How it feels to float, p.5
How It Feels to Float, page 5
‘Maybe it’s time to go home, Biz,’ says a shape that is probably Grace, but I’m not going to listen to her. I’m laughing too loudly. I can hear my voice kicking the rabbits out of their homes. The stars are turning their faces away. The waves are disgusted. I’m loud and my laugh is loud and my laugh is ugly and I’m ugly. A bit of sex will sort me out. I’ll be just like Grace, who’s done it, and Evie, who’d love to do it, and Miff too and all the women in love who do it and the women not in love who do it.
I’ll be a woman: split inside but so whole.
I whisper in the ear of one of the stupid boys. ‘Let’s have sex,’ I say.
He looks at me and grins.
‘Okay!’ He slaps his knees.
‘Yeah. Let’s get this shit done,’ I say. Do I say that out loud or do I just think it?
The boy nods and pulls me up. We don’t look at anyone. We just go. We stumble up to the dunes and lie down and scrabble around for a while.
And then suddenly I’m not sure because I look closer and I see it’s Tim—cross-country Tim—and wait, isn’t he the one Evie likes? And suddenly everything feels so messy and maybe painful too, although we haven’t done it yet, and I say, ‘I’m not sure.’
And Tim says, ‘Ah, come on,’
and I say, ‘I don’t know. Um. No.’
And he says, ‘Come on, Biz,’
and he’s yanking my underpants down and his hand goes between my legs
and I think, No,
and the feel of his hand and the sand on my bum is cold, cold, cold
and I say, ‘No!’
I push him away and he flops over like a toy off a bed, which would be funny,
except it’s not.
And then I sit up and puke all over him, which is actually hilarious and not at all hilarious, and I can’t stop laughing and crying because of the look on his face, and I pull up my undies, stand and push down my skirt and run away from the beach, to the bike path and along the sunless streets. And I know Tim’s back on the beach, sitting by the stupid fire, telling a stupid story about stupid Biz and how I handed him my virginity on the dunes before I threw up everywhere like a dickhead and went home.
I know this, because the stars are telling each other in shocked, hushed voices.
Did you hear?
I did!
Gosh!
Can you believe?!
God. They’re so disappointed.
The night is close and thick. Dad’s running alongside me, but he isn’t talking. He’s in his running shoes and dark blue shorts. He is moving beside me. He stares ahead like I’m not even there.
And it’s so clear how far I have fallen. How far I am from where the stars are.
It is 6 a.m. Monday. First day back at school after the break.
I count to one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three and then I go back to sleep.
I wake up. It’s 7 a.m.
The wind whirls and clatters. The sun arcs over the sky. The dog woofs outside. Somewhere in the house, a toilet flushes.
I lie in bed and don’t get up.
Billie and Dart run up and down the hall. They are arguing over a dinosaur, a card game, a lost shoe. The sun tries to fight its way into the room.
I smell coffee. Toast.
Any minute, Mum’s going to come and check on me. When she does, I will flatten my body so she can’t see me. She’ll think I’ve gone out. Perhaps to jog or buy bread or donate my clothes to charity.
I am going to lie here for the entire day. I will sleep and get up only to pee and then crawl back inside my cave. I will slow down my breathing until it is barely perceptible. I will spend autumn and winter here and come out with the spring flowers.
If I come out.
It is ten to eight.
Dart and Mum come into my room and look at me. My mother frowns.
‘What’s up, Biz?’ Mum says.
‘Yeah. What’s up?’ says Dart.
‘I’m sick,’ I say to them.
‘What kind of sick?’ says Mum.
‘Yeah, what kind of sick?’ parrots Dart.
The kind where everyone thinks you had sex with hot, stupid Tim on Saturday night and your best friend hasn’t texted and neither has anyone else and Jasper hasn’t spoken to you since you died in the waves four weeks ago and the earth is being poisoned and will one day be swallowed by the sun.
‘Cramps,’ I say. ‘Like knives, Mum. Feel like I’m going to throw up.’
