It's a Bit More Complicated Than That, page 9
Descartes is napping on the concrete steps outside our front door, basking in the sunlight. He slips inside as I unlock the door.
‘Ditching school?’ Kate says.
I hold up my hands. ‘Don’t tell Mum.’
She grins. ‘Don’t tell her what?’
‘You’re the best.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ She flops onto the couch. ‘But I’m only keeping your secret if you watch Netflix with me.’
I roll my eyes and huff out a theatrical sigh. ‘Fine.’
I shake my head and plonk down on the couch next to her. She scrolls through options on the TV.
‘Bad day?’ she says.
‘Yeah. Kind of.’
‘Zelle?’
I glance at her from the corner of my eye. ‘Yeah.’
‘Want to talk about it?’
‘No.’
We’re almost halfway through the new season of our favourite trashy series when my phone pings. Mac’s sent a message to our group chat.
OK, we’ve been talking and you have a point. You can invite Zelle to the party. We can have a truce, be open minded. This DOES NOT mean we’re friends with her again tho.
Agreed, I write.
And I wonder if I’m doing the right thing.
ZELLE
‘What the hell did you do?’ I scream.
Mum is working on a new canvas. There’s paint smeared on her face. ‘Zelle!’ Her brush clatters to the ground. ‘Why aren’t you in school?’
I am a tornado. A fuming storm in the shape of a girl. Mum told me that when I was born, Berlin was having its worst winter in years. I was brought into the world during a blizzard so harsh she and Dad almost didn’t make it to the hospital because of the icy roads and city chaos. And I think part of that storm’s always inside of me. That the ice burrowed under my skin, and I’ll always be a flurry of snow and sleet and tempest.
‘You told the school! You told me you’d keep it private and you told the fucking school!’
I’m barely coherent but Mum knows what I mean. She stands up, and she looks mad, but part of her looks fearful too. Which I find satisfying.
‘Giselle,’ she says. ‘You need to go back to school. Right now. I’ll drive you.’
‘I don’t have a drinking problem,’ I yell.
Mum shakes her head. ‘Liefje,’ she says softly, which startles me, because it’s a Dutch term of endearment she hasn’t used since I was about twelve. It’s too gentle a word to describe me. ‘You’re not listening.’
‘Why do you care so much?’ I shriek. ‘Why can’t I get a break? It’s not as if this is easy for me, you know.’
‘Well, it’s not easy for me either, Zelle.’
I laugh a laugh so hollow it rattles in the empty cavern where my heart should be. ‘You don’t have to face the outside world,’ I spit. ‘You don’t have old friends to confront. You don’t have a past to face. You’ve got it the easiest it could be. You’re a hypocrite. You don’t even leave the fucking house!’
Mum goes quiet, which is a surprise. Usually that happens only when she’s really, really mad, which even for her is rare. The kind of mad where she’ll turn around and tell me, calmly, that she wishes I wasn’t her daughter or she wishes she could get rid of me. Last time she got that mad was the beginning of last year when Anahera and I got suspended for bringing vodka to school. Mum told me to get out of the house, which I did. I stayed the night at Anahera’s — sneaking in through her window so her parents wouldn’t know — until Mum called me the next day and said sorry and asked me to come home. That was back when Mum would actually tell me to get out, before I met Luka and the others and started drinking more. Now she barely lets me out of her sight.
So, anyway, I’m expecting Mum to do something like that: frog-march me into the car then dump me on the side of the road, maybe, or just tell me that she hates me. Instead, Mum’s acidic-blue eyes go glassy, and my heart seizes in my chest as a tear rolls down her cheek.
She reaches up quickly to wipe it away. Then another falls. Then another. And before my anger has barely morphed into panic, Mum’s sitting on the sofa, head in her hands, and she’s crying.
I’m completely spooked. I don’t know what to do. My mother always cries in secret. She cries behind closed doors. And she never, ever talks about it.
This is not how I thought things would go.
