My Best Friend Is a Goddess

by Tara Eglington

  The lump in my throat triples in size as I try to find the words to explain what happened between us tonight. In the end, I just nod, my eyes filling with tears.

  Mum puts her arm around me. ‘You need to give her a bit of space. She’s going through a really bad patch. Daniel’s been wondering for weeks whether to make her go back to the counsellor and I think he’ll insist on it now.’ Mum’s voice is gentle. ‘Give her a few days, and then go round and apologise. Remember, you two always work it out.’

  I nod again, even though all I can think is: Maybe this time it’s different.

  Walking through the school gates on Monday is hell. I know the Tens have spread the word about how I stole Adriana’s formal date as girls give me death stares all through my morning classes.

  I don’t say anything back, even when the whispers get super-nasty, because let’s face it — I went to Theo’s house, I kissed him, I stayed. I did everything my conscience told me was wrong, so honestly, I deserve what they’re saying about me.

  I really, really want to skip art class as the idea of standing there next to Theo is excruciating, but Mr Morrison finds me during recess.

  ‘Emily, can we talk?’ He leads me to the art room, even though there’s still fifteen minutes before class starts.

  Has he changed his mind about the exhibition, and wants to break it to me gently? My heart starts pounding at the thought.

  ‘There was an incident on Friday night. A student — we know who it is from security footage — entered the art room and I’m very sorry to say,’ Mr Morrison sighs, ‘destroyed your work.’

  I freeze. All I can think is Lana and The Tens, but when Mr Morrison brings out a canvas — or really, what is the remnants of a canvas — from behind his desk and I take in the shreds of material — parts of Adriana’s smile and eyes, the remaining glimpses of a face I know as well as my own — I know who destroyed it.

  ‘Adriana,’ I whisper.

  For a minute all I feel is horror, thinking of her slashing her own image to pieces. She must have been hurting so badly at that moment.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Emily.’ Mr Morrison shakes his head. ‘I spoke with both the principal and Adriana’s father this morning. This is considered a very serious offence, and as a result, Adriana has been suspended for the next fortnight. Please don’t worry about your mark for this semester; your grade will of course be a reflection of the work you put in throughout the term. And the exhibition —’

  I can’t look at him. I stare at the ceiling, blinking back tears as I think of the show I’ll no longer be part of. Some other student’s work will hang on the wall where mine should have been.

  It’s not just missing out on being part of a real-life exhibition. That work was the best thing I’d ever created — I’d put everything I had into it.

  ‘There will be other chances, I’m sure,’ Mr Morrison says softly.

  Right now I can’t bear to think of starting again, the months of hard work and mental effort behind creating something anew.

  ‘Em.’ Theo’s entered the room. Hearing the pity in his voice as he stares at the ruined painting pushes me over the brink.

  I run from the art room, Theo behind me. Within seconds, I realise there’s no point in running. You share classes, you idiot. Do you really think you can avoid the inevitable conversation? So I stop at the end of the verandah, turning to face him. He tries to pull me in for a hug, and even though I’m desperate for comfort, I shake my head and step away.

  ‘Theo, I can’t.’

  ‘I know it’s a mess. But I’ve never felt like this about anybody —’

  ‘Please stop.’ I’m crying now. I can feel people staring at us from the yard. ‘What I did to Adriana — I can’t forgive myself —’

  ‘Emily, please —’

  Every time I look at him, my whole body feels like it’s burning up from guilt and shame. I shake my head. ‘You need to forget about me, okay?’

  I run for the girls’ bathroom. I stare in the mirror, wondering who this person is that’s looking back at me.

  Liar. Betrayer.

  I can’t be with Theo and like myself.

  I wait five agonising days before I go over to Ade’s house. I don’t think Daniel knows about our fight, because when I knock on their front door, he lets me upstairs to Ade’s room without asking her.

