13
THEY DAWDLED THROUGH the campus, despite the growing dark and the drizzling rain beginning to turn into ice. The footpaths were empty, only the occasional student running between buildings with a textbook or jumper as a makeshift shelter over their heads. They walked in silence, the rush of tyres on the wet road filling the void. Lori had been trying to figure out how to word her question the right way, to get Em to open up about Lena. Struggling, she realised it wasn’t the right wording that kept her from asking. It was that she didn’t think Em would give a full answer. So she dove in with whatever came out of her mouth.
‘So when’re you gonna tell me what happened? Or do I need to drag it out of Lena?’
Em snorted. ‘Good luck. She won’t talk to me, what makes you think she’ll talk to you?’
‘Come on, Em. What’s up with you two? It’s not like you not to blurt it all out and vent. And Lena hasn’t been answering her phone—’
‘You called her?’
‘—I don’t think you’ll fix anything if you’re not even talking to each other—’
Em asked again. ‘You called her?’
‘Will you stop interrupting me? Yes. I called her.’
‘Why didn’t you just talk to me?’
‘Because you avoid it every time I bring it up.’
They stopped at the usual spot on their street. Further along, Lori could just make out the top floor of Em and Lena’s house. All the windows were dark. It looked like no one was home.
‘Lena doesn’t love me anymore, she doesn’t need me.’ Em stared at the house too.
Lori almost rolled her eyes. ‘How do you know?’
‘How—How do I know?’ Feet fidgeting, Em raised a hand to point at her dark and empty house. ‘Because she thought I was having an affair.’ Her voice dipped a little, breaking, then rising steadily. ‘So she started seeing someone. Said she wanted to get back at me, hurt me like I did her. But now she thinks she’s fallen in love. Real love, she called it.’ Em turned on her heel. ‘She left me, Lori. That’s how I know. Are you happy now, Miss Need-To-Know-Everything?’
‘Emmie.’ Lori tried to keep the sadness out of her voice, but she couldn’t understand why Em hadn’t just told her the truth straight up. ‘Why would Lena think—’
The porch lamp of the house they were standing in front of came on, a white glow flooding the lawn and footpath with blinding light and distorted shadows. Rage and a lost temper clouded Em’s face. She stormed off as the front door opened, leaving Lori to wave an apology to the neighbour in their pyjamas who poked their head out. If Em truly wasn’t in a bad mood at training, then she was definitely in one now.
It looked like every single light in her house was on, blazing through the windows and spilling out onto the ground outside. Lori climbed the porch steps. Her phone buzzed as she hung her bag up and peeled off her damp layers. It was a message from Addy. She stood there staring at it, unsure whether to tempt herself by reading it, or to just leave it.
‘Was that Marina? Have you talked to her yet?’ Em leaned out from the kitchen, staring down the hallway at her.
Lori shook her head. ‘Just a reminder for tomorrow.’ She slid the phone back into her pocket.
The oven was on and the fridge wide open. Em stared at the brightly lit shelves, spotting and pulling out the tray of yesterday’s leftover lasagne. The fridge door closed with a thud and a rattle of jars.
‘Emmie.’
Silent, Em peeled off the sheet of foil, crushed it into the smallest, tightest ball of shining silver anyone could possibly manage.
‘Emmie?’
‘What?’ Em snapped.
‘Why would Lena even think you were—’
Em sighed and tossed the ball of foil into the bin. ‘You know what? I’m not hungry. Think I’m just gonna go to bed.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Mhm. Night.’
Lori turned off the oven and dished out a small plate, put it into the microwave to reheat. She stood at the kitchen bench to eat. She had a forkful of crunchy, cheesy pasta halfway to her mouth when her phone interrupted, buzzing again. She pulled it from her pocket, placed it on the bench and stared at the screen. Another message from Addy.
