My Life as a Hashtag

by Gabrielle Williams

  Harley held my phone up to my ear and pressed replay on one of the messages.

  ‘Hi, this is Brant Borgman with a message for MC.’ I looked across at Harley, my heart perking up at hearing his cute English accent. ‘I just wanted to say I know the media can be brutal. Though I can’t even imagine how you’re feeling at the moment. For what it’s worth, I thought the videos were classic. If there’s anything I can do to help, give me a call. My agent’s number is …’ And he recited a number. ‘We’re playing a gig in Melbourne tomorrow night,’ he went on, ‘if you want to come, and bring some friends. Backstage passes, of course.’

  Backstage passes to see Brant Borgman and the Filthy Guys. Of course.

  ‘You want me to call them back?’ Harley asked. ‘The Filthy Guys. Backstage passes.’

  I shook my head. ‘Nuh.’

  ‘But you love the Filthy Guys,’ he said.

  ‘It’s just a band,’ I said. ‘I don’t really care.’

  He looked at my phone, all the messages that still hadn’t been answered, then put it down on the bed between us.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ he said, running his tongue over his lips, as if he were oiling them for the news he was about to tell me.

  There was silence for a moment. Then a longer moment.

  ‘I’m gay,’ he said finally, ‘and Seth is my … ahem, well, yeah … Seth is my boyfriend. I should have told you ages ago. But I’m just getting used to saying it myself. Hearing how it sounds coming out of my mouth. We’ve been together since uni started.’

  Harley was gay?

  But he didn’t seem gay.

  He didn’t look gay.

  And then I realised what a stupid thing that was to think. What did gay even look like?

  ‘I wanted to tell you, but then I was worried about how it would change things,’ Harley went on. ‘And, you know, then Dad was off with Tosca, he was this big bad stud around town, and here I was, gay. And I feel so …’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, of course I don’t, but, you know, we all grow up with fairytales about getting married and being dad, mum and the kids. Seth calls it my inner homophobe – he says I can’t deal with the fact that I’m gay because I’ve got the fantasy in my head of how I’m supposed to be.’

  ‘Your inner homophobe?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You’re gay?’

  He nodded again.

  ‘But why haven’t you told me till now?’ I asked. ‘As if I’d care.’

  ‘Like I said, I’m kind of still getting used to it myself. Getting used to the idea that this isn’t just a phase – it’s real. I like guys. That’s how I am.’

  Harley bit his lip. I could see he was struggling with how much to say. How much to tell me.

  ‘I got drunk on New Year’s Eve,’ Harley finally said quietly, ‘and I made a move on Wilder.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I was out of it,’ he continued, ‘and I thought I’d go for it. I’d liked him forever. What’s not to love about Wilder, right? I wanted to be with him.’

  He stopped talking, as if his breath had been taken away when he thought back to that night.

  ‘And, I mean, he was kind of good about it,’ he went on eventually. ‘Said he didn’t swing that way, didn’t care if that’s how I rolled, that it didn’t change our friendship. But I felt like I’d been slapped. I was embarrassed. I’d misread him. I’d thought he liked me.’

  ‘But Wilder does like you.’

  ‘Not the way I liked him. And the next time I saw him, he was friendly, but you know, friendly. As in “friendly”. There’s nothing worse than “friendly” coming from a friend.’

  I knew what he meant. When Liv had been all supportive after we’d first heard Anouk was having a party, I hadn’t been able to stand it either.

  Although, come to think of it, I could have done with supportive Liv right now.

  ‘Things had changed,’ Harley went on. ‘Even though Wilder said it wasn’t going to change things between us, it did. Of course it did. And I felt like he’d have told everyone, all the guys – all the people I’d been hanging out with since I was a kid, all of who would now be “friendly” towards me.’

  He held his hands up in air quotes around ‘friendly’. Harley has beautiful hands. Thin, elegant piano hands, my mum calls them.

  I looked at my own hands, sitting in my lap. Turned them over like they were on a rotisserie. Examined them. Stared at them.

