15
‘OKAY, BELLA ,’ JACINTA says when she sees where I’ve brought her. ‘I think you’re taking the whole life-bomb thing too far. Have you lost your actual mind?’
‘Only the boring part of it,’ I say, grabbing her hand and dragging her inside the entrance of Ink and Dreams.
It’s sort of like a cool, tiny, 24-hour art gallery. Indie rock music plays over the buzz-hum of needles. The walls are lined with intricate tattoo designs. There are glass cabinets full of piercings lit up like treasure. My nerves fizz as we walk up to a counter where a woman with three nose piercings and a tattoo of what I think is the New York skyline on her shaved skull has just finished charging a freshly inked guy with grey hair.
‘Hi,’ I say, trying not to sound intimidated despite feeling very intimidated.
‘Hey!’ the woman says. She has a bright, kind face and an American accent. She glances between me and Jacinta. ‘How good is your makeup! You girls after some walk-ins?’
I look at Jacinta, who’s staring wide-eyed at the woman with an expression I’m taking to mean ‘I want to be her’ and assume I can probably answer for both of us. I swallow my hesitation. ‘Yeah. We want tattoos. Do you have time?’
‘Well, I did just have a cancellation. Bad idea getting a girl’s face inked on your back if she’s just dumped you.’ She looks at her watch. ‘Jazz and I can do you together in twenty minutes if you have a design.’
‘Okay. Cool,’ I say. I already know what I want. A tribute to Ninja. Because there’s no way she can still be alive. That’s why Ben isn’t messaging me. Or, at least, I try to convince myself she’s dead because the uncertainty of not knowing, of maybe never knowing, is excruciating. Maybe if I can get this tribute I can somehow move on.
The woman walks off to get some forms and Jacinta grabs my elbow. ‘I dunno, L,’ she hisses, forehead creased with concern. ‘Won’t your parents kill you?’
I shrug, but of course they will. Mum even freaked out when I spray-painted my hair blue at a school fete because she thought it was permanent dye. But I don’t want to think about my parents right now. I don’t want to think about anything beyond this pulsing, shining moment.
‘They don’t have to know,’ I tell Jacinta, but I don’t sound nearly as sure as I want to. ‘We can get them somewhere they won’t see.’
‘Um, if your mum is anything like my mum she will literally smell it on you.’
‘Come on , Cint,’ I say, bouncing on the balls of my feet and trying to convince myself as well as her that this is a good idea. ‘What did you say about the flashing? We were reclaiming our bodies? It’ll be the ultimate bonding experience. One-friend monsters, unite!’
Jacinta lets out a nervous laugh, then scrunches her eyes shut. ‘I dunno. I don’t think I want to.’
I groan in frustration and open my mouth to keep trying to pressure her, because I can’t do this alone, but then the woman returns with a few light-green pieces of paper. She doesn’t slide the forms across the counter yet, though. ‘Okay, so before we get started I need your IDs.’ She narrows her eyes slightly at us. ‘You’re both eighteen, right?’
Damn. I had completely blanked that there was an age restriction for tattoos, but I try to sound confident. ‘Oh, um. We didn’t bring any ID. But yeah, we’re both eighteen.’
Next to me, Jacinta hesitates. My heart sinks.
The woman gives us a sad little smile as if she’s genuinely sorry. ‘Ah, yeah, no. Eighteen or not, I can’t tattoo you without an ID. It’s illegal.’
‘Oh,’ I say. And even though I’m actually a little relieved, all the adrenaline rushes from my body like a deflating balloon, leaving space for my thoughts to start filling my mind again. ‘Right. Yeah, no worries. Thanks anyway.’
But Jacinta either realises how much I need this, or she liked my bonding speech, because she says, ‘What about piercings?’
We’re lying on our backs on two padded massage-type tables in a side room, waiting for the woman and Jazz to finish sterilising our jewellery out the back. We’re both getting our helix pierced, the cartilage at the very top of our ears, and according to Google this is going to hurt. I’m also probably still going to be torn apart by Mum and Dad for doing this without their permission. I try to find a crack to concentrate on, but the ceiling is smooth.
‘What do you think?’ Jacinta asks. ‘Worst-period-ever level of pain or being-punched-in-the-boob level of pain?’
My pulse thumps in my veins. ‘Um. Maybe just being-stabbed-through-the-ear-by-a-metal-skewer level of pain?’
‘That’s not helping,’ she moans. ‘Come on. Tell me something distracting. Please .’
I blink at the ceiling a few times, chewing my cheek. And maybe it’s the fact that we’re not making eye contact, or maybe it’s the bonding experience, but I know I’m going to tell her the truth about Charlie.