  She’s lying on her bed, thumbing through a magazine. She doesn’t look up, but she knows I’m there. Eventually she throws the magazine to one side and says, ‘I suppose you’re here to try and explain.’

  Even though she won’t look at me, I tell her everything as I stand there in the doorway — about what happened at Theo’s house, about the contact with my father. I tell her I’m ashamed of myself, that I was weak and betrayed her and did everything a best friend never should. I tell her I will never see Theo again. I ask her if there’s anything I can do. I plead with her to let me prove that I care more about her than anyone or anything else.

  ‘Like I told you, I don’t care.’

  ‘I’m not lying, Ade —’

  ‘I know you’re not lying. Just go.’ She picks up the remote and flicks on the television.

  I can’t move. I’ve known since the second my lips touched Theo’s that she wouldn’t forgive me, but the reality of that is so excruciating that I feel close to losing control of my basic functions — standing, breathing, blinking.

  ‘You know, I hope you and Theo do get together,’ she says, ‘because at least then you didn’t betray me over something that means nothing.’

  Then she stands up and shuts the door in my face. Not an impulsive slam, but a cool, decisive click that tells me her door will never be open to me again.

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  If life was a movie called Adriana and Emily, I would forgive Emily. She would come to my room and deliver a poetically perfect apology, and as she’s speaking the camera would zoom in on my face, capturing my emotions as they change from anger to sadness to utter forgiveness. In this scene, Adriana would cry, and then Emily would too, and then they’d throw their arms around each other in perfect timing, with beautiful, half-teary smiles.

  Real life is nothing like that. In real life, Emily’s apology doesn’t make me feel any different, except for making me angrier that she thinks she deserves forgiveness. In real life, I know I’m half to blame, but I don’t want to admit it to her because then she’ll feel less guilty than I think she deserves. So I hang on to all the reasons I’m angry because being angry is easier than being sad, and feels that little bit further away from ‘messed up’.

  Angry makes me want to wipe out any connection to my old life, like it’s fight or flight. I’ve been trying to get rid of old Adriana all term with new friends and new clothes and a new bedroom, but it’s not enough. Emily is my final sacrifice.

  I tell myself she’s the reason our friendship died, and no-one would forgive her. We’ve grown apart, it’s obvious, so it’s for the best anyway.

  In real life, I want to hurt her. I want to send her ugly texts and call her foul things in front of our whole year. I want to start a rumour that she slept at Theo’s on formal night, that she’s that kind of girl. I want to make the Tens write abusive stuff all over her Instagram page. I hold back on those things, not because of my conscience, but because I want to look like Jefferson’s sweetheart and have Emily be the villain.

  In real life, I hate myself, but I don’t let myself think too much about it.

  I don’t let myself think about anything too much — after all, I’m a Ten now. I drink vacuousness like it’s water and I’ll die without it. I obsess about my makeup, start low-carb diets, suntan with Chanel, bitch back to Lana, go to music festivals with the twins and wear clothing I once would have stared at.

  In real life, I never acknowledge the card Dylan leaves on the doorstep, or the flowers from his mum’s garden, the ones that make me figure out he’s been the one leaving roses on my mum’s grave for the last ei
ghteen months. I stop talking to him again because he’s my past and I’m running from it.

  I flirt with boys all the time and I feast on their compliments like a vampire, always hungry for more. I walk around like I’m the new and improved Tatiana.

  I fight like hell with Dad about going to the counsellor, even if it’s a different one I’m slightly more comfortable with. I scream at him and lock my door, and go out at night and don’t answer his texts or pick up his calls. When he grounds me I don’t play by the rules.

  I hate him for dating Isobel, and for the fact that by mid-Year Eleven, it’s going so well they start to want to do all sorts of things with me and Emily — the four of us — like go to outdoor concerts with fireworks, or eat at Italian restaurants, or hire a house down the coast for the Queen’s birthday weekend.

  Family things. I had a family, and I didn’t want this new one. I say no to everything they suggest.

