Leaving Jetty Road (13 page)

I take out the box of tea bags Mum gave me, read the instructions on it thoroughly. Then I put it on my bedside table. According to the nutritional analysis on the back of the box, they have no calories, so perhaps they’re worth a try. I’d give
anything
for a good night’s sleep.

But I put the meditation CD in the bottom drawer of my desk. I don’t
want
to “sit still and let my thoughts go,” as the blurb on the cover suggests. I can’t think of anything
worse.
When I let my thoughts go, they drift and wheel and return to me, full of hunger, and longing, and guilt.

And huge, black Fear.

chapter twenty-four

Jessica

T
he last day of Year 12 is a tradition at our school. Not only is there just the one week of studying left before the exams, but it’s also the last day of secondary education forever. And who knows what will come next?

Our year is no different from any of the others before it. All day, my classmates run around the schoolyard squirting each other (and everyone else) with shaving cream. They tear up each other’s uniforms and autograph them, and then race up the stairs to the top of the science building, throwing flour bombs at teachers and students passing below. They sing rude songs at the top of their voices and write swearwords on the covers of their prayer books.

And some people have their own private rebellions, too. Sofia, for example, disappears at lunchtime and returns an hour later with her nose repierced.

“Got it done at the hairdresser’s down the road this time,” she tells everyone, grinning. “They can’t expel me now.”

“Did it hurt?” someone asks.

She shrugs. “It was worth it. Mate, I am
so
not going to miss this place.”

It’s about then that I creep away from everyone else and retreat into the school library. I’ve tried to get into the spirit of things,
tried
to join in. But my heart isn’t in it: I don’t feel remotely like celebrating. Apart from the fact that I can’t get the exams off my mind (
I’m-going-to-fail-I’m-going-to-fail-I’m-going- to-FAIL
)
,
I, unlike the others,
will
miss school.

Because despite the loneliness I often feel here—the feeling of not being like anyone else; the feeling of not being
liked
by anyone else (even my best friend)—at least here I am accepted. People put up with me; I know what I’m supposed to do each day; I know where I fit in.

And I’m not sure that’s going to happen once I’ve left this school. Not sure at all . . .

It’s not until just after lunch, when we’re all back at the locker room changing out of our uniforms and cleaning our lockers out before leaving, that Nat, Sofe, and I finally converge on each other.

“You want to go out for a coffee?” Nat suggests, shoving pens, paper, and loose-leaf notebooks into her bag. “To celebrate?”

Sofia glances through the window at the blue sky. “Let’s go and sit on the grass in the park, hey. It’s too nice to sit in a coffee shop.”

We walk out of the schoolyard together. Sofia and Nat take their backpacks with them, staggering slightly under their weight. I leave mine in my locker, planning to come back via the school on the way home: there are still some textbooks I need to borrow from the library for studying. We stroll down the road, soaking up the sun. It’s the first time in weeks that the three of us have been together.

“I can’t believe it’s the exams in one week’s time,” says Nat as we reach the entrance to the park. “I’m nowhere near ready for them, you know? I even had to ask Michael to give me time off work until they’re over. And I made Josh promise not to see me till then, either.”

Sofia rolls her eyes. “They’re only exams.”

“Yeah, but I’ve left everything to the last moment. I mean like—everything.” Nat sighs. “I’ll never get into uni now. I’m just hoping I’ll
pass.
”

We wander over to a gum tree on the far side of the park and settle down underneath it, not far from a set of rusted, empty swings and a seesaw with paint flaking off it. When I was younger, mothers used to bring their kids to this park to play on the swings, and families set up their grills and had barbecues by the creek. Nat and I used to come here, too, for picnics on warm spring weekends. We’d drink lemonade and watch the magpies ferret in the earth with their beaks for worms. And we’d talk and talk and talk.

But things change. In the last few years, the park has fallen out of community favor for some reason. (Fashion, maybe; or different people moving into the area; or the new shopping complex just down the road, which has a McDonald’s playground out front.) There are even rumors that the toilets are used as a pickup spot for gay men and that drug dealers come here to deal. And today, just like any other day—despite the beautiful weather, despite the neatly mown grass and the brightly colored flowers planted by the city along the perimeter—there’s no one else in sight.

“I can’t wait till next year,” says Sofia, rolling lazily onto her back.

Nat’s lying on her stomach, her legs kicking the air. “Have you made up your mind where you want to do your nursing?”

“I’ve decided not to go straight into study next year after all,” says Sofia. “I’m deferring for a year. Nick and I’re going to buy an old VW van and travel around Australia. Do some volunteer work on organic farms. Stuff like that.”

“Really?” Nat nudges her elbow into Sofia’s ribs, grinning. “You little hippie, you.”

