The Boundless Sublime (10 page)

Fox kept mentioning monkeys. Was the Institute some kind of research centre?

‘Do you want to go back?’ I asked.

‘Of course I do,’ said Fox, but I didn’t believe him.

For a moment I imagined going with him. Really belonging somewhere, not just visiting. Being with Fox every day. After all, if I didn’t like it I could always leave, and maybe after a little while I could convince Fox to leave with me.

The blackness reached for me, suffocating, familiar. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I just can’t.’

Fox’s face crumpled. I couldn’t stand to see him looking so sad. If Fox was sad, nobody else in the world could feel happiness. The sun wouldn’t shine, and the birds would refuse to sing.

‘Then this is goodbye.’

My chest filled with despair. ‘Already?’

A tear rolled down Fox’s cheek. ‘I don’t want to leave you.’

‘Then don’t.’

‘I don’t have a choice.’

He kissed me on the cheek and reached out to cup my chin in his hands. I drank him in – his cascade of sandy hair that fell into stormy eyes. His pale skin and rosy lips. I wasn’t sure if I could live without him.

And then he was gone.

I didn’t know where to go. To school? I hadn’t been for nearly a fortnight. I’d been deleting Helena’s voicemail messages from Mum’s phone. I knew I got a certain amount of leeway on attendance due to being a broken shell of a human, but a fortnight was stretching it. There would be questions, and meetings, and consequences, and I couldn’t face that. I couldn’t go home to Mum’s ashen emptiness and Aunty Cath’s fake cheer and false nails. I couldn’t go to the Red House, because Fox was leaving. I couldn’t go to the Wasteland, because I hated my friends.

So I stayed in the park. I wandered around the perimeter. I stood by the pond and looked for the ducks, but they were nowhere to be seen. Everything was chilled and grey, with low, threatening clouds releasing the occasional drizzle of rain. My fingers went numb. I kept walking, around
and around. Joggers passed me without a second glance. A homeless man dug through a rubbish bin, and I envied him his fingerless gloves and beanie. A crow perched on a park bench, watching me with a beady black eye.

I walked, and walked, and tried not to think about what would happen tomorrow, and the next day. The dark tide rose around me once more, and I welcomed its suffocating blankness.

Minah texted after she finished school, asking if we could talk. She met me by the duck pond, her face dark with concern, her mouth twisted as though she was struggling to get the words out.

‘I get it, okay?’ she said. ‘The guy is super-hot. But he’s … he’s not all there. He’s like a little kid.’

Fox wasn’t like a little kid. He was innocent, yes. Undamaged by cynicism and bitterness. But he was also wise. He understood more about the world than I ever would. He understood people. He understood
me
. And the physical intensity when we were together … Fox was
definitely
not a little kid.

‘You don’t know him.’

‘I don’t have to know him,’ said Minah. ‘I know
you
. And this isn’t you.’

‘Maybe it is me,’ I said. ‘Maybe this is who I’ve been all along, but I needed Fox to show me.’

Minah shook her head. ‘What is it about these people? Why are they so great?’

I thought about it. About the Red House. The long dinners full of debate and laughter. The closeness. The trust. The honesty. The clear-headedness I had experienced over the past few weeks. The loss of it was sharp and keen, like a knife
slicing through my lungs, filling them with cold, suffocating fluid.

‘I don’t know,’ I said at last. ‘They helped me to see things differently. Myself. My life. They make me feel there’s a possibility for happiness after all.’

Minah raised her eyebrows. ‘Happiness?’

I shrugged. ‘After what happened … I didn’t think it was ever going to be an option.’

And maybe now it wasn’t.

Minah bit her bottom lip and looked away for a moment, as if hesitating over whether or not to say something. Then she turned back to me, her brow wrinkled in frustration. ‘I don’t understand you at all, Ruby. You called yourself an artist. We used to talk for hours about where creativity comes from. About humanity’s extraordinary ability to channel grief and anger and oppression and turn it into something
more
, something outside of them. And then it happens to you – you experience tragedy, the big death and everything. And you just opt out. You don’t face your grief. You don’t turn it into something beautiful. You don’t put it on a canvas or shape it in clay or turn it into a song. You become a robot. You don’t
feel
anything. You pretend everything’s okay, and we pretend along with you because … I don’t know why. Because we’re a bit scared of you. And then you meet some granola-munching hippies and all of a sudden you’re signing up for their twelve-step bullshit?’

I stared at her. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘I think you’re running away.’

‘And why shouldn’t I? What’s left to stick around for? My brother’s dead. My dad’s going to jail. My mum is a ghost. What reason is there not to run away?’