  I mess up my Year Eleven exams and don’t choose the right Year Twelve subjects.

  In real life I know I’m playing the victim, but I want to. She died, and I want the whole world to know I’m furious, because then she meant something. Then people know she held my world together.

  Well-adjusted or normal means she doesn’t matter any more, that everything continues on as if she never existed at all.

  Emily’s Diary

  I always find myself wanting to write, She broke my heart. But it never looks right on the page. I’m a girl, and we weren’t lovers, and most people don’t call the end of a friendship a break-up. But that’s the only phrase that seems to sum up how it feels to have lost her. To see her every single day, but not be able to say anything to her, or know anything about her life any more. To worry I’m not there to watch her back, and then to realise I don’t have that right because I’m the one who stabbed her in the back. To know it’s undeniably my fault.

  She broke my heart, but the truth is, I was the one who broke us.

  The rest of term four is horrible, and so is the start of summer. I spend most of my time outside of school crying under the covers, as I replay all the shoulds and shouldn’t haves over and over. Sometimes I’m desperate to call or text her, to beg her to forgive me. What holds me back isn’t pride; it’s knowing I’ve put her through enough already.

  I deserve to feel like this. I deserve to have lost her. I deserve to be lonely and the one all the other girls avoid.

  I start writing in a diary because I feel like I’ll go crazy if I don’t let some of this stuff out, somehow. I write a lot about Ade, about how much I miss her, about what I want to say to her about the formal night and our fight, about my fantasies that one day we’ll be friends again. I know she’ll never see any of it, but it helps. It makes me face up to things about myself. Why I envied her. What my insecurities are. How I could have acted better.

  Sometimes I use the diary to write letters to my father, to say things I’ll never tell him in real life, even if sometimes I’m tempted.

  I don’t tell Mum about contacting him. I know she’ll feel hurt on my behalf, and it will throw her mind back into the past when she’s finally moving forward.

  She and Daniel are super-happy. Sometimes when he helps Mum and me with painting the verandah, or he fixes the bookshelf in my room or the heels on my shoes, I can’t help imagining him in the dad role — it’s hard not to. If I’m honest with myself, I don’t think I’ll ever stop wanting a father, but I do try to keep that castle in the air from getting too elaborate.

  After all, if he and Mum don’t wind up together for the rest of their lives, I need to be okay with knowing that what Mum and I have is enough. I might have missed out on a dad, but I got one heck of an amazing mum to make up for it.

  When Theo knocks on my door on Christmas Eve, I know I shouldn’t answer.

  I promised Adriana I wouldn’t have anything to do with him, and that shouldn’t change even if our friendship is over.

  But suddenly Mum’s behind me, asking who’s at the door, and before I can stop her, she’s opening it and inviting Theo to join the dinner she always holds for friends from the gallery who don’t have families to celebrate with at Christmas.

  He fits in perfectly of course — Mum can’t stop raving about him after the guests finally head home. The story of Theo and Ade and me still hurts too much to try and explain, so I just shrug when she asks me why I haven’t told her about ‘this fantastic boy’.

  I wind up taking him to Mum’s gallery in the new year, because she’d volunteered me as personal tour guide, even though I’d given her an ‘it’s not happening!’ look. Sitting outside near the sculpture garden, I tell him we can’t be anything but friends — and he has to accept that wholeheartedly if we’re going to spend any time together.

  He nods, and I tell myself I can handle this, trying to bury the guilt that needles into me whenever I find myself enjoying being with him.

  Gallery hang-outs turn into afternoon coffee meet-ups, or mornings spent wandering through the Japanese gardens. In mid-January, we take our easels to the beach every single afternoon for nine days straight, to try and capture the changing light at sunset, just like the Impressionists would have done.

  Looking over at him on the seventh day, his eyes intent upon the canvas, the last of the light hitting his cheeks, I know nothing has changed since the formal. I’m still in love with him.

