Am I Normal Yet?

by Holly Bourne

  I should’ve rung the emergency doctor person. I should’ve told my family. I didn’t even have to tell them in person, I could’ve left a note on the kitchen table.

  Dear family,

  It’s back. I’m not coping. Send help.

  Evie.

  But I didn’t.

  Rational reasons I didn’t tell anyone

  1) Er…

  Irrational reasons I didn’t tell anyone

  1) They were all so proud of me, of how I was doing. The other morning, when I was carefully pouring my medicine onto the spoon, Dad actually slapped me on the back, making me spill some down me. “You’re doing so well, Eves,” he’d said. “Not long to go.”

  2) Maybe it wasn’t “back”. I was still functioning. I was still going to college, seeing my friends, doing my coursework. Yes, okay, I washed a bit more but I was still living an outwardly normal life. Like a swan gliding on a pond, from the surface I was a regular person – swimming through life – it was just my feet paddling madly under water, pummelling hard to stop me drowning. If I was still doing stuff, then the OCD wasn’t really back, was it?

  3) And it’s not like I was doing all the same things as before. Especially after my cleaning box was confiscated. I’d never touched street lights before. I’d never counted to six before. And think how dirty street lights are – I mean, dogs pee on them like literally every day. I was still touching them. Maybe this was a sign of progress? Maybe I was doing my very own exposures?

  Maybe I should insert a joke here about Denial being a river in Egypt?

  4) If it was back, I’d have to up my medication again. I’d failed. I’d always be on it. I’d never know who I was.

  5) If it was back than all the therapy hadn’t worked. If it was back it meant it would never truly go away. If it was back I would always be like this. I would always have to fight, every day, to stop myself slipping down the slope to Crazysville. Just the thought of that was exhausting. If it wasn’t back, then I was cured. I was normal again. I was just like everybody else. Everybody else, with their easy lives and normal problems and lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky.

  6) If it was back, my friends might find out. They might not want to be my friends any more. Like what happened with Jane.

  “Evie? Evie? You all right?”

  BAD THOUGHT

  If I just run my finger around the whole rim of Jane’s mirror, tonight will go well.

  “Evie?” Jane asked again.

  “Huh?” I jolted back from my own reflection and spotted her in the corner.

  “You all right, Evie?” Jane asked a second time. “You’ve been stroking my mirror.”

  Amber catapulted into the reflection alongside me, slinging an arm around my neck.

  “It’s because she looks so bloody gorgeous, don’t you, Evie?” she said.

  I looked at Amber and me – we couldn’t be more different. She was so long and wild-haired, with clashing green eyeshadow smudged around her eyes. I was so short and curvy (well, used to be curvy), my blonde hair sleek as always, no matter how much I washed it with volumizing shampoo. Which was a lot at the moment.

  “I…I’m fine, Jane, I’ve almost finished with it,” I said.

  “Good,” Lottie butted in. Her face was more eyeliner than anything else. “I need to apply my all-important eighth coat of mascara.”

  I didn’t know how to finish touching the mirror with them all looking so I reluctantly stepped away, letting Lottie have her turn.

  BAD THOUGHT

  You’ve ruined it, tonight is ruined now. Everything is going to go wrong.

  No it won’t, I told myself. I’ll finish it when no one’s looking.

  BAD THOUGHT

  No, you have to do it now. Now now now now NOW.

  I tip-tapped on my arm with my fingernails, letting them dance a nervous jig of scratches across my skin. “Have you decided what to wear yet?” I asked Jane, who’d been fretting all afternoon.

  Jane shook her head mournfully. “No. I look fat in everything I try on.”

  “You’re not fat, you idiot. Saying that is being really mean to actually-fat people.”

  Jane had upheld her invite to all get ready for Battle of the Bands at her house. In a surprising turn of events, Amber and Lottie had agreed to come and we’d all eaten takeaway pizza together – I hid my share in my handbag. I mean, have you seen the grubbiness of people who make takeaway pizzas?

