The following morning, when it was still dark, I went for a run, smashing out ten k’s, the air crisp in my lungs. My left knee was twinging by the time I got home — an old judo injury — but I felt good, better than I had in ages. I sang ‘Snow (Hey Oh)’ in the shower, got out to find Jack waiting in the hallway, a towel draped around his neck.
He lowered his phone. ‘What time are you leaving for class?’
‘Ah, I’m taking the car,’ I said, hoping he wouldn’t ask for a ride.
‘Lazy bastard.’
‘I just ran ten k’s, man. I’d give you a lift, but I need to fill it up and check the tyres, so I might make you late.’ I gave him a fake punch on the shoulder as I passed. We’d walked in together every day last week — me, Tess and Jack are all in the same med class; Blue in the third year of her dental degree. For the first couple of months of med school I’d thought everyone in my class was smarter than me, but I’d soon figured out that wasn’t true. It’d taken a couple more months for me to stop stressing that someone would figure out that I wasn’t meant to be there, a worry that really only went away when I passed my end-of-year exams.
Once dressed, I sprayed on the aftershave Ashleigh had given me for Christmas and raked my fingers through my damp curls. After downing eight Weet-Bix and a piece of toast, I made a four-layer Vegemite and cheese sandwich and chucked it in my bag. My phone buzzed as I was reversing out of the driveway.
Ashleigh: Want to meet up for lunch?
I waited until I’d stopped for a red light before replying: Lunch break at 1. Your café or mine? I usually hung out in the med school café; Ashleigh at the University Union, on the main campus. Usually I ate my homemade lunch while Ashleigh had a scone and a salad. I didn’t know how she wasn’t starving half the time. I sure was.
Ashleigh: Can you come my way? See you then x
I fired off a message to Ronnie: Can I meet you on Moat Street? There’s a cut-through from your carpark.
The car behind me honked and I realised the light was green. I tossed my phone on the back seat and took off, tyres squealing. I was never going to pass my next warrant with those — just another bill to worry about.
Ronnie was already waiting when I pulled into the side street.
‘How’s it feeling this morning?’ I asked.
‘Not so bad. The cast helps a lot.’ She was wearing a T-shirt-style dress, blue with white stripes, and had tied her hair up. ‘What’s on your timetable for today? Anything exciting?’
I shrugged. ‘Not really. I just sit around in lectures, mostly.’
‘No dissection classes? I’ve always had a morbid curiosity about those.’
‘Me too,’ I admitted. ‘No dead people today, though. Sorry to disappoint.’
She smiled. ‘Sounds like the script for a bad movie.’
‘Yeah, REDRUM.’
I wasn’t sure she’d get the reference, but Ronnie said, ‘Ha, I watched The Shining with my dad when I was eight. I had nightmares for months afterwards.’ She took a packet of chewing gum out of her bag. ‘Want some?’
‘Thanks.’ I stuck a couple of pellets in my mouth. ‘My sisters used to say REDRUM all the time, like some sort of secret password. Took me years to work out it was murder spelt backwards. That, and “I see dead people”, from The Sixth Sense. You know the one?’
‘Another favourite of my dad’s, yeah. You were the little one, huh?’
‘Yep.’ I stopped for a pedestrian crossing. ‘You?’
‘No, I’m the eldest.’ She’d tensed up, I noticed. She smoothed some balm over her lips. ‘How long have you and Ashleigh been together?’
‘Oh, ages. We met when we were at high school.’
‘High school sweethearts, nice. So you went to the same school?’
‘God, no. Ashleigh went to a private school, twenty k a year fees kind of thing. We met through her dad. We belonged to the same judo club.’
‘Judo?’ Her voice lightened. ‘What belt are you?’
‘Black. First dan.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, black’s the highest colour belt, but there are ranks of black belt. First dan is the first rank. The highest you can get is tenth dan. Geoff, Ashleigh’s dad, is fourth dan.’
‘He must be good.’ She frowned at her phone, pressed a button on the side to turn the screen off.
‘He went to the Commonwealth Games when he was younger.’ Geoff was competitive about his coaching too, taking credit for every fight I won, every medal, as if I’d never have achieved it without him. Maybe he was right. ‘Do you play a sport?’
She let out a short laugh. ‘No, I’m not that coordinated.’
‘What’s your passion, then?’
Ronnie’s mouth twisted. ‘Music, I guess. We had a band.’
‘We?’ I stopped outside the University Union. I knew Ashleigh wouldn’t be there this early, but I did a quick scan in case any of her friends were around.
