My Life as a Hashtag

by Gabrielle Williams

  And he handed the phone to me again, my sobs settling as I put the phone to my ear and said, ‘Hey.’

  ‘MC,’ a man’s voice said. ‘It’s Mr Yumi here. I asked Yumi if I could use her phone because I thought there was a chance you’d answer if you thought it was her. I’ve been trying to call you from the school phone all morning.’

  I started crying again.

  It wasn’t Yumi.

  Not Yumi at all.

  ‘I wanted to check you’re okay,’ he went on. I nodded into the phone. ‘We’re all thinking of you. Mrs Willis said she was at your place earlier today. How are you going?’

  I shook my head, starting to cry in earnest again.

  ‘It can be a savage world sometimes,’ he went on, and I could almost see him shaking his head as he said it, in that way he had when he was talking to us in class and someone had done or said something that monumentally disappointed him.

  ‘Is Yumi there?’ I managed to say. ‘Can you put her on?’

  There was a pause. And then he said, ‘She’s in class at the moment. Maybe I could bring her around to your place after school, so you can talk things through?’

  I shook my head and handed the phone back to Harley. Yumi wouldn’t come to see me. Mr Yumi had tricked me by calling on Yumi’s phone. I’d always liked him, but now I realised he was like everyone else: not to be trusted, unsafe, calling me on Yumi’s phone, making me think it was her when it wasn’t.

  ‘It’s me again,’ Harley said. ‘Yeah, she’s pretty upset … I guess you could see how you go, but our front lawn is packed with journalists … Yeah, maybe in a few days …’

  And I started crying all over again.

  The sea air was so cold that it cut against my throat as I breathed it in. Once Harley had hung up, I turned my phone to silent, but left it face-up so we could see if any of the numbers were people we knew. People I might want to talk to. People like Yumi or Liv or Anouk.

  It rang from an unfamiliar number.

  Another unfamiliar number.

  Another and another and another.

  And then Grandpa called.

  ‘Don’t answer it,’ I said.

  ‘It’s Grandpa. I can’t not answer it.’

  Harley picked it up. ‘Hey, Grandpa,’ he said.

  I started crying again. Even the thought of Grandpa was too much for me at the moment.

  ‘She’s kind of busy right now – that’s why I picked it up. How are things with you?’

  He listened, then shook his head.

  ‘No. She didn’t go to school today. A couple of reasons.’

  I could hear the deep burr of Grandpa’s voice through the phone.

  ‘Oh. Well, yeah, I guess. Is everything okay?’ Harley asked, his voice going soft with concern.

  I didn’t think I could bear one more thing. I felt like my skeleton would shatter if even the tiniest, wafer-thin crumb of something else was put on my shoulders. I wasn’t strong enough.

  I was exhausted.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Harley said to Grandpa. ‘We’ll be round in a halfer.’

  He hung up and looked at me.

  ‘Grandpa has something he needs to talk to us about.’

  #

  I could drag it out, or I could tell it as it was.

  Probably easier to tell it as it was.

  We sat in Grandpa’s kitchen as he made us a cup of tea and told us that Tosca had had a baby that day.

  I didn’t even know what to say.

  It was impossible.

  ‘He should have told you before now,’ Grandpa said, putting cups of tea down in front of Harley and me and taking the lid off the sugar bowl. ‘Dad should have. But they only found out quite late in the piece that she was pregnant, and then there were some complications with the baby.’ He spooned sugar into his hot, milky tea. ‘And in Dad’s defence, she isn’t supposed to be born for another three months – the baby isn’t – so he probably thought he had plenty of time to break the news to you. But Tosca went into labour this morning and delivered a little girl. Milla.’

  ‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘That’s impossible. I only saw Tosca recently. She didn’t look anything like she was pregnant.’

  Grandpa smiled sadly. ‘Dad said he hasn’t seen you much the last little while,’ he said gently. ‘When did you actually last see Tosca?’

  I thought back. The last time I’d seen Tosca had been the night of Anouk’s party. The night I’d seen the pregnancy kit in the bathroom rubbish bin.