  It was weird being back in Jane’s bedroom. I used to spend most days here, getting lost in her butterfly wall stickers, picking my way through her collection of musical instruments. Now, her butterflies had been replaced with angry black posters of hairy bands I’d never heard of. An electric guitar sat where her clarinet used to be. “Joel’s teaching me,” she’d said. The air hung thick with hairspray and perfume and not enough spare oxygen for everyone. I was desperate to open the window but it had been so cold walking here it’d hurt my lungs.

  At least cold air is clean. And crisp. As air should be.

  “I think you should wear the red top,” I offered.

  “Won’t it clash with my new hair?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s a point.” Jane’s new do was blood red, which really didn’t match her blonde eyebrows and English Rose colouring. It really was a blood red too. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it looked like her head was bleeding. I probably would’ve told her in the past, but it would seem mean now…now that we weren’t really mates any more.

  “Black? I could wear my black lacy top, I guess.”

  “Yeah, that one’s really nice,” I said.

  “I won’t really stand out for Joel in black though, will I?”

  Amber rolled her eyes as she dowsed herself in perfume. “And that’s the whole point of the evening, isn’t it? To stand out for Joel.”

  Jane bristled. “What band is your boyfriend in then?” she quipped.

  “Girls, come on,” I groaned.

  Amber ignored me. “I don’t judge my worth on having a boyfriend and what he does.”

  “GIRLS.”

  “Just as well,” Jane said.

  “STOP IT. NOW.”

  They did. But there was an awkward silence and at least two evils exchanged.

  “Riiight,” Jane said. “Black top it is.” Her face was all pinched.

  “It’s really lovely,” I said, glancing at the mirror again, wondering if I could get to it.

  “Yeah, it is,” Amber said, surprising us all. I smiled a weak thank you at her and she smiled back meekly. “Sorry, Jane,” she added genuinely.

  Jane looked relieved. “I’m sorry too.”

  Lottie – who’d been ignoring the whole thing – threw her mascara wand back into her bag. “Voilá,” she declared. “Jane, we’ve got some wine. Do you have a bottle opener?”

  Jane nodded, pulling her top over her head. I saw her marshmallow stomach – she had gained weight. Why hadn’t I noticed? “Yeah, downstairs in the kitchen,” she answered from inside her top.

  “I’ll come with you,” Amber said. “We’ll bring up some glasses.”

  They left. With Jane’s head still inside fabric, I saw my chance, jumped across the room and quickly trailed my hand over the circumference of the mirror. My stomach melted in relief and I savoured it for a second…before it knotted up again almost instantly.

  BAD THOUGHT

  And again. You need to touch the mirror again. Just in case.

  I reached out to it, like that scene in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty when Princess Aurora keeps trancing out and trying to touch the spinning wheel.

  “Evie?”

  I whipped round. Jane was right behind me.

  “Evie? Are you really okay?”

  I dropped my hand guiltily. “I’m fine…” My voice squeaked. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Jane’s eyebrows pulled together. “You seem…on edge. Twitchy. Is everything okay? You know?” She tapped her head. “In here?”

  It was Jane’s old face, the one I
remembered. Open and caring and chewing her lip as she worried about me. It would’ve been so easy to tell her then. To tell my best friend that I thought I was maybe losing it, that I didn’t know what to tell my parents. And that, more than anything, I couldn’t stop thinking about a silly boy. Guy Guy Guy Guy Guy, on a loop.

  It may’ve been old Jane’s face, but it was still new Jane’s personality…

  “I’m fine,” I said, in that halting way you deliberately use to say “I’m not fine!” – testing her.

  Jane failed the test. She didn’t even press me on it, she just cast her eyes to her new black rug and said, “They hate me.”

  I instantly felt so alone.

  “Don’t be silly, they don’t hate you,” I replied hollowly. Though I gave myself away by not asking who she meant.

  “They do. They just think I’m a Stepford Girlfriend. Amber, like, really hates me.”

  “Amber hates the world.” I wasn’t sure why I was consoling her still. Default maybe? “She’s funny with all of us about boys. She’s made spinster membership cards, remember?”

