I close my eyes. ‘Listen, Damien? I … I’ll talk to him, okay? I’ll talk to him, but I really don’t want to talk about this with you.’
Damien stands. ‘Okay. That’s cool. But, hey, ah, Sophia? You know, I’ve always thought you were pretty okay.’ He clears his throat. ‘If you ever wanna, you know, practise your monologue, or whatever, I’m down. I’m less shit in this class than in everything else and, well, maybe I can help. Or whatever.’
I stare at him. His cheeks are a little red, small eyes downcast. I wait for the punchline, but nothing is forthcoming. I can’t imagine what he could want, but for some unknown reason, I am suddenly sure that he is not messing with me.
‘Maybe. Thank you, Damien.’
He grins. ‘And don’t tell Josh I talked to you, okay? Cos he’s a nice guy and all, but I reckon he might, you know, conjure one of my nuts off if he knew.’
I may have learned nothing in this class; I can only hope that by some miracle of thespian osmosis, my subconscious has absorbed a few rudiments, some tiny fragments of acting skill.
I think perhaps I’m about to find out.
It’s cold in the main building as people head outside for morning break. The wide doors snap back and forth, icy air careening through the corridors.
I concentrate on keeping my breathing even. The ceaseless churn that I’ve been experiencing since Saturday is something beyond my usual anxiety; something beyond fight or flight.
But when I round the corner and see Joshua leaning with his forehead against the locker bank, my heart seems to shift into something heavy and disquieting. The line of his back is slumped, and his long hair is covering his face. I see his fingers fluttering almost indiscernibly against the door.
All I want to do is turn and run. But something in his defeated posture calls me forward. It’s magnetic, this thing between us, the thing that got me into this mess. It makes my feet move of their own accord, despite the nerves and nausea.
‘Hello,’ I say.
He opens his eyes and turns around.
‘Hello, Sophia.’
I stop a few steps away. The grates on his locker door have left an impression on his forehead, three horizontal lines pressed into his skin. It makes him look sort of confused, or quizzical. I have this insane urge to smile. I don’t think it would be helpful.
I plunge my hand deep into my blazer pocket. ‘I’m sorry about the weekend. It was a mistake,’ I blurt. Heat immediately floods my cheeks.
Joshua’s face contorts. He swallows, jaw working back and forth. ‘I didn’t mean for that to happen,’ he says slowly. ‘Or to tell you those things. I swear, I never planned to –’
‘No, you didn’t do anything wrong.’ My right hand forms a fist in my pocket. ‘It’s not you –’
Joshua laughs wearily. He runs a hand through his hair. ‘Really? That’s the line you’re going with?’
I can’t meet his eye. ‘I suck at this. You know my information on these things comes from questionable sources,’ I mumble.
My eyes flicker back to his. He smiles, briefly. ‘Elsie’s crappy movies. I remember. Did I ever tell you Gilly and I watched Sleepless in Seattle? I liked it. I mean, when my sister wasn’t pretending to vomit in her mouth. That kinda ruined the ambience. Her verdict, and I quote, was that “old-people love is sick and wrong”. I think maybe she missed the point.’
His words bounce over each other at a steady clip, though his speech is beset by more tics and hitches than I have heard from him in a long time. ‘Oh, and by the way, you do not suck, Sophia.’
My brain tumbles back to the darkened stairwell, the things he said to me, the misguided, wonderful, terrifying way he sees me. I try, for an instant, to find the words and the will to push past my fear. But then Joshua takes a step towards me, his dark eyes solemn.
‘Sophia, I’ll do whatever you need. If you need me to leave you alone, I will. I just want … wanted … to help. That’s all.’
The corridor has almost emptied. My hand in my pocket is clenched so hard it’s hurting, nails biting into my palm. But what can I tell him? That it’s not his help that I need? My brain just doesn’t work this way. I don’t know how to be a normal girl, the sort of girl he needs, and it’s no use pretending otherwise. As much as I wish it could be different, my brain is a giant arsehole. I can’t live in his bubble. I need to burst it, once and for all.
I back up a few steps and shake my head. ‘I’m sorry, Joshua,’ I say softly.
If I had to put a label to his expression, I think it would be resigned. He nods. ‘Yeah. Me too.’
I turn and walk away. I need go back to my life, to the moment before all my messes became tangled up in some boy with kind eyes and a hopeless ambition to fix all my problems.
I withdraw my hand from my pocket as I stumble outside, releasing the coin that I’ve been clutching. I don’t know what’s more disturbing – the fact that I have Abraham Lincoln’s face imprinted on my palm, or the fact that I had every intention of returning his lucky talisman, and have no reasonable explanation for why I didn’t.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
For those who believe, no explanation is necessary.
For those who do not, none will suffice.
– JOSEPH DUNNINGER
So I made it through the week. Well – endured it. I showed up to class. I even wrote some stuff. I didn’t grab one of the multiple muesli bars Damien kept shoving at me and beat him over the head with it. I’m counting that as a win.
I’m not working till this afternoon, which means I get to spend Saturday morning flat on my back, shifting my gaze between the underside of my lowest bookshelf and the stack of practice exams on my desk. Beneath the shelf, a tiny spider is cocooning an insect in a web. Her legs, like fine eyelashes, dance merrily around the body of the hapless bug that’s soon to be her dinner.
‘Oh how I envy you, little bug guy,’ I moan.
The clomp of size-five Doc Martens turns my head. Gillian’s scowling face pokes around my door. ‘For God’s sake, Josh, could you be more wretched? Last time I saw something this pathetic, it was smeared over the highway on that Christmas trip to Wollongong.’
‘Gilly, go away. I need to be alone.’
The door flies open with a thump. ‘Yeah, I don’t think so. This room is starting to smell like someone took a dump in a HAZMAT bin. And do you know you have a Dorito in your hair?’