The Spite Game

by Anna Snoekstra

  Unlike most of the other residents of the college dorms, he had his own room and bathroom. It was his third year and he was, supposedly, a residential adviser. It was him that first year students were meant to go to if they were feeling homesick, or if they’d locked themselves out of their rooms in the middle of the night. Even though his room was on the ground floor, he always left his curtains ajar and sometimes even the window open.

  If he had an early class he wouldn’t bother with a shower, especially if that class was philosophy. He seemed to be under the impression that the sharp odor of his unwashed body was alluring. You would think that Theodore’s undergraduate degree was in philosophy given the way he incessantly spoke of the constant revelations and epiphanies it supplied him with. It wasn’t. Philosophy was his elective. He was really studying science, with a major in applied chemistry.

  As he walked to his first class, he’d wink at the people he passed, sometimes pulling a hand through his hair if he wanted to seem particularly charming. He walked with a slight swagger, an air of unhurried ease, as he made his way toward the main university buildings.

  In his science classes, this nonchalance would disappear. His hair would go behind his ears and stay there as he bent over his textbooks and took notes.

  In the evenings, while the college dinner was being prepared, he would sometimes call his mum. I’d sit around the corner and listen. He mustn’t have realized how much his voice carried.

  “But everyone else is getting supported,” he’d whine.

  “Yeah, sure, teaching me to stand on my own two feet means making me wait tables instead of studying. I’m falling behind—is that what you want for me?”

  “Well, should I still bring around my laundry on Sunday, or don’t you have time for that anymore either?”

  He would end the call annoyed, and light another cigarette.

  7

  “I’m going to be late for class!” I yelled through the door.

  Bea was in the shower. She’d been in there for ages. If I didn’t get in the bathroom soon I’d miss my lift with Nancy, the woman who lived with her elderly great-aunt down the street. Three times a week she went into the city, and if I was at her house before eight she’d drive me in with her.

  More than anything, I was dying to use the toilet. I jumped and fidgeted, ran up and down the stairs, squeezing my pelvic muscles. If I stopped moving, I was sure I’d wee myself.

  “Come on!” I called, but she didn’t answer. It was too late anyway, I’d never make it.

  I opened our front door and ran to the corner of the street. Nancy was there, leaning against her car waiting for me.

  “Morning!” I yelled.

  She looked up at me, raised her arms in question.

  “Class got canceled!” I called.

  She smiled at me, as if to say lucky you, and turned to get in her car.

  I half ran back toward my house. If she was still in the shower, I could sit up on the kitchen sink. Or I could pee in a bowl or something, then tip it in the yard. If only we had a backyard, then I could squat behind a tree.

  “Why are you walking like that?”

  The guy who lived with his brother across the road was staring at me through his open kitchen window, again.

  I’d seen him a few times over the years, but I’d barely ever spoken to him. It was during the one and only night that Mel, Cass and Saanvi slept over at my house. He said hi to me a few weeks after that, but I was so miserable I’d just ignored him.

  “No reason,” I said.

  “Okay.” He shrugged and turned away.

  The truth was the panic was starting to set in. I was absolutely busting and there was no way I was going to do it in the sink.

  “Hey!” I yelled, crossing my legs in front of me. “Do you mind if I use your toilet?”

  He came back to the window and looked me up and down. “You really need to go, don’t you?”

  “Yeah! Obviously, or I wouldn’t be asking you.”

  He stared at me, smirking, as I began jiggling on the spot.

  “Don’t be an asshole,” I said.

  He laughed. “Fine. Come in.”

  I ran to the door, but he didn’t open it. I knocked, and heard slow footsteps. He opened the door and looked at me with fake confusion.

  “Can I help you?”

  “For fuck’s sake!” I pushed past him and ran up to the toilet. It was in the exact same spot in his house as mine. I banged the door shut behind me, pushed my foot against it and pulled my pajama pants down. The flow started before my bum even made contact with his toilet seat. The relief was exquisite. I closed my eyes.

  “Wow, I’ve never heard a chick piss that hard.”

  He was on the other side of the door.

  “Fuck off!” I screamed, my voice high and pitchy, making me cringe even more than I already was.

  I heard him laughing as he walked away.

  When I was done, I stormed back down the stairs.

  “I’m making a coffee—do you want one?”

  “No! What the fuck is wrong with you?” I yelled.

  “Evan! What did you do now?”

  I turned around. The other guy, who was in his early thirties and I was pretty sure was Evan’s brother, was standing in the doorway to the living room.

  Evan didn’t reply, just looked at me.

  “See ya,” I said, and half ran through the door and back to my own house before they could see my blush. That would only make the whole thing even more hideously embarrassing.

  As I closed the front door I could still hear the shower. Walking slowly up the stairs, I could already feel it. Something was wrong. Bea never had showers that long.

  I tapped on the door.

  “Bea?” I said. No answer.

  “Bea? Are you okay?” I said louder. She might not be able to hear me over the water. Maybe she was washing her hair or something.

