What Does Blue Feel Like?

by Jessica Davidson

  apply lip gloss

  fix unruly strands of hair

  run their tongues over their teeth to remove lippy stains

  adjust their strapless bras as they head ever south.

  Then they

  Emerge.

  A friend of a friend takes an interest in Bronwyn.

  They dance,

  share small talk,

  laugh.

  Several hours

  and shots of tequila

  later

  he whispers to her,

  ‘You’d be really pretty

  if you weren’t so thin.’

  Fuck you,

  she thinks,

  but

  she knows those nine words will stay with her for a long time.

  Lee gets drunk and disappears with a guy.

  Later,

  he stumbles back into the party

  clutching a beer and

  fumbling to do up the zipper on his jeans.

  Char is splayed on Jim’s lap,

  almost like an ornamental piece,

  but it’s obvious she’s drunk.

  They occasionally kiss,

  interlink their fingers.

  Char nestles into his shoulder

  And looks up at the low-slung moon,

  thin and yellow.

  Monday Monday

  At school,

  the party is the topic of conversation.

  Bronwyn blushes, and shyly giggles,

  when she admits that she might,

  just might,

  have a boyfriend — worth keeping.

  Lee slinks into school

  looking gaunt

  huge sunnies on her face

  jumper pulled down over her hands

  hair hanging over her ears

  to block out the whispers and giggles about her.

  During Maths,

  Char asks if she can go to the toilets.

  She finds Lee,

  splotchy-eyed,

  huddling.

  ‘I’m not a slut, Char. I’m not.’

  News moves fast

  I stay in the toilets with Lee

  until the bell goes for lunch.

  And tell her about when Jim and I first met.

  I tell her

  the whispers

  giggles

  sly looks

  will fade.

  Next weekend

  there will be new gossip,

  and she will be

  glossed over.

  Luckily for her,

  she doesn’t have to wait that long.

  Some stupid kid got caught smoking pot in the toilets.

  News moves fast around here.

  Lee says

  I feel

  Used

  Discarded

  like a soggy tissue

  flung into the bin.

  I doodle on my folder

  swirls

  over and over

  hypnotic.

  But I can’t stop thinking

  that I’m

  used goods.

  Stood up

  Lee and I

  are meant to be going shopping together

  on Saturday morning.

  (I’m finally forgiven.)

  I wait,

  impatiently,

  drink three coffees,

  check my watch twenty times.

  She isn’t answering her phone.

  I know

  she had a date last night

  and she’s probably sleeping.

  Bitch.

  I’ve been

  stood up.

  When I get home,

  muttering under my breath like a petulant child,

  Mum’s waiting at the door for me.

  Instantly

  I know she’s got

  bad news.

  Turns out

  that Lee went on her date last night.

  They went out to a party after the movies

  and both got drunk.

  The guy she was with

  swore he was okay to drive,

  and Lee didn’t want to ring her parents

  because it was so late

  so she said okay.

  Turns out

  the guy she was with

  wasn’t okay to drive

  and he drove into a tree

  and Lee was in the car

  and she isn’t okay.

  False cheer

  I’m apprehensive

  walking into the hospital

  my arms loaded with

  chocolates

  flowers

  magazines.

  Lee has stitches down her cheek

  a cast on her arm

  and another on her leg

  and bruises everywhere.

  There’s a tube connecting her to a drip

  and two others connecting her to machines.

  She’s doped up on painkillers,

  but smiles weakly as I come in,

  full of

  false cheer

  that falters and stalls as slowly,

  but deliberately,

  she tells me

  what happened.

  Lee/my hair

  It was horrible, Char.

  The last thing I remember was heading towards a tree,

  Nick saying ‘Oh fuck’,

  and hearing glass shatter.

  Then I woke up in emergency

  and I remember not being able to move.

  They had me in a neck brace.

  Thank god I haven’t broken my spine.

  Mum and Dad were there in their dressing gowns,

  and they were both crying.

  They said to me,

  ‘Any time of the day or night

  you can call us

  any time,

  do you understand?

  We’d rather be woken up and you be okay

  than to get a call from the police or hospital

  in the middle of the night.

