Page 50 of Almost Ours

They think because I’m so emotional, James couldn’t forgive himself for sleeping with Bonnie. He couldn’t move past how it would wreck me. And in their heads, it means I’m the cause.

It's funny how quickly you can become the ghost in your own family when the person who's actually gone is the one everybody misses.

“I am keeping my head down,” I breathe out, though it’s considerably harder to breathe than it was ten minutes ago.

“Good.” There’s a long, suffering silence.

I force myself to ask, “How is mum?”

“Are you pretending to care about her wellbeing? Do you not think it might be too late?”

I will never understand what I did wrong. “I just want to know if she’s okay?”

“She is not your concern, as you have made very clear.”

“I—”

“No, Joshua. I will not indulge you anymore. You are an adult now. It’s time to start acting like it.”

When I woke up, the grey wolf of depression had been somewhere in the distance, wandering the edges of my mind where I could pretend it wasn't real. Dad has always had a knack for whistling it back to my side, and now I can feel its breath against the back of my neck before I've even caught my breath.

Chapter Thirteen

Saturday

October 17th 2015

Ruby:

“I’m not wearing anything from here,” Brooke shouts from the other end of the fancy-dress shop. She looks different to usual today, having spent hours at the hairdressers this morning before re-emerging with a sleek ombré sew-in that’s blonde at the ends.

“Why is nothing working?” Abi complains.

She’s the reason we’re here. She insisted we needed outfits for tonight’s party. I’m hungover from last night. It’s Saturday, and the party she’s dragging us to has been questionably named Glow Jobs.

Abi’s blonde hair is falling down her shoulders in curls, and she’s tall enough I have to crane my neck to look up at her. She’s got blue eyes framed by the longest lashes I’ve ever seen, and she’s holding up a neon tutu at arm’s length, her mouth twisted, the fabric dangling limply from her fingers.

This is how things seem to move in uni. Friendship seems to happen through proximity.

Last year I'd have found an excuse to stay in my room. Today, I'm standing in a tacky fancy-dress shop with two girls I made fast friends with. My therapist would probably give me a thumbs up and wry smile if he could see.

Brooke is flicking through a rack of fluorescent tops with the same enthusiasm someone has for doing homework. Each hanger clacks loudly against the next, blending with the shop’s tinny pop music.

“We have to find something!” Abi whines, scanning shelves and rails, shifting from foot to foot as she tries to look everywhere at once.

We’ve been all over town, and no one is selling snot-green or bright-orange stuff. The dress code for tonight is basically: be offensively bright. I suggested taping glow sticks to our clothes, which is what led us here.

Abi huffs and drops the tutu back onto the pile, the skirt puffing slightly as it lands. “Why is everything either tiny or hideous? There’s no in-between.”

Brooke holds up a neon yellow crop top between two fingers, pinching the fabric. “I’m not wearing this. I’d rather show up in my pyjamas.”

“You can’t wear pyjamas to Glow Jobs,” Abi tuts, elbow-deep in another rail. The metal bars rattle with how fast she moves. “We’ll get laughed at.”

“We’ll get laughed at if we wear this,” Brooke fires back, lifting a mesh vest in an unmistakable shade of road-sign orange. She presses it flat against her torso and then slams the hanger back onto the rail.

I take in the shop around us—the harsh lighting, the stacks of plastic-wrapped costumes, the chemical smell of new synthetic fabric.

This is no use.