That night at home, I was unpacking my bag when I found a small parcel wrapped in purple tissue paper. It was heavy, and it clinked. When I unwrapped it, a necklace fell out of the paper onto my bed – three strands of green glass beads.
A present. I upended my bag, but there was no card, no note, nothing; an anonymous present. I tried it on. It was gorgeous, just perfect for my colouring. It even made me look – sort of casually glamorous.
Dad yelled, ‘It’s that Mackenzie girl on the phone!’
She was early. I hurried to the phone and took it back to my room. ‘I just found the weirdest thing in my bag!’
‘Really? What?’
‘A necklace. Green beads, it’s beautiful. Do you think . . .’ I hesitated to even suggest it. ‘Do you think Richard might have asked Bec to put it in my bag? There’s no note or anything, but it must be him, mustn’t it?’
‘Why must it be him?’
‘Well, it’s jewellery. Isn’t that the kind of thing a boy gives a girl? And he’s the only boy I know.’
There was a brief pause, then Mackenzie laughed.
‘Can’t you think of another scenario?’
‘Oh. You think it’s a mistake? Maybe it’s really Bec’s?
We share a locker, it might have fallen into my bag by mistake – but she didn’t—’
‘No, you idiot,’ interrupted Mackenzie. ‘It’s for you. But it’s not from Bec’s brother. It’s from me.’
‘From you? Oh – wow – Mackenzie.’
‘You didn’t text him thank you or anything excruciating like that, did you?’
‘No, no, of course not. But Mackenzie – they’re gorgeous. You shouldn’t have.’
‘They weren’t expensive. And even if they were, I’m loaded, remember?’
‘That’s not what I meant—’ I stopped. What did I mean? I said, ‘They’re just – too beautiful.’
‘It’s nothing, Jem. I saw them, and they were pretty, and I knew they’d suit you. That’s all. It’s just a present, no big deal.’
‘They do suit me.’
‘Yes. They reminded me of your eyes.’
There was a strange silence. At last I said, ‘Well . . . thanks. Thank you.’
‘So you like them?’
‘I do. I love them.’
‘Do you? Really? You love them?’
‘Yes, of course I do.’
Then there was another strange silence.
‘Well,’ I said at last. ‘I’d better go. See you tomorrow.’
‘See you tomorrow.’
I held the beads between my fingers for a long time. I tried them on again and stared at myself in the mirror. Then I took them off. I could have hung them on the side of the mirror with the silver chain Nana gave me – the one I never wear – and the imitation pearls I keep in honour of Harriet Vane. But instead I hid them under my bed, in the box where I kept Mackenzie’s poem. I don’t know why. I guess I didn’t want Mum to ask about them. It was like the poem, in a way – they were too much. Beautiful, amazing, wonderful. But too much.
A bit like Mackenzie herself. Too good to be true. Too rich for ordinary consumption. I don’t mean loaded rich, I mean rich as in food. (I consulted the dictionary and there wasn’t a good definition; it just said, with a high proportion of butter, oil, eggs, spices etc., which is a really clumsy, inelegant definition, in my humble opinion, and it doesn’t convey the meaning either, which is basically: this is delicious, but too much of it will make you sick.)
The next morning I realised I’d forgotten to ask Mackenzie about Georgia and Rosie Lee and the whole party situation. Well, it didn’t matter. I could talk to her about it later. There was plenty of time.
But that was the day it all fell apart.
There was no sign, no warning. Unless the beads were an omen I was too dense to interpret; an omen that meant the exact opposite of what it seemed to mean.
After assembly I got caught in a clot of people by the quadrangle doors, just behind Mackenzie.
‘Hello, Mackenzie.’
She didn’t hear me.
‘Hey, Woodrow!’ I said, slightly louder.
Very, very slowly, she swung around. She was about a head taller than I was, but at that moment she seemed to tower over me. She looked at me for a second or two, then she said, in a cool, distant voice, ‘Oh, hi, Jessica.’
Not Jem, not Martinic: Jessica. As if we’d never even met.