  I went back into my room and sat on the bed. The sound of the shower running filled up the whole quiet house. I made myself count to a hundred, sure that when I did the water would be turned off. It didn’t.

  Going back to the door, I knocked again. An image appeared in my head. Bea, lying in the tub, blood pooling around her, the water creeping up over her nose and mouth.

  “Bea!” I screamed. No answer.

  I took a step back and tried to kick the door. It shuddered, but didn’t budge. Mum would be on shift. I could call the hospital reception and get them to go find her, but that could take a while.

  “Bea!”

  I put my ear to the door. Behind the sound of the water, I heard a quiet moan.

  I ran back down the stairs over to Evan’s house, banged on the door. It swung open.

  “Need to go number two now?” His face fell as he took in mine.

  “I need you to come kick my bathroom door in!”

  “Aiden!” he yelled.

  The older brother came around behind him, but Evan didn’t wait for him. He followed me as I turned and jogged back inside.

  “She’s epileptic,” I told him, as we raced up the stairs.

  “I don’t know if I’m strong enough,” he said, and I eyed his spindly arms. He was probably right. He tried anyway, running backward and throwing himself into the door.

  “Ouch!” he yelled, rubbing his shoulder.

  Our dog, Chucky, started barking from the noise, snuffling at Aiden’s heels as he took the stairs two at a time.

  “Is it Beatrice?” Aiden said.

  “Yeah,” I told him. I didn’t know they knew each other.

  “I’ll do it. Move.”

  Both Evan and I stepped backward into Bea’s room.

  “Beatrice,” Aiden yelled, “we’re coming in.”

  Instead of charging at the door like Evan had, he kicke
d it near the hinges. On his second kick, the wood split with a loud crack. He kicked it again, and the door opened a few inches, enough to see Bea’s naked flesh through the gap. I stepped forward.

  “Don’t look!” I snapped.

  “Sorry,” he said, and both of them instantly turned around.

  I pushed the door wide enough so I could squeeze through sideways. Bea was lying half in and half out of the shower, which was still streaming over her thighs. There was water all over the tiles and I half walked, half slipped toward her. Her eyes were open, and she looked at me as I crouched down next to her. There was vomit down her cheek and in her hair.

  “Bea,” I said, “you okay?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered so quietly I could barely hear her.

  “Should we call an ambulance?” Aiden called.

  “Not yet!” I called back.

  “Who is that?” she murmured.

  I brushed her wet hair off her face. “Those guys from across the street.”

  “Oh God,” she said.

  “Well, if you insist on locking the door when you’re about to have a seizure, then what do you expect?”

  She closed her eyes and almost smiled.

  “Did you hit your head?” I asked.

  “Nah, shoulder.”

  “How bad?” I stood up and turned the taps off.

  “Not broken.”

  “Is she okay?” Aiden called out.

  “Make them go,” she whispered.

  I grabbed a towel and put it over her, then went back to the door and put my head through the gap.

  “Thanks,” I said to them. “You don’t need to stay.”

  “Are you sure?” Evan asked, looking genuinely concerned.

  “Yep,” I said, then softer, “She’s fine—honestly, you guys are just going to embarrass her.”

  Evan looked to Aiden, who reluctantly shrugged.

  “We’ll be in for the next hour. Come over if we can do anything. Really.”

  I nodded. “I will.”

  Evan gave me an unsure half smile, and then followed his brother down the stairs. The front door banged shut behind them. I turned back around.

  “What do you think? Do you want to go to the hospital?”

  “No, just call Mum.”

  “Okay.”

  “Get the puke off my face first though.”

  “Yeah, I was planning on it.”

  She laughed, a hollow sound, and I smiled back at her as I grabbed a facecloth off the rack. It was already wet from the steam.

  “Did they see?” she asked, as I wiped the vomit away.

  “Nah.” I wrapped the towel around her properly, and started pulling her onto her knees. When I got her there I hugged her tight.

  “Your pajamas are getting soaked,” she said.

  “Don’t care.”

  After a few seconds, she started to cry. “I hate this,” she whispered into my ear.

  I held her close, tears streaming down my own face. “Me too,” I said. “That was so scary.”

  * * *

  When I got Bea into bed, I called Mum, who said she’d come straight home. I went into my sister’s room and lay on the bed next to her. I’d wrapped a towel around her hair, but her pillow was still wet.

  “Don’t go to sleep until Mum checks you,” I said, “just in case.”

  “I know.”

  I held her hand. “Do you feel a bit better?”

  “Yeah. Sorry I made you miss class.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said, swallowing away the guilt. There was no class.

  She took a long deep breath.

  “You know what this means, right?”

  “What?” I said, although I had a feeling I knew what she was going to say.

  “No driving for six months.”

  “Shit.”

  Epileptic people aren’t meant to drive after they have a seizure. It’s a stupid rule in my opinion, but still. It’s the law.

  “I’m going to have to quit my job,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Yes. That was the whole reason I got the car—there’s actually no way of getting there by public transport. I could walk I guess, but it would take me three hours each way.”

