Saturday 20 August

Through the cypress hedge to an overgrown, weed-thick front garden with 1960s-style planting: pittosporums, oleanders, lilly pilly, japonica, I pick my way through the rubbish tip, along the broken concrete path to the front door. People are piling up pieces of furniture in a clear patch of lawn near the hedge. Kate is staying outside, waiting for Oliver. I turn back as she calls my name. She invites me to her place in the country for the long weekend. She is as impulsively kind as Tash is impulsively harsh.

Clem has floated on ahead, drawn by Stu’s pheromones, no doubt. Her hair looks so pretty all pinned up like a spiky little tiara. This party is already boiling over and it’s only eight pm – it’s a potential riot or cop call-out for sure. Stu’s band is so loud I don’t even penetrate the front room where they’re playing. Wouldn’t mind a couple more allies here. I told Kate I was glad she’d asked Max. Glad doesn’t quite cover it: I feel helium-fuelled over-the-moon excited and nervous.

I text Tash: At that party, yawnies. See you tomorrow? I told her that tonight was strictly Malik homework, a second date with the thumb-group. Keeping Tash happy suddenly calls for determined insincerity. She replies: Poor bb with the dorks . Brunch at Figgy’s 11ish, loves . That will put another hole in my gram birthday cash with nothing on the horizon to replace it.

The place reeks of weed, and ticks my number one bad sign of a party: too many dudes. I smile and think of Flight of the Conchords, ‘Too Many Dicks (On the Dance Floor)’. Flight of the Conchords is one of those parent–kid crossovers in my family. Stomach lurch as I remember, it was my father who brought them home, and now we are fatherless, for a stretch.

A guy is smiling at me. I avoid eye contact, vague-smiling as I walk past him. ‘Bitch,’ he says. God, the tiresome small dealings with random dudes. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve been a frigid bitch or a stuck-up slut just for not talking to or smiling back at guys who are complete and utter strangers to me – since Year 8, since the first hint of breast. I send up a prayer to the party fairy for a night of no arse grabs; I get so tired of having my guard up the whole time. Based on the amount of beer swilling around here, I’m not going to be hanging around for too long. A moment of missing my footballer-physique Rupert companion, walking further in, comfort touching the edge of my phone in my jacket pocket. That thought makes me angry, too: feeling safer with a big guy next to me.

Clare told me about an article that floated the idea of a curfew for guys, so women could feel safe roaming the world at night. Uproar against the idea, of course; how ridiculous, hysterical – why should all guys be penalised for the actions of a few? But why not? All women are penalised because of the actions of a few (guys). We’re all forced to modify our behaviour, or risk our safety, all the time. So why shouldn’t all guys have a turn at the world not being guy-friendly, for a change? I imagine the girl-friendly world – streets at night full of girls and women. God, it would be so lovely. Walking anywhere we want, wearing anything we want, staying out late shouting, singing, drinking. Never worrying about attracting unwanted attention from dickheads. All the taxis and Ubers driven by women, so you don’t have to sit there holding your phone, ready to instant dial for help if they take a wrong turn on the way home. Women in the trains and trams, laneways, highways, parks, beaches, pubs, parties, clubs – all safe, all night. Things would be . . . unrecognisable. Imagine slipping out for a full-moon midnight walk just because you could. We’d start to swagger. We’d own the streets, own the night.

There would have to be a device ready to pick up any men who broke curfew – maybe a drone with a claw-like attachment. Men’s neck implants would start beeping if they were out after dark, so the drones could locate them straightaway. And women would finally feel – be – safe in the dark hours. After centuries, millennia, of not.

I wander deeper into the house, wondering if I’ll get to the heart of this party. Parties have such unpredictable anatomy, so you don’t always find it. Looking for the heart is why you end up staying too long at some parties. It can be dancing when the perfect track comes on and getting that mainline hit of collective euphoria, or eating a souvlaki on the way home when you’re stoned and starving, or talking your head off to friends you’ve spent all day with, or kissing someone new.

It feels mildly creepy here, not quite safe. I feel a small pang of longing for the party Lola, Tash, Rupe and the others are at – dancing to Queen Bey with the girls, parent-funded booze, nice food of some sort. Here, I don’t even want to sit down – that orange sofa looks like it would have a liquid level somewhere not far beneath the surface.

