Most mornings I wake up to the sound of crows. Their cawing is loud and sharp, startling me out of sleep. Crows walk along the side of the footpath on the way to the bus stop, they fly overhead as I look out the bus window. Crows walk by the train tracks at the station, flying around the small, leafless trees.
‘It’s really freaking me out,’ I explain to Evie.
Evie looks away for a moment, watching Johnny as he brings our coffees.
‘Well yeah, there are lots of crows in Sydney. It’s the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. You began noticing them and now you can’t stop,’ Evie replies.
She scratches her short, bleached hair. I don’t know what else to say, so I say nothing. We sit like this for a while, silently sipping coffee.
*
Swirling her iced long black, Evie pokes the half-melted ice cubes.
‘You don’t talk to me liked you used to,’ she says, still looking at her glass.
Johnny returns and asks us if we would like anything off the menu. Evie shakes her head. I shrug.
‘When are you back at film school?’ Johnny asks me.
‘Not until March.’
We talk casually, catching up. Evie looks at Johnny, then at me. When he leaves she turns to me with a slight scowl.
‘Why didn’t you introduce me?’ Evie asks.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t think to.’
‘When you can’t be fucked introducing me to your friends it makes me feel like your squeeze of the week.’
The anachronism makes me laugh.
‘Who the fuck uses the term squeeze in the twenty-first century?’
Evie only looks at me out of the corner of her eye. I don’t make her laugh like when we met. Maybe she’s right: we don’t talk like we used to.
*
Later that night, while sitting together in the bathroom of a warehouse party, Evie and I split lines of ketamine. She takes the first hit, grabbing the baggie out of my hand. As she racks a line, I watch her. She bends down, inhales and sits against the wall, all with her eyes shut. She hasn’t looked at me all night. Before I do my line, I look at Evie for a moment. Her eyes are closed and her fists are clenched as she sits on the bathroom floor. It occurs to me to try and connect with her. To say something, to do anything to pull her out of what she is feeling. Instead I snort the drugs.
‘I need music,’ Evie says eventually.
She stands up, leaning against the door to gain her balance. I follow her into the crowd but I’m not interested in the music. Lost inside my head I stand stiff and tense. Around me the party pulses and writhes, a fluorescent hell. Everything is beginning to feel broken. When I look beside me Evie is no longer there; she is dancing at the front of the crowd with her blonde hair glowing under the lights.
*
Sitting alone at the back of the warehouse, I close my eyes and pull on my hair. I see the crowd, young and joyous and drug stained, and I wonder why I’m unable to join them. What’s wrong with me? Why am I like this? At some point Evie finds me. She places a hand on the top of my head. A simple touch, a gesture of affection.
‘Are you all good?’ She asks.
‘I fucked up. I took too much and now I can’t get out of my head.’
Evie crouches down to my level, wrapping her arms around my neck. As we kiss there’s a strange sensation in my stomach. It doesn’t feel right.
‘I’m going home.’ I say.
Evie nods. I’m expecting her to come with me, but instead she gives me a brief kiss and runs back onto the dancefloor.
*
After the night at the warehouse party, Evie stops replying to my texts. She doesn’t give me a reason, or a break-up text, or a goodbye. She just stops. I lie in bed all day, sick and anxious. To distract myself I download several dating apps. Scrolling through them mindlessly, I match with Misaki. We text for a while.
What do you like in bed? I message her.
Telling men what to do, she replies.
Misaki invites me over. It’s almost one in the morning.
I’m broke, I message her.
She agrees to pay for my Uber to her place.
*
Misaki’s bedroom is a mess. Scattered books, bad paintings on the wall, old mugs of coffee, an unstringed bass guitar, a bong. It reminds me of Evie’s room, of my own room. Lost twenty-somethings trying to find themselves and ending up with each other. Misaki stands in front of me with slightly red eyes, smiling to herself. A stoner’s gaze.
‘Get undressed,’ she says as she takes off her T-shirt and bra, lying on the bed.
‘Go down on me,’ she says as she runs a hand through my hair.
‘Use the vibrator,’ she says as she points to the bedside table.
I walk over to the table and find a body wand lying on the floor. The vibrating circular head suddenly makes me feel useless. I go soft.
‘What’s wrong?’ Misaki asks.
‘My head is all over the place.’
*
Lying next to Misaki on her bed, she traces the outline of the tattoos down my arm.
‘Why’d you get all these?’ she asks.
‘Out of impulse mostly. Maybe I wanted to prove to myself that I could endure pain.’
