30th of August 2013
Ayah
I collapse on my bed, exhausted to the point of tingling all over. Each muscle is executing some form of acrobatics under my skin, as if the cells were trying to repair the damage I just caused by reminding me never to do it again. One of my arms is pinned beneath me but I’m too tired to make myself comfortable. I just want sleep.
“Ah-Yahhhhhh!”
The last syllable is dragged out like a karate champ, signalling my little brother’s arrival from preschool. I ignore the pain in my limbs and flip on my back with a smile. Jason’s karate-chop collides with my bruised stomach, exorcising a combination of a laugh and a yelp out of me. I rest the back of my hand to my forehead dramatically.
“Oh, why, oh, why did our mother call me Ayah?” I say with an air of snobbery that always makes Jason laugh. I narrow my eyes at him. “I want your name,” I threaten in a deep voice.
“No!” He screams in delight. We’ve rehearsed this game countless times.
“GIVE ME YOUR NAME!” I yell, sounding like the Wizard of Oz and loving every second of it. I rise slowly from the bed and stomp over to his small, retreating form like a zombie. He shrieks loudly and runs out the door.
I roar like a lion – which isn’t the sound a zombie makes but is a part of our play – and I follow his loud shrieks of terror to the kitchen. He clutches on the hem of my mum’s skirt like a shield. My mother, who plays a small part in our theatre production, hands a wooden spoon to Jason wordlessly and continues her cooking. She and I exchange a small smile in greeting.
“I SAID GIVE ME YOUR NAME, JASON ASHFORD!” I command in the lowest tone I can muster. I hit a note too low for my vocal chords and end up coughing like a smoker. My mother’s smile grows but is not yet fully developed. She only laughs at the end when I can’t see her.
“It’s mine!” Jason declares with a shout. He thrusts the spoon forward like a sword, catching me in the leg, and my groan is only half-exaggerated.
I clutch my thigh like a lifeline. “I’m bleeding! Ah!” I cry and fall to the ground. Jason throws my mum’s skirt over his shoulder like a cape and charges at me, wooden spoon raised like an axe. I shield myself with a hand and on cue: light floods through the kitchen window where my mum opens the curtain.
“I’m meltingggggggggg!” I hiss, catching Jason off guard.
I take his little arm in my hands, cough convincingly enough to be sought after by Hollywood, and die.
Jason – my once arch-enemy – falls to the ground by my side and starts fake-wailing. I always try to suppress my smile when he does this little titbit of drama but it is so very hard to deny my amusement when a three-year-old start’s howling: ‘Why, oh why! Oh, my sister! Why!”
My mother’s giggles and I know this part is almost over. Jason just has to –
A small kiss is reverently placed between my eyebrows. This is my favourite part of the day.
“Ah!” I shoot upwards and Jason claps in delight. “You saved me!” I exclaim while hoisting him under the arms and spinning him around like a helicopter. His cries of escalation are so contagious that my mother stops cooking and turns around to face us with a hand to her mouth. I laugh with them and revel in the knowledge that soon enough, my dad will soon be here in Australia to join us.
Eventually, my sore muscles protest and only when I groan does Jason tap my shoulder, as if to say, ‘it’s okay, you can put me down now.’
I place his feet on the floor and he smiles up at me in greeting. Unlike me, Jason has two matching blue eyes. His hair isn’t quite black like mine, but it is dark enough to add contrast between the two adorable features. Mum had him in baby modelling for a Huggies campaign in his baby days, which she still brings up whenever one of their commercials is on. I ruffle his hair, my little superstar.
“Hey, little man,” I say.
“Hey, big girl,” he answers back. He is the only person in the world who can make a reference to my size without making me cringe. Jason would call me that even if I was skinny enough to shop at Pumpkin Patch like the other girls in my senior class.
“Now that I’m alive: how was school?” I ask him and look to my mother. “How was Billy today?” I ask her.
Billy is my mother’s boss, a boss that sends her flowers every other week, even though she’s a happily married woman. She always tosses the flowers – expensive flowers, I always note – in the trash. I know she would never cheat on dad but I worry sometimes that Billy will fire her if she doesn’t succumb.
Jason says, “Great!” at the same time my mother says, “Horrible.”
Jason looks up at both of us and pouts, but he is smart enough to go play in his room. My mother and I watch him go with matching sad expressions. Even though he doesn’t remember him, he misses my dad.
“What happened?” I ask her when Jason is out of ear shot. The smile that had momentarily graced my mother’s lips is gone, leaving frown lines that weren’t there when my dad was last here two years ago. My fingers involuntarily rise and stroke my mother's cheek. I don’t want those frown lines to scar her face before he gets back in a month. They stand out like faint creases in a folder piece of paper and I hate Billy for turning my mother’s beauty and my father’s job in the army, protecting people, into a bother.
