Life in Outer Space Page 16

  Three days.

  I will get over this.

  Three days.

  Piece of cake.

  •

  I almost make it, too.

  Actually, I am completely and totally lying. I make it to one o’clock in the afternoon and then I grab my mobile. I can’t help it.

  This is due to the fact that in between Andromeda episodes, I spent thirty-three minutes going over the calendar in my school diary to try to find the last time I went a day without speaking to her. I approach this as methodically as I can, marking each Camilla-day with a blue ‘X’ across the date. I realise that in six months, apart from a few torturous days while she was away, I have not gone one single goddamned day without talking to her.

  I turn on my phone and wait for the network to connect. The phone beeps. I have four missed calls and a message from her. My stomach lurches when I see Camilla’s name appear on my screen. Her message reads:

  You ok? Answer your phone or I’m gonna think you have something fatal.

  I also have two missed calls and a message from Mike:

  Call me. Adrian told everyone u have gastro. Explosive diarrhoea.

  Of course he did. I turn off my phone and go back to bed. Time seems to stop.

  But I can’t get my brain to shut the hell up. It’s chanting at me, like some demonic creature hell-bent on driving me insane. It is chanting:

  Camilla. Camilla. Camilla.

  Why did it have to be her?

  Of all the people in the universe who my stupid goddamned hormones or whatever could have chosen to have a chemical reaction to – why Camilla?

  I pull the blankets up to my eyeballs. Do I really need to answer that question?

  I tug the blankets over my head and give up trying to eradicate her face from my brain.

  I fall asleep with the sound of her voice echoing in my head, and a feeling in my chest like someone is scooping my heart out with a spoon.

  •

  I wake up and immediately regret it. It is still light outside. I have not miraculously been beamed onto an alien spacecraft. My first thought is, as always, about her. I can actually hear goddamned bells ringing.

  Oh. I think someone is ringing my doorbell. I drag myself downstairs and open the door.

  Allison is standing there. ‘Hey. Are you okay?’

  ‘Um, just a bit … off. What are you doing here?’

  ‘You weren’t answering your phone and everyone was worried. Camilla had to fly to Adelaide, but she made me check on you. By the way, Mike says to turn on your phone. He’s stuck in detention. His lab partner exploded a test-tube. They both got kept in for an after-school.’

  ‘Camilla … went to Adelaide?’

  Allison steps into the foyer. ‘Yeah. You knew that? One of her dad’s friends from London is there.’

  ‘Oh. Did … she say when she’ll be back?’

  Allison looks at me closely. ‘Sunday. Late. Why?’

  I swallow. ‘Nothing. No reason. Nothing. What are you doing here?’

  Allison frowns. ‘Do you have a fever?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I murmur.

  She shuffles into the hallway and touches my forehead with her fingertips. ‘You should probably be in bed then.’

  I drag myself into the lounge room and collapse onto the couch. Allison follows me cautiously.

  ‘Yeah, probably. Maybe I’ll just go back there.’

  ‘Okay, well then, I guess I’ll go home. Even though you kinda do look like you’re dying.’ She sits down next to me. ‘Maybe you should change out of your pyjamas?’

  ‘Why? Why must we put on clothes if we have no intention of facing the world? Why can’t we just live in pyjamas?’

  Allison chuckles. ‘Why do we have to wear clothes at all in that case? Maybe loincloths or whatever would be enough?’

  I grunt. ‘Some of us can’t pull off the loincloth thing.’

  ‘You underestimate yourself, Sam,’ she says lightly.

  I turn my head and realise that she is uncomfortably close. But before I can move anywhere she leans in a bit towards me, and I think it might just be to check my temperature again, but somehow I lose either a moment of time or space or possibly both, because the next second her lips are attached to mine and I am kissing her. Maybe she is kissing me. I’m not really sure how to tell.

  It’s weird. It’s softer than I imagined it would be. I have to move my head so I don’t bump into her nose, and then the only thing I can think is that someone else’s nose is, like, right against mine, which was not what I was planning on dealing with when I got up this morning.