‘L?’
I sense her turning her head towards me, but I keep staring straight up.
My stomach clenches, nerves forming a tight ball. ‘Okay, so, I do have something to tell you. But before I do, you have to know I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you before. It’s just…’ How am I meant to explain the complex web of reasoning behind keeping Charlie a secret? Maybe I don’t even have to. ‘It’s just shit.’
‘Okay.’
I can tell she’s absorbed the seriousness of the moment, but I hesitate. I don’t know how to start. ‘Can you look at the ceiling please?’
‘Okay,’ Jacinta says again, softly. ‘Hey. You can tell me anything. Okay?’
So I do. ‘Charlie…he…he died. Almost a year ago.’ I have to stop and clear my throat. ‘He slipped at a party. He hit his head really, really hard.’ A tear rolls down my temple into my hairline. ‘We turned the life support off.’
There’s silence for a moment and then, ‘Oh,’ Jacinta says. ‘Okay, I was, ah, I was not expecting that.’ And her tone is so refreshingly her that it almost makes me laugh.
‘Yeah. Fair enough.’
I didn’t plan on saying anything else, but once I’ve told Jacinta the hardest part the rest tumbles out like a confession: what happened with Lockie and that we’re kind of messaging again, the fact that Ben knows about Charlie and that’s why he got my number in the first place, that I’ve drifted from my friends and that my parents are being so weird with each other. The only thing I don’t tell her is that there’s something going on with me that I don’t understand, that Charlie would have understood, and that I need to understand if I ever want to feel better, if I ever want to feel like I’m not always on the edge of something terrifying and unnameable, or that there’s something I need to discover to make my life right that’s always just out of reach, because I don’t know how to figure it all out.
When I’ve finished spilling almost my entire insides to Jacinta the woman and Jazz still haven’t come back, which seems weird. Maybe they overheard and are letting us talk? I should care, but I don’t right now.
‘Anyway,’ I say eventually. ‘Do you…do you hate me now?’
The room is dead quiet, just the faint sound of music and machine buzz outside. Jacinta doesn’t say anything. Five seconds pass. I’m too scared to turn my head and see her expression.
Finally, she speaks. ‘You’re a freakishly good liar. I mean, you even lied to me about your brother tonight .’
I scrunch my eyes closed. ‘I know. I’m really sorry. I—’ But before I can finish, she reaches a hand over and gropes for mine, finding my fingers and giving them a hard squeeze. I surprise myself by squeezing back.
‘I mean, I knew something was up. I knew you were going through something, and I was kind of getting over you obviously hiding it from me, but I didn’t realise it was…but, yeah. I get it. That’s completely messed up. I’m so, so sorry.’
I suck in a breath, feeling a little lighter. ‘Yeah. Thanks.’
‘Okay, but…now I have to tell you something.’
I frown at the ceiling. ‘What?’
She hesitates before speaking. ‘Ah, so, I actually had a massive, secret crush on your brother. So, yeah. Don’t think you deserve all the sympathy over this, okay?’
‘Cint!’ I scream, but it’s through a wet laugh because she’s somehow made this moment feel a little bit normal. ‘ That’s why you wanted to invite him tonight?’
‘Obviously!’
A second later there’s a soft knock on the door. ‘Are you guys ready?’
Jacinta and I turn to look to look at each other and answer at the same time. ‘Ready.’
·
We only have a few minutes to stare in wonder at our piercings in the mirror—Jacinta’s is a silver star and mine is a gold feather—before we pay and burst onto the street just in time to run down to the river and join the crowd for midnight, ears throbbing.
3…
2…
1…
The fireworks erupt in the sky above us and reflect off the silky black surface of the Yarra like there’s a parallel universe below. Brief explosions of light, life, there then not, somehow gone forever despite the intensity of their brightness—or maybe because of it. I try not to think about that and find myself remembering something Charlie used to say: Time is a social construct and doesn’t exist in objective reality. But I still expect birthday presents. I think about Salvatore the seal in the river, the falcon family perched high on a nearby building, and wonder if they’re scared or if they’re used to humans disrupting their world with explosives every year to celebrate something that doesn’t even exist in objective reality.
‘Happy New Year!’ Jacinta screams at me over the booms, and I finally give in to the moment. Time stops running like a river and it’s only us, here, now, forever.
‘Happy New Year!’ I scream back.
I pull out my phone. Still nothing from Ben. I swallow my disappointment and take a photo of the multi-coloured sky. I attach it to a message to Lockie and hit send before I can think.
Happy new year xxx