What Does Blue Feel Like? (13 page)

Instead, she says,

‘You drink Coke, right?'

‘I was in here sipping on a bottle last week,' I say.

‘Do you think it's natural to put fizzy black liquid into your body? Not a chance. But society tells you that you should, that you want to, that it tastes great. Watching a toddler having their first sip of Coke is like watching a teenager try their first cigarette. You tell yourself you like anything enough times, and you will.'

I'm in Geography one day, not really listening,

when I realise there's a video playing

(guess our teacher didn't want to do anything today).

I've missed the whole introduction

but begin to watch with horrified fascination.

It's gross,

but I can't turn my head away.

It's about factory farming and the abattoirs.

One of the girls leaves the classroom to vomit

and even the boys are looking green

as the cows scream when they get poked with prods,

and chickens are held in stacked wire cages

as small as shoeboxes

with their beaks broken off so they won't peck each other,

covered in shit from the hundreds of chickens above them.

Jim tells me to desensitise myself

but I can't.

I immediately decide I'm now a vegetarian.

Maybe ignorance was bliss,

but I can't ignore what I know now,

thanks to

this wake-up call.

Tim has a girlfriend, Shelley,

who seems nice enough,

though I can't imagine what she sees

in my smelly little brother.

No way I'd be cuddling up to that walking BO machine.

Tim's chuffed.

He even puts on deodorant.

Now there's a bonus.

One day

I don't want to get out of bed.

Nothing's happened to make me feel sad

but I just don't.

I lie in bed,

huddled under the covers.

Sniffing into my pillow.

Jim comes over,

tells me that lying in bed won't help,

jumps on me,

bounces,

telling me to get up.

I give him a shove,

hard,

and tell him to go away.

If he doesn't know by now

that what I need from him

is a hug

then I'm not going to tell him.

Bugger that.

I stick my head under the pillow

and don't come out,

even when I hear my door slam

and his footsteps pound down the stairs.

I think about Lee

as I shave my legs (I got my razor privileges back).

Filled with

bleakness,

I stare

as I drag the razor across my forearm.

Watching,

fascinated,

as a line of blood forms right near my wrist.

I didn't expect it to sting quite so much.

I don't feel any happier,

but maybe a little

lighter,

like there's less pressure.

Like a balloon that's been blown up real big,

and someone's let out a little air.

 

I wear a silver arm cuff to school the next day,

down on my wrist instead of pushed above my elbow.

Bronwyn comments on how funky it looks,

but Lee raises her eyebrows.

A few teachers try to take it off me,

but I glare at them from behind black,

thickly lined eyes.

I tell them it's emotionally significant to me —

so there —

and they don't push it.

Around me,

some teachers

are wary as rabbits.

I stay at Lee's that night.

My parents think that we're working on an assignment.

We are,

kind of,

but we're practising drinking straight vodka

without coughing and making faces.

Lee drunkenly tells me

that she didn't want Bronwyn to come,

because we both know how she drinks,

and Lee didn't want to have to deal with vomit,

not tonight.

We're sitting side by side against the bed

when she slides the cuff up my arm.

I'm half expecting to be told off,

but she just hugs me tight.

 

In the morning I borrow one of her uniforms,

some make-up,

and some bangles.

 

As we leave her house,

I watch her mother as she says goodbye to Lee.

I see in her eyes

what I see in my mother's.

 

We share a smoke on the way to school.

She says it'll help the hangover.

I don't cough as much this time,

but it still tastes like shit,

and it's not helping the headache any.

Jim sniffs my hair suspiciously and whispers,

‘Have you been smoking?'

‘What do you care,' I ask,

feeling like a bitch but unable to stop.

He doesn't say anything else

but,

at lunchtime,

he holds me tight

and says,

‘It's no use trying to piss me off, Char.

I'm not leaving you. So stop trying to push me away

and tell me what's going on.'

frowns,

sniffles again,

and starts crying.

‘I don't know, Jim, I don't know what's wrong with me

and I don't know why I act the way I do and I feel so bad

for being a bitch to you and I don't know, I just, I don't

know what's wrong.'

He smoothes her hair,

and rubs her back,

as she chokes on her sobs.

Bronwyn is watching from the sidelines,

jealous,

of how tenderly Jim is holding Char.

She thinks,

I want,

more than anything,

for someone to touch me like that.

It must be so nice

to be held when you cry.

what I'm not telling her.

What it is inside that's eating me up and churning my guts.

‘I don't know what you mean,' I tell her,

wide-eyed and innocent.