Dart looks confused. Mum looks sympathetic. Woman to woman. She knows how terrible blood can be.
‘Maybe you have too much poo,’ says Dart. ‘I get cramps sometimes when I need to poo.’
I look at Dart. ‘Yeah. Maybe, Dart. There is a whole lot of shit inside me.’
‘Biz!’ says Mum.
Dart sort of laughs. Have I ever sworn in front of him before?
He leans over the bed and pushes his face close.
‘I love you, Biz,’ he says, his breath warm in my ear. ‘Get better soon.’
Billie yells from somewhere. Dart kisses me, then rushes out. Mum touches my hair. ‘Want a hot water bottle?’
‘No. I’m good.’
‘Panadol?’
‘Just took some.’
‘Okay then.’
Then I am alone except for Mum’s deodorant smell floating in the air, and the imprint of Dart’s wet kiss on my cheek.
The twins slam out the front door for school. Mum backs the car down the drive. And the day turns into a syrup of Netflix movies and checking my phone and nothing and silence and birds looking in at me with their sideways eyes.
Dad doesn’t visit. He doesn’t sit by the bed or the window. There are no stories for me.
The next day I tell Mum I am still sick.
Mum frowns.
A sloppy kiss from Dart. A quick hug from Billie.
Silence in the house.
Nothing from Grace. Nothing from The Posse.
I check our group chat. No mention of me. It’s like I’ve become a particle.
Why the fuck aren’t they writing to me?
And the whole day slides away—from light to dusk, to dark.
The next day, Mum opens the curtains. She says, ‘I’m worried about you, Biz. Shall we go to the doctor?’
I make a face. ‘No.’
When she leaves, I shut the curtains.
Next day, Mum opens the curtains. She says, ‘Please leave these open for the day, okay? Biz? And if you’re not better by tomorrow, we are going to the doctor.’
Fine. ‘Okay.’
The day passes.
The trees outside look in.
It’s cold today. The trees look chilled. The trunks are shivering. The leaves are curling inwards. Birds cuddle on the branches and clouds clank against each other muttering, ‘Blimey, it’s bloody freezing! Isn’t it freezing? Too right.’
I watch the clouds parade in bunches. They gather, building into and onto one another until they fill the sky. The trees flick back and forth. The air roars. Lightning spears, in long, electric flashes. And down comes the rain.
It beats on the house.
The thunder splits everything open. Splits me.
The thunder looks inside and sees: how I lay down in the sand, how I opened my legs to the boy, how I threw up on the boy, how I ran home, how no one is saying a word to me, how I am invisible.
The thunder laughs and laughs. ‘Hahahahahahaha!’ it says.
Fuck you, thunder.
In the beat between booms, I hear something crashing outside, and three shrill barks.
God. The dog.
He must be terrified.
I push off the blanket, get up, and go onto the back verandah. The storm is a whole-body howl out here. Bump is panicking; he’s trying to push his way out the side gate, hurling himself hopelessly against the wood.
‘Here,’ I call. ‘Here, boy!’
He bolts to me, his body twisting sideways with relief. I crouch and he presses himself against me, his tail whapping.
I bring him inside. He’s soaking wet. I find a towel to dry him. I rub his fur. I speak to him, ‘It’s okay, boy, it’s okay, it’s okay.’
I croon over the slam of rain and over the thunder and through the split of the sky. I rub and rub, Bump trembling and whining. He licks my hand over and over again.
The next morning, I get out of bed. I go to the kitchen for breakfast.
Billie and Dart look up from their cereal and grin.
‘She’s better!’ Dart says.
‘Yay!’ Billie says.
My mother claps.
Everyone is so happy. A marching band comes in and marches through the living room. A cheer squad cheers. All the fireworks explode at once.
I have a shower after breakfast. I think I have bed sores. I try to see my bum in the mirror but then I don’t want to look at myself. What did Tim see, what did his hands feel? I wrap myself back up in the towel.
