Halfway to Nowhere: Liminal Female Journeys As “Coming of Awareness” In

Halfway to Nowhere: Liminal Female

Journeys as “Coming of Awareness” in

Contemporary Australian Fiction

A Novella and Critical Exegesis

Amy Terese Lovat

BA (Hons)

A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in English (Creative Writing)

July 2016

The University of Newcastle, Australia

Declaration

The Thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text.

I give consent to the final version of my thesis being made available worldwide when deposited in the University’s Digital Repository, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968.

I hereby certify that the work embodied in this Thesis is the result of original research, the greater part of which was completed subsequent to admission to candidature for the degree.

Signature ...... Date: ......

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt thanks to everyone who was there for me along the way; I couldn’t have done this without you.

To my parents, who knew I could do it, and who drank my poison the way only parents can. Thank you for everything. Seriously, everything.

To Emma and Tom, for making life better.

To my supervisors, Dr Keri Glastonbury and Dr Brooke Collins-Gearing, for all your support and inspiration. Thank you to Keri, for always putting my name forward for new opportunities, and for being Halfway to Nowhere’s biggest fan.

Thank you to Brooke, for the expression “postmodern nothingness”, and for all the existential life chats.

To Dr Michael Sala, for your words of encouragement in the hallways.

To my fellow postgraduate friends who consistently reminded me that I wasn’t going crazy (and if I was, then we were all in it together). A special thank you to

Morgan, Di, Peter, Naomi, and Alyce.

To the friends and family who read my writing along the way.

To the University of Newcastle and, in particular, the School of Humanities and

Social Sciences, for the opportunity to complete this PhD and for their support in the process.

iii

Table of Contents Declaration ...... i Acknowledgements ...... iii Abstract ...... vi Novella ...... 7 PART ONE ...... 1 PART TWO ...... 65 PART THREE ...... 139 Exegesis...... 187 Prologue ...... 189 Introduction ...... 199 Do we ever really “come of age”? ...... 203 Writing Halfway to Nowhere ...... 208 Chapter 1 ...... 217 The extended liminal space between adolescence and adulthood ...... 218 The bildungsroman in a contemporary setting...... 235 Chapter 2 ...... 250 Capturing moments in time on the threshold ...... 252 Coming of awareness through several epiphanic moments ...... 261 The coming of awareness as open-ended narrative...... 275 Chapter 3 ...... 288 The female coming of awareness ...... 291 Embodying physical spaces ...... 306 Navigating virtual realities ...... 313 Conclusion...... 328 Works Cited ...... 340 Further Reading ...... 355

Abstract

This thesis contains a novella, Halfway to Nowhere, and an accompanying exegesis.

Halfway to Nowhere: Liminal Female Journeys as “Coming of Awareness” in

Contemporary Australian Fiction is an exegetical response to the creative artefact that draws on literary theory, close reading of texts, and self-reflexive questioning to understand how the liminal space between adolescence and adulthood is represented in examples of contemporary Australian fiction. I align myself with my protagonist, El, as caught between two recognised life stages, and use autoethnographic honesty and experiential knowledge as an integral narrative thread.

Using Halfway to Nowhere and four contemporary Australian works of fiction, this exegesis reappropriates the coming of age to a “coming of awareness” that is defined by several moments of transition, realisation, or epiphany. I posit that contemporaneous narration to focus the present moment, and open-ended narrative, are effective techniques for demonstrating the ongoing process of self-creation.

Halfway to Nowhere is a coming-of-awareness story in a time when a search for identity isn’t limited to high school, puberty, and teenagehood. Rather than a Young Adult fiction novel or a bildungsroman text, Halfway to Nowhere is an experimental narrative about a

20-something female character straddling adolescence and adulthood, on a journey of self-discovery in her particular time and space. In leaving the ending of my novella open,

I have hoped to transcend a traditionally linear narrative arc and allow readers to interpret the story through their own lens of understanding. I also hope that the experimental, self-conscious narration of Halfway to Nowhere offers the reader opportunity to reflect on their own transition to adulthood, as I have done throughout the exegesis.

Novella halfway to nowhere

PART ONE

1. this is it

We live at home so we fuck in cars and carparks. On sand and concrete.

Everything’s cool, but nothing’s cool enough.

At night we go to gigs. Locals. Listen to the other locals talk shit about the talent. You have to be careful what you say coz one cool person might say someone’s awesome and you’re thinking, What the fuck am I listening to? Goes both ways.

If you’re not in the music clique, you’re not in. Newcastle – we stick around but we can’t wait to get out. It’s a bit of a cultural capital now. People comparing it to Melbourne.

Obviously, no way there. A new café or bar opening up every second day. Can’t keep up.

But I always thought a tram line would do well here – one down Hunter Street, past all the dilapidated buildings, the second-hand book stores and political outposts, right to the beach. One down King Street, too. Maybe another running from Wickham to Hamilton. I dunno. Maybe I should’ve been a town planner. Ha.

In summer, we’re heaps “surf”. But you gotta pretend not to be. Oversized knits, skinny jeans and vintage-style boots are just too hot, you know, so we can hang out in minimal clothing and the girls can sunbake while the boys surf. But you gotta make fun of yourself while you’re doing it. Be facetious – note the irony. Bag out the actual surfers.

Because the hipsters that surf aren’t actual surfers, which is cool. There are levels, layers to anything. No one ever wins, except in their own little circles.

It’s not like Puberty Blues or anything. We can pee and eat chico rolls. Not that I’ve ever eaten a chico roll in my life. What the fuck is even a chico roll? We’re supposed to eat

like men, drink like men, look like ladies. It’s a fine line between tomboy and princess and we have to play it right.

After the gigs, we do beers. Tooheys Old in the back of a van or at my house. Someone’s backyard, front step, wherever. Trying to be quiet coz of parents and housemates sleeping inside. Never achieving. Flicking cigarette butts into trees, flower gardens.

Wherever. Watch a movie, eat nachos, roll a joint. In bed by 3am. Up by 2pm. Unless

I’ve gotta work at the crack of dawn. Bloodshot eyes and wet hair, pumping out five coffees a minute.

That’s the goal. We’ve got a system and lucky I’m a fast learner coz I could do this shit in my sleep now. Bedsheets smell like coffee, grind like sand all through my car. Lucky I can do this shit in my sleep coz most days I feel like I’m sleeping. Newie’s finest come here – radio presenters, the richest family in Newcastle with their two bratty, well- travelled kids, Silverchair, some guy who used to be on Water Rats.

Docket spits out, bash the head, wipe the grind out so the basket’s clean. Fill the head, tamp it down – not too hard, not too soft. Perfectly even on both sides, stand with your legs apart, equal weight. Ballet class. Plié. Groom the grind with the peace fingers of your right hand. Burn those callouses just a little more. Head’s back in. Watch the pour, don’t take your eyes off it. Not too slow, not too fast. Dark like chocolate. Cut it off just in time, when the chocolate turns to caramel. Check the grind – no holes, good to go. The perfect shot.

Pass the cup to the bench. Steam wand waiting like an erect penis. “Neurotically hot” for the lady with the frizzy brown hair and the bald patch. Right at the back, like she spends too much time sleeping. Burn the fuck outta that milk, holding the bottom of the jug.

Burning the palm of my hand, don’t take it away till the last second. Wait a bit longer, make sure I’ve still got feeling. 3

More callouses. We don’t need the temp gage coz we’ve all been doing this for years, right?

Yasmin blows her fringe from her eyes. Looks at me. We grin. The before-work rush is over and we’ve got a five- or 10-minute recovery period.

An espresso shot each. With whipped cream coz we’re fucked.

She grabs her hands together behind her back and pulls. Shoulder stretch. I flop my body down over my legs, grab my ankles. The chef behind me whistles. Apprentice rookie chopping sweet potato methodically for the lunch salad.

‘Quick, El. Number one.’

It’s a game we play. Every guy that walks in goes through the same scrutinisation process. 1, 2, or 3. You’ve gotta fuck one of them. If you don’t pick 1 or 2, you’ve gotta have 3. Helps pass the time. We’re subtle. My boss creeps behind. Walks real soft and quiet but with purpose. Confident but not, hard to describe. Always looks at me with a smirk, like he knows all my secrets but it’s not creepy, it’s almost comforting. Like he knows I don’t belong pulling shots and steaming milk and carrying perfectly poached eggs to tables of businessmen. Like he’s expecting more. I hope he’s right.

Midday, shift over and I drive home, wiping the sleep from my eyes. Pull the visor down to check my face. Fucked. Wondering who’ll be on the couch. Is it time to light up again?

Someone’s had a shower. I push open the bedroom door and trip over my trackies. Kik’s facing away from me, bare shoulder rising and falling over the blanket. It’s June. I’ve been living in this place a couple of months. Always home alone. Only 10 degrees outside. She’s a cold one. He must be freezing.

I sit down on my side of the bed. Bounce a bit so he wakes up. Bored already. I used to love being alone. He yawns, shivers. Pulls the blanket up higher.

‘Lux called. She’s pissed.’ He says it without turning to face me.

I roll my eyes. Nothing to say. I already saw her whiny, attention-seeking Facebook status at the traffic lights on my way home from work. Phone between my knees so the cameras don’t catch me.

Kik rolls over to face me. Eyes half open, beard all crushed. Fucking beautiful. Sleepy blue eyes smile at me. Suddenly slaps his hands over his face. ‘Can’t believe you’ve already been to work!’

I grunt, half smile. Look away. Must look like shit.

“Best friends” for months and I still never know what to say to him. The fact we haven’t had sex is like the elephant in the room.

2. half empty

It’s my seventeenth birthday and I’m in a tent out the back of Lara’s house. Lara +

Gabby + Giselle, the three musketeers. It happened suddenly, one day, teamed together dissecting a rat. Bonding over the grossness. Like all non-lasting high school friendships.

You’re in or you’re out, and everything happens quick as a wink.

Gabby wasn’t allowed to stay and neither was I but her parents are a little more diligent about checking her whereabouts. Mum thinks that by saying no to me, that she can stop me doing whatever it is I’m doing or wanting to do. It’s all about “because I said so”. To tick off the parenting skills of the day, like washing the dishes. Say no to Giselle. Assert some semblance of parental control. I can’t wait to leave home.

I haven’t told Lara it’s my birthday. The best of friends, three peas in a pod, but it hasn’t been long enough. Lara only joined recently. We always end up in a threesome. Like maybe Gab and I have been in each other’s lives so long we need that little something extra. Someone else to bounce off. Gab usually baulks at the idea more than me. Letting someone in. For someone so defensive, I’m always so eager to welcome another into our little “group”, as if they’ll be there forever. The one I’ve been waiting for.

Lara’s different, by teenage girl standards. Me and Gab are the blonde girls with the good grades. She wears leather shoes with a slight heel and I wear Doc Marten combat boots.

We’re nice. But Lara isn’t afraid of conflict. She’s loud and aggressive and wears coloured knee-high socks and cuts her own flaming red hair. She’s everything I wish I could be sometimes. But you know when you’ve come so far in your life as one person, you feel like assuming a new identity now could make you kind of a fraud. No one wants

to be a fake. It’s about being who you are and not giving a shit. As long as you know who you are in the first place.

I remember Lara from the first day of high school. When the teacher called her name on the roll she yelled HERE and sat up straight in her seat, glaring around the rest of the class with a hard, but open expression. As if she was daring someone to be her friend, while the rest of us cowered behind first-day nerves.

She makes out with her boyfriend furiously, at the bus stop every morning. He’s older, finished high school a few years ago but still catches the bus with her every day. Nothing else to do. ‘Pax fingered me on the bus the other day.’

We’re lying in one king-size sleeping bag, melted Neopolitan ice cream in a bucket near our heads. My watch says it’s nearly midnight. Birthday nearly here. A bottle of vodka stolen from her parents’ cabinet. Half empty.

‘On the bus? Ew Lara. Where’s your sense of class?’

She laughs, shoves me. ‘Coming from you!’

I widen my eyes innocently. ‘Who me?’

‘Speaking of buses, how’s Jer-e-my?’

I try not to smile and she shoves me. ‘You soooo love him.’

‘Whatever.’ I don’t know if I should tell her he says it every day, and I say it back, even though I don’t know if we really know what love means yet. If we mean it.

‘They say all the best experiences happen on a bus.’

‘They or you?’ We’re cacking ourselves now and she instinctively whispers Shhh between bursts of giggling. ‘You couldn’t look innocent if you tried!’

I roll onto my back, watch the freezing moisture curl into tear drops on the roof of the tent. ‘I could look innocent, you know.’

‘Oh come on, ballerinas are the naughtiest.’

‘You would know!’ Lara used to dance as well but she stopped when she reached high school. “Couldn’t compete with all you skinny bitches,” she says. She’s chubby, robust.

Actually chubby though, not just in her head.

‘Why don’t you just sleep with him already?’

She smiles, small, rolls onto her back as well and wipes sleep from her eyes under the black-rimmed glasses she’s been wearing since before it was cool. ‘Nah. Too soon.’

‘Oh please. It’s been months and I’m sure he knows by now you’re not a virgin.’

‘Ha, who doesn’t.’

Lara was one of the first in our year and it’s probably not the sort of thing people should care about or keep track of, but I guess good news travels fast.

We wriggle closer. Facing each other. We drink more, eat more, she vomits later. But right before, we kiss. We decide not to tell Gabby, we decide she wouldn’t understand. I use my tongue. And a new, hot heat spreads from the inside out.

3. the face of pathetic

The gates come down as I approach the rail crossing. A thick, sturdy-looking white gate slams shut in front of my chest. Wouldn’t be hard to scale. They shut them so early I’d probably have time to run across the tracks. But. I’m not in a hurry. Never really am. I used to be the kind of person who walked fast everywhere. The echo of a group fitness class floats towards me, bouncing off the harbour, the Crown Plaza hotel, the old warehouses.

‘And push. Come on. Yeah. You. Can. Do. It!’

A flash of envy for the people inside who can squat, push, lift their legs. Move their bodies, invite endorphins. Feel good. Feel fit. Feel healthy. Happy.

I rest my elbows on the gate, look right and left. There’s a voice that says Do it. Come on. Pussy. It’ll be over before you know it. They say you don’t even hear the train as it’s coming straight for you. Which makes sense. At the house, you don’t hear them coming from a distance. I live right on the train line, it’s just past the clothesline. All you get is the excruciating rattle as the train comes level with the back gate.

I stare down at my feet. Slightly blue. Thongs in winter. Should really fix that nailpolish.

Chipped and unsightly. Mum would say it’s skanky but I don’t think she really knows what that means. I wonder how many seconds of fear you’ve got before the train hits. If any. And – would I feel it, the fear? Anything?

I don’t think I’m actually suicidal. Just low. And curious. Yeah, I’m fucking curious.

About everything. That must count for something. Curiosity killed the cat.

I’m staring so hard at my feet my eyes have started to water. Feels good. Maybe there’s something coming. Real tears? Nah.

Footsteps behind me. Two girls. Sweaty and red-faced, tight racer-back gym shirts showing off their tits. They smile, slightly. Nice girls. I wonder if I’m smiling back.

Touch my cheek. It’s numb. They walk straight past me. Sweat towels around their necks. Oh. The gates are up. The sounds from the gym are gone. Clouds gathering.

I cross the tracks, turn left. Head for the clinic.

I stayed at Mace’s last night. Well, until before the sun came up. Stayed there for the last time. There were boxes in the corner, scribbled handwriting like “sheets”, “footy”,

“DVDs”. Guess they’ll be moving in together soon enough.

He asks about Kik, about Lux. All of them. Tells me to be careful.

‘Like you care.’

‘All I ever did was care. Or try to.’ We lie facing each other on the bed and he’s looking in my eyes, which is pretty rare.

‘Right.’

He grabs the side of my face, runs his thumb along my bottom lip. Like a jerk. And I’m fighting back tears if I thought it was possible. ‘You know, if things were different…’ He trails off.

‘Yeah, but they’re not.’

‘But they’re not.’

We lie in silence for a while then I get up from the bed and pull my shirt over my head and try to not be awkward as I dress myself. He doesn’t move.

‘K. Bye then.’ I grab my phone.

‘It’s not goodbye.’

‘Yeah. It is.’

‘You can’t stay away.’ He grins like it’s all a big joke. I wish he wasn’t right. I used to have a moral centre, I think.

My face goes hot and I battle with myself, and then walk out. To the car. Start the engine, start driving. Then I pull over and text him.

- I wanna come back.

And he replies

- Door’s locked.

In the clinic, there’s a girl on the comfy chair in the corner, next to the water cooler.

Looks kind of familiar. A friend of a friend. I duck my eyes, chin down. She’s got the most amazing eyebrows. Big lips, real sexy. From the church. One of the born-agains.

They baptised her in Lake Macquarie – I saw it on Instagram.

Yesterday, I heard she was pregnant. Someone who wasn’t supposed to know or tell told me and now I kinda feel sorry for her. She’s definitely seen me, and she probably doesn’t suspect that I know but she’d feel awkward anyway. A church girl, no boyfriend, in a

Family Planning centre. There’s no minding your own business here. At least mine’s just 11

an infection. Maybe. I’m probably infertile. And I often wonder if I care. I feel almost like announcing it to everyone who walks in. I’m not ashamed – sex is a thing. A normal thing. And I’m allowed to do it.

Then I look around. A girl in the other corner can’t be more than 17. A kid at her feet, probably just learned to walk. Sucking the edge of a Winnie the Pooh book. She’s fat, the girl. Just saying. Has a bottle of Coke in her lap. Eyes glued to the phone in her hand.

Omg fb twitter insta hashtag. The kid makes a noise and she cuts her off – ‘Quiet

Ebony!’

I’m judging. Hard. Two girls on the sofa. A baby each. Tights as pants. Muffin tops.

Jeggings, bleached blonde hair with black roots and the skin of a smoker. Fuck. I wanna know what happened. Did they do it on purpose? Accident? Where are the poor boys?

Did they finish school? I always feel more sorry for the boys. Girls have so much power.

We can skip the pill or prick holes in condoms if we want to keep a man.

The fat girl’s kid runs over to me. Places a toy in my lap. I smile. Always smile at the kids – they haven’t done anything wrong yet. The mum heaves herself off the chair, adjusts her tight singlet, bra exposed.

‘Ebony. Get back here.’ Picks her up, smack on the bum. Launches back into the chair and plops the kid on the floor. Up and running back to me. A dribbly smile. I smile again. I’ve never been good with kids.

‘EBONY.’

‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘She’s okay.’

Gives me a look halfway between filthy and grateful. Like she’s used to getting shit from people, and didn’t have time to change her facial expression when I was nice to her.

I never know what to say to kids. So fucking awkward. I open my mouth and nothing comes out. Feels like I haven’t spoken in hours. The girl’s pigtails are lopsided.

Breakfast on her chin. She bends and picks up my bottle of water. Throws it back on the ground and giggles. I pick it up, give it back to her. She throws it, giggles. This could get old fast.

The mum shrieks from the corner, tears her eyes from her phone and storms over, ugg boots scuffing on the dirty carpet. Lifts the girl by one arm. ‘That’s not yours! No!

Naughty!’

I give up. Pull out my phone. Google “how to make someone love you” because that’s how pathetic I’m feeling today.

The nurse calls my name. ‘Giselle?’ They never use surnames. Privacy.

‘Just El.’ The nurse nods, smiles. ‘Here – she can have it.’ I hand the bottle to the toddler, smile again and follow the nurse down the corridor towards the offices.

Sometimes I wish I had a baby, just so I could learn to love something more than myself.

Have something worth loving.

The girl I know. She’s got a sexy name. I’d make out with her. They saved her soul. She used to be in a “bad crowd”. Parties, drugs, sex. The usual. Now she still does it all, just pretends not to. They all fuck each other but as long as you show up on Sundays, raise your hands to the Lord, you’re good. Have coffee with the right people, fuck the wrong ones later. Oh, and giving head doesn’t count.

4. out of ten

Kik looks at me, wide eyes. One cheek squashed on the pillow. ‘Wait. What the fuck.

You’d rather have sex than give head?’

‘…yeah.’

He grins. A big one. I know how much he loves a good BJ. Everyone knows. ‘Isn’t that heaps backwards? Like. I don’t get it. BJ’s just a BJ.’

‘I dunno. You don’t know where that shit’s been. And at least with sex you’re both getting something out of it.’

‘What!’ He starts cacking. ‘Mate, you’re backwards.’

‘Seriously. It’s more intimate. It’s like a boyfriend thing. Fucking is just fucking.’

He’s got his hands over his face, like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Reaches over, grabs my hip. Squeezes. ‘You. Are something else, El.’

I don’t know whether to laugh or be embarrassed.

‘Awwww man. I just love head. Ugh.’

‘Yeah. I know.’ And that’s why I haven’t done it. Not that we’ve really done anything.

Let’s not bring that up though.

‘Awww.’ He’s still going on about it. ‘I’ve had some good head. Fuck.’ Eyes closed.

‘Now I can’t stop thinking about it.’

‘Bec?’ 14

He doesn’t answer. She’s a sensitive topic and I don’t push it.

I’m on my back. Arms behind my head. Paint is peeling off the ceiling. He shoves his erection into my side. Groans a bit. If my eyes were open they’d be rolling. It never goes anywhere. I’m sick of getting all worked up then shut down.

His mouth is real close to my ear. Soft husky voice. Thrusts gently. Just in case I hadn’t felt it. ‘So. How good are you at head? Outta 10.’

5. racing the birds

It’s my sixteenth birthday and I’m lying on Jeremy Jones’ single bed, staring up at a Star

Wars poster on the ceiling. We’re kissing and he runs his hand down my side to my undies. I bite my lip and clench my thighs and when it starts feeling a little better I relax but he pulls his hand out, wipes his sticky fingers on the bedspread and sighs in frustration like something is supposed to happen that’s not happening.

‘Do you just wanna have sex then?’

‘Oh. Okay.’ I’m pretty much whispering.

He mumbles something, not looking me in the eye. Leaps off the bed to his school backpack and fishes around for something. My mind goes blank as he feeds himself into a bright blue condom. I’ve seen the movies and fantasised about this just as much as any other teenage girl but for some reason I thought it would be different, even though I knew it was unrealistic.

Jeremy and I were caught wagging school the other day. Just your typical high school love story.

I sit in the office, waiting to be called in to see the principal. The school has just raised money to install fancy new sliding doors for the front entrance to the office and every time somebody walks past on the playground, the doors rattle open to the cacophonous noise of teenagers. Then the doors shut and everything is relatively silent save for the sporadic tapping of the receptionist’s fingers on the keyboard.

Jeremy walks in. From the grade above me. He’s kind of famous, according to the carvings on the desks and permanent marker on the bathroom doors. Tall and built pretty big but he hunches his shoulders to appear mysterious and brooding. Dark hair groomed diagonally across his head in a Mohawk style. The epitome of seventeen-year-old boy.

He enters the office with a skateboard under one arm. Winks at the receptionist and she tries not to smile, a bit flustered. My throat is acidic and I’m bloated and I just want the day to be over so I can go home and run up and down the driveway until it’s time to sleep. I like to pretend I can race the birds and bats that fly overhead but I’m faster and more powerful.

Eyes on my knees, I pick at the heart-shaped scab there. Moody, sulking. The usual. I used to be a pretty pleasant child. Sometimes I don’t know if it’s fake or real, whether my whole life has been waiting for me to come into my own, into this combat boot- wearing, black-clothed, attitude-y girl who doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks (or at least tries really hard for that to be the case), or whether I’m going through a “stage”.

So this boy, Jeremy, won’t let me fade inconspicuously against the wall. He sits right opposite me in an ugly green chair with his forearms on his knees looking every bit the teen hunk of Young Adult novels. I feel him staring at me, feel him breathing evenly as if his breath is on my neck. Goosebumps. I look up at him, hard stare. Folding my arms.

Daring him to talk to me and yet hoping he doesn’t.

He just sits there staring, his eyes smiling. We wait for the squeak of Mrs Murray’s brass door handle. We’ve both heard it before.

‘Mr Jones, Miss O’Reilly, come inside. I’m going to deal with you together.’ Her look is stern behind her purple-rimmed glasses and shock of white hair. Always dishevelled. She can’t really pull off “scary principal”.

As we walk behind her through the door, Jeremy grins like a Cheshire cat, turning towards me. ‘You’re beautiful.’

After that, it was on. Who falls for that? Texting. MySpace. MSN messenger. The heartbeat’s flutter as he comes online.

I knock on the door, knowing his parents will be out. It’s all pre-planned. I didn’t eat all day, hoping to lose weight at the last second. But then I casually suggest we order pizza as if I don’t care about what I eat because my best friend Gab says that’s what guys like.

He looks nervous and I’m confused because for someone so “experienced” it’s disconcerting. Under dark lashes and an anxious, wrinkled forehead he smiles and opens the door to let me in.

We blink at each other, grinning stupidly for a few seconds past awkward. Patches of sweat threaten my armpits and I briefly panic that I forgot to wear deodorant. I’m wearing short shorts and a thin black jumper and my boots and I feel dumb because it’s

July and I’m shivering in the cold. Maybe it’s the cold.

I follow him to the kitchen and before anyone needs to break the ice he grabs my waist and pushes me hard against the marble bench. His lips find my neck and my heart starts racing but all I want to do is shove my fingers down my throat until my eyes leak and my shoulders cramp from the force of the bile.

He says he didn’t cum because the condom was too tight. Too small. That’s why it wasn’t good but he doesn’t apologise and I don’t really know what he has to apologise for anyway. Not that I know anything. He kind of pushes my head down to his naked crotch and I don’t really know what I’m doing and he doesn’t make a noise or tell me what to do so after a while I just stop. Says I can’t stay because his parents will be back 18

early in the morning. I briefly wonder if Mum would even let me stay at a boy’s house, if she were to know where I was, which she doesn’t. Never does.

I catch the bus. Arrive home to an empty house.

6. these are our conversations

‘Do you think there’s a difference between a hipster and an indie?’ says Lux.

‘I dunno.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Indie’s more of a muso term, y’know? Like independent artist. Hipster doesn’t have much to do with music. Just tats, beards, vintage clothes. Working at a cool job. But obviously you’ve gotta like good music.’

‘Yeah like not a lawyer or some shit.’

‘What’s good music though?’

‘Wait isn’t vintage clothes an indie thing?’

‘Babies! Having babies when you’re young is cool!’

‘What’s cool though?’

‘Yeah, babies with tattooed parents!’

‘All the churchies seem to be hipster.’

‘Hey!’ Kik pretends to be offended. Maybe he really is. But he acts pretty good at making fun of himself when he’s with us. His non-churchy crowd. Two different worlds.

‘Bitches ain’t shit.’

Pumba launches into an improv rap. Kik starts beatboxing, and Lux is rolling a joint.

Adding harmonies when she feels it’s necessary. She’s got a pretty good voice. I never join in so I guess they assume I’ve got nothing to offer and they’re okay with it. I’m like the “token black guy” in the comedy film except that I’m not black and I’m not a guy.

And we’re not very funny.

These are our conversations. We sit and discuss ourselves like we don’t belong anywhere. I watch with what I’m sure is a pathetic smile on my face and I’m having a great time but I’m bored as shit. Can’t decide which, maybe both?

No one ever asks me to roll one. I wouldn’t know how anyway.

All our scenes take place at my house coz I’m the only one living out of home. Except

Pumba, but he’s funny about smoking at his place. His aunty owns the apartment and he grows weed on the balcony but he doesn’t want us smoking there. Something about shitting where you eat, he says. I watch Pum for a while. Realise I don’t even know his real name. Is he a hipster? Tats covering both arms, big Ned Kelly beard. But he’s a plumber, and he’s fat. So I guess that disqualifies him. Doesn’t go to church either, wouldn’t be caught dead. Neither would Lux. I’m still undecided.

We look the part, the four of us. The right amount of shaved sections of hair, ink and fashion. But it’s like we can disconnect from the fad yet secretly strive to be what defines it. Hipster, indie, goth, whatever. Have an identity. El, that hipster chick with the dyed black hair with the shaved side. Lux, the chick with the blonde hair and pink dreads. Kik, the bass player in the button-up shirt. None of us would have a chance without each other.

I always clean up after the others leave. Dirty pizza plates, Oreo wrappers and discarded papers. Brush the weed off the outdoor table. Light some incense. All good. My

housemate’s loved up so he’s never home. His girlfriend’s a hairdresser and I’ve got their lives planned for them. I think he’s an electrician so he makes a fair bit of money.

Already owns a house and a fish tank. They’ll kick me out soon, get a dog. She’ll get pregnant accidentally-on-purpose and there’ll be a shotgun wedding. She’ll wear a strapless white satin dress and those Spanx pants that suck in your tummy and thighs.

Hair up in a high bun, heaps of makeup. Tuckshop lady arms, unflattering. And sweat marks at her armpits by the end of the reception (at The Brewery). The rest is history.

They expect nothing of each other and know they can’t do any better than each other so they’ll probably be happy. Simple life in the ‘burbs – Adamstown. This house, with an extension for the kids and for her to cut hair at home, eventually. They’ll never leave

Newie. Maybe a trip to Bali or two.

I’m so supremely aware of what’s going on. Every episode, every conversation between us. Voices are murmurs and I tune out and in, out and in. Sometimes it feels like I’m watching everything from outside my body. Constructing my own self-destruction and witnessing it all with my own hand slapped over my mouth.

I sit here and try to remember all the things I’ll write down someday. The things that would surely make this story worth telling. Living it and writing it at the same time, scrawling lyrical sentences behind my eyelids, hoping it’ll all be worth it. Totally and unequivocally not present in the moment at any stage.

7. first dates

Kik’s van has a fridge but we never use it. Beers stay cold outside at this time of year.

When we met, that was his thing. Kik the guy in the band who lives in his van. It’s his thing, his jam, his defining personality trait. Perpetually parked on the cliff above the

Bogey Hole.

The first time we hung out in the van, it wasn’t winter yet. He pulls up the front of my house and beeps the horn. When I jump in the passenger side, he nods towards the shack by the train line.

‘Hey, so do you live here by yourself?’

‘Yeah. Well pretty much. The guy who owns the house is always at his girlfriend’s place.

He comes home to, like, feed the fish.’

‘Sick. You know I’m moving in right?’

I don’t know what to say. We’ve known each other all of two weeks.

He pulls away from the curb, my butt sliding on the bench seat. I grab my seatbelt. We chat comfortably on the way into town. He shows me a lookout near the Mater Hospital, where people go to fuck.

At the cliff, Kik pulls my laptop from under my handbag. ‘Keen for a movie sesh?’

Those blue eyes sparkle, big kid’s face with chubby cheeks and I can’t help but grin back. We climb into the back and he opens the back door, plugging in the power cord while I grab the pile of shabby blankets and spread them out.

‘It’s comfy in here.’

‘Yeah. She’s a beauty.’

‘Do you ever get sick of living in your car?’

‘Nah. Means I’m free. My parents decided to start charging me rent so I bailed, bought this bad boy.’

‘Thought you said she was a girl?’

‘Depends who’s in it.’ He winks. Puts a DVD in the disc drive.

‘Been on any roadtrips?’

‘Yeah. So good. Went up the coast over summer, surfing and playing music. Supporting

Mace. Before he was a douchebag.’

‘Urban Legend, I remember this!’ Changing the subject.

‘Yeah, classic. I’m so into bad horror movies right now. Lux got me onto it. You should see her collection.’

‘Right.’

He looks like he wants to say something but shuts his mouth. We haven’t even acknowledged that Mace is why we’re here now. I stretch my legs out, lean forward and pull fluff off my jeans. Rest my elbows on my shins.

‘The fuck!’

‘What?’ I sit up straight.

‘How the fuck can you do that?’ He’s looking wide-eyed at my outstretched legs.

‘What?’

‘You must be pretty fucking flexible. Me, can’t even touch my toes.’

I grin and lay my torso flat over my legs. ‘I used to do ballet.’

His eyes grow wider, then narrow. ‘That’s hot.’

During the movie I can feel he wants to kiss me. He’s fidgety, always trying to get closer. I’m not in the mood and we don’t even know each other. All I know is there’s a girl called Lux and an ex named Bec and he used to be friends with Mace and it seems all a bit too messy. Then again if it was all too messy I wouldn’t be here. Call me a masochist.

I can see his face in the glare from the laptop. When the movie gets dark. His head leaning towards mine, eyes distracted. Sitting at an angle with his shoulder almost touching mine, must be uncomfortable. He’s tall.

‘I’m kinda cold.’

‘Yeah, crazy how the weather has changed in the last two weeks.’

‘Yeah.’ I shiver, move my feet under one of the blankets.

‘Here.’ He leans over to the front seat, pulling back a faded denim jacket. ‘Wear this.’

‘Haha. Thanks.’ I pull it over my shirt. ‘How do I look?’

‘You look tiny!’

‘I feel like I’m drowning in denim.’

We laugh and when the movie’s over we watch another one. Drive to get takeaway Thai.

Start a third movie and then Lux calls. She’s finished work and they have plans. Kik drops me back at my house in Adamstown.

8. surviving

Nan and G invite me over. There’s some stuff for me to pick up in the spare room. My old room. Stay for dinner, love. It’d be good to see you.

G’s in the corner smoking. I kiss his rough cheek and he grabs my hand when I move away. ‘Never start smoking.’ That mischievous glint in his eye.

Nan’s paperbag skin is warm when she hugs me. I cup the soft skin under her upper arms, like I know she hates, but we both laugh as she slaps my hand away.

We cover topics like Uni, work, boys. They know now not to ask about Mum. My father.

Nan’s pretty, for an old person. She’s got this perpetually pleasant smile on her face, even when she’s mad, or even when she used to nag at Mum about something or other.

Usually about my father. At least we agree there. It’s like Nan totally zenned out over the years. Mum used to talk about her deprived childhood. As an only child. Neglected.

Paying for her own ballet lessons. Her mum was working, her dad was distant. Whatever.

She doesn’t know them like I know them. As pretty much the best people ever; my grandparents who took me in like a stray cat, straight out of school. Let me do my thing, come and go as I pleased. And I always washed the dishes. Watched reruns of M*A*S*H with G in the middle of the night when he should’ve been sleeping and I should’ve been studying.

Nan thinks I don’t know she’s on Valium and I think she doesn’t know I steal it and so we just ignore the subject.

‘What happened to Brendan? Nice boy.’

‘Didn’t work out Nan.’

‘What is this didn’t work out business? You kids don’t know what commitment looks like.’

‘Let’s not do this Nan.’

G just sits silently. Smoking. Watching. Amused. He’s seen three generations of crazy females.

‘No, darling, you think it’s all about true love and finding the one and it’s bullshit—’

G coughs over his soup and I catch his eye. We both break into laughter.

‘Nan! How many wines have you had?’

‘Don’t talk to me about alcohol, young lady.’

‘She hasn’t sworn since ’74,’ G growls. ‘Since when your mother was pushing her little head up against—’

‘It’s about making a choice, doll, and sticking with it—’

‘—her pelvis. Poor little thing. Didn’t know what—’

‘—you know it’s not all about love. It’s overrated. It’s about commitment and making a life—’

‘—had hit her. Poor little thing, coming into this world to a screaming swearing mother—’

‘Poor little thing!’ Nan has finally realised what G is rambling about. ‘What about me,

Rog?’

‘Oh, doll, you were tough.’

‘Yes, you’re right. I was tough.’

‘I’ll never forget the day…’

They go off down memory lane together and I’ve heard this story a billion times so I let my eyes glaze over, sip my sparkling wine (fucking foul) and push bread crusts into the chunky pea and ham soup. Wondering when I’ll get to the medicine cabinet. Arms a bit jittery, that balloon-in-my-chest feeling of inexplicable anxiety because this is like a safe house for me. A place of good memories and people who love me but all of a sudden I need to get out. Because maybe I don’t deserve this.

The water glass in front of me has white stripes, like I’ve been drinking from since I was too small to even remember. Rain is lashing at the windows, pounding on the tin roof.

Like a late afternoon storm after a hot summer’s day. I imagine myself here, ten years earlier. My parents would take time out, in the summer holidays. Nan and G were happy to have us. Nan feeding us at all hours of the day, even though mum told her I wasn’t allowed biscuits or sweet stuff. She snuck me extra dessert every night. A second blob of cream, scoop of ice cream. Winking at me, pink lipstick slightly smeared on one corner of her mouth. Of course I would have to hide the evidence anyway, before the holiday was over. Throw it all up. In case mum noticed a change. Or noticed anything. Sharing a mattress with Justin on the floor of Nan’s room. Andrew always got the spare room.

Always got everything he wanted. Trying to block out Nan’s snores and Justin’s wheezy breathing, like his little lungs were struggling.

I’m lying there listening to his breathing, and it gets slower and slower. The pauses between breaths are longer. And then it stops. And I’m at peace with his death. I curl into his bony little body which somehow is already freezing cold and I imagine that I kiss his

cheek. And I don’t tell anyone he’s died until the morning, so as not to disturb them and panic everyone. Nan will call mum and she will arrive, clutching at me, crying into my hair because I’m still alive and Justin spent his last moments with me. I imagine the funeral, all his friends from primary school and their parents, everybody sombre but we would try and make the day a happy day. A celebration of life.

And then I snap out of it. Guilty to be writing my own brother’s eulogy. So I snuggle into his skinny body and he murmurs in his sleep. I press my fingernails into my palms until they bleed.

This is the kind of weather I used to love. Now it just seems like that pathetic fallacy stuff we learned in high school. I need the sun to warm my bones again, because everything will be normal when the sun is shining.

Nan and G go quiet, eventually. We eat. Drink. Talk about the weather. And the birds.

And I pretend to care about Wimbledon coz they love tennis. And G’s lost his spark again. And Nan’s smile is back and I wonder if they love each other, or if they’re putting one foot in front of the other and surviving the only way they know how.

Nan had her heart set on my marrying Brendan – my ex – because we were together for over a year and I’m in my 20s and I had a key to his rich parents’ house and he wanted to have my babies or whatever, and I’m exhausted of reminding her we live in the 21st century. Then feeling like shit for ruining all their lives.

After dinner we watch The Bill, like always. And when I leave it’s too early to go home to the empty shack by the train line so I drive past Lux’s house, check for Kik’s van. It’s parked out front, and I feel sick and stupid.

9. high as a kite

‘You look good in that jacket. But maybe it’s just coz it’s you wearing it.’ Kik looks at me over his beer.

I want to say something. Anything. Respond with a witty joke, a flirty comment. But my brain is paralysed. Am I smiling? Do I look like an idiot? Can’t feel my face. I bring a cuffed denim sleeve to my cheek, press hard. Smells like him. Like boy. It’s way too big, this jacket. I’ve taken to wearing it every day. It covers me. Over everything. Pyjamas, on the couch, watching TV. He left it so I knew he was coming back. That’s what he said. Smells like him.

Say something. Before he moves.

Blue eyes boring into me, searching deeper. He doesn’t touch me when the others are around, but I want him to remind me why I’m here. Touch me.

Someone’s filming. Someone else thinks this will be funny tomorrow. Someone else is sharpening knives in the kitchen. Get them away from me. I hate knives. Say it out loud.

No, don’t, it’s dumb. I’m straddling the heater. Warm air blows up my crotch. The most action I’m getting tonight. Say that out loud, it’s funny. Say that. Too late. Did I say it already? Can’t feel my face.

It’s Pum’s housemate sharpening knives in the kitchen. He’s a chef slash drummer slash nobody. I’m staring so hard at the boys in the kitchen my eyes feel like they’re bleeding.

No one’s paying attention. I can imagine the knife coming towards me. And maybe I’d try to duck but I’m slow and numb. Then the blade would go right into my belly. All of a sudden I imagine myself naked. Clean cut, perfect slice from the nice sharp knife. I don’t

think I’m supposed to touch it. Stay still. Don’t bleed out. Something needs to happen and I’m imagining all this drama but I look around and I’m still stuck, straddling the heater. People having fun around me.

Someone says Maccas and everyone’s out the door. It’s my house so I stay. No one invites me. Kik says to keep the jacket. Touches his rough hand to my cheek, the others are in the car so it’s okay, they can’t see. He stays a second too long.

I wash the bowl and the scissors, wipe down the outside table. It’s freezing out here.

They said it would be funny if I looked at myself in the mirror. I walk into the bathroom and expect my face. I see someone else’s and it’s not funny. Crooked teeth, small lips, eyes shrunken. They used to be pretty. I’m even wearing makeup. Were my teeth always that crooked? Should have got braces. Everything less than desirable stares back and it’s not funny at all.

10. extra baggage

The day before my fifteenth birthday, my father left for good. Apparently.

He forages around the room while I sit on my parents’ bed, hugging a pillow to my chest.

The smell of baked dinner wafts upstairs and my stomach feels like a merry-go-round.

Birthdays are nerve-wracking now because mum cooks and I have to eat it. Special occasion fizzy drink on the table. It taunts me so I can practically feel the syrupy liquid pumping through my veins and fermenting into lumps of sugar, collecting at my thighs.

Smells sticky and stale.

Dad chats to me about my day, about the weekend. Doesn’t mention my birthday and maybe he doesn’t remember coz I guess he has other things on his mind, though I don’t know that yet. Not that his attendance at my previous birthdays is to be applauded. We both know this is his longest trip to date.

He delivers intermittent instructions while packing, like the fact that the bins go out on

Tuesdays and the number for the pest man is on the fridge and Mum’s car takes unleaded fuel. My throat closes and eyes burn and I beg myself not to cry, not to be a wimp.

Because really, deep down, I don’t care, do I?

He zips zips and locks locks and pulls on his favourite plane socks that are thick and grey. ‘I’ll miss you sweetheart.’

We don’t look at each other. I want to believe that it’s true and that he just isn’t looking at me because he’s embarrassed about being emotional. I wish he carried a picture of us in his wallet because if something ever happened who would know where he belongs?

Does he even know where he belongs?

I don’t notice until later that the suitcase is much bigger than usual and the pile of books and reading glasses by his side of the bed are gone and my brain is punishing me for not remembering it all at the time.

‘Look after mum, okay?’ He says it every time, like it’s my responsibility to look after the person who birthed me and raised me and is supposed to be an adult. The one who’s supposed to run the family.

‘I know.’ It’s all I can say.

‘That reminds me.’ He trudges over to the wardrobe and back, giving me an extremely short, typed letter. Points to the word “depression”. ‘Just remember this.’

‘What for?’

‘Dr Stephens saw your mother last night.’

I stare at the words, blinking to confirm it’s not my own name on the page. Like a montage scene in a movie where the leading character has an epiphany and everything falls into place, I see the other words on the page: insomnia, anxiety, exhaustion, poor diet, stress. I swallow. ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t argue with that.’

‘Anyway, it wouldn’t hurt you to remember this. When your mother goes off at you like she does, well there’s a reason.’ He gives the paper a final flourish and puts it back on the dresser.

I watch the taxi pull up from my room, noticing for the first time the extra bags. He turns back towards the house before he gets in and he never usually does that – looks up to my window and waves. I go to the bathroom and purge myself of my last meal, curl on my bed in the foetal position.

For years I couldn’t even remember what he looked like, picture his face. Couldn’t conjure an image save for the smudgy black and white face of a man with a strong jaw, dark stubble and thick eyebrows. Maybe I’ve been staring at my own blank face for too long.

11. skinny cock

Vibrations wake me up. Like a chainsaw to my scalp. I roll over, swearing in my head.

Voice too dead and croaky to say anything out loud. Messages from Kik. It’s only 11pm.

Knocked myself out on Nan’s Valium. After Kik left this morning I couldn’t shake the feeling. Ants crawling through my veins. Jittery. Fucking angry and so exhausted like I could run into town from all this pent-up adrenaline. But I stand up and collapse back on the couch. Hope I wasn’t supposed to work today.

Anyway. Lux cracked the shits. It’s not unlike her, but she must be on her period or something. It’s not the first time Kik’s stayed at my house and it won’t be the last. We were up late last night, as usual. Watching movies. 100 percent baked, eating Tim Tams.

Lux bailed early, thinking Kik would follow her home. We carried on till way past 2am.

Crashed on the couch. We moved from sitting straight next to each other, to my legs on his lap, to him spooning me. All his moves. Classic Kik. Fell asleep with his hands on my tits, kneading them, exploring, tweaking the nipples. It didn’t even feel good, just normal. Like I know it means nothing. Like brother and sister, even though that’s clearly fucked up.

We moved to the bedroom. Fell asleep. An hour later I wake up to him pressing himself against me. He pulls me over to straddle him. ‘Grind.’ It’s all he says. I comply. Go for his lips, because I’m a kisser. He moves his face away.

‘What are you doing El! We can’t do this.’ He says it as he rubs his hard, skinny cock against my pubic bone.

‘You’re fucked.’ I grab his face. Make him kiss me. He never uses his tongue. Like he’s scared. Head doesn’t count, dry humping doesn’t count. So maybe kissing with no tongue doesn’t count.

Kik’s message:

- El! Come to Lux’s. Bring vodka.

- Don’t have any.

- Bring anything.

- You were meant to pick me up on the way to the gig.

- Oh shit. Sorry

- I’m in bed.

- Well fucking come over

- Nah, Lux probably needs a break from me

- Actually yeah. Love ya

Message from Lux:

- El Belle, just come over. I’m not mad. There’s just some

things I can’t even explain to you. I can’t talk to you about

everything

- All good x

- Well there’s no need to be a bitch about it

- Um, I’m not? Just said it’s fine. I’m in bed, tired x

- Yeah. Ok. Whatever. Night.

Fuck me. It’s high school all over again. They’re a few suburbs away, without me, on the hunt for weed and booze. Jamming without me. Lux’s parents don’t care, they love Kik. 37

Love anyone. Me, even. Parents never usually do. Total hippies. They’ll probably wake up, join the kids at the couches on the driveway. Amazing singers. Mum on tambourine,

Dad on bongos. They probably wish Lux and Kik would just date already. Or fuck. They spend pretty much every night together. That’s why Lux is pissed at me. I’m in the way.

A fucking liability. A blow-up doll for Kik’s horny penis to rub against. Provider of the food when everyone else’s broke and I’m close to it. Rent will be late when I buy out

Coles to satisfy our munchies. We all throw stuff in the trolley. Getting excited about the prospect of white bread, devon. Doritos with tomato sauce. Then at the register, no one pulls out their wallets. Lux and Kik step back, or disappear.

12. fairy princess

‘So, anyway. I’m heaps sorry about the other night.’

I act annoyed and aloof but if I’m honest with myself I’m too gutless to say anything substantial. Lux and I have been making small talk for almost half an hour at Goldbergs, drinking wine because it’s “girl time”. I wonder what we would talk about if we didn’t talk about Kik. It was her idea to have dinner. We’re only friends by default, coz it’s easier.

Earlier, I got a message. The first one from her in days:

- What you up to tonight?

- Wanna go to the gig?

- Hells yeah. Dinner first?

She tagged me in a funny meme on Instagram. A cartoon lady holding a black canvas saying Look, it’s a picture of my love life. On social media we can pretend there’s no tension between us and for a brief moment I think maybe the situation will just pass by like tumbleweed, like all the other times. Not sure if you’ve actually seen it, if it really happened. Solid friendship a mirage on the horizon.

Then here she is apologising. Truth be told I’m pretty fucking gobsmacked. Didn’t think she had a speck of humility lurking within.

‘Yeah. Okay. All good.’

We avoid eye contact awkwardly, sipping wine and tearing pieces of bread, swirling it in olive oil with no intention of actually eating it. I briefly consider having a go at her, then decide against it. Briefly consider commenting on the sexy bearded waiter, then decide not to.

‘I was pretty out of line, I know. It’s just my shit, you know. There’s some things I can’t even talk to you about—’

‘When are you gonna believe me that there’s nothing going on between me and Kik?’

‘I know. I know. But it’s just, he’s my best friend. Sometimes it’s hard having someone else – new – in the picture. You know. There’s two of us now. I know he loves me, like, I know. Guys are just weird at showing it.’

‘Yeah he does love you.’

She looks at me, eyes screaming with insecurity and doubt.

‘You know you’re never gonna find someone, like an actual boyfriend, with Kik in your life. Don’t think any other guy would like his woman sleeping with another guy in your bed every night. Plus, where would he go? Back to the van? His parents?’ I don’t say, with me.

She looks down. I continue. ‘Coz you know he hooks up with people so why shouldn’t you? He knows you’d never, though. He knows he’s always got you.’

‘We were talking the other night, when you left for work. Just like under a blanket outside…’ I imagine them lighting each other’s cigarettes on my balcony. ‘…and we just have this connection, you know, like this magnetic force field constantly drawing us together. It’s hard to explain.’

‘I get it.’ And I do, but I don’t say this out loud. Coz I feel it too.

‘And anyway, he said, like, “Lux mate, I swear, if I’m not married by the time I’m 30

I’m just gonna cut my losses and marry you”.’

I laugh. Her eyes are shining, like she’s a fucking fairy princess. But she’s laughing too.

‘30? Jeez. Not giving himself much time.’

‘Well, you know, he probably reckoned he was gonna get married to Bec pretty soon after school.’

‘True.’ We go quiet for a moment. Both thinking the same thing, but in different ways.

‘Did you see Bec’s Instagram post?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s gotta hurt.’

‘I dunno, I reckon he’s over it.’

‘Lux, it’s been less than a year since they broke up, and even then the split wasn’t even official!’

‘Yeah but—’

‘Which is pretty fucked up considering she’s already engaged to someone else.’

‘As if she wasn’t cheating.’

‘I dunno.’ I don’t tell her about the messages I read in Kik’s phone when he was in the shower. I don’t tell her that Bec and Kik have still been seeing each other pretty regularly

according to my sleuthing. Kinda brings me pleasure, kinda doesn’t. God I’m disgusting.

‘Bet her dress will be amazing.’

‘I dunno.’ Lux laughs like a bitch. ‘She’s put on a bit of weight.’ I say nothing, thinking of all the things I could, should, say. Hoping she doesn’t mention Mace. ‘Anyway I always wanted kids before 30 anyway.’ She looks a bit sheepish.

‘Shit you guys would have cute babies.’

She scoffs, fiddles with the dreadlock that’s fallen down level with her chin. Her eyes doing that fairy princess thing again. ‘Anyway I know nothing is going on with you guys.

Kik told me.’

‘Yeah?’ Not what he fucking told me.

‘He just said it’s different with you guys. Like he said you kissed a few times but, you know, it doesn’t matter. He’s kissed me before too, ages ago.’

‘Yeah. Exactly. It’s different.’ I imagine Kik’s bony cock pushing against Lux’s creamy white thigh.

‘Like we will always have that connection which is special I guess.’

‘You should be grateful.’ I say it like a best friend should while someone stirs burnt soup in my stomach. Acid reflux burning my windpipe. Just the wine. The wine.

I check my phone, cut off whatever she’s about to say next. ‘We better go.’

I drive, even though I’ve had three glasses of wine. Could be worse. The Lass is close enough. The only reason we’re here, the two of us having a fake girls night, is coz we both wanted to go to the gig but both didn’t wanna go alone. We’d never admit it to each other or ourselves. That we need each other. Except I just did. 42

Kik’s “band” is supporting Mace Bedford tonight. They used to be best friends before

Mace and Bec got engaged and they shat all over Kik’s heart. They hang out with their respective minions, bitching about each other like little girls, on opposite sides of the pub.

We stride straight out to the courtyard. Lux lights up. No one approaches us, we go to them. Never if we were alone, but we’re best friends with everyone, know everyone, rubbing shoulders, when we’re standing side by side, silently hating each other. Or maybe that’s just me. How can you hate someone but love them to fucking pieces at the same time? Maybe I am a masochist.

We stroll around and people pass sneaky joints to each other. You don’t ask, you just take. It’s cooler, like you belong. Everyone rugged up, all fingerless gloves. Nodding to the people we haven’t said Hi to yet, exchanging fake personal jokes we make up on the spot with people we might have met before, but maybe not.

I go to the bar, alone. Conveniently pretending I don’t see Kik, too cool to say Hi.

Having a rad fucking time. But actually I’m just chicken shit for no apparent reason. Too scared to say Hi in public to the guy who sleeps in my bed. My doona is still in his van.

And at night I’m freezing without him.

Mace is different. I feel him watching me casually, like I’m just another face in the crowd. The problem is if I look I’ll know what he’s really thinking, challenging me to acknowledge him. Do I pretend to be his cousin, sister, colleague? Always a different story. It’s no effort to see straight past him. I’ve been doing it for months.

His fiancé, Bec, sits on the edge of the raised platform stage, looking effortlessly stylish and bored like a picture on Tumblr. No idea I even exist. Maybe my face would look familiar but that’s as far as it goes. No one knows how long they’ve actually been seeing

each other, but everyone speculates. Being engaged is like being in the safe zone. You’re intending to get married and serve God – keep Him at the centre of your relationship – so as far as anyone is concerned what you did or didn’t do in the past doesn’t count. Even fathering someone else’s child.

Mace and Kik used to be best friends. Muso besties, church buddies. The voice and the sounds.

Kik is in the corner playing pool, ignoring me but trying not to stare at Bec. Everyone’s just cheating on cheaters with cheaters and I think the word so many times it sounds stupid and I see cheetahs running in my head.

It’s about this time, this moment, that I ditch my drinks, leave the bartender open- mouthed and cashless and bail to the toilets. Reapply my lipstick. Heart beating fast, face pale and sweaty. Fuck I look like shit. Can’t even bear to look myself in my own eyes, they’re scanning every other part of my face and neck.

This is fucked. Fucked. Fucking fucked. How did I let my life get so fucked up?

I think it over and over in my head and then eventually text it to Gabby. She writes back straight away. Where am I? Am I okay? She’s such a fucking good friend and it makes me feel worse so I ignore her. I finally look into my eyes. Someone walks into the bathroom, gives me a weird look. I don’t even care. I wonder how long I’ve been in here, wonder if anyone’s noticed. Doubt it.

When I emerge, everything looks the same. The music is louder and the lights are brighter. Talking, music, drums, glasses clinking as a bartender does the rounds on the grass, clearing empty drinks and stacking them in a pile taller than his head. No one looks around or calls me over. My instincts locate Lux and I walk over, hug the guy she’s talking to as if we’ve known each other forever. He seems happy to see me, but aren’t we 44

all just happy to see each other all the time? It’s what we do. Can’t remember his name, maybe we haven’t even met before.

Lux doesn’t even notice that I returned with no drinks coz someone’s bought her a beer.

She’s holding a cig between two fingers of the hand that holds the glass, chipped black nailpolish. Equal parts glamorous and grunge. I need something to do with my hands.

Old mate walks away eventually, says something about catching up soon. I grab Lux’s beer and take a sip. Foul. Take another one. What’s mine is yours is mine.

‘You seen Kik?’ She takes a drag.

‘Yeah he’s playing pool.’

‘Talk to him?’

‘Nah.’ Silence as she blows smoke from her cigarette and I blow smoke from the cold.

‘Bec’s here.’

‘Shit!’

‘Yeah, on the stage helping Mace set up.’

‘Fuckin Mace.’

‘Yeah. Poor Kik.’

‘Ha! Fuck him. Serves him right.’ I laugh too and it’s empty but full. I love her more when she’s mad at Kik. One minute she’s all fairytale dream then the next she’s pissed off at him. ‘Can’t believe he hasn’t said hi! Prick. Fuck him.’

I’m kinda actually hoping he doesn’t come outside. I’ve got ants crawling under my skin and 99% of my being wants to walk away, get in my car, drive home and never see these people again. The 1% always wins.

