It Sounded Better in My Head

by Nina Kenwood

  ‘Lucy is kind, generous and caring. Natalie is funny, smart and interesting,’ Zach says quickly, swimming in slow strokes with his head out of the water.

  ‘Interesting,’ I scoff.

  ‘What’s wrong with interesting?’ Zach says.

  ‘It’s a placeholder word,’ I say, flicking a bit of water at him when he swims by me.

  ‘A placeholder for what?’ he says, scrunching his face when my flicks of water hit him.

  ‘Weird. Unpopular.’

  ‘It is not. Interesting is the highest compliment I can give,’ Zach says, standing up and pushing his hair out of his eyes.

  ‘I think you can do better.’

  ‘Well, you say yours and let’s see if you can do better.’

  ‘Why do you guys always ruin my game?’ Lucy says.

  ‘We can’t help it,’ Zach says.

  ‘It’s in our nature to ruin things. Hey, that can be one for you, Zach—excellent at ruining things.’

  ‘That’s a very undervalued quality,’ he says, grinning.

  I dive under the water, trying not to think about sharks, rise to the surface and dive under again. Last year, I spent New Year’s Eve with my parents, doing what had become our tradition over the years: eating fancy cheese and watching old movies. As much as I love Zach and Lucy, and as happy as I am to be with them right now, a part of me can’t help thinking about how I’ll never, ever have another New Year’s Eve like that with my parents again.

  I float on my back for a while and watch the last of the fireworks burst across the sky. My ears are under the water, so it’s a silent, colourful explosion surrounded by stars. I could stay like this forever.

  10

  Humiliating Things

  It’s 2am, and I jolt awake at the sound of the front door creaking open. Everyone is back at the house and in bed, and I’ve been asleep for about half an hour. After coming home, showering, dumping our wet clothes in the washing machine, and saying goodnight to everyone, Zach and I secretly switched rooms.

  I’m currently alone in the downstairs bedroom that’s closest to the front door, and I’m scared. Why didn’t I think of the risks of bed-swapping? I’ll be the first person murdered because of Zach and Lucy’s horniness. The front door creaks closed, and I pull the blankets over my head. Dear God or Whoever Might Be Listening, don’t let me die before I learn how to drive. Don’t let me die before I launch my podcast series about current teens watching old teen shows from the nineties. Don’t let me die before I get to travel somewhere, anywhere, outside of Australia. Don’t let me die before I have an orgasm with someone other than myself. Don’t let me, don’t let me die, don’t let me die—

  There are footsteps headed towards the bedroom door. When is the appropriate time for me to scream—when the murderer starts opening the door, when they actually enter the room, or do I wait until they pull the sheet off my head? I want my phone but it’s charging on the other side of the room.

  The murderer is definitely hovering on the other side of my door. Except now there is another set of footsteps, and whispers. Two people whispering. I pull the sheet down off my head.

  ‘Alex?’ It’s Mariella’s voice.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘You almost gave me a heart attack! What are you doing here?’ she says.

  ‘I drove down after I finished work. What are you holding? Is that a cricket bat?’

  ‘I thought you were someone breaking in.’

  ‘So you left Dad asleep and came out to confront an intruder on your own with a child’s plastic cricket bat?’

  ‘Your father doesn’t have a killer instinct. He’d hesitate at the crucial moment. You know that.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘What are you doing driving on New Year’s Eve? That’s dangerous, honey.’

  ‘I wasn’t drinking. Trust me. I was pulled over and tested by a booze bus twice on the way down.’

  ‘Driving for an hour and a half in the middle of the night after a long shift is how you fall asleep at the wheel and die.’

  ‘You’re right. I shouldn’t have done it. I just had a bad night and wanted to get out of the city.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing, I just—let’s talk in the morning.’

  ‘Well, Zach’s in there asleep, and the trundle bed is still in the cupboard in Glenn and Anthony’s room. I don’t want to wake them up.’

