Slowly Spinning

Nobody ever really appreciates the security of high school, the safety net its morning bells and fortnightly assemblies gave us. We were all too eager to escape the shackles that bound us to childhood and now we’re floundering in our freedom, grasping for a semblance of routine.

Over the past few months, before registration period, hanging out in the city has become habitual. It isn’t that my friends and I have a lot of money to spend or that we’re particularly smitten by the concept of lugging bags up and down the Melbourne CBD. There’s just an inexplicable need to have some kind of schedule to follow, something to hold on to as we’re dumped unceremoniously into the ‘real world.’

Tacit agreement christened the Mc Donald’s nearest Flinders Street Station our meeting place, as tacky as Natalie complains eating at a fast-food chain is. It is for her sake that we sit upstairs, where we are more likely to avoid the large families and clusters of high schoolers who frequent the city on a regular Saturday afternoon such as this.

I bump into Liana, on her way to order for us, as I make a beeline for the stairs and she manages to give me a quick hug before being jostled by a harassed looking father, his three children scampering out into the March air.

“I wonder why this place is so busy,” I remark, trying to peer at the menu through the crowd. “Seems to be a lot more pre-pubescent girls in here than usual. What’s the deal?”

For a moment, I don’t think she’s heard me above the din.

“No clue.” Her shoulders rise in a careless shrug, her mind set only on wrestling her way through the crowd and being served; she and Minh have only just finished their seven-hour shift at the cinema so I don’t take any offence to her disinterested tone.

As if something has suddenly occurred to her, she forgets about our order for the moment and whips toward me, jabbing a perfectly manicured finger at my chest.

“Minh’s upstairs. Go keep her company. And if Natalie comes before I get there, you can tell that loser I’m not ordering any of that deli-choices bullshit for her. This is a fast-food restaurant and, for chrissakes, I want my food bloody fast.”

The grumble in her voice quirks my mouth into a small grin as I amble up the stairs. Liana Romanella has been my best friend since kindergarten and her candid nature has never ceased to amaze – or, to be apt, amuse – me, although it has lead, many times in the past year, to heated arguments between her and Nat.

Minh looks up from inspecting her nails as I slide into a seat across the table. Her long ebony plait hangs a mere centimeter or so above the tabletop and it strikes me that her hairstyle hasn’t changed in all of the years that I’ve known her.

“It’s been a while,” she greets me, “since the last time I saw you…which was - ” her brow crinkles “ – two weeks ago? Time flies, doesn’t it?”

I nod my assent and we lapse into a comfortable silence. It has always been this way with Minh: this effortless, unaffected ease, this ‘take-it-easy-we’ll-get-there’ approach where gaps in conversation aren’t cheapened by redundancy. If Liana is that ever-flowing current of electricity, Minh is that stable, reassuring handhold - the thing you reach for when you think you’re about to fall.

But today something barely perceptible hangs in the air between us, colouring our silence an unfamiliar shade that sends me grasping for something, anything, to say.

“I – it’s nuts that we’re out of high school,” I begin lamely. As soon as the words leave my mouth I inwardly cringe. Pursuing journalism has been my dream for as long as I can remember and yet the only thing my mind can conjure on the spur of the moment is something so incredibly facile that I begin to feel like a D-grade actor in a daytime soap opera.

Nevertheless, Minh’s eyes snap to mine and she smiles, the dimple in her cheek flashing. “Don’t tell me the totally ‘together’ Jen Stabler is worried about Uni,” she teases. “That’s a load of crap.” She flicks a crumb in my direction and laughs when I make a disgusted noise.

I turn her words over in my mind and images of the past year rush forth. While Minh had turned herself into a stress-magnet and Liana and Natalie had gone head-to-head in a number of screaming matches, as our VCE exams had loomed, I had calmly completed my revision notes and done the required amount of studying with minimal tears and outbursts. During our Graduation Mass I was one of the few girls in our year who hadn’t turned into a blubbering mess at the notion of leaving our six-year sanctum.

With a start, I realise that it was only around Charlie that I had ever lost my composure. He’d brought out a part of me that had left me feeling out of my depth and it had scared me and exhilarated me all at once. Brings, I correct myself. Past tense isn’t for Charlie and I, even if he doesn’t recall who I am right now.

