Being Kalli (10 page)

By Wednesday night I have a neat pile of notebooks and papers on the right side of my desk, a huge stack of messy papers on the left, and my laptop somewhere in the middle under the pens and food wrappers and tissues and more paper. It’s surprising how much uni work I can get done when I force myself.

U
ntil Wednesday night.

Monday I started the trend, Tuesday I thought I could continue it for the whole week but by
tonight I burst. I throw back my chair, which topples to the floor, and stomp to my bed where I fist my hands and slam them into the mattress. One, three, five times and then I assess the outcome and decide things don’t look destroyed enough.

Standing in an open space, my arms are pinned straight by my side, my fingers wriggling and squeezing my thighs so I jerk in pain. I could smash my phone and my computer and it wouldn’t be enough. Then I see my violin case, the top closed but the latches unlocked
, and I no longer want to smash everything.

I want to overpower it.

I storm up to my bookshelf and pull out a folder. Inside I leaf through the sheet music until I come across “Love the Way You Lie”, originally sung by Eminem and Rihanna. I remember when that was released. I’d stick in my earphones, go for a run and push myself harder than other times, running until my breaths turned into puffs, puffing until my chest felt like it was being squeezed off by a band, struggling to breathe until my throat felt funny and I had to stop off the sidewalk, lean over and wait for the nauseous feeling to subside.

When I play on my violin, I hack at it. I love this thing, but it’s my therapy when I can’t explain myself and boy
, do I have a lot to say. Lost in the moment, I wonder why every note sounds hushed, strangled, until I see my bow has crossed the bridge and I’m playing over the hump in the little section where the sounds can’t echo through the violin. How the hell this happened, I don’t know. I’m a professional player, a qualified teacher.

I live and breathe this thing.

I put the violin and bow back in its case, close the top, and slide the case back in its resting place.

Then I sink on my bed, face in the concave of my palms, and feel heat rushing to my
cheeks, my ears tingling and a tremble hurting me from deep inside. I almost cry, but it’s not sadness in me. It’s nothingness.

It’s
Nate. Rather, me; my mistakes. Oh, how foresight would have been a nice gift to have. Why is it humans have to lose what they had in order to realise how important it was?

I drop my hands, crack my neck back and tell myself it’ll be fine. I’ve always comp
osed myself before. Always been fine for my family.

I’ll be fine.

Not in the mood to play more, fed up with that desk, and ahead on current and projected course work, I lie back on the bed, hearing the springs creak under me in the afternoon quiet. Mum’s at work and the boys are at kindergarten.

I
stare at the ceiling. It’s just as empty as it is when the darkness encompasses it when I can’t sleep at night. Because no matter the time of day my past, my mistakes, always hover above me there, twirling and swimming in circles like ghosts. Now, I watch these memories:

Picking at the crusts on my sandwich in the toilet block at lunchtimes. Feeling the bread harden, then
hating myself when I had to throw out the hard bread. But secretly, I enjoyed the starving feeling. Walking, I’d be lost, like floating on clouds, hanging above flaming lava. Sleeping I’d wake up choking from a nightmare, heart pounding in my ears and tears behind my eyes that wouldn’t come. But feeling starving was a control I had. No matter when or where or why it happened, it could never be mistaken for anything other than real, crippling pain. I’d cry, sometimes, when I was that hungry.

I trace the cornices of
the ceiling with my gaze, coming back to my body here, nineteen, not a gangly girl anymore.

Thinking back to me plastered
against that hallway wall with people watching and hearing about Donovan stamping his name over my slutty image, me disintegrating my reputation further like with every crazy thing I do, I’m starting to feel the build up.

I don’t know what’s building up, but something is.

Something startles me, and I see it’s my phone, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Scout?” I answer warily into it.

“Der
, Fred. Who else could it be ringing when my caller ID comes up?”

“Right,” I say. Of course it was
her. I’d have known that if I weren’t in my own world. “I’m sorry I’ve been MIA. Just with—”

“I didn’t ring you to pull teeth and drag
‘sorrys’ from that potty mouth of yours.”

“Oh,
okay.”

Scout, no matter my mood, can pick me right up and get me into giggles, like now.

“Keep me company, bitch.”

I shower, fix my face with some makeup and dres
s to hang at her parents’ house, since she’s staying there after helping her sister with homework.

I arrive
there that evening. We both don’t have class the next day, she isn’t working at Target until noon, and her family are all busy doing their own things, so we make a box-set night of it.

Every step further, I wonder who’ll spill what they want to say first. I put my bag down; do I mention it during the silence? I sit on her bed, cross my legs and we exchange a “hello” glance; do I acknowledge the big, fat elephant now?

Building, building, building.

Is Scout a lesbian?

Am I totally crazy to do what I did?

Scout
, unaware of my inner ramblings, goes to her collection. Her wall unit is taller than her standing, and she’s installed more shelves in it to deck it out to the max. There is an order of sorts.
Charmed
,
The OC
and more are in the middle. There’s
Law & Order
,
CSI
and others just above. She sits cross-legged at the bottom and goes through that section.

“Okay, tell me when to stop,” she says. “
Breaking Bad
,
Revenge
,
Big
Bang
—”

“Okay, stop.”

“Seriously? I was hoping that was the only one you—”

“Are you a lesbian?”

It falls out. Old habits die hard, and right then, when she called out those names faster and faster, my blood pressure was rising until I had to choke out something to make her slow down.

