How it feels to float, p.6
How It Feels to Float, page 6
Bile rises in my stomach and grinds up my throat. I’ve heard about this kind of thing happening—I’ve seen it from a distance, girls turning their backs on girls, laughing as the girl walks away, guys spreading shit, girls spreading shit, everyone copy-pasting, everyone baa-baa-baa-ing—but I’ve floated outside it. And I’ve been held in a Posse bubble and a Grace bubble so long I didn’t know this could happen to me.
I stare at the phone.
PING!
GRACE: I’m so sorry, Biz.
. . .
. . .
PING!
GRACE: Where are you?
. . .
GRACE: Biz. Come on. Where are you?
. . .
BIZ: Beach.
GRACE: Our spot?
BIZ: Yeah.
GRACE: I’ll be there in ten minutes.
. . .
GRACE: I love you.
. . .
GRACE: I’m really sorry.
. . .
GRACE: Fuck everyone. We’ll burn the place down.
In ten minutes the cavalry will come. Grace, who’s going to be prime minister one day; Grace, who feels so lonely some nights she asks me to talk to her on the phone till she goes to sleep. Grace, who never bends, never lets you down. Grace, who hasn’t texted or spoken to me for six days because her boyfriend told her not to.
I stand up. My knees crack. The rabbits scatter. I pick up my bag and go home.
In the stories, the best friend chooses the boy and doesn’t look back. In the stories, the best friend is disloyal and untrustworthy. In the stories, the best friend doesn’t come over and bash on the door and scream your name when you bail on her and don’t meet her at the beach.
Grace is a storm at the door. Grace is shouting so loudly I’m sure the police will be called. Grace won’t leave until I send her away.
I open the door. I find Grace standing there in her uniform, raising a single, furious eyebrow.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘Uh-huh,’ she says, and shoulders past me.
‘It’s just—’
‘You didn’t want to see your best friend.’ She stands, arms crossed in my hallway, filling it.
‘Best is a tenuous term at this time, Grace.’
‘But I texted you!’
‘Six days late.’
‘Hmmm.’ Grace peers at a nail. Nibbles it.
‘Because dick boy said so.’
‘True,’ says Grace.
‘What kind of an arsehole—’
‘Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ says Grace. She moves forward and wraps her arms around me. ‘Okay. I messed up, Biz.’
‘Yep,’ I say, and my voice feels like glass in my throat.
Grace leans into me and I can feel her boobs on me, her arms tight around me, her breath on my neck, her heart radiating its beat to me. She starts to rock, so we lean back and forth, like two statues, wobbling on our tiny pedestals.
‘Okay. I promise. Enough fuckery from me,’ Grace says, finally. She leans back, gathers me up with her dark eyes, and kisses me on the cheek. ‘It won’t happen again.’
‘Good,’ I say, and I wipe away whatever is in my eye.
‘I think we need some fortification,’ Grace says.
She goes into the kitchen. I follow.
She opens the fridge and starts rummaging. She shakes her head.
‘Abysmal,’ she says, holding up a flaccid carrot.
Then I hear the clink of glass and she’s pulled two beers out of the fridge.
‘Time to make a plan,’ she says. ‘World domination in three-two-one.’
I smile for the first time in approximately six days, or a month, or ever. Something inside me shifts, opens. It makes way for the possibility of something good.
If only it were that easy.
Turns out rejecting a friend group is a bit like detonating a school-sized bomb.
Grace and I tell The Posse we are leaving and Evie’s eyes turn to slits. ‘You aren’t leaving,’ she hisses. ‘You are actually not welcome here.’
No one else says anything. Stu focuses on his sandwich. Rob coughs. Miff looks at me, then at Grace, then sideways at the air beside us. Sal sits with her lips pinched.
Evie crosses her arms, lifts her eyebrows, and that’s that. Our joyous, inclusive, delightful Collective has made its decree: we can’t quit. We’re fired.