We hear music and gradually make our way back inside to the sweaty staleness under fluorescent lights they really should turn off already. They never leave the lights on for the main act. Eager not to look too eager, we lurk off to the side near the pokies room,

Lux sipping silently on her beer. I look around, not bothering to act like I’m enjoying myself or like I come here all the time and know these songs backwards and am mates with the band. Can’t even be bothered listening.

Mace and Bec have disappeared, their crowd now mingling at the pool table with Kik’s crowd coz they’re all still friends, church and music and all that, but they pretend not to be when it matters; when they have to choose a side. They have to take sides most of the time. I look around and realise no one would recognise me if Lux wasn’t here. A nobody, everyone’s secret. Lux’s elusive “best friend” with the black hair who comes to gigs, no visible piercings or discernible tattoos. Lux’s friend, Kik’s secret-but-sometimes-public friend, Mace’s deadest secret. Funny how I knew Mace before any of them. How he was the catalyst that started all this fuckedupness. Not funny though.

‘Dodged a bullet there, El!’ It’s like Lux can read my thoughts. I smile without my teeth.

No one hears coz no one cares and no one even knows I used to stand beside him. ‘When was the last time you even saw him?’ Lux whispers, thinking she already knows the answer anyway but still digging conspiratorially for any new info. She likes to know stuff, be in the know, tell other people.

‘Pfft. Can’t even remember.’ Lies.

‘Is it awkward?’

‘Nah. We just pretend we don’t know each other.’

‘Does he still text you?’

‘Nah. Changed my number.’

‘Ha. Nice. Plus he’s engaged now. Good little church boy.’ I don’t respond. ‘Wonder how many secret friends he’s got now.’ I keep quiet. ‘Poor Bec.’

‘She’s pretty hot ay.’

‘Fuck her.’

‘Fuck Kik.’

She laughs. We both watch Kik, strutting his stuff, on the bass, not looking in our direction. Being a hero.

When it’s all over, I drive Lux home. Definitely feeling the buzz, eyes a bit blurry. All good.

‘Come snuggle?’ She leans into my open window.

‘Nah. Gotta work.’

‘Righto bitch.’ She winks. Turns on her heel and strides into the house.

‘See ya.’ It’s Sunday, so the gig was early. I don’t drive home.

13. don’t wake the baby

I lean down over his face, kiss his cheek.

‘You can’t be here on my birthday.’ Mace grabs my hips and shoves me to the side. I fall on my back on the bed, reaching for my phone. 11.49pm. I don’t know why I expected anything different.

I roll onto my left side, finger the tattoo on his forearm. Trace the curve of the anchor.

‘But you didn’t even cum.’ My voice is small, but my mind tells me I’m big. Better than this. Just leave.

Before I can move, his hand is up my dress, his mouth on my neck. My face hot. Breath hitched. Then it all stops. My undies, curled around one thigh, cut into my leg, forcing me to move. Mace is sitting up now, back to me. I see a glimpse of the scratches on his back, wondering which are mine. The wolf face leering at me from his right scapula; my favourite.

I force myself into a sitting position. Push my left leg through the other side of my undies. Smooth my dress. Just walk to the door, grab your bag and don’t look back. Do it. I shove my phone down my bra, grab my keys. It must be almost midnight now. You don’t want to be here either.

I turn. I fucking turn around, at the bedroom door. ‘Aren’t you going to lock the door behind me?’

Mace smirks, bottom lip poking out slightly. My gut twists. I don’t want to go.

He stands, towering over me then bending down to lick my lips as he passes. I follow him out the bedroom door, through the dark lounge room to the front door. Tiptoeing, just like always. Don’t wake the baby.

I am ready. He holds the double doors open, glass shining, reflecting the moon. I am ready to walk past, head high, get in my car, drive away, never look back.

This is the last time. This is goodbye.

But I look up at him. He looks down at me with a look that says he knows what I’m doing, that I’m trying to be strong. That smirk, like he knows how much power he has.

He knows I can’t just walk past him into the night. Mace holds his hand to my throat and kisses my forehead. Murmurs something like I love you.

My gut twists again and my heart does that little jolt in my chest, like it’s skipping a beat even though that’s too cliché. I don’t notice how cold it is now because this all started in summer. Driving to his house in the middle of the night. The breeze makes the hairs on my arms stand up as I walk to my car.

When I drive home, I think that the darkest love the hardest because they know what it’s like to be at the bottom, looking up and wondering if and when they can climb to the top, break the surface, feel the sun on their faces. And fucking breathe, just breathe.

14. in a pink tutu

In my dream, we sit beside each other on cold, plastic chairs. Sheets of bright white paper float in front of our faces, out of reach and printed with harsh black letters. The TV screen in the corner of the waiting room shows a static image of blurred faces. The receptionist is wearing a pink tutu.

Mum pinches my fragile wrist and lifts my hand to her cheek. In my hand, the cheek is warm and soft and smells of apricot muffins, but in front of my eyes the picture is different. Her cheekbone protrudes out towards her temple. Her skin is stretched and grey, as if it might split from the pressure. My arm, still reaching towards her face, is limp and skinny. We look at each other with sad eyes, the same green, and a tear rolls down her cheek. I feel nothing.

Then I’m lying on the floor at her feet and I can’t get up. I’m confused – my legs are perfectly strong. I look down and realise my legs are actually toothpicks, snapped in half and lying on the floor beneath my torso. I start to sob and look up to my mother, who is growing taller before my eyes. She shakes her head at me and walks away, down the corridor. Hushed voices engulf me and the room gets darker, darker, darker.

Moving through the mall at a snail’s pace. It’s cool now – there’s a new initiative, the council or whatever, that leases shitty old buildings in Hunter Street to start-up businesses. Artists, designers, baristas, entrepreneurs. Everyone’s got a story and a skill.

I’m with Yasmin and we’re on a coffee crawl. Because apparently all we know how to do is drink coffee together on our days off from the café. The conversation’s not quite

awkward but not exactly comfortable. She’s nice. It’s one of those freakishly warm days in winter that makes you think summer is coming soon then you get fucked over at the start of spring.

We’re trying on clothes and Yas is kind of bigger than me, which makes me feel better. I can never go shopping with Gab anymore, since she started a health kick with her boyfriend and I managed to fuck up my life just a little.

On Thursdays and Fridays the “organic market” comprises of a few fruit and veg stands and the happiest man ever selling flowers under a dirty white marquee. I’ve never understood flowers, as a pleasure. They’re pretty. Kind of. If you like that sort of thing.

But they die. Sorry for cheating baby, here’s some wilted petals with thorns. Happy

Valentine’s Day – I’ll love you until the roses die. I buy a bunch anyway. Trying to decide between orange and white, but then I realise white reminds me of dead people.

I’m not even sure if there’s a vase at home. Yas doesn’t buy anything coz she’s saving to go to Europe. Aren’t we all?

I know which shop we’ll definitely go into. I know through Kik that Bec works at

Sportsgirl, but she doesn’t know me so we’re safe. Yas and I meander in, picking things up, pointing things out. We laugh. And I’ve got one eye on Bec the whole time. She’s behind the counter, on the phone. Trendy, immaculate, like she should be standing in the fucking window. Red lips. Messy curls.

Yas and I try things on, parading awkwardly in front of each other. Bec’s the only one working but she doesn’t come to help, like she knows who I am but she can’t possibly.

Yas buys a necklace and we stand at the counter. I watch the soft winter sunlight bouncing off the diamond on Bec’s left hand. If you had a sparkly thing like that you’d want to be staring at it all the time. Her hands are perfect but I want to know what her heart looks like. 51

I’m looking at the girl who broke both Mace and Kik in different ways and wondering what she’s got, how she did it. Why couldn’t it be me?

15. like a spider

I met Mace at a Halloween party. A sprawling old house in Mayfield, lived in by a friend of a friend. Gabby and I arrived early to help. And by help I mean stand around awkwardly while the six or so people who lived there Halloweened their outfits. We made some punch. Admired the decos. I tried to help wash some dishes but the sponge, I swear, it was alive. Went for a walk around the house. The room at the back, opposite the toilet, had a mattress leaning up against the wall. A pile of clothes in the corner.

‘Yeah.’ “Hanna – no h” walks up behind me. ‘Reece lives in there.’

She stands a bit too close to me. I didn’t know who the fuck Reece was. I barely know

Hanna. But she must think it’s a good enough story to mention.

‘It was the last empty room when we moved in. So we thought – cool, spare room.

Shoved an old mattress in there. Next thing we know, we’ve got ourselves an extra housemate. Must’ve strolled in the back door one night, saw the mattress and crashed.

No one said anything, and next thing there’s a pile of clothes here. Someone else using our kitchen. Peeing in the shower. But whatever, you know. Reece is pretty cool.’ She talks fast, her eyes wide. She’s probably already on something. ‘So we let him stay. He’s pretty cute.’ She whispers the last bit dramatically but I know she’s a lesbian anyway and she must know about me so I don’t know what she’s trying to get at.

“Hanna – no h” has huge tits, spilling out of her black leather dress. Hair cropped close to her head. Maybe she swings both ways too.

I realise I haven’t responded. ‘Right. Wow. Um, cool.’

‘Oh! You don’t have any fake blood yet!’ Next thing, she’s slapped her hand on my chest. Smeared some foul-smelling red dye shit from my cleavage all the way up one side of my neck. Down my arm. ‘There ya go.’ She winks at me, pokes her tongue out a bit. ‘Find me later – I’ll introduce you to Reece!’

I take another look in this so-called Reece’s room. Smells nice. Like boy’s deodorant and sweat.

To the bathroom. Finally. Been holding this pee for ages. Fuck, broke the seal. No lock on the door. That’ll suck later when there’s heaps more people. Drunk, high, stumbling through doors without knocking. Last thing you need when you’re looking for a quiet corner to fuck is seeing someone taking a dump, pants around their ankles. You can already tell it’ll be one of those parties.

Bodies move around me. Voices whirring – trying to catch conversations like a fly in my hand. Always getting away from me. I’m on a trampoline. Plastic cup of punch in my hand. The slight bounce and settle when someone leaves or returns. Most of these people are Gab’s friends. From Uni. Since high school. She still invites me to everything.

Mosquitos sting my legs. I kick my shins, one at a time with my Doc Martens. They’re heavy. That’ll bruise in the morning.

‘You getting bitten too?’ A voice floats towards me – clearest among the murmur of sounds close by.

I look up from trying to peel the fake blood from my arm. Dark eyes staring at me – flicking away quick then back. Like he knows he shouldn’t be talking to me. Kind of familiar. I frown, glance to his hands. One holding his phone, the other rubbing the back of his head. There’s no hair on the knuckles. The fingers are long, and strong. I

immediately want one inside me. I know those hands. He’s still looking every which way but at me. ‘Um, okay.’ He sounds kinda pissed off and I realise I haven’t responded.

‘Yeah. Ha. They love me.’

‘Who wouldn’t?’ He chuckles. Quick. Stops himself. Looking right at me now. His plump lips open slightly with the sound, revealing straight teeth with prominent canines.

He’s got a boyish face, long forehead, with dark edges. If that’s even a legitimate description.

‘Oh em gee, El! Ellie! What’s that even short for? Or is it L? Like capital L?’ “Hanna – no h” stumbles towards the trampoline, dress hitched, cellulite everywhere.

‘Come meet—’ She stops next to the guy I’m talking to. ‘Mm. I see you’ve met Mace here. Be warned L. He’s not very nice.’ She does that dramatic whisper thing again. Then cacks herself laughing.

Mace’s eyes flash and there’s a hint of barely contained rage oozing from his pores. He looks at “Hanna – no h”, whose whole body is jiggling with her own hilarity. You could even call his face a sneer. She finally stops laughing. Sighs. Slaps Mace in the cock. He winces. Eyes roll back in his head. She flounces away and Mace glances at me then bails.

Stalking away. All skinny jeans and trench coat. Clearly takes himself seriously.

I definitely know those hands. It comes to me slowly, things are hazy. I’ve seen those fingers strum at a guitar, dancing across the strings. Clutch at a microphone, eyes closed.

But I’m too drunk to care that I probably embarrassed myself majorly just then. Fuck.

Mace Bedford. King of the Newcastle indie music scene. I’ve definitely frothed on that voice, that tall hunched figure. The Lass. The Northern. The Cambo.

Time passes. People come and go. Punch is poured. Mosquitos bite.

A message from an unknown number:

- Hey

- Hey?

- You look amazing

- Who’s this?

- Come out front.

And then, now, the moment I’ll always regret. Okay, that’s dramatic. But honestly, those moments you read about, see in movies – I had one. This is it. An unknown number tells me to come out the front. On Halloween. If this was a horror movie you’d be screaming

No! Don’t do it! Whadda dumb bitch. But this isn’t a horror movie. Obviously. So my drunk self didn’t think there was a problem with meeting an unknown stranger on the street in the middle of the night. I walk through the kitchen. Empty glasses, broken bottles, shit everywhere. The smell of BBQ mixed with cleaning fluid. People in little groups around the lounge room, blurred faces laughing and squealing. Music so loud the house is shaking.

I trail my fingers along the walls of the corridor, peeking into each room. A voyeur. Stop for a moment to touch the fake cobwebs. They’re sticky, like fairy floss. Plastic spiders on the ceiling, bats on the front door. Open it, close with a slam. There’s no one out here.

I feel pleasant. Safe and serene. Scuff my boots down the front path. The grass is dry and brown on either side. Summer is coming – it’s warmer than it was earlier, though maybe that’s just the alcohol. The rusty white gate is only thigh-high, it’s not gonna keep anyone out. Creaks loudly as I open it.

I stand in the middle of the road, savour the quiet. It’s warm enough that I don’t need a jacket. Makes me want to smile to myself but I’d prefer not to ruin the peace. In my

head, a car comes flying around the corner out of nowhere, high beams on, slipping side to side on invisible oil or rain. I turn to face the vehicle and I’m smiling when I die. This is how I’ll die. I’m okay with that. Random, a bit dramatic. No witnesses. I wonder how many people from the party would come to my funeral. I just kinda cruised around, didn’t speak to many people. Gab would be there and she’d cry but maybe only because she’s known me so long and it’s what people would expect. She’s growing out of me.

Best friends since high school and all that.

‘What the frig are you doing?’

I’m back in the present. My eyes back in focus. Car gone, casket disappeared. I whip around to see a figure crouching low against a neighbour’s fence. Long legs like a spider in the dark.

‘Oh. It’s you.’

Mace stands and moves slightly to the left so he’s in the light of the street lamp. ‘What are you doing?’ He grins. Showing those canine teeth again.

‘Nothing. How’d you get my number?’

Grins again. ‘Sshhh.’ I don’t know why that’s an acceptable answer, but I take it. Walk over to him. ‘So you’re El.’ He balances on the curb, hands in his pockets. Doc Martens just like mine.

‘Apparently.’ I still don’t wanna smile and give myself away.

‘You know me, don’t you? I’ve seen you at gigs.’

He’s lying. Just assumes I know that he’s a mini celebrity in Newie. Only in the right circles, though. ‘Yeah. Maybe.’

‘So what’re you doing here?’

‘Gabby is my best friend. She’s friends with Moo, who once slept with “Hanna – no h”, who lives here. I’m a tagalong.’

‘“Hanna no h”?’

‘Yeah. That’s how she introduced herself so that’s what I call her.’

‘Come with me.’

‘Hey. You know what they say about riding in cars with boys.’

He scoffs, like he wants to laugh but it’d be uncool to acknowledge that I’m funny.

‘C’mon. Let’s go for a drive.’

‘You can drive me to my boyfriend’s house.’

He grins. Not quite the bombshell reaction I was expecting. His eyes light up like me having a boyfriend is the best news ever. ‘Ok deal.’ He opens the passenger door for me.

Little closed-mouth smile as he shuts it behind me.

‘So where am I taking you?’ Cruising through the back streets of Mayfield, heading towards town.

‘To my boyfriend’s house.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘What are we even doing?!’

He’s so tall his hair brushes the roof of the car. Kind of hunches over the wheel, resting his elbows and peering out the windscreen like a blind man. ‘How long have you been together?’

‘Does it matter?’

He laughs again. We drive through Maccas coz I’m drunk and I want a cheeseburger.

Mace asks for a cup of ice. I never order the burger. ‘Here, put this between your legs.’ I do what he says. ‘Ugh.’ He moans, putting the car into drive. ‘If you want me to take you to your boyfriend’s house, you’ll have to put those legs away.’

We’re at Kotara. Only fifteen more minutes until my destination but we’re playing a game. Won’t give him any directions so he’s driving aimlessly, asking questions I can’t remember answering. ‘Park here!’

He pulls over and screeches to a halt. No indication, there are no cars around.

My brain is a whirlpool and someone’s drowning in it. Every now and then an arm shoots up from the water, the faint gurgle of a cry for help as she’s dragged deeper by the current.

We sit in silence for a moment. He plays it up, drumming his fingers on the dash, whistling. ‘Sooooo…’

I’m not ready to talk. It’s all good – all innocent. Just sitting in a car with a guy who’s not my boyfriend.

‘Is anyone home?’ His beautiful hand, calloused by guitar strings, waves in front of my face. I undo my seatbelt, step out of the car and stride with as much confidence as I can down the hill toward the set of stairs, away from the streetlight’s glare. Clomp down each step, relishing the dull smack of my boots on the concrete. I’m just swimming in my 59

drunkenness, vague thoughts telling me to swing on that pole, balance on that ledge, the world is my oyster. I’m having fun.

Mace takes a while to follow. Playing it cool, or maybe he’s taking a piss. It doesn’t occur to me that he could drive away and leave me here. We owe each other nothing.

I hear his boots before I see him. Down the stairs, echo of the slap reverberating across the carpark and bouncing off pylons with colours and numbers and letters. The butt of a guitar peeks out from behind a pole and the rest of it follows with Mace. He’s wringing it by the neck like a chicken up for slaughter.

Looks everywhere but me as he’s walking over. I don’t register what this means for his character because I’m soaking in this guy who I’ve more or less idolised on stage, walking towards me with his fucking guitar. Doc Martens, dark chinos, long shirt with an open neck and chain. Tattoos peeking nervously out over his collar and from under his sleeves. Just the right amount of wrist paraphernalia and a titanium ring for good measure. We look the part. Industrial chic.

And for one fucking dumb, shallow split second I believe that this can happen, that we’re meant to be. He’s real close to me now, pulling the guitar up under his chest like he’s about to play.

‘Don’t try to kiss me.’ He kind of scoffs, taken aback. Maybe because he was going to so now he’s defensive. ‘I just mean—’

‘No. Fine. Whatever. I won’t kiss you.’ Around that moment his eyes get several shades darker, like a cartoon when a shadow passes over the bad guy’s face, and I realise that

I’ll be loving this guy. Hard. When do two emotionally stable people fall in love? Not in my world. ‘I’ve got a girlfriend anyway.’

His grin is cheeky. He might be lying and in any case my stomach splatters onto my feet, guts everywhere.

‘Umm… what? Shouldn’t you be… not hitting on girls at Halloween parties then?’

‘Who said I was hitting on you?’

‘Um. Well we’re in a dark carpark. You’re practically serenading me. You told me I looked good, and to put my legs away.’

‘So?’ There’s the darkness again. I’m trying to be smart and sassy and I’m failing coz

I’m intimidated and I hate myself.

I start walking again and this time he follows, playing the soundtrack to my life a few steps behind me. We trace the lines of the parking spaces, white paint like a tightrope.

Moving around each other like bubbles projected from a child’s toy. Don’t touch or we’ll burst into a wisp of soapy nothing. I launch onto the trolley rack, a balancing game I’ll surely lose. And when I do, those hands around my waist, warm and big and there’s nothing hesitant about that touch. All of a sudden I’m projected into a teen rom-com, minus the com, and I’m half expecting us to start making out until I stumble backwards and he doesn’t follow. Keep walking to the top level now. The worst place to be during a zombie apocalypse. Or the best? Goosebumps show their faces on my forearms as we lean against the concrete railing, looking down to the lights of Maccas, KFC, Hungry

Jacks.

‘So what do your parents do?’

‘Are we actually gonna have a conversation then?’

‘I’m curious about you El.’ He exaggerates the L, showing his tongue.

‘It doesn’t really matter what my parents do.’

‘Why don’t you tell me?’

‘I suspect you don’t really care?’

‘Way to assume you know me.’

‘Well…’ I give him a doubtful look.

‘You think you’re so sassy.’

And we think we’re getting to know each other but we’re not. Then again, are the basic facts of our lives the things that define us? Where we live, what we do with our time, what our parents do, the car we drive? These things we know about our closest friends – are they the reasons for our closeness or is it the deeper, murky waters that we learn lie within each other? What we believe, how we feel, the way we react to events and situations. Maybe that’s the real stuff – navigating around each other, treading the waters carefully so as not to disturb the eels at the bottom of the lake. Avoiding questions, acting tough – this is how we’re rolling.

‘Tell me about your girlfriend.’

‘What girlfriend?’

‘Are you serious?’

‘About what?’

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

‘Do you care?’

‘I’m just wondering.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m confused.’

‘Good.’ And then he lunges in. Steps closer. Face on its way towards mine. I’m cornered against the railing.

‘Don’t.’

‘Why?’

‘Just don’t.’

He doesn’t move. Then he does. ‘Guess we better go then.’

‘Yep.’

‘Are you gonna fuck your boyfriend tonight?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

He grins. Flicks his hair away from his eyes like a teenage boy. Picks up his guitar. This time I follow a few paces behind him, back to the car.

We’re driving past Blackbutt Reserve. He flicks the headlights off. I scream, for a second. Shocked into losing my cool. Just for a second. Heart racing. It’s pitch black, moving forward through empty space. The stars show the outlines of the tallest trees.

Mace starts laughing. Almost manic. Accelerates. Reaches over and grabs my right thigh, holding steady. My fingers lace through his and I laugh too. Laughing into the darkness with a guy who’s not my boyfriend by my side.

Bare feet on bricks as I scale the steep driveway, climb the low stone fence, weave through the hedges, jump at shadows. Boots in hand. I know exactly where to avoid the security lights. Don’t wake the parents, don’t let the dog bark. The key Brendan gave me a year ago cool in my hand, slides in easily. The perfect fit. Time for the one-year-itch.

I look down at him sleeping. Eyes flickering, like he’s thinking hard about something.

Wonder if he’s dreaming, wonder if his dreams are blank, like his face when he looks at me sometimes. Looks through me.

I don’t bother to shower or change. Strip to my undies and climb into bed, curl my hand over his side, resting on his stomach. Big spoon. Warmth seeping into my bare chest. I whisper in the dark You’re not supposed to make me feel lonely. It’s your fault.

Brendan wakes up, groggy, pulls me closer. I let my boyfriend fuck me from behind. But

I don’t sleep. The nausea of irrational guilt sits like kidney stones. They will pass. In the morning, it’s like it was a dream. Fuzzy around the edges. The only clear memory is the flutter deep in the pit of my stomach. The jolt when Mace’s hands were on my waist. I used to say “don’t leave me” with the rhythm of “I love you”, even though I knew if anyone left it’d be me.

PART TWO

16. into the darkness

The day after I met Mace, he sent me a message. Then another and another. Who even invented phones?

- What are you doing to me?

- Hi.

- Send me a pic

- Of what?

- Your arm.

So I do and it’s another stupid moment. A lapse in judgement. I find myself wondering at the ease of it all.

But then darkness settles on another day and the guilt arrives. Like when I was little and I assumed everything was alright as long as the sky had a sun which had rays which lit up the world and everything could be seen. Then come night time I’d be subjected to whatever existential crisis is available for a nine-, 10-, 11-, 12-year-old to endure. I guess the darkness never goes away.

And as Mace sends me a photo of his hand gripping the base of his penis I laugh out loud and look away quickly but then I look back. And I wonder again at the ease of all this.

No wonder two in three marriages break down. It’s super easy to have an affair.

I’ve got the flu. Days pass and life is as normal as it gets. Nan brings me Panadol and pumpkin soup one day, but mostly leaves me alone. My almost-non-existent boyfriend

sends his love between meetings and deadlines and Mace is there. Always there. There in the vibration of the phone in my hand.

- I’ll stroke your hair while you sleep.

I scoff because I’m not a romantic, and who says that to someone you barely know? And

I have a boyfriend and I just met Mace and this is super untrustworthy, all of it, and he’s a churchy so what am I doing? But. It doesn’t stop. So with every reply I sell another body part to the devil. It’s addictive. I come to expect the messages, the calls, the pictures on his blog that I know are for me.

An indeterminate number of days later we’re back at the carpark. We circle each other, no purpose, inane conversation and hyper self-aware insecurities hiding behind sarcastic smiles. We make fun of each other and I’m better at it than him.

I look to the lit window of the house across the street. Imagine a man standing there.

Glasses. A teacher, maybe. His teenage daughter asleep downstairs. Watching us and frowning, judging, his cock getting harder as he tries to ignore it. Watching Mace work with his tongue between my legs. I moan and turn my head, catch his eye. The man shuts the curtain abruptly, crawling into bed next to his sleeping wife. Trying to ignore the aching throb between his legs. I wish I could see everything, know what everyone’s thinking. Crawl into people’s windows, into their minds like a parasite. Sit and watch them all day, hear what they say, how they move around me. Perpetually a wallflower.

Mace and I are playing the same coy game of “don’t kiss me”. Once enough time has passed I kiss him. I kiss him. I’m the one who kisses him.

He’s sitting on his butt on the concrete leaning against a concrete wall, eyes the colour of wet concrete. So I stride towards him with confidence, straddle him. My knees drawing blood on the concrete and I lean down and I fucking kiss him. On top. In control. Hands 67

in his hair, arms around my waist, and he pushes me down on my back on the concrete, hitching up my skirt that’s the colour of tangerines and I open my eyes to see his face above me. Can’t decide if it’s hot or creepy so I panic.

‘Don’t push your luck,’ I say.

He’s up in a second on his feet, like he wasn’t fully committed to the moment, like he was expecting it the whole time. An awkward pause when I struggle to adjust my clothes and stand up without too many seconds of humiliation. Then a bizarre moment when I think this should be in a movie. He marches straight up the path leading to the stairs leading to the street leading to the car and I wonder if he’ll leave me here. Like a boy scorned by a girl scorned. I should’ve taken a moment to realise the speed with which I had the power then he had the power and all of a sudden I felt like shit.

We drive in silence and he pulls up out the front of my house and says, ‘This never happened.’

‘Yep, this never happened.’

And I don’t sleep. And he sends me a message in the morning, something about bad dreams, and I’m equal parts relieved and disgusted. Elation and terror. And I break up with Brendan but that’s another story.

17. kaleidoscope life

It’s my fourteenth birthday and the biggest dust storm I’ve ever seen. Waking up to an orange glow, thinking the world is on fire. Forgetting it’s my birthday.

I’ve got a boyfriend, and he told me he liked me last week so I have a boyfriend on my birthday now.

I run into mum’s room, begging not to go to school in the dust. She always wakes at

6am, goes to the gym, home, eggs for the boys, fruit for me. She drives the boys to school and I walk because I need the exercise.

I run into her room and she doesn’t move or speak. Eyes open and staring at the ceiling, her breath slow and deep and relaxed like she’s meditating. Smooth blonde hair spread evenly along the pillow, perfect symmetry on both sides and I’d expect no less except that it looks like it was arranged that way. I lie beside her, watching her chest rise and fall to make sure she keeps breathing. Then I kiss her on the cheek and leave for school.

Everything is tinted yellow and orange and red, like seeing through special glasses or a kaleidoscope. Looking out the window of my Maths classroom, the outline of trees is indistinct in the haze and you can hardly even see the next building. Not many people at school, most got to stay home according to the radio warning, especially those with asthma. The corridors are weirdly quiet and the lockers look like rows of empty suits of armour, waiting for their chance to strike as I walk past. My boyfriend is at school, he holds my hand at lunch which makes my belly glow.

In the afternoon I run up and down the driveway ten times, then do 50 push-ups and sit- ups in my room. Mum is still in bed, watching an old ballet video. I crawl into bed with

her again, pressing my left arm up against her right one. Her long, pale neck angles out of the covers like a swan, and she has tied her hair in a bun – each strand of hair slicked back perfectly and twisted at the base of her skull. When I was little, she would call me into her room and we would lie together watching videos of me dancing; my first lesson, my first concert, my first eisteddfod. She filmed them all.

The first time mum told me her story, I was seven and she took me to ballet. Bought me a brand new pink leotard and pink ballet shoes. She told me the story of Giselle and of her tour with the Australian Ballet Company and of how she met my father, who was really handsome. When I was 12, mum stopped taking me to ballet. Said I didn’t have the body for it.

It’s my fourteenth birthday and I’m lying in bed with mum. She hasn’t moved all day.

She links her arm in mine, kisses the top of my head. Points to the TV screen at the foot of her bed. ‘That’s me,’ she says.

I’ve never seen the video before but I know what it is without her telling me. Her last performance with the Company. The one when she injured herself and gave up dancing forever. The story she always tells me with a kind of accusing tone. Like it’s my fault even though I wasn’t even alive. I wonder if this is the first time in years she’s watched the video. Or if it’s something she does every day when we go to school.

‘Your father was so handsome. I’ll never forget that night – so cold in Brighton! I think I could hear the crash of waves while I was dancing! They had to call a doctor because of my fall. You know Giselle has a weak heart? In the ballet. Poor thing. It was the last act when I fell over but I pushed through because ballerinas don’t get injured and they especially don’t cry in front of anyone. Your father let me cry, though, on his shoulder.’

She lets out a manic laugh. ‘He didn’t even know me! My makeup must’ve been running, how embarrassing. He probably thought to himself “who’s this crazy ballerina girl sobbing into my nice white coat”!’

She laughs again. Her eyes on the screen. ‘Have I ever told you about the story of

Giselle?’ I nod but she doesn’t see. Just keeps talking anyway. ‘Giselle falls in love with another peasant but he’s not really a peasant he’s only pretending to be one so that he can sow his wild oats before he gets married. Your father was engaged, you know, when we met? Anyway the truth is she dies of a broken heart. You know the Wilis? The ghosts of women who died before their wedding day? Well, I was the Queen, see?’ She says this all in one breath, points to herself on the screen. ‘That’s why I fell. Because I was supposed to be Giselle.’

Silence and my heart pounds. I wait for her to tell me about what happened when

Andrew was born, the way she always does. She looks at me but doesn’t really look and I feel like she’s seeing someone else. Then she looks down and points to a cut on my leg, mid-thigh where my school skirt has ridden up. Clean and straight and red and still stinging from the night before.

‘How did you get that darling?’

I look into her sad eyes and wonder whether to tell the truth but I don’t because she has already looked back to the TV and turned up the volume. I tuck a stray curl of hair behind her ear. A small tear slides down her cheek. She has forgotten the question before

I had a chance to answer.

‘I wouldn’t mind being danced to death.’ Then she closes her eyes.

The orchestral music was beautiful once, probably, but on the old video it sounds hollow and out-of-tune. 71

My father missed England. I guess he thought it’d be okay, marrying a beautiful ballerina from Australia and moving to a place where the sun is always shining. Justin and I are the obligatory two younger children to complete the nuclear family. Did they think they would be happy? Maybe they thought they could make it work if they feigned normality from the beginning but the fact is he was engaged and knocked up a dancer and got stuck here. I don’t know why Andrew was named Andrew. I guess he was just a mistake child, a rush decision, some denial, then a baby boy she couldn’t call Giselle.

18. you don’t even know me

It’s a brand new year and I’ve just moved out of Nan and G’s so Gab and I are celebrating. It doesn’t matter that we haven’t spoken in months. She’s the only one I thought to message.

Shit clubhouse music that I hate and she loves smashes between my ears, sweaty bodies knocking into me but it’s okay because I’m buzzing. I haven’t told her I’m single now – she might be uncomfortable, like all I’m out to do is get wasted and hook up with strangers. She’s been with Alex since Year 10.

In the bathroom, I pee while reading my texts – three from Mace.

- I miss you.

Where are you?

I want you.

We agreed never to speak again but deep down we both know we’re sticking. But I’m pissed off. I found his personal Instagram – the one he doesn’t use to promote gigs, under a pseudonym. The one with the photos of his daughter. And his girlfriend. I’ve been ignoring his texts for days and it feels delicious and powerful but something in me knows

I’ll snap, that there’s a force within me that’s already addicted to him.

Gab is chatting at the sink, reapplying lipstick and I’m affirming what she’s saying without knowing what she’s saying. Through my tequila haze I say firm words to myself about staying strong. I should talk to Gab, she’d have good advice but the street-smart

part of me knows what I’m doing is wrong. That I’m single because of Mace but he’s all wrong for me. For anyone. So much baggage but the darkness in me spreads like ink through my veins and my good sense is clouded by the allure of what I can’t – shouldn’t

– have. I can’t get caught up in post-adolescent, pre-adult drama.

I’m still sitting on the toilet, checking Mace’s Tumblr blog now and a chick is bashing on the cubicle door Hurry Up Bitch and his latest post was 20 minutes ago and it says LET

ME IN on a white background in big black letters so I reblog it, OK. And he knows it’s for him. He texts again.

- Where are you?

And through the tequila haze I say

- The Cambridge. Pick me up?

Gab and I push our way back to the dance floor and move and grind and giggle like we used to when we first turned 18 and I feel light and free and ready for the world and I’ll go to Uni this year and catch up on all my lectures online and study hard. Cook dinner for Nan and G in my new house. It’s all good.

Mace calls, he’s outside. We give Gab a lift home and she’s confused and doesn’t say anything. Mace introduces himself as my cousin. One she hasn’t met. I don’t know if she buys it, but when she gets out of the car I kiss her lightly through the window, and wave.

Mace grips my thigh, fingers reach my undies as he pulls out of the driveway. ‘You’re cute.’ He looks at me out of the corner of his eye and I slump back, elated, arms gripping the head rest. ‘Do I smell tequila?’

‘Who’s Bec?’ I blurt out, riding on the fact he thinks I’m beautiful.

‘What?’ He splutters.

‘Bec. Your girlfriend? The mother of your child?’

He laughs. A cold one. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ There’s a hiss in his words.

‘Oh, don’t I?’ Shut up, I tell myself. I’m in full sass mode and there’s no stopping it now.

‘Bec the chick on your Instagram? And yeah I know about your daughter too and just so you know I’m not ready to be a mummy.’ I think I’m being funny, making light of the shittest situation but willing myself to shut up.

‘Bella.’ He says simply, clutching the steering wheel. Knuckles growing white.

‘Yes, Edward?’ I flutter my eyelids, laugh at myself, wonder why I’m being such a douche.

‘No, you dickhead. Bella. My daughter. She’s two.’

‘Oh so does Bec, like, looooove Twilight?’

He throws me his wallet from the inner console. I flip it open to a passport photo.

Fucking cute kid, all white teeth and fairy crown.

‘I’d say she’s got Bec’s eyes but…’

‘She’s not Bec’s!’ He says it short, like he wants to drop the subject.

‘Oh. Sooo…’

Mace pulls over abruptly, almost hitting the curb. Spins to look at me front on. Hard, black eyes. Like a Great White shark. ‘Bella’s mum’s gone. I take turns looking after her

with my parents. Bec’s not even…’ He sighs, frustrated. Looks away. My heart races.

Not even what? Not even his girlfriend? My gut is hopeful that maybe this all isn’t so bad. ‘Bec and I are friends. From church. That’s it. So can we drop it now? You’re much cuter when you shut the fuck up.’

I’m appeased on one level and confused on another. Danger signs flashing in the distant recesses of my mind. What does he mean gone? This Bec chick – he posted a photo of her a week ago, yet she’s not the mother and they’re not even dating? But I pretend to zip my lips shut and throw away the key. It’s disgustingly out of character but my head is spinning.

Mace pulls away from the curb and continues navigating the lake-side drive past

Warner’s Bay. When we’re on the bridge toward Toronto, I wonder for a moment how

I’ll get home but I’m not sober enough to care and I know he’s taking me to his house – will his kid be there? – and that we’ll have sex and suddenly I don’t know if I want it.

At his house, we dance the awkward space around each other, both trying to pretend there’s no tension, save for the sexual nature. I don’t know what we’re talking about, everything’s just slightly hazy on the edges and his room lacks personality. No books, papers, CDs. A single rack of dark clothes, a shoe rack of boots and a desk with a laptop.

Guitar in the corner.

There’s no mention of a condom, he just goes for gold and I don’t stop him because apparently everything I’ve ever believed in is hiding under the bed with my dignity. I feel nothing. Switched off, numb and I must be the shittest lay right now, stationary starfish with a brain on fire behind my eyes. He takes me to the kitchen, props my bare butt on the bench and thrusts a few times. No noise, no fuss. Stops and pulls out. Leans his hands on either side of me before pushing away and backing up against the fridge,

arms crossed. I am naked, in the most fucking awkward position ever. I let my legs drop and cross each other, too scared to look down at his penis so I fixate on his face.

‘What?’

He glares at me. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’

‘Nothing! What the fuck is wrong with you?’

He walks closer, runs his hands up the side of my thigh, arms, collarbones, neck. ‘You have the best body.’

‘You don’t even know me.’ I look away.

‘You don’t even know me.’ He leans in, softly kisses my neck and I melt. ‘Is it coz of your boyfriend?’

‘I don’t have a boyfriend.’

He grins, canines prominent. I think this is what I’ll always remember – Mace that guy with the sexy hands, amazing voice, long body with tattoos, canines and Great White shark eyes. He enters me again, his not-quite-hard penis thrashing away for another minute. I grip his shoulders and let my mind wander to the photo I’m staring at on the fridge. Mace’s parents – I assume – and Mace holding a toddler with curly blonde hair and the same grin I’ve seen before on her dad.

And then next minute I’m hunched over the kitchen sink in this stranger’s home, coughing up bile.

He tells me to be quiet, because his parents are home. And the baby’s asleep.

19. typical car sex

My neck hurts, head pressed against the roof, but everything else is on fire in a good way. Arms gripping the headrest, driver’s seat back at an angle and Mace. Mace beneath me. Under me. Nothing else matters and it’s easy to forget and I try not to hate myself too much as I feel Mace going soft.

I keep moving on top of him but he slips out and then we just breathe until he digs his fingernails into my hips. Which means get the fuck off me. I try to ignore that he never cums. He cracks the window a fraction and I search the floor for my undies. Back on the passenger side and he’s in the driver’s seat.

‘Here.’ He flicks my undies at my face. ‘You’re all over my seat.’

‘Sorry.’

I wonder how he keeps his car so clean. And then I see a pair of earrings in the drink holder and my ears aren’t pierced. He sees me looking and grabs them in his fist, chucking them out the window.

We sit and stare at the ships and twinkling lights on the horizon. A couple strolls past the car, giggling and kissing, heading for the bench seat on the cliff, no idea we’re sexed up in the dark car, watching them. I imagine gripping the handbrake, releasing it and turning the wheel hard left. Mace’s pants around his knees and my undies in my lap. His fucking shitty car cruising over the cliff and into the water. Thelma and Louise style.

‘I’ll drive you home.’

Well, yeah, I think. Der. 78

20. the disease

Up here, there is 360 degrees of things to look at. A bird’s eye view, some might say.

We’re on top of the world. Kik is on his back, legs bent, feet bare. His feet are always bare. A guitar lies across his belly. He’s good but not amazing. Plays bass in a band, just local stuff. Mace is better and he knows it.

Kik keeps playing the same intro to the same song, over and over. Like an unconscious spasm. No one seems to mind. It’s winter but there’s a definite fire in the sun. With my eyes closed, the brightness burns my eyelids and heats my face. It’s an original song. I know because he played it for me last night. In the van.

The seasons change but your green eyes stay the same for another day

I wonder if anyone else recognises it. I like to think he’s singing about me, but I don’t want to get my hopes up. Pretty sure Bec has green eyes too. We were watching a movie last night and he looked at me, all frustrated, and when I asked what was wrong he said

‘How can you be so cute without even trying?’ I just kind of scoffed awkwardly because

I don’t know how to take a compliment that doesn’t contain a slap in the face. He put my feet on his lap and we kept watching the movie. Wind buffeting the van from all sides.

Something about the ocean relaxes me, calms my nerves. Like looking out at the abyss reminds me there are bigger things out there, bigger things than me and my stupid life,

my petty first-world problems. Like seeing trees and leaves and breathing fresh air is the key to everything that locks the claustrophobia away for good.

Kik and I kissed for the first time right here. He tried to hold my hand to help me up to the top of the fort but I wanted to show him I was strong. A good climber. It’s really not hard anyway, he probably just wanted to touch me. We talked about life. Which sounds so lame but we honestly did. It was almost midnight at the end of summer so it wasn’t really cold but we sat huddled together on top of the fort. It was such a calm night. We counted 13 ships on the horizon, wondered what they were all doing out there. How the men were passing the time. I told him how big I thought the world is, and how sometimes I get so overwhelmed with thinking about it all – who we are, who I am, what we’re all doing here – that I have to make myself pass out in sleep just to stop stressing.

He was looking so deep into my eyes, like he was really listening and we were having an actual bona fide conversation. Then he kissed me. Which, I admit, totally ruined the moment for me, but hey. It felt good at the time.

Narrating life while you’re living it. If that’s a disease, I’ve got it. Looking around, watching, listening. Figuring out the best way to describe this scene, these characters.

Making up stories for people and guessing at their lives, their worries. Trouble is, nothing compares to real life. Not even a photo. Driving anywhere, you see an amazing sunset. Or a perfect clear day at the beach. No camera can capture that. So you gotta remember. Describe it in your head, use creative words. Make it stick. I hope I remember. I’m a fuck up but I still appreciate nature. I’m still pissed about global warming and all that jazz. Reminds me there’s more out there. More than myself and my stupid narration.

21. something my parents call me

Kik and Lux were those people at the party who everybody wanted to be friends with.

They generated the energy – Lux with the loud laugh, Kik with the guitar. The ebb and flow of the room revolved around them. Who they were talking to, what they were talking about. Then people pulsated around Mace with a quiet respect. He was the hotshot, the talent, the party’s for him. Though no one says it.

We’ve just been to Mace’s gig at The Great Northern and he absolutely fucking killed it.

So on his game, everyone knows it. And everyone is here, trying to gain his approval.

We’re at Pumba’s, but I don’t know him yet. He’s invited everyone – all the “cool” people – back from the gig. Everyone’s ducking in and out of his sixth floor apartment.

Seeing a man about a dog.

Win, the drummer from the support band, is in an armchair on the balcony. It’s a hot night and he’s snorting lines off the armrests. Piercings in his eyebrows and ears and nose, glinting in the street lights. Karaoke is happening somewhere and it’s just daggy enough to be cool. Myra Back, Newcastle’s coolest, youngest soul singer has just released an “album” and she’s a friend of a friend, hitting all the high notes of Alicia

Keys, strutting in her massive platform shoes. She’s humble, but totally not at the same time. A rare breed. Like most of these people.

I’m so fucking out of place. Cobalt blue dress, baggy with black lace. My favourite. My

Docs. Standing in the corner with Mace. Our arms are always a millimetre from each other. If I move to the right, he’ll move towards me, but never touch. I know because

I’ve tried it a few times. I like to think he’s not doing it on purpose and he’s just gravitating towards me subconsciously because maybe on some level he feels as

uncomfortable as I do and he needs me. But at least he has something to do with his hands. Alternates between sipping beer and dragging the joint. Doesn’t offer and doesn’t share. No one would dare ask, least of all me. He told me he was getting booze for us, before the gig. He knew I was coming without asking, that I’d bring back-up so I didn’t have to show up alone, because heaven forbid he has to talk to me in public. Gabby came to the gig with me. Left before the party, always making the right decisions. Turns out the beer was just for him. So now I have nothing to do with my hands.

Wringing the rings on my fingers. Twirling the long side of my hair, the right side. Being the mate or the cousin or whatever I’m supposed to be tonight. Always a new story, a new identity to cover the lies. Never questioning, wishing he’d just hold my hand or kiss my temple or something to stop the awkwardness and stop the people staring and wondering who I am and why I’m there. Wondering if I know about his kid? The electricity, the brink of potential happiness called hope that shows its beauty right before the deepest fucking depression sets into your bones and you can’t move, can’t move your bones. Too tired. The mirage on the horizon – I just want to be his but don’t know how.

And it would be out of character to let it show so I stand and watch and try to have a good time, try to look like I’m having a good time. Though no one really cares if anyone else is having a good time. So I sway in my misery and a voice breaks through.

‘How can you look so cute without even trying?’ His voice is kind of hostile and exasperated but his cheeks are rosy and his eyes look kind.

‘Chris, right? You were great tonight.’

‘Kik. Only my parents call me Chris.’ His massive blue eyes are childlike and endearing.

‘So you’re a … friend… of Mace?’ Something in the way he says it makes me think that he knows the situation so I laugh. Just like, a quick scoff.

‘Something like that.’ I didn’t even realise Mace had gone, so Kik and I are just standing there grinning at each other. I’m having fun for the first time, for no reason.

‘Oh sorry. El.’ I reach forward to shake his hand. They’re a lot like Mace’s.

‘What’s that short for?’

‘Something my parents call me.’

He laughs and we’re still grinning at each other and I wonder when it will get awkward because it always does but it hasn’t yet. I look down at my shoes, grab a fistful of my dress then look around the room. Check for Mace. ‘Where’s your girlfriend?’

Kik’s brow furrows in confusion. ‘Huh? Oh. Lux. Ha. Nah, we’re just mates. She’s a good chick.’

‘Right.’ I think about the way they moved around each other in the room. Like a comfortable, interpretive dance, like they’d known each other all their lives. Like how I feel now with Kik, and we’re only talking. They lightly touched each other when I watched, laughing the way I wish I could with Mace.

We keep chatting. But I just wanna have sex. With Mace. Just get the fuck out of this fucked-up party. With Mace. Because something about having sex with Mace makes me feel normal. Even loved for a really short moment in time – like a bizarre twist of pain and pleasure. How I imagine it feels to shoot up and come down then shoot up again after the agony of having nothing left in your system.

Then Mace is back by my side and Kik steps back. ‘Just chatting to your girl here mate.

She’s a keeper.’

‘She’s not my girl.’ Mace says it without missing a beat. Defensive. But he moves a fraction closer to me. I try not to think about what that could mean. There’s something in the way they’re looking at each other that I don’t understand.

Kik doesn’t look phased, or even surprised. He’s seen it all before. Winks at me. ‘On the market then, yewwww!’ The kind eyes are gone. Walks away.

I’m thinking Get out of here. Just go down to the street. Call a taxi. Call Gab. Call your fucking brother, your fucking mother. Just get out. But I don’t. The party goes on. I talk to a few more people, move around the room. Kik follows me, maybe not on purpose.

Always managing to be talking to the same people.

At some point Mace disappears. He was supposed to be my lift but more than anything else – more than the fact my car is now stranded at his parents’ place – I’m thinking we don’t get to fuck tonight and I’m feeling a bit sick in my gut with the disappointment. I briefly wonder who he’s gone to see because Mace never just goes home.

Someone puts on that August Rush movie and everyone’s on the couches now, mesmerised. Some guy is talking about seeing coyotes, freaking out a bit. Pum takes him into the bathroom. I’m the only girl and then I look around and realise there’s only like five people here and I know none of them, except my new friend Kik. Even Lux is gone.

Because she was pissed about Kik hanging around me. He tells me later.

‘But she doesn’t even know me.’

‘Yeah but you’re hot.’

‘She’s hot.’

‘El – you’re adorable! You’re a girl, you’re supposed to know what girls are like!’

We end up sleeping in Pum’s housemate’s single bed, the one who was talking about coyotes. Kik’s arm around my waist. Feels like I’ve been sleeping like this forever. In my dress, shoes on.

In the morning Kik is gone and I hear people in the lounge room. Talking about my legs.

Wondering if we had sex. No one even mentions that I came here with Mace. I go out and introduce myself. Confidence awakened in the light of day. They’re all still fucked up from the night before. Still watching the same movie. Barely noticing me.

Later, Kik drives me home. And that’s how this all started.

22. up on the fort

We talked about all that. Life. The first time up on the fort. It wasn’t long after the party, maybe a few weeks. It started slow, as it does. Kik followed me on Instagram, friends on

Facebook. Liking things. What people do when they want to be noticed, subtle. Let you know they’re noticing you. You don’t like some girl’s photo if you’re not maybe kinda into her a bit. Or at least you want her to think that. Play the game, don’t be too keen, don’t hit back. It’s how we flirt.

So he starts messaging me on Facebook. A funny YouTube video. A casual “it was nice to meet you” message. There’s always a hook, something one of you said that can serve forever as a personal joke, drawing you together in cyber space and maybe real life. A reply – thanks for dropping me home. He doesn’t need to know my car was at Mace’s and I had to get a taxi there anyway. Mace had gone AWOL again, wouldn’t answer any messages. Quiet on social media. I wouldn’t dare call him. It’s not what we do.

Kik suggests we hang out. There’s a party – two, actually. A farewell and a birthday.

Turns out I know both hosts, through friends of friends of people. My heart races when we arrange it all. The familiar high school crush syndrome creeping through my limbs.

Wondering if this is the one that’ll distract me, finally. Kind of want to piss off Mace.

He’s public with Bec now and Kik doesn’t want a bar of it. Thought he was gonna marry that girl.

I pick him up. From Lux’s. Didn’t know that at the time. He’s in a trench coat. I’m in leather pants and a flannel shirt.

‘You look good. Hope you brought a jacket.’

‘Ha. Why? Where are you taking me? It’s still like summer here. So good.’

‘Where am I taking you? I believe you’re driving me. Modern woman and all that. Bet you’re a control freak.’

We grin at each other. It’s March and the days are still freakishly long. Let’s drag this thing out, the warmth. The light. We grab a coffee on Darby Street first. All the nerves are gone now. The same feeling at the party that I’ve known him forever. He’s never had a job, for some reason that’s charming. He lives with friends, and in his van, and occasionally his parents. Apparently that’s charming too. Doesn’t go to church anymore, so he reckons.

‘I had a dream about you last night,’ he says.

‘What? That’s weird.’

‘Yeah and I just woke up really fond of you. Has that ever happened to you?’

‘Nope and I’m the queen of crazy dreams.’

‘Really? Well it wasn’t crazy. Just nice. Don’t really know what happened but I woke up with a warm feeling in my heart. I was looking forward to seeing you.’

It’s the lamest thing anyone’s ever said to me but it works in the moment and I hate myself for it. I feel cool, calm and collected. Like I could take on the world and everything will finally be okay and not fucked up. ‘I’ve always just wanted to drive all the way around the coast of Australia. Like, the perimeter. Nothing to do, no one to see. ‘

‘So do it!’

‘Nah.’

‘Why not?’

‘Work. Life. Money.’

He waxes lyrical about living in the moment and just vibing and doing what you want when you want and it’s all appealing to my senses, just not my brain. Makes me feel like an idiot; yeah it’s possible, just do it, just go. For some reason the fact he knows no responsibility has no place in the moment. ‘Man, I’m so keen for winter cuddles.’

‘Ha, with who? Your pillow?’ Apparently we’re at the teasing stage now.

‘Nah, anyone mate! Anyone. But I have one of those heaps good pillows, the long maternity ones. Lux bought it for me.’ I laugh but baulk internally at the mention of her name. ‘We should go on a winter trip!’ Eyes shining. I’d call them earnest, which is such a weird description but it fits. He’s writing me into his life.

When we leave, he goes to the bathroom so I pay the bill. We make appearances at both parties. Have a drink or two, he doesn’t buy. Sitting at a tall bench at The Dockyards,

Honeysuckle. Looking out at the harbour, over at Stockton. Ignoring the party behind us.

‘So what do you want for dinner?’

‘Oh. Are we having dinner?’ Awkward response. I’ve already eaten.

‘Well yeah. I’m hungry. Pasta?’

We go for a drive, pick up takeaway and he directs me to the fort. I leave my phone in the car but he takes his. Guides me through the dark bushes, empty carpark roped off for the night. Druggos hang out here and I’m kind of nervous. Thinking of my high school days. Late night drives with boys to King Edward Park, daring each other to run up to the

darkened fort on the hill. Always too chicken. Making out on the swings. Really

Dawson’s Creek. The O.C. The bliss of teenagehood.

There’s already people on top of the fort. A guy and girl. We climb up the far side, away from them. Sit on the lower tower, backs against the concrete. I’m not cold but maybe in another situation I would be. Chinese container of pasta warming my thighs. We sit in silence and it feels comfortable, okay. We both notice.

‘Can’t believe you’ve never been up here before!’

‘Yeah I feel like a faux Novocastrian.’

He smiles but I don’t think he knows what I mean. ‘It’s so great up here. Where I come to write music mostly.’

‘Oh so you write too?’

‘Yeah of course. Bass players get so much shit.’ He shakes his head.

‘Not what I meant. Just haven’t heard you sing or anything.’

‘I’ll have to. For you. One time.’

‘Yeah.’

Silence again and we look out over the ocean, counting the twinkling lights on the coal ships waiting to come into the harbour. Wonder what the men are all thinking about, whether they hate being out there for sometimes weeks, land so close but so far away.

We talk about the June floods, back in ’07. The Pasha Bulka. He has a shirt with the ship on it, washed up at Nobby’s Beach. Wears it to gigs sometimes, he reckons.

The old rusted metal gate next to Kik’s shoulder shakes back and forth in the breeze, making a creepy banging noise we try not to notice. Occasionally I hear a whisper from inside the fort and tell myself it’s just the ocean talking. ‘Did you know there’s a tunnel that goes from under here all the way to The Northern? They built it in the war apparently.’

‘The fuck! Are you serious? That’s so cool. And creepy.’

‘Yeah Win’s been down there. One day we were here having beers and writing songs and he was high as a kite, wandered down into the fort, you know when the gates are sometimes open down there? Just kept wandering for ages. Surfaced about half an hour later all white and shaken but full of the jitters. He was so excited. Said he walked past junkies n shit! Just living down there.’

‘Holy shit.’

‘Yeah.’

‘P.S. What’s Win’s real name?’

‘Winifred!’

‘No way!’

‘Yeah, epic. His parents are so strict. He’s the golden child at home. Takes out his piercings before he gets inside.’

‘Wow. What an effort.’ Kik doesn’t say anything. ‘They should do tours or something.’

‘Yeah.’

After a while the couple up the top leave and we take their place. Bums going numb, perched on the concrete at the highest point. Legs crossed in front of us, sitting close but not too close. On an obtuse angle to each other. I’m watching the cathedral – the highest point in Newcastle – lit from below to make it look even more ominous. Waiting for something to happen, anything, nothing.

‘Thanks heaps for hanging out with me tonight.’

I scoff coz it’s a weird thing to say. ‘Yeah no worries.’

‘No seriously! I mean it. It’s been real nice.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I know this sounds real lame but I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. I’m so comfortable.’

‘Yeah I know what you mean.’ It’s getting a bit chilly and I cross my arms. Partly because I’m cold and partly coz I get the weird feeling he’ll try and kiss me soon and I don’t know if I want to ruin it.

Lux has been calling him all night but he tries to hide the phone, pretends it’s nothing. I guess she knows we’re hanging out and I still haven’t even met her properly. He asks to borrow my phone, has no credit left. We go back to the car and he calls her, affection in his voice. Scolding her gently for getting too drunk. Saying he can’t pick her up, doesn’t have his car. Looks at me expectantly, rolling his eyes a bit as if it’s the most annoying thing in the world to talk to her.