‘What?’ Sympathy isn’t my strong suit, evidently, but I guess that runs in the family. I’m trying my hardest to make my voice go soft, but the effort only makes me sound harsher than ever.
Mum sniffs, blinks rapidly. ‘The past is everywhere,’ she says. ‘All over this house. In every corner.’ She drags her fingers under her eyes. ‘He is everywhere.’
She’s talking about my dad, of course. Which I don’t respond to. Not because I’m not sure what to say. Because that’s something we don’t talk about either.
My Wellington friends know that my parents are divorced and that my dad moved back to Berlin. They don’t know that he lives there in a ritzy condo with his girlfriend who’s half his age. Well, as far as I know: I haven’t spoken to my dad in almost two years. Every few months he sends Mum his child support payments and then some. For my birthday and Christmas he puts the money straight into my bank account. He’s never called. Neither have I.
‘I want you to get better, Zelle,’ Mum sniffs. ‘Please try. Try to get better.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say softly. ‘I haven’t had a drink in three weeks, and I’m fine. I’m not dying of withdrawal.’
That’s what happens to true addicts when they quit too quickly, isn’t it? They die. And I’m most definitely not dead. And, even when I’m drinking, I’m still functioning. Like, I’m not wasting my days sleeping on the couch because I’m too wasted to do anything. When I’ve had a hard night, I just take a shot in the morning and get on with it. It’s like magic.
Why doesn’t anyone see that?
I’m fine.
I’m fine.
Mum’s decided not to talk anymore, not even to tell me to go back to school, so I head to my room and stay there, lying on my bed with my eyes open, waiting for the day to end.
It’s after four o’clock when my phone rings.
I sit up.
The only person who’s likely to call me is Luka. And Luka never calls me first.
Hope rises in my chest.
It fizzles into confusion when I see the name on the screen: Callum.
I’m almost too scared to answer.
‘Hello?’
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘It’s, um, it’s Cal.’
‘I know.’
Silence. Static.
‘Still there, Zelle?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I was just calling because … because, y’know, you weren’t at school today. And I was worried. So I’m just making sure you’re okay. If you’re okay.’
My heart tugs. I’m at once grateful and unworthy, pleased but befuddled. ‘Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine. I just … wasn’t feeling that well. Cold, maybe.’ I sniff for effect.
‘Oh. Oh, okay. That’s good. Well, good that you’re okay.’
I sniff again, but this time it isn’t forced. ‘Thanks.’
‘Also … there’s a party on this Friday? Joe Rooney’s?’
‘The woolshed party?’ I say, remembering the revered yearly tradition. Only seniors are invited, but we’d been looking forward to the day for years. I was always itching to go.
‘Yeah,’ Cal says. ‘So, anyway, that’s on, and I’ve been talking to the others and … do you want to come?’
A party.
A party means a chance to socialise.
A chance to make things less awkward with the others.
A chance to feel normal.
A party means alcohol.
‘Zelle?’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I’d love to come. That’d be great.’
‘Okay.’ He hesitates, and I kick myself for sounding so enthusiastic. ‘Just so we’re clear,’ he says, ‘this isn’t, like, a sign that we’re all best friends again and everything’s fine. There’s still a long way to go with that. But I hope this can be a start. An extending of the olive branch, if you will.’ He sucks in a breath. ‘God, that was cringe.’
I laugh. ‘Don’t worry,’ I say, giggling because I know that three years ago Cal would have said something that awful unironically. He’s always been full of antique idioms like don’t be daft and pot calling the kettle black and put that in your pipe and smoke it. It’s a relief to know that part of him’s still there.
‘I can pick you up on Friday night,’ Callum says. ‘We’ll drop the car at mine and walk the rest of the way to Joe’s. It’s only twenty minutes up the hill. Eight sound good?’
‘Eight is fine,’ I say.
The static stings with a growing awkwardness. ‘Great,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you then. Bye, Zelle.’
‘Bye, Cal.’
He hangs up first.
I flop back onto my pillow.
I throw my phone on the duvet.
