Chapter 13
Ada
If there’s one thing I always loved about New Zealand, it was the water.
It’s pristine even at the urban beaches.
I pace the sand, my insides twisting like live snakes, but no matter how fast I walk, I can’t get the energy out of my body.
I feel dirty. As disgusting as the day Jenny Wallis sealed her fate as the worst of my enemies.
“Jake,” I tell myself. “I’ll call Jake.”
Suddenly, I can’t fucking stand my own skin.
I tear my shorts and top off and wade into the freezing water.
The cold sucks the air from my body, but I welcome it.
This time, it feels like it’s making me stronger.
I swim for the horizon as fast as I can, the salt stinging my eyes and nose.
I’m not sure how long I do it for, but when I turn, I can barely see the beach.
It doesn’t matter. Just like it doesn’t matter if anyone steals my shorts or my phone.
I can get a new phone. What I can’t get is peace from the fear pumping through me like battery acid.
That’s the feeling I’ve been battling since Betty told me her baby’s name. I’m still angry, I’m still grieving, and I still want justice, but mostly I’m terrified because I understand way too much about what led Rhys to where he went. I look up at the periwinkle sky and admit it to myself:
I’m in a bad place, and I have been for a long time.
I spent my teens and twenties climbing the orchestral ladder, playing twelve hours a day, getting all the success a classical musician could.
Then I turned thirty and found myself sitting alone atop a meaningless empire.
On the outside, I was the queen of glittery ashes and on the inside, the same old weird, woggy, Autistic-as-balls Ada.
I thought I spent a million hours practising the flute as a kid, because I was good at it, but I was lying to myself. I just wanted Mummy and Daddy to love me.
They probably do, but not in a way that means anything. I was never the kid they wanted. I was annoying and needy and constantly bombarding them with questions like, “How do we know we’re us and not someone else?”
I was also smart. Whenever teachers said so, my parents turned to me with smiles of reflected glory.
I got the message loud and clear. I worked my fingers to the bone, trying to make sure they never ran out of reasons to congratulate me.
It didn’t matter. At the end of the day, they were never going to be able to talk to me on the phone for more than two minutes before saying, ‘Well… We’d better let you go, Ada. ’
I’m not a real person to them. I’m an idea.
The shape of a girl they didn’t want to understand.
And when I finally realised the way things were, I lost my only reason for trying.
For a while, I wandered around punch-drunk, then I met Name Forever Redacted and let him steal the last of what I liked about myself: my independence, my opinions, my gigs, my music friends…
Or maybe I wanted him to take that stuff. It never felt like it belonged to me anyway. I sank into the beautiful oblivion of clubs and parties, and it was such a relief not to care anymore. To be lazy and drunk and dress like the slut I’d been called my whole life, regardless of what I wore.
And now here I am, jobless and boozing my life away.
I’ve been hurt. Badly. But that’s true of plenty of people.
Under the open sky and in open water, I can admit I’m being selfish.
I was given things people would kill for, and I’m trying my hardest to throw them away.
It’s pointless and disrespectful, and it’s not even working.
The brighter parts of me are still here, still fighting to protect me.
I left Name Forever Redacted, and I still dream about music.
I want a normal life. But what am I doing to make it happen?
Top answers on the board, ladies and gentlemen: ‘Fuck Nothing’ for eighty points.
I told Betty that Rhys and I understood each other.
I didn’t say we shared the same armour, a bitterness that simultaneously protected and poisoned us.
The world turned its back on us, so we turned our backs harder.
But you have to live in the world. There’s nowhere else to go. Unless you do what Rhys did.
His descent was faster than mine, but what am I doing to stop myself from getting there? Drinking all the time and dedicating my life to revenge? Solid fucking plan, Renaldo.
The whole bootstraps thing is a brutal lie, but even lies have splinters of truth.
Were Rhys and I ever willing to face the things we were running from before they chased us into the abyss?
We were holding a shit hand, poker-wise, but we still had cards.
Rhys had his mum and his sister, and I have Cece and music. And now, maybe Jake.
I think of kissing him in his bed, our fingers threaded together.
Is it so hard to believe I’ve finally met someone perfect for me?
And even if I haven’t, how long am I going to spin my wheels?
The pain hasn’t gone away. It’s still here, as vast as the ocean I’m swimming in, and I’ve abandoned the only place I could ever put it—my music.
“Play for me,” Jake asked one night as we lay in his bed.
“Don’t have my flute.”
He gave me a look I’ve grown all too familiar with. The ‘don’t bullshit me, Renaldo’ look. “I mean tomorrow. Whenever.”
“Can’t. Sold it before I came to Auckland. Got ten grand for it.”
“Liar.”
He was right. My flute is under Cece’s bed, along with A Room of One’s Own and the Euterpe card.
