Snake Bite

by Christie Thompson

  ‘Jez!’ Lukey was knocking on the door. ‘What’re you doing in there? There’s a wicked sunset. Jez? I can hear you laughing to yourself and I just want you to know you are the weirdest person ever.’

  A few minutes later I joined the others on the patio. Against Me!’s ‘Sink, Florida, Sink’ was playing on the stereo, the sun had dropped to the horizon, blazing bright orange, the sky streaked with pink, purple and peach.

  ‘Did you put this on?’ I asked Lukey.

  ‘Laura did.’ Lukey grinned. ‘I told her this was your song.’

  ‘Our song,’ I reminded him, thinking of all the times we’d been high or pilling or drunk and sang along to every word at the top of our lungs.

  But we didn’t sing along this time. We sat, just listening. I felt so happy and so sad at the same time. Happy because I could feel every part of my body tingling with the ecstasy, and I felt like I was glowing from the inside out; happy because I was with Lukey, my best friend for the last five years. Sad because I knew I would never be able to feel this good without drugs, and sad because it felt like one of those nights where you knew that afterwards nothing would ever be the same again.

  When the sun disappeared, we went into the lounge room and sank into the plush cushions of the modular sofa. Laura’s house was decorated in that kind of half boho-Asian-eclectic style, with oriental rugs and paisley floor cushions and giant wooden giraffe statues. But it had heaps of other quirky cool shit, like the oak-coloured bass guitar propped on a stand in one corner.

  ‘Whose bass?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘Mine.’ Laura sounded a little smug. ‘I’ve played since I was thirteen.’

  ‘Jez plays guitar,’ Lukey said.

  ‘We should jam!’ Laura was eager.

  ‘Where’re your parents?’ I asked Laura, changing the subject. I wasn’t interested in jamming with her.

  ‘In Melbourne. They’re getting stuff tied up there and organising the last of Dana’s stuff to be moved. She collects vintage bicycles.’

  ‘Heaps rad!’ Lukey commented, shifting his head to look at Laura. They were at either end of the larger sofa. She had her feet up on a cushion near his leg, and he was sitting, legs spread wide, kind of facing her.

  ‘Yeah, Dana’s a rad bitch.’ Laura laughed. ‘Heaps more laid-back than Joanie. But I love ’em both.’

  ‘I live with my dad,’ Lukey offered. ‘He’s pretty cool, too. Had me when he was only twenty-one, so he’s still young and shit. We smoke joints together and he knows I deal E and that and he doesn’t give a fuck.’

  ‘Cool.’ Laura grinned. ‘I’d hate to have hectic parents. You got any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘Yeah, I got an older brother, Mark, who’s a massive fuckin’ redneck arsehole. I wanna fucking kill the cunt.’

  I twisted my head, surprised by the venom in Lukey’s voice. It was true, Mark had always beaten up Lukey and bullied him, but I hadn’t heard him talk about Mark like that before, so fully intense.

  Lukey changed his tone slightly. ‘And I’ve got a little sister, Ash, she’s thirteen. Jez’s mum’s pretty awesome, too, hey, Jez?’ Lukey said, shifting his posture a bit to include me in the conversation.

  ‘My mum is . . . alright. She keeps things interesting, I guess.’

  ‘That’s heaps cool, but. It would suck to get old and just be boring, too. I just want to party and get messy forever.’ Laura sighed.

  ‘Oath,’ Lukey agreed.

  ‘Yeah . . .’ I echoed half-heartedly.

  ‘Hey, you guys want some wine? We’ve got, like, a couple of bottles stashed somewhere around here.’

  ‘Awesome,’ me and Lukey said in unison, and laughed.

  ‘Heeey!’ Laura re-emerged from the kitchen. ‘Look what I found! Something even better!’ She held up a bottle of Absolut Vodka in one hand and a bottle of Coke in the other.

  ‘Yeeeew!’ Lukey whooped. ‘Let’s get loose.’

  We went into the kitchen and Laura sloshed vodka into highball glasses, about a third full, and then added a dash of Coke.

  ‘May the best of the past be the worst of the future,’ she said, and raised her glass. ‘First drink is a skull; loser has to take a shot of straight vodka.’

  ‘That practically is straight vodka,’ I observed, holding up my glass full of pale brown liquid.

  ‘Cheers!’ Lukey said.

  ‘Cheers!’ Laura and I echoed.

  We clunked our glasses and bottomed up. As soon as the vodka hit my mouth I knew I was going to lose. My eyes watered.

