I’m lost in the memory, so it takes me a moment to notice that Elsie has stopped pacing, and that she still hasn’t said a word. She’s blinking quickly again, her head tilted like she’s trying to hear something in the distance.
She looks me square in the eye, and my heart makes an uncomfortable stumble because it is the first time she has made eye contact since I started speaking.
‘Elsie?’
Elsie sits down heavily, right in front of me. ‘You went to a party?’
I can’t tell if it’s the rain on the roof or the blood in my ears that makes me suddenly claustrophobic. ‘Yes. But it wasn’t a big deal. It was a last-minute thing –’
Elsie holds up a hand. I search her face for any clue as to what is happening, but all I can tell is that her brain is whirring.
‘Sophia. When we got invited to Harriet Lohman’s sixth birthday party with the rest of our class, what did you tell me?’
I swallow. ‘I said that Harriet Lohman was having a jumping castle, which, on average, are responsible for thirty people a day being hospitalised. And I think I said that I wanted to finish some geometry homework –’
‘And when we got asked to the year-seven formal by those guys from the debate team, what did you say?’
I think for a moment. ‘I said that I didn’t want to hang out with Ben Bartlett because he didn’t understand fractional exponents – but to be fair, Elsie, he always spent the class reading comics on his phone, then asked me for help later. And, um, I said there was a Fermat’s Last Theorem documentary on TV that would be more fun.’
‘And what did I do?’ she says, in a voice that sounds too full.
‘You stayed with me, Elsie. You always stay with me.’
She stands up, a shirt from her floor-pile clutched in her hand. ‘Rey?’ she says softly. ‘Tell me why you’ve been keeping things from me?’
Without any idea what I should be doing, I stand as well. My skin is still cold, like the warmth of Elsie’s house can’t unfreeze it. Elsie backs away.
Elsie has only a couple of photographs among the clutter on her desk – a picture of her with her brothers on a trip to India a few years ago, and two photos of her and me. In one we’re at Sizzler for her thirteenth birthday; we’re a few years older in the other, both wearing surgical masks and her mum’s scrubs. It was taken the last time we dressed up for Halloween, even though I talked Elsie into skipping trick-or-treating that year, which pretty much signalled the end of our Halloween tradition. Elsie is all broad smiles in both photos; I look like I’m made of marble. I’ve always hated photos of myself. No matter what I’m thinking or feeling when the picture is snapped, my face always manages to look blank and vacant. I always look insubstantial, diffused around the edges. I think it’s because I’m built of numbers, of data and facts and peculiarly firing synapses; maybe, in the real world, I am simply more faded, less there than everyone else.
‘Elsie, are you mad?’ I whisper, my eyes on the Halloween picture. ‘Please, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what I’ve done and I’ve had a really bad night and I can’t focus on you right now –’
‘You can’t focus on me?’ she yells. I jump, dropping the sock I didn’t realise I’d been grasping. The chatter from downstairs ceases. ‘When have you ever focused on me, Sophia? You think I don’t know that you barely even register I’m here?’
‘That’s ridiculous, Elsie. Of course I notice you –’
‘Oh really? Then why don’t you ever ask about anything to do with me? You never ask about my plans for next year – you’re not even a bit curious about what I want or how I feel about anything! You have no idea what’s going on with me. Has it ever even crossed your mind?’
‘But, Elsie, you told me you didn’t want to talk about it –’
She bundles the shirt in her hand and flings it at the wall. ‘God, that’s just something people say! Of course I want to talk to you –’ She laughs, but I have no idea why. ‘Who else do I have? Who else am I supposed to talk to?’
I think back over this past year, running frantically over every conversation we’ve had. I know I have asked her about things. School and homework; her opinion on Doctor Who and Keanu Reeves and Maryam Mirzakhani. We spent three hours one Friday in June debating the relative merits of Mr Grayson’s thinning comb-over versus Mr Peterson’s fire-hazard toupee. Maybe I haven’t said much about the future. But I don’t know how to talk about something that makes me feel stressed and sad.
I feel myself tunnelling into my centre, shrinking inside my skin in a way that I do when I’m overwhelmed, but never, ever with Elsie. She seems to take my silence as a statement, because her face becomes redder and her voice so much angrier.
‘I’m scared, Sophia – I can’t coast the way you can. And I’ve been busting my arse with band practice, which you never even acknowledge! When was the last time you came to a recital? When was the last time you asked me how it’s going?’
‘But you play the xylophone!’ I blurt. ‘It’s not a key part of the orchestra. Zimmy Taylor plays the cowbell and her friends never come to anything –’
Elsie’s eyes widen. Horrifyingly, they also brim with tears. The last time I saw Elsie cry was when Ryan accidentally deleted Harold and Maude from their DVR. I can’t speak. I can’t process anything else tonight; the emotive centres of my brain are shutting down, underneath this awful, stomach-ripping sensation that something unrecoverable is spiralling out of my control.
‘That’s what you think of me,’ Elsie says, her dull tone more frightening than anything else. I can’t reconcile her inflection with the tears that are careening down her face, and all I want to do is crawl under her blankets and have her explain everything to me, like she always did when we were kids.
‘Elsie, please, just tell me –’
‘No,’ she whispers. ‘I’m done being your interpreter. I have made so many sacrifices for you. I’ve missed out on so much, all because my best friend has a breakdown every time anyone even suggests she interact with other humans. But the moment you find someone worth making the effort for, all that becomes meaningless –’
‘But Elsie –’
‘No. Stop,’ she says, sobbing now, heedless of my shaking hands and frozen face. ‘You’ve been holding me back all these years, Sophia,’ she chokes out. ‘You have no idea how lonely being your friend is.’
And though I know it’s a physiological impossibility, somehow my heart feels like it has cracked into a million pieces.