The Making of Us

by Debbie McGowan

  “An excellent choice.”

  The queue inched along. Matty put his phone away and chewed his finger. He sighed, switched hands, did some kind of dance move with his super-bendy legs…

  “Why don’t you two go find a table?” Noah said, with an endearing shake of the head at his fidgety boyfriend.

  I glanced behind me at the rapidly filling café. There were only two tables free. Matty saw them, too, and sprinted over, claiming the one on the end of a row. I appreciated Matty picking a table where there was room to pull the chairs out. No fuss, no drawing attention; he did it automatically even though, with his cat-like agility, he could squeeze into any old tight space. At my height and width, and Noah’s heightier height, there was no way we could fit in between the tables.

  Matty wriggled and slid into the narrow gap between our table and the people sitting behind him, and loudly blew his hair out of his face. “God, I hope it’s not gonna be like this all year.”

  “Think you might be out of luck there, Matt.” I pulled out the chair diagonally opposite his and sat down, doing another quick survey of the café, refusing to visually acknowledge Matty’s smirk or the reason for it in spite of my more than likely glow-in-the-dark cheeks.

  “Shall I invite Leigh to join us?” Matty suggested.

  “They’re with other students,” I said, which was true. I quickly diverted my attention to Noah. He’d moved along the queue a couple of spaces. “When’s your first class?” I asked.

  “This afternoon. Yours isn’t till tomorrow, is it?”

  “No, but I’m seeing my diss supervisor at two. Is Noah hanging around?”

  “He will be. Adam’s picking us up on his way home from work.”

  “Cool,” I said. I saw Leigh and their friends sit at the other free table, and my heart did a little somersault. I willed it to behave.

  “Unless you’re coming over tonight?” Matty asked.

  “Not tonight. I need to make a start on packing.”

  “You can’t have that many books at home.”

  “I don’t mean for uni.” He knew what I meant.

  “We’re not going for another month, Jess.”

  “Yeah, I know, but…” I let the sentence dangle rather than finish it. It was true; our holiday wasn’t for another month, but I wanted to go through my clothes and establish what I needed to buy so I wouldn’t be stressing about stuff not arriving in time. Plus, I was pretty sure Noah’s brother and his husband were sick of the sight of me. It felt like I was always over at their place these days.

  A tray landed with a clunk on the table between us, and I looked up into Noah’s shadowed scowl. He pulled out the chair next to me and flopped onto it, legs everywhere. “No banana cream, no caramel, no apple… It’s crazy.”

  “Damn first years,” I muttered, playing along. “Who do they think they are?”

  “Leigh’s a first year,” Matty pointed out with a cheeky grin.

  “I knew that,” I said too quickly. My cheeks went up in flames, or felt like. I didn’t have a problem with the first years—even if they did nick all the decent doughnuts—and Leigh was an exception, anyway. Or did I mean exceptional? “What did you get in the end?” I asked Noah, eager to move on. I didn’t really mind them seeing me get in a pickle. They were my best buds, and they both knew how much I liked Leigh. It had been instant attraction—for me. For Leigh? I had no idea. We got on pretty well—I’d even go so far as to say we were becoming good friends—but we talked about nothing, really. On the plus side, Leigh had never mentioned The Dough Ball Incident. They probably hadn’t noticed I was there, which was for the best.

  “I dunno,” Noah said, opening the doughnut box and peering inside. “I told them to give me whatever.”

  Matty leaned forward and looked in the box. “Orange and lemon. Ew.” He picked up his milkshake and sat back again. He’d barely got the straw to his lips when, behind him, all hell broke loose. A girl climbed up onto the table and then jumped down on the other side, dragging another girl from her seat to the floor as she yelled, “Someone call an ambulance!”

  “I’ll do it,” a student on the next row of tables said.

  “We need to alert—” I began but didn’t finish; Matty was already calling the campus medics on his mobile.

  “Come on, Lizzie.” The girl checked for breathing, thumped her friend’s chest a few times and then put her ear back to her friend’s mouth. “She’s still not breathing.” She thumped a couple more times, but if she knew anything about CPR, she’d forgotten it in her panic. I knew CPR. I’d learnt it in sixth form while everyone else was off doing their Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.