And, with that thought, I swallow.

Minh can throw words like ‘together, cool, and composed’ around as much as she wants, but nobody knows about my slips, the way I sometimes find myself walking purposely down Charlie’s street, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, hoping that he’ll catch a glimpse of me and just…remember. Or initiate a conversation. Anything.

Guilt wells up in the pit of my stomach. Even though the doctors released him in January, they’d warned us that a sudden onslaught of memory would cause a relapse - ruin any progress he’d made over the past few months. So I’d promised Mrs. Reid that I would stay away. But in those moments, I hadn’t – haven’t - been able to help myself and I’d begun to play a foolish game with my boyfriend’s recovery. In moments like those, I feel an overwhelming sense of – of what? Of restlessness. Or desperation. Feelingsthat I had never thought I would ever have to attribute to myself.

Minh’s next words jolt me away from my thoughts.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Wha-?” I glance at Minh, slightly disoriented and ashamed for having zoned out. Her fine brows are furrowed and she toys absentmindedly with the end of her plait.

She repeats her question.

“Yeah, ‘course I can.” My forehead creases as I take in her expression and I reach over to clasp her smaller hand in my own. “What’s up? The look on your face is saying ‘Danger! Shitty news ahead! Proceed at caution.’”

Minh cracks a smile. “Yeah. I guess you could say that. I’m telling you this first ‘cause I know I can trust you not to cause a scene.”

“Okayyy.” I draw out the word. “Now I’m shitting myself. You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

And there’s something about that moment, that one lingering millisecond before she opens her mouth to speak, which strikes me as incredibly significant and I bite my bottom lip in apprehension.

“I know this year was supposed to be our year. You know, the year that we’d do all the totally cool stuff we always said we’d do. It sucks that I’m going to miss out ‘cause I’m going back to Vietnam in June.”

For a moment, the words don’t register, as if she is speaking in an unfamiliar tongue, as if we are two builders of the Tower of Babel after they were cast across the ends of the earth, made to speak different languages.

I blink and my words are thick around my tongue. “For how long?”

“I don’t know. Mum and Dad have missed it so much and Thuc, well, he’s never really liked it here.” She smiles affectionately and her face lights up. “Personally, I think he’s got a girlfriend over there.”

Across the room a little kid starts to bawl. I furrow my brow, trying to process the information.

“But,” I pause, “you could always stay here. You’re eighteen now.”

“I know.” She bites her lip and averts her gaze. “Cam’s staying. The thing is – I dunno, I want to go. It’s dumb, I know. But I miss it too. Besides, I’ve already got a university placement there.” She shrugs and looks at me pleadingly. “Promise you won’t tell Nat or Liana yet. At least, ‘til I work out how to tell them.”

Her dark eyes are shining earnestly beneath the fluorescent light and all I can do is nod slowly, deliberately.

“Alright,” I agree. “But I’m warning you now, they’re going to make a bigger scene when they realise you didn’t tell them fir – ”

“Hey!” Natalie’s voice rises above the din, cutting me off mid-sentence. Her newly dyed brown hair is pulled back in a high ponytail and it swings behind her as she makes her way toward us, balancing our food on the standard tray. She wrinkles her nose. “Lucky I got here before Li could order a Big Mac for me.”

Liana appears a second later, chortling wickedly, straws and napkins in hand.

The atmosphere quickly changes around us, light and airy as if a cool breeze has swept through and blown away the solemnity. I tug at the short blonde wisps that curl at the base of my neck.

“You would not guess who served us at the counter.” Nat’s eyes sparkle excitedly as she slides into the seat beside me, delicately picking out the tomatoes from her wrap.

My eyes meet Minh’s and she leans across the table, pointedly ignoring my stare. “Who?”

Nat points at Liana. “Tell vem,” she demands around a mouthful of chicken. “I schwear, I couldn’t beleef eff.”

There’s a few seconds of silence as Liana settles herself next to Minh and rolls her eyes, looking bored. She digs into the pocket of her jeans and pulls out a small elastic. “Damien Mannix,” she informs us, snapping her dark curls back with an exaggerated yawn. “Yeah, you heard it here first, folks. St. Jerome’s sex-machine is now Mc. Donald’s’ newest counter chick. Anyone order fries with your STI?”

