Bonnet in hand, Nic surveys the room as her heartbeat returns to normal. The TV cabinet is for trophies and ornaments, vases and decorative jars. Pretty things, yes, but hard: all metal, plastic and glass. Any of the sofas in here would make appropriately soft beds for the bonnet, but it is such a small, dear thing that it would easily get lost among the cushions and throws and blankets.

  Back in the hallway she shuffles along the left-hand wall, pausing at the break in the newspaper stacks that leads to Lena’s room. She’s long thought of it that way, even though it was originally her own room, shared with Michelle, and then, after Michelle moved out and Mum died, it was the guest room and both kids would use it on their sleepovers, first snuggled together in the single bed then, older, fighting over who would get the bed and who the makeshift mattress of couch cushions on the floor. Around the time Will turned twelve, sleepovers with school friends became more attractive than sleepovers with Aunty Nic, and so it became Lena’s room, indisputably. Not every weekend, but a lot. Not every night in the school holidays, but most.

  Until the horror year. The year Michelle’s husband Joe died and Will—sweet, kind, tough little Will, in training to be a childcare worker, for goodness sake!—went to prison. And Michelle, as though deliberately testing how much loss the human spirit could take, swept fourteen-year-old Lena away to live in Brisbane. And Nic had to let her go. No such thing as custody rights to your sister’s kid. No matter how destroyed you are by her absence.

  She has her back now, though. A serious, fiery twenty-year-old so smart it amazes Nic that the girl would want to spend any time with a dullard like her at all. But she does! Miraculously, she really does seem to enjoy hanging with her old aunty, insisting, now that she is living in Sydney again, that they have lunch together every Sunday.

  I should clear this room out, Nic thinks, pushing open the door, taking a cautious step inside. Tell her there’s always a bed for her here. It wouldn’t be so hard: the rag dolls and teddy bears and lions and puppies could move onto her own bed. The books—well, some of them could stay. It’d just be a matter of sorting through them, so only the most worthy remained. Only enough to fit neatly in the walnut-stained bookshelf, which is itself a beautiful, Lena-worthy thing currently hidden by all the non-Lena-worthy books stacked on and over and around it.

  The clothes would be trickier to rehome. Some in plastic washing baskets, moving boxes and black garbage bags, others making multi-coloured soft statues or waterfalling off the furniture. Could she shift some of them to the living room? The lounge blankets wouldn’t mind the weight of clothing on them, surely. If she put only woollen jumpers and fleecy tracksuits out there it’d be like blankets for the blankets, wouldn’t it? But blankets don’t need to be blanketed. It would insult and offend and anyway, if they were gone, if the toys and the books and the clothes were gone, that would still leave the other things, the precious painful needed beautiful awful beloved things over there in the wardrobe in the corner, and what could she do with those that wouldn’t hurt them hurt her hurt hurt hurt—

  Nic squishes down between the bags. The pillowy weight of clothes presses into her. Cuddles her. It is easier to regain her breath sitting here. In: one, two, three. Hold: one, two, three. Out: one, two, three. Lena would not want to sleep here, anyway. It’s too far on the bus to get back to uni, where she often has early classes, and too far from the supermarket, where she often works late. In: one, two, three. Hold: one, two, three. Out: one, two, three. Meeting for lunch on a Sunday was perfect for them both. No need to complicate things out of nostalgia. In: one, two, three. Hold: one, two, three. Out: one, two, three.

  Nic rubs the satin ribbons of the bonnet with her thumbs and forefingers. This is too delicate an object for this room of heavy love and heavier pain. The bonnet needs a simpler space.