  I didn’t think about it. I just got up and took over. The girl’s airway was clear, but she definitely wasn’t breathing. I began compressions, counting in my head while Noah asked the girl’s friend what had happened.

  “She’s got a heart condition. She takes medication for it, but she said she’d been feeling weird all morning.”

  I reached thirty, delivered two rescue breaths, and continued the compressions. In my head, I could hear Matty singing The Bee Gees’ ‘Staying Alive’, like the video with the American firefighters. It was helping me keep my rhythm, but my arms were aching, and the sweat was pouring off me. Another thirty compressions, another two breaths. The ambulance needed to get here, and the crowd needed to back off.

  One of the campus medics pushed their way through with a mobile defibrillator and knelt at the girl’s other side.

  “What’s your name?” she asked me.

  “Jesse,” I panted out.

  “OK, Jesse. Great job. Keep going there for me a bit longer.” She pulled the girl’s top up and attached the defib pads. “Stop,” she said. I stopped. She pressed a button on the machine, and a digital voice said, “Analysing,” then, “Stand back. Do not touch the patient.” The medic pressed another button, jolting the girl’s chest.

  The machine pinged and the medic took over the chest compressions. She’d barely completed one set before an ambulance pulled up outside the café and two paramedics made their way in at speed. With nothing left for me to do, I got up and spent a moment leaning on a table while I got my breath back and the feeling returned to my legs.

  “Thank you,” the girl’s friend said.

  I nodded a ‘you’re welcome’, too puffed out to speak. Both of us watched her friend as the paramedics connected wires and tubes, and lifted her onto a stretcher.

  Last year, my dad died following a heart attack. He was hardly ever around—my parents divorced when I was still in primary school and I’d stayed with my mum—so we weren’t very close. He’d made it to the hospital but had another heart attack and died during surgery. When he’d collapsed at work, one of his colleagues had given him CPR, and I wondered if it was like this for them. I was buzzing on adrenaline, and I felt…I don’t know. Worthwhile.

  The emergency had passed, and I looked around the café for Leigh. They gave me a thumbs up—whether in praise or reassurance they were OK, I wasn’t sure—and then disappeared from view behind the paramedics, who wheeled the girl away. Beside me, her friend gathered her belongings together.

  “I’m taking these up to her room,” she explained.

  “Good idea,” I said, although I wasn’t sure why she was telling me.

  She paused and gave me a brief squeeze, not enough to count as a hug. “Thanks again.”

  I smiled, feeling proud, and grateful for the first-aid training. It was the first time I’d had to use it—well, other than elevating my mum’s hand when she cut her finger with a vegetable peeler. I’d stayed with Leigh while they’d administered an emergency injection once, too, but that wasn’t really first aid. “I’m sorry I kind of took over.”

  “Don’t be. I’m so glad you were here. I mean, I don’t wish to insult you, but with your size and everything… You were so fast!”

  My throat constricted, and my sweat suddenly turned icy, but the girl was already gone, taking my eg
o with her.

  It was only then I realised what that temporary euphoria had been. I’d been so focused on what I was doing that for those few brief moments, I’d forgotten I was fat Jesse.

  After the ambulance departed, the commotion died down, and everyone either returned to their tables or left the café. Noah handed me my bottle of water, and I gulped it down in one. I was gutted by what she’d said. Absolutely gutted. But I was trying to keep a brave face—obviously I was failing.

  “You are pretty tall,” Matty consoled. Kind, sweet Matty, trying to make me feel better, feel less like the fat kid, red-cheeked from crying in the toilet cubicle he’d crammed himself into every lunch break, or sweating buckets in full-length pants and long-sleeved t-shirts while everyone else wore their summer vests and shorts. There was always something—some way I’d covered up, hidden, made apologies—for just about every moment of my life.

  I felt Noah’s eyes on me and met his smile with a meagre attempt of my own. “Yeah,” I said, making my agreement sound as matter-of-fact as I could. I knew what people saw: the same thing I did every time I looked in a mirror.

