What Does Blue Feel Like? (12 page)

He says I'm like a diamond

because

no matter what,

I don't crack,

I don't fall apart,

I don't shatter.

 

I lie in bed that night

and think about my birthday.

My first car.

My first diamond.

Not too shabby.

So many people asked me

if I felt older today.

It's bullshit,

being expected to feel older on one day just because

according to the calendar you are.

I wonder if

my eighteenth year

will be better than my seventeenth.

 

I buy some diet pills from the supermarket

just to, like,

see if they work.

The girl at the checkout looks at me suspiciously

but doesn't say anything.

I hide them at the back of my dresser drawer.

They make me, like, so thirsty.

My head spins,

and my heart beats really fast.

But I'm not hungry, like, at all.

Jim has applied for a mechanical apprenticeship next year.

Bronwyn wants to study business

and stresses that she won't get the grades she needs

to get into the right course.

Our teachers talk about ‘alternate pathways' to getting

where you want to be, and tell her she can always do a

year of tafe and then get credit for those subjects at uni.

Most everyone seems to know what they want to do.

Right now I feel like I'm only eighteen,

not that grown-up at all.

I don't have a clue

what I want to do with the rest of my life.

 

How come I don't know what I want to do?

 

 

I recognise,

like the shrink told me to,

that I'm not thinking rationally and logically.

(At least part of my brain acknowledges that.)

But to the other part of my brain,

it sounds so very true.

 

I ask everyone I know

to pick a job for me.

Tim comes up with the most outrageous,

outlandish careers.

Contortionist, lollipop taste tester, security guard.

Jim jokingly suggests I could stay at home

washing his socks

and cops a nipple cripple for that.

My Japanese teacher suggests I go to Japan and

teach English,

and Mum cries when I tell her that.

Much to the horror of

my parents

and the school,

I decide to have a year off studying,

working where I can get work,

thinking about what I
really
want to do.

Mum and Dad are worried,

that I'll just freeload for a year and then like it so much

I'll want to do it forever,

but I tell them that I want to have my own place

by the end of next year

and then they've got something else to worry about.

and I've done no studying this year.

I start locking myself in my room

with four-packs of energy drinks,

lollies

and rice crackers.

I sit at my desk for hours,

thinking about how much useless trivia they make you

learn in high school,

which you never ever use again.

I don't care what my history teacher says,

I will never again have to know the important dates

in the industrial revolution.

My walls become covered

in Post-its

and sheets of paper.

At night,

I dream about studying.

I feel sorry for the people who are relying on their grades

to get them into the course they want,

into the job they want,

into the life they want.

It seems

the more they want it,

the higher the stakes.

I'm glad

I'm sitting this game out.

Chars.

One

who is happily outgoing,

cheerful,

loves being around people

and partying,

and who sees the sun peeking from behind the clouds,

no matter how grey.

One

who wants to hide away from the world,

tearful,

tolerates the presence of others,

and parties to get drunk.

And whom the clouds seem to engulf

even on the sunniest of days.

I'm making a sandwich in the kitchen

when,

all of a sudden,

I start to cry.

Mum, startled, looks up.

She wants to know why I'm crying.

What's wrong?

But I don't know.

And the realisation that I don't know why I'm crying

makes me cry even more.

So now I'm crying because I don't know why I'm crying.

 

I go to my room,

shut myself in.

Tell Mum I want some breathing space.

Right now,

I just want to hide away from it all.

Lock myself away from this goddamn world

I don't understand.

If only now,

I could shut my brain up.

Jim recognises that look in Char's eyes.

He's seen it before,

many a time.

That

desperate

wild

hunted

frantic

pleading

Look.

At night,

he holds her close,

holds her tight,

and tells her,

‘It'll be OK, Char,

it'll be all right.'

Jim drunkenly slurs at me,

‘Shouldn't you be over it by now?'

I know he's talking about the abortion.

Maybe he's wrong.

Maybe he's right.

But the possibility of him being either

sends shivers down my spine.

There's a shy girl in my history class, Lee,

who gets drunk and starts crying

at a party on the weekend.

I befriend her,

glad that, for once, I'm not the

Crying Drunk Girl

at this party.

Her mum and dad are splitting up.

She found a condom in her dad's wallet,

and it wasn't there a few days later.

And her parents don't have sex, of course.

I let her cry on me,

wipe tears and snot off her face,

make her drink some water to sober the fuck up.

