Fourteen by Shannon Molloy

Author:Shannon Molloy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia
Published: 2020-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

July

In the days after Maryanne left, I sank once again into a deep, relentless depression. It was all too much. She phoned me every day to talk about what had happened. After our failed search for the guy who bashed me, Mum had picked us up from Damien’s house and drove to the bus stop to drop Maryanne off. I knew she wanted to talk then, but my shame was so intense that I just couldn’t bring myself to.

I retreated into myself. I became very quiet and fled to the safety and comfort of my bed whenever I had the chance. It was like a warm cocoon in which I could hide away from the world. I wrapped the doona around myself tightly, pulling it up to my neck, and covered my face with a pillow.

When I was about four or five, I almost drowned in a family friend’s pool. I thought I was jumping into the shallow end, and so I took a big run up and catapulted in. It should have been an expertly executed dive-bomb, but it turned out I’d launched myself into the middle of the deep end. No one was paying attention as I splashed around under water for what seemed like an eternity. I couldn’t swim, and pretty soon I had a lungful of chlorinated water. I thrashed out to no avail. I tried to find the surface. I grasped at nothingness. And then I accepted the inevitable despair. I didn’t understand until years later, but in that moment, I believed my end had arrived.

In reality, I doubt I was in any real danger. What felt like minutes to me was probably seconds before I was fished out, smacked on the back a few times to clear my lungs and then sent to play in the sandpit instead. But the sensation of fighting against the inevitable before finally giving up and sinking to the bottom had taken root.

I woke each day with something very close to that feeling. The bleeping of the alarm would drag me from slumber. As soon as I opened my eyes and the world began to come into focus, it receded away again into murky grey. Suddenly my chest would tighten, my heart would sink, blood would rush to the ends of my fingers and toes, making them feel swollen and tingly.

As I lay there each morning, dreading yet another day of hell at school, I was drowning in my mind again, sinking further and further down, my spirit slipping away from sight.

Weirdly, when I went back to school the day after Maryanne left, it was as though nothing had ever happened. I was still picked on – that hadn’t changed. I was still loathed, but no one ever said a word about the note. It had not become the unending terror that I imagined it would.

One afternoon, after a few weeks back from winter holidays, someone started to say something about it as I walked into religion class.

‘Yeah, well, you wanna root Joshua –’ the boy began.

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