  ***

  “Jesse!”

  I rolled onto my back and peered up at the ceiling through eyes blurred and hazy from having spent the past however many hours with my face stuffed in my pillow. It was about the twentieth time Mum had called me for dinner, each time her voice getting louder, the pronunciation of my name shorter and hissier. She was out of patience, and my bedroom door flung open.

  “Mother coming in,” she said, holding the door handle with one hand, the other shielding her face as she stepped into my room.

  I laughed at her attempt to respect my privacy, this woman who had changed my nappies, washed my winky and brought me cold compresses for my testicles when I got mumps in high school. It was all a bit of an over-exaggeration about being left infertile by mumps—that was another thing I’d learnt on the first-aid course. It did happen, but it was rare, and my mumps weren’t severe. In any case, I had no intention of having kids, ever. Why would I burden my offspring with the ‘big-boned’ gene?

  “I’m decent, Mum,” I said, or as decent as I could make myself while trying to cover my belly by tugging down the hem of yet another t-shirt that was too short and too tight.

  Mum uncovered her eyes, and I spotted a brief flash of annoyance, which instantly turned to concern when she caught sight of my face. “Oh, love, what’s the matter?” She came over and perched on the edge of my bed.

  “Just tired,” I said, and I wasn’t lying. I was exhausted. It had been a heavy day, but it’d pass. I was having one of those ‘I hate my body’ evenings, and all because of the stupid t-shirt. Well, that, and what the girl in the café had said, which was what had prompted me to torture myself by trying on a t-shirt that I’d already known didn’t fit me. I was still really upset, but I hadn’t told my mum about what had happened.

  She brushed my hair back from my forehead. “Were you sleeping?”

  “Yeah.” Now that was a lie, but I knew what was coming.

  “I’ve made your dinner. I can bring it in here if you want. You can eat in bed.”

  I wasn’t hungry, or no more hungry than usual. But I didn’t need to eat. It wasn’t as if I was going to starve to death.

  “I’m all right, Mum.”

  She took a long hard look at me and then turned away. “Have they been at it again?”

  “Who?”

  “At school.”

  I’d left school four years ago, but she still called it that. She was talking about the bullies who’d terrorised me all through high school, calling names, tipping leftovers and rubbish off their plate and onto mine as they passed by in the dinner hall, the ‘Big Jessie’ graffiti on my locker, all of it unprovoked, but that’s the way bullying goes. Being seen as weaker, easier to wind up, or different, is all the reason bullies need.

  “No, they haven’t,” I finally answered Mum’s question, but she already had tears in her eyes, and I’d only just got control of my own. I needed a distraction or she’d start me off again. I studied the poster of Pink on the far wall. I’d been in love with her since I was twelve. I owned all her albums, knew the lyrics to every single one of her songs, although I’d never been to see her perform live. If I ever found the nerve to get up and sing at karaoke, I thought I could probably do a passable cover of ‘So What’.

  “Are you going to have your dinner?” Mum pushed.

  “Nah. I think I’ll get my PJs on and go to bed.”

  “All right, love.” She got up and walked slowly across my room, picking up my bag and straightening my shoes on her way to the door, where she stopped and turned back with a heartbreaking smile. “Maybe we should get you back to the doctor again. Get a second opinion on your thyroid.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I agreed. It was easier that way.

  “I’ll cover the plate and stick it in the fridge, in case you want it later,” she said.

  “OK. Thanks, Mum.”

  “You sleep well.” She closed the door behind her, and I rolled back onto my belly, holding my breath until lights flashed like fireworks before my eyes. I exhaled the stale air and tried to draw in more through the pillow. It was hard to breathe, and while I was miserable, I didn’t have a death wish. I got up and wearily swapped my scrimpy ‘XXXL’ t-shirt and baggiest of baggy sweatpants for my pyjamas, hauled back the duvet and climbed into bed. I’d feel better in the morning.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Two

  Some days, I wake up thinking…so what? I’m a fatty. Get over it. I put on my Big & Tall jeans—impossibly enormous, with an invisible diamond section in the crotch so they don’t split—and stride out with pride, shoulders back, ready to take on the world. Other days, I wake up determined that today will be the day I start my diet, follow the exercise plan Matty typed out for me, get fit, lose weight, turn into Jesse Thomas the beefcake, tall, dark, handsome…

  It usually lasts until lunchtime, when I give up in favour of silencing the embarrassing rumble in my belly.

