I’ve seen ads for a reality show about addictions, and I know people can be shopping addicts, so maybe they are the ones we are aiming these bracelets at. But the likelihood of a shopping addict coming in to Robins on a quiet Saturday afternoon has got to be pretty low, right? The cash register is a hundred years old and the screen decides what moments it wants to work, and what moments it would rather glitch out for a bit. I get that. I relate better to the cash register than I do to Manic Panic Caroline or any of the customers I served today. I will be better when I work my first shift with Aggie.
Remember your first shift at Coles? You brought home flowers for Mum, a newspaper for Dad and chocolate for Ollie and me. That was the nicest thing. Even if I could have afforded to do something similar (I couldn’t), there is nothing at Robins for Dad or Ollie. Still, I was inspired by your gesture, so I bought a necklace on sale for Mum. It was five bucks, and a little bit ugly, but she cried about it anyway. She really doesn’t need a lot to make her happy.
I’m going to try to do more of that. Be more like you, in some ways anyway. You made kindness look easy. It feels hard for me to think of things that people will appreciate. I am so good at getting things wrong. Thanks Rudy, for the inspiration.
Love, Erin
24 August
Dear Rudy,
I miss you driving me to school, even though I know you hated doing it—you always told Mum she’s the parent, not you. But then you were usually the one to pick me up from school if I’d had an outburst, even if Mum wasn’t at work, so maybe you didn’t hate driving me as much as you’d let on. Driving has always been kind of your thing, hasn’t it. You had your music and your journey and your space. I liked that you’d let me run a little late—Mum is fanatical about getting me there on time. ‘We’re not paying for you to miss school,’ she says. I can sometimes stretch her out, remembering something I need to do just as I’m walking out the door. Some recent rememberings have included:
‘Be there in a second, I just need to strip my sheets for the wash.’
‘I’m coming, just need to put my laptop on charge.’
‘I think I left my hair straightener on.’
‘My lunch is on the bench.’
‘Please, just give me five more minutes, I want to reread a page of my textbook before my exam.’
It’s hard because I don’t want to be early, and there is only one minute on the clock that is on time and everything else is late. Mum’s work moved offices this year so now she’s just around the corner from school and it’s very convenient. Our drives are the most time we ever spend talking, me babbling about Real Housewives or what Harry Potter would be like as an adult, while Mum navigates the fifteen roundabouts between our house and the school. Fifteen! There must be more roundabouts in this little suburb than in most major capital cities. Someone at school said Cowgirl Glenda the driving instructor won’t pass you on your test unless you have driven around at least ten, including the monster threelaner in the centre of town. Did you have to go around it? I know you passed first time.
I think Mum and I can talk in the car because we’re not facing each other, and there are other things going on. It takes the pressure off the conversation, and it means we can both just say what we are feeling. Ordinarily Mum doesn’t really have a problem with that, but I do.
I haven’t always been a late person, and I hate being late, but it’s better than arriving before Dee and having to sit and wait in the toilets until the first bell rings. She gets there right on the bell because her bus comes from furthest away. I usually wait in a toilet cubicle staring at my phone until I hear it. It’s slightly less uncomfortable than having to talk to other people in my home group who mingle around at the lockers chatting before the bell. Dr Lim says it’s something I can learn, a ‘learned behaviour’, but I don’t seem to be any better now than when I first learned to talk.
I’m not really ‘out’ as autistic and I wonder sometimes if that’s a good or bad thing. The people who went to primary school with me know, and my teachers know. It’s just not something I bring up in conversation. Sometimes I think it would be easier if everyone knew that some things are really easy for me but others are really hard. But then I think, it’s no one else’s business and I don’t owe anyone an apology or an explanation. Everyone has their stuff, and people don’t seem to want to talk about theirs so why should I be the only one? And then sometimes I wonder if I should even have this diagnosis, because it makes it seem like ‘normal’ people are on one side of the room and ‘abnormal’ people are over the other, when really it’s more of a whole range of different brains than a binary thing. I’m rambling now but you know what I mean. A label is fine in the hands of the person wearing it, it’s when someone else takes it and uses it without understanding what it actually means I wonder if it’s really so good at all.
I found Dee sitting on my locker, scrolling through her phone and looking exasperated. I’d always wished our school lockers were more like the ones on Riverdale, tall and personalised inside with photos and stickers, but they’re still these short ugly little things that have been around forever and hardly fit a few books. Dee could barely contain her glee as she told me what happened on the weekend. You’d think she had won the lottery or something.
‘You will never guess what happened at Freckle Ben’s party. You freaking missed out. Pointy Kathy got so wasted she spewed in Freckle Ben’s parents’ bed and then slept in her own spew. How gross is that? And from little miss stick-up-her-arse herself. Anyway Freckle Ben posted the pictures online and then Pointy Kathy’s mum said she was going to call the police. Imagine dobbing to your mum because you made a dick of yourself. That’s the last I heard, but shit is going to go down at lunch. Kathy is fuming. I think she might actually knock him out, she’s that mad.’
I found it a bit confusing, because Dee was so friendly with Pointy Kathy a couple of days ago. It’s hard to keep up with the friendships in the group, especially when no one talks about stuff openly. It’s all group texts with one person excluded, and catching up and ‘forgetting’ to invite certain people. I’m not usually on group texts, and Dee is the only one who invites me to things. At least I know where I stand. Dee told me not to be late to lunch, because she thought Pointy Kathy was going to ‘straight up kick Freckle Ben in the balls’.
And with a nifty little bounce, she was off the locker and on her way to class. Dee sounds like a Jessica these days, and she is spending a lot of time with them on weekends. I don’t know if I like how happy she seemed about Pointy Kathy, even though I don’t like Pointy Kathy. I have been the topic of Monday morning gossip before and it destroyed my life for months. Dee knows that. I don’t mean it like I’m morally superior and she is a jerk either, because she’s a much better person than I am most days. I just think she’s talking about it because the Jessicas are talking about it and I don’t think that’s the right reason to do it.
When we emerged from double maths I felt like I always do after that class, like we’re mole-people seeing sunlight for the first time, because it’s so bright after being in the C-block dungeons for two hours. Remember the C-block classrooms? They smell gross, like damp towels that have been left in a gym bag or something. Even though I said I don’t like the gossip, I still went to check out the drama at the quadrangle. I don’t know why. It seemed someone had already called ‘action’ and the performance was underway. It went down quite similarly to Dee’s prediction actually, but nobody’s balls were kicked. Pointy Kathy slapped Freckle Ben across the cheek, threatened him with calling the police and stood over him as he deleted the photos from Facebook, Instagram and his phone. Practically the entire year level, and half the rest of the school, sat around pretending to talk, while they watched the action unfold. The tuckshop ladies continued serving pork rib rolls. It was in no way a victory for Pointy Kathy, but it was as close as she would get until the next weekend rolled around and it was somebody else’s turn to be embarrassed by inappropriate drunken behaviour.