I put on my uniform. I go to the kitchen to hug Mum goodbye.
‘So you’re okay?’ she says.
‘Of course!’ I say. Too brightly.
Mum measures me with a look, tries to see in. ‘You sure?’
‘All is well, Mum,’ I say.
Is it? Is all well, Biz?
I kiss Mum and off to school I go.
And it’s another normal day.
See?
Look at me walking down the road.
Sun is shining. It’s warm again today. That’s how weather works; it changes in an instant, nothing to be alarmed about. Life is absolutely normal. Here I am, just a girl on her way to school with assignments overdue and nothing to show on her phone—no texts, no chats, no messages.
I walk down the road, under the trees.
I cross the freeway.
I cross the train tracks—thewomanfrozeandturnedbutitwastoolate.
I walk down the bike path, along the school fence. I go in through the gate. Everyone’s a shape with eyes, watching me. The bell’s about to ring.
I walk out the side gate and down the bike path to the beach. I sit on the top of the dunes. I tuck my feet under my knees. I huddle into my jacket.
The waves roll in, out. They say nothing.
I sit at the edge of the sea and cry.
Dad sits beside me on the dunes. He looks at the water, glances over at me, then down at his feet. He doesn’t speak for a minute.
‘Remember how you hated the sand, Biz?’ he says, finally.
I sniff, wiping my nose.
‘We took you to the beach one time, when you were maybe a year old, just starting to walk. And you suddenly decided you didn’t like the sand on your toes. You kept lifting your feet up every time I put you down.’
I turn and stare at him.
Dad’s wearing a pair of board shorts and a Rage Against the Machine T-shirt. I’ve seen the shirt and shorts before—Mum keeps them in a drawer along with a bunch of Dad’s other clothes. She asked me once if I wanted to wear any and I said no. She kept them, all the same. She says maybe Dart or Billie will want them someday, so she doesn’t throw anything out.
I found Mum smelling a blue button-down once, when I was almost nine, just before Mum’s boyfriend came into the picture. Mum told me she was checking whether it needed to be washed. She said it was hayfever that was making her eyes go wet. But I knew it wasn’t true, because Mum’s a terrible liar.
Two weeks later, Mum went out on a date—her first since Dad died. I was left with some neighbour called Doreen who smelled of hair spray and bacon. Doreen wanted me to sit on her lap when we watched TV.
‘I am nearly nine,’ I told her politely. ‘I don’t sit on laps.’
‘Oh, gosh!’ said Doreen. ‘Aren’t you quite the grown-up!’
We watched TV until Doreen fell asleep on the couch. I kept watching Doreen’s murder show until I heard the car drive in. Then I scooted to my room. After Doreen left and Mum went to her room, humming, I hopped out of bed to see her.
‘Did he kiss you, Mum?’ I said, standing at the door.
‘Oh!’ said Mum, turning. ‘What are you doing up?’ She was unzipping her yellow dress, a new one.
‘Did he?’
‘That’s none of your business!’
‘Yeah, it is,’ I said.
Mum’s zip was stuck. She flailed a bit, then dropped her arms to her sides. ‘Can you help me?’
I stood on the bed and Mum backed up. I unzipped Mum’s dress. It flopped to the ground like an empty banana.
‘Thanks, sweetie.’ Mum pulled on her nightie. She looked like Mum again, thank God.
‘So?’ I asked.
‘What?’ Mum went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. I followed her.
‘Did he kiss you?’ I said.
Mum waved her toothbrush vaguely in the air. ‘Maybe,’ she said, and smiled.
‘Was it gross?’
‘No.’ She looked at me through the mirror. ‘It was strange. And nice. And strange. It was my first kiss in a long time.’
In other words, it was Mum’s first kiss since the last kiss she had with Dad.
I wanted to crawl inside her body and feel what she was feeling. ‘Do you love him?’ I asked, and Mum burst out laughing.