‘We can pick her up.’ I offer, with a little sick twist in my gut like I shouldn’t be a pushover. But who really cares coz I don’t know these people. Maybe will never see them again. 91

Drive to King Street Maccas, Lux is stumbling through the carpark in the same leather pants as me, with a low cut sheer singlet. No boobs to speak of and long, fleshy arms.

‘She got a new tattoo the other day. The dreamcatcher on her arm.’

I nod, silent. Waiting for Lux to make her way to my car. She falls into the back seat.

Mumbles something like ‘Thanks heaps’.

‘Don’t be so rude mate. El offered to pick you up.’

‘Nice to meet you!’ I turn around in my seat and smile. Her pupils are tiny and she tries to smile back but it’s a grimace in her drunken state.

I pull out of the carpark, past the beefed up rev-heads with their lowered utes and doof- doof bass pounding from their cars. Girls in miniskirts spill out of the fluorescent lights of Maccas, looking like shit, clutching cheeseburgers and I’m thinking I hope I never looked that bad when I used to go out. It’s been a while.

At Lux’s house in Merewether, on the top of a hill overlooking the whole of Newcastle from the back, she lurches out of the car, calling ‘Thanks’ and trudges down the front path. Shoes dangling from one hand. I watch her turn around before she goes inside, checking to see if Kik is following, but he’s not. He’s still in the car with me and she rolls her eyes.

Kik gets out of the car, crouches in the gutter, holding the open door, so he’s level with me. ‘I had the best time tonight.’

‘Yeah it was fun.’

‘Hang out tomorrow?’

‘Ha, sure.’ 92

‘Serious.’

‘Yeah okay. I finish work at 1.’

‘I’ll text ya!’

He saunters down the front path after Lux. There’s the faint glow of candle light coming from most windows, and a stark light comes on upstairs. Lux’s silhouette visible behind the curtains. Pulling a shirt over her head, moving around the room.

I should feel weird about the situation but I don’t. Joy in the pit of my stomach overrides the fact I’ve just gone on a date with a guy who is now going to sleep in a bed with another girl who hates me. Nothing about this is fucked.

23. the slow burn

‘Better to be a married idiot than a single idiot.’

The fire’s burning low now and it’s fucking freezing out here. I’m thinking about the heater inside – the shitty little gas blow heater that Mum got me for my last birthday. She reckons she wants me to move home but why would I? I think she likes me better now, out of her hair. You could say our relationship improved the day I finished school and moved in with Nan and G.

‘You gotta be kidding me,’ Lux says, before I get a chance. ‘You and me, mate, different worlds!’

The boys are chortling and Lux is shaking her head in amused disbelief. Like she knows

Kik isn’t joking but is trying to convince herself that he is. He’s still stuck in that church mentality. We all hope he’s taking the piss.

Lux has amazing blonde hair. Like a mermaid, with random dreadlocks that she sometimes dyes pink. A sometimes-model – the grungy type – a part-time babysitter. A perpetual cold sore she hides with makeup. The glowing embers in the barrel between us make her eyes look red. She pulls a hideous face when she sucks on the cig. Peace fingers spread wide like she’s licking someone out. Makes me feel a bit better. Even she’s got ugly moments.

Kik is laughing now, flicking ash from his cig. Trying to take the piss out of himself.

Ease the moment. ‘Still can’t believe she’s engaged. Fucking engaged!’

‘What even happened?’ says Lux

I’ve heard this story so many times: Kik’s story, Mace’s story, everyone else’s respective stories. Always different.

‘Reckons they’ve “always had a connection”. Goddamn,’ says Kik.

‘Why the fuck do you even care, bro? It’s over. Did you screw her or something?’ says

Pumba.

Kik doesn’t answer straight away coz he knows that I know. He’s no fucking virgin

Joseph. I pull the hood of my jacket over my hair and sink lower, folding my arms. He watches me. Eyes burning as if to say Don’t you dare say anything. I look over at Lux, maybe she knows his secrets too. Her face is blank.

‘I wish,’ he grins.

‘It’s a male pride thing,’ says Lux.

Pumba finally lights the joint he’s been rolling for an hour. Even his fingers are chubby.

He passes it to me and I lean across the circle. Say nothing. Kik thought him and Bec would be together forever and ever. I look at Lux and now I can tell she knows too.

We’re testing each other. Who knows the most secrets about our best friend?

‘Nice tits.’ Pum flicks his tongue at me then explodes into wracking coughs. He’ll definitely die young.

‘FWB, El?’ Kik takes the joint from me and brings it to his lips.

‘Yeah, sure mate.’ I smirk.

Ever since the gig after-party back in February, Pumba’s been hitting me up for sex.

Friends With Benefits. He knows about me and Kik. Me and Mace. Everyone here does.

But no one outside our circle. It’s all the same to him. 95

‘Um, hello?’ Lux holds her hand out for the joint, her body rigid with irritation. She hates when the attention’s on me. Fuck me, she can have it.

We sit in silence for a good few minutes, feeling the effects of the weed creeping along our limbs. Flooding my mind. My eyes water from staring at the fire. Cold deep in my body but not on the surface anymore. A train flies past over near the clothesline. No one stirs.

‘Imagine if you were on the train and you jumped off,’ says Pum.

‘You don’t even hear them till they’re right there,’ I say. We don’t even hear them anymore. Inside, it’s louder. The house shakes, I swear it. On the hour, even through the night. Doesn’t even wake me up.

‘Doesn’t it wake you up?’ says Lux.

‘Nah. You get used to it.’

Lux and Pum bail to get KFC, never come back. Some time in the night, I wake up and

Kik is pressing himself against me.

24. you’re not like most girls

I’ve got the day off work and Kik pulls up in his blue van, hunched over the steering wheel. I’m watching him from my bedroom window. He doesn’t come in, just a text after two minutes of waiting.

- Oi. I’m here.

I wonder if there were ever days when boys came to the door to pick you up. But I guess this isn’t really a date, in the traditional sense of the word. I grab my handbag, laptop.

Kik doesn’t have one. A couple of my housemate’s DVDs.

When I open the car door, Kik grins. ‘Hey mate, looking good.’

‘Yeah, whatever mate.’ But my heart is singing. Open the sliding door and stick my stuff in the back.

‘Where’s my favourite blanky?’

I groan. He puts on the puppy dog eyes so I fish my keys out, race back inside to pull the doona off my bed and run back outside. ‘The things I do for you!’ Slam the car door behind me.

‘You love it El.’ He reaches over and squeezes my knee. In a good mood. ‘So, welcome to my place.’ We both crack up laughing.

‘Are you gonna take me on a tour later?’

‘Well, I’ll show you the bedroom.’ He winks and jabs a thumb over his shoulder. I glance behind me, laughing. Empty beer bottles rattle somewhere near the rear door as

Kik flies over speed humps.

‘Charming,’ I say. We’re getting along just fine.

‘Lux is working.’ It’s like he anticipated I’d ask. I don’t respond but my mood is instantly deflated, because I wonder – like I always do – if we’d be here like this, just the two of us hanging out, if Lux was around. She would call or text and he’d go running.

‘Don’t worry. She’ll warm up to you.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

Then, stony silence until he pulls into the carpark overlooking the Bogey Hole. Clifftop movie-watching in the van. It’s raining. Kik runs around to the back door and I climb over the low partition to the mattress.

After a few movies, we dare each other to run down to the Bogey Hole and jump in. I don’t know whose idea it was but I just happen to have a bikini in my handbag. It’s not so bad when you’ve dunked your head in a few times. Kind of refreshing, like being reborn. All of a sudden I’m alive. I dive under the icy water, emerging slowly right in front of Kik’s stationary body. I’ve got his attention. Wrap my legs around his waist, arms around his neck. Wet kiss on his lips, droplets of salty ocean water falling from our eyelashes. He holds around my waist, looks me in the eyes. Lets us drift with the gentle current. Then launches me into the air and I squeal. Splash awkwardly into the water and emerge spluttering, laughing at him laughing at me. We circle each other like animals at prey and I’m trying not to look at the dark corners of the cliff base.

‘You’re not like most girls.’

‘What do you mean?’ I wipe makeup from under my eyes.

‘You don’t mind a bit of rough and tumble. You’re not too bothered with being precious, you know? Plus you’re sexy when you drink beer.’

‘Ha. Yeah I guess. Never really cared much for what I look like.’ Blatant lie. Everyone cares.

‘Do you reckon you could have sex in here?’

‘Who, me? Or just anyone?’ I grin and he follows suit, moving his hands through the water in front of him.

‘You know, anyone? Reckon it could be done?’

‘I dunno. Yeah. I mean there’s no one around now.’ He grins, but looks down like he’s regretting bringing it up. ‘But I had sex with a guy in a pool and he said it felt like wearing six condoms.’

‘What?! Ha you slut! Who was it?’

‘You don’t wanna know.’ And he really doesn’t. I backflip into the water and when I resurface he’s walking slowly towards me. I wipe under my eyes again, wait for him to reach me. We dip down so our shoulders are submerged and circle each other again.

Gently, in the opposite direction this time. Floating.

‘Aww man, your eyes.’

‘What about them?’

‘You have the most beautiful eyes.’

‘Ha. Okay. Thanks. Is that a problem?’

‘Means I can’t be a jerk to you. Because you have the best eyes.’ Before I can even process the fucked up shit he’s projecting, he’s made it to the side of the baths and pushed himself up. ‘Fuck, it’s cold! Quick!’

I follow and he chucks me a towel. We don’t talk as we walk back to the van. It must be after midnight. Bare feet slapping on cold concrete, up zillions of steps. Heart pounding, breath short. We undress and re-dress, backs to each other on opposite sides of the van.

I can’t stop shaking but I don’t think I’m that cold. My teeth are chattering. The cool night breeze weaving its way through the wet strands of my hair.

‘Can you close the door?’

Kik extricates himself from me and reaches out to bring the back door shut, blocking out the wind. Folds his warm body back over me, hands creeping low to the waistband of my jeans. Bites down on my ear and I wince. His teeth caught a fresh piercing he doesn’t know about and I’m not gonna say anything.

Somehow I end up on top, as usual. I sweep my hair over my shoulder, lean down over his face and grind my pubic bone against his penis.

‘I knew you had a sexy side,’ he breathes. Runs his hands down my shoulders then across my breasts. We’re making out and I start thinking. Maybe this is it, maybe it’ll finally happen.

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25. too close for comfort

Lux got a job at my work a few weeks after we met. Once everything had calmed down between us. Like, the day after we had the conversation – the first of many – about how neither of us were interested in Kik (even though we both were), so why couldn’t we all just be friends.

She waltzes in to the café and I sense her presence before I see her. A mixture of elation and anxiety. Being friends with Lux is like swimming with sharks. All adrenaline, no trust. I see her in my peripheral vision, long white lace dress that isn’t exactly flattering but she can get away with it. That bright orange cardigan she wears. She has the hippy child thing nailed to the cross. My boss will love that; loves his “alternative” girls.

I keep pumping out coffees; order receipts spitting out of the printer in front of me.

Yasmin is on milk, as usual. Calling the customers by name, asking about their dogs, biceps bulging. She’s been going to the gym. Hoping Lux will order, get her coffee and bail. Maybe I can get away with being too busy to notice. That familiar dreaded flush of heat starts at the base of my neck, spreads up to my cheeks. You know, the hot heat you get when you know someone is staring at you and they know you know?

She’s at the front of the line now and I can’t help but look up. She’s smiling at me as she orders. Double-strength latte on soy milk. Holds up a piece of paper and points to it. ‘Giz job!’ She laughs at the look on my face. Millie, the cute little schoolgirl waitress we just hired, goes out back to get Greg. I see Lux talking to him over near the milk fridge, hands him the resume, smiling, laughing, pointing to me. Working the Lux charm.

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‘El!’ Yasmin snaps at me. The orders have kept printing out, receipts streaming to reach the ground like a lame party decoration.

‘Shit. Sorry.’ Back on my game. Head down, grooming the coffee, tamping the grind, watching the pour. Over and over. Easy to forget about Lux, easy to forget about the world when you’re right in the moment, on default, doing what you’re being paid to do.

Maybe she won’t get the job but at the same time I kind of want her to.

My boss creeps up behind us. Always creeping. The pace is slowing – there’s no line for takeaways anymore. I reach for a bag of beans, rip open the top and take a huge whiff of the sweet poison. Greg smirks at me. Leans his head in for a whiff as well. A little too close.

‘So your friend…’

‘She’s not really my friend.’

‘Lux. Interesting name. Interesting girl.’

‘The Virgin Suicides.’ He nods, quiet, reading me. ‘Parents are total hippies,’ I continue.

Pottering around behind the coffee machine, refilling tea leaves, washing out milk jugs.

‘Ah. Seems nice enough. You wanna train her?’

‘Sure.’ A concealed sigh. He likes to test out personalities, Greg. See what we’re made of. How far he can push us, how strong we are. We’re not supposed to recommend our friends for jobs. Gets messy, he says. The turnover is high, like his standards. You’d think this was fine dining or some shit. He’s soft spoken and well-read, I can tell, but he pretends not to be. He likes it when I tell him about books, what I’m reading. I reckon he’s read most of it anyway.

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When I finish the shift, there are messages from Lux. As always, these days. Since we became friends, or whatever. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be shocked to see a blank screen when I finish work. If I’d miss her. Hope not, but she’s Lux.

- Come over!

I get there, knock on the door. Kinda hoping her parents don’t answer. Mr Twine comes to the door. They’re always home – I’ve met them a few times now but still have no idea what they do for a living. Something about acting and something about electricity.

Though they’re all about candles and incense and weed when the sun goes down.

‘El.’ He smiles vaguely. I get the feeling he likes me, though I never know what to say to him. Haven’t had to deal with parents in a while. His eyes are glazed, he leads me into the kitchen. Cup of tea, open newspaper. What looks like the remains of a papier maché session. He’s asked me to call him Fred before, always laughs when he says it. No idea why. I wish Lux would come out of her room, if she’s even here.

‘What happened to Lux’s babysitting job?’

‘Huh? Oh, I don’t know. Nothing? She’s working tonight I think.’ It’s like his brain is having a hard time putting a sentence together.

‘Oh. She applied for a job at my work today. Think she got it, too.’

‘But she loves those kids!’ He raises his eyebrows, then giggles, soft and affectionate.

‘That girl…’

He calls his wife Babe as if it’s her first name, not even a term of endearment.

I escape. Lux is in her room with her mum – who acts really happy to see me while avoiding eye contact, as usual. Long strawberry blonde hair falling in the same twists and

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turns as her daughter’s. There’s a moment when I wonder what my own mother looks like now. Lux’s mum breezes out of the room as I enter, smiling at me as she passes.

She’s holding a sunflower, perfectly painted nails. Like a fucking novel.

‘Hey gurrrl.’ Lux throws a cushion at me as I sit on the edge of her bed.

‘Hey.’

‘Jeez you smell like coffee!’

‘Yeah sorry. Perks of the job.’

‘Lucky I love me some coffee!’ She leans in, sniffs, then licks my neck. I feel a tingle between my legs, like a small electric shock that comes out of nowhere. She’s all bright- eyed and shiny today. The new Lux, the one who licks my neck and is my bestest friend, suddenly. I’m rolling with it. Or am I totally sucked in?

‘So. I think you got the job. Greg wants me to train you.’ I lie back, stretch my arms over my head and groan. Feels good to stretch.

‘Yew! That’s awesome – we get to be work buddies!’ She starts drumming on my exposed belly all childlike. Orange cardigan falling off one shoulder to reveal a smooth round shoulder, just the right amount of flesh on it, lightly tanned. I think it’s fake.

‘Fuck. You have the best abs. Bitch.’ She stops, sits back against the bedhead. Folded arms. Sulky Lux.

‘Shut up!’

She smiles at my insecurity. We play for a while. Moving in and out of conversation as if we’ve done this all our adult lives. Not quite awkward but stilted on my part. I’m wary.

Sitting back on my haunches, ready to defend myself if she strikes. Because you just

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never know. A week ago this chick hated me, and I’ve seen her every day since. ‘Hey!

Kik wants to watch a movie tonight! We thought we should come over to yours.’

‘Oh. What about work?’

‘Yeah, I quit. Or they fired me. One or the other, the details are hazy. So tonight?’ She’s talking fast and I’m suspicious but I agree. Even get excited. Because I’m a masochist.

Lux never opens her mouth properly, because she hates her teeth. She laughs by pulling her cheeks up like a chipmunk, mouth in a little pout. Lips always red and moist. I worry about her germs, I don’t know why. Like she has something to hide in there. She has little hands that curve slightly at the wrist, like an old woman with arthritis. Always dry, and kind of scaly. The kind of face and body I could describe forever. Not quite stunning but not quite ugly. A kind of dangerous beauty.

When we watch movies later, at my house, she sits on the couch next to me before Kik can. Her head on my shoulder, holding my forearm in both her small hands, stroking.

Marking her territory, stroking like a cat. Loves to touch, needs to touch. Kik alone on the other couch, doesn’t bat an eyelid, cradling his longneck beer. Acting like he’s never been here before, but a bit too comfortable in the space. Nachos cooling on the coffee table in front of us.

Later, someone wants chocolate and I volunteer for some reason. Drive to the nearest petrol station for overpriced Cadbury’s, freezing in my pyjamas and thongs.

They leave together. And I stand at the front door thinking this is all pretty fucked up.

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26. sexting with Mace

He starts it. In bed one night. When I hear the phone I expect it to be Lux.

- Haven’t heard from you in a while.

- I said goodbye, didn’t I?

- You’ve said it before.

- Maybe I meant it that time.

- Dare ya.

10 minutes pass. He messages again.

- Come over and fuck me?

- The moon is amazing tonight.

- Come over. I miss your skin on mine.

- Sure.

- I saw you tonight.

- Where?

- At the gig.

- Liar.

- Fine.

So I don’t think I’m getting laid tonight. 10 more minutes pass. I message him. Breaking my own rules, not for the last time. 106

- I know a lot about you.

- You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.

- Shouldn’t I?

- Fuck off if you’re going to believe them over me. All I ever did

was care about you.

- Funny that.

- Almost got kicked out of fucking church because you can’t

keep your fucking mouth shut.

- No idea what you’re fucking talking about.

- Potty mouth. I miss you.

I wait for him to ask me over, and fall asleep waiting.

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27. no bra girls night

‘The devil is literally eating my insides with a spoon!’ I’m groaning on the couch, writhing from side to side and balling my hands into fists.

Lux starts laughing at the other end of the couch then cringes in pain. Forehead wrinkles.

‘Oh my god El don’t make me laugh, I can’t move.’

‘Do you know, the first time I read about this period alignment business was in

Girlfriend magazine. It was an interview with Drew Barrymore for Charlie’s Angels and she said it was true when they were filming and I didn’t even have my period yet, but I thought it sounded awesome and fun.’

‘Fuck you. This is not cool.’

I throw a pillow at her head. ‘Well I know that now.’

‘I’m more of a Cameron girl.’ She leans forward to grab her beer bottle off the coffee table. We’ve made a nest of blankets and pillows and we’re going to watch Grease.

‘Ugh. No. Drew all the way.’

‘You’d go all the way with Drew?’ She winks and laughs at her own joke and does that unsightly peace finger licking thing.

‘Hells yeah. She’s edgy and I reckon she’d know what she’s doing.’

‘Hmm. Yeah. Actually I’d probably need that.’

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‘Wait. Lux. You’ve been with girls, right? You have the most hippy parents ever, didn’t you, like, witness orgies and shit when you were little?’

‘Oh. Ha. Yeah. Kind of. I don’t know. Maybe?’ She looks kind of sheepish and embarrassed which is not like Lux. At all.

‘How is that even an answer?’

‘I dunno.’ She grins at her lap, shimmies herself up straighter. It’s “no bra girls night” and her loose singlet shifts to one side a bit, and I’m totally staring at her sideboob instead of her face and maybe I even instinctively lick my lips. ‘Well. You know Zan?

The tattoo artist, did this?’ She points to the feather on her right tricep. I nod. Remember meeting her at a gig one night – who knows which one – narrow hips, muscled legs.

Inked. ‘We were kind of, like, infatuated with each other in high school. I ended up getting a job at her work – some shitty little bakery at the lake – and we used to do the close shifts together after school. Before she dropped out. But anyway. There was always this weird tension and we used to get drunk and make out at parties in front of the boys.’

Sounds familiar but I don’t say this out loud. The suspense is killing me. I roll my eyes and she throws the pillow back at me and I karate chop it to the coffee table, spilling my beer. ‘Fuck.’

She keeps talking as I unravel the myriad blankets and shuffle to the kitchen for paper towel. ‘Anyway one afternoon at work we were messing around, throwing flour at each other or whatever the fuck, and we started kissing and then we were just, like, pantless.

Awkwardly fingering each other.’

I burst out laughing at this image, curling myself back under the blanket nest. She looks indignant, extracting her arm from the blankets to flip me off. Her singlet slips further to one side revealing a massive pink nipple. 109

‘Fuck you bitch as if you could do any better!’

I say nothing, drag my eyes from her tit and sip my beer. She’s giggling to herself.

Another un-Lux-like trait. I’m too fucking turned on to notice she’s acting different, weird.

‘I prefer licking them out.’ I say it casually because it’s a casual, truthful statement even though I know she’ll be shocked because she pretends to be my best mate but knows nothing about me and doesn’t care. I know she’ll be shocked. I watch her freeze out of the corner of my eye. I look over and she’s staring at me. Beer halfway to her lips. Her little, always-red lips in perfect proportion to her chipmunk cheeks. ‘It’s more…’ I’m searching for the word. ‘Delicate?’

‘What! El, I had no idea! You sly dog you.’

Now I’m angry because once again I’m thinking fuck you fuck you all you don’t know anything about me fuck everyone you don’t even care to find out no one asks about my parents, my life, they don’t know I go to Uni, I studied law, I can sing. Nothing. I feel like an internally ranting teenager. But I just shrug. Glare at her.

‘Sorry it’s just… unexpected.’

‘Maybe you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, as they say.’

‘Nah it’s not that it’s just… fuck.’

‘Your nipples are fucking huge by the way.’

She laughs out loud in surprise, reaching to put her empty bottle down. Looks down at her skewiff singlet. Goes to fix it then stops. Whips it over her head in one movement.

Stares at me, hard. Shifts on the couch so she’s directly facing me. Like she’s

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challenging me and she looks like a bitch and I’ve never been so turned on so I put my beer down slowly and shuffle towards her, trying to match her stare and hoping she won’t notice the fear in my eyes coz she’s back to the other Lux now, the one I know, the fucking tough bitch intimidating you never know if you’re friends or enemies. She grabs my throat with one hand, chipped white nailpolish. Runs it down my neck between my breasts. The thing Mace does that makes me shiver. The aggression, like barely concealed hate.

‘My nipples on your chest would be perfect.’ She drops her hand, looks down at her boobs, bare and goosebumped. The nights are colder now. ‘My nipples are too big for my tiny tits.’ She pinches them. A small smile.

I grab around her tiny ribcage. She’s really bottom-heavy. ‘You’re freezing.’ Rub my hands up and down her sides. Thumbs push over her nipples and her mouth parts slightly, eyes go a bit heavy as she stares at me and I lunge my head down, licking right on her sternum and feel her breath catch before I move my mouth down over each nipple in turn giving them the attention she wants as she rubs my scalp lightly behind my ears like a cat and as I push her slightly back over the arm of the couch she moans, my hand between her legs, rubbing over her flannel pyjama pants and she’s panting and I move back to take my shirt off too when she sits up suddenly. Hands cupping her breasts.

‘Pasta won’t cook itself.’ She smirks at me, reaching to the ground for her top. Each bone of her spine pops against her skin. Artwork moving with her limbs. She pulls her top back on as she walks to the kitchen. ‘Kik will be here soon.’ She calls over her shoulder.

Didn’t even know Kik was coming to girls night. Tonight they sleep in my bed and I curl up on the couch because that’s the type of person I am. Don’t we all just go to sleep at night, one hand working between our legs, thinking about no one in particular?

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28. grey skies

Yas and I are on coffee as usual. I never work until close but I think Greg did it on purpose. My last shift and all.

He comes up behind me. ‘So, your last shift, ay?’

‘Yeah.’

Pulling shots. Dropping the cups on the counter over Yas’s right shoulder while she steams the milk and greets the customers and pretends not to listen. It’s the kind of grey sky that makes me feel weird. Clouds pressing down, no freedom in the air.

‘Working till close?’

‘Yeah.’ You’re the one that did the rosters.

‘I’ve gotta hang around anyway.’ He’s talking quiet, as usual, hovering behind us. Close but not close enough to be in our way. Practised. Smiling at customers, waving a hand to his regulars as they try and flag his attention. Everyone wants a piece of him at this place.

‘How about we have a wine?’

‘Yeah. Sure.’

‘Right.’ I get the feeling he wants to say more. But he shuffles away, my back still turned. Focusing on the order receipts spitting out every 15 seconds. Afternoon rush.

Office workers spilling in from their number-punching city jobs, trying to make it through the last hour of the day. At least I’m on my feet.

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29. better tomorrow

The birds make a ruckus in the trees and beads of salty perspiration roll down between my breasts. It’s only spring. I’m on the veranda doing science homework. The familiar dread of hearing the Volvo pull into our street. Mum’s at the bottom of the driveway.

Everything halts and she walks towards me, sits down on the front step.

‘Working hard?’

‘Yep.’

‘You’ll have to go inside soon.’

‘Why?’

‘To get the job done.’

‘I’m doing my homework now.’

‘Yes, but you need to get the job down.’

‘Yes, but I’m doing it now.’

‘I’ll give you an ice cream then.’

Her smile is big and courageous but all I feel is heaviness in my chest because I can’t say no. She’s in a good mood and you don’t want to ruin the mood. Even if I say no, I’ll eat the ice cream later then feel like crap because she’ll make a comment. Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow I’ll get skinny.

* 113

We go to the lookout up the hill from Bar Beach. Pizza box open on my lap, oil seeping into my skirt. I don’t eat and Kik doesn’t notice.

‘It’s all just so fucked, you know?’ He doesn’t need an answer, staring out over the dark ocean. It’s getting cold and I unravel my scarf, make a shawl and wrap it tight around my shoulders. ‘She’s just not the same.’

‘Of course she’s not Kik, people change. That’s what happens when you grow up. Bec’s never gonna be the same as when you were 16.’

‘Yeah but I just want to help her you know, like save her. She’s making a mistake. This is fucked.’

‘Kik—’

‘Fucking Mace.’ He yells it out over the water, drops his head into his hands. ‘I always knew there was something weird about him.’

‘Weren’t you like, best friends?’

‘I’m sorry. El, sorry. You’re beautiful.’ Reaches over to rub his hands over my legs.

Goosebumps. I’m wearing a skirt. He pushes his hands up through my hair, bringing my forehead close to his. Looks at me with eyes screaming out in pain and I want to say I understand everything. Everything. ‘You don’t deserve this.’

‘You’re right, I don’t.’ I smile and he doesn’t.

His rough, calloused, beautiful hands slide down the sides of my face, one thumb pushes over my bottom lip. He’s going in for the kiss.

I look away. ‘This is fucked.’

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‘Yeah.’ He takes a slice of pizza, holds it in one hand, pineapple pieces sliding off onto the grass. ‘It’s getting cold, can you shut the lid?’

I do it. Put the pizza box on the bench seat next to me, between us. Place my hands on my red, burned thighs. Rubbing my fingers warm.

‘You know how when you know exactly when something started and you wish you could just go back and change it, like stop it before everything gets ruined?’

‘Of course I do. I think sometimes you forget who you’re talking to. That Halloween party…’ I laugh under my breath.

‘Oh. Right.’ He looks at me blankly. Not interested in sharing the pain. ‘Of course.’ He shakes his head and starts kicking his legs under the seat like a child, sneakers scuffing the ground below us. ‘I’ll never forget mine. Everything was fine. So good. She was with my family at dinner and they just fucking love her and it was my birthday and then we went to my room later. She sat on my bed and wouldn’t let me shut the door and I knew something was up. She said that Mace had been texting her and she thought I should know. And I didn’t think anything of it, you know, like he was my best mate.’

I’m nodding and he’s speaking to the ground.

‘She was crying. And I was just comforting her, like I had no idea why she was crying.

But she was, like, sobbing, and really worked up and I kept telling her it was okay and I guess she just thought she had told me everything I need to know because we calmed down and then… you know.’

‘All downhill from there.’

‘Exactly. I just want her to be the same old Bec. The one she used to be.’

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‘She’s the same person mate, just made a different choice.’

‘Well it’s the fucking wrong choice! Do you know like do you have any idea how bad that dude is?! It was fine when we were friends but I always knew he was a fucker and he knows he’s a jerk and he’s just okay with it. Or something.’

‘He told me his parents don’t give a shit.’

‘Yeah. Like, they’re just caught up in their own little world and taking care of his baby, trying to protect his reputation in the church and everything but he’s fucked, dude, he raped a chick.’

‘What?’ The pizza I didn’t eat rolled up into a ball, on fire in my stomach. Travelling up my throat.

He looks at me. The look in his eyes is what I think is earnest, like he needs me to understand. ‘Yeah. Our friend. She fell asleep at a party and he took her into a bedroom and everyone just kind of knows what happened but no one is saying anything. Coz he’s

Mace, you know. You don’t say anything.’

‘What happened to the girl?’

‘Well she like told a few friends and everyone kind of found out but that was it.’ He shrugs. As if I’m missing the point.

I want to cry and my eyes burn and I feel sick. ‘Dude. That’s fucked up.’ Can’t absorb the moment. Numb. Salty ocean air whipping my cheeks.

‘I know. And like he just has so many girls. Always texting and even when we were mates he wouldn’t let any of the boys stay at his house and we just thought maybe his

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parents wouldn’t let him but it’s weird, you know, like he’s just always got something going on.’

‘What happened to Bella’s mother?’

‘Oh who the fuck knows.’ He shakes his head like I’m missing the point again. Shoves his hands in his pockets and frowns out over the ocean. Staring. ‘I’m sorry El, you don’t deserve this.’ The left side of his face is illuminated in the glow from the moon, which is massive but not full. Not yet.

‘Want any more of this?’ I pick up the pizza box between us and he shakes his head.

Scuffing his shoes on the ground again. I walk across the carpark to the only bin I can see. Heart pounding and teeth chattering. When I walk back he’s leaning against my car door. Guess we’re leaving then. Part of me wants to talk all night. Part of me wants to drive off without him. Smiles at me, a half smile, like he’s done something wrong and wants forgiveness.

‘Come on then.’ I reach past him to unlock the door. He grabs my arm and turns me to face him, one finger under my chin and leans down to me, folding my body into his coat.

Kisses me like we’re in a movie.

We drive home in relative silence and when we pull up, he doesn’t get out of the car.

And I’m thinking, this is kind of a fucking big deal.

‘Can you just text him for me?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Just text Mace. Tell him you never want to see him again.’

‘What. I don’t—’ Fumble with the keys in the ignition.

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‘El. I know him and I know you and you shouldn’t be seeing him anymore. I know you still talk to him.’ He won’t stop staring at my face.

I’m going to deny it and I start denying it and then I stop because he won’t hear it and he thinks he knows me when he knows shit all.

‘Please just do it, just fucking do it. He doesn’t deserve you.’

‘Okay. Okay, calm down.’

He’s thumping his fists on his knees and it’s childlike again, a kid not getting his way in the supermarket. Face flushed in the darkness save for the streetlight through the windscreen. I pull out my phone and he snatches it off me. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Fine.’

Lucky I delete every message Mace sends me, all the evidence. From myself. From anyone but mainly from myself. His number isn’t even saved.

‘You know his number?’

‘Yeah.’

When it’s done we sit in the car and the CD plays through twice. Mace doesn’t respond and Kik drives the van home to his parents, or to Lux’s, or to Bec’s, or somewhere away from me.

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30. birthday blues

Another birthday been and gone. Mum called, asked me to come over for dinner. Said she was making steamed fish. Very healthy. Did I need any money? I didn’t go.

Dad emailed me an e-card from somewhere overseas, in the abyss. Can’t remember where he is. Andrew told me. Mongolia maybe? Anyway I didn’t have the program so I couldn’t even open it. Didn’t people stop sending e-cards in 2001?

A stream of birthday wishes on Facebook. People I never talk to. Who don’t give a shit whether my birthday is actually “happy” or not. Somewhere between July last year and this year I stopped doing that. Writing meaningless messages on people’s walls, encouraged by the Facebook robot to “wish Tom a happy birthday!” It seemed rude.

Ignoring these people, forever, not knowing what they’re doing with their lives then wishing them a happy birthday. Fucking rude.

I deactivated my account in preparation for this. Suddenly thought. The other day. Fuck it. Don’t want randoms wishing me a happy birthday. They can suck it. I guess it also seemed like a good way of testing people. The real people. Active-in-my-life friends. If there are any left now. Who haven’t given up on me.

I try and tell myself that just because I’m a freak who remembers numbers and dates doesn’t mean everyone can. Some people need the help of the Facebook robot prompting them. Gone are the days of diaries and calendars hanging on the back door of the kitchen pantry. I sound old.

So I reactivated my account.

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Then the day before my birthday I made my birth date private. Fuck everyone. Then, because I’m pathetic and had depressing visions of no one remembering at all, I made it public again.

The usual influx of meaningless messages didn’t even seem to perk me up though.

Started the day with high hopes. House to myself. No work. Wine, cheese, junk food.

Pile of books I’ve been meaning to read. The perfect set up I used to froth over and crave. Lux’s cashmere throw she left behind last time. Then I got called into work and I went in, with relief, because I had nothing better to do and was slipping hard into the birthday blues. Also, it’s a new job. So I want to make an impression; they don’t know it’s my birthday.

Nothing from Lux or Pum. Trying not to take it personally that it’s the first time in a week Kik hasn’t slept over since the night he made me text Mace. Hasn’t responded to my texts. I’m living in Hamilton now and my new housemates hate him. They think he takes advantage and whenever he stays over he never cleans up after himself. That he should be paying rent he’s here so much. Except today.

‘Happy birthday!’ Gab jumps up from her seat as I ascend the stairs to the mezzanine level of the café. Every year, birthday tradition, Three Monkeys on Darby St. Back to school days, wagging during free periods and wandering hand in hand, flowers, balloons and paraphernalia in tow. Always a big deal, birthdays.

Her grin is wide, straight white teeth and sparkling eyes like she’s genuinely excited to see me and I don’t know who I feel most sorry for in that moment. Me or her. I smile too and it feels forced but I hope it looks okay.

‘Thanks Gab!’ 120

She jumps into my arms, planting a warm kiss on my cheek. ‘How are you babes?’

‘Not too bad.’

‘Oh no, are you sick?’ She touches my forehead.

‘Oh. I dunno. Ha. Maybe!’ Yes I’m pale and tired and I know I look like shit, but what’s new? She always looks so nice and put together and simple, almost on the verge of daggy but maybe we just have different styles now. Or maybe we always did. She’s all neutral colours and modest, like a young, semi-hip school teacher. She looks nice. Nice. I suddenly feel harsh next to her in my burnt orange knit, baggy and falling over one shoulder. Faux leather pants and my Docs. Rings on every finger. She’s elegant and dainty and so very blonde and people used to think we were sisters and now. Now that memory doesn’t even make me laugh. Gab doesn’t mention the freshly shaved side of my head. ‘How’ve you been?’

‘Good! Exams are over, thank god for that! I think, think, I got an internship in town at a firm. Maybe. The interview went pretty well so fingers crossed.’

‘Can’t believe you’re in your last year.’

‘I know! Me neither. Finally. I feel like I know nothing!’ She laughs but I know she’s serious, she’s never been very confident. That was my job, to pull us through. Followed me into studying law because she didn’t know what else she wanted to do. Not that any of us did. Lucky enough to get the entry marks. ‘Do you ever regret it G?’ She’s the only one who still calls me that. Old habits die hard. ‘Like. Don’t get me wrong. I know you made the right decision for you but…’

‘Nah. I’m way happier now.’ Grin as if to prove it.

‘So how’s Uni?’ 121

‘Oh you know. Same old. It’s a love hate thing.’ I don’t tell her I haven’t actually been there all semester.

‘Yeah I know what you mean. We used to say we’d be students forever, but now I can’t wait to finish. I just want it to end, you know? I want to work. Buy an ironing board finally and not have to worry about whether that means I can afford food or not.’

We laugh. The waitress brings our coffees and takes our breakfast order. As she walks away I have a sudden flutter in my chest. Like I need to get out. Right now. I’m about to go to the bathroom when she squeals ‘Oh!’ and scares the shit out of me. Reaches under the table. ‘Before I forget.’ She passes over a huge bunch of flowers and a little brown paper bag.

‘Wow, thanks Gab. You didn’t have to get me anything, honestly.’ She smiles, waiting delightedly for me to open it. ‘You’re too good to me lady.’

I put the flowers on the seat next to me. Unfold the top of the bag. Inside is a red velvet cupcake, perfect cream cheese frosting – our favourite. But. Instead of the usual little edible red heart on top there’s a thin silver ring. With a miniscule skull and black cubic zirconas for eyes.

‘Far out Gabs. What the.’ Her eyes are shining a little bit. ‘How did you know? Oh my god.’

‘Do you like it?!’

‘Dude. What the. Are you serious? I love it.’ I stand up tentatively, reach over for a hug, squeezing. The urge to vomit or cry or both.

‘I know you well, silly.’

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‘I love it Gab. But I really need to pee.’

She laughs. ‘Okay go! Be quick coz I wanna hear about your love life.’

In the small cubicle, I crack the window. Breathing hard. Claustrophobic. I almost feel tears burning in the corners of my eyes but I don’t think they’re coming and I’m pissed because I’d love nothing more than to let rip and cry my eyes out right now.

I flip the lid open, lean over and shove two fingers in my mouth, tickling the back of my throat in that perfect, practised way. It’s been years. And I still know what to do. It’s mindless. Why now? Like an uncontrollable tic, a product of utter desperation like this moment. Hurl, retch, heave. All dry. Nothing comes up. I fall onto my butt, probably bruising my coccyx bone on the hard tile floor. Lean against the wall, clasp my hands together. Stare at the ring. I don’t remember putting it on just then. Covered in saliva. I reach over and grab some toilet paper. Wipe my hands dry.

She’s such a fucking good friend. Loves me so unconditionally. And I feel so damn sorry for myself because of it.

Back at the table, our eggs have arrived. Mine with the mushrooms, Gab’s on gluten free toast.

‘There you are! I was about to start I am sooo starving.’

‘Ohhh remember going to the toilet in restaurants as a kid? And trying to take your time hoping the food would have miraculously appeared when you get back?! I used to love that.’ I push my knife into one egg, watching the dark yellow yolk ooze over the toast.

‘Yes! And how 20 minutes or whatever always felt like hours? I mean it can’t have been that long, waiting for food, like it’s not as if all of a sudden 15 years later restaurant service has improved.’ 123

‘Exactly.’

And we’re back in the game. Just two high school best friends talking about life over eggs and coffee.

Trying to read and I can’t concentrate, can’t get into it. Nothing on TV. Nothing to do.

Birthdays suck.

I lie here and think of texting Mace. A warm body would be good and a focus outside my own head. But I know if he doesn’t write back it will be because he’s with her, or someone, or just torturing me in general and I’ll want to stand in front of a train. So I don’t. But then an hour later I do.

- What are you doing?

And I wait another hour and hear nothing and long for the vibration of the phone on the hard wood shelf. Heart racing then slowing, racing then slowing. I think of the days when there were no phones, no texting, no lying awake at night or spending the day wondering. Leaving your phone in another room for an hour and hoping that when you check it you’ll see a reply. Anything.

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31. we are your family

‘Hi! Welcome to church!’

Some ridiculously attractive blonde chick is grinning at me with straight white teeth and

I’m awkward and taken aback and I think I whisper thanks because this isn’t like, a retail smile, this is like a best-friends-forever-I-genuinely-care-about-your-wellbeing smile.

Shit they’re good.

JD has a hold of my hand, nice and soft and non-sweaty, her lank brown hair curled down her back in a messy braid. I stare at the braid, scared of making eye contact with anyone else.

‘Hi! Welcome to church!’

It’s like a procession, on repeat. Every person with the same smile – the same line – and everyone is so fucking perky. All I’m thinking is They know. I’m a non-believer. A hedonist.

JD smiles as she heads through the entrance, shoulders relaxed and a bounce in her step.

Still holding my hand. This is her home, she’s one of them but one of mine too so surely it can’t be that bad. The girl said to herself at the gates of hell.

We met at my new work. The bar. She’s one of the nice ones. Bonded over an arsehole who’s a Wednesday night regular, hanging out ever since. Simple as that. An easy friend.

Single, lives alone. Endless cups of tea and snuggles in her queen-size bed and deep chats. The ones about life that you can only have with certain people. The moments when someone looks into your eyes and you know they get it.

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I haven’t seen Lux in weeks. I don’t even know if she still works at the café.

Occasionally on my way home from work I find myself driving past her house. Driving to the beach to see if the van’s there. Any van. Someone. The occasional “babe I miss you let’s catch up” message. High school all over again. Primary school, even. Picked last for sport, friends hanging out without you. All that. Instagram posts with new friends, and new new best friends, and Kik and Lux at gigs and parties and constantly seeking each other’s approval. But I can’t seek anyone’s approval when I’m not there.

Was I the flavour of the month? Do I care?

So now there’s JD who seems to love me and who knows Kik through someone through someone through church. Which means she probably knows Bec and Mace too but we don’t talk about that yet.

At work last week I got the same greeting from JD. As always, the big smile, the kind eyes, the momentary elation of thinking, knowing, that you’re the best thing since sliced bread, or at least the most beautiful thing she’s seen all day. On Wednesdays, JD starts when I finish. I handed her my section and she says, ‘Hey!’ Grabs my shoulder, face real close. ‘My friend’s band is playing on Sunday – you should come!’

I say something about how it sounds like the best thing since sliced bread. We arrange, quickly coz my boss is staring. Dinner first, gig next. My kinda night. She fails to mention the gig’s at church but I choose to believe it’s just not an issue for her – the location. Like, I was surprised to learn, from another waitress, that she even goes to church coz JD’s not churchy. So not churchy. Pretty normal. Super nice, I guess. But that’s not exactly a churchy trait, if I’m judging by what, who, I know. I’m choosing to believe it wasn’t a deviant plan – that she doesn’t think I need saving. She just knows I love me some live acoustic.

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We enter the nightclub. Yeah – dark walls, strobe lights, huge stage and standing floor section and tiered seating. Church by day, club by night. I get a flash of Nan rolling her eyes at my probing questions in high school, about my friends who go to “cool church”. I think I get it now. Hipsters, aesthetically pleasing musicians, all-round fucking cool people crowd the standing area. Lights are dim. Music pumping, electronic stuff. Babies in the arms of young mothers with huge headphones over their ears, looking a bit like aliens, or oversized flies. Poor little fuckers, with no idea of what they’ve been born into.

When we take our seats, JD holds my hand again, smiling and waving to people, introducing me to those who stop by to chat. They don’t have her lovingly open eyes, most seem even distrustful. It’s the best way I can explain it. Cautious, maybe. A bit reserved like in-laws meeting in-laws. Does this person belong in my family?

The lights go down, cheers roar, stage lights scream for attention, a few musos run onto the stage like rock stars, eyes closed, big smiles, arms outstretched. Just like every other person in the room. I stand too, not sure whether to look around or stare straight ahead.

Then the music starts and everyone is singing or mouthing the words like it’s fucking

Bon Jovi, words up on the big screen.

Jesus that

Save this

Love that

Jumping and dancing and arms up and holding each other. JD doesn’t have my hand anymore, they’re clasped tight under her chin, her eyes shining. To be honest it’s hard not to move to the music but I feel so retarded and stiff, like two sides of myself battling it out for dominance. My head nods, out of time, like I’ve never danced in my life.

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It’s not like anything even happened between Lux and I. So why do I feel like shit about it? I have to turn my phone off, delete her number even, just to stop myself messaging her. It’s fucking lame. The fear of no reply. The stupidest thing is it’s not even Lux I should care about. Kik was the one who drew me in. Package deal I guess.

The pastor has skinny chinos, army boots and a shaved head, just the hint of Mohawk in the middle at the front, tufts smoothed down onto his face. He’s young, can’t be more than 30. He waxes lyrical about Jesus and his beautiful wife, as if they are one and the same. Something about how we’re all his family, we’re all one, God loves us, if we’re in need, we have a family here.

Jesus Christ. No wonder people get sucked into this shit. Imagine this – you’re having a hard time, you meet a nice person like JD, you’ve just moved to a new city, and you’re feeling a bit lonely and lost and wondering if you made the wrong decision. Maybe you’ve just broken up with someone. Then someone nice, like JD, says “hey man come watch my friend’s band” so you do and some cool guy with a babin’ wife says we’re all family and next minute you’ve got your eyes closed and arms reaching up to the Lord.

The pastor is telling a story of a guy at McDonald’s who said he liked his shoes so he took them off and gave them to this random guy at McDonald’s and walked out with bare feet. People are crying. Shouting out YES. AMEN. YES. But they’re grinning, so it’s like, all these watery smiles, like everyone is being proposed to all at once. JD puts her arm around me, squeezes, snuggles her head into my neck for a moment. Like family.

We’re standing now and the pastor’s voice is louder, really enthusiastic, he’s probably spraying spit at the people in the front row. There’s a timer on the screen.

‘Okay in the next 10 seconds I want you to make a choice…

A choice to be happy. To be whole… 128

To be loved…

A choice to throw up your hands and surrender and know deep in your heart that you have a family and this life is out of your control, it’s in God’s hands…

10 seconds!

Raise your hands to the lord if you accept Jesus Christ our lord as your saviour…

5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1…’

Jumping yelling chanting crying arms in the air arms around each other.

I’m thinking in those last five seconds… do I? Do I raise my arms to the Lord? It would be so easy to just raise my arms and be part of this community, even just for the next hour, and be accepted, do I raise my arms in front of all these people while I’m here?

But I can’t do it. My arms are heavy, bags of sand against a bursting waterfall. Frozen.

Staring at the back of the guy’s head in front of me, at his bald patch. The beads of sweat falling down the collar of his shirt as he jumps up and down with his arms to the ceiling.

‘5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1!’

I look over to JD and she is clapping slowly with her eyes closed. A small smile on her face like she knows the secrets of the world.

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32. you guys don’t have it

Kik, Lux and I have just been to The Lass, rubbing shoulders with Newcastle’s indie music scene, as per usual. Sitting at the front stoop, past midnight. Not bothering to be quiet for my housemates sleeping inside. They’ll be pissed in the morning. But I don’t care coz I finally heard from my people. Kik’s van parked behind Lux’s car, behind my car. I emerge from the house with a sixpack of Corona. The good stuff, the stuff we can never afford.

‘It’s crazy but, don’t you reckon? That the reason we’re here right now is because of

Mace.’ Kik uses the cold concrete step to open us each a beer before passing them around. If you listen hard, you can hear the waves over at Merewether Beach. We saw

Mace at the gig, in the corner with Bec hanging off his arm. Staring straight ahead and paying her no attention.

‘What do you mean?’ says Lux. I stay quiet.

‘Like, if you hadn’t come to the after-party with Mace we wouldn’t have met. And if I didn’t know you and Mace were sleeping together, I wouldn’t have suggested we hang out.’

‘Gotta pee.’ Lux bounces up, crashes open the screen door.

Kik carries on like she never left. ‘You know, you just would’ve been another face in the crowd.’

‘So. You only suggested we hang out because you wanted to warn me off Mace?’ My chest is going to explode.

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‘Yeah. I guess. But then I got to know you.’

‘Right.’

‘No seriously, El. You’re one of a kind.’

I don’t say anything. Just stare at the line of ants moving past my legs. Breathe in the cold night air, my toes turning slightly blue but too comfortable to move. Too happy with my little threesome, at two in the morning, chatting without a care in the world. Because we’re young and free and high. Wanting to hear what he’ll say next and already forgetting that I’m just a project. A case for him to save. A way to get back at Bec, at

Mace.

‘I’m heaps glad we met.’ He’s looking at me with the same eyes he just gave Lux, and she’s still gone.

I try and harden my expression before I say, ‘So, hanging out with me was a way to get back at your ex GF and ex BF?’

‘No. El. No way. We have something. You and me. Like this magnetic force field, drawing us together.’ And if I hadn’t heard the same words from Lux’s mouth I would have thought he was being sincere. Like the people from JD’s church who said I was welcome, anytime. Their family. Like Mace when he tells me I’m beautiful. And that if the situation was different, we would be together. So I just smile. Then Lux comes back outside. She’s wearing my university hoodie. Mascara slightly smeared under her eyes.

Sits on Kik’s lap on the front step while I lean my spine against the cold wrought iron fence. Wonder if it’ll leave marks in the morning. He wraps his arms around her and she takes the cigarette from his mouth, takes a drag, takes it all.

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‘I just don’t get it. I mean look at Win. Snorting lines of coke whenever we see him, dressing the part for the parties but going to church with his parents on the weekend. Is that, like, allowed?’ She’s forgotten what we were actually talking about when she left.

‘He’s not hurting anyone.’

‘So why judge people like me and El? For not believing?’

‘You’re hurting yourselves.’

‘Sometimes I feel like we live on different planets.’ But she’s looking at him with these fairy princess eyes and he’s looking at her back the same kinda way, with deep affection.

And I’m just over here with my beer.

So I say, ‘But, like, why did you sleep with Bec? If you’re all against no sex before marriage? Isn’t that hurting people?’

‘No one’s supposed to know about that.’

Lux and I look at each other. She says, ‘You’re hurting, because now she’s off to marry

Mace and has probably slept with him too. She’s probably hurting, because you’re hurting, and he’s hurting, if he had any feelings at all. Not that I really know the guy.’

‘We thought we’d be together forever.’

‘So that’s the rule? If you say you’re going to be with someone forever, then you can have sex and no one will say anything?’

‘Well no one knows, that’s the thing.’

‘Well, don’t you think anyone would know? Isn’t it obvious? Like, you told us.’ Lux gestures over to me.

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‘I dunno. Anyway. Obviously some people know. But not, like, our parents. And people in the church.’

I can’t keep quiet any more. ‘I mean, what kind of 19-year-old knows what they want in life? How can you meet someone and be like “yeah, I’m definitely gonna marry you” when you haven’t had any life experience yet?’ I can feel my cheeks hot against the frozen breeze.

‘We’re not all as fucked up as you El.’

‘Ouch.’ Lux is laughing. We’re all laughing.

‘Some of us know what we want.’ There’s something in there that’s harsh, even though he’s got a smile on his face. And I’m trying to figure out what he means. Why it matters so much to him. Was I not supposed to be the cool girl? The new best friend who doesn’t care that he hooks up with other people, and me too. And Lux. Was I supposed to declare my undying love for him and make some wild gesture, and then things would have worked out between us? I’m reading into it too much. Obviously. Naturally. So instead I imagine standing up, elegant, striding over to where he’s perched on the front step, one elbow resting on one leg, and press his head against the wall with as much strength as I can muster and kiss the shit out of him. In front of Lux, even. Then I punch him in the face, with my thumb outside my fist like a guy in high school taught me, and he looks at me with fire in his eyes then kisses me back and it’s all very Hollywood. Maybe Lux starts a solo slow clap and she’s okay with it because she knows the two of us were meant to be all along.

But all I say is, ‘Fair.’

‘Hey, I don’t know what I want either. Try before you buy, that’s all I’m saying.’ Lux winks. 133

‘What do you think I was doing with Bec?’ Sticks his tongue out. Vulgar.

‘Mate you’re fucked.’

‘Aren’t we all.’

Silence as Kik rolls another smoke. Lights it and passes it to Lux. They’ve been sharing a packet of tobacco for weeks. Another excuse to see each other every day. I bet it was

Lux’s idea.

‘You guys don’t get it.’ Six beers in and getting loose. He’s open.

‘What is there to get? You believe or you don’t.’

‘It’s more complicated than that. I’ve been in this thing forever.’

‘This thing?’

‘You know, church.’

‘So it’s all you know.’

‘Mate I’ve lived in the real world.’

‘Right.’ It’s fun, me and Lux against him. Exchanging glances, smirking over our beer bottles.

Kik’s staring hard at the line of ants near his bare feet. ‘You haven’t known it. You know, how do you explain just literally lying on the bathroom floor, for hours, not being able to move, just like paralysed to the spot. What do you call that?’

‘A really fucking bad day.’

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We crack up laughing and even Kik joins in.

‘Nah, it’s different. Like there’s something else keeping you there. Cementing you to the spot. You’ve got to listen. To your purpose.’

‘How can you use god to explain depression?’

He ignores me. ‘I’ve seen it. Seen it all. At camp, early high school. This was like, my moment. When I realised this shit was real and I couldn’t control it. Nothing’s up to me.

I was in the hall, packing up the instruments and this guy, about my age, can’t remember his name, was just going mental, surrounded by pastors, he’s shaking and convulsing and saying all this weird shit and then one of the guys went and just put his hand on his head and prayed and then he just calmed right down. You can’t explain that shit.’

I don’t even know what to say. Neither does Lux. We don’t even exchange a look this time. Just stare at the ground and wonder what makes us all so different. If our lives would be any more fulfilled to believe, to see things so passionately. Or maybe it’s just me.

‘It’s all about passion. You guys, you don’t have it.’ He narrows his eyes, small smile on his lips. Waiting for us to counter him.

‘I passionately believe you’re full of shit,’ I say. Lux cracks up laughing and Kik can’t help but join in. He flicks ash at her.

‘So what’s wrong with just believing what you wanna believe,’ I carry on. ‘Being a nice person and just making your way in the world without god, or whatever. Can’t I just go through life, being good and loving people and not doing bad shit and still be saved?’

We drink in silence, drink in the silence again.

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33. best cake ever

I remember my thirteenth birthday. Not the presents, the balloons from my friends at school, the attention I received or the phone calls from distant relatives. It was the cake.

I’ll never forget that cake. Pink – my favourite colour – with so many layers. Vanilla sponge, jam, more sponge, cream, more jam, chocolate sponge on top and bright pink icing with the words Happy Birthday Giselle.

Mum’s handwriting was distinct, even though she used a special tool for the writing. I watched her make it the day before, sitting on the kitchen bench, swinging my legs back and forth the way I always did.

I watch her mix the icing sugar with water, colouring and extra vanilla essence. She pours the icing into special calico bags that have little white plastic heads in the corners.

The bag squeezes and icing oozes delicately out, fashioned by mum’s careful hands. She uses a knife to smooth the icing perfectly along the side. Absolutely perfect. My heart races because if she messes it up she’ll start all over again in frustration and we won’t have dinner tonight. There’s no room for error. She stands like a ballerina, front leg turned out, back leg stretched and pointed behind her. I copy her on the other side of the bench when she’s not looking. She’s beautiful.

Mum lets me lick the knife when she’s done, and the mixers. Only on my birthday.

Andrew and Justin lick the bowl and they get the leftover cake batter. Andrew’s the

“garbage bin” and Justin is the fussy eater. Loves his veggies, which makes mum love him more. I’m not allowed chicken coz it makes your boobs big. The hormones, she says.

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Before high school started I licked the bowl. Nan and G used to pick Justin and I up from primary school in their tiny white car. Crunchy grapes waiting in the back seat for the drive back to Mum’s. Sweat dripping down my back under the ugly blue polo shirts.