  I hear Adriana’s voice inside my head: I hope you and Theo do get together, because at least then you didn’t betray me over something that means nothing.

  He kisses me on my birthday, and breathing him in, I feel like it’s the present I always wanted, but shouldn’t accept.

  I do though, and together begins.

  It’s incredibly hard at first. It’s not like Cupid and Psyche or Guinevere and Lancelot — there’s a point every week where I find myself resenting him for costing me my best friend. There are moments when the guilt I feel about being with him, after I swore to her I wouldn’t, becomes so strong that it leaves me slightly nauseous, and questioning the type of person I am.

  Sometimes I want to say, I think about whether you were worth it. Sometimes he loses his patience and gets mad that I treat him like the apple that got Adam and Eve thrown from paradise. And then I cry and we both go silent or cranky towards each other.

  In the midst of this beginning, his dad starts trying to see him again, and that only makes things more challenging because he’s dealing with his own family stuff while I’m loaded down with mine.

  That doesn’t mean being with him isn’t one of the most incredible things I’ve experienced.

  Our conversations only become better as we get to know each other more deeply. I tell him things that once upon a time I would have died at the idea of confessing to a guy.

  We read books together — sometimes out loud, one person’s head on the other’s chest, listening to the lines reverberate through their ribcage; and sometimes alone at home, texting each other the lines we love. We commiserate on bad days, less-than-perfect grades and art we make that is nothing like the glorious concept born in our minds. He kisses my nose and tells me he adores it like he adores every other part of me.

  Sometimes I say stupid things, and sometimes I hang out with him with no makeup on. We see each other sick or with pimples on our chins, sometimes with sweat patches on our clothes.

  We discover the other person isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t change our feelings. We compromise and let live the ten per cent that will never be entirely perfect. He’s someone I’m proud to be with and I pray he sees me that way too.

  We kiss, and we lose so much time to that. And as days and months and then a year goes by and we get closer, there are things I want to tell Ade, the firsts you want to giggle on the phone about, but I can’t — I have to write about them instead.

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  For the first year, anger rules everything — but in the second year, it doesn’t. I don’t know whether it’s because I�
��ve run out of steam, or the therapy sessions are kicking in, but in Year Twelve I stop living like I want to bruise everything I come into contact with.

  I start going easier on Dad. One day I’m sifting through old photographs, and he knocks on my door to tell me dinner is ready. I look from him to a picture in my hand, a shot taken in Borneo when we’d been diving off a boat, and I realise how much older he looks now, how many more wrinkles circle his eyes. It’s time passing of course, but it’s also sadness tracked across his face.

  He’s suffered enough. Maybe I have too.

  Talking to the counsellor helps me stand outside my own thoughts more. I can look back on something now and, most times, stop myself from sprinting into shame territory. So I was shy back then. So I cried instead of standing up for myself. So I made a mistake showing up at Dylan’s that Valentine’s Day. Some people are shy. Some people feel things more. Sometimes you take a risk and it goes wrong.

  Some people don’t speak at their parent’s funeral. It doesn’t mean they didn’t care and the person’s life meant nothing to them.

  Everyone always told me the grief would grow less in time. But I know it’s not like that. It surges, and then it dissipates. Sometimes it rages at obvious times, like Mum’s birthday or Christmas. But sometimes it’s not predictable at all. It can happen when you’re in the supermarket and you reach up to grab the person’s favourite peanut butter out of habit. It can be a whiff of their perfume on a stranger at the mall, and bang, you feel like you’re right back at the beginning of the pain. Sometimes it’s just an extra-beautiful day and you feel this pang, wishing they could enjoy it with you.

  Healing isn’t linear.

  I know from working with Mum in the garden that you can’t force a seed to grow. It does it in its own time. It chooses how long it spends in the darkness, and when it pushes itself through to the light. My roots will always be entrenched in her loss, but there’s a little more light now than in Year Ten.