  She moves around a bit, and I don’t know if it’s deliberate but now my hands are resting on her hips. Her tongue feels like it’s looking for something inside my mouth, and I almost want to stop her and ask what it is, but then I think that might be a bit rude, so I don’t do anything but continue kissing her while wondering if I should be doing something else with my hands other than keeping them stationary on her hipbones like I’m holding a handrail on the bus.

  Part of me is finding the whole situation curious. My brain feels strangely detached from my lips, but my body is reacting as though it actually likes the situation it’s got itself into. But then I open my eyes a little bit, and I see Allison’s face in front of me. My lips are still moving, but my brain, and the rest of me, completely seizes up.

  How did this happen?

  Why am I kissing Allison?

  I move backwards, quickly, and she wobbles a bit before she opens her eyes. My breathing is all over the place; it takes at least eleven seconds to realign all the bits of me that the kissing had sent bouncing in different directions.

  ‘Jeez, wow. Was that … okay?’ Allison says.

  I move backwards again. She grimaces. Her face turns crimson.

  ‘Um … I mean, yeah, it was cool, but weird, but I don’t think … Allison, I’m not sure that was the best idea.’

  Allison pauses. Her eyes do that thing where they seem to go really far away. ‘It was … cool. But. Weird,’ she says quietly.

  I don’t know why she’s speaking so slowly, or why her face suddenly looks like Mr Nicholas’s that time in class when Justin Zigoni superglued Victor Cho’s English homework to his hair while he slept.

  ‘Cool. But. Weird?’ she repeats.

  ‘Um, I mean. Maybe that wasn’t the best choice of words –’

  Allison leaps up from the couch. ‘You think! Oh my god, Sam, I can’t believe you just – argh! This is sooooo embarrassing! You. Are. A. Moron!’

  I think she expects me to argue with her. I do not believe my moronicity is in any way up for debate. I am slightly curious, however, as to what level my self-loathing will sink to today. Meanwhile, my legs are engaging in a heated argument with my brain about the various merits of standing up versus remaining seated, and I’m staring at the buttons on Allison’s shirt in the vague hope that they grow mouths and tell me what to do.

  I think I may have been silent for a few seconds too long. Because the next thing my brain registers is the furious slamming of my front door. My house is silent again.

  My lips feel warm, and a tiny bit bruised or something.

  I don’t understand this kissing business.

  •

  I spend Saturday curled in the foetal position on my bedroom floor with my face pressed against the blank page of a notebook. I have heard a theory that trauma is supposedly good fuel for artistic expression, but the only screenplay ideas that come to mind involve a clueless moronic loser being slowly devoured by various supernatural creatures.

  I’m incapable of speaking to anyone till midday, at which time I call Mike and confess the entire Allison episode. Mike is silent for what seems like hours.

  ‘So. How was it?’ he says eventually. There is a definite tone in his voice.

  ‘Bizarre,’ is the only response I can make.

  Mike grunts. ‘I bet.’ He sounds disproportionately annoyed with me. I don’t have the ener
gy to question why. I hang up and assume my position on the floor.

  I don’t hear from Camilla until Sunday afternoon. I know I had big plans to avoid her, but the fact that she hasn’t checked in with me is disconcerting. My stomach does that freakish leaping thing when I see her name on my phone. And then it does something else entirely.

  Her message reads:

  Hope you’re feeling better. Just wanted to say I think it’s really cool about you and Allie. I understand if it’s a bit weird now, you and me hanging out so much, and it’s cool that you need to spend more time with her. Hey – congrats! C

  I stare at her message.

  I stare at it for approximately one whole minute.

  The realisation hits me in a place that is not my functioning cerebral cortex. It starts in my kneecaps and works its way up into my oesophagus. It is a combination of tightening and compressing and squeezing. It is what I imagine the blonde chick in every horror movie feels when the masked psycho appears out of the shadows with the kitchen knife or hook or chainsaw or icepick in hand.

  Camilla knows.

  Camilla knows I kissed Allison.

  Camilla thinks that Allison and I are –

  I call her. I don’t know what else to do.

