Chapter Six
“You are aware,” Elise turned to me as we sat at the bus-stop shelter opposite Riccarton Mc Donalds. “That our first day back starts in like 30 minutes, right?”
I nodded, my cigarette now smouldering on the ground, at the toe of my shoes. “Of this I am aware,” I said in my best Yoda-impersonation. She shot me a filthy glare and I took that as a forceful suggestion to check the “estimated time of arrival,” board that was attached to a purple lamppost in the ground—yes you read that right; purple lamppost.
Only in Christchurch.
The screen flickered and displayed the arrival time for the various busses destined for this stop/ the screen looked as technologically current as an Atari handheld brick console. I swear it must have been run on some Windows BC edition.
“83, fifteen minutes,” I reported.
“Great,” she groaned. “Looks like we’ll be late,”
“We got to Hagley,”
“And?”
“It’s Hagley, our school invented the fashionably late trend: they built a fucking school on that trend,”
“It’s our first day as year 12’s though!”
“And that matters why?”
She sighed, and admitted defeat. She knew that I was defiant to my bitter last breath. I defy things, it’s what I do, like how a dog chases car: I just defy things. It doesn’t even matter what—or who—it is I’ll defy it: it provides me with a kind of purpose. “I just don’t like being late,” she said, running her fingers through her hair.
“It’s hagley,” I repeated. “Chill,” I patted her on the head. “Forgive me if I want to delay my public execution,”
“It will be fine, you know, I mean it can’t be any worse than last year. And besides, I’ll cut anyone who ruins your day,”
“Oh yes, and last year,” I rolled my eyes beneath my shades—and like a camera distances a photographer from a photo, my sunglasses distanced me from society.
“Don’t your rolls at me,” she snapped.
“Fuck off with your x-ray vision,” I snapped back. “Fine, Omg, I am so excited for school, everyone can point and laugh at me!” I said with a sickening amount of false excitement. “Was that better?”
“Was that sarcasm?” She asked. “It’s hard to tell when you have Sunglasses on.”
“Yes, should I wear a sign?”
“I wish you would,”
I fell silent.
“Things will be different, Eden,”
“And I’m a sober Irishman,”
“Very funny,” she chuckled, no doubt trying to imagine me drunk, it hadn’t happened in a while—actually it had only happened once in 16 years. “We don’t have to go, you know,”
I sighed sharply, relishing the idea of skiving off school and curling back up in bed, nestled inside a cocoon of blankets. “No, you’re right, we should go,”
“So, what do you reckon we’re missing out on?”
“No doubt some speech about individuality and a lame induction with sausages and rubbing noses with total strangers, oh and of course can’t forget all the people laughing and pointing and wearing their pants so low it looks like they shat themselves, so really,” I finished, saying most of that in one breath. “We’re really not missing anything I’d lament missing.”
Elise digested and catalogued the over-visual and elaborate picture I had painted for her. Her eyes whirred with all the messages being screened in her mind, a little side show that was a testament to my ADHD.
“God, that made my brain hurt,” she grimaced, massing her temple with the palm of her hand. “Stop writing books in my head,’
“You mean stop being a writer?”
She nodded. “And stop bending my mind!”
“But it’s who I am,”
“Well . . . fuck,”
“Yeah, fuck,”
Five minutes passed and Elise and I just sat in silence, mostly because we were both trying to figure out why the fuck we were awake so early in the morning.
“Bus is here,” Elise said suddenly.
I swung my bag onto my shoulder, accidently clipping Elise in the side.
“Bitch,” She glared.
“Harden up,” I said cheerfully, skipping to the bus, Elise trailed behind, clearly not amused. “The gallows waits,”
“Harden up?” She repeated as we paid and our fair and sat in the left side of the four-seater in the front half of the bus. We stretched out our legs: mine stretched to the base of the seat, but hers barely reached the seat itself. “Why don’t you go swallow some fucking concrete,” She cursed suddenly.
“Nom,” I replied as the bus sped towards Hagley and towards the distinctive Christchurch City Central horizon.