I saw Minah flinch. She knew I wasn’t sticking around for her. ‘Problems don’t go away because you want them to,’ she
said. ‘You have to face them. Turn them into words and art and music. Work through it.’

I blinked. ‘You think my brother’s death was an
opportunity
. You think I should be grateful that he died, because now I get to be a genuine tortured artist.’

‘That isn’t what I meant.’

I stared at the pond, feeling fat drops splash on my cheeks, not sure if they were tears or rain. It was getting late and the light was leaching away from everything. I turned on Minah.

‘You think because you can make a sculpture out of dead animals, it means you understand death. Well, you don’t. You don’t understand anything. You talk all the time about art and pain and creativity, but you don’t feel anything either. You think emotions are for the weak. You’d rather turn rotten fruit into art than accept the fact that
you’re
rotten on the inside. You’re just as blank and empty as I am. The only difference is I’m trying to change.’

Minah’s jaw trembled. ‘Whatever,’ she said from between gritted teeth. ‘Throw your life away. Shave your head and call yourself Daffodil Moonblood. If you think that’s your path to freedom, who am I to stand in your way?’

She stood and walked away towards the shops. She didn’t look back.

Aunty Cath ordered pizza that night, and opened a bottle of wine, to celebrate how well we were all doing. The house stank of cheese and garlic, a smell that had once been appetising to me, but now made my stomach turn. Aunty Cath hadn’t even ordered one with any vegetables. It was all meat and cheese and flour, melded together into an oozing hideous mess.

I got myself a carrot and a handful of almonds from the kitchen.

‘You should have seen your mum today at the hairdresser, Ruby,’ said Aunty Cath. She licked grease from her fingers, and I looked away, repulsed. ‘She was amazing. Calm and poised and confident.’

I glanced at Mum, who was nibbling her pizza slice. She
did
look different, and it wasn’t just her newly cut and coloured hair. Her cheeks were pink again, and although she still didn’t talk much, she followed the conversation with her eyes, and responded to direct questions with soft, short statements.

‘You know what would make you feel better?’ said Aunty Cath to Mum, pouring more wine into her glass. ‘Acrylics. You should come with me tomorrow so we can get our nails done. I’ve found a great girl down at the shopping centre. She does French tips and Vinylux. It’ll be a real pick-me-up for you. Just what you need.’

I shuddered, thinking of how my eyes watered whenever I walked past a nail salon. How could anyone surround themselves with chemicals like that?

‘You should come too, Rubes,’ said Aunty Cath.

I stretched my lips in a smile. ‘I’m afraid I’m busy.’

‘Off with your friends?’

I pictured Minah and the others sitting on their hoard of rubbish at the Wasteland, and an aching bitterness rose inside me. Was that all I had left? I thought about the Red House. What were they doing right now? Probably sitting around the communal table, eating real food and talking about real things. There would be warmth and laughter. I imagined Welling and Stan getting into a debate about states of being. Fox would be there too, smiling and listening and adding his own insightful thoughts to the conversation. Or had he left already? The ache intensified.

Fox. Would I truly not be able to see him anymore? Surely he’d come back to the Red House to visit occasionally.

But I knew that even if this was true, ‘occasionally’ wasn’t enough for me. I
needed
Fox. I needed him like air and water. He was the only thing stopping me from falling back into darkness.

Aunty Cath reached for another slice of pizza. Her chin glistened with grease and her flamingo-pink fingernails were clogged with tomato sauce. She cackled at something on the television.

I glanced at Mum. She ate mechanically, nodded in response to Aunty Cath, and answered her questions. But even though she seemed to be getting better, I could see she wasn’t really there. She was just pretending.

I remembered what Fox had said.
You have to want it
. Mum didn’t want to get better. There was nothing I could do or say to drag her out of her empty, blank little world, and I was scared that if I stayed, she’d drag me back down into it as well.

Aunty Cath gave me a hug before she went to bed, enveloping me in her powdery smell. Her arms were soft and flabby around me, and I flinched. I didn’t ever want to be like her.

‘You know, Ruby,’ said Aunty Cath, trying to look meaningfully into my eyes, ‘you are the author of your own story. Your life is a book and you are the one who gets to decide when to turn the page.’

It was her usual garbage, quoted directly from whatever self-help book she was currently reading. But her words didn’t slide past my ears and evaporate the way they normally did. She was right. I was the one who got to decide how my story was going to go.

‘This pain you’re feeling – it will pass. You’re growing up so quickly. Soon you’ll be off to uni. You’ll meet someone. You’ll fall in love and have children of your own. A career. A beautiful life. And this will be a distant memory.’