Your Own Kind of Girl

three times a week. I still have them. We folded ourselves into each other’s lives, each other’s families. His mother cooked vegetarian curries for me, my mother gave him the lamb shank from the Sunday roast. He lived closer to our school than me, and in Year Twelve, for reasons that I dared not question, my parents allowed me to stay overnight at his house during the week. Although we were supposed to sleep in different rooms, we didn’t really. Nobody said anything. I still remember lying with my head on his bare chest, listening to his heart. He told me he wanted to spend his whole life with me; that he had never known a love like this and he probably never would again.

I wish we had been able to keep things sweet.

At the very least, when they changed, I wish one of us had called it, quickly and cleanly.

It was not to be.

Perhaps it was the stress of the exams, the expectation of our future weighing on us, but by the end of Year Twelve things had begun to feel strained between us. Even though I knew it was almost impossible for childhood relationships to survive the transition to independence, to adulthood, I had occasionally dared to imagine that we might be the exception. However, what started as bickering soon progressed into a style of fighting ugly enough to make me think: this is not right. I considered cutting the cord, but was tortured by the worry that to do so would be a betrayal. I just needed to try harder. To stick it out. And in silencing what I suspect was the truth, I returned, once more, to the comfort of food, to that habit of eating down my emotions, my unhappiness, and my ballooning weight yet again became a source of unspoken, dominating, shame.

Joffa had his own demons, most notably a soft spot for dope. I, on the other hand, hated it. It triggered a panic in me so all-encompassing that, by the time I was seventeen, it was already clear that I was not the kind of person who should take drugs. I knew that, and he knew that. At first, out of politeness, he kept his habit to himself, but as the pressure of Year Twelve set in, getting stoned soon became his favourite thing to do. The amount he smoked worried me, and I told him so. He said I should mind my own business; he wasn’t hurting anyone. He was hurting himself, I said. What was I, his mother? It became A Thing. The tenderness and respectfulness that had been such a feature of our relationship began to fray.

That summer, after our final exams, his family took me with them on holiday to Noosa. At the famous Eumundi Markets, I saw a lady with a beautiful wooden-bead necklace that was so beautiful I became obsessed with replicating it. I wasn’t sure where to buy beads like hers so, as an experiment, I bought a bag of borlotti beans from the supermarket, borrowed Joffa’s dad’s power drill, drilled a hole through each one, lacquered them and strung them on fishing wire. This was the kind of thing I did for fun, when Joffa and his brothers and their girlfriends were at the beach. Having something to do—a job or a project—just always made me feel so much calmer. More settled.

Joffa couldn’t understand it. Why didn’t I come out to the beach? And why didn’t I want to join him and his brothers at the nightclub, drinking cocktails? What was I gonna do—stay at home every day, drinking cups of Earl Grey tea by the fire with his parents?

Well, yes, actually! Couldn’t think of anything better!

One day, feeling brave, I agreed to join Joffa and his brothers and their girlfriends for an evening at a nightclub in Noosa. In the back of the car with Joffa, Mother Love Bone on the stereo, window down, wind blowing in my hair, I remember feeling young, and wild, and free. But as we entered the highway, with the car now speeding around thirty kilometres above the speed limit, that old bad feeling began to swell in my stomach. I told myself to relax, we’d be fine, but it just didn’t work. When I too casually asked the driver to please slow down, he thought it was funny, and then I just felt like a prude, and stopped talking at all. For fun, the driver decided to see if he could drive and pull a cone at the same time. I didn’t think that was a good idea, and I said so, but my distress seemed to be taken on as some kind of challenge and, before long, the passenger in the front seat had pulled out a bong, packed a tight little cone, set it up between the driver’s knees, and—after one two three—a lighter flickered and the pipe was lit. I watched in disembodied terror as the driver, still speeding, sucked back the cone, held his breath for what felt like an eternity, and then puckered his lips to blow the smoke out the window like a victorious dragon while Joffa and the other passenger hooted in celebration.

I did not hoot. I just sat there, frozen in silence, the feeling of badness gushing through me, my heart beating so loud and fast in my chest that I had to hold my body to the seat to stop it from leaping out of the still speeding vehicle.

I got drunk that night. Really, really drunk. And it was only with the alcohol in my system that I was able to finally admit to myself that Joffa and I were growing in completely different directions. I didn’t feel safe with him anymore. I knew that I needed to say something, but for reasons I didn’t understand at the time, the thought of breaking up with him filled me with guilt so sticky, so true feeling, I just couldn’t seem