Chapter Twenty Seven

 May 2003

I go to Rottnest Island for a day. I want Steve to come with me but he says he's already been and it's not worth going again. 

   I am disappointed he doesn't think it's worth going just to be with me.

   I am sick on the boat and the nausea lingers as I walk and bus around the island.

   Maybe it's better that I've come without Steve. As I watch the seals at Cathedral Rock I feel clouds  disappear from my mind. The seals flip and twist, their dark bodies graceful and lithe in the water. They look like different species from the slow, fat seals on the rocks.

   Steve and I, are we different species? Me, the streamlined dancing creature, and him the lumpen, lethargic animal?

   But just as the seals in the water and the seals on the rocks are the same animals, maybe Steve and I are the same in some way that I can't define. Why else would we have been drawn together?

   I walk, keeping my eyes peeled for quokkas, the marsupials that seventeenth century Dutch sailors took to be giant rats, naming the island Rat Nest after them.

   Steve said he didn't see any quokkas but I think he just doesn't know how to look, because I'm seeing them everywhere, shuffling and leaping in the distance.

   As I wait for the boat back to Perth a quokka comes just close enough for me to see its face. It looks like it's smiling. I smile back.

   I am feeling sick just at the thought of going back on the boat. I put my hands over my stomach.

   I don't remember when my last period was. Was it in Port Hedland? That must have been over a month ago. Maybe? I don't know. It couldn't have been. Time has been so warped with Steve I can't tell. I don't know the length of my menstrual cycle anyway, never counted the days between periods. It's probably just not due yet.

   Back in the hostel I ask Steve what he's done today. He says he's been job hunting. He doesn't ask me about Rottnest Island. I tell him about the seals and quokkas anyway.

The next day we are walking into the city when Shelley comes round the corner. 

   It feels like a million years since we left the flat in Sydney. 

   Shelley and I hug awkwardly. I introduce her to Steve. She narrows her eyes. I wonder what she sees, what she's judging in him. We arrange to meet up for a drink and a catch up.

I'm lying on my bed, flicking the The Lonely Planet. Steve shakes his head at me.

   'No one needs a Lonely Planet for Australia,' he says. 'Everyone knows all the places to go.'

   'Someone gave it to me,' I say, 'and I didn't know all the places to go.' Without it I wouldn't have known about Nimbin, 1770, Port Hedland. 'I didn't even know about the Opera House in Sydney.'

   'Everyone knows about the 'Opera House.' He smirks at me. 'I know you were scared.'

   'I wasn't scared,' I say, sneering at the idea, 'someone just gave me The Lonely Planet.

   'Of course you were scared,' he says.

   'I was not.' I hate that he sees me, mocks me as this scared little girl. I don't know how to prove that's not who I am. 

I meet Shelley. Conversation is stilted between us, not how it was in Sydney when we shared a room and felt almost like sisters. 

   She hasn't forgiven me for the last night out in Sydney, I think. For disappearing. For being flirty with James then leaving with some random man.

   I go back to the hostel. 

   'You weren't gone long,' says Tom as I slide into the bench at the picnic table next to Steve.

   'My friend's not a big drinker,' I say.

   She's not really my friend anymore. Steve was right about everyone hating me. He's all I have now. 

Chapter Twenty Eight