  Breath normal, Nic gets to her feet and steps into the hallway, turns right and, after four more stacks, right again into her bedroom. It’s the only space left, save the bathroom, which is unthinkable; all that moisture and heat, the easily spilt lotions and beauty products. The toilet with its gaping maw! No, her room, the best and safest place. Standing here it is immediately obvious. That hook on the wall over the dresser. It once held a painting of a white horse being fed by a girl with a brown ponytail, but that fell a long time ago and now lives somewhere behind the dresser, which is fine because the moment being captured between girl and horse is so intimate and tender it made Nic feel embarrassed to look at it. It made her think of the shock of hate she saw in the big tabby’s eyes when it caught her watching while it lay on its side and let its kittens suck on its teats. This is not for you, the cat’s eyes told her, and she’d scurried away, appalled at her own trespass. That was how the painting made her feel, and for years she’d avoid looking up at it, but then it dropped itself behind the dresser of its own accord and they’d all lived happily together—Nic, girl, horse and empty hook—ever since.

  But now it is evident that the hook is tired of being alone and unused. What is it for if not to support and display something of interest and beauty? Poor thing, sticking out there all naked and unemployed. And here in her hand the thing that would make the hook know she had not abandoned it, only kept it free waiting for its true match.

  A burst of happiness surprises her. Like whenever she looked at her buzzing phone and saw Lena’s name glowing up at her. She squeezes between the nail salon chairs and steps over a box of records, nudging aside the piles of Women’s Weekly and Who magazines. Holding the bonnet in her left hand, she uses her right to move the fishbowl filled with copper coins onto the top of the stacked jewellery boxes to its left. She assesses the cleared space. Her calves are not as narrow as they once were, more’s the pity. ‘Sorry, darl,’ she tells the unplugged clock radio, moving it to rest on the Sydney Olympic Games commemorative Weet-Bix tin. It looks good up there, and the hair ties and ribbons and scrunchies in the tin will not be bothered by its presence. Perhaps they will feel even safer with that extra weight on top. Yes! Serendipity. Lena’s favourite word when she was nine. It felt like this: like joy that had been waiting for you to catch up to it.

  Space enough now. She shivers with excitement, lifts a leg experimentally. No, that won’t be happening. No way she can get onto the dresser unboosted. She tests the closest pile with her foot; magazines slide against each other beneath the barely applied pressure. She apologises, withdraws. The records are too easily damaged to put her weight on. She could go back to the living room and empty one of the toy crates, but that seems unfair. She has already messed with their serenity this afternoon.

  Of course! Like the empty hook, the exercise bike has been hiding in plain sight. Over there, under the window, a little further from the dresser than is ideal, but with only a few shoeboxes, a hairdryer and three small lamps between her and it. Easy. She reaches the bike without disturbing anything. Its bars are a tangle of bag straps, but the seat and frame are miraculously clear. She hoists herself up, sits for a second while she evaluates the task. If she can reach the top of the mirror frame on the dresser she can use it to steady herself as she leaps across. It isn’t even as far as she jumps to reach her bed each night, but that is at ground level and soft mounds of clothing form a crash mat if she misses. There is further to fall here and the landing ground a variety of hard, irregularly shaped things.

  But that won’t happen. The bonnet urges her on. She is standing more steadily than she thought possible on the bike frame. ‘Sorry, but I have to.’ She tosses the bonnet onto the dresser. Keeping her eyes on the hook, she reaches across and gets a firm grip on the mirror. One foot up on the seat, waits a beat then squishes the other beside it. She wobbles and her heart is going nuts, but she breathes calmly and keeps hold of the mirror, eyes on the hook. Go on. Go on now. And she does, just steps out, and her foot connects with the wood and then the other follows and something clicks in her hip and she stumbles a step and loses her stomach, but then there she is, up on the dresser, eye level with the hook, the bonnet at her feet.

  A simple thing from here: she picks up the bonnet, brushes away invisible dust, runs her fingers over the satin ribbons one final time. ‘Welcome, beautiful,’ she says and drapes it over the hook. Her whole body hums with the rightness of it. Like it’s 1996 and she’s in the back seat of Tony’s Datsun again. Like it’s 1999 and she’s holding Lena for the first time. Like it’s 2003 and she’s being held by her dying mother and the fear that she is unlovable even to the woman who gave birth to her dissipates and is replaced with surety of her worth. Some things your body just knows.