  ‘Uggghh,’ I groaned. ‘I can’t do it.’

  Lukey won. Laura got a shot glass out of the cupboard and filled it to the brim.

  ‘You’re up again, Jez.’ She handed me the shot.

  I held my nose and tipped it down my throat and struggled to swallow. I could feel it burning all the way down to my empty stomach. I mixed myself a third drink, weaker, and it went down easy. My head started to swim almost straightaway. Total buzz.

  I swaggered around the living room, kind of thrusting my hips forward as I walked. My vision had softened a little around the edges and I swayed down the hall to find a mirror. After I’d repainted my eyes with soft glittery pale-blue shadow and smudgy black liner I felt sexy, especially next to fat Laura. I went back to the others, grabbed Lukey and pulled him to his feet to dance with me, slinging my arms around his shoulders and laughing louder than I should have at nothing in particular. I danced harder, obnoxiously, and said obnoxious things. I might have even told Laura she might like to lose some weight. I can’t be sure if it was something I said or just thought before I bent over double in an armchair, my chin on my own chest.

  When I woke up, groggy, the television was on and Lukey and Laura were lying wrapped in each other’s arms on the other end of the modular couch. At first I thought they had fallen asleep, too. Then I saw that they were kissing. Laura had one arm up the back of Lukey’s shirt and her fingers tangled in his hair. My stomach lurched like I was gunna vom. I might have even made a noise like ‘ugh!’ then I looked away, got up abruptly, and banged my shin on the coffee table.

  ‘Ooooow fuckety fucking ow!’ I hissed, rubbing my sore shin.

  Lukey and Laura turned their heads my way.

  ‘What’d you do?’ Laura exclaimed with a giddy giggle. ‘Jez?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I snapped. ‘I’m all good. Go back to whatever you were doing.’

  ‘You okay, Jez?’ Lukey asked. ‘We thought you were asleep.’

  ‘I woke up,’ I said, in a matter-of-fact way that probably sounded bitchy, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to get the hell out of that room. ‘I’m going outside for a smoke.’

  I wandered into the kitchen, disoriented. The effects of the E were draining from my body. The bottle of Absolut was still on the kitchen counter, two-thirds full. I grabbed it and took it outside to the patio before collapsing in one of the deckchairs and beginning to swig. And smoke.

  I kept expecting Lukey to come outside and join me. He didn’t. An hour or so passed. I drank a third more of the bottle of vodka, smoked half a dozen cigarettes out of Laura’s packet then moved onto Lukey’s pouch of rolling tobacco, chain-smoking until the sky started to lighten to a dull orange.

  When I woke up again I was stretched out on Laura’s sofa in the lounge room in a pool of hot yellow sunlight, drenched in sweat. I didn’t remember how I got there. As soon as I stood up my head reeled. I didn’t have a centre of gravity, but I lurched across the room anyway, arms flailing for something to hold onto, my stomach heaving with the sudden forward motion. I rasped up a few shaky burps and shuddered violently. Oh. My. Fucking. God. I want to die.

  I staggered to the bathroom and threw myself cheek-down upon the cold tiled floor, groaning.

  ‘You orright?’

  Lukey appeared in my peripheral vision, slouching in the doorframe of the bathroom, grinning in amusement at me, in starfish mode, on the floor.

  ‘Come down to the kitchen when you’
re done being a drama queen.’

  ‘You . . . cunt,’ I managed to gasp. ‘I’m not being dramatic. I’m dying.’

  Lukey doubled over laughing. ‘I’m not heaps surprised, hey. You’re a vodka pig. And you smoked all Laura’s smokes.’ He kicked my foot with his sneakered toe. ‘Come down to the kitchen,’ he urged. ‘Laura is making hash stacks, it’s her special recipe.’

  I rolled over onto my back. ‘What the fuck is a hash stack?’ I asked.

  ‘Laura’s recipe. Hash browns spread with vegemite and stacked with mushrooms in between,’ Lukey informed me.

  ‘So no actual hash in ’em.’ I tried to sound cool. ‘Sounds shit.’

  ‘Could be pretty good.’

  ‘Could be pretty bad.’

  ‘Are you just gunna lie on the bathroom floor all day, then?’

  ‘Help me,’ I pleaded, pathetically lifting one limp arm in his direction.

  ‘You’re such a whinger when you’re hung-over.’ He stuck out his hand and pulled me up.