She ducks as a wrapper is thrown her way.

“You’re such a bitch,” Natalie declares.

“Mole,” Liana counters.

Nat flips her the finger in reply, which Li pointedly ignores. She clears her throat.

“Anyway, Li,” she says. “Damien doesn’t really fit into that stereotype. His reputation precedes him, ‘cause, far as I know, he’s only ever done the deed with Marisa. And they’re still together too. How long’s it been? Six months?” She lets out a low whistle. “That’s when the relationship starts to get rocky, you know.”

I take a bite of my burger and chew slowly, unwilling to add to the conversation. Damien and I had never been really good friends but we’d never been enemies either, merely acquaintances flitting through each other’s lives at parties and school functions. He’d been on the senior soccer team with Charlie but all I really knew about him were from the occasional snippets Marisa Marasco would tell me in Lit class.

I remember the day they got together too, because it was the same day she’d gotten a seventy-four percent on one of her SACs and had been too over-the-moon to care.

“Explains what all those teenyboppers are doing here,” Liana grumbles, stealing a fry from my tray. “Geez. It’s not like he’s freaking Brad Pitt or anything. Bloody hell, some people just want to get their food, you know?”

This time, it’s Nat’s turn to roll her eyes. “Yeah, sure, you stupid liar. Like you minded him when you pashed him at Francesca Savelio’s party back in year ten.” She pokes her tongue out at her and Liana laughs, looking slightly abashed.

“Yeah, well,” she concedes. “I didn’t say he was a bad kisser.”

Minh’s eyes sparkle. “Does he remember?”

She shakes her head and wrinkles her nose. “Nah, don’t think so, and thank God. Can you imagine how awkward that would be? Besides, he was too busy telling us about his plans for this year. You guys wanna hear about Damien Mannix’s greatest ambition for 2007?” She laughs.

Natalie’s eyes widen and she slams her hand against the table excitedly, making us jump.

“Oh my Gawd!” She waves her hands. “Yeah, I was like ‘what the hell?’ when he told us. And he was acting like he was all happy about it too, but you could so tell he wasn’t. Poor thing. I guess he didn’t get any offers for Uni, ‘cause he’s all like ‘yeah, this year I’m gonna be working at McDonald’s full-time. Gonna pull me some massive cash. None of that school bullshit for me for a whole year’ like it was the best thing that ever happened to him. And I was like, yeah right. You so know you wanted to get into Uni.”

Minh looks sympathetic as she takes a sip of her coke. “Poor guy. Marisa probably gives him hell for it too. You know how she’s so ambitious. She can’t help it - it’s in her nature.”

I remember that about her. She hadn’t been last year’s school captain for nothing.

There’s an audible snort and Li scrunches up her wrapper in disgust. “Poor guy? You guys are crazy. Pazzo. For crying out loud, you know, for most of the year he’d shit around at the back of the classroom like the rest of us weren’t trying to learn or something. I think he only started getting serious halfway through the year. And that was about the same time he started going out with Marisa.”

“Whipped!” Natalie sniggers. “So pussy-whipped! Marisa has him wrapped around her little finger, I swear.” In true Natalie Hoskin fashion, she waggles her eyebrows suggestively and makes a whipping motion with her wrist.

I shift uneasily in my seat as the other three burst into laughter.

It’s not that I find the joke particularly offensive. Last year I would have been making vulgar jokes right alongside them but so many things can happen in a year. Maybe it’s because I know what it’s like: the hushed whispers, the gossip that spreads like wildfire as curious gazes follow your every move. And everybody who has no right to know anything somehow does anyway.

In that moment, I feel a strange kind of affinity with Damien Mannix, and I sip my coke in silence.

A big thank you to Harmonized (major huggles to you), Elly, professional scatterbrain, and Nomadic Writer for having enough faith in what I had of the prologue. And for just being awesome. 'Cause I said so. )

Please feel free to point out any mistakes, errors, etc. because constructive criticism makes the world go round. Really, it does.