SOLACE (condensed version)

2004

FEBRUARY

Ashleigh and I have been passing notes to each other all day. She tells me about the rest of her school holidays, and how she went to this little beach town for a week. She met a really cute guy  but was too nervous to talk to him.

She went back to the holiday program a few more times and met two boys called Xavier and Casey that her and Andy are friends with now.

Andy kept asking if I was going to go to the program again. He told Ashleigh that him and I had been emailing all holidays. Ashleigh says I should ask my parents for a phone for my birthday so that I can text Andy, and text her too.

I tell Ashleigh about going to Luna Park, but being too scared to go on any of the rides. I tell her about my hanging out with a boy named Liam, and how we spent almost the entire holidays together because our mums are friends with each other.

My mum and his mum went to high school together and ran into each other at the start of school holidays and now they're best friends again. We went to their holiday house for a few nights, and Liam and I spent half the day at the beach taking turns blowing up the inflatable boat his mum bought, and then we sat in it in the water. We didn't bring any oars and the current dragged us so far from the shore that we had to jump out of the boat and swim back to where our parents were, leaving the boat to get dragged out to sea.

We talk about the netball team tryouts coming up next week, and the day Andy fought that mean kid during dodgeball.

Her next note to me gets intercepted by the teacher, who reads it out loud. "I think Andy has a crush on you" the teacher reads, and the whole class starts laughing.

SEPTEMBER (Dammit - Blink182)
Today's the day that the Bradford girls and Marsden boys go on a school excursion together. As we get sent onto the bus at the start of the day, I end up next to Andy.

As we put on our seatbelts, we tell each other we miss each other, and we agree to never stop speaking to each other again.

We promise to be best friends forever, even when we start high school in a few years. Then that same, mean fat kid from the holiday program throws an orange at Andy's head, but it hits me instead.

Andy leaps over the seat and chokes him, and as he's getting pulled off the bus, he's screaming at the kid to never fucking touch me again.

Instead of feeling scared, I feel safe.

I smile, because deep down I know that Andy will always keep me safe.

Andy gets suspended from school for a week.

OCTOBER

The five of us are on Main Street. Ashleigh and Casey are being loud and throwing hot chips at each other. People walking past give our whole group dirty looks, and it makes me uncomfortable. I don't like drawing attention to myself.

Andy asks why I'm being so quiet, and I nod towards a group of elderly women. "Such awful manners." One of them says to her friend. "We never acted like that in our day."

Andy gives them a sickly sweet and very insincere smile, then turns to me. "Fuck them, Lex. They're just jealous because they're old and ugly and we're young and happy. I never want to get old and grumpy like them."

"Lex? No one has ever called me Lex before." I tell him.

"Yeah, well your real name is Alexandra, which you hate, so you shortened it to Alex, and now I've shortened it again. Strangers call you Alexandra, friends call you Alex, but I'm your best friend, so I get to call you Lex."

"I love it."

I motion to him that I want to tell him a secret, and he leans forward, expectantly. I smear a handful of greasy, ketchup-covered chips down his cheek, and I ignore the stares of passers-by and live in this moment, as Lex.