Everything would stay the same.
It didn’t though.
Zach took the news about Lucy and Travis better than I did. He seemed unaffected and cheerful about it at first. I thought that was nice. It was refreshing, because I was worried Zach would be jealous if Lucy or I got a boyfriend (and I am sure we would have been jealous if he got a girlfriend). Hell, I was jealous of Lucy and Travis. But it was also somewhere around this time that I noticed the vibe between Lucy and Zach change. Maybe the Travis story was a jolt to Zach, and he was scared of losing his chance with Lucy. Maybe it made him look at her in a different way. Maybe he was thinking about the almost-something that might have happened between him and me, and he realised Lucy was who he wanted. Or maybe they just fell in love, as simple as that. Or maybe I have no idea what happened, and I never will, because they have their own secrets.
The first thing I noticed was in the early weeks of year twelve. Lucy and I were stressed. To be fair, everyone was freaking out. Our school was pretty intense. But Lucy was especially stressed. Her parents wanted her to do well. They wanted her to set the example for her younger sister. They wanted her to be top of her class in at least two subjects. They wanted her to be better than as many people as possible.
‘I have to do well,’ she said one afternoon when we were all studying together.
‘I know. Me too,’ I said, chewing my pen and not really paying much attention.
‘Your parents don’t care,’ she said.
Now I looked up. This wasn’t true and she knew it. ‘My parents do care, actually. They show it in different ways. And anyway, I care.’
‘I know, I know. I know it’s bad for everyone.’ She bent over, pretending to look for something in her schoolbag but, really, she seemed to be just trying to breathe.
‘I keep thinking about everything I need to do this year, and I feel sick,’ she said, still bent over.
I looked over her head at Zach.
‘Luce?’ he said, and put a hand on her arm, and bent over to try to see her face.
‘What?’
‘You’ll be okay. We’ll make sure it’s okay.’
The tenderness in his voice, the tenderness in his hand on her arm. I noticed it. I’m not sure what I thought, exactly, but I remember noticing how he was with her that day.
A week or so later, we were all on the train together, and a bunch of guys from Fullers College got on, in their distinctive green and yellow uniforms. They were the guys that used to scream at me about my acne. I hated them, but, even more, I hated that I was scared of them. I looked away.
The train was busy, but not packed. We were near the doors, and they got on yelling and laughing, and they walked past us, deliberately ramming into Lucy’s bag and almost knocking her over.
‘What the hell,’ she said, stumbling backwards and grabbing the pole.
The boys laughed.
‘Hey,’ Zach said.
‘What?’ One of the boys turned to him.
‘Watch what you’re doing. You almost knocked her over.’
The guy rolled his eyes. He was summing Zach up—taking in how much more muscular he was than Zach, and how many more friends he had around him, how much the situation was to his advantage. And yet Zach’s eyes were flat and unafraid. He looked calm and serious. He wasn’t trying to start a fight, but there was something forceful in his voice.
‘All right, mate. Whatever. Tell your girlfriend I’m sorry.’
The guy turned away, said something to his friends, and they all laughed.
‘I’m standing right here,’ Lucy said, looking cross, putting her hand on her hip.
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘He said, tell your girlfriend I’m sorry, as if I wasn’t standing right here, listening to him.’ This outraged Lucy a lot more than the original bump did.
But I had seen the way Zach’s face changed when the guy called Lucy his girlfriend, and then again when Lucy repeated it. There was something flickering there.
I became sure that he was falling in love with her. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it; a little bit sick, a little bit fascinated. I thought it was an unrequited love, at first. Lucy didn’t give much away.
Then one afternoon, I felt a shift. They were laughing, and I saw Lucy gently pushing Zach’s arm and he was staring at her with soft eyes, and I knew it was coming—something was going to happen between them. And the minute something did happen, things would change between the three of us forever, and I wasn’t in a hurry for that to happen. Still, I imagined Zach would come to me and tell me about his feelings for Lucy and ask for my advice. I imagined Lucy would confess to me first too, and I would guide them both towards each other.
I imagined I would be part of things.
Instead, everything happened when I wasn’t looking. I was busy with assignments one weekend, and I didn’t see Lucy or Zach, and then the next weekend I went with Mum to see my grandmother who lived two hours’ drive away. On the way home, I asked Mum to drop me at Zach’s house so I could pick up a book.
I didn’t message him to say I was coming by, and I let myself in the back door. I knew I was doing this to see if Lucy was there, to see how she and Zach were interacting without me. I was imagining flirting, maybe catching them snuggled together watching a movie.
‘Hello?’ I called out, knowing that if they were in the den, then they probably wouldn’t be able to hear me.
I walked to the den and gave the door a small push. At first I thought it was empty, but then I saw Lucy and Zach on the couch, kissing passionately, completely entwined in each other.
‘Oh,’ I said, and jumped back. They didn’t hear me. I shut the door, turned too quickly in my hurry to get out of there and tripped over a pair of shoes in the hallway. My knees hit the floorboards really hard, and I sat on the floor for a minute, looking down, deep breathing, feeling shocked, feeling stupid for coming here with the intention of catching them, because I wasn’t prepared to see that.
I limped home slowly and, to my shame, I started to cry about halfway there. I pretended to myself I was crying because my knees hurt and I was cold and tired. But I knew I was crying because Zach and Lucy hadn’t needed me at all to get together, and even though I had known they were going to get together, I hadn’t expected them to be that together. I was picturing lingering looks, and they were well on their way to who knows what. Well, I did know what. Lucy had had sex before, so why wait now? I could hear a nasty tone in my own mind. I was slut-shaming my best friend in the privacy of my thoughts. I was a gross, horrible person. A sad, single, unlovable, horrible, repulsive person.
I limped and cried the rest of the way home, and then I had to sneak into my own house and hide in the shower until my face looked less red and tearful.
My left knee had a gigantic bruise on it.
‘Oh, my god. How did that happen?’ Lucy asked me at school the next day.
‘I fell over.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Yeah. It hurt.’
9
Auld Lang Syne
Zach, Lucy and I are sitting on a sand dune and sharing a bottle of pink champagne. I take a small sip and hand it to Lucy, who swigs a couple of times before handing it to Zach, who drinks and then makes a face. He doesn’t like pink champagne. Neither do I. We got it for Lucy, because drinking pink champagne all together on the beach on New Year’s Eve is something she wanted to do, and we like to make her happy, especially at the moment. She still occasionally gets that faraway look in her eye, the look that says she isn’t as happy as she seems to be.