How is it possible that Tim’s lie has smeared itself over them so easily? When I’ve sat with them for years and not made a touch of trouble? When I’ve been a good lump on a seat and nodded and smiled and drunk and sung and linked arms and swapped notes and agreed with everything I needed to agree to?
Turns out it takes almost nothing at all. Just me + Tim + a dune + his hand in the wrong underpants + a lie + Grace siding with me + our clear lack of remorse. You’d think it would take something bigger, but I guess this is how it works? Things change in an instant—one minute a mountain, solid and immoveable. The next, the land drops out. Trees collapse and tumble. The landscape slides into a mess of scars.
The lie oozes around the school, all the way from the Year 9s to the Year 12s. The younger years are oblivious, which provides exactly no comfort.
I am a slut. Everyone agrees. Their eyes slide off me when they see me.
(Except for Jasper, who never looked at me anyway and doesn’t seem to be anywhere at school.)
I am mental. Everyone has always suspected. Have you heard about her dad?
No!
Well, Evie says . . .
I am a bitch. Everyone has heard what I did to Tim who’s, like, gorgeous and can surf.
(Where is Jasper? I don’t know, because literally no one but Grace is talking to me. Has Jasper left school? Did he hear what I did and he thought, I’m not going to school with a slutbitchho like her? Most likely.)
I deserve everything I’m getting. Everyone is 100 per cent sure. It is a single, inalienable truth.
And Grace—beautiful, smart, funny Grace? What did she do?
Did you hear what she did?
With Suryan?
Yeah!
And he says—
Grace too. Grace deserves it.
Grace Yu–Harrison and Elizabeth Grey, those two slut bitch fuckinhoes.
We sit on Grace’s couch. It’s Friday evening. We have a pile of food, and Grace is crying over it.
‘Everything is so stupid,’ she says, chugging a Red Bull liberally laced with her mother’s vodka. What number is that, her fourth?
‘I’m a slut because I had sex with Suryan but he’s not? And you, Biz, you’re a slut for having sex with Tim even though you never did and he’s a hero for having sex with you and saying you said you’d say you never said yes?’ She shakes her head. ‘What the living fuck? Where’s the logic?’
Grace drinks and eats and weeps and rages.
Poor Grace.
Suryan has dumped her, by text. Everyone has dumped us. We are now not just Ex-Posse, but Ex-Every-Group-That- Exists-in-Every-Corner-of-the-School.
Grace has never been a social outcast before. She’s really too beautiful for this kind of shit.
Dad says he doesn’t know how to help.
He sits on the edge of Grace’s couch and watches Grace weep. Her hair flops over her eyes, and I’m sure Dad wants to smooth it back, just like I want to, but we can’t—Dad because he’s dead, and me because Grace isn’t up for anyone touching her. She’s too angry.
Dad’s wearing a suit today. It’s dark blue. He’s wearing his patterned socks, grey and blue diamonds. He’s wobbling in the air, like he’s being steamed.
‘I wish I knew what to do,’ he says, wringing his hands, helpless.
I nod. He looks so sad, like he’s walking into Grace’s water and dissolving.
‘The suffering of a child,’ he says, and tapers off. ‘You want to keep them safe—’ he says. He shakes his head. ‘Those arseholes. I’d bash their heads in if I could.’
‘Violence isn’t the answer,’ I say, and Grace’s head whips up.
‘Sorry?’
Dad blips out.
‘Just saying, uh,’ I start.
‘But violence is the answer, Biz,’ Grace says. Her eyes gleam. ‘That’s exactly what it is.’ She swigs down the last of her drink. ‘Time to fuck up some shit.’
Grace is on a bender. Grace is on fire.
