Elliot stirs in the back seat at about six forty-five. He wipes the crusted sleep from his eye and flicks it at Teddy.
‘You’re a moron,’ says Teddy.
‘Where are we?’ says Elliot.
‘About forty-five minutes out of Forbes,’ I say.
‘I’m so thirsty,’ he complains, so I give him my water bottle. ‘You’re a lifesaver.’
Sophie pulls over to the side of the road to let me jump in the driver’s seat. We’re in between towns, so there’s nowhere else to stop. The ground is hard and dusty and I can feel myself burning in the sun. Teddy climbs into shotgun.
At about seven-thirty we arrive in Forbes, where we refuel the car and get our second meal from McDonald’s for the day. Road-tripping and eating healthily just don’t go together. Teddy complains again about how he has to unwrap the driver’s food: ‘It’s so much effort! I just want to eat my own food.’
Sophie takes advantage of the relative quiet to call home and say goodnight to Luke. It’s strange to hear her say goodnight, because it feels like only an hour or two have passed since she was saying goodbye to him this morning.
Teddy tries to start a game of I-Spy but it’s incredibly unsuccessful on account of there being nothing to see except brown grass. Then he tries again. And again. ‘Okay, I’ve got one,’ he says. ‘I spy with my little –’
‘For the love of God,’ says Elliot, ‘would you shut up?’
Just before eleven, right as my eyelids start to droop, I pull the car over.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to stop and sleep somewhere?’ I say while Elliot and I swap places.
‘Nah, it’s all good,’ Elliot says, turning the key. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
I narrow my eyes. ‘Of course I do. But you still need sleep.’
‘I slept before!’
‘Fine,’ I say, ‘but one of us will stay awake with you the whole time.’
‘Will we just?’ says Teddy.
Sophie flicks his ear.
‘Jen, I’ll be fine,’ says Elliot.
‘I don’t care,’ I say. ‘If one of us is awake too, then at least you’ll have someone to talk to.’
‘I mean, if you want …’ says Elliot.
‘Good,’ I say. ‘Then it’s settled.’
‘Who wants to sleep first, then?’ says Sophie. ‘We can do it in shifts.’
Sophie, Teddy and I all look at each other.
‘I will,’ I say. ‘Wake me up at three or something?’
‘Deal,’ says Sophie.
I change into my tracksuit pants and wriggle around for a bit to get myself comfortable – or as comfortable as I can be in the back seat of a car – and close my eyes.
Teddy wakes me at two thirty-seven. We pull over for the very few seconds it takes for Teddy and me to swap seats. Once we’re back on the road, Teddy falls asleep within a minute.
‘I’m just a little glad his shift is over,’ says Elliot after glancing at the rear-view mirror to make sure that Teddy is sleeping. ‘He was driving me crazy.’
I laugh. ‘What was he doing?’
‘Turning everything into an innuendo, talking about his various paraphilia. You know, Theodore stuff.’
‘Sounds fun.’
He murmurs his agreement. ‘Sophie went to sleep at around twelve-thirty and I got two hours of Teddy-talk.’
‘Where are we?’
‘In New South Wales. And in three … two … one … welcome to Scotland! About five hours to go. Factoring in one more pit stop, I’d say we’ll be there by eight at the latest.’
It’s weird but there seems to be a shift in the atmosphere once we cross the state line. It doesn’t make any sense because state lines are completely arbitrary but there’s something about Queensland that feels different to New South Wales, which feels different to Victoria. The world suddenly feels a whole lot bigger.
I wonder if this is why people like going overseas.
‘I still can’t believe we’re actually doing this,’ I say.
‘Me neither. But it’s fun. Why haven’t we ever road-tripped before?’
‘I don’t know,’ I answer honestly. ‘It was too difficult during school terms. Plus I guess it’s good we didn’t go … It would’ve just added to the rumour mill.’
‘Yeah, that’s true. God, some of those rumours were funny.’
‘You know what question annoyed me the most?’ I ask.
‘What’s that?’
‘ “Are you guys together or just friends?” Why is it “just” friends, as if friendship is somehow not as good as romance? I think the whole concept of more than friends is weird.’
Elliot laughs. ‘I’m pretty sure you’re overthinking things.’
‘I was dating Dylan but that relationship was in no way better than this one.’
