Page 7 of Unnecessary Drama

I couldn’t resist looking back though. Just once, just quickly, just in case he was really upset. Our eyes met. He’d picked up the map from the ground and held the torn, scrunched pieces in his hands.

‘I don’t care about this. It was a shit story anyway,’ he yelled at me.

That was it. I turned and walked away.

The next year, at the year-nine social, I told Georgia Crowley not to kiss him because he was a bad kisser, which was the cruelest thing I could think to do, and she reported back to him that I said that (but she did not heed my advice because, by then, he was the boy everyone wanted to kiss). After that, it became a thing, a known, established thing, that we didn’t like each other. Keep them separated, I overheard a teacher say once, Brooke and Jesse don’t work well together.

That night at Gretel’s party didn’t ruin my life in any measurable sense. It didn’t leave me friendless and alone. I went on to have a boyfriend and a reasonable approximation of a social life. But it was one of those moments that lingered. It lodged inside me like a shard of glass, and if I moved the wrong way, I would feel it, a sharp unexpected jab.

Do I like Brooke? No. No. Fuck, no.

When I finished school, I thought, thank god I’ll never have to see Jesse again.

6

I’m early for my Creative Writing: Ideas and Practice class, which means I am sitting awkwardly alone in the room with our teacher, PJ Mayfield.

This is my heart class, the one I picked with hands shaking with guilt and trepidation, because I was doing it for pure enjoyment and that’s not what studying is supposed to be about. Enjoyment? Enjoyment is frivolous, and I am here to learn, to achieve, to figure out a serious career path. But every time I’ve stepped into the room for our creative writing class, I’ve had to bite back a smile of pure happiness at the prospect of being here, on campus, in a room with high ceilings, big windows and a general aura of importance and significance, with people who just want to talk about books and writing.

PJ Mayfield is an author. She wrote a very bleak, critically acclaimed book two years ago. I hadn’t heard of it, but I bought it when I saw she was in charge of the course. It’s very good, in that literary way where most of the characters are sad and depressed and say cruel things that are funny but not in a way I am comfortable with laughing at because I’m worried I don’t actually get it. There is a horrible scene in the middle of the novel involving the grisly death of a dog left alone in a hot car that made me put the book down for days and debate whether to keep reading or even take the class. Almost every review alludes to this scene, often with trigger warnings. ‘IF YOU LOVE DOGS, OR ANY ANIMAL, OR EVEN JUST SORT OF LIKE THEM, STAY AWAY FROM THIS BOOK!!!!!!’ wrote one Goodreads reviewer. I have to agree with them, and I almost liked their review, but then I’m worried PJ might be neurotic enough to monitor this kind of thing, and trace that like back to me.

PJ doesn’t seem bothered that I’m here early today. She’s reclining in her chair, eyes closed, her Blundstone-clad feet on the desk, balancing a book face-down and open on her chest. I would assume she was asleep except she stretches her neck from side to side occasionally. She is just firmly determined not to open even the slightest crack of opportunity for enthusiastic early arrivers to engage with her.

I have leaned forward as subtly as I can to try to see the title of her book, but I can’t. It’s slim, with a minimalist cover. It looks European. Maybe something obscure translated from German. Or maybe she’s reading it in German. She seems like someone who can read fluently in German. Or, oh god, Russian. Latin? I’m too scared to take my book out of my bag, in case she judges me for reading a bestseller written in English, even though I’m at a really good part and dying to finish the chapter.

I have a latte on my desk, and I sip it very slowly, playing with my phone, trying to pretend I am possibly taking notes for a novel I am going to write, instead of looking through my photo reel and wondering if it’s true that your nose keeps growing for your entire life and if I can see that growth in photos of me over the last five years. (I think I can.)

I’ve been living in Melbourne for almost a month now. It’s going well, really well. Sort of. On the good side of things, I have successfully managed to avoid Jesse most days (I have memorised his schedule to make sure mine is slightly different and we’re never in the kitchen together, or on the same tram in the mornings), I enjoy most of my uni classes, and I have forged the tentative beginnings of a friendship with Harper and her girlfriend, Penny. I think. It’s hard to tell. Harper was very enthusiastic about the chocolate-chip cookies I made yesterday, but she might just love chocolate-chip cookies.

On the negative side, I can only relax enough to poop when I think the others are asleep so I’ve had to adjust my entire digestive schedule. I wake up every night, heart pounding, convinced the mouse is back. I had a trial at a local cafe for a casual waitress position and they never called back despite the fact I smiled the whole time, even when a man made me repeat his order back to him twice because he didn’t believe I could remember that he wanted his latte very hot. I bought two tickets to the movies last weekend because I was going to see if Harper wanted to come with me, but then I chickened out of asking her. It felt too presumptuous and cringeworthy, to have already bought the tickets, and the opportunity to just casually ask her never naturally arose, so I ended up going on my own, and I sat in a near-empty cinema and felt like the depressed but beautiful main character of an indie film, which made me feel very adult and mysterious (maybe a cute quirky guy was watching me from nearby, appreciating my haunting allure), but also a little sad.

The things I have learned living with Harper and Jesse are that they’re not as shy about the toilet as me, they don’t mind their clothes sitting wet in the washing machine for days, they will squish things down and jenga a piece of rubbish on top of a teetering bin rather than take the garbage out, they haven’t appeared to notice I do all the vacuuming, and they can’t cook. Harper goes out a lot at night to see Penny, but when she’s home, she eats takeaway or plain pasta with cheese. Jesse seems to eat cereal for dinner as his main option, sometimes two-minute noodles, sometimes a banana and a giant tub of yoghurt. Occasionally he’ll cook a steak and eat just that, a hunk of meat alone on a plate, sitting in its juices.