  ‘Be gentle!’ I cried. ‘My head feels like it’s gunna fall off.’ I fell against his chest. I breathed in, enjoying the sharp smell of boy sweat mixed with cheap deodorant.

  ‘Piggyback?’ he offered, suddenly kind, and stroked my hair.

  I met his eyes for moment. He looked away, embarrassed. I felt my face grow hot.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He easily hoisted my fifty kilos of dead weight onto his back and trudged down the hall to the kitchen where Laura, wearing a leopard print bra and boxer shorts, rolls of white fat sitting like kneaded dough around her middle, was plonking down big plates laden with greasy hash browns and mushrooms. She looked up and grinned.

  ‘What’s the matter, Jez?!’ she crowed. Her shrill voice sounded like a freakin’ carillon in my head. ‘You look like shiiiit!’

  I squeezed my eyes shut and buried my head against Lukey’s shoulder. ‘Shut up, Laura. I feel like balls, okay?’ I snapped. ‘Just put me on the couch, Lukey.’

  Lukey didn’t stop, though. He walked straight out the open sliding doors onto the patio, then across the backyard towards the pool. My slow brain finally figured out what was going on.

  ‘No . . . no, please Lukey . . . LUKEY!’ I was still screaming as he hurled me over the side of the pool into the water, fully clothed.

  When I surfaced, coughing, spluttering and blowing water out of my nose, Lukey and Laura were standing on the patio pissing themselves. I death-stared them with my most venomous glare, but it just made them laugh harder.

  ‘You look like that evil dead chick in The Ring,’ Lukey choked, wiping tears from his eyes. ‘Coming out of the murky water with hair all in your face like that.’

  ‘It’s not fucking funny, Luke,’ I spat, hoisting myself out of the pool and collapsing over the edge, still coughing up water from my aching lungs.

  ‘Oooooh, Luke,’ Lukey taunted. ‘She never calls me Luke,’ he informed Laura. ‘She’s really mad. We better stay out of her way or she’ll claw us.’

  ‘You gotta see the funny side, Jez,’ Laura giggled. ‘You look hilarious, like Cousin It from The Addams Family.’

  I stripped off my wet jeans and t-shirt and lay on a sun lounger, sulking, in my undies and bra drying off while Lukey and Laura ate their breakfast. I could hear them laughing and chatting and Laura letting out the occasional exuberant shriek over fuck-knows-what. I felt angry little tears pricking the back of my eyelids wanting to escape. I was angry with myself for being such a sooky la la, and the angrier I got the more the tears wanted to fall. Eventually I gave in and hot tears rolled down my cheeks, and I let out a pathetic little sob.

  ‘Jez?’ Laura’s shadow fell over me. ‘It was just a joke, hey. Lukey was just showing off for me. Boys are like that.’

  I didn’t open my eyes. I was fuming. Showing off for you?

  ‘Jez?’ I could feel her hefty weight tip the sun lounger, as she perched herself by my side and gently laid one hand on my arm. I wanted to slap it away. ‘Jeeeez,’ Laura coaxed in a singsong voice.

  ‘What?’ I snapped. I gathered my last shreds of dignity and opened my eyes.

  ‘Brought you some ice water.’ Laura held the frosted glass out to me with a sympathetic smile.

  I took it from her, wordlessly, and gulped it down in five seconds flat and handed her back the empty glass.

  ‘I’ve gotta get home,’ I muttered, and started to pull on my wet clothes.

  ‘Why? If this is about me and Lukey . . .’ Laura trailed off.

  ‘What about you and Lukey?’ I met her eyes defiantly.

  ‘He said you guys are just friends.’

  ‘We are. Best friends. Have been for years.’

  ‘I don’t get why you’re upset with me, Jez.’

  ‘I’m not upset with you, Laura. I just have to get home.’ I knew I was being totally OTT and probably a complete bitch, but I didn’t care.

  Lukey was still sitting at the kitchen table. I stalked past him without a word.

  ‘Where are you going, Jez?’ he called after me.

  The lump in my throat was so huge I knew any attempt to speak would come out as a wail. I slammed Laura’s front door behind me and ran all the way home.

  Mum was spreadeagled on the brown corduroy couch that she refused to throw out even though it was older than me, wearing a greying and pilled nightie, watching info-mercial telly, one arm above her head, and the other dangling into a box of crackers that were spilling out onto the coffee table.

  ‘Jezza . . . Why are you all wet?’ Mum slurred.

