In Ecstasy (16 page)

At school I had to field all sorts of questions about Mia, and it made me mad how judgemental everyone was. Christ, it could have been any one of them ending up in trouble, but because they'd been lucky and got away with it they felt they could look down on her.

I hadn't seen her, hadn't been to the rehab centre. I imagined her locked up in some dark and seedy Cuckoo's Nest with dirty tiled bathrooms and crazed nurses waving syringes.

Dom tried to reassure me. ‘It won't be like that Soph. Not the one Mia's in. Dad reckons it's one of the best.'

I went to her house nearly every day. It was like my penance for not doing enough earlier, for turning my back on her when she needed me. I remembered how awful I felt when it seemed she didn't care about me. But I had cared.

‘She's doing well,' Rae told me. ‘She's starting to face what's happened. We all are.'

Through the window I watched Jordie holding a model plane aloft, making it twist and swoop.

‘Hey, Jordie,' I called out to him as I was leaving.

He didn't look up, but brought the plane in for a careful and controlled landing.

‘How you doing?' I asked.

‘Okay,' he shrugged. He didn't seem interested in talking to me. His indifference hurt me. It felt like another part of Mia gone from my life.

‘See you then,' I said. But he still didn't look at me. He just shrugged his shoulders.

I started to have flashes of missing memory. Those three days that had vanished began to reveal themselves to me at night in little snippets. I'd wake in a panic and have to work to calm myself down. I never managed to piece it all together. There are still huge gaps I can't fill, and a part of me doesn't want to, because the parts I do remember are so disgusting.

I remember being half-dressed in Glenn's lounge room, dancing to the music in front of his mates. I think I'd taken pills from the bag he gave me. And I remember being with two other guys. The memory makes me shudder. I let them treat my body like shit. I was so out of it, I didn't care. Nothing stopped me, not even the physical pain of what they did. I think I drank more GHB, but I'm not sure. I just know that for three days I completely abandoned any sense of self I had.

Realising I will never know the whole story both comforts and frightens me. The what-ifs keep popping up in my head, usually in the middle of the night, and I have to fight to let them go.

Group therapy was one session I looked forward to, even though the stories were often pretty heavy. But some people, Charlie for instance, filled me with hope. Charlie is a small, pixie-like girl with spiky blond-tipped hair. She usually sat with her knees pulled up to her chest. With her sleeves pushed up to the elbow you can see old, fading trackmarks.

‘Mum was a recovering heroin user,' she told the group, ‘and Dad was in jail for trying to hold up a chemist. He had a bad habit too. She'd been clean for six months and was pregnant. Dad's a total disaster. There was me, my brother, my baby sister and the unborn kid, plus he had three other kids too. Reckoned the maintenance was killing him.' She laughed lightly. ‘That day I was at school. Mum had the baby Ella strapped into the bassinet. You know, the kind that fits into the car?'

I felt myself nodding, even though she was looking at Maryanne, not me.

‘Jayden was four and he would have been pretty excited. Mum was taking them to the zoo. So apparently she had Ella's bassinet in one hand and then she saw the pack of jellybeans on the hall table. She would have given one to Jayden—a bribe so he behaved—then popped one in her own mouth. A black one, because my Mum loved black jellybeans even though she hated liquorice. Weird, hey?' Charlie paused and I realised how tense I was. It was like when you watch a suspense film, and the scary music comes on, and you just know something really bad is about to happen.

‘She must've inhaled it or something because it lodged in her windpipe and she choked. When someone broke in and found her a day later, Ella was dehydrated in the bassinet and Jayden had collapsed over our mother's body.'

We were all silent. It was too terrible.

‘I'd gone straight from school to a friend's house for the night. If only I'd come home, maybe she wouldn't have died.' Charlie shook her head. ‘But the thing that really kills me is what a stupid pointless way to die. If it had been an OD, you could almost have understood it, but she'd kicked the smack.'

I couldn't stay away from Charlie. I wanted to know more. I needed to know everything. Her room was two doors down from my own, and when we were allowed, I'd go there and talk. She was only fourteen—her mother's death had been three years ago. I asked her what happened after her mum died.

‘We got sent to live with Dad's sister, Aunty Jean. Do you know, they wouldn't let my dad out of prison to go to Mum's funeral because they weren't married?'

