by Nina Kenwood
‘That was fun. Hey, Natalie, you should come to Benny’s party with us on Friday night,’ Owen suddenly says to me.
Before I can react, Zach and Lucy both speak at the same time.
‘Yes,’ Lucy says.
‘No,’ Zach says.
Alex looks at them both. ‘Are you guys Natalie’s friends or her parents?’
‘A bit of both,’ I say.
I know why Zach is saying no—he thinks his brother and especially his brother’s friends are not Good People, and that I will be in way over my head at their party. Both of which are probably true. Lucy is thinking that Owen is hot and he’s inviting me somewhere, so I should go, and also—possibly—that she and Zach can have a guilt-free night alone. All of this is true too.
I look at Owen.
‘Who’s Benny?’
‘Our friend. He’s cool. You’ll like him.’
‘Okay. I’ll go.’ I say it before I can chicken out. I can’t actually believe I’ve said these words. I don’t go to things. I hate going to things. Most especially parties.
‘Give me your number and I’ll text you the details,’ Owen says, pulling out his phone. I can practically feel Lucy vibrating with excitement from the other couch.
I say my number out loud, twice, because I can’t stand the thought that this opportunity might be lost because he mistyped a number. He sends me a text straight away, the smiling emoji with sunglasses. That self-assured little emoji face has never looked so beautiful.
‘Now you’ve got my number,’ Owen says, unnecessarily.
I am trying to ignore the fact that I find his personality a tiny bit dull. ‘Awesome,’ I say. I hate the word awesome. It slips out when I’m nervous.
After Alex and Owen leave, Lucy grabs me and shakes me. ‘You’re going to a party with Owen Sinclair!’
‘I know,’ I say.
We hold each other’s arms and squeal and jump up and down, and when Zach looks disgusted, we do it again and collapse with laughter.
Mariella pokes her head into the room. ‘Everything all right in here?’
‘Natalie is going to a party with Owen.’
‘Owen Sinclair?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, goodness.’ Mariella looks surprised, pleased and worried all at once.
‘See? Mum thinks it’s a bad idea.’ Zach looks triumphant, even though normally agreeing with his mother about something like this would automatically make him change his mind.
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to fall in love with him or anything,’ I say, even though I am already running multiple fantasies of our romance through my head. (Scene: Owen and I holding hands, walking into a cool cafe, filled with everyone I disliked from school, who all turn their heads and stare at us. I’m wearing an amazing leather jacket and my hair is falling in gentle waves, and someone takes a perfectly lit photo of us laughing together over coffee that somehow ends up all over social media because in this scenario we’re also low-level famous.)
Later that night, lying in bed, unable to sleep, I decide the best thing about agreeing to go to the party is that I am so stressed and worried about it that I have hardly any space left in my head to think about my parents.
4
Patrick Swayze and Other People’s Bathrooms
Mum pulls up across the road from Benny’s house (whoever Benny is—I’m still not entirely sure). I can hear the thump of music coming from the party. It seems very loud. I wonder if the police will turn up. Could I be arrested? I’m still getting used to the idea of going to the house of someone who doesn’t live with their parents.
‘You sure you’re okay?’ Mum asks.
I’m obviously still extremely mad at her about the separation, and even more so for lying to me for a year, but my anger is on a temporary hold for tonight so she could drive me to the party.
I’m freaking out and I need my mother.
‘Of course,’ I say.
But I don’t get out of the car. I’m so nervous I could throw up. I don’t know if Owen is there yet, but I don’t want to message him and ask. He said he would be there at eight. He didn’t say ‘I’ll meet you there’ or anything. He just wrote We’ll be there at 8 and the address. It’s 8.45. He must be in there. But he hasn’t texted me to see where I am, so he’s either not there or he’s there and doesn’t care that I’m not there. It’s a lose–lose scenario.
‘We can just go home, you know,’ Mum says. She has pushed me to socialise since I was ten years old, and now here I am at a party and she’s trying to sabotage me.
‘No thanks.’ I cross my arms, so she can’t see that my hands are shaking.
