Chapter Five

 January 2003

I get a bus to Nimbin. I spend the days writing everything I remember from Saturday night and Sunday morning in a notebook. I had Shelley's lip balm in my bag. I don't think Adam or I were wearing seatbelts in the car. The third man in the house in the morning- Did he- No. He couldn't have done. I would know. Surely I would know.

   In the night I sit in the tent with the other residents of the hostel, smoking, getting stoned, forgetting.

   I'm walking to the town when the owner of the hostel passes in his truck. He stops and asks me if I want to go with him. He's going to his ex-wife's house to do some gardening.

   'Okay,' I say. I get in the truck.

   His ex-wife, he tells me, lives in a commune, but everyone in it has their own house and garden. She's on holiday with her partner so he's looking after the garden and keeping an eye on the house.

   When we get there he gives me a glass of water and tells me to sit on the porch and enjoy the surroundings while he tends to the garden.

   It's peaceful here. So quiet. It's not like a garden, it seems wild and overgrown, alive with leaves and flowers.

   He comes and shows me a white flower with a yellow centre. Frangipani, he calls it. He folds the petals. 'And then you give it to someone special,'  he says. He holds it out to me.

I take it but I feel my muscles stiffen. I am dizzy with the thoughts filling my head. Why did he bring me here? I should know not to get into vehicles with men I barely know. I'm miles from anywhere.  He must be twice my age. He can't think-

   He smiles and goes back to the garden. It's okay. Nothing happens. He takes me back to the hostel. 

   I go into the town. There is a young woman there dressed in black. She's so pale she could be a ghost, so thin I am both repelled and envious. She walks through the street as if she is somewhere else.

   In the tent that night a group play the song Because I Got High by Afroman on repeat. Someone asks them if they want to listen to something else. They stare blankly and giggle.

   The next day I get the bus back to Byron Bay. 

   I go to a different hostel from before. A man is juggling in reception as I walk in. I'm not sure if this is the right place for me. 

   That evening I swim lengths of the pool. Two women are talking by the side.

   'I'm going to do some laps. I want to get skinny.'

   'Like her in there?'

   'Not that skinny.'

   I have to walk across a railway track to get to the hostel. Every time I cross I check, double check, triple check for trains. Then hurry across, afraid a train will materialise out of nowhere as soon as I step onto the track.

   I pull my unworn bikini from my backpack and find a quiet corner of the beach. The scars on my stomach fade into my tan. The scars on my arm stand out white against my browned skin. But they are just lines, easier to shrug off if anyone asks.

   A man in the hostel is teaching the didgeridoo. He tells me women aren't supposed to play it because it rattles our brains. I try anyway. It leaves me breathless.

   I take a surfing lesson. I concentrate on tuning into the ocean, the ebb and flow of the tide. Nothing else exists, just me and the waves.

   Two women in my dorm talk about a day trip they took to Nimbin. The first thing they saw when they got off the bus was a junkie bleeding. I think of the pale girl. 

Because I Got High

Chapter Six