It’s still calling to me. I dream about it.
Because I didn’t just play for my parents, I played because I loved it.
Because the flute helped me say the things I couldn’t put into words.
Feel things I couldn’t explain to anyone.
Tears slip down my face, and I’m shaking from the cold, but I don’t care. The clarity is pure as oxygen, bright as sunshine.
I don’t need revenge, I need a fucking therapist. A therapist and somewhere I can sleep and play music, and not slam tequila like it’s going out of fashion. A place of one’s own, just like Virginia Woolf wrote.
She killed herself. So did Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton, and Martha Gellhorn, and Iris Chang, and fuck knows how many other brilliant, sensitive women.
The scorched trail of the female artist is well-worn.
Do I want to keep pretending I’m not marching down it, or do I want to fight my way onto another path?
As I float beneath the open sky, two questions surface: do I think my life is worth saving? And am I willing to do what it takes to save it?
The answer to both is yes.
The word vibrates in my chest like a closing note.
I’m not going to the reunion. I’ll make it up to Cece. She’ll forgive me; she wants me to get better. I’ll go away with Jake instead. I’ll try to be better with drinking. No, I will be better. I need to be.
It takes me a long time to make it back to the beach, but all my things are still there, and it feels like a validation of why I went into the water.
A good omen. People gawk at the half-dressed, soaked woman pulling on sandy denim shorts.
An old guy calls me a crazy tourist. I don’t care.
I’ve been called worse. And I’m not crazy.
Neither was Rhys. We were just different, and a better world would’ve seen that.
I sit, drying on the sand until the sun gets low, making plans in my head.
When I’m only mildly soggy, I hire a car to take me back to Stabbies.
But instead of going to the bar for a drink, I sneak upstairs and shower.
Towelling myself in Cece’s spare room, I decide to look at apartments before I make dinner. Then maybe—
“Ada?”
Cece appears in the doorway. Her voice is tight. Something’s wrong. “What? What’s up?”
“Have you spoken to Jake today?”
My pulse spikes. “Yeah. This morning? What happened? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine, I think. Where… Where is he?”
A wave of nausea rises in my throat. “I don’t know. At home, I think. Why?”
“Oh God.” Cece looks sick to her stomach. “Ada, I can’t…”
“What? What is it? Just tell me.”
Shaking, she hands me her phone. It’s open on Jenny Wallis’ account, a multi-photo post, but this one isn’t about the reunion.
The first photo shows Jake and Jenny with their arms around each other at what looks like a party.
They’re in their late teens or early twenties, ridiculously attractive, and clearly about to kiss.
My mind bursts above my body. I watch myself swipe left and see a photo of Jake the way he is now, drinking coffee at a cafe.
Another swipe reveals him and Jenny Wallis, smiling arm-in-arm, the beach behind them.
He’s wearing the same T-shirt as he was in the photo before, and something in me knows it was taken today. I scroll down to the caption:
Childhood sweethearts reunited! Some people were always meant to find their way back to each other…#hometownheat #stillgotit
I rush for Cece’s bathroom and manage to get most of my puke in the toilet.
After that, things come in flashes, me on my feet, swearing a blue streak.
Davis pressing a cold towel into my face.
Cece saying things. Aggie saying things.
Heat bursting across my eyes like sunspots.
Running away from all of them and barricading myself in the laundry, turning off the light and curling into a ball.
Time drips and drops, thoughts circling on a Rolodex until I claw my way back.
“Hey girl,” I mumble to myself. “Time to sort this mess.”
I take a boiling hot shower. Get dressed. Do my makeup. Pull on the All Blacks jersey. Snap a few photos. Head downstairs.
I pass Cece and Davis, ignore what they say and walk out.
First stop: Vape shop. Two ice-mint ElfBars.
Second stop: Liquor store. The most expensive tequila they have. Eighteen-year-old Fuenteseca.
I drink as I walk, practically begging someone to say something about me swigging from an open bottle.
No one does. Cowards. I reach the park near Stabbies and settle cross-legged on a bench.
I hunt for the photo I took after Jake and I first slept together.
Me, smiling like the cat that got the cream, his tattooed bicep clearly visible in the bed behind me.
I upload it to my stories and add text:
Some childhood sweethearts stay together. Some grow up.
When an amateur shoots to kill, their best chance is to aim for centre mass and spray. I post another picture. Me, tangled in my sheets, eyes closed, lips parted, naked except for Jake’s All Blacks jersey. The text box practically types itself:
Thanks for all the adult memories...
I delete all my social media apps, turn off my phone and down tequila like it’s tap water.
I might be the most naive bitch walking the earth, but three things are crystal clear:
Jake fucked Jenny Wallis.
We’re done. Forever.
My plans to get my shit together can wait, because I am getting completely, catastrophically fucked up tonight.