When I cook, I put any leftovers in the fridge with a note encouraging Harper and Jesse to help themselves, listing the ingredients (in case of allergies) and the date it is good until, adding a smiley face and an exclamation mark to make it all seem very friendly and relaxed and low drama. I even bought purple Post-it notes because they seem less uptight than the standard yellow ones.

I have the purple Post-it notes with me now in class, because they also seemed the most appropriate for creativity, but now I’m suddenly worried PJ will judge those too. She seems like a strictly no-nonsense yellow-Post-its-only person. I subtly slide them off my desk and push them back into my bag. Finally, other students start arriving, including Sophie, Justin and Ruby, the three students who I sit with every class and who are the closest I have come to making friends with at uni so far. I always have a moment of fear when they arrive, that they won’t sit with me today, and I curse myself simultaneously for putting myself in this position by arriving early and for being so pathetically insecure to even worry about it, but they smile and head in my direction, and I almost slump in relief.

PJ always starts the class with a kind of rambling lecture on her thoughts on writing and publishing books. Today she tells us: it’s hard; it takes years and years to write anything halfdecent, if you think you’ve written something great you’ll come back to it three months later and realise it’s not; there’s absolutely no money to be made, especially in Australia; it’s lonely; it’s a form of torture, really; most people won’t get published, if you do get published you’ll be utterly disappointed at what an anticlimax it is; writing talent is rare but even rarer is a talented writer who can take on feedback and actually do the work to make their writing better. But, despite all this, if we want to write, if it calls to us in the dark of night, if it’s in our very bones, then we should face down the inevitable heartbreak and do it anyway, because nothing else will ever feel as nourishing to our souls. Making art, she says, requires courage and fortitude. Oh, and exercise helps. Helps what? someone asks. Helps everything, she says gravely.

I dutifully write it all down in my new notebook: hard, lonely, no money, great suffering but possible happiness. Start running?

Sophie has been making a pained face at Justin throughout this lecture. Justin is grinning back at her. Ruby is sipping on a giant iced coffee, using one finger to slowly scroll through a clothing website on her laptop. Sophie, Ruby and Justin all think PJ is too cynical and bitter. They roll their eyes and make fun of her in the group chat we set up, while also remaining completely terrified of her in person. Obviously, we are all desperate for her approval. But I like her. I like the way she combines no-bullshit honesty with a flair for the dramatic. I like that she tells us it’s going to be terrible but we should do it anyway because it might also be wonderful.

At the end of class, I say, ‘See you on Friday,’ to Sophie, Ruby and Justin, and then brace myself, because Friday is our housewarming party, and I am expecting the three of them to give me blank looks or make excuses for why they can’t come. But they all cheerfully say, ‘See you then,’ and, once again, I am flooded with relief. I don’t remember ever being this nervous or neurotic about making friends in high school. Back then, I had a group I sat with at lunch, and I had other groups that my group was friends with, friendships that were wide and shallow and safe. Things weren’t perfect, but I knew who I was and where I fit. I am out of my depth here. I’m always on edge that I’ll be exposed as a fraud in some way.

I invited eight of my schoolfriends to the housewarming party. Two said they would try to make it after something else, which means they won’t be coming. The other six are working, or can’t get to Melbourne, or have other plans. The trouble with my school friendships now is that even though we all still talk and text, everyone is so eager to meet new people and forge new post-high-school lives, it’s easy to slip away from each other. And when you’re holding a party, and you need to invite people to said party and be sure they actually show up in person, it’s like a friendship exam. I don’t want to fail the exam. I can’t fail the exam. When Sophie, Ruby and Justin all said yes to the invitation straightaway, I almost cried.

On the tram on the way home, I am gazing out the window when I see Jesse get on. We go to different universities but they’re close to each other, his in the city centre, mine a few minutes further out, but we are on the same tram line home. I glance away, hoping he doesn’t see me. He’s halfway down the tram, and there are five people standing in between us. I sneak a look at him. He has headphones in and a backpack on, and for a brief moment, my heart softens a little. There’s something about him standing there alone, one hand gripping the pole, in a crowd of people, that makes me feel like maybe we’re the same, both floundering a little in a new city, trying to meet people and learn the public-transport system and not get lost or overwhelmed or homesick.

He looks up and we make eye contact. Damn it.

He awkwardly raises a hand, and I give a small nod back. No smile. We are not at smiling stage. The people standing between us get off, and now it’s very hard to ignore him. Will he move closer to me, or should I move closer to him? What is the protocol here? I take one small sideways step towards him, and then pretend it was nothing more than adjusting my balance. The tram stops again, and several more people get off, leaving a double seat empty between us. A glaring empty seat right there, beckoning, an invitation for us both to sit down. I don’t want to share the seat with him, it’s too much like sharing our bus seat in high school. But if I sit down first, he’ll be the one left with the dilemma of what to do. He seems to be thinking the same thing, as we both make a move for the seat at the same time, bumping into each other.

‘Sorry,’ we say at the same time. He smiles. I don’t.

‘After you m’lady,’ he says, using, for some reason, a ridiculous British accent, and giving a grand sweeping hand gesture.

‘Thank you,’ I say, frowning a little, because I suspect he did the accent to try and trick me into smiling, and I need him to know I will not be won over so easily. I absolutely do not find him charming or cute.