by Kay Kerr
I’ve got so much homework to do, plus study, but my mind is tired, so I’m taking a brain break and ‘chilling out’. You’re probably falling off your chair right now, reading that. Haha, Erin chilling out. And no that is not me making a joke. Things change, I guess. Next time you see me I could be the most relaxed chiller you’ve ever seen. Probably not, but you never know.
I need to take a leaf out of your book. Wait, that’s not the saying, is it? A page out of your book? A leaf out of your tree? Or am I thinking about ‘turning over a new leaf’? Anyway, I’m going to get your iPod, that’s really all I’m saying. I’m trying music because it’s all I can think of.
Now get your act together and get back to me, all right? I want you to tell me everything in one big go.
Love, Erin
16 August
Dear Rudy,
Mum thinks I should work at Robins, the old-lady shop at the centre that is always playing Ed Sheeran songs too loud, you know the one. I’d have to wear hippy skirts and layered bead necklaces and jewelled sandals. I know I need to get a job in the next two weeks to be able to afford Schoolies, but Robins is not the place. It can’t be. I wish you’d have a word with her about it, Rudy, I really do. Mum has always listened to you. Maybe it’s because you made her a mum, or because you look so much like Pa.
Did you like working at Coles? You were there long enough. The odd hours and slacker camaraderie seemed to fit you just right. Was stacking shelves a relaxing, meditative kind of thing or was it more like slow, agonising torture? I think it could be nice. Maybe I’ll try to get a job at Coles. I wonder if your reputation will be a hindrance or a help. It could go either way. It was kind of a big thing you did, getting that job and paying board before Mum and Dad even asked for it. I should have told you that back then. You could have easily done nothing, and leant into the ‘dropkick’ label that people wanted to stick on you when TAFE didn’t work out. You could have applied for Centrelink and skated more and not even cared. But it’s good that you cared, even if it doesn’t feel like you do anymore. Maybe especially because of that.
Today was a rubbish day at school. My Monday timetable is my worst. I have history with Mrs Wallis, remember her? Then double maths, double biology and a magazine committee meeting after school. I try to break down Mondays into twenty-one twenty-minute sections, so I can tick them off as I go. At least I can sit with Dee in Wallis’s class. We sit up the back, not to be cool or anything but because I like watching my classmates like they’re a documentary. I get to see how they wear their uniforms and what it says about them. Some girls have their skirts taken up to the knee instead of mid-calf where it is supposed to be. My skirt is still mid-calf length. Uninterested boys—surfers and skaters and internet bros, your people—wear their socks pushed down to the ankle and their shirts untucked, ties loose or no tie. I remember Mum getting so mad at you for always losing your tie. They were expensive. The prefects have perfectly polished black shoes and perfect hair ribbons, which I think show off their perfect lives.
Wallis gets offended by talking and laughing in class, which is strange because it seems like for her class is the thing she has to do between cigarettes, not the other way around. Maybe it is because of Dee’s laugh—it does seem like she is being disobedient on purpose. Dee was telling me a funny story about Pointy Kathy this morning, in her usual loud way. If you can imagine Dee’s sing-songy voice and her wild hands gesturing, it will probably make the story funnier for you too.
‘She was fully going for it, flicking her hair and touching her face and belting out the high notes with her shitty singing voice. And as soon as she saw me she turned her radio down and went sooo red! She just acted like it never happened. I would have died from embarrassment. So cringe. It was hilarious, Brain, you should have seen her singing, like she was trying to be sexy in a music video clip or something.’