And I smile, because it’s the first time I’ve felt this close to Callum in three years.
CALLUM
Zelle’s cold seems to have miraculously cleared up overnight, because she’s back at school the next day and looking bright as ever. She sits at our table during maths again, and everyone makes an attempt to be civil, though Fox is as stiff as a marionette and Mac looks as if being nice physically pains her. Finn doesn’t ignore Zelle, but he doesn’t make an active effort to talk to her either. Mostly because he’s always talking to me. That boy’s mouth is a motor that never stops.
She doesn’t join the four of us at lunchtime and keeps her distance for the rest of the week. I’m not sure where she goes, but there seems to be an unspoken agreement that none of us will seek her out.
On Friday afternoon I’m walking to last-period media studies when she comes down the corridor towards me. My chest flutters with the reflexive Zelle-induced anxiety, but she throws a shy smile my way, and I smile back without even forcing myself to.
And for the first time in three years, things feel somewhat normal between us.
ZELLE
Mum says there’s no way I’m going to Joe Rooney’s party.
‘It’s not a good idea, Zelle,’ she says, over and over again, until she sounds like her broken Joni Mitchell vinyl that always gets stuck on the chorus during ‘A Case of You’.
‘There won’t be alcohol,’ I say.
She raises a disbelieving eyebrow.
‘Please,’ I say. ‘How am I ever meant to do better if I’m not even allowed to have fun?’
‘There are other ways to socialise,’ she says, obviously forgetting that we live in the literal armpit of the earth and that this party is the only social event on the Stakesville calendar. ‘I’m not budging, Zella. No parties.’
I stomp to my room and text Cal.
Can u please pick me up from the end of the driveway?
The three typing dots dance across my screen.
sure … see you at 8 still?
I send a thumbs-up emoji.
And then I get ready for Joe Rooney’s party.
It’s different from how it usually is when I go out. I’ve no friends here to share the moment with. There’s no music pouring out of speakers, first drink in hand as we get dressed up, borrowing each other’s clothes and doing each other’s makeup. In the sullen quiet of the house I put on black vinyl pants and a white cropped shirt — chic but understated — and do my makeup in the full-length mirror I bought from Nicky’s shop last weekend, since I couldn’t bring mine from home. With my friends it usually takes us an hour or more to get ready; by myself, I’m done in twenty minutes. I even straighten my hair for something to do.
At 7.50 I open the latch on my bedroom window and let it swing out wide. I grab my jacket off the door hook and shrug it on. It’s Luka’s jacket — he lent it to me one night when we were drinking at the beach with the others. When I tried to give it back, he refused to take it.
‘You keep it,’ he told me. ‘It looks better on you.’
I pull one leg over the sill, then the other, and land on the grass with a soft thump. I wait to see if Mum’s heard me before I dare to move again. The night stays still and quiet, so with mouse footsteps I creep round the side of the house and up to the gates of The Sanctuary. Once I’m at the driveway, I run.
Callum’s car is waiting for me.
And the others are inside.
‘Hey,’ Mac says as I climb into the left-side backseat. She’s sitting shotgun. Her voice is completely unfriendly. ‘What’s up with the incognito pick-up? You sneaking out?’
Fox is sitting next to me, Finn on his right. I can feel both their eyes on me. My skin starts to prickle.
‘No,’ I say, clenching my jaw. ‘Our driveway is under works at the moment. Super-potholed. Uneven. Thought I’d save Cal the inconvenience.’
‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded,’ Mac says, turning her head to face him. He keeps his eyes fixed on the road. ‘Eh, Cal?’
‘No big deal.’ He shrugs. I can tell he’s uncomfortable.
‘What are you drinking, Zelle?’ Mac says pointedly, taking in the fact I’ve come empty-handed.
I want to yell at her to stop being such a bitch, but Cal invited me to the party to try to make peace and the others agreed, so I should be grateful I’m getting the chance to talk to Mac at all. I plaster on my brightest, fakest smile, even though it rattles my teeth.