  ‘I’ll share with Zach then. You know how he sleeps. He won’t even notice I’m in the bed until morning.’

  ‘Sweetie, come here.’

  ‘Mum—’

  ‘I just want a quick hug.’

  ‘Mum, come on.’

  ‘You can’t hug your mother now?’ The universal mum-guilt tone.

  ‘Fine. Careful with that bat.’

  There’s a beat of silence.

  ‘Your T-shirt smells like beer. And chips.’

  ‘Yeah, I work in a pub.’

  ‘Goodnight, honey. I love you.’

  ‘Night, Mum. Love you too.’

  I’m so busy eavesdropping that what is about to happen occurs to me in a rush. I pull the sheet back over my head.

  The bedroom door opens and then closes. I am waiting to make sure Mariella has gone back to her room before I speak, but I hear the sound of Alex taking off his jeans, and my mind turns into a white-noise buzz, it’s so panicked.

  ‘Wait,’ I say. My voice comes out in a huffy breath. The sheet is still covering my head.

  ‘Shit? Who is that?’ Alex must have one leg half in, half out of his jeans because I hear a hop as he jolts in surprise, and then a soft thud as he falls onto the floor.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I ask.

  ‘Natalie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sorry. Shit. Mum said Zach was in here.’

  ‘He was. We swapped, don’t tell her, so he and Lucy could share.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I pull back the sheet and squint into the dark. He’s standing up, yanking his jeans back on.

  ‘Bloody Zach,’ he says.

  ‘It’s New Year’s Eve. They wanted a night together.’

  ‘So what do we do? I guess I’ll sleep on the floor,’ he says, but sits down on the bed. Then he flops onto his back, putting his hands over his face, like we’re facing the greatest predicament two people could ever endure.

  ‘I’m so fucking tired and I’ve had the worst fucking night ever and I can’t stop fucking swearing, sorry. I don’t even like swearing,’ Alex says. There’s a brokenness in his voice that makes my heart hurt.

  ‘Get in,’ I say, because it seems like the kindest thing to say right now, and I want to offer him some small kindness. About a millisecond after I have uttered the words, I want to die. I just told Alex to get in bed with me. I resist the urge to pull the sheet back over my head. Maybe I will self-combust and disappear into thin air before he answers. I can only hope.

  He lies still for a second, and then he sits up and crawls up the bed until his head is on the pillow next to mine.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says, his voice a little shaky.

  It’s ridiculous he’s thanking me, because this is his family’s house, not mine. I want to say ‘and take your jeans off ’ because the thought of him sleeping in jeans on a warm night makes my skin itch, but telling him that sounds even more suggestive than telling him to get in the bed, and also I’m not sure I want him to take his jeans off.

  I can’t sleep in a bed with a pantless Alex. I might legitimately have a heart attack.

  Thinking about his jeans makes me realise I’m wearing my distorted-face Prince Harry T-shirt and oversized pyjama shorts with hot dogs on them that I bought from the men’s section at Kmart. So, my pyjamas are not sexy. They are the opposite of sexy.

  Alex shuffles around, and then leans over to the side of the bed and grabs two pillows off the floor (Mariella loves pillows, every bed has at least three more than are needed) and puts them under the sheet between us.

  ‘Wha
t are you doing?’ I say.

  ‘Creating a pillow barrier. I can’t sleep in jeans.’

  Oh god, oh god, oh god. He is going to be pantless. He will be Without Pants.

  I’m in a fan fiction of my own life. Except I want to be safely reading it on the screen, not lying here in hot-dog-patterned shorts, sweating and self-consciously braless.

  ‘Are you going naked?’ I ask, my voice a weird squeaky version of what it normally sounds like.

  ‘No! I’m wearing my jocks. Is that okay? If it’s not okay, I can keep the jeans on.’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine, take them off,’ I say, dropping my voice a little to try and sound like a worldly woman who is unconcerned about the amount of clothes being worn in the bed beside her. (I always imagine worldly women as having sexy, raspy it-might-be-a-cold-or-it-might-be-too-many-cigarettes kinds of voices.)

