My Best Friend Is a Goddess

by Tara Eglington

  Emily’s Diary

  A week before Valentine’s Day in Year Twelve, I see Adriana at the mall. She’s sitting at a table on the edge of the food court with Chanel, and about six or seven guys from school are standing around them, hanging off their every word.

  There’s not a hint of the old Adriana nervousness about her. Every gesture she makes is calmly confident, like a queen well into her reign. Her laugh is louder than it used to be, and I watch her wink at one of the boys.

  For a second, her gaze travels my way, and I’m convinced she sees me. My heart starts drumming because she never acknowledges me. But then her attention turns back to the boys, and I know she’s oblivious to me standing here, watching her.

  Even though I know it’s crazy, all I want to do is run up and ask, Are you happy? When I pass her in the hall at school, surrounded by the Tens and hangers-on, she looks like she is. I know from Daniel that she’s doing better this year.

  But I want to know for sure.

  I want her to be happy, even if she’s friends with people I can’t stand. Even if she wants nothing to do with me, or all-out hates me.

  I’ll never stop caring about her.

  Her cheeks are pink now. She obviously has a crush on one of the boys.

  That old feeling inside me twinges to life as I wonder what it would be like to look the way she does. To walk into a room and see every head turn my way. To throw a smile at a guy, knowing it would become the highlight of his week. To hold court over endless admirers.

  And then I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket.

  Hey, beautiful! What are you up to? xxx

  I don’t need a million guys paying me attention — just the one that matters.

  I look away from the worshippers at Adriana’s table, and turn the other way, heading for the newsagent. I need to find a Valentine’s Day card for the boy who always calls me beautiful, like it’s my name.

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  I see Emily that day at the mall, even though I pretend I don’t.

  Over the last year and a bit, I’ve got good at acting like she doesn’t exist when we share a class, or she and Theo walk by me in the hall. Most of the time I try and fool myself that she’s just some random Five that the Tens would never acknowledge, so why would she cross my periphery either?

  It doesn’t hurt to see them together — when out of the corner of my eye, I notice Theo’s arm round her shoulders, or glimpse the little wink he throws her in class when he thinks no-one is looking. It took me ages to admit that to myself because for a long time, I wanted it to hurt — after all, she stole the guy I cared about, right?

  For some reason, the day that she sees me and Chanel at the mall, surrounded by guys, my cheeks start burning, like I’m old Adriana again.

  You’re making a bigger mess for yourself, I hear her voice say, just like on the night of the formal.

  Suddenly the admiring glances and flirty comments from the boys, which normally make me feel like a million bucks, leave me feeling embarrassed.

  What are you doing, Adriana? You know who you actually care about.

  When am I going to stop lying to myself? Playing these stupid games that make my ego feel better, but never actually heal the hurt in my heart?

  A week later, on Valentine’s Day, I go to Dylan’s house. It’s not like the movies — I don’t take a white rose, or kiss him when he opens the door. Instead we look awkwardly at each other before I cast off my pride and say, ‘Can I come in?’

  That first conversation is pretty awful. It doesn’t turn close to pleasant for nearly an hour, and a huge part of me just wants to turn tail and run right back to pretending I no longer care about him. But then slowly it gets better, and each time I come and visit — on Monday afternoons, just like before — the conversation gets easier, and old hurts become a little less excruciating. There are moments when we know that talking won’t actually help, and that’s the point when Dylan turns on a DVD. Sitting side by side on the couch, eating popcorn under the flicker of the screen, it’s easy to slip back into our old groove of laughing and picking apart films like we’re movie critics.

  It’s months before I let him kiss me, even though I know from three weeks into our afternoon movie rituals that he wants to. Looking away when he’s staring into my eyes or turning my cheek when he moves closer is self-defence, my way of keeping some armour on. I’m scared that showing him that I care will send me straight back to feeling like I could be shattered in one single second.

  You know what you’re capable of surviving, so why does this scare you?

  I don’t want to live like I’m afraid of everything.

  And so finally I let his lips touch mine, and this time our kiss isn’t a one-sided plea or an attempt to win a game, but something entirely different. We’re both hesitant at first, terrified one of us will spoil this tremulous start to something so important — before feeling takes over and the kiss becomes a fierce pledge that this time, we want to do everything we can to get it right.

  Emily’s Diary

  In Year Twelve, I get a second chance to see my work displayed in a gallery.

  Mr Morrison didn’t choose one of my pieces the year after the portrait of Ade was destroyed. Even though I tried my best to block out the disappointment and anger I felt about the ruined painting, the work I produced in Year Eleven wasn’t great. My confidence had taken a huge hit, and the thought of maybe I’ll never create anything as good as that portrait seemed to hover around me every time I put a paintbrush to canvas.

  In a way, I was grateful not to be chosen then. I didn’t want Mr Morrison to give me the exhibition opportunity because he felt sorry for me, or because I’d missed out last time. If I was going to show my work publicly, I wanted to know, all ego aside, that it was worthy of being on a wall.

