‘You just don’t get it, Jarrah!’
I felt stupid. She was right. I didn’t get it. She couldn’t be crying for Toby. Had she been crying so hard because she was sorry for me?
The whole thing was getting weird. Expected all along I was going to be dropped. But she hadn’t dropped me. She’d started acting like she was my girlfriend.
Laura had been waiting for me before school and she suggested we sneak off to the forest. When we sat down on the damp grass by the creek she started crying and I had no idea what she needed. Put my arm around her shoulder, but she held herself stiff underneath it. Wanted to take it away again, but I reckoned that’d make things worse, so I left it there and pretended it wasn’t part of me. Did she want me to kiss her? Didn’t feel like it but what did I know? Maybe she had her period or something. Didn’t know much about that either, but knew it could make girls emotional.
‘You only met Toby once.’
It was the wrong thing to say. She pulled away from me and I had to take my arm back or leave it hanging in the air.
I tried to backpedal. ‘I mean, it’s nice of you—’
‘You don’t know anything about nice!’ she snapped.
‘That’s right, I’m just an idiot.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh fuck you.’
It shocked me. Not the word, but coming from her. She wasn’t a swearer. The whole thing was turning to crap. All I’d done was ask her why she was crying and now we were stuck in some argument I didn’t understand.
Did she like me? Today, no. Obviously. But she didn’t just get up and walk away. She said fuck you, not fuck off. She wanted something from me, but I didn’t know what it was. My guts were churning. Is that what love was meant to feel like? At least it meant I didn’t think about Toby so much.
‘I had an abortion. All right?’
That jolted me back. Didn’t dare move.
‘No one knows. I don’t have any ashes or any grave; I can’t even cry about it. You’re lucky, Jazz. At least you can be sad.’
Lucky wasn’t how I’d thought of myself lately, but tears were rolling down her face. Somehow knew it was the right moment to hold out my arm and she came close and leaned against me.
‘When?’ Safest thing I could think to ask.
‘Start of the year. Lucky it was after my birthday, so didn’t have to tell my parents. They thought I was staying over with a friend. I went to a clinic on the Gold Coast and stayed in a hotel after.’
A month ago I couldn’t have imagined that. But it was something like what happened to me. You’re suddenly not a kid any more. Your parents can’t help you and you have to grow up fast. Doesn’t mean you know much, but you know you’ve got to find a way through. Do things like tell your aunt on the phone that your brother has drowned, or work out how you can have an abortion without anyone finding out.
It all started to make sense. She didn’t just pick me up to be the centre of attention. I’d got it wrong. She picked me up because maybe I’d understand her.
‘What about the guy?’ I asked.
‘He doesn’t know. We’d already broken up. He was a dick.’
She started crying again, softly. She was warm against me, and I had a feeling I hadn’t had since … well, it was a feeling I got sometimes with Toby. Like a nearly overwhelming kind of love. I guess that was it. I squeezed her gently. I could feel she needed a big howling cry, but I didn’t know if I could handle it. Might just set me off too. How could two people be so sad?
She lifted her face up to mine and I kissed her. Knew that was what she wanted, even covered with snot and tears, her mascara running. We kissed softly. When I drew back, a tear hung in her eyelashes. Wiped it off with my finger. I felt like I’d grown up about ten years.
‘Do you wish you hadn’t done it?’
‘Wish I didn’t have to do it. I hated it. When I woke up, I was already crying. Like, even through the anaesthetic, I knew what I’d done. I knew I’d killed it. I never want to do that again.’
She turned to me. ‘Thing is, Jazz, I like sex. I really like it.’
I was a bit shocked. Not that she liked sex, but that she said it, just like that. She saw something in my face.
‘Oh, I get it.’ Her voice was bitter. ‘Any girl who likes sex is a slut, right?’
‘No!’ I protested.
‘I thought you were different. You’ve been through something. You’re not a kid. And neither am I. Not like everyone else at school. They’ve got no idea.’
I’d never thought about Laura being an outsider before.
‘I killed someone,’ she said softly. ‘Not that it was someone yet, but it would have been.’
She started to cry again. ‘And you hear all these stories of women who have abortions when they’re young and when they want to have babies later they can’t get pregnant. Like they’re getting payback.’
I put both arms around her and rocked her, and for once, I got it right. I knew what to do. She softened into me, like all the muscles of her body had kind of melted. Holding her like that, I knew the two of us could make everything all right. We could make a baby that would stop us being these broken people and let us know the world could be OK. We were teenagers but we weren’t kids. We’d been through more than lots of adults. We could fix things.
Laura felt it too. She shifted her weight around and eased back, pulling me with her, so we were lying on the ground, and I was half on top of her. She put her hand on the back of my head, pulled me in.
I knew what she wanted. Her whole body was telling me, her arms, her legs, her mouth, her skin, all drawing me closer. She put my hand on her breast and pressed my fingers so I was squeezing and made a sound like a sob, but I knew it was a wanting sound. I could tell it wasn’t just an idea she had, liking sex. It was strong in her.
She was breathing hard. So was I. She pulled my hand down and slid it into her underpants. I had the brief feeling of her crisp hair. I thought I should stop there – wasn’t there something about foreplay and girls needing a lot more time than boys to be ready for sex? It was all mysterious down there, I could feel heat and slipperiness, she was making that sound again. I hesitated and she took my hand, tilted her hips and pushed my first two fingers all the way inside her.
I’d never imagined I could make a girl feel the way Laura was feeling, clutching my arms, her body moving against mine, making that sound. It was incredible. I kissed her again, wetly and deeply, and I realised how fast this could happen, how it could go from sitting next to each other one moment to actually having sex, just like that. We were going to have sex. We were going to make a baby. We were going to make the world all right.
She reached down and put her hand on my penis, through my pants. That was a kid’s word for it, but hell, I’d been a kid until a month ago. She squeezed and I felt a rush of feeling so strong that I gasped.
Then suddenly, nothing. I’d gone limp in her hand. Everything had disappeared.
She opened her eyes. ‘Jarrah?’
It was all wrong. It wasn’t going to bring Toby back. It wasn’t going to bring her baby back. It wasn’t even my brain thinking this. My body just switched off. Couldn’t do it.
‘What?’
I drew my fingers out of her. She gasped, like it hurt. I pulled her skirt down. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You fucking bastard.’ She scrambled to her feet.
‘Laura—’
‘No, fuck you, Jarrah Brennan! Fuck you and your dead brother and go to hell!’
It was like being hit in the face. She turned, scooped up her bag and was gone before I could move to stop her, crashing through the bush, setting off all the birds, disappearing. I knew she wasn’t coming back.
I wanted to cry. I rolled over so my face was against the leaves and I said Toby’s name, just once, clawing at the dirt so it jammed under my nails, hoping it would set me off. But my eyes stayed dry. What was wrong with me?
Time after Toby: twenty-one days.