Which looks like this:
I try to talk her out of it—I grab the car keys from her hand—I pull at her clothes, but she’s out of the house and running and I’m running after her—it’s crunchy with cold and thick with dark, but we can see over the roots of the trees and the lumps in the driveways because we know these streets—these are our streets—and Grace runs so fast—she has won prizes for her running—has her mother ever come to the awards?—I don’t think so and even though I’ve got giraffe legs I’m not much use, because I’m not a runner and Grace could be in the Olympics—and she’s at Suryan’s house before I realise where we are, because how would I know what his house looks like, except Grace is shouting his name and she’s throwing a huge rock through his front window—whoa, Grace, Jesus, where’d you get that?—and she’s shouting, ‘Arsehole stupid shithead motherfucker!’—and Suryan’s parents are at the door, clutching each other and Grace is wild, wild, wild—and I’m pulling her away into the slurping dark—we’re ghosts going back into the shell— we’re leaving—‘We’re leaving, Grace, come on, shit, shit, shit,’ I say—and I’m running with her back down the street as she totters and bumps into me, snot dribbling as she cries—and we’re almost home, we’ve almost made it to her house and our books and our boring, good girl lives when the police pull up beside us, and their lights go around and
around and
around.
The Youth Liaison Officer wears a navy-blue uniform, a yellow badge, and a red, tired face.
Her pinched ponytail hair is bottle orange. You can see the brown roots. She is older than Mum. She is short.
We sit at a grey table, on grey chairs, in a grey-walled room.
When the Youth Liaison Officer sits down opposite us, the buttons strain on her uniform.
She says, ‘You girls know what you did wrong, I’m guessing?’
I don’t know what to say. Yes? No? Everything? Nothing?
The officer doesn’t seem to need an answer. She flaps open a notepad.
‘Okay. Here’s how this is going to go,’ she says, huffing her breath. Her cheeks go out like a squirrel’s. Is she tired? It’s almost midnight. Does the officer have kids? Is she glad we aren’t her kids? Is she there thinking, Jesus, if little Mike did this, he’d be in deep shit?
Most likely.
She squints at her notebook. ‘Sounds like you got drunk and broke some poor bugger’s window? Is that right?’
She peers at us. We don’t nod or move or speak. Should we nod? Should we speak? The officer sighs.
‘You’re going to tell me what you did,’ she says. ‘You’re going to tell me, “Officer, this is exactly what we did and we are very sorry.” Then I’m going to give you a caution. It will sit on your record until you’re eighteen, so you’d better not stuff up again. And then you’re going to go home and stop being dickheads.’
Grace and I look at each other.
Grace leans forward. She’s been crying for so long her eyes look like two marshmallows.
‘Biz didn’t do anything,’ she says.
‘Sorry?’ says the officer. ‘Who’s Biz?’
I raise my hand.
The officer looks at her notes and reads out slowly. ‘Elizabeth Martin Grey.’ She looks up at me. ‘And this translates to Biz?’
‘You can call me Elizabeth,’ I say.
The officer raises her eyebrows. ‘Ah, a smartarse, hey?’
‘No,’ I say, ‘just—’
‘Listen, kiddo. You and this one’—she thumbs over at Grace—‘were both in front of that house, maliciously destroying a living-room window. In someone else’s home. There were three witnesses. You could have killed someone. And you’re bloody lucky you’re getting off with just a caution.’
Grace palms her hands on the table, leans forward again. ‘No. I’m the one who got drunk. I’m the one who ran to that fuckwit’s house. I’m the one who broke the window. Biz did nothing wrong.’
Seriously, Grace? Still on fire. What the hell?
I start to speak, but the officer is shutting her notebook. She’s standing up.
‘Looks like you pretty things need some time to cool off. How about I show you to your accommodation?’
Shit.
Grace’s face sets and I feel my insides go liquid.
We meekly stand and follow the officer down the hall. We go past the empty-eyed windows of all the other interrogation rooms. We pass a row of benches. A man lies asleep on one, his mouth open in a snore. He smells like urine. We turn right, we turn left, left again, and she opens a door.
It’s just like a movie and way, way worse than a movie.
Inside: two bare beds. No window. A toilet.
It smells of bleach and loneliness and old vomit.
Ohmygod.
The beds feel made of concrete.
The walls have deep scratches on them.