‘Me and my brother. Toby. And a couple of others.’ She pushed a finger along the top of her thigh. Her breathing had sped up, just like when she’d talked about being the eldest.
What did you do last year?
Existed, I guess.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘Toby’s gone. I mean, he’s dead. Suicide.’ Ronnie unfastened her seatbelt. ‘Sorry, downer.’
‘It’s OK.’ Shockwaves reverberated in my chest. ‘I mean, it’s not. Sorry.’
‘It’s all right. No one ever knows what to say.’ She opened the door.
‘Hang on, I’ll get your gear.’ I passed her the crutches and her bag. ‘You all right from here?’
‘I’m good. Thanks.’ Her head was lowered.
‘Do you want a lift home? My classes finish at four.’
‘Oh no,’ she said, her voice high and bright. ‘I can make my own way home. Thanks again.’ She slung her bag over both shoulders and limped away. A few students were heading towards the library, so I ducked away. I had a feeling the short guy down the road was in Ash’s law class.
‘Serotonin,’ the lecturer said, ‘is a monoamine neurotransmitter. It regulates mood, cognition, reward, learning and memory.’ Prof Golding was a small man with a horrendous moustache and a wardrobe of colourful shoes, a pair for each day of the week. Monday’s were yellow with white stripes. The shoes would have looked OK if he hadn’t worn them with knee-high socks and shorts, like a time traveller from the seventies.
‘Learning and memory,’ I wrote in my notes, and then, in vertical letters down the left margin, ‘REDRUM’. The image would be flipped upside down by my retina, sending a message along my optic nerve to the visual centres in my occipital cortex, which would flip it the right way up again.
‘Serotonin,’ Golding continued, ‘also plays an important part in the development and maintenance of an addiction.’
‘NOITCIDDA,’ I wrote down the right-hand side of the page. I straightened up, stretching out my knee, which had stiffened up. My classmates, all two hundred of them, were in various states of consciousness, ranging from scrawling down everything that came out of Golding’s mouth to myoclonic sleep twitches and drooling. The three girls to my left were sucking lollipops. To my right, Yoda was having a conversation with a girl on Instagram, someone he’d met on Saturday night.
‘And dopamine,’ Golding continued, ‘plays a vital role in the regulation of movement and reward.’ He flashed up an image of a molecule with a benzene ring.
I took my phone out of my pocket and checked on Ronnie’s surname, then did a search for ‘Toby Austin death’. A photo came up straight away, accompanied by a news report: ‘The 18-year-old was taken to hospital with third-degree burns covering ninety per cent of his body and died three days later. His sister told police she saw Austin pouring petrol over himself before striking a match.’
‘Jesus,’ I whispered.
‘Huh?’ Yoda looked up.
I shook my head, moved my phone onto my lap so I could examine the photo. The family resemblance was clear — Ronnie’s brother had the same jet-black hair and olive skin, the same tawny-brown irises. In the picture, Toby was standing on a wharf, holding a large fish on a hook, his smile wide and guileless. He didn’t look crazy.
Golding had moved on to the hypothalamus, a tiny area in the centre of the brain that controls many hormones. I shuffled in my seat. Random sensory memories flitted through my primordial brain — the vanilla scent of lip balm, the weight of a small foot in my lap, the weft of gauze between my fingers, a song about nothing lasting forever.
I typed another term into the search engine. ‘Third-degree burns,’ I read, ‘destroy the epidermis and dermis. They may also destroy underlying muscles, bones and tendons.’ There was an image of a foot with a raw, deeply ulcerated area covered in yellow ooze. I tried to fathom that sort of damage to so much of someone’s body, but couldn’t. No wonder Ronnie had taken a year off. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had post-traumatic stress disorder.
Glancing up, I saw that Golding had moved on to a slide entitled ‘The Anatomy of Addiction’.
‘All addictive drugs’, he said, ‘increase levels of dopamine.’
A message flashed up. Ashleigh. Want to come over after dinner?
I hesitated, thinking about all the study I had to do, starting with the notes from the lecture I was hardly paying any attention to. I’d paid enough attention, however, to know that my brain was already completely addicted to dopamine, which also happened to be one of the neurotransmitters involved in the first flush of attraction.
You’re not the only one.
‘With enough reinforcement,’ Golding continued, ‘we start to see craving and dependence.’
Sure, but will be later. Judo finishes 7.30, I replied, then switched my phone to flight mode.
‘All addictive drugs,’ the lecturer said, ‘alter neurons — that is, the structure of brain cells.’
