Aftershock Page 14

  Mikhail’s research was about online activism in a repressive state, and they got on to discussing how social media was radically changing everything, from expectations of privacy to the nature of love.

  It tries to convince us to change our priorities, Mikhail said. That our privacy doesn’t matter. Our integrity doesn’t really matter. That what matters is how we are perceived, that we never break character, that we look the right way and consume the right things, which means it’s in our own best interest to have people like you guys—he waggled a finger between Jules and Drew—keeping track of what we all do in our spare time, so you can target us with marketing that makes us feel like we might get onto the next trend ahead of the curve. Get noticed for starting something. Build our brand. But the truth of it is, it’s utterly meaningless. There’s no long game in play.

  Bleak, said Jules. But true.

  We’re so manipulated into complicity, it’s impossible to stand against it, or to extract yourself from it.

  On the other hand, Drew said with a small flourish, I am an openly gay man—loudly gay, in fact—making seven figures.

  Climb that rainbow ceiling, said Jules. Or smash it. Or something.

  Well, and I’m a big hashtag in Russia. So, no one’s perfect.

  They laughed and argued over oysters and then Scotch for hours. She could remember they ran up a thousand-dollar tab but not who paid or how she got home.

  She remembered going into work the following week feeling fortified. Rejuvenated. Drew sought her out regularly for lunch or gossip or just to say good morning. She felt like she’d finally met her people. It had been more years than she cared to count since she’d had a close friend.

  But she only saw Drew and Mikhail together a few times after that. She’d have seen them more, but it seemed complicated somehow. A couple times they cancelled at the last minute. The last time she saw him, Mikhail got drunk and punchy and then left halfway through dinner. Clearly something was going on with him, but she still didn’t know either of them that well, so she kept her reactions to herself. That was a Friday night. Drew called her on Sunday morning to tell her Mikhail had jumped off an apartment building.

  So when Drew asked if she remembered him, it wasn’t so much a question as a point he was trying to make.

  You looked after me, Jules. I wouldn’t have made it through that without you.

  I didn’t do anything.

  Yeah, you did. Don’t you remember? After the memorial, everyone else was telling me I would get through it, I was going to be okay, I could weather the storm, blah blah blah. But you were like, No. It’s not going to be okay. It’s going to be super fucking shitty for a long, long time. It might never be okay. That’s what you said to me. You can’t fight it. You might not survive it. But you’re not the first person to go through it.

  She didn’t remember saying any of that, but it sounded about right.

  That really stuck with me, he went on. And I knew about your . . . Lizzie. And when I got back to work, every time I saw your face, I would think, She’s right. This is what people go through. This is what we do.

  Yep, Jules was nodding, looking out the window. This is what we do.

  And you were right, and it’s still super fucking shitty. But I’ve got you. And I’ve got Farzan. Dec, a couple others from that group. And that’s what gets me through the day. Well, that and a few martinis. Ha. But what I’m trying to say is, you called me for help. And I can help. You’re my friend, I love you, probably more than you know, and I want to help. If you’ll let me.

  He’d paid her bail and arranged thirty days of medical leave with the company and didn’t see the need, at this point, to bring Raj and Simon, the other partners, in on the details.

  So. You can stay here. Or you can go.

  She heard what he wasn’t saying. He was still her boss. Stay and follow the rules. Or leave and lose everything. Her job. Her best friend. Her life as she knew it.

  It’s your choice.

  Is that a threat? She meant it as a joke, but it failed.

  Yeah, Jules, I’m threatening to not watch you self-destruct.

  He manoeuvred himself out of the car and started lumbering up the walk. Jules got as far as opening the car door, and then stalled, unsure of what to do next. She watched Drew use the reinforced railing to pull himself up the stairs to the porch. Without turning around, he called back to her.

  But if you go more than a hundred metres, the cops’re gonna call the house.

  She felt abruptly, physically constrained.

  HE PUT HER up on his third floor, a wide and airy triangular loft with sloped wooden ceilings that contained a cozy bedroom, a bright sitting room and a tiny bathroom.

