clinic. I’m not really focused on what they’re saying because I’m having minor freakouts about needles and stitches, but I’m aware enough to notice the smiles and the easiness of their conversation.
It feels like we’re at the clinic forever, but it’s only about an hour and a half. During the ride back, I’m hoping that when we get to Daniel’s the party will have broken up, but it’s clear from the music coming from the backyard that’s not the case.
All I want is to go up to Adriana’s room and go to sleep, but when I see Dylan dash by with an upset look on his face, I know I have to go find Ade, even if that means facing the crowd I accidentally flashed earlier. If Dylan’s here and is that upset, who knows what’s happened.
She’s not inside, so I head out to the deck. I ignore the whispers as people take in my bandaged hand, and I scan the crowd, trying to see through the dozens of people on what has become an outdoor dance floor.
And then I see Ade. She’s slow dancing in Theo’s arms, her head on his shoulder. Her eyes are closed. His hands are at the small of her back.
He likes her.
I’ve seen this whole thing coming, and I knew I could handle it when it did. I just wasn’t expecting it to hurt this badly.
I quickly head inside and go up to Ade’s room, because I know my face will give everything away, and I never want Ade to think her best friend is ever anything but thrilled for her.
By the time Daniel, Mum and Adriana finish cleaning up after the party, it’s late. The painkillers I took for my hand have obviously kicked in, because I fell asleep in Adriana’s bed. I wake when she climbs in next to me.
‘Hey,’ I say groggily.
‘Hey.’ She switches off the light. ‘I’m sorry for waking you.’ She lets out a big sigh. ‘And for being a terrible friend this afternoon. I shouldn’t have stayed in the pool so long —’
‘You didn’t do anything,’ I say. ‘I’m the klutz who cut open her hand and flashed an entire party, and I wasn’t even drunk.’
Suddenly I’m laughing, and Ade is too.
I groan. ‘I can’t believe everyone saw my bum. I’m actually living in fear that it’s all over Snapchat or Facebook by now.’
‘I didn’t see anyone take a picture, I promise,’ Ade says. ‘And Theo covered you up so quickly.’
I can’t tell her that the knowledge that Theo had an up-close view of my naked ass is seventy per cent of the horrendous embarrassment I feel over the incident.
‘I saw you slow dancing with him,’ I say, because that’s the most positive thing to have come out of tonight. ‘That’s amazing, Ade!’
I want to say You’re the luckiest girl in the world. Instead, I close my eyes and see Theo sitting on the deck, looking at me and smiling. If he can make me feel that special just sharing a conversation, that dance with him must have been incredible.
‘Yeah.’ Ade sighs and rolls over away from me. ‘It was nice.’
Nice? She’s blocking me out and I don’t know why.
‘Ade, you don’t want to talk about it?’ I don’t want to talk about it, because it hurts, but we’re best friends, and if something amazing happens I want her to know that I’m happy for her. ‘You really like him, right?’
She says nothing, and for a moment I wonder if she’s fallen asleep.
‘Ade?’
‘Of course I really like him.’
Her voice wavers slightly and I almost sit up in bed, because I know that waver. It’s the one she gets when she’s about to dissolve into tears.
‘I’m tired, let’s talk about this tomorrow,’ she says, and lets out a yawn, and I realise the tremor has nothing to do with being upset.
‘Okay.’
I look up at the ceiling and, though I try to hold them back, tears trickle from the corners of my eyes. I tell myself it’s because of my throbbing hand, but it’s not. I’m weirdly sensitive that Ade is shutting me out. Normally, we tell each other everything, but tonight I can’t be honest with her about half the stuff I’m feeling.
And now I’m lying here in the dark, angry at myself for being a klutz, ashamed of how awkward and out of place I felt before the accident, and guilty — because when I saw Theo holding Ade, it was like my whole chest ached with why can’t that be me?
Hoping to block Saturday out of my mind, I spend Sunday focusing on my major work for art class. Surprisingly, Ade told me that morning that she was okay with me painting her portrait. Whether it’s because she feels guilty about yesterday, I don’t know, but it’s awesome news. So I spent all Sunday flicking through photos of her, thinking about how I wanted to portray her.
And then I see the shot that Theo took of us at the party, which I’m certain was taken after he said the word ‘gorgeous’, because the look in her eyes in that photo is something else. It seems to reflect so many feelings — surprise, delight, shyness, and a little bit of sadness. There’s so much there that encapsulates who Ade is — but also hints at who she might become.
At the start of Monday’s art class, I snip the photo in half so it only shows Adriana, and toss the other half, which shows me, in the bin.
‘Hey!’ Theo puts his backpack down and looks at the bin. ‘You’re tossing the shot I took of you in the rubbish right in front of me? I’m not an amazing photographer, but that’s a little brutal.’
I point at the photo of Adriana pinned to my easel. ‘I’m keeping the good bit. Actually, I’m hoping you won’t mind if I base my portrait on it.’
I feel weird looking at him. I don’t know why — maybe because the last time I saw him I had that whole ‘my chest is aching’ feeling. Even though I know he hasn’t a clue about my reaction, I still feel hyper-conscious of it.