The only one still sitting up, I cross my legs, feet tucked under my knees, studying a caterpillar that’s inching its way across the dry, crackly gum leaves at my feet. I read somewhere recently that caterpillars eat several times their body weight every day until they go into their chrysalis. Imagine, I think longingly, if humans could eat that much and not get fat. Imagine how blissfully
full
you’d feel . . .

Nat sighs again. “I haven’t even thought about next year. I just want the exams to be over, you know? So I can catch up with Josh. Get on with my life.”

“What about you, Lise?” says Sofia drowsily. “You still planning to do law?”

“Of course she’s still planning to do law,” Nat says before I can answer. “She’s been wanting to do it for the last five
years.
”

I pick up a twig, trace a pattern with it in the dusty soil. “I might not get in, you know.”

Sofia and Nat make puking noises. “Yeah, right, Lise. As
if.
”

Sun-spotted shadows from the gum leaves above us dance across my skin.
Law.
It seems so far away, so unreal. And so unlikely.
Is
that what I’ll be doing next year? Is it what I
want
to do next year? I wish I could explain to them how the thought of it—the thought of
anything
beyond this safe, warm (Fear-driven) little world I live in now—fills me with dread . . .

I close my eyes, the air warm against my cheek. Today should be a good day, I remind myself sternly, trying to lift myself out of the blackness: today I hit 90 pounds. My target. And yet the strange thing is, I don’t feel any different from how I felt yesterday, or last week, or last month. I still feel fat. I still
look
fat.

I stare up at the swaying trunk of the gum tree.
Maybe I should try for 85 pounds?
I think idly. And a little flutter of excitement goes through me, the first of the day. Think about it: going
under
90 pounds. Now
that’s
thin.

Sofia yawns. “I could just go to sleep . . .,” she says, closing her eyes.

Nat, too, is yawning. She rests her head on her arms, legs finally still. “Me, too.”

Their faces are shadow-brushed and peaceful. After a moment, I lie down on my back next to them. Closing my eyes, I fold my arms across my middle: protecting my stomach, keeping it warm. Shielding its discontented rumblings from the companionable silence that has slipped slowly, pleasurably, among us. And for a moment, lying there, I could almost believe that nothing has changed. That you can still hear the sound of barbecues sizzling, of children shrieking on the swings. That hunger means nothing more than that tiny gap between a midafternoon ice cream and the evening meal. And that Nat and I still talk . . .

A piece of bark dislodges itself suddenly from the top of the tree trunk, making a small, sharp, crackling sound that jolts me awake. I open my eyes, watch it rustle through the leaves and drop to the ground next to me. Wide awake again, I roll over onto my stomach. I stare intently at the ground, willing myself not to look up again through the leaves to the top of the tree and beyond, where the sky yawns at me, a distant, empty blue.

“Lise?”

I’m standing in the school library, leaning against a bookshelf, deeply ensconced in the Year 12 biology textbook’s version of human anatomy, when I hear my name. Still somewhere amidst atria and ventricles, I lift my head, startled. I thought everyone else had gone home; I said goodbye to Nat and Sofia at the school gate ages ago. But I was wrong, I realize slowly: it’s Jessica Fuller, and she’s coming over to me.

“Lise?” She says my name again quietly, almost hesitantly, even though—apart from the school librarian—there’s no one else here. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I just wanted to say . . . good luck. With the exams.”

I close the book in my hands and turn to face her, surprised. This must be the first thing she’s ever said to me one-on-one. Jessica belongs to the “trendy” set—the group of girls who hang out in Rundle Mall on Friday nights and go out with gorgeous, popular boys from other private schools. People like Jessica just don’t
talk
to people like me.

I examine her more closely. She’s so pretty, with her thick blond hair, the tiny waist, her long, slim legs. And she’s so popular.
Everyone
likes Jessica Fuller.

“Good luck to you, too,” I say awkwardly, not knowing what else to say. Surely she hasn’t been looking for me all over the school to say
that
?

There’s a pause. She bites her lip. “What I really wanted to say . . .”

But her voice trails off, her cheeks flooding with color.

“The thing is,” she blurts out finally, “you just can’t take exams on an empty stomach, Lise. You’ve got to
eat.
”

I stare at her. My mind starts chattering noisily. Who’s
she
to talk? She’s lost heaps of weight again since she came out of the hospital at the end of last year. Oh, she doesn’t look as if she’s at death’s door anymore, but she’s much thinner than she was
before
she became anorexic. And she still doesn’t eat very much, you know. I’ve seen her at lunchtime, scrumpling up bits of sandwiches in plastic wrap, stuffing them into the bin.