When Nan comes over now, she does the talking, mostly. ‘Any word from you-know- who?’

‘Nope.’ Mum comes over to my side of the bench, starting to braid my hair, lips pale and clenched tight.

‘He just can’t do that, you know! You can’t let him leave all the time, again and again…’

‘Bastard.’ G chimes in, reading a magazine on the armchair in the corner.

‘Don’t you have any respect for yourself? I mean, come on!’ says Nan.

Mum doesn’t reply, not when I’m there in the kitchen. Never talks about Dad to me either. Mum winks at me, which means it’s time to start setting out the ingredients. Eggs, milk, flour, butter.

‘What about the boys? Marriage is about more than money! Don’t you think they need a man in their lives? And what about G-I-S-E-L-L-E?’

Because apparently I can’t spell my own name.

When Nan was going on at Mum about Dad always being away, I never left the kitchen, even if I wanted to. Like it was my duty to protect her, not to betray her. She had to know

I’m on her side. In high school, I have to walk home. No car, no bus. Up the hills. Mum says it’s good exercise. I arrive home pink in the face and sweaty and she opens the door, barely looking at me as I walk in. Straight to my room, no cakes or cookies or muffins

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cooling on the kitchen bench. Homework. Maybe dinner later. Baked beans, no toast. No carbs. Frozen veggies and tuna. No rice.

The more Dad’s away, the less time Mum spends in the kitchen. Or with any of us.

Except on birthdays. It’s the day before my thirteenth and it’s better than my actual birthday because we bake the cake and I watch and lick the knife and even taste some of the chocolate sponge batter. I watch her use the oven, for the first time in months. Beat eggs, sift flour. Laugh. Seems to be enjoying herself. Going to bed with a full stomach.

The best cake ever.

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PART THREE

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34. one of the born-agains

I choose a seat in the sun. Dirty white plastic chairs under umbrellas in the courtyard of

Mamaduke’s at the Uni. Flashbacks to first year, lugging heavy piles of law textbooks from one side of campus to the other. Falling asleep in the sun, no shoes. Mosquitoes.

Schnitzel in the cafeteria with a whole bunch of high school acquaintances. Impossible to make new friends when half our year entered the same degree. The people we thought we’d left behind turned out to be our number one security blankets.

I reach my legs out under the table, resting my feet on the opposite chair.

‘Hey sis.’

Someone squeezes my shoulders from behind. Andrew plants a rough kiss on my cheek.

I instinctively wipe it off as he sits down opposite, pushing my feet to the ground.

Aftershave and men’s deodorant. ‘I don’t have long.’ He loosens his tie.

‘Ok.’ I can’t be bothered reminding him that he’s the one who invited me for coffee.

‘Have you ordered?’

‘Yeah. Skinny latte?’

‘Ah shit. I’m not doing dairy at the moment.’ He jumps up and heads inside to switch to soy or whatever. There are patches of sweat on the back of his business shirt. He tutors here now. Economics. Must suck to have to wear nice clothes every day.

I say it out loud as he sits back down. He laughs, seems a bit edgy. ‘You know little sis, one day you’ll have a job that won’t let you wear those big dumb combat boots.’ 140

‘Never.’ I smile. ‘Anyway who are you, Julia Stiles?’ He pretends to miss the reference even though we spent our entire childhood watching Ten Things I Hate About You.

We have nothing to say. He closes his eyes, soaking up the late winter sun. The middle- aged waitress comes out with our coffees. As grumpy as I remember. I shot my espresso straight away. Cringe.

‘Let me guess, not extracted properly?’ Andrew is smirking at me, sipping his soy latte with one hand. Broad shoulders slightly hunched.

‘I don’t understand. There’s just no excuse for bad coffee these days. Especially in

Newcastle.’

‘Yeah but this is the Uni, El. Different stratosphere.’

‘Yeah yeah. Anyway I’ll have you know I’m a bartender now. It’s a fucking relief not to smell like coffee 24/7.’

‘Okay, right. Where?’

‘The Mary Ellen.’

‘Nice. So happy birthday for a few weeks ago. Sorry I didn’t get you anything. I’m up to my ears marking papers. That time of year you know. End of semester. Students knocking on my door left right and centre.’

‘How’s Nicki?’ I cut him off. Bored of the work talk.

‘Oh. Shit yeah. Forgot how long it’s been since I saw you. We broke up.’ He seems totally unphased.

‘What? Why?’ I’m kind of distressed. I liked her.

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‘Wasn’t working out. Lives just going in different directions. We’re fine.’ Classic

Andrew. Golden child. Always got his shit together. ‘So anyway. How are you doing?’

He’s suddenly serious.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Do you need money?’

‘Fuck! Why does everyone keep asking me that? When have I ever asked anyone for money?’

‘Righto mate, no need to bite my head off. We just want to know you’re okay.’

‘I can take care of myself… how long have I been doing this on my own!?’

‘You’re not on your own, G.’ His voice softens.

I deflect the moment. ‘Anyway, who is “we”?’

‘Mum and Dad are always worried about you.’ I scoff. ‘Aren’t you going to ask how they are?’

I roll my eyes. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me anyway?’

‘They’re good. Really good.’ He looks kind of stern now. ‘It wouldn’t hurt you to drop in every now and then.’

‘What, so they can pretend we’re a nice nuclear family? Seriously Andrew that framed mantelpiece picture cracked a long time ago.’ He bursts out laughing. ‘What?’

‘You always have a way with words. Especially when you’re mad.’

‘Yeah well, I’m at my best and most literate when I’m pissed off.’

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‘You would’ve made a stunning lawyer.’

‘Oh please…’

‘I know you don’t want to mention it.’ He holds up his hands in defence. ‘But I’m just saying.’ He checks his watch.

‘Whatever, I don’t think we should just be cool with the fact that Dad up and left almost, what, almost ten years ago now, then waltzes back in a few years later as if nothing ever happened.’

‘They’re adults, matey, they’ve got their reasons.’ He’s bored of this argument. ‘Cut them some slack.’

‘Can’t believe Mum just took him back, I mean what the fuck? Does he even to this day have any idea what she was like when he left?’

‘Look. I know you’ve always had your beef with Mum, maybe it’s a girl thing, but—’

‘You don’t get it! You never did! You’re the perfect oldest sibling, doing your degree, dating pretty, thin girls, staying in touch with Dad, even visiting him in fucking England!

You can do no wrong in her book.’

‘El—’

‘You have no idea!’

He sighs. Looks kind of sorry for me, which makes me madder. I scrape my fingers hard against my scalp, pushing my hair back from my face. Exasperated and way more emotional than I try hard not to be.

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‘Have you eaten? Wanna share a focaccia or something?’ I don’t answer but he’s already making his way through the heavy sliding door to order. Part of me wants to grab my satchel and leave but I wait till he returns and pick at my half of a toasted sandwich.

‘What’s this I hear about you going to church?’

‘Excuse me?!’

‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those born-agains now.’

‘Oh god. What the? No. How did you know?’

‘My colleague, you remember Rudy? He says “Hi” by the way. His new girlfriend is one of them. I had dinner there the other night. Well, at his place. They pretend they don’t live together but, you know. Said she recognised you from around town.’

‘Fucking Newcastle.’ He laughs, mouth full of food. ‘My friend at work goes to

Hillsong. She took me to a gig there.’

‘A gig?’

‘Yeah. It’s hectic. They have like a full on rock band in there performing every time.’

‘Right.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m not, like, converted or whatever.’

‘Good.’

He finishes his sandwich, brushes his hands against his pant leg as he stands. ‘Right well

I’ve gotta run.’

‘Okay.’ I stand too.

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He pulls me in for an awkward hug and I’m overcome with a sudden rush of emotion.

Desperation. I squeeze my arms around his back, holding tighter than I normally would.

Almost like I wanna cry. Maybe I’m getting my period or something.

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35. my friends

The manager at the Mary Ellen has a hilarious German accent and he’s super harsh but also a total softie. He’s tiny, short, always wearing a suit with round glasses and he can carry five plates at once. Loves to tell me about his love life while we’re restocking fridges in the store room. I think I’m his favourite coz I know how to dish it out and I can take his shit too. We’re both the black sheep among a minimal staff of pretty blonde girls and hunky surfer dudes. Sometimes I wonder why the big boss hired me. Maybe for some token variety.

It’s Friday night, my usual shift. Three of us behind the bar with barely time to talk. I’m floating between the kitchen and the lounge in the quieter moments, helping set up for tonight’s gig. Just acoustic, a few randoms supporting Myra Back at 11pm. The restaurant is none of my business. I’m in the corner adjusting the mic, no raised platform.

Sitting on a rustic stool, Myra’s favourite. She’s been gigging every Friday for years.

Never leaving Newcastle because people know her name here. I’m about to do a sound check when I see Pum, wearing a loud Hawaiian button-up shirt and coughing like he’s dying. Walks straight to the bar. I feel like I’ve swallowed a whole grape and it’s caught in my windpipe. He’s the kind of guy that will call the girls ‘darlin’. Rum and coke please darlin. Even though he’s probably younger than all of us. Kik, a head taller than his mate, enters behind him. Beard grown out more since I last saw him. A week or two ago. Lux follows in ripped jeans and a white singlet. No bra. Must be cold outside. She’s laughing, her mermaid hair whipping around as she looks behind her to carry on the joke with Myra, who’s following. They’re all carrying a piece of her equipment.

They see me, one at a time. To Myra I’m the new girl who works here and adjusts her mic. Smiles politely. Pum waves from the bar. Shirt rises up with his arm, hairy lower 146

belly hanging over his pants. Lux smiles vaguely and Kik does that thing where you pretend you don’t see someone but you’re just having a fucking awesome time doing what you’re doing.

These are my friends. But I don’t go and say Hi.

I’m busy. I flit around. Pouring drinks, stacking glasses, placing bills on coffee tables between couch chairs of men having after-work drinks. They sit in a circle of couches right near the stage, to the left. A fake indoor plant tickles Lux’s back and she moves her armchair closer to Myra’s, laughing. Drinking. Laughing. Ordering more drinks. Pum usually comes to the bar. He’s the only one with a job. We chat. He tells me to sit with them when I’m done.

‘I’m on break in halfa.’

‘Yeah chick. Let’s do this. Come sit.’

‘Righto mate.’

He grins at me and I smile back because he knows nothing and it makes me kinda sad.

But he’s still there, sitting with the people I was sitting with.

I hang out in the kitchen on my break. My favourite chef makes me a salad and I lean on a chopping board while we talk about stuff. Throw my apron in the staff closet and head to the bathroom before I start back. Almost smash into Lux on my way out. In two seconds her face goes from shocked to awkward to ecstatic.

‘HEY!’ She grabs my shoulders and pulls me into a hug.

‘I just finished my break.’

‘Oh noooo dude, you should’ve come sit with us.’ 147

‘All good, didn’t have much time. So busy.’

‘Yeah. Yeah.’ She looks around vaguely. ‘Anyway, gotta pee! Come over later?’

‘Yep.’

But I know I’m not really invited and she knows I won’t actually come. She pushes open the door to the girls’ bathroom and I hold my bladder till the end of my shift. They leave at midnight, before Myra’s even finished her set. Lux calls ‘Text me!’ as she waltzes out and Kik follows, smiling at me with his eyes because I’m staring at him and making him look at me and he doesn’t know what to do because he doesn’t know he’s done anything other than what he’s good at.

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36. all the life stories

When I’m having an existential crisis I need to be around people. Strangers. Wonder at their lives to remember that I’m small and I don’t matter. I catch the train to Sydney on my day off. High-tail it the fuck out of this place I’ve always called home. Whatever that means. I choose a dirty purple seat near the window, purposely not entering the quiet carriage because I need noise. Need to eavesdrop on a conversation that doesn’t concern me.

In Kings Cross, the heart of it all. Barely existing as a suburb though I suppose it never really was. Darlinghurst and Potts Point encroaching from both sides like mountains closing in on a lone, leafless tree. Stuck in the middle. Abandoned shop fronts for lease every few steps. Walking along Darlinghurst Road I relish that no one looks twice.

Because no one cares and here, among strangers, that’s okay. Nobody can disappoint. In my head, I give someone money. Sit down next to a homeless woman and chat, find out her story, make a difference in her day. But it’s in another life that I’m bold and brave and confident enough to turn heads and if only briefly, sporadically, occasionally it occurs to me that maybe it’s okay, maybe that’s not who I want to be.

In the city I know I need to see water. Any sprawling body of water because I’m feeling claustrophobic. I think I can survive here. I follow my feet, find myself at Rushcutters

Bay. Squealing children run in every direction on the oval, coloured witches hats and harsh whistles punctuating the movement. It’s actually peaceful and people are on their own, lying on the grass by the harbour. Sleeping, reading, eating, soaking up the sun.

Two girls sit near me on a picnic blanket and they’re chatting quietly, seriously, with small smiles and a container of fruit between them. For a moment, I wonder if they’re praying or meditating or gossiping. Small white dogs chase balls and they’re so well- 149

trained they don’t bother anyone but their owners. Fast footsteps on the path behind me and a distant cacophony of chatter builds and fades as the pack of runners approaches and leaves, heading perpendicular away from my position on the grass.

I walk along the harbour. Massive houses and massive boats. Walk along a jetty and sit down on a floating platform, Harbour Bridge in the distance, surrounded by cranes. I think of staying here tonight, it’s more adventurous. It’s not too cold, just a light

September breeze. My stomach on the cool, rough wood. I rest my left cheek on my folded arms, watch the city lights rise and fall from view as the platform bobs up and down. I imagine a fin surfacing before my eyes. The thrill and adrenaline. Stories to tell.

I saw a shark once. At Lake Macquarie. Valentine’s Day with Jeremy. Night time rendezvous, fucking on the grass before we could fuck in houses. High school boyfriend.

No one believed us.

The wind picks up and the jetty crashes into the platform, squealing and banging non- rhythmically. It gets annoying fast and who am I kidding? A girl who’s used to a roof over her head is hardly going to spend the night on a floating jetty for no good reason.

Childish whims and gypsy wandering aside, I am who I am. I guess I like comfort.

Nobody’s in business clothes and I’m surprised. Don’t they have jobs? The city didn’t seem leisurely yet here I am in jeans at Rushcutters Bay in the middle of a Wednesday so who am I to say what people should be doing? How many of me are out there?

A father and son ride by on scooters, two guys steal a kiss near the playground and everyone has a life and a story.

$2 for a double cheeseburger at Maccas. How could you ever go hungry? I see a sign for a backpacker hostel, near the station. A night of anonymity. Behind the reception desk is

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a bright, amateur mural of Sydney harbour, paint flaking away in misshapen sheets like peeling skin from a sunburnt back.

A crumpled $20 note on the counter top. Winter special, even though it’s spring now.

September. Must’ve been a slow season. ‘The Cross is dying,’ says the guy behind the counter. Maybe he’s tired early of my awkwardness, because he slams a key on the counter. ‘Just don’t tell the boss, eh? Sheets.’ A rolled-up pile of stained linen is thrust at my face. ‘You’re not supposed to stay here if you’re Australian. Anyway, showers, TV room, kitchen.’ He nods his head in vague directions, then goes back to staring, glassy- eyed, at the computer screen in front of him. He’s kind of attractive, in a greasy French way. Or maybe he’s Italian, I’m not good with accents.

I shoulder my handbag. He didn’t look twice at my lack of luggage. Must get all sorts here. Wishing I’d brought a spare pair of undies, then again why would I? Pop to Coles and buy some. Or not. Clutching the key in my sweaty fisted hand, I turn my back to the reception desk and start climbing stairs to level three. Each new landing has a different mural – clearly the same artist. Blue Mountains, Palm Beach, Opera House.

The room is empty, luggage and wet clothes and wrappers everywhere. Empty beer bottles and a ripped sign saying No Food and Drink in Rooms. I throw my bag on the spare bed near the window, lie down on the lumpy mattress and close my eyes. Stretch my arms up and let my fingers follow the pattern on the springs of the bunk above me.

It’s like winter isn’t real – we’re all waiting for something better. The in-between.

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37. the in-between

And this is the most amazing sunset I’ve ever seen. My head lolls forward, jerking me awake on the train back north from Sydney. Ugly vinyl seats are worse for wear, closing in on me from all sides. What looks suspiciously like tuna smeared in the carpet at my feet. The sky’s on fire with the most brilliant shades of red, orange, yellow, reflected on the cotton wool clouds and fading out, pushing a colourful crocheted blanket over the fading sky. It makes me want to weep like I’m in a fucking Jane Austen novel.

I pull out my phone, press the camera lens to the dirty glass window and take picture after picture. This is amazing and beautiful and wonderful and I become obsessed with capturing the moment. But the train is moving fast and the trees are in the way and it’s blurry; the colours aren’t as good in the photos. Tearing my eyes from the small screen, I realise sadly that the photo will never be as good as the real thing.

I press my forehead to the glass, staring at this sunset like it’s the last thing I’ll ever see.

Lamenting the moment before it’s been and gone; I’m in it and I want to stay. How am I supposed to remember this incredible sky tomorrow or next year? Overwhelmed with the craving for a hot tear to fall down my face I stare without blinking, longing for the feeling, the emotion that will disturb me into action.

I pull my phone out, try again. Why the fuck am I wasting time staring through the lens instead of looking at the real thing? I want to tattoo this sunset to the inside of my eyelids so I’ll see it when I close my eyes. I want so badly to be moved by this moment.

We go through a tunnel and the fluorescent lights seem bright. I can see myself in the reflection and outside is pitch black. I close my eyes. Lean my head back in the squeaky

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seat. Sunsets are almost cleansing – another day is over, it’s time to sleep soon. The reassurance that I’ve survived another day, whether I want to or not. I wonder if I can use words or music or paint to recreate that most amazing sunset. Then I realise I’m ordinary.

I scroll through my photos, choose the best for Instagram. Struggle with a caption and decide on none – hope others will accept the poignancy. Waiting for the likes to roll in when the train pulls into Cardiff station.

- El! What you doin tonight?

I know Lux is working because the café is only open Wednesday nights and she’s got my old shifts. Pum must be working. Myra must be doing a gig that Kik doesn’t want to turn up to alone and Bec is marrying Mace and so Kik must have no one tonight and that probably scares him and that’s why he’s messaging me and maybe that makes me happy but maybe I also feel sorry for him.

In any case, I don’t write back.

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38. acid reflux

JD and I have an early dinner before work one night. She’s the kind of person who writes back to text messages.

We just happen to choose the cocktail bar on Darby St where Mace is doing an acoustic gig. Kik’s at a lounge table in the back corner with a bunch of guys I don’t know, but

I’ve seen them on his Instagram lately. Lux is nowhere to be seen. I look at nothing but the back of JD’s head as we head to the bar. Two chardonnays. Then to a tall table near the open windows, facing out onto the street so we can people watch. And I wonder why she doesn’t suggest we listen to the band.

‘Sorry, I just really hate that guy.’

‘Which guy?’ I crane my neck to see towards the bar, hanging my handbag on the back of the stool before sitting down. Thinking she’s talking about the bartender.

‘Oh, that guy on guitar. His name’s Mace.’ Acid reflux. ‘He’s super talented, but I just can’t stand the guy.’

‘That’s not like you “Janey”.’ I smirk and she rolls her eyes at me as we clink glasses.

‘I know, I know. Love everyone and blah blah. This guy though…’

Despite the conversation, we turn our heads to the music corner and sip our wine, nodding along to the music. Thank fuck someone’s head’s in the way so I can’t see

Mace, only hear him, which probably makes me feel less sick than I already am.

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‘So, how do you know him?’ JD follows my lead and we turn back to the street. Lights twinkling in the puddles on the ground from the rain earlier. Spring shower.

‘He goes to my cousin’s church. She used to be really good friends with his fiancé actually. Then things went downhill.’

‘Don’t they always? Seems like a lot of drama in the church.’

‘No, not really.’ Though her stories tell me the exact opposite. ‘I love it. I really do.

They’re my family. It’s just hard, you know, having all these expectations. Sometimes I don’t know if…’

‘If what?’

‘I shouldn’t say it.’ She shakes her head as if to shake the thoughts right out of it.

‘If you don’t belong?’

‘Ugh.’ She stares down into her glass, wiping condensation from the bench. ‘It’s just all so complicated. But they make it seem so simple. You know, meet someone from the church, fall in love, get married, have babies. Everything by the rules. I’m 25 and everyone’s wondering when I’m going to get my life together.’

‘Life isn’t about rules.’

‘Exactly. My best friend, she’s getting married next year and she’s been with her partner for, like, five years, and she just finished Uni and they decided to book a trip to Europe to celebrate. Which is flipping awesome, you know, but everyone at the church is all frowny.’

‘I don’t get it…’ I can feel my phone vibrating, and part of me hopes it’s Mace, or Kik, or even Lux but it’s probably just my brother, or Gab, so I don’t want to check. 155

‘Well, you know, it’s against our values. No sex before marriage and all that.’

‘People still believe in that?’ I’m trying to make light of the situation because she’s clearly getting distressed and I can feel Mace’s and Kik’s eyes on me through the crowd and I’m determined to look nowhere except into my friend’s face.

‘Yeah. Anyway. I just feel really sorry for her, because doesn’t love trump everything?’

‘I guess…’

‘But then I see people like that guy – Mace Bedford – getting married soon, after all the shit he’s done, and it just doesn’t make sense.’

It’s hard to keep my voice from wavering when I ask, ‘What shit has he done?’

‘Oh, you know, just sleeping around. And he’s got a kid, for goodness’ sake, but then somehow my friend gets in trouble for going overseas with her fiancé?! And he’s got a kid with a girl who no one even really knows, no one even really knows the full story.

Always got several girls on the go and they all think that he’s really in love with them, even when they find out about the other girls, and I guess he’s just super manipulative or something, but it’s like, can he really be that manipulative? Can anyone? I just don’t get it.’ She’s sipping her wine and people-watching while she’s telling the story, on a roll, rambling. ‘My cousin, the one I was just telling you about, she just, like, couldn’t go to church for a while when they announced their engagement and everyone knew she thought it would be her. Then there’s that guy Kik, I mean he was the one dating Bec before that and it’s just heaps weird. My cousin was pretty devo. I think Mace still contacts her, too, texts and stuff. And it’s just like, fuck off and get out of her life, you know?’

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She drains her wine glass while I clutch mine, knuckles white. Looking past her, past her eyes and above her head.

‘Anyway, I shouldn’t be talking about other people.’ She exhales. ‘Let it go.’ I can see her smiling, even though I’m not looking. Breathing deep. “Let it go” is a running joke between us. Something the German manager says to us when we get pissed off about a customer, or the boss. “Just let it go!” he says in that hilarious accent.

I can see the reflection of my face, in the folded-back glass doors behind JD’s head. I’ve never looked so haggard and anguished and I know I can’t hide it anymore. But I don’t even need to say anything.

‘Oh my god. El. No.’

I can’t really say anything. She looks like she’s seen a ghost. Or found out her best friend has cancer. And she just leans over to hug me and her felt hat is poking me in the eye but

I just let her hug me anyway.

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39. small talk

My heart is racing and I’ve been polishing the same glass for 10 minutes. I wish daytime was busier here so I could say ‘Sorry, it’s a bad time, I’m run off my feet’ when he arrives but this bar is too small, too cool for midday drinks. My boss insists we stay open anyway, trusts me to be here on my own. I’ve been working here just over a month and he’s already taken a liking to me. His wife too. I think they see me as a project. She can’t have kids. Everyone is always seeing the best in me. Hoping for the best.

I try not to stare at the glass doors in the far corner. Will I remember what he looks like?

It’s been over five years and I’m desperate for my father’s face to remain a smudgy polaroid in my mind. Bile rises in my throat when I think of him being nice, charming, trying to win me over with the right words or gifts. Then again, maybe he’ll be a prick.

Can’t decide which one I would prefer. And now I have heartburn.

The glass door squeals open, letting in a rush of fresh air. Dull click of business shoes on the hardwood floor. When did I manage to duck? I’m squatting low behind the bar, staring at my boots, one hand clutching the sink above me. I can hear him strutting around the empty room, waiting for service. I let air out of my chest as I stand abruptly.

He’s at the kitchen end of the bar, turns to me, taken aback. I almost say Hi but bite my tongue – he should be the first to speak.

‘Giselle!’ His wide eyes soften and he smiles cautiously. ‘Sweetheart.’ Places both hands on the bar, sliding sideways towards me. ‘I almost didn’t recognise you.’ He gestures vaguely to my hair.

‘Hi.’ Small voice. ‘I’m about to take a break.’

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‘Good. Right. Excellent. Shall we sit?’ He glances around. ‘Are you here alone? Sure it’s okay?’

‘It’s fine.’ I untie my black apron, throw the cloth from my shoulder to the waiter’s station. I can feel him watching me as I move around the bar. My hands are clammy, I smooth them down my tight black skirt. My father chooses two vintage armchairs, one burgundy velvet, one a floral nanna print. A small table between us, too small for the actual distance between us.

‘Oh, would you like a drink?’ I spring to my feet just as I’ve lowered to sit on the chair.

‘No honey, I’m fine. Thank you,’ he adds quickly. He has his arms out, palms down, like he’s trying to calm a wild animal.

We make boring small talk about my job – he asks all the questions. ‘So, how’s Uni?’

‘Fine.’ I’m not giving him anything to work with coz I know what’s coming.

‘Your brother tells me you’ve changed again? What happened to law?’

‘I hated it.’

‘And business? Andrew could’ve helped with the theory, you know he’s lecturing now?’

‘Yeah I know.’

‘Sweetie, we’re just worried about you. Sooner or later you’ll need to make a decision.’

‘We?’

‘Your mum misses you.’

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‘She’s no stranger to people leaving.’ His eyes harden. I admit, it was a little below the belt, but I’m on a roll now. ‘How’s your English family?’

‘I don’t –’ He sighs. Tired of the childishness. ‘I know what it’s like, believe me. The need to get away from everything. Escape. God knows I know. But it’s different, Giselle,

I was an adult. I had money to live off, and then some for you guys. A great job opportunity back home.’ I raise my eyebrows at his context of “home”. ‘Your mother and I needed a break. It all made sense at the time. But you’re young, don’t throw away your best years behind a bar.’

‘So you’re saying to throw away my so-called best years in a lecture theatre instead?’

‘Uni takes you places. Look at Andrew.’

‘I don’t care what Andrew does! It’s great, flipping awesome, he’s successful, whatever.

But as hard as it is for you people to grasp, I don’t measure success by how much money is in my pocket. It shouldn’t matter what I do with my life as long as I’m happy!’

‘And are you happy, Giselle?’

He’s got me there. Fuck. If I was a tiny bit more sentimental I’d probably cry now. But thank fuck I’m all out of tears at this moment coz I don’t want him thinking he’s got me on a good day. I slump back in my seat, broken for a moment. ‘I’ve got my whole life to make a decision.’

‘What, so you’re going to work in a bar forever?’

‘No! Just—I’ll figure it out.’

‘You know what, maybe I will take that drink.’

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Every fibre of my being wants to say ‘bar’s closed’ and storm out. But I get to my feet and walk away, behind the bar again. Watch my father rub his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose as I pour a scotch and dry. Double. I don’t even need to ask. The teenage me remembers. I take him a coaster, place the drink in front of him. He smiles up at me and I can’t help but return the favour. Those boyish dark eyes are too familiar.

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40. shit out my heart

JD has a hold of my hand and I’m following her messy braid up a paved driveway to a typical residential shack in Hamilton. Two front windows, a red door and roof like something you draw in Kindergarten.

‘Hi!’ A young girl, not much older than me with long brown hair, a sleeve tattoo and a flushed face. Swings open the door a minute after we knock.

‘Sorry, come in! Chase is going nuts. He needs to be fed.’ JD throws her arm around her friend, who smiles at me over JD’s narrow shoulders. ‘How are ya Janey?’

It takes me a second to figure out who she’s talking to. Only the church people call her

Janey.

‘Good babe. Shivani, this is El.’ Her eyes shine as she introduces me.

‘Hi!’ Shivani throws her arms around me like we’ve known each other forever. She pulls away before I get a chance to reciprocate. ‘Yeah, I’ve seen you around.’ She steps back and ushers us further inside. Her smile is kind but I wonder what she knows. Where she’s seen me. Through Kik. Lux. Mace?

We move inside to the lounge room where a preschool has exploded in a vintage store.

Mismatched couches, rugs and cool, minimalist artwork sprinkled with bright plastic toys and a rainbow Turkish mat with a baby on it.

JD swoops down on the baby, picking him up and burying her face in his belly. The baby giggles. ‘Aunty Janey’s here, Chase!’ Shivani giggles with her son. His deep brown eyes lock with JD’s. 162

‘Ohhh, my ovaries!’ JD bounces him around the room while we laugh at her natural instincts. Shivani picks up a pile of kids’ books from an armchair and tells me to sit.

Bustles around while I hover awkwardly, wondering why the fuck I’m here. JD and I were supposed to catch up for coffee. Said she needed to drop into her friend’s house.

She quit the bar last week, to work in childcare at the church.

‘So glad you guys are here, I really have to pee and Mitch isn’t home yet!’

‘Go for it lady. I’ll make us some cuppas.’ JD hands me the baby and skips off into the kitchen behind Shivani.

The child squirms in my arms, lets out a whimper. Oh fuck. It’s gonna cry. I sit him on my lap facing away from me, bouncing him on my knee a bit. I should say something.

‘Shh. It’s okay.’ I’m not convinced and neither is he. Chase whimpers again and I keep bouncing my knees. Willing JD to come back and rescue me. It’s not that I hate kids, they’re cute. I just don’t know what to say to them. They’re so vulnerable, and expect so much from you it’s terrifying.

I turn him around to face me, standing his chubby legs on my thighs. His eyes say You don’t know what you’re doing but he giggles and drool oozes from the corner of his mouth. His olive skin rolled like a shar pei dog. I can’t help but smile back at the baby, but my ovaries don’t do anything in particular. I don’t feel the maternal pull. I’ve never even known if I want kids, even though when we were 15 Gab had her baby names picked, before she even met Alex. It’s like I’m missing an essential gene.

Shivani bounces back into the room, wiping her hands on her ripped skinny jeans. It’s hard to believe she had a baby only six months ago. ‘Here.’ I pass Chase to her. ‘I’ll go help JD.’

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‘Oh, thanks El.’ Her face lights up when the baby’s in her arms and I wonder if that’s what I’ll look like one day.

We’re all sitting around drinking green tea, the baby rolling around on the floor being a baby. JD and Shivani watch him in awe, talking all things baby.

‘Oh my gosh, El, I feel so rude. Here we are talking about babies and birth and everything! How do you two know each other?’

JD smiles at me encouragingly, like I’m a child learning to speak for myself. ‘We worked together at the Mary Ellen.’

‘Oh, right! You do look familiar! I love that place. My friends do heaps of gigs there.

You still working there?’ She blows on her tea before taking a sip.

‘Yeah. It’s alright.’ Wondering who her friends are. Whether they’re my friends too.

There’s a moment of silence broken by Chase cooing happily on the rug.

‘How’s Mitch? I haven’t seen him in ages!’ says JD.

‘Yeah, he’s working so hard. Been going to church on Sunday night instead. Works the morning shift. He’s good, we’re just so tired, you know.’

JD nods sympathetically. ‘I just can’t wait to have one of these little guys.’

‘We’ve just got to find you a hus first!’

‘I know, I know.’ They both laugh like it’s an inside joke.

‘What about you, El, any kids on the horizon?’

‘God, no. Ha.’

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‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

‘Ha. No thank you.’ I laugh, try to break the awkwardness. I don’t even know where it came from. Shivani looks at me blankly. Polite, but I can tell she’s confused. It’s what she’s been trained for, I guess. Marry young, procreate. JD’s told me all about it during our long life-chats. The pressure of finding someone. The pressure when you do. She wants to stay single forever and just have babies, it’s the only part she wants. But she wouldn’t let that on to Shivani and the rest. Guess they’ve got plans for her.

JD changes the subject, winking at me slightly. ‘So, you must feel pretty isolated, do you miss work? Have many people visited?’

‘Yeah, it’s hard sometimes but I just love this little guy so much. Keeps me going.

Mum’s over a lot – as you can imagine!’ They both laugh. ‘And then Mace and Bec were here the other day, brought little Bella. Bec is just so good with her, you wouldn’t even know…’ She trails off. Unchartered territory. But I guess everyone’s back in the good books.

‘I can’t believe the wedding’s only a couple of months!’

‘I know. Crazy. It’s all wedding talk of course. ‘

‘I imagine. She’s going to look beautiful.’

‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘No.’ JD shrugs. ‘I don’t really know her that well.’

I’m just sitting quietly in my armchair, sipping my green tea and feeling like I shit out my heart.

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They keep chatting, Chase crawling around the floor placing toys in our laps at any given opportunity. I get into a rhythm of gushing every time he comes my way. Follow the lead of the girls. Shivani’s long, dark hair swishing and catching the light from the window every time she looks my way. Her eyes so open, smile so big. She doesn’t know me.

About half an hour later, Mitch comes in, the yin to her yang. Pale skin, scruffy dark beard and a ponytail. Titanium on his left ring finger. We shake hands, Chase propped in his other arm. It must be nice. To believe in something.

JD drops me home. ‘They’re so happy.’ She sighs.

‘Yeah.’

‘How could you not want that?’ Gazing out the windscreen. I don’t think she’s asking me, and in any case I don’t have an answer.

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41. so they finally did it

We’re lying side by side on beach towels and if it were a month ago I’d be licking the salt off her body.

‘How are you already so tanned? It’s barely fucking October.’

Lux turns her head towards me, squinting in the sun. ‘Been to the beach a lot. When Kik started surfing again.’ She trails off.

‘Right. How is Kik?’

‘Plus I quit the café.’

‘Ha, saw that one coming.’

‘Greg, what a creep though!’

‘Nah, he’s alright.’

She pulls her bikini top loose, rolls over onto her belly. ‘Can you sunscreen my back?’

I straddle her butt, reach forward and pull the tube from the canvas bag near her head.

Let my nipples, hardened with salt and the light breeze, brush against her bare back. I know she feels it. ‘How’s the bar going?’

‘Not bad. Kind of need a break from hospitality.’

‘I know what you mean.’

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I follow her lead, climb back onto my towel and pull my top loose. Roll onto my front.

She grins, one cheek squashed against the towel, grains of sand on her lips. Reaches one bronze arm out and pokes my sideboob with her finger. ‘Glad to see you’ve still got tits after losing all that weight!’ I say nothing. ‘Hey, I’m thinking of moving out!’

‘Yeah? Where to?’

‘Town somewhere. Kik and Pum and me were looking at a few places. But now my friend from high school – you know the one who was living in Sydney? – she’s coming back soon. And the Kik thing just… fell apart.’ I can tell she wants me to ask, so I don’t.

‘None of you have any money!’

She laughs. ‘Yeah. Slight problem. Nah, it’ll be fine. Any jobs going at the bar?’

I laugh. ‘Maybe.’ But inside, I’m all fuck you get out of my life.

‘So if you hate the bar what are you gonna do?’

‘I didn’t say I hate the bar.’ I roll onto my back, flinging an arm across my eyes. Bikini top resting precariously over my chest.

‘Ha! Come on El, you hate everything.’

Shit. Do I? Thoughts in my head. Out loud: ‘Well, I dunno. There’s still Uni’

She laughs again. ‘Uni? Spewni? As if El, you’re too hot to study.’

I say nothing. Again. Scrape my hand through the sand until it’s caked under my fingernails, pushing further. Deeper under. ‘So. How’s Kik and the boys?’

Lux groans. Closes her eyes. ‘Fuuuuck. I keep forgetting you don’t know.’

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‘Know what?’ She squirms on her towel. Pretends to rummage through her bag, avoiding my eyes with that fucking fairy princess smile. ‘Lux. What the fuck.’

She pulls out some lip balm, rubbing it over her pouty red lips. ‘Let’s just say…’

‘You slept together didn’t you?!’ I’m laughing and she’s laughing and I can’t decide if I care or not but what comes out of my mouth is, ‘It’s about fucking time.’

She groans again, burying her face in the towel. ‘I know.’ Pushes herself up on her elbows like a sphinx, pink nipples pointing out to the lifeguard stand. ‘It’s just…’

‘What? Was it bad?’

‘Nah. I mean, it was alright. Just kinda ruined things.’

‘Yeah. Well. You’re an idiot.’

‘First time was bad. He pretended to be all nervous and virginal.’

‘Jesus Christ. More than once? What’s wrong with you!’

We’re joking and laughing and I’m waiting to feel the acid in my throat and it doesn’t come. Just a hollow feeling in my stomach when I picture the blurry face of Kik. Like I can’t even remember what he looks like. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

‘Anyway, I kind of told him how I feel and…’ I close my eyes and relax. Block it out.

Let the waves thundering on the sand lull me into a coma. Pretend Lux isn’t there. So I don’t have to listen to the bullshit. ‘He kind of freaked out when I said I loved him…’

It’s too rough to swim today, we just splashed around. Catching up. It’s been almost a month and she’s pretending it was just yesterday that we were smoking joints in my backyard. She doesn’t even know I’ve moved house again. ‘Anyway, he’s fucked off up

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the coast now.’ She waits for me to say something. I’ve already seen it on Instagram anyway. ‘Got a new girlfriend. Win’s ex, remember her?’

‘Knows how to pick ‘em.’ I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice and she likes it. She likes it when I’m angry at Kik even though he belongs to neither of us.

‘Fucking inbred.’

‘Churchies.’

And here we are, pretending we’re something we’re not. Bringing each other down and lifting each other up above the rest because we don’t know how to just be. The sun goes behind a cloud and it’s suddenly winter again. Goosebumps prickle down my arms and the ants start crawling under my skin again. A gentle, excruciating vibration of unwanted adrenaline from the soles of my feet to my hips and I need to kick my legs out and spasm and punch a hole in the sand where my head should be.

Lux is the kind of person who eats the skin of a kiwifruit. She reaches out, catches my hand in hers. White polished nails stark against my black ones. She squints at me out of one eye, ‘I’ve missed you.’ We fall asleep with the sun beating on our skin. The naughts and crosses tattoo on her right shoulder blade rises and falls, rippling with her breaths.

I wake up and she’s gone. A text.

- Had to go pick up a friend. Luv ya bitch.

I don’t reply.

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42. ghost story

A text from Mace.

- I’m sitting on your car.

Almost a year and he’s never been to my house. Any of my houses. No one else is home; it’s a Saturday night. Let off early from work because of all the overtime I’ve been doing. Boss sent me home with a bottle of red and said ‘relax’.

‘So. Look who comes crawling back.’ He smirks, black eyes glint in the lamp light beside my bed. He’s got his hands in his pockets, no shoes. Won’t get comfortable.

‘Don’t be like that.’ Though I laugh.

‘No one hiding in the cupboard?’ I gesture towards the room. A single clothes rack in the corner, leaning precariously on an angle towards the window. Boxes still packed from my most recent move. ‘Messy one, aren’t ya?’ He wanders towards the chest of drawers, pulling a white lace bra from the top and flicking it at me. The drawers are open haphazardly, clothes spilling out.

‘We can’t all be obsessive compulsive freaks like you.’

He still can’t laugh at himself. It’s been a few weeks since we saw each other but it feels like months. A year since the carpark and the jolt near my navel when he caught me, hands around my waist. Doc Martens slapping on the concrete, echoing the song of what’s to come.

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‘Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m sorry.’ He walks towards me, lets me keep talking for once. Eyes never leave mine. I sit down on the bed. Curl my knees up to my chest. ‘That text, it was out of line. Came out of nowhere. I was having a bad night.’

He stops just in front of me, lamp light illuminating his face from underneath like a kid telling a ghost story with a torch. I have to strain my neck to look up, he’s so tall and close. ‘You waited two months to say sorry?’

‘Well, I didn’t think you’d actually… you know, stop.’

‘You told me never to contact you again.’

‘I’ve told you that before.’

‘Fair call.’ He grins. ‘I know it wasn’t you.’

‘Ummm…’

‘Don’t play dumb, El. It doesn’t suit you.’ He runs his finger along the bedhead, making patterns in the dust.

‘Mace, I don’t know what… I just said I’m sorry.’

‘Do you really think you’re the only one that’s fallen under his spell? “Don’t ever talk to me again”, I’ve seen the same shit dozens of times.’ Words spitting.

‘What do you mean?’ I twirl the top corner of the doona in my hands. Unravel the twist, ravel it again.

‘Kik! Fucking Chris-toph-er. Jerk central.’ He laughs but he doesn’t think it’s funny so it’s like he’s spitting at me again. Patronising.

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I sigh. ‘You know Kik’s reasons. I mean have you ever thought of how he feels now?’

Mace scoffs. Still tracing patterns behind my head. ‘Of course I know how he feels.’ He says it quietly.

‘Well. Cut him some slack. He was messed up that night. Blubbering.’

‘Blubbering?!’ Mace looks ecstatic.

‘You know what I mean.’ I frown. ‘Show you have a heart.’

‘What about your heart?’

‘What about it?’

‘So that’s really the only reason you texted me?’

‘Well yeah. Obviously.’

‘Could’ve just said sorry via text.’

‘Yeah well, I thought after everything you deserved to at least hear it in person. I don’t want to cause any trouble. All that drama, it’s stupid. Fucking stupid. We’re in our 20s.’

‘Over the drama, hey?’

‘Yes. Fuck yes. This isn’t high school anymore. I’m done. Those guys. Kik and Lux and—’

‘He told the pastor, you know, at church.’ I don’t say anything. His eyes glinting again.

‘Didn’t think I’d have to deal with that sort of shit ever again. The lies people spread. But there you go.’

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‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Told the pastor what?’

‘It was a mistake ever getting involved with you.’ He stands up abruptly, knocking my foot against the bedside table. On the ankle bone. Fucking ouch. But I don’t say anything.

‘Yeah?! Well how do you think I feel?’ My face is hot. ‘This is all so fucked up.’

‘You can say that again!’

‘Mace you’re fucking getting married.’ He’s backed himself into the corner next to the clothes rack. Staring at me. Silent. Hands in pockets. ‘You probably knew you were getting married when we met! Isn’t that what you people do?!’ Still silent. ‘Just tell me.

Mace. Just please tell me. Were you engaged when we met? At the Halloween party?’

‘You’re asking me this now, almost a year later?’

‘Don’t try and make me feel like the bad guy.’

‘Oh yeah, so who’s the bad guy, El?’

‘Argh.’ I let out a half-hearted scream of frustration. ‘This is fucked.’

‘Fucked?’ He moves towards me again.

‘Yes. Fucked! Just. Just. Fuck off.’ I can’t get mad enough. He’s closer to me now.

Leans his hands down on the mattress, either side of me. I try to move, roll away. He locks me in with his arms.

‘Say it like you mean it El.’

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My face is hot. Skin burning. On the stake in front of the crowd, naked. Witch. Lava boiling through my windpipe, ants crawling under my skin. ‘Fuck. Off.’ Voice barely a whisper I’m so angry. Can’t look him in the eye. Voice shakes. He’s going to kiss me, he’s going to fucking kiss me and I can’t stop it happening but I have to. Don’t look up.

Face down. Push his arms away. Heart pounding.

Mace backs off a bit, loosening his grip from around me. Kisses my forehead. Pushes me gently back on the bed so my head reaches a pillow. He walks around the bed, to the other side. Soft footsteps on the grainy carpet. Lies down next to me, moving me like a broken statue. Onto my right side, he shifts his body closer. Warmth seeps into my back and along my legs as he curls himself around me. His arm snakes around my waist and he takes a deep breath through his nose which is near my ear.

I guess there are no more words.

Fall into a feverish sleep while he’s calm and still beside me. Breathing evenly so I don’t know if he’s real or inside my head.

My alarm goes off at 6am. I’m opening for Sunday breakfast at the pub. Peel his arm from my waist and say ‘You have to leave.’ And when I get out of the shower he’s gone and the room doesn’t even smell like him anymore.

I never even got to ask if he thought it ever would have worked between us. I never got to figure out if he was telling the truth, and then lie to myself about it. And I should be thinking about the fact that maybe he raped a girl, maybe not. Maybe he’s in love with his fiancé, maybe he’s in love with me. Maybe his daughter is in his life, maybe she isn’t.

Maybe life isn’t meant to be this hard or messy and maybe I do know how to be happy.

Maybe I can learn. And it won’t be like this forever.

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43. halfway to nowhere

During nights of insomnia my brain offers endless chatter and during the day my thoughts are ugly and in pieces.

Fantasies and conversations that will never be real. They say you should write down your thoughts but staring at a blank page makes me feel blank and metaphysical, soaring above myself instead of grounded and in touch. Left alone for too long my mind becomes the ruler of my life so I surround myself until I need to be left alone. At the bottom of the pit looking up at the tiny crack of light offered by the sun. Wondering how to get to the top, ripping my fingernails from skin in the process of climbing. And I can easily visualise this down to the last detail, but I can’t visualise smiling.

My mother used to say, visualise yourself winning. A trick she learned from her days as a pro. And I’d lie there at night trying to imagine dancing my heart out, holding the trophy, and all I could see was broken limbs, ripped tutus and the same move I couldn’t get past, repeating over and over.

I snap the blank notebook shut. Stir the dregs of my third coffee, probably cold now.

Tepid. People-watch the few others sharing the brick courtyard with me on this crisp day.

Blue sky with a bite in the breeze. Pockets of dried leaves picking up and moving on the ground, a couple of steps at a time. Like a dance. Thinking back to the roadtrip up the coast with Kik, Lux and Pum. Getting high on the beach in the middle of the day. Winter clothes and sandy feet. Eating a bucket of maltesers. Three days and what did we do?

Where was I – floating above the scene? Music, a circle. Someone else was there. Who?

I drove Kik’s van back, Lux in the passenger seat and boys sprawled in the back on the

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mattress, empty bottles rolling in places we couldn’t reach. The boys pulling from a homemade bong. Dirty plastic bottle our mouths had all shared that long weekend.

We were young, happy, free, driving halfway to nowhere and back.

It wasn’t that long ago and the memories are foggy. Like a solstice, a ritual, a goodbye.

Because everything changed. One night we were high and it was pitch black, pushing through the bush to the ocean. Clutching the back of Pum’s sweaty shirt in front of me.

Terrified. Seeing things. The waves coming in so close, so big. We oohed and aahed and

I couldn’t see straight.

The next day we questioned if it was all real.

One bad day and it all comes crashing down. Coffee after coffee at a café where I know no one, on my only day off from the bar. As if I think I’ll never remember how to be happy again.

Working nights is good because as the first rays of light break through the dusty curtains

I can finally sleep. At night, every vibration of my phone on the bedside table reminds me of Mace because of all the nights we would text until he told me to fuck off, or I climbed out of bed in the middle of the night. Driving the same track through to Toronto, crossing the bridge over the lake and past the 24-hour Maccas where I’d pick up cups of ice and chocolate sundaes. The same route makes me sick now and I drive anywhere but there.

And I never wondered why he didn’t come to see me. I refused to see it strange that the only time he saw my face was against the backdrop of the moon.

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44. the best feeling in the world

I climb the steps to Gab’s house, hoping her parents don’t answer the door just because I don’t feel like talking to anyone. Not even Gab. But she won’t take no for an answer, like she knows exactly when I need her, as much as I don’t want to admit it. The door’s open so I let myself in the way I’ve been doing since we started high school and Nan dropped us there together. Matching school bags and all.

‘Hey!’ Her voice from the kitchen. ‘I’m making smoothies, you keen?’

‘Oh dear, is this another health fad?’

‘Shut your face.’ She laughs. ‘Alex bought me this epic blender, you just throw stuff in there and it blends it into nothing, even nuts. Keeps the nutrients or something. Here, check it out.’ I sit at the bench and drum my fingers on the marble benchtop. Her parents just had the kitchen renovated. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing, just tired.’

‘You’re always tired El.’

‘Don’t remind me.’

She tells me about her marks, for the final assignment I once would have stressed about too. I can barely hear her over the lawn-mower sound of the blender chopping up fruit and god knows what else. She pushes a glass of green stuff towards me.

‘It’s good for you.’ She winks. And if it wasn’t for the wink it would remind me of my mother, packing a box of almonds in my school bag with a note “good for you”.

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Everyone wondered where my real lunch was and I always said I never got hungry at school, which was true. Never hungry anywhere. ‘Speaking of health kick. You’re wasting away babe!’

‘Nah.’

‘Careful El.’ She’s frowning now. That classic Gabby look of maternal concern. She knows everything.

‘It’s not like before Gab, I’m honestly just working really hard and, you know, getting my shit together.’

‘Stopped smoking weed?’

‘Huh?’

‘El. Please. I’m not a fucking idiot. Give me a little credit.’ She sounds angry, but smiles.

‘Those guys you’ve been hanging out with. The musos.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m not hanging out with them anymore.’

She doesn’t say anything. Sips her smoothie and stares out the window. Looking like she’s got a lot to say. Maybe she won’t take my word for it. Like she knows as well as I do that I’d go running the minute I heard from Kik or Lux, or even Pum, again. ‘Come on.’ She picks up both our glasses. ‘Let’s go sit by the pool. October, you beauty.’

I follow her outside, shutting the sliding door behind me. The waterfall of makeshift rocks is soothing and I feel like I’m at a tropical resort. Palms above the fence line and a perfect blue sky and sounds of the kids next door splashing and squealing in their pool.

The sounds of our childhood. We used to play a game, me and Gab. Spin around and around, as fast as we could, then dive into the pool and try to swim straight. Feeling like

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you’re moving through a tornado, water churning around you like you’re drowning and it was the best feeling in the world.

Then I realise that’s what it feels like to be high. So I turn in circles, slowly at first. Then faster and faster and faster and I can hear Gab laughing and I collapse on one of the sunbeds, head spinning. The world crazy and colourful for a few seconds. Catching my breath.

Maybe life’s just meant to be good some of the time.

Gab is still laughing. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I don’t know.’ I shield my eyes from the sun, sprawled on the sunbed like a drunk at a train station.

‘You’re crazy.’ She sits on the pool step, bare legs dangling in the crystal blue water.

‘I wish I was crazy.’ I sit up straight. ‘Seriously Gab. Do you ever wish you were crazy?

Like, diagnosed? So that you had an excuse for all the shit days and the weird moods?’

‘I don’t know. I guess so.’ I can tell she doesn’t get it.

‘Sometimes I wish I had cancer, just so people would have an excuse to care.’

‘El, that’s heavy. And stupid.’

‘And self-indulgent.’ I slump onto my back, throw a hand over my eyes again.

‘Yeah. I wasn’t going to say it, but you’re welcome.’

‘I know Gab. I just don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘None of us do El.’

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‘You do! You’re finishing law and you’ve got Alex and… just… your shit together.’

‘There’s more to life than Uni and a boyfriend, El. You know that. I’m shit scared of the future, just like you. Everyone is. It’s just part of being a 20-something. Seriously. I’ve been thinking about this. 20s are for figuring it out. 30s are for doing it. 40s are for livin!’

‘They do say 30 is the new 20.’

‘They do.’ We’re quiet for a minute. The mother next door yells out to the kids. There are iceblocks waiting inside. It’s time for a break from the sun. ‘I ran into your mum the other day.’

My heart leaps into my throat and I wonder if that’s the reaction I should have when someone mentions my mother. ‘Oh, really?’

‘Yeah El. She was asking me about you. About Uni, Jeremy.’ In the tone of her voice, she’s scolding me. I can feel her rolling her eyes from a few metres away.

‘Jeremy?!’

‘Yes, El. Jeremy.’ Her frustration is mounting and I’m not helping matters by playing dumb. ‘The guy you dated in high school. She doesn’t even know about Brendan. Let alone that you quit Uni, where you live, where you work.’

‘Well, that’s weird. Wouldn’t Nan or Andrew or someone have told her?’

‘That’s not the point. Don’t you think it’s pretty bad that she knows nothing about your life?’

‘Yeah well if she paid attention.’

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‘No. Come on. She tries. You’ve told me, whinged to me about her calling you, wanting you to come home. Maybe it’s time to forgive.’

‘Forgive but not forget.’

‘Whatever, your call. Anyway. She looked good.’ I smile into my forearm. Feel the hot prick of tears at the back of my eyes. I can feel Gab watching me. ‘Your dad was there too. Doing the groceries.’

‘Now there’s an image I can’t quite fathom.’

‘She looks like she’s doing good. You should go see her.’

‘You know you’re the only one who’s allowed to say this shit to me?’

‘Your smoothie’s getting warm.’

I stand up and join her at the edge of the pool, swinging my legs back and forth in the water.

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45. it’s not the end

It’s Halloween again and I’m meeting Gab for drinks before a party that I haven’t decided if I’ll go to or not. Later. I’ve cleaned the house. Unpacked boxes because I’m finally on a lease and maybe I’ll stay for a while here, maybe. My bookshelf is out in the lounge room and my new housemates have been borrowing from it. Like a library but I don’t keep track.

My bike is covered in dust and rust from being locked outside at my last house in

Merewether. Wickham is quiet. Suburban. But with coffee houses and art galleries and antique stores tucked into warehouses that bikie gangs no longer inhabit. And I wonder where they went. My friend from high school’s parents just bought an old factory somewhere nearby, turning it into a luxury apartment like something out of a magazine, or in New York City. I ride past small houses and terraces and miner’s cottages. Flat bitumen is easy to navigate. And I forgot the feeling of wind on my face and moving faster than walking or running. I’m not wearing a helmet but no one does around here. I don’t even know if I own one.

I keep going.

At the foreshore there’s a bike lane but I ride on the footpath. Seagulls and pelicans on the streetlights. Shit on the concrete. The sky is blue and the sun is gentle for the end of

October but there are dark clouds over near the lighthouse. Black and rolling in quick. I stop and pull my water bottle from the basket at the front. Check my phone.

- Come over tonight?

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Check Tumblr. His blog. Her blog. Instagram. They must be getting married soon. A few days maybe. And I want to see him. It’s primal. I don’t even think.

- Ok.

I turn around and ride back towards Honeysuckle, wonder if I can beat the clouds creeping up behind me. My legs move harder than before and I’m making an effort and I can feel muscles working and sweat on my brow and it’s alien but nice and normal and okay. Think about getting home, having a shower. Same outfit as last year? I text Mace again.

- Meet me at our carpark.

Heart pounding. It’s not the bike. Maybe it is. I think about his favourite underwear, I know the ones. If I was getting married I’d want to be free, too. To have a last fling. To fling forever. To move from one to the other and back with no consequences and why can’t we all just be free to love and fuck and aren’t we all just animals? Isn’t that okay?

I turn the corner at the yacht club. Small drops of rain on my arms. It’s refreshing. Check my phone. He hasn’t replied. And there’s the sickness. He had the power and he took it away again in 20 minutes, via text. My eyes burn and I want to punch something and my arms get that jittery feeling but I’m not crying. I won’t cry, still can’t. Willing myself to feel the moment of anger. I lay my bike under a tree and sit at the edge of the water on a concrete block. A man is watching me from the top deck of his yacht, beer in hand. He waves and I don’t wave back so he probably thinks I can’t see him, not that I’m just being rude.

My phone drops from my hand into the water.

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I’m on my way to meet Gab and I should turn left at the main intersection but instead I turn right and drive on towards Kotara. It’s dark and there aren’t many cars on the road and I find myself near Blackbutt Reserve and I think of pulling over and running into the bush at night, just to see what happens, but instead I keep driving and I’m going past

Carnley Avenue and there are no cars so I switch off my headlights and laugh. And there

I am, driving and laughing like a fucking maniac with the lights off and no one by my side.

