As it warms up and t-shirts and blouses reappear, the days grow longer. Trees sprout leaves, flowers bloom and things change. That’s how simple it is, really. Not a lot’s unchanging – well, death, maybe. That’s a thought that creeps in.
Steph’s always up early, looking for jobs. Evenings, she’s often out – Mum and Dad think with Todd but I don’t know where. She might have another boyfriend she’s not telling anybody about. That would be the smart thing with Mum and Dad – don’t let them know until the engagement.
School becomes this mishmash of shifting dynamics. There’s the world inside my head and the world outside it. Samantha ditches Lachlan, those soft eyes are always studying me in a way that makes me think I could be a god if I didn’t have so much trouble being a human. It’s not two days after she ditches Lachlan that she tracks me down in the courtyard at recess.
‘I’m having a birthday,’ she says. ‘A sixteenth.’ She thrusts an invitation at me. ‘Will you come?’
In the instant before I open my mouth, my head’s overwhelmed with possible catastrophes: the crowd will make me uncomfortable; the last party I was at, I panicked. Can I drink on sedatives? What if I can’t breathe? What if another headache hits? What if I freak out in front of everybody? I’ll be trapped, unable to escape. And on it goes.
‘I’m inviting everybody,’ she says, maybe to assure me it’s not just going to be me and her, or just me and her and her friends.
‘Sure,’ I say.
Samantha smiles and takes off, a firework I’ve lit up.
Riley and Felicia often take long walks to the back of the school. I can’t figure Riley out, if this is some ploy to woo Felicia, or if he’s fallen for her that much and, having lost her once, is afraid he’ll lose her again. It’d be good to talk to him, too, because his birthday’s coming up.
Gabriella splits up with Jake and I see her chatting at times with Scott Marshall, a barrel-chested guy with blond hair tied into a ponytail. I would love to tell you that when each of these things happen, they’re momentous, but they’re not. This is high school.
And still emerging is Deanne. Gone are the shapeless clothes and unassuming haircut. Now she wears clingy blouses, tight jeans or dresses, and so much crap in her hair a hole in the ozone forms above wherever she walks. She gets a lot of attention.
‘See what I did?’ Ash says one lunchtime, while we’re smoking in the toilets. ‘It’s like I have a magic touch. But in my cock.’
I shake my head. ‘I can’t believe you said that.’
‘This is a power I need to share. It’s a calling. You understand that, don’t you?’
The constant in my life becomes the appointments with Dr Dimmock every two weeks. He sits there and listens to me report what the fortnight’s been like – usually, it’s me listing the symptoms. He’ll nod and scribble on his notepad. Sometimes, he’ll ask a question and I think we’re going to get to the bottom of what’s going on.
‘What appeals to you about writing?’ he says, towards the end of that second appointment.
‘I like that I get to make things up,’ I say, ‘that there’s this story I want to tell and I can go anywhere with it.’
Nods. Scribbles. Then he’ll ask me if I need a prescription. Even Counsellor Hoffs asked me more about my aspirations than that and Dr Dimmock’s meant to be helping me deal with what’s going on inside my head, isn’t he?
‘It gets to me the way my parents shout so much,’ I say in another appointment. Then I add, like it’s meant to give more weight to my claim, ‘It gets to my sister, too.’
‘Why does it get to you?’ he asks.
‘Because they’re always looking at the negative of a situation.’
‘Why do you think that is?’
‘It’s the way they are.’
Nods. Scribbles. Prescription?
‘Do people get better from this?’ I ask, another time.
Dr Dimmock purses his lips, like that’s meant to make him look thoughtful, and not like a fish sizing up some bait. ‘It is about management.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘In learning to manage this, you improve your situation.’
Nods. Scribbles. Prescription?
Each time I leave his little office, I can only think that if this is how it’s going, it can’t be too bad. Steph sits patiently in the waiting room and doesn’t press me with questions until we’ve gotten in the car and are driving home.
‘Is he helping?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You should know. You’ve been seeing him a while.’
‘I guess.’
‘You guess?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘This the way you talk to him?’
‘Not really.’
‘I want to know that he’s taking care of you. I want to know that he’s helping.’
I sit back and stare at the undeveloped paddocks out here before we get back on the bypass. The truth is, Dr Dimmock is helping by existing because I know there’s always an appointment close by where I can check in, talk about which symptoms have been worse in that fortnight, but show I’m otherwise stable.
‘Well?’ Steph says.
‘Sure,’ I say.