Yellow (16 page)

It's late. I've drunk more than half the bottle, and the edges of the world keep running away from me so I can't keep steady. I hear music floating in from down the street.

It's Saturday.

Noah's party.

I think of Noah, and how he held my fingers, and how he had a crush on me.

How he
has
a crush on me.

My mind is fuzzy, and my thoughts are hard to pull together, as though someone's half rubbed them out, and they're dancing around in my brain, all smudged, so I have to squint to make out what they say. I can only think in short, simple sentences.

I think of Noah, and how he's the only good thing in my life right now. He's the only person who likes me. He invited me to his party. I need to go to his party.

I step into my old denim cut-off shorts with all the grace of a newborn giraffe, and then stumble to Mum's wardrobe and take out a top of hers from the 70s. It's a red-and-white floral blouse with scalloped sleeves, and I tie it tight around my midriff. I've never worn this outfit before, it seemed too revealing, but tonight I don't care. I slip on Mum's chunky wedges and I look at myself in the mirror, turning from side to side and inspecting my reflection thoughtfully, like the way people check fruit for bruises at the market. Everything seems blurry. Mum's looking at me in a sad sort of way.

‘Do you think it's a good idea to go out?' she asks me, her voice tense.

‘Don't you dare be a mother right now. Don't you
dare
!' I slur at her, and then roll her the last can of beer for the day. She doesn't drink it right away this time. She stares at me with a broken sort of look on her face, like her face belongs to a figurine that's been smashed and poorly glued back together.

I stumble across the road to Noah's party. There are empty beer cans and cigarette butts strewn across the front yard, and there's a couple of year ten kids smoking a joint on the patio. The guy takes a toke, and then presses his lips against the girl to blow the smoke into her mouth. Their eyes look like ratshit.

I can't wait until I touch mouths with Noah.

Tonight's the night, I think in a hazy sort of certainty. I've never kissed anyone before, and I keep wondering whether his lips will feel as soft as they look. I walk past the stoner couple and follow my unsteady footsteps inside. I slip over when I reach the tiled hallway, and look up, confused, as my palms won't grip the floor when I try to push the ground away from me. The puzzle is answered a few seconds later, when a kid races down the hallway in just his boxer shorts and dives onto the ground, zooming into me with a soapy crash that knocks me sideways. They've thrown detergent and water onto the ground and made the whole hallway a giant slip-n-slide.

I need to find Noah.

I need to lock lips with Noah.

I disentangle myself from the slip-n-slide guy and crawl into the living room where, thankfully, the carpeted floor has been spared the soap suds. Dragging myself back onto my feet I scan the room for sandy hair and freckles, but I can't see him amidst the swaying sea of flush-faced, red-eyed teenagers. I see Cassie and the rest of them gossiping amongst themselves on the sunken orange velvet sofa. Cassie's nose is swollen from where I punched her, but despite that, she still looks pretty in a way that she really doesn't deserve. It's not fair. Beauty should be like a driver's licence, I think hazily, as I squint my eyes to try to keep her in focus. It should be suspended after a certain amount of ugly deeds. With all Cassie's done, she'd look like The Elephant Man by now. She looks up and glares at me, but she doesn't say anything. My eyes grab hold of her stare, and I don't care if she hates how I widen my eyes to scare people anymore. I want to scare her. When she looks away I feel a petty sort of triumph.

The music's playing loud – it's obvious Noah's mum's away for the night, and the kids are getting stuck into making a mess of the place. I stumble into the kitchen, and a goldfish has been taken from the bowl and now swims around in the blender. Thankfully nobody's turned it on yet to make a goldfish smoothie.

I need to see Noah.

I've never been to a party before, and despite the way the gin numbs my insides, I can't chase the nerves away from my belly. It's worse than butterflies this time, it's like moths. Dirty, mangy moths chewing on my insides like they do to cloth. Everyone's laughing and dancing and talking to one another, and I'm standing by myself, swaying unsteadily, like I'm the most friendless person on earth.