She forced down a few more mouthfuls of her dinner and scraped the rest into the trash, then climbed the stairs. There was silence behind the door to the spare room. She listened for a soft snore before retracing her steps to the front door, hesitating for a moment and then walking back out into the dark night.
14
ADDY HAD SENT her an address and told her to walk through the nightclub and out the door at the back with the alarm sign on it. It seemed like a weird instruction to arrive and then leave. When Lori walked into the club, flashing lights made it hard to fight her way through the crowd let alone find a door with an alarm sign. When she finally found it, she realised it didn’t leave the club, but led into another space; the complete opposite of what she’d just walked through; open and uncrowded and softly lit. As soon as the door closed behind her, it was quiet and calm. A tiki-style sign named it The Garden. A forest of ferns and carved wooden statues lined the walls, and strings of yellow bulbs hung across the ceiling in jagged zigzags.
Addy stood up and waved her over to a rowdy group packed tight around a table. A cheer went up as Addy introduced everyone at once, claiming them as her “no-good, do-nothing friends from high school, none of whom would be caught dead setting foot on university grounds, all of whom had nowhere better to be and nothing better to do on a Thursday night.”
To Lori’s relief, she recognised none of their faces. If she had been in any other mood, all of this would have made the age gap between them stretch, made her feel a little too old and out of place, but their energy was contagious as they talked nonsense about people she didn’t know and things she had no clue about.
Another pitcher of beer arrived, but Lori put her hand over her glass. ‘I have to teach in the morning.’
A groan went through the group but they didn’t dog her for it, instead they asked what it was like to have never escaped school.
‘C’mon Teach, you must have some stories. Seen some stuff. Surely?’
‘Students passed out naked in hallways—’
‘Dorm room pranks—’
‘Declarations of true love mid-class—’
‘Something, anything.’
‘Does it suck being a teacher?’
Someone bellowed from the other end of the table, a sound like an animal call, amplified through cupped hands. ‘First rule of The Garden—no one talks about work, or anything related to work.’
Nate, the guy sitting across the table, wasn’t letting it go as easily. He bellowed back, a sarcastic, comedic hint in his voice. ‘Can I at least ask what she was like back in school?’
‘I don’t know, Nate, can you?’
Nate didn’t get the joke made at his own expense, laughing in confusion while everyone else was laughing at him. He shook it off and spoke over the glass held at his lips, slightly tipped, froth almost touching his lips. ‘So, Teach, where were you on the scale? One being the teacher’s pet and ten being the stoner who wandered the halls during class and set the lockers on fire.’
Lori waited, hopeful, but no one spoke up, or swatted down his question. Heads turned, all eyes on her, like spotlights. She sure as shit wasn’t about to swap stories from the worst time in her life with a tableful of strangers over a friendly beer or two. On a scale of one to ten, she was at least a fifteen. She stuttered, stalling while her brain panicked for something else to turn their attention to.
But then a hand squeezed her knee under the table. ‘Give it a rest, guys. It’s been a long day.’ Addy kept her eyes forward, her other hand twirling her glass.
A moment of awkward, wounded silence fell, but then a girl further down the table leaned forward, peering around the bulk of the guy sitting next to her. She had two different coloured eyes, both with a hint of mischief in them.
‘Wanna know what Addy was like?’
Addy reached across the guy’s chest, pushing her friend back out of sight. ‘No, she really doesn’t.’
Trying to repay Addy for saving her, Lori shook her head.
But they told her anyway.
‘Didn’t take any shit—’
‘Didn’t give a fuck either.’
‘Always in trouble for crazy stuff.’
‘Teachers hated her.’
‘Yeah, cos she was a shit—’
‘Smarter than them, too. Couldn’t handle her—’
‘—wore the same shirt for like a month. That alien cop show.’
‘That’s right! She had the biggest, most massive crush on the lady cop.’
‘And now she’s a university scholar—’
‘Nature scientist, or something, right?’
‘Fancy word for hippie.’
