Wildlife (15 page)

sunday (later)

I hate Holly.

I hate Holly.

I hate Holly.

Only fucking therapy insists I am honest, at least to myself.

She doesn’t know anything about Fred.

She doesn’t know anything about the state of my heart.

I can’t have it both ways.

I can’t expect respect for my feelings when I haven’t shared those feelings.

There is a price to pay for privacy, for having secrets. The price is Holly gets to say whatever the hell she wants and I get to shut up.

I know enough about these girls now to know that if I did/if I had to/if I do tell them about Fred, they would stick up for me against Holly.

Sibylla and Pippa stood up for me even not knowing how it felt to have someone messing with a picture of Fred.

I’m not even sure that Holly would be so mean if she knew.

Maybe what I hate is my life since your death. And not Holly at all.

Definitely not Holly.

Not Holly.

Holly is not important enough to hate.

Three unusual things happened today. First, I came back after we’d all headed out to the dreaded minibus of horror to find Lou—all packed and ready to go—photographing a big slug of dirty Blu Tack on the back of one of the kitchen chairs.

“Just making my own fun.” She smiled a Baby Bear smile, stowed her camera, and came back out with me.

Second thing was after we got back. I saw Holly slipping out of Cleveland, Ben and Michael’s house. She had a look on her face not too far removed from Lou’s Baby Bear
juuuust right
look this morning, though Holly’s was nudging into the terrain of the cat who got the cream. What was she doing there? Risking a Vincent visit? There’s something simmering since the Snow Gum Flat party, but she’s not sharing, because I’m in trouble.

The third unusual thing: I had a Ben breakthrough. Not an entirely good one. There was a brief clearing in the hormone fog, and I’m now doubting again that it’s possible for us to “go out” up here.

After breakfast, and before getting ready for our rappelling—“breaking bones can be fun, kids”—activities, Ben and I managed to disappear for a few minutes in the art room.

Oh, to breathe that boy in, to gaze into his eyes, to hold him, to place my hand against the warm skin tight over muscles carved from hardwood; to feel his fit heart beat slowly, to make his heart beat fast. It is poetic and powerful. But it’s also getting so frustrating; there is an element now of picking up where we left off, we go from eye contact at ten paces to raggedy breathing pretty damn quickly these days.

It was time for the talk, but it didn’t quite go the way I thought it would. My script would have included something about never having felt like this before, not being able to imagine feeling like this with anyone else, ever. Wanting—longing—to be somewhere that doesn’t exist in time or space, where we can do what our bodies are telling us to do. With no one around for a long, long time except us. Maybe a distant servant refilling the cupboards with really good food… but no parents, no teachers, no friends.

Then, ouch! While I was imagining our (tropical) paradise—the not many clothes, the nonstop sex, the excellent food—Ben was biting my neck in a way that felt ravenous and was bound to leave a mark. I gave him a shove. “You’re not auditioning for a vampire movie.”

“Isn’t it about time?”

“Time for the talk?”

“Talk? I was thinking, like, time to do it,” he said, still kissing very persuasively between each word.

“Wow, sweep me off my feet,” I said.

“Come on—you feel the same.”

“How do you feel?” (He feels
great
.)

“Kinda frustrated—we keep getting to here and stopping.”

“I guess.” So now I’m not about to bring up the nonexistent paradise—there’s turquoise water and a large four-poster bed with gauzy billowing curtains—where we could be alone. Deep breath. Can I even say the word? “There’s always outercourse,” I said.

He looked at me like I’m a fruitcake, or a pervert. “Or… I can get condoms when we do community service stuff in Hartsfield next week.”

“We’re going straight to condoms?”

“Is it a problem?”

It? Depends what “it” you mean. These tricky small words
it
,
this
… “This would be a bit of a first for me,” I began.

“Yeah,” he said. Of course he knows. Every single person in our year could accurately draw a chart of the whole grade’s dating and sexual history. Things like that become public fast. I’m a straight-up “good” girl. No form. No boyfriends. No party action even. Until Ben.

“Well, maybe this isn’t the ideal setting for us to start that sort of relationship.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Roll away,” I said. “I’ve got to go rappelling. You can let me know if you want to talk about outercourse.” I kind
of perversely enjoyed saying it—it sounds so wrong, so unapologetically stupid. I like to imagine it as pronounced by an American sexologist from the 1960s.