When Dee gets on a roll like that I feel like she should have her own talk show or something. She has so many opinions about things that to me don’t even seem important enough to think about. She has ‘hot takes’. You know Pointy Kathy; you said she was hot once. She’s like Taylor Swift’s blonder, taller, snootier sister. Her nickname is pretty self-explanatory. Everything about her is pointy—her knees, her elbows, her fingers, her chin, her nose, her words. The hard angles are so sharp she can cut you with a single look. I suppose she is quite pretty, that face where everything seems to have a purpose and is placed just so. Not like me. I am rounded, uneven and lumpy, like a jumbled mix of features pulled from a lucky dip. Chubby cheeks here, a rounded nose there; no consideration to how the overall picture comes together. I think you got the good parts of each of our parents, and I got the leftovers. Ollie got a mix of both, but sometimes I think he looks nothing like any of us and perhaps he was dropped into our family by aliens or something. But I wouldn’t trade my insides for Pointy Kathy’s outsides, no way. Not even with all of my challenges. She’s like a drug-detection dog that can pick up a whiff of insecurity a mile away, she always has been. She’ll uncover those insecurities and make you pay for daring to try to hide them at all. The first time I was in her sights it was because I didn’t wear makeup or shave my legs. I didn’t know I was supposed to. I know now.
Dee is so excited about formal, and she wants to talk about it almost as much as she wants to talk about Schoolies. Today was no different. She couldn’t wait to get started.
‘So, is Mitch excited? Is he all sorted with a suit and everything? Because I can send him some links if he’s having trouble.’
Mitch would definitely not take fashion tips from Dee, but I stopped myself before I mentioned that fact.
‘Oh yeah, he’s pumped,’ I said to Dee.
This isn’t technically true. He says he is looking forward to it in words, but his eyes say not. I just chose to tell Dee about the words rather than the real truth. I know you don’t like him, Rudy, so I’ve been trying not to mention him, but I’m writing to you about everything so it’s just something you’ll have to deal with. I don’t think it’s a bad relationship like you say. I think it’s just that maybe I’m bad at it, so I’m working on it. Just pretend I’m talking about someone else when you read his name, because I want to write about everything that’s going on. I need to. Dr Lim says I need to process. She says it is how we can work through what has happened and move forward as a family.
Dee is going to formal with Skyscraper Simon, you know him because he’s Damo’s younger brother, and just like Damo was the tallest guy in your year level, Skyscraper Simon is the tallest guy in ours. He has already booked them a limo and ordered a wrist corsage for Dee. It is sweet how excited about it he is, in this dorky, lanky kind of way. He talks to Dee about it every day after home class, she says. They are going to look incredible together and I feel a little happy/sad to think about it. Melancholy I guess is the word for that feeling. Or maybe bittersweet. Neither of those really fit. Sometimes I think we need more words in our language to describe feelings. There are so many names for things, like how somewhere you go for food can be a cafe or a restaurant or a diner or a shop or a bistro or an eatery or a cafeteria or a food hall. But it is so difficult to find a word that is just right for describing how I’m feeling.
Remember how Skyscraper Simon was my friend in year eight and nine? We used to see bands and movies together, but Mitch doesn’t think guys can want to be just friends with me, which is funny because he’s the only guy who has ever wanted to be anything else. I stopped replying to Simon’s texts when Mitch and I got together, which felt like the right thing at the time but now it feels like maybe it wasn’t.
It was hard to shake the happy/sad feeling, like it’s hard to shake pretty much any feeling that takes over my body, but I tried to get as excited as Dee was telling me about her latest styling idea.
‘I was thinking of getting like a sleek kind of Blake Lively style knotted up-do—I’ll send you the pics—and then wearing big statement earrings. I’d have to ditch the ne
cklace, and I really liked that gold one I sent you last week. I don’t know, maybe I’ll pretend I’m a celebrity stylist, get both and decide on the night.’
There’s so much more to formal for a girl. You just had to buy a suit and brush your hair, and I don’t even think you did that. You just shoved it in a man-bun. I was trying to listen to what Dee was saying and listen to Mrs Wallis at the same time because she was saying something about what would be on the final exam. I didn’t catch it all, but I heard ‘Marxism’ and ‘communism’ so I think I’m all over it. I’ve really enjoyed this topic, China in a historical context, and I’ve done plenty of extra reading. I’ll probably end up emailing Dee my notes, because she is not all over it at all.