‘What do you think, Biz?’ she said. She looked at me, toothbrush close to her mouth, eyes on mine.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ she said, and began to brush.
But three months later the man she didn’t love moved in with us, and four months after that, she was pregnant with the twins.
Now Dad’s here on the beach staring out over the water. And like so many times before, I want to ask him questions. Like, did he see the kiss that first night, between Mum and the boyfriend? Did he see the second kiss? The third?
Dad showed up for the first time on Mum’s sixth date, just after Mum said, ‘I’m starting to really like Brian, Biz.’
Maybe Dad had been watching us. Maybe he’d been floating close by in some unfixed form, watching Mum get all smiley when the boyfriend rang, when the boyfriend asked her out, when the boyfriend kissed her. Maybe it broke his heart so much Dad popped back into being. Maybe he stepped into his old clothes and came to find me—Biz, who would never love anyone as much as I loved him.
‘Dad?’ I say.
I want to know: how did he feel, watching Mum fall in love? Did he die—again, even more—inside?
‘I remember you cried when the sand touched you,’ says Dad, staring hard over the water. ‘You said, “Off! Off!” and we had to lay down a towel just to get you to sit.’
‘Dad?’ I want to ask him a thousand questions. I want to tell him about The Posse not talking to me. I want to ask him how heartbreak feels. I want to know what it’s like to watch and not be seen, because I think I already know, but is it different for him?
Dad says, ‘I remember your mum saying, “She’ll like the sand, give her time.” And guess what? She was right.’ He tries to smile.
‘Dad?’
‘You ended up loving the beach, Biz. I remember the first time you ran on the sand. It was like you’d never been happier in your whole life, like the past had never existed, like you’d never been afraid. Have you seen that photo?’ asks Dad. He wobble-smiles again and reaches out a hand.
I reach out mine.
‘Yeah, Dad, I’ve seen it, but—’
And poof! He’s gone.
I get a text from Grace at lunchtime. I’m still in the dunes.
I’ve peed behind a bush. I’ve eaten my sandwich. I can’t bring myself to go anywhere—school or home or on a plane to Istanbul—wherever, whatever, I can’t move.
The sun squints at me from behind a cloud. A family of rabbits have inched out from their hidey-hole, noses trembling, and had a meeting, nose to feathery nose. They’ve agreed I can stay, seeing as I haven’t moved except for peeing and eating and sniffing and wiping my eyes.
I am Elizabeth Martin Grey: invisible girl, zero threat.
The sun’s overhead, a blur behind the clouds. The clouds are hovering and lurching when my phone goes PING! for the first time in days.
It’s Grace.
Biz! Where the fuck are you?
Huh. An interesting opener.
I don’t know what to say. So I don’t say anything, just stare at the text, and this is when I realise I might actually be invisible; maybe I am a ghost and I can’t text back because I don’t have fingers or a mind that functions and even though I can physically see myself maybe I’m 100 per cent a lie.
My phone goes PING! again.
They’ve said to freeze you out. But fuck it, Biz. I don’t want to.
I hold the phone up to my eyes because this makes no sense. The phone jiggles and I can see my fingers actually trembling like in those books where it says ‘Her hands shook,’ just as the heroine is about to be shot or see her true love ride off into the sunset with someone else.
My hands have gone fuzzy. I look at them from very, very far away.
I poke at the silly box with my silly fingers and words come out:
Who? What? Freeze? What?
PING!
GRACE: Suryan. Tim. Evie.
BIZ: Evie?
GRACE: Says you’re a slut.
BIZ: But I didn’t have sex with him.
GRACE: Tim said you did. And he said you went crazy afterwards and told him you’d tell everyone you didn’t say yes. He says you’re a mental case. So Evie said we should freeze you out. Until you tell the truth and apologise.
BIZ: But I haven’t told anyone anything!
GRACE: Suryan said we can’t text you. Everyone’s gone mad. I held on as long as I could but then I thought, What the fuck? I’m no gladiator. I’m your fucking best friend.