‘This one?’
‘You and me,’ I say impatiently. ‘People seem to think that if we started dating it would add something to the relationship and make it better, but that’s not necessarily the case. I love you a hell of a lot and I’m kind of insulted that people call us “just” friends. Sure, we don’t put our tongues in each other’s mouths and we don’t orgasm together and sure, our friendship is different to a romantic or sexual relationship. But it’s not necessarily worse. I don’t like it when people dismiss our friendship as insignificant.’
‘You’re crazy, you know that, Jen?’
I laugh. ‘I know.’
‘I’m touched, though. That’s one of the nicest psychotic rants I’ve ever been the subject of.’ He reaches over to grab my hand. ‘I feel the same, you know. I’ve just never thought about it so much.’
We arrive in the small town of Warwick just after five. We get fuel again (thank God for Grandma’s money) and swap places. Then Elliot sleeps.
For about an hour I just drive, taking in the scenery (or lack thereof) and focusing on not crashing. Sophie wakes at six fifteen. Really it’s Sophie’s turn to ride shotgun, but Elliot fell asleep there and we don’t want to wake him up just to get him to move.
Just before seven, we reach Brisbane. Teddy wakes up and we stop at McDonald’s for the third time in twenty-four hours, which definitely isn’t healthy. But such is life.
I go in and get everybody orange juice and bacon-and-egg McMuffins and stretch my legs for a bit.
‘Final stretch, guys,’ says Sophie as she pulls Vincent back onto the road, the sleeping Elliot still in shotgun.
I quickly become convinced Teddy has spiked his OJ, because although the radio is playing the top ten hits, he’s singing Broadway songs at the top of his lungs. Awfully, I might add. He almost gets through the entire first act of this musical called Next to Normal before Elliot reaches back and punches him in the leg.
‘Seriously, dude, shut up.’
Teddy sings another line from the song and Elliot hits him again. ‘Jesus, fine, I’ll stop. You should learn to appreciate the magic that is theatre.’
‘Don’t make me hit you again.’
‘Hey, I have a question,’ I say as soon as the thought occurs to me. ‘Do you actually know where Nessie is staying?’
I’m met with silence.
‘Shit,’ Elliot says.
I can’t help but laugh. We’re maybe half an hour away from the Sunshine Coast after twenty-something hours of travel and hundreds of dollars spent on fuel and we don’t even know how to find her. At least Nessie is living up to her name and avoiding being found.
‘So what do we do now?’ says Teddy. ‘Just go home?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘We’ll figure something out. Maybe you can just call her, Elliot.’
‘But the whole point was for this to be a surprise,’ says Elliot. He looks beyond disappointed, as though Christmas had been moved to the end of November and nobody told him until December had started.
‘At least you’ll still get to see her, right? And we’re in Queensland. It’s going to be fun!’ I want to cheer him up because – for me, anyway – the little detail of actually finding Nessie is less important than us enjoying ourselves.
‘The phone book,’ says Sophie. ‘Look up her family’s address in the phone book.’
‘Sophie, you’re a genius,’ says Elliot. Christmas is back on the right day. He pulls out his phone and searches the online phone book for her relatives. ‘I found it!’ he says after a couple of minutes. ‘T. L. Portland. That’s got to be it. Her uncle’s name is Terry.’ He reads out the address and Teddy plugs it into the GPS.
ETA: fourteen minutes.
But it takes longer than fourteen minutes because a) Elliot wants to buy flowers but b) the florist doesn’t open until nine, meaning that c) we have to wait for half an hour.
We take a walk around one of the parks and the salty air slips into our lungs. The sun is already warm on my face and I’m itching to get to the beach. The beach is the only place that heat is tolerable.
‘It’s nine,’ says Elliot. ‘Flowers and Nessie. Let’s go!’
The beach will have to wait.
Elliot forks out a fortune on a bunch of bright flowers arranged in a bouquet. They’re beautiful and they smell amazing but I didn’t know how expensive flowers could be.
Elliot takes the wheel for the final leg of the trip, a five-minute journey through the backstreets until we find the two-storeyed red-brick house that contains the elusive beast.
Elliot walks to the front door, while the rest of us lurk about halfway along the path between the street and the door.
A brunette girl who could only be Nessie answers the door. Her hair curls down just past her shoulders. Her eyes are huge and brown and her skin pale.
