Euphoria Kids

by Alison Evans

‘Why?’

  ‘Something is happening.’

  The hairs on my body rise up. ‘Be specific.’ Nova seems serious, which worries me. I try to focus instead on finding flowers for Mum.

  They sway in the breeze, closing the eyes on their face. ‘There is something in the air.’

  ‘Cool.’ I bend down and keep looking for buds.

  ‘Babs, you should listen to me.’

  ‘Nova, no offence, but you tell me stuff all the time about how I’m going to get hurt, or something’s dangerous, or the air is trying to kill me, or whatever else, and like, I think I’ll be fine.’

  Their trunk creaks as they sigh. ‘I do wish you would listen to me, I –’

  ‘I know, I know, you’re very wise.’ I find three buds and pluck them, putting them into the jar. ‘Oh, by the way, Mum made you something.’ Before they can respond, I get up and get to my backpack. I pull out a little globe filled with herbs and rocks. ‘It’s for protection,’ I say, handing it over. It sparkles in the sunlight, sending out a tiny rainbow for a split second.

  They make a pleased hum, then loop the string over one of their branches. ‘Tell her thank you, and I miss her company.’

  I nod. ‘You should come into the backyard again sometime, she’d love to see you.’

  Nova nods back. ‘I will.’

  The breeze picks up, smelling of a memory I can’t place. Just faintly, and then it’s gone.

  ‘Do you really think I shouldn’t be here today?’

  ‘I would not lie to you.’

  ‘Can you take me to Iris?’

  I don’t know if Nova knows who Iris is exactly, but I do know I can feel them somewhere in the forest, back in the regular world. I just hope they can see me. Whenever we part, I worry. What if it’s the last time?

  As Nova guides me to the path, the wind picks up around them, making them sigh and creak with every movement.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say when we’re at the right spot. ‘I’ll tell Mum to come see you soon.’

  Nova just wheezes out some wind. Then they’re gone.

  I sit on a log that’s fallen. After a few minutes, Iris appears in maroon shorts and a t-shirt with flowers all over it. Their face lights up when they see me. ‘Hey,’ I say, like we had planned all this, ‘what took you so long?’

  ‘You took school off too?’

  I shrug. ‘Yeah, y’know. Sometimes you just gotta. Anyway, I want to show you something. Follow me.’ I jump off the log and start down the path, looking over my shoulder to make sure they’re following me.

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  We stray off the path into the forest, crossing the river at a narrow point. There are heaps more birds here and their songs are louder, freer, they bounce off each other and we’re surrounded by their music. We get to a tiny dirt path that weaves through the trees. This leads to the side of a dirt road, and the path continues on the other side of it. Eventually, it’s finally wide enough for us to walk side by side.

  ‘Nice stone,’ I say when I notice they’re holding a smoky quartz in their hand.

  ‘Thanks.’ They lift it up, catching the sides in the light. ‘I found it in the forest.’

  ‘Huh. That’s pretty cool.’

  They pass it to me and it’s warm from their hand. ‘Yeah, I couldn’t really believe it. Do you reckon they really send out those vibrations people say they do?’

  ‘Not sure.’ I give Iris back their stone. ‘Sometimes I think maybe they do, and sometimes I reckon I’m just imagining it. But either way, they’re pretty and fun.’

  ‘I was looking up the rose quartz that Salt— that I have, and it’s supposed to mean love. I don’t think, like, that’s a real thing written into the chemical makeup of the stone, but because whenever I think about the stone I think about that meaning. And I guess like, I don’t know, it kind of makes it real.’ They blush.

  ‘That makes sense. And there’s not like, it’s not dangerous to think this stuff? It’s not hurting anyone.’

  ‘And it’s fun.’ Iris sighs in relief.

  I laugh. ‘And it’s fun.’

  The road we’re on turns from dirt to bitumen, and soon we’re at the main street of town. We walk past the newsagents, op shop, a few cafes, bakeries, then we come to Eaglefern.

  I say, ‘This is my favourite cafe.’