  After a shower (which she hoped might short-circuit her anklet, but didn’t) and donning a set of pyjamas (borrowed from Farzan, who seemed to be moving in piecemeal), Jules beelined for the bar in the living room. But Drew intercepted her as soon as she came through the French doors.

  I just want a drink.

  I know you do, sweetie.

  Jules peeked around him and saw Farzan, emptying out the cabinet of the wet bar, putting all the bottles into a couple cardboard wine boxes.

  No drugs, no booze, no nothing. You can take up smoking if you want.

  But I wouldn’t, Farzan interjected as he squeezed around Drew, box in his arms rattling glass. Jules watched it, hope fading as it went through the foyer and out the front door. Farzan reappeared a moment later and started packing a second box. Drew moved to block her view.

  My wine cellar’s also locked up tight, so just forget about it, okay?

  Maybe I should just go to my own house.

  She knew it was too late to be thinking this and wondered why she hadn’t brought it up in court when it could have made a difference. Home, where she knew she at least had a couple good single malts.

  Jules, honey. You can’t go home.

  Drew gently took her by the shoulders, steered her to the couch. And anyway, to do what? Sulk and feel terrible? No. He sat her on the edge of the couch.

  She put her head in her hands. Stared down at the electronic anklet poking out from underneath the borrowed pyjamas. Slid a finger under the edge of the band, felt the snugness of it.

  Too bad you can’t just take your foot off, said Farzan. Drew smiled at him, shook his head.

  When you feel a little better, we’ll go get some of your things.

  Jules felt like crying, but she wasn’t very good at it and never did it in front of other people.

  I’m so fucking sick, Drew. I need something.

  Drew lowered himself onto the couch next to her, making it sink down so she fell into him.

  I know, honey. He draped a sixty-pound arm across her shoulders, simultaneously making her feel both protected and very small. Let’s put you to bed.

  Pool.

  I’m breathing underwater, currents slide along my skin and map out the murk around me, rocks and coral and darting, synchronized fish. Beside me, a pod of dolphins plays in the waves, swimming up to kiss the surface, their mighty thrashing tails sending them arcing, splashing. One of the young leaves the group, its belly upturning as it floats towards me, its skin greying and wrinkling, shrivelling and shrinking, and the surface of the water glares above me, unreachable.

  I woke up with a gasp, sat up in my bunk and concentrated on breathing evenly. Low-angled moonlight cut bent squares across the dark dorm. The four bunks I could see held bodies, the mattress above me sagged with a fifth. Lee’s bed was at right angles to mine, our heads almost meeting in the corner. Her legs shifted and her face moved into a panel of light. She reached a hand out between our bunks to mine and I lay back down and took it, grateful not to be awake alone.

  You okay? she whispered, and I nodded. Lee closed her eyes but didn’t let go. I lay for a while watching a few breathy clouds cut across a spotlight of moon, and listened to the crashing midnight surf. Until I fell asleep in a smooth dive, still holding on to Lee
’s hand, its warm grip guiding me safely under.

  MY STITCHES HAD healed, but I was still getting daily ice-pick headaches, and my memories took on the quality of stand-alone episodes, narratively disconnected. The doctor said this might go on for months, especially since it was my third concussion (because hockey).

  Lee started surfing every morning with the Australian women, and I spent long hours watching from a beach towel. Off-hours, when the tide wasn’t right, surfers would crowd into the TV room or around someone’s laptop to watch surf videos, but I still didn’t enjoy screens, so I sat on the porch and watched the ocean, or went for walks on the beach with Lee.

  I realized my world, in the few weeks since my concussion, had become very small. I was beginning to feel restless.

  WE WERE PLAYING pool late one afternoon when Jansen, a South African guy who’d arrived the day before, came in and said he was going to hitchhike up north, and as someone had told him Lee and I were also travelling north, he wondered if we wanted to travel together.

  No, thanks, Lee said, at the same time that I said, Sure.