  ‘Okay … a while ago. But not that long ago,’ I said limply.

  If I was honest, I’d been avoiding Dad. He’d come to watch my footy a couple more times, taken time off work to see me, but I hadn’t been round to their place again.

  I’d been busy turning the entire world against me. That kind of thing took time and effort; it didn’t just happen on its own.

  ‘I saw her a couple of weeks ago,’ Grandpa said, meaning Tosca, ‘and she didn’t look particularly pregnant to me either. But as I said, the baby was born very prem. She hadn’t started putting on her baby weight yet. The baby, I mean.’

  A baby girl.

  The fact that it was a girl made me feel punched in the guts. Why couldn’t she have been a boy? I liked being Dad’s girl; his only daughter. I knew it was ridiculous, but it mattered to me that she wasn’t a boy. Because now this baby, this little girl, would be the one he’d throw onto his shoulders and walk down the street with, bending down so she didn’t get smacked by trees. She’d be the one he’d plonk on his knee, whose back he’d draw on, whose swimming lessons he’d watch.

  I didn’t want him to have a new baby.

  ‘There are problems, I’m afraid,’ Grandpa went on, his eyes looking filmy. ‘She’s only a little tike, and she … she might not make it, I’m afraid.’

  Might not make it.

  I watched Grandpa’s face falling along his wrinkles, the weight of his sadness revealing in-depth each and every one of those lines. I put my hand up to cover my face. Tears streamed down my cheeks again. Just because I didn’t want Dad to have a new baby didn’t mean I wanted her to die. Why did everything I turn my mind to always turn to shit?

  Poor Dad.

  Poor Tosca.

  Poor me.

  Grandpa rubbed my back, comforting me. ‘It’ll be alright,’ he kept repeating. ‘You’ll see, she’ll be okay.’

  My new baby sister might die, and my friends – and millions of online people – all hated me, and there were journalists camped out the front of our house and harassing Anouk, and it was all my fault, and I wasn’t sure if I was able to cope anymore.

  I heard Harley telling Grandpa that I’d been suspended; that there were journalists out the front of our house; that I was going through a pretty hard time; and I hunched my shoulders to make myself smaller so that the shame didn’t have as large a target to splat all over.

  ‘What do you mean, journalists out the front of your place? Why?’ Grandpa asked, his hand stopping mid-rub as he tried to puzzle out what Harley was telling him.

  ‘Long story,’ Harley said.

  ‘That’s a disgrace. She’s sixteen years old. They’re animals. Don’t give it another thought, darling. Stay here until whatever it is that’s going on settles down,’ Grandpa said. ‘In your old room. Remember when you used to stay the night whenever Dad and Mum went out?’ he said, getting back to rubbing up and down my spine.

  I couldn’t even smile at the memory. Basic social functions were becoming too much for me. I felt like everything from this morning, from the past few days, had an actual physical weight and was pressing down on me, preventing me from doing even the smallest of things.

  ‘That’s a brilliant idea,’ Harley said. ‘You should see how many of them are out the front. It’s crazy.’

  ‘Call Mum and get her to bring over your stuff,’ Grandpa said.

  ‘But then they’ll follow her here,’ I said, feeling like I was boxed in and whichever way I turned, t
he journalists were going to start swarming, ready to sting.

  ‘Your mother’s a smart woman,’ Grandpa said. ‘She’ll figure it out.’

  #

  I was upstairs in my bedroom at Grandpa’s, lying down on my old bed, when I heard a knock at the front door. I heard Harley go and open it; heard him talking quietly; heard Mum answering.

  I heard her come up the stairs, then knock gently on my door, open it, step inside. I didn’t want to see her. I felt overwhelmed with how much I’d messed up. With how much I’d let everyone down.

  I looked at Mum and remembered that Tosca had a baby. I wondered how Mum would feel when she found out.

  She sat down on my bed and put her hand on my feet. ‘You okay?’ she asked.

  ‘They didn’t follow you?’