‘Nah, Addy’s too angry to be a hippie—’
‘Okay. Thanks, guys. That’s enough sharing for today.’ Addy smiled hatefully at them, small points of colour in her cheeks. ‘Love you fuckers too.’
Not finished, Nate grinned across the table as he got in the last jab. ‘I guess not much has changed.’
Addy reached across the tops of empty glasses and flicked Nate’s ear so hard it sounded like plastic snapping, so hard it made him squeal and the rest of the table laughed again.
Back in her seat, Addy chuckled into her glass. No one else seemed to notice, but Lori saw it, the change in her face; the smile not spreading; a blankness in her eyes; a guarded loneliness; distance.
Lori couldn’t pull her eyes away, hiding the fact that she wasn’t laughing by raising the glass to cover her mouth, waiting for the glint of light to return to Addy’s eye. She’d drained half the glass before she realised what she was doing. Even though she’d limited herself to one drink, she must have been mindlessly reaching for her glass, which seemed to never empty, and now she was on the far side of tipsy. She put the glass down and caught Nate refilling it with a cheeky grin on his face.
Fumbling to get her phone out of her pocket, Lori wanted to check the time and to see if there was a message from Em noticing that she wasn’t at home. Thankfully, there wasn’t one.
She switched it off and had it halfway back in her pocket when she realised she’d already forgotten what the time was. Before she could turn it on again, Addy grabbed the phone from her hand, dancing it through the air.
‘Hey!’ Lori moved to take it back, laughing as Addy teased the phone in and out of her reach.
But then Addy laid it facedown on the table, trying on her best teacher impersonation. ‘You can have it back at the end of the night.’ She leaned into Lori’s shoulder and whispered, ‘You’re here, so be here.’
They were caught in the electric moment of almost touching, eyes locked, close enough that the faces around them faded.
15
A GARBLED VOICE came over the speakers and there was a rush of chairs being pushed back, everyone heading inside.
‘Wanna see something cool?’ Addy was already out of her seat, pulled along in the wake of the others.
Inside the club, the music was at a volume that you could hold a conversation without yelling in a person’s ear. The flashing lights stood still, pointing straight down the walls, and plain overhead lights flooded the smoky space. The crowd was no smaller, but it was shifting, stretching out like a rubber band, tight with energy and excitement.
A cheer went up as a guy in a black cowboy hat walked across the stage, followed by a line of guys with the usual band instruments and a few she hadn’t expected to see in a nightclub: banjo, stand-up bass, fiddle. They were all dressed the same: cowboy hats, bandanas tucked into the buttoned collars of checkered flannel shirts, dust-covered black jeans that looked like they could stand up on their own.
Lori stood just inside the door, caught in confusion. She checked the sign to see if it was the same one she’d walked through a little while ago, or if she’d walked into some other place.
When she turned around, she’d lost Addy in the crowd. Up on her toes, Lori scanned the faces, dropping back down when she spotted Addy motioning for her to hurry. She wove through the crowd, breaking through lines of people. They met halfway, Addy pulling Lori over to where the others were, slotting her into an empty spot between her and Nate.
‘What’s going on?’
‘You’ll see.’ Addy smiled.
The guy in the black cowboy hat jumped down from the stage and stood at the front of the crowd, back turned.
‘Ready?’ Nate rubbed his hands together, shaking them out, fingers twitching by his side like he was about to draw and shoot.
‘For what?’
But then a single note played out on the fiddle, sustained for an impossible moment before the rest of the band joined in. The crowd shifted and moved from side to side, forwards and back, following the lead of the guy in front.
‘Are we line dancing?’
‘Bet your boot scootin’ ass, we are.’ Nate’s attempt at a Texas drawl was terrible, and he knew it, jostling into Lori and then stepping back the other way, head nodding with a big grin.
Lori looked around. She was the only one standing still in a mass of movement.
‘Move it or lose it.’ Addy grabbed Lori’s hand, pushing and pulling her along, saying the steps out loud.