  Her body, humming like this, alive and delighted, missteps. She is on the dresser and then she is not. She is falling backwards, twisting. On the ground, fast. So much blood so quickly. The sound of the lamp smashing must have been muffled by her flesh, but smashed it has, under her. Into her. Her right ankle screams differently to her gouged arm. Her left leg different again. So many varieties of pain to feel all at once. She thinks about what to do next and then doesn’t think at all.

  LENA

  After two months of perving at Josh from across the lecture theatre, Lena finally managed to speak with him on the way out of Education in the Twenty-first Century one Wednesday afternoon. ‘Nice presentation,’ she said, and he smiled like someone used to receiving praise and said, ‘Thanks. Can’t wait to see what you come up with.’ She’d done her presentation the week before and had made eye contact with him several times throughout, so his response was a bummer, but on the following Friday he approached her after class and complimented her on an answer she’d given earlier and they small-talked all the way out to the east lawn, where she turned left towards the bus stop and he right towards his college. Every Wednesday and Friday for three weeks they repeated the ritual, exchanging slightly more information each time.

  In the fourth week, Josh was absent on Wednesday, but on Friday he came and sat right beside her. Several times he almost brushed her arm with his, confirming her suspicion that if he ever touched her it would be incredibly difficult to concentrate on anything else except the thought of touching him again. The lecture was a total loss, learning-wise.

  When they reached the place of their usual separation on the east lawn that day, he said, ‘You in a rush?’ And without waiting for an answer sat down on the grass and held his hand out to her to join him and she did, like it was a normal thing to do, just take the hand of a man you’d been fantasising about for the last three months and sit easily beside him on the lawn of a university you’d fantasised about attending for the six or so years since you knew it existed and then talk on that lawn with that man as though you were the kind of girl to whom all this was nothing.

  She missed her bus and the next one, which meant she would barely make it to work on time, and even then only if she managed to squeeze on board the 5.35, which was always packed with city office workers on their glum and pushy way home. It’d be worth it, though. Josh had told her that talking to her was addictive, and then he hugged her long and hard and pressed his impossibly smooth cheek against hers before pulling back and looking into her eyes for one, two, three, four, five seconds. ‘See you next week, Harris,’ he said, and when she looked back from the edge of the lawn he was still there watching.

  At Sunday lunch Aunty Nic had noticed she was buzzy. Forced her to disclose that she was in the grip of a serious and very fun crush.

  ‘We’re only in one class together because he’s actually a third year.’

  ‘So he’s your age then?’ Nic asked.

  Lena was old for a first year. Not old like the mums returning to uni now their kids had left home or the senior citizens using their retirement to pack in an extra degree; not so old that you could tell just by looking that she wasn’t fresh out of high school. Coming from interstate it was easy to glide over the gap. Her answer to the inevitable where-did-you-go was a school none of them had heard of and so there was no follow up of oh-my-god-you-must-know-my-tennis-friend-Janie.

  Admitting she’d spent two years redoing her leaving certificate at TAFE to earn entry to uni was out of the question. And for a primary teaching degree, of all things! A shameful, last resort of a course, according to most of her classmates. The profession you entered because you didn’t get the marks to enter any of the good ones. Imagine if they knew how Lena had strived for this. How brain-foggingly, vertebra-crunchingly, wrist-crackingly hard it had been to get these unimpressive marks. The only acceptable thing to say about going into teaching was that you were passionate about education, but, actually, she had hated every minute of school and now she was out the idea of voluntarily going back there and standing in front of a class of kids made her feel nothing but tired. She was doing teaching because it was as close as you could get to a guaranteed full-time job with sick pay and holidays and superannuation. She was lucky the public school system was desperate enough for teachers that even a thickhead like her could make the cut. After two years at TAFE, anyway.

  ‘Nah, Josh is old for his year, too,’ Lena told Nic. ‘He took three years off after his HSC and travelled. He’s been to, like, Italy and Greece and everywhere.’

  ‘Kissed on the dick, hey?’ Nic said it loudly, like she said everything, and Lena felt the cafe bristling with judgement. Couldn’t bear to actually look around and check.

