Sugar, page 10
I stared at his hand. ‘Why are you giving me this?’
Joseph Barnett paused, then said, ‘You’re connected, somehow. To her.’
My cheeks went hot. I remembered Sylvia’s avatar appearing beneath my message. Those three dots, coming and then going. That was him.
‘Persephone.’
I looked at the tiny square of paper in Joseph Barnett’s hand. All the things I deserved. Was this one of them?
‘Take it.’
I did.
This time last year Berenice caught a mouse, and there was a full moon.
This time last year, Demi drove out of town to collect seedlings. This time last year, I was finishing a book report. This time last year, we were halfway through watching a nature series about insects. This time last year, we ate without the TV on in the background.
This time last year, Steven and Iris were both still living in the house with the red letterbox.
This time last year, Demi was still driving to work.
This time last year, I could still eat without doing maths first.
This time last year, everyone was still here.
9.7
Berenice and I walked home.
Except ‘walked’ isn’t exactly the right word. We went fast and heavy, through the bush. All the way I felt the folded piece of paper in my pocket like a burning stone. I wouldn’t use it. Or maybe I would. No. I definitely wouldn’t. Shouldn’t. Couldn’t.
My head was full. Packed, like sardines in a can. Like an electronic rock song. Like too many similes in one paragraph. But I wasn’t interested in decluttering. Fuck Marie Kondo. Let it fill. Let it overflow and spill down the sides. I kept everything in my head, and I kept it all open, like wounds. I poked into it all, and got blood on my fingers. I opened more. Demi and Iris. Steven. Joseph Barnett. Mr Hagan ordering me to check my blood sugar. Sylvia. Alexander. Fucking cunt. A staticky voice saying I guess I was hoping this would be it. A fast car on a dark road. All the questions Ms Hardstark had asked about Dad. And the ones she hadn’t.
Did he suffer?
Was it my fault?
What did I deserve?
And the answers.
Yes.
Yes.
And—
Diabetes.
Someone was standing in the middle of the track. I wasn’t looking, and we collided. I stepped back. The person stayed where she was, and swayed a little to regain her balance. Daria.
Berenice licked her hand, but Daria ignored her. She was focused on me. I knew what she was going to ask. I knew the voice she would use, and the way her mouth would turn up slightly at the edges. I knew the expectations she had of me. But I had a history of not living up to expectations.
She stepped forward, and took both my hands in hers. ‘You’re a good girl,’ Daria said. ‘Aren’t you?’
Something moved in the pit of my stomach, like a snake. ‘No,’ I said. My own words. ‘I’m not.’
Daria’s expression twisted into something that was part confusion, part fear. This had nothing to do with her. But at that moment she was the same as Joseph Barnett’s fly, and all I wanted to do was squash her into the ground.
I pulled my hands away, quickly. Daria wobbled. Her left foot kicked against a tree root.
She fell.
I didn’t help her up.
I ran the rest of the way home. Ran is exactly the right word. I ran so hard Berenice could hardly keep up and my breath caught in my chest like a thread on a nail. Trees blurred. My skin went red. Sweat.
When I got home I didn’t think. I didn’t stop. I went straight to my room and pulled out my phone. Then I took the paper from my pocket, Joseph Barnett’s note folded and folded and folded in on itself. I unfolded and unfolded until I could see his careful writing. His neat marks that were just lines and curves but that—together—meant so much more.
17
it’s complicated
The fires started at the end of December.
The largest was on the other side of the mountain, deep in the national park. It ran along the ridgeline, ignited by a storm without rain, dry lightning in the middle of the airless, sweltering night. Isolated strikes. Rising smoke. The fire moved in and out of containment lines, but it kept burning. The haze in the sky became normal. Fragile fingers of ash appeared on footpaths and roads, like grey caterpillars that fell apart as soon as you nudged them with your toe.
