Bridie

She stayed up late, long after her parents and Emmet had gone to bed, stalking Lily on social media and stressing about school the next day.

Lily and Jamie had been ‘official’ for three weeks now; Bridie had barely seen her friend in those weeks. Lily no longer caught the same school bus. At class and during lunch break, she tended to sit with Jamie’s friend group, who were loud and crude and never made Bridie feel welcome.

Last Friday night, instead of homework, dumplings and a movie, Lily had been to a party on the beach. The photos on Instagram showed her and Jamie with their heads close together, firelight on their faces. Saturday’s photos showed the loved-up couple at a cafe somewhere, holding stainless steel milkshake cups; Lily’s was probably mango flavoured, unless she’d changed her taste in milkshakes, too. Today Lily and Jamie had caught the train to the city. The photo caption simply said: exploring.

When she was done with examining the photos for clues, Bridie resorted to a different form of torture: watching all the old videos she and Lily had recorded together. All the TikTok dance routines, the long afternoons at the beach, the school holidays when they’d gone ‘exploring’.

For the first time in her life, she didn’t want to go to school tomorrow. She’d spent the whole weekend in a state of dread; it had got so bad that she even considered feigning sickness. But she was too much of a good girl to pull a sickie. She didn’t want to fall behind: she cared too much about her marks.

‘You’re being really clingy,’ Lily had said last Wednesday, when Bridie suggested they sit alone at recess. ‘Can you stop?’

Stop being clingy, or stop acting like they were friends?

Bridie had always been the type of person who preferred one close friend; she’d never had the desire, or facilitation skills, to foster a wider group. Too late now. Groups were territorial, and breaking into a new circle required a lot of confidence, or an express invitation.

She fell asleep sometime after midnight, her phone in her hand, the screen open on a photo of Lily chewing the end of her pen as she contemplated a maths question. It had been taken on one of those almost perfect Friday afternoons, which Bridie hadn’t realised were finite.

~

Bridie’s first period was modern history, a subject she genuinely enjoyed; the day would deteriorate from there. She chose an aisle seat in the third row. Lily didn’t do history, so it was less awkward navigating where to sit. Caitlin Hewitt-Franklin and her friends sat directly behind her. Caitlin was one of those tall, popular girls who would be the future school captain, and possibly the prime minister. Going from the snatches of conversation that Bridie overheard, the entire group had been at Friday night’s beach party. The girls gossiped and laughed about who had hooked up with whom; and who’d been drunk, spewed or done caps or cones.

‘Lily Pearson was totally wasted,’ one of them said casually. ‘Not what I was expecting.’

Bridie neither. So Lily was drinking now? This revelation made her jealous and worried. And quite devastated. Jealous that she and Lily weren’t sharing these milestones. Worried that Lily was out of her depth with Jamie and his risk-taking friends. Devastated that she was no longer Lily’s confidante, no longer someone with whom she would share details about boys, hangovers or parties.

Bridie had accelerated maths after modern history. The class was a small one, and most of the time, in this class at least, Lily still sat with her. Maybe she would talk about the party, and apologise for not inviting Bridie.

But Lily wasn’t in class. Was she sick or wagging? Was she with Jamie? Maybe she had a violin exam: occasionally she needed to take time off school so she could go to the city to complete another grade. Bridie didn’t have time to think about it further because Mrs Zhang didn’t believe in going easy on Monday mornings. The teacher launched straight into a complex application of Pythagoras.

‘Some of these questions are Year Ten and Eleven difficulty. But the purpose of this class is to stretch our mathematical abilities.’ Mrs Zhang often likened maths to sports: you needed to practise, practise, practise to become proficient.

Bridie didn’t know if it was the lack of sleep, or the heartache over the party, or the distraction that Lily wasn’t here – where the hell was she? – but she couldn’t get her head around the questions. This had happened a few times before, but she hadn’t felt so stressed because she knew she could always ask Mr Pearson. Lily’s dad would explain the concept slowly, and then compile some questions for her to answer so she could feel confident in her grasp of it.

No more. Bridie was on her own now. Maybe she wasn’t as competent at maths as she thought. Maybe she’d been over-relying on Lily and her dad, and this was one of the reasons that Lily now deemed her ‘clingy’.

~

Bridie had a dull headache by the time she got off the bus. She also felt nauseous; she’d been feeling mildly sick since the day Lily and Jamie became official.

Tears smarted in her eyes as she stomped up the hill. She’d never felt so invisible as she had today. Never felt so irrelevant, so unseen. Even her own family didn’t see her. None of them had noticed that she hadn’t been at Lily’s house the last few weeks. None of them had noticed that she’d barely left her bedroom all weekend.

How long would it take them to miss her if she didn’t come home today? How long before Emmet noticed and told Dad? How long before Dad called Lily (Is Bridie with you?), or Mum (Sorry to bother you, Rachel. Did Bridie have something on after school?), before finally calling the police?

The answer was hours. Emmet would just assume that she had something on. Dad would be distracted and then perplexed and would need to call Mum for direction. Lily would be too enthralled with Jamie to even check her phone.

Despite having stacks of homework, Bridie was severely tempted to put them to the test. She could turn around, tramp back down the hill, jump on another bus, take a trip around the city, exploring, while she waited for them to miss her, to notice her, to properly see her.

She sniffed and wiped away her tears. She completed the four-minute walk home. Less than ten minutes later she was biting into an apple and frowning over the first question in her accelerated maths homework.