I grab the ends of the bed and slink off, crawling up to her. She hasn’t moved, only her eyes following my path. I take her hands in mine and roll them over, all the while covering them with mine.

I try again.

“I’d never, ever treat you badly, or
think lesser of you. I’d just be sad if you’d kept it all in, keeping your secret to the world, if that’s the case.

“So,” I say. “I’ve either made this our most awkward conversation yet—and that’s some feat—or that look
is ‘how the hell is she reading my mind’.”

“I
never lied,” Scout mumbles, chin to chest. Lifting her head up, she reaches for DVD cases and says, “So season one, two, three—”

“Scout, seriously.”

I place my hands on both her knees, hold my gaze on her eyes until she begrudgingly looks up.

“
Oh, it’s cool. Nothing really to say. Why the sudden questions?”

Do I say it?
I knew this moment would come but looking at her now, I feel like a predator. She’s unsure, mindlessly flicking through the shelf of DVDs, body angled away from me. And her voice. It’s like she’s a mouse hiding who’s trying to pretend the hissing cat isn’t standing right there.

I can, I figure. I can ease into it.

“It’s just that … well with Steph, and …”

Now it’s Scout’s turn to stare me down. She tips her head and stares at me at a
forty-five-degree angle.

“Um, Kalli
Perkins? Is she home?” Scout asks, waving inches from my face.

At first I’m confused, but then it hits. Why the hell is Kalli Perkins so shy all of a sudden?
I suck in a breath, and another, and slowly let it all out. She watches me do this. Her expression deepens from plain confused to wrinkles between her eyebrows.

“
No thanks to my own fault, I’ve spent the last two and a half days keeping to myself and shitty, but it got me wondering.”
And I’d rather talk about you than me.
“You bring her up in a way you’ve never done before. You’ve never gushed over your boyfriends. She seems perfect for you, considering how happy you are, except for … you know …”
… the fact you say you’re straight.

“
Well …” She lets out a pent-up gulp of air. “I’m gay.”

It’s gone.
Her very own release. If tension were a bird chained, a flock would be soaring from her body out into the world and now she can stretch and walk with tall shoulders. Now, I think I’m seeing Scout truly happy for the first time.

Look at the girl. She has this huge beam. Suddenly, she’s up, twirling around. Then she leaps into the air and curls up into a ball to let her mattress catch her. “It feels so
good
.”

“I know. I know!”

I follow her and launch onto the bed too, but stay in my superman-flight position and hit the bed full-force. If it’s possible, Scout grins wider and laughs harder.

Then she scoots away. “You don’t have to be like this with me, if you don’t feel comfortable. Or, crap, the kissing? Crap, it doesn’t matter. We can draw boundaries, and—”

“Shh.” I place my
shh!
finger to her lips. “You’re too awesome not to roll and jump and squeal with. It was always just fun when you’ve kissed me.”

“You don’t think I’m disgusting?”

“Scout,” I say.

Why would she think that?
Scout has one of the kindest souls. It’s part of why I’m attracted to her. She has this lure that draws you in with her capacity to be so much fun, yet also willing to give so much time and care. Thinking about that, I realise I’m attracted to having her as my friend because I want to be more like her.
Because I’m not like that
.

My heart aches for
Scout. She could have so much love in her life and she’s held back because of opinions? God, it hurts like someone has my heart in their grip.

“All right. L
et me explain,” she says. “Those 5 feet, 10 inch blonde-haired, curvaceous Barbie-look-a-likes Dad slept with during those two affairs? One was a bulky Vin Diesel look-a-like named Chris, and the other was a just your plain-old-Joe-type guy. One night, I heard Mum and Dad arguing and hard as I try to forget it, when I’ve wanted to tell my family or you or anyone, I can only remember her saying, ‘You’re a stupid, embarrassing fag. You like dicks up your ass? You like to shit pancakes? You’re not a man. Men like women. Real men do their wives, not another man. I see you and have the urge to vomit.’”

I watch, slack jaw
ed and unblinking until I realise she isn’t talking anymore, and then I overcompensate by blinking so fast her movements are staggered as she stands and paces her room. She stops, stares at me, and is sitting in front of me in an instant.

“Kalli, I don’t expect you to
be okay that I haven’t told you all this time, but please know I choked up. Every time. I almost told Dad once, knowing he’s bisexual. But I figured if he’s stayed with Mum all this time she must have gotten to him, you know? I couldn’t tell my sister—she was as horrified as Mum, just a child at the time. I’m terrified to tell them and they’re family. I’m ashamed of what I am, and I can’t even tell them.”

I wrap my arms around her. I whisper
to her, “Shame is vowing to love and be solely devoted to one person for the rest of your life, then cheating on them. Shame is being too self-absorbed to rank personality higher than an image.”

I hold her cheeks and
angle her so she’s looking at my face so she knows I’m not lying. The eyes don’t lie. “There’s not one reason to be ashamed, however, of who
you
are.”

Her eyes seem to sadden, as if asking me if I’m really telling the truth. A grin slips out the corner of my mouth
. I bare all my teeth and let her feel the power of a real smile.

Scout smiles, but her eyes are glassy, and I manage to catch her first tear with
my thumb under her chin.

She talks through some of the stuff she’s hidden and the “plans” she’d ma
de so she didn’t draw too much attention to her nature. Until Steph. She seemed to connect with her past a physical level even though they made out the first night they met. I guess relationships that are meant to be will eventuate no matter how they begin.

“Another thing.”

“God, Scout,” I cry, feigning shock, “don’t tell me you have another super secret to share.”