I shook my head. There were so many things I didn't know.

‘Well, that didn't work out, because Uncle Rick had wandering hands.'

‘What do you mean?' I asked.

‘Uncle Rick liked his lovin' from young girls. Not Aunty Jean.'

‘Oh God.' I clapped my hand over my mouth.

‘I wasn't giving in without a fight, so I tried to bite it off, but I've got pretty small teeth.' She bared her teeth at me. Even though it wasn't really funny, I couldn't help laughing.

‘What happened next?' I asked.

‘Oh, you can guess. Aunty Jean stands by her man. Me, my brother and sister are bundled off to foster homes. Separately. Eldest child, me,' she said, pointing at herself, ‘runs away, and in an ironic twist of fate gets hooked on smack. The same drug that killed her mother.'

‘But you said your mother choked.'

‘Yeah, she did. But you know what? I think she'd screwed her body up so badly that she couldn't even cough up a jellybean. She had kicked the smack but it was just too late.'

‘Oh, Charlie,' I said sadly.

‘So, yeah, I go out and get onto the same shit that kills my mother and has my dad, useless prick that he is, still behind bars. The ambos found me OD'd in a park and gave me a shot of naloxone. The drug court ordered me here.'

‘Do you think it'll work?' I asked hopefully.

‘Dunno. It's not my first time. But I hope to God it's my last.'

Days went by at school and interest in Mia faded. It was like the guy who'd OD'd. One minute he was the hot topic of conversation, with everyone trying to outdo each other with what they'd heard, and next thing all the talk was about Wolfmother rocking up to the Big Day Out in the new year. Life went on and the casualties faded into the ether. Except for me. I tried writing to Mia. I wanted to put it all on paper, explain it, to myself as well as to her. I wanted her forgiveness. But none of the letters sounded right and I didn't send them.

I went to the year twelve graduation ball as Dom's partner. I had the day off school to go to the hairdressers, and then Adele and Nat, who also had year twelve partners, came to my house at about four o'clock to get ready. We shared my bathroom, helping each other with make-up and nail polish, gossiping about which other year elevens would turn up and what might happen at the after party. There was so much anticipation the air was actually humming. And then as we posed for photos, all brightly dressed and polished, it hit me really hard. She should've been there. This was something else I'd never thought I'd be doing without her. It felt like she'd died. I stopped myself crying—but my mascara smudged a bit anyway.

The night was fantastic, a gorgeous whirl of colour and dancing and more posed photos. I felt sick when Lewis Scott and his partner Sasha were announced Belle and Beau of the Ball. They looked like the two plastic figurines on top of a wedding cake. But the night kicked on with the after-ball party and I forgot about them. Even Adele came with her partner Steven, the captain of the chess team. And she does know how to have a good time—that night I had real evidence of that. But as much as I like her, she's not Mia.

It was the next day when Mia's mum asked me to go and see her. She must have seen from my face that I dreaded going.

‘It's part of her therapy, Sophie,' she said. ‘She has to confront everyone she hurt.'

I nodded, thinking of the hurt I'd inflicted too. I wanted to run and hide, but that's what cowards do.

I was sitting on my bed, writing in my journal—something Maryanne encouraged me to do—when she stuck her head around the door. ‘You've got a visitor,' she said. And then I saw Sophie standing behind her.

I swallowed nervously. ‘Let's go outside,' I said, feeling my chest constrict.

We sat under the shade of a huge old tree and I stared at the warped surface of its bark. I didn't know what to say to her. What had happened? What had Glenn done to her? How could I have not believed her? No wonder she hated me. I shivered.

‘Mia, I'm so sorry I turned my back on you,' she said eventually.

I couldn't believe she was apologising to me. ‘But I'm the one who's sorry.'

‘I should've told you what happened that night,' she said, ‘but things were so complicated. I was so tangled up in the lies I'd created, I didn't really tell anyone. I'm so sorry. Lately, I've kept thinking that if only I'd told you, maybe things wouldn't have ended up so bad.'

I'd been so involved in myself I hadn't really cared about her problems. And I know it wouldn't have made much difference if she had told me. I didn't really want to know now, it seemed too late to go back.

