Breaking up is even harder when no one knows you were together in the first place. It was even more miserable when the object of my affection shared a flat with my girlfriend, a girlfriend who preferred I stay at her place rather than the other way around.
‘Your flat’s so cold,’ Ashleigh complained. ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t find a new one this year.’
‘It’s cheap,’ I said. ‘Some of us are poor students, remember?’
‘Just put it on your loan. You won’t be poor forever.’
As if you know what it’s like to be lumbered with a student loan, I thought, but didn’t say. I couldn’t be bothered with another argument. I was exhausted by fighting, exhausted by Ashleigh, exhausted by being Xander.
It had been two weeks since Ronnie last touched me, two weeks since she’d told me the deadline was up. ‘Do you think this is fun for me?’ she’d asked. ‘I want to do what normal boyfriends and girlfriends do. I want to hold your hand in public. I want to go to the movies and out to dinner. Most of all, I don’t want to share you.’
I didn’t try to argue the point with her, just told her that I was sorry over and over. Two weeks down the track, and she wouldn’t say hello, wouldn’t look at me even when there was no one else around.
‘Are you all right?’ Tess asked me on the Friday of the second week.
‘Fine.’ I was slouched on the couch, a pathology textbook open on my lap. I was delaying going around to Ashleigh’s, where we were planning to eat pizza and drink beer with her flatmates. ‘Except for Harrison, of course,’ she’d said. ‘And I don’t know about Ronnie — she’s been acting weird lately.’
‘Chocolate-covered peanut?’ Tess held out the bag. She was sitting in the armchair with her legs draped over the side, watching Home and Away. It was only half past five but she was wearing her bunny onesie.
‘Thanks.’ I took a couple and stuck them in my mouth.
‘You can take more than that.’
‘Not hungry.’
‘Are you sure you’re OK? You seem down in the dumps.’ She swung her legs back and forth, the eyes on her bunny slippers winking up at me.
‘I think I’ve got seasonal affective disorder,’ I said. ‘And winter here lasts for—’
‘About eight months?’ Tess said.
I gave her a half-smile. ‘Pretty much.’
‘Things all right with you and Ashleigh?’
I shrugged. ‘Just the usual.’ Should I tell her the truth? No point. Besides, I was starting to wonder if Ashleigh was right. Maybe I should have had dinner with her and Geoff before we left Christchurch the other week. Maybe I was being selfish, as she’d said; ignoring her needs when she’d been hanging around my tournament all weekend. Maybe she hadn’t meant to hit me with that rock.
Just as she never means to hit you, right? said a voice in my head. It sounded like Ronnie.
Tess stuffed the empty chocolate peanut packet down the side of the chair. ‘You guys have been together for ages, huh?’
‘Five years.’
‘Do you think she’d ever cheat on you?’ She pulled her hood up.
I frowned. ‘No. At least, I don’t think so.’
‘Would you ever cheat on her?’
My heart thudded behind my ribs. ‘What kind of an arsehole do you think I am?’
‘I didn’t say you were an arsehole.’ Tess opened a bag of chips. ‘Sometimes people do that kind of stuff because they’re unhappy. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re horrible people.’ She held out the bag. I shook my head.
‘I’ll remember that the next time I’m cheating on Ashleigh, thanks.’
Tess laughed. ‘Anytime.’ She got up, sat down next to me. ‘What are you studying? Oh, TB. That looks gross.’
‘Like cheese,’ I said, gazing at the soft yellow material in the lung. No wonder they called it caseating necrosis.
Tess yanked a checked blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over her knees. ‘Do you want some?’ She held up the edge of the blanket.
‘Nah, I’d better get going.’ I passed her the textbook and stood up. ‘Enjoy.’
‘You too,’ Tess called after me.
‘Texas hold’em rules,’ Van said, shuffling the cards overhand, followed by a riffle. ‘Two dollars to buy in.’
‘Urrgh, poker is so boring,’ Ashleigh said. She was sitting on the couch, drinking Corona with a slice of lemon in the neck. The rest of us had moved to the table.
Nisha flicked the ball of her lighter with her thumb. ‘It’s only boring if you lose.’
‘But it takes so long.’
‘It’s only eight o’clock, Grandma.’ Nisha waved a finger through the flame.
‘Yeah, but it’s like Monopoly — a slow, painful death.’ Ashleigh sloped over to sit beside me.