  ‘Yep,’ Lena said quietly, hoping to lower Nic’s volume by example. ‘His family owns half the state. The country half. All of the soy or wheat or something. I don’t know. He lives in the college that all the prime ministers lived in.’

  ‘All except Julia.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  Lena pulled up Josh’s Instagram page, found the pic of him on horseback he’d posted during winter break. Nic whistled, long and low. Not too loud, at least. ‘That’s a pair of thighs right there.’

  Before that, Lena had never noticed Josh’s thighs specifically, but the following Wednesday in class her gaze kept drifting down and to the left, taking in the surprising thickness of them. Most boys here, she realised now, had thighs barely thicker than their calves. Their legs giant khaki-cotton-wrapped matchsticks. Josh had thighs like the boys she grew up with. Footy-playing thighs, but without the bent nose and thick neck that usually went with them. Was it horseriding that did that for him? If so, it must be a regular part of his life. Something else that had never occurred to her: that the photo wasn’t a show-off holiday shot, like the one her mum had taken on their only ever trip to Wonderland Sydney, right before it closed for good, her and Will gripping the wheel of the Snowy River Rampage raft with expressions of goofy concentration. Josh on a horse was normal. It was like a picture of her on the stinking 412 bus! What was his life? God.

  Also: he dressed exactly like all the other boys from his college, managing to somehow look like he’d just rolled out of bed and put on the first combo of clothes he stumbled over, but also like he could be a men’s style influencer on Instagram. But there was no way Josh was buying his pants at the same places as the other boys. A pair of pants to fit his neat waist and cuppable arse would be burst open Hulk-style by his thighs.

  A piece of scrunched paper landed on her lap and she looked up into his leering face. ‘Eyes up here, Harris. Geez.’

  Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god. She stared straight ahead at the lecturer, resisting the urge to run from the room. To leave the state!

  She slid her silenced phone from her pocket and texted Nic: Josh just caught me perving on his thighs. Now I’m dead and it’s all your fault. Nic wouldn’t answer right away; she’d be behind the register still. Just as well. She’d probably text back something really dirty and Lena would lose it. Lose it worse than she already had.

  Her screen flashed. New text. From Josh. Shit. She didn’t even know he had her number. With the most who-gives-a-fuck expression she could possibly fake, she tapped it open.

  Oh. God. Help. Me.

  A photo. Of his crotch. Wearing the same palest-of-pale green pants he was wearing today. Sitting on the same fuzzy burgundy-coloured lecture theatre seat he was sitting on right now. Evidently taken in this room, today, while she was beside him trying not to think about his thighs. While he had an obvious—proud, even—hard-on.

  Lena shoved the phone in her pocket. It vibrated immediately. Fuck. She held it by her side and glanced down. Josh again: Obviously don’t mind you looking …

  The urge to run out of the room intensified and was then overtaken by a hot flash of inspiration. Before she could second-guess herself, she typed: I was admiring your pants, creep. Kmart’s spring collection?

  She kept her eyes ahead. Waited for the buzz which, when it came, caused an echoing vibration between her legs.

  Unfortch have to get my strides custom made

  Off the rack are too tight in the crotch

  Lena shot back a vomit emoji bracketed by eye-roll emojis but was thinking of how three years ago she had to get her year twelve formal dress altered because she’d lost so much weight since she’d bought it in the July sales and it cost forty-five dollars and that was just to take in the waist and bust of a dress that already existed. And also thinking that she couldn’t wait to get out of here and take another look at that photo because it did look impressive.

  Bet you’d like to have a feel

  Of the fabric I mean

  It’s really soft

  The fabric is

  RUOK ur face is red

  The room erupted. People standing and shoving laptops and books into bags. ‘Hey, can I borrow your notes?’ she said, so fucking nonchalant. ‘Some idiot was distracting me and I missed, like, everything.’

  ‘Sorry, Harris, can’t help you.’ They were walking out together, like always. ‘Spent the whole time thinking about this girl I’m into. Maybe you can give me some advice, actually.’

  ‘I can try.’

  ‘So we’ve been hanging out a bit, after class or whatever. I think she might be interested in taking things further, but I’m kind of nervous about asking her.’