‘I have work tomorrow,’ I say, which at least is the truth. ‘So I thought I’d better not have anything. Don’t want to be hungover at work.’
‘Didn’t think that would stop you,’ she says. ‘You’ve never really been a consequences person, have you?’
‘Mac,’ Fox warns. ‘Chill out. This is meant to be a fun night. Don’t make this hard.’
Mac looks like she wants to throttle him, but then she huffs out a sigh and flops back into her seat. She’s silent as we pull up outside Callum’s house.
I try to send Fox a silent thanks, but he won’t look at me.
We pile out of the car like kids on a family road-trip and begin the walk up to Joe’s. Mac and Cal are each holding a bottle of those cheap one-litre ciders that taste like sour piss, while Fox — a true Otagonite — carries a crate of beer, and Finn brandishes a bottle of cleanskin wine that definitely came from the bottom shelf of the supermarket. Everyone’s made an effort for tonight, with slicked-back hair and starchy shirts, clothes too good to wear to school. It’s a scene I know all too well, but the air doesn’t fizz like it’s meant to. It feels like we’re on a funeral march. Not on our way to a party everyone’s been looking forward to the entire year.
Mac and Fox lead the pack, talking quietly. Cal and Finn are behind them, also chattering, by which I mean Finn blabbers excitedly and laughs and throws his hands around, while Cal mumbles replies and progressively shrinks to the size of a flea.
He’s definitely got a crush.
If things were the way they were before, I’d tease him about it. Be his wingman. Force him to get his act together and make a move, because I know he will never be able to do it himself. As we near the lip of the hill to Joe’s farm, Cal and Finn stop and wait for me.
‘All right?’ Cal says.
‘All good,’ I lie.
‘They’re trying,’ he says, though I’m finding that increasingly hard to believe. It feels like I’m watching the others’ lives play out as a movie and I’m stuck on the wrong side of the cinema screen.
The party is loud and thrumming and big. The woolshed is decked out with fairy lights and a stereo with a thumping bass I can feel inside my skull. Literally everyone from our year group is here, plus some friends of Joe’s older brothers and a couple of Year Twelves who must have enough connections to be allowed in. It’s so much like the parties from home that for a moment I feel like I’m right there back in Wellington. Apart from the hay bales and silos everywhere, and the southern-tinged accents, and the smell of sheep shit.
And there’s a lot of alcohol.
Everyone’s holding a bottle of wine or beer or cider or a can of RTD. There’s a table set up with a stack of red plastic cups and a jug of what looks like sangria that appears to be for everyone.
My hands clench into fists at my side.
Here’s the thing: parties just aren’t the same when you’re sober. There’s no dancing like you don’t care who’s watching, because you don’t, or telling your life story to a stranger or kissing a stranger or lying back on the grass and watching the stars spin.
Life without alcohol is boring.
The others have already joined a group who’ve made themselves at home in a corner. They’re sprawled over the hay bales, laughing and talking and drinking.
I take a deep breath, then wander over.
‘Hey,’ I say, sounding about as relaxed as a Seventh Day Adventist at a warehouse rave. ‘What have I missed?’
‘Zelle Bachmann!’ Joe Rooney’s plastered already. ‘Where have you been the past three years?’
‘Oh, you know,’ I say, which is thankfully enough of an answer, because Joe’s already forgotten he’s even asked me a question. He looks at my empty hands with eyes wide. ‘Why aren’t you drinking anything?’
‘She’s working tomorrow,’ Mac says. ‘Being very responsible.’
I want to slap the smirk off her face.
‘What about a sangria? I made it myself. It’s good shit, let me tell you.’
Finn points at Callum. ‘Is that the sangria that—’
‘We’re not talking about that,’ he says, and everyone laughs, and I wait for someone to let me in on the joke, but they don’t, and I feel like a fool sitting here when it’s obvious I don’t belong and no one wants me to belong.
‘C’mon, Zelle,’ Joe says. ‘At least have one.’
Mac’s judgement burns holes into my back.