We kept our phones close. The emergency app was a little blue and red flame. The twenty-four-hour news channel was twenty-four-hours of the ‘Bushfire Crisis’. ‘One hundred and sixty-two fires are burning across the state,’ a reporter said. ‘Eighty-two are out of control.’ Pause. Her fingers flexed around the microphone. She went off script. ‘There is so much fire out there.’
And it was close. But we didn’t leave. We were waiting for the warnings to escalate, for the emergency app to tell us to ‘Evacuate Now’. I checked the fire updates as often as I checked my BGL.
12.7
Advice: Bushfire in your watch zone.
It was the summer holidays, but I was at school. Keleos’s orders. On the last day of term she had given me a list and a look that said Don’t fuck this up. At least she hadn’t asked me what I wanted.
On the first of December I flipped the calendar on the fridge. A labrador in a Santa hat. This time last year we ordered pizza to celebrate the start of summer. This month last year we sat outside on Christmas Day and ate potato salad and Demi and Dad drank too much white wine.
This year we hardly noticed Christmas. Demi made eggs for breakfast, and in the afternoon we flicked channels on the TV. Half the time we were watching fire updates, and half the time we were watching our phones.
On New Year’s Eve I went down to the river. I don’t know where Joseph Barnett got the whisky from. We drank straight from the bottle and didn’t talk. He was angry; I could tell from the way he swallowed, and glared out at the dark water. I couldn’t tell what he was angry about, but it seemed deep-seated and long-term. Like a chronic illness. We missed midnight. Neither of us was interested in the count down, and by the time it was the new year we were both drunk. I lay on my back and watched the stars spin. They turned red, like the distant dots of fire on the hills. Tiny pinpricks, burning against the sky. On my back, with the whisky in my veins, I felt safe, wrapped up against the world.
Define aware. Japanese. The bittersweetness of a brief and fading moment of transcendent beauty. Like the perfect words in the perfect order. Like eating cake. Like being drunk in the dark by the river before the hangover. I looked at Joseph Barnett, lying next to me, scowling at the sky. I wondered if the stars looked red to him, too.
We never got a new calendar after Dad died, but the old one had a bonus January at the end. The image is a sunrise, or maybe a sunset. It’s the last page with scribbled notes in its squares. After January, all appointments, reminders, birthdays, shopping lists just stop. It’s as if at the end of January last year, time hit pause. Since then, I’ve been counting carbs and calculating insulin. Since then, the house has been one person emptier. Since then, nothing else has changed.
Demi appointed herself supervisor of my holiday schooling. She loved Keleos’s list. Every morning she set up the kitchen with pens and paper and a laptop and said, ‘We’ll have to move, Persephone, if you don’t get your shit together. And we can’t move.’
No pressure.
Demi loaded up on coffee and watched me work. She was less and less at the nursery and more and more at the kitchen table. Sometimes I’d catch her staring in my direction. Not like she was looking at me; like she was looking for me. Like I wasn’t actually sitting there, surrounded by textbooks. Like I was somewhere else. Absent. Missing.
In January, I had all my diabetes appointments. The optometrist (to find out how diabetes was affecting my eyes), the podiatrist (to find out how diabetes was affecting my feet) and the diabetes nurse educator (to find out how diabetes was affecting me). The DNE asked me, again, if I’d thought about getting an insulin pump. I said I’d thought about it, and I didn’t want one. She said it would make my diabetes easier to manage. I didn’t reply. I thought, I’m not interested in making things easier.
Iris drove me from one medical building to the next. Demi came too, but she sat in the back and didn’t speak. I felt her eyes boring through my seat, through me, to get to the flat, hard highway that rolled under us. I felt her looking for the place where Dad had died. I felt her wishing I’d gone with him, that night. She knew he’d wanted me to. She knew I’d refused. She knew I was to blame.
Iris divided her time between the hospital and our house and the house with the peeling white paint. That way, she could pretend she hadn’t gone back. Demi and I didn’t say it, but we both knew it was only a matter of time. Iris knew it, too. Or, at least, her eyes did.