Mum sighs heavily, heavily enough to have me worried that she will never breathe in again. She misses my dad too.
“Same as usual. That... that... man had the nerve to joke about Andrew dying–”
“Don’t say it, mum.” I’ve heard it all before – the terrible scenarios Billy hides behind trashy humour – but it doesn’t lighten the stone in my stomach each time I think about it.
“We’d know if something happened, okay? Billy’s just getting the idea in your head to warm-up your maternal juices,” I say to lighten the mood.
As I’d hoped, she laughs. “Maternal juices,” she echoes mockingly. “What am I paying your school to teach you?” She asks and I laugh too.
“Oh, you know: Remedial Sex, Advanced Drugs and Intermediate Alcohol. The general stuff, really,” I say with a shrug. She smiles and already one of the creases around her mouth disappears. My mum is so incredibly beautiful when she smiles. She has the blue eyes that Jason inherited but her hair is fair, almost blonde, and she is trim and small – unlike me.
What I love most about her is that she has always treated me like an adult. Two years ago, at the tender age of sixteen, I wrote a book for fun and put it on the internet. An international publisher read it, loved it and now – two years later – I have two novels in the Crime’s Best Sellers list. My books have been published in three other countries: Germany, Singapore and America are now my favourite places in the world.
When I told my mother I wanted to go under a pseudonym so I could finish school without anyone knowing how big of a nerd I was, she told me to go with my gut. Even though she believed I shouldn’t hide such an accomplishment from my friends, she still supported me and kept my secret. She even found time to manage all the boring stuff that comes with being a published author for me. Without her, I wouldn’t be travelling across America for signings and to lecture at a school for young writers like me. Without her, I’d be an overweight nobody with an empty Microsoft Word document. As sad as it sounds to some people, my mother is my best friend.
“You look exhausted. Where were you today?” my mother asks me, cutting my reminiscing short.
I smile sheepishly. “At the gym.”
Her eyebrows shoot skyward but she doesn’t laugh, which relieves me. I should’ve known my mother would never make fun of me. I am too used to the girls at my school.
“What did you think of it?” she asks, genuinely curious.
“Good and bad,” I answer with a so-so gesture of my hand while thinking about Noah and that other trainer. “I almost didn’t sign up because a staff member was rude to me, but luckily I found another trainer to get me started.”
“Do you think he can motivate you?”
I nod. “He’s really nice and when he was training me today he was equally mean and encouraging, which is what I think I need. The only bad thing is his sexiness is a tad distracting. I pretty much talked his ear off, he made me that nervous.”
She laughs and, again, another wrinkle smooths out. She needs some time away from work, I think. Touring with me for three months around America will be good for her. “As long as you can exercise at the same time, I don’t think he’ll mind if you check him out.”
“Yeah, well, we were teasing each other the whole session. I forgot I was even exercising at one point!”
She raises her eyebrow. “Teasing, huh? What kind of teasing?”
Nothing slips past my mother. “Well – get this – his favourite junk food is eucalyptus drops.” I see my mother’s incredulous face and I laugh. “I know. I think I’ve stumbled on a health nut. Anyway, we started talking about movies at one point and how he’s a sucker for scary ones. I told him I hated them but I loved scary rides, which he hates. I forgot your question.”
She throws her head back – just like Noah – and laughs loudly. It makes my stomach warm to see her laugh whole-heartedly, even at my expense. “It sounds like you’re in-love.”
I snicker at that. “Maybe with his humour but no: fortunately I am not in-love with this beautiful stranger, mother. No grand-babies any time soon.”
“And why do you call it fortunate that you’re not in-love with a funny, sexy man that motivates people for a living?” She asks half-jokingly.
“Because you don’t grab a gourmet steak during an apocalypse – you grab cans and other non-perishables,” I reply, somewhat serious. Some of the laughter in the room fizzles out at that.
“What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t understand writer’s talk,” mum asks, although I think she knows exactly what I’m implying. One of her frown lines is back. I should’ve shut my mouth.
“It means that chasing this boy would be just as beautiful as it is unreasonable.” My mother tries to protest but I wave her off. “It’s quite alright, mummy dearest. I don’t need someone dazzling, anyway – I need someone dependable and positively square like myself.” I try to reanimate the mood I had going before but with no success.
Instead of laughing my mother’s lips thin into a straight line, flattening the crease in her lower lip we both share. I’ve upset her. I can see it in the way she squints her eyes, wondering how to punish me. The only time my mother ever punishes me is whenever she hears me put myself down. I want to scream at her sometimes, explain that I do not pity myself when I talk about my weight or how amateur my inexperienced writing can be – or my lack of romantic possibility with Mr Hunky Trainer. I am just being honest. Practical, even. She should be proud I'm mature enough to understand my own shortcomings. She doesn’t understand.
