Outside In (8 page)

It wasn't until recess that he spotted her. Or her back, anyway. Her school dress against her knees as she walked. Her shiny ponytail, a hint of red in the brown that he'd never noticed before. And the indentation of a bra under her dress.

Definitely a bra.

Sam found himself walking in the opposite direction, down towards the basketball court. He had a sense of escaping one second. Eclipsed the next. How could he want and not want at the very same time?

From the court, as he played basketball, he could see the shape of her on the slope with the other girls. She was far away. Too far away? He did a slam dunk, wondered whether she saw it. He wanted her to.

The bell rang.

He could take the pathway up to the lockers. He didn't actually need to walk up the slope. But that's what Jack was doing. Drawn like a magnet to Jordan, and not questioning it. Just moving towards her.

Sam took a deep breath as he walked along with Jack. His feet seemed to decide for him. Not his mind.

The girls stood up as he and Jack approached. Meredith's dress was bunched up. Sam noticed a splash of freckles on her thigh before she pulled her dress down. She arranged it around her legs in a way that seemed unusually self-conscious for Meredith.

Only then did Sam's brain start ticking again. He could change direction. He could cut his way over to the footpath.

Except that it was too late. Would be too obvious.

There were five steps between him and Meredith. He froze. She stepped down towards him as the others moved off.

‘Sam, you did it,' she said, quite gently. ‘You had a shave. Geez, you shouldn't listen to me. Nobody else does.'

They were separate enough from the rest of the gang that no-one else could hear.

‘No nicks, no cuts,' she stirred. ‘Well, maybe one!'

She reached out towards his lip. Sam caught her hand and twisted her around into a headlock. He lowered his arm, running it along her side from her shoulder to her waist. His movements felt like they were in slow motion.

She started to say something jokey.

‘Can you … I mean … is it possible for you to shut up every now and then?' he asked.

‘Nup.' Meredith ducked down. Slipped out of his grasp. His arms felt empty. A symptom?

She ran up the slope towards the others. Sam watched as her ponytail jiggled from side to side. He stayed behind, standing still to preserve the feeling of holding her.

She was only a few metres away when she changed direction. She turned back down the slope.

Back towards him.

She stood so close to him. So close, and for once, she wasn't talking.

Meredith leant into him. Her lips grazed his. And they felt soft against his own, and smooth, and it felt as though Sam was in a dream. It could have been two seconds or ten minutes. And he might have been blushing or he might not have been blushing.

But one thing was for sure. Kissing Meredith was right. His body told him. The actual cells in his body told him. In a rush that whooshed inside, from his toes right up to his head.

‘Go, Sam! Go, Moo! Oi, oi, oi!' The shouts came randomly from the gang on the slope above them.

And even when Meredith started back up the slope, Sam just stood there. He felt like something had changed. That there had been a shift inside. He felt that he didn't need Google to research it for him anymore.

Meredith liked him,
Sam
. He liked her back.

It was a lot to take in all at once. A shave. A kiss. But maybe it was time for things to start changing? For all that to happen, and maybe more?

Finally, it felt like he was starting to get it.

This strange life stuff.

meredith

Meredith lifted the doona. She could feel it already. An alien trickle. But the blood on her pj pants was proof. It wasn't as if she didn't expect it. She'd had the cramps. The weird sensations, as though her whole body was reduced to one space in her guts.

She switched on her bedroom light, then the light in the hallway. She walked down to the bathroom, which was where it always was. A second set of footsteps followed, and her dad was at the bathroom door, wiping sleep out of his eyes.

‘Moo, what are you doing up? Are you OK?'

‘I got it.'

‘Oh …' he paused. ‘Oh, really?' He ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. He was whispering like they were together harbouring a great secret.

‘So, do you have everything you need?' he asked. ‘It's all in the white bathroom bag under the sink.'

He had bought the stuff ages ago and left the bag in the cupboard, while it seemed to happen to everyone except for her. And Cecilia, of course, but Meredith could tell why it hadn't happened to Cecilia. She was dancing her body into nothing.

Meredith peered inside the bag. There were pads and tampons. Even a booklet called
Changing Bodies.
It all made her feel a little giggly. As though she might look down, suddenly, and see her body covered in fur. Or sprouting a tail.

‘Yep, it's all good, Dad. I'm just going to have a shower.'

He nodded, all serious. ‘You do that, Moo. That's a good idea. That's what you should do.'

He was trying to make a statement, but the last bit sounded more like a question.

Meredith breathed, deep and even, as she ran the shower. She stepped over her brother's footy gear, a dirty lump on the tiles. A mud cake with sock candles.

Finally, she was under the spray.

An hour ago, she was a child. Now she was something else. A woman? Really? It seemed so strange, and she couldn't help wondering if getting her period was somehow the result of kissing Sam. Maybe the two things were linked in some weird way?

Kissing Sam had been, well, an impulse. A sudden urge that she just went with. A sudden urge that turned out … really nicely. Sam was so sweet, she already knew that. But it had been a discovery that the kiss felt so good.

It felt like everything was happening at once, too much to think about. She wouldn't be able to sleep, she knew that already. She put a pad inside fresh knickers. It had ‘wings'. Like a bird, or an angel, or a sanitary pad. She stuck the wings around her knickers to secure the pad. Her pj pants were soaking in the laundry. She put on the new ones she'd brought in from her bedroom.

Tampons might be harder, but she didn't need to use them yet. Anyway, the whole thing wasn't rocket science. Wasn't like she needed a live demo.

She took the booklet back to her room, though. Just in case she'd missed something.

Rain tapped on the roof. Insistently. Like it was trying to get in.