  He spun us a sad tale: He’d been robbed a couple days before, in a tourist town in the south. He’d gone to the bathroom while he was checking out of his hostel, left his pack by the front desk, and when he came back, it was gone. So now he had no passport, no phone, no credit cards, only the clothes he’d been wearing and the cash in his pocket. Nothing else. No witnesses: the guy on the desk had stepped away, just for a moment, but that was all it took.

  I’m just so happy I had put some money in my pants pocket, or I would have worse troubles than this.

  We’d moved to one of the heavy picnic tables in the common area, and as he talked, he looked more and more exhausted, sank lower and lower into himself on the bench, pitiful in his defeat and aloneness.

  People suck, I said.

  No shit, Lee snorted. Number one reason why hitchhiking is stupid.

  After more than a week of spending every non-surfing moment together and trying to find a few minutes of privacy in the dorm room, Lee had finally asked me the day before:

  So, where’s this hike you’re always on about?

  Abel Tasman. Like a few hours north. I bit my lip, waiting.

  And how many days is it?

  One day to get there. Four days of hiking. Or three. We don’t have to do the whole thing.

  Lee raised an eyebrow. You don’t think I can handle it?

  That’s not—

  But she winked, tapped her tea mug against my plastic beer cup, and we both grinned.

  BUT HITCHHIKING WAS apparently a game changer, and when Jansen left to use the landline—It is breakfast time at home. My father must send me money from Johannesburg—Lee looked at me in a way that sent my train of thought stuttering.

  Hitchhiking? Are you starkers?

  This from the girl who wants to surf tsunamis?

  This from the girl who’s recovering from a head injury? Anyway, the ocean’s—

  Oh my god, I’m fine already, would you—

  —more predictable than this git—let alone whatever potential—

  —stop waiting for me to break in half, you’re—

  —bloody axe murderer that might pick us up.

  —acting like my fucking mother.

  Which I immediately knew was going way too far. Lee’s face went red under her freckles, almost as red as her hair. We stared at each other for a moment, feeling the heat of our first actual argument. Then I said we could take the bus, no big deal, and in my mind that should have put the matter to rest.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up to Lee sitting on the edge of her bunk stuffing her sleeping bag into the bottom of her pack.

  I croaked out an unintelligible question.

  Oh good, you’re awake. Right, so, I checked my email this morning, and well, I can’t go hiking with you, mate.

  She opened the top of her pack, shoved in the tank top and boxers she slept in, her voice oddly strained and her eyes averted as she explained, rapid-fire, that a friend of hers had managed to get her officially invited to compete in nationals up at Piha, and it was a big deal because she wasn’t even a New Zealand citizen, and she had this publicist back in England who really thought she should—

  I finally woke up enough to say, You have a publicist? What friend?

  She zipped up her toiletries case, thrust it into an outside pocket, then shook her head in an ambiguous yes-but-no. My board’s already being shipped up there, she said, still not showing me her face.

  I sat up in my sleeping bag. Lee?

  Having run out of things to pack, Lee stood and said in a halting voice that she had initially said no to the tournament but had thought about it overnight and realized it was time for her to move on from the past.

  I need to have my own life, she said. I can’t let my dad’s legacy keep me away from it. Plus, he surfed there, back in the day, so it seems, like, serendipitous. But if you want—

  What friend? I asked again.

  She frowned, surprised at the question, and I cringed as I realized how it sounded.

  One of the Australians, she said. Talda. She knows one of the organizers.

  Oh, I said. She seems nice. Talda was an amazing surfer, something she and Lee shared that I probably never would. She was also easygoing, quirky and hilarious. And as of this moment, I couldn’t stand her. If that’s what you’d rather do, I said.

  Lee stared at me for a moment, still frowning. I hated how I must have looked in her eyes.

  That’s okay, I’m still getting over Jill anyway, I added, making it worse.

  Yeah, alright, she said. So maybe it’s you who isn’t sure what you want.

