Monday 29 August
How are we travelling? Malik asks. But he’s not really asking. That is, he’s not expecting us to answer. The way of Wellness is to let things percolate. Think now, talk later. He walks around the room, weaving through the beanbag islands. Half the class is absent because of the uber-flu – Iris is back though. She looks pale and depressed. A few times I’ve caught her looking at me beseechingly. She even left me a note apologising, but it’ll take more than that to win me over. I still can’t believe she told Mum and Dad about Stu. Last night I couldn’t sleep. I was picturing interrogation, a doctor’s exam, my relocation to a school for wayward girls. I feel Iris’s eyes on me. I give her the finger.
Malik is talking about ‘personal geography’ – journeys big and small. He puts a memory map up on the board. It’s like a map of his childhood. He talks us through each marker on the map, and each one stands for a story.
‘What I want you to do is make your own map. It can be a map of last year or last week, or your life to date – go back as far as you want. Put down all your defining moments – the “moments of truth” – el momento de la verdad – where things changed and put you on a new or different path. As we explore our life continuum, notice that we move through good and bad. We can’t map the future, and that can make us worry about all the little possibilities, particularly negative ones. But today’s map – this – can be both a record of your past, and a tool for the future, proof that you can get over things, through things.’
‘So . . .’ Malik moves up the front of the room, his shadow blocking the map. ‘What are your markers? What kind of things could you encounter on a map of your history?’
No one says anything. Then Tash puts her hand up. ‘Success and failure?’
‘Right,’ Malik says. ‘But be specific. Traditionally, on a geographical map, we have rivers . . .’ He draws squiggly lines on the board. ‘Train tracks, roads, churches, hospitals . . . So have a think about what kind of markers you might encounter in psychological terrain.’
‘Heartbreak.’ I say this out loud, without thinking.
Malik ignores the murmurs and draws a heart with a crack in it. And the heat of Iris’s stare is too much. I turn to look at her. Die, I mouth.
Malik sets us up with butcher’s paper and coloured textas. He tells us to get comfortable, we’re going to start our maps in class, but he hopes we’ll keep going outside class.
‘Once, people used to imagine sea monsters in the unmapped areas – we still do this now; we have a fear of the unknown. The future is the great unknown, the “unmapped perhaps”.’
We get started. My life is just a line marked with situations that have arisen from external factors. But maybe that’s Malik’s point; we can’t control anything but our responses. When Mum and Dad made their big announcement at the end of last year, what could I have done? The option of staying at our old school didn’t exist. If it had, this whole year would have been different. I chose not to share a room with Iris, but what if I’d gone the other way? Would I have even made any friends? Then there was swimming and Stu. He gave me his number, but I was the one who called it. I said yes and yes and yes. My choices did not lead to roses and happy ever after, but major sads – yet even this is changing. I can see from my map how one thing leads to another, how if I hadn’t found out about Stu, then I wouldn’t have gone to Kate’s, and I wouldn’t have met Ben . . . and he’s already called me. He told me I was pretty, said he was having trouble thinking about anything else. I asked him for a photo and in the one he sent he’s fully clothed, facing the camera and smiling.
My symbols are a broken heart (for Stu); a wild wind (for the moments where life went south or north or east or west); I have a lightning bolt marking the swim disaster, but then I add a smiley face, because, really, it was that day that led to friendship with Ady and Kate. For our weekend trip I put three smilies on a train. For Ben I draw a little spaceship that has a flight path into the future.
I draw my symbols in a tiny hand because this stuff is private. It’s how I really feel. After a while, I look up to see that Iris isn’t drawing at all. In spite of everything, I feel sorry for her. She’s crushing on a guy who doesn’t even notice her. She doesn’t have any momentoes of her own; she just has a green eye on everyone else’s.
After Wellness I blow off History and go to my room. Jinx is training so I have some uninterrupted me-time. I delete all my photos of Stu. I look at each one for a long time before I delete it. I am building up to there being nothing more of him. He hasn’t called or texted since the weekend. He doesn’t know what I know. I wonder if he’d care. I can’t believe a week ago I was picturing us in our finery at the formal, imagining it like a fuck-you to anyone who ever laughed at me or called me fat. In my fantasy I looked amazing and Stu’s hair was the perfect storm. We stayed at the formal just long enough for everyone to see and then we left for –
But where would we have gone?
There was never anywhere to go.
And now the formal approaches and I don’t even have a pity date. I think I’ll go with Jinx.
The door opens. I look up, expecting Jinx, but it’s Iris.
‘Go away,’ I say.
But she just comes closer. She goes to Jinx’s bed, straightens the already straight cover and sits down.
‘Heartbreak?’
‘How could you tell Mum and Dad about Stu? They want to tell Gaffa. I’ll probably get expelled.’
‘I rang them. I told them I made it up. I told them I was just . . .’
I look at her.
‘Jealous,’ she finishes. She gets up and comes to sit next to me on my bed.
‘There’s nothing to be jealous of,’ I say. ‘It’s over.’
‘What happened?’
‘What’s the point of me even telling you? You don’t get it. You don’t know what it’s like. You’ve never even had a boyfriend.’
I see the hurt crash on her face and I feel bad for a second, but then I go on, poking my finger in the wound, hooking it around the lip, chucking in salt and capsicum spray.
‘I bet you’ve never even kissed a guy.’
‘I have.’
‘Who?’
‘Theo.’
‘Theo!’ I laugh. ‘Well I don’t know how you managed to do it for any amount of time seeing as you’re both such mouth-breathers.’
‘I only came here because I was worried about you.’
‘No you didn’t. You just wanted to feel good about yourself. And the only way you get to feel good about yourself is when you’re watching someone else feel shit. Well, you’re too late. I was heartbroken, but I’ve decided to get over it. I liked a boy. I thought we were exclusive. We weren’t. Map that – it’s a short fucking line.’
‘Oh,’ Iris says quietly. She’s sitting with her hands in her lap, and looking at something – the jar of plum jam Kate’s mum gave us. She picks it up and turns it over in her hand.
‘I’m glad you were sick this weekend,’ I say suddenly. ‘We would have had to explain everything to you because you’re such a freak. You act like you’re smarter than everyone but you’re just a lonely loser.’ I stop, my mouth tastes bitter. Iris’s face – I think I’ve gone too far.
‘Friend-stealer!’ she hisses.
She picks up the jam jar, and throws it hard against the wall. The glass smashes and jam goes everywhere. Iris looks stricken, then she turns and stomps out, slamming the door behind her. My tears come without warning. I full-on sob. I don’t even know why I’m crying. Is this me now? Weepbag Clem. I sob into Stu’s scarf and, even though it’s gross, I blow my nose on it too.
Ady Rosenthal, the most up herself of the whole Year 10 St Hildarian bitch brigade, is finally being put in her place. About time.
1. Her best friend Tash and ex Rupert are now an item. Suck on that, bitch
2. Her father is a cokehead drunk now in rehab – apparently he said, yes, yes, yes, but not before he lost the family money
3. So her family is headed for bankruptcy and she’s leaving St Hilda’s. No great loss. Enjoy slumming it in public school land, precious
4. She’s a dyke
5. Isn’t that about enough to make her the biggest loser?
B@rnieboy: laughing fit to bust. couldn’t happen to a bigger bitch
sufferingsuffragette: Ady is nice and not responsible for the behaviour of her parents
hungryjackoff: Don’t mind watching her eat some pussy tho – 3way?
Feminightmare: A friendly reminder that sex between women does not exist as entertainment for boys. Enjoy your next ‘3way’ though, which I expect will be you, a fizzy drink and a packet of chips.
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