‘What does anything matter if you’re not remembered at all?’ asked Jewel.
‘Oh, Jewel,’ I sighed. ‘You’ll be remembered, I’m sure. The important bit is having a good time while you’re here, as well as doing good things.’
Jewel laughed weakly. ‘Christ, you should write a self-help book.’
We stopped at a red light and she turned to face me again. ‘What would your last words have been, if you’d died that night in the lake?’
I had to think about that for a minute. ‘I’d already said goodbye to Dad, before I left home.’ I paused. ‘But it doesn’t matter, because they weren’t my last words. I’m still alive. I’m still here.’
Jewel nodded. ‘You’re right. You’re here.’
Neither of us spoke for the rest of the drive. Occasionally I reached over and grasped Jewel’s hand, to make sure she was there, that she was with me. We drove through the city and towards the bay.
Ten minutes later, we stopped across from the beach, outside a fish and chip shop.
Jewel leant towards me. ‘We’ll have lunch first. I know you were probably expecting some ritzy restaurant or something, but are fish and chips all right?’
‘Fish and chips are great,’ I said. ‘Perfect, in fact.’
She smiled.
We got chips, a big bundle of them with lots of chicken salt, because everyone knows you only eat the fish so you can have the chips, and on birthdays all remotely healthy eating options go out the window.
We walked down the boardwalk to the beach, which was packed with people. There were people swimming further out, and families with young kids splashing in the shallows—some toddlers without bathers, squealing and laughing in their parents’ arms. There were couples lying on the sand and a group playing a game of volleyball. Jewel and I took off our shoes and I rolled up my jeans, and we ate the chips as we walked along the sand.
‘Do you ever want to have kids?’ Jewel asked me.
‘I never thought I did,’ I said. ‘I mean, I like kids. I love Al’s little sister. But it didn’t seem like the sort of thing I’d ever want to do. Then as soon as I found out about…well, you know, I thought,
Shit, I’m not even going to get the option
. Maybe that’s how people who find out they’re infertile feel, even if they’d previously made the decision not to have kids.’
‘They could still adopt,’ said Jewel. ‘Or be a foster parent.’
‘I don’t think it would be the same,’ I said. ‘People are obsessed with this whole thing of their own flesh and blood.’
‘It’s the only reason we’re here, you know,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s looking for the deeper meaning in everything; everyone wants there to be some grand thing that’s behind it all. But there isn’t. The point of us being here is for our species to perpetuate itself.’
‘But what’s the point of us perpetuating?’
‘So we can keep on reproducing and growing stronger and bigger and evolving until we’re the biggest and the best and we knock everything else off the face of the planet.’ She grinned.
‘We’re doing a good job of it,’ I said. ‘So basically we’re only here and reproducing because our race is egotistical?’
‘Yeah. Nothing I didn’t know already.’
‘What about you?’ I asked.
‘Am I egotistical, do you mean?’ asked Jewel.
I shook my head. ‘No, about kids.’
Jewel didn’t say anything for a moment. I ate some more chips.
‘I haven’t thought ahead that far,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I want to have kids. But if I had the choice taken away from me…I don’t know. I don’t know.’ Then she smiled at me. ‘God, we’re having conversations about life, the universe and all that when we should be getting plastered. You’re eighteen!’
‘Nothing feels different,’ I said, shaking my head.
‘It never does,’ said Jewel. ‘Things change so slowly you don’t notice. Besides, we invented this birthday thing. As if anyone would change on a specific day.’
Jewel tossed a chip to a seagull, and a whole bunch of them swarmed and fought over it.
‘Do you ever…do you ever miss the person you used to be?’ I asked.
‘All the time,’ she said. ‘I miss being young. I miss the kid I was when Ben was alive. I don’t think I would have grown up and been like this had he lived. My life would have been different.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘You remember the lake where…’
‘Of course.
That
lake is where he died?’
‘Yeah. I was eight, and he was ten. It was during the summer, and we were playing in the lake, pushing each other around. Our parents were nearby, but not really paying us much attention. He was balancing on something underneath the water and it wasn’t stable. I pushed him a bit too hard, and he fell. God, I never meant to hurt him. He hit his head on a rock, and then he was underwater and dead.’ On that last word her voice cracked. ‘All I remember after that was the blood, and the lights of the ambulance, and all this shouting, and I was shaking so hard. At the funeral, I just felt numb.’
We’d reached the end of the beach. Jewel tossed the empty chip wrapper in the bin. We stood there a moment and she buried her face in my shoulder, whispering between sobs. ‘It was so long ago, I should have got over it. I should have got over it.’
‘Shh,’ I murmured, ‘it’s okay, it’s okay, everything’s okay.’
Jewel wiped her eyes. ‘Make-up didn’t last long!’ she sniffed, and we walked back along the beach holding hands, looking at everyone in the water, and making up stories about their lives.
‘See that guy there?’ asked Jewel, pointing to a man across the sand playing volleyball. ‘He’s a cross-dresser. Not right now he’s not, but by night he gets up to all sorts of shenanigans as his alter-ego Roberta. Roberta’s a red-head. She’s a sucker for a good pair of stilettos. She loves her jewels; she’s got a miniature spoodle—’
I laughed. ‘What’s a spoodle?’
Jewel gave me a look. ‘I can’t believe you don’t know what a spoodle is. It’s what happens when dog breeders decide to play God and make poodles and spaniels have babies. But Roberta, she loves her miniature spoodle, Donnie.’
‘But what’s that guy’s real name?’
‘His real name isn’t important,’ she said. ‘He feels like he’s Roberta. He keeps up this act—he plays volleyball with his daytime friends, works his office job. But on the inside, he is Roberta. Your turn.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘See that girl?’ I pointed to a girl up the beach. ‘She was born a man.’
‘Hey!’ cried Jewel. ‘You practically copied me. She doesn’t even look transsexual, anyway.’
‘They never do, the real ones. They call them “lady boys”. They’re incredibly popular in Asia.’
Jewel laughed. ‘You know that saying “born a man” makes no sense? It makes her sound as if she was born a full-grown man, not a baby.’
‘That’s because she
was
born a full-grown man,’ I nodded.
Jewel shook her head. ‘No, you have to stay within the realms of the possible.’
‘If a spoodle is possible, a man being born fully grown and turning into a woman is almost definitely possible.’
Jewel laughed again and squeezed my hand, and I turned and kissed her. We probably looked like stupid kids, but I didn’t mind, because I was so happy. What people thought didn’t matter any more.
I would like to thank the wonderful people who made this book possible: my fantastic agent, Ginger Clark; Penny Hueston and all the brilliant people at Text Publishing; Weronika Janczuk, this book’s first reader; and Sara J Henry, without whose encouragement and advice I would not be where I am right now.
I’d also like to thank my family: Nan and Pop, for reading my books and blogs and always telling me how great I am; Aunty Pat, my number one fan, for always being fabulous, Grandma, Grandpa, Susan, Carol and Dean, for all of their support; my beautiful little sister, Rhiannon; and Mum, for her never-ending hugs, for listening to me talk incessantly about imaginary people and for giving me resilience.
To everyone I’ve ever known who has encouraged or inspired me in one way or another, I am immensely grateful. Don’t worry; the characters in the book are completely fictitious.