Page 56

It’s Friday, and I am having a very bad day. It was my deadline to email my story to PJ, so she could check it over and print it out and give it to everyone in class on Monday, to be taken away and read ahead of Thursday’s class, when it will be discussed and critiqued.

I emailed her my story, feeling sick but hopeful, whispering, ‘Go safe, little Word doc.’

She wrote back an hour later, and said, Brooke, you should take the weekend to think about whether this is the version of the story you want to submit. Apparently, it feels not quite right, not my voice, not the voice she read in the first piece of mine, and she’ll give me until Monday morning if I want to submit a reworked version.

I don’t even know what to say to that. I sat through my Principles of Management lecture in a daze, thinking of nothing but that email. My only distraction was when Jesse’s face slipped into my mind, and I pushed it out so violently that I almost physically jolted. Ruby, Justin and Sophie message me, asking if PJ has said anything when I sent her my work, and I am too ashamed to tell them the truth, so I just write, No response yet!

I am walking home from the train station, planning how I will be going straight from the front door to the bathroom for a very long hot shower and then I will take all my snacks into my room and lie in bed and google ‘how to write’. Then I’ll drink two coffees, no three, in a row and I’ll sit up till 4 am rewriting my story, just forcing myself to stare at the screen until I figure it out.

I open the front door and Harper is hovering in the hallway. She must have been watching from her bedroom window.

‘I have a surprise for you,’ she says. Her voice is heavy with a tone, but I’m not sure what kind of tone exactly.

‘Can we skip it? I’m not really in the mood for surprises. I’ve had a crappy day.’

‘Well, too late, because the surprise is here and there’s no escaping it,’ she says.

I follow her to the lounge room, and see Jesse first, talking to someone who has their back to me, but I know that hair anywhere, the long, luscious, ashy blonde ponytail.

Lauren is here.

She hears my footsteps, and turns around.

‘Surprise!’ she yells, leaping up and hugging me. She smells like home.

‘What are you doing here?’ I say. I hug her again, because that smell, the feel of her body against mine, the sudden hit of family is like a drug I thought I was over but now I’ve got a taste, I need it more than ever.

‘I thought I’d come and crash here for a few days.’

‘A few days!’ A few days could mean a week, it could mean longer. My heart is hammering. I needed notice, I needed to plan, I needed to clean, shop, clear my schedule, buy new clothes, and more towels, tell everyone, adjust my uni schedule, get ahead with my work. Doesn’t she know this about me after all these years? She does know, but she thinks it’s just my neurosis, just me being controlling, just me being anxious, resisting spontaneity and fun, rather than crucial to my actual emotional wellbeing.

But, she’s here. She’s here. I’m trying to keep my reaction under control.

‘What brought this visit on?’ I say. I am barely listening, scrolling ahead in my mind to what it means, to have Lauren stay, to have Lauren here in my world, my fragile and recently imploded little world.

‘I thought you might need cheering up. The cyst, the bad date, goddamn Dad, all that crap.’

‘Right,’ I say. A nice list of my humiliations. I didn’t even tell her the truth about the date, I just said it hadn’t gone well, we didn’t click, which is technically not a lie. ‘Does Mum know you’re here?’

‘Not yet. She would have called to warn you and then it would have turned into a whole thing. I wanted to keep it low key. And to give you a surprise!’

‘I am definitely surprised,’ I say. Lauren follows me down the hall to my room, where she lies on my bed and watches me fuss around.

‘Also, Mum and I are fighting,’ she says.

Of course they are.

‘What about?’

‘The usual, you know.’

That could be one of a hundred things, really. I don’t have time to dig into that because my mind is still racing.

‘I’m starving,’ Lauren says.

‘I’ll get you something to eat,’ I say, defaulting straight to mothering mode. ‘Where did you park your car? It’s a permit zone all round here.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ Lauren says, waving her hand.