Misaki smiles and turns her body to lie on her back. I place a hand on her breast, over her pierced nipple.
‘Why’d you get pierced?’ I ask.
Misaki shrugs. ‘I thought it looked cool.’
She turns to face me again, resting her head on her arm. As she watches me, I feel as if there is something I am supposed to say. Something concrete and tangible I am supposed to be doing in this moment. Something that will create some bond or intimacy. But the words or actions don’t come and my mind remains blank. Misaki smiles again, before moving off the bed and picking up her bong.
‘Thanks for keeping me company tonight,’ she says as she rips a cone.
Grey smoke fills the rooms. She places her bong back down but stays standing. It’s almost four. I realise she wants me to leave. Picking up my clothes from the floor I get dressed.
‘Good idea. My boyfriend will be back in the morning,’ Misaki says.
‘Can you order my Uber home?’ is all I can think to ask.
*
Over the next week I do nothing because I have nothing to do. It’s the end of the year and I’m single, unemployed and thinking of dropping out of school. To distract myself from all this, I sleep until twelve, one, two in the afternoon. By Friday I’m desperate for company, so I message Katie, an old friend who I haven’t seen in months. We agree to see each other in the evening. When I arrive at Katie’s house, there is loud music coming from inside.
‘Lovely to see you, it’s been a hot minute!’ Katie says.
We walked past her housemate’s band, as they practice in the living room, and head to the kitchen. Katie brews a pot of chai. We talk about money and music and plants.
‘I traded cuttings from my huge aloe plant for some guitar strings. My friend was so excited. I think we should restart a barter economy,’ Katie says while pouring two cups of chai.
We walk back past the practicing band and sit outside. Katie notices my outfit. I’m wearing a button-down shirt and corduroy pants.
‘Glad you stopped dressing like a hobo,’ she comments.
*
Though we have known each other for years, very quickly Katie and I find we have run out of things to say. I remember why we don’t hang out as much as we used to. Over time we have become very different people. Sitting in the silence I become self-conscious that Katie isn’t enjoying my company. After a while, she takes out her phone to play me her new music. The songs are boppy bedroom pop, with looped beats beneath sad lyrics.
‘It’s very different from your old music,’ I say.
‘Yeah, I got over the post-punk scene. It’s so gross.’
When the song ends there is another moment of silence. The same silence that seems to follow me everywhere: dense and nervous, alienating and insurmountable. This silence that I sometimes believe to be at my core, the poison at the centre of myself. Katie finishes her cup of chai. She stands up. ‘Let’s make dinner,’ she says.
In the kitchen, Katie boils pasta and steams broccoli.
‘Pasta, broccoli and olive oil. It’s all you need!’
Katie’s boyfriend, Jake, joins us. We talk about movies. Jake says they’ve started watching two or three a day.
‘Like the classics. But also dumb stuff,’ he explains.
When the pasta is ready the three of us sit out back, under a decaying wooden pergola. Jake and Katie eat while talking about British comedies. Jake speaks quickly, he’s articulate and able to connect multiple ideas at once. His black-painted fingernails move rapidly as he waves his hands, blonde hair falling across his face. Watching Katie with Jake, I find myself longing to be with a partner. I think about Evie and my gut sinks. After dinner I notice Katie looking tired and tense. It’s late now and maybe I’ve overstayed my welcome. As I leave, I suggest we go to the gallery sometime and ask Katie to send me some of her music. She gives me a brisk hug outside before closing the door. Standing alone on the street, I think of messaging Evie, but I don’t. Instead I message Misaki. She doesn’t reply.
*
In the morning I wake again to the cawing crows. They sound like an admonishment. Each day comes with this heavy feeling, a mixture of dread and anxiety, that makes it difficult to get out of bed at all. When I check the date on my phone, I notice it’s New Year’s Eve next Saturday night. Scrambling to find something to do so that I don’t spend the night alone, I message anyone I can think of. Elliot replies. He tells me there is a big laneway party on that night.
Lots of drugs, his message says. And Evie will be there.
*
When the night arrives, I find Elliot among the partiers. He gives me a long, warm hug. His curly brunette hair covers half his face but it’s clear he is very high.
‘What’s everyone on tonight?’ I ask.
Elliot looks around, smiling. ‘Someone brought rocks of MDMA. Super strong and everyone is fucked.’ He unzips the bum bag strapped across his chest and finds a cap. ‘I’ve already capped a bunch. It makes them easier to sell. If you want one, on the house!’