I probably am.

I need to talk to Noah, and Noah would want to talk to me, except I can't find him. I'll wait for him in the kitchen, I think; he'll need water, or chips, or something. The kitchen is the best place. I sit on the table and try my best to blend in with the partygoers.

Damien is rummaging through a case of beer in the corner. Beer is good, I think. More alcohol might drown all the nasty moths that are chewing away in my belly.

‘Give us a beer, Damo!' I slur to him, and beneath his peeling nose he looks surprised to see me here. Swigging from one bottle, he hands another to me, and when I drink it I screw my face up. It tastes like sweat.

‘Ease up, girl. Nice threads, ya look like Jodie Foster in
Taxi Driver
.'

‘Yep, teenage prostitute is jussht the look I was going for.'

Damien starts laughing and it makes him choke on his beer. I like this beer, it's making me sassy, and the nervy little moth things are having trouble flapping their beer-soaked wings.

I wonder where Noah is.

I want him to think I'm hilarious, too.

‘Teenage prostitute, huh? What happened to the nice, quiet Kirra?' Damien smirks at me.

‘Oh, I drowned her at the bottom of this beer bottle.' I swing my beer in his face. ‘Then I buried her in the backyard. I never liked her anyway. This party's great, huh? Although I saw a girl before doing a non-ironic “wooo!” You should only wooo ironic– iron– ironically, don't you think?' Damien's smile is looking a bit strained now, I have verbal diarrhoea but I can't stop. Other­wise there'll be silence, and I'm scared of silence right now. Silence means your internal monologue has space to talk to you, and I don't like the girl I've become, or what she has to say. She scares me. Nirvana starts blasting from the stereo.

‘Oooh, I love grunge music! How's your band going, by the way? I hear it's really good, except that nobody can sing, or really play instruments properly.' I grin over at him and climb up onto the table to start dancing. Damien glares up at me, unimpressed. His band, The Dead Heads, had been booed off the stage at a local music festival last month, and he still hasn't heard the end of it.

‘Bitch.'

I laugh manically. ‘You're the bitch. This party's my bitch!'

I try to grab his hand to pull him up onto the table when Cassie walks in, and her eyes dart between me and Damien.

‘Nice outfit, Kirra, did an op shop throw up on you?'

I roll my eyes dramatically at Damien.

‘Casshie's just jealous 'cos I'm talking to you, and she has a big fat crussssh on you! She calls her pillow Damien, and practises kissing it. Big sloppy kisses!'

This isn't true, the pillow thing, but it feels like a nice flourish to the story.

Cassie is mortified. ‘I'm sorry, Kirra, nobody understands what you're saying. We don't speak “Drunk”. I hear your mother's fluent, though?'

With her words, a whole red fog of rage rises up from inside of me. It becomes bigger than me, and swallows me whole.

‘Come closer so I can touch up your make-up, Casshie. I think a black eye would go loooovely with your fat nose!'

I've stopped dancing, and my voice drips with venom. My fists are clenched, and the whole party's watching on, like it's the most entertaining thing they've seen all week. In all truth it probably is. Like I said, teenagers have short attention spans, we take entertainment where we can get it.

The tension between Cassie and me is sliced in two by a sharp voice coming from the doorway, and the moment falls away and rolls off the table.

‘Settle down, rabid munchkin girl, and step away from the beer.'

It's Willow, who's eyeing me seriously behind that hair of hers that looks like spilt coffee. She's standing close to Noah. Too close. Their shoulders are touching – where
my
shoulders should be touching. They share a worried, conspiratorial glance. Jealousy punches its evil little fists into my heart.

‘Shuddup, Willow.' I can't think of what to say next, the alcohol has chased my thoughts away and hung up a ‘back in five minutes' sign, so I misquote Cassie. ‘I don't speak “Prostitute”, but I hear your mum does?'