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THE END

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Exegesis

Halfway to Nowhere: Liminal Female Journeys as “Coming of Awareness” in Contemporary Australian Fiction

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Prologue

We find the author outside the work as a human being living his own

biographical life. But we also meet him as the creator of the work itself, although

he is located outside the chronotopes represented in his work, he is as it were

tangential to them. (Bakhtin “Forms of Time” 254-5)

When workshopping the final chapter of Halfway to Nowhere with a writing group in

2015, many of them asked me about the “suicide” at the end. At first, I was taken aback by the assumption that El went on to take her own life after the events leading to the ending of the story. These writers told me that it’s what they assumed, as she was behaving “erratically” and had suffered “mental health issues”. I can certainly see their point; however, my interpretation of the aftermath of El’s narration was vague. I never really thought about what happens next; I just assumed that she would go on to keep living life, making mistakes, experiencing brief moments that lead – slowly – to greater self-awareness and maturity. Perhaps she would re-kindle her tumultuous friendship with

Kik and Lux, perhaps she continued her affair with Mace after he was married, and perhaps she didn’t. The other half of the room assumed that El had moved on to “get her shit together” and that throwing her phone into the water, driving home alone, and laughing, was a sign of empowerment and euphoria and having “let go” of her past. I certainly wouldn’t go that far either, but it was fascinating to hear others debate the two perspectives.

The point of sharing this story is that a group of about 10 readers formed their own opinions and reflections on El’s journey, and they were all pretty unique. This kind of reader agency and individual interpretation of Halfway to Nowhere is precisely what I

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hoped to achieve in leaving the ending of the story quite open. I wanted to create open interpretation for the reader so that individual readings are varied and diverse. It doesn’t matter what happens next; what matters is that we recognise the story continues. I’ve always been drawn to stories that don’t really end, that leave you feeling like you’re on a rollercoaster, at the very top of the threshold, hanging suspended in the air for a moment.

Reflecting on my penchant for open-ended narrative, I’ve realised it’s because life can’t be tied with a neat red bow. I enjoy stories that feel incomplete, that leave the reader guessing, and that make you think long after the turn of the final page. This personal preference has informed much of this exegesis, as has the rather existential but somewhat related question: “When do we become adults?”

Holding a position as a junior professor of psychology at the University of Missouri, focusing on research into adolescence, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett finally felt as if he’d

“reached adulthood” (v) in his personal life, having stayed in the one place, the one job, and the one relationship for a steady few years. Such was the beginnings of his research into what he later termed emerging adulthood. Arnett muses in the preface to his book,

Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties

(Emerging Adulthood), “…how and when do other people feel they have reached adulthood?” (v). He follows to note that in American society (much like in Australian society), there isn’t a particular ritual to mark the passage. My own story is similar to

Arnett’s, in that only a few short years ago, I felt as if I’d found the sweet spot. I was feeling settled, mature, starting to put down roots, making decisions with the future in mind. My interest was already in the 20-something decade as represented in fiction, but I began to think deeper about what adolescence – and adulthood – really means in my particular society and culture. From many, many conversations with people of all ages,

I’ve concluded that there is no correct answer. As Arnett writes, “it is left to each of us to determine when the threshold to adulthood has been reached and what signifies it” (v).

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Writing this now, I’m 27 years of age, living at home with my parents, unemployed, and have no independent financial security. I’m often wondering when I’ll start feeling like an adult; for a few years now, I’ve felt on the threshold of sometime, someplace, something else. Throughout my reading and research, I’ve also recognised myself in the young protagonists of some contemporary Australian fiction, which has led me to wonder whether the threshold point of adulthood is shifting and blurred in the 21st century. Do we exist in a constant state of in-between? And how is this extended state of adolescence represented in contemporary Australian fiction? These are questions that

I’ve attempted to work towards answering in this exegesis, and address creatively in

Halfway to Nowhere.

I have chosen to write a novella that hopefully appeals to a non-age-specific audience.

Given my fascination with open-ended stories, I have focused on the idea of a coming of age and refashioned it to what I call a “coming of awareness” that has no end. I did not set out to write a bildungsroman or a Young Adult (YA) fiction text, but merely to experiment with writing a narrative that shows a 20-something character on a journey toward adulthood in her particular time and space. In Halfway to Nowhere, I hoped to capture characters of indeterminate age who have left high school but not yet found their way into society’s version of adulthood, and write about the challenges they face existing in the in-between. In Halfway to Nowhere, El is financially independent, living out of home, but still struggles with societal pressures imposed on her by institutions such as university, church, and parents. She narrates contemporaneously with the events in the story in a first-person, hyper self-aware prose that demonstrates her constant state of reflection, narrating life as she’s living it. She looks back nostalgically on high school as an almost utopian era of solid friendships, relationships, and a sense of identity that has unravelled in her early 20s. She hangs out with the muso crowd, but is never invited to participate in “jam sessions” and her new friends have no idea that she can sing. She goes to the local evangelical church with a friend from work, but isn’t sure of her belief 191

system and condemns the hypocrisy she sees around her when “good Christian boys” sleep around but get away with it simply because they go to church on Sundays, when she’s called a “slut” for engaging in consensual sex outside of marriage. El autonomously chooses where she lives and works, who she spends time with, but she feels as if everyone else is ahead of her in the rat race, berating herself for not knowing what she’s doing, or where she’s going in life.

When I began shaping El’s story, I realised that I was writing back to the YA fiction that

I’d read so much of in my youth. The story was becoming a creative response to the departure I was feeling from the YA market, and what I believed to be the inauthentic representation of adolescence in some contemporary novels. I wanted my novella to be incomplete and non-linear, like life itself. I also hoped to achieve a certain authenticity to the story of El and her peers without the paradigms and genre conventions of particular marketing categories. It was my vision for teenagers about to finish school, adolescents moving into adulthood, and adults looking back on their youth, to all find a connection in the story of El, her lovers and friends.

In Coming of Age in Children’s Literature, Victor Watson writes about the trope of the budding adolescent writer in fiction during the middle of the 20th century, noting the intrinsic connection between writing and maturation for these protagonists. With reference to the 1949 novel I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith, Watson argues that protagonist Cassandra’s maturation

is in terms of writing, failing to write, struggling to find meaning and clarity…

The writing of the novel becomes the subject of the novel, while the journal itself

is a focus for the privacy and intensity of adolescence. (27)

When interrogating exactly why writing is a consistent theme in these novels, Watson reaches an answer: “their authors see maturation in terms of their own lives, in which 192

writing was important” (27). Early on in my creative practice, I knew that El was an over-thinker and a passive, deeply intellectual personality who thinks more than she speaks, finding it difficult to be “in the moment” during social settings in particular.

Perhaps she, too, was a budding writer? Would the parallels between myself and El become too pronounced if I was to have her studying a creative writing program at university? One of my supervisors was quick to shut the door on this idea, for which I’m grateful. While I can certainly track the growth to maturity and awareness in my personal and writing life, to send El on the same journey would’ve crossed the line into metafiction, and possibly cliché territory. In saying that, writing Halfway to Nowhere became a process of self-reflection and a series of epiphanic moments in my own life.

Watson writes about the presence of a journal or notebook in fiction as often “a precise metaphor for reflective adolescence” (27); Halfway to Nowhere is, in some ways, the journal that allowed me to be “private, self-obsessed, intelligent” (Watson 27) and a place where both El and I could grapple with meaning and indulge our flights of imagination. By disengaging from fanciful notions of adulthood, my mind took me back a few years to an earlier version of myself. I was able to explore my own maturation and see a period of my life “in time and context” (Watson 27). For me, the writing process is often quite meditative. By visualising myself in my early 20s again, I could write from a symbiotic place of experience, self-reflection, and imagination. Writing Halfway to

Nowhere was an extended moment of my own coming to awareness.

During his research, Arnett noticed the interesting lack of psychology research into the

20-something decade; however, sociologists had written often about “distinct events” (v), such as finishing education, entering full-time work, marriage, and parenthood, that signify the transition to adulthood. He found that when interviewing young people about what they thought of the signs of adulthood, their responses were more “intangible and psychological” (Arnett vi), like financial independence, accepting responsibility, and making independent decisions. What I find most poignant is that El’s ideals are similar to 193

the college-age people Arnett interviewed over a decade. El doesn’t place a high value on marriage, indicates a desire to be free from monogamy, she does not feel maternal, she seems willing to stay underemployed in hospitality… and I wrote her character before I’d ever come across Arnett’s work, and before dabbling in any kind of critical reading of psychology and sociology research. I can also recognise similar tropes in contemporary

Australian fiction I’ve been reading. El’s character comes from within me, and through the voices of people around me, so my own ideals and values as a 20-something have surely filtered through to El’s internal narration. Reading Emerging Adulthood while writing this exegesis made me realise that there’s certainly some greater cultural truth to the in-between stage of Arnett’s work, and I am an example of the lived experience.

My PhD evolved into a symbiotic experience of both research-led practice and practice- led research. My practice was writing a novella that informed the direction of my exegesis, but also simply being a 20-something navigating the space between adolescence and adulthood. In turn, the research is informed by my creative practice, and also by my lived, subjective experience. Hence, this entire thesis is bound up with my own development as a woman, an adult, a writer, and a human being.

I’ve attempted to interrogate existing ideas of growth to maturity and a coming of age, demonstrating some examples of texts that rethink the linear narrative arc. Writing this

PhD has forced me to interrogate myself, too. Apart from the existential questions of a classic over-thinker (Who am I? What does it all mean?), I’ve learned to rethink and reappropriate the dominant discourses that have informed my understanding of self.

What are the narratives of my DNA? What narrative voices is the reader receiving when reading my writing? Through what lens do I read and interpret stories and the wider world around me? My own subjectivity intricately linked with the research and subject matter in this exegesis, not just because the novella is a product of my creativity, but also because of how closely I can align myself to the characters. In Towards a Poetics of

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Creative Writing, Dominique Hecq argues for psychoanalysis as relevant for writers in exploring their own subjectivity: “The act of articulating and conceptualising the writing process, with all the conflicting factors that this entails, is indeed one of the crucial goals of writers…” (32). Hecq uses Kim Lasky’s definition of “poetics”:

the means by which writers formulate and discuss an attitude to their work that

recognises influences, the traditions they write within and develop, the literary,

social, and political context in which they write, and the processes of

composition and revision they undertake. (qtd. in Hecq “Towards a Poetics” 1)

This is an idea I will come back to in my conclusion. In this exegesis, I’ve attempted to reconcile my own voice with El’s, and an academic voice with creative prose. What results is a hybrid compromise between myself and my characters, a creative and an exegetical voice, a student and a researcher, an adolescent and an adult. I’d love to say

I’m enlightened, but not only would that be a lie, it defies the entire point of this thesis.

In my exegesis, I hoped to respond to the characters’ experiences in Halfway to Nowhere from a theoretical perspective, using literary theory and close study of similar novels as methodologies to support the issues I’ve explored in the novella. Further, autoethnographic honesty, self-reflection, and self-analysis became crucial methodologies in bringing this thesis to life. Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner define autoethnography as “an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural” (739). I hope that the experimental, self-conscious narration of Halfway to Nowhere offers the reader opportunity to reflect on their own transition to adulthood, hence the open-ended nature of the story. As Tami Spry notes, “Good autoethnography is not simply a confessional tale of self-renewal; it is a provocative weave of story and theory.” (713) This exegesis poses a series of questions that might not necessarily reach conclusion by the end of this

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document. I have chosen to adopt a similar style of self-consciousness in writing this exegesis as more of an essay style than a traditional dissertation. In 1996, Rachel Blau

DuPlessis wrote “An Essay on the Essay”, suggesting that contemporary essays contained “a particular kind of social autobiography in which the exemplary self comes into its own in a moment of particular palpability…” (20). I’m not sure that I have reached my own “moment” but, as I posit throughout this thesis, do any of us reach that palpability? A coming of awareness can be defined by a series of epiphanic, palpable, or transitional moments. In this exegesis, I’ve tried and attempted (as the etymology of the word essay would suggest) to reach a few of my own. Of course, this slow meandering might be frustrating for some readers, but it is a deliberate decision that I feel is more authentic to the subject matter of the exegesis.

In Paul Williams’ “The Performative Exegesis”, he writes that we “should be suspicious of exegeses that claim to have such privileged knowledge of the artefact they are describing”, and yet this is precisely what we’re asked to do in writing an exegesis to accompany a piece of creative writing. All I can do here is explain what I have attempted to do with my creative work, how I hope it will be read and received, and what has influenced its writing from a personal and theoretical point of view. In his article,

Williams demonstrates five of his postgraduate students’ work as performative exegeses and how they “prioritise the discourse of tentative, playful, creative endeavour over explanatory, traditional research discourse”. The narrative thread of this PhD is the notion of ongoing self-creation, and I have performed this notion in writing an exegesis that attempts to simultaneously reflect both on itself and its artefact, while also reflecting on my experience of writing it, and the greater implications for my life and own journey into adulthood. Rather than reaching a denouement, I move toward the realisation that nothing truly ever ends – stories, adolescence, PhDs. I suppose you could say, then, that this exegesis is both confessional narrative and philosophical project.

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Recently, I was driving past a local pub with the headlights on (symbolically, quite near

Blackbutt Reserve), and glanced up at their lightbox sign that reads: “I’m not young enough to know it all.” A smirk, a chuckle, a slight frown, a crisis, a moment of awareness, then I’m “laughing like a fucking maniac” (185). This moment is reminiscent of other moments, past and future, in my cyclical universe of understanding. They say the more you learn, the less you know; now, at the end of this PhD journey, the phrase has never been more pertinent. Onwards.

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Introduction

In this exegesis, I’m looking to rethink the idea of a coming of age, toward understanding growth to maturity as a “coming of awareness”. Rather than reach a single threshold point where a young character crosses the line into adulthood, I argue that journeys can be captured in several moments of experience, realisation, or epiphany. This ongoing process of self-creation is best represented in fiction by examples of liminality, and an open-ended narrative. Along with self-reflexively investigating my own experience of moving into perceived notions of adulthood during this PhD journey, I will explore the idea of a coming of awareness using Halfway to Nowhere and four contemporary

Australian works of fiction that feature a young protagonist navigating the in-between. I hope that in reflecting on contemporary creative writing that moves beyond the boundaries of conventional or genre fiction, I can open the reader’s perspective to different ways of knowing, storying, and understanding identity in a digital global world.

Ultimately, I intended for Halfway to Nowhere to open the bildungsroman form and demonstrate liminal moments of coming of awareness that allow the reader to reflexively engage with their own experiences and create their own interpretations.

The word liminality comes from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold, and often refers to that which exists “betwixt and between” (V. Turner “Betwixt”). In The Rites of

Passage in 1909, anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep wrote of the transitional, liminal stages within and between various rites of passage. In the 1960s, symbolic interactionalist Victor Turner coined the term liminality after reading Van Gennep’s work. In an essay by Turner’s wife, Edith, she writes: “[Victor] Turner wrote an essay that emerged from the experience of waiting. It was entitled, ‘Betwixt and Between: The

Liminal Period in Les Rites de Passage’” (E. Turner 34). Van Gennep theorised a liminal

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stage as a transitional one on the way to a particular period in life, between various rites of passage that signify the movement from childhood to adulthood. Victor Turner, however, saw the ritual and processes as more philosophical and less structured: “In this way he concentrated on the capacity of ritual to bring forth … and to change the very ground of being” (Kapferer 9-10). This idea of liminal experience and changing the notion of being in the world invites questions related to the coming of age that is widely accepted as a pivotal moment on the adolescent’s journey into adulthood.

Halfway to Nowhere might be called a coming-of-age story, in a time when the search for identity and growth to self-awareness is liminal: not limited to high school and teenagehood, or contained in YA novels marketed to an audience of a specific age. The

“coming of age” is a problematic phrase. It implies a point of completion, a finish line, the end of a journey, as well as dominant ideas of age and maturity that are quite fixed and linear. On an esoteric level, it could be argued that any novel with a protagonist of any age, in any genre, undergoes a journey toward varying degrees of maturation, development, or self-acceptance. Growth and development is a defining nature of human life, emotionally and scientifically. Does that make the coming of age a moot point? Do we ever truly come of age?

Halfway to Nowhere might also be called a bildungsroman concerning “a purposeful youth advancing toward some clarity and stability of being” (Fraiman ix). The bildungsroman has its foundation, predominantly, in psychological conventions that define the goals of development (Abel, Hirsch, and Langland). Bildungsroman novels generally demonstrate character growth and development, rites of passage, and, ultimately, a linear narrative arc that shows young characters reaching a coming of age denouement: a perceived state of maturity, knowledge, self-awareness, self- transformation, or adulthood. It has widely been accepted that this coming of age is a transitory process leading to a static outcome. Since the inaugural text – Wilhelm

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Meister’s Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1795 – the bildungsroman has been synonymous with the novel of youth or apprenticeship (Buckley), novel of development (Summerfield and Downward), novel of formation (Hirsch), and one containing themes of transformation (Williams Barlow). In Unsettling the

Bildungsroman, Stella Bolaki refers to the genre as “notoriously slippery” (9), noting that what defines it is the debate regarding the inherent difficulties in attempting to, indeed, define it. Jerome Buckley even suggests “life-novel” as a possible synonym for the bildungsroman. As Giovanna Summerfield and Lisa Downward argue in New

Perspectives on the European Bildungsroman, “the dispute over its definition is exacerbated by the passage of time” (2-3). As a result, theorists have questioned whether it’s necessary for the bildungsroman as narrative form to exist at all in a contemporary context; now, it generally exists in symbolic form, rather than being a genre in and of itself (Moretti). Tracing its history through modernity and contemporary socialisation, the bildungsroman has reached a kind of stalemate position: it can exist as a lens through which we read certain texts yet we can rarely hope to prescribe the tropes of its classical form onto contemporary narratives, without a necessary reappropriation. We can now regard the bildungsroman as “a flexible category whose validity lies in its usefulness as a conceptual tool” (Abel, Hirsch, and Langland 13-14).

In exploring the idea of adolescence as a liminal period of transition between childhood and adulthood, I’ve come to understand both mine and El’s particular stage in life as one of extended adolescence. An important narrative thread, therefore, is my autoethnographic experience that influenced the writing of Halfway to Nowhere and, in turn, this exegesis. Deborah Reed-Danahay’s notion of “autobiographical ethnography”

(9) is most relevant here:

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“…a form of narrative that places the self within a social context. It is both a

method and a text… It can also be done by an autobiographer who places the

story of his or her life within a story of the social context in which it occurs.” (9)

My own experience of doing a PhD and moving into adulthood has become integral to writing this exegesis. In turn, I’ve self-reflexively noticed the gaps in my own understanding and the explicit way in which my upbringing has informed my reading and writing. A Syrian refugee of the same age would understand herself in a different way; a

20-something working-mother-of-two has an entirely subjective experience of what it means to be an adult; a 27-year-old Indigenous Australian from a long line of trauma and with ancient spiritual beliefs might have no analogous framing of age-based developmental boundaries at all. Therefore, understandings and representations of young characters in fiction are relative to time and space. El’s moment of extended adolescence is ethnocentric, and can be read through a lens of patriarchy, privilege, whiteness, and

Western notions of time and space (as well as a particularly parochial one: life in

Newcastle, NSW).

In Unbecoming Women, Susan Fraiman writes:

…a poststructuralist sense of identity [is] conflicted and provisional, involving

not one but many developmental narratives. Going further, I would say that these

narratives do not simply proceed toward the destination of adulthood but go on

themselves to constitute the adult self, which is always fluid and emergent. (xiii)

In other words, adulthood itself is made up of several narratives in an ongoing process of self-creation, rather than a linear path we travel along to reach the elusive other side.

With such a fluid idea of adulthood underpinning my reading, I’ve hoped to hone in on the “here and now” in my novella, capturing this cultural moment of extended adolescence in a particular time and space. In writing my novella, I was working toward 202

a vision of a fragmentary, experimental, and self-conscious narrative that demonstrates a

20-something character’s inner self-reflection on the move toward adulthood, but also the lack of understanding of such a transition. The focus on El’s “here and now” and her particularly subjective experiences demonstrate that her perception is her reality, just as my perception of the in-between constitutes my own reality. The limited narrative perspective in fiction can work as a tool to capture the idea that each individual journey is unique. Furthermore, having never experienced the move toward adulthood (in this conscious life), how is El, or myself, or the reader, to know what is ahead? Becoming an adult might just involve driving at night with the car headlights off, “laughing like a fucking maniac with nothing and no one by my side” (185).

Do we ever really “come of age”?

There is no such thing as gradual development. There is a time of apparent stasis

during the rite of passage … but far from being a time of stasis, things are

happening offstage which verge upon the eerie. (E. Turner 32)

Although it has a long literary history in the bildungsroman, “coming of age” has more recently been associated with Young Adult (YA) literature, an age-marketed category of contemporary fiction that generally targets teenage readers. Since its popular inception in the 1950s, YA literature has navigated rites of passage, maturity, identity creation, transition from adolescence to adulthood, and a coming of age. The word age, however, is loaded with implication. Who or what is to say that, by a certain age, someone must have reached perceived notions of development, intellect, or awareness? The coming of age implies a fixed threshold point that is tied to dominant ideas of maturity and sociocultural expectations of adulthood. Further, the cultural construction of adolescence dates back more than a century; the word “adolescence” was first coined and moved into

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popular usage following a two-volume work in 1905 by G. Stanley Hall entitled

Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology,

Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education.

In the 21st century, the shift in what it means to be young is twofold. In media and popular culture, we can witness a certain moral panic associated with young kids growing up faster than ever before, thanks in large part to non-censored publically accessible material on the internet, hypersexualised social media use, violent video games, and more. At the same time, young people like myself, in a privileged, globalised, and digital Western world, are in a state of extended adolescence. We’re living at home longer, travelling more, switching jobs, and getting married and becoming parents later in life than previous generations. We’re also living longer than ever before, resulting in a rapid cultural shift of understanding surrounding periods of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

In Australia, it’s no longer legal to leave school after Year 10, at the age of 15. Now, we’re required to stay until the age of 17 and, even then, there are restrictions based on full-time employment, traineeships, and apprenticeships (NSW Government). A 2009 report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) states that “young people (aged 20-

34) are now more likely to be living with their parents than they used to be” (ABS

“Home and Away”). In 2006, 23% of young people were living at home with their parents, compared with 19% in 1986 (ABS “Home and Away”). The report also states that “the likelihood that a young person would leave home increases with age, levelling out at 28…” (ABS “Home and Away”). Statistics from 2014 show that the average age of first-time parenting is 30.9 (ABS “Inner City Areas”), as opposed to 27.5 in 1990

(ABS “Crude Marriage Rate”). Arnett’s research into emerging adulthood notes sociocultural trends in 21st century America:

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The rise in the ages of entering marriage and parenthood, the lengthening of

higher education, and prolonged job instability during the twenties reflect the

development of a new period of life for young people in the United States and

other industrialized societies, lasting from the late teens through the mid- to late

twenties. (3-4)

In presenting these statistics here, I’m hoping to contextualise the experiences of young protagonists in examples of contemporary literary fiction.

Dating back to the classic YA canon of the 1950s, teenage years were represented as a time of harrowing existential crises and “figuring yourself out” through the trials and tribulations of puberty, emerging after high school as a more mature 20-something navigating marriage, child birth, financial security, career, and other more adult-like responsibilities. Certainly, these narratives mirrored reality in their respective time period. In contemporary society, however, “most identity exploration takes place in emerging adulthood rather than in adolescence” (Arnett 9). Exploring the cultural implications of the 20-something decade in contemporary society is a hot topic of research following the discovery by neuroscientists in the 1990s that our brains, in fact, don’t fully develop until sometime between our 20s and 30s (see MIT “Young Adult

Development Project”).

According to neuroscience, sociology, and the representation of 20-something life in popular culture, we might have been granted an extra decade’s grace period to get our lives on track. Twenty-something life has also been the subject of satire and controversy since the turn of the century. A spoof news site in the US, The Onion, reports a “hot new trend” sweeping the country, called “plateauing in your career and relationship” with

“lead researcher Susan McClintock” quoted as saying that new adults “gradually slip into a kind of numbed routine devoid of variation or joy” (The Onion). Award-winning HBO

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television series, Girls, created by Lena Dunham, certainly captures the zeitgeist with four post-college-age female characters who seem inept at dealing with burgeoning adulthood.

The media has invented marketing neologisms that capture the essence of this liminal zone, such as twixters, kidult, adulting, and adultescence, which are more often than not associated with Peter Pan Syndrome, a concept popularised in psychology by Dr Dan

Kiley in 1983. Oxford Dictionaries defines “kidult” as “An adult with childish tastes”

(Oxford Dictionaries “Definition”), whereas Urban Dictionary is more specific:

An individual caught between childhood and adulthood. Often a college student

or recent graduate anxious to enter the adult workforce, but is unable to because

they still financially depend on their parents or guardians. (Urban Dictionary

“Kidult” entry 3)

“Adulting” is a tongue-in-cheek idiom I hear often used by people my age, with various memes dedicated to laughing at ourselves for our lack of direction and responsibility. My personal favourite reads: “Being an adult is like folding a fitted sheet; no one knows how.” Urban Dictionary defines adulting as a verb: “to do grown up things and hold responsibilities such as, a 9-5 job, a mortgage/rent, a car payment, or anything else that makes one think of grown ups [sic]” (Urban Dictionary “Adulting” entry 1), as well as, further down the page: “Post adolescence when the light in your eyes fade [sic] away and dies” (Urban Dictionary “Adulting” entry 4). American writer and journalist, Kelly

Williams Brown, published a New York Times bestselling book in 2013 called Adulting:

How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps. A Tumblr blog called “Fuck! I’m in my Twenties” by Emma Koenig resulted in a book deal of the same name in 2012. The

New York Times calls it “a sweetly dark look at a life stage” (Green). Similarly,

Brooklyn-based cartoonist Sarah Andersen shot to relative fame on the internet, as a

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result of her Tumblr blog dedicated to “scribbles” celebrating the “awkwardness of young modern life” (Andersen, back cover). Andersen’s book, Adulthood is a Myth, was first published in 2016.

Australian author and academic, Karen Brooks, notes that “youth” is a contentious designation, “most often used to describe young people when they refuse to model their behaviour on what the parent culture considers appropriate…” (1). On observing the commodification of youth culture, Brooks writes:

These oppositional classifications of young people as either dangerous or in

danger pathologize youth and youth culture and institutionalize a way of reading

‘youth’ that is reflected in various popular cultural forms (Oswell 38-39). (1)

The difference between the above examples of popular culture, and the deriding of millennials (generally, those born between 1981 and 2000) by media outlets like New

York Post (who in 2010 asked whether Gen Y was “The worst generation?” [Moore]) and Time Magazine (“Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents” [Stein]), is that the former are representations of a life stage by those within the life stage themselves.

Despite thoroughly enjoying the frivolity of the post-adolescent, pre-adult stage in popular media, I’ve realised that an understanding of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, identity, growth, and development, is bound up in specific contexts and an exclusive lens of understanding, relative to the person – or fictional character – at the centre. Our understanding of self also informs the way we interact with the world around us. In The

Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development (The Voyage In), Elizabeth Abel, Marianne

Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland argue:

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Development is a relative concept colored by many interrelated factors,

including class, history, and gender. … Literature, especially the novel, offers

the complexity of form necessary to represent the interrelationships shaping

individual growth. (4)

My creative work builds on the ideas underpinned by the bildungsroman form to include notions of liminality, femaleness, time, and space, and in doing so it moves away from the coming of age toward a more expansive understanding of growth as a coming of awareness. In Halfway to Nowhere, I hope that El’s fictional journey can offer the reader an idea of the coming to awareness concept as fluid and complex, and just one example of the individual growth we all experience.

Writing Halfway to Nowhere

The best of literature probably tells humankind’s deepest stories and addresses

its deepest concerns, in a way that is not only artistically and aesthetically

satisfying but engages both senses and intellect. (Winch et al. 481)

I did not intend to write a YA novel, so the works of fiction I’ve chosen to critically engage with in this exegesis are specifically not marketed as YA fiction, which means that there is no age-based intended readership, and they probably weren’t subject to strict censorship, as is often the case in the YA fiction market. Glory This (2004) by Michelle

Moo, just_a_girl (2013) by Kirsten Krauth, No Limit (2014) by Holly Childs, and Hot

Little Hands (2015) by Abigail Ulman are contemporary texts by first-time Australian authors, published in the last 15 years. Protagonists Mayne, Layla, Ash, and Claire are all under the age of 30, searching for identity and struggling with their “emerging adulthood” (Arnett). In the case of 14-year-old Layla from just_a_girl, she’s desperately

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seeking maturity and adulthood, engaging in sexual trysts and flirtations with older men to explore her burgeoning sexuality and feminine identity, while also defying the religious ideals of her mother. Conversely, Claire in Hot Little Hands is more than happy to put adulthood in the too-hard basket, floating in that liminal period of mid-20s independence, facing typically adult challenges like pregnancy, living overseas, publishing a book, and finishing a PhD, but unsure where to turn or how to face them head-on. Each of these novels speaks to me, personally and creatively. I’ve taken inspiration from the stylistic prose and young narrative voice in Glory This and just_a_girl, both which I read before writing my novella. I’ve emulated the authors’ use of slang, rough Australian vernacular, short, sharp sentences, and prose that reads as if the character herself is speaking. I discovered Hot Little Hands and No Limit after completing Halfway to Nowhere and was fascinated and intrigued by the similarities between their 20-something characters and mine. Interestingly, Abigail Ulman and Holly

Childs are both of similar age to me, which led me to ponder whether our experiences growing up female in the 21st century might be comparable, full of challenges and existential crises that we’ve passed onto our young female protagonists.

Part of my decision to explore non-YA novels is because I’ve struggled with the idea of censorship and morally instructive, didactic endings that can dominate much of contemporary realist YA. I remember my harrowing high school years fondly, and while

I could relate many of my experiences to those within the YA novels I was reading, there were other instances when I found myself scoffing at the pages and questioning the character’s motives or language choice. It’s widely known that language is censored in teen novels, particularly those used in school curricula, but most people (myself included) would argue that the foulest of language springs from the mouths of youths.

Similarly, sex and sexual experiences tend to be largely glossed over, or downplayed, in some examples of contemporary YA fiction (see Disturbing the Universe by Roberta

Seelinger Trites). These rites of passages, or coming-of-age processes, are the most 209

fascinating to me, yet the most continually censored. Teenagehood is a gritty, sexually awkward, and experimental time in life; teens are getting to know themselves, and others, within the context of platonic, romantic, and sexual bonds. There is much commentary regarding the “accelerated sexuality of teens online” (Paull), although it could be argued that it’s the nature of teenagehood to be concerned with budding sexuality, with or without technology. For example, the teenagers in the 1979 Australian novel Puberty Blues (Lette and Carey) are only 13 years of age and, bereft of technology, they are just as sexual and get in just as much trouble as Layla from Krauth’s just_a_girl.

In saying that, boundaries of YA fiction are constantly being redefined and there are certainly texts that move beyond the paradigm, yet are still marketed as YA literature. In

2000, the first-ever Michael L. Printz awards were held, with the purpose of celebrating

“the newly literary, sometimes experimental, and increasingly diverse character of young adult literature” (Cart 28). In an article for New Writing journal, Eugen Bacon argues that exploring decidedly adult themes in YA fiction, with messages unveiled in the

“transformation arc” (32) of the central character, is powerful for young readers:

A novel, any novel … that can ‘promote meaningful dialogue and understanding

of contemporary adolescent issues’ (Bach et al. 2011, 198-199) is a worthy read

for young adults. (31)

On the other hand, Krauth has openly admitted that just_a_girl is targeted toward adult readers so that she could write beyond the YA paradigm:

I realised fairly soon that I wanted it to be an adult novel. I needed to be able to

honestly explore her sexuality and challenging situations… without fear of

censorship. (“AWW Feature”)

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What does Krauth mean by “honest”? And why should teenage readers be excluded from reading novels that apparently portray the reality of their lives? Literary criticism of YA has recognised the ironic narration that occurs when an adult author writes in the voice of a young character, hence creating a “top-down (vertical) power relationship” (Cadden

146) between author and reader, with the protagonist falling somewhere between.

Jacqueline Rose addresses the issue of ironic narration in the seminal text, The Case of

Peter Pan, from 1984, in which she writes of the “impossible relation between adult and child” (1) and questions the possibility of children’s fiction:

There is… no body of literature which rests so openly on an acknowledged

difference, a rupture almost, between writer and addressee. (2)

Author and critic, Gail Gauthier, writes about reading stories with her teenage son; one particular novel ended with a nice resolution that “supports the adult world we all want our kids to conform to” (73). Her son responded, “Like any of this would ever happen”

(Gauthier 73). As Gauthier argues, “…if you are going to write about their life, their culture, they do expect probability. In their reading they want to identify with a culture of peers, just as adult readers do” (73). Naturally, this presents somewhat of a problem, because how often do you find YA fiction written by teenagers themselves?

One way to address the gap, as suggested by Mark Rossiter, in his 2008 AAWP paper

“The Uncertain Voice: Writing the Young Narrator”, is to create an “authentic” young narrative voice. Using first-person narration of events that are told “contemporaneously with, or very soon after, the time of the story” (Rossiter 2) results in a limited narrative perspective and, hence, agency for the reader to understand the story through their own prism. just_a_girl, for example, adheres to these narrative conventions. The ending is open and Layla’s character development is quite stunted over the course of the novel

(naturally, as it spans less than a year of her life as a teenager), which sends a clear

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message to readers that her journey isn’t over and might even encourage readers to decide for themselves what happens. However, Krauth’s intended readers in this case are adults, perhaps with teenage daughters of their own. Arguably, such realistic storytelling and exploration of themes like sexuality, gender roles, cyber bullying, etc., would be even more powerful for young readers. I’d like to see just_a_girl on YA shelves as well.

While a 20-something female living in Newcastle writing in the voice of a 20-something female living in Newcastle might seem an empowering concept, the act of fiction itself means there’s always a gap between writer and reader. Ironic narration is inherent in any story when the author speaks in the voice of a character of a different age, race, or gender. Even autobiographical writing is mediated; writers step outside their own stories and have the power to filter information for the reader. In the introduction to Minding the

Gap: Writing Across Thresholds and Fault Lines (Minding the Gap), Thom Conroy and

Gail Pittaway write:

Minding the gaps in language and literature also involves paying attention to the

gaps that form the identity of those performing the writing and reading. Each act

of composition, each episode of reading and interpretation is grounded in the

particularities of an individual experience constituted in terms of culture,

ethnicity, class, and gender. Every voyage of imagination launches from its own

shore, and every landfall reconstitutes the space between near and far. (3)

Many of the scenes, conversations, and relationships in Halfway to Nowhere are based on my personal experience, cultural exploration, and participant observation. My own voice certainly comes through in El’s internal narration, but it’s also a particular version of myself who existed just a few years ago. I needed to disengage from my own experiences, in order to engage in the act of writing fiction and, eventually, re-engage

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with my novella when writing this exegesis. In Minding the Gap, Dominique Hecq writes:

Re-entering old time in a new space leads to experiment and innovation, but it is

also an act that pays homage to human creativity. This presupposes a certain

relationship to language, one whereby the artist is both outside and inside the

body of the text and the text of the body. (“Fault-lines” 93)

While there’s not as much of an age difference between myself and El as there might be between other adult authors and their teenage characters, authenticity is essentially a myth and a level of ironic narration will always endure. Hecq analyses Janet Frame’s The

Carpathians and suggests that the creative work is “a constant bridging of the gap between world and word, self and other, fact and fiction, art and science, madness and sanity…” (“Fault-lines” 93). Also in Minding the Gap, Lisa Smithies uses the work of

Ellen Spolsky to address the brain’s gaps in understanding that writers are at liberty to creatively fill. This “creative cognitive gap-filling”, Smithies argues, is “fundamental to literary interpretation” (118).

The creative writer’s gap gives rise to a dialogic relationship between writer and reader, which has also been interesting to explore. Russian philosopher Mikhail M. Bakhtin introduced the term dialogism in his 1929 essay “Problems of Dostoevsky’s Art”.

Bakhtin’s rhetorical triangle – speaker-listener-hero – has its foundations in the work of

Aristotle; the speaker (writer) and listener (reader) engage in communication that provides the hero, or subject, with an active, rhetorical force within the story. Bakhtin’s rhetorical triangle is enforced by dialogic interaction, which is a process whereby

“subject and object lose their ontology” and are “altered by semantic shaping” (Schuster

597). As James Lawson writes:

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Because the author cannot stand fully within the world of the novel, there is an

absolute limit to the immediacy of encounter: the narrative is always at one

remove from the narrated events (Folch-Serra 1990: 261). ‘Dialogism’, or

double-voicedness, expresses what happens in face of this irreducible separation.

(388)

This feeds into Bakhtin’s idea of polyphony, or multiple-voiced discourse. When several voices “speak” at once, the didactic narrator is allowed to disappear (Nikolajeva

“Children Literature” 119). Bakhtin reifies language in an attempt to describe dialogic: he makes it into a living being, whereby words are no longer free from meaning.

Professor Charles I. Schuster provides his interpretation of dialogism as:

an umbrella term which describes this merging of voices, speaker with hero and

listener, one writer with another. Language, for Bakhtin, is a conversation where

a great many people talk at once. (605)

In other words, El’s character collects stigma and associations through the dialogue between myself and the reader, and the way our respective context informs meaning; this is an idea I explore further throughout this exegesis, with particular reference to

Bakhtin’s idea of the chronotope (time-space).

The texts I’ve chosen to analyse do not represent an overview of the field of contemporary Australian fiction with young protagonists, nor is it a canonical list, if one were to exist. There have always been novels that defy narrative and genre conventions of a particular time period. My Brilliant Career, written by Miles Franklin in 1901, is often referred to as the first Australian novel, and one of the first female bildungsroman novels. While it does provide a cultural snapshot of life in the early 20th century, Franklin defied gender expectations in the ending of her novel; protagonist Sybylla makes the positively scandalous decision not to marry Harold Beecham. At the end of the novel, 214

we’re not sure whether Sybylla will achieve her “brilliant career” and dream of being a writer. Eve Langley’s The Pea-Pickers, from 1942, is a story about two young sisters who dress as boys and do agricultural work for a few seasons. In the end, one sister goes home to marry and the other stays in Gippsland; there is no resolving of Steve’s dilemma to want love (as a woman) but also freedom and independence (typically only available to men in that era). As a further example of boundary-breaking fiction, the Australian grunge era in the 1990s was a time when subversive young voices were emerging, destabilising traditional categories of literature. These novels featured 20-something characters caught in a liminal zone, searching for identity and experimenting with myriad subcultures and substances. The River Ophelia, by Justine Ettler, has a female,

University-age protagonist, which helped to buck the trend of male voices in grunge fiction, and inspired The Weekend Australian to coin “dirty realism” as a new genre term

(Ferres). Kay Ferres writes that the novel “turns to a residual theme of feminine experience: the asymmetries of heterosexual relationships, sexual difference and the intricate knots of intimacy and power” (74), and that protagonist Justine’s world

“scarcely extends the scope of the self” (77), which certainly has its resonances when compared to El’s story. Late-twentieth century fiction by Linda Jaivan, Helen Garner, and other Australian female writers also provided creative inspiration for my own writing. All these examples, and the four texts discussed in this exegesis, can help situate

Halfway to Nowhere within the field of contemporary Australian literature featuring young female voices.

In Chapter 1, I demonstrate examples of liminality in my creative project and the above four texts and illustrate creative techniques like narrative voice that have been used to convey the betweenness of the characters’ existence. I reintroduce the idea of extended adolescence and posit that a character’s growth to maturity in a contemporary setting moves beyond the traditional bildungsroman form, to create liminal spaces.

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In Chapter 2, I introduce Bakhtin’s idea of the chronotope (time-space) as influencing my understanding of a coming of awareness. Between recognised life stages, all that truly exists is the present moment, which is why I chose to focus my story on the contemporaneous “here and now” present. When El is simultaneously living her story and reflecting on it – much like I have done in autoethnographically performing the writing of my exegesis – this creates a threshold moment or a state of liminality. I suggest that a coming of awareness is a journey of ongoing self-creation defined by several threshold moments and illuminated by open-ended narrative.

In Chapter 3, I discuss the idea of female identity in a global, digital world, with particular emphasis on how female characters in the “here and now” embody their spaces

– real, virtual, and liminal. These characters create their identities in a social setting as well as online, which allows for space to become an active agent garnering dialogical meaning within narrative. I introduce the notions of posthumanism and embodiment to expand the female bildungsroman form and shed light on the way young people experience coming of awareness in a contemporary setting.

To conclude this exegesis, I revisit the self-reflexive narrative thread of my own coming of awareness during this PhD journey, and how my lived experiences and creative endeavours have influenced my research. Both mine and El’s journeys are interwoven and embodied, hence further transcending the boundaries of time, space, and notions of otherness. My own story is open-ended – my threshold moments of transformation far from finished.

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Chapter 1

Coming of Age in Extended Adolescence

We’re driving past Blackbutt Reserve. He flicks the headlights off. I scream, for

a second. Shocked into losing my cool. Just for a second. Heart racing. It’s pitch

black, moving forward through empty space. The stars show the outlines of the

tallest trees. Mace starts laughing. Almost manic. Accelerates. Reaches over and

grabs my right thigh, holding steady. My fingers lace through his and I laugh too.

Laughing into the darkness with a guy who’s not my boyfriend by my side. (63)

El is in the passenger seat while Mace drives. He’s not her boyfriend – they just met. El likes Mace and is trying to keep her cool, stay in control. But when he turns the lights off, she screams as it seems like they’re moving through empty space. She can’t see where they’re going, or what’s ahead, and she doesn’t like it. Everything is dark in front of her and she feels guilty because she’s driving through the night with a boy who she barely knows. But she doesn’t voice any of this – she’s just along for the ride.

If in our lives we move consistently forward through time, progressing from certain life stages to others, then El is stuck somewhere in the middle: halfway to nowhere, as the novella’s title suggests. “Halfway” implies movement, but “nowhere” indicates that the destination is unknown. She’s of indeterminate age – a 20-something – dealing with the myriad social pressures and expectations of being a particular age.

Bakhtin writes that on the threshold, “time is essentially instantaneous; it is as if it has no duration and falls out of the normal course of biographical time” (“Forms of Time” 248).

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On the threshold between adolescence and adulthood, at the point where El stands, time stands still for a moment, her eyes squeezed shut against what comes next.

The extended liminal space between adolescence and adulthood

‘Youth’ defines a moment of disturbance: A space in between. (Oswell 38)

Building on Van Gennep and Turner’s theories of liminality, Professor Iver B. Neumann proposes that liminality could be “a condition of being suspended or even trapped between two different sets of role expectations … leading to impassivity, or even to a social impasse” (474). This is certainly the case when we look at El in Halfway to

Nowhere. On the threshold of adulthood, she’s frozen in a state of extended adolescence, pushing back against ideas of what she should be doing with her life and refusing to accept certain adult responsibilities, while also living out of home, being financially independent, and making autonomous decisions about the people she spends time with.

Existing between adolescence and adulthood means that El finds herself in a prolonged moment of stagnation – a liminal zone, or “social impasse”.

In the preface to Emerging Adulthood, Arnett writes about feeling dissatisfied by the sociological term “transition to adulthood”, arguing that the passage of time in question – usually from age 18 to 25 – lasts longer than stages of childhood or adolescence, so

“Why shouldn’t it be regarded as a distinct period of life in its own right?” (vi). He coined the term “emerging adulthood” and listed the five main features of this period: identity exploration – “trying out various possibilities, especially in love and work”

(Arnett 8); instability; self-focus; feeling in-between – “in transition, neither adolescent nor adult” (Arnett 8); and, the age of possibilities, “when people have an unparalleled 218

opportunity to transform their lives” (Arnett 8). Strictly YA literature often addresses the liminality of adolescence, with teenage high school students as the focus. But what about beyond the school years? In 2009, St Martin’s Press coined the term New Adult (NA) fiction in a search for fiction that bridged the gap between YA and adult literature (Jae-

Jones), with protagonists between the ages of 18 to 25 dealing with post-high school issues like leaving home, tertiary study, the search for a career, and finding their way past the threshold point and into adulthood. The advent of NA fiction follows a similar trend in popular culture, with the 20-something years represented as a new wave of teenagehood.

The coming of age was once seen as the threshold point that moved an adolescent character into an accepted state of adulthood. Now, as critic Rosemary Johnston argues,

“The culture of the adolescent rite of passage has been bypassed” (97). Similarly, Karen

Coats argues that YA fiction “for the most part, still operate[s] under the imperative of growth” (320), but we’re seeing more novels that are less concerned with the traditional narrative arc denoting a young character as having moved through various rites of passage or come of age by the final page. El in Halfway to Nowhere, Claire in Hot Little

Hands (Ulman), Layla in just_a_girl (Krauth), Ash in No Limit (Childs), and Mayne in

Glory This (Moo) exist in the liminal space between adolescence and adulthood. Layla and Mayne are teenagers, whereas El, Claire, and Ash are in the 20-something, “new adult” or “emerging adult” age bracket, but none of these texts adhere to conventional tropes of YA and NA fiction.

El senses that she’s supposed to act like an adult and feels the expectation of parents and cultural institutions, but experiences opposing pressure from her friends to remain free from responsibility. As a result, she’s in a kind of “existential crisis”; a state of hyper self-awareness during which she is reflecting on her life and choices while living the moments as they unfold. The contemporaneous narration showcases her passive,

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depressive state of being, where she is aware of the future yet does not feel the power to change her current behavioural patterns. She envies the “freedom” of high school; an irony she acknowledges in nostalgic reference to her adolescence. Throughout the novella, El refers constantly to high school, comparing situations and behaviours in both positive and negative lights:

I haven’t seen Lux in weeks. I don’t even know if she still works at the café.

Occasionally on my way home from work I find myself driving past her house.

Driving to the beach to see if the van’s there. Any van. Someone. The occasional

“babe I miss you let’s catch up” message. High school all over again. Primary

school, even. Picked last for sport, friends hanging out without you. All that.

(126)

During this impasse, she’s struggling to let go of the past but also living too far into the future:

I wonder how many people from the party would come to my funeral. I just

kinda cruised around, didn’t speak to many people. Gab would be there and

she’d cry but maybe only because she’s known me so long and it’s what people

would expect. She’s growing out of me. Best friends since high school and all

that. (57)

Most characters in Halfway to Nowhere are fearful of moving forward in their lives. Kik is living in “two different worlds” (20) – as a good Christian boy, and as a slightly rebellious hipster muso who smokes weed and has a few pseudo girlfriends at any one time. Myra Back, the infamous soul singer, stays in Newcastle rather than trying to make it big elsewhere – a decision that El believes is because “people know her name here”

(146). Even though Gabby is a character who El believes has it all figured out, Gab reminds her at the close of the novel that everyone’s afraid of being an adult, and yet she 220

yearns for a time when she can “buy an ironing board finally and not have to worry about whether that means I can afford food or not” (122). Gab echoes El’s sentiments about fear of the future towards the end of the story:

‘I know Gab. I just don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘None of us do El.’

‘You do! You’re finishing law and you’ve got Alex and… just… your shit

together.’

‘There’s more to life than Uni and a boyfriend, El. You know that. I’m shit

scared of the future, just like you. Everyone is. It’s just part of being a 20-

something. Seriously. I’ve been thinking about this. 20s are for figuring it out.

30s are for doing it. 40s are for livin!’

‘They do say 30 is the new 20.’

‘They do.’ (181)

Lux is afraid of social segregation, so she sticks to Kik even though he doesn’t treat her well, and she knows that he’ll never love her the way that she wants to be loved. All these characters express, through the medium of El’s narration, a desire to move forward while staying where they are, an incommensurability that reveals them to be “liminars”

(Norton). El muses that as a group, they would be nothing without each other:

We look the part, the four of us. The right amount of shaved sections of hair, ink

and fashion. But it’s like we can disconnect from the fad yet secretly strive to be

what defines it. Hipster, indie, goth, whatever. Have an identity. El, that hipster

chick with the dyed black hair with the shaved side. Lux, the chick with the

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blonde hair and pink dreads. Kik, the bass player in the button-up shirt. None of

us would have a chance without each other. (21)

She feels like an outsider, but also has a deep connection to the various subcultures that provides a sense of security in a time when insecurity and self-doubt are paramount. In the opening scene, she describes both hipsters and surfers in one paragraph, implying that

“we” means the group she belongs to at the time – Kik, Lux, Pum – but also more universally “we” as Novocastrians:

In summer we’re heaps “surf”. But you gotta pretend not to be. Oversized knits,

skinny jeans and vintage-style boots are just too hot, you know, so we can hang

out in minimal clothing and the girls can sunbake while the boys surf. But you

gotta make fun of yourself while you’re doing it. Be facetious – note the irony.

Bag out the actual surfers. Because the hipsters who surf aren’t actual surfers,

which is cool. (2)

This passage suggests the two separate subcultures of “surfer” and “hipster” can intersect, but to truly belong in either category, you need to commit and label yourself as such, lest you fall in the liminal space between.

To capture the culture of El’s world, I wanted to incorporate the use of social media and technology, and also style a narrative voice to reflect it. Colloquial language listened to and spoken by those coming out of teenagehood helped me construct the narration of

El’s inner consciousness. At times during the writing process, I’ve literally transcribed full conversations heard in public spaces, or from memory of times passed with my own friends, that have formed parts of the narrative. By attempting to evoke such character authenticity, I hoped to also create El’s voice as “convincing and sustaining” (Rossiter

2). I expressed concern with my supervisors that El’s narration might not be sustainable, that it might grow tired, or annoying, or difficult and confusing to read owing to its 222

limitations. To authentically portray a 20-something Novocastrian in the immediate present, I didn’t want to overlook the use of slang, popular culture references, “text speak”, and social media use that informs young people’s diatribe in a contemporary realistic setting. At the same time, I’m well aware that these language techniques can date a story, read as trite, or be interpreted as lazy writing.

In Halfway to Nowhere, alternative methods of storytelling showcase the simpatico between characters. In one scene, El and Lux are texting each other and we gain insight into the power of punctuation (or lack thereof) in texting:

Message from Lux:

- El Belle, just come over. I’m not mad. There’s just some things I can’t

even explain to you. I can’t talk to you about everything

- All good x

- Well there’s no need to be a bitch about it

- Um, I’m not? Just said it’s fine. I’m in bed, tired x

- Yeah. Ok. Whatever. Night. (37)

El then launches into an internalised diatribe on how “high school” it is of Lux to act this way. She’s clearly interpreting the messaging as passive aggressive, particularly given the last text is punctuated with several full stops, while El has tried to be warmer in her communication.

El’s vernacular roots the story in the present and transcends any artifice of readability: she narrates as if she’s speaking, using words like “coz” (because), “wanna” (want to),

“reckon” (less refined version of “think”), phrases like “n shit”, and slang like “vibing” and “frothing” (both which mean, generally, to be having a good time). The specific,

Australian language situates the story in a time and space. When El is describing the girls

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at the Family Planning centre, Australian readers could determine these girls to be stereotypical bogans, based on their outfits and the way they speak to each other and their young children, but El makes no specific concession for those readers who might not understand:

Two girls on the sofa. A baby each. Tights as pants. Muffin tops. Jeggings,

bleached blonde hair with black roots and the skin of a smoker. (12)

It wasn’t until after I’d finished writing the full draft of Halfway to Nowhere that I discovered Hot Little Hands, by Abigail Ulman, in the airport before a particularly soul- searching trip overseas. It remains one of my favourite books to date; I saw myself, and

El, in recurring narrator Claire. Ulman’s collection of nine short stories has been described variously as “about a coming-of-age (even when it happens, as it does for

Claire, ‘long after [she] had come of age’)” (F. Wright), navigating the “fascinating fluid line between childhood and being an adult” (LS) and with characters who exist “in that murky unmapped area … before knowledge and understanding, somewhere between childhood and adulthood, girlhood and womanhood” (McGrath).

In “The Withdrawal Method”, Claire is navigating the betweenness of her existence, bouncing off the walls trying to find the exit. She’s living in a foreign country finishing her PhD, finds out she’s pregnant, and is hence thrust into an adult world of which she doesn’t wish to be a part. Deciding to terminate a pregnancy at the age of 27 is a stereotypically adult decision, but she continues to act like an adolescent. She’s in a band, drinks, parties, hooks up with random boys and girls in San Francisco. We also learn that she’s “made out” with her supervisor and rarely works on her dissertation.

When she finds out she’s pregnant, Claire doesn’t emotionally respond to the news; instead, she repeatedly tells people around her, as if she’s hoping for someone to tell her

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what to do, to respond like an “adult”, or to give advice, even when she’s not asking for it. Claire’s bandmate is on a similar level of maturity:

‘I think I may have chipped a molar.’

‘I’m pregnant.’

‘Man.’ He sits up and glares at me. ‘You’re always one-upping me.’ (Ulman 45)

When visiting her fellow PhD students, Amanda and James, Claire tells them the news of her pregnancy and measures her own adulthood against theirs:

‘When do you find time to work, with all this stuff going on?’

‘On the holidays. Everyone goes home to their families. I stay in the city and

work my arse off.’

‘That’s probably ten days a year,’ James says.

‘When do you two work?’

‘Monday to Friday,’ says Amanda. ‘Nine to five.’

‘Wow, you guys are such grown-ups,’ I say. ‘Do you want a baby?’ (Ulman 41)

By comparing herself to “grown-ups” Amanda and James, Claire is indicating that she feels completely unprepared for the stereotypically adult responsibility of pregnancy. By making a joke of giving away her baby, she could also be making reference to her available choices as female in this context, which readers could interpret as either empowered or irresponsible.

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In “The Pretty One”, Claire falls for a boy eight years her junior. We feel a sense of the age gap between her and 19-year-old Sy through brief narrative asides: “I want to make a joke about his age and puberty but it’s not that moment” (Ulman 131). Claire acts young, using made-up terminology like “wastified” and “drunkified”. In this short story, her tone shifts; the sentences are shorter and contain simplified descriptions, using quite juvenile language that evokes a young girl talking about a boy she has a crush on:

There is a new boy in the neighbourhood. Working at the gourmet ice-cream

place and bar-backing at the Make Out Room. He has a Japanese bike and a scar

on his forearm and he always keeps a little notebook in the back pocket of his

jeans. Grey ones. Tight. He has curly hair with a fringe that sweeps across his

forehead and the eyelashes of a pretty girl. (Ulman 109)

At a poetry reading in a bar, Claire describes the people around her in the same detached way that El observes her crowd in Halfway to Nowhere. Claire situates herself on the periphery of a particular “literary strain of hipster” (Ulman 110) subculture, making shrewd comments about the young people in the crowd in particular: “Some of it [the poetry] is probably really good but we’re in a bar, and the only bits that people pay attention to are funny or about sex.” (Ulman 110) She even refers to the other patrons as

“kids” (Ulman 110), revealing a contradiction between two different sides of herself. She clearly sees herself as older and more mature than some of the people in the bar, but reverts into giggly teenagehood when confronted with a witty comment from Sy:

I wait for some smart reply to come to me, something drink-related or cherry-

related or a play on the word ‘dirty’. But he’s looking right at me and he’s so

damn pretty, I blank. (Ulman 111)

When she can’t think of a response to Sy, she turns to a random guy next to her and kisses him, specifically noting the juvenility of it: “It’s a weird kiss. More high school 226

than grad school” (Ulman 111). She is about to move away from the stranger when she has a brief moment of awareness: “But suddenly I remember how it feels to like somebody, and I feel sorry for this guy…” (Ulman 111). At a party later in the story, she refuses to kiss someone because she has a boyfriend, but she lets him grab her butt instead. I read this scene as a clear portrayal of Claire’s willingness to remain in the grey area between adolescent and adult. Her self-conscious reflection coupled with the juvenile behaviour creates a liminal space of awareness and existence, and gives readers the opportunity to reflect.