Lori repeated them under her breath, copying Addy’s feet, stumbling with each mistimed step and bumping into Nate, clapping a second too late. Soon she was moving in the same direction as everyone else, and after a while she got the hang of it, her feet stepping without thought.
It’d been ages since Lori had let herself go like this, not caring if she looked like an idiot, just having fun. Most of the people around her were following along, each step perfectly timed.
Nate was doing a terrible job showing off for the girl with the different coloured eyes, and a few others were making it up as they went along, not caring that they were out of sync with everyone else.
A girl in cowboy boots, cut-off denims and a white shirt tied around her waist walked through the crowd, handing out bandanas and putting plastic cowboy hats on people’s heads. Nate got a bandana with bright green cacti printed on it, and one guy doing his own thing got a rainbow sparkly hat plonked on his head at a tilt because he wouldn’t stand still.
The pace of the music picked up until everyone was tripping over each other, laughing as they untangled limbs and tried to keep up. With a final note signalled again by the fiddle, everyone stopped, lines falling apart into a sighing, laughing, heaving, breathing mess.
The crowd cheered and clapped. The band picked up a new tune and kept playing as they took turns for each player to throw their hat and bandana into the crowd, unbuttoning their checkered flannels to reveal t-shirts covered in splattered paint, holes and tears, band names and the faces of 80s rock idols. The guy who led the dance was now at the mic, introducing the band. In under a few minutes, they’d gone from country to grunge rock with a bluegrass twang.
It was the weirdest, most exhilarating experience Lori had had in a long time and she wanted it to keep going, jumping along in time with the beat, cheering and laughing and yelling and singing along with Addy and Nate and the others.
16
TIME FLEW AND the mood shifted as people filtered back to the table, voices rising and competing as their not-so-long-ago teenage years were relived in jokes and stories as they bagged each other out.
A waitress came out to collect empties, already cradling a snake of glasses that ran the length of her arm and leaned against her shoulder. Nate called out to her, getting up and dismantling the glasses back into uneven piles on the table, handing her Lori’s phone.
It took some organising to get everyone on the same side of the table, crowded behind Addy and Lori. The waitress waited patiently, indifference blanking her face. Finally, everyone was in place, and in the last moment, Lori felt Addy’s lips press against her cheek a
s the waitress took a burst of photos, the flash momentarily blinding everyone.
By the time Lori blinked the stars of dark and light from her eyes, the bored waitress and her stack of glasses were gone, and Addy was holding out her phone. ‘Just wanted you to have proof that you can have fun. A reminder.’
Lori took it back, flicking through a mass of photos, starting right after Addy had confiscated it. They must have passed her phone around, everyone taking turns. She came across one of her and Addy on the dance floor, smiling goofily at each other. ‘Sneaky.’
Addy shrugged a smile just as a bell rang and the overhead lights flashed. A collective groan rumbled around.
‘What was that?’
‘Closing time.’ Addy was pulling on her jacket. ‘Their polite way of saying get the fuck out.’
Lori followed suit as everyone drained their glasses and got up out of their seats. They weren’t heading for the door she’d entered through, though.
Addy spun Lori around, hands on her shoulders as she walked her in the right direction. At the other end of the room, behind the leaves of a palm, she saw another door, a reluctant surge of jackets and beanies heading towards it.
The door led to a corridor filled with confetti tumbling down from the ceiling, flurrying like bright-coloured flakes of snow, the exit door at the other end.
‘What’s with the confetti?’
Addy shrugged, holding a hand out to catch a few flecks. ‘Makes it fun?’
‘This is a weird place.’
Outside in the dark, Lori couldn’t tell if it was late in the night or early in the morning. The group veered off to the right, shaking a cloud of coloured sparks to the ground. Lori shook herself out and stepped to the left, her head a little light in the shock of the cold air. She flicked the collar of her jacket up tight against the back of her neck, trying to figure out what street they’d come out on.
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