Life somehow didn't quite make sense anymore. Like it did, but it didn't at the same time. I felt like I could see the way life was supposed to be. It shimmered over what now seemed to be a new reality – a reality I wasn't prepared to acknowledge – like I'd been given the gift of Sight. Except, instead of magic being wonderful and opening up my world, it was terrifying and made my world feel narrow and small.
I could see through the bullshit to the truth, but the grass wasn't greener. It was black and full of thorns that tore into me, ripping gouges out of the armour that protected me from all the bad in the world.
"...or I could do a nudie run through next assembly," Lisa mused pointedly and I realised I hadn't been listening.
"That would definitely save me having to sit through Wade doing the announcements," I commented dryly.
"I thought you weren't listening?"
I shrugged as I shoved a chip in my mouth. "I wasn't. What did you say?"
"I was asking you what you knew about Hollard," she said, picking up my Farmer's Union Iced Coffee – going theory was that, if it didn't belong to her, the calories didn't count. Suffice to say, she saved me quite a few calories. She also cost me a buttload extra to account for her non-calories.
"Hollard?" I clarified and she nodded mid-sip.
My gaze roved over the common room until I saw him standing with his friends by the kitchenette.
Hollard was, by and large, your typical male jock – a type Lisa stuck to with avid devotion. Sometimes I wondered whether she thought she'd make Wade jealous by making her way through the soccer team. Other times I just admired her choosing athletic lovers.
Personally, I found the smart boys were more...attentive. And that definitely wasn't off the advice of a twenty-something year old Dolly magazine I'd found in my mum's old stuff. Honestly, the fact nothing had changed for teenage girls in twenty-odd years was both a comfort and a concern.
But, I wasn't meant to be thinking about Wade or jocks or nerds. I was meant to be focussing on Hollard.
"Rumours abound. Fact is elusive," I answered, putting on my best Yoda voice.
"Elusive to all but you, Master," she said with a smirk.
Speaking of rumours, one of them seemed to be that I had the downlow on the sexual – or lack thereof – prowess of everyone relevant. That whatever nonsense I spouted had yet to be refuted was either a miracle or a worry. I was pretty sure I didn't want to be the instigator of a bunch of lies – or worse, false hope – just because I had a faulty brain-mouth connection.
However, on this occasion, I did have some possibly helpful info.
"Word on the street is Amy dumped him for being impatient. But Malin," Amy's best friend, "let slip that he dumped her for hooking up with Dave."
"So, he's not only available, but desperate?" Lisa mused.
I could concede that. "Why try to discern the truth? I too choose to believe all the rumours are true." Look, it wasn't totally wrong.
Lisa whacked me companionably, her hazel eyes fixed on Hollard. The fact he stood with Wade hadn't passed me by, I'd just chosen to ignore it in favour of not letting the shit-head in my head more often than necessary in any given hour.
"Okay. So, do you think I go up to him now? Or wait until after school?"
I shook my head as I swallowed. "There's this brilliant invention. Called Messenger. I vote you use that."
Lisa looked at me like I'd grown two heads and had just asked if she thought a third one would be a solid choice.
"He's right there. Why not ask him in person? You know you can talk to people in real life, right?" she asked.
Her nose wrinkled. "Soo...?" She tried guessing the anacronym.
"We think of ourselves as SOILED, thank you."
She rolled her eyes and fought an encouraging smile as she got up. "I'm going to ask him now."
I watched her walk away.
I didn't have to ask her what she was going to ask him. She was going to do what she always did and end up with a date at the end of it. I was less of the 'date first, kiss me later' kind and more the 'it just happened' type. Sometimes with an 'oops' at the beginning of it.
Although, at that point in time, neither scenario was particularly enticing. There seemed something weird about engaging in anything of an even vaguely romantic nature with the knowledge that my parents had apparently given up on theirs.
But there was Lisa, going about her usual business like everything was normal. It wasn't normal. It was... Well, it was difficult to put into words exactly what it was.
It felt like final exams were already here, only I hadn't been to any of the classes and they were going to be entirely in French – of which my grasp was minimal at best.
It felt like those times your body twitches when you're almost asleep and you come back to full consciousness feeling like you're falling. Only the sensation of heightened adrenaline and racing heart was near constant.
I'd never before felt so restless and cooped up. My hands fidgeted non-stop. I'd chewed a raw patch on the inside of my bottom lip. I kept picking up my phone, although I didn't really know what I wanted to do with it when I was looking at it.
I was in the midst of a sea of people and yet I felt lost. Uncertain. Alone. Scared. But, at the same time, I felt surrounded. Confined. Cramped. Scrutinised.
It was the first time I'd felt that way and I didn't care for it.
"He's going to pick me up at seven-thirty on Friday night," I heard Lisa say.
I blinked and wondered how much time I'd spent stressing out about the new feeling of freaked out dread that seemed to now make up who I was as a person.
"Friday?" I said as I cobbled some kind of coherent thought together. "Nice." It was then I noticed the person standing next to her and waved.
Lisa nodded. "I also picked up a stray."
Erin and I grinned.
"Wondered where you'd got to," I said to her.
She sighed as she joined us. "Line at Tuck was massive."