  Hands are so weird. It’s like they’re completely independent from the rest of your body. You don’t even have to think ‘move now’ or ‘tap’ or ‘spread out like a sun’ – they just do it, all on their own.

  I noticed that my thumbnail was digging in under the nail of my middle finger on the other hand to scrape out a sliver of dirt.

  ‘I went through a shitty time after that,’ Harley said to me. ‘Not as shitty as what you’re going through at the moment, but definitely bad. I felt like no one was there for me.’

  ‘That’s not fair. I would have been there for you. It makes me sound like I’m a shitty sister. Then again, maybe I am. I’m a shitty friend. It makes sense that I’d be a shitty sister. Hashtag MC what a B.’

  ‘You’re not a shitty sister. You kept asking me, but I didn’t want to tell. But then I started uni, and met some new people, met Seth, and yeah … you know what? I’m happy.’

  I tried to remember what happy felt like. It was hard to capture it.

  ‘I remember,’ Harley said, ‘when everything happened with Wilder, it really got to me. They were my friends, my tribe, they’d kicked me out. I mean, not in so many words, but basically I felt completely alone.’

  A calmness settled over me, Harley’s arms around me, his energy reviving me.

  ‘You know what happens when people reject you?’ he asked me, his arms keeping me safe. ‘Physically, what happens? We studied this in psych recently. It actually triggers the same part in the brain as a physical injury. And the reason it triggers that response is because back in the old days – you know, caveman days – if a caveman was kicked out of the tribe, he wouldn’t survive. Not on his own. It was really important to stay in with the tribe. So the pain was a warning to change what you were doing, so you’d keep safe with the tribe.’

  ‘But I can’t change what I’ve done,’ I said into his chest. ‘I would – seriously, I promise, I would – but I can’t. I can’t do anything about it.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said, leaning back from me and checking my face, as if the pain and hurt would be appearing on my skin like bruises and lacerations. ‘All I’m saying is, don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s going to hurt, literally, but maybe those friendships were getting to their use-by date anyway. You’ve been friends with those guys since forever. Maybe it’s time to move on.’

  I felt my face fall at the thought of not hanging out with them anymore.

  ‘I couldn’t imagine not being friends with Wilder and everyone,’ he went on. ‘But now I’ve got these fantastic new friends, and they know exactly who I am. They don’t have a problem with the fact that I’m gay; that’s just who I am. No biggie. You’re a fantastic chick. You’re smart, and you get along with everyone – you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Yeah, everyone. All my friends love me.’

  ‘Usually,’ he said, smiling down at me. ‘Usually you get along with everyone. Don’t do what I did and stay in your room the whole time thinking bad things about yourself. I can tell you for a fact: that’s not the way to happiness. I considered dropping out of uni before I’d even started – that’s how down I was. But something told me I should go anyway. And it was the best thing I could have done. Beating up on myself was not a good strategy. I don’t want you doing that to yourself.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what it will be like when I go back to school,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry about school. School is next week. Or the week after that. You want everything to go back
to the way it’s always been – but maybe the way it’s always been wasn’t as awesome as you thought it was. Maybe things can be better, and you just haven’t seen the new better yet.’

  I didn’t want to hear any more. I knew he was trying to rally me, make me feel better, but I didn’t.

  I didn’t feel better, and I couldn’t fake it.

  Chapter 22

  Jed texted that afternoon. ‘Whatcha doing?’

  Yeah. Jed. After all these months.

  I didn’t answer.

  He texted again. ‘Are you ignoring me?’

  After everything, here he was, on the end of a text, asking if I was ignoring him.

  Like he hadn’t ignored me since his party. Like he hadn’t ruined my life.

  But he was the only one nice enough to contact me now. And I was curious to know why. So I wrote, ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Down road from ur joint.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Park. With dog.’

  ‘I’m not home. I’m at my grandpa’s.’

  ‘What park’s near his place?’

