Being Kalli(33)

It’s Nate. Rather, me; my mistakes. Oh, how foresight would have been a nice gift to have. Why is it humans have to lose what they had in order to realise how important it was?

I drop my hands, crack my neck back and tell myself it’ll be fine. I’ve always composed myself before. Always been fine for my family.

I’ll be fine.

Not in the mood to play more, fed up with that desk, and ahead on current and projected course work, I lie back on the bed, hearing the springs creak under me in the afternoon quiet. Mum’s at work and the boys are at kindergarten.

I stare at the ceiling. It’s just as empty as it is when the darkness encompasses it when I can’t sleep at night. Because no matter the time of day my past, my mistakes, always hover above me there, twirling and swimming in circles like ghosts. Now, I watch these memories:

Picking at the crusts on my sandwich in the toilet block at lunchtimes. Feeling the bread harden, then hating myself when I had to throw out the hard bread. But secretly, I enjoyed the starving feeling. Walking, I’d be lost, like floating on clouds, hanging above flaming lava. Sleeping I’d wake up choking from a nightmare, heart pounding in my ears and tears behind my eyes that wouldn’t come. But feeling starving was a control I had. No matter when or where or why it happened, it could never be mistaken for anything other than real, crippling pain. I’d cry, sometimes, when I was that hungry.

I trace the cornices of the ceiling with my gaze, coming back to my body here, nineteen, not a gangly girl anymore.

Thinking back to me plastered against that hallway wall with people watching and hearing about Donovan stamping his name over my slutty image, me disintegrating my reputation further like with every crazy thing I do, I’m starting to feel the build up.

I don’t know what’s building up, but something is.

Something startles me, and I see it’s my phone, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Scout?” I answer warily into it.

“Der, Fred. Who else could it be ringing when my caller ID comes up?”

“Right,” I say. Of course it was her. I’d have known that if I weren’t in my own world. “I’m sorry I’ve been MIA. Just with—”

“I didn’t ring you to pull teeth and drag ‘sorrys’ from that potty mouth of yours.”

“Oh, okay.”

Scout, no matter my mood, can pick me right up and get me into giggles, like now.

“Keep me company, bitch.”

I shower, fix my face with some makeup and dress to hang at her parents’ house, since she’s staying there after helping her sister with homework.

I arrive there that evening. We both don’t have class the next day, she isn’t working at Target until noon, and her family are all busy doing their own things, so we make a box-set night of it.

Every step further, I wonder who’ll spill what they want to say first. I put my bag down; do I mention it during the silence? I sit on her bed, cross my legs and we exchange a “hello” glance; do I acknowledge the big, fat elephant now?

Building, building, building.

Is Scout a lesbian?

Am I totally crazy to do what I did?

Scout, unaware of my inner ramblings, goes to her collection. Her wall unit is taller than her standing, and she’s installed more shelves in it to deck it out to the max. There is an order of sorts. Charmed, The OC and more are in the middle. There’s Law & Order, CSI and others just above. She sits cross-legged at the bottom and goes through that section.

“Okay, tell me when to stop,” she says. “Breaking Bad, Revenge, Big Bang—”

“Okay, stop.”

“Seriously? I was hoping that was the only one you—”

“Are you a lesbian?”

It falls out. Old habits die hard, and right then, when she called out those names faster and faster, my blood pressure was rising until I had to choke out something to make her slow down.

I grab the ends of the bed and slink off, crawling up to her. She hasn’t moved, only her eyes following my path. I take her hands in mine and roll them over, all the while covering them with mine.

I try again.

“I’d never, ever treat you badly, or think lesser of you. I’d just be sad if you’d kept it all in, keeping your secret to the world, if that’s the case.

“So,” I say. “I’ve either made this our most awkward conversation yet—and that’s some feat—or that look is ‘how the hell is she reading my mind’.”

“I never lied,” Scout mumbles, chin to chest. Lifting her head up, she reaches for DVD cases and says, “So season one, two, three—”

“Scout, seriously.”

I place my hands on both her knees, hold my gaze on her eyes until she begrudgingly looks up.