Dom let a hiss of air out of the side of his mouth. ‘Only if you lose. You’ve got to know when to hold ’em.’
Ashleigh gave him an ‘oh, please’ look.
‘And when to fold ’em,’ Dom continued, and we guys launched into a sizzling rendition of ‘The Gambler’, slapping the table with our hands.
‘Pity you don’t have your guitar with you,’ Skye said.
I picked up my beer. ‘Yeah, should have thought to bring it round.’
‘I wonder why Ronnie doesn’t have one.’ Nisha opened a bag of pistachio nuts. ‘Since she’s so good at it and all.’
I shrugged. ‘Who knows? Where is she, anyway?’
‘No idea.’ Ashleigh poked the slice of lemon into the body of the bottle and held it up to watch the citrus fizz.
Nisha cracked a nut open. ‘She said something about going out for a drink with her tutorial group.’
‘Must have been a long drink.’ Dom glanced up. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To the loo. Sorry, beer bladder.’ I jogged up the stairs to the bathroom on the second level. ‘Oh, hey, Harrison.’ He was sitting on his bed, a large metal bowl in front of him. I took a step closer. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Organising my vitamins,’ he said, and broke a capsule in half before tipping the contents into the bowl.
I frowned. ‘How come you can’t just swallow them?’
Harrison looked up. Skye was right, his eyes were kind of creepy, though it wasn’t so much the colour as the way he stared at people when they were talking to him — unblinking, expressionless, like a goldfish.
‘How come you can’t mind your own business?’ He sprang up and shut the door.
‘Have a good evening!’ I called out, casting a sideways glance at Ronnie’s room as I went to the toilet. Her door was closed, and the edge of an envelope was poking out of the bottom. It looked like a bill or some other official notice. For all I knew, she could be hiding in there, though I couldn’t hear any noise, and surely she’d have picked up the envelope.
I could leave her a note, but there was nothing to say. It was over. We were over. From downstairs, I heard a peal of laughter — Ashleigh.
‘No escape,’ I whispered, and went for a long, melancholy pee.
‘What took you so long?’ Ashleigh asked when I arrived back.
Van smirked. ‘Maybe don’t ask for details.’ He’d tucked a cigarette behind his ear, the one with the spacer in the earlobe. I wondered what would happen to the remains of his earlobe if he ever had to take it out. Would it heal up or forever dangle like a shrivelled scrotum?
‘Just put “Not known at this address: return to sender” on the envelope,’ said Ashleigh.
‘Yeah, but B. Williams. It has to be Blake, right?’ Skye asked.
Ashleigh shrugged. ‘Not necessarily, especially as he was in our hostel last year, so why would he have post sent here?’
‘He flatted before he came to our hostel, remember? When they found him roaming around the corridors in the nude he thought he was in his old flat. That must be here.’ Skye was obviously pleased at her deduction, though everyone else looked unsettled.
I resumed my seat beside Ashleigh. ‘Speaking of unhinged flatmates, Harrison is breaking open vitamin capsules and tipping them into a bowl.’
Dom snorted. ‘What’s he going to do, overdose on them?’
‘I don’t think you can overdose on vitamins,’ Skye said.
‘He was joking, sweetheart.’ Ashleigh used her most condescending tone.
‘What if they’re not vitamins?’ Nisha glanced up at the ceiling, where Harrison’s room was. ‘What if he really is about to overdose?’
‘Good riddance,’ Ashleigh remarked. ‘Like I said, serial killer material.’
I woke at 4.17 a.m., according to Ashleigh’s bedside clock. My heart was racing. In my dream, I’d gone to have a pee and found Harrison slumped beside the toilet, vomit around his mouth. When I’d touched his face, it was cold.
Beside me, Ashleigh snuffled and turned over. I slid out of bed.
The toilet was unoccupied, Harrison’s door closed — of course. It didn’t mean he was alive. I pressed my ear against the wood, but couldn’t hear anything.
Well, if he is dead then he’s not going to get any deader, I thought, and suppressed an inappropriate snort of laughter. I flicked on the hall light, turned my attention to Ronnie’s door. The edge of the envelope was still poking out, untouched. She must have crashed at a friend’s. Either that, or she and her classmates were pulling an all-nighter.
I returned to bed and fell into a light, dream-disturbed sleep. This time, though, it was Ronnie I found in the bathroom, her pupils fixed and dilated, her face covered in blood, and Harrison was telling me it was none of my business, none at all.