I shuffle through the morning and stumble out of the house. Every step feels like it’s coming off the back of some hike that’s already exhausted me.
Ash is waiting at the corner, hands shoved in his pocket. ‘My mum said you dropped around last night.’
‘Yeah. Didn’t plan to. Went for a walk.’
‘What did you end up doing?’
‘Went to Riley’s.’
‘Is–?’
My mind does the calculations quick. Ash is going to ask, Is everything okay? I jump in with question.
‘When’s the last time you’ve been to Riley’s?’ I ask.
‘A while.’
I tell him what Riley told me about his dad. It might be confidential, but it keeps Ash from asking about me.
‘I wonder why he didn’t say anything,’ Ash says when I finish.
‘Don’t know.’
We stop on the bank by the bridge and smoke, although we can’t sit because the grass is wet with morning dew. A cold wind funnels down the aqueduct and hurries us on our way.
It’s the usual activity in the courtyard, the same everyday clusters – except for Lachlan sitting with Felicia, chatting and laughing. I don’t know what Lachlan’s saying. It can’t be smart, on account of him being an idiot. But Felicia regularly throws back her head and laughs.
Ash and I slip into the toilets. Riley sits against the sink as always, smoking and blowing rings. He offers us a cigarette. I take one and light it, but the stench of smoke is cloying and my chest seizes up. The fear that I’m going to choke EXPLODES in my head – I can’t stop it and my heart thumpthumpthumps a warning that has the toilet sway in front of me. I lean against the wall.
‘What’s up with you?’ Ash says. ‘Why didn’t you tell us about your dad?’
‘It just is.’ Riley spits in the sink.
‘It’s a pretty big just is.’
‘Not like you could do anything.’ Riley spits again in the sink. ‘Mum’s struggling to keep it together. Dad should be strung up by the balls.’
‘For cheating?’ Ash says, his voice tense.
‘Yeah. Why? What’s the problem?’
It hangs there, waiting to be challenged. But Riley doesn’t really want to have a conversation about this. He wants to be the final authority, like what he says can’t be questioned. We’ve learned just to shut up, for the most part.
Riley throws his cigarette into the urinal like he’s ditching everything associated with the topic.
The bell rings.
Ash takes a last puff of his cigarette and then also throws it in the urinal. He and Riley head for the door.
‘I’ll catch up,’ I say, stepping up onto the urinal.
Once they’re gone, I go straight to the sink and splash cold water on my face. Riley’s two gobs of spit stare up at me like a pair of unsightly eyes. I pull back and my chest scrunches up. Irrational possibilities blare through my mind: heart attack, emphysema, cancer. I tell myself they can’t be the case – I’m too young for a heart attack and emphysema and cancer don’t work like they’ve just been switched on. Unfortunately, I’m imaginative enough to poke holes through logic. I don’t know how emphysema and cancer work. Maybe they toil quietly away at your body until they hit a breaking point. Aunt Mena only discovered her cancer when she went to get a check-up because she’d been feeling tired. As for a heart attack, I might be young, but young people can have congenital heart defects. Anything could be happening inside me.
I sit on the toilet seat, doubled over, smelling the urinal cakes and feeling the cold seep through my clothes. But it’s good, because now I’m not focusing on what’s going on inside my head. Slowly, my breath evens out, although my chest is still tight. I get up and feel okay – or at least okay as far as my new baseline goes.
As I emerge from the cubicle, the main door opens and Mr Baker comes in. He puts his hands on his hips.
‘You’ve missed half of the class,’ he says. ‘Your friends said you were in here. What’ve you been doing?’
‘I…have an upset stomach.’
Mr Baker’s face doesn’t twitch. He must know it’s a lie. If I’d had an upset stomach, the toilet would stink. But he nods.
‘You okay to come back to class? Do you want to go to the sickbay? Or perhaps I can call your parents?’
‘I’ll be all right.’
‘Okay. But tell me if you feel unwell again.’
It’s awkward coming into class when it’s halfway done, but given Mr Baker’s absence to come find me, everybody’s gotten noisy. Samantha watches me with concern as I take my seat next to Riley. Gabriella glances at me. Kat and Felicia are oblivious. Only Rachel sits quietly.
I struggle through the rest of English and feel little better in Mr McCready’s Social Studies class. At recess, drizzle is a drumroll across the courtyard, so kids hang around in classrooms or take refuge in the locker rooms. I’m in the toilets, of course, with Ash and Riley, but being here worries me that there’ll be a repeat performance of what happened this morning. I tell myself over and over that I’ll be okay, like the sheer weight of repetition can brainwash my thinking back to where it belongs.
But as the day goes on, I know it won’t.
Whatever this is, I can’t keep facing it alone.