  I was sure what I wanted. Wasn’t I? I thought I was. I thought I wanted to be with Lee. I’m not sure what I hoped to gain by saying:

  Well, I’m sure I want to go hiking. I thought I had someone to go with me.

  Lee swung her pack up onto her back and turned to look at me, said a sorry that sounded like a placeholder for something else and reached down to squeeze my hand. Well, anyway, I gotta go surf. I was gonna say you could come and meet me—

  You and Talda? No thank you. Anyway, I just told you, I’m going hiking. With you or without you.

  Her face went very still. I knew she was hurt, but so was I.

  Right. Well, then. See ya ’round, hey. But her aviators hid her eyes, and then she was gone.

  I listened to her footsteps fade away on the stairs, and tried to reconcile the hollow feeling in my chest with the full-to-bursting feelings of the last week.

  I could still feel the pressure on my hand where Lee had squeezed it. Looking down, I saw a folded slip of paper tucked into the curve of my fingers. It had an email address on it for a surfmonkey99.

  JANSEN WAS IN the hostel kitchen cooking eggs, German sausage and thick toast. He told me to sit, and eat, as he put a full plate in front of me along with a cup of coffee.

  What the hell’s all this for?

  I cannot share a breakfast with a new buddy?

  I was too grouchy to even wonder where the food had come from. The coffee was the best I’d had in weeks, which irritated me further.

  Sorry. Shit mood. Not your fault. I picked up a fork and moved a mouthful of eggs towards my mouth. But everything looked like plastic. It felt like Lee had gone to the store for cigarettes and never come back.

  Jansen, eating fast and talking around mouthfuls, said he’d seen Lee leaving.

  She’s going surfing, I said. I held my fork limply, the eggs falling back to the plate. I had a flash of kissing Lee in the dorm, our whispers as we listened for footsteps in the hallway. Felt myself fighting tears.

  Jansen shoved half a sausage into his mouth. Are you also leaving today?

  He had to make his way up to Wellington to get a new passport and retrieve the money his father was sending.

  I don’t know, I said. I felt miserable. Everything was falling apart. I pushed my plate away and grasped for a
way to salvage something.

  IN THE END, it all came down to Jules. I had spent my whole life being told what to avoid because certain things—so many things—were deemed unsafe. Running down the stairs two at a time, skateboarding, ice skating without a helmet, riding a bike with no hands—the list was endless of things that I loved doing, and even excelled at, that Jules was always trying to stop me from doing because she herself lacked the physical confidence. Likewise, Jules would never use Uber or Airbnb or eat a hot dog from a hot dog cart because she fundamentally didn’t trust people: things that relied on the basic humanity of strangers, on an assumption of non-malevolence, were abundant with risk. Not deadbolting the front door when we were home during the day. Public washrooms. Asking for directions. If something bad could happen, she believed it would happen to her. So hitchhiking with a stranger she had only met the day before would have been out of the question for Jules.

  Which, for me, made it an obvious choice.

  Bedroom.

  Detox was hell. It kept blasting away her expectations of just how bad it could get. Every time she thought she had plateaued, the bottom would open up again, send her flailing down to another level. More than once, Jules had the thought that she might actually be dying, and welcomed it. She lay in bed for what seemed like days, sweating, retching, cramps in her legs, her bloodstream a thrumming cord of ache. She wanted to rip her own skin off. She wanted to sleep. That was what Oxy had done, once: when she lay down and closed her eyes, sleep had been right there, waiting. Now, she couldn’t lie still.

  In a half-dream state, she convinced herself that Drew had a secret stash, and before she was fully awake, she was down on the second floor, fumbling around in his medicine cabinet, hoping for Percocets, with their meagre dose of Oxy, or the codeine of Tylenol 3s, even muscle relaxants, anything to take the edge off, give her distance from the moment, from herself.

  He did have a shelf full of medication, prescription and otherwise, and Jules scrabbled through blood pressure pills, indigestion aids, allergy pills and Viagra, her anticipation mounting, her hands shaking, knocking boxes and pill bottles into the sink below with what seemed a blatant clatter.