  I knew I shouldn’t text him back. Didn’t want to make things worse. But seriously, how much worse could they have got?

  ‘McKeon Park,’ I texted. ‘U know it?’

  ‘Sure. See you in 5.’

  #

  The Gun was running around the park when I got there, sniffing at the base of trees, looking up into the branches, checking for wildlife that might need taking down, fluffy possums that might be good to eat.

  When Jed saw me, his eyes crinkled into a smile. Despite myself, I felt a skip in my chest. A bump. A jolt.

  We walked around the park, me with my hands jammed into my pockets, him pushing the hair back behind my ear, putting his arms around my shoulders and bringing me in close to him, laughing, talking – acting normal. The weather was August-cold, bitter and icy, but without the pushy wind that had hassled everyone back in autumn.

  It felt nice having Jed’s body close to mine, keeping me warm. Hell, it felt nice to have anybody who wasn’t a member of my direct family, and therefore forced to still love me, speaking to me at all.

  We stopped at a bench under a big old tree. The branches of the tree cantilevered out over us, creating a leafy nook for us to nestle into.

  When is a nook not a nook? When it’s the name of a friend who I totally betrayed.

  Jed dragged me to sit down next to him. Put his arm back around me, and took hold of my chin in his hands.

  ‘Why haven’t I seen you in so long?’ he said.

  I could feel my breath catching in my ribs.

  ‘I saw those videos you posted,’ he said. ‘They were pretty funny.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I said, ‘everyone thinks they’re hilarious.’

  ‘How about how viral it’s gone? You couldn’t have planned that, even if you’d tried.’

  ‘Yeah, whoo hoo. Lucky me.’

  ‘You’re famous,’ he said. And he leant forward and kissed me, pressing his lips against mine, messing with my head, wrecking my already-wrecked life. It felt so great. Just the two of us, his tongue and my tongue tasting each other, our bodies connecting first through our mouths, and then igniting along the points of contact between us. His arms, my shoulders. His hands running down my back. His thighs under my thighs as he pulled me to sit on his knee. His mouth pressing against my throat.

  Like that night at his party.

  The night that had started everything.

  I pulled away and looked at him. ‘You never called me,’ I said.

  ‘What are you talking about? I texted you just before,’ he whispered, his mouth pushing back down onto my throat.

  I felt that warmth, that contact, his mouth on my neck, and weakened again. Jed didn’t hate me. Jed was speaking to me. More than speaking. He moved his mouth back up to mine and kissed me again, the two of us cushioned from the cold of the park, the warmth of our bodies heating up the air around us, creating our own external layer.

  His hand moved under my jumper, under my shirt, finding the bare skin of my stomach, sliding behind to the bare skin of my back, and then creeping around again to my stomach, reaching up further under my jumper.

  Someone in the distance whistled to their dog, the high pitch slipping into my ears and jagging my brain.

  It occurred to me that I’d been hoping for him to say, I called you plenty of times, but you never answered. You never called me back. All those messages I left you. I thought you weren’t keen.

  Even after everything that had happened, I’d been hoping that. And I’d say to him, My mum put a spy app on my phone, which meant I wasn’t getting any of your messages.

  But no. He didn’t say any of those things. Because he’d never called.

  Harley was right. He wasn’t that into me. It was only now, with everything that was going on, that he wanted to see me.

  Because I was famous.

  I pulled back from him. Pulled my jumper down. ‘I have to go,’ I said.

  ‘Stay.’ He pulled me back towards him.

  I pulled myself back away. ‘Seriously, I’ve got to go,’ I repeated.

  He folded his arms across his body to protect himself from the chill. The chill from me, or the chill from the weather, I wasn’t sure which.

  Jed had loomed huge in mine and Anouk’s lives these past few months, and we hadn’t even registered as a blip on his radar.

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t believe you’re what this is all about,’ I said to him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This whole thing, this fight with Anouk, all this stuff’ – and I waved my arms around to show him that I was talking about everyone in the entire world who hated me, the suspension, the fallout from my friends – ‘all for you.’