Dee is passionate about magazines like Vogue and she has a good eye for fashion stuff. I don’t really know what to say when she talks about it, so when the bell rang I was the first out the door. By lunch I only had three things on my cringe list:
An embarrassingly incorrect answer in history because I wasn’t paying proper attention
Not saying hi to a girl who had been my friend in year eight
A clumsy stumble in front of my entire home group.
These moments are now on the highlights reel that plays as I’m trying to fall asleep at night.
Just like when you were at school here, and probably until the end of time, the biggest group sits in the quadrangle. I sit with them because Dee does, but I don’t know if I’d call them my friends. If it is Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, they catch up on all the gossip from the weekend, and Thursday and Friday they plan what to do the next. Every week it’s the same. It’s another one of those rules. We also talk about Schoolies every day, of course. I have certain comments and conversations prepared in my head, so I don’t freeze and forget how to talk if someone asks for my input. I can shuffle them around and amend them to fit, depending on who is talking and what they want to know. I find it’s best to ask people questions, because everyone seems to like talking about themselves the most. It’s something I’ve always done, I think, as a way of coping in social situations.
I’m glad you always say how much better things are after high school, Rudy, because if this is the best time of my life, well, I think that would be awful. Some days I love it here, because I have a class I like and I know the rules and Dee will say something that makes me think she understands. Other days I hate it, like any time I have to use one of my scripted dialogue bits, or if I know the answer in class but someone else puts their hand up before I’ve worked up the courage to, and sometimes I swing back and forth between the two feelings so many times neither of them feels real.
Honestly though, Rudy, even when you were underselling it you gave me such a false idea of what high school would be like. You told me how it was for you, not how it would be for me. Shiny people don’t experience things the same way as the rest of us. That’s what being shiny is. So let me tell you what it’s like for me.
While I was eating my yoghurt today I had to listen to the story of how Monobrow Ryan made out with a girl at an open house party on the weekend, after the whole party had seen her throw up in the pool. She wouldn’t let Ryan go any further than that, even though she was incredibly drunk. She made the right choice, obviously. And then Freckle Ben was paying him out about it. He said she was ‘busted’, ‘hanging’ and ‘buckled’. Dee says all of those words mean ugly, as if Ryan or Ben are anything but. Ryan was laughing along as if he agreed. So even if they were good looking, they’re rotten on the inside, which is worse. Charming, right?
As if I don’t already find names and faces hard enough to remember as it is, there are ten Jessicas, eight Kates, eight Ryans and eleven Bens in our year level. I know it’s probably a coincidence but I think it explains so much. Kind of like how I use ‘different wiring’ to explain my brain, the crazy number of same-named kids represents how the same this place is to me. It’s like there hasn’t been an original thought between an entire generation of parents in a ten-kilometre radius, and the sameness has been bred into their offspring. At this rate the entire next generation at Cleveland College will all just be called Jessica or Ben. Then everyone will need to implement my nicknaming system.
The only Jessica I’m really friends with at the moment is Jessica Rabbit. You know, Jessica Doyle. I gave her that nickname because she has big boobs and she dyed her brown hair bright red and she talks in a low voice whenever guys are around like that cartoon character that no one really knows outside of costume parties and GIFs. It’s strange because any other time her voice is high and normal. No one else seems to notice, but Dee said it’s all she can think about when she talks to Jessica, since I pointed it out. Jessica Rabbit has this habit of taking other people’s food, and, all credit to her, she has the method down pat. It starts with a question about what you are eating. She’ll say, ‘What have you got for lunch? That looks great.’ She says it sweetly, never taking her eyes off the food in your hands. You reply with whatever it is—chicken sandwich, salad, a muffin. It really doesn’t matter. And then she’ll say how incredible it sounds, and that she’s never tried the tuckshop’s chicken sandwich/ salad/muffin, urging you to offer her a taste. The set-up means you would seem rude not to offer her some, even though she has definitely had a chicken sandwich from the school tuckshop before. I know for a fact she has, because I’ve seen her have one more than twenty-eight times in the last three months alone. And she always has her own food—I think she just enjoys convincing others to hand over half of their lunch. It makes her look as happy as if she was talking to a cute guy in her strange, deep voice. And if anyone else ever forgot their lunch, she will be so heavily engrossed in her phone it causes her to temporarily lose all hearing until someone else shares with them.