“I’m sorry,” Jessica says. “I know you think it’s none of my business. It’s just . . .” She hesitates again, and then says, with sudden, alarming passion, “I can’t
stand
seeing someone else make the same mistake as I did. I can’t stand watching you
do
this to yourself.”

My breath catches. “I’m fine,” I say quickly. “You don’t need to worry. I eat fine.”

She looks me over without speaking, and it feels as if her eyes are scanning my body, detecting parts of me that even I’m not aware of.

“It doesn’t matter
how
thin you get, you know,” she says then, quietly. “Trust me. The way you feel about yourself—it doesn’t change. It just
doesn’t.
You
still
don’t feel like an okay person. You never do.”

Her words clutch at me. It feels as if she’s inside my head.
She knows,
I think incredulously, staring down at the carpet.
She knows what this FEELS like. She knows what I’m THINKING.

The thought terrifies me. And suddenly—I don’t know—I feel like crying. Yet again. What has gotten into me recently?

“Listen . . .” Jessica reaches out, rests her hand lightly for a second on my wrist. “If you ever want to talk to someone, I’m here, okay?”

Her touch almost undoes me. I stare downward into nothingness, trying not to blink, forcing myself to wait the moment out, to see my way through my swimming eyes. No one
ever
touches me; not even my parents. I just . . . I’m not a huggy person. I don’t
do
touchy-feely.

She reaches into her pocket, hands me a piece of paper with her name and phone number on it. Then she turns away, starts to leave. Halfway to the library door, she turns back.

“It takes one to know one, Lise,” she says simply.

chapter twenty-five

Exams

O
n the day of the first exam, I wake up with a feeling of utter, soulless dread. I get up, put on my running gear, creep out of the house. When I start to run, my feet hit the cracked asphalt pavement, dull and heavy. (Yes, at a little under 90 pounds I’m
still
too heavy.) I run in slow, tired rhythm:
I’m-going-to-fail-I’m-going-to-fail-I’m-going-to-fail . . .

Afterward, in the shower, I inspect myself. It’s bizarre. I can
see
I’ve lost weight: my hip bones jut out, and my thighs don’t rub together anymore, and I can circle my finger and thumb halfway up my forearm. You can see the shadow of my ribs, too, through my skin—not sharp, not pointed, but there.
Mine.
I am no longer made up of curves: just nice, straight lines.

But it’s still not enough. I still don’t feel okay.

On the way out of the kitchen, I pass Terri eating breakfast at the counter. She yawns up at me, her mouth full of toasted muesli.

“First one today?”

I nod. “English.”

I hover at the other end of the counter, fiddling with Mum’s cigarette packet by the phone. The cereal box stands next to Terri’s elbow, and for one long, longing moment I dream: of crunchy oats and dried fruit; of the leftover milk at the bottom of the bowl that you spoon up, all sweet and sugary and warm.

And then I just . . . let the thought go. I decided last night that the only way to get through these exams now is to fast before each one. Fasting clears your mind, I read somewhere: it calms you down, sharpens your thought processes. I could do with a bit of that.

“Good luck, Lisa-lou,” Terri says sleepily.

I nod, take a deep breath, and step outside.

The unopened exam paper on my desk is pink. I notice this as I stare down at it. No one told me it would be pink, I think incongruously; the practice papers were white.

Sunlight pours through the classroom window: it cascades into a bright patch on the floor, motes of dust dancing in its path. My heart is racing and my hands are clammy.
I’ll be all right,
I tell myself, over and over.
I’ll be all right.

I glance across at Nat, who’s sitting beside me, and then at Sofia, in front. On my other side is Anna Chan. The familiar sight of her sleek black hair, gathered in its customary ponytail, comforts me momentarily.
I’ll be all right.

“You may begin, girls,” says Mrs. Lovett.

I open the writing booklet, pick up my pen. I stare at the pages of the exam paper—a sea of blurred pale pink—and a wave of sickness hits me from nowhere.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Please don’t let this happen now . . .

My heart zigzags, skips a beat, lurches crazily in my throat. I clutch my desk. Sweat beads spring up at my temples. I take a deep breath, come up for air again, swallow wildly.
This will go away.

But it doesn’t. A hot, choking tide of nausea engulfs me, and
. . . I’m NOT all right. I never was and I never will be . . .
My pen clatters to the floor. I am drowning in sickness and fear.

And then I am up, pushing my chair back, stumbling past desk upon pink-paged desk. Past rows of upturned, curious faces and Mrs. Lovett’s startled, worried gesturing. I shake my head:
No, no, leave me alone . . .
Opening the door. Out of the room. Running, now. Running.

And all the way, these huge, stupid, uncontrollable sobs tearing at my throat, like wild, clawing beasts finally let loose.