  I listen to Alex wriggle out of his jeans and drop them to the floor. That’s it. The jeans are officially off. Deep breaths, Natalie. This is really happening.

  ‘When are you and Zach switching back?’ he asks, through a yawn. How can he be so relaxed? This is the most high-stakes moment of my life, and I say that as someone who considered her final English exam a matter of life or death.

  ‘At six-thirty. I’ve set my alarm,’ I say.

  ‘Are you really okay to share until then?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes. Alex, it’s your house.’

  The only thing more terrifying than sharing the bed with pantless Alex is losing the chance to share the bed with pantless Alex.

  ‘Exactly. It’s my house. Which means you’re the guest who has to sleep with a random guy who bursts into your room in the middle of the night.’

  ‘You’re hardly a random guy.’ If he knew how much space he had occupied in my brain in the past four days, I would die of shame.

  ‘I know. But it feels weird. Anyway, the pillow barrier is here to create the illusion that we’re in separate beds.’

  He has a lot of faith in this pillow barrier.

  ‘I feel very reassured. In fact, it feels like we’re in separate rooms. Separate houses even,’ I say.

  ‘That’s the power of a good pillow barrier,’ he says, and his voice has a smile in it.

  We are both lying on our sides, facing each other. It’s dark enough that I can only see an outline of his features, more a sense of his face than his actual face.

  ‘So why was your night so horrible?’ I say, feeling braver than usual because it’s 2am on New Year’s Eve and I’ve had a small amount of pink champagne.

  He’s quiet for a long time. ‘I got fired,’ he says finally.

  ‘Oh my god.’ I was not expecting that answer. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because my boss is an arsehole.’

  ‘Wow.’ I don’t know what to say. I feel terrible, because I know how much that job meant to him. Zach told me what a big deal it was when Alex chose to do an apprenticeship instead of going to university and how much their parents disapproved.

  ‘Yeah,’ Alex says.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say.

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘I’m sorry it happened.’

  ‘Me too. I’ve never been fired before.’

  ‘What does it feel like?’ I say, without thinking. What a terrible question. I honestly shouldn’t be allowed to talk to people.

  ‘Pretty bad,’ he says.

  ‘What happened, exactly?’ It feels a little nosy to ask, but I sense he might want to talk.

  Alex rolls over and lies on his back.

  ‘Long story short, my boss, Garry, likes to scream and yell at people. Like, I know that’s a thing all chefs do, or something, but this guy is really bad. I think there’s something seriously wrong with him. Anyway, tonight he was picking on me and this other guy, Felix. Mostly I just ignore him, but Felix lost it. He and Garry got into a huge argument and I sided with Felix. I told Garry he was being unreasonable, and that he can’t treat people like this, and at the end of my shift Garry told me not to bother coming back.’

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘Yeah. The thing is, he didn’t fire Felix, who said a lot worse than me. I think he just wanted to get rid of me. I’m not the greatest cook yet, but I’m getting a lot better.’

  ‘You didn’t do anything wrong, though.’

  ‘Maybe I did. Maybe I should have kept out of it. Anyway, Mum and Dad are going to be furious.’ He lets out a long breath.

  ‘They’ll understand,’ I say.

  ‘They’ll say they knew this was going to happen,’ he says.

  ‘You can get another job,’ I say, with more confidence than I should, since I know nothing about the industry.

  ‘I just feel like…’ he pauses, and then he rolls over and looks at me. ‘You know what? Let’s talk about something else. What did you do tonight?’

  I ignore his question. ‘You just feel like what?’ I say.

  He’s silent for a few seconds, and I can feel him wavering, hedging his bets on how much he wants to say.

  ‘I just feel like, no matter how hard I try, I’m screwing everything up right now. My whole life feels like a huge mistake,’ he says, quietly.

  I know that feeling. The one that says my life isn’t how it’s supposed to be, that I’ve made all the wrong decisions.