Although just_a_girl (Krauth) has three narrators, 14-year-old Layla is the central character and the main focus of my exegesis. Layla is a classic example of a young character “growing up too fast” in a hypersexualised, digital culture. Layla’s mother,

Margot, is distracted by her new-found Christianity and unrequited love for the church pastor, experiencing depression that means she’s struggling to connect with her teenage daughter. Her father, Geoff, lives in Queensland with his new male partner and is a famous TV chef who she gets to know through his columns in the newspaper and various media clippings. The local church pastor is married but having an affair with Layla; her boss (and boyfriend’s dad) at the grocery store sexually assaults her during a shift. If just_a_girl was a YA novel, adult figures – parents, teachers, mentors – might serve as guiding moral forces, with lessons to impart on the teenage character; however, Layla seems to be on her own.

Layla constantly signposts her youth, with passing references to her school uniform and the ease of acting young and innocent when she needs to play the part or get what she wants. In the opening scene, she meets an older man at Newcastle train station, and they check into a hotel together. She notes that he’s “older than I thought. Old enough to be my … maybe” (Krauth 1). She arrives in school uniform and at the hotel the concierge asks if they’d like an extra trundle bed for the room: “I do my best to look young and

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innocent. No probs there. Cross my t-barred feet and perch my elbows on the counter”

(Krauth 2). Despite her precociousness, in the hotel room we learn that Layla is a virgin; clearly walking the line between innocent and experienced, she acts confident and sexual: “I roll over onto him and I tease him. Darting, biting his lips.” (Krauth 3); “‘I really want you inside me,’ I say” (Krauth 3). Then, we learn of her inexperience in the next line: “Because it’s sexy and I’ve heard that’s what you say” (Krauth 3). The older man says to her: “You’re quite mature for your age, Layla. It’s not what I was expecting”

(Krauth 3). Similar to the way El makes nostalgic reference to high school as an era of solid friendships and carefree fun, Layla remembers her childhood, implying a primal need to be looked after by her parents, despite her unconventional upbringing: “Haven’t been able to shake that santa claus excitement since preschool. Even though that was when I learnt he’s not real. My dad believes in telling kids the truth” (Krauth 8). Layla admits that she’s still excited about Christmas and yet: “Every year christmas gets that bit more boring” (Krauth 8). This consistent juxtaposition demonstrates Layla as struggling with issues of identity. She longs to grow up, lose her virginity, and be independent and autonomous, but she also mourns her loss of innocence.

Layla’s language and vernacular is noticeably teenage, with words like “fuckadoodle” and phrases such as “starvin marvin” used repetitively in her stream-of-consciousness narration. Layla’s narration evokes the style of a teenager talking fast without quite finishing some sentences – her prose is short, disjointed, and honest, which speaks to

Rossiter’s idea of the “directness and immediacy” (4) of young narrators:

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Mum says I need to focus more on the here and

now. So, I’m dancing at the school social and I’m getting off. Bloc Party

melodies grab me and won’t let go. My best mate Sarah has just tripped over her

slippery slope ecstasy edge. She’s chatting up a sullen surfy type. Stripy shirt

bedraggled. I haven’t seen him around school much. As I join the party she

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raises her eyebrows at me and swirls away leaving us. Yeah, right. Subtle.

(Krauth 5)

No Limit by Holly Childs is a novella set during a 24-hour period in Auckland during a volcano eruption. In the first scene, it is narrated through the focalising perspective of

Ash’s cousin, Haydn, and then the rest of the story is seen through Ash’s eyes in third- person narration. Haydn seems caught in a liminal space, transitioning from Australia to

New Zealand only four days previous and couch-surfing for the time being. From one brief meeting, he falls in love with a girl, Misty. When he spends time with Misty that morning, his internal narration indicates his adolescence, measured against more adult ideas that are as yet unfamiliar to him: “…maybe I could get a place on the water, a job, a reason to be. I could look after this girl, and together we could make everything else disappear” (Childs 3-4). Haydn clearly feels lost within himself and the greater world, displaying teenage behaviour but internalising something different. On the bus, they

“touch like slutty kissing cousins” (Childs 4) and he realises Misty isn’t really present in the moment. Then again, as indicated by the contemporaneous narration, neither is he:

“But she is inattentive, like she’s kissing just for herself, as though I’m not even there, or real…” (Childs 4-5). Further, Haydn explicates that he’s searching for identity, purpose, and a sense of clarity when he says he’s “trying to recover my sense of self” (Childs 5).

Protagonist Ash’s flight is grounded so she’s stuck in the city for an indeterminate time, trying to find Haydn, but instead passing from stranger to stranger in a narrative that is

“unapologetically strange” (according to writer and critic Benjamin Law, on the book’s jacket). It’s unclear how old Ash actually is, but she’s travelling alone, is of legal drinking age, and makes intertextual references that suggest her to be between the ages of

18 and mid-20s. Further, her mention of “old people” at several points in the novella means that she probably considers herself to be “young”. The reader is catapulted straight into the story from the first sentence; Ash is sleep-deprived and hungry, floating

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between half-awake and half-asleep. Stuck in New Zealand with no idea of when her flight will reopen, she is transitioning and moving, but time seems both stretched and still in this fast-paced narrative. Ash’s understanding of self is bound up in her use of social media, which situates the story in a contemporary setting and lends Ash’s existence a certain betweenness. She thinks in tweets: “She wants to tweet ‘Fuck u Stilnox, Worst

Pharm Ever,’ but her phone isn’t doing international roaming for some reason” (Childs

11). Her sense of time is also directly linked to an alternative online reality: “She looks at her phone: 3.18am, three retweets” (Childs 9). Ash’s long passages of internal narration and conversely fragmented sentences read as if the words and thoughts spill out with abandon, reminiscent of Layla’s disjointed and fast-paced speech. It’s as if the novella isn’t crafted for a reader, but is a direct transcription.

Childs uses frenetic, fast-paced narration by juxtaposing long, descriptive, one-sentence paragraphs with short, sharp sentences:

He’s steering badly and everyone’s got their hazard lights on, driving real slow,

and he asks Ash if she wants to go to a rave, still on the phone, trying to get the

details off whoever’s on the other end onto a square of paper that he’s holding

against the steering wheel with the tip of a tiny IKEA pencil, scribbling crazy,

and locusts are slapping, dying against the windscreen. Dick puts the wipers on.

(30)

This narrative flow, or lack thereof, contributes to the chaotic scene of the volcanic ash cloud, as well as Ash’s stress at being in a foreign country, in an unfamiliar city, driving around with a total stranger. The vernacular is oftentimes recognisable Australian/New

Zealand, such as the improper contractions “gonna”, “wanna”, and “lemme”, and sentences punctuated by “like”: “Ash is like panicking and speechless, like so

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overwrought…” (Childs 78). The turn-of-phrase doesn’t necessarily adhere to strict grammatical conventions, which gives the effect of authentic speech:

Their hair is blowing into their faces, everything is dramatic, they’re both totally

antsy, like, what the fuck am I doing here especially if this is the last night ever,

which it kind of feels like it might be. (Childs 27)

At other times, the language is alien: “Fidget is a total candyflip” (Childs 54) and

“munting on the side of the road” (Childs 78). Text speak is also a narrative device used in No Limit and captures the cultural moment, effectively alienating older generations, particularly as Childs includes emoticons throughout the narrative: “He’s still smiling like this :)” (52). It’s almost as if to read and understand the story properly, readers would need to get inside the author’s head, or Google every intertextual and cultural reference as it appears; but, then, the story probably wouldn’t have the same manic effect, which relies on the unknown.

The teenagers in Michelle Moo’s Glory This are aged between 14 and 16. The story follows the journey of protagonist, Mayne, and her new friend, Snigs. It’s a tale concerned with youth subculture and capturing the essence of a particular time and place in history, much like the classic Australian novel Puberty Blues. While the latter is set on the white sands of Cronulla Beach in the ‘70s, Glory This takes place in the same time period, but near “shitty old” Frankston Beach, outside Melbourne, on the tram line. From the first page, readers get a feel for the liminal, and for the way time almost slows down for these characters as they move in cyclical patterns: “—Where are they? —

Somewhere” (Moo 7).

The story is comprised of episodic, sometimes banal scenes that situate readers directly into the story, painting a picture of suburban Australian culture in the ‘70s. In that way, the novella is not about a coming of age and doesn’t focus explicitly on a search for 231

identity. Parents, school, and other adult figures are under-represented so the focus is honed in on the young characters, the subculture, and their daily activities as they move between parties and gigs and hanging out on the streets. Like Layla in just_a_girl

(Krauth), the main characters are hypersexualised:

In the dark. Tongues and cocks and pants pulled down only just. Angel under

someone with his pants just below his arse. White and skinny. Dead if it wasn’t

jerking like that, trying to find its way in, blind.

—You’re too big.

—Bullshit, not this matchstick.

—Bullshit you, I’m not even wet. (Moo 11-12)

The myriad party scenes are fragmented, punctuated by sex and violence, and all the while the characters are smoking and drinking. Then there are moments of juvenility that remind the reader of their age, such as when Snigs’ sister puts makeup on Snigs and

Mayne, and then they prance around the room dressed up in boob tubes and platform shoes, like a kids’ slumber party. When they fall asleep, Mayne watches Snigs and describes her as “like a kid, skinny and straight as a board” (Moo 98).

Glory This is narrated in third-person, through the focalising perspective of Mayne.

Rather than gain direct access to her thoughts and feelings, readers are left to interpret

Mayne’s identity and journey through these episodic scenes, interaction with other characters, and, perhaps, by transferring themselves nostalgically into the story and remembering what it was like to be 15 and what might be going through her head. On the first page of the story, we hear “Mayne is a foetus” (Moo 7), pointing to her age, maturity, and level of belonging at a typical Sharpie party:

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Small groups stand around everywhere, all looking slightly different, just enough

to tell. Tight high cut pants. Tight short connies, sleeves just past the elbow, with

stripes, buttons, and a thing on the back like an old man’s vest. Drinking,

smoking, putting it on. Eyeing each other off, but not looking, not giving

anything away. (Moo 7)

What we can gather from this scene, through the almost tongue-in-cheek narration, is that

Mayne and her friends are trying hard to fit in to how everyone dresses and acts, even though they’re probably the youngest at the party. Though they are often labelled as

Sharpies, they are too young to be truly a part of the older Sharpie demographic and exist in the liminal space on the outskirts of the subculture. For example, Mayne observes the older Sharpies at an ACDC riot at Frankston:

Sharps looking real sexy and rough, real tough little cunts. Framed by orange

flames and thick smoke. The younger kids standing back, keeping clear. Little

bony face lit up. Rapt. Sirens. Tails and triggers. (Moo 41)

It becomes apparent from the beginning of the novel that, like El among the hipsters, musos, and Christians, Mayne loiters on the fringe of subcultures, and doesn’t feel like she belongs to any group in particular:

The four girls ready. Standing by the front door. Tight pants. Tight short connies.

Not sharpie chicks, not in a gang. Just looking that much like it. Every bit as

lean, and every detail right. Like half the kids around. (Moo 22)

The language in Glory This is also specific to its context of ‘70s Sharpie subculture. As well as recognisable Australian slang, such as “youse” (pluralised version of you),

“doncha” (don’t you), and “fucken” (spelt with an “e” as opposed to “i”), Mayne, Snigs, and the other characters make constant reference to “connies”, “fanging”, and “heavies”,

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with no regard for what the reader may or may not understand. When reading Glory This for the first time, I found myself lost down a Google rabbit hole trying to find out exactly what is a “connie”. The repetition of particular phrases such as “having a bit of a laugh” throughout the entire narrative also indicates that this is popular speak of the time period.

Moo has made no concessions with readability; the young characters’ vernacular is written the way they would speak it out loud:

—What’s y’name again?

—Mayne.

—That’s not a sharp name?

—Nah that’s m’real name … M’olds are pretty weird.

—Like y’tatt.

—M’kinda boyfriend gave it to me.

—Whaddaya mean kinda? (Moo 43)

This stylistic narrative device has the impact of an almost forced enculturation. As readers, we can hear their voices in our heads and we start to read as if we’re hearing them talk, placing us directly inside the narrative.

As R. Johnston writes:

YA literature began life as part of the momentum of that earlier literary

slipstream which was children’s literature, and served a purpose in the second

half of the 20th century as a provocative wake; but the term is now a misnomer: a

real slip has occurred not only in the ages of readership but in the movement

(real or perceived) of teenagers into adulthood. (90)

The changing nature of adolescence in 21st century society means there’s also an expansion of the age bracket at both ends of the spectrum. Layla and Mayne are at one

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end, growing up fast and craving adulthood, and characters like El, Claire, and Ash are at the other end, resisting the sense of responsibility that lies over the threshold. They operate under the notion of extended adolescence and a growth toward adulthood and maturity as cyclical, expansive, and seemingly endless.

The bildungsroman in a contemporary setting

We saw that the betwixt-and-between nature of a rite of passage cracks the

structures of a society open and lets people through to what it really is to be

human, and to the spiritual things that go with it. (E. Turner 39)

It is inevitable that classic narrative forms change over time, and no doubt the bildungsroman will continue to reinvent itself in the future, which is precisely why it has proved an invaluable literary form to consider alongside Halfway to Nowhere and other contemporary texts with young protagonists. In my reading and research, I’ve become particularly interested in the dichotomies present within the bildungsroman: between passivity and activity, internal and outer forces that inform identity, religious and secular pressures. The attempted marriage of self-awareness with a sense of social responsibility is one canonical trope of the bildungsroman that transcends time periods and cultural boundaries. The dichotomy between self and society implies that if a protagonist has not yet reconciled self with society, or internal and outer forces that construct identity, they’re existing in a relatively tumultuous liminal space of extended adolescence that can presumably only be reconciled by a coming-of-age denouement.

In Female Bildungsroman, Pin-chia Feng notes the bildungsroman as following two distinct patterns: “a linear progression toward knowledge and social integration, and

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upward movement toward spiritual fulfilment” (2). Summerfield and Downward take this idea further, asserting the bildungsroman as both religious and secular:

the concept of the Bildung is highly nuanced, and at times contradictory from its

inception, as it is defined as both religious … and secular and encompasses both

the passivity and activity of humans in their development. (2)

This is to say that we as humans travel through journeys of self-discovery that are both internal and outer, as we attempt to interact both with ourselves – our own psyche – and our sociocultural surrounds. We are active agents of our life choices, yet our lives are also informed by greater forces that we might not understand. Jenna Williams Barlow argues that personal journeys are shaped and “thrown into sharp relief” when adolescents

“battle to come to terms with their own identities and… realizing their position within their broader communities” (50). As protagonists attempt to marry self with society, their journey is both passive (to society) and active (to self), with internal and external narration as opposing, dialogic forces in the text. As Bakhtin writes in his essay, “Epic and Novel”:

The epic wholeness of an individual disintegrates in a novel in other ways as

well. A crucial tension develops between the external and the internal man, and

as a result the subjectivity of the individual becomes an object of

experimentation and representation... (37)

During most of Halfway to Nowhere, El’s actions and reactions are dictated by external pressures, both explicit and implicit. El’s journey to marry self with society is quite literally both religious and secular. She attempts to make active life choices while feeling stagnant, passive, and powerless in many of her relationships with other characters:

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They [Kik and Lux] spend pretty much every night together. That’s why Lux is

pissed at me. I’m in the way. A fucking liability. A blow-up doll for Kik’s horny

penis to rub against. Provider of the food when everyone else’s broke and I’m

close to it. Rent will be late when I buy out Coles to satisfy our munchies. We all

throw stuff in the trolley. Getting excited about the prospect of white bread,

devon. Doritos with tomato sauce. Then at the register, no one pulls out their

wallets. Lux and Kik step back, or disappear. (38)

El never quite knows where she sits on the spectrum of religious belief; she’s

“undecided” (21). El has feelings for her new friend, Kik, who is a Christian and still in love with his ex-girlfriend. Kik and his ex-girlfriend slept together in the past, but he has to pretend he’s a virgin in front of his parents, friends, and other church elders. He refuses to have sex with El, even though they get close to it, and eventually ends up sleeping with Lux several times. El is aware of this hypocrisy but is never outspoken about it to others, merely internalising her confusion:

They all fuck each other but as long as you show up on Sundays, raise your

hands to the Lord, you’re good. Have coffee with the right people, fuck the

wrong ones later. Oh, and giving head doesn’t count. (13)

El ends up going to church one Sunday with her work colleague, JD. She narrates the experience from an almost out-of-body place, floating between religious and secular, present and omnipresent. She’s hyper aware of her surroundings, sharing with the reader her detailed narration that encompasses all the senses. Like previous scenes that deal with conversations or experiences with the “churchy” subculture, El is expecting to be judged, conveying her own insecurity and confusion about her identity, and, more specifically, what she believes in: “All I’m thinking is They know. I’m a non-believer. A hedonist (125)”.

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When describing the scene at the church, El backtracks to revisit the time when she first met JD at work, which conveys her preconceived ideas on the culture:

She fails to mention the gig’s at church but I choose to believe it’s just not an

issue for her – the location. Like, I was surprised to learn, from another waitress,

that she even goes to church coz JD’s not churchy. So not churchy. Pretty

normal. Super nice, I guess. But that’s not exactly a churchy trait, if I’m judging

by what, who, I know. I’m choosing to believe it wasn’t a deviant plan – that she

doesn’t think I need saving. (126)

The beliefs of those around El clearly have an influence on her at a time when she’s feeling lost. Even though she feels judged by her religious peers, in her internal narration she’s quite assertive and defensive: “I’m not ashamed – sex is a thing. A normal thing.

And I’m allowed to do it” (12). Further, readers can assume that discourses of feminism in El’s contemporary, Western, urban context are in full force; she clearly struggles to marry the ideals of being a strong, empowered, sexual female with the hypocrisy of characters like Kik and Mace who seem to sleep around with no consequence while pretending they’re “good little church boy[s]” (47):

Being engaged is like being in the safe zone. You’re intending to get married and

serve God – keep Him at the centre of your relationship – so as far as anyone is

concerned what you did or didn’t do in the past doesn’t count. Even fathering

someone else’s child. (44)

After El goes to church with JD, she has a conversation with Kik and Lux late one night, where Kik shares insight into his beliefs. El stays quiet at first, and lets Lux take the reins in playing devil’s advocate to Kik’s hyped-up stories of church camp and pseudo- exorcisms. Lux says:

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‘I just don’t get it. I mean look at Win. Snorting lines of coke whenever we see

him, dressing the part for the parties but going to church with his parents on the

weekend. Is that, like, allowed?’

‘He’s not hurting anyone.’

‘So why judge people like me and El? For not believing?’

‘You’re hurting yourselves.’ (132)

El wonders how you can know if you really want to marry someone at the age of 19, before any real life experience. Kik says: “Some of us know what we want” and calls El

“fucked up” (133). El laughs, keeping her composure, but takes the comment personally and assumes it’s a direct reflection of her and Kik’s troubled relationship, rather than a more general comment about her struggles with identity:

…I’m trying to figure out what he means. Why it matters to him. Was I not

supposed to be the cool girl? The new best friend who doesn’t care that he hooks

up with other people, and then hooks up with me too. And Lux. Was I supposed

to declare my undying love for him and make some wild gesture, and then things

would have worked out between us? I’m reading into it too much. Obviously.

Naturally. (133)

Further to the sociocultural expectations of her religious peer group, more secular pressures become apparent from other characters in her life, such as El’s brother:

‘What’s this I hear about you going to church?’

‘Excuse me?!’

‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those born-agains now.’

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‘Oh god. What the? No. How did you know?’ (144)

This exchange between Andrew and El demonstrates to the reader the context of their childhood. They clearly grew up in a secular household and the family have preconceived ideas of what it means to go to church or be a “born-again” Christian. El is quick to deny her association, explaining that her friend invited her to a gig and that she’s

“not, like, converted or whatever” (144).

Throughout Halfway to Nowhere, El’s search for identity becomes entangled with the various subcultures of which she loiters on the fringe: churchy, muso, surfer, hipster. El’s subjective interpretation of her own place, or lack thereof, is made explicit from the first page of the story: “If you’re not in the music clique, you’re not in” (2). Further, we recognise a societal expectation of growing up and journeying toward maturity as

“finding your place in the world” and contributing to society. In one scene, JD is sharing her reservations about the church culture and the “rules”: “…meet someone from the church, fall in love, get married, have babies … I’m 25 and everyone’s wondering when

I’m going to get my life together” (155).

In a conversation with El’s father (when she’s seeing him for the first time in years), he asks about her plans for university and work. He is gently pressuring her about finishing her degree: “Don’t throw away your best years behind a bar” (160). El’s response is defensive: “So you’re saying to throw away my so-called best years in a lecture theatre instead? … I don’t measure success by how much money is in my pocket” (160).

In a scene when El has dinner with her grandparents, we can see the influence of older family members, and the divide between different generations:

‘What happened to Brendan? Nice boy.’

‘Didn’t work out Nan.’ 240

‘What is this didn’t work out business? You kids don’t know what commitment

looks like.’

‘Let’s not do this Nan.’

G just sits silently. Smoking. Watching. Amused. He’s seen three generations of

crazy females.

‘No, darling, you think it’s all about true love and finding the one and it’s

bullshit—’ (27-8)

El’s Nan believes that young people don’t know how to commit to one person, presumably in place of having several semi-serious relationships until finding “the one” as El and her peer group are wont to do:

Nan had her heart set on my marrying Brendan – my ex – because we were

together for over a year and I’m in my 20s and I had a key to his rich parents’

house and he wanted to have my babies or whatever, and I’m exhausted of

reminding her we live in the 21st century. Then feeling like shit for ruining all

their lives. (30)

El’s decision to break up with her ex-boyfriend was clearly active and empowered, but she feels guilty about “ruining all their lives” owing to the subliminal messaging from other characters. She makes active life decisions, yet they’re still affected by more passive, implicit societal pressure.

In Hot Little Hands (Ulman), we recognise Claire’s relative passivity in her life and fragile sense of self and place when she finds out she’s pregnant in “The Withdrawal

Method”: ‘Suddenly I’m aware of how alone I am in this city, how far away all my best friends and family are” (Ulman 32). Claire makes several attempts to share the news of

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her pregnancy, first with the father, who doesn’t hear her over the sound of the coffee machine, then with an acquaintance, Sean, who asks her on a date and ignores her when she says: “I can’t next week, I’m having an abortion next week” (Ulman 37). At her apartment, her housemates are busy making a YouTube video response. When she phones her mum back home in London to talk about an abortion, she ends up in a speaker-phone conversation with the entire extended family and discovers her sister is dating her ex-boyfriend.

“The Withdrawal Method” is dialogue-heavy; therefore, the story unfolds more through

Claire’s conversations with other characters than through her own narration. Although the narration is first-person and told in conjunction with the events of the story (i.e. not retrospectively), we follow Claire through seemingly inane activities, meetings, and conversations during a 24-hour period, that all add meaning to her character. We learn about Claire’s journey and her struggle to balance self with society through her interactions with other characters, which implies a sense of her identity as largely influenced by what’s external to herself. In saying that, Claire doesn’t appear to grapple with societal expectations; there are no opposing characters or overt moral forces within the story. As readers, we only catch glimpses of insight into how Claire might be interpreting any tension in her situation. For example, when she visits married couple,

Amanda and James, to tell them the news, they’re relatively unresponsive, asking a few simple questions such as: “How did this happen?” to which Claire responds: “I’m an idiot” (Ulman 40). Then she narrates: “Neither of them responds to this. I wonder what they’ll say about it later, after I’m gone” (Ulman 40).

Later in the story, she meets Anton, and they go back to his house to talk about her “boy problems” and the upcoming abortion:

‘So this abortion thing is a big deal,’ Anton says, once they’ve disappeared.

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‘Nah. This abortion is the most practical and organised thing in my life. It’s the

only thing I’m certain I want.’ (Ulman 51)

Through this exchange with a guy she’s just met, we can see that Claire is searching for meaning in her life, even though she doesn’t explicitly offer this information. Further, through Anton’s comment, we learn of the dominant societal ideas surrounding abortion; even though Claire doesn’t discuss what others might think of her decision, Anton’s opinion in that one sentence is enough to shed light on external expectations that might influence Claire’s passivity. Claire wants to sleep over at Anton’s house:

‘Please,’ I say. ‘We don’t have to do anything. We can just sleep.’

‘I just met you,’ he says. ‘I don’t know you.’

‘I’m nice,’ I say, grabbing his hand and squeezing.

‘You’re smashed,’ he says. ‘It wouldn’t feel right. Why don’t I just walk you

home?’ (Ulman 52)

Anton clearly thinks it’s inappropriate to sleep with a perfect stranger, particularly one who’s drunk and pregnant. In another scene, Anton agrees to pick up Claire from the abortion clinic the next day:

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘You’re the only person I know who wouldn’t judge me, or

try to sleep with me, or tell me to keep the baby.’ (Ulman 55)

Claire is, in fact, feeling judged, or knows she has the potential to be. We don’t hear the voices of these characters, or Claire’s reflections on them, but we now know that others have a moral compass that she feels is unaligned with her own – or at least her actions at the time. Although Claire and Anton clearly have different ideas of what constitutes appropriateness, these snippets of dialogue also capture the particular context of the 243

story. The reader can relate to this setting as modern-day San Francisco inhabited by 20- somethings who work, study, party, drink, smoke, play music, and ride bikes around the city.

Layla also deals with competing secular and religious ideals that inform her growth to maturity in just_a_girl (Krauth). Layla’s mother, Margot, goes to a popular local church called Riverlay. They demonstrate a typical mother-teenager relationship in their struggle to connect and, at times, their blatant dislike for each other. Layla used to go to church at a younger age, but at 14 has decided it’s not for her. Margot is infatuated with married

Pastor Bevan, and as the story unfolds we learn that the latter is engaged in an illicit affair with Layla, a reveal that brings both Layla and Margot’s separate narrations and troubled relationship to a head at the end of the novel.

Margot explicitly tries to enforce the church’s values on her daughter, and through

Layla’s internal narration, we learn that she feels implicit moral force to behave in a certain way. Layla compares her own actions to those within the church and speculates whether her mother would approve. In one scene, she talks about the Christmas presents she receives from her mother, which are always church or bible materials disguised as board games, novels, and popular CDs by the church band:

She opens my present and frowns slightly. They radiate in her hands. Turquoise

and white gold earrings. I stole them from that Baku store near the cinemas at

Parramatta.

I’m tempted to knock her out with the Good News Bible. Before reclaiming the

earrings as my own.

Born-agains are just so stingy. (Krauth 10)

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Later, when Margot has told Layla that they’ll probably be moving house, to a flashy neighbourhood called Bella Vista that is “made up of Riverlayers” (Krauth 98), Layla shares more of her reflections on church culture and how she finds it difficult talking to them because of taboo topics:

 Climate change. Because the future is all god’s plan.

 What you’re really doing with your boyfriend.

 Drinking alcohol or taking drugs. (Krauth 99)

Layla reflects on when she used to go to church with her mother:

Maybe I’ll go to church again. Just to see him perform one more time. But I

wonder just which god he’s worshipping. The lord of big bucks and sweet girls.

How can god-if-there-is-one let him behave like that. All the talk of family

values and look how he treats his wife. But he reckons she knows and doesn’t

care. That she’s happy in her own world. (Krauth 99-100)

Here, Layla is clearly aware of the hypocrisy she believes exists within her mother’s church and we gain insight into the fact that she doesn’t belong and is questioning the values and morals her mother and other churchgoers try to impose. Layla is yearning to break free but also wants to belong somewhere: “I wonder if there’s another religion in the world, a church where people like me fit in” (Krauth 100).

Layla’s narration is hyper self-aware, which means her journey to maturity is understood and analysed by Layla herself and, in turn, by readers, rather than an omniscient narrator, or Layla looking back on her youth. We learn of what her mother and other adults think of her actions and decisions through Layla’s own voice. In fact, she explicitly laments her mother’s lack of influence and control:

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Mum lets me down sometimes. She’s not on the ball like she used to be. I get

away with my Newcastle adventure. Maybe I should start leaving clues. To make

it easier for her to track my whereabouts. A GPS purpose-built for Layla.

(Krauth 124)

She feels similarly about her father, who she only sees once a year. When she spends

Christmas with him on the Gold Coast, we understand their relationship and how Layla feels about the fatherly advice he tries to impart, saying that she goes “into shutdown mode because I can’t trust the words” (Krauth 141). Even though Layla is indicating that her parents try to impose moral forces, she doesn’t accept them. Layla says that her father’s words “become poisoned” (Krauth 141) when he’s giving advice, because he’s been drinking heavily, and she turns the tables of their power relationship:

He even starts offering me champagne. But I never drink when he’s around.

Because it gives him the shits. And it gives me more ammunition in the morning.

If I can remember everything he said. I like to get him when he’s vulnerable. I

save up all my most interesting questions for these times. (Krauth 141)

Layla experiences a confusing divide between her understanding of homosexuality and that of society. Layla doesn’t think it’s a big deal that her dad is gay; she talks about it casually and openly throughout the first half of the novel, but then we learn of what

Margot thinks:

After that, it took a long time for mum to say the word gay. She still can’t really

manage it. It’s like the emotion has been ironed out of her face. Of course now

she borrows her words all the time from the bible. Unnatural acts. She says that

dad had a choice. That if he really loved her he would have tried to change.

(Krauth 128)

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Margot’s opinion clearly has a loaded effect on Layla’s understanding. She admits that she doesn’t tell people that her dad is gay, so while she’s okay with it on one level, she feels pressure from the ideas of those around her. Layla accepts her father’s lifestyle and even admits that he seems happy, but keeps it secret from her friends:

But I can see that dad’s now slotted into place. He seems to fit where is

somehow. But that doesn’t mean I can tell my friends. It’ll be like I have the gay

gene or something. And guys just can’t handle it. A poofta for a dad. They’ll

think he’ll be after them. As if you turn gay and suddenly you jump on anything

that moves. (Krauth 128)

Literary critic Professor Gary Saul Morson argues:

In the great realist novels, people truly change bit by bit; they are essentially

shaped both by their own decisions and by their reactions to the historical

milieu… to use Bakhtin’s terms, in the realistic novel people and their society

undergo ‘genuine becoming’ as they impinge upon each other. (217)

For protagonists in contemporary realist novels, identity is certainly formed by the marriage between self and society and shaped by internal and outer forces; however, the context of an individual’s “historical milieu” shapes this journey of self-transformation.

Saul Morson’s use of the phrase “gradually alters” suggests that new possibilities for individuals and cultures are constantly created in narrative. A protagonist’s identity, therefore, isn’t presented with finality that implies a self-aware reconciliation between self and society, but is “truly ‘unfinalizable’ in all its respects” (Saul Morson 217).

In Beyond the Threshold: Explorations of Liminality in Literature, Hein Viljoen and

Chris Van der Merwe ask, “To what extent can processes of identity change and identity formation be conceptualized by means of boundaries, hybridity and liminality?” (4).

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Halfway to Nowhere, Ulman’s short stories, and Krauth’s just_a_girl are vehicles for exploring what it means to come of age, or to not, indicative of a time period when young people are self-creating their identity outside socially recognised categories of adolescence and adulthood. Though the line between childhood and adolescence is often marked by puberty, the line between adolescence and adulthood seems intangible and is a liminal zone in and of itself. The liminality of a particular stage in life also implies that beyond is something solid and tangible; that we pass through the liminal stage, on the way to something that is supposedly not liminal. If the notion of liminality implies navigating the between spaces and transitioning across thresholds, aren’t we constantly experiencing liminality as we grow, change, and develop? As Neumann argues,

“Liminality is … a concept rooted in the social as such, pointing to a phenomenon that occurs everywhere” (479). If the clock is ticking, we’re growing older day by day, which means we’re transitioning to whatever comes next, learning along the way. As readers, we are privy to the journey of a young character’s life in the course of a text, and the narrative arc is the tool by which we read and interpret their character growth. We understand changes in identity – the way a protagonist thinks, feels or acts in certain situations – based on the boundaries (or lack thereof) implied by the author.

As Downward proposes, a more contemporary way of viewing the classic bildungsroman arc and reifying it in new contexts is to “accept the novel as both religious and secular, optimistic and pessimistic, passive and active” (108). This “ideological disarray”

(Fraiman xiv) leaves room for opposition and openendedness, because as readers we’re encouraged to acknowledge the voices that dispute homogenous, dominant views of growth and development.

As Bakhtin writes in his essay, “The Bildungsroman and its Significance in the History of Realism”, the hero is “emerging along with the world” (23); in other words, the

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protagonist and the world are one, without precedence for how a particular individual can operate in the world he or she inhabits:

He [sic] is no longer within an epoch, but on the border between two epochs, at

the transition point from one to the other … He is forced to become a new,

unprecedented type of human being. (23)

This liminal space between epochs is recognised in novels that feature young characters searching for identity, without reaching an endpoint of the journey. The narrativity of these stories, therefore, lies in the open ending, suggesting an ongoing process of self- creation for young characters. These liminal spaces expand and invert the traditional bildungsroman arc. Further, in a time and space setting where neither time nor space is certain, we could argue that it might be impossible to fix the “now”.

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Chapter 2

The Present Moment

It’s dark and there aren’t any cars on the road and I find myself near Blackbutt

Reserve and I think of pulling over and running into the bush at night, just to see

what happens, but instead I keep driving and I’m going past Carnley Avenue and

there are no cars so I switch off my headlights and laugh. And there I am, driving

and laughing like a fucking maniac with the lights off and no one by my side.

(185)

In the final paragraph of Halfway to Nowhere, El is supposed to meet Gab at a party, but ends up taking a last-minute turn toward Blackbutt Reserve, in a scene reminiscent of the earlier one with Mace. El is moving through empty time and space, into the unknown.

She feels disconnected and existential, struggling to belong, to understand herself. She is physically moving forward – driving the car – as we must if we are to progress through life. And this time she’s alone, driving her own car, and turns off the headlights herself.

El steps outside her body to stand by the reader: “And there I am” forces us right into the moment with El as we watch her drive and laugh, alone in the darkness. I’ve written her on the threshold – on the periphery of a conscious moment that many readers could hopefully relate to.

To capture El’s extended adolescence and the unknown journey ahead, I’ve chosen to focus the narrative on the present moment: “the ‘inconclusive present’ leading into the immediate future” (Saul Morson 219). As Bakhtin writes in “Epic and Novel”:

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The present is something transitory, it is flow, it is an eternal continuation

without beginning or end; it is denied an authentic conclusiveness and

consequently lacks an essence as well. (20)

As Saul Morson states in his article, “Bakhtin and the Present Moment”, if literary scholarship (among others) truly respects “the otherness of others”, they “can help to liberate cultures from ‘the captivity of time’” (222). Halfway to Nowhere is written, and set, in the present moment, which contextualises the “here and now” for readers and allows them to understand time and space as important considerations in the story. In relating to the past in a present way, Bakhtin writes, “we ignore the presentness of the present and the pastness of the past; we are removing ourselves from the zone of ‘my time’, from the zone of familiar contact with me” (“Epic and Novel” 14). In “Epic and

Novel”, Bakhtin writes:

To portray an event on the same time-and-value plane as oneself and one’s

contemporaries (and an event that is therefore based on personal experience and

thought) is to undertake a radical revolution, and to step out of the world of the

epic and into the world of the novel. (14)

Stepping outside real time and into imagined time creates a threshold for fictional characters to grow in awareness and self-reflexively narrate their experiences. At the same time, bridging the real and imagined – the character’s world and the author’s world

– allows readers to respond, digest, and operate on a similar “time-and-value plane”. This dialogism also creates a threshold moment where time stands still.

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Capturing moments in time on the threshold

Everything we do is embedded in time, and time changes not only us, but our

point of view as well. (Atwood xiii-xiv)

In Bakhtin’s Theory of the Literary Chronotope, Nele Bemong and Pieter Borghart introduce Bakhtin’s idea of time and space (the chronotope) as categories “through which human beings perceive and structure the surrounding world” (4). They suggest

Bakhtin borrowed the concept from German philosopher Immanuel Kant, one of whose central philosophies was that the world, in itself, is unknowable. In “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel”, Bakhtin claimed his theory differed from Kant’s philosophy; while the latter viewed time and space as “transcendental”, Bakhtin saw time and space as “forms of the most immediate reality” (85) and the chronotope as the

“organising centre for the fundamental narrative events of the novel” (250). Bakhtin’s chronotope is concerned with the meaning of time and space as captured in moments, rather than deciphering its overall meaning, spiritually, existentially, or philosophically:

Nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the world, the ultimate word of the

world and about the world has not yet been spoken, the world is open and free,

everything is in the future and will always be in the future. (“Problems” 166)

According to Bakhtin, the novel is form for the “intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed” (“Forms of Time” 84) and several chronotopes – those of author, character, and reader – exist dialogically at the base of narrative text, informing meaning within the novel. The intrinsic relationship between writer and reader constitutes a liminal zone of fluid boundaries and individual agency.

Time and space, therefore, become their own characters. The temporal and the spatial co- mingle and correspond to one another, vividly and concretely. Time “thickens, takes on

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flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history” (Bakhtin “Forms of Time” 84).

Our understanding of time in a Western context is largely taken for granted as “given, natural, and universal” (Hom 1169). Western time emerged alongside modernity, and is

“the time now commonly associated with contemporary clocks and watches” (Hom

1149). Even the dominant understanding of the developmental stages of life is dictated by linear, Western notions of time. In The Rites of Passage, Van Gennep writes:

Transitions from group to group and from one social situation to the next are

looked on as implicit in the very fact of existence, so that a man’s [sic] life

comes to be made up of a succession of stages with similar ends and beginnings:

birth, social puberty, marriage, fatherhood, advancement to a higher class,

occupational specialization, and death. (3)

It is the ritual that allows and celebrates such passing between “stages” that Van Gennep calls the “rite of passage”. The social situations and positions that Van Gennep theorises as rites of passage are “well defined” (3), although he also argues that, as well as transitions and “movements forward” (3), humans experience “periods of relative inactivity” (3). These are presumably liminal zones, when we are existing between socially recognised categories of being.

Victor Turner recognised that Van Gennep’s work is ethnocentric in that it is “bound up with biological and meteorological rhythms and recurrences” (46 “Betwixt”):

The subject of passage ritual is, in the liminal period, structurally, if not

physically, ‘invisible.’ As members of society, most of us see only what we

expect to see, and what we expect to see is what we are conditioned to see when

we have learned the definitions of classifications of our culture. (47 “Betwixt”)

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In saying that, Bruce Kapferer argues for a more symbolic interpretation of the “rites”, suggesting that “ritualists” like Van Gennep and Turner discovered something in their research that can “shape human perception and thereby transform experience” (Kapferer

12). Indeed, in theorising liminality as “a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise” (V. Turner “Betwixt” 7), Turner is essentially suggesting a more expansive interpretation of the way we view time and space in relation to developing as a human being.

Let’s think visually for a moment. A one-dimensional, linear narrative arc is an upside down smile, beginning at birth, progressing slowly upwards as one grows and matures to a gentle, curved peak – the coming of age threshold – and then moves slowly downwards to a primitive end – death. The downward slope represents depleting physicality, retirement, the aging process, etc. A coming of awareness is an ongoing journey, so time and space is four-dimensional. El exists at the centre of a moving sphere, living in an extended state of adolescence, caught in a liminal zone of social and psychological change. Her journey is captured in a series of threshold moments that shape her perception and, hence, “transform experience” (Kapferer 12).

In Halfway to Nowhere, El narrates the novella contemporaneously with the events in the story, over the course of a few short months. She stays in Newcastle, venturing once to

Sydney, changes jobs, and moves house. Her movement through space and time informs her identity and readers’ understanding of her development as a character. In an article on cognitive literary criticism, literary scholar Maria Nikolajeva writes:

consistent present-tense, first-person narrative is the closest approximation to an

explicit ‘here and now’ experience that does not allow reflection on the past nor

anticipation of the future. (“Memory of the Present” 2)

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Through a specific, stylistic young narrative voice, I’ve hoped to authenticate a “here and now” context in Halfway to Nowhere. I’ve chosen to write in first-person through the perspective of one single character’s internal narration, and with a sense of immediacy that catapults readers directly into the narrative and along the journey with El. Nikolajeva argues that contemporaneous first-person narration has limits in that it “loses the depth and dynamism essential for the formation of identity” (“Memory of the Present” 2).

Indeed, as Feng writes in Female Bildungsroman, “An awareness of one’s history is the first step toward understanding one’s self” (23). During the flashback memory scenes, present-tense narration also ensures the reader is following the story while El’s consciousness is narrating it. El transposes herself into those past moments as if it’s happening in the present, without the self-reflection that would usually accompany flashback scenes, which encourages readers to stay present in the story. I hope that the

“depth and dynamism” of the story can be found in the immediacy of the narration.

El’s story is non-linear, transcending time and space boundaries with flashbacks, hallucinogenic scenes, and even dream sequences that punctuate the novella. Her journey appears cyclical and endless when she lapses in nostalgic reference to the past, or acknowledges that she isn’t moving forward. This inner time-space awareness mirrors her outer patterns of movement in that she physically moves through time, but always returns to familiar places. In one scene at El’s house, they’ve all been smoking weed and

El observes everything happening around her in a detached way, unable to contribute to any conversation, presumably influenced by the marijuana. Time slows down in her own mind as she internally narrates the things she wishes she was saying aloud, but the opportunity always passes by, so she’s rendered mute. She watches the boys sharpening knives in the kitchen and imagines a hyperrealistic scenario:

I can imagine the knife coming towards me. And maybe I’d try to duck but I’m

slow and numb. Then the blade would go right into my belly. All of a sudden I

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imagine myself naked. Clean cut, perfect slice from the nice sharp knife. I don’t

think I’m supposed to touch it. Stay still. Don’t bleed out. Something needs to

happen and I’m imagining all this drama but I look around and I’m still stuck,

straddling the heater. People having fun around me. (31-2)

In another scene, El is analysing a conversation between her, Lux, and Kik, right as it unfolds, and wondering about the real meaning of something Kik has said. She imagines how she might react more assertively in an alternate universe:

So instead I imagine standing up, elegant, striding over to where he’s perched on

the front step, one elbow resting on one leg, and press his head against the wall

with as much strength as I can muster and kiss the shit out of him. In front of

Lux, even. Then I punch him in the face, with my thumb outside my fist like a

guy in high school taught me, and he looks at me with fire in his eyes then kisses

me back and it’s all very Hollywood. Maybe Lux starts a solo slow clap and

she’s okay with it because she knows the two of us were meant to be all along.

(133)

At the same time, El and the other characters operate according to the ticking clock, and the idea of time as “running out”:

‘And anyway, he said, like, “Lux mate, I swear, if I’m not married by the time

I’m 30 I’m just gonna cut my losses and marry you.”’

I laugh. Her eyes are shining, like she’s a fucking fairy princess. But she’s

laughing too. ‘30? Jeez. Not giving himself much time.’

‘Well, you know, he probably reckoned he was gonna get married to Bec pretty

soon after school.’ (41)

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Scenes when they speak about the future demonstrate the societal pressures of their age and dominant ideas of development in their context. We are also transferred into the past, to El’s teenage birthdays, showing that her identity is influenced by her idea of growing older. While she doesn’t reflect on the past, she associates quite negative memories with those birthdays, such as her father leaving, her mother’s depressive episodes, and her less-than-ideal loss of virginity. These scenes might help the reader to understand how she feels in the present, and El’s apparent obsession with time that leads to her bouts of

“birthday blues”.

In the scene when El and Mace meet at the Halloween party, the slight tense shifts deconstruct linear time, bringing readers into the moment but reminding them, at intervals, that this particular scene is actually in the past. El begins narrating the scene in past tense: “I met Mace at a Halloween party” (53) then immediately shifts to present tense. After she receives a text message asking her to come outside, she narrates: “And then, now, the moment I’ll always regret” (56). The juxtaposition of the words “then” and “now” reminds the reader that she is telling us the story, but also living it out at the same time. The mention of regret suggests that El has thought about the moment since its occurrence, and is inviting readers to laugh or make judgements about her actions, the way she might have judged herself later on. She takes herself out of the present:

Okay, that’s dramatic. But honestly, those moments you read about, see in

movies – I had one. This is it. An unknown number tells me to come out the

front. On Halloween. If this was a horror movie you’d be screaming No! Don’t

do it! Whadda dumb bitch. But this isn’t a horror movie. Obviously. So my

drunk self didn’t think there was a problem with meeting an unknown stranger

on the street in the middle of the night. (56)

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After El imagines being hit by a car and dying, she brings herself, and the reader, back into reality: “I’m back in the present” (57).

At other times, El’s narrative voice is layered; as readers, we never quite know if she’s having certain thoughts at the time, or has realised them later. For example, at the carpark with Mace, she says: “It doesn’t occur to me that he could drive away and leave me here. We owe each other nothing” (60). Again, she steps out of the moment, but has clearly relived it later. At the same time, she talks about futures that bridge the real and imagined: “All of a sudden I’m projected into a teen rom-com, minus the com, and I’m half expecting us to start making out…” (61). El is both hyper self-aware and yet detached from the moment and, at times, her own reality:

I sit here and try to remember all the things I’ll write down someday. The things

that would surely make this story worth telling. Living it and writing it at the

same time, scrawling lyrical sentences behind my eyelids, hoping it’ll all be

worth it. Totally and unequivocally not present in the moment at any stage. (22)

In just_a_girl (Krauth), Layla narrates from the present tense, but also takes us back in time. The story opens with her travelling to Newcastle to meet the older stranger, but then her memories take her back to the events leading up to the situation. A few chapters later, she says: “So we’re back in the now. Right here in the hotel with youami33”

(Krauth 103). When she is travelling on trains or planes, she often lets her mind take her away to imagined realities:

Maybe one day I won’t get on the plane. I’ll disappear, duck out of sight of dad.

Or I’ll rewind the plane down the tarmac. Reverse through the punters. Clutching

their last-minute-texts-on-mobiles. I’ll stand and revel in the limpness of that

concertinaed shute … Mum will spend her years wondering how I managed to

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go missing. From a plane in the air between Coolangatta and Sydney. (Krauth

151)

Layla is aware of her overthinking mind, and talks about her thoughts running away from her: “Sometimes at times like this I can’t sleep. And then my thoughts don’t seem to include me. It’s like they create this great superhero of a girl. Bionic Layla” (Krauth

160). She explicates the disconnect she feels from herself, her own mind, and the world at large.

In No Limit (Childs), the psychedelic prose keeps readers constantly balancing the line between real and imagined. It’s a story set over 24 hours and has a certain frenetic style of narration that mirrors the craziness of the characters’ lives as they wait for the supposed end of the world. Sleep-deprived and lost, Ash seems detached from reality, existing between countries, places, time zones, and people. She is delayed on the threshold, observing the rest of humanity in a state of disassociation. She describes people from a distance as like lego figurines, or cartoons, and hints at her desire for connection during this “limitless delay” (Childs 13): “Ash has a sense, coming from somewhere external to her, that she needs to stop lagging. Snap out of it” (Childs 13).

Above all, the hyperreality of the narrative suggests the liminality of the characters within.

When we first meet Ash, she is in a dream sequence on the plane travelling into New

Zealand; we think she has woken up when she talks about holding a newspaper with the headline “Ash Obscures Global Flight” (because we already know about the volcano eruption), but it turns out she’s still asleep: “Ash wakes up again and thinks: A dream within a dream, that is so tacky” (Childs 8). The rest of the narrative is similarly layered, like a dream-within-a-dream motif. In a scene when Ash and Dick are driving away from

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the drive-in movies, Dick shares his stream-of-consciousness thoughts out loud, reflecting the nature of the entire story:

‘Don’t you think it was a mistake that you were called Ash and I just met you, so

from my perspective you are crucial to the development of this natural-disaster

plot that is fucking up my night, and maybe also the entire world? … Like, is

there some greater connection, a bigger story… perhaps you manifested this

whole thing in your mind…’ (Childs 29)

According to the Mayan calendar, it’s supposedly the end of the world that night, and

Ash attends disaster movie screenings, warehouse raves, internet cafes, and parties, set against the backdrop of literal, physical ash cloud polluting the air. These characters are all on the threshold – of adulthood, presumably, but also of death. In one scene at a party,

Ash escapes to the rooftop: “The air is sulphuric, smoky, smothering. The sky above is so close, basically red, and swirling. A lava lamp” (Childs 34). This description is apocalyptic and futuristic, but she grounds herself in the present by pulling out an iPhone and listening to a guided meditation. High on caffeine tablets, she steps outside herself in order to find connection:

She watches her thoughts: stranded in Auckland, what may be the last night of

life on Earth or at least very definitely the end of life in this city, that guy Dick

who seemed cool until he started sexually harassing her and is now playing

excruciating acoustic shit. Ash blows it all away. (Childs 35)

In that last sentence, “Ash” could be referring to Ash as the protagonist, or ash particles in the air. Is Ash using guided meditation to unleash her thoughts and push them aside to feel grounded, or is the ash in the sky blowing her thoughts away?

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Ash also refers to airports as a quintessentially liminal space of transition and transcending time when she reflects on letting the “dream girl” walk away from her:

“Airports are the perfect environment to experience otherworld girls that you will never see again in any other context. The meeting place of a million realities” (Childs 35). At the end of her meditation track on the rooftop, Ash mentions the girl again, this time as

“floating in techno ether” before indicating that her mind is “…totally blank. Relaxed”

(Childs 36).

She frequently moves past expectations of what’s real, what she imagines, and the thoughts and experiences of people around her. Later, at the warehouse rave, she observes: “One girl swings up and knocks a purple party disco-ball marble way off its axis and if this is supposed to be the end of the world, Ash is like, whatever, try harder”

(Childs 53). When Ash and Mack are trying to find their way into the warehouse, they end up physically moving through darkness – their phones aren’t working so they can’t use torches – which points to the more metaphorical unknown ahead:

They decide to keep walking, holding hands, each with one arm out in front

because they can’t just stay there in the dark and there’s no point turning back.

After walking super slowly for about twenty metres in absolute blackness, dark

enough that Ash can’t tell if her eyes are open or closed… (Childs 45)

Coming of awareness through several epiphanic moments

Stories are multilayered, complex, and interwoven in and through time and

space; without clear beginnings or ends they are constantly told and retold. (S.

Wright et al. 57)

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Rather than moving toward a coming of age, El is experiencing an ongoing “coming of awareness”. It’s not explicitly clear where El is going now or how she’s feeling, which allows readers agency in interpreting events through their own lens of understanding. In keeping the ending of Halfway to Nowhere open, I have deliberately tried to unsettle the classic linear narrative arc. Traditionally, the bildungsroman in novel form demonstrates a “harmonious course of maturation” (Avery 1) with a clear resolution. Leisha Jones writes:

The traditional bildungsroman begins with a child coming of age, a rising action

event distancing that individual from predetermined assumptions and mores, and

the long and arduous process of self-discovery toward a maturity that includes

the assimilation of contemporary cultural values and the participation and

recognition of that individual by society. (“Contemporary Bildungsromans” 46)

As German Enlightenment philosopher Hegel famously wrote in Aesthetics: Lectures on

Fine Arts:

The conclusion … usually amounts to the hero getting the corners knocked off

him … In the last analysis he usually gets his girl and some kind of job, marries

and becomes a philistine just like the others. (qtd. in Prickett 120)

In the 21st century, the bildungsroman has an “important literary social function” (Bolaki

247) and narratives set in different time periods can capture “the story of a cultural moment” (Fraiman 144). Even though their stories are set several decades apart, the characters in Hot Little Hands, just_a_girl, and Glory This are moving from one experience to the next, from one age to the next, from one physical or virtual place to the next, searching for knowledge, a sense of belonging and purpose, but in different contexts. Mayne, Snigs, and the other young characters in Glory This play out their experiences of adolescence in 1970s Melbourne. The novella was written about the past 262

with a sense of nostalgia, but it also recognises and captures cultural attitudes of the time.

On the other hand, the protagonists in Hot Little Hands and just_a_girl are trying to reconcile their identity as influenced by a fast-paced Western society where boundaries between adolescence and adulthood are dissolving in fiction, entertainment, and culture.

In The Voyage In, Abel, Hirsch, and Langland suggest two predominant narrative patterns for novels of growth. One traces a linear, chronological growth from childhood to maturity. The second is when development is somewhat delayed until adulthood

(Abel, Hirsch, and Langland 11) and then occurs in a single moment of awakening or in

“brief epiphanic moments” (Abel, Hirsch, and Langland 12) that are also internalised:

“flashes of recognition often replace the continuous unfolding of an action” (Abel,

Hirsch, and Langland 12). It’s the latter narrative pattern that I’ve emulated in Halfway to Nowhere, even though the authors’ definition refers to the enigma of “adulthood”.

From a developmental perspective, linear notions of time imply a movement away from primitiveness or immaturity, toward the other end of the spectrum; presumably, to maturity and defined adulthood. Such a definitive arc of understanding growth is certainly not universal. As Saul Morson suggests, we experience time in myriad ways:

…in various spheres of life, and in different literary genres, time is experienced

in different ways. And because people act in time, different temporalities create a

multiplicity of ways to understand human nature. (216)

El doesn’t embark on an explicit journey to grow up, or find herself, but her self- reflexive narration gives rise to moments of growing awareness. In a scene where she goes to a gig with Lux, El comes to understand the nature of their forced, mutually beneficial friendship:

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The only reason we’re here, the two of us having a fake girls night, is coz we

both wanted to go to the gig but both didn’t wanna go alone. We’d never admit it

to each other or ourselves. That we need each other. Except I just did. (42)

This particular scene in the pub sheds considerable light on El’s understanding of her shaky social standing in the hipster/muso subculture. Her sarcastic narration shows that she truly understands the relationships for what they are, sees straight through these people, and holds no illusions about her position (or lack thereof) in the social sphere:

We stride straight out to the courtyard. Lux lights up. No one approaches us, we

go to them. Never if we were alone, but we’re best friends with everyone, know

everyone, rubbing shoulders, when we’re standing side by side, silently hating

each other. Or maybe that’s just me. How can you hate someone but love them to

fucking pieces at the same time? Maybe I am a masochist. (43)

El’s dark description of the inauthentic way they all act around each other comes to a sharp point when she has a panic attack in the bathroom at the pub:

…bail to the toilets. Reapply my lipstick. Heart beating fast, face pale and

sweaty. Fuck I look like shit. Can’t even bear to look myself in my own eyes,

they’re scanning every other part of my face and neck.

This is fucked. Fucked. Fucking fucked. How did I let my life get so fucked up?