  She doesn’t answer the first time. She doesn’t answer the second time I speed-dial her number. The third time the phone almost rings out before she picks up.

  ‘Hey, Sam!’ she says brightly. ‘How are you?’

  I clear my throat. It feels like it has been fused shut. I don’t understand the purpose of my palms starting to sweat when I hear Camilla’s voice. What possible evolutionary purpose could clammy palms serve? I can probably google it. Possibly not at this second, though.

  I clear my throat again. ‘Hi. I got your message –’

  ‘Hey, yeah,’ she says breathlessly. ‘Really, I think it’s cool, I mean, you know I think Allie’s awesome, and –’

  ‘But it’s not … did she tell you … Camilla, how did –’

  ‘Oh, Adrian texted me. Sam, hey, I think it’s great! Did I say that?’

  ‘Yeah, but –’

  ‘Hey, listen,’ she says quickly. She almost sounds like she’s running. ‘I have to go. I’m just about to step into a restaurant. Having lunch with my godfather. Did I mention that my godfather is here from London? Well, he is, and we’re having lunch. Now. And then I’m on a plane home, so, hey, I guess I’ll see you at school tomorrow?’

  ‘Camilla –’

  ‘Sam, I gotta go. Talk later! Bye!’ She hangs up.

  I stare at my phone for what feels like four hours.

  Camilla knows. For some unknown, godforsaken reason, Allison told Adrian. And Adrian told Camilla.

  Adrian Radley – the stupid, short, troll-faced, hairy, imbecilic, dumb-arse arsehat.

  Radley is a dead man.

  •

  I show up on his doorstep, not really remembering how my feet managed to transport me here. I think there may have been a bus involved. When Adrian opens the door, I am momentarily surprised to see him in front of me, even though I believe I have been leaning on his doorbell for several minutes beforehand.

  He frowns. ‘Dude, your T-shirt’s inside out.’

  ‘Yeah? So’s yours!’

  Adrian looks down at his hoodie. I am dimly aware that I sound unhinged, but my voice is coming from a great distance away and my brain is floating in a haze of red mist and wrath.

  ‘Adrian, what the hell did you tell Camilla?’

  ‘About what?’

  My mouth is incapable of speech for six seconds. ‘About the scientific formula for rubber. What do you think? About me and Allison!’

  ‘I told her what happened, but –’

  ‘Adrian, Jesus! What goddamned business is it of yours? And how did you even find out?’

  His eyes widen. ‘Because Al called me. She sounded really upset. She wasn’t making a whole lotta sense, and you weren’t answering your phone – I thought Camilla could talk to her –’

  ‘You thought? Since when did that misfiring lump of grey matter in your giant fat head ever produce a coherent thought, Adrian?’

  ‘Sam, what – why are you so pissed? So what if Camilla knows?’

  I am not sure whose voice comes out of my mouth when I do, eventually, speak. Some distant part of my brain is telling me that I need to stop, now. Unfortunately that part of my brain doesn’t seem to be controlling my mouth, or much of anything else.

  ‘Radley, listen carefully. Do not come near me. Do not speak to me, or look at me, or breathe anywhere that I might be remotely downwind of. Get out of my face!’

  ‘But … you’re at my house,’ he says quietly.

  ‘Yeah, well, consider this the last time!’

  I turn around and barrel down his front path. I hear him calling out behind me. I have no idea what he is saying, but it seems to involve my name, and it sounds pleading and confused. I refuse to allow any part of me to feel bad, or sorry, or guilty, even though I think all three might be trying to worm their way into my consciousness.

  All I can think is that Camilla knows I kissed Allison. Camilla is going to think I’m a moron and a loser. She’s going to think I’m as stupid and shallow as those guys at school.

  Camilla is going to think that I don’t care about her.

  Adrian grabs my sleeve. I spin around. I am unsure exactly what happens next. My hands are bunched into fists at my side; only suddenly they are not at my side anymore. I think I just meant to shrug off his arm. I’m pretty sure that this is the case. It’s not my fault he comes up to my armpit. All I know is that there’s red in front of my eyes when I turn around, and then the knuckles on my right hand feel like they have exploded.