The wrecking vibe is warming up. Front sitting room walls have already been graffed: dicks and balls (why?), lots of tags. Two girls, each wielding cans in both hands, are creating some pro-looking tentacular sprouting around a window frame, the solvent smell mingling sickly with the weed and beer. The lighting is crime-chiaroscuro from a couple of portable film lights pointing up in two corners of the room.

I head upstairs to keep exploring. This house is a tatty Florence Broadhurst-esque dreamscape – a delicious clash of time-travel furnishing. I wish I could have seen it in daylight.

I open and close one door – humping; a second door – shooting up, eep; a third door – ah, just right – empty room. O, wallpaper, lit by the streetlights – a hot pink, black and white wicker-weave pattern. Be still, my hammering heart. It’s the real thing: Florence, and the perfect backdrop for my dress made from decommissioned Gram curtains – Marimekko: big black and yellow geometric daisies. I shine my phone torch around. This must have been a library or home office; it’s lined with shelves now empty except for junk. There are piles of magazines, a broken The Sims 2 box, a small blow heater with its plug cut off, and a shelf of phone books with the 2001 White Pages L–Z on top. I think about taking it home – it’s super-thin paper, good for papier-mâché . . . What am I – crafty craft kinder girl? No! Resist!

I find the clearest stretch of wallpaper, lean back against it, and paste on an enigmatic smile suitable to the pattern clash. Arm out, flash click, check, edit, filter, post. I have eight likes as soon as I refresh. Thirty when I refresh again. And a message from Max: Are you where I am? I message back: idk – I’m having a wallpaper love-in upstairs – come join ☺

Max comes through the door with a blast of party sound and a smile. We sit at opposite ends of the window seat, knees up, toes not quite touching.

‘Tell me these are not your friends,’ she says.

‘These are not my friends. It’s an unfortunate friends of friends of friend situation. Hey, I’m looking for a new school. How do you like MCA?’

‘I like it lots. It’s perfect for driven arts tragics. There’s no Wellness program, but there is ample wellness.’

‘St Hilda’s thinks it’s an antidote to online meanies.’

‘Kate said they posted about you. That sucks.’

‘I chose not to take it seriously. At least not in public. There’s no good way to deal with that stuff.’

‘When did everyone decide it was even a thing to be anonymous and evil?’

‘It only takes a couple of people – and it’s like everyone is waiting, ready to follow the mean lead. It’s easy to set up a new site if one gets shut down. It’s like Whac-A-Mole. You don’t have stuff like that at your school?’

Max shakes her head. ‘People would think it was too – nasty. Uncool. We get a lot of private school rejects. Not looking for any trouble. Recovering from trouble.’ She gives my foot a gentle nudge. ‘So, Kate’s been telling me about her perfect day assignment – it was writing music and performing it. What’s yours?’

‘I don’t know – playing with fabrics, dreaming up clothes that don’t look like other stuff. What about you?’

Stu’s band is starting up again and we mirror grimace.

‘Oh, I’ve got a thousand perfect days. They all involve books and movies and music,’ Max says, trying to compete with the band’s volume.

‘I can hardly hear you.’

‘We don’t have to talk.’

She swings her feet to the floor, tilts her face towards me, and checks with a look that she can keep going. My smile says yes, and, right here in the pull and glow of our kiss, I find the heart of the party.

Later, just before some idiot threw empty spray-paint cans into the fire, just before they exploded and caused a fireball that ignited the old cypress hedge in a burning whoosh, just before we made our escape, laughing, and feeling lucky we hadn’t been standing on the other side of the fire, just before all that, I saw Stu standing under the lilly pilly tree, kissing a black-haired girl, his hand down the front of her jeans.

Lying in bed, too hyped to sleep, I see it clearly, looping like a scene from a film. I’m worried about how to tell Clem and don’t come up with a single good way to do it. She looked so happy coming home on the tram. I don’t want to break that.

Text from Tash: We’re all going to escalatorrrr, COME TOOOOOOO, YOU LAZY WENCH xxx

I put my sound-of-rain app on and go to sleep thinking about kissing Max, and when I can kiss her again.