  Jane tugged at her top, trying to get the edges pulled over her muffin top. “I just thought if I invited them round, they’d see I was cool, you know?”

  “And they will…I mean, they have.”

  “I dunno.” She looked sadly at the rug again. Maybe I was reading too much into it but it seemed like, for the first time, Jane was jealous of me. Jealous of the friendships I’d made, the identity I was carving out for myself, independent of anyone else. Despite the odd Guy blip.

  We heard a clattering of glasses downstairs and some giggling. The wine was on its way.

  Jane walked past me to the mirror to check her reflection. “My new hair’s okay, isn’t it? I’ve got this patchy bit at the back where I missed some across my parting. I had to do it by myself…”

  “Oh…yeah, well, it doesn’t show.”

  She pouted and turned her head side to side. “When Joel saw it he said we should try and spend more time with our friends. He said we spend too much time together.”

  A-ha! Joel was steering her sudden burst of friendliness. I felt suddenly angry at her – that this change had come from Joel, not her. Angry that she couldn’t see that I was hurting…or that she was just choosing not to see it. Because she’d seen too much already. She’d reached her threshold.

  “Ahh, well, I mean, it’s important to have friends, isn’t it?” I tried to make myself feel sorry for her, to calm down the inner anger.

  “Yeah. I don’t know what I would do without you, Evie.” It came out empty. Forced. I looked at my friend’s reflection with her. She’d changed so much in the past few months. Different hair, new piercings, crazy outfits – but that didn’t stand out to me – that didn’t make me really look. It was the way she carried herself now – none of her sass, none of her attitude. It was like someone had slowly turned her from Technicolor into sepia tone.

  “How are things with you and Joel?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  “Just asking.”

  “Well, they’re fine. Great. Wonderful. Just wait till you fall in love, Evie.” I sneered slightly at the back of her head. “But, as Joel said, it’s important to have friends too. That’s why I invited you all around tonight.”

  Because Joel suggested it…

  The bedroom door opened and Lottie and Amber came in brandishing wine and glasses.

  “We’ve got Merlot!” Lottie announced, setting it clumsily on the carpet and pouring it slapdash into four glasses. Some splashed on the carpet. Nobody said anything. Maybe nobody else but me noticed. “I stole it from my parents. We’re going to class-up the college band night by drinking red wine. We will be the most sophisticated girls there.”

  I pointed to Amber who was carefully pouring another bottle of red wine into an empty plastic Coke bottle. “Not if anyone sees us swigging from that.”

  “Nonsense,” Lottie said. “That’s for the walk there. Nobody will see us drink it. We’ll be walking through the alleyways.”

  “Classy as hell.”

  “Too right. Come on, let’s chink.”

  The overly-full glasses were passed about and we cheers-ed each other.

  “To Joel’s band winning tonight?” Jane suggested.

  Lottie cackled. “No chance. Let’s drink to the sisterhood.” And we chinked again.

  I was on an even lower dose than I’d been at the house party. And this wasn’t shots. So I drained my glass as quickly as you can drain red wine without making little wincing faces that give away you’re not really a grown-up yet.

  It took ages to leave the house in the cold, what with ten layers of coats and scarves to put on. We were glad for them though when we filtered out onto Jane’s front porch.

  Lottie let out a little squeal. “It’s colder than liquid nitrogen! Pass me that bottle of wine.”

  Amber obliged and Lottie drank some and passed it over. I pretended to drink, not letting it near my lips. I just couldn’t share. And anyway, I already felt a bit fuzzy from the wine I’d had at Jane’s, from a nice, safe glass.

  “It’s so cold,” I said, to cover my lack of drinking, “that it is scientifically impossible for me to unclench my buttocks right now.”

  Amber and Lottie cracked up. “That’s sophistication, sister.”

  “Don’t pretend your arse cheeks aren’t hiked together with freezingness right now.”

  “Oh, mine are so tight, I could crack walnuts between them,” Lottie said, and we laughed again. We bobbed between side-streets, dodging from lamplight glow to lamplight glow, the wine disappearing from the bottle.

