“I saw you working on it in IT. Woodwind Whirlwind.”
I clap my hands to my mouth. “Pleasetell me you didn’t read it?”
“Of course I did.”
My insides writhe. My blog was your typical teenage cringe-fest. A melodramatic record of fights with my parents, amateur takes on world events and thinly veiled jabs at Mrs. Kingston’s fascist teaching style. The kind of thing that should never be broadcast to the world,and only was because of unregulated leaps in internet technology. “God, that makes me wanna die…”
“I loved it,” Jake says, earnest as a Boy Scout. “I read it all the time. Especially after you went to Juilliard. I kept thinking I’d email you on there, and then, one day it was just… gone.”
I stare at him. I deleted my blog before I left for London. I’d just gotten my first full-time orchestral role, and it occurred to me that my online repository of teen whiningmightbe a threat to my career. But that was four years after I left Pukekohe.
“You read my blog for that long?”
“Yeah. When it disappeared, it was like you left again. Properly this time. Back then, I was playing for… it doesn’t matter, but I nearly bailed on a game to buy a ticket to New York and try to find you.”
He seems to take my shocked silence for disbelief.
“I know it sounds insane, but I swear I came so close to doing it. My mate, T-bone, thought I’d lost my mind. He had to take my wallet off me. Sit me down and remind me you probably had no idea who I was, let alone how I felt about you.”
It feels like I’m breathing through a straw. I believe him; his tortured expression is proof enough. I just can’t make any sense of what he’s saying. “But you never talked to me at school. You never asked me out or?—”
“I asked you out.”
“Bullshit.”
His gaze locks on mine. “I never knew if you remembered or not. Guess I got my answer.”
“Bullshit,” I repeat, heart hammering. “How? When?”
He’s quiet for so long, I think he’s not going to say anything. I need him to say something. “Excuse me? Jerkoff? Can you please tell me what you mean?”
He lets out a long sigh. “You’re killing me, Renaldo. You’ve been killing me for sixteen years…”
“Whatever. What happened? Where did this alleged ‘asking out’ take place?”
“You remember Sonny Mills’ woodshed party?”
“No.” I pause. “Wait… Yes. He had, like, four pit fires going in his backyard at the same time?”
“Yeah.”
The memories flood back. The email invite I’d thought was a scam until Cece told me it was an ‘anyone free’ party offer, and I could stay over at her place if I wanted to drink. And I wanted to drink.
Rhys told me I was bonkers for going. He practically begged me to stay in and playWorld of Warcraftonline like we did most Saturday nights. But Jenny and her army of twats were away on a netball trip, and I was almost seventeen. My social wings were straining at their bonds, desperate to flutter.
Cece did my makeup and let me borrow her jeans and a black halter top. I was so excited to show off my body for the first time, so hopeful this might be the night I actually had fun with people from school. Maybe even kissed a guy.
I don’t know what I was thinking. That everyone would be nice? I never had a prayer. In the power vacuum left by Jenny Wallis, Cece’s friends became the popular crowd for the night and boxed me out the same way Jenny would have—tittering at everything I said and turning their backs whenever Cece ran off to hover around Will.
In the end, I sat on a hay bale behind the shed and got fucking wasted. Cece’s brother bought us two four packs of Pulse, and my prior drinking experience—church wine—in no way prepared me for what was to come. Pulse was the Antipodean answer to Four Loko, as much booze, sugar, and caffeine as you could fit in a can. It was banned a year after that party, and after my experience, I can only endorse that decision. It wasnota smooth introduction to binge drinking.
I remember pounding two cans back-to-back and going all glowy inside. I stared up at the stars, feeling a calm serenity I’d never felt before and wondering why everyone didn’t do this all the time. An hour later, I had my answer. I staggered to the back field and started puking like they just invented puking.
No one noticed I was gone until Cece found my dehydrated huskat God knows what time, and took me back to her place. I remained there, writhing in agony, until four the following afternoon. Cece had to call my parents and say I had salmonella to get me out of going to church. To this day, my mum still won’t touch anything Mrs. Taylor brings to the Pukekohe bake sale.
“I don’t remember a lot from that night,” I tell Jake. “I was ballistic.”
“I figured. I just hoped…” he shakes his head again. “Anyway, I’d been hanging around near you all night, hoping I could catch you chatting with someone I knew so I had a reason to come over. Problem was, you were never talking to anyone for long. And then you just went outside and parked up on that hay bale by yourself.”