  “Well, quit then,” I said. “You hate that job anyway. Your boss is a dickhead.”

  “Yeah, but I’m still paying off the car.”

  I shrugged. “Get Mum to pay you back some of the rent money you’ve been giving her.”

  “I can’t do that,” she said. “She’s already used it on the mortgage. Plus I’m twenty-two, Ava, it’s embarrassing.”

  “I’m twenty.”

  “Yeah, but you’re at uni. Mum wants you to focus on that.”

  I stared at the ceiling. I wanted to help her make this better, but I also didn’t want to reveal just how much of my life was actually a lie.

  “I’ll go part-time, get a job so I can help pay off the car.”

  “I don’t want you to do that.”

  “Bea,” I said, and waited until she looked at me, “let’s talk about this later.”

  She closed her eyes, and then nodded.

  8

  I told Bea I’d spend the next day with her. Watching bad soap operas about accidental incest and illegitimate children like we had after her seizure, Chucky sleeping on my feet, a bowl of snacks between us. She said no and, secretly, I was glad. It felt so good to do nothing with Bea, just to be with her and feel like a real person with a real life. But that wasn’t me. By the end of the day I’d been itching with it. Knowing that Theodore was out there, doing something, and I wasn’t there to see it.

  The whole thing had started innocently enough. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr. I had been forced to delete them all during high school, when my pages began to be filled with words like psycho, freak, shithead, die. But a few months after graduation the lure had been too strong. I just wanted to see. To look. To see what their lives were like, while I was still grappling with the pieces of my own.

  As much as I tried not to be, I was still so focused on them. On what had happened. I wanted to move on. I didn’t want to think about that horrible wretched night and all that came after, but it felt like not thinking about it took all my energy. I didn’t have space to do anything else, to carve out a life for myself, to really live. No matter what, I still felt stuck in those last few months of high school. The idea that they could have kept going, become different people, seemed impossible. I couldn’t imagine it, but I didn’t really have to try. It only took a few clicks, and there they were.

  Mel was in Europe. Cass barely posted. Saanvi just uploaded pictures of her architecture assignments, punctuated by photographs of coffees and comments on how stressed she was. But Theodore posted daily. I could see his whole life. His whole pretentious, blessed life. Photographs from parties, plastic cup in his hand, arm stretched around a girl’s shoulders. Or sitting and smoking with some boys, staring furrow-browed into the camera with his practiced almost-smirk. He went on weekends away to the coast. Lay on beach towels, filmed himself singing along in the back of cars. He got countless pictures of funny cats in paper hats for his birthday, and a new friend almost daily. He looked so happy.

  I’m not stupid. Everyone knows social media is all lies. People show what they want you to see. I knew that he couldn’t really be that happy. But he was. I saw that soon enough in the flesh. It was easy—he always posted about where he was. It was like an invitation. I don’t know what I was expecting to find the first time I followed him to the bar he’d posted about. I guess maybe I’d thought that when I saw him I’d see a shadow there, some reserve in his manner that showed that high school had changed him too. But there wasn’t; that was clear straightaway. For him, the past didn’t matter. He didn’t care about what he’d d
one. It was all about his potential, his golden bright future.

  I know I’m a lot of things, a liar for one. But I do believe in fairness. Theodore had screwed up my future, so it was only fair I did the same to him.

  An eye for an eye. That’s the idea, right?

  * * *

  As Nancy drove us toward the city the morning after Bea’s seizure, I filled her in on what happened.

  “Now she thinks she’s going to have to stop working for a while. It’s really unfair.”

  “How awful,” she said. “Poor darl.”

  I shrugged. “I’m going part-time at uni. Get a job.”

  “Really?”

  “Otherwise I would feel really selfish.”

  “But being at university isn’t selfish. Just means you’ll get a good job. What are you doing again, honey?”

  “Nursing,” I told her. That’s what I’d been telling everyone else.

  “Nothing selfish about that,” she said.

  We drove in silence for a while. That was something I liked about Nancy. She didn’t try to make conversation all the time. I stared out the windscreen, looking at the dappled sunshine through the leaves. I liked this part of the drive the best. When the car zoomed down the road, shrouded by snow gums towering above. It felt totally uninhabited. You wouldn’t know in ten minutes the car would hit the freeway and you’d be sitting bumper-to-bumper in smog for the whole rest of the way.

  Nancy tapped her fake nails on the steering wheel.

  “I have an idea for you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was thinking of getting a nurse to call in at my place sometimes. Cil’s getting bad at being on her own all the time—not that she’d admit it. Maybe if you could be there, on two weekdays say, and maybe a Saturday? Just read to her and, you know, make sure she takes her pills, makes it to the loo, doesn’t burn the house down. She’s still in remission, but she’s getting better every day.”

  “Remission for what?”

  “She had breast cancer. It was early stages, and I made sure she did everything right for it.”

  I swallowed. “Doesn’t she need a real nurse for that?”

  “Oh, you’d be fine, hon. Honestly. You must know the basics by now.”