  In Year Twelve, inspiration comes flooding back. I paint and paint, going through dozens of canvases, trailing and testing ideas until I settle on one I work obsessively at. When I finally add the last stroke of paint and step away from my easel, I feel this calmness settle over me.

  As an artist, I don’t know whether you’re ever entirely satisfied with your work — after all, the ideas are born in your mind in their most perfect state, and when they’re launched into the real world of paint and canvas, they’re never quite the same. You always fixate on what’s not quite right, the little details that niggle at you every time you look at your creation.

  But this is the closest I’ve felt to being happy with a painting.

  ‘I think this is your best piece so far, Emily,’ Mr Morrison says.

  Two weeks before the end of term two, he tells me my work will be part of the mid-year Emerging Artists exhibition at Mum’s gallery.

  On opening night, standing in front of my work that’s actually hanging on a real-life gallery wall, and taking in Mum’s, Daniel’s and Theo’s beaming faces, my life feels this close to perfect.

  Except for one thing of course. I know I shouldn’t imagine her standing here with us. Thinking of what could have been doesn’t change anything.

  But every so often throughout the evening, I can’t stop my mind from drifting up and away to that castle in the sky where she walks through the gallery door.

  I don’t know if I’ll ever stop wishing she was here.

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  In late June, Dad tells me the owners of our rental want to sell. I know what he’s going to suggest before he says a word because he looks super-anxious.

  A year ago, I never would have agreed. Now, I find myself saying yes. Really, this isn’t about Emily — after all, she and I will both probably be living somewhere else next year, closer to university, and it will only be Dad and Isobel.

  I want Dad to have another chance.

  Dad and I move into Isobel’s place one weekend in August. She and Dad had talked about shifting everyone to a completely different house so no-one felt like they were moving into someone else’s
home, but they couldn’t find anywhere that had a similar setup studio-wise for Isobel.

  It’s agreed I can have the downstairs room, with my own ensuite, so Emily and I don’t have to share.

  I tell myself there are less than two terms of Year Twelve left, and then I can go flat with Chanel. I’m used to sharing a classroom with Emily at school, so I can deal with this in the same way — I do my own thing and let her be. I don’t hate her any more — after all, now that the anger has died down, I know what happened with Theo was far from your simple case of best friend steals boy — but I’m not ready to talk about it.

  I think Dad and Isobel had assumed Emily and I would be friendlier than we are, but they don’t push it.

  I have to admit, being in her house like this, it’s weird. After our fight, I’d blocked out a lot of the good times we’d shared because the memories were always followed by remember what she did to you?

  But now they’re flooding back.

  I remember her buying me pads from the supermarket because Mum wasn’t here to do it, and though one of the hot senior guys was working at the till, she still bought them, putting on her best ‘so?’ face when he served her.

  I remember us trying to play-fight while watching Taylor Swift’s ‘Bad Blood’, and Emily kicked me in the ribs by accident and confused my laughter for sobs before she figured it out and collapsed on the floor, laughing with me.

  I remember all the nights she stayed with me after the funeral, for months and months, because I couldn’t bear to sleep alone.

  Making popcorn at midnight while singing songs we couldn’t get out of our heads.

  The time Mum and Dad took us to New Zealand to learn to ski, and we got our skis crossed and zoomed down the mountain in tandem, laughing hysterically the whole way and screaming at each other to stop.

  Bouncing on her trampoline and lying in the hammocks, eating icy poles.

  Sharing the same walls makes it impossible to keep the memories out. I miss her. I don’t want to, but I do.

  One evening when we’re sitting at the dinner table, and Dad and Isobel are laughing like crazy, Emily and I happen to look at them at the same time and our eyes meet.

  I’ve been avoiding her gaze for so long that the acknowledgement of each other’s existence is a shock.

  She looks from me to our parents and back again. Her eyes say, Once upon a time this is what we dreamed about.

  I remember, my eyes say back.

  Emily’s Diary

  It starts when I least expect it. A few weeks after that moment at the dinner table, I’m sitting in my room, trying to study for a biology exam, and realise I can’t find my textbook. It has to be in the lounge room, where I was studying the other night.

  As I head downstairs, I hear the noise of the TV. I know Adriana must be in there. Normally we give each other a super-wide berth, but I need the book because the test is tomorrow.

  I walk in and spot the book on a side table. Adriana has a textbook open too, but she’s watching The Bachelor. It’s cocktail party time and the girls are all dressed up to the max.

  Right as I grab my book, the bachelor says something so ridiculous I can’t stop myself letting out a huge snort of derision.

  Adriana jumps but she starts giggling, and then we go completely stupid, cracking up at the show. What the bachelor said wasn’t that funny, but we’re giddy with the release of two years of tension.

  Finally we pull ourselves together, and Adriana wipes her eyes and looks at me. ‘Do you want to watch with me? I know it’s stupid, but it’s a good distraction from this.’ She nods at her textbook.

  I know my face betrays how much the offer means to me and I quickly rein my expression back to casual.

  I shrug. ‘Sure, I need a break from studying.’

  I sit down on the couch, and she hands me a bag of chips, like she has countless times before.

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  That moment isn’t a miracle. It doesn’t throw us back in time, or hand us our old friendship on a silver platter. But it has broken the ice. That horrible awkward silence is gone now.