  ‘It’s a new year. You’ve got a clean slate,’ I say. I’m naturally a pessimist, but tonight I’ll play the role of optimist for Alex.

  ‘Technically, I was fired this year. About ten minutes into this year, to be precise,’ he says.

  ‘Anything bad that happens in the first hour of a new year still belongs to the previous year. It’s a rule,’ I say.

  ‘That’s a good rule.’

  We’ve shuffled a little closer to one another during this conversation.

  ‘Now forget everything I just said,’ he says.

  ‘Why?’ I say.

  ‘Because I just told you a very humiliating thing about myself and…it’s embarrassing.’ He gives a little uncomfortable half-laugh.

  ‘See, I don’t think you realise who you are talking to. I’m the queen of humiliating things. My life has been one big humiliation,’ I say. I regret the words as soon as they are out of my mouth, because I know what his next question will be.

  ‘Like what?’

  I try to think of something I would actually want to tell him, something funny and easy, a humble brag that sounds embarrassing on the surface but is actually designed to make me sound cool, something that doesn’t involve me being ashamed of the state of my body or the state of my personality. Nothing comes to mind.

  But it’s dark, and he’s waiting, and I have to speak.

  ‘Like, all of my high-school years, I guess,’ I say.

  ‘Give me an example.’

  I reach for the safest option I can think of in the moment, something he already knows. ‘Well, the other night at that party. You saw me hiding in the bathroom. You saw me cry.’

  ‘You went to a party where you didn’t know anyone. That’s brave.’

  ‘You have a low bar for brave,’ I say.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?’

  He thinks for a while.

  ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever done anything truly brave.’

  ‘What about tonight? Standing up to your boss?’

  ‘Maybe.’ He sounds unconvinced.

  ‘It sounded brave to me.’

  ‘Well then, maybe you have a low bar for brave,’ he says, reaching across the pillow barrier to gently poke my arm.

  His very brief touch gives me goosebumps. ‘Or maybe we’re both incredibly courageous people,’ I say.

  ‘We’re heroes, really,’ he says.

  ‘They’ll write books about us.’

  ‘And make movies.’

  ‘Little kids will dress up as us on Halloween.’

  ‘That means we need superhero costumes.’

  ‘Mine has
a silver dagger with a poisoned tip, and a black hooded cape,’ I say. I’ve always wanted a cape, so I can sweep out of a room with purpose or pull the hood back to dramatically reveal my identity.

  ‘Are you a superhero or an assassin?’ he says.

  ‘A bit of both,’ I say.

  ‘Well, my superhero costume will have a jetpack, and a sword.’

  ‘I’m not sure a jetpack and a sword really fit together, thematically.’

  ‘You think that now, but when you see a sword fight in the air, you’ll change your mind.’ He sounds very sure of this.

  ‘But how are you fighting with the sword and steering the jetpack at the same time? It’s logistically very dangerous.’

  We argue about swords and jetpacks for a little while, and I can hear in his voice that he’s relaxing.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says suddenly.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I came in here feeling terrible. And now I feel a bit less terrible.’

  ‘Less terrible, but still not good?’

  ‘Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’

  I laugh, and then close my eyes. I listen to him breathe, and I can tell the moment he falls asleep because his breathing changes.

  I lie there listening to him sleep for a long time, which is a thrillingly intimate and kind of creepy thing to do. I can’t help it though, because I feel wide awake. I’ve never spent the night in a bed with a guy before. I want to document every moment, although after a while it becomes clear that with Alex asleep, there is very little to document.

  It feels like I’ve just closed my eyes when my alarm starts quietly buzzing.

  11

  An Incomplete List

  Here is an incomplete list of my actual greatest humiliations from high school that I would never say out loud to Alex, or anyone:

  A woman in the supermarket asking me what happened to my face, because my acne was so bad it didn’t even look like acne anymore.

  Crying in my doctor’s office when she showed me the smallest kindness by saying, ‘Oh honey, you poor thing.’