April

It had been three weeks since the party and Gab hadn’t seen or heard from Robbie since. She couldn’t decide whether she felt relief or despair at this, though she imagined she’d drop dead with embarrassment if she actually had to talk to him again. She wanted to leave that party well and truly behind her. Last week, Steph had mentioned that Robbie was a ring-in friend of Dylan’s who lived in Camberwell and was doing an Arts degree. She’d looked at Gab strangely when she’d said that. Gab tried to block it out; she was attempting to categorise Robbie as chimera. A haze. Someone who didn’t really exist. But … she couldn’t help wondering, fearing, what had happened that night.

“He’s got a girlfriend,” said Steph knowingly, as they sat around eating breakfast one autumnal morning. Gab’s stomach dropped. “But she wasn’t at Dylan’s party.”

Gab looked down into her cereal, her head spinning. Just. Great. she thought. This was a horror. This wasn’t her. Had she cheated on someone without even knowing it?

Freya put a hand on her arm. “It’s his responsibility, not yours,” she said.

“I feel sick,” said Gab.

“So would I, if I’d slept with Robbie!” Steph scoffed, finally saying what she’d been tempted to say for the last three weeks.

“No, I mean, I really feel sick,” said Gab, suddenly too ill to react to Steph’s jibe. “I’m going back to bed”.

Relief was waiting for her under the covers. She closed her eyes and stayed there for an hour, drifting between sleep and vague questions about her life and where it was going. Why always contradictory feelings? Freedom and guilt; liberation and emptiness; anger and apathy. As she dozed, her dreams were uncomfortable and grotesque; she was tied up in a huge knot in one of them, and in another, her teeth were long and contorted and growing all wrong. She had to spit them out.

That evening, she couldn’t bare the smell of dinner as she cooked and had to pinch her nose shut as she stirred the stir fry with satay sauce. It got right up into her head, clouded her brain, sickened her stomach. She tried to eat some but ran to the bathroom moments later to bring it all up again, hoping desperately that she’d feel better in the morning.

She didn’t. She woke on Monday with a spinning head, dreading class. She couldn’t eat breakfast, so she shoved all her books in her backpack and went for a walk instead. Maybe a fruit smoothie’ll do the trick, she thought. She picked one up from So Smoothie and wandered towards her favourite spot in the park across from their apartment. She took tiny sips of smoothie that sort-of helped wash away the disgusting feeling she couldn’t shake. She lay down on the grass and closed her eyes.

“So. Tired,” she thought. “So tired of everything … uni is bloody exhausting. Life is exhausting!”.

Suddenly she opened her eyes, and the sun was somewhere different. Gab checked her watch. 10:03am. She’d slept for an hour on the lawn, and class was starting now! She grabbed her bag and stood up—but way too quickly, and had to sit down again so that she didn’t pass out. I should really drink more water, she thought.

Gab sat in Foundations of Ag. Science, not really listening—which was uncharacteristic, because she generally felt engaged in this class, and the end of semester was looming. She tapped her pen on her knee, doodled asymmetrical patterns in her notebook, and tried to pretend that life was simple. Then she was thinking of Mr. Cheng; he hadn’t crossed her mind for a while. She wondered what he was up to and how his Year 12 Maths class was going. Maybe she should call him. She wanted to, a bit. But for some reason, the thought of it made her palms sweaty.