I thought the only thing I was going to miss about Wellington was you (I really, really miss you, Five. Irrevocably, seriously, crazily, horribly) and my family — with the exception of Dad, although blood ties are obviously pretty strong, because I even, weirdly and fucked-upedly (think I just made a new word) miss him sometimes. Not the Dad as he is now — I’m homesick for this impossible Dad-memory I have from when I’m little. Something for the shrink to discuss with me when I go and talk to him about being an abused child and whether I’m going to read my victim statement in court.
Hey, look, I’ve written two pages already. Sorry if you can’t read my writing. Not as neat as yours, obviously.
So, what else am I missing, apart from you and the family plus or minus Dad? My new friends. The chance to learn judo from a previous Olympic gold-medal winner. The caravan. I even miss swimming in the river.
Life with my Auntie Rosina is OK though. She’s kind of disorganised, dinner whenever it happens and sometimes not at all, because she’s caught up painting or reading. But there’s no shouting, and the beach is only a kilometre away. I can’t go back to judo yet, not until I’m off these stupid blood thinners. Apparently that might be in five months, depending on how my next scan looks. I’ve got some pretty impressive bruises just from bumping my leg against the doorframe the other day. But some weeks, I don’t have any bruises at all. That’s a new thing.
Mum rings me every night. I keep thinking I don’t want to talk to her, but the one night she didn’t ring until ten p.m. (because she had to take Libby to the After Hours doctor with an asthma attack), I felt really lost. At least they get to stay together, I guess. I was pretty worried about that, but with me gone, it’s one less mouth to feed.
Mum keeps saying ‘when you come back’. There’s a restraining order, so Dad isn’t allowed within 400 metres of our house, but I don’t know if I can ever go back. I know that’s not want you want to hear, Five, but every time I think about it, I feel like I’m going to stop breathing again. The shrink said something about post-traumatic stress disorder. I think it’s just a survival instinct thing, myself.
You wanted to know what I said to Zero, the day of our fight. I told my shrink the other day. He said people say things like that all the time when they’re wound up. Apparently, saying ‘I’ll kill you, don’t think I won’t’ doesn’t mean I’m a psychopath. Well. We’ll see. If I don’t get a letter back from you, I’ll know why.
But enough of that. I’ve been thinking. I told Auntie Rosina about you. I told her you were my boyfriend, and she didn’t even stop painting, just said, when do I get to meet him? She said you can come and visit. We can lie on the back lawn and look at the infinity I promised you.
I’m still breathing, Five, just for you. Learning to exhale.
(#2)
CHAPTER 28
SEE YOU IN THE INFINITUDE
July, West Auckland
There is no such thing as happily ever after.
No, but there’s happily as you can b-be. Have you heard of the glass half-full thing?
Yeah, my mum says I’m a glass half-empty person and that annoys me, because I would never leave my glass half empty. I’m glad you think it’s funny … huh.
Want me to do it again?
Yeah, if you keep that up I think I will live happily ever after.
I wasn’t going to stop there.
What if your auntie hears?
She never hears anything when she’s painting. She calls it flow. Have you heard of that?
No.
Breathe, Five.
Can’t when you do that.
I’ll stop then.
You’re a fricking tease, you know that?
So, flow is when you are so absorbed in doing something you love that you forget where you are. You lose all sense of time.
Like when I’m working on mathematical proofs?
Yeah, like that.
What’s your flow?
When I’m hiking, or doing judo. When I’m with you.
Flow. Yeah, I like that. It’s like … infinity. Oh.
Told you I’d give you infinity, Five.
Stop talking, Two. You’re disturbing my flow.
That’s not flow, that’s just being horny. Oh-kay.
…
…
…
You didn’t tell me that gets better.
Practice makes perfect, Five.
An infinitude of practice, Two.
I like the sound of that. I do.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my beloved husband, Grant, and beautiful children, Lachie and Maisie, as well as the rest of my extended family, who continue to support me in all my writing endeavours. As always, a very special thank you to Nod Ghosh — I am eternally grateful for your friendship and considered critique of all my work.
Thank you to my friend and Sexual Health physician, Rose Forster, and to Alex Anderson, Team Coordinator of the Education Unit at the Auckland Sexual Health Service, for their advice on LGBTI adolescents. Thanks also to my fellow flash fiction writer, Patrick Pink, for his valuable input on the teenage gay male perspective.
Thanks to one of my oldest friends, Sergeant Adrian Ross, for his advice regarding child abuse and other police matters, and for putting up with all of my odd questions over the years!
Thank you to Linda Williams for letting me borrow a line of dialogue — you know which one!
Thank you to Harriet Allan, fiction publisher at Penguin Random House New Zealand, for her tireless efforts in continuing to support and promote my work, and to my agent, Frances Plumpton.
Wise, tough, heart-breaking, funny, this compulsive love story is about facing your demons.
Fifteen-year-old Rebecca McQuilten moves with her parents to a new city. Lonely but trying to fit in, she goes to a party, but that’s when things really fall apart.
I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened. Especially since I was the new girl in town. Who would want to believe me?
Things look up when she meets gregarious sixteen-year-old Cory Marshall.
‘You’re funny, Becs,’ Cory said.
‘You have no idea,’ I said, and clearly he didn’t, but I was smiling anyway.
And after that, he was all I could think about.
Cory helps Rebecca believe in herself and piece her life back together; but that’s before he shatters it all over again …
A moving novel about learning to find happiness in the face of uncertainty and discovering a love that transcends the boundary between life and death.
Seventeen-year-old Alex Byrd is about to have the worst day of her life, and the best. A routine blood test that will reveal her leukaemia has returned, but she also meets Jamie Orange.
Some people believe in love at first sight, and some don’t.
I believe in love in four days.
I believe in falling.
Both teenagers have big dreams, but also big obstacles to overcome.
‘Promise me you won’t try to die,’ I said. ‘Ever.’
‘Promise me you won’t either,’ he countered.
‘It’s not really something I can control.’
Eileen Merriman works full-time as a consultant haematologist at North Shore Hospital. Her writing has appeared in a number of national and international journals and anthologies, including Smokelong Quarterly, The Island Review, Literary Orphans, the Bath Short Story Award Anthology 2015, the Sunday Star-Times, F(r)iction, takahē, Headland and Flash Frontier. Her first novel, Pieces of You, was a Best First Book nominee at the 2018 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, a Storylines Notable Book Award winner, with reviewers calling it ‘compulsively readable’ and ‘compelling, challenging, and heartbreaking’.
Eileen’s second novel, Catch Me When You Fall, was nominated for the Copyright Licensing NZ Award For Young Adult Fiction in 2018. Her other awards include second in the 2015 Bath Flash Fiction Award, third for three consecutive years in the Sunday S
tar-Times Short Story Awards, and first place in the 2015 Graeme Lay Short Story Competition.
PENGUIN
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Penguin is an imprint of the Penguin Random House group of companies, whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published by Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2019
Text © Eileen Merriman, 2019
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Cover design by Rachel Clark © Penguin Random House New Zealand
Text design by Emma Jakicevich © Penguin Random House New Zealand
Author photograph by David Rowland
Prepress by Image Centre Group
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.
ISBN 978-0-14-377286-6
The assistance of Creative New Zealand towards the production of this book is gratefully acknowledged by the publisher.
THE BEGINNING
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Invisibly Breathing Page 23