‘You can go to parties without going to this party,’ she says.
‘I’m going.’
‘Okay.’
‘In one minute.’
‘Okay.’
We sit in silence for about thirty seconds and then I open the door, but I’m still not quite ready to get out of the car.
‘Bye, Mum.’
‘Call me to pick you up.’
‘I’ll get an Uber.’
‘I can pick you up.’
‘I might…stay at Owen’s.’ I haven’t actually considered this possibility until the words come out of my mouth. Am I seriously planning on hooking up with Owen? Am I planning on having sex tonight? No. The idea is preposterous. Owen and I have had one conversation in our lives. We’re unlikely to make eye contact, let alone bodily contact, let alone kiss, let alone have sex. I don’t even want to have sex with him. But it feels important that Mum believes it could happen. That’s the first step towards it one day actually happening—that other people look at me and think this person could feasibly have sex with someone.
Also, I want to test Mum a little.
‘Oh, Natalie, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘Do I need your permission?’ I’m not being snarky or rude with this question. I genuinely don’t know. I turned eighteen seven weeks ago. I’m an adult. I. Am. An. Adult. I do not feel like an adult. I feel light years away from being an adult. I mean, I’m also still a teenager, which is a relief. I always had this vision of myself doing something important during my teen years. I didn’t think I would be a child prodigy, but I thought I would be something very close to it, and now I’m almost out of time. Before I know it, I’ll be twenty-one and no one will be impressed by anything I do.
Mum purses her lips. ‘I suppose not. I mean, I like to know where you are. But you’re eighteen, so you can technically go wherever you want.’
‘Technically?’
‘Legally. Officially. In the eyes of the law.’
‘But?’
‘I don’t want my baby to stay at some boy’s house.’
‘Don’t call me your baby. That is gross and infantilising.’
‘You get a boyfriend and now you’re too good to be called baby. You’ll never have Patrick Swayze with that attitude.’
‘Patrick Swayze is dead.’
‘I know, sweetie. It was a Dirty Dancing reference.’ Mum made me watch Dirty Dancing, The Bodyguard and Muriel’s Wedding when I was fourteen, in order that I would, as she put it, ‘understand her emotional landscape’.
‘I get the reference. But it was weird to mention him.’
‘If I can’t make Dirty Dancing references, then end my life now because it isn’t worth living.’
‘He’s not my boyfriend.’
‘What?’
‘Owen. Just in case you somehow meet him and call him my boyfriend. It’s not like that. At all. We’re not even friends. We barely know each other. I don’t think he’d recognise me if we passed each other on the street.’
‘Well, why on Earth are you thinking about spending the night with him?’ Mum says, her voice jumping about five octaves.
‘Because that’s what people do. Boyfriends and girlfriends aren’t really a big thing anymore. People are more casual now. They just hook up whenever.’ One of my superpowers is pretending I know
a lot more about something than I actually do.
‘If boyfriends and girlfriends aren’t a thing anymore, then what are Zach and Lucy doing?’
‘Being old-fashioned.’
‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with old-fashioned.’
‘I’m going now.’
‘I think you should at least wait until you know his surname.’
‘It’s Sinclair.’
‘Owen Sinclair? Didn’t he do something with a girl on a park bench once?’
I need to stop having conversations in front of my parents. My mother retains far too much information.
‘No, you’re thinking of someone else.’ I turn to get out of the car.
Mum reaches out and puts her hand on my arm.
‘You’ve scared me. I don’t want to let you go now.’
‘Mum, probably nothing is going to happen. I just wanted to clear a path in your mind in case it does.’
‘Clear a path in my mind?’ She’s smiling.
I frown at her. ‘Yes.’
She pulls me back into the car and kisses my cheek. ‘Okay. Consider the path cleared.’
‘Bye, Mum.’ I shut the car door and start crossing the road. I can hear the buzz of her window rolling down.
‘Bye, hon. Text me, too. I’ll be waiting up. And don’t do anything you don’t want to do. Don’t let anyone put anything in your drink. And don’t take drugs—you’re not ready for that. Have fun!’