Her face stays unchanged, but her eyes are glinting the way a fish hook does in sunlight. She strides up to the table and swings me over her shoulder, carrying me outside, while Cassie smirks and looks innocent.

She has me propped under the eucalyptus tree in Noah's backyard, the place where we buried his dead cat when we were ten.

‘Poor Cottonsocks,' I mumble.

Willow arches an eyebrow at me. ‘Nasty drunk is really not a good look on you.'

I glare at her, except I'm seeing double, so I close one eye to focus, and glare at her with the other. I think I just look squinty instead of fearsome.

‘Whoring after the boy I'm in love with isn't a good look on you, either. Whoreface.'

She looks puzzled for a moment. ‘Noah?'

‘You make me wanna puke,' I hiss at her. She rolls her eyes.

‘Uh huh. Your nausea is totally caused by my harlot ways, and not your point two blood alcohol level, sugartits.'

I do the squinty glare thing again, except waves of nausea keep bashing against my stomach, and the next thing I know I'm spewing for Australia all over poor old Cottonsocks' grave.

‘Jesus Christ,' mutters Willow as she holds back my hair. When my stomach stops inverting itself I hold my head in my hands and try to breathe. ‘Do you want water?'

‘Yes,' I groan. ‘But even if you are a water fetcher I still wish for evil things to happen to you.'

She throws a fake, dazzling smile my way.

‘That was my wish also! Starlight, star bright, etcetera. I'm going to get you water now, you charming drunkard you, so don't go choking on your own vomit until I get back, y'hear?'

She drops the fake smile, and with a last, disgusted look, she disappears back into the party.

Stupid Willow. I don't know what I ever saw in her, anyway. I mean, why doesn't she just part her hair in the middle like normal people? Looking out of two eyes would surely help her depth perception . . .

And my muddled train of thought is abruptly cut off by Noah sitting down next to me. The side of me that doesn't have the vomit, thankfully. He looks lovely. His brow is all furrowed, in that brooding sort of way, like ripples in water, I think, and I just want to reach out and touch his freckles to draw the constellations onto his skin. He must be brooding because he's shy, because he doesn't know how to ask me for a kiss. He wants to kiss me, right? He's had a crush on me for three years.

He thinks I'm unique!

Unique in a good way, not a bad way!

I try to catch his eye, but he's pulling at the grass and staring back at the party.

Look at me.

Nope.

Nothing.

Shit.

I'm going to have to use my newfound sass then.

Despite all of my muscles wanting to go on strike, I manage to gather myself enough to clutch my fingers around his fingers. He swings his face around to me, surprised.

This is it.

This is my first kiss.

This is my first kiss with
Noah Willis
.

I close my eyes, ignoring the swaying, woozy sensation that overcomes me, and I lean in for my first kiss.

I lean, then sort of fall.

I open my eyes to see Noah jerk away from me, and my head falls to bang against his left shoulder, my teeth knocking against his shoulder bone, a gentle knock, like the way Mum's teeth knocks against the ice when she's drinking gin. I look up to him, puzzled. He holds me by my floppy shoulders so I don't fall down, and he's staring into my eyes again, but this time he's not looking at me like I'm something worth looking at. He's looking at me like I'm a rotted old possum corpse that he doesn't want to be touching. Shame curls and tightens around my stomach, and I hold my breath inside my rib cage.

‘Is your mouth too sore from making out with Willow?' I mutter. His dark-blue eyes are muddied with disgust.

‘Willow and I were talking about you, you idiot. She was worried about you. And so was I.'

He sighs and looks away, and all I can focus on is the pale-pink loop of his lips, and how horribly wrong this night has gone. ‘I thought you were different. I thought you were nice, you know? But you're not. You're just as awful as Cassie.' With that, he lets go of my shoulders to unfold himself from the ground and slouch off. I watch him go, slumped under the tree with only vomit and a buried cat corpse to keep me company, and I don't stop watching him until the crowd of dancing, shouting, slip-n-sliding kids eats him up.