You had no issues looking at him last week. This is only weird if you make it weird.
He grins. ‘I’ve provided inspiration to the master artiste? Wow. That said, I’m not letting you discard this.’ He picks the photo of me out of the bin. ‘I managed to capture a shot of the elusive butterfly goddess. She’s a rare specimen, so I need proof we crossed paths.’
Remembering our conversation on Saturday, I feel good again. He might be crushing on Adriana, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have our own connection.
‘I suspect the girl in that photo is an impostor,’ I say. ‘Psyche would glide effortlessly from place to place, not stack it like a fool.’
‘Em, I’m the fool.’ He carefully places my photo on the bottom left corner of his easel. ‘I feel so guilty — I never should have let you go first down those steps in the dark.’
‘Are you kidding? I fall over all the time.’
He doesn’t look any happier. ‘I failed a basic chivalry test.’
‘I won’t let them strip you of your knighthood.’ I give him a smile, but he doesn’t smile back.
‘I was bummed we didn’t get to chat more at the party.’ Suddenly his voice goes quieter, so I have to lean in to hear him. ‘Listen, I’m sure you know about this because she’s your best friend, but I think Ade’s still pretty affected by what happened with that guy — I’m forgetting his name again, your dance partner?’
‘Dylan?’ I keep my voice as low as his. How did he pick up on the whole Ade/Dylan situation? ‘He wasn’t meant to be at the party. I don’t know what she’s told you —’
‘She told me the story — you know, about the kiss and the girl who videoed her.’
Ade told him about that? I’m shocked. Then again I told The
o about my dad. He has this way of making you feel like it’s okay to talk about things close to your heart.
‘Do you think she and Dylan will resolve things?’ he asks.
‘God, no.’ The words come out louder than I planned and so I drop my voice again. ‘That bridge is burnt down to smithereens.’
He’s obviously worried that Ade is still hung up on Dylan. I want to emphasise how wrong that is, make sure he doesn’t go on believing it, because I don’t want anything to hold him back from asking her out — but at that moment, Mr Morrison walks in and starts the lesson. I keep waiting for an opportunity, but Mr Morrison keeps to a lightning-fast pace.
In the last five minutes of class, he tells us about this term’s art theory assignment. ‘Three thousand words in total. You can work on your own or in pairs, but the basic brief is that it needs to cover an element of the Renaissance. I don’t mind what your subject is — it can be an in-depth analysis of a painting, a bio of a painter, or a cultural study of Florence, whatever — but when I’m reading the paper, I want to feel like this is a topic you’re passionate about. Surprise me.’
As soon as he finishes talking, Theo whispers to me, ‘Dante?’
Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson
I don’t tell Dad about the afternoon I go back to our old house.
I don’t knock on the door. What would I say? Hi, I used to live here and I need to check your backyard? Instead, I go round the side. It’s on the edge of the block, so I don’t have to edge along a neighbour’s yard, worrying that someone we used to know will spot me.
When I look over the fence all the breath leaves my lungs. Nearly all the yard is paved over now. I don’t know who bought the house, but it looks like anything natural scares them. The only green is a few hedge-like plants, perfectly trimmed, and an orderly line of petunias along the fence. Looking at this yard, you would never know what was here before. Now I understand why some older people want to tell their stories over and over. Because when you tell someone else, it’s proof it existed.
I sink onto the ground and lean against the fence. There was once a garden here, I tell myself.
A garden with a tall pine whose scent drifted up through my bedroom window whenever there was a wind. There were daffodils and tiny purple violets peeping shyly up at you. So many different greens that you ran out of words to describe them. Peonies that only came out once a year, and when they did Mum filled the house with them. There was an apricot tree that grew so much fruit one season its branches hung right down to the ground. Herbs in hanging pots — basil and oregano that Mum and I snipped sprigs from to add to pots of bubbling tomato sauce. It was a garden teeming with life. The people who live in the house now would have been horrified by it.
Mum never wanted an orderly garden. During the week she worked at the florist, making bouquets for weddings and birthdays and new babies, designing the arrangements how the customer wanted them. But in her garden, she liked surprises — unexpected combinations of native plants and traditional flowers; banksias and English roses growing next to each other.
One of my first memories is digging in the dirt. There are endless photos of me wearing little overalls and a hat, crouching beside Mum and trying to copy what she was doing.
I remember her reading me The Secret Garden. ‘There’s naught as nice as th’ smell o’ good clean earth, except th’ smell o’ fresh growin’ things when th’ rain falls on ’em,’ she read, trying to do Dickon’s Yorkshire accent.
I loved that first moment of turning over the soil — the earthy smell that filled the air. The soil felt cool, even through gloves, a contrast to the heat on my back from the sun.
I loved the way time slipped away in a collective sound of spades cleaving through earth, the hum of occasional bees stopping to survey your work. How you felt when you stood up at the end of the day, your back and thighs stiff and sore, but in a good way — it made you feel like you’d done something satisfying. We were always starving for dinner on gardening days and everything seemed to taste that much better.