Oh my god. I hurry away before she can think of another stream of mortifying things to call out. She hasn’t driven off yet, which means she’s going to sit there and watch me go in.
I slow down as I approach the house, trying to look a lot more confident than I am. There are two guys I don’t know sitting on the steps leading up to the front door. They glance at me as I open the gate and walk towards them but continue their conversation. Should I say hi? I should say hi. I imagine myself saying hello in my nervous, too-formal voice and I imagine them raising their eyebrows at each other and then mimicking me behind my back as I walk in. I won’t say anything. That’s safer. I should pretend to be on my phone. But it’s too late for that now. I’m right beside them. Oh god, is one of them Benny?
I pause at the steps and manoeuvre awkwardly around them. They don’t even look at me or stop their conversation as I brush past.
The front door is open. There’s a long hallway with a stained carpet that could be grey or brown or blue—it’s impossible to tell—and music. I follow the hallway, peering into empty rooms as I pass them (a messy bedroom with an unmade bed and three guitars propped against it, another bedroom with posters of people I don’t know on the walls and a stack of dirty dishes on the bedside table) until I find a big lounge room where a bunch of people are sitting on couches and beanbags. There are double doors thrown open to a courtyard, and I can see more people out there, smoking and vaping. I can’t see Owen. Everyone looks so much older, even though I know most of them are only a year or two ahead of me.
I hover in the doorway to the lounge room, feeling like an idiot. I spend ten agonising seconds trying to look relaxed and normal, scanning every face desperately for Owen or Alex, and then I turn around and walk into the bathroom and lock the door.
I sit on the toilet for a while, and play on my phone until the battery goes down to 40% (I somehow forgot to charge it this afternoon, an amateur mistake) and then I stop, because getting through the rest of this night without a phone is an unbearable thought. I should just text Owen. He might even be here and I just didn’t see him, but I can’t bring myself to go back out there. How do people do it? How do they walk into a room of strangers and join conversations? And even if I could pretend I was comfortable doing that, I’m not sure this is the kind of party where that can happen. I don’t have the first clue how to interact with these people, who all know each other and go to university together and are utterly comfortable in each other’s presence. I’m some weird high-school kid who’s spent her whole life reading about parties rather than going to them.
I’m nervous-sweating now. I put bunches of toilet paper under my armpits to stop myself from getting sweat marks on my clothes. I’m wearing a cheap patterned dress I bought from a chain store that’s designed to look like it might be a 90s vintage dress from an op-shop. I bought it because it looked soft and floaty on the mannequin, and because it has cute buttons on the front, but it’s not quite soft and floaty on me. It’s itchy and doesn’t sit straight over my left boob. But the buttons do look cute.
Someone knocks on the bathroom door and I say nothing. They turn the handle, find it locked and knock again. I call out, ‘I’m in here. Sorry’. I hear footsteps walking away.
I really, really want to call Mum to pick me up but, no matter how grim this night gets, I won’t do that.
I start looking through the bathroom cabinets because I have nothing else to do. Panadol. Fungal cream. Birth-control pills. Toothpaste, with the cap off and a thick gloop of it on the shelf. Multivitamins. Mouthwash. Condoms. Lots of condoms. Medication that looks like antidepressants. I close the cabinet door, feeling bad for snooping.
They have a big, grungy bathtub that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in months. I put an already damp towel in the bottom and sit in the bathtub, because it seems less gross than sitting on the toilet. I can see several dark hairs clinging to the side of the bath. There’s nothing more disgusting than other people’s bathrooms. I sit there for what feels like a long time, but is probably two minutes, waiting for something to happen. I imagine standing up, slipping over, hitting my head on the edge of the tub, and no one finding me until the next day, when it’s too late to save me. That would be a very sad way to die, in the dirty bathtub of a stranger.
There’s a chorus of loud shouting and laughter as a new group of people arrive, clomping down the hallway, carrying bags of clinking bottles.