  ‘I’ve never been here before,’ Iris says. I can tell they like the plants. ‘Moss and Clover say we have to keep money for other things.’

  ‘Livia gives me free stuff sometimes, she’s friends with my mum. Come on, I’ll show you.’ The bell dings as we walk in.

  There’s no one sitting in here, and when Livia sees me, her face lights up. ‘Hi, girls.’

  Iris grips my hand. The bottom of my stomach falls out. I want Iris to feel safe in this cafe, just like I do. It smells like my kitchen.

  I look at Iris, eyebrows raised. Iris nods. I shake my head. ‘Livia, Iris isn’t a girl.’

  Livia puts down her tea towel. ‘Sorry. Is he your boyfriend?’

  I scowl. ‘First of all, why would I want to date a boy? And Iris is non-binary.’

  ‘Sorry, love, I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘It means,’ Iris says, voice cracking a little. I grip their hand tighter and they continue, ‘It basically means that I’m not a boy or a girl.’

  ‘Oh.’ Livia chuckles. ‘I didn’t know that was allowed.’

  ‘Livia!’ I shriek. ‘That’s so rude!’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry. I’ve never met anyone like you, Iris.’

  ‘It’s not a joke!’ I didn’t know my voice could get so high.

  ‘Look, I’ll make it up to you, sweetheart. Free coffees today, and a cake each. I’ll teach myself and then next time you come in, if I’m rude, well, we’ll work out something.’

  I glance at Iris. They nod, a little sadly, and I wish I could take it all back. Iris does change their order to a hot chocolate, though, and I do the same. We sit at a couch next to the window, with flowerboxes right outside, filled with every colour flower. Fat blue-striped bees are hovering over them.

  I tell Iris, ‘I come here almost every day no one can see me. Livia always can.’

  ‘Is she a witch?’ Iris asks, quietly, like they don’t know if that’s a rude thing to say.

  I shrug. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Are you, Babs?’

  I shrug again. ‘Dunno. I guess.’

  ‘Can you become a witch? Do you have to be a girl?’

  As Iris says this, Livia comes over with our drinks. ‘You’re already one, if you want to be,’ she says. ‘You can talk to plants.’

  Iris blushes deeply, not sure what to say.

  ‘I’m sorry I called you a girl,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know there was anything else.’

  ‘I didn’t either, at first,’ Iris says.

  ‘I’ll leave you two to it, then.’ Livia wanders back up to the front. The place is just big enough that we can have a conversation without really being overheard by Livia, although we have to keep our voices down.

  ‘My mum’s a witch,’ I tell Iris. ‘Hey, let’s do like a spell or something later. Instead of homework. It’s more fun.’

  ‘That sounds good.’

  I sip my hot chocolate. It’s warm fizzy good, like the cookies Mum makes. Something about witches and chocolate makes it taste better. ‘Mum does spells for money.’ I lean forward a bit, speak lower – I’ve never told anyone this. I’ve not had anyone to tell. ‘She can’t have a regular-person job because of the fibro, but she can do this.’

  ‘Fibro?’

  ‘Fibromyalgia. It’s . . . complicated. Basically, it’s a chronic thing. She’s in a lot of pain, pretty constantly.’

  ‘Do the baths and stuff help?’

  ‘Only, like
, for comfort. Like they’re more for her depression, I think, than anything.’ I breathe out deep, sit back into the couch and close my eyes. ‘I don’t think I’ve said that out loud before. She has a hard time. Anyway.’ I smile and have some more hot chocolate. ‘She could probably lend you some books. If you wanted to learn. About magic.’

  ‘That could be fun.’

  We watch the bees outside the window. They love the sage especially, and the little white-and-purple daisies.

  ‘Come over tonight?’ I ask. ‘Stay if you want. Mum will show you some things.’

  ‘I dunno if I’m ready yet,’ Iris says. ‘For the spells, I mean. I’d like to stay.’

  Chapter Five

  The Haircut Spell

  When we’re at Babs’s, her mum is asleep anyway. Her bedroom door is shut, and some kind of power is radiating out from it, though I don’t know now if it’s my imagination because Babs told me she is a witch, or if it’s from something else.