  That was the mood I was in this morning, motivated by having not succumbed to the temptation of last night’s dinner. I’d moved on from the misery of my favourite t-shirt not fitting anymore. I couldn’t even blame it on a growth spurt. Or I could—an outward spurt, not an upward one.

  I’d even kind of forgotten what the girl in the café had said.

  When I made it out of the shower, Mum was already in her coat, about to leave for work. She gave me a hug.

  “Are you feeling better, love?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You home normal time?”

  By ‘normal time’, she meant around four-thirty—end-of-school time—which didn’t apply to university, but I was familiar with the conversion.

  “Before that, I reckon,” I said.

  She stood on tiptoes, and I bent my knees so she could kiss me on the cheek.

  “See you later, Mum.”

  “There’s bacon keeping warm, OK?”

  “OK.”

  She left. I went to my room to get dressed, ignoring the treacherous t-shirt I’d cast off in disgust and pulling out a shirt that could’ve fitted Matty and Leigh inside it with room to spare. It was comfy—soft dark-grey cotton—and it was loose on me, which made me feel slimmer, but it was an illusion, of course. I hated it when people made those kinds of observations—you look slimmer in that, stripes suit you—because it was temporary, lasting, at best, until I took off my clothes and faced the flab underneath.

  At least I’d finally left my enormous hoodie behind. Leigh was partly responsible for that. Four years, I’d had that hoodie, all through sixth form and the first two years of uni. It had served me well, but it had also been a comfort blanket—heh, it was big enough. Every day, I was tempted to take it out of the storage bag in my wardrobe…zip up, hood up, sleeves down… I was caught between hiding from the world and wanting Leigh to notice me; the hoodie stayed where it was.

  I
grabbed the bacon on my way out. I could afford to eat it if I walked to uni. Granted, it was only a ten-minute walk—about fifty calories—but it was better than no exercise at all. I arrived at the campus as Noah and Matty’s bus pulled up. The doors opened, and the bus emptied, no sign of Noah and Matty for ages, because they always sat at the back, and it was Noah who stepped off first, giving me a hang-dog expression. A second later, I discovered why. Behind him was Matty and…Leigh.

  My poor old heart. Who needed a defibrillator? It happened every time I saw them, that sudden jolt, and off it went, like an express freight train trying to break out of my chest.

  Arms linked, Matty and Leigh laughed and chatted, almost skipping along behind Noah. God, my crush was epic, but Leigh was beautiful. Both acknowledged me with a little wave and a smile. I smiled back and realised, when Leigh’s eyelids lowered bashfully, that I was staring.

  Adam and Sol—Noah’s brother and brother-in-law—were like foster parents for students with additional needs, things like learning disabilities, behavioural problems and medical conditions. Leigh had only been living there a couple of months, whereas Matty had moved in with them in first year of uni. He said it was because he was a nutcase. I never saw any evidence of it, but his parents had done a number on him, so he probably had his nutty moments.

  Leigh’s situation was a bit different. Like Matty, Leigh had been in foster care forever, I guessed because their mum couldn’t cope with their medical condition. I was interested to know more, but Leigh didn’t talk about it, and I didn’t push. We talked about a lot of stuff, mostly music and movies, and we had a good laugh, but we didn’t know each other anywhere near as well as I would have liked. Yet.

  I didn’t think that was expecting too much. All through school, people had told me I was a good friend. By ‘people’, I mean ‘girls’, and by ‘good friend’, they meant ‘not boyfriend material’. That was fine by me. The number of my mates who hit on girls just because they could, it made me feel a bit sleazy on their behalf. They liked the girl, sure, and I don’t think—I hope they didn’t—force themselves on anyone, but they’d go too far, too quickly, and without getting to know each other.