  ‘Are you joking? I’m a ninja mother. Good luck with catching me if I decide you’re not going to.’

  I sighed.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

  I nodded. Then I shook my head. Then I shrugged. Then I shook my head again.

  She lay down on the bed beside me and stroked my hair. We hadn’t lain like that for years. Not since I was a kid.

  It felt weird.

  But normal. A remembered type of normal.

  She brushed my hair behind my ears.

  ‘Why don’t we do this anymore?’ she said, looking up at the ceiling. ‘Every morning, you used to come and sneak into bed with Dad and me. No matter whether we wanted you there or not, there you’d be, first thing, snuggling in between us. Remember that?’

  It was like running down the corridor to see Dad every night when he’d come home from work – I hadn’t realised it was something that would stop. It had seemed like it would last forever. And then, one day, I’d stopped wanting to go in there. I couldn’t be bothered. I’d preferred lying in my own bed, reading my book, or looking up at the mobile hanging from my ceiling, thinking about stuff, just general, nothing stuff. I didn’t wake up so early. By the time I opened my eyes, I could hear Mum rustling around in the kitchen, getting breakfast organised; Dad coming out of the shower, calling something down the stairs to Mum.

  Now he had a new baby who was going to climb into bed with him in the mornings.

  If she survived.

  My friends were never going to speak to me again.

  My life was worth nothing.

  I could feel the heaviness sitting on my chest like a bale of hay, making it difficult for me to breathe.

  I looked at the old tree out the window of my bedroom at Grandpa’s. There were two knots on the trunk. If I tilted my head slightly, they looked like eyes – like the tree was looking down at me, watching over me. I’d looked at those eyes, watched the branches get broader, more spread out, over the years, and the eyes had always watched me. I wondered what the tree would have to say to me. But it didn’t need to say anything. It needed to simply be where it was, its roots deep in the earth, and that was enough. It told me all about time, about seasons, things coming and things going.

  ‘I should have told you about the baby,’ Mum murmured. ‘But Dad didn’t want me to say anything, because Tosca had already had a few problems. He wanted to wait until she was a bit further down the track.’

  ‘You knew?’ I said.

  ‘He told me a few weeks ago. I was upset at first, but then it helped me make a few decisions about my life. You know, going back to school, throwing the party. I realised, when he told me, that it really was over between us. And once I let go of it, I felt good. Better. You can’t force someone to love you, or stay with you, or any of that. People stay together for all sorts of reasons, but they should never stay together if they’re really not happy anymore. And he wasn’t happy anymore. And actually, thinking about it now, I don’t think I was either. I was bored.’

  I closed my eyes, listening to the words forming in her chest before they came out of her mouth.

  ‘Besides, I had good times with him. I probably had him in the best times, when he was young, when we did silly, crazy things. But sometimes a person falls out of love. And then maybe they fall in love with someone else. And even though I miss him, I’m happy that he’s found someone else. I don’t want bad things for him. I want him to be happy, and if Tosca makes him happy, then that’s good.’

  I kept my eyes closed, feeling tears dribbling down onto the pillow.

  ‘Life keeps moving forward, whether you like it or not,’ she said. ‘I got an email today, about a job I’ve applied for. It’s to be a Hansard reporter, in parliament. You know, taking down the notes of what everyone says, all the politicians, during question time. It’d be an amazing job, if I can get it. And I found out today that they want me to come in for an interview, which goes for three hours: there’s a general knowledge test, and then I have to transcribe a speech, and then we have to analyse some news articles. A year ago, six months ago – three months ago, even – I would never have considered doing something like this. If Dad had stayed, I wouldn’t have gone back and retrained. I wouldn’t have applied for this job. I wouldn’t have needed to. But it sounds really interesting, and I think it’ll be great, if I can get it. So yeah, maybe Dad moving out isn’t the worst thing that happened to me after all.’

  I was feeling exhausted. I kept drifting in and out of what she was saying to me.