I started buying two sandwiches just so I could eat mine in peace. Mostly I end up eating them both though, because Jessica Rabbit doesn’t seem to want something if you’re willing to hand it over from the outset. That’s why I think it isn’t actually about the food.
My stomach is funny about eating; I can’t let myself get too hungry or too full. Dad calls me fussy, but that’s not it. If I get too hungry my stomach pangs turn to queasiness and I throw up. It happens at least once a week. What kind of ridiculous reaction to hunger is that? And if I eat too much I definitely throw up. I wouldn’t have survived long in hunter-gatherer times. Men would be out hunting, women would be cleaning their caves, or whatever it was they did, and I would just be in the corner somewhere throwing my guts up. Eventually they’d probably eat me. Donuts are the only food that bring me joy, and that’s not even really because of how they taste. They’re like the stuffing from the inside of a teddy bear, keeping it shaped properly. They make me feel like I am here.
The rest of the day went exactly to schedule, and my cringe list was only at ten by the time I got home. I’m happy with ten—it’s a nice even, manageable number. I’ve been as high as thirty-two this year, which is really bad. I’ll try to beat my score every day until I get it down to three. I’d be asleep in less than an hour at night if I only had three cringe list things to think about. I haven’t been as low as three in the last year, though.
Dr Lim told me to stop using my cringe list, but it’s not that easy and anyway I think it’s a better tool for managing outbursts than writing to you has been, so far. How is it even that different anyway? They both make me reflect on difficult moments and address how they can be fixed. I have a target and I’m working to beat it every day—what is wrong with that? I’ll talk to her about it on Wednesday, and maybe I can negotiate one for the other. Even if she says I have to stop my cringe list, how would she ever know if I kept it running? And how would I even know how to turn it off?
I’ve written too many questions, so I’m finishing this letter now. I hate reading letters that are all questions, so sorry about this one. But you don’t have to answer the questions; they’re mostly rhetorical.
Hurry up and write back, Rudy. Tell me something abo
ut where you are, anything. Just tell me about the weather. Is it nice? It probably isn’t as nice as it is here at the moment. The jacarandas will bloom soon. Just saying.
Love, Erin
17 August
Dear Rudy,
Did you go to therapy, when you were having that dark time? I know you were on antidepressants because I saw them in the bathroom cabinet, right there next to my face wash. It’s strange, but I don’t think we’re the kind of family that talks about therapy out loud, even though I think we all actually go. Maybe not Dad, even though he probably needs it most of all.
I knew things weren’t okay, but I didn’t know how to ask you about it so I didn’t say anything at all. I wish I did, just so you know. I wish a lot of things. I tried to make things easier on you, like choosing shows to watch on TV that I knew you’d like, and letting you have first shower. That doesn’t seem like much written down, but it was all I could think of. And when you dumped it all out that day in the car, I remember smiling and then thinking you probably thought I was a jerk for smiling at your pain, but I was happy to be worthy of hearing it. It sucks that you left as soon as things started to get better for you, for us. I would have liked to do more listening, more sharing. We’ll get that again one day, though. And there will be a lot to say.
My session with Dr Lim went for two hours this afternoon, which I know means she and Mum are worried about me. We never talk for more than an hour unless I’ve had a bad outburst or Mum has yelled more than twice in a week. Dr Lim is helping me to ‘retrain my brain’ and giving me exercises to practise at home. She calls it cognitive behavioural therapy, which sounds like some kind of torture done in an old mental asylum, but it’s actually just a way of thinking about things. Did your doctor ever get you doing that kind of thing? Dr Lim says I need to be more mindful of how I talk to myself, but I don’t feel like I really have a choice about that. I’m working on it though. When she looks at me over her notebook and asks a question with her eyebrows raised, I compulsively start talking to fill the air, even if I don’t know what kind of answer I’m going to give.
