I’m sitting on my bed thinking about high school.

In high school I had my first girlfriend.

We were together for a while and then I broke up with her and we got back together and went overseas and I acted pretty shitty.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a short story about it.

I don’t know why.

Sitting on my bed, I read the story.

I read about how, in high school, Lauren’s parents kept odd hours and she slept in the room opposite her sister’s, where there was a single bed, with the guitar she strummed Tracy Chapman songs on in the corner, and her chalkboard: a collection of messages and reminders.

And then I read about myself, in my room with the light on, staring at the computer screen, beating off at one in the morning so that when the sun rose my mum would say, ‘You look tired,’ and I would reply, ‘I had a lot of study, a lot of study.’

And then I read about the Brisbane heat. I remember the classrooms — they were modelled like old Queenslanders. I remember the timber floors and the fans that spun a million miles an hour and how I used to sit at my desk while Lauren sat at her desk while the teacher sat at his desk thinking, probably, of his youth or his next cigarette. I remember how my hands wouldn’t work because the blood from my body had drained to my penis and all I could think of was the things I wanted to do but had no idea how.

I read about how one day I approached Lauren at her locker and asked if I could walk her home, and she said yes. Remembering how it began to happen like that every day: her and I, the back roads of Milton, Suncorp Stadium, her driveway, her bedroom. How we kissed and touched. How it felt, that first time, to be kissed. To be touched.

And then we made love for the first time that summer. Both of us doing this new thing together. And I read about the pool we dove into afterwards, and about how she looked at me. About how she was smiling and I was smiling and we smiled at each other for ten seconds, which was about how long the sex had lasted.

I read about how time passed and we broke up. I broke up with her because I was bored. But then one night I saw her at this party, sitting on a black plastic couch underneath the stairs of an old house. This boy was sitting next to her, and I walked over and kissed her on the cheek. It wasn’t that I wanted to get back with her; I just didn’t want her to be with anyone else. And I remember walking outside. The hot, black sky, and us beneath it: telling her that I was going to South America, and that I’d thought about it, and I wanted her to come for a little while.

And I want to stop reading because I know the bad things are coming. Because maybe then I can forget the shitty things I did. But I also know that nothing we experience ever truly leaves us.

And so I keep going. I read about how my high-school friend, Kurt, and Lauren and I were at this oasis in the middle of the Peruvian desert. How we were riding around in four-wheel drives with roll cages, driven by former stunt drivers, over sand and high ridges. How it was hot and exhausting because we would climb with our sandboards to the tops of the dunes and, standing or lying on our stomachs, sail down them, Kurt and I drunk from the morning tequilas. I read about how when we got back, Lauren lay on the bed, and I lay there too and we had sex, but I was bored and wanted to see Kurt or maybe have a drink or plan the next thing, so we went and found a cafe, and I had a club sandwich and Lauren had soup, and Kurt arrived and noticed some people smoking weed and we wanted some weed too, and soon we were high, Kurt and I, and we offered some to Lauren several times but all she wanted to do was sleep, so she went home and slept while we went out and danced. Laughing, sweating, snorting line after line of coke in the bathrooms of various clubs.

And then I read about how, the night before Lauren and I left to hike the Inca Trail, I snuck out. I read about Kurt and I buying drugs and dancing while Lauren slept — dreamed, hoped, probably, that I would be more understanding or caring. I read about not being there when she woke up and how I missed the bus that left from the parking lot outside our hostel, so I hailed a taxi that took me to the checkpoint, and we drove so fast the ground blurred into greys and greens. She was on the bus. And then I was too: sweaty. Bloodshot. Pale. Pale.

And over the next four days, as we hiked the trail, she told me everything: how she had cried the first night she had gone home alone to the oasis because I had been ignoring her, that she had heard gunshots, and that she was scared for Kurt and I because she thought we might have been robbed or killed. About how she wanted more time together, and how we could make it work because she believed in it, in us; that we could leave Kurt back in Cusco and venture off on our own for the final days before she flew home. She told of her insecurities, her fear for the unknown. She apologised for things inherent to her personality. In the night, in our tent, we cuddled because it was cold.

After the hike there was a problem with the bus ticket. One of us had to go home early, so I went. I sat alone on the train as it rattled along, watching the mountains, the creeks, and the clouds that shadowed the large green fields. A Belgian family sat in front of me, and their daughter offered me her iPod. She told me to listen to Lamb. So I did listen, to her voice wailing, harrowing, tragic, and beautiful.

I finish reading.

I sit on my bed.

I don’t do anything.

I sit and I think: try to be successful in life by not being a shit person.