  ‘Same with you,’ she said to me, ‘today. All this business with the videos and your friends and whatnot. All this will pass. Life has a way of turning out okay. Even if you think it’s as bad as it can be, sometimes you look back on that time later and think to yourself, Well, gee, that actually turned out to be a good thing. You’ll see. Everything will turn out okay …’

  And I didn’t hear the rest of what she was saying, because I was asleep.

  #

  When I woke up, Dad was sitting in my room, his laptop propped on his knee as he typed up some stuff. Work stuff, I guessed.

  ‘Hey,’ I said to him groggily.

  He put his laptop down and came over to the bed to give me a kiss; put his hand on my forehead like he was checking my temperature.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he said.

  I shrugged.

  I was feeling like shit, but I couldn’t even be bothered going into that much detail. A shrug was as much effort as I could muster. I looked at him. He looked tired. Wrecked, actually. And then I remembered. He had a new baby. Dad and Tosca had a new baby. Milla.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said. It sounded strange coming out of my mouth. ‘How’s … Milla?’

  That sounded even stranger. A brand-new name. My brand-new sister.

  He leant his elbows heavily on his knees, clasping his hands in front of him like a prayer.

  ‘She’s having her first scan tomorrow,’ he said. ‘To see how she’s doing.’

  I felt bad that I hadn’t spent more time with him these past weeks. If he hadn’t come by to watch my footy those few times, I wouldn’t have seen him at all.

  ‘What sort of scan?’ I asked.

  ‘Brain scan,’ he said.

  ‘What for?’

  He looked down at his hands. His prayerful hands.

  ‘She’s very prem,’ he finally said, a ploddingness in each of his words. Like he felt the same as me – could barely be bothered to form the words inside his brain and push them out his mouth. ‘The doctors have said she has something like a sixty per cent chance of surviving, and of that sixty per cent chance, there’s something like a seventy-five per cent risk there’ll be something seriously wrong with her. Permanently. If they don’t give her enough oxygen, she could suffer brain damage. If she gets too much oxygen, she could go blind. It’s a real balancing act for the doctors at the moment.’

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, collecting himself.

  ‘So many terrible things for a tiny wee baby to have to deal with,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry you had to find out like this. That Tosca was pregnant.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, leaning over and puttin
g my arms around him. I could hardly look at him when he seemed so fragile. It was like seeing him undressed, out of his suit, his emotions right there for anyone to see. ‘I saw the pregnancy test, when I was over at your place all those weeks back.’

  He puffed a slight laugh out his nose and sat back from me, his emotions back in their suit.

  ‘You did, huh? Tosca said she’d left it in the bathroom rubbish bin. We hadn’t expected you to come around, remember? And we’d only just found out. We were a bit shell-shocked ourselves.’

  ‘But I don’t understand. How can she have only found out two months ago, and now the baby’s born? Milla’s born?’

  ‘Tosca was very sick when she was younger,’ Dad said, the top button of his emotions undoing again. But just the top button this time. I could deal with that. ‘She was in hospital for quite a long time. Missed out on a lot of school. The doctors told her she’d never be able to have a baby. She did keep saying to me that she thought she was putting on weight, but she didn’t think anything of the periods she’d missed – they were never regular for her anyway, and she simply never considered the fact that she might be pregnant.’

  ‘She wasn’t looking fat when I saw her.’

  Dad laughed, a full laugh this time. ‘Well, she’ll be pleased to hear that. She was, what, nearly twenty weeks when she finally did the test. The test you found. You wouldn’t have expected her to look terribly pregnant at that stage.’

  ‘Can I go see her?’ I asked him.

  ‘Milla?’

  ‘Yeah. And Tosca.’

  His face crumpled. And together, the two of us sat on my bed in my old bedroom at Grandpa’s and mingled our tears, crying for each other, for ourselves, for Milla, for friendship, for all of it.

  #

  Harley listened to all the messages on my phone for me and wrote down the details of every person. There were calls from TV journalists, the press, gossip mags and online sites, radio presenters, bloggers, vloggers. There were even messages from some celebrities – like Pip Quayle, and Esther Ruddick, and that cricketer who’d been slammed for being sexist.