Eventually, Steven replied to my message.
Define ‘all right’.
Touché, Steven. I messaged back: What are you doing?
Steven: Master plan.
Me: Mental plan.
Steven sent a photo. The unmistakable and disgusting landscape of his tongue. The resolution was so good I could see the pus-white tastebuds.
Things the internet can do: make you want to vomit.
I tried to imagine Steven and his dad living together. It wasn’t hard; it had happened before, countless times. Kurt would cook slabs of meat and they would eat in front of the TV. Steven would do the dishes and keep his room tidy. Kurt would load up the ute with guns and drive Steven into the mountains to shoot deer. Kurt would show Steven how to hold the rifle. They’d come back and butcher the carcass and Kurt would light the barbecue. Sometimes Kurt would buy ice cream for dessert. They’d stay up late watching movies and playing video games. Kurt would tell jokes. Steven would laugh. And then, at some point, for some reason, Kurt would get angry. Steven would get hit. Or pushed. Or thrown against a wall. Kurt would apologise. Sometimes he would even cry. And then, the next day, he’d load up the ute and, together, they’d go back into the mountains. Rinse, repeat. Etc.
7.9
Advice: Bushfire in your watch zone.
It was forty degrees the day I saw Alexander in the supermarket.
I was in the confectionery aisle, staring at the different shapes of sugar and thinking about my BGL. I was trying to be good, trying to keep my numbers between four and eight. That was how I spent my days: doing homework, checking fire conditions, and managing my blood glucose. I looked at the shelves of jellybeans and snakes, marshmallows, chocolate frogs. I picked up a packet of musk sticks and ripped it open, pulled out a stick and chewed. Pink and sweet, part fairy floss, part cough medicine. I put the ripped packet at the very back of the shelf and turned in the direction of the biscuit aisle. And there he was, right up in my personal space, like a tick on a dog. Like he’d been following me.
‘Hey, Persephone.’
I backed up into a wall of licorice.
Alexander was barefoot, and his shorts and T-shirt looked wet, like he’d been in the river. He dripped onto the rubbery supermarket floor. ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ he said.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Why’d you call me a cunt?’
He shifted uncomfortably, and stared past me at a shelf of gummy bears. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said.
‘I’ve got time.’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t.’
I nodded. ‘Good chat.’ I grabbed a packet of caramels.
‘Wait.’
I waited. I thought, This better be good.
Alexander stood there with wet hair and open palms. ‘I’m sorry.’
Nope. Not good enough.
I walked away. I didn’t need an apology. I needed an explanation. I needed to know why—out of nowhere, without knowing me, without me knowing him—Alexander had decided to call me the worst word in the English language. It wasn’t an accident; it wasn’t like he’d hit me with a basketball or bumped me with his bike. Calling someone a cunt wasn’t an ‘oops, sorry’ situation. Calling someone a cunt was a conscious decision, a decision that could be named and admitted to. I needed him to name it. I needed him to tell me who he thought I was, and why he thought I deserved that word. I needed to know.
I’d eaten four caramels before I even got to the checkout.
Define sugar.
Noun. Sweet, soluble carbohydrates. As in, glucose. As in, lactose. As in, fructose, sucrose, galactose, dextrose.
As in:
granulated
powdered
raw
palm
date
icing
muscovado
confectioners’
cane
invert
castor
malt
coconut
corn
rice
barley
brown
white
treacle
caramel
molasses
agave
golden syrup
maple syrup
high fructose corn syrup
As in, groups of molecules from the tissues of most plants.
As in, pure chemicals.
I read every single message, right back to the very beginning.
Hellooooooo!! I’m here!!
She was seventeen, when the messages started.
Things the internet can do: keep everything about everyone, forever.
How’s your hangover?
I don’t even know what a soup and oyster cracker is!
Visiting my grandma.