  ‘Jesus Christ, that hurt!’ I clutch my fist to my chest.

  Adrian stares at me through one wide, bewildered eye. His hands are clasped over the other half of his face. The eye that is looking at me fills with tears.

  ‘You hit me,’ he says. His voice is so quiet I almost don’t hear him.

  ‘Adrian, wait –’

  ‘No, really,’ he says, tears spilling down his cheeks. ‘I’m sorry my face got in the way of your fist!’ He takes a couple of shaky steps backwards. ‘I can’t believe you hit me, Sam!’

  He turns and runs into his house, leaving me beside his mum’s lavender bushes, clutching my hand and feeling like a massive tool draped in a colossal blanket of suck.

  Did I actually just hit Adrian? My possibly broken fist would seem to suggest yes.

  The red fury vanishes. All I feel is numb.

  My feet somehow carry me home. I consider doing something useful there. I consider trying to write. I consider calling Mike. After eight minutes I give up on the idea of doing anything, and I curl up on the floor again instead.

  I don’t know what is happening to my life.

  And the only person I want to talk to is the one person who can’t help me.

  What is happening to my life?

  As above.

  The Undiscovered Country

  Back in my other life – the Before-Camilla-Carter life – the feelings that used to accompany Monday mornings were dread, mixed with doom and salted with misery. I’d almost forgotten what BCC life felt like, until I wake up to my screaming alarm on Monday with my stomach knotted into a pretzel of despair. I feel as if I’m moving through sludge as I shower and dress and drag my arse out of the house.

  The first person I see is Mike. He is hovering near the school gates, his arms crossed tightly. His expression remains blank when he sees me. But beneath the blankness, I detect a world of fury.

  ‘Hey,’ I say quietly.

  ‘That’s all you have to say? Have you seen Radley’s face?’

  I flinch. ‘I don’t know what happened. I didn’t mean to do it. At least, I don’t think I did.’

  ‘And Allison?’

  ‘Yeah. Same deal,’ I mumble.

  Mike scowls. ‘Dude, seriously, what the frak? You�
��re acting insane.’

  ‘I’m acting insane?’ I echo. That recently familiar red haze seems to descend over my eyeballs.

  ‘Yeah. You are.’

  ‘I’m acting insane? This is what you’re saying, Mike? You are saying that I, Sam, am acting strange? That I am being weird?’

  Mike’s eyes narrow. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It’s supposed to mean that I may be experiencing an off-moment, but you, Mike, have been acting like a complete goddamned psycho all year!’

  I think I might be yelling. Several people stop and stare eagerly in our direction. I draw upon whatever tiny part of my brain is still capable of rational thought and I lower my voice. ‘It means I have been putting up with your crap and weirdness for months, and now that I am experiencing a tiny bit of a situation –’

  ‘A situation? You punched Adrian in the face!’

  I don’t really have a response for that.

  ‘And forget about kissing Allison,’ he growls. ‘You’re allowed to kiss whoever the hell you like, cos apparently you’re perfectly equipped to handle randomly kissing your friends –’

  ‘Save it, Michael,’ I hiss. ‘You are the last person I need that kind of advice from.’

  Mike takes a step backwards. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Dude – figure it out!’

  I storm past him. My hands are shaking. My knees are shaking. I have never, not once in the nine years we have been friends, yelled at Mike. And Mike has sure as hell never raised his voice at me.

  Granted, I have never punched or kissed any of our mutual friends either. I am not sure whether it’s the yelling or the punching or the kissing that’s most disturbing.

  I walk through the corridors in a fog. People wave and say hi. I think I respond with some sort of head gesture. I retrieve books from my locker and aim myself at my English classroom. And then, as if someone has turned a giant fan on the pollution-filled cavity that is my brain, the fog clears.

  Because I see Camilla. She’s wearing her favourite yellow dress and the cowboy boots that she bought from a market we went to a few months ago. She is engaged in an intense conversation with Victor Cho. She must see me from the corner of her eye, because she turns around. My heart starts to hammer in my eardrums when I see her face. I wonder if anyone else in the corridor can hear it?