I slid my eyes towards Yoda. He was tapping on his phone, smiling.
Monday night judo wasn’t exactly training for me, though I sometimes stayed behind to spar with one of the other instructors. But it was fun teaching the juniors. More importantly, it meant some much-needed cash.
By the end of the ninety-minute training session, I was starving. I returned to the flat to find dirty dishes piled high on the left side of the bench.
‘Your turn to wash up,’ Tess said from her usual spot on the couch, where she was studying while simultaneously watching some home renovation programme on TV. I didn’t get how she learnt anything like that.
‘So it is,’ I said, contemplating the congealed pasta in the pot on the stove. After wolfing down my share of spag bol, I started on the pile of crockery, which included all the dishes from breakfast as well. By the time I’d done those and showered, it was half past eight. No wonder there was a series of passive-aggressive messages on my phone from Ashleigh when I fished it out of my jeans. Turned out I’d left it in flight mode.
7.40. Do you want a cup of tea? I’m putting the kettle on now.
7.53. Guess not. What time do you think you’ll get here?
8.12. Have you changed your mind?
8.23. Is there something wrong with your phone?
8.29. Are you even talking to me??
I drove straight over. Ashleigh was curled up in an armchair in the lounge, a chunky textbook on her lap. From above, I heard the faint thump of music.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was on dishes.’
‘You could have messaged me.’ She was wearing a blue halter neck and white shorts, which showed off her tan. When I bent to kiss her, I smelt freshly washed hair, along with the apricot moisturiser she’d suggested I buy her for Christmas last year. The apricots must have been sourced by singing virgins, if the price was anything to go by.
‘Phone went flat. You smell good.’
‘Is that meant to be an apology?’ She dropped the textbook beside the chair, barely missing my foot.
I straightened up. ‘It’s meant to be the truth.’
‘I’ve got better things to do than wait around all night for you, you know.’ Ashleigh stared fixedly out of the window. It was dark outside, though there was a strange shadow by the hedge. Yet when I shifted to see better, all I could see were our reflections in the glass.
‘No one said you had to wait around for me.’ As always, I was watching her hands, though it wouldn’t make any difference. I knew I had no control over what might or mightn’t happen next.
‘You said you were coming over.’ She was grinding her teeth, a prelude to an explosion.
‘I said, after judo.’ My slow-boil temper had reached simmering point. ‘I didn’t say a specific time, did I?’ The music got louder.
Ashleigh tipped her head back and yelled, ‘Could you keep it down? Typical guys, never think of anyone else.’ The elusive fifth flatmate, Harrison, must have arrived. Also, she was out of fucking line.
‘Oh, so I’m the self-centred one now, am I?’ A tiny sliver of frontal cortex was telling me that what I was about to say next was a bad idea, but, too late, my primitive amygdala, in charge of emotional responses — Prof Golding would have been proud of my anatomical recall — had taken over. ‘Fetch my phone, Xander,’ I mimicked. ‘Carry my bag, Xander, and while you’re at it, can you massage my fucking—’
The slap wasn’t completely unexpected. The trickle of blood from my lip was.
Ashleigh’s eyes widened and narrowed, like an old-fashioned camera lens. ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that.’ She pointed a finger at me. ‘If it wasn’t for me, you’d be nothing.’
I clenched my fists. How I wanted to thump her one or, even better, wrap my arm around her neck. At least, if I cut off her flow of air, she’d stop talking.
‘Yeah,’ she said, as though she could hear my every thought. ‘Go ahead, hit me. Who’ll pay your uni fees, then?’
I bit back: ‘Yeah, run to your daddy like you always do.’ I swallowed down what I wanted to say: ‘I could add it to my loan, like most other students in the real world.’ But it wasn’t the money I was worried about, and she knew it.
I passed a wrist over my bleeding lip. ‘I’m off.’ As I marched out Ashleigh ran after me, caught my arm before I could open the front door.
‘No. Don’t go.’
I stared at her, wordless. There were tears in her eyes, and her lower lip was quivering.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as she always did. She wasn’t. I could leave, but that would only provoke the next eruption. My frontal lobes took over, assessing, calculating, numbing.
‘I’m sorry.’ I was, but not for what I’d said.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ She touched my throbbing lip. ‘Come upstairs. I’ll clean you up.’ She took my hand. Sensing a blur of movement behind me, I turned to see Ronnie standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the entranceway, leaning on her crutches.
Ronnie gave me a smile that wasn’t a smile, more like a grimace of sympathy. I gave her a blank look in return, then followed Ashleigh up the stairs, like a good dog.