I skimmed the replies, but I read her words like they had magic in them. The magic to explain why she died. The magic to make sense of the universe. The magic to save me.
Do you think plants feel anything?
Feet are definitely sexier than hands.
Is this even worth it?
Things I learned about Sylvia MacKenna from her
private messages (an incomplete list):
Her middle name was Elizabeth, and she hated it.
On her thirty-first birthday she got drunk on red wine and threw up in her handbag.
She thought her sister’s boyfriend had too much facial hair.
She loved her cat slightly more than she loved her brother.
Sometimes she worried she was drinking too much coffee.
Sometimes she worried she was eating too much sugar.
Sometimes she worried she wasn’t good enough.
I thought that all these private words would add up to something, that through them I would find out who she really was, and what she had done to deserve the heart condition that killed her. I searched for hints that she’d stolen, or cheated, or lied. I looked for evidence that she hadn’t been a good friend, or a good sister. Or a good daughter. But I couldn’t find anything.
Things the internet can’t do: tell you who someone really is.
You think you’re getting words, but really all the internet can give you are dressed-up digits, pretending to be something that has depth and meaning.
Define cyber-zombie. A staggering, moaning mess of ones and zeroes. A thing that looks alive, but really isn’t.
Most of Sylvia’s messages were to Erin Kearney. Red hair, cold stare. I’m so sorry.
Sylvia and Erin’s message history went back fifteen years.
What’s the name of that song I like? The one with the moustache?
We’re making tagine. I don’t know what it is, but we’re making it.
Did you keep that plant alive?
Coming over. Be there in ten.
I kept scrolling. I lay on the couch at night in the dark, with the TV on and Sylvia MacKenna’s past lighting up my face. The glow went into me like radiation: maybe a poison, maybe a cure.
18
i guess we’ll die
8.7
Advice: Bushfire in your watch zone.
In the late afternoons, when Demi released me from schoolwork, I walked with Berenice. I stayed on the bush track, in the shade, but still it was sweltering. I could tell Berenice was looking for Daria. She’d stop and sniff the wombat hole, and the big pine, and she cocked an ear every time a twig cracked. I tried not to think about Daria and the last time I had seen her—almost two months ago, when I told her I wasn’t good and left her fallen at the edge of the track. I tried not to think about the look on her face as I turned away—disoriented, confused. On the emotional colour wheel it was somewhere between fear and the worst kind of sadness.
One day, halfway to the river, Berenice almost killed a cat.
It was black and white, and wandering in the bush above the wombat hole. Above the place where Sylvia had been. Berenice saw it before I did, and lunged. The cat reared and hissed. Berenice barked like something from a horror film, and clawed at my legs trying to get off the lead. Search frenzied. There’s Berenice, right beside a feeding shoal of sharks. When the cat realised Berenice could bark but not bite, it walked calmly away from us down the track, its tail winding in the air like the bushfire smoke that curled into all our empty spaces. Berenice was unimpressed.
Most afternoons, I found Joseph Barnett in his spot by the river. I sat with him while he skipped stones—sometimes we didn’t talk, and sometimes we did.
‘I read all her messages,’ I admitted. ‘And I still don’t understand why she died.’
Joseph Barnett squinted at the water, and took aim. ‘She had a heart condition,’ he said.
‘I know. But why?’
Joseph Barnett’s stone hit the bottom before it could skip. The river was so low in places it hardly ran. Parts went stagnant. They bred mosquitoes.
I looked at the dry bush, the haze of smoke that had become normal. ‘You live on that hill, right?’ I asked.
Joseph Barnett nodded.
‘Where will you go? If the fire comes through here.’
He shook his head. ‘We’re staying,’ he said.
‘Seriously?’
Joseph Barnett shrugged. ‘Yeah.’
‘What if it’s too big?’
‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘I guess we’ll die.’
Later, as Joseph Barnett climbed the bank, I wondered if he was going home. And—if he was—what kind of conditions he was going home to.