While she's still drunk

she pushes back the bangles that line her arms,

shows me the cuts on them.

Some look old,

healing

scars.

Some are new,

red

and angry.

She tells me between tears and hiccups

that she cuts herself as a release.

That all of her pain and anger and regret and shame

get squished down

into manageable chunks.

A brand of pain she can handle.

I don't say anything,

just push another glass of water into her hand

and stare at her scars.

 

I see her at school on Monday,

and we bashfully say hello,

like seeing a boy you've kissed after five beers,

when you're sober and realise that he isn't cute any more.

She's sitting by herself at lunchtime.

I crash beside her on the grass

and say,

‘Explain to me,

please.'

It's like

when all of the anger

and pain

and shame

inside

builds up and up and up

and it's about to explode.

We don't get angry in my family,

you see.

My parents would freak out

if I screamed, yelled, sulked.

I know it sounds weird,

but it doesn't hurt.

It actually feels —

better.

Bewildered,

I ask the shrink to explain.

‘Some girls,' she says,

‘it's mainly girls,

come from homes where

there's a lot of pressure to be

the perfect child.

And being flawed

is not OK.

Some girls want an outlet for their anger.

Some are crying for someone to notice they need help.

And physical pain

is OK

so they convert their emotional turmoil

into physical,

which can be fixed up

with some antiseptic and a Bandaid.

They're making their pain acceptable.

Or, then again, they might loathe themselves so much

that they feel they deserve the pain.

A kind of repentance,

in a really screwed up way.'

Lee, Bronwyn and I become friends.

We do girly stuff like

painting our nails,

dyeing our hair,

eating an entire block of chocolate and three lots of

popcorn watching chick flicks on TV.

The shrink tells me that this friendship could be

very beneficial

if we bring each other up,

not take each other down.

analyses the new friendship formed

with a kind of careful scrutiny.

Tongues click

at the blue fingernail polish all three girls sport one day,

the pink streaks in their hair the next week,

a certain rebellion against the school rules.

And yet,

their teachers feel slightly proud

that these girls,

who they were about to give up on,

are alive enough inside

to be able to rebel.

‘Hey,

like my tongue ring?

My olds are spewing.

Tried to get me to take it out.

It caned

but I like it.

a lot.'

At a party the next weekend,

we sit on the grass,

with a bottle,

mostly Coke,

quarter Baccardi.

We take turns drinking it, straight from the bottle.

Lee's bracelets catch the light and seem to dance

on her arms.

Bronwyn's tongue ring flashes every time she

opens her mouth.

But nothing on me seems to sparkle.

I speak these thoughts,

and both of the girls are silent,

watching me.

Then Lee says,

‘Your eyes gleam, hon. Your eyes catch all the light.'

 

Bronwyn says,

‘Inside of me,

I know,

there's a girl who doesn't diet and obsess about food,

trying to get out.'

Lee says,

‘Inside of me,

I know,

there's a girl who doesn't cut,

trying to get out.'

 

Then they look at me.

I say,

‘Inside of me,

I'm not sure,

but I think there's a girl

with so much more purpose to her life,

trying to get out.'

 

Lee says, ‘Oh, man, that's deep,'

pushes her hair back behind her ears,

and takes the bottle off me.

with my plans for next year.

Even a year studying a course,

any course,

he says,

could help me in ways I'd never know.

I know

that doing a year of something, anything,

that will never lead to anything

will only help the school's reputation

which boasts of the percentage of graduates

who get into uni

and won't do a damn thing for me.

He asks

what my psychiatrist thinks.

I tell him

to ask her himself,

and cop a detention.

 

I write lines in detention

about courtesy and respecting my elders

and I wonder why they can demand, without giving

as a teacher snaps in some kid's face

and takes jewellery off another.

I think of what my friend said

about being in a fishbowl.

They must be the piranhas of the fish tank.

With filed-down teeth.

Lee is a smoker.

She offers me a drag,

huddled behind the sports shed one lunch hour.

I'm too curious to resist —

curious why people seem to like it so much.

I take a puff,

and hack my lungs out coughing.

‘This tastes like shit, Lee.'

She grins

wryly.

‘I know,' she says,

‘I know. But if you do it enough,

you convince yourself that you actually like doing it.

And then —

then you don't want to stop.'

I tell the shrink about our conversation,

expecting her to agree with me that Lee's nuts.