(44)

El’s moments of realisation and awareness aren’t necessarily transitional; she doesn’t offer solutions to problems, but simply recognises them:

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I go to the bar, alone. Conveniently pretending I don’t see Kik, too cool to say

Hi. Having a rad fucking time. But actually I’m just chicken shit for no apparent

reason. Too scared to say Hi in public to the guy who sleeps in my bed. (43)

El also admits that she “loves Lux more when she’s pissed at Kik”, which is in contrast to an earlier scene where she tells Lux that she is totally cool with the platonic relationship she has with Kik and the apparent “special connection” that Lux and Kik share. In the same scene at the pub, El narrates:

I’m kinda actually hoping he doesn’t come outside. I’ve got ants crawling under

my skin and 99% of my being wants to walk away, get in my car, drive home

and never see these people again. The 1% always wins. (46)

El recognises that she doesn’t want to be there, is in the midst of an anxiety attack, and wishes she could never see some of these people ever again. At the same time, she acknowledges that a small part of herself wants to belong, and generally wins over in these situations. From that moment of realisation, El lapses into an attitude that demonstrates apathy:

I look around, not bothering to act like I’m enjoying myself or like I come here

all the time and know these songs backwards and am mates with the band. Can’t

even be bothered listening. (46)

Her thoughts unravel from this point in the scene. She begins to reflect on how she met

Mace, and that it was because of her affair with Mace that she ended up becoming friends with Kik and Lux:

I look around and realise no one would recognise me if Lux wasn’t here. A

nobody, everyone’s secret. Lux’s elusive “best friend” with the black hair who

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comes to gigs, no visible piercings or discernible tattoos. Lux’s friend, Kik’s

secret-but-sometimes-public friend, Mace’s deadest secret. (46)

When she’s feeling anxious, El’s awareness is heightened, such as in the scene when she’s having dinner at her grandparents’ house:

Arms a bit jittery, that balloon-in-my-chest feeling of inexplicable anxiety

because this is like a safe house for me. A place of good memories and people

who love me but all of a sudden I need to get out. Because maybe I don’t deserve

this. (29)

She feels undeserving of their love and affection and seems to idolise their strong relationship; however, later she wonders “if they love each other, or if they’re putting one foot in front of the other and surviving the only way they know how” (30). This is an interesting revelation considering the conversation at the dinner table, during which El’s

Nan berated her generation for not understanding real relationship commitment. El is

“exhausted of reminding her we live in the 21st century” (30), and yet acknowledges that maybe the relationship between her grandparents is, in fact, built on hard work and commitment, rather than love and passion.

In the first part of Halfway to Nowhere, El’s moments of insight appear to be filtered by self-loathing (“God I’m disgusting” [41]; “Everything less than desirable stares back and it’s not funny at all” [32]) and indicative of a depressive state, particularly when she acknowledges the “mirage” friendships and issues of belonging and identity (“It’s about being who you are and not giving a shit. As long as you know who you are in the first place” [7]; “You don’t ask, you just take. It’s cooler, like you belong” [43]). During the above scene at the gig, El narrates: “It’s about this time, this moment, that I ditch my drinks, leave the bartender open-mouthed and cashless and bail to the toilets” (44). In pointing out “this moment”, she is signposting it to herself as pivotal. 266

In a scene with Mace, she’s trying to remain true to herself – “funny” and “smart” – but struggles and admits she’s “intimidated” and, hence, “hate myself” (61). In the same scene, El realises that they’re both lying to themselves about getting to know each other through the inane, cyclical conversation, and makes an observation about identity:

Then again, are the basic facts of our lives the things that define us? Where we

live, what we do with our time, what our parents do, the car we drive? These

things we know about our closest friends – are they the reasons for our closeness

or is it the deeper, murky waters that we learn lie within each other? What we

believe, how we feel, the way we react to events and situations. Maybe that’s the

real stuff... (62)

In the third-last chapter, El is reflecting on the new information about Mace and she experiences a moment of awareness that sees her transitioning toward a potentially more enlightened frame of mind: “Maybe life isn’t meant to be this hard or messy and maybe I do know how to be happy. Maybe I can learn. And it won’t be like this forever” (175).

The beauty of these moments is that El can simultaneously exist within the extended moment and also narrate her growing awareness. Her ongoing process of self-creation

“suspend[s] her in a series of ongoing stories” (Fraiman xiii). The emphasis in these kinds of non-linear stories, therefore, becomes on “open-endedness over closure, on contradiction over consistency… a kind of aesthetics of ‘mess’” (Fraiman xiv).

In Hot Little Hands (Ulman), Claire reappears as narrator in the story “The Pretty One”, presumably after the abortion. She is back to her old habits – drinking, kissing strangers in bars, not working on her thesis – and falls fast in love with a younger guy. Again, her narration isn’t particularly self-reflective; instead, we see her moments of realisation through dialogue with other characters. In one scene, when she’s teaching a first-year college class, she shares with her students that she has a crush on someone: 267

‘I’m just confused,’ she says when I call on her. ‘I guess we all thought you were

kind of, I don’t know, old and married and settled or something.’ The other girls

in the class nod. The boys sit there with their legs out straight, staring at their

shoes.

‘I’m not old,’ I say. ‘I’m twenty-seven.’ It takes a second of silence for me to

realise that to them it’s the same thing. (Ulman 115)

Once again, it’s in the comparison with herself to other characters, albeit this time with those younger, that Claire’s moment of understanding emerges. At one point, following a conversation about how it takes one week for every month you were dating someone to get over them, Claire says: “The week it’s gonna take me to get over this past month is gonna be the worst week ever of my life” (Ulman 124). This comment seems to be in recognition of her almost love-at-first-sight relationship with 19-year-old Sy; it’s moving fast and she’s subconsciously aware that it won’t last.

In the third short story narrated by Claire, titled “Your Charm Won’t Help You Here”, she finds herself once again in an “adult” situation. It is a few years after she’s finished her PhD, and she is being held at a US airport, interviewed extensively, and spends the night in jail, with no idea why. Again, the story is dialogue-heavy, but this time we gain more insight into Claire’s thoughts and emotions through snippets of internal narration:

My vision grows dark and furry around the edges. I feel like I’m about to throw

up, which surprises me. I haven’t thrown up from anything but alcohol since I

was fourteen. I keep expecting to wake up and find that I’m still on the

aeroplane, up over the Atlantic, my head on a stranger’s shoulder, dreaming this

whole thing up. (Ulman 247)

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By making reference to when she was fourteen, Claire is signposting the dichotomy between childhood and adulthood. Reflecting on the situation, she feels like a child and is clearly still resisting adult responsibility, hoping she’ll wake up from a dream.

Previously, Claire dealt with trying situations with sharp, quick wit, but the title of the short story suggests that it won’t work this time around. Her usual “charm” is subdued in favour of desperation and anxiety; she’s starting to show her vulnerability:

The officers ignore us. If I was Nicolas Cage I’d be elbowing someone in the jaw

right now, but I’m me, so I cry tears onto my feet and watch them sink into my

shoes. (Ulman 258)

She’s still making jokes and references to pop culture, while feeling powerless and upset.

When she’s in jail overnight, Claire is sharing a cell with a Polish woman named Bobbi, who doesn’t speak much English and, hence, asks incessant questions in vernacular reminiscent of a toddler. Claire is forced to be the adult in this situation; the dynamic in the closed space shifts the power to Claire as she tries to remain calm and answer

Bobbi’s questions. In the jail cell, Claire imagines herself back at the airport, sitting among the officers as equals and chatting about their relationships, offering advice and wisdom. This is an interesting shift, because Claire has previously relied on others who she sees as more mature than herself, including her ex-boyfriend, Luke, who she calls for help at the airport, admitting “I just call the person I always call when I’m having a freak-out” (Ulman 254). The visualised conversation with the officers is a vehicle to understand her coming of awareness. She experiences epiphanic moments through her imagined and profound advice to other characters: “I want to say it’s not always the amount of time you experience something that determines its impact on you” (Ulman

259). To the female officer, she imagines saying: “You shouldn’t judge all relationships by one bad one. It sounds like you ended up with the wrong person. But you might meet the right person one day” (Ulman 268). In the previous few stories, Claire demonstrates

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an unwillingness to learn from the past but, in these moments, it’s almost as if Claire is talking back to a younger, less enlightened version of herself.

In just_a_girl, character growth is stunted by Layla’s age and the short time span of the novel. Krauth is clearly aware of this fledgling journey toward maturity, writing Layla’s character as hypocritical and contradictory in her thoughts and actions, much like a real- life young person trying to figure out the world. Early in the novel, Layla is getting sick of her 18-year-old boyfriend, Davo, and is semi-interested in Marco, who she works with, while carrying on a developing online relationship with the older stranger, youami33, and also Mr C (Pastor Bevan):

I don’t believe in just one boyfriend. The more you try out the better. I’m not

going to be like mum. Spending my whole life. Pining for just one guy. But

when the tables are turned. Nobody likes being dumped. Being played. But you

have to go through the motions. It’s better to shoot them before they shoot you.

(Krauth 85)

She is happy having more than one relationship at a time but also knows that no one likes being played. Later in the novel, when she finds out that Davo has probably cheated on her, her reaction is atypical of the cool she demonstrates in the above passage. Layla is upset and angry, catastrophising the situation to the point of imagining how she would react if she was at the top of one of the twin towers during the 9/11 attacks. When she confronts Davo and they break up, Layla drinks vodka alone until she vomits and passes out in the bathroom.

In one scene, Layla and her mother are shopping for a Year 10 formal dress. When they sit down for coffee and cake, Layla tells Margot that she knows about the time when she was a baby and Geoff was high on drugs and wanted to kill her. Margot contradicts the story emphatically, saying that she never left Layla alone and would definitely remember 270

if something like that happened. This leaves Layla feeling confused and annoyed, not sure who to believe:

As we look out into the food court the fluorescent light settles on her. And I see

the wrinkles. Just the beginnings of them. Dancing at her eyes. And the way she

hesitates before asking for the bill.

And it hits me for the first time. She’s not just my mother. She’s a woman living

alone. She’s uncertain of the future. She’s waiting for something to happen. She

doesn’t have any friends. She’s shy. She’s beyond lonely.

I let her have the last mouthful of cake. (Krauth 171)

This moment is particularly epiphanic for Layla as it’s the first time she talks about her mother, or notices her, with a glimpse of sympathy and sensitivity – perhaps even empathy. She is seeing Margot as her own woman for the first time, separate from her role as parent. Layla experiences a similar moment of awareness when she says goodbye to Geoff at the airport in Queensland, reflecting on their time together at the music festival. She describes his embarrassing appearance, but then says: “He was just so wrong. But he is trying to do things right” (Krauth 151).

Layla starts to understand the true nature of her relationship with Davo and the disconnect between them: “I’m having one of those days. Where I can’t think of a thing to say. It’s like the more time we spend apart. The less we have to talk about” (Krauth

158). Layla doesn’t pause too long to consider the realisation; she merely presents these moments to us in fast-paced narration that soon moves on to the next topic. As readers, we are allowed to pause in the moment and reflect on what it means for Layla. After the break-up with Davo, Layla is remembering what she loved about him and feels like “an oil tanker has crashed into my chest” (Krauth 183). At the same time, she starts to notice

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what was lacking in their relationship, building on her earlier realisation, but this time reflecting on it further:

But there was always that gap between us. I’d say stuff he just didn’t get. He

wouldn’t admit it but there’d be a pause. And he’d look away pretending he was

thinking it through. Or he’d say, Get a life, Layla. As if what I was saying was

stupid. Maybe that’s why I didn’t say I love you. I think I was hooked on him.

But he didn’t make me think about much. (Krauth 184)

Reading Glory This (Moo) at the start of my PhD, when I was just beginning to create ideas for my own writing, I was initially taken by the style of prose. The narrative is fast- paced and fragmented, with short, incomplete sentences that situate the reader firmly in the moment. The way the characters speak to each other, and the external narration, is evocative of how these characters communicate with each other in real life and it lends a certain “authenticity” to the story that I really enjoyed reading: “Waking, reaches for a fag. Automatic” (Moo 15). Despite stylistic similarities to Halfway to Nowhere and just_a_girl, Glory This differs in its lack of character self-reflexivity. We occasionally gain insight into Mayne’s internalised thoughts, but they aren’t particularly reflective.

Mayne is a character of few words so her “symbolic measures of growth” (Frouman-

Smith 110) are more difficult to decipher than in the first-person narration of characters in other texts. The transitional moments of growing awareness come in our own interpretations of the events in the story and Mayne’s actions and reactions.

At a party in the first scene, Mayne walks in on her boyfriend kissing another boy. At the age of 15, she doesn’t know what to do except leave the room, tell her friends what she saw, and then leave the party. The confrontation that follows the next day is lukewarm; it’s Mayne’s friend Angel who confronts Nafe: “Well watcha been doin, Nafe? You jus been usen her all this time?” (Moo 18). Mayne remains passive during the private

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conversation with Nafe, barely saying a word and there’s no resolution to follow. It’s

Mayne’s passivity, and her actions following the event, that show us her emotion; for example, at subsequent parties, she refuses to kiss boys who show interest, using Nafe as an excuse, even though he cheated on her.

Throughout the novella, Mayne experiences brief flashes of insight that situate her outside the immediacy of the story for a moment. For example, when they’re escaping the ACDC riot, the phrase “Mayne takes a last look so she can say she did” (Moo 42) indicates that Mayne is experiencing a moment of awareness and trying to capture the scene in her memory and tell people about it one day. She is clearly more self-aware than the sparse narration implies.

Longer descriptions of people and places break up the dialogue. Mayne’s observations of class, Australian society, and subculture indicate her search for identity:

People in hand knits and cashmere, women with country ponytails blonded in

Toorak Road. Laughing with a big toss your head back for not too long and like

you know everything. And the wind, the bare swept coast, ugly as hell. Sucked

in for sure, with the poor relations in the flat lots and fibros of Rosebud privy to

the secrets of the estuary and flowering gums and quiet sandy streets and black

swan refugees. (Moo 70-1)

Despite Mayne’s verbal reticence, we can also follow the subliminal currents of her conflicted feelings for Snigs. While Mayne and Snigs seem to achieve little to no outward personal or emotional growth throughout the story, their simpatico is unobtrusively rendered within the narrative:

—You with someone Snigs?

—Why?

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—Jus wonderin.

—Not really. Sometimes. What’s the story with yours?

—Walked in on him and his best mate.

—How?

—At a party.

—Well, at least he’s interestin. (Moo 47)

The scant descriptions of Snigs’ appearance shows Mayne’s infatuation, including the way that she copies Snigs’ haircut later in the story: “Snigs so small but takes up nearly all the sky” (Moo 43) and “Snigs all small and spunky” (Moo 82). Part Two of the novella is an extended moment in Mayne and Snigs’ developing relationship. They hang out, walking around Frankston and The Pines, smoking and drinking with other groups of kids, going back to Snigs’ house, and enjoy random snippets of conversation, over the course of one long, hot summer night. Through their limited dialogue, we learn more of

Mayne’s past and family life; in opening up to Snigs, we can see Mayne’s feelings grow:

“And Mayne knowing that maybe Snigs is the only one who can say it was okay” (Moo

100).

In one scene at Snigs’ house, Mayne asks her about the future and if she’ll ever leave her house “like when you’re sixteen or whatever and get a job and stuff” (Moo 84). Snigs replies: “Y’mean when I’m the tea lady at the Bata shoe factory?” (Moo 84) before they both fall asleep. Snigs is clearly aware of her working-class social milieu. Despite the fact that Mayne pretends not to care about the future, this snippet of conversation shows that she is becoming more aware of what happens next.

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The coming of awareness as open-ended narrative

If journeys toward maturity are defined by several moments of epiphany and a gradual self-transformation, these moments are not bound by heteronormative notions of age.

Therefore, a coming of age is not about age, but rather awareness of a character as they move through their experiences. Moments of realisation and understanding allow a character to grow and change, but not necessarily reach any perceived notions of adulthood, maturity, or finality. As we know, a character grows and changes far beyond the end of the story. The coming of awareness, therefore, is open-ended.

In “Epic and Novel”, Bakhtin writes:

the novel inserts into these other genres an indeterminacy, a certain semantic

openendedness, a living contact with the unfinished, still-evolving contemporary

reality (the openended present). (7)

In the same essay, Bakhtin notes that in bildungsroman novels, the authors’ prerequisites implied that “the hero should not be portrayed as an already completed and unchanging person but as one who is evolving and developing, a person who learns from life” (“Epic and Novel” 10). He did not put forward that the hero must conclude with higher moral standing or greater awareness, but simply that they should be “evolving and developing”, presumably without end. Just as we can’t plan or control our own life path, it would seem contradictory to plan a character’s narrative arc in fiction, particularly with such a neat resolution as to eschew all indication of further self-transformation. In the final turn of the page, we can understand the protagonist’s level of awareness explicitly through the narration, or implicitly through our interpretation as readers.

In literary scholar Franco Moretti’s article, “The Bildungsroman as Symbolic Form”, he theorises two plot principles that capture the ideologies of the text – “classification” and

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“transformation”. The predominant difference between the two principles is whether a clear, marked ending is represented in the narrative arc of the text:

When classification is strongest … narrative transformations have meaning in so

far as they lead to a particularly marked ending: one that establishes a

classification different from the initial one but nonetheless perfectly clear and

stable… (Moretti 7)

Therefore, the classification principle implies that the meaning in the story is found in a traditional narrative arc that includes beginning, middle, and, most importantly, end: “the meaning of events lies in their finality…” (Moretti 7). On the other hand, the transformation principle is more subversive and less bound by the notion of finality.

Instead, meaning lies in the story’s lack of boundaries as an “open-ended process”

(Moretti 7).

In “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel”, Bakhtin introduces the idea of the chronotope of the threshold:

…highly charged with emotion and value, the chronotope of threshold … is as

the chronotope of crisis and break in a life. The word ‘threshold’ itself already

has a metaphorical meaning in everyday usage (together with its literal meaning),

and is connected with the breaking point of a life, the moment of crisis, the

decision that changes a life (or the indecisiveness that fails to change a life, the

fear to step over the threshold). In literature, the chronotope of the threshold is

always metaphorical and symbolic, sometimes openly but more often implicitly.

(248)

While the notion of the chronotope of the threshold evokes an understanding of the coming of age trope, Bakhtin merely refers to this threshold moment as “metaphorical or

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symbolic”, meaning readers are left to interpret incomplete journeys. Further, Ingrid

Johnston explores four Canadian YA texts using Bakhtin’s chronotope of the threshold, arguing that his work serves to “emphasize the agency of individuals within the realities of space and time” (140) and thereby recognises that place, society, and culture, as well as space and time, are all dynamic, in flow, and liminal.

Bakhtin’s chronotope of the threshold recognises the fluidity of identity; though a character might be on the “breaking point” and make decisions that could “change a life”, they are unlikely to reach full maturation or self-actualisation over the course of a text (particularly a YA text, as I. Johnston argues). Therefore, the open-endedness of certain stories shows characters during a prolonged threshold moment, focused on what

Bakhtin calls the “immediate present”. This is certainly true for El. We see her in this chronotopic moment on the threshold, but she doesn’t know what’s next, and neither do we.

In the second-last chapter of Halfway to Nowhere, El is at Gabby’s house, where she tells

Gab that she’s “getting her shit together” and not hanging out with Lux, Kik, or Mace anymore:

She doesn’t say anything. Sips her smoothie and stares out the window. Looking

like she’s got a lot to say. Maybe she won’t take my word for it. Like she knows

as well as I do that I’d go running the minute I heard from Kik or Lux, or even

Pum, again. (179)

In the contradiction between the words she says in conversation and in her own mind, readers can interpret El’s mental state and growth, or lack thereof. When they’re sitting outside by the pool, El sheds light on her potentially less-than-stable mental state:

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‘I wish I was crazy.’ I sit up straight. ‘Seriously Gab. Do you ever wish you were

crazy? Like, diagnosed? So that you had an excuse for all the shit days and the

weird moods?’

‘I don’t know. I guess so.’ I can tell she doesn’t get it.

‘Sometimes I wish I had cancer, just so people would have an excuse to care.’

‘El, that’s heavy. And stupid.’

‘And self-indulgent.’ I slump onto my back, throw a hand over my eyes again.

‘Yeah. I wasn’t going to say it, but you’re welcome.’ (180)

El continues to express uncertainty about life and the future: “I just don’t know what I’m doing” (180). Gab then scolds El about not staying in contact with her mother, which brings a cyclical nature to the story as we already know of El’s troubled relationship with her mother through flashbacks and brief asides. However, El doesn’t deal with that part of her life in the final chapter; the information is simply left there and El doesn’t pick it up.

When El is on a solo bike ride at the end of the story, she receives a text from Mace for the first time in months. Her initial reaction is that she wants to see him, despite knowing that he’s getting married in a few days and that they’ve already said goodbye, ending the affair a few chapters earlier:

I’m excited when I text him. Heart pounding. It’s not the bike. Maybe it is. I

think about his favourite underwear, I know the ones. If I was getting married I’d

want to be free, too. To have a last fling. To fling forever. To move from one to

the other and back with no consequences and why can’t we all just be free to

love and fuck and aren’t we all just animals? Isn’t that okay? (184) 278

This passage demonstrates El’s inability to reconcile her growing maturity – that we see snippets of in her conversation with Gab – with her inclination to be free. She’s trying to justify her thoughts and actions. When Mace doesn’t respond within 20 minutes, El is angry that she let down her guard, leading to the spiral of events that follow. She sits for a while and tries to “feel the moment of anger” (184), as opposed to letting it slide past and not dealing with her emotion.

By the final page, El has made small decisions that demonstrate moments of epiphany or realisation that further her into the unknown life path. Some of these are recognisably different to the El we know at the beginning of the story; for example, she’s finally on a lease at her new apartment and has consciously distanced herself from certain people in her life. There’s no saying El won’t find herself back in another manipulative relationship or loitering on the fringes of new subcultures trying to find a space where she belongs. By throwing her phone into the water, she has by no means eradicated the power of social media but it is a small step toward greater change in her life.

Halfway to Nowhere ends when El is driving past Blackbutt Reserve by herself, closing the story in a cyclical fashion. In the scene where El first meets Mace, they drive past

Blackbutt with the headlights switched off. The direct juxtaposition of these two scenes at different points in the story allows readers to gain insight into El’s growth, or lack thereof. In the first scene, she screams and “loses her cool” because Mace is in control of the car and it’s his decision to turn off the headlights. El’s reference to “moving forward through empty space” (63) is a nod to the title of the novella. She knows she’s heading into the unknown. El mentions that she’s with “a guy who’s not my boyfriend” (63), which lends a particular sense of wild abandon and, perhaps, immaturity, to the scene. In the final scene, El’s spontaneous decision to drive past Blackbutt Reserve could indicate her lack of growth, particularly in that it’s quite a dangerous activity; however, she has changed from that earlier scene. She is also alone this time. She laughs when she’s

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driving with the headlights off, which could indicate a changed mental state for the better or worse. It’s up to the reader to decide.

The short stories that comprise Hot Little Hands (Ulman) represent a “symbolically demarcated liminal zone” (Viljoen and van der Merwe 20) in that they’re open-ended. In the end of “Withdrawal Method”, Claire has organised a ride to her abortion the next day and is walking back to her apartment. She is decidedly upbeat and plans to call her sister in London: “I am excited to speak to her. I am excited to tell her that I’m happy she has found love” (Ulman 56). The short story ends there. This is a marked difference in her reaction to her sister’s news (of dating Claire’s ex-boyfriend) earlier in the story. We are left wondering what happens next and how she deals with the abortion, and whether she is genuinely happy for her sister.

In “The Pretty One”, during a short exchange between Claire and Sy, Claire asks: “Are we there yet?” and Sy replies: “Not even nearly” (Ulman 128). The meaning is ambiguous; it’s not clear whether they’re talking about physical location, relationship status, or something bigger. As readers, we can interpret this on an esoteric level as conveying a level of foresight on the part of the author. Ulman knows where her characters are going to end up, and she’s warning us not to get comfortable. After Claire and Sy have broken up, Sy comes over to visit because Claire wants him to identify her new plant:

Really, the plant is a present from myself for myself to celebrate my twenty-

eighth birthday. Which is next week. It is the way I’m going to prove that I can

take care of something. I don’t take proper care of myself, or my relationships.

… It is my practice dog, and maybe my practice dog will be my practice

husband, and maybe my practice husband will be my practice adopted baby from

the Near East. (Ulman 142)

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Claire seems ready to grow up and take responsibility for herself and others, but then we learn that it’s only been three weeks since the break-up and that she’s not doing as well as she implies. When Sy observes that she’s giving the plant too much water, Claire responds: “I guess I love it too much” (Ulman 143). The reason why they broke up was because Claire was smothering Sy, in the same way she seems a bit too obsessive about her new plant:

This isn’t going well. I invited him over to show him the plant, so he’d know that

I’ve changed, can take responsibility and keep a promise to something. I wanted

him to know that I’m not a mess any more, but he’s standing in the middle of it,

and I know it’s all he can see. (Ulman 143)

It seems ironic that Claire is worried about Sy perceiving her as irresponsible, when he is the teenager. In this scene, we can recognise that Claire might not be learning from the past or growing from her experiences just yet. The final paragraph of the short story shows Claire standing on a street corner watching Sy ride past with another girl on the back of his bike. She stands unnoticed and laments:

I wish I could say that I feel nothing, but I feel something. … That maybe then

[if she sees him again] I will be able to look right at him and see exactly what he

is, what he always was, and what he should already be to me now: just another

kid on a bike. (Ulman 144)

In a more classic bildungsroman narrative, Claire might stand and smile to herself, content in the knowledge that she has moved on from her youthful crush and ready to take the next step into the world as a fully-fledged mature adult. However, in this contemporary example of a 20-something finding her way in the world, we learn that she still has a long way to go in figuring it out, whatever “it” is. Claire looks at Sy and realises that he looks different now, “smaller and less vivid” (Ulman 144). 281

“Your Charm Won’t Help You Here” ends with Claire imagining what her life will look like in the future, starting with “five hours from now” (Ulman 291). This is a clever method of closing off the story while keeping the narration alive and in the present. In the final moment, Claire exists in a literal “transit zone” (Ulman 251), belonging to no country and with no understanding of why she spent the night in jail and is being deported out of the US. Like El driving into the night with the headlights off, Claire is unsure of what is next, kept in the dark about the short- and long-term future. While the story technically ends in this liminal zone, as a cyclical journey from the opening of the short story to the close, Claire imagining what she’s doing in the future transports the reader to an alternate reality and gives us liberty to follow Claire’s story a little further.

As readers, we will never know if this visualised situation eventuates or merely exists inside Claire’s head; we don’t know whether Claire is ever allowed back into the US, if she makes it to the UK, if her friends ever talk to her again. We are, however, allowed into Claire’s future for a moment:

Three years from now, I will still not be allowed back into the States. I’ll just be

watching it from afar, like everybody else. And, strangely, it will only be when

I’m in yoga class, holding certain poses, that I’ll remember myself back there, in

the Bay Area, as though the memories are somehow locked inside my muscles.

(Ulman 292)

She makes specific reference to a coming of age in the final few sentences of the story, which closes the entire collection of short stories:

Before I myself got turned around and kicked out. Before I came of age long

after I had come of age. Before I took the journey back to where I started, and

started again. (Ulman 292)

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Claire recognises that she will be “starting again” soon – physically, emotionally, and in her career and relationships, leaving behind the stories and memories of her years and experience living in the US. The reference to the coming of age suggests that she is, or will soon, actually come of age in a more spiritual sense, despite having come of age physically (adolescence, puberty, etc.) far earlier in life. Despite Claire’s epiphanic moments, Ulman makes sure to ground readers firmly in the present with the final paragraph:

But right now, still in this waiting room, in the transit zone, I lean my head onto

Bobbi’s shoulder, and doze on and off for the hours until my flight. … she

doesn’t shake me off, even when I start to drool. (292)

By the end of just_a_girl (Krauth), Layla doesn’t have any answers. Despite the story being centred heavily on her burgeoning sexuality, including Layla’s sexual experiences with her boyfriend, older strangers, and the married pastor at her mother’s church, she doesn’t manage to lose her virginity. In the beginning, she is party to a seemingly powerless sexual situation in a hotel with an older stranger and, in the end, she willingly continues her relationship with Marco, a boy with whom she struggles for sexual agency:

I want to be in a bed. In my own bed. I could keep going. This might be the right

time. But Marco has his own point. And it’s like a full stop and he’s already

reached it. My mum would say his mother brought him up well. (Krauth 222)

Toward the end of the novel, Layla says: “I used to think I wanted more. But something’s changed. It’s like the closer I get the less I want it” (Krauth 206). In this way, just_a_girl manages to grasp the idea that a character’s growth at the tender age of

14 years (15 by the end of the book) is by no means a defining process, or indeed a finished one. Layla is still figuring it all out and making mistakes along the way, punctuated by brief moments of epiphany and realisation. During a scene when her and 283

Pastor Bevan are “mucking around” on her mum’s bed, she tells him that she’s not ready to have sex. She wants to wait until she’s 16, because “Fifteen just seems too skanky.

You can’t tell your kids you lost your virginity at 15. They’ll just want to do it even younger” (Krauth 208).

In the final scene, Marco and Layla fight after the senior dance. They go for a drive in the middle of the night, hit a kangaroo and crash; they save the joey by wrapping it in a picnic blanket and lay down together in the park. When they crash, Layla says: “They say time slows down and it’s true. But not enough for you to fix your mistakes” (Krauth

257). She acknowledges that she’s been making mistakes, including the car accident, and will probably continue to do so. Marco apologises to Layla and she seems to forgive him, kissing his neck and wrapping herself into his body. The last line of the novel reads:

“The concrete wraps around us like a cold hug” (Krauth 259). The concrete is cold, not comforting, so they probably won’t stay for long.

Toward the end of Glory This (Moo), Mayne experiences moments of insight at faster intervals, building toward an ending where we feel like we might get answers about her relationship with Snigs. When Mayne, Snigs, and Flats are at Nafe’s house, Mayne questions Nafe about their relationship:

—Flats tol’ me that you and him been seein each other since always, since before

me.

…

—Was I coverin up for y’?

—What?

—Coverin up for y’. That why y’went out wif me?

Quiet, maybe it’s true.

—I liked y’ Mayne.

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—You’d say that anyway.

—Yeah, I would, but I did.

—I thought you and Flats were best mates an’ everything was normal. (Moo

144)

In the same scene, Mayne notes that Snigs doesn’t make a big deal of the situation, the way Angel might, that Snigs just “takes it in her stride”. When Snigs asks if she’s okay, she responds: “I must be thick, never even guessin” (Moo 145). They talk about visiting

Snigs’ friend in prison and, when they suggest going out and doing something before

Nafe’s parents wake up, Nafe declines because he’s got a job now and doesn’t want to

“pull a sickie”. The other three don’t respond to this, but this is one of the first times that any of the teenagers has shown more adult-like responsibility. In the working-class setting, perhaps they’re all glimpsing their own future in this moment.

The second-last paragraph is the longest in the novella, containing banal yet detailed descriptions of the frosty morning as Mayne, Snigs, and Flats walk to a place unknown.

They’re wandering aimlessly, probably still drunk from their binge drinking at Nafe’s house, and they’re not talking to each other. The scenery is the same as it has been throughout most of the story, particularly in the preoccupation with colours of the sky.

Further, the mention of the shut milkbar with “yesterday’s headlines still out front” (Moo

147) suggests this liminal moment. Mayne and the other characters repeat the same patterns, visit the same places, talk about the same people. Each day blends into one long moment.

In the final paragraph, the three of them find a playground: “Walking up the slides, hanging on the monkeybars, the sky huge and upside down” (Moo 147) pointing to their youth and sense of aimlessness. The “upside down sky” suggests they might start seeing things differently, that things might be on the threshold of change. The end, however, is

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open and vague, with only a suggestion of what might happen next. They notice a group of people “looking pissed, lost and like nothing else” (Moo 147). Snigs knows that these kids are punks. While the Sharpie era spanned most of the 1960s and ‘70s, a new subculture was rising out of the ashes toward the end of the latter decade. In 1977, the punk era began in Australia. From the rather allusive final word of Glory This, we might assume the Sharpie culture is coming to an end, making way for something new.

In discussing the symbolic interpretation of Victor Turner’s work on liminality, Kapferer recognises that “The ordinary everyday realities that human beings live, construct and pass through are continuously forming, merging and flowing into each other” (19). He refers to movements through and between spaces as “chaotic … always changing and shifting”, with the ability to “alter standpoint” (19). Liminal narratives, therefore, hold

“transformational power”; they act as “a levelling, subversion and negation of quotidian lived-in structures of life” (Kapferer 17). An open ending can “stimulate questions”

(Nikolajeva “Children’s Literature” 82) and “leave an impact on the reader” (Treagus

21).

In one scene in Halfway to Nowhere, El is on a train and looking at “the most amazing sunset I’ve ever seen” (152). She takes picture after picture on her iPhone, obsessed with trying to capture the moment in all its beauty and stir some kind of emotion within herself. Then, she recognises that the moment can’t be captured, because it has passed:

“Lamenting the moment before it’s been and gone; I’m in it and I want to stay. How am I supposed to remember this incredible sky tomorrow or next year?” (152). As Rachel

Blau DuPlessis argues in Writing Beyond the Ending, “artistic resolution” in the form of a linear plot can serve as an “ideological solution to the fundamental contradictions that animate the work” (3). In the above texts, the open ending illuminates, but doesn’t solve, the ideological contradictions within. After all, if we never quite know when we become adults, how can journeys be tied with a neat red bow by the end of the story?

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Chapter 3

Embodying Space

And there I am, driving and laughing like a fucking maniac with the lights off

and no one by my side. (185)

The final sentence of Halfway to Nowhere sees El driving her own car. She has taken control, turning the headlights off herself. And this time, she is alone, which is in contrast to the way she incessantly preoccupies her time moving between social events, and through and between platonic, romantic, and sexual relationships. She has also thrown her phone into the harbour, disregarding her virtual self and removing herself from the anxieties of technology. El’s experience of the female self and the digital self in a rapidly transforming world are narrative throughlines in the story. What happens beyond this final sentence is contentious, but I hope readers could see that El is recognising the threads of her growing autonomy as a woman in the 21st century.

Although predominantly in relation to technologically modified bodies, Professor Sherryl

Vint’s idea of the body as threshold is thought-provoking in the context of exploring contemporary female identity. She writes that the body occupies “the liminal space between self and not-self, between nature and culture, between the inner ‘authentic’ person and social persona” (Vint 16). Further, Vint argues the boundaries between “what is self and what is not … have always been unstable” (17); an anxiety further enhanced in an era when young people move seamlessly between real-world and online spaces. In her article on between spaces and female embodiment, Kath Browne writes:

“Geographies of sexualities have argued that sexualities are fluid, contextually enacted and, importantly, spatially contingent…” (123). In the final scene of Halfway to

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Nowhere, El is owning her body in its physical space, and simultaneously embracing the metaphysical unknown ahead. Her body and mind are indivisibly together on the threshold. Interestingly, Nancy Chodorow posits female development as embodied within the self as well as within the wider world, as opposed to Cartesian mind/body separation and duality: “The basic feminine sense of self is connected to the world; the basic masculine sense of self is separate” (169). Space is not a passive agent; instead, space creates activity and meaning within the narrative.

While the classic form of the bildungsroman was a tale of boys coming to age and emerging as men, El’s experience is of embodying her identity as female in a digital era.

The bildungsroman was ballast for looking at other female-narrated contemporary novels. At the same time as analysing gender, I became interested in the way young female characters use technology and social media, noticing a connection between their experience of being female and the spaces they inhabit in both real and virtual worlds.

Technology and social media can be both empowering and disempowering for these characters as they navigate their “liminal status” (Jones “Becoming-Rhythm” 386).

Posthumanism is an ideology often associated with science fiction, but I’ve found it useful to explore in the context of 21st century realistic fiction texts, as a way of reifying and expanding notions of identity in the digital world. In a recent, comprehensive text on posthumanism in YA literature, Victoria Flanagan defines the concept as a

“philosophical exploration of the relationship(s) between human beings and technology”

(4), and one that encourages a “radical reformation of human subjectivity” (5).

According to Flanagan, feminism and posthumanism intersect because each “seeks to deconstruct the essential, unified humanist subject in favour of a more fluid conceptualisation of subjectivity” (106). She argues that because posthumanism is concerned with concepts of selfhood, embodiment is crucial in understanding and reconciling discourses of “otherness” (Flanagan 17-18).

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When I refer to embodiment in this chapter, I’m leaning toward a definition influenced by social psychology and ideas of the embodied mind, as well as one that takes into account the importance of real and virtual spaces for young female characters. As Thecla

Schiphorst writes in the foreword to Identity, Performance and Technology, “The body invents technology as it absorbs it, absolves technology as it critiques it, and reduces technology as it claims it” (xi). The digital self, the female self, the body, and the natural world, are all examples of that which has been perceived as “other” in Western society, particularly influenced by Cartesian mind/body dualism that “considered consciousness as the seat of human identity” (McCallum 31). This dualism is also an inherent theme in feminist discussion of the female bildungsroman, wherein “love and work, sexuality and autonomy, body and mind are set in inevitable conflict” (Frye 2).

According to Flanagan:

Women have traditionally been excluded by humanist constructions of the

subject, precisely because feminine subjectivity is so closely linked to the

physical body and its cultural signification. (101)

Given that adolescence has previously been seen as a liminal, transitional zone between the more recognised categories of childhood and adulthood, we could also look to notions of youth and adolescence as examples of “other”. Brooks argues that representations of youth culture in mainstream media can disempower and “other” young people themselves, eliding “any notion of agency” (1). Brooks posits that youth has been reconstructed as object, an idea which can certainly be applied more specifically to the young female protagonist in fiction. We only need to think here of the negative reception of grunge fiction in Australia in the 1990s to see her point. Mark Davis’ Gangland provides an empirical overview of the cultural generationalism of the 1990s, with a focus on youth culture: “youth and their preoccupations are being discredited, even demonised,

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in the media” (xii). This was a time before social media and technology became so widely used by young people; the inherent generationalism that “others” adolescence is only exacerbated now in Western culture.

Flanagan argues that posthumanist discourse enables abstract ideas about identity, and the way we understand ourselves as human in a digital world. In writing about capturing the present moment in fiction (as influenced by Bakhtin), and suggesting that identity creation is liminal, I’m positing a more expansive, holistic, and embodied idea of being in the world. For young female protagonists in fiction, this means reconciling their female bodies with other ideas of self, such as the online version of themselves as created through social media. The real and the virtual intertwine for young characters who spend a large part of their time creating relationships and interacting with others online, leading to a more embodied coming of awareness. Technology intersects real life with digital experience and situates stories like Halfway to Nowhere, just_a_girl, and No Limit within a particular spatiotemporal frame of reference. Conversely, Glory This is not set in the

21st century, but Mayne’s experience as female is also influenced by her epoch and the spaces she inhabits.

In this chapter, I look to the gendered coming of awareness for female characters, and the way in which they exist in gendered liminal spaces – between empowered and disempowered, real and virtual, external (body) and internal (mind).

The female coming of awareness

I would like to imagine the way to womanhood not as a single path to a clear

destination but as the endless negotiation of a crossroads … she lives her gender

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as a continuous movement in contradictory directions, some more sanctioned

than others. (Fraiman x)

As a female writer, I’ve been drawn to novels and stories by a female author, with a female young protagonist, and it would feel remiss not to include an analysis of gender in my exegesis. During my reading of contemporary Australian texts, I began to notice the themes inherent to those I had chosen to analyse, and in my own creative work. The way the young characters search for meaning and create their identities is inextricably linked with their experience of being female. In their own ways, each young female protagonist navigates gender stereotypes and hypocrisies, sex, power and empowerment, and is forced to reconcile their femininity with sociocultural expectations of dichotomous gender roles. In Halfway to Nowhere, I can see a narrative world developing that looks similar to the one Ferres theorised when reading Justine Ettler’s The River Ophelia. My creative work might also be called one that “asks questions about sex and power in a postmodern, postfeminist, urban world” (Ferres 72).

It is becoming more commonplace to see empowered feminist characters emerging in popular fiction, and YA fiction in particular (such as Katniss in The Hunger Games by

Suzanne Collins), and young feminist personalities dominating the media (like the oft- outspoken Lena Dunham, and 20-year-old Tavi Gevinson, who became famous when she was 12, as a result of her anti-establishment fashion blog Style Rookie). While I admire those who are giving female protagonists a strong, feminist voice in fiction, I wasn’t going to tread the same path. El’s chronotope is influenced by discourses of feminism and postfeminism, but she is not necessarily an empowered feminist character. In fact, I didn’t specifically write Halfway to Nowhere with the issue of gender in mind. It wasn’t until the editing stages, and in comparing my work with other contemporary realistic examples of female-narrated fiction, that I noticed the strong narrative throughlines of

El’s gendered coming of awareness.

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In Children’s Literature Comes of Age, Nikolajeva argues the male and female chronotope as separate entities when looking at children’s books for boys and girls.

Building on the idea of male time as linear and female plots of development as more cyclical, Nikolajeva writes:

The male chronotope is determined by the basic premise of the genre, that is, the

protagonist’s primarily superficial maturation. Male time involves a relatively

simple evolution: a child grows up or an adolescent becomes sexually mature in

a movement from birth to death. (“Children’s Literature” 125)

In books for girls, Nikolajeva argues, the chronotope is different – “closed and confined”, yet “continuous both in time and space” (“Children’s Literature” 125), where girls usually move from one confined space to another, as dictated by the sociocultural context of classic children’s novels.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the bildungsroman certainly captured the culture of the time; women could hardly hope to embark on a physical journey, leaving “the repressive atmosphere of home … to make his [sic] way independently in the city” (Buckley 17-8).

Despite the intrinsic patriarchy of the bildungsroman, contemporary reappropriations allow for both male and female stories, oftentimes through a feminist lens (Frouman-

Smith; Abel, Hirsch, and Langland; Mori; Treagus; Frye; DuPlessis). At the same time, the idea of an exclusively female form is similarly fraught with tension as the culturally homogenous, classical genre. As Joanne Frye argues, “women … have too often found themselves living men’s stories rather than telling and living their own” (v). New dimensions and readings of female protagonists have been further compounded by new theories of female psychology that don’t wholly prescribe to the traditional male paradigm of understanding. While the 18th century heroine’s limited options were harmony in marriage and motherhood, death, or attempted rebellion in the form of

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adultery resulting in punishment (Abel, Hirsch, and Langland; Frye; DuPlessis), we, as readers, are “faced with new possibilities … through the influence of feminism”

(Frouman-Smith 101).

Feminist discussion of the bildungsroman and feminist literary criticism (see The New

Feminist Criticism edited by Elaine Showalter [ed.]) from the 1980s provides an interesting look at the continuing divide between male and female experience as represented in fiction. In The Voyage In, Abel, Hirsch, and Langland trace psychoanalytic and feminist theories that influence new readings of the bildungsroman:

“In Freudian theory, women remain culturally marginal, passive, dependent, and infantile” (10). The authors suggest:

…by highlighting interpersonal relationships rather than anatomy, feminist

theorists construct a picture of femininity as alternative, not inferior, to

masculinity. (Abel, Hirsch, and Langland 10)

In her essay for The Voyage In, Susan J. Rosowski notes that the female journey is different, “inward”, and moves toward a “revelation of the disparity between … self- knowledge and the nature of the world” (49). It’s quite widely agreed that the female journey is cyclical, as opposed to linear, and more inward, as opposed to externalised through a physical exploration of social space; it is “between two selves” (Rosowski 49);

“more conflicted, less direct” (Abel, Hirsch, and Langland 11), and a more “spiritual growth” (Hirsch 32). Of course, this discussion is now dated, but it still influences the way people read gender in a contemporary context.

The idea of interiority, in particular, speaks to those texts I’ve chosen to analyse in this exegesis, wherein the narration is first-person and hyper self-aware (Halfway to Nowhere and just_a_girl) or focalised through the perspective of a single female protagonist (No

Limit and Glory This). Moretti writes about the notion of youth as representing “an 294

uncertain exploration through social space” (4) that has now given rise to “an interiority not only fuller than before, but … perennially dissatisfied and restless” (4). According to

Frye, “The internal dilemma yields the forced choice between being either an acceptable female or nonfemale adult” (2). In a contemporary context, this internal conflict incorporates both a universal and fragmented understanding of female coming of awareness.

El’s “interior journey toward self-transformation” (Mori 538) could be interpreted as quite passive. She’s unsure of herself, her body, her desires, her friends, and her future, and tends toward being swept along for the ride by more dominant characters in her life.

On the surface, El might seem like an empowered, sexually mature 20-something living in a time of almost-third-wave feminism, but her internal narration tells another story.

She struggles to reconcile her feminist ideals with her innate femininity and the gender hypocrisy around her: “We’re supposed to eat like men, drink like men, look like ladies.

It’s a fine line between tomboy and princess and we have to play it right” (2-3). On the first page of the novella, El’s analysis of how to “play” her gender is a nod to her constant struggle for agency in some of her relationships. She also mentions Puberty

Blues, in which the girls hanging out on the beach are there for decorative purposes, watching the boys surf and then going to fetch their snacks and drinks from the kiosk at sporadic intervals, never daring to take a sip or bite for themselves. This reference situates the context of El’s story. She’s familiar with the gender divide of the past, as represented in the 1970s setting of Puberty Blues, and acknowledges that’s not really how it works now. In the 21st century, the gender divide is more fluid, not just in the gradual incorporation of LGBTQI community rights into legitimate political and social debate, but in how males and females are expected to act.

Kik and El’s relationship is an example of the hypocrisy that El flags in the opening chapter of Halfway to Nowhere. They fluctuate between blokey mateship and something

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more. Even though they never actually have sex, they play with the boundaries of their apparently platonic friendship. It becomes clear that Kik wants the best of both worlds.

He keeps El at arm’s length throughout the story, treating her like a best friend, but then crossing the line when he feels like it. El is aware of her sexual power, and sometimes tries to seduce Kik, but she becomes “sick of getting all worked up then shut down” (15).

Conversely, when Kik tries to seduce El, she often becomes passive and lets herself be taken away in the moment, even though she knows it won’t go anywhere. In one scene, they’re swimming at the Bogey Hole:

I dive under the icy water, emerging slowly right in front of Kik’s stationary

body. I’ve got his attention. Wrap my legs around his waist, arms around his

neck. Wet kiss on his lips, droplets of salty ocean water falling from our

eyelashes. (98)

El’s sultry confidence is quickly replaced by awkwardness and passivity when Kik throws her into the air and away from him. El’s language changes immediately as she describes “squealing”, “splashing awkwardly”, and “spluttering”; the tone of the scene also shifts, as El describes them “[circling] each other like animals at prey” (98). Then,

Kik says:

‘You’re not like most girls … You don’t mind a bit of rough and tumble. You’re

not too bothered with being precious, you know? Plus you’re sexy when you

drink beer.’ (98-9)

She agrees with him, saying she “Never really cared much for what I look like” while admitting to the reader that it’s a “Blatant lie” (99). El clearly feels the pressure to act in the way Kik expects, to be “one of the boys” most of the time, but also feminine and sexual when the moment arises; this hypocrisy can be seen in the way Kik pairs

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stereotypically masculine behaviour of drinking beer, with the usually feminine trait of

“sexy”, in one approving compliment.

In the same scene, the conversation turns to sex and El says that she once had sex with a guy in a pool and “he said it felt like wearing six condoms” (99). Although it was Kik who started the conversation by musing whether it would be possible to have sex in the

Bogey Hole, he responds to El’s story by calling her a “slut”. He laughs as he says it, and

El laughs along, too. It’s clear that she is struggling to reconcile her need for acceptance and affection from Kik, with her relatively strong opinions on slut-shaming. She doesn’t find the confidence to be assertive. Further to the hypocrisy evidently playing out, when they go back to the van, Kik makes a move on El and says to her: “I knew you had a sexy side” (100). This particular scene reminds me of a passage from Gillian Flynn’s Gone

Girl, which became rather notorious on media platforms following the release of the homonymous movie in 2014. Lead female character, Amy, says the following to male protagonist, Nick, when they first meet at a party:

‘Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores

football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping … while somehow maintaining a size 2,

because Cool Girls are above all hot. … Cool Girls never get angry … Go ahead,

shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.’ (Flynn 210)

An opinion piece by Australian writer, Rosie Waterland, recently went viral, in which she argued that Flynn’s “Cool Girl” concept is all-too-familiar for women around the world, summarising it as “about compromising who you are so you can seem more like the women you think he wants you to be” (“The Lie”). The title for Waterland’s later- published memoir, The Anti-Cool Girl, is a kind of feminist nod to owning your femininity. I wrote El and Kik’s Bogey Hole scene loosely based on real-life experience, so the idea of the hypocritical “Cool Girl” concept definitely has particular resonance and

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is a prevailing zeitgeist in the current era. Masculinity, as opposed to femininity, is purported as something to be desired, which creates tension in El’s relationships in

Halfway to Nowhere.

El’s struggle for agency is internalised in her self-talk, rather than voiced in confrontations with others. She is in a constant powerplay with characters in her life, compounded by the fact that most of her relationships are triangulated: El and Lux are both friends with Kik, and they both like him, and he plays them against each other, while also remaining hung up on his ex, Bec; El is also having an affair with Mace, who is engaged to Bec. No one is exclusively in a relationship with one other person, which blurs the expected boundaries of conventional pairings, adding to El’s internal struggle.

When readers first meet Mace, El is at his house in the middle of the night, saying goodbye before he leaves for Sydney. Her own self-talk is contradictory to the dialogue with Mace. When she tries to say goodbye for the final time, essentially putting an end to the affair, Mace manipulates her skilfully by responding: “It’s not goodbye … You can’t stay away” (11). Rather than fight his response, El berates herself for her own lack of good judgement: “I wish he wasn’t right. I used to have a moral centre, I think” (11). She works up the strength to go to the car and leave, but then pulls over and texts him saying she wants to come back. In another scene with Mace, when they first have sex, El narrates:

There’s no mention of a condom, he just goes for gold and I don’t stop him

because apparently everything I’ve ever believed in is hiding under the bed with

my dignity. I feel nothing. (76)

When El and Mace kiss for the first time, El is proud of herself for making the first move, but when Mace tries to push it further and El denies him, he storms off: “I should’ve taken a moment to realise the speed with which I had the power then he had

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the power and all of a sudden I felt like shit” (68). El’s relationship with sex is inextricably linked with power, and, more specifically, her sense of powerlessness. In a flashback scene of her sixteenth birthday when she loses her virginity to Jeremy, she also loses her sense of identity: “My mind goes blank as he feeds himself into a bright blue condom” (16). A slight growth toward sexual maturity is evident when comparing El’s experience with Jeremy: “He kind of pushes my head down to his naked crotch and I don’t really know what I’m doing and he doesn’t make a noise or tell me what to do so after a while I just stop” (18), to the fact that she refuses to give head to Kik in the present day.

In a later scene, Kik is trying to convince El that Mace is a bad person: “he’s fucked, dude, he raped a chick” (117). El feels sick and confused, but doesn’t let her emotion show. She asks simple questions about the alleged rape situation, including what happened to the victim; Kik’s response is:

‘Well she like told a few friends and everyone kind of found out but that was it.’

He shrugs. As if I’m missing the point. (116)

She’s not sure whether to believe Kik and is deeply disturbed by the story, but still meets up with Mace later on. They spend the night together and when Mace leaves in the morning, she questions herself: “I should be thinking about the fact that maybe he raped a girl, maybe not. Maybe he’s in love with his fiancé, maybe he’s in love with me…”

(175).

Despite her struggle for agency with other characters in her life, El defies normative conventions of femaleness in her autonomy; she rejects her mother figure, moved out of home very early in life (while her brothers are still under her mother’s wing, to an extent), explicitly notes her lack of maternal instincts, and, most importantly, ends up on her own at the end of the narrative. Rather poignantly considering the open-ended 299

narrative, the way Halfway to Nowhere “severs … from formerly conventional structures of fiction and consciousness about women” is what DuPlessis calls “writing beyond the ending” (“Writing” x). I didn’t set out to write a specifically non-romantic ending; however, during my exegetical research on women’s developmental fiction, I’ve realised that El’s story was my attempt to rewrite conventional “happy ending” and “romance” plots often evident in young narrator novels:

Writing beyond the ending … produces a narrative that denies or reconstructs

seductive patterns of feeling that are culturally mandated, internally policed,

hegemonically poised. (DuPlessis “Writing” 5)

El also disrupts conventional gender expectations with her fluid sexual orientation.

Although homo-, bi- or heterosexuality are not issues dealt with explicitly, they hold an underlying presence in the narrative. Through conversations with others, El reveals snippets of her past relationships and alludes to the fact that she’s been in adult relationships with both females and males. During her conversation with Lux during their

“no bra girls night”, El says she prefers “going down on them [girls]” because it’s more

“delicate” (110). Browne argues that exploring the betweenness of sexed bodies

“contests the pre-existence of a dominant gender schema, and instead looks to the moments where the performativities of becoming woman… break down” (123). El’s body as “other” is subverted when boundaries dissolve between male/female and hetero/homosexuality. Her own body is what drives her desire and gives her autonomy at certain moments. In a scene with Lux, El is sexually assertive:

I grab around her tiny ribcage. She’s really bottom-heavy. ‘You’re freezing.’

Rub my hands up and down her sides. Thumbs push over her nipples and her

mouth parts slightly, eyes go a bit heavy as she stares at me and I lunge my head

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down, licking right on her sternum and feel her breath catch before I move my

mouth down over each nipple in turn… (111)

Just like in the scene with Kik, the tables turn and she loses her power, reverting to passivity:

I move back to take my shirt off when she sits up suddenly. Hands cupping her

breasts. ‘Pasta won’t cook itself.’ She smirks at me, reaching to the ground for

her top. (111)

El’s anxious self-talk returns when her body is effectively rejected. When she discovers that Lux has invited Kik over for “girls night”, she says:

Tonight they sleep in my bed and I curl up on the couch because that’s the type

of person I am. Don’t we all just go to sleep at night, one hand working between

our legs, thinking about no one in particular? (111)

El’s development as a female being leans more toward issues of identity, belonging, and empowerment, rather than any strong sense of feminist preoccupation:

A distinctive female “I” implies a distinctive value system and unorthodox

development goals, defined in terms of community and empathy rather than

achievement and autonomy. (Abel, Hirsch, and Langland 10)

During a scene at the Family Planning centre early in the story, El is talking about the young mothers and pregnant women in the waiting room with her. She acknowledges that she’s judging their stereotypical outfits and mannerisms and wondering whether they got pregnant on purpose:

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Where are the poor boys? Did they finish school? I always feel more sorry for

the boys. Girls have so much power. We can skip the pill or prick holes in

condoms if we want to keep a man. (12)

El observes the power of women and (albeit negative) autonomous decisions they might make about the future, while also mentioning the idea of girls entrapping boys into relationships, which is quite anti-feminist. While I haven’t written El’s character to be on an explicit journey toward becoming a “self-confident adult in control of her own destiny” (Ferguson 229), readers can certainly hope for this at some point beyond the ending. The situations El finds herself in, and her lack of power as female, would surely be frustrating for some readers. They might wish to grab her by the shoulders and tell her to run fast from Mace and Kik, or stand up for herself around Lux, and generally have more self-respect. In that way, El’s character becomes a metaphor for the competing ideological forces at play in modern-day feminist politics.