But Sophie kept talking. ‘That night we'd gone to his place. He was going to get his keys and drive me home. He had some friends over.' She was looking away from me now. ‘I remember drinking a bourbon he gave me and it affected me so badly I could hardly speak. The next thing I knew I woke up on the floor of his bedroom.

‘I wasn't sure what he'd done to me. I couldn't remember anything.' She brushed tears away. ‘But I was terrified. I thought...' She was having trouble controlling her voice. ‘I thought he was going to rape me. I was afraid he was going to kill me.'

‘You should've told me, you should've made me listen.'

‘I tried,' she sounded defensive, ‘but you wouldn't.'

I couldn't argue with her. I hadn't wanted to hear her; I didn't want her to spoil my fun. ‘You didn't tell anyone?'

‘I told a bit, but not everything, not then. I just wanted to forget about it and try to get on with my life,' she shrugged. ‘There was nothing anyone could do about it anyway.'

She was right. I'd been down this road already, talking with a social worker at the centre. Glen couldn't be charged with date rape because GHB leaves the system so quickly. And, aside from a vague memory of sexual assault, girls like Sophie and me are not, apparently, good witnesses.

We sat there quietly for a while. Sophie cupped her face in her hands and stared off into space. I guess the whole situation was weird for both of us. We knew each other so well, but we didn't know how to act around each other any more.

‘So, what do you do around here?' she said to break the silence.

I waved a hand around. ‘You know, the usual detox kind of stuff. Prescription drugs and therapy with Freud.' I put on an exaggerated German accent. ‘Ve haf vayz of making you zink.'

And then she laughed, a deep, strong laugh. ‘Mia!' she said, like I was being really naughty.

‘What?' I said, laughing too. ‘If I come out of here muttering like a village idiot you'll know they got their way and gave me a frontal lobotomy.'

She cracked up. And then it was easy. It was Soph and me again. We sat in the sunshine of the rehab centre laughing and talking, not about what had happened, but other things, the fun things we used to do.

Finally she looked at her watch. ‘I've gotta go,' she said reluctantly.

I stood up with her, so glad she'd come, wishing she wasn't leaving.

‘Dominic's waiting for me,' she nodded her head towards the car park.

‘Dominic?' I said excitedly. ‘You didn't mention him.'

She waved her hand in front of me. ‘I've flashed this at you about thirty times,' she said, holding out her hand.

I grabbed hold of it and studied the ring. It was beautiful. She was so lucky. My old envy filled me again. Sophie always landed on her feet. ‘It's lovely,' I said at last.

She smiled. ‘He's been great for me. I couldn't have made it through all this if I hadn't had him.'

I was still holding her hand. Tears stung my eyes. I had no one. ‘Thanks for coming.'

‘No worries,' she said, her eyes also shiny. ‘I'll come back soon.'

I hugged her, really hard, and stood in the shade waving as she walked off towards the car park. I wished it was me leaving.

After that first visit I went every week. Initially there was this strained familiarity between us, but as time passed the tension lifted. Soon Mia was back in form as the class clown, and I saw the way other people watched her, waiting for her jokes, appreciating the same qualities in her that I did.

I met her friend in there, Charlie—a fast talking, slick fourteen year old who'd OD'd on smack a couple of times and hadn't even finished year nine. She knew a lot though, and when I was around her I felt like I'd led a sheltered and protected life. And it was funny the way Mia related to her, like Charlie could give her something that no one else could. And whatever that was, it made me jealous. But I wouldn't want her life, ever.

I actually enjoyed going there. Sounds like an odd thing to say, doesn't it? But it was a space that allowed us to get our friendship back. Even though it was a completely controlled environment, where the nurses surreptitiously watched our every move, for the first time in ages I felt totally free. Lying on the grass under the tree, all the lies, the facade, the insecurities, they were all gone. And we rediscovered that deep connection that had always held us together. To me it felt totally honest. I'm not saying I'm glad we had to go through all we did to get to this point, but at least we ended up with something worthwhile.

I had to stop my habit of thinking in black and white to realise this. It was too easy to beat myself up—or Mia—for what had happened, but that was the sort of thinking that creates the kind of situation we'd just been through. So now I looked for the positives. Things could have been worse, much worse. We'd come out fairly lucky. After all, the difference between a tiger snake and a cat's tail is only a matter of perception and poor lighting.