  Babs shows me her mum’s library of magic books. ‘She’s got heaps of stuff. If you ever want to borrow something, you can ask her.’

  ‘Wow.’ I look at all the titles. There are books about the moon, dreams and palmistry, and lots about herbs and cooking. There are some books on crystals, too.

  We make dinner out of a few leftovers in the fridge, watch another movie, and end up doing our homework. I’m in the higher maths class than Babs, so I help her out.

  ‘Babs . . . do you think a haircut would count as a spell?’

  Babs takes my hair, not a handful, not a tiny bit. Somewhere in between. Her breath is warm on my skin, rushing past the hairs on my neck, sweeping over my shoulder blades.

  ‘How much?’ she asks. Her voice is closer than it has ever been, somehow. Closer than when she leans into my ear to whisper something in class, closer than when we’re hugging and say goodbye. These words are so close they heat every part of me in a way I don’t understand, and it scares me a little.

  ‘All of it.’

  Like a plant, it’ll grow back stronger, bushier, quicker, if you cut it at the right time.

  I don’t know if I want it to grow back.

  She takes another curl in her hand, lets it fall through her fingers like water, like sand. ‘Are we talking a pixie cut or stubble?’

  ‘Stubble.’

  I need it gone, and right now she’s the only one who can give me what I want. She’ll do it right, I know.

  ‘I’m going to cut it off so it’s short and then shave it, is that okay?’

  I swallow, and I want to stop, to take it all back. I can keep the length and I can keep hating it. Nothing needs to change. But I say, ‘That’s okay.’

  She keeps her hands on my hair for just a moment, and then she lets me go. A pang of loss in my ribcage blossoms into something else when she touches me again, sparks flying up to my throat. ‘Okay,’ she says, breathy. ‘Let’s go.’

  She begins at the bottom of my head where it starts to become my neck. The scissors are so close to my skin, there’s a scrape against my head a couple of times, but she never hurts me. When she’s near my ear, she cups the soft skin to make sure she doesn’t cut anything by accident. In the mirror, her brow is furrowed in concentration. She’s not looking at me, and I think if she did right now, well, I don’t know what I would feel. She is taking parts of my body away; I asked her to. It’s strange when I think of it that way.

  Half my hair is gone; I’m lopsided, I’m uneven. It feels right, I feel more of myself. My eyes fill with tears.

  ‘You okay?’ she asks.

  A tear slips out, barely brushing my cheek before it falls onto my arm. ‘Yeah,’ I say. She grips my shoulder and I put my hand on hers, just holding. She’s got bits of my hair on her fingers and they get everywhere, some falling onto my arm where the tear fell. There is no going back. ‘Please keep going.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘All or nothing, right?’

  It’s like some part of me is dying. There’s loss, but something new’s going to emerge. Tiny bright-green shoots.

  She smiles at me in the mirror. ‘Right.’

  I let her hand go and she continues, maybe a bit slower.

  All the length is gone soon, an age later – it’s been minutes but it’s been years. The centimetres left behind are uneven and ugly, short and long, and I love them.

  She turns on the clippers and brings them closer; I can feel the vibrations in my bones.

  ‘Wait,’ I say as I turn to face her, properly face her.

  She turns off the clippers but otherwise doesn’t move.

  ‘I want to keep it like this. I love it.’

  She smiles again and puts down the clippers. ‘You look great.’

  I want to be seen. I want to be recognised. I feel like she’s given me that.

  ‘Want a shower?’ she asks. ‘I can give you a fresh shirt that’s not covered in hair.’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She gives me a shirt that says This must be my dream, a towel, a face washer. She shows me how to work her shower and then leaves me alone in the bathroom, standing in the warmth of the light. It’s an old room; some of the wood has rotted away near the base of the shower from time and too much water. Ours is the same.

  When I undress, my hair that was caught in my clothes falls to the floor. Pieces of me not mine anymore.

