‘But you just did,’ I reply, not a correction, but a plea.
‘You know what I mean.’ A hint of frustration.
‘I really don’t,’ I say, because I really, really don’t.
‘Neither of us are in a good place at the moment, Nora. I don’t think this is a good idea.’
He pushes his hair out of his face and closes his eyes. And before I have the chance to explain all the reasons I believe this to be the only good idea, Fran stands and leaves. He never even said whatever he came all this way to say to me in the first place. I do not know what he expects me to think, or how he expects me to think of anything else. The only thing I can think to do is find another drink.
Once I discovered the magical powers of alcohol, life seemed to tilt, to become entirely about planning the next time we would be able to get alcohol, get drunk, let the wretch take the wheel and finally be free. That was most of my senior high school experience in a nutshell. A liquor-soaked nutshell. Poppy and Mara were excellent accomplices, Mara with the older brother and Poppy the only child with the mostly absent parents and empty house. Mum and Dad did not cotton on to what a sleepover actually entailed, only thrilled to see me with friends who got me out of my room. Poppy got an older boyfriend who played in a band and our weekends found a new momentum. We must have been seniors by then, though I cannot be trusted to know the chronology of my own life. Drinking became pre-drinking. Community halls and backyards and field parties became the main events. Fran sometimes came along, and the nights were always better when he did. The hormones were still there, radiating in his presence, and I could see the two of us together on the horizon, an oasis, one day set to figure it all out. I dreamt about us, and spent plenty of time imagining us, but I promised myself I would not make the first move, knowing I would not survive his rejection or even his doubt. I tried to give him signs, to let him choose, and I was happy to wait, more sure about that than anything. In the meantime, we were dodging trouble, and counted it as part of the adventure when it found us anyway. Like the night we almost died.
Poppy’s boyfriend’s friend had agreed to give us a ride that night. The party was at a house down in the valley, so walking was not an option. None of us had met this friend, not even Poppy. She did not act as though this was a big deal, though it felt like one to me. Nothing was a big deal to Poppy, and so everything seemed to happen around her. Fran sat quietly on her bed as we tried to plan outfits that showed bodies we were growing into, and made us look older than we were. Poppy and Mara treated me like a dress-up doll, a clueless child who needed their assistance on how to be in the world. I suppose they were right. I would have worn giant T-shirt dresses and Crocs every day for the rest of my life if it had been up to me. On this night, they had convinced me that a crop top and pleather mini skirt was ‘the outfit’ I had been born to wear. I argued in favour of my chunky boots, as they were flat and comfortable, and they agreed it was ‘grunge’ enough to work.
‘Does this look okay?’ I remember asking Fran, feeling flayed as I waited for the only opinion that mattered.
‘You look great,’ he replied.
I waited for his eyes to confirm the words but they avoided mine. I’ll show him, I thought, hoping the attention of others might encourage him to give me more of his. It was not meant as manipulation – I was simply close enough to my childhood to remember how appealing a toy became when someone else picked it up. I wanted him to pick me up; I wanted him to choose me. We drank lurid vodka drinks and fought over who was in control of the playlist until we heard a car crunching up the driveway. Headlights flashed and the horn blared. Poppy spilt her orange drink across the carpet as we scrambled to get on our way into the night.
‘Shit. Oh well, that’s future Poppy’s problem,’ she said, and we laughed and laughed.
The silver Camry waiting for us looked like it belonged to a parent, but the guy in the driver’s seat looked like the type of person a mother would cross the street with her children to avoid. He had greasy hair with a centre part, a cigarette behind his ear, and the worst kind of techno music thudding at a low volume.
‘Shotgun not the front,’ I said, keen to avoid sitting with someone I did not know, especially in this case.
The other girls scrambled to join me in the back seat, and Fran took the front passenger seat because that was all that was left. It would have made more sense if it had been Poppy, but she would not have seen it that way.
‘Which one of you is Poppy?’ the driver, whose name was Jax or Jex or Jett, asked.
‘Me,’ Poppy replied, bursting into a fit of giggles as she raised her hand.
‘Wow, right. I would have thought you were more Calvin’s type,’ he replied, pointing at me.
The air tensed, but Poppy never truly saw me as a person of value, so she was able to brush it off.
‘Fuck off,’ she said, swatting Jax or Jex or Jett over the back of the head. ‘I dressed her, so that’s probably why you think that.’
‘Sure,’ he replied, giving me one lingering, unsettling look, and then turning back to the wheel.
I felt disgusted with my own body for drawing the wrong kind of attention. When he drove out onto the street, he made the tyres spin so that dirt and rocks flew up and clouded our vision out of every window, as though we had been dropped into the centre of a dust storm. The back of the car fishtailed and Jax or Jex or Jett overcorrected, which nearly sent us off the road. If any part of me imagined the rest of the drive would settle, that this initial scare was as bad as it would get, I was as naïve as I was incorrect.
‘Watch this,’ our driver, who apparently had a death wish, soon announced.
He turned off the headlights and swerved over onto the wrong side of the road.
‘Stop fucking around, man,’ Fran said, holding tight to his door and twisting to make sure we were all still accounted for in the back seat, that no one had flown out a window.
A car was heading our way, its headlights coming closer along the road, and I was not sure they would be able to see us, on this dimly lit mountain stretch. Mara and Poppy were screaming and flailing, but I was entirely silent, and still. When the other car was so close I could see the older man in the driver’s seat, Fran reached across and grabbed the wheel. We swerved back into our lane, across our lane, and into the grass on the other side. It was only when the car lurched forward that I remembered the other side of this road was the edge of the mountain. Brakes screeched and we all flung forward with the shock of the sudden halt.
‘If my car is fucked, I’m going to kill you,’ Jax or Jex or Jett raged, as though Fran’s actions had been the questionable ones.
Moments like this made me understand the need for social conventions. It is right that we have established, as a species, an understanding of what is acceptable human behaviour and what is not. Weshouldshame those who seek to impart their death wish upon unwilling victims. Jax or Jex or Jett jumped out to assess the damage. He slammed his door, swearing under his breath as he walked around his car, but no murder was committed so it must have been okay.
‘We’re leaving. Now,’ Fran announced, getting out and opening the back passenger door.
Mara and Poppy argued, but I did not. He held out his hand and I climbed across their legs as fast as I possibly could, my chunky boots pressing into their thighs. With hindsight, I should have done more to get them out of that car. I should have yelled, or called their parents, or dragged them by their hair. But they did not want to come, and I wanted to go home. Fran called his brother, and we waited, cold and silent and upset, in a darkened bus stop shelter. My body began to vibrate, and Fran wrapped his arms around me, in an attempt to keep me warm. I do not think I was cold, but his embrace did eventually stop the shaking. Martin did not say much when he got there, and I held tight on to Fran’s hand in the back seat until we pulled up in front of my house.
‘Thank you,’ I said to Martin, who grunted in response.