  Don’t you ever

  do that again.’

  I start crying,

  and say,

  ‘Look at the back of my head.’

  It’s a struggle to manoeuvre my body

  and lift my head from the pillows,

  and when Char looks

  I can hear her gasp.

  From the front,

  my hair looks normal.

  But at the back,

  my hair has been

  shorn

  and replaced

  with a long, snakelike row

  of stitches,

  precise and careful.

  I can hear my voice, pitiful

  as I say,

  ‘They shaved my hair, Char.

  They shaved my hair.’

  Around the coffee machine

  At the coffee machine

  I see her parents,

  still in their woolly dressing gowns and slippers,

  looking every one of their years.

  They’re buying what must be their hundredth

  crappy machine coffee of the day,

  but it’s hot, and wet, and has caffeine in it.

  Her mum tells me

  they’re pressing charges against the guy.

  Her eyes well over

  as she says,

  ‘Look how lucky we were.

  I don’t know what I’d do

  if Lee had been . . .’

  I know that she can’t finish the sentence.

  I tell them to go home,

  have a shower,

  a sleep,

  some food.

  They smile indulgently at me,

  take their coffees

  and walk back towards the ward.

  Something nice I can do

  The school formal is on Friday

  but I don’t really feel like going.

  Lee tells me not to be ridiculous,

  she wants to hear all of the gossip.

  I decide to duck into the hos
pital with Jim

  before we go to the formal

  so she can see us all dressed up.

  That’s something nice I can do.

  Lee/being brave

  Char and Jim visit me before going to the formal.

  Char looks so pretty.

  And Jim looks really cute in a tux and top hat.

  I smile bravely at them

  and try to be excited

  but

  inside

  I’m jealous

  that I’m not going too.

  Char knows that something is wrong

  but I just tell her I’m tired,

  and soon after,

  she leaves,

  full of vigour and excitement.

  I want to go

  and it’s not fair

  that I’m stuck in this hospital bed

  scarred and broken.

  Mum and Dad keep telling me how lucky I am

  but I don’t feel lucky tonight, not at all.

  I turn on my side

  and cry quietly

  so the nurses don’t hear.

  Bronwyn

  I think

  that my latest boyfriend, Jack,

  is lovely.

  Char giggles at me,

  makes kissing sounds,

  and sings that old song about

  ‘Sitting in a tree

  k-i-s-s-i-n-g’.

  What she doesn’t know

  is that he

  warms me up inside

  the whole way through.

  At the formal

  Some of the boys are caught with hipflasks and

  get suspended and

  Mick turns up in a yellow suit and

  the girls tell him he looks weird.

  Two of the girls turn up in the same dresses and

  bitch about each other all night and

  there are about five teachers brave enough to get on the

  dance floor and the cool kids laugh at them and

  the speeches go for a really long time and

  one of the girls turns up in an ultra-revealing dress

  and her boobs pop out halfway through the night and

  she gets suspended and

  it passes by

  so fast.

  Gossip

  In the girls’ toilets,

  Char is in a cubicle

  when some of the girls from the self-proclaimed

  ‘cool group’ come in.

  She listens for a few minutes as they gossip, meanly

  about this girl’s dress

  or that girl’s hair.

  She comes out,

  irate,

  and says,

  ‘You know who the real losers are?

  It’s you lot.

  You don’t do anything except laugh at other people

  so you can feel better about yourselves.

  You’re not brave enough to do anything

  in case someone laughs at you.

  Just get a life.’

  They bitch about her from their table all night,

  but she doesn’t care.

  You can’t be hurt by people you don’t care about.

  I still don’t know

  what I want to be when I grow up

  and it scares me a little.

  I’m thinking about this in class,

  not really listening to Ol’ Yapper

  until he says,

  ‘Nelson Mandela said that it isn’t our darkness we’re afraid of.

  It’s our light.

  We think,

  Who am I to achieve my dreams?

  Who am I to be successful?

  Why do I deserve that kind of happiness?

  But the truth is,

  ladies and gents,

  the truth is

  that you do.

  You don’t make dark corners darker

  by letting your own light fully shine.’