“And PS, that doesn’t include oral sex. It’s strictly hand jobs. Plus there may be something about… feet. Or perhaps elbows?”

“Great,” he said. Another eye roll.

Yeah, great. Does everyone else get to that point of breathless hands in pants without talking about it? Just using instinct, and perhaps a few mime skills? Going with the flow? Am I the only person in the whole world abnormally over-influenced by that early instruction, “use your words”?

The great outdoors is constructed of nonstop handy metaphors. As we geared up for the rappelling, I hardly needed the experience. The sheer rock face was inside me, I was already sliding and looking for a foothold, scared of what comes next. Where were my toeholds, the little safe shelves providing some connection between what I was feeling and what Ben was feeling?

“So, did you have the talk?” Holly asked.

“You and I are barely talking—how do you know anything about the talk?” I said, tetchy.

“Oh, come on, he’s my friend, too, and it’s pretty obvious to everyone here what’s going on. Or what’s
not
going on.”

Right now is an example of when I could use some time in a well-padded screaming cell.

For four weeks I have—against the grain, but with unexpected increasing tolerance—rappelled, canoed, mountain biked, and run long distances twice a week. I’ve had one real and one fake two-day hike. We’ve been civil to one another most of the time in Bennett House. I’ve had several breathtaking close encounters with Ben. And one falling-out with Holly.

Talking to Michael and Lou about
Othello
is the best non-Ben fun I’ve had in a while. And I’ve been invited to Lou’s cave. It’s an honor. Are we warming up to be friends?

We are writing about poor Desdemona—classic innocent victim. It seems such a hopeless thesis: the reward for innocence is… death. Another bad deal for a female character, and after a promisingly feisty, father-defying start, too.

How ruthlessly Iago uses Desdemona—imagine creating a character so heartless. “So will I turn her virtue into pitch, and out of her own goodness make the net that shall enmesh them all.” But Iago is the best thing about the play. A pure villain. A wonderful manipulator, “he publishes doubt and calls it knowledge.”

No matter what you start talking about with
Othello
, it always comes back to Iago. Why is it so oddly satisfying to spend time in the pits of Iago’s mad, bad world?

“We love a good bad guy because we’re intrigued by our own shadow selves, the wickedness that resides in each of our hearts,” Lou thinks, slowly chewing a toffee stick, breathing clouds of raspberry chemicals into the air.

“And life, real life, is so gray and ambiguous and nuanced, so a ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ morality play is relaxing, notwithstanding its extremes; like kindergarten, not that I personally found kindergarten to be relaxing, I found it stressful and often dull, but it is generally thought to be a time of innocence and an absence of complication,” says Michael.

Shakespeare gave himself carte blanche for crazy-faced turnarounds, and an all-time unhappy ending by creating in Othello “a jealousy so strong that judgment cannot cure”… Any amount of bleak havoc could be wreaked.

And why would we not enjoy wallowing in some unmitigated misery when we’re all enmeshed in the public life of relentless school niceness up here. Hi… Hiiiii, how are you? How’s it all going?… Great!

Are we all friends? Yes. Are we a community? Yes. Are we getting along? Yes. Could we strangle one another at a moment’s notice? Hell, yes. Will we? No, probably not. Hiii. Mwah.

We have more or less figured out what we are going to say in our presentation, fifteen minutes to stimulate the broader class discussion. So we play some
sounds-like, doesn’t-sound-like
.

It’s not as though there’s a punch line for this game, or even that it’s a game as such. There’s no objective, no
winner or loser, although there are heated disagreements from time to time.

“Lucent,” for instance, is a bone of contention between Michael and me. For him it’s a
sounds-like
—bright, shining, clear; for me it’s a
doesn’t-sound-like
—I think it suggests soft, dim twilight or moonlight.

It is not about onomatopoeia, although it can be that, too; it’s about the vibe.

I go first. “Liminal—because it sounds like it is lapping or shimmering from one state to the next with its repeated soft vowels and humming consonants.” Michael is happy. (I love
liminal
; it doesn’t just have to be about light, or landscape, or elements, or metaphorical transitions, doorways. Would you care for a glass of Liminal, my salty sweet sour beverage?)

Michael is next. “Temerity—because it bristles—its tail is up; it has attitude.”