  We watch The Bachelor and a few other TV shows together here and there, instead of alone in our bedrooms. We share the kitchen, instead of waiting until the other person’s left the room.

  One afternoon she’s lying in the hammock, and I take the other one, and we talk about some of our classes, how Year Twelve is more work than we ever expected, even though Year Eleven should have been a warning.

  We’re nervous around each other because even though the other person is so familiar, they’re not in some ways. It’s like meeting an old friend and a stranger at the same time, and you don’t feel confident laying bets on their reactions.

  For a while, we’re like a guy and a girl who have started seeing each other, but don’t want to have the talk. What are we? Friends, or not? Does this have a future?

  It feels too early to put a label on it.

  Emily’s Diary

  Then come the Year Twelve exams and, because we share so many of the same classes, we find ourselves studying together in my room or hers, trying to make sense of Hamlet or technology during World War One at 12.30 am, making endless cups of coffee in the kitchen and eating way too many jelly snakes.

  We try out study soundtracks and quiz each other. We attempt to meditate and it’s a huge failure. We take all our books and lie out on the lawn, desperate to be away from four walls — and fall asleep in the sun instead, wasting three hours of study time.

  When we go to school for the exams we sit outside the test rooms until we’re called in. Once settled in our seats, she turns around from her spot down the front, sending me a ‘you can do this’ look.

  After every exam we go downtown for gelato, and groan over questions we already know we’ve messed up, and breathe sighs of relief over the ones we haven’t.

  With the very last exam over, we rip up all our notes, screaming and jumping on my bed. We run out of pep in two minutes flat and lie on our backs on the bed instead, surrounded by scraps of paper.

  I realise I am holding back tears, and it’s not because I’m ecstatic or relieved — I’m scared.

  I’m scared now exams are over that this — whatever it is with her — will be over too.

  I turn my head to look at her, and she’s already glancing over at me.

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  I can see her eyes are watery. She’s scared, and I am too.

  I want to save this, I silently tell her.

  Me too, her eyes say back.

  Emily’s Diary

  For ten years we had the perfect friendship, and then we didn’t. But just because something isn’t perfect doesn’t mean you should throw it away.

  I know sometimes she asks herself, Can I trust her again?

  And I often think, She’ll never completely forgive me.

  It’s obvious — we can’t go back to how it was. She’s different, and I’m different, and our friendship is too. But maybe we shouldn’t look at it like a loss, but as an opportunity. We’re both stronger now, and have better control over some of the insecurities that used to govern us.

  That summer is my favourite. It’s when our friendship finds its feet again. The gap between the Year Twelve exams and the start of university is a long one, and we live like we’ve been liberated. We spend hours at the beach, getting sand between the pages of our books. We go on missions to find the city’s best pizza or chocolate-filled doughnut, whatever our craving happens to be that day. We go out dancing at rooftop bars, and ride our bikes at midnight, and try our hand at making bombe Alaska, pretending our effort will blow Mum’s or Daniel’s out of the water.

  We let each other have space too. I go for breakfasts with Theo, and she heads out with Chanel, and we’re both okay with it.

  One day I see Ade and Dylan in the lounge room, watching a movie. I shouldn’t say watching, because they’re not looking at the screen. They’re kis
sing. I tiptoe away.

  Dylan starts coming over more often, and he and Ade and me and Theo have movie marathons, Adriana and I groaning over some of their beyond-weird film choices. I ask her what’s going on, wondering if it’s my right to know, and she shrugs and smiles, but on New Year’s Eve, when she and Dylan join Theo and me on a rug down by the harbour for the fireworks, and Theo says something about all going out for dinner together, double-date-style, they look at each other and nod.

  Adriana’s becoming more and more beautiful of course, even though that seems impossible. When we start university, she turns heads all over campus, and like in high school, the guys come to me to find out whether she’s available, even though they must see her with Dylan.

  Girls always ask me what it’s like to have a friend who looks like a supermodel, their expressions indicating I’m courageous to take her on, like she’s a cross to bear and not many people could.

  Sometimes I tell them, ‘She’s not just my friend, she’s my stepsister — my mother married her father when we were nineteen’, and their eyes go bigger.

  I know what they’re really asking is, How do you stop yourself envying her?

  I always tell them the same thing.

  You’re only small if you believe you are. If you know inside yourself that you’re more than a number on a scale, or someone’s opinion; if you believe — and that’s the hardest thing, getting to the point where you’re not trying to convince yourself, it’s a quiet certainty within you — if you believe that you’re vast and brilliant, that you are worthy and you matter; if you have people and things you love that make you feel fulfilled and happy; then even if you do feel a pang of envy here and there, someone else’s light will never make yours die out.

  Maybe it’s naive to think that we’re all goddesses in different ways — whether that’s for our beauty or our brains, our courage or talents, our ability to love or make others laugh, or create things that move people. Maybe we’re goddesses because as girls we’re so many different things. Our existence is a constant battle against a world that wants to call us one thing or another, but we’re fighting to define ourselves, to try and love whoever we are, no matter what.