In just_a_girl (Krauth), Layla’s experience of growing up female in a regional area in

Australia contributes to her coming of awareness. The novel explores issues of gender hypocrisy and the divide between expected behaviours of young males and females, predominantly demonstrated through the use of technology and social media. Layla is developing an innate understanding of the power of her female body:

Mum says I have to be careful now that I’m in Year 9. Because men will start

looking at me in a new way. Fuckadoodle, they’ve been looking at me like that

for years. Especially when I eat Chupa Chups on the train. … But those men are

only looking. I don’t see how it’s a big deal. … But if a guy comes up behind

you in the dark. And he’s got a loaded gun. Or a taxi driver tries to grope you. In

the front seat when you’re a bit drunk. It’s hard to know what I’d do. In porn

films the women always say no. Then moan and writhe and say yes. And end up

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loving it. Or I’ve heard it’s best to go along with it. So you don’t get killed in the

end. (Krauth 26-7)

Clearly, Layla’s knowledge of being female is informed by her mother’s explicit moral force, and by the implicit messages of the adult entertainment industry and other media to which a teenage girl might be exposed. She understands that her femaleness could be a danger and makes her vulnerable in certain situations, but is receiving mixed socialisation messages.

Layla is growing more aware of the disempowering nature of being female, such as when she is sexually assaulted by her boss at the supermarket. While she actively seeks relationships with older men online, she is upset by the experience with her boss:

And I can’t not smile when he calls out to me again, Bella. I can’t not thank him

as he passes up the tins of tuna. In oil and brine and lemon and peppers and thai

chilli and italian tomato and basil. I can’t not respond as if innocent when he tells

me I have beautiful lips. I know I would have to go into the coolroom now if he

asked me.

I don’t want him anywhere near. (Krauth 69)

Layla acts passively around her sleazy boss, but conversely uses her sexuality to her advantage when it suits her: “I don’t see the point in wasting time. If you want a guy make it clear and go for it” (Krauth 181). The entire novel, therefore, is bound up in this dichotomous idea, and the space between is where Layla creates her identity and begins to understand herself.

In a scene when Davo is coming to pick her up to go shopping for a Year 10 formal dress, Layla compares her dog’s disinterest in Davo with her own; she is already growing

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tired of him, and suspects that he has cheated on her, but hasn’t yet done anything about it. She experiences a transitional moment when Davo arrives:

He grabs and pulls me to meet him. As if I’m always ready. To surrender at his

feet. No question. Something about it makes me decide. I don’t want to go

driving anymore. (Krauth 165)

Previously, Layla seems to idolise Davo and yet feels powerless around him and his friends. In the above scene, she’s standing up for herself for the first time, while still acknowledging the hold he has on her: “Trust him to look good today” (Krauth 166). She confronts him about cheating and dominates him with her intelligence: “I can see his fluorescent brain flickering as he reaches for some lame excuse” (Krauth 166). Layla imagines pushing him but Davo physically overpowers her by squeezing her wrists. He attacks her passivity, even though it’s the role he consistently forces her into: “Look,

Layla, she makes a bit of an effort. Being with you is like being with a corpse, you just seem to lie there” (Krauth 166). Davo is making a direct physical and emotional attack on Layla’s body, objectifying her by likening her body to a corpse. Sometimes, Layla sees her own body as empowering, but here, she imagines it physically being torn apart, to match her interior. She doesn’t respond but lets him walk away, imagining herself tied to his car and being dragged away until all that is left is bones: “The words settle on my skin and start to tattoo their way in” (Krauth 166).

Layla implicitly refers to ideas of slut-shaming by pointing to the apparent hypocrisy of her friend’s morality: “Sarah says that you don’t want to act like a slut. But she’s the one who goes down on boys she’s just met” (Krauth 181). The video of Sarah giving a blow job to an anonymous guy is floating around; he is shown from the waist down, but her face is clearly visible. This uneven portrayal of male and female subjects points to wider socio-political issues facing young people and their sexuality in the age of social media.

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Layla also highlights the hypocrisy of oral sex in her culture; it annoys her that guys expect girls to go down on them at any given moment, when “Davo and his friends won’t go down on a girl because of the hair and smell factor” (Krauth 181).

In one of the final scenes of the novel, Davo and Layla are reading a newspaper article about a woman who was raped and murdered on a cruise ship. Layla speculates that the woman’s drink was spiked, whereas Davo makes his somewhat misogynistic opinion clear:

‘Look, it sounds like she was off her face by the time she got to the room

anyway. She would’ve taken anything. And what did she expect? Everyone

knows that’s why guys go on those cruises.’ (Krauth 191)

This conversation is a turning point for Layla, because she sees Davo for who he truly is, kicking him out of the house and locking the door. She then imagines herself as the victim, studying the photograph in the newspaper and empathising by trying to see the world through the woman’s eyes: “I imagine her at my age. Just a girl. Dreaming of a future” (Krauth 193). Krauth’s inclusion of this pivotal scene sends wider messages to readers about the issues facing women in contemporary society.

As Abel, Hirsch, and Langland write in The Voyage In, female protagonists must repeatedly

chart a treacherous course between the penalties of expressing sexuality and

suppressing it, between the costs of inner concentration and of direct

confrontation with society, between the price of succumbing to madness and of

grasping a repressive ‘normality’. (12-13)

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Embodying physical spaces

In a collaborative article by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, the authors think through notions of storying, to look beyond the “human/nonhuman binary and question the way we sculpt our shared moments into new knowledge” (Wright et al. 41).

They co-write their paper with Bawaka Country, to acknowledge the way their research on Indigenous and more-than-human methodologies is intimately shaped by Country itself, and “based on the ongoing telling of stories that are embodied, emotional, sensual, and placed” (Wright et al. 41). The idea of space shaping experience is powerful and relevant when looking at the way young people create their narratives in a global, digital world. El’s body and mind inhabits physical, social, and virtual spaces throughout the story. These spaces inform her identity and build the narrative by specific reference, and also in what is left out – the spaces she does not embody.

Flanagan asserts that the connection between material body and material world “is a crucial means through which the destabilisation of the historically privileged humanist subject can occur” (102). She quotes Pramod Nayar’s argument about embodiment as crucial to posthuman discourse and, more generally, identity creation in the current era:

…the machine and the organic body and the human and other life forms are now

more or less seamlessly articulated, mutually dependent and co-evolving. It

critiques the humanist and transhumanist centrality of reason and rationality …

and offers a more inclusive and therefore ethical understanding of life. (qtd. in

Flanagan 103)

Spatialities play an important role in capturing the gendered coming of awareness for characters like El, Layla, Ash, and Mayne. In Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-

First Century, Anita Harris writes about the changing nature of public and private space, specifically in the way young girls enact their identities and operate as “a vanguard of 306

new subjectivity” (1). Harris argues that young women represent and embody greater social change, development, and “anxieties about new identities more generally” (2):

The abundance of books about girls’ voices, webpages for their issues, and

goods and services geared to a girl market indicates how young women are made

visible in more and more places to exemplify this new way of being. … At the

beginning of the twenty-first century, the creation of the contemporary social

order and citizenship is achieved in part within the space of girlhood. (1-2)

In the concluding remarks of Bakhtin’s essay on chronotopes in novel form, he refers to the intersection of space and time in “provincial towns” and “realistic narrative setting” as

…the locus for cyclical everyday time. Here there are no events, only ‘doings’

that constantly repeat themselves. Time here has no advancing historical

movement; it moves rather in narrow circles: the circle of the day, of the week,

of the month, of a person’s entire life. (“Forms of Time” 247-8)

Bakhtin argues that in realistic narrative set in provincial towns, the focus isn’t on plot- driven meeting, chance, parting, or specific events, but rather we can follow the characters in their everyday lives, wherein “time … is without event and therefore almost seems to stand still” (“Forms of Time” 248). This stagnation of time and space also evokes Bakhtin’s idea of the chronotope of the threshold – the extended moment during which characters are coming to awareness. In this context, we could certainly look at

Newcastle as a provincial town; El’s existence in a place that’s not-quite-small-town, not-quite-big-city creates tension in the story. The same idea can be applied to the outer- suburban Melbourne setting in Glory This (Moo). The significance of their movements, or lack thereof, lies in “cyclical everyday time” (Bakhtin “Forms of Time” 247-8), lending a sense of containment to the narrative – both spatially and temporally. 307

El takes readers on a psychogeographic journey to real-life physical places. Her narration gives insight to her – and others’ – understandings of Newcastle as a place that’s caught in a liminal zone between city and town:

Newcastle – we stick around but we can’t wait to get out. It’s a bit of a cultural

capital now. People comparing it to Melbourne. Obviously, no way there. A new

café or bar opening up every second day. Can’t keep up. (2)

In Globalization and Language in Contact, Anna de Fina argues the connection between social and physical space allows for social identities to be formed and understood within a story:

Work in this area has shown that time and space are not merely coordinates for

narrative organization, but parameters whose management and structural role in

storytelling crucially depend on historical and local aspects of the context. (111)

El casually mentions local landmarks in Newcastle, without pausing to explain where they are, what they look like, what it means. It’s almost as if she’s narrating for her own benefit. As de Fina writes: “Landmarks and paths do not merely mark the unfolding of events; they symbolize processes and identities that embody socially significant constructions of experience” (114). Recurring place names build the narrative and become meaningful by the pure fact of their existence; they are a “constitutive part of socially salient, shared experiences” (de Fina 115). In one scene, El is driving around with Kik in his van; they go to a few parties and “grab a coffee on Darby Street” (87) and sit on top of what El simply calls the “fort”. El doesn’t say “we go to bustling Darby

Street and get coffee among the tables of hipsters and professionals”, which would indicate it as a popular, thriving place to go in Newcastle. By her simple mention of

Darby Street without any further explanation, readers who aren’t familiar with Newcastle can understand that this is the place to go to get coffee at night. In that sense, El creates 308

places in Newcastle as particularly metonymic – garnering meaning not through name but by association in meaning, drawing readers into the story and her contained, local world. Later in the same scene, El narrates:

We go for a drive, pick up takeaway and he directs me to the fort. I leave my

phone in the car but he takes his. Guides me through the dark bushes, empty

carpark roped off for the night. Druggos hang out here and I’m kind of nervous.

Thinking of my high school days. Late night drives with boys to King Edward

Park, daring each other to run up to the darkened fort on the hill. Always too

chicken. Making out on the swings. Really Dawson’s Creek. The O.C. The bliss

of teenagehood. (88-9)

The fort in question now gains symbolic meaning through El’s mention of “druggos” and being nervous, implying that at some point in her adolescence, El must have been told, or heard, that she wasn’t safe in this particular space. Further, her association of the area to driving around with boys means that her experiences of place are particularly gendered.

As social scientist and geographer Doreen Massey argues, “spaces and places are not only themselves gendered but … they both reflect and affect the ways in which gender is constructed and understood” (179). The “fort” evokes masculinity, an association with war and fighting and patriarchal history, whereas El’s nervousness, by contrast, becomes a feminine trait. The nostalgic memory of driving and hanging out with boys also lends symbolic meaning to El’s narrative and identity, giving the reader insight into her adolescent life.

The mention of King Edward Park by name, rather than just as a generic park, allows for discursive connection of language and space. Readers might interpret that it’s a place to go at night when you’re a local teenager and want to enjoy rampant and potentially illicit fun. The name identifies a particular geographic space in which the characters are

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interacting, but knowing about or having visited King Edward Park in real life carries a further specific understanding of knowledge; as ancient land, previously it was a different space, called something different, so El mentioning the park by name allows readers to grasp her innate and limited cultural understanding of place.

In Glory This (Moo), the cultural moment is formed through navigating social spaces.

The setting is described as somewhat bleak: “Frankston is a shit beach, but OK for walking. Flat and shallow. No-one here. The water looks like sump oil” (Moo 42). As de

Fina writes, “both landmarks and paths are examples of spatialization as a social and discursive process of singling out locations that are invested with social meanings” (118).

Sharpie subculture was a “tribal phenomenon, separated by train lines into suburban gangs” (Blackman) and often associated with youth violence. The subculture was influenced more broadly by mod, punk, and glam music and fashion trends around the developed world; the constant reference to artists like Bowie, and events like the

Bluelight Disco, roots the novella in a specific cultural time and space.

The spaces Mayne and her friends inhabit are usually on the outside of something – the outskirts of Melbourne, on the steps of the train station, against the outer wall of the milk bar, vacant lots between suburban houses – which points to the social outside of Sharpie subculture that was unique to Australia in the ‘70s. The descriptions of setting often points to a stretching out of physical space. There is a recurring motif throughout the story, of the sky matching and blending into the rest of the setting: “The street is the same colour as the sky” (Moo 13); “Sky huge and arched… Exactly like the sand at low tide” (Moo 85). Mayne’s aimless walks and train rides, and her insomnia, also adds a sense of extended liminality to the narrative – to time standing still, or moving really slow, while the characters move in circles; they’re particles that break apart and join together again. When they ask each other what they’ve been up to, typical responses

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include: “Nuthin much” (Moo 17); “jus sittin round” (Moo 19); “Dunno, nuthin” (Moo

21), and other variations of the same.

Converse to the merging of physical boundaries, many scenes seem enclosed by physical and social space, with descriptions often hinting at a feeling of closing in that’s compounded by the summer heat: “The streets are flat, giving off steam. Holdens and

Fords parked unlocked. Pale cement gutters. Houses bullied low to the ground by the bright blue” (Moo 17). During parties in the story, the male crowd tends to dominate central spaces – the lounge rooms in particular – with Mayne likening the space to “the last waterhole on earth” and the boys as “all the wild dogs” (Moo 10). In the first party scene, Mayne moves through each section of the house, observing what’s going on around her, from the backyard to the kitchen, lounge room (where one guy is drinking his own piss), bedrooms (where she sees her boyfriend with another guy), and back to the yard (where she finds Angel having sex). The movement is cyclical, then the girls walk home through suburban streets, “gutter to pristine gutter” (Moo 13), before doing it all again the next night: “Not talking and not thinking right up to the brick veneer” (Moo

14).

Social spaces, and spaces of gender, transcend binaries in Glory This. The contained physical spaces of the suburbs juxtapose the fluid boundaries of gender and sexuality in

Sharpie subculture. These young characters are hypersexualised and also quite androgynous. Both boys and girls could be Sharpies, and while some theorists argue that females were subordinate (Stratton 201), Mayne and her female friends adopt androgynous fashion trends that see them relatively on par with their male counterparts, at least physically: “Hair sharpie cut but dyed red or orange it’s hard to tell. Shaved eyebrows, make-up frosted. The boys and the girls look the same. Almost” (Moo 8).

Fashion choices blended typical male and female looks:

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Mayne is a real spunk with her smoke and drink. Her hands especially. Short

nails, this time deep emerald glitter, and chunky rings all over every finger, like

the boys do. Good for brawls. (Moo 8)

The fluid sexual identity of the characters also captures the zeitgeist, just out of the free love movement of the ‘60s and prior to the identity politics of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Three of the main characters – Mayne, Snigs, and Nafe – have sexual experiences and relationships with both genders. It’s not treated as unusual in the narrative, but almost idealistic; at a party in the first scene, Mayne and Angel are checking out the Bowies – a sub-subculture group. Angel says, “Y’know they root each other, boys on boys and girls and everythin?” Mayne replies, “Bullshit. They’re just posers” (Moo 8). Later in the story, Snigs kisses Mayne and acts like it isn’t a big deal, the same way she casually asks

Flats whether he’s ever been “poofter bashed”; to her, sexuality is fluid, which opens

Mayne’s mind as the story progresses. When Snigs and Mayne return to the pier where they first met, Mayne is worried about Snigs’ drug habit:

And Snigs sits down, close and takes up the sky again. Funny, but not being able

to imagine her not being around forever, even though she’s only been around for

a bit. And then again, not being able to imagine being twenty or something and

still not knowing her. (Moo 132)

The above passage is reminiscent of an earlier one when Mayne first takes interest in

Snigs. The image of Snigs taking up the entire sky shows that, in this moment, she’s the most important thing in Mayne’s world. At the same time, it acknowledges the potentially transient nature of their friendship, and the fragility of Snigs’ character, suggesting that she might not exist forever, that she might die young if she keeps taking heroin, or that their lives will simply move in different directions. The Glory This narrative is an extended moment in time and space over a few months, but it isn’t

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necessarily lasting. The Sharpie subculture will die out, the characters might not be gay or bisexual in their adult life, and they may or may not escape their working-class suburban existence.

Wright et al. suggest

…stories told, experienced, and co-authored in research and co-created from the

temporal and spatial weavings of people and nonhumans in, through, and with

place. These stories are dynamic and continue to unfold as they are re-told,

heard, and read over and over again. (41-2)

This idea reflects the important fact we must acknowledge in any notion of storytelling: that ways of knowing move beyond four walls and a ticking clock.

Navigating virtual realities

In-between-ness, the stage in the middle of change, has a strange character, out

of this ordinary world. (E. Turner 35)

As well as embodying space in a real-world setting, young characters experience their femaleness in online spaces. Flanagan says that the posthumanist notion of subjectivity as “fragmented and plural” (5) is far easier to notice and explore “using contrasts between the self that inhabits social reality and the self (or selves) that we construct and operate in a virtual reality” (5). The spaces their bodies inhabit are “seamlessly articulated” and “mutually dependent” (Flanagan 103) because of the embodied way young people create their identities in real-life social settings, and in online worlds.

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Harris addresses the “current reshaping of the private/public division” (125) and its impact on how young women express the intersection of their inner self with what they present to the public. She argues that regulated public space now includes “the space of the interior life – that is, emotions, sexual desire, the private parts of the body, and in particular, the voice of the “true” self” (Harris 125). Further, Harris writes, “the combination of this new emphasis on the visual and a sense of instant intimacy has made the cultivation of a public image important to young people’s identities” (126). In

“Contemporary Bildungsromans and the Prosumer Girl”, Jones argues that self- enculturation, and the relationship between reader and text in a contemporary digital society, serves to “transform the bildungsroman from product to practice” (441):

“Twenty-first-century networked girls actively produce their own bildungsromans every day through social networking sites such as Facebook” (441).

Massey writes about the phenomenon of time-space compression that emphasises a “new phase” Karl Marx once called “the annihilation of space by time” (146): “Time-space compression refers to movement and communication across space, to the geographical stretching-out of social relations, and to our experience in all this” (147). In a time when life is “speeding up, and spreading out” (Massey 146), it’s no wonder that young people are growing up and becoming socialised in new and diverse ways:

…it is not just the body or the private space of the bedroom that is increasingly

displayed and regulated by this kind of inversion of public and private spaces.

Young women’s private thoughts, conversations, and feelings are also cultivated

as suitable for public scrutiny. (Harris 129)

In “The Struggle to be Human in a Posthuman World”, Robyn McCallum writes about the utopian and dystopian potentialities of a posthuman future, suggesting that robot figures as focalising characters in narrative “destabilise boundaries between self, other

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and world, and hence raise questions about ‘humanness’…” (34-5). Looking to the digital self as a “robot figure” within contemporary realistic texts has allowed for a greater understanding of female subjectivity in the protagonists’ digital worlds.

El’s conversations are externally mediated both through technology and social media and internally in her hyper self-aware narration, and she’s constantly attempting to reconcile both versions of herself. El narrates her story to include interactions through text message, Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram, with mentions of YouTube and Twitter, as well as the more dated MySpace and MSN messenger (in a high school flashback scene).

The casual incorporation of this social media throughout the story roots the narrative in a particular context. Instagram, for example, becomes a grounding part of her identity.

Plot points and information that drives the narrative often comes from social media. For example, they find out about Bec and Mace’s engagement on Instagram, and when El sees her friends hanging out together and tagging each other on social media, she starts to feel left out. Social media and technology also contribute to El’s self-talk and anxiety, and her relationship building with potential romantic acquaintances:

It started slow, as it does. Kik followed me on Instagram, friends on Facebook.

Liking things. What people do when they want to be noticed, subtle. Let you

know they’re noticing you. You don’t like some girl’s photo if you aren’t maybe

kinda into her a bit. Or at least you want her to think that. Play the game, don’t

be too keen, don’t hit back. It’s how we flirt. (86)

Further, when she’s talking about how she and Kik became friends, El makes direct reference to the connection between the virtual and real worlds of relationship building, without separation of the two:

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So he starts messaging me on Facebook. A funny YouTube video. A casual “it

was nice to meet you” message. There’s always a hook, something one of you

said that can serve forever as a personal joke, drawing you together in cyber

space and maybe real life. (86)

She adds a “maybe” before “real life”, as if the virtual connection in cyberspace takes precedence over real-life experience. In the scene when it’s El’s current birthday, she’s talking about her decision to delete, then reactivate, her Facebook account before the day:

I deactivated my account in preparation for this. Suddenly thought. The other

day. Fuck it. Don’t want randoms wishing me a happy birthday. They can suck

it. I guess it also seemed like a good way of testing people. The real people.

Active-in-my-life friends. If there are any left now. Who haven’t given up on me.

I try and tell myself that just because I’m a freak who remembers numbers and

dates doesn’t mean everyone can. Some people need the help of the Facebook

robot prompting them. Gone are the days of diaries and calendars hanging on the

back door of the kitchen pantry. I sound old.

So I reactivated my account.

Then the day before my birthday I made my birth date private. Fuck everyone.

Then, because I’m pathetic and had depressing visions of no one remembering at

all, I made it public again. (119-120)

In another scene, El receives a text message from Mace. She wants to see him but backtracks, checking social media to see if Mace is playing games with her again:

“Check Tumblr. His blog. Her blog. Instagram. They must be getting married soon. A few days maybe” (184). 316

El’s problematic relationship with technology intensifies throughout the story, and can even be blamed, to an extent, for the breakdown of her relationship with her ex- boyfriend, Brendan:

And as Mace sends me a photo of his hand gripping the base of his penis I laugh

out loud and look away quickly but then I look back. And I wonder again at the

ease of all this. No wonder two in three marriages break down. It’s super easy to

have an affair. (66)

She then describes how the exchange escalates almost beyond control, wondering “Who even invented phones?” (66):

It doesn’t stop. So with every reply I sell another body part to the devil. It’s

addictive. I come to expect the messages, the calls, the pictures on his blog that I

know are for me. (67)

The act of discarding her phone into the harbour at the end of the story indicates that she recognises the power struggle and inherent anxieties that are exacerbated by technology and social media, and the blurred, dissolving boundaries between virtual and real-world experiences.

Further to technology use, popular culture informs El’s identity. She often makes connection between her real life and the “movies”, such as when she’s about to lose her virginity:

I’ve seen the movies and fantasised about this just as much as any other teenage

girl but for some reason I thought it would be different, even though I knew it

was unrealistic. (16)

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In another flashback scene, she makes reference to how she’s feeling as like a scene in a movie “where the leading character has an epiphany and everything falls into place”

(34). In a few instances when she’s interacting with Mace in particular, El’s internal narration indicates a dissociative experience during which she imagines that the real-life scene looks similar to a movie, or belongs in a movie, or looks like a Tumblr picture:

“We look the part. Industrial chic. And for one fucking dumb, shallow split second I believe that this can happen, that we’re meant to be” (60).

John Stephens and Sylvia Geerts note a trend of intertextuality in children’s and YA fiction during the internet age, arguing readers to be “active consumers of images, signs and commodities” (211) that might even encourage them to step outside the text at times:

“they require texts of a kind which adapt the cultures of the past to engage with the diffuse nature of contemporary textuality and information flows” (Stephens and Geerts

211). Mention of two popular TV shows of their time – Dawson’s Creek and The O.C. – contextualises the narrative, allowing the reader to understand the pop culture influences of her adolescence and the time during which she grew up. This intertextuality also invites the reader into the story for a moment, giving “new significance to reader relationships” (Winch et al. 501), encouraging them to formulate their own nostalgic memories of high school, whether they recognise the references or not. This place and space in time adds value to El’s identity and allows for reader agency in interpreting the currents and context of the narrative. just_a_girl (Krauth) was written as a response to the age of social media, with teenage girls as a focus: “I wrote just_a_girl for parents grappling with the new technologies thrust upon us” (Krauth “Disconnected”) All the characters are searching for connection in a world where connecting seems easier than ever before; however, as Krauth notes,

“it’s a world where the line between public and private is increasingly being eroded”

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(“AWW Feature”). Layla’s conflicted relationship with social media reflects the “new kinds of regulation” (Harris 132) that blends the interior self and the public sphere:

The culture of display, performance, and confession encourages them [young

women] to express their private thoughts and desires, as well as to exhibit the

process of self-improvement. (Harris 132)

Layla is typical of a contemporary, urban teenager during a time when young people are allegedly growing up faster than ever before in an increasingly secular, de-sensitised and uncensored world, thanks in part to “sophisticated movies, video games…and intimate social media” (R. Johnston 89). She is learning the enabling and disempowering effects of her femininity and female body, online and in real life. Online, she makes a video of herself masturbating, and flirts with men in chatrooms:

I like hooking up with guys online. There are no boys at my high school I’m

into. Davo is starting to wear thin. Even though he’s 18 now. I need more

brainpower. And I get to test them out on the net. I like the conversation. You

can reveal more. When there’s a screen between you and them. (Krauth 85)

Layla clearly feels more at ease with her identity in the virtual world and can be her true self when there’s a “screen between”. She builds her relationship with Marco online: “He writes on my wall. He sends me a song Bet you look good on the dance floor … So I send him a tickle. The next thing I know, we’re on” (Krauth 182). Layla believes young people’s identity to be even more revealing online: “Those people who talk about teenagers like we’re innocents in danger of being corrupted need to get into the real world. Or they could start in the virtual, even” (Krauth 197-8). Later in the story, she’s describing her own interactions on her Facebook profile, once again making the direct link between online and offline: “I superpoke people giving hugs and buying beers. A cockroach runs over my foot and I trap it under my Coke bottle. That’s in real life. Not 319

on screen” (Krauth 180). Then she finds an unflattering photo of Davo and posts it online, sends it to her friends, and tags people. This seemingly ruthless act is a classic way of getting back at him for cheating on her: “I love Facebook. It’s all about sharing”

(Krauth 180). It’s clear that to Layla, her virtual world is just as real as the real.

Technology becomes disempowering for her later in the story when she is attacked by a group of boys on the train home from Sydney, one of whom films the event and posts it to YouTube. Layla is recognisable in the video, which leads to an intervention from her mother and Pastor Bevan, and a confrontation with Marco, who was with her at the time.

Through social media, Layla also finds out that her best friend, Sarah, is dating her ex- boyfriend, Davo, which leads to subsequent cyber bullying scenarios between the two girls. Here, we gain insight into how technology can both repudiate and exemplify relationship building. After the break-up, Layla tortures herself by stalking her ex on social media, noticing that Sarah is marking her territory almost immediately, by posting sexy photos of herself all over Davo’s profile and posting photos of the two of them together at events Layla was supposed to go to. When she watches a YouTube video he posted of a python eating a possum, we can understand the hopelessness and disconnect she feels in the moment:

I try not to watch it but I can’t help myself. When it’s finished I want to switch it

off. But I click to play it again. There’s something about the sickness in my

stomach that I quite like the feel of. (Krauth 180)

As readers, we feel empathy for Layla, but the dynamic quickly shifts to position Layla as perpetrator when she attacks her friend online and via text, using a fake number and anonymous profile. Layla knows that Sarah won’t tell anyone about the cyber bullying, because there’s a video of Sarah giving a blowjob to someone at Town Hall station:

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That video could go viral. And I bet there’s more where that came from. All

those grammar guys. With their mobiles and their groupies. All I have to do is

post it online. And I’ve got her mum’s email. It’s only the click of a button.

(Krauth 185)

Layla’s conflicting experiences of technology compound her constant grapple between agency and disempowerment as female, leading to a fragmented sense of identity that is an important trope of posthumanist ideology.

In fast-paced prose that’s almost psychedelic at times, No Limit (Childs) explores the interconnection of the real, the virtual, and the imagined. The incorporation of social media and technology in No Limit is certainly more chaotic than the previous two examples, as the real and virtual worlds interconnect with fluidity, leading to a state of hyperreality on the part of the characters, as well as the reader. As critic Penny Modra writes on the book’s back cover, the story is “A real, weird, wired, 3G dream. No Limit might just tenderly reprogram your brain.” When reading the novella for the first time, I was struck by the inventiveness of the narration and consumed the story quickly. On the second read, it seemed less hyperreal, which was a slightly concerning realisation.

Despite a few odd, futuristic scenarios – such as when the “dream girl” has a barcode tattoo on her arm scanned by airport security and, hence, let through without a passport – the story could certainly take place right now, in real life. It is set in – and centred on – the age of the internet.

The story starts with Ash stranded at the airport. Connectivity is completely fine as she logs onto her social media to post a few tweets, tracking the retweets and favourites she receives. At the airport, Ash watches and listens to people using and discussing social media:

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But from behind her she can hear someone talking, fiercely detracting from her

admittedly fairly banal fantasy. ‘She just does heaps of reblogs, like, she adds no

content at all. She never does comments, she doesn’t like anything, her entire

personal brand is built off of other people’s hard work, totally uncredited, like, I

don’t care because I mean, I guess that’s just what you have to do if you don’t

have any ideas of your own but really, like, how difficult is it to just not press

delete on someone else’s source info? And you know what else? I think she

queues her posts.’ (Childs 12)

Users of the blogging site Tumblr would recognise this stranger’s diatribe as typical of young people who use the platform. The anonymous ranter in the airport mentions several sources of tension between Tumblr users, such as deleting sources and photo credits to essentially plagiarise material, as a way of building a personal brand that’s quite deceitful but, at the same time, adheres to the status quo’s idea of “coolness”.

When Ash first meets Dick, he shows her around the gallery where he works; the name of the exhibition, “Not Dreams”, is a metaphor for the entire narrative:

The roomsheet has a quote from an American art critic saying that this show

‘answers the question we’ve all been asking: “Can an artist working in the digital

realm break through to the mainstream?” With the resounding answer: at this

point, not necessarily.’ (Childs 17)

Ash and the aptly-named Dick drive to find Haydn; at first, Ash is “into” Dick, but the interest is soon replaced with “a really specific kind of fear” (Childs 20) when he dons a leather trench coat and fox fur. She experiences fluctuating emotions during the scene with Dick, and they’re locked in a powerplay when they arrive at the drive-in movies.

Dick is trying to seduce her, “doing sex eyes” (Childs 26), but then Ash tells it like it is:

“you seem like a pretty kooky guy… Your outfit is expressing things that your mouth 322

isn’t” (Childs 26-7). Dick is offended, changing his tone immediately and calling her a

“slut”: “Why don’t you just suck my dick and put me out of this misery” (Childs 27).

Ash responds in anger, standing up for herself, then Dick apologises, saying he was joking, and pointing to her agency and autonomy in the situation: “And you always have options, Ash… Don’t be such a victim, you’re not trapped” (Childs 27). Ash points out that she can’t leave, that she’s “stuck” in a foreign country, foreign landscape, with no internet connection and nowhere to stay. The movie playing at the drive-in is

Melancholia, and the description of a particular scene mirrors Ash’s current circumstance:

On the horizon a celestial body grows bigger and bigger until it visibly enters the

Earth’s atmosphere and then everything on screen ignites. (Childs 28)

Set against the backdrop of the movies playing on a big screen in front of the car windscreen, this scene feels contained within several layers: the characters are experiencing tension by being boxed in the car, the circumstance of the volcano is tense and keeps them stagnant, and the ash cloud gradually wipes out the movie screen so the image can’t be seen and “people around them are throwing popcorn at their own windscreens” (Childs 29). There’s a techno-futuristic quality to the pertinent issues of gender, sex, and power being dealt with here.

Dick tells Ash a story of developing an app with a friend, who ended up stabbing him in the back and running off with “Tom from MySpace”; readers of a particular age would understand exactly who this is: the notorious inventor of the social media platform, who everyone was forced to be friends with if they had a profile. The constant and casual mention of social media platforms like Facebook, Google, Grindr, Twitter, etc. grounds the story in the “here and now”. Further, intertextuality and popular culture references occur on almost every page, which suggests to readers that, for these characters, their

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identity is firmly embodied in alternative versions of reality; perhaps, to these young people, what exists online and offline are one and the same. Dick’s iPhone 4 case, for example, is clearly a key part of his identity. Even though it’s a mere physical object, he speaks about it passionately:

Dick explains, ‘Yeah it’s functional, every form is functional. That’s a semiotic

issue about which many people are misguided. The exact name of this product I

don’t know, I bought it from the last show at Ne Plus Ultra. I can reach all the

buttons and the rear-facing camera is not obscured. It’s an advanced version of

the kind of fake rock you get at two-dollar shops to hide your house keys under

but it’s got my iPhone in it instead. It’s virtually shatterproof.’ (Childs 26)

The mention of house keys indicates that Dick’s iPhone is his most prized possession, the way a house might be to other people, because it’s the thing that informs his understanding of self and where he belongs. While readers of a particular generation might interpret references like these as laughable and disconnected from reality, others would definitely relate.

When Ash meets Mack, he also tries to seduce her, by saying that Dick is a dick, and, ironically, referencing his own penis. Ash is trying to escape the party scene by doing a guided meditation on her phone, and Mack interrupts her: “Me on the other hand, I am totally pro-feminist, I’m also sensitive to lesbians and the broad spectrum of trans* identities” (Childs 38). Ash is still listening to the relaxation track in one ear, while listening to Mack talk, and she feels frazzled; she says: “I feel like I’m in a movie, this feels stupid, scripted” (Childs 39). Mack then takes a selfie of the two of them, without her consent, and “uploads it #nofilter” (Childs 39). Mack explains: “My feed is full of geeks making #nofilter jokes. Because of the ash. Do you get it?” (Childs 39).

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Like Dick’s leather trench coat and fox fur, the physical description of characters is embodied in their use of social media, either mirroring or contradicting the way they present themselves in real life. At the warehouse rave, Ash observes Mack’s gender- bending outfit, his tattoos, and “He’s holding that book No Logo. Not reading it, just holding onto it like it’s part of his brand identity” (Childs 44). While she describes him,

Mack is raving on about the “evil” of McDonald’s and Nike brands. Playing once again on the interplay between real and imagined, the DJ is wearing “a t-shirt dress that says

REAL IS A FEELING across the front” (Childs 47). When Mack and Ash find the bathroom, there’s an orgy going on; physical bodies meld together and touch one another, but everyone is also omnipresent in other realities, holding phones, watching

Vimeo, and Mack is commenting on the sex while also trying to bid for vegan Nikes on eBay.

As the story progresses, and the ash cloud gets thicker and darker, internet connectivity and phone reception start breaking down. The characters are forced to make greater connections with each other, which proves difficult as they’re mostly on drugs and caught up in their own hallucinogenic worlds: “They all separately affirm that they can’t get online on their personal devices, so like, what’s the point of even being at the rave?”

(Childs 62). At the end of the story, it is dawn after the warehouse rave and Ash is with three new friends, trying to hitchhike. They’re talking about potentially being murdered by the driver and Fidget says: “They might find our bones and plug in our phones and see who we were. Or who we thought we were…” (Childs 78). Although it is only a brief moment of insight, unacknowledged by the other characters, Fidget’s words are quite prophetic. He’s recognising that they certainly create their identities online, through the use of their phones, but that it might not always be genuine. Fidget is making a shrewd observation of the way in which people of his generation attempt to reconcile their real and virtual world identities, without always achieving:

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At one time or another, everyone experiences periods so crazy they forget

important elements completely until they read back through their diary from that

time and place, and even then they feel unsure about what was real, what they

fabricated in the telling, even though it’s not in their nature to make shit up.

(Childs 82)

Flanagan argues that “individual subjectivity is not static or fixed but in a constant process of transformation, a construction of subjectivity that reflects posthuman ideology” (126). In a posthumanist, contemporary context, the use of technology and inhabitation of online realities creates extra narrative layers. The digital world that El,

Layla, and Ash navigate reinforces my overarching argument that processes of identity creation are ongoing and liminal. It is passages and references like those I’ve included above that inextricably link a real-life narrative setting to the virtual world through which the characters interact. As Jones suggests:

…the twenty-first century digital reader breaks the paradigm of linear

progression toward knowledge that is the encounter with the novel through the

daily interaction with hypertext and Internet search engines as she authors a daily

self-narrative online. (“Contemporary Bildungsromans” 447)

When the narrator’s identity is informed so strongly by use of technology, their physical space becomes a liminal zone. On the progressive journey to recognised notions of adulthood and a coming of awareness, young characters in a posthumanist context can exist in both real life and online spheres and, hence, between two recognised categories of existence.

Fraiman proposes that developing as a female being is

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a lifelong act continuing well past any discrete season of youth, and it involves a

struggle among diverse narratives: official and oppositional stories of arriving at

adult “femininity” (x).

In the texts I’ve chosen to analyse here, the protagonists are understanding their growth and development as more embodied, transcending the boundaries of time, space, mind, body, and gender; their identity is not fixed or static, but “in a constant process of transformation” (Flanagan 126). Halfway to Nowhere, just_a_girl, No Limit, and Glory

This demonstrate a realistic, non-linear narrative that explodes stereotypical views of womanhood and maturation. They’re temporally, spatially, socially, and developmentally occupying a liminal stage in life, at the threshold point where time stands still.

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Conclusion

Embodied writing brings the finely textured experience of the body to the art

of writing. Relaying human experience from the inside out and entwining in

words our senses with the senses of the world, embodied writing affirms

human life as embedded in the sensual world in which we live our lives.

(Anderson 83)

In 2015, I did a reading from Halfway to Nowhere at the Newcastle Writer’s Festival.

The night before, I was timing myself in front of my then-23-year-old sister, and expressing my anxiety that mum was coming to watch me read. “There are so many f- words, and I talk about BJs,” I said. “I’m just going to have to remind her that it’s not me talking, it’s the character. I haven’t done all these things, it’s fictional.” My sister said,

“Yeah, but it’s not really, is it?” Cue panic. She continued: “It’s all real, isn’t it? I mean, these characters are doing the things that teens and 20-somethings do now.”

After the reading, sometime after my mum had asked me “What’s a BJ?”, a girl approached me, saying that she saw so many of her friends in that extract. It reminded her of so many characters in her own life. A few weeks later, I gave the manuscript to a friend for feedback. She said, “I spent the first half trying to decipher who the real-life characters are.” I reminded her it was fictional, and she said the same thing as my sister:

“It’s not really though, is it? This person is so-and-so from school, and this person is that guy who you used to date...”

As a first-time novelist and a 20-something female writing in the voice of a 20- something female character, am I merely manifesting myself on the page? It left me thinking: Maybe I’m creating my own coming of age, of sorts, through the medium of 328

fiction. Maybe writing my novel, using inspiration from real-life people I’ve known and a heavy dose of participant observation, I’m constructing my own rite of passage and moving through a coming of awareness. Jones rethinks Hegel’s humanist bildungsroman toward a “Bildungsroman 2.0” that incorporates 21st century enculturation in digital spaces:

The electronic bildungsroman authors a distributive process, hailing a reader

who is also a writer and for whom the goal is the educational process itself more

than resolutions or maturation. (“Contemporary Bildungsromans” 447)

My journey to greater maturity and self-awareness might well be embodied in my research and writing practice, or the “educational process” that saw me acting as both reader and writer. Rather serendipitously, during the final editing stages of this exegesis,

I discovered a book by clinical psychologist Meg Jay, called The Defining Decade: Why

Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now, which I more or less inhaled over a few nights. I scribbled in the margins, sent quoted passages off to fellow

20-something friends, and felt like I was on yet another journey to self-discovery. It seemed pertinent that I was reading about how to make the most of my remaining few years of the decade, while preparing to submit a thesis about the ongoing process of self- creation in fiction.

For four years, I’ve been stuck in a moment of time, on the threshold – existing “betwixt and between” (V. Turner “Betwixt”) adolescence and adulthood, student and academic, writer and researcher. According to Viljoen and van der Merwe, narrative allows this idea of liminality and representations of liminal characters to flourish:

The relevance of the idea of liminality for literature is not only that many texts

describe and represent liminal states, persons and transformations, but also that

the space of the text itself is a symbolically demarcated liminal zone where 329

transformations are allowed to happen – imaginary transformations that model

and possibly bring into being new ways of thinking and being. (11)

Writing Halfway to Nowhere, and this exegesis, allowed me to explore these “imaginary transformations” in a suspended moment of time, as author removed from the subject.

Although El experiences moments of awareness throughout the novella, she doesn’t necessarily reflect on them at the time; however, since the act of writing those fictional moments, I have been able to reflect on what they might mean for El, and I hope readers could also “stop time” in order to submerse themselves in El’s story. I have also disengaged from my creative manuscript in order to analyse the narrative for this exegesis. In a similar vein, writing this exegesis has catalysed a few transformations of a personal nature, inspiring “new ways of thinking and being” in my academic and personal life.

In Towards a Poetics of Creative Writing, Hecq likens the act of creative writing to Alice having fallen down the rabbit hole, and navigating “a mode of discontinuity and instability” (3):

The creative writer crosses through the mirror but does not go mad because he or

she relates the two sides of the mirror by way of a symbolic recuperation, which

occurs in the act of putting an experience into words. (3)

Sometimes I read my own words back, after some time has passed, and wonder if I wrote them, because I can’t remember the act itself. As if I go to some other place in my mind when the words are flowing out. I am reminded here of novelist Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on the “elusive creative genius”, which has been viewed over 2.5 million times on

YouTube. She speaks about the idea of creativity in ancient Greece and Rome:

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People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to

human beings from some distant and unknowable source for distant and

unknowable reasons. (Gilbert)

This idea of a disembodied creative force resonates with me, and has stayed with me for the years since I first watched that TED talk. It speaks to the idea of creative disassociation, and the gap that we must all create between our writing and ourselves, if we are to maintain any level of sanity. Tracing the mental health problems of writers and artists through centuries passed, Hecq settles on the idea of creative writing as a “risky business” (“Towards a Poetics” 4). As writers, our self-creation becomes quite intimately bound up in our writing: the process of formulating ideas; the things we discover about ourselves while creating; the act of putting out into the world that which we have created; our shells hardened from criticism; the anxiety of awaiting reader (or examiner) reception. Parts of ourselves live inside the words we write. As Hecq writes:

If the writer is in the work, she or he is also outside the work and, increasingly, it

belongs not to her or him but ‘to the language or to tradition’ (Borges, 1970:

282). (“Towards a Poetics” 4-5)

This PhD journey has been an odd experience; I’ve been writing a novella about a 20- something female character living in Newcastle, while also being a 20-something female, living in Newcastle and figuring out when and where I might become a real-life adult.

I’ve been writing an exegesis about my creative work, and the ideas and theories that have informed its creation, as well as ideas and theories around what it means to be a young person on a journey to growth, maturation, development, and identity, while also trying to grow, mature, develop, and identify myself. My PhD has become a symbiosis of research-led practice and practice-led research; the practice of writing, but also in simply being. The research informing my practice of writing also helped to develop the story,

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my understanding of the main character El, and my understanding of myself at this stage of my life. During these years, I’ve experienced moments of academic, creative, and personal revelation. My thesis is the tip of the iceberg.

The overarching existential question of my thesis, creative work, and general life, has been: “When do we become adults?” Whenever something celebratory happens to me, I usually receive a text message from my best friend, saying something like “You’re such an adult.” And it always baffles me. What does she mean by that? She’s living with her long-term partner and their cats, whereas I’m in my ninth year of University and live with my parents. What makes me any more of an adult than her? What makes any of us adults? My mum says she feels 21 inside, but I would definitely call her an adult. So is it having kids that moves us over the threshold? Is it getting married? Buying a house?

Staying in the same career for a significant number of years? Finishing a PhD? Writing a book?

Professor Nathan Harter theorises in “The Liminality of Creative Illness” that liminality

“belongs to an image of change that could be applied to a variety of phenomena” (57) and it makes perfect sense that liminality should be a liminal concept in itself. When writing this exegesis, engaging in academic and personal reflection, I couldn’t help but muse on the experience of doing a PhD – and writing a novel – as liminal zones. If

“undergraduate student” and “academic” are the socially demarcated zones of meaning, then postgraduate research and practice falls somewhere in the middle. During this time, we’re quite stagnant in time and space, chipping away slowly and often painstakingly at a major research and/or creative project that, in most cases, takes over our entire lives; as

Professor Jen Webb writes, creative practice PhD candidates are also “frequently directed, by their art, down blind alleys or into oceans of red herrings” (155), which leads to a kind of “unfinished business” feel to the whole experience. Not to mention the

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nebulous space between submitting the thesis and receiving a doctoral certificate. The time spent re-writing, adding ideas and words, reading and responding to examination.

Writing a novella, too, is a kind of threshold experience, and one that for me has become bound up in my own personal development. Writing Halfway to Nowhere meant accessing memories and conjuring a previous version of myself to constitute the character of El and filter through to the other fictional characters in the story. As a writer, it’s a huge challenge not to insert myself into any story I write. As Hecq writes:

To see oneself in the mirror, to identity oneself, requires a mental operation by

which the subject is capable of objectifying himself or herself, of separating what

is outside from what is inside. (“Towards a Poetics” 5-6)

Sometimes, the growth through awareness for a first-time novelist might even mirror the young protagonist’s search for identity in the narrative. As novelist and poet, David

Malouf, says, “…it is the act of writing itself that makes articulation possible” (78). I hadn’t acknowledged, consciously, a lot of ideas I hold on particular topics, but they came through in my writing of the character El. In turn, this has led me to explore deeper those opinions she often touches on, but doesn’t necessarily explicate, in her narration.

With the help of literary theory and a touch of amateur psychoanalysis, I’ve been able to use the act of writing this exegesis to articulate my ideas. The journey has been one of transformative self-reflexivity.

It is no coincidence that the four texts I’ve chosen to analyse here are first-time publications. I’ve become fascinated by Bakhtin’s idea of the blurred boundaries between fictional and real-world chronotopes, and often wonder how much of a fictional story contains truth or half-truths from the author’s own life; is there a “symbolic recuperation” (Hecq “Towards a Poetics” 3) between lived experience and the words that end up on the page? I know that Abigail Ulman, like one of her protagonists, Claire, has 333

lived and worked in San Francisco, and I wonder whether she ever had an abortion, or spent the night in jail. Michelle Moo was a pre-teen in the ‘70s; was she a wannabe-

Sharpie like Mayne? Bakhtin acknowledges the blurred boundaries between fiction and reality in his theory of the chronotope:

A literary work’s artistic unity in relationship to an actual reality is defined by its

chronotope. Therefore the chronotope in a work always contains within it an

evaluating aspect that can be isolated from the whole artistic chronotope only in

abstract analysis. In literature and art itself, temporal and spatial determinations

are inseparable from one another, and always colored by emotions and values.

Abstract thoughts can, of course, think time and space as separate entities and

conceive them as things apart from the emotions and values that attach to them.

But living artistic perception (which also of course involves thought, but not

abstract thought) makes no such divisions and permits no such segmentation. It

seizes on the chronotope in all its wholeness and fullness. (“Forms of Time”

243)

Further, Lawson writes that Bakhtin thought the chronotopes of the novel and the real- world correspond, connecting like a “bridge”, that is “crucial to using narrative form as a method of knowledge” (389). Although some authors deny autobiographical tendencies in their first novels, their protagonists can bear striking resemblance to the documented lives of the authors. Much of my creative inspiration for Halfway to Nowhere came from reading Australian grunge novels from the 1990s, such as Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas and Praise by Andrew McGahan. Interestingly, both were penned by the authors while in their 20s, featuring a 20-something narrator, and hence the context of the narration is of contemporaneous “authenticity”, capturing a specific time and place in the character/author’s life. Loaded, for example, contains “aspects of autobiography”

(Dunkley 2) and features Ari, a 20-something, Greek-Australian, gay character

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navigating the streets of Melbourne over a 24-hour period; Tsiolkas himself is Greek-

Australian, gay, and grew up in Melbourne. Praise is similar in content and is also widely known as semi-autobiographical, as was its sequel. Puberty Blues, too, was written by Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette when they were in their teen years and published when they were both in their early 20s. It has been marketed as YA fiction, adult fiction, and more generally as classic fiction in the several decades since its publication; further, the authors have admitted it to be heavily autobiographical. The well-known Australian novel, My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin, has experienced almost constant debate between academics and critics as to whether it’s actually autobiographical fiction. Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Webby writes in the introduction to the A&R Classics centenary edition of the novel that contemporary critics and reviewers “have followed [Henry] Lawson in stressing Franklin’s youth and gender and in reading My Brilliant Career as autobiography rather than fiction” (ix). Written at the end of teenagehood, starring a young narrator of the same age, who is also an aspiring writer, it’s not hard to see why the line between fact and fiction is contentious. In fact, the novel is almost metafictional in that it opens with a “Special Notice”, presumably by protagonist and narrator, Sybylla, that confirms the egotistical nature of the story, and even contains suggestions as to how readers might engage with it:

Just a few lines to tell you that this story is all about myself – for no other

purpose do I write it. … This is not a romance… neither is it a novel, but simply

a yarn – a real yarn. … You can dive into this story head first as it were. Do not

fear encountering such trash as descriptions of beautiful sunsets and whisperings

of wind. (Franklin 1-2)

Victor Turner writes, “Through the performance process … what is normally sealed up inaccessible to everyday observation and reasoning, in the depth of sociocultural life, is drawn forth” (13 “From ritual”). Much like I have performed my exegesis with a

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personal narrative alongside a fictional character and a research journey, Franklin has performed the nature of writing itself. In Franklin’s own introduction to the sequel, My

Career Goes Bung, she writes of the devastating effect on her life when family and friends mistook the original novel as straight autobiography, to the point where, in 1910, she refused any republications of My Brilliant Career until after her death (Webby ix).

Looking outside Australia, one of my favourite young narrator novels, The Perks of

Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, is also known to be based on memories from the author’s own life and he began penning it when he was in college; presumably this means he was in his early 20s at the time. Like the other novels referenced above, it’s also a first publication. The award-winning TV show, Girls, was written by Lena

Dunham in her early 20s and features four female protagonists of the same age who are navigating their way through and into adulthood. When reading her book of published essays, Not That Kind of Girl, I recognised that many experiences, situations, and characters from Dunham’s own life make appearances in the show. Halfway to Nowhere is no exception to these examples. As I admitted earlier, many creative and personal decisions that influenced the writing of my novella were informed by lived, subjective experience, making the writing process almost autoethnographic. My own sociocultural, time-space context has informed the writing of the story; the chronotope of Halfway to

Nowhere, therefore, connects to my own chronotope.

Starting out this PhD candidature, I was a young woman of 23. Single, living with a crazy housemate by the beach, and spending my days utterly joyful and unburdened by adult responsibilities. Not even a PhD could make me feel like an “adult”. Two years later, I was engaged, living with a partner for the first time, and having adult conversations about the future that felt entirely natural and actually kind of fun. I was so ready to be an adult, whatever that meant. I felt like I’d finally come of age. I sat at my desk, working on an exegesis that felt, at the time, almost inauthentic. I was starting to

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feel as if I might have moved past that quintessential developmental stage, out the other side and ready for whatever mature adventures that the next chapter of life had to bring.

I’m not afraid to admit that for a while there, the point of my exegesis became lost. It’s not that I thought my journey was complete, but that with all this extra knowledge, wisdom, life experience, I would face all manner of hardship to come with the poise of a real-life human adult. I believed myself to be ready for whatever life had for me. I was

Katniss in the final battle; Harry facing Voldemort for the final time. I wondered if this was what adulthood was really about; maybe I’d finally got it. I hadn’t. I soon learned what some would argue is the most adult lesson of all – that life never unfolds in the way you expect. Next minute, my fiancé and I split up and I crawled, tail between my legs, back to my childhood bedroom, moved in with my parents who cooked for me, nurtured me, and listened to my unabated fears and existential crises.

Now, I’m on the verge of submitting my PhD, I’m at the precipice of adulthood, and I’m on the threshold of whatever comes next. I’m a young woman of 27, wondering how long I’ll be calling myself a young woman. Da Vinci has been famously quoted as saying: “A work of art is never finished, only abandoned.” Perhaps then, if life is like a work of art, the only way forward – into adulthood, academia, and life in general – is with reckless abandon, hoping for the best. In an ongoing self-creation process, the postgraduate journey was merely a section of gravel on the bitumen road – and not the last.

In the final weeks of my candidature, I’m struck with an existential crisis of a similar nature: Will it ever feel like this exegesis is finished? I’m constantly discovering new ideas, new texts, new theories. And I’m always experiencing moments of epiphany, realisation, and transition. Leaving the Great Writing UK conference in June of this year,

I experienced a brief and slightly flustered moment on the stairs that led to an ongoing email exchange across time zones and continents. This person introduced me to French

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philosopher Henri Bergson, whose ideas on duration – immediate experience as the only reality, and how it’s impossible to capture a moment, because it has already passed – I wished I had discovered three years ago.

Bergson philosophised what scientists are discovering right now. How can we measure time, when the clock is constantly ticking? If time is immeasurable, then this moment – my PhD – has already passed. I’ve been searching for a kind of ideological closure on this journey, but I’m realising now that to experience said closure would be contradictory to what I’ve suggested within this exegesis. I am bound to keep thinking about this research for years to come, because it has shaped me as a person. I am excited for what the future holds, and for what might emerge in my writing in the years to come. As Hecq writes of the unconscious mind, it is “creatively active in both the subject and the writing process, thereby changing writing, and changing us, as we write” (“Towards a Poetics”

6). Maybe I need to accept the unacceptable: that the extended moment in time that is my

PhD cannot possibly encompass all possibilities. As Bakhtin writes in “Epic and Novel”:

The present, in its so-called ‘wholeness’ (although it is, of course, never whole)

is in essence and in principle inconclusive; by its very nature it demands

continuation, it moves into the future… (30)

Now that the submission of my PhD has actually passed, I am diving back into the beast in this moment. Both examiners of this thesis expressed concern that it seemed incomplete, or underdone. At the time of reading my reports, this was quite a stressful comment to receive, but upon reflection I realised that this is, in fact, the philosophical point of the exegesis. As I question at the end of Chapter 2, if we never really know when we become adults, how can our stories be tied with a neat red bow? Similarly, if we’re constantly living out our narratives, and reading, and writing, and learning – about ourselves and the world – how can this exegesis hope to answer all of the questions it

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poses? Of course, I have revisited my work and trawled through with a fine-tooth comb for inconsistencies, typos, un-explicated ideas and claims. I’ve worked to bind the ideas in my exegesis more closely with how I’ve demonstrated them in the novella, but the beating heart of this entire project is in the questions that can’t be answered.

In the end of Halfway to Nowhere, El is physically moving through space, but she can’t see where she’s going. She is moving forwards in time, but is suspended in a prolonged moment of liminal existence, with no idea what happens next: “And there I am, driving and laughing like a fucking maniac with the lights off and no one by my side” (185).

In this scene, I am El. The present is “inconclusive”, and so is the future. I’m coming to awareness every day, with no idea of what the future holds. I’m straddling the driver’s seat and the passenger seat, existing in a prolonged moment on the threshold. Sometimes,

I take two steps forward and one step back. I am driving and laughing like a fucking maniac with the lights off and no one by my side.

THE END

Authors may be planets ringed by a series of subject positions, each modified by

and modifying the others, affected by gaps and silences between, but they are

certainly visible on the horizon, waiting to be explored. (Kroll 101)

339

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