“Why can’t you find someone that’s both dazzling and dependable? You’re an amazing, gifted, funny, beautiful girl that’s accomplished more in eighteen years than adults do in one life time–” Something catches in her throat, putting an end to the lecture prematurely, and it is quiet again. She is more than upset. She is angry. I sigh heavily, sad that our earlier moment had passed so soon.
“Let’s just drop it, mum. I’m sure I’ll find someone dazzling and dependable. It just won’t be Noah.”
“Go to your room,” she commands.
I roll my eyes but do as she says, wishing silently that she’d let me be self-depraving every once in a while – it is a lot of work pretending to be strong all the time.
When I’m unable to write or amuse myself an hour later, I make for the front door. Maybe my mum is right and I can find someone dazzling and dependable – I’ll just look for him in a book.
Austin
What the hell is she doing here? I think when I see Ayah not one day after I met her. Is she stalking me?
The department store is quiet this time of night, as most people do their shopping straight after work. My mother needed pasta sauce and forgot to buy some during the day so I offered to get some for her. My willingness to be helpful had more to do with avoiding my dad than out of genuine generosity. But either way, dinner would be on the table.
I love visiting department stores at night when the cashier girls are usually over the age of fifteen and under the age of twenty-five. One winks at me but for some reason my eyes skip over the sexy redhead to the chubby girl on her way to the book section. I decide to follow. There is no one around her because, of course, what normal girl shops for books on a Thursday night?
I catch snippets of her slinking off into the romance section between the rows of titles. Ayah is wearing tracksuit pants and her black hair is tumbled in a ball on her head, reminding me of a pineapple. I can’t tell if she’s wearing makeup. She picks up a nerdy-looking book with a kilted man on the cover and flips it over to scan the back. A kilted man. Tsk. Does she really think I’m that stupid?
I march up to her.
It takes her ten seconds to realise I’m standing in front of her, too distracted she is by her book to look up. The other reason, I argue in my head, might be that she’s stalking me for a chance to get back at me, ignoring me like I did her. That makes more sense.
I clear my throat and her different coloured eyes widen when she looks up and recognizes me. She’s a good actress.
“Hey?” she says, although it sounds like a question. Her eyes dart from left to right like she’s nervous. Like she’s busted.
“Ah-huh,” I say, crossing my arms. It is clear her desperation has driven her here, trying to redeem her somehow, but it still gives me the creeps.
“Um... can I help you?” she asks with her shoulders hunched, acting uncomfortable. I snort.
“Do you mean can I help you?” I ask accusingly. “Don’t you think you’re being a little desperate?”
Her eyebrows shoot up and almost disappear into the short wisps of hair fallen on her face. “Excuse me?” She asks after sometime. I refuse to believe her shock is genuine.
“I mean, I’m sorry I rejected you today at the gym. It was a dick-move. But that’s no excuse to creep me out by following me around. It’s not going to happen between us,” I say gently.
She stares at me for a long time and after one minute of waiting for her to apologise, she surprises me.
She starts laughing.
The sound echoes so that I have three different harmonisations of her cackles all around me. An old woman in the underwear aisle across from us gives Ayah a disapproving look and I can’t help but do the same. Stalking is not a laughing matter, especially since I’ve been nice enough to apologise for treating her badly.
She is still laughing.
“Would you stop?” I ask, irritated.
She puts a fist in front of her mouth as if beating the laughter back, and after a while she manages to quiet down. “I... actually can’t believe you’re that.... conceited!” She says between breaths. My mouth pops open but she’s not finished. “I mean, I get it. You’re attractive and all but holly shit, dude, you seriously cannot be that deluded.”
For the first time in a long time, I feel my cheeks reddening. I want desperately to believe that she is just a really good actress. Because if she is not and she is talking to me in this condescending way: then I have made a fool of myself.
I am the best, I chant. I’m successful. I’m attractive. She is neither of those things.
I smirk, grateful for the cradle Logic rocks me with. “Nice try,” I say. “I’ll pretend this never happened if you just back off, okay, stalker?”
She starts laughing again but it is under control, only her shaking shoulders giving her away. I hate that she’s making me question myself. Again.
“Whatever you say,” she says with an eye roll. “Now can I get back to shopping?”
I get the hell out of there and leave her alone so she can ‘shop’. When I get to my car and she’s nowhere in sight, I don’t think too hard about it – it doesn’t mean I wasn’t right. She wants me.
I’ll just have to watch her closely.
Damn it. I forgot the sauce.
Ayah
I’m standing at the checkout and suddenly I can’t help but laugh out loud. The redhead girl working shoots me one of those dirty, patronizing smiles only retail people can pull off, and I mirror her expression. I’ve worked in Woolworths before. She purses her lips and gives me my receipt.
Even as I make my way back to my car (the car I bought with my first ever cheque for writing Danger after Dark), I can’t help but let the laughter out, my quiet chuckles resounding in the car park as if the concrete agreed with me. What an absolute douche.