‘Surprise,’ says Elliot, holding out the flowers. But Nessie does not smile. She doesn’t look pleased to see him at all. Her already magnified eyes widen even further.
‘What are you doing here?’ she says, her beautiful complexion stern. She folds her arms across her chest, looking incredibly uncomfortable. I take this as our cue to back away.
We go back to Vincent and Teddy says, ‘Goddamn. She’s hot. Nice work, Elliot.’
I know that I’m sometimes guilty of saying rubbish like this and I know exactly how Teddy meant it, but what’s happening right now to Elliot is making me far too angry to let the comment slide.
‘ “Nice work, Elliot”? Are you serious?’
‘Here we go,’ he mumbles.
‘You’re damn right “here we go”, ’ I say. ‘Obviously she didn’t have the reaction we expected, so making stupid comments maybe isn’t the best idea right now. Secondly, she’s not an object. She’s a person. She’s not some great conquest Elliot made. She’s not some goal. She’s not a prize. She’s not an achievement.’
‘I know, I know, I’m sorry.’
But a) I’m on a roll and b) I doubt whether he’s actually sorry. ‘It’s these stupid comments that perpetuate sexism. You think it’s all in good fun but you’re implying women only exist for men to conquer and possess and you’re saying that the hotter the girl, the more successful the guy. It needs to stop.’
‘Come on, Jen, it was just one comment. It’s not like I’m ruining the planet,’ he says.
‘Yeah, it was one comment from you,’ I say, ‘but what about the one comment from everybody else? They all add up and before you know it, everybody – me included – has these subtle prejudices they don’t even recognise in themselves. If everyone thought of their comments as “just one comment”, nothing would ever change.’
He doesn’t say anything. Then, finally, ‘Sorry.’ He means it this time.
I exhale through pursed lips. Sophie massages my shoulders.
Soon after, Elliot storms straight past us.
‘Elliot!’ I call, but he ignores me. Teddy starts to walk after him but I grab his arm and swing him back. ‘Stay. I’ll go.’
I keep calling Elliot’s name as I jog to catch up to him but he doesn’t respond. Running in thongs is hard.
‘Hey!’ I grasp his hand, finally catching up three streets over.
‘Leave me alone,’ he says, pulling his hand free.
‘Talk to me. What happened?’
‘This is all your fault,’ he says, rounding on me. ‘It was your stupid idea to come here. Why did you even suggest it? You ruined everything.’
And he starts to cry.
I hug him tight. He holds on just as tightly and sobs into my shoulder, which is no easy feat given our height difference.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
After a while he lets go, wipes his eyes on his arm and sits along the side of the footpath, with his feet in the gutter. I sit next to him and hold his hand.
‘She dumped me,’ he says, which I had already figured. ‘I asked her why and she basically said we weren’t compatible. She thought I was too smothering, even though I consciously tried not to be. I mean, before she left we were seeing each other maybe once a week. And texting only every few days or so. How is that smothering? She told me it was totally out of line for me to come here and that I don’t respect her privacy enough. She’s right … I shouldn’t have come.’ He wipes his eyes again, this time on the heel of his palm. ‘I just screw up everything. I was so excited to see her and I thought she’d be happy. I guess she’s just way out of my league.’
‘Please don’t say that,’ I say. ‘So things didn’t work out. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. Maybe she’s right. Maybe you just aren’t compatible.’
‘Yeah, we aren’t compatible because she’s endlessly amazing and I’m a stupid, useless lump of shit.’
‘No, you aren’t. Why would I be best friends with a stupid, useless lump of shit?’
‘Why did she dump me, then?’
‘Sometimes personalities just clash.’ I’m not exactly an expert in the field of dating, so I’m not sure how good my advice is but I can’t just let him sit there and cry. ‘Think of it like … food. A chicken parmigiana is amazing, yeah?’
He nods.
‘And a hot fudge syrup is good too, right?’
He nods again, more slowly.
‘Both of them are amazing and neither is inherently better or worse than the other, correct?’
‘I guess.’
‘But you wouldn’t want a mix of parma and hot fudge, would you?’
He sighs and shakes his head. ‘It just hurts so much,’ he says.
‘I know it hurts,’ I say. ‘That’s how you know it mattered.’