Dear Rudy,
Sorry that last letter was so sad. I was letting myself feel it. Everyone keeps saying I’ve got to feel it, as if that’s something I have any say in. I wonder if you ever got told to ‘feel it’. Your emotions have always been more obvious than mine. I have to perform mine in a way that isn’t real to me in order for people to believe them.
I remember you crying when Ollie was born. Like, really bawling. Do you remember that? At the hospital, Mum was pale and Dad was beaming and you were crying your thirteen-year-old eyes out. I could hardly take my eyes off you to look at our new brother. I couldn’t fathom how something so exciting could make you cry so hard. I couldn’t figure any of it out. Mum said you were sensitive, in a way that felt like a compliment to you and a disparagement of my lack of outward emotions. I was supposed to be the sensitive one, the one who felt things deeply, and there you were, being that one, with your big blobby tears of joy. I don’t know why I’m writing about that. I guess when I think of sadness, of really feeling it and of what it looks like to be sad, I think of you in that hospital, crying about something that was so far from sad—it’s weird I even think of this as my example in the first place.
I’m still tired from the dinner, so I’m glad I had my easiest timetable day today. PE for the first half of the day and religion and assembly in the second. Dee and I usually manage to get out of PE by mentioning our periods to Mr Simpson. Girl problems are on his list of unmentionables, along with male feelings, the time we saw him with a lady who wasn’t Mrs Simpson in the main street of Cleveland, and State of Origin whenever the Blues lose. If you mention any of those things he goes bright red, starts to sweat and stumbles over his words while backing away. I would almost think he has ASD too, except he only acts like that when you mention one of those four things. Other times he knows how to organise his words and make small talk. Mr Simpson lets us sit on the hill beside the oval and keep score of whatever game the class is playing. It’s an arrangement that suits everyone. I really don’t understand the point of group exercise. There are so many things I would prefer to be learning, including:
Dee asked about what I had planned for tonight, and after I spent a really long time telling her all about the exams I planned to study for and the ways I would do it, I noticed her eyes were kind of glazed over. I realised she wanted to hear the question back. That’s a thing people do, you know—ask a question so they can be asked it back and tell you the thing they want to say. Anyway, Dee was very excited.
‘I think I’m going to go to the point with Jessica Rabbit. She wants to meet that Matt guy from the party the other night and he goes down there on Fridays.’
I didn’t tell her it sounded boring, even though it did. I asked if she was ‘third-wheeling’ because I’ve heard Jessica Rabbit talk about third-wheeling like it’s the worst thing you can do.
‘Well, it’s not a date. I don’t think he even knows she’s coming. She just wants to run into him accidentally, you know.’
It sounded way worse than third-wheeling, and definitely not like an accident. I guess girls look more appealing if it seems like they’re not trying. She told me I should come, to meet someone and ‘get over’ Mitch.
I told her I didn’t want to. Dee doesn’t like Mitch very much. I think it’s because of how he treated me at formal and when we first got together. Did I ever tell you about that? Probably not; it’s not something I talked about with many people. I met him at a party and he had a girlfriend, but he told me they had broken up. Turns out he was lying and he dated us both for a while. Eventually she found out. And then he only had one girlfriend. Me. I was the winner. Or the loser, depending on how you look at it. You would say loser. I used to feel like the winner, like somehow I had something she didn’t, but now I realise she had something I didn’t. Self-esteem.
The bell rang and we were gone from the hill before Mr Simpson had a chance to ask us to help pack up. Dee was the first to the quadrangle while I lined up for our salad sandwiches and apple-and-cinnamon muffins. A group of year eights, who looked like they were five years old, started a water fight at the bubblers that I knew would get them a detention.
I told them to cut it out and they asked me for my change. I had forty-five cents in my hand, not enough to buy more than a Zooper Dooper or a tomato sauce from tuckshop, so I reached out as if I was going to hand it over, and threw it on the ground instead. It’s a trick I’d seen Jessica Rabbit do loads of times. The kids scrambled on their hands and knees around the queue and I brought our food back to Dee. She was clutching her stomach with laughter as I handed her the sandwich. My face burned. Freckle Ben said how awesome it was that I ‘made them crawl’ and I wanted to crawl into a hole myself. They all threw their coins from the quadrangle to the line to keep the kids scrambling around on the floor.
It was awful. Freckle Ben said it was better than that time someone had glued $2 coins to the ground, but I suspect that’s because at the time we were the year eights down on our hands and knees trying to prise the glued coins off the ground. I still remember the horror of hearing a group of year twelves in the quadrangle laughing at me when I fell for the prank.
I guess I’m telling you because I wasn’t kind to the year-eight kids, and I know you would have been. I don’t always like the person I am when I’m around this group at school. Even Dee. But I’m just as bad for trying so hard to fit in. I’m working on being better, Rudy. September is just a hard month. I’ll be better in October.
Love, Erin