‘But?’
‘But what?’
‘But I’m waiting for the catch, because everyone looks as though I’ve gone and put my head through the window rather than decorating it,’ I reply.
‘It’s just . . . it’s a bit much, isn’t it?’ Mum says, her voice sing-songy now.
As though I should have known better, as though I am obstinate rather than confused.
‘A bit much? Is that not the whole fucking point of the thing?’ Rage sparks in my chest and I want to actually put my head through the glass.
‘You did well,’ Olivia says quietly, with nothing more to add.
‘Nora, sweetie, it’s lovely. Obviously you are the winner,’ Dad calls. I had not realised he was sitting out on the deck.
I join him and sit back to look at my work from the other side. I am quietly thrilled with how it turned out, though unable to really enjoy that feeling on account of the other, more powerful ones clouding it.
‘Why is everyone mad?’
‘They’re not mad,’ he replies.
‘They are acting like they’re mad. I can feel it.’
Dad nods his head. ‘I’d say some people expected things to go a different way, so it will just take them a bit of time to get their heads around,’ he says.
‘Do you include Mum in “some people”?’
‘I do.’
‘That’s pretty shitty of her, then,’ I reply.
We sit in silence for a time, and when the living room is empty I head back inside. I can hear Mum and Olivia down the hall, talking about outfits for Christmas Day. I want to be bigger than this, I want to metabolise the injustice and allow myself to rise above it, but I cannot. Packing up my things, all I feel is quiet, shaking anger. Another time, I would have taken that pain and used it to destroy my own creation. Pain is easiest enacted on the self. But today, there is only one thing I can think to do. Walking across the room, I take my scissors to the wire that connects all of Luke’s synchronised lights to the power source and I snip it. It is not enough that I have already won; he needs to feel as though he has lost something too. I take a photo of my window, sure that it will have been defaced in some way by the time I see it again, and keen to preserve its beauty if only in an image. I send the photo to Fran, hoping to spark something, hoping he will remember how beautiful things can be when I am able to give them my focus.
When I have held a thought in my mind for long enough – turned it over, flipped it inside out and back again, examined it from all angles, and played out every possible scenario that could stem from said thought – a problem often occurs. I want to explain the entirety of the world I have created around that thought to someone, but I often start at the end. I can’t figure out the sequence I should be explaining things in, so I give the most important piece first, no context, and thoroughly confuse whoever I am hoping to enlighten.
This is what I did with Fran one night, the summer holidays before my final year of high school, much like I had a few years prior with our conversation about girlfriends and futures. While drinking was still a mainstay, sometimes tiredness would creep over me in a fog so heavy I could barely lift my head. It could hang around for days or weeks. Now I know it is burnout, but then I understood it only as failure on my part. I could human no longer. Christmas was a prime time for these periods, and Fran and I spent most January nights staying in and watching early aughts comedies, finding humour in the cringey parts that had not stood the test of time. It made the movies that held up well all the more special. We lounged and ate microwave popcorn and played ‘remember when’ and gave each other those head massages that made your skin prickle all over your body. It was my way of creeping closer to that horizon. That and the hormones, probably.
That particular night, we were lying on the floor watching something with a great soundtrack, I remember that much. When a song he liked kicked in, he would turn to me in delight, as though to say, can you believe the music supervisor chose something so perfect? I returned every smile, entirely uninterested in the music, or the film. His joy was what captivated me, so enthralling and real. And when he reached up onto his bed to grab another pillow, the gap where his T-shirt lifted and bared his stomach enthralled me, too. His skin looked like it would be warm to the touch, and I wondered if he had freckles on his shoulders from all his time in the sun. This felt important to know.
He caught my eye after readjusting his pillows, and gave a questioning smile. I looked away, feeling sprung.
‘Hey, Rah?’
‘Yeah?’
‘What’s on your mind? You have such a great look on your face right now.’
He was still grinning when I glanced back. Again, I had been thinking about us, and how much I loved him, and how being around him remained the best part of my life. I had been thinking about when we used to kiss one another, and how perfect that had been, and how I wished we had never stopped. I had been thinking about pleasure, and our bodies, and how he was the only person I could imagine sharing my first time with, the only one I could be that vulnerable and exposed around. But what I said was:
‘I was thinking about how I want to have sex.’
‘Oh, right. What’s made you decide on that, then?’ he asked without judgement, but he was no longer smiling either.
‘I just think it’s time. Everyone else has done it,’ I said, trying to sound older and more nonchalant than I was.
‘You don’t have to do something just because other people have done it,’ he replied, quiet and raw.
‘You sound like my mum – “If so-and-so jumped off a cliff, would you?”’ I had not meant to be so defensive, but he was perceiving me wrong, and it inflamed me a little.