  He grinned. ‘I’m flattered,’ he said, grabbing for my hand again.

  ‘Omigod.’ I yanked my hand out of his grip. ‘It’s not a compliment. I wouldn’t be with you if you were the last guy on earth.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m pretty sure, if the whole of the human race depended on us for survival, you’d be with me.’

  I walked out of the park.

  Over him. Well and truly.

  #

  When I got back to Grandpa’s, I opened up a whole new email.

  ‘Dear Anouk,’ I wrote, my thumbs jostling for position on the keyboard, ‘I can’t believe all of this was over Jed. If I had the choice now of swimming with you or Jed, I’d pick you every time. And not just because of how everything’s turned out. I’d choose you because I know you’d be more fun to swim with – I’d have more laughs with you than I’d ever have with someone like him.

  ‘You’ve always been one of my favourite people, and I can’t believe I’ve hurt you so badly.

  ‘The papers and your mum are right – I’m a bully. I just didn’t realise it.

  ‘Those videos were a horrible thing to send out into the world. And the stuff I wrote in my Year 9 diary – I mean, what sort of a person says that about her friends?

  ‘I hacked your Facebook account the Monday after your party. Switched your language to Pirate English, liked all these bad products, poked all these guys.

  ‘I’m a bully, and I hate that that’s who I am.

  ‘You probably won’t believe that I didn’t realise I was a bully. And fair enough. But honestly, I didn’t think what I was doing was bullying. I just thought I was getting stuff off my chest.

  ‘How piss-weak is that.

  ‘It sounds like an excuse. The worst excuse ever.

  ‘I don’t expect you to reply to this.

  ‘You might not even read it.

  ‘But I needed to let you know that I’ve finally realised what sort of person I am.

  ‘I’m so sorry.

  ‘Love MC.’

  Chapter 23

  Mrs Willis had said she hoped something else would find its way onto the front page of the newspapers by Monday. And then I could come back to school.

  Sorry, M
rs Willis, but welcome to my world of shit.

  There were articles headlined ‘Bullying is not just an “elite” problem’ and ‘Single-sex schools fail our girls’ and ‘Bullying with a $30,000 price tag’.

  Apparently some parents had been ringing the school and threatening to withdraw their daughters; refusing to pay their school fees.

  And then there was me. Sitting in Grandpa’s front room, with Mrs Willis and Mum and Dad and Harley and Grandpa.

  We couldn’t meet up at school because of the press. Ditto our house – still. So Mum had suggested we meet at Grandpa’s. I hated that Grandpa had to witness everything.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Mrs Willis said, sitting on the couch, her hands fitting into each other like the clasp on a nanna bag, ‘that … There’s no easy way to say this. A decision’s been made to ask MC to leave the school.’

  I could feel my chest boom with the news.

  It was as bad as it could be.

  It couldn’t be any worse.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Mrs Willis went on, ‘but this business hasn’t died down. Annick’s mother isn’t going to let it rest until some drastic action is taken.’ She looked me in the eye. ‘She wants you expelled, MC, and the board has decided that it’s probably for the best.’

  ‘Best for who?’ Grandpa said.

  ‘Best for the school,’ Mrs Willis said. ‘I’m not going to pretend this is the best for MC, because obviously the best thing would be for her to stay at school. I don’t agree with the decision, but it’s been taken out of my hands. The board has said they want her gone, and I only hold so much influence.’

  You probably expect that I cried. I didn’t. I didn’t have any more tears left. No more sadness. I was empty.

  ‘I don’t want you to think we’re abandoning her, though,’ Mrs Willis went on. ‘I’m speaking to—’

  ‘This is your version of not abandoning her?’ Mum said, interrupting Mrs Willis. ‘Booting her out?’

  Mrs Willis sighed. ‘Julie,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders, ‘we’re all trying our best. At the moment, I’ve managed to convince the board not to insist that you repay the school fees.