  I marched over to the coffee table and picked up her coffee mug and sniffed it. ‘Are you fucking drunk?!’ I screeched. ‘It’s not even lunchtime!’

  ‘Not drunk. Hung-over. I’m having an Irish coffee without the coffee,’ she said, clearly tired, and half smiled.

  ‘You are pathetic,’ I sneered at her.

  ‘What the hell is the matter with you?!’ she yelled after me as I went to the bathroom to take a shower.

  I peeled off my wet undies and bra and stepped under the lukewarm water. I leaned against the cold tiled wall, nauseous, and vomited down my chest, then moved under the shower’s flow to rinse it off. I looked down at my small, pointed breasts, and long flat stomach, pierced with a silver belly ring. I cursed myself. You are such a fucking idiot fuck-up. I bashed my head once, hard against the shower screen, and let out a small cry at the pain.

  I could hear Mum let herself into the bathroom. I opened one eye and saw her perched on the edge of the tub.

  ‘I’ve got the right to a social life, Jez. I don’t deny you one.’ Mum sounded upset.

  Go away, go away, go away.

  I stepped out of the shower, dripping. And started to cry.

  ‘Awww, Jez. I’m sorry. I literally just woke up about an hour ago and felt like absolute shit. I had a little nip of Jameson’s to take the sting out of my hangover.’ Mum wrapped a towel around me gently and sighed. ‘I’m working at the club again tonight. There’re some of those tofu nugget things you like in the freezer.’

  I started crying harder because Mum was being so nice to me and I didn’t deserve it.

  ‘Lukey . . .’ I choked. ‘Lukey has a girlfriend.’

  I didn’t actually know if that was technically true, but I didn’t want Mum to think I was crying over something trivial.

  ‘A girlfriend, huh?’ Mum said, shaking her head. ‘Geez . . .’

  ‘And I hate her!’ I exploded. ‘She’s annoying and fat and wears these short little dresses that show how fat her legs are and she thinks she’s so great just because she’s got lesbo mums and she’s from Melbourne and all like,’ I put on my best high-pitched ‘girly’ voice, ‘I’m a big city girl moving to suburbia, what a freakin’ novelty.’

  ‘Whoah.’ Mum put her arms around me, pressing my wet head down into her breasts. ‘That sucks, babe. This girl beat you to it, hey?’

  I stepped back and wiped the tears from my eyes. ‘What do you me
an?’

  ‘Lukey. He’s basically all you talk about.’

  ‘He’s my best friend, Mum. Since Year 7.’

  ‘Just friends?’

  ‘Yes! Oh, fucking hell, Mum. You just don’t understand anything.’

  Mum did that wounded child face where her mouth turned down at the sides and made her double chin deepen and it always tore me into two, part of me wanting to slap her and part of me wanting to squeeze her in a tight sympathetic hug.

  ‘Aw, Ma. Don’t be like that.’ I kind of patted her arm. ‘You wanna watch a movie or something before you go to work? Dirty Dancing?’

  ‘It always makes me cry,’ she reminded me.

  ‘Everything makes you cry.’ I rolled my eyes but said it lightly so she wouldn’t pull one of her sad-sack heads again.

  THREE

  After Mum left for work that night I couldn’t sleep so I dragged her laptop onto the couch and read Harry Potter fan fiction on the net until my eyes bled. My favourite was one where Draco Malfoy and Potter are secretly bumming in the Forbidden Forest every night; a lot of great puns involving ‘wands’. I gave this the two thumbs up.

  Mum came home from her shift around three in the morning, acting a little spaced. She dumped her keys and bag on the coffee table and just kind of muttered goodnight and then went to bed. I was guessing she’d had a few staffies after close-up.

  I grabbed one of Mum’s smokes out of her handbag. I stared into the fridge for a while, thinking about eating something, but there wasn’t anything there: a jar of mayonnaise, milk, a few cans of Pepsi Max. I made myself a cup of instant coffee with two sugars and extra milk, went out onto the back porch and sat there thinking about stuff. Lukey and Laura, my mum . . . and serious First World problems like, Am I ever gunna get a boyfriend?

  I’ve never had sex. It’s not like I didn’t want to or I was like dried up down there or anything; I’d hooked up with a few guys. But I was gunna be eighteen the next year and it seemed like everyone was doing it except for me and that really broke my crayons because it made me feel like maybe I was ugly or smelled weird or something. So Laura coming along all wobbly cottage-cheese thighs and more rolls than Baker’s Delight macking on with my best friend . . .