Being in the garden made me forget about school, about feeling awkward and anxious. It made me forget about the things people did and said to me.
My favourite thing was seeing something I’d planted in the winter appear in spring. It always seemed so incredible that you could cover a seed with darkness, and in time something lovely would push its head through the soil and turn its face to the light.
Putting something in the earth had always seemed beautiful to me, until the funeral.
In that moment, as they lowered her coffin into the hole someone had dug in preparation, all I could think of was how cold the winter soil was in my hand, and how soon it was going to be all around her, and she wouldn’t be able to push her way through, because, unlike the seed, this wasn’t the beginning of something, it was the end.
I felt a scream rising up in my throat, and I wanted to climb on top of the coffin and be swallowed up in the darkness with her.
Emily could read my mind, because she grabbed onto me even tighter, like I was hanging off a cliff.
I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to watch the coffin disappear. But I could still hear and smell the earth being thrown into the hole.
The next few months were a blur, and so were the windows in our house as it rained and rained. It was the wettest spring in thirty years they said. I didn’t care if I got wet when I was getting out of the car, or walking between classes, because I didn’t feel it. All my senses had been wiped, including touch.
One afternoon I was doing the dishes and only noticed after a few minutes that my hands were bright red. The water was boiling hot, but I couldn’t feel it. The burns were bad. Strips of skin peeled off in the next fortnight, and Dad gave me antibiotics because he was scared they’d get infected.
The rain matched my mood, and when the sun came out again I felt angry. What right did anyone have to enjoy the sunshine when she couldn’t any more?
One day in November, I went out to the garden and realised that everything was overgrown. We should have cleared the weeds two months ago. Now, after the rain and humidity, they’d sprung up everywhere. They were choking the earth. Suffocating her garden and everything she worked for.
I ripped them out by hand, not bothering with gloves or a spade. I sank onto my knees in the dirt, felt the dampness seeping through to my skin, the first bodily sensation I’d felt since we’d been told about the accident.
When I let myself look up, my neck was killing me. I looked around and realised I’d cleared next to nothing. This spot that had seemed so huge was tiny compared to what remained. The fact that everything around me was so goddamn alive when she wasn’t seemed like a cruel joke. I was so angry that I smashed my fist into the earth, and hot tears streamed down my face.
I gave up on trying to do what Mum and I did together, because looking at patch after patch of weeds was too much for me, like the thought of trying to live a whole lifetime without her was too much.
Dad must have seen the clumps of earth thrown all over the yard, because the next week he hired a gardener. But seeing somebody else tend to her garden felt like a failure, especially as the plants he put in weren’t the ones she would have chosen.
Sometimes, when Dad was out, I’d go and lie next to the flowerbeds and pretend there was a doorway hidden amongst the ferns that led through to a secret garden. In that garden, one afternoon was an eternity, and Mum and I were always side by side, and nothing terrible like death could ever slip through the walls and touch us.
20
ADRIANA
I haven’t told Emily much about the party because any time I think back to that night, all I remember is turning my back to her in bed so she wouldn’t know I was crying. Crying about a stupid slow dance, and the fact that the whole time I was dancing with the cutest guy at Jefferson, all I could think was I want to be dancing with Dylan. Dylan, the person who never really gave a crap about me. I’m sick in the head to want what I do
after everything that has happened.
So Emily going on about how dancing with Theo must have been the best thing ever just highlighted how messed up I am, because all I felt was a warped sense of satisfaction that I was getting my revenge on a guy who wasn’t even my ex. I was scared that she’d see through me, that everyone would, even Dylan, and they’d all know how pathetic I was, playing a blatant game of ‘make the guy who never cared about me jealous’.
‘So, Saturday night, huh?’ Chanel gives me a wink as we line up for coffee on Monday morning.
‘Listen,’ I drop my voice, ‘I didn’t look stupid, did I? You know, with the whole get-Theo-to-dance-with-me thing?’
‘Um, no.’ Chanel looks at me like I’m crazy. ‘Every guy in the room wanted to be Theo, and every girl wanted to be you.’ She giggles.
I try to smile, but I can tell from Chanel’s face that I don’t have her convinced.
‘You’re still getting used to it, aren’t you?’ she says.
‘It?’
‘Looking different. I didn’t used to be pretty either, you know.’ She drops her voice. ‘Back in Korea. It’s only since I came here.’
I wonder if she’s digging for a compliment, because looking at her big eyes and her perfect nose and full lips, I can’t imagine her ever being anything less than stunning.
‘It took me a while to get used to people treating me differently,’ she goes on. ‘It made me mad at first, because even though people say looks aren’t everything, this proved the opposite. It makes you depressed about human nature. Guys who used to call me names at my old school now send me Facebook messages, all “hey, hottie”.’ She raises an eyebrow. ‘It makes me feel great and horrible at the same time to not reply — you know, the whole “now I’m rejecting you” kind of power.’
I think of looking across at Dylan before I put my head on Theo’s shoulder, and I smile at Chanel. ‘I get it.’
My Best Friend Is a Goddess Page 22