‘Heeeeeeyyyyyyy!’
‘Yo!’
‘You’re finally here!’
‘Bro!’
I recognise Owen’s voice and I feel so much relief my body actually sags against the side of the tub.
There’s more noise and then someone tries to open the bathroom door and rattles the handle.
‘I hate to be rude, but there’s a line of people needing to piss out here,’ a voice says from the other side of the door.
‘Some chick has been in there for, like, half an hour,’ says another voice.
‘We’re about to start peeing in sinks out here!’ a third voice chimes in.
Surely they would pee in the garden before they used the kitchen sink. People just don’t think sometimes.
I stand up, not knowing what to do. I pull the toilet paper out from my armpits and flush it down the toilet. I immediately regret doing that, because now they’ll think I’ve been on the toilet all this time.
I walk to the door and unlock it, opening it a crack. Six faces stare back at me. One of them is Owen, another is Alex, and the rest I don’t know.
‘Natalie!’ Owen says. He looks like he is very pleased with himself for remembering my name.
Alex leans forward. ‘Are you okay?’ he asks.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look concerned before.
‘Yes, I’m fine. I haven’t been in here for half an hour. It’s been ten minutes. I needed somewhere quiet to make a phone call. Sorry.’ I’m babbling, and I can feel that my face is red.
All six of them continue staring at me. I need to walk away now, but that means walking back into the party. I am frozen, unwilling to give up the safe oasis of the bathroom.
Owen steps forward, pushes the door open and walks into the bathroom.
‘Turn around,’ he says.
‘Why?’
‘I’m about to pee.’
He’s already standing over the toilet and unzipping his fly. I am a prudish only child who grew up with a bathroom to herself and no brothers, so there’s no way I can remain in the room with a guy peeing. Also, it’s not a thin
g a guy would do in front of a girl he wants to maybe kiss at some point, so my fantasy of hooking up with Owen Sinclair takes a further step away from the realm of possibility. Or maybe Owen is so self-assured, has lived a life of such untouchable male privilege, that he can pee in front of someone with full confidence that he could still kiss them later.
I leave the bathroom and walk about five steps before I’m at a loss where to go, again. This time there is a familiar face to bail me out. Alex is putting beers in the fridge in the kitchen. I hover nearby, forgetting all my wariness about him. No longer is he somebody I don’t trust. Now he’s my lifejacket, my safety net, my I-will-hang-on-to-you-like-grim-death fellow partygoer.
‘What were you doing in the bathroom,’ he asks when he sees me.
What kind of outrageous question is that?
‘I told you. Making a phone call.’
‘Not hiding?’
‘Definitely not hiding.’
‘Okay. Just seemed like you might have been hiding.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Good.’ He finishes putting the beers in the fridge and waves to someone across the room.
Owen walks out of the bathroom, running his hand through his hair in a way that makes it obvious he knows how great his hair is. It’s weird to look at someone and know they are probably very vain and they just peed in front of you but still be attracted to them.
‘Hey, having fun?’ he asks me.
‘Yes,’ I reply.
‘Cool,’ he says, very clearly looking over my shoulder for someone better.
My heart is pounding. What happens now? Do we keep talking? Owen walks out of the kitchen and into the lounge room.
I follow him, and hover in the background. There’s a free chair in the far corner, and I sit in it and smile at people, trying to catch someone’s eye, trying to see an opening to say something. There’s none, in part because the chair has been pushed off to the side and wedged half behind a shelf, so I’m out of eyeline of the people chatting on the other chairs and couches.
I pull out my phone and pretend I am texting someone. I google ‘top ten tips for talking to people at parties’ and scroll through suggestions about introducing myself with a firm-but-not-too-firm handshake (I don’t know much, but this party really does not seem like the kind of party where you would shake hands with someone), asking engaging questions (it does not explain how to know if a question is engaging or not), and smiling and laughing when appropriate (which sends me into a spiral: Maybe I’ve never smiled or laughed at an appropriate time in my entire life and I just didn’t realise until this moment).