The police have taken our phones. So all we have is the room and each other.
Grace can’t stop crying.
‘I’m so sorry, Biz.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘You said that already.’
Grace wails. ‘It’s all gone to shit. Everything! What’s Mum going to say? That fucking Suryan. That bitch Evie. What about uni?’
‘You only broke a window, Grace.’
That’s all she did. Right? And somehow I did too.
‘But someone could have died,’ she says. A sob heaves itself out of her and flaps on the floor. Which is when it hits me.
Someone could have died.
We could have killed someone. Grace with her rock and me with not stopping her.
Who might have died? A two-day-old baby lying on the other side of the window?
A cat on a couch? A grandmother, knitting?
Or Suryan. Or his brothers. Or his mum and dad.
I stare down at my hands. I can see blood pooling on the palms. I see blood on the caved-in heads of Suryan/the two-day-old baby/the grandmother/the children/the parents/the people. Their eyes are open, wide wide wide wide wide.
When the officer comes to get us, I can’t breathe. I walk, not breathing, as she brings us back to the interrogation room. Mum’s there, and Grace’s mum and stepdad too.
When the officer looks at me and asks, ‘Did you do the thing?’ I nod.
I say, ‘Yes, I did. I did that exact thing,’ even though Grace is interrupting and saying, ‘But she didn’t! Biz didn’t do anything!’
I shush her away.
I say, ‘I did it. I did the thing.’
I sign the papers. I agree to the terms and conditions. I tick the box that says: Biz is terrible. She has blood on her hands. All the heads are caved.
Grace looks at me. She stares into my body, sees all the holes. She shakes her head slowly. She signs the paper. She doesn’t look at me again.
All her fire is out.
Dad sits on the edge of my bed.
What were you thinking, Biz?
Mum paces back and forth. She’s been raging for about an hour. I don’t even know what she’s saying; it’s a swirl of fury and fear.
I look at Dad. He’s in his blue suit but it’s rumpled and filthy. It looks like he’s been crawling through vines, like he’s been pulling himself out of a hole.
Mum says, ‘Did you hear me, Biz? You’re in so much shit, do you understand?’
I do understand. I am in such shit. I’ve been in shit for longer than I can explain.
It started when I was small. I want to stand up and say, ‘When I launched myself out of your vagina, Mum, when I ripped you, and Dad fainted, that’s when it began.’
I know Dad would agree.
Dad doesn’t speak. He doesn’t look at me. He sits on the edge of my bed. Sadness oozes out of his eyes. He’s almost completely see-through.
° ° ° ° °
Grace and I have been released to our parents, and two days later, in an impressive turn of events, we are also suspended from school—for two whole weeks, pending further inquiry. The principal is appalled. Such a shock, he says in his email to Mum. So promising, so disappointing.
Grace’s mum is apoplectic.
When she came to pick up Grace from the police station, she looked like she’d been sucking on an exhaust pipe, her lips pinched, her face ash. Grace’s stepdad just stood at the door of the interrogation room, jiggling his keys. The whole station rattled with his rattle.
Grace’s mum had already heard from Suryan’s parents. She’d heard everything Grace had done before she heard a word from Grace.
‘But, Mum!’ Grace tried to explain.
‘Don’t even start with me, Grace,’ said her mum. So Grace didn’t even start.
Three days after the Incident, Grace is withdrawn from school. Five days after the Incident, Grace is sent to Wagga Wagga, four whole hours and a world away, to live with her father.
I’m not allowed to see her. Mum gets a single message from Grace’s mum to let me know Grace is leaving. I am not permitted to text Grace, or email, or call.
Grace doesn’t text me.
Grace doesn’t email.
Grace doesn’t call.
Grace doesn’t say goodbye.
° ° ° ° °
I am sent away to exactly nowhere. I get to continue my life at home, in my house, with my brother and sister and mother and dog and dead dad.
Mum says I could have gone to jail. Which makes sense, because I nearly killed someone. Which is exactly the same as: I killed someone.