I stare at the cap he gives me, wondering if it will help with how I’m feeling or make it much worse.
‘Where’s Evie?’ I ask.
‘Relax. She’s around.’
Pocketing the cap, I give Elliot another hug.
‘Thanks for texting me back,’ I say.
*
This party is a spectacle of music, chatter, glitter and dancing. Walking around, I hear someone howl, which starts a chain reaction of drug-addled shouts through the night. Near the makeshift stage, I wait for the next band to begin. Four musicians dressed in glittery gold jumpsuits take the stage. As they start their set, I become filled with an anxiety that I am alone, an alien, a stranger. So I take the cap out of my pocket and swallow it. It kicks in as the band is playing. An intense wave of hesitation quickly replaced with a rushing weightlessness. Then I dance, no longer remembering my fears. Soon I can barely remember who I am. The band plays a cover of Jefferson Airplane’s ‘Somebody to Love’. In my serotonergic daze the lyrics seem significant and prophetic. I remember Evie is somewhere at this party and the urge to find her becomes overwhelming. Leaving the dancefloor, the laneway vibrates and mutates like a living thing. I think I’m walking in circles, seeing the same faces over and over. The high is strong, maybe too strong. Why do I keep doing this? Why do I continue to bring myself to this point? Evie’s laughter catches my ear, and I walk in the direction of the sound. She is standing with a group of friends, passing around a bottle of water. When she sees me she screeches and runs up to give me a hug.
*
We walk out of the party and sit in a nearby park. Evie’s quiet now; there’s an obvious tension. Thoughts and emotions cascade through me, too rapidly to think or feel any specific one. Evie’s staring at her fingernails, which are chipped and painted a bright purple. There must be something I can do or say in this moment that will fix everything. Not only my relationship with Evie, but everything. A magic phrase or gesture that will form a new pattern, instigate a better way of living. This pressure continues to build and my head is filling with noise. Then I begin to laugh.
‘I got too high again, and it feels like my whole dumb life is a joke.’
Watching me laugh makes Evie laugh. Eventually, she falls quiet again, chipping at her purple fingernails.
‘Sorry for disappearing on you,’ Evie says.
She pauses for a moment, breathing to calm herself.
‘It’s not really my style to ghost people like that, but I felt like you were pulling away and wouldn’t care anyway.’
‘It’s not that I don’t care,’ I reply.
‘But after the first few months we were together, you suddenly stopped being warm, and I got sick of trying…’
‘I’m just bad at handling all that stuff.’
‘What stuff?’ Evie asks.
‘Human relationships,’ I answer.
Evie turns and we look each other in the eyes. Her pupils are dark and dilated, and I have the thought that this is the first time I have ever actually seen her.
*
Sitting on the bus back to my place, Evie rests her head on my shoulder. I wonder how much of what we’re feeling is the drugs and how much is us. This thought concerns me less as the bus drives on and the high fades but our connection remains. In my room we both crash on the bed. The effort to do anything but sleep is exhausting. When I close my eyes the room swirls, then I blackout. In the morning I wake to my head pounding. In the kitchen, I chug water from the faucet. Evie is sitting outside, eating from a kilogram bag of frozen blueberries.
‘I found these in the freezer and read somewhere that blueberries are good for restoring serotonin,’ she explains.
Evie passes me the bag as I sit next to her.
‘Happy New Year,’ I say as I place a berry in my mouth.
‘Did you make any resolutions?’ Evie asks.
‘I think I want to be good. I’m going to pursue goodness.’
‘So grandiose. I only resolved to bring healthier lunches to work.’
I bite down on the frozen berry and the coldness causes a sharp pain through my tooth. ‘Maybe I’ll start with brushing my teeth more often,’ I say.
*
To ease the comedown, we decide to have a few drinks. Local bands are playing at The Vic all afternoon, so we catch the bus over. The pub is busy, and looking around I notice groups of people from last night’s party. I see Elliot standing at the bar. We walk up to him and he gives us each a hug.
‘How was your night?’ he asks.
‘Out of my mind, I realised many things relating to the nature of fear and human connection. Though in the morning I forgot pretty much all of it and ate a half kilo of frozen blueberries,’ I answer.
‘I mostly remember wanting to boogie,’ Evie says as she walks towards the stage.
A band is setting up and the hum of a distorted guitar fills the venue. I buy Elliot a drink before finding Evie near the front. The band plays, loud and reckless, while we dance.
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