“Whisper,” says Lou. “It’s soft. It promises secrets.”

I say, “Luscious—totally a big, wet, licky mouthful.”

“Betrayal,” Michael offers. “Sounds like a noose, or like wind blowing; a rusty rattling through bars.”

Before we get to doesn’t-sound-likes, Lou remembers something. “Ooh, the thing,” she says to Michael.

He says, “Of course. Sibylla, Louisa and I have decided we need to break the law. You are welcome to join us.”

Michael scrabbles around in his backpack and pulls out a fat Sharpie. Lou clears her throat. “This is kind of a family tradition, I guess. You know my mother was at school here? And she told me that none of the place-name signs
use an apostrophe of possession where it would be appropriate to do so. She did a bit of apostrophe adding—but all the signs have been replaced since those days.”

“So, we have taken to carrying our weapons of media with us. We intend to deliver the joy of grammar to wanderers in the alpine region.”

Lou shows me “before” and “after” photos on her phone—what was Byrons Trail is now Byron’s Trail.

“Are you in?” asks Michael, showing me another photo. Dylans Trail is now Dylan’s Trail.

“It’s an unofficial mountain-life project,” says Lou.

“Never leave home without it,” says Michael, handing me the Sharpie.

I take it, looking at them, with their together-hatched plans, and feel a pang of exclusion. A ripping away of something with Michael. And a petty wish that Lou had chosen me to like, not Michael. But my better self swallows that and smiles. How could I not want to be part of such a nerdfest activity?

Lou stays to read, and Michael and I head back to camp.

Holly is weeding the path when we get back. “Where have you two been?” she asks with an insinuating tone.

“We have been in the land of reason,” says Michael. An answer, in its deliberate obtuseness, guaranteed to annoy Holly.

“You’re a wanker, you know that, right?”

Michael looks at her, declines to answer, and goes to put on his running clothes.

tuesday 30 october

Two letters.

One unsent letter missing: potential major problem brewing.

Michael wrote his letter to Sibylla. His loving, I’m-a-bit-obsessed, get-it-off-your-chest letter. Omitted crucial step of destroying it. Cannot find it. He did seal it in an envelope. He thinks.

He lives part-time in cloud-cuckoo-land, so it is possible he has mislaid it. He’s also worried there is a chance he has mailed it to his parents. He doesn’t like that idea much, but it’s marginally less appalling than someone up here finding it and reading it.

It’s flipped his switch slightly, and he has reacted by upping the running.

He is already clocking unimaginably high distances and has been reprimanded for running too late in the day, at the
liminal
time, when light is fading or darkness is deepening, and ankles may more easily be broken. He knows he is addicted, but he calls it a safe addiction. He is used to dealing with his obsessions.

The second letter.

You know I’m not particularly a snoop, Fred. I’m just
not. But I have some natural curiosity, and when Holly went running obediently out of the unit when Vincent whistled or snapped his fingers, I did just stroll over to where she’d been sitting at the kitchen table and glance down at her (cough) letter.

It was to Dear Ruby, so a friend, not a parent.

You know I’m a fast reader, so it’s not even as though I had time to construct the argument for or against. My eyes ripped down that page so quickly they beat my good manners by a mile.

Mostly it was a rave about how Holly couldn’t get over the coincidence of Dear Ruby knowing (dear) Ben. Turns out they went to elementary school together, yawn, but my interest grew when I read that Ben is Holly’s
best friend
. They
hang together up here all the time
, he is
soooo funny
, in fact she has
never met anyone she gets along with so well
, who
makes her laugh so much
, who is
such a great guy, who really “gets” her,
etc. etc. Cutesy little heart and (“sigh”) next to
great guy
. Definitely verging on implying there is a romantic nature to her feelings. No mention of the person who is ostensibly her best friend, Sibylla. And no mention of this same person also hanging with Ben for significant amounts of time. A slightly skewed account.

I turned away. More the thought of the evil one’s return than any pricking of my conscience; I know, hardly admirable. Too bad. I was up in my bunk by the time Holly got back.

Sibylla followed closely, holding an apple, which Holly grabbed and bit into, saying, Halvsies?

If you can believe it, this was a token effort on Holly’s part to smooth over their recent trials and snitchiness, and Sibylla read it as such, pleasantly accepting the apple grab.