  The blackness in my head

  Is turning grey

  And I can’t help but wonder

  If it will ever be fully gone.

  Tonight I wish

  that I had some sleeping pills left

  to get me through the agonising hours

  until dawn.

  I feel

  so tired

  but I can’t sleep.

  I gnaw at my fingernails

  until they’re bitten-down, bleeding stubs.

  I pace the room

  like a caged rat.

  I draw tatts on my arm

  until my pens have run out of ink.

  I visit the fridge for midnight snacking

  even though it’s finally about three am.

  The shrink warned me

  that the insomnia

  might stick around

  and that I will still have ‘down days’.

  But she didn’t remind me

  that it’s always worse

  at night.

  Midnight snack

  Char sits,

  snacking on a cheese and potato chip sandwich,

  interspersed with a glass of milk.

  Her hair is matted,

  and curls have formed at the nape of her neck from the

  friction on the pillow as she tossed and turned.

  She’s staring,

  hypnotically,

  at the knife block in the kitchen.

  Sandwich finished,

  she rises,

  puts her plate and glass into the sink

  and pads back up the stairs.

  English Assignment #5

  I have a shadow

  that follows me

  everywhere I go.

  It shadows my thoughts

  and makes them dark

  on the sunniest of days.

  I have a shadow

  that mostly hides

  coming out at the strangest of times.

  It cannot be shushed

  and it won’t be ignored

  and it makes me want to cry.

  I have a shadow

  that makes me feel blue

  even on happy days.

  I ask, and I beg, and I plead with my shadow

  but sometimes it won’t go away.

  Down

  Mum says, with concern in her eyes,

  that I can go back to the shrink if I want.

  But I don’t.

  I just want to be

  left the fuck alone.

  I have a bath that night

  sinking into the steamy water

  down

  down

  down

  until I’m lying flat on the bathtub

  holding my breath.

  Eventually

  I resurface

  gasping air.

  Another night

  and I can’t sleep.

  I count imaginary sheep.

  They mock me,

  laughing,

  taunting.

  I find my headphones,

  jam them in my ears,

  and turn them up loud.

  I’m backsliding

  down

  down

  down

  maybe it’s futile

  maybe I’m just a big pain to everyone

  and maybe I’m going to spend the rest of my life like this

  and that thought

  makes me want to cry.

  Control yourself

  I go to Bronwyn’s house on a Friday night.

  We drink tequila

  and walk the streets.

  I bum a smoke off someone

  and suck it down

  out of control

  and unable to stop.

  I’m about to go to Jim’s, and Bronwyn to her boyfriend’s,

  when

  she looks at me drunkenly, sadly, tiredly.

  ‘When are you going to stop relying on other people

  to save you, Char?

  When are you going to save yourself?’

  Jim says

&
nbsp; that everyone needs help, sometimes

  but

  ultimately

  you can’t rely on other people all the time,

  maybe because life’s a bitch

  and people will let you down,

  or maybe because

  just maybe because

  they can’t control how you feel and what you do.

  I tell him

  that sometimes I feel like

  I can’t control how I feel and what I do.

  Bronwyn/burgers and fries

  Jack wants to go out for burgers and chips,

  washed down with milkshakes.

  I tell him no way,

  there’s like 40 grams of fat right there.

  He tells me that guys don’t like girls who are

  scrawny and bony,

  they like girls who look healthy,

  with boobs and bums,

  women who look like women,

  not like their little brothers.

  Girls who don’t obsess over every little thing

  they put in their mouths.

  ‘What’d you like me for then?’ I grouch.

  He laughs, kisses me, and gives me a bite of his burger.

  Lee

  Lee is out of hospital.

  Her hair is growing back

  slowly.

  The bruises have faded to a yellowy-green

  and the guy who was driving has been charged,

  although her father spits,

  ‘Slap on the wrist it was, Char, slap on the wrist.’

  I wonder if he knows

  the damage he’s done,

  wonder if he cares.

  When we’re alone in her room,

  Lee says,

  ‘We get mad in this family now.

  We yell

  scream

  feel like punching things

  cry with rage.

  It’s great —

  too bad it took this to make it happen.’