‘Bullshit, Char, absolute bullshit,' she says,

and I'm still wondering if I did actually hear her swear,

when she does it again.

 

Like vomit,

involuntary and convulsive,

the shame purges out.

 

‘I had an abortion.'

 

And there it is,

spewed out into the world,

like so much black bile.

 

Why?

Why, Char?

Paul, will you just look at that?

Char, what on earth possessed you

to get a stud put through your chin?

Do you know how unsightly that looks?

What am I going to do with you

(you bad child)?

 

Dad

sits,

looks me in the eye,

and says,

so quietly that I have to strain to hear him,

‘Tell me. Please.'

my life right now is like this piercing,

a bit yucky,

tender.

If it's gonna heal

I have to want it to heal.

And I have to do something about it.

I have to concentrate on taking care of myself.

I have to cherish myself.

 

My parents look proud of me

after that little spiel.

 

They take the car off me for a month anyway.

Jim calls me a little rebel,

looking befuddled.

He doesn't get the analogy either.

In his opinion,

labret piercings look kinda funny.

 

are getting worse

but she refuses to go to the doctor.

I'm the only one who knows

but what I don't know

is what to do.

He looks at me coldly

and turns away.

I run after him,

fuelled by vodka

‘I never meant to hurt you, Guy.'

‘Well you did,' he says. ‘Whether you meant to or not,

you did, okay?'

I can't lie,

he's really hot.

And I want to feel his kisses again,

so different from Jim's.

But I turn around

and walk in the opposite direction.

Ol' Yapper is talking to us

about human nature.

One of the girls in my class saw a segment on the news

where these kids bashed an old guy

because they were bored.

And now she thinks that there really are

evil people in the world.

 

Yapper says,

‘I like to think that all people are inherently good. But

people can make bad choices.

Just because a good person makes a bad choice,

does that make them a bad person?'

 

He makes a good point,

but I still feel like a bad person for having an abortion.

The voice in my head whispers,

‘You're going to hell anyway, kid,

so why not enjoy the party on the way down?'

 

I have a dream one night,

about Lee.

We're at a party

and she comes out of the bathroom,

gashes in her wrists, gaping open.

She turns white

as the blood drains out of her

onto the floor.

I wake up shivering.

The sheet tangled around my legs.

Jim doesn't want to party this weekend.

He's got assignments to write,

study to do.

Final exams start next week.

I lie on his bedroom floor while he writes assignments,

drawing doodles on the page where my Maths homework

should be,

drinking Coke and eating chips.

Bored out of my fucking brain.

 

He comes over to kiss me,

and

suddenly

I tell him,

‘I love you.'

He

pulls away,

his face unreadable.

My heart stops,

hoping this won't mean the end because

he doesn't feel the same.

Even if he doesn't love me back,

I don't want us to break up.

Luckily for me,

he does.

And he tells me so.

 

I'm not so bored any more.

 

I take a detour on the way home,

and knock on Lee's door.

‘Lee isn't home, dear,' her mum tells me tiredly.

I hear myself saying, ‘I know.

I actually came to talk to you.

It's about Lee.'

eyes bruised with tears.

It's obvious she's been crying all night.

‘You bitch.

You bitch.'

It's a litany that pours,

unstoppered,

from her lips.

And I let it.

Eventually,

she can't talk for the tears,

and I start.

‘You need help, Lee.

I don't want to find out that you've died because I didn't

say anything and you've bled to death.

You can't do that sort of shit and not realise that you're

asking for help.'

‘I am not
asking
for help, Char, why did you have to say

anything? Why? Why did you do it?'

I feel like a parent,

as I say,

‘You don't know it,

but you need this help.'

 

She won't talk to me for a week.

But I don't care.

I'm melodramatic.

Maybe I'm over the top.

Maybe I am a drama queen.

Maybe.

Maybe I just am.

Maybe.

 

The formal is coming up.

Bronwyn and Char go dress shopping.

Bronwyn tries on a silky blue number.

Her ribs peek-a-boo through the material.

She runs her fingers over her rib cage,

secretly smiling and proud

as the salesgirl adjusts a tiara on her head

and watches her preening.

Char goes through racks of sleek see-through dresses,

wisps of fabric hanging off coathangers.

She's getting exasperated, frustrated,

when her fingers,

trailing along the rails

land on

a dress.

It's black,

and it has lace on it,

but it's more vintage than Too Much Exposure.

She tries it on,

anxiously,

and is delighted with what she sees.