  The water cleans me, warms me. When I dry myself off I sweep up the slivers of hair with my hands and put them into the bin with the toilet rolls and the tissues and the cotton balls. All waste, now. I step into her clothes and they’re soft, slightly bigger than my own.

  My hair’s now a little jagged, strange, but it shows off the bones in my face. Without the frame of soft curls, my features look squarer. More like myself.

  Babs is sitting on her bed, reading. ‘Did you want to stay up for a bit?’

  ‘Not really. But you keep reading, it’s okay.’

  She swivels around and gets under the sheets; I curl up beside her, my head resting on her hip. She reads out loud now, without me asking, tales of trees and magical lands, and I fall asleep as she moves her hand across my new hair, her fingers gentle and warm.

  Chapter Six

  The Rose Boy

  On Monday there’s a new boy in science class. He’s tall and gangly, thick black hair just past his chin, light-brown skin. When the teacher introduces him, I know from how he shies away from her that it’s not his real name. He takes a seat in the front row by himself.

  His books and uniform are all new. The shirt still has creases from where it was folded in the packet. When he leans forward a bit, I see he’s got shaved sides.

  I look at Iris and know they’re thinking the same thing: this boy, he’s like us. I trace a sigil on my thigh and concentrate on the air around him to see if it reveals anything, but he’s mysterious, not giving anything away.

  Throughout the lesson I hope we’ll split up into groups so I can go talk to this boy, but we’re on a new topic – rocks and rock formations. We’re just reading and answering questions in the textbook.

  Maybe if I had any control over this curse, I could disappear from everyone else except him, and we could have a chat. Maybe I could even extend this to him. He looks like he needs someone to talk to. He looks lonely.

  The boy stays hunched over his books the whole lesson. His sleeves are too long for him and he holds the ends in his palms. As soon as the bell rings, he packs up everything, quick as, and leaves without looking at anyone. Before we met, Iris would do this. Just leave.

  There’s a twinge in my guts as I walk down the hall. ‘Hey, can you hear me?’ I ask Iris when the twinge happens again. They don’t respond. I think of just going home, but then I wonder if maybe the
new mysterious boy is in my next class, or maybe we could find him at lunch. Maths is next, though, and I don’t want to go.

  I trace a sigil on my forearm for clarity and decide instead to go to the library. The twinging seems to have stopped – I reckon I might be visible again, but I really don’t want to go to maths. On the way, I see the new boy. He’s taken off his jumper, and on the back of his arm, just under his shirtsleeve, a small rose is pinpricked into his skin.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  He startles and whips around, all long limbs and floppy hair. ‘Hello,’ he says, clutching his books to his chest.

  ‘I’m Babs.’

  He tells me the name the teacher said, but it doesn’t match his face at all. It drops out of his mouth like a pebble to the bottom of a river.

  ‘That’s not your real name, is it.’

  He stares at me. ‘How did you know?’

  I shrug. ‘Magic,’ I say and smile. ‘I use she pronouns, by the way.’

  ‘Babs,’ he says, rolling my name like a lolly in his mouth. ‘I’m not sure what I want my name to be.’

  ‘You don’t need to, not right now. I can just call you boy, if you want.’

  ‘I mean, I would like to.’

  ‘I can help you. And Iris too – they’re non-binary. They’re really sweet.’

  ‘Thanks.’ There’s a pause, and we look everywhere but each other. ‘Um, I’m supposed to get to the B building, where is that?’

  I take him up a flight of stairs and down a few hallways. We pass people in classes, but no one bothers to check why we’re just wandering. ‘If you want to sit with us at lunch, we’ll be near the gym. Under the paperbark. Iris has really short hair, usually sits cross-legged. Will probably have a cheese sandwich.’ I don’t tell him I might be invisible – I guess he’ll find out soon enough, and he should be okay as long as he can sit with Iris. ‘Oh, we’re in the same maths class,’ I realise when we get to the door he needs. ‘The teacher’s really cool, I reckon you’ll have a good time. She won’t care that you’re late.’

  ‘You’re not coming?’

  I shake my head. ‘I’ve got . . . something else.’