  Jane launched into some monologue about Joel’s set list. We listened dutifully without really listening until she said, “Guy talks about you a lot, Evie.”

  I almost stopped walking. If I was a rabbit, my ears would’ve shot right up. If I was a meerkat, I would’ve rocked up onto my hind legs. Lottie and Amber groaned before I could reply.

  “Aww, Jane, don’t tell her stuff like that,” Lottie said.

  “Yeah, she’s managed to go two whole hours without bringing him up.”

  “Shut up.” I turned to Jane and tried to keep my voice casual. “Oh, really? What does he say?”

  I thought I sounded disinterested and vague but the other two groaned louder. “Oh, man, now you’ve done it.”

  “What did he say, Jane?” Amber said, in a high squeaky voice. “Can you tell me again? Can you write it down? What do you think of this full-stop he used? What does it mean? Do you think he likes me?”

  I thumped her on the head with the empty Coke/wine bottle. “Shut it. I’m not that bad.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “Well, maybe I am. But he makes me that way.”

  Jane watched us with a puzzled face. “What’s going on?”

  Amber flailed her arms dramatically. “You mean Evie hasn’t told you about her romantic game of conkers?”

  “Followed by an all-out communication blackout,” Lottie added.

  “Or the almost-kiss at the house party?” Amber asked.

  “Followed by an all-out communication blackout,” Lottie added.

  “Or the unnecessary deviations from his walking-home routes so he can sit on a fence with her and chat about nothing.”

  “Followed by an all-out communication blackout.”

  “Or how he slags off every guy she considers dating…”

  “Before an all-out communication blackout.”

  I hit them both on the head with the empty bottle.

  “Oww.”

  “If you were trying to make a point,” I said, “you could’ve stopped a while back.”

  “Hang on,” Jane said. “Stuff’s been going on with you and Guy?”

  Why did I like hearing his name so much? Why was I so pathetic?

  “Have you not been listening?” Amber asked. “He’s been so changeable with her I’m surprised he’s not been accepted to Hogwarts for his transfi
guration skills.”

  We exited an alleyway and came out on the road next to college. Cheap cars were parked everywhere, students pouring out of them, heading towards the light of our school.

  “He does talk about her a lot,” Jane insisted.

  “I’m sure he does,” Amber said. “But that doesn’t make him a nice guy.”

  “I am under no illusions that he’s a nice guy,” I protested.

  “Then why are you so hung up on him?”

  “I’m not…well…I can’t help it. And I told you, enough’s enough. I’m not messaging him any more. He is dead to me.”

  Jane walked up close to me and whispered like we were old friends. Which we were, I guess. “Well, you’re certainly not dead to him.”

  I hung back a little as we walked towards college. In the darkness, walking just behind them, I tapped every remaining lamp post six times.

  I would have to wash my hands before the music started.

  Thirty-one

  It was weird, being in college at night. It felt unreal, or forbidden or something. All the same old faces were there but everyone seemed stranger in the darkness.

  “Yikes, it’s packed,” I said, as we turned into the college car park and spotted the crowd.

  “Tell me, Jane,” Lottie said. “You’ve known Evie a long time. Has she always used ye-olde Milly Molly Mandy words like ‘yikes’ or is this just a recent issue in her literary development?”

  “Hey,” I said as Jane spoke over me, the teeth from her smile shining in the moonlight.

  “Always, her favourite used to be ‘crikey’.”

  “Crikey is a vastly underrated expression,” I argued. “Anyway, it’s not my fault. I watch a lot of old romantic movies. They talked properly back then…with class.”

  Jane’s phone buzzed and she wrestled with her coat to retrieve it. “It’s Joel,” she told us, though none of us had asked. “He says they’re second-to-last on. They’re backstage but he may be able to come out and meet us.”

  “Backstage?” I could see Amber raise an eyebrow, even in the dark.

  “Well, in the photography block. That’s what they’re using as a Green Room.”

  “Green Room?” Amber’s eyebrows went into overdrive.

  I linked arms with both of them, holding one on each side like squabbling siblings. “Let’s go get our tickets.”