Her dad hadn't gone back to bed. He stood at her bedroom door, tapping his fingers on the doorframe, little finger to big. Meredith wriggled under the doona, pushed the booklet deep down under the covers. He stopped tapping at the index finger, midstream.

‘Dad, really, I'm fine.'

‘We could ring Aunty Lisa. She would come over. If you have any questions …'

Aunty Lisa would purse her lips. She was the original inspiration for one of Meredith's best faces, the cat's-bum. Aunty Lisa would narrow her eyes, and her tone would be whiny, as though she was sick to death of everything. Her whole being an indicator that life was just something that had to be tolerated.

‘Well, Meredith.' Meredith's impression was perfect. ‘Congratulations. You are finally a woman. Later than other girls, but at least you got there. Darling.'

The crow's-feet around her dad's eyes crinkled with his smile. ‘You're a shocker, Moo,' he admonished.

‘Really, Dad, I'm like the second-last girl my age on the planet to get it. If I have any questions, I can just ask my friends.'

Meredith turned over on her side. Her dad walked in, leant down and kissed her on the temple. Meredith detected a certain glistening in his eyes.

‘I'm sorry, Moo. I'm sorry she's not … Let me know if there's anything I can do. Anything at all.'

Meredith looked up at the giant poster on her bedroom wall. It covered the space where the photo had been. Chosen for size rather than content. It was some boy band that Meredith wasn't even that into. It was annoying that thoughts of the photo should jump into her head now. She wished she could just erase the memory of it. Of her.

She would not let herself go any further down that road. There was no point. If she let herself slip, she would fall down that black hole. She'd been there enough.

She wished the memories would just go away. But there they were, back again.

When it happened, she had been three quarters of the way through grade six. It wasn't a particularly special time of year.

Spring, when the world woke up after a long winter.

When her mother woke up and left them.

Meredith had sunk, then. The poor little girl. Abandoned by her own mother. It was like a neon sign around her neck. Canteen mothers gave her extra in her lunch orders. Like compensation.

Normally the other kids looked to her to make up fun games, but that all changed somehow. They kept their distance. It was as if they carried their parents' lectures around with them. That somehow they thought it might be contagious. Their mums might also vanish. They let her have the best swing without an argument. The first turn at everything.

The curse of kindness had followed her everywhere.

It had been such a relief to get to high school, and she chose one that none of her primary school friends were going to. She needed to shed the old skin, snake-like. She had already started practising how not to appear sad. How to be bubbly and light.

She realised that if she was bright in the face of darkness, things started to change. People reacted differently. Meredith could hide the black hole so no-one would know about the tender stretch of pink heart that covered its opening. She would be the clown.

It was just a case of accruing points, really. The more Meredith could make light of the serious stuff, the more points she got. Like life points in a Nintendo game, she could use them up when she needed to. She would be fun. She would not be heavy, sad. The more she practised, the better she got at it.

At high school, everyone knew she had no mother. But it was Ancient History. There were plenty of other kids with divorced parents, and she didn't seem that different to them. The neon sign had faded, like one of those glo-sticks you got at a night concert for $2.99. It had lost its glow.

Meredith no longer spoke about her. She no longer opened the letters, postmarked from Canada. She had become brilliant at steering people away from the topic.

‘Anything I need, Dad?' she asked now, sitting up slightly on her elbow. ‘I reckon a rise in my pocket money is in order. Of course, I will be needing a whole new wardrobe of clothes. And beauty products. Etcetera. Now that I am a W.O.M.A.N.'

Meredith loved it. How she could make him laugh.

The door of the gym change rooms creaked behind her.

Meredith did a little dance, bumping her bum to bang it closed behind her. Cecilia sat, back straight, on the bench next to Lee. Jordan stood in front of her, hands on hips.

‘So, what's up, A.D.D? What's the big news?' Jordan smiled her half-smile.

Meredith giggled nervously. She wasn't quite sure what to expect, but felt totally … expectant. This was it. There was no-one else to tell. Just her friends.

‘I got my period,' she said in a loud whisper. ‘Last night.'

‘Oh, cool,' Jordan said. ‘Nice one.'

‘Oh, Moo,' Lee chimed in. ‘That's great. Do you feel OK? Are you getting pains? Because if you are, you could try a hot water bottle. I've got a spare one if you need it.'

‘I've got one thanks, Lee-Lee.'

‘Great. And do you have all the other stuff you need? My mum did that for me, prepared a kind of medical kit,' Lee continued.

‘Yeah,' Jordan added. ‘And my mum tried to give me the whole birds-and-bees talk –'

Jordan's voice drifted away. A grimace was exchanged from Lee to Jordan and back again. It was the ‘mum' word. They didn't use it very often in front of Meredith. They had forgotten and remembered. Meredith would rescue them like she always did.

‘Yeah, I have what I need. Dad bought me these.' Meredith held up the pads. ‘The packet is pretty, don't you think? He got the ones with wings.'

‘Ah, you don't want leakage, do you?' Jordan monotoned. ‘Some days you need the special assurance of Libra.'

‘The comfort of Carefree,' Lee giggled.

‘I am a WOMAN!' Meredith exclaimed, jiggling her hips.

‘Well, your body might be. Definitely not your head, though,' Jordan replied.

‘You know, I've actually got mine at the moment,' Lee said. ‘I wonder if our moons will align. That sometimes happens with girls when they are close – their periods start to come at the same time.'

For a second, Meredith felt a sting behind her eyes, tears that had to be blinked back quick-smart. These girls were so important to her. She wanted them to do everything together. Sometimes she wished she could actually merge herself into one of them. Or all of them.