Oh boy.
A chorus of girls surrounded me at the basin of the girls’ toilets.
“D-did it hurt?” asked Kim Winters, her big blue eyes wide and full of wonder.
I casually ran my fingers through my fringe, taking in my reflection with a quiet confidence. “The first time always does, but then it feels good—really, really good.” I gave the group a pointed look, as Ellie’s sex ed continued with a series of awkward, yet intriguing questions that I answered without missing a beat. It was all the stuff that wasn’t covered in Mr Ericson’s health class; mine was much more engaging. It was just a shame that all my shared knowledge was actually not based on personal experience but more so on what I had read out of the sealed section of Dolly magazine. I’m not sure why I did it, why I continued with the lies; a part of me liked the attention, craved it from anyone who would give it: good or bad, I didn’t really care, and that was the problem. Along with lies comes the aftermath of disaster; in this case, little-goody-two-shoes Kelly Heart had taken one of my lessons out of the confines of the girls’ toilets and spread a rather inventive rumour that I had sex with the entire Onslow football team. Not very original, but also not exactly denied by the boys of the Onslow Tigers. When the ludicrous rumour had surfaced, Tess turned to me with her big worried eyes; I swear it affected her more than it did me. Adam, on the other hand, didn’t give me that look; there was no sympathy, or worry. He simply sat next to me at the bus stop, crunching on his orange-flavoured Sunnyboy, looking at me with that usual cheeky glint in his eyes.
“Going to watch footy training tonight?” he asked, cocking his brow.
“Adam!” Tess cried.
But I wasn’t offended; I simply bumped him with my shoulder. “Shut up!”
“Yeah, you must be exhausted,” he mocked.
“Oh, but I am; I have to conserve my energy for the swim team and cricket season though.”
“What about the debate team?” Adam posed, with a mouthful of ice.
“Oh, yeah, I’ll have to check my schedule.”
“I’m glad you guys think this is so funny, but you know what my mum always says,” said Tess, as she looked around and lowered her voice. “No one wants a slut for a girlfriend.” Tess gave me a pointed look, a look that a mother would give, and I could imagine Tess’s mum giving her that very same look. My mouth curved at sweet Tess.
“Do you think I’m a slut?”
Tess’s eyes widened in horror. “Of course not, Ellie, I—”
I turned to Adam. “Do you?”
Adam seemed surprised by the question, as if the conversation was exclusive between us girls. He looked at me, his serious brown eyes assessing me with interest to the point I straightened as the drawn-out silence caused me to feel uneasy. I could handle anyone thinking the worst of me—it was all just water off a duck’s back, my feelings were like old leather like that—but at the thought of Tess or Adam thinking that of me, I doubted my heart could take it. It was telling me so with the erratic pounding it was doing in my chest.
Adam shook his head. “You know how incredibly average you are, right?” he said, breaking into a slow smile, watching for my reaction intently.
I burst out laughing. “Shut up,” I said, shoving him as hard as I could, so hard he had to juggle to keep a hold of his Sunnyboy.
Even the worry had melted away from Tess’s grim disposition as she laughed at Adam’s response.
All had seemed well in the world: I had my friends and to hell with what anyone else had thought. If they wanted to misconstrue my girls’ toilet storytelling, what was I to do? I stretched my long legs out in front of me as I leant against the bus shelter, lifting my chin defiantly to all the girls who passed with their filthy looks and bitchy whisperings, or the boys who sniggered and elbowed each other. I breathed a laugh through my nose. Let them look, I thought; I would whole-heartedly sooner be memorable than simply, God forbid, melt into the background. I shuddered, looking at Tess, who sat next to me, poring over the school newsletter. Tess preferred to fly under the radar and for the most part she succeeded. Despite being known as that smart girl, she would often get looks of interest from boys admiring a pretty face. Petite, blonde, shy, definitely the kind of girl you would want to take home to meet your parents. Aside from our colouring, we really were polar opposites.
My memory ended as I closed the diary, resting it on my chin with a smile. The page was littered from my sixteen-year-old penmanship with:
Tess + Ellie + Adam = BFF 4 Life!
At sixteen, and the vicious circle of rumours that went with the territory, it was surely great to have such an alliance, one that seemed unshakable, until I remembered something. My brows knit together as I flipped through the diary once more, flicking, flicking, until I hit a page, and a time that wasn’t so solid in our friendship.
September 1994—Adam gets a girlfriend; ugh, how could I forget that?
Three
I slammed the diary shut, pushing it aside, pursing my lips together as if it had left a lingering sour taste in my mouth. I really didn’t need a rundown of that moment in history; it was one I remembered well. Adam’s first true love, the one that had taken him away from Tess and me. Megsy Swanston, or as we commonly referred to her, Megsy Fucking Swanston. She was the equivalent of Yoko Ono to the Beatles. As soon as she entered the picture, our impenetrable trio was suddenly an awesome foursome, minus the ‘awesome’. She was one of those ‘out of town’ girls who had to travel by bus to get to her parents’ property on the outskirts of Onslow. She was a quirky, pretty girl with big moon-shaped eyes, a cutesy little nose, and cropped, bobbed hair with a jagged short fringe that only really cool people could get away with. She was sweet and lovely and her parents were hippy-like, organic farmers who sold produce at the local markets. There was no one like Megsy in school; she had been a blow-in in Year Ten, home-schooled before then, and now she had escaped, and Adam was completely enamoured by her. I hated her.
“Megsy Fucking Swanston.” I laughed and chucked the diary back into the deep recess of the box where some memories simply belonged. I calmed my thoughts thinking of a more happy time, like when Megsy broke Adam’s heart when she left for some artsy kind of school—far, far away. Of course I had felt sorry for Adam, he had taken it really hard; I had never seen him so down, so sad, so un-Adam. But I wasn’t sorry about having my friend back, and as we ventured into 1995 it was like the days of old, the three amigos, and Megsy was nothing but a distant nightmare, only to be buried in the pages of an old diary and locked away into a box forever. Where she belonged.
My bare feet padded their way along the tiled floor of the long narrow hall toward my bedroom. I carried a glass of water to chase all the wine with the hope I would wake up with a less horrific hangover, however unlikely that seemed. I held my mobile in my other hand, not knowing whether to feel annoyed or relieved that there had been no more text messages from Adam. A part of me felt worried that perhaps the game was over, that this was it. Adam had become bored, and instead of every hour of his life being filled with thinking of me, and therefore texting me, he was doing the thing I feared the most: living his life, without me.
I hopped into bed, crossing my legs and sitting up straight. Maybe it was the reminiscing about the horrible end of 1994 when Adam had a girlfriend—how he was suddenly not a huge part of our lives anymore—or maybe my icy façade was starting to thaw, but I found myself texting Adam back. And this time it felt good, it felt right. I had punished him long enough. He knew he had hurt me, and now, like we always did anytime we fought, it was time to move on.
To: Adam