How could someone be that delusional? I mean, I’m an overweight girl that thought the guy was cute – until he opened his big mouth. But come on, I wanted to yell at him when he gave me that pitying look. Just because I’m not skinny doesn’t mean I’d degrade myself by stalking a man that called me a lost cause.
I don’t even know his name. Some stalker I’d make.
I see the door to English and breathe a sigh of relief.
Last night’s ‘stalker’ fiasco, coupled with this morning’s head-dunking in a toilet, have put me on edge. And as I walk the halls of my school with blue water staining my shirt (among other things that come from a toilet) I can’t help but be annoyed with that trainer instead of thinking his delusions were funny. But I guess that’s what you get for swimming in shit: nothing impresses you afterwards.
Pricilla had made sure to catch me before lunch today, claiming her intentions were noble: who would eat lunch smelling like a sewer drain, right? She was watching out for my weight, she told me. I had taken a risk and said that I’d tasted the breakfast that she’d thrown up this morning anyway, so I wasn’t hungry (everyone knew she was bulimic and laughed at that).
What she does to me physically I do to her emotionally. It’s a slippery slope, the power we have over each other, but I would happily stop exploiting her failures if she just left me alone.
Only three more weeks to graduation, I chant to myself as I walk into Mr Hickey’s safe haven of a classroom: Pricilla can’t do anything to me in here. And in three weeks she won’t be able to do anything to me at all.
My words of self-empowerment fade into the distance as she walks through the door, and I realise too late that Mr Hickey hasn’t arrived yet. But I refuse to be openly cowed. Refuse to let a screw-up like her get to me. She’s the bully that didn’t get into any university because she’s stupid. She’s the girl that’s known for whoring herself out in exchange for assignments. She should be embarrassed for dunking someone’s head in a toilet, not me.
Pricilla approaches my desk with a come-hither sway of her hips and hands me a tissue. “Ayah, hey! You’ve got some mascara running down your cheeks,” she says with a mask too kind to be genuine. I narrow my eyes, feeling threatened by her sugary tone, but angry enough to pretend otherwise. I snatch the tissue from her hands and dab under my eyes.
Something crunchy and oozing slides down my face.
“Oh!” She exclaims and walks back to my desk. The students who have beaten Mr Hickey to class face her – face us. “That’s the tissue I used to pick up a dead spider in my car! I’m so forgetful!”
While those around me laugh I wipe my cheek and my hand comes away with what is left of the tiny carcass. How could I trust her to give me anything other than more humiliation? I want to puke. That’s disgusting, even for her.
“Say cheese,” she says, and quickly snaps a photo of me with her phone.
I surprise her by smiling. Regardless of what she did and the way she made me feel, I never once reacted outwardly to her scornfulness. And I think that’s what annoyed her the most.
“Thanks for the tissue, Prissy. But maybe you should work on improving your memory a little bit. That’s probably why you didn’t get into uni.”
I inhale all the ‘burns!’ around me like an asthmatic puffing on Ventolin. Brian slips a clean tissue onto my desk discreetly and I award Pricilla a wink, once my face is devoid of guts. Just because I was an unwilling contestant, that didn’t mean I couldn’t play the game.
Although I know it is coming and it is nothing new, I squeeze my eyes shut when Pricilla’s hand strikes my face. My cheek immediately stings and my tear ducts activate. She dares me to react with her eyes, dares me to hit her back, but I raise my finger and point to the door instead. Mr Hickey walks in a second later.
“Alright everyone: practice take-home exams to be done, stop talking!” he says cheerily while indicating with a flourish of his hand for Pricilla to sit down. She does so immediately but not before whispering in my ear, “I can wait an hour to finish what we started, loser.”
Oh, goody.
I ignore her and stand to distribute this week’s essay question for Mr Hickey. Lost cause. Stalker. Loser. Fatty. Tubba-tub. Ashfat. Geek. All these names...
Once all the papers are handed out, I take a seat at my desk and write them all in the top corner.
I complete the essay in forty-five of the fifty minutes assigned to us. My mind is lost in a whirlwind of Losers and Lost Causes to finish anything worth handing in so I ask to excuse myself two minutes early, claiming a stomach ache. Mr Hickey takes one long look at me and nods his head in approval. I bolt to the door with my head hanging.
Mr Hickey never let anybody out of class early, especially not for a two minute head start. And it’s pretty clear by the amount of snickering students I leave behind that his acceptance had more to do with my pee-stained shirt than any stomach ache I may have. If I was the type to lie, I’d turn around and shout that I was no coward. But even that would require the bravery I’m obviously lacking.
Once the door is closed behind me my feet propel me to my car. Yes, I had run. But cowards can change. Bravery could be earned. I just had to prove it.