I was shell-shocked, and she swept away. Between Phillipa and Frances, laughing.
Rosie Lee lingered, smirking over her shoulder. ‘Is she bored with you now?’ she murmured. ‘Poor little Jem . . .’
Then she vanished too.
‘Jem! Hurry along please. You’ve been told often enough not to clog up the doorways.’
‘Sorry, Mrs Peterson.’
I moved, but I was in a daze; I didn’t know where I was walking. I felt ridiculous, and tears prickled in my eyes, as if I were a baby.
‘Did you hear Rosie sniggering?’ Iris said indignantly, and immediately I felt better. Slightly better.
Georgia grabbed my arm and squeezed it. ‘Rosie wasn’t laughing at you,’ she said. ‘She was laughing at Mrs Peterson.’
I knew that wasn’t true, but it was irrelevant. Rosie could have stripped off naked and waggled her bare bum at me for all I cared. I didn’t give a damn about Rosie Lee.
‘They’re both cows,’ said Bec cheerfully, appearing behind us.
‘Vipers,’ said Iris with relish.
Nobody said, we warned you, Jem, but they didn’t have to.
Part of me was in denial. I half-expected Mackenzie to rush up to me outside the lockers or in the toilets and say, ‘Hey, Martinic, you didn’t think I meant it, did you?’ But she didn’t.
Okay, I thought. Something’s happened. Something that was preventing her from talking to me, temporarily. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what that something might be, but I clung to the possibility all day, and the day after, and the day after that. Maybe terrorists were holding her family hostage. Maybe she had a disease of the vocal cords and couldn’t speak. Maybe she had amnesia. Maybe aliens had possessed her and she was protecting me by pretending she didn’t know me. Maybe she’d been kidnapped and this was the identical replica of Mackenzie who wasn’t quite right.
Maybe she just didn’t like me any more.
Maybe she thought I’d been sucking up to her, trying to get into the cool gang. But she knew I didn’t care about that . . .
Maybe I hadn’t been enthusiastic enough about the necklace. Maybe I’d been too enthusiastic.
Maybe she thought I had a crush on her.
Bec and Iris and Georgia were extra cheerful for the rest of the week. I couldn’t decide if it was because a) they’d been proven right about Mackenzie being superficial; b) they knew I was miserable and they were trying to cheer me up; or c) I wasn’t friends with Mackenzie any more, so now I’d have more time to hang out with them. It was true, I had neglected them a tiny bit. Not that I’d ever actually dropped them. Not like Mackenzie had just dropped me.
The weekend came. I guess I’d hoped in the back of my mind that whatever had caused this abrupt cold-shouldering might be school-related, and maybe at the weekend she might tell me what was going on. Or she’d ring as usual and everything would be fine again.
But as the weekend wore on with no signal from her, a cold knot of hurt began to replace the fog of bewilderment I’d been bumping around in all week. Even if she did ring, I wouldn’t know what to say to her. Was I supposed to apologise? What had I done wrong? Even if she apologised, what explanation would be good enough? What could possibly make this all right?
On Sunday night I lay sleepless in bed. It all meant nothing. The night we drank in the stars. Swimming in the river, hiking, the Great Book Raid. The phone calls, all the conversations. The poem. The necklace. It was all a joke, or a misunderstanding. I’d been stupid, gullible, naive – I didn’t know what I’d been. Was I too ugly, to
o nerdy? Had I said something, done something, not done something, offended her somehow? It must have been my fault.
Or maybe the girls were right, and she was just a shallow, using viper-cow. But even as I was hating her, wishing I’d never met her, I couldn’t quite believe that. The Mackenzie I knew wasn’t like that; not my Mackenzie.
So why – and I know this is what Mum would have said if I’d told her about it, which is why I didn’t – why I didn’t ring her and say, ‘For Pete’s sake! I thought we were friends. What’s the story?’
I probably should have. But I couldn’t pick up the phone. Whatever her reason was, I didn’t want to hear it, I didn’t want it confirmed. If I knew nothing, there was the hope (a tiny, ever-diminishing hope) that today Mackenzie would see me in the corridor and smile. That tonight the phone would ring, and she’d say, I’m so, so sorry.
A few times in the weeks that followed, I took out Mackenzie’s poem from under the bed and read it again, in case the words had altered, in case there was an ironic interpretation that I’d been too dense to see. I held the glass beads and touched them with my fingertips. But I didn’t put them on.
Then I stopped taking them out of the box. I left them under the bed, in the dark.
may
Halfway through term two, when I had completely and utterly forgotten that he even existed, Richard Patel called.
He rang on a Saturday morning when I was still lounging around in my jamies and said he’d pick me up in an hour. An hour! I was so dumbfounded I could hardly speak. ‘Er . . . um . . . okay,’ I said.
‘Don’t you want to know where we’re going?’
‘Um . . . yeah.’
‘I thought we might go to that exhibition in the city, the botanical drawings, in fact? Because you said you were interested in plants.’
I had no memory of saying such a thing. But then I didn’t have a clear memory of any of my conversations with Richard. I’d glazed over a few times and nodded and smiled. I guess I’d nodded and smiled at the wrong moment, and now he’d got the misconception that I had a passionate interest in botanical drawings. But it was too late to clear that up.
‘Is Bec coming?’ I blurted, just before he hung up.
There was a funny little silence, and then he said slowly, ‘No-o. Would you like her to?’
‘Well,’ I said feebly. ‘If she’s interested . . .’
‘I think she’s busy, in fact.’
‘Oh, okay. Never mind.’
‘See you in an hour then?’
I stood for a minute with the phone in my hand. Why had I said that? Did I want Bec to come? To protect me? Would Richard think I didn’t like him? Did I like him? He’d think I was an idiot. Did I care if he thought I was an idiot? Yes, I did. Did that mean I liked him? ‘I just don’t know,’ I said aloud.
‘Talking to yourself,’ said Dad, walking past. ‘First sign of madness.’
Dad could be very irritating sometimes.
So I went on my second date.
I was better prepared this time. While I was in the shower, I thought of things to talk about. But as it turned out, Richard didn’t need any help. He apologised for not calling for so long; he’d been busy with uni and the new job. He told me about his new job. For hours. He described every single person he was working with, every task he’d performed. He practically drew me a map of the building. By the time we got to the city and had brunch at a little laneway cafe and found the exhibition at the library, I was longing for him to shut up.
I thought the exhibition would be boring, but it wasn’t. The drawings were so detailed, so loving. It reminded me of Heathersett River, and being out in the bush, how beautiful it was, the birds and the trees and the sound of the river, and suddenly I missed it so much. I missed being happy.
When we emerged, the city seemed dirty and noisy. I wanted to get off the streets, but I didn’t know where else to go.
Richard said, ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘What, in a bar?’
‘No, of course not, you’re underage, in fact.’ He looked horrified. I was a tiny bit disappointed – I’d never been to a bar. It might have been a thrill, to go into a bar and have an illegal drink with a boy, on a date. Even in broad daylight.
I said, ‘It’d be nice to go somewhere quiet.’
‘Why don’t we walk through the gardens?’ he suggested.
‘Yes, that’d be perfect!’
He smiled.
The gardens were green and still, and full of trees starting to shed their leaves, and the traffic was barely a murmur in the background. We walked past a dried-up fountain, and the famous Fairy Tree, and a statue of a long-dead, forgotten governor. It was sunny, not at all cold. Then we sat under a big spreading oak tree, and picked at the grass and talked. At least Richard talked; he told me more about India, and how his relatives thought he’d gone there to find a bride, which is hilarious, because he’s only eighteen.
And then, without any warning, he leaned over and pushed his mouth at me. Our lips smashed together and his tongue shoved against my teeth. It was like that old TV ad where the tongue crawls out of its owner’s mouth in search of beer. It wriggled and humped around like a miniature skinned ferret. Well, that skinned ferret was thrusting itself inside my mouth.
I pulled away and gasped, ‘No, no!’ and we fell away from each other and sat there on the grass breathing hard and not looking at each other.
I was so upset I almost cried. My first kiss, and it was horrible. I’d never have a first kiss again, and that was it, ruined.
Of course I’d imagined it a million times, often with Lord Peter Wimsey, played by a hot actor, but always there’d been a conversation beforehand. The conversation was almost more important than the kiss itself – there’d been meaningful looks, then he’d take my hand and meet my eyes, and say . . . something sensitive or witty or suddenly serious, and my heart would beat faster, and slowly his face would draw nearer, and our lips would meet softly, and part, and it would be exquisite, and shivery and slow, and gentle – it might become heated and passionate later on, but it would be a gradual build-up, a gradual mutual build-up . . .
But not this. This was like having a train crash into my face. I didn’t expect a tongue to be hard, and rude, poking in like that, mashing my lips against my teeth. It was more like being punched than being kissed. And it was embarrassing. There were people walking by. I never thought my first kiss would be a public spectacle.
And . . . I’d thought my first kiss would be with a boy I’d be longing to kiss, a boy I was in love with. I was still trying to decide if I liked Richard. Though ‘in fact’ this had pretty much made up my mind.
Richard said in a stiff voice, ‘Would you like to go home?’
I stood at once. ‘Yes, please.’
We didn’t say a word on the long walk back to the car. It was hideous. I knew I had to say something, to try to return things to normal, to erase that scene in the park. As Richard drove, I forced myself to speak.
‘How many people work in the Melbourne office?’
‘I told you, about twenty.’ His voice was still stiff, more offended now, if anything, because I hadn’t been listening.
‘And – in Sydney?’
‘About forty. I told you that, too.’
Our words fell into the heavy silence like lead pellets. Richard slammed on the brakes at the third red light in a row and swore under his breath. I was flung against the seatbelt, but Richard didn’t even glance at me, let alone apologise. I clenched my hands in my lap, counting the minutes till I’d be safe at home. I just wanted to get as far away from Richard Patel as possible.
At first I’d felt like crying, but now I was angry. He’d kissed me – he didn’t bother finding out if I wanted to kiss him – he’d just jumped on me and rammed his tongue down my throat! And he was all huffy with me? Maybe I should have just kissed him, and pretended to like it, that might have been easier . . .
But no, it wouldn’t, bec
ause then he might have wanted to kiss me again, and then maybe more, and then I would have missed my chance to say, No! Stop! I don’t want to. It just got worse and worse . . .
Richard stopped the car in front of my house. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Thank you for a nice day.’
‘Yes. Thanks.’
We glared at each other. No nonsense about I’ll ring you this time. I got out of the car and sprinted inside.
Mum said, ‘How was—?’
I sped straight past her and into my room and slammed the door and threw myself on my bed. I pressed my face into the pillow as if I could scour the memory of that kiss away. It was all so absurd. Why did it have to be awkward and fumbling and embarrassing? Why couldn’t it be the way it is in books and movies?
After a while Mum knocked, and I made room for her on the end of the bed. ‘Not so good?’ she said.
‘Not so good.’
‘Are you all right? Do you want to talk about it?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But I can tell you Richard Patel and I are never going to see each other again. Mum?’ I felt silly asking, but I did anyway. ‘Mum, could you read to me?’
Mum laughed, but she looked almost as if she were going to cry. She used to read to me every night, right up till high school, when I made her stop. But I can’t tell you how comforting it was, curled up on my bed next to Mum while she read me Harry Potter. It was like Milo for the soul. I felt like a little kid.
What I really wished I could ask her was, am I normal? Was it normal to want to scrub my mouth out, and wash away the feeling of that tongue probing between my teeth? Was there something wrong with me? I wondered, if the tongue in question had belonged to Peter Wimsey, would I have found the sensation so repellent? It was hard to say. But I couldn’t arrange to have my first kiss from a fictional character, could I. Especially not now.
Bec sprang at me first thing on Monday morning. I was anxious about seeing her. I wasn’t sure what Richard might have said, but apparently he hadn’t said anything – nothing bad, anyway.