Elsie’s bedroom hasn’t changed much since we were kids, except for the new posters that keep appearing on her walls. She never bothers removing the old ones, just Blu-Tacks new pictures on top of one another. By now the layer of paper is so thick I think it has actually reduced the space inside, like an embodiment of a Gabriel’s horn paradox. Peeling away Elsie’s posters would be like excavating layers of sediment, or the heartwood of a tree trunk – her Powerpuff Girls buried layers beneath the shirtless guys from Magic Mike, the Rihanna-in-an-orange-bra hidden deep under an Emory University poster her uncle sent all the way from Atlanta.
Her collection of popular science books has doubled over the years, as has the range of multi-coloured bras that lie permanently scattered over her floor. Felipe, Elsie’s life-sized human skeleton, is propped in a chair near her window. He’s wearing a knitted bobble hat and has one of Colin’s Hawthorn football scarves draped around his clavicle. Elsie’s bedroom is probably my second most comfortable place on earth, always familiar despite the ever-changing ephemera.
‘There are seventy sextillion stars in the known universe,’ I say after hovering unnoticed in the doorway. ‘If intelligent life exists elsewhere, why do we think it’d bother to buzz us here on earth?’ Elsie practically falls out of her chair as she spins around from her computer. ‘We are a small, ridiculous species, Elsie. Forget about the probability of aliens in the universe. Why would anyone bother to come looking for us?’
Elsie clutches her heart. ‘Jesus, Sophia. Give a person some warning!’ She pushes her chair backwards. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you had family stuff?’
I tear my eyes away from her screen. The extra reading for Physics – an article on Fermi’s paradox, with Mrs Angstrom’s little green alien drawing – is open on Elsie’s monitor. Another window in the corner of her screen is playing a clip from what I think is Sleepless in Seattle.
I nudge a basket of shoes out of the way and sit ungracefully on the floor, the purring lump of ginger cat still in my arms.
‘Colin let me in,’ I answer. My stomach is starting to feel a little less like it’s being wrung from the inside. But I have no idea what I want to say.
Elsie follows my gaze to Felipe’s scarf. ‘Yeah, Colin’s crashing for a couple of days. Apparently “my hot water is on the blink” is boy code for “my housemates have spent this month’s gas money on gourmet pizza”. I mean, I love my brother. But when it comes to money, Colin can be a real dick bag.’
‘Right. Poor Colin.’
Elsie sits on the floor beside me. She is in her plaid pyjama pants and an ancient Doc McStuffins T-shirt that I think belonged to one of her cousins. She takes the cat from my hands, then gathers a towel from a pile on her floor and hands it to me.
‘This is Pumpkin, by the way. Number four or five – no-one can remember how many gingers we’ve had.’ Elsie chuckles, her eyes trained on Pumpkin’s head. ‘So. What’s going on, Rey? If I had to guess, judging by the look on your face, I’d assume Toby has finally snapped and express-posted Viljami’s decapitated head home to Finland?’
Elsie smiles, but it’s small and strange. She deposits the cat on her bed and sweeps an armful of clothes off before dragging herself up to sit on her doona. Her hair is just washed, flowing in fat, loose waves. Her eyes flash yellow and purple from the string of butterfly lights on the wall above her bed.
I lean my cold face against her quilt cover and close my eyes. Alarmingly, they feel a little damp behind my eyelids, but of course, nothing resembling tears is forthcoming.
Elsie drums her fingers lightly on my head, just hard enough to coerce my eyes open. Reflexively, I shift away, then feel yet another swoop of guilt and shame.
‘Okay. So you’re upset?’ She fidgets with her blankets. ‘Sophia … are you going to tell me what’s been going on? Because for the last few weeks it’s sort of felt like you’ve been visiting another planet.’ She clears her throat. ‘Maybe I’m just paranoid, but it feels like lately … like you haven’t wanted me around as much or something?’
I sit up straight. I’ve been so busy trying to sort through the tangle in my head that I haven’t given much thought to how this must seem to her. I haven’t been pushing Elsie away. Not on purpose. Have I?
Elsie swings her legs off her bed and walks around to face me. ‘Sophia, you’re taking a really long time to answer that question.’ She crosses her arms. ‘Do you … have you not wanted me around?’
‘Maybe,’ I say slowly. ‘I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s that simple, Elsie.’
Elsie’s mouth drops open. She snaps it shut again, blinking way too rapidly. But when she speaks, her voice is eerily calm.
‘Sophia, you’re going to have to explain that. Hey, I know, how ’bout you just pretend I’m an idiot?’ she says with a sharp smile. ‘Pretend I’m a moron whose brain moves a couple of clicks behind yours, okay?’
I twist the damp towel, knuckles white. I have been trying for so long now to find the words to explain to my best friend why my future feels so terrifying, why I can’t face talking about university, or the prospect of her not being around for it. But I know I’m not capable of articulating the things I feel.
Instead, I decide to focus on my most pressing dilemma. ‘See, Elsie, there’s this thing I’ve been trying to manage, or understand, I suppose is a better word. Something that I didn’t factor on having to deal with … this thing that I’m having, or was having, or, I don’t even know. With this boy …’
I’m pretty sure my syntax is hopelessly jumbled. I can’t say his name out loud. I feel, once again, the failure of my own vernacular, the inadequacy of stupid, stupid words. I have this brief notion that perhaps I could express everything more clearly in a chart or a Hasse diagram, but I think I’d have as much luck trying to quantify the events of the past month using the marionette puppets that starred in the year-seven production of The Sound of Music.
I glance at Elsie. She has been pacing back and forth in the free space between her clothes. The look on her face is one I’ve never seen before.
‘It’s all been a bit confusing, to be honest,’ I mumble. ‘He’s strange, but I think good strange, and then tonight there was this party … I mean, you know me and crowds, but I thought I could handle it. And I did. I was handling it fine. But then it got … well. I don’t know. There was this thing …’
I take a deep breath, regrouping my thoughts into orderly rows and columns, and I give her a rundown, in dot points, of everything that’s happened over the last month. I even manage to dispassionately report everything that’s transpired since I landed on Joshua’s doorstep tonight.
I don’t know how to explain the kiss. I could describe it with anatomical precision, since my eidetic brain remembers every nuance. I know that the scientific study of kissing is known as philematology, and that the scientists who study kissing are known as osculologists. It sounds like a cool profession. Useful. Enlightening.
But out of all the things I lack the language for, I especially can’t articulate that kiss.