Erin made three in our little inner circle. Others came and went as they flitted about the Common Room, spending a bit of time with everyone. It hadn't always been that way. But, it seemed, put a whole year level in a room together and it inevitably breaks down the majority of those resentments or feuds or disjointedness between cliques. As an inherently introverted person, I tended to stick to my spot. As my best friend, Lisa stuck to it with me. As an avid fan of Lisa, Erin was found with us more often than not.
"Is his backseat as roomy as they say?"
I wasn't sure who 'they' were, but they did tend to be proverbial in these circumstances. Besides, that was something I didn't know.
I shrugged. "I haven't seen it."
Lisa frowned. "I thought you hooked up with Harry back there?"
I shook my head. "That was Tiff."
One reason Harry pissed me off greatly.
Not that I thought he hooked up with Tiff. I couldn't care less about that. It was the fact he thought he'd hooked up with me. At least that's what he'd said when I accused him of lying about hooking up with me; 'Honest mistake, Norah. I was pretty parro.' Like, yeah, mate. No worries. Drunkenness is definitely a good excuse to keep telling everyone it was me after I set you straight. Cue eye roll.
It's not that I wasn't the sort of girl to hook up with a guy in his car. And I wasn't about to deny there were sometimes some drinks involved. But I did have a problem with a guy saying we hooked up when we didn't. Which I thought was totally justifiable. Most of the guys at our school seemed to think it was one of those things you just got over and let go.
When I slept with a guy, it didn't have to be the One or anything, but it wasn't totally meaningless and I didn't appreciate him running off to give his friends the play by play. And it wasn't like there was a line around the block of them. There'd only been a couple to score the proverbial homerun. Very few of my hook ups even involved clothes removal.
For someone better at and more serious about the whole dating thing, Lisa had far more notches in her... What conveyed less machismo connotations than a belt or a bed post that wasn't a lipstick case? Phone case? Corset?
I'll come back to that.
The point was Lisa had slept with more people than I had.
I was proud of her for it.
After the whole Wade debacle, I hadn't known where she stood on the whole sex and virginity thing; having it, losing it, doing it.
At the time, I hadn't been quite sure if Lisa and Wade had done it or not. After he dumped her, she was vehement they hadn't and I'd wondered if it was wishful thinking on her part – although, I'd left out any comments about methinking she doth protested too much. It hadn't been until Trent that I'd been sure who'd been the one to do the deed. It had been obvious in the way she'd been somewhat hesitant and regretful under her outward excitement.
It wasn't the first time I'd wished I'd pulled her up on her warring emotions. Maybe if I hadn't, like her, been expecting/hoping the Trent experience to magically make her get over Wade, we could have had a conversation that maybe actually got her over him instead.
But, alas, wishes weren't fishes and I liked to think I was far less naive – especially in matters relating to Wade – than I'd been then.
"Norah?" Lisa nudged me.
"Huh?" I looked at them as I pulled the sleeves of my Matric jumper over my hands and buried in for comfort.
"I said, Erin's got a date Friday night. What are you up to?"
What was I up to? Once a month, my parents insisted we have a family movie night. There were tacos or burritos, tonnes of popcorn, a dozen blocks of chocolate, and an overabundance of soft drink involved. No one ever went to bed feeling at full health. It used to be one of m favourite nights of the month. I somehow didn't really have any interest in family movie night anymore.
I shrugged. "Dunno. No plans."
No plans except trying to make sure movie night wasn't that Friday and probably sitting in the park on my phone for a few hours to make the parents think I was out with friends. I would have been actually out with friends, but no one liked being a third or fifth wheel.
"Hollard and I are probably going to see a movie," Lisa said. "You can come if you want? I'm sure Long or Martin are free?"
"Oh, hard pass, but thanks." I shook my head. No way did I need a pity date.
Quite aside from me not wanting a date of any sort just then, I was also quite capable of getting my own dates without the need to be set up.
"Who's your date with?" I asked Erin.
I forced myself to focus on my friends until the bell rang and we all split off to class.
It was both easier and harder than I'd expected it to be. It was easy enough to latch onto their words and their faces to drown out the uncertainty and discomfort rattling around my head. But it was hard to stop those thoughts – those feelings – constantly trying to work their way into the front of my mind.
One little ten-minute conversation and I was about ready for a nap. Shame then that we still had two more lessons to go.
Outside the Common Room, Erin went right and Lisa and I went left.
As we came around the corner, we sidestepped to avoid running into the person on the other side and found Wade sidestepping to miss us as well. The actual look of apology on his face fell as he saw it was us.
"Oh, my bad. Is this the part where I throw on my blinker?" Wade asked sarcastically.
Lisa lay a hand on my arm. Her eyes said, 'Please, not today, Norah'. I knew I should heed the eyes. I knew it. Just because Lisa didn't lash out at Wade for being a prat, didn't mean someone had to. Didn't mean I had to. Not really. No matter how unfair his treatment of her was. I could be the bigger person and just walk away.
So, I did.
"What? No scathing remark from the oh-so witty Norah Lincoln?" Wade called.
There was something in his voice that made me want to go back there and rub his face in the dirt. Something about it that had more to do with the fact it would make me feel better than that he deserved it. A part of me was convinced it would make me feel better. All of my parental drama would pale into insignificance if I just got one up on stupid Wade Phillips.
But my love for Lisa won out.
If she wanted to just bask in the knowledge she had a date coming up, then fine. I wouldn't ruin it for her. I just flipped him the bird as we slipped into the crowded hallway.