I wake with a tight band of pain that circles my head. It must be from drinking yesterday, although I only had four. Maybe it was the dope? I might’ve passively inhaled it and this is the response, but I know that I’m deflecting.
I feel a little better once I’ve had breakfast and showered and through the day, when I get can get immersed in something – like in first lesson in English when we talk about To Kill a Mockingbird – it slips by unnoticed. So, it can’t be bad. You wouldn’t be able to ignore something truly bad, would you?
In second period, I have Social Studies with Mr McCready. Mr McCready is a bear, his face more hair than skin. He looks like he was left in the wild as a kid and grew up into some fierce, untamed savage who’s been packed into jeans, a shirt and a khaki coat. But he’s softly spoken and always challenges us to think about the world’s problems. Now – as much as I struggle to focus – he talks about means of improving the world and assigns us the essay of finding a unique way to do just that. It’s ironic – he wants us to fix the world when I can’t even fix myself.
When the bell rings for recess, it sounds so shrill that it slices through my head. We stumble out of the classroom and head towards the toilet, but Riley pulls us up halfway across the courtyard.
‘I’ll catch up to you,’ he says.
Ash and me go into the toilet and light up. The toilet stinks of urinal cakes, their sweetness cloying. I lean against the wall and drag on my smoke.
‘You all right?’ Ash says.
‘Got a headache.’
When we’ve finished our smokes, we go out into the courtyard. Riley’s sitting with Felicia on one of the benches by the atrium, chatting. Me and Ash sit on the bench opposite them.
Ash shakes his head but before he can say anything, Samantha comes skittering up to me like a plane slowing down a runway.
‘Hi,’ she says.
‘Hey,’ I say.
‘I wanted to wish you a happy birthday for yesterday,’ Samantha says.
‘Thanks.’
Samantha hovers over me, maybe waiting for an invitation to sit down and join me or something. I don’t know what else to say. It’s a simple transaction: Happy birthday. Thank you. There are not a lot of places to go from there.
‘You going to Ethan’s birthday?’ she asks.
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay.’ Samantha arches her brows. ‘I’ll see you there.’
She hurries off.
Ash claps me on the shoulder. ‘We’ve had this talk before–’
‘Go for it. She’d be willing. Maybe she’s even experienced. Then dump her.’
All this time, I’ve been thinking it was Riley’s influence that’s shaped Ash’s attitude towards girls, but now Riley’s chasing Felicia and Ash is the same as ever. This is who Ash is – I’m seeing that now.
‘Isn’t that cruel?’ I ask.
‘It’s life. And she’ll be so angry at you that she’ll stop bothering you. Win-win.’
‘Do you think there’s a possibility some time in the future that some woman might, like, kill you?’
‘Hey!’ Ash says, as if offended. Then he grins. ‘Of course there is.’
When my headache persists, I slip away to the library at lunch so I can read about symptoms. The problem is that a headache could be so many things: neck tension, a migraine, a brain tumour – it’s such a big list there’s no way to know without going back to the doctor. Anyway, if it was anything serious, it would’ve shown up when Dr Stathakis examined me. I tell myself this over and over but I can’t stop obsessing about it. Other times, my head feels oddly weighted, like moving one way or the other will throw me off balance.
I stumble out of the library, not wanting to be around anybody – at least so I don’t have to talk with them. But I don’t want to do nothing either. I need to occupy my time. Then it pops up in my head: the Boland essays.
The offices are a hub in the central building. It has a totally different feel to the rest of the school – serious and grave. Reception is a square counter that sits in the middle like a fortified trench. Offices surround it – the Principal, the Vice-principal, Counsellor Hoffs, a staff room, and various others. Pictures, certificates and achievements decorate the walls between each office door.
One wall is dedicated to the Boland stuff – framed essays, along with photos of the grinning fellows receiving their prizes. The Fellowship has run seventeen years, so these photos are a chronology of fashion – ranging from the big lapels, psychedelic shirts and overlong hair in the 1970s, to the blow-waves and acid-wash of the 1980s. I see Steph as a sixteen-year-old, smiling, eyes sparkling, a toothy grin. I wonder what she was thinking at that time.
I read Steph’s essay first – which is about wealth redistribution – and then skim the others. They all contain some idealistic version of improving our way of life in some way, or how somebody can be an agency for change. They make me think about the homework assignments that have been given out – at least the ones that might fit the Boland. Definitely Mr McCready’s today about improving the world, as well as the Legal Studies essay. I now can’t see how Mr Baker’s identity essay could reach anybody on that sort of level.
I wonder what’s become of the winners. Steph has struggled to find direction in her life. Have the others? Has life swallowed them up into some mundane job? Or have they gone onto better things? Are some of them doing – or trying to do – the stuff they wrote about? Or was the Boland the peak of their accomplishments?
I look at last year’s winner – Frank Valeri – and then to the space under his picture and his framed essay. I could occupy that spot. People expect it of me. I should take the Boland seriously, work towards it and hold onto that. It can make life mean something more than this.
After school, I go home, eat a sandwich and then Mum, Dad, and me go to clean the little office building they’ve contracted part-time, emptying bins and vacuuming the floor. But once we’re done and driving home, Mum and Dad start on me – the cost of Steph’s absence.
‘Sixteen now,’ Mum says. ‘Any nice girls at school?’
‘Mum, please,’ I say.
‘When I was not much older than you,’ Dad says, ‘I was thinking about settling down. I had a job. I was saving money.’
‘I know.’
‘You need to know what you’re doing.’
‘Now? Right now?’
‘Don’t speak to me like that,’ Dad says. ‘You’ve got it way too easy here.’
‘I’m helping you with this,’ I say.
‘You’re not helping! You’re getting paid! It’s work. Easy work!’
‘Don’t shout at him,’ Mum says. ‘You don’t need to go on.’
‘I’m not going on – he needs to know!’
‘He knows. Don’t you? You know you have to work hard, you get married, you buy a house and you start a family.’
‘They have it too easy!’ Dad says.
Their voices grate until my headache re-emerges and that good feeling that I carried home evaporates. The moment we pull into the drive, I flee the car and hide in my bedroom. I lie on my bed, fighting the ongoing fears that I have a brain tumour, that it’ll pop, that it’ll kill me and that’ll be it.
When Mum and Dad go to bed, I crawl out into the lounge, lie on the couch and watch TV. At 9.30, I take a sleeping pill. I don’t have many left, but it doesn’t matter, because they do nothing now and I contemplate taking a second. But I might overdose. Who’d find me? Mum and Dad? And it wouldn’t even be until they got home from work. No, I can’t take the second.
I go to bed and close my eyes and it takes me so long to get to sleep, but when I do sleep, it’s okay. Unfortunately, when I wake, the first thing my mind does is turn inward and find the headache waiting there. I sit up and scrunch the